San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

You are here: Home / Archives for Business

How the Little People Crushed a Corporate Bully

by

Preserving Carlsbad’s Future the Right Way

Citizen activism triumphed over corporate greed last week when Carlsbad voters defeated Measure A. If approved it would have transformed the quiet beauty of one of the city’s three pristine lagoons into the home of a Los Angeles-style shopping center/tourist magnet.

The 53 percent voter turnout surpassed SD County’s 45 percent in the 2014 gubernatorial election. The Citizens for North County activist group opposing the measure raised $115,000 in donations to produce 20,362 NO votes. That’s less than $6 per voter.
  [Read more…]

Berkeley Votes To Boost Co-op Economy In The Face Of Gentrification

by

A growing number of cities are investing in co-ops to keep money local and neighborhoods affordable.

By Araz Hachadourian / Yes! Magazine

In 1971, the owners of The Cheese Board turned their Berkeley, California, mom-and-pop shop into a co-op, where they became worker-owners alongside their former employees. Over the years, more co-ops branched out from the bakery, forming the Arizmendi Association of Cooperatives, a group of six bakeries and a development and support collective in the San Francisco Bay Area. Today, The Cheese Board Collective, as it’s now called, has an espresso bar, a pizzeria, a menu of nearly 400 cheeses, and dozens of well-paying jobs.

Cathy Goldsmith has worked as a baker there for 21 years. Like the other worker-owners, she also has duties in human resources, accounts receivable, and community relations. She estimates that she makes about twice as much as she would make at other local bakeries where her responsibilities would be more limited.   [Read more…]

Americans Are Being Screwed by Drug Companies

by

And It’s Not Obamacare’s Fault

You can blame lobbyists from the health insurance and pharmaceutical industry in conjunction with Republican lawmakers who lobbied the Affordable Care Act to death making it in the long run unaffordable and probably untenable. Why? Because there are no cost containment features in the Act. None. Nada. Zippo.

What that means is that the drug companies can raise the prices of drugs 5000% like Martin Shkreli of Turing Pharmaceuticals did for Daraprim without breaking the law. Shkreli’s arrogance, the latest example of which is calling the Congressmen who interrogated him “imbeciles”, has gotten him into much trouble but not for raising the price of a life-saving drug 5000%.   [Read more…]

Ceramic Heights: A New Creative Outlet for City Heights

by

Have you ever taken a ceramics class? If you were lucky, maybe your high school art class or summer camp let you play around with hand building. But for most of us, we’ve either never had the chance or think of ceramics as “that thing I tried once upon a time”. For Amanda Gardner, ceramics has been a hobby since she was a kid growing up in the suburbs of Chicago.

Fast forward to adulthood and Amanda joined the coast guard. She was stationed in San Diego in 2007 and spent 4 years in the service as an electrician. After leaving the coast guard, she found herself picking up a variety of different jobs, constantly learning new skills.   [Read more…]

Spinning SeaWorld: “Hey Look, We’re No Longer Spying on Activists!”

by

Forgive me if I don’t seem all that excited about SeaWorld CEO Joe Manby’s admission about SeaWorld employees posing as animal rights activists in order to spy on opponents. And their promise not to do it anymore.

We already knew about Paul T. McCombe, using the alias Thomas Jones, the guy who was fond of inflammatory rhetoric and tried to incite PETA activists to violence. His activities and the high probability that more of his ilk were lurking in the shadows was reported in the Union-Tribune in the summer of 2015.

The company’s statement was given at the end of a conference call to discuss an earnings report. The press has largely taken the bait reporting on this disclosure over the real news, namely that SeaWorld had just posted an adjusted loss of $9.6 million, or 11 cents per share.   [Read more…]

Private Encroachments into Public Space: Ocean Beach Grows Wary

by

From Restaurants to the Beach, Private Interests Are Taking More Public Grounds

The recent uproar among OBceans over the intrusions into public sidewalks by two Ocean Beach restaurants illustrates a broader and growing wariness by the public of the larger issue of encroachment by private interests into public space.

Just several weeks ago, two OB restaurants, The Joint and the yet-to-open OB Brewery – both on Newport Avenue – have installed permanent fixtures outside their establishments that seriously curtail pedestrian traffic and block the public access to the public sidewalk immediately in front of the restaurants.

The Joint put in tables with a metal fence and gate, taking the encroachment trend in OB’s “outdoor cafes” to a new level. The OB Rag ran a poll where 42% of the respondents agreed that what The Joint did was an encroachment into public space and agreed that the fence and tables should be removed. The OB Brewery also installed exterior fencing that significantly narrows the public walkway.

