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
Would Spelling Lessons Affect the Library?
My personal description of what ails America in general and San Diego in particular may be gross but appropriate for the up-coming trick-or-treat season: boils that need lancing and draining, or the infection of unethical corruption will spread to all aspects of life, resulting in death to the civic cohesion that should act to hold us together as a city and a nation. The only "easy money" to be found in in all of Fletcher's midnight SB 863 earmark is that which flows from the taxpayers to the developers, where the mayor-sanctioned bailout in the amended state redevelopment statutes benefits CCDC specifically by name. http://www.cp-dr.com/node/2790 CCDC is that parasitic beast that lives among us, and now by law there is no limit on the tax increment revenue that it takes from general property tax revenues for its "master", the Redevelopment Agency that is personally directed by a majority of our city council members. Hopefully, eventually, finally, the truth just might set us free. The election results may be telling.— October 30, 2010 5:02 a.m.
Would Spelling Lessons Affect the Library?
As a former grammar and research tutor at that award-winning English Writing Center on the campus of San Diego City College, I cringe at the thought of a Bauderian review of any and all comments that I HAVE made on the Scam Diego blog posts...— October 30, 2010 4:56 a.m.
Public Records Suggest Southwestern College Used Public Funds Frivolously
Compton Community College lost accreditation in 2006. Searching the list below, I found no other California community college that has lost accreditation. Perhaps less than five of over 100 California community colleges appear to have warnings, and if there is another besides SWC on probation, I didn't see it. Perhaps someone else can have a look to see if I missed one. http://www.accjc.org/pdf/accjc_directory_of_accre… As for Grossmont-Cuyamaca having the "same problem", I assume it must be the fact that both SWCCD and Grossmont-Cuyamaca have up-coming elections of board members. Both Grossmmont and Cuyamaca Colleges are WASC-accredited with no warnings. See the above link. Personally, I know that Dr. Jeanne Atherton served as the Chancellor at Grossmont-Cuyamaca. After having her driving the accreditation process that I was involved in at City College earlier, I have no doubt that all campuses under her authority were driven to address all accreditation standards, at least until she left. I seriously doubt that the level of professionalism in that district has deteriorated significantly since then. If there is some article saying otherwise, I'd have to question the journalistic integrity of the author (due to partisan nature of election candidates) and credibility of the author's sources until someone can provide proof of problems worth noting. Anyone who believes I am overzealous about SWC possibly losing accreditation is either covering their assets without concern for students' academic progress, or has no clue what the standards look like and what the accreditation process actually is. In my eyes, just being placed on probation is a slap in the face of any college's governing board, especially after more than a decade of being advised by WASC of what to do to make things better. If any UCSD, SDSU, or other local community college administrator disagrees with that, then that administrator should feel free to mouth off about it below, even anonymously if he or she can't stand the light of day. As for vocational colleges and other educational institutions that shun WASC accreditation, they are what they are.— October 29, 2010 11:27 p.m.
Public Records Suggest Southwestern College Used Public Funds Frivolously
RE "When I was in grad school I became very involved in the student government. It was without a doubt one of the best experiences I ever had": And it cured me of any interest of running for any office outside school. There's something about being an advocate for students eager to learn and advance themselves. It beats selling oneself to corporate interests that rarely venture on campus except to hand out credit card applications or free cigarettes. EVERY SINGLE TIME I am back on the City College campus to do a little cash tutoring, I try to talk somebody into getting involved in student government. In hard times, showing one can find solutions beyond just pointing out problems is the best way I know of getting some dean's sponsorship to a competitive private university that would otherwise be out of reach, especially for the vast majority of students at City College. I still miss living on campus at USD as I was in '92-'94 as the most ancient dude (35?) in the Valley undergraduate housing area... but then again, my current old age means I can't drink beer like I used to back then... Go, Torero intramural football! Back on topic: I spent this morning talking to people at City College (including at least one administrator who remembers accreditation subcommittee work back in the mid-90s) who are in utter amazement of SWC's accreditation issues and the likelihood that it will be lost by this time next year.— October 29, 2010 4:41 p.m.
Is Proposition C Just a Green Light for Developers?
