Category: Politics

Popaditch Incites Mob, Curses at Filner and reportedly pushed Opponent at Election Central By Miriam Raferty / East County Magazine…

Since Primary election eve, when the results were coming in, San Diego conservatives have been celebrating their perceived “victories”. Me thinks they are celebrating way too early, as the results are not as favorable to the GOP and their extremist friends as they think it was. Check this out.

First, the California Primary was one of the lowest voter turn-outs in history – 36% – if not the lowest. Low turn-outs tend to favor conservatives, whereas large turn-0uts favor Democrats and liberals. And Democrats did stay away from the polls, as there was no big-ticket item on the ballot. Sure, Barack Obama was on it but he was a shoe-in. And Senator Dianne Feinstein was on it as well, but she didn’t have any serious challengers. Yes, there were two state-wide measures – and one of them – Prop 28 – which does aid democracy just a tad -passed handily – but how can anyone get excited about a tax on tobacco.

Editor: Here is a two-part series about what is going on in Venezuela by Peter Bohmer – a former OBcean, who now teaches at Evergreen College in Washington state. Bohmer just recently returned from a ten week visit to Venezuela, and filed this report.

by Peter Bohmer / Special to the OB Rag / June 7, 2012

I spent 10 weeks in Venezuela in early 2012, two months with a group of 30 students from the Evergreen State College and then two weeks continuing my travels with a good friend. I had a similar 10 week experience in early 2009 and also spent three weeks in Venezuela in 2011. Based on my 2009 study and travel in Venezuela, I wrote an article that can be found here. This article here is a continuation of that one. It focuses primarily on the changes in Venezuela since 2009. Most of my time on this trip was spent in Caracas, Mérida, and Barquisimeto.

OB Rag readers – please go check out our brand new offspring online publication for all of San Diego: the San Diego Free Press.

By Mel Freilicher / Special to the OB Rag

Emma Goldman: Revolution as a Way of Life
By Vivian Gornick
Yale University Press, 2011; 151 pages; $25

Rather than write a political history of Emma Goldman’s very full life (which is already documented in great detail, including in her own hefty, 2 volume autobiography, Living My Life), Vivian Gornick has chosen to “concentrate on the force of her extraordinary rebelliousness and try to understand it in light of the existential drive behind radical politics.”

To illuminate what she believes to be at the heart of many dedicated radicals’ commitment, Gornick delivers a provocative portrait of Goldman’s soul, really: embodied in what’s famously paraphrased as, “If I can’t come to your dance, I’m not coming to your revolution.”

Join us tonight – Primary Night – here at 8:00 pm when the OB Rag joins other local online media and doing a live blog of the Primary’s mysterious being unfolded over the course of the evening. San Diego CityBeat and San Diego Rostra will be represented as well. Andy Cohen will be downtown blogging at Election Central, and Doug Porter, Frank Gormlie and Annie Lane – and perhaps more – will be live blogging from home.

From San Diego Free Press / June 4, 2012

In Under the Perfect Sun, Mike Davis, Kelly Mayhew and I observe that San Diego is a city that “many conservatives extol as a utopia of patriotism and free enterprise.” Indeed it was Nixon’s “lucky city” but, as we note, “San Diego has too frequently been a town wide open to greed but closed to social justice.

Like its Sunbelt siblings—Orange County, Phoenix, and Dallas—it has a long history of weak and venal city halls dominated by powerful groups of capitalist insiders. ‘Private Government’ has long overshadowed public politics.”

Beginning Monday, June 4th, the OB Rag is birthing a new online publication for all of San Diego. It’s called the San Diego Free Press – and is named after San Diego’s very first alternative newspaper – which was published from 1968 to 1969.

The San Diego Free Press will bring to the rest of San Diego what the OB Rag has been bringing to the community of Ocean Beach these last four and half years – an online source of news, issues, and progressive views by citizen journalists, plus the providing of a platform for the discussion of issues relevant to the village of OB.

The San Diego Free Press – in the planning stages for over a year and half – will be a source for neighborhood news from all the ignored and forgotten communities of our area, and it will provide a source and platform for progressive views for and by San Diegans.

Candidate Scott Peters has been blanketing his expensive, slick fliers all over the 52nd Congressional District. Today, his latest flier arrived, and lo and behold – it’s a listing of media and press endorsements of the Scott Peters campaign – and includes the OB Rag. The flier intentionally makes it appear as if the OB Rag endorsed Scott Peters for Congress.

There is nothing further from the truth.

We at the OB Rag did NOT endorse Scott Peters – in fact, we endorsed Lori Saldaña in a staff vote of 9 to 2.

“The best lack all conviction while the worst are filled with passionate intensity.” Second Coming, William Butler Yeats

President Bill Clinton was in Wisconsin on Friday, June 1, stumping for Milwaukee Democratic Mayor Tom Barrett. Barrett is running against Governor Scott Walker in the upcoming recall election on June 5th and the race is a tight one.

Walker, who rode into office with a six point victory over Barrett in the 2010 mid-term elections, immediately focused upon dismantling the public employee collective bargaining laws in the state, reducing the number of individuals eligible for BadgerCare, the state’s health insurance safety net, lowering taxes on the wealthiest, and slashing the budget for education.

Hello, fellow activists!

We are asking for San Diegans – and ONLY SAN DIEGANS – to help out by signing our new Change.org petition.

The petition asks that the San Diego City Council support a resolution to amend the constitution and reverse Citizens United. After all, corporations are not people and money is not free speech!

We’ll be submitting this petition list to members of the San Diego City Council in June as part of ongoing nationwide effort. For that reason it is important that only those living in the city of San Diego (ZIP code 92101-92199) sign.

From Stop Prop A

San Diego, CA – “San Diegans do love their parks, but our parks could be at risk if Prop A passes,” begins District 7 Councilmember Marti Emerald in a taped statement released today by the No on Proposition A campaign.
COME INSIDE FOR DETAILS

Voter Approval of Proposition A on the June 5 Ballot could cause the City of San Diego’s Bond Ratings to Drop

San Diego, CA – Fitch Ratings, a global rating agency dedicated to scoring agencies’ financial strength, has cautioned the City of San Diego that passage of Proposition A will present severe fiscal consequences to the city, …COME INSIDE FOR DETAILS