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Billionaire Developer Pays Off County GOP for Backing Carlsbad’s Measure A

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Following Caruso Affiliated’s Money Trail

By Richard Riehl / The Riehl World

When I got an email a few days ago from an unrecognizable sender with the single word “Caruso” in the subject line, I was skeptical. Was this just another phishing expedition? But curiosity got the better of me. Opening it I found the unsigned message, “Caruso Acquisition LLC gave $50,000 to the San Diego County Republican Party on 12/31/15.” It was followed by a link to the California Secretary of State’s website. Checking it out, I found only one thing wrong with the anonymous message. The gift was actually made on December 30.

The timing of the donation struck me as odd. Rick Caruso had already invested $7 million in an attempt to build a shopping center next to Carlsbad’s Agua Hedionda Lagoon. Why the sudden urge to give big bucks to the Republican Party?   [Read more…]

When The Junkyard Is Home

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29% of the San Ysidro student population is homeless, often living in motels and junkyards.

By Barbara Zaragoza

Veronica Medina went from being an A student to an F student while at San Ysidro Middle School. It was right around the time that her parents split up. Her dad moved to Tijuana and her mom became addicted to drugs. Medina spent many nights and weekends alone in an apartment, not knowing where her mother might be. At one point, her mother couldn’t pay rent and they ended up in a hotel. For two years, Medina bounced back and forth between couch surfing with her mother and living with her grandmother.

That was back in the 1980s.

For the last nine years, Medina has been the homeless liaison for approximately 1,408 students, or 29% of the 4,832 total enrolled in the San Ysidro School District, the largest student homeless population percentage-wise in the entire county. Her title has changed over the years— she is now the Student & Family Services Manager—but her work has never changed.   [Read more…]

Who the Election Should Be For: The 7 Most Beaten-Down Americans

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By Paul Bucheit / CommonDreams

Wealthy Americans are afraid of too much change, the kind that might occur with a Democratic Socialist as president. But it’s too late for gradual change. Only a popular uprising against big business greed can restore a semblance of normalcy to our perversely unequal society.

The election should be about the economy—but the economy of average Americans, not of establishment wealth. The election should be about these beaten-down groups of Americans:   [Read more…]

Looking Down the Road at San Diego

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It’s like a tale of two cities. The staff with the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) have put together competing proposals for spending priorities in advance of a ballot measure for countywide half-cent sales tax increase, raising $18 billion over the next 40 years.

Two constituencies are targeted with these proposals: city politicians and environmentally conscious citizens. Both plans include construction of a new trolley line running from South Bay to Carmel Valley, a skyway system of gondolas connecting the first tier of mesas (Balboa Ave to PB, Sorrento Valley to UCSD) to the coast, along with various clean air and water projects.

One proposal offers up 40% of revenues for cash-strapped localities to be spent on infrastructure, 30% on transit projects and operations and 10% on highways. spending priorities. The other proposal offers up 50% of revenues for transit, 17% for highways and zero for infrastructure.   [Read more…]

Michael Moore Says His New Movie Will Change America

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“Free universal health care, free university, free day care, taxing and policing hedge fund millionaires—have already happened in nearly every other industrialized country in the world! And I have the evidence—and the film—to prove it!”

By Lauren McCauley / CommonDreamsWhere to Invade Next, which is said to be both his happiest and “most subversive” movie yet.

In the film, Moore travels to countries throughout Europe and also Tunisia to “pry loose from them the tools they’ve been using to make their countries happy, shiny places,” he writes, with the goal of “show[ing] millions of Americans what these countries have been hiding from us.” Such tools range from eight weeks paid vacation in Italy, to a year of paid maternity leave in Scandinavia, to women with “true equality and power” in Tunisia, to trusting prisons in Norway.

Moore, who is known for such works as Bowling for Columbine and Capitalism: A Love Story, penned an open letter to supporters last week explaining how a recent bout of pneumonia and subsequent hospital stay forced him to cancel all television appearances promoting the film.   [Read more…]

Here Comes California’s Concrete Coast: Coastal Commission Director Sacked

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Escondido City Councilwoman Olga Diaz, voting as the alternate for County Supervisor Greg Cox, cast the deciding vote as the California Coastal Commission sacked executive director Dr. Charles Lester late yesterday.

The 7-5 decision ended a meeting in Morro Bay that ran late into the evening. The commissioners heard impassioned pleas from dozens of witnesses saying the director’s removal amounted to a green light for unchecked development on 1,100 miles of scenic mountains, cliffs and beaches along the Pacific Ocean.