RE "Expenses incurred to prepare a program of phased development and revisions to the Pacific Highlands Ranch Public Facilities Financing Plan will be borne by the Pacific Highlands Ranch Facilities Benefit Assessment, which is funded by builder/developer fees. There will be no costs to City taxpayers as a result of this ballot measure" at http://www.smartvoter.org/2010/11/02/ca/sd/prop/C/ : The costs referred to are limited to paperwork only, not to the actual construction of physical structure nor acquisition of land for those structures to sit on. As for the funding, this will be done with debt issuance where lack of PHR industry AND the City of San Diego's current deficit inability to cover PHR will be debt rating factors in ratings agency decisions as to how those GO bonds will be viewed. Expect to see a PHR issuance rating by Firch Ratings to be lower than City of San Diego's current AA-, probably highest at A-, and that's with PHR's community facilities tax-assessment district having to build up a large enough cash reserve to convince investors that a community of such small size is capable of repayment. If PHR residents are saying "no way, we're part of San Diego" then that tells me PHR residents and the DEVELOPER are expecting a City Council bailout after construction starts. Been there before... Will future PHR residents pay a 15-20% current premium to live where schools and libraries will most likely be completed in the 2020s? The fee could be smaller, but then those PHR homes will be hisoric preservation sites by the time everything plus interest is paid off. New PHR homes will include the added fees as part of the sale price, making older empty downtown condos look even more attractive because those amenities already exist downtown. It appears that comments being made by some individuals are made to go in sequence, like adding houses on properties in the same color group while playing Monopoly...— October 29, 2010 3:05 p.m.
September Lead Indicators of San Diego Economy Fall
RE "Just keep in mind that 20% of fans are utter fanatics. I wondered if the late-night, secret Sacramento scam would outrage San Diegans who knew nothing about it. On the other hand, there are all those fanatics who think it is wonderful that a bankrupt city can come up with a deal to give a $600 million to $700 million subsidy to a billionaire family that is much better off financially than San Diego": History tells us that the great Olmec civilization in central Mexico built at least three large temple cities with very few other amenities, where the most likely end of that civilization came when the Olmec slaves who were captured from nearby tribes and actually built those temples revolted... live and learn? Or maybe not.— October 29, 2010 2:30 p.m.
An Early Holiday Season Arrives With Unlimited CCDC Bailout
RE "While Fletcher insists that the earmark-like amendment was fully debated in Sacramento, other sources have stated the secretive nature of SB 863's amendment and passage was in part to keep Los Angeles-area representatives from opposing it": Also see: http://www.kpbs.org/news/2010/oct/18/officals-apo…— October 29, 2010 2:21 p.m.
An Early Holiday Season Arrives With Unlimited CCDC Bailout
RE "Downtown has produced more jobs, tax revenues and housing units that any part of our region in recent years - not to mention become one of the most vibrant entertainment districts in the City": Downtown also appears to have lost more than enough jobs and has enough vacant residential units that local tax revenues are down year over year. Downtown also has the greatest concentration of homeless south of the Los Angeles dead zone between LAX and the Greyhound depot, and it doesn't take an accounting degree or a Mensa-level IQ score to see that. A local economy that is dependenct on entertainment and tourism was listed as a negative Fitch Ratings factor possibly leading to a downgrade San Diego's AA- credit rating, with a subsequent increase in interest payments on municipal general obligations. Since that information was included on the October 11 city council agenda, I'll have to assume that's now common knowledge. For people who didn't have the chance to download the Fitch Ratings training materials for city council members earlier found at the City Clerk's website, I have copies at: http://sdreader.stickywebs.com/ As a former president of a California legislative body, I expect that my constituents would have run me out of office for doing anything like the secretive Sacramento process that our mayor has already had to apologize for in advance of next week's election. Personally, I am greatly flattered that of all of the interesting things going on in the Reader, you chose my blog post to comment on first!— October 29, 2010 2 p.m.
A Power Greater Than Ourselves
RE #7: Actually, nobody is guaranteed to believe in God before not being able to believe at all due to death.— October 29, 2010 8:49 a.m.
September Lead Indicators of San Diego Economy Fall
RE "This Fall (No Pun Intended) will be long remembered in $D": Actually the unintentional pun may be an example of semantic recursion ("?!?")... Is SD capable of a long memory on anything?— October 29, 2010 8:39 a.m.