San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

The Starting Line – Can You Say Congressman DeMaio? And Other Republican Wet Dreams

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By Doug Porter

I read the Daily Fishwrap(s) so you don’t have to… is the tag line for this daily column. Some days I think it might be more appropriate to say ‘because you wouldn’t want to’.

So hold on to your blood pressure cuffs because today, we’ll be exploring the land of the absurd as portrayed in various news outlets around the country…

Washington’s Roll Call reported yesterday on a GOP polling effort right here in San Diego County’s 52 Congressional District. It’s well known that incumbent Brian Bilbray’s defeat by Democrat Scott Peters was a bitter pill for Republicans to swallow.

And local GOP leaders have made it perfectly clear that they’ll be back in the game, mounting a serious effort to retake that seat in 2014.

The latest Republican polling effort involved testing voter reaction to ‘new generation Republican’ Carl DeMaio.

INSIDE: Sarah Palin, Ted Cruz, Mark Sanford, GOP Light Bulb Screwing, and the Plague of Student Bombers Who Dance Dirty   [Read more…]

Video of Mission Beach Cigarette Citation Goes Viral and Lights Up National Debate Over Cellphone Videos

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See Video Below

By Frank Gormlie / OB Rag

A video by a guy on the Mission Beach boardwalk who was being given a citation for smoking a cigarette has gone viral. The incident involved Adam Pringle who refused to shut off his cellphone while videoing the San Diego police officer – and now Pringle’s video of part of the incident has sparked a conversation that has gone national over the rights of people using the video on their cellphone (or other cameras).

Pringle – from Escondido – was smoking a cig on the boardwalk at Mission when he was approached by San Diego Police on bicycles. As the officer began writing up a citation, an infraction, Adam Pringle began using his cell phone to video the officer.

The officer then asks Pringle to shut off his cellphone. Pringle refuses – saying it was his right. The officer asks him at least one more time – and Pringle continues to video the officer.

Pringle then told the press that his cellphone was then slapped out of his hand and then tackled to the ground by the same officer who was writing the ticket. He was then arrested for disorderly conduct.   [Read more…]

Join U-T Poll On Whether San Onofre Should Be Shut Down

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San Onofre nuke plant

The UT-San Diego has a poll for its readers going right now on whether you think the San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant should be shut down.

Yesterday, May 1, “Yes” was winning but as of today, it has swung the other way.

C’mon San Diegans. Vote to shut it down. We have the link right here so you can vote.

Here’s the link to vote   [Read more…]

Women in Ground Combat Service: Victory for Women’s Rights?

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By Kathy Gilberd / Draft NOtices /April-June 2013,

In January, outgoing Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced the lifting of the Combat Exclusion Policy (CEP), which formally excluded women from ground combat service in the military. Panetta’s action, which reflected the unanimous recommendation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will give women potential access to over 230,000 positions previously closed to them.

In his announcement Panetta also said, “We are moving forward with a plan to eliminate all unnecessary gender-based barriers to service.” The lifting of the exclusion policy follows a 2012 decision to open more than 14,000 additional positions to women, allowing them to serve in select positions in ground combat units at the brigade.

The change is not immediate, however. While the services must submit plans for integration by this May, the overall plan is set to phase in through 2016, and it may not be universal.   [Read more…]

Sex in San Diego: Getting Older, Getting Better

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By Charlie Glickman, PhD / Charlie Glickman

Today is the 20th anniversary of the date that I met my partner. In the last two decades, we’ve both changed a lot. We’re both much more secure and solid in who we are. We’ve grown and challenged each other to overcome many of the habits that caused friction in our lives and in our connections with other people. We’ve learned many, many ways to support our relationship. And yes, our bodies have changed, too. While I’d love to have the physical resilience that I used to have, I wouldn’t trade my current life for the one I had back then. I needed that ability to bounce back- without it, I never would have survived the drama I caused myself and others.

After all of this time with my partner, I think she’s more beautiful than ever before and I’m more drawn to her than I could have imagined when we first met.   [Read more…]

The Incredible Lightness of Being Able to Understand Mayor Filner’s 2014 Budget

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Community Power Affecting Budget Decisions that Impact Our Neighborhoods

by Anna Daniels

It is highly unusual for a group of strangers to smile broadly at each other and enthusiastically confess that the workshop they had just attended on how to read the City’s Capital Improvement Budget had been really interesting and very worthwhile. That is exactly what happened a few weeks ago when I got into the elevator with a group of people with whom I had just attended the Community Budget Alliance‘s hands on budget workshop held in City Heights.

It’s budget season! The total City Of San Diego budget is a whopping 2.7 billion dollars, with 1.1 billion dollars allocated to the General Fund, which is where the rubber meets the road in providing core services to residents- police and fire, libraries and recreation. Another 363 million dollars is allocated to the Capital Improvement Program.

This is the annual budget exercise to determine how well our need for safe, sustainable and livable neighborhoods will be met. Mayor Filner has made neighborhood services a top priority, which includes the revitalization of our neighborhood infrastructure. As residents, we should do much more than wait and see what happens– we should be informed and involved.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Whoa! Stop that Walmart! UFCW President Calls for ‘Extreme Measures’ in Wake of State Audit

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By Doug Porter

So much news, so little time… Here is today’s roundup.

A fifty eight page report from State Auditor Elaine Howle examining the City of San Diego’s practices regarding permitting for construction projects has raised serious ethical and legal questions about a Walmart location under construction in Sherman Heights.

