The Conscious of the Council.

It has been said that nature abhors a vacuum and in 2010 when Donna Frye left the San Diego City Council a chasm was created. Since her time on the Council, Donna was almost always the consistent voice of leadership and conviction on the council. Sometimes she would irk her supporters from time to time but over all she was seen as someone who would always do what she thought was right and became the voice for those who felt left out of the Downtown power plays and would remind the Council, time and again that there was more to San Diego than Downtown and that there were other issues than redevelopment and the Convention Center.

If the past was any indication of what was to happen in the future then it would be a long time before someone would be that champion again. After all, almost everyone who has been elected to the Council seems to view it as a stepping-stone to a higher political office and seems to position their votes and support with an eye towards that goal of being in the Assembly, State Senate or Congress. So perhaps that saying didn’t apply in San Diego Politics.

Or did it?

In that same year, a small political upset took place when a relatively unknown candidate beat someone who’s family was an institution in the District and was seen as a shoo-in as he had the support of Labor and some big names. Yet even in the face of all those obstacles, David Alvarez was able to beat his opponent, Felipe Hueso by 15%.

During that campaign Alvarez promised that he would serve the full terms and would do his best to provide the District the representation it needed. A promise that resonated with the District but to many political observers it was seen a smart ploy that eventually he would have to reneg on because history was against it.  Possibly only one person served two full terms since 1980’s because either the person moved on to higher political office or had to resign in disgrace.

In his short time, Alvarez has been consistent in his views and his votes that he has fought for his district but, by extension, the communities that have been left out of those Downtown Power Plays. He as been an advocate of stopping needless waste as his efforts with reforming San Diego SAFE program with Lorie Zaph and most importantly was the lone voice against the giveaways to the Convention Center in 2012.

Also he has become a real leader with the other Democratic Councilmembers and yesterday’s meeting at Rules showed that.

It was well known that Alvarez was going to put up a resolution that would support Immigration Reform with a path towards Citizenship to those who have worked and labored in the shadows. With the help of fellow Councilmembers Sherri Lightener and Marti Emerald they were all set to do so but jumping in on the bandwagon for the sake of political survival the four Republicans, with Mark Kersey leading the pack, decided to draft their own resolution, sign it, force it on the docket and blab to the U-T and the media about it and not tell their Democratic Counterparts.

Maybe Kersey thought his watered down, mealy-mouthed resolution would be acceptable to everyone. I mean it calls for “legal status” so maybe he can say he snag some Latino votes in some future City wide run and since it doesn’t say citizenship so he say to the right that they don’t get citizenship. Win-win, right?

Wrong.

Alvarez, at the Rules meeting, called the Republicans out for their attempt at playing politics with their antics of going around the other Councilmembers, drafting a vague resolution and doing so as an act of political survival. He denied Kersey’s attempt to co-opt the resolution he and the other Dems on the Council drafted and so Kersey and Kevin Faulconer voted against the true Immigration Reform resolution and now both go up to the Council for a vote.

So where is Todd Gloria in all this?

You guess is as good as mine.

Will Todd support the sham Republican resolution that in essence would call for a permanent immigrant ambiguous status not fully a part of our society?

Or will he stand with Alvarez, Emerald and Lightner with a resolution that lives up to the creed of this nation and give those who have labored, fought and risked their lives to come to this county a chance to be a part of this country that they have sacrificed so much to be a part of?

