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A Hard Look at San Diego: The Impact of the Foreclosure Crisis

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by J. G. Robinson

I have spent the last year and a half of my life researching the impact of foreclosures on members of our community. I have interviewed homeowners, realtors, bankers, loan counselors, political activists, politicians, and community leaders about this issue. In each column I will a particular facet of the crisis, but then, and most importantly, look at the experiences of people who have suffered through the crisis. We are witnessing what the Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman has called a “lesser depression”, and the stories of people hammered by this event deserve to be heard.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Getting Past the UT-SD Paywall; Bridgepoint in the Crosshairs

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June 22, 2012 – It didn’t take long yesterday for news to spreadthat San Diego’s daily dead tree news operation had decided to monetize its internet operations by charging customers for access once they’d passed a monthly limit of fifteen page views. And, by the end of the day, savvy local computer users were spreading the word on methods to bypass the company’s paywall.

Bridgepoint in the crosshairs… San Diego has a long history of really big companies dominating the local landscape that crash and burn, leaving economic devastation inn their wake. During the 1960s, for instance, U.S. National Bank and the Westgate Corporation dominated the local landscape, only to collapse as the financial machinations of its owner C. Arnholt Smith were exposed. Today’s really big player is Bridgepoint Education. Its name and influence are at the top of the local economic scene. And while DailyFinance.com considers Bridgepoint stock to be “perfect”, i.e., the stock that provides everything you could possibly want, there are cracks opening around the edges of the giant that portend poorly for the future.
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Former ATF Agent Blasts GOP Fast & Furious Foolishness

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By Kimberley Beatty / Special to San Diego Free Press

Republicans feign outrage over “Operation Fast and Furious,” ensure more illegal firearms flood the streets.

The National Rifle Association (NRA), one of the most powerful lobbies in the US, has relentlessly tried to destroy the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) since it was created in 1972. They came close under Ronald Reagan in 1981, when the NRA pushed legislation to abolish the agency. Realizing that federal gun law enforcement would transfer to the then much esteemed Secret Service, the NRA scuttled the proposal. Ironically, when Reagan was shot that year, ATF agents were crawling over boxes in warehouses in order to follow the paper trail of purchases and gun ownership of the gun used to shoot Reagan and his Press Secretary Jim Brady. The NRA had successfully blocked computerization of records because that would amount to registration.   [Read more…]

Stop the Secret Power Plant Deal in University City!

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What happens when you combine strong mayor Jerry Sanders with a Canadian firm’s desire to build an 800 MW gas-fired power plant in San Diego? You get a secret plan that is being fast tracked through the City Council with the intent of a November ballot measure to enable passage. You also get “business as usual” at City Hall. Hear more about the proposal and what you can do on Monday, June 25, 6pm at the University Community Planning Group meeting, Forum Hall, UTC Mall (above Wells Fargo Bank).

Matt Potter at the San Diego Reader describes how a power giant from Edmonton, Canada received approval to fund a San Diego campaign finance committee through it’s wholly owned American subsidiary, Capital Power US Holdings. A new plant would require the approval of city voters through a ballot measure. Capital Power US Holdings will provide the grease to support the passage of the measure and the question is whether there is enough grease to get it on the November 2012 ballot and whether the citizens will get wise to what’s going on.   [Read more…]

Announcing the San Diego Free Press “Find the Koch Brothers Confab” Contest

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First Person Who Finds Koch Brothers’ Site Wins T-Shirt !

Earlier this week we let the cat out the bag that the infamous Koch Brothers, the guys that are pumping $395 million for right wing causes into this year’s elections, are having a little get together in San Diego.

These meetings bring together ultra wealthy individuals to convince them to pool their monies on behalf of right wing and conservative causes. Koch Industries, the brothers’ privately owned oil, chemical and household products company, has sponsored the summits twice a year since 2003.

Past meetings have included big names conservative speakers like political stars like Eric Cantor, Chris Christie, Bob McDonnell, Rick Perry, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck along with Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Thomas.

We’d like to make sure that they get a nice warm “San Diego” reception for their little shindig, but there’s only one problem.

Its location is a secret.
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Hope Dies at Guantanamo

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By Marjorie Cohn / Jurist / June 20, 2012

The tragic case of Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif hit a dead end when the US Supreme Court issued an order refusing to hear his case last week. Latif, a Yemeni man, has been imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay since January 2002, after being detained while traveling to seek medical treatment.

Latif had suffered serious head injuries as the result of a car accident in 1994, and the Yemeni government paid for him to receive treatment in Jordan at that time. But his medical problems persisted, and in 1999 Yemen’s Ministry of Public Health recommended that Latif undergo tests, therapy and surgical procedures at his own expense. Unable to afford it, Latif said he left Yemen in 2001 with the help of a charitable worker to seek free medical treatment in Pakistan. When he was picked up in Afghanistan — on his way to Pakistan — and transferred to US custody in December 2001, Latif had his medical records with him.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – UT-SD to Charge Actual Money for On-line Content; Getting Ready for the Foie Gras Ban

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June 21, 2012- Today’s round-up of stories leads off with the announcement by Doug Manchester’s UT-San Diego that they will begin charging for access effective today. Readers will be blocked after a “free sample” of 15 pages each month. Pricing will include an introductory rate of 99 cents per week for the first month and $3.49 a week thereafter. I suspect that one unintended effect of this move will be to reduce the comments to on-line versions of their stories, which are always amusing and usually mindless right wing drivel. The Starting Line will continue to bring you highlights and low lights of Papa Doug’s madness Monday-thru Friday.

