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Rising Costs of Living [With an Education] in California

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Tuition and fees for public colleges in the US rose 80 percent between 2000 and 2014 while American household income fell seven percent during the same period, according to recent data published by ProPublica, a non-profit investigative journalism outlet.

The data shows yearly tuition and public schools across the US rose $3,563 in adjusted 2014 dollars, and the median household income was $4,067 less in 2014 compared to 2000.

Using the online tool ProPublica provided, which allows users to obtain information specific to their state, we learn tuition and fees increased 162 percent in California, more than double the average. Students in California paid $5,327 more in 2014 than did an earlier generation of aspiring scholars back at the turn of the millennium. Those attending California colleges and universities paid $1,674 more in tuition and fees than the average American student in 2014.   [Read more…]

Christian Anti-Communist Crusade: Schwarz on Marcuse

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The Hanalei Hotel in San Diego was the scene for a dinner meeting of the Long Beach based Christian Anti-Communist Crusade on Friday April 18. Fred Schwarz, President of tie Crusade, delivered a speech on “one of the world’s leading destructive revolutionaries,” Herbert Marcuse.

In his invitational letter, Schwarz had promised to cover such topics as the “biological details of the life of Marcuse.” Indeed, it was an enormous let-down when he rehashed the biographical details instead.

Schwarz admitted that he had undertaken the “onerous task”of reading all the books Marcuse has written.   [Read more…]

San Diego Free Press Takes Home Nine SPJ Awards

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As we enter our fourth year here at the San Diego Free Press, there could be no greater gift than to be the platform that allows eight volunteer writers worthy recognition among a Society of Professional Journalists. We are intensely proud to be working with these incredibly talented and passionate people.

The San Diego Free Press itself was also recognized for its role in online journalism.

The awards are as follows:   [Read more…]

Haitian Storytelling: The Last Tiger in Haiti at the La Jolla Playhouse

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By Yuko Kurahashi

The La Jolla Playhouse, in partnership with Berkeley Repertory Theatre, presents Jeff Augustin’s The Last Tiger in Haiti, a play about “restavek” (child slavery in Haiti), directed by Joshua Kahan Brody, at the Mandell Weiss Forum through July 24, 2016. The playwright Augustin, of Haitian descent, chose to use the traditions of Haitian storytelling as a vehicle not only to expose child slavery but also question traditional and contemporary “story-telling” and its power.

Augustin depicts child slaves making up stories about their lives in a competitive way, shaping the stories in response to the comments of the listeners. In Haiti, the tradition is that a storyteller says, “krik” if one has a story to tell. Then the “listener” says “krak” if they are willing to listen. Using this set of call and response the stories in the play are comingled with folktales and religious traditions, while they also introduce the audience to the tragic reality of child slavery.   [Read more…]

Anti-Parks Caucus Seeks to Remove Protections for Public Lands

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How Republicans Celebrate the National Park Service’s 100th Anniversary

By Susan Grigsby / Daily Kos

In 2015, the two million annual visitors to California’s Joshua Tree National Park spent almost $97 million in the surrounding communities. Those same visitors created 1,341 job,s which had a cumulative benefit to the local economy of $128 million, according to an April 21, 2016 statement from the National Park Service. And still, knowing how much his constituents rely on the existence of a National Park within his congressional district, Republican Rep. Paul Cook has done everything within his power to hinder any growth of the Park Service, which will be celebrating its 100th anniversary in August.

Paul Cook is one of 20 Republican representatives and senators, known as the Anti-Parks Caucus, who actively work to sell off public lands to private parties for exploitation. The American Legislative Council (ALEC) has led the charge in western states, and broken ground for action on a federal level. Most of the members of the anti-parks caucus are members of the tea party, have been challenged by a tea party candidate, or are in uncompetitive districts where they have little to fear from their failure to represent their constituents.   [Read more…]

Five Ways to be a Changemaker

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By Linda Williams, Ph.D. and Monica Slabaugh / Invisible Disability Project

Social change is unruly and imperfect. When we say “changemaker,” we are talking about the individual who uses the resources native to them to change themselves, and create change in the places and people around them. There are some fundamental ways we can improve our changemaker ways. The Invisible Disability Project came up with five of them.   [Read more…]

Lies of the Rich and Famous: Off-Shoring Dark Money and Fighting the Minimum Wage

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As leaks of confidential documents go, the Panama Papers dwarf past disclosures. The story isn’t new: rich people use offshore shell corporations to avoid taxes. But the detail is stunning. And there is reportedly much more coming over the next month.

Enough documents to fill six hundred CD’s leaked from the law firm Mossack Fonseca reveal the dark money dealings of world leaders, celebrities and dozens of Fortune 500 billionaires. More than 370 journalists from more than 70 countries are following up on leads using corporate filings, property records, financial disclosures, court documents and interviews with money laundering experts and law-enforcement officials.

