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In the past couple of days, customers at Berkeley’s South Station post office may have noticed a woman in a sun hat standing outside urging passersby to sign a petition. 

“Sir, would you like to sign a petition to save this post office?” she politely asked a gentleman walking out of the door Wednesday, introducing herself as Richie Smith. 

Smith, who lives a few blocks away on Alcatraz Avenue, is part of a recent community-wide effort to draw attention to a decision by the U.S. Postal Service to include three Berkeley post offices on a list for possible consolidation in face of a staggering budget deficit. 

The petition, which is being circulated around the South Berkeley Station at 3175 Adeline St., Park Station at 2900 Sacramento St., and Landscape Station at 1831 Solano Ave.—the three currently being evaluated for consolidation in Berkeley—calls on the postal service to “not close targeted stations of the Berkeley Post Office.” 

The petitioners say that they are opposed to the closures because it would force merchants and residents in the area to travel farther, lead to a deterioration in service resulting from longer lines and greater wait periods, and leave P.O. box holders with no other option except to relocate to more distant stations. 

Faced with a $7.5 billion loss in revenue this year, the postal service announced Sept. 2 that 413 retail stations and branches nationwide were still being considered for possible consolidation.  

The updated list was based on a study the USPS undertook this summer to examine a wide range of stations and branches in dense urban and suburban areas across the country, focusing on offices in close proximity in order to find out where consolidations might be feasible while still serving the needs of customers. 

“We are not driving the post offices out of Berkeley,” said Augustine Ruiz, a spokesperson for the Bay Valley district, which comprises 226 post offices from Berkeley to Santa Cruz and beyond. “We are looking at consolidating one station with another where they serve the same geographic area. We will keep in mind customer convenience and transportation. All we are asking for is a flexibility to determine our future by making all these difficult decisions so that we can remain a viable service in the days ahead.” 

But for people like Smith, who depend on their neighborhood post office, Ruiz’s words offer little consolation. 

“You see the set-up here,” she said, pointing at the parking lot outside the Adeline post office with her cane. “It is the only one in this area that has a parking space. Parking is very hard to come by in the other post offices, especially the main post office downtown.” 

Smith said that South Station is in a convenient location for aged and disabled residents, a lot of whom live in senior co-ops or assisted living in South Berkeley or would soon begin using the Ed Roberts Campus—a one-stop service center for the disability community located a few buildings down from the post office. 

“I can just walk here if I want to,” she said. “If it is closed down, I will have to drive to the one on Seventh Street in Oakland and spend hours just looking for parking. I am doing this not only for myself,but for other people as well. I am fortunate to have a roof over my head, but what about all the homeless people who can’t get their mail delivered to them? Where will they take their P.O. boxes?” 

A retired preschool teacher who now sits on the city of Berkeley’s Commission on Aging, Smith said she contacted her councilmember, Max Anderson, after reading about the post offices in the newspaper. Anderson’s aide then helped her to get hold of a petition. 

Darlene Carroll, who owns Berkeley Signs with her husband, signed the petition after collecting mail from the P.O. box inside, 

“Our business has had a P.O. box here for 20 years,” she said. “It’s really convenient. I don’t know what we would do if it closed down.” 

Ruiz said a total of 22 stations and branches in the Bay Valley district had found their way onto the list for possible consolidation after being recommended by their postmasters. 

The drop in revenue, Ruiz said, was mainly due to a significant dip in the volume of mail this year, down from 212 billion pieces in 2006 to an estimated 180 billion by the end of this year. 

Ruiz blamed the decrease largely on the electronic transaction business, which he said had eliminated the need for people to use the postal service to pay bills. 

“Institutions have found a way to do their transactions online through the Internet,” he said. “A lot of it has to do with the recession. Businesses aren’t mailing as much as before.” 

A report by the USPS shows walk-in revenues for the Landscape Station to be the highest ($740,885), followed by South Berkeley ($464,316) and Park ($310,938) stations. 

Landscape also has the largest number of P.O. boxes—1136—with South Berkeley having a little more than 500. Park Station does not have any P.O. boxes. 

The USPS, Ruiz said, was also straining under a 2006 law that required it to pay billions of dollars in health retirement benefits for employees every year, something he said no other public or private agency was required to do. 

Ruiz said the USPS would make a decision based on the summer study by the first week of October. 

Rafael Blank was at the South Berkeley Station Wednesday collecting mail for his mother from a P.O. box. 

“I opened this P.O. box for my mother before she went away with the Peace Corps to Nicaragua,” he said. “I come here to get her mail two or three times every week. It would be a hassle if I had to look for a new box—she has to be here to sign for one, and she won’t be here for a couple of years.” 

At least 10 people started to queue up around noon to buy stamps, envelopes, and bubble mailers and to sign money orders. 

“This is by far my favorite post office,” said James Livingston, who lives in San Francisco and works at Berkeley Bowl. “The lady here is really nice, even though it’s always busy,” she said, referring to Lead Sales Associate Yolanda Williams, who has worked at the branch for six years. “I wouldn’t want to see this one close.” 

“I prefer the Park Station post office because I live near there, but this one has decent customer service as well,” said Yolanda Johnson. “Between the two of them, I don’t know which one should close. If the postal people don’t have the money—and I believe that—what about the people who don’t have the money to catch the bus to go to these limited-only post offices? Where are they going to go?” 

For many seniors, Johnson said, walking to their neighborhood post office to mail a letter or a bill was a “matter of dignity and pride.” 

“It pisses me off,” she said. “It’s a crying shame for the community.” 

Regulars at the Park Station branch were busy signing petitions Wednesday afternoon. More than 1,700 signatures have been gathered over the last seven days. 

“Why is it closing? When is it closing?” The barrage of questions hit Park Station’s only sales associate, Eleanor Neal, who has been at the branch for eight years. 

Neal knows her customers by name and sometimes skips her lunch break to help them out. Many of them live on fixed incomes and can’t afford to buy a computer or get Internet access to correspond with family and friends. 

“It’s going to be terrible,” said Shirley, a customer who has been shopping at the Park Station post office for 30 years. “I don’t have a computer, and I mail all my letters from here. I know the postal service is losing some of their business to e-mail, but it can’t be that bad.” 

Streamlining mailboxes, reducing staff and increasing the price of postage stamps for the last two years has not done much to solve the budget deficit, Ruiz said. 

Raising the value of postage stamps to 44 cents this year only helped to cover operational costs, Ruiz said, and did not address other expenses like transportation and fuel. 

“Raising the price of a stamp will not solve the problem,” he said. “And we don’t want to increase the price to a point where we drive business away.”

The City of Berkeley announced Sept. 1 that the public could weigh in on the Citywide Pools Master Plan environmental initial study for a 30-day period ending Oct. 2. 

The master plan proposes to expand or modernize three of the city’s existing public pools—King, Willard and West Campus—and addresses the relocation, to West Campus of the warm water pool in the seismically unsafe Berkeley High School Old Gym, which is slated for demolition in 2011 to make way for classrooms,.  

The pools at King, Willard and West Campus were all constructed in the 1960s and are in dire need of repair and upgrades. 

According to the master plan, the City of Berkeley spends around $880,000—the net income generated from user fees—every year to operate the existing swimming pools. 

Additionally, the Berkeley Unified School District spends $200,000 annually on heating and maintenance for the warm water pool, costs that will become the city’s responsibility once the pool is relocated to a new site. 

A 10-member aquatics task force completed the master plan in April 2009, recommending a preferred option, which includes constructing a 25-yard by 25-meter outdoor competition pool at King Middle School, a 2,790-square-foot indoor warm water pool, and a 3,510-square-foot indoor lap pool at West Campus and renovating the pool and locker rooms and converting the dive pool to a children’s play pool at Willard for a $29,231,000 total price tag. 

The Berkeley Board of Education recently approved 1,900 square feet of additional land at West Campus for the warm water pool as part of the preferred plan.  

Berkeley Unified is planning to start construction at West Campus to convert an old adult school classroom building into the district’s administrative headquarters. The project is not expected to clash with the pool construction. 

At an April 21 workshop, the Berkeley City Council asked city staff to design a “design variant” to the preferred plan that altered the size and configuration of some of the pools and lowered the total cost of the project by around $4 million. 

The plan includes a warm water pool similar in size to the existing pool (2,250 square feet) and a larger, outdoor recreational pool at West Campus, a shallower end with a slide at the King pool which would provide more opportunity for swim lessons and recreational and public use, and keeps the design for the Willard pool unchanged. 

The total cost of the alternative design comes to $25,370,000. 

On May 19, 2009, the City Council gave the city manager the green light to move ahead with environmental analysis of the preferred plan and design variant of the Citywide Pools Master Plan.  

Based on the initial environmental report, Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Department Manager William Rogers has proposed a mitigated negative declaration instead of an environmental impact report, explaining that “although the proposed project could have a significant effect on the environment, there will not be a significant effect in this case because revisions in the project have been made by or agreed to by the project proponent.” 

The proposed project includes mitigation to ensure that construction of the pool enclosure at West Campus and replacement of the pool deck at King do not conflict with the Berkeley Creeks Ordinance, which states that all construction must be at least 25 feet away from the city’s culverts. 

According to the initial study, the construction at the West Campus pool site may be close enough to the Strawberry Creek culvert and that at King near a drainage swale. 

Pending completion of the plan’s environmental review and its adoption by the council, the city will start preparing a bond measure to fund pool improvements for the June 2010 ballot. 

The city’s Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Department is currently asking community members to review and comment on the environmental initial study, which can be found at the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Department, the city manager’s office and all three pools. 

Project sponsor 

The project is being sponsored by the City of Berkeley. The city’s Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Department is taking the lead in preparing the master plan and is responsible for constructing and operating the three proposed swimming pool improvement projects. 

All three pool sites are located on property owned by the Berkeley Unified School District, which was involved in the crafting of the master plan and will be a “Responsible Agency” in the project. 

Environmental review and pre-bond schedule options 

City officials have come up with two schedules for the next 10 months, which would ultimately lead to a “potential pools bond measure in June 2010.” 

The first option includes community surveys and a detailed cost estimate, while the second one does not have any community surveys and has a less detailed cost estimate. 

According to a notice on the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront website, these schedules were prepared based upon current circumstances and are subject to change “based upon council actions, unexpected impacts found during the environmental review process and other unforeseen circumstances.” 

The website says that it is ultimately the council that will make the decision on which schedule will be followed. 

Public meetings 

The city of Berkeley will be holding three public meetings in September to hear comments about the environmental initial study: 

Disability Commission Meeting, 6:30 p.m., Wednesday, Sept. 9, North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. 

Parks and Recreation Commission Meeting, 7 p.m., Monday, Sept. 28., North Berkeley Senior Center, Multi-Purpose Room, 1901 Hearst Ave. 

Community Meeting, 7 p.m., Wednesday, Sept. 30, Frances Albrier Community Center, 2800 Park St. 

Written comments about the environmental initial study must be received by Oct. 2 and should be addressed to William Rogers, Director, Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Department, 2180 Milvia St., 3rd Floor, Berkeley, CA 94704 

  E-mail comments should be sent to tstott@ci.berkeley.ca.us. 

The Citywide Pools Master Plan environmental initial study can be reviewed online at www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ContentDisplay.aspx?id=28522 or in person at: 

• Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Department, 2180 Milvia St. 

• Office of the City Manager, 2180 Milvia St. 

• King Pool, 1700 Hopkins St. 

• Willard Pool, 2701 Telegraph Ave. 

