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Should the Koch Brothers Own The Tribune Newspapers?

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By Jackie Tortora/AFL-CIO Blog

Some say the press is the fourth branch of government. It serves as a “check and a balance” to our elected and non-elected leaders and informs the public of news for the greater good. But what if that was compromised by a corporate power grab?

That’s exactly what the panel “Should the Koch Brothers Own The Tribune Newspapers?” will examine next Wednesday at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. As we’ve covered on the blog before, David and Charles Koch have expressed interest in buying the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun and other leading newspapers owned by the Tribune Co.   [Read more…]

2013: Year of the Protest?

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“We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.” ― Historian Howard Zinn

By Doug Porter

It’s hard to keep all the players straight at this point.

Last month protesters rallied in 52 countries and 436 cities world-wide as part of ongoing global protests against seed giant Monsanto and the genetically modified food it produces.

This month there are massive protests in Turkey. Nationwide demonstrations in Brazil. A huge construction workers strike in Quebec, with 175,000 strikers angry about being asked to work 14 hours a day, six days a week with no overtime pay.

And there are lots of smaller, less likely to be covered by the mass media, protests slated for San Diego, including an unusual coalition planning a July 4th rally protest prompted by the recent disclosures regarding government surveillance.

Today we’ll take a look around at what’s happening in this year of protest.   [Read more…]

Olympic Bid is Perfect Opportunity to Address Chargers Stadium Quest

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Discussions should start now to plan for Olympic stadium, regardless of bid’s success.

By Andy Cohen

San Diego Mayor Bob Filner wants to bring the Olympics to San Diego. Actually, he wants to bring the Olympics to San Diego and Tijuana.

This is not exactly news if you follow local politics at all. Filner has been rather vocal about his desire to bring the 2024 games to America’s Finest City, and even more adamant about it being a bi-national effort.

“Within a week we will announce our bi-national committee, the chairs and the membership from both Tijuana and San Diego,” said Filner last week during his periodic “Pen and Paper” session with the local media in response to a question about his proposal. There are outlines and timelines drawn up already, there has been contact with the various Olympic Committees, drafts of logos, among other things. “It’s really been moving along,” said Filner.   [Read more…]

Lawsuit Seeks to Shut Down Over The Line’s Boozin Beach Tournament; Preferential Treatment Claimed

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By Doug Porter

A non-profit group has filed suit against the City of San Diego, seeking to block approval of a special-event permit for the 60th Annual World Championship Over-The-Line Tournament (OTL), scheduled for two weekends in July.

FreePB.org, a group that in the past opposed the city’s alcohol ban on beaches, is saying that the permit approval process was illegal and therefore null and void until an environmental review is conducted.

Their opposition to the OTL tournament permit was triggered by the city’s rejection of a permit for a beach event called the Leisure Olympics. FreePB asked for many of the same concessions granted to OTL, including exemptions from San Diego’s beach booze ban that would allow for individuals to bring their own alcohol and purchase alcohol from vendors. They also vowed to impose exactly the same “safeguards” promised by OTL   [Read more…]

Beyond the “Conservative Entertainment Complex”

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By Jim Miller

In this column that originally ran in December of last year, I discuss “the conservative media entertainment complex” as conceived of by former Bush propagandist David Frum and note that he only touches on the tip of the corporate media propaganda iceberg.  What follows this is a beginners primer on how to decipher corporate media propaganda.  

In the weeks following the election, David Frum made waves by explaining the shock in conservative circles over Romney’s loss with a bit of interesting media criticism: “Republicans have been fleeced and exploited and lied to by a conservative entertainment complex.”

Of course, those of us with a historical memory longer than five minutes found it amusing to hear this from Frum, the author of George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil” speech.  Indeed, Frum was one of the central ideologues promulgating lies aboutIraqand demonizing dissent as unpatriotic.  I guess it takes one to know one.

Still, despite the bitter irony of Frum playing the role of truth-teller, he is on to something.  The trouble with his analysis is that it stops at the obvious.  The truth is that the problem with the media is not limited to the universe of Fox News and right wing radio pundits.  The American media landscape distorts the truth not because it is liberal or conservative but because it is corporate.

Eds. Note: Originally Posted in December 2012. We’re re-running some of the best of his columns while Jim takes this ‘vacation’ thing we keep hearing about.   [Read more…]

One Sharp Health Care Experience: Uncoordinated, Sub-Standard, and Ultimately Tragic

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The opinions and views expressed in the following article are solely those of the author and his subjects and do not reflect the opinions and views of the editors and staff of the San Diego Free Press.

by John Lawrence

This article is about the shoddy treatment of one woman by San Diego’s Sharp Health Care. Her name is Donna Lichtenfels. I interviewed her by phone on Saturday, May 18.

Donna was an employee of Sharp Health Care. She had gone to work there in the corporate office in August 2011, and, as a condition of her employment, she had to take Sharp Insurance called Sharp Health Plan. She had no choice in the matter.

Donna has worked in the healthcare field for over 30 years. She started working in the field for Blue Shield of California as a claims adjuster and in fraud and abuse. She has worked for physicians and major hospitals all over the US. She also has written for several websites  including OpEdNews, Winning Progressive and Daily Kos under her pen name, Jillian Barclay. She currently is too sick to write.

