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Chula Vista City Council Elections: Candidates Tackle Homeless, Housing

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On Sept. 7, 2016, Chula Vista Chamber of Commerce and the Pacific Southwest Association of Realtors hosted a Candidates Forum at Southwestern College. Four candidates — two for District 3 and two for District 4 — debated each other in hopes of gaining your vote for Chula Vista City Council on November 8.

Less than 100 people attended the event.

New Districts For Chula Vista: As the second largest city in San Diego County, Chula Vista has approximately 250,000 residents. The eastern part of the City anticipates an influx of over 60,000 more people within the next two decades, in particular with the coming of a new University and the Millenia Project.   [Read more…]

San Diego 2016 Progressive Voter Guide

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The editors of the San Diego Free Press and OB Rag are pleased to present our 2016 General Election Progressive Voter Guide.

We believe this is a historic election, one that will set the course of the United States for decades to come. If there ever was an election where voting was important — this is it.

The candidacy of Donald Trump is no accident. It is a consequence of decades of building a constituency for a market-driven political economy by capitalizing on fear, bias, and ignorance.

The ballot this year is long and complicated. Not everything is as it seems. Practitioners of deception have deliberately crafted personas and propositions in a manner that trick people into voting against their best interests. There are an equal number of voting decisions to be made on less-than-perfect candidates and causes.

We tried not to let perfect be the enemy of good in our decision making.   [Read more…]

Cleaning Up the City Charter: Measures E thru H

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In the June primary election voters in the City of San Diego were presented with seven ballot measures aimed at what Council President Sherri Lightner called ‘house cleaning’ for the City Charter. All passed.

The November general election has eight more charter amendments for voters. Some of them go beyond housecleaning into the realm of political agendas. Today, I’ll cover four housecleaning measures in one column. In coming days the more controversial ballot items will get some individual attention.

For those of you with short attention spans– Vote Yes on Measures E thru H. There is no known opposition for any of these items. They’re not necessarily perfect, but nothing there rolls back the clock.   [Read more…]

Largest Elementary School District in the State: Chula Vista

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Chula Vista Elementary School District (CVESD) is the state’s largest elementary school district (K-6) and good news: the CVESD outperformed its county and state counterparts in 2016 with 62% of students meeting or exceeding the standards in English. In math CV students scored 49% on average compared to the county’s 44% and the state’s 37%.

However, you’ll still want to be careful. In May 2016, shortly before the election primary, Larry Breitfelder-Navas and consultant Kenneth Moser filed a complaint with the Fair Political Practices Commission saying that three trustees: Eduardo Reyes, Leslie Bunker and Francisco Tamayo made campaign violations connected to reporting donations and spending during the 2014 school board election. Now careful. Breitfelder-Navas only named three Democratic trustees and Breitfelder-Navas is a Republican who ran for Chula Vista City Council in 2012.   [Read more…]

Props 65 & 67 – Revenge of the Plastic Bag Industrial Complex

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The bastard sons of the dirty energy industry are trying to pull a fast one on California voters with Props 65 and 67.

In a perfect world, the people who put together Proposition 65, along with forcing us to vote to uphold a legislatively passed ban (Prop 67) on the crappy plastic bags handed out by retail stores, would be tried for crimes against the planet. If found guilty they would be sentenced to picking up cigarette butts on beaches in Libya for a term of no less than two years, wearing tee shirts emblazoned with We Love Imperialism on the back.

What Proposition 65 is all about is revenge. The plastic bag industry and the oil companies who sell them raw materials want to have it both ways. If they’re gonna lose the vote to ban plastic bags, then maybe they can fool voters with a measure promising to do something good for the environment.   [Read more…]

Prop 64 – Just Legalize Marijuana, Already

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California, Arizona, Nevada, Maine, and Massachusetts will be voting on legalizing the recreational use of marijuana this fall.

Some people, including many pro-legalization advocates, think this is about easing another legal intoxicant into society. It’s not. It’s about undoing a prohibition based on ‘scientific racism.’ It’s about a ‘war on drugs’ that served as a gateway towards militarization of law enforcement and eroded the constitutional rights of all Americans.

