Month: August 2011

Billionaire Warren Buffett has been making headlines in his call for the super-rich of America to be taxed more. (See below.)

Now we hear that Irwin Jacobs – one of the richest San Diegans and co-founder of Qualcomm – agrees with Buffett. Jacobs made this surprising statement during a meeting with the San Diego U-T Community Editorial Board earlier this week, where he raised questions about the assumption that higher taxes on the super-rich were bad for job creation, and completely agreed with Buffett.

In 2009, Forbes listed Jacobs as the 220th richest American, worth $1.6 Billion.

The Nickel and Dimed (2011 Version)

By Barbara Ehrenreich / TomDispatch.com / Originally published Aug. 9, 2011

I completed the manuscript for Nickel and Dimed in a time of seemingly boundless prosperity. Technology innovators and venture capitalists were acquiring sudden fortunes, buying up McMansions like the ones I had cleaned in Maine and much larger. Even secretaries in some hi-tech firms were striking it rich with their stock options. There was loose talk about a permanent conquest of the business cycle, and a sassy new spirit infecting American capitalism. In San Francisco, a billboard for an e-trading firm proclaimed, “Make love not war,” and then — down at the bottom — “Screw it, just make money.”

I remember a night

my wife said to me:

“How come you’re not listening to me?”

Well, I wanted to listen,

you see,

An Update: February 26th of this year, I originally wrote an article about the number of helicopters flying over Ocean Beach in the wee small hours of the morning. As an insomniac I find this very distressing. I accept that I will go to sleep after 11:30pm when Lindbergh closes their takeoff routine, and, if lucky, will have the drone of the motor wake me at 6:30am. That is if I am able to sleep in the “between” hours.

Did you see anything from a hit and run near Abbott and Brighton Sunday night (Aug.14th)?

An OBcian has requested help from our readers, as a friend of theirs was a victim of a hit and run around Abbot and Brighton Sunday night, about 10pm. That would be the evening of August 14th.

If you any knowledge or observations of this, please email the OB Rag at obragblog@gmail.com, and you can do it anonymously.

Strange Loud Noise Late at Night

A reader has written in saying that “there was a crazy loud noise that went off at 1:45am sharp on the corner of Brighton and Cable,” Monday night – August 15th.

If you think the “Debt Deal” stinks, wait until you find out how they pulled off this heist, with the full complicity of the media!

This month, Activist San Diego brings together a panel of experts, to analyze and deconstruct how an artificial ‘crisis’ was created, just as outlined in Naomi Klein’s book ” Shock Doctrine: The rise of disaster capitalism“. The panel includes:

• Congressman Bob Filner
• Lorena Gonzalez of the Labor Council,
• Floyd Morrow,
• Dr. Jeoff Gordon and

By Randall Erickson / Special to the OB Rag

PARIS, FRANCE. My previous dispatch may give a too idealistic image of life in France.

There are major and minor problems. Yes, like the United States, France has homeless individuals and families. They cannot afford available housing and may have trouble paying for food or even finding a school for their children because they don’t have an address.

Kevin Faulconer, it seems, is okay with gentrification in Ocean Beach. The District 2 City Councilman for Ocean Beach responded to a letter sent to him by members of the OB Planning Board protesting how the City was granting variances to property owners in the 5100 block of West Point Loma. In his response, Faulconer dismissed the concerns of our local planners about that block.

“Out there in San Diego
Where the Western Breakers Beat
They’re Jailing Men and Women
For Speaking on the Street”

2012 will mark the 100 year anniversary of the San Diego Free Speech Fight when workers from the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) along with allies from the rest of labor and the community at large defied a city ordinance designed to prevent them from standing on a soapbox at the corner of 5^th and E in downtown San Diego and speaking. As I explain in Under the Perfect Sun, street speaking was part of a larger strategy for the IWW:

[W]hen the IWW came to San Diego, they sought to turn “bums” into men by transforming the attitude of the town’s small disposable labor force from individual shame and defeatism to solidarity and class anger. Their method was street speaking…

There’s a proposal floating around the country called a “Contract for the American Dream.”

It’s an ages old dream, simple in its scheme, a dream where everyone has a place of employment (JOBS, NOT CUTS!), roofs over our heads on homes we own and secure futures for ourselves and our children so they can pass the good fortunes on.

The dream eases me into a “What if?” kind of modality. Like what if tomorrow Obama woke up truly realizing that the Good Old USA is in a kind of “do or die” situation. Either he, and Congress, does something or we, in spirit, without a doubt, will surely die.

The other night, after dark, there was a knock on my door. I thought it was a friend, but lo and behold, a young woman with a clipboard. I thought, no, not another person with a clipboard asking for donations or to buy a subscription to the UT.

I admit I may have been a bit brusque with my usual “I’m sorry, I’m not interested in buying anything… ” and she said, “I’m not selling anything,” or something to that effect. I then informed her that I wasn’t able to make any donations. I don’t remember what she said after that, but within the next moment or two she said she was from CALPIRG.

Appalling: BART tactic may be first time a government agency disrupts cellphone service in the U.S.to quell planned protests

By Julianne Escobedo Shepherd /AlterNet / August 13, 2011

Thursday night [August 11, 2011] , a protest was planned in the Bay Area Rapid Transit to protest the latest police shooting of an unarmed man. But protesters found themselves without cell service, and now a BART official admits that cell service was shut off to quell the action—violating citizens’ First Amendment rights.