• West Campus Pool, 2100 Browning St. 

Hopes for some form of citizen oversight of the Bay Area Rapid Transit District police department died for the year when Oakland Assemblymember Sandré Swanson abruptly withdrew his proposed state authorization legislation. 

The proposed legislation—AB 1586—will now go through the regular legislative process of committee assignment and possible hearings next year. If passed by the Legislature and signed into law by the governor, the changes proposed in AB 1586 would now not go into effect until January of 2011. 

A spokesperson for BART said that Swanson withdrew the legislation after legislative leaders “did not agree to provide a waiver” to allow Swanson’s bill to be rushed through at the end of this year’s legislative session. Such waivers of regular legislative rules were needed because the bill was brought to the Legislature after the deadline for the introduction of bills. 

Last month, in response to community outrage over the Jan. 1 shooting death of 21-year-old BART passenger Oscar Grant by then-BART police officer Johannes Mehserle, the BART Board unanimously passed a plan that would provide oversight and disciplinary recommendation to the BART police force by a board-hired police auditor and a citizen police review panel. Legislation is needed for BART to implement its oversight plan, because the BART charter—originally set up by the Legislature—does not currently allow the civilian police oversight sought by the BART Board.  

Meanwhile, BART media representative Linton Johnson confirmed that a controversial amendment made to AB 1586 would eliminate the provision in the BART oversight plan to allow a two-thirds majority of the BART Board to override a police punishment decision by the BART general manager and police chief. That board override ability was struck when a passage (“The board may also recommend the appropriate level of discipline for any district police officer against whom a citizen complaint has been sustained”) was taken out of the proposed BART police oversight bill. 

Deletion of the board override provision caused several key community leaders—including Oakland Nation of Islam head, Minister Keith Muhammad, and representatives of the Oscar Grant family—to withdraw their support for the BART police oversight legislation. 

Linton said by telephone this week that even with the board override passage taken out, AB 1586 represents “two-thirds of a loaf,” and added that, if the Legislature passes the bill next year, the board override provision could be put back in at a later date. 

Whose decision it was to take out the board override passage is still in dispute. 

During an Aug. 27 meeting of the BART Board of Directors, in an audio tape of the meeting posted on the website of the San Francisco Independent Media Center (indybay.org), BART General Manager Dorothy Dugger and at least one unidentified board member can be heard saying that the provision had been struck by Swanson. 

In a prepared statement, Dugger told board members that BART representatives were told the day before the Aug. 27 meeting “by members of Swanson's staff that he will eliminate one sentence from the amendments given to him by BART in order to quiet some opposition from [the statewide police lobbying group, the Police Officers Research Association of California (PORAC)].” Dugger said that Swanson believed that PORAC “would oppose our bill and successfully kill it this year … unless it is amended to eliminate the authority given to the BART Board for disciplinary action against police officers.” 

During the following discussion, after BART Board Vice President Henry Fang of San Francisco asked who had authorized the deletion of the board override from the bill, BART Department of Government and Community Relations Manager Kerry Hamill is heard on the indybay tape saying that members of the BART Board Police Oversight Committee-Carole Ward Allen, Lynette Sweet, Tom Radulovich, and Joel Keller-"were polled and decided to move forw 

An unidentified board member can be heard on the tape of the meeting saying that AB 1586 was “Swanson’s bill” and “we can’t stop any member of the Legislature from moving forward with any bill they want.” 

However, Swanson chief of staff Larry Broussard has told the Daily Planet that the board override provision was taken out of the bill before Swanson received the proposed legislation from BART. 

It is also known that at least some members of the BART Police Oversight Committee were in negotiations with PORAC about the BART oversight bill even before Swanson agreed to take on the legislation, leading to speculation that it was BART, not Swanson, that made the deal with PORAC. Board member Lynette Sweet, a member of the police oversight committee, told participants about the BART-PORAC negotiations for PORAC support of the bill during an Oakland community meeting five days before the Aug. 27 BART Board meeting. 

And while an e-mail sent out last week by BART consultant Reginald Lyles—the author of the BART police oversight model—said that it was Swanson who proposed the BART board override deletion, it cast doubt on the claim that Swanson would have moved forward with the deletion without board approval. 

In his Aug. 26 e-mail, Lyles said that he had “spoke[n] with Carole Ward Allen, Chair of the BPD Review Committee about the proposed amendment that Assemblyman Swanson wished to make to our draft language. Chair Ward Allen reached out to and received the support from Vice Chair Joel Keller and Board President Tom Blalock to move forward with the amendment striking the last sentence of section (c).” 

Lyles said that “Director Ward Allen had [Swanson chief of staff] Larry Broussard advised that BART will support the bill as amended by Assemblyman Swanson,” adding that after unsuccessful attempts to advise Directors Sweet and Radulovich of the proposed change, the two committee members “did contact BART Staff and stated they are both in support of Assemblyman Swanson moving the bill forward as amended with the [provision for board override] taken out.”  

Lyles said that the board members were being polled because Broussard “needed clarification from BART that it would support the bill as amended by Assemblyman Swanson.”

The new CEO for the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce has left before he even arrived.  

In an e-mail to chamber members Friday, Sept. 4, chamber Vice Chair Rod Howard announced that Gian Paulo Mammone will not be taking the job offered to him a month ago.  

“I regret to inform you that Gian Paulo Mammone, our recent selection for the CEO position of the Berkeley Chamber, due to personal reasons, has decided not to take the position,” said Howard, who is also serving as the chair of the CEO search team. “Although we were disappointed in his decision, we wish Mr. Mammone all the best in his future endeavors.”  

The Daily Planet reported Aug. 13 that the chamber had appointed a new CEO after a four-month search for a replacement.  

Mammone was scheduled to take over from interim CEO Kevin Allen, who was filling the position after the chamber suddenly removed the previous CEO, Ted Garrett, in March.  

Few reasons were given for Garrett’s dismissal, except that the chamber was aspiring to move in a new direction.  

The same reason was given by Oregon’s Lincoln City Chamber of Commerce, when it decided to terminate Mammone’s position as its executive director.  

Berkeley Chamber of Commerce Chairman Jonathan DeYoe told the Planet during an interview in August that the chamber’s hiring committee was aware of Mammone’s termination from his earlier job and had talked to Lincoln City chamber officials about the reasons behind his dismissal.  

“We are confident that the issues that he [Mammone] had in Lincoln City, which is a very small city, will be deeply embraced in Berkeley,” DeYoe said. “We are very excited to have him here.”   

In an e-mail to the Daily Planet Tuesday, DeYoe said that the chamber “believed that Gian Paolo would have been an excellent fit and still understand that sometimes we each must make difficult choices. It just so happens that one of his difficult choices was to make the decision, for personal reasons, to pass on the Berkeley Chamber opportunity.” 

  DeYoe said the chamber’s executive board will re-form the search team and start over on the search. 

  “We continue to believe that the right candidate is out there and we look forward to making their acquaintance,” he said. 

E-mails to Howard were not returned by press time. Mammone could not be reached for comment immediately.  

Howard said in his e-mail that the chamber’s executive board will convene Sept. 8 to plan a new search process to “find the right CEO for this special role in this special city.”  

Howard said that he was confident that the chamber’s support staff would be perfectly capable of running the office and serving the needs of its members as the hiring team “re-starts the search process once again.”  

“We also have a phenomenal, active board at this time, so we will continue to be strong advocates for you and for business, and a positive force for thoughtful change in the city,” Howard said. “Thank you again for your support during this transition, and we will keep you up to date on our new pursuit of this important role.”  

A coalition of environmental justice organizations filed a formal administrative complaint to the Federal Transportation Commission last week seeking to derail plans by the Bay Area Rapid Transit District to build a 3.2-mile rail connection between BART’s Coliseum Station and the Oakland Airport. 

The organizations say that the Oakland Airport Connector will have adverse effects on the high-minority, low-income communities surrounding it’s planned route, and they want BART to reconsider an alternative proposal to run a rapid bus line between the Coliseum Station and the airport along Hegenberger Road. 

The FTC administrative complaint against the Oakland Airport Connector was jointly filed by Urban Habitat Program, Transform, and Genesis, three local environmental justice organizations that have been active in the fight over BART’s airport connector. 

BART’s media spokesperson was not available to answer questions about the complaint filing. 

Meanwhile, the Public Safety Committee of the Oakland City Council has scheduled a discussion next Tuesday concerning the Oakland Airport Connector, and is expecting a response from BART to a series of questions the committee raised last month about the project. The committee meeting is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. at Oakland City Hall, with full council consideration of the project scheduled for Oct. 6. While the city of Oakland and the Oakland City Council have no legal say in the airport connector project, opponents of the connector are hoping that a resolution by the council opposing the project as it is currently proposed would have serious political implications, and might throw enough political weight to force BART to consider the bus rapid transit alternative. 

Meanwhile, BART has secured federal funding for the connector project and is ready to move forward, holding a pre-proposal outreach meeting with prospective developers late last month. BART has posted a sign-in sheet with the names of some 200 developer representatives who attended the pre-proposal meeting. Proposals are due back in by Sept. 22, and BART then has approximately two and a half months to have a developer signed up to construct the project in order to continue to qualify for the federal stimulus money included in the project’s complicated funding packet.  

If the FTC agrees with the complainants, however, the agency could withhold federal funding for the project until a new environmental impact report is done examining the economic impacts of the connector to residents of the surrounding communities. A representative of San Francisco-based Public Advocates, Inc., the law firm representing the organizations in the filing, said that, to their knowledge, this is the first time the FTC’s administrative complaint procedure has been attempted. 

According to the complaint, the Oakland Airport Connector is “situated in an East Oakland community with a very high minority and low-income population and will “traverse a corridor with many low-wage jobs that employ local residents, yet it will apparently be built without any intermediate stops.”  

“Even if such stops were added in the future,” the complaint continues, “its extremely high [$6] fare will exclude low-income riders from the delayed benefits of the new service. … More than just a procedural shortcoming, BART’s failure to evaluate the equity impacts of the OAC project, and weigh appropriate alternatives to find a less discriminatory one, is likely to have disparate impacts on Environmental Justice populations in East Oakland, low-income and minority BART riders, and the many low-wage workers with jobs at the Airport and along the Hegenberger corridor in which the OAC project would operate. Those populations either rely on the existing bus connection or would benefit from a low-fare transit option with stops at the Airport and along the way.” 

“Of equal concern to these populations,” the complaint concluded, “is the massive capital cost of the OAC project, which will drain scarce funds from local, state and federal sources that could otherwise provide operating and capital assistance for low-cost transit on which East Oakland residents rely very heavily to access employment, education and other essential opportunities.” 

Marni Posey replaced Chef Ann Cooper as the Berkeley Unified School District’s director of nutrition services Tuesday. 

Cooper, who was hired by the school district on a three-year contract with the help of a grant from the Chez Pannisse Foundation in October 2005, left the school district in June to work for the Boulder Valley Unified School District. 

Posey was previously the district’s manager of nutrition services under Cooper as well as her assistant for the past three years. 

“I was her right hand,” Posey said during a telephone interview Wed- 

nesday. “I helped her with everything she did here.” 

Cooper’s efforts to ban frozen lunches and replace them with farm-fresh ingredients won her accolades in the national media, including a profile in the New Yorker—big shoes to fill, but Posey’s not worried.  

“I am very prepared for it,” she said. “Anne has taught me everything she knew. I am confident everything is going to be fine. I am prepared to enhance the programs, if not make them better.” 

