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The Clear Broth of Actual Reform in San Diego

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Union-Tribune columnist Logan Jenkins has produced an essay warning about the Citizens’ Plan for the Responsible Management of Major Tourism and Entertainment Resources, a proposed June 2016 ballot measure currently in the signature-gathering stage. It’s complicated, he says, begging for a re-write by Ernest Hemmingway

Initiatives, we’re taught as an axiom, are supposed to be clear broth. This one is a bouillabaisse stocked with personal hobbyhorses.

The funny thing is, I don’t remember being taught that axiom. It certainly wasn’t in play when the city’s establishment lined up to back Carl DeMaio’s “solution” to San Diego’s pension problems.   [Read more…]

So a Right Wing Nut Job with a Gun Walks into a Planned Parenthood Office…

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Friday’s shootout at the Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs left three people dead, nine people wounded and right-wingers scrambling to distance themselves from an act of terrorism.

Misogyny, alienation and insanity were likely driving forces behind the actions of the 59-year-old white male who surrendered to police after the five hour seize. From what I’ve been able to ascertain, he had no ties to organized hate groups.

As the media and their sources in law enforcement have proclaimed the dozen or so “lone wolf” attacks in recent years to have been inspired by radical Islam,” it would appear what happened in Colorado Springs was a lone wolf attack inspired by radical right-wing righteousness.   [Read more…]

Happy Thanksgiving from Donald Trump

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Sen Bernie Sanders on Democratic Socialism: Let Us Finish What FDR and MLK Started

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The following are the prepared remarks for a speech given by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) at Georgetown University on Thursday, November 19th, 2015.

In his inaugural remarks in January 1937, in the midst of the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt looked out at the nation and this is what he saw.

He saw tens of millions of its citizens denied the basic necessities of life.

He saw millions of families trying to live on incomes so meager that the pall of family disaster hung over them day by day.

He saw millions denied education, recreation, and the opportunity to better their lot and the lot of their children.

He saw millions lacking the means to buy the products they needed and by their poverty and lack of disposable income denying employment to many other millions.

He saw one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.

And he acted.   [Read more…]

Anti-Muslim Bigotry in San Diego; Trump’s Racist Rampage Continues

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A female Muslim student at San Diego State University was assaulted on campus last week. An unknown male, believed to be a SDSU student, pushed her and pulled her by her hijab while making hate comments and threats based on her religious appearance.

An unidentified pregnant woman, dressed in a traditional Muslim headscarf and pushing her child in a stroller in Mission Valley, was stopped by an unidentified man making racially charged threats. He went so far as to push her stroller back into her.

Those are just the most recent two of the 170 reported threats against Muslims in San Diego this year, according to officials with the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The Muslim Student Association organized a rally at SDSU for today, urging the community at large to come make a statement against Islamophobia.   [Read more…]

Clinton and the New Democrats’ Tired Third Way

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Recently I noted how movements like the Fight for $15 and the insurgent Bernie Sanders campaign have revealed a widespread thirst for an overtly left politics that makes the battle against the billionaire class a central rallying cry. Indeed, Sanders has continued to force Hillary Clinton to tack to the left on multiple issues, and he has had a genuinely transformative impact on the national political discourse by unashamedly bringing democratic socialism to the stage.

This is why Harold Meyerson argues that the Sanders’s campaign represents “the largest specifically left mobilization—and by ‘specifically left’ I mean it demands major changes in the distribution of income and wealth and major reforms to U.S. capitalism—that the nation has seen in at least half a century.”

Last week, Sanders himself defined what such a movement should be based on in a speech in which he defined his version of “Democratic Socialism” by linking his political vision to FDR’s Second Bill of Rights and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s proposition that “true freedom does not occur without economic security”   [Read more…]

Hillary the Hawk

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Hillary Clinton has abandoned the Democratic Party’s foreign policy for her own. She’s left behind the notion that the Middle Eastern conflict could be contained to that region and joined Republicans in their calls to expand our warfare.

“It cannot be contained; it must be defeated,” she recently said.

On November 19, she told The American Council on Foreign Relations, “(t)he United States has been conducting this fight for more than a year; it’s time to begin a new phase and intensify and broaden our efforts … if we press forward on both sides of the border, in the air, on the ground, and as well as diplomatically, I do believe we can crush ISIS’s enclave of terror.”   [Read more…]

Dr. Ben Carson Brings (Terrorist Recruiting) Campaign to San Diego

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Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson was in San Diego yesterday, ostensibly appearing at campaign fundraisers in La Jolla and Rancho Santa Fe.

The big news, however, continues to be Republican cooperation with the idea of spreading fear and loathing outside the Caliphate, as Carson and other candidates have wasted no time in exploiting the Paris attacks as a way to prove who’s “tougher” on terrorism.

In doing so, they’ve fallen right into ISIS’ trap. They might as well open terrorist recruiting offices in major cities.   [Read more…]

The Perils of Circus Politics

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By Robert Reich / Robert Reich Blog

The next president of the United States will confront a virulent jihadist threat, mounting effects of climate change, and an economy becoming ever more unequal.

We’re going to need an especially wise and able leader.

Yet our process for choosing that person is a circus, and several leading candidates are clowns.

How have we come to this?   [Read more…]

Conservatives Cry Wolf About Refugee Terror Threat

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Right-wing politicians in the United States are working overtime to drum up fears about refugees in the wake of last weekend’s terrorism in Paris. Today we’ll look at the coverage of the cowardly lions and the facts which, unsurprisingly, don’t support their case.

Twelve million people have fled their homes in Syria over the past five years. Four million of those displaced have fled the country, coming mostly from what’s left of the once-burgeoning middle class. Half of those leaving the country are children.

At present, the United States is poised to accept 10,000 refugees in the coming year. Since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011, the United States has taken in 1,800 refugees. It is likely some of the refugees well be resettled through San Diego, given the existing infrastructure.
  [Read more…]

Hillary Held Her Own at Dems Debate; Sanders Needs to Step Up His Game

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I guess I have to start out by saying Senator Bernie Sanders is the democratic candidate whose positions align most closely with my own. I will, given the opportunity, cast my vote for him in the California primary.

Having put that disclaimer up first, I’ll go on to say that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won (by not losing) in Saturday’s Democratic Debate. Yes, I know that Sanders won every straw poll out there. I also know that Ron Paul won a lot of straw polls in 2012.

Straw polls don’t replace actual canvassing, social media interest is an unreliable predictor for election results, and the photos of overwhelmingly white male attendees at Sanders watch parties are a big warning flag about vital segments of the electorate that are not engaged with the campaign.   [Read more…]

Just Say No to Highways in SANDAG’s Sales Tax Increase Proposal

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The board of the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG), the county’s regional planning agency, is putting together a proposal for a one-half cent sales tax increase for voter consideration in November 2016. The proposed name for this package is “Keep San Diego Moving Forward,” but it’s also been referred to as the quality of life measure.

Two things need to happen for this sort of scheme to reach the two-thirds voter approval threshold; large numbers of endorsements from governments and groups in the region, and a wish list of projects to draw in voters who would then feel they’re getting some benefit from the additional taxes.

Since SANDAG essentially failed (they agreed to look at it again in the future) to modify its long-term regional planning away from prioritizing auto-centric projects, the subject of more immediate funding for transit and alternative transportation will likely play a significant role in selling this idea.   [Read more…]

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