Author: Frank Gormlie

By Ezra Klein / New York Times – Democratic Underground / September 7, 2025

In about three weeks, the government’s funding will run out. Democrats will face a choice: Join Republicans to fund a government that President Trump is turning into a tool of authoritarian takeover and vengeance or shut the government down.

Democrats faced a version of this choice back in March. DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, was chain-sawing its way through the government. Civil servants were being fired left and right. Government grants and payments were being choked off and reworked into tools of political power and punishment. Trump was signing executive orders demanding the investigation — I would say, the persecution — of his enemies. He had announced shocking tariffs on Mexico and Canada. We were in the muzzle velocity stage of this presidency. And Democrats seemed completely overwhelmed and outmatched.

I often heard people complain that Democrats lacked a message. What Democrats really lacked was power. They didn’t have the House or the Senate, but they did have one sliver of leverage: To fund the government, Senate Republicans needed Democratic votes. And not just one or two. They needed at least seven Democrats to reach that magic 60-vote threshold. House Democrats wanted a shutdown. But Chuck Schumer, the leader of the Senate Democrats, didn’t. He voted for the funding bill and encouraged a crucial number of his colleagues to do the same. The bill passed.

To many Democrats, this seemed insane. Some began openly calling for Schumer to resign or face a primary challenge. This was Democrats’ first real opportunity to fight back against Trump, and they had folded. What were they good for?

By NBC 7 Staff / September 9, 2025 

A proposed ordinance to establish metered parking in a portion of Balboa Park is heading back to staff for review, after several San Diego City Council members said they didn’t support it Tuesday. Council President Joe LaCava suggested that it would be better to move the proposal to the Sept. 15 meeting, giving city staff time to work on it.

The ordinance, on the Tuesday consent agenda, called for “exploring the implementation of a paid parking program within Balboa Park to improve parking management, support long-term financial sustainability and enhance the overall visitor experience,” according to city staff report. A city spokesperson said the item was “a routine second reading of an ordinance passed by the council on July 28 to allow for on-street parking meters near the park.”

That earlier vote was 6-2, with Jennifer Campbell and Raul Campillo opposed and Vivian Moreno being absent. On Tuesday, however, Moreno and Councilman Stephen Whitburn also expressed opposition.

On Tuesday, September 9, the San Diego City Council unanimously approved a sweeping plan to fight sea-level rise by reconfiguring iconic city locations including Sunset Cliffs, Ocean Beach and Tourmaline Surf Park. The Council passed the coastal resilience master plan, despite some community backlash, which supposedly opts for nature-based solutions like dunes instead of older methods like seawalls and culverts.

The project facing the most public backlash is the one in Sunset Cliffs, where city officials want to shrink Sunset Cliffs Boulevard to one lane and possibly start charging drivers to park. Despite the cash-strapped city focusing recently on boosting parking revenue by beginning to charge in many places, including Balboa Park, charging at Sunset Cliffs had not previously been mentioned.

The plan just passed has major changes in store for Sunset Cliffs.

The major focus is to enhance the existing resources and protect public safety without compromising the structural integrity of the cliff or current infrastructure. The project concept includes:

• trail enhancements,
• adding native plants to the linear park,
• drainage improvements
• removal of paved parking lots from the cliffs.
• Road reconfiguration will be considered for a section of Sunset Cliffs Boulevard.
• To include re-configuring the boulevard from a two-lane, north-south major collector road to a single southbound lane and
• creating a protected walkway for pedestrians and cyclists;
• possibly paid parking along cliffs

UPDATED: Victim Was Well-Known, Unhoused and a Beloved member of the Voltaire Street Community.>UPDATED: There is a crucial update to this story. The woman who was initially thought to be a pedestrian is now being reported as a passenger in one of the cars involved in the crash.

Here is original story:
During the early hours of Saturday morning, drivers coming out of OB and Point Loma were confronted with the closure of the lane on their side of the bridge over San Diego River. Police had shut down a lot of the roadway. Turns out there had been a two-car accident around midnight – a hit and run actually – around the 100 block of Sea World Drive.

