by John Lawrence
Determined to make a scandal out of the Benghazi incident, Vista, CA Congressman Darryl Issa has launched an investigation. What else do Republicans have to do?
They certainly aren’t going to pass any legislation that might be on Obama’s agenda. So they’ve got nothing else to do but to launch an investigation.
Here are the facts:
Four people were killed, including US Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens on September 11, 2012. Ten others were injured. [Read more…]
While the oldstream media is obsessing on the current crop of Washington’s politi-dramas, an international protest movement is gathering steam. Activists in on six continents, in 36 countries, and in 47 U.S. states — totaling events in over 250 cities — are coordinating demonstrations to occur simultaneously at 11am Pacific time on Saturday May 25th under the general theme “March Against Monsanto”.
The St Louis-based biotech behemoth Monsanto has come under increasing attack from environmentalists, agriculturalists and average consumers in response to the company’s conduct in the realm of genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) and genetically-engineered foods.
Efforts aimed at forcing the company to engage in transparent business practices, like providing consumer information about products incorporating GMOs, have exposed a corporate culture willing to use raw power and virtually unlimited amounts of cash to protect their interests.
By Danny Feingold/Frying Pan News
The L.A. Times has not exactly been falling all over itself lately to curry favor with the city’s labor movement, with a seemingly endless stream of news stories, columns and editorials portraying unions in a less than sympathetic light. So the last thing one might have expected to see was a rally of workers and labor leaders coming to the defense of L.A.’s paper of record.
But desperate times call for desperate measures – and with the Koch brothers potentially poised to take over Spring Street, the present moment certainly meets the test.
In case you have tuned out the Times and every other source of local news, Charles and David Koch – patron saints of the Tea Party, best friends to climate change deniers and bankrollers of an endless parade of far-right causes – have set their sights on the Tribune Company’s empire. After emerging from a bankruptcy brought on by the rapacious practices of former owner Sam Zell, Tribune’s far-flung newspaper interests are up for grabs. And while Rupert Murdoch and a local consortium headed by Eli Broad are also in the running, public attention has focused on the Kochs. [Read more…]
By Doug Porter
Some people are more equal than others. And when it comes to fat cats like developer and newspaper publisher Doug Manchester, that ‘more equal’ status would seem to mean above the law.
Today’s revelation about Manchester’s misdeeds comes from the Sunlight Foundation, which has scoured campaign finance records nationwide and identified hard money donors who have donated to federal candidates, political parties and political committees in the last election cycle,
“Papa” Doug Manchester made the list of hard money donors of those who appear to have exceeded the legal limit of $70,800 to parties and committees in the 2012 cycle. His donations of $83,426 to committees and $10,000 to candidates all went to Republicans, of course.
I doubt he’s lost any sleep over breaking this ‘little people’s’ law. That’s why he’s got lawyers. [Read more…]
By Brent E. Beltrán
On occasion I feel the need to write about issues outside of the comfy confines of Barrio Logan and San Diego. This is one of those times.
Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
You won’t have your names when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be “deportees”
– Woody Guthrie, Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)
The first time I heard those lines was in 1998. It was in Spanish on the CD Siempre He Estado Aquí by Teatro Campesino co-founder and Fresno residents Agustín Lira and his partner of many years Patricia Wells Solórzano. At the time I didn’t know that it was originally written by famed folk singer/activist Woody Guthrie. Later on that year I heard it in English by the Latin super group Los Super 7.
Since then I’ve heard Woody sing it and fellow folk traveller and activist icon Pete Seeger as well as other performers such as Bruce Springsteen, Concrete Blonde and recent Grammy award winners Quetzal. Many more have recorded and performed this classic piece of American music. [Read more…]
By Doug Porter
We’ve seen an up tick in stories recently about drug busts in schools in the region. While no parent wants to see their kid on the wrong side of the law, it turns out that at least one of these ‘stings’ wasn’t quite the law enforcement coup touted to the news media.
The San Diego Sheriff’s Department’s ‘Operation A Team’ spent a year posing as students at four county high schools, scoring drugs at Poway, Mission Hills, and Ramona High Schools. The busts were announced with much fanfare recently, and the UT-San Diego even garnered an undercover interview with one of the agents.
Last fall undercover officers enrolled at Temecula high schools rounded up 22 ruffians in a similar investigation.
