San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

Is Affordable Housing in the City of San Diego an Oxymoron? Part 2

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Homeless Population Undercounted

The 8700 people identified by the Point-In-Time-Count are not anywhere close to the total number of homeless people in San Diego City and County. They didn’t count all the people sleeping in their cars nor the many that are staying with friends or couch surfing. Nor did they count the many that sleep “off the beaten track” in the many hidden gullies and the river bed. Nor did it count all those who slept in places unlikely to be found by the volunteers who did the counting who, after all, could not be expected to expose themselves to dangerous situations and environments.

Jeeni Crescenzo has come up with a more accurate count by studying the data for homeless children that each school district is required to maintain by the McKinney-Vento Act. There are some 22,000 children by this count and each has at least one parent with them. That’s at least 22,000 families and 44,000 people!   [Read more…]

Millennials Poll Shows Sanders’ Revolution Reshaping US Electorate

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“He’s not moving a party to the left. He’s moving a generation to the left,” says pollster

By Deirdre Fulton / Common Dreams

Bernie Sanders is changing the face of American politics, a new poll from Harvard’s Institute of Politics suggests.

According to the survey released Monday, Sanders remains the most popular presidential candidate for so-called millennials between the ages of 18-29, 54 percent of whom view him favorably, compared to 31 percent who harbor unfavorable views.

Just 37 percent of respondents say they see Sanders rival Hillary Clinton favorably, compared to 53 percent who do not.   [Read more…]

Will it be UT-Today, Tommorrow? Gannett Makes Offer for Tribune Papers

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If you don’t like what you’ve been seeing in the San Diego Union-Tribune lately, wait a couple of months. Seriously. The newspaper of record in America’s Finest City may soon have new owners.

Newspaper publisher Gannett has gone public with an offer to buy Tribune Publishing after getting a less-than-enthusiastic response to a private offer made on April 12th.

The proposed deal would fold the Tribune’s nine daily newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune into a media monolith publishing USA Today and newspapers in 107 other cities.   [Read more…]

What’s the Matter With Corporate Education Reform?

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Last week I reviewed Thomas Frank’s Listen Liberal: What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? in which he lambastes professional-class Democrats for thinking that there is “no social or political problem that cannot be solved with more education and job training.” This makes perfect sense because, as a class, professionals are “defined by educational attainment, and every time they tell the country that what it needs is more schooling, they are saying: Inequality is not a failure of the system; it is a failure of you.”

But, Frank contends, the only problem with education, for the professional crew, is that it is “not meritocratic enough.” Thus, all that needs to be done is bust the teachers’ unions (whose sin is their outdated belief in solidarity), open charter schools, test our kids to death, and give tax breaks to “innovators.”

Nothing is more illustrative of this aspect of Frank’s critique than the way so many Democrats lined up to support the Vergara decision in 2014 even against the interests of a key Democratic constituency and key Democratic electeds.   [Read more…]

Carlsbad Council Outsources City’s Future Again

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This Time It’s a Florida Consulting Firm

Over the last two years Carlsbad residents have watched city leaders squander more than $1 million to outsource the future of their Village by the Sea.

They fell in love with L.A. billionaire developer Rick Caruso’s promises to transform the site of the Agua Hedionda Lagoon into a shopping mall magnet for $2.6 million in annual tax revenue, preserve strawberry fields already saved by Prop D, and build scenic trails, all at no cost to the city. After a citizens-led referendum overturned the City Council’s unanimous support of the project, the Council ponied up $650,000 for a special election that allowed voters to send Caruso packing.

In March 2014, while Caruso courted council members, the city signed a $380,000 contract with Dover, Kohl and Partners, a Florida consulting firm, to create the Carlsbad Village and Barrio Master Plan to update the Carlsbad Village Master Plan and Design Manual, the one that was written by city planners and approved in June 2013. The 2016 plan is currently under review by the city’s Planning Commission.   [Read more…]

Celebrating 78

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I hadn’t waited with bated breath, in any way, but I was very glad when Monday, April 18th, came my way so I could say “I’m 78.”

