BULLYING, SCHOOL VIOLENCE DISCUSSION TO FOLLOW MATINEE PERFORMANCE OF “PUNK ROCK” MARCH 9
March 2, 2013 (Hillcrest) – Anti-bullying expert and ECM writer/reviewer Walter G. Meyer will be leading a discussion of bullying and school violence from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday March 9, 2013 prior to the 4 p.m. matinee performance of Punk Rock by Simon Stephens at Ion Theatre in Hillcrest. President of the San Diego Unified School District’s Board of Education, Richard Barrera will also be on the discussion panel along with ion’s Producing Artistic Director, Glenn Paris, who directed the play. Meyer’s most recent book Rounding Third powerfully addresses the bullying/suicide crisis and was published just before started making the news. The novel was reviewed in East County Magazine when it first debuted: http://www.eastcountymagazine.org/node/2580 and Meyer is a frequent contributor to ECM. He has been asked to speak and write about the topic for numerous newspapers and web sites including the San Diego Union-Tribune and he has spoken throughout the US, including at Penn State, Arizona State, SUNY-Jamestown, the Cleveland LGBT Center, and libraries in California and Pennsylvania. He coordinated an anti-bullying program with members of the San Diego School Board and City Council and he has been a guest on many radio programs to discuss the issue. Meyer has become recognized as an authority in the field and works as a consultant for Civility Partners, a company that does bullying prevention; he was asked by the nonprofit “No Bully” to become certified to do their in-school bullying interventions, and he has created webinars for SafeSchools and the nonprofit Acheiva. He recently was on a panel discussing bullying following a performance by Malashock Dance and at a screening of the documentary Bully at Canvass for a Cause on February 26. “Bullying. Underage sex. Drugs. School violence. Punk Rock has it all,” said Ion’s Paris. A play Meyer co-wrote with Brian Bielawski, GAM3RS, was produced at ion in 2010. “I heard about Punk Rock and asked Glenn how I could help,” said Meyer. “I know how much ion likes to engage their audiences even after a performance.” Rounding Third was based in part on Meyer’s high school experiences and Punk Rock is based on playwright Simon Stephen’s experience as a teacher. The play explores the underlying tensions and potential violence in a group of affluent, articulate seventeen year-old students as they prep for the next chapter in their adult academic lives. When a new classmate arrives suddenly, friendships are tested and allegiances shift amidst the pressures of everyday adolescence – with tragic results. “Although it’s set in northern England, I think audiences will find the subject matter far too familiar and relatable,” Meyer added. This is only the second U.S. production in the U.S. and it features returning ion artists David Ahmadian, Benjamin Cole, and the ion debuts of Ryan Casselman, Tyler Jones, Samantha Littleford, Charles Maze, Lizzie Morse and Samantha Vesco. Punk Rock is the fourth production in ion’s current Season 7. For reservations and discounted tickets to the 4pm show, please call Ion Theatre at (619) 600-5020. The production is for mature audiences only. For more information on Walter G. Meyer and Rounding Third visit http://www.waltergmeyer.com
GASOLINE EXCISE TAX TO INCREASE 3.5 CENTS ON JULY 1, 2013
March 2, 2013 (Sacramento) – Effective July 1, 2013, the excise tax on gasoline will increase 3.5 cents per gallon following a vote February 28, 2013 by the California State Board of Equalization. The Board is sensitive to the financial impact consumers are feeling at the pump, but state law requires the BOE to adjust the excise tax rate by March 1 of each year in order to ensure revenue neutrality. As gasoline prices increase, the relative amount of state sales tax that would be collected, but for the fuel tax swap, decreases and must be offset by an increase in the excise tax rate. In 2010, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed Assembly Bill x8 6, Ch. 11, and Senate Bill 70, Ch. 9. These bills lowered the sales and use tax rate on gasoline and increased the excise tax rate on July 1, 2010. The laws require the annual sales and excise taxes paid on gasoline to remain revenue neutral. They also mandated the BOE to adjust the excise tax rate by March 1 of each year in order to ensure revenue neutrality.