Community groups opposed to the destruction of the Historic Farmer’s Market building in Sherman Heights were joined by organized labor in protests and lawsuits aimed at halting Walmart. But their complaints fell of deaf ears as city officials claimed all appropriate reviews had been conducted and touted the mega-retailers plans to create jobs in business-friendly San Diego.

Now it’s come out that the City didn’t even issue permits until after construction was underway, even after the lawsuits were filed.   [Read more…]

Golden Hill: “Tis a Picture Worth Seeing”

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By Jim Miller

May is Golden Hill month here at the San Diego Free Press where we will do our collective best to spotlight one of San Diego’s oldest and most dynamic communities. 

A particularly interesting question we will be engaging is how the imagined community of Greater Golden Hill that is shared by many long time residents as well as entities such as the Golden Hill Community Development Corporation conflicts with the official separation of Golden Hill from South Park.

The more narrow designation of Golden Hill’s boundaries sets Interstate 5 as the western border and 34th Street where A, B, and C Streets end as its easternmost limit.  To the south, the Martin Luther King Jr. freeway separates Golden Hill from its neighbors in ShermanHeights and Grant Hill while Russ Boulevard and A Street mark its northern border.   [Read more…]

Shining a Beam on Black and White

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Thoughts on the “Fluency of Light”

By Ernie McCray

As I sit writing as a still new 75 year old, I’m so glad I’ve lived, in spite of how scary our world is at times, to see shreds of promise rise before my eyes, hopeful happenings like Arab Spring, gays marrying, and Occupy. I love anything that keeps hope alive.

That being said, I just read the most inspirational memoir, “The Fluency of Light,” by Aisha Sabatini Sloan, the niece of a new friend of mine. I was feeling good about the book before I even fluttered the pages because I found out on the back cover that Aisha lived in my hometown for a spell and has a masters from the University of Arizona, as do I. And she taught creative writing there too. All of that, alone, represented hope to me as back in my day at the U of A it was very unlikely that she would have even been invited for an interview to teach Wildcats. My school has come a long way.   [Read more…]

New Report: Taxpayers on the Hook When Corporate Giants Dump Workers onto Medi-Cal

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Proposed legislation would close “Walmart Loophole”

By Steve Smith/Labor’s Edge

For years, we’ve known big companies like Walmart have been shifting their health care costs onto taxpayers. Now a new report from the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research shows just how widespread the problem is, projecting that as many as 380,000 workers for big companies will end up on the state’s Medi-Cal program by 2019.

For taxpayers, that’s a pretty tough pill to swallow. In 2011, Walmart made $447 billion in revenue. The company’s CEO raked in nearly $21 million last year. And yet, Walmart and other large companies don’t think twice about cutting workers’ hours and wages to such a low level that workers have to get health care through taxpayer-funded Medi-Cal. Even more infuriating, Walmart and companies like Darden restaurants (owner of Oliver Garden, Red Lobster and other chains) have openly flouted the Affordable Health Care Act’s (ACA) requirement — which mandates that companies either provide affordable health care to their workers or pay a penalty — by paying so little that workers end up on public assistance.   [Read more…]

Initiative Seeks to Bring California In Line with Other Oil Producing States

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Californians for Responsible Economic Development pushing ballot initiative to create oil and gas severance tax

by Andy Cohen

North Dakota does it. Louisiana does it. Florida too, and Alaska. Even Texas has an oil and gas severance tax, which largely funds state government there. Alaska is almost entirely dependent on their oil severance tax.

But in California, no such tax exists. California, unlike just about every other oil producing state in the U.S., practically gives away its natural resources to private industry. That could change, however, by way of the 2014 midterm elections.

The group Californians for Responsible Economic Development hopes to bring an initiative to California voters in 2014 that will impose a 9.5% severance tax on any and all oil and natural gas extracted from California land or coastal waters, a fairly modest proposal in comparison to other states. The fee in North Dakota, for example, is 11.5%. In Louisiana the rate tacks up to 12.5%. In Alaska, oil companies are dinged at the rate of 25-50% of the net value of the oil and gas extracted. California is clearly missing out on a massive revenue opportunity for state coffers.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Hell Froze Over: UT-San Diego Endorsed Labor Leader Lorena Gonzalez

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By Doug Porter 

I checked the calendar to make sure it wasn’t April Fools Day this morning after reading an editorial in UT-San Diego endorsing Lorena Gonzalez in the race for the 80th District Assembly seat.

There are, after all, only two Democrats, officially in the race and I fully expected the paper would pass up the opportunity to say anything encouraging about either of them. (There is, I’m told, also a write-in campaign by a Republican.)

Their endorsement was apparently triggered by Gonzalez’s positions on ‘job creation’.  Rather than play into the conservative meme that ‘jobs’ and ‘the environment’ are mutually exclusive propositions, she told them during an extensive interview that policies  respecting both are possible.

As much as I hate to do this, I’m going to agree with the UT-San Diego’s choice of candidates in this race, although for different reasons.  Lorena Gonzalez has done a terrific job of actually ‘leading’ labor in this town into areas way outside their traditional comfort zone.

I don’t know how the UT-SD missed this, but her efforts to get out the vote and involvement with grassroots organizing outside the walls of the Labor Council offices are a major reason why Democrats are an ascendant force in this town.

If she was smart enough to fool them, just think how good she’ll be with those dumbasses up in Sacramento.

INSIDE: Fighting Test to the Test, Junior Seau’s Brain, and the GOP’s Rube Goldberg Immigration plan.   [Read more…]

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