San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

You are here: Home / Archives for Media

Mayor Piñata Swings from the Ceiling. Again.

by

Not long ago former mayor Bob Filner dialed up Voice of San Diego, purportedly to opine on the local homeless veterans situation. The subsequent interview covered a wide variety of topics but was mostly short on substance and long on defensiveness.

Filner still doesn’t get that regardless of whether it was as was mayor or street sweeper, his behavior was wrong. While acknowledging he’d given his political enemies “the ammunition,” the former mayor remains in denial about his actions. (And, yes, it is simultaneously true our city was denied the benefit of a progressive agenda.)

This week we learned one possible reason why Filner had emerged from the shadows of his newly adopted Los Angeles. His former chief of staff Lee Burdick is making the rounds, pushing a soon to be released book: “Bob Filner’s Monster, The Unraveling of an American Mayor and What We Can Learn from It.”   [Read more…]

The Oregon Stand Off: Mainstream Media Looked the Other Way

by

Odd that the Bundy story didn’t preoccupy the press as much as a Trump sneeze

Mainstream media largely failed to come up with breaking news of the arrest of the Bundys and a significant number of their cohort this week.

It was a failure that may have been intended. For weeks after January 2nd—when the cowboy sons of Nevada’s Cliven Bundy took over the Malheur bird refuge in Paiute Indian territory—the major outlets of television and traditional press just seemed to look the other way.
  [Read more…]

Fixing Flint

by

Water is a public good provided by public institutions

By Donald Cohen / Capital & Main

Flint was a failure of government — but it didn’t have to be so. And government wasn’t the root of the problem. It was about the people, and ideas they advocate, who have taken control of governments across the country.

Water is a public good provided by public institutions — i.e. governments. It should be clear now that “running government like a business” (the privatizers trope) means you don’t invest in places that don’t have markets that can afford to buy your products. It didn’t work for Flint and it doesn’t work for America. Government needs to be run like a government — clear about its mission, run by competent people (yes, bureaucrats) committed passionately to the public good.   [Read more…]

Trump Nixes Fox Debate, Looks to General Election

by

As much as I hate to do it, I’m gonna give The Donald the notice he so desperately craves today. The GOP’s leading candidate said “no” to the voice of republicanism’s Thursday night showcase of presidential candidates. A popular point of view following his decision to pull out of the Fox debate has been this could be the end of Donald Trump’s candidacy.

I beg to disagree.

This decision not to play nice with Fox News represents, in my opinion, a shift in strategy for Trump. He’s decided getting the Republican nomination is a done deal and is turning his focus to the general election.   [Read more…]

Dems Iowa Town Hall: Political Revolution vs Building on Obama’s Legacy

by

Both candidates say they have the better judgment to be president as the primary season begins.

By Steven Rosenfeld / AlterNet

The hope of the campaign trail and the pragmatism of governing clashed at an Iowa town hall meeting Monday night, as both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton each said that they had the better judgment and experience to be the 2016 Democratic nominee and nation’s next president.

It was an impressive display of two strong candidates, who, despite sharing many goals such as lessening the many forms of inequality afflicting the country, are offering decidedly different paths to achieve them. Sanders called for a political and economic revolution, where the money to meet many of America’s needs would come from confronting the wealthiest interests and using the full force of federal government to redistribute that money to benefit middle and working classes.   [Read more…]

Teleconference: Roland S. Martin Explains Why Black Media Matters

by

Gwen Pierce / The Chocolate Voice

Roland S. Martin, host and managing editor of News One Now held a teleconference on January 8, 2016, with “The Chocolate Voice” and a select group of other Black media outlets. Martin shared his insight and analysis on covering stories that are largely ignored by mainstream media.

The award winning journalist was at the top of his game in covering the most impactful stories from 2015, and is looking ahead to being at the forefront of covering hot stories in 2016.   [Read more…]

Bringing the ‘White Line’ Gondolas to San Diego

by

An editorial in today’s Union-Tribune waxes poetic about the virtues of building a mass transit system for the white people in San Diego– a network of “skyway” gondolas.