I’m not holding my breath…

Monday - Quick Hits

County planning on leasing three planes for firefighting. UT

Mayoral candidate Steve Francis is spending very generously on television ads. UT

All candidates for City Attorney agree on the role and functions for the office. UT

Thousands showed up to Balboa Park yesterday to celebrate Earth Day. UT

Day laborers are finding a harder time getting hired. NCTimes

Bilbray Prefers Fence over Environment, District, Effective Reform

Does anybody remember when Brian Bilbray sold himself as a moderate? I know it seems like a lifetime ago (or maybe some sort of absurd dream), but it was just 1995 that he first went to Congress. And I've heard the stories from reasonable people with clear eyes about how once he was (relatively) a champion of the environment, particularly clean beaches and water. He was (and perhaps still is) a surfer and lifeguard after all. And yet, it's not at all surprising that he was doing rhetorical backflips in celebration yesterday when Homeland Security decided to waive 30 federal and state environmental laws in order to more quickly build 670 miles of border fence:

"It's great. This is the priority area where most of the illegal activity is going on and where most of the deaths are occurring," said Rep. Brian P. Bilbray (R-Solana Beach), chairman of the Immigration Reform Caucus. "The quicker we can get the physical fence up, the sooner we'll avoid situations like the deaths of agents. And it's still a national security issue. You just have to stop this kind of open traffic along the border."

DHS head Michael Chertoff opted to blatantly lie about the situation, claiming:

DHS is neither compromising its commitment to responsible environmental stewardship nor its commitment to solicit and respond to the needs of state, local and tribal governments

Right. Because not adhering to existing environmental law is the same as being commited to it. Much closer to the truth is:

Critics, however, said the waivers were intended to sidestep growing and unexpectedly fierce opposition -- especially in Arizona and in Texas, where concerns have been raised about endangered species and fragile ecosystems along the Rio Grande.

While the section of this project in East San Diego County hasn't met with much opposition (yet?), Brian Bilbray should know- if he's been paying any attention at all- that local opposition to the destruction of communities and habitats can be a real pain in the ass for right-wing ideologues. And as proponents of comprehensive (read: effective) immigration reform note, just building a fence really is a simple-minded approach to securing the border. Nevermind that impeding the cross-border flow hurts the local economy and the people that Bilbray purports to represent. This "wall or bust" outlook from Bilbray fits nicely with his America should create more uneducated poor people economic plan and his Protect the employer (as long as they contribute to the campaign) enforcement policy.

Yesterday the Defenders of Wildlife sent around an email asking people to call their representatives in Congress. If you're in the 50th, where Brian Bilbray thinks it's politically astute in 2008 to run to the right of President Bush, you may want to just skip straight to your Senators.

Cheryl Ede and Nick Leibham are Democrats running against Brian Bilbray this year.

Cross posted at Calitics

"It's a paradigm shifting election." An interview with Nick Leibham

I shared breakfast with Nick Leibham last week and discussed where he stands on a number of issues. I mostly just lobbed topics and let him talk; this is the relevant transcript edited to be a remotely reasonable length and minus fun stuff like us chatting with the waitress and our occasional divergence into non-relevant shop talk. Some parts I liked, some parts less so. But here it is. Note this is a contested primary.

Iraq

Each and every day we remain in Iraq we're compromising our national security further. It's a blood feud that goes back 1400 years between the Sunnis and Shiites. American military forces are not going to be able to sort this out for them and at the end of the day they've got to want peace; they've got to want their own stable form of government; they've got to want democracy more than the American Marine Corps wants it for them

The longer that we're there, the more strain it puts on our own men and women in uniform. They're going out on third, fourth, fifth tours of duty, and you read about it all the time of course because we're just miles away from Camp Pendleton

We need to come out and we need to set a date certain for when we are going to redeploy out of Iraq.

Military and Security

There’s one...threshold question that needs to be answered whenever even the thought of American military use is involved, and that is 'Is it in the interests of the United States of America; Is it in the national security interest?' Obviously the United States military has a role to play in ferreting out al Qaeda, in ferreting out terrorist organizations, in...making sure that our own interests abroad are taken care of.

But the United States military has no business in trying to create whole cloth [or] molding different societies. It's kind of antithetical- democracy can't be imposed at gunpoint.

They’ve got to figure it out for themselves. It can't be the United States government doing it for them.

