OB Rag

by Ernie McCray

This is a little story about a place called Bear Down Gym and me.

I just found out that it’s in the National Register of Historic Places and an historic place is exactly what it is to me.

We were tight. It provided me a space that eventually led to me being in my school’s Sports Hall of Fame and Basketball Ring of Honor.

In between its bleacher-ed walls I’d do my thing to foot stomping cheers and applause that still remain as music to my ears after sixty-one years.

I loved every inch of the building, even the dead spot on its court that no one could apparently fix. But for a relationship to work you have to accept a pimple or a wart or two in the mix.

I can just picture myself, back then, walking to this beloved gym, on a game day, slowly putting on my game face.

Gina Champion-Cain, the former owner of the Surf Rider Pizza chain, a host of “patio restaurants”, vacation rentals and clothing businesses, was sentenced Thursday to 15 years in prison for operating almost a $400 million Ponzi scheme, with hundreds of victims.

U.S. District Judge Larry Burns said Champion-Cain deserved the maximum, calling her crimes a “tremendous fraud” and a “betrayal,” and likely the biggest fraud committed in the history of the federal court’s Southern District of California.

Her Ocean Beach Surf Rider Pizza had to close – and now the building has a whole different business. Champion-Cain was not the original owner of Surf Rider Pizza, having purchased the small chain from other owners.

Judge Burns said Champion-Cain could have been charged with many more criminal counts — and faced a much longer prison term —

The Ocean Beach Green Center will be celebrating our 32nd Anniversary on Earth Day April 22nd. We can’t have our usual celebration this year but we will be open from 12:30 to 6:30 with Covid-19 protocols if you want to drop by and say hi! We will have a donation jar available if you are so inclined to make a small donation. Do not feel obligated as we know a lot of people are having a hard time. Your presence is our present. Happy Earth Day

A lot is happening this month. Because it is Earth Day Month environmental events dominate the calendar. Peace and Social Justice highlighted events are listed but check out our list of all P & SJ groups for more of their events. Go to http://www.oceanbeachgreencenter.org/get-involved.html for their links

April Events From the Ocean Beach Green Center

All events are online and free unless stated otherwise.

Nuclear Shutdown News April 2021

By Michael Steinberg / Black Rain Press

Nuclear Shutdown News chronicles the decline and fall of nuclear power in the US and beyond, and highlights the efforts of those working for a nuclear free future.

Since I began writing Nuclear Shutdown News in 2014, I’ve learned that the No Nukes Movement resembles a woe-begone tale with more twists and turns than anyone would care to imagine.

The now outdated nuclear power technology began as the Atoms for Peace program following the mass nuclear destruction of multitudes of humans at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Now nuke power freaks don’t seem to know how to give up the ghost.

Perhaps nothing illustrates this better- or worse– than the current situation with California’s two remaining nukes, both overshadowed by the legacy of multiple meltdowns at Fukushima 10 years ago

A lawsuit filed by a long-time City Heights resident alleges that the recent invitation to bid on San Diego’s utility franchises by Mayor Todd Gloria favors SDG&E and actually violates the city charter.

Resident John Stump, an attorney, has initiated the lawsuit in which it’s alleged that Gloria’s bid process violates Section 103 of the charter, which requires a two-thirds vote of the City Council to approve a franchise agreement. Stump is represented by the prestigious law firm Aguirre & Severson (that’s Mike Aguirre – the former City Attorney for San Diego); the firm’s Maria Severson told the press that the invitation favors SDG&E.

By Amy Gardner, Kate Rabinowitz and Harry Stevens / Washington Post

The GOP’s national push to enact hundreds of new election restrictions could strain every available method of voting for tens of millions of Americans, potentially amounting to the most sweeping contraction of ballot access in the United States since the end of Reconstruction, when Southern states curtailed the voting rights of formerly enslaved Black men, a Washington Post analysis has found.

In 43 states across the country, Republican lawmakers have proposed at least 250 laws

By Thomas Ultican

The second and third presidents of the United States advocated powerfully for public education. Thomas Jefferson saw education as the cause for developing out of common farmers the enlightened citizenry who would take the rational action a successful republican democracy requires. Jefferson contended,

“The qualifications for self government are not innate. They are the result of habit and long training.”

By Thomas Ultican / Tultican / March 29, 2021

The original cause for my supporting public education was that my rancher father married a school teacher. Growing up in southern Idaho, I learned many philosophical and theoretical reasons for supporting the establishment and maintenance of public schools from my mother. However, it was from watching mom and her dedicated colleagues in action that I learned to truly respect and appreciate public school.

I remember stories of my father being warned that he better not treat that woman wrong. For several years in a row she won the Elmore County sharp shooting contest. She didn’t like to chop a chicken’s head off so she would pull out her rifle and shoot it off.

Yesterday, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) pleaded with Americans to not give up on using the measures we’re employed this last year to staunch the spread of COVID-19, and warned of a the possible coming of a Fourth Surge.

In an emotional address to the country, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, issued a dire warning of a sense of “impending doom” as coronavirus infections and hospitalizations tick up. Walensky said there are “continuing concerning trends” in the nation’s response to the pandemic, as the numbers of infections, hospitalizations and deaths are all rising.

The trajectory of the pandemic in the United States, she said, is following European countries like Germany, Italy and France, which have experienced a “consistent and worrying spike in cases.”

In her televised address, Walensky became emotional, and said:

by Bob Edwards

Late last week the OB RAG received an email from a concerned reader who suggested a topic for a new article. “Hey, not sure if you guys are interested but there’s a swarm of bees at the USPS building on Cable St. Might be a cool story about how the city handles it,” the email stated.

This was not the first report of a bee situation in the Ocean Beach/ Point Loma area. Last year there was an infestation of aggressive bees on the Bayside Trail at Cabrillo National Monument that closed down the trail for months as the Park Service struggled to find a solution that didn’t involve a call to Terminex. Ultimately they sealed the “bee cave” that was the little critters’ home with expanding foam caulk and eventually it was bricked over, eliminating (at least for now) the problem.

by Cody Dulaney / inewsource / March 30, 2021

The city and county of San Diego set aside more than $47 million in federal coronavirus aid last fall to pay landlords whose low-income tenants were behind on rent. But some eligible renters didn’t get any help because their landlords didn’t take the money and they weren’t required to explain why.

Public records obtained by inewsource show 1,268 eligible households were denied assistance from the county’s rent relief program because their landlords either refused to participate or missed deadlines. The city’s program, overseen by the San Diego Housing Commission, had 19 households with landlords who wouldn’t accept payments, an agency spokesperson said.

Now, more than $211 million in state and federal funds have poured into the region to help low-income renters. And under a new state law, this time the programs come with built-in incentives designed to persuade landlords to take the money.

Data Shows Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans Bear Brunt of Racial Biases in Local Policing

Long before protests erupted across San Diego County over the death of George Floyd, a Black man who died last May after a Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck for almost nine minutes, community leaders have called on local law enforcement officials to address persistent racial disparities in policing.

For years, study after study has shown that people of color — especially Blacks — are stopped, searched and arrested at higher rates than their White counterparts.

A new analysis by The San Diego Union-Tribune of nearly 500,000 stops of drivers and pedestrians made by San Diego police and sheriff’s deputies