Category: History

29th Annual Coastal Cleanup Day- September 21

After you’ve had your fill of pancakes at our Pier Pancake Breakfast, be sure to help out at the annual San Diego Coastal Clean-Up. The event takes place on Saturday, Sept. 21st from 9am-12pm. Jane Donley from Dog Beach Dog Wash is leading our local event at Dog Beach.

San Diego City Council Committee Pushes for Ban on Plastic Bags

Local markets throughout Ocean Beach, Point Loma and elsewhere across San Diego wil be effected if this ban on plastic bags ultimately passes the San Diego City Council A key committee of the Council came out today in strong support for a ban of plastic bags. The Rules and Economic Development Committee took a unanimous vote in directing staff to construct an ordinance that would ban plastic bags at city grocery stores and other retail sites within the city.

Promoting Sustainable Neighborhoods in the Mayoral Campaign

By Jay Powell /Part One is Here

Sometime last year the street grinders and asphalt layers showed up in our neighborhood in Normal Heights. They did a great job right in front of our house– which really didn’t seem to need any repair, but around the corner, the worst, most traveled portion of the street wasn’t touched. Still hasn’t been.

After some considerable neighborhood wondering and grumbling it became apparent that the bumps and rolling topography and potholes actually served as a kind of regimen of reverse speed bumps to slow down some of those folks who thought the curves on Mountain View Drive were there to test the adhesion of their Mini Cooper’s tires at high speed.

Forming the Basis of a Sustainable Neighborhoods Initiative

Part One of a Two Part Series

By Jay Powell

As things stand now Kevin Faulconer, a two term City Councilman, appears to be the choice of establishment Republicans, while Nathan Fletcher, former State Assemblyman and David Alvarez, City Councilman, will be vying for the support of the Democratic Party faithful.

Questions still remain about IF other credible candidates will throw their hat in ring in the days remaining to declare and file as candidates for this accelerated special election.

While we hold our breath, I suggest that those of us who have embraced a platform that was characterized as “neighborhoods first” during the last Mayoral election take the initiative to define what we mean by that phrase.

Did Bob Filner jump? did he fall? was he pushed?

Here’s a link to Part One, A Story About Sex, the Birds and Bees and the Wolfpack

By Norma Damashek / NumbersRunner

Forget you, Nancy Drew. You’re being replaced by Perry Mason, super-sleuth defense attorney from the zero hour this guy would laboriously rise up in the middle of the courtroom and pull a rabbit out of a hat. First he’d say something enigmatic to the judge, then to the jury. Soon he’d turn to the seated onlookers and dramatically finger the real culprit… swindler… murderer… for a histrionic wrap-up to another solved case.

The case against Bob Filner, however, doesn’t lend itself to cheap theatrics. The complexity and political fallout of Bob Filner’s ouster bring his political demise closer to classic tragedy than pulp fiction — not merely for him personally but for the future of our city.

So let’s stick with the diligent approach of Ms Drew to arrive at some answers to this mayoral mystery: did Bob Filner jump? fall? or get pushed? and when the curtains are drawn back will we find a master manipulator slinking around in the shadows?

On Syria Vote, Trust, but Verify

By Congressman Alan Grayson / The New York Times / Sept. 6, 2013

WASHINGTON — THE documentary record regarding an attack on Syria consists of just two papers: a four-page unclassified summary and a 12-page classified summary. The first enumerates only the evidence in favor of an attack. I’m not allowed to tell you what’s in the classified summary, but you can draw your own conclusion.

On Thursday I asked the House Intelligence Committee staff whether there was any other documentation available, classified or unclassified. Their answer was “no.”

Group brings challenge to patents on Monsanto’s genetically engineered seed to Supreme Court.

By Andrea Germanos / Common Dreams

A group of U.S. farmers is not giving up its fight against biotech giant Monsanto

In the latest step of a two and a half year legal battle, plaintiffs in Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association (OSGATA) et al v. Monsanto asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Thrusday to hear their case challenging the patents on Monsanto’s genetically engineered seed.

From AlJazeera

Prison inmates in the US state of California have ended a nearly two-month hunger strike to protest policies that can keep some gang leaders isolated for decades, after lawmakers agreed to hold hearings on the issue, prison officials say.

More than 30,000 inmates had been refusing meals when the strike began in early July.

