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Energy Democracy: Inside Californians’ Game-Changing Plan for Community-Owned Power

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Large utility companies control about 75 percent of the electricity market in California. A hybrid between a public agency and private utility, the new Community Choice program is a model for communities that want greener, cheaper energy.

By Al Weinrub / Yes!

On September 21, Pa Dwe, a 16-year-old student at Oakland’s Street Academy, spoke out against the export of coal through the Port of Oakland to City Council members: “I’m opposed to this coal export because it will make my community in West Oakland sick. I support jobs, but not the kind of jobs that make us sick. There are clean job alternatives, like Community Choice energy, and this will be good for the health of my community. This is my generation; I want to have a healthy life.”
  [Read more…]

Photography Keeps Alzheimer’s Patients In The Moment

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Most people in San Diego know that the Museum of Photographic Arts (MOPA), located in Balboa Park, offers exquisite exhibits throughout the year. Lesser known are their outreach programs.

Kevin Linde, Adults Programs Coordinator, has been offering workshops to Spanish language communities in the South Bay for the last two years. Recently, in collaboration with the Shiley-Marcos Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (ADRC), MOPA reached out to Spanish speaking seniors who have been diagnosed with various stages of Alzheimer’s.   [Read more…]

Excerpt From Sunshine/Noir II: From the Border to the Fields

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By Juanita Lopez

It is the year of 2014 and both of my grandparents are very old but alive, though suffering from dementia. I decided to pay them a visit to interview them. Believe it or not, they still live in the same one-bedroom apartment in San Ysidro where they established their U.S. residency in the late 1970s. From their yard, I am able to look at the thousands of tiny houses in Tijuana, where they once lived, dreaming of crossing over for a better opportunity. I look at my dark-skinned grandmother and admire her toothless smile. Her eyes light up every time she sees me. She normally asks me how my brother is doing, and I tell her he’s okay, working like always since he has a baby to take care of now. She smiles and two minutes later asks me the same question. I go over to her kitchen and wash some strawberries that were in her refrigerator. I offer her some after I cut them and sprinkle some sugar on top—my grandmother smiles again and starts telling me about her life, a not-so-sweet story about the times she labored as a farm worker picking strawberries and cutting flowers.   [Read more…]

Why SeaWorld Can’t Build a Hotel at its Location on Mission Bay

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Coming off a trouncing over the last 2 years because of the Orca circuses, SeaWorld has announced that it now plans on building a hotel and resort at its location on the southern rim of Mission Bay.  Its hope is that declining attendances and revenues will be halted with a branded hotel right there on its site with its aquatic theme.

Yet, there is trouble afoot for these plans. SeaWorld needs to re-appraise the project, for the last time a major hotel was planned for that area of Mission Bay – it ended in disaster. In the early 1980s, Ramada wanted to build a resort – and the city had given the go-ahead.

But when it came time to begin construction, it was uncovered that a toxic landfill sat beneath all that sand. The old Mission Bay Landfill.   [Read more…]

Laffing it Up

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My mother used to say “Sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying,” and when I think back on our days of second-class citizenship she sure wasn’t lying.

The other day Maria and I gave in to that old adage as we laughed about this and that, whiling the time away during her stay in a little two-bed hospital room at Scripps Mercy, worrying about what the doctor might say.

We started laughing ourselves silly listening to a woman’s (Maria’s roommate) emotional and animated conversation in Cantonese, with all the rhythmic inflections and rapidly changing nuances intertwined.

It was so beautiful and exciting to listen to, actually, but we couldn’t help but crack up when, at the end, the woman paused and said “Bye, bye” like she had suddenly become Lily Tomlin or Whoopi Goldberg. Looking for anything to cut into our anxiety we just lost it.   [Read more…]

North Of The Fence: Water Rates, Dead Dolphins and More Mexicans Leaving U.S.

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Water Rate Hikes

On Tuesday, November 17, members of the San Diegans for Fair Water Rates Coalition rallied at the San Diego Civic Concourse Plaza asking the SD City Council to vote against the recycled water unitary rate proposal. They lost. The City Council approved a five-year, 40 percent increase to the price of city drinking water overall and then also approved the recycled water rate with a vote of 7-2, Alvarez and Kersey voting against it.

Imperial Beach

Vince Farnsworth at the San Diego Reader reported three dead dolphins washed up on the shores of Imperial Beach in the past month. Investigations are underway to determine whether their deaths were due to Navy sonar exercises. According to Earthjustice, there are only 323 bottlenose dolphins known to live in California coastal waters.   [Read more…]

San Diego’s Hidden Homeless

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Homeless women and children undercounted and underserved.

It looks like the issue of homelessness will be getting some airtime during the 2016 election season in San Diego. That should be good news for anyone who is deeply concerned about homelessness in the region. Problem is that some candidates might use the issue to put forth solutions, without taking the time to understand the problem.

