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CPI Asks: Why Should We Fund Poverty Wages?

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The Center on Policy Initiatives (CPI) has long been a fighter on the San Diego scene for economic justice causes. Whether it’s advocacy on the part of financially distressed homeowners facing foreclosure or fighting for an understandable, open and fair budget for the City of San Diego, CPI has been in the thick of it.

Now they’ve jumped into fray over Mayor Filner’s refusal to sign off on a deal negotiated by the previous administration that would hand $1 billion over the next four decades to a group essentially run by San Diego’s large hoteliers.

CPI has asked supporters to focus on the Mayor’s demand that the big hoteliers pay a living wage to their employees as part of any deal with the City.

Come inside to see all the people who wrote us on this issue!   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Who is a Reporter? Press Association Forum Triggers a Conversation That Needs to Happen

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The topic for the evening was ‘Grade the Media’.  Local newsmakers were invited by the San Diego chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists to offer critiques of media coverage at a forum held at Point Loma Nazarene University last Tuesday evening.

Sitting on panel were Darren Pudgil, former Mayor Sanders’ director of communication from 2008 to 2012, Jan Caldwell, public information officer for the SD County Sheriff’s Department, and Michael Shames, the controversial former leader of the Utility Consumers’ Action Network (UCAN).

I wasn’t there. I ‘watched’ the evening unfold via my Twitter account. I’ve read a couple of accounts written by people who were there. And watched a couple of clips posted on YouTube. So much of what I’m writing about here has been gleaned through other people’s eyes (or fingers, as the case may be).   [Read more…]

Frank Gormlie to Speak on History of Community Planning in Ocean Beach – Tonight, Feb. 21

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A Historical Perspective of OB’s Planning “Crisis” in the 1970s and the Village’s Response

Frank Gormlie, Editor of the OB Rag, will give a program on the history of the early days of Ocean Beach’s Planning Board and the importance of O.B. residents taking part in their community groups. Frank was a member of the O.B. Planning Board, and for one year was the chair, which was also one of the first San Diego Community Planning Boards.

Frank will talk about the importance of a good community plan that reflects what the residents want, and how they want to shape their future. Frank will stress the participation of residents in running for the board, going to meetings and voting in the election.
  [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Mayor Crashes Press Conference to Defend City Against Dubious Hotel Deal

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City Attorney Jan Goldsmith’s attempted to undercut Mayor Bob Filner’s questioning of the pending hotel tax-but-not-a-tax deal by staging a hastily called press conference yesterday afternoon. Things didn’t work out quite like Goldsmith hoped.

As Goldsmith stood before the assembled media questioning the legality of the Mayor’s proposals, Filner joined the audience, initially sitting in the back row.

After Goldsmith failed to answer a 10News reporter’s questions about whether the City Attorney had offered his legal advice to the Mayor, Filner hijacked the conference by answering “No”. The local media has played up the drama of the situation while largely ignoring (except for the Voice of San Diego) the real issues at stake.

Goldsmith’s intent was. I believe, part of a coordinated effort to bring pressure on Filner   [Read more…]

Author Q & A: ‘The Golden Shore: California’s Love Affair with the Sea’

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Conservationist David Helvarg talks about his book, “The Golden Shore,” a tribute to California’s beautiful and iconic coastline, and the Navy’s and San Diego’s roles in shaping it.

By Serge Dedina / Wildcoast

No one has done more to educate the public on ways to preserve our coast and ocean than David Helvarg. Author of six books and the founder and Executive Director of the Blue Frontier Campaign, Helvarg will be speaking about his newest book, The Golden Shore: California’s Love Affair with the Sea at the Birch Aquarium on Tuesday Feb. 26 from 6:30-8 p.m. Helvarg is also a former San Diegan who wrote for the OB Rag.

Serge Dedina: What is your first memory of the coast in California?

David Helvarg: Flying into San Diego at night to help out some friends in trouble in the Ocean Beach neighborhood and then staying up ’til dawn watching the Pacific lapping on the shore, small breaking wavelets sparkling with silvery luminescence. Two days later there was a concert on Sunset Cliffs. Watching the young OB residents dancing on the beach and wading into the bracing 68-degree water where silky-haired California girls in bikinis were tossing Frisbees, I knew I’d come home to a place I’d never been before.   [Read more…]

Frank Thomas: ‘Do We Have Time to Save Mother Earth?’

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Editor: One of the San Diego Free Press’ most active writers on climate change is Frank Thomas, who often collaborates with John Lawrence. Readers appreciate Thomas so much that a group of them invited him to speak at their “pro-science” club meetings. Problem is, Thomas lives in the Netherlands. Here is his gracious decline along with more expositions on his part, ‘do we have time to save Mother Earth’.

By Frank Thomas

Thank you for trying to reach me through the San Diego Free Press and John Lawrence.

I would much enjoy meeting with members of your pro-science club. But, unfortunately I live in the Netherlands where I’m actively engaged as a free-lance trainer/lecturer and writer. For some time now, I’ve have been researching and writing about macro-micro comparative U.S. and European economic, social, environmental issues. High on my and John Lawrence’s list has been the U.S. and world dependence on environmentally finite and polluting fossil fuel greenhouse gas emissions.

