OC Voice

If you love dogs and cats, you are out of luck getting attention or protection for them from Orange County elected officials.

Maintaining the American Lawn Wastes Energy, Water and Money
By Sarah Mosko
Special to the OC Voice
Which consumes more fossil fuels: lawn maintenance with gas-powered tools or lawn watering? For residents of Southern California, the correct answer is watering because of the energy it takes to transport water to the region.
Southern California (SoCal) is a semi-arid [...]

When asked to write about why I am a vegetarian, I was initially reluctant. But I accepted this assignment, in part, to clear the record. There are many reasons people choose to be vegetarian. They run the gamut from environmental to social to moral to health to religion.

Joe Shaw announced his candidacy for the Huntington Beach City Council on Oct. 24, 2009 at the home of former mayor and city council member Debbie Cook. The OC Voice was there to record the event.

Neo-Nazis pretending they never heard of the Jewish Holocaust try to exploit anti-immigrant sentiment to recruit new members to their tiny “Freedom 14″ group in an ongoing effort (started last summer) at the Huntington Beach pier.

At first glance, surfing might seem like an inherently earth-friendly sport. Surfers paddle out and catch waves by sheer force of will and muscle. No need for fossil fuel-burning speed boats to get around. But a closer look reveals that, like most human activities, the environmental impact is far from nil and, consequently, there’s a nascent movement within the surfing industry to clean up it its act.

Hearthside Homes CEO Edward Mountford angrily denied reports that the company had uncovered 87 ancient Native American burial remains since breaking ground in June of 2006 on its planned 356 unit Brightwater housing project or had failed to report them the Orange County Coroner’s office in a manner required by California law.

Given that urban dwellers pass 90 percent of their time inside, any strategy to improve indoor air quality is of widespread interest, especially one as appealing and environmentally sustainable as adding potted plants to the décor.

This holiday season, parents shopping for children can rest just a tad easier because of a recent California law restricting the use of toxic phthalate plasticizers in toys and childcare products made of plastic.

City council and company claims to the contrary, Poseidon Resources Inc.’s desalination projects have little to do with free-market karma and the entire desalination industry was built on over $1 billion in tax subsidies–and more is on the way.

By Vern Nelson
OC Voice Columnist
“We think our healthcare system is actually pretty good right now.”-State Senator Tom Harman, Sept. 2006.
At the time the senator uttered this astonishing remark to Laguna Beach’s Coastline Pilot, the U.S. was spending nearly twice as much per capita on health care as other developed countries, while rating 37th on [...]

By John Earl and Scott Sink
OC Voice
Increased deportation raids conducted at gun point by “La Mirgra” in work places and homes across America are terrorizing documented and undocumented immigrants alike.
Multinational corporations operating under the banner of “free trade,” and xenophobic hate groups like the Minuteman Project, are the main beneficiaries of what a recent article [...]

By Chris Caesar
OC Voice Staff Writer
While Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher made repeated assurances that he takes the problem of detainee abuse “very seriously” during an interview with the OC Voice recently, he apparently lacked familiarity with a number of issues associated with the system – including the applicability of the Geneva Conventions to detainees, and [...]