San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

You are here: Home / Archives for Business

The Starting Line—UT-San Diego Soviet-Style Election Coverage. Are Airbrushed Photos Next?

by

UT-San Diego editor Jeff Light has always challenged critics of the paper’s ownership to see if they can find any bias in the paper’s news coverage that reflects the unabashed right wing political leanings of publisher Doug Manchester and CEO John Lynch. One need look no further than today’s edition of the paper and its failure to report any forum or debate occurring in San Diego yesterday that might have aired views in opposition to UT-San Diego’s editorial stances.

There were six, count em, six, debates and forums throughout San Diego yesterday, but for readers of our daily newspaper the only one that occurred was the “televised” event that was staged in UT-San Diego’s broadcast studio.

Not mentioned in today’s paper were a debate between candidates for the San Diego City Council District One seat, a forum for SDUSD School Board candidates, sponsored by the League of Women Voters and Up for Ed, a Balboa Park rally held by supports of school bond construction Proposition Z, a multi-candidate (six contenders, including Mayoral candidate Bob Filner and Congressional candidate Scott Peters appeared) forum on sustainability issues, and a PTA sponsored appearance by civil rights lawyer Molly Munger in support of Proposition 38.   [Read more…]

Prop 37: 8 Reasons for Voting Yes for Labeling GMO Foods

by

The French prime minister announced on September 15, 2012 that France would maintain a ban on Monsanto’s MON810 maize, the only genetically modified organisim (GMO) currently allowed in Europe. Thanks to activism by French citizens and serious political outcry, Monsanto is now effectively blocked from Europe’s gigantic marketplace. This is even more true when you consider that France is the largest agricultural producer in Europe.

But that’s not all. Following the ground-breaking French study that graphically linked the lifetime consumption of Monsanto’s GMO corn in rats to massive tumors and direct organ failure, Russia’s premiere consumers rights organization has suspended both the importation and use of Monsanto’s GMO corn within the nation’s borders.
  [Read more…]

Stadium at San Diego’s 10th Ave Marine Terminal Site Potentially a VERY Bad Idea

by

UT San Diego​ CEO threatens port commissioner in effort to intimidate local officials into supporting development plan.

San Diego has a stadium problem. I know. You’re shocked—SHOCKED!—to hear this. I mean, after all, it’s been the best kept secret in San Diego this side of peanut butter. We’ve only been talking about a new football stadium to replace the aging and crumbling city owned Jack Murphy/Qualcomm Stadium for the Chargers (and Aztecs) for over a decade now. And yes, it has been that long. It may only seem like yesterday.

The Chargers have long contended that in order to remain financially competitive in the NFL they would need a new football only stadium with all the bells and whistles of the rest of the modern facilities that have cropped up throughout the league. And there have been a LOT of them. Of the 32 NFL teams, almost all of them are playing in new or completely refurbished stadiums.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Want to Make San Diego More Bike Friendly? Lose the Helmets!

by

There’s been a lot of discussion in San Diego lately about making the city more bike friendly.  Mayor Sanders held a media event not long ago touting a public “bike sharing’ program, a low cost rental system that could encompass downtown, the beach areas and midtown by next spring.  Three bike ‘corrals” that allow riders to safely park their bicycle in crowded urban neighborhoods have been opened recently. And it would appear that the people in charge of the area’s roads are starting to take a more serious look at making the streets more user friendly to riders.

From the venerable New York Times Sunday Review comes an article suggesting that, if we truly want to succeed in making the San Diego area more bike-centric, we should look at what many will consider a heretical idea: lose the helmets.   [Read more…]

California Prisons, a Profitable Industry

by

by John Lawrence

We’ve been incarcerating more of our citizens than any other country in the world. 2.3 million Americans are presently behind bars. Since 1970 the number of people incarcerated in the US has grown by 700%. Even though we are 5 percent of the world’s population, we have 25 percent of the prisoners in the world. Most of those incarcerated are there for minor drug offenses including possession of small amounts of marijuana. 9.2% of African-American adults were in prison in 2008. One in six Latino men will spend part of their life behind bars. The for profit prison-industrial-complex has grown mainly due to the War on Drugs. The War on Drugs has become a war on drug users, non-violent offenders and poor people even though a majority of drug users are affluent.
  [Read more…]

San Diego Ashford University Ex-Employee Writes About Getting Shafted

by

(Editor’s Note: We received this letter in response to a story that we ran this week about Bridgepoint Education/Ashford University laying off hundred of employees here in the San Diego area. Our premise for the original story was that Bridgepont/Ashford was just another in a long series of morally bankrupt corporations that have been touted as the darlings of the San Diego establishment. Our correspondent, who for obvious reasons wishes to remain anonymous, certainly does a good job of making the case for us.)

As a former employee of Ashford University, I am very upset with the way we were treated, lied to and disposed of by a company that found legal loop holes in the system that allowed them to take advantage of 450 people.