Posey has worked in Berkeley Unified’s Nutrition Services department for the last nine years. Before joining Berkeley Unified, she worked at Mount Diablo Unified School District. She has a total of 15 years of experience in food services. 

Posey worked with Cooper on revamping Berkeley’s school lunch program, helping to incorporate changes to the menu and setting up the dining commons at King Middle School. 

Her new job will put her in charge of a staff of 50, including the district’s executive chef, Bonnie Christensen, and two sous chefs. 

Though the Nutrition Services department has reached its goal of being budget-neutral, Posey said, and is finally paying for itself, it is still receiving a contribution from Berkeley Unified, but the department has managed to whittle down the amount considerably.  

“We were going to get a contribution of $310,000 from the district’s General Fund this year, but we were able to chip away at it and bring it down to $23,000,” she said. 

Posey said she wanted to focus on getting more Berkeley High School students to take part in the school lunch program, which had posed a challenge for Cooper during her time in Berkeley. 

For now, Posey is concentrating on introducing new dishes to the school lunch menu. Her latest creations include spicy apricot drums for middle schoolers and beef barbacoa, a slow-cooked beef Mexican dish.

The UC Board of Regents will hold two meetings Wednesday, Sept. 16, on the controversial plans to build a new UC Berkeley lab to house research on turning plants into fuel for planes, trains and automobiles. 

The first session of the board’s Committee on Grounds and Buildings meets behind closed doors as members decide what to do about a pending court case that challenges their approval of a key environmental document needed to build the lab on a sensitive site above Strawberry Canyon at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). 

The second session, an open meeting, is slated to begin 25 minutes after the start of the first and would amend financing plans for the same lab, this time at a new site in downtown Berkeley. 

The Helios Energy Research Facility, now planned for the northeast corner of the site currently occupied by the vacant California Department of Health Services building north of Berkeley Way between Oxford Street and Shattuck Avenue, will house public and private labs conducting research funded by a $500 million grant from British oil giant BP, plc. 

The major focus of the facility will be research on synthetic fuels—called biofuels by proponents and agrofuels by critics—created from plants by genetically modified microbes. 

A second, smaller building is still planned for an existing site on the LBNL campus and will house research not related to plant-derived fuels. 

A coalition of Berkeley activists organized as Save Strawberry Canyon had filed suits challenging two proposed LBNL lab buildings. 

A decision handed down by a San Francisco federal judge last month halted plans for the $113 million Computational Research and Theory (CRT) building, planned for the Berkeley hills adjacent to Blackberry Gate.  

In that case, District Court Judge William Alsup ruled that the university, LBNL and the Department of Energy had violated federal law when they failed to conduct an environmental review under the provisions of the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA). 

The second action challenges the fuel lab, and it is that lawsuit that regents will discuss in their closed-door session. 

The second session will consider funding amendments for the new downtown location. 

The regents will be meeting Wednesday and Thursday at the UCSF Mission Bay campus in San Francisco, 1675 Owens St., with the two Helios sessions set for 2:50 p.m. and 3:15 Thursday.

Officials in San Pablo, long one of the East Bay’s poorest cities, fear their community could lose up to 42 percent of its municipal budget if the Point Molate casino resort is built, said City Manager Brock T. Arner. 

City councilmembers voted unanimously Sept. 8 to support a draft letter of opposition challenging the conclusions of the draft environmental review documents for the $1.5 billion casino resort. 

Backers of the proposed Point Molate resort have prepared a draft environmental review under both the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA). 

Arner said the documents didn’t consider the impacts on San Pablo, which receives the largest share of its municipal revenues from the Lytton San Pablo Casino, which relies on fast-paced electronic bingo machines for most of its income. 

San Pablo officials fear the full-scope Las Vegas-style slot machines and games at the Richmond resort will lure many players away from the Lytton band’s casino. 

“We estimate that it could siphon off as much as $100 million a year,” Arner said, which would cost the city $7.5 million of its $18 million annual bonus. 

The impact would also cost the jobs of San Pablo residents who work at the local casino, he said. 

Arner said the city has a strong basis for its challenge. 

“Unlike CEQA, NEPA requires that the review take economic degradation into account,” Arner said. 

The San Pablo administrator also faulted the study’s analysis of traffic impacts, which he fears could be considerably worse than indicated in the joint federal and state document. 

“I also have questions about their business model. Does anyone really believe that their customer base will be visitors to San Francisco conventions who take the ferry over to Richmond?” 

Arner, the mayor and the deputy mayor will be drafting a final version of the letter, which he said should be ready to deliver by Monday. 

The Point Molate casino project, brainchild of Berkeley environmental consultant turned developer James Levine, is one of two projects that could affect the San Pablo casino’s revenue. 

Closer at hand is the proposed Sugar Bowl casino in unincorporated North Richmond. Though a draft environmental review was prepared for that project, a court decision has overturned its adoption by the Richmond City Council. 

One of the problems the court had with that project is that it would have a municipal services agreement with the city of Richmond, even though the casino is in an unincorporated area of Contra Costa County. 

Both San Pablo and Richmond have large populations at the lower end of the income scale, and each city has turned to casino revenue as a way of funding civic improvements and creating much-needed jobs. Both communities could find themselves seated at opposite tables before a judge unless the issues can be resolved. 

Before the Lytton Band of Pomos took over the former card room and turned it into the gambling venue it is today, city officials had pondered ending the community’s incorporation and handing jurisdiction over to the county because of what appeared to be insurmountable financial difficulties.

With the year only two-thirds over, American journalism has already lost nearly as many jobs as in all of last year. 

Bay Area papers may be hit even harder as downsizings continue in the area, with the San Francisco Chronicle engaged in a new round of layoffs as two major national papers prepare to launch local editions. 

MediaNews, the Bay Area’s largest newspaper publisher, has had more layoffs as well, even closing the editorial offices of one of its papers, the Fremont Argus. 

MediaNews workers at the chain’s East Bay unit were also forced to take unpaid days off as one of the conditions for winning a union contract. 

More bad news for local print publishers came in an announcement in Saturday’s New York Times, stating that “Both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times are planning to introduce San Francisco Bay Area editions.” 

Times staff writer Richard Pérez-Peña reported that, by offering coverage of local stories in a bid to capture advertisers and new readers, the new editions could represent “the first glimpse at a new strategy by national newspapers to capitalize on the contraction of regional papers.”  

So far in 2009, U.S. papers have laid off at least 13,533 workers, compared to 15,977 in all of 2008—itself a record year—according to the blog Paper Cuts, which charts press downsizings. 

The blog reported that, in the last seven months, 2,112 newspaper jobs vanished. 

Converting those figures to a monthly basis, papers lost 302 jobs a month in 2007, 1,331 in 2008 and 1,640 a month so far this year. 

Layoffs haven’t been restricted to print, with television also engaged in downsizings—for example at KTTV-11, the Fox News station in Los Angeles, which has laid off 117 newsroom employees in the last two months, according to media-watching blog L.A. Observed. 

The station is a dominant player in one of the nation’s two leading media markets. 

The blog reprinted a letter sent by station Senior Editor Mark Suddock to Fox owner Rupert Murdoch lamenting that “The best of the best are being furloughed. ... The cuts are so severe that virtually no one remains on-site to technically maintain the facility.” 

Layoffs have hit Bay Area stations as well. 

According to Mother Jones magazine, “In the first half of 2009, 123 TV news shows were canceled, 106 newspapers folded, 110 bureaus closed, 556 magazines died, and 12,000 journalists lost their jobs. These numbers are likely to get much worse.”

A city of Berkeley public health building previously deemed ineligible for landmarking might fit the criteria to be on the National Register, the Berkeley Landmarks Preservation Commission said last week. 

At its monthly meeting on Sept. 3, the landmarks commission was asked to weigh in on proposed renovations to the Berkeley Public Health Clinic at 830 University Ave.—as required under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act—as well as to comment on its historic merit. 

The commission was invitedonly to review the project, not to vote on it. 

Lorin Jensen, the city’s supervising civil engineer for the project, told the commission that the city had received $500,000 in federal stimulus funds to restore and upgrade the early 20th century structure to make it energy efficient and ADA compliant. 

The city of Berkeley will contribute $300,000 from its General Fund toward designing the project. 

The proposed renovations would add an elevator to the rear of the building, alter the main entrance ramp, paint the structure and reshingle the roof while keeping within the secretary of interior’s standards. 

The clinic currently offers comprehensive health care to Berkeley residents, including reproductive, immunization, tuberculosis prevention and educational programs. 

The city’s historic consultant for the project, San Francisco-based Knapp Architects, concluded that the building was not significant enough to be eligible for the National Register. 

However, local historian Susan Cerny told the commission that she had come across some interesting history on the clinic while researching the landmarked Mobilized Women’s building. 

“I am very compelled by the history,” Cerny said. “I am not opposed at all to what [the city] is planning to do, but I am opposed to the building being more or less condemned once it gets on record that it is not eligible for being on the National Register. The building is definitely worthy of being initiated for landmark status.” 

The Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association also disagreed with the Knapp report. 

A report by Cerny says that the clinic is locally significant “in the area of medicine and health, social history, community development and for its association with philanthropist Phoebe Apperson Hearst, its architects Charles Henry Cheney and James Plachek, and founders, two early women doctors, Dr. Edith Brownsill, Dr. Louise Linscott-Hector and Dr. Robert Hector.” 

It shows that the building is associated with the women of the Berkeley Clinic Auxiliary, who since 1917 have raised funds for various projects, including the building. 

Founded in 1906, right after the great earthquake and fire, the clinic has a 103-year history that also reflects the history of West Berkeley, according to Cerny. 

“I am surprised it is not already landmarked,” said Landmarks Commissioner Carrie Olson. “The information is fascinating.” 

The landmarks commission told the city’s planning staff that, based on the information from Cerny and the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association, the building was eligible for the National Register at a future date. 

The commission also landmarked the Koerber Building at 2054 University Ave. and the Capitol Market Building at 1500 Shattuck Ave.

The Berkeley Zoning Adjustments Board will review Pacific Steel Casting’s use permit at a public meeting Thursday, Sept. 10. 

According to a report prepared by the city’s planning staff, Pacific Steel, located at 1421 Second St., is not in violation of its use permit.  

On June 25, the board received the steel foundry’s annual performance report regarding whether or not it was in compliance with the conditions of approval on its use permit. 

At that meeting, zoning board members raised certain questions about the use permit and asked for clarification on certain points. 

The latest report by city planning staff begins with a summary of the history of the project and the permit, current compliance status, a brief overview of the changes in the operation and staffing as reflected by the last three performance reports and a response to the zoning board’s questions.  

Pacific Steel has been battling with neighbors and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District for more than 20 years on charges ranging from exceeding emission standards to creating a public nuisance. 

The foundry was forced to lay off more than 300 workers recently because of low steel production during the recession. 

The report prepared by the city staff shows that there have been significant decreases in overall output (10 percent) and number of employees (30 percent), especially those employed during the evening and graveyard shifts.  

The meeting is scheduled to take place at 7 p.m., Old City Hall, 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 

Caucasians comprise 80 percent of the people who jump to their deaths from the Golden Gate Bridge and men outnumber women 3-1, according to a report issued today by Marin County Coroner Ken Holmes regarding suicides on the Golden Gate Bridge over the past 15 years. 

The report is based on the coroner’s office’s public files of 330 deaths from the bridge between July 1, 1994, and June 30 of this year. 

The report does not contain data from coroner and medical examiner offices that find the remains of people who jump from the bridge, Holmes said. 

