OB Rag

Plus: Bernie’s Policies Are the Answer to the Rise of the Far-Right

By Robert B. Reich / RobertReich.org

With the Democratic primaries grinding to a bitter end, I have suggestions for both Clinton and Sanders supporters that neither will like.

First, my advice to Clinton supporters: Don’t try to drum Bernie Sanders out of the race before Hillary Clinton officially gets the nomination (if she in fact does get it).

Some of you say Bernie should bow out because he has no chance of getting the nomination, and his continuing candidacy is harming Hillary Clinton’s chances.

By Dan Bacher

Claiming that fracking poses “no significant impact” to the environment, Obama administration officials on May 27 finalized their plans to allow oil companies to resume offshore fracking and acidizing in California’s Santa Barbara Channel.

The announcement from the two agencies responsible for oil drilling, the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Management (BOEM) and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), ended a court-ordered settlement placing a moratorium on offshore fracking and acidizing for oil in the fish and wildlife-rich federal waters off California.

The two agencies reported they have completed a comprehensive environmental analysis evaluating the potential impacts from the use of “well stimulation treatments” – acidizing and fracking operations — on the 23 oil and gas platforms currently in operation on the Outer Continental Shelf offshore California.

Channel 10 News is running a story about somebody carving racist and nasty messages into freshly poured concrete in Ocean Beach – near the residence of Juan Viella, a five-year resident.

The messages were racist and political and were signed “OB SS” – “SS” being a Nazi reference.

Here are the messages that Viella found (WARNING: vulgarity approaching):

“Trump 2016,” “F*ck Bernie”, “Build the wall,” “No F**s, OBSS”

Viella has since scraped most of the hateful messages off the concrete on Lotus Street near Sunset Cliffs .

By Alliance San Diego

Editor: Following last Friday’s anti-Trump demonstrations at the San Diego Convention Center, local police and other law enforcement agencies descended on Barrio Logan in an unnecessary show of militarized force, corralling a community and making over 2 dozen arrests. This is a statement in response by Alliance San Diego. After the statement, we publish an update by Doug Porter from today’s San Diego Free Press.

Community leaders were shocked by the unwarranted show of force that law enforcement used during the peaceful rallies and marches that took place on Friday May 27 in response to the visit of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

Report of May Meeting of Peninsula Community Planning Board

By Tony de Garate

If there’s such a thing as a grocery store achieving rock-star excitement, it may well be happening at 955 Catalina Blvd. — the site of the future Jensen’s supermarket.

Jensen’s, which obtained the lease after the bankruptcy of previous tenant Fresh and Easy and an aborted plan to takeover by CVS Pharmacy, hopes to open sometime in the fall. In the meantime, the Peninsula Community Planning Board wants to speed up the momentum to bring grocery sales back to the site, which has been a supermarket since Food Basket operated there in the 1950s.

On May 19, at its monthly meeting, the board voted 11-0 to send a letter to Mayor Kevin Faulconer to express support and ensure any permit processing required does not fall through the cracks.

In doing so, however, the board struck language from the draft, presented by citizen activist Samantha Stockton, calling for a “fast track” or expedited permitting.

OB Residents to Protest Mills’ Outrageous Rents at Saturday June 4th Rally

By San Diego Tenants United

San Diego is currently facing a massive Housing Crisis: rents have increased 25% over the past decade and are expected to increase by 19% in just the next five (5) years, while wages have actually decreased for many San Diego residents.

A February 2015 KPBS article exposed multiple shortcomings with the current system in San Diego for ensuring basic living standards for tenants, making the case that slumlords are not held accountable in San Diego.

Fortunately, tenants in Ocean Beach are fighting back against one such landlord: Michael Mills.

“In the apartment complex I am in, almost half of the apartments are empty because he [Michael Mills] just keeps raising the rent,” explains one displaced Ocean Beach resident.

By Michael Steinberg / Black Rain Press

Nuclear Shutdown News chronicles the decline and fall of the US nuclear power industry at home and abroad, and highlights the efforts of those who are fighting to create a nuclear free future. Here is our May issue:

California Nuclear Ratepayers Still Struggling For Justice Over San Onofre Shutdown Costs

On May 17, the Orange County Register ran the story, “How much should consumers pay for the San Onofre shutdown?”

As previously reported by Nuclear Shutdown News, in June 2003, the San Onofre nuclear power plant, located in northern San Diego County, permanently shut down, 20 years ahead schedule.
This followed a scandal involving gross mismanagement and duplicity by its majority owner, Southern California Edison.

The Saga of the Controversial Froude Project at the San Diego Planning Commission

By Tom and Judy Parry

The decision by the San Diego Planning Commission was pretty clear: Five votes to allow a McMansion to go forward on our quiet Ocean Beach block of Froude Street, one vote to stop it.

Amid our disappointment, we’re allowing the lessons we learned to sink in. The one most frightening is that it can happen on any O.B. street with similar zoning, even if no McMansions are present, even if the entire block is dead set against it.

We live on Froude Street, between Voltaire and Greene streets. As we blogged before, a 50-parcel with one single-family house is about to be split into two 25-foot lots, each with a three-level residence filling the lot and pushing the 30-foot height limit.

Froude sits on the boundary of the Peninsula and Ocean Beach advisory planning boards. We live in the Peninsula district, where the planning board voted against the project 9 to 1. The Ocean Beach board, though their boundary line down the middle of the street is just 20 feet away, was never notified by the city and not allowed to vote. The reason? “We’re not required to [notify them].”

The OB Planing Board meets Wednesday, June 1st, at the OB Recreation Center. And at the top of their agenda are a series of presentations and updates, with no new development projects up for review by the Board.

Instead, the Board will receive a presentation about the so-called “Citizens Plan for San Diego” by veteran politico, Jeff Marston. This is the plan backed by the Chargers and some environmentalists and public-interest lawyers to construct a new stadium and convention center downtown.

Next up, is a presentation by Joe LaCava, head of the Committee of Planning Committees – a body of all the planning boards and committees across the city – about the City’s goal to install twenty round-abouts throughout the city. We know the City and OB planners have been considering a round-about at the intersection of West Pt Loma and Bacon.

The red crabs have arrived in OB – again.

Check out these photos by South OB Girl of the arrival of the red crabs on Bermuda beach on Sunday, May 29th. The pelagic red crabs (Pleuroncodes planipes) – probably washed up with the high tide.

Here is something that it may take a while for the scientists to tell you:

They arrived here last year around the same time. It was June 11, 2015 when they washed up along OB beaches in massive numbers.

By Jim Miller

What struck me the most about the recent Sanders rally in National City was how much the crowd embodied the notion of the beloved community.

As opposed to the corporate media caricature of Sanders’ supporters as a group of mostly angry, white “Bernie bros,” this huge gathering of over ten thousand people was diverse in age, gender, sexuality, race, and class.

It was also a kind, gentle crowd that fell silent when Sanders, in a moving gesture, stopped his speech when …

By Ernie McCray

What’s up with us liberals? We’ve freaked out over a chair supposedly being thrown in protest of shenanigans involving voting in Nevada. And we’re beside ourselves that Hillary got booed and hissed by folks whom we say “aren’t really democrats.”

I don’t like all that but I’ve learned over the years that politics can get rather mean and we democrats are proving that based on how we’re treating each other just discussing matters I’ve just described: talking to each other in caps and exclamations, littered with a few vulgarities.

Shouldn’t we be celebrating a campaign that’s been marvelous if, for no other reason, because of the important questions that are being raised regarding and by two very passionate democratic candidates?