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Ramona School Board Finds Easy Target: Public Unions

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By Dave Patterson / Special to the San Diego Free Press

Nothing bold, nothing new.

The seminal message delivered at the Ramona School board meeting on June 7th, 2012, was that the problem is the unions. While concessions from the unions will certainly be part of it, the real solution is much more complex. Too bad that the Administration and all but one of the school board members were willing to turn away from the reality, and instead cast a stone at a politically reliable target, public unions.

Dawn Perfect, the lone dissenter in approval of the 2012~2013 budget, remarked courageously that the administration had failed to produce a plan toward future solvency, paraphrasing here. The County schools executive told the board that the deficit projections are “huge” for years 13~14, and “beyond belief” for 14~15. They warned that if the school board fails to reign in the budget the state will take over and everyone will lose, particularly our children.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line-UT San Diego Gets the Evil NY Times Eye

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June 11, 2012—New York Times media reporter/columnist David Carr has penned a largely critical review of “Papa Doug” Manchester’s media machinations since his purchase last year of the Union-Trib. The article starts out talking about the “growing worry” that the sickly state of dead tree journalism could create circumstances that would allow moneyed interests to take over newspapers and use their perceived integrity to “prosecute a political and commercial agenda.”

Carr goes on to assert that San Diego is Exhibit A for that fear since last year when Manchester purchased the paper, saying that nowadays the UT-SD “often seems like a brochure for his various interests.” He goes on to cite several examples where the Daily Fishwrap has transcended reportage and ridden roughshod over miscreants perceived to have gotten in the way of Papa Doug’s agenda. Chief executive John Lynch is quoted as saying “we make no apologies” for the paper’s activities and asserting that there is a “clear line of demarcation between our editorials and our news”.   [Read more…]

Primary Election Results Update

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The latest counts from the tightest races in San Diego County

The San Diego County Registrar of Voters released an updated count on Friday from all of the county election races. With 88,000 absentee and provisional ballots still to be counted, here are the latest results from some of the closest races   [Read more…]

“Occupy Our Arts” – Saturday, June 9th – San Diego Civic Center Plaza

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From OBRag / June 9, 2012

FAMILY FRIENDLY AND FUN: Occupy Women Lend a Creative Twist to the Movement
‘Occupy OUR Arts’ is a Celebration of the 99% Culture and Creative Arts.

SAN DIEGO: Women Occupy San Diego (WOSD), with the support and endorsement of many community groups and artists will be hosting an all-day, family-friendly arts festival at Civic Center Plaza on Saturday June 9th, 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM.   [Read more…]

The Myth of Exorbitance in the San Diego Police Department

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In San Diego and elsewhere across the country, public employees are the bane of conservatives’ existence, including, as we found out, police and fire services.

The SDPD is having a major retention problem. And when their own union tried to do something to alleviate the problem, they were rebuffed because it didn’t fit the political narrative of the day: That unions are bad; unions are always bad; unions are greedy and are only out for themselves and their members, never mind what’s good for the city at large. Unions make city services too expensive. The Carl DeMaio crowd’s rhetoric is that unions need to be decimated in order for the city to even be able to function.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line—San Diego Teachers to Talk Contract Concessions

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Tuesdays’ election results continue to reverberate around the country. Here in San Diego city attorney Jan Goldsmith is asking the courts to help the City sidestep long term litigation over the legality of Proposition B by combining five lawsuits already filed over the initiative in advance of a court decision on the legality of the measure. At issue is the question of whether the city violated a state law that requires negotiations with labor unions in advance of requesting any initiative that would impact employee pay and benefits. The city has maintained that Proposition B was initiated by private citizens and is exempt from the provisions of the law.

Early morning reports on Twitter indicate that the San Diego Educational Association (teacher’s union) membership has voted to talk about contract concessions aimed at negating already announced layoffs for some 1534 teachers. The issue of concessions has divided the union, with more militant members being purged from the SDEA leadership in recent weeks. And yesterday 1000 students at Point Loma High School walked out to protest teacher layoffs.   [Read more…]

Field of View: Golden Hall Bustles On Election Night

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Photo Gallery: Crowds gathered at the Civic Center’s Golden Hall on Election Night, from Boy Scouts to veteran reporters to parents showing their kids the ropes—and, of course, diligent politicians offering last-minute interviews. Cheers and chanting could be heard, but mostly the hum of active conversations filled the space.   [Read more…]

Denial of Service Attack Responsible for Registrar of Voters Website Crash

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According to a Channel 6 report, a firewall issue caused the San Diego County Registrar of Voters website to crash shortly after the first batch of election results were posted Tuesday night, June 5th.  The County is conducting an investigation into the source of the attack. IT services provider Hewlett Packard determined that there were […]

Peed Takes the Lead

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SDROV updates election results to include some absentee ballots. Plus: Saldaña vs. Peters update.

Updated results (and reported first by “The Rachel Maddow Show” on MSNBC, no less) on the Garland Peed vs. birther king Gary Kreep: The San Diego County Registrar of Voters has released new figures showing that Garland Peed, the longtime San Diego prosecutor, has taken a slim lead in his quest to become a Superior Court judge:   [Read more…]

California Primary: San Diego Conservatives Are Celebrating Way Too Early

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Since Primary election eve, when the results were coming in, San Diego conservatives have been celebrating their perceived “victories”. Me thinks they are celebrating way too early, as the results are not as favorable to the GOP and their extremist friends as they think it was. Check this out.

First, the California Primary was one of the lowest voter turn-outs in history – 36% – if not the lowest. Low turn-outs tend to favor conservatives, whereas large turn-0uts favor Democrats and liberals. And Democrats did stay away from the polls, as there was no big-ticket item on the ballot. Sure, Barack Obama was on it but he was a shoe-in. And Senator Dianne Feinstein was on it as well, but she didn’t have any serious challengers. Yes, there were two state-wide measures – and one of them – Prop 28 – which does aid democracy just a tad -passed handily – but how can anyone get excited about a tax on tobacco.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line—Are We Ready for an Alien Invasion?

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June 7, 2012—In keeping with my perceived reality that most of us are in overload mode with regard to election coverage, The Starting Line will talk about defense, science and technology issues today. We’ll get back into the muck tomorrow, I promise.

Does the Pentagon have the right weapons to fight off an alien invasion? No, but they’re working on it, says Foreign Policy magazine, in a short but sweet review of some of DARPA’s (Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency ) more sci-fi kind of projects. These projects include lots of ideas that are not ready for prime time, but show promise for future use by the military.

Perhaps the closest to realization are weapons-grade lasers. The stumbling block with this project thus far is that they can work but are too big to be of use in an actual fight. If the aliens have super fast flying saucers, DARPA’s Falcon HTV-2 might be able to keep up with them. It is an unmanned, rocket-launched, maneuverable aircraft that glides through the Earth’s atmosphere at incredibly fast speeds, as fast as Mach 20 (approximately 13,000 miles per hour). It’s actual been tested, but not successfully.   [Read more…]

Sign Petition: Support a Resolution to Reverse Citizens United

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We are asking for San Diegans – and ONLY SAN DIEGANS – to help out by signing our new Change.org petition.

The petition asks that the San Diego City Council support a resolution to amend the constitution and reverse Citizens United. After all, corporations are not people and money is not free speech!   [Read more…]

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