Category: Politics

By JW August / June 3, 2025

San Diego Congressional and local elected officials stood together Monday to denounce last weekend’s armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid on a South Park neighborhood restaurant.

Four U.S. representatives and two mayors vowed to challenge the Trump Administration’s militaristic tactics in storming the popular Buona Forchetta eatery on Friday and intimidating the South Park community. An estimated 20 to 25 ICE agents handcuffed the entire staff while looking for 19 employees named in a warrant signed by local magistrate Judge Karen Crawford. Four employees with no identification were taken into custody.

“Over the past week, the immigration enforcement tactics we’ve seen in San Diego have crossed a new line,” said Rep. Sara Jacobs. “This isn’t about going after criminals. They’re going after people who are trying to do the right thing and people who are contributing to our economy.”

Jacobs was joined at the press conference outside the James M. Carter and Judith N. Keep Federal Courthouse by Reps. Juan Vargas, Mike Levin, and Scott Peters and by San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria and Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre.

By Neighbors for a Better San Diego / June 2, 2025

While Neighbors For A Better San Diego has been focusing on San Diego’s revisions to the Bonus ADU program, a bill is moving through the California State Senate — Senate Bill 79 (SB 79) — that could radically change for the worse single-family neighborhoods across the state, including right here in San Diego.

SB 79 would allow housing developments up to 6 stories tall (65 feet or more) in single-family zoned neighborhoods within a half-mile of bus rapid transit (BRT) or trolley lines — all under the pretense of climate action and transit accessibility. This could include transit stops that are planned but may never be built.

Neighbors For A Better San Diego strongly opposes SB 79.  Our objections are detailed in our white paper.

While some of our objections arise from the specific conditions of San Diego, others apply to all California cities:

By Kate Callen / May 29, 2025

San Diegans have just 10 days to submit written protests to the City Clerk about proposed trash fees for residential properties.

For the price of a postage stamp, property owners can register their disgust with one of the most offensive City Hall scams in recent memory. If voters had known the truth in 2022 – that new trash collection services would cost $53 a month – Proposition B would have been defeated.

Instead, it narrowly passed, thanks to a much lower estimate of $23 to $29 a month from the City’s Independent Budget Analyst (IBA). In a May 5 Union-Tribune article headlined “San Diego Trash Fee Collection Was Riddled With Errors,” the IBA said its faulty work was “an honest mistake based on some bad information and some miscalculations.”

Jordan More, the IBA analyst responsible for the miscalculation, had this to say: “Mea culpa – I am human.” He is also well compensated. According to Transparent California, the City paid More $248,117.68 in total pay and benefits in 2023.

By Chuck Dunning / May 30, 2025
In his Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln called this country “a new nation conceived in liberty” guaranteed by the First Amendment of the Constitution: “Congress shall make no law …abridging the freedom of speech, or the press.”

In the 1920s, with the advent of radio and later television, Congress realized the enormous potential in these media for the public good. It deemed the airways as belonging to the public. For the right to use them, license holders would be required to operate in the “public interest, convenience and necessity.”

In 1949, the Federal Communications Commission went a step further and passed what became known as The Fairness Doctrine, requiring radio and television stations to devote airtime to issues of public importance and to present opposing perspectives. But in 1987, the Reagan administration, believing the growth of cable TV and the Internet would guarantee multiple points of view, repealed the Fairness Doctrine.

Today, that guarantee of freedom of the press is under assault like never before.

By David Garrick / SD Union Tribune / May 29, 2025

At least two San Diego council members want to give back future pay raises to help solve a budget crisis, but City Attorney Heather Ferbert says a city law explicitly allowing them to do that is nullified by the city charter.

Council members haven’t had the power to vote for or against their own pay raises since a 2018 ballot measure that tied their compensation — including any raises — directly to the salaries of state Superior Court judges.

Their annual salaries were hiked from $182,955 to $183,545 last December and are expected to be increased again later this year when Superior Court judges get their annual pay bump.

The goal of the ballot measure was allowing council members to get pay raises without the awkwardness and controversy of voting for those raises themselves.

Supporters say the pay increases under the measure have significantly boosted the quality of candidates seeking office because the salaries are high enough to attract lawyers, doctors and other professionals.

The ballot measure also tied the salaries of the mayor and city attorney to Superior Court judges, but they get equal pay to the judges while council members only get 75% of the judicial salaries. Annual pay for the mayor and city attorney rose from $243,940 to $244,727 in December.

The city’s gaping budget deficit this spring, which has been estimated at anywhere between $258 million and $353 million, has prompted some to suggest the mayor and council members should agree to reject any raises.

