Tag: It

It wasn’t that long ago we were, uh, not having the best time with SANDAG. A tunnel instead: “If you want to build transit, build it where people live and work. That’s why I don’t think SANDAG is ready to go for a sales tax measure any time soon simply because we need to do the work first.” Cool with being fired: “You know, I might get into trouble, but I’ll tell you this, the worst thing is not being fired. That’s OK.” ??? Interlude ??? Ken Stone at Times of San Diego did a piece about how Andrew Keatts got the story of four men accusing Kevin Beiser of sexual misconduct and assault and a bizarre claim talk show host Carl DeMaio made about it. ??? End Interlude ??? Republicans in San Diego are having the opposite of a moment. He worked in politics until 2001 and then joined the Marines at age 27. About the deal between the city and SDSU in Mission Valley: “There is some concern that this is an adversarial process but SDSU West still has to uphold its side of the bargain and make sure it pays fair value for the land.” Batten’s consultant … will be Tom Shepard. Leventhal’s consultant … Will be Stephen Puetz, who was chief of staff for Faulconer and … worked for SoccerCity and Measure E. Yes, I am hinting there’s a kind of SDSU West vs. SoccerCity subtext here but I have no more evidence for it than that so I decided to recklessly just float it out there because this is my column and I can do whatever I want, especially when Andy is doing work on an apparently more important story than this, the most prestigious and important political newsletter sent out of downtown San Diego every Saturday. And the group decided to endorse Republican Steve Vaus for the county supervisor seat, District 2, currently held by Dianne Jacob. But the club has not picked a candidate in the San Diego City Council District 5 race.

An online petition calling for the UK government to revoke article 50 and remain in the EU has reached more than 4m signatures, becoming the most popular to be submitted to the Parliament website. The petition, which was started in late February by “frustrated remainer” Margaret Georgiadou, has gained momentum very quickly, and has now reached just over 4m supporters, adding 2.5m signatures in less than 24 hours. Brexit: hundreds of thousands expected to march for people's vote – live updates Read more It gathered momentum shortly after the prime minister appealed to the British people to back her in her standoff with MPs from all parties. The number of signatures continued to rise on Saturday, with hundreds of thousands of people expected to gather in central London to march for a “people’s vote” on Brexit, asking for the public to be given the power to make the final decision. On Thursday, the parliamentary petitions website crashed several times as so many people were trying to access it at the same time. The error message “bad gateway”, which displayed when the website was overwhelmed, even started trending on Twitter. Conspiracy theories also appeared from both sides, with some saying the site’s troubles were a plot to prevent further signatures. Others claimed that a small proportion of signatures from overseas IP addresses – including one from North Korea – meant the petition had been “hijacked by bots”. In fact, 96% of the signatures were from the UK. The House of Commons petitions committee said: “Anyone who is a UK resident or a British citizen can sign a petition.

In a recent Washington Post op-ed, Ilhan Omar called for the application of “universal values to all nations.” According to Omar, only then, can we truly achieve world peace. Not only is much of what she argues based on a lack of evidence (e.g., climate change) but the other issues she addresses are so skewed in their presentation that they end up reading like a meaningless word salad. Omar survived a war in Somalia and immigrated to the United States with her family when she was just a teenager. It takes a lot of courage to make a decision to come to another country, but this courage and the desire for a better life must drive every immigrant who decides to become a part of America’s fabric. And this helps explain her perceived poor reception. But there is a great difference between acknowledging where America can improve and a denial of America’s greatness. This means that there is an internal obligation to live according to the principles of the Constitution of the United States and not actively work against them. Instead embracing an opportunity for a dialogue, given her unusual position of being both an American and a Muslim, Omar is so wedded to her Muslim identity that she uses Islam as a political football to gain points among the proponents of identity politics. People like Omar, Ocasio-Cortez, or Tlaib do not represent that American ideal. She lives near Buffalo, N.Y.

