OB Rag

Both candidates for Mayor of San Diego are viewed as fighters, but only one has repeatedly and habitually demonstrated a genuine concern for the people he is elected to serve.

Carl DeMaio and Bob Filner have both been described as “snarly.” Maybe they are but Bob has got a lot of snarling to do to match Carl.

I mean Bob pretty much, from what I’ve seen personally, as a friend of his over the years, only snarls at the likes of the promoters of injustices in our society like the fat cats in high positions and places who spend their lives conniving how to deny us “regular” folks a nice slice of the American Pie, not caring whether we live or die.

City Heights has got religion. A distinctive characteristic of my community is not only the sheer number of religious establishments located here, but the diverse forms that religious expression takes. There are the storefront Evangelical and Pentecostal Christian churches that have sprung up along University and El Cajon Boulevard, with names like La Esposa del Cordero, the Shepherd’s Wife, and signs with the exhortation Pare de Sufrir, to stop suffering.

There are Buddhist temples, botánicas, a mosque, a tiny Russian Orthodox church, and familiar Catholic and Baptist churches as well. Religious services are conducted in Spanish, Creole, Russian, Chinese and Vietnamese, to name just a few of the languages routinely spoken besides English. I do not know if other languages besides Arabic are used at the mosque located adjacent to the Somali neighborhood known as Little Mogadishu. There are also shamans and babaloas living quietly among us.

In my last column I began the story of someone I call Jose, and what led to his financial crisis. In this column I look at the Kafkaesque process he went through in his failed attempt to save his home from foreclosure. The experiences I describe here are neither rare nor random. The difficulties Jose and his family encountered in trying to get their bank to re-evaluate their loan were all too representative of the random sample of people I interviewed. The tragic fact is that the delays that Jose’s family encountered were not the result of inefficiency, but rather a deliberate policy to protect banks.

Banks do NOT want foreclosures rapidly resolved because that would bring these properties down to market value, reflecting badly on their bottom lines. Thus families like Jose’s are the deliberate casualties of a war of attrition that banks have waged on the public to protect their economic interests. For the remainder of this article, please go here.

Originally published at San Diego Free Press

“The process of public engagement [in developing the County of San Diego General Plan] had hundreds of hearings over 10 years…So the implication is that anything that is coming forward now would be inconsistent. It would be amazing if there is going to now be wholesale General Plan amendments.”

San Diego County Planning Commissioner Michael Beck, Nov. 9, 2011 interview with KPBS

Last Wednesday, June 20th, the County Board of Supervisors held a hearing for 137 private property requests that would require amending the County’s new General Plan, …

North African & Mideast Conflict Resolution Delegation visits San Diego; Looks for Answers and finds more Questions

Clearly the vetting process at the State Department needs some updating from the Google dartboard they must be currently using, I thought to myself a little over a week ago, last Friday. After all, the last rumor I heard about the OB Rag / San Diego Free Press staffers was we were all under investigation by Homeland Security for our Occupy Movement support. But unlike some other thoughts I have, at least there was a basis for this one.

By J. G. Robinson / San Diego Free Press

As I said in my last column, Latinos in our community have been among the groups most affected by the foreclosure crisis. In the next two columns I tell the story of one Latino family and what foreclosure has meant to it. I found this story moving, and it is one of the strongest indictments I know of the politicians and business people who have done so little to help people facing foreclosure. In this first installment I will look at what led up to the foreclosure for this family, and in the following column I will examine what happened after the foreclosure took place. This is the story of someone I will call Jose.

The OB Rag has been contacted by friends of an OB man who was violently assaulted on Bacon Street after walking home from Winston’s, one night last weekend. A $500 award has been posted for information.

The victim was walking home around 1:30 – 2am between Niagara and Narragansett. He was savagely attacked by three white males in their 20’s who kicked him repeated in the face. So far, the only description available is 3 white males , with medium height and build, with short haircuts, and one of the three being a bit shorter than the other two.

Ocean Friendly Garden Party

San Diego, California – Ocean Beach and Point Loma residents have long endured problems of stormwater flooding, an eroding coastline, and polluted beaches from rainwater runoff, but now they can learn firsthand how to mitigate those problems by attending Surfrider Foundation’s Garden Party event at the Ocean Beach Hotel on Thursday, June 28th from 5-8pm.The Ocean Beach Hotel is located at 5080 Newport Ave.

“The event will be a beautiful evening of music, wine, and appetizers, but more importantly we will be introducing local homeowners to our Ocean Friendly Gardens Program” said Susan Krzywicki, Chair of the Ocean Friendly Gardens program.

“Everyone always wants to know why Surfrider is involved in gardening. Well, in nature, everything is connected. An Ocean Friendly Garden can help stop erosion, stop polluted runoff, save water (thereby lowering water bills,) create native habitat for birds and butterflies, and is part of a comprehensive landscaping solution needed for the Ocean Beach and Sunset Cliffs area,” she said.

A protest is being planned at the next open meeting of San Diego’s Citizens Review Board on Police Practices. A grand jury investigation uncovered major corruption at the Board. (Here is an article on the Grand Jury report.)

Some of the violations included police presence during closed sessions, police harassment, intimidation and bullying of board members who disagreed with police findings.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday struck down Montana’s century-old limits on corporate political spending, putting an end to the state’s resistance to Citizens United and effectively expanding that controversial ruling to the state and local elections.

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, decided in January 2010, struck down federal limits on campaign spending by corporations and unions as violations of the First Amendment. Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing on behalf of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, reached the bold conclusion that “independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption,” and therefore “[n]o sufficient governmental interest justifies limits on the political speech of nonprofit or for-profit corporations.”

I had an old friend in town recently for a visit, a friend who’d lived in San Diego for many years until leaving for South America before the law could catch up with him. Back in the day, my pal was a real wild man, spending much of his free time scouring San Diego for the next dive bar with its mandatory sordid adventure, so his return to our heavily gentrified city was like watching a bewildered Bukowski re-emerge after being cryogenically frozen for 20 years, stumbling through the streets of downtown, Golden Hill, North Park, City Heights, and the beaches bitterly muttering to himself about chic bistros and expensive craft brews. The statute of limitations was up but his city was gone.

Never has a stout middle-aged man seemed so distraught to be in a room full of beautiful young women as my companion was when confronted with the new gang populating the renovated Waterfront Bar and Grill or the cocktail lounge that replaced the bar with no name and the crooked pool tables. “What happened, Miller?” He kept saying to me as he shook his head disapprovingly. “Look at this! What the hell happened?”

There are some places we are not allowed to go on the internet. Sometimes when censorship is imposed by the government the error message should be Error Code 451. This is the idea of Google’s Tim Bray.

The number 451 refers to Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Since we all have read this text.

What?

You haven’t read it?

Drop everything and run to the library before it is too late! To give you a taste here are some quotes from the book. …