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Mayoral Candidates Debate the issues at Ocean Beach Town Council

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DeMaio and Filner lay out their divergent views on the role of government in San Diego.

The Ocean Beach Town Council welcomed San Diego’s two mayoral candidates to its monthly meeting at the Masonic Center last night in the latest in a series of debates ahead of November’s general election. Not surprisingly a packed house gathered to hear what the two aspirants to the city’s highest elected office had to say about their plans for the city should they be elected.

The format for the discussion was very lax with seemingly few rules. As requested by the two candidates, members of the audience were asked to submit questions for the candidates, which were then selected by members of the Town Council board. After making a brief opening statement, each candidate was then given ample time to answer the questions presented.

“Our city government has failed us,” Councilman Carl DeMaio opened. “They ran up a mountain of debt, they cut our services, they raised the cost of living through higher water bills. They let our city infrastructure, our streets, our sidewalks, our facilities, fall apart.”   [Read more…]

How to lie, cheat, and steal your way to elected office

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Republicans embark on an unprecedented campaign of dishonesty and deceit.

So this is what it’s come down to. Republicans can’t win on the merits of their policy ideas, so they have to resort to deliberate and systematic deception in order to win. And people are buying into it like the fools they are. In fact, that’s what Republicans are counting on: That the voters are uninformed dolts that don’t pay attention to detail and swallow the hook of convenient sound bites that fit their ideology, accepting them without question.

Start with the fact that Republican claims of grave concern over the economy. The truth is that they revel in the slow economic recovery because they think it’s good for them politically. As long as the economy is still languishing, they can simply blame it on President Obama and spin it into political gold for them. The truth is that they have no interest in seeing the economy improve until they can reclaim control of both houses of Congress and the White House, if even then.   [Read more…]

Choice of Paul Ryan as Veep Crystallizes the Choice in November’s Election

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The Republican budget hero provides a clear context and contrast to a race where there previously was little.

So it’s now official: Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has a running mate. Last weekend Team Mittens announced the selection of Wisconsin Congressman and House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan as Romney’s #2. You could almost hear the champagne corks popping in Chicago.

The selection of Ryan, the principal author of the official Republican budget proposal, entitled “The Path to Prosperity,” changes this presidential election in a very substantial way; it defines it in a way that it had not been defined before. Romney wanted to make this election exclusively about President Barack Obama’s handling of the national economy, a dubious tack to begin with for a number of reasons that need not be spelled out here other than to say that deliberate and systematic Republican obstructionism has played a starring role in the slow pace of economic recovery.   [Read more…]

Back here in the reality based reality….

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“Papa Doug’s” UT San Diego Editorial Board pens a fantastical version of existence with no connection to the world we live in.

In politics, just like in life, we have choices to make. Some of us choose to make those choices based on the facts as they exist, some of us make choices based on the facts as we wish them to be. For the better part of three decades now, the Republican Party has based their decision making process on the latter. From their near maniacal belief in supply side economics (or “trickle down” economics, or my favorite “voodoo economics” as then candidate George H. W. Bush called it) to their insistence that they’re party represents a “higher morality,” there seems to be little connection with the reality the rest of us live in.

Last weekend San Diego’s esteemed daily fishwrap ran an editorial entitled “Romney in a Landslide.” It reads more like a religious proclamation than a bold prediction; a fantasy conjured up in the halls of the Mission Valley fortress newly rededicated to Republican virtue.   [Read more…]

Polls Show Local Races up for Grabs; National Parties Ante Up

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DCCC reserves $1.65 million from national funds, NRCC pledges $1.6 million to Bilbray–Updated

It’s the end of July, and some important political races in San Diego are beginning to heat up. Two polls released yesterday started to bring both the San Diego mayoral race and the 52nd District Congressional race into focus for the general election campaign.

According to a report by Roll Call, a Washington, DC based publication, the race between Democratic Challenger Scott Peters and Republican incumbent Brian Bilbray is a dead heat with each candidate receiving 40% of the projected vote. The poll showed a significant 19% of those questioned as undecided.   [Read more…]

In Wake of Prop B, Filner Sidelines Pension Refinance Plan

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Candidate accepts the will of the voters; critics accuse him of abandoning his principles

Mayoral candidate Bob Filner is taking heat again this week for saying that he would go along with the law. Last week he was challenged for saying that as mayor he would enforce Prop B—the so called pension reform initiative that he so vehemently opposed during the primary—and essentially flip-flopping and supporting the controversial plan. This time he’s being accused of abandoning his own principles.

During the primary Filner touted a plan to refinance the pension debt, issuing 30 year bonds to do so. It was a plan he claimed would save the city $500,000 over the next 10 years, citing all-time low interest rates and comparing it to a homeowner who refinances his or her mortgage and in the process cuts the interest rate they pay nearly in half. That’s a lot of money the homeowner gets to keep.   [Read more…]

Filner Under Fire for Saying He Would Follow the Law

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Mayoral candidate says he would negotiate with unions on pay freeze.

