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Reader’s Response: Living Artists, Zombie Redevelopment, Community Pushback

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Editor: This is a Reader’s Response to Jim Bliesner’s article, “Whatever Happened to Downtown Artists? The Experiences of Three Creative Souls Who Survived .

By Remigia Bermúdez

I take my hat off to Jim Bliesner for all that he has done and continues to do for humanity, including but not limited to, the Arts (locally and globally), job creation, non-profits creation, financial institutions’ re-investments into our communities, higher level educational institutions and a host of other avaunt-guard ideas and ideologies that enhance our livelihoods in the San Diego-Baja California transnational region.   [Read more…]

What Republicans Don’t Want You To Know About Medicare

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According to Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, President Obama is taking $716 billion away from Medicare and giving it to Obamacare. No he’s not. We attempt to set the record straight. The crux of the matter has to do with what’s called Medicare Advantage which is a privatized version of Medicare. Neither side will use the word privatization, but in a nutshell that’s what this issue is all about. That $716 billion represents a pushback by the Obama administration against the forces of privatization which have been at work against government run Medicare for years.

In 1997 our old friend, Newt Gingrich, established the privatization camel’s nose under the tent of traditional Medicare with the Balanced Budget Act which included a provision for something called  Medicare+Choice, the precursor to Medicare Advantage. This act let private health care companies compete with traditional government run Medicare. This was step 1 in the privatization of Medicare.

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The Starting Line – Looking Forward to the Democratic and Backwards at the Republican Convention

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Well here we are. August is behind us, the Republicans have had their Convention and the Democrats are getting ready to put their show on in Charlotte over the course of this week.  Today, we’ll recap the GOP’s moments of glory/shame/ennui and preview the Dems’ coming convo and its likely movements of glory/shame/ennui.

Political conventions have morphed over the years from wildly unpredictable and chaotic drinking binges into highly scripted and predictable drinking binges. Much of the public is bored with the process, as steadily declining ratings on broadcast/cable and an ever-shrinking window of prime time coverage will attest. The quadrennial gatherings have much more to do with firing up the faithful (and the financial moguls who seek to gain influence) than actually winning over the undecided or unmotivated masses.

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Election Coverage in the San Diego Free Press starts officially today. Check in daily for more coverage, plus you can subscribe to our coverage and get articles sent directly to your inbox. And we’ll publish at least one (maybe more) voter’s guides, with links to everything, and a handy-dandy cheat sheet.  Be sure to read the comments after each story, as our readers have lots of good stuff to say, even when they are wrong…
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No More ‘Wisconsin’ in the West: Why We Must Defeat Proposition 32

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 It’s Citizens United on Steroids, a Bill of Rights for Billionaires

Last week, I addressed how the Governor’s tax measure was needed to stop the cuts to education and vital public services.  The passage of Proposition 30 would indeed help California begin to turn the corner and finally stop the hemorrhaging of our education system.  But where the passage of Proposition 30 would bring hope, the passage of Proposition 32, on the other hand, would kill it.

Proposition 32, the Special Exemptions Act, is a corporate power grab that would totally eliminate unions’ ability to take part in politics while leaving the rich, corporate special interests, and Super PACs untouched.  It is Citizens United on Steroids, a Bill of Rights for Billionaires that would permanently eliminate working peoples’ voices from California politics.  At present, corporate interests already outspend unions by nearly 15-1.  What Proposition 32 would do is transform the political contest in California, where the privileged are already playing with a stacked deck, into a hopelessly rigged game.   [Read more…]

In Praise of the American Worker

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by Lorena Gonzalez (This Labor Day message originally appeared U-T San Diego on August 30, 2012)

As a single mom, on my busiest mornings I struggle to ensure that everyone’s teeth are brushed, breakfast is eaten, lunches are made, the kids get to school on time and I get into work. On those mornings, it’s the barista at the local coffee shop who quickly passes me a hot cup of coffee with plenty of room for milk that makes things a little more bearable. She is my daily reminder that no matter what we do, work connects us all; we depend on one another’s work.

On this Labor Day, let’s recognize the women and men who do the work that keeps America strong.

That’s pretty much all of us. Our work makes the work of others possible. We rely on the teacher to inspire our children. The teacher depends on the bus driver to get the students to class on time, in one piece. The bus driver counts on the mechanic to keep the buses running and safe. The mechanic relies on the mail carrier to deliver the parts at the bus yard. And so on it goes.   [Read more…]

How About Some Soul Power?

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I don’t know why, considering that the party always makes me feel like an extreme outsider, but I thought I’d look in on the Republican Convention. I tuned in just as Clint Eastwood was doing what seemed like a Comedy Club routine, acting like he was listening to an imaginary Barack Obama who was badmouthing Mitt Romney. We were to guess what the Prez said via Clint responding: “He can’t do that to himself. You’re absolutely crazy!” Well, you saw it.

