April 2011

The OB Rag presents “The Green OB” T-shirt!

April 22, 2011 by Patty Jones

Show your love of OB and your support for the OB Rag

With the help of a benevolent benefactor, we’ve just had a brand new batch of T-shirts – “The Green OB” – printed up by the James Gang, in a whole new style! These shirts have the OB Rag logo on the front and a big, Green OB on the back. We have new colors and also some in a more tailored cut for our uppity women friends!

We still have the “Classic OB Rag” style, with a plain back and the front proudly announcing our affinity for freaks and politicos, too.

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OBcians: Our Library Needs a Few Good Organizers

April 22, 2011 by Frank Gormlie

MEMO: To the community of Ocean Beach:

RE: The Proposed Closure of the Ocean Beach Branch of the San Diego Library

Mayor Jerry Sanders has threatened to close all libraries – including the OB Branch – except for 2 days a week, and only on alternate Saturdays. The Friends of the OB Library are organizing a petition drive, gathering signatures in opposition…

Yet a Rally to Save the OB Library is also needed – but the Friends … who include many who are long in tooth and short of hair … are stretched line … so …

OUR LIBRARY NEEDS A FEW GOOD ORGANIZERS to put together a RALLY in front of the OB Library A meeting for new organizers has been set for Saturday, April 30th, noon, at the Library.

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Councilman Kevin Faulconer writes the OB Rag

April 22, 2011 by Source

Editor: Councilman Kevin Faulconer has sent the OB Rag the following note to explain his position on the Mayor’s proposed cut-backs, including libraries, rec centers, and fire pits.

Hello:

Mayor Jerry Sanders recently released his proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year. His proposal contains good news – the fire engine brownouts are coming to an end. And bad news – cuts to libraries, rec centers and firepits. By the time the Mayor and the City Council finish deliberations this summer, I am confident you’re going to see a budget that preserves libraries, rec centers and firepits.

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Fire pits threatened – again – supporters seek private funding

April 22, 2011 by Source

For the third time in as many years, the city is considering the removal of the nearly 200 fire pits scattered around San Diego’s beaches to help close a multimillion dollar budget gap.

(Go inside for the links to the history of the OB Rag working to save the fire pits last year.)

And, for the third time, a push to raise private funds to keep the pits in place is underway. The only question now is if the $120,500 annual expense can be raised before the pits are set to be ripped out on July 1.

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San Diego Redistricting FAQ

April 22, 2011 by Source

By Jason Everitt / Two Cathedrals / April 21, 2011

Redistricting is, without question, one of the most important and rare opportunities for civic engagement. Offered only once every ten years, immediately following the federal census, redistricting is more than just the process of corralling thousands of San Diegans into arbitrarily drawn boundaries.

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Fed up taxpayers target tax dodging corporations

April 21, 2011 by Staff

While the TEA Party calls for tax cuts and slashing services, a new taxpayers’ movement is outraged by some of America’s biggest corporations paying zero taxes while reaping huge profits. Now a national movement calling for corporations to pay a “fair share” has reached the streets in San Diego.

By Maria Yushinsky / East County Magazine

Following the deadline for taxpayers to send in payments to the I.R.S., taxpaying members of U.S. Uncut San Diego, MoveOn.org and other community groups gathered at the San Diego Civic Center on Monday, the 19th. Their goal?

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Thursday night: OB Historical Society: “This Day in San Diego History”

April 21, 2011 by Staff

The Ocean Beach Historical Society Presents:

Author Linda Pequegnat’s “This Day in San Diego History”

Thurs., April 21st, 7 p.m.

At the PL United Methodist Church – 1984 Sunset Cliffs Blvd. (O.B.)

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NFL Lockout: Who’s right, who’s wrong? And will there be a 2011 NFL season?

April 21, 2011 by Andy Cohen

As the NFL Lockout heads toward its third month, as the draft approaches, and despite the league releasing its full 2011 schedule, it remains uncertain if or when NFL football will be played in 2011.

The single biggest factor in this “crisis” is figuring out just exactly how to divvy up the $9 billion in annual revenues, which is actually a bit more complicated than it sounds. And no, it’s not just a “dispute between millionaires and billionaires,” as many would like us to think, since not all of the players are millionaires.

