Author: Source

by John Lawrence / Will Blog For Food

The Tea Party says we are Taxed Enough Already. But who exactly is “We.” Are upper income individuals and families taxed enough already or is it just lower income individuals and families? Check out this graph of tax brackets for 2010 – inside. How many middle class families would object to adding a few higher brackets like say a Tax Rate of 40% for Married Couples and Individuals with Incomes over $500,000.

A new report released today by SIPRI, a Swedish-based think tank, reveals that U.S. military spending has almost doubled since 2001. The U.S. spent an astounding $698 billion on the military last year, an 81% increase over the last decade.

U.S. spending on the military last year far exceeded any other country. We spent six times more than China — the second largest spender.

Guns in churches, schools and bars. Immigrants expelled to solve financial problems. Morality praised as the key national issue.

American politics are getting more bizarre and in some cases, border on the nutty. Current politics include Republican legislatures in Texas, Arizona, Georgia and Minnesota fighting for their “rights” to reject energy efficiency light bulbs, while South Carolina will manufacture their own state’s rights incandescent bulbs.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt / Excuse me, I’m writing / April 11, 2011

Southern colloquialisms are so darn charming — with those well-honed nasty edges!

Growing up, my family had particular fun with them, as we were wont to play with most words, great fodder that they were for what we considered erudite scoffery (a perfectly good word, if only the Oxford English Dictionary would admit it!).

Editor: Below you will find a piece by David Sirota about recent investigative efforts by Lowell Bergman, local boy, former 60 Minutes producer, and one of our heroes for helping to inspire the original OB Rag from the pages of the San Diego Street Journal.

By David Sirota / TruthDig / April 8, 2011

Lowell Bergman is the rare skunk who regularly finds his way into the power elite’s garden parties. As tobacco executives celebrated huge revenues in the 1990s, he was the journalist whose reporting about cancer and nicotine addiction stopped the festivities.

Editor: As you read this, remember that your community’s underground newspaper, the original OB Rag, was part of this era. Art Kunkin, mentioned below – he was the editor of one of the West Coast’s grandparent alternatives, the LA Free Press – once called the OB Rag one of the best, community-based underground newspapers in the country.
The Sixties’ scrappy alternative newspapers were the oxygen that kept the era’s movements going.
By Richard Greenwald / In These Times

History books rarely speak as trenchantly to contemporary issues as John McMillian’s Smoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America (Oxford University, February). As the cascading revolts in the Muslim world demonstrate, communication systems matter.

by Jim Miller

These are grim times. The worst are full of passionate intensity and the best lack all conviction. The Democrats at the state and national levels seem ready to embrace economic scarcity and budget cutting as the “new normal” while the right smells blood in the water and is going in for the kill on collective bargaining rights, women’s rights, environmental regulations, funding for education, and long untouchable social programs. While the Democrats play prevent defense, the corporate-funded right is going for it all, working to change the rules of the game permanently, short-term costs be damned.

By Anon OB Observer

Comments here represent my personal political analysis (not those of the OB Rag) and are certainly not meant to offend….only to instigate some discussion and hopefully improve the political process and representation in our little hamlet. As always…. I welcome any of the Board to comment or offer a counter if they disagree.

There were 5 representatives from Districts 1,2,4,5,6 elected in the general election. There were no candidates in Districts 3 or 7. District 1 was the only contested election and the incumbent lost in a very low turnout affair. Overall it was a dismally low turnout for voting.

Koch spends tens of millions trying to shape federal policies that affect their global business empire By John Aloysius Farrell…

Potential effects of shutdown

National Parks —- Likely to be closed.
Social Security —- Checks will be mailed out, although new claims may not be processed.
Border Patrol —- Deemed an essential service and will continue.
Air travel —- Air traffic control is essential; flights should not be affected.
IRS —- This agency will shut down in the middle of tax season. Tax refund checks won’t be issued.
Military —- Thousands of military members based in San Diego could go without pay temporarily federal officials said Wednesday.

Editor: Here is a rather fluff piece on Bo-Beau – the former Thee Bungalow – the Cohn family restaurant on…

In 1985, John Thompson was convicted of murder in Louisiana. Having already been convicted in a separate armed robbery case, he opted not to testify on his own behalf in his murder trial. He was sentenced to death and spent 18 years in prison—14 of them isolated on death row—and watched as seven executions were planned for him. Several weeks before an execution scheduled for May 1999, Thompson’s private investigators learned that prosecutors had failed to turn over evidence that would have cleared him at his robbery trial.