Over 20,000 letters were received by the commission, with a vast majority supportive of Dr. Lester. Billionaire environmental activist Tom Steyer delivered a petition with nearly 10,000 signatures asking the commission to “put coastal protection before the demands of special interests.” The outpouring of support apparently didn’t outweigh a letter from the Los Angeles County Business Federation, an alliance of 155 business groups, blaming the commission’s staff for a lack of accountability and regulatory overreach.   [Read more…]

San Diego Women’s Museum of California: “Women in Action”

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By South OB Girl/ OB Rag

Tucked in Liberty Station, across the street from Slater’s 50/50 Burgers, Ace Hardware, and Con Pane Bakery on Historic Decatur Road is a hidden gem of the peninsula and beach community — the Women’s Museum of California. Little did you know that in the second story above the first floor exhibit hall lies an extensive archive and collection devoted to women’s history.

Opening on Thursday evening Feb. 4th was the museum’s new exhibit, which showcases the history of the United Nations commitment to global equality and women’s issues, and celebrates the 70th year of the U.N.’s Commission on the Status of Women.   [Read more…]

June Vote Set for San Diego Minimum Wage Increase

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Voters in the city of San Diego will get a chance to weigh in on an ordinance providing stepped increases in the minimum wage and up to five earned sick days annually in the June 2016 primary election.

A historic wrong will be righted with public approval of the measure, implementation of which was delayed by a deceptive petition campaign financed by out of town interests whose business model depends on government assistance to their employees.

The original ordinance was approved in the summer of 2014, following months of City Council president Todd Gloria attempting and essentially failing to get business community input. Mayor Kevin Faulconer vetoed the measure. The City Council overrode the veto, 6-3, voting along party lines.   [Read more…]

Faulconer Flunky Dukes It Out With Saldaña in UT Interview

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Today’s Union-Tribune interview with mayoral candidate Lori Saldaña read like a debate between the former Assemblywoman with Mayor Faulconer’s campaign manager Jason Roe. This was coverage reminiscent of the Copley era.

Rather than give Saldaña a clear shot at explaining her views and critiques (and she has plenty) of the present regime, the Union-Tribune tapped the mayoral pit bull to refute her point by point.

This reminds me very much of the old days around the paper, wherein any viewpoints counter to “everybody knows” were quickly smothered with officially blessed counterpoints.   [Read more…]

Human Rights Watch Film Festival 2016 in Balboa Park

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By Mukul Khurana

The 2016 Human Rights Watch Film Festival is in town and opened on Thursday, January 21 at the Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park. This is not the first year for this kind of event, but the care taken in the selection of films and the scheduling seems to point to a well thought out experience. Credit goes to the collaboration between Paolo Zuniga of MOPA and Andrea Holley of Human Rights Watch (not to mention the excellent artists selected for the 2016 festival).   [Read more…]

Hoteliers Not-A-Tax Scheme Headed to Trial

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San Diego’s big hotel barons have suffered a significant defeat as their two percent self-assessment/fee/not-a-tax surcharge is headed for its day of reckoning in the courts. Superior Court Judge Joel R.Wohlfeil handed down a ruling late Friday afternoon allowing attorney Cory Briggs and his clients to proceed with a lawsuit challenging the basis on which hotels are allowed to collect this fee.

This self-assessment/fee/not-a-tax was an attempt to make an end-run around the requirement of two-thirds voter approval on taxes dedicated for a specific use. The city and the Tourism Marketing District tried and failed to derail a lawsuit challenging its legality by arguing only hoteliers had standing to challenge it in court.

Monies collected under this scheme have been set aside for a single purpose, namely financing advertising and promotional materials for the local tourism industry. The city’s politicians bowed down to the wishes of the corporate tourism industry, agreeing on–as Briggs puts it: “a ‘management plan’ that allows the ‘self-assessment’ to be added to a guest’s bill as long as it is ‘separately stated from the amount of rent charged and any applicable taxes’—as if separating it on the bill means that the guest is not paying it.”   [Read more…]

Pinyon-Juniper Forests: BLM is a Ranching Industry Tool

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By Will Falk

Public lands ranching is destroying the Western United States. It has pushed native plant species to the brink of extinction. It causes soil to erode so quickly the land cannot keep up. Livestock are poisoning and depleting water supplies, killing perennial stream flows, and are making it increasingly difficult for surface water to accumulate. Stockmen and the animals they raise have devastated populations of iconic American animals like bison, elk, pronghorn, and sage-grouse. Ranchers, ever jealous of the trees their stock cannot eat, encourage the clear-cutting of forests.

I cannot decide whether writing this essay in the wake of Ammon Bundy’s arrest and Lavoy Finicum’s death at the hands of the FBI and Oregon State Police after their occupation of Northern Paiute land at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge is good or bad. It could be good because this story has finally forced public lands ranching, or “welfare ranching,” and the policies of federal agencies like the Bureau of Land Management and US Forest Service into the public’s consciousness.

On the other hand, there is the risk that while Bundy and his angry white men waved their rifles in the faces of law enforcement complaining about federal agencies like BLM and the Forest Service, the public developed too much sympathy for those Bundy threatened. These agencies might look like the good guys against Big Bad Bundy while the agencies’ own atrocities go over-looked.   [Read more…]

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