San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

You are here: Home / Archives for Government

The Starting Line – Keystone XL Pipeline the Focus of Nationwide Protests: Mayor Filner Addresses San Diego Gathering

by

San Diegans joined with protesters in twenty other cities in North American yesterday to express opposition to the Keystone XL Pipeline project, calling upon President Obama to block it and for leaders at all levels to take action in the fight against global warming.

Five hundred people rallied locally in Mission Bay Park, hearing speeches from Dr. Jeffrey Severinghaus, director for the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Climate-Ocean-Atmosphere Program and Mayor Bob Filner.

The Mission Bay rally was part of a nationwide protest, sponsored locally by sandiego350.org, Citizens Climate Lobby, the Sierra Club, the Environmental Health Coalition and Greenpeace.

In Washington DC, an estimated 40,000 people braved below-freezing temperatures to rally at the foot of the Washington monument to protest against the Keystone pipeline.

INSIDE: The Pope’s Retirement, Manchester’s New Hotel, Gormlie’s Old History, and Why We Call Them Teahadists   [Read more…]

Is Big Oil Too Big to Tax in California?

by

Soon our national political discourse will be dominated by the nightmarish sequester debate with the Republicans’ doomsday austerity strategy being countered by the Democrats’ austerity-lite program that draws from the eternal verity of Simpson-Bowles. God help us.

Standing in stark contrast to the reigning austerity-lite crowd inside the Democratic Party is perhaps the brightest progressive hope in the country, Senator Elizabeth Warren. Rather than playing the populist note to bash Republicans and then retreating to safe, chamber of commerce approved positions that put Social Security and Medicare “on the table” like many of her colleagues in the Democratic Party, Warren is consistently taking it to the 1% whenever she can, and she really means it.   [Read more…]

Rick Perry Shows His Love For Corporate Welfare Queens

by

Editor’s Note: Since it seems like our local daily newspaper can’t find enough good things to say about Texas Governor Rick Perry, we thought we’d present the point of view of a Texan who’s living through his reign… 

by Libby Shaw /Daily Kos

 

I did not want my tombstone to read, ‘She kept a really clean house.’ I think I’d like them to remember me by saying, ‘She opened government to everyone.’ Ann Richards.

Ann Richards served as Governor of Texas 1990-1994.  This was a great place to live until Governors Bush and Perry ruined it.

Now that we know the Governor’s political appointees have turned the state’s taxpayer funded cancer prevention institute (CPRIT) into a cash cow for themselves and their cronies in the medical and pharmaceutical fields, state legislators want to take a hard look at two of Rick Perry’s pet projects. This is especially necessary now that CPRIT is under criminal investigation.

These funds would be none other than the Texas Enterprise Fund and the Emerging Technology Fund.  These funds were created as a means by which to attract businesses to the state as well as to advance various technologies here.

But both have been shrouded in secrecy with little oversight or accountability.   [Read more…]

Getting away with murder (part two)

by

By Norma Damashek / NumbersRunner

Some of my friends think I pick on San Diego unfairly.  They ask me, Don’t all cities have a similar quotient of greed, corruption, mediocrity, deceit, and political blowhards as we have in San Diego?
I won’t equivocate.  The answer is… yes.

So why single out our city? Because San Diego is unique in one peculiar respect: we practice an overweening reverence for gentility.  We lionize propriety.  We relish an identity as America’s finest, nicest city.  Some guys might even stretch the description and say we’re pussy-whipped.  But the more orthodox label for our singular compliance is civility.
  [Read more…]

Big Corporations Put Up Seed Funding for Republican Dark Money Group

by

by Justin Elliott /ProPublica

Some of the nation’s biggest corporations donated more than a million dollars to launch a Republican nonprofit that went on to play a key role in recent political fights.

Like the nonprofit groups that poured money into last year’s elections, the decade-old State Government Leadership Foundation has been able to keep the identities of its funders secret. Until now.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Here Comes Strike Three: Tourism Tax Showdown Symbolic of Change in San Diego

by

City Councilman Kevin Falconer called for public hearings yesterday to placate the City’s hotel industry, which is growing increasingly panicky over Mayor Bob Filner’s refusal to release funding generated by a hotel room surcharge of 2 percent to finance the city’s Tourism Authority.

“Jobs”, “Police”, “Potholes” whined Falconer, desperate for a buzzword that would play well in the evening’s TV newscasts.

From this morning’s UT-San Diego:

“Every day that goes by San Diego is losing potential tourism tax revenue that we can use to fill potholes and hire more police officers,” Faulconer said in an interview. “Shutting off those funds will hurt one of our most important industries and cost us jobs. I want to ensure that all of the council and the public know the cost of the mayor’s inaction. There’s no excuse for this inaction.”

