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Archives for September 2012

Romney to hurricane victims: Bootstrap it, call 211

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By Kit-Bacon Gressitt / Excuse Me, I’m Writing

Following his lackluster speech at the Republican National Convention in Florida last week, GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney reportedly went off script Friday to make what appeared to be a well-scripted campaign stop in the Hurricane Isaac-flooded town of Jean Lafitte in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana.

Some news media outlets suggested the trip was an opportunity for Romney to appear presidential while comforting flood victims and praising emergency responders, but an unnamed campaign advisor contradicted that interpretation.   [Read more…]

Reader’s Response: Living Artists, Zombie Redevelopment, Community Pushback

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Editor: This is a Reader’s Response to Jim Bliesner’s article, “Whatever Happened to Downtown Artists? The Experiences of Three Creative Souls Who Survived .

By Remigia Bermúdez

I take my hat off to Jim Bliesner for all that he has done and continues to do for humanity, including but not limited to, the Arts (locally and globally), job creation, non-profits creation, financial institutions’ re-investments into our communities, higher level educational institutions and a host of other avaunt-guard ideas and ideologies that enhance our livelihoods in the San Diego-Baja California transnational region.   [Read more…]

What Republicans Don’t Want You To Know About Medicare

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According to Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, President Obama is taking $716 billion away from Medicare and giving it to Obamacare. No he’s not. We attempt to set the record straight. The crux of the matter has to do with what’s called Medicare Advantage which is a privatized version of Medicare. Neither side will use the word privatization, but in a nutshell that’s what this issue is all about. That $716 billion represents a pushback by the Obama administration against the forces of privatization which have been at work against government run Medicare for years.

In 1997 our old friend, Newt Gingrich, established the privatization camel’s nose under the tent of traditional Medicare with the Balanced Budget Act which included a provision for something called  Medicare+Choice, the precursor to Medicare Advantage. This act let private health care companies compete with traditional government run Medicare. This was step 1 in the privatization of Medicare.

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Is This California’s Last Labor Day?

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Alternet / By Brigid O’Farrell

Attacks on hard-working people are nothing new in America. Sixty-five years ago, Eleanor Roosevelt, first lady and architect of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, wrote these words : “Labor Day this year is not a day for rejoicing for the labor groups, or for those who are interested in good labor conditions throughout the nation.” In 1947 she was worried about the Taft-Hartley Act, which was the first major legislation to weaken unions since the New Deal. The rights of the people who drive the economy and form the backbone of the country were under siege.

How true her words ring today. And nowhere are they truer than in California.
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The Starting Line – Looking Forward to the Democratic and Backwards at the Republican Convention

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Well here we are. August is behind us, the Republicans have had their Convention and the Democrats are getting ready to put their show on in Charlotte over the course of this week.  Today, we’ll recap the GOP’s moments of glory/shame/ennui and preview the Dems’ coming convo and its likely movements of glory/shame/ennui.

Political conventions have morphed over the years from wildly unpredictable and chaotic drinking binges into highly scripted and predictable drinking binges. Much of the public is bored with the process, as steadily declining ratings on broadcast/cable and an ever-shrinking window of prime time coverage will attest. The quadrennial gatherings have much more to do with firing up the faithful (and the financial moguls who seek to gain influence) than actually winning over the undecided or unmotivated masses.

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Election Coverage in the San Diego Free Press starts officially today. Check in daily for more coverage, plus you can subscribe to our coverage and get articles sent directly to your inbox. And we’ll publish at least one (maybe more) voter’s guides, with links to everything, and a handy-dandy cheat sheet.  Be sure to read the comments after each story, as our readers have lots of good stuff to say, even when they are wrong…
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No More ‘Wisconsin’ in the West: Why We Must Defeat Proposition 32

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 It’s Citizens United on Steroids, a Bill of Rights for Billionaires

Last week, I addressed how the Governor’s tax measure was needed to stop the cuts to education and vital public services.  The passage of Proposition 30 would indeed help California begin to turn the corner and finally stop the hemorrhaging of our education system.  But where the passage of Proposition 30 would bring hope, the passage of Proposition 32, on the other hand, would kill it.

