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The Starting Line—DeMaio’s Pothole Plan Craters; UT Editorials for Sale?

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June 14, 2012- Mayoral candidate Carl DeMaio’s scheme to tie his November campaign to yet another ‘reform’ initiative ran into a brick wall yesterday as a San Diego City Council committee voted 5-0 against referring it to the full council for a vote. DeMaio’s “Road Repair Initiative” would have required the city government to exclusively allocate any surplus revenues for the next five years towards infrastructure repairs. Councilwoman Marti Emerald asked why the city should spend monies to support an initiative that was clearly designed to support a mayoral campaign. Mayoral challenger Bob Filner appeared before the committee, calling the proposed measure “an aspiration for mediocrity.”

DeMaio plans to re-introduce the measure as part of a revised budget should he win the mayoral contest. If the City Council refuses to go along with his plan at that point he pledged to go through the initiative signature gathering process. One has to wonder if his plan for governance is simply government by initiative.   [Read more…]

Sex In San Diego: Women Aren’t Meeting Breastfeeding Goals

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by Denise Mann / WebMD Health News

Despite having every intention to breastfeed for at least three months, more than 85% of mothers don’t meet their goals. A recent study takes a look at what makes moms most and least likely to succeed.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line—Peed Dribbles Past Kreep in Closely Watched Judicial Race

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June 13, 2012- Observers are keeping a close eye on late election results at the San Diego County Registrar of Voters office, with a couple of close races hanging in the balance as 17,700 provisional ballots are counted. The closest contest is the race for Superior Court Judge # 34; Garland Peed is clinging to a 79 vote lead over right wing activist and birther Gary Kreep. In the hotly contested race to see who will challenge incumbent Congressman Brian Bilbray in the 52nd district, former City Councilman Scott Peters holds a 803 vote lead over former Assemblywoman Lori Saldaña. 5PM UPDATE: Kreep now leads Peed by 216 votes; Peters lead over Saaldana narrows to 737 vote-word is that she is conceding. There are 13,500 provisional ballots left to count.

Looking at the primary from the other side of the aisle… Local conserv blog SDRostra has a couple of post-election articles up that, along with the additional comments posted, should be mandatory reading for San Diego politicos. The Oracle Speaks has local pollster John Nienstedt sharing his observations about local primary contests from a (successful) political consultant’s point of view. And Tweets Don’t Equal Votes takes a look at the social media efforts of the Nathan Fletcher campaign; be sure to read through the comments on this one.   [Read more…]

Within These Whispering Walls–What My House Told Me About City Heights

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The home my husband and I bought in City Heights over two decades ago is a four mile straight shot along University Avenue from the little house we had rented in North Park for six years. Despite the short distance, the trips east to our new home were initially disorienting. Yes, there were the same low buildings constructed between the 20’s and 40’s lining University Avenue and the uninterrupted march of billboards knitted the two communities together seamlessly with their visual blight.

But North Park, even though it was in the throes of urban decay, still had a palpable urban energy and a diverse concentration of businesses in the area of 30th Street from University to El Cajon. There were small specialty shops, thrift stores and restaurants, and even a JCPenny, all of which attracted a diverse segment of the population in the area. City Heights on the other hand lacked an identifiable destination with a similar broad appeal. In City Heights, circa 1987, there was no there there.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line— “Reform and Jobs” is the New Mantra (and Big Lie) of the Plutocracy

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June 12, 2012—The Big Reality about last weeks elections is that nearly three quarters of voters in California didn’t bother to cast a ballot. Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent, TV ads blared non stop, internet sites were plastered with political come-ons and mailboxes were overflowing with conflicting messages. Voting “Yes” on Proposition XXX would create jobs; voting “No” on the same measure would save the middle class. Middle of the road Democrats were cast as extremists; candidates whose campaign coffers overflowed with lobbyist cash packaged themselves as reformers. Even people who live and breathe politics (me, for instance) were disgusted and overwhelmed by the onslaught.

The “win at any cost” ethos combined with California’s top two vote getters primary system created situations where campaigns maneuvered to “pick” their opponents (Democratic slime ball and insurance company prostitute Juan Vargas is exhibit A-IMHO-See inside for supporting links) for the November general elections and inter-party battles left both campaign workers and candidates disillusioned and disgusted by the system. It’s safe to say that little “d” democracy may have been the ultimate loser last week. Steve Singiser at Daily Kos has more insights into ‘the results behind the results’, including the observation that independent candidates, who were supposed to be embolded by the new California primary system, fared poorly statewide.   [Read more…]

The 99% and All that Stuff is a Movement That’s All About US

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The 99% and all that stuff
is a movement that’s all about US
and with that in mind
one might opine
that many of US
can remember times
when we could barely
pay the rent
and when the rent
was made good with all good intent
the food money
was gone…spent.
So broke
you couldn’t afford to
take time to resent
the predictament…..   [Read more…]

June Gloom: Why Wisconsin Labor’s Recall Loss is Everyone’s Loss

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Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s overwhelming recall victory could signal the demise of the middle class nationwide.

