OB Rag

It worked. Last night’s outpouring of support and solidarity for the Ocean Beach planners in their fight with the City proved the ticket. The city-wide committee of neighborhood planners agreed with the OB Board that this issue of the City granting improper variances was indeed an issue worthy of study.

Formally known as the Council of Planning Committees (CPC), they voted unanimously last night to create a committee to specifically look into the issue of the variances and to facilitate a resolution. There was sympathy for the issue when it was brought up at the regular monthly meeting of the CPC last night, as it appears the same type of city granting of variances is occurring in other communities as well.

By Michael Boldin / Tenth Amendment Center / February 29, 2012

Today, the Virginia Senate took a firm stand in support of liberty, the Constitution for the United States, and the Constitution of Virginia by voting in favor of House Bill 1160 (HB1160), the “NDAA Nullification Act.”

The final vote was 39-1.

After a motion to recommit (delay until next year) went down to the wire before being rejected yesterday (report here), groups across the political spectrum activated in support of the legislation, which codifies in law that no agency of the Commonwealth of Virginia – including defense forces and national guard troops, will comply with or assist the federal government in any way under it’s newly claimed powers to arrest and detain without due process.

By Stop NDAA

A lawsuit against the United States government was filed this week on behalf of a group of plaintiffs that includes Pulitzer prize-winning author Chris Hedges, Professor Noam Chomsky, the Pentagon Papers’ Daniel Ellsberg, an Icelandic Parliamentarian, and three women activists engaged in work they believe will put them in imminent danger under the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

Defendants in the suit include President Obama, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, Senator John McCain, John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi and others.

Attorneys in the case Carl Mayer and Bruce Afran also asked Southern District New York Court Judge Katherine Forrest to grant a Temporary Restraining Order to enjoin the provisions of the NDAA that appear to contravene the US Constitution.

In tandem with this filing, an international democracy advocacy group and progressive civil liberties group have teamed up to conduct a campaign in support of a lawsuit they hope attracts hundreds of thousands of supporters – and thousands of potential plaintiffs. RevolutionTruth, a small, international, all-volunteer group dedicated to defending democratic rights, and Demand Progress, a million-member civil liberties group, are leading the charge to build a broad, transpartisan coalition of supporters of this lawsuit and to provide a platform for potential plaintiffs to be screened.

As part of the March 1st National Day of Action for Education, three area college campuses are planning student and faculty walk-outs tomorrow, the first day of March.

Students at City College, San Diego State University, and University of California at San Diego have all joined in this national day of demonstrations, and each campus has plans for walk-outs, rallies and other protests of budget cuts and the on-going stampede towards the privatization of public schools and colleges.

Here in more detail are the plans for each campus:

City College

At City College, the Walkout is set to start at 11:00 am at Curran Plaza. A rally will be held from 11:00am until 3:00pm.

SDSU

There will be a student walk-out at 12:oo noon, followed by a rally at Scripps Cottage Patio, where speakers will discuss a education from a variety of perspectives. Potential solutions and opportunities for students to stay involved will be offered.

UCSD

At 11:30 am, students will stage the walk-out. At 12 noon, instructors will hold a rally / teach-out at the Silent Tree in front of Geisel Library. There will also be performance art at the Silent Tree. Then at 1:30 pm, there will be a march!

Editor: The following “Call to Action” is from ReclaimUCSD and involves a campus protest against student fees for March 1st, and although student walk-outs are also being planned for City College and SDSU, this “Call” is detailed in its reasons and history (see footnotes at end).

By Reclaim UCSD

Students, instructors and staff you have a stake in the future of the UC. The public nature of the UC is under threat, but on March 1st we are coming together to defend it.

Students, mandatory fees set by the regents have more than doubled since 2001 adjusted for inflation.[1] At the same time, UCSD’s average debt at graduation increased 20%.[2] In 2009, 48% of UCSD students graduated with debt at an average of $18,757.[3] Since 1990 expenditure per student has fallen over 19%.[4] At the same time state support per student fell 60% while tuition support more than tripled.[5] The UC shifted from public funding toward personal, private funding. This shift was not and is not inevitable. Students: the ability of many of your qualified colleagues to attend a UC is threatened by this shift,[6] but you can help.

By Louisa Golden / Special to the OB Rag

“And the Woman said, ‘His name is not Wild Dog any more, but the First Friend, because he will be our friend for always and always and always.” (Rudyard Kipling)

Spring is nearly here and with the warming weather, Obceans can expect the local dog population to explode. Warmer, longer days mean that more people will be getting out and taking their dogs for walks. Strolling in the neighborhood with your First Friend is a great pleasure. Doing your duty to clean up after Fido is not. With a little management and planning, you and your dog can enjoy your daily promenade without the hassle.

