Articles by Tony G Rocco

September 14, 2021 is the day California voters decide the fate of Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom in a special recall election, only the fourth ever held in the US. Absentee ballots were due out by August 16. If you’re not sure what this recall election is all about, or whether you should vote for or against keeping him in office, Represent San Diego has put together this quick reference to provide you with the information you need to make a decision. The Big Picture The following articles ...

Open San Diego is a volunteer organization that helps local government and community groups use technology to solve problems. The ten year-old group is one of over eighty chapters, called brigades, of Code for America, a national organization that shares the same mission on a state and national level. Represent San Diego, as part of the Voters Voice Initiatives coalition, has been a key partner in one of Open San Diego’s recent projects, San Diego Voters’ Voice Initiative Dashboard, an online t...

Propaganda. We imagine regimes feeding fake news to a subjugated populous via state-controlled media. Even though we have a free press in the U.S., we have our own forms of propaganda, which is why Cynara Velazquez created PoliticalPropoganda.org. “I've seen the lack of transparency in our current political system,” Velazquez said, explaining the need to ferret out the hidden ways corporate money influences our democracy. “We've created a system where you need so much money to run, it’s almost ...

Determining who’s footing the bill for political campaigns and, consequently, who our elected officials are really serving, has long been a challenge for voters in our system of legalized corruption....

Determining who’s footing the bill for political campaigns and, consequently, who our elected officials are really serving, has long been a challenge for voters in our system of legalized corruption. San Diego voters will soon be able to track and analyze the campaign contributions and independent expenditures of local political campaigns with an online dashboard created by a coalition of non-partisan political reform organizations. While campaign finance information has always been available t...

This is an independent opinion. Have one of your own? Email it to sandiego@ivn.us Bernie Sanders’ loss of the Democratic Party’s nomination for president prompted some voters to cry out, as they have in the past, for the creation of a new party. There is merit to this idea, given that repeated attempts to fashion the Democratic Party into a force for progressive change have failed. While a party that reflects progressive values would warm my heart, now is not the time to add another source of ...

OPINION: While a party that reflects progressive values would warm my heart, now is not the time to add another source of partisan divisiveness in the form of a political party....

This is an independent opinion. Have one of your own? Email it to hoa@ivn.us In the recent elections, the U.S. came perilously close to re-electing a man who, after four long years as our president, made it clear that he was an incompetent, authoritarian conman. He presided over a failed pandemic response, greatly increased the budget deficit despite promising to reduce it and dismantled environmental protections that had been in place for decades. While we may all breathe a sigh of relief for...

In the wake of Bernie Sanders’ loss of the Democratic Party’s nomination for president, the Left has cried out, as it has in the past, for the creation of a third party. There is some merit to this idea, given that repeated attempts to fashion the Democratic Party into a force for progressive change have failed and likely always will. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. The Left has been fooled many more times than once, most recently by the faux progressivism of Barack Obam...