Category: Election

It’s All About the Climate and Our Children’s Future

By Jim Miller, Nicole Capretz, and Nick Segura

San Diego does not have a history of visionary regional planning, but the woefully inadequate Measure A would take our city to a new low by ensuring decades more of inadequate efforts to address both our infrastructure needs and climate change.

Sadly, Measure A is not up to the transportation and climate justice challenges of the present and would guarantee a future for our city that would leave us with no solutions for climate change or traffic congestion while increasing pollution, poisoning our children, and turning a deaf ear to the needs of beleaguered communities of color.

The OB Rag ran a readers’ poll for one week asking the question: “What would you do if Trump was elected?” and it had 145 respondents.

The answers ranged from nearly a third saying they would be celebrating Trump’s election (31%), contrasted with nearly 10% who said they would be joining the “underground resistance”, and where 23% claimed “nothing will change.”

About 38% of those who answered chose options in the poll that expressed some level of negative impact with Trump’s election. Nearly 8% said they would move out of the country (2% to Mexico and 5.5% to Canada).

Another 14% would be mobilized politically against Trump – with an astounding 9.7% of the overall respondents agreeing to the option, “Joint the underground resistance.”

Almost 5% said they would “take to the streets”, meaning demonstrating and protesting.

Opponent Gretchen Newsom Squares Off with Anthony Montalvo

From Point Loma – OB Dems

There’s a Measure on the ballot this November that could determine how we’ll get around San Diego County for the next 40 years. Transportation affects the quality of lives – how we get to work, how we get to the beach. It shapes the growth of our cities, and the health of children and seniors.

by David Helvarg /Ocean Views / August 30, 2016

In response to a letter sent by 115 Ocean Leaders to the leading presidential candidates Secretary Clinton has released a two-page response on what she will do to protect our coast and ocean if elected. With just over two months until the vote, this marks the first time in the campaign where a major candidate has addressed the daunting issues confronting America’s public seas.

“As President of the Untied States, I will work to redouble national efforts to boost the “blue economy,” creating jobs and opportunity in industries that restore and protect the health and vitality of our oceans,” she writes.

By Patricia Staley

I’m getting sick of stump speeches and I have a deep-rooted distrust of politicians, in general.

How many leaflets can you bear to pull out of your mailbox?

Every branch of government is at stake and it makes you feel like a sap if you don’t vote.

Proposition 64 Enjoys Wide Support Among Most Voter Categories

A new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll found that a good majority of California voters support marijuana legalization and back Proposition 64.

58% of voters in the state support Prop 64, which would allow Californians ages 21 or older to possess, transport and use up to an ounce of cannabis for recreational purposes, and would allow individuals to grow as many as six plants. The measure would also impose a 15% tax on retail sales of the drug.

And according to the poll, the favorable attitude toward grass cuts across most lines of age, race, income and gender.

Ed Spriggs Appeals to Fellow IB City Council Candidates But His Words Resonate for All San Diegans

By Ed Spriggs / San Diego Free Press

There is one proposition on the State ballot this year that hasn’t yet drawn much attention, and probably won’t.

It doesn’t cost anything. It doesn’t require anyone to do or change anything. It doesn’t prohibit anything. It doesn’t even benefit one citizen or group of individuals over another.

It just supports the core principle of a democratic system of government – one that is of the people, by the people and for the people.

By Norma Damashek / NumbersRunner

What is it about brute force and macho swagger that mesmerizes so many people?

Picture this: you’re at a crowded carnival. See that big beefy guy up on stage – the one with bulging pecs and thighs like a steel vise? Watch as he picks up that mallet, swings it high overhead, and smashes it down – smack on target. The bell at the top almost shatters with a ringing endorsement of this big tough guy. We all cheer.

Picture another carnival. Onstage is an international lineup of muscle-flexing politicians. See the iron-fisted man of steel Vladimir Putin? the vicious hanger-on Bashar al-Assad? how about the take-no-prisoners Kim Jong-un? And whoa! there’s a joker in the pack – the one with a muscle-bound mouth. Could it be the Donald, our very own wild card? Even he gets cheers.

Now picture a different carnival setting. Let’s make it city hall in sunny San Diego. Man-o-man, the politics on this stage are a feminist fantasy come true – not a grandstanding, fulminating, intimidating, testosterone-laden blowhard in sight (at least, not since Papa Doug Manchester pulled out at the U-T).

By Jim Miller

As many of us in education circles remember, before the passage of Proposition 30 in 2012, the funding situation for schools and colleges in California was dire.

The question was not IF there were going to be cuts, but rather, how large they would be and how much damage they would do to our students, our profession, and to the communities we serve.

But fortunately, in the wake of the Great Recession and the Occupy movement, the questions of economic inequality and social justice were in the air and we in the California Federation of Teachers, along with our community allies, were able to muster a successful campaign first for the Millionaire’s Tax and then for the passage of Proposition 30, the compromise measure that was forged with Governor Brown.

Just when you thought the 2016 Presidential race couldn’t get any crazier, here come reports that Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka is actually vacationing in Croatia with Putin’s girlfriend, Wendi Deng Murdoch.

From an August 14 article on People online:

Ivanka Trump is taking a break from the campaign trail to vacation with friends. The daughter of GOP nominee Donald Trump shared a scenic snap with Wendi Deng Murdoch, the ex-wife of billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch, from Dubrovnik, Croatia.

It turns out that the guy leading 6 petition drives against new California gun restrictions recently signed into law has a business “headquartered” right here in Ocean Beach.

Barry Bahrami has launched campaigns to qualify his six referendum to go up against the gun control laws signed by Gov. Jerry Brown.

Barry Bahrami is also the CEO of Commercial Network Services, an online business that touts itself “a global online service provider specializing in hosting low latency algorithmic trading systems, virtual private networks …” and other virtual trading services.

And Commercial Network Services are indeed headquartered in OB, right at the OB Business Center, at “4876 Santa Monica Ave # 111, San Diego, CA 92107” according to his site. Now, true, we’re talking a PO Box here as “headquarters” – but it is an Ocean Beach connection.

By Jim Miller

In late July, I was at the American Federation of Teachers convention in Minneapolis, Minnesota watching Hillary Clinton address a hall of thousands of educators as a handful of #Black Lives Matters and assorted other protesters tried, unsuccessfully, to disrupt her speech, which inspired a few angry delegates to start yelling, “Get them out! Arrest them!” until a wiser soul chimed in with, “Aren’t we supposed to be different than Trump?”

For the most part, Clinton’s speech was a laundry list of interest group button-pushing, but I was pleased to see how far the primary seemed to have forced her to adopt Sanders-like positions and rhetoric on things like affordable higher education.