Whenever I go roaming about San Diego, whether by foot, car, boat or bicycle, I always take my camera with me because you never know when that perfect shot is going to be staring you in the face, and, if you don't have your camera, all you can do is say "Oh, darrrn, I wish I had a camera." Anyway here are some of my best shots of our city from 2007. Remember you can click on any of them to make them larger.
It's become a Christmas Eve tradition: Peter Sprague's annual free concert at 15th Street in Ould Del Mar, a place near and dear to my heart because it was my first impression of California when I came here in 1963. Every year since Peter and his brother Tripp were wee little lads, growing up in this paradise, they set up their music stands, opened their guitar cases and played music for the assembled holiday throngs for nickels, dimes and quarters on the sidewalk in front of the Earth Song book store. Now they have moved to the outdoor amphitheatre near the Inn l'Auberge just across the way. This concert is a family and friends affair with father Hall Sprague on bongos, little Kate Sprague (Tripp's daughter) and Kylie Sprague (Peter's daughter) singing. 
The highlight of the afternoon concert was the Benedetti girls, Regina and Julia, whose guitar playing father, Fred, a full time music professor at Grossmont College, is equally at home with jazz or classical. They can be regularly heard at the Aviara resort in Carlsbad.
The band included Gunner Biggs, bass; Tripp Sprague, saxophone and flute; Dylan Savage, drums. Singers Coral Macfarland-Thuett, Allison Tucker and Lisa Hightower lit up the proceedings. A harp and mandolin duo, the Wrong Trousers, added to the festivities. Mark Lessman sat in on saxophone and a blues harmonica playing architect got everyone jumping. There was a lot of samba and Brazilian music which my significant other, Judy, really loves. She is becoming a huge fan of Peter's. This music is really accessible and infectious, a blessed alternative to pop/rock, rap or whatever other stuff is floating over the airwaves these days. It's a treat to hear singing in languages other than 
English and the vibes conjured up from Brazilian and other cultures. One of my favorite singers, Karrin Allyson has an album, "From Paris to Rio," on which she sings in Portuguese and French. It would be good to hear more of the French vibe as in Edith Piaf's "La Vie En Rose" or "Ne Me Quitte Pas." If Coral sang these songs with half as much conviction as she conveys in the Latin tinged numbers, it would be sensational! Harmonica and accordion sometimes add a distinctly different cultural ambiance - an off the beaten track vibe - as on the album "Chez Toots" by Toots Thielemans.
Peter deserves a lot of credit not only for adding greatly to the cultural edification of San Diego County but also for mentoring and encouraging younger (and older) musicians. At his Spragueland production studio, he produces CD albums for a lot of these folks and in general has built up a network of relationships that has extended from family out into the community. This is truly peace on earth, goodwill towards men (and women). 
If only the larger world would emulate what Peter and the other musicians have accomplished in microcosm, the world would be more representative of the wishes of the dude whose birthday we celebrate this time of year! Peter has added a lot more to the community as a local musician than many more famous musicians that live here but aren't as active and involved except for an occasional concert. Peter is always searching for new sonic avenues and his music is both high quality and eminently approachable. A musician needs to be versatile these days playing in a variety of musical situations and with a variety of different groups. Peter has created a multi-faceted array of sonic situations that should encompass the vast majority of musical palates. On this particular sunny California Christmas Eve, the audience couldn't get enough of the warm vibes emanating from this simpatico group.
When I first arrived in California, it was a rainy, dark September evening. I had driven cross country from Atlanta just having finished eight straight quarters at Georgia Tech. I was on my way to Palo Alto where I was in for three more quarters at Stanford before my first summer break. I was trying to find downtown San Diego; I thought surely a major street like El Cajon Blvd would take me to it, but after driving back and forth, never actually finding San Diego, I pulled over in North Park and slept in my car. The next day I actually looked at a map and turned north from I-8 onto Highway 101. (There was no I-5, no I-15, no I-805 in those days.) When I got to Del Mar, the sun came out. I pulled over into the gas station on the corner of 15th Street where the flower shop is today, went into the rest room and cleaned up. 
Then I headed for the coffee shop next door (where Bank of America is now). Before I went in to have breakfast, I looked out over the old tudor Shakepearian inn on the northwest corner of 15th Street (that has been replaced by the Inn l'Auberge) toward the blue Pacific. I took a deep breath of fresh air, felt the sunshine and rejoiced in my first impression of California. Little did I know at the time that I would be living here a few blocks up 15th Street a few years later in a little shack I rented for $40. a month. Today Del Mar is strictly a high rent district but in those days it was still a funky little town.
In addition to his website, petersprague.com, Peter has a website complete with shopping cart, Actual Proof, from which you can access CDs and books as well as download MP3s.
In San Diego County market prices for real estate are down 10% and sales are down 25% from last year. The housing crisis continues with many sub-prime mortgages due to reset the first of the year. As the Fed writes new rules for mortgages such as that the mortgagee must provide actual proof of income - imagine that! - and no pre-payment penalties, (things that only made sense in the first place), finally some sanity is being reintroduced to the mortgage market. The only problem is that real estate prices have to fall a lot more before they're in line with incomes and rents. In the hey day of the housing boom, a casual objective observer might have noticed that it made a lot more sense to rent than to own. You could get a lot more for a lot less money by renting. But then you wouldn't get that build-up of equity. Hah! And the American Dream said everyone had to be a homeowner rather than a renter just like everyone has to be a college graduate even if it means going $100,000 into debt because that's the American dream too. People who believed in the American Dream got sucker punched not realizing that the American Dream is just so much mythology that's used by the advertising establishment to lure people into making non-objective financial decisions. Objectively speaking, it makes more sense to rent than to own at this point in time, and it makes more sense not to go to college. But that's just what a rational person would conclude, not what most Americans have concluded. But then they aren't rational about electing a President either. They would rather have a President that they could have a beer with even as he picks their pocket!
It pays to be a contrarian, to be counter-cyclical. Now those of us who didn't buy during the housing boom, who cashed out of the volatile stock market and who are sitting on piles of cash can go out and buy real estate at fire sale prices! Think of the foreclosures! Oh, it fires the imagination! Tuppence invested wisely in the bank, safe and sound! But you may ask how will all this settle out. Will all the inventory sitting on the market eventually be liquidated (in two to three years), and then the market will start back up again having only retreated say 15%? Or will housing prices come down and stay down with the result that they might even become affordable again and in line with rents and incomes? Will they become, objectively, a good deal again compared to renting? That may happen if rents increase which they likely will. However, if incomes don't increase, which they likely won't, there'll be stagflation with former homeowners being squeezed as renters. Condo conversions may well reverse course and convert back to apartments again. Homeowners who have held on by their teeth for the first couple of rounds may wake up to find they have negative equity in their homes. If they have to sell when the market recuperates, they will be left holding the bag of a mortgage to pay but without a home to live in. In such cases the prudent thing to do would just be to walk away leaving the bank with more foreclosures in their inventory. And the infusion of cash will have to go to Wall Street to pay off their investors who bought up the collateralized mortgage backed assets.