A complete study would require records from counties along bay shores and the Pacific Coast between Mendocino and Santa Barbara counties, Holmes said. 

“Further, a methodology to include confirmed suicides where no body is recovered must be developed to complete the picture,” Holmes said.  

The new study, released in conjunction with the Bridge Rail Foundation that has advocated raising the height of the railing on the bridge to prevent suicide attempts, reinforces and expands observations Holmes made in a 2007 study regarding the demographics of those who jumped from the bridge. 

Over 90 percent of the people who jump from the bridge are from Northern California and 80 percent are from the nine Bay Area counties, Holmes said. Forty-two percent of those who committed suicide are from Marin or San Francisco counties. 

There is an average of about two dozen suicides a year, the coroner’s office said. 

The median age of those who jump to their deaths from the en Gate Bridge is 40, the report states. Fifty-six percent of those who have jumped never married. 

Holmes said, however, the new study “exposes a hidden horror in the Golden Gate Bridge suicide story—the public witnesses most of these deaths. 

“Tourists, commuters, adults, children and people working on the Bridge report seeing over 70 percent of all suicides from the famous span,” Holmes said. 

“And that’s just people who speak with authorities. I suspect the actual number of witnesses is much greater,” Holmes said in a news release. 

“The Bridge District cried foul when filmmaker Eric Steel recorded the deaths in 2004, yet they see little urgency in resolving this ongoing problem,” Holmes said. 

Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District spokeswoman Mary Currie took issue with Holmes this morning. 

“I’m not going to address the allegations but the district is clearly moving as quickly as possible toward a suicide barrier,” Currie said. 

The district’s Board of Directors voted in October to install a net system under the bridge to deter suicides. 

Currie said the final environmental impact report on the net system is due for public release this month but the district must still find $50 million for the project. 

“Seventy percent of those who come to the bridge to harm themselves are stopped by our patrols. I can’t confirm that 70 percent of suicides are witnessed. We don’t hear much from them,” Currie said. 

Currie said the bridge district and state Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, are hoping to secure private funding for the net project. 

Ammiano’s spokesman Quintin Mecke said this afternoon the assemblyman would appreciate private funding but “the primary focus is federal funding.” 

“There is no coordinated effort to get private funding. There’s nothing definitive,” Mecke said..

Berkeley police have arrested a 17-year-old boy and are seeking two other suspects in connection with a brief car chase this morning in which a gun may have fired by accident, a police spokesperson said. 

The chase began at about 3:30 a.m. after an officer attempted to pull over a silver, four-door Honda Civic in the area of 10th and Gilman streets for a traffic violation, the police spokesperson Officer Andrew Frankel said.  

The driver refused to yield, and the officer followed the car. After about two blocks, near Ninth and Camelia streets, the officer heard a gunshot and called in a report of shots fired, Frankel said.  

No one was hit by the gunfire and police continued to follow the Honda until the driver stopped in the middle of the road at Fifth and Camelia streets, Frankel said. Three males exited the car and ran. 

Berkeley police, Albany police and a K-9 unit from Oakland searched the neighborhood and found the 17-year-old boy hiding in the 700 block of Page Street, Frankel said. 

The other two suspects remained at large as of about 8 a.m. 

Frankel said a handgun was recovered near Ninth and Camelia streets. He said the officer who initiated the pursuit didn’t see a muzzle flash at the time the shot was fired and that investigators believe the gun went off by accident.  

“What we think happened was that they were scared to get caught with a gun, they threw it out the window and it fired,” Frankel said.  

The 17-year-old was arrested and brought to the Berkeley Police Department and will be taken to juvenile hall, he said.

Bucket brigade 

Summoned by a report of a grass fire burning near the railroad tracks in the 700 block of University Avenue, Berkeley firefighters arrived to find a vestige of a bygone era—a working bucket brigade. 

The call came in at 5 p.m. last Friday, Sept. 4, reported Deputy Fire Chief Gil Dong. 

“On arrival, firefighters found a brigade of citizens trying to put out the fire with buckets,” he said. 

But buckets weren’t doing a lot of good at quenching the flames, which were quickly consuming a 20-by-20-foot dried-out yard. 

However, a blast of water from a fire hose hooked to a fire truck made nearly instant work of the flames, which may have been caused by a discarded cigarette. 

There was no damage to nearby structures.

Alameda County District Attorney Tom Orloff announced at today’s Board of Supervisors meeting that he has decided to retire, effective as soon as the board can appoint a replacement. 

Orloff, 66, who has been in the office nearly 40 years and has headed it for the past 15, recommended that the board act next week to appoint Chief Assistant District Attorney Nancy O’Malley to fill the rest of his four-year term, which expires at the end of next year. 

The district attorney’s position will be on the ballot next year. 

Orloff told the Board of Supervisors, “If you select Nancy, next year the voters will decide if your choice of Nancy was correct. I am confident they will affirm your selection.” 

Orloff’s announcement seemed to take the board by surprise. 

After the meeting, Orloff said he had simply decided that “it’s time” to retire. 

“I still have my good health, and there are some things I want to do,” he said. 

Orloff said, “My grandson is one year old and I want to spend time with him so he gets to know his grandfather.” 

Supervisor Gail Steele told Orloff, “You’ve done a good job and have represented the county well.” 

Supervisor Alice Lai-Bitker said, “We’re very fortunate to have had your leadership the last 15 years.” 

In his announcement to the board, Orloff said, “Over the past 15 years as district attorney I have been called on to make many decisions. Many have received little or no public attention. A few have been scrutinized in the public eye.” 

One such decision was the question of whether to charge former BART police officer Johannes Mehserle in connection with the shooting death of Oscar Grant III at the Fruitvale station on Jan. 1. 

Some community leaders criticized Orloff for taking too long to file charges against Mehserle. Orloff did file a murder charge against Mehserle on Jan. 13. 

According to Mehserle’s lawyer, Michael Rains, it is the first murder prosecution in California of a police officer for an on-duty homicide. 

On Feb. 10, a civil rights group delivered a petition to Orloff with more than 20,000 signatures asking that he charge a second BART police officer, Tony Pirone, in connection with Grant’s death, but Orloff has declined to do so. 

Chief Assistant District Attorney O’Malley, 55, has been in the District Attorney’s Office for 25 years and has been chief assistant for 10 years. 

She said that Orloff’s retirement “is a great loss” and that “Tom has been a great leader.” 

Although best known for its spring historic House Tour, this fall the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association (BAHA) is offering up a varied bouquet of events; no less than 10 separate activities plus a book release. 

Here’s a brief summary of what’s in store, from talks to walks in little-explored Berkeley neighborhoods to an event at Berkeley’s famed National Landmark First Church of Christ, Scientist. 

Worried about your aged wooden windows? Seduced by the siren song of the vinyl window salesperson? Repair, don’t replace. Saturday, Sept. 12, local architect and BAHA Board member Shawn Smith will lead a practical how-to workshop on repairing the wooden windows that give local homes so much of their architectural character. $15, 2 p.m. at the BAHA offices. 

Sunday, Sept. 13, BAHA will have a booth between Modoc and Ensenada at the Solano Stroll. This is always a good opportunity to buy BAHA publications. 

BAHA is on the verge of completing a top-to-bottom reworking and updating of its popular handbook, 41 Berkeley Walking Tours. Many entries—and several entirely new self-guided tours—have been added. Planned for release this fall, the book will be a renewed, accessible gateway to the history of Berkeley as expressed through its buildings and neighborhoods. 

To mark the publication, a series of five walking tours of neighborhoods included in the book will be given. The tours can be attended individually, or a discounted season ticket is available. Tour costs for BAHA members are $10 per tour, $40 per season; the general public rates are $15 per tour, $50 per series. 

All the tours run from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturdays. They include: 

“Dwight Way Station,” led by this article’s author, on Saturday, Sept. 19, featuring the area around Dwight and Shattuck that 19th-century promoters unsuccessfully tried to make the center of Berkeley’s embryonic downtown. Victorian houses, early commercial buildings, and a wide variety of historic sites survive in this often-overlooked district. 

“West Berkeley,” led by Stephanie Manning on Saturday, Sept. 26. Manning, who started researching the history of Berkeley’s oldest—and her home—neighborhood in the 1970s will lead this visit to the many surviving structures and sites from when the neighborhood was the Bayside manufacturing village of Oceanview. 

“North-Central Berkeley” will be led by BAHA President Daniella Thompson on Saturday, Oct. 3. This neighborhood, northwest of downtown and north of University Avenue, was home to both businessmen and Beats, including for a time both Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. Although BART construction cut through the neighborhood, many of its characteristic Classic Box and Colonial Revival houses survive along with Victorians and Arts and Crafts homes. 

Berkeley native and BAHA Executive Director Anthony Bruce leads “Claremont Creekside” on Oct. 10. This idyllic and exclusive planned residential district, now more than a century old, features stately homes, winding streets, and meandering Harwood Creek in southeast Berkeley. 

“Berkeley Villa Tract,” led by author Susan Cerny on Saturday, Oct. 17. The Villa Tract in north central Berkeley, beside today’s gourmet ghetto, was originally part of the 800-acre farmstead of Napoleon Bonaparte Byrne. Railroad and streetcar lines opened it up as a convenient district, and residential subdivisions burgeoned, making this a distinctive early East Berkeley neighborhood. 

Overlapping with the walking tours is a series of evening lectures at the Hillside Club on Cedar Street. Inaugurating a new, periodic BAHA series entitled “Preservation at Work”—the lectures feature local speakers who make their living studying, writing, and teaching about history or historic preservation. 

First up on Wednesday, Oct. 21, is author and scholar Gray Brechin speaking about “A New Deal for the East Bay: Excavating the Buried Civilization of the Great Depression.” Brechin is engaged in a massive project to document the physical and cultural remains of the New Deal in California. He has a barn-burning documentary address on the considerable legacy—from sewer systems to public parks—built by a federal government that was accused of socialism and unwisely going into debt to stimulate the economy during an economic crisis.  

Next, on Nov. 4, author and historic home renovator Jane Powell will speak on the subject of “Smart Growth, Green Buildings and Other Oxymorons,” taking a critical look at some of the trends changing urban landscapes today, including those in the East Bay. Oakland resident Powell is a wry and provocative speaker and an expert in renovating and reusing, rather than removing, historic resources. 

University of California Professor Paul Groth, an expert in American vernacular architecture and cultural, social, and economic trends, will give the third lecture on Wednesday, Nov. 18, as these subjects are expressed through buildings. 

Groth’s topic is “Ordinary Storefronts of the 20th Century: Clues to the Local Histories of Shopping and Retailing.” He has studied, both around the country and in the East Bay, the evolution of the commercial landscape and will trace and illustrate the history of business building from 18th-century shops, when people went to businesses to buy but not to be seen, to 21st century malls where the customer has become part of the display. 

The lectures cost $15 per talk, or $40 for a series ticket. Proceeds benefit the renovation of the historic Elizabeth Kenney Cottage. 

BAHA is also co-sponsoring a lecture by Robert Judson Clark at the First Church of Christ, Scientist, on the evening of Thursday, Oct. 8. Clark, a noted architectural historian, speaks on “Inventing a Masterwork: Bernard Maybeck and the First Church of Christ, Scientist, Berkeley, 1909–1911.”  

His talk comes almost exactly a century after Maybeck was hired to design what is now Berkeley’s most architecturally renowned building, and kicks off a two-year observance of the building’s centennial. The event is co-sponsored by the Friends of First Church. Tickets are $15. 