Last July after a mammogram and a biopsy, she was diagnosed with breast cancer.   [Read more…]

Money Kills Journalism

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By Bob Dorn

There’s only so much a few individuals can do against what more and more appears to be a remodeling of Mussolini’s corporate state, and only a bit more that a gathering of individuals like San Diego Free Press can. But I think The Freep is growing.

Every month I see a contribution from a talented writer whose name I hadn’t noticed before. I read comment lines from people who know more about the issues at stake in San Diego and the world than I can see in the Atlantic, Reuters, ABC, CNN, CBS and CBs..t sites of the nation’s overfed, paralyzed and monetized media.

The endurance of The Freep offers me at least one sure takeaway: money kills journalism.   [Read more…]

SoCal Edison Pulls the Plug on San Onofre Nuke Plant

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By Doug Porter

Today’s news round up starts with the announcement from Southern California Edison saying that the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station is finished. Kaput. Shutdown. Over.

Citing “continuing uncertainty about when or if it might return to service”, the company concluded that questions over when or if the plant might return to service was not good for customers or investors. Concerns about the environment or planet earth were not mentioned.

Since the shutdown of the nuclear power generating station in January of 2012, there has been an epic struggle over whether the plant could safely be returned to operating status.  A small radioactive leak in faulty steam tubes prompted the closure and subsequent questions over the plant’s processes and procedures have lead to protests, innumerable hearings and calls by California Senator Barbara Boxer for the Justice Department to investigate Southern California Edison and its statements to federal regulators about swapping out generators.   [Read more…]

NYC Launches Largest Bike-share Program in Nation – Will San Diego Ever Get Rolling?

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Start Up Delayed Until March 2014 – No Reason for Delay Given

By John Anderson

New York City launched a bike-share program last Monday, May 27.  The program, dubbed Citi Bike in a nod to corporate sponsor Citibank, had been the subject of much conversation and excitement (both positive and negative) in the months leading up to launch.

Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the country San Diego awaits the arrival of a bike-share program.  Announced in November 2012, the initial projection called for 1,800 bicycles in 180 stations.   [Read more…]

Tony Baloney Says Meatless Mondays in San Diego Schools are Government Coercion

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By Doug Porter

Today’s round up of the news starts with public education. And one of the ways the English language gets mauled by those who have an aversion to the ‘public’ part of it.

The San Diego Unified School District Board of Trustees approved a proposal yesterday to incorporate meatless Mondays into its cafeteria menus for elementary and K-8 schools for the coming school year.

This isn’t some radical notion. The concept started a decade ago, as an initiative backed by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.  A report by the American Meat Institute in February 2011 found that 18% of American households now participate in Meatless Mondays. Oprah’s endorsed it. School districts in Los Angeles, Baltimore, Oakland and Arlington, Virginia all participate.

Note that the SDUSD policy doesn’t prohibit bringing a baloney and ketchup sandwich (a high school favorite of mine) from home, so if a student wants animal protein they can have it.

INSIDE: Peters to Come Out Swinging for Obamacare, VOSD Jumps the Shark, GOP Defunds (Non-existant) Acorn (Again)   [Read more…]

San Diego Professor Taking Global Warming Fight to the Markets

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A successful effort to convince CalSTRS to divest in fossil fuel stocks would be first significant economic victory in fight against global warming.

By Andy Cohen

Most people accept that global warming is real and that it’s happening. But even for those who continue to willfully deny the facts right underneath their noses, it is getting more and more difficult to ignore the increased frequency and intensity of the superstorms that have devastated our landscape.

The arguments against global warming are almost nonsensical, ranging from “God would never allow it” theology to ideological orthodoxy. Since global warming is the major threat to the recession proof oil and gas industry—an industry that represents enormous power and influence with the ability to sway policy on a whim—many climate change deniers simply reject the abundance of empirical evidence out of their own economic self interest. The decline of the oil and gas industry, after all, in their mind, is the demise of the Western World’s entire economic existence. Oil provides the energy that makes the world go ‘round. What would we do without it?

To the true believers, fossil fuels are, and will continue to be, the lynchpin to the American and global economies.   [Read more…]

Monsanto in the Hot Seat

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By JEC

On Friday May 31st, NBC News posted a report from Reuters that South Korea has suspended wheat imports after the discovery of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready Wheat growing in a fallowed field of an Oregon farmer.  Problem is, Monsanto only field-tested the strain until May, 2004 when the Canadian Wheat Board, then the world’s largest grain seller, informed Monsanto it’s 10 largest red spring wheat buyers, including Japan, the U.K. and Malaysia, wouldn’t buy modified (genetically altered) varieties of wheat.  

Out of market concerns Monsanto pulled their GM Roundup Ready Wheat from the USDA’s approval process.  So how did this discontinued strain of Monsanto wheat end up on a farm in Oregon nine years after the company stopped working with this strain?  Has this modified strain found its way into the commercial wheat crop? 

On such concerns, Japan too has suspended imports of western-white wheat from the U.S., and canceled an order while the USDA is sending investigators to undisclosed locations throughout the western United States.  The story is just beginning and the weeks ahead could prove challenging for the U.S. agriculture business and Monsanto.   [Read more…]

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