One respected researcher on climate change and Arctic greenhouse gas conditions is University of Utah Professor of Physics, Timothy J. Garrett. If you contact him, he may know colleagues in California who are well-informed on this carbon dioxide-methane intensive region. Prof. Garrett sees climate change as a fight between human beings and physics … where the physics of climate change becomes irreversibly deadly unless something is done IMMEDIATELY to drastically reduce GHG emissions worldwide.   [Read more…]

You Got to be Yourself, Jack (Looking at the Likes of 5 Hour Energy by Keeping it Real)

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I had a childhood buddy whose answer to all that we faced as growing boys, like how to hit on the girls and how to get Murray’s Pomade to turn our naps into waves or curls, was “You got to be yourself, Jack” which is old school for “Keeping it real.”

And I thought of my philosophical friend the other day as I watched a man on TV who said that he: played a round of golf; read a book while teaching himself to play guitar; ran 10 miles while knitting himself a sweater; jumped out of a plane; became a ping pong master while recording his, debut album, which he sings in an auto-tuned voice and then he says, “How you ask? 5 Hour Energy!”

The bit’s funny but, whoa, what is this fantasy really all about? The dude did everything but drop dead, which would have been real, and from a couple of articles I’ve read the product is alleged to have caused death. But the stuff sold to the tune of 1.3 billion dollars last year. Seems there are a ton of people not “being themselves.”   [Read more…]

Peters Focuses Consequences of Sequester on San Diego

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Sequestration deal agreed to in 2011 could have devastating effects on the San Diego economy.

Representative Scott Peters is back home in San Diego. A rather irritated Scott Peters. “I love being here in San Diego, and by the way it’s 20 some degrees in Washington, D.C. This is a nice place to be. But I really ought to be at work as we get two weeks away from the sequester,” he said, expressing his frustration that the Republican leadership in the House had declared a recess for this week.

As of March 1st, the sequestration deal that was struck at the end of 2011 between President Obama and the Republicans will kick in—a deal that was never intended to be actually implemented.

Back in December, 2011, the federal government was coming up against the debt ceiling. It’s usually a routine matter to raise it in order to allow the government to borrow money in order to meet its financial obligations. It’s important to note that we’re not talking about borrowing for new spending, but to repay debts already incurred.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Big Hotels to Mayor Filner: ‘We Want Our Money, We Stole it Fair and Square.’

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So the Big Local News story today over at the UT-San Diego is that city’s hoteliers have decided to sue Mayor Bob Filner.

It seems as though our Mayor has decided not play nice with the hotels, refusing to sign off on a deal that would hand them more than $1 billion in tax revenues to do with as they see fit over the next four decades.

These ‘hospitality’ businesses decided to collect these taxes and allocate the money without involving local citizens. The logic behind this maneuver is that hotel taxes are paid by tourists, not locals, so voter approval is not required.

All this was done by our former mayor and a council scared to death of being labeled as ‘anti-business’. Our elected representatives don’t even get a say as to who sits on the board that doles out this money.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Keystone XL Pipeline the Focus of Nationwide Protests: Mayor Filner Addresses San Diego Gathering

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San Diegans joined with protesters in twenty other cities in North American yesterday to express opposition to the Keystone XL Pipeline project, calling upon President Obama to block it and for leaders at all levels to take action in the fight against global warming.

Five hundred people rallied locally in Mission Bay Park, hearing speeches from Dr. Jeffrey Severinghaus, director for the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Climate-Ocean-Atmosphere Program and Mayor Bob Filner.

The Mission Bay rally was part of a nationwide protest, sponsored locally by sandiego350.org, Citizens Climate Lobby, the Sierra Club, the Environmental Health Coalition and Greenpeace.

In Washington DC, an estimated 40,000 people braved below-freezing temperatures to rally at the foot of the Washington monument to protest against the Keystone pipeline.

INSIDE: The Pope’s Retirement, Manchester’s New Hotel, Gormlie’s Old History, and Why We Call Them Teahadists   [Read more…]

Is Big Oil Too Big to Tax in California?

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Soon our national political discourse will be dominated by the nightmarish sequester debate with the Republicans’ doomsday austerity strategy being countered by the Democrats’ austerity-lite program that draws from the eternal verity of Simpson-Bowles. God help us.

Standing in stark contrast to the reigning austerity-lite crowd inside the Democratic Party is perhaps the brightest progressive hope in the country, Senator Elizabeth Warren. Rather than playing the populist note to bash Republicans and then retreating to safe, chamber of commerce approved positions that put Social Security and Medicare “on the table” like many of her colleagues in the Democratic Party, Warren is consistently taking it to the 1% whenever she can, and she really means it.   [Read more…]

Bonny Russell, a Woman for our Times (December 23, 1943 – January 14, 2013)

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For Bonny Russell’s Celebration of Life on 2-17-13 at the Unitarian Universalist Church

Jan says about Bonny,
her wife, her love:

“She brought with her an open and loving heart,
the ability to listen deeply,
and a passion
for addressing injustice and inequality.”
…
Come Inside for the rest of Ernie’s beautiful poem…   [Read more…]

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