Bob Filner Visits the Grand Bazaar

Despite the state’s budget crisis, Sandra A. Brown, the new vice chancellor for research at UCSD, has been awarded a salary of $290,000 a year by UC regents. A Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Wayne State University, Brown has been a professor in UCSD’s Psychology Department…Democratic congressman Bob Filner, said to be interested in running for San Diego mayor when Jerry Sanders is termed out next year, has been on the road of late, courtesy of the Pacifica Institute, a nonprofit group founded by Turkish Americans, whose mission, according to its website, “is to promote cross-cultural awareness, in order to attain peace and diversity with our neighbors, help establish a better society where individuals love, respect and accept each other as they are.” In Filner’s case, that meant paying lodging and meal expenses totaling $880 for a trip he took from Washington to Istanbul during the congressional recess from December 22 through December 31 last year. Highlights, according to the itinerary, included a stop at Topkapi Palace, lunch at Sultan Ahmet Square, a visit to the Karakoy Jewish Foundation Museum, capturing “700 years of amiable relations between Jews and Turks,” and a December 25 shopping tour of the Grand Bazaar, “one of the largest and oldest covered markets in the world, with more than 58 covered streets and over 1200 shops.… Many of the stalls in the bazaar are grouped by type of goods, with special areas for leather coats, gold jewelry and the like.”…Another potential mayoral candidate, GOP district attorney Bonnie Dumanis, entered the new year with a ready-made campaign bankroll, $42,166 left over from her easy coast to reelection in 2010. Much of the cash — including $500 each from lawyer and ex-Democratic congresswoman Lynn Schenk, her brother Fred, Democratic financier Murray Galinson, and his wife Elaine, as well as $200 from General Atomics principal Linden Blue, a big fan of incumbent mayor Jerry Sanders — was donated in 2009.