The San Diego County Water Authority gave the nod yesterday to a thirty year water purchase deal that will clear the way for a privately constructed desalination plant to operate in the north county.
Frankly, I don’t see this as a controversial decision. I’ve read the arguments pro and con. I think the desal plant is a good idea. Let me explain why. [Read more…]
By Brent E. Beltrán
On October 1, 2012 the latest addition to the renaissance of my much maligned community, Barrio Logan, finally opened up. The 92 unit Estrella del Mercado apartments is a beautiful, affordable housing community built by Chelsea Investment and Shea Properties.
This project has been in the works for over two decades and with the mid-December opening of the Northgate Gonzalez Market will reach the end. The site was initially going to be built by private developer Sam Marasco and the nonprofit MAAC Project (which built the nearby Mercado Apartments in the 1990’s). But, due to whatever legal, economic and political schemes and squabbles Marasco and city hall were up to, the project fell apart. Devastating a community that always ended up with the short end of the stick. Eventually the city of San Diego sued Marasco to get the land back. The city won in court and in 2010 gifted the land to the new developers who moved with lightning quick speed to get the project done. [Read more…]
It may be the season for shopping for consumers. It may be a time to recharge for political campaigners. But for the anti-nuclear activists in the region it’s time to intensify their efforts. Inside are a half dozen programs, protests and events compiled by the Peace Resource Center for the coming days. Remember to make your holiday season about more than a trip to the mall.
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Reddit’s AMA (Ask Me Anything) feature, where people of influence open themselves up to questions posed by Redditors, can get pretty wild. Conversational threads, where remarks build upon other comments and spark new lines of inquiry, can spin off into areas far removed from their starting place.
Yesterday Congressman Darrel Issa climbed to the virtual dais on Reddit to explain (as much as you can in the AMA format) and get feedback on his proposed legislation that would bar ‘new regulations or burdens on the internet for two years’. This broad shouldered bit of legalese really is all about keeping Federal regulators from doing anything (good or bad) for the duration of the 113th Congress.
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As (largely untrue) reports fly through the blogosphere and interwebs about reports of movement between the Congressional political blocs on various aspects of the impending ‘fiscal cliff’ crisis, the man at the center of it all, Grover Norquist is certainly having his moments in the spotlight.
Steve Inskeep of NPR gave Norquist air time this morning to prattle on about how it really isn’t true that Republicans are lining up to jump ship and break their pledges not to raise taxes. He likened talk of accepting tax increases in exchange for spending cuts by Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina to believing in a pink unicorn. [Read more…]
by Robert Cruikshank/California High Speed Rail Blog
The passage of Prop 30 has stopped the bleeding at California’s K-12 schools, at least for the time being. The $6 billion in revenues it raises won’t fully backfill the nearly $10 billion in cuts made to K-12 education since 2008, nor will it restore the huge funding cuts made to the community college, CSU and UC systems in that same time. But it’s a start.
Transportation funding faces a crisis too. It has been slashed over that same amount of time, and even before that, revenues weren’t keeping pace with basic road maintenance needs nor were they sufficient to fund the level of mass transit that the state desperately needs. [Read more…]
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On Friday, November 23, 2012, the day after Thanksgiving, the biggest shopping day of the year, community members and workers protested outside of several Wal-Mart locations throughout the country.
In San Diego the community focused on ten locations including one located in the College Grove shopping center. As shoppers came into the store community members greeted them with stickers for shoppers to wear inside the store that read “We Support Wal-Mart Workers”. Many of the community were very supportive and one shopper said “she would wear the sticker proudly and ask management why they retaliated against it’s own employees”. [Read more…]
Chances are you’ve never heard of the “drone caucus” in the US House of Representatives, officially known as the House Unmanned Systems Caucus. Yet they are considered among the most powerful groups on the Hill. And participating in the caucus is a sure way for Congressmen to enrich their campaign coffers. [Read more…]
Here we go again: the day after Black Friday was filled with the now all-too-familiar news of shopping mayhem.
There was the man who threatened to stab his fellow shoppers for pushing his kids outside a Sacramento K-mart, the melee of frenzied Georgia shoppers mauling each other to get at a stack of cell phones in a Walmart, the trampling that followed after a man brandished a gun in a line outside a Sears in Texas, the gang fight in a Michigan mall, arrests of hysterical consumers in Florida, the vicious brawling over lingerie, etc. etc.
This ritual has come to define us as much or more than Thanksgiving. [Read more…]
I’m still riding high as a result of the elections. It was so great seeing so many propositions that I like pass, so satisfying having the president remain where he is, so refreshing having a mayor who is a friend. I mean, hey, I’ve been voting since 1959 and this has been a real new experience for people of my voting kind.
By Kristen Gwynnn / Alternet / Nov. 18, 2012
Unroll the tapestries, twist up a joint and crank up the Bob Marley jams! The stoners have token — excuse me, spoken — and dope is now legal in two states.
That’s the kind of ridiculous banter pundits have employed to discuss a historic moment in US democracy: the legalization of marijuana in Washington and Colorado. [Read more…]
By Lauren Kelley / Alternet / Nov. 23, 2012
“Come January,” reports the New York Times, “more than two-thirds of the states will be under single-party control, raising the prospect that bold partisan agendas.” That’s one way of putting it. In Michigan, where Republicans hold a super-majority in the state legislature, we can see how that may play out in the redder states, as lawmakers toy with the idea of a $160 tax credit for fetuses starting at 12 weeks of gestation.
As The Guardian reports that the bill is designed “to recognize that mothers have additional bills to pay.” I think we can all agree with that, but the rationale is hard to swallow in a state that last year cut tax credits for children — actual breathing, eating kids. [Read more…]
