San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

A Misguided Attempt at Bipartisanship

by

Congressman Peters’ yea vote on H.R. 3350 an overreaching attempt to appease conservative critics.

By Andy Cohen

In the midst of the mayoral special election, there have been a number of items of local importance that have gotten, if not lost, then overshadowed. Often, in the course of our sometimes convoluted local political scene, the actions of our members of Congress get largely ignored….which is a shame, particularly in the case of our local right wing extremist/verbal bomb thrower/attention whore Darrell Issa. He, in particular, will do most anything, say most anything just to get his mug on camera.

But typically, our members of Congress will try to do what’s right for their respective districts, and do so in a respectable manner becoming of the office they hold. And despite the inbox full of press releases sent out by our Congressional brigade, the local news media doesn’t often find it sexy enough to keep tabs on what they’re up to. Which is a shame, because they’re often doing some very good work on our behalf.

But then again, sometimes our representatives will do something—vote on a bill, for example—in the name of “bipartisanship” that should be given some extra scrutiny. Such is often the case with Freshman Democratic Rep. Scott Peters.

Unfortunately, this desperation for bipartisanship has led Congressman Peters and 32 of his Democratic colleagues to cast a vote that could potentially be one of the most damaging of his brief tenure, and do serious damage to the healthcare reform law he professes to support.   [Read more…]

Congressman Juan Vargas Joins Capitol Hill Fast for Immigration Reform

by

By Doug Porter

An ongoing fast by immigration activists just steps from the Capitol building in Washington DC continues to grow, both in participants and impact.  The news media around the country has begun to notice, with prominent stories posted in the Washington Post and at National Public Radio.

The four original protesters—who had consumed nothing but water since November 12th—yielded to the concerns of medical personnel yesterday, handing their protest over to Rep. Joe Kennedy (D-Mass.), the first of a series of lawmakers to participate in the fast.

Kennedy will be replaced by San Diego’s Rep. Juan Vargas today. House Majority leader Rep. John Boehner and other Republicans have declined invitations to meet with the protesters.

Although lobbyists and business leaders have urged to House of Representatives to take action before the end of the year, the GOP leadership has indicated they’ll have to wait until a budget agreement is enacted in mid-January. And even then, they’re not willing to go on the record to say immigration reform will get consideration.   [Read more…]

Support Local Artists, Artisans and Small Businesses, Buy Independent for the Holidays

by

By Brent E. Beltrán

The holidays are upon us and the time for gift giving is here. Instead of shopping at the malls and giving your hard earned cash to a corporation why not purchase items from local artists and artisans?

Here is a short list of holiday art bazaars and small businesses that deserve to be patronized this holiday season.   [Read more…]

We Had No Choice Other Than Be the Best (A Rhyme for the Dunbar Reunion)

by

By Ernie McCray

Tucson is a place where
several times a day
you hear somebody say:
“Damn, it’s hot!”
That’s a tradition that will never stop.
Because it is, indeed, hot,
very hot,
so hot that no matter
whether a person is religious or not,
when that sun drops
down behind the Tucson Mountains on, say,
a July day,
Christians are born right away
because everybody has to say:
“Thank you, Jesus!”
But the sun will be back the very next day
Don’t even try to pray it away….   [Read more…]

Charges Dismissed Against Vince Adame – “the Felony Hedge Trimmer of OB”

by

By Matthew Wood /OBRag

The nightmare that has been Vince Adame’s long shrubbery saga is finally over.

He has been battling a citation over his trimming of some bushes across the alley from his house that somehow turned into a felony vandalism charge. When the district attorney’s office finally dropped the charges Monday night, the longtime Ocean Beach resident was able to breathe a sigh of relief.

A press conference in the alley just outside his house, in “Surf Check Alley”, next to the scene of the crime, brought some closure to this chain of events that started in July.

“I’ve been doing the same thing for years,” Adame said of his maintenance work, which he said only came about because nobody at the city would take care of it.

“I sweep the alley and clean up. I encourage everyone to do the same in their neighborhood.”   [Read more…]

The GOP’s Latest Dirty Trick – A Fake California Covered Healthcare Website

by

By Doug Porter

After two months of regularly hijacking the 24 hour news cycle with horror stories about the Affordable Healthcare Act, Republicans here in California reached a new low this week. They rolled out a fake Covered California website via mailings to constituents (apparently paid for by taxpayers) from GOP Assembly members.  Taxpayers also paid for creation of the faux website, registered with GoDaddy.com

Rather than inform users about their healthcare options, clicking on highlighted topics like “Don’t Have Insurance” leads to negative news stories, filled with misinformation or out of date data.  The idea, of course, is to discourage people from signing up; part of the GOP strategy to make Obamacare collapse due to lack of interest.

This is  shameless and breathtaking in the scope of its misdirection and misinformation.  If you had any doubts about the fact that these people care for nobody but the rich, visiting this bit of Astroturf on the web should put your concerns to rest.   [Read more…]

Rep. Darrell Issa is Very Bad at His Job

by

By Hunter / Daily Kos

A good point is raised here: It’s not just that Rep. Darrell Issa has turned the House Oversight Committee into a hyper-partisanized vehicle for an unending stream of witch hunts. He’s also just plain not very good at it.

It’s familiar territory for Issa, who tends to shoot first and ask questions later. From Benghazi to the IRS to Fast and Furious, almost every investigation he has helmed has blown up in his face.

Democrats can’t help but marvel and feel compelled to offer some advice. “Not that I want to be calling attention to it, but he totally wasted a huge opportunity and got nothing,” a Democratic staffer familiar with the oversight process, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said of Issa’s hearing last week. For one, the staffer noted, Issa failed to mention anything about a report that HealthCare.gov might not be ready by the administration’s Nov. 30 deadline. “From our perspective, they had so much that they could have asked, but nothing new was discovered.”

