San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

As City Attorney Pulls the Strings, New SDPD Chief Gets Warm Welcome

by

By Doug Porter

Mayor elect Kevin Faulconer surprised San Diego yesterday by naming SDPD veteran Shelly Zimmerman as new chief of police. The surprise wasn’t his choice of Zimmerman, a well regarded veteran with 31 years of service in the department; it was how fast he moved to make the announcement.

As was the case with Chief Lansdowne’s retirement, the local media was filled with statements praising Zimmerman. Even the Reader’s Don Bauder, who regularly dishes up dirt on local politics, approved, saying Zimmerman was an ideal choice for a police department in trouble for its members’ sexual misdeeds.

Caught flatfooted by the announcement was iMayor Todd Gloria   [Read more…]

Escondido State of the City Address Brings Much of the Same Rhetoric

by

By Don Greene/Escondido Democratic Club

In his fourth State of the City address, Mayor Abed continued to tout successes brought to the city by its “forward thinking council.” After playing yet another campaign informational video, produced by the city’s media department at taxpayer expense, the Mayor presented slides demonstrating the success stories that Escondido has and will experience.

All in all, the success of the newly renovated Westfield Shopping Center and Palomar Hospital continue to be at the top of the Mayor’s list of accomplishments, only this time he got it right to say that private industry was behind these things, not the city council. He even showed an artist’s conception of the pie-in-the-sky, tech park that they are calling Cross Roads Business Park, on the site of the Public Works yard and the rest of the area that was set aside for the construction of a ball park.   [Read more…]

Arizona Dreaming

by

By Ernie McCray

Growing up in Arizona
I used to have simple dreams:
Eating in any cafe;
sitting anywhere in a movie theatre
or skating at the rink
at any time on any day;
attending any school
I could get myself to
and swimming in any pool.

I dreamed in a state
where black people like me
drove the city fathers insane
when we dared to
carry ourselves with dignity
in our constant struggle
to be free.
  [Read more…]

Your Credit Card Has Been Compromised

by

By Judi Curry

I received an automated call this morning at 11:27 am. It went like this: “This is your credit card company calling. We are not trying to sell you anything but we think that your credit card has been compromised. We want to talk to either Robert Curry (so do I) or Judith Curry. If this is Robert Curry please press 1. If this is Judith Curry please press 2. If neither Robert Curry or Judith Curry is available, please press 3.”

Since I am “Judith Curry” I pressed 2.

“So that we can be sure we have the right person, please enter your 5 digit zip code.” I entered my zip code.

“Please hold for the next available representative.”

There were many thoughts that went through my mind during the 2 minute hold time. Was I being scammed again? How could they figure out who I was by my zip code? I just used my credit card moments ago to purchase new cards for my new business. Was that a scam? I decided that I would ask the questions when the representative came back on line.   [Read more…]

SDPD Chief Lansdowne Takes One for the Team

by

By Doug Porter

San Diego’s Chief of Police is gone as of Monday, March 3rd. Retired. Resigned. Whatever.

Incoming Mayor Kevin Faulconer will be starting his term with a clean slate, able to downplay reports of police misconduct as the failures of prior administrations.  

The systemic problems within the SDPD won’t be actually resolved by his resignation, but the perception that action has been taken will likely trump demands for actual reforms, or, God forbid, an actual independent monitor. Fortunately, there was another, less noticed, development yesterday that may derail hopes by local officials that these scandals will fade away.      [Read more…]

Public Banking – Part 5: San Diego Could Benefit From a Public Bank

by

City of San Diego Sending Billions of Dollars to Wall Street Needlessly

By John Lawrence

Public banks are financial institutions owned by government entities, such as cities, states, and nations. Establishment of a Public Bank of San Diego would return millions in profits to the City instead of winding up in Wall Street bankers’ private pockets.

Each year the City of San Diego deposits millions of dollars of city revenues in Wall Street banks. The budget for 2014 General Fund Revenues is $1.2 billion. That includes revenues from property taxes, sales taxes, Transient Occupancy Taxes and Franchise Fees among other things. That money has to be deposited somewhere. The City pays these banks transaction fees and loses whatever interest might be gained if the City of San Diego deposited the money in its own public bank with profits earned deposited in the City’s general fund.

Under the current arrangement, interest earnings for the projected 2014 budget are a pathetic 0.1%. Why? Because the Wall Street banks earn most of the interest on the deposited City revenues and pay out interest to the City bordering on zero. Revenues from interest to the City alone could be millions of dollars, and interest the City pays out could be effectively be reduced to zero if the City of San Diego owned its own bank.   [Read more…]

Vergara v. California’s Corporate Heart

by

By Julie Gutman Dickinson/Capital and Main

Are job protections for teachers to blame for educational underachievement among low-income students of color in California? That’s the provocative question ostensibly at the heart of Vergara vs. California, which seeks to invalidate the tenure, due process and seniority rights of hundreds of thousands of educators.

