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Ramona School Board Finds Easy Target: Public Unions

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By Dave Patterson / Special to the San Diego Free Press

Nothing bold, nothing new.

The seminal message delivered at the Ramona School board meeting on June 7th, 2012, was that the problem is the unions. While concessions from the unions will certainly be part of it, the real solution is much more complex. Too bad that the Administration and all but one of the school board members were willing to turn away from the reality, and instead cast a stone at a politically reliable target, public unions.

Dawn Perfect, the lone dissenter in approval of the 2012~2013 budget, remarked courageously that the administration had failed to produce a plan toward future solvency, paraphrasing here. The County schools executive told the board that the deficit projections are “huge” for years 13~14, and “beyond belief” for 14~15. They warned that if the school board fails to reign in the budget the state will take over and everyone will lose, particularly our children.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line—San Diego Teachers to Talk Contract Concessions

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Tuesdays’ election results continue to reverberate around the country. Here in San Diego city attorney Jan Goldsmith is asking the courts to help the City sidestep long term litigation over the legality of Proposition B by combining five lawsuits already filed over the initiative in advance of a court decision on the legality of the measure. At issue is the question of whether the city violated a state law that requires negotiations with labor unions in advance of requesting any initiative that would impact employee pay and benefits. The city has maintained that Proposition B was initiated by private citizens and is exempt from the provisions of the law.

Early morning reports on Twitter indicate that the San Diego Educational Association (teacher’s union) membership has voted to talk about contract concessions aimed at negating already announced layoffs for some 1534 teachers. The issue of concessions has divided the union, with more militant members being purged from the SDEA leadership in recent weeks. And yesterday 1000 students at Point Loma High School walked out to protest teacher layoffs.   [Read more…]

California Primary: San Diego Conservatives Are Celebrating Way Too Early

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Since Primary election eve, when the results were coming in, San Diego conservatives have been celebrating their perceived “victories”. Me thinks they are celebrating way too early, as the results are not as favorable to the GOP and their extremist friends as they think it was. Check this out.

First, the California Primary was one of the lowest voter turn-outs in history – 36% – if not the lowest. Low turn-outs tend to favor conservatives, whereas large turn-0uts favor Democrats and liberals. And Democrats did stay away from the polls, as there was no big-ticket item on the ballot. Sure, Barack Obama was on it but he was a shoe-in. And Senator Dianne Feinstein was on it as well, but she didn’t have any serious challengers. Yes, there were two state-wide measures – and one of them – Prop 28 – which does aid democracy just a tad -passed handily – but how can anyone get excited about a tax on tobacco.   [Read more…]

Sign Petition: Support a Resolution to Reverse Citizens United

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We are asking for San Diegans – and ONLY SAN DIEGANS – to help out by signing our new Change.org petition.

The petition asks that the San Diego City Council support a resolution to amend the constitution and reverse Citizens United. After all, corporations are not people and money is not free speech!   [Read more…]

Why Wisconsin matters to San Diego

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The Wisconsin recall election could have implications in local San Diego races

Anyone who has followed national politics over the last year will be eagerly awaiting the results of the efforts in Wisconsin to recall Republican Governor Scott Walker. It is considered to be the most important pre-November general election result in the country because it represents two distinct philosophies and the direction this country could go when all the votes are tallied on November 6th.   [Read more…]

“I used to work on the original San Diego Free Press”

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By John Lawrence / Will Blog for Food / Originally published July 6, 2007

I used to work for the San Diego Free Press. It flourished for about two years from about 1968 to 1970. I guess there was a recent version [before our current SDFP] but it has nothing in common with the 1968-70 version except the name. It was an “underground” newspaper meaning that it was devoted to radical politics, alternative lifestyles, the counterculture in general. But mainly it was a political newspaper. I used to sell papers at the San Diego Zoo among other spots, one of the few people who actually went out and sold them on the street. Most of the staff just liked to put out the paper, do the art work, write the articles etc. I also wrote for the paper, took photos and was a reporter.   [Read more…]

Welcome to the San Diego Free Press !

