Category: Election

California could be third State in nation to adopt such a resolution

By Public Citizen / East Co. Magazine / Originally published on March 25, 2012

California is well in stride to be the third state to call for a constitutional amendment to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision, which allows corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money in an attempt to influence elections. The California Assembly passed a resolution – by a 48-22 vote – calling for an amendment, sending the measure to the California Senate.

These days, the recently re-christened UT San Diego seems to be a fan of San Diego city councilman and mayoral candidate Carl Demaio. Pension-hating missives such as this, this, and this suggest the paper’s editors, at least, sympathize with DeMaio’s emphasis on public-employee retirement plans as an apocalyptic scourge facing San Diegans.

It’s not hard to imagine UT San Diego issuing a DeMaio endorsement in the months ahead, particularly if the mayor’s race comes down to DeMaio versus Bob Filner.

But a sea change underlies UT San Diego’s apparent affection for DeMaio. When the two first met in 2005, when UT San Diego was still The San Diego Union-Tribune, the newspaper’s reaction could be characterized as somewhere between skeptical and “pffft.”

CSUSM: The results of electing inaction

By Kit-Bacon Gressit / Excuse Me, I’m Writing / March 17, 2012

Better election fraud than rape. That’s what I always say. Not really. That’s what I’ve been saying since Friday, when I learned that Cal State University San Marcos (CSUSM) student Matt Weaver was arrested. But he was not arrested for repeatedly promoting rape (along with homophobia, misogyny, pedophilia and racism) in the pages of The Koala, the privately-owned, for-profit tabloid he edits and touts as a “humor” publication.* No, Weaver, who was running for president of ASI, the student government, was arrested and charged with three criminal counts associated with the elections:

1. unlawful access to a computer or database,
2. identity theft and
3. election fraud.

Here’s the gist of it: The university’s information security folks noticed suspicious activity …

Underwater Homeowners Start To Lose Patience

By Tom Fudge / KPBS / March 14, 2012

Rolling Hills Ranch looks like a pretty plush neighborhood. Three thousand square-foot stucco homes line the winding streets, and they’re framed by a panorama of nearby mountains. …

Use Of Pigs In Medic Classes Sparks Protest

By Steve Schmidt / 10 News / March 14, 2012

It’s about training the finest medics in the world. It’s about cruelty to animals. When it comes to the goings-on at secluded Covert Canyon, an outdoor training facility near Alpine, there’s little that the two sides in the issue agree on. …

San Diego Rents Third Highest in Nation

By Don Bauder / The Reader / March 13, 2012

Last week wasn’t so good for Jerry Brown. First the Public Policy Institute of California put out a poll that found that the Governor’s measure was favored by only a very slim majority of California voters at 52% approval. This number is 16% below where it was in a January PPIC poll and, if accurate, pretty much dooms it. What changed? In this survey, people were given the actual language that will be on the ballot (including the regressive sales tax), which appears to kill voter enthusiasm.

Making matters worse for Brown and company, another poll followed this one that eviscerates one of the governor’s main arguments. This poll confirms that a majority of Californians would prefer to have a choice of tax measures on the ballot.

By Dirty DeMaio/ February 21, 2012

One of Carl DeMaio’s favorite claims on the campaign trail is that government doesn’t create jobs. We’ve noted previously that DeMaio can actually thank government for every job he’s ever had, but is he also looking to have government create jobs for his campaign contributors?

After he didn’t back down from a statement that he “owes” his supporters, DeMaio assured the audience at a mayoral debate in January that “we have not had any contract process where I’m awarding a contract.” But as we noted last month, that’s not entirely accurate:
(see inside)

An Aide of Opponent Scott Peters Attempts to Disrupt Kick-Off Event

By Nadin Abbott / February 18, 2012

Lori Saldaña officially launched her primary run for the June 5th election, for Congressional District 52. She is running against Scott Peters on the Democratic Party Primary. During the event Saldaña highlighted her achievements in Sacramento during her six years in the Legislature.

During the event a young man with her opponent Scott Peters’ Campaign tried to disrupt it. His efforts to mar the kick-off event was prevented by volunteers.

During Saldana’s six years she worked on clean water, which is not a “partisan issue.” It is also not a partisan issue to work on clean sea food, in a city that relies on sea food. During those years she worked with Rick Rudy, a commercial fisherman, on these issues. Mr. Rudy is a commercial lobsterman, and a registered Republican.

