California

California Finally Moving to Restrict Synthetic Turf

November 3, 2023 by Source

by Shreya Agrawal / CalMatters  – Times of San Diego / October 22, 2023

Gov. Gavin Newsom last week passed on a chance to limit the use of the so-called “forever chemicals” in legions of plastic products when he vetoed a bill that would have banned them in synthetic lawns.

His veto of an environmental bill that overwhelmingly passed the Legislature underscores California’s convoluted guidance on the plastic turf that some homeowners, schools and businesses use in place of grass in a state accustomed to drought.

Read the full article → 9 comments

Meet Our New California Senator — Laphonza Butler

October 2, 2023 by Source

Read the full article → 8 comments

Senator Dianne Feinstein Passes

September 29, 2023 by Staff

Read the full article → 2 comments

Hurricane Hilary Blamed for Rise In Ankle Biter Mosquitos

September 18, 2023 by Source

By Paige Austin / Patch / Sept. 16, 2023

It’s been more than three weeks since Hurricane Hilary dumped record August rain on California, and the rare summer storm’s impact on the mosquito population is hitting home, literally.

An uninvited houseguest is plaguing homes up and down California. It’s the Aedes aegypti, better known as the ankle-biter mosquito, one of the most vicious little bloodsuckers to invade the Golden State.

Read the full article → 0 comments

City Leaders in Northern San Diego County Concerned Senate Bill Will Undermine 1972 Coastal Act Protections

August 28, 2023 by Staff

By Luke Harold / Pt Loma – OB Monthly / Aug. 27, 2023

A group of elected leaders who represent cities in San Diego County’s coastal zone sent a letter this month to state lawmakers about their concerns over a bill that would streamline development along the coast.

Senate Bill 423, authored by state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, chairman of the Senate Housing Committee, would remove a 2025 sunset provision for Senate Bill 35, which created a “builder’s remedy” that streamlines housing development in cities that are behind on their state-mandated housing goals.

More notably, SB 423 would extend the streamlining to cities in the coastal zone.

Read the full article → 4 comments

Construction of New Apartments Nosedives in Cities on the West Coast

August 23, 2023 by Source

By Andrew Keatts, Emily Harris and Christine Clarridge / Axios San Diego / Aug. 22, 2023

New apartment construction is plunging in the West Coast’s biggest metro areas after officials spent years trying to combat soaring rents.

Why it matters: West Coast metro areas are already grappling with a housing shortage that’s driving an affordability crisis, and experts say the apartment construction slump will make things worse.

Read the full article → 5 comments

How to Stop SB9 & SB10 and Other Unwanted Building Codes? Support the Our Neighborhood Voices Initiative

August 15, 2023 by Source

By Leighann O’Reilly

Support the Our Neighborhood Voices initiative.

The Our Neighborhood Voices initiative restores the authority of your local representatives to decide what gets built in your community, on your street, and right next door to where you live.

We are organizing a campaign to bring back our neighborhood voices in local planning with a 2024 statewide ballot measure.

In San Diego, this means a two-step process to ensure voters have a say in their housing codes:

Read the full article → 4 comments

Most Comprehensive Survey Ever on California Homeless Crisis

June 22, 2023 by Source

By Marisa Kendall/ KPBS – CalMatters / June 20, 2023

Losing income is the No. 1 reason Californians end up homeless — and the vast majority of them say a subsidy of as little as $300 a month could have kept them off the streets.

That’s according to a new study out of UC San Francisco that provides the most comprehensive look yet at California’s homeless crisis.

Read the full article → 5 comments

LA Mayor Has Moved 14,000 Homeless Off the Streets in Her First 6 Months

June 20, 2023 by Source

By Ruben Vives, Doug Smith / Los Angeles Times / June 14, 2023

More than 14,000 people experiencing homelessness have been moved off the streets during the first six months of her administration, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass reported Tuesday.

About 30%, or 4,332, acquired permanent housing. An additional 10,049 people were placed in interim housing through city and county programs from December through May, Bass said — a 27% increase over the same period the year before.

