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
Isolate, Expose, Avoid
RE #33: Community college students have to participate in shared governance. It's the law according to the California Education Code. It means that there must be at least one student on every college committee, including the ones that developers most likely want not observed too well by the public, students, or the campus journalism department. Many moons ago, the San Diego Community College District Foundation walked away from SDCCD with about $10 million in funds (1980s?). The lawsuit was Nellie G. Anderson et al v. SDCCDF, and when it settled, SDCCDF paid SDCCD the $10 million, which had grown to about $40 million at the time, so the scam paid out roughly $30 million to the ex-SDCCD chancellor, student trustee and others in on the Foundation action. I believe the numbers are about right, but I'm doing all this from faded memory... I think it happened back then because NOBODY WAS WATCHING.— August 18, 2010 4:39 p.m.
Pinpoint Forecasting, San Diego Style
RE #31: I then hope that the IBA takes the time to look at City finances through the SAP lens darkly, something that she earlier revealed in agenda item supporting documents as not doing before until "sometime this summer"? It's almost September already. Based on the above blog post and comments, I'd say that the City Attorney's statement is enough of a stealth cloak on what's really going on that I'd have to vote NO.— August 18, 2010 4:27 p.m.
Isolate, Expose, Avoid
Thanks to the author, who should be doing Southwestern College's students a big favor by sending a copy of her Southwestern College articles to the resident associated students organization. I don't know nada about SW probation status or why it's there per WASC, but the time I spent as a student rep on City College's accreditation reports to WASC tells me that if the campus student government is not involved under state law's "shared college governance" for community colleges, then that's a darn good reason to at least be threatened with WASC probation status. Without students paying attention and watching what's going on through mandated policy making with shared governance, it is possible that a there could be a recurrence of the San Diego Community College District Foundation fiasco and subsequent lawsuit, but with different names in a different district.— August 18, 2010 4:12 p.m.
Per Watt Savings from Off-Grid Solar Panels Balance SDG&E Proposed Rate Hikes
RE #1: First off, SDG&E will not pay anybody for electricity generated unless anybody happens to be a regulated public utility. In other words, electricity confiscation "protects" private citizens from becoming public utilities and having to face CPUC on a regular basis. Internally, SDG&E considers this to be doing customers a favor. Second, SDG&E will not pay out on excess solar panel electricity until there is a CPUC ruling that provides a firm process for payment. Expect CPUC to come to some decision on that early next year? Third, nobody gets paid unless there is a surplus measured over an entire year and only if the producing household files for and receives a Qualifying Facility designation from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. SDG&E in its solar rebate policy request to CPUC said that it would help customers fill out the FERC QF form , but then SDGE would seem to have a contrary interest in not having that form approved all that fast, or then it has to start tracking that surplus for a whole year before SDG&E thinks about giving a bill credit for confiscated electricity past zeroing out one's payment due. Am I making this all up? Not really... I spelled it out in previous blogs over the past year, and since I just got my mitts on the new, revised and amended Wildfire Expense Balancing Account (WEBA) Application A0908020 filed with CPUC by SDG&E and the usual suspects last week, I'll wait until I've had a chance to look at the new app before doing a related blog or two... Oh... I almost forgot... new state law passed earlier this year/late last year only allows 5 percent of all customers to receive pay for excess electricity, no matter how many of us actually get QF'd up.— August 18, 2010 3:56 p.m.
Why Anchor Babies are not Legal Citizens
One big reason some would want anchor babies not to be legal citizens is that America no longer has the kind of economy that can employ those babies when they grow up. For the same reason, it's kind of hard for me to justify citizenship for American high school drop-outs who can't manage to pick up a good conduct medal and a GED by the time they're 21 or so. The Obama administration is ALMOST there to stimulate the kind of economic growth to pull us out of this recession that may not be a recession except that nobody is getting hired fast for a long time. The President has already dropped the flag on the biggest "land rush" in American history RE NASA and private launch capacity, and all we keep hearing from Industrial America is "I've gotta keep hoarding my cash!"— August 18, 2010 3:42 p.m.
Get Used to Unemployment
I am hoping that among the unemployed and under-employed, there are those who can use the circumstances of their own situation to start their own small businesses in their own communities. People will have to pull themselves up from their own bootstraps rather than depend on the government or charity. I would not be surprised to see an increasing incidence of upper-class families taking on casual workers for room and board from among those who have no jobs or homes to speak of. It's not like we haven't seen indentured servitude before in America...— August 18, 2010 3:31 p.m.
On the Benefits of Recreational Summertime Walking through Death Valley
I believe that gay marriage exists as a form of artificial marriage, that it is not the same for all legal purposes as natural marriage. Arguing that gay marriage or any other form of artificial marriage is the same as natural marriage falls as soon as there are compelling state interests to differentiate between natural marriage and artificial marriage. The greatest difference I can see is the one our elected leaders spend no time talking about in public: continuity of government. I accept that for most people, continuity of government is a total non-issue, but then again most people have busy lives and never spend any time thinking about what government is supposed to be doing for us in the first place. They just expect government to be there, even if it is due to collapse by poor design and hastily-contrived implementation. If I am not incorrect, then my God is everyone's God, even if many don't realize the truth of it yet. I accept that all of us are doing exactly what it is that God expects us to be doing, rightly or wrongly, and the judgment of that for each of us is one day closer today than it was yesterday. As it was said many centuries ago (at least I believe it was so said), the Good News would fall on many ears like seed grain on the ground, so that some of it would blow away, another portion would be taken by hungry beasts of the air, but for some, the Good News would take hold and grow to be something great and fruitful.— August 18, 2010 3:23 p.m.
CPUC DRA Moves To Strike $118 Million Part of SDG&E Rate Hike Proposal
RE #1: CPUC DRA's motion looks legit to me. I'll add a link to the motion above for you to see for yourself.— August 11, 2010 4:45 p.m.
Permit an insolvent city to subsidize a Charger stadium?
Today's general market drop seems to confirm your observations on consumer cautiousness. Citigroup and the other Master of Disasters on Wall Street live in a separate-and-unequal context, where cleverly-constructed financial instruments have generally pushed aside all ordinary notions in increasing wealth through reasonable economic growth. Instead, we now endure an endless cycle of boom and bust while bubbles congregate investors and speculators alike until things go *POP*. Correct me if I am wrong about this, but wasn't there some announcement today that at least a billion would be pumped into a plan for the unemployed to buy houses with federal loans? If so, then how characteristic!— August 11, 2010 4:43 p.m.
Philly Child's Death Also Blamed on Brownouts
Discussions I have had with firefighters locally inform me that engines and trucks with fewer firefighters assigned are most likely to have increased workman comp claims. Another point made was that the reason there is so much overtime pay going out is that there are not enough firefighters at not enough fire houses in San Diego. It was recently in the news that San Diego is short some 20 fire houses not yet built, and it appears that none of the $6 billion difference in the proposed TI CAP increase to $9 billion will not go to public safety. SOMEBODY is gonna get a brand new multi-billion-dollar facility downtown. Whether it's Comic-Con or the Chargers, I can't tell.— August 11, 2010 4:30 p.m.