San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

City of San Diego Threatens County With Draining of Lake Morena Despite Damage to Fish and Loss of Water to Fire Fighters

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There’s a battle brewing right now between the City and County of San Diego – a battle that may result in the draining of a major lake of the County. Interim Mayor Todd Gloria wants the County to give the city $1.7 million or else the City will drain Lake Morena, near Campo and the border.

If the lake is drained to the level that Gloria wants, the County Parks and Recreation warns that there could be a massive fish kill, algae blooms, and a damage to the local economy that thrives on the lake 46 miles east of San Diego. Lake Morena attracted 1600 overnight campers last year who lived within the City of San Diego, plus it served an estimated 10,000 visitors overall.

In addition, the lake serves fire fighters as it provides them with a ready and accessible body of water.

Miriam Raftery of the East County Magazine wrote extensively of the battle between two entities, and here is her report:
  [Read more…]

CEOs Against Grandmas

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The loudest calls for Social Security cuts are coming from CEOs who will never have to worry about their own retirement security

By  / OtherWords.org

David Cote, the CEO of Honeywell, has more than $134 million in his personal retirement fund. If I were sitting on a nest egg that big, I might feel a bit sheepish about telling ordinary grandmas and grandpas to take a cut in their Social Security payments.

But Cote — and leaders of many other large corporations — don’t see it that way. In fact, as Congress prepares for yet another budget showdown at the end of the year, the loudest calls for Social Security cuts are coming from CEOs who will never have to worry about their own retirement security.   [Read more…]

Labor’s Ground Game Made the Difference in Alvarez Win

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By Doug Porter

Mayoral candidate David Alvarez isn’t taking the victory laps today on the morning talk shows. He can’t.  He completely lost his voice talking to voters as the special election neared.

With 100 percent of precincts reporting this morning, Faulconer received 89,043 votes, Alvarez 52,283 votes, and Fletcher 49,645 votes. There remain as many as 34,500 mail and provisional ballots still to be counted.  By shortly after 10pm last night Alvarez had moved into second place and his lead grew throughout the night.

What little life was left in his vocal chords was expended as he thanked supporters last night at a rally held in the old Weber bakery building in the heart of the neighborhood he came from.    [Read more…]

California Oil Company Fined for Illegally Discharging Fracking Fluid

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By Dan Bacher/Indybay

The oil industry in California has constantly claimed that fracking (hydraulic fracturing) for oil and natural gas is “safe” and doesn’t harm the environment.

“An honest appraisal of the science and common sense around hydraulic fracturing leads to a conclusion the technology we’ve used without harm in California for 60 plus years is safe and its benefits a blessing,” said Catherine Reheis-Boyd, President of the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA), earlier this year.

“Oil drilling activities in California are strictly regulated by several agencies and the state’s oil producers are working closely with the government to develop even stronger protections to ensure the vast potential of the Monterey Shale can be realized,” she claimed.   [Read more…]

What You Don’t Know About Me (As If You Cared)

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By Ernie McCray

I like facebook. For me it’s been a nice way to get snippets, sometimes daily, of what’s going on in the lives of both new and old friends: students of mine from over time, some of my children and grandchildren, ex-colleagues, fellow actors and writers and activists – interesting people all.

Occasionally one of them will suggest a game for me to play and I usually don’t take part in such online activities because it’s too easy to spend too much time on social media without the temptation of getting involved in diversionary attractions of any kind.

But lately a number of my friends have been revealing a number of random things about themselves that no one knows or bits of information only a few people are in on and if you profess a “like” for or make a comment on what they have exposed they assign you a number and you’re to make a list of unknown facts about yourself equal to that number. I was given the number 8 by one of my favorite students of all times, Shannon, who disclosed that her name is really Shanna in keeping with the idea of the game.   [Read more…]

Voices From the Drone Summit

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by Marjorie Cohn /Common Dreams

Last weekend, I participated in a panel on the illegality of drones and targeted killing off the battlefield at the conference, “Drones Around the Globe: Proliferation and Resistance,” in Washington DC. Nearly 400 people from many countries came together to gather information, protest, and develop strategies to end targeted killing by combat drones. I found the most compelling presentations to be first-hand accounts by those victimized by U.S. drone attacks, and a former military intelligence analyst who helped choose targets for drone strikes.

Members of a delegation from Yemen provided examples of the devastation drones have wrought in their communities. Faisal bin Ali Jaber is an engineer. For some time, one of his relatives had been giving public lectures criticizing drone attacks. In August 2012, family and friends were celebrating the marriage of Jaber’s son. After the wedding, a drone struck Jaber’s relative, killing him instantly. Jaber lost a brother-in-law who was a known opponent of Al Qaeda, and a 21-year-old nephew in the attack.   [Read more…]

Looking Back at Our Special Election Coverage: Sixty One Articles by Sixteen Writers

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By Doug Porter

The email said: “You have lost me”.

The reader was presumably upset by an interview with Nathan Fletcher posted a few days ago. After posting five dozen articles by sixteen different writers, this conversation with one of the major Democratic candidates was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

So today as people have their final opportunity to cast their ballots, I thought that taking a look back over our coverage might be useful.  If you haven’t voted this might prove useful.  If you have voted, good for you; send this story to a friend who might not have voted.

