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Proposition D Thumbed Down Overwhelmingly
RE "Liability is the issue. ... There is such a legal morass that would ensue it would quickly deter most people from volunteering from these kinds of jobs. Even if the City promises to indemnify you, that does not make the suit go away": This is the entire point of getting volunteers to be FEMA EMI-certified FIRST, so that NIMS/ICS standards compliance in an emergency response to any risk from any hazard is reimbursible from the federal government as a legitimate emergency or disaster response expense, stemming from a tasking of resources as part of the Comprehensive Emergency Management by objectives principals that controls FEMA under the National Response Framework, 24/7. As long as any volunteer or other person has reported to the Incident Commander at a response and been tasked to do something during that response, then the agency that authorized the response (in this case City of San Diego) DOES indemnify because of course it's going to claim credit for fixing the problem. Someone can try to sue the city for something a volunteer does while responding to a city call for volunteers, but there is this thing called sovereign immunity... and at this point, we're generally talking about somebody suing all of us for trying to help that somebody out. On the flip side, the person who doesn't do something about the neighbor's house that's burning down until it starts burning down that person's house probably isn't going to be getting any more holiday greeting cards from her or his insurance agent... if he or she still HAS an insurance agent.— November 3, 2010 8:18 p.m.
Horse Sleep, Flatulent Vapor, Prison Life for Disabled
Farting has something to do with global warming. For that reason, somebody out there thinks this is a serious comment thread. Lighting them: sounds like something BP tried. Several times.— November 3, 2010 7:56 p.m.
Biogen Idec Whacks Idec, Its San Diego Wing
Now if a certain San Diego family with megabucks was interested in making more megabucks in a way that did not involve new stadium construction, then the ramrod family member should be seeing opportunities here. Big Pharma-sized opportunities... There is a trend where biotech companies spring up that only manage drug research, development and production. Their labs are leased. Later, after trials prove that the drug just might heal more people than it harms, they then lease plant and equipment to produce and distribute. If successful, they just might buy the plant and equipment and possibly even expand. The undergraduate minds at UCSD, USD, and SDSU are a terrible thing to waste. If we are losing a company, then somebody smart and rather wealthy could step up and fill the void, if that somebody was thinking about the future...— November 3, 2010 7:36 p.m.
South Park's Granny Flats — City Says Yea, Some Citizens Say Nay
I am appreciative that the Reader, as the prime alternative print and other media source of news in San Diego, allows me to mouth off here without pointing a shotgun loaded with rock salt at me. When I try to make a point either in an UNPAID blog post or in a comment to someone else's article or blog post, I also try to include some document or other source so that others can freely decide what kind of damn-fool idiot I am. I value my reputation at the Reader as somebody who looks for facts and presents them to others. I believe that information serves that part of the public who isn't taken in by snappy one-liners from paid political operatives. Apparently, the majority of people who paid attention to facts and not just one-liners was able to register their votes for or against Proposition D. All I want to do is comfort the afflicted by afflicting the comfortable: a prophet once asked us to do that for his sake, and for the sake of the One who sent him. I've purposely stayed off this thread until now, but as somebody who has placa'd this website often enough in the last two years, I feel the need... the need to screed.— November 3, 2010 5:45 p.m.
Proposition D Thumbed Down Overwhelmingly
RE "Volunteers?? Last I checked they work for me, not vice-versa. And they do not do it for free. I am sure A2Z was being facitious": I apologize for appearing to be clowning around, but I am absolutely serious about using city-managed volunteers to get things done in this town. I see things getting much worse than they are now, when we will either have to mitigate crappy city-owned things near us by ourselves (while hoping to have access to a city crew) or just go with the flow, in much the same way that we deal with the exploding overhead utility equipment that causes wildfires every so often. Speaking of wildfires, residents of Alpine, Ramona and a few other choice communities, remembering the evacuations of 2003, were told to evacuate in 2007, gave a one finger salute, and stayed behind to save their own homes while saving a few of their neighbors' homes for good measure. THESE PEOPLE VOLUNTEERED BECAUSE TO NOT DO SO MEANT THE END OF DREAMS... with an effect like a very hot no-paperwork involuntary foreclosure from SDG&E/Sempra Energy. City workers need to be prepared to be volunteer coordinators of local residents, or they will see the facilities they work at being closed down due to our city-wide budget shortages. That's just the way it's going to be, and the ones who haven't been clever enough to get people in the surrounding communities to at least be prepared for volunteering can experience the simple pleasures of being unemployed like the rest of us non-municipal types. I haven't been posting those FEMA EMI certification links for my own health. I already HAVE that certification from the Department of Homeland Security, National Fire Academy and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the same kind of certification that a number of city workers were found to be cheating on a few years back.— November 3, 2010 5:05 p.m.
