Month: October 2014

By Anna Daniels / San Diego Free Press

Editor note: The OB Rag and the San Diego Free Press have not endorsed any judges. The opinions in the article are those of the author.

Does this sound familiar? ” I’m filling out my ballot and there are 14 judges. Who do I vote for and specifically not for?” The usual means at our disposal for choosing voter nominated candidates and propositions are noticeably absent when voting for judges. It is therefore easy to blow off this obscure exercise in democracy until you wake up one day to find out that you have been Kreep’d, as in San Diego Superior Court Judge Gary Kreep.

By John Lawrence

Wall Street needs to get people into debt. That’s one way they make their money – by collecting interest on people’s debts. They had a field day with subprime mortgages, and then those government bailouts were the sweet icing on the cake. Then they moved on to student loans.

Now they are making a killing off of subprime auto loans. Anyone can buy a used car, even those with no credit, the same way you used to be able to get a mortgage. They are also called liar loans which is the appropriate name for them because loan applications are falsified in the same way that mortgage loan applications were falsified.

As ‘Old-Money’ Point Loman Burnham emerges to operate San Diego’s daily, questions raised whether this is the “Moderate Wing” of the Establishment reasserting itself?

Part One of two parts.

By Frank Gormlie

The news has been out for nearly a month now that well known wheeler-dealer and financier Malin Burnham of Point Loma has initiated efforts to purchase the U-T San Diego from Doug Manchester, the current owner and publisher.

Burnham, who calls himself a moderate Republican and who has lived in Point Loma all his life, told the press that he is the spokesman for a 5-man group of economic power-brokers who want to form a non-profit that will take over the newspaper and run it as a profit-making enterprise. Any profits, Burnham has pledged, would go back into community charities. Now as crazy as that plan might seem in this day and age of folding newspapers and expanding internet news sites, there are at least two other major dailies in the country that are run by non-profits. …

Rumors of Sale of Voltaire Cottages Not True

The OB Rag had heard rumors that the set of cottages on the south side of the lower 5000 block of Voltaire Street had been sold. …

Update on Katie Connor: Father’s Plea and Pizza Port Fundraiser

Here’s an update on Katie Connor, the young woman who suffered a serious head trauma by a hit and run truck on October 12th in O.B. …

New California Law Cracks Down on Fraud at Farmers Markets

After some LA media caught farmers who bought produce wholesale and then resold …

Annual OB Holiday Parade Applications Now Open – “35 Years of Peace, Love, and OB”

Mayor Faulconer’s Push back on Reports of His Use of Too Much Water

Internet Addiction Disorder Discovered in Point Loma

PLUS ALL THE MEETINGS THIS WEEK …

UPDATE: There has been a confirmed sighting of Elizabeth Ricks Sullivan. Local NBC is reporting that on Sunday, Oct. 19th, she was seen in Liberty Station at the soccer fields on just before noon, and was wearing black stretch style cloth pants and a gray sweatshirt.

A woman from Point Loma has now been missing for one week. Elizabeth Sullivan, a mother of two young daughters whose husband is in the Navy, was last seen on October 13th at her Point Loma home near Liberty Station. Police have reported that Sullivan’s car is in the garage.

Understandably, family and friends are extremely worried for her safety. Sullivan has family in Virginia.

Sullivan’s last contact reportedly was with a friend Nathan Caracter, a text message on the 13th, and her phone has been off ever since. Caracter spoke to the press and told them he had contact with Sullivan on Sunday night – that’s the 12th. He said:

“We left it at ‘talk to you tomorrow’ … didn’t hear from her again.”

by Bill Adams / San Diego UrbDeZine

For the last half century, cities have attempted to repair the damage to their urban cores from migration to suburbs and exurbs. Redevelopment has evolved into smart growth, transit oriented development, and complete streets. In the last 15 years or so, the urban renewal efforts have had a receptive audience as people, tired of the car oriented lifestyle of the suburbs, are returning to urban cores and older urban neighborhoods. However, while cities get the big picture, too often in my 25 years as a land use attorney, I have seen the same mistakes repeated.

