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A contentious campaign to overturn Berkeley’s recently passed Downtown Area Plan comes to an end at 5 p.m. today, Thursday, when opponents face a deadline to turn in petitions decertifying last month’s Berkeley City Council passage of the plan. 

The plan, mandated by the settlement of the city’s lawsuit against University of California expansion, sets the direction and goals for development in the city center for the foreseeable future. It is not binding on U.C. Berkeley, however. 

If 5,528 valid signatures have been collected and turned in, the Downtown Area Plan will be invalidated. Council will then have the option of passing a new version of the plan, putting the Council-passed plan on the ballot for Berkeley citizens themselves to vote it up or down, or having no downtown area plan at all. 

The petition campaign is being sponsored by the Alliance for a Green and Livable Downtown, a loose coalition of Berkeley activists.  

The petition campaign has been particularly confrontational, with petition gatherers charging that many opponents of the petition and referendum have been engaging in a campaign to actively block the petition gatherers from reaching citizens. 

“It’s been a pretty intensive campaign done under incredibly difficult circumstances,” Planning Commissioner Patti Dacey said on Wednesday. Dacey said that petition opponents, whom she calls “blockers,” come out to public locations where petition signatures are being sought and “loom over you. They physically stand between you and the potential signer, and won’t let you talk to them. I’ve never seen tactics like this before.” 

Dacey said that she was “cautiously optimistic” about the outcome of the petition campaign, however. 

There have been charges from petition proponents that the Chamber of Commerce has been financing some of the anti-petition activities.  

Flyers headlined “For a Sustainable, Vibrant & Affordable Downtown We All Agree: Please Don’t Sign The Petition,” featuring a photo of Mayor Tom Bates, State Senator Loni Hancock and Assemblymember Nancy Skinner, with the notation “paid for by the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce Political Action Committee,” have been posted throughout Berkeley. Opponents of the petition campaign have also put up a website listing Bates, Hancock, Skinner and Councilmembers Capitelli, Maio, Wozniak, Wengraf, and Moore as supporters of the council-passed plan, as well as the Greenbelt Alliance, the Bicycle-Friendly Berkeley Coalition, Livable Berkeley, TransForm, the Downtown Berkeley Association and the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce. 

Representatives of the Chamber and Livable Berkeley, a pro-development advocacy group, did not respond to telephone calls requesting comment for this story. 

Certification of the petition signatures will be a two-step process. On Thursday night, the office of Berkeley City Clerk DeAnna Despain will do a manual count of the signatures and—if it is determined that enough signatures have been collected—will issue the petitioners a preliminary certificate. The clerk’s office will have 30 days to check the signatures against the Alameda County voting rolls to ascertain whether enough of those signatures are registered voters to invalidate the Downtown Area Plan. 

Meanwhile, foes of the Downtown Area Plan got a setback this week when the Berkeley City Attorney’s office failed to invalidate passage of the plan. In answer to what she said were “questions raised” following the council passage of the plan last month, Acting Assistant City Attorney Sarah Reynoso issued an official opinion that the way it was passed was valid. 

According to Reynoso’s four-page August 18 memo, questions were raised about the council’s consideration of a supplemental report on the Downtown Area Plan even though that report was not received within the four-day period called for in the council rules, as well as the fact that the motion to extend council deliberations to 11:30 on the night the plan was passed did not conform to council rules by specifying that the Downtown Area Plan was one of the matters to be considered in that extension. In both cases, Reynoso said that the council may “suspend, modify, or waive its own rules,” and did so by implication by moving forward with consideration of the plan even after those rules were broken. 

Reynoso added that “Council Rules are procedural” and said that “failure to strictly observe such procedural rules does not invalidate council action which in all other respects is in compliance with the Charter.” 

While Reynoso did not say in her memo who had raised the questions that sparked her opinion, it was City Councilmember Kriss Worthington who first raised the issue of the validity of consideration of the Downtown Area Plan after the council failed to include specific mention of it in the motion to extend the meeting time on the night the plan was passed. Worthington was one of two city councilmembers—along with Jesse Arreguín—who voted against the plan. Councilmember Max Anderson voted for the plan, but he was not listed in the Chamber of Commerce leaflet denouncing the referendum. 

The UC Theater became Berkeley’s latest concert venue last week when the city’s Zoning Adjustments Board unanimously approved a use permit modification at a July 13 public meeting. 

David Mayeri, former chief operating officer of Bill Graham Presents, is partnering with Dawn Holliday of Slim’s San Francisco on the project. He told the Planet that the duo had decided not to change the name of the UC Theater. 

“It’s a great name for a building that has been in the community for a long time,” Mayeri said. “Many people in the East Bay like the name and we want to keep it. We may add a tagline after it.” 

East Bay music fans will surely be happy to see the weary looking marquee light up with names like Boz Scaggs, B.B. King, Dashboard Confessional and Calexico.  

Mayeri said he first became aware of the theater at 2036 University Ave. a year and a half ago, after Kimball’s announced that it had scrapped plans to open a 900-seat theater and jazz club in the space. 

UC Studios, the real estate firm which owns the theater, hired local broker John Gordon to lease the space. Gordon reached out to the City of Berkeley’s Economic Development Director Michael Caplan for help, who then contacted Mayeri. 

When Mayeri showed the space to Holliday, who also runs San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall and co-produces the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival, she liked it instantly. 

“When I first saw the building with the owners, I thought it was a very interesting space,” Mayeri said. “The first person I went to was Dawn, and she loved the building. Things just moved on after that.” 

Mayeri said he and Holliday were planning to start a new company in Berkeley, named Berkeley Music Group LLC, which would manage the UC Theater. 

“It’s a great place for the public to assemble—very conducive to live entertainment,” he said, when asked why the two had decided to open a concert hall in Berkeley. “I think there’s a big need for a concert venue of this size in Berkeley. We see the UC Theater filling a niche in the East Bay similar to the Fillmore in San Francisco. You can expect bands which play at the Fillmore or the Great American Music Hall. Of course nothing can replace the Fillmore in terms of history, but there’s a strong interest in seeing the same kind of concerts and hoping that you have a great time.” 

Mayeri said that although Berkeley had live entertainment venues of all sizes—ranging from the smaller Anna’s Jazz Island and Jazz Cafe to the new 440-seat Freight & Salvage to big ones such as the 2,000-capacity Zellerbach, the 3,600-capacity Berkeley Community Theater and the Greek Theater, which can hold 8,500 people, there was nothing to cater to the 1,000 to 1,500 range crowd. 

Christina Kellog, director of public relations and new media at Cal Performances, which manages both Zellerbach and the Greek Theater, welcomed the idea of another concert venue in Berkeley. 

“You can’t have too many performing arts in the city,” she said. “I don’t see it as competition. The more arts we have the better.” 

Several Bay Area music industry oldtimers spoke in support of the project at the zoning meeting, saying that the new venue would revitalize the University Avenue corridor and create new jobs in the city. Others said they had been craving an East Bay venue similar to Slim’s so they wouldn’t have to travel across the Bay Bridge to San Francisco or visit Oakland for their monthly music fix. 

“Arts is the new retail,” said Deborah Badhia, executive director of the Berkeley Downtown Association. “It’s the best thing we can hope for a huge space like this. It helps us to be more competitive with our neighboring cities, with new concert venues coming up everyday.” 

The project’s developers will not be changing the UC Theater’s landmarked exteriors, limiting most of the renovation work to constructing viewing platforms, dance floors, ramped aisles and performance space, which will be accessible by stairs and elevators. The old raked theater floor will be replaced by tiered seating similar to the Warfield in San Francisco, and new seats will be put in. A part of the basement will be used for dressing rooms. 

Built in 1917, parts of the theater as it stands today were rebuilt after a fire in 1940, Mayeri said. Landmark Theaters co-founder Gary Meyer opened the UC Theater in 1976 but left the company in 1997. Landmark closed the theater in 2001 when the repertory movie business started suffering and it was unable to fund a hefty seismic retrofit bill. 

“A lot of damage was done to the place toward the end,” Mayeri said. “A lot of vandalism. We’ll have to take care of that.” 

Robert Remiker of Remiker Architects, the Berkeley firm carrying out the renovation, said that most of the decorative elements inside the theater, including the beams, coffers and Fresco paintings, would be brought back to life. 

Care would be taken to make sure that a modern acoustic and light system suspended from the ceiling doesn’t become a visual distraction for the audience, he said. 

“The interior is actually quite modest—it’s not neo-classical like the Great American Music Hall,” Remikar said. “Given that we are in Berkeley, there will be a high level of sensitivity and accommodation for the disabled.” 

The renovated UC Theater, which will also serve alcohol and food, is expected to attract more than 120,000 people annually, based on an estimated 100 concerts and community and corporate events. 

“Our goal is to create a unique and compelling customer experience and further establish downtown Berkeley as the East Bay’s regional center for arts and culture,” Mayeri told the zoning board at the meeting. “The UC Theater will stimulate downtown businesses, restaurants and nightlife and will complement existing music institutions. As a kid growing up on Shattuck Avenue, I attended movies at the UC Theater and am excited at the prospect of seeing concerts at this grand old building—a building that will continue to inspire arts and entertainment in Berkeley.” 

Although a couple of zoning board members had questions about crowd control and security, Mayeri assured them that the theater operators would be prepared for any kind of rowdy behavior. 

Mayeri, who was in charge of crowd control when he first started at Bill Graham Presents, which later became Live Nation, said that a sold-out show would typically have 14 to 20 security officers inside the venue, and between two to four people on the streets. 

Plain-clothes security will also be keeping an eye out for underage drinkers and potential troublemakers. 

“We believe in being good neighbors, so we will ask the customers when they are leaving to please be quiet or remind them that they are in a neighborhood,” Mayeri said. “We will ask them to use their library voices. Ninety-nine percent of people are going to cooperate when they come to a show. For the remaining 1 percent who don’t, we will respond quickly. To say that we will not have problems will not be a factual statement. There will be problems. We have to anticipate problems, and we’ll have to scan them and act responsibly when they come up.” 

At one point boardmember Terry Doran interjected by saying, “I can’t believe anything will be wilder—more problematic—than a midnight Rocky Horror Show,” drawing laughs from everyone in the room. 

City of Berkeley’s principal planner Aaron Sage told the zoning board to make a finding to allow expansion of alcohol sales at the UC Theater on the basis that its operators did not have a history of negligence or violations pertaining to alcohol. 

Sage acknowledged that although Slim’s was currently involved in a dispute with the ABC over San Francisco’s strict sound ordinance rising from the complaint of one neighbor and its original use permit—which says that Slim’s should be run as a restaurant, not a nightclub—they were not obstacles for the Berkeley project. 

A date had not yet been set for construction to begin. Mayeri said he expected the theater to open in fall 2010.

Four generations of alumni joined activists, community members and lawyers on the UC Berkeley School of Law steps to protest former Bush administration lawyer John Yoo’s return to campus Monday.  

Yoo spent the spring semester at Chapman University School of Law in Orange County. 

The group called for Yoo to be prosecuted and fired from his position as professor of law at the School of Law—formerly known as Boalt Hall—for writing memorandums which were used to justify extensive policies on detention and interrogation, even torture.  

The Obama administration has so far showed little interest in prosecuting those who worked for the Bush administration. Despite criticism from protesters and from the National Lawyers Guild about Yoo’s continuing employment at UC Berkeley, Boalt Hall Dean Christopher Edley has defended Yoo’s actions as academic freedom.  

Chanting “Yoo should be ashamed” and “I am so over Yoo,” the crowd assembled outside Boalt Hall at 1:30 p.m. Monday, closely watched by UC police, as students and professors walked in and out of the building.  

The event was organized by the National Lawyers Guild, World Can’t Wait and Code Pink, whose members dressed up as “Pink Police” and included a dog sporting a pink “arrest torture” button.  

When the UC Police Department told the event organizers they would not be allowed to use amplifiers outside the building, the speakers either talked loudly or stood on boxes to have their voices heard.  

Members of the National Lawyers Guild stressed that Yoo should be held accountable for his actions, which they said had led to the torture of thousands of U.S. political prisoners.  

Sharon Adams, a guild member, called Yoo’s memos “inane” and “secretive.”  

“In the name of democracy, Yoo did all he could to undermine democracy,” she said, talking about the much criticized wiretapping and controversial interrogation techniques like waterboarding.  

“This is the kind of person who is teaching our next generation of lawyers ... He should be prosecuted for war crimes.”  

Yoo has said in the past that the harsh techniques were required to protect the United States from terrorist attacks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. 

The infamous Abu Ghraib torture pictures, which came to public attention in 2004, dotted Boalt’s steps, with several individuals posing as hooded prisoners in chains, and one of them resembling the iconic man on top of a box.  

Dan Siegel, a 1970 Boalt Hall alumnus and nationally known trial and appellate lawyer, said he was angry and frustrated that Edley, a staunch advocate of civil rights, continues to head a faculty which includes a “war criminal.”  

“There is little doubt that John Yoo is a war criminal,” Siegel said. “There are some who try to bastardize the situation, as if Yoo wrote a law review article. This person wrote an ideological and legal basis for torture. I am hoping that if Dean Edley doesn’t get wise, we will march down to Yoo’s office next time.”  

Ann Fagan Ginger, Boalt Hall Class of 1960, decried Edley using academic freedom as the basis of Yoo’s actions.  

Ginger, who leads the Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute in Berkeley, said UC Berkeley students should have the academic freedom to take classes from someone who had not been charged with being a war criminal.  

Following the rally, at least 12 of the anti-war protesters entered the law school building and went inside Yoo’s classroom, where they talked to some students and Yoo himself. 

When UCPD officers asked them to leave the classroom, the group stepped outside and began chanting loudly. 

UCPD spokesperson Lt. Douglas Wing said that the group was asked to leave the building because they were being loud and disruptive. When four of them refused to obey the officers’ orders, they were arrested and cited for disrupting the peace and tresspassing, and given a campus stay-away order. Wing said the four arrested were released on site.

One after another, impassioned speakers from Richmond’s African-American community rose Wednesday night to heap praises on a Berkeley developer’s shoreline casino resort plans. 

The reasons were clear, and cited repeatedly: a plague of violence, soaring unemployment and a foreclosure rate several said included one in every four homes in the city. 

With the promise of abundant jobs backed by a well-organized and tightly on-point community campaign, developer James D. Levine and his Napa partner John Salmon sat smiling during the session, formally a public hearing to take comments on the environmental review document for the Point Molate casino resort. 

Few of the proponents, who accounted for the vast majority of the speakers, had anything to say about the document itself, prepared as a dual-purpose review under the federal National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). 

