San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

You are here: Home / Archives for Government

U.S. Prisoners: Why They Strike and Why It Matters

by

By John M. Webb / Daily Kos

Amid all of the news about Cohen and Manafort this week, an important story is going under-reported. While it may be tempting to escape into some schadenfreude about our president’s little circle of criminal cronies, prison is no laughing matter. It is a dangerous place where we are literally throwing away our fellow human being beings. Tuesday was the beginning of a massive prisoners strike to protest the conditions in which they live and work.

Men and women incarcerated in prisons across the nation declare a nationwide strike in response to the riot in Lee Correctional  Institution,  a maximum security prison in South  Carolina.  Seven comrades lost their lives during a senseless uprising that could have been avoided had the prison not been so overcrowded from the greed wrought by mass incarceration, and a lack of respect for human life that is embedded in our nation’s penal ideology. These men and women are demanding humane living conditions,  access to rehabilitation, sentencing reform and the end of modern day slavery.   [Read more…]

‘Brown’s Last Chance’ Could Be Our Last Chance To Avert Climate Change Apocalypse

by

Brown’s Last Chance is a campaign demanding Governor Jerry Brown halt the development of unsustainable, polluting, fossil fuel infrastructure and begin an immediate phase-out of fossil fuels in California. If he’s unwilling to do so, a multitude of organizations (environmental, health, justice, community, consumer) are prepared to protest the upcoming Global Climate Action Summit.

This climate summit, held in San Francisco next month from September 12 to 14, was the brainchild of Gov. Brown. It was conceived of in response to President Trump withdrawing the United States from the international Paris Climate Accord. World leaders will be in attendance to continue the work of past international climate conferences to mitigate climate change. There will be numerous affiliate marches and rallies around the world (including San Diego’s Rise For Climate March) to demand a transformation to clean energy and real action on climate change.   [Read more…]

Today is the Anniversary of Nixon’s Confidential Enemies List Memorandum | Video Worth Watching

by

On this date, August 16th, in 1971, John Dean drafted a confidential memo that essentially outlined the structure of what is now popularly referred to as Nixon’s Enemies List. Rachel Maddow shows us the gory details from a copy of the original memorandum and notes that unlike the current administration’s very public retaliations against its perceived enemies, the Nixon administration believed it was necessary for this behavior to remain behind-the-scenes and covert. How times have changed!   [Read more…]

Convention Center, County Voting Initiatives Bode Poorly for Local GOP Leaders

by

Last week was a rough week for the status quo in San Diego. The (mostly) unspoken private-public partnership between land developers and local elected officials couldn’t get it done. Not once, but twice.

A faux ‘citizens initiative’ run by hoteliers, and assorted Mayoral toadies won’t be on the November ballot. Visions of economic growth centered on convention center expansion ended amid finger pointing and raised middle fingers. Grift, incompetence and a failure to understand public weariness with past promises of economic benefits trickling down from the schemes of the rich and famous all played in role in the effort’s spectacular failure.

The days of San Diego County being a Republican enclave may be numbered. A Board of Supervisors’ attempt to deep-six a union-sponsored voting measure made its way back onto the November ballot, thanks to a judge’s ruling affirming that the 100,000+ people who’d signed petitions didn’t do so with the intention of fostering yet another pointless study.
  [Read more…]

Why Homeless Advocates Opposed the Convention Center Ballot Measure | Video Worth Watching

by

John Brady speaks before the City Council, August 9, 2018 to explain why Homelesness activists oppose the Convention Center Ballot Measure.   [Read more…]

SB 964 Will Require Largest U.S. Pensions to Report on Climate Risk

by

By Laura Sisk-Hackworth / SanDiego350

A landmark bill in the California legislature, SB 964, defines climate-related financial risk in law for the first time and requires the boards of the two largest public pension funds in the nation to report on this risk every three years. The importance of this bill is that it gives the public a way to respond to the boards’ consideration of climate risk and its investments in key industries. It also protects state employees and our economy from potentially devastating financial losses that could result from climate change.   [Read more…]

An Open Letter to the New FAA Administrator: Mr. Dan Elwell

by

Editor’s Note: North County residents want some honest answers about the County of San Diego’s desire to expand McClellan-Palomar [CRQ] Airport (Palomar) by extending its sole 4900-foot runway to 5700-feet and moving it north about 100 feet. They suspect the county has been playing fast and loose with Federal Aviation Administration regulations and can’t get answers from the federal government.

