According to a KPBS post today, June 25th, Capital Power is withdrawing its request to the City of San Diego to build a power plant in University City on Pueblo lands. They will not be appearing before the Rules Committee tomorrow, Tuesday June 26th as expected. Councilwoman Sherri Lightner told KPBS that she believed there were not enough votes to get the request on the November ballot. Capital Power hasn’t given up on the project. They will begin a public relations campaign in the future. [Read more…]
Supreme Court Reversed Anti-Citizens United Ruling From Montana
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday struck down Montana’s century-old limits on corporate political spending, putting an end to the state’s resistance to Citizens United and effectively expanding that controversial ruling to the state and local elections.
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, decided in January 2010, struck down federal limits on campaign spending by corporations and unions as violations of the First Amendment. Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing on behalf of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, reached the bold conclusion that “independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption,” and therefore “[n]o sufficient governmental interest justifies limits on the political speech of nonprofit or for-profit corporations.” [Read more…]
A Hard Look at San Diego: The Story of One Latino Family and What Foreclosure has Meant
By J. G. Robinson
As I said in my last column, Latinos in our community have been among the groups most affected by the foreclosure crisis. In the next two columns I tell the story of one Latino family and what foreclosure has meant to it. I found this story moving, and it is one of the strongest indictments I know of the politicians and business people who have done so little to help people facing foreclosure. In this first installment I will look at what led up to the foreclosure for this family, and in the following column I will examine what happened after the foreclosure took place. This is the story of someone I will call Jose.
Jose was not originally from San Diego, but rather from a small west Texas town. He was brought to San Diego, like so many others, by the military. [Read more…]
Error Code 451
by Horace Boothroyd III /Daily Kos
There are some places we are not allowed to go on the internet. Sometimes when censorship is imposed by the government the error message should be Error Code 451. This is the idea of Google’s Tim Bray.
The number 451 refers to Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Since we all have read this text.
What?
You haven’t read it?
Drop everything and run to the library before it is too late! [Read more…]
An Interview with Foreclosure Fighter Michael T. Pines
By Carolyn Zellander
Following is an interview Michael T. Pines, a Carlsbad attorney who made national headlines for advising clients to “occupy” foreclosed homes. Back in 2011 he was charged with 18 counts of misconduct stemming from his representation of the former owners of three foreclosed homes — in Carlsbad, Newport Beach and Simi Valley. He was released from jail three months ago and will probably be booted out of the legal profession according to a decision by a State Bar Court judge public Thursday. Although he has been scorned by the legal profession, he is a hero to many activists fighting to save homeowners from the perils of the foreclosure crisis.
As a member of the San Diego Foreclosure Strategists Group (SDFSG), I first met Michael at a planning meeting on March 1st, 2012. The primary objectives of SDFSG include educating stressed homeowners and finding solutions and/or alternatives to foreclosure. Michael was an invited guest of a planning session for an action directed toward District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis. Several homeowners with documented incidences of fraud, which when presented to the District Attorney‘s office, had fallen on deaf ears. We did carry out that action at a public function. The action was effective, but Michael paid a price, two days later, he was in jail again. Violation of bail, I believe was the reason given.
[Read more…]
A Hard Look at San Diego: The Impact of the Foreclosure Crisis
by J. G. Robinson
I have spent the last year and a half of my life researching the impact of foreclosures on members of our community. I have interviewed homeowners, realtors, bankers, loan counselors, political activists, politicians, and community leaders about this issue. In each column I will a particular facet of the crisis, but then, and most importantly, look at the experiences of people who have suffered through the crisis. We are witnessing what the Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman has called a “lesser depression”, and the stories of people hammered by this event deserve to be heard. [Read more…]
Teachers Are People Too: Some Musings on Education “Reform” and Gender
By Kelly Mayhew / Special to San Diego Free Press
Vilification of teachers belies the hard work and preparation it takes to educate our children.
