Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Koch-tied non-profit teams with Manchester's U-T San Diego
Hey Randy, old buddy, bold super-pro journalist with a bright future...remember when I told you to look into Lawful Intercept technology a few months back? Well, you sure missed an opportunity. Maybe instead of policing the comments looking to deflect any criticism of your pay masters, you should be doing some...uh...journalism? Matt Potter and Don Bauder can show you how it's done.— June 10, 2013 9:21 p.m.
Grantville Action Group loses at appeals court level
It is specifically prohibited for redevelopment money to be spent on beautifying existing government buildings. State law is clear on this. It's also prohibited to transfer tax increment funding to outside the boundaries of a redevelopment area. The County wants to spruce up the Administration Building on the waterfront. The City wants to re-shape the C Street Trolley Corridor. So they hatched a plan: 1. Transfer over $30 million of Grantville's redevelopment funding to the C Street Trolley, with the flimsy excuse that the Trolley connection (45 minutes away) to Grantville creates a "nexus" by which the two redevelopment projects are connected. 2. Transfer an equal amount to the County as part of a "settlement" so they wouldn't object to this blatant mis-allocation of public funds. The County is free to use this money to renovate their Administration Building. The individual steps of this arcane scheme (much more complex than I'm describing) were kept quiet, and only Grantville Veterinarian Brian Peterson stood up to object. Well educated, well informed, taking countless hours from his personal and professional life, Brian attended all the meetings he could, objecting, even paying for lawyers to help him fight this clear injustice. And the courts found that, while the overall effect is clearly illegal, because each baby step in the process was either technically allowed or, found no objection at the time -- hocus pocus, it's all somehow legal. By myopically focusing only on the details, and willfully refusing to acknowledge the big picture, and public policy implications, the judges have disgraced themselves and the legal profession. Should the Grantville Action Group continue the fight? Take this to a higher level? Or will Mayor Filner and the City perhaps reconsider this folly with the trolley, and restore justice and common sense to redevelopment. Filner has made it clear he stands for the neighborhoods. Here's a good test case. Grantville's money should be spent in Grantville, not downtown.— May 31, 2013 10:16 p.m.
FINRA fines LPL Financial for faulty email system
How convenient to blame it on the email system. From a technical point of view, it's utter b.s. Emails don't get "lost" or "erased" by accident. It takes significant effort to make emails disappear. I have to wonder if anyone at FINRA even bothered to learn something about how email works before accepting this lame excuse...or if the fine is a response to this outrageous lie told by the LPL executives. (Did FINRA interview the person who was running their mail servers?) As technology becomes ever more important in legal, social, and political questions, it's disheartening that the persons making the decisions are so woefully ignorant of how this stuff works...— May 22, 2013 1:08 a.m.
Dumanis draws first re-election opponent
I'm still hoping Aguirre will take on Dumanis...San Diego needs an honest DA who works for the people instead of the insiders.— April 12, 2013 5:01 a.m.
San Diego city attorney dances to lobbyists' tune in banquet video
Lani Lutar doesn't defend tax payers...she is in the employ of tax takers who stuff their pockets with public money. She's a shameless smokescreen, diverting attention away from the reality of the situation. But since she's practiced at providing convenient quotes for lazy journalists, she's unquestioningly quoted as if she were an oracle. Lani is a lobbyist, and she works for those who pay her salary. That means the big hotels, the developers, and the political insiders...she could care less about tax payers, as any examination of the SDCTA's endorsements would easily show.— April 12, 2013 4:48 a.m.
"I would do this for free"
I disagree strongly with this lousy advice. Working for free is an option only for those whose families have enough money to support them. For the rest of the population, this isn't an "internship"...it's just free labor. By all means young people should volunteer for causes dear to their hearts. But if the choice is between working for free and seeing another part of the world, then they should ignore your advice and get on a plane. They're going to work the rest of their lives paying off the debts our society has foisted on them, and this may be their only chance to do something other than work, work, work until they are dead. Such a person is much better off getting exposure to other cultures, learning to use another language, and gaining some broader experiences including how the rest of the world operates...which means they might be exposed to societies that don't cynically exploit the young by expecting them to work for free. Who knows? They might even find out that USA#1 is a lie, and that other countries treat their citizens as people, rather than labor to be exploited by the callous, which is confusingly condoned in this article that purports to be giving career advice. An internship is rarely a path to a good job...most often it's cynical exploitation of the naive...you're contributing to that exploitation with this article.— April 12, 2013 3:08 a.m.
Another unreported DeMaio contribution disclosed by Sheppard Mullin law firm
Hotels make undocumented contributions in other ways too... They provide their meeting rooms for fundraisers, at reduced prices or nearly free for favored candidates and causes. They provide drinks and food for candidate and issue fundraisers, at reduced prices for their political allies. When it comes to bundling, it's not just the hotel's employees and their family members who are "strongly encouraged" to give, but also their suppliers, lawyers and other service providers, and heads of associated businesses like restaurants and spas. Filner is not being inaccurate about the amount of money, but you have to know something about how San Diego politics works to be able to trace it properly. The point of making these contributions in shady ways is exactly to avoid scrutiny...and when it comes to most reporters, who don't know how to search the records properly, it works like a dream. Thanks again Matt Potter for setting the record straight.— April 2, 2013 4:15 a.m.
Judge in Filner case discloses link to Tierney, denies knowing Gloria or hotelier
This is corruption, plain and simple, obvious to any reasonable person. Taylor should recuse himself from this case, but he won't because he's not an honest jurist...he's a tool of the local oligarchs who tell him what to do.— March 13, 2013 11:19 p.m.
Bubbles: Greenspan, Bernanke could have learned something in San Diego
All these factors you've described are sufficient to set up the global economy for a great fall. The question in my mind is what the trigger will be that starts the panic. Another terrorist attack? A cyber-attack that actually does damage to financial systems (they're so vulnerable to this it's almost a certainty it WILL happen, but who knows when)? Another war, perhaps with N. Korea, or Iran, or in Norther Africa or will the US openly intervene in Syria? In the meantime, for normal folks without insider trading knowledge, the only possible outcome is negative. This is squarely on Obama's shoulders. He has both the power and opportunity to challenge these corrupt banksters and chooses instead to coddle them (look at the HSBC slap on the wrist). Unfortunately, I see this getting really ugly...civil unrest ugly. Militarized thug-cops beating old lady protesters ugly. Bombings and assassinations ugly. Is there time to prevent this? Barely. But I have zero confidence that those with the power to enforce the laws will actually do so. Rather, they will unleash the thugs and start a civil war instead of challenging their paymasters. San Diego is a microcosm representative of the rest of the country. A corrupt oligarchy has strangled the city, and the country. Until we get rid of them, there is no hope for anything getting better. If the lawful means of getting rid of them won't work, then non-lawful means will be used. That's the lesson of history, if anyone is interested in learning from it.— March 13, 2013 11:12 p.m.
Judge Prager OKs convention center expansion tax
Judge Prager is either incompetent or corrupt. There's no possible way to make a ruling like this based on the law. It's called taxation without representation. Prager should be ashamed of himself.— March 13, 2013 10:53 p.m.