For me, turning 78 is special because my grandfather lived to be 78 and living as long as he lived has been a lifelong dream of mine – and I know he wouldn’t mind. I can hear him wisecracking: “Yeah, boy, you might match me in age, but I’m still better looking than you.” Who was better looking was an inside joke between me and him (as neither one of us had much Denzel in us).
78 also means a lot to me for another reason: my twin girls, Tawny, and Nyla, were born in ’78 and I took three years off to hang out with them and their mom (who would have been 69 the 20th of this month). I was the first man in San Diego City Schools to do such a thing. It seemed to me to be, what it turned out to be, the most precious years of my life.   [Read more…]

Rancho Santa Fe School District Threatens to Expel Children of Teachers as Negotiations Drag On

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By A Concerned Teacher

What began a decade ago as an effective collaboration between a school board and its teachers has become a divisive tool enabling the Rancho Santa Fe superintendent to use the threat of expelling the children of teachers in their district if they will not agree to settle their contract.

By using a sunset clause in current contract language, Rancho Santa Fe administration simply stalls negotiations to run out the clock and stipulates that if there is no settlement, Board policy 4111 will be void and teachers will be forced to remove their children from the Rancho Santa Fe School District.   [Read more…]

Looking Back at the Week: April 17-23

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This week’s edition of Looking Back at the Week features articles, commentaries, columns, toons, and other work by San Diego Free Press regulars, irregulars, columnists, at-large contributors, and sourced writers on: The Freeps calling out Trump, Earth Day, Goldsmith’s true colors, our Vapor Mayor’s unicorn dreams, the history of cannabis prohibiton, the CA Senate race, Denim Day, GOP’s clown show coverage, making love, the oxymoron of affordable housing, chatting with Janis Ian, and lots of other inspiring (and sometimes depressing), grassroots news & progressive views from San Diego’s friendly, neighborhood, all volunteer, slightly funky, community news site.   [Read more…]

‘Always Fly Away’ : Teaching Children to Be Smart, Strong and Safe

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Milena (Sellers) Phillips’ book “Always Fly Away” is not the work of someone who has made a career of writing books for children. This brightly illustrated book written for elementary school children is a reflection of how the author herself has come to understand the world as much as it is a children’s story.

“Always Fly Away” acknowledges the necessary transition that takes place when young children want to start exploring the world with an ever growing degree of independence. It also helps to develop the critical judgement that young children need to recognize when a situation doesn’t feel right and what to do when this happens.

Phillips spins a story that retains the joy and mystery of a child’s explorations while providing ways to assure that the exploration is as safe as possible. It is a remarkable story because she personally experienced the devastating death of her nine year old son Jonathan Sellers.   [Read more…]

Geo-Poetic Spaces: Making Love

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Outside a village
at the end of life’s busy road
an elderly couple
is making loukoumades

Squeezing barehands of dough
into moist spoons
  [Read more…]

Now They’re Coming After the Librarians

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By looty / Daily Kos

The British burned down the first Library of Congress in 1814. Two hundred years later and some Republicans seem to want to do it again.

Rep. Diane Black (R-TN) is, as I suspect most people know, a Teahadist moron. But it takes a special kind of moron to piss off librarians. That’s exactly what she did this morning, with the announcement that she would introduce a bill in Congress, mandating that,

“The Librarian of Congress shall continue to use the terms ‘Alien’ and ‘Illegal aliens’ in the Library of Congress Subject Headings in the same manner as they were in effect during 2015.”

  [Read more…]

Denim Day: Calling Attention to Rape Kits and Domestic Violence in San Diego

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Talk about timing: Ninety-eight criminal cases, most of them involving domestic violence were mishandled by the city attorney’s office, according to an investigation by the Union-Tribune…At a recent press conference, Suzanne E. Morse of Heartfelt Voices United called attention to the backlog of several thousand unprocessed rape test kits in San Diego.

Hey folks, maybe America’s Finest City has a problem in dealing with violence aginst women, the ultimate assertion of misogyny.

Independent mayoral candidate Lori Saldaña and other community leaders are urging San Diego’s elected officials to join in the observance of Denim Day on Wednesday, April 27th as part of Sexual Assault Awareness Month in April. Maybe we should all wear denim that day.   [Read more…]

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