San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

Another View of Robert Reich’s Inequality for All

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By John Lawrence

This is Robert Reich’s latest venture in an attempt to inform the American public about what’s really going on with the economy in this society. He’s tried everything else: Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley in which he teaches a course on Wealth and Poverty, a blog, where he had as many as 300 comments after each post until he shut down the comments due to a persistent vile and threatening commenter who stooped to anti-semitic comments, 13 books, the latest being “Beyond Outrage,” Secretary of Labor in the Clinton Administration, radio and TV appearances, lectures.

He also worked in the Ford and Carter administrations. Reich has always been concerned about those who are struggling to keep their heads above water, and in today’s world that includes almost all of the former members of the middle class.

The major metaphor in the film is a suspension bridge which fits perfectly over a graph of the concentration of wealth that occurred at two points in American history, the first being in 1928 and the second being in 2008. These are the two high points of the suspension bridge and correspond to the two points of peak inequality in American society after which there was a crash: the Great Depression and the Great Recession.   [Read more…]

For the Love of Food: Sun-dried Tomato, Spinach and Goat Cheese Mini Frittatas

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By Melissa Phy / For the Love of Food

For some reason, things are just cuter when they’re smaller: children, bills, bugs.

Oh, and frittatas.

It’s strange, but whenever I make frittatas in my favorite cast-iron skillet, they never get finished. So I decided to try my hand at mini-versions, because we seem more inclined to go back for seconds (and thirds, and fourths) when the item is smaller. And l get offended at leftovers.   [Read more…]

Until Medicare-for-All Arrives, A Desire for Obamacare to Work

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By Donna Smith / Common Dreams

Yes, it is true. I want the Affordable Care Act/Obamacare to be successful, and I want single-payer, improved and expanded Medicare for all for life. I can hear it now, and almost predict who will be saying it, “Oh, Donna’s a single-payer sell-out. Look, she said she wants the ACA to succeed. Doesn’t she get it that it’s nothing more than a bail-out to the private insurance industry?”

Yes, I get it. I lived in Washington, D.C., all through the health reform debates and saw what the process did to single-payer activists. I know that the ACA is not where we need to go. I know its failings, and I know in some ways it moves us further away from the “everybody in, nobody out” kind of system we hope to achieve. I know that the health industry basically drafted the bill to be spoon fed through Congress, and I watched and worked the press side of the days when 13 people were arrested in Max Baucus’ Senate Finance Committee for wanting single-payer on the table. I know, I know.   [Read more…]

How the Owner of the Company That Handled Edward Snowden’s Encrypted Emails Stood Up to the Feds’ Massive Investigation

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Bravery in the face of enormous FBI pressure to give up the store.

By Steven Rosenfeld / Alternet

The whirlwind that turned Ladar Levison’s life upside down, gave him a possibly pivotal role in the Edward Snowden affair, and has since made him a hero to civil libertarians, began innocently enough in early June.

On June 6, U.K. Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald unmasked the U.S. government’s secret spying on Internet users by first reporting that the National Security Agency was collecting phone records of millions of Verizon’s customers, despite NSA denials in Congress. On June 7, the Guardian and the Washington Post reported the NSA had an unknown program that tapped Internet giants including Google and Facebook, allowing it to collect data streams including emails, live chats and search histories.   [Read more…]

Tío Emilio and the Secrets of the Ancestors: Chapter 20 — Creating What We Think About

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“You create the world that you know. You have been given perhaps the most awesome gift of all: the ability to project your thoughts outward into physical form.” Seth, in Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul, by Jane Roberts.

 

By Richard Juarez

“That was one weird trip, my eagle friend,” said Tony as he sat down across from me. We had agreed to meet in the quad at school during lunch on Thursday to talk about what happened on the mountain trip. I had wanted to talk with him sooner, but with classes, homework, him working at the store, and all our energy practice, it was tough to find time to get together. It was probably better that we had to wait a few days anyway, to let it all sink in.

“It was weird, all right,” I answered, “but weird good. It was magical. Better than Disneyland.”   [Read more…]

Don’t Miss Robert Reich’s Movie ‘Inequality for All’

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By Frances O’Neill Zimmerman

In the years before Ronald Reagan, income taxes on the One Percent were regularly in the range of 70%, including when Republicans Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon were in the White House.

Amiable President Reagan brought us the exaggerated and toxic notion of “welfare queens” on foodstamps. He also fired all the striking air traffic controllers without a peep of opposition and lowered income taxes on the rich to 28%, benefitting his plutocrat LA pals. In 2012  the GOP’s own Richie Rich,  Gov. Mitt Romney, paid 13% in taxes. And in 2012 Warren Buffett paid less income tax than any of his clerical help at Berkshire-Hathaway.

