By Doug Porter

San Diego County’s District Attorney is getting a lot of heat as reporters continue to unearth new details about a campaign finance scandal spanning the last couple of years.

Prosecutors have determined that more than $200,000 was illegally funneled into independent campaign committees in support of her failed mayoral candidacy in 2012.  UT-San Diego ran a front page story claiming candidate committees directly under Dumanis’ control received $13,250 connected to three persons connected with the ongoing investigation.

Calls for an additional investigation are mounting.  The District Attorney has returned $1,400 in contributions to her current re-election campaign since the scandal unfolded and is refusing to re-open earlier campaign committees to give back monies from earlier contests.

Former City Attorney Mike Aquirre told 10News that it’s time for federal investigators took look into the matter, including Dumanis’ apparent lack of action after learning, via a City Beat article in May 2012, about an illegal $100,000 contribution to a political action committee from Mexican tycoon Susumo Azano.

Robert Brewer, one of two former prosecutors running against Dumanis in 2014, has called for a full accounting of her connections to the defendants named in the complaint. His campaign has garnered widespread support from law enforcement groups, who have publicly complained about the politicalization of the prosecutor’s office under her administration.

Brian Marvel, president of the San Diego Police Officers Association told NBC7News: “We’ve been disappointed with Bonnie’s communication with our communities. It seems we only hear form her when election day approaches. She has consistently placed politics above her responsibilities as D.A.”

Opponent Terri Wyatt told 10News “It erodes the trust in the district attorney when you have this going on, when she’s connected to that.”

Following the revelation that the DA lunched with Azano at his Coronado home (at a date she cannot recall), she met with UT-San Diego reporters…

…and repeatedly said she intends to return no further contributions. She noted that most of the money was given to her mayoral campaign, which has been closed out and is therefore not in a position to cut checks.

Dumanis told UT-TV:

“I have nothing to hide. My name is being dragged through the mud because I met somebody. I had nothing to do with that committee.”

Congressman Darrell Issa’s Scummy Friends

The man who would seemingly move mountains to investigate allegations about President Obama’s flatulence and who’d rather leak selected portions of confidential document than tell the truth has gone all in for the “legalized loan sharking” industry.

On January 8th House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH) sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, accusing the Justice Department of “using its civil investigative power” to “inappropriately target two lawful financial services: third-party payment processing and online lending.”

Here’s the skinny, via Think Progress:

Each year, millions incur long-term debt by taking out a short-term loan that’s intended to cover borrowers’ expenses until they receive their next paychecks. Most take out nine repeat loans per year with an interest rate as high as 400 percent. Forty-four percent of borrowers ultimately default, even after paying back their loans several times over, and thus are pushed ever closer to poverty. Critics have called the practice “legalized loan sharking” and describe the industry as “bottom feeders.” In recent years, major banks have also joined in the practice.

In recent weeks, the U.S. Department of Justice began to take aim at the big banks that illegally help payday lenders rip off consumers. “Operation Choke Point” is a massive investigation into whether banks help payday lenders illegally siphon billions of dollars from consumers’ checking accounts in exchange for a fee. Some banks, which offered loans of their own, recently announced they would get out of the payday lending business entirely to avoid a separate regulatory crackdown.

Hey Kids! Kevin Faulconer Lied to You

By all accounts the young people who worked on formulating questions for the mayoral candidates at Saturday’s Hoover High debate did a great job. They asked heartfelt questions about crime, bullying and neighborhood resources.

From Speak City Heights, via Voice of San Diego:

..The forum in City Heights hosted by San Diego 6and community groups Mid-City CAN Youth Council and Cesar Chavez Service Club had a decidedly different feel than most political debates, thanks to youth panelists like Roosevelt Middle School sixth grader Hiyab Seadedin.

 She thanked her mom before throwing a hardball at the candidates, asking them how they’d give young people from underserved communities a better chance of competing in San Diego’s job market.

 Both candidates said they’d invest in underserved communities to create jobs and give youth the resources they need to be competitive. Alvarez said he’d use federal development dollars to do the job. Faulconer said pension reform, which he supports, would cover some of the cost.

Faulconer’s been hauling out that “pension reform” line as a cure-all for funding just about any city service people ask about. It’s too bad that the potential savings won’t materialize until 2018. His first term, should he be elected, will end in 2016. So, yeah, kids, the man lied to you. Be sure to go home and tell your parents about Kevin Faulconer, Republican.

