July 2011

2nd Person Run Over by Lifeguards in One Month – Training to be Reviewed

July 31, 2011 by Source

State lifeguard officials are reviewing training policies after one of their trucks ran over a Poway woman this week at Torrey Pines State Beach.

It was the second time in a month that a lifeguard truck ran over someone at a local beach. The earlier incident occurred June 30 at Pacific Beach and involved a 3-year-old girl whose collarbone was broken. San Diego police are investigating both accidents.

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Teachers March On Washington – Demand End to Bush Era’s ‘No Child Left Behind’

July 31, 2011 by Source

There are many reasons thousands of teachers traveled across the country to protest in front of the White House on Saturday — including to oppose charter schools, to fight for equal funding for poor schools, and to have more say in public education policies.

But at a noisy rally starting at noon under soaring temperatures, their message boiled down to one point, which was summed up by the sound check before the first speaker took the stage:

Tap. Tap. “No testing, no testing, 1-2-3.”

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Last Minute Invitation to a Baby Shower for OB Couple Who Needs Our Help

July 30, 2011 by Staff

Some time ago our own Sunshine wrote about her experience participating in the Point-in-Time-Count where she met Ricky and Darcie. Ricky and Darcie are going to have a baby real soon and need a little help. Sunshine is throwing them a baby shower this afternoon and wants to invite our readers to attend. Sunshine says,

Darcie’s baby (sex to be determined at birth) is due on Aug 8th. Please RSVP (through facebook) soon. Feel free to invite others who would enjoy sharing some baby/mama items to my lovely friend Darcie.

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Thoughts on San Diego City Council Districts Being Redrawn

July 29, 2011 by Source

By Jason Everitt / Two Cathedrals / July 28, 2011

On Thursday, July 21st, the San Diego Citizen’s Redistricting Commission finalized its preliminary draft of the new council districts. We can now say a few things with confidence.

Todd Gloria will be moving. Gloria was drawn out of the old District 3. …

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Hearing on proposed merger of AT&T and T-Mobile draws big crowd in San Diego

July 29, 2011 by Source

By Miriam Rafferty / East County Magazine / July 28, 2011

Hundreds of local residents spoke out at a hearing held by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) Monday evening at the Al Bahr Shriners auditorium in San Diego.

The majority voiced support for a proposed merger between AT&T and T-Mobile. Supporters said the merger could create a more reliable network for cell phone service and create good-paying union jobs; many also praised AT&T’s record of community service. Opponents, by contrast, voiced concerns over creating a monopoly and feared the merger would lead to higher rates, decreased incentive for innovation, and job lay-offs.

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San Diego City Schools Save Money With Labor Agreements

July 29, 2011 by Source

By Tom Lemmon / SignOnSanDiego / July 28, 2011

When I was a kid growing up in the South Bay, I remember bringing my progress reports home to share with my parents. Just like many teachers before them and since, my teachers would set goals for me and assess my performance, and my parents would push me to do better. They would identify ways I could work harder to improve my performance, with hopes that my final report card would bring better grades.

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Need Money? El Cajon Young Republicans San Diego GOP operatives Pay “Activists”!

July 29, 2011 by Anna Daniels

Thumbnail image for Need Money? <del>El Cajon Young Republicans</del> San Diego GOP operatives Pay “Activists”!

Author’s note 7/30/10: The link in the article below no longer goes to the original U-T article upon which I based this post (see the reposted article at Tenants Together). I’ll let you all decide whether the new article is an “update” or a “correction,” because in many ways it is a whole different animal.

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Religious leaders arrested for sit-in against budget cuts at Capitol

July 28, 2011 by Source

U.S. Capitol Police arrested 11 Christian and Jewish faith leaders Thursday after they staged a Capitol sit-in against budget cuts. The group called on the Obama administration and Congress not to “balance the budget on the backs of the poor,” according to the release sent out after the incident.

The religious leaders, members of an interfaith coalition to protect the poor, have been charged with demonstrating within a U.S. Capitol building, according to a Capitol Police spokeswoman. All have been taken to Capitol Police headquarters for processing.

