Category: Politics

The following calendar of events in OB and San Diego is from our good friends at the OB Green Center. All that we did is add a few meetings in Ocean Beach*. The Ocean Beach Green Center is located at 4843 B Voltaire Street, Ocean Beach 92107 (contact them : oceanbeachgreencenter@gmail. com 619.225.1083)

February Events in OB

February 9th Thursday 7:00 p.m. Film Night “Merchants of Doubt”
“Merchants of Doubt” takes audiences on a satirically comedic, yet illuminating ride into the heart of conjuring American spin. Filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the curtain on a secretive group of highly charismatic, silver- tongued pundits-for-hire who present themselves in the media as scientific authorities – yet have the contrary aim of spreading maximum confusion about well-studied public threats ranging from toxic chemicals to pharmaceuticals to climate change. Free of Charge :-)

COME INSIDE FOR MUCH MORE

By Annie Lane / San Diego Free Press

While Mike Pence decided to recognize Black History Month by honoring a white man, Donald Trump was busy vaguely listing the few black people he’s heard of throughout his 70-plus years of ignorant life in a zero-hearted attempt to care about anyone other than himself.

One such man was Frederick Douglass, the ex-slave turned abolitionist, author, suffragist, editor and diplomat. Here’s what Trump said:

“Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more, I notice.”

The one thing Trump didn’t notice? Douglass died in 1895.

“Indivisible” Leaders Plan Comprehensive Campaign to Sway Congress

February 7 “Resist Trump Tuesday” Targets Feinstein, Harris, Issa, Hunter

POINT LOMA, CA – More than 60 San Diegans united in Point Loma on Saturday, Jan. 4th to defeat President Trump’s agenda through direct advocacy to members of Congress, and other elected officials.

Representing many of the five dozen “Indivisible” groups that have formed in the San Diego region since the election, the leaders met to network and strategize to maximize their impact through collective action.

The overflow crowd had to move to a larger room at a Point Loma community center to accommodate the attendees, who hailed from Alpine, Ramona, La Mesa, Carlsbad, Capitol Heights, La Jolla, Point Loma, Fallbrook, Tierrasanta and many other communities.

There is a nation-wide group that is organizing a boycott of companies that carry Trump products, or are owned by Trump or have other relationships with him. It’s call #GrabYourWallet and they believe economic push-back by American citizens and others is a very valid form of protest.

Their campaign has already been going on for nearly 4 months now and it has achieved some successes. Here is how they describe themselves and their history:

The #GrabYourWallet movement tracks & boycotts retailers that sell Trump family products as well as corporate leaders who enabled the political rise of the Trump family through fundraising and/or endorsements.

Head of Democratic Party Bashes Unions … While American Federation of Teachers Joins Calls for Kasparian to Take Leave of Absence

By Jim Miller

Last week I dedicated my column to outlining how, despite the emergence of inspiring protests in the streets and amongst the progressive base, many key Democratic figures in Congress and in the national leadership of the building trades unions still didn’t seem to understand what time it was. Sadly, it only took a few more days to see a couple of stunning examples of how not to be the resistance right here in San Diego.

On January 26th, Jessica Hayes, the newly elected chair of the San Diego County Democratic Party, took advantage of her presence at a forum hosted by the Democrats for Equality entitled “#The Resistance: Women Lead the Way” to attack not the dangerous plutocrats running the country, but a key element of the Democratic base: unions.

This Is Not an Issue of “Free Speech” for a White Nationalist with Connections to the White House

Risking becoming the lone voice in today’s wilderness, we say today that somebody has to say “thank you” to the UC Berkeley students and community members who demonstrated against the white nationalist Breitbart News senior editor back on Wednesday, February 1st, and helped cause the campus to cancel the talk by Milo Yiannopoulo.

So, thank you.

The whole incident has now blown up, with claims the protesters violated free speech, with Trump threatening to cut off funds to UC Berkeley – which he cannot do unilaterally – and the subsequent push-back against him from school and California officials.

Latest data shows more than 1 million people living in families with incomes too low for expenses

Center on Policy Initiatives

A new report from the Center on Policy Initiatives finds that a third (33%) of all household in San Diego County have incomes below the level needed to cover basic living expenses.

Women and children are most impacted, largely because employed women throughout the county earn 74 cents for every $1 paid to men. Among households headed by single mothers, 69% have incomes below the bare-bones level known as the Self-Sufficiency Standard.

Trump’s Supreme Court nominee could enact revenge against the EPA

By David Helvarg / Sierra Feb 1 2017

Neil Gorsuch, who won the rose from Donald Trump as one of two finalists for a Supreme Court nomination, is a deeply conservative choice in the mold of the late Antonio Scalia.

He is also the poisoned fruit of a partisan refusal to hold confirmation hearings on Judge Merrick Garland, who was President Obama’s nominee for Scalia’s vacant seat. That constitutional hostage drama played out very well for the hostage takers.

If Gorsuch is confirmed (something that the Sierra Club and groups across the progressive movement have vowed to prevent), his ascendance to the nation’s highest court might also play out as a family revenge-drama against U.S. environmental laws.

From City Heights Town Hall to Airport Protest

By Anna Daniels / San Diego Free Press

“Tell me what democracy looks like!”

“This is what democracy looks like!”

The chant ran up and down the whole length of Terminal 2 of San Diego’s Lindbergh Airport, up and down the opposite side of the terminal and could be heard on the second floor walkway. Three lines of cars ran between the two and those cars honked their horns while passengers waved flags and held signs outside of the windows.

Lost Opportunity to “Grill” Director Vacchi Over 30-Foot Height Enforcement

By Geoff Page

I want to relate some observations and opinions about the 30-foot height discussion and the sorry appearance of Robert Vacchi, Director of the Development Services Department (DSD), at the January 19 monthly meeting of the Peninsula Community Planning Board (PCPB). I wrote a report of the meeting that appeared in the OB Rag last week but that report was an attempt at an objective account of the meeting; my opinions, and I have a few, were held in check.

Let me start my piece with a little background. Recently, the editor of the OB Rag drafted me into his informal and diverse staff to provide regular reporting on the Midway and Peninsula monthly planning board meetings. To his credit, the editor is making a real effort to provide as much news as he can about the community around us, if he can manage to cajole enough folks to help. The main focus is OB, of course, and Point Loma, but also beyond.

By TG Branfalt / Ganjapreneur

San Diego California’s city council unanimously voted to allow adult-use cannabis sales at the cities current 15 medical dispensaries once the voter-backed program is fully implemented, the San Diego Union-Tribune reports. Officials also indicated they would consider regulations later this year that would permit commercial cannabis cultivation, testing, and distribution.

A “sunset clause” is included in the measure, which requires the council to vote whether or not to allow cultivation within nine months.

By David Helvarg / The Progressive

As a coastal developer, Donald Trump has bulldozed ancient sand dunes and opposed offshore wind turbines (because they “ruined the view”) in Scotland, sought to build seawalls and fill in (smother) seagrass meadows and coral reefs in Florida, and built golf club luxury homes on a geologically unstable bluff in California where the eighteenth hole had earlier fallen into the sea.

Myron Ebell, the man Trump tapped to oversee the transition team at the Environmental Protection Agency, is a well-known climate-change denier from the libertarian (and partly fossil fuel funded) Competitive Enterprise Institute. In the past he’s worked as the D.C. lobbyist for Chuck “Rent-a-Riot” Cushman, one of the more extreme leaders of the Wise Use movement of the 1990s. Ebell also promoted “safer cigarettes” (the “clean coal” of our lungs) with funding from Philip Morris.