Author: Jim Miller

Faulconer is hoping that you just won’t remember that the pension scandal occurred under a Republican mayor

By Jim Miller

As we head down the stretch run of the campaign to elect San Diego’s next mayor, Kevin Faulconer’s anti-union hysteria has reached critical mass.

In his latest TV ad a very serious woman’s voice warns us that despite the fact that “We need progress in San Diego,” David Alvarez wants to “take us back to times when union cronies ruled San Diego.” She goes on to warn us that Alvarez is being brought to you by “union bosses” who want “lavish pensions” and “no accountability” while “streets crumble” and “neighborhoods suffer.”

By Jim Miller

Last week a new poll by Public Policy Polling (PPP) funded by the Democratic Party came out that showed the race to become San Diego’s next mayor a dead heat with Alvarez at 46% and Faulconer just behind with 45%.

In another poll, Latino Decisions and the Latino Victory Project appraised Latino voters on the race and got radically different results than both the earlier Survey USA/UT-SD poll, a Republican Party poll , and the more recent PPP effort showing that Alvarez leads 75%-10% among Latino voters.

By Jim Miller

This year our ritual celebration of the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. comes in the midst of a contentious mayoral election. And while some might try to bracket this year’s remembrance off from the ugly fray, that would be a mistake. As I noted in an earlier column on this subject, remembering “a sanitized version of King as a vanilla saint who called on us to just move beyond our differences does a disservice to him and his legacy” because “[o]ur collective remembrance of MLK is most useful when it troubles us.”

And King would be deeply troubled to see where we are today nationally and locally. Yes, the man who said, “one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring” would be profoundly disturbed by the fact that we are living in an era of historic economic inequality.

By Jim Miller

Meet Kevin Faulconer, man of the people. He’s running glossy commercials about how he’ll be “a mayor for all of us” and talking as if he’ll be the guy who will focus on neighborhoods that “have been under-served by this city for too long.”

His website and ballot statement have been scrubbed of any unpleasant reminders that he is a Republican backed by San Diego’s traditional power brokers, and he just can’t stop reminding us that there is “no such thing as a Democratic or Republican pothole.”

Like the Republicans at the national level who have decided that they can claim poverty as an issue while refusing to raise the minimum wage, extend unemployment benefits, or stop cutting services to the poor, Faulconer seems to think ….

By Jim Miller

At the national level, there are signs that 2014 might be a hopeful one for progressives. In New York City Bill De Blasio was sworn in as mayor pledging to fight the “inequality crisis” with a bold progressive agenda addressing housing, education, and economic opportunity at all levels: “When I said we would take dead aim at the Tale of Two Cities, I meant it. And we will do it. We will succeed as one city.”

Many in the national press are pointing to De Blasio’s victory along with the momentum the living wage movement is gaining in cities like Seattle, and buzz around the effort to draft Elizabeth Warren to run for President as evidence of a shift in the national narrative about the question of inequality that bodes well for progressive populism and the country as a whole.

By Jim Miller

…the emergence of the local plutocracy’s strategy of rule by ballot initiative is a genuine threat to our local democracy

Last year, I rang out the New Year with a list of the best in San Diego culturally and politically in 2012. This year begs for a grimmer assessment. Better yet, politically, 2013 deserves to be tossed from the house with the caveat that it not let the door hit it in the ass on the way out.

It would be tempting to do a bottom ten list as there are so many deserving candidates in all quarters, but let me just reiterate what I wrote last summer, that much of what we saw transpiring in our fair city brought to mind Mark Twain’s pithy assessment of “the damned human race”:

I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the lower animals (so-called), and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me. For it obliges me to renounce my allegiance to the Darwinian theory of the Ascent of Man from the Lower Animals; since it now seems plain to me that the theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer one, this new and truer one to be named the Descent of Man from the Higher Animals.

By Jim Miller

Every holiday season one of my favorite tasks is collecting and delivering all the toys donated by my union brothers and sisters in the American Federation of Teachers to the Labor Council office for the annual toy drive. My union, along with many other San Diego locals who participate in this annual ritual, do so in order to help out the families of unemployed workers struggling during the holiday season.

They want you to glare at the union worker asking for a cookie while they walk away with the whole jar.

By Jim Miller

Last week over at the SD Rostra they posted an interesting commentary entitled “Electing Kevin Faulconer: Make a Clear Distinction on Fiscal Conservatism” that outlined the path to a Republican victory. While not particularly surprising, the strategy suggested there is revealing in some important ways.

What, according to our friends on the right, needs to be done?

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 …”

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.

By Jim Miller

Last Tuesday, fortune favored the bold. David Alvarez defied the pundits and political insiders and beat the prohibitive favorite, Nathan Fletcher, in the race to face Kevin Faulconer in the run-off to be San Diego’s next mayor. This was a seminal moment for San Diego—perhaps the biggest political upset in history of the city.

It just wasn’t supposed to happen.

By Jim Miller

This just in: it appears that Nathan Fletcher’s claims of inevitability have evaporated as the race to meet Kevin Faulconer in the run off is a dead heat leaning Alvarez heading into the last week. The internal polling in all three camps shows Faulconer having consolidated the Republican vote as Fletcher’s early name ID-fueled lead has collapsed, and Alvarez has continued to steadily trend upwards.