Auditors from the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General say their snap visit to the Otay Mesa Detention Center - run by private prison contractor CoreCivic for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency …
Incompetence, not hackers, to blame? It’s been a tough year for San Diego city clerk Elizabeth Maland on the computer front. As revealed here on June 14, a legal disagreement between the clerk’s office and …
San Diego Navy labs and bases that employ so-called 3D printing technology – used to churn out everything from aircraft parts to teeth – are at high risk of hacker attacks, says a heavily redacted …
The Ed and Peter show Though it went unmentioned in last week’s coverage of his passing by the latest incarnation of the Union-Tribune, Ed Asner played various roles in San Diego politics. The Los Angeles …
San Diegans at the Renegade explain country music The Renegade does not hide behind that generic tyranny of the latest urban middle-class version of good taste. The tavern is in-your-face like Willie Nelson with his …
Gloria’s Colma casino cash When he was mayor of San Diego, Republican Kevin Faulconer was slapped with a $4000 fine by the city’s ethics commission (ultimately paid by his campaign committee) for failing to disclose …
Depending on whose ox is vaxxed It’s Democrat versus Democrat in Sacramento’s latest battle over whether to mandate vaccinations for employees, at least in the state capitol. After state Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon ordered lower …
UCSD’s moonlighting abuse It’s an open secret that some already richly paid UCSD academic staffers have been taking advantage of lax enforcement of the school’s limits on overtime, moonlighting, and other off-the-job activity to make …
The year of the big Covid-19 shutdown was San Diego city hall's most lucrative year for behind-the-scenes influence peddling. "In 2020, a total of 57 lobbying firms and 61 organization lobbyists registered a total of …
Adela’s changing of the guard When San Diego State president Adela de la Torre took charge back in August of 2018, some questioned her $441,504 salary, while others wondered how much change the campus’s first …
Allen Glick, a key figure in San Diego's bloodiest and arguably most famous Mafia hit, has died, his passing marked by a paid Union-Tribune obituary making no reference to its subject's colorful and deadly past …
Seven-figure overrun San Diego city officials have gotten a splash of cold water over their handling of last year’s showers-for-the-homeless program, called Operation Shelter to Home, in a July 21 report by City Auditor Andy …
Huell Howser, the folksy host of public television's California's Gold, who died in 2014, may be spinning in his grave, but a top North County politico wants to emulate him on YouTube, courtesy of a …
God’s Dirt “It’s not for the faint-hearted. It’s pretty high-risk because they’re very, very, very, very perishable. When the flowers are bloomed, you have to pick ’em. And you have to sell ’em. Otherwise you …
Papa Doug’s benefactor Tom Barrack, a top Donald Trump’s presidential money-raiser indicted last week for failing to register as a foreign agent, has many ties to San Diego, not the least of which is his …
Political roller coaster The San Diego Coaster Company, which runs the city-owned Giant Dipper roller coaster and related Belmont Park amusements, paid $12,000 to Sacramento-based Axiom Advisors in the first three months of 2021. The …
A Last Hurrah of sorts comes tomorrow morning, July 20, at St. Rita's Catholic Church with a funeral Mass to be presided over by San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy. Father Joe Carroll, long a key …
Jason Cabel Roe, the onetime political eyes, ears, and, some say, brain of GOP San Diego mayor Kevin Faulconer, is out as executive director of Michigan's Republican Party. "I resigned my position as executive director …
Faulconer’s China connection Some well-heeled members of the made-in-China clothing crowd are coming out for Republican ex-San Diego mayor Kevin Faulconer’s bid to become governor. Among them is Gerard Guez, chairman of the board at …
Raised Not to Hope Too Hard Sherley Anne Williams built her career celebrating the ways black folks talked and acted. School-wise, street-smart, and quick-tongued, she reserved her deepest antipathy for those outside the African-American experience …
Tale of two mayors In the tainted annals of the Jason Hughes city hall real estate scandal, before Kevin Faulconer there was Bob Filner. Hughes, a wealthy Rancho Santa Fe resident, spread his campaign cash …
As the stock market reaches near record highs, wealthy House Democrat Sara Jacobs of San Diego unloaded a raft of personal shareholdings, some potentially controversial, per a May 28 Periodic Transaction Report filed with the …
Kemp and the Fugitive Fotomat also gave Graham a political base. One of the first beneficiaries was Jack Kemp. On May 23, 1968, the San Diego Union reported that Kemp had “joined Fotomat Corp., La …
As San Diego survivors of the pandemic head back to the beach this June, their elected representatives in Sacramento rush to hit up political donors for campaign cash, some of it controversial. Take Assembly Democrat …
Bettering and rebuilding Ex-San Diego mayor Kevin Faulconer already relies on three statewide political committees to fund his hopes of becoming governor, either through this year’s recall of incumbent Gavin Newsom or 2022’s regular race …