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OB Church Awards Renovation Contract to Local Design Firm

April 21, 2011 by Staff

KMA Architecture & Engineering (KMA) announced that renovation designs are underway of the Newbreak Church in Ocean Beach. KMA was retained by the church to design the project, with construction expected to begin in July and slated for completion in December of 2011.

Located at 2069 Ebers Street, the 6,000 square-foot one and two-story church is being renovated to give the facility a more modern feel. The existing wood and brick exterior cladding of the facility will be removed …

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Dave’s Politi-punk Song-a-da-Week goes Hip-Hop

April 21, 2011 by Dave Rice

Well hello again. It seems my first attempt to bring political pop punk to the masses worked out okay…or at least well enough that I’m going to try it again. But after just one week of staying true to my theme and posting a punk rock video, I’m going to switch it up and dive into some hip-hop.

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Friends of the Ocean Beach Library Mobilize Against Closures and Staff Cuts

April 20, 2011 by Frank Gormlie

The Friends of the OB Library met on Tuesday, April 19th. The current chair – George Murphy – has reported to us that the meeting had the largest attendance that he’d ever experienced. The group was riled up because of the draconic library closures and staff cuts proposed – once again – by San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders in his latest budget presented to the City Council.

Apparently, the Friends are mobilizing to prevent these proposals and have put together the following plan of action

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“4-20” : The True Story Of How April 20 Became ‘Weed Day’

April 20, 2011 by Source

Ryan Grim / Huff Post/ First Published April 20, 2010

Warren Haynes, the Allman Brothers Band guitarist, routinely plays with the surviving members of the Grateful Dead, now touring as The Dead. He’s just finished a Dead show in Washington, D.C. and gets a pop quiz from the Huffington Post.

Where does 420 come from?

He pauses and thinks, hands on his side. “I don’t know the real origin. I know myths and rumors,” he says. “I’m really confused about the first time I heard it. It was like a police code for smoking in progress or something. What’s the real story?”

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Local San Diego Group Repudiates KUSI Report on City Redistricting As Inaccurate

April 20, 2011 by Source

by Empower San Diego

On April 18, 2011, KUSI News aired a grossly inaccurate report (“Controversy surrounds latest redistricting effort” -here for the story at KUSI.) about Empower San Diego’s role in the City of San Diego’s redistricting process. Relying on false information, the report suggested that Empower has improper influence on two commissioners whose appointments the organization endorsed.

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Safety Questioned at San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant: San Diegans Begin a Movement to Shut the Plant Down

April 20, 2011 by Source

By Helen Villines / San Diego Citizens for Nuclear Free Neighborhoods

“What if you had just 15 minutes to evacuate, looking around your apartment or house, trying to quickly decide what you will take, how overwhelmed would you be – knowing you couldn’t return for a thousand years,” Rocky Neptun asks the group.

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OB Planning Board Project Review Committee Meet – Thursday, April 21

April 20, 2011 by Staff

Here is the agenda for the Project Review Committee of the OB Planning Board, meeting this Thursday, April 21st. The one-item agenda is a review of a request to convert one existing residential unit at 4677 Pescadero to condominium and create 1 residential condominium (under construction) on a 0.16acre site. This is in the OBPB area […]

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Just How Stupid Are We?

April 19, 2011 by Andy Cohen

Tea Party activists want us to believe that we’re being “taxed into ruin,” but the facts tell us a completely different story.

A funny thing happened on the way to the TEA Party anti-tax rallies across the country. Well, two things, actually: Standard and Poor’s, the financial market rating agency, essentially downgraded the credit rating of the United States government from “stable” to “negative” for the first time in history. And the teabagger crowd “taxes are too high” whine was turned on its head by a publication that is known for its conservative bent in one of the most conservative locales in all of California.

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Open thread on taxes – Tuesday, April 19th

April 19, 2011 by Staff

Here gentle reader, is an open thread on taxes, now that most of us peons have paid ours (or at least sent in our extension request). Here is where you can rant and rave about taxes (or really anything else you want to express, whatever rocks your boat ) – right down here in the […]

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Speak Tenderly to the City

April 19, 2011 by Source

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt/ExcuseMeImWriting.com

An annual remembrance of the 19 April 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City

Ladies and gentlemen and children: See before you the crumbled concrete and teddy bears, the wreaths and forlorn love notes, …

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Happy tax day – for some of us!

