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
San Diego mayoral debate abruptly canceled...due to pension truth?
The basic fix, fighting waste in government, can make a winning issue, but must be approached in bite sized chunks. Saying the City Pension is billions in the red sets heads spinning, but explaining that one scheming lawyer gets millions from very little work is easy to understand. Anecdotal argument wins campaigns.— October 28, 2013 6:30 p.m.
San Diego mayoral debate abruptly canceled...due to pension truth?
The truth will set you free from employment. The pension system must be fixed, but campaigning on the issue should be avoided if a candidate really wants the job, rather than give the City helpful advice. The issue is just too complex, Jerry Sanders won twice while blatantly lying about the problem, even as he collected a shocking pension, if you can't beat the poster child with the issue it won't win now. A winning candidate should face the problem indirectly by addressing the real needs of the City, and refusing to endorse the wasteful nonsense of the big downtown projects unless citizens vote the required taxes.— October 26, 2013 10:10 a.m.
San Diego mayoral debate abruptly canceled...due to pension truth?
I'm for buying annuities to cover pension costs at the time of employment, that way local governments couldn't use these funds to borrow as they do today, and the cost of employees would be obvious.— October 25, 2013 10:01 p.m.
San Diego mayoral debate abruptly canceled...due to pension truth?
The pension system is unpredictable, and that's what must be reformed. I'm not a fan of privatization generally, but private insurance companies should be employed by local governments to handle the risks inherent in public pensions, and the pension should be paid in full for each employee during the years they work. Only a private company with their own money in the game can give a cold eyed judgement of costs and investment gain.— October 25, 2013 4:29 p.m.
San Diego mayoral debate abruptly canceled...due to pension truth?
The perps in the scheme, the top brass that negotiated the pensions, are mostly retired now, and are now spending their plunder. Mayor Sanders covered their rear by sabotaging all legal efforts to fix things from the City side. The scheme was by insiders for insiders, a police chief is compensated over a million dollars for a single year on the job, should he live a normal lifespan. Because the rank and file don't share in this level of plunder, the unions might restructure the contract at a price.— October 25, 2013 10:05 a.m.
San Diego mayoral debate abruptly canceled...due to pension truth?
The present pension benefits must be replaced with a system with predictable costs, that must be handled pay as you go. The present scheme, from the start, was illegal borrowing under the cover of "inept" actuarial work that likely was fraud, but those involved escaped conviction. Rank and file City workers didn't create the scheme, those creators were leaders mostly retired now, Jerry Sanders is their poster child. City workers are a necessary part of the solution though, they must be persuaded to change their exploding benefit scheme to a plan that guarantees both benefit and contribution. This won't be cheap, but the City could buy predictability at a price.— October 25, 2013 12:47 a.m.
City attorney Goldsmith boasted how he worked on Filner ouster for 8 months
I suspect the Reader removed items by software problems.— October 24, 2013 11:02 p.m.
San Diego tourism lags other California cities
Before the City spends billions on a couple of giant entertainment venues downtown, they might stop the relentless campaign to harass venues throughout the City. Most are unaware that picking up a violin in an outdoor cafe is a violation of code that might close the business. The city requires an entertainment licence to offer live music. CDs can play at full volume without interference, but nightclubs in PB must close all windows before live music is allowed. We often hear complaints of loud and unruly crowds outside venues, and that is used as a reason to shut down a music venue, but the loudest, most drunken, near rioting crowd of all, those leaving the Charger games, are to be built a giant bar in a residential neighborhood. The City collects taxes from the small venues trying to scrape by, regardless of how they attract tourists, and provide jobs. Why should those taxes be spent building Drunken Gambler Stadium downtown?— October 24, 2013 11:36 a.m.
San Diego tourism lags other California cities
The relentless attack of NIMBYs on our entertainment venues should also be considered as a source of the problem, as well as alcohol restrictions on the beaches and parks. In Pacific Beach, residents grandfathered in the commercial zone at the beach have succeeded in driving away entertainment venues and replacing them with tee shirt tourist traps. Even the coffee houses are harassed by police over noise complaints. We should condemn residential property incompatible with tourist uses on the beachfront, rather than let the griping of residents living in a commercial zone make our city less entertaining.— October 23, 2013 6:11 p.m.
City attorney Goldsmith boasted how he worked on Filner ouster for 8 months
An internet dictionary gives Swift first publication in Guliver's Travels, as a name like "Liliputin", for a race of people, if memory serves, it was the horse's name for humanity.— October 22, 2013 10:34 a.m.