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We want to welcome our readers – today is our first “official” day for the publication of the San Diego Free Press.

Beginning Monday, June 4th, the OB Rag – an online publication for Ocean Beach – is birthing a new online publication for all of San Diego. It’s the San Diego Free Press – and is named after San Diego’s very first alternative newspaper – which was published from 1968 to 1969.

The San Diego Free Press will bring to the rest of San Diego what the OB Rag has been bringing to the community of Ocean Beach these last four and half years – an online source of news, issues, and progressive views by citizen journalists, plus providing of a platform for the discussion of issues relevant to the village of OB.

The San Diego Free Press – in the planning stages for over a year and half – will be a source for neighborhood news from all the ignored and forgotten communities of our area, and it will provide a source and platform for progressive views for and by San Diegans.   [Read more…]

Homelessness and Hand-to-Hand Combat

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Violence: Is it caused by nature or nurture? I have often wondered why people hit each other in physical, hand-to-hand fights. And when people are homeless, living bereft of everything, why doesn’t the fighting stop?

To find out about the nature of violence among homeless people, I asked a 48 year old disabled man who lives on the streets why he fights. I thank him for the candor:   [Read more…]

The Starting Line: DeMaio on the Front Page, UT Talking Heads Debut Panned

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June 4, 2012—For the second time in this election cycle “Papa Doug” Manchester’s Union-Tribune has splashed it’s editorial endorsement of a mayoral candidate on the front page. Monday morning readers of the local daily newspaper were treated to “Editorial: The Case for Carl DeMaio” even before they could turn the page today. Blogger George J. Janczyn (@GrokSurf) pretty much summed it up when he tweeted: “Once again the U-T headlines DeMaio for mayor–and this time on the REAL front page, not on a wrap-around. U-T’s the Fox News of newspapers.”

U-T San Diego launches on-line TV station to terrible reviews… Hoping to extend his reach beyond print with “original local news, talk and lifestyle programming on cable and the Web”, publisher Doug Manchester launched UT San Diego TV this week to terrible reader reviews.   [Read more…]

Sign Petition: Support a Resolution to Reverse Citizens United

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Hello, fellow activists!

We are asking for San Diegans – and ONLY SAN DIEGANS – to help out by signing our new Change.org petition.

The petition asks that the San Diego City Council support a resolution to amend the constitution and reverse Citizens United. After all, corporations are not people and money is not free speech!

We’ll be submitting this petition list to members of the San Diego City Council in June as part of ongoing nationwide effort. For that reason it is important that only those living in the city of San Diego (ZIP code 92101-92199) sign.   [Read more…]

San Diego Primary Round Up – Have You Voted Yet?

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The last few days have seen local Republicans crowing over various social media outlets about the “voter enthusiasm gap”. What this is all about is that the Registrar of Voters for San Diego has been steadily releasing information on the number of mail in ballots they have received, broken down by party affiliation. (You can tell this because of differences in the return envelope, indicating party affiliation if any.) Who people are actually voting for won’t be known until June 5th.

What the GOPer’s are talking about is the spread in favor of Republicans in terms of those ballots that have already been received. The Daily Fishwrap ran an article Tuesday that said Republicans had a six thousand vote lead over Democrats in mail-in votes. Another way of looking at would be that, Republicans, who are more likely to vote by mail, have returned two percent more ballots when compared to the total number of Democrat/Republican ballots mailed.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line: Mayoral Candidate Filner’s Missing Transcripts Found

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I read the Daily Fishwrap(s) so you don’t have to…    Filner’s Kenyan connection?… Absent a potential birth certificate scandal, reporter/columnist Matt Hall has decided to make the Mayoral candidates cough up their college transcripts in hopes that something, anything will make for a story. And at least one of the SDUT’s reliably right wing commenters is having […]

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