Author: Source

By Colleen O’Connor

“It’s the economy, stupid,” a phrase coined by Bill Clinton strategist, James Carville in 1992, defined that election and defeated President George W. Bush.

The 2024 election, however, will not be about the economy.  Inflation is hot again (nothing new); rents and housing are expensive.  The price of gas and food (kept out of the inflation stats) are already baked in.

Women know about these costs while trying to put “food on the table.”  Now their reproductive rights are at risk.  A bitter assault on personal, private decisions. The 2024 election will be about and for women. 

By Ken Stone / Times of San Diego / April 7, 2024

After a rally and brief march Thursday, a group of labor-union advocates at the University of San Diego entered the Hughes Administration Center and made their way to Room 222.

The office of James T. Harris III, USD’s president. They buzzed for entrance. No answer. “The door was locked,” Meghan Donnelly told fellow nontenure-track faculty and supporters after emerging from the campus HQ facing the stately Immaculata Church. She reported that an election plan had been slid under the door, so Harris would see it when he returns.

From Informed Infrastructure / April 8, 2024

Yesterday, Civitas, an award winning global landscape architecture and urban design firm, as a subconsultant to Moffatt and Nichol, a premier waterfront engineering practice, presented the latest design concepts for the replacement of the Ocean Beach Pier based on extensive community outreach and engagement over the past year. The presentation event provided community members with an exclusive look at the latest concept that the City of San Diego has selected based on the public’s preferences.

By Ken Stone | Times of San Diego – SDMetro / April 9, 2024

Using new concrete techniques may be key to a new Ocean Beach Pier that can last 50-75 years, design experts said Saturday at a presentation on replacing the iconic structure.

Following more than a year of community engagement, the City of San Diego at a Liberty Station presentation revealed the preferred design concept that captures the features San Diegans expressed they would like to see in a new pier.

By Colleen O’Connor

If you missed the excitement of the Eclipse or passed on the Carlsbad flowers this season. Or if you didn’t catch the Women’s National basketball semi-finals, with Caitlin Clark awing the country with record-breaking 3-point shots, don’t despair.

There is still a bit of wonder. Butterflies.

By Sandi Masori / San Diego Jewish World / April 7, 2024

One of the fun things about having friends come in from out of town is that they take you out of your normal travel patterns.  This is exactly how I found myself in Ocean Beach recently, a part of San Diego I have to admit I don’t get to enough.  Since I was there for the company I wasn’t really worried about where we would eat, and agreed that we could meet up and walk around and find something open.  I figured that we would be brunching on mediocre overpriced beach food, but I was oh so wrong.

We chose OB Surf Lodge for the location, It’s right across from the beach and has a great view.  We were there pretty early so we’re quickly seated.

Locals are bearing the cost of increasing rates, with many spending more than half of their income on rent

By Sasha Abramsky / San Diego Magazine – The Nation / April 4, 2024

Teresa, a 52-year-old with a solidly middle-class job in the healthcare industry, recently separated from her husband. At the time, the couple lived in Encinitas, in a large home they bought in 2010 for $450,000. When interest rates plummeted, they refinanced at less than 2.5 percent with only 13 years of payments left. Each month, the mortgage, the insurance, and the money they set aside for real estate taxes came to $2,900 between them.

But now, the market has shattered Teresa’s financial calculus. Even after she and her husband sold their house and split the profits, affording to buy again seems impossible.

The Biden administration should be preparing for the worst.

By Juliette Kayyem  / The Atlantic -RSN / April 8, 2024

No one in law enforcement should be caught off guard if trouble breaks out before, during, or after the November presidential election, because Donald Trump keeps talking as if addressing differences through violence is a normal part of the American political process. The presumptive Republican nominee recently promised forgiveness for the January 6 insurrectionists, posted a video involving a fake image of President Joe Biden hog-tied in the back of a truck, and riled up his supporters by claiming that “if we don’t win this election, I don’t think you’re going to have another election in this country.”

La Prensa Offers Time Line to Latest Scandal Affecting Midway Rising and Sports Arena Redevelopment

By Arturo Castañares / La Prensa / April 8, 2024

Sometimes it takes time and distance to see more clearly how relationships and interests help explain the actions of others.

We learned that lesson with the 101 Ash building debacle that was exposed by the media more than three years after insiders had worked together to fleece taxpayers and left a $200 million hole in the City’s budget with only a toxic, empty building to show for it.

Herbert Shore was a founding member of DSA in 1982 and San Diego chapter until he passed in February of 2024

by Mark Sherman and Virginia Franco / Democratic Left / March 29, 2024

In Herb’s own words “I was born in 1939 in Brooklyn, New York to secular, Jewish, working class parents. My parents were not actually Communist Party members, but our lives revolved around the ‘fellow traveling’ milieu that existed until the mid 1950s. So you might say I was born into the socialist movement; though no one in my family knew Karl Marx from Groucho Marx.” Those roots stayed with Herb throughout his life.

By The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board / April 4, 2024

The recent report that the San Diego Association of Governments is being investigated by the U.S. Justice Department said agency officials weren’t exactly sure what prompted the federal probe. That is in its own way a testament to the fact that SANDAG — the main regional transportation planning agency with a huge $1.3 billion annual budget — has been so awful on several fronts that any might trigger an inquiry.

The latest scandal certainly qualifies. Evidence shows SANDAG wrongly charged up to 45,000 drivers for a toll road they did not use, and an internal inquiry found agency officials knew of the bogus charges for more than a year without telling the agency’s Board of Directors. If a private business knowingly and persistently kept charging people for services they didn’t use, the indictments would be swift and public condemnation would be overwhelming.

Our friend Roger Showley (PLHS 1966]  just had some ideas of how San Diego could handle the “chase [of] the mirage of a new City Hall” that was published in the U-T Letters to the Editor:

Here’s an off-the-wall, back-to-the-future solution: The city buys back the half of the County Administration Center on Pacific Highway that it sold to the county in the 1960s.

The mayor, City Council and key administrators move in and develop a lot more collaboration with the county on a whole range of duties and projects.