To buy tickets on line for events or find out further details, visit the calendar section of the BAHA website at http://berkeleyheritage.com/calendar.html, or call the BAHA office at 841-2242. E-mail inquiries can be sent to baha@berkeleyheritage.com. 

Steven Finacom is on the BAHA Board and will be leading one of the walks this season.  

Explore President Franklin Roosevelt’s legacy in Berkeley. Take a look inside some of Berkeley’s boutique hostelries or West Berkeley artisan shops. Picnic in the idyllic north Berkeley hills. Learn the overlooked history of one major local street. Tour several newly constructed, and rehabilitated, housing developments along another major avenue. 

All those opportunities are yours in the fall series of Walking Tours sponsored by the Berkeley Historical Society.  

The tours take place six Saturdays from September 19 to December 12, typically from 10 a.m. to 12 noon (unless otherwise noted). You can attend single tours, or buy a discounted season ticket.  

BHS walking tours are informal and affordable. You get a volunteer guide who knows the neighborhood—typically they’re a resident of the area you’re touring and/or have been researching it for years. Oftentimes—although not always—there’s a handout with maps and a historical summary, as well as the opportunity to see inside places usually closed to the public. 

The tours kick off Saturday, September 19, with a stroll through the legacy of Berkeley’s Depression era past. Although Berkeley, like most American communities, faced prolonged economic hardship during the 1930s, it also benefitted from foresighted federal aid programs—Roosevelt’s famed New Deal—that brought both employment and public improvements to the local landscape. 

Harvey Smith, board president of the National New Deal Preservation Association, will lead the tour, visiting parks, public buildings, schools and art works that came from New Deal programs. And since we’re currently in another “Great” economic period in United States history—although a Recession, not a Depression—the tour will “explore the relevance of this work to today’s political and economic realities.” 

Historical Society stalwart Paul Grunland—known for his careful research and detailed tour write-ups—leads the second tour through what he calls “Marin Avenue North”—a neighborhood of “charming homes built by famed architects and builders, winding contoured streets, creeks, rock outcroppings, city parks and pathways.” 

North Berkeley walks are always filled with architectural and historical surprises and delights. Attendees at Grunland’s October 3 tour are also invited to bring a picnic lunch to enjoy after the tour. This tour is not wheelchair accessible because of the steep slopes involved. 

I’ll be leading the third tour of the season on October 17, along Telegraph Avenue—not the famed four blocks north of Dwight, but the wider, often overlooked, stretch south of Dwight towards the Oakland border.  

Many hurry along this four-lane street on their way to other destinations with a “there’s nothing there” attitude, but the street has a host of historic sites, buildings and a heritage dating back to the 19th century, when it was one of Berkeley’s earliest roadways.  

Back then portions of the avenue went by different names—the Telegraph Road, Humboldt, Choate Street. It developed, with some commercial interludes, into a residential boulevard lined with stately homes and street trees. 

Although considerably changed from that past, south Telegraph is still full of surprises, from a block where every building from a century ago is still standing, to the location of a famed 1960s folk music club. 

Saturday, October 31, Rick Auerbach of the West Berkeley Artisans and Industrial Companies (WEBAIC) will be leading a “West Berkeley Works!” walk through some of the “hundreds of factories, shops and studios between San Pablo and the freeway.”  

This is a neighborhood where manufacturing and craftwork date back to Berkeley’s earliest days, and where thousands of artists, artisans, and industrial workers are currently employed. 

Rezoning in West Berkeley is on the policy agenda of the city; this walk will provide a timely look at the present day character of West Berkeley’s “industrial” district. 

Saturday, November 14, Dan Sawislak from Resources for Community Development will head a tour of “Affordable Housing in Berkeley,” featuring several infill housing developments along University Avenue. They range from the old Bel Air Motel—refurbished into the Erna P. Harris Court apartments—to Helios Corner, a large, new construction development at University and Sacramento avenues. 

The tour is co-sponsored by several local affordable housing organizations and lasts an extra half hour until 12:30. 

Saturday, December 12 is the final tour, traditionally a bonus tour for those who bought season tickets to the other walks. This fall the bonus tour will visit three Berkeley boutique hotels as they get ready for the holidays and will last three hours, until 1:00 p.m. 

Steven Finacom is a board member of the Berkeley Historical Society and will be leading one of the tours this season. 

Each tour costs $8 for a BHS member, $10 for general public. There’s a $30 “season pass” for all five tours for BHS members. You can join BHS and get the member discount for the tours at the same time.  

For reservations and tour starting points, call the Berkeley Historical Society at (510) 848-0181. Leave a message with your name, telephone number, tours you’d like to attend, and number of tickets you’d like to purchase for each. 

You can also drop by the Berkeley History Society in the Veterans Memorial Building, 1931 Center Street (west of Milvia) on Thursdays–Saturdays, 1–4 p.m., to add your name to the reservation list.  

A couple of weeks before Van Jones resigned his Washington job, I happened to have a casual conversation with an old friend about a media organization we’d both been instrumental in founding in the distant last millennium. He was complaining that the group had, rather soon after it began, turned into an arena for ambitious self-promoters instead of being the advocacy organization which its founders intended. Most of this happened in the 15 or so years when I was too preoccupied with earning a living to pay attention, but I believed my friend’s annoyed recital of pointless power struggles within the group, since anyone who’s ever been politically active knows that it happens all the time. 

Among the players he was kvetching about was Van Jones. 

On a Bay Area e-mail tree that I sometimes see, just after Jones’ resignation, most activists of my acquaintance were wringing their collective hands about it. One of them, however, a person who founded a pioneering green business before Van was even a young Yalie, noted that he was a pain in the neck to work with when he became a born-again eco-capitalist: evidently charming, bright and charismatic, but also arrogant and uncooperative. 

Anyone who reads Jones’ Wikipedia bio might wonder who vetted him for a high profile White House job. He started out as a typical Preachers’ Kid: a good student, conventional, an adept user of language, and yes, ambitious. Between twenty and forty, as many of his fellow PKs have been known to do, he cut loose in all kinds of dramatic and high profile ways. He called himself a small-c communist for a while, though years after that label had lost its shock value and the official party had self-destructed.  

Now, you can’t believe everything you read in a Wikipedia bio. (We have first-hand experience with that problem, since the entry for the Berkeley Daily Planet is being stalked by one “Dr. Mike” Harris of Sausalito, a card-carrying member of the lunatic fringe of supporters of right-wing Israeli politics. Every time someone corrects the misinformation he’s inserted into the entry, he changes it back.) So for all I know Glenn Beck and his ilk might be altering Van Jones’s story, but it seems clear that he’s been fairly rowdy from time to time.  

How about that petition he signed? Rabbi Michael Lerner told me that the circulated version, which he himself signed, was considerably milder than the one that appeared in print, to which the sponsors had added a lot of unsupportable accusations without the consent of the signers. It was bad judgment to sign even the original, for sure, but not the worst decision Jones has ever made. My own view has always been that signing petitions for anything except local ballot propositions and candidates is risky business, and that most petitions make very little difference anyhow, so the risk usually outweighs the benefit.  

The most curious aspect of the story is that it illustrates the way some members of the American public, left, right and center, have come to look on political events as if they were episodes on made-for-TV series about fictional people. What are we to make of the number of poll respondents on the left who don’t believe that planes crashed into the World Trade center eight years ago this week, good matches for those on the right who think Barack Obama was born in Kenya? It’s not Van Jones’ political correctness that is called into question by his seeming endorsement of the 9/11 doubters, it’s his good sense. But maybe he just wasn’t paying attention that day. 

It’s possible, as my hyper-critical leftist buddies have been quick to assert, that “Obama caved in to the right wing.” Last weekend I was at a nostalgic gathering of old radicals, alter kockers in training, who almost uniformly expressed deep disapproval over how Jones had been let go, sure that the Fox News crowd had gotten their way. Some people love to bring the bad news. 

But if you believe the word on the street in the Bay Area, it’s also possible that some folks in Washington were not unhappy to turn loose of Jones while blaming it on the right. It’s possible that some Br’er Rabbits in the White House were begging Glenn Beck not to throw them in that there briar patch when they actually wanted to get away from Van Jones themselves. Remember that he’s frequently described as “a gadfly,” and a gadfly has an unpleasant way of stinging whatever it lights on. He might have been driving the White House insiders crazy by this time.  

I’ve never met Van myself, or even heard him speak, but many reports from people I trust who have, except the two above, rave about his quick intelligence and his power to move audiences. For the Obama administration, though, that might not be the good news.  

I’m still chewing over my recent exposure to Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Just as it was in the time of “the noblest Roman of them all,” politics is a curious mixture of idealism and personal ambition—there’s that A-word again. Even Van Jones’s biggest fans will admit that he is indeed ambitious, and likes to be the center of attention in whatever he does. Rumors among the devoted fans of the current West Wing reality show say the same thing about Rahm Emanuel. Maybe the stage there just wasn’t large enough for two tremendous egos.  

The old Russians used to say “if our little father the Tsar only knew about this, he wouldn’t allow it.” If my totally unsubstantiated hypothesis is true, and it really was a clash of ambitions, and if Obama knew about it, he should have stepped on both of them, but the man’s busy these days with a number of bigger problems. The republic will survive Van Jones’s resignation, and he’ll live to fight with characteristic panache on another day in another arena. 

BERKELEY GUIDES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Regarding the $200,000 price tag for the brown-jacketed “Berkeley Guides,” Mr Fonseca either doesn’t mention or doesn’t know what most street people in Berkeley suspect: that the “Guides” are actually paid extra sets of eyes and ears for BPD. In other words, while patrolling the street for runaways and probation/parole violators from other counties and states to recruit into the city’s very profitable homeless grant money industry, they are also on the lookout for those dimebag cannabis dealers, hookers and other dangerous street hustler types that congregate downtown (except the alcohol and hard drug dealers in the park by BHS and the police station. They’re apparently on special assignment from Mayor Bates). 

Wm. Henry Fenderson 

• 

POLICE BLOTTER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It’s been a pleasant respite, this period when your paper has given the Police Blotter job to someone other than Brenneman. As of the current issue, he’s back—and obviously hasn’t received any sensitivity training. As before, he slings his cheeky noir slang—heist, stickup (multiple times), braced, packing, made off, brandished—and his usual dramatic prose (”Finally, at two minutes after midnight, a lone robber...”; “A solo stickup artist produced a pistol and demanded...”) as though he was writing a screenplay instead of reporting traumatic, potentially life-changing incidents experienced by real people. Why did you take this uncompassionate guy off the column only to put him back on it? He hasn’t learned anything. 

Yes, you will probably get letters from people who disagree—who find Brenneman’s crime writing “entertaining.” Don’t listen to them. They are just as insensitive as the writer. 

Sandy Rothman 

• 

PARKER PLACE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I read Steven Finacom’s piece about the Parker Place development, and I couldn’t disagree more over the general tenor and perspective of the piece. Overall I found the article to be extremely one-sided. From what I can see, the proposed project appears to be appropriately to scale—four stories is a reasonable increase in density for this area—and I personally find the design to be creative and attractive. If this is going to be a battle of taste, put me down strongly in favor of the appearance; and if it’s going to be a debate about social merit, I’d argue that a moderate increase of density along a heavy traffic corridor like Shattuck is exactly what both Berkeley and the planet needs. 