As Doug Porter aptly observed in his election post-mortem last week, big money spoke loudly in the big races on June 5th. This is nothing new but what happened in Wisconsin was truly historic. It was a soul-crushing defeat—not unexpected, but a gut punch nonetheless. Labor’s loss in the recall battle against Governor Scott Walker will surely go down as a key sequel to the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) strike for unionized public sector workers in America. Indeed, Governor Walker clearly said that he wanted to emulate that model, and he just won a very big battle in the war against collective bargaining in the United States.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line-UT San Diego Gets the Evil NY Times Eye

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June 11, 2012—New York Times media reporter/columnist David Carr has penned a largely critical review of “Papa Doug” Manchester’s media machinations since his purchase last year of the Union-Trib. The article starts out talking about the “growing worry” that the sickly state of dead tree journalism could create circumstances that would allow moneyed interests to take over newspapers and use their perceived integrity to “prosecute a political and commercial agenda.”

Carr goes on to assert that San Diego is Exhibit A for that fear since last year when Manchester purchased the paper, saying that nowadays the UT-SD “often seems like a brochure for his various interests.” He goes on to cite several examples where the Daily Fishwrap has transcended reportage and ridden roughshod over miscreants perceived to have gotten in the way of Papa Doug’s agenda. Chief executive John Lynch is quoted as saying “we make no apologies” for the paper’s activities and asserting that there is a “clear line of demarcation between our editorials and our news”.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line—San Diego Teachers to Talk Contract Concessions

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Tuesdays’ election results continue to reverberate around the country. Here in San Diego city attorney Jan Goldsmith is asking the courts to help the City sidestep long term litigation over the legality of Proposition B by combining five lawsuits already filed over the initiative in advance of a court decision on the legality of the measure. At issue is the question of whether the city violated a state law that requires negotiations with labor unions in advance of requesting any initiative that would impact employee pay and benefits. The city has maintained that Proposition B was initiated by private citizens and is exempt from the provisions of the law.

Early morning reports on Twitter indicate that the San Diego Educational Association (teacher’s union) membership has voted to talk about contract concessions aimed at negating already announced layoffs for some 1534 teachers. The issue of concessions has divided the union, with more militant members being purged from the SDEA leadership in recent weeks. And yesterday 1000 students at Point Loma High School walked out to protest teacher layoffs.   [Read more…]

Field of View: Golden Hall Bustles On Election Night

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Photo Gallery: Crowds gathered at the Civic Center’s Golden Hall on Election Night, from Boy Scouts to veteran reporters to parents showing their kids the ropes—and, of course, diligent politicians offering last-minute interviews. Cheers and chanting could be heard, but mostly the hum of active conversations filled the space.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line—Are We Ready for an Alien Invasion?

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June 7, 2012—In keeping with my perceived reality that most of us are in overload mode with regard to election coverage, The Starting Line will talk about defense, science and technology issues today. We’ll get back into the muck tomorrow, I promise.

Does the Pentagon have the right weapons to fight off an alien invasion? No, but they’re working on it, says Foreign Policy magazine, in a short but sweet review of some of DARPA’s (Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency ) more sci-fi kind of projects. These projects include lots of ideas that are not ready for prime time, but show promise for future use by the military.

Perhaps the closest to realization are weapons-grade lasers. The stumbling block with this project thus far is that they can work but are too big to be of use in an actual fight. If the aliens have super fast flying saucers, DARPA’s Falcon HTV-2 might be able to keep up with them. It is an unmanned, rocket-launched, maneuverable aircraft that glides through the Earth’s atmosphere at incredibly fast speeds, as fast as Mach 20 (approximately 13,000 miles per hour). It’s actual been tested, but not successfully.   [Read more…]

Sex in San Diego: Women in Movies

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Double Standard: Women on screen are always required to look their sultry, sexy best. Not so for their male counterparts.

Over the weekend I caught the movie X-men on TV and I have to say that women are really starting to get on my nerves. For those who are unfamiliar with the story (is that possible?), X-men is an action adventure about love, revenge, super human capabilities, violence and acceptance. And lots and lots of sex.   [Read more…]

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