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Words of Tim DeChristopher to the Court as He Is Sentenced for Environmental Activism

July 28, 2011 by Source

As Tim DeChristopher Is Sentenced to Prison for Making Bids on Oil and Natural Gas Lands, He Tells the Court, “This Is What Hope Looks Like”

“In these times of a morally bankrupt government that has sold out its principles, this is what patriotism looks like.”

Editor: On Tuesday, July 25th, Tim DeChristopher was sentenced to 2 years in federal prison and was handed a $10,000 fine for bidding on oil and gas drilling leases in an attempt to protect public lands. Here is our original article from January 2009 by Lane Tobias on DeChristopher’s “crime” of civil disobedience to thwart Big Oil of buying up the Utah wilderness. Here are his words in court.

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Still Advocating for Children After All These Years

July 28, 2011 by Ernie McCray

Many people have read my piece, “Making a Better Place for Children,” that was in Sunday’s Union-Tribune. My friends have responded with “Right on!” And then they ask: “So, do you think the U-T is on the up and up with all this ‘diversity of ideas’ talk?” And to that I say: I do. But we’ll just have to see, won’t we? I mean this is a “new category” of “new territory” for me. But my optimism lies simply in that they solicited me.

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Attention Bouncers and Bar Staff! Free Introductory Integrated Threat Response Security Tactics Seminar

July 28, 2011 by Terrie Leigh Relf

This Saturday at The Vault

On Saturday, July 30th, from 10:00 a.m. until noon, Jack Gialanella, a licensed and certified Senior Full Instructor in Rapid Assault Tactics, will be teaching a free seminar geared toward bouncers and bar staff. The seminar will take place at the Vault Combat Academy Mixed Martial Art Training and Fitness gym, located inside the Ocean Beach Surf and Skate Shop, at 4976 Newport Ave. in Ocean Beach.

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The Saga of the Del Mar Ave. Benches Not Over Yet

July 28, 2011 by Andy Cohen

OB Town Council Meeting, July 27, 2011: Town Council awards $6,000 in grants to local organizations.

The benches are back, but the controversy is not over yet. As has been widely reported, KUSI Channel 9/51’s Michael Turko facilitated the return from a junkyard of the two missing memorial benches placed overlooking the ocean at the end of Del Mar Ave. However there remain some questions about the legality of their placement.

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The Douche Distraction: Hail to the V, bye-bye Roe V Wade?

July 27, 2011 by Anna Daniels

Thumbnail image for The Douche Distraction: Hail to the <em>V</em>, bye-bye Roe V Wade?

While the sturm und drang of the debt ceiling debate drowns out the howls of distress of the American public going down with the ship, we are being treated to an equally diversionary coverage of the significant women’s issue of the day. Did someone say douche? I didn’t say douche but someone said douche.

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Memorial Benches Returned to Ocean Beach

July 27, 2011 by Frank Gormlie

Turko Arranges for Benches to be Returned to Del Mar Avenue Bluff

Late this afternoon, on the bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean at the end of Del Mar Avenue in Ocean Beach, two memorial benches were lifted by crane off a truck and placed exactly where they had been before they were stolen on July 8th.

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Updates and new wrinkle in the stolen Ocean Beach memorial benches

July 27, 2011 by Frank Gormlie

UPDATE: The Benches Have Been Returned! (See most recent post.)

As Turko Picks Benches Up, Other TV Station Now Doubts Whether They Were Even “Legal”

While politicians dally in Washington DC, while unemployment rises, social security threatened, and things economically don’t appear to be improving, one little story from Ocean Beach just won’t go away. It’s the story about the two memorial benches removed or stolen from a bluff at the end of Del Mar Avenue earlier this month. There’s new updates and a new wrinkle purported by a San Diego television station.

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San Diego approves $500,000 in settlement with boy wounded by off-duty cop

July 27, 2011 by Source

The father of a child who was shot by an off-duty San Diego policeman during a 2008 road rage confrontation with the child’s mother in Oceanside has settled his son’s federal civil rights lawsuit with the city of San Diego for $500,000.