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Going Undercover at the GOP’s Voter Vigilante Project to Disrupt the Nov. Election

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The Republican True the Vote project is a well-funded scheme with training sessions for activists across the country. Will it work?

By Steven Rosenfeld / AlterNet

I was nervous getting onto the flight to Denver. Since 2004, I have been a national radio producer, investigative reporter, author and consultant—writing about how elections are won, lost, bungled and improved, with a big focus on voter registration. But I had never snuck into a meeting of right-wing voting vigilantes who are the frontline of a national voter suppression strategy, and where the main speaker was a man whose new book I’d aggressively debunked days before, in an AlterNet article lauded by a leading election law blog and Washington Post.

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Generating Photovoltaic Solar Power Close to the End Consumer

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By Frank Thomas

This article is a continuation of the series on PV power generation. Previous articles were Learning from the Cascading Power Failures that Brought Down the Power Grid in India by Deb Severson and Power to the People or Power to the Corporations by John Lawrence.

The evidence is substantial that distributed local PV power plants have the lowest transmission loss and cost as well CO2 pollution footprint of all available energy sources. In Germany, more than 98% of all PV power plants are decentralized.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Technology breakthrough at UT-San Diego allows website to post news before it happens

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Local Public Radio reporter Katie Orr was the first to spot the new technology in use yesterday, but failed to grasp its significance when she tweeted at 2:50 pm about the story up at the UT-San Diego’s website: “Is it me, or is this story confusing? It makes it sound like Romney’s already given his speech, which happens at 7 PST”.  Others, including local scribe Seth Hall, noticed another story posted Thursday morning featuring a photograph and video of lightning in the East County with a headline and lede indicating that the images were captured on Thursday evening.

Of course, what really happened in the first instance was that editors in Mission Valley had jumped the gun, running an Associated Press story written by reporters with access to an advance copy of Romney’s speech.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line — The GOP Jobs Program: More Fact Checkers

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Day 2.5 of the Republican National Convention brought out more big guns for the TV cameras and the party faithful. There were the usual failed attempts at partisan humor (a bipartisan affliction) including rim shots at the President’s golf game, which seemed a bit odd in a hall dominated by the country club set. Oh wait! Maybe the jokes were there because he was the black guy on the golf course…. nah, the Republicans wouldn’t do that, would they?

 The crescendo of the convo’s evening was the speech by Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan.  This is the guy on the ticket who is supposed to be everything that Mitt Romney is not. A decisive leader with unquestionable credentials that appeal to the core conservatives and the tea party activists that makes up the bulk of the GOP’s committed voting block. His “white bread” quotient makes him a good bet with uncommitted voters; he’s no grizzly mamma, having crafted a persona going back to Jack Kemp that gives the perception of just enough wonkiness wrapped around a mid-western sensibility to make him a safe choice. And his willingness to play fast and loose with facts and history make him an ideal pairing with the GOP’s Main Man of the moment.

The “liberal” media of the East Coast was all over Congressman Ryan’s lack of command of the facts in his speech. What they didn’t get, apparently, is that facts don’t matter here. Having spent four years buying into the alternative reality crafted for them by their party’s leadership, the party faithful in Tampa and the vast majority of those watching Ryan’s speech on television were certainly not going to be troubled by mere facts. Sally Kohn at Fox News said it, but nobody was listening. The roar of crowd, the sense that, finally, “we” can “take America back” was all that mattered…   [Read more…]

San Diego’s morphing water policy

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by George J. Janczyn / Groksurf’s San Diego / August 28, 2012

The San Diego City Council has been working on a comprehensive water policy for several years. While incremental developments have been sporadically reported in the news media, it’s easy to lose the thread, so here’s a backgrounder.

In late 2010, anticipating an eventual announcement that the drought was officially over, then San Diego City Councilmember Donna Frye proposed that the city’s temporary Drought Response Level 2 restrictions on water use be made permanent, rather than be discontinued.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line — Reporter Assaulted by Goons at Mission Valley Hilton Press Conference Exposing Mistreatment of Employees

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Mission Valley mayhem… A press conference being held yesterday by the Employee Rights Center to air charges that the hotel’s operator, Connecticut-based HEI Hospitality, had been named in a complaint alleging wage theft totaling approximately $250,000, was disrupted by loud music apparently at the direction of hotel management.

Reporter Dave Rice, whose account of the incident is online at the SDReader, found the source of the noise behind a hedge over a hundred feet from the presser. Photographs published with the story clearly demonstrate the Hotel’s involvement:

When I walked around the corner to ascertain the source of the music, I found two men next to a limousine with large speakers aimed at the crowd and a power cord leading back toward the hotel….   [Read more…]

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