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The Starting Line – The Meanies at the IRS and Other Republicanesque Themes du Jour

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By Doug Porter 

It’s the new Benghazi.

It’s ‘Plan B’, in case Congressman Darrell Issa’s crew can’t make the case for impeachment. They’re even willing to tie Presidents Obama and Nixon together.

I’m talking about the emerging ‘scandal’ that the Internal Revenue Service made life difficult for Tea Party type groups seeking to obtain tax exempt status. The story gets top billing in today’s UT-San Diego, slightly overshadowing coverage of Senator John McCain’s call for a special panel to investigate last year’s attack on the US diplomatic compound/CIA station in Libya.

Documents obtained by various media outlets over the past few days, including the Washington Post, the Associated Press and the Wall Street Journal, tell a story about the behind the scene processes at the IRS in how it defined “social welfare groups” following the US Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizen’s United ruling.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – All is Not Clear on the Low Wage Front: San Diego Fundraiser for a Walmart Strike Fund Planned

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By Doug Porter

Years of growing inequality have taken their toll on low-wage workers over several decades even as workplace productivity has increased. A minimum-wage income in 1968 was higher than the poverty line for a family of two adults and one child. Even into the 1980s the minimum wage was high enough to lift a single parent over the federal poverty line. Today’s minimum wage, however, is not enough for single parents to reach even the most basic threshold of adequate living standards.

The latest census figures show 46.2 million people living in poverty in the US. Companies that pay low wages leave their employees no choice but to rely on public assistance programs like food stamps, Medicare or the earned income tax credit.  So, in effect, these companies are being subsidized by government.

Today CEOs in the country’s S&P 500 companies make, on average, 319 times more than the average American worker. Back in the 1970s, that ratio was 30 to 1.  Walmart CEO Mike Duke makes better than a thousand times more than the median worker pay at the one of his stores.

So it’s little wonder than 47% of Walmart employees are less than thrilled about their jobs. And despite a workplace environment where many employees are pitted against each other in a desperate struggle for survival, here are signs of unrest that are increasing around the country.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Special Ed Student Used as “Bait” in School Drug Bust After Parents Refused Permission

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By Doug Porter

We’ve seen an up tick in stories recently about drug busts in schools in the region.  While no parent wants to see their kid on the wrong side of the law, it turns out that at least one of these ‘stings’ wasn’t quite the law enforcement coup touted to the news media.

The San Diego Sheriff’s Department’s ‘Operation A Team’ spent a year posing as students at four county high schools, scoring drugs at Poway, Mission Hills, and Ramona High Schools. The busts were announced with much fanfare recently, and the UT-San Diego even garnered an undercover interview with one of the agents.

Last fall undercover officers enrolled at Temecula high schools rounded up 22 ruffians in a similar investigation.

Yesterday the Press-Enterprise ran a story regarding a special education student recruited by a Temecula school official over the objections of his parents to pose as ‘bait’ in an on-campus sting. And it turns out this isn’t the only case involving a special education student and drug stings in the Temecula Valley Unified School District.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – The President is Doomed: Darrell Issa’s Benghazasm

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By Doug Porter

Well here it is folks. This is the day we’ve all been waiting for. Congressman Darrell Issa’s going to blow the lid off the foreign policy scandal that’s been festering for over six months now.

Representative Steve King of Iowa, perhaps best known for his comparison of immigrants and dogs, says:

“I believe that it’s a lot bigger than Watergate, and if you link Watergate and Iran-Contra together and multiply it times maybe 10 or so, you’re going to get in the zone where Benghazi is,”   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Dougie Manchester’s Minions Twerking the Night Away

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By Doug Porter

‘What the hell?’ you’re probably thinking, how did he come up with that headline?

 I was just reading the UT-San Diego’s editorial page today, something not recommended for the faint of heart or weak of stomach.

Leading the inane parade of profoundly partisan digestational by-products today is another in this week’s ObamaScare is coming missives.  We’re being schooled this week on “the broken promises that President Barack Obama used to sell the Affordable Care Act”.

Did you know that the President and his liberal/socialist cabal are going to take away your health insurance right after they grab your guns? It must be true; look what happened in Massachusetts when essentially the same plan was enacted…   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Fletcher Switches Sides, Gloria Doesn’t. And the Party of NO Keeps on Keeping On

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By Doug Porter 

It’s getting harder to tell the players without a scorecard in San Diego politics these days. Take a couple of days off from the news babble and the whole landscape might be changed.

Friday night six hundred local Republicans gathered round at the safely white Rancho-Bernardo Inn for their Lincoln-Reagan Dinner. Congressman Darrell Issa regaled them with stories of Benghazi while Rueben Barrales and Puerto Rico’s recently defeated Gov. Luis Fortuno pitched the crowd on the ‘natural tendencies’ of the Latino population.

The whomp whomp of Issa’s figurative Molotov cocktails aimed at the Obama administration (and Hillary’s potential candidacy in 2016) faded into the background quickly on Saturday as Nathan Fletcher, the formerly ‘reasonable’ Republican-turned-independent announced his switch to the Democratic Party.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – The National NRA Convention: No Sane People Allowed

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Going Great Guns, Deep in the Heart of Texas

By Doug Porter

Stories about pushback resulting from votes against the Senate’s most recent efforts at gun legislation are making the rounds this week, including poll results showing voter frustration with elected officials who opposed background checks.

