Scan scam. San Diego, not surprisingly, is in the middle of this one. In 1992, Los Angeles financier Bruce Friedman set up Heart Check America. “We were a regular imaging center. A doctor prescribes a …
August 29, 2012
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Stories by Don Bauder (RIP)
Heart Check and Life Score Clinic didn't work so well
Wall Street's High-Speed Gambling
When I was in first grade, the school janitor asked what my father did for a living. I said he was a stockbroker. He said, “Oh, one of those gamblers.” I cried all the way …
August 22, 2012
UCSD's Gary Jacobson and Keith T. Poole predict political peace
Political parties have never been so ideologically divided — and downright nasty about it — since the Reconstruction that followed the Civil War, say two political scientists who study and track political polarization. But both …
August 15, 2012
Eye gnat infestations in south Escondido – end of local organic food farming?
Organic foods are about 2 percent of world food sales but are growing at 20 percent annually. They are produced without use of synthetic pesticides, chemical fertilizers, solvents, or additives. Although they may cost at …
August 8, 2012
Screw U: The Next Bubble May Be Higher Education
In economics, a bubble is something that trades at prices far beyond its intrinsic value. Fasten your seat belt: the next bubble may be higher education. The $1 trillion of student debt is clearly a …
August 1, 2012
League of California Cities Touts Openness but Shuns Disclosure Requirements
What does San Diego get out of the Sacramento-based League of California Cities?
July 25, 2012
Did President Nixon help finance part of San Diego?
Citizens are wringing their hands — wisely, in my opinion — about Mitt Romney’s long-standing practice of stashing money in havens such as Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. But during the Republican nomination race, then-candidate …
July 18, 2012
The NFL's Dirty Secret
The National Football Leagues’s links to organized crime enumerated.
July 4, 2012
Creation of a Monster, John Gardner
Caitlin Rother’s book about John Gardner draws a terrifying portrait of a man who was sweet and cuddly one day and a crazed killer the next.
June 27, 2012
Could Imperial Valley Become Owens Valley?
Political and drought conditions could turn the Imperial Valley into another Owens Valley.
June 20, 2012
Will Brain Damage Kill Football?
Professional football takes a blow to the head. Military combat personnel in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars may suffer the same kind of brain damage as professional football players.
June 13, 2012
San Diego Economy: Where’s the Oomph?
Is low home-ownership an indication of San Diego’s stagnant economy?
June 6, 2012
In Borrego, Prices Are Low, Anyway
Development of Borrego Springs still hinges on water supply.
May 30, 2012
Did Sempra Bribe Mexicans?
Did Sempra Energy pass bribes to officials in Mexico to grease construction projects there? Then, when a whistle-blower complaint was filed, did the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Bureau of Investigation permit Sempra …
May 16, 2012
Will Wall Street Cool on Bridgepoint?
Bridgepoint Education stock drops. The San Diego company’s relationship with Wall Street becomes more apparent.
May 9, 2012
Build a stadium and Chargers will stay? Nope.
Downtown potentates want taxpayers to provide a massive subsidy for a new Chargers stadium. If it ever happens (here’s hoping it doesn’t), the team and whatever governments are involved will draw up a contract. If …
May 2, 2012
Timothy Alan Simon: Commissioner with a Past
A California Public Utilities commissioner has his unimpressive/brow-raising track record laid out.
April 25, 2012
U-T Saw Ryan Leaf as a Savior
There was a time when the San Diego Union-Tribune prophesized that an NFL player would fill this city with super sports boosters. Didn’t happen.
April 18, 2012
UCAN's Best Con
The truism goes back centuries: “Hee that lies with the dogs, riseth with fleas.” But ten years ago, Utility Consumers’ Action Network (UCAN), the watchdog nonprofit attempting to dissolve while it is being investigated by …
April 11, 2012
San Diego Gas & Electric: Fat Profits, Fat Pay
Sempra Energy, the San Diego–based utility, is wealthy by comparison with other utilities. It is obsessed with handing out its riches to its shareholders (particularly its own top executives) at the expense of its customers. …
April 4, 2012
San Diego's redevelopment pigs want back at the trough
Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat fearful of losing a cushy job or a real estate kingpin fearful of losing a fat government subsidy. Therefore, the move to bring back redevelopment in some form …
March 28, 2012
Tony Gwynn got salivary gland cancer but won't denounce chewing tobacco
When baseball icon Tony Gwynn revealed in 2010 that he had salivary gland cancer and blamed it on decades of using chewing tobacco, he set off firestorms: prominent Major League players and managers proclaimed they …
March 14, 2012
The return of the Chargers scandals
Having been hornswoggled by both the Chargers and the Padres, and knowing the City is wobbling financially, San Diego voters are unlikely to approve a fat subsidy for a new Chargers stadium. But downtown overlords …
February 29, 2012
Fat Claims, Fat Chance
A web of interrelated North County enterprises — known for high-pressure TV ads — professes its products will help you peel off body fat. But to conceal what it is doing, this group of purported …
February 22, 2012
San Diego Gas & Electric Wants You to Pay for Its Negligence
Your pocket is being picked in an alleged conspiracy between San Diego Gas & Electric and the California Public Utilities Commission, which is supposed to regulate utilities but actually mollycoddles them. This chicanery, spelled out …
February 15, 2012
Fed H-1B Visa Probes May Help American Engineers
American computer professionals who complain that they lose jobs or get lower pay because of imported tech workers may have reason to smile. Government regulators are cracking down on alleged fraud in worker visa programs. …
February 8, 2012
Buyouts Didn’t Help U-T and Petco