Mostly this column will be about short quotes and links to the articles. I strongly encourage you to click through to the original stories early and often. In case the words “Progressive Views” on the top of the page have somehow eluded you, SDFP has (and encourages) a certain point of view. We’d rather be honest about that fact than try to delude you as is the standard in much of the mainstream media.   [Read more…]

Want Your Voice Heard? GET OUT AND VOTE!

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By Andy Cohen

Today is the first—but not likely the last—in the special election to determine who will fill out the vacated first term of former San Diego Mayor Bob Filner. This is an absolutely crucial election. Voters last fall chose a candidate who represented a decidedly progressive agenda over his opponent, who represented an extremely conservative agenda.

Bob Filner was a flawed candidate when he ran for mayor in 2012. Everyone knew it—we just didn’t know how flawed. But Carl DeMaio was an equally flawed candidate. So the choice in the 2012 mayoral election came down to which candidate best represented the values of San Diego voters; after decades of conservative, Republican structured leadership, San Diego voters decided that it was high time for a change. They chose a new way of doing business at City Hall. They chose an emphasis on communities over an emphasis on Downtown. They chose fairness over favoritism. They chose people over corporations (and no, corporations are not people).

As voters head to the polls today, they face a similar choice: Do they vote for a return to the ways of previous administrations, where the wealthy business interests based Downtown will once again drive the policy agenda in whatever direction they wish it to go, or do they stick with their choice from last November and choose a mayor who is going to put his constituents first, who will stand up for the “little guy?” Will the city vote where its voter registration numbers say it will? Or will the election swing in the Republican direction, despite the fact that Republicans have 90,000 fewer registered voters in the City of San Diego, and more than 12,000 fewer than Decline-to-State? Speaking of the DTS voters, what will they do? Who do they break for?   [Read more…]

Her Goal is in Sight. Just Who Is Our Photo-Journalist Annie Lane?

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By Judi Curry

People do things for acquaintances if they don’t have anything better to do.. People do things for friends because they want to help and like to have many friends. People do things for those that they love without question or thought, because there are deep feelings for that person.

Sometimes, people do things for those they love even though their instinct is to pull back and find an excuse not to do what is asked.

Such was an experience I had today with our very own San Diego Free Press photo-journalist   [Read more…]

Global CO2 and Arctic Methane Release: An Environmental Disaster in the Making

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Part II: Awful Odds Global Warming Won’t Exceed 2 Degrees Celsius

by Frank Thomas / See Part 1 here

University of Utah Professor of Physics, Timothy J. Garrett is a climate scientist I admire for his original, remarkable research on climate warming.

It’s only disappointing this bright scientist seems to have thrown in the towel on the possibilities for effective, creative solutions to sharply mitigate climate warming (e.g., finding a way to remove CO2 from the atmosphere; developing advanced technology for storing excess CO2, using sun’s heat to increase the energy content of natural gas, lowering greenhouse gases (GHGs) emitted and gas used).   [Read more…]

Nathan Fletcher: The Minimum Wage Must Be Raised

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Mayoral candidate Nathan Fletcher lays out a surprisingly progressive policy agenda.

By Andy Cohen

Part 2 of the SDFP interview with mayoral candidate Nathan Fletcher.  See Part 1 here.

Listen to Nathan Fletcher talk about his policy ideas and positions and it’s hard to believe that he ever considered himself a conservative, a Republican.  These are not the thoughts of the anti-tax, business-is-always-right crowd.  This is a guy who has given this stuff a lot of thought and understands the historical significance of the issues.  He understands that history can tell us a lot about what works and what doesn’t.

And, he says, it’s time we started focusing more on workers and wages than on protecting and promoting business interests at all cost.  He understands that protecting the American worker is protecting business interests.  The two are inextricably tied together, a concept that evades his former colleagues on the other side of the aisle.

For example, the minimum wage.  “We should have a real conversation about minimum wage, because what you see is a real erosion of the middle class.  It’s real.  It. Is. Real.  When you look at the average hourly wage of American workers, they’re going down.  The stock market continues to go up, and the average hourly wage of American workers is going down.”   [Read more…]

What Happens If [Fill-in the Candidate’s Name] Wins the Runoff Mayoral Election?

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By Doug Porter

There will be two winners come Wednesday morning, since nobody outside of GOP Bossman Tony Krvaric’s opium dreams thinks any candidate will win more than fifty percent of the vote.  The accepted wisdom is that City Councilman Kevin Faulconer, a Republican who’d like voters to forget about that fact, will take “first place.”

Faulconer would prefer that we ignore the sources of his cash, since voter registration in San Diego is tilted in favor of the Democratic Party.  The local GOP is currently less popular than even Congress, with a mere 3% of newly registered voters willing to affiliate themselves with the Party of Lincoln.

What we’re really voting on is who makes it to the runoff election, which will take place at sometime in February… Or maybe March, depending on when this round’s votes are certified.

And it’s that runoff election I’ll be talking about today, in the hopes you’ll be further inspired to vote this time around. (Did I mention yet how important it is to vote?)   [Read more…]

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