From OBRag / June 9, 2012
FAMILY FRIENDLY AND FUN: Occupy Women Lend a Creative Twist to the Movement
‘Occupy OUR Arts’ is a Celebration of the 99% Culture and Creative Arts.
SAN DIEGO: Women Occupy San Diego (WOSD), with the support and endorsement of many community groups and artists will be hosting an all-day, family-friendly arts festival at Civic Center Plaza on Saturday June 9th, 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM. [Read more…]
AlterNet / By Adele M. Stan
In 1979, Sister Theresa Kane was given a very special task. As president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an umbrella group for most orders of U.S. Catholic nuns, Kane was asked to deliver four minutes of welcoming remarks, on behalf of American sisters, to the newly elected Pope John Paul II during his first papal visit to the United States. At a gathering inside the grand church in Washington, D.C., known as the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Kane offered the pope a warm greeting, and then launched into this:
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By Veteran of First Dates
After my San Diego divorce in the early part of this century, and then after a few false-starts in dating other women, I finally set out to date with a more self-conscious awareness.
Being in my mid-fifties, it was not easy to meet people – not being a bar kind of guy -, and after exhausting friends of friends, friends of family, former girlfriends, going on one blind date, participating in one of those “quick dating” rounds at a restaurant, I came to realize that there must be better and more modern ways to meet women – and men – in this society.
And there is. It’s called internet dating. [Read more…]
OWS’ ‘Spring Awakening’ in Central Park Will Kick Off a Season of Activism, Attract New Faces
By Simran Sachdev /AlterNet / April 11, 2012
This Saturday’s family-friendly event will draw some new individuals into the movement while also energizing existing Occupiers and facilitating cross-organizational cooperation.
The Spring Awakening 2012, a day of rejuvenation, celebration, and intense movement-building, will take place this Saturday, April 14, in Central Park. For Occupy supporters who may have been disheartened by any struggles over the winter, this event will help propel Occupy Wall Street forward over the next six months. It is designed to welcome new people into the life of activism and strengthen existing ties of those already embedded in the movement. [Read more…]
By Dirty DeMaio / April 9, 2012
There’s been considerable attention paid recently to the secrecy around the hotelier vote to impose a new tax on the public. Those looking for the origin of the secret hotelier vote that apparently can’t be shared with the public can look back to October 10th last year, when the city council voted to make it secret. Thanks to a motion by Carl DeMaio, the city’s municipal code was altered specifically for this purpose:
61.2710(e) Since the Landowner-voters are entitled to a secret ballot, and since ballots are required to contain the names of each Landowner and the number of votes each Landowner is entitled to cast, and since the number of votes assigned to each Hotel may be considered to contain proprietary commercial information, the City Clerk shall protect the confidentiality of the ballots. No persons, other than the staff and consultants of the City who require access for the purposes of counting and canvassing the ballots, may have access to the ballots at any time unless by order of a court of competent jurisdiction.
So of course the public doesn’t get to know. [Read more…]
By Paul Buchheit / NationofChange / April 9, 2012
This is tax time, or in the case of many big businesses, just another time without taxes. These companies deserve to be recognized. With the help of SEC data and the results of several excellent research studies, PayUpNow.org has selected the ‘winners’ of the 2011 Tax Avoidance Awards.
Last Year’s Results
First a review of last year’s results. The top spot went to General Electric, which made pre-tax profits of $44 billion from 2008 to 2010 but received almost $5 billion in refunds. A GE spokesperson added, “We are committed to acting with integrity in relation to our tax obligations.”
A close second was Exxon, notable for having the nation’s highest pre-tax earnings three years in a row, a 2% federal income tax payment rate, and hubris comparable to that of GE: “Any claim we don’t pay taxes is absurd…ExxonMobil is a leading U.S. taxpayer.”
[Read more…]
Editor: If you’re asking yourself how could SeaWorld have a banner year in 2011 with record earnings for the company, and yet pay not one nickle in taxes, you’re on the right track. Doug Porter’s First Cuppa this morning turned us on to what article most newspapers in this country ran about the SeaWorld financial saga, which is reposted below. The U-T San Diego ran a similar but different article. Can you find the differences?
McClatchy/Tribune / Originally published April 4, 2012
ORLANDO, Fla. _ SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment had a banner year in 2011. Attendance and guest spending rose across its U.S. theme parks. Earnings set a company record.
But SeaWorld won’t have to pay a dime in federal income tax. It will not have to pay any Florida corporate income tax, either.
Thanks to big tax deductions for capital investment and interest payments, SeaWorld’s record 2011 will actually go down as a loss for tax purposes. [Read more…]
San Diego’s best known cultural center with a history of celebrating the cultural diversity of the region and the people who work there have become the targets of discrimination.
The World Beat Center needs our support. This prized venue of music, art, and creativity is at the center of San Diego’s Black, Hispanic, and Native American cultures. Located on the fringe of Balboa Park, the World Beat Center (WBC) is under increasing attack that has been described as systematic, “institutionalized racism”. [Read more…]
I’m a man in my 30s who enjoys porn. In contrast, most women I know seem to have no interest in porn.
Accordingly, I’m intrigued by how porn tends to be compelling to men but unappealing to women. Maybe it’s because, for men, so much of sex is about the physical details. Whereas for women, so much of sex is not about the physical details.
But porn does excite women — and it doesn’t matter what kind of porn. Studies show that straight men are turned on by straight porn, gay people by gay porn, and straight women by both straight porn and gay porn… [Read more…]
Free Screening of “Bag It” at Indie Yoga April 7th at 7pm
Billions of plastic bags and bottles are used in the U.S. each year. Take a look around your own household, or check out the trash littering our streets and beaches.
The average American uses about 500 plastic bags each year and, according to estimates, each bag is only used for about twelve minutes before being discarded.
There’s no denying it. Plastics are everywhere! Most of what we eat and drink, and the products we purchase, are packaged and wrapped in petroleum plastic – a material designed to last forever, yet used for products that most people use once and throw away. [Read more…]
Allison Kilkenny / The Nation / April 3, 2012
Once the last major Occupy camps had been razed by police forces, pundits began to crow that the movement was finished. Of course, once it became clear that thesis was not grounded in reality, the professional ponderers went on to wonder aloud (and in print) if occupations would still be a major part of the group’s agenda. In other words: could Occupy still be Occupy without ongoing occupations?
An Occupy Wall Street action in San Francisco of between 100 and 300 activists achieved what New York Magazine calls “one of the first real occupations of 2012” when they took over a building belonging to the city Archdiocese. (photo via @OCongress)
Police in riot gear stormed the two-story building Monday afternoon after breaking through a barricade the activists had built and arrested nearly eighty Occupiers. [Read more…]
San Diego CPUC Meeting
Al Bahr Shriners Memorial Auditorium
April 5th
2:00 pm and 6:00 pm
5440 Kearny Mesa Road
San Diego, CA 92111
By Diane Conklin / Ramona Sentinel / Originally published March 24, 2012
What will it take for the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to deny San Diego Gas & Electric’s request that you and I pay for their fires? I have thought a lot about this question and have come to this conclusion: It will take the people of San Diego County, thousands of them, to email, call, write, and participate in the process.
And one of the most important and most accessible ways to participate is to join with neighbors and friends and “Come on down” to the April 5th public hearing and tell the commission yourself what you think of this plan.
[Read more…]
