San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

San Diego County Supervisor D5 | Michelle Gomez vs Jim Desmond: It’s Time for a Change

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San Diego County is changing, and nowhere is that truer than in the North County, currently represented on the Board of Supervisors by Bill Horn.

Most of the five supervisors have been in office for more than 20 years. It’s been largely a white, male, Republican club brimming with alumni from San Diego State University.

After 23 years in office, supervisor Horn is terming out of District 5. And not a moment too soon. He’s long been the embodiment of what’s wrong with County government: gruff, unfeeling, and forgetful about who he was supposed to be representing.   [Read more…]

San Diego County Supervisor D4 | Nathan Fletcher vs. Bonnie Dumanis: A Critical Contest

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Tuesday, November 6 should be the beginning of the end of a status quo situation in San Diego that is just. plain. wrong.. All you have to do is vote.

I know, I know. Every campaign and every ballot measure says they’re The One, but this vote will –over the next few years– improve mental health care, help the homeless, and make our corner of the country a better place for all of us to live.  

Much of the power over our lives by the government is vested with the five members of the County Board of Supervisors. Most of them have been in office for more than 20 years.
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Trump Seeks to Undermine Investigation by Ordering Documents Declassified

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Is Trump barreling towards a high-stakes confrontation with the FBI and Department of Justice?

A confrontation that could unfold within the next several days is about to overtake the news cycle and signal yet another abuse of power move by Trump. But this one could be the trigger – as FBI Director Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein – decide how to respond to the president’s latest attempt to subvert the investigation into whether the Russian sabotage of the 2016 election included Trump and his people.

Did you miss the memo on the latest installment in the continuing American constitutional crisis?   [Read more…]

A Layman’s Guide to the Destroy Public Education Movement

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The destroy public education (DPE) movement is the fruit of a relatively small group of billionaires. The movement is financed by several large non-profit organizations. Nearly all of the money spent is free of taxation. Without this spending, there would be no wide-spread public school privatization.

Last year, researchers from the University of Indiana Purdue University Indianapolis (UIPUI) led by professor Jim Scheurich, who coordinates the urban studies program there, perceived a pattern in the destruction of the public schools. That pattern became the “destroy public education” model. As Ravitch’s “corporate education reform” became more organized and ruthless, the Scheurich team’s DPE model became a better descriptor.   [Read more…]

California’s Recycling Crisis: China Doesn’t Want Our Trash Anymore

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It’s a sad fact of our Californian recycling world – China no longer wants our trash.

China used to be California’s — and the world’s — largest overseas market for recyclables, but in January, China began not accepting “contaminated” material it once brought to its shores. For China, now, if the recycled material is one-half of 1% contaminated, it’s too impure for recycling.

CalRecyle – which runs California’s recycling program – stated in a bulletin in August:

“This policy change is already starting to have adverse impacts on California, and is resulting in more material being stockpiled at solid waste facilities and recycling centers or disposed of in landfills.”   [Read more…]

Kavanaugh’s Accuser Is Credible. Will It Matter? | Video Worth Watching

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Ari Melber interviews Michelle Goldberg, author of the recent New York Times opinion editorial “Boys Will Be Supreme Court Judges” and they discuss the recent right-wing character assassination of Professor Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who has made allegations of being sexually assaulted by Judge Kavanaugh, as well as the attempts to downplay the significance of Kavanaugh’s actions, if true. (h/t to AGD)   [Read more…]

San Diego’s City Council District 8 | Martinez vs Moreno: It’s Complicated

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The district is a bi-polar political entity. Geography and long-standing loyalties both exert a significant influence on elections in the city’s southernmost political sector.

City Council District 8 is bisected by National City & Chula Vista. The north and south ends have a majority Latino population in common, but the external realities differ.

The forces of gentrification weight heavily on neighborhoods connected to the core city like Barrio Logan. The border with Mexico, along with the militarization that goes with it, looms over the southern end.

