…I caution fellow Democrats: make your focus the American people, not Trump. We will defeat him one day, and when we do, we better have something to offer people. –Congressman Keith Ellison [Read more…]
These are extraordinary times, and for a passionate progressive like myself, it’s hard to look away from the Basket of Deplorables being assembled to run the country’s executive branch.
But for today we need to discuss something both local and deplorable. Another hair-brained idea to build a downtown stadium for the San Diego Chargers is making the rounds, coming out of a Wednesday sit-down between Mayor Kevin Faulconer and team owners Dean Spanos.
After getting his ass handed to him at the ballot box in 2016 (56% voted No on a stadium measure requiring two-thirds approval), Spanos is counting on a future court ruling lowering the threshold to a simple majority, and on Rams owner Stan Kroenke’s desire to have the Los Angeles market all to himself. [Read more…]
This morning Democratic party leaders from the House and Senate, along with representatives from seniors and activist organizations, delivered more than one million petition signatures demanding that President Elect Donald Trump, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) keep their hands off the American people’s earned Medicare benefits.
Medicare and Medicaid provide health insurance to one-third of all Americans.
Although Donald Trump ran on a pledge not to touch Medicare, House Speaker Ryan has already announced plans to abolish the program through privatization. Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), one of Ryan’s closest allies and an ardent foe of Medicare, has been nominated to be Health and Human Services Secretary. [Read more…]
President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration may be six weeks away. Elected officials in Sacramento and San Diego are already taking actions aimed at shielding those who may be victimized by the new administration.
Newly sworn in lawmakers at the State capitol proposed legislation providing attorneys to immigrants in the country illegally, refusing to aid any proposed registry of Muslim immigrants and requiring voter approval for any wall built along the Mexican border.
This evening San Diego Unified School Board will likely approve a resolution to protect all of its 130,000 students and staff in the district. [Read more…]
The federal government on Sunday denied the easement needed to complete the Dakota Access pipeline’s route under the Missouri River.
The announcement by the Army Corps of Engineers came as veterans streamed into the camps over the weekend in cars and buses to offer their support to the tribe in its months-long battle. The veterans event had raised more than $1 million dollars in response to violent assaults on the demonstrators by law enforcement. The veterans said they would shield the demonstrators. [Read more…]
How and where we get information informing our outlook on the world has become an issue in the wake of the most recent presidential election. People’s lives, reputations and even democracy itself can be endangered.
A cottage industry, some of which masks bigger players with malevolent agendas, is taking advantage of opportunities afforded by social media to mold public opinion.
An analysis in BuzzFeed published shortly after the election revealed “top fake election news stories generated more total engagement on Facebook than top election stories from 19 major news outlets combined” from August through Election Day. [Read more…]
By RL Miller / Daily Kos
Want to get more involved with the party, and know that the deadline for California Assembly District Delegates is December 8? Or, want to get involved but didn’t even know that this Thursday is the deadline?
First, why be a party insider? Officially, you’ll be a delegate to the California Democratic Party convention, meaning that you get to go to Sacramento May 17-19 and mingle, drink, schmooze, network, and — importantly — vote on resolutions. If you want to change the party from the inside, you need to become a party insider — by getting elected. The cost is $20. Elections are January 7 and 8, one in each of the state’s 80 Assembly districts. Seven men and seven women will be elected from each district — that’s 1120 people — and they are commonly known as ADEMs. [Read more…]
By Norman Soloman / Common Dreams
We still don’t have any sort of apology or retraction from the Washington Post for promoting “The List” — the highly dangerous blacklist that got a huge boost from the newspaper’s fawning coverage on November 24. The project of smearing 200 websites with one broad brush wouldn’t have gotten far without the avid complicity of high-profile media outlets, starting with the Post.
On Thursday — a week after the Post published its front-page news article hyping the blacklist that was put out by a group of unidentified people called PropOrNot — I sent a petition statement to the newspaper’s executive editor Martin Baron.
“Smearing is not reporting,” the RootsAction petition says. “The Washington Post’s recent descent into McCarthyism — promoting anonymous and shoddy claims that a vast range of some 200 websites are all accomplices or tools of the Russian government — violates basic journalistic standards and does real harm to democratic discourse in our country. We urge the Washington Post to prominently retract the article and apologize for publishing it.” [Read more…]
Incidents of voter fraud in the 2016 general election have now been verified.
All four of them. In Iowa, Terri Lynn Rote tried to vote twice for Donald Trump and was arrested. In Texas, Phillip Cook was arrested for voting twice. He (falsely) claimed to be a Trump campaign employee testing the security system. In Illinois, Republican election judge Audrey Cook filled out an absentee ballot for her dead husband. It won’t be counted. In Florida, electoral employee Gladys Coego was caught and arrested for altering mail-in ballots, adding votes for a local mayoral candidate.
Meanwhile, internet wags are busy repeating variants on the meme “Trump’s lawyers are Russian to Putin legal challenges” to voter recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania. [Read more…]
Ah, reality. The feces is about to hit the fan on healthcare.
After years featuring sixty-plus votes in Congress to end the Affordable Care Act, interminable misrepresentations (remember death panels?), and failing to move on even one alternative plan for legislative consideration, it’s time to put up or shut up.
There are three possible scenarios on paying for health care emerging, none of which bodes well for the more than one in three Californians covered in some fashion by Medi-Cal. All of them will enrich a few at the expense of the many by continuing commodification of what should be a public service. [Read more…]
By Deidre Fulton / Common Dreams
“I am dangerous not to America but to the people soon to be in charge of it.”
So says one of roughly 200 college professors recently named to a conservative website’s “Professor Watchlist”—a round-up of academics accused of “discriminat[ing] against conservative students and advanc[ing] leftist propaganda in the classroom.” The list is based on “pre-existing news stories,” though readers are encouraged to “submit a tip” if they become aware of “professors that advance a radical agenda in lecture halls.”
The list, which first appeared on November 21, is a project of right-wing non-profit Turning Point USA (TPUSA), a group whose stated mission “is to identify, educate, train, and organize students to promote the principles of fiscal responsibility, free markets, and limited government.”
According to a blog post written by the organization’s founder and executive director Charlie Kirk: “Throughout the next 120 days, Turning Point USA will be running ads to make sure students, faculty, and administrators see that these professors made the Professor Watchlist…We believe these people need to be exposed.” [Read more…]
Two reports from the Southern Poverty Law Center released this week confirmed anecdotal reports of a spike in incidents involving harassment and intimidation in the days following the general election.
One report culled media reports and direct submissions to a #ReportHate page on the SPLC website. Online harassment and incidents determined to be hoaxes by authorities were not included. According to the group, “the incidents documented here almost certainly represent a small fraction of the actual number of election-related hate incidents that have occurred since November 8. The Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates that two-thirds of hate crimes go unreported to the police.”
Of the 867 occurrences cataloged by the group over ten days, 99 were reported from California. Schools were the most common locations, followed by public spaces and workplace/retail environments. The leading reported motivation for these incidents was anti-immigrant sentiments, with anti-Black, anti-Semitic, anti-LGBTQ, and anti-Muslim episodes also being significant factors. [Read more…]
