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Not-So-Presidential Politics and Football Fantasies Ruled the Night

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By Doug Porter

What a night.

Presidential candidate Ted Cruz was busy calling out Democrats as Bolsheviks and Mensheviks during the Republican debate, which was about as out of control as any debate, ever.

Chargers fans called out NFL executives on a listening tour of cities threatened with franchise relocation. Attorney Mark Fabiani, representing the team’s owners was roundly booed, hissed and even warned about walking around unaccompanied.

It was a two-fer evening of bullshit, featuring occasional factual-sounding words laced with hyperbole and ignorance. Metaphors counted. Reality didn’t. Let’s wander together through today’s punditry for selected insights on what transpired…   [Read more…]

Marijuana, Tax Measures Vying for California 2016 Ballot

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By Doug Porter

As we come down the stretch into the final year before the 2016 general election, there are competing interests backing ballot measures seeking to legalize recreational marijuana use and increase taxes on upper-income earners in California.

The downside in this situation is the possibility of enough confused voters rejecting the choices on the ballot on both issues. And you can bank on opponents of legalization and tax increases will do their best to sow doubt and confusion.

Divisions in the pro-pot camp led to the defeat of Proposition 19 in 2010, despite not having a competing measure on the ballot and polling showing voters favoring legalized marijuana.  Advocates for tax increases in 2012 were divided between competing propositions, but a unified effort on the part of organized labor gave Proposition 30 the votes needed to win.   [Read more…]

Many Faces of Modern Day Racism in the USA

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By Doug Porter

For too long, too many white Americans have viewed racism through the lens of the South. Once again, current events are proving once again this particular brand of fear and hatred runs much deeper in the national psyche than Jim Crow laws.

Two recent media reports about immigration–always a lightning rod for fear of the ‘other’– illustrate the point here. Then there’s the festering sore of state-sanctioned violence directed at people of color and now the push-back about how somehow making videos of people being brutalized is causing crime.

Congressman Paul Ryan is about to take over as Speaker of the House of Representatives. There’s been deal making galore going on as Rep. John Boehner heads out the door. A long-term budget agreement has emerged, something inconceivable just a few weeks ago. Suddenly, a large number of deficit hawks are willing to vote for a  $120+ increase in federal spending.

But there was one particular promise the incoming speaker made to the Republican rebels of the right. It involved a promise to not even consider immigration reform…as long as that Black Guy is in the White House.   [Read more…]

Gretchen Newsom is Running for Mayor. It Ain’t Gonna Be Easy.

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By Doug Porter

Gretchen Newsom announced her intention to run for Mayor of San Diego during the Sixth Biennial County Democratic Convention on Saturday, October 24th. She’s got a tough road in front of her.

Incumbent Kevin Faulconer is a public relations machine. He gets out of bed in the morning, and a press release crediting him with saving the world overnight (hey, the sun rose!) gets emailed. He’s got no major scandals swirling around him, is considered to be a rising star in the GOP, and has a proven ability to sidestep controversy.

Challenger Gretchen Newsom is not well known outside activist circles. She was among those considered as the interim replacement for Faulconer’s city council seat, is President of the Ocean Beach town Council, and works for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.  Today I’ll take a look at what else there is to know about the candidate, her values and the implications of her candidacy.   [Read more…]

‘Pay Their Own Way’ Initiative Exposes Downtown Rifts

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By Doug Porter

You don’t have to know anything about Attorney Cory Briggs’ “Pay Their Own Way” proposal allowing voters a say in tourism taxes to understand how it much it upsets the established order downtown.

Simply put, it exposes the ugly reality underlying San Diego politics by going after both the money and political mechanisms used by the tourism industry and its affiliated real estate interests to direct government institutions to do their bidding.

The ultimate reaction came from San Diego Chargers counsel Mark Fabiani, who is still reviewing the 28 page initiative: “As a general matter, anything that reduces the iron grip of the hotel lobby on our Mayor and some of our City Council is good for San Diego’s future, and Mr. Briggs’ initiative would go a long way toward accomplishing that goal.”

Bingo.   [Read more…]

Protests Planned as Police Explain Gaslamp Death

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By Doug Porter

As of this morning, police in the United States have killed 927 people this year. Number 925 on the Guardian’s list was Lamontez Jones, age 39, who died at Sixth and F Streets in San Diego’s Gaslamp District. He was, according to activists with United Against Police Terror (UAPTSD), the ninth person killed by law enforcement in San Diego this year.

Media reports say Jones was shot by two motorcycle officers when he pulled a gun replica on them as they chased him through downtown San Diego Tuesday afternoon. The body cams worn by the policemen were not activated before or during the encounter. Department procedure is to turn them on prior to arriving on the scene.

Police Chief Shelley Zimmerman defended the officers failure to activate the cameras at a press conference, saying officer- and public- safety concerns are more important than use of the devices.   [Read more…]

Social Security Stuck with the Bills as Companies Subvert Workman’s Comp

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By Doug Porter

A study released today by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) makes the case that so-called reforms to workman’s compensation programs at the state level are tied to a rise of the number of workers receiving Social Security Disability Insurance (DI).

Over the past quarter century, the number of beneficiaries in this program has gone from 25 per thousand to 59 per thousand, bringing the DI trust fund close to depletion in 2015.

