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Creative Protests Mark Planned Parenthood ‘Show Trial’ in DC, Anti-Choice Group Meeting in San Diego

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By Doug Porter

Battles over abortion, a key element in the right’s war against women, continue on both coasts this week.

In Washington DC, the House Judiciary Committee opened hearings expressly designed to garner publicity for a coming effort to defund Planned Parenthood. Today’s Washington Post quotes a former top Republican congressional budget aide saying there’s about a 60% chance of a government shutdown over the issue.

This week Care Net, an umbrella organization claiming more than 1,100 faux “crisis pregnancy centers” (CPCs) around the country, is having its 2015 National Conference at the Sheraton San Diego Hotel & Marina on Harbor Island. A pro-choice group placed ads in the Daily Aztec and Union-Tribune yesterday touting a “tourist guide” filled with the kind of unreliable information they say women receive when visiting Care Net’s crisis pregnancy centers.   [Read more…]

SDPD Chief Invokes Ferguson Effect Falsehood to Block Body Cam, Video Evidence

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By Doug Porter

Chief Shelly Zimmerman, Mayor Kevin Faulconer’s choice to instill public confidence in the San Diego Police Department, has pulled “the boogie man” out of her bag of tricks in an attempt to justify less transparency with the public.

She told a federal court last week, according to NBC7, “the release of video showing a fatal, officer-involved shooting could jeopardize that officer’s life and provoke violence against his law enforcement colleagues.” Meeting with Union-Tribune editorial board on Tuesday in advance of releasing statistics about body camera use, Chief Zimmerman said the department doesn’t plan to release video footage in most cases.

Today we’ll take a look at Zimmerman’s claims and match them up against reality. My analysis of this situation suggests she’s just part of the ‘same old, same old’ game wherein misdeeds by police are kept hidden from the public behind a blue curtain of silence and misdirection.   [Read more…]

Sharing Solidarity on Labor’s Day in San Diego

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By Doug Porter

It was Labor Day on Monday. That’s the holiday where people are supposed to celebrate the many little victories adding up to what is generally referred to as middle-class life. These days it’s about those fortunate souls who’ve managed not to be pushed downward by the market-based economy.

Many of them are union families. In America’s Finest City they’re likely the most diverse grouping of people you’ll see anywhere. Black, Brown, old, young, gay and straight–the one thing binding them together is the power that collective bargaining gives them.

In the news business if it doesn’t bleed, it doesn’t lead. There were no bombs thrown and no heads busted at the hundreds of labor day picnics, rallies and parades around the country. So it was in San Diego, where just a couple of TV crews braved the blazing sun to report on the rally held by the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council at Tailgate park.   [Read more…]

It’s a FACT, Jack: State Senate Passes Bill Aimed at Faux Women’s Clinics

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By Doug Porter

This week the State Senate voted 23-14 to approve Assembly Bill 775, the Reproductive FACT Act, sending it on to Gov. Jerry Brown.  Backed by a coalition that includes NARAL Pro-Choice and Planned Parenthood California,  AB 775 takes aim at the 200 plus so-called “crisis pregnancy centers” (CPCs) statewide.

The groups supporting the bill say the CPCs spread medical misinformation aimed at manipulating women to keep them from accessing abortion care. Unlicensed facilities  providing pregnancy-related services would be required to prominently display and include in their advertising a statement that clarifies that they are not medical facilities licensed by the state of California.

An undercover investigation by NARAL earlier this year found that 91% of CPCs visited falsely linked abortion with health problems like breast cancer, infertility, depression and even death.   [Read more…]

Cal Pensions Cutting Coal Stock Called an “Emotional” Response to Climate Change

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By Doug Porter

You would think that losing $5 billion in pension fund investments in fossil fuel companies in 2014 would cause the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) to change course.

But Republican reaction to passage of SB 185, also called “Investing with Values and Responsibility,” beginning an eighteen month process to disinvest in any holdings of thermal coal is quite the opposite.

Assemblyman James Gallagher, R-Yuba City decried the measure, saying, “We need to make (investment) decisions based on good, sound financial decisions, not based on emotions.”

So there you have it. Global climate change is simply an emotional issue.   [Read more…]

Police Deaths Matter. Now, Can We Talk About Injustice?

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By Doug Porter

The gang at Fox News is doing their damnest to make a connection between #BlackLivesMatter and police officers killed in the line of duty.  Yesterday, Megyn Kelly and Katie Pavlich characterized Black Lives Matter as violent, with Pavlich calling it “a movement that promotes the execution of police officers.”

Elsewhere in the media the implied story is that cops are getting mowed down at a dramatically increasing rate.  The Los Angeles Times ran with a story saying “the recent bloodshed feels different.” 

