San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

Musings on Freedom and Independence

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By Lucas O’Connor

Marking this year’s Independence Day, the Supreme Court served up easy tie-ins for good and for bad. We saw the end of DOMA and of Proposition 8, and weddings began up and down the state of California. We also saw the end of fundamental voter protections in the Voting Rights Act, calling into question the viability of the most fundamental function of our democratic system. And if that weren’t enough, right here in San Diego we saw the culmination of the chalker case, raising all sorts of bizarre questions about the Bill of Rights that might actually be best not considered too carefully. But from the momentous to the trivial, all are steering us towards what it really means to be free and independent.

The ideas of Freedom and Independence often overlap, but aren’t necessarily interchangeable. Freedom is rarely easy, but is generally a simple concept to which we can aspire. Independence takes the opportunities of freedom to a higher standard, demanding a capacity for sustainability, not just separation from an outside authority, and that sort of independence can take a lot of work.   [Read more…]

July 4th, 2013: I Don’t Feel Very Proud of Being an American Today – With Latest Revelations About Postal Service Copying All Our Envelopes

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Yes, it is the Fourth of July, that glorious day where we Americans celebrate our history – honoring the day in 1776 when the Declaration of Independence was signed and passed by the Continental Congress in Philadelphia.

But, no, I don’t feel very proud today of being an American. Why not, you ask, as you bundle up your family, hot dogs, beach umbrellas and head out for your own family’s festivities.

It now turns out that our own Postal Service has been spying on our mail for years. About 160 billion postcards, packages – and yes, envelopes were photographed by the good ol’ US Postal Service last year.

This is all part of … drum roll please … because you probably have never heard of this before … the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program. Under this nefarious program Post Office computers take photos of the exterior of every piece of mail – snailmail we’re talking her – that Americans mail out and which goes through our postal system.

The The New York Times reports that the postal mail is being subjected to similar surveillance to our phone calls and emails by the National Security Agency. CBS picked up the story, using this headline: Report: Postal Service uses “spying” programs similar to NSA.   [Read more…]

July 4th: Stand by the Fourth Amendment

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I’m taking today off. Unless we all stand up and say something, we have no chance of changing the government’s schemes for ‘protecting us’.

They say this is what people are asking for in the name of stopping ‘terrorists’, because ‘everybody knows’ creating a massive data sucking intelligence industrial complex is our only hope.

Mostly I’ll be hanging out with my family today. But I’ll take an hour or so so today to make a statement about what liberty needs to look like in the future. There’s a rally in Balboa Park at 11am.

Thousands of websites are participating in a July 4 online protest against the NSA surveillance programs. Reddit, Wordpress, and Mozilla are taking part in the ‘Restore the Fourth’ campaign online. ‘Restore the Fourth’ is aimed at restoring the fundamentals of the Fourth Amendment – the part of the Bill of Rights which protects citizens against unlawful searches and seizures.   [Read more…]

Born on the Fourth of July; Community Radio Returns to San Diego

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By Doug Porter

It’s taken six years, hundreds of meetings and $45,000 raised via grassroots fundraising efforts to launch KNSJ/89.1, a community media outlet ‘by, of and for the people’.  And they’re launching tomorrow, Thursday July 4th with a full day of live broadcast plus audio and video streaming on KNSJ.org.

The public is invited to come down to the World Beat Center at 2100 Park Blvd. in Balboa Park to participate in the live broadcast, talking about how to shape this community radio station to meet the needs of San Diego’s diverse population.

Officially known as KNSJ 89.1 Descanso; (Descanso is the FCC’s “city of record”), the station’s call letters reflect its mission: Networking forSocial Justice.  The main studios will be located in El Cajon, with a transmitter and tower at over 6200 feet in the Laguna Mountains.

They believe KNSJ’s signal will be heard in car radios from the US-Mexico border to Highway 52, from the East County mountains to the bay, covering all of central San Diego.  Programs will also be available through live streaming at KNSJ.org.   [Read more…]

June’s Extreme Weather Breaks All Kinds of Records

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By John Lawrence

Devastating fires swept through Colorado in June, where firefighters remain relentless in their battle against the West Fork Complex fire in southwest Colorado, which has burned for most of the month.
The West Fork Fire likely will burn for months, said incident commander Pete Blume. And crews are not expecting to make any real gains against the 117-square-mile burn until the summer monsoon season brings cooler temperatures and rains, hopefully in early July.

“This is a significant fire with significant problems, and we are not going to see any significant containment until we have significant changes in the weather,” said Blume, who is with the Rocky Mountain Type I Incident Command.   [Read more…]

AB 10: Time is Ripe for California to Raise the Minimum Wage

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By Martin J. Bennett/California Progress Report

The New York Times recently characterized the economic recovery that officially began in 2009 as a “golden era for corporate profits.” Indeed, corporate profits doubled between 2008 and 2011 and reached a record high.

However, these increased profits have fueled inequality and come at the expense of worker compensation. Profits are now a larger share of total national income, and wages and benefits are a smaller share than at any time since the 1960s.

Over the last four decades productivity gains have overwhelmingly accrued to business and not labor. The Economic Policy Institute calculates that between 1973-2011 productivity increased by 80 percent, but median hourly compensation by only 11 percent.

The recovery has not lifted up those at the bottom of the income distribution, nor has it increased opportunity for the middle. According to the Women’s Foundation of California, one in three families in the state (with family members reporting a combined work effort of 39 or more weeks annually) are the working poor who earn less than $45,397 a year. California has more working poor families than any other state.   [Read more…]

Readers Write: Where Will Modern Economy Theory Lead Us?