We’re talking serious income inequality here and now in the US of A.   [Read more…]

Gap, Old Navy, and the Living Hell of a Bangladeshi Sweatshop

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Report exposes firing and overwork of pregnant workers, routine beatings and deep poverty wages in sweatshop backed by US mega-retailers.

By Sarah Lazare / Common Dreams

Twenty-year-old Bangladeshi worker Morium Begum lost her baby in her seventh month of pregnancy after being forced to work 100-plus hours a week despite sickness and exhaustion while sewing garments for Gap and Old Navy in exchange for poverty wages.

According to a 68-page report released Thursday by the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights, stories like Begum’s are commonplace in the 3,750-worker Next Collections factory in Ashulia, Bangladesh, on the outskirts of Dhaka, where physical punishments—including slapping and beating—are routine, pregnant workers are subject to illegal firings or forced to toil without maternity leave, and wages are dismally low at 20 to 24 cents an hour.   [Read more…]

30 Ways the Shutdown Is Already Screwing People

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The government shutdown is already wreaking havoc on the lives of Americans.

By Tim Murphy / Mother Jones

The federal government entered shutdown mode at midnight on Monday, after Congress failed to pass a continuing resolution that would keep departments and agencies up and running. Though some Republicans have dismissed the immediate impact of the shutdown, quite a lot of people have already been affected.

Here’s a quick guide:   [Read more…]

Projected Low Turnout in Mayoral Special Election Favors Faulconer

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By Doug Porter

Two studies released this week appear to validate the decision made by big money Republican donors to boost the candidacy of City Councilman Kevin Faulconer.

A poll by Republican leaning Competitive Edge Research & Communication of 504 likely voters (Sept. 26-29) shows Faulconer running essentially even with Nathan Fletcher (26-27%, with a plus or minus margin of error of 4.4 percent).  Candidate David Alvarez was favored by 13%, Mike Aguirre got 7%, 20% of those polled said they were undecided and while 8% backed one of the seven other candidates in the race.

Following “push” polling questions, wherein surveyors read politically leading statements to respondents, support for Faulconer jumped to 34%, with Alvarez moving into second place with 22% and Fletcher support dropping to 20%.

Probable voter turnout in the Competitive Edge survey was pegged at somewhere between 35 and 40%.   [Read more…]

San Diego’s Special Mayoral Election: Meet the Candidates – Part 2

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Six Candidates You May Not Be Familiar With

By Doug Porter  (Part 1 can be accessed here)

Yesterday we took a look at a bunch of things we know about the five Big Name candidates.  Today we’re looking at the Rest of the Pack: six men with a variety of reasons for wanting the job of mayor that you might not ever have heard about.

We’ll be writing a lot of the mayoral campaigns in the coming weeks for the November 19th special election. These articles are introductions, mostly in their own words. The wording and formatting of the candidate statements is taken directly from the City Clerk. The biographies come from the candidate’s websites. And included are links (I think) will be useful in giving insight as to what these guys are all about.   [Read more…]

Readers Write: Allowing ‘Unauthorized Immigrants’ to Drive in California

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By Dana Levy

Wow, was I ever amazed when I turned on the TV this morning that I had an actual news alert which  was not related to the dreaded federal shutdown. Low and behold our California Governor Brown had actually signed the bill to allow “unauthorized immigrants” to apply for California Drivers Licenses.

What made me start reflect on this, besides the obvious, is that it is the exact same issue that caused our previous democratic governor, Gray Davis, to be recalled (or impeached by the hateful) and replaced by another immigrant, Arnold The Terrible (both actor and executive). Seems like a whole lifetime ago but it was 2003. The offshoot from the recall was that it set the tone for the legalization movement of those in our country illegally and that conversation has dominated then airwaves for quite some time now.   [Read more…]

The Mystery of Why Qualcomm Adopted Nathan Fletcher

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By Norma Damashek / NumbersRunner

Did you ever suspect you were being taken for a ride but decide to go along with it anyway?  Did you ever ignore that little voice inside your head warning you to watch out! because the guy conning you was so smooth, so really cute,  how could you say no?

You’ve just been introduced to Nathan Fletcher in his rematch race for mayor of San Diego.

Nathan Fletcher is funny, engaging, self-deprecating, and a topnotch storyteller.  He is low-keyed even when boasting, “I interrogated al-Qaeda… I can negotiate a labor deal.”   [Read more…]

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