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City of San Diego Ballot Measures, 2018 General Election | Soccer City, SDSU West, or Bust?

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The short version of this analysis is you need to pay attention to City Measures E & G, and could reasonably be expected to vote yes on the rest of them.

E & G are about the future of the stadium site in Mission Valley, and the only ones with pro and con groups; the rest of the City ballot items are just housekeeping or consensus agreements on issues. My remarks on those (H-N) will be short and sweet.

How we got here: After years of dicking around about wanting a bigger and better place for the San Diego Chargers to play, team owner Dean Spanos packed up his franchise and left town.   [Read more…]

Former Senior Border Patrol Agent Speaks Out On Corruption | Video Worth Watching

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The Southern Border Communities Coalition (SBCC) has created a new video series which they’re calling “Breaking the Green Line”. It features a former senior Border Patrol agent (1995-2001) who left the agency due to the rampant corruption and culture of impunity. She is now sharing her first-hand experiences to shed light on the Federal government’s most corrupt, abusive, and out of control agency.   [Read more…]

San Diego County Supervisor D5 | Michelle Gomez vs Jim Desmond: It’s Time for a Change

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San Diego County is changing, and nowhere is that truer than in the North County, currently represented on the Board of Supervisors by Bill Horn.

Most of the five supervisors have been in office for more than 20 years. It’s been largely a white, male, Republican club brimming with alumni from San Diego State University.

After 23 years in office, supervisor Horn is terming out of District 5. And not a moment too soon. He’s long been the embodiment of what’s wrong with County government: gruff, unfeeling, and forgetful about who he was supposed to be representing.   [Read more…]

San Diego County Supervisor D4 | Nathan Fletcher vs. Bonnie Dumanis: A Critical Contest

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Tuesday, November 6 should be the beginning of the end of a status quo situation in San Diego that is just. plain. wrong.. All you have to do is vote.

I know, I know. Every campaign and every ballot measure says they’re The One, but this vote will –over the next few years– improve mental health care, help the homeless, and make our corner of the country a better place for all of us to live.  

Much of the power over our lives by the government is vested with the five members of the County Board of Supervisors. Most of them have been in office for more than 20 years.
  [Read more…]

Kavanaugh’s Accuser Is Credible. Will It Matter? | Video Worth Watching

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Ari Melber interviews Michelle Goldberg, author of the recent New York Times opinion editorial “Boys Will Be Supreme Court Judges” and they discuss the recent right-wing character assassination of Professor Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who has made allegations of being sexually assaulted by Judge Kavanaugh, as well as the attempts to downplay the significance of Kavanaugh’s actions, if true. (h/t to AGD)   [Read more…]

San Diego’s City Council District 8 | Martinez vs Moreno: It’s Complicated

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The district is a bi-polar political entity. Geography and long-standing loyalties both exert a significant influence on elections in the city’s southernmost political sector.

City Council District 8 is bisected by National City & Chula Vista. The north and south ends have a majority Latino population in common, but the external realities differ.

The forces of gentrification weight heavily on neighborhoods connected to the core city like Barrio Logan. The border with Mexico, along with the militarization that goes with it, looms over the southern end.

Overlaid on these different environments are family and personal connections. To understand the race for city council in District 8, a history lesson is in order. I’ve simplified parts of this story because the nuances are near-impossible for an outsider to discern.   [Read more…]

Michael Moore: How The F*** Did This Happen? | Video Worth Watching

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All In’s Chris Hayes interviews Michael Moore in Michael’s home town, Flint, Michigan. Chris provides some teasers of Michael’s new movie: Fahrenheit 11/9; Michael gives a bit more background about the Flint situation, including an important historical marker: the 1936 Flint GM plant 45-day sit-down strike—the event which credibly can be considered the birth of the Middle Class; he ruminates on the Electoral College’s undemocratic underpinnings; and delilvers a jaw-dropping statistic on the number of Michigan voters who voted for public offices down to “Registrar of Deeds” and “Drain Commisioner”, yet did not cast a vote for the office of President of the United States.   [Read more…]

City Council District 6: How Can Hough Hew His Way Around An Incumbent’s Advantage?

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I’ll let you in on a little secret: San Diego is a lot bluer city than most people realize, meaning–as one politico told me recently–if you run the right Democrat, they can win just about everywhere.

City Attorney Mara Elliot carried every council district in 2016 except D5 Mark Kersey’s collection of north-central communities clustered along Interstate 15. There are roughly 130,000 more registered Democrats in the city than Republicans, who have sunk to third place–70,000 voters or so behind No Party Preference.

Fortunately for partisans on the right side of the aisle, San Diego’s City Council races are officially non-partisan. The words “Democrat” or “Republican” don’t appear on the ballot, making a high public profile a potential equalizer.   [Read more…]

A Blue Wave is Not Enough: Progressives Need to Win the Long War for Democracy

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Recently I had the pleasure of speaking to the La Mesa-Foothills Democratic Club about the Lincoln Club and the history of the American Right. In that presentation, I noted how the ultimate aim of the Right was to dishonestly promote deeply unpopular policies through stealth politics that take advantage of the general public’s naiveté about their agenda.  

Locally, groups like the Lincoln Club do their best to intervene in Democratic primaries and shift the landscape in their favor so they can win elections and promote policies that further enrich the elite. As I have written in this space, that’s how San Diego’s “shadow government” has rolled for decades.

At the national level, the Lincoln Club was a key player in bringing us the Citizens United case which helped further stack the deck of national politics in favor of the rich and corporate interests.   To really understand the big picture, however (as I told the audience), you need to understand the entire history of the Right’s long war to, as historian Nancy MacLean puts it, “save capitalism from democracy permanently.”        [Read more…]

Reflections on Keeping Loved Ones From Taking Their Lives

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I remember back, maybe
when I was in junior high,
neighbors talking in hush-hush tones
about a man
who had drowned himself
in the night.
“Hey, why y’all whispering?”
I wanted to know,
all wide-eyed
and mystified
and horrified.
“Shhh, boy, he died of suicide.”
And we all just carried on
with our lives,
looking at how he had died
through the eyes
of ignorance,
of unfamiliarity   [Read more…]

This Is How Democrats (Women!) Win | Video Worth Watching

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Who says Democrats don’t have an agenda? Elissa Slotkin on the “pre-existing conditions” issue makes it real and personal. (h/t to AGD)   [Read more…]

Looking Back at the Week: September 9-15

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This week’s edition of Looking Back at the Week contains articles, commentaries, columns, and other work by San Diego Free Press regulars, irregulars, columnists, at-large contributors, and locally and nationally sourced writers on women run, D2, D4, workers struggling, wanting to be heard, candidate canvassing, street scenes, The Jungle, Seize The King, and lots of other grassroots news & progressive views from San Diego’s feisty, all volunteer, slightly funky, community news site.   [Read more…]

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