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Nuclear Dread on Both Sides of the Pacific – Japan and San Onofre

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By Michael Steinberg

For those of an apocalyptic bent, the beginning of the final half of 2012 was near perfect.

True, the walls didn’t all come tumbling down, though those retaining the spent nuclear fuel pool atop Fukushima Unit 4 were bulging. But the signs seemed to be everywhere, from the eastern shores of Japan to the west coast of California.

The most widely reported such event was the July 1 restart of a Japanese commercial nuclear power reactor at the Ohi nuclear plant. Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda pushed for this restart, despite a massive protest in front of his office in Tokyo only days before. Digital Journal reported that 200,000 protested there on June 29   [Read more…]

San Diego’s Mayoral Race, Part Three: Sex, Lies and Video Tape

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By Norma Damashek / NumbersRunner
Political suicide is not an acceptable option. There are billionaire puppeteers on the national scene who groomed Carl DeMaio to be their “vehicle,” their instrument for a right-wing takeover ofSan Diego. The Koch brothers are alter egos of Te and Do…Bo and Peep…The Two…. As they say in my birthplace, fuggedaboudit.

There are big-business/ downtownSan Diegointerests who believe they can keep Carl DeMaio in check… reined in… serving their interests… doing their bidding. It’s a delusional fantasy. He’s got richer, more powerful masters to please.

There are sincere and good people in San Diego who cry out for meaningful pension reform and mistakenly believe that Carl DeMaio can take them to the “next level.” His message is untrue. His true agenda is not reforming but dismantling public institutions of government. It’s a new-age form of anarchy.   [Read more…]

Deporting the Hand That Feeds Us: How Anti-Immigrant Laws Are Causing a Farm Labor Shortage

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If Americans won’t do the work, and the U.S. successfully keeps undocumented immigrants out of the country, then who will do it?

AlterNet / By Jill Richardson 
While researching her 2012 book The American Way of Eating, journalist Tracie McMillan decided to try her hand at picking grapes, sorting peaches and cutting garlic. The experience resulted in heatstroke, tendonitis and long-term damage to her right arm. In only one job – sorting peaches – was she paid minimum wage. That was also the only job where her employer was aware she was an undercover journalist. She left two jobs rather quickly, but stuck with the garlic job for six weeks until she literally could not use her right arm for anything and she became worried she might permanently damage it.

The harsh conditions and poor pay for farmwork are nothing new in American history. Before Mexicans worked on America’s large farms, the U.S. used a different group of immigrants: slaves from Africa and their descendants.
  [Read more…]

San Diego’s Mayoral Race, Part Two: Sex, Lies, and Videotape

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By Norma Damashek / NumbersRunner

For the past few years the man who would be San Diego’s highest elected official has been leading a bifurcated life.

In public, Carl DeMaio remains a populist avatar of fiscal rectitude and righteous tea-party values.   In private, DeMaio is now the live-in mate of the publisher of San Diego Gay and Lesbian News and SD Pix magazine.  This partner is a controversial and successful videographer and photo cataloguer of social and party events in the gay community, a go-to man.

This is not a casual relationship.  Carl DeMaio and his partner have shared ‘promise rings.’  They share DeMaio’s home in Rancho Bernardo.   [Read more…]

San Diego’s Mayoral Race, Part One: Sex, Lies and Videotape

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By Norma Damashek / NumbersRunner

Does anyone out there remember the doomsday cult called Heaven’s Gate — UFO-believers led by Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles, aka “The Two,” aka “Te and Do,” aka “Bo and Peep”? Heaven’s Gate cult members were ascetic “vehicles” on a journey to the “next level.” Their shared delusions and willing submission to authoritarian leaders came to a shocking end in a tragic group suicide. This happened in 1996. Only videotapes remain, documenting their stay in and departure from San Diego.

