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Make Your Vote the Tie-Breaker | Progressive Activist Calendar, October 26 – November 5

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Let’s take a stroll down memory lane.

Remember how you felt on the morning of November 9, 2016? Shocked? Depressed? Angry? Do you ever want to feel that way again?

Despite all the hype, the role of ‘the resistance’ against the Trump regime hasn’t been anything like it’s imagined in fictional portrayals of people bravely fighting back against evil and oppression.

The last two years have been a long slog. The banality, the naked greed, and near-complete lack of empathy coming out of Washington was worse than (almost) anyone could have expected. 

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Following Terror Attacks, County DA Stephan Takes Down Her Anti-Soros Campaign Website

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In the wake of the bombs sent via mail to various Democratic supporters, I revisited District Attorney Summer Stephan’s campaign website on Wednesday, which utilized many of the right-wing memes many believe were responsible for billionaire George Soros being included as a target.

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Senator Bernie Sanders to Speak at ‘Get Out the Youth Vote’ Rally, Supporting Local Candidates

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A rally on Friday at MiraCosta College in Oceanside aimed at encouraging young voters will feature one of Bernie Sanders two appearances in California.

Doors will open at the college gymnasium at 6pm for the event, open to registered voters. RSVPs are being taken via the BernieSanders.com website.

The Vermont Senator will reportedly be joined by Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti as he winds up a nine-state trip in support of Democratic candidates.

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Terror by Mail, Riots, and Refugees: Anxiety As a Political Weapon

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I’ll say right up front that I don’t believe anybody with a direct connection to the Trump administration has anything to do with the bombs mailed to George Soros, Hillary Clinton, Maxine Waters, Eric Holder, and CNN.

I will instead direct readers to the definition of stochastic terrorism, namely the use of mass communications to stir up random lone wolves to carry out violent or terrorist acts that are statistically predictable but individually unpredictable.

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Judge Gary Kreep & Reasons to Avoid Slate Mailers

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Here’s a reminder as election day nears: direct mail voter guides from seemingly innocuous organizations are a bad resource for making ballot decisions.

A tip from a reader in this morning’s email about Judge Gary Kreep’s presence on the  ‘Election Digest, a Project of the Coalition for Literacy’ slate mailer prompted me to post an updated version of the warning I made prior to the primary.

Kreep is an eccentric ultra-conservative who made it to the bench in 2012 because nobody thought he’d be taken seriously. “Everybody knew” he was a birther, associated with conspiracy crazed tea party types. “Everybody knew” Kreep’s peers at the San Diego County Bar Association rated him “Lacking Qualifications,” the lowest rating in their evaluation system for judges up for election.   [Read more…]

GOP Campaign Fodder: Transgender Humans, Birth Control, Immigrants, Jews, Muslims, and Californians

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Republicans and their standard-bearer President are stepping up the pace of hate in political campaigns from coast-to-coast. Buying into their rhetoric means buying into the belief Republican candidates are the only thing standing between the ‘good people’ of the United States and mob rule.

Crusades against the ‘other’ aren’t just limited to political rallies. The administration’s bureaucracy is also doing its part.

Transgender people learned what’s in store for them on Sunday, via an article in the New York Times, which disclosed a memo seeking to reverse the Obama administration’s more fluid recognition of gender identity.
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Tell the Whole World You Care Enough to Vote | Progressive Activist Calendar October 19 – 29, 2018

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Having nothing positive to campaign on, reactionaries are relying upon the time-honored techniques of fear, loathing, and falsehoods. There is no wall. There is no Obamacare replacement. (Although Republicans who voted to dismember it are now claiming to want to protect patients with pre-existing conditions.)  There is no infrastructure program. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which Republicans once believed would be the centerpiece of their re-election campaign, has given Wall Street a sugar rush and the average four grand bumps promised Americans is nowhere to be seen.

That’s why Ammar Campa-Najjar– a really decent human being–is being portrayed as a terrorist. That’s why Trump’s on the stump ginning up his base about hordes of brown people headed to the border.