Who Runs Our Elections and How Safe Actually are They?
Unfortunately, I have lost confidence in local elections after looking at some of the links provided above. Because this is my personal problem, I have no public challenge to the results from this county to be certified by the state. It does mean that I have little to no faith in what local elected and appointed politicians tell us unless they are capable of putting it in sufficiently understandable terms that I don't feel like I am on the losing end of an overly-complex financial scam. For anyone who thinks I am going to disappear because I chose not to vote, think again. I am certainly not waiving any right to free expression here or anywhere else. People deserve facts, and if I can dig some of them up, then they are coming out. I was referring to buried facts, not buried people.— November 3, 2010 9:18 a.m.
Proposition D Thumbed Down Overwhelmingly
RE "Using volunteers intelligently is certainly one alternative that has to be studied. But there is one overwhelming factor: fat, fat, fat pensions. San Diego simply can't make modest changes, such as taking DROP away from new employees. Changes to existing contracts must be made, even if they have to be made in bankruptcy court, and the decision will end up at the Supreme Court. Assistant city attorneys shouldn't be retiring at $300,000 a year. Safety employees shouldn't be retiring at ages 50 and 55 with huge pension": Certainly even the massive usage of city-managed volunteers cannot do anything about our even more massive pension and municipal retiree health care liabilities. At the same time, SOMEBODY at City Hall needs to be planning for the contingency of just flat out running out of cash flow to keep city workers paid, much less paying for their early retirement. If the city is not planning on bankruptcy or some other measure to insure that there are funds to maintain a minimal level of public services (probably less than what we've enjoyed up to now), then there is an increasing risk of failed city processes and lawlessness in San Diego county.— November 3, 2010 9 a.m.
Proposition D Thumbed Down Overwhelmingly
I expect that one relatively low cost alternative is to train line city employees to manage trained volunteers in their respective job areas of operations for the city. Regardless of current city employee contracts, expecting all city employees to serve as managers of numerous volunteers is what the citizens must expect now of city government, or we must admit that city workers are contributing to to fiscal crisis conditions while preventing a proper comprehensive emergency management response to a city-managed high-risk hazard that threatens the public's well being with respect to our lives, liberty and property. This is now a discussion about a failure of process hazard leading to an increased risk of lawlessness in San Diego county. An experienced governor who is aware of his militia powers in times and places of lawlessness may have to come down and put things in order.— November 3, 2010 3:20 a.m.
Proposition D Thumbed Down Overwhelmingly
RE "Now pundits will guess why the vote was so decisive. Was it the national Republican sweep? A vote against a Chargers subsidy? Resentment against the mayor's late-night, secret deal to help CCDC finance a Chargers stadium? A dislike of taxes in a deep recession? Fear that the increased tax will dent retail sales, already down more in the recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s? Or San Diego's usual tax revulsion?": This gadfly pundit sez: How about all of the above, and then some? Don't forget the recent Reader revelation that unionized city workers are now suspected of illegally converting unused city property into gifts and other prizes as semi-official payouts paid for with salvaged city construction materials... all sanctioned by their immediate supervisors and most likely never routinely disclosed by those supervisors to city auditors.— November 3, 2010 3:08 a.m.
Who Runs Our Elections and How Safe Actually are They?
Taken together, the strands that are brought together here seem to reveal a web of SOMETHING worth being concerned about. I have been analyzing other issues, but this post is certainly deserving of further attention and scrutiny. If the people lose confidence in the voting process of a democracy, then there is a real threat of future anarchy. Officials who excel in creating conditions for breeding anarchy may very well be enemies of the people.— November 2, 2010 9:02 a.m.