By feeding the electorate with misinformation that plays into their eagerness for a quick and easy fix to the city’s growing homeless situation, they will not only fail to solve the problem, they will exacerbate it.

Take a recent plan offered by San Diego City Attorney candidate, Robert P. Hickey, that he calls his “Community Care Plan”. Why would the City Attorney be making homelessness a cornerstone to his campaign?   [Read more…]

Nuclear Shutdown News – October 2015

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By Michael Steinberg / Black Rain Press

Nuclear Shutdown News chronicles the decline of the nuclear power industry in the US and beyond, and highlights the efforts of those who are working to create a nuclear free future.

This October I returned to the place I come from, southeast Connecticut on Long Island Sound, off the Atlantic Ocean. The region promotes and prides itself as “The Submarine Capital of the World.”

The General Dynamics Electric Boat Company in Groton, CT, has built almost all the nation’s nuclear powered submarines. These include each and every of the Trident subs, which along with nuclear missiles and bombs constitute the US “strategic forces.”

Each Trident carries nuclear missiles, each one consisting of multiple warheads that can be independently targeted.

Thus Tridents are submersible Armageddons.   [Read more…]

‘A Better Option’: Colorado Readies Ballot Battle for Single-Payer Solution

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“It’s time we get the insurance industry out of the driver’s seat and put families in charge of their healthcare.”

By Deidre Fulton / CommonDreams

Will Colorado be the first state in the nation to successfully implement a single-payer healthcare system?

Voters in the Centennial State will decide next year, the secretary of state’s office announced Monday, after confirming that proponents of universal coverage had gathered enough signatures to put the plan—dubbed ‘ColoradoCare’—on the 2016 ballot.   [Read more…]

Is It Time to Put Down the Bacon?

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Processed meat may cause cancer, but your personal risk is probably low.

By Jill Richardson / OtherWords

By now you’ve probably heard the sobering news: Red meat may cause cancer. And bacon and other popular processed meats definitely do, the World Health Organization says.

Does that mean we all need to quit eating processed meats — no pun intended — cold turkey?

For nutrition-obsessed dorks like me, this pronouncement wasn’t news: Bacon’s been suspect for decades. Yet I still occasionally eat the stuff, and I have a weakness for a particular variety of overpriced salami sold at Whole Foods. (It’s great for camping trips, because it stays good outside the fridge.)   [Read more…]

A Greedy Capitalist Gets His Comeuppance

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Price Gouger Martin Shkreli Becomes Known as ‘Most Hated Man in America’

Turing Pharmaceuticals chief Martin Shkreli will face new competition for Daraprim, the drug he recently hiked 5,000 percent in price, after competitor Imprimis Pharmaceuticals said it would market a similar drug for just $1 a tablet. Daraprim is used mainly to treat toxoplasmosis, a parasitic infection that’s common in AIDS and HIV patients, as well as cancer sufferers.

Greedy buttwipe Martin Shkreli, the hedge fund guy that bought the drug Dariprim and then raised the price from $13.50 to $750. a pill will actually lose his ass on this venture. At these prices the estimated  annual cost of treatment for toxoplasmosis, for the pyrimethamine component alone, would be $336,000 for patients who weigh less than 132 pounds, and $634,500 for those who weigh more than that. Daraprim is given for at least six weeks to knock out the infection, and then often for a year or even indefinitely to help the immune-compromised patient keep the parasite at bay.

The problem for Shkreli, that he didn’t take account of in his lust for speedy profits, is that Dariprim is actually a generic. It’s been around for 62 years. That means that anybody can manufacture it. That’s exactly what one San Diego drug company did. Moreover, Imprimis intends to come up with cheap versions of other drugs that some businesses sell for far above their manufacturing costs. The trick for Imprimis was to combine pyrimethamine with another generic drug, leucovorin, thus giving it the right to operate as a compounding pharmacy and to avoid a lengthy approval process by the US Food and Drug Administration.   [Read more…]

Loving A Child, Protecting the Future

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By Will Falk

Not long ago, a few hours after his birth, I held a new-born baby to my chest in the hospital. The baby is my girlfriend’s nephew. We arrived at the hospital and crowded into a maternity room with my girlfriend’s sister, brother-in-law, little niece, and mother.

During the pregnancy, my girlfriend’s almost three year-old niece was asked what her little brother’s name should be. She answered, quickly, matter-of-factly, “Pineapple.” He has another name, but for this essay, he will be Pineapple.

Conversation revolved around what Pineapple would be like when he was older, the adventures his big sister and he would have, and what the relative ease of his birth might mean for his life. We were excited for what we might teach him, what he would teach us, and we made predictions about the milestones in his life.   [Read more…]

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