White, a Democratic Party political organizer and campaign strategist, was named the top staff member for new Nevada Gov. This past fall, Sisolak won the race for Nevada's top political post and became the state's first Democratic governor in 20 years. As White serves the governor in his role running state government, she relies on skills and insight she gained as a political science major at High Point University. "It allowed me to be in a place that took me out of the political bubble I was in," she told The High Point Enterprise. "I went and visited High Point and fell in love with the campus and the people there," she said. HPU Political Science Professor Mark Setzler, who taught White, said he's not surprised by her success. Setzler, whom White considers a mentor, sent her a personal note earlier this year when she was named chief of staff by Sisolak. The experience at HPU has served White well after she moved to Nevada following graduation and became engrossed in state politics. "Overall, I think there are more people who fall in the middle somewhere. White has advanced quickly in Nevada political circles since initially moving to Las Vegas after graduation from HPU to take a political organizing post.

Spending by Fair Fight Action, a nonprofit that former Georgia House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams founded to advance voting rights, and which is staffed by former Abrams campaign aides, is prompting questions about whether it's inappropriately supporting her political ambitions. The group pointed to roughly $100,000 worth of Facebook ads featuring Abrams, an advertisement for a “Stacey Abrams Fundraiser” that featured Fair Fight Action’s logo, travel for Abrams’ post-election “thank you” tour of Georgia and a professionally produced “highlight reel” of Abrams footage on the group’s website. The complaint argued Fair Fight Action has been supporting Abrams’ political ambitions, not advocating for voting rights. That would be a violation of tax law that forbids political 501(c)(4) nonprofits from providing a “private benefit” to a particular person or group, according to a copy of the complaint provided to The Associated Press. The group typically files ethics complaints against Democrats but also has targeted some Republicans, including North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows, a leader of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. Fair Fight Action CEO Lauren Groh-Wargo, Abrams’ former campaign manager, disputed the details of FACT’s complaint. She said that while Abrams is the figurehead of the organization, Fair Fight Action’s promotional activities have always focused on voting rights issues. “It’s no surprise that right-wing hit groups allied with Donald Trump are launching bogus attacks against Fair Fight,” she said in an emailed statement. Caitlin Highland, an Abrams spokeswoman, said Abrams will step down from Fair Fight Action if she runs for office again. It has not yet filed tax paperwork showing what it raised in 2018 when she was running for governor.

With all that is going on with China’s economy and with its trade discussions with the United States and with US tariffs and with the EU’s mounting frustration with China, our China lawyers are finding themselves more often engaged in “big picture” discussions with our clients than ever before. What are you seeing in China? We are well-trained and well-positioned to answer some of these, such as the one regarding China’s new laws and we write about those. See China’s New Foreign Investment Law and Forced Technology Transfer: Same As it Ever Was and China Approves New Foreign Investment Law to Level Playing Field for Foreign Companies. Our client had read the report, found it exceedingly helpful, and thought we too would benefit from it. Yesterday, my law firm had its bi-weekly “international team” meeting. One of the things I love discussing at these meetings is what I call the 360 nature of our practice and in our meeting yesterday I talked of how the EU lead at a multinational company had contacted us because he had heard of our having opened a Madrid office and he was based right outside Madrid. I just assumed from this that he was seeking Spain legal help, but it turned out he wanted to work with our Spain lawyers on a China matter. The Special Report is 20 pages, but Ms. Minehardt nicely summarizes it on APCO’s blog here. Stability is the government’s top priority amid the continuation of China’s economic slowdown.

Raut-led Alliance for Independent Madhes has been running a campaign for an independent state for the historically marginalised people from the southern region, also known as Terai, bordering India. The government offered him to surrender at once, he needs to support the sovereignty and integrity of the country," Deputy Prime Minister and Health Minister Upendra Yadav told Al Jazeera. One of the main agendas for Madhesi parties has been the amendment of the constitution passed in 2015 as part of Nepal's democratic transition following the end of the decade-long civil war in 2006. "Constitution amendment in Madhes is a genuine call. But Vijay Kant Karna, a political science professor at Tribhuvan University in the capital, Kathmandu, says "the agreement between Raut and the government has nothing to do with the issue of Madhes or Madhesis". "Madhesi parties refused to accept the constitution and protested against [it]. The people of Madhes have raised these issues since many years through several phases of movement. Some opposition parties have condemned the deal calling it "anti-national". "He would try to establish a party in Madhes to vouch for the rights of Madhes. However, this agreement between him and the government is not going to benefit Madhes.

