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The Starting Line – Here Comes Strike Three: Tourism Tax Showdown Symbolic of Change in San Diego

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City Councilman Kevin Falconer called for public hearings yesterday to placate the City’s hotel industry, which is growing increasingly panicky over Mayor Bob Filner’s refusal to release funding generated by a hotel room surcharge of 2 percent to finance the city’s Tourism Authority.

“Jobs”, “Police”, “Potholes” whined Falconer, desperate for a buzzword that would play well in the evening’s TV newscasts.

From this morning’s UT-San Diego:

“Every day that goes by San Diego is losing potential tourism tax revenue that we can use to fill potholes and hire more police officers,” Faulconer said in an interview. “Shutting off those funds will hurt one of our most important industries and cost us jobs. I want to ensure that all of the council and the public know the cost of the mayor’s inaction. There’s no excuse for this inaction.”

No excuse, Kevin? Really?

How about the probability that the two per cent tax funding this program will be declared illegal?

INSIDE: San Onofre Saga Continues, Senator McGrumpy on Hagel and a Headline You Won’t Believe…   [Read more…]

PERB Smacks Down Prop B: Pension Reform Initiative Ruling Explained

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To the surprise of……well, no one, really, Prop B was deemed illegal according to state law by an administrative law judge in a ruling released Tuesday evening, essentially invalidating Prop B.

The City, of course, intends to appeal the ruling.

The crux of the case is this: Proponents of Prop B insist that it was a “citizens initiative,” since it was put on the ballot after a petition drive that gathered over 115,000 signatures to get the measure on the ballot. Therefore it reflects the will of the people and should not be overturned. Opponents of Prop B noted that according to state law workers rights cannot be put to a vote via ballot initiative……in a nutshell.   [Read more…]

PUC Delays Vote on SDG&E’s Proposed Fossil-Fuel Power Plants – Again – and the Sierra Club Is Pissed Off!

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During a period of time when the nuclear power station at San Onofre has been disabled for a year now, there are renewed calls, according to the U-T, to allow SDG&E to proceed with their plans to build two fossil-fuel power plants. Yet, when the California Public Utilities Commission sat down to vote on the utility’s proposals yesterday, Feb. 13th, they refused to take a vote and instead delayed their decision – again – and this time for the fourth time

The San Diego Chapter of the Sierra Club – who has opposed these plants – is pissed off, and they’re demanding answers – and rightfully so. The Chapter head, Lori Saldana, called it “unacceptable.”   [Read more…]

Bernie Sanders and Ralph Nader Both Condemn Postal Service Decision

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By Matthew Rothschild / The Progressive –RSN

Consumer advocate Ralph Nader and Senator Bernie Sanders condemned the U.S. Postal Service for its decision to end Saturday delivery.

“The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) today continued its tradition under the leadership of Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe of shooting itself in the foot,” Nader said. “The only question that remains is: When will the madness end? By ending Saturday letter delivery in August 2013, as the USPS has proposed, millions of customers who take advantage of its services will be harmed, mail service will be slowed, and the USPS’s current death spiral will deepen.”

Nader also called into question the legality of the move.   [Read more…]

Edison and Mitsubishi Knew San Onofre Steam Generators Were Defective

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By Michael Steinberg / Black Rain Press

A press release issued Wednesday by two prominent members of Congress charged that Southern California Edison (SCE) and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) knew that the two replacement steam generators for the San Onofre nuclear plant were defective, and avoided adding safety measures to keep from triggering stricter scrutiny by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Senator Barbara Boxer of California and Congressman Ed Markey of Massachusetts send a letter to NRC Chair Allison Macfarlane on Wednesday stating,

“Southern California Edison and MHI were aware of serious problems with the design of San Onofre nuclear power plant’s replacement steam generators before they were installed. Further, SCE and MHI rejected enhanced safety modifications and avoided triggering a more rigorous license amendment and safety review process.”

San Onofre units 2 and 3 have been shut down for over a year, because of serious problems in the replacement steam generators that caused serious damage and rendered operation of the two nuclear reactors unsafe.   [Read more…]

SDG&E and Southern California Edison Up to Same Old Tricks: They Want You to Pay for Repairs to San Onofre

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We have written before about how electric utility companies try to get ratepayers rather than stockholders to pay for repairs to their equipment.

In particular, we wrote previously how SDG&E appealed to the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) for a rate increase after the disastrous Witch Creek fire..

Now Southern California Edison (SCE) and SDG&E, majority and minority owners, respectively, are using the same playbook with regard to the repairs undertaken at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS).   [Read more…]

A Good Day for an Implosion – End of Days for South Bay Power Plant

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Editor: Our friend JEC witnessed this event Saturday morning and sent us his pictures and thoughts…

The crowd was in the thousands, parking was a challenge.  The morning was beautiful – a good day for an implosion.  The crowd could feel the shock waves from the explosions and car alarms went off in mass.

