San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

You Don’t Need a Weatherman to Kick Bob Filner

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By Paul Broadway

I woke up this morning thinking about the Bob Dylan lyric, “you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows”.  This lyric is a good explanation about my view of the Mayor Filner issue that is being orchestrated by the rich, powerful, and connected in San Diego.

You see, I supported Carl DeMaio in the Mayoral election.

I should feel vindicated that Mayor Filner is proving that he was not the right choice for Mayor of America’s finest city.  I should feel that way, but I don’t.  From my point of view, I see something that scares me.  I see a political machine that is using its power to force an elected official out of office.   [Read more…]

CicloSDias Comes to City Heights Sunday August 11

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Sunday August 11 is a big day for bicyclists and a particularly big day for bicyclists in the Mid-City communities. Four years in the planning, “CicloSDias will be the city of San Diego’s first open street event” according to Sam Ollinger. Sam is the Executive Director and Board President of BikeSD. Sam goes on to say:

With this first event, San Diego will join the ranks of 90 other cities around the U.S. in an attempt to showcase an apparently wary San Diego that no disaster will befall our fine city if she opens her street to people and closes it off to multi-ton motor vehicles for a few hours on a Sunday.

This idea to introduce the city’s residents to the notion of reclaiming the public commons and experiencing it without fear of bodily harm that may come in the form of an automobile barreling toward them at high speed…

  [Read more…]

Are You Now or Have You Ever Been (A Filner Supporter)?

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By Doug Porter

There were developments aplenty yesterday in the San Diego’s Kabuki dance theater, also known as the Mayor Bob Filner scandal.

Attorney Harvey Berger filed a motion to move the legal venue for Irene McCormack’s lawsuit due to the media frenzy surrounding the case.  The motion will be heard in San Diego County Superior Court on Sept. 16

Today the UT-San Diego announced an on-line user-friendly format to keep score of who’s been naughty or nice in the Filner case, with naughty being that you haven’t sufficiently denounced the Mayor.

Politicos and union leaders from around the region were inundated with emails yesterday from the newspaper’s reporters yesterday demanding to know, as one union leader put it, “are you now or have you ever been a Filner supporter. And have you called for his resignation yet?”

The influential local American Federation of Teachers (Guild 1931) sent a letter to its 5000+ local members yesterday strongly condemning the Mayor’s actions while at the same time refusing to join in calls for Filner’s resignation.   [Read more…]

Extreme Weather Watch July 2013: Floods, Fires, Drought and Heat Waves

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by John Lawrence

From coast to coast, we saw a variety of record-breaking weather in July 2013. Several cities recorded one of their hottest Julys on record. A heat wave that lasted a week in middle July helped propel Hartford, Conn., Bridgeport, Conn., and Providence R.I. to their hottest July and calendar month on record. In the west Salt Lake City, Utah, Reno, Nev., Elko, Nev., Medford, Ore., Roseburg, Ore. and Bend, Ore. all saw their hottest July and calendar month in history.

Although July is typically the driest month of the year in the Pacific Northwest, it was exceptionally dry in July 2013.

Seattle, Olympia, Wash., Portland, Ore., Eugene, Ore. and Salem, Ore. were among the slew of locations in western Washington and western Oregon that recorded no measurable rainfall in July 2013. Only four other Julys since 1890 have had no rain in Portland (downtown). For Seattle, it was the first time in more than 50 years with no measurable rain in July.   [Read more…]

Sex in San Diego: New Pornographers Claim Their Work Is Ethical, Feminist and ‘Sex-Positive,’ But Will It Sell?

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By David Rosen / Alternet

The 8th annual Feminist Porn Awards, held in Toronto, April 4 to 6, were organized by Good for Her, a Toronto-based, women-orientated, sex paraphernalia store. Some 110 programs were submitted for such categories as Golden Beaver (Canadian content) and Smutty Schoolteacher (sex-ed).

When Carlyle Jansen started Good For Her in 1997, there were a very limited number of porn videos that appealed to her customers. “There was a narrow selection of videos, in particular those highlighting people of color, gays and lesbians, transsexuals and women with a variety of body types and desires,” she recalls.

The Feminist Porn Awards (FPA) grew out of discussions among the company’s employees to host an event that would acknowledge and celebrate diverse ways to sexually represent people, particularly women. Jansen noted that her customers wanted porn they could identify with. “They wanted movies, high-quality productions,” she said, “that did not feel degrading, were not misogynistic and turned them on rather than off.”   [Read more…]

Newspaper Acquisitions, San Diego Conspiracies and Cell Phone Paranoia

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By Doug Porter

The sale of the Washington Post this week to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has the chattering class in a tizzy, with pundits of every persuasion throwing figurative tarot cards on the table hoping to gain some insight to share with the public about this billionaire’s motivations.

