San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

The Starting Line – Unregulated, Unsafe, Unfair – the GOP Vision for California

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By Doug Porter

One of the favored propaganda ploys of conservative pundits over the past year or so has been the ‘everybody’s leaving California for Texas’ meme. This all started with an article in the ultra conserve National Review by former assemblyman Chuck DeVore, who left the Golden State for the Lone Star State after finishing third in the 2010 GOP primary race for US Senate.

“California may be dreaming, but Texas is working” said DeVore, who went on to tell a tale of woe including high taxes, burdensome regulations and a bloated bureaucracy that stood in sharp contrast to the lean, mean Texas machine.

And so it began. Thousands of businesses were fleeing “Taxifornia” for the freedom offered by Rick Perry’s Republican mecca, so we were told. By early in 2013, media accounts of a minor ad buy urging businesses to consider relocation to Texas painted a picture of a grand exodus underway.

Today’s report on National Public Radio by Wade Goodwin on the construction industry in Texas paints a sad portrait of the real costs of the GOP’s prosperity paradise.   [Read more…]

Five Stages of Republican Grief (A Tribute to the U-T’s Steve Breen)

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By Annie Lane
Last week I came across a Steve Breen cartoon in the San Diego Union-Tribune entitled “Mapping Bob Filner’s Brain” (see left). I had quite the guffaw. I mean, if guffaws were redefined to be humorless, silent events that’s what it was.

I find it interesting that, given Breen’s skill and Pulitzer Prize history, the brain he chose to draw was so boorishly simple. Don’t worry, I get it — it’s intended to represent the supposedly simple mind of our union-sympathizing, anti-hotelier mayor.

But it doesn’t matter what multi-syllabic, mildly offensive adjectives Breen uses to describe Bob Filner because, at the end of the day, he’s still the elected mayor of San Diego. You know, the guy who, like most Democrats in the 2012 election, fairly won against his Republican counterpart.   [Read more…]

What’s an EcoDistrict Anyway? North Park prepares to become first in San Diego

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North Park in the first stages of becoming the first sustainable-focused neighborhood in San Diego following the U.S. lead of Portland, OR.  Tonight (Wednesday, April 10th) there will be an informational meeting for community members to learn about the project.  The meeting will be at Sea Rocket Bistro (3382 30th Street, 92104) from 5:30 – 7:30 PM and $3 drafts and $2 street tacos will be available.

I recently talked with Paulina Lis, who is heading up the North Park EcoDistrict project along with colleague Jennifer Owens, to learn more about the project.  (The North Park EcoDistrict is currently in ‘start-up’ mode and the official website, northparkecodistrict.com, is under construction. In the interim the best source for information on the EcoDistrict is the Facebook page.)  Paulina directed me to the Portland Sustainability Institute (PSI) as a primary source for information on what an EcoDistrict is and what Portland has been doing.   [Read more…]

‘State of Cycling in San Diego County’ – A Snapshot of the Region and Plans for the Future

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by John Anderson

Last Saturday, April 6, the San Diego County Bicycle Coalition (SDCBC) hosted a ‘State of Cycling in San Diego County’ event in the Balboa Room of the historic Lafayette Hotel on El Cajon Boulevard in North Park.

This event was held to mark the one-year anniversary of the 5-Year Strategic Plan the group adopted in 2012 and discuss progress and goals for the coming years. Every seat in the room was taken, plus some standing in the doorways. I counted approximately 60 people. A bicycle valet service was provided outside the hotel for attendees – a service the SDCBC also offered at the Padres home opener on Tuesday, April 8.   [Read more…]

5 Things You Need to Know About the Immigration Agreement

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by Jackie Tortora, AFL-CIO/Originally published at Labor’s Edge

It was announced over the weekend the bipartisan Senate “Gang of Eight” came to an agreement in principle on a major aspect of creating a commonsense immigration process that benefits all workers.

This agreement includes a new kind of worker visa program called the W-Visa, which will work for everyone, not just employers.

Here are five things you need to know about this new employer-based visa:   [Read more…]

Tuesday the Ninth 45 Years Ago – an Historic Day for the San Diego Free Press

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By Frank Gormlie

When it finally dawned on me that today was Tuesday, the ninth of April – I began immediately having flashbacks – not hallucinogenic ones – but ones that surrounded another Tuesday the 9th – a Tuesday the ninth of April exactly 45 years ago. It’s a date that has poignancy for us at the San Diego Free Press and for all of our readers and contributors.

For it was this day 45 years ago – itself just a few days after Martin Luther King was assassinated – that students at UCSD decided once and for all to begin publishing an underground newspaper, called the San Diego Free Press.

If we go back four and a half decades to that time, you’d find me as a new sophomore at the University of California at San Diego – totally unpoliticized, walking around in a daze, a definite neophyte in the land of politics. I had just left the US Army and had transferred right into the bowels of left-wing radicalism as I began taking classes from philosophy professor Herbert Marcuse. He and his graduate student assistants were beginning to fill my brain with all kinds of new thoughts – but I was still new to it all, still very wet behind my ears, more interested in completing my courses than in understanding what was going on across the country in 1968.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Coachella Hipsters Won’t Be Shot, Yet. Guantanamo ‘Party’ to be Renamed

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By Doug Porter

For those of you who are terminally uncool, the next two weekends are the time of year when tens of thousands of (mostly) otherwise sane people take to the desert for a time out to enjoy the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Annual Festival.

