OB Rag

Independent Grassroots Education Movement to March From Balboa Park to State Building Downtown to Protest Next Round of Cuts to Budgets

San Diego, CA – March 10th, 2012 – 9:15am – Balboa Park (Park Ave. & Presidents Way)

The next round of education budget cuts will be devastating to our schools, our children, and our teachers. In an effort to be proactive in fostering a change in priorities at the state level, a broad coalition of parents, teachers, students, and concerned citizens will be marching from Balboa Park (corner of Park Ave. & Presidents Way) to the State Building downtown.

By Lee Fang / AlterNet / March 7, 2012

Why we still put hundreds of thousands of people in steel cages for pot-related offenses.

John Lovell is a lobbyist who makes a lot of money from making sure you can’t smoke a joint. That’s his job. He’s a lobbyist for the police unions in Sacramento, and he is a driving force behind grabbing Federal dollars to shut down the California marijuana industry. I’ll get to the evidence on this important story in a bit, but first, some context.

By Paul Rogers / MercuryNews.com / March 3, 2012

Hunters and environmentalists don’t often agree.

But there’s no dispute between them on one thing: This week’s sizzling controversy over whether a top California wildlife official should be removed from his post for shooting a mountain lion in Idaho is about much more than mountain lions.

It’s the latest example of a cultural shift afoot in America’s most populous state — a profound change involving urban and rural, old and young, red and blue — in which the traditional political power of hunters and fishermen is in steady decline while environmentalists and animal rights groups have grown in influence.

If you have been following the story of the unarmed Marine sergeant gunned down in front of his two daughters last February up in San Clemente, there is some more news and information about the case.

The latest ugly info about this horrific and ugly incident is that Sgt Manny Loggins’ daughters were incarcerated for 13 hours without contact with their mother – this after watching their father being shot in front of them.

Not only that, but a claim that the family is filing against the Sheriffs states that Sgt. Loggins was shot multiple times. Also, Loggins’ wife, Phoebe, who was pregnant at the time of the shooting, just had her baby last Sunday.

Does anyone know what happened to the “OB Dude”? You know, the woodman that always stood by that cottage on the 1900 block of Ebers Street, across from the small neighborhood park next to the Rec Center. The wood guy who always had pithy messages or words on him – that changed with the seasons.

Some of them we recall were “Peace”, and there was a “Thanks” during Thanksgiving, and “Share” during other holidays.

Where are you, OB Dude? We assume your owner had to move – as the cottage is now up for rent and is empty, according to one of our bloggers, Gail Powell.

By Larry Gordon / Los Angeles Times / March 7, 2012

An Alameda County Superior Court judge Tuesday temporarily blocked the release of a University of California investigative report about the controversial pepper-spraying of UC Davis student protesters by campus police in November.

Judge Evelio Grillo’s ruling in an Oakland courtroom came at the request of the UC police union. The Federated University Police Officers Assn. contends that state law forbids public disclosure of such information as the names of UC Davis campus police officers involved in the spraying incident and personnel information garnered from interviews with them. The matter is scheduled to return to court on March 16 for a hearing on whether the temporary restraining order should be dropped or a permanent injunction granted.

Today (March 7), the U-T San Diego reported that the Sheriff’s Department is conducting an internal affairs investigation of a sergeant deputy who has been accused of abuses while in her uniform.

The main complain involves allegations that she – Sgt. Elizabeth Palmer – had unlawfully detained and searched an African-American male in the Chula Vista Court parking lot. Thing was, the guy she hassled was a retired San Diego police officer. Whoops.

Editor: Here is an update on Larissa Danielli by OB blogger Gail Powell. Larissa, you may recall, was arrested November 3, 2011, in Ocean Beach when she returned to her Cape May apartment to find an adjacent apartment had caught on fire and firefighters had entered her unit. Medical marijuana was found and her troubles exploded. For three months, her young son was taken from her. Larissa has given her side of the story before, yet her travails just stagger the mind.

By Gail Powell

Last year, when a fire consumed the Ocean Beach apartment building where Larissa Danielli and her son, Silas resided, another fire of injustice and persecution started up that very day.

There were terrible consequences suffered by single mom Larissa and her sweet little boy who were doubly victimized by the tragedy that ensued.

This old dude was so tired that evening but there was no way I was going to miss a Town Hall Meeting with such a compelling theme as “Silence is Worse than Violence” – especially considering that a number of youth leaders decided that such a gathering was needed to begin a conversation for solutions to the problem. I love it when our children take the lead.

The night was kicked off with a bumping rap about how, “We got to rise up above it” followed by a spoken word piece about love and respect and honoring our ancestries and histories. Amen.

That set a tone that was soothing to my aging bones and the featured speaker and moderator of the evening, Kevin Powell, a prominent voice in the hip hop generation, jumped right in without missing a beat with anecdotes about the rough edges of his youth and how he turned it all around and has devoted his life to positive hopeful causes like ending violence, in keeping with why we were all gathered at the Joe & Vi Jacobs Center.

The Ocean Beach branch library is set to re-open this Saturday, March 10th. This, after a period where it was remodeled with a new carpet, new paint, and a new roof.

But with just a few days away from the doors being swung open again to OB, our library needs help.

The place needs cleaning and all the books need reshelving. Before it can open again, there’s a bunch of internal work that needs to happen.

By Bob Sullivan / msnbc / March 6, 2012

If you think privacy settings on your Facebook and Twitter accounts guarantee future employers or schools can’t see your private posts, guess again.

Employers and colleges find the treasure-trove of personal information hiding behind password-protected accounts and privacy walls just too tempting, and some are demanding full access from job applicants and student athletes.

In Maryland, job seekers applying to the state’s Department of Corrections have been asked during interviews to log into their accounts and let an interviewer watch while the potential employee clicks through wall posts, friends, photos and anything else that might be found behind the privacy wall.

Previously, applicants were asked to surrender their user name and password, but a complaint from the ACLU stopped that practice last year. While submitting to a Facebook review is voluntary, virtually all applicants agree to it out of a desire to score well in the interview, according Maryland ACLU legislative director Melissa Coretz Goemann.

Women from all over San Diego County will rally in front of the US Federal Courthouse in San Diego on Thursday, March 8th, to support women’s rights to contraception on International Women’s Day. The rally will be held from noon to 1pm, and the Courthouse is located at 940 Front Street, in downtown San Diego.

The rally will address a number of recent attacks on a woman’s right to contraception and family planning:

• US Rep. Darrell Issa convenes a hearing about contraception with 5 men on the panel, and no women.

• Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum touts the “dangers” of contraceptives and that sex is “only for purposes of procreation.”

• Foster Friess, main donor to a super PAC for Rick Santorum, suggests women use aspirin as a contraception method.

• Rush Limbaugh, on a national radio show, calls a young woman a slut and prostitute because she speaks out in favor of birth control.