Category: Election

by John Lawrence/ San Diego Free Press

Criticisms of Mitt Romney’s background at Bain Capital and his record as a “job creator” are fair game.

I have never heard so many conservative pundits offering gratuitous avuncular advice to Barack Obama that his campaign strategy attacking Bain Capital will not get him anywhere. Joe Scarborough of Morning Joe on msnbc and others have gone on and on about how using Bain Capital against Mitt Romney is not a good strategy. Well, when conservatives offer advice to Barack Obama about what will or will not work for him, Obama better do just the opposite of what they recommend because ultimately they want him to lose. Therefore, he should double down, not abandon, the Bain Capital strategy.

By Robert Scheer / TruthDig / June 7, 2012

On, Wisconsin! Or so it was meant to be with a union-led recall in the home state of Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette Sr., the populist governor and senator who once shaped the cry for anti-corporate social justice in this nation. After La Follette there was the Wisconsinite William Proxmire, the great conscience of the U.S. Senate, followed by the equally impressive Russ Feingold, who, despite being exactly correct in warning of the consequences of unfettered banking greed, was turned out by Wisconsin voters in 2010. Perhaps if the original McCain-Feingold legislation—gutted by the Supreme Court—was still the law of the land on campaign finance, the Democrats and their union base would have survived Tuesday’s election.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s overwhelming recall victory could signal the demise of the middle class nationwide.

As Doug Porter aptly observed in his election post-mortem last week, big money spoke loudly in the big races on June 5^th. This is nothing new but what happened in Wisconsin was truly historic. It was a soul-crushing defeat—not unexpected, but a gut punch nonetheless. Labor’s loss in the recall battle against Governor Scott Walker will surely go down as a key sequel to the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) strike for unionized public sector workers in America. Indeed, Governor Walker clearly said that he wanted to emulate that model, and he just won a very big battle in the war against collective bargaining in the United States.

Why is the PATCO strike so significant? After Reagan fired the striking air traffic controllers and crushed their union in 1981, it sent a signal to corporate America that it was open season on labor.

Since Primary election eve, when the results were coming in, San Diego conservatives have been celebrating their perceived “victories”. Me thinks they are celebrating way too early, as the results are not as favorable to the GOP and their extremist friends as they think it was. Check this out.

First, the California Primary was one of the lowest voter turn-outs in history – 36% – if not the lowest. Low turn-outs tend to favor conservatives, whereas large turn-0uts favor Democrats and liberals. And Democrats did stay away from the polls, as there was no big-ticket item on the ballot. Sure, Barack Obama was on it but he was a shoe-in. And Senator Dianne Feinstein was on it as well, but she didn’t have any serious challengers. Yes, there were two state-wide measures – and one of them – Prop 28 – which does aid democracy just a tad -passed handily – but how can anyone get excited about a tax on tobacco.

Join us tonight – Primary Night – here at 8:00 pm when the OB Rag joins other local online media and doing a live blog of the Primary’s mysterious being unfolded over the course of the evening. San Diego CityBeat and San Diego Rostra will be represented as well. Andy Cohen will be downtown blogging at Election Central, and Doug Porter, Frank Gormlie and Annie Lane – and perhaps more – will be live blogging from home.

From San Diego Free Press / June 4, 2012

In Under the Perfect Sun, Mike Davis, Kelly Mayhew and I observe that San Diego is a city that “many conservatives extol as a utopia of patriotism and free enterprise.” Indeed it was Nixon’s “lucky city” but, as we note, “San Diego has too frequently been a town wide open to greed but closed to social justice.

Like its Sunbelt siblings—Orange County, Phoenix, and Dallas—it has a long history of weak and venal city halls dominated by powerful groups of capitalist insiders. ‘Private Government’ has long overshadowed public politics.”

Candidate Scott Peters has been blanketing his expensive, slick fliers all over the 52nd Congressional District. Today, his latest flier arrived, and lo and behold – it’s a listing of media and press endorsements of the Scott Peters campaign – and includes the OB Rag. The flier intentionally makes it appear as if the OB Rag endorsed Scott Peters for Congress.

There is nothing further from the truth.

We at the OB Rag did NOT endorse Scott Peters – in fact, we endorsed Lori Saldaña in a staff vote of 9 to 2.

“The best lack all conviction while the worst are filled with passionate intensity.” Second Coming, William Butler Yeats

President Bill Clinton was in Wisconsin on Friday, June 1, stumping for Milwaukee Democratic Mayor Tom Barrett. Barrett is running against Governor Scott Walker in the upcoming recall election on June 5th and the race is a tight one.

Walker, who rode into office with a six point victory over Barrett in the 2010 mid-term elections, immediately focused upon dismantling the public employee collective bargaining laws in the state, reducing the number of individuals eligible for BadgerCare, the state’s health insurance safety net, lowering taxes on the wealthiest, and slashing the budget for education.

From Stop Prop A

San Diego, CA – “San Diegans do love their parks, but our parks could be at risk if Prop A passes,” begins District 7 Councilmember Marti Emerald in a taped statement released today by the No on Proposition A campaign.
COME INSIDE FOR DETAILS

Voter Approval of Proposition A on the June 5 Ballot could cause the City of San Diego’s Bond Ratings to Drop

San Diego, CA – Fitch Ratings, a global rating agency dedicated to scoring agencies’ financial strength, has cautioned the City of San Diego that passage of Proposition A will present severe fiscal consequences to the city, …COME INSIDE FOR DETAILS

by Doug Porter / San Diego Free Press / May 29, 2012

I read the Daily Fishwrap(s) so you don’t have to…

Filner’s Kenyan connection?… Absent a potential birth certificate scandal, reporter/columnist Matt Hall has decided to make the Mayoral candidates cough up their college transcripts in hopes that something, anything will make for a story. And at least one of the SDUT’s reliably right wing commenters is having a cow because candidate Bob Filner apparently ignored the request. The lone democrat in the race has been known to not suffer foolish requests lightly, as he did earlier this year when the Voice of San Diego wanted him to give up political positions in three sentences or less. Our sources say that Filner’s crew is, in fact, trying to get the stone tablets from Cornell shipped off to Hall; they’re just having problems finding a shipper.

A “Voter Information Night” will be held by High Tech High International on Wednesday, May 30th from 6pm – 8pm. High Tech High International is located at 2855 Farragut Road in Point Loma, within Liberty Station.

The non-partisan event will focus on educating the public about candidates who are competing for President, U.S. Senate, U.S. Congress, State Assembly, State Senate, City Council, and San Diego Mayor on this upcoming June 5th Primary Election. It will also cover state and local propositions, with the bulk of the focus on California and San Diego-specific issues.

“Voter Information Night” is a student-researched and conducted event. The public’s participation would greatly further support of the students’ goal of voter awareness and voter education for the June primaries/Presidential election.

In my column last week, I pointed out what Scott Peters’ accepting the endorsement by the New Democrat Coalition meant. Specifically, I outlined the history of the Democratic Leadership Council and its transformation into the New Democrat Coalition and noted that these organizations have been the chief engines behind the Democratic Party’s shift toward a far more business-friendly orientation. I also observed something that even Bill Clinton’s former advisor Robert Reich has recently written about—that the Clinton administration’s loosening of economic regulations as a result of this ideological shift helped grease the wheels for the great financial train wreck from which we are yet to recover.

This ideological shift in a large chunk of the Democratic Party was made possible by a web of corporate interests funding the DLC and its NDC offspring in order to influence policy on both sides of the aisle. It is, I argued, just as important to note these ideological and economic networks inside the Democratic Party as it is to look at the well-funded think tanks behind folks like Carl DeMaio.