San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

San Diego Theater: “Juanita Hits the Jackpot!”

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Twenty three years ago Teresa Gunn was performing on stage in DC with her rock and roll band when a song came into her head “just like that.” The band had no idea what Teresa was doing when she launched into a spontaneous a capella rendition of “Trailer Park Money.” Teresa didn’t know much more about that moment than the band did. The song/message entered her head, she delivered it and the show went on.

Teresa never forgot that particular message. In the intervening years, that song became more fully realized as “Trailer Park Queen” and then continued to evolve as a series of one woman performances about Juanita, a mysterious unseen presence who cannot be abandoned, only temporarily ignored.   [Read more…]

Carl DeMaio in City Heights

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Many of us living in the inner city communities and south of Route 8 will remember Mayor Sanders as the leader who performed triage with a hatchet upon a flat-lined city budget. He destroyed the villages writ small while saving the only village that really counts–powerful business interests and an entrenched downtown establishment.

Mayor Sanders’ recent endorsement of Carl DeMaio raises the obvious question–Will Carl DeMaio, if elected, embrace the same governance policies and attitudes? The corollary of course is–Does City Heights want more of the same?   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Poll Shows Filner Gaining in Mayoral Race as The City Goes to Hell

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Mayoral candidate DeMaio continues to consolidate his support among the downtown business types that he campaigned against during the primary. The ‘reformer’ who was going to take on the ‘entrenched interests’ in San Diego is now actively courting the Chamber of Commerce types. So it came as no big surprise yesterday when current Mayor Jerry Sanders swallowed his pride and appeared before the press to bless DeMaio’s candidacy.
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Meanwhile, in the only good news I have to report today, a Survey USA poll released yesterday by TV 10News indicates Congressman Bob Filner is widening his lead over City Councilman Carl DeMaio in the race for San Diego’s top spot.  Voters reached by telephone for the survey favored Filner over DeMaio by a 12 point margin, 50 to 38%, with the Congressman showing significant gains among women, Hispanic and white voters over the past month.  The poll says that 12 percent of voters remain undecided and that those who formerly supported candidate Nathan Fletcher now support Filner by a 2 to 1 margin..   [Read more…]

The Fed’s Quantitative Easing Policy: What’s In It For You?

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Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve Chairman, has been in the business of printing money. His program is euphemistically called “Quantitative Easing (QE).” In September 2012 Bernanke announced QE3 in which the Fed would purchase $40 billion of mortgage backed securities per month indefinitely.

There had been QE1 and QE2 previously, which were one time injections of capital into the nations’ money supply. All theses QEs have resulted in one thing: interest rates have been brought down to practically zero. This may be great for people wanting to buy a car or a house, but for savers, like senior citizens, they have been robbed from gaining any interest on their savings accounts.

They might as well have put their money in their mattresses.   [Read more…]

Athens in Turmoil Over European Union Sanctions: An Eyewitness Report on the Eve of the General Strike

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by Jim Bliesner, SDFP Correspondent from Greece

On Sept. 26, 2012, the people of Greece will go on general strike against austerity measures being imposed by the European Union Central Bank. As one person told me, “The measures call for all government workers to receive wage and benefits reductions.” I asked her how they could do that to her since she worked for a private company. “Well I don’t know exactly how but they will. You know how business is- they cut wages whenever they think they can get away with it.”

Athens, the capital of Greece and its largest city, seems to be in turmoil. On Sunday Omonia Square, the central commercial intersection of five large boulevards, was surrounded by at least three different police forces. Each of the five main streets was yellow taped or blocked by large black buses with metal grated windows. Behind the buses were phalanges of police with clear plastic shields.   [Read more…]

San Diego City Council Unanimously Denies Quail Brush Power Plant

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by Nadin Abbott/East County Magazine

September 24, 2012 (San Diego)–The mood was tense as people from multiple walks of life and political views filed into San Diego City Chambers. Among them was Republican Santee Councilman Jack Dale and Democrat David Secor, candidate for U.S. Congress for the 50th district. Both Dale and Secor came to oppose the Quail Brush gas-fired power plant.

So did Massada Disenhouse, activist for the Sierra Club and Martha Sullivan, a former California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) employee, and many others.