As Paul Krugman points out, infusions of liquidity into the system will not solve the problem because the credit crunch is only the half of it. Credit should be crunched since it was overextended to people who couldn't afford the mortgages they were cheerfully given. Now it's back to the bad old days where the bank will do due diligence to ascertain whether or not a prospective mortgagee has the wherewithal to actually pay back the loan. The problem is not a matter of liquidity - having enough money available to hand out mortgages - there was too much liquidity in the first place. The problem is solvency: is the person applying for a mortgage actually solvent? The credit crunch has to do not with mortgages but with investors who are dumping mortgage backed securities, and the investment banks have to cover them. Mortgagees have an out through default and bankruptcy; investment banks don't. They sold junk securities as AAA; now they have to pay the piper.
As Krugman states:
It’s easy to get lost in the details of subprime mortgages, resets, collateralized debt obligations, and so on. But there are two important facts that may give you a sense of just how big the problem is.
First, we had an enormous housing bubble in the middle of this decade. To restore a historically normal ratio of housing prices to rents or incomes, average home prices would have to fall about 30 percent from their current levels.
Second, there was a tremendous amount of borrowing into the bubble, as new home buyers purchased houses with little or no money down, and as people who already owned houses refinanced their mortgages as a way of converting rising home prices into cash.
As home prices come back down to earth, many of these borrowers will find themselves with negative equity - owing more than their houses are worth. Negative equity, in turn, often leads to foreclosures and big losses for lenders.
And the numbers are huge. The financial blog Calculated Risk, using data from First American CoreLogic, estimates that if home prices fall 20 percent there will be 13.7 million homeowners with negative equity. If prices fall 30 percent, that number would rise to more than 20 million.
That translates into a lot of losses, and explains why liquidity has dried up. What’s going on in the markets isn’t an irrational panic. It’s a wholly rational panic, because there’s a lot of bad debt out there, and you don’t know how much of that bad debt is held by the guy who wants to borrow your money.
So trillions of dollars of equity will have to be lost before the housing market normalizes. This will result in the impoverishment of a segment of the middle class. If rents go up and wages stagnate, the former homeowners, who were squeezed out of their homes, will now be renters squeezed out of their rentals. Meanwhile, investors will have snapped up foreclosures at fire sale prices, rented them out with a positive cash flow and will be patiently waiting for the next housing bubble at which time they will be able to sell at a tidy profit having gained back the equity that was lost by the unfortunate sub-prime mortgage holders in the first place. That's why they call it patient capital!
Three jazz events in one week! I'm getting the holidays off to a good start. First there was Jazz in the Park, the monthly event at the San Diego Museum of Art. This group featured Joe LaBarbera on drums, Bill Cunliffe on piano, Tom Warrington, bass and Larry Koonse, guitar. These guys actually are willing to frequently drive down here from LA to perform at the Museum. Joe LaBarbera is practically the house drummer, and a great drummer at that. It's hard to believe that he played with the late, great Bill Evans. His performance exemplified taste and class to the extreme. Bill Cunliffe is one of my favorite pianists. Again taste and class. I'm starting to really dig Tom Warrington's bass playing. He had one solo that blew me away. Larry Koonse, although a good guitarist, didn't leave me with any memorable impresssions. They delved into the Christmas music bag to some extent without pandering to the genre. These monthly concerts are suitable for us old fogeys since they start at 5:30 PM and are over by 7:30. No need to pub crawl to the wee small hours to hear good jazz! It pays to be a San Diegan and live downtown or you'd never be able to get there by 5:30. But at $18.00 a shot (more for non-members) it ain't cheap either. This week took its toll on the old exchequer!
Thursday night I headed down to Anthology, a newly opened jazz (partly) club in Little Italy that represents state of the art technology and 21st century chic. Ahmad Jamal was there, a man that I'd never seen live before and one of the old guard still holding forth in his seventies. I can go peacefully now since I've heard Ahmad Jamal play Poinciana live! Now I'm telling you Anthology ain't cheap either. Be prepared to part with some bucks when you go there. I sat at the bar and drank Coors Lights at $5.00 a pop. Jeez, I could have gotten a whole case at Costco for what two beers cost me. But the ambiance is superb. There are HDTV screens everywhere, and the camera man is part of the show. What a priceless experience to see close-ups of Ahmad's hands as they ripple up and down the keyboard. Did I say that a hamburger was $19.00? Ouch!! OK, OK it was a Koby burger. Oh, and the cover was $30.00 just to get in. It was well worth it though. I attended the 7:30 PM show and was home by 9 o'clock. Again perfect for old fogeys pretending to be young, hip and urban.
I could not resist going down to Anthology again Sunday night with my significant other, Judy. The draw was No Cover Charge for the 5:30 PM show featuring the Moutin brothers with Rick Margitza on tenor sax. So we decided to splurge on dinner in lieu of the cover charge. And a great dinner it was. We were attended to very attentively by a myriad of black clad waiters, waitreses, hostesses and maitre d's. Ah, the good life. La dolce vita. But it didn't come cheap! We wined and dined with all the young, hip, urban professionals and the mega gazillionaires fresh off their yachts docked in San Diego Harbor marinas, having parked the van a block away on India street in the commercial parking (yellow) zone. What!! It's perfectly legal after 6 o'clock and we had 20 minutes there as a commercial vehicle anyway. We mingled with the Mercedes and Porsche driving crowd whose master bedroom closets, filled with clothes and dozens of pairs of shoes, are as big as our little studio apartment in downtown San Diego. But then we only had a five minute commute and it took them 30-45 minutes to drive home on vehicle clogged freeways. Ah, the good life! Little did they know we had arrived in a van with ladders on top. Ohhhh!
But let's talk about the Moutin brothers - Francois on bass and Louis on drums. They are identical twins from France and seemed to have that telepathic empathy and interconnectedness that only twins do. Ahhh! La musique, toute la musique! These guys are really good. Intensity to the max. Pierre de Bethmann is on piano. They're all fantastic musicians. And their ensemble sounds really churned with that big bass swirling on the bottom. They played a long set as we ate dinner, and then packed up their instruments to make way for the next event. It was all over and we were home by 7:30, another great night out for old fogeys! I figured I had spent about $200. in one week on live jazz in San Diego, but it was worth it. Since we don't go to Panda Express and Coco's any more on a regular basis, we can save up our money and spend it on more high class entertainment once in a while.
San Diego AM radio station KLSD, which used to broadcast a progressive talk format, ceased that format and turned into sports talk as of Monday November 12, 2007. This pending format change had been bandied about for months on the morning Stacy Taylor show. There was even a rally on August 27 in the parking lot of Clear Channel, a giant media corporation that owns the station, to show "support" for the progressive talk format. 
It was somewhat strange to see all these fans pledging their support to the advertisers. One lady even donated $10,000. to keep Progressive Talk on the air - but to whom? Clear Channel, a multi-billion dollar corporation? To one of their advertisers? This all seems very bizarre. From my point of view, the change in format had more to do with the sub-prime mortgage crisis than the failure of KLSD listeners to "support" the radio station by buying more of the advertisers' products. Let me explain.
Several of the biggest advertisers on KLSD were mortgage companies who obviously chose to advertise to the demographic that the Progressive Talk format represented. Such companies as Paramount Mortgage with Hayes Barnard intoning syrupy messages to potential customers - "If you ever thought of refinancing your home, now's the time..." From Hayes' point of view, it was always the right time to refinance your home. Countrywide was another client - "Nobody can do what Countrywide can..." You do not have to be too well informed to realize that a sub-prime mortgage crisis has hit the country lately. Hayes persisted in hawking his mortgages to the very end, but most of the others had given up realizing that the market for sub-prime mortgages had dried up. Many mortgage companies have gone out of business or have gone bankrupt. So that advertising revenue source for Clear Channel is history. That leaves a big hole in their advertising revenue, one difficult to fill. But there are probably no end of advertisers for sports talk radio which represents a different demographic altogether. So I don't think it has anything to do with Clear Channel's ulterior motives unless you consider maximizing profits to be an ulterior motive which I actually do.
The other major advertisers on KLSD were get-rich-quick scheme promoters. There were some local advertisers such as Corky's Pest Control, but advertising on KLSD Progressive Talk was dominated by non-local mortgage companies and get-rich-quick schemes. Most of these ads were particularly obnoxious making listening to Progressive Talk for me a perplexing experience. I loved Thom Hartmann and Randi Rhodes. I liked Al Franken when he used to be on and even Jerry Springer, but I hated and suffered through the ads which were numerous, and - did I mention - obnoxious. 
They even had ads for an organization that lobbied against children's health care, a position the exact opposite of every progressive talk show host or hostess. Once I heard an ad for DynCorp, a defense contractor in Iraq, and this was just after a segment in which the host trashed Iraq contractors! Talk about a disconnect. Were the advertisers trying to convert the listeners to a right wing point of view or was Clear Channel management using them cynically to tweak our noses? It got to the point where I found a use for the timer on my wristwatch. When the ads came on, I set the timer for four minutes and turned off the radio. It worked pretty good.
Now they even have a website for ex-listeners to KLSD Progressive Talk who want to commiserate with each other. You wonder what the motivation of "Cliff," the only person who can submit a blog to the site, actually is. His profile says that he's the local San Diego station KLSD Program Director. What?? The one who is overseeing what now is sports talk? You have to wonder about the motivation of these people. Is this a way to let former KLSD listeners down slow? So they won't be too pissed off about having their radio station change formats? Are we out to prove that Clear Channel is not just a cold-hearted profit maximizer? Is this just more PR? Former listeners are welcome to leave comments; I even left one, but what is the point?
I've got good news for former listeners of KLSD Progressive Talk. You can listen to Randi Rhodes and Thom Hartmann via podcast without the advertising. You can get an ipod shuffle for $79. and download the podcasts for free. It's something I should have done even before KLSD Progressive Talk went off the air. I think Ed Schultz charges for his podcast, but I don't like him anyway. You also can listen to Thom and Randi via XM radio, but even though you pay a monthly fee for XM , not to mention the start-up costs, you still have to listen to all the fricken commercials, and you can only listen in your car or in your home. You can listen to a podcast anywhere. It's supremely portable. Randi's daily show is in one long segment and Thom's is in three - one for each hour he's on the air. You can listen to the local Portland station, KPOJ, with no commercials or Thom Hartmann nationwide which does have commercials (not as obnoxious as Air America's), but you can fast forward through them with the ipod.
A word about the local "progressive" DJ, Stacy Taylor. Stacy was bitching for months about being taken off the air, and he encouraged all the brouhaha about listeners joining together in the parking lot to show "support" for the "progressive" format. A caller called in and told Stacy what he very well knows: he could do a podcast out of his home and make his living off the subscribers. Stacy gave this approach very little shrift so you know that Stacy basically just wanted to have some corporation cut him a check every two weeks and wanted an advertising based show on conventional radio despite his "progresssive" blather. I wish Stacy well, but as long as podcasts are available, I'll never listen to him again if he pops up on some other San Diego station. And although the podcasts I subscribe to are free, I would gladly pay a fee if I had to. In addition to the portability of the ipod, you can even listen to it in the car instead of the radio. It's got plenty of volume! And you don't need any fancy docking equipment - just the ipod and a set of earphones.
But there is more than just Air America talk show hosts that you can download sans advertising. For instance, Meet the Press, Bill Maher on HBO, language lessons, NPR broadcasts, history of the Byzantine empire, a course in quantum mechanics - stuff that you'd either have to pay for or suffer through commercials to view. I know what Tim Russert looks like. I don't really need the video portion. For those folks who want to call in to talk radio, the podcast may leave a little to be desired. However, there are other means of feedback i.e. blogs and email.
A final word about advertising. Those who have read my blog know that I hate it. It's the bane of my existence. If I never had to listen to or see another ad again for the rest of my life, I'd think that I'd died and gone to heaven. That's why this is an ad free blog. Those who make their living off it are basically whores, and it's corrupting the whole political process as Congressmen and Senators and Presidential candidates have to raise outlandish sums just to buy TV ads. You know it's not really necessary. I can find out anything I want to know about a product (or a candidate for that matter) just by googling it on the internet. I can also comparison shop and get ratings and reviews. Why do I need to be force fed some garbage like all the drug commercials where they tell you "Ask your doctor" about this drug and that drug. My doctor should be telling me what I need after he diagnoses some condition that requires a drug in the first place. It shouldn't be necessarry for me to prompt my doctor. If it is, he's not a very good doctor. And as for the advertising on former KLSD Progresssive Talk, a lot of it, if not all, was predatory and ethically questionable, and I don't see how those progresssive talk hosts, in good conscience, could cash their paychecks. I say good riddance to KLSD, Clear Channnel and their ilk!
On Monday, August 27, there was a rally in the parking lot outside the studios of KLSD, San Diego's Progressive Talk Station. Talk show host Stacy Taylor who has the 6 AM to 9 AM slot alternately conducted his show from the studio and the parking lot while hundreds of supporters protested the impending "change in format" for the station owned by media conglomerate Clear Channel. Clear Channel owns and operates more than 1200 radio stations in the United States, stages live shows at thousands of venues in dozens of countries, and operates more than 240 radio stations in Australia, Mexico and New Zealand programming 20 different formats with more than 17 million listeners weekly and a total of more than 2,000 employees. Premiere Radio Networks, Inc., a subsidiary of Clear Channel Communications, syndicates 90 radio programs and services to more than 4,600 radio affiliations and reaches over 190 million listeners weekly. Premiere Radio is the number one radio network in the country and features the following personalities: Rush Limbaugh, Jim Rome, Casey Kasem, Ryan Seacrest, Glenn Beck and others.
So why is Clear Channel considering a change in format rumored to be sports talk? The stated reason is that Progressive Talk is not earning enough money. At the rally there were pitches to the crowd to start purchasing more of the sponsors' products and testamonials from the crowd about how many of the sponsors' products they were buying. There were sentiments expressed by the crowd that this change of format is politically motivated, since Clear Channel, obviously a major backer of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, two of the rightest wing nutcases, may have a political agenda. But, no, program director Cliff Albert said. It was strictly about making money and maximizing profits and, evidently, progressive talk does not make as much money as right wing talk. 
Hmmm. I wonder why? You mean the listenership is just not there? People would rather listen to hate mongering, fear mongering and war mongering than a point of view that's about peace and love? I guess there's more money in violence, war and hate. But does this come as any surprise? Look at TV. What are the most popular shows? Crime Scene Miami. Crime Scene this and Crime Scene that. Shows about crime. And movies? Shoot 'em ups. Blow 'em ups. The more violence the better. As far as talk goes, the more hate talk the better. There's money in it. No money in peace talk. What do TV news channels cover. Violence, disasters. Do they ever cover some constructive project that some neighborhood group is pursuing? No. Not exciting enough. Constructive activities are not exciting enough. If it bleeds, it leads. If it's a disaster, they cover it faster. If it's crime, it's sublime. That's what sells.
So it's no wonder that Air America went bankrupt and would be out of business if it hadn't been for the billionaire Green brothers who stepped in with an infusion of cash because their political philosophy coincides with that of Air America. Clear Channel would have you believe they have no political agenda; their only responsibility is to maximize profits for their stock holders. Maybe, yes. Maybe, no. But if they did have a right wing political agenda, why would they even put Progressive Talk on the radio at all? Let's face it. Progressive Talk, unfortunately, cannot compete in the market place with the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. Hate sells. Fear sells. Violence sells and crime sells.
Another thing... The advertising on KLSD is oppressive. There's too much of it. It's too strident. The volume is much louder than the talk, and it's totally inappropriate for the audience. For example, after Thom Hartmann goes on and on about universal health care, something his audience is almost entirely in agreement with, on comes an ad about some group bragging about how they're helping to prevent universal health care from becoming a reality. They've even had ads on there for DynCorp advertising for contractors to go to Iraq and make $100,000 a year when it's widely known that KLSD and Air America's audience is totally against the war and everything it stands for. Some of the local ads are appropriate, and I'm sure the audience trys to support San Diego Kitchen and Bath, Corky's Pest Control and Small Dog Electronics as well as Mossy Nissan. But there are tons of ads for people to teach you how to get rich quick and oriented towards turning the audience into a bunch of wealthy Republicans. Maybe that's their hidden agenda. I'm going to try and get Thom Hartman and Randi Rhodes via podcast, even if I have to pay for it, which I'd gladly do to get rid of the commercials which are highly annoying. After all, as far as Clear Channel is concerned, radio is just a commercial delivery vehicle in the way a cigarrette is just a nicotine delivery vehicle. Who cares about the actual content or the taste?
A few years ago I broke off a front tooth eating an English muffin that was as hard as a rock. When I took it out of the freezer, I defrosted it in the microwave too long. That's how it got that way. I made one for myself and one for my girlfriend. I ate mine, but she said, "This is too hard for me." "Here," I said, "I'll eat it" and I promptly broke off my tooth. The dentist removed the part of the tooth that was hanging by a thread which was most of the tooth down to the gum line and gave me a flipper. I think the flipper cost $300. This was a while back and I don't remember what alternatives the dentist gave me, but I'm sure they were all expensive so I decided to keep the flipper as a permanent solution. This lasted a few years; then the flipper broke. I had it repaired; then it broke again. Finally, I gave up on the flipper and decided to seek a permanent solution.
The dentist I was going to in San Diego suggested a bridge cap as a more reasonable alternative to an implant. (Actually, I had gone to two dentists before that including the one who gave me the flipper and neither of them had proposed a reasonable solution.) What they would do for the bridge cap is grind down the two adjacent teeth, cap them and then those caps would support a third cap over my missing tooth. First they would extract what remained of my missing tooth below the gum line. This solution would cost $995. per cap or $2985. plus the extraction. I forget how much that was. And this was with my Secure Horizon high option dental insurance! So two front teeth would be destroyed, and one wouldn't be rooted in anything. And the dentist said she didn't know how long it would last.
After considerable thought and seeing some ads in the Reader which said that implants in Tijuana could be had for $1500., I decided to look for a dentist in Tijuana. I had been thinking about this for some time as a more economically feasible alternative to US dentistry which had been costing me more and more as time went on, and I was getting less and less satisfied with the quality and the way they treated patients as well as all the subterfuges surrounding how they dealt with insurance. Dental insurance was pretty much of a joke anyway as the dentists always seemed to find a way around it either by shorting the service or charging you for additional items the insurance didn't pay for.
As was my wont, I googled "dentistry in Tijuana" and checked out somewhat thoroughly what was available which was a lot. In fact I devoted an afternoon to it. A lot of dentists had websites, and a ton of information was available. I had several criteria: qualifications and background of the dentist; quality of the website; location and appearance of the dental office. Some of these criteria are somewhat superficial, I admit, but I wanted a dentist with a nice office in a good neighborhood, not somebody who worked out of his house in a bad neighborhood. I finally settled on Baja Oral Center. I was impresssed with the qualifications of Dr. Martinez who did the dental implants. I called a local San Diego number (they have an 800 number too) and set up an appointment with Dr. Martinez to see about a dental implant. Everyone in the office speaks fluent English including the office manager and phone answerer, Berniece. They cover all the bases at Baja Oral Center. The general dentist there is Dr. Garcia. I was impressed with his credentials too. Their equipment is the latest and most modern. And their offices and waiting rooms are immaculate.
