June 18,2012—SDG&E’s trojan horse…Michael Hiltzer in the LA Times reported Sunday on a scheme proposed by SDG&E that would give its 1.2 million customers the option of prepaying their electric bills. While the plan may sound appealing to those mostly working class consumers who favor prepaid cell phones and the like, there are significant disadvantages for consumers built into the proposal. Sign up for the prepaid program and you’re signing away virtually all the consumer protections governing disconnections. Run out of money on the prepaid deal and your power will be cut off, no notice required. Regular customers get a two week notice prior to disconnection and the option of extending any back bills over a three month period when they run into financial difficulty. [Read more…]
The Starting Line — It’s Off to the Races; Fall Campaigns Gear Up
November political campaigns shifted into a higher gear yesterday in the local and national arenas. Here in San Diego, the first debate of the fall mayoral contest between Congressman Bob Filner and City Councilman Carl DeMaio took place yesterday before the San Diego Rotary Club. DeMaio promised the crowd that he would act quickly as Mayor, citing his comprehensive plans to repair roads, make the city more business-friendly and fix city finances. Filner opted to describe the differences between himself and his contender, characterizing the City Councilman’s plans as a ‘spreadsheet’ and his own proposals as a ‘vision’ for San Diego.
Meanwhile in Ohio, President Barack Obama and GOP contender Mitt Romney gave dueling economic policy speeches in different corners of the state. In Cincinnati Romney called out the President for being “long on words and short on action” when it comes to fixing the economy. In Cleveland, the President told his audience that he and Republican Mitt Romney offer “two fundamentally different views” about the economy, saying “If you want to give the policies of the last decade another try, then you should vote for Mr. Romney”. The Romney campaign sent their tour bus to where the President was scheduled to speak; emblazoned with the Romney campaign logo in giant letters, it honked at Obama supporters as it continually circled the area. [Read more…]
The Starting Line—DeMaio’s Pothole Plan Craters; UT Editorials for Sale?
June 14, 2012- Mayoral candidate Carl DeMaio’s scheme to tie his November campaign to yet another ‘reform’ initiative ran into a brick wall yesterday as a San Diego City Council committee voted 5-0 against referring it to the full council for a vote. DeMaio’s “Road Repair Initiative” would have required the city government to exclusively allocate any surplus revenues for the next five years towards infrastructure repairs. Councilwoman Marti Emerald asked why the city should spend monies to support an initiative that was clearly designed to support a mayoral campaign. Mayoral challenger Bob Filner appeared before the committee, calling the proposed measure “an aspiration for mediocrity.”
DeMaio plans to re-introduce the measure as part of a revised budget should he win the mayoral contest. If the City Council refuses to go along with his plan at that point he pledged to go through the initiative signature gathering process. One has to wonder if his plan for governance is simply government by initiative. [Read more…]
The Starting Line—Peed Dribbles Past Kreep in Closely Watched Judicial Race
June 13, 2012- Observers are keeping a close eye on late election results at the San Diego County Registrar of Voters office, with a couple of close races hanging in the balance as 17,700 provisional ballots are counted. The closest contest is the race for Superior Court Judge # 34; Garland Peed is clinging to a 79 vote lead over right wing activist and birther Gary Kreep. In the hotly contested race to see who will challenge incumbent Congressman Brian Bilbray in the 52nd district, former City Councilman Scott Peters holds a 803 vote lead over former Assemblywoman Lori Saldaña. 5PM UPDATE: Kreep now leads Peed by 216 votes; Peters lead over Saaldana narrows to 737 vote-word is that she is conceding. There are 13,500 provisional ballots left to count.
Looking at the primary from the other side of the aisle… Local conserv blog SDRostra has a couple of post-election articles up that, along with the additional comments posted, should be mandatory reading for San Diego politicos. The Oracle Speaks has local pollster John Nienstedt sharing his observations about local primary contests from a (successful) political consultant’s point of view. And Tweets Don’t Equal Votes takes a look at the social media efforts of the Nathan Fletcher campaign; be sure to read through the comments on this one. [Read more…]
The Starting Line— “Reform and Jobs” is the New Mantra (and Big Lie) of the Plutocracy
June 12, 2012—The Big Reality about last weeks elections is that nearly three quarters of voters in California didn’t bother to cast a ballot. Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent, TV ads blared non stop, internet sites were plastered with political come-ons and mailboxes were overflowing with conflicting messages. Voting “Yes” on Proposition XXX would create jobs; voting “No” on the same measure would save the middle class. Middle of the road Democrats were cast as extremists; candidates whose campaign coffers overflowed with lobbyist cash packaged themselves as reformers. Even people who live and breathe politics (me, for instance) were disgusted and overwhelmed by the onslaught.
The “win at any cost” ethos combined with California’s top two vote getters primary system created situations where campaigns maneuvered to “pick” their opponents (Democratic slime ball and insurance company prostitute Juan Vargas is exhibit A-IMHO-See inside for supporting links) for the November general elections and inter-party battles left both campaign workers and candidates disillusioned and disgusted by the system. It’s safe to say that little “d” democracy may have been the ultimate loser last week. Steve Singiser at Daily Kos has more insights into ‘the results behind the results’, including the observation that independent candidates, who were supposed to be embolded by the new California primary system, fared poorly statewide. [Read more…]
The Starting Line-UT San Diego Gets the Evil NY Times Eye
June 11, 2012—New York Times media reporter/columnist David Carr has penned a largely critical review of “Papa Doug” Manchester’s media machinations since his purchase last year of the Union-Trib. The article starts out talking about the “growing worry” that the sickly state of dead tree journalism could create circumstances that would allow moneyed interests to take over newspapers and use their perceived integrity to “prosecute a political and commercial agenda.”