Theo Posselt 

• 

BIKE HELMETS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’m grateful to H. Scott Prosterman for clarifying that Mayor Tom Bates, Councilmembers Linda Maio and Max Anderson, Transportation Commissioners Marcy Greenhut and Eric McCaughrin and Eric Anderson, the city’s professional bicycle safety coordinator/ consultant, are part of the reason Berkeley doesn’t have a mandatory helmet law.  

It is so easy to cite statistics: 58 percent of Americans don’t wear helmets while cycling, 92 percent of riders killed while cycling in 2007 were not helmeted, etc. The medical and societal costs of these deaths and head injuries are in the billions.  

It is even easier for people to joke about being eager to rid the gene pool of the helmet-free riders one meets constantly riding to work and through town.  

But the best reason, the most selfless reason for wearing a helmet, is that you are influencing kids with your behavior. It is hard for kids to figure out what’s safe, what’s cool, and what weight to give vanity in a sometimes shallow world.  

If we abandon the legal obligation to wear a helmet at 16, or 18, as many laws allow, we give the impression that helmets are child’s attire, and that mature riders no longer need them. This is a deadly education.  

Helmet hair is cool. Walking into your office or the grocery store with sweat-smashed locks sailing every which way is sexy. Forget the spandex riding togs and the pricey cycling gear—the really attractive quality a bike rider can communicate is that he or she simply recognizes that our community’s children are priceless, and that anything, any simple $40 thing they can do to help keep them safe is worth it.  

Just as we’re slowing ridding our parks and public places of smoking, let’s rid our streets of the destructive message sent by riding without bike helmets by wearing them and being an inspiration to the community we love.  

Carol Denney 

• 

TV ADS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’ve been long intrigued by ads on TV and the printed media who demand “Ask your doctor!” I’ve never had the nerve to ask my doctor to use any of them, like Lepitor or Viagra or those pills for ladies who have osteoporosis, etc. 

But then it occurred to me that millions of Americans also don’t have the nerve to ask, because they don’t have a doctor.  

Robert Blau  

• 

LIFE AND DEATH CHOICE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

A few of your readers write letters from the viewpoint that government is bad and government services should be opposed. One writer who frequently rails against Oakland’s mayor, not without good cause, states that Obama’s health reform would “unalterably abridge” our rights and freedoms. Perhaps he should consider a country with no government: Iraq. 

The Bush administration invaded Iraq and dissembled its social structure, resulting in neighborhoods being taken over by armed thugs who terrorized the population and executed anyone who “didn’t belong.” That’s what happens when there is no government.  

Health insurance companies are not run by thugs, but people needing health care have as little control over their policies and procedures as the neighborhoods of Iraq. Oh sure, you have the choice of taking your business from Blue Cross to Blue Shield, but their health plans and their constantly rising costs aren’t much different from each other. And if you have a “pre-existing condition,” forget about changing health insurance companies.  

What should we call anonymous bureaucrats who deny someone a medical procedure or a life-saving drug? Death panels” would be appropriate, and that’s what we have today, right now, with profit-making health insurance companies. Their profit depends upon denying claims. Approximately 18 percent of our health insurance premium money goes for the company’s administrative cost, of which nearly half are people employed to deny claims. Compare that with the two percent administrative cost of government-run Medicare. Oh, and don’t forget an additional 12 percent of our premium money goes to outrageous executive bonuses and corporate profits. It’s like a tax except we get no services for our money. 

Would government bureaucrats do a better job? They will do only as good as their employer requires of them. But, their main purpose will not be to squeeze profits by denying services; government’s primary purpose is to serve people. If they do it badly, they are answerable to our democratically-elected representatives who can fix the problems. Who can you turn to, to fix an insurance company problem? 

Americans pay nearly twice as much for health care as do citizens of the other industrialized democracies, yet our health statistics are far below theirs. Why? Because 30 percent of our costs go to profiteering. In our country, health care is privatized, so if you have money you get health services, if you don’t, you die. That is rationing; one of the crudest and cruelest forms of rationing.  

Let those who like their insurance company keep it, but let those who want a government alternative have the choice. It’s a matter of life and death. 

Bruce Joffe 

Piedmont 

• 

PICK YOUR POISON 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

“Some second-hand smoke, as I puff?” 

“Oh, no—I’d prefer chewing snuff. 

Either one makes me ill. 

I would run from a pill, 

And your first-hand exhaust is enough.” 

Ove Ofteness 

• 

SMOKING IN PUBLIC 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

To the whining complainer who wrote about people who smoke outdoors. Since you don’t consent to people “raping” and “molesting” your lungs and sinuses do you offer your consent to all the cars that fill your lungs and sinuses daily with tons more deadly carbon monoxide then a single person smoking a cigarette next to you? I myself am not a smoker but it drives me crazy all these people who constantly whine and complain about other people smoking outdoors or around them and how it affects their health while completely ignoring the fact that they are inhaling constant CO emissions from cars. 

Tell you what, if I put you in a windowless room with 100 smokers for one hour you will walk out of that room. Granted you will feel awful but you will be alive. Now if I put you in that same windowless room for one hour with a single running car. I can guarantee you will not leave that room alive. If you don’t want to be around people who smoke, it’s pretty easy to avoid them since smoking is banned in all those location that you wrote about. Granted people can still smoke walking down the street and that’s their right to do so, if the smoke bothers you just by having someone pass you while smoking then you have much bigger issues to deal with. 

Next time you want to complain about someone smoking a cigarette or marijuana around you just take a look at the sky above the Bay Bridge during rush hour. 

Kristy West 

• 

BIKE SAFETY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Scott Prosterman made many important points about safety. I would like to underline the following in particular, and urge the mayor and city council to address all the issues he has raised. 

1. There should be more frequent and obvious marking of bike lanes on streets with heavy traffic like Oxford at rush hour. I almost killed my son by opening my car door there in front of him because I had not noticed the few and faded bike logos. Because there has been for good reason gradual expansion in bike lane creation, we should remind drivers in every possible way and mark more densely. 

2. There should certainly be a helmet law. 

3. Bicyclists are not, I think, required to have driver’s licenses, and we find some of them violating laws by riding the wrong way on one-way-streets, riding fast across stopped intersections, and riding on the sidewalk, creating hazards for pedestrians. Downtown Berkeley near the BART station has such bicyclists on the sidewalk frequently. For anyone walking who has trouble with balance, this is a danger. 

I am not sure what the solution should be. I have even seen cops on bikes fail to stop at pedestrian crossings. I confess I have been tempted to assault the sidewalk bike with my cane. 

Susan Tripp 

• 

PARKING TICKET 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I just unsuccessfully contested a parking ticket, on the grounds that the metermaid(man) marked my tire so close to the pavement that one had to literally lie down on the street to see the mark.  

The fact that the city has never before marked tires like this did not faze Ann Miley, the hearing officer. Obviously, she was interested in funding her paycheck, without regard to civic fair play. 

This another low, underhanded City of Berkeley technique for extorting revenue. 

And yet, University ave. is being repaved. It had such Third World charm for so long, I thought it would forever be misrepaired at various times and places with the city’s standard practice of turning a pothole into a bump..... They’re all so conscientious, aren’t they?  

Eric Rhodes 

• 

CARL WILSON 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was saddened to hear of the passing of Carl Wilson, and grateful for Linda Rosen’s thoughtful tribute to a great man. I was fortunate to have worked with Carl on the board of the Berkeley Historical Society when he was its president, and I knew him to be one of the most optimistic, good hearted men I have ever met. Our community has lost a wonderful spirit, and I am grateful to have known him. Thank you for recognizing his contributions to our community. 

George Rose 

• 

MOBILITY SAFETY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

H. Scott Prosterman’s commentary in the Planet, Sept. 3, is a good starting point for a rational discussion of bike safety. Let’s consider it “Mobility Safety” to include consideration to pedestrians and, even, motor vehicle drivers.  

Mobility safety has several aspects: 

1. Enforce bicycle rules and regulations already on the books. Treat bicycle scofflaws as errant motor vehicle drivers are treated by ticketing, fining, and, when necessary, revoking their licenses. Too many bicyclists do not stop at stop signs red lights. Too often bicycle riders, without looking in either direction, blithely breeze right through stop signs and red lights in neighborhoods, commercial districts, and where BART bicycle paths cross streets. There is never a day when I do not see a bicyclist do something foolish—like today—when one sped from a sidewalk via a blind driveway directly in front of me without looking right or left in full violation of BMC 14.68.170. Then, without slowing, whizzed right through a nearby stop sign. 

2. Make pedestrian safety a priority. Bicycle riders can cause serious damage to pedestrians on crosswalks and, particularly, on sidewalks in commercial districts in violation of Berkeley Municipal Code 14.68.130. By and large this code is ignored. It is not fun to be plowed to the pavement by a bicyclist as I was some years ago in front of Radstons. Regardless of age, anyone hit by a bike can be maimed and debilitated for life.  

3. Add streetlights throughout the city, particularly in currently low-lighted, residential areas. Mr. Prosterman makes a good point—“improving lighting conditions in residential neighborhoods.” Too many streets in Berkeley are simply too dark for safe pedaling and walking. This safety issue affects bicyclists, vehicle drivers, and pedestrians. Darkness, often passed off as “charm” is, in fact, dangerous to life and limb. Yet the city claims that it doesn’t have the money to add lights. How many accidents is it going to take for the city to set protective priorities for its residents and visitors? 

4. Impose parking fees on bikes in the same way parking fees are imposed on vehicle parking. Mr. Prosterman asks for more bicycle racks at parking meters. He’s correct: bicycle racks are needed. I rail at paid parking whether meters or public garages. But, if the city imposes parking fees for motorists, it also should charge bike riders to use bicycle racks. Bicyclists save money otherwise spent for gas, automotive maintenance, and insurance; Parking fees for bicycles would help support bicycle regulation enforcement.  

Bicycles can cause bodily damage as motor vehicles can; it is reasonable to subject bicyclists to the same rules and regulations, fees and fines.  

Barbara Witte 

• 

COUPONS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Already hopelessly addicted to chocolate, I now discover that I have a brand new addiction. This one is for coupons. Show me a coupon—any coupon—and I’m ecstatic! Now this would appear to be a relatively innocent obsession, wouldn’t you agree? Not so in my case. 

I should mention that, for obvious reasons, Sunday is my favorite day of the week—the day that the hefty San Francisco Chronicle is delivered to my front door. It weighs a ton, I might add. Newspaper under my arm, armed with scissors, I spread the paper out on the table in my breakfast room. Do I read the news, literary section and Datebook? Actually, no. I put those to one side for reading later in the day. What I go for are all those glossy inserts and advertisements. Not the Macy’s or J.C. Penney’s ads, but rather the ones for Walgreen’s, Long’s and RiteAid, in that order. Mind you, clipping out all those coupons is not an easy task, but it’s one I relish. By morning’s end I’ve cut out dozens and dozens of coupons, which will wind up stuffed in my wallet and on the floor of my car. 

This Sunday’s Walgreen’s advertisement was especially alluring. There were coupons for everything—coffee, peanut butter, paper towels, white tuna, Halloween candy, etc. Unfortunately there was no coupon for the Neckline Slimmer, priced at $19.99. I’ll have to think about that one. And I had strong reservations about the Boy/Girl Gender Prediction Test, marked down from $29.99 to $24.99. Really, now, isn’t Walgreen’s venturing into a biomedical ethics issue here? 

