The Morning Report
Get the news and information you need to take on the day.
A collection of opinion and commentary from around the San Diego Internet:
• Allen Hemphill says that one solution to improving student scores is to pay teachers a minimum of $100,000, though they’d also have to “give up their current union protection that keeps unqualified teachers in the system.” He goes on to say
good teachers make far too little, and bad teachers make far too much, and the public concentrates its ire on the bad teachers because the good teachers permit this to continue.
• Can Councilman Carl DeMaio get enough political juice to put his plans into action? Omar Passons says the real test for DeMaio becomes
how willing he is to work with views that differ from his own to come up with a ballot measure that isn’t just likely to pass, but is likely to be good for our city. Of course, he can’t compromise on his own so a few of his colleagues on the Council and among the civic community will have to step up and be flexible on their own stances as well.
• In a Twitter discussion about desalination vs. wastewater reusage with @jonathanheller, environmentalist Sara_H writes that
desal will continue to improve and advance. And hopefully we’ll conserve current supply, incl. use of Aquatain. 😉
Aquatain is a “silicone-based liquid which spreads across the water surface, forming a very thin film and greatly reducing evaporation.”
• Ah, the chaos and excitement of Union-Tribune comments. Refreshing! Take this story about how there might be snow at an altitude of 1000 feet. Sorting by “best” we find:
- two jokes about weatherman Joe Lizura (one funny, one not)
- one comment that this snow disproves there’s global warming, matched by another comment calling that commenter “ignorant“
- “drivel” misspelled as “dribble” (a common enough error)
- a short description of how the surf and tide will wash seal pups off the beach
- and someone saying — wait, I have to quote this in full —
Perhaps the weather service should broadcast this forecast in Spanish on radio stations in Baja to prevent any more illegal border crossers from dying in the mountains. I know that illegal border crossers choose to break the law and risk their lives to come to the US. But maybe if they knew the true hazards not the risk of being caught but of harsh weather and terrain they would not try it.
Happily, there were also commenters expressing genuine delight at the snow and others remembering the snow of ’67:
I was a lil’ kid in stuck in the kindergarten classroom wondering why on Earth the teachers would not let us go out and play in it.
• A post without an author on the KUSI website cautions against journalists reporting on the content of the prank call to governor of Wisconsin Scott Walker, in which he said some impolitic things.
We should spend as much time explaining the deception and explaining that the potentially inflammatory comments were “baited” as we do playing the audio from this “fake” phone call.
Commenters on KUSI’s Facebook page sharpen their knives to disagree. Matthew Giuntini says,
While this phone call may create an ethical dilemma in your business, there is no question that it is news to the rest of us.
and Haroldo Ricardo Castro says it’s
No different than a phony pimp and prostitute looking for assistance at Planned Parenthood.
Items quoted here may be lightly edited for spelling, grammar, or style (such as using proper capitalization, removing extra exclamation marks, or fixing obvious typos). Send comments you’d like to have included here to Grant Barrett, engagement editor for voiceofsandiego.org: grant@voiceofsandiego.org or (619) 550-5666 or @grantbarrett on Twitter.