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Whistle-blowing firefighter's case settled
My first reaction upon reading the headline was that the city of SD had done it again. That city is constantly making settlements to wronged employees and those victimized by rogue cops. And the SD fire department seems to have a major problem with its current fire chief and his ways of dealing with the staff. But, lo and behold, this was the city of Chula Vista! Maybe now that CV is hands down the second largest city in the county, it is trying to be the worst run. It would be very hard to dislodge SD from that perch. Do these bureaucrats never learn? Ans: No, they seem to work very hard at making the same errors of judgment over and over.— December 11, 2017 4:01 p.m.
Tijuana Uber report
The notorious Tijuana taxis aren't necessarily any safer than rideshares. Have you ever chanced to take a trip in a TJ taxi? Are these cars any worse? I don't claim to know, but in the Third World, and don't forget for a moment that TJ isn't anything like the US, usual norms just don't apply consistently.— December 10, 2017 8:56 p.m.
Thanks for the food desert, Albertsons
Ken, If there were that many WF branches at one intersection, it probably didn't last long. Back about 1990 Great American folded and WF bought up the branches. Then San Diego Trust sold out to First Interstate which was in turn taken over by WF. So, there was the possibility that none of those branches operated by Wells was actually its own branch prior to the mass insanity and merger-mania in banking. One could have been a former Great American branch (with its distinctive blue tile roof), another a former San Diego Trust branch (they tended to be big), and the third one a former First Interstate office. I do know that after WF took over Great American, they shuttered most of those branches, which is why so many of them are now used by other operations, many of which had the roofs repainted red or brown or . . .— December 10, 2017 8:24 a.m.
In search of state utilities commission's jugular...
Looking at those two mustachioed slime balls, I'm almost tempted to shave off my trademark mustache (and beard, I suppose.) RICO is a federal law that has been hard to employ: they knew what they were trying to punish, but had a hard time trying to define it. I'm hard-pressed to think of a time when RICO was used on a corporate entity or a state agency like CPUC. Does it apply? For sure! The real question is if a Trump DOJ would pursue these corrupt Dems in California. Sounds like a silly question, I know. But it does offer an opening to clean house in Sacto.— December 9, 2017 5:47 p.m.
Thanks for the food desert, Albertsons
If you are looking for sit-down restaurants, they are getting scarce, even in some of the more affluent parts of the county. Seems that help, now that the minimum wage is up and going higher is costly, and the prices also have to match. The "fast casual" approach--menu on the wall, order at the counter, pick up your own food, dishes, tableware--is emerging as the norm. I guess there will always be Denny's.— December 9, 2017 4:22 p.m.
Local human rights groups fight each other
This story is odd, and I suspect some things are not mentioned. Two organizations like those would usually be of a like mind, and yet one is accused of excluding a big element of its support. That just makes no sense. There's more to the whole situation.— December 9, 2017 3:27 p.m.
Thanks for the food desert, Albertsons
Albertson's has been shuttering stores in this county for years. But where they pulled out of spots that I know about the space was taken. On Encinitas Blvd, just east of I-5, shortly after they closed up, Smart & Final Extra moved in. I'm aware of Ralphs shuttering two supermarkets in Oceanside. The first one to close was on Oceanside Blvd, adjacent to I-5 and the other on South Melrose Ave (the street address of the store was on Cannon Road). Neither space has been taken. I have a real problem believing that any chain that was hurting enough to close stores would keep paying the inflated rent on he space for years after and blocking it from being reused by another food store. But, hey, strange things happen out there. There is no doubt that the county now has excess retail space, and that some of it just will not find another occupant, ever. But a supermarket space in a fairly new center in a new area doesn't seem to fit the idea of "excess."— December 8, 2017 1:27 p.m.
Hard times for the United Auto Workers
That was the essential approach taken by a virulently anti-union employer of mine back about forty years ago. If there was a union organizing drive in a unit, it must have been that the manager was at fault, and so he usually got canned. The corporation didn't seem to recognize that paying poorly, having a sketchy benefit package, and a lack of corporate identity contributed to the drives. The assumption of managerial abuse or incompetence applies only if your compensation and benefits are competitive. And in this case of graduate student teachers and researchers, it applies both to the poor compensation for hard work, and to the abuses delivered by the regular (i.e. tenured) faculty. Those students have a strong case for better treatment, and now can legally pursue equitable pay and benefits for the work they perform.— December 7, 2017 5:05 p.m.
Oily money
She and hubby Nathan want to come across as the woman and man of the people. Her labor union record helps that story along. But like so many establishment Dems, they are for sale to the highest bidder, and not only accept big corporate money, they solicit it. Juan Vargas, the border district congressman, has been at the trough of big corporate lobbyist money for as long as he's been in that office. (He was prior to that time, another story itself.) But the voters just think that he's "one of us little people" and mark the square next to his name on their ballots. And know what? That will probably work for lovely Lorena and Nathan, too.— December 7, 2017 4:58 p.m.
Hard times for the United Auto Workers
You can take to the bank the fact that no university wants to see its staff or faculty to be unionized. There have been faculty unions in California since the early 80's. But the graduate students fell into a gray area between being students and being workers. In fact they had to do plenty of work that was only tenuously connected to their studies. A PhD program takes, generally, a minimum of six years after the bachelors degree, so those doctoral candidates are available to work for that same number of years. They have no bargaining chips, and have had to accept whatever the campus was willing to pay them. For about as long as there have been such programs and students in them, the pay was just enough to survive, if that. Complain and you find that your academic output and dissertation just never are good enough. Oral exams, much feared by even the best qualified students, can be used endlessly punish and thwart students who don't just keep smiling and working day and night. If/when those grad students unionize and want pay commensurate with the teaching and toiling they do in labs it will be a sea change for UCSD and other campuses. It will upset many of the tenured faculty members who had to put up with years of abuse before they moved into the upper echelons, and they often will resent that. (Having had to endure it while earning their doctorates, they should be sympathetic, and some will be, probably a minority.) So, things may change now that they are deprived of their semi-slave labor. I'd guess that if the universities had adopted some enlightened approaches to dealing with the graduate students, this push to unionize would never have started. But now they get their just deserts. I'd guess that if they do organize on the UCSD campus they won't affiliate with the UAW. The blue-collar nature of that national union just won't appeal to the snobbishness that goes with big a doctoral candidate, even though it might be a better affiliation than something academic.— December 6, 2017 10:05 a.m.