1) Failing to Understand How to Provide for Pedestrian and Other Active Transit:

Too often, cities and towns seem to think that all pedestrians need are sidewalks to walk on and greenery to look at. The same goes for bikes and bikelanes. It goes without saying that pedestrians and bikes work differently than cars, each with their own advantages and disadvantages.

By Murtaza H. Baxamusa /San Diego UrbDeZine

Nobody likes uncertainty.

Certainly not the developers of a billion dollar mixed-use project that encounters community opposition due to traffic impacts. Nor the public transportation agency that runs into fairy shrimp on the future route of a trolley line. Nor the city planners for multifamily housing around a transit station that face a revolt from their single-family neighbors.

Hence, there is a concerted effort by planners and policymakers locally and statewide, to reduce uncertainty in development project approvals. It takes the form of reducing discretion of public bodies, streamlining permit approvals through the use of specific plans and categorical exemptions, reforming the California Environmental Quality Act, and limiting opportunities …

Editor: The following is a media statement by Preserve Point Loma, a new grassroots group from the Peninsula.

Point Loma Citizens Organize to Oppose La Playa 4 Lot Sub-Division on Steep Hillside

Preserve Point Loma, a newly created grassroots citizens group announced its opposition to the 4 lot proposed subdivision “The Point Loma Summit” on the old Jessop estate on La Crescentia Drive. “The site contains environmentally sensitive steep and unstable hillsides and sets a bad precedent for future deviations and variances to the San Diego City land use policies detrimental to our community character.” said Marcie Rothman, co chair of the group.

“This project is in violation of our adopted Peninsula Community Plan and contains deviations to the existing Zoning Code regarding access, setbacks and height,” said Bill Moody, a member of Preserve Point Loma.

Do you remember when the Pacific Ocean became OB’s front yard? The last time it really flooded in Ocean Beach was in mid January 2010.

The rains and high winds brought the ocean right into Ocean Beach’s front yard those several days.

The typical areas of OB did flood. And then there was the aftermath.

Seals isn’t merely continuing to play Garcia’s songs; he and his band continue to push the jams in the bold and exploratory directions the Jerry Garcia Band was always known for.

by Greg M. Schwartz /Popmatters / Oct 17, 2014

It was a Friday night in Ocean Beach, where a hippie haven oasis exists in what is otherwise considered more of a conservative town. Deadhead culture thrives here on Ocean Beach’s main drag on and around Newport Avenue, an area that feels like a cross between LA’s Venice Beach and San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district. Winston’s Beach Club doesn’t quite stack up to Phil Lesh’s Terrapin Crossroads in the Bay Area, but the club has been helping to keep the vibe alive by featuring the Electric Waste Band covering the Grateful Dead every week for over two decades.

By Jim Miller

Since I last wrote on the People’s Climate March in late September, the grim environmental news has just kept coming in, whether it’s the revelation that September was the warmest month ever on planet earth, the Stanford study linking California’s grueling drought to climate change, the World Wildlife Federation report that the earth has lost half of its wildlife in the last fifty years, or the unpleasant surprise that, “In what could be termed as the worst effect of degrading climatic conditions and global warming, a new study has showed that fish in large numbers will disappear from the tropics by 2050”—it just doesn’t let up.

OB RAG VOTER GUIDE
Here is the November 2014 Election Voter Guide by the OB Rag. It closely follows the endorsements of the San Diego Free Press editorial board – as the editors of the OB Rag are also part of the editorial board – and the SDFP is our online media partner (and prodigy). For all SDFP articles on the upcoming election, check out our 2014 Progressive Voter’s Guide.

________

The San Diego County Registrar of Voters issued a 76 page long list of the 671 local candidates for the November 2014 elections. And that doesn’t include local propositions, the statewide propositions and the dozen or so statewide races for office. So there are plenty of contests on the ballot we passed over. These were the ones we agreed upon.

Regardless of your political persuasion, we urge you to vote.