Their focus was instead to praise the project to the Richmond Design Review Board, under whose auspices the hearing was conducted. 

The campaign, a well-organized effort, which featured several speakers with name tags identifying themselves as “Point Molate Community Liaison,” unites unions, business interests and several members of the African-American clergy to whom the developers have promised a jackpot of riches, jobs and new business. 

Levine and his partners say their $1.5 billion project will restore dignity and prosperity both to Richmond’s poorest and to the Guidiville Rancheria Band of Pomos, who would have one of the San Francisco Bay’s choicest sites awarded them as a reservation if the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) agrees to the proposal. 

The hearing, held at Richmond’s civic auditorium in the city hall complex, ran 80 minutes longer than the scheduled two hours. 

The public testimony session was run by Larry Blevins, a BIA environmental protection specialist from Sacramento, who also heard from Design Review Board members at the end. 

On hand to give an introduction to the massive environmental review document was Mike Taggart of Analytical Environmental Services (AES), a Sacramento firm with a long record of preparing successful reviews for tribal casino projects.  

Their 5,284-page draft environmental impact report (EIR) was finally released July 10, three years after the initially planned release date. The release triggered a 75-day public comment period during which individuals and public agency can make comments to be considered in the final EIR. 

Taggart said the report represents the work of 20 AES technical experts and 14 sub-consultants. 

First to speak was Richmond resident Laura Graham. “I just wish there were a land trust in Contra Costa County that could preserve that land,” she said, and urged that the project be moved to another site, while Bruce Beyaert of the Trails for Richmond Action Committee spoke on behalf of creating safe bicycle access to and through the site and making sure the Bay Trail was developed along the shoreline. 

Leslie May was the first speaker to praise the project, which in its “preferred alternative” mode would include two hotels with a total of 1,075 rooms, 54 luxury guest cottages and a 240,000-square-foot casino including 124,000 square feet of gambling area, a 300,000-square-foot shopping center, two parking garages, a ferry terminal and a public transit hub. 

While Levine had told audiences at public meetings last year that the project would include a housing component, that element—340 attached housing units, including three- and four-bedroom townhouses ranging from 1,700 to 2,600 square feet on 32 acres—was demoted to an alternative by the time the EIR had been printed. 

May said the project would provide good construction jobs and provide an afflicted community “with an opportunity for people to uplift themselves.”  

While it won’t stop Richmond residents from gambling, she said, “you can bet it will stop them from spending money in places like Plymouth, California,” the proposed site of another casino.  

Jean Womack, a 40-year resident, scoffed at the notion of “trying to put a tourist industry into a town that doesn’t like strangers and actually attacks strangers,” instead suggesting sale of the site to Chevron, which had earlier tried to buy the land from the city. 

But Chris Serrano, an unemployed iron worker and another 40-year resident, said, “This would be a golden opportunity for me. You’ve had your chance, why can’t our kids have this chance?” 

Greg Feere, CEO of Contra Costa Building Trades Council, which represents labor unions, called the resort “the largest economic stimulus project for jobs in the entire Bay Area,” offering hard-pressed workers 17,000 construction jobs. “The only problem I have with this project is that it isn’t starting today.” 

At least three ministers spoke in favor of the project. Rev. Mitch Robinson, who was also wearing a “liaison” name tag, said that bringing 17,000 jobs to the city would provide “17,000 ways to support my family without picking up a gun and killing someone.” 

Rev. Andre Shumake Sr. of the Richmond Improvement Association, citing Richmond’s 70 murders in 2008 and responding to a critic who had termed the promised economic benefits “pipe dreams,” said that “If I have a choice between a nightmare and a pipe dream, I’ll take the pipe dream.” 

“Everything the developer has said he would do, they’re in the process of doing,” he said. Porfiria Garcia of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, a Catholic charity, said that while “a casino may create a diversity of reactions, to the people of the Richmond community, it provides hope and an answered prayers . . .every day we wait is a wasted day.” 

Several residents of the Point San Pablo Yacht Harbor sad they worried about traffic congestion, and especially access to their shipboard homes during construction. 

Tarnel Abbott, reference librarian at the city’s public library, said the EIR’s provisions for two counselors to treat gambling addiction wouldn’t counter the impacts posed by studies showing that problem gambling rates double within 10 miles of a casino, accompanied by increases in violent crime, child abuse and neglect, mental health problems and other issues. 

While the casino promised jobs, she said, “the social costs are very high.” 

Andres Soto, Richmond Progressive Alliance activist and one-time city council candidate, called the EIR deficient for failing to include the option favored by the General Plan Advisory Committee for the site. He called the proposed casino project “a pit of unhealthiness.” 

But Dr. Henry Clarke of the West County Toxics Coalition, said, “I am convinced the project supports public health and safety,” adding that “these developers should be given a reward for the great work they’re doing.”  

Former City Councilmember John Marquez praised the project for which he had voted during his time on the city’s legislative body. “The major emphasis in my opinion is on jobs. I hear this every day in the community,” he said. 

Susan Cerny, a Berkeley architectural historian and author, was one of the few speakers who actually spoke about the EIR itself, addressing issues of aesthetics and historic preservation. 

Cerny said the presence of 160-foot and 120-foot hotel buildings would have significant impacts on “a very unusual spot with a very unusual impact” that is already designated a national historic district. She said she was also concerned about the impacts of reflections from the high-rises’ windows on commuters crossing the Richmond San Rafael Bridge and on homeowners and others in Marin County. 

But when the public comment session ended, supporters had outnumbered critics. 

When it came time for Design Review Board members to offer their input, criticism outweighed favorable comments. 

“I do have concerns about the economics of the project in terms of sustainability,” said Raymond Welter. 

“From a design standpoint, it’s a massive undertaking in a natural area and I couldn’t approve it from an aesthetic standpoint,” said Diane Bloom, who also said she couldn’t imagine that the project’s economic feasibility is solid.” 

Member Andrew Butt said he would like to see more mitigations for developer plans to demolish a large historic building at the site. 

Donald Woodward rattled off a list of criticisms, starting with his inability to see a real economic need for a casino at the site, given the presence of many others within 100 miles. He also wanted to see drawings of how proposed traffic improvements would be built, how the project could accommodate an existing quarry on the road into the site, and called the EIR’s coverage of earthquake risks “real.” 

Only Otheree Christian, the board’s only African-American member, expressed unqualified support for the project. 

Ellen Whitty said none of the development proposals offered “the highest and best possible use for the site.” 

Chair Michael Wolderman was more reserved in his comments, saying that while the EIR was “an amazingly complete document,” he still wanted to see more about how the project would be reviewed by other agencies. 

Reza Valiyee claims to have invented what physicists have long declared impossible: the perpetual motion machine. 

But it’s the seemingly perpetual motion of construction equipment at his Berkeley rental properties that have tenants—and at least one city councilmember—up in arms. 

Not even citations from the city’s building code enforcement officers seem to stop Valiyee from chopping up curbs and pouring concrete on the yards of his properties. 

And once the concrete dries, unregistered and apparently junker cars sprout where once grass and flowers grew, neighbors say. 

“It is quite a mess,” said City Councilmember Kriss Worthington, who has twice pushed the city to issue citations for Valiyee’s unauthorized work at 2252 Derby St. 

The original notices, issued July 29, included four separate violations of the city building code, including: 

• Construction of sidewalk and driveway without permits; 

• Paving a required landscape area; 

• Construction of a building addition without a permit; 

• Construction in the public right-of-way without a permit, and  

• Establishment of new off-street parking without permits. 

When work continued, the city served a stop-work order on Aug. 6, accompanied by a demand that he “correct all violations within 15 days.” 

After another constituent complaint, Worthington asked inspectors to look at Valiyee’s properties in the 2200 block of Ward Street, where seven more violations were cited.  

The residence at 2245 Ward earned four citations, the same ones as for Derby Street except for the unauthorized building addition violation. 

The home at 2249 Ward earned two citations, one for an illegal sidewalk and driveway and the other for paving a required landscape area. 

And 2253 Ward was cited for paving a required landscape area. 

A check for properties listed under his own name in Alameda County revealed a total of 22 in Berkeley, purchased between 1972 and 2006, and one on Ayala Avenue in Oakland, purchased in 1981. 

The properties are currently assessed at $6,058,820, but are undoubtedly worth much more since most were bought before the recent real estate boom and bust cycle. In addition, Proposition 13 allows for a maximum of a 2 percent annual increase in assessed value, and 14 of the properties were purchased before 1990.  

A reporter who drove past one of his properties Friday afternoon found himself in a momentarily tense confrontation with the scofflaw landlord. 

Within seconds after the reporter began shooting photographs from inside his car of a Valiyee rental at the southwest corner of Ellsworth and Derby streets, a worker doing plumbing repairs spotted the camera and went to fetch Valiyee. 

The pair approached the car, and both men repeatedly reached inside the car to cover the camera lens, the worker demanding, “Where’s your permit to take pictures?” 

“It’s called the First Amendment,” the reporter replied. 

Finally Valiyee told his employee to ease off, and he asked the reporter why he was taking pictures. 

After he was told that neighbors had complained about illegal construction, Valiyee said, “All I am doing is providing housing for students who really need it.” 

He declined to talk about why he had repeatedly done work without permits, though he acknowledged that he had just paid $600 to cover costs for a curb cut he had made. 

His properties  

According to the assessor’s office, Valiyee owns seven properties in the 2200 block of Ward Street: 2209, 2211, 2219, 2227, 2245, 2249 and 2253. 

He owns three residences on Derby Street, 2244, 2248 and 2252. 

Two dwellings are on Ellsworth—2708 and 2712. 

Other properties are at 2178 Ashby Ave., 2110 Parker St., 2219 Blake St., 2245 Prospect St., 2412 Piedmont Ave., 2731 Haste St. and 2116 Channing Way. 

The city has faced Valiyee in court on at least 14 occasions, including an action which resulted in the court putting the Prospect and Piedmont properties into city receivership after they were declared public nuisances because he had installed illegal bedrooms. 

Developer Ali Kashani, then working in the affordable housing market, was appointed as receiver to oversee the repairs. 

At the time of the action, Zach Cowan of the city attorney’s office told the Daily Planet that “Valiyee’s long history of stalling on city-mandated repair work has forced the city’s heavy hand.” 

The landlord also owns a key stretch of Shattuck Avenue—2609, 2621 and 2627—which Worthington said he would like to see developed. 

“But he tells me he’s waiting for BART to buy it so they can build another station. I don’t think that’s likely, but he’s convinced that if he waits long enough, they’ll take him up,” said the councilmember. 

Maybe Valiyee’s perpetual motion machines will enable BART to build speedier, cheaper trains and his real estate dreams will come true. 

“I have solved all the world’s energy problems,” he told the Planet reporter. 

When asked if he meant his perpetual motion machine, Valiyee said yes. 

When the reporter replied that every physicist he’d ever met said the notion was fallacious, he replied, “Physicists said Gallileo was wrong when he said the earth revolves around the sun, and he said man would never land on the moon.” 

“Actually,” the reporter said, “physicists were at the forefront of the moon race.” 

Valiyee said he will have a working model of his invention within a few weeks, and then he would be the leader in the world. 

The reporter smiled. The U.S. Patent Office had long ago stopped taking applications for the devices unless the inventor provides a working model that proves his claim. While several patents have been granted, none has yet made it to the market. 

The agency maintains a listing of different devices that have tried and failed to meet the test at www.uspto.gov/go/classification/uspc074/sched074.htm#C074SDIG009|. 

For those interested in Valiyee’s invention, he has posted some versions—along with letters to political leaders—on his website at http://perpetualunlimitedcleanairselfpoweredinventedmachines.com/Home.html 

The 2009 Standardized Testing and Reporting Program results brought good news for Berkeley public schools Tuesday, with more students performing above the state average in reading and writing and math. 

Fifty-six percent of students in the Berkeley Unified School District were proficient or advanced in English-language arts compared with 50 percent statewide and 54 percent in Alameda County. 

Forty-seven percent were proficient or advanced in math compared with 46 percent statewide and 49 percent in Alameda County. 

The STAR tests judge students’ performances in the California Standardized Tests by labeling them as advanced, proficient, basic, below basic, and far below basic, with proficient being the target the California Department of Education wants all students to achieve. 

This goal is consistent with growth targets for state accountability and the federal No Child Left Behind requirements. 

The English-language arts performance for Berkeley showed a 4 percent jump from 2008, when 52 percent scored proficient or above, but a slightly smaller decline in math, where 46.9 percent students scored proficient or above in math in 2008 compared with this year’s 46.8 percent. 

At Berkeley High, 56 percent of students scored proficient or advanced in English-language arts, but only 25 percent demonstrated proficiency or advancement in math. 

Berkeley Technology Academy’s STAR results were not available on the state Department of Education’s website, which showed 51 B-Tech students taking the tests. 

Almost every elementary and middle school in Berkeley Unified scored near or above the state average in reading, writing and math. 

District Superintendent Bill Huyett said that the district saw a lot of progress in math in the lower grades due to the adoption of new programs, but that the upper grades were still struggling in algebra and geometry. 

The district introduced the Everyday Math program in second, third, fourth and fifth grades and a number of other programs to boost learning of algebra and geometry in the middle and high schools last year. Huyett said Everyday Math had showed positive results in every grade except third, for which district officials were still trying to figure out an explanation  

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell Tuesday released the results of the 2009 STAR Program, which showed that California students had overall continued to make uniform progress in English-language arts, math, science and history. 

Noting that half of the state’s public school students were now proficient in English-language arts, O’Connell called the improvement particularly impressive given that only 35 percent of students met the bar seven years ago. 

“California is known nationally for the rigor of our academic standards, and this level of student achievement on our California Standards Tests should be celebrated,” O’Connell said. “It is the result of hard work by teachers, administrators, school support staff, students, and parents.” 

However, O’Connell cautioned that despite the progress, there was a considerable amount of work to be done in closing the achievement gap.  

According to the state Department of Education, while all student subgroups continue to reach proficiency, the achievement gap between African-American and white students and Latinos and their white peers changed little from 2008 to 2009 in both English-language arts and math. 

“We must continue to focus on students who struggle in the classroom and help them become skillful readers, able mathematicians, and self-confident, well-prepared leaders of tomorrow,” O’Connell said. “We must also pay particular attention to the fact that a disproportionate share of students who fall below the proficient level are African-American or Latino. This achievement gap represents a loss of opportunity for students of color and remains a real threat to their and California’s future success.” 