I was hired early in the summer and was told that we should not worry about the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) denial of the company’s application for accreditation, and that Ashford had already started making corrections to get the approval the next time around.
  [Read more…]

SEMPRA Energy Wants Ratepayers to Pay for Their Negligence

by

It’s standard operating procedure for San Diego based SEMPRA Energy, parent corporation of San Diego Gas and Electric, to delay costly maintenance and then, when there is a breakdown in the system such as the 2007 Witch Creek Fire which burned 198,000 acres, killed two people, injured 40 firefighters and destroyed more than 1,100 homes, to go to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and get a ruling that would allow them to charge the ratepayers for costs associated with that disaster.

So SEMPRA’s strategy is very simple. Don’t spend the money on maintenance and then, when a disaster happens, go to the CPUC whose members it has wined and dined, and ask for a rate increase so that the ratepayers, not SEMPRA, pays for the costs associated with the disaster such as paying off homeowners whose homes have been burned down in the fire. Hey, it’s cheaper than doing routine maintenance.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Poll Shows Filner Gaining in Mayoral Race as The City Goes to Hell

by

Mayoral candidate DeMaio continues to consolidate his support among the downtown business types that he campaigned against during the primary. The ‘reformer’ who was going to take on the ‘entrenched interests’ in San Diego is now actively courting the Chamber of Commerce types. So it came as no big surprise yesterday when current Mayor Jerry Sanders swallowed his pride and appeared before the press to bless DeMaio’s candidacy.
…
Meanwhile, in the only good news I have to report today, a Survey USA poll released yesterday by TV 10News indicates Congressman Bob Filner is widening his lead over City Councilman Carl DeMaio in the race for San Diego’s top spot.  Voters reached by telephone for the survey favored Filner over DeMaio by a 12 point margin, 50 to 38%, with the Congressman showing significant gains among women, Hispanic and white voters over the past month.  The poll says that 12 percent of voters remain undecided and that those who formerly supported candidate Nathan Fletcher now support Filner by a 2 to 1 margin..   [Read more…]

The Fed’s Quantitative Easing Policy: What’s In It For You?

by

Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve Chairman, has been in the business of printing money. His program is euphemistically called “Quantitative Easing (QE).” In September 2012 Bernanke announced QE3 in which the Fed would purchase $40 billion of mortgage backed securities per month indefinitely.

There had been QE1 and QE2 previously, which were one time injections of capital into the nations’ money supply. All theses QEs have resulted in one thing: interest rates have been brought down to practically zero. This may be great for people wanting to buy a car or a house, but for savers, like senior citizens, they have been robbed from gaining any interest on their savings accounts.

They might as well have put their money in their mattresses.   [Read more…]

San Diego City Council Unanimously Denies Quail Brush Power Plant

by

by Nadin Abbott/East County Magazine

September 24, 2012 (San Diego)–The mood was tense as people from multiple walks of life and political views filed into San Diego City Chambers. Among them was Republican Santee Councilman Jack Dale and Democrat David Secor, candidate for U.S. Congress for the 50th district. Both Dale and Secor came to oppose the Quail Brush gas-fired power plant.

So did Massada Disenhouse, activist for the Sierra Club and Martha Sullivan, a former California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) employee, and many others.

There were supporters of the plant as well, including Gary Salas, a member of the electrical trades. Also supporting the project was John Gibson, of Hamman Construction in El Cajon.

  [Read more…]

The Starting Line – The Moral Bankruptcy of Bridgepoint Education/Ashford University

by

One of San Diego larger private employers, Ashford University/Bridgepoint Education, announced layoffs for 450 employees yesterday, a move that’s bound to send ripples throughout the region. Employees were told to come in early, shown a video and offered a two-week severance package. Then it was out the door.

The aftermath of past corporate disintegrations brought on by unsustainable business models (or a legal/quasi-legal ponzi scheme, as I like to call it) has been a sort of local amnesia in the news media, followed by admonitions from the UT’s editorial page that “too much regulation” is bad for business. At the bottom of this well of malevolent corporate behavior is the ultimate reality that we citizens will get stuck with the bill for damages while most of its perpetrators will walk away unscathed.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – San Diego City Council to Celebrate National Voter Registration Day by Authorizing Secret Vote on Hotel Tax

by

Things that make you go hmmmm…Tuesday’s docket for the San Diego City Council features item number S500:

“A resolution authorizing the payment of outside counsel fees and associated costs incurred by the Mayor, City Councilmember, and present and former City employees in testifying before the California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB).”

If that sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because the same resolution was considered and rejected by the City Council on June 26th, by a vote of 4-1.

The fact that this question is even being put up for consideration screams “under the table deal”. And does this deal have anything to do with the secret vote that the City Council be taking shortly that could authorize our local hotels to soak the public for another couple of  billion in taxes?   [Read more…]

©2010-2017 SanDiegoFreePress.org

Code is Poetry