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Escondido City Council Votes to Lease Former Police Headquarters
I've seen this tried before in the San Diego Community College District, in the form of high-tech-oriented enterprise "incubators" at San Diego City College during the 1990s? A number of small start-ups got on-campus demo production-line space and access to students in robotics, quality assurance, systems analysis & design, and other industry-useful majors. When the companies were somewhat viable, they were spun off to their own spaces off campus, but still maintaining ties for future program graduates. I remember the City College high-tech incubator programs were tour-worthy features for visiting dignitaries and worth a fair number of brownie bonus points for accreditation... If it's pulled off well, it can drive some limited amount of job growth, and that could be a good thing if the smell of small-town nepotism doesn't get too strong... Hopefully, good local oversight can prevent that from happening, just to keep things honest. If CSU San Marcos is well-integrated into the project's employee preparation component, then hopefully the rather low rent won't be an inappropriate gift.— November 20, 2010 8:39 p.m.
City Delays Audit, Halts Bonds. Blames Computers. Hmmmmm
It appears that in a city agenda item supporting document earlier this year, the Independent Budget Analyst offered that she had not yet used the new City SAP package but would probably get around to using it by "late summer"? The city council has had its October training session from Fitch Ratings on debt servicing, but the system that tracks exactly what debt there is cannot be used to inventory those debts for the review of the council or the council's report to the electors of San Diego.— November 18, 2010 6:47 p.m.
Florida Man Shot Outside Rosarito Beach Bakery
I'll play nice and think of them as assets... and there are a lot more than two, but then again, Jesus said it could be done with two.— November 14, 2010 9:59 p.m.
DeMaio Blind to One Thing: Greed
RE #71: Yes, some of us have become cybernetic organisms. The Borg have arrived, the new collective consciousness... naw, we're not that bad. It's just that Don Bauder has become something of a lightning rod of sorts, and the tone of civic conversation of late comes out in the SCAM DIEGO blog posts and comments. It seems to have attracted weirdos like me... I think if one looks at this empirically, Don's blog attracts a load of comments that have depth in the back-and-forth, and a lot of it consists of references to outside sources or previous posts. There's an institutional memory here of sorts, and it's building... It's kind of like a live running transcript of what could have been talk radio? [wowww... just had brain fart: what if these were read out loud and uploaded like Barbarella's "Happy Pill" video?] Sockpuppets, or additional user accounts for the same person, are not necessarily a bad thing, especially at the Reader. For somebody capable of a little political satire in a Swiftian kind of way, or maybe a lot, it can be a darn good thing and funny as well, funny as hell. Not that I've tried being a puppet master here myself... but I can appreciate things that make me watch my dentures fly across the room from explosive laughter. It hurts, but in a good way.— November 14, 2010 9:52 p.m.
LA Times Cites San Diego Public Corruption
A wise leader can convert this into an engine for positive change BEFORE it goes critical and explodes. Personally, I am encouraged that a sitting Attorney General is our new Governor. It is the Office of the Governor that has authority if there is a determination that any part of the state has overshot political zeal for reform and ended up in a state of lawlessness. A city charter provision granting emergency power to a strong mayor does not trump the California Constitution as to the Governor as commander in chief of the militia. The Governor has wide latitude to act both under state law and the National Response Framework.— November 14, 2010 2:30 p.m.
So Much Things to Say
Homeless veterans have a calling here. Everyday Americans who are not homeless may be annoyingly judgmental for you, but we are also generous with second chances when we are convinced it is the right thing to do. To the extent that you can help improve community readiness for emergency incidents up to catastrophic disasters, you help to provide better government for all Americans who seem to be no too happy with the state of government as it is now. Get FEMA certified at http://training.fema.gov/emiweb/is/is100b.asp Print the resulting certificate and keep it in a plastic page cover. When all hell breaks loose, approach the Incident Commander with certificate in hand and say "I can help evacuate survivors" or "I can make coffee and pancakes" or "I can be a message runner to the emergency operations center" or anything else useful when there's not much left to live on, and federal help is still days or weeks away. In case you haven't been keeping up with current events, city public safety services may be awfully short in the near future, and anything you are prepared to do to help out as volunteers would be greatly appreciated. What you are prepared to do in the near term as volunteers in bad times may cause you to be paid city employees later when times get better. There are opportunities here, mostly because people in power who should know better are not acting better, and there will most likely be cutback in critical city services. Show some discipline, have some faith, and prepare for better days ahead. All this should also apply to any non-violent offender seeking a pardon for good service to the state. Be useful; get pardoned. Sounds fair to me.— November 14, 2010 2:19 p.m.
