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Tea Party Wet Dream Forces Shutdown of San Diego’s Miramar Air Show

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“The reign of morons began with the triumph of bullshit.”  Charles Pierce, Esquire Magazine

By Doug Porter

Over the last few days the conservative pundit class has been preaching the message that the government shutdown was much ado about nothing. A ‘slim down’ became the Fox news codeword meant to belittle the ever-growing cumulative effects of the Congressional Republican’s efforts to hold the country hostage.

Word came out this morning that this weekend’s Miramar Air Show, already truncated by sequester mandated cutbacks in military spending, would now be cancelled.  I have no doubt that the local Tea Party set will soon be announcing the closure was personally ordered by President Obama.

  [Read more…]

Outraged? Call Government Shutdown Supporters Duncan Hunter and Darrell Issa of San Diego

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We’re in Day 3 of the Federal government shutdown. If you are outraged or upset, how about calling or contacting San Diego’s Congressional members who support the shutdown?

Call Congressmen Darrell Issa and Duncan Hunter, Jr. Both are Republicans and both have consistently voted to shutdown the federal government in efforts to defund the law called the Affordable Care Act.

San Diego’s Democratic Congressional members, Susan Davis, Juan Vargas, and Scott Peters – all have supported the Obama Administration’s efforts to keep the government open.

Here’s contact info on both Darrell Issa and Duncan Hunter.   [Read more…]

Travelers on the Street of Dreams

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“My challenge is to finish high school as a teenage Mom”

By Anna Daniels

Once a year Teresa Gunn, artistic director and founder of Street of Dreams, stands before a full house in the City College Saville Theatre and opens the student performance with these words:

We have the highest prison population that we have ever had in the history of the country. At Street of Dreams we are not willing to put another generation of people in prison because we lack the humanity to produce a creative solution. The solution is education and community collaboration. Street of Dreams is part of the solution.

Street of Dreams has been part of that solution since its founding in 1998, when Teresa Gunn recognized that the power of story telling and arts education could provide a path out of poverty and inter-generational incarceration and addiction for young mothers who had found themselves in the juvenile justice system.   [Read more…]

Mel Freilicher Reads from “Encyclopedia of Rebels”

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Wednesday, October 2nd at 7pm at DG Wills Book Store

By Jim Miller

San Diego City Works Press is proud to announce the publication of The Encyclopedia of Rebels by local author and UCSD writing teacher, Mel Freilicher. The book plays with the intersections between history, fiction, memoir, fantasy, and mystery. As Pulitzer Prize winning poet Rae Armantrout puts it, “You could call this both an outrageous comedy and a credible look at the world we live in.”

Mel Freilicher will read from his new book this Wednesday, at 7 PM at D.G. Wills Book Store at 7461 Girard Ave in La Jolla on WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 2nd at 7 pm as part of the San Diego City College International Book Fair.   [Read more…]

Finally, Respect: Calif. Domestic Workers Win OT Pay

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By Bradley Wong /Equal Voice News

Domestic workers in California — and groups and people who support better employment conditions for them nationwide — are hailing a new bill of rights signed into law Thursday in Sacramento.

The signing of AB 241 ensures that domestic workers in private homes are paid overtime for the hours they work.

The law goes into effect on Jan. 1, a year before similar but federal regulations announced this month begin, California state Assemblymember Tom Ammiano said in a statement. He is the main author of the bill.

“This is a big step for respecting and recognizing domestic work as real work, and the fight doesn’t stop here,” Marcela Escamilla, a San Francisco domestic worker, said in a statement released by Mujeres Unidas y Activas.   [Read more…]

Passionate Debate Ends with Alvarez Getting the Backing of SD Democrats for Equality

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Story and Photos by Eva Posner

The San Diego Democrats for Equality endorsed City Councilmember David Alvarez last night, furthering his momentum toward an improbable-but-not-impossible victory against Nathan Fletcher and Kevin Faulconer in the November 19 special election to replace Bob Filner as mayor of San Diego.

The result is interesting, given the amount of infighting that has taken place among local Democrats since Alvarez entered the race– placing himself opposite former Republican Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher for the title of Democratic front-runner.   [Read more…]

Gentle Fathers in the Wild

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By Ernie McCray

I hadn’t camped since Nancy died in ’09. But there I was, this past weekend, laying my sleeping bag down on the ground, to spend some time in the wilderness, near Julian, for two days and two nights with some of the most delightful people one could ever meet in life. It would be an understatement to define those moments as nice.

