San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

You are here: Home / Archives for Source

How Gloria Romero Became the Face of Proposition 32

by

by Matthew Fleischer/Frying Pan News

“Money is the mother’s milk of politics,” Gloria Romero tells me on the phone. “It’s flowing to both sides. Government isn’t about drawing lines. It’s not about saying you’re on that side and you can’t come over.”

Her voice is friendly, somewhat placid, but it’s clear Romero is not thrilled with having to answer questions about her political alliance with the Koch brothers and other wealthy supporters of Proposition 32, and she conspicuously avoids bringing up their names. When pressed about the Kochs and the money behind behind Prop. 32, she falls back upon her experience in Sacramento.

“I have sat in the belly of the beast,” she says. “I have seen the realities of money and its influence.”

With Election Day still one month away, the battle to pass Prop. 32 has seen its share of political shockers, including the sudden injection of $4 million of Koch brother money to the Yes on 32 campaign, along with millions more from Charles Munger Jr. But nothing has been more surprising than the decision of Romero, a former California State Senate Democratic majority leader, to serve as the measure’s frontwoman.   [Read more…]

Occupy San Diego: A Year Later

by

By Nadine Abbott

Occupy San Diego reached an important milestone this weekend. Occupy San Diego is now one year old, and like all children, it has learned a lot this year, but also achieved quite a bit.

The weekend saw a series of events, some low key, some going back to it’s roots in the streets, celebrating the fact that OSD is still here. The first event was at Balboa Park on Saturday afternoon.

When I reached the Park I was no longer surprised to see San Diego Police coming in to talk to an Occupier. Well, so what is new? Same old, same old – right? This time, the officers had cause. No, not the usual we saw over the course of last year. They had a call, from another occupier, reporting what can best be described as a domestic dispute. Given the Occupier in question wore a Guy Fawkes costume with knives (which I could not tell at a distance were plastic either), the cops showed up in force. This is standard.

Moreover, while the Police kept an eye on Occupy, like they do on every demonstration that happens in this town, they also kept their actual contact to a minimum, and kept their distance.
  [Read more…]

Why didn’t she just leave?

by

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Picture a sere summer night in Phoenix, Arizona, circa 1982.

I lay on a crinkly table in a cluttered ER, joking with the doc, bribing him with a promise of homemade shortbread if he could fix my face without leaving scars, looking anywhere but in his eyes, and I noticed a police officer nearby.

When I was all stitched and tidied up, I went to the cop and heard a quavering voice tell him that I wanted to press charges against my husband for assault.

The cop looked across the waiting room at him, sitting with his face buried behind his bloodied hands, his tiny mother, herself a victim, standing next to his chair, her arm around him while she stroked his head and kissed his fevered brow.

The cop looked back at me and said, “You don’t want to do that. You’ll just make him angry all over again, and it’ll be worse the next time.”   [Read more…]

Our Readers Write: Thoughts on the Anniversary of Occupy

by

The day many Occupiers in San Diego had been anticipating. The one-year anniversary.

I reflected on the past year. I did not know about OSD when they did their first rally, so I missed it. But I attended every rally since. Though I did not ever camp overnight, I participated as often as I could. Donated so many items and food, as many other supporters did, only for them to be confiscated by the police during raids. Donated some more items and food again and again. Police raided the camp again and again.

I was never able to attend a General Assembly, but spent many hours watching the Livestream of it in the early days. I indirectly participated. I became familiar with the issues and the people involved. Though many of them were unfamiliar with me. I recognized them at the rallies, but often felt as an outsider because they did not know me. I spoke at City Council meetings after I witnessed the force used by the police. Never knowing that would be the first of many trips to City Council. My voice trembled as I spoke because I was so nervous. Now I think back on how all my words fell on deaf ears.   [Read more…]

This Week In the War on Women: If You Don’t Want to Get F’d This November …

by

Daily Kos / By Kaili Joy Gray / Oct. 6, 2012

Are you sick and tired of being sick and tired of the Republicans’ War on Women? Sick and tired of being told we’re “not ladylike” when we challenge them? That we “neuter” them when we stand up for our rights? That we shrink their penises with our feminism? (Well, okay, that one’s actually kind of fun, amirite, ladies?)

Come on inside for an It’s the Law… video and a list of cry-out-loud laws intended to restrict women’s rights and access to healthcare. Some of this is not safe for work.   [Read more…]

Advertising on Television Reaches $5 Billion as Super PAC Spending Skyrockets

by

Alternet / By Steven Rosenfeld / Sept. 27, 2012

After the votes are counted in November, there will be a big winner in the 2012 election who is not Mitt Romney, Barack Obama nor their top donors. This winner does not want to change anything about how America’s latest national election was run.

