SAN DIEGO — Qualcomm co-founder Andrew Viterbi was the subject of an interesting Q&A column by Steve Chapple in the U-T business section of May 12. Among other things Viterbi had to say were that in the future, people’s refrigerators may keep track of food items and electronically message supermarkets to have needed foodstuffs delivered by drones; that even if the National Security Agency has invaded Americans’ privacy, disabling its efforts to protect against cyber-attacks by foreign countries would be far more dangerous, and that the U.S., not the U.N, should control the Internet because it was developed in the U.S. and other governments “are all worse than ours.”
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In an OpEd for Voice of San Diego (VOSD), Harry Schwartz, co-owner of Ace Hardware in Downtown San Diego, argues that an increase in the minimum wage in San Diego to over $13 would impact not only those employees who currently are earning minimum wage, but also those who have earned merit raises for their work. Many employers feel it is only ethical to give such employes concommitant raises, but the problem is such action will force prices to consumers to rise — and even cause some businesses operating on low margins to fold. Schwartz said the tendencies of the San Diego City Council are so economically perilous for him that he has told Ace Hardware headquarters he would not be interested in expanding his operations to another store — unless it is outside San Diego’s city limits.
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In the U-T’s local section, Greg Moran detailed the three times Judge Lisa Schall was judicially admonished—a story that should redound to the benefit of challenger Carla Keehn, a U.S. attorney. However, on its editorial page, the U-T nevertheless endorsed Schall for reelection to Superior Court Office No. 20. In another endorsement, the newspaper chose Brad Weinreb, a deputy attorney general, for the open Superior Court Office No. 25 over Ken Gosselin and Michele Hagan.
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A U-T story by Peter Rowe about philanthropist T. Denny Sanford noted that he had given $1 billion to various causes, with $130.5 million in donations in 2013 earning him the 20th spot on the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s annual list of big givers. Qualcomm co-founder Irwin Jacobs and his wife Joan ranked eighth in the same year, with donations of $221.1 million.
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Mother’s Day and all prevented us from writing up our San Diego Jews in the News column for Sunday, May 11, 2014, but surely it’s not too late to play some catch-up. Two stories by U-T drama critic James Hebert caught our eye. In discussing Annie Get Your Gun, which is now being featured at the San Diego Musical Theatre, Hebert said that with actress Beth Malone playing the straight-shooting cowgirl, the classic songs by Irving Berlin have “fresh zing and an unbridled sense of fun.” … In another Hebert piece about collaborators Joe DiPietro and David Bryan, who are bringing Chasing the Song to the La Jolla Playhouse, he quotes DePietro as saying of Bryan: “I’m Italian, he’s Jewish – we have, like, the exact same mother.” Bryan was a long time keyboardist for Bon Jovi, who knew far more about rock n’ roll than about musical theatre. In fact, Herbert reported, up to the time he decided to try writing songs for the theatre, his experience “began and ended with seeing Fiddler on the Roof around the time of his bar mitzvah.”
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Preceding compiled by San Diego Jewish World staff