By Robert Clark

Photo: Shaima Alawadi

By Craig E. Kleffman

April 5, 2014 (San Diego County) - San Diego’s chief law enforcement officer is District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis. In 2012 she ran for Mayor. Her associate, Ernesto Encinas — a retired San Diego Detective — conspired with a foreign national to secure illegally about $200,000 in a foreign campaign contribution. Approximately $100,000 went to a campaign committee, while the other $100,000 or so funded the campaign’s online presence.

By Kathleen Connell

March 8, 2014 (San Diego's East County) - The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) will soon make a decision on how to replace the power from San Onofre.  This is a decision with consequences for generations to come.  The choice is local clean energy such as rooftop solar, energy efficiency, and conservation or natural gas power plants, i.e., fossil fuel generation.  Local clean energy fights climate change, doesn’t pollute our air, already supports hundreds of well-paying local jobs, and lowers electricity bills.  Natural gas power plants ramp up greenhouse gases, worsen air quality, average only 10-20 permanent employees, and raise electricity bills for all of us because they are funded by ratepayers and cost anywhere from $1 billion to $5 billion each.  And we are shackled to these monuments of the past for decades.

“The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes.”-- Aristotle (384 BCE – 322 BCE) 

By Pat Zaharopoulos

February 28, 2014 (San Diego’s East County) -- A healthy democracy must have a strong middle class because the middle class stabilizes a nation and also helps its economy by buying the products made by those with capital.  But in today’s America, the rich are getting richer, the middle class is shrinking, poverty is raising and young Americans can no longer attain the American Dream.  We need a taxpayer-middle class revolt to restore a better balance of income, benefits and taxation.

February 9, 2014 (San Diego’s East County) – On January 24, ECM published two reader’s editorials – one pro-life and one pro-choice in view, related to the anniversary of the Roe v.. Wade Supreme Court ruling legalizing abortion.  The reader’s pro-choice editorial addressed crisis pregnancy clinics that the author termed “fake” abortion clinics that she asserted “frighten and mislead” women who are pregnant.

Josh McClure at the East County Pregnancy Care Clinic has sent a rebuttal disputing points in  the “fake” clinics editorial, though that piece did NOT reference the ECPCC by name and addressed issues of crisis pregnancy clinics only generally. Still in the interest of fairness and accuracy, here are the key points raised by McClure.

Editor's note: A local clinic has disputed portions of this editorial .  For details, click here.

By Sylvia Hampton

January 24, 2014 (San Diego)--Since the January 22, 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court Decision striking down all state laws prohibiting doctors from performing abortions, the anti-abortion forces have done everything in their power to make abortion as difficult to obtain as possible. Hundreds of state laws have been passed and then struck down by the courts because they placed an undue burden on women or were simply medically unsound.  So the crusaders resort to trickery and bearing false witness.

By Jim Wiegand

January 18, 2014 (San Diego’s East County) --The golden eagle is a species in rapid decline and most of this demise has been a relatively recent event. The primary reason for their population crash has been the development of wind energy in the habitat of this species. None of this has been publicly acknowledged.

“…devote your time, energy, passion, and money to making sure that everyone has decent shelter, food, education, and medical care. That will be the true monument to Christianity.” – Joel A. Harrison

By Joel A. Harrison

January 8, 2014 (San Diego) -- In a 20-year saga that never ends, on December 12 U.S. District Judge Larry Burns ruled that the cross atop Mount Soledad was unconstitutional. Burns ordered the cross removed within 90 days; but then stayed that order until all appeals have been exhausted. And on December 19 an article in the San Diego U-TA reported an appeal is underway.

A similar controversy in East County several years ago was resolved when a cross atop Mt. Helix was transferred from public ownership to a private group of area homeowners. (Privatization is not an appropriate option for Soledad, since the site is a U.S. military memorial.) Instead of rehashing the Constitutional pros and cons, I would like to reflect a moment on my view of the meaning of Christianity—and the most appropriate monuments to faith and humanity.

By E.A. Barrera

November 27, 2013 (San Diego) – Even now, ten years since the flames have died and the air has cleared, the sight of it all still seems unreal - the earth outside my door in smolders and flames. Waking up that Sunday morning to the sounds of Santa Ana winds and an unpleasant sky, the Great Fires of 2003 were still a world away. They were still off in some remote back-country. Dreadful to consider - but none the less esoteric, and lacking any influence upon my Sunday morning routine.

By Claudia Millerbragg

I am asking you to put human life before money. If you continue with your plans to drain Lake Morena it puts the residents of rural East County at a higher fire risk.

If a fire sweeps through here and property and lives are lost because of the low water levels at Lake Morena are you prepared to live with the fact that your decision to drain the lake contributed towards the destruction?

By Tom Budlong

I just mined the Ocotillo project's Environmental Impact Statement issued before the project was approved. The document's job is to predict the project's impacts.

On noise: “Under this worst-case scenario the wind farm would be considered an acceptable land use and…would meet the Imperial County daytime and nighttime noise limits. (p. 4.9-7).

By Cindy Buxton, Chair, Forest Committee of the San Diego Sierra Club

“This is the general “neck of the woods” of the famous Cedar Creek Falls and Three Sisters Waterfall… We are hoping for universal outcry to insist that all parties, SDG&E, the CPUC, and the USFS will embrace this as the golden opportunity to evolve community safety and environmental integrity forward.” – Cindy Buxton

October 21, 2013 (San Diego’s East County) -- The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) sent out its request for scoping on SDG&E’s Master Permit renewal.  The comment period is through November 7th.   Document links are provided at the end of this editorial.

The Forest Service, in an attempt to consistently and effectively manage wilderness and wilderness-like portions of their Forest, recommends moving the 626 69kV line that runs up Boulder Creek Road out of these fragile areas and makes this suggestion along with a mile or so wide corridor for study where portions of the line could be moved. But there more to this proposal than meets the eye.

Editor's note: We received this editorial  from a Canadian reader in response to our coverage of the Ocotillo Wind Energy Project's impacts on our local desert and the people of Octoillo. 

By Catherine Bayne, Bayniche Conservancy

We grieve for you and yours, for the desert, the world and for the future.  The wind war stories are fundamentally the same from everywhere, the disillusionment pervasive.  

How could corruption of such magnitude flourish under the UN? We forgot that, "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance"

By Parke Ewing

“Our desert home is not really a home any longer, it is just a place to fight wind turbine syndrome, since the turbines crank out profits for huge investment companies and CEO's get big bonuses while the uninformed public is forced to subsidize and allow production tax credits for a wind industry that could care less about renewable energy.  Profit is the name of the game here.”—Parke Ewing

October 17, 2013 (Ocotillo) --I am a resident, another citizen forced to live adjacent to an Industrial Wind Turbine Facility.  The Ocotillo Wind Energy Facility consists of 112 Siemens 2.3-108 wind turbines, the nacelles are 262.5 feet high, the very tip of a turbine blade at 12 o'clock measures 438' above the desert floor.  This hideous project was approved and constructed by Pattern Energy surrounding the community of Ocotillo, California, which according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is designated as a "Marginal Wind Resource" area.