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Owning San Marcos Mayor Rebecca Jones

According to her 2018 campaign disclosure statement, mayoral candidate Rebecca Jones received $50,965 in donations from 180 individuals. Only 53 have San Marcos addresses. Seven of ten of her cash supporters were, like me, not eligible to vote in the election. Jones’s opponent, Chris Orlando, raised $29,000 in donations from 139 individuals, 94 of whom have San Marcos addresses. I was disappointed to learn that…


Seniors community foundation packs a punch

A new, well-funded and ultra-connected non-profit called San Diego Seniors Community Foundation entered the local arena with a splashy new “senior center assessment,” finding “San Diego’s senior population is rising, but the community is not ready for change.” The 11-page report got a lot of play in the media following its Aug. 20 release, and why not. Bob Kelly, former president and CEO of The San…


Found the car at Stockton, but not the canine

Stockton can be a mean town. Just ask Poway resident Cynthia Niswonger. Niswonger’s family vacation return trip from Oregon took a detour of the worst sort about 3 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 11 outside the McDonalds at 611 West Charter Way, Stockton. That is when a thief broke the lock on her green 2000 Ford Focus hatchback and stole the car. Complicating the theft was the…


Napili Bay, Maui July 18, 2019

(Margaret McCown Liles started blogging about the Escondido City Council following the demise of the North County Times as a public resource. This is a more personal look at some of her private moments and challenges. Please visit her blog at http://ablueviewescondido.com.) This is the view from the tiny balcony of our tiny studio apartment. That’s Lanai in the background. It’s a great view, but…


San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station remains public scandal despite shutdown

Two recent scandals confirm that public safety is not top priority of either the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) or SoCal Edison as they lurch forward with a faulty engineering design for removing spent nuclear waste from cooling pools and loading into dry storage at the now shuttered San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. In August 2018, a conscience-driven whistle blower exposed how, because of a system…


Food Network: Say it ain’t so, Rosie’s Cafe

After three years off the air, Restaurant Impossible returned to the Food Network Saturday, April 20 with a somewhat problematic visit to Rosie’s Cafe on Grand Avenue at Escondido. Food Network Gossip also covered restaurant makeover guru Robert Irvine’s highly eventful visit, but when the smoke from the kitchen cleared, with all due respect to owner Kaitlyn Rose, 32, and her enthusiastic foray into the…


San Diego County Fair this way comes

Strap on the fried food feed bag, bundle up the kids and get down to the Del Mar Fairgrounds — It’s San Diego County Fair go time again. “Wizard of Oz” is this year’s theme at San Diego County Fair, harkening to its origins as an agricultural fair in 1880. The location moved from place to place for several years, finally settling on the Del…


Duncan Hunter suffering shell shock, CTE?

Move over Donald Trump sanity issues, his early supporter and continuing sycophant, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-50th Congressional District) apparently has his own mentally-related issues. Uttering numerous insane slurs and comments across various media sites this week, could Hunter be suffering from shell shock, known in modern terms as CTE, the same brain disease disabling many former NFL football players? Sharyn Alfonsi reported last year on…


Kids are the grownups in climate crisis room

The next U.S. presidential election is being transformed because children everywhere, watching in disbelief as grownups fail to address the climate crisis, are launching their own climate movements. In contrast to the 2016 election – where exactly zero questions about global warming were posed during the general election debates – the lineup of presidential candidates are already being pressured to do something about the climate…


Escondido mosque arson investigation yields more questions than answers and a reward

Authorities said this week they had not ruled out anything when it comes to who started a small fire at Escondido’s Dar-ul-Arqam Mosque at 318 W. Sixth Ave. around 3:15 a.m. Sunday, March 24. Believed to be arson, a suspect reportedly left a note referring to the shootings Friday, March  15 that killed 50 people at mosques in the city of Christchurch, New Zealand. The fire…