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All I Want for Christmas: A Youth’s Statement of Solidarity with Joe Solomon

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By Anonymous Youth

Editors Note: We received this essay over the holiday in response to our December 24 post by activist Joe Soloman. Because of the personal nature of subjects covered herein, we suggested anonymity to the author.

I write in solidarity with Joe Solomon’s desire for more youth-led climate justice.

I am 26 years old. I hold degrees as a Bachelor of Arts in English and a Juris Doctor. I have $230,000 of student loan debt and growing. I have already began and finished a career as a public defender.

I am young and I want climate justice.

I want a livable future for myself, my loved ones, and the rest of the world. I want the current extinction rate of 200 species a day to stop. Forever. I want more whales off the San Diego coast this year than the year before. I want less deforestation. I want the kids in Barrio Logan to be able to breathe. I want the rich to stop stealing from the poor. I want to see a grizzly bear in California again one day.   [Read more…]

Why No Wall Street CEOs Were Prosecuted For Causing The Financial Crisis

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By Dartagnan /Daily Kos

“If you prosecute a CEO or other senior executive and send him or her to jail for committing a crime, the deterrent effect in my view vastly outweighs even the best compliance program you can put in place.”

It’s unusual for a Federal Judge to weigh in on specific matters that could conceivably come before his Bench.  It’s even more unusual when those matters involve politically sensitive issues of national policy. A hard-hitting essay published recently in The New York Review Of Books by a 70-year old active United States District Judge has raised eyebrows for doing just that.

Judge Jed S. Rakoff sits for the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York–the nerve center of the financial world.  A Clinton appointee and former Federal prosecutor, he stunned the SEC in 2011 by rejecting a proposed 285 million dollar settlement between the U.S. and Citigroup in a case where Citigroup had been accused of misleading investors through the sale and packaging of collateralized debt obligations.  Rakoff’s rationale for rejecting that settlement–which he characterized as “pocket change”–was that Citigroup was not required to admit culpability.  The SEC changed its position on this practice after this ruling.   [Read more…]

Sequestration, Taxifornication, Misinformation, and the Great Tourism Recession in San Diego: Looking Back at March 2013

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By Doug Porter

For the twelve days of Christmas I give you: The madness of 2013, one month at a time-A month by month recap of stories that appeared in the Starting Line over the past year.

#1 Sequestration Won’t Make the Sky Fall

Happy sequestration day.  The sky most likely won’t fall at 11:59pm tonight when President Obama signs the order implementing terms of a deal struck with Congress designed to be so odious that no person in their right mind would allow it to happen.

That should tell us a lot about the current mental state of the nation’s politicians. But it doesn’t.  The horrible deal, as it turns out, isn’t all that horrible, at least in the short run.   [Read more…]

Guns, Governors, God and the Gipper: Looking Back at February 2013

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By Doug Porter

For the twelve days of Christmas I give you: The madness of 2013, one month at a time-A month by month recap of stories that appeared in the Starting Line over the past year.

#1 Rick “Tex” Perry Rides into Town

Our local daily is featuring an article today hewing to its meme that the end is nigh for the Golden State in the wake of voter support for raising taxes in the last election. Here’s the lede:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry quietly came to San Diego last week to lure biotech companies seeking to escape from higher income taxes under Proposition 30 to the Lone Star State.

  [Read more…]

100 Years is Enough: Time to Make the Fed a Public Utility

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By Ellen Brown/Nation of Change

December 23rd, 2013, marks the 100th anniversary of the Federal Reserve, warranting a review of its performance.  Has it achieved the purposes for which it was designed?

The answer depends on whose purposes we are talking about.  For the banks, the Fed has served quite well.  For the laboring masses whose populist movement prompted it, not much has changed in a century.

The Federal Reserve Act was passed in 1913 in response to a wave of bank crises, which had hit on average every six years over a period of 80 years. The resulting economic depressions triggered a populist movement for monetary reform in the 1890s. Mary Ellen Lease, an early populist leader, said in a fiery speech that could have been written today.
  [Read more…]

City settles FPPC complaint on Prop. N & P mailer

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From the Escondido Democratic Club

The City of Escondido has announced a settlement in a Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) complaint by EDC member and former Mayor Jerry Harmon. The complaint accused the City of violating FPPC rules when it sent a mailer to voters about Propositions N and P, which were on the November 2012 ballot. Proposition N asked voters to approve a General Plan Update. Proposition P asked voters to approve a change to charter city status and a new charter. The City said the mailer cost $20,000.

The mailer was presented to the City Council for approval as “informational,” but the final product struck Harmon as “one-sided” campaign material. It carried, in large letters, the phrase “Moving Forward” and presented only positive information about the two measures. There were no opposing views to provide be.   [Read more…]

Ted Nugent’s Guns, Obama’s Gays, Manchester’s Minions and Huffpost’s Sideboobs: Looking Back at January 2013

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By Doug Porter

For the twelve days of Christmas I give you: The madness of 2013, one month at a time-A month by month recap of stories that appeared in the Starting Line last year.