Immigration

The most fundamental job of a nation is to protect its sovereignty, and when you can't secure your borders and ports you can't protect your sovereignty...As a nation we need to recognize that we are going to have to put a significant amount of money, time and effort into suring up our southern border.

As a former prosecutor...if you really want to dry up illegal immigration, you hold employers accountable, and I’ll be the only one up on stage that has ever prosecuted an employer for hiring illegal immigrants. After that's done, you get to other questions.

Health Care and SCHIP

We should be providing health care to kids and Brian Bilbray has staked out a position of essentially rabid ideology at the expense of some 10 million American kids...I think that it's a disgrace that he decided to stand on ideology and stand with the President as opposed to providing these kids with proper medical care. I think it's just very mean-spirited and worse, it's bad public policy.

My endpoint [on health care] is that every family should be able to see a family doctor of their choosing. The way in which we get there I think is going to be a battle royale come January 2009. And what is being pitched today out on the campaign trail- there isn't going to be even a shade of resemblance once this thing actually gets done.

There is a little bit of overlap between Democrats and Republicans on a few issues. One, I think all parties agree that you're going to have to see rapid and massive adoption of information technology and digital patient files. That will cut down on everything from medical errors to back office expense. And the estimates on what that would shave off- I've seen 10-12% of the total healthcare dollars. Secondly, another overlapping area is preventative care. There are certain areas of medicine where this makes a lot of sense. This makes a lot of sense in the area of inoculations...it makes a lot of sense as it concerns preventative screening for certain diseases. From a cost benefit analysis and a quality of years lived analysis.

You've got to have a very serious debate on how else you get there. we're the only westernized country in the world that tells the pres drug companies that they can charge anything they want and it doesn't matter...I think that's something that needs to be addressed.

What that final product is going to look like, I’m not exactly sure. But I know that...we need to look at that end goal...and say let's try to get there.

FISA

we spoke briefly about the general nature of modern privacy before FISA

What's much MUCH more disconcerting to me is the entire FISA bill...As somebody who has been a prosecutor and dealt with the 4th Amendment, I can tell you that this happened to have been the one amendment in the Bill of Rights that all the Founding Fathers could agree upon; that in order for the government intrusion there had to be probable cause signed off on by an independent magistrate that says you may have committed a crime. I find the entire FISA process to be constitutionally dubious. That doesn't mean that it couldn't be made constitutionally valid but I think that anytime you have wiretaps involved...that deals with an American citizen, you've gotta have a court sign off on it. The only question in my mind is whether or not that has to be done prior to there warrant being executed or whether or not there is some grace period. There is no doubt in my mind that the executive branch itself cannot act as both overseer and executioner (of warrants or wiretaps). That, I think, is constitutionally impermissible; I think it's a violation of the judiciary's proper role of interpreting laws.

As a former prosecutor [and] law clerk in the US Attorney's office in the Major Frauds and Economic Crimes section...I've never heard of anybody being given immunity when you don't know what they've done. It's not how the immunity process works. You don't say to somebody 'Whatever you've done, don't worry about it.'...It's unthinkable to me as a lawyer and as somebody who will have...sworn to uphold the Constitution that I could ever support that.

California Emissions and the Environment

I’m not a scientist, but from what I have read...the EPA seems to have made their decision to deny California its waiver based on faith based science. That’s not good enough. If it's warranted by the facts and the evidence, it should be granted. During the next administration, if it's a Democrat, I think we'll get a fair hearing. And if we don't, that's ripe for congressional action to clarify the rule. Because it's the congress that makes the laws, the executive branch simply carries out those laws.

The debate on the science (of global warming) is over. There is no doubt in any serious scientist's mind that global warming is happening. There is virtually no doubt that mankind is directly causing global warming. The only question at this point is 'What is the causal relationship and what are the consequences going forward?'

