Quickies

A round-up of news items, articles, columns and blog posts that caught our attention this past week or so.





A San Diego Chargers to Los Angeles update:

Forbes magazine figures the Chargers would be worth at least $200 million more upon moving to Los Angeles. If that’s all it is, though, it probably doesn’t happen.

Unless that number is comically conservative, there would not appear to be enough financial incentive for Dean Spanos to justify an exit fee, a relocation fee and a new partner/landlord with a significant stake in his football franchise.

Trouble is, that projected $200 million bump may well be comically conservative. There may be too much easy money to be made in the nation’s No. 2 market for Team Spanos to continue to seek stadium traction in San Diego after nearly a decade of inertia.

Also, would the Spanos family accept 60% vs. full ownership of the team selling 40% to AEG, the stadium developers? With family patriarch, Alex Spanos in old age and failing health, the factor that no one seems to be talking about is the Spanos' willingness to sell Alex's 36% share to avoid the death tax. As we originally reported, this deal remains too good to not happen.





Would SDG&E's Sunrise Powerlink, the massive transmission line under construction in East County, have prevented Thurday's county-wide blackout here in San Diego?

A resounding maybe.

So, the media covered the President's gaffe regarding Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party during his jobs speech last Thursday night? Oh, you better believe they covered it.

Also, the same media outlets that fact-checked a similar gaffe made by Mike Huckabee back in 2008 can't be bothered to do the same due diligence this time around.





Here's B-Daddy with some thoughts on the President's jobs speech:

•Where's the bill? The President, as usual, did no heavy lifting. He demanded that Congress take action, but where is the bill he proposes? Legislation usually requires, well, legislation, as in legal prose.

•Where's the money?

•Roads and bridges? Really? This worked so well in the first stimulus package. Good luck getting the projects past the increasingly zealous EPA.

•Congress gets the blame for the lack of jobs? Whose party decided that healthcare was more important for the first two years of the administration. Nice tone. Way to encourage Republicans to work with you. Bottom line this was a campaign speech. Now we know Obama's campaign game plan, blame the Republicans.

Read more at the link.

Do you know what we found lacking in the jobs speech? It's pretty basic stuff. We do it quite well as a matter of fact. And as opposed to the green jobs mirage, it actually does provide very well-paying jobs and the best part of it may be that we keep finding more and more of it.

Of course, we're talking about drilling for oil and natural gas. The stuff is there, so let's go get it!



San Diego mayoral candidate and tea party fave, Carl DeMaio hitching his candidacy to public employee pension benefit reform?

The petition to do just that is still about 30,000 signatures short of qualifying for the June 2012 ballot and the deadline is October 14.

The two other Republicans in the race, Nathan Fletcher and Bonnie Dumanis have come onbard favoring the ballot initiative (Democrat and union hack, Bob Filner is opposed) but belatedly so. This has been DeMaio's baby from the get go, so, yeah, his bid for the mayor's office largely depends upon getting this on the ballot and ultimately succeeding.



Shane Atwell on the Great San Diego Black-out:

Every time there's an outbreak of salmonella or even speculation of some minor crisis in an unregulated market, the statists come out of the woodwork to discuss 'market failure' and the need for more regulations. But when a heavily regulated industry fails--an industry who's regulations were supposed to make it cheaper, more efficient and safer--those statists are silent.

Our own thoughts and observations, here.


And finally...

...The Cardiff Kook, the much-derided and much made-over surfing statue up the coast from us a few miles gets its 9-11/FDNY make-over.