The Indio, California shindig features music from a variety of genres playing from stages located throughout the Empire Polo Club. People have been known to get stoned and occasionally naked, but the real reason to go is to say you’ve been there, done that. It’s cooler than a tramp stamp.

Lots of auxiliary (not officially sanctioned) events occur because the crowd is large and mostly affluent. One of them caught my attention yesterday, and it really rattled my cage. Some fashionistas have decided that it would be appro to throw a Gitmo themed party, I guess because human rights violations and torture are such ‘groovy’ ideas. This is stupider than stupid.   [Read more…]

Definitely Not Business As Usual at City Hall

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Filner commited to changing the culture of city government

By Andy Cohen

Last spring, then mayoral candidate Bob Filner promised anyone who would listen that should he be elected Mayor of San Diego after 20 years in Congress, business as usual would no longer be tolerated by his office. The “Downtown Special Interests,” he said, had controlled San Diego for too long, and it was time to put it to an end.

In his mind, the “special interests” controlled the agenda in San Diego. From the big developers to the big hoteliers, the perception has long been that the wealthy and powerful of this city have enjoyed an outsized influence over City Hall. The City Council and the Mayor’s office have often been viewed as nothing more than a rubber stamp for their agenda, which has focused primarily on Downtown for at least the last 20 years.

That would change under a Bob Filner administration, he promised. The focus would be placed on what was good for the city as a whole, not just what worked best for private business interests. It was an interesting campaign promise that many believed was nothing more than lip service; the kind of things politicians often say in order to impress the voters. But we all knew once in office the power brokers would once again resume their place at the top of the hierarchy. That’s the way it’s always been done. No real reason to expect that to change.   [Read more…]

Chronicling My Daily Newspaper Withdrawal Symptoms

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By Judi Curry

In 2004 when I broke my back and my then HMO – Kaiser – was unable to find the break along with 5 broken ribs, doctor’s prescribed morphine for the pain to be taken at regularly scheduled intervals. And, within a few short days, I was addicted to morphine and went through horrific withdrawal symptoms while I was being weaned off the medicine.

Last month I received notification that my subscription to the San Diego Union was expiring, and I could renew my yearly subscription for $150.

When I called the office to ask about the possibility of obtaining a “senior citizen” rate, I was told that I could have the paper delivered for $126 a year. I said that was still more than this senior could afford  since I was on a fixed income. The person I spoke to informed me that the yearly rate for “non-seniors” is $401 a year and the $126 was really a bargain.

Even after I told her that I would not be renewing my subscription, she never suggested to me the other alternatives that are offered – Sunday only delivery and/or weekend delivery.  Either of which I might have entertained if they had been offered.   [Read more…]

Keys to the Kingdom: Using San Diego’s Open Government Web Site

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By Norma Damashek

For the first time ever, the San Diego public has been awarded the Keys to the Kingdom.

The grantor of this unique gift to the people of San Diego is former councilmember Donna Frye and her Open Government project, developed during her three-month stint in the office of Mayor Bob Filner.

Finally, regular citizens and ordinary folk (you and I) have ready access to just about everything we wish to know about the ins-and-outs of City Hall. Come on inside to see how it works.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – ‘AdRateGate’ Inquiry Underway; UT-San Diego Accused of Offering Illegal Political Discounts

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By Doug Porter

Our local daily newspaper continues to ignore the story about themselves, rolled out last Friday by inewssource/KPBS, concerning deep discounts in advertising rates given to GOP candidates Brian Bilbray and Carl DeMaio during last fall’s electoral contests.

The California Fair Political Practices Commission has confirmed that an investigation of the ad rates offered to various candidates and ballot measures by the UT-San Diego is under way.

A group opposing Bob Filner paid $25,000 for 16 full-page ads, according to campaign disclosures, or about $1,560 per ad. Brian Bilbray’s campaign got an even better deal, paying $25,000 for 27 full-page ads, or about $926 per ad.  And a pro-Proposition 32 group calling itself the Small Business Action Committee ran at least 20 full-page ads in the U-T during the fall campaign and reporting $26,000 in costs for print advertising.

Campaigns not favored editorially by UT-San Diego uniformly reported being quoted $8000 per page.    [Read more…]

The San Diego Nine Walk in the Footsteps of Martin Luther King

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The San Diego Nine picked the perfect week for a hunger strike.  They may not have known it, but the ghosts of Memphis were haunting the Mission Valley Hilton.  What’s the connection?

Last week was the 45th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who was murdered in Memphis where he had gone to support striking sanitation workers.  As I noted in my column for Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday in January, the real MLK is frequently neglected in favor of a distorted picture of a vanilla saint who just wanted us all to get along.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

Indeed, King was a provocateur who wanted to disturb us about America’s hypocritical racial inequality AND its shameful class divide.  King died fighting for the rights of poor workers of color because he thought nothing was a better example of what he wanted the Poor People’s Campaign to be than the sanitation workers’ strike.  Their fight was a call not just for legal civil rights for black people, but a cry for economic justice for all.   [Read more…]

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