I mean we were living good, just kicking back, underneath a sky that was black as it could be considering that there was a full moon at play, eating meals off the grill, over burning logs we needed to feel cozy in the evening chill.

It had been a while but nothing had changed since the days when Nancy and I and our offspring would get out into the woods. Like back then, no sooner than I stepped out of my car my spiritual nature rose to the fore. At first it was a reaction to the sheer majesty of it all: the emerging colors of autumn all around me in the oak and cedar and pine trees, the knowing that I was surrounded by mule deer and wild turkeys with bobcats and mountain lions watching the whole scene, the fresh air. How could my soul not feel moved when I was, by the very environment I found myself in, feeling such a connection to nature’s wonders?   [Read more…]

Fletcher Versus Alvarez: The Battle for the Soul of San Diego’s Democratic Party

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by Jim Miller

This last week marked the two-year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, a political happening that finally put the issue of economic inequality in the spotlight and started a national discussion about money, class, and political corruption. That movement was largely brought to us by young people, Millennials mostly, whose view of mainstream politics is justifiably jaded.

As Peter Beinart recently pointed out, “Compared to their Reagan-Clinton generation elders, Millennials are entering adulthood in an America where government provides much less economic security. And their economic experience in this newly deregulated America has been horrendous.”

And this experience has been made worse by bankrupt politics that pits what Beinart rightly characterizes as “a procapitalist, anti-bureaucratic Reaganized liberalism” that is “inclined toward market solutions” to everything against a radicalized “right wing populism”:   [Read more…]

The New Main Library: A Benefit for All

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Richard Rider, a local libertarian, called the new library “a monument to an era that is ending — a structure that in a few years will have little more utility value than a Pharaoh’s pyramid in Egypt. The only difference is that the library will have high operating costs — the pyramids need no such annual funding.”
–UT San Diego article “New library: Is this monument necessary?”

By Joe Flynn

Odd isn’t it? The self professed “cheerleaders” for San Diego preview the grand opening of the new library with this article puffed up with a quote from San Diego’s Dr. No, Richard Rider, libertarian. I wanted to get the spelling right, but after reading his remarks no one will mistake him for a librarian.   [Read more…]

How Factory Farms May Be Killing Us

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A report from the CDC reveals the grave dangers of antibiotic resistance and says factory-farmed animals are a big contributor

By Tara Lohan / AlterNet 

What would our healthcare system look like if we couldn’t perform surgeries, administer chemotherapy, replace joints, treat diabetes? It would be the end of modern medicine as we know it. A new report from the Centers for Disease Control warns we could be headed toward that very future.

Antibiotics revolutionized medicine in the 1940s, saving millions of lives over the last 70 years. But during that time bacteria have evolved to become resistant to certain antibiotics. The more antibiotics we use, the quicker resistance builds up. This has deadly repercussions.   [Read more…]

Congressional Countdown for a Meltdown in Progress as Republicans Draw a Line in the Sand Over ObamaCare

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By Doug Porter

As part of their ongoing drive to drive their party’s plummeting polling numbers off a cliff, Congressional Republicans have declared that now is the time to engineer a shutdown of the Federal government.

Two separate showdowns are slated for the coming weeks, following a revolt by Tea Party Representatives last week which left the “reasonable” voices in the GOP on the side on the road.  Coming Friday will be a House vote for a continuing resolution for funding to allow government operations to proceed. Three weeks down the road a legislative showdown is expected over a bill allowing the debt ceiling to rise.

As things stand today both actions will likely result in GOP sponsored majority votes in the House, rejection by the Democratic-led Senate of odious portions of those legislative packages and a probable shutdown of the government.   [Read more…]

Support the Barrio Logan Community Plan Update Alternative 1!

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San Diego’s Maritime Industry Doesn’t Care About Barrio Logan

By Brent E. Beltrán

I come before you today not as a paid employee of Continental Marine or of the other ubiquitous polluting industries that mar the streetscape of Barrio Logan. Nor do I come as a high paid lobbyist or lawyer of these same businesses. Neither am I a CEO or manager of said industry.

I come before you today as a relatively new resident of Barrio Logan. I’ve lived in Logan Heights for two years and am now finishing my first year as an apartment dweller in the new Estrella del Mercado complex. Though for the past 20 years I have participated in various ways in the life and activities of Barrio Logan.

For decades my community has struggled with neglect by the political players, power brokers and industries that have never cared about the residents of this barrio.   [Read more…]

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