Foodies throughout California are all aware that just a few days remain before the State’s ban on Foie Gras takes effect. Troy Johnson’s article in this month’s San Diego Magazine does a great job of telling the story about what’s going on here.   [Read more…]

Sacred Lands -Public asked to join Native American vigil on June 23 at Ocotillo wind site

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The snake was moved but kept coming back, just like our people. We will continue to keep coming back.” – Preston Arrowweed, Quechan elder. He believes unusual animal visitations at site are signs from Indian spirits, asking his people to help

By Miriam Raftery / East County Magazine

Ocotillo – Neither blistering heat nor blowing dust dissuaded Native Americans from at least four different tribes from taking part in a five-day occupation in Ocotillo last week.

They came to be with the spirits of their ancestors. They also aim to show that desert devastation occurring with construction of the Ocotillo Express wind facility is wrong and must be stopped.
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The Starting Line – San Diego Teacher’s Union Dissidents Mount ‘Just Say No’ Campaign on Concessions

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June 20, 2012 – Today’s Big Story is the deal announced yesterday between the San Diego Education Association (SDEA) and the San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD). Negotiations over the past three weeks produced a proposed settlement that would purportedly save (SDUSD) $68 million, return 1372 pink slipped teachers to classrooms in September, defer a series of pay raises promised by the district two years ago, and extend five unpaid furlough days for an additional two years. Two weeks of additional furlough days would be added next year if two new state tax measures fail in November’s general election. The anticipated settlement comes just days before the Board of Education is scheduled to adopt a final budget for the 2012-13 school year. It must be supported by more than 50 percent of union members, plus school board approval. The SDEA will begin a campaign this week to educate teachers about the agreement via phone calls, electronic posts and meetings. One gets the sense from press accounts that this is all but a done deal…

But wait a minute!… The Breakfast Club Action Group, a dissident teachers group spawned by concerns that the SDEA leadership was being less than forthright with the rank and file union members, is crying foul. Saying that the SDEA leadership approved the pact in a session closed to membership, the group posted an essay on its website calling the proposal a “horrible deal” that amounts to a 17.42 % pay cut and disputing the claim that the number of rescinded pink slips is real.   [Read more…]

Incorporating the Mind

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By Lucas O’Connor
By now, most of us agree that the concept of treating corporations as people has, in practice, been a disaster. The flood of corporate money into elections since Citizens United has been just as bad as advertised, deference to the supremacy of corporate health as national health continues to rise, and still the very concept remains just as laughable now as it’s always been. But it isn’t just the straightforward threats to a functioning electoral system or a stable economy that should be worrisome. This march towards corporations-as-people ultimately challenges how we see ourselves and what we value in our lives.

The argument that corporations are people inevitably spills over into what the role of people are in our society. Corporatizing that concept will, over time, reduce individual people more and more into nothing more than instruments of profit. That means that quality of life goes out the window, it means value that doesn’t show up on a balance sheet is dismissed, and over time we give up on building anything into our lives or communities that don’t make money.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line — Demonstrations, Caravans and Twitterstorms, Oh My!

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June 19. 2012—Grass roots activism around the world leads the news wrap up today. In San Diego, cities around the world and in cyberspace citizens are and have been expressing their frustrations and hopes for a better world.

National Robin Hood Day demonstrations…. Rallies in San Diego and 14 other cities across the country at noon today kick off a national campaign to institute a Wall Street tax that would produce billions for the public good. This Financial Transaction Tax, called the “Robin Hood Tax,” is a levy of less than half of a percent on trades in derivatives, stocks, bonds and foreign currencies. According to the campaign, economists estimate that $350 billion could be raised each year for health care, jobs, education, infrastructure and various other needs, which may help rejuvenate the economy. The campaign states that it is pushing for “a tax for the people.”   [Read more…]

Young Wall Street Traitor Joins Occupy Wall Street

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Wall Street “Quant” Alexis Goldstein Joins the Opposition

Wall Street recruits young, just out of college computer science majors and mathematicians to become “quants” whose skills are used among other things to predict when pension funds are going to make huge trades so that Wall Street can jump in ahead of them and do deals effectively raising the price the pension fund must pay or lowering the profit they might make.

One such young twenty something quant was Alexis Goldstein. Goldstein devised trading software for Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch. She has divulged some of Wall Street’s most closely held cultural secrets such as the phrase “rip the client’s face off” which means selling some derivative “solution” to a naive client such as a convent of nuns in Europe at a huge profit to the trader and to Wall Street while convincing the client that it’s the best deal they ever made. Sometimes they refer to these clients as “muppets.”
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