A Better Person for an Imperfect San Diego
Monica Montgomery-Steppe Is the Right Choice for D4 Supervisor
Ballots for the special election to pick a new County Supervisor for District 4 are arriving in mailboxes this week. Arms full of glossy campaign flyers started arriving late last week.
On Sunday, the Union Tribune endorsed Monica Montgomery-Steppe because of experience and a willingness to deviate from the go along to get along crowd at city hall. I agree with that assessment.
I’m endorsing Monica Montgomery-Steppe because she is about as honest a politician as I’ve ever seen, keeping the people that elected her at the top of her do-list.
The San Diego Police Officers Association (remember, the guys who were afraid of COVID shots?) has committed money ($75K & counting) to stop her from taking office.
Did you know? (They say)
As a San Diego Councilmember Monica Montgomery Steppe has promoted a law that severely limits the ability of the police to protect the public.
Make San Diego’s safety a priority and say NO to Monica Montgomery Steppe for Board of Supervisors. –SDPOA ad on Facebook, complete with scary video.
You might want to ask yourself, “What law are they talking about?” What does “promoting a law” mean? They’re not going to tell you anything more than you should be scared of Montgomery-Steppe. I’m going to guess that we’re talking about one out of the plethora of reform oriented laws introduced in the legislature each year. More below…
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I’m going to be on vacation for a couple of weeks, soaking up the heat and humidity of the nation’s capital and nearby locations. I may do a post or two along the way, and may share another author’s thoughts if they enrich my thought process. Otherwise, see you in August.
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Continued from above… Police lobbyists have fought tooth and nail against any reforms coming out of Sacramento. They have consistently shown self interest over transparency, opposed changes proposed because of repeated misconduct, and asserted that much of the public is just “against” them. If this sounds vaguely familiar, that’s because they’re mirroring the performance of once-upon-a-time President Donald Trump.
Remember when there was a ballot measure in support of a city oversight commission with some power? More than 75% of San Diego city’s voting public thought this was a good idea. Here we are more than two years later and this commission has yet to act. (It took the council until October 2022 to pass an ordinance dealing with the nuts and bolts of the commission.)
Things move slow in San Diego’s oversight of our taxpayer-paid law enforcement. There are always excuses, but the reality is that the SDPOA’s behind-the-scenes actions muck things up. Opposing Monica Montgomery-Steppe is payback for her sticking to principles and hearing her constituents.
The County Board of Supervisors have no say about how the SDPD conducts its business, yet the union representing its officers is paying for ads in the D4 race. This is a part of the pact between cops in two agencies. If the Deputy Sheriffs Association takes a side in this contest, it could come back to bite them on the ass, so their SDPOA buddies do a little “wink, wink” thing.
It works, as we can see the lack of political will to cross cops on the part of both the City Council and the Board of Supervisors.
The law enforcement agency Monica Montgomery-Steppe will have some say over is the San Diego Sheriff’s Office (SDSO). Unfortunately for most of the counties in California, Sheriffs as elected officials only answer to the voters. Now what the Sheriffs do is another matter altogether– some jurisdictions limit their policing power to the bailiff in charge of protecting the court.
The conundrum any future Board of Supervisors would have in reigning in the SDSO is that taking away or limiting their powers could leave a void affecting the sense of security county residents expect. And, while strikes by cops are illegal, there are plenty of ways officers can scare the public into taking their side.
Remember, San Diego’s Sheriffs are the largest law enforcement agency in the county, and, for that matter, the United States. Think of them as a cruise ship; changing course is difficult.
Obviously, the Supes should find a way to do something about current sheriff Kelly A. Martinez oversight of the jail system. It functionally is the largest facility locally for mental health patients, and here the supes need to act. Her job is not unlike having a plumber teaching computer security.
Her recent public relations campaign has nothing to do with the basic premises of local incarceration, namely that the buildings themselves are primarily a form of punishment, even though many of their occupants haven’t been to trial or are incarcerated for some “crime” adjacent to being homeless.
There may be constraints about what can be done in terms of the legal silence surrounding the jail system - Martinez is actively fighting disclosure of documentation relating to jail deaths, and the county is obligated to back her position. But that shouldn’t stop any supervisor willing to use their bully pulpit to express outrage at the plain and simple morality of the situation. Nothing is going to change if our elected officials continue to cater to the whims of one agency.
Just like Nathan Fletcher was a good choice to lead a moribund county government in a better direction, Monica Montgomery-Steppe is a person with the kind of dedication and moral clarity to continue the process.
So, in case you missed the message earlier, Vote 4 Monica.
Monday Morning Messaging and Media Clips
Opinion: The lasting threat is not the ‘next Trump,’ but the MAGA base Via the Los Angeles Times, by former Homeland Security Official Miles Taylor. There’s work to be done.
An Economist/YouGov survey last year found that half of American Republicans now believe in core QAnon concepts, such as the assertion that a single group of people “secretly . . . rule the world” and that “top Democrats are involved in elite child sex-trafficking rings.”
GOP leaders have fanned the flames of these theories. The No. 3 House Republican, Elise Stefanik, referred to Democrats as “pedo grifters” in 2022, and the party has backed candidates who were open QAnon believers.
Likewise, millions of Republicans subscribe to the Trump-fueled Great Replacement Theory. The conspiracy alleges that the Democratic Party is attempting to “replace the current electorate” of white Americans with “Third World” voters, as former Fox News host Tucker Carlson claimed. A gunman cited this race-baiting theory in a manifesto before murdering nearly a dozen black Americans in a New York supermarket in 2022, not to mention the mass shooter who killed nearly two dozen people in an El Paso Walmart in 2019, echoing Trump’s words about an “invasion” at the U.S. southern border. An AP/NORC poll found nearly half of Republicans believed in the theory.
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San Diego looks to give itself more time as surveillance tech deadline looms Via the Union-Tribune. Once again, an oversight mechanism springing from public concern is being slow walked… Excuses are for losers.
The city’s surveillance ordinance was passed in September after outcry over the city’s handling of a network of thousands of smart street lights. The public learned years after the specialized lights were installed that police could access video and other data captured by the technology.
Under the law, city departments are required to disclose their surveillance technologies — everything from drones to car trackers to fingerprint scanners — and compile reports outlining how those tools are used and their impact on communities. That information would then make its way to the newly created Privacy Advisory Board — a volunteer panel charged with vetting the city’s technologies — and then to the City Council, which would decide whether a tool should stay in use.
The city gave itself a year to do the work, and any technology that hadn’t moved through the steps was supposed to be put on pause until it could be reviewed. To date, not a single tool has made it through the process.
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Trump and Allies Forge Plans to Increase Presidential Power in 2025 Via the New York Times. Let’s hope he’s not in charge of anything beyond keeping his jail cell clean.
Donald J. Trump and his allies are planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government if voters return him to the White House in 2025, reshaping the structure of the executive branch to concentrate far greater authority directly in his hands.
Their plans to centralize more power in the Oval Office stretch far beyond the former president’s recent remarks that he would order a criminal investigation into his political rival, President Biden, signaling his intent to end the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence from White House political control.
Mr. Trump and his associates have a broader goal: to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to a review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him.
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BONUS BINGO-While there are likely indictments against the Trumpanzies coming on several fronts, I feel the investigation into Stop the Steal hasn’t received its fair share of attention. So that readers can keep up, I’ve created the Bingo card below to help keep track of who’s receiving the Grand Jury’s “blessings.”
I have been bewildered by the campaign adds for the D4 Supervisor seat. Thank you fr cutting through all that info. I trust your judgement.