California’s prison system is one of the largest and most crowded in the US. About 3,600 inmates are housed in the isolation units, which are designed to discipline inmates who commit crimes in prison or keep gang leaders from easily communicating with their followers.

Critics have warned that long-term isolation can hurt prisoners’ mental health.

By Adam Rothstein / Next City / Sept. 3, 2013

Black Rock City: Burning Man is not that different from everyday life. You get up, get dressed and catch the bus to work. You get off work and have a beer with some friends at a bar. And then you take off your pants, put on animal face paint, climb a steel tower to stare at a massive fire, and run screaming into the night with a hundred strangers you will never meet again.

Life in Black Rock City is just like life in any other city, except when it’s different.

A lot of fuss is made over the ways in which this massive temporary city of 60,000, which sets up in the Black Rock desert of Nevada for one week every August, differs from the rest of the world. The idiosyncrasies are what sell the event, why people pack up trucks full of paint, wood and glitter and spend hundreds of dollars every year to vacation from the straight world of capitalism, clothing and jobs.

From East County Magazine / September 4, 2013

On the heels of a hefty rate increase that took effect September 1st, SDG&E wants ratepayers to pay for costs of decommissioning the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Stations. Ratepayer advocates, meanwhile, say ratepayers should receive a refund for charges assessed when the nuclear facility was off-line for more than a year before being shut down permanently.

The California Public Utilities Commission will hold two hearings on Tuesday, October 1 at 2 p.m. and again at 6:30 p.m. Both will be held in the Al Bahr Shriners auditorium, 5440 Kaerny Mesa Road, San Diego 92111. The commission will consider whether or not ratepayers should be charged for the decommissioning costs, as well as whether ratepayers should receive refunds for charges assessed while the nuclear facilities were offline for more than a year before the shut-down decision.

Attorney General Eric Holder has placed a ticking time bomb on the GOP’s doorstep that could detonate during the 2016 presidential elections.

By Sanho Tree /OtherWords

Attorney General Eric Holder’s recent announcement that the federal government wouldn’t challenge Colorado and Washington state’s ability to implement a legal regulatory system for adult recreational marijuanause marked a tremendous political victory for reform if not a definitive legal victory.

Technically, pot remains illegal across the nation. But Holder went as far as he could under our system of checks and balances.

by Frank Thomas and John Lawrence

Is the Gassing of 1400 Syrians More of a Crime Against Humanity Than the Slaughter of 100,000 Syrians?

Frank Thomas’ take:

Russia’s ongoing multi-dollar sales of advanced massively destructive weapons to Assad’s government has exacerbated the killing fields in Syria. Yet Russia sanctimoniously thinks the rest of the world, namely the U.S., has no right of humanitarian intervention to protect the lives of innocents being slaughtered by chemical weapons and more so by Russia’s own prolific arms sales to Assad’s military forces.

Russia would remind us that for many years (1980-88) Saddam Hussein’s army blatantly used mustard and nerve gases at will against Iran and even the people of Iraq. Foreign Policy has just published CIA documents confirming Washington and other western nations knew of Iraq’s production and use of chemical gases and even delivered some raw materials.

Editor: It has been a week since the passing of our good friend, Jon Christensen, who wrote on occasion for both the OB Rag and the San Diego Free Press, writing under his initials, JEC. Here, below, we repost his two-part series on “Riding the Rails in the West – The State of Amtrak”:

Part I: Are We There Yet?

by JEC

Its 6am – still dark with a morning fog when we board the Pacific Surfliner in San Diego. While there is a train leaving at 6:35 am, Amtrak urges passengers booked on the Coast Starlight to take the first train out at 6 am, likely based on experience with frequent delays. But today’s train leaves on time with a few dozen blurry eyed passengers. We were bound for Chicago via Oakland.

Days before we departed, I had mentioned to my doctor I was about to leave on a train trip, from San Diego to Chicago via Oakland. He looked up, surprised, “what, you can do that, take a train from here to Chicago?”

A more common response – why would you want to? Ask yourself, to get from one city to the next; to go from LA to the Bay Area or Sacramento, or San Diego to Phoenix – does Amtrak come to mind? If you’re like 96% of the population the answer is a simple no. In California only 5% rely on public transportation to get to and from and Amtrak accounts for only a small portion.