Author: Dave Rice

Book Review: Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps

Author: Greg Palast / Introduction by: Robert F. Kennedy Jr
Seven Stories Press / Release Date: September 18, 2012

Ten elderly nuns get kicked out of an Indiana polling station for not having driver’s licenses or other state ID.

Electronic voting machines in Georgia report massive malfunctions – but only in Democratic-leaning low income districts, where the hot, humid conditions of polling stations aren’t conducive to electronics. The ones in wealthy, Republican-leaning districts are protected in well kept, air-conditioned buildings – and have no problems registering votes.

Thomas Brown, a black Floridian, has his name purged from voter rolls because a white man with the same name and birthday once committed a felony.

Foreclosure firm Trott & Trott shares an office building with John McCain’s Detroit campaign headquarters. Whenever Trott completes a foreclosure, the McCain campaign challenges the foreclosure victim’s voter registration to have it purged from Michigan’s voter rolls: if they’ve been kicked out of their home, the address they used to register must not be valid.

So everyone’s been weighing in on the Occupy protests lately. I’ve done a few lightweight “just the facts, ma’am,” pieces on my other site, but I feel like what I’ve really got is commentary, reaction, and editorializing. In one of my day jobs I’m a reporter of straight news, in the other I’m a real estate and mortgage broker, which probably qualifies me as a 1%er (and not in the HA kinda way) and worthy of lynching. But I’m bringing the unqualified opinions that follow home to the OB Rag, the place where I cut my pseudo-journalistic chops.

The point of my rant today is the official Facebook page of the Occupy SD movement.

For those that are interested…

Faulconer and the Mighty, Mighty FAR

Fresh Funds for Farmer’s Markets

Variances for Chickens

SANDAG’s 2050 Regional Transportation Plan

Ocean Beach qualifies under SANDAG as a ‘Smart Growth’ community

Details inside…

Sage Francis is an anomaly – a heavyset, full-bearded, white, hip-hop artist in his mid-thirties. While he’s got a lot of interesting and timely things to say about the state of the modern ‘family,’ culture, and other contemporary topics, his political commentary stands out and is most pertinent to this venue. Here’s a little flow he put together while contemplating the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and the impact of mass media on the public psyche…

See full article for video…

(Author’s note – while this is a brief write-up on Ruth Varney Held’s Beach Town: Early Days in Ocean Beach, – originally published in 1975 and updated in 1984 and 1990 – a history that gracefully glosses over any social improprieties, this article’s title has been slightly modified in order to shamelessly trick you into clicking through to the full post…)

Having been itching to read a book recommended to me several weeks ago at a Rag-sponsored picnic commemorating the Collier Park Riots, I finally headed into the library last week to pick up a copy of Beach Town…delayed by at least two weeks’ searching for and fretting over my lost library card that ended up costing me only $2 to replace. The book is out of print and used copies are retailing for as much as $35 at Amazon, but the OB branch library has at least three copies on hand.

Michael Franti of Spearhead is hands-down, bar-none my favorite musician alive, today or ever. Lately his music has been popping up on the radio, on TV in video game and Corona beer ads, and elsewhere in the public sphere, so you’re probably familiar with Franti and his band Spearhead’s reggae-funk-ska-hip-hop-world beat fusion, whether or not you know it. But were you aware of how deep his tracks really go?

See inside for the video.

Hello again! Thanks for following me last week with a departure guest entry, I hope it was as well-received as it was deserving. This week I’m going back to my own idea bin, and I’ve got a video that, even though you might not dig the music, provides an awesome slide show to check out.

For fear of overexposure, I’m hesitant to add an extra edition of this music thing. But I’ve gotten such a positive response, it’s tempting to make like Catherine Zeta-Jones in all those obnoxious T-Mobile commercials from the late ’00s and start throwing out more than one post every week or so. And you people that read me and watch my videos are coming up with some good suggestions that I don’t want to put on the back burner…and I don’t want to stop firing on all cylinders myself (at least not yet, because I’ve got a few months’ worth of ideas of my own). So with no further ado, I give you Green Day, a suggestion by the esteemed Andy Cohen.

Well hello again. It seems my first attempt to bring political pop punk to the masses worked out okay…or at least well enough that I’m going to try it again. But after just one week of staying true to my theme and posting a punk rock video, I’m going to switch it up and dive into some hip-hop.

My faith in the ability of my generation and the one following mine to actually give a damn got a major boost today when I headed down to City College at the (for the under-30 and under-employed set) ungodly hour of 8:00 for the pre-rally to a protest of the educational budget cuts proposed by Governor Jerry Brown.

First off, I’ve got to say that in general, I admire Brown’s apparent willingness to compromise on shrinking the state budget gap with equal measures of cuts and taxes …

Okay folks, Frank and Patty have given me a platform to post a random piece of marginally-listenable music once a week Anna, sorry if this is ripping you off, but what’s the sincerest form of flattery? I’ve chosen my videos among a handful of available YouTubes, going with what I feel does the best to convey the song’s message… lots of times it’s the band’s official video.

See inside for the video…

So last Thursday my ‘union’ (California Association of Realtors, CAR) spent the equivalent of several thousand years’ worth of individual…