CNN does it by slight of hand in its coverage of Illinois police officer Charles Joseph Gliniewicz and Texas Sheriff’s Deputy Darren Goforth, telling us that the number of deaths in the line of duty this year has increased from 73 to 85.   [Read more…]

Lawsuits Point to Misconduct in San Diego City and County Police Agencies

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By Doug Porter

We’re supposed to have been reassured that San Diego was on its way to solving the problems with police officers who break bad.  Yet there is mounting evidence that it’s business as usual behind the ‘blue curtain’ in local law enforcement.

Mayor Kevin Faulconer appointed a new chief of police before he was even sworn in and a voluntary audit by way of the Justice Department’s office of Community Oriented Policing made recommendations for reform. Chief Zimmerman assured the City Council not long ago that new training procedures were addressing the concerns raised by the audit.

When the Union-Tribune editorial board is taking the department to task and lawsuits begin to pile up, you might have a problem if you are the San Diego Police Department. This problem isn’t constrained by the city limits, as legal actions and court settlements point to the County Sheriff’s Department having it’s own issues with use of force.   [Read more…]

Mayor Faulconer’s Convention Center Expansion: It’s Huuuge

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By Doug Porter

Oh, those boys and their big shiny toys. Having failed in past years to gain approval for a waterfront expansion of the San Diego Convention Center, the City is about to throw its weight behind a $90,000 study promising “huuuge” (ala Trump) returns.

The Union-Tribune says Mayor Faulconer finds the report so persuasive that he’s prepared to back a ballot measure increasing hotel taxes for 2016. Since those taxes are dedicated revenues, two thirds voter approval will be required.

Today we’ll take a look at the spotty record of the outfit hired to do this report, along with various options along the way to getting a super-majority to go the polls and vote for this expansion.   [Read more…]

Looking Back at the Week: August 23-29

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By Doug Porter

This week’s edition of Looking Back at the Week features articles, commentaries, columns, toons and other work by San Diego Free Press regulars, irregulars, columnists, at-large contributors.

Twenty San Diegans contributed videos, poems, essays and analysis this week.

(Brother Brent Beltrán is having technical difficulties, so I’m substituting today. Any mistakes or omissions are still entirely his fault. You can send him all your hate mail though; he likes that.)

Step inside to catch up with all the latest from the San Diego Free Press….   [Read more…]

NLRB Ruling Could Be a Game Changer for Unions

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By Doug Porter

A Reagan-era standard allowing corporations to maintain an arms-length relationship with their workforces fell by the wayside yesterday as the National Labor Relations Board ruled in favor of the Teamsters in a dispute with California recycler Browning-Ferris Industries.

The bottom line here is that big companies may be held responsible for what goes on in the workplace. Organized labor is pleased with the decision. Wall Street isn’t. The actual ruling concerned the use of temporary employees. What people are reacting to are its game changing implications.

There are lots of poorly informed (meaning full of crap) analyses being passed off in various media accounts.  To use a baseball analogy, just because a team acquires a high performance player doesn’t mean they’ll have a winning season. Just ask the San Diego Padres.   [Read more…]

Welcome to TrumpLand: A Local Example of Bigotry USA! USA! Style

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By Doug Porter

I’ve been trying not to say too much about The Donald. He’s playing the media like a great violinist plays a Stradivarius. He says jump and the stenographers posing as journalists say “how high?”

I can no longer remain silent in the face of the hate-mongering coming from this public figure aimed at Latinos. He’s giving ammunition to assholes, and there are real consequences, even on the streets of San Diego.

When a well-known and respected public advocate can’t take his child to a park without being race baited, it’s time to stand up and say No More. And, yes, it is precisely the rhetoric favored by Donald Trump that’s encouraging an upswing in bigotry.   [Read more…]

Women’s Equality Day: Celebrating the Success of Militant Protest

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The argument of the broken pane of glass is the most valuable argument in modern politics.–Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst

By Doug Porter

Women’s Equality Day (August 26th) marks anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, giving women the right to vote.

There are observances this week in San Diego, including a re-enactment of an early-century Suffrage march in Balboa Park.

Organizations including the League of Women Voters, the United Nations Women’s Equity Council, the Older Women’s League and others, will join members and supporters of the Women’s Museum at 5pm for a Rally on Thursday, (Aug 27th) at the Kate Sessions Statue, at the 6th Avenue end of the Cabrillo Bridge, followed by a parade across the bridge info the Organ Pavilion where the last free concert of the summer will be held at 6:30pm.

While this commemoration will be celebratory in nature, it’s important to remember, as Frederick Douglass once said, “Power never concedes nothing without a demand.” In many sanitized versions of US history, the struggle leading up to that victory is depicted as controversial only because women left their roles as wives and house-makers to protest. The reality of what transpired is considerably different.   [Read more…]

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