Month: July 2021

Neighbors near the Sunset Cliffs Natural Park and other are complaining they are seeing more and more rogue bikers all over the park. The bicyclists are destroying the newly re-vegetated areas, damaging the trails they are not allowed on. They are also a serious safety hazard to the visitors to the park.

As one neighbor told the OB Rag:

The City recently spent millions of dollars on the park and have failed to maintain it or supervise activity in the park. The illegal riders are there every morning and evening and often all day.

On August 3, the City of San Diego will declare the Sports Arena area as surplus land to comply with the state’s Surplus Land Act. This will set off a new, legal process of opening up the bidding for the redevelopment of the 48-acre site.

And for the first time, there is a very real chance the process will require the construction of affordable housing at the Arena tract. Neither Faulconer’s initiative nor Measure E which passed last November required affordable housing to be included.

Declaring the Sports Arena area as surplus land, the first step

On Tuesday, July 13, the San Diego City Council authorized the San Diego Housing Commission to build up to 78 affordable housing units on the 5-acre parcel in Famosa Canyon. The council entered into an agreement with Bridge Housing Corporation to design housing units at the southeast corner of Famosa and Nimitz boulevards.

The decision appears to resolve the controversies over the site, one of the last open spaces in Point Loma and used by kids on bikes for generations. Many in the community have fought this development for years, at the grassroots level and at the local planning board level. But it appears to no avail.

Opponents of the development have been characterized as “NIMBYs” and even “racist” by its advocates,

by Ernie McCray

America.
I’ve so had it with
your evil ways,
especially the way
you make us Black folks
slave away
to just prevent you
from taking our right to vote away,
over-and-over-again
ad nauseam.

And what pisses
me off the most
about this is

By Thomas Ultican / Tultican

Founded in 1897, the ubiquitous PTA has been a long time powerful voice in legislative halls. With their many victories, they have developed enemies especially among school privatization advocates. However, the reports of their imminent demise have proven inaccurate. PTA’s robust 2019 tax form (EIN: 36-2169155) and a reported membership of more than 4 million indicates they will be viable for some time to come.

Radical Right Opposes another American Institution

One of the first big hit pieces on the PTA came from the Brookings Institute in 2001. Thomas Toch claimed that the PTA was floundering because they were “out of step with many parents’ demands for change in public education.” Toch also claimed that the PTA was working with teachers to slow the pace of reform,

Talent Abounds in Ibraham Al Nashashibi

By Judi Curry

I have been an educator for over 40 years and have never met a more talented person than Al. I have never met a more talented person that is so unassuming about his talent. If you have ever met this man you are almost immediately aware of the great attributes that he has to offer, for he is the owner of Fairouz Café on Midway Drive. But this article is not about the restaurant; rather it is about the man that created it and showcases the tremendous talent he has to offer to the world.

Al was born in Jerusalem, and among the various occupations he has tried, besides being a restaurateur,

The gloves are off! The group “Circulate San Diego” has dropped its environmentally-friendly facade and has now unfurled its full pro-developer colors. It has done this with the group’s recent endorsement of the most dense development proposed by the Navy for NAVWAR or the Old Town area.

Circulate San Diego has come out in public support for the Navy’s preferred Alternate 4. As Jim Perry, Barbara McDonald, and Mary Koto wrote in a recent OB Rag post:

Alternative 4 is the Navy and City’s Preferred Alternative. The existing NAVWAR buildings will be replaced with up to 109 new buildings. There will be up to 35 high rise buildings with a 350 foot maximum (about 32 stories).

There was so much interest in Geoff Page’s report on the OB Planning Board’s review of the proposed deck at the Inn at Sunset Cliffs, that we decided to post its detailed drawings. The images were presented during the OBPB meeting. (More details about the images and drawings may be forthcoming …)

By Luke Harding, Julian Borger and Dan Sabbagh / The Guardian / July 15, 2021

Vladimir Putin personally authorised a secret spy agency operation to support a “mentally unstable” Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election during a closed session of Russia’s national security council, according to what are assessed to be leaked Kremlin documents.

The key meeting took place on 22 January 2016, the papers suggest, with the Russian president, his spy chiefs and senior ministers all present.

Straight Up With a Twist

By Edwin Decker

Dear SWAT,

I know this question has been asked of a million advice columnists already but I’d like to hear your take on it. I recently discovered my friend’s boyfriend of seven years is cheating on her. Should I tell my friend?”

Sincerely, Phillip of Bankers Hill

Ah yes, the age-old, “Should-I-Tell-The-Friend-About-Their-Significant-Cheating-Other” (SITTFATSCO) question. You’re right. SITTFATSCO is probably the oldest and most often asked question of advice columnists. In fact, it was the very first query answered by the very first advice columnist, midwife Cinderwench Wartyface, in the Hertfordshire Town Crier in 1547. It went like this:

“Deary Cinderwench, mine own freond’s jointress hath committed adult’ry with a hairy scallywag. Shoulds’t I acquaint hire? Sincerely, Eathellrelda from Boggy Slogs, Hertfordshire.”

In the U.S., with one of the highest vaccination rates in the world, newly confirmed infections per day have doubled over the past two weeks to an average of about 24,000, though deaths are still on a downward trajectory at around 260 a day.

As COVID-19 cases slowly rise in San Diego County – including an increase in Delta variant cases – new research is looking into why San Diegans still are not getting vaccinated.

By Eugene Scott / San Diego Union-Tribune – Washington Post / July 15, 2021

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., introduced legislation Wednesday to decriminalize marijuana at the federal level, vowing to use his clout as majority leader toward reversing policies and laws that he says have caused significant harm to the lives of thousands of Americans. The draft bill, which is co-sponsored by Sens. Cory’ Booker, D-N.J., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., would remove federal penalties associated with cannabis, expunge nonviolent federal cannabis-related criminal records and begin regulating and taxing the drug.