Category: San Diego

My new friend, who works for the Border Patrol, resists my use of the word “wall” to describe the vast system of barriers being erected along the length of the U.S.-Mexico border. He would prefer that I – and others who oppose current U.S. border policy – talk about the barriers by referring to them as “tactical infrastructure.”

Veterans For Peace will be hosting a rally & protest on the exact date of the sixth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, on March 19th, 2009 4:30pm to 7:00pm at Horton Plaza. This will be from 4:30pm to 7:00pm, and will be held near the NBC 7/39 studios. We will have banners & signs, and hope to get some media attention.

Tonight outside a rally for San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom in City Heights, a local activist – and writer for the OB Rag blog – was prevented from taking her sign about the lack of funds for public transit into the rally site, a local City Heights school auditorium.

(Originally posted July 30, 2008)

by Frank Gormlie

Oh, my god! The Union-Tribune is about to be sold – or at least – is up for sale. What will San Diego do now? Do we care? What does it mean for a one-paper town like San Diego to have its monopoly print media exchange owners … or even close down altogether?

Today we heard (tip to Voice of San Diego) that our favorite monopoly press – the San Diego Union-Tribune – has been sold to Platinum Equity – a private equity firm in Beverly Hills. Here is how they describe themselves:

It may be true, as someone has suggested, that young people of Ocean Beach today have no idea of the on-going, daily tension between the police and the youth of OB a generation ago. Things are taken for granted.

Take the concept of police review, of the idea that civilians with some authority review the activities of police officers through an independent process. Heh? What’s the big deal? you ask. Of course, there should be some sort of civilian monitoring of and control on how police act and behave toward citizens.

by Norm Stamper

As police brutality cases go, it may not be one for the annals.

In late February, King County, WA sheriff’s deputy Paul Schene deposited a slender 15-year-old girl into a holding cell and ordered her to remove her shoes. The teen used her right toe to loosen the heel of her left sneaker, which she then cast off, the rubber-soled shoe apparently striking Schene in the shin.

As she began the mirror process with the other shoe, Schene stormed the holding cell, …

by Lane Tobias

After writing the first piece on food stamps, a number of questions have come up regarding San Diego’s place in the food stamps controversy. How are the income guidelines that determine eligibility set? Why does San Diego county have such low enrollment in the program? And most of all, what can we do about it?

The income guidelines that the USDA utilizes are based on the “Orshansky Poverty Thresholds”, developed for the Social Security Administration by a woman named Mollie Orshansky in the late 50’s and adopted by all Executive Administrations in 1965. Her guidelines took into account family size, farm or non-farm family, income, and other relative numbers.

In my first post of this series on San Diego County government, I gave an overview of the County itself and then a brief look at the governmental machine. Because of the sheer size and magnitude of its operations and reach, it can be very overwhelming any time one looks at our County political apparatus. Because our county is huge, the government shell over it has to be huge too. And we’ve got to understand this shell.

A military jet crash that killed four civilians in University City last fall was a preventable accident caused by mechanical problems and a series of poor decisions, Marine Corps officials said today. The pilot of the disabled F/A-18D Hornet that went down near Nobel Drive and Interstate 805 on Dec. 8 should have made an emergency landing at Naval Air Station North Island, which was closer and involved an approach over water, USMC authorities said during a briefing this afternoon.

by Anna Daniels

A woman came up to the information desk where I work at the Central Library downtown and asked me how to get her stimulus funds. This is of course an excellent question- the 787 billion dollar budget for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) includes provisions for education and training, protecting the vulnerable, energy, state and local fiscal relief, tax relief, health care, infrastructure and science and “other.” In addition, California, the most populous state in the union will receive the largest amount of those funds destined to the states.

In my earlier post, I described how all hell broke loose 35 years ago on February 22, 1974. It was the day that Pete Mahone tried to commit suicide by cop – a guy many of us active in OB’s progressive community knew. The subsequent armed take-over of Ocean Beach by the San Diego Police in response to the shooting led to an outrage among residents, an outrage that manifested itself into a campaign for human rights and reforms in police practices – a campaign that eventually did win some changes.