Yes, truth can be stranger than fiction. But if you think it can’t get even stranger, consider this: we’ve got another Hale Bopp scenario on our hands. This time it involves billionaire corporate investors with an anointed “vehicle” who happens to be running for mayor of San Diego. This could be the plot for a 3rd rate horror film but I’m afraid it’s real. Here’s what’s going on:

A group of of multi-million/billionaires — well-known for their anti-tax, anti-government, anti-labor, anti-regulation, anti-pension, anti-public, anti-environmental, pro-privatization proclivities — have targeted the city of San Diego for political takeover. Their goal is not greater efficiency or raising the standard of living. Their goal is to transfer the control, ownership, and wealth embedded in the city’s valuable public assets straight into private corporate hands. Their goal is a new world order. Their goal is to use San Diego as a launching pad.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – UT-San Diego Derides Balboa Park Plan Opposition as “Idiotic”; LAPD Bust Up Occupy Artwalk Artists

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The dark lords of Mission Valley know what’s best for us…. Our daily newspaper says that opponents of the Jacobs/Saunders plan for Balboa Park are being “idiotic”.  The paper featured an editorial yesterday entitled “Idiotic, Let Us Count the Ways”.  The Editorial Board pasted that label on Councilwoman Sherri Lightner and Congressman/Mayoral candidate Bob Filner, D-San Diego, among others, for their opposition to the current arrangement. Questions about the process involved in approving the plan, its legality and its shaky financial assumptions, apparently weren’t worth considering by the UT’s opinion makers in Mission Valley as they pursued an agenda that is, at its core, anti-democratic and plutocratic in nature.

Opposition in the community was deep and widespread, with comments about the project running as high as 25 to 1 against.  Are all those people idiots? There was considerable frustration and anger sparked by the perception that opponents were simply being ignored at every step of the way. It’s not surprising that everyday people started to feel like this scenario was simply a show designed to legitimize the City’s special relationship with a Very Wealthy Individual. Passions ran high, and as our reporter Andy Cohen tried to point out, some individuals –on both sides of this issue– may have crossed the line in terms of expressing their disagreement in polite terms.  The fact is that hardly anybody disagrees with the kernel of truth at the center of this debate—that cars need to be removed from the core of Balboa Park. The question was (and is), how do we get there?

The UT-San Diego editorial made it perfectly clear that citizen input will be derided and disparaged in these sorts of instances. Good luck to anybody who dares oppose their grand visions for a shiny new stadium downtown or publisher Doug Manchester’s plans for mega development along the San Diego river—if they called people idiotic for speaking out against the Balboa Park plan, lord only knows what words they’ll come up with for opponents of their own pet projects.   [Read more…]

Balboa Park Project Appears to be Illegal, Places Park’s National Historic Landmark Status in Jeopardy

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Deeply flawed plan could cost San Diego tens of millions of dollars.

The Irwin Jacobs plan to transform San Diego’s Balboa Park may be illegal according to the City Municipal Code. In her statements to the City Council at the July 9th City Council meeting, Susan Brandt-Hawley, an attorney who worked with the Save Our Heritage Organisation in challenging the project, warned the members that in supporting the plan they would be in violation of the law.

In question are two particular sub-sections of the Municipal Code.   [Read more…]

San Diego: America’s Finest Dressed City

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By Sub-Committee / Special to San Diego Free Press

Sub-committee report #3  Now that we will create parking spaces in Balboa Park that cost about $58,000 a piece, and public beach toilets in North Pacific Beach that cost $100,000 per toilet stall, and recently re-modeled “art toilets” in Ocean Beach, I think we can legitimately call ourselves the “finest dressed city in America.” We are obliged to dress nicely and have nice bathrooms because we are eager to invite the world to our town to party. Being rich costs a lot of money, you know, and we would like to thank the pleasant and well-meaning golf and yacht club committees for their advice to the city council members on the subject of our attire.

Our local news television stations are also eager to keep the party going as they don’t miss a chance to throw up on the airwaves (in flash subliminal ways) 5 year old photos of standing room only at the beaches before the beach alcohol ban in 2008. The beaches have become much less crowded and mild-mannered since the booze ban, so I hope the revelers are not disappointed.

