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Part Two: President Obama & the Gang of Eight’s ‘Comprehensive Immigration Reform’

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A Chicano Historical Analysis: Immigration or Labor?

By Herman Baca, President, Committee on Chicano Rights

Employer Sanctions 

Sanctions against employers historically have always been a farce for the simple reason that, U.S. employers unlike Mexican undocumented workers have massive amounts of money and political power!

Proof of the above is documented with the 1951 President’s Commission on Migratory Labor that first recommended reducing the number of “wetbacks” with employer sanctions, and fines on employers who knowingly hired illegal workers.

However, in 1952 when the Immigration and Nationality Act was enacted making the harboring of illegal aliens a felony, punishable by a $2,000 fine and a prison term of five years; the law also included the Texas proviso, which asserted that employing an illegal alien, was not harboring!

Thus, there were no penalties on US employers.   [Read more…]

Convention Center Ruling Reinforces Private Tax Scheme

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Props 13 and 218 necessitate convoluted scheme to effectively privatize public assets

The privatization of public resources took another step toward reality yesterday, although in this particular case it may not be a terrible thing. In a tentative ruling, Judge Ronald Prager determined that the unusual taxation method being used to finance the $520 million expansion of the San Diego Convention Center is perfectly legal, giving the project the green light.

The San Diego hotel interests and the City Council decided that they wanted the expansion project to happen, and they didn’t think they could get the 2/3 vote of the public in order to raise the TOT (a logic that might also be applied to the TMD, but more on that in another post). Instead, they used a provision in Prop 218 that allows local property owners to choose to tax themselves without a public vote.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Welcome to Paul Ryan’s Budget Nightmare

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Congressman Paul Ryan’s blueprint for the Republican Party budget, rolled out for all to see this morning, presents a sweeping view of the future. (Here’s your copy.) In 10 years, the budget deficit will have disappeared. The progressive income tax structure will be replaced by a two tiered system. Obamacare will be gone.

It will be a dream come true if you happen to be wealthy.

INSIDE: Let the Poors Eat at Burger King, Some Taxes are More Equal Than Others, Gosh, I Wonder Why Trolley Ridership is Down?   [Read more…]

Judge Tentatively Rules in Favor of Convention Center Expansion Project

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San Diego Convention Center Expansion Project back on schedule to begin construction in 2014, with 2017 completion date.

In a ruling issued today, judge Ronald Prager ruled that the funding mechanism for the Convention Center Facilities District that was set up to fund the $520 million Convention Center expansion project is legal and the project can proceed as planned.

At issue was whether the hoteliers could legally vote to essentially raise taxes that they charge on hotel guests outside of the city’s existing transient occupancy tax, which currently sits at 10.5%. Two separate attempts in 2004 to raise the TOT both failed, despite the 2004 measure earning nearly 62% approval of the voters. State law at the time required that any measure proposing to raise taxes of any kind required the approval of a full two-thirds of the voters in order to become law. The second ballot measure in November 2004 earned over 58% approval of the voters.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – North County SPRINTER Transit Troubles Stem from Lack of Outsourcing Oversight

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The SPRINTER transit line serving commuters between Escondido and Oceanside has suspended service for at least two months, effective last Friday, due to problems with the braking systems. Accelerated wear patterns on brake rotors were discovered during an inspection last week by officials with the California Public Utilities Commission.

Nearly eight thousand users of the North County rail system will be re-routed to express bus services until repairs can be made. (UPDATED) The North County Transit District outsourced many services with this system, starting from day one in 2008. A restructuring in 2010 moved bus operations to private contractors.

Maintenance and operations of SPRINTER vehicles was handed over to Veolia Transportation, which sub-contracted the work out to Bombardier Transportation. A spokesman for the Transit District told KPBS the companies under contract failed to report the issue of the non-compliant brake rotors to North County staff.

A recent KPBS report by i-newsource raised questions about the oversight of outsourced contracts at the agency for security. Now it would appear that maintenance contracts also need to be reviewed for oversight considerations.   [Read more…]

Obama’s End Game: Not With A Bang But a Neoliberal Whimper?

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Well after all the bluster coming from the Democratic camp about President Obama’s “upper hand” leading into the sequester showdown, it turns out he had no game at all.  The result: score another one for the Tea Party who got to take a hatchet to government spending and hold the line on taxes.  As I wrote after the “Fiscal Cliff” showdown:

Grover Norquist is happy.  After the fiscal cliff deal was passed in the House, he pointed out that Obama blinked on his $250,000 line in the sand on taxes and that, by locking in the Bush tax cuts for 98% of Americans, the Democrats’ ability to defend the legacy of the New Deal has been greatly diminished.  He’s right.

And now Grover and company are even happier as the Republicans just said no to more taxes and let the ax fall indiscriminately on government spending.  The “liberal media” may think badly of them and their national approval rating may be in the toilet but they simply don’t give a rat’s ass because they are winning nonetheless.

But fear not progressives, Obama is desperately courting Republicans outside of the party’s leadership in hopes of doing an end run to get to a “grand bargain” that will give us the manna from heaven that is austerity lite.   [Read more…]

Part One: President Obama & the Gang of Eight’s ‘Comprehensive Immigration Reform’

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A Chicano Historical Analysis: Immigration or Labor?

