Category: Culture

By Paul Krueger / Times of San Diego / Sept. 10, 2026

The Aug. 26 conclusion of the lawsuit challenging San Diego’s inflated trash fee has prompted the release of new details about the cost to taxpayers of a divisive and unnecessary legal dispute.

The lawsuit was sparked by a City Council vote that approved a “world-class” trash and recycling program with new bins, weekly recycling, bulk-item pick-up, “radio frequency identification” tags and other add-ons.

Those perks — plus salaries for additional city employees to deliver the services — bumped the estimated baseline fee from about $23 a month to more than $40 monthly.

Taxpayers revolted. Facing both a ballot measure and a lawsuit, the City Council in May approved a compromise that significantly reduced both the fee and the scope of service.

The settlement scuttled the proposed ballot measure and resolved the lawsuit. But the dispute was still a drain on city finances.

NY Times Editorial Board – RSN / Sept. 9–11, 2026

President Trump has a long record of threatening rather than protecting the integrity of American elections. At his worst, he sought to overturn the 2020 results. Now he is menacing the midterms, with an executive order that would throw voting by mail into chaos if it went into effect.

It is up to the Supreme Court to prevent that. Nearly one in three voters now vote by mail. Mr. Trump’s order has already sowed doubt about whether Americans can continue to trust the Postal Service to deliver their ballots and prompted bipartisan alarm from states and local election officials. The sooner the court puts Mr. Trump’s ill-advised directive to rest, the better.

Mr. Trump’s order is illegal. He does not have the authority to set the rules for election administration. The Constitution gives that role to the states, with Congress providing oversight. “The times, places and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations,” Article I states.

As a bipartisan task force said in 2021 in response to a relatively minor executive order from President Joe Biden, “Presidents don’t have much of a role in how elections are run — and that’s a good thing.” Nevertheless, Mr. Trump ordered the Postal Service in March to decide which voters would receive mail-in ballots, a decision that states have always made for themselves.

Claiming Democrats are “communists” is another fantasy crisis.

Bill Eddy / Substack / Aug 17, 2026

Remember the 2016 election campaign when Donald Trump repeatedly called Hillary Clinton “Crooked Hillary” and the entire Republican Convention chanted “Lock Her Up”? Yes, she improperly used a personal server for her emails sometimes for government business—just like many Republicans in government did without consequence. She was not prosecuted for this, but less than two weeks before the election, the Director of the FBI, James Comey, notified Congress that they were investigating an unrelated laptop that suddenly showed up with some of her emails. This gave the bogus claim extra credibility at the worst time. Trump won the election and the issue promptly vanished. Trump’s con was highly effective and may have won him the Presidency.

Now It’s Communism?

In August, 2024, at a press conference while gearing up for the Presidential Election against Kamala Harris, Trump explained his strategy: “All we have to do is define our opponent as being a communist or a socialist or somebody who is going to destroy our country.” He then branded her “comrade Kamala” as his favorite label throughout the campaign. Reports indicate that he used this term somewhere between 30 and 80 times in his speeches in the fall of 2024. And he won the election.

by Ernie McCray

It’s so refreshing,

especially nowadays,

to hear ideas being expressed

in loving ways,

and I listened, recently,

to a few speakers,

at a forum sponsored by

H.O.M.E.

the abbreviation for

Humanitarian Outreach for

Migrant Emotional Health,

who spoke with affection concerning how the organization

goes about its mission to ensure

that the voices of asylum seekers,

ICE detainees,

and immigrants in removal proceedings

By Muir Avenue Ale

Amtrak has ruined my vacation, and I’m pissed.

For years, Amtrak has sold the California Rail Pass for $159. For the right kind of traveler and the right trip, it’s almost too good to be true. During a 21-day period, you can use the pass for seven days of nearly unlimited travel (four trips per day).

The pass includes these four train lines:

• Pacific Surfliner: San Diego to San Luis Obispo
• Gold Runner (my favorite): Bakersfield to Bay Area
• Capital Corridor: Bay Area
• Coast Starlight: Los Angeles to Dunsmuir

These trains are connected by a bunch of bus routes, which the pass covers. Two of these buses even take you into Nevada (Reno, Las Vegas) for no extra charge.

By Point Loma Observer

Last week, Voice of San Diego updated readers on Awaken Church and its “out there” pastor, Jurgen Matthesius, including a link to a recently posted supercut of clips from Matthesius’ sermons. The clips include his claims that he shrank a child’s inoperable tumor through prayer and that God called on him to pray for the tanks to stop during the Tiananmen Square massacre, prompting him to spontaneously speak in what the article characterizes as “Asian-tinged tongues.”

“Out there” is putting it mildly.

But Matthesius and Awaken Church are not simply a religious curiosity. As many Rag readers know, their influence extends into San Diego’s political arena.

In 2024, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported that Richard Bailey, now a candidate for San Diego City Council District 2, assisted members of the Awaken Church’s political arm, RMNNT, in their efforts to get elected to local office.

By Debbie L. Sklar / Special to the OB Rag

In 1855, a group of San Diegans began prospecting for coal on Point Loma.