#1 Elections have consequences:

Republican activist Ryan Trabuco took to the interwebs yesterday to announce his decision to re-register as “no party preference”. It’s not that he likes Democrats, it’s just that he can’t stand his old party:   [Read more…]

Reflections on the Meaning of Christianity and Religious Symbols: A Reaction to the Mt Soledad Cross Controversy

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By Joel A. Harrison, PhD

In a 20-year saga that never ends, on December 12 U.S. District Judge Larry Burns ruled that the cross atop MountSoledad was unconstitutional. Burns ordered the cross removed within 90 days; but then stayed that order until all appeals have been exhausted. And on December 19 an article in the San Diego U-TA reported an appeal is underway. A similar controversy in EastCounty several years ago was resolved when a cross atop Mt.Helix was transferred from public ownership to a private group of area homeowners. (Privatization is not an appropriate option for Soledad, since the site is a U.S. military memorial.) Instead of rehashing the Constitutional pros and cons, I would like to reflect a moment on my view of the meaning of Christianity—and the most appropriate monuments to faith and humanity.

  [Read more…]

San Diego’s Shadow Government Steps Into the Spotlight

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Former Mayor Jerry Sanders steps back into the spotlight to undermine San Diego’s elected government

By Andy Cohen

We often hear, particularly when a government entity is seeking to raise revenues for an important project (or, on occasion, a not-so-important project) that the associated revenues amount to a “jobs tax,” or a “job killing tax.” It’s a favorite meme of those of a particular political persuasion or economic status. Ordinance ‘A’ is a JOBS KILLER! We must not allow it to pass! Requiring health care is a JOBS KILLER! Any ordinance requiring a living wage is a JOBS KILLER! The minimum wage is a JOBS KILLER! Increasing the sales tax by one-half of one percent is a JOBS KILLER!

It’s an effective scare tactic used by those on the political right to prevent governments from being able to raise enough revenues to provide services that residents demand. That’s especially true here in San Diego, where we have a history of demanding services without providing a means to pay for them. We’re notorious for that.

As far as the Lincoln Club, or the San Diego Taxpayers Association, or the San Diego Chamber of Commerce, or, to a lesser extent, the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation is concerned, any revenues raised by the city for the provision of services—or just day-to-day operations—is a JOBS KILLING tax. Any regulations placed on any local businesses are JOBS KILLERS and are a hindrance to our economy. Anything that benefits workers is a JOBS KILLER.   [Read more…]

A Big Fat Job Killing Lie for Christmas from Jerry Sanders

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“The Recession’s Coming” and other pants-on-fire tales coming soon to a mall near you

By Doug Porter

Former Mayor Jerry Sanders, President and CEO of the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce, sent a holiday letter out this week to all Chamber members and partner organizations urging them to get on board with the latest campaign to overturn the City Council by referendum. 

Their “friendly” signature gatherers will be blocking your entrance into shopping malls around the region starting the day after Christmas urging people to sign the Stop the Jobs-Killing Tax petition. (I’ll gladly publish videos of their “sales” techniques if you’d like to email them in.)

The council’s decision to end a linkage fee (with plenty of exceptions) for bigger developers is being cast by Saunders and his cronies as a “massive tax increase” and a “jobs tax”.   [Read more…]

All I Want for Christmas: More Youth-Led Climate Justice

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A holiday vision for global activism in 2014

By Joe Solomon / Common Dreams

When I shut my eyes, I am grateful for all the growth the student divestment has seen in the last two years. Just in the last month, the divestment movement has made headlines in USA Today, The Washington Post, the Boston Globe, TIME, and Al Jazeera. Half a dozen schools have committed to divesting, and while the Harvard and Brown Presidents are bemoaning their students rising voices and defending their schools’ dirty endowments – it means student campaigns are working. And just earlier this month, Alberta’s premier oil magazine said oil companies underestimate the divestment movement – with this headline: “The energy industry ignores the fossil fuel divestiture movement at its own peril.”

All of that is a testimony to the progress you’ve made.

And yet, when I shut my eyes—I imagine this youth movement seizing far more of its potential.

We need youth power far more than ever before.   [Read more…]

Happy Festivus! Airing of Some Grievances, San Diego Style

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By Doug Porter

Today, December 23rd we celebrate Festivus,“the holiday for the rest of us,” popularized via an episode of the Seinfeld sitcom. Frank Constanza (Jerry Stiller), father of George Constanza (Jason Alexander) supposedly invented the holiday as a reaction to the commercialization of Christmas and other December holidays.

First a little background is in order, via Festivusweb.com, for those of you scratching your head and going “huh?”

Frank Costanza, during a failed attempt to buy a Christmas gift for son George, realized that there should be a new holiday   [Read more…]

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