Balboa Park Conservancy Board of Director members Judy Swink and Vicki Granowitz recently issued a joint press release in which they announced their resignations from the board. Both of their resignations were precipitated by the board’s June 1 majority endorsement of politically powerful San Diego philanthropist Irwin Jacobs’ controversial Plaza de Panama plan. According to the press release, prior to June 1 the Balboa Park Conservancy had maintained a neutral role with no direct involvement in the creation or implementation of this plan. It now not only supports the plan, it will actively lobby for it. [Read more…]
Playing Tourist at the San Diego Zoo
A family outing at the World Famous San Diego Zoo is a great way to spend a day and see all that it has to offer. But be prepared for it to set you back a few shekels.
With our $20 discount the cost was still $148. It included the guided tour, the express bus and the safari aerial tramway. When we went through the ticket booth, our hands were stamped so show that we had paid and would be allowed to take the bus and tramway free. (Upon returning home and while writing this article, I checked on something my daughter said to me – “. . . . why do they have to stamp your hand? We could not have purchased a ticket for entry into the Zoo alone. EVERYONE purchasing a ticket is entitled to the rides. She is correct. The only ticket for a 1 day pass is the one we purchased and we could not have purchased a zoo entry alone.)” The ticket seller told me that the $42, with the discount was less expensive than the senior citizen price. [Read more…]
Welcome to the San Diego Free Press !
We want to welcome our readers – today is our first “official” day for the publication of the San Diego Free Press.
Beginning Monday, June 4th, the OB Rag – an online publication for Ocean Beach – is birthing a new online publication for all of San Diego. It’s the San Diego Free Press – and is named after San Diego’s very first alternative newspaper – which was published from 1968 to 1969.
The San Diego Free Press will bring to the rest of San Diego what the OB Rag has been bringing to the community of Ocean Beach these last four and half years – an online source of news, issues, and progressive views by citizen journalists, plus providing of a platform for the discussion of issues relevant to the village of OB.
The San Diego Free Press – in the planning stages for over a year and half – will be a source for neighborhood news from all the ignored and forgotten communities of our area, and it will provide a source and platform for progressive views for and by San Diegans. [Read more…]
Homelessness and Hand-to-Hand Combat
Violence: Is it caused by nature or nurture? I have often wondered why people hit each other in physical, hand-to-hand fights. And when people are homeless, living bereft of everything, why doesn’t the fighting stop?
To find out about the nature of violence among homeless people, I asked a 48 year old disabled man who lives on the streets why he fights. I thank him for the candor: [Read more…]
The Starting Line: DeMaio on the Front Page, UT Talking Heads Debut Panned
June 4, 2012—For the second time in this election cycle “Papa Doug” Manchester’s Union-Tribune has splashed it’s editorial endorsement of a mayoral candidate on the front page. Monday morning readers of the local daily newspaper were treated to “Editorial: The Case for Carl DeMaio” even before they could turn the page today. Blogger George J. Janczyn (@GrokSurf) pretty much summed it up when he tweeted: “Once again the U-T headlines DeMaio for mayor–and this time on the REAL front page, not on a wrap-around. U-T’s the Fox News of newspapers.”
U-T San Diego launches on-line TV station to terrible reviews… Hoping to extend his reach beyond print with “original local news, talk and lifestyle programming on cable and the Web”, publisher Doug Manchester launched UT San Diego TV this week to terrible reader reviews. [Read more…]
End San Diego’s Shadow Government
In Under the Perfect Sun, Mike Davis, Kelly Mayhew and I observe that San Diego is a city that “many conservatives extol as a utopia of patriotism and free enterprise.” Indeed it was Nixon’s “lucky city” but, as we note, “San Diego has too frequently been a town wide open to greed but closed to social justice.