Another revealing point in the 2009 STAR test data was that African-American and Hispanic students continued to perform way behind their white, Asian, and Filipino counterparts regardless of economic status in most cases. 

For example, 35 percent of African-American students who were not economically disadvantaged turned out to be proficient in math compared with 43 percent economically disadvantaged white students. 

Huyett said that Berkeley Unified had showed some improvement in closing the achievement gap, with a larger number of African-American students reporting an increase in English-language arts. 

O’Connell blamed the state budget cuts to education—which has led to fewer text books, fewer professional development days for teachers and in some cases, no more summer programs—for exacerbating the achievement gap. 

“It’s the biggest civil rights issue of our generation,” O’Connell told reporters during a teleconference Tuesday. “It’s not just a moral imperative to close the achievement gap but also an economic imperative. It is my greatest priority.” 

O’Connell said that the achievement gap often widens during summer because low-income students don’t always get access to the kind of programs and travel their more privileged classmates can afford. 

He said state educators were studying cultural climate to address the problem. When a reporter pointed out that the 2009 report showed that minority students who were not from low-income backgrounds still had lower proficiency than poor white students, O’Connell admitted that economic reasons alone might not be the source of the problem. 

“We are using data to be more analytical—beginning with preschool,” he said. “We are being expected to do more with less because of the budget cuts. We have world-class content standards yet we are funding education like a third world country.” 

The 2009 STAR results can be found at: star.cde.ca.gov.

The California Department of Education Friday launched a new website to help parents and teachers understand the Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) Program better. 

The STAR Program is a statewide standardized test given to measure student performance levels at public schools. 

Concerns from parents and teachers about how they could understand the test better prompted the state Department of Education and the State Board of Education to design a new website, www.starsamplequestions.org, which includes dozens of actual test questions students have faced in every grade. 

Dr. Yvonne Chan, a member of the State Board of Education, said that “Parents and teachers can be better partners in helping students succeed if we demystify our assessments and what we are asking students to demonstrate when they take the state tests.”  

Chan strongly encouraged school districts to use the link on their websites. 

The new website is easily navigable, has a search feature and includes information about the state’s expectations of student performance as well who is eligible to take the tests. The site also offers guidelines for parents according to grade-level which are easily printable. 

   At focus groups held by state officials to find out what information would be helpful to parents, teachers and community members, and figure out the best way to communicate it, parents stressed that they wanted to gather their own information about the STAR Program at their own convenience. Although the amount of information requested varied, parents on the whole wanted to access clear and concise information whenever possible. 

The results for California's 2008 STAR Program show a higher percentage of students in the Berkeley Unified School District scored proficient or above in reading, writing and mathematics as compared with the state results.  

The state education department is scheduled to release the results of the 2009 STAR Program next week. 

At its first meeting after summer break, the Berkeley Board of Education Wednesday recommended changes to Berkeley High School’s School Governance Council.  

Following complaints from parents regarding the Governance Council’s lack of transparency and non-compliance with federal, state and local guidelines, the board formed a two-member policy subcommittee in June to investigate the issue.  

Bylaws adopted by the Berkeley Unified School District for its elementary and middle schools in April 2008 mandated that a single committee be created to analyze school data, develop an annual plan, allocate supplemental funds and oversee other activities.   

But Berkeley High’s complicated makeup prevented any single committee from being formed.    

Instead, the school has two separate committees—the School Governance Council, which also acts as the School Site Council, and the Berkeley School Excellence Program (BSEP) Committee, which oversees expenditures raised under a special local assessment.  

The school board subcommittee—comprised of board members Shirley Issel and John Selawsky—was formed to realign the Governance Council to make it more consistent with the district’s K-8 public schools.  

One of the main issues the policy subcommittee looked at was the constitution of the Governance Council, which stemmed from concerns raised about the lack of parity between parents and students and teachers and staff at Berkeley High and Berkeley Technology Academy, the city’s only public continuation school.  

Issel and Selawsky met with Superintendent Bill Huyett over the summer to address these issues and consulted with Berkeley High Principal Jim Slemp about the proposed changes.  

Huyett said that although there was nothing to suggest that the Governance Council was out of compliance, Slemp had agreed that the following short-term modifications could be made before the start of the school year on Sept. 2 in order to address parental concerns:  

1. Eliminate from the bylaws the principal’s right to veto the appointment of an elected member to the School Site Council. Huyett said Slemp had called this a “moot point” because he didn’t think it was necessary to have this bylaw there in the first place.  

2. Continue to post minutes of the meetings in a timely manner. Huyett acknowledged that the high school sometimes had problems posting the minutes online and asked school officials to add school board members and the superintendent’s office to the list of people who received the minutes.  

3. The bylaws will be changed to allow comment on any issue during the public comment section of the agenda. Currently, the bylaws allow public comment only on items listed on the agenda.  

4. The bylaws will be amended to require that an explicit count of votes be taken and recorded in the minutes for both the School Governance Council and School Site Council for any item requiring School Site Council approval. Huyett called this a pretty significant change, explaining that it would help the votes to get on the record in a more precise way.  

5. The district will provide training to all existing and new School Governance Council members.  

Issel said she hoped this would help the members to think of future modifications to the Governance Council.  

The five changes will be presented to the Berkeley High School Governance Council for approval, after which the school board will vote on whether to adopt them.  

As for the long-term changes, subcommittee members said they were still examining three different models of governance:  

1. The K-8 model which has merged BSEP and the School Site Council into a body called the School Governance Council.  

2. The current hybrid model at Berkeley High, which has merged the functions of a Leadership Team with the functions of a School Site Council, giving rise to a Shared Governance Council.  

3. The modified hybrid model which would be similar to the current model but would at times have the School Site Council meet separately from the School Governance Council to discuss and vote on matters that require only Site Council approval, such as the single plan for student achievement.  

Huyett said the board had not yet presented these options to Berkeley High.

UC Berkeley and its Department of Energy-funded laboratory in the hills overlooking the city lost a major legal battle Monday in federal court. 

The lawsuit filed by the environmentalists of Save Strawberry Canyon charged that the federal agency and the university broke the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by failing to conduct an environmental review of the proposed $113 million Computational Research and Theory (CRT) building, planned for the Berkeley hills adjacent to Blackberry Gate. 

District Court Judge William Alsup issued the decisive ruling, backing the claims of the environmentalists and their lawyer, Michael Lozeau of Oakland. 

“We won the case in total,” Lozeau said. “No ifs, ands or buts.” 

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) is run by the university under contract to the Department of Energy, though not all research conducted there is funded by the federal government. 

A second planned lab to house a non-federal project—the $500 million agrofuel and alternative energy research program funded by BP (formerly British Petroleum)—is moving off the hill to downtown Berkeley in the wake of a second lawsuit, though the university contends the move was not spurred by the litigation. 

The lab, renamed Helios West, will be built after the demolition of the former state Department of Public Health building, which is located on a two-block site between Berkeley Way on the south, Hearst Avenue on the north, Oxford Street on the east and Shattuck Avenue on the west.  

A small part of the Energy Biosciences Institute, the BP-funded program, will remain on the hill, the university announced Aug. 3. 

In a statement released by the university’s public affairs department, the school announced that “A second, smaller building, devoted to the development of new photovoltaic and electrochemical solar-energy systems is envisioned to be located on UC’s LBNL site, preserving valuable synergies between lab researchers involved in nanoscale work, while ensuring efficient collaboration with researchers based on the Berkeley campus.” 

The structure would encompass 21,000 usable square feet, allowing “for selection of a site that avoids or significantly reduces environmental and aesthetic impacts.” 

Four separate sites on the LBNL campus are currently being evaluated, all of which are served by existing roadways and utilities. 

The UC Board of Regents had approved both hillside projects in May 2008, after approving environmental impact statements for both prepared under provisions of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).  

Lawsuits challenging each of the projects followed within weeks, both filed by Save Strawberry Canyon (SCS), a group which includes Berkeley residents Sylvia McLaughlin, Lesley Emmington, Janice Thomas and Hank Gehman. 

“We are very thankful,” Emmington said. “This happened thanks to all the people who joined SCS. And we’re very grateful for the support of Sylvia McLaughlin, who is a giant of the environmental movement.” 

McLaughlin is perhaps Berkeley’s best-known environmentalists and a founder of Save the Bay, the organization which in the 1960s stopped plans to fill San Francisco Bay to create new sites for development. 

“It’s pretty exciting,” McLaughlin said of the court victory. “It’s been a worrisome issue and we’ve been fortunate in having excellent legal advice.” 

Emmington said SCS challenged the two projects because members felt the lab had picked sites which were environmentally sensitive, prone to earthquakes, landslides, mudslides and fires, and which merited protection for the variety of plant and animal species they house.  

Leslie Sepuka, spokesperson for the UC system’s Office of the President, said the university and the Department of Energy are reviewing their options in light of Judge Alsup’s decision. “We don’t have a whole lot more information right now,” she said. 

The lawsuit 

The action began with a Jan. 2, 2008, letter, not a lawsuit, sent to the LBNL’s Environmental Planning Group Coordinator asserting that the CRT building met the requirements for a mandatory review under the provisions of NEPA, a federal statute which predates California’s own version, CEQA.  

The lawsuit came after the lab rejected the request. 

The defendants, represented by Oakland law firm Reed Smith LLP, alleged that not only was the CEQA review adequate, but that there was no guarantee that the Department of Energy would use the structure to house its National Energy Research Scientific Computing (NERSC) Center, a key node in the agency’s cybersystem linking its national labs across the country. 

“The project was, and is, not Department of Energy’s action,” the lab contended in a Feb. 29, 2009, filing with the court—that despite statements by lab officials during CEQA-mandated hearings that the building was specifically planned to house the Department of Energy facility. 

In a March 18, 2009, order granting SCS’s motion for a preliminary injunction halt in any work on the building until a final decision had been reached, Judge Alsup found that SCS had raised “‘serious questions’ going to the merits of its claim that the project is a major federal action.” 

While he barred the lab from turning the first spadeful of earth at the site, the jurist didn’t order cancellation of planning contracts. 

He also denied the university’s request that would have forced SCS to post a bond on the grounds that such an order “would effectively deny access to judicial review” for the non-profit organization. 

In his final order this week, Judge Alsup—who once clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice and environmentalist William O. Douglas—found that UCB’s contract with the Department of Energy “obligated the university to provide facilities like the CRT. . .including the management and operation of the NERSC Center. 

The judge also agreed with Lozeau that the university’s Long Range Development plan required removal of the NERSC facility “to the main LBNL site to fully meet Department of Energy security requirements.” 

The judge also found that the Department of Energy had maintained oversight of the project, provided critical input and agreed to provide cheap federal power to the facility. 

“This order concludes as a matter of law that the Department of Energy’s involvement in construction of the CRT project constituted a ‘major federal action,’” triggering a statutory requirement for environmental review under NEPA. 

The judge didn’t mandate a full environmental impact statement, the equivalent of an Environmental Impact Review under CEQA. That determination, he ruled, must be left to the agency. 

“Given that they couldn’t even mitigate all the impacts found in the EIR, it’s a given they’ll have to do a full EIS,” Lozeau said. “This has been a really good result for Save Strawberry Canyon.” 

NERSC is currently housed in a 27,000-square-foot former Wells Fargo bank building at 415 20th St. in Oakland. The facility was formally dedicated as an LBNL facility on May 24, 2001, five months after installation of its first supercomputer.  

Berkeley Unified School District Superintendent Bill Huyett announced at the Aug. 12 board meeting that the district had hired its first director of special education. 

Kay Altizer, who served as director of special education and student health in Vallejo City Unified School District for the last 13 years, joined Berkeley Unified as director of special education on July 1. 

According to a statement from Berkeley Unified, Altizer has served as an educator for 32 years, and is widely known for her work as chair of the State Special Education Local Plan Area Association. 

She began her career as a speech and language therapist and served as a program specialist and coordinator of special education services prior to her role as director of special education in Vallejo.  

Berkeley Unified did not have a special education director before hiring Altizer. The district’s Student Services Director Felton Owens was managing special education, an area that has been the subjects of much criticism, complaints and lawsuits from the district’s special education parent and student community over the years. 

At a Feb. 25, 2009 meeting, Huyett explained why the district had decided to hire a special education director after the board approved several settlement claims resulting from special education lawsuits against the district. 

“I wanted to announce tonight that there are a lot of cuts and reductions but I will be coming forward to the board and asking them to hire a director of special education,” Huyett said. “Frankly, I see it as the heart of an effort to curtail special education costs. We need an administrator solely focused on special education even in this time when we are reducing budgets and cutting costs. I believe if we don’t do this our special education costs will continue to escalate and costs are going up faster than anything else.” 

Huyett said that the district had recently lost up to $800,000 because of special education costs, mainly arising from settlement claims and lawsuits. 

“So it’s a real crisis,” he said. “We need a top administrator to manage this. Currently we have someone working in special education who didn’t come here for that purpose but has some background in it. Assistant superintendent Neil Smith has been monitoring a lot of it but we all feel it is a necessity.” 

At a public meeting at the Berkeley Adult School last fall, hundreds of parents of special education children in Berkeley public schools turned up to talk to an official from the California Department of Education, complaining about the lack of adequate services for special education students and the lack of a proper complaint procedure. 

District officials have said in the past that special education is one of the most underfunded areas in public education, which results in many programs often not getting the kind of attention they deserve for success. 

Oakland police spokesman Jeff Thomason said today that police are “very concerned” about a 5-year-old boy with cerebral palsy who has now been missing for nine days. 

Hassani Campbell, who lives in Fremont with his foster parents, Louis Ross and Jennifer Campbell, was reported missing from the parking lot of the Shuz of Rockridge shoe store in the 6000 block of College Avenue in Oakland about 4:15 p.m. on Aug. 10. 

Thomason said police are still treating Hassani’s disappearance as a missing persons case and that there is no evidence a crime has been committed. 

“We’re asking the public to call if they have any credible tips,” Thomason said. 

He said police have followed up on all of the approximately 50 tips they’ve received so far but none haS panned out. 

On Monday, Oakland police and Crime Stoppers announced a $10,000 reward for information leading to the whereabouts of Hassani. 

Thomason said one caller left about 40 unhelpful messages with Crime Stoppers and clogged its voicemail box. But the voicemail box is now open again, he said. 

Thomason said police talk to Hassani’s foster parents every day and that they are being cooperative. 

On Saturday, law enforcement officials and volunteers searched marshland and shoreline areas at the tip of West Winton Avenue in Hayward as well as Coyote Hills Regional Park in Fremont but didn’t find anything significant. 

