Serving OB, the Peninsula and San Diego Beaches
By Susanne Rust/California Watch
Under pressure from the American Chemistry Council, a lobbying group for the plastics industry, school officials in California edited a new environmental curriculum to include positive messages about plastic shopping bags, interviews and documents show.
About 200 Kaiser Permanente employees in San Diego walked off the job Wednesday to protest proposed benefit cuts and what they regard as insufficient staffing levels.
Audiologists, dieticians, health educators, social workers, speech pathologists and mental health therapists began picketing at the Kaiser Hospital in San Diego’s Allied Gardens neighborhood about 6 a.m. Leighton Woodhouse of the National Union of Healthcare Workers said the employees would return to work Friday.
Rand study finds less crime near pot dispensaries. Crimes such as assaults and thefts rose in areas of L.A. where the shops were forced to close last summer, researchers say. The city attorney’s office and a sheriff’s spokesman dispute the report’s conclusions.
Canceling the contract does not mean grocery workers will walk out in 72 hours, but it removes the final barrier to a strike. After the contract is no longer in effect, a strike can be called at any time.
Frustrated at supermarket corporation stonewalling, workers take next step towards strike
As contract negotiations stall, grocery workers issued a 72-hour notice canceling the grocery contract extension and paving the way for a strike.
By Billie Jo Jannen / East County Magazine / Sept 12, 2011
A resolution introduced by District 40 State Senator Juan Vargas (D-San Diego) and passed in both houses Friday [Sept. 9th] seeks to put the brakes on a high voltage trans-border power line slated to bring electricity in from the proposed 1250 MW La Rumorosa wind turbine project near Jacumba.
Editor: The following is an edited “executive summary” of Peter Philip’s case study – published June 10, 2011 – on SEMPRA’s plan to outsource an estimated 15,000 jobs to Mexico by building a cross-border 1250 megawatt energy transmission line to their energy facility in Mexico. The full report can be found here.
By Peter Philips, PhD
The proposed Sempra 1250 megawatt (MW) tieline connecting the California grid to envisioned new wind-farms in Mexico is not just about electricity. It is also about foregone opportunities, lost human capital investment, lost worklives, lost tax revenues, and diminished economic development prospects; and also, it is about which regulatory authority, California or Mexico, should oversee the environmental impacts of building green generation capacity for the California grid.
Editor: Here’s a timely article from the LA Times about how the State Lands Commission has grossly mismanaged millions of acres of public land, costing Californians tens of millions of dollars and benefiting large corporations, all the while the State is cutting teachers and aid to the poor. Oh, by the way, you fledgling investigative reporters, what public lands in San Diego County are being mismanaged by the State?
By Patrick McGreevy / Los Angeles Times / August 24, 2011
Businesses and dozens of other large corporations have benefited from officials’ mismanagement of more than 4 million acres of public land, according to a state audit released Tuesday. The cost to taxpayers could easily be in the tens of millions of dollars, the auditors say, at a time when the state has been forcing teacher layoffs and cutting aid to the poor.
“What concerns us as people of faith is the destruction of the human spirit. When human beings are subjected to conditions that destroy who they are, it is incumbent upon the whole faith community to call our culture, and yes, even our government, to accountability. If we allow solitary confinement to continue in our society – especially when we have been informed of the harmful results – what does that say about the kind of people we have become?”
“If we don’t get a deal, “ grocery workers union leader pledged, “we’ll take this fight to the streets.” Picketing could begin this week.
By East County Magazine
A grocery workers’ strike at Vons, Albertsons and Ralphs supermarkets could begin as early as this week. Union members voted overwhelmingly on Saturday to authorize leaders to call a strike, with 90% voting in favor.
by Lucas O’Connor / Two Cathedrals / August 18, 2011
Two months ago I took on some of the most persistent failures of conventional wisdom in San Diego politics, including that the city’s voters lean to the right. At the time, I pointed out that the city of San Diego is not only willing to elect Democrats, it voted for every possible Democrat in the November 2010 election by almost the exact same margin as the state overall. Now, California has become a reliably Democratic state over the last ten or twenty years, so it’s perhaps worth going back over a sample size a bit larger than last November.
I have spent most of the week poring over news stories, blogs and commentary on last week’s decision by Bay Area Rapid Transit officials to shut off cellphone service to quash planned protests on its trains and platforms.
Opinions are many and range from BART spokesman Linton Johnson, who says constitutional rights end the moment people walk through transit-authority turnstiles, to “X” of the hacker collective Anonymous, who protested BART’s action and said our freedom to connect should be absolute and universal.
The other night, after dark, there was a knock on my door. I thought it was a friend, but lo and behold, a young woman with a clipboard. I thought, no, not another person with a clipboard asking for donations or to buy a subscription to the UT.
I admit I may have been a bit brusque with my usual “I’m sorry, I’m not interested in buying anything… ” and she said, “I’m not selling anything,” or something to that effect. I then informed her that I wasn’t able to make any donations. I don’t remember what she said after that, but within the next moment or two she said she was from CALPIRG.
Say Keep it goin' to the OB Rag
with your donation today!
Copyright © 2026 OB Rag
Recent Comments