Saying it’s “one idea that does not get the attention it deserves,” the UT goes on to predict Ron Roberts, now chairing both the Board of Supervisors and SANDAG (and vice chair of the Metropolitan Transit System board), will use his perch to seek funding for the concept.

The editorial writers for the Union-Tribune might want to try becoming bus riders (I suggest the #7 Route during rush hour) before they go all in on this idea. And I realize they probably have no clue as to what an insult this project might be considered to the (mostly) people of color in San Diego who have very real transportation problems.   [Read more…]

From Hockey Star To Homeless: Craig Miller Dies on Christmas Day In Ocean Beach

by

By Vera Sanchez and Sunny Rey

Most people celebrate Christmas by unwrapping surprises, with the smell of coffee, the sound of giggles, and the warmth of a crowded house. But Dec. 25, 2015, is the day we found Craig Miller dead.

We were just two volunteers wanting to pass out sleeping bags; the season slump was to be uplifted in the streets of Ocean Beach. The organization, Urban Street Angels, had a goal of reaching 800 local homeless in the community by gifting them with newly donated sleeping bags. As fate would have it, we received an outdated flyer with an old starting time, and consequently arrived well after the event was over.   [Read more…]

Abe Ordover and Images of Beauty in a New Year

by

What a New Year we San Diegans have had so far: a January filled with rain. Rain that has brought us both beauty and pain, blessing us with precious drinking water and boosting our wishes for a drought to end on the one hand, and then, on the other hand, damning us with devastating floods that have rushed through people’s living rooms and kitchens and dens, dimming their hopes and dreams.

And we, with no other choice, wade on, as life doesn’t stand still, come rain or come shine. In spite of it all, though, I’ve seen beauty all around me as this year unfolds.   [Read more…]

American Media in 2016: Those Afflicting the Comfortable Need Not Apply

by

Just before the New Year I highlighted Project Censored’s pick for the most underreported story of 2015—the fact that 2016 will be when the top 1% will control half of the world’s wealth). In that same column I focused on two other largely ignored stories that broke subsequent to Project Censored’s annual report that also underline the perils of domestic and international economic inequality.

The first addresses the end of the American middle class’s majority status and the second examines the disproportionately negative effect that the global elite’s consumption has on greenhouse gas production.

These crucially important news stories should be shaping our national discourse but, unfortunately, they never make it through a sufficient number of what Noam Chomsky calls the corporate news “filters” to make a significant impact.   [Read more…]

Darth Niño Wreaks Havoc on San Diego

by

A little less than two months ago, the San Diego City Council declared a ‘state of emergency in advance’, based on predictions of an unusually intense El Niño weather pattern.

What this meant in practice was the potential for more immediate access to State and Federal emergency funding. And now it’s looking like those funds will be needed. A procession of storms is coming through the area and the city’s already poorly maintained infrastructure is proving to be unable to handle the stress.

Scattered bands of showers turned into intense downpours on Tuesday afternoon. Roads throughout the region were closed by flooding. Lifeguards and fire rescue teams responded to 75 emergency calls in the late afternoon, most of them dealing with vehicles stranded in flooded intersections.   [Read more…]

Bottomless Pit of Right-Wing Lies Continues as City Pension Reform Scheme Loses Appeal

by

Over the last few days we’ve heard, via the Union-Tribune and the Wall Street Journal’s free marketeers, a tale of woe arising from the ruling of a state agency holding that the city of San Diego violated state law by not negotiating with employee unions over a 2012 ballot measure that eliminated guaranteed pension benefits for most city employees.

Now we’re being told that greedy unions have circumvented the will of the voters. Talk-show host Carl DeMaio says the agency making this determination is a “kangaroo court.”

Then-Mayor Jerry Sanders worked hand-in-glove with local right-wing politicos to create and sell a “reform” program promising to save taxpayers untold millions of dollars. They lied, they cheated, and when they were called on it, said “so what?”   [Read more…]

©2010-2017 SanDiegoFreePress.org

Code is Poetry