OB Rag

By Ernie McCray

I began this writing a day after one of the president’s thuggish friends, a man who led his campaign, was found guilty of several counts of fraud, and his personal lawyer and “fixer” pleaded guilty to illegal payments under his direction.

I waited a day to see how the Republicans in the Senate and the House would react, foolishly holding out that they would finally say “Enough” to the lunacy coming out of the West Wing of the White House – considering that the clock should have run out on his presidency months ago.

And all they’ve done so far is claim that a sitting president can’t be indicted when, whether that is true or not, they have the power to take him down. Like they could impeach the sordid clown.

By Huiying B Chan / Daily Kos

Wildfires continue to ravage California. Instead of hiring firefighters to put out the fires, the government is turning to incarcerated people for labor. More than 3,400 prisoners risk their lives every day to tackle the wildfires. While the average California firefighter earns $74,000 plus benefits annually, imprisoned people are paid as little as $2 a day. By relying on prison labor, California avoids spending $80 to $100 million a year.

On Saturday, Aug. 25, the Ocean Beach Town Council partied. It was their 50th anniversary – and the celebration rocked the patio of Newbreak Church.

Local bands played, pizzas from Pizza Port and SurfRider were the menu, draft beer from the OB Brewery was on tap – and raffle prizes were handed out.

President Marcus Turner got the ball rolling with welcomes and intros; past presidents Dave Martin and Gretchen Newsom were on hand, and Councilwoman Lorie Zapf joined the fun – and stayed quite a while.

The infamous Mike James gave an inspiring speech. Happy Birthday was sung and a delicious birthday cake was carved up and dished out.

A federal judge last week ordered San Diego police to temporarily stop ticketing homeless people living in their vehicles. Sitting in San Diego, U.S. District Judge Anthony Battaglia issued the injunction until he makes a final ruling in a case brought to court by a class-action suit by a group of disabled homeless people living in recreational vehicles.

They filed the suit last year against the law, which they claim is discriminatory, with the help of the Disability Rights California and The National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty. In his order issued August 21, Battaglia called the city ordinance that prohibits people for living inside vehicles too vague

It shouldn’t be news to readers of the OB Rag that life here under the perfect sun isn’t always so easy, particularly for working people. Indeed, as a Bloomberg report outlined last May, “The gap between the have and have-nots in San Diego was the ninth-highest out of 100 cities between 2011 to 2016.”

As usual, this report received not much more than a shrug in the place where happy happens as we were too busy spectacularly failing to address our shameful homelessness crisis yet again while the supply of high-end condos downtown and elsewhere continues to grow. So it goes.

It’s the same old story over and over again here–and everywhere else.

According to a new ranking by a food website, The Daily Meal , San Diego has seven of the top 50 burritos in America. Wow!

On top of that, two local OB and Point Loma burritos made it to their “Top 10”.

Here is what they say:

By Jake Johnson / Common Dreams

As California lawmakers prepared on Wednesday for a key committee vote (it passed) on their state’s net neutrality bill — which, in its current form, would restore the protections repealed by the FCC in December — the Santa Clara County Fire Department accused the telecom giant Verizon of dramatically cutting its data speed as [the department] recently fought the largest recorded wildfire in California’s history.

After Verizon admitted that it slowed the fire department’s data — a despised practice known as throttling —

Do you own or run a small or home business in Ocean Beach?

If so, the OB Rag is offering you one full week of free advertising on our platform. And there’s no catch. It’s just part of our showing support to very small and local businesses and merchants.

All you have to do is send us what we used to call in the print business, “camera-ready copy” – that is your ad all ready to go, send it to us in an email, and we’ll post it in our side-bar for one week. Plus we’ll connect the ad with a business link you have. Here are the details:

There’s just too many questions being raised about the newly-formed Sunset Cliffs Merchants Association and a so-called “Street Fair” they are organizing.

On this past Wednesday, Aug. 22, the OB Rag published a post about the group and the street fair supposedly calendared for September 1 – a week away – using a report in the online The Beacon by Judi Curry and using the group’s facebook page.

But over the last two days there’s been some pushback mainly in the form of comments and questions to the article, private comments made at Wed’s OB Town Council meeting, and more concerns raised after some quick digging by locals.

By Egberto Willies / Daily Kos

America needs a paradigm shift when it comes to how it deals with products that affect our moods, psyche, and our overall well-being. We must do so based on data instead of ideology, and deprogramming many will be difficult. But marijuana must be completely decriminalized.

Houston cannabis activist Ashley Miller appeared on Politics Done Right to bring awareness to many issues about marijuana, aka weed, aka cannabis. Her first goal was to dispel the notion that there are any valid reasons why marijuana is illegal. Second, she hoped to activate Americans both locally and throughout the country. As one listens to all the arguments and discourse about marijuana, there can only be one conclusion: the product should not be illegal.

By Stephanie Corkran / SanDiego350

Brown’s Last Chance is a campaign demanding Governor Jerry Brown halt the development of unsustainable, polluting, fossil fuel infrastructure and begin an immediate phase-out of fossil fuels in California.

If he’s unwilling to do so, a multitude of organizations (environmental, health, justice, community, consumer) are prepared to protest the upcoming Global Climate Action Summit.

At their monthly public meeting last night – Wed., August 22 – the Ocean Beach Town Council opened up the floor for presentations from a handful of local groups as part of the board’s “What’s Happening Around Town” forum.

Over fifty souls sat in the sweltering Masonic Center downstairs hall as presentations were given by Denny Knox of the OB Mainstreet Association, by Andrea Schlageter of the OB Planning Board, and by a member of San Diego Bicycle Coalition on an upcoming “CiclOBias” in Ocean Beach.