Republicans are claiming the rise in claimants for disability benefits is being fueled by lower-wage workers seeking an easy way out of the labor force. It’s just the latest wrinkle in the old “poor are shiftless and lazy meme” at the heart of so-called reform schemes.   [Read more…]

Conservatives Rally Behind Exxon-Mobil’s ‘Right to Lie’

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By Doug Porter

Twin tales of scheming and misleading by Exxon-Mobil executives seeking to suppress evidence of climate change for decades have emerged in recent weeks. Drawing on completely separate archives, Pulitzer-prize winning reporters at Inside Climate News and another team with the Los Angeles Times have reached the same conclusion: that the company ignored and suppressed data at odds with the continued expansion of the fossil fuel business.

In September, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, along with 20 climate scientists, called for an investigation of fossil fuel companies under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. Last week, members of the House Oversight And Government Reform Committee sent their own letter asking the Department of Justice to “investigate ExxonMobil for organizing a sustained deception campaign disputing climate science and failing to disclose truthful information to investors and the public.”

Media Matters for America is reporting on what appears to be a concerted campaign in the right wing media to defend the “right” of fossil fuel companies to lie to the public. Assorted conservatives on Fox News, The Hill, The Blaze, Breitbart News, the Wall Street Journal and other media are claiming these calls for investigations amount to criminalization of policy differences.   [Read more…]

San Diego County Wage Board’s Heartbreaking Hearing

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By Doug Porter

More than thirty low-income workers came before an ad hoc committee on Saturday to testify about the realities of low-wage life in San Diego County. Many wept openly as they told their stories, encompassing a range of human misery in sharp contrast with the image of San Diego as the economic juggernaut portrayed by civic boosters.

Tales of living without running water, of not being able to afford medication for sick loved ones, of having not being able to afford school supplies and more were heard by the panel composed of representatives from faith, academic, labor and business groups. Every one of the speakers was employed; some were working two or more jobs. None of them could make ends meet on the wages they were being paid.

San Diego’s regional forum was one of several dozen held around the country, with low-income workers also testifying in Denver, Phoenix, Atlanta, New Orleans, Detroit, Kansas City, Mo., St. Louis, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Houston and Milwaukee.
  [Read more…]

Excerpt From Sunshine Noir II: My Days at the Door

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Editor’s Note: We’ll be publishing excerpts from Sunshine/Noir II: Writing from San Diego and Tijuana, an anthology of local writing about San Diego over the coming weeks, starting with the chapters written by SD Free Press writers. As City Works Press co-editor Jim Miller says in his introduction: “…San Diego is still a city in need of a literary voice, a cultural identity that goes beyond the Zoo, Sea World, Legoland, and the beach.  With Sunshine/Noir II we persist in our romantic, perhaps Sisyphean, effort to address this need and expose the true face of “the other San Diego.”  To buy a copy of Sunshine/Noir II or any other San Diego City Works Press book go here.

By Doug Porter

The San Diego Door and its antecedents were a big part of the alternative media scene in America’s Finest City over a eight year period starting in October,1966 when the Good Morning, Teaspoon published its first edition.

By December, 1971, when I first climbed up the steps of the paper’s Victorian stick mansion at 2445 Albatross Street just north of downtown, the paper had gone through ‘free love’, hippie druggie and counterculture phases and a half-dozen names. It had evolved to become a publication with anti-establishment news and alt-culture reviews, featuring powerful graphics and color.   [Read more…]

Lt. Gov. Newsom’s Gun Violence Initiative Draws Predictable Fire

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By Doug Porter

Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom held a press conference yesterday, rolling out details of a proposed ballot initiative aimed at reducing gun violence in California. The setting for the announcement was San Francisco’s 101 California St. office building, site of a 1993 mass shooting.

The measure, co-authored by the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, includes provisions of bills that have stalled at the state Capitol or were vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown in recent years.

Owners would be required to dispose of weapons with high capacity magazines grandfathered in after the 1999 ban. Ammunition sellers would be licensed and required to do point-of-sale background checks on every purchase of ammunition. A process would be established to seize guns from people prohibited from owning them because of their criminal records and federal authorities would be automatically notified of each addition to the state’s databased on prohibited firearms owners.

Needless to say, gun groups are locking and loading.   [Read more…]

A Dark and Dirty Shadow Falls Over California Plastic Bag Ban

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By Doug Porter

Efforts to eliminate the use of plastic grocery bags in California face all-out opposition via two well-funded industry campaigns in 2016. Hilex Poly, Superbag Corp, Advance Polybag and Formosa Plastics Corporation are expected to cough up most of the probable $55.3 million price tag for the efforts.

An estimated $38.1 million war chest will back a November referendum aimed at SB270, State Senator Alex Padilla’s bill banning the use of plastic bags. The measure was suspended following a $3.2 million signature-gathering campaign funded by the American Progressive Bag Alliance.

And just to make sure they get their way, industry proponents are spending an estimated $4 million qualifying a second ballot measure innocuously titled the Environmental Fee Protection Act. It’s likely they’ll spend $17.2 million selling this bit of misdirection, according to Forward Observer.com.   [Read more…]

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