By Francine Maxwell / May 20, 2025

I am a San Diego resident, a taxpayer, and somebody who still believes this city belongs to the people. This is my request to the City Council as it tries to navigate our financial crisis.

Let’s be clear: the Mayor has done his job. He proposed a draft budget to close a $258-million deficit. If you don’t like it — and I don’t — your job is to propose something better. The people of San Diego didn’t elect nine Councilmembers to rubber-stamp bad ideas. They elected you to lead.

This budget is a moral document. And what it says right now is: The City values bureaucracy over neighborhoods. It protects middle management and redundant executive positions while gutting services our communities rely on. Five-day library service? Parks losing a third of their programming hours? And residents paying for it through $47 trash fees, water rate hikes, $2.50-an-hour parking meters, and who knows what next?

By Paul Krueger / May 21, 2025

I listened politely, and with compassion, as speaker after speaker at the San Diego City Council’s May 19 Public Budget Forum pleaded, begged, and demanded that the Mayor and the Council protect our libraries, parks and rec centers.

I totally agreed with all the advocates. But it was Francine Maxwell’s comments that best expressed my position on how to balance the city’s budget. And that’s why I used my one-minute public comment to urge the Council to follow her sage advice.

Francine’s powerful presentation is posted here. I will summarize it in a few words: “Cut positions, not programs.”

By Steve Rivera / May 20, 2025

Political mailers clog mailboxes and recycle bins every campaign cycle.

Why?

Because they work. Sort of.

They are crude, broad-based attempts by campaigns to influence voters. In a news and political environment with declining coverage and increased partisanship, mailers are often the only connection a voter will have to a campaign.

As the general public becomes algorithmically fractionalized, it becomes easier to “micro-target” voters. Rare campaign funds are put toward niche social media strategies rather than broad outreach.

Broad efforts such as field campaigns (yard signs, volunteers, doorhangers, transportation, food, water, etc.) and phone banks (calling voters) are still used. But after COVID, their importance can be questioned as fewer people answer the door let alone talk to strangers on the phone.

Texting can work, but its appeal is limited. And in this era of virtual private networks, social media buys are like throwing darts blindfolded; You’ll hit the dartboard only if you’re lucky.

By Dan Walters / Calmatters / May 20, 2025

One of Gavin Newsom’s political ploys is to depict political rivals as bullies and himself as someone who stands up to them.

Last September, for example, he devoted an entire segment of his podcast, “Politickin’,” to denouncing Donald Trump, saying he is “a bully. But here’s the thing about bullies — they’re weak.”

That was before Trump was elected and before Newsom had to play nice in hopes of securing billions of dollars in federal relief aid for fire-damaged Los Angeles County. After initially saying he would provide such aid during a visit to L.A., Trump began hinting on imposing conditions on California, such as tightening up voting requirements and loosening up on water deliveries to farmers.

Newsom then reverted to his previous role as a leader of resistance to Trump.

Yes, Trump does use bullying tactics to get his way. He uses aggressive policies — such as tariffs on imports — as a negotiating tactic. So does Newsom.

By Marty Graham / May 19, 2025

Remember that Measure B campaign for fairness and free bins?

In the last two weeks, about 47,000 San Diego households received letters kicking them off free city trash service they’d been receiving and leaving them to scramble to find private haulers. Nearly all are in buildings with more than four homes, both apartments and condos. (Existing service for a two cubic yard dumpster for trash only – not including recycling – at a North Park condo building currently runs about $300 a month, or about $38 per unit each month.

Coincidentally, the City Auditor released a report that concludes those private haulers are NOT paying their fair share of landfill costs. While the report said the loss belongs to the city, it’s obvious that taxpayers have been subsidizing trash costs for anyone using a private hauler – and for the more than 47,000 households who got kicked off free service.

By Paul Krugman / Substack / Dec. 29, 2024

Like many observers, I expected severe buyers’ regret fairly early in the second Trump administration. After all, many Americans who voted for Trump did so because they believed he would bring down grocery prices. He was never going to be able to deliver on that promise and stopped talking about the subject as soon as the election was over; sooner or later, voters were going to notice.

I did not, however, expect a MAGA civil war weeks before Trump had even taken office. But in retrospect I should have seen it coming.

Background: Every political movement is a coalition made up of factions with different goals and priorities. Normally what holds these factions together is realism and a willingness to compromise: Each faction is willing to give the other factions part of what they want in return for part of what it wants.

President Joe Biden just announced he was ended his candidacy for the 2024 campaign. He thanked Kamala Harris for being a good partner and endorsed her.

Here’s his statement to the American people:

My Fellow Americans,

Over the past three and a half years, we have made great progress as a Nation.