Financial problems are haunting two candidates for City Council. One didn’t pay her mortgage payments on time earlier this year. Another candidate went bankrupt in the 1990s but has forgotten one important detail.
Should voters hold their money issues against them? The latter candidate says no, blaming his financial woes back then on an accountant and saying his experience with bankruptcy — both personally and as an attorney — would help if he gets elected and the city has to go belly-up.
• Did a taxpayer advocate group actually endorse Prop. J? That would be interesting considering that the measure imposes a per-parcel tax on property owners. A campaign mailer says the group did — but it didn’t.
• In the latest in our series of questions and answers about Prop. J, we look at whether the district can just shift the money around so that the parcel tax actually helps other programs. One critic refers to this as a shell game. But is it reality?
• San Diego Fact Check examines a claim regarding the number of students who are graduating from San Diego public schools.
• In arts, we check in with the man who will soon play the Grinch on stage.
• We also take note of a public radio interview with a curator at the San Diego Museum of Art who made a potentially monumental discovery in a basement at Yale University.
• The latest edition of San Diego Explained, our video series with NBC San Diego, looks at three state ballot propositions.
• The Photo of the Day looks at Pacific Beach’s past (seemingly tidy) and present (not so much).
• We’ve got the gist on johns: our readers have weighed in on the best and worst local public restrooms to help us in our search for the ideal locale for a photo shoot.
Elsewhere:
• The U-T polled a variety of possible 2012 mayoral candidates about how they’ll vote on Prop. D. Some news: The wife of a former basketball star says he’s not running, and one councilman says he’s thinking about it.
• Earlier this month, we interviewed the writer of a new magazine article that examined violence in Tijuana and declared that the deadly drug war may be waning. Then came the news of 13 patients killed at a rehab center on Sunday.
“Similar massacres have occurred in other Mexican towns, and they usually signal more and worse to come,” the writer says in a new post, and the precarious balance of power among cartels may be eroding. “Organized crime is, unfortunately, the wealthiest, most dangerous, most powerful actor in the Mexican tragedy, and its intentions are normally signaled in blood.”
• The twice-annual newspaper circulation figures came out earlier this week. Like most newspapers, the number of print subscribers to the U-T fell on a year-to-year basis. (It ranks 23rd overall for its Monday-through-Friday print editions.)
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Could online advertising save the newspaper industry? Probably not for a while: it tends to make up a small chunk of overall revenue. Locally, statistics suggest that many more people read the print edition of the U-T than read it online. (By one measurement, its online readership ranks it 25th among the nation’s papers).
• Researchers from San Diego State reported recently that Latinas may be more likely than other women to avoid cancer screening because they feel fatalistic about disease. Those who agree with statements like “cancer is like a death sentence” and “cancer is God’s punishment” were less likely to get preventive tests.
• Halloween treat: If you stick around number 99 in this video where two guys give away the endings to 100 horror movies, you’ll see a reference to “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes,” filmed here in San Diego and produced by a future state legislator.
• Listen and you might hear the clarion call of a state that takes more Californians than it sends us, a place that “lured people such as Jen Burke, a sprint kayaker who came from San Diego to train for international competition, including the 2012 Olympics.”
“It’s a perfect place to be,” she tells USA Today in a recent story. Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain, has gained a net of 21,000 Californians since 1999. The median house price is $150,000.
As they say out there: Yeeow! Ayipioeeay! Can I buy that house with FHA?
Please contact Randy Dotinga directly at randydotinga@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter: twitter.com/rdotinga.