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Sherri Lightner Seeks to Retain Her City Council Seat

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The lone remaining City Council race stands to determine the balance of power in San Diego’s City Hall.

The lone remaining undecided city council race is in District 1, where incumbent Democrat Sherri Lightner finished a close second to Republican challenger Ray Ellis. Which is surprising, and then again not surprising, since of the four contestants in the race, three of them were Democrats.

It’s an important race, however, one that could very well determine the future direction of the City of San Diego. It will determine the balance of power between Democrats and Republicans on the City Council, which is currently split evenly between the two parties, giving one party a distinct edge in which policies get adopted. And although the city council and mayoral race is officially non-partisan, in this election year they have been anything but. It’s a distinction that takes on even more significance should Carl DeMaio defeat Bob Filner in the mayor’s race.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – San Diego Zoo Expansion Plan: Make 61% of Balboa Park’s Parking Paid

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Now that (it appears) plans for construction of a paid parking garage adjacent to the Plaza de Panama are moving forward, the San Diego Zoo has dusted off an eight year old project involving construction of a fee based 4800 space underground garage and will eliminating the free 2500 space surface lot currently in use.

The announcement for the latest proposal came via a very carefully controlled roll out with members of the Balboa Park conservancy and the UT-San Diego editorial board being given a ‘first look’ at the revived plan. Today’s newspaper features a front page article putting a positive spin on the Zoo’s parking scheme, stressing an alleged paucity of parking in Balboa Park. It will be very interesting to see if any opposition develops.

INSIDE: Fletcher Blesses Prop Z, Undecided Voters Who Have Already Voted, Adios NC Times, Munger Pulls Negative Ads

  [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Bain Owned Plant Drops US Flag as US Workers Forced to Train Chinese Replacements

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Presidential candidate Mitt Romney loves to berate the Chinese on the campaign trail. He portrays himself as the candidate that will stop Beijing from “cheating” that will stem the flow of jobs being exported to Asia from the United States. Yet an Illinois company that he has large investments in is forcing soon to be laid off workers to train their Chinese replacements even as Romney continues to claim that his programs will revive the economy and create jobs.

To make matters worse, the U.S. flag that has always flown in front of the company’s Freeport , Ill. headquarters was removed just as the Chinese trainees arrived. The facility, which is non-unionized, employees 170 people.

Workers at the Sensata Technologies plant set up camp in an adjacent fairground over a month ago, hoping to draw more attention to their cause. About a dozen people have been there round the clock even as temperatures outside have rapidly declined. The encampment is a nod to both the “Hoovervilles” of unemployed workers that sprung up during the Great Depression and the Occupy Wall Street movement.   [Read more…]

Colonizing Greece: A European Union Strategy?

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Commentary and photographs by Jim Bliesner, SDFP Correspondent reporting from Greece

Skopelos, Greece. Oct. 14, 2012. Greece as a civilization is over 7000 years old in one form or another. It has experienced thousands of transformative influences, some self-generated others external. It now sits in a pivotal position in the economic roulette game being played by the European Union (E.U.) and the G-7 (United States, Japan, Germany, France, United Kingdom, Italy and Canada whose finance ministers meet annually to discuss economic cooperation/intervention).

The E.U., the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Central Bank, frequently referred to as “the troika” in Greece, has been engaged in a multi-year experiment focused on keeping the European Union together as a global economic force. Various countries of the E.U. coalition have erupted with economic turmoil as a result of the bank excesses in the USA and sub-prime mortgages in 2008-09. Most of the countries in the E.U. basked in the spending spree, bought bad investments and made a few of their own. The troika is commissioned to respond by its charter.

The fly in the ointment at the moment is Greece, representing about 3% of the total E.U. economy.   [Read more…]

Note to Obama: Ditch Simpson-Bowles for FDR

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In the aftermath of the spectacular shellacking that Mitt Romney gave the President in the first debate, there was much handwringing in liberal circles. Critics on the left side of the spectrum couldn’t believe how Mr. Obama let Romney prevaricate so boldly and wildly as he hammered away at the President’s record while simultaneously and stunningly repackaging himself as a centrist unrecognizable to those of us who were paying attention to Mitt’s rightward tilt during the primary season and the obvious implications of his plutocratic agenda.

But hey, it worked! Now the Rombot is neck and neck with the face of hope in the polls and progressives have been forced to ponder the real possibility of a Romney/Ryan victory, a horror that had seemed to be getting less and less likely until Obama showed up and played the listless corporate Democratic technocrat with low T to Romney’s perky plutocrat on a crazy Viagra binge. The result: perky plutocracy won and now it’s nervous time even after Joe Biden’s frantic full court press attack on Paul Ryan in the Vice Presidential debate.

While there is certainly much to be worried about, it has less to do with style and more to do with Obama’s core vision. On this note, the most important and insightful analysis came before the first debate not after it. Paul Krugman in “The Real Referendum” presciently noted that the President and other prominent Democrats like Bill Clinton have become smitten with referencing their fondness for the timeless wisdom of the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan.   [Read more…]

Videos: Mitt Romney Debates Himself

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The one thing that unites all these clips is that Romney appears equally passionate about his convictions in all of them. The problem is that he’s saying the exact opposite things. Apparently, the only thing he really cares about getting what he wants, and he’ll say whatever he thinks it will take to get it. And with his track record of dishonesty, voters shouldn’t believe a word of it.   [Read more…]

$34.4 Million Can’t Seem To Buy Prop 37 Opponents Their Own Facts

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Alternet / By Zack Kaldveer / Oct. 2, 2012

Apparently $34.4 million in pesticide and junk food money can’t buy the opponents of Proposition 37 their own set of facts.