By Herman Baca, President, Committee on Chicano Rights

President Barack Obama, along with the “gang of 8,” 4 Democrats; Sens. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and 4 Republican; Sens. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Tea Party favor Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) recently called for bi-partisan, “comprehensive immigration reform.”

The call brought back vivid memories of labor, political and civil rights organizer, Humberto “Bert” Corona.

Corona, while unknown too many in the US, struggled to improve the conditions of persons of Mexican ancestry and undocumented immigrants in the US from the 1930’s until his death in 2001. He is recognized by many in the Chicano community as being both the father of the Chicano and Immigration movements.   [Read more…]

Health Insurance Scams Leave People High and Dry

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 Goldman Sachs, Blackstone Group make hundred of millions selling useless mini-med policies

Part Two of a series on the Business of Health

In Part 1 we told about how hospitals have a huge computer file called a Chargemaster that details prices for every possible item a hospital can charge for. These prices don’t have anything to do with reality because in fact there is no market for health care services.

In a truly capitalist economy there would be a competitive market by means of which people could check prices and choose the service that’s the most reasonable in terms of price and other factors. It’s called price discovery.

Hospital charges represent a dark market just like over the counter derivatives because it’s next to impossible to get hospitals to reveal their prices for any of their services. According to an extensive article in Time, the author was given the brushoff and even told it was illegal every time he tried to get pricing information. Therefore, the Chargemaster details prices that are sky high and out of sight compared to the paying abilities of most Americans.

In Part 2 we will cover the plight of many folks who thought they had sufficient health insurance coverage only to be told that their insurance policies were useless and they would be required to pay cash upfront if they wanted to access hospital services.
  [Read more…]

In America We Have the Power to Change (Thoughts of Freedom)

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Freedom. What a concept, huh? One of the sweetest words in the world’s vocabulary.

I learned a long time ago that the pursuit of freedom will make one do almost anything. Sometimes in the spur of a moment. I used to love to hear my maternal grandfather tell about how he woke up one day on a sharecropper’s plot of land in Hawkinsville, Georgia, thinking to himself, “God, I don’t know what all is out there in this world but I just know You created something better than this.”

At about the same time “big boss man” came riding up on his horse rallying what were supposed to be “free men” to the fields, “yelling and spitting tobacco every which-a-away” my grandfather would say and the next thing he knew he had snatched the man off his horse, gave him the ass-kicking of his life and then ran for that very life until he reached the Gulf of Mexico – to what, he didn’t know. He just knew he had to be free.

I thought of him a little while back at a forum at the Malcolm X Library that featured four of a group of people who stand tall in my mind and soul: The Freedom Riders.   [Read more…]

Mayor Filner: Is it heartburn or the stirrings of true love?

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What you always wanted to know…

By Norma Damashek

One time or another we’ve all experienced that unsettled, mid-gut sensation.  Strangely, it always feels the same — whether the cause is dread, pleasurable anticipation, or a pesky upset stomach.

Yes, Bob Filner is giving a lot of San Diego greybeards a bad case of heartburn. How? by prying open the locked jaws of powerful land developers, tourism profiteers, and respected enablers (bankers, law firms, judges, consultants, radio/TV/news purveyors) whose business has traditionally been to keep the reigning power structure intact and thriving. He’s forced them to swallow a new style of home-town brew and it’s not to their liking.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Fake Video About San Diego ACORN Yields $100,000 Settlement; Wingnuts Continue Defamation

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You’d think the right wingers would give it a rest. But the myth of the evil-doers at ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) continues to live.

Four separate investigations by various state and city Attorneys General and the GAO released in 2009/2010 cleared ACORN of any illegal activities. Law enforcement officials found its employees had not engaged in criminal activities and that the organization had managed its federal funding appropriately.  Videos purporting to show illegal activities were found to have been deceptively and selectively edited to present the workers in the worst possible light.

So it’s with some small satisfaction that former members of that group were in a celebratory mood yesterday after court documents were released revealing that James O’Keefe, the conservative activist whose hidden-camera stings were at the center of the controversy, agreed to pay $100,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by a former employee of ACORN.

INSIDE: North Park Water Tower, District 4 Dirt, Balboa Park Redux, Digging in South LA   [Read more…]

Where’s Planning in San Diego? Moving Beyond Process and Delivering Results

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By Beryl Forman

Once San Diego fulfilled its quest of becoming a sprawled out metropolis, narrow minded city officials questioned the purpose of future planning. To some, development is equivalent to planning, so with no more available land to build, the value of planning was in question. Aside from accepting that our county had become a sprawling mess, good planners would argue that the objective of contemporary urban planning is to ‘Return to the Center”, to improve the life and environment our city’s dense urban neighborhoods. With a new found interest in urban living, San Diego’s city leaders and urban planners alike are proudly re-examining the purpose of planning.

To expand on this subject, panelists Bill Anderson, former director of Planning for the City of San Diego, along with Mike Stepner, former city architect, and Howard Blackson, local urban designer seen at the forefront our city’s urban issues, spoke at February’s C3 (Citizens Coordinate for Century 3) breakfast dialogue.   [Read more…]

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