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Breaking News: Poll Shows California Pension Ballot Measures Already in Trouble

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By Dan Braun & Bill Raden / Capital & Main

A pair of potential ballot initiatives written to overhaul California’s public pensions could face a rough road, according to a new poll.

The results from a Capital & Main-David Binder Research poll of 500 likely voters shows that if the election were held today, the numbers of those voting for the measures and those against them appear to be dead even. Those numbers are not what pension-reduction advocates had hoped for going into the 2016 election cycle.   [Read more…]

Carlsbad Report on Caruso’s Lagoon Mall: Close Enough for Government Work?

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By Richard Riehl/ The Riehl World

On February 23 the people of Carlsbad will vote on Measure A, an L.A. developer’s attempt to bypass normal city and state reviews, allowing him to build a thirteen-acre shopping center overlooking the Agua Hedionda lagoon.

The City council’s staff report claims to be an “impartial planning, policy, economic, and environmental analysis” of Rick Caruso’s lagoon mall plan. But I was reminded of a summer job I once had with the Washington State Highway Department, working to keep contractors honest by testing their highway asphalt samples.

I learned how politics trumped highway safety when my supervisor kept telling me to re-test failed samples until they passed. I guessed he didn’t want to bring bad news to his boss’s desk. So I stopped bringing it to his, following the advice of my fellow workers, the lab’s old timers, “Close enough for government work.”   [Read more…]

San Diegans Say No To Hate, Refugees Welcome

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Hundreds of people gathered along San Diego’s Waterfront Park yesterday to mark International Human Rights Day and to make their voices heard on the subject of refugees and support for the local Muslim community.

The San Diego area has long been a prime resettlement area for refugees, taking in as many as 3,000 annually. Successive waves of people from Southeast Asia, East Africa, and the Middle East have created new lives here in recent decades.

Fear-mongering over Syrian refugees following terrorist attacks in Paris has led to increasingly strident rhetoric from prominent political figures. Now a ban keeping all people of the Muslim faith from entering the US has gained some traction. Hate crimes have soared, including attacks on places of worship.   [Read more…]

Restraining Order Offers Glimpse into Escondido School Board Follies

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Sometimes big headlines result from big spin. Take Escondido, for instance. Politicians in that north county bastion of reaction have mastered the fine art of drama when it comes to politics.

Whether it’s banning immigrants from renting homes, terminating a social service agency’s contract in retaliation for its speech, and enforcing a restrictive ordinance that stifled rallies and demonstrations, the yokels in America’s 11th most conservative city know how to stand the truth on its head to advance their cause.

From the mindset that imagined refugees from Central America were here to sell drugs, spread disease, and rape their daughters, comes the story of poor hard working Republican school board members being bullied by a mean old Latino Democrat.   [Read more…]

SDG&E: Solar’s Fake Friend

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By Hutton Marshall/ SanDiego350.org

San Diego Gas & Electric, our friendly neighborhood energy provider whether we like it or not, continues to prove that their claims to support clean energy are merely superficial. Especially in regards to solar energy, the most efficient, environmentally friendly energy source available to homes and businesses, SDG&E continues to favor policies that diminish the critical financial incentives that allow San Diegans to generate their own clean energy.   [Read more…]

In San Diego and Elsewhere, Increasing Demands for Police Reform

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SDPD Union Contracts Under Scrutiny

Despite promises of increased transparency and action to prevent misconduct, the San Diego Police Department continues to draw criticism. Law enforcement agencies around the country are under increasing scrutiny, as reports about use of excessive force, sexual assault, and abuse of power surface. Today I’ll take a look at recent developments both locally and nationally.

Taking things one step further, activists associated with Black Lives Matter have broadened their Campaign Zero to include researching police union-negotiated labor agreements in many jurisdictions with the aim of flagging provisions delaying the interrogation of officers being investigated for use of force and used in erasing documentation of abuse.

San Diego is one of the cities under scrutiny.   [Read more…]

The Number 1 Thing Rich People Get Dead Wrong About Poor People

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Debunking one of the biggest myths about poverty

By Paul Buchheit / AlterNet

Many wealthy white conservative males believe they deserve their good fortunes, and that the poor are taking handouts. But on average little of the money of the wealthiest Americans is spent on productive job-creating ventures. Potential young entrepreneurs, in contrast, are too often mired in debt and deprived of opportunities to prosper.   [Read more…]

It’s Time for Quantitative Easing for People Instead of Banks

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Income Inequality is Getting Worse

Income and wealth inequality is only getting worse. It’s not hard to understand why. Certain corporations have a lock on economic activity throughout the world. Mom and Pop operations have been forced out of business or have merged with the Big Guys. Artificial intelligence, automation, robots and computers have taken over many menial but used-to-be-better-than-minimum-wage jobs like check-out clerks, bank tellers and customer service operators. Other jobs have been off shored to cheaper labor jurisdictions.