Eeek! It’s the The State of the Union Speech

There will likely be an hour or so this evening when regular broadcast network programming will be interrupted by the President’s Annual State of Union address to the nation. As we’ve learned from the past four years, he’ll say lots of warm and fuzzy things and ask Congress to work with him on other warm and fuzzy things. Congress will promptly ignore him.

This year things will  likely be a little different, according to news media reports this morning. They’re saying President Obama will be taking more executive actions, signing off on policies providing some small workarounds towards achieving his agenda.

From the New York Times:

President Obama plans to sign an executive order requiring that janitors, construction workers and others working for federal contractors be paid at least $10.10 an hour, using his own power to enact a more limited version of a policy that he has yet to push through Congress.

The order, which Mr. Obama will highlight in his annual State of the Union address on Tuesday night, is meant to underscore an increasing willingness by the president to bypass Congress if lawmakers continue to resist his agenda, aides said. After a year in which most of his legislative priorities went nowhere, Mr. Obama is seeking ways to make progress without cooperation on Capitol Hill.

I’ll save you the trouble of tuning in to any of the three Republican responses or the Faux News analysis, along with the chain email your crazy uncle will probably forward in the next couple of days.

You’ll likely see GOP talking heads going crazy over this executive order strategy. It segues nicely into the Obama dictatorship conspiracy theories beloved by the Tea Party set.

Here’s an inconvenient fact to consider: President Obama has issued fewer executive orders than any president over the past 100 years. Follow that link to see a handy-dandy chart with the current president just ahead of Grover Cleveland’s output. (FDR & Hoover are nos. one & two, respectively)

I have no doubt the viral email about Obama’s 923 executive orders will make the rounds, also.  It’s been thoroughly debunked. Sorry, gang, the United Nations troops won’t be coming to march your granny out to the Death Panel Concentration Camps anytime soon.

Rest in Peace, Pete Seeger

Folksinger, banjo expert and American icon Pete Seeger died yesterday at age 94. NPR had a great audio tribute by Paul Brown  and a nice round up of media reactions:

The New York Times says of Seeger that his career “carried him from singing at labor rallies to the Top 10 to college auditoriums to folk festivals, and from a conviction for contempt of Congress (after defying the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s) to performing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at an inaugural concert for Barack Obama.”

And the Times notes that Seeger “was a mentor to younger folk and topical singers in the ’50s and ’60s, among them Bob Dylan, Don McLean and Bernice Johnson Reagon, who founded Sweet Honey in the Rock.”

Seeger’s influence went well beyond folk music. He’s a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, which says of Seeger that in his “capable hands, from the ’40s to the present day, a concert isn’t regarded as a one-way proceeding but a group singalong.”

According to The Associated Press, “Seeger’s grandson, Kitama Cahill-Jackson said his grandfather died peacefully in his sleep around 9:30 p.m. at New York Presbyterian Hospital, where he had been for six days. Family members were with him.”

Pete Seeger’s testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee, August 18, 1955:

 I decline to discuss, under compulsion, where I have sung, and who has sung my songs, and who else has sung with me, and the people I have known. I love my country very dearly, and I greatly resent this implication that some of the places that I have sung and some of the people that I have known, and some of my opinions, whether they are religious or philosophical, or I might be a vegetarian, make me any less of an American. I will tell you about my songs, but I am not interested in telling you who wrote them, and I will tell you about my songs, and I am not interested in who listened to them.

On This Day:1978 – At the request of a fan, Ted Nugent autographed a man’s arm with a bowie knife. 1980 – Six Americans who had fled the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran, on November 4, 1979, left Iran using false Canadian diplomatic passports. The Americans had been hidden at the Canadian embassy in Tehran. 1986 – The space shuttle Challenger exploded just after takeoff. All seven of its crewmembers were killed. 

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Doug Porter

Doug Porter was active in the early days of the alternative press in San Diego, contributing to the OB Liberator, the print version of the OB Rag, the San Diego Door, and the San Diego Street Journal. He went on to have a 35-year career in the Hospitality business and decided to go back into raising hell when he retired. He won numerous awards for his columns from the Society of Professional Journalists in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017. Doug is a cancer survivor (sans vocal chords) and lives in North Park.

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