The role of government as it concerns energy and the environment I think is going to be crucial in the next 5, 10, 20 years. One of the things I very much hope to work on as a member of Congress...is pursuing and advocating for alternative energy in the areas of wind, solar, some biomass, hydrogen. And the role of the government here is to set high standards, it's to help foster innovation- especially in the very early stages of research and development- and then I think it's to turn it over to the market who does a great job of packaging this up...and if people can make a...fortune doing it, great. It makes good public policy, it's good politics, I think it's a good way to return some manufacturing to...the Americas.

It's also an issue of national security. We send hundreds of billions of dollars each year to...Middle Eastern regimes many of them hostile to our interests. We know...that some of that money ends up with Hezbollah; that it ends up with Hamas; some of it filters down and ends up with al Qaeda. We're funding both sides of the war in this particular time.

Then there is the great moral calling of our time which is addressing the global warming problem itself...There is no doubt that our kids will bear the full brunt of this, and we need to figure out now a way to mitigate it because to do anything other than that is nothing short of...long-term child abuse.

Economy

Two prime reasons (for the current economic situation). One, it has been fiscal insanity on the part of the Bush administration...We see that in everything from the weakness of the dollar which hits you...at the pump and in the grocery aisle, to being able to sure up many of those social programs which we know have a pending disaster: Medicare, Social Security, our infrastructure, etc. Secondly, the war. You cannot talk about anything else in this campaign until you address the war.

We are spending- the estimates are- $10-12 billion a month. We have direct outlays to Iraq...upwards and including $500 billion. For one single solitary day of war making in Iraq, we could have sent 160,000 low-income students to college for a year. For 3 1/2 months of war in Iraq we could have provided healthcare coverage to those 10 million...American kids for 5 years under SCHIP. Until we end that, again, we are committing long term fiscal child abuse. Because we're not paying for it...we're borrowing money from...foreign creditors to finance this thing. It's completely and totally irresponsible and it must end.

There’s some middle class tax cuts that...we should retain. We should retain the 15% capital gains rate as opposed to seeing it revert back to 20%. More than 50 million Americans at this point have 401Ks; hat benefits them greatly. We need to once and for all end the AMT. These last couple years it has snagged a whole cross section of our population that it was never meant to hit, and the doubling of the child tax credit is a positive thing. It's a positive thing for San Diego families and San Diego parents. Of course, the recklessness as it concerns the Bush giveaways in terms of the top 1%- no. That's fiscal insanity and I will be a voice to end it.

Most interesting for me was an interlude about halfway through the interview where we lapsed into discussing this year's election in an historical context:

We win this fight because their platform is old and it's worn out...The Reagan Revolution...which started really in 1964 with Goldwater's defeat...it culminated in 1980 and 1994 and the end of the Bush years are a bookend. It's tired, it's played out, and it no longer offers up a positive agenda for America. This isn't just a change election in the sense of Democrats or Republicans. This is a paradigm shifting election and Democrats can capture that...they've got a lot of work to do but we can capture it and I think the pendulum is swinging our way.

Cross posted from Calitics

Brian Bilbray's Economic Stimulus Plan: Create Our Own Poverty

Cross-posted at DailyKos
Drawn from CarlsbadDem's diary with permission

Last night Congressman Bilbray hosted a constituent teleforum- a sort of hybrid robocall/conference call. One of the contributors at Calitics was on the call and caught one of the more honest moments of the Congressman's recent career. The conversation turned towards a discussion over whether undocumented immigrants perform manual labor that citizens otherwise would not perform. Congressman Bilbray, needless to say, does not see this as either an excuse or a problem. All it takes is some good old fashioned American ingenuity to overcome the challenge. Or, maybe, exactly the opposite. As closely as blogger CarlsbadDem could get it down:

What those people are really saying is that we aren't producing enough unskilled, poor workers. They're saying that we aren't producing enough poverty in this country. Well, my answer is that the federal government could produce a lot of poverty if it wanted to. We spend billions on education and training. We could create our own.