The unadvertised victors are media businesses that are seeing political advertising profits reach into the billions. There is no one estimate that combines all of 2012’s campaign advertising across all media, but one of the biggest winners clearly will be local TV stations and regional TV networks in 10 presidential swing states—and in California because of its costly statewide ballot measures.   [Read more…]

Is Whole Foods Sincere About Its Support for Labeling Genetically Modified Foods?

by

Alternet / By Ronnie Cummins / Oct. 4, 2012

After months of pressure from the organic community, including thousands of its customers, the leadership of Whole Foods Market on September 11 endorsed Proposition 37, the California Ballot Initiative to require mandatory labels on genetically engineered foods. But the endorsement came with “reservations” and inaccuracies. It also included the false claim that company policy precludes Whole Foods and its executives from providing much-needed financial support to Prop 37, a campaign that consumers – the very people who have made WFM and its executives wildly profitable – overwhelmingly support.

Is it possible that Whole Foods wants to ride the GMO labeling popularity wave while it quietly works behind the scenes to prevent Prop 37, or any other GMO labeling law, from passing? Could it be that a GMO labeling law – especially one like Prop 37 that prohibits the use of the word “natural” on any food containing GMOs – would cut too deeply into the company’s $9.8 billion in sales and almost $246 million in profits?   [Read more…]

The Right Employs Creative Thinking to Explain Why Unemployment Is Below 8 Percent

by

Alternet / Adele M. Stan / Oct. 5, 2012

This month’s jobs numbers are out, showing the unemployment rate to have fallen to 7.8 percent, robbing Republicans of a favorite talking point. That number is a 44-month low, according to the Associated Press , which reports the unemployment number fell from 8.1 percent because “the number of people who said they were employed soared by 873,000.” Predictably, right-wing Republicans are crying foul , insisting, based on nothing, that the career civil servants at the Bureau of Labor Statistics must be cooking the books.   [Read more…]

Romney’s Debate Strategy: The Testosterone Ploy

by

Alternet / By Alison Rose Levy / Oct. 4, 2012

Do we choose the nice guy with the solid values that we share, or do we choose the primate who beats his chest and displays high testosterone?

Just like in the ads featuring beautiful women, luring consumers to buy products, in this week’s Presidential debate, Mitt Romney pulled out something alluring—testosterone—offering this country a choice with which many women are familiar: Do we choose the nice guy with the solid values that we share, or do we choose the primate who beats his chest and displays high testosterone?

During the debate, while reversing his position on almost everything, and hoping Americans would forget his choice of running mate, Romney set his jaw, puffed his chest, and shouted over the moderator. In contrast, Obama repeatedly looked down, and looked tired. But who wouldn’t? (Note to Dem media advisors: Tell the President to look up and assure that he is positioned to Romney’s left in future debates.) Having pulled this country back from the brink of disaster created by the previous administration, and having fought to get anything done with a Congress more partisan and uncooperative than any in U.S. history, what’s President Obama served for dessert? A buffet of narrow-minded racism. After all of that, and much more, who wouldn’t be tired?   [Read more…]

National Organization for Marriage (NOM) Pans My Nice Little Hetero Marriage

by

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt
The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) emailed a link to its two new campaign advertisements this week. The ads support Minnesota’s Amendment 1, which would amend the constitution to restrict marriage to “only a union of one man and one woman.” What the ballot measure fails to note, but NOM makes evident in the first of its new ads, is that the woman had better be fertile, because, “Marriage is more a commitment between two loving people. It was made by God for the creation and care of the next generation.”   [Read more…]

Sex In San Diego: The 10 Weirdest Sex-cessories

by

Alternet / April De Costa

No judgement: Everyone has their own sexual preferences, predilections and fantasies, and it’s also understood that sex with one, or two, or however many of the same person(s) can grow tedious. The Internet has grown, in part, to accommodate everyone’s erotic interests, and to capitalize on niche fetish markets. So I’m not here to lower your freak flag, and of course this third party could never understand the nuances of your beaudoire repertoire. All that said, here are 10 weird sexcessories used by consenting adults that seem somewhat unnecessary, or even counterproductive to the whole enterprise.   [Read more…]

Brian Bilbray and Carl DeMaio: San Diego’s Republican Shapeshifters

by

By Lucas O’Connor / Special to the San Diego Free Press

If there’s one thing that’s been particularly consistent to campaigns of the far right in San Diego this fall, it’s the unusually desperate attempts to hide the real agenda from voters. It’s one that should be cause for optimism as long as voters pay attention, and betrays an almost impressive self-awareness from the top of the GOP that the party’s agenda has drifted well outside the mainstream.

From the special exemptions of Prop 32 to Brian Bilbray’s teetering re-election bid to Carl DeMaio’s bizarre mayoral campaign, extreme conservatives are doing everything they can to hide their record and who they are.

For the backers of Proposition 32, the deception was part of the design from the very beginning. They surveyed the political landscape and found that, unsurprisingly, nobody wants millionaires and corporations to be able to buy off our political process. Rather than abandon a wildly unpopular idea, they came up with a different plan: fake it.   [Read more…]

©2010-2017 SanDiegoFreePress.org

Code is Poetry