Category: Election

By Bob Dorn / San Diego Free Press

The Democratic Party, not the Republicans, died Tuesday night. It took with it to the grave a functional middle class.

From now on smart people will have to find some new ways to avoid the hoi polloi, the downward bound still clinging to their weekend Harleys and storing their AK 47’s in whatever closet they can afford to rent. We’ve watched our tepid and bland Democrats—the Susan Davis’s and Scott Peters—clapping and wiggling their asses to the tunes of corporate advisers for so long that we’ve failed to notice they look and sound just like Republicans.

They just wouldn’t go away, would they? They kept cloning themselves, and droning the same songs of the party of Jefferson. They were forced by political law to live in their districts but we didn’t know where they were, and we knew it wouldn’t be in their local offices. How many pieces of our minds were we unable to give them?

Who’d a thunk the Dems would die first? The Tea Party and the White Nationalists and the End Time Evangelicals were making war on The Blue-Suited Wall Streeters and Corporate Media, and so we thought the Republicans were killing themselves.

Sometime after 2 a.m. eastern standard time – in the middle of the late night, Hillary Clinton – who won the popular vote for President – phoned Donald Trump and made her concession. He had won the electoral vote.

In an historic rebellion of the white, working-class, half of American voters used democratic means to elect a man who does not understand the Constitution, who does not respect the Bill of Rights, and who does not believe in democracy.

It is an irony, then, that a radical regime was voted into power that represents the greatest threat in 40 years to what is left of American democracy. Words do matter. With the threats and promises made by our new President-elect over the course of the last year and a half, it’s clear that not since the time of Richard Nixon have the civil rights of Americans been so openly splayed out on the chopping block as they are now – or will be in a few months.

The OB Rag has been live blogging since 9 a.m. – COME INSIDE FOR THE LATEST ….

9:00 a.m. This is finally it – Election Day, 2016! This is the historic day where American voters have a final say in the Presidential contest between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

The editors of the OB Rag and the San Diego Free Press are pleased to present our 2016 General Election Progressive Voter Guide.

We believe this is a historic election, one that will set the course of the United States for decades to come. If there ever was an election where voting was important — this is it.

The candidacy of Donald Trump is no accident. It is a consequence of decades of building a constituency for a market-driven political economy by capitalizing on fear, bias, and ignorance.

By Jim Miller

Greetings procrastinating progressive poll voters! After you are done voting against Donald Trump and attending to all the high profile races that have received plenty of attention elsewhere, there are a myriad of other issues to decide. Here is my list of good things progressives can do down ballot:

*Vote to Fund Education and Elect Actual Educators to School and College Boards: Of course, the central statewide ballot measure to vote for is Proposition 55, which extends Proposition 30’s taxes on the wealthiest Californians while leaving the sales tax behind.

If you value public education, this is an obvious vote. For more on Prop. 55 see my column here.

Here are some frequently asked questions about election day voting in San Diego County. In order to vote, you must be a U.S. citizen and you must already be registered to vote. There is no same day registration in CA.

For info on candidates and issues on the 2016 general election ballots in San Diego, go here.

OB Rag and San Diego Free Press Progressive Voter Guide here.

When are the polls open?

Polls are open on election day Tuesday, November 8, 2016 from 7am to 8pm. If you are in the line at the polling place prior to 8pm, you have the right to vote.

Hearing all the recent news accounts about how elements in the highest reaches of our top national law enforcement agency – the FBI – have worked to flip the Presidential election in Donald Trump’s favor, made me pull up a definition of “coup d’etat“.

Wow, you might say, how extreme, how hyperbolic – how over the top you’re getting these last few days of the election campaign.

But isn’t it a significant intervention into this election when James Comey, the head of the FBI, announces that the agency is reopening its investigation into a new batch of emails that may involve Hillary Clinton – a bombshell meant to disparage her certainly? And isn’t it intervention when sources within the FBI leak damaging and false information about Clinton to both right-wing media and the Trump campaign?

And when an anchor and reporter on Fox News announced that according to his FBI “sources”, Clinton is likely to be criminally indicted, and this is supposedly confirmed by others close to the agency. So, is all of this an attempted coup d’etat by FBI agents immersed in Trumpland to throw the election to their favorite candidate?

Rick Shea versus Walmart and Company

By Gregg Robinson, President, San Diego County Board of Education, and Jim Miller, Vice President, American Federation of Teachers Guild, Local 1931

Somebody is trying to buy control of San Diego’s education system and few in the local media seem to have noticed until Sunday’s San Diego Union-Tribune finally covered it.

The Voice of San Diego has been quiet on this front, perhaps because, as the SDUT article reports, its co-founder Buzz Woolley is part of the action. He and his fellow corporate education reformers have San Diego in their crosshairs and are spending big money to drive their agenda.

Via UrbDeZine

By Mario Torero, Brent Beltrán, and Bill Adams / UrbDeZine

Barrio Logan is little known to most San Diegans – beyond being a predominantly Mexican-American neighborhood near downtown. Yet it is one of San Diego’s most historically significant and culturally important neighborhoods.

In particular, it has national prominence for its role in the Chicano / Mexican-American civil rights movement. However, more than a Chicano historic asset, the neighborhood and it’s history stands as a monument to the resilience and survival of the nation’s minority and working class populations in the face of assaults and exploitation by the overwhelming power of the state and business interests.

In particular, many ethnic working-class urban neighborhoods across the country were destroyed or severely damaged by en masse relocation of their residents to build freeways and other neighborhood-destroying and suburb serving facilities.

Opponents of Measure J on the San Diego ballot are rallying today, Tuesday, November 1st, at Mission Bay. Opponents include former City Councilmember Ed Harris, the Surfrider Foundation, the Pacific Beach Town Council, and the Pacific Beach Planning Group.

From the group’s press release, they state:

The proposed measure is a terrible idea for both the public and the City of San Diego.

The lack of community involvement, the proponents lack of disclosure of its full implications, the reallocation of Mission Bay Park commercial lease revenue, and the City Council’s ability to add contiguous park acreage to Mission Pay Park, and therefore open the door to more commercial development, makes voting “No” on Measure J an easy choice.

By South OB Girl

There is a lot of discussion these days about climate change. Global warming. Carbon emissions. The Climate Action Plan. You no doubt have friends talking about going electric, or who are proud owners and drivers of electric vehicles. Or friends or family members who devoutly bike everywhere. You may know some folks too who use public transportation.

The majority of San Diegans are dissatisfied with public transportation. San Diegans prefer cars — it’s our way of life. Not necessarily across the board — many satisfied bus riders in OB take the 923 bus downtown for work and are quite satisfied — doing work, reading, or playing games on their bus ride. Many people do use public transportation and are satisfied. But we have by no means reached an efficiency of public transportation comparable to New York City, San Francisco, Berlin, or many other large cities.