OB Rag

By Colleen O’Connor / Times of San Diego / June 16, 2020

The warnings are dire. The options limited. The fears real. But keeping schools closed the remainder of the year may be a mistake.

Why open up in August? The reasons are obvious and many.

First, San Diego education leaders warn of financial calamity. If even a small number of parents choose not to send their children back to traditional schools, it could trigger a funding crisis and threaten the link between neighborhoods and schools.”

Public schools, as libraries, are often the cornerstones of safety in many neighborhoods.

Yet, some parents will seek out alternative education sites: private schools, charter schools, academies, tutors and home-schooling options — further eroding the tax base allotments for the public ones—as those funds are calculated on a daily head count in every district. No one can blame parents for wanting to keep their children safe.

18th Annual Creek to Bay Cleanup

Goes Virtual with Facebook Live Kick-off!

Celebrate the first day of summer with San Diego County’s first major cleanup run by you, in your neighborhood along with thousands of other small cleanup efforts across the region – all hosted on social media! Many small efforts make a lasting environmental impact!

Saturday, June 20 2020 Starting at 9 AM

Join an army of socially-distanced Volunteer Environmental Champions by cleaning up litter and pollution in your neighborhood. Thousands of small efforts across the county will help prevent TONS of litter from entering our creeks, bays and the ocean!

How to Participate- COME INSIDE

Environmental groups again defeat the county’s approach to climate change in a nearly decade-long legal battle.

By Joshua Emerson Smith / San Diego Union-Tribune / June 17, 2020

A state court has struck down a San Diego County plan to allow housing developers to buy their way around restrictions on greenhouse-gas emissions from new vehicle traffic using so-called carbon offsets.

The 4th District Court of Appeal in San Diego issued its ruling on Friday in response to a lawsuit brought by the Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity, Climate Action Campaign and other environmental groups. Specifically, the three-judge panel’s decision tossed out the county’s latest adopted Climate Action Plan — the sixth such ruling in nearly a decade.

by Brad Racino / inewsource / June 17, 2020

Following an inewsource report that the VA San Diego Healthcare System has stopped paying for a drug treatment that helps suicidal veterans, a panel of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs has begun investigating the decision.

El Cajon veteran AJ Williams, featured this month in the inewsource investigation, was interviewed Monday by a staff member from the House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee. A representative from San Diego Congressman Scott Peters’ office also participated.

Williams is one of several veterans pulled from ketamine treatments at a private clinic and ordered back to the VA to be treated with a controversial nasal spray President Donald Trump has touted as “incredible.”

The only bookstore in Ocean Beach, Run for Cover on Voltaire near Cable, is closing its doors on July 1. There will be major sidewalk sales coming up – so stay alert for them, as Marianne Reiner, the owner, has to sell as much of her inventory as possible. (Check RfC website for dates, etc.)

Here is the statement to her Book Lovers that Marianne wrote on her website:

Dear Book Lovers,

This is the letter I was hoping to never have to write.

Run for Cover Bookstore in its current form will be closing as of July 1, 2020.

The greatest gift Run for Cover Bookstore has brought me has been to get to know so many of you. Our conversations, our exchanges about books, society and life in general have enriched me in ways I can’t even begin to describe.

Organized to Disrupt

By Thomas Ultican / Tultican / June 10, 2020

The New Schools Venture Fund (NSVF) is the Swiss army knife of public school privatization. It promotes education technology development, bankrolls charter school creation, develops charter management organizations and sponsors school leadership training groups.

Since its founding in 1998, a small group of people with extraordinary wealth have been munificent in their support. NSVF is a significant asset in the billionaire funded drive to end democratically run public schools and replace them with privatized corporate structures.

1990’s Silicon Valley was a Happening Place

Like elsewhere in America, every little strip mall in San Jose, California had a Blockbuster video rental store. In 1997, Reed Hastings and Netflix co-founder Mark Reynolds came up with a disruptive idea that put Blockbuster out of business. For a monthly fee, they offered DVD’s by mail with no late charges. Blockbuster did not adapt fast enough and went bankrupt.

By Sheila Pell / San Diego Reader / June 16, 2020

A new ordinance regulating the use of drones in Del Mar will take effect on June 17. The rules will “add to guidelines set by the FAA,” a city report says. While the Federal Aviation Authority regulates and sets guidelines for drones, local governments can control some aspects.

However, the areas available for local regulation are limited.

Ewww!

by Ernie McCray

Lately I’ve found myself saying “Ewww!” a lot.

It began over a week ago on a nice easy summer day.

I was reading a great book and two young friends of ours were painting our hallway.

An odor suddenly enters the room. It’s weak at first, and then it blows me away. I mean it was like a farting contest was going on in my nose between contestants who had trained by eating pots full of spoiled pinto beans.

In those moments I wondered:

“Is there a broken sewer in the neighborhood?”

“Did someone dump a truck load of rotten eggs in the backyard?”

“Is a dinosaur decomposing in the canyon our house is in?”

I thought I heard someone walking in the patio and I almost asked “Hey, is that you, Pepe Le Pew? Pig-Pen?”

By David Hernandez / SDU-T / June 14, 2020

San Diego police Officer Jonathan Wiese was almost at Sunset Cliffs early Saturday when a lieutenant radioed that the suicidal driver police had been looking for had just driven off the cliffs.

The man’s wife had called the Sheriff’s Department around 4:30 a.m. reporting that her husband had taken off with their 2-year-old girls, with plans to drive off the San Diego-Coronado Bridge. After police traced the man’s cellphone to Sunset Cliffs, police Lt. Dave Bautista located the truck on Hill Street near Cornish Drive. As soon as Bautista got close, the driver sped off

If you’re one of those who don’t believe there needs to be wholesale reforms of the police (as there’s just a few bad apples) you need to watch this video. Warning: it ain’t pretty – and it’s from August 2019 in New Mexico.

The video shows a squad of police officers fully armed approach a homeless man sleeping at a bus stop. They received a call about him. They put on their full combat gear and at least 4 officers approach the man, with rifles leveled at him. They demand that he raise his hands, which he does, and they demand that he lays flat on his stomach. He refuses.

It’s a very disturbing video – prepare yourself.

By Kevin Hastings

In the late 1960s, city planners and developers devised a plan to transform Ocean Beach into high-density condos, apartments, and hotels. OBceans organized and fought back, pressuring politicians to drop the plan, and ultimately led to the formation of the Ocean Beach Planning Board and a rewrite of the community plan to preserve the small-scale development model we see to this day.

Fifty years later, history is repeating itself with Mayor Faulconer pushing a proposal called “Complete Communities” to transform housing development in multi-family areas of San Diego, and Ocean Beach in particular.

The current zoning and OB Community Plan limits housing density

By Alexandra Petri / WaPo / June 10, 2020

Buffalo protester shoved by Police could be an ANTIFA provocateur. 75 year old Martin Gugino was pushed away after appearing to scan police communications in order to black out the equipment. @OANN I watched, he fell harder than was pushed. Was aiming scanner. Could be a set up?
— President Trump on Twitter

For your birthday, she knits you an unwanted scarf. To be used as a balaclava?

She belongs to a decentralized group with no leadership structure that claims to be discussing a “book,” but no one ever reads the book and all they seem to do is drink wine.

Is always talking on the phone with an “aunt” you have never actually met in person. Aunt TIFA???? Always walking into rooms and claiming