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The Starting Line – End Welfare for UT-San Diego’s Owner and his Friends; Raise the Minimum Wage

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Today’s UT-San Diego editorial represents the height of hypocrisy.

Titled ‘Minimum wage hikes deliver maximum pain to the poor’, it goes on to tell us in no uncertain terms about the terrible things that will follow should Congress act on a bill introduced on Tuesday by Democratic Senators Tom Harkin of Iowa and George Miller of California that would raise the hourly minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 — and add an annual adjustment to keep pace with the cost-of-living index.

At the heart of the issue over wages is a business model that relies upon ‘corporate welfare’ either through tax breaks or subsidies (including their labor costs).  Aside from the fact that it’s remarkably short-sighted, such a business philosophy also leads to increases in wealth differential. They get richer, everybody else gets poorer. And that’s exactly what’s happening in the US today.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Mayor Filner Keeps Up the Heat on Hoteliers

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Get ready for more UT-San Diego editorials calling Mayor Filner a bully.

He’s calling into question the deal struck between former Mayor Jerry Sanders and the downtown crowd giving them control over the Convention Center’s sales and marketing. Yesterday Filner’s office released a letter calling for an end to that agreement, demanding return of those functions to a City sponsored non-profit.

This agreement was the quid pro quo demanded by hoteliers in 2012 in return for their cooperation with an increase in taxes to pay for the Convention Center expansion.

INSIDE: SABOTAGING THE NEW SUPERINTENDENT? – VOUCHERCARE IS NEXT ON GOP AGENDA   [Read more…]

Yeah, I’m Bad! (Honoring My History)

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Yeah, I’m bad.

That’s what I was thinking as two City College communications majors talked to me behind the camera that was focused on me in the Quad at SDCC.

And I wasn’t just thinking that I’m bad. No, not at all, for I am: Truly. Bad. And I don’t say that as a wolf ticket kind of brag. But as a black man you can’t reach 74.99 years of age, in these here United States of America, with all your senses, and not indulge in a little swag. So please excuse me if I break into a bee-bop stance with a little Bojangles tap dance and act out just how bad I am.

The reason I was on the premises was because I had been asked to speak at a ceremony that was dedicated to Black History. Now that invite, alone, sets the tone for how bad I am because they didn’t just ask anybody to address them. Can there be a greater honor than having someone think that you have something to say?   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Brilliant! New San Diego Schools Superintendent Selected from Community

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The grapevine was humming yesterday as word seeped out that San Diego Unified would make an early evening ‘major announcement’ following news of current Superintendent Bill Kowba’s resignation on Tuesday. Many folks, including KPBS news, thought the Board of Trustees would simply be announcing their selection process. Or naming the high priced consulting firm to sort through resumes and vet the next candidate for the job.

The announcement that Principal Cindy Marten had already been unanimously nominated by the school board as the next leader for SD Unified was indeed a shocker. A figurative “gasp” went up from many members the news media, who’ve spent the last few years crafting a narrative about the dysfunctionality of the elected Board of Trustees.

This is simply a brilliant decision. I speak from personal knowledge, having worked with Ms. Marten on education issues through my association with the parent-centric Educate for the Future. Her personal mantra (and the slogan for her school): “Work Hard. Be Kind. Dream Big. No Excuses.”

INSIDE: Filner’s Wish List, Man Bites Dog, the Sequester Conspiracy Parts 1 & 2   [Read more…]

Today’s College Graduates: In Debt and Unable to Find a Job

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The American mythology that getting a good job requires a college degree is turning out to be a hollow promise, a mythology devoid of any connection to reality. Today’s college graduates are being weighed down with tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt, and many of them are either unemployed or working in jobs that don’t require a college degree.

A recent study has shown that half of recent college graduates can’t find jobs. Those who graduated since 2009 are three times more likely to not have found a full-time job than those from the classes of 2006 through 2008. Of those who did find a job, the study indicates that 43 percent had jobs that didn’t require a college degree. Sure the top 10% will get jobs right out of college, but for everyone else disappointment in the job search abounds. Even recent PhDs are facing stiff competition for fewer available jobs, and many of them end up driving taxis for a living.

At the same time that college graduates are not finding work, there are 3.7 million job openings, but these are the kinds of jobs college graduates aren’t equipped to do.   [Read more…]

Author Q & A: ‘The Golden Shore: California’s Love Affair with the Sea’

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Conservationist David Helvarg talks about his book, “The Golden Shore,” a tribute to California’s beautiful and iconic coastline, and the Navy’s and San Diego’s roles in shaping it.

By Serge Dedina / Wildcoast

No one has done more to educate the public on ways to preserve our coast and ocean than David Helvarg. Author of six books and the founder and Executive Director of the Blue Frontier Campaign, Helvarg will be speaking about his newest book, The Golden Shore: California’s Love Affair with the Sea at the Birch Aquarium on Tuesday Feb. 26 from 6:30-8 p.m. Helvarg is also a former San Diegan who wrote for the OB Rag.

Serge Dedina: What is your first memory of the coast in California?