Thomason said police have also searched North Oakland thoroughly. 

Police describe Hassani as a black boy with medium complexion, brown hair and brown eyes. He is about 3 feet tall and weighs about 30 pounds. He was last seen wearing a gray sweatshirt and gray pants. 

Police said he has difficulty walking because he is disabled. 

Thomason said people with information on the case should call the Oakland Police Department or Crime Stoppers at 777-8572 or 777-3211. 

Due to a production error, an Aug. 13 story on the Cuban 5 was incomplete. The full story is available on the Daily Planet’s website at www.berkeleydailyplanet.com.

A state prison inmate serving time for a Berkeley armed robbery spree has been charged with the Feb. 19, 2006, murder of a popular Berkeley High School graduate and youth football coach. 

The Alameda County district attorney’s office charged Bahsson Carl Smith, 28, with one count of murder in the shooting of Keith Stephens, 24, reports Berkeley police spokesperson Sgt. Mary Kusmiss. 

Stephens was gunned down at a friend’s house at 1200 block of Carrison Street at 7:10 p.m., after he left his own home following an argument about a car he had sold to an acquaintance, his sister told the Daily Planet after the killing. 

Sgt. Kusmiss said the arrest closes the last open murder case from 2006.  

Saved [in] the Bay 

After Berkeley’s Finest spotted a man in the water off Golden Gate Fields Monday evening, they turned to Berkeley’s Bravest to make the rescue. 

Deputy Fire Chief Gil Dong said police called the Fire Department at 7:37 p.m., reporting “a man in the bay in need of assistance.” 

Firefighters arrived with two engines, a truck and a paramedic unit. The crew included three specially trained swimmers from the department’s new Water Rescue Team, making their first-ever rescue since the team was trained and equipped last year thanks to a $48,000 grant from Fireman’s Fund insurance company. 

“We’ve made recoveries before, said the deputy chief, “but this was our first rescue.”  

“Recovery” is 911-worker-speak for retrieving dead bodies, and “rescue” is the word for live ones. 

The 38-year-old man was alive and alert at the time of his rescue, when he was brought ashore and taken to an emergency room for treatment of hypothermia and hypoglycemia—too much cold and too little blood sugar. 

Deputy Chief Dong said there had been reports earlier in the day of an apparently homeless man who had kept trying to wade out into the bay. 

Homecoming 

Four very tired Berkeley firefighters were due home Thursday, Aug. 20, after spending a week with the engine, fighting to save the homes of Bonny Doon during the just-contained Lockheed Fire in Santa Cruz County, said the deputy chief. 

The engine company headed south at 8 a.m. on Aug. 13 as part of the Alameda County contingent of firefighters. “They spent the first five days protecting structures and the last two days doing mopping up and overhaul,” he said. “After seven straight days of hard work, they’re ready for a break.”

Two angry men in search of money attacked victims in the Telegraph Avenue area last week, one armed with a stun gun and the other with a lead-lined glove, according to campus police. 

The first robbery took place at Telegraph Avenue near Channing Way at about 1:15 a.m. last Wednesday, Aug. 12. A man walking along Telegraph “was shocked on the back of his neck by a stun gun,” according to the Crime Alert issued later that day by the UC Police Department. 

The robbers were both clad in jeans; one wore a green hoodie, the other a black hoodie. Both men are described as in their early 20s. The pair fled south on foot along the avenue. 

“The victim was not seriously injured during the encounter,” the alert stated.  

The second robbery that same day was more conventional, with the robber brandishing a knife as he strode up to a teenager waiting at a bus stop at Telegraph and Durant avenues. 

The youth handed over his cash when the robber demanded it, and the armed felon walked away, heading west on Durant. 

He was described as a bald, deep-voiced African-American with a goatee, about 30 years old, standing about 6’4” and weighing about 200 pounds. He was wearing a black hoodie with a zipper, gray baggy jeans, white Nikes and a silver medal with a chain around his neck. 

In both cases, campus police joined their city counterparts in unsuccessful area searches for the culprits. 

Anyone with information about the robberies is urged to call UCPD’s Criminal Investigation Bureau between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. at 642-0472, or 642-6760 after hours. 

The third incident of the week followed on Friday morning in People’s Park and ended with the arrest of 34-year-old Travis Barrett Williams on one count of assault with a deadly weapon—the device in question being a “sap glove,” otherwise described as “a lead weighted-knuckle glove” in the Crime Alert, 

His victim was a 23-year-old man who was in the park at 7:30 a.m. when Williams, an acquaintance, walked up, made a lead-enhanced fist, then popped him twice in the face. 

“The suspect attempted to extort money from the victim with more physical violence if he did not return to the park with cash,” the alert states. 

The victim left the park and headed to the nearest campus cop. 

An investigation followed, ending with Williams’s arrest three days later.

By Al Winslow 

I was looking at myself. She was a little girl about 2 years old. She was at the edge of the boarding platform at the 12th Street BART station, leaning into space and gazing down the tunnel where the BART train was going to come from. 

She was alone, and I stood close enough to be able to grab her. 

But she was in control. Her hands gripped the edge of the platform. Her weight was thrown back so that if anything occurred she could automatically fall backwards into safety. 

There was no wasted motion. Likely, it was all instinct, but the instinct of an athlete. 

Once, I was an athlete, and I know the center of it—certainty about the capabilities of your body. 

Two-year-olds have long since converted the main elevator at the Downtown Berkeley Library into a playground. 

The elevator, notorious for being slow, has regular buttons but also large, round buttons near the floor. 

They’re meant to be used by people in wheelchairs, but I’ve rarely seen a person in a wheelchair in this elevator. 

Children come in and kick the large buttons. Partly, it seems, as a ritual to get the elevator going. 

One time, I was there with a child who kicked the large buttons—all of them, repeatedly—while going in circles around the elevator. 

She was two weeks short of two years old, according to her mother. Partly her actions seemed to be a ritual to get the elevator to stop and open its door. When it did, the child sprinted into the library. 

I remarked to the mother, who was still in the elevator, “They’re just exploring. They’re not trying to be bad.” 

“Yes, I know that,” she said. 

I once met a guy who had a theory about elevator behavior. He said he was in the elevator with a group of teenagers who were bouncing around. “When the doors opened, they suddenly stopped and walked calmly into the library,” he said. 

His theory is that elevators abruptly compress people and their energies into a small space. This provokes physical activity or comments about how slow the elevator is, because, basically, nobody wants to be there. 

The little girl at the edge of the BART platform looked down the tunnel until the train came rushing in and then she simply pushed herself back. She became enmeshed in a herd of commuters. 

By then we were friends of a sort and I picked her up—the way you pick up a child of that age, each hand in an armpit each thumb resting on a shoulder—and turned to find the mother. She was a few steps away and took the child. 

She had the familiar look of mothers of two-year-olds, expressing fatigue, acceptance and—I’m not a woman so I can’t really know—but something that seemed to say that the nine-month investment was worth the trouble. 

Don Miguel Ruiz, an emerging thinker, wrote, “If we see a child who is two or three ... we find a free human. These humans have big smiles on their faces and they’re having fun. They are exploring the world. They are not afraid to play. They are afraid when they are hurt, when they are hungry ... but they don’t worry. They are so loving that if they perceive they melt into love. They are not afraid to love at all.” 

In his Aug. 13 commentary “Crying Wolf at KPFA,” Akio Tanaka passed on a restatement by KPFA Board member Tracy Rosenberg of an e-mail by Daily Planet reporter J. Douglas Allen-Taylor. In the interests of clarification, the text of the original e-mail by Mr. Allen-Taylor to Ms. Rosenberg was as follows: In answer to a query by Ms. Rosenberg of the identity of the individual who first contacted the Planet about the alleged $100,000 transfer of funds from KPFA to Pacifica Foundation, Mr. Allen-Taylor replied “Unfortunately, I cannot answer your question. It is my understanding that the individual who first contacted the Daily Planet has requested that their name not be associated with the story. As a professional journalist, I’m bound to honor that request.”

Last weekend a nice lady that I know slightly through a shared interest in classical music left a message on my voicemail. She’d taken an unusual route through the Berkeley Hills and come upon the Code Pink demonstration that’s been ongoing at Law School Professor John Yoo’s house on Grizzly Peak for some weeks now. She described feeling “extremely upset.” Not, of course, she said, that she’s a fan of Yoo, but “while I may agree with them, you know, his stance, torture and stuff,” she didn’t like how they went about expressing their opinion.  

She called it a “pink pogrom…which reminds me of pro-lifers in front of a clinic.”  

“I felt just terrible,” she told me. What if Yoo has children who were seeing this? “What a horrible impression it gives of Berkeley where people stalk and stake out,” she said. And she asked, “Why aren’t the police doing anything?” She thought I might know the answer or be able to do something myself. 

She left her phone number, but I haven’t called back because I’m not sure what to say. The police part is easy for me, of course. As a notorious First Amendment absolutist, I always stand with Justice Hugo Black, who carried a copy of the U.S. Constitution in his hip pocket. He was described as whipping out his text while thundering that when the First Amendment says that the government should make no law restricting freedom of speech, “it means NO LAW!” I think that there’s no constitutional law that lets police stop even the most annoying demonstration if it’s not violent, which I’ll tell her when I call her back. 

But her call raised another question, harder to answer. Are Code Pink’s tactics productive or counter-productive? If they turn off potentially sympathetic people like The Nice Lady, are they a mistake, more self-indulgent self-expression than persuasion?  

After the group’s long stretch at the Berkeley Marine Recruiting Center, which seems in the end to have accomplished nothing and alienated many, I’ve been inclined to that point of view. On the other hand, John Yoo is still enjoying a cushy job at taxpayers’ expense, despite the fact that many of us, myself included, have been on his case in print for years now. Some members of Congress have expressed interest in trying him for war crimes, but so far, nothing. A judge in Spain is after him, but again, nothing’s happened. 

So I went over to the law school formerly known as Boalt Hall to check out the action yesterday. The occasion was the start of the law school year, as John Yoo rejoined the faculty after an absence. Demonstrators were invited to act out their objections. 

The Code Pink ladies (I think they’re all women, but maybe not) were there in costume, dressed in pink as jailers and marshals, keystone-coppish in affect. They were joined by more serious folks who favored the color orange, after the orange jumpsuits worn by prisoners, from the lively group The World Can’t Wait (for you old-timers, reputedly spiritual descendants of the East Bay’s own Bob Avakian).  

Several distinguished members of the left flank of Boalt alumni spoke to good effect. Of the 30 or so others in attendance, most of them were the Usual Suspects: that hardy band of Berkeleyans who still believe that it’s necessary and possible to set the world to rights, many of whom are labeled “crazies” by the media for their troubles. I recognized almost all of them from previous demonstrations for other causes.  

The Planet’s reporter was there, of course, but I didn’t spot any other newsies. 

Some video cameras and microphones were in evidence, but it didn’t look like the MainStreamMedia was taking notice. 

And yet…Tuesday morning the local NPR station had a nice piece on the event, serious and respectful. The Associated Press and a Wall Street Journal blog for lawyers picked the story up. KCBS did it. It’s been a while since any of these outlets thought about John Yoo, and without Code Pink’s antics they might never have done so. 

The question of how you influence public policy has been much discussed as liberal columnists one by one have begun gingerly expressing their disappointment with what President Obama has accomplished so far. Many of them had hoped that Yoo and his allies would have been prosecuted by now.  

What’s the best way to force this laggard administration to act on important problems, and not just cleaning up after Bush but making more progress in all areas? If not Code Pink, what? 

At the Thursday Farmers’ Market last week, where I went to observe the tactics of the anti-referendum harassers first hand, I happened on two national-level gurus of my acquaintance toe to toe amidst the peaches. (I should go to North Berkeley more often.) They were lamenting the lack of action in Washington on issues they (and I) thought were critical. 

“We took out a full-page ad in the Washington Post,” said Guru A, “and it didn’t make any difference.” 

Guru B opined that what Obama needed was a grassroots movement to back him up, or more precisely to appear to force him to do what he really wanted to do anyway.  

“I could get something like that going with $10 million,” he said, “but I can’t raise the money.”  

How about asking George Soros? I suggested. “No,” he said, “I know George well, but he’s got his own way of doing things.” 

Well then, what does that leave us with for strategy?  

Code Pink might be annoying to some, but you can’t argue with results, as far as PR is concerned. On the other hand, next week John Yoo will still be meeting classes.  

My friend the professor emerita was in town this week and went to the demonstration with me. She says that where she comes from moral turpitude and gross incompetence are the standards for removing a tenured faculty member, and she thinks both apply to Yoo. Perhaps demonstrations outside of Yoo’s classes are off target—better results might be obtained by confronting the school’s dean or ethics committee with their responsibilities instead. 

And what can be done about the Democrats in Washington?  

Barack Obama burst upon the national horizon as an overwhelming presence, but his influence seems to be waning as the incompetence of the congressional majority plays out in the health care debate. He’s beginning to remind me of Alice’s Cheshire cat: slowly fading, fading, fading away, until finally there might be nothing left of him but his beautiful smile.  

Something needs to be done before that happens, but what? 

DOWNTOWN PLAN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The debate over Berkeley’s downtown plan might become more grounded in fact if the city were to follow the lead of cities like Havana, which has a three-dimensional scale model of the city, showing any proposed changes to citizens before any changes are made. 

Such an important decision merits a website with images of the competing proposals which all can see.  

In the meantime, more information and commentary is located at www.greendowntownberkeley.org where advocates of the petition opposing the Bates plan have collected a number of thoughtful commentaries. 

Tom Miller 

President, Green Cities Fund 

• 

WHAT DO THEY WANT? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The petitioners are vehemently opposed to the Downtown Area Plan as it was approved by the City Council, but has anyone ever said what it is they do want? Is there an alternative vision for downtown, and if so, can Jesse Arreguin or Kris Worthington or anyone else articulate it—they’ll want “vibrant,” naturally, but beyond that?  

Mr. Arreguin, a big part of your council district is in a sorry state—I know, I live in it. As our representative, what are you planning to do about it?  

Dave Coolidge 

• 

DAVID BROWER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In my letter “Green should be Green” I inadvertently misstated that David Brower was Co-Founder of the Sierra club, (an impossibility since he was born 20 year after its founding). I intended to state “Brower was a Sierra Club activist and co-founder of Friends of The Earth.”  

It’s an embarrassing mistake, especially since I’ve been exploring the Sierra, coastal and desert wilderness and reading John Muir, David Brower, Barry Lopez, Gary Snyder and the likes for decades.  

