San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

Fight Over Google Buses Shows Need For Statewide Rail Funding Plan

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By Robert Cruickshank/California High Speed Rail Blog

A battle that has been simmering for years finally exploded into the open today in San Francisco, where protestors blocked one of Google’s private buses that carries workers from their homes in the Mission to Google HQ in Mountain View. Protestors charged that Google was contributing to a two-tier transportation system in the Bay Area, where tech workers get free express bus service whereas everyone else has to make do with transit systems like Muni, BART and Caltrain that are increasingly struggling to meet soaring demand.

It’s a fair point. Every dollar that Google and other companies spend on these private transit systems is a dollar not being spent on operations, maintenance, or expansion of existing transit systems. In Seattle, for example, Microsoft operates a similar system – but the company is also one of the biggest backers of expanding the public rail system, which in 2023 will open a new route to Microsoft’s front door, and the company has been a leader in lobbying the state legislature for more transit funding.   [Read more…]

How Low Will They Go?

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Where will the negative campaigning in the San Diego mayoral race take us?

By Andy Cohen

Negative campaigning works. It’s a simple fact of our political world, otherwise it wouldn’t be such a constant. Yes, we all complain about it, lament how dirty and slimy our politics have gotten. But, even the most disgusted among us has to admit that the negative campaign ads and rhetoric has an effect on our opinions of the candidates. And despite promises to wage “positive” campaigns, every single candidate eventually wades into the muck and sullies him or herself in the mud. It becomes unavoidable.

The 2013 primary race to see who would complete Bob Filner’s first term was certainly no exception. In fact, it could be argued that it was messier than most others. In an abbreviated election cycle, candidates have to scratch and claw to distinguish themselves from their opponents, particularly when there are multiple big-name candidates running. The fastest and easiest way to do that is through negative campaigning.   [Read more…]

“We Sincerely Wish Mr. Filner Well in His Rehabilitation”

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By Doug Porter

The headline on today’s column is the language used by the UT-San Diego editorial board today in summing up what they called “the final chapter” of the Bob Filner saga.  Today’s column will look at some of the coverage around the nation of former Mayor Bob Filner’s sentencing yesterday. And I’ll chime in with a few thoughts.

Between reading the coverage and today’s UT-San Diego editorial I’ve concluded San Diegans are expected to draw the following conclusions:

  • San Diego just experienced a disaster. (Has the Red Cross been notified?)
  • Bob Filner’s political supporters should to be exiled. (Will Siberia do?)
  • The news media failed to print enough rumors. (Except about Carl DeMaio)
  • The voters were stupid not to listen to Lynchester Logic™.

Just in case we, the public, haven’t “learned our lesson” from this squalid affair, our Daily Fishwrap featured Logan Jenkins warning us that the former mayor might indeed seek a role in local civic affairs in the future.  Look for additional Filner Fearmongering in your mailbox in coming weeks as the Lincoln Club types desperation deepens in their quest to disparage Democrat David Alvarez’s mayoral campaign.   [Read more…]

South Africa’s Role in My Evolution as an Educator

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By Ernie McCray

As I reflect on Mandela’s passing I’m reminded of how the struggle of his people has played an important role in my development as an educator, starting back in ’57 or ’58 before I had taken my first “How to Teach” course at the University of Arizona.

At the time I was writing a research paper and found some essays on South Africa and the word “apartheid” leapt off the pages at me and I discovered that my struggle in Southern Arizona was so similar to what blacks were going through in the southern tip of the Dark Continent.

Of course, apartheid was more brutal. I didn’t have enough time to dwell on the subject so I just tucked my new found information away and got back to a life of pop quizzes and mid-terms and the like.
  [Read more…]

Millions of ‘Missing Workers’ Continue to Make the Monthly Jobs Reports Look Better Than They Are

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By Meteor Blades / Daily Kos

The latest job growth report—released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics—would in normal times be an unalloyed piece of good news. The official unemployment rate fell to 7 percent (a five-year low), 203,000 new jobs were created (putting the economy on track to show the best job growth since 2005), the labor-force expanded and the labor-force participation rate grew, wages edged up and the percentage of people forced to work part-time fell (only partly due to a return to work by employees furloughed by the government shutdown). Add November’s results to the total, and 7.4 million new jobs have been created since February 2010, definitely nothing to sneeze at.

But those improvements conceal a continuing problem that keeps being ignored or explained away as just a matter of demographics: The missing workers.   [Read more…]

Occupy-Linked Lawsuit Settled: Registering Voters Outside City Hall is No Longer a Crime in San Diego

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By Doug Porter

Perhaps the most outrageous of the arrests made two years ago at the height of San Diego’s Occupy Movement was that of Ray Lutz, activist and former Congressional Candidate. On Nov 29, 2011, he was arrested for attempting to register voters in the Civic Center Plaza, adjacent to City Hall. (You can watch a video of the arrest here.)

Lutz sued the City of San Diego, along with the property management company (CBRE Group) and the private security contractor (ABM Security) who ordered a citizen’s arrest for trespassing.  All the parties have now agreed to a mediated settlement conducted by Hon. Judge David H. Bartick, in Federal Court.

Part of the deal involves scheduling a public hearing of the grievances involved, which will occur on Tuesday, December 10th at a session of San Diego City Council.  The rest of settlement has already been approved by the City in closed session.