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By Tom Hunter

All those high falutin’ economists from Harvard are somewhat muted with their economic models. Meanwhile, the real economic model being adopted in the United States is that of our largest corporation. The old theory is that Henry Ford was a fool for paying his people enough to buy his car. The modern theory would have him ship their jobs to Mexico or China and to hell with the domestic sales, as they are no longer the largest market.

Wal-Mart has about three guiding principles. First, the only thing they’ve got going for them is low prices. These are achieved by paying their people just enough so they can get food stamps supplemented by food banks. Their suppliers are continually required to find cheaper ways to deliver the goods or they will be replaced seamlessly with some outfit that will.   [Read more…]

From Yoga, Chalk to Medical Pot, San Diego Courts Protect Rights

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If anyone was counting, Monday, July 1st in San Diego should stand out as a day when San Diego courts delivered justice. From the yoga case, to the by-now well-known chalk case, to the medical marijuana case, in one day local courts involving two juries and two judges stood up for the rest of us, and for our rights.

Jeff Olson, the Chalk Man, Wins

Certainly, justice was delivered – a little late – in Jeff Olson’s fight against those 13 counts of vandalism for his anti-bank messages. On Monday, a jury found him not guilty on all counts. Jan Goldsmith, our city attorney, and his deputy du jour on Olson’s case, both made public statements that it was all about graffiti.

In a sense, the judge – Howard Shore – agreed. He ruled that the defense could not bring up First Amendment arguments during the trial. And then he gagged everybody. In a misdemeanor case. That’s unheard of. Nobody that was involved could talk to the media. Shore rules that it’s not about free speech and then he declares that there’s no free speech for the parties or witnesses.

The jury felt otherwise and issued a necessary victory for free speech.

Medical Marijuana Mistrial, a Dismissal and a History Lesson in Jury Nullification

On the same day, Monday, in another courtroom – …   [Read more…]

San Diego’s New Simmering Sunroad “Controversy”

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There is plenty of blame to go around in the latest brouhaha involving Mayor Bob Filner

By Andy Cohen

Mayor Bob Filner is in the crosshairs again (metaphorically speaking, lest anyone suggest that someone is actually trying to shoot our mayor).  This time, the local media—and especially the conservative interests around town—are howling about a deal that Filner’s office struck with Sunroad Vice President for Development Tom Story.

This is the same Sunroad Enterprises, and same Tom Story, that in 2007 were accused of exerting improper influence over city officials in order to secure construction permits to build a 12 story building off of route 163 and adjacent to Montgomery Field.  Federal Aviation Administration regulations prohibit a building that tall from being so close to an airport, but city officials along with a complicit Mayor Jerry Sanders, issued the permits anyway.  Then-City Attorney Mike Aguirre sued Sunroad, was joined by the FAA, and the company was eventually forced to remove two entire floors from the building.

Sunroad does not exactly have a sterling reputation around town.   [Read more…]

Snowden’s Moscow Purgatory: Why Nobody Wants Him

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By Doug Porter

I’ll lead off today’s roundup of the news with the subject of international headlines: Edward Snowden, trapped now in the bowels of Moscow airport.

Nineteenth century historian Lord Acton is generally credited with coining the phrase “absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Here in the twenty-first century knowledge is power, more so than tanks, treasuries or theology.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the travails of Edward Snowden, formerly employed within the industrial-spying complex. Troubled by the vastness of contemporary intelligence collection, he sought to turn loose the secrets of the National Security Agency, only to end up in a kafka-esque nightmare, trapped in the Moscow airport.

Apparently no country wants him. Even nations with hostile relationships with the United States are distancing themselves from this modern day Robin Hood of the information wars.

INSIDE: Carl DeMaio’s Disappearing $10,000 Donation, Mayor Filner’s Latest ‘Scandal’, The #ChalkGate Deal That Wasn’t   [Read more…]

Las Monthly Ondas July Edition: Free Speech Chalk-In at BofA Barrio Logan and Other Branches

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By Brent E. Beltrán

Last week floundering Republican City Attorney Jan Goldsmith, at the behest of Bank of America, chose to prosecute Occupy San Diego protester Jeff Olson for writing anti-bank slogans on the sidewalk, in washable chalk, in front of their North Park branch.

Mr. Olson was charged with 13 counts of vandalism and faced a year in jail and a $1000 fine on each count. He faced a total possible sentence of 13 years in jail and $13,000! Luckily a San Diego jury on Monday, July 1st, using common sense, found him not guilty on all counts.

City Attorney Jan Goldsmith wasted over one hundred thousand dollars of taxpayer’s money to prosecute someone for exercising their 1stamendment rights, on public property, to do the bidding of his corporate master.

Freedom loving progressives and liberals all over San Diego are tired of right wing politicians working on behalf of corporations and the rich instead of defending the rights and interests of average citizens like Jeff Olson.

So tired that a Recall Jan Goldsmith Facebook page has garnered over 230 likes in less than a week. So tired that a nationwide Chalk-In is taking place this Saturday at various Bank of America branches throughout San Diego and the rest of the country.   [Read more…]

When is the Gospel Not the Truth? More on the La Jolla ‘Christmas’ Parade

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By Judi Curry

Several months ago I wrote an article about the possibility of changing the name of the “La Jolla Christmas Parade” to something that did not connote a religious theme. I pointed out that almost every parade during the month of December had changed their title from a “Christmas theme” to a more generic one, thus entailing more enjoyment and enthusiasm for the total population rather than a select few.

One of the references I used was a three paragraph summary of the anti semitism that had existed in La Jolla for many years. I found that reference in the “La Jolla” section of Wikipedia .

I was very surprised when one of the readers of my original article called to inform me that those references no longer existed; and, in fact, there was only a small paragraph where the three used to be and it practically negated the original paragraphs.   [Read more…]

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