I’ve read that Bezos is part of the anti-public education cabal seeking to impose the libertarian (lol) version of Sharia law on states resistant to charter schools.  Others are wondering why he “would buy a stodgy, moribund unionized organization like WaPo”, the implication being that technology based improvements would be impossible and therefore doom Bezos to failure.

Then there’s the debate over whether his purchase of the Post was motivated by philanthropic concerns or a desire to expand his political influence.

Yada, yada, yada.  I agree with Forbes’ Jonathan Salem Baskin.  Bezos bought the newspaper because he wanted to.   [Read more…]

Welcome to City Heights!

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By Anna Daniels

It is hard to make generalizations about a community with over 75,000 residents. It is even harder to make generalizations about a community in which 41% of the residents are foreign born and those residents were born in over thirty different countries. City Heights must be understood in bits and shape shifting pieces.

To understand City Heights, it must be rolled across the tongue and savored in the local markets and restaurants. It must be heard in the cacophony of buses, street vendors, garbage trucks, music from quinceañeras and children’s voices. It must be felt on an early morning canyon walk.

The San Diego Free Press focus on City Heights will be delivered up over the next month as a fragmented incomplete narrative. Twenty-one percent of the residents here speak no or little English. It is a daunting challenge to provide a way for myriad disparate voices to be heard. In the upcoming weeks we’ll be covering a variety of topics and people.   [Read more…]

The New Pope Castigates “The Greed of the Market”

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Pope Francis, a Pope of the People, takes up the cause of the poor

by John Lawrence

I like this new Pope even though I’m not Catholic. What’s not to like about a Pope who eschews those fancy red shoes and wears the basic black Payless variety instead? He even carries his own luggage, takes public transportation and pays his own hotel bills. Clearly there is something different about this Pope. I liked Pope John Paul too,who articlulated the “preferential option for the poor.” The preferential option for the poor refers to a trend, throughout the Judeo-Christian Bible, of preference being given to the well-being of the poor and powerless of society.

According to said doctrine, through one’s words, prayers and deeds one must show solidarity with, and compassion for, the poor. Therefore, when instituting public policy one must always keep the “preferential option for the poor” at the forefront of one’s mind. Accordingly, this doctrine implies that the moral test of any society is “how it treats its most vulnerable members.” The poor have the most urgent moral claim on the conscience of the nation. We are called to look at public policy decisions in terms of how they affect the poor.   [Read more…]

How Land Use Abuse Fits into the Current San Diego Drama

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By Jay Powell

The news this week via the “Utterly-Terrible” news machine (August 6 edition) is that when asked the “push-poll” question: “What story about Filner concerns you more: the charge of sexual misconduct or the charge that he improperly extracted monetary concessions for the city from developers in return for approving their projects?” the result was a dead heat at 44% for each.

Never mind that in both cases the “story” is about a “charge”. And that the only so-called “extraction” was from the now infamous Sunroad developer for donations to two City sanctioned projects.

Yes, there should have been a nexus to the impacts of that project, so the money was returned. It’s important to bear in mind that all the projects that the current Mayor has questioned or impeded were due to violating either community plans or municipal code provisions and initiated under the previous Mayor’s regime.   [Read more…]

San Diego Zoo Targeted by NRA Activists

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By Doug Porter

The National Rifle Association is continually expanding its activities on many different fronts, and the newest of these campaigns, HuntForTruth.Org, has listed the San Diego Zoo as one of the non-governmental organizations it plans to “expose.”

Joining the Zoo as targets of this group are the Peregrine Fund, the Ventana Wildlife Society, the California Condor Recovery Team, the Raptor Education Group, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Natural Resources Defense Council.  All have urged the Environmental Protection Agency to ban hunters from using lead ammunition because of its effects on eagles, condors, swans and other birds.   [Read more…]

8 Ways Privatization Has Failed America

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by Paul Buchheit / Common Dreams

Some of America’s leading news analysts are beginning to recognize the fallacy of the “free market.” Said Ted Koppel, “We are privatizing ourselves into one disaster after another.”Fareed Zakaria admitted, “I am a big fan of the free market…But precisely because it is so powerful, in places where it doesn’t work well, it can cause huge distortions.” They’re right. A little analysis reveals that privatization doesn’t seem to work in any of the areas vital to the American public.   [Read more…]

You Don’t Have to Eat Cat Food

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By Tom Hunter

Since my retirement and application for Social Security at the age of 63, I have gradually learned how to live frugally.

Whenever I think I’ve cut expenses to the bone, it seems like the rent goes up by 30% or the State of Nevada finds me and wants $225 a month in child support.  At the end of all this I am left with $125 dollars a month for food and TV and Internet and gas and electric.

I no longer have a vehicle of my own, but my children provide me alternately with a car and a motorcycle.  I have ridden motorcycles since I was fourteen, but I was definitely out of practice and the new bikes are heavier and faster than anything I ever owned.

This month, on the first day of my direct deposit from Uncle Sam, I spent $60 on groceries, and before the day was out I was a little short on the rent for next month.    [Read more…]

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