OB Rag

By Kate Callen

When you hear “city budget crisis,” does your mind make the leap to slashing funds for libraries and parks?

Or do you think about cutting obscure city management positions that pay huge salaries?

The public’s priorities for City spending will be discussed next month at four Citizen Budget Review Town Hall Meetings with Independent Budget Analyst (IBA) Charles Modica.

The title of the series is to the point: “Now that Measure E Has Failed, Where Should City Budget Cuts Be Made?”

Dates and locations are:

Downtown Julian. Amazing.

Snow at Mt Laguna — 8:15 am January 26, 2025

Here is a dramatic video of a smuggler’s boat capsizing at the shores of Ocean Beach Saturday morning, January 25. Surfers and lifeguards help rescue the survivors. Reportedly one immigrant didn’t make it.

The video is by Charles Landon who records one interview with one of the surfer rescuers.

Cal Fire crews are battling a brush fire that erupted on Otay Mountain Thursday afternoon, with evacuation orders and warnings in place for surrounding areas.

The “Border 2 Fire” as of 11:45 a.m. Friday was at 5,389 acres, “with long range spotting and extreme fire behavior.” Fire officials said the blaze was at 10% containment. It was first reported after 2:15 p.m. in the area of Otay Mountain Truck Trail in the Otay Wilderness Area. The fire jumped from 350 to over 500 acres within a half hour at one point.

Cal Fire issued an evacuation order for residents who live in the red shaded areas shown in the maps below. This means that there is an immediate threat and “you need to leave.” An evacuation warning has also been issued for the areas in yellow. Officials said, “Be prepared to evacuate should conditions change. If you feel you are in danger, go!”

UPDATE: As of 5 p.m., the Otay fire called “Border 2” is over 200 acres and 0% contained, with a dangerous rate of spread and the potential to burn through 500 acres, according to Cal Fire San Diego.A pair of fires began burning Thursday afternoon around San Diego County.

One of the fires, which began just after 2 p.m., is burning near Gilman Drive and Via Alicante in La Jolla, not far from where it intersects with Interstate 5, which is also close to UC San Diego and the Torrey Pines golf course, where the PGA is hosting the Farmers Insurance Open this week.

Evacuations have been ordered for immediate area.

Otay Mountain Fire

A second vegetation fire also began burning Thursday afternoon on Otay Mountain near the U.S.-Mexico border. At a little before 2:30 p.m., Cal Fire San Diego tweeted out that the border fire had already burned 20 acres and had a “dangerous rate of spread.” An hour later, it was reported to have spread to 60 acres.

From LA Times

By Kevin Rector / LA Times / Jan. 21, 2025

California, a coalition of other states and the city of San Francisco sued the federal government Tuesday over President Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship via executive order — calling it an unconstitutional directive that flies in the face of long-standing legal precedent.

“I have one message for President Trump: I’ll see you in court,” California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said during a morning news conference — calling the order “unconstitutional and quite frankly un-American.”

The lawsuit asks the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts to block Trump’s order from taking effect — which it is meant to do in less than 30 days — and to “ensure that the rights of American-born children impacted by this order remain in effect while litigation proceeds,” Bonta said. “The president has overstepped his authority by a mile with this order, and we will hold him accountable.”

By George T. Conway III and Neal Kumar Katyal / Washington Post – RSN / Jan. 23, 2025

Sometimes the Constitution’s text is plain as day and bars what politicians seek to do. That’s the case with President Trump’s proposal to end “birthright citizenship” through an executive order. Such a move would be unconstitutional and would certainly be challenged. And the challengers would undoubtedly win.

Trump has long argued that birthright citizenship for the children of parents not legally in the United States should be abolished. “It’s ridiculous. And it has to end,” he told Axios in an interview released Tuesday, in which he disclosed his plan for the unilateral action.

But at its core, birthright citizenship is what our 14th Amendment is all about,

Cognitive behavioral therapy and LGBTQ+ education will be included in the treatment program for the defendants

By City News Service / January 22, 2025 

Four men pleaded guilty this week to taking part in a string of pellet gun shootings in Hillcrest last fall that police described as hate-related.

The defendants, all 19 years old, were arrested in connection with drive-by attacks on six victims along University Avenue on the night of Sept. 7, 2024.

San Diego police described the crimes at the time as “hate crime-related assaults” and the defendants were initially charged with hate crime allegations that elevated what would be misdemeanor battery counts to felonies.

What we are witnessing is not simply right-wing ascendancy in national politics but a long-term decline and corporate consolidation of American journalism.

By David Helvarg / Common Dreams / Jan 13, 2025

Two billionaire publishers, the Washington Post’s Jeff Bezos and the LA Times Patrick Soon-Shiong, blocked their editorial page editors from endorsing Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election (a Washington Post editorial cartoonist than quit when her cartoon depicting Jeff Bezos, Son-Shiong and other billionaires abasing themselves in front of Trump was killed). If you believe the Washington Post’s slogan that ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness,’ their owner was the first to switch off the light.

Soon-Shiong also blocked an editorial asking the Senate to perform its constitutional duty to provide advice and consent on Trump’s cabinet picks. Next ABC News (owned by Disney) agreed to pay $15 million in a settlement of a Trump defamation lawsuit

by Ernie McCray

My heart continues
to bleed miserably
for the incredibly hapless residents
of Los Angeles
and I, particularly,
can’t imagine
how hard it must be
for the LA football teams,
the Chargers
and the Rams,
that had to board planes
to make it to NFL Playoff Games
while their beautiful city was aflame
due to a firestorm of a magnitude|
that’s almost impossible
for one to make sense of in his brain,