Counter to many parents and education reformers, my husband and I are staunch supporters of not only public schools, but of public school teachers. As a community college instructor myself—a professor of English at City College—I recognize the challenges facing folks who devote themselves to serving everyone who walks through their doors. They do this because: a) public schools, unlike charters and privates, can’t turn any kid away; and b) most teachers I know believe in the mandate that we should serve everyone. [Read more…]
Former ATF Agent Blasts GOP Fast & Furious Foolishness
By Kimberley Beatty / Special to San Diego Free Press
Republicans feign outrage over “Operation Fast and Furious,” ensure more illegal firearms flood the streets.
The National Rifle Association (NRA), one of the most powerful lobbies in the US, has relentlessly tried to destroy the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) since it was created in 1972. They came close under Ronald Reagan in 1981, when the NRA pushed legislation to abolish the agency. Realizing that federal gun law enforcement would transfer to the then much esteemed Secret Service, the NRA scuttled the proposal. Ironically, when Reagan was shot that year, ATF agents were crawling over boxes in warehouses in order to follow the paper trail of purchases and gun ownership of the gun used to shoot Reagan and his Press Secretary Jim Brady. The NRA had successfully blocked computerization of records because that would amount to registration. [Read more…]
Hope Dies at Guantanamo
By Marjorie Cohn / Jurist / June 20, 2012
The tragic case of Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif hit a dead end when the US Supreme Court issued an order refusing to hear his case last week. Latif, a Yemeni man, has been imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay since January 2002, after being detained while traveling to seek medical treatment.
Latif had suffered serious head injuries as the result of a car accident in 1994, and the Yemeni government paid for him to receive treatment in Jordan at that time. But his medical problems persisted, and in 1999 Yemen’s Ministry of Public Health recommended that Latif undergo tests, therapy and surgical procedures at his own expense. Unable to afford it, Latif said he left Yemen in 2001 with the help of a charitable worker to seek free medical treatment in Pakistan. When he was picked up in Afghanistan — on his way to Pakistan — and transferred to US custody in December 2001, Latif had his medical records with him. [Read more…]
Sacred Lands -Public asked to join Native American vigil on June 23 at Ocotillo wind site
The snake was moved but kept coming back, just like our people. We will continue to keep coming back.” – Preston Arrowweed, Quechan elder. He believes unusual animal visitations at site are signs from Indian spirits, asking his people to help
By Miriam Raftery / East County Magazine
Ocotillo – Neither blistering heat nor blowing dust dissuaded Native Americans from at least four different tribes from taking part in a five-day occupation in Ocotillo last week.
They came to be with the spirits of their ancestors. They also aim to show that desert devastation occurring with construction of the Ocotillo Express wind facility is wrong and must be stopped.
[Read more…]
Sex in San Diego: Are you a prude?
by Mrs. Grundy
The word “prude” comes from the French. Traditionally, it meant something along the lines of “honorable woman.”
Today, dear Wikipedia explains that “prude” refers to a person of any gender who is “concerned with decorum and propriety, significantly in excess of normal prevailing community standards.” Particularly when it comes to sex and nudity, a prude “may be perceived as being more uncomfortable than most.”
This suggests that determining one’s level of prudishness involves a comparison to current community norms. And when it comes to sex and nudity, the community’s norms are hard to pin down — especially in a major metropolitan community like San Diego.
Still, I believe it is possible to delineate some sex-related norms across San Diego — and therefore, to calculate the extent of a given San Diegan’s prudishness. [Read more…]
Incorporating the Mind
By Lucas O’Connor
By now, most of us agree that the concept of treating corporations as people has, in practice, been a disaster. The flood of corporate money into elections since Citizens United has been just as bad as advertised, deference to the supremacy of corporate health as national health continues to rise, and still the very concept remains just as laughable now as it’s always been. But it isn’t just the straightforward threats to a functioning electoral system or a stable economy that should be worrisome. This march towards corporations-as-people ultimately challenges how we see ourselves and what we value in our lives.
The argument that corporations are people inevitably spills over into what the role of people are in our society. Corporatizing that concept will, over time, reduce individual people more and more into nothing more than instruments of profit. That means that quality of life goes out the window, it means value that doesn’t show up on a balance sheet is dismissed, and over time we give up on building anything into our lives or communities that don’t make money. [Read more…]
