Author: Source

The number of San Diegans using food stamps to help supplement their income has increased by 89 percent since January 2009, according to the County’s Health and Human Services Agency.

For several years the number of people using food stamps, also known as the CalFresh program, in San Diego, in comparison to other cities across the country was extremely low. In January 2009 San Diego’s food stamp program had 122,878 recipients. In July 2011, there were 232,255 food stamp recipients in San Diego almost double the number in less than two years.

Some of the country’s best-known multi­national corporations closely guard a number they don’t want anyone to know: the breakdown between their jobs here and abroad.

So secretive are these companies that they hand the figure over to government statisticians on the condition that officials will release only an aggregate number. The latest data show that multinationals cut 2.9 million jobs in the United States and added 2.4 million overseas between 2000 and 2009.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt / Excuse Me, I’m Writing / August 28, 2011

Friday, August 26, was Women’s Equality Day. Sadly, it’s a bit of a misnomer. Besides, how many people actually know what it is that the day celebrates? It surely is not equality. Women don’t have equality. Even I don’t have equality, and I am no pantywaist — but the same rights, responsibilities and opportunities as men? Oh my goodness, no. Women, as a class, have not yet achieved any of that.

By Mike Lee/SignOnSanDiego.com

A garbage truck on Tuesday morning picked up food scraps from seven grocery stores around San Diego and chugged to Miramar Landfill in what normally would have been an unremarkable moment.

But instead of turning into the zone for dumping trash, it delivered the mash of fruit, pastries and similar items to the composting yard and launched what many around the region hope is a new era of waste-reduction.

Editor: Here’s a timely article from the LA Times about how the State Lands Commission has grossly mismanaged millions of acres of public land, costing Californians tens of millions of dollars and benefiting large corporations, all the while the State is cutting teachers and aid to the poor. Oh, by the way, you fledgling investigative reporters, what public lands in San Diego County are being mismanaged by the State?

By Patrick McGreevy / Los Angeles Times / August 24, 2011

Businesses and dozens of other large corporations have benefited from officials’ mismanagement of more than 4 million acres of public land, according to a state audit released Tuesday. The cost to taxpayers could easily be in the tens of millions of dollars, the auditors say, at a time when the state has been forcing teacher layoffs and cutting aid to the poor.

Editor: The mainstream, corporate media has been blatantly ignoring what’s been going on in Washington, DC. There have been five days of sit-in’s and arrests at the White House in protest of the proposed oil pipeline.

By Frances Beinecke / HuffPost / August 24, 2011

It is the fifth day of the sit-ins at the White House urging President Obama to deny a permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline.

“What concerns us as people of faith is the destruction of the human spirit. When human beings are subjected to conditions that destroy who they are, it is incumbent upon the whole faith community to call our culture, and yes, even our government, to accountability. If we allow solitary confinement to continue in our society – especially when we have been informed of the harmful results – what does that say about the kind of people we have become?”

In 1995 in Ocean Beach, California, childhood friends Miles Doughty and Kyle McDonald formed a band that created a fusion of music between acoustic rock and blues and reggae, hip-hip, and punk. Soon after, the late Sublime frontman Bradley Nowell discovered the duo and asked them to perform a set at the Foot Hill Tavern in Long Beach, California. Nowell immediately signed them to his label, Skunk Records, while the band was still in high school. Sixteen years later, Doughty and McDonald, known as Slightly Stoopid, have released eight albums and have been compared to bands such as Sublime, Operation Ivy, Rancid, and Streetwise.

By Jennifer Dreyer / Guest Columnist Voice of San Diego / August 22, 2011

Recently I’ve been asked why San Diego should elect a pro-choice mayor. After all, mayors run city departments, manage the municipal budget, and (hopefully) set a clear vision for our city’s future. They do not run any health services or enact heath care policy. So why should it matter whether San Diego’s next mayor is pro-choice?

The answer is that it matters greatly. During the past decade, anti-abortion rights groups have expanded their agenda to oppose contraception programs and women’s health services.

By Phat Jim / San Diego Politico / August 22, 2011

What in the Sam Hell. . .

To those of you out there who are more closely intertwined with politics than I am these days, I have one question – what in the sam hell is Bonnie Dumanis doing? It looks like Dumanis and DeMaio are both skipping the mayoral debates between now and Oct. 17.

By John Lawrence / Will Blog For Food / August 23, 2011

The Tea Party wants to get “government off ‘our’ back.”

But is government really on our back or is the case really that corporations and wealthy interests are on government’s back? There are 40,000 or more lobbyists in Washington, DC. They are there for the purposes of extracting taxpayer money for their corporate sponsors’ benefits and for no other reason.

How could the US put five million unskilled workers on the job in three months without raising taxes? Simple- invest in a self-payout revolving fund which would underwrite putting solar panels on residential roofs all over America. Much of this labor is pretty much unskilled labor. You certainly don’t need a college degree to haul solar panels onto a roof and screw them down.