Author: Anna Daniels

Editor: “City Heights – Up Close & Personal” is a weekly column by Anna Daniels at the San Diego Free Press, our own upstart launched last week. One of the aims of the SD Free Press is to cover long-ignored and forgotten communities around San Diego.

The home my husband and I bought in City Heights over two decades ago is a four mile straight shot along University Avenue from the little house we had rented in North Park for six years. Despite the short distance, the trips east to our new home were initially disorienting.

The San Diego City Council will cast its final vote at 2:00 pm today – Monday, June 11th, on Mayor Jerry Sanders’ budget for fiscal year 2013. Sanders released his budget in April. Stronger than projected although still modest revenue increases this past year enabled Sanders to address General Fund cuts that have occurred with regularity over the past years, with libraries and park and recreation being hit particularly hard.

The City Council held two public hearings since April on the budget. Council members then released their own budget recommendations with input from the Office of Independent Budget Analysis (IBA). Mayor Sanders subsequently released a revised budget in May. The City Council will vote on that revised budget today.

“The best lack all conviction while the worst are filled with passionate intensity.” Second Coming, William Butler Yeats

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.

ENDORSEMENTS PRIMARY ELECTION JUNE 5, 2012

CITY OF SAN DIEGO MAYOR

• BOB FILNER

US REPRESENTATIVE 51^ST DISTRICT

• DENISE MORENO DUCHENY

Go Inside for the rest of our endorsements ….

Another Endorsement That Hasn’t Happened Yet (But Still Could)

I didn’t realize that my House congressional district had been redrawn until a Juan Vargas campaign walker knocked upon my door in City Heights. I had to stop and think a moment. I had spent a number of yes, dramatic years, in Susan Davis’ district and it took me a moment to process the impact of the redistricting and that now I’m in the 51st Congressional District.

It took me less than a minute to respond to the question whether I would support Juan Vargas. When asked I said “No. Absolutely not and I’ll tell you why. He went missing on the single payer healthcare vote earlier this year.” Vargas ducked the vote, twice, despite receiving thousands of calls urging him to support the bill.

Vargas was presented with the “Spineless Rubber Chicken” award for sitting out a critical vote on this particular issue. We have a Democratic governor and a Democratic majority in the California legislature and the single payer health care option with dental coverage for our families and neighbor is dead, lacking two votes.

There is an evening public budget hearing tonight,

Monday, May14, beginning at at 6pm,

on the 12^th floor of city hall, 202 C street.

This is the evening hearing scheduled for working San Diegans to attend and give them two cents on the San Diego City budget.

Are Your Library Services “Good Enough?” Mayor Sanders and the City Council Think So

Outgoing Mayor Jerry Sanders recently declared an end to the structural deficit problems facing the city by virtue of his eight year reign of awesomeness. Revenues this past year were a modest 1.9% higher than anticipated, and Sanders was able to play the kindly king, distributing some of the revenue to deserving city departments in fiscal year 2013.

“I’m leaving party politics. I’m leaving behind a system that is completely dysfunctional.”

Nathan Fletcher, announcing his mayoral run as an Independent

_____

“Is you is or is you ain’t my baby
Maybe baby’s found somebody new
Or is my baby still my baby true?”

Louis Jordan

Nathan Fletcher’s recent decision to leave the Republican Party and campaign as an Independent has resulted in two interesting responses. A group of local executives, inspired by Fletcher’s decision, has formed a “Movement to the Middle.” Their pledge declares “I am not a Democrat. I am not a Republican. I am an American.” It is worth noting that these shakers and movers also support Fletcher’s candidacy.

The U-T San Diego’s editorial board, clearly in the Carl DeMaio camp, took Fletcher to task for what they perceived as the muddle of mush in the middle. Did this mean Fletcher would negotiate with those evil labor unions? Does Independent mean “compromise is always good?”

This is the sixth and final day in which “Doonesbury creator” Gary Trudeau satirizes Texas’ state mandated health care requirements for women seeking an abortion. Trudeau depicts a woman in the first trimester of an unwanted pregnancy as she undergoes a state mandated transvaginal sonogram, listens to her physician provide a state mandated detailed description of her possibly 2 ½ inch fetus, and then waits another state mandated 24 hours before having the abortion.

Are these really the same people who are frothing at the mouth about “big government mandated Obamacare?” My shit detector just hit “10.”

In an interview earlier this week with the Washington Post Trudeau explains the impetus for this week’s strips:

“For some reason, the GOP has chosen 2012 to re-litigate reproductive freedom, an issue that was resolved decades ago. Why Santorum, Limbaugh et al. thought this would be a good time to declare war on half the electorate, I cannot say. But to ignore it would have been comedy malpractice.”

Originally posted on March 15, 2012

A few words about political cartoons, U-T’s Steve Breen, and the blackout.

Over the past few days Doonesbury creator Gary Trudeau has depicted a woman’s experience in a Texas abortion clinic. The woman has been introduced to the shaming room, pronounced a suspected slut, and has been Rick Rolled, as Governor Rick Perry casts aside the woman’s own doctor’s health assessment to present a legislative edict of his own.

Trudeau has been a comic strip artist since 1970. He is also a Pulitzer Prize winning comic strip artist ( 1975), and political satirist and social commentator. It is therefore not a surprise that his cartoons riff off of the mainstream news and delivers them up with a distinctive point of view. This is what political satirists and commentators do.

That is what U-T San Diego’s own political cartoonist, Steve Breen does—he draws political cartoons that represent his own distinctive point of view. Breen was born in 1970, the same year that Trudeau became syndicated, and he has won two Pulitzer Prizes (1998, 2009).

Comics about women’s reproductive rights simply not “appropriate”

Doonesbury cartoonist Gary Trudeau takes on Texas’ controversial abortion laws this week, but you won’t see them in our big bold San Diego U-T. U-T editor Jeff Light joins a number of equally feckless editors in places like Kansas City, MO, pulling the strip completely, or providing “replacements.” Father knows best…

In today’s Doonesbury strip, a Texas woman walks into an abortion clinic and is introduced to the shaming room.

I arrived at the Federal Building while the San Diego Occupellas were still practicing. This Women Occupy group rewrites the lyrics of well know songs with punchy occupy themes. As one of the speakers would later point out, 99% of women use contraception, which is just one more reason to be part of the Occupy movement.

Over the past few weeks a seemingly endless parade of dour old pontificating shriveled up white guys have set us straight on contraception, abortion, sex and even the definition of life itself. They have done it at all levels of government, from the pulpits and on the airwaves.

Now that they have fixed the economy, brought back jobs and lowered the deficits, those who have been aptly described as “the best minds of the thirteenth century” can now turn their attention to what they really seem to enjoy—sex talk and lots of it!