Violence: Is it caused by nature or nurture? I have often wondered why people hit each other in physical, hand-to-hand fights. And when people are homeless, living bereft of everything, why doesn’t the fighting stop?
To find out about the nature of violence among homeless people, I asked a 48 year old disabled man who lives on the streets why he fights. I thank him for the candor: [Read more…]
June 4, 2012—For the second time in this election cycle “Papa Doug” Manchester’s Union-Tribune has splashed it’s editorial endorsement of a mayoral candidate on the front page. Monday morning readers of the local daily newspaper were treated to “Editorial: The Case for Carl DeMaio” even before they could turn the page today. Blogger George J. Janczyn (@GrokSurf) pretty much summed it up when he tweeted: “Once again the U-T headlines DeMaio for mayor–and this time on the REAL front page, not on a wrap-around. U-T’s the Fox News of newspapers.”
U-T San Diego launches on-line TV station to terrible reviews… Hoping to extend his reach beyond print with “original local news, talk and lifestyle programming on cable and the Web”, publisher Doug Manchester launched UT San Diego TV this week to terrible reader reviews. [Read more…]
In Under the Perfect Sun, Mike Davis, Kelly Mayhew and I observe that San Diego is a city that “many conservatives extol as a utopia of patriotism and free enterprise.” Indeed it was Nixon’s “lucky city” but, as we note, “San Diego has too frequently been a town wide open to greed but closed to social justice.
Like its Sunbelt siblings—Orange County, Phoenix, and Dallas—it has a long history of weak and venal city halls dominated by powerful groups of capitalist insiders. ‘Private Government’ has long overshadowed public politics.” More recently in Paradise Plundered: Fiscal Crisis and Governance Failure in San Diego, Steve Erie, Vladimir Kogan, and Scott MacKenzie similarly illustrate how San Diego’s political and business elite have done a fantastic job of “using public resources to maximize private profit” with little to no oversight from our “shadow governments.” [Read more…]
By Frank Gormlie / OB Rag / Originally published May 18, 2012
Here is a summary of the candidates and propositions that San Diego’s different left-of-center and left-wing groups and media projects are endorsing for the June 5th California Primary. (Note: not all races are covered, especially those of smaller municipalities and non-controversial propositions).
First – of course, there is a left in San Diego politics – so, those who cannot accept it, get over it. (For a refresher course on left vs right, see here and here.) The groups reviewed for their endorsements are all left or left-of-center. And by report [Read more…]
President Bill Clinton was in Wisconsin on Friday, June 1, stumping for Milwaukee Democratic Mayor Tom Barrett. Barrett is running against Governor Scott Walker in the upcoming recall election on June 5th and the race is a tight one.
Walker, who rode into office with a six point victory over Barrett in the 2010 mid-term elections, immediately focused upon dismantling the public employee collective bargaining laws in the state, reducing the number of individuals eligible for BadgerCare, the state’s health insurance safety net, lowering taxes on the wealthiest, and slashing the budget for education. [Read more…]
The last few days have seen local Republicans crowing over various social media outlets about the “voter enthusiasm gap”. What this is all about is that the Registrar of Voters for San Diego has been steadily releasing information on the number of mail in ballots they have received, broken down by party affiliation. (You can tell this because of differences in the return envelope, indicating party affiliation if any.) Who people are actually voting for won’t be known until June 5th.
What the GOPer’s are talking about is the spread in favor of Republicans in terms of those ballots that have already been received. The Daily Fishwrap ran an article Tuesday that said Republicans had a six thousand vote lead over Democrats in mail-in votes. Another way of looking at would be that, Republicans, who are more likely to vote by mail, have returned two percent more ballots when compared to the total number of Democrat/Republican ballots mailed. [Read more…]
“They have too much food to eat.”
Really? Do some housed people really believe that homeless people have too much food to eat? Actually, yes. And they provide what they consider the evidence:
“Of course they have too much food to eat. See how fat they are!”
This myth leaves me stunned because I believe its falsehood is obvious. I’ve had the privilege to work with people in need for over twenty years. Sadly, in all of that time, I have never known a homeless person who was able to eat three healthy meals a day. Really. As we all know, obesity is an American epidemic. Whether we are housed or homeless, many authorities agree that our diet of high-calorie, unhealthy foods contributes to our obesity. [Read more…]
San Diego Democrats shouldn’t be prevented from playing by the same rules as Republicans.
Last week a memo was sent out by MoveOn.org on behalf of Lori Saldaña’s campaign excoriating Scott Peters for loaning his campaign $1.2 million out of his own personal funds. In the memo, MoveOn claims that “Peters realized that his only chance was to try to buy the race.” [Read more…]
I read the Daily Fishwrap(s) so you don’t have to… Filner’s Kenyan connection?… Absent a potential birth certificate scandal, reporter/columnist Matt Hall has decided to make the Mayoral candidates cough up their college transcripts in hopes that something, anything will make for a story. And at least one of the SDUT’s reliably right wing commenters is having […]
The May Greys were out in full force Tuesday morning as a fledgling new group calling itself “Fight4America” trotted out a media event down at “Tuna Park” in downtown San Diego. With the USS Midway looming in the background, organizers unveiled three 30 second television spots that will air in key markets when and if enough money is raised. [Read more…]
After careful consideration of the facts, the choice for this writer has become clear.
There has been an awful lot of handwringing and consternation regarding who should have the Democrats’ support in the 52nd District Congressional race. There are three major candidates for the newly redrawn, Central San Diego district: Democrats Scott Peters and Lori Saldaña, and incumbent Republican Brian Bilbray, formerly of the 50th Congressional District based in Coastal North San Diego County. [Read more…]
The two-thirds requirement to pass legislation is grinding the state’s government–and the economy–to a halt.
Last month Los Angeles Times columnist George Skelton dished out some harsh criticism for California Governor Jerry Brown for his challenge to the state Legislature to “man up” and pass his proposed spending cuts. In addition to his push for a ballot initiative in November to temporarily raise state sales taxes and income taxes on those Californians earning more than $250,000 per year, the governor said it will also be necessary to slash spending due to the larger than expected projected budget shortfall for the coming fiscal year. At the time, the expected shortfall was just north of $9 billion. [Read more…]