More proof that proof reading is a good idea.  

John Koenigshofer  

• 

MIDDLE EAST 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I find it strange that someone like Faith Meltzer (letters, Aug. 13) urges people of conscience “to look beyond the extremists on both sides, to reject those that reject compromise, and to embrace the true peacemakers on both sides of (the Middle East) conflict.” Such a noble plea as this would be credible, if it were not coming from such a pro-Israel extremist as herself.  

And joining in the dialog is all well and good, but quite hypocritical for someone who only weeks ago was distributing fliers at the Jewish Film Festival in Berkeley which attacked the Daily Planet as anti-Semitic and urged filmgoers to call or write the Daily Planet’s advertisers (list provided) and to tell them “that you believe their financial support of the Daily Planet is not healthy for our community and not good for their business.”  

When you intimidate others and spread lies, indeed, you are one of the extremists. 

Robert Kanter 

Emeryville 

• 

WEST BERKELEY ZONING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Proposals to change zoning in West Berkeley with the purpose of encouraging business development “could result in increased development,” according to an initial environmental study authored by Berkeley city planners and quoted in the Daily Planet. Well, I hope so. Noise in the area would likely increase, the report says. The Planet story doesn’t go into great detail on the subject, but two significant sources of noise are identified by the report: traffic and construction. Construction noise, of course, is temporary.  

That leaves traffic. Since the only noise I hear in many of the affected sections of West Berkeley is trash blowing against cyclone fences in vacant lots, perhaps some extra noise caused by cars and buses shuttling workers to well-paying jobs and economically desirable jobs might be socially acceptable. Who knows, maybe some car-battery spinoffs from the university will lead to improvements in the electric car, leading to even quieter streets in the future.  

Russ Mitchell 

• 

POINT MOLATE CASINO 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am writing to thank Richard Brenneman for his coverage of the proposed Point Molate casino project. Because of his coverage, I attended the Aug. 12 public hearing on its DEIS/EIR. It was well attended by supporters of a casino/resort. There were only a handful of us who were concerned or opposed to the use of this beautiful bay shore site for intense development. I am not certain those who would or might care are paying attention.  

Are you aware of where this is? This is just north of the Richmond San Rafael Bridge. There is only one way to get there—an exit to the right just before the toll plaza. (This is only one of the project’s big problems—traffic.)  

This is a massive proposal. More that 2,000,000 square feet with several “towers” of 160 feet (16 stories) and 120 feet (12 stories) and the demolition of at least two historic buildings. The project’s EIR is so long and complex (Volume 1 is 1,000 pages plus three more volumes of appendix) that it would take days to read it all, and then the reader would have to tear the pages apart and rearrange it to make sense of it. I have never seen an EIR like it—straight forward information, such as the number of square feet, or daily estimated population, is hard to ferret out. Simple facts are buried in piles of paper.  

The people of Richmond who want the jobs they believe will be generated by this project kept repeating that there will be 17,000 jobs—but the EIR indicates there will be less than 3,000 a day—who is correct? Daily attendance projections runs from 5,000 to 15,000 —I couldn’t even figure it out.  

The proposal violates Richmond’s General Plan, but Richmond council voted for it. I understand there are some in political office who oppose this project, I hope they begin to exert some pressure not to let this project happen. 

Susan Cerny 

• 

SCORCERESS AT PACIFIC RADIO 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Grace Aaron, the current executive of Pacifica Radio, is a sorceress who can appear in multiple locations at the same time. I’ve suspected this for some time, as it’s clearly the most reasonable explanation for the numerous things she’s routinely accused of having done—such as her participation in the Nadra Foster arrest at KPFA, an extraordinary feat of sorcery since, at the time, she was a lowly KPFK board member in Los Angeles without personal authorization over anything related to KPFA. 

Further evidence of Grace Aaron’s witchcraft recently came to light when the national office was charged with a raid on KPFA funds. That was even on the front page of the Berkeley Daily Planet (Aug. 6). The intriguing thing is that since the funds were part of collateral for a loan taken out last fall by a previous chair of the national board, this would seem to have nothing to do with Grace Aaron. Unless, of course, the previous chairwoman was under her spell. So I decided to investigate. I consulted a highly regarded and absolutely reliable psychic. (The consultation fee was rather high, but I received a senior discount.) 

The psychic confirmed that Grace Aaron, the interim executive director of Pacifica radio, is indeed a powerful sorceress. And not only that. It was also revealed during the consultation that, in her past lives, this entity we know as Grace Aaron had done incredibly awful things. 

Back in 1915 she was the German U-boat commander who torpedoed and sank the Lusitania. And in another lifetime before that, she conspired with John Wilkes Booth. 

The appalling truth is that in lifetime after lifetime, since the earliest beginnings of history, she has inflicted disasters and calamities upon humanity. 

Grace Aaron was not alone in those activities. Back in the 1690s she organized and chaired the Salem Association of Witches.  

That entire coven has returned to earth and reconvened in the national office of Pacifica Radio.  

Daniel Borgström 

• 

GAZA 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Clearly a man can witness reality with his own eyes and still see only what he expects to see: Attempts at genocide. Yet that is nothing like the truth.  

The truth is, the people of Gaza in their desperation elected government that will not acknowledge Israel’s right to exist and launches rockets into Israeli neighborhoods per the alignment of their political calculations. Hamas cares no more for the Palestinian people than for the Israelis. They are thugs with no sense of responsibility. Why does Stephen DeGange say nothing of this?  

“Clearly,” he says, the attacks “targeted the civilian population. In Gaza, it could not be otherwise.” An interesting admission. What he is saying without saying so is that Hamas attacked from civilian areas, giving the Israelis the choice between attacking civilian areas, or not responding at all. There is an easily predicted set of outcomes for not responding at all. Why does Stephen DeGange say nothing of this?  

In the end, the author advocates cutting off all military aid to Israel. Weakening this small country, in other words, in the midst of sworn enemies who do nothing for the aspirations of their own people, but manipulate them into hating Israel too much to hate their own dictatorships. History proves time and again this is the surest way to war and genocide. Why does Stephen DeGange say nothing of this?  

Don Teeter 

Orangevale 

• 

NORTH BERKELEY BART 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

For the last two weeks I have been watching what appears to be a million-dollar-plus repaving of the North Berkeley BART parking lot. I have seen perfectly intact, crack-free surfaces destroyed and replaced for no apparent reason. Meanwhile BART employees threatened a strike, fares were recently increased and service has been reduced. 

What is wrong with this picture? 

I have spoken with many commuters and I never heard a single complaint about the surface of the North Berkeley BART parking lot. We do complain about the increasing unreliability of the system and the higher fares. We also don’t appreciate that every year, for several years, when it rains heavily the roof leaks, allowing a dangerous amount of water to spill onto the train platform. I am also aware that there are serious seismic safety issues with the transbay tubes. 

People can, and do, regularly park in unpaved, weedy parking lots and don’t care. If the goal was ADA compliance it could have been achieved easily without redoing the entire parking lot. But higher fares and less frequent service turn riders into drivers. 

BART should do everything they can to redirect funds for non-essential vanity projects, such as parking lot repaving, towards safety improvements, better service and lower fares. I understand that this may mean delaying projects that have been planned for several years, but when funding is low it is essential that taxes and fares are used to deal with the most important needs, rather than projects that have simply made their way to the head of the line. 

Similarly, grant and federally funded projects should be prioritized by real, current needs, and in some cases these funds should be redirected, even if it requires additional administrative work to do so. 

Michael Freeman 

• 

UNIVERSITY CONSTRUCTION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Who wants a possibly toxic construction dump and eight-foot-high dirt dug mounds a few feet from your house? Probably contains lead, asbestos, etc.?  

Redwood Gardens, consisting of at-risk disabled and elderly, doesn’t want it.  

But the university, perhaps hoping for fewer complaints and political heat than from area’s richer folks has dumped it there anyway. The wind continually blows a perfect storm of this suspect dirt all over the Redwood compound: into peoples’ faces, eyes, lungs, cars, homes, food, water, breathing and other medical equipment. Residents and others are feeling the effects in terms of increased eye, (one person stated to his doctor that he had reduced eye functionality from the dirt), lung, and immune problems which lead to more medical visits in an already underfunded, overstrained system.  

The constant construction truck noise and loud beeping which often starts from 7 or 8 a.m. to sometimes 9:30 at night (sometimes six days a week) has caused some residents to lose much sleep and to have to keep their windows closed to try to reduce the noise, the dirt the and the stresses on their emotional and physical health. 

How safe is it to even go out breathe the air? The university plans more construction.  

Vita Weiss 

P. Smith 

Berkeley Citizens for Fair Housing 

• 

ALBANY POLICE DEPARTMENT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Congratulations to the Albany Police Department. They have managed to terminate a new business and destroy the dream of a family. 

When Phil Ferratt opened his new restaurant Ferratt’s at San Pablo and Solano in Albany, he had the vision of creating a family-friendly dining establishment complete with an open-air patio and off-street parking (a parking lot shared with Beverages and More). 

He filed the necessary ABC paperwork to secure a beer and wine license and posted the appropriate notice in the front window. Ferratt was then told that he must secure the approval of the Albany Police Department as a final step in the process. 

This was his downfall, since Ferratt was told by the chief’s office they “there were too many permits to sell alcohol in Albany” and they did not want to approve the license...an arbitrary decision.  

Phil Ferratt tried to wait it out hoping for a change of heart...but there was no heart in Albany and Ferratt’s closed their doors this past week. Unfortunately for me (and a few others), we have lost a great place to enjoy breakfast.  

K.C. Jones 

• 

HEALTH INSURANCE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am sick and tired of the health care industry that cares more about its bottom line than the health of a nation. How can we live in such a wealthy nation where 46 million Americans are uninsured, where those of us who do have health care can barely afford to pay our premiums and are constantly fighting to have care because companies claim “pre-existing conditions.” 

It is time for a health care plan that provides care for all Americans. It is time for the health care industry to stop spending millions of the dollars it has stolen from us to spread lies and misinformation with only its own profit in mind.  

It is time for a change.  

Congress must pass genuine health care reform in 2009 and we must take action by making phone calls, donating to the campaign, writing letters, meeting with our elected officials and knocking on doors to assure that they do.  

Jonah Zern 

Within the United States people of all races are having the same conversation blacks have had in barber shops, beauty salons, on street corners and at kitchen tables for generations—our seemingly imbalanced relationship with the police. The arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., reminds me of the night I spent in jail. While driving from work in downtown Oakland to my home in west Berkeley, a police car stopped me. My tags were expired but I had already paid the renewal fees. I simply awaited the stickers in the mail. I confidently handed the officer my driver’s license, proof of insurance and a receipt showing I had paid my registration. After dispatching my information, he approached my car to inform me there was a warrant for my arrest and he would send me to jail.  

Like Gates, I am an African-American male with an advanced degree who lives in a university town. I perceived my offense as insignificant in the context of working in crime-ridden Oakland. I hadn’t raped, robbed or murdered anyone; I had failed to pay a traffic ticket. My experience differed from Gates’ in that one of my arresting officers was black, black like me.  

Race is an illusory social construction within which many of us function as if it is real. The Gates incident reveals that underlying these constructions is the question of power—who has the power to define, to include or exclude, to establish the norm. Both Gates and Officer Crowley faced a challenge to their power. Gates is an upper-middle-class university professor who found himself, to his surprise, treated like an average black man (an outsider) in his own neighborhood and indeed in his own home. He lamented, “There are one million black men in jail in this country and last Thursday I was one of them…this is how poor black men across the country are treated everyday in the criminal justice system. It’s one thing to write about it, but altogether another to experience it.” Officer Crowley, who previously trained other officers to avoid racial profiling, found his authority publicly challenged. But power has no race, or color. We all benefit and suffer by the multifarious ways power manifests as racism, sexism, class and even one person’s ability to deny another physical freedom.  

As the white cop who transported me from the corner of Martin Luther King and San Pablo contested my arrest with his partner, I wondered how race, class, color and power influenced the African- American officer’s decision to send me to jail. I wore a designer suit, drove a new car, and am significantly lighter skinned than the arresting officer. “I should have paid the ticket,” I told the white officer, assuming responsibility for my actions and understanding that while the black officer exercised power in this specific interaction, I had possibly benefitted from power in other ways not accessible to him.  

I would not have been arrested if the white officer alone had cited me—not because he was white, but because he clearly lacked a need to exercise power over me. He immediately helped me from the back of the patrol car, removed my handcuffs, and allowed me to retrieve some items from my car unsupervised, commenting “you don’t look like you belong here.” His comment suggested that class perception was important. I believe that the African-American officer’s decision to arrest me was possibly influenced by my perceived class and that he was pleased to jail someone he perceived as different. His white counterpart admitted that class colored his perception, stating that I did not fit the profile of a criminal. To reduce the discussion of the Gates arrest to a discussion of race is to ignore that race is about power. We must also ask, would either Gates or I have been arrested if we were female?  

Current demographic trends across the country reflect increasing class differences among people of color. The way we negotiate power inevitably changes as our roles within society change. Interactions between blacks and whites will no longer so easily be reduced to overly simplified discussions of race and racism. My arrest, like that of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is an example of how power manifests complexly as race and class. If Gates’ experience was simply a result of racism, then perhaps I am the first to experience black on black racism. Either possibility seems absurd.  

Berkeley resident Robert Quintana Hopkins writes about race, gender, sexuality and identity in his new book Glass Closet, published by AfroChicano Press.

In her July 16 letter June Brott states that people will be laughing at those that signed the July 9 advertisement, “We are Jews.” I, for one, am not laughing. The ad condemned Israel’s continued illegal occupation of Gaza and its brutal bombing campaign last December, as well as the thuggish tactics of some of Israel’s supporters attempting to censor our local paper. Ms. Brott states that the Israeli Palestinian conflict is “one of the world’s most complex, difficult conflicts, one that has defied solution for more than 60 years.” I believe her argument that this issue is so complex is used to create apathy—apathy which allows billions of our tax dollars (annually) to go on paying for Israel’s illegal and murderous acts, and creates no motivation on Israel’s part to work towards peace (with all the might, why negotiate?). 

Ms. Brott goes on to state, “to declare Israelis as the Bad Guys and Palestinians as the Blameless Victims is beyond ridiculous.”  

What the ad stated in part is “we name the murderous attacks of December and January as war crimes.” The facts are that during Israel’s 22-day invasion of Gaza this past December, Israeli military killed 1,330 Palestinians, of whom 437 were children (the wounded included 1,890 children). In comparison, 13 Israelis were killed (of which at least four were soldiers killed by friendly fire). I am neither Jewish nor Palestinian, but I think those numbers speak for themselves. 