I noted in the Business Section of the Sunday paper that there are now electronic coupons arriving by cell phone, Twitter, and Facebook, enabling some shoppers to cut their monthly grocery bills from $500 to $300. Good for them, but I’ll happily settle for Walgreen’s advertisement. I’ll definitely use most of those coupons I cut out today. While I don’t really need more coffee, peanut butter and white tuna, how can I pass up such bargains? I simply won’t let those coupons go to waste! 

Dorothy Snodgrass 

• 

JOHN YOO 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

John Yoo spent the spring semester at Chapman Law School in Orange, Ca. His public debate with the faculty is online at tinyurl.com/YooAtChapman. He can be heard to say, at 57:40, that the president’s highest constitutional duty is to protect the country from attack; overlooking the duty to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. There was one arrest of a demonstrator for trespassing, with a summary acquittal on First Amendment grounds. Lucky that some people remember the Constitution.  

Martin Gugino 

Lakewood 

• 

VAN HOOL BUSES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

When the Board of AC Transit decided to buy Van Hool Belgian-built buses, did they consider the fact that they were helping to pull down NUMMI, an important part of the Bay Area econmy? 

Albert Scott 

• 

SWINE FLU SHOTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In response to the article about the Berkeley school district not offering in-house clinics for swine flu, I disagree with the decision, because, as a graduate of Berkeley High, I remember students using the health center as a major resource in their helth care. As a former student, I believe students will go to the health center and use the services. In addition, students do not take the time to go elsewhere for medical attention. This in-house clinic for the swine flu shot will increase the number of young children and young adutls who get immunized. 

The article states that the target groups for the vaccinations are “children aged six months to young adults up to the age of 24; staff in K-12 schools and child care centers; pregnant women; and anyone taking care of babies.” In order to stop this flu, everybody needs to get the vaccination leaving no one left behind. How are we going to get through this, if we are just focusing on people paying for it, and where they can get it? Everybody needs to be vaccinated whether they have money or not. It should be given in schools, because that is where it is going to hit the hardest. 

The article also states that students should get the vaccines from their own health care provider. I feel that people who cannot afford the cost of medical attention should be able to get the vaccination for free. Some students and their parents are unable to afford the rising cost for health care coverage. I believe the swine flu is very serious and every school, health clinic and hospital should carry the vaccines for easy access. Money, or no money, lives are important. 

Angelia Spikes 

Richmond 

• 

BENEFITS OF MEDICARE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am a physician living in the East Bay. Last year I became eligible for Medicare and signed up for both part A and B. My insurance premiums were cut in half, I no longer have to pay a co-pay, and there are no out of network doctors. As a self-employed physician I was paying close to $10,000 a year for my family coverage. My wife, not yet 65, is now paying $7,000 per year for her individual coverage. 

I have the same freedom of choice I had with my extravagantly expensive private policy, which by the way went up every two years by 6-8 percent. I have no problem seeing any doctor I want in any institution I choose for my care. I feel an extraordinary sense of relief to have this fantastic coverage that I can afford. I cannot tell you how important this is to my especially now that I am approaching retirement age. 

The plans before congress that my friends and I have paid careful attention to, do not in any way curtail the current excellent benefits of Medicare and in fact look to make good and positive changes in the administration of care that will make services even more easily accessible. 

Ray G. Poggi, M.D. 

• 

PUBLIC OPTION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Any hope for bipartisan support of real healthcare reform is illusory. The Democratic congress must act boldly on single-payer healthcare reform, or at minimum, a strong public option. For me and most of my colleagues, a strong public option is a deal-breaker, and the basis for re-election support for both the president and democratic congressmembers. 

James E Vann 

Oakland 

• 

HEALTH CARE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

For too long too many Americans have been without health care and this has caused unnecessary suffering for families and loss to the economy. 

I support the current plan the Obama administration is proposing. It will strengthen Medicare by cutting down on paperwork, emphasize wellness and prevention and reward doctors for the care they provide instead of how many procedures they do. 

It is an embarrasment and a shame that our country, as rich as it is, does not protect the welfare of its citizens with a national plan for health coverage. 

Robert Warwick

Around town I saw this bumper sticker on a hulking SUV: “Bring Back Capitalism.” Next to it was another bumper sticker: “Pro-life.” And a third: “Go Cal.” I know a lot of self-proclaimed “socialists” in Berkeley who, from the vantage of the not-very-perceptive owner of this energy sink, should be dancing in the streets And yet most of them see themselves falling into a ring of fire, going “down, down, down, and the flames go higher,” as Johnny Cash wrote.  

Not surprisingly, most people don’t call unemployment and the decimation of public service functions of government “Socialism.” Though these contradictory perceptions of the world may seem absurd to us, those bumper stickers represent such a deep socio-economic and political schism as to predict a coming huge civil conflict—perhaps like our Civil War—fueled and financed by major sectors of Capitalism. Goldman-Sachs may like Obama, but it has just as much to gain by fueling this conflict as Rupert Murdock, for its apparatus, like the health insurance industry, serves no useful social function except to steal from the rest to enhance the rich.  

There are an unlimited number of well paid intellectual prostitutes in the United States who have used historical fact and fiction to conjure the idea that Right and Left ideologies are essentially similar—if not exactly identical; that both lead to little more than irrationality, excesses and brutality. Most commonly we are treated to statistics of how many people Hitler, Stalin and Mao wiped from the face of the map, all in one breath. The equation works to make a point, but what that point is often escapes revelation—you should be cynical, passive and not believe that a better, more egalitarian world, is possible. The result, as my 40-year-old-physician niece has often told me is, “but I’m not political.” Politics assumes the status of something so alien, other and criminally filthy that staying a world away seems rational. Unfortunately, this places the actor a world apart from reality and the necessities and vicissitudes of human discourse and behavior. Only the nasty people who like the thrill of power, and true believers, participate.  

As they say, figures don’t lie, but liars know how to figure. Those liars, most with advanced degrees from prestigious universities, have figured out the art of social manipulation very well, and they have had the resources to “actualize” their best (if socially destructive) practices throughout the world—selling things, selling ideas, selling souls. You see, those who will do anyone’s bidding for a price, or for glory, for posterity, do not see themselves as warriors, nor do they claim that their role is to empower the anti-democratic tendencies that give birth to fascist ideas and behaviors. They just operate in the world of “realpolitik” and PR and marketing, and they do not ever pull triggers or fire missiles from drones. That’s for worker bees.  

The rather obvious and fundamental differences between ideas that come from what we call the “Left” and the “Right” is that the former tend to believe in the human capacity to create rational societies that treat all people equally, societies in which public functions exist and are enhanced to enable human capacity, validate human worth and creativity, and serve social needs. Right ideology tends to be founded upon principles of Social Darwinism—humans are fundamentally atavistic and individuals survive because of their individual resonance with nature in their drive for dominance and control. This isn’t seen as negative, but as the very font of creativity, which can be used as the engine of society if left largely unfettered. The fruits will trickle down. In point of fact, Rousseau—revolutionary thinker though he was—seemed to believe in both of these views of human nature and culture simultaneously. In Emile he argued against contamination of human nature by social forces, but I don’t think he believed that humans were inherently bent upon dominance. And he certainly didn’t approve of the dominance that class society had foisted upon the rest.  

Be that as it may, the way that people see the world determines what they will do, how they will act. And those who see a moribund self-destructive Capitalist system trying to prop itself up at the expense of our very humanity are likely to behave quite differently from those who see a left- wing conspiracy and and an “African” in the White House as the cause of the catastrophes we were left with after the last 8 years (or perhaps the last 28 years) of U.S. declination.  

The Center (be that conception liberal or conservative or neither) cannot hold under current conditions in the world. Within Capitalism, simple pragmatic solutions to problems cannot be had to reverse the expanding catastrophes that are bittering our discourse and our lives. I would not even predict if we might solve these immense problems effectively should we rapidly overcome Capitalist domination, but it would be a starting point. From Katrina to Palestine to Iraq and Afghanistan nothing is being pulled back, reversed or solved, while real unemployment in the United States is currently at 16 percent and will move inexorably higher. The global warming crisis—and the ecologic crisis in general—cannot be addressed by societies within a system so rift by internal contradictions that the Right (defenders of the golden age of Capitalism) would like to kill off all change agents or defenders of equal rights for all. If we wait like good Germans (claiming we’re not the political type and we hate that genre) or even believe that there is some hope if we do our duty to vote and send our e-mails, we will walk ourselves into an end game.  

The poet wrote: “this is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.” Who knows? Right or wrong, before that, expect never-ending war, famine, disease, as if the determinists and apocalyptics are right. As if there really is no such thing as human free will, except in the most grotesque understanding of that term, as in Dr. Strangelove.   

The hulking SUV in Berkeley is an energy sink on wheels and a simulacrum. Made of steel, drinking oil, it steals not only the natural resources of our earth, but, like Hal in 2001: A Space Oddysey, it dominates its owner. How does one rebel against such human nearsightedness and self-containment? There are many difficult choices in life, but one of these, in particular, is overarching presently: shall we rebel against wealth and private property accumulation and a Capitalist state/government whose primary role is to enforce class divisions and diminish democracy, or shall we destine our descendents to live in Hell?  

For the month of September, Berkeley physician Marc Sapir joins a cross country van tour for Single Payer health care organized by a group of Oregon doctors (www.madashelldoctors.com). They’ll rally in 26 cities and end at Lafayette Park across from the White House on September 30. 

Brian Edwards-Tiekert, a reporter at KPFA, the board treasurer and power on the Concerned Listeners faction, says there is a failure of transparency at KPFA. I don’t agree. What he is doing is adequately transparent.   

Edwards-Tiekert is still going strong with his line that money seemed about to be taken from the KPFA bank account by Pacifica, that the business manager—brand spanking new in that position, by the way—got just such an impression from our bank, and those in charge at Pacifica didn’t respond to his two e-mails asking for information immediately. What’s a treasurer to do? Tell the board? Nah, tell the world that KPFA is being robbed.  

What Edwards-Tiekert doesn’t bother to say is that there might be valid reasons why he didn’t get a prompt response to his e-mails. That the two people involved were out of town and he has spent years playing nasty political games with them might be grounds for their not hopping right to it. His not getting a speedy reply, he says, validates his irresponsibly running to the media with a story that would stop any rational person from giving money to KPFA.   

While the presses were rolling printing Edward-Tiekert’s larders being raided story, several board members were meeting with Edwards-Tiekert and the new business manager to review the budget. Not so much as a whisper to us that Pacifica was emptying our coffers. Of course not; we all knew that is not the case. The public didn’t. So there it was the next morning as front page news.   

Since then there have been many commentaries back and forth in these pages. The end result is that confusion reigns, as I’ve since learned when talking to some longtime progressives and KPFA donors. Since these same people are about to elect a new KPFA board, such confusion is dangerous to the station.  

Here is what is really happening. Pacifica is not taking any money from KPFA. The station does, however, have budget woes. The economy has turned sour and donations are down. We’ve been running a $300,000 budget deficit known since the beginning of our fiscal year that ends this month. The powers that hold sway over the station and board, Concerned Listeners, have been running things for the last three years. Pacifica had ordered them to make budget cuts and they didn’t.  

Pacifica is doing better financially. WBAI, our sister station in New York that has been negatively affecting the network’s finances, has had fund drives this year that did far better than the year before. The national office, board and WBAI are in new hands as of 2009 and those who were in power for the prior three years, Concerned Listeners and their allies, are history on the national level. Reports are that staff morale at WBAI is on the upswing.   

