Month: July 2011

URGENT: The New York Times reports that President Obama is offering Republicans “substantial spending cuts, including in such social programs as Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security — programs that had been off the table.”

Will you join 100,000 others who have signed this urgent pledge, which we’ll deliver to the Obama campaign?
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On its current course, the United States is four weeks away from defaulting on its debt for the first time in its history. If that happens, businesses will fail. Financial institutions will fail. Home values will decline. Mortgage rates will skyrocket. Spending and investment will all but disappear. Social Security checks will stop being mailed. Everything from military pay to food inspection will be compromised, if not fully cut off. The millions upon millions of Americans who are unemployed or underemployed will be joined by millions more.

The “Just Say No, San Diego” Public Education Campaign released video today of Republican-controlled ballot measure campaigns using a phony petition to supposedly “lower gas prices” as a bait-and-switch in order to have voters sign ballot measures that eliminate a retirement safety net for city employees, abolish collective bargaining for construction workers and silence the voices of workers in politics.

Balboa Park institution lobbies for its financial backers

By Lucas O’Connor / Two Cathedrals / July 6, 2011

A new front opened last night in the saga of Balboa Park, with the Old Globe’s Executive Producer emailing the theater’s email list with a pitch for the Plaza de Panama Committee’s recommendations for park redesign and lobbying for theater patrons to contact their city councilmember. It reignites debate over Balboa Park’s future and sparks new ethical and pragmatic questions about the relationship between money and political lobbying efforts.

UPDATE: WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is pushing back against a Wednesday night report that the president is prepared to offer cuts to Social Security as part of a deal to raise the debt ceiling.

Although specifics have yet to officially emerge, there is little doubt that among the Social Security benefit cuts the President is proposing will be a reduction in Social Security’s annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) through an obscure change in the COLA formula known as the chained CPI.

Update for those who haven’t seen it: The Washington Post reported last night that President Obama is “proposing significant reductions in Medicare spending and for the first time is offering to tackle the rising cost of Social Security,” in a meeting with top House and Senate leaders this morning.

A local eccentric elderly man, known for hoarding things in his car, died last night from injuries sustained during a midnight accident in front of Sea World.

The 70-something gentleman – known to some other locals as “the Hoarder” – was hit by a youthful driver when the younger guy missed a turn and started backing up and hit the other, older, white car head-long which was driven by the Hoarder.

By Frank Rich / The New Yorker – rsn / Originally published July 3, 2011

After 9/11, Rudy Giuliani went on Saturday Night Live to give New Yorkers permission to laugh again. But Mayor Bloomberg never did tell us when we could resume conspicuous consumption after the crash of 2008. And so, as we stumble through the second year of the official “recovery,” it’s been an improvisational return to high-end carousing in Manhattan.

By Lori Montgomery / The Washington Post / Wednesday, July 6, 6:38 PM EDT

President Obama is pressing congressional leaders to consider a far-reaching debt-reduction plan that would force Democrats to accept major changes to Social Security and Medicare in exchange for Republican support for fresh tax revenue.

At a meeting with top House and Senate leaders set for Thursday morning, Obama plans to argue that a rare consensus has emerged about the size and scope of the nation’s budget problems and that policymakers should seize the moment to take dramatic action.

Okay class, let’s take our seats, get out our pens and notebooks. Hopefully, you didn’t forget too much from Lesson #1.

Today’s lesson about gentrification coming to OB is going to focus on the 5100 block of West Point Loma, for that is the front line in this gentrification crisis. Gentrification is all around us, but one way it has been slowed down over the decades is with the 30 foot height limit.

UPDATE: Exxon Mobil came under fire on Wednesday from Gov. Brian Schweitzer, who said the oil giant had assured Montana that any spill on the Yellowstone River could be shut off in a few minutes. (Go here for more details.)

Federal documents show it took Exxon Mobil nearly twice as long as it publicly disclosed to fully seal a pipeline that spilled roughly 1,000 barrels of crude oil into the Yellowstone River.

There was a story about the homeless and Ocean Beach that we missed last month. An article in the Peninsula Beacon by Bianca Koch in their June 16th edition described how a handful of local homeless people, aided by an OB homeowner named “Eric”, gave a new coat of paint to the OB Lifeguard Station.

In the year and a half since the Citizens United decision, Americans from all walks of life have become concerned about corporate dominance of our government and our society as a whole. In Citizens United v. FEC, the U.S. Supreme Court (in an act of outrageous “judicial activism) gutted existing campaign finance laws by ruling that corporations, wealthy individuals, and other entities can spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns.