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Alex, Mike, and Jerry

Alex, Mike, and Jerry

San Diego city attorney Mike Aguirre and Chargers owner Alex Spanos finally may have something in common. At loggerheads for years over Spanos’s attempts to build a new taxpayer-financed football stadium, Spanos and Aguirre have encountered ...

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Right wing light

Right wing light

KPBS, the San Diego State University–owned public broadcasting operation that has been suffering financially of late, is looking for a new voice from the right. The website of the TV station and FM radio combination ...

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Who’s bundling whom?

Who’s bundling whom?

Both Barack Obama and John McCain have released updated lists of their so-called bundlers, fat cats who hit up their friends for the maximum amount of campaign contributions allowed by law. That can be as ...

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Veteran’s hang-up hell

Veteran’s hang-up hell

Patients experiencing interminable delays in scheduling appointments for care at the San Diego Veterans Administration hospital aren’t just imagining things. So concludes a health-care inspection ... More Comments (2)

Out and about

Out and about

A major figure in the dark saga of Andrew Cunanan, the gay serial killer from San Diego who made international headlines when he murdered fashion ... More Comment (1)

Booze and electricity

Booze and electricity

When Saint Louis–based brewing giant Anheuser-Busch, owner of SeaWorld, gets taken over by a Belgium-based beer maker, will state politicians be left out in the ... More Comment (1)

Saint Patrick’s in July

Saint Patrick’s in July

Is San Diego due for a wave of undocumented Irish immigrants? With increasingly hard economic times on the Emerald Isle, officials there are predicting that ... More Comment (1)

Poseidon adventures

Poseidon adventures

“Jerry Brown 2010,” the campaign committee expected to fund the likely gubernatorial bid of the Democratic state attorney general, collected $5000 from Stamford, Connecticut–based Poseidon ... More Post a comment

Streaming Larry Smarr

Streaming Larry Smarr

UCSD’s California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, which spends a tidy chunk of its taxpayer-furnished budget on public relations, has recently outdone itself, coming ... More Comment (1)

Boozing with Shamu

Boozing with Shamu

With St. Louis brewing giant Anheuser-Busch battling a hostile $46.4 billion takeover attempt by Belgium’s InBev, locals are bracing for the possibility that SeaWorld, the ... More Comments (3)

Tuning out

Tuning out

With the imminent departure of station manager Doug Myrland and yet another round of staffing cuts, has the time come to pry KPBS from the ... More Comments (2)

Gaily, gaily

Gaily, gaily

The impending ballot battle over gay marriage continues to pick up local financial backing from those on both sides of the issue. Latest to donate ... More Post a comment

Fine whine

Fine whine

Ex-Democratic congresswoman Lynn Schenk, fresh from the local campaign trail as Hillary Clinton’s San Diego chairwoman, has circulated a lengthy email to volunteers and contributors ... More Comments (6)

Falling sky

Falling sky

Problems aboard a San Diego–based “mini-jet” have caused the temporary grounding of the nation’s fleet of Eclipse 500s, a new generation of light executive jets ... More Post a comment

Fly like an Egyptian

Fly like an Egyptian

La Jolla’s Blue brothers aren’t the only locals in the business of making unmanned aerial vehicles. In fact, San Diego is such a hotbed of ... More Post a comment

Updates

Updates

Former Union-Tribune enterprise reporting editor Susan White has departed the paper and is now in New York working as an editor for a new foundation-funded ... More Comment (1)

Big Blues

Big Blues

It’s been a very good San Diego election cycle for Linden Blue, proprietor with his brother Neal of General Atomics, the La Jolla defense contractor ... More Comment (1)

Stealthy

Stealthy

Last-minute political expenditures made in local campaigns are often an indication that the people spending the cash don’t want their identities to become an issue ... More Post a comment

Ephemera

Ephemera

The library at UCSD has just purchased some letters and related miscellanea belonging to Gary Snyder, a Northern California poet famous for hanging out with ... More Comment (1)

Clinton’s minions

Clinton’s minions

Now that Hillary Clinton has finally bowed out of the Democratic presidential race, the bets placed by local contributors can be tallied. Perhaps the biggest ... More Comment (1)

In the lobby

In the lobby

With election results now in hand, members of the city’s lobbying corps can adjust their strategies as needed. And despite the threatened economic recession and ... More Post a comment

Not in the lobby

Not in the lobby

An engineer from Burlingame, California, has been told by the City of San Diego’s Ethics Commission that he doesn’t have to register as a lobbyist ... More Post a comment

Small world

Small world

Late last month, San Diego voters began getting so-called robo calls on behalf of city councilman Scott Peters, one of four candidates running against incumbent ... More Comment (1)

Block vote

Block vote

A bevy of some of California’s biggest plaintiffs’ attorneys are lining up behind San Diego Community College District Board president Marty Block in his Democratic ... More Post a comment

Smoke and fire

Smoke and fire

A good example of how money is channeled through state campaign committees, obscuring the original, sometimes controversial sources, can be found in the recent campaign ... More Post a comment

Top heavy

Top heavy

The University of California just hiked annual student fees by 7.4 percent, but that hasn’t stopped the hallowed institution from handing out of ever-higher salaries. ... More Post a comment

