July 2012

Woman Sentenced to One Year in Jail for OB Hit and Run

July 31, 2012 by Frank Gormlie
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Nikolette Kristina Gallo had pleaded guilty in June to the March 11th hit and run incident at OB’s entrance that killed Sho Funai. On Friday, July 27th, she was sentenced by Judge Dwayne Moring to one year in prison, plus the standard five years of probation.

The 19-year-old Gallo had admitted that she had drank alcohol and smoked marijuana prior to the crash at the end of I-8. It left Funai, an engineering student at UCSD, without a life.

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OB Planners to Request Moratorium on City Issuance of Variances for 25 Foot Front Lots Until Solution Found

July 31, 2012 by Frank Gormlie
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At their Wednesday night meeting, OB Planners will decide on whether to call for an immediate moratorium on variances granted by the City of San Diego on 25 foot front lots. At 6:55 pm on the Planning Board’s agenda for August 1st, is Information Item 002 – which is when and where the full Board takes up the recommendation of its sub-committee on the matter.

The sub-committee – formally called the Project Review Committee – is recommending that the Board request an immediate moratorium on variances in certain areas of Ocean Beach. The areas include the RM 2-4 zone, the FEMA 100 year Flood Plain A, lots without alley access, and on substandard or 25 foot front lots. The Project Review sub-committee took up this issue at its last meeting on July 18th and decided then to bring their recommendation to the entire Board.

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Ocean Beach Planning Board Agenda for Wednesday, August 1, 2012

July 31, 2012 by Frank Gormlie

OCEAN BEACH PLANNING BOARD

PUBLIC NOTICE & GENERAL MEETING AGENDA

Wednesday, August 1, 2012 – 6:00 p.m.

Ocean Beach Recreation Center – 4726 Santa Monica Ave., Ocean Beach

6:00 pm – Call to order

• Quorum/ Introductions
• Agenda modification and approval
• Minutes modification and approval – June 6, 2012 …
(Come inside for the rest of the agenda.)

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Field of View: Torrey Pines State National Reserve

July 31, 2012 by Annie Lane
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If you’re looking for an easy hike with a mixture of vistas, Torrey Pines State National Reserve is a cheap and spectacular option. Arrive early (about 6:30 a.m., no later than 7 a.m.) and there is free public parking available outside of the official Reserve parking lot; otherwise it’s $15. I recommend a jacket because it starts off chilly.

One of the most beautiful parts about this early morning adventure is watching the sun wash over the land. It’s inspiring.

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The San Diego Mayoral Contest Heats Up; Poll Shows Filner with 8 Point Lead

July 31, 2012 by Doug Porter

The 2012 mayoral contest here in San Diego is front and center in the news today. Polling results released yesterday show Rep. Bob Filner with an 8 point lead over City Councilman Carl DeMaio. According to San Diego Politico, the race currently stands at 40% – Filner, 32% – DeMaio and 29% – Undecided. These polling results (which are likely drawn from internal Democratic surveys) closely mirror party registration in San Diego. Other polls reportedly show Filner in the high 30s and DeMaio peaking in the low 30s.

Voice of San Diego has an article up this morning that leads by quoting former Filner opponent and modern day China-phobic economist Peter Navaro calling the Congressman “the Grand Canyon of assholes.” The VOSD piece focuses on the narrative that candidate Filner’s abrasive personality is a political liability; it does explore the roots of his willingness to be combative–his roots in the civil rights movement–but the overall thrust is not particularly complimentary.

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New Ocean Beach Brighton Restrooms – Local and Artsy But Without Stall Doors

July 30, 2012 by Frank Gormlie
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New Comfort Station Opens to Rave Reviews … But the Stalls Don’t Have Doors

OB Rag T-shirt Contest to Find Hidden Text (scroll down)

It’s been nearly a month now since the new public restrooms at the foot of Brighton Avenue in Ocean Beach opened. And the innovative, design-busting “comfort station” opened to rave reviews from City Hall to San Diego CityBeat. The crazy and weird and cool design elements of the building and its immediate vicinity are far-out, dude.

Here’s a sampling of what the new facility has to offer: …

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How Mitt Romney Drove Companies Bankrupt, Raided Pension Funds and Paid Himself Handsomely

July 30, 2012 by Source

by John Lawrence / San Diego Free Press

Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital was very good at making money for Mitt Romney.

