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Posted: 21 Aug 2015 08:40 AM PDT
Editors Note: Attorney Cory Briggs responded to a commenter on Thursday'sStarting Line item regarding a proposed ballot measure on hotel taxes and a shared a bit of history about the tourism industry's relationship with the City of San Diego. We've taken the liberty of posting it as a "Readers Write" essay. ...I offer this for the sake of precision.
The scam is very clever, and I don’t want people to mistake one bad actor for another (which is very easy to do in this town because there are so many). To win at the ballot box, we need the public to understand exactly what’s going on. (I’ll jump on my soapbox at the end.) The SDTA is not taxing anyone. The City is taxing tourists 10.5% as TOT and then another 2% for the “Tourism Marketing District Assessment” but it’s really a tax. The hoteliers claim to have imposed the TMD tax on themselves as a “self-assessment,” which is how they rationalized not putting the 2% hike to the voters, but then wrote the rules in a way that allows them to put the 2% TMD tax on their hotel guests’ bills right next to the TOT. The hotels collect the money from their guests and pay it over to the City, and the City then writes a check for that same 2% (after deducting a small admin fee) to the San Diego Tourism Marketing District Corporation. The SDTMDC is run by a small handful of big hoteliers, and they get to decide how the money is spent. At this point, the public has no ability to influence the rate of the TMD tax or how it is spent — except at the ballot box if we get enough signatures on this initiative. [Read more...]
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San Diego Free Press |  |
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Posted: 21 Aug 2015 10:14 AM PDT
By Doug Porter The spat between KPBS/inewsource and attorney Cory Briggs reached a new low this week when an invitation to retired civil rights leader and affordable housing advocate Rev. Richard Lawrence to participate on the Midday Edition program was abruptly withdrawn. Lawrence, whose list of honors includes the San Diego Housing Federation’s "Lifetime Achievement Award" and a San Diego City Council declaration making November 10, 2013 "Richard Lawrence Day," was supposed to be participating in an August 17th panel on San Diego’s declaration of an affordable housing state of emergency. The reasoning behind his “dis-invitation” was that Lawrence sits on the board of San Diegans for Open Government and vigorously defended attorney Cory Briggs in the wake of allegations of misconduct made by KPBS/inewsource. [Read more...]
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Posted: 21 Aug 2015 08:40 AM PDT
Editors Note: Attorney Cory Briggs responded to a commenter on Thursday'sStarting Line item regarding a proposed ballot measure on hotel taxes and a shared a bit of history about the tourism industry's relationship with the City of San Diego. We've taken the liberty of posting it as a "Readers Write" essay. ...I offer this for the sake of precision. The scam is very clever, and I don’t want people to mistake one bad actor for another (which is very easy to do in this town because there are so many). To win at the ballot box, we need the public to understand exactly what’s going on. (I’ll jump on my soapbox at the end.) The SDTA is not taxing anyone. The City is taxing tourists 10.5% as TOT and then another 2% for the “Tourism Marketing District Assessment” but it’s really a tax. The hoteliers claim to have imposed the TMD tax on themselves as a “self-assessment,” which is how they rationalized not putting the 2% hike to the voters, but then wrote the rules in a way that allows them to put the 2% TMD tax on their hotel guests’ bills right next to the TOT. The hotels collect the money from their guests and pay it over to the City, and the City then writes a check for that same 2% (after deducting a small admin fee) to the San Diego Tourism Marketing District Corporation. The SDTMDC is run by a small handful of big hoteliers, and they get to decide how the money is spent. At this point, the public has no ability to influence the rate of the TMD tax or how it is spent — except at the ballot box if we get enough signatures on this initiative. [Read more...]
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Posted: 21 Aug 2015 08:40 AM PDT
Containers of commerce anchored offshore shipped from port to port Transported by semi trucks to the empty warehouses of consumers Who defecate the final product out to sea [Read more...]
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Posted: 21 Aug 2015 08:39 AM PDT
The criticism aimed at Marissa Johnson and Mara Willaford have ranged from the deeply piercing to the explicitly racist. But what they did was necessary, a welcome harbinger of more direct disruption. Marcus Harrison Green / Yes! Magazine “America is a racist nation. Look at this country’s true history. Look at its foundations. It was founded on the genocide of Native Americans and the continued enslavement of black Americans.” A Black Lives Matter protester laid it out bare, raw, and unapologetic to me and the hundreds of others who stood shoulder to shoulder on the grassy courtyard of Seattle Central Community College. It was the day after Mara Willaford and Marissa Johnson engaged in a now-famous disruption at Bernie Sanders’ rally in Seattle, where the democratic presidential candidate was scheduled to speak in front of a largely (and seemingly) progressive white audience. The criticism aimed at the two’s actions has ranged from the deeply piercing, to the contextually vapid, to the explicitly racist. The two women have had their lives scrutinized, religion questioned, and progressive values challenged. All because they would not allow a white man to speak. [Read more...]
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This is not the first time a fire broke out at Pulau Bukom. In September 2011, more than 100 firefighters helped to put out a fire that raged for 32 hours at the Pulau Bukom refinery. Shell was fined $80,000 the following year for lapses in workplace safety that led to the fire.