The victory by the nationalist Forum voor Democratie in the provincial elections earlier this week has generated a flurry of speculation in the Dutch press about what will happen next. Here’s a round-up of the main points. Trouw writes that Baudet’s win is a signal ‘something is seriously wrong with Dutch politics’. The common ground between leaders such as Baudet and PVV leader Geert Wilders is, the paper says, ‘ a faked aversion to the political handiwork which is unavoidably necessary in the Netherlands’. Trouw says negotiating in the time-honoured Dutch way is not Baudet’s style, and will not work. Saving Rutte’s climate agenda ‘would seem to be a guarantee for a new victory for Forum voor Democratie’, the paper says. The NRC expects ‘complicated formation talks in the provincial capitals’. This will be made worse because of ‘the spectacular entry of Forum voor Democratie which, with no knowledge of provincial programmes and no experienced politicians, will have to be part of the negotiations. Although Jansen expects that partners will vary according to the issue being debated in the senate at the time, ‘It would be a dangerous game to isolate and marginalise Forum’ because it will ‘only increase people’s dissatisfaction with issues such as climate and the Marrakesh accord.’ Elsevier’s Arendo Joustra says that after such ‘punishment’ the government has only one option: step down. Joustra also puts the coalition’s loss and Forum’s gain firmly at the door of the climate agreement which has, Joustra says, ‘given birth to Baudet’.

Joe Biden knows what you’re thinking. He has seen the stories, too. He knows that, as a senator representing Delaware for nearly half a century, his extensive ties to the banking, credit, and financial industries are liabilities in an increasingly populist Democratic Party. The other is to name Stacey Abrams, a black woman 31 years his junior, as his running mate early in the race. Such a “big play,” in the New York Times’ words, “would send a signal about the seriousness of the election, and could potentially appeal to both liberal activists and general-election voters who are eager to chart the safest route toward defeating President Trump.” But the fact that Biden is even considering these moves only underscores his innumerable flaws, rather than addressing them. Biden’s age, like that of the 77-year-old Bernie Sanders, undoubtedly would be a concern for some Americans, given the erratic and seemingly cognitively impaired septuagenarian currently in the White House. He bragged that one Democrat-backed crime bill in 1992 did “everything but hang people for jaywalking”; two years later he would be a principal author of the 1994 crime bill that exacerbated mass incarceration. I know we haven’t always gotten things right, but I’ve always tried.” Biden also recently suggested that he owes an apology to Anita Hill for his handling, as chair of the Judiciary Committee, of her accusations of sexual harassment against Clarence Thomas. I wish I could’ve done more to prevent those questions and the way they asked them,” he said on the Today show last year. And if you’re a career-long politician who can’t run on your record, then why are you running at all?

Gary Sinise just published a new memoir called "Grateful American" and it's every bit as modest as anyone who has followed his years of support for the veteran community would expect. Except Gary's greatest talent shines through the humility with which he tells his story. To be sure, he's an extraordinarily gifted actor who has had a storied career both in serious theater and popular movies and television. But his most profound gift is his empathy for men and women who serve their country. Still, there are plenty of performers who don't share that insight and not many Americans share the sense of mission that Gary's has given him. "Grateful American" is co-written with Marcus Brotherton, who also worked with Army veteran Travis Mills on his excellent autobiography "As Tough As They Come." When Sinise tells his life story, he talks about his own family's service in WWI and WWII and how his wife Moira's brothers both served in Vietnam. Sinise later directed and then re-teamed with Malkovich to star in a 1992 movie version of John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men." Another gift Sinise displays is an ability to write about patriotism minus the politics. Gary Sinise has instead written a book that can appeal to anyone who's interested in his theater and movie careers and -- at the same time -- inspire readers who know him best from his work in support of military members.