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San Diego City Council Endorses Resolution to Reverse Citizens United – How a Grassroots Group Defeated the Odds

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By Money Out of Politics -San Diego – Special to the SDFP

On Tuesday, the San Diego City Council overwhelmingly endorsed a resolution to reverse Citizens United, the Supreme Court ruling that in 2010 allowed unrestricted political spending by corporations and unions.

The resolution was supported 8-0, as San Diego joins 350 cities and 12 states that have endorsed resolutions. This victory comes as a result of the hard work of a multitude of people and organizations, at the local forefront of which was Money Out of Politics/San Diego (MOP).

MOP is a local activist group that was initially born a year ago this month out of a Women Occupy San Diego meeting. The brainchild of Dianne Lane, MOP was joined by Pam Page, who, alongside Lane, has dedicated countless hours to the cause.   [Read more…]

Cliff Notes on the Three Real Perils Ahead

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by Robert Reich

The “fiscal cliff” is a a metaphor for a government that no longer responds to the biggest challenges we face because it’s paralyzed by intransigent Republicans, obsessed by the federal budget deficit, and overwhelmed by big money from corporations, Wall Street, and billionaires.

If we had a functional government America would address three “cliffs” posing far larger dangers to us than the fiscal one:

The child poverty cliff.

Between 2007 and 2011, the percentage of American school-age children living in poor households grew from 17 to 21%. Last year, according to the Agriculture Department, nearly 1 in 4 young children lived in a family that had difficulty affording sufficient food at some point in the year.

Yet federal programs to help children and lower-income families – food stamps, aid for poor school districts, Pell grants, child health care, child nutrition, pre- and post-natal care, and Medicaid – are being targeted by the Republican right. Over 60 percent of the cuts in the GOP’s most recent budget came out of these programs.

Even if these programs are preserved, they don’t go nearly far enough. But the Obama Administration doesn’t talk about reducing poverty in America. It talks only about preserving the middle class.   [Read more…]

From Redevelopment to Civic San Diego Economic Development: A New Name and the Same Old Game?

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Recently elected Mayor Bob Filner’s inaugural day assertion that “neighborhoods are the heart and soul of the city” was music to my City Heights ears. A great deal of resources need to be invested in neighborhoods and new community based voices need to play a pivotal role in defining those investments. This process can’t be business as usual.

I was still doing an inauguration day happy dance in my chair when I opened an email from City Heights Planning Area Committee resident board member Jim Varnadore. I was jarred from my happy place by its message that entrenched interests and ways of doing things do not disappear with a new mayor.   [Read more…]

Filner Cites FDR on Anti-Poverty Pledge: “I agree with you, now make me do it.”

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Challenged by a local activist at the District 4 inaugural party on Monday night to make fighting poverty a priority in his administration, newly elected Mayor Bob Filner responded by quoting President Franklin Roosevelt’s rejoinder to activists in the early days of the New Deal: “I agree with you, now make me do it.”

And that’s exactly what the Center for Policy Initiatives (CPI) is doing. They’ve launched a letter writing campaign seeking to gather 500 letters over the next week urging the Mayor to make poverty a priority in San Diego.

  [Read more…]

California Gasoline Prices go Haywire, May Have Been Subject to Collusion

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Data suggests that price spikes in May and October may have been the result of market manipulation and not supply shortages.

Back in 2000-2001, California—and San Diego in particular—fell victim to the price fixing schemes of a virtually unregulated electricity market. Back then the state became the center of the nation’s attention when the state’s electricity markets went absolutely kablooey (that’s a technical term). Electricity providers SDG&E, PG&E, and Southern California Edison were forced to sell off their production facilities as a part of then governor Pete Wilson’s grand deregulation experiment, in which San Diego was the guinea pig. The new owners of the generating plants smelled opportunity, and they took full advantage of it, creating a market-manipulation free-for-all that spiked prices and created huge profits for the companies who generated electricity.

  [Read more…]

Fun and Gloating at Bob Filner’s Inauguration

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When we awoke this morning – for the first time in history – Bob Filner is the mayor of San Diego, the eighth largest city in America. Yesterday, Monday, December 3rd, was his official inauguration. (Please see Annie Lane’s wonderful photo spread of the event.)

Representing progressive media in town, I accompanied my good friend Doug Porter to the Balboa Club in Balboa Park to be witnesses to this historic event. Filner is only the second Democratic mayor in the last forty years in this town – and decidedly it’s most liberal. And Filner wasn’t the only politician being inaugurated, as there was an entire shelf of them waiting around when we arrived at the Balboa Club – all those veterans who had been elected, selected and rejected by the voters were going to be there.