Police conducted their initial investigation and determined that one of the drivers, who was driving a 2013 Honda, had rear-ended another vehicle, pushing it forward and then had taken off. That Honda was later found, but the driver has not been located. And the roadway was cleared two hours later, at around 2 a.m. This according 7SanDiego.

Protests against the Trump regime took place Monday, Labor Day, across San Diego County with the largest and most significant event in downtown San Diego at Waterfront Park.

San Diego’s protests joined “Workers Over Billionaires” demonstrations throughout the country in cities that included Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles and New York in a nationwide Labor Day effort organized by labor unions and other groups. Other demonstrations in the county included those in Chula Vista, La Jolla, Mira Mesa, Rancho Bernardo, Carlsbad, and Escondido. Local members and allies turned out to demand investment in schools, health care, housing, and climate action over corporate wealth. The Service Employees International Union and the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council were among the local event organizers.

Organizers using a scientific approach to crowd counting, determined that close to 10,000 attended the rally and march at Waterfront Park. Event spokesman Mark Sauer said, “Considering it’s a holiday for working folks, (turnout) was encouraging,” said Sauer, who added the rally was peaceful as no counter-protesters materialized.

The downtown crowd was estimated to be 1,200 to 1,500 people according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. NBC7 reported the Waterfront event drew between 2,000-3,000 people, a San Diego police official told the station.

Along with promoting the importance of organized labor, Sauer said speakers focused on the November special election for Proposition 50 — an effort by Gov. Gavin Newsom to redraw California’s congressional districts to negate a similar move in Texas — Trump administration policies’ effect on working families, and how the 2026 midterm elections will be a way “to put some serious checks and balances” on them, organizers said.

By Paul Grimes / August 29, 2025 

Like other collapses along Route 1, the collapse in Big Sur had nothing to do with sea level rise, rather winter storms, which have existed for centuries. Same for the collapse at Sunset Cliffs at Guizot. Sea level rise continues to be a straight line of under an inch per decade. Scares from people like Al Gore have never materialized.

The cliffs will continue to erode at a slow rate as they have for years. It’s premature to take Sunset Cliffs Blvd to a one-way street. Part of a real solution would be to clean debris and sand from the curb, then add an asphalt curb to replace portions that are missing. Without a curb, water can go over the cliff and erode the bluff.

It looks like the City of San Diego has re-striped a portion of the roadway south of Monaco to add plastic pipes to demarcate the walkway. This is a good start, but I think the walkway can be expanded with an 8 foot parking lane, two 10 foot travel lanes (with bike sharrows added), which should look to leave a minimum of 6 feet for pedestrians (marked with no parking signs and possibly tinted paint) by the guardrail. Note that the city is limiting parking lanes to 7 feet in some areas to squeeze in bike lanes while 10 foot travel lanes are known to reduce speed.

An enlarged tree branch fell in the children’s park at Ebers and Saratoga on Sunday, August 10, which could’ve seriously injured or even killed any of the 12 toddlers playing at the park that day had they been right underneath it.

A local parent immediately contacted the city — as well as the Rag about this. He had one question: “Have recent city budget cuts affected tree maintenance and surveillance at public parks?” He wrote:

This is unacceptable, this is the only child’s park in Ocean Beach. This deserves more awareness and exposure.

He wrote:

My wife and I are very shook by what we saw (we saw it fall in real time) Because they were many children, including our own, in that area minutes prior. We have many family pictures picnicking under that tree as well. It just adds to a growing sentiment we have about the city falling short in protecting its residents, including its most vulnerable—children.

Over 100 San Diego residents from all over the city rallied in Clairemont on Saturday, August 23, against Senate Bill 79 – a bill sponsored by State Senator Scott Wiener that targets the state’s neighborhoods. Opponents claim that the bill is worse than SB 9 and SB 10.

Its sponsors claim the bill is aimed at increasing housing density near train and rapid bus lines across California by mandating up-zoning within a quarter to half-mile of transit hubs, and allow developers to build large-scale apartment complexes near these transit stops.

Yet opponents like Neighbors for a Better California, the prime sponsor of Saturday’s protest, argue that SB 79’s language is vague around bus stops, and that the lack of precision could allow developers to exploit ambiguities, undermining the bill’s intent.