Like its Sunbelt siblings—Orange County, Phoenix, and Dallas—it has a long history of weak and venal city halls dominated by powerful groups of capitalist insiders. ‘Private Government’ has long overshadowed public politics.” More recently in Paradise Plundered: Fiscal Crisis and Governance Failure in San Diego, Steve Erie, Vladimir Kogan, and Scott MacKenzie similarly illustrate how San Diego’s political and business elite have done a fantastic job of “using public resources to maximize private profit” with little to no oversight from our “shadow governments.” [Read more…]
Who the San Diego Left Has Endorsed for the California Primary
By Frank Gormlie / OB Rag / Originally published May 18, 2012
Here is a summary of the candidates and propositions that San Diego’s different left-of-center and left-wing groups and media projects are endorsing for the June 5th California Primary. (Note: not all races are covered, especially those of smaller municipalities and non-controversial propositions).
First – of course, there is a left in San Diego politics – so, those who cannot accept it, get over it. (For a refresher course on left vs right, see here and here.) The groups reviewed for their endorsements are all left or left-of-center. And by report [Read more…]
Hoodoo Love at Mo’olelo
Sometimes when I’m feeling mellow I can’t help but reflect on the good moments in my life, on the things that make my heart sing. Being an actor, and a patron of the arts, theater is high among the list of things that energize my existence.
And there is a performing arts company in town called Mo’olelo (story in Hawaiian) that is dedicated to staging dramas that inspire us, no matter our ethnicity or creed or what we believe, to seek and embrace ways to respect each other for who we all are: human beings. [Read more…]
Sign Petition: Support a Resolution to Reverse Citizens United
Hello, fellow activists!
We are asking for San Diegans – and ONLY SAN DIEGANS – to help out by signing our new Change.org petition.
The petition asks that the San Diego City Council support a resolution to amend the constitution and reverse Citizens United. After all, corporations are not people and money is not free speech!
We’ll be submitting this petition list to members of the San Diego City Council in June as part of ongoing nationwide effort. For that reason it is important that only those living in the city of San Diego (ZIP code 92101-92199) sign. [Read more…]
Bill Clinton, Irwin Jacobs and San Diego – the Wisconsin of the West
President Bill Clinton was in Wisconsin on Friday, June 1, stumping for Milwaukee Democratic Mayor Tom Barrett. Barrett is running against Governor Scott Walker in the upcoming recall election on June 5th and the race is a tight one.
Walker, who rode into office with a six point victory over Barrett in the 2010 mid-term elections, immediately focused upon dismantling the public employee collective bargaining laws in the state, reducing the number of individuals eligible for BadgerCare, the state’s health insurance safety net, lowering taxes on the wealthiest, and slashing the budget for education. [Read more…]
San Diego Primary Round Up – Have You Voted Yet?
The last few days have seen local Republicans crowing over various social media outlets about the “voter enthusiasm gap”. What this is all about is that the Registrar of Voters for San Diego has been steadily releasing information on the number of mail in ballots they have received, broken down by party affiliation. (You can tell this because of differences in the return envelope, indicating party affiliation if any.) Who people are actually voting for won’t be known until June 5th.
What the GOPer’s are talking about is the spread in favor of Republicans in terms of those ballots that have already been received. The Daily Fishwrap ran an article Tuesday that said Republicans had a six thousand vote lead over Democrats in mail-in votes. Another way of looking at would be that, Republicans, who are more likely to vote by mail, have returned two percent more ballots when compared to the total number of Democrat/Republican ballots mailed. [Read more…]
Homelessness Myth #23: They Have Too Much Food To Eat
“They have too much food to eat.”
Really? Do some housed people really believe that homeless people have too much food to eat? Actually, yes. And they provide what they consider the evidence:
“Of course they have too much food to eat. See how fat they are!”
This myth leaves me stunned because I believe its falsehood is obvious. I’ve had the privilege to work with people in need for over twenty years. Sadly, in all of that time, I have never known a homeless person who was able to eat three healthy meals a day. Really. As we all know, obesity is an American epidemic. Whether we are housed or homeless, many authorities agree that our diet of high-calorie, unhealthy foods contributes to our obesity. [Read more…]
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