At the same time, it loaded companies Bain bought with debt, borrowed even more money to pay dividends to Mitt Romney and destroyed or outsourced lots of jobs. It even raided pension funds. Then Romney turns around and holds himself up as a “successful businessman.”

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In a Morro Bay State of Mind

July 30, 2012 by Ernie McCray
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Home from a roadtrip. One which was just that, a journey, a moving on, to another phase in my life.

We got going at a nice pace as I’m not fascinated with speed. It got a little slow through L.A. but, indeed, it wasn’t too bad. I approached it with a “low rider” attitude, set my own mood. Hey, my novia’s at my side so I couldn’t help but low ride as she rubbed her sexy little hands on my knee. Made me go “Good googily wooglily” like back in my teens wearing white t-shirts and levi blue jeans.

Next think I know we’re in Carpinteria and when I looked around I couldn’t help but swoon and sway as I stood there in view of an almost criminally beautiful day. It was like the sun was showing off.

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Homelessness Myth#24: They All Frequent Bars

July 30, 2012 by Christine Schanes
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We’re all aware that the United States economy is going through some hard times. A number of businesses are experiencing financial down turns. Some housed people believe that all homeless people spend a great deal of time hanging out in bars and, by their very presence in those bars, negatively impact those businesses.

But do all homeless people really hang out in bars? To answer this question, I asked a number of people who have experienced homelessness whether they frequent bars and, if so, what have their experiences have been.

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Bernie Sanders: The Road to Oligarchy and Taking Back Our Democracy

July 27, 2012 by Source
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By Bernie Sanders / July 26, 2012 / Reader Supported News

The Senate Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights held a hearing Tuesday on “Taking Back Our Democracy: Responding to Citizens United and the Rise of Super PACs”.

Here is Sen. Bernie Sanders’ testimony:

Mr. Chairman, thank you for convening a hearing on the monumentally important issue of “Taking Back Our Democracy.” Unfortunately, that title exactly describes the challenge facing us today.

The history of this country has been the drive toward a more and more inclusive democracy—a democracy which would fulfill Abraham Lincoln’s beautiful phraseology at Gettysburg in which he described America as a nation “of the people by the people for the people.”

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Progressive Pundits Pontificate: Magna Carta, Climate Dice, and Challenging Wall Street

July 27, 2012 by Source

Hey boys and girls! Here’s a bevy of progressive pundits – all pontificating:

Noam Chomsky: Shredding the Magna Carta

Down the road only a few generations, the millennium of Magna Carta, one of the great events in the establishment of civil and human rights, will arrive. Whether it will be celebrated, mourned, or ignored is not at all clear.

Paul Krugman: Loading the Climate Dice

A couple of weeks ago the Northeast was in the grip of a severe heat wave. As I write this, however, it’s a fairly cool day in New Jersey, considering that it’s late July. Weather is like that; it fluctuates.

Matt Taibbi : A Serious Challenge to Wall Street – Using Eminent Domain to Forestall Foreclosures

Something very interesting is happening. There’s been so much corruption on Wall Street in recent years, and the federal government has appeared to be so deeply complicit in many of the problems, that many people have experienced something very like despair over the question of what to do about it all.

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Pacific Beach Planning Board Resists City Builders’ Plans for Beach Development

July 27, 2012 by Source
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By Sub-Committee / Special to San Diego Free Press

Sub-Committee Report # 4: For the moment, city plans to develop the coastal cliff beach at Law St. in North Pacific Beach, with another new live-in lifeguard tower and garages, have met with an equally divided planning board, 7-7, with the tie vote cast by the board president, in a heated debate at the last PB Planning Board meeting, July 25, 2012, at the PB library community room.
For the remainder of this article, please go to San Diego Free Press.

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14 Specific Allegations of NYPD Brutality During Occupy Wall Street

July 27, 2012 by Source
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By Conor Friedersdorf / The Atlantic / Jul 25, 2012

A collaborative investigation launched by law clinics at four top universities has assembled damning evidence of widespread misconduct.

An investigation undertaken by law clinics at NYU, Fordham, Harvard, and Stanford has concluded, after eight months of study, that the NYPD abused Occupy Wall Street protesters and violated their rights on numerous occasions during the 2011 protests that radiated out from Zuccotti Park. Their report, Suppressing Protest: Human Rights Violations in the U.S. Response to Occupy Wall Street, was released today. It focuses on transgressions against international law.

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Paipo Stokefest About Wood Boards – La Jolla, July 29th

July 27, 2012 by Frank Gormlie
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Wooden Surf Boards On Display and Available for Test Rides

by Larry O’Brien

People have been riding wood in the surf since before historians had pens and paper. The age of hard and soft plastic surfcraft is barely sixty years old, but it’s far more common than wooden surfcraft.

Unfortunately it also means that these plastic beach toys are more common in our landfills, and litter our coves and sea caves.

The good news is that the old ways are still available to us. Riding wood in the surf has been gaining in popularity in recent years, and the internet has helped proliferate the enthusiasm around the globe.

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Drinking the Right Wing Kool-Aid in Mission Valley; UT-SD’s Quest to Demonize President Obama

July 26, 2012 by Doug Porter

How low will the UT-San Diego’s editorial board go in its quest to demonize President Obama? Will they manufacture or twist history to portray him as the worst chief executive in history? You betcha!, as they did in an editorial profile (Presidential busts: The worst of all: Barack Obama...) this weekend. Will they cry “wolf” when one of contender Mitt Romney’s financial backers’ activities gets scrutinized by the federal government after years of investigations by state governments? Oh, yes!, they will. Consider the first paragraph of this editorial entitled “The president’s enemy pays a price”:

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Brief History of OB Grassroots Activism – Part 2

July 26, 2012 by Frank Gormlie
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This is Part 2 of my “brief” history of modern OB activism. Here’s Part 1. It is taken from a talk I gave at the Open House of the Green Store on July 14th.

The Eighties

The 1980s were a period of accommodation. Hippie businessmen and women emerged on the scene in OB and were accepted. The projects of the hippie radicals of the late Sixties and Seventies had all but faded away – many of the hippies remained however, buying homes in OB or Point Loma, getting married, and having careers and children. But the radical pioneers had paved the way for a new wave of hippies – it was the coming of age of the “hip-oisie”, a type of hip petite-bourgeoisie.

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OB Entryway Sign Needs to Be Replaced – Call for Proposals

July 26, 2012 by Staff
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Apparently, the OB Entryway Sign is in trouble. The OB Town Council reports that the sign has weathered years and years of coastal air and an army of termites has moved in – it must now be replaced and they are seeking residents’ input and design proposals for a new sign.

OBceans are urged to contact artist friends and family members to draft what they would like to see and submit it for consideration -even if what is wanted is the exact same sign, only with different materials.

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A Poem by Loverne Brown: “Episode In a Continuing Series”

July 26, 2012 by Staff
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By Loverne Brown

I wait for a bus.
He comes up out of the shadows
to share the bench,
greets me with a broken-toothed smile.

He has the sad courtesy of the derelict
who remembers once being other than what he is,
the remote regard of one who no longer cares.

He drinks from a fragrant bottle, is himself fragrant
with all of the human smells.
His chariot arrives before mine. Two officers
relieve him of his bottle,
spill the red dreamstuff
into the gutter, rumple him into the car.

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Hounds for Hope Walk – A Canine Cancer Awareness and Wellness Festival

July 26, 2012 by Staff
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It’s the 2nd Annual Hounds for Hope Walk, coming up on Saturday, July 28, 2012, at Dusty Rhodes Park, Ocean Beach, from 10:00am-1:00pm.

Hounds for Hope Walk is a canine cancer awareness and wellness festival designed to promote healthy care for our furry friends. A short walk around the perimeter of the park will kick off the event.

This is a family-friendly celebration and all leashed dogs are welcome for a great day of fun and hope.

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Coastal Habitat Restoration on July 28th – Volunteers Needed

July 26, 2012 by Staff
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The Friends of the San Diego River Mouth, a chapter of the San Diego River Park Foundation, needs volunteers with an interest in helping to save and restore one of the last remaining Coastal Dune and Wetland Habitats in San Diego.

They are meeting this Saturday, July 28th, at Dog Beach in OB, from 9am to 12 noon.

Coastal Habitat restoration projects are needed as over 95% of these habitat areas are now gone due to development. Home to many endangered birds, fish and mammals this area needs your help to remain as a viable habitat area. An educational walking tour will be included. All are welcome even if you can’t stay to help us with the project.

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4th Night of Unrest in Anaheim As Protesters Confront Police – Support Caravan Planned From San Diego

July 25, 2012 by Frank Gormlie

This originally appeared at San Diego Free Press

Hundreds of Protesters – 24 Arrests and 7 Hours of Confrontations

Unrest continued last night – Tuesday, July 24th – in Anaheim, the fourth night in a row – between community residents protesting recent police lethal shootings and law enforcement. 24 arrests were made yesterday and overnight, near a half dozen injuries occurred during the seven hours of conflict Tuesday that ended around 2 a.m.

Anaheim police remained on alert Wednesday. The family of the man fatally shot on Saturday are suing the City and police and a support caravan from San Diego is going up to Anaheim on Sunday, July 29th.

Between 500 and 600 demonstrators were reported to have carried out protests throughout Tuesday, as hundreds of extra police were brought in to supplement Anaheim’s city police. Many of the protests were peaceful, yet police again fired pepper balls and beanbags at unarmed protesters. Some business windows were smashed, rocks were thrown at police, and dumpsters lit on fire.

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Will Carlbad’s Controversial Desalination Plant Get Off the Ground?

July 25, 2012 by Frank Gormlie
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Southern’s California Recent Desal Plant Faces its Last Hurdle

By David Rosenfeld / AlterNet / Originally published July 17, 2012

The private equity firm proposing to finance the project has one last hurdle to overcome: It needs someone to agree to buy the water. And that is proving tricky.

After more than a decade spent talking about building a large-scale ocean desalination plant in Carlsbad, California, the private equity firm proposing to finance the project has one last hurdle to overcome: It needs someone to agree to buy the water.

Poseidon Resources has put forth several iterations over the years of its proposed plant in San Diego County, expected to produce up to 50 million gallons of freshwater daily. In one attempt, Poseidon inked agreements with local water agencies claiming it could sell water at no greater cost than imported water supplies.

But investors and members of the San Diego County Water Authority, both of whom Poseidon needs for support, balked at the claim and those agreements were scrapped.

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California’s ‘Special Exemptions’ Act: The Biggest Threat You Haven’t Heard Of

July 25, 2012 by Source

By Dante Atkins / Daily Kos

November 2012 will be a cataclysmic showdown between the forces of democracy and the forces of unlimited wealth. If we lose this, the plutocrats will be in charge and will be able to write their own rules to further the interests of Wall Street and the one percent. If we lose this fight, anti-democratic legislation will continue to sweep across the nation, overwhelming the grassroots support and small-dollar contributions of those who dare to fight against overwhelming odds.

And I’m not talking about the reelection campaign of Barack Obama. No, this battle to the death between moneyed interests and working people will play out in California in the form of Proposition 32. This measure, proponents say, would ban both corporate and union contributions for most political purposes and make citizens reign supreme. But progressives here have taken to calling it the “special exemptions act.”

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California Republicans to Push Voter ID Measure in Quest to Completely Marginalize Party

July 25, 2012 by Doug Porter

Just shoot me, please… On the heels of a New York Times article describing the California Republican Party as “caught in a cycle of relentless decline, and appears in danger of shrinking to the rank of a minor party”, the State GOP has announced plans for sponsorship of a Voter Identification initiative for the next election cycle. To kick off that effort the party has invited conservative columnist John Fund, co-author of the forthcoming book “Who’s Counting? How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk.” to its August convention in Burbank.

The move to enact a Voter ID law is sure to alienate minority voters, who are poised to become a majority of the electorate in California in the near future. Attorney General Eric Holder characterized Voter ID laws as a new poll tax at the recent NAACP convention. Two new reports — released by the Brennan Center of Justice at the NYU School of Law and the University of Delaware’s Center for Political Communication, respectively – have further undermined the GOP’s discredited claims that voter ID laws do not have a discriminatory impact on persons of color and are not intended to be discriminatory on the basis of race.

