Daily Business Report: October 9, 2026
Oceanside Voters to Decide on Another Sales Tax Measure
By Tygist Lane | Voice of San Diego
Oceanside voters will decide on a half-cent sales tax increase this election. City officials say it will help pay for the aging Oceanside Pier and other critical infrastructure projects, but the proposed increase comes just two years after voters approved a different sales tax measure in 2024.
The new measure is called Measure S. It proposes a half-cent sales tax increase that would bring the city’s sales tax rate to 8.75 percent, on par with eight other cities in San Diego County, including San Marcos, Del Mar, Escondido and Solana Beach.
It’s predicted to bring in around $20 million per year in revenue and would sunset after 10 years. The city would also create a citizen’s oversight committee to monitor spending and a new fund so the public can easily track spending
The Loneliest Man in American Politics Has an Army
by Will McCarthy | Politico
In April 2025, Carl DeMaio, just four months into his first term as a California state assemblymember, sat before a panel of his new colleagues in a small, windowless room in downtown Sacramento and told them that they were contributing to a “cancer on democracy.”
It was one of the 52-year-old freshman lawmaker’s first committee hearings, an early chance to pitch peers on one of his top priorities. In opening remarks, the Republican framed his proposal, which would require government-issued identification in order to vote, as a commonsense, nonpartisan reform to ensure the integrity of elections. No one, argued DeMaio, should have reason to question the legitimacy of American democracy.
It is an issue that has animated Republicans nationally for the better part of two decades. But in the Democrat-controlled California Legislature, the bill stood little chance of survival. The hearing, perhaps unsurprisingly, did not go well for DeMaio. After listening to his presentation, Gail Pellerin, a Democrat from Santa Cruz, told him that if he didn’t “trust the process that put [him] in this office, perhaps [he] should consider resigning.”
Becerra’s Baggage Would Have Taken Down Anyone Else
by Katy Grimes | California Globe
There are serious questions about Xavier Becerra’s long record in elected office that deserve answers. His tainted tenure as President Joe Biden’s Health and Human Services Secretary, and the government’s handling of unaccompanied migrant children, which has been the subject of extensive investigative reporting, including by The New York Times. Migrant children are still missing and legacy media doesn’t seem too interested.
Whatever Becerra’s explanation is, shouldn’t California voters hear it directly from him? How is media not hammering Becerra on the missing migrant children?
The Globe has covered Becerra extensively for many years: Xavier Becerra as HHS Secretary doubled down on tyrannical COVID policies, including mandatory masking and vaccines for everyone including pregnant women and infants, as well as business and school lockdowns.
