San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

You are here: Home / Archives for Columns

Why Don’t San Diego Restaurants Add ‘Free Market’ Surcharges to Customer Bills?

by

High-end SD restaurants poised to add surcharge for “government mandated” costs to business

Over the past ten years consumers have absorbed higher costs at the check-out counter for all manner of goods. Remember when gasoline costs spiked and affected more than just gas at the pump? Everything from the potted plants at the local nursery to grocery items reflected an attendant price increase. Remember when the cost of coffee went up? What about the shortage of cheese and how that was reflected in higher consumer costs?

These consumer cost increases reflect everything from volatility in the commodity market to shortages caused by natural disasters to price fixing. We weren’t handed restaurant checks or grocery bills with a surcharge added for “free market” or “act of god” or “corporate greed.”

So why are some San Diego restaurants considering a surcharge on bills to cover the most recent “government mandated” wage hike which raises the minimum wage to $11.50 an hour?
  [Read more…]

AARP’s Spineless Response to Social Security, Medicare Privatization Threat

by

AARP, the American Association of Retired Persons, recently sent a call to action letter to its members about the need to secure future Social Security benefits. That opening line should have generated a sigh of relief from AARP’s 37.8 million members over the age of 50 who have been following the rumblings from the new Republican Congress to privatize Medicare and Social Security.

Read a little further and you find out that AARP is not alerting us to the potential unraveling in 2017 of two wildly popular and essential components of our social safety net–but rather the potential insolvency of Social Security in 2034. Imagine that your house has been doused in gasoline and an arsonist is standing close by with a box of matches but you are being told that your problem is that you aren’t saving enough money to tent the place for termites seventeen years into the future.   [Read more…]

Russian Hacking and the 2016 Presidential Election

by

Serious People are claiming that news accounts about Russian meddling in US elections are somehow equivalent to the Weapons of Mass Destruction stories peddled in the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq. Or a liberal version of the group-think on the Trumpian right about millions of illegal aliens voting for Hillary Clinton.

And then there are others on the right, like the Heritage Foundation, who would have us believe the special relationship between two oligarchs is somehow a good thing. They find much to admire about having a strongman in charge, as opposed to an imperfect democracy.

The reluctance of the FBI/Homeland Security report to disclose sources and methods along with the Obama’s administration’s reliance on the (often meaningless) tactic of diplomatic expulsions as the public side of their response to Russia are cited as reasons to doubt the official account.
  [Read more…]

Looking Back at the Week: Dec 25-31

by

This week’s edition of Looking Back at the Week features articles, commentaries, columns, toons, and other work by San Diego Free Press regulars, irregulars, columnists, at-large contributors, and sourced writers on: 2016’s underreported stories, keeping hope alive, Cole’s crappy picks, Star Wars Rogue One, Hunter’s lack of values, Maria Garcia’s book on La Neighbor, Citizens Unites, and lots of other grassroots news & progressive views from San Diego’s friendly, neighborhood, all volunteer, slightly funky, community news site.   [Read more…]

Geo-Poetic Spaces: Resolution

by

A respite
between waves
reflecting
the mandala of sun

Touch Apollo’s altar
and throw yourself
into light
before resolution
breaks
the sea’s mirror
  [Read more…]

Left Behind: Myrtle Cole’s Committee Appointments and City Heights

by

San Diego City Councilwoman Myrtle Cole’s contentious election as Council President last week culminated with her appointments to the various City Council committees. Few of us know that these committees exist or what they do, but by the time issues are brought before the full City Council for legislative action they have been discussed and pretty much finalized in a committee.

Cole’s appointments to the Public Services and Livable Neighborhood (PS&L) committee denies a seat at the table for those of us who live in communities south of 8. Her selection of Councilmembers Chris Cate (chair), Lorie Zapf (vice chair), Barbary Bry, and Chris Ward is enraging, deeply concerning and unacceptable.   [Read more…]

Historic Marston House Hosts Book Release of Maria Garcia’s ‘La Neighbor’

by

Maria Garcia recently release her long awaited book based on the award winning San Diego Free Press series The History of Neighborhood House in Logan Heights. The site of the book release—the historic Marston House—was no accident.

On Saturday December 10 over fifty people gathered at the Marston House garden where decades earlier San Diego businessman and philanthropist George Marston and his daughters Mary and Helen held fundraisers for the settlement house.   [Read more…]

Anti Choice Women’s Clinics Seek to Defy State Law in San Diego County and El Cajon

by

Editor Note: This article was originally published on March 15, 2016. The effort to erode women’s reproductive rights and access to health services here in San Diego was one of the under-reported stories of 2016.

The County of San Diego and the City of El Cajon are considering a proposed settlement with anti-choice crisis pregnancy centers, amounting to a pledge not enforce the Reproductive FACT Act.

In response, local pro-choice activists are presenting El Cajon City Attorney Morgan Foley and San Diego County Counsel Thomas Montgomery with petitions signed by 25,000 Californians urging them to enforce the letter and the spirit of the law.

NARAL Pro-Choice California, UltraViolet and Courage Campaign have been gathering signatures since the anti-choice organizations offered to remove local authorities as named defendants in lawsuits if they agree not to apply the law.   [Read more…]

Censored 2016: Underreported Stories of the Year

by

In my final column of 2015, I wrote about the most underreported story of the year according to Project Censored’s annual list: “2016 will be the year when half of the world’s wealth will be controlled by the top 1%.” After reporting the dismaying details of that story, I ended with the following analysis:

So putting this all together, we are just about to end a year where we learned that global plutocracy is becoming more and more firmly entrenched and that the beneficiaries of that very system are not just responsible for an immoral level of economic inequality and human suffering but also for speeding us toward an apocalyptic end to the climate crisis.

Why this news appeared as a blip on the radar screen rather than dominating the media landscape is no accident. When the same oligarchy that benefits from our rigged system own the corporations that run our mass media, it is not surprising that bad news for the vast majority of us is not worthy of occupying the heaven of the spectacle for more than a fleeting moment.

  [Read more…]

Looking Back at the Week: Dec 18-24

by

This week’s edition of Looking Back at the Week features articles, commentaries, columns, toons, and other work by San Diego Free Press regulars, irregulars, columnists, at-large contributors, and sourced writers on: tamales, a soulless city, Ocean Beach, genuinely Trump, eliminating the Electoral College, Makeda Dread, America in distress, homeless in the cold, Bob’s gran mal, Thanksgiving at Standing Rock, and lots of other grassroots news & progressive views from San Diego’s friendly, neighborhood, all volunteer, slightly funky, community news site.   [Read more…]

Geo-Poetic Spaces: Next Christmas

by

Next holiday season
bells will be ringing:

Tongues hammering
sunken cheeks

Hands
stripped to bones
peeling for handouts from thieves   [Read more…]

©2010-2017 SanDiegoFreePress.org

Code is Poetry