OB Rag

Originally published Jan. 27, 2010

We here at the OB Rag have been complaining for awhile now that even though we live in a coastal desert, there is no wide-spread effort to collect the rainwater that falls on our parched paradise. There is no government encouragement for it, our culture doesn’t support it – and we waste the opportunity every time it rains – and floods like it did last week.

Well, there’s a woman in Point Loma who is showing us how to do it. Cielo Foth has installed huge storage tanks and 44-gallon trash cans in her backyard to collect rainwater – which she uses for her garden.

SEE INSIDE FOR ARTICLES

* Pier Re-opens and Is Mobbed
* OB Historical Society Featured Steve Rowell’s Birds
* Old Rexalt Drug Sign Bites the Dust
* Ciao Bella to Open by Valentine’s Day
* Surf Shop Opens at Old Rock Paper Scissors Building
* Meanwhile, New Smoke Shop and Others to Open at the Old Surf Shop
* Rich’s VW Closes
* Skate Shop Closed
* OB Planning Board to Hold Election March 9th
* Point Loma Planning Committee Seeks Candidates for March 18th Election
* Channel 10 News Finds Sprinkler Going Outside OB Library During the Rains
* Noon Designs Is Celebrating Its First Birthday February 4th
* South Beach Bar & Grille Fish Tacos “Discovered” by Chicago Tribune

Since Thursday, January 21, 2010, the internet, newspapers and people around kitchen tables across the country have been ablaze with outrage over the Supreme Court’s action to open the floodgates to corporate money in our elections.
Over 40,000 of you have joined with us in launching a long-term campaign to amend the Constitution, and others have begun to follow your lead.

The annual election of candidates for the Ocean Beach Planning Board is coming up. The election will be held March 9th at the OB Rec Center. There are vacancies in each of the 7 Districts.

The OB Planning Board – the grandparent of all planning boards and committees – is the official advisory body to the City of San Diego and the San Diego Planning Commission. It has jurisdiction over construction projects and planning issues within Ocean Beach, and is mandated to require such projects to conform to the OB Precise Plan – the planning outline for the community.

The establishment of OB’s Board was the result of years of trials and tribulations of community residents back in the early and mid-1970s.

Scott Lewis of voiceofsandiego.org recently interviewed the director of research at the Center for Policy Initiatives Murtaza Baxamusa about San Diego and its economy. The Center is a labor-friendly think tank, a rare entity in this town, at least. Here is part of the interview:

If there was one, simple misconception among San Diegans that you could clear up in 2010, what would it be?

The last decade saw a well-orchestrated campaign by the blame-the-government privatizers at federal, state and local levels. San Diego was one such target, in which public employees were repeatedly demonized as over-paid and over-benefited, even when independent studies show that the city of San Diego compensates its workers much less than others for comparable work. But the work needs to be done, be it cleaning our streets and picking up our trash, to policing our neighborhoods and fighting fires.

Yesterday, January 21, 2010, the US Supreme Court dealt potentially a lethal blow to what’s left of American democracy. The slim majority of right-wing radical activists on the highest court in the land decided that corporations are people and that there should be no limitations on the amount of money they can spend on elections and candidates.

This means that corporations can now spend unlimited monies on any candidate and on any election they want. The 5 to 4 decision overturned decades of corporate restrictions and overturned a century’s-old limit on the role of corporate money in federal elections, on the books since Teddy Roosevelt was president.

As a former government worker myself, I can understand the food stamp worker’s lament to not be blamed for the program regulations she/he has to deal and the stress she/he deals with having heavy caseloads and not enough workers, BUT it sure sounds like there is an attitude problem also, as many have already mentioned.

The worker blames federal regulations but doesn’t seem to be aware that California, and San Diego County in particular, goes far beyond what the federal regulations require to PROCESS the applications, and someone has already mentioned that maybe the fact that our County Board of Supervisors is made up of all Republicans has something to do with that.

by Sunshine

Women. Questing, contrary, willful, inventive, questioning women. We are women who name ourselves and announce ourselves as the oracles we are. Breaking the mirror of deceit that kept us tamed, framed, within the mirror, the cage. Unbound in this world, free to achieve our hearts desires.

I am reminded of such women by Laughing Womyn’s (Whispers of Our Knowings by Laughing Womyn Ashonosheni) words on First Woman.

“Return, return, sisters, with me to the time of our origins. Remember First Woman…she whose body was made from this Earth, molded and shaped to carry and birth the coming generations of children, of ideas, of human ways of being. Remember, sisters, when we gave birth to words, and writing, and counting. Remember our healing ways, our artwork, our ways of expressing ourselves, our strong muscles and bones, our minds that fly with our souls.”

Women like this have lived in OB for generations.

Is this the end of the storms? Can we get back to “normal” yet? Nate Hipple took this Friday morning.

California medical marijuana patients won a court battle Thursday.

In a unanimous decision, the state Supreme Court struck down a state law that set an 8-ounce limit on the amount of medical marijuana a patient can possess at one time. The court, in a ruling issued in San Francisco, said the measure approved by the Legislature in 2003 was an illegal amendment of the medical marijuana law enacted by state voters in 1996.

The initiative, known as the Compassionate Use Act, doesn’t set a limit and allows patients to possess the amount needed for “personal medical purposes.” The court ruled in the case of a Los Angeles County patient, Patrick Kelly, who was prosecuted and sentenced to probation for possessing 12 ounces.

by John Williams

Having now been in Saudi Arabia for only thirty-eight days, I have had time to develop no more than a newcomer’s perspective on this significant Gulf Region country. This is my first experience in a kingdom other than Disney’s magic one. While I can hardly help but consider the political basis of this state to be archaic, I am able to recognize that it is but one of the many systems extant on the planet today, and I can also recognize that whether it is the best or worst system currently in existence or is the best system that possibly could be developed are issues I am neither prepared nor qualified to determine, though I could, if pressed, express an opinion thereon.

If pressed, I would have to say it is unlikely that this system is the best possible system which could be created, but then to the limit of my understanding, no system is, and, further this one seems to work for its citizens. Saudis I meet spend no time complaining about their government, culture, or society.

Editor: This was sent to us by an OBcean who wanted us to know about Gary Headrick’s address to the San Clemente City Council about his safety concerns at the San Onofre Nuclear power station. Headrick made the following remarks before the San Clemente City Council on January 20th:

City Council Members of San Clemente:

I need to take a few minutes of your time to bring something urgent to your attention. I recently wrote an article about the whistle blowers at San Onofre. Since then, another person with many years in management at the power plant has come forward with more serious allegations, but wishes to remain anonymous. This and other revelations are compelling reasons to temporarily halt progress at San Onofre before they fire up the new generators. The normal channels of communication through the NRC and FEMA have failed, and now we can only seek immediate action from Governor Schwarzenegger.