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Paul Krugman: The Cult That Is Destroying America

July 27, 2011 by Source

By Paul Krugman / New York Times / July 26, 2011

Watching our system deal with the debt ceiling crisis — a wholly self-inflicted crisis, which may nonetheless have disastrous consequences — it’s increasingly obvious that what we’re looking at is the destructive influence of a cult that has really poisoned our political system.

And no, I don’t mean the fanaticism of the right.

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Dispatches from Paris: Women’s Fashion of Protest

July 27, 2011 by Source

By R. Erickson / Special to the OB Rag / July 27, 2011

PARIS, FRANCE: Americans who manage to avoid «American Idol» and see some films from France, see some photos or commercials of Paris, or even travel there, might have the image of women in flowing spring skirts or dresses, or in professional skirt suits.

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Ask OB Convert: “I still haven’t found a job in OB.”

July 27, 2011 by OB Convert

Dear OB Convert:

I have wanted to move to this beachy hippie haven for sometime now. After I graduated I was sure I would be able to find a job in OB where I could ride my bike to work and wherever life takes me. Sadly, having graduated from college this past spring I still haven’t found a job in OB.

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Is the GOP the real Manchurian Candidate?

July 27, 2011 by JEC

The Manchurian Candidate, the idea of a mole, a plant on the inside using a powerful position (the Presidency) to destroy the nation. Consider, in 2001 the GOP was handed a balanced budget producing a mild surplus. The GOP took that balanced budget and turned it upside down; then using lies, started aggressive wars they knew would cost hundreds of billions but they cut taxes and kicked the cost down the road. Now the bills are due and they refuse to pay. It’s like they threw a big banquet, invited everyone to go shopping and are now ducking out on paying their bills.

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OB Rag Challenging Assumptions Over At The Union Tribune

July 27, 2011 by Doug Porter

Three disparate events over the last month have prompted this article. It’s funny how life works – and sometimes doesn’t – and how one’s perspective can impacted. Those of you that are long time readers of the OBRag may have noticed less output from me here as of late, from a guy who in the past has written early and often about whatever crossed my mind.

Which leads me to event #1: finding out that I had cancer. I won’t bore you with the details except to say that my prognosis is extremely positive and that the treatments (chemo/radiation) are debilitating. So I have had lots of time to contemplate life but can’t often summon the energy to write about it.

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NO CUTS ! Tuesday. Noon. Get out there in front of your Congressional Rep’s office

July 26, 2011 by Staff

Find your representative’s office here

Last weekend, it became 100% clear that Republicans would rather see America default, Social Security payments stopped, and unemployment soar ever higher than give an inch on their position: The very richest people and most profitable corporations shouldn’t pay one penny more in taxes.

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Bigger Than the Tea Party

July 26, 2011 by Source

By Van Jones / Reader Supported News / July 25, 2011

Last month, I joined with MoveOn.org and launched the Rebuild the Dream campaign to help give a voice to the millions of Americans who aren’t being heard in Washington. This past weekend, we organized nearly 1,600 house meetings across the country – nearly double the number of protests the Tea Party held when they launched in April of 2009. The American Dream Meetings gave more than 27,000 people, from all across the country, an opportunity to come together and discuss what the American Dream means to them and their families. They talked about how the jobless crisis and foreclosure mess is impacting their communities. They put forth creative ideas for the Contract for the American Dream – a bold progressive vision to help fix the broken economy and rebuild our communities. The Contract has already received nearly 26,000 ideas submitted online alone and over 6 million ratings.

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Mike Davis: Crash Club – What Happens When Three Sputtering Economies Collide?

July 26, 2011 by Source

By Mike Davis / TomDispatch.com / July 26, 2011

When my old gang and I were 14 or 15 years old, many centuries ago, we yearned for immortality in the fiery wreck of a bitchin’ ’40 Ford or ’57 Chevy. Our J.K. Rowling was Henry Felsen, the ex-Marine who wrote the bestselling masterpieces Hot Rod (1950), Street Rod (1953), and Crash Club (1958).

