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Looking at a Beautiful Sunset …and …Contemplating a Mayor – Bob Filner – Who Loves the Arts

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Looking at a beautiful San Diego sunset I thought of how there’s so much about our city that lends itself to art. A clip of a radio show on KPBS that a friend of mine, Seema Sueko, a leader in the San Diego arts scene, shared with me played a major part in my thinking.

On the show she expressed that she felt Carl DeMaio was a “little unfriendly” to arts and culture in our city. That really resonated in my mind because the arts, to me, is what life is all about as the arts let us explore who we are and who we might become. It could do the same for a city.

I realized just how essential the arts are to our well being as a society back when I was a beginning classroom teacher in Room B5 at Perry Elementary in the Bayview Naval Housing area.
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Field of View: An Alaskan Adventure

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My trip to Alaska was the result of a year of planning and not-so-patiently waiting. I knew it would be wonderful, especially to see old family friends after such a long time, but I never imagined it would become an experience of a lifetime.   [Read more…]

July 2 – 7: Week of Protest of Trans-Pacific Partnership Talks Being Held in San Diego

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No to NAFTA on Steroids

Coalition to STOP TPP Announces Week of Protest

and an International Community-Based Conference

From June 30 to July 8, the secret, super-treaty negotiations known as the 13th Round of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Negotiations are being held here in San Diego at the Hilton Bayfront Hotel. The Coalition to STOP TPP hereby announces a week with rallies, a march, various other protests, and a week-long international community-based People’s Conference: A Better World Is Possible!

The 11 nations involved in the talks are the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei, Chile, Peru, Mexico, and Canada. Japan has indicated a desire to join. The economic power of this group is more than 40% larger than the 27-nation European Union. The claimed purpose of TPP is to promote development and create jobs. But their reality is different. Though the contents of these negotiations are secret, what is not a secret is that the impacts of the TPP on these Pacific Rim nations, on peasants, on farmers, on workers, on their natural resources, on the environment, will be devastating. Some people describe the TPP as “NAFTA on Steroids.”
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How Mitt Romney Followed Me Around the Internet

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by Lois Beckett / ProPublica, June 27, 2012, 4:27 p.m.

Last month, I was searching for a peppy Glee song on the music site Grooveshark, and up popped two ads for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. One invited me to “Learn More.” The other suggested that I “Donate.”

Had Romney’s campaign decided that swing voters might frequent an Internet music site with copyright issues? Are Glee fans now a key demographic?

But it turns out the campaign wasn’t advertising to Grooveshark listeners or a capella fans.

They were targeting me.   [Read more…]

The Surprising Tale of the Last Jurors in the Great Penal Industry

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Welcome folks, and come right in,
An inspiring tale of civic duty I’ll spin.
But first, please, pass this way,
Our detector police must have their say.

Detector police scan us to get in,
“Off with their head, this one has a pin!”
“Off with their head, this one has a fork!”
Our X-ray machine is a great piece of work!

“Our large penal family embraces you now,
Just sit back, relax, and enjoy the court show.
We need your good common sense, and naïve civilian duty,
’Cause we’ve seen it before, and we think you’re all guilty.”   [Read more…]

The Starting Line: Pension Proposition Proponents Required to Pay Legal Fees; Filner Scores on MSNBC

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June 27, 2012- You can’t have it both ways… The San Diego City Council yesterday refused to fund legal representation for city employees who may be called to testify in lawsuits challenging the recently approved Proposition B, a measure that seeks to fundamentally restructure the city’s pension system. This decision means that Mayor Jerry Sanders, Councilman Kevin Falconer and Councilman Carl DeMaio, who campaigned for and contended that their support of the Pension Proposition was as private citizens, will have to pay their own legal fees. A handful of other city employees were also affected by the decision.

San Diego is facing lawsuits from its unions and the state Public Employment Relations Board, who claim officials violated the Meyers-Milias-Brown Act by failing to negotiate terms of the initiative with labor prior to placing it on the ballot. Since the mayor and these councilmen were among the primary boosters of the measure, the unions contend that their actions amounted to city sponsorship.