San Diego mayoral candidate Bob Filner came under fire last night for comments he made in an interview with the UT San Diego, saying that “he would push for the freeze even if the courts ruled Prop B illegal because two-thirds of city voters favored the plan.” The UT San Diego headline reads “New backer of SD pension overhaul: Bob Filner.” The Voice of San Diego’s Scott Lewis took to Twitter, more or less accusing Filner of flip-flopping on Prop B.

Filner was among the plan’s most vehement opponents during the primary election, and he still is. However, Filner also said during the final mayoral debate before the primary election that should Prop B be passed by the voters, it would become the law of the city, and therefore he would be obligated to implement it as mayor. He said he would follow the law and the will of the voters. And the voters have spoken.   [Read more…]

52nd Congressional District among the most competitive, most likely to turn from red to blue

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Peters campaign insists that they will be able to compete financially head to head.

As the race for the California 52nd District Congressional race begins to heat up between Republican incumbent Brian Bilbray and Democratic challenger Scott Peters, one of the more interesting and telling aspects of the race will be determining which candidate will have access to the most resources. It is widely assumed that Bilbray will have a sizeable funding advantage, as Republicans stereotypically do. After all, Scott Walker was able to outspend his Democratic challenger Tom Barrett in the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall election by a margin of eight to one.

However, in an interview, a representative from the Scott Peters campaign insists that in this race the Democrat will be competitive. Definitions of “competitive” may vary depending on perspective, but the campaign remains confident that they will be able to raise nearly as much money as the Bilbray campaign.   [Read more…]

The GOP: The Party that Doesn’t Care

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Republicans profess an unmatched love of country, but what they have is an unmatched disdain for the people who inhabit it.

Maybe Republicans do love America. Or at least hey love the property they own. They love the money they can make. They love the power they can accumulate. They love the rules they can flaunt. What they so clearly hate, as Bening’s character said so succinctly, are Americans. As in the American people.

Think about it in terms of the policies they support. Prime example: Health care. The Affordable Care Act that was recently upheld by the Supreme Court provides for a dramatic expansion of Medicaid that will expand coverage to millions of Americans who earn up to 133% of the poverty level. Until the health law kicks in, Medicaid is only available to the extremely poor with families or the disabled. Now it will be available to anyone who otherwise would have no access to basic health care. The kicker? The federal government will pay for 100% of said expansion for the first four years, tapering down to 90% of all costs by 2020.   [Read more…]

Balboa Park Project Appears to be Illegal, Places Park’s National Historic Landmark Status in Jeopardy

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Deeply flawed plan could cost San Diego tens of millions of dollars.

The Irwin Jacobs plan to transform San Diego’s Balboa Park may be illegal according to the City Municipal Code. In her statements to the City Council at the July 9th City Council meeting, Susan Brandt-Hawley, an attorney who worked with the Save Our Heritage Organisation in challenging the project, warned the members that in supporting the plan they would be in violation of the law.

In question are two particular sub-sections of the Municipal Code.   [Read more…]

City Council Approves Jacobs Plan

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Seven-and-a-half hour City Council marathon ends in 6-1 vote in favor of Balboa Park overhaul.

Update: Statement from Scott Peters

The most controversial decision in the San Diego City Council since the Chargers ticket guarantee finally came to a head last night at around 9:30 pm, and when the council had completed its vote, the Irwin Jacobs plan to transform Balboa Park had its official go ahead. The $45 million plan to eliminate vehicle traffic from the Plaza de Panama, build the “Centennial Bridge” that will circumvent the centerpiece of the park itself, and lead into a brand spanking new $16 million parking structure that will introduce paid parking into Balboa Park for the first time in the park’s history got the City Council’s official go ahead.

Despite overwhelming public opposition to the perceived privatization of San Diego’s crown jewel, the City Council voted 6-1 to approve the plan pushed by the billionaire founder of Qualcomm, the eighth largest employer in San Diego, with even the council’s most liberal members giving the plan the green light.   [Read more…]

“Save KLSD:” The Corporate Consolidation of America’s Airwaves

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San Diego’s last progressive talk radio station a victim of the loosening of media ownership laws

Talk radio has become big business in the last decade and a half, particularly conservative talk radio, which has seen an explosion in popularity and influence. Progressive talk radio? Not so much.

San Diegans have become accustomed to the conservative stylings of locally owned 760 KFMB and the not so locally owned KOGO 600. When you’re looking for news in this city, there are no other choices. You’re stuck with the nonsensical, anti-government, sensationalist, and sometimes maniacal ramblings of Rush Limbaugh and Roger Hedgecock. But that wasn’t always the case. For a brief while, San Diego did have a progressive talk radio station to call its own: 1360 KLSD (for “Liberal San Diego,” as we are informed by radio and television news personality Bree Walker).

KLSD at one point was the home of San Diego personalities like Stacy Taylor and Jon Elliott. It was also San Diego’s home to Air America Radio, the national syndication outfit that brought voices such as Ed Schultz, Rachel Maddow, Randi Rhodes, and Al Franken, now a United States Senator from Minnesota, to the airwaves.   [Read more…]

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