Violet Ri, a transgender teenager at San Ysidro High School, was nominated for Homecoming Queen last week. Although she didn’t win, San Diego Gay & Lesbian News praised the high school’s staff for promoting a safe environment and not discriminating, for example, against which restroom Ri uses. Violet Ri is also at the top of her class and plans to get a Master’s in education. [Read more…]
Just Say No to Highways in SANDAG’s Sales Tax Increase Proposal
The board of the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG), the county’s regional planning agency, is putting together a proposal for a one-half cent sales tax increase for voter consideration in November 2016. The proposed name for this package is “Keep San Diego Moving Forward,” but it’s also been referred to as the quality of life measure.
Two things need to happen for this sort of scheme to reach the two-thirds voter approval threshold; large numbers of endorsements from governments and groups in the region, and a wish list of projects to draw in voters who would then feel they’re getting some benefit from the additional taxes.
Since SANDAG essentially failed (they agreed to look at it again in the future) to modify its long-term regional planning away from prioritizing auto-centric projects, the subject of more immediate funding for transit and alternative transportation will likely play a significant role in selling this idea. [Read more…]
Can BikeSD Make a Dent in Income Inequality through Advocacy and Embracing Equity?
By Sam Ollinger / BikeSD
Last year, Councilmember David Alvarez appointed me to represent his council district, District 8, at the city’s Bicycle Advisory Committee. It was an incredible honor and a challenge, because I live in Council District 9, not 8. In an attempt to understand the district, the needs of the community, and the challenges I would be dealing with, I met with one of Alvarez’s staffers for coffee one morning.
At the meeting, the staffer told me, in no uncertain terms, that bike infrastructure was not necessarily a priority for the district. I was a bit blindsided and it has taken me almost an entire year to understand what she meant when she gave me the low-down on District 8. This post is an attempt to explain that understanding. [Read more…]
Will the City Council Join the Anti-Starbucks Holiday Coffee Cup Crusade?
The San Diego City Council unanimously approved a resolution on Tuesday opposing the mere thought of a transfer of Guantanamo Bay detainees to the Marine Corps Air Station Miramar.
This was an act of political cowardice based on fear-mongering, led by Councilman Chris Cate, seeking to bolster his conservative cred. Now he’s officially a “manly man,” capable of staring down imagined threats no matter where they are imagined.
The fact of San Diego not being under consideration as a detainee destination wasn’t as important as a four-year-old assessment survey that included a look at local facilities. Sites actually under consideration are in Colorado, Kansas, and South Carolina. In addition, Congress has passed a defense spending measure barring the transfer of prisoners to US soil. [Read more…]
#MillionStudentMarch and the Soul of Higher Education
By Andrew J. Mackay
The Million Student March emerges from a long-running crisis. A public good, an educated citizenry, is being misclassified as a private luxury in the name of profit. It emerges from growing mass resistance to what higher education has become- expensive, corporatized, exploitative.
115 marches are planned for this Thursday, November 12. They span the entire country, from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa to Montclair High School in New Jersey. Institutions private and public, small and large, famous and obscure. [Read more…]
San Diego, We Have a Use of Deadly Force Problem
It should surprise no one that County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis called a press conference yesterday announcing that charges will not be filed against the San Diego Police officer who shot and killed Fridoon Rawshan Nehad in the Midway District last April.
Her conclusion may or may not be reasonable. The DA said Officer Neal Browder’s fear for his life was reasonable, based on the totality of evidence. She also said the dead man was mentally ill and DRUGS! were found in his system.
So there you have it. A “drug-crazed foreigner” got what was coming to him. Today we’ll look at developments in that case and one Customs and Border Patrol story in the news. [Read more…]
A Greedy Capitalist Gets His Comeuppance
Price Gouger Martin Shkreli Becomes Known as ‘Most Hated Man in America’
Turing Pharmaceuticals chief Martin Shkreli will face new competition for Daraprim, the drug he recently hiked 5,000 percent in price, after competitor Imprimis Pharmaceuticals said it would market a similar drug for just $1 a tablet. Daraprim is used mainly to treat toxoplasmosis, a parasitic infection that’s common in AIDS and HIV patients, as well as cancer sufferers.