  [Read more…]

SuperStorm Sandy Aftermath: Power Companies Unnecessarily Immiserated Millions

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Weeks after Hurricane Sandy struck, millions of people were still without electricity. At its peak Sandy left 8.5 million without power. A lot of people were angry. Why did it take so long to get the power back on even with crews coming from as far away as San Diego? One power company in New Jersey came in for a lot of criticism – Jersey Central Power and Light (JCP&L)- owned by First Energy based in Ohio.
Although we San Diegans have blessedly been spared from the ravages of hurricanes, tornadoes and other weather disasters, we are still at the mercies of aging utilities much in need of repair and upgrading. In particular, our local power and light company, San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E) has been neglecting maintenance and upgrading similar to what JCP&L did prior to the devastation of Hurricane Sandy.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – A Day to Celebrate: Filner in as Mayor, Xolos in as Champs

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It’s a day for underdogs to celebrate. After three decades of Republican rule, Bob Filner’s ascension into San Diego’s top spot marks the start of a new era in San Diego politics. At long last our city’s neighborhoods, long considered a red headed step-child in terms of urban planning and economic development will be given the opportunity to have their needs and desires given a fair shake. We hope, anyway.

Meanwhile, in the “missing half” of our metropolis, more than 100,000 residents of Tijuana took to the streets in neighborhoods throughout that city to celebrate victory for Club Tijuana Xoloitzcuintles de Caliente as that team emerged as champions in Mexico’s highest level of soccer.

The nay-sayers are already jumping on both these stories.   [Read more…]

Beyond the “Conservative Entertainment Complex”

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In the weeks following the election, David Frum made waves by explaining the shock in conservative circles over Romney’s loss with a bit of interesting media criticism: “Republicans have been fleeced and exploited and lied to by a conservative entertainment complex.”

Of course, those of us with a historical memory longer than five minutes found it amusing to hear this from Frum, the author of George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil” speech. Indeed, Frum was one of the central ideologues promulgating lies aboutIraqand demonizing dissent as unpatriotic. I guess it takes one to know one.

Still, despite the bitter irony of Frum playing the role of truth-teller, he is on to something.   [Read more…]

Shame on US – Palestine’s First Step to Statehood and Liberation (but where were we?)

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Watching the television last week, I came close to tears several times. Seeing the victims of Israel’s indiscriminate bombing in Gaza was almost too much to watch. But watch I did. Not as some ghoulish entertainment. No, I watched as a witness. I watched just as my parents before me watched the horrific images of the death camps, evidence of the Nazi genocide of Jews, the disabled, gypsies and homosexuals some 67 years ago. And just as my parents will never deny the atrocities of Nazi Germany, I will never deny the same by the Israeli government.

I do not pretend to completely understand the 5000 year history of Mideast. To characterize it as complex is such a vast understatement, it is disingenuous. I do know from world history classes, biblical study (both Jewish and Christian), wading into the Holy Qur’an and just reading a newspaper over the past fifty some odd years, it is a region which has been locked in constant turmoil.   [Read more…]

Marijuana Decriminalization Drops Youth Crime Rates by Stunning 20% in One Year

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The Center for Public Integrity / By Susan Ferriss

Arresting and putting low-level juvenile offenders into the criminal-justice system pulls many kids deeper into trouble rather than turning them around.

 

Marijuana — it’s one of the primary reasons why California experienced a stunning 20 percent drop in juvenile arrests in just one year, between 2010 and 2011, according to provocative new research.

The San Francisco-based Center on Juvenile & Criminal Justice (CJCJ) recently released a policy briefing with an analysis of arrest data collected by the California Department of Justice’s Criminal Justice Statistics Center. The briefing, “California Youth Crime Plunges to All-Time Low,” identifies a new state marijuana decriminalization law that applies to juveniles, not just adults, as the driving force behind the  plummeting arrest totals.

After the new pot law went into effect in January 2011, simple marijuana possession arrests of California juveniles fell from 14,991 in 2010 to 5,831 in 2011, a 61 percent difference, the report by CJCJ senior research fellow Mike Males found.   [Read more…]

‘Crisis Pregnancy Center’ that Made Couples Study the Bible Now Suing for Taxpayer Dollars

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By Sarah Seltzer / AlterNet / Nov. 30, 2012

Crisis Pregnancy Centers are problematic on many levels: they often engage in deceptive practices, setting up shop near abortion providers to confuse women, handing out medically inaccurate information and sometimes even coercing patients.

Many are Christian conversion clearinghouses in disguise , as well.

One such “Christ-centered ministry” in Vermont, part of a national umbrella network of Christian CPCs, got rejected for a federal loan for a variety. Now they are suing the U.S. Department of Agriculture.   [Read more…]

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