Read the full article → 8 comments

Yelp Declares ‘Best Rooftop Restaurant in California’ Is The Holding Company in Ocean Beach

June 9, 2023 by Frank Gormlie

Yelp has determined that the best rooftop restaurant and bar in the entire state of California is OB’s own The Holding Company. Congrats are due.

Read the full article → 0 comments

‘Why I Founded the California Innocence Project’ — OBcean Justin Brooks

May 23, 2023 by Source

By Justin Brooks / SD U-T OpEd / May 19, 2023

In 1995, I read a newspaper article about a young woman in her early 20s named Marilyn Mulero. Marilyn was awaiting execution in Illinois after being convicted of a double homicide.

The article said she was sentenced to death on a plea bargain, but I didn’t think that could be accurate. How could anyone be sentenced to death on a plea bargain? A plea bargain is supposed to be a bargain — meaning you give up your right to a trial in exchange for a lesser sentence. Death is the most severe punishment the government can dole out.

At the time I read about Marilyn, I was a law professor teaching and living in Michigan.

I felt a deep need to find out more about her case, so I set up a meeting with her and drove hundreds of miles to the prison where she was housed in rural Illinois.

Read the full article → 1 comment

Kudos to Senator Diane Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi and Her Daughter

May 22, 2023 by Source

By Colleen O’Connor

All your enemies
Have opened their mouths wide against you;
They hiss and gnash their teeth.
They say, “We have swallowed her up!
Surely this is the day for which we waited; (From the Bible: Lamentations 2:16)

But, they have not swallowed her up.  Not Senator Diane Feinstein, not Nancy Pelosi, her neighbor of 30 years, and not Pelosi’s eldest caregiving daughter, Nancy Corinne Prowda.

For months, the GOP, many self-important, ineffectual politicians and op/ed columnists have railed against Senator Feinstein, demanding her resignation and heaping scorn on those who protected, sheltered, and cared for a woman who is elderly, recently recovering from shingles and its maladies.

Read the full article → 7 comments

How Reagan’s Decision to Close Mental Institutions Led to the Homelessness Crisis

April 25, 2023 by Source

By Divya Kakaiya, Ph.D., M.S./ San Diego Union-Tribune Op-Ed / April 24, 2023

As a psychologist who began practicing nearly 40 years ago, I’ve seen a significant shift in the care of the mentally ill since the mid-1980s — and it hasn’t been for the better.

After the deinstitutionalization movement began in California in the 1960s, many state mental health hospitals closed, forcing many folks who needed a lot of care onto the streets.

Read the full article → 23 comments

Long-Term Loss of Coastal Cliffs Has New Tool

April 19, 2023 by Source

A new method for estimating cliff loss over thousands of years in Del Mar, California, may help reveal some of the long-term drivers of coastal cliff loss in the state.

By Danielle Torrent Tucker / Stanford News / April 17, 2023

In parts of California’s iconic mountainous coasts, breathtaking beauty is punctuated by brusque signs warning spectators to stay back from unstable cliffs. The dangers of coastal erosion are an all-too-familiar reality for the modern residents of these communities. Now, with a new tool, researchers are bringing historical perspective to the hotly debated topic of how to manage these disappearing coastlines.

Read the full article → 0 comments

Senator Diane Feinstein’s Worth is Priceless

April 18, 2023 by Source

By Colleen O’Connor

Let’s be blunt.  Senator Diane Feinstein is worth more than a dozen GOP Senators. Worth more than millions of California votes that elected her to office decade after decade.

And worth more than all the naysayers popping up on talk shows and opinion pieces attempting to drive her from office.

Feinstein’s worth is priceless. And I, for one of multi-millions of California admirers want her to STAY PUT.  PERIOD. She can do more for the state than any replacement on the horizon.  And she only needs to stick around for about a year.

Read the full article → 20 comments

California Is Losing Licensed Pot Farms By the Hundreds

April 7, 2023 by Source

By Lester Black / SFGATE / April 7, 2023

California’s legal pot market has lost hundreds of pot farms a month as farmers opt to quit the legal market. And signs indicate the industry is only continuing to shrink.