April 18, 2011 by Jim Miller

In my column last week I reported the results of a new Tulchin Research poll that showed that Californians favor raising taxes on the rich and closing corporate tax loopholes by large margins. Perhaps this is true because they sense that something has gone very wrong in our economy over the past several decades. The gap between the rich and the poor has dramatically widened and the middle class has become increasingly unstable. Many more of us are feeling unsure about the future.

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Comparison of Proposals for Car Free Zones in Balboa Park, San Diego

April 18, 2011 by Source

By John Lawrence/Will Blog for Food

There was a discussion Sunday, April 10th, on KUSI Channel 9 with a debate between Irwin Jacobs and Bruce Coons of Save Our Heritage Organization (SOHO). They invited the public to go to the park and see for ourselves the merits of the two proposals and that’s exactly what I did, the results are illustrated in the video below.

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Do I Dare? Writing on a Provocative Subject

April 18, 2011 by Source

By Shirley Robinson Sprinkles, Ph.D

My new book, “Seven Keys to Successful Single Parenting” (Wheatmark, 2011), is just days from publication and already I’m shaking in my boots. When it comes to the subject of parenting, there are so many ideas of what constitutes “good” parenting. Everyone has an opinion.

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Michael Moore: The Execs at GE Are Laughing at What a Bunch of Suckers We Are for Filing Our Taxes — Let’s Make Them PAY

April 16, 2011 by Source

The joke’s on us, folks. GE and tons of other corporations will have a tax bill for 2010 of ZERO. by Michael Moore / MichaelMoore.com /April 15, 2011 Friends, Do you wonder (like I do) what the tax accountants and executives are doing over at GE this weekend? Frantically rushing to fill out their IRS […]

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Oliver Stone: Don’t Betray Us, Barack — End the Empire

April 16, 2011 by Source

“Suddenly, a season of peace seems to be warming the world,” the New York Times exulted on the last day of July 1988. Protracted and bloody wars were ending in Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia and Nicaragua, and between Iran and Iraq. But the most dramatic development was still to come.

In December 1988, the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, declared the cold war over. “The use or threat of force no longer can or must be an instrument of foreign policy,” he said. “This applies above all to nuclear arms.”

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A New Way to Make Money for the City?

April 16, 2011 by Judi Curry

Monday, better known as “trash day” in Ocean Beach, is coming up soon. What a beautiful array of blacks, greens and blues await us on each and every street.

Oh…what’s this? What are all these trash barrels doing on their sides? And why are the tops cracked on so many of them?

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San Diego City College Protest Against Budget Cuts, April 15, 2011

April 15, 2011 by Dave Rice

My faith in the ability of my generation and the one following mine to actually give a damn got a major boost today when I headed down to City College at the (for the under-30 and under-employed set) ungodly hour of 8:00 for the pre-rally to a protest of the educational budget cuts proposed by Governor Jerry Brown.

First off, I’ve got to say that in general, I admire Brown’s apparent willingness to compromise on shrinking the state budget gap with equal measures of cuts and taxes …

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Jerry Sanders Took an Ax, Gave Your Library Forty Whacks

April 15, 2011 by Anna Daniels

When he saw what he had done, he said “Screw you, I’ll make it forty-one.”

[Updated April 17, 2011]

Mayor Sanders has released his two year budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1. Sanders is once again using our libraries as the mother of all piñatas, beating an obscene, disproportionate 7.4 million dollar reduction out of the library’s current budget.

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Hundreds Rally Against Community College Cuts

April 15, 2011 by Source

SD Community College District Canceled Most Of Summer Session Due To Cuts

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San Diego Cuts Library Hours to Help Erase $57 Million Deficit

April 15, 2011 by Source

San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders proposed filling a $56.7 million fiscal 2012 deficit by cutting in half the operating hours of libraries and recreation centers in the nation’s eighth-largest city by population….

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Bring Back The Brown!

April 15, 2011 by Andy Cohen

The Padres are an important part of San Diego history. The very name has become a part of this city’s identity and is distinctively ours. But the switch from brown as a primary uniform color to blue in the early 90’s has caused us to lose something of our character. And the Padres have become lost in a sea of blue.