LA MESA POLICE SAY “NO” TO SPEEDERS
March 2, 2013 (La Mesa) – The La Mesa Police Department, in an effort to keep everyone safe, was aggressively enforcing the state’s speed laws during the fourth “Traffic Safety Enforcement Program” operation, which took place Saturday February 23, 2013. The program relies on heavy enforcement and public education as a means to help reduce deaths and injuries on our local roadways. When caught speeding, driver’s often ask for just a verbal warning. Though sometimes appropriate based on the overall circumstances, La Mesa Police Officers said “no” to that request at least 27 times and issued them speeding tickets during Saturday’s operation. One speeding driver was also driving on a suspended driver’s license, and his vehicle was impounded. These efforts will continue throughout the year and “as long as it takes to get the message out to not speed in the City of La Mesa,” a release issued by LMPD states. Funding for this operation was provided by a grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
READER’S EDITORIAL: THE COMING STUDENT LOAN FREIGHT TRAIN
By Jake Christie March 2, 2013 (San Diego’s East County)–I could’ve called it a “bomb” or a “fiasco”, but I prefer to call the mess that is the American private and public student loan system a “freight train” because the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming high-speed double diesel pulling 25 cars full of heavy loads. The numbers surrounding the student loan mess are horrifying; the total student loan debt out is one trillion dollars, which is the entire US government budget in a year. Of that amount, $76 billion is in default, though Allan College of StudentLoanJustice.org put out a press release* doubting that figure because even defaulted loans have interest piled on top of them. Thanks to a 2005 bill (the Bankruptcy Protection Act and Consumer Protection Act) it is now impossible to declare bankruptcy on student loans; if you have one, it will follow you until it is repaid in full, even if it requires collections agencies, wage garnishments, and other tactics** to get it. When did this catastrophe begin? We’ve only had federal student loans since 1958. When the ball began rolling was sometime in the Nixon years, when the government decided – despite a lack of evidence – that too many students were sticking Uncle Sam with their debts, so they made student loan debts un-dischargeable. This opened a door to new worlds of usury, as the quasi-governmental company Sallie Mae was allowed to go private and rake in the real interest: 8 percent and higher. But that was only after the State began retreating in funding the colleges and the costs of college began outstripping inflation in the late 1980s. So the debt train was built and sent rolling down the tracks over 30 years, though it really began picking up speed in the last decade as it roughly doubled in size. So what does all of this mean? It means that the young people of East County who should be buying new Toyotas in El Cajon aren’t. It means that people can’t buy houses, or start little businesses, or plan for families like they should, because they are paying most of their paychecks in rent and student loan fees. You can’t save up when Sallie Mae, now privatized, is asking for $150 a month on top of your federally-backed Stafford Loans ($50-60). Oh, and if you are a lawyer or a dentist (and have that debt piled on top of your undergraduate debt), they can take away your certificates if you default, which means you now get to pay off the professional schools on a janitor’s salary. This is why there seems to be an un-charted Diaspora of around a million to a million-and-a-half Americans living as expatriates in Canada, Vietnam, China, Japan, etc. They are fleeing Sallie Mae and all their credit card debt, because nobody sees a check from the lender companies anymore; the money moves from the loan company to the school without the student seeing it. I haven’t hit all of this, but the bit that truly sickens me is “zombie student debt”; people somehow pay off their debt, then a decade rolls past and they get a note from the Department of Education demanding $20,000 or $30,000 because their loans “defaulted.” So people are on the hook for school again. (Moral of the story: hold onto your proof of loan payoffs ‘til you die, to protect yourself against this bureaucratic bungling.) The whole thing has become a nightmare of bad decisions based on unintended consequences. Consider this: colleges have lending limits; they can’t approve more loans than are being paid in. So if nobody is paying back, the college is in hot water since money goes from the lender to the college, not the student (though students are on the hook for the loan repayments.) At this point, either the government will have to write off that trillion, or watch as the borderline schools (the ITT Techs, the Coleman Colleges, possibly even San Diego State University) implode into an ocean of bad credit with the empty buildings as archipelagos of ruin. The loan companies need to be dissolved and the collections firms shuttered, banks restructured so that can’t profit off this. The government should be on the hook for this because they allowed this fiasco to happen. Privatizing student loans and driving tuitions sky-high was an Enron type of solution, that wound up coming back to bite us all. * http://studentloanjustice.org/press%20release11-2-12.html Allan College has been going after the student loan fiasco since 2005; there are others, mostly concerning the high costs and small returns of law school and the legal profession; one of the strongest is www.thirdtierreality.blogspot.com but the reader should be warned that “Nando” the site owner illustrates how bad the law schools are with photos of full toilets. ** The other tactics include garnishing Social Security, any lottery winnings, and siccing the hordes of fly-by-night collections agencies on the student debtor. Many of the collections agencies will resort to calling relatives, neighbors, former places of residence, even people with similar last or first names in desperate bids to get debtors to sign. They are also the people keeping regular “zombie debt” alive. It’s a parasitic shadow industry. The opinions in this editorial reflect the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of East County Magazine. To submit an editorial for consideration, contact editor@eastcountymagazine.org.