The day of my appointment at 11 AM, I took the San Diego trolley from downtown. I allowed an hour and a half to get down there. My plan was to take the trolley to San Ysidro, walk across the border, then get a taxi to Jose Orosco St. where the offices are located in the Plaza Pacifico building, a relatively recently constructed high rise. It actually took me an hour and fifteen minutes including a fifteen minute walk to the trolley station from my apartment. The taxi ride cost "cinco" dollars and took less than five minutes. The offices are located in the Zona Rio section of Tijuana, near Paseo de los Heroes and a huge modern shopping mall. There's a large statue of Abraham Lincoln (among others) nearby on Paseo de los Heroes.
I went up the elevator to the fourth floor and found the Baja Oral Center office. It seemed like the whole building was devoted to doctors and dentists. I met with Dr. Garcia who checked me out first, had a panoramic Xray which cost $27.00, and then Berniece escorted me up to Dr. Martinez' office in the penthouse. Dr. Martinez' office is truly stunning with fantastic views. Everything about this building and the offices I've seen is first class. Much nicer than most US dental offices that I've been in with much better "wall-of-glass" views. By the way Dr. Garcia, Dr. Martinez and Berniece all speak perfect English.
I told Dr. Martinez I was interested in an implant. As he examined me, he pulled and tugged on what was left of my front tooth. I couldn't figure out what he was doing. Finally, he said, "I could give you an implant if you want it, but a better and less costly solution would be to put a post on your tooth since you still have part of one there and then a crown." Dr. Martinez pointed out that I had already had a root canal in that tooth so there should be no pain or complications. Why waste a perfectly good root canal? He would do some minor gum surgery first in order to expose more of the tooth and Dr. Garcia would do the rest. The total cost would be $850 including the gum surgery and a gold crown (gold on the inside, regular looking tooth on the outside). It would be a better solution than the bridge cap or the implant and would cost me $2135. less! We set up an appointment for the following week.
I wondered why no US dentist had proposed this solution. Was it because it was more labor intensive and less lucrative than the solutions they proposed? As it happened, I had an appointment the next day with my San Diego dentist for scaling and root planing, otherwise known as deep cleaning, for two quadrants of my mouth. My former, former dentist had told me I needed this 4 times a year. Then when I changed from Blue Cross to Secure Horizons (when I went on Medicare) the dentist told me I didn't need it at all. Blue Cross didn't cover this procedure at all but Secure Horizons did with a $50.00 copay. Seemed strange to me that one dentist would recommend it so often when it wasn't covered by insurance, and then the next one would not recommend it when it was covered by insurance. But they told me they would perform it if I wanted to pay the full freight! I guess he was fulfilling his role as gatekeeper for Secure Horizons! That's why I changed dentists again. This time they were pleased to do the deep cleaning under the insurance.
I was prepared to pay the $100.00 copay for half my mouth, and then there would be a follow-on appointment for the other half. The dentist jabbed me, and I mean jabbed, several times with novacaine, no topical anesthetic first (as a contrast Dr. Martinez applied a topical and I never even felt the novacaine needle), then proceeded to work on the two quadrants for less than an hour. This is something else I had noticed with US dentistry. When it was an insurance prodcedure, it always took far less time than when you were paying out of your pocket. I guess this is how they made up for the lesser payment from the insurance company. 
When I got out to the desk they told me the bill was $430! This included my $100.00 copay which I expected and then two charges of $55.00 each for an "unspecified perio procedure." There were also five $44.00 charges for arestin which is something they stick down below the gum line which is supposed to heal infection. I had agreed to the arestin, but they had not told me it was $44.00 a shot! It just took her seconds to put each one in so I felt the cost was ridiculous but I had agreed to it. Fool me once... but what really bothered me was the two $55.00 charges for an "unspecified procedure." I guess they are so brazen they just blow off the expected copay and charge you whatever they want. Right there I decided that I was going to have all my dentistry needs taken care of in Tijuana and not just the big items. I had contemplated having my routine work still done under my insurance in San Diego, but I came to the conclusion that dental insurance is a joke, and dentists would do whatever they had to do to work around it and still charge you exhorbitant prices or give you less than the standard service in terms of their time.
I called and canceled my second $400. plus dental appointment with my San Diego dentist, and after three visits to Dr. Garcia I had my front tooth back again with which I'm very happy. I guess I had gone toothless for about three months, but I'm happy with the final result and what I paid for it. By the way Dr. Garcia worked on me for about two hours putting in the post and the temporary tooth. Before that Dr. Martinez did some minor gum surgery to expose the tooth more. No separate appointments necessary for the two procedures! And I never had any pain during or after the procedure. Maybe the time it took for this procedure is why no San Diego dentist recommended it although I do believe it's preferable to either the bridge cap or the implant and far less costly, but it was labor intensive and US dentists want you in and out of the chair as quickly as possible. I credit Dr. Martinez' honesty for the less expensive diagnosis when he could have given me an implant and charged me a lot more, and Dr. Garcia's and Dr. Martinez' hard work for a very reasonable charge compared to the time they put in. Finally, they did all this for over $2000.00 less than what the San Diego dentist had proposed!
Subsequently, I took my daughter and two granddaughters to see Dr. Garcia. My granddaughters were worked on by Dr. Lizeth Fajardo, who specializes in pediatric dentistry, and Dr. Garcia saw my daughter. My daughter needed to see another specialist to get braces even though she's 36. She has some serious problems, but will save some serious money by not going to a San Diego dentist for her dentistry needs. Dr. Lizeth did a great job with the granddaughters. I found that all the dentists and assistants in Dr. Garcia's office were polite and kind and seemed to really care about our welfare as opposed to the arrogant and uncaring attitudes I found with some dentists and some office staff in San Diego. In fact some of the office staff I dealt with in San Diego were downright rude.
Today my daughter is taking her husband to see Dr. Garcia. He's a really nice guy, and I've been recommending him to everyone. If you require a specialist one is ususally available in the same building and will see you at the same time with no need for a separate appointment and two trips to Tijuana. A lot of people, including me, have given up completely on the exhorbitant prices and less than caring attitudes found in US dentistry, and some travel great distances to have their dental work done in Mexico. They are in fact "dental tourists." You hear a lot about the high cost of medical care in the US while the high cost of US dentistry slips under the radar. It's a scandal as big as US health care, I think.
I found that the Tijuana dentists I dealt with were very professional and highly competent and used the latest equipment and techniques. More importantly, they seemed to really care about their patients as opposed to a lot of US dentists who, when you open your mouth, only see dollar signs.
