OB Rag

The internal division within the Services Employees International Union (SEIU) has taken a serious turn for the worst, breaking out in open warfare between the factions. This new trench to trench in-fighting has resulted in a new national healthcare workers’ union, but has also disrupted local labor negotiations at Tri-City Hospital, already beset with its own internal battles.

San Diego’s libraries are back on the local issues burner, as the City of San Diego begins a new round of meetings that seek community input on the City’s budget. And this means the libraries and other social services. The community input meetings begin this Wednesday evening, Feb 4, in Council District 4.

Crews started cutting down more than a dozen trees surrounding the Jolly Roger restaurant at the Oceanside Harbor this week, displacing some birds that had nearly taken over the property and prompting a debate over whether the action was an outrage or a relief.

Twelve eucalyptus and two Torrey pine trees are being removed this week due to what restaurant officials said was a health and safety issue involving excessive amounts of bird feces accumulating in the area.

Are you an OBcean with services or products you’d like to offer your fellow residents – and you don’t represent a big corporation or business?

Is there a community event coming up that you know about? Or you might want to share the success of one that has already happened.

Is there a local group or individual that deserve some props? Perhaps an issue that you just want to bring to light? Let us know, if it interests you it will interest others.

To post your OB Flash all you have to do is leave a comment.

We’re starting up a new feature here on the OB Rag, OB Flashes. Back in the day when the Rag was printed on paper, OB Flashes was a place for news and happenings around Ocean Beach, but we want to expand its original intent. We hope to start some dialog, a place for our readers to post their own OB Flashes and alert us and our growing community to things of interest that are happening in and around Ocean Beach.

Are you an OBcean with services or products you’d like to offer your fellow residents – and you don’t represent a big corporation or business? Is there a community event coming up that you know about? Or you might want to share the success of one that has already happened.

Late last night (Feb. 10th) around 9pm, in a 3-2 vote, the School Board of the San Diego Unified School District voted to removed JROTC shooting ranges from district high school campuses.

Congratulations are due the Education Not Arms Coalition which has been fighting this for a year and to the 150 students from Lincoln, Mission Bay and other high schools who were at the school district offices and board meeting today for over 6 hours.

by Frank Gormlie and Patty Jones

When we heard what the Encinitas tree-sitter was doing, Patty and I wanted to meet him. So we drove up the coast on a beautiful day to do just that. We found Orpheus Park – about halfway between the freeway and the coast – denuded of most of its trees.

And there was Andrew Watkins hanging upside down from a large branch, along with a few other friends who had climbed up to the platform that Watkins had assembled.

Authorities at Super Bowl XLIII will be looking for more than just drunken fans. They’ll be watching spectators’ body language, facial expressions and demeanor to find suspicious people.

For the first time Sunday, federal behavior-detection officers will team with local police to use a controversial technique on people heading to a major event, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) says. The officers usually work in airports.

A large sculpture of one of the shoes thrown at President Bush last December by an Iraqi journalist was unveiled this week just outside an orphanage in Tikrit, Iraq — Saddam Hussein’s hometown. The orphans at the complex helped sculptor Laith al-Amiri build the shoe monument. “Those orphans who helped the sculptor in building this monument were the victims of Bush’s war,” said Faten Abdulqader al-Naseri, the orphanage director, adding that it “is a gift to the next generation to remember the heroic action by the journalist.” Al-Amiri praised the journalist, Muntadhar al-Zeidi.

With today’s announcement by the Union-Tribune of the latest San Diego area teacher to be accused of having sex with a student being arraigned in the South County Court, we turn to our archives. Now, with Carmina Erica Lopez charged with molesting and having sex with a boy who was a one-time student, we add her to our rolls of area teachers – which now add up to twelve – who have had sex with students in the last few years. Helix High School has been getting all the attention, as four of the teachers taught there. But the focus by the mainstream media on that singular fact misses an even greater issue.

Bloomberg reports that, according to recently released IRS data, “the average tax rate paid by the richest 400 Americans fell by a third to 17.2 percent through the first six years of the Bush administration and their average income doubled to $263.3 million.” Much of their income came from capital gains resulting from the Bush tax cuts:

The drop from 2001’s tax rate of 22.9 percent was due largely to ex-President George W. Bush’s push to cut tax rates on most capital gains to 15 percent in 2003.

On yet another morning of grim economic news, President Obama sought to further distance himself from his predecessor on Friday as he announced steps that he said would strengthen organized labor and improve the lot of middle-class Americans.

At a White House ceremony, the president signed three executive orders that he said would “reverse many of the policies towards organized labor that we’ve seen these last eight years, policies with which I’ve sharply disagreed.”