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
Dumanis Met with Sanders to Tell Him She Wouldn't Prosecute Li Mandri, Mannino
If it were $750K, then someone might actually see justice for a botched foreclosure and the subsequent humiliation of forced eviction?— December 13, 2010 9:13 p.m.
City Outsources Future Moves
RE "the City is also looking for a consultant to help it stage an emergency exercise": Hopefully, the level of city employee emergency management certification has greatly improved since several were busted cheating on FEMA Emergency Management Institute testing a few years back... Some specific courses on disaster prep exercises, which should all be old news for the successful exercise consultant candidate: IS-120.a An Introduction to Exercises http://training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/IS/IS120A.asp IS-130 Exercise Evaluation and Improvement Planning http://training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/IS/IS130.asp IS-139 Exercise Design http://training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/IS/is139.asp It wouldn't hurt if every city council member has these certifications already, but I wouldn't be surprised if most have never heard of this stuff before. After all, why should we expect them to know anything about federal reimbursement of local disaster response costs? It apparently wasn't well known by them when two trash hauling contractors left San Diego stuck for the otherwise-reimbursable costs of the botched 2007 wildfire cleanup.— December 13, 2010 9:05 p.m.
Uninvited Guests Line the Road to Powerlink Ground-Breaking
Despite SDG&E's UT-reported claim that this project will reduce SDG&E's wholesale cost of electricity, virtually every SDG&E-filed application to California's Public Utilities Commission dealing with rates paid by consumers is for a retail rate hike. http://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/published/proceedings/doc… Two notable examples: A0908020 Wildfire Expense Balancing Account (WEBA) proceeding on consumer ratepayers getting the tab for utility overhead equipment failures leading to wildfire legal and other costs, and A1007009 PeakShift at Work/ PeakShift at Home (PSW/PSH) small business and residential rate hikes even if Sunrise Powerlink goes online and delivers the maximum amount of power to customers in the SDG&E service area.— December 13, 2010 12:13 a.m.
Dumanis Met with Sanders to Tell Him She Wouldn't Prosecute Li Mandri, Mannino
Even for the blindly naive, the mayor's testimony here is a smoking gun on the level of self-protection that is business as usual for city and county elected officials. Actually, it would be rather surprising if Bonnie Dumanis does not end up on the stand under oath if this goes to trial, given her central role in ALL of this. At least I now know why Dianne Jacob (sitting as an APCD director) had to go around Dumanis and get County Counsel to file suit against SDG&E over the massively-botched asbestos abatement job in the 2000-2001 Encanto Gas Holder demolition. It figures that County Air Pollution Control District was also listed as an investigative agency in UNITED STATES OF AMERICA V. SDG&E, but Dumanis' office was never heard from as the guilty verdicts were handed down: http://www.justice.gov/usao/cas/press/cas70713-SD…— December 12, 2010 11:09 p.m.
City Demurrer No Good, Must Answer Kessler Amended Complaint
I was confused as well. Apparently Kessler is on his second amended complaint, and the City demurred without filing an answer to the most recent amended complaint. I'll try to download a copy of the tentative ruling and make a link available. RE "the fact is if the City lost a SJ motion, they are in for rough seas in the future of this litigation": That about sums things up.— December 12, 2010 7:42 p.m.
City Demurrer No Good, Must Answer Kessler Amended Complaint
Don Bauder's "What a Tangled Web We Weave": http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2010/mar/17/ci… Copy of Original KESSLER V. CITY OF SAN DIEGO complaint: http://media.sdreader.com/pdf/kessler-suit.pdf HUD OIG Audit of City of San Diego Redevelopment Agency mentioned in KESSLER V. CITY OF SAN DIEGO complaint: http://www.hud.gov/offices/oig/reports/files/ig09…— December 12, 2010 3:17 a.m.
Bankruptcy — Good for San Diego
The cyber-rebels have little or no discipline. None of them are part of the economy that would be using Visa or Mastercard, or their cyber-attacks would be directed against themselves. Better yet, none of them have significant relationships with persons of the opposite sex who would be extremely annoyed by not having access to their own credit card purchasing power. If someone were launching cyber-attacks against their own non-existent businesses on the Internet, then they'd be loudest amongst the complainers of how unfair denial-of-service attacks are to their own interests. Once the cyber-rebels crash the Internet, the only things they'll have left are burning cars in the streets. Fortunately, they have a lot of virtual training for that from endless hours of playing Grand Theft Auto on their personal game consoles while staying up all night. The current success of cyber-rebels reflects more on crappy commercial website security across the Internet than it does on anyone's competence as a code-copying hacker with few actual programming skills and even less scruples.— December 11, 2010 11:08 a.m.
Ex-Gay Community Publisher Portantino Takes Own Life
Generally, I have found that the more people who write negative comments after a SCAM DIEGO post, the closer to the truth that writing may have been...— December 10, 2010 10:17 a.m.
Gary Aguirre forces hand of SEC
RE "Hahah......hold gov employees accountable! What a laugher that one is. Never happens": When I was an RTC/FDIC intern in DC, I was introduced to a theory of government ethics that holds government employees should at least follow the Constitution, and the laws adopted pursuant to it. It wasn't part of the internship but in a course for those of us who were Minority Leaders Fellows, one of those ideals shining on the top of the hill. Now, few people talk about it as a matter of law, but our Constitution does contain a Preamble that says some things about preserving the blessings of liberty to the people of the United States. It may not be realistic to expect government employees to behave this way, especially when some believe that they are the law and can change it at will, but it does help to set a standard of behavior. Beyond the Preamble, the Constitution and federal law SHOULD be something that protects the rights of people, so that they do enjoy those blessings. When government employees are arbitrary in denying one's rights, we hold them accountable, responsible, and liable... or we get the kind of government that we've consented to by our own negligence. That might seem harsh for a people who've had to put up with a whole lot of crap lately, but ultimately, it IS a matter of priorities. After all, we are the posterity of those who created our Constitution in the first place. Once upon a time, a president resigned as he was being held responsible. Sometimes the system actually works. Martha Stewart deserves her fans. I've become one. She's survived prosecution and rehabilitation, things that probably would have killed me.— December 9, 2010 12:44 a.m.
If San Diego Needs More Electricity, then Sempra Sells It... To Canada?
There may be monetary reasons for Sempra Energy to have more electricity sent out of the country rather than have it available for customers here in San Diego. http://www.sandiegoreader.com/weblogs/encanto-gas…— December 8, 2010 2:32 p.m.