Calling Michael Moore...
US Attorney Carol Lam working out of the San Diego Office was conducting investigations of leading Republicans that might have led to Vice President Dick Cheney's door. Therefore, she had to go. But Bush, through his surrogate, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, couldn't fire just her. That would be too suspicious. So they had to fire several others as well. White House counsel Harriet Miers, the inveterate Bush ass saver from Texas gubernatorial days suggested firing all 92. They finally settled on eight including one to make room for a Karl Rove ass kisser.
Carol Lam made her reputation by getting three Democratic San Diego City Councilmen indicted and two of them convicted (one died) in a titty bar scandal. The Republicans were pleased with her performance up to that time. But then she started investigating Republicans. The San Diego Union had run a piece on Congresssman Duke Cunningham questioning the sale of his Del Mar residence to defense contractor Mitchell Wade for twice its market value. Duke then subsequently bought an even more expensive home in the even tonier neighborhood of Rancho Santa Fe. In addition to the bribes provided Cunningham by Wade which included a $140,000 yacht, the Duke-Stir, defense contractor Brent Wilkes supplied Cunningham with a lavish list of gifts including prostitution services. Wilkes' company, Poway-based ADCS, received more than $100 million in government contracts between 1995 and 2005, partly with the help of Cunningham, who sat on the influential House Appropriations Committee.
Carol Lam announced indictments against Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, number 3 man at the CIA, and Wilkes at a February 13, 2007 press conference a little over a month ago. Foggo had awarded Wilkes a multi-million dollar contract to supply water to the CIA in Iraq. Wade had previously pleaded guilty in February 2006. Now about that boat, the aforementioned Duke-Stir, it seems it was bought by Mitchell Wade for $140,000 two weeks after Wade, a man who never before had received a Federal contract, received a check for $140,000 from Vice President Dick Cheney's office to supply office furniture for Cheney. This is according to the Think Progress blog. A few days ago, Kyle Sampson, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' Chief of Staff, resigned. Think Progress had made public an email sent by Sampson in May 2006 that contained the following line: "The real problem we have right now with Carol Lam that leads me to conclude that we should have someone ready to be nominated on 11/18, the day her 4-year term expires." The email also said it was sent at "Harriet's request." That would be Harriet Miers, White House counsel, who has a long history of saving Bush's ass. That's why she's so valuable. But more about that later.
So Carol Lam's firing was not politically motivated? Hmmm. The problem was Carol Lam had switched from investigating and prosecuting Democrats to Republicans! So yesterday Bush warned the Democrats not to subpoena White House officials. Y'all Democrats, he might as well have said, can spin your wheels, bark up wrong trees and go on wild goose chases to your hearts' content, but don't you dare come after my boys! Well, c'mon Democrats, let's cut to the chase. If I can figure this out surely y'all, who have IQs higher than mine, can.
...in 1997, Governor Bush secretly suggested to the chairwoman of the Texas Lottery Commission that she grant a contract to the client of a Bush ally.
The Governor’s back-door demand to the Lottery chairwoman was not so easy. Bush wanted the Lottery to grant a multi-billion dollar contract to GTech Corporation. But GTech hadn’t even bid on the contract - and a winner was already announced.
There was only way for the Chairwoman to carry out the fix: fire the director of the Lottery who had discouraged GTech from bidding because of its history of corruption.
The Chairwoman, Harriet Miers, did the deed: fired the Lottery director; Miers then ignored the winning bid — and gave Bush’s favored company the contract, no bidding, in perpetuity.
Why did Bush want the contract to go to GTech? Because its lobbyist, Ben Barnes, had been former Lieutenant Governor of Texas during the Vietnam war, and had used his influence to get George W out of the Vietnam War. In 2004, Barnes admitted the draft-dodge fix on 60 Minutes, the broadcast that brought Dan Rather down. Barnes picked up a $23 million dollar fee for getting GTech the lottery contract. In return he kept silent about his role in getting Bush out of the Vietnam War. The Texas Attorney General had a letter laying all this out. Why didn't the Texas Attorney General disclose the information it had or investigate further? It seems that well known Democrats such as Lloyd Bentsen and John Connolly had exerted their influence on Barnes, a Democrat, to get their sons out of the war as well. The moral of the story: he who controls US Attorneys can cover his ass very well indeed. And we come full circle to the current firing of non-compliant US Attorneys such as Carol Lam and their replacement by Bush team cronies who know on which side their bread is buttered.
Oh, by the way, my bet is that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will not be fired. Why? Because he does Bush's bidding. He's one of Bush's boys. And besides he stays or goes at the "pleasure of the President." So no matter how much of a dumbeat, how big a crescendo, in the final analysis, it's up to the President, and the President will just thumb his nose at the Congress, the media and the American people. And besides the real issue here isn't Alberto Gonzales. The real issue is whether or not those investigations initiated by Carol Lam will be continued. With a Bush crony replacing her serving at the "pleasure [whim] of the President," don't bet on it! But if Bush can make a deal - stop investigating in return for Gonzales' head - Gonzales' head will be served up on a platter.
Oh, if Congress and the American people don't like the principle of US Attorneys "serving at the pleasure of the President," why not change the law or the Constitution, whatever?
I have blogged about all the bad stuff - the pension crisis, the fact that San Diego hasn't been able to borrow money in the bond market for three years and, consequently, can't repair infrastructure or do much of anything else, the Strippergate scandal, the fact that the City has to go hat in hand to the CCDC to beg for money for the new library etc. etc. Now the good news: San Diego is going gangbusters in downtown redevelopment. Believe it or not, the city has veritably transformed itself from mainly a slum, particularly in the East Village neighborhood, to one gleaming high rise after another with streetside amenities such as broad sidewalks, trees, landscaping, the whole progresssive urban schmear. It's gone from last class to first class practically overnight. Gone are the sleazy liquor stores, square block parking lots, flophouses, funky tatoo parlors and radiator repair joints. Condomania reigns supreme with forward looking urban values such as setbacks and street level retail. Parking garages have replaced parking lots. Architectural values have replaced hastily thrown up buildings designed by nitwits. Funky tattoo parlors have been replaced by...not so funky tattoo parlors. After all you can't keep a thriving business down. There are cranes everywhere.
