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Bob Filner, My Kind of Snarly Guy

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Both candidates for Mayor of San Diego are viewed as fighters, but only one has repeatedly and habitually demonstrated a genuine concern for the people he is elected to serve.

Carl DeMaio and Bob Filner have both been described as “snarly.” Maybe they are but Bob has got a lot of snarling to do to match Carl.

I mean Bob pretty much, from what I’ve seen personally, as a friend of his over the years, only snarls at the likes of the promoters of injustices in our society like the fat cats in high positions and places who spend their lives conniving how to deny us “regular” folks a nice slice of the American Pie, not caring whether we live or die.   [Read more…]

A Hard Look At San Diego: The Kafkaesque Process of Trying to Save a Home from Foreclosure

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by J. G. Robinson
In my last column I began the story of someone I call Jose, and what led to his financial crisis. In this column I look at the Kafkaesque process he went through in his failed attempt to save his home from foreclosure. The experiences I describe here are neither rare nor random. The difficulties Jose and his family encountered in trying to get their bank to re-evaluate their loan were all too representative of the random sample of people I interviewed. The tragic fact is that the delays that Jose’s family encountered were not the result of inefficiency, but rather a deliberate policy to protect banks. Banks do NOT want foreclosures rapidly resolved because that would bring these properties down to market value, reflecting badly on their bottom lines. Thus families like Jose’s are the deliberate casualties of a war of attrition that banks have waged on the public to protect their economic interests.

Jose’s original mortgage was through the Bank of America. The home was a modest condominium in a somewhat marginal area of El Cajon. Marginal, but not horrible—the schools in the area were decent, and that was the main attraction for Jose and his family.   [Read more…]

Local Residents to Ask Oceanside City Council: ‘Is Our Community Prepared for an Accident at San Onofre Nuclear Power Station?’

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Oceanside, CA – On Wednesday, June 27, 2012, residents from Oceanside will attend the Oceanside City Council meeting and request that the Council place the issue of the safety of their community should there be an accident at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station on a future Council Agenda for in-depth discussion and presentation by experts.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission met in San Clemente on June 18th and pledged that San Onofre will remain shut down until a solution is found to fix the problem (a release of radioactive steam and unexpected, accelerated tube wear) which precipitated the emergency shutdown on January 31, 2012.
  [Read more…]

Killer Drone Attacks Are Illegal and Counter-Productive

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By Marjorie Cohn and Jeanne Mirer

The Bush administration detained and tortured suspected militants; the Obama administration assassinates them. Both practices not only visit
more hatred upon the United States; they are also illegal. Our laws and treaties prohibit torture. The Constitution forbids the government
from depriving any person of life without due process of law; that is, arrest and fair trial. Yet President Obama has approved the killing of
people, many of whom were not even identified before the kill order was given.

Jo Becker and Scott Shane reported in the New York Times that Obama maintains a “kill list.” After consulting with his counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan, Obama personally makes the decision to have individuals executed. Brennan was closely identified with torture, secret prisons, and extraordinary rendition during the Bush administration. The Times story, based on interviews with three dozen current and former Obama advisers, reports that “Mr. Obama has avoided the complications of detention by deciding, in effect, to take no prisoners alive. While scores of suspects have been killed under Mr. Obama, only one has been taken into U.S. custody” because he doesn’t want to add new prisoners to Guantanamo.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Negotiators to Face a Week of Protests

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June 26, 2012 – A diverse coalition of groups has announced plans for ongoing protests aimed at trade negotiators meeting in San Diego next week for the 13th round of talks aimed at the creation of a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade zone that would include the United States, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam, with a “docking agreement” that other countries can join over time. Canada, Japan and Mexico are currently pressing to do so.. Describing the proposals being discussed at the confab as “NAFTA on steroids”, the Citizens Trade Campaign is seeking to draw attention to the fact that approximately 600 corporate lobbyists have access to the TPP negotiating texts, while the public has been barred from reviewing what trade negotiators have been proposing.

A leaked TPP document demonstrates that the group is considering a dispute resolution process that would grant transnational corporations special authority to challenge countries’ laws, regulations and court decisions in international tribunals that circumvent domestic judicial systems. Of further concern is the impact of the agreement on jobs, wages, agriculture, migration, the environment, consumer safety, financial regulations, Internet protocols, government procurement and more. Negotiations on the proposed pact will be held at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront Hotel from July 2 – 10.   [Read more…]

Supreme Court Reversed Anti-Citizens United Ruling From Montana

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The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday struck down Montana’s century-old limits on corporate political spending, putting an end to the state’s resistance to Citizens United and effectively expanding that controversial ruling to the state and local elections.