We’re beach people here, and wannabes, so we know how to throw a bash, and enjoy it too.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line — Internet Freedom Under Attack Again; Congressman Seeks to Avoid Public Scrutiny

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July 12, 2012- Congressman Lamar Smith, who hails from the west hills of Texas, is trying to push yet another bill through the House that will ‘tame the internet’.  Smith is trying to pass it without any substantive debate or scrutiny, just as he tried with the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), the bill that died on the vine earlier this year after 100,000 webs sites went dark for a day in protest.

The Intellectual Property Attache Act, will create the position of Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property who will see to it that all US trade negotiations and discussions advance SOPA-like provisions in foreign law. This clever maneuver is one way that he and his Hollywood masters can get past the fact that SOPA like measures are unpopular by getting other countries to impose them as part of trade agreements and then agree to “harmonize” these provisions by making the part of U.S. law.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line: Will Bridgepoint’s House of Cards Collapse? And Will San Diego Be Left Holding the Bag?

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July 11, 2012- One of San Diego’s largest employers is headed for financial and legal  troubles that could have a serious impact on the region. Bridgepoint Education took a bath in the stock market Monday, losing one third of its value and continuing downward on Tuesday. Over the past year the company’s stock price has dropped by more than 50%. This week’s sharp drop in value at the stock exchange happened after its flagship school, Ashford University, was denied accreditation by the Western Association of Schools. The upshot of this ruling is that the company will need to relocate hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of employees out of the San Diego region.

The for profit education company depends on the status of the Ashford campus to give it credibility with its on-line students, who make up 99% of its enrollment, and the financial organizations that loan them money for tuition. Standing in the way of certification is Bridgepoint’s drop out rate; of the nearly quarter million students enrolled over the past four years (2007-2011), 127,879 withdrew from the school. Also troubling for the Western Association was the fact that the school spends 31% of its operating costs on recruitment, well above the amount it spends on actual instruction or student services like job counseling. Just 22% of Ashford students graduate; the actual campus in Iowa has a mere 1,000 students taking classes, 85,000 are studying online.   [Read more…]

Eyewitness Report: The Nightmare of the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster

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By Dave Patterson
We visited with Chieko Shiina, mother and organic farmer – whose life was tied to the earth, when she came to San Diego on July 7, 2011 to help us understand what happened to the people of Japan when the earthquake and tsunami destroyed the Fukushimi Diachi nuclear plant, and what she and others have done there. What we learned is that the nightmare has only begun for the people of Japan, and how the efforts of Chieko Shiina and others are empowering the people to help themselves, as the Japanese government appears powerless, to help.

Chieko’s organic farm was 25 miles away from Fukushima when the disaster struck, and she had to stop growing food because of the nuclear contamination. Later when the radiation reached levels that equaled a continuous mammogram (0.7mSieverts), she moved to Fukushima city. Unfortunately the standard down-wind models of airborne radiation contamination do not apply, as there are now many places in Japan at great distances from Fukushima that are very contaminated. Hot spots in Fukushima City itself measure 10~30mS or higher, the equivalent of living in a full body CT scan 24 hours a day. Japan right now is not a healthy place to be, particularly for children and women.   [Read more…]

City Council Approves Jacobs Plan

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Seven-and-a-half hour City Council marathon ends in 6-1 vote in favor of Balboa Park overhaul.

Update: Statement from Scott Peters

The most controversial decision in the San Diego City Council since the Chargers ticket guarantee finally came to a head last night at around 9:30 pm, and when the council had completed its vote, the Irwin Jacobs plan to transform Balboa Park had its official go ahead. The $45 million plan to eliminate vehicle traffic from the Plaza de Panama, build the “Centennial Bridge” that will circumvent the centerpiece of the park itself, and lead into a brand spanking new $16 million parking structure that will introduce paid parking into Balboa Park for the first time in the park’s history got the City Council’s official go ahead.

Despite overwhelming public opposition to the perceived privatization of San Diego’s crown jewel, the City Council voted 6-1 to approve the plan pushed by the billionaire founder of Qualcomm, the eighth largest employer in San Diego, with even the council’s most liberal members giving the plan the green light.   [Read more…]

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