Category: California

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.

“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?”

“If we don’t get a deal, “ grocery workers union leader pledged, “we’ll take this fight to the streets.” Picketing could begin this week.

By East County Magazine

A grocery workers’ strike at Vons, Albertsons and Ralphs supermarkets could begin as early as this week. Union members voted overwhelmingly on Saturday to authorize leaders to call a strike, with 90% voting in favor.

by Lucas O’Connor / Two Cathedrals / August 18, 2011

Two months ago I took on some of the most persistent failures of conventional wisdom in San Diego politics, including that the city’s voters lean to the right. At the time, I pointed out that the city of San Diego is not only willing to elect Democrats, it voted for every possible Democrat in the November 2010 election by almost the exact same margin as the state overall. Now, California has become a reliably Democratic state over the last ten or twenty years, so it’s perhaps worth going back over a sample size a bit larger than last November.

I have spent most of the week poring over news stories, blogs and commentary on last week’s decision by Bay Area Rapid Transit officials to shut off cellphone service to quash planned protests on its trains and platforms.

Opinions are many and range from BART spokesman Linton Johnson, who says constitutional rights end the moment people walk through transit-authority turnstiles, to “X” of the hacker collective Anonymous, who protested BART’s action and said our freedom to connect should be absolute and universal.

The other night, after dark, there was a knock on my door. I thought it was a friend, but lo and behold, a young woman with a clipboard. I thought, no, not another person with a clipboard asking for donations or to buy a subscription to the UT.

I admit I may have been a bit brusque with my usual “I’m sorry, I’m not interested in buying anything… ” and she said, “I’m not selling anything,” or something to that effect. I then informed her that I wasn’t able to make any donations. I don’t remember what she said after that, but within the next moment or two she said she was from CALPIRG.

By Lyneva Mottley

It’s hard to believe that it’s been 46 years since August 11, 1965, the day the Watts uprising began.

I’ll never forget the fear that I felt watching the chaos unfold. I was shocked but not surprised: you could feel the anger and frustration building up during that hot summer.

The booming California economy was providing little opportunity for people of color. Public policy was benefiting the already fortunate and was leaving behind those who were already disadvantaged. In California, as in the rest of the country, African American and Latino families were reaching a boiling point that could not be contained any longer. Over the following two years there were a number of additional riots in Chicago, Newark, Detroit and elsewhere.

There is growing community interest in acquiring the keys to two parks in San Diego County that the governor plans to padlock next year.

Organized groups have launched preliminary talks with state parks officials with hopes of saving Palomar Mountain and San Pasqual Battlefield parks if pending legislation passes to permit nonprofits to take over campgrounds, museums and forests.

By Miriam Rafferty / East County Magazine / July 28, 2011

Hundreds of local residents spoke out at a hearing held by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) Monday evening at the Al Bahr Shriners auditorium in San Diego.

The majority voiced support for a proposed merger between AT&T and T-Mobile. Supporters said the merger could create a more reliable network for cell phone service and create good-paying union jobs; many also praised AT&T’s record of community service. Opponents, by contrast, voiced concerns over creating a monopoly and feared the merger would lead to higher rates, decreased incentive for innovation, and job lay-offs.

By Mike Davis / TomDispatch.com / July 26, 2011

When my old gang and I were 14 or 15 years old, many centuries ago, we yearned for immortality in the fiery wreck of a bitchin’ ’40 Ford or ’57 Chevy. Our J.K. Rowling was Henry Felsen, the ex-Marine who wrote the bestselling masterpieces Hot Rod (1950), Street Rod (1953), and Crash Club (1958).

Officially, his books — highly praised by the National Safety Council — were deterrents, meant to scare my generation straight with huge dollops of teenage gore. In fact, he was our asphalt Homer, exalting doomed teenage heroes and inviting us to emulate their legend. One of his books ends with an apocalyptic collision at a crossroads that more or less wipes out the entire graduating class of a small Iowa town. We loved this passage so much that we used to read it aloud to each other.

It’s hard not to think of the great Felsen, who died in 1995, while browsing the business pages these days.

SAN FRANCISCO — Inmates have ended a three-week hunger strike in the high-security Pelican Bay State Prison in Del Norte County to protest conditions in isolation units at the facility and what they said were oppressive gang-security measures by prison officials, California prison officials say.

Advocates for the prisoners said they got confirmation late Thursday from the inmates themselves. Meanwhile, some inmates in three other state prisons who were refusing to eat in solidarity with those in Pelican Bay were continuing their strike until they could also receive confirmation, state officials said.

At the turn of the last century, as the robber barons’ first gilded age lingered on, many Californians came to regard one powerful enterprise as the symbol of oppressive avarice and of big money’s corrupt appropriation of the political process.