Month: June 2012

By Catherine New / Huffington Post / June 20, 2012

Dory Hayes’ credit card complaint started with an honest mistake. And the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau agreed. When she bought a new couch at Jennifer Convertibles in April 2011, she financed it by charging $500 on a GE Money Card, which had an annual percentage rate of 0 percent.

From San Diego Free Press

It probably should come as no surprise that the diverse community of City Heights delivers up equally diverse coffee drinking experiences. The one unifying quality to the coffee here is a certain “robustness–” this IS City Heights after all.

The other day
I was kind of lowriding down the street,
feeling about as cool as a 74 year old
could ever hope to be,
listening to some sounds
on Radio Jazz 88.3.
Ramsey Lewis, more specifically,
running his fingers over a keyboard,
…

By Lucas O’Connor / San Diego Free Press

By now, most of us agree that the concept of treating corporations as people has, in practice, been a disaster. The flood of corporate money into elections since Citizens United has been just as bad as advertised, deference to the supremacy of corporate health as national health continues to rise, and still the very concept remains just as laughable now as it’s always been.

Since Ocean Beach and Pt. Loma have begun to have the streets paved, a mysterious sign has appeared that should be discussed. On the new paving is a picture of a bike – a “two wheeler” every block or so. And on a pole near the decal, is the following: a picture of the decal and these words under it: “May Use Full Lane”. You have to be kidding?

Wall Street “Quant” Alexis Goldstein Joins the Opposition

By John Lawrence / San Diego Free Press / Will Blog For Food

Wall Street recruits young, just out of college computer science majors and mathematicians to become “quants” whose skills are used among other things to predict when pension funds are going to make huge trades so that Wall Street can jump in ahead of them and do deals effectively raising the price the pension fund must pay or lowering the profit they might make.

By Sub-Committee / Special to San Diego Free Press

The second, and last, item on the agenda of the very recent Pacific Beach Planning Board sub-committee for the re-development of the North Pacific Beach lifeguard station at Law St. was to do with a complaint from some local resident at some other local resident for erecting a temporary car shelter, of the canopy type, I imagine, and morphing it into a more permanent garage in their driveway or front yard, without a permit, of course.

This must also be the sub-committee for code compliance. The committee members seemed of a mind to propose a change in the city “garage morphing” building codes, rather than trying to enforce existing city ordinances, (“morphing” anything into something else is the best way to get around all these ridiculous governmental laws they keep making!) and as a second thought, suggested calling “the TURKO Files” to complain, as Mr. Turko seems to be the only one willing to question bureaucratic policies, and actually get something done about it… thank you Mr. Turko!

Good morning Dudes and Dudettes!

Today, Wednesday, June 20, 2012, is the eighth annual International Surfing Day. Regardless of the June Gloom or lack of bump in the water, Our Mother Ocean is calling us to come and play…especially if you surf.

Now I know most who work in OB most likely will not have a problem getting the time off to commune with our Beautiful Lady to the West. Not all who live in San Diego, however, live west of I-5. I do not understand this, but it is the subject for another time.

So for those of you who work for uptight, tie-wearing, clock-puchin’, worried-about-makin’-a-buck bosses, regardless if it is in a high-rise downtown or changing tires in El Cabong, you need to get in the water. Have no fear, an answer has been provided to your dilemma.

Seems Jim Moriarty, the CEO of the Surfrider Foundation (truly an oxymoron if I ever heard one) has taken time to provide those of us who need to splain’ to their bosses why they need to get off work.

Just cut and past the link below, and Jim has drafted a fill-in-the-blank letter which should, in most reasonable cases, allow you to get off work. It looks official enough that if you worked for me, I’d give you the day off.

Editor: Here are two “letters to the editor” sent out by local Point Lomas, Susan Town Shea, and Judy Hagar Schons, pleading to their fellow citizens to save Balboa Park, to oppose the Jacobs’ plan, and to support SOHO. We decided that they were important enough to cast as one of our irregular Reader Rants. Susan and Judy, I am proud to say, are also from the Point Loma High School Class of 1966 – my class sisters!

___________

Many years ago, my mother, Mae Louise Ford Town, was a frequent contributor to Letters to the Editor. Harold Keane, newscaster, had called her “that woman on Pt. Loma”. Mae Louise Town tried to impress the sanity of keeping San Diego true to zoning, historical importance, and natural beauty of San Diego.

This was despite the ill advised people trying to ruin our city, propelled by greed and disrespect, our City Council! I feel compelled, as a second generation San Diegan, to take over the gauntlet my Mother carried.

In protesting what the City Council is supporting, in ruining Plaza de Panama, I say enough is enough! SOHO needs everyone’s support! REACT! Before it’s too late. We are not like L.A. We will be if greedy, unconscionable, thoughtless people ‘in charge ‘ are left alone.

Susan Town Shea

_____________

Massive protests in Cairo and other citeis against military rule as their candidaten declares himself winner of presidential vote.

AlJazeera/ June 20 , 2012

Thousands of Egyptians have packed into Cairo’s Tahrir Square to protest against the ruling military council’s decision to claim new powers, amid contesting claims by both presidential candidates of victory in the weekend’s election.

In the hub of the uprising that deposed president Hosni Mubarak, protesters chanted against his military successors, with a steady trickle of people joining the demonstration after sunset.

The demonstration on Tuesday comes against a backdrop of uncertainty over the winner of the presidential vote, with the Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi and his rival, former prime minister Ahmed Shafik, both claiming victory.

By Frances O’Neill Zimmerman
A veterans’ group led by the owner of the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club wants to light up inky-dark Mount Soledad nights and is seeking official approval next week for this unprecedented alteration to the highest viewpoint on the west side of the city of San Diego.

At stake is encroaching light pollution within our urban area and maintaining Mount Soledad as a sacred dark space for viewing the night sky — shooting stars, unusual planetary alignments, spectacular moonrises, eclipses of the moon. Generations of San Diegans and visitors to San Diego have experienced the beauty of the nighttime sky and the 360-degree panorama of the city below from atop Mount Soledad.

By Michael Blood / HuffPost / June 19, 2012

AN JUAN CAPISTRANO, Calif. — A botched computer analysis resulted in design flaws that are largely to blame for unprecedented wear in steam tubes at the San Onofre nuclear power plant, but it isn’t clear how the problems can be fixed, federal regulators said.

The preliminary findings by a team of Nuclear Regulatory Commission investigators were disclosed Monday night nearly five months after the seaside plant was shut down following a break in a tube that carries radioactive water. There is no date to restart either of its two reactors.

The problems center on excessive tube wear in steam generators that were installed at San Onofre during a $670 million overhaul in 2009 and 2010. Tests found some tubes were so badly corroded that they could fail and possibly release radiation, a stunning finding inside the virtually new equipment.