That's right. Create our own poverty. So there you have it, boiled down nice and easy. All the United States needs to do is stop educating people. No fuss, no muss, and market forces will drive out all those immigrants. The problem is just that we aren't competing for the jobs because we're too busy pursuing college degrees and jobs that would pay rent.

This fits rather nicely with many of Bilbray's other political positions. Like not funding SCHIP healthcare for children (if they're healthy, they'll go to school and get all uppity about graduating). Like opposition to lower interest rates on student loans (college graduates are bad for the economy- they won't do manual labor). Like opposing a cost of living increase to the minimum wage (a remotely living wage will empower too many people). Like supporting warrantless spying (if people have rights, they'll want to use them). Like opposition to hate-crime legislation (hate is healthy, it gets people elected). Like tax breaks for the rich (they can hire more of our new virtuous class of uneducated native-born citizens).

It's one of the most fundamental pieces of governance that a population kept insecure is easier to control. Keep them poor, sick, hungry, uneducated and desperate and they're docile. They'll turn on each other instead of turn on their government. We've seen this theory in action for the last seven years, if not for nearly 40. Heck, Brian Bilbray's entire platform is "blame the guy next to you, not me." It's rare though that anyone is this blatant about their deeper intentions.

When Bilbray was first in Congress from 1995-2001, he was one of the more moderate members of the GOP. That reputation played no small part in his winning the special election to succeed Duke Cunningham in California's 50th district in 2006. But he spent his years away from Congress as a supershady lobbyist and, as may be clear by now, the guy is a total nutjob.

Nick Leibham is the Democrat aiming to send Bilbray back to the K Street breadlines. I'm guessing he wouldn't mind some scratch.

Oh, and I called Bilbray's office hoping to hear the comments for myself and was informed that the call was not recorded (very odd), so confirming the exact wording is probably impossible. But CarlsbadDem says "is my sincere best recollection, that I believe to be accurate in all significant ways." I have no reason to doubt that.

Tuesday - Quick Hits

Supreme Court refuses to hear challenge to San Diego County program that sends peace officers to homes of poor who apply for public assistance. I guess the poor don't have Fourth Admendment rights. UT

Another one to leave, Kyo Yamashiro who overseas charter schools for San Diego Unified will be stepping down. VOSD

Senator Dianne Feinstein will be bring her subcommittee roadshow here to town this morning, to hear about last month's wildfires. It will take place at 9:30 a.m. in the council chambers, located on the 12th floor of 202 C St. in downtown San Diego. VOSD UT

SANDAG updates its regional traffic plan. Their solution more toll roads!! UT

Once again proving the anti-immigrant nativists wrong, UCLA study finds that immigrants are 50% less likely compared to native born Latinos to use hospital emergency rooms. LATimes

ICE Out of Emeryville! Rally Opposing Woodfin and Bilbray's Dirty Tactics

From noon to 1pm tomorrow, immigrant rights activists will be rallying in Oakland (1500 Broadway) in protest of ICE performing employee harassment and intimidation on behalf of a well-connected hotel CEO who doesn't feel like adhering to a living wage law. If you're in the area, go out and tell ICE to stop attacking workers rights. And if you can't be there in person, you can call Special Agent Charles DeMore at (510) 267-3800 and tell him that ICE shouldn't be involving itself in the enforcement (or lack thereof) of local labor laws.

A month ago, Brian wrote on Calitics about Rep. Brian Bilbray's meddling in Bay Area living wage issues. He chronicled how workers at the Woodfin hotels in Emeryville were fighting to receive the living wage assured them by Measure C, a local living wage law. The city is insisting that Woodfin pay the living wage, but unfortunately for the workers, the CEO of Woodfin hotels lives in Brian Bilbray's district and has contributed enough money to get his phone calls answered.

