Category: Election

by Lucas O’Connor / Two Cathedrals / October 31, 2011

Hypocrisy is a painfully familiar political topic in recent years, but this is a particularly stunning case. Congressman Brian Bilbray is co-sponsoring legislation that would boost the US economy and create jobs by demanding that China play by the same economic rules as the rest of the world — but using parliamentary tactics to block the House of Representatives from being allowed to hold a vote. That is, he signed himself up to help pass the bill, and is now blocking the passage of that bill. At the cost of new jobs — lots of them.

Recently, Clare Crawford of the Center on Policy Initiatives noted that, “Even three full-time minimum wage jobs don’t make enough to make ends meet in San Diego County.” Crawford was responding to the release of a report by the Insight Center for Community Economic Development that documented how it now costs a family of three nearly $63,000 to make ends meet in San Diego.

This is according to the 2011 California Family Self-Sufficiency Standard and the grim news is that more than one million San Diegans are living in households earning less than that threshold. That’s close to a third of all San Diegans, much higher than the fifteen percent of San Diegans who fall under the official poverty line.

The coalition “A Better San Diego“, comprised of community, faith, labor, LGBT rights, immigrant rights, environmental and social justice organizations (view a partial list), have been working to build an economic vision for our city that focuses on jobs, quality of life, equality, prosperity and fairness for more San Diegans. This coalition has been organizing a forum where selected candidates running for San Diego Mayor will address issues that concern workers, students, retirees… actually, the 99%!

In a letter published at the Voice of San Diego yesterday, candidate Loch David Crane has announced that he has withdrawn from the San Diego mayoral race. He states that despite physical problems that made it difficult for him to campaign he gave it his best effort because no one else spoke out to defend legal medical marijuana patients. I applaud him for taking a stance and wish him the best with his endeavors and hope his physical condition improves.

However, in his letter to Voice of San Diego he misguidedly attacks the labor council…

SUSA dishes up workable mayoral numbers

The polling continues to circle the San Diego mayoral race, with Survey USA returning with new numbers last week. By contrast to the recent local polling that insisted on voters picking a candidate, the 10News/SUSA poll allowed for an ‘Undecided’ option, which proved to be quite popular, underlining the limitations of September’s B&B poll. First, the results

By Melissa Harris-Perry / The Nation Magazine / September 21, 2011 ( October 10, 2011 edition of The Nation.)

Electoral racism in its most naked, egregious and aggressive form is the unwillingness of white Americans to vote for a black candidate regardless of the candidate’s qualifications, ideology or party. This form of racism was a standard feature of American politics for much of the twentieth century. So far, Barack Obama has been involved in two elections that suggest that such racism is no longer operative. His re-election bid, however, may indicate that a more insidious form of racism has come to replace it.

By Brittany Bailey / Special to the OB Rag

Since the OB Rag’s article on the Dumanis Fundraiser on Del Monte in Ocean Beach created such controversy, I decided to stakeout the event and report on any protests that may arise. Nothing says ‘political espionage’ more than a college student facebooking in a mini cooper.

If I were the kind of person who stereotypes (and I am), I might say that at a liberal fundraiser, I might expect to find an offering of free abortions, a justice of the peace presiding over same-sex marriages, and guests using the smattering of hors d’ouvres to make sandwiches for the homeless. I wasn’t sure what to expect at a conservative’s fundraiser– maybe a politician accepting monetary donations in exchange for political patronage? Oh, wait….

There’s an unofficial and underground tussle going on right now between the OB Rag and the Bonnie Dumanis for Mayor Campaign. It is subtle and you have to look literally between the lines.

But it involves vague threats against Doug Porter, our OB Rag reporter, who published an article about Dumanis’ “secret” campaign with a comment referring to an Ocean Beach fundraiser for the District Attorney on Thursday, September 22nd.

In the Tea Party’s America, families must mortgage their home to pay for their mother’s end-of-life care. Higher education is a luxury reserved almost exclusively to the very rich. Rotten meat ships to supermarkets nationwide without a national agency to inspect it. Fathers compete with their adolescent children for sub-minimum wage jobs. And our national leaders are utterly powerless to do a thing.

The newly empowered Republicans in Pennsylvania are considering changing the way the state awards its electoral votes in presidential elections despite growing concerns by some Republicans that the move could backfire

Former Gov. Edward G. Rendell, a Democrat, calls the effort to change how electoral votes are awarded in Pennsylvania “somewhere between despicable and reprehensible.”

Get your history of voter suppression right here! GOP rev’s up efforts to make voting more difficult by Americans

In the 1964 presidential elections, a young political operative named Bill guarded a largely African-American polling place in South Phoenix, Arizona like a bull mastiff. Bill was a legal whiz who knew the ins and outs of voting law and insisted that every obscure provision be applied, no matter what. … It turned out that it was part of a Republican Party strategy known as “Operation Eagle Eye”, and “Bill” was future Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist.

By Jason Everitt / Two Cathedrals / September 16, 2011

On Wednesday, the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council called on KUSI to acknowledge their broadcast of the station-sponsored special report, “Pension Reform: The Fight to Get it on the Ballot,” as a campaign contribution. The Labor Council’s claim is based on the fact that the “special report” was explicitly produced for the purpose of advocating for qualification of a ballot measure. For anyone who watched the hour and a half long CPR commercial (and I did), it would be impossible to draw any other conclusion