A much ‘smaller’ story impacting a much larger number of people in the US appears today in the Washington Post (via the Center for Media and Democracy) showing internal polling commissioned by Chambers of Commerce revealing a large majority of business owners being supportive of increasing minimum wages, paid sick leave and other reforms.   [Read more…]

Assault on Public Employee Unions Fizzles at the Supreme Court

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Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association Gets Split Decision 

Rebecca Friedrichs, the elementary school teacher honored with a ‘Torch of Freedom Award’ at the San Diego County Republican Party’s annual Lincoln-Reagan dinner last weekend, won’t be celebrating this weekend.

This morning, in a single-sentence order, the Supreme Court announced that the judgment of a lower court rejecting an effort to defund public sector unions “is affirmed by an equally divided court.”. A four-decade-old opinion protecting public sector unions will live to see another day.

Friederichs and nine other teachers served as plaintiffs in a lawsuit brought by the conservative Center for Individual Rights (CIR) and the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. The claim being made was that the free speech rights of non-union members entitled them to contribute nothing to the costs of representation, even if they’d already opted out of fees supporting unions’ political activities.   [Read more…]

Keep Your Eyes on the Prize, California – The $15 Minimum Wage isn’t a Done Deal

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A quick read through today’s news might lead the casual reader to believe California is all-but-set to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. The Los Angeles Times already has an article featuring interviews with low wage employees and low-margin employers talking about the impact of the proposed increase.

The New York Times, Washington Post and the wire services all have stories about what is really no more than a back-room handshake agreement. Gov. Jerry Brown is set to make an announcement today, and then the sausage-making in the legislature will begin. The promise of more food on the table for as much as 38% of California’s workforce could very easily end up looking like a shit sandwich.

In today’s column, I’ll take a look at what’s been proposed and the forces already at work to derail or water down the deal.   [Read more…]

Plastic Bag Industry Seeks the ‘Freedom’ to Pollute by Confusing California Voters

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The California legislature passed a ban on many uses of plastic bags back in 2014. Gov. Brown signed it and the American Progressive Bag Alliance, representing bag manufacturers, dumped $3.2 million to get signatures for a referendum on the November, 2016 ballot. So now the law is on hold.

Not content with a simple up or down vote on the matter, the industry is now in the process of gathering signatures for a second measure mandating fees from grocery bag sales be used for environmental projects. If you think this sounds too good to be true for an idea ultimately emanating from the dirty energy industry, you’re right.

This second ballot item is aimed at punishing the grocery industry for backing the original statewide ban. What’s even worse is the sales spiel being used by this effort confuses the matter, implying that the 10 cent fee allowed for store-furnished shopping bags is lining the interests of “special interests” and “union bosses.”   [Read more…]

Hogarth at the San Diego Public Library

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By Brett Warnke

“What’s your proposal? To build the just city? I will.” –W.H. Auden

What does it mean to construct the just city today? San Diego is admittedly no Flint. As I write this, there are unpunished poisoners like Rick Snyder still giving speeches, doing fundraisers, outside of a prison cell, with the craven media establishment recording every utterance. And even further east, goldbricker frauds on Wall Street giggle their way through new swindles—ones we won’t discover until we once again stand at the lip of another recession when “tough choices” will again “have to be made” in order to “save Main Street.”

But San Diego is a city not immune to corruption. Our streets, too, are peopled with the chalked bodies of unarmed black and brown men. In July 2015 we even played host to the American Legislative Exchange Council (or ALEC), that great instrument of business elites to capture the regulatory powers of the state for its own tax loopholes and favors. And just this year our local democracy was used by the Chamber of Commerce to thwart wage increases for thousands of workers.

What does it mean to construct a just city in such a corroded republic? “America’s finest city” is a city 41% more expensive than the rest of America, where people of every shade are scrabbling at the lower slopes of the wage scale and where 38% of residents, regardless of their neighborhood, are unable to earn enough to make a living. One method of coping is to laugh. Ours is a golden age of satire.   [Read more…]

If California is Such a Hostile Business Climate, Why is it Kicking Everyone Else’s Ass (like Texas)

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By Kos / Daily Kos

You hear conservatives tell it, the key to a job-creating positive business environment is … drum roll … low taxes! So the conservative Tax Foundation will rank the best and worst business climate states:
California and New York are ranked way low (48 and 49, respectively), with New Jersey coming in last at 50. And on the “positive” side, you have Wyoming leading the pack, with Texas at #10.

CNBC has its own rankings, with Texas at #2, and California down at #27 and New York at #36. (These rankings, for example, favor right-to-work anti-union states.)

And how about crazy-ass ALEC?
  [Read more…]

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