So back in February he had Bilbray call Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in to investigate his own staff. ICE seized employee files from two local hotels (Woodfin and Hilton Garden Inn), and last month it returned to the Hilton to arrest a dishwasher who had worked there 18 years and with a list of 12 employees that must be fired immediately. ICE agents have also reportedly visited the home of a Woodfin employee leader explicitly because she'd spoken publicly about the issue. So not only did Woodfin CEO Sam Hardage call down ICE on his own staff rather than pay them decently and legally, and not only does he have federal immigration officers doing his employee intimidation for him, he also managed to call the feds on his local competition and only get members of their staff fired. Paying to be connected sure pays off.

If Brian Bilbray were really concerned about any sort of immigration enforcement, he'd be holding employers accountable instead of calling in favors for campaign contributors. He wouldn't be wasting the ICE's time meddling in local labor issues or muddying the waters between immigration law and fair wage practices. If he had any respect for the rule of law or the rights of localities to legislate local issues, he wouldn't be using federal agents to intimidate workers who only want the law to be enforced and he wouldn't be helping a campaign contributor refuse to acknowledge the law in the first place. But as usual, it's politics of the expedient power grab, with Bilbray rewarding the big bucks and betraying any semblance of principle. It's about creating victims and criminals but never calling into question the campaign contributors that criminalize and victimize so many people. It's about ignoring the law if your monetary backers tell you to.

Cross posted at Calitics

San Diego Wants to Bill Bush for Undocumented Immigrants

The San Diego Board of Supervisors voted yesterday to attempt to bill the federal government for the supposed cost of undocumented immigrants.  In an exceptionally pathetic (even by normal standards) attempt to steal money and headlines without any underlying logic, the Board commissioned a report to examine only the negative economic impact of undocumented workers and ignore the economic benefits of taxes paid and goods and services purchased.  The kicker?  They want the bill to be paid with money that the undocumented immigrants paid into the Social Security system via taxes. Taxes of course were not included in the study.

The Board specifically voted to enlist the aid of immigration zealot and all around xenophobic crazy person Brian Bilbray (who is "eager" to work on this with the Supervisors) in getting legislation passed which would:

make it easier for local law enforcement officials to track illegal immigrants wanted for crimes;

change the Medicare Modernization Act to pay local hospitals $155 million for unpaid bills from illegal immigrants;

make the federal government pay local governments from the Social Security fund into which people pay but do not collect, often because they have worked using phony Social Security documents. Reports have estimated that illegal immigrants pay $7 billion in taxes into that fund each year.

Supervisor Bill Horn commented on the maneuver which echoes previous attempts to squeeze funding from the feds in 1994 and 2001, saying "I don't want to just grandstand, I really want the money this time," apparently confirming that the last two times they didn't really want the money and were, in fact, just grandstanding.

There is a legitimate point to be made that the tax dollars generated by undocumented immigrants generally go to state or federal coffers and not to localities via property taxes while the outgoing money often flows from the local level.  But this is a completely backwards and shameful way to go about, let's face it, really lame and overdone grandstanding.

The North County Times notes pokes further holes in the study by pointing out that "the study did not account for the costs of education or unpaid medical bills for illegal immigrants, although it used estimates from the Hospital Association of San Diego and Imperial Counties to come up with its figure of $155 million in unpaid medical care costs."

Nor, from what I can gather, did the study delve into the degree to which local taxes mitigated the poorly-determined "cost" for citizens.  Hell, I don't pay property taxes cause I can't afford property.  But I pay many of the same state and federal taxes that undocumented workers would.  What's the economic difference?

This was a pathetic attempt by the Board of Supervisors to validate their greed and anti-immigration hysteria, and they got a study that, by completely ignoring reality, gave them the answers they wanted.  Freed from the chains of a responsibility to logic or competent governance,  the Board is now going full bore after money and social divisiveness.  I'm looking forward to a governing body who spends less time casting blame and more time actually improving the community.

Cross posted from Calitics