Greedy buttwipe Martin Shkreli, the hedge fund guy that bought the drug Dariprim and then raised the price from $13.50 to $750. a pill will actually lose his ass on this venture. At these prices the estimated annual cost of treatment for toxoplasmosis, for the pyrimethamine component alone, would be $336,000 for patients who weigh less than 132 pounds, and $634,500 for those who weigh more than that. Daraprim is given for at least six weeks to knock out the infection, and then often for a year or even indefinitely to help the immune-compromised patient keep the parasite at bay.
The problem for Shkreli, that he didn’t take account of in his lust for speedy profits, is that Dariprim is actually a generic. It’s been around for 62 years. That means that anybody can manufacture it. That’s exactly what one San Diego drug company did. Moreover, Imprimis intends to come up with cheap versions of other drugs that some businesses sell for far above their manufacturing costs. The trick for Imprimis was to combine pyrimethamine with another generic drug, leucovorin, thus giving it the right to operate as a compounding pharmacy and to avoid a lengthy approval process by the US Food and Drug Administration. [Read more…]
Donald Trump Is Right About One Thing. GW Bush Did Not Keep Us Safe Before 9/11
The Donald just doesn’t know how to back up his statement with the actual facts, that’s all. Richard Clarke, the CIA’s National Coordinator for Counterterrorism, was running around with his hair on fire trying to get George W Bush to listen to him about the imminence of an attack by bin Ladin.
Bush blew him off and then demoted him so that he didn’t report directly to the President as he had under the Clinton and George H W Bush administrations. Now he had to go through Condoleeza Rice and her deputy who also blew him off. Bush simply was not interested in terrorism; he was only interested in getting the goods on Saddam so he would have some kind of rationale for invading Iraq. He wanted to invade Iraq the worst way so he went about manufacturing evidence that would justify his doing so. In the meantime, he totally ignored terrorism and the advice he should have heeded about an imminent attack. [Read more…]
The Fall of the Haggen Grocery Chain: A 21st Century Morality Story
The collapse of the Haggen grocery store chain just over month ago was a sad moment for neighborhoods and thousands of employees throughout California. More than two dozen stores in the San Diego region will soon be (or already are) closing, leaving some vacant properties behind and about a thousand employees wondering about paychecks as the holidays approach.
Now, thanks to reporting by the Seattle Times, we know the inside scoop on how this deal came down, and it ain’t pretty. Private equity investors flipped the real estate for cash, handed operations to an overwhelmed management team and will see their risks marginalized by the bankruptcy courts.
It’s all legal; another example of greed run amok. They win, we lose. And we’re supposed to accept this as the “natural order” of things in a market economy. [Read more…]
No One is Talking About Taking Your Guns. And Why, Exactly, is That?
By Susan Grigsby /Daily Kos
The National Rifle Association (NRA) and the even further right-leaning Gun Owners of America continue to stoke fears of gun confiscation in America with able assistance from their political arm, the Republican Party. This is happening in spite of the fact that no Democratic politician is suggesting such a thing or sadly, appears to even want such a thing. Writing for Talking Points Memo, Catherine Thompson compares the current hysteria over gun confiscation to the threat of the Jade Helm exercise, and suggests that this too will all blow over in a couple of months when no guns are confiscated. Meanwhile, politicians like Ted Cruz and Donald Trump use the issue to raise funds from their base and increase their poll numbers.
The point of the gun confiscation hysteria is to prevent any discussion of gun control. [Read more…]
Nana: Remembering an Island Girl
By Olympia Andrade Beltrán
Brown skinned and beautiful,
Island girl the youngest of six.
Inner fire bursting forth from dimpled smiles.
Her Island rises up from the streets of Sherman Heights,
a great temple where love and family are revered.
Ancient smells of chocolate and roasted chiles
mixed with silky ballads of Jorge Negrete
coloring her walk to Stockton Elementary school
with piñata vibrant flair.
Obsidian hair, wild and unruly,
whips behind her as she defies gender stereotypes
with a line drive to center field.
Playground boys high five her when the game is over,
despite sideways glances from starch pressed girls
tightly clutching their school books. [Read more…]
Geo-Poetic Spaces: My Family Thinks I’m a Pot Farmer
Got to wonder
if my family has a contact high
when they call out of purple haze
to ask if I’m a marijuana farmer
Hydroponically speaking
I don’t have a pot to piss in
not that I’m opposed
to organic chemotherapy
or the buzz of tax revenues
instead of drug wars [Read more…]
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