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, decided in January 2010, struck down federal limits on campaign spending by corporations and unions as violations of the First Amendment. Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing on behalf of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, reached the bold conclusion that “independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption,” and therefore “[n]o sufficient governmental interest justifies limits on the political speech of nonprofit or for-profit corporations.”   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Teachers Group Cries Foul Over Concession Vote

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June 25, 2012 – Seven thousand members of the San Diego Education Association, a group you’re probably familiar with as the “teacher’s union” starting voting on a new contract yesterday and already questions are being raised about the fairness of the voting process. The vote is to decide whether to approve a tentative revision of their contract with the San Diego Unified School District that calls for teachers to defer scheduled pay raises in order to save the jobs of nearly 1,500 district employees facing layoffs due to the District’s ongoing budget crisis. Teachers will be given five unpaid days off, with 14 more furlough days to be added if Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposal to raise taxes fails at the ballot box in November. The SDUSD Board of Trustees voted to approve the contract last Thursday.

The Breakfast Club Action Group, a dissident bloc of teachers which has actively campaigned against the agreement, complained on Sunday via a blog post and email that many SDEA members were being disenfranchised by the requirement that they vote in person within a three-day window ending Tuesday. They also pointed out that a basic security measure SDEA has taken with paper ballot elections in the past has been discontinued for this election.   [Read more…]

A Hard Look at San Diego: The Story of One Latino Family and What Foreclosure has Meant

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By J. G. Robinson
As I said in my last column, Latinos in our community have been among the groups most affected by the foreclosure crisis. In the next two columns I tell the story of one Latino family and what foreclosure has meant to it. I found this story moving, and it is one of the strongest indictments I know of the politicians and business people who have done so little to help people facing foreclosure. In this first installment I will look at what led up to the foreclosure for this family, and in the following column I will examine what happened after the foreclosure took place. This is the story of someone I will call Jose.
Jose was not originally from San Diego, but rather from a small west Texas town. He was brought to San Diego, like so many others, by the military.   [Read more…]

Koch Brothers Unveil Hush-Hush Project Themis at Carlsbad Confab

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While a small group of protesters rallied in downtown San Diego to protest the Koch confab in Carlsbad, Charles and David Koch, who tied as the fourth richest Americans on the 2012 Forbes list, were holding their secret reception and biannual fundraiser in Carlsbad. The Koch event, billed as “Path to Freedom 2012” completely took over the Park Hyatt Aviara Resort where rooms start at $1,250 a night. Security was tight, but not so tight that a reporter from Buzzfeed wasn’t prevented from sneaking in by trekking across the golf course. The only major breach of security at a Koch confab was in 2011, when advance notice of a Koch confab at the enclave of Rancho Mirage in the California desert led to raucous demonstrations outside the event.   [Read more…]

Is this the site of the secret Koch Brothers’ conference – the Park Hyatt Aviara resort?

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Looks like our contest to locate the secret site of the Koch brothers’ confab has a winner.

The political site BuzzFeed has announced that sources have passed on the location of the site, and it’s:

the Park Hyatt Aviara resort in Carlsbad, just up the road from San Diego.

  [Read more…]

Error Code 451

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by Horace Boothroyd III /Daily Kos

There are some places we are not allowed to go on the internet. Sometimes when censorship is imposed by the government the error message should be Error Code 451. This is the idea of Google’s Tim Bray.

The number 451 refers to Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Since we all have read this text.

What?

You haven’t read it?

Drop everything and run to the library before it is too late!   [Read more…]

An Interview with Foreclosure Fighter Michael T. Pines

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By Carolyn Zellander

Following is an interview Michael T. Pines, a Carlsbad attorney who made national headlines for advising clients to “occupy” foreclosed homes. Back in 2011 he was charged with 18 counts of misconduct stemming from his representation of the former owners of three foreclosed homes — in Carlsbad, Newport Beach and Simi Valley. He was released from jail three months ago and will probably be booted out of the legal profession according to a decision by a State Bar Court judge public Thursday. Although he has been scorned by the legal profession, he is a hero to many activists fighting to save homeowners from the perils of the foreclosure crisis.

As a member of the San Diego Foreclosure Strategists Group (SDFSG), I first met Michael at a planning meeting on March 1st, 2012. The primary objectives of SDFSG include educating stressed homeowners and finding solutions and/or alternatives to foreclosure. Michael was an invited guest of a planning session for an action directed toward District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis. Several homeowners with documented incidences of fraud, which when presented to the District Attorney‘s office, had fallen on deaf ears. We did carry out that action at a public function. The action was effective, but Michael paid a price, two days later, he was in jail again. Violation of bail, I believe was the reason given.
  [Read more…]

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