OB Rag

By Jack Hamlin/ Special to the OB Rag

With the proliferation of Antique Stores in the Ocean Beach business district and in the greater San Diego area, I believe it is high time the City Council formed a task force to create regulations for these types of businesses. After all, they are popping up all over and as a homegrown problem the police need tools to oversee the manner in which these places do business.

Imagine my surprise when I found out earlier this week on the Rachel Maddow show that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney registered his domicile for voting purposes as the unfinished basement of his son’s Massachusetts home, a few blocks from the home that the Romney’s sold earlier. She went on to say that Romney also has a home in La Jolla, which is a community of San Diego, and a cabin in New Hampshire. Her guest Fred Karger, who didn’t make the Republican cut for the New Hampshire debate last week, maintains that Romney hasn’t really been living in his son’s basement but rather in La Jolla for the past couple of years and may have committed voter fraud in the Massachusetts election of 2010.

I read the HEADLINES this morning that Anthony Weiner has resigned from his House seat. Thank goodness that “distraction” is now over and the Dems can resume their laser focus on creating jobs-hopefully in this country; protecting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; and continuing their unwavering support for working people. Democrats have purged their party of a lying jackass who is admired for his fiery policy positions by progressives but not so much by his congressional colleagues. Their moral compass has been reset– to campaigning and fund raising 24/7 and I’m sure it’s going to be nothing but distraction free sailing to November 2012.

Just before 1 pm this Thursday afternoon, three thieves entered the OB Antique Mall at at 4926 Newport Avenue. One had a shotgun and another reportedly had a hand gun.

Employees were tied up by the robbers before they made off with gold jewelry and a silver handgun.

First Protest Against Starbucks

The very first protest against Starbucks coming into OB was held on Sunday, March 25th, 2001. At first at the anointed time, dozens upon dozens of people gathered at all four corners of Bacon and Newport, chanting, waving signs, picketing back and forth in front of the empty building. They handed out clipboards with a petition opposing the lease to Starbucks, and there lots of hand-crafted signs – as the Coalition had met at the Green Store the night before to make them. As the crowd grew, it continued to be generally very boisterous and friendly. It was almost a party atmosphere. Lots of smiles, some chants. One was: “We don’t want no corporate whores, on our beautiful OB shores!”

It was one of those articles that after you read it, you have to go back and re-read it because what it describes doesn’t make sense. This was what happened when I first read Craig Gustafson’s June 13th article in the San Diego U-T about San Diego’s ambulance service – how they bilked the City out of $18 million but get to keep operating ambulances for us – and are able to increase their fees to San Diego residents – the users of ambulances.

After a series of public meetings that began in February, the County’s Redistricting Advisory Committee voted Monday [June 13] to forward three proposed redistricting plans to the Board of Supervisors. The citizen’s committee was tasked with gathering public input and forwarding no more than three plans for the Board’s consideration. The Redistricting Advisory Committee finished that work and held its final meeting Monday.

The Board of Supervisors is expected to hear the committee’s proposed plans at its regular Board meeting at 9 a.m. on June 28.

Conservation groups and a Native American tribe sued San Diego County’s environmental agency to stop a proposed dump they claim will harm endangered species habitat, a critical drinking water source and sacred tribal sites.

The lawsuit filed Monday by the Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, RiverWatch and the Pala Band of Mission Indians argues that the Department of Environmental Health violated state laws when it permitted the proposed Gregory Canyon landfill.

Editor: Hugh Moore is the Chair of the San Diego Green Party.

An Open Letter to the California Democratic Party:

By Hugh Moore, RN, / June 13, 2011

I’m a registered nurse who works in a hospital that serves the disenfranchised and sees every day the damage that the lack of a healthcare system causes. So when I heard that the California Democratic Party had added the principle of healthcare as a right rather than an option of all people I was ecstatic.

We have to hand it to our big-sibling weekly newspaper, The Reader. They’ve discovered an errant street sign in Ocean Beach. Or rather their new guy, Dave Rice – who also is one of our bloggers -, found it. It’s a street sign of the new, blue type that the City has been installing for a while now. But this one, at the corner of Santa Monica Avenue and Bacon Street …. is misspelled.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt / Excuse Me, I’m Writing

“Hey, dude, that’s wack!”

I learned that handy little colloquialism during my first semester at Cal State San Marcos. “Wack,” according to the fellow who uttered it (a comely young man who was conscripted into a women’s studies class), is an adjective indicating that something is not right. After doing a little etymological digging, I found that “wack” is a variant of “whack,” which means “crazy” and is commonly used in conjunction with “job,” as in …

by George J. Janczyn / Groksurf’s San Diego /June 14, 2011 [updated June 15]

As predicted here one year ago (“San Diego County Water Authority water pricing lawsuit could jeopardize funding for Carlsbad Desalination Plant“), the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD) has moved to terminate an agreement that would have paid a subsidy of $250 per acre foot (potentially $14M annually) to Posiedon and the San Diego County Water Authority (SDCWA) for water produced at the Carlsbad Desalination Plant.