No excuse, Kevin? Really?

How about the probability that the two per cent tax funding this program will be declared illegal?

INSIDE: San Onofre Saga Continues, Senator McGrumpy on Hagel and a Headline You Won’t Believe…   [Read more…]

Arctic Methane: A Global Environmental Disaster in the Making

by

By Frank Thomas

In the 1970s, permafrost Arctic sea ice at its lowest point covered about half of the Arctic ocean surface. But it has been on an alarming declining trend over recent decades, now covering at its lowest point 25% of the Arctic ocean surface – or half of its previous area and thickness.

This rapid warming of the Arctic region creates a near term world threat of a major sub-sea methane release that could intensify global warming to irreversible levels along with high fossil fuel C02 emissions.   [Read more…]

PERB Smacks Down Prop B: Pension Reform Initiative Ruling Explained

by

To the surprise of……well, no one, really, Prop B was deemed illegal according to state law by an administrative law judge in a ruling released Tuesday evening, essentially invalidating Prop B.

The City, of course, intends to appeal the ruling.

The crux of the case is this: Proponents of Prop B insist that it was a “citizens initiative,” since it was put on the ballot after a petition drive that gathered over 115,000 signatures to get the measure on the ballot. Therefore it reflects the will of the people and should not be overturned. Opponents of Prop B noted that according to state law workers rights cannot be put to a vote via ballot initiative……in a nutshell.   [Read more…]

PUC Delays Vote on SDG&E’s Proposed Fossil-Fuel Power Plants – Again – and the Sierra Club Is Pissed Off!

by

During a period of time when the nuclear power station at San Onofre has been disabled for a year now, there are renewed calls, according to the U-T, to allow SDG&E to proceed with their plans to build two fossil-fuel power plants. Yet, when the California Public Utilities Commission sat down to vote on the utility’s proposals yesterday, Feb. 13th, they refused to take a vote and instead delayed their decision – again – and this time for the fourth time

The San Diego Chapter of the Sierra Club – who has opposed these plants – is pissed off, and they’re demanding answers – and rightfully so. The Chapter head, Lori Saldana, called it “unacceptable.”   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Obamacare in California = $100 a Month Family Premiums

by

On Wednesday Covered California, our state’s healthcare exchange program created as a result of the passage of the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), announced standardized benefits and costs for health insurance plans it will begin selling next year.

This is huge. One of the most difficult parts of buying any health insurance plan is trying to winnow out exactly what you get for what you pay. It’s a shell game run by insurance companies, with rules that change annually.

INSIDE: One Billion Rising on Valentines Day, All Those in Favor of Violence Against Women Please Stand, A Really Tasteless Tea Party Video, ‘Biggest Climate Rally’ Ever Slated for Sunday   [Read more…]

An Interview with Marjorie Cohn about Targeted Killings

by

By Dennis Bernstein / Flashpoints

DB:  We continue our discussion of the revelations around a memo coming out of the Justice Department that the administration plans to keep up these assassinations and expand the program. 

Joining us to take a legal look at this is Marjorie Cohn, Professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and former President of the National Lawyers Guild.  She is also the editor of “The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, and Abuse.”  Welcome back to Flashpoints, Marjorie.  You say the White Paper runs afoul of international and US law.  Please explain.

MC:  The White Paper allows the government to kill a US citizen who is not on the battlefield, if some high government official who is supposedly informed about the situation thinks that the target is a senior Al Queda leader who poses an imminent threat of a violent attack against the United States.   [Read more…]

A City Heights Response to the State of the Union Address (and the Responses to the State of the Union Address)

by

I crawled groggily out of bed this morning and ambled out to the kitchen. My Beloved turned to me and said “I don’t know how many more State of the Unions I can handle.” Last night we listened to President Obama’s hour long speech, then Republican Savior-in-Training Senator Marco Rubio’s, followed by Congressman Rand Paul’s, as the voice of the Tea Party, which is the other white meat of the Republican party. Afterward, we smoked.

The Designated Survivor One odd little factoid that was revealed during the pre-speech(es) buildup was that Energy Secretary Steven Chu was selected to skip this year’s address.

Because the president, vice president, lawmakers, Cabinet secretaries, Supreme Court justices and members of the military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff are all sitting together in a confined space in the Capitol, one Cabinet member is chosen to skip the speech every year.

The concept of a designated survivor is an interesting one.   [Read more…]

©2010-2017 SanDiegoFreePress.org

Code is Poetry