And who do we have to thank for all this? Not the mayor, not the elected officials, not the city councilmen, not the city employees. But the CCDC working in conjunction with private developers. The CCDC is a tight knit group of very sharp, very professional, urban planners, architects and financial experts who have been in charge of downtown redevelopment. Having been declared a redevelopment zone, the whole downtown is subject to being bought out and redeveloped. The CCDC acts as a go-between in securing real estate parcels and, if necessary, piecing them together to form parcels large enough to meet the demands of developers. They set limits for such things as the number of parking places that must be included in any project. They have the power of eminent domain which is only used as a last resort, and, to date, has not been used more than a couple of times if that. They oversee the developer's building plans and architectural design, and, if not up to snuff, send him back to the drawing board. They see to it that amenities such as parks are included in the overall scheme of things and that distinct neighborhoods retain their distinctiveness. There are six downtown neighborhoods: Little Italy, the Marina, Cortez Hill, Core Columbia, the Gaslamp and East Village.
There are so many projects either under construction or recently completed downtown that they are too numerous to mention, but here's a partial list: Horizons, Renaissance, Pinnacle, the Children's Museum, Discovery, Icon, Cortez Bleu, Treo, Aria, Aloft, Vantage Pointe, Bayside, the Grande, Sapphire Tower, Electra, Palermo, Fahrenheit, Metrome, the Mark, Pier, Aperture, Atmosphere. This gives you some idea of the scale and range of redevelopment within the fairly small and contained downtown limits. Of course, redevelopment on a major scale is going on in parts of the city other than downtown such as Hillcrest, North Park and Point Loma.
A good example of urban planning is smartcorner. Smartcorner consists of two buildings: a low rise office building on the right and a high rise residential tower on the left. The trolley runs between the buildings and will stop there when the project is completed. Retail will be street level. There is a spa on the roof of the residential building. Smartcorner is close to everything downtown, and one can just hop on and off the trolley to get to the ballpark, Gaslamp, Little Italy, Seaport Village or train station. It's walking distance to Balboa Park, but it would be nice if there were a trolley extension that went there. Smartcorner is adjacent to City College. A prime example of urban planning, smartcorner isn't cheap. The studios start at $267,000. That's for around 450 square feet. You do get a parking place with that though.
Here's a picture of Aloft under construction and one of the finished project. Right across the street bordering I-5 they're going to develop "Tweet Street Park," which will be a gathering place for all manner and assortment of birds. Fancy birdhouses have already been designed. I imagine it will be a favorite place for people walking their dogs as well. Cats might enjoy some birdwatching too. Any pleasant open space in an urban environment is greatly appreciated.
On the left is Discovery a project by Bosa Development. Nat Bosa is responsible for a lot of downtown development being one of the first to pave the way and hop on the bandwagon. Nat Bosa is a high school drop-out who started working in construction as a framer. His family moved from Italy to Vancouver, BC, and Nat saw the similarities between the two cities. After Vancouver had popped in terms of high rise condo construction, Bosa came to San Diego and started the same process. He's now responsible for six high rise towers in downtown including Horizons, Park Place, the Grande and Discovery with Electra, The Legend and Bayside under condtruction.
Below are a few other development related pictures:
And more:
San Diego has an on-going crisis. It has not been able to borrow money in the bond market since 2004. According to the San Diego Union: "The city of San Diego has been underfunding its employee pension plan since 1996. Today's pension deficit is estimated at more than $1.4 billion, though some estimates put it as high as $2 billion." The SEC recently passed judgment that the City of San Diego had committed securities fraud by not disclosing to potential bond holders the extent of the city's underfunding of the pension fund.
As part of a settlement with the SEC, the city agreed to “cease and desist from future securities fraud violations” and hire a financial oversight monitor for the next three years – a move Mayor Jerry Sanders has been pushing for months. No financial penalty was issued.
The SEC found the city “knew or was reckless in not knowing that its disclosures were materially misleading.” Under the settlement, the city neither admits nor denies any wrongdoing.
The settlement doesn't lift the specter of penalties against individual city officials. In its order, the SEC acknowledged those investigations remain ongoing.
“San Diego's misconduct jeopardized the interests of its citizens, its current and future retirees, and those who placed their trust in the city's bonds as an investment,” said Randall R. Lee, regional director of the SEC's Los Angeles office.
The settlement, however, let the City of San Diego off the hook in terms of financial penalties. After all any penalties assessed to the city would be borne by the taxpayers who, after all, had nothing to do with the fraud. The next phase though will entail the SEC and other entites going after the individuals, city council and pension board members, who engineered the situation. They may have to pay criminal penalties.
What happened in a nutshell is this. The City, not wanting to fund the mundane pension fund to the full extent required, choosing instead to use the money for other more exotic purposes like paying for a new ballpark, buying up unsold Chargers' tickets and expanding the Convention Center in order to attract the 1996 Republican National Convention went to the pension board and gave them a deal designed by the devil: they would increase pension benefits including benefits that would be lucrative to the individuals on the pension board, themselves, if the pension board would agree to the underfunding. So benefits went up; funding went down. Then the city went to the bond market and sold bonds to investors without telling them about the underfunding. Thus they obtained the bonds under fraudulent conditions: they did not disclose the shaky grounds and slippery slope the city was on. The people who bought the bonds did so believing that the city was in sound financial shape. Hence they were essentially fooled. The SEC frowns on this.
The SEC ruling is an enormous vindication for embattled City Attorney Michael Aguirre who has maintained all along that, since the pension benefits were granted illegally, the city should not be legally obligated to pay them. This could save the city a billion dollars or more. He also insisted that those responsible should be punished thus signaling that this kind of 'business as usual' should not continue. Mayor Sanders at first didn't support this kind of harsh action preferring instead to just gloss over the situation getting back to business as usual as soon as possible rather than having long drawn out, bitter and divisive court actions. This approach and those who supported it resulted in much criticism for Mike Aguirre. Now that the SEC has spoken, people are beginning to see the wisdom of his stance. The people responsible should be punished and illegal benefits granted should be taken away thus helping to bail the city out of its financial dilemma.
The city seems to have been so enamored of the Chargers football team, a private, profit-making enterprise, that it sold everything else down the river such as street and sewer repair, not to mention funding the pension fund. According to Mike Aguirre's blog:
Let's talk priorities. The City has serious infrastructure problems. Our streets are in disrepair, sewers are breaking and spilling, water delivery is at risk of being contaminated, and inadequate storm drains continue to pollute our beaches and waterways. Not to mention the City's employee pension fund that has a $1.7 billion deficit and a retired employees' health benefit commitment of over $ 1.4 billion.
According to a June 9, 2006 report to the Public Safety & Neighborhood Services Committee, the City has 2,735 miles of streets with 60% in need of repairs. And yet over the last six years, while the City has spent $114 million on the Chargers, we have allocated only $30 million on our streets and roads. Last year, City taxpayers spent 9 times more to maintain Qualcomm Stadium for the Chargers than we committed to our roadway infrastructure. That's just to keep the streets from sliding further downhill.
