Month: September 2011

By Mike James / Special to the OB Rag

In the fall of 1983 it came to the attention of the Ocean Beach Planning Board that certain large property owners and local Realtors had persuaded then Councilman Bill Cleator to silently put before the Council an amendment for the Ocean Beach Precise Plan. The amendment would have doubled Ocean Beach’s residential density from 25 units-per-acre to 52-units-per-acre.

By Mike Davis / TomDispatch.com / September 13, 2011

1. Twin Towers

Two years from now the staffs of Vanity Fair and the New Yorker will move into the most haunted building in the world. There, the elite of American celebrity photographers, gossip columnists, and magazine journalists may meet some macabre new muses, aloft in the upper stories of 1 World Trade Center where 658 doomed employees were sitting at their desks at 8:46 AM, September 11, 2001.

Editor: This is the personal and harrowing account of the woman who was among three passengers forcefully removed from Flight 623 that originated in San Diego on September 11th. It is a wake-up call to anyone who hasn’t been introduced to the Patriot Act. This is America of today.

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Some real Shock and Awe: Racially profiled and cuffed in Detroit

Silly me. I thought flying on 9/11 would be easy. I figured most people would choose not to fly that day so lines would be short, planes would be lightly filled and though security might be ratcheted up, we’d all feel safer knowing we had come a long way since that dreadful Tuesday morning 10 years ago.

But then armed officers stormed my plane, threw me in handcuffs and locked me up.

By Randall Erickson / Special to the OB Rag

PARIS, FRANCE. In addition to the different forms of aid to the defavorized (a popular political euphemism often used now in place of the more descriptive and simple «poor»), some people have found their own ways to survive or improve their lives. Like in the United States, they scour the garbage bins behind supermarkets and find products that have been thrown out but are perfectly edible, and even non-food products. For reasons incomprehensible to me, some supermarkets pour bleach or other liquid products over the contents of their bins.

By Explorer Parent

The OB Rag had it right when publishing the article on September 1st, “Is former principal of Point Loma charter school being hounded by U-T Watchdog?” Indeed, Jill Green was being targeted by the Union Tribune Watchdog with erroneous and misleading information.

As the nation continued to struggle to escape the effects of the recession, the poverty rate spiked to 15.1 percent in 2010, the highest level since 1993, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday.

About 46.2 million Americans lived in poverty last year, marking an increase of 2.6 million over 2009 and the fourth consecutive annual increase in the poverty rate.

The total number of people living in poverty — defined in 2010 as at or below an income of $22,314 for a family of four — is now at the highest level in the 52 years the statistic has been collected.

On the front page of today’s San Diego U-T, there is an announcement by the U-T of the end of anonymous comments to their online publication, SignOnSanDiego.

And our very own OB Ragster Doug Porter was quoted to show one of the reasons, at least, the daily newspaper is changing their comment policy.

By Xu Urubu

The Sixth Jazz88 Ocean Beach Music and Art Festival was celebrated Saturday, September 10^th. Newport Avenue in Ocean Beach was transformed for one day into the Big Easy’s Bourbon Street with an array of Jazz, Afro-Cuban, Blues, Gospel, and Western Swing performers.

According to an unofficial estimate, there were over 30,000 music lovers jammed at multiple venues, with nine stages, listening to 23 bands with over 80 performers. There was also an art row on the 4900 block of Newport that featured 34 fine visual artists. There were two-dozen food tents provided by Ocean Beach restaurants, ….

Here is a set of national news posts – articles you may have missed in the nation’s rush to commemorate 9-11:

Postal Workers: The Last Union

Obama Team Feared Coup If He Prosecuted War Crimes

Army Base on the Brink : At an Army base near Seattle, soldiers are committing suicide, murdering their families—and in one case, waterboarding their own kids.

(Go inside for the links)

While this summer has seen stock markets plunge, consumer confidence crater, and hopes for a broad economic recovery evaporate, several members of Ocean Beach’s business community seem cautiously optimistic about the future.

Gary Gilmore, owner of Gilmore Family Jewelers on Newport Avenue, has noticed a slight upturn in customer sentiment in recent weeks.

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By Kit-Bacon Gressitt / Excuse Me, I’m Writing / September 11, 2011

As I sat in a college classroom Thursday afternoon, the power went out and we swiftly determined we were in the throes of a regional electrical power failure. My first thought was to check for students in the elevators. My second thought was of the anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks and the possibility that the blackout was somehow related.

The battle over gentrification in Ocean Beach has ratcheted up a notch and has entered a new phase. The Ocean Beach Planning Board has wrestled with the manner in which the City has been granting variances to property owners along the 5100 block of West Point Loma Boulevard of late, and the OB Rag has blogged numerous times about the issue.

Now, City Councilmember Kevin Faulconer has requested the City Attorney to step in and make a legal decision about “whether the cumulative effect of granting multiple development variances has the same effect as a rezone, ….”