Potty-less walking is convenient, relaxing, clean and great for public relations.

With weather reports promising 6 to 8 inches of snow in local mountains for yesterday – February 27th – I nosed my PT Cruiser east on the old venerable Highway 8, and punched the accelerator in a mini-adventure to find Winter in San Diego County.

Gray skies, billowing clouds, and even some sunshine filled my vision for the first half hour in the cruise up the elevation towards Mount Laguna. If it was too snowy by time I reach the turn-off for Sunrise Highway, I thought to myself, I’ll go into the small town of Pine Valley for shelter and comfort, imagining flurries cutting off my visibility in the trek into the snow.

But actually, when I reached Sunrise Highway, I hadn’t even seen any rain. And there was a News 8 van sitting alongside the road, waiting to file the first report on the promised snow.

As I headed up the mountain on the twisting two-laner, the only vehicles I encountered were Border Patrol, ICE, immigration trucks and SUVs. They were all heading down the mountain.

By Gail Powell

On a foggy morning in March 2011, a man who blacked out in the water while surfing off Sunset Cliffs survived, all thanks to quick action from three fellow surfers. Fox5 News reported at the time that surfer David Scheidlinger was very close to death, when help arrived from an angel in a wetsuit!

“I remember being at the top of the stairs carrying my board down and starting to paddle out and then the next thing I remember was being in the bottom of a lifeguard’s boat,” Scheidlinger noted.

Scheidlinger is lucky that Paula Reynolds was his surfing companion and buddy that morning, for she noticed that something was amiss with her friend who suddenly seemed unresponsive in the water.

This life and death situation occurred off surfing mecca Garbage Beach, a popular place to catch some waves off Sunset Cliffs.

Paula Reynolds, a friend since childhood and next door neighbor, told me that she “pulled Dave out of the water” and (onto his surfboard.)

I wrote in the guest book of her obituary:

Pearlie Mae. What can I say.
On my family tree.
A cousin but like a big sister to me.
Part of my history.
Here when I arrived.
Could always count on her love.
In my heart she will always reside.

She was a prominent member on our branch of the Windham/Windom family tree. Our grandmother’s Lillie (hers) and Alma (mine) were sisters. It’s hard believing that she’s now resting in peace with those two extraordinary women.

Her obituary states how selfless and loyal she was to family and friends and confidantes and I sure got a sense of that early on in life.

CUPERTINO, CALIF. — Giving new meaning to corporate social responsibility, Apple Inc. announced it is “bringing home” more than 700,000 manufacturing jobs currently held by workers in foreign countries.

“As a leading corporate citizen of the United States,” the company said in a press release, “Apple can’t help but feel some sort of responsibility to its fellow Americans. So why not start hiring them?”

Apple plans to spread the employment across ten different U.S. cities, bringing each city an average of 70,000 new jobs, all with full benefits, by the end of 2013.

“We basically just gave our outsourcing team a different task,” Apple’s chief executive Tim Cook told The OB Rag. “Instead of scouring third-world countries to find where workers come cheapest, we surveyed America to find areas where these new jobs would make the most sense.”

In last week’s column, I noted that Arizona lawmakers, with help from a right-wing think tank, were pushing union busting legislation more severe than Wisconsin’s. Not surprisingly, as John Nichols reported in The Nation, Arizona Republicans got a little pep talk from Governor Scott Walker himself:

Two days after Ohio voters overwhelmingly rejected Governor John Kasich’s anti-labor agenda by a sixty-one to thirty-nine margin in a statewide referendum, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker jetted to Arizona to launch the next front in the national campaign to attack union rights. After meeting with former Vice President Dan Quayle, Walker was whisked over to the Phoenician Resort in Scottsdale, where he briefed a thousand Arizona conservatives on how they could attack “the big-government union bosses.”

“We need to make big, fundamental, permanent structural changes. It’s why we did what we did in Wisconsin,” declared Walker, who at the annual dinner of the right-wing Goldwater Institute said that compromising with unions was “bogus.” Comparing governors who have been attacking the collective-bargaining rights of public employees with the founders of the American experiment—“just like that group that gathered in Philadelphia”—

Featuring David Cobb – a fiery speaker, attorney and former Green Party presidential candidate. David’s presentation is part history lesson and part heart-felt call-to-action!

Cobb is an organizer and national spokesman for MoveToAmend.org, a coalition of over 170,000 people and organizations whose goal is to amend the United States Constitution to end corporate rule and legalize democracy.

This event is free and open to the general public, donations requested, no one turned away for lack of funds.

• WHEN: Tuesday, February 28, 2012 – 7 to 9 p.m.
• WHAT: 1 hr talk + 1 hr facilitated discussion and Q&A.
• WHERE: First Church of the Brethren – 3850 Westgate Place, San Diego, CA 92105