Saldaña also emphasized the fight for the middle class and labor, and how wages have stalled over the last thirty years. As she pointed out, a master carpenter wages start at around twenty-five dollars, where they were thirty years ago. Another issue that matters to the grass roots are college loans, and access to college.

Hey y’all! – It’s Thursday and editordude called me to say he wanted another column on stories our OBcean friends may have missed due to being too messed up from the night before. Them – not me. I’ve been savin’ some clips from the week. So, Wake and Bake, people! Get off you ass, load the bong, and check these out! C’mon!

For starters, Comedy Central has abruptly suspended Stephen Colbert‘s nightly comedy satire show. Reuters reports that “Comedy Central has suspended production of the Colbert Report for at least two days, an unexplained development that ignited widespread speculation about the popular satirical news show on Twitter and other social networks.” A repeat was shown on Wednesday and also is planned for tonight, Thursday due to due to “unforeseen circumstances”. We all know what a super job Colbert and his pal Jon Stewart have done in educating the nation about Super-Pacs, so we’re hoping everything is okay.

Some sanity from two of our Congressional reps – Filner and Davis – both are co-sponsoring a bill that would require disclosure of corporate money in politics. The East County Mag reports:

Two San Diego Congressional representatives, Susan Davis and Bob Filner, have taken steps to clean up the secret money plaguing our political system. Both Democrats have joined colleagues in cosponsoring the Disclose 2012 Act (H.R. 4010) to require disclosure of the corporate and special interest money in politics.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt / Excuse Me, I’m Writing / February 12, 2012

Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, seems to have been widely misquoted last Friday, after the Obama administration announced a compromise to the campaign-season conflict between religious liberty and women’s contraception coverage under health insurance plans provided by Catholic employers (hospitals, universities and other agencies, but not churches). With the compromise, responsibility for funding contraceptives was shifted to the insurers, and Dolan purportedly said the resolution was, “a first step in the right direction.”

But, oh no, no! What Dolan surely said was that the resolution was “a first step in the right direction — to hell!” and that was made clear when the bishops slammed the compromise later in the day.

Editor: Our good friend and fellow Ragster Doug Porter has not been feeling so hot these last couple of days, and so hasn’t dropped off his daily column “First Cuppa Coffee” for a couple of mornings. So, we have enlisted the last minute assistance of one of our regular readers and commenters, OB Joe, in the first of his irregular columns, “Wake and Bake”.

By OB Joe / Special to the OB Rag

Hey, all – ol’ buddy Doug is down, so I’m stepping in to fill his shoes – just for this mornin’ – ‘course if you like it, maybe the Rag editors will let me do it more often … just sayin’. Anyhoo, my style is a little more free flowin’ than Porter’s so I hope it doesn’t distract from the news. And BTW, don’t get upset if I’m using a lot of links to our local fishwrap, the U-T. The Rag editors called me freakin in the middle of the morning, before I had my first bong. So Wake and Bake – fellow OBceans and other denizens of the world!

Who will pay for SDG&E’s screw-ups and all that 2007 fire damage? The U-T is reporting that Sempra Energy – SDG&E’s parent – is assuring investors that its San Diego-area utility customers – that’s us – will pay for nearly all of an estimated $463 million in costs not covered by insurance from the catastrophic 2007 wildfires that were triggered in large part by its power lines. My emphasis. Let’s keep this mind.

A new poll out shows that in San Diego’s mayoral race, Congressman Bob Filner and City Councilman Carl DeMaio are in a statistical tie for first place, each with about a quarter of respondents’ votes.

The poll – conducted for KGTV by SurveyUSA between January 30 and February 3 – shows DeMaio with 25% and Filner with 24% – a tie as the poll of only 511 likely voters has a margin of error of 4.4%.

The other high-profile candidates include District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis who garnered 14% and state Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher who received 13%. Nearly a quarter of respondents picked “other” or were undecided.

Who has made MAN the guardian of women’s rights? Who has sanctioned other women telling other females that they are wrong because they want to have an abortion. Did you hear a candidate for President of the United States of America say, when it involves a woman pregnant from a rape, “Make The Best Out Of A Bad Situation”. Yes, that is what candidate Rick Santorum said when he commented on his opposition to abortion.

A woman’s body is her own. It does not belong to anyone else except that woman. No one should be able to tell a woman what to do with her body. Not her family; not her husband; not her significant other; not her religion. What she decides to do with it should be between her and her doctor. No one else.