 Lutz is encouraging all persons who support the right to peaceful political activity, such as registering voters, in the public square of San Diego, to appear and voice their support of the settlement, as well as to voice any concerns regarding the disgusting abuse of recent invalid arrests or other actions by the San Diego Police Department.   [Read more…]

San Diego Occupy Movement, Vets for Peace Reach Out to Help Homeless as Temperatures Fall

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By Doug Porter

It’s easy to make light of the colder weather Southern California has experienced over the past few days. People from the east county were joking on Twitter this morning about having to use spatulas to clear their windshields of frost. But for the thousands of San Diego’s who live on the streets, the chilly temperatures are pure torture.

While the weather conditions locally can’t compare with those in northern tier cities, it doesn’t take below freezing temperatures to induce hypothermia, a potentially fatal drop in body temperature, usually caused by prolonged exposure to cold temperatures. And San Diego simply lacks enough shelter space for its homeless population when the temperature drops. Four people have died from exposure in the Bay Area in the past weeks and well over 700 die annual from exposure to the elements.

While many organizations are involved in collecting needed items for our local homeless population, two groups have reached out to the San Diego Free Press in recent days asking for our help in getting the word out. The need is real and these folks are looking for your help.   [Read more…]

“The Defining Challenge of Our Time”: Four Things Obama Should Do To Really Start Addressing Inequality

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By Jim Miller

Just as he did last summer during the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, President Obama addressed the issue of economic inequality last week during a speech on the minimum wage and health care, which he delivered in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Washington D.C.  His message was stark and pointed as he told the crowd that, “The combined trends of increased inequality and decreasing mobility pose a fundamental threat to the American dream, our way of life and what we stand for around the globe.”

Sounding a populist note, Obama decried the fact that American workers at the bottom end of the pay scale are continuing to “work their tails off and are still living at or barely above poverty” and called the rising level of economic inequality “the defining challenge of our time.”
Even more encouraging, the President specifically referenced fast food workers on the eve of the Fight for 15 national day of action as well as the plight of health care and retail employees. Such open talk about inequality, class, and economic exploitation is long overdue from the President and, one hopes, indicates a welcome embrace of a populist agenda.   [Read more…]

Airline Deregulation: Triumph of Ideology Over Evidence

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A look at the facts reveal the public has suffered from government’s hands-off stance toward airlines

By David Morris / OnTheCommons.org

In November, in what history may judge the ultimate triumph of ideology over evidence, the U.S. Department of Justice dropped its lawsuit against the merger of American Airlines and United Airways.

It is altogether fitting that the green light for allowing just 4 airlines to control 85 percent of the domestic market was given by a Democratic administration. Because airline deregulation, the precursor to the deregulation boom beginning in the 1980s, was a liberal cause. In 1978 Democrats controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress. Teddy Kennedy, Chair of the Senate Judicial Committee was deregulation’s principal architect. Ralph Nader was one of its most passionate advocates.   [Read more…]

The Race for Mayor a Dead Heat

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New Poll has Alvarez at 46% only 1% behind Faulconer

By Brent E. Beltrán

The race for mayor has gotten a lot closer as a new 10 News/San Diego Union Tribune poll has big business friendly Republican candidate, and maritime industry minion, Kevin Faulconer at 47% with surging District 8 councilman David Alvarez coming in at 46% with 7% undecided.

The poll, conducted by SurveyUSA, has a margin of error of +/- 4.4% making this race a statistical dead heat. See full poll data here.

The question that the pollsters asked was: If the runoff election for San Diego mayor were today, who would you vote for? Kevin Faulconer? Or David Alvarez?

Though polls funded by 10 News and the SDUT have historically been inaccurate in favor of Republicans (see last year’s mayor’s race when they had Carl DeMaio up by 5% over Bob Filner) it is very interesting to see a poll by them that actually shows positive numbers for the Democratic candidate.   [Read more…]

How School of the Americas Watch’s perseverance is paying off

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By Ken Butigan / Waging Nonviolence

When the first School of the Americas, or SOA, mass protest was held in 1990, its organizers probably didn’t think they would still be at it 23 years later. But enduring social change typically takes many years or decades, especially if your goal is to shutter a facility that’s a lynchpin of U.S. geopolitics. Just ask groups like Witness Against Torture and the more recent Close Gitmo coalition, which have been conducting a full court press to shut the prison at Guantanamo Bay for over a decade. It remains open in spite of the fact that President Obama’s first official act was to mandate its closure within 12 months. That was five years ago.   [Read more…]

Listen Up, Budget Cutters. Austerity Can Lead to Blood on the Streets, Even in America

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Researchers find statistical evidence that austerity policies are linked to explosive unrest.

By Lynn Stuart Parramore / AlterNet

Squeeze and push. Punish and strain. Since the global financial crisis of 2008, elites across the world have been on a tear against ordinary citizens, promoting austerity policies that strip hard-working people of their jobs, their security, and their dignity. In many places, people have pushed back — violently. Maybe you’ve been wondering if it could happen here, too.

In some corners of America, plutocrats seem to be experimenting to find out. In North Carolina, discount store tycoon Art Pope, a close ally of the Brothers Koch, is installed in the office of State Budget Director, where he has placed his boot firmly on the neck of the public with regressive policies, including the denial of Medicaid expansion to 500,000 of the needy, slashes in unemployment benefits to 170,000 people, devastating cuts to education, and voter suppression to make sure it all sticks.

These actions have led to protests across the state, most prominent among them the Moral Monday demonstrations led by Rev. William Barber. Do a quick Google search of the terms “North Carolina” and “unrest”, and you find plentiful headlines testifying to an increasingly jittery population. The police have even resorted to sending undercover agents to church gatherings to collect information on presumed “anarchists” among the protesters.

So far, U.S. protests have been remarkably peaceful. What conditions have to happen before things get really ugly?   [Read more…]

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