Marcella Bothwell, the chair of the sponsoring group, clarified to the demonstrators, many of whom lined Genessee Boulevard with signs for passing motorists:

“And that bus stop can be anything from just 15-minute frequency in the height of morning and evening. That will qualify as a bus stop. That 500 homes or a half a mile around that area, the height now can go up to six, to eight, even nine stories. These homes, there’s no affordability requirement. They’re not concerned about fire safety.”

There were also other anti-SB79 rallies up and down the state.

By Dustin Gardiner and Blake Jones / Politico / August 18, 2025 

MUNGER GAMES — Charles Munger Jr., the megadonor backing Republicans’ effort to block Democrats from redrawing California’s congressional map, has primarily been known to the public as the bow-tie-wearing champion of good-government causes like independent redistricting and legislative transparency.

But there’s a lesser-known aspect of Munger’s financial giving that Democrats are preparing to torch him on.

Munger, a Palo Alto physicist, has contributed more than $158,000 to socially conservative causes over the last 25 years, according to federal tax filings — including to organizations that oppose abortion rights and promote so-called crisis pregnancy centers, and to Christian groups whose leaders have opposed LGBTQ+ rights.

Munger’s spending, via his charitable nonprofit, is providing fodder to abortion-rights advocates and LGBTQ+ leaders in their effort to build support for Gov. Gavin Newsom’s push to gerrymander California’s congressional districts in favor of Democrats — a gambit that Newsom says will neutralize President Donald Trump’s effort to nab five new Republican House seats in Texas.

When Steven Mihailovich, reporter for the UT magazine Point Loma-OB Monthly, first got to the August 14 meeting of the Ocean Beach Community Foundation, he didn’t realize the impact of what transpired to the community.

He did note that “The city of San Diego’s financial problems are having several notable effects in Ocean Beach.” Most notable was that the OB Pier’s replacement has stalled and that the OB Community Foundation was stalling the annual Pancake Breakfast until they can figure out alternatives.

The other “big news” was about parking at the beach, most notably paid parking. Here’s that portion of Mihailovich’s report:

Randy Reyes, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria’s representative for City Council District 2, which includes Ocean Beach, said the city will introduce parking fees at city-owned beach lots sometime after the adoption of parking fees at Balboa Park for the first time, which is expected around October.

Spirited objections ensued.

STATEWIDE RALLIES TO PROTEST SB 79: EXPERTS WARN BILL PUTS PROFITS OVER SAFETY AND HOMEOWNERSHIP

August 23, 2025 — San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Marin

On Saturday, August 23, Californians in San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and other cities will rally against Senate Bill 79, which allows developers to build large-scale housing projects within a half-mile of existing or proposed transit stops. Critics say the bill overrides local safety standards, infrastructure limits, and community input.

The San Diego rally begins at 10 a.m. near the North Clairemont Recreation Center, corner of Genesee andBannock Avenue.

State Senator Aisha Wahab told a group of California smart housing growth advocates during a recent Zoom call that “tech billionaire and developer money funneled through YIMBY lobbying is misleading younger legislators into thinking this is a simple fix for affordability.” She urged lawmakers to focus on protecting a pathway to homeownership, not locking Californians into high-cost rentals.

By Steven Mihailovich / Point Loma-OB Monthly SDU-T / August 20, 2025 

The Ocean Beach Community Foundation is trying to take on the homelessness problem with the formation of an Unsheltered Subcommittee, and it’s seeking support from the community.

In announcing the new committee at OBCF’s public meeting Aug. 14, board member Phil Cenedella categorized homelessness as three types of conditions — mental illness, circumstantial and criminal — and said the committee’s goal is to assist with all three, including incarceration for the latter.

“The elephant in the room in OB has been the unsheltered, security and mental illness issues,” Cenedella said. “That’s why we’re taking it seriously as a board and try to address it. … We know what’s going on. Now we need to find solutions. … We don’t want kids and their moms scared walking to school. That’s unacceptable.”

Tamara Kohler, chief executive of the Regional Task Force on Homelessness, was on hand to offer the support of her nonprofit organization.