Carr goes on to assert that San Diego is Exhibit A for that fear since last year when Manchester purchased the paper, saying that nowadays the UT-SD “often seems like a brochure for his various interests.” He goes on to cite several examples where the Daily Fishwrap has transcended reportage and ridden roughshod over miscreants perceived to have gotten in the way of Papa Doug’s agenda. Chief executive John Lynch is quoted as saying “we make no apologies” for the paper’s activities and asserting that there is a “clear line of demarcation between our editorials and our news”. [Read more…]
The Starting Line—San Diego Teachers to Talk Contract Concessions
Tuesdays’ election results continue to reverberate around the country. Here in San Diego city attorney Jan Goldsmith is asking the courts to help the City sidestep long term litigation over the legality of Proposition B by combining five lawsuits already filed over the initiative in advance of a court decision on the legality of the measure. At issue is the question of whether the city violated a state law that requires negotiations with labor unions in advance of requesting any initiative that would impact employee pay and benefits. The city has maintained that Proposition B was initiated by private citizens and is exempt from the provisions of the law.
Early morning reports on Twitter indicate that the San Diego Educational Association (teacher’s union) membership has voted to talk about contract concessions aimed at negating already announced layoffs for some 1534 teachers. The issue of concessions has divided the union, with more militant members being purged from the SDEA leadership in recent weeks. And yesterday 1000 students at Point Loma High School walked out to protest teacher layoffs. [Read more…]
The Starting Line—Are We Ready for an Alien Invasion?
June 7, 2012—In keeping with my perceived reality that most of us are in overload mode with regard to election coverage, The Starting Line will talk about defense, science and technology issues today. We’ll get back into the muck tomorrow, I promise.
Does the Pentagon have the right weapons to fight off an alien invasion? No, but they’re working on it, says Foreign Policy magazine, in a short but sweet review of some of DARPA’s (Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency ) more sci-fi kind of projects. These projects include lots of ideas that are not ready for prime time, but show promise for future use by the military.
Perhaps the closest to realization are weapons-grade lasers. The stumbling block with this project thus far is that they can work but are too big to be of use in an actual fight. If the aliens have super fast flying saucers, DARPA’s Falcon HTV-2 might be able to keep up with them. It is an unmanned, rocket-launched, maneuverable aircraft that glides through the Earth’s atmosphere at incredibly fast speeds, as fast as Mach 20 (approximately 13,000 miles per hour). It’s actual been tested, but not successfully. [Read more…]
The Starting Line – The Big Money Wins The Big Races, Filner is the Exception
June 6, 2012—It was a long night for poll watchers in San Diego. Or at least it seemed long, as the County Registrar of Voters’ computer system {wags were saying its was a pair Commodore 64’s using Compuserv} crashed right after the first batch of results were posted and didn’t come back on line until 11 pm.
In the end, there were few surprises in local races. It’s DeMaio v.Filner come November and both local Propositions passed by large margins. The one local upset was SDUSD School Board President John Evans coming in second to Mark Powell by a mere 46 votes.
Turnout throughout California was abysmal, with a mere one in four registered voters bothering to cast their ballots. It’s a new record low for the State. In minority neighborhoods turnout was even lower, often in the teens. [Read more…]
The Starting Line: Look at the Big Picture, Follow the Money for California and Wisconsin Election Predictions
June 5, 2012- Today’s primaries in California and Wisconsin will be watched by pundits around the country. While predicting the actual results may seem like a crapshoot, my bet is that you’ll get the most correct predictions by keeping your eye on the big picture and following the money.
The long view of today’s voting is that this is yet another battle in an epic struggle between increasingly polarized views on government. A study released yesterday by the Pew Research Center and fronted by the Washington Post this morning, confirms that the most significant divisions in the United States are no longer based on race, class or sex but on political identity. [Read more…]
The Starting Line: DeMaio on the Front Page, UT Talking Heads Debut Panned
June 4, 2012—For the second time in this election cycle “Papa Doug” Manchester’s Union-Tribune has splashed it’s editorial endorsement of a mayoral candidate on the front page. Monday morning readers of the local daily newspaper were treated to “Editorial: The Case for Carl DeMaio” even before they could turn the page today. Blogger George J. Janczyn (@GrokSurf) pretty much summed it up when he tweeted: “Once again the U-T headlines DeMaio for mayor–and this time on the REAL front page, not on a wrap-around. U-T’s the Fox News of newspapers.”
U-T San Diego launches on-line TV station to terrible reviews… Hoping to extend his reach beyond print with “original local news, talk and lifestyle programming on cable and the Web”, publisher Doug Manchester launched UT San Diego TV this week to terrible reader reviews. [Read more…]
San Diego Primary Round Up – Have You Voted Yet?
The last few days have seen local Republicans crowing over various social media outlets about the “voter enthusiasm gap”. What this is all about is that the Registrar of Voters for San Diego has been steadily releasing information on the number of mail in ballots they have received, broken down by party affiliation. (You can tell this because of differences in the return envelope, indicating party affiliation if any.) Who people are actually voting for won’t be known until June 5th.
What the GOPer’s are talking about is the spread in favor of Republicans in terms of those ballots that have already been received. The Daily Fishwrap ran an article Tuesday that said Republicans had a six thousand vote lead over Democrats in mail-in votes. Another way of looking at would be that, Republicans, who are more likely to vote by mail, have returned two percent more ballots when compared to the total number of Democrat/Republican ballots mailed. [Read more…]