Author: Source

Competing plans by new “Gang of Four” and by Faulconer suggest not if, but how it will be done

By Craig Gustafson / San Diego U-T / May 10, 2011

Remember those devastating cuts to city parks and libraries proposed last month by San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders? Not going to happen.

A swift public outcry has led to dueling proposals from City Council members to restore the mayor’s suggested reductions in operating hours at branch libraries and recreation centers.

MISSION BAY — San Diego resident and San Diego Coastkeeper outreach coordinator Dylan Edwards grew up sailing and wakeboarding in Mission Bay, in a time when many people saw the aquatic park as little more than a contaminated saltwater lagoon.

“I remember people saying, ‘Eww, you wakeboard there?’” Edwards recalled. “I think it has that reputation because of the chronic sewage spills that happened in the 1990s and early 2000s.”

By Matt Corrales

In the current edition of another community publication, a column ran attacking the LGBT Redistricting Task Force as a “mostly all white so-called LGBT Redistricting Committee … working on a new 3rd District that would be about 70 percent all white and would kick out our first gay person of color elected to the city council”.

This analysis of the Task Force and the proposed District 3 map it produced is plain wrong in a number of ways.

by Lucas O’Connor / Two Cathedrals

It was perhaps with a certain perverse pleasure that political watchers in San Diego pounced in late March on Congressman Bob Filner’s seemingly accidental entrance into the mayor’s race. Not only was it easy to comment on—it was anything to comment on in the decidedly un-fun wasteland of redevelopment, budget cuts and pension reform.

REGION: Reshaping county districts draws yawn from County residents By Chris Nichols / North County Times / May 8, 2011…

Chanting “shared use is abuse” and “just one beach for the seals,” more than 30 seal sympathizers rallied in La Jolla [Saturday, May 7th] marching down to Children’s Pool carrying signs advocating creation of a marine mammal sanctuary there.

by Ed Joyce / KPBS / originally published May 3, 2011 Scripps Institution of Oceanography scientists said the sea level…

By Tony Barboza / Los Angeles Times / May 7, 2011 It was a gamble when Southern California Edison crews pushed…

“Anchor Baby” Member of Elite Seal Team Six

By Paul Hogarth

In the past few days, as America rejoices the capture and killing of Osama Bin Laden, I’ve thought about how this completely discredits the right-wing worldview – and how Republicans who pander to that ilk are now in trouble.

First, let’s state the obvious. A President named Barack Hussein Obama who many Republicans believe is not a “real” American was able to track down the World’s Most Wanted Terrorist –

NBC San Diego reports: Two surfers who overheard calls for help near Sunset Cliffs helped rescue a man trapped by…

From ThinkProgress.org

As ThinkProgress has repeatedly noted, crucial services and public investments for Main Street America are being gutted as taxes on the richest Americans are the lowest they’ve been in a generation. Yet many Americans may not know exactly how unfair this is, as the country has grown increasingly unequal at the same time. Using data from the CIA Factbook based on the Gini coefficient — a measure of income inequality within a society — ThinkProgress has assembled the following graph, which demonstrates that the United States is now about as economically unequal as Uganda and more unequal than countries like Pakistan or the Ivory Coast.

by Livia Borak

Two months. Exactly two months remain until the 4th of July holiday. We’ll take time off to enjoy the company of our friends and loved ones, fly our American flags and light the barbeque. And then the fireworks. What’s more American than buying hundreds of millions of dollars worth of fireworks from China, watching their explosive display, and then sitting in traffic for an hour? Sarcasm aside, 4th of July fireworks are, for most people, synonymous with the holiday. It’s tradition.