So Much Things to Say
OK, let us agree that we have evidence. RE "Those who chose to live on the streets have decided to make a living off the rest of us. But those of us who are simply trying to live our lives; work; go to the store; walk the streets and enjoy the day...we have certain rights too. When a homeless person asks for some change, or a cigarette, they are affecting the world we live in, interfering in our freedom and our rights, and that is where they cross the line. Homeless people do not seem to understand or care that their lifestyle affects our lives, and not in a good way. Having to respond to a request for a quarter may not seem like a big deal, but it is": We can therefore accept this and any of the rest of the above record as first-person evidence as long as at least most of us agree it makes sense to accept it as evidence. RE "It's time for the homeless to pull their own weight and stop living off the fear and generosity of others. It's time for the homeless to go home; find a home; make a home, and [let those of us who live productive lives, enjoy ourselves without having to worry about who is going to spoil our day and remind us that our town has parasites, and we have to constantly be prepared to deal with them. It's tiresome, boring, and irritating.] It's time for the people of this city to do something about it; it's time to stop feeding the bums...in every possible way": I like this, but I'd replace the [bracketed part] with "have them join us in living productive lives in our home San Diego." Homelessness is something we can do something about if we understand what it is, or at least what it most resembles. I'd call it a case of unsupervised lunch and recess, graduate version, 24/7. Get it supervised and organized, and it becomes a reliable source of urban activity for positive change, both individually and socially.— November 14, 2010 2:17 p.m.
Dorian Hargrove suffers life-changing skateboard accident
I have a slightly different story than the ones others have told here, about somebody on a board getting a nice fast tow from his rottweiler. It was a big rott, and this guy could get moving a whole lot faster than I could run, even before I had my first heart attack at 39. My next-door neighbor had a grandson who was maybe 4 years old. He was a somewhat defiant little guy, and on our dead end street near Lemon Grove, he would like to lay out on the asphalt. He was quick and feisty, and his grandmother would chew him out regularly, but with no fence outside the house, it was a quick run for him to be back on the curb anytime nobody at home was actually hovering over him like a hawk, and that appeared to be often. We had just bought a padlock to keep him from opening our gate and running around the front yard. Like I said, he was adoringly defiant, and we didn't really like yelling at him for just being misbehavingly curious. One day, the little guy apparently crossed the street and was watching the Orange Line trolleys go by, as he would do when he could get away with it. Relatives at home said that the guy who was on his daily rottweiler tow was seen on the street, moving fast as usual on the down slope west toward 69th and Akins, with no moving cars anywhere in sight. A short time later, my relatives said they heard the grandmother screaming and howling in the street. People running out of their houses saw the little guy laying close to the curb, a pool of blood coming from the back of his head. Other than that, police found no signs of trauma that would have indicated that he had been run over by a car, or even bumped by something that hard and unyielding. Whatever hit him left no skid marks. The guy on the board with the rottweiler tow has never been seen since he was spotted the following day by us and took off like a bat out of hell as we closed in. The neighbor's family, one of the longest-living here on this end of Encanto, left town, maybe for Arkansas, maybe Tennessee. We never did use that padlock. It still hangs useless on the fence with no key. I don't have the heart to cut it down. The police still have this down as an unsolved accidental death for well over a decade now. The concrete storm channel with the rounded walls at the bottom was known worldwide as Trench Town back in the day, and even now a crew will show up to shoot some scenes of people launching themselves off the lip for some runs, without knowing little Cody died here on the street from what we all believe was a boarding hit-and-run. I may be one of the living few who still remember his name. Sleep well, Dakota. Be well. Keep writing.— November 14, 2010 12:24 p.m.
For-Profit College CEOS Rolling in Dough, Including Bridgepoint
Dedicated to all college students who ever attempted to survive on a liquid diet... Professor Larry Miller on the Five Stages of Drinking: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piPyfqAKf6o— November 14, 2010 9:45 a.m.
It's Not Just Chargers Who Would Fleece Insolvent Political Entity
I am coming around to seeing corruption in a new light. There is the corrupt individual in an uncorrupted culture of leadership. He or she may be successful for a time because of the immediate advantages that personal corruption may offer, but the leadership culture will eventually find this person out and expel her or him for its own good. The SCAM DIEGO blog posts tell us that we have moved beyond this level. There are the corrupt individuals who corrupt the civic leadership of society. This happens when civic leadership is capable of being corrupted and chooses to be corrupt, to keep up with the advantages of the ones bringing corruption on in the first place. I believe this is when at least one of our Founding Fathers said it is a good time to have a revolution, but in our system, we can hope that a large enough group of reformers can rise up and seize control without the human waste of revolution as civil war. There may be resistance to reform by a majority of persons who refuse to acknowledge or even care that a corrupt leadership culture exists, so long as the perceived benefits of corruption continue to roll in, whatever those benefits might be. Examples of this is the Roman bribes of bread and circuses to keep the mob in line, and Al Capone cited above. It may very well apply to the entire culture of "blight" redevelopment in San Diego right now, especially as it overrides concerns about obvious regional scarcities of power, water and other infrastructure. Finally, there is the level of corruption that overtakes an entire society. This one is ripe for the pickings of neighboring nations who see it to their own advantage to impose order on a diseased society, even to the point of mass slavery or genocide. We don't seem to be there yet, but that distance grows less and less with what we are willing to tolerate in our leadership until corruption consumes us all. I am pretty sure we haven't sunk that low yet, or there would not have been an electoral revolt against the civic leadership's insistent promotion of Proposition D. Freedom of the press is in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights because it matters that much for honest public safety against corruption in all forms, at all levels. Financial bankruptcy is bad; moral bankruptcy is usually worse.— November 14, 2010 2:53 a.m.