David Helvarg: Flying into San Diego at night to help out some friends in trouble in the Ocean Beach neighborhood and then staying up ’til dawn watching the Pacific lapping on the shore, small breaking wavelets sparkling with silvery luminescence. Two days later there was a concert on Sunset Cliffs. Watching the young OB residents dancing on the beach and wading into the bracing 68-degree water where silky-haired California girls in bikinis were tossing Frisbees, I knew I’d come home to a place I’d never been before.   [Read more…]

Sex in San Diego: Sugar Daddies Site Boasts California Colleges Among ‘Fastest Growing Sugar Baby Schools’ Thanks to Tuition Hikes

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By Amanda Marcotte / Alternet

Soaring tuition rates are causing a number of reactions from the public: concern for young people saddled with ever-growing debt, anger at governments for cutting back on education instead of taxing the rich appropriately, calls for system-wide reform to help restore America’s global competitiveness. But some see it as an opportunity to market sexual services to men who find the idea of college women in dire economic straights to be arousing.

The leading company in this market recently sent out a glowing press release — heavy with sexist, outdated terms like “coed” — applauding the explosion of desperate college students and letting its customers know that the pool of available sex workers had grown tremendously. It particularly recommended universities in California as a place where the market is flooded with young women who are willing to pretend to like having sex with you in exchange for the kind of financial relief that used to be the government’s responsibility.

For example, UC Berkley experienced a 67% growth and UC Davis experienced a 220% growth, earning them spots among the “Fastest Growing Sugar Baby Schools of 2012.”

  [Read more…]

Arctic Methane: A Global Environmental Disaster in the Making

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By Frank Thomas

In the 1970s, permafrost Arctic sea ice at its lowest point covered about half of the Arctic ocean surface. But it has been on an alarming declining trend over recent decades, now covering at its lowest point 25% of the Arctic ocean surface – or half of its previous area and thickness.

This rapid warming of the Arctic region creates a near term world threat of a major sub-sea methane release that could intensify global warming to irreversible levels along with high fossil fuel C02 emissions.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Papa Doug’s Got a Brand New Bag, Maybe

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The Tweets were flying last night after the associate regional editor for Patch (AOL/Huffpo’s hyperlocal web news outfit) reported on twitter that a “source” told her UT-San Diego publisher Doug Manchester told a group of Republican women that he is “in negotiations” to purchase the Tribune Company.

For San Diegans, this prospective purchase would mean that the Los Angeles Times, long considered a viable source of news for non UT-SD readers, would now be joining Manchester’s media empire.

There’s plenty of reason to be skeptical about this story. I might choose to “negotiate” for a new Mercedes Benz; that doesn’t mean I’ll be buying one. And IF Manchester does buy the LA Times (and the other newspapers in the company) it’s just one step closer to the end of the road for dead tree journalism.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Petition Drive Seeks Removal of San Diego School Official

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A teachers group has initiated an online petition drive urging the Superintendent and Board of Trustees for the San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) to dismiss newly hired Chief Financial Officer Stanley “Data” Dobbs.

The movement comes in the wake of a recent Q&A interview with Dobbs published February 1st by Voice of San Diego (VOSD). The CFO’s factually challenged assertions about the challenges facing the school district along with his one-dimensional analysis of the politics of education in this city has reverberated throughout the community for nearly two weeks now.

VOSD responded to complaints about inaccuracies in the interview by publishing “fact check “ articles which have proved that, indeed, the Chief Financial Officer for SDUSD had no command of actual dollar figures associated with the single biggest expense in any education system: the people who teach. Nor is he familiar with studies relating to concerns in the academic world over the impact of class size on educational achievement; Dobbs simply said they don’t exist.

MORE INSIDE: DRONES SEEKING DORNER, THE GOP/VEGETARIAN PLOT, RON PAUL JOINS UN CONSPIRACY   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Call Out the ‘Lynch’ Mob: The Mayor’s a Liar and the School Board Stinks

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I expect it won’t be too long before a campaign to recall Mayor Bob Filner is launched, given the way the UT-San Diego is poised to pounce on every action regardless of significance taken by hizzoner. And the interview posted by Voice of San Diego with SDUSD’s CFO ‘Data” Dobbs is now grist for an editorial in the Daily Fishwrap blasting a “scandal’ with the school board.

Today’s front page ‘gotcha’ story on Filner concerns a story attributed to the Mayor about the impact of the managed competition (approved by voters in 2006) process on the city’s fleet services. It’s a tangled up story dating back to October 2011 when City workers won out over two private companies seeking handle maintenance for municipal vehicles. (And it’s also a story about just how complicated the process of outsourcing (or not) government services can be.)

As I predicted last week, the unfiltered version of the Voice of San Diego interview will live on way past any subsequent ‘fact checks’ the crew over there publishes.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – A Slow Death for the Post Office, Courtesy of the US Congress

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It won’t be long now.  CBS News reported this morning that the United States Post Office is ending Saturday delivery of first-class and will phase out the practice by the end of this summer. Effective August 1st, all first-class mail—which includes pretty much all letters, bills, cards, and catalogs—will only be delivered on weekdays.

Packages, express, and Priority Mail will still get delivered on the weekend. The change will mark the end of weekend deliveries for the first time in 150 years.

It didn’t have to be this way. Yes, the times have changed. The days of mail as the primary means of long distance communication and sending money are over. And the Post Office knows that. They’re just not allowed to do anything about it.   [Read more…]

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