The frenzy of electric scooters filling the streets of San Diego has begun to grow anew as the state lifts its last anti-pandemic strictures. Burgeoning too are local lobbyists lining up downtown to grease political …
Lonnie, not Ronnie, from Simi The city attorney of Simi Valley, home to the Ronald Reagan presidential library, is making a shift to distinctly more left-leaning terrain via his appointment by the San Diego County …
The intrigue surrounding the City of San Diego's abrupt switch to a new campaign finance disclosure website has deepened with the partial rejection by city officials of a request for public records that might shed …
Naval housing crunch Hours-long commutes, a painful childcare backlog, and an ever-growing lack of housing are some of the problems bedeviling San Diego-based Navy families these days, says a new report to Congress by the …
Lorena’s put-down California senate Democrat Ben Hueso, who last year lost his bid for county supervisor to Nora Vargas, is busy collecting cash for a 2022 campaign against incumbent Mike Schaefer for the state Board …
Back on February 23, La Jolla serial entrepreneur and Union-Tribune columnist Neil Senturia slammed down the phone on a reporter when asked about his wife's role in Deckard Technologies. According to a September 2019 report …
Professor Horrdendo Discovers on Page 23 That I've Called an Orange a Tangerine “Then there were a couple of older gentlemen here in California, one an ophthalmologist in Santa Monica and the other a retired …
Refund check’s in the mail County auditors have not let the Covid-19 pandemic deter them from rooting out a bevy of “unallowable expenses” by non-profit groups awarded taxpayer cash by county supervisors through the so-called …
In Case They Attack “I’ve been melancholy. It made me very sad. Deep-down sad. I realized immediately that our lives would never be the same again. “We’ve never had war on our shores. And I’ve …
The city of San Diego's online campaign disclosure system, at one time a stellar model of electronic reporting, now appears to have lost a key vendor and been down for weeks without any public announcement, …
Mean tweets about Nathan San Diego Assembly Democrat Lorena Gonzalez, the putative front-runner in the California Secretary of State race until Shirley Weber’s appointment to the post by Gavin Newsom, has gone quiet on fundraising. …
Monday's guilty plea by ex-Seminole County Tax Collector Joel Greenberg to sex trafficking and a bevy of other felony counts has reportedly ratcheted up the heat on his partner in partying, Republican congressman Matt Gaetz. …
A prefab unit in every backyard The Los Angeles real estate financiers currently remaking downtown’s failed Horton Plaza shopping mall into a high-tech office hub have put another building bullseye on San Diego, based on …
The Evil I Do Not Intend Dravecky raised some eyebrows that month when he appeared with Eric Show and Mark Thurmond at a John Birch Society booth at the Del Mar Fair. Back home in …
Covid complaints A March 31 audit that reviewed San Diego’s Marine Corps Recruit Depot as well as facilities of the nation’s other services, has found that military training leaders largely botched their response to the …
In January, she succeeded Susan Davis, one of the top free foreign travelers in the U.S. House of Representatives. Now fellow Democrat Sara Jacobs has wasted no time taking her first gratis international journey, courtesy …
Making Kevin great again Big money Donald Trump donors continue to kick in for ex-San Diego mayor Kevin Faulconer’s bid for California governor. The latest contributions include $32,400 on April 9 from “Aluminum Treating Co, …
In a little-noticed move, the San Diego city council is set to pay former San Diego Chargers defensive back Michael C. Lee $1.35 million to settle a lawsuit brought by Lee charging that he sustained …
Johnnie on the run Johnnie Perkins, the former trash company executive and lobbyist who became San Diego Republican mayor Kevin Faulconer’s chief of environmental services, has landed on his feet in Washington state — but …
As a torrent of cash from out-of-town developers gushed into the campaign coffers of a San Diego ballot proposition ostensibly meant to boost low-cost housing with a property tax hike, proponents delayed disclosing to the …
Border Patrol’s fentanyl follies The U. S. Border Patrol is sitting on a vast horde of deadly illegal drugs collected over two decades, creating significant risks to the safety and security of the agency’s sprawling …
San Diego and Las Vegas have had a long, wild history together. Besides the mobbed-up Moe Dalitz's La Costa resorts, San Diego County has played host to marginal figures who became Vegas notables, including Dalitz …
Human flood detection Since the border between the U.S. and Mexico is once again an immigration battleground, the war to staunch the flow of undocumented crossers from Mexico to San Diego is being fought in …
Whether Democrat or Republican, San Diego politicos are infamous for taking care of each other at local taxpayers' expense. Freshman San Diego County supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer, widely billed as a liberal Democrat, furnishes the latest …
While staffers nervously speculate whether Union-Tribune owner Patrick Soon-Shiong will block the purchase of Chicago-based Tribune Publishing by hedge fund Alden Capital, the usually muted billionaire has unleashed his fury against American racism. Thursday's rebuke …