OB Rag

I have spent most of the week poring over news stories, blogs and commentary on last week’s decision by Bay Area Rapid Transit officials to shut off cellphone service to quash planned protests on its trains and platforms.

Opinions are many and range from BART spokesman Linton Johnson, who says constitutional rights end the moment people walk through transit-authority turnstiles, to “X” of the hacker collective Anonymous, who protested BART’s action and said our freedom to connect should be absolute and universal.

With the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks only a month away, former CIA Director George Tenet and two former top aides are fighting back hard against allegations that they engaged in a massive cover-up in 2000 and 2001 to hide intelligence from the White House and the FBI that might have prevented the attacks.

by Lucas O’Connor / Two Cathedrals / August 17, 2011

Remember when we worried here that Walmart may have broken the San Diego City Council? The giant corporation had just forced the council to reverse its city planning policy for absolutely no reason other than the prospective cost of holding an election. The worry then was that any organization could skip both the will of the people and the will of those elected by the people simply by trading on tough economic times.

Poll: Tea Party Less Popular Than Muslims, Atheists, 21 Other Groups

The debt ceiling deal has left the Tea Party more disliked than ever, as a recent New York Times poll shows. In April, 2010, 21 percent of Americans approved of the Tea Party while 18 percent disapproved of it. Now, 20 percent approve while a stunning 40 percent disapprove of it.

By Eric Lichtblau / The New York Times

Corrections Appended to the New York Times article.

VISTA, Calif. — Here on the third floor of a gleaming office building overlooking a golf course in the rugged foothills north of San Diego, Darrell Issa, the entrepreneur, oversees the hub of a growing financial empire worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Darrell Issa’s businesses have prospered since he was elected in 2000. The properties his management company in California owns include a building housing a Hooters restaurant.

Republican Governors Eliminate Jobs and Raise Unemployment Rate by Firing Cops, Teachers and Firemen

by John Lawrence / Will Blog for Food / August 14, 2011

The private sector has added jobs in recent months, but government has lost jobs because Republican Governors are firing public workers.

by Lucas O’Connor / Two Cathedrals / August 16, 2011

We recently touched on mayor candidate Nathan Fletcher’s transparently unethical hiring practices, paying for campaign staff with taxpayer dollars. Today we turn the spotlight to another mayoral candidate, District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis.

Billionaire Warren Buffett has been making headlines in his call for the super-rich of America to be taxed more. (See below.)

Now we hear that Irwin Jacobs – one of the richest San Diegans and co-founder of Qualcomm – agrees with Buffett. Jacobs made this surprising statement during a meeting with the San Diego U-T Community Editorial Board earlier this week, where he raised questions about the assumption that higher taxes on the super-rich were bad for job creation, and completely agreed with Buffett.

In 2009, Forbes listed Jacobs as the 220th richest American, worth $1.6 Billion.

The Nickel and Dimed (2011 Version)

By Barbara Ehrenreich / TomDispatch.com / Originally published Aug. 9, 2011

I completed the manuscript for Nickel and Dimed in a time of seemingly boundless prosperity. Technology innovators and venture capitalists were acquiring sudden fortunes, buying up McMansions like the ones I had cleaned in Maine and much larger. Even secretaries in some hi-tech firms were striking it rich with their stock options. There was loose talk about a permanent conquest of the business cycle, and a sassy new spirit infecting American capitalism. In San Francisco, a billboard for an e-trading firm proclaimed, “Make love not war,” and then — down at the bottom — “Screw it, just make money.”

I remember a night

my wife said to me:

“How come you’re not listening to me?”

Well, I wanted to listen,

you see,

An Update: February 26th of this year, I originally wrote an article about the number of helicopters flying over Ocean Beach in the wee small hours of the morning. As an insomniac I find this very distressing. I accept that I will go to sleep after 11:30pm when Lindbergh closes their takeoff routine, and, if lucky, will have the drone of the motor wake me at 6:30am. That is if I am able to sleep in the “between” hours.

Did you see anything from a hit and run near Abbott and Brighton Sunday night (Aug.14th)?

An OBcian has requested help from our readers, as a friend of theirs was a victim of a hit and run around Abbot and Brighton Sunday night, about 10pm. That would be the evening of August 14th.

If you any knowledge or observations of this, please email the OB Rag at obragblog@gmail.com, and you can do it anonymously.

Strange Loud Noise Late at Night

A reader has written in saying that “there was a crazy loud noise that went off at 1:45am sharp on the corner of Brighton and Cable,” Monday night – August 15th.