Yesterday the Press-Enterprise ran a story regarding a special education student recruited by a Temecula school official over the objections of his parents to pose as ‘bait’ in an on-campus sting. And it turns out this isn’t the only case involving a special education student and drug stings in the Temecula Valley Unified School District. [Read more…]
By Brent E. Beltrán
In April many of us here at San Diego Free Press focused our journalistic efforts on my community of Barrio Logan. Twenty three articles were written about this vibrant, working class neighborhood.
They were stories that broke the old stereotype of Barrio Logan being a violent, gang infested place where people are scared to go to. I’m proud that our little website that could helped advance the image that Barrio Logan is a beautiful place to not only live but visit and enjoy. [Read more…]
By Doug Porter
Well here it is folks. This is the day we’ve all been waiting for. Congressman Darrell Issa’s going to blow the lid off the foreign policy scandal that’s been festering for over six months now.
Representative Steve King of Iowa, perhaps best known for his comparison of immigrants and dogs, says:
“I believe that it’s a lot bigger than Watergate, and if you link Watergate and Iran-Contra together and multiply it times maybe 10 or so, you’re going to get in the zone where Benghazi is,” [Read more…]
By Doug Porter
‘What the hell?’ you’re probably thinking, how did he come up with that headline?
I was just reading the UT-San Diego’s editorial page today, something not recommended for the faint of heart or weak of stomach.
Leading the inane parade of profoundly partisan digestational by-products today is another in this week’s ObamaScare is coming missives. We’re being schooled this week on “the broken promises that President Barack Obama used to sell the Affordable Care Act”.
Did you know that the President and his liberal/socialist cabal are going to take away your health insurance right after they grab your guns? It must be true; look what happened in Massachusetts when essentially the same plan was enacted… [Read more…]
By Doug Porter
It’s getting harder to tell the players without a scorecard in San Diego politics these days. Take a couple of days off from the news babble and the whole landscape might be changed.
Friday night six hundred local Republicans gathered round at the safely white Rancho-Bernardo Inn for their Lincoln-Reagan Dinner. Congressman Darrell Issa regaled them with stories of Benghazi while Rueben Barrales and Puerto Rico’s recently defeated Gov. Luis Fortuno pitched the crowd on the ‘natural tendencies’ of the Latino population.
The whomp whomp of Issa’s figurative Molotov cocktails aimed at the Obama administration (and Hillary’s potential candidacy in 2016) faded into the background quickly on Saturday as Nathan Fletcher, the formerly ‘reasonable’ Republican-turned-independent announced his switch to the Democratic Party. [Read more…]
By Bob Dorn
In modern times nothing has been more effective in bringing down the Republicans than the Republicans.
Hubris it might be called. From Richard Nixon’s embarrassing proposal for a White House ceremonial guard dressed in musical comedy uniforms to Ronald Reagan’s naked affection for ranchero machismo to George Dubya’s endorsement of even faker ranchero machismo (he didn’t like horses and went awol from his national guard post); professed Republicans have tended to talk tough. And done poof.
They’re fantasists, of a particular variety.
Locally, there’s no better example of this commitment to the wet dreams of destiny than the website, San Diego Rostra. [Read more…]
By Anna Daniels
My mother loved the horses. She grudgingly attended sulky races at The Meadows race track in western Pennsylvania, but it was flat racing that captivated her heart. She and my father would argue for days about the line up for the Kentucky Derby and lay bets with the local bookie; only the stupid or insane would dare to carry on a conversation anywhere close to the television set during the broadcast of this event.
Mom was also a devoted albeit quirky gardener–confident in her abilities to grow abundant vegetables and flowers and contemptuous of those who over-think the process. “Grow where you are planted” was delivered as an edict, not cajolery. Her gardening philosophy mirrored in many ways her philosophy on child rearing.
My younger sister and I were sitting in Mom’s kitchen a few decades ago discussing gardening. We had both thrown ourselves completely into turning our yards into beds for flowers, bushes and trees. We were comparing notes on the use of root toner when transplanting and whether to use fungicides on dahlia tubers. Seed catalogs passed between us for close review.
Mom stood at the table listening. “You two sure have more money than brains,” she pronounced. This was one of her favorite all-purpose phrases. “Do you know what I do? On Derby Day I go down into the basement and bring up the seeds I saved from last year and I throw them out into the beds. That’s it. What’s wrong with my gardens?” [Read more…]