Go, Newt! In your donnybrook with Mitt, please keep informing the citizenry about the rapacity of private equity groups (essentially leveraged buyout firms). I’m neutral on the nomination but feel strongly about private equity groups: …
February 1, 2012
Gambling Addicts Aren't Necessarily Smoking Addicts
In a gambling casino, you can lose your shirt — and worse, your health. That’s why several groups are working on California’s Indian casinos to go smoke-free. Many such casinos, particularly in San Diego County, …
January 25, 2012
Redevelopment promoters weep over supreme court decision
"The good news is the bad news — that the state is desperate for money,” says Richard Rider. If the state’s books were in good shape, the corporate welfare lobby would probably succeed in getting …
January 18, 2012
U.S. and San Diego economies muddling through
The United States and San Diego economies should muddle through in 2012 — growing very slowly — unless an economic civil war of sorts erupts in Europe. It’s already rumbling and could cause a global …
January 11, 2012
Snug and Smug at the Hotel Del
Gary Aguirre heads a San Diego law firm that since February has specialized in representing whistle-blowers, those who blow the whistle on financial fraud — often inside the companies they work for — and government …
January 4, 2012
The Stock Market Roller Coaster
The stock market is like Pavlov’s dogs. It starts to salivate at the thought of a juicy meal, long before it gets one. (About a century ago, Russian scientist Ivan Petrovich Pavlov found that if …
December 21, 2011
San Diego Convention Center liars
"Even in the face of the current economic downturn, the San Diego Convention Center continues to deliver significant benefits to the greater San Diego region,” boasted the center in its 2010 annual report. Do not …
December 14, 2011
San Diego has a civic inferiority complex
San Diego needs counseling. If you could bring back a great name from the past to give advice, who would it be? Real estate wizards Alonzo Horton or John Spreckels? Civic activist George Marston, who …
December 7, 2011
Escondido's dubious plan to build a $50 million ballpark
Early next year, the California Supreme Court will decide whether the state can abolish or weaken redevelopment agencies. If the City of Escondido is lucky, the high court’s decision will thwart the City’s dubious plan …
November 30, 2011
How Sempra used cash-balance plans
Forget Occupy Wall Street. Forget Occupy Oakland and Occupy San Diego. The next protest movement should be OccupyTowers Watson. Or Occupy Mercer. Or Occupy International Business Machines or San Diego’s Sempra Energy. Towers Watson and …
November 16, 2011
Big Four accounting firms do dirty work
The bank’s loans to Smith associates vastly exceeded bank regulators’ limits on insider transactions. The United States Comptroller of the Currency said the bank’s muddle of Smith-related transactions was “self-dealing run riot.”
November 9, 2011
Income chasm widens in San Diego
The income gap between San Diego’s very richest and everybody else is widening, but still, inequality here remains less scary than it is in the nation as a whole. That may partially explain why Occupy …
October 26, 2011
Real estate funds not sure thing for San Diego retirees
Beware nontraded real estate investment trusts. That advice was issued early this month by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the nongovernmental regulator of securities firms. Real estate investment trusts (REITs) pool money from many investors, …
October 19, 2011
San Diegans on bringing in the feds
Late last month, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke said long-term unemployment is a “national crisis.” And it’s urgent that government give more help to the ailing housing industry. San Diego’s unemployment and housing problems are …
October 12, 2011
Who caused San Diego's massive power failure September 8?
Fumbling European banks may drag the whole world into another slough, but a couple of them have done the right things responding to adversity. A trader at UBS (once known as Union Bank of Switzerland) …
October 5, 2011
Alfred Rappaport and Todd Buchholz take sides on risk-taking
Two San Diego authors have recently written books. One tsk-tsks risk-taking and the other celebrates it. Yet you can agree with both premises. La Jolla’s Alfred Rappaport, professor emeritus at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, …
September 28, 2011
San Diego unions push transaction tax
On September 1, two hundred labor union members assembled at the Vista office of Congressman Darrell Issa to promote the idea of a transaction tax — a tiny assessment on sales of stocks, bonds, currencies, …
September 21, 2011
Conventions, Football Don’t Mix
Southern California has balmy weather and, seemingly, balmy leadership. For one thing, both Los Angeles and San Diego want to expand convention centers in the teeth of a grossly overbuilt market and slumping convention attendance. …
September 14, 2011
Paradise Plundered tells San Diego story
Abe Lincoln championed government for the people and said you can only fool some of the people all of the time. In San Diego, government gives succor to a handful of the most affluent people …
September 7, 2011
Nucor's Death by China, co-authored by Peter Navarro
UCAN agreed to pay $1 million to the production company in three installments. According to an internal document, UCAN has deposited two checks from Nucor — one for $600,000 and one for $400,000.
August 24, 2011
New Calif. redevelopment law could stop Chargers stadium
When the economy weakens, resolve stiffens. Glum consumers do fewer giddy things. It’s becoming apparent that lack of buying by debt-sated consumers could push us into another recession, or close to one, and the pain …
August 17, 2011
The Swiss Connection to BBG Communications
People using overseas pay phones are shelling out $54 and $55 for one-minute calls when using their credit cards, and they say that phone instructions give them no warning of such staggering charges. Understandably, the …
August 10, 2011
Will Southern Cal Newspapers Combine?
Platinum Equity, financial swingers from Beverly Hills, bought the Union-Tribune in March of 2009 for a song. Now San Diegans wonder if that song is “A Cottage for Sale.” On July 11 of this year, …
August 3, 2011