Author: Source

By Lisa Halverstadt / Voice of San Diego / Feb. 22, 2021

As City Council President Jen Campbell and stakeholders on both sides of the vacation rental saga prepare to debate yet another regulation proposal, they’re grappling with an inconvenient truth: No one knows exactly how many vacation rentals there are in the city. Campbell has predicted her plan could slash the number of whole-home rentals in the city by at least two-thirds.

But new data obtained separately by Voice of San Diego and the city’s Office of the Independent Budget Analyst suggests Campbell’s proposal may not reduce the number of whole-home vacation rentals as much as she predicts.

By Kevin Hastings

Tomorrow, Tuesday, Feb 23rd, councilmember Jen Campbell will seek to legalize all the Short Term Vacation Rentals (STVRs) in your neighborhood, and leave room for even more. Her proposal has been endorsed by Airbnb and VRBO, but none of the neighborhood community groups.

Campbell’s policy was developed behind closed doors by VRBO and a hotel worker’s union and successfully dodged public input and scrutiny. It would create a 4-tier licensing system covering everything to full-time STVRs without host on site (Tier 3 & 4), to the uncontroversial part-time rentals and room shares (Tier 1 & 2).

It would limit licenses for the full-time whole-home STRs to approximately 6,500 city-wide. Campbell has peddled this as a “78% reduction in STRs” that will “return 7,000 units to long term housing”. She does this despite providing no analysis of the existing number and types of STRs. A cursory study of the existing STR situation, and a previous study commissioned by the city both show her claims to be false.

By Colleen O’Connor

Unable to travel? Unhappy about sheltering in place? Depressed about our blue planet’s future; aging; or just in a funk about the enormity of change and loss.

Fret not. There is a remedy close at hand. In fact, two of them; both contenders for big acting awards; directing awards; foreign film and storytelling awards.

Think about it. A dreadful 2020 year producing two marvelous films (both based on books) with two great, older actresses.

The stories confront generational and cultural sufferings without sentimentality and hardly any make-up.

The first, The Life Ahead, starring 86-year-old, Sophia Loren, (where she plays the lead as Madame Rosa) has already won the San Diego Film Critics Society “Best International Film” award, and the Capri Hollywood International Film Festival nod for Best Actress.

Oscar nominations and award decisions are still pending; delayed due to the pandemic.

At age 86, Sophia Loren has already collected five Golden Globes, 10 Donatellos, one BAFTA, one Grammy, two Oscars, not to mention multiple lifetime achievement awards.

By Bill McKibben / Reader Supported News – The New Yorker / February 18, 2021

Sometimes, all you need is a map. In the wake of this week’s power failures in Texas, which have left millions without heat in subfreezing conditions, right-wing politicians and news networks decided that the emergency was down to “frozen wind turbines,” a phrase that has now been repeated ad infinitum on all the various ganglia that make up the conservative “information” network.

The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, which has managed to be wrong about energy and climate for more than four decades, put it like this:

“Gas and power prices have spiked across the central U.S. while Texas regulators ordered rolling blackouts Monday as an Arctic blast has frozen wind turbines.”

Governor Greg Abbott took time out from failing to deal with the emergency that had imperiled many in his state to tell Fox News that “this shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America.”

Not to be outdone, on Tuesday afternoon, Representative Dan Crenshaw, a Republican who represents Texas’s second congressional district, including parts of Houston, tweeted that “this is what happens when you force the grid to rely in part on wind as a power source.”

By Don Bauder / Times of San Diego / Feb. 18, 2021

A mob incited by then-President Trump invaded the Capitol. Everybody knows about that mob.

But what about the other mob that has been nurtured, cuddled, stroked by Trump? By whatever name — Mafia, organized crime, gangsters — this mob has gotten very little media attention, particularly in the 2016 and 2020 elections.

Let’s call the first Mob 1 and the second Mob 2.

As noted last September, I have followed Trump’s Mob 2 since the 1980s. But in this essay, I will rely on works of three great investigative journalists: David Cay Johnston, an expert on Trump’s fraudulent finances; the late Wayne Barrett, who for decades reported on Trump and other New York crooks, and Dan E. Moldea, the reporter who exposed the cozy relationship between professional sports team owners and organized crime.