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Let the Budget Wars Begin!

April 14, 2011 by Andy Cohen

President Obama presents his version of how to tackle the debt and deficit, and not surprisingly, it is completely at odds with the Republican plan.

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Thomas Gayton April 19, 2024 at 9:10 pm on The Beat of the Drums Goes OnRIGHT ON!
sealintheSelkirks April 19, 2024 at 7:46 pm on OB Planners’ Project Review Committee: 20 Units at 4705 Point Loma Ave., — Wed., April 17Oops. Correction: Typo! The Wbush 2008 crash NOT 1998! sealintheSelkirks
At the Edge of D7 April 19, 2024 at 6:07 pm on OB Planners’ Project Review Committee: 20 Units at 4705 Point Loma Ave., — Wed., April 17Holy smokes I can't believe my eyes. The first sentence of this darn proposal on the Project Review Committee Meeting Notice and Agenda has blatantly...
sealintheSelkirks April 19, 2024 at 4:26 pm on OB Planners’ Project Review Committee: 20 Units at 4705 Point Loma Ave., — Wed., April 17In 1974 I lived in a studio on Strandway between Liverpool Ct. and Lido Ct. in MB. A converted 1-car garage with a tiny bathroom...
kh April 19, 2024 at 3:41 pm on Reader Rant on the New Warehouse Plan for San Diego’s Unhoused CitizensI think in the interest of expediency, we should sign a lease without due diligence. And then later when we find out we can't use...
kh April 19, 2024 at 3:36 pm on 2 New Projects Proposed for West Point Loma Boulevard in Ocean BeachStrawman, if you transfer title to your children and they actually live there, they will be protected by Prop 13.
kh April 19, 2024 at 3:34 pm on 2 New Projects Proposed for West Point Loma Boulevard in Ocean BeachAre you suggesting that investor-driven real estate speculation doesn't contribute to higher housing prices?
kh April 19, 2024 at 3:32 pm on Why San Diego Should Not Be Awarded Anything for Its ‘Bonus ADU’ Program — Not One ADU Unit Has Been Built as Low-Income HousingMeh. City staffers live on these awards and back pats. We need to give them more awards. They would whither and die without these meaningless...
Sam April 19, 2024 at 3:27 pm on 2 New Projects Proposed for West Point Loma Boulevard in Ocean BeachTo what end? This will not bring down housing prices and you still won't be able to afford to buy.
kh April 19, 2024 at 1:11 pm on 2 New Projects Proposed for West Point Loma Boulevard in Ocean BeachAre you seriously trying to equate the tens of thousands in annual Prop 13 benefits some receive on their investment properties with the $9 writeoff...
sam April 19, 2024 at 1:10 pm on Reader Rant on the New Warehouse Plan for San Diego’s Unhoused CitizensThis lease was negotiated by the staff at the Real Estate Department, who clearly had no issues agreeing on terms, with the approval of management....
chris schultz April 19, 2024 at 11:49 am on Why San Diego Should Not Be Awarded Anything for Its ‘Bonus ADU’ Program — Not One ADU Unit Has Been Built as Low-Income HousingSANDAG spending a billion over the next 4 years for bike lanes is mind boggling.
paul krueger April 19, 2024 at 11:44 am on Why San Diego Should Not Be Awarded Anything for Its ‘Bonus ADU’ Program — Not One ADU Unit Has Been Built as Low-Income HousingExcellent and very revealing research! Thanks for sharing!
Paul Krueger April 19, 2024 at 11:43 am on Why San Diego Should Not Be Awarded Anything for Its ‘Bonus ADU’ Program — Not One ADU Unit Has Been Built as Low-Income HousingHere's a link to the city's news release on it's nomination for the 2024 "Ivory Prize for Housing Affordability": https://www.sandiego.gov/sites/default/files/2024-04/2024-04-16-city-of-san-diego-a-top-10-finalist-for-2024-ivory-prize-for-housing-affordability.pdf
Kate Callen April 19, 2024 at 11:40 am on Why San Diego Should Not Be Awarded Anything for Its ‘Bonus ADU’ Program — Not One ADU Unit Has Been Built as Low-Income HousingThe good people at Ivory Innovations are in the pocket of Ivory Homes, the largest home builder in Utah. The Ivory Family is one of...