Proposition 32, the Special Exemptions Act, is a corporate power grab that would totally eliminate unions’ ability to take part in politics while leaving the rich, corporate special interests, and Super PACs untouched.  It is Citizens United on Steroids, a Bill of Rights for Billionaires that would permanently eliminate working peoples’ voices from California politics.  At present, corporate interests already outspend unions by nearly 15-1.  What Proposition 32 would do is transform the political contest in California, where the privileged are already playing with a stacked deck, into a hopelessly rigged game.   [Read more…]

In Praise of the American Worker

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by Lorena Gonzalez (This Labor Day message originally appeared U-T San Diego on August 30, 2012)

As a single mom, on my busiest mornings I struggle to ensure that everyone’s teeth are brushed, breakfast is eaten, lunches are made, the kids get to school on time and I get into work. On those mornings, it’s the barista at the local coffee shop who quickly passes me a hot cup of coffee with plenty of room for milk that makes things a little more bearable. She is my daily reminder that no matter what we do, work connects us all; we depend on one another’s work.

On this Labor Day, let’s recognize the women and men who do the work that keeps America strong.

That’s pretty much all of us. Our work makes the work of others possible. We rely on the teacher to inspire our children. The teacher depends on the bus driver to get the students to class on time, in one piece. The bus driver counts on the mechanic to keep the buses running and safe. The mechanic relies on the mail carrier to deliver the parts at the bus yard. And so on it goes.   [Read more…]

How About Some Soul Power?

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I don’t know why, considering that the party always makes me feel like an extreme outsider, but I thought I’d look in on the Republican Convention. I tuned in just as Clint Eastwood was doing what seemed like a Comedy Club routine, acting like he was listening to an imaginary Barack Obama who was badmouthing Mitt Romney. We were to guess what the Prez said via Clint responding: “He can’t do that to himself. You’re absolutely crazy!” Well, you saw it.

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RNC Convention Ka-Ray-Zee: Where the Insanity meets the Inanity

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You’ll have to click the link and come inside. The politically correct police won’t let this stuff on the front page. So do come in if your feeling a little incorrect today…heh. heh….   [Read more…]

Going Undercover at the GOP’s Voter Vigilante Project to Disrupt the Nov. Election

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The Republican True the Vote project is a well-funded scheme with training sessions for activists across the country. Will it work?

By Steven Rosenfeld / AlterNet

I was nervous getting onto the flight to Denver. Since 2004, I have been a national radio producer, investigative reporter, author and consultant—writing about how elections are won, lost, bungled and improved, with a big focus on voter registration. But I had never snuck into a meeting of right-wing voting vigilantes who are the frontline of a national voter suppression strategy, and where the main speaker was a man whose new book I’d aggressively debunked days before, in an AlterNet article lauded by a leading election law blog and Washington Post.

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Ann Romney Says “We Love Women” while the Republican War against Women Continues

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The Romney campaign is clearly counting on Ann Romney– warm, authentic female person ™ to convince women voters that they should discount their real life experiences and perceptions that conservatives are waging a war on women. It has been a bad week to make that argument. Not only did the Republican National Committee (RNC) express their party platform on abortion–no exceptions, and personhood–beginning at the moment that a sperm fertilizes an egg, but a number of congressional men folk hauled themselves out of the stinking swamp of the conservative id to tell us what they really think about women.   [Read more…]

Generating Photovoltaic Solar Power Close to the End Consumer

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By Frank Thomas

This article is a continuation of the series on PV power generation. Previous articles were Learning from the Cascading Power Failures that Brought Down the Power Grid in India by Deb Severson and Power to the People or Power to the Corporations by John Lawrence.

The evidence is substantial that distributed local PV power plants have the lowest transmission loss and cost as well CO2 pollution footprint of all available energy sources. In Germany, more than 98% of all PV power plants are decentralized.   [Read more…]

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