MartyGardner
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Chargers or Comic-Con? SD can't get both (and needs neither)
We need it all. The reason we can't get it and keep it, is because we mismanage and do not maintain what we have here. Here is the equation: #1 Destination + Good Visitor Experience = Sustained Revenue + Continued Growth. Do you see how those things are interconnected? We are dropping the ball on Good Visitor Experience. People come, they see, and they are appalled, if not apathetic about ever coming again. Clean up the city, manage the homeless people better, and add the pizazz back to San Diego. Downtown is our revenue core. It generates all other revenue and services. Clean the corner of J. Street and Second Ave., a dubious stub of litter and unwelcome that makes anyone new to this city think that he or she has stumbled the wrong way across the street from the convention center. It won't matter that two centers are blocks apart, if those blocks are integrated into a cohesive and consistent plan. Try putting the street corner signs back up. We go from First to Fifteenth streets, A to J, Fron to the I-5. It's a tiny square compared to most major cities, and we can't afford to let people know which street they are on? Many of them give up and go back to their hotel rooms. You have the downtown partnership which goes out and spot cleans a little piece of sidewalk every now and then. Clean all the sidewalks! The drought is over. We let the trees die due to the drought. A liter of water a week on those trees would have kept them alive, now we have to replace them or watch them rot. Cut out the middlemen who are robbing us blind. The Mayor, in the strong mayor role, should be able to handle the big picture over all of these projects. It's large, challenging, and daunting yes; but no more difficult than getting a four-year business degree, I'm sure. Negotiate with the Chargers, do not capitulate to them. Slash their figures in half. If they don't budge, sue them for the team rights. Have you read the NFL bylaws? You can drive a truck through them. The Chargers belong to San Diego, period. Want to challenge them? Fly all the NFL players into San Diego, at the Convention Center, and ask them to raise their hands if they think the NFL is just a glorified player's union. Watch Goodell mess himself. We will have a new stadium, tax free, in no time. If elected Mayor, I promise to roll up my sleeves, look under the hood, and find out exactly why the engine isn't working. Then I will fix it. Vote Marty Gardner for Mayor. Thank you.— March 18, 2016 12:49 p.m.
Will Faulconer dare touch Trump's third rail?
It's not so much the granting of the visas as it is the overall outcome. While gathering my ballot nomination signatures, I estimate that 6 out of 10 business people that I spoke with downtown had green cards. Of course, they are nice people, give service with a smile, and are highly professional. But I wonder, how many of them could have been Americans that filled those jobs. The problem comes down to the law of the street, versus the law on the books. Give a green card, take an American job, sure; but after the majority of that business is filled with visa holders, including the hiring managers, what incentive do they have to hire ANY Americans? Many of these people come from places where they do not have the civil and human rights laws that we have. In other words, they haven't necessarily been taught to "play fair," nor do they have a reason to do so when our native laws begin to give them all the advantage. Same thing with renting or buying: When most of the units in a building are suddenly one nationality or another, what incentive do sellers have to follow red-lining and profiling laws? In other words, what keeps them from secretly deciding how and whom they rent to? Americans are slowly losing their legal rights, because the law of the street and demographics takes over. My opinion may sound discriminatory, but it is just the opposite. This goes all the way back to nationalism and protectionism. Democrats and middle-of-the-road Republicans are terrified of any candidate who looks to restrict or tighten protectionist laws; because then all the fast money dries up from foreign investors. The trouble with Faulconer, and his support of Rubio, is that it shows him to be a weak conservative; and downright close to being a liberal. As Mayor, I am going to be a strong leader, and also a strong conservative. Every other country that I have visited does not let one expat group or another "take over." Why should it happen here, making a quick buck for the politicians while our people are marginalized by the system and grow hungry and disheartened?— March 14, 2016 5:01 p.m.