Filner’s on fire… Congressman (and mayoral candidate) Bob Filner appeared on Rachel Maddow’s NSNBC program last night to talk about veterans’ issues.  He didn’t mince words in his criticisms of the Veterans Administration, saying that their health care system is ‘so bad,’ vets are dying or even committing suicide while waiting for adjudication of claims.   [Read more…]

A Hard Look At San Diego: The Kafkaesque Process of Trying to Save a Home from Foreclosure

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by J. G. Robinson
In my last column I began the story of someone I call Jose, and what led to his financial crisis. In this column I look at the Kafkaesque process he went through in his failed attempt to save his home from foreclosure. The experiences I describe here are neither rare nor random. The difficulties Jose and his family encountered in trying to get their bank to re-evaluate their loan were all too representative of the random sample of people I interviewed. The tragic fact is that the delays that Jose’s family encountered were not the result of inefficiency, but rather a deliberate policy to protect banks. Banks do NOT want foreclosures rapidly resolved because that would bring these properties down to market value, reflecting badly on their bottom lines. Thus families like Jose’s are the deliberate casualties of a war of attrition that banks have waged on the public to protect their economic interests.

Jose’s original mortgage was through the Bank of America. The home was a modest condominium in a somewhat marginal area of El Cajon. Marginal, but not horrible—the schools in the area were decent, and that was the main attraction for Jose and his family.   [Read more…]

“God Don’t Make Junk.” Conversations with my Evangelical Christian Neighbor

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City Heights has got religion. A distinctive characteristic of my community is not only the sheer number of religious establishments located here, but the diverse forms that religious expression takes. There are the storefront Evangelical and Pentecostal Christian churches that have sprung up along University and El Cajon Boulevard, with names like La Esposa del Cordero, the Shepherd’s Wife, and signs with the exhortation Pare de Sufrir, to stop suffering.

There are Buddhist temples, botánicas, a mosque, a tiny Russian Orthodox church, and more main stream Catholic and Baptist churches as well. Religious services are conducted in Spanish, Creole, Russian, Chinese and Vietnamese, to name just a few of the languages routinely spoken besides English. I do not know if other languages besides Arabic are used at the mosque located adjacent to the Somali neighborhood known as Little Mogadishu. There are also shamans and babaloas living quietly among us.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Negotiators to Face a Week of Protests

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June 26, 2012 – A diverse coalition of groups has announced plans for ongoing protests aimed at trade negotiators meeting in San Diego next week for the 13th round of talks aimed at the creation of a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade zone that would include the United States, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam, with a “docking agreement” that other countries can join over time. Canada, Japan and Mexico are currently pressing to do so.. Describing the proposals being discussed at the confab as “NAFTA on steroids”, the Citizens Trade Campaign is seeking to draw attention to the fact that approximately 600 corporate lobbyists have access to the TPP negotiating texts, while the public has been barred from reviewing what trade negotiators have been proposing.

A leaked TPP document demonstrates that the group is considering a dispute resolution process that would grant transnational corporations special authority to challenge countries’ laws, regulations and court decisions in international tribunals that circumvent domestic judicial systems. Of further concern is the impact of the agreement on jobs, wages, agriculture, migration, the environment, consumer safety, financial regulations, Internet protocols, government procurement and more. Negotiations on the proposed pact will be held at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront Hotel from July 2 – 10.   [Read more…]

The Great Ramona Zucchini Wars

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By Dave Patterson

Like a shot heard round the world, what was considered beyond the limits of civility was breached while we were away. When we saw what had been left on our doorstep in Ramona, my wife ran away screaming and I was taken aback to witness what depths of decency had been abandoned. I shudder to think what may become of society in Ramona as a result of this dastardly act, because this means war.

Someone left an extremely large zucchini on our doorstep. Zucchinis at this time of year are frightening because we are at wits end with what to do with them.   [Read more…]

Jerry Sandusky Guilty on 45 Counts, Brings Shame to Coaches Everywhere

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Former longtime Penn St. football coach will be going to prison presumably for the rest of his life.

Jerry Sandusky, the longtime defensive coordinator and onetime heir to Joe Paterno’s job, was convicted last Friday on 45 of the 48 counts that were brought against him for child sexual abuse and related charges. At 68 years old, Sandusky—who has yet to be formally sentenced—will likely die in prison where he belongs. It’s not enough. The punishment, sadly, does not fit the crime. He won’t live long enough in confinement to adequately pay for the suffering and humiliation he brought on those 10 boys he raped…..the 10 we know of.   [Read more…]

Protest at the Citizens Review Board – Tierrasanta Branch Library, Tuesday, June 26th

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A protest is being planned at the next open meeting of San Diego’s Citizens Review Board on Police Practices. A grand jury investigation uncovered major corruption at the Board. (Here is an article on the Grand Jury report.)

Some of the violations included police presence during closed sessions, police harassment, intimidation and bullying of board members who disagreed with police findings.

When: Tues. June 26

Where: 4985 La Cuenta Drive — Tierrasanta Branch Library, San Diego, CA 92124

Time: 6:30 PM

To improve the Board, the Grand jury made the following recommendations to the mayor:   [Read more…]

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