Opinion

Plastic ocean pollution and climate change

Although burning fossil fuels is the primary cause of global warming, fossil fuels could also be driving climate change via a completely different mechanism involving ocean plastic debris and tiny, bioluminescent fish living hundreds of meters beneath the ocean’s surface. Lanternfish (aka myctophids) are only a few inches long typically but so ubiquitous that they account for over half the ocean’s total fish-mass. They are…


Leaving Gadsden, Alabama, and Roy Moore

Bless his cotton-picking, pedophile, hypocritical 10 Commandments blackheart, good ole child-molesting Republican boy Roy Moore of Gadsden, Alabama is in the news and on the run. I, too, spent time at Gadsden, and have escaped to tell thee. It was another time and another place. Between jobs as a correspondent for the St. Petersburg Times and Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta reporter/columnist for the Sacramento Bee, I…


Duncan Hunter blows hard on vaping rules

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-50th Congressional District) this month has ducked constituents refusing to hold a town hall. He has been nowhere to be found to answer for his promise to vote for the Republican tax bill raising taxes on the people he pretends to represent. However, the self-admitted spender of campaign funds for personal expenses now under federal criminal investigation for spending campaign funds for…


After tax cuts derailed the ‘California dream,’ is the state getting back on track?

In 1978, the year I graduated from college with a degree in economics, most voters in my state chose to turn their backs on the “California dream.” Not unlike the American dream, California’s iteration focused on the limitless possibilities awaiting anyone who moved to the state. It was the state’s basic philosophic footing, a social compact that connected generations, geographies and economic classes in a common destiny….


Trump targets Issa, the last Cal Republicans

It’s hard to know exactly what shape Republican “tax reform” will take. Many details are missing from the “framework” that the administration presented last month. (Describing actions, or promises of action, by the Donald Trump administration often necessitates the use of quotation marks.) But it must have seemed a good idea to someone to complement Trump’s culture war against liberals with a fiscal war. The…


How much more of an ‘F.U.’ can Californians send the Republican Party?

What is to be done in 2018 and beyond, to get the country back on track? Just how liberal is California? It’s the home state of Amanda Chantal Bacon’s Moon Juice and a shit-ton of cannabis — but it’s also the headquarters of Scientology, the launchpad and burial place of Ronald Reagan, and where the landmark 1978 anti-tax measure Prop 13 still polls remarkably well. So how…


Collective action will solve climate crisis

I fancy myself an environmentalist.  I recycle, backyard compost, have rooftop solar, rarely use AC or heat, drive a hybrid, don’t have a lawn and eat vegetarian. Yet the truth is I am as responsible for climate change as the next guy. Here’s why. Doing those things makes me feel good about myself, but they don’t move the world measurably closer to solving the climate…


Abed, Masson, Gallo: ‘Screw you, library’

Shocking. Deaf. Scandalous. Callous. Fascist. Fishy… In a shocking display of community and political deafness, Escondido’s Gang of Three right-wing Republicans on the 5-person City Council, so-called Mayor Sam Abed, and Councilmen John Masson, and Ed Gallo ignored overwhelming community opposition and voted for an ill-defined marketing sales pitch by the corporate interest, Library Systems and Services (LS&S) to take over Escondido library services. Speaker…


Duncan Hunter brings his kids to work for ‘Stealing from your Campaign Day’

“Father of the year” — Reprinted by permission from “Five Dollar Feminist” at Wonkette. For more from Wonkette visit the International Home of the Resistance. When God closes a door, he opens a window. Congressman Duncan Hunter (R-50th District) knows this, because he is a Christian who loves Trump and hates gaybortions. For instance, Hunter tried to close the door on a Congressional investigation into…


Post-Paris Climate Accord: What’s next?

The City of Escondido should do what 46 other local jurisdictions across the country have done, pass a resolution telling Congress to step up and lead the rest of the world in addressing the crisis of global climate change — Sarah Mosko Although President Donald Trump has withdrawn the U.S. from the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, this is no time for the 70 percent of…