There is only one defense against this kind of campaigning. YOU must take personal responsibility to make sure everybody around you votes. Make sure the world knows you voted. Tell everybody. Brag a little.   [Read more…]

California Politics | Odious Prop 8 Money, Questionable Prop 6 Polling, and a Nasty Ad for Marshall Tuck

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Ballot propositions draw big money like shit draws flies. The scatological reference is deliberate on my part because today I’m going to look at some election news that just plain stinks.

I have to admit to missing the ominous backstory on 2018’s Proposition 8, the one about kidney dialysis companies. I bought into the narrative that this was a battle between corporate ‘care’ companies and organized labor. And while it is true workers for these companies are trying to organize despite fierce opposition, the battle over this measure is a metaphor for the much bigger struggle over the future of healthcare.

Michael Hiltznik of the Los Angeles Times has unearthed the truth behind the motivations of the corporations willing to spend $99 million to defeat this measure.   [Read more…]

The Duncan Hunter(s) and Various Other Threats to Our National Security

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Any doubts about Congressional candidate Ammar Campa-Najjar’s moral code should have been resolved on Tuesday, as the 29-year-old Democrat shook Duncan Hunter, Sr.’s hand after listening to the old man lie to the assembled news media in the shadow of the USS Midway on San Diego’s waterfront.

If Campa-Najjar was the terrorist threat the retired Congressman made him out to be, he should have punched the old son of a bitch in the face right then and there. Hell, that’s what I would have been at least tempted to do if I’d been anywhere nearby. (I guess that’s why nobody’s clamoring for me to run for office.)

Instead, Duncan Hunter Jr’s challenger has issued what he says is his final statement on what the Washington Post called “the most vile political ad of this year’s midterm elections.”

“The FBI throughly vetted me, my family history and connections. After doing so, they determined my allegiances to the United States were unquestionable and I was given security clearance to serve in the federal government as recent as 2016. I am not a security threat, Duncan Hunter is, however.”
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The How and Why of Measure YY, the San Diego Unified School District Bond Ask

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Back in the old days before Proposition 13, local schools were funded locally. School boards had the authority to raise property tax rates, constrained by the understanding that the electorate would vote them out come election time if they went too far.

In practice, this meant school districts with lower property values ended up with inferior education facilities and programs. Court cases in the 1970’s began the erosion of local control in the cause of rectifying these inequities; Prop 13 put the state in the driver’s seat.

School boards can no longer levy property taxes. They can, however, ask voters to support local funding for schools through parcel taxes and bond measures. And in the majority of cases, voters have agreed with this method of filling the holes blown through local education budgets.   [Read more…]

UPDATED With Suggestions | An Explainer on Electing Judges in California

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What to do about voting for or against judges is a thing this year. I’m hoping today’s column will answer some of the questions readers have asked in recent days.  

The attention paid to Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing has made a lot of people take notice of the judicial contests appearing on their ballots. At least that is what I assume is going on, having researched and/or produced a half-dozen or so voter guides since 2012.

San Diegans who have heard, read, or seen campaign materials about many candidates and propositions open up the ballot and are confounded by seeing 16 judicial contests for people they know nothing about. (There’s a seventeenth contest, and we’ll get to it further down in the story.)

Who are these people listed for California’s Court of Appeals and Supreme Court and why are we being asked to vote on them?   [Read more…]

A Sampling of 2018 Voter Guides for San Diegans | Progressive Activist Calendar, October 12-22, 2018

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I don’t know if there’s Blue Wave building, but I can tell you I haven’t seen such engagement and interest in an election in recent memory. This week’s activist calendar includes 36 events related to canvassing or voter education, and I know I just scratched the surface.

Another indication of voter interest is the proliferation of voter guides. Not that long ago, the term ‘voter guide’ either meant a handout from a political party or a slate mailer from a pay to play outfit.

Given that I worked on two such efforts this year, I thought I’d take a few minutes to catalog and comment upon some of what I’m seeing in the way of election-related compendiums and endorsement lists.    [Read more…]

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