Straight Up With a Twist

By Edwin Decker

Hi Ed, I was all set to have a small (and safe) birthday gathering in my back yard with a handful of close friends. But the day before my birthday, the riot at the capital happened and two of my friends backed out . . . One of them said she couldn’t justify going to a party while, as she put it, “[T]he country is on fire.” The other one said that the riot was the last straw, on top of rising COVID-19 and mounting police brutality incidents . . . She even insinuated that I should have cancelled outright. I didn’t, but do you think she was right?

Julene H.M.

Dear Julene, I can’t help but wonder if people like this are real and if so, why they didn’t just slit their own wrists in the womb. Ok, sure, 2020 has been a festering canker on the anus of humanity, but what does 2020 expect us to do, crawl in a cave and watch stalactites grow? If you think like that you’ll always find a reason to avoid living in the moment.

by OBPB

The OB Planning Board is holding elections on March 3, 2021. If you’ve attended a Planning Board meeting within the LAST 12 months, are at least 18, and live, own property or own a business within the OB Planning Area, the Planning Board invites you to submit an application to be a WRITE-IN candidate. Please submit your application by March 2, 2021.

Elections

3 Ways to Vote in 2021

By mail: Print and mail your voter registration form and ballot to Ocean Beach Planning Board, 4876 Santa Monica Ave. #133, San Diego, CA 92107. Must be in our mail box by 4 pm, March 3, 2021 to be counted.

by Jill Castellano / inewscource / February 12, 2021

For the second time, a federal watchdog agency found that the Department of Veterans Affairs’ investigation into unethical liver research performed on San Diego veterans was “not reasonable.”

The U.S. Office of Special Counsel published new reports on Tuesday, Feb. 8, revealing more details about the mistakes and violations that occurred during the research and its dissatisfaction with the VA’s investigation into what happened. inewsource broke the story about the unethical study in 2018 as the first article in its Risky Research series.

The study at the San Diego VA was part of a $6 million international project to find new therapies for people with alcoholic hepatitis. Researchers around the world were supposed to collect these patients’ leftover liver tissue after they received biopsies and look for patterns.

But that’s not what happened in San Diego.

By Colleen E. Putzel / Times of San Diego / Feb. 16, 2021

Like most tragedies, the onset of the pandemic produced a call for unity with sentiments ensuring “we’re all in this together.”

Every outlet, from the daily news to hand-made window signs, offered appreciation for those on the front line: health care workers, grocery store clerks, public transportation workers, and truck drivers. My father, a truck driver, and my mother, a seamstress, suddenly became heroes.

My father goes to work every day delivering construction materials and my mother paused her Etsy sales to make masks for her local hospital. I feared, especially early on, that my father’s company would begin laying off workers. As that threat seemed less imminent, it was replaced by the fear that he would be exposed to the virus.

On the one year anniversary of San Diego County’s declaration of a local health emergency due to COVID-19, there are hopeful signs that the worst of the pandemic could be behind us. And these charts and graphs demonstrate the basis of that hope.

It was on February 14th, 2020, Valentine’s Day, that San Diego County declared a local health emergency to combat the coronavirus. At that time there were two confirmed cases of COVID-19 in San Diego County and several suspected cases.

One year later to the day, more than a quarter of a million people in San Diego County have tested positive for COVID-19 and 3,000 people have died. But because there is hope, it does not mean we stop or ease up on

By Donna Frye / San Diego Union-Tribune / Feb. 8, 2021

The political polarization facing our country today is not a new thing. People have been fighting about their differing points of view for as long as anyone can remember.

What is relatively new, however, is the speed at which massive amounts of information can be disseminated to millions of people at the same time.

Not that long ago, people generally relied upon the newspaper, television or radio to find out what was happening both locally and nationally. Those were also the venues people used to communicate their points of view, especially to the public at large.

People sent letters to the editor or called radio programs. Sometimes days passed before their response was received and published. In other words, there was time between the information being received and the response being sent.

That’s not how it works today.

By Colleen O’Connor

Time to be blunt. Teachers, students and children are the new electoral battering rams amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Just as I wrote in June of last year, the 2020 Presidential election it was “not Biden v. Trump, but COVID-19 v. Trump).” And the GOP’s own confidential postmortem report (as quoted on Politico), confirms it.

“The autopsy says that coronavirus registered as the top issue among voters, and that Biden won those voters by a nearly 3-to-1 margin. A majority registered disapproval of Trump’s handling of the virus.