FDA’S MEDWATCH SAFETY ALERTS: JANUARY 2013
March 2, 2013 (Washington, D.C.) – The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recently issued alerts or other safety information about a number of products, including metal-on-metal hip implants, which release metal particles into the bloodstream, sleep drugs that reduce morning alertness—especially in women, and a motion sickness drug packaged in error as an iron supplement. These and other alerts were prompted by reports FDA received from health care professionals and the public through the agency’s MedWatch Adverse Event Reporting Program. Read this Consumer Update to learn more about these safety alerts and what to do if you’ve used one of the products described.
SEMPRA ENERGY ANNOUNCES 2012 FINANCIAL RESULTS, HUGE GROWTH IN REVENUES FROM RENEWABLE ENERGY
March 2, 2013 – Sempra Energy, parent company of SDG&E, this week reported 2012 earnings of $859 million, or $3.48 per diluted share, compared with $1.3 billion, or $5.51 per diluted share, in 2011. Earnings for Sempra Renewables division took a huge leap in 2012, increasing to $61 million from $7 million in 2011. Fourth-quarter earnings for Sempra Renewables were $14 million in 2012, compared with a loss of $2 million in 2011, due primarily to the addition of solar and wind assets in 2012. Earnings for SDG&E increased to $484 million in 2012 from $431 million in 2011. For details, see the company’s announcement.
SECOND ANNUAL LAKE JENNINGS PHOTO CONTEST RUNS THROUGH MARCH
March 2, 2013 (San Diego’s East County) – Photos taken at Lake Jennings during March may be entered in Helix Water District’s Lake Jennings Photo Contest. Prizes of up to $100 will be awarded in adult and student categories. Photos can be of any aspect of the lake—wildlife, wild flowers, camping, fishing, boating, scenic views. They can be up to 10 mg and must be e-mailed to: lakejenningsphotocontest@helixwater.org. An entry and release form must accompany each photo and can be found at: www.lakejennings.org/photocontest/index.htm. Contest rules are also posted at this URL. Last year’s winners can be seen at: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lake-Jennings/301972993198610 Lake Jennings is located just off I-8 at Lake Jennings Park Road. Follow Lake Jennings Park Road north; a right turn on Harritt Road will take photographers to the entry gate—9535 Harritt Road, Lakeside, California 92040. Photographer must stop at the Bait and Tackle Shop for a free pass any Friday, Saturday, or Sunday during March. Photography from the campground can be done any day of the week—passes available at the gate house. (Passes do not include fishing permit.) Contest deadline: Monday, April 1, 2013 at 5:00 p.m.