Is anything new ever discovered? For all the talk of oversight, the Issa-led committee has done precious little of it, or at least has almost nothing to show for it. We don’t know anything about the eff-ups in implementation of the HealthCare.gov website that we would not have known without Issa.   [Read more…]

Busting Eight Common Excuses for NSA Mass Surveillance

by

By Cindy Cohn and Trevor Timm /Electronic Frontier Foundation

We’ve heard from lots of folks who are passionately concerned about the NSA’s mass spying, but are struggling to get their friends and family to understand the problem and join the over a half-million people who have demanded change through stopwatching.us and elsewhere.

Of course, you can show them the Stop Watching Us video and this great segment from Stephen Colbert. And if you’d like a detailed refresher on all the ways NSA is conducing mass surveillance, ProPublica has a handy explainer here.   [Read more…]

The Last Refuge of Sore Losers: UT-San Diego Proposes Splitting California in Two

by

By Doug Porter

The editorial board at UT-San Diego finally crossed the line from delusional to just flat out insane this weekend.  After reading Sunday’s paper a rational human being might even be open to arguments suggesting that the satirical Onion website has surreptitiously taken over our Daily Fishwrap.  But this weekend’s fare wasn’t funny…

Our city has many pressing issues, as the many debates leading up the special mayor election prove beyond a doubt.  Now UT-SD is trying to frame the upcoming runoff in the context of our city’s desperate need for a new football stadium, saying they’ll step in from Day One to pressure our next mayor to “get it done”.

Forget those potholes, declining city services or neighborhood empowerment; a sports venue tops all those needs.

If that singularity of bad policy wasn’t enough, they’ve also come out full bore for secession. California, they reason, needs to be split in two to save us from the evils of the nanny state and excessive taxation. They’ve even published a wish list of conservative wet dreams they’d like to see included in a new constitution.   [Read more…]

Reflections on the Mayoral Race . . .

by

By Larry Remer

If it hadn’t already been apparent, the Mayoral Primary clearly demonstrated seismic shifts that have taken place in recent years on the local political landscape.

San Diego is now a very solidly Blue City and Democrat David Alvarez is well positioned to compete strongly in the February Mayoral runoff.

Just look at how stunningly strong the Democratic vote was last week. Despite an abysmally low voter turnout of barely 36%, more than 55% of the vote went to 3 clearly identified Democratic candidates (Alvarez, Fletcher and Aguirre). Republican Kevin Faulconer finished with less than 43%. In other words, the combined vote of the Democrats in the low turnout primary handily beat the anointed Republican candidate by more than 12 points.

This is consistent with the 14 point registration edge the Dems hold over the Reps in the city; and this result is clearly not a transient phenomenon. When San Diego went for Obama 2008 and 2012 and for Filner in 2012, most of the punditry ascribed it to the high voter turnouts (70%-plus) that accompany Presidential elections. After Filner resigned, the “conventional wisdom” was that Republicans are more likely to vote in off year elections and GOP dominance would emerge in a low-turnout Mayoral special election.   [Read more…]

On Black Friday: I Would Prefer Not To

by

By Jim Miller

As the Salon story reposted here on Black Friday noted there were about 1,500 protests around the country on our annual day of consumer madness mostly designed to shine a light on the horrendous corporate practices of Walmart, America’s beloved externalizing machine. While Walmart’s propaganda insists that the company is a provider of good jobs and many benefits to our communities, the facts suggest otherwise.

Protesters took to the streets outside Walmarts across the country to splash some cold water on the consumer delirium. Indeed, even Santa got hauled into the pen for civil disobedience at one demonstration.

Inside the stores, away from the protests, things were a bit more disturbing and, as ABC News reported, many customers documented the holiday fun by taking “photos and videos of bloody noses, paramedics wheeling stretchers, women smacking one another on the head, security officers wrestling shoppers to the ground and employees yelling at shoppers to stop recording the melees on their cellphones.” And for those who want to keep a tally of shoppers who were truly dying for a bargain, there is now a website called, “Black Friday Death Count” that does precisely that.

While all of this makes us want to condemn those few “nuts” out there engaging in murderously uncivil behavior, the meaning of Black Friday is much deeper than we’d like to think.   [Read more…]

Sitting in on Papa Doug’s Gathering of the Elite to Chew on the Election of Kevin Faulconer

by

By Jay Powell

Last week Voice of San Diego CEO Scott Lewis reported (“Stadiums and Pensions,” November 27) that he had been informed by a reliable source that Papa Doug Manchester was hosting a lunch for “a group of the city elite” on Monday, December 2nd to “strategize on how we can best move San Diego forward in support of Kevin Faulconer as Mayor.”

He confirmed that the invite was authentic and quoted from it:

“ We all know the need to preserve and protect San Diego from losing the Chargers, fix the pension system, and create incentives that will allow San Diego to reach its full potential and recover from what we have experienced over these past several years…”.

Scott did a fine job showing the irony of some other these assertions and reprised the exchange between Sanders and Manchester when they last convened in La Jolla to pick Kevin Faulconer as the candidate for the elite. Scott then queried his readers to write him and let him know “if you were at this U-T (lunch) meeting, what would you say should be the top priorities for city government in coming years?”

I dutifully replied that if I was at the lunch meeting with Papa Doug and the other “city elite” this day (Dec 2), it wouldn’t be me…

but let’s just pretend for a moment that I was a person who was invited and attending…   [Read more…]

©2010-2017 SanDiegoFreePress.org

Code is Poetry