The future of these intrusions into what many feel are the public’s right-of-way has yet to be ultimately decided, but the response by locals reflects a growing wariness among OBceans – and others who live up and down the coast or near parks – to what they perceive as an invasion into public space by people with private interests as their motivation.
  [Read more…]

Trouble on the Dream Coast: Housing Policy Challenges

by

By Debra Varnado / Capital & Main

It’s no secret that California residents pay more for housing than residents in most other states, especially in the metropolitan coastal areas and Silicon Valley cities. Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, Palo Alto and other highly attractive, jobs- and amenities-rich cities are widely documented as being the least-affordable housing markets in California.

Obtaining decent affordable rental housing and earning enough income to sustain a family are increasingly more difficult goals to achieve. The American Dream of homeownership, and of building and maintaining stable communities, is fading in the face of this new socio-economic reality.   [Read more…]

Winter 2016 AFL-CIO Executive Meeting Topics: Economic Inequality, Democracy in America

by

The executive council of the AFL-CIO, a federation of 56 unions representing 12.5 million members, has been meeting in San Diego this week. The agenda for the gathering suggests a growing enthusiasm for broad political actions, going beyond the specific needs of organized labor.

The Big Story, according to mainstream media outlets, has been the decision not to make a presidential endorsement. The reasoning behind that decision, and just about everything else happening at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront Hotel is no secret though it would be easy to think it was from the lack of local coverage.   [Read more…]

North of the Fence: Institutionalized Racism in San Ysidro …

by

… South Bay Rapid Transit Breaks Ground, and the Bill of Rights Schooner Needs Help

On Wednesday, February 17th a groundbreaking ceremony marked the construction of the South Bay Rapid project, a $113 million, 21-mile bus route from the Otay Mesa Port of Entry to downtown San Diego. Mayor Mary Salas said it would connect eastern Chula Vista with downtown San Diego.

The biggest question yet unanswered: Will residents switch from their car to public transportation?   [Read more…]

Billionaire Developer Pays Off County GOP for Backing Carlsbad’s Measure A

by

Following Caruso Affiliated’s Money Trail

By Richard Riehl / The Riehl World

When I got an email a few days ago from an unrecognizable sender with the single word “Caruso” in the subject line, I was skeptical. Was this just another phishing expedition? But curiosity got the better of me. Opening it I found the unsigned message, “Caruso Acquisition LLC gave $50,000 to the San Diego County Republican Party on 12/31/15.” It was followed by a link to the California Secretary of State’s website. Checking it out, I found only one thing wrong with the anonymous message. The gift was actually made on December 30.

The timing of the donation struck me as odd. Rick Caruso had already invested $7 million in an attempt to build a shopping center next to Carlsbad’s Agua Hedionda Lagoon. Why the sudden urge to give big bucks to the Republican Party?   [Read more…]

Looking Down the Road at San Diego

by

It’s like a tale of two cities. The staff with the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) have put together competing proposals for spending priorities in advance of a ballot measure for countywide half-cent sales tax increase, raising $18 billion over the next 40 years.

Two constituencies are targeted with these proposals: city politicians and environmentally conscious citizens. Both plans include construction of a new trolley line running from South Bay to Carmel Valley, a skyway system of gondolas connecting the first tier of mesas (Balboa Ave to PB, Sorrento Valley to UCSD) to the coast, along with various clean air and water projects.

One proposal offers up 40% of revenues for cash-strapped localities to be spent on infrastructure, 30% on transit projects and operations and 10% on highways. spending priorities. The other proposal offers up 50% of revenues for transit, 17% for highways and zero for infrastructure.   [Read more…]

Civic San Diego’s Plan to Bypass the Living Wage Ordinance

by

Editor’s Note: The Board of Directors of Civic San Diego is set to approve an economic development work plan at their February 24th meeting. In short, this is their grand vision for San Diego. Sadly, this vision doesn’t include the living wage provisions required of large local development projects over the past decade. Board member Murtaza Baxamusa was the sole opposing vote at a recent committee meeting.   

By Murtaza Baxamusa

For low-income communities, the promise of “economic development” is often held as the basis for taxpayer-subsidized projects. However, developer-driven focus on projects, rather than people, has the theory of local economic development upside-down. This is what happens when a downtown development corporation starts working on a plan for economic development for other neighborhoods.

It is often easy to forget why we do economic development? Not every project, nor every neighborhood needs it. Ultimately, the key metric to measure the success (or failure) of any economic development intervention should be whether local residents are working in better-paying jobs. If the disposable income of the average household in a neighborhood increases, the market will respond accordingly. There will be more amenities, shops, restaurants, services that will be attracted to the buying power of local residents. On the other hand, if household incomes in a neighborhood stagnate, then local businesses stagnate too and perpetuate the lack of opportunity.   [Read more…]

©2010-2017 SanDiegoFreePress.org

Code is Poetry