Dear Mr. Elwell:

Congratulations on your appointment as the new Acting FAA Administrator. Your history as a U.S. Air Force Academy graduate; as a long-term American Airlines pilot; and your FAA prior positions involving safety and the environment all suggest that you have the credentials to right the FAA’s sinking ship.  Thank you also for your service in Operation Desert Storm.

We write because we believe the FAA Western Pacific Region (WPR) Office does not comply in good faith with the FAA February 2016 Community Involvement Policy.   [Read more…]

The American Sequel to Nazi Germany is Coming Along Just Fine | Dear Ohio, Part 8

by

Dear Ohio,

Things are starting to fall into place. Not in the way many of us hoped, but in a way that looks more and more like pre-World War II Germany.

Since the dawn of Hollywood movies, we Americans have been pretty good at re-creating any era we choose, dressing our sets, painting our backdrops, sewing our costumes. When the movie is finished, viewers can immerse themselves in a new reality, traveling back in time, or forward into the future, then exiting after things are resolved. How many times, for example, have moviegoers felt the terror of the Nazi regime, easing it with popcorn, soda, and a quiet walk to the parking lot while checking our phones?   [Read more…]

“Earth Will Be Annihilated”: On 73rd Anniversary of Hiroshima Bombing, a Warning Against Nuclear War | Video Worth Watching

by

From the Democracy Now! YouTube page:

[Monday marked] the 73rd anniversary of the United States’ atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, which killed 140,000 people and seriously injured another 100,000. In remembrance, we turn to the words of a Hiroshima survivor, or hibakusha. Koji Hosokawa was 17 years old when the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. His 13-year-old sister Yoko died in the bombing. He gave us a tour of the city when Democracy Now! was in Japan in 2014. He spoke to us near the A-Bomb Dome in Hiroshima, one of the few structures in the city that survived the atomic blast.

  [Read more…]

San Diego’s Deplorables: Jerry Sanders & Carl DeMaio Want to Sell ‘Son of B’ to Voters

by

Not all deplorables are running for office. Today’s politicos covered in this column are not on the ballot this fall, but their influence has shaped local politics over the past decade. They’re really excited about an upcoming opportunity to sell the public on a rehashed version of what they call pension reform.

Faced with the prospect of burning, looting, and potholes, San Diego voters overwhelming approved Proposition B in 2012. This flavor of ‘pension reform’ was sold as the only possible solution to the city’s budget crisis. It was ‘vote for this, or your city will fail.’

The measure switched all new city hires, except police, from pensions to 401(k)-style individual investment plans. It hasn’t been a financial solution for the city’s money problems as much as it has changed the employee-employer relationship.   [Read more…]

Hibakusha and Hope in the Nuclear Age

by

The threat continues to this day fueled by a new nuclear arms race initiated by the United States proposal to spend upwards of $1.7 trillion over the next 30 years to rebuild our entire nuclear arsenal

By Robert Dodge / Common Dreams

This week marks 73 years since the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, ultimately resulting in the deaths of more than 200,000 people. With the dawn of the nuclear age, the term “hibakusha” formally entered our lexicon. Atomic bomb survivors are referred to in Japanese as hibakusha, which translates literally as “bomb-affected-people”.  The bombings and aftermath changed the world forever and threaten the very future of mankind to this day.

According to the Atomic Bomb Survivors Relief Law, there are three hibakusha categories. These include people exposed directly to the bomb and its immediate aftermath, those people exposed within a 2 kilometer radius who entered the sphere of destruction within two weeks of the explosion and people exposed to radioactive fallout generally from assisting victims and handling bodies, and those exposed in utero, whose mothers were pregnant and belonging to any of these defined categories.
  [Read more…]

Destroying Public Education With Vouchers and Charters in Wisconsin

by

This past school year, Wisconsin taxpayers sent $250,000,000 to religious schools. Catholics received the largest slice, but protestants, evangelicals and Jews got their cuts. Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction (DPI) reveals that private Islamic schools took in $6,350,000. Of the 212 schools collecting voucher money, 197 were religious schools.

The Wisconsin voucher program was expanded before the 2014-2015 school year. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported, “Seventy-five percent of eligible students who applied for taxpayer-funded subsidies to attend private and religious schools this fall in the statewide voucher program already attend private schools ….”

Money taken from the public schools attended by the vast majority of Milwaukee’s students is sent to private religious schools. Public schools must adjust for stranded costs while paying to serve a higher percentage of special education students because private schools won’t take them. Forcing public schools to increase class sizes, reduce offerings such as music and lay off staff.   [Read more…]

©2010-2017 SanDiegoFreePress.org

Code is Poetry