Case in point: A new L.A. Times poll shows Prop 37 winning by more than a 2-to-1 margin among registered California voters. And, according to the recent Pepperdine poll the opposition’s support actually dropped four points over the past two weeks.

So while their treasure trove of special interest money can pay for an endless supply of tired, discredited talking points, it can’t seem to convince consumers we don’t deserve to know what’s in the food we eat.   [Read more…]

Biden v. Ryan: The Old Pro Takes On the Lying Kid (Video)

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Alternet / Adele M. Stan / Oct. 11, 2012

In a lively contrast to last week’s presidential debate between President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, tonight’s match-up between Vice President Joe Biden and Republican rival Rep. Paul Ryan offered moments of riveting television as Biden used his populist persona to full effect against the wonkish and prevaricating Ryan.

In a discussion surprisingly heavy on foreign policy, the two also sparred over the federal budget, Medicare and reproductive rights — with Ryan making the surprising claim that the courts should have no role in deciding the legality of abortion.

With the first few moments, it seemed that the whole mood of the liberal blogosphere turned from despair to elation amid a chorus of “Attaboy!” — especially among those who gathered on Twitter and other social media. And unlike Obama, Biden held no fire on the subject of Romney’s infamous comments about the 47 percent of the American people who he described as victim-conscious drags on the economy.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line— DeMaio ‘Malarkey’ Fails to Stick in Mayoral Contest

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DeMaio Was for Pension Bonds Before He Was Against Them

City Councilman Kevin Falconer and other local backers of Mayoral candidate Carl DeMaio pressed forward yesterday with attacks aimed at challenger Congressman Bob Filner.  Earlier in the day they were beating the drum about Filner’s earlier advocacy of pension obligation bonds as a solution to San Diego’s financial crisis. The Congressman has maintained in recent statements that voter approval of last June’s Proposition B makes the bonds unnecessary.

The DeMaio campaign went silent on that subject when local Dems unearthed evidence that the City Councilman also had a past history of supporting such bonds.  A 2004 report from DeMaio’s Performance Instititute (funded by U-T San Diego publisher Doug Manchester), DeMaio offered a blanket endorsement of the reforms proposed by the City’s Pension Reform Committee, which included issuance of $600 million in pension obligation bonds to address the City’s unfunded pension liabilities…

Having failed at this round of attacks, the DeMaio campaign shifted gears, calling a press conference outside his campaign headquarters in Murphy Canyon to denounce Congressman Filner’s participation in Congressional junkets funded by “special interests”. (Oh, so much more inside….)   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Local Labor Activist Banned from All Walmart Stores

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Skirmishes between Walmart and labor groups continued yesterday, as 200 angry protesters showed up at a meeting of investors and analysts earlier today at Walmart’s headquarters in Bentonville, Ark.

Here in San Diego local AFL/CIO leader Lorena Gonzalez paid her first visit ever to a Walmart, visiting the College Grove store with a letter for the store manager asking the retailer to improve employee pay and benefits, and require store contractors to pay a living wage.

The store manager refused to even shake hands with Gonzalez, keeping hands in his pockets as she asked him to accept the letter.

He responded with a notice banning Gonzalez from ever setting foot in any Walmart store, and called the police.   [Read more…]

We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Lies

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by Norma Damashek/NumbersRunner

A) Some liars lie for self-protection.  Consider political cover-ups.

B)  Some liars lie to whitewash things they say (or write) whenever they get loaded.  Consider the congenital lushes you’ve known.

C) Some liars lie because of a pathological affliction that compels them to create false/ fabricated/ fallacious responses to just about everything.  Consider the manchurian (I have a friend who calls him manchesturian) candidate Carl DeMaio.

Let’s explore this more closely.   [Read more…]

How Gloria Romero Became the Face of Proposition 32

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by Matthew Fleischer/Frying Pan News

“Money is the mother’s milk of politics,” Gloria Romero tells me on the phone. “It’s flowing to both sides. Government isn’t about drawing lines. It’s not about saying you’re on that side and you can’t come over.”

Her voice is friendly, somewhat placid, but it’s clear Romero is not thrilled with having to answer questions about her political alliance with the Koch brothers and other wealthy supporters of Proposition 32, and she conspicuously avoids bringing up their names. When pressed about the Kochs and the money behind behind Prop. 32, she falls back upon her experience in Sacramento.

“I have sat in the belly of the beast,” she says. “I have seen the realities of money and its influence.”

With Election Day still one month away, the battle to pass Prop. 32 has seen its share of political shockers, including the sudden injection of $4 million of Koch brother money to the Yes on 32 campaign, along with millions more from Charles Munger Jr. But nothing has been more surprising than the decision of Romero, a former California State Senate Democratic majority leader, to serve as the measure’s frontwoman.   [Read more…]

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