The rest of us, college graduates included, have been reduced to being expendable appendages of the large corporate machines to be sucked in and spit out at their pleasure. When our skill sets are outmoded, we will be laid off and fresh talent will be acquired. The job pool is shrinking because the number of necessary jobs is shrinking. Today, there are approximately 1.2 million fewer jobs in mid-and higher-wage industries than there were prior to the 2008 recession, while there are 2.3 million more jobs in lower-wage industries. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics most jobs in the next decade won’t even require a college education. They are jobs that can’t be done by robots: care givers, nurses, house cleaners, gardeners, retail.

Another reason for income and wealth inequality is that the US Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing policy screws savers who get zero interest on their life savings while injecting money into the largest Wall Street banks. This money is siphoned off by wealthy investors and hedge funds. It never enters the real economy. It only encourages the average Joes and Janes to take on more debt. Ninty percent of the money supply is created by private banks who loan money into the economy through their policy of fractional reserve banking. As the money supply increases, so does debt.   [Read more…]

What to Do About Disloyal Corporations

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By Robert Reich / RobertReich.Org

Just like that, Pfizer has decided it’s no longer American. It plans to link up with Ireland’s Allergan and move its corporate headquarters from New York to Ireland.

That way it will pay less tax. Ireland’s tax rate is less than half that of United States. Ian Read, Pfizer’s chief executive, told the Wall Street Journal the higher tax rate in the United States caused Pfizer to compete “with one hand tied behind our back.”

Read said he’d tried to lobby Congress to reduce the corporate tax rate (now 35 percent) but failed, so Pfizer is leaving.
  [Read more…]

Kersey’s Blue Smoke and Mirrors Plan for ‘Fixing’ San Diego

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Gosh, it all sounds so good: A 2016 ballot measure raising billions for infrastructure projects by requiring city leaders to devote future growth in sales tax revenue and all pension savings to the problem over the next 30 years.

Councilman Mark Kersey’s plan would not raise taxes. It simply amends the city charter, something requiring only 51% voter approval. What could go wrong?

Plenty. Starting with it’s actually not enough money and ending with cuts to other city services. Which services? That’s up to some future city council to decide. Kersey’s plan is a Trojan horse, painted in cheery colors, with sparkles and googly eyes so voters don’t notice its ‘drown government in a bathtub’ core.   [Read more…]

Excerpt From Sunshine/Noir II: Livin’ La Vida Logan

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Barrio Logan is one of the oldest neighborhoods in San Diego. It used to be one whole community called Logan Heights, named after congressman John A. Logan, but the creation of the Interstate 5 freeway that bisected the neighborhood changed that. Then the building of the San Diego–Coronado Bridge changed it again. Thousands were displaced from building the freeway and the bridge. Now Barrio Logan encompasses a relatively small patch of land sandwiched between the San Diego Bay and the I-5 freeway and north of National City and south of San Diego’s East Village.

Fewer than 5,000 people inhabit my barrio. Thousands more come during the day to work here in the shipyards, the Port of San Diego and the other companies that line the bay side of Barrio Logan. Of those 5,000 barrio denizens about 85% of them are non-white, most of which are of Mexican descent. But things are changing.   [Read more…]

Progressive San Diego: 15 Years Ago Was a High Water Mark for OB Activism

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In 2000 OBGO Held Its First ‘Coming-Out’ Community Forum

Grassroots activism has been in the air in OB of late, with a definite spike last year during the campaign to have the OB Community Plan approved, but it also has been seen this year around the Plan at the Coastal Commission. Prior to 2014, however, there had been many a lean year in terms of genuine local activism across the village, many a moon had passed without throwing shadows on such OBcean activity as petitions and community mobilizations.

And that’s the way grassroots activism is, it comes and goes – like the tides that lap OB’s beaches and cliffs.

Coincidentally or not, there has been some talk – also of late – of a former OB activist group.   [Read more…]

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