OB Rag

by Joe Mathews / Times of San Diego  Zócalo / November 9, 2024

California, let’s go Coastal. Let’s put the California Coastal Commission in charge of the entire state.

Why? Because, in this land of weak governments and cowardly corporations, the Coastal Commission is the rare California institution with a spine.

Elon Musk’s new fight against the commission is merely the latest testament to its extraordinary effectiveness.

The California Coastal Commission was created not by politicians but by the people of California, via a 1972 ballot initiative.

Barrio Logan Mid-Rise Planned

A four-story, 73-unit housing complex at 1864 National Avenue has won approval from the Barrio Logan Community Planning Group despite neighborhood pushback. The project will replace an industrial warehouse and take more than three years to complete.

On September 18, the planning group voted to recommend the project 6-2 with one abstention. According to an inewssource report, community members expressed concerns that parking problems along the busy street will grow worse. Minutes of the meeting by a documenter reported:

One feature that raised many questions was that the complex will only offer 13 parking spots. These spots will be located in an alley on the side of the building on a first-come, first-serve basis.

There were no satisfactory answers given to the questions, to some in the audience.

Residents to Demand Answers Why There Was No Community Input and More on “Footnote 7”

Encanto and Emerald Hills residents will turn out in force tomorrow, November 12th, at San Diego City Hall to stop a high-density housing project and demand detailed information about how residential zones in Southeast San Diego were up zoned with no input from the community planning group or neighbors.

“We’re identified as an environmental justice-affected community,” said Encanto resident Rob Campbell. “And so we don’t see how paving over what green space we have will increase our air quality or will decrease the heat island effect that we suffer from.”

The residents are appealing a multi-unit project made possible by a still-mysterious footnote in the city’s planning code that reduced the minimum lot size from 20,000 square feet to 5,000 square feet.

On November 8th members of a raft of locals of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) voted to ratify a new three-year contract with CVS Pharmacy.

The 8 locals — Locals 5, 135, 324, 648, 770, 1167, 1428 and 1442 — representing CVS pharmacists, clerks, and technicians  — reached the agreement after months of negotiations, a 3-day unlawful labor practices strike in Los Angeles and Orange counties, and active participation from thousands of California pharmacists, pharmacy clerks, and technicians.

By Geoff Page

As I thought about the Presidential election result this week, one thought dominated over everything. For the first time in my 73 years, I am ashamed to call myself an American.

I’m not naïve, I am familiar with the dark side of America’s history. We have a lot in our past to be ashamed of. Our founding on slavery and slaughter of the indigenous people was the start. As if that were not shame enough, that the effects of both still linger hundreds of years later is equally as shameful.

Racism, religious zealotry, misogyny, we have it all. Meddling in foreign governments, meddling that consisted of assassinations and wars.

But even with all of that, I always felt that what this country has accomplished was a counterweight to the shameful. I came of age in the 1960s that began with huddling under a puny elementary school desk for protection against an atomic bomb.

I lived in Arlington , Virginia, across the Potomac River from the nation’s capital. We lived about five miles from downtown D.C. Everyone knew that D.C. was a likely target in the event of a nuclear war.

I was in the 7th grade when John Kennedy was killed.

I was in high school in 1968 when Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed. I saw the devastation the riots left behind in D.C. Blocks of burned out and boarded up buildings that were once stores. Burned out hulks of cars.

Two short months later, Bobby Kennedy was killed. It began to feel like the world was falling apart, and it was.

by Ernie McCray

Mass deportation
is uppermost
in a mad man’s plan
on his first day back
to being president again
and my eyes dampen
as vivid recollections
flood my mind,
memories of an earlier time
in my lifetime.

1944.|
I was six years old.

Editordude: This Op-Ed by NY Times columnist Michelle Goldberg reprinted in the LA Times helped me to understand that I was truly grieving — in grief — about the death of democracy — and it helped me get through the weekend. I wanted to share it.