There were supporters of the plant as well, including Gary Salas, a member of the electrical trades. Also supporting the project was John Gibson, of Hamman Construction in El Cajon.

  [Read more…]

City Agencies Thrive Under Managed Competition

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Carl DeMaio’s quest to privatize San Diego’s city services take an unexpected turn.

For decades now we have heard Republicans tell us that under every circumstance government is incapable and incompetent. There’s this completely irrational hatred of all things linked to the government–except the military, of course–which somehow doesn’t qualify as a government agency by Republican definition. Government, and by extension, government agencies—all government agencies—are unable to efficiently and effectively perform the tasks they’ve been chartered for, and thus cannot be trusted with taxpayer money.

  [Read more…]

The Starting Line – The Moral Bankruptcy of Bridgepoint Education/Ashford University

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One of San Diego larger private employers, Ashford University/Bridgepoint Education, announced layoffs for 450 employees yesterday, a move that’s bound to send ripples throughout the region. Employees were told to come in early, shown a video and offered a two-week severance package. Then it was out the door.

The aftermath of past corporate disintegrations brought on by unsustainable business models (or a legal/quasi-legal ponzi scheme, as I like to call it) has been a sort of local amnesia in the news media, followed by admonitions from the UT’s editorial page that “too much regulation” is bad for business. At the bottom of this well of malevolent corporate behavior is the ultimate reality that we citizens will get stuck with the bill for damages while most of its perpetrators will walk away unscathed.   [Read more…]

For the Sake of Civility The U-T Needs to Change

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Hope on my mind

Hope comes easy for me. It can rise from the words in a kindergarten girl’s poem where everybody lives happily forever and ever, or it could come out of the energy of thousands of San Diegans standing in the middle of Broadway singing “Give Peace a Chance.”

I didn’t realize, though, how hopeful a human being I am until I found myself one day holding out hope that the San Diego Union-Tribune, a rag that, on good days, over the years, has made me gag, could change and become a factor in helping San Diego become all it can be.

I didn’t see this hopeful moment coming. I was leaving the Union-Tribune Building one day when it dawned on me that I had a smile on my face. And that had never been the case when I look back on all the times I’ve walked away from the place.   [Read more…]

Prop 37: Labeling of Genetically Modified Foods. Will We Be Better Off If We Don’t Eat Them?

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Proposition 37 requires labeling foods you buy in the supermarket as GMO foods if they contain genetically modified ingredients. It also prevents labeling GMO foods as “natural.” Some foods can be exempted from the GMO label such as otherwise organic foods that have been unintentionally cross-pollinated from GMO crops. And Prop 37 does not require labeling at restaurants and in particular fast food restaurants – just the places that you can probably expect to be served GMO foods.

  [Read more…]

The Starting Line – San Diego City Council to Celebrate National Voter Registration Day by Authorizing Secret Vote on Hotel Tax

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Things that make you go hmmmm…Tuesday’s docket for the San Diego City Council features item number S500:

“A resolution authorizing the payment of outside counsel fees and associated costs incurred by the Mayor, City Councilmember, and present and former City employees in testifying before the California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB).”

If that sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because the same resolution was considered and rejected by the City Council on June 26th, by a vote of 4-1.

The fact that this question is even being put up for consideration screams “under the table deal”. And does this deal have anything to do with the secret vote that the City Council be taking shortly that could authorize our local hotels to soak the public for another couple of  billion in taxes?   [Read more…]

DeMaio & Manchester: San Diego’s Tourist Plantation Lords?

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As Doug Porter noted here last week, the Center on Policy Initiatives (CPI) released a new report on poverty, earnings, and income in San Diego County that revealed the sad fact that  “more than a third of San Diego County’s population” lives “in economic hardship.”  Nearly one out of five children in our city live in poverty with 16% of women, 21% of Latinos and 23% of African Americans joining them—and we are losing ground “as the quality of jobs created by major industries in the region failed to keep pace with the cost of living.”

Median income is falling and the household income for all races and ethnicities decreased here in San Diego.  About 17% of us don’t have health insurance, three out of five renters are paying more than they can afford, the middle class is getting leaner, and poverty and income inequality have been on the rise over the last five years.   [Read more…]

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