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Why Does San Diego Have Such Bad Air Quality?

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It’s Worse than You Might Think…

By South OB Girl / OB Rag

There is a lot of discussion these days about climate change. Global warming. Carbon emissions. The Climate Action Plan. You no doubt have friends talking about going electric, or who are proud owners and drivers of electric vehicles. Or friends or family members who devoutly bike everywhere. You may know some folks too who use public transportation.

The majority of San Diegans are dissatisfied with public transpiration. San Diegans prefer cars — it’s our way of life. Not necessarily across the board — many satisfied bus riders in OB take the 923 bus downtown for work and are quite satisfied — doing work, reading, or playing games on their bus ride.   [Read more…]

After Two Wars, Standing Rock is the First Time I Served the American People

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By Will Griffin / Common Dreams

I was in Iraq when President Bush announced the “surge” in January 2007. I was in Afghanistan when President Obama announced the “surge” in December 2009. But it wasn’t until I visited Standing Rock in October 2016 when I actually served the American people. This time, instead of fighting for corporate interests, I was fighting for the people.

The Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), or Bakken Pipeline, is a 1,172-mile oil pipeline project that will transfer crude oil across four states: North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, and Illinois. From the Bakken fields of North Dakota, the pipeline will carry in excess of 450,000 barrels per day of crude oil to Patoka, Illinois, and possibly on to Texas and near the Gulf Coast areas for refinement or export. The project will cost $3.7 billion while creating 8,000-12,000 temporary construction jobs and only 40 permanent operating jobs.   [Read more…]

San Diego’s Year of the Political Black Woman

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By Gwen Pierce / The Chocolate Voice

Win or lose, without question the year 2016 will go down in history as the year of making Women’s history. With Hillary Clinton, becoming the first woman in U.S. history to become the presidential nominee of a major political party, many would agree that progress is on the rise.

In San Diego, six Black women are politically shaking things up too, as the year of the Political Black women emerge throughout San Diego County, as they run for State, School Board, College Boards and Lemon Grove Mayor in the County of San Diego!

Accomplished, powerful and smart, all six are representative of a phrase or hashtag that the world has come to know as #BlackGirlMagic.   [Read more…]

Donald Trump Is a Serial Anti-Semite

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Trump’s chronic anti-Semitism is often overlooked among the laundry list of the GOP candidate’s bigotry and offensive comments

By Peter Dreier / AlterNet

When this campaign is over, let’s not forget Donald Trump’s steady use of anti-Semitic stereotypes and images throughout the campaign—ideas we can expect he’ll continue to use when the election is over and he tries to re-invent himself as the leader of a white supremacist nationalist movement and the public face of a new media empire (Trump TV?) with his supporters Roger Ailes (former head of Fox News who has a history of making anti-Semitic comments and was responsible for Fox News’ anti-Semitic crusade against the phony “war on Christmas”), Stephen Bannon (head of Breitbart News known for his own anti-Semitic remarks), and hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer (the money behind Breitbart News).

Trump’s anti-Semitism comes in different shapes and sizes. He verbalizes it, encourages it, enables it, tolerates it, and makes excuses for it. What he doesn’t do is condemn it.   [Read more…]

Measure A: How SANDAG Undermines Transit, Environmental, and Social Goals

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By Murtaza H. Baxamusa / UrbDeZine

Nearly a third of all counties in California are proposing a sales tax increase to fund transportation on this November’s ballot. But one stands out with organized opposition from an unprecedented coalition of labor, environmental and community groups. It is perhaps the only transportation measure where both political parties, and the main newspaper opposes it.

Why? In one word, SANDAG.

The San Diego Association of Governments (or SANDAG) is a unique super-governmental agency with unparalleled power over a single county with over three million residents. It spent almost $670 million of taxpayer funds last year.[i] It collects a tax of half-cents on every dollar of taxable sales in the entire county. And it remains an enigma to most San Diegans.   [Read more…]

Trump Galvanizes ‘Nasty’ Women Voters with Extreme and Incoherent Abortion Stance

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Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton was applauded for her compassionate defense of women’s rights

By Lauren McCauley / Common Dreams

Donald Trump’s misogyny was once again on full display Wednesday night, with the Republican nominee going so far as to call rival Hillary Clinton a “nasty woman” during the final presidential debate. But, the candidates’ answers regarding abortion and the Supreme Court were the most revealing in terms of who would work to uphold the rights of women and would prove to be their “worst nightmare.”   [Read more…]

CBP Uses Border To Pressure People Into Becoming Informants

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The government has been using the border as a dragnet to pressure people into becoming informants

By Hugh Handeyside, Staff Attorney / ACLU National Security Project

Recently leaked documents published by The Intercept show that the FBI and Customs and Border Protection have been using CBP’s authority to search travelers at the border — along with the troves of information collected as a result — to troll for potential sources and pressure people into becoming informants. We’ve gone through the documents, and they heighten our concerns that these agencies are exceeding their authority, targeting minority communities and vulnerable people, and trying to evade accountability for doing so.