The state has lost 1,766 cultivation licenses since the beginning of last year, according to data reported by the California Department of Cannabis Control and the Cannabis Business Times. Low wholesale prices and high taxes have made it almost impossible for operators to run a profitable small business, pot industry insiders say.

Read the full article → 3 comments

State-Wide Group Pushes Initiative for 2024 Ballot to Return Voices to the Neighborhood

March 31, 2023 by Source

The group Neighbors for a Better San Diego have of late been tooting the horn of a state-wide organization, Our Neighborhood Voices – in fact just recently NBSD held an online town hall meeting with Voices. Here’s what ONV says about itself:

The politicians are taking away our ability to speak out when developers damage and gentrify our neighborhoods.

We are a coalition of thousands of California neighborhood leaders creating an initiative to be put on the 2024 ballot that would bring back our ability to speak out about what happens in our own neighborhoods.

Read the full article → 1 comment

The Promise of California’s Climate Roadmap

March 28, 2023 by Source

The Golden State can only stand up to its formidable climate disasters if it fully commits to its climate initiatives.

By David Helvarg / The Progressive / March 23, 2023

Ten years ago, I wrote a book called The Golden Shore: California’s Love Affair with the Sea. Back then, I suggested that California, with almost forty million people and the world’s fifth largest economy, was proof that you could grow a progressive society while protecting your coast and ocean—and that the two are intrinsically linked. The San Francisco Chronicle wrote that the book “just might make you feel optimistic about the future.”

Well, that future has arrived and I’m less optimistic.

Read the full article → 0 comments

The Innocence Project: Stories of Exoneration

March 27, 2023 by Source

By Camden Painton / The Point / March 22, 2023

Marilyn Mulero was 21 years old when she received her execution date.

On May 12, 1992, two members of the Latin Kings gang were shot and killed in a bathroom in Humboldt Park in Chicago. There was one eyewitness to the shooting. The witness claimed to see a woman hand Mulero a gun, who then shot a man dead at midnight. Mulero was picked up by police the next evening and brought into the station, where she was denied legal representation and questioned for over nine hours.

Without counsel or sleep, Mulero signed a prepared statement that implicated her for both murders.

Read the full article → 0 comments

Reader Rant: ‘How California Set Up the Licensed Marijuana Industry to Fail’

March 24, 2023 by Source


By Midnight Toker

Very briefly, here is how the State of California set up the licensed marijuana industry to fail.

Here is the receipt I received after purchasing an eight of an ounce (3.5 grams) of decent cannabis flower recently at a licensed dispensary (not in the city of San Diego):

Read the full article → 7 comments

If All California’s Homeless Lived in One Place, They’d Make Up the 32nd Largest City in the State

March 17, 2023 by Frank Gormlie

California is now home to more than 171,000 homeless individuals, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, a 6.2% increase since 2020.

Roughly 67%, or more than 115,000 are unsheltered meaning that they’re living outside.

If all the state’s homeless individuals lived in one locale, they’d make up the 32nd largest city in California. This may not seem so much. But consider this.

Read the full article → 12 comments

Lake Oroville March 14 – A Picture Is Worth a 1,000 Words

March 16, 2023 by Source

California’s second largest reservoir was down to its lowest levels ever recorded in September 2021 (628’).

Incessant parades of atmospheric rivers have almost refilled the 3.5 million acre-foot reservoir by March 2023 (845’).

Read the full article → 0 comments

Bless California Farmers and the Governor and Water Boards for Helping Them

February 27, 2023 by Source

By Colleen O’Connor

My grandmother and great aunts were all farmers in North Dakota.  Most were homesteading land in their own name.  They rode horseback while brandishing rifles to shoot their dinners.  Then plucked, hacked, and ate their game and grew farm vegetables and fruits.

These pioneer women would be shocked to learn that their granddaughter/grandniece has never grown anything edible yet made a living standing in front a classroom and talking.

