Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Close to Home — What it’s like on the street where you live
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
San Diego City Employees pension fund ailing
I did see something interesting in the http://www.sandiego.gov/pensionreform/pdf/min0408… report: "It was recognized that there may be limits to the City's debt capacity or other pressing City needs for that capacity that would make the extensive use of POBs either not possible or not attractive. The City owns a considerable amount of real estate that could be used, in a variety of forms, to provide the needed cash infusion. The most straight-forward option would be for the City to sell City-owned real estate and transfer the cash into the plan" (p. 32). Y'know, selling Balboa Park would cure all o' this pension funding talk once and for all time, just about as quick as our strong mayor can round up a real estate agent to take this transaction private. Anybody who doesn't have the taint of a block grant-abusing redevelopment corporation ought to do for this trick.— January 26, 2009 3:45 p.m.
Gary Aguirre case,– embarrassment for SEC
Supposing change has come to Washington... would it be a nice change to see SEC transformed into a tightly-supervised department of the FBI? Can you imagine how many mail fraud counts there must be in a Madoff-style ponzi scheme where there's no real proof of any alleged legitimate securities transactions... just think of all the lulling letters...— January 26, 2009 9:25 a.m.
San Diego City Employees pension fund ailing
Regardless of the state of the pension fund, or the relative health/illness of the things it is invested in, it does appear that we will be getting less for our tax dollar's worth of service, not more. Key indicators: government employee furloughs and closed government offices... and that includes under-manned fire stations. Didn't East LA just make a move to split itself off from greater Los Angeles? Would we be better off if the City of San Diego was just the fountain at Horton Plaza and some adjacent parking meters WITHOUT a Redevelopment Agency/City Council split personality?— January 12, 2009 1:14 p.m.
President-elect Obama wants to toss in another trillion bucks soon
Perhaps we could call it reflation?— January 11, 2009 10:07 p.m.
Redevelopment Agency Block Grant Scandal: the Carolyn Smith Legacy
See Pat Flannery's comments at http://www.blogofsandiego.com/— January 11, 2009 9:38 p.m.
Note to U-T Employees: You Think You're Angst-Ridden? Look at Your Former Ohio, Illinois Colleagues
Re: #43 "The CDBG Grants scandal is quite a big one, but doesn't seem to have gained any traction in public attention. So much for the strong mayor cleaning house. Oops." Oh, boy... Mr. Williams pointed out a live one... I'm looking at a copy of the Dec. 30 HUD report right now (HUD Regional Inspector General Audit Report # 2000-LA-1005), and it'll be a blog by tomorrow morning. Teaser: The UT got it wrong. The City isn't in for "nearly $2 million"... it's more like $13 million, and the reason will be in the blog.— January 11, 2009 8:06 p.m.
Dick Rider wants competition, Mike Aguirre wants bankruptcy
There will come a time when the ownership of Balboa Park will be less important than paying the necessary costs of public safety and fire protection in San Diego. The time is coming because... well, just because. Neither the public employee groups nor the taxpayers want to give ground, and so the disposal (for more liquid assets) of city properties in various degrees of sentimental value is inevitable.— November 19, 2008 2:20 p.m.
U.S. facing bear market till 2017?
For general information: The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) and the Amero were things I've never heard of before, but there is information about the partnership at http://www.spp.gov/ which does not indicate that it rises to the level of a Senate-approved treaty. Could it be that rumors of the Amero are being floated to improve sales of gold-related mining stocks?— November 6, 2008 9:39 a.m.
Doing the Math: Why Was Expected "Record" Voter Turn-out so Low?
OK... I'm kicking myself for posting this, but... Hand jobs ARE good. And safe, too. Now that's out of the way... I still subscribe to the thought that 'way out here on the West Coast, by the time people have quit looking at totals coming in on the Internet at work all afternoon, there's no point in voting on things already decided by Vermont, Kentucky and Rhode Island. After all, how many elections turned on vote tallies coming out of Hawaii? Do they even vote in Hawaii? (Family members are reading over my shoulder and calling me a scumbag...)— November 5, 2008 7:11 p.m.
U.S. facing bear market till 2017?
In my mind (meaning this likely has noooo relationship to "reality") the problems with the economy go to the foundations of globalization as a market paradigm. My ideas on fixing things and making them go are probably too radical even for the Reader. Still, it should be obvious that as long as America needs globalization to make things go, there will always be a need for large defense outlays, large international bank loan guarantees secured with American debt against tax revenues, and unavoidable overseas political triggers to commiting American armed forces to the rescue... all of which tax the economy and prevent the use of otherwise-dedicated resources for expansion and growth. America could dump globalization if we had a commercially-successful program of space exploration and colonization where our technological advantages froze out foreign competitors and restricted terrestrial anti-American terrorism to a relative rarity, but again... such a thing is too radical to consider even here. The only reason for bringing this up is that severe market contraction is probably the best time to make plans for a different future.— November 5, 2008 6:59 p.m.