Author: Source

Editor: The following Ten Myths was prepared this month by the California Budget Project. Go here to see their nifty graphs and pie charts.

Myth #1 : The Largest Share of the State Budget Goes To Prisons

The Facts:

* The State spends more than four times as much on K-12 education as it does on corrections and one and one-quarter times as much on higher education as it does on corrections.

Far from being a war between hippies and police, the fight to legalize marijuana in California centers on whether decriminalizing and taxing cannabis can help fill the state’s fiscal hole.

Using the drug for medical purposes has been legal for 14 years in the western state. But a new initiative that will appear on the ballot in November elections is seeking to legalize recreational marijuana use.

by Denny Knox

I am a founding member of the Peninsula Singers, which is a community chorus that practices in the Community Room at the Hervey Point Loma Library. Recently, we were invited to participate with seven other choruses from around the country at Carnegie Hall in New York City.

We started practicing Beethoven’s Mass in C major about a year ago, the piece that we sang in NYC.

by Michael Moore / Huffington Post / March 22, 2010

To My Fellow Citizens, the Republicans:

Thanks to last night’s vote, that child of yours who has had asthma since birth will now be covered after suffering for her first nine years as an American child with a pre-existing condition.

Thanks to last night’s vote, that 23-year-old of yours who will be hit one day by a drunk driver and spend six months recovering in the hospital will now not go bankrupt because you will be able to keep him on your insurance policy.

The U.S. House of Representatives voted for a sweeping overhaul of the $2.5 trillion U.S. healthcare system.
Here is what to expect if the bill becomes law:

WITHIN THE FIRST YEAR OF ENACTMENT

* Insurance companies will be barred from dropping people from coverage when they get sick. Lifetime coverage limits will be eliminated and annual limits are to be restricted.

* Insurers will be barred from excluding children for coverage because of pre-existing conditions.

* Young adults will be able to stay on their parents’ health plans until the age of 26. Many health plans currently drop dependents from coverage when they turn 19 or finish college.

On March 20th, San Diego Coalition for Peace & Justice decorated cars, took to the streets in a caravan through the city, and with peace protesters at Harbor Drive joined Vets for Peace at Arlington West in front of The Midway (Carrier) Museum for a candlelight vigil.

by Genie Phillips aka Zuchinni

If you look at the March 1975 cover of the O.B. Rag, with the caption ‘International Woman’s Day’, you see a group of women, and one small kid waving a flag, marching on the O.B. pier in support of International Women’s Day. To the far right is Nancy Little, in her often-present overalls. At her side, her seven-year old son Paul is merrily waving his flag, just having fun in the festivities.

Joe Cocker sang, “And Every Picture Tells A Story Don’t It…..”

How telling that Nancy should pass on one week after her picture appears once again on the pages of the OB Rag some 35 years later. I wonder if she saw it. I hope so. She loved Ocean Beach.

by Nate Hipple

Let it be known: The first Floatopia of 2010 occurred yesterday on Mission Bay!

Apparently, nobody got the memo that Spring has only barely sprung and hence it’s still a bit nippy to be rafting with an ice chest of beer. But never ever underestimate the indomitable spirit of the people’s will to party, even when all signs tell them to behave.

When the city banned alcohol on the beach, Floatopia was the natural reaction. (It’s sort of a cross between ‘Jersey Shore’ and the movie ‘Waterworld’).

The end result of the ban is pushing public drinking …

by Kristin Condon

The building with Ace Tattoo and El Rodeo is looking spiffy – it has gotten a new paint job and new banisters and signs, including the new “L Rodeo” sign.

Ciao Bella Ristorante e Pizzaria at 4953 Newport opened at the end of February, and appears to be doing a brisk business. Their extensive menu features soups, salads, antipasto, pasta, panini, risotti, pizzas, and handmade desserts. They have a very nice dining room, and also will take phone orders to go….

SEE MORE INSIDE…..

It was a good year to be rich. Or ultra-rich, for that matter.

The number of U.S. households with a net worth of $1 million or more — excluding wealth derived from a primary residence — grew 16 percent last year, according to a new report by the Spectrem Group, a Chicago-based consulting firm. After a 27 percent decline in the number of millionaire households in 2008, the ranks of U.S. millionaires swelled to 7.8 million last year.

And it was an even better year to be an “Ultra High Net Worth Individual,” defined as someone with a net worth of $5 million or more. That population grew 17 percent in 2009 to 980,000.

By Leo Hindery Jr./ Huffington Post //March 9, 2010 |

Two old friends, civil rights activist David Mixner and former U.S. Senator (and my oft co-author) Don Riegle (D-MI), believe that in the economic recovery, not enough attention is being given to ‘who’s really poor’ now. David and Don have for years advised me — and others — on the issue of poverty in America, and they are worried that too many people, and especially too many people in the administration and Congress, are missing this imperative.

To help make their point, they referred me to poverty activist Marsha Timpson, who describes today’s poor as “America’s dirty little secret, hidden in the backyards of America’s shining homes, the hollows, the reservations, the border towns and the dark ghettos of the city where they are the lie of the American dream.”

Editor: Every now and then a bizarre story crosses our desk that deserves exposure. And here is one, about how the recent Pentagon shooter was into exposing the mysterious murder and subsequent cover-up of an El Toro Marine colonel who, just before his death – which was ruled a “suicide” -, was about to expose major illicit drug movements and dealings from Central America at the air base.

(SALEM, Ore.) – John Patrick Bedell must have had a lot on his mind as he went through the motions of a dead man walking. He knew this would be it; nobody opens fire near the Pentagon without falling in a hail of bullets.

It must be brutal in the last seconds, to enter the very last stage of life. Surely that is what he thought, and that had to be what Marine Colonel Jim Sabow thought, as he took his last breath in 1991.