  I was brought up being taught about the horrors the Nazis committed and the sins of silence in the face of such atrocities and injustices. I reject the inference that the Israeli question is too complicated for citizens of the United States to speak up on it. The occupation and blockade of Gaza (which forces Palestinians to live in conditions where malnutrion among children is rampant) are crimes. Collective punishment and house demolitions (like the one that resulted in Rachel Corrie’s murder) are a crime, as are the mass killings of civilians. And despite the huge media censorship campaign and the very successful use of the word anti-Semitic to silence critics or even discussion of Israel, the world is increasingly aware of Israel’s war crimes. In fact, the Vatican’s Justice and Peace Minister visited Gaza recently and told the press, “Let’s look at the conditions in Gaza: these increasingly resemble a big concentration camp.”  

Thank you to the Daily Planet for keeping a free press in Berkeley, despite the real risk to their own economic survival, and shame on any of us if we stay silent while freedom of the press is attacked. History teaches us we do so at our own peril.  

Neil Doherty is a Berkeley resident.

Unfortunately, health care in the United States is a privilege, not a right. Opponents of health care insurance reform prefer the status quo,  that is, obscene profits for the health insurance industry while consumers pay more for less coverage. Our present health care system is riddled with inefficiencies, excessive administrative expenses, inflated prices, poor management, and inappropriate care, waste and fraud. And too many Americans do not even have the “privilege” of health care.   

The dreaded “S” word 

Socialized medicine is coming! Lock your doors and shutter your windows.  Why is the dreaded “S” word used to oppose health care reform? Those who use the dreaded “S” word never really define what they mean by socialism. To some, it is an expansion in government spending.  For example, they deemed the stimulus bill socialist—even though the architect of such policies, John Maynard Keynes, advocated a capitalist economic system. Thus, President Obama who is trying to save capitalism from itself must be a socialist.   

Since 1913, the federal tax code has used a progressive formula whereby the rich pay a higher percentage in taxes. Thus, one aim of our federal tax code is to redistribute wealth and, by the way, not doing a very good job of it. Guess our tax system is socialistic as is Social Security, public housing, unemployment insurance, medicare, school breakfast programs, etc. You get the idea. 

In other developed democracies, national health care systems are so popular that once established, it would be politically impossible to eliminate them. In a recent Gallup poll, while only 57 percent of Americans said they were satisfied with their health care, over 75 percent of Canadians and Western Europeans said they would not trade their health care system for the current U.S. model. Remember Sicko, Michael Moore’s documentary on America’s health care system as compared to the universal free health care systems in Canada, France, Britain, and Cuba. 

Why are Republicans trying to sow doubt and prevent passage of a national health care bill? Because they want to protect the for-profit health care and pharmaceutical industries.  They want an unregulated capitalism, the kind that got us into our present financial mess. 

America’s uninsured  

The United States is the only industrialized country in the world that does not guarantee health care to all its citizens. In 2007, nearly 46 million Americans, or 18 percent of the population under the age of 65, were without health insurance. Why?  Because a third of this country’s firms did not offer coverage in 2007. Even if health coverage was offered, many employees could not afford their part of the premiums. And losing a job meant losing coverage because they could not afford to pay for Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) health insurance—the continuation of group coverage offered by their former employers.   

And when an employee loses his or her health coverage, it also means a family loses its coverage. Persons without health coverage usually must pay upfront for medical care or go untreated. Many end up in the emergency room. The uninsured are likely to receive less preventive care, may be diagnosed at a later stage of a disease, and once diagnosed, receive less therapeutic care and have higher mortality rates. It is estimated that the United States spends $100 billion per year for the uninsured, often for preventable diseases that physicians could have treated more efficiently at an early stage of diagnosis. 

Insurance company profits 

Profits at ten of the country’s largest publicly traded health insurance companies rose 428 percent from 2000 to 2007.  One of the main reasons for such high profits is the growing lack of competition in the private health insurance industry that has led to near monopoly conditions in many markets. Any comparative analysis of health care systems indicates that the greater the role of private, for-profit health insurance companies in the delivery of health care, the higher the cost. This is why the United States has the most expensive healthcare system in the world but trails well behind on crucial indicators of public health, such as infant mortality, longevity, and death of women in childbirth.  

These facts provide compelling evidence for a public health insurance plan option to provide some healthy competition, which in turn will provide the greatest number of choices possible for consumers. 

Conclusion  

For more than 60 years, the United States has tried to make quality, affordable health insurance coverage available to all Americans. Now is the time to make health care a right for all Americans. 

Ralph E. Stone is a retired Bay Area attorney.

About five years ago, I was swimming in the Strawberry Canyon swimming pool, which is associated with the UC Berkeley faculty and their families. It was a hot, sunny day, and I had been teaching all morning. Taking advantage of the faculty prices, I find swimming a great bargain. As I thrust my right arm over my shoulder and turned my head, I caught a glimpse of two policemen standing at the end of the pool. 

Laughingly I said to myself, as a Kafkaesque joke, what they going to do? Arrest me? Ask me for my identification? 

But sure enough, as I came to the turn, one of the cops beckoned to me. He wanted me to get out of the pool. Why? Had a relative died? What was so important that two policemen were waiting to yank me out of the lane? 

The first thing the cops asked was where was my identification. I told them that I taught at Berkeley.  

You do? They asked skeptically. Let’s see your identification, they asked threateningly, and seemed not to realize that I was dripping wet. 

I pointed to my pants and my wallet on my towel on the grass at the other end of the pool. 

When I heard the news about my friend Harvard Professor Henry L. Gates Jr. being arrested by the Boston police, I thought of that afternoon.  

As I walked through the all-white sunbathers—most of them in various stages of getting brown like me—I felt humiliated and clueless. Most whites believe that if a policeman asks for their identification, they have the right to ask why. But if you are a black person, you are smart not to ask them any questions. From the beginning, I understood that by giving me mean and nasty looks, the police implied that if I asked too many questions, I was setting myself up for a charge of resisting, or as Sgt.Crowely said of Professor Gates, of being “uncooperative” or “difficult.” 

I got to my pants and gave them my driving license and UC Berkeley identification. They took the information and called in on their walkie-talkies. As I stood there, I was shocked at the way the others around me passively watched. 

At some point, I complained, “I teach here,” meaning Cal, “and I have a Ph.D…” 

The cop was a wit. “Yeah,” he laughed grimly, “ and I … uh … have just an eighth-grade education!” The other policeman joined in the laughter. 

In other words, it was like the old joke, “What’s a black man with a Ph.D.?” A nigger. In racist America, a white man with only an eighth-grade education is superior to any black man with a Ph.D. Underlying his remark was the assumption, which is still prevalent in our society today: that all whites are superior to any black person. A black man with a Ph.D. doesn’t rate against a cop with an eighth-grade education—not if that cop is white. 

Finally, when they gave me my identification back, I asked them why they pulled me out of the pool. Somebody working at the facility had called in because some guy had been harassing people, and they thought he was back. 

I asked one more question. Could they give me the name of the person who called? No, they could not. One of the policemen warned me to stay away from the swimming pool. Have a good day. 

I sat down shocked and drained. I felt that I had been humiliated, which is what the policemen wanted me to feel. 

I went home and began writing a rap song. I had never written a rap song before, but it was the most appropriate thing to do because I could express my anger and I could get it out of my system, out of my body. (I began to understand what rappers do when they have no other outlet.) I told my friends about the incident, and that I had written a rap to get it out. Noted author Ishmael Reed heard about my rap song and published it. 

What I find disturbing is that as black intellectuals and academics, we are living and working in environments where whites often project onto us their deepest, most illogical and improbable racist worldviews. 

Most whites who read this will not, I suspect, believe that white policemen would pull a black professor out of the swimming pool. I didn’t either until it happened to me. What the incident taught me is that our society invests white people with enormous power: any white person who sees a black man or woman in a social space where only whites should be can pick up the phone and call the police. 

Lucia Whalen worked at the Harvard Magazine for fifteen years at Harvard University, yet she couldn’t recognize one of the most famous writers in publishing. Like many “educated” whites, she projected a racist template when she saw two black men out of their social space. Like Professor Gates and his black chauffeur, a black man swimming in a white faculty pool is out of his designated space. Instead of seeing two black men having a problem with the door, she saw two black men burglarizing a house. 

In too many instances, black people with Ph.D.s are told by their colleagues that they are brilliant, and welcome, but that is not how the campus police often see blacks on campus. Many coworkers also smile at the only black working in the department but secretly wish they were not there. 

Academic-related racism is a projection that our country has inherited from the age of slavery and is a long way from dealing with. 

When I went back to the Strawberry Canyon swimming facility the next day to inquire, the young white and Asian workers said they had no idea who could have called the police. Like Lucia Whalen, who called the police on Professor Gates, these young people were not questioned about the incident and were not held responsible. They are looked upon as citizens doing a service for the good of society. 

Even now that we have a black president and even as liberal academics embrace him, there are many whites who still project their own low views of themselves on any black person they choose. 

I never went back to the Strawberry Canyon swimming pool. The message that blacks are not wanted there really got through to me. Last week, a black friend of mine, a Ph.D. from Princeton, took his seven-year-old son to the faculty swimming pool. He was so embarrassed by the stares and hostility his son received from the “white only” population that he said he will never go back there. 

Cecil Brown is novelist and writer.

In his run up to the election Barack Obama frequently invoked the legacy of Abraham Lincoln and his theory of bringing powerful but opposing personalities together in order to govern better.  

At the time no one spoke of the unthinkable possibility of another obvious connection to the Lincoln Administration. Now it is openly discussed.  

In retrospect, therefore, you’ve got to give Mrs. Lincoln some love.  

On April 3, 1865, Richmond, Va., the capitol of the Confederacy, fell to union forces, effectively ending the Civil War. The following day, in Washington, D.C., President Lincoln, with members of his family and others, boarded a small naval vessel to travel to Richmond in order to walk the streets and personally assure the residents of their safety.  

That same evening Lincoln stood on a hotel balcony and spoke to the assembled crowds below. Even though Lincoln had decidedly racist views concerning blacks and considered promoting a 13th Amendment that would have made slavery legal into perpetuity if it would have averted war, Lincoln urged the vote be extended to the newly liberated Africans.  

Elizabeth Keckley, who viewed the scene from inside the hotel and was standing to the rear of Lincoln, was horrified. Keckley, who previously had been enslaved, was a close companion of the president’s wife, Mary Todd Lincoln. Keckley told Mrs. Lincoln she must try never to allow such a scene to happen again. “Anyone could have taken a shot at him,” she said.  

Mary Todd Lincoln responded that there was little she could do and that she “had premonitions” that something terrible was going to happen.  

Many are having Mrs. Lincoln-like premonitions these days.  

Recently we have been informed that President Obama has received more death threats in a shorter period of time than any president since the organizing of the Secret Service in the immediate aftermath of the Lincoln assassination.  

The recent violent and furious protests by armed sign carriers at town-hall meetings, called to discuss health care reforms, recalled not so much democratic discussions New England used to be famous for as distant white protests against civil rights reforms. Cartoons disparaging the President and his family bring to mind an earlier time when blacks were routinely ridiculed in the nation’s press. The Rush Limbaughs, Glenn Becks, Lou Dobbs, Anne Coulters, Sean Hannitys, etc., who routinely pollute the television and radio airwaves, have proven themselves true acolytes of the 1930s fascist Father Coughlin, the “Father of Hate Radio,” and are themselves the oracles of hate television. Like the “birthers,” those delusional white folks who so hate the idea of a black president that they invent their own “reality” in the form of fake birth certificates and claim the president wasn’t born in the U.S. and therefore is ineligible to be president. Protesters carrying signs calling for the death of Obama, Michelle and the children, black politicians’ offices being painted with swastikas, the president labeled a Nazi, a communist, and Republican Party threats that similar tactics will be used in upcoming debates on immigration reform; all this against a national media backdrop of a full television menu, ranging from Whale Wars and Dog the Bounty Hunter to the First 48, has reinforced television viewing that promotes racial and ethnic intolerance. The tinder box of political tensions is ignited and simmering.  

This is the “democracy at work” that a handful of white liberals, notably including San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, dismiss not only as harmless but productive.  

Mayor Newsom and others seem not to recognize a new downward ratcheting of Republican Party strategists; a downward spiral from the so-called “southern strategy” of the Nixon years and beyond, when the Republicans manipulated white fears toward civil rights gains for African-Americans and others to a newer and even more mean-spirited strategy that could be called the Randy Weaver recruitment plan.  

Randy Weaver was the evangelical, former Green Beret, Aryan-nation-sympathizing nut who was in a shootout standoff with the federal government in 1992 at Ruby Ridge, Idaho.  

Though few invoke Randy Weaver’s name, the allusions could not be clearer.  

The hatred and anger we see spewing forth at the health care “discussions” (and which we are led to believe will be duplicated at any immigration reform discussions) is based on a fundamental mistrust of government that was first fueled during the civil rights movement and gradually stoked to its current white heat intensity by the Howard Jarvis-Paul Gann-like tax reform initiatives that spread across the nation in the late 1970’s. These tax reform initiatives helped lay the basis for the current fiscal crises now experienced by virtually every public political entity in the nation.  

Many within the Republican Party appear appalled at what’s happening. However, anyone who’s followed the career and seemingly inexplicable popularity of former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, Randy Weaver in pumps, witnessed the ease with which she describes herself as a “redneck woman,” and notes the racist populist enthusiasm of her denigration of the federal government can see that a sizeable portion of the Republican Party has gone far beyond what senior Republican strategist Ed Rollins lamented on election night past when he said, “We’ve become the party of the deep south.”  

In 2008, the Republican Party at its national convention of 2,500 delegates, boasted 75 African-American delegates. [Numbers of Latino delegates appear not to be available.] In addition to proving that white folks have no monopoly on political self-delusion, these numbers reflect how totally and absolutely the Republican Party is out of step with modern needs of the multi-racial electorate of the U.S.  

Those charged with securing the safety of the president say all that is needed to set of a conflagration (presumably a euphemism for the unthinkable) is a spark.  

Meanwhile from the Left, there is barely a whisper. From those who were so quick just a year ago to accuse Michigan Congress member John Conyers of treason for not attempting to impeach Bush, there is virtual silence. Significant numbers of black progressives engage in studious navel gazing as they debate whether or not Obama is good for black people. Organized labor, at a time when it could have tremendous influence in charting a progressive path, is disorganized.  

