Candidate for San Diego County Sheriff Dave Myers has decided that having his office relocated to a broom closet just might constitute workplace harassment.
He issued a statement today denouncing incumbent San Diego Sheriff Bill Gore, calling attention to what he described as retaliatory actions since declaring as a candidate for the County’s top law enforcement post in the 2018 election.
Myers has served in the Sheriff’s office for 32 of his 34 years in law enforcement and is running a campaign based on the need for substantial reforms in the department.
“After months of escalation, I’ve decided I have to speak up. As an officer who is protected by the Peace Officer’s Bill of Rights, as a candidate for sheriff, and as a citizen, it is my right to run for public office and to speak freely in doing so. Gore is using the power of his office for political purposes, to stifle an opponent who has spoken out against him. This is absolutely corrupt and downright un-American.
“I have been removed from the chain of command and all internal management committee meetings. I have been forced out of my command staff office. A broom closet downstairs was cleared out to make room for my new ‘office.’ Every day, when I show up for assignment, I am assigned to spend the day sitting in this ‘office.’ Sheriff Gore has literally forced the highest ranking openly gay officer on the department into an actual closet.
“It’s one thing to make excuses for why he won’t grant the voters an opportunity to hear us debate the issues. It’s quite another to employ retaliation in a taxpayer funded workplace as a campaign tactic. I have the right to run for this office and should be treated just like any other officer at my rank.”
Incumbent Sheriff Bill Gore got his job the same way other top county officials did, namely being appointed by his predecessor so as to have the advantages of incumbency when election time came around. It’s a process we saw in 2012 when county Chief Administrative Officer Walt Ekard announced plans to resign, and the way interim District Attorney Summer Stephan hopes to win the post this coming June.
Since ascending to his position as County Sheriff, Gore has presided over a scandal involving jail suicides, failure to take preventative actions regarding the Hepatitis A outbreak, and the County has paid out (through September 15, 2017) $24,033,149.36 via 108 personal injury and damage settlements.
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Rep. Issa’s support for a bill permitting licensed gun owners to carry their concealed firearms into other states has drawn the attention of a non-profit founded by former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.
Digital advertising focused on 25,000 voters in District 49 will call on Issa oppose the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017. Giffords’ group contends the bill would allow stalkers and domestic abusers to carry concealed firearms, along with making it easier for to obtain a permit in a less restrictive state.
Congressman Issa Issa has received $29,200 in campaign contributions from the National Rifle Association in recent years..
From The Hill:
“Even after two of the nation’s worst mass shootings, Darrell Issa is working to weaken our gun laws,” the ad says, after invoking the recent mass shootings in Las Vegas and Texas. “He’s accepted thousands in cash from the gun lobby, and now he’s supporting their agenda.”
Issa sits on the House Judiciary Committee, which will do a markup of the bill on Wednesday. He’s one of 213 co-sponsors, and the bill is also expected to go to a committee vote.
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In other news, it would appear North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was on the money when he called President Trump a ‘dotard.’
The videos were so bad, they triggered warnings for some Twitter users. Others who retweeted Trump’s morning rant received terms of service warnings from Twitter
The British aren’t taking the President’s morning anti-Muslim re-tweets from a fringe group called Britain First lightly.
Condemnation, according to The Guardian, included a statement from the official spokesperson of the prime minister, Theresa May:
Trump, who has 43.5 million followers on Twitter, retweeted three separate posts by Fransen on Wednesday, which all included separate, unverified, anti-Islamic videos.
One purported to show a group of Muslims pushing a boy off a roof. Another claimed to show a Muslim destroying a statue of the Virgin Mary and another claimed to show a Muslim immigrant hitting a Dutch boy on crutches. In the latter case at least the videos’ credibility was cast in doubt when it emerged that Dutch police and media never suggested the attacker was a Muslim immigrant in their coverage of the incident.
The Islamophobic videos were tweeted by Fransen – the deputy leader of the British far-right anti-Islam group – on Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning before being picked up the president. They were not sequentially posted, meaning that Trump would have had to scroll through her timeline before picking out which videos to retweet. Conservative commentator Ann Coulter retweeted one of the videos on Tuesday.
Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended the President’s tweets, saying that it doesn’t matter if the videos are fake, it’s the sentiment that counts.
The President’s morning rants also included a now-deleted tweet suggesting MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough was responsible for the death of a staffer.
All this comes as the New York Times is reporting on Trump regularly bragging to people about winning a majority of women (not true) once again privately questioning the authenticity of Barack Obama’s birth certificate.
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Finally, a few words in response to news of the firing of NBC’s Matt Lauer. Is anybody noticing a connection between the now-fired media men and those who were so cynical about candidate Hillary Clinton besides me?
Yes, they are. You didn’t have to love candidate Clinton to understand how the deck was stacked against her.
One of the best pieces I’ve seen on the topic is by Rantt Deputy Managing Editor Remy Anne. Here’s a snip (along with a chart) in the hope you’ll read the entire piece:
Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard report on media coverage of the election from May 2015 through November 2016
Media coverage of the 2016 election provides a stunning example of how dangerous misogyny can be when it’s given a microphone and a large broadcast audience. As many election postmortem studies have shown, coverage of Hillary Clinton was largely focused on her “scandals” while coverage of Donald Trump somehow managed to focus on his “core issues.”
While the biased coverage of Clinton has been an oft-discussed topic in the past months, the recent allegations have added a new layer to our understanding of how we got to where we are today.
The men that told us the story of the 2016 campaigns — who shaped the narrative surrounding one of the most consequential presidential elections in modern history — are the same men who abused their female colleagues. These men told voters which issues they should care about (private email servers) and which they should ignore (Trump’s history of treating women like second-class citizens).
Looking for some action? Check out the Weekly Progressive Calendar, published every Friday in this space, featuring Demonstrations, Rallies, Teach-ins, Meet Ups and other opportunities to get your activism on.
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Doug Porter
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