San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

Public Banking: The Antidote to Wall Street’s Domination of the Economy – Part 3

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When states and municipalities set up public banks, money and hence energy is withdrawn from Wall Street creating the perfect revolution with the result that the husk of Wall Street shrivels up and dies like a plant deprived of nutrients … without a shot being fired.

By John Lawrence

Nothing could be less radical than a public bank because the state of North Dakota already has one and it has been working successfully for the citizens of North Dakota. No one would accuse North Dakotans of being socialists or would they? No new ground to break here!

Instead of money leaving the state and going to Wall Street, money stays in the state where it is lent out in the form of student and business loans with the profits being shared by the citizens of North Dakota instead of going into the pockets of private bankers in New York.   [Read more…]

Will Puppy Mills Banned in San Diego Get a Free Pass in Oceanside?

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By Staff

Over a dozen cities in California including Los Angeles, Laguna Beach, Dana Point, Chula Vista, and San Diego have adopted ordinances placing restrictions on the sale of animals from commercial breeders. The ban was created to stop the flow of puppy-mill puppies into those cities, which increases the number of dogs left languishing in shelters, effectively increasing the number of animals euthanized each year and costing cities money. Friends of Fire Mountain

Under a City of San Diego ordinance passed in July, no store can display, sell, deliver, offer for sale, auction or give away animal pets in the city. Existing pet stores, including San Diego Puppy, were given up to six months to stop those practices. While this was a big win for animals in the City of San Diego, people who care about the humane treatment of pets are concerned about the opening of puppy mills in areas of the county which do not have a similar ordinance.

Animal rights activists in Oceanside have recently been protesting the presence of puppy mills and will request that the Oceanside City Council adopt an ordinance that would ban these businesses.   [Read more…]

Bolts’ Brass Must Decide on Mathews’ Future

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Chargers and SDSU football teams have given San Diego little to cheer about early in the 2013 season.

By Andy Cohen

So I’m breaking with my norm and reverting back to my roots. The 2013 football season is now in full swing, at the high school, college, and NFL levels. So today’s column is about football, and purely football.

The state of San Diego football at both the pro and major college level is a pretty sad one as I sit here and type this. And it’s depressing, because San Diego is one of the better football cities out there. We deserve better here; a better pro/college stadium, and better teams that the fan base can be proud to support.

But we’re being seriously shortchanged here in “America’s Finest City.” Our pro team is apparently back to its maddeningly foundering ways, and our FBS college team….well, as much as I love my Aztecs (and yes, I am biased and not at all afraid to admit it), what’s happening out there on the field of play is nothing short of embarrassing. I expect much better from this program at this point in the program’s post-Chuck Long development.

Can’t trust star RB

In the 2010, then General Manager AJ Smith traded up 16 spots in the first round to take Fresno State running back Ryan Matthews with the 12th overall pick in the NFL Draft. Matthews was talented to be sure, with plenty of speed and big play potential. Durability, however, was a major question mark. But then again, coming out of the University of Oklahoma, durability was a major question mark for Adrian Peterson, now of the Minnesota Vikings. That worked out OK, and the Chargers needed a feature back with the departure of the aging LaDainian Tomlinson. At the time, it seemed like a worthwhile gamble.   [Read more…]

The Sky Hasn’t Fallen: San Diego Tourism is UP

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By Doug Porter

One of the most frequently told tall tales during the Filner administration had to do with the consequences of San Diego Tourism Authority’s reduction in advertising and promotional expenditures.  Doom and gloom studded media accounts, like one just published in UT-San Diego on September 8th, warned that falling hotel occupancy would have widespread impacts on the local economy.

This most recent account had Tourism Authority CEO Joe Terzi ominously warning the number of room nights generated this fiscal year in San Diego will fall by as much as 350,000.

The latest reporting by industry analysts at Smith Travel Research indicates San Diego’s hotel occupancy rose by “only” 1% over July levels and is up year-to-date.

I have no doubt the local tourism tax dollar welfare recipients downtown will wail none-the-less by pointing out that tourism in other California coastal cities increased by a larger amount.   [Read more…]

Barrio Logan Community Plan Update Alternative 1 Passes

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Not All Stakeholders Are Pleased With Compromise

By Brent E. Beltrán

I have never been to a San Diego City Council meeting before. Never had a need nor did I ever care about the goings on inside the council’s chamber on the 12th floor of City Hall. But that changed on Tuesday, September 17. That was the day that the council was to vote upon the Barrio Logan Community Plan Update.

For five years the Barrio Logan Community Plan Update Stakeholders Committee held meetings to create a new community plan for Barrio Logan. A plan that would change the mixed use zoning that has been detrimental to the health and welfare of the residents of this predominantly working class, Mexican neighborhood. The Stakeholders were to create a plan that would delineate industrial areas from residential ones and create a barrier of sorts between the two.

For five years the various Barrio Logan Stakeholders met time and time again to create this plan. It was a democratic process. Votes were cast overwhelmingly in favor of Alternative 1 yet the maritime industry that has been polluting this community for decades kept holding out hope that their plan, Alternative 2, would ultimately be voted on and implemented by the San Diego City Council.   [Read more…]

Distilling the Essence of a Tune: Jeff Hamilton Trio Sunday at the Saville Theater

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by John Lawrence

The Jeff Hamilton Trio with Jeff on drums, Tamir Hendelman on piano and Christoph Luty on bass will perform Saturday, September 29, at the Saville Theater on the campus of San Diego City College at 5 PM. If you only go to one jazz event this year, this should be the one.