There is no joy or delight cataloguing the darkness that seems to be descending on the U.S. political scene. However, the atmosphere has now become so charged, it is rarely possible to criticize Obama on his weaknesses and failures, without adding fuel to the fire in progress.  

If the unthinkable should become real, that would surely unravel the American project as we know it. 

Jean Damu frequently contributes ot the Planet.

Now that the dust has settled and Californians can see the drastic consequences of the state budget train wreck, it’s time to consider 10 actions to fix California. 

1. Elect a leader. California has a 40-year history of electing governors on the basis of their personality, starting with Ronald Reagan in 1967 and ending with the current governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger. In 2006, Schwarzenegger defeated the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Phil Angelides, who had far more experience and leadership ability, but less charisma. Angelides might not have been able to head off the current budget crisis, but he had a track record of forming coalitions to deal with California’s big problems. In 2010, Californians must choose a governor who can inspire them to deal with their state’s difficult problems. 

2. Change term limits. In 1990, California voters passed legislative term limits: six years in the Assembly and eight in the Senate. This action fatally diminished the collective memory of the Legislature and its ability to act strategically. Moreover, term limits increased the power of lobbyists who typically have far more experience than do the short-term legislators. Term limits should either be repealed altogether or modified so that legislators are limited to 14 years of total legislative service. 

3. End gerrymandering. Following the 2000 Census, California’s Democratic and Republican Parties agreed to gerrymander the district boundaries so that the status quo would be preserved. This action rendered almost all legislator seats non-competitive, thereby ensuring a continuation of the partisanship that hampers budget negotiations. The solution is to have a bipartisan group—such as retired judges—draw new district boundaries. 

4. Restore majority rule. In 1934, California voters passed a law requiring a two-thirds legislative majority to pass a budget. California is one of only three states that require a two-thirds vote. In the interest of a rational budget process, Californians must readopt majority rule. 

5. Revise the initiative process. Over the years, the frequency of ballot initiatives has increased, resulting in a bewildering set of rules that restrict not only budgetary decisions but also administrative actions. This process must be amended, as part of a wholesale revision of the state constitution. 

6. Adopt a two-year budget cycle. California’s budget process has become so dysfunctional that legislators spend most of their time working on next year’s budget. Nonetheless, in 19 of the past 23 years, California has not passed a budget on schedule. Meanwhile, 21 states have adopted a two-year budget cycle, which permits legislators to spend a full year preparing the budget for the next two years. Typically, the first year of the cycle is devoted to budgetary oversight and non-budget-related bills are considered in the second year. California should move to a two-year budget cycle. 

7. Revamp the tax code. Over the past 50 years, California has become increasingly dependent upon personal income taxes, which now constitute 53 percent of all tax revenues. (In most states, the revenue base is one third property tax, one third sales tax, and one third income tax.) As a result, the California budget is increasingly vulnerable to economic swings that affect personal income. Late in 2008, Gov. Schwarzenegger authorized the Commission on the 21st Century Economy to suggest changes to California’s tax code. Among the revisions being considered are: expanding the sales tax to include a variety of services, implementing a value-added tax (net-receipts tax), adopting a pollution surtax on carbon-based fuels, and modifying Proposition 13 to facilitate raising revenues. California’s tax code needs an overhaul. 

8. Legalize marijuana. There’s a huge market for marijuana in California, but only medicinal use is fully legal. The black market for pot is an enormous source of potential tax revenue. If marijuana were to be taxed and regulated the same as alcohol, California would garner more than $1 billion per year. Legalize pot. 

9. Reduce the prison population. In the recent budget compromise, education funds were cut by $6 billion but the Department of Corrections was reduced by only $1.2 billion. California continues to spend a disproportionate amount on prisons—10 percent of the state general fund; the average cost per inmate is roughly $46,000, while the average cost per pupil is $11,626. The prison population—167,000—can be dramatically reduced by common-sense actions such as deporting undocumented aliens and making non-violent crimes, such as writing bad checks, a misdemeanor so that prison time is not an option. Reducing the number of prisoners would free up billions for other state purposes. 

10. Designate more toll roads. For the past 20 years, California has experimented with toll roads in Southern California and for the past ten years, the FasTrak electronic toll collection system has been used to collect fees on toll bridges and roads. The FasTrak system should be expanded to collect tolls on more California highways. California can’t afford to let all of its freeways be free. 

California’s problems are not insurmountable, but their resolution will require concerted action: new leadership, legal changes, likely a new constitution, and the willingness to consider alternative revenue sources. 

Bob Burnett is a Berkeley writer. He can be reached at bobburnett@comcast.net.

Incoming Oakland Police Chief Anthony Batts won over the crowd at his coming-out press conference Monday afternoon with a bit of hometown theatrics. Asking himself the rhetorical question of why he chose to transfer to Oakland from a similar position in Long Beach, Mr. Batts reached down under the table, pulled out a Raiders cap, pulled it on his head, pronounced himself a lifelong Raiders fan, and began to name off all the old-school silver-and-black stars from the glory days, throwing in a couple of ‘7os Oakland Athletics for good measure. The collection of newsfolk and camerapeople and assorted curious and powerfuls and interesteds at Mayor Ron Dellums’ City Hall conference room roared with laughter and approval, and though he got a couple of pointed questions along the way, Mr. Batts had cemented himself then and there as a legitimate Oaktowner, a member of the club. 

Are we really still such suckers for the Raiders? 

For me, the funniest moment at the press conference came at another point, when Mr. Batts declared that he was not a politician. The newly appointed chief touched all the bases and hit all the right notes, voicing enthusiasm at being able to work alongside the “iconic” Mr. Dellums, twice giving props and praise to Deputy Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan—who Mr. Batts beat out for the chief’s job—at one point even making the visibly disappointed Mr. Jordan break out in a smile, acknowledging that he understood and empathized with the “pain” of “both sides” in the Lovelle Mixon police killings (while tactfully not going into detail on what might have pained the community side), reciting the obligatory mantra that police must work in cooperation with the community to bring down Oakland’s crime and violence epidemic, confessing he still did not know what has caused the city’s crime rate to remain so naggingly high, promising to listen and not simply come in imposing “his” program on the department on the city, promising to reach out to the city’s neglected youth population, etc., etc., etc. 

Mr. Batts handled the most difficult of the questions like a pro when he was asked by a reporter where he planned to live. Had he said “I don’t know yet,” he would have found himself immersed in a controversy, or had he said “I’m buying a house in Brentwood,” he would have immediately turned off a significant portion of Oakland’s activist population. Instead, Mr. Batts hesitated for the briefest of moments, laughed as if he could not understand the import of the question, and answered “Oakland,” with an implied “of course; why wouldn’t I?” at the end. Whether he thought this was merely an Oakland-pride issue or already knew of the controversy surrounding so many of Oakland’s police officers living far away from the city, across the hills, Mr. Batts found the only possible way out of this briar patch. If that’s not the mark of a good politician, it’s certainly a damn good imitation of one. 

I’m a skeptic both by nature and by profession and so I believe—as the old folks on the front porch used to say—that the proof of the pudding is in the eating of it, not in how delicious it appears on the front of the package on the shelf in the store. The job of chief of the Oakland Police Department is an enormously difficult one, with fiercely opposing constituencies to placate and minefields set to blow on all sides and at every step, and we will have to wait to see how Mr. Batts does in—to put it as simply as possible—the doing of it. 

Still, there was something of a poignancy in this week’s introductory press conference, a sad reminder of what many in the city had expected to be the regular state of affairs in Oakland with the 2006 election of Ron Dellums as mayor. It was assumed that the best and the brightest would flock to Oakland to work in a Dellums administration, and the most significant problem would be finding enough room at City Hall and within the city’s boundaries and budget to harness and use all the expected incoming talent. 

That, of course, has not happened. While there has been talent within the Dellums administration, and some dedicated staff members who have labored well in the trenches, the only bright star that has shone in the administration has been Mr. Dellums himself. It is hard to see a Barbara Lee or a Keith Carson or a Sandré Swanson emerging from the Dellums mayoral staff as such political powerhouses emerged from the Dellums Congressional staff. While unfair claims about Mr. Dellums lagging on the job have dominated criticism of this administration—unfair because Mr. Dellums remains an exceptionally hard worker and will leave the city in better shape than he found it—it is the failure to attract major talent to the city that has been the administration’s biggest single and actual disappointment. Until the Batts appointment, in fact, the Dellums administration was best-known for the chance that got away, the failure to put a star quality player in the post of city administrator. 

(This is no knock, by the way, on the abilities of the actual city administrator, Dan Lindheim. It’s a political criticism. If Mr. Lindheim was to be city administrator, he should have been appointed immediately upon the firing of former administrator Deborah Edgerly. By building up expectations of an appointment of national stature, and then getting played by former Oakland City Manager/Administrator Robert Bobb, it was Mr. Dellums who ended up undervaluing the public worth of Mr. Lindheim.) 

Meanwhile, to show how much of a boost the Batts appointment made in the public perception of the Dellums Aaministration, it even caused an abrupt change in the opinions expressed by East Bay Express journalist and blogger Bob Gammon, who has been one of Mr. Dellums’ most vocal critics since the mayor’s 2007 swearing-in ceremonies. 

In an Aug. 19 column entitled “Dellums Gets His Mojo Back,” Mr. Gammon concludes: “According to sources, the Batts hire ... has helped stir a buzz in City Hall about Dellums possibly running for re-election. Sure, it took a while for the former Congressman to hit his stride, but after the past few months, it’s hard to see his main rival, former state Sen. Don Perata, being a better mayor. If Dellums were to seek re-election, both men would be formidable candidates.” 

(As an aside, I think my good friend Mr. Gammon erred in not listing a third individual as a formidable candidate for Oakland mayor: City Councilmember Jean Quan. Ms. Quan is a relentless campaigner, knows Oakland city issues, has the credentials to run Oakland government, has a strong base of popular support, will probably have access to the same vast Asian-American financial base that poured money into Wilma Chan’s campaign for state Senate last year, and has piled up considerable political credits over the years, including one with former Dellums staffer and now state Assemblymember Sandré Swanson, for whom Ms. Quan tirelessly campaigned in Mr. Swanson’s original Assembly race. While this should not be construed as an endorsement of Ms. Quan—I don’t do endorsements—I think counting Ms. Quan out of the top tier of mayoral candidates is a mistake.) 

Meanwhile, Mr. Gammon’s sudden burst of sunshine over the Dellums camp is of note not only because it is among the only positive words Mr. Gammon has made about Mr. Dellums in the past two and a half years, but because it has been widely assumed that Mr. Dellums is not going to run for re-election next year. 

I’m not one of the ones who has made that assumption and my guess is that Mr. Dellums has not yet made the decision, and has been carefully preserving the option either to run again or retire, depending. He has a deep residue of support within many of Oakland’s communities, and with all the batterings he has taken, can still one-on-one rally and inspire Oaklanders better than any other politician in the city, without exception. 

However, if the mayor does decide to run for re-election, he has some significant fence-mending to do within his own camp. 

Particularly during the first year of the Dellums administration, public attention focused on the fierce criticism of the mayor coming from people who did not support him in the 2006 election. What went largely unreported—and therefore largely unnoticed—was the slow but steady level of disappointment with Mr. Dellums developing within the original African-American/progressive coalition that started and fueled the massive petition campaign that convinced Mr. Dellums to return to Oakland and run for mayor. This has been building over a long period, and amongst many people, and for many reasons, but the general feeling I have heard within this original coalition is a grumbling and growing discontent, a feeling that their specific concerns have been overlooked by the mayor. But in part because they were the ones who induced Mr. Dellums to run, and in part because of the perceived unfairness of the criticism of Mr. Dellums’ enemies, almost all of this original Dellums coalition was reluctant to speak out publicly, although many of them reportedly attempted to make their views known to Mr. Dellums on a private basis. 

Unfortunately, this lack of public discussion and airing of grievances, combined with the failure of Mr. Dellums to address the concerns to the satisfaction of the grievants, allowed those grievances to fester and grow. Earlier this year, in a series of private over-drinks discussion at a public reception concerning alternatives to the mayoral candidacy of former state Sen. Don Perata, I was somewhat surprised to learn how angry some former Dellums supporters were with the mayor, and how unwilling they were to commit to signing back on to another Dellums candidacy. 

At least as far as a Dellums re-election candidacy is concerned, that is not the worst of it. 

This summer, members of the old Dellums African-American/progressive coalition felt they got three distinct snubs from the mayor’s office. The first was in the selection of Phil Tagami as the developer of both the city and port portions of the old Oakland Army Base—Mr. Tagami is considered a political enemy of the old Dellums coalition. While that decision was ultimately made by the Oakland City Council, coalition members felt, rightly or wrongly, that Mr. Dellums helped tip the scales in favor of Mr. Tagami. The second perceived grievance was Mr. Dellums’ selection of Gilda Gonzales, a former aide to City Councilmember Ignacio De La Fuente, to the Port of Oakland Commission (Mr. De La Fuente is another coalition opponent, and it was their opposition to him that sparked the original search for an alternate candidate that ended with the Dellums petition drive). And finally, after coalition members lobbied hard for the mayor to appoint East Palo Alto Police Chief Ron Davis to the vacant Oakland chief’s position, Mr. Dellums appointed Mr. Batts instead. 

Following the Batts press conference, several members of the old Dellums coalition were very favorably impressed by the new chief’s initial performance, and therefore mollified, and that was undoubtedly part of Mr. Dellums’ calculations in the appointment. But if the mayor wants to run for re-election—or even if he believes he will need that old coalition to help carry his water in some of the political fights remaining in his current term—it would be a mistake for Mr. Dellums to assume that the wounds within his own camp have been healed.  

But, then, that’s only my opinion as a sideline observer in a game Mr. Dellums long ago showed he was a grandmaster of. 

We were strolling under the paperbarks (irresistibly dubbed “fluffula truffula trees” by one Daily Planet reader) on Jefferson Street near Bancroft, and it occurred to me that it’s time for my unofficially annual tree rant.  

What occasions this one is praise—I wouldn’t want anyone to think I’m an unalloyed grouch.  

Officially it’s named Melaleuca linariifolia, flaxleaf papebark or cajeput tree, or sometimes “snow-in-summer” like the pretty silver-leaved groundcover Cerastium tomentosum. It’s an Australian, like a lot of strange plants that thrive here; drought-tolerant, non-invasive here as far as I know though it’s a problem in Florida.  

It’s fun to get up close and personal with this tree, because its bark is deeply squooshy. Go ahead; hug one. Try to resist pulling the softly shaggy bark off in strips, though… Well, don’t take much, as the trees here have to cope with a dense human population.  

