Author: Source

by Lucas O’Connor / Two Cathedrals

The first draft of state redistricting maps were released and approved [June 10th]. There will still be revisions, but this should be relatively close to what we’re dealing with. Flash analysis, roughly based on current numbering and roughly South to North.

Last week was a milestone in journalism, as the Huffington Post exceeded the New York Times in Web traffic and cemented its role as a main rival to the Gray Lady. It was also noted that the combined AOL-Huffington Post newsroom staff of 1,300 people is now bigger than the Times’ 1,200 person newsroom staff. While much of the debate about the rivalry has focused on Huffington Post’s adoption of savvy Internet tactics versus the much more old-school New York Times, very little of the discussion has focused on where the two newsroom differ the most: their labor practices.

Editor: Here’s yet another TV critique that heaps kudos onto “Terriers” – the private eye series filmed in OB but cancelled earlier this year. The Television Critics Association’s (TCA) announcement of its the nominations for the its 2011 awards included Terriers, which made the list for Outstanding New Program.

From the United Farm Workers

Our vital bill, the Fair Treatment for Farm Workers Act (SB 104) has passed the CA Senate and Assembly and will shortly go to Governor Jerry Brown.

The United Farm Workers has won solid laws to protect California farm workers who provide more than half of our nation’s produce. But with over 400,000 field workers migrating among 80,000 farms, these laws have not and cannot be enforced by the state of California.

By Laurie Macrae, MLS

May 25th, Capitol Action Day in Sacramento, saw a thousand members of the disability community, in-home health care workers and family members massed before the capitol trying to get the attention of state legislators who have put their survival on the chopping block.

It rained steadily as people, many in wheel chairs, many being assisted by care workers and many family groups moved about the pavilion and the various organization tables, gathering information and communicating with their regional counterparts. All day individuals and groups trooped in to the capitol building to meet with legislators.

Soccer is the great global game: the closest thing we have to a connective cultural tissue that binds our species across national and cultural borders. But only in a world so upside down could “the Beautiful Game” be run by an organization as corrupt as FIFA [international federation of football (soccer) association] and by a man as rotten to the core as FIFA President Sepp Blatter. Only Sepp Blatter, whose reputation for degeneracy approaches legend, hire a war criminal like Henry Kissinger to head “a committee of wise persons” aimed at “rooting out corruption” in his organization. And only these two twinning avatars of amorality would use “the Beautiful Game” as an instrument of Islamophobia.

By David Langston

Note: There will be a Town Hall Meeting on this issue on Thursday, June 9 at 6pm at Memorial Prep School at 2850 Logan in San Diego. The forum will highlight the impact of the foreclosure crisis, connect families in danger of losing their homes with resources, and discuss solutions to hold bad actors accountable.

The big banks shattered our economy and left workers and our communities to clean up the pieces. We’ve lost 8 million jobs, our retirement savings vanished, entire neighborhoods sit abandoned by foreclosure, and cities and states are facing an ever widening budget crisis.

By Monty Kroopkin / June 7, 2011

Saturday, June 4, 2011,the San Diego County Board of Supervisors was issued a warning. 700 County union members and their supporters rallied and picketed at the County Admin Building.

Many of the picket signs read: “More work, for less pay? No way!” and “Cut the Fat at the Top.” They marched around the County Center on Pacific Highway . They chanted. They ….

Using synthetic drugs such as spice will do more than just risk your military career — it could lead to serious and potentially long-term mental disorders.

That’s the initial observation by a Navy psychiatry resident who worked with sailors and Marines treated this past year at Naval Medical Center San Diego for using the popular-yet-banned drugs.

by Lucas O’Connor / Two Cathedrals/ June 3, 2011

Rapid transit received an angry NIMBY attack today over at the Reader, essentially complaining that transit is tied to density and that adding infrastructure actually takes space. It’s a lamentably familiar complaint that for things to change, things must actually change, and obscures the actual issues being faced as San Diego tries to improve transit, connect neighborhoods, and reclaim the budget from life-support.

Obama seems to be counting on the fact that the economy will recover on its own after the initial stimulus package. It’s starting to look like this was a bad bet. The Republicans of course have their job creation plan in place: lower taxes especially on the rich, less government spending and more deregulation or, in other words, the continuation of the transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the rich. However, this is precisely what has ruined the economy.

A San Diego judge said Friday [June 3, 2011] that a rope separating thousands of visitors from a colony of harbor seals on a La Jolla beach must come down for now. Superior Court Judge Lisa Foster said in a preliminary decision that she did not find evidence to support keeping up the rope at Children’s Pool beach beyond the seals’ pupping season, which goes from December to mid-May.