Category: California

Surf’s really up in California. On Monday, August 20, 2018, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill making surfing the official state sport.

Acknowledging that surfing originated with the Polynesian peoples and that surfing was brought to California from Hawaii, the bill signed by Brown declares surfing “an iconic California sport”.

The law also states the people of California have made the sport their own – and that important developments and contributions have been made by Californians. For instance,

The world just keeps getting hotter, and California burns ever-more-furiously as one epic blaze after another strain not just our resources, but our ability to cognitively adjust to the fact that this is the new normal. As I wrote in response to the huge fires in Los Angeles last December, “Reality is exceeding the capacity of our dystopian imaginations.”

By Laura Sisk-Hackworth / SanDiego350

A landmark bill in the California legislature, SB 964, defines climate-related financial risk in law for the first time and requires the boards of the two largest public pension funds in the nation to report on this risk every three years.

The importance of this bill is that it gives the public a way to respond to the boards’ consideration of climate risk and its investments in key industries. It also protects state employees and our economy from potentially devastating financial losses that could result from climate change.

I was just about to write down my thoughts on a meeting I attended a little while back, but I thought I’d check my email first so I could really settle in with what I wanted to say.

One particular email in my inbox got my attention right away: news the San Diego City Council hadn’t taken a step that was necessary in the process of readying an amendment regarding the creation of a Commission on Police Practices for placement on the November ballot.

They just let it drop. And although that’s shocking to me, I’m not the least bit surprised because,

By Daniel Bacher

SACRAMENTO – California Governor Jerry Brown yesterday condemned the Trump Administration’s proposal to weaken the nation’s clean vehicle emissions standard at the same time that California regulators have approved an expansion of offshore and onshore drilling in California.

“For Trump to now destroy a law first enacted at the request of Ronald Reagan five decades ago is a betrayal and an assault on the health of Americans everywhere,” said Brown in a statement.

Editordude: Many who grew up at the coast in Southern California in the late fifties and early sixties remember how plentiful abalones were.Then they disappeared ostensibly from over-fishing. Yet, here’s some hope for their return.

By Laylan Connelly / Southern California News Group / July 19, 2018

John Warren thinks back to the days when getting his hands on abalone was as easy as jumping on a surfboard and plucking the plentiful shellfish off a reef. Warren, who grew up at the beach, always cooked them with white wine in a big wok for the “ab feed,”

By Laura Sisk-Hackworth

SB 237, authored by California State Senator Hertzberg (D-18), threatens to increase the use of fossil fuels in California by undercutting Community Choice Energy (CCE) programs. The bill would allow businesses to circumvent CCE providers and buy electricity directly from suppliers. These suppliers would be subject to the state’s required minimum on the renewable content of the electricity – whereas CCEs consistently exceed those minimums. Therefore, this bill would reduce the use of renewables, hurt renewable energy job growth, and likely bankrupt all current CCEs. This bill would effectively end existing CCE programs and halt their future expansion throughout California.

Community Choice Energy allows communities, rather than the utility companies, to purchase electricity.

Thud! What’s that sound? It’s the unceremonious crash landing of tens of millions of dollars of Charter Schools Association money in the Governor’s race backing Antonio Villaraigosa.

Never has such an obscene amount of money been spent on a bad cause with so little to show for it. The good news here is that their efforts to turn the November election into a proxy war between the billionaire boys club and California’s educators failed miserably.

Now, rather than having to watch the tragic irony of a multimillion-dollar crusade against teachers’ unions standing in for our Governor’s race in California while elsewhere in the red states teachers are turning the tide against decades of austerity budgeting brought to us by the GOP, we can watch a Democrat cruise to victory against the Trump-endorsed Republican.

That’s more like it.

Today – Primary Day in California – is a good day to vote against the self-proclaimed emperor, Donald Trump.

Yesterday, June 4, Trump tweeted, “I have the absolute right to PARDON myself, …” This is akin to what a monarch, a king believes – the view of a dictator, an emperor.

“In this view the president is like kings and emperors of ages past. By definition, he cannot violate the law. It’s not that he is above the law. As president, the argument goes, he is the law.”

That’s not of the OB Rag – that’s from the Los Angeles Times editorial in today’s paper.

Please join the Ocean Beach Town Council at their next meeting, Wednesday, May 23, where they will be discussing the OB Parrots and ways in which the community can support these beautiful and unique residents of Ocean Beach.

In particular the discussion will examine the City’s springtime tree-trimming policy, which often endangers parrot nests.

By Tyson Siegele / SanDiego350

California will soon decide whether to combine its electric grid management with western states dependent on coal mining and coal-based electricity. This massive change has been proposed in the form of Assembly Bill 813 and before that in Assembly Bill 726. If passed, either of those bills would provide an avenue for coal-fired electricity to gain access to the California market. This would make the transition to renewable energy even harder.

Unifying California’s grid operations with other western states would be a huge risk. Thankfully better options are available.