Leave it to the government-loving Los Angeles Times to find the real tragedy in California’s deep recession. What a precisely backward reading of cause and effect. Government job cuts were made necessary by plunging tax revenues from the recession-ravaged private sector. Economic lesson for the Los Angeles Times: Private sector taxes and fees fund government activities. The story lays virtually …
Public Service Journalism By Voice Of San Diego
To get a good story, sometimes all a reporter has to do is just stand around. That’s what Voice of San Diego reporter Adrian Florido and photographer Sam Hodgson did: The private company pumping sand onto Mission Beach has not done what it’s promised to prevent debris like rebar and rubber from being dumped on the beach. Manson Construction had …
Hire Rahmbo, Gain +5 Ruthlessness, Lose -7 Charisma
Did you play RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons? Even more to the point, the computer game Zork? Do you think The One is an Oval Office disaster? Then hie thee hence to the amazing, guffaw-inducing, chortle-making, laugh-provoking Iowahawk, who’s got a scarily true-to-life Zorkesque rendition of how a mundane president can be so inept he must be wielding a cursed …
How To Sell Global Warming To Those Bitter Clinger Hicks In Flyover Country
From the New York Times, via Climate Depot: “Don’t mention global warming,” warned Nancy Jackson, chairwoman of the Climate and Energy Project, a small nonprofit group that aims to get people to rein in the fossil fuel emissions that contribute to climate change. “And don’t mention Al Gore. People out here just hate him.” Focus instead on the quaint religious …
Global Warming Activist Topic-Banned From Wikipedia
Wikipedia is supposed to be a source of information, not propaganda. But William M. Connolley, who blogs under the name Stoat, has repeatedly abused his administrator position at Wikipedia to bias climate change-related articles to reflect his CAGW (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming) activism. But no more. After extensive run-ins with Connolley, Wikipedia has banned him from participating in climate change …
Dog Bites Man
I never seriously doubted that San Diego CityBeat would endorse Proposition D. Now the left-leaning alt-weekly has made its support of the tax hike official. CityBeat originally claimed it opposed Prop. D, but I found its declared opposition less than convincing for reasons I won’t repeat here. For more information about CityBeat’s political preferences, read its endorsements of candidates and …
Cops Say Girl Lied About Kidnap-Rape Claim
Updating an earlier story on SD Rostra by Kimberly Dvorak, San Diego County sheriff’s officials have branded false the allegation of a 15-year-old girl that she was raped Friday by three men. She “made up the story after she had sex with a man she met online,” officials told the North County Times. “The girl, ashamed and scared of telling …
Math-Illiterate AP Gun Story
The Associated Press just put out a press-release generated story about the supposed nexus between states with lax gun laws and exports of those guns for crimes. There’s nothing necessarily bad about such stories — I’ve written many myself — as long as the reporter takes a critical look at the information to see if it has any flaws. Unfortunately, …
Prop. 23 Opponents Spread ‘Repeal’ Falsehood
If enacted, Proposition 23 will suspend California’s global warming law until unemployment falls below 5.5 percent for four consecutive quarters. When that takes place, Prop. 23 goes back into effect. Backers say their intent is to ensure that California’s horrendous economy, with an unemployment rate above 12 percent and possibly double that in reality, isn’t further crippled. That’s straightforward enough, …
Mayor Sanders Opposes Prop. 23
San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders and other local political leaders have announced they oppose Proposition 23, the state initiative to suspend California’s global warming law until California’s unemployment rate falls. The law, AB32, places mandates on businesses to reduce carbon dioxide emissions believed by many scientists to cause global warming. Backers of the initiative say it will protect California jobs …
Meg Whitman’s Big-Spending Secretive Bureaucracy
And she hasn’t even been elected yet! CalWatchdog has the story about Whitman’s secretive centimillion-dollar campaign: “The Meg Whitman for Governor Campaign is like the Pentagon – or possibly even the NORAD command bunker – of political operations. Its headquarters in Cupertino is highly secured, with all access absolutely restricted. Staffers, except those specifically paid to deal with the media, …
Kudos To SD CityBeat On Life Perspectives Article
Due to an investigation prompted by an SD CityBeat expose, the County of San Diego has halted payment of a $20,000 grant to a group on grounds it might use the money for religiously-based activity. The money, and previous grants, was recommended by Supervisor Bill Horn. This is a great coup for CityBeat’s watchdog journalism. While I’ve criticized CityBeat in …
U-T Explores City’s Fiscal Foolishness Leading To Sales Tax Hike Proposal
The San Diego Union-Tribune lays out out the record of foolish financial decisions by the city. It provides historical context for Proposition D, the half-cent sales tax hike on the November ballot. The A1 story, from the U-T’s new Watchdog unit, is well worth reading. It names the names of the myopic city leaders who got us into this mess, …
Federal Employees Earn Double Private-Sector Pay
Food for thought from USA Today: Federal civil servants earned average pay and benefits of $123,049 in 2009 while private workers made $61,051 in total compensation, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The data are the latest available. Federal workers have been awarded bigger average pay and benefit increases than private employees for nine years in a row. The …
Despite Deceptive Editorial, SD CityBeat Supports Sales Tax Increase
In a recent editorial, San Diego CityBeat’s staff claimed to oppose Proposition D, the sales tax increase on the November ballot. But the purported opposition is just a convenient fig-leaf for the tax-and-spend CityBeat “liberals”, as they prepare to endorse the sales tax hike. The “liberals” (I don’t like calling them liberals, as they’re not – they are leftists) rule …
Meg Whitman Tiene Dos Caras
In English, “Met Whitman Has Two Faces.” That’s on a Spanish-language billboard ad from Jerry Brown’s campaign, pointing out how post-primary Whitman is saying different things than pre-primary Whitman on issues like illegal immigration and halting AB 32, California’s strict global warming law. KFI’s John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou (get their podcasts at the link) say that duplicity . . …
Time To Retract Mexican Takeover Story
The claim in certain quarters of the dextrosphere, including here, that a Mexican drug cartel took over ranches in Texas deserves euthanasia. There is no confirmation on the record, just anonymous sources. Texas newspapers say the story is groundless. Time to put it out of its misery. The story got an inauspicious start by using anonymous sources. I think the …
When Fact Checks Are False
Fact-checks are one of the latest fads of journalists as they try to recover importance in the age of new media. They’re supposed to show how journalists can cut through the confusion and find the truth about controversial claims. But they can be bogus and misleading. I’m going to show this by fact-checking a fact-check by PolitiFact, a group that …
Union-Tribune’s Ghoulish News Article Promotes Sales Tax Hike — UPDATED
“Tragedy renews sales-tax debate” reads the story’s headline. “Union Tribune renews sales-tax debate by campaigning on corpse of toddler” would have been more accurate. The A-1 article linked the tragic death of 2-year-old Bentley Do to “brownouts” in public safety service, brownouts it said would be fixed with a 5-year sales tax hike for residents of the city of San …
Union-Tribune Wises Up On Rosy Petco Park Study
Richard Rider told it to us on July 15. The San Diego Reader’s Don Bauder told it to us on July 14 and on July 15. Belatedly, the San Diego Union-Tribune is telling its readers: The firm that did the favorable study for the economic returns on the Petco stadium/redevelopment project — Conventions, Sports & Leisure International — has a …
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