SPRING INTO HEALTHY LIVING: YMCA HOSTS FREE HEALTH FAIR MARCH 20
March 2, 2013 (Spring Valley) – Spring Into Healthy Living, a health and wellness fair featuring free health screenings and healthy living information from seniors and community service providers in the East County, will be held from 9 a.m. to noon on Wednesday, March 20 at the McGrath Family YMCA, 12006 Campo Road, Spring Valley. Admission is free, and continental breakfast will be served. Health screenings will check blood glucose, blood pressure, body mass index, hearing and stroke risk. Information will be available on nutrition, volunteer opportunities, disaster preparedness and various diseases, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and diabetes. Demonstrations of tai chi and zumba, along with tours of the YMCA, will be held. Health officials will accept unused prescription medications. Sponsors include YMCA, Grosssmont Healthcare District, San Diego County Health and Human Services Agency, Sharp Grossmont Hospital Senior Resource Center, East County’s Action Network, Parkinson’s Association of San Diego, Senior Community Center, La Vida Real and AARP. To RSVP, call (619) 401-3929.
PASSAGES: CHRIS KYLE, FORMER NAVY SEAL AND AMERICAN SNIIPER AUTHOR
March 1, 2013 (Alpine) – Former Alpine resident Chris Kyle, who served with Navy Seal Team 3, was gunned down near his home in Dallas, Texas in February by a fellow veteran. This morning, a flag-lowering ceremony was held at De La Fuente Cadillac in El Cajon, where the public joined in commemorating the famed fallen soldier. Kyle served five tours of duty in Iraq, where he earned a reputation as one of the U.S. military’s most lethal snipers, earning two purple hearts, four Bronze stars for valor and two Silver Stars. He authored a book, American Sniper, documenting his wartime experiences. He lived for six years in Alpine and later moved to Texas, where he founded a company that helped train SWAT team members. A bounty was reportedly placed on his heads by insurgents in Iraq, where he was known as the “Devil of Ramadi”, the New York Times reported. But in the end, a Marine suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder whome Kyle was assisting took Kyle’s life on a Texas shooting range. A ceremony honoring Kyle was held at Cowboy Stadium in Dallas, attended by thousands. More than 60,000 people lined the funeral procession route. Texas Governor Rick Perry attended the services and flags across Texas were ordered flown at half mast in his honor. “Having witnessed this sad event, my heart was filled with pain for the Kyle family, but pride with how Americans turned out to honor Chris Kyle. A man who loved his country with all of his heart,” Chuck Taylor wrote in the Alpine Sun.. Kyle is survived by his wife and two children.
CONGRESS PASSES VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN ACT
San Diego Republicans drop opposition, vote to pass measure By Miriam Raftery March 1, 2013 (San Diego’s East County) – Two Republican Congressmen from San Diego, Duncan Hunter and Darrell Issa, previously voted against renewal and expansion of the Violence Against Women Act to include protections for Native American, gay and immigrant women. But this week, both shifted their stance and joined with Democrats to pass the measure 286 to 138. Local Democratic House representatives Susan Davis, Scott Peters and Juan Vargas also voted in favor. (View roll call) The bill has also been approved by the Senate, where California Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein supported it, and is expected to be signed into law by the President. The law had expired, leaving all battered women without the protections afforded by the Violence Against Women Act, due to the House blocking the measure for over a year. But after mounting public pressure by women’s groups, Native American rights advocates, immigrant and gay rights organizations and others, 87 House Republicans joined with all 199 Democrats to pass the reauthorization bill, expanding rights to include all women. San Diego County is home to 19 Native American tribes, more than any county in America, as well as large populations of immigrant women Congresswoman Karen Bass (D-California) issued the following statement following passage: “After an unnecessary delay of more than 500 days, the House today finally did the right thing and passed commonsense legislation protecting battered women from their abusers. Protections were extended to those most in need of a helping hand, including battered women who are Native American, immigrants and LGBT. Because of VAWA, tribes have the authority to prosecute non-Indians who commit domestic violence against their Indian spouses or dating partners and that is a tremendous step forward in protecting Native American women from these senseless acts of violence.” She added, “Under VAWA, states will be given more funding to vigorously prosecute sexual and domestic violence offenders and can also qualify for money to provide key services to victims. The bill also reauthorizes the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, providing critical support for trafficking victims and helping to ensure traffickers are brought to justice.”