The double file of paperbarks lined up on that street, and a few other plantings in Berkeley and Albany, make one of several reliably wonderful summer urban sights in the East Bay when they all bloom at once. The trees have a round-headed form, fluffy indeed, and the little white flowers open en masse on the ends of the myriad twigs to make a foamy, creamy set of sculptures held above those improbably pale and raggedy-veiled trunks.  

There was a nice difference in the two trees on the Jefferson Street side of the Congregation Beth Israel synagogue; I didn’t see it until we walked directly under them and looked up.  

Paperbarks make a dense canopy, and the underside of the foliage mass, left on its own, forms a dark cave full of dead and dangling twigs. In the wild and untouched, I’m sure these make great shelter for the assorted birds and marsupials and herps and other critters that live with them.  

City life is different, though. Just leaving a tree to its own devices isn’t always the best thing, especially where its castoff leaves and twigs don’t naturally fall to the ground beneath it to make a nice nutritious duff.  

In the wrong hands, a paperbark could so easily turn into a rack of poodleballs, which would be an insult to anything less common than a Hollywood juniper. (The only thing moderating my reaction to poodleballing Hollywood junipers is my residual personal malice toward that plant.)  

I haven’t yet found out who pruned the paperbarks at Jefferson and Bancroft; I figure it was somebody hired by Congregation Beth Israel, or maybe there’s a tree genius right there in its ranks.  

Whoever it was did an excellent job: it appears that he or she simply cleaned out the shaded-out dead stuff to expose the branch structure, seen from below. I suspect there was some more sophisticated work too, but it all follows the tree’s natural form and the result is great. The pale branches visible against the (apparently untouched) dark canopy form a handsome, muscular sculpture.  

Hats off to some thoughtful, skilled pruning, and to whoever had the brains to give the right person that job! 

Legend has it that in the 1920s, a small plane crashed outside the Wawona Hotel in Yosemite National Park. Taken to Moore Cottage, on the slope behind the main hotel building, the injured pilot is said to have expired before the doctor’s arrival. Hotel employees and guests have reported seeing a ghost descending the stairs in Moore Cottage, dressed in a leather jacket, pilot’s cap, goggles, and a white silk scarf. 

On a recent visit to Wawona, we stayed at Moore Cottage, a gingerbread charmer built in 1894 and originally called “Little Brown.” No ghost livened up our stay, but we found it a good place to stop nonetheless. We weren’t the first to find it so. Native Americans who camped at the Wawona meadows on their peregrinations between the Sierra foothills and Yosemite Valley called the area Pallachun, or “a good place to stop.” 

Apt as it is, the name Pallachun did not survive into the era of Gringo settlement. The first non-native resident in what is now known as Wawona was Galen Clark (1814-1910), widely known as the “discoverer of the Mariposa Grove of giant trees.” A New Hampshire native, Clark left for the Golden State in 1853, lured by newly mined California gold dust he had seen on exhibit at the Crystal Palace in New York. Arriving in Mariposa County, he engaged in mining and surveying Government land. 

In 1855, Clark made his first visit to Yosemite Valley. Two years later, suffering severe pulmonary hemorrhages that threatened his life, he moved to the south fork of the Merced River, staking a claim and building a log cabin on the spot where Wawona now stands. A bridge and trails followed, and soon travelers on the way from Mariposa to Yosemite Valley were stopping for food and shelter at Clark’s Station. 

It was here, in 1868, that John Muir, on his first visit to Yosemite, met Clark. In his book The Yosemite (1912), Muir devoted a chapter to Clark, reminiscing: “Galen Clark was the best mountaineer I ever met, and one of the kindest and most amiable of all my mountain friends. I first met him at his Wawona ranch forty-three years ago on my first visit to Yosemite. [...] Botanizing by the way, we made slow, plodding progress, and were again about out of provisions when we reached Clark’s hospitable cabin at Wawona. He kindly furnished us with flour and a little sugar and tea, and my companion, who complained of the benumbing poverty of a strictly vegetarian diet, gladly accepted Mr. Clark’s offer of a piece of a bear that had just been killed.” 

Muir also set the record straight abut the discovery of the Mariposa Grove: “Though not the first to see the Mariposa Big Tree grove, he was the first to explore it, after he had heard from a prospector, who had passed through the grove and who gave him the indefinite information, that there were some wonderful big trees up there on the top of the Wawona hill and that he believed they must be of the same kind that had become so famous and well-known in the Calaveras grove farther north. On this information, Galen Clark told me, he went up and thoroughly explored the grove, counting the trees and measuring the largest, and becoming familiar with it. He stated also that he had explored the forest to the southward and had discovered the much larger Fresno grove of about two square miles, six or seven miles distant from the Mariposa grove. Unfortunately most of the Fresno grove has been cut and flumed down to the railroad near Madera.” 

Clark, who recovered his health and lived to the age of 96, was among the key preservation advocates whose opinion led to President Lincoln’s signing, in 1864, an Act of Congress transferring Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove to the State of California as a grant reserved from settlement. The grant was locally administered by a guardian representing a board of commissioners. The first man picked for the position was Galen Clark, who fulfilled the role for 24 years. 

The added duties made the task of running an inn too onerous. Expenses always exceeded income, and in 1869, Clark brought in Edwin Moore as a partner (Moore Cottage at the Wawona Hotel is named after him). The debts, however, continued to mount, and in December 1874, Clark’s Station was sold to one of its creditors, the stagecoach and livery firm of Washburn, Coffman & Chapman. 

It was Vermont-born Albert Henry Washburn (1836-1902) and his brothers, Edward and John, who built the Wawona into what it is today. The inn, which they renamed Big Tree Station, was for a while no more than a sideline for the Washburns’ Yosemite Stage & Turnpike Company. The main business was in building roads from Merced, Madera, and Raymond into Yosemite, connecting Wawona with Yosemite Valley, and providing transportation to Yosemite-bound tourists. Still, as the number of tourists increased, more accommodations were needed. In 1876, the Washburns constructed a new guest-room building called Long White. Renamed Clark Cottage, it is now the oldest structure remaining on the hotel grounds. 

In November 1878, a fire decimated all the buildings at Big Tree Station, sparing only Long White and the stables. Within a week, the Washburns hired Joseph Shelly, builder of Long White, to construct the two-story main hotel building familiar to present-day visitors. It opened on April 1, 1879, and the Mariposa Gazette declared it to be “the grandest hotel in the mountains of California.” Five additional buildings were constructed between 1884 and 1918, making Wawona the largest existing Victorian hotel complex within the boundaries of a national park. 

Jean Bruce Washburn, Henry’s wife, was an observer of Indian lore, and in 1882, she suggested that Big Tree Station be given the more mellifluous Indian name Wawona. There appears to be a disagreement as to the true meaning of the word. Shirley Sargent, author of Yosemite’s Historic Wawona (1979, 2008), claims it means “Big Tree,” while S. A. Barrett and E. W. Gifford, authors of Miwok Material Culture: Indian Life of the Yosemite Region (1933), maintained that it stands for the Dense-flowered Evening Primrose (Epilobium densiflorum), whose seeds the Indians gathered, parched, pulverized, and ate dry. 

Like his wife, Henry Washburn paid attention to Native American customs. Toward the end of his life, he decried the misguided forest management practices in Yosemite, calling for a return to the Native American methods. “The first time I went to the Yosemite, which was forty-one years ago, I particularly noticed how few fallen trees there were and how clean and green the forest looked,” he told the San Francisco Call in June 1901. “In those days all kinds of trees flourished and all looked healthy. Then the trees were taken care of by the native sons—the Indians—who burned the forest over every three or four years, thus keeping down the undergrowth,” said Washburn, adding, “Those that keep the fires out should be fined instead of those that make the fire.” 

When Washburn died, his obituary in the San Francisco Call hailed him as “without doubt the greatest of all developers of Yosemite Valley.” 

Wawona and the Washburns had an illustrious connection in the person of landscape painter Thomas Hill (1828-1908), best known for his painting “The Driving of the Last Spike,” which depicts the joining of the rails between the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads. The English-born Hill made his first trip to Yosemite Valley in 1865, and it transformed his career. In 1883, he had a studio built in Yosemite Valley, but after a gale blew it off its foundations, Hill moved to the Wawona. His daughter, Estella, married John Washburn, and the artist gained a new studio on the hotel grounds. This studio was advertised in Galen Clark’s book Indians of the Yosemite (1904) and offered a “free exhibition of Mr. Hill’s celebrated paintings of the Yosemite Valley and Big Trees.” It now serves as a visitor center, and it was recently renovated to recreate the character of the interior in Hill’s time. 

Another artist closely associated with Yosemite was Chris Jorgensen (1860-1935), who contributed five illustrations to Galen Clark’s Indians of the Yosemite. In 1900, Jorgensen built a studio-home on the north bank of the Merced River in Yosemite Valley. Three years later, he added a log home, “the bungalow,” near Sentinel Bridge. It may have been this cabin that the San Francisco Call reported had been made available for the accommodation of President Theodore Roosevelt when he visited Yosemite in May, 1903. 

The Jorgensen cabin and other historic Yosemite structures may be seen at the Pioneer Yosemite History Center next to the Wawona Hotel. From the hotel grounds, a covered bridge constructed by the Washburns leads across the south fork of the Merced River to this open-air museum of vernacular mountain architecture. Here you can see rustic buildings constructed at various locations in Yosemite and moved to Wawona in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Also on display is a sizeable collection of authentic wagons and stagecoaches.

OK, I don’t actually hate Norm Abrams of “New Yankee Workshop,” “This Old House,” etc.; I sort of like the guy. It’s nice to see someone on TV who would never have made it based on his headshot and a screen-test. Those other folks on “Hometime”—so cute and all-American-looking and blond: them, I hate. (Kachunk, Blam, Kachunk, Blam.) Ah, that’s better. There’s nothing like large caliber gunfire to sooth the chakras. 

I do genuinely hate these specific shows: “Hometime,” “This Old House” and “The New Yankee Workshop.” I hate them for one simple reason: they make most people feel like idiots. Even if a show only demonstrates how to build a basic chest of drawers, it does a lousy job of preparing the average Joe or Joan for the task. In the end, the show provides nothing more than boutique shopping and showing off. I suppose that would be a lot of fun if you only want to learn that you—as a homeowner or stock broker or bank clerk—know nothing about houses or furniture or nails and that you’ll never stand a chance of doing more than hanging a picture on the wall.  

On shows like these, the jobs are made to look so darned easy. All the materials are waiting for assembly and nothing is spoiled, the wrong type or missing. The air gun never misfires and the compressor never needs to be drained (yes, you have to drain compressors daily because they fill up with water and will rust out if you don’t do so). That’s another thing I hate: in actuality, there are many small details that fill a contractor’s day (or your day when you play contractor) but they’re neatly edited out, just as they are in a cooking show. Just pop the raw one in the oven and Voila, the new freshly baked one comes right out of the other oven. 

Now, how educational is this, really? The average viewer of these shows isn’t yet sure which nail to use to fix the trim on the side of the house, so it’s a little high-handed to try to show—even over three episodes—how to rehabilitate an 1860 farm house into a three-bedroom, two-bathroom suite with an office in the basement. Can you the viewer replicate any of these actions, or are they simply a fashion show designed to lure you into the false belief that you could do all this yourself if only you had just a wee bit more free time?  

Not that I don’t think that people can learn this stuff, but it’s just a tad more complex and definitely more hairy than the TV makes it look, even for a skilled contractor. Let’s take “This Old House.” (Kachunk, Blam.) I hate that they don’t show you how bad things often get. The show doesn’t show the mistakes, the overages and the heartache often involved in home remodeling. I have yet to see an episode of this show in which a red-faced homeowner screams bloody murder at Steve and Norm. Don’t tell me that it’s never happened. I don’t care how good a contractor is: when you’ve been working on someone’s house for ten weeks, some per cent of your clientele will go into anaphylaxis. It’s well known in the industry that some people just can’t take it, even under the best of circumstances. So I am certain that those cinema verité videos are hiding in a vault somewhere at PBS central, waiting for the day that Steve or Norm steps over the line. 

Yes, I hate the way these shows make everything look easy. You never see a subcontractor show up drunk. You never see a guy going to the emergency room because he stepped on a nail. You never see a job sitting incomplete for eighteen months because the homeowners are getting a divorce or going into bankruptcy. The camera cleans up all the messes. (I’m also quite sure that PBS has footed the bill more than a few times to get the job completed so that they could get everything in the can.) 

I did once see one of those extreme remodeling shows in which we got to see the workers freak out, fight and lose their cool. That was pretty refreshing. 

I have another major complaint, one that is never so aggravating to me as when I’m watching Norm build a Georgian breakfront. Norm has really, really nice tools. His tools are sharp and clean and new and they’re all hanging on the wall in exactly the right place, courtesy of the sponsor, Stanley™ tools. He has attachments for routers and drill presses that I’ve never seen anywhere else. I’ll bet that even professional cabinetmakers would say that the quality and completeness of his assembly of tools far exceeds theirs. 

So when Norm starts to build his breakfront and you start to build yours, (assuming you’re retired, moderately wealthy and sufficiently well-adjusted) you’re going to have a lot to emotionally contend with, as nothing that you do comes out as well or anywhere near as fast as the one that Norm does on screen. You’ve been set up. 

I think home repair TV should be more like watching brain surgery on The Discovery Channel. When those operations are accurately presented, you are not persuaded to turn to your spouse and say, “Hey, Honey, I’ll bet I can remove that tumor for you right here on the kitchen table.” (By the way, gals, if your husband gets that Jack-Nicholson-in-The Shining look while watching the Home Neuroscience channel, it’s best to go stay with Mom for a few days. At least until the cable company can come downgrade you from the Gold package to regular broadcast TV.)  

Here’s what I’d like to see in place of all these shows (if there are any TV producers reading, I’m waiting for my close-up, C.B.) An episode would go something like this: Mrs. Jones has a leaky faucet and maybe a few other small repairs, too. She calls the handyman (me) to come fix things. The handyman (me) arrives with no tools and attempts to make use of whatever Mrs. Jones has in her tool drawer in the kitchen. Then he and Mrs. Jones go to the hardware store, buy the tools and the parts they need and proceed to struggle through all the steps in fixing the leak. This will, of course, require a second, and possibly, third trip to the hardware store. All will end with cheers of joy and turkey sandwiches eaten on the kitchen floor in sopping jeans once the drip has finally been tackled. 

Now that’s what I would call Reality TV.