OB Rag

The Employee Free Choice Act was introduced in Congress this week, but the action wasn’t all in Washington. Around the country, grassroots efforts are growing to pass this critical bill to restore workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain.

Hundreds of phone calls and handwritten letters have gone to U.S. senators this week, urging them to support the Employee Free Choice Act.

It may be true, as someone has suggested, that young people of Ocean Beach today have no idea of the on-going, daily tension between the police and the youth of OB a generation ago. Things are taken for granted.

Take the concept of police review, of the idea that civilians with some authority review the activities of police officers through an independent process. Heh? What’s the big deal? you ask. Of course, there should be some sort of civilian monitoring of and control on how police act and behave toward citizens.

by Norm Stamper

As police brutality cases go, it may not be one for the annals.

In late February, King County, WA sheriff’s deputy Paul Schene deposited a slender 15-year-old girl into a holding cell and ordered her to remove her shoes. The teen used her right toe to loosen the heel of her left sneaker, which she then cast off, the rubber-soled shoe apparently striking Schene in the shin.

As she began the mirror process with the other shoe, Schene stormed the holding cell, …

A HUNDRED years ago a group of foreign diplomats gathered in Shanghai for the first-ever international effort to ban trade in a narcotic drug. On February 26th 1909 they agreed to set up the International Opium Commission—just a few decades after Britain had fought a war with China to assert its right to peddle the stuff. Many other bans of mood-altering drugs have followed. In 1998 the UN General Assembly committed member countries to achieving a “drug-free world” and to “eliminating or significantly reducing” the production of opium, cocaine and cannabis by 2008.

by Lane Tobias

After writing the first piece on food stamps, a number of questions have come up regarding San Diego’s place in the food stamps controversy. How are the income guidelines that determine eligibility set? Why does San Diego county have such low enrollment in the program? And most of all, what can we do about it?

The income guidelines that the USDA utilizes are based on the “Orshansky Poverty Thresholds”, developed for the Social Security Administration by a woman named Mollie Orshansky in the late 50’s and adopted by all Executive Administrations in 1965. Her guidelines took into account family size, farm or non-farm family, income, and other relative numbers.

Many of the vendors kicked out from Rock Paper Scissors are still angry at Dr Jefe who ran the place, and who supposedly decided in one day to immediately close the business – a business that had grown to be one of the most popular storefronts on Newport Avenue. Jeff Fagan, the real Dr Jefe, had told me that the fateful day was February 2nd, when after reading his financial statements, he decided to close RPS immediately.

The vendors don’t believe that. They believe that he and his staff knew business was bad, but the message they gave out to the vendors was that ‘everything was fine.’ That’s what they heard.

A century and a half ago it was at the centre of the Californian gold rush, with hopeful prospectors pitching their tents along the banks of the American River. Today, tents are once again springing up in the city of Sacramento. But this time it is for people with no hope and no prospects. With America’s economy in freefall and its housing market in crisis, California’s state capital has become home to a tented city for the dispossessed.

In my first post of this series on San Diego County government, I gave an overview of the County itself and then a brief look at the governmental machine. Because of the sheer size and magnitude of its operations and reach, it can be very overwhelming any time one looks at our County political apparatus. Because our county is huge, the government shell over it has to be huge too. And we’ve got to understand this shell.

You old hippies from the sixties and seventies remember the Furry Freak Brothers, right? And the crazy things they used to do with their cat, Freddy. Well, one of the brothers is alive and well in the body of a 20-year old dude, Acea Schomaker of Lincoln, Nebraska. Schomaker – in order to calm down an abused cat that he and his girlfriend took in – placed the 6-month old feline into a large, make-shift bong.

Schomaker said that when he smoked marijuana through it, it calmed the cat down.

Ocean Beach Planning Board meets tonight – March 4 – at 6pm at Rec Center.

Your OB Rag blog editor Frank Gormlie was mentioned in Union-Tribune columnist Michael Stetz’s article today – March 4th, and the blog is mentioned. His column is on page B-1, and entitled “Budget cuts at the coast sting like a sunburn”. It’s all about how Mayor Jerry Sanders has been chopping at the beach and coast with his budgetary axe, and how he doesn’t really understand and appreciate beach culture.

A military jet crash that killed four civilians in University City last fall was a preventable accident caused by mechanical problems and a series of poor decisions, Marine Corps officials said today. The pilot of the disabled F/A-18D Hornet that went down near Nobel Drive and Interstate 805 on Dec. 8 should have made an emergency landing at Naval Air Station North Island, which was closer and involved an approach over water, USMC authorities said during a briefing this afternoon.

The Capitol Power Plant’s days of coal are over. It’s been the waiting game here: Since 2 pm, over 2,000 activists have blockaded the three main gates to the Capitol Power Plant. The rather larger police turnout is impressive; clad in their best stocking caps, they dot the chain fence like lamp-posts, taking in the gregarious march with a bit of interest and fascination. No attempt at any arrests have been made. The crowd is controlled and peaceful; there is a festive atmosphere, young and old, all bundled up and dancing to keep warm on this crystal clear but chilly afternoon.