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The San Diego Monitor The answer varies by the street. The common denominator is the city’s street division, which holds sway over which projects get done, how they get done and when they get done. Kristy Reeser, deputy director of the city’s street division, said many factors guide the department’s decision-making. But the process starts with a big review that happens every four years.
Why Some Streets Get Repaired Over Others By Lisa Halverstadt VOSD This story is a part of The People’s Reporter, a feature where the public can submit questions, readers vote on which questions they want answered and VOSD investigates. As the city has redoubled efforts to repair roads, many San Diegans have questioned why some crumbling streets still seem to get overlooked.
Reeser said street planning decisions rely heavily on a major condition assessment of the city’s roughly 3,000 miles of roadway that helps the street division determine where repairs or more basic maintenance is needed. The latest one is expected to kick off this year. During the assessment, a contractor scores city streets and rates them poor, fair or good. A rating between 70 and 100 is considered good while a score between 40 and 69 is considered fair. Streets with scores below 40 are rated in poor condition and considered eligible for major repairs. The city aims to maintain an average citywide rating of at least 70. Read Morewww.sdmonitornews.com
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The San Diego Monitor
Kamala Harris Is Running for President in 2020. Here's Where She Stands on 8 Important Issues. Democratic Senator Kamala Harris is the latest woman to enter the 2020 presidential race, announcing on Martin Luther King Jr. Day that she was joining the already-crowded Democratic primary pool. Harris, 54, was born in Oakland, to immigrant parents; her mother is originally from India, while her father is from Jamaica. After she graduated law school, Harris was a deputy district attorney before serving as the District Attorney of the City and County of San Francisco. She then became the first African-American and the first woman to become California’s Attorney General, a position she held until 2016, when she ran to represent California in the U.S. Senate. She’s California’s first African-American senator, the country’s first South Asian-American senator, and if she secures the Democratic nomination for 2020, she’d be the first AfricanAmerican woman to be a major party’s nominee for president.
Healthcare Harris has made healthcare a key part of her platform, recently writing about her mother’s struggle with colon cancer for The New York Times. In the piece, she talks about her support for the Affordable Care Act and shares how she was one of the first senators to sign onto Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All bill that was introduced in 2017. Harris wrote, “I believe that health care should be a right, but the reality is that it is still a privilege in this country. We need that to change.” The Economy Harris has been critical of the Trump economy, saying that while unemployment is low, there are still many American families struggling to stay afloat and that the economy “is not working for working people.” She’s also encouraged workforce training in order to prepare people for the future of automation.
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The San Diego Monitor
Immigration The Senator has been vocally against President Trump’s proposed U.S.-Mexico border wall, calling it a “vanity project.” On The View, she said, “By the way, because I was a prosecutor for many years, including the Attorney General of California, I specialize on trans-national criminal organizations. That wall ain’t gonna stop them.”
women’s issues, which she says include things like the economy, national security, healthcare, education, criminal justice reform, and climate change.
She’s also supported DREAMers and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program; in 2017, Harris said she would oppose any end-of-year government spending bills unless Congress acted to protect young people affected by DACA. Before she ever got to D.C., Harris had a long record of immigration work: While working in San Francisco, she started a job training program for ex-convicts that allowed undocumented immigrants to participate. (She has said before that illegal immigration is “a civil violation, not a crime.”) In California, she also helped create legislation that would protect immigrants who reported or testified about crimes from deportation. How Women Are Treated in the U.S. During a speech at the 2017 Women’s March, Harris implored the nation to prioritize
She’s also continuously been pro-choice and has been supported by Planned Parenthood. When she was elected to the U.S. Senate, Cecile Richards, then-President of Planned Parenthood, said, “Congratulations to Kamala Harris on her victory. Kamala Harris is a staunch advocate for women’s health and rights. She ran proudly on an agenda to expand access to reproductive health care, and her victory shows that voters demand their elected officials protect women’s health and rights.” NEXT PAGE
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The San Diego Monitor
Gun Policy
Foreign Affairs
Harris supports a ban on assault weapons and on the sale of high-capacity magazines. While Attorney General, she also introduced a California-wide sweep to seize illegally-owned firearms; more than 1,200 firearms ended up being collected.