The project was an ambitious one. The San Diego Coal Co. hoped to develop the deposit into a local source of fuel and a profitable business for its investors. A local coal supply also could have helped San Diego compete as a coaling station for steamships and potentially benefit from future railroad development.

The men behind the venture were associated with San Diego’s small Mormon community. Among them was Ephraim Green, a former member of the Mormon Battalion who later said he had noticed coal on Point Loma before leaving San Diego in 1847.

The story has acquired a mythology of its own. One version says the Mormon prospectors were acting on a “revelation” that coal could be found there. But the historical record tells a more complicated story.

Reports of possible coal deposits on Point Loma dated to at least 1849. In 1855, Green returned to California and told members of the Mormon colony at San Bernardino about the coal he remembered seeing on Point Loma. He eventually led interested men to the site.

The prospecting soon became a formal business.

The San Diego Coal Co. was formed in November 1855 by Green, H.C. Ladd, George Warren Sirrine and Seth Benjamin Tanner.

Contact Governor Newsom Immediately to Veto SB 344 -the Midway Rising Gut-and-Amend Bill

By Donna Frye

[Here’s Part 1]

If you’ve been following the Midway Rising development project for the past many years, you know how complicated it has become. The project being proposed includes a new sports arena and housing development in the Midway area that “was once part of the river bottom and alluvial flood plain area of the San Diego River.”

Most recently, state legislation (SB 344) was introduced at the very last minute and passed via a shameful gut-and-amend political maneuver by the state legislators.

It’s been difficult to watch this process play out and not feel disconnected from the elected officials who are supposed to represent us. But it’s no wonder especially when our representatives work so hard to shut us out of the process.

That being said, we still have to do something to try and stop SB 344 from being signed into law.

By Nicole Crosby, Candidate for San Diego City Council District 2

It’s no secret that many of us feel left behind by City Hall. It’s a sentiment I hear from and share with my neighbors every day. With costs on the rise, our infrastructure crumbling, and City leaders pushing half-baked solutions to complex issues, it’s easy to see why.

These were the issues on my mind when I decided to launch my campaign for City Council District 2, which covers the neighborhoods of Ocean Beach, Mission Beach, Point Loma, Clairemont, Midway, Old Town, and North Bay. These are the neighborhoods where I started my family, served as the President of the PTA and Clairemont Town Council, and am proud to be raising my daughter.

And as a working mom, I know this race isn’t about abstract ideas or numbers on a spreadsheet; it’s about real problems that impact real people’s lives. I have served the City Attorney’s office for over a decade, where I’ve stood up for victims of elder abuse, hate crimes, and gun crimes. Every day, I work to help ordinary people secure justice and dignity against those who try to exploit them. Now, I’m running to take that fight to City Hall on behalf of our neighborhoods and stand up against the corporate special interests that want us to stay quiet.

While serving in the community, I have seen firsthand the ways that the system is rigged against working San Diegans: whether it’s corporate short term vacation rentals turning affordable homes in our communities into unregulated hotels, a recreational airfield spreading pollution directly into our backyards, or a stunning lack of investment in basic infrastructure and services. What would fixing these issues and making City Hall actually work for us mean in our everyday lives?

Reporter Interviews Editordude and Cites His Study, “Death and Distress at Sunset Cliffs”

By Andrew J. Campa / The Los Angeles Times / September 8, 2026

SAN DIEGO — As dusk approached San Diego’s seaside enclave of Ocean Beach, its Sunset Cliffs bustled on a recent Friday evening. Two engaged couples posed for wedding photos in between joggers, dog walkers and sightseers who clamored around Osprey Street to enjoy the day’s majestic sunset.

It was a deceptively idyllic setting for what authorities say is continued lawbreaking and peril, which authorities just can’t seem to quash.

The lawbreakers were gathered this day on a cliff and a nearby arch, a crowd of around 50 young people — 14- to 20-year-olds, mostly males. Buoyed by a youthful sense of invincibility, they dared one another to leap, waiting for another to move, like emperor penguin chicks before a first arctic plunge. After a few minutes, there was a dive off the arch, followed by a cannonball from the next person, a backflip from a third and then other more spectacular and daring stunts from the flock. The cliff divers, drawn to the thrills of the illicit jumps amplified by social media, reveled in dozens of leaps.

No one was injured that day, but that hasn’t always been the case.

By Mat Wahlstrom

Consider what can be accomplished in four years. High school, college, military service, medical residency, a term in political office, a vehicle lease, can all be encompassed in that time. So it is fitting to reflect that four years ago today was the kickoff of the Midway Rising scheme, when the San Diego City Council’s Land Use and Housing Committee voted unanimously to send it to the full council as their “recommendation” of the three proposals winnowed by Todd  Gloria’s staff.

Here is the link to the original write-up of that meeting by Jennifer Van Grove in the San Diego Union-Tribune. (Full disclosure: one of the public comments she reported was by yours truly, so judge for yourself how well this project has aged.)

It was already clear that the fix was in for Midway Rising. La Prensa revealed a week before the committee’s vote that the couple behind its development team had been the largest individual contributors to Todd Gloria’s 2020 political campaign.