By Mark Jackson, former Valley Center Community Planning Group member

Map by Tristan Loper and Maya Srikrishnan

October 11, 2016 (San Diego’s East County) - The Lilac Hills Ranch development put forward by San Diego County Measure B claims to be good for the region’s housing needs. In fact, it would not make a dent in the county’s affordable housing shortage. It would also endanger the very people who purchase homes in the development in the event of a wildfire. For these and many other reasons, I urge all county residents to vote No on B.

By Jack and Helen Ofield, Lemon Grove

September 22, 2016 (Lemon Grove) - -Measure V on our November 8 ballot would bring up to 15 marijuana storefronts to Lemon Grove, according to Mayor Mary Sessom, serving about 4,000 pot smokers apiece, yielding a mob scene of some 60,000 addicts (more than twice the size of Lemon Grove's population).

By Steve Bartlett and Tony Coelho

September 15, 2016 (Detroit) -- The Ford Foundation made history last year when it announced it was focusing its grant making on equality. Now one of the nation’s wealthiest and oldest foundations is making history in a new way: It acknowledged in big, bold fashion that inclusion means focusing on disability as well as race, gender, and class. Indeed, according to the U.S. Census, people with disabilities are the poorest of the poor in America.

By Tony Manolatos​



August 11, 2016 (San Diego) — Memo to taxpayers:  If voters approve the Chargers billion-dollar-plus stadium tax in November San Diego taxpayers would pay for the new facility in a variety of ways.

Do not believe Dean Spanos, Mark Fabiani and their surrogates. The cost would NOT be born solely by hotel guests. San Diego taxpayers would pay. The total amount is unknown, which is why Dean Spanos’ plan to raise our taxes by more than $1 billion is so risky.

In this open memo to taxpayers, the “No Downtown Stadium – Jobs and Streets First” coalition outlines several examples of costs San Diego taxpayers would incur. The following are in addition to the costs found in the Chargers $1.8 billion measure:

By Elizabeth Lou

June 20, 2016 (San Diego) -- With all the cataclysmic incidences happening around the world, the refugee crisis is one of chief concerns in recent history. Refugees are a population of concern because they are displaced due to unwarranted circumstances including armed conflict and political or religious persecution. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there are more than 65 million displaced people in the world. That is approximately the populations of two U.S. states, California and Texas combined. Every year during the month of June, the international community commemorates the plight of refugees, as well as their contributions to their respective host countries.

By Richard Lawless

June 2, 2016 (San Diego) -- Senior citizens and savers throughout the fifty states and Puerto Rico have taken tens of billions in municipal bond losses.  It has become clear that the Rating Agencies have been knowingly and intentionally issuing good credit ratings for technically bankrupt municipal entities in exchange for healthy fees. 

By April Boling

April 24, 2016 (San Diego's East County) - Voters asked to help qualify the Chargers proposal for the November election should know a few things before deciding to sign.

By Dave Patterson, Ramona

This is a wakeup call for everyone that assumes that our jobs and pensions are secure, and that we will be taken care of in our elder years.  The fact is that our leadership has bankrupted the nation and we are mostly to blame because of our apathy.

Starting in 1990 I was waving the red flag regarding the National Debt, then $2,000 per capita.  No one was worried because it was such a small percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), and besides Ronald Reagan had said, “Deficits don’t matter.”

The crooks and liars gave the green light to the banks and investment firms that proceeded to gamble our wealth and lose it.  Now the debt is almost as large as the debt accumulated after WWII, and we have a government that is so big no one wants to deal with it.  Our politicians have failed us and now they are saying that Social Security is on the chopping block.  Like our other pensions, they have spent it all into oblivion.

By Jeffrey Meyer

August 9, 2013 (San Diego’s East County) – There is an unprecedented human drama unfolding in Africa that should stop every one of us in our tracks.  It is a vision into humanity's future, where we are heading and how we will exist throughout the remainder of this century.  This is about choices, by all of us and where those decisions will lead us.

By Roy Hales

http://www.sandiegolovesgreen.com/articles/gregory-landfill-it-is-time-we-listened/

February 9, 2013 (San Diego)--An editorial, written in defense of the proposed Gregory Landfill, recently complained that, “…the Pala decided to claim the entire mountain is a sacred site.” I sometimes wonder how much the people who do, or say, things like that know of their own ancestry? Without resorting to a genealogist, can they tell us where their paternal great, great grandfather lived? How about their maternal great, great, grandmother?

By Eleanora Robbins

“This is where Doug Manchester has decided to build high rise buildings, right on liquefiable soils.”

November 3, 2012 (San Diego)--Italy isn’t the only place making dumb decisions over earthquake prediction.  Here in San Diego, never-ending broken utility lines and stinky sewers are occurring because our local and state government officials have suspended their responsibility for oversight of development on known and suspected faults downtown.  Surprisingly, the City and Port of San Diego actually funded studies of downtown faults but refuse to release them. The reason?  They probably don't want to turn down potential development money and the resulting property taxes.