In 2018, Harris was one of the Democratic Senators who signed a letter to Trump saying he did not have the authority to order a preemptive strike against North Korea without permission from Congress. READ MORE www.sdmonitornews.com
While Harris supports the Second Amendment, she also says she supports common-sense safety laws and universal background checks. Taxes A few months before she announced her intentions to run for president, Harris proposed a plan to give a tax credit to the middle-class, called the LIFT the Middle-Class Act. The bill would offer up to $3,000 a year (or $250 a month) to single people, while married couples would get up to $6,000 a year (or $500 a month). The credit would be available to couples that earn under $100,000 a year or singles who earn less than $50,000 a year. (Learn more about it, here.) According to Politico, Harris said about the bill, “We should put money back into the pockets of American families to address rising costs of childcare, housing, tuition and other expenses. Our tax code should reflect our values and instead of more tax breaks for the top 1 percent and corporations, we should be lifting up millions of American families." She’s also proposed the Rent Relief Act, which would give a tax credit to certain people who spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent. The bill has been criticized for being favorable to landlords, since people could end up spending even more of their money on rent, and because it doesn’t do anything to address the current supply of housing. (Learn more about the Rent Relief Act, here.)
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The San Diego Monitor
R. Kelly’s Time Is Finally Up Jamilah Lemieux/Guest Writer Huffington Post
Being an R. Kelly “hater” in early 2000s Chicago was a mighty lonely experience, but the release of a video that featured him engaged in sexual acts with two teenage girls was all the proof I needed to let him go ― though his marriage to Aaliyah in 1995 and the stories I heard about him approaching my friends when we were only in middle school should have done the trick. For two decades, I have been begging people to stop playing this man’s music. Stop purchasing tickets to his shows. Stop acting like he isn’t to blame for every single relationship he’s had with an underage girl. Despite mountains of reporting — not nearly enough, mind you — and evidence, people found ways to disregard allegations as rumors, and cited his 2008 acquittal on child pornography charges as a reason to leave the matter be. The same community that knows how unfair and inadequate the criminal justice system can be will lean on it when someone they love has been legally exonerated. But now, finally, it feels like there is a sea change happening.
But now, finally, it feels like there is a sea change happening. Since the first episode of Dream Hampton’s docuseries “Surviving R. Kelly” aired, I have been inundated with calls, texts, emails and direct messages from friends, colleagues, former classmates and complete strangers. They thank me for appearing in the film and for constantly speaking out about Kelly and his predations. I’ve heard confessions from other survivors of sexual abuse who’ve never shared their stories with anyone, and heard vows to stop supporting a once-beloved artist. My mother was even approached at a restaurant in the neighborhood where I grew up by a woman who remarked that she remembered seeing us together when I was a child. Read More www.sdmonitornews.com
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The San Diego Monitor exposes a difficult truth: King's legacy has become as segregated as the country he tried to heal.
The politics a KING DAY of
The celebration of the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. takes place this year amidst political chaos. In particular, it is occurring in the middle a weeks-long government shutdown that has pitted President Donald Trump, the leader of a party that is 90 percent white, against the most diverse Congress in American history over an idea that has been derided as racist and xenophobic. Praise for Dr. King’s legacy will emerge from this partisan rancor. Rather than invoke unity, however, such praise
For white people, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. exists mainly as a mainstream portrayal of a saint of redemption. In this historical interpretation, Dr. King saved both black and white Americans from the evils of segregation, while overcoming the resistance of a few, powerful bigoted individuals with little more than dignified protest and the strength of his convictions. This Dr. King tells us that hate cannot drive out hate, that we should judge each other on the content of our characters, and that poverty and racism are their own evils. This Dr. King does not think were wrong as long as we do not have hate in our heart, doesn’t want us to dwell on each other’s differences and knows that what hurts white people also hurts black people. READ MORE www.sdmonitornews.com
For white people, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. exists mainly as a mainstream portrayal of a saint of redemption.