Officially, his books — highly praised by the National Safety Council — were deterrents, meant to scare my generation straight with huge dollops of teenage gore. In fact, he was our asphalt Homer, exalting doomed teenage heroes and inviting us to emulate their legend. One of his books ends with an apocalyptic collision at a crossroads that more or less wipes out the entire graduating class of a small Iowa town. We loved this passage so much that we used to read it aloud to each other.

It’s hard not to think of the great Felsen, who died in 1995, while browsing the business pages these days.

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The Patient Care Association of California Succeeds in Having Cannabis Collective Ban Repealed in San Diego

July 26, 2011 by Source

Source: Patient Care Association of California (PCA)

Citizens for Patient Rights and The Patient Care Association of California (PCA) have successfully halted the ban on medical cannabis collectives in the City of San Diego. Faced with the prospect up to one million dollars in ballot expenses, San Diego City Council voted 6-2 with council members Marti Emerald and Tony Young opposed today to repeal the suspended ordinance banning collectives rather than fund the placement on the ballot in June 2012. The PCA thanks the people of San Diego for their support. In addition, we believe the council members acted in the best interests of the city by not wasting taxpayer dollars in this time of fiscal crisis.

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Sustainability 101: Repurposing & Upcycling

July 26, 2011 by Terrie Leigh Relf

Recently, I heard the term, upcycling, and was curious what it meant. I also wanted to determine whether, or if, it differed from repurposing.

It seems that these two concepts are basically synonymous. Repurposing may be as simple as cutting off the top of a plastic milk jug to make a planter for burgeoning aloe plants, or filling old wooden barrels with dirt and compost to plant tomatoes, onions, and squash. Upcycling may be just as simple in that it takes products that may not be as easily recycled and utilizes them to make new products. These include wine cork bulletin boards as well as juice pouch purses.

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BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE: Washington fiddles about the deficit while our job prospects, home security and economic future are toast

July 26, 2011 by Anna Daniels

Thumbnail image for BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE: Washington fiddles about the deficit while our job prospects, home security and economic future are toast

In the past weeks, American citizens have made it known in countless polls that they don’t want anyone to mess with their Social Security, their Medicare or Medicaid. And the majority of us have also said that it is about time to make the wealthiest among us to pay their fair share of taxes.

So why are we enmeshed in a months long debate about the friggin debt ceiling, which in the words of Jefferson Airplane, doesn’t mean shit to a tree (or the citizenry)?

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NFL Lockout Officially Ended. A Look Back at the Issues and the Settlement

July 25, 2011 by Andy Cohen

NFL lockout ends, assuring that there will be a 2011 football season. A look at how the impasse was solved.

Back in April, I posted this essay on the NFL lockout. In it I chronicled the major issues leading to the owners locking out the players, and made a few predictions as to how I thought things would shake out. Using this breakdown from Pro Football Talk as a primary guide, I’ll take a look at the settlement, add my own analysis, and look at how my predictions played out.

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After Beach Booze Ban, Crime Went Inland

July 25, 2011 by Source

by Keegan Kyle / Voice of San Diego

Before San Diego banned alcohol from its beaches, Police Chief Bill Lansdowne expressed his opposition to the proposal and issued a warning. The heavy drinkers who amass during summer holidays won’t go away, he said. They’ll move inland, away from beefed up beach patrols, and make it harder for police to monitor crime

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Your last chance for input into City of San Diego redistricting

July 25, 2011 by Staff

Recently, the Redistricting Commission has released a draft of the San Diego city Districts. Make sure your voice is heard NOW!

The next opportunity to express your opinion will be next Tuesday, July 26th at the first post-map public hearing. Please join us to show your support for representative redistricting!

Tuesday, July 26th, 6PM

Logan Heights Branch Library
567 South 28th Street
San Diego, CA 92113

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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...