Read the full article → 0 comments

Live Cam at Big Bear’s Eagle Nest

February 25, 2023 by Frank Gormlie

This is a screen grab from Big Bear’s eagle nest.

Read the full article → 5 comments

Critics: July 4th Fireworks Damage Southern California Environment; Are Demanding Action in Court

February 13, 2023 by Source

By Grace Toohey / Los Angeles Times / Feb. 9, 2023

A growing debate over the possible environmental damage caused by fireworks shows, especially over waterways, recently erupted in federal court where climate activists are pushing for stronger regulations of a popular Independence Day celebration in Southern California.

While fireworks have for years been known to cause significant air pollution — with July 4 and 5 recording some of Southern California’s worst air quality days — activists and attorneys with the Coastal Environmental Rights Foundation want officials to help minimize the damage fireworks pose to waterways

Read the full article → 2 comments

After Weeks of Rain, California Reservoirs Still Not Full

January 25, 2023 by Source

By Jamie Joseph / Epoch Times / Jan. 24, 2023, Updated Jan.25

Most of California’s major reservoirs failed to reach full capacity after more than two weeks of rainstorms, according to the latest data from the state water department. As of Jan. 23, among the 17 major reservoirs, only the smallest one—the Cachuma Reservoir northwest of Santa Barbara—was nearly full, at about 1.5 times its historical average level, according to the California Department of Water Resources.

Read the full article → 6 comments

OBcean Is ‘Officially Over Disneyland’

January 23, 2023 by Source

An OBcean has just posted on facebook: “I’m officially over Disneyland!” Then the person posted a time and expense chart to show their grief. We thought it timely and funny and and not so-funny and reposted it.

I think I’m officially over Disneyland. I’ve gone so many times that I have hit my lifetime limit of waiting in line for minimal amounts of entertainment value.

Read the full article → 5 comments

David Crosby, at 81, Is Now ‘Long Time Gone’

January 20, 2023 by Source

By John Dolan and Andy Greene / Rolling Stone – Reader Supported News / Jan. 20, 2023

David Crosby, the singer, songwriter, and guitarist who helped shape the sound of Sixties rock and beyond, died Wednesday night at the age of 81. A source close to Crosby confirmed the musician’s death to Rolling Stone, but did not disclose a cause.

Crosby was a founding member of the Byrds, playing guitar and contributing harmony vocals to their most enduring songs, including “Eight Miles High,” “So You Want to Be a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star,” and “Turn! Turn! Turn!” Shortly after being forced out of the group due to personality conflicts with frontman Roger McGuinn, he formed the supergroup Crosby, Stills, and Nash with Buffalo Springfield’s Stephen Stills and Graham Nash of the Hollies.

Read the full article → 10 comments

Thousands of Stoned California Elders Are Heading to Emergency Rooms

January 13, 2023 by Staff

According to researchers at UCSD, 12,167 California elders — people over the of 65 — made trips to emergency rooms in 2019 for cannabis-related issues.

Reporter Eric Page at 7SanDiego cited the study conducted by the University of California San Diego School of Medicine that “just 366 Californians over the age of 65 visited ERs in 2005 for cannabis-related concerns. By 2019, that figure had skyrocketed nearly 3200%, when 12,167 seniors made trips to emergency rooms for that reason.”

Read the full article → 1 comment

Brilliant Move by Katie Porter to Secure Diane Feinstein’s Senate Seat

January 11, 2023 by Source

By Colleen O’Connor

Once you have witnessed a comet streak across the sky or a double rainbow stretch across a mountaintop, you never forget the sight.

Once, you have seen Rep. Katie Porter deliver a takedown of corporate and political bigwigs during Congressional hearings, using just a small white board and some numbers, you never forget that moment. And now, after just being sworn in for her third term, Porter has just delivered another memorable moment by stealing the march on multiple competitors and announcing her run for Senator Diane Feinstein’s seat.

Read the full article → 6 comments

← Older Articles

Newer Articles →