Serving OB, the Peninsula and San Diego Beaches
By Jim Bell
The ecology of our planet is the foundation of everything we do, including what we do under the heading of economy. When we damage our planet’s life-support system through inappropriate economic activities, we undercut the potential for economic activities in the future.
“Crowd control” training to be held at UCSD Thursday, August 4th, with police helicopter
Did you know that a couple hundred Explorer scouts from around the State are in San Diego this week for training on how to be cops? And the training includes “crowd control” during an improvised “riot” on the UCSD campus, complete with Sheriff deputies masquerading as “rioters” and the use of a police helicopter. This will take place Thursday evening, August 4th, at Residential Hall of 6th College.
On Tuesday, August 2nd, the County Board of Supervisors unanimously voted to direct staff to come up with a County redistricting map that would include one district with a population that had a majority of minorities. This would enable a minority candidate to break through the all-white, all-Republican blockade of access to the Board.
The current crop of Supervisors are all white, all Republican, and have been on the Board for 16 to 18 years each. This scenario is what prompted last year’s successful passage of a term-limits measure for the Board.
It was over 90 degrees in the shade, but the anger of the nearly 50 protesters outside Congressman Duncan Hunter’s office in El Cajon was even hotter.
It was noon, Tuesday, August 2nd, the day the debt deal was passed by the US Senate and signed into law by President Obama, and the protest event had been organized by a local chapter of MoveOn and its new coalition, the American Dream Movement.
By Miriam Rafferty / East County Magazine / August 1, 2011
Sempra Energy has asked the U.S. Department of Energy for a presidential permit to construct a cross-border transmission line called Energia Sierra Juarez to import electricity from Sempra facilities in Mexico. The line would cross the border near Jacumba in San Diego’s East County.
By John Lawrence / Will Blog For Food / July 31, 2011
Republicans want to “reform” social security. They say social security is broke. Not so.
There’s $2.5 trillion in the Social Security Trust Fund (SSTF). The way the funding for social security works is this. Workers pay a payroll tax otherwise known as a FICA tax. …
By Tom Engelhardt / TomDispatch.com / August 2, 2011
By now, it seems as if everybody and his brother has joined the debt-ceiling imbroglio in Washington, perhaps the strangest homespun drama of our time. It’s as if Washington’s leading political players, aided and abetted by the media’s love of the horserace, had eaten LSD-laced brownies, then gone on stage before an audience of millions to enact a psychotic spectacle of American decline.
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.
This venture I’m involved with, the UT’s Community Editorial Board, has brought about mostly affirmative responses from around the city.
But of course there have been those who’ve reacted to what we’re trying to do by throwing dirt on it like Richard Rider, well known tax fighter about town, who had this to say regarding my “Let’s Make a Better World for Our Children” kind of essay: “The first editorial “for the children” is by board member Ernie McCray, a lifetime hard left advocate. Indeed, as I recall, at one time McCray was actually the spokesperson for the local Communist Party. No, not the Democrat Party, or the Peace and Freedom (socialist) Party. The actual COMMUNIST PARTY. His lame response when confronted about this was that he was not a MEMBER of the Communist Party — they just needed an articulate spokesperson for their cause.”
By Bruce E. Levine / AlterNet / July 31, 2011 |
Traditionally, young people have energized democratic movements. So it is a major coup for the ruling elite to have created societal institutions that have subdued young Americans and broken their spirit of resistance to domination.
Young Americans—even more so than older Americans—appear to have acquiesced to the idea that the corporatocracy can completely screw them and that they are helpless to do anything about it.
The San Diego County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday [August 2, 2011] is expected to redraw its political boundaries —- and when it does, critics say, it will violate federal law.
The law in question is the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Civil rights activists say the redistricting map favored by the board, which consists of five white Republicans who have served together since the mid-1990s, violates the law by ignoring the county’s growing Latino population and further diluting minority voting power.
Last night, President Obama agreed to a deal with top Republicans that is widely seen as a big victory for the Tea Party.
It has trillions in spending cuts that will hurt poor and middle-class families and no taxes on the rich. It also lines up Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits for future cuts.
Nancy Pelosi said “none of us may be able to support it” — but many Democrats are making up their minds in the next few hours.
Can you call your Representative, Susan Davis, right now? Tell her to vote NO on this bad deal — Click here for her number and a script.
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