This weekend, however, the media landscape will shift as the National Rifle Association holds a three day gathering in Houston, Texas.  Today’s ‘leadership forum’ will boast conservative heart-throbs like former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Rick Santorum.

INSIDE: Is Obama the Worst Socialist Ever?, Ethiopian Blogger Imprisoned, Where Have All the Teachers Gone?   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Can You Say Congressman DeMaio? And Other Republican Wet Dreams

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By Doug Porter

I read the Daily Fishwrap(s) so you don’t have to… is the tag line for this daily column. Some days I think it might be more appropriate to say ‘because you wouldn’t want to’.

So hold on to your blood pressure cuffs because today, we’ll be exploring the land of the absurd as portrayed in various news outlets around the country…

Washington’s Roll Call reported yesterday on a GOP polling effort right here in San Diego County’s 52 Congressional District. It’s well known that incumbent Brian Bilbray’s defeat by Democrat Scott Peters was a bitter pill for Republicans to swallow.

And local GOP leaders have made it perfectly clear that they’ll be back in the game, mounting a serious effort to retake that seat in 2014.

The latest Republican polling effort involved testing voter reaction to ‘new generation Republican’ Carl DeMaio.

INSIDE: Sarah Palin, Ted Cruz, Mark Sanford, GOP Light Bulb Screwing, and the Plague of Student Bombers Who Dance Dirty   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Whoa! Stop that Walmart! UFCW President Calls for ‘Extreme Measures’ in Wake of State Audit

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By Doug Porter

So much news, so little time… Here is today’s roundup.

A fifty eight page report from State Auditor Elaine Howle examining the City of San Diego’s practices regarding permitting for construction projects has raised serious ethical and legal questions about a Walmart location under construction in Sherman Heights.

Community groups opposed to the destruction of the Historic Farmer’s Market building in Sherman Heights were joined by organized labor in protests and lawsuits aimed at halting Walmart. But their complaints fell of deaf ears as city officials claimed all appropriate reviews had been conducted and touted the mega-retailers plans to create jobs in business-friendly San Diego.

Now it’s come out that the City didn’t even issue permits until after construction was underway, even after the lawsuits were filed.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Hell Froze Over: UT-San Diego Endorsed Labor Leader Lorena Gonzalez

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By Doug Porter 

I checked the calendar to make sure it wasn’t April Fools Day this morning after reading an editorial in UT-San Diego endorsing Lorena Gonzalez in the race for the 80th District Assembly seat.

There are, after all, only two Democrats, officially in the race and I fully expected the paper would pass up the opportunity to say anything encouraging about either of them. (There is, I’m told, also a write-in campaign by a Republican.)

Their endorsement was apparently triggered by Gonzalez’s positions on ‘job creation’.  Rather than play into the conservative meme that ‘jobs’ and ‘the environment’ are mutually exclusive propositions, she told them during an extensive interview that policies  respecting both are possible.

As much as I hate to do this, I’m going to agree with the UT-San Diego’s choice of candidates in this race, although for different reasons.  Lorena Gonzalez has done a terrific job of actually ‘leading’ labor in this town into areas way outside their traditional comfort zone.

I don’t know how the UT-SD missed this, but her efforts to get out the vote and involvement with grassroots organizing outside the walls of the Labor Council offices are a major reason why Democrats are an ascendant force in this town.

If she was smart enough to fool them, just think how good she’ll be with those dumbasses up in Sacramento.

INSIDE: Fighting Test to the Test, Junior Seau’s Brain, and the GOP’s Rube Goldberg Immigration plan.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Evading Taxes as a ‘Human Right’ (?!)

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By Doug Porter

Say what? Will these people ever stop with the twisting of words?

Does it say that in the Bible? Is it in the UN Charter? Did the founders include it in the Constitution on orders from Jesus?

Cut me a break, already.

Bloomberg news has a story up detailing how tough things are becoming for gazillionaires who want to hide their money in overseas accounts.  It seems as though many of the world’s safe havens are becoming more transparent in the face of international pressure from countries tired of seeing cashed stashed in places where they can’t tax it. So now, somehow, evading taxes is becoming a human right.

INSIDE: International Workers Memorial Day, Brown Gets Down on Prison Court Orders, Basketball Player Comes Out, Guns and Votes   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Our SNAFU Congress: Stories of Inaction, Reaction and Sperm-Shaped Electric Cars

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By Doug Porter

Our national sausage making factory rises to the top my morning news heap today with a pile of stories that cry out to be told.

We’ll start with the number zero.  That’s how many Republican members of both houses of Congress showed up for a Joint Economic Committee hearing on long term unemployment. And the Democrats didn’t do much better.

Long term unemployment represents a huge economic, social and political challenge. In my opinion, it’s ticking time bomb, ripe for developing into a rich recruitment source for extremists and a rich environment for fomenting ‘lone wolves’ bent on acts of mayhem.  The sense of humiliation by forces outside one’s control is a powerful and very negative motivator.

There were suggestions for policy changes put forwards at these hearings, noted in today’s Wonkblog at the Washington Post. But they all involve some form of government intervention and cash money at a time when the now-disproved mantra of austerity continues to reign supreme in the nation’s capital.

INSIDE: CYA = Clear Your Airports, Issa’s Failed Sperm Car Loan Request, Local Protest on Immigration Policy, and It’s Kumbaya Time for Carl & Bonnie   [Read more…]

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