Astute observers of the nation’s escalating education wars, however, may be asking another question: When did it become permissible to use the welfare of children as a fig leaf for an all-out legal attack on teachers?

Or, as historian and teacher John Thompson wrote recently in Scholastic, “Are corporate reformers unabashedly using the courts as a battleground for battering employees’ rights, as opposed to helping children?”   [Read more…]

How TPP Would Harm You At the Drug Store and On The Internet

by

By Dave Johnson/Campaign for America’s Future

A law affecting content on the Internet that was rejected by Congress shows up in a trade agreement designed to bypass and override Congress. Small, innovative companies that manufacture low-cost, generic drugs find their products blocked.

Those are examples of what is in store based on provisions in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which is now being negotiated by the United States and 11 other nations, that have been leaked to the public. The leaks appear to show that provision after leaked provision will take power away from democracy and countries and hand it to the biggest corporations. No wonder these giant, monopolistic corporations want Congress to approve Fast Track before they – and We the People – get a chance to read the agreement.

Because of these leaks we know that the TPP has an intellectual property section that will override government rules that limit the power giant corporations can wield against smaller competitors and the general public. Intellectual property (IP) is a term that covers patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, industrial designs and similar ‘intangible assets.” (Click here for the IP chapter that was leaked to Wikileaks.)
  [Read more…]

Aztecs Fall to 13 in AP, Coaches Poll After UNM Loss. Time to Panic Yet?

by

Yearlong offensive struggles have finally caught up.

By Andy Cohen

The San Diego State Aztecs plummeted from 6th in the AP poll and 7th in the Coaches poll to 13th in both yesterday after losing to New Mexico 58-44 in Albuquerque on Saturday night.  Perhaps “plummeted” is a bit much.  This isn’t the Aztec basketball apocalypse…..yet.

Let’s not take anything away from the Lobos here.  They are a very good team who just happens to be playing its best basketball of the entire season right now.  The Aztecs hit a buzzsaw at the wrong time.

But to say that the Aztecs have been in an offensive funk since the first quarter of the conference season would be a bit of an understatement.  This team has prided itself on its effort and effectiveness on the defensive end of the floor all year, and through the non-conference season they were able to do just enough offensively to power them through some very big games, most notably against then #20 Creighton (now ranked #9 in the AP poll) and at then #16/17 Kansas (now #5/6), who just secured their 10th straight conference title to go against only their ninth home loss that the Aztecs dealt them on Jan 5 during that same period.   [Read more…]

It’s ‘Pin the Tail on Filner’ Week in San Diego

by

By Doug Porter

‘Blame Bob Filner’ seems to be the catchphrase of the week here in San Diego. Months of demonizing our former mayor in the media have seemingly created an atmosphere where it’s possible to deflect political and legal problems by simply blaming The.Worst.Mayor.Ever.

I don’t argue the point that he screwed up. He’s suffering the consequences. And it’s my educated guess that there’s more legal troubles headed his way. But this business of trying to blame him for all of San Diego’s ills has got to stop. What’s next? Can we blame Filner for the lack of rain? Or too much rain, if that should happen?

If you believe reports in the Daily Fishwrap and other local media, the ex-mayor is now supposed to take the fall for two of our city’s new found embarrassments-an illegal campaign contributions scandal and a floundering Balboa Park centennial– in what seems to me to be an obvious effort to protect other officeholders.   [Read more…]

What Did David Alvarez’ Campaign Mean to San Diego?

by

Supporters speak about what it meant to them

By Brent E. Beltrán

This past Sunday my family and I attended a thank you celebration hosted by David Alvarez’ campaign at Cesar Chavez Park in Barrio Logan. Over 150 supporters and volunteers turned out to not only get a thank you from Mr. Alvarez but to also thank him for running on a progressive platform.

In attendance were many luminaries on San Diego’s political left, from Democratic Party politicians to labor leaders to local barrio denizens who have engaged in a variety of community battles over the years. Some of who had fought for over a decade for the very park they were standing in.   [Read more…]

Surveillance Evangelist at the Heart of San Diego’s Campaign Contribution Scandal

by

By Dave Maass / Electronic Frontier Foundation

FBI agents arrested a Mexican tycoon named Jose Susumo Azano Matsura at his Coronado, Calif. home on Wednesday as part of a political bribery investigation based on captured emails, seized banking records, and covertly recorded conversations.

The unfolding scandal is soaked in irony: Azano is a surveillance evangelist whose company won a secret, no-bid contract with the Mexican military for computer and mobile phone hacking and spying technology in 2011. He is chairman of a company called Security Tracking Devices SA de CV, and he is now chained to a tracking device—on house arrest.   [Read more…]

©2010-2017 SanDiegoFreePress.org

Code is Poetry