Opinion

Progressive guide to county ballot measures

As presently constituted, San Diego County’s Board of Supervisors is a dying breed. Decades of a status quo determined by mostly white, Republican, and male overlords are coming to an end. Term limits, a less homogenous population, and the decline of the Grand Old Party’s base in California mean a change is coming. This is the lens through which Measures A thru D–to be voted…


Duncan Hunter ‘Op-Ed’ annotated

[Editor’s note: Hard to believe the congressman from grift-ville can see through his alcoholic and federally ordered drug testing haze to compose an op-ed piece, meager and ridiculous as it is, but there you have it. USA Today did the dishonor of publishing “Duncan Hunter: Evidence will trump political agendas” without even the courtesy of identifying it as a satirical take. Here it is, annotated…


San Onofre Nuclear Plant ticking time bomb

What to do with the 3.6 million pounds of highly radioactive waste at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station by Camp Pendleton remains an epic problem, pitting concerned citizens against Southern California Edison, the California Coastal Commission and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).  San Onofre’s seaside nuclear reactors were permanently shut down in 2013, following steam generator malfunction. Edison operates San Onofre while the Coastal Commission…


California working, UC Berkeley report says

Between 2011 and 2016, California enacted a set of 51 policy measures addressing workers’ rights, environmental issues, safety net programs, taxation, and infrastructure and housing. Critics predicted that these policies—collectively called “the California Policy Model” (CPM) in this paper—would reduce employment and slow economic growth, while supporters argued that they would raise wages for low-wage workers, increase access to health insurance, lower wage inequality, and…


No taxation without representation, Hunter

Spoiler alert. Rep, Duncan Hunter (R-50th Congressional District), like his President idol (for now) Donald Trump should do everyone a favor and resign. Considering Hunter’s multiple transgressions, topped off by breaking the law by spending campaign finance $$$ for his, and his family’s, personal expenses, self-admitted by Hunter: The vape, on-the-take, Hunter managed to outdo himself last week. Hunter VOTED FOR THE GOP TAX PLAN…


Vista Dreamer’s ‘open letter’ to Darrell Issa

(Editor’s Note: A Vista native, Marco Ortiz Sanchez is a UC Irvine student and a DACA recipient. He traveled to Washington with a group of 100 Dreamers in October.) Dear Congressman Darrell Issa, Thank you for welcoming me into your office to discuss the current situation facing American Dreamers, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals beneficiaries, like myself. Not everyone gets the opportunity to meet their representative on…


End Citizens United begins GOP ditch drive

A major democratic political action organization that’s working to get big money and all of the temptation it offers out of politics recently released a list of 20 Republican Congress members that it intends to target next year. The organization on attack is End Citizens United, and it is calling its targeted Congress members the “Big Money 20.” A Group that Favors Its Special Interest…


Plastic ocean pollution and climate change

Although burning fossil fuels is the primary cause of global warming, fossil fuels could also be driving climate change via a completely different mechanism involving ocean plastic debris and tiny, bioluminescent fish living hundreds of meters beneath the ocean’s surface. Lanternfish (aka myctophids) are only a few inches long typically but so ubiquitous that they account for over half the ocean’s total fish-mass. They are…


Leaving Gadsden, Alabama, and Roy Moore

Bless his cotton-picking, pedophile, hypocritical 10 Commandments blackheart, good ole child-molesting Republican boy Roy Moore of Gadsden, Alabama is in the news and on the run. I, too, spent time at Gadsden, and have escaped to tell thee. It was another time and another place. Between jobs as a correspondent for the St. Petersburg Times and Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta reporter/columnist for the Sacramento Bee, I…


Duncan Hunter blows hard on vaping rules

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-50th Congressional District) this month has ducked constituents refusing to hold a town hall. He has been nowhere to be found to answer for his promise to vote for the Republican tax bill raising taxes on the people he pretends to represent. However, the self-admitted spender of campaign funds for personal expenses now under federal criminal investigation for spending campaign funds for…