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Where a University of San Diego degree leads
LOL! I was actually living on campus at the University of Spoiled Daughters when Aromas opened up. My favorite thing to do around 11:30pm was to run up there from the Valley frosh housing to grab a double expresso before tackling my computer science homework (Thanx, Dr. Langton). If it had opened a year earlier, I would have graded calculus homework there instead of grading in my dorm room on instant coffee. My memories of USD are somewhat brighter than those in the above article, fiction or not. I tended to see the women on campus, especially those living in the dorms as my neighbors, as my younger sisters. This wasn't that hard to do as a mid-30s transfer student, but it helped having the ability to tutor business "baby" calc while administering a fairly decent back massage. I miss that slender Aromas barista that I tutored baby calc to during the last spring semester I lived on campus... More than a few USD students did go to high school in Beverly Hills. USD is still a nice place to drop off one's daughter to break up a questionable relationship with someone else living in LA. Sure, there were some young women who had a difficult time adjusting to the relative freedom of college life after high school, but the REAL A-holes on campus were the freshmen boys who took to expressing themselves by trashing select portions of campus, relying on the theory that "The help will take care of it." Those self-righteous children actually thought like that! And we wonder where the Wall Street Masters of the Universe came from before causing the Crash of 2008...— February 11, 2010 1:23 p.m.
San Diego mayor Sanders puts football above water
"It's really a failure to cogitate." I am seriously pushing Comprehensive Emergency Management as offered by FEMA's Emergency Management Institute in its numerous independent studies courses (both at http://groups.myspace.com/cemis and at http://training.fema.gov/IS/crslist.asp ), especially for our "younger" citizens at our local community colleges. It's my experience that community college students are not yet so burnt-out on reality that they refuse to believe they have no power whatsoever, and CEM management by objectives may allow them to get things done where political ossification by campaign contribution prevents action by local elected officials. I have this personal thing I call All-hazard Local Emergency Response Theory (ALERT) loosely based on CERT (community emergency response teams; http://www.citizencorps.gov/cert/ ), except a grass-roots community ALERT organization is more independent rather than dependent on local agency assistance/tethering. The point of all of this is to get more of us thinking about what it is that we can do to prepare for disasters... especially those created by government mismanagement of resources, inattention to neighborhood problems, and deliberate manipulation by well-heeled corporations that just do not give a damn about the neighborhoods they choose to step on. There is definitely a connection between ALERT and a move to increase the electric franchise fee at the ballot box. As long as SDG&E/Sempra have no financial incentive to put the power lines underground, San Diego County is still under threat of wildfires that previous SDG&E CEO Debra Reed and other investor-owned utilities ("IOUs") testified in the CPUC Wildfire Expense Balancing Account application last year, stating "The risk of fire is inherent in the provision of utility service. Because that risk cannot be entirely avoided, the costs of claims for wildfires allegedly caused by utility property are properly recoverable". By "properly recoverable", SDG&E and the other IOUs mean that our rates go up here because SDG&E refuses to put the power lines underground before 2063. Duh!— February 11, 2010 9:47 a.m.
San Diego mayor Sanders puts football above water
I have a way to channel outrage: voters raising the electric franchise fee (set in 1970 at 3% of gross receipts) to 20% until all of the county's power lines are underground (http://www.sandiegoreader.com/weblogs/encanto-gas…). Not all capitalists are dead and buried. Soon, somebody is gonna find a spare Navy sub reactor at the bottom of the bay, install it on a floating desalinization plant off shore (totally bypassing the Coastal Commission permit process), and sell the rest of us distilled drinking water after MWD cuts us off at the tap... I'm amazed that nobody (except the Navy on its own vessels and the occasional cruise liner) has done it yet.— February 8, 2010 2:58 p.m.
Luna, Constantin Generated Controversy in San Jose
It is interesting that nobody involved with City of San Diego internal auditing has made public statements regarding City contracts and franchise agreements with certain private-sector vendors since the mayor took office... especially as the low payment rates to the City on those contracts and agreements may have something to do with the mayor's proposed budget gap described in his recent State of the City address. It seems that Matt Potter has been tracking for years the political contributions of one or more of the larger contract/franchise holders...— February 5, 2010 9:28 a.m.
News Mixed in Unemployment Report
"The stock market has jumped up and down on the news and actually might be focusing more on European woes in Greece, along with Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Spain." There are comments in the media this morning that major European banks are adding credit default swaps in anticipation of possible financial collapse in one or more of those sovereign countries with a common currency. Naturally, I don't expect that if the comments are true, then those banks will be honestly transparent in their ownership of any new CDS paper assets.— February 5, 2010 9:16 a.m.
Cashless ducats
Maybe this helps to open the way for me to be a consultant to the local legislative body that I once was president of...— February 4, 2010 11:37 a.m.
League Cites Establishment in Bid for Longer "Strong Mayor" Trial Period
RE #7: Interesting... hadn't thought of that regarding someone like Ms. Frye! I assumed that she could not get elected unless there was some sort of real populist wave of political support that developers could not contain... If such a wave did develop, knocking down a 2/3 veto provision once adopted might not be possible.— February 4, 2010 9:25 a.m.
San Diego mayor Sanders puts football above water
RE# 7: Guess who sits on the city's redevelopment agency, and that will give us all a clue as to "how our Mayor and Clowncil get away with all these back door shenanigans."— February 4, 2010 8:46 a.m.
San Diego mayor Sanders puts football above water
RE #8: ... but I thought Carolyn Smith (ex-SEDC prez) couldn't cash that going-away check...— February 4, 2010 8:43 a.m.
Cash and ethics
Could there be a future bet on the outcome of a Chargers/Bears game in the above? As for Spanos holdings in Las Vegas, one wonders what possible connection there might be between that clan and Dubai World's financing of CityCenter...— February 2, 2010 1:38 p.m.