Legalizing pot won’t undo those things. In case you haven’t noticed, government and society rarely move backward. But legalization does provide a path moving forward that makes a lot more sense than the failed policies proceeding it.   [Read more…]

The Second Debate: A Cornered Rat Turns Vicious

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If you just watched the debate portion of yesterday’s political drama, you missed Donald Trump sitting at a press conference with four women with Clinton issues he’d flown to St. Louis.

Three of the women claimed somebody who wasn’t on the ticket sexually abused them in some manner. One of the women was raped by a man who a young lawyer named Hillary Clinton was assigned to defend in court.

The Trump campaign’s plan, according to today’s Washington Post, was to place the four women in the Clinton family seating area and have them confront the former president on live television at some point in the evening.

The plan was foiled just moments before the debate was supposed to start when Frank J. Fahrenkopf, the debate commission’s co-chairman and a former Republican National Committee chairman, caught wind of the plot and warned the campaign that he’d have security personnel remove the women if this was attempted.   [Read more…]

Vote No on Measures A and B for a Sustainable Future for San Diego

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Much of the reporting on the early campaign surrounding Measure A is falling victim to the proponents’ attempts to greenwash their deeply flawed measure by representing a few astroturf “environmental” organizations in league with big money from corporate interests and a handful of unions doing the bidding of downtown insiders as a “split” in progressive circles. This is unfortunate as the fact of the matter is that the opposition to Measure A by the Quality of Life Coalition represents a historically significant new alliance between progressive labor and nearly all of the local environmental organizations doing serious work around climate.

Two weeks ago in this space I was pleased to co-sign a column as Chair of the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council Environmental Caucus along with Nicole Capretz, the Executive Director of the Climate Action Campaign, and Nick Segura, Business Manager of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 569, explaining why progressives should say No Way to Measure A. In that same spirit, this week I am happy to cede my usual spot to Jana Clark, a board member of both the Cleveland National Forest Foundation and Save Our Forest and Ranchlands to explain why both Measures A and B are bad for San Diego.   [Read more…]

Prop 63 – Ammopalousa, GunGhazi and Second Amendmenting

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This measure is Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s baby. Prop 63 requires a background check to purchase ammo, bans possession of large capacity ammo clips, sets up a way to remove guns from felons, and requires reporting of stolen firearms/ammo.

This is all good stuff and there no denying it’s part of Newsom’s image building in the lead up to the 2018 gubernatorial contest.

Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) also has political ambitions. He’s been feuding with Newsom over who is the true leader on gun control, In July, the legislature approved bills requiring background checks for ammunition purchasers and outlaw magazines that hold more than 10 bullets.   [Read more…]

Props 62 & 66 – Nay or Yea on the Death Penalty

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An eye-for-eye and tooth-for-tooth would lead to a world of the blind and toothless.–Book of Exodus [21:24]

Both points of view regarding the death penalty managed to get a measure on the November ballot.

Prop 62 will eliminate the death penalty. Prop 66 will streamline the process of executing people. If both pass, the measure with the most votes will supersede the other.

In a perfect world, there could be a discussion about the advisability of government sanctioned executions involving actual facts and figures. We won’t see much of that sort of thing this fall.   [Read more…]

Chula Vista’s Sales Tax Increase: It Actually Might Be a Good Idea

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Way back in February 2016 I attended a meeting of the GMOC, where a city employee said Chula Vista needs $600 million for infrastructure repairs. To address the crisis, the city considered either a half-cent sales tax hike that would bring $16 million per year, or a $200 million bond. Both would fall short of actual needs.

Bond money would come from property taxes. The half-cent sales tax would be paid at the time of the sale of goods and would not apply to certain items, such as groceries and prescription medicines. According to a survey conducted in English and Spanish, with about 880 participants, more residents supported the sales tax measure.

Thus, on our November 2016 ballot, Chula Vistans will have Measure P.   [Read more…]

Prop 61 – Big Pharma Promises Revenge If It Passes

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Proposition 61 seems pretty straightforward. The price paid for prescription drugs in California state health care programs must be equal to or lower than what is paid by the Veterans Administration.

Sadly, it isn’t that simple. There’s $101 million (and counting) being spent on this measure, which only directly affects 12% of Californians.

When I saw the words “badly flawed” in ads against Prop 61, I reflexively assumed the bad guys of Big Pharma were desperate to confuse the public… But…   [Read more…]

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