So, instead of the $5.7 million we will be paying each year on the stadium bonds for the next two decades for having believed the failed promise that the Chargers would stay, we could have been taking care of the things that really matter. Exactly what is the City obligated to fix, streets or skyboxes?
As if the pension crisis were not enough, the city is also in hot water over its sewer system! Evidently it charged residents more than their fair share in order to reduce the cost to businesses. This violated state law and may invalidate $265 million dollars in grant money which may have to be paid back.
What is going on here? Is this amateur hour for lightweight, dim-witted democratically elected city councilmen or are these people criminally negligent or are they not up to the demands of a job that calls for a modicum of intelligence? Mayor Sanders, elected after former Mayor Murphy resigned, and not implicated in the entire mess is trying to get the city back on solid ground and back in the good graces of the bond market. This is a tall order, indeed. By the way Sanders is the one with the square shoulders; Murphy is the one throwing out the first pitch. True to his Republican mind-set, Mayor Sanders has promised to get San Diego out of this financial mess without raising taxes. However, Mayor Sanders has not even been able to get the city's audit released for FY 2003 by the auditor KPMG. According to the Voice of San Diego blog:
The city is still waiting for accounting firm KPMG to issue a long-overdue audit of the municipal government's fiscal year 2003 financial statements. A parade of delays, including two costly investigations, has resulted in the city's lengthy banishment from Wall Street, where public agencies such as the city can court a wide field of investors for loans that are often less expensive than the backing of a single private financier.
"The audit is the biggest priority of the city and has been for about two years," City Council President Scott Peters said. "Everything we've done since has been directed toward getting this audit done."
San Diego's absence from the public bond markets has caused the city to hold off on repairing its crumbling infrastructure. The city's exclusion also stirred up enough uncertainty to help derail pension borrowing plans floated by current Mayor Jerry Sanders and his predecessors, former Mayor Dick Murphy and former City Manager Lamont Ewell. All had designs to use borrowed money to pay down the city's looming pension deficit, now estimated to be $1.4 billion, dating back to 2004. All needed the pending audits to be completed in order to realize their proposals.
Now, with plans that Sanders unveiled this month to right the city's waning fiscal ship, the elusive audits appear again to be the fulcrum on which another financial-reparation plan hinges.
Well, there's FY 2004, FY 2005 and soon FY 2006. How many years behind in the auditing world can San Diego go? Or in other words, why can't they get that dog KPMG to hunt? It gets weirder and weirder. Pat Flannery of the San Diego Today blog seems to think that the SEC has made Mike Aguirre's case. He points out that the SEC cares only about the bondholders, not whether or not San Diego retirees get their pensions or the city's streets get repaired:
The SEC only cares about its bond holders. It could care less whether retirees get their pension benefits or not. It could care less whether San Diegans get city services or not. What it wants to avoid is a situation where the City is "forced to choose between paying pension contributions, paying what the City owes on its bonds and notes, reducing services, and/or raising fees and taxes." That's why they have helped Aguirre win his pension rollback case. They too want to reduce the City's debt.
The most notorious program thought up by guess who - the city employees themselves!- and ratified by the mayor and city council is the DROP program (Deferred Retirement Option Plan).
Under the Deferred Retirement Option Plan, employees are allowed to collect their full monthly pension checks for up to five years while continuing to work and receive their full salaries from the city. Critics aptly decry the DROP payments as a pernicious form of "double dipping" at taxpayers' expense. Supporters defend the program as a way to retain experienced municipal workers.
To grasp just how lucrative DROP benefits are to city employees -- and just how costly to taxpayers -- consider one of the latest entrants into the program, Deputy City Manager Bruce Herring. At age 55, amid a career with the city spanning more than 28 years, Herring qualifies for the complete panoply of pension benefits. Under DROP, these benefits are paid now into an escrow account and will be given to him in a lump sum when he leaves the city's employment. In the meantime, he will continue to receive his regular paycheck.
So combining young retirememnt ages with collection of pensions while still continuing to work results in a lump sum payout after 5 years. Who thought up this "double dipping" scenario? Why, noneother than Mr. Bruce Herring himself during his job as Deputy City Manager who then sold it to the Mayor and City Council. I guess he managed the city pretty well, huh? He will receive a whopping $1.2 million after 5 years participation in the plan and then continue to receive his pension for life starting at age 60. Pretty sweet. But who's watching out for the taxpayers? Nobody, I guess. Mayor Sanders has dropped the DROP program for new hires. I guess there's no stopping those currently enrolled. All this begs the question: "Who's watching the store?"
And then there was the notorious ticket guarantee ginned up by former Mayor Susan Golding ostensibly to keep the Chargers in town for 20 years:
In 1995, the city of San Diego agreed to expand Qualcomm Stadium for the Chargers, build a new practice field and headquarters and buy unsold tickets to the games -- all in exchange for a promise the team would stay in town until 2020.
Proponents also said the expansion would keep the city in the rotation to play host to the Super Bowl.
But seven years later, the city is no closer to keeping the Chargers for the long term than it was when the City Council agreed to the $78 million stadium expansion deal.
What was billed as a fair -- and perhaps even profitable -- deal for the city has ended up costing taxpayers more than $25 million because of the notorious provision that has come to be known as the ticket guarantee. And an escape clause has left the city vulnerable to a recent threat by the Chargers to leave town as early as 2004 if taxpayers don't help build a new stadium.
When former Mayor Susan Golding sold the deal to her council colleagues at a May 15, 1995, meeting, she assured them the lease would keep the team here long past 2003, when the existing lease would have expired.
After all this foolishness, the city commissioned a supposedly independent group chaired by former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt to study the situation and report on what should be done. The so-called Kroll report said the city should "create an audit committee to hire and supervise the city's independent auditors, meet regularly with city officials, perform as-needed internal audits and monitor whistle-blower complaints."
All in all San Diego City Mayors have either actively campaigned for or overseen a giveaway of taxpayer dollars to private interests such as the San Diego Chargers, the Padres baseball team and the Republican National Convention of 1996 in lieu of funding the pension fund. The pension fund board and labor unions in general have gone along with this in return for lucrative benefits to themselves and jobs for their members expanding the Convention Center, improving Qualcomm Stadium and building the Padres' ballpark. But the chickens have finally come home to roost. Bruce Henderson tried to stop some of the foolishness only to be beaten down. The other hero in this mess is Diann Shipione, the pension board member who first blew the whistle. Now the valiant but much maligned city attorney, Mike Aguirre, is on a quest to have some of the illegal pension benefits nullified which, if he can pull it off, will save the city millions of dollars. Stay tuned...