Jeff Hamilton is a truly amazing drummer, a major star in the jazz firmament. Jeff was voted the Numero Uno jazz drummer in Modern Drummer Magazine’s readers’ poll. Jeff’s prestidigitation on the drum set will have sticks and/or hands flying in a way that hardly seems humanly possible but always with consummate taste and rooted in the jazz tradition.

Jeff’s marriage of power and precision, his dynamic range from whispers to raging torrents, will leave you breathless and definitely wanting more. But most of all he’s known for his melodic solos.   [Read more…]

Say No to Paying San Onofre Nuke Shutdown Costs: “You Break It, You Buy It”

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By Doug Porter

The shutdown of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station was a significant blow to the nuclear power industry. Although the twin reactors were licensed to operate until 2022, a new steam generator system installed in reactor unit 2 in 2009 and unit 3 in 2010 failed less than two years after vibrations caused heavy alloy tubes in each steam generator to rub against one another.

Critics of Southern California Edison contend the utility and its supplier Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, hid the risks of the new system they installed. Hoping to sidestep the potentially lengthy process of obtaining a license amendment, the company appealed to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board for permission to restart unit 2 at 70 percent of capacity.

Following a negative ruling by the Board, the company announced plans for permanently closing the facility.

Now they’d like the California Public Utility Commission to grant them permission to make consumers pay for the utility’s mistakes.   [Read more…]

Fletcher Versus Alvarez: The Battle for the Soul of San Diego’s Democratic Party

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by Jim Miller

This last week marked the two-year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, a political happening that finally put the issue of economic inequality in the spotlight and started a national discussion about money, class, and political corruption. That movement was largely brought to us by young people, Millennials mostly, whose view of mainstream politics is justifiably jaded.

As Peter Beinart recently pointed out, “Compared to their Reagan-Clinton generation elders, Millennials are entering adulthood in an America where government provides much less economic security. And their economic experience in this newly deregulated America has been horrendous.”

And this experience has been made worse by bankrupt politics that pits what Beinart rightly characterizes as “a procapitalist, anti-bureaucratic Reaganized liberalism” that is “inclined toward market solutions” to everything against a radicalized “right wing populism”:   [Read more…]

The New Main Library: A Benefit for All

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Richard Rider, a local libertarian, called the new library “a monument to an era that is ending — a structure that in a few years will have little more utility value than a Pharaoh’s pyramid in Egypt. The only difference is that the library will have high operating costs — the pyramids need no such annual funding.”
–UT San Diego article “New library: Is this monument necessary?”

By Joe Flynn

Odd isn’t it? The self professed “cheerleaders” for San Diego preview the grand opening of the new library with this article puffed up with a quote from San Diego’s Dr. No, Richard Rider, libertarian. I wanted to get the spelling right, but after reading his remarks no one will mistake him for a librarian.   [Read more…]

For the Love of Food: Curried Tofu ‘Egg’ Salad

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By Melissa Phy / For the Love of Food

Listen, the fact that my title says egg salad makes me wince. I get it. It’s a food with a bad rap. But this egg salad is free of sulfur-smelling ingredients and could even be called “elevated,” which is just another way to call food fancy. Much like “deconstructed” dishes somehow make things cost $10 more — you know, cause the chef didn’t have to assemble it.

But I digress.

This dish was the result of another brainstorm with a friend. She said she gets a curried version of tofu “egg” salad from Whole Foods that she adores and asked me to recreate.

Without knowing what the Whole Foods version looks, tastes or feels like, I accepted the challenge. And the result is a beautiful thing. Who knew crumbled extra firm tofu had the exact same consistency as eggs? Whole Foods did, friends. Whole Foods did   [Read more…]

Raise the Sub-Minimum Wage

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The rock-bottom pay mandated for tipped workers like servers in restaurants needs to rise from $2.13 an hour.

By Saru Jayaraman / Other Words

As the fast food workers’ minimum wage campaign gains momentum, another group of workers is expanding the fight to address one of the least-known economic outrages.

You may not realize it, but the measly $7.25 an hour McDonald’s and other fast-food giants pay their workers is three times higher than what many large sit-down restaurants pay their servers.   [Read more…]

Fine Print of Obama’s EPA Rules Reveal Huge Giveaways to Big Coal and Gas

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Obama can’t fight ‘war on coal’ by giving industry $8 billion in government subsidies, say critics.

By Jacob Chamberlain/ Common Dreams

The Environmental Protection Agency announced new regulations for the energy industry on Friday which will limit, for the first time, the amount of carbon that gas- and coal-fired plants can emit into the atmosphere.

And though many of the larger environmental groups in the country welcomed the new restrictions, more critical observers of the EPA announcement argue the rules don’t go far enough in terms of limiting emissions. Meanwhile the Obama administration, in fact, is preparing to use huge amounts of public money to prop up the U.S. coal industry.

Such a scheme, according to one critic, “will make only modest cuts to power plant emissions” at a moment in history when much more dramatic actions are needed.   [Read more…]

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