Now the real battle begins – do something better with the land.  And what’s the bet the Port District will let Duke energy off the hook by leaving the spit of land that extends out from the plant into the middle of the bay.  That berm with the square island at the end was built for the plant to separate the cool intake water from the plant’s warm output.  Standard language in Port leases calls for tenants to return to land to it’s original condition.  Western Salt avoided paying millions to remove the industrial salt ponds because those berms have been declared historical structures, “celebrating San Diego’s industrial heritage.”

Come inside for the photo gallery…   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – San Diego: Have a (Great) Beer While You’re Waiting for the Marijuana Dispensary to Open

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Our fair city finally got national recognition for what it does well yesterday when a writer who actually drinks beer put San Diego at the top of a “Non Fiction” list of the best beer towns in America. And our new mayor got schooled yesterday in what it really takes to be a game changer when it comes to medical marijuana.

Columnist Steve Body, who pens The Pour Fool column for Seattlepi.com did a little research into the business of compiling best beer cities and was shocked to discover that even big time media outlets weren’t using any sources with backgrounds in the field.

In other news, Mayor Filner walked back an earlier promise to get the City of San Diego out of the business of prosecuting medical marijuana dispensary owners yesterday.

MORE Inside: Immigration Reform, ‘Yes We Cannibus’, DeVry University Sued…   [Read more…]

State Hits Walmart Contractor with Wage Theft Ruling

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from Warehouse Workers United/Frying Pan News

The state of California has ordered a Southern California warehouse that processes merchandise for Walmart and other retailers to pay 865 workers more than $1 million in stolen wages.

The California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement issued the citations Monday, Jan. 28 against Quetico, LLC, a large warehouse complex in Chino, California. Back wages and unpaid overtime total more than $1.1million and in addition the state issued about $200,000 in penalties.

“Quetico is strict when it comes to enforcing its rules with workers so it is only fair that the state enforce the laws that the company broke,” said Abraham Guzman, a warehouse worker who has been at Quetico for about two and a half years. “I am satisfied that the law will now be followed and workers have won justice.”   [Read more…]

The Non Zero-Sum Society: How the Rich Are Destroying the US Economy

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And why Walmart, McDonald’s and every hospital in the country should be unionized

As President Obama said in his inaugural address last week, America “cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it.”

Yet that continues to be the direction we’re heading in.

A newly-released analysis by the Economic Policy Institute shows that the super-rich have done well in the economic recovery while almost everyone else has done badly. The top 1 percent of earners’ real wages grew 8.2 percent from 2009 to 2011, yet the real annual wages of Americans in the bottom 90 percent have continued to decline in the recovery, eroding by 1.2 percent between 2009 and 2011.

In other words, we’re back to the widening inequality we had before the debt bubble burst in 2008 and the economy crashed.   [Read more…]

Digging Tunnels Under the 30 Foot Height Limit – Part 1

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Height Limit Critic Sparks Debate But Important Exemptions Need to Be Acknowledged

This is the first part in a two-part series on the latest debate about the 30 foot height limit.

New Year’s confetti and the champagne glasses used celebrating the end of 2012 – a year that marked the 40th anniversary of the 30 foot height limit in San Diego – had barely been cleaned up when the assault on that height limit began. It all started in a January 3rd Voice of San Diego article questioning any positive attributes of the 30 foot limit.

Not exactly like a “D-Day” type assault, but more like a tunnel being dug – a tunnel designed to undermine the coastal height limit of 1972, writer Andrew Keatts questions the basic character of the height limit, declares that its essential rigidity will be necessarily and periodically questioned by a city yearning to break free, and gives voice to its critics. The critics believe that because of the 30 foot height limits, all kinds of problems plague San Diego, with rents and property values at the coast being too high.
  [Read more…]

Wall Street: From Too Big to Fail to Too Big to Jail

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After the financial meltdown of 2008, the Bush administration shoveled tons of money into Wall Street as did the Federal Reserve. TARP, the Troubed Asset Relief Program, was a $700 billion carte blanche gift to Wall Street to prevent an imminent meltdown. This was engineered by Henry Paulson, Bush’s Treasury Secretary.

But that was miniscule compared to what the Fed ponied up. A lawsuit by Bloomberg News forced the Fed to reveal that it had given $7.7 trillion to banks all over the world to prevent the looming crisis. And the Fed is still at it with its policy of Quantitative Easing (QE).

But while the banks have been bailed out and are still being given monthly money cards, they have not been held to account for the behavior that caused the financial crisis in the first place. No banker has gone to jail despite the massive fraud and corruption that they perpetrated and in fact are still perpetrating.   [Read more…]

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