By Michelle Goldberg / The Spokesman Review – New York Times /Sat., Nov. 9, 2024 

When Donald Trump won the first time, I spoke to a journalist friend in Turkey to commiserate. I told her about all the protests that were planned, and she gently tried to prepare me for disappointment. She and her friends had protested Recep Tayyip Erdogan when he was prime minister, she said. But in time, the protests subsided, and life within a country of diminishing freedoms ground on. This conversation stayed in my mind throughout the Trump presidency as a warning against letting down our guard. When Trump was finally ejected from the White House, I felt patriotic pride in the endurance of the anti-Trump resistance, which had never for a moment accepted his grotesquerie as our new normal.

It won’t be that way this time.

By Laura Meckler and Andrew Jeong / Washington Post / November 9, 2024

For most of the country, predictions that Election Day would morph into election week or election month did not come to pass.
Then there’s California, where millions of ballots remain uncounted.

The most populous state in the union has one of the longest vote-counting processes. That’s partly because California has so many ballots to count and partly because the state makes it easy for its citizens to vote, which means election officials have to work harder to certify that ballots are valid.

The result is — it may take a while for results. As of midday Saturday, 10 House races in California had yet to be called, with control of the House on the line. Also uncalled were a few closely fought ballot initiatives, including one that would gradually raise the minimum wage to $18 per hour.

As of Saturday, there were nearly 5 million uncounted ballots, including more than 950,000 in Los Angeles County alone. County officials have 30 days to count their ballots and report them to the secretary of state, which then certifies the results.

The Washington Post reports :

As of Saturday, there were nearly 5 million uncounted ballots in California, including more than 950,000 in Los Angeles County alone. County officials have 30 days to count their ballots and report them to the secretary of state, which then certifies the results.

Days after Republicans won the presidency and control of the Senate, the exact makeup of the 119th Congress remained unclear, with control of the House uncertain and one Senate seat left to be called.

Early Saturday, Sen. Jacky Rosen (D) was projected to win Nevada’s Senate race, according to the Associated Press, marking a victory for Democrats in one of the last Senate seats to be called.

On election night, Republicans secured enough seats to attain the Senate majority. Arizona’s Senate race remains the last one without a projected winner. There, Rep. Ruben Gallego (D) leads Republican Kari Lake. If Gallego wins, Republicans will have a 53-seat majority.

The current balance of power in the House is 212 Republicans and 203 Democrats, with 20 races remaining uncalled. Republicans need to win six of them to secure a majority; Democrats need to win 15.

What’s left to be called

Neighbors upset. They seemed to be finding out about a developer’s plans in their neighborhood — but the City of San Diego wasn’t helping them.

Sound familiar?

It’s a story that’s resounding across San Diego communities these days – and this time it’s in Emerald Hills and the Chollas area. And this time, it involves a low-income community that is mainly African-American and Latino.

Two tall radio towers sit on the highest point of Emerald Hills which is a huge empty green lot behind wire fencing. Yet, it’s private land and two years ago, the city announced that a housing project would be constructed there.

Neighbors had wanted a  park there, something akin to Kate Sessions in Pacific Beach with maybe a youth or senior center. But now these neighbors are finding out about a developer’s plans to build more than 120 units on the empty lot. Yet, the zoning map showed that only about 70 houses would be allowed on the parcel.

By Brae Canlen

The recriminations were swift, against Biden, Harris, and the Democrats. He should have stepped down sooner. She ran a lousy campaign. They should have given us a better candidate.

True or false, these are not the reasons why Donald Trump will become the 47th president of the United States. As of late Thursday, more than 72 million people voted for him. I’m pretty sure that most of them knew – they knew – he was not a good man. And they didn’t care.

It would be easy to demonize these people, and let’s face it, some of them are wackos (Proud Boys, QAnon, Oath Keepers, etc.). But when I looked at all those red states on the election map Tuesday night, after the polls had closed, I tried to think of the average people who lived there. The parents who had 2.5 kids, pay a monthly $2,209 mortgage payment, and carry a credit card balance of $6,642.