Overlaid on these different environments are family and personal connections. To understand the race for city council in District 8, a history lesson is in order. I’ve simplified parts of this story because the nuances are near-impossible for an outsider to discern.   [Read more…]

Women Remember Sexual Assault

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By Democrat in the South / Daily Kos

I was listening to a guy on Morning Joe this morning analyzing whether or not the woman accusing Kavanaugh of sexual assault could actually be capable of remembering accurately or even correctly what happened to her because of the time passed since the incident.

While I’ve never been raped or sexually abused in any way, there was just one incident that happened to me at least 50 years ago. I am 67 and I remember it and every detail about it like it was yesterday and none of it ever fades from my memory. 

When I was in my teens, a group of us went to a friend’s parent’s cabin to sleep for the night. It was a 2 bedroom cabin and each bedroom had several beds in it. Like at least 3, maybe 4 double beds. So we piled up at least 2 to a bed and all beds were filled. Someone was on the sofa too. It was summer time so we slept on top of the covers fully clothed.

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We Can All Be Accused Of Something, Says Kavanaugh Apologist

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By Amy Zimet / Common Dreams

The White House ostensibly run by a pathological liar, irredeemable grifter and self-confessed serial sexual predator has now officially set the bar so low it’s underground, or, more aptly these days, underwater.

This weekend, they and their slimy apologists responded to the credible charge that a Supreme Court nominee with an already appalling record also tried to sexually assault someone in his youth by dismissing, distracting, desperately victim-smearing – she donated $72 to Democrats over four years! –  crowing with gobsmacking cognitive dissonance about all the women he didn’t try to rape, blindly urging a vote NOW, and otherwise insisting nothing to see here other than the usual venal and occasionally rapey shit show. If they had any shame, this would be the time for it.   [Read more…]

Michael Moore: How The F*** Did This Happen? | Video Worth Watching

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All In’s Chris Hayes interviews Michael Moore in Michael’s home town, Flint, Michigan. Chris provides some teasers of Michael’s new movie: Fahrenheit 11/9; Michael gives a bit more background about the Flint situation, including an important historical marker: the 1936 Flint GM plant 45-day sit-down strike—the event which credibly can be considered the birth of the Middle Class; he ruminates on the Electoral College’s undemocratic underpinnings; and delilvers a jaw-dropping statistic on the number of Michigan voters who voted for public offices down to “Registrar of Deeds” and “Drain Commisioner”, yet did not cast a vote for the office of President of the United States.   [Read more…]

City Council District 6: How Can Hough Hew His Way Around An Incumbent’s Advantage?

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I’ll let you in on a little secret: San Diego is a lot bluer city than most people realize, meaning–as one politico told me recently–if you run the right Democrat, they can win just about everywhere.

City Attorney Mara Elliot carried every council district in 2016 except D5 Mark Kersey’s collection of north-central communities clustered along Interstate 15. There are roughly 130,000 more registered Democrats in the city than Republicans, who have sunk to third place–70,000 voters or so behind No Party Preference.

Fortunately for partisans on the right side of the aisle, San Diego’s City Council races are officially non-partisan. The words “Democrat” or “Republican” don’t appear on the ballot, making a high public profile a potential equalizer.   [Read more…]

A Blue Wave is Not Enough: Progressives Need to Win the Long War for Democracy

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Recently I had the pleasure of speaking to the La Mesa-Foothills Democratic Club about the Lincoln Club and the history of the American Right. In that presentation, I noted how the ultimate aim of the Right was to dishonestly promote deeply unpopular policies through stealth politics that take advantage of the general public’s naiveté about their agenda.  

Locally, groups like the Lincoln Club do their best to intervene in Democratic primaries and shift the landscape in their favor so they can win elections and promote policies that further enrich the elite. As I have written in this space, that’s how San Diego’s “shadow government” has rolled for decades.

At the national level, the Lincoln Club was a key player in bringing us the Citizens United case which helped further stack the deck of national politics in favor of the rich and corporate interests.   To really understand the big picture, however (as I told the audience), you need to understand the entire history of the Right’s long war to, as historian Nancy MacLean puts it, “save capitalism from democracy permanently.”        [Read more…]

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