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Michael Moore: It’s the Guns – But Not Really the Guns

July 25, 2012 by Source
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By Michael Moore / July 25, 2012

Since Cain went nuts and whacked Abel, there have always been those humans who, for one reason or another, go temporarily or permanently insane and commit unspeakable acts of violence. There was the Roman Emperor Tiberius, who during the first century A.D. enjoyed throwing victims off a cliff on the Mediterranean island of Capri. Gilles de Rais, a French knight and ally of Joan of Arc during the middle ages, went cuckoo-for-Cocoa Puffs one day and ended up murdering hundreds of children. Just a few decades later Vlad the Impaler, the inspiration for Dracula, was killing people in Transylvania in numberless horrifying ways.

In modern times, nearly every nation has had a psychopath or two commit a mass murder, regardless of how strict their gun laws are – the crazed white supremacist in Norway one year ago Sunday, the schoolyard butcher in Dunblane, Scotland, the École Polytechnique killer in Montreal, the mass murderer in Erfurt, Germany … the list seems endless.

And now the Aurora shooter last Friday. There have always been insane people, and there always will be.

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52nd Congressional District among the most competitive, most likely to turn from red to blue

July 24, 2012 by Andy Cohen
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Peters campaign insists that they will be able to compete financially head to head.

As the race for the California 52nd District Congressional race begins to heat up between Republican incumbent Brian Bilbray and Democratic challenger Scott Peters, one of the more interesting and telling aspects of the race will be determining which candidate will have access to the most resources. It is widely assumed that Bilbray will have a sizeable funding advantage, as Republicans stereotypically do. After all, Scott Walker was able to outspend his Democratic challenger Tom Barrett in the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall election by a margin of eight to one.

For the rest of this story, please visit the San Diego Free Press.

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Rally to Save Medical Cannabis – July 25th – at Federal Court House

July 24, 2012 by Staff

Rally to Save Medical Cannabis

Join us, Wednesday July 25th – 12pm at the San Diego Federal Court House on 880 Front St. to rally against federal attacks on the Medical Cannabis Community!

After closing down over 200 dispensaries throughout San Diego County, U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy has set her sights on Mother Earth’s Alternative Healing Cooperative the only Sheriff Permitted medical marijuana dispensary in the 4 most southern county’s in California. The Coop received an eviction notion to cease operation on Wed, July 25 due to the pressure from U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy’s office on there landlord.

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“Colorado River Day” – July 25th – Environmental and Policy Groups to Urge Governor Brown and Feds to Conserve “the River”

July 24, 2012 by Staff
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On Wednesday, July 25th, a coalition of sorts of environmental, progressive and fiscal conservative groups will draw the public’s attention to the need to focus on water conservation and cost-efficiency in San Diego. The groups will do this by holding a press conference in Mission Bay as a “Colorado River Day” event and highlight their delivery of a letter to Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar and Governor Jerry Brown outlining these concerns.

On July 25, 1921, Congress officially named the river “Colorado,” which now faces massive water supply draws to quench the thirst of the arid southwestern United States.

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Community colleges should offer four-year degrees

July 24, 2012 by Source
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Editor: This is a commentary sent to us by OBcean Richard Grosch who wrote it in conjunction with labor activist Peter Zschiesche and was published in the July 18th OpEd pages of the U-T San Diego. Grosch is president of the San Diego Community College District board of trustees, and Zschiesche is the executive vice president of the board.

By Richard Grosch & Peter Zschiesche / U-T San Diego / Originally published July 18, 2012

California has a higher education crisis. The University of California (UC), the California State University System (CSU) and the California Community College system have all been hit with deep reductions in state funding for students’ education in the face of unprecedented need for job training, college degree preparation and re-careering.

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Activists call NRC Ruling on San Onofre “Dangerous Coverup”

July 24, 2012 by Staff
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Regulators Cover for Edison: “No One at Fault”

The announcement on July 19th by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) stating that Southern California Edison (SCE) – the owner of the San Onofre Nuclear Power station – had complied will all regulations is yet another dangerous case of regulators looking the other way coupled with gutted unsafe regulations, according to local anti-nuke activist groups. The groups include Residents Organized for a Safe Environment (ROSE), Citizens’ Oversight, and the Peace Resource Center of San Diego.

Listen to the activists:

Carol Jahnkow of the Peace Resource Center of San Diego:

“It’s a very sad commentary when regulatory agencies will allow transgressions to occur and will not speak out about them, to avoid scrutiny themselves.”

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