Jerry’s favorite

Jerry’s favorite

General Atomics megamillionaire Linden Blue and ex–Jerry Sanders chief operating officer Ronne Froman have been an item for more than three years now, showing up ... More Post a comment

Condemned

Condemned

The League of California Cities, operating out of a posh Sacramento office, is funded by cities with taxpayer dollars to lobby for legislation dear to ... More Comments (7)

Copping tickets

Copping tickets

In his latest annual financial disclosure statement, filed last month, San Diego police captain Bob Kanaski reported receiving four tickets to the Chargers-Colts game in ... More Comments (6)

Ms. in-the-chips

Ms. in-the-chips

San Diego State University has been getting more than its share of bad ink lately, what with the campus drug raid last week. But at ... More Post a comment

Money talking

Money talking

Average San Diego citizens who have a hard time getting through to Mayor Jerry Sanders and the city council might be amazed at how easy ... More Comments (2)

Rock and rip

Rock and rip

EdVoice, that controversial Sacramento lobbying organization, has already rolled out at least two mailers on behalf of 78th District Democratic assembly candidate Marty Block, chairman ... More Post a comment

Indian givers

Indian givers

The long-running dispute between the Barona Indians and their neighbors over pumping water for the tribe’s golf course apparently demanded a recent firsthand inspection by ... More Comments (2)

Mystery meat

Mystery meat

Some San Diego city hall insiders are expecting the investigation announced this week by Mayor Jerry Sanders of that controversial Otay Mesa Blackwater training facility ... More Comments (2)

Tough guys

Tough guys

The by-now-infamous F-word meltdown by San Diego mayor Jerry Sanders is only the latest instance in a long history of bad-boy behavior by the onetime ... More Comments (3)

Political dowries

Political dowries

Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins — the former law firm of now-imprisoned superlawyer Bill Lerach — is throwing a fund-raiser for Mike Lumpkin, running ... More Post a comment

Never mind

Never mind

Political observers are scratching their heads over the unfortunate strategic timing of a new mailer being sent out by the campaign of Auday Arabo, the ... More Comment (1)

Duke’s legacy

Duke’s legacy

The United States Navy is still using software sold to it by ADCS, the Poway outfit founded by Brent Wilkes, convicted of bribery, fraud, conspiracy, ... More Post a comment

Scenes from a divorce

Scenes from a divorce

It’s campaign season, time to delve into some colorful divorces of San Diego’s more-or-less rich and sort-of famous personalities. Earlier it was GOP city attorney ... More Comments (2)

The K word

The K word

Thirty-Ninth District Democratic state senator Christine Kehoe is the chairwoman of the senate’s Energy, Utilities, and Communications Committee, holding life-and-death power over bills crucial to ... More Comments (2)

Eat, drink, and be lobbying

Eat, drink, and be lobbying

While the State of California is threatening to slash funds for everything from school teachers to parks, higher-ups out at UCSD continue to party on. ... More Post a comment

What recession?

What recession?

More UCSD spending: recently appointed UCSD health sciences counsel Anthony Perez is being paid an annual base salary of $210,000 and will be eligible for ... More Post a comment

Ghost of Nixon’s past

Ghost of Nixon’s past

Maybe it’s something in the water, but many of San Diego’s top Republican political players have lived to a ripe old age. Banker C. Arnholt ... More Comments (2)

Pete’s return

Pete’s return

Ex-mayor Pete Wilson, who retired as governor to a tony house in Los Angeles, returns to San Diego only occasionally these days to accept tributes ... More Comment (1)

Calling new cops

Calling new cops

Faced with continued departures from the ranks of its sworn officers due to low pay, low morale, and competition from other law enforcement agencies, the ... More Post a comment

Alien intelligence

Alien intelligence

Information Week is out with a list of organizations that obtained H-1B visas to bring foreign “guest” workers into the country last year. They included ... More Comments (3)

Straight up

Straight up

The National Organization for Marriage California, a political committee sponsored by the National Organization for Marriage, a group backing a state measure to ban gay ... More Comments (7)

Shell game

Shell game

It’s getting hard to tell who is financing whom in the increasingly combative races for San Diego city council and city attorney. As the jousting ... More Post a comment

Bucks for friends

Bucks for friends

San Diego’s GOP mayor Jerry Sanders has announced that under his direction the City has made a $5 million deposit at Neighborhood National Bank. “This ... More Comments (2)

Quids, quos, and a pro

Quids, quos, and a pro

The source of campaign money recently given to Marty Block may come to Democrats as a bit of a surprise. Block is the San Diego ... More Comment (1)

Sweet deal

Sweet deal

It’s politics with an inside twist at the County Administration Building, where Jim Duffy, a sheriff’s lieutenant, took over earlier this year as Republican county ... More Comments (3)

San Diego to Sacramento

San Diego to Sacramento

Big labor is throwing in big money to oppose San Diego fifth district Republican city council candidate Carl DeMaio, a self-styled government reformer opposed by ... More Comment (1)

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American Teen is the touching and hilarious Sundance hit that follows the lives of five teenagers — a jock, a ... More