These documents also highlight a broader problem with the government’s official guidance on the use of race by federal law enforcement agencies. That guidance purports to ban racial profiling, but it includes exemptions for border screening and national security — exemptions that the leaked documents demonstrate are dangerous and unwise.   [Read more…]

Medical Marijuana Patient Found Not Guilty within 10 Minutes in June, District Attorney Keeps the Cash

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Americans for Safe Access – San Diego / SDASA

When medical marijuana patient Shaun Smith won his case with a ten minute not guilty verdict in June, he could not have known the District Attorney had already spent the cash they took from his medical cannabis collective and that the Sheriff’s department would take such a long time to return the motorcycle confiscated from Shaun’s home. But, both Bonnie Dumanis and Sheriff Gore have so far failed to return the property of a vindicated citizen.

In June, Shaun’s case moved through the San Diego North County courthouse very quickly and within 10 minutes a jury had reached a verdict of not guilty on the possession for sale and manufacturing charges the DA had levied after a raid on Shaun’s Oceanside home. Shaun was operating a legal collective and the group was saving for a storefront location.   [Read more…]

A Closer Look at the Ebers and Greene Project and the Correction Notice Issued by the City

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In Order to Keep Project, Owner May Be Creating “Guest Quarters”

Editor: The OB Rag asked local Geoff Page – former chair of the Peninsula Community Planning Board and occasional writer for us – to look at the Ebers and Greene project from a technical standpoint, to review the Correction Notice issued by the city and see what it meant, and any other issues that grabbed his attention. 

By Geoff Page / Special to the OB Rag

After reviewing the Correction Notice and a few other things as well, it appears to me that the developer – Curtis Nelson of Nelco Properties – and the City of San Diego are changing this development in reaction to public attention. This means that what they may be doing needs scrutiny.

It looks like they plan to designate one of the buildings a guest quarters and only one of the two buildings could possibly qualify – and that would be the existing house.   [Read more…]

Trump’s Misogyny Is Causing Millions Mental and Physical Pain

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Trump’s runoff of fear and anxiety is affecting many Americans.

By Kali Holloway / AlterNet

According to a recently leaked video from 2005, GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump enjoys boasting about his regular practice of grabbing women “by the pussy.” Despite this revelation, Trump remains in striking distance of the presidency. A post-leak Washington Post/ABC News poll shows Hillary Clinton leading her opponent by a mere 4 points. An overwhelming number of Republican voters have expressed ambivalence about Trump’s remarks. But Trump’s words have resonated far beyond the circle of giggling, goading sycophants who surrounded him on that Access Hollywood bus.

For survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence, the incident, far from the first example of Trump’s vile and violent sexism, caused yet another reopening of wounds only partially sutured by time. A 24-hour news cycle filled with Trump’s advocacy of sexual predation, disgusting misogynist remarks and allegations of sexual harassment and assault upon numerous women, as well as his hateful attacks on people of color, immigrants, the disabled and many others, have forced millions of survivors—many of whom already suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder—to mentally revisit the trauma of their abuse.   [Read more…]

Make the Convention Center Better, Not Bigger

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By David McCullough / UrbDeZine

Earlier this year, a hosted panel of local decision makers was brought together to discuss future of San Diego. Much of the conversation was around the convention center expansion. If you’ve been following the local news, you’ve noticed much of the dialog is about the benefits of a larger meeting space.

The conversation is often about the need for more space to keep Comic-Con in San Diego or the heavy regional impact, the tax revenues, or the attention it all brings to our city. At the end of the panel discussion, a younger, seemingly naive gentleman stood up to ask a question. The question was, “Why do we need a larger convention center when it seems vacant for most of the year?”

I, like most, blew this question off as I thought this person couldn’t possibly understand all the economic benefits of this institution here in our city. The answering panelist rattled off the economic forecast numbers that we have all likely heard before and the discussion quickly moved on in another direction.   [Read more…]

Avoiding Privatization’s Slippery Slide

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By Donald Cohen / Capital & Main

Last Wednesday was a big day for In the Public Interest. We released one of our longest and most wide-ranging reports, How Privatization Is Increasing Inequality.

The report describes how the privatization of public goods and services disproportionately impacts poor individuals and families, and people of color. It pulls together issues that at a glance appear unrelated—like private prisons, charter schools and privatized water—to show that handing control of such things as education and infrastructure to the private sector is fueling an increasingly unequal society.

We found five dynamics that are exacerbating America’s historic inequality:   [Read more…]

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