You’re probably wondering what might have triggered the urge to send misinformation loose in the progressive world. Edwards-Tiekert also doesn’t bother mentioning that enough staff members no longer want him as one of their representatives on the board that there is a recall election in the works to remove him from that position. The KPFA board has several seats that are elected by the staff from their ranks. The staff’s desire to get rid of him predates the story he keeps putting out in the media that is damaging to KPFA, so a white knight galloping to the rescue image might be useful.   

Here’s another educated guess. Not only is Edwards-Tierkert subject to a recall election, it is board election season and member ballots will arrive any day. (I am a member of KPFA’s board, and in the interest of full disclosure, running for reelection.) His group, Concerned Listeners, have been the majority faction on the board for three years. They have little to entice in terms of candidates this year. Their slate offers up 70 percent white males over the age of 60. They have already provided the board with two aging brothers as well as a husband, wife, and one of their former employees. Look closely and you realize that their slate is loaded with retired bureaucrats. It’s an outdated notion and one that reeks of the typical corporate board of directors.   

They are up against a dynamic young team, Independents for Community Radio. We’ve got 20- and 30-year-olds, and 70 percent are female and people of color. There are a couple of older media and KPFA hands thrown in for experience and continuity.   

This is all likely election fun and games on the part of Edwards-Tiekert and Concerned Listerners, but it comes at a critical juncture for KPFA. Not only are we running a budget deficit and losing both donors and listeners, we need to move into the modern online world and do a better job of providing radio that appeals to a younger audience as well as the diverse community in which we all live. We need to draw on the voices and expertise so readily available in our marvelous Bay Area in a more inclusive sweep and not limit ourselves to a small and aging world of political and radio cronyism.   

There is also a fair degree of general unrest and dissatisfaction with KPFA management since the Unpaid Staff Organization was ‘derecognized’ two year’s ago and one of their members hurt while arrested at the station a year ago for no good reason. Roughly 70 percent of all the programs KPFA airs are produced and hosted by UPSO members. They need to be fearless in pursuing new program ideas, not nervously looking over their shoulders. They need to be treated with respect. Speaking plainly, we need a new board majority that will allow what has been forbidden for three years: Serious and respectful discussion of the problems we face and space for exploring creative new solutions. Whether a board or staff member is a power force shouldn’t matter if they have ideas to offer. The audience is shrinking and we’re running out of time.  

KPFA has a mission to provide news, views, voices and expertise not available elsewhere in the media and reflective of our whole community. We could do so much better at it and we may not get another chance.   

Sasha Futran is a radio and print journalist, winner of Project Censored most censored story of the year award, former minority member of the KQED board who stopped the Robert Mondavi infomercial from being produced. 

In May of this year, the Obama administration fired General David McKiernan as the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan. In announcing the decision, Defense Secretary Robert Gates stated he was seeking “fresh thinking” and “fresh eyes” on Afghanistan. McKiernan was replaced by General Stanley McChrystal. His selection marked the continued ascendancy of officers who have advocated the use of counterinsurgency tactics in Iraq and Afghanistan. General David Petraeus, the head of Central Command, was another such officer. He implemented COIN strategy in Iraq. Petraeus is McChrystal’s commander. Gates praised McChrystal for his “unique skill set in counterinsurgency.  

When McChrystal took command of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, he claimed his implementation of counter-insurgency (COIN) warfare there would protect the Afghan population. His version of war would help win the “hearts and minds of the people” just as it did in Vietnam. This new emphasis on COIN strategy was supposed to turn around the downward spiral of the Afghan war. In theory, it was also suppose to limit Afghan civilian casualties.  

But we have recently seen the newest U.S. strategy in practice in that war ravaged country. On Monday, September 7th the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan claimed that troops of the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division invaded the charity’s hospital in Wardak province on the night of September 2nd.  

Anders Fange, the charity’s country director, asserted that American troops stormed through the hospital, broke down doors, and tied up four security guards and two hospital visitors. He also said the U.S. military forcibly removed patients from their beds during their search and barged into the women’s wards. Fange claimed that such actions as entering rooms where women are in bed is a serious insult under Muslim culture.  

Fange further stated that the raid was a violation of an agreement between NATO forces and aid organizations that worked in Wardak province. He said, “This is a clear violation of internationally recognized rules and principles. If the international military forces are not respecting the sanctity of health facilities, then there is no reason for the Taliban to do it either. Then these clinics and hospitals would become military targets.”  

Lt. Commander Christine Sidenstricker, a U.S. military spokeswoman, confirmed that the hospital was searched. She also said, “We are investigating, and we take allegations like this seriously. Complaints like this are rare.” But abuses and even deaths of the Afghan population at the hands of the U.S. and its allies are far from rare. On Friday September 4th, a NATO air strike by U.S. jets killed many Afghan civilians.  

The independent human rights group, Afghan Rights Monitor reported that its visit of the attack site indicated the strike killed as many as 70 local villagers along the Kunduz River. In the past, other such U.S. air attacks have killed large numbers of civilians at wedding parties and a funeral. Almost any large gathering in Afghanistan can suddenly be attacked. This is how the U.S. really implements its COIN strategy.  

The “heart and minds strategy” will continue to kill innocent Afghans as the U.S., under Commander-in-Chief Obama, continues to escalate the war. In a short time we can expect thousands of so-called U.S. support troops in Afghanistan to be replaced by more combat troops, or “trigger pullers” as one U.S. officer referred to them in his support of the move. McChyrstal is also very likely to request additional troops from his commander-in-chief within a few weeks as well. He laid the political groundwork for this further escalation with his recent review of Afghan operations. That review was given to Obama last week. When Obama receives the request for additional troops, it is very likely he will grant it. He has already sent thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan.  

One reason that Obama is likely to approve an additional troop request is that the “successful” implementation of COIN strategy requires the introduction of many more U.S. troops into Afghanistan. COIN strategy is troop intensive as is indicated by the Army’s new COIN manual, written in large part by General David Petraeus. To quote the manual: “No predetermined, fixed ratio of friendly troops to enemy combatants ensures success in COIN. The conditions of the operational environment and the approaches insurgents use vary too widely. A better force requirement gauge is troop density, the ratio of security forces (including the host nation’s military and police forces as well as foreign counterinsurgents) to inhabitants. Most density recommendations fall within a range of 20 to 25 counterinsurgents for every 1000 residents in an AO. Twenty counterinsurgents per 1000 residents is often considered the minimum troop density required for effective COIN operations; however as with any fixed ratio, such calculations remain very dependent upon the situation.”  

In 2003 the U.N estimated the Afghan population at nearly 24 million. At 20 troops per 1000 Afghan residents that would require 480,000 allied troops to meet the minimum density recommendation of the COIN manual. At 25 troops it would take 600,000 troops. Obviously to reach these numbers would require a massive troop escalation.  

Just like in Vietnam the rhetoric may claim the U.S. is “winning hearts and minds, but the reality is that the U.S. war of terror is killing and terrorizing people from Iraq, to Afghanistan, to Pakistan. In Vietnam 2-3 million Vietnamese died. Already there have been a million Iraqi deaths as a result of the 2003 U.S. invasion. Thousands more have died in Afghanistan since the October 2001 invasion. When do we say enough? What will you do to stop the U.S. wars? To see what you can do, please go to worldcantwait.org.  

Kenneth J. Theisen is an Oakland resident and a steering committee member of World Can’t Wait which is trying to mobilize people to end the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

AC Transit staff’s proposal to trash the vital 51 bus line is appallingly wrongheaded. 

   The 51 is now AC Transit’s very busiest line. Serving multiple places and purposes, it’s also the most useful. And linking as it does so many of the East Bay’s most vibrant urban scenes, it’s the most interesting line to ride: for locals and visitors alike, a handy resource for transit-enabled sight-seeing. 

   An obvious key to all of that is the 51 line’s great length, which lets passengers go anywhere along it without the inconvenience—and deterrent to ridership—of needing to transfer. 

   Thus for instance, the 51 now importantly links many of the densest sections of Berkeley, Oakland, and Alameda directly with Kaiser’s medical facilities around the Broadway/MacArthur intersection. As another example, people from all those areas can ride the 51 right down to the Berkeley Amtrak station. The 51 directly connects UC’s campus with those of the California College of the Arts and the College of Alameda. And it seamlessly links much of Berkeley, Oakland, and Alameda with a rich diversity of commercial areas, including Berkeley’s Arts District, upper Telegraph, and the Elmwood; Oakland’s Rockridge, Uptown, Old Oakland, and Chinatown; and Alameda’s Park Street, to the mutual benefit of restaurants, theaters, and shops along the bus line. 

   But those important linkages are seriously threatened by AC Transit staff’s proposal to chop the 51 route into two separate lines. One of them would run from Berkeley Amtrak only as far as the Rockridge BART station. The other one would go from Rockridge BART through Downtown Oakland and Alameda, plus a short extension to the Fruitvale BART 

station. And along both these replacement lines, service frequency would be less than what the 51 now provides. 

   The results would be especially harmful for Berkeleyans, and for Berkeley’s Southside and Elmwood districts. 

   While I realize that AC Transit needs to reduce its large fiscal deficit in general, I don’t see how dismembering and downgrading its busiest and most popular bus line could particularly serve that goal. 

   If it’s truly essential to break the 51 into two separate lines, the severing should be done somewhere in Downtown Oakland instead of at Rockridge BART. But even that would be undesirable, leaving Alameda out in the cold. 

   Though the 51 line does have problems, such as slow speed along College Avenue during the evening peak hour, these can be addressed through relatively modest measures like signal preemption or perhaps eliminating some stops. AC Transit should enhance the 51, not destroy it. 

John English is a Berkeley resident and Route 51 patron.

Scores of residents, hotel and construction workers, local artists and small business owners rallied in front of Emeryville City Hall Tuesday evening to protest the preferential treatment of D.C.-based developer Madison Marquette. The Council took a four to one vote to approve a “sweetheart deal” with Madison Marquette, the fifth consecutive extension of an exclusive agreement to develop shopping complex Bay Street Site B. Among the speakers at the public hearing was Maha Ibrahim, Field Representative for State Assemblymember Nancy Skinner in whose district the Bay Street project is located.  

“I support collaboration between all parties as they work to ensure that the character of Emeryville’s development reflects the interests of the residents and workers who are the backbone of its success,” Assemblymember Skinner said in a written statement.  

In a surprising twist, Merlin Edwards, a member of Federal Oakland Associates, which recently competed for the Oakland Army Base redevelopment bid, spoke at the meeting. Edwards said he was offering no opinion on the exclusive agreement with Madison Marquette, but “simply [wished] to offer an alternative.” Federal was one of the two top contenders for redeveloping the massive former Oakland Army Base, a high-profile process in which his company proposed a retail and hotel project for the site; the project would have included connections to local training programs to put residents to work. 

“The City council majority, and a handful of developers have had a run of the city for years, and we want it back,” said Tracy Schroth, seven year resident of Emeryville and member of Residents United for a Livable Emeryville (RULE)—one of the organizers of the rally.  

Madison Marquette received the extension from the City even as they insisted they had “no plan” on the table for the Bay Street project, saying previous plans submitted for Site B have been since abandoned. The developer representative, Anna Shimko, was asked repeatedly why they have shunned requests to meet with community and yet were still meeting with tenants and operators including hotel operators. Shimko responded that meeting with the community “would not be fruitful at this time.” City councilmembers repeatedly told Madison Marquette that they expect the corporation to work with the community and address community concerns. “I’ve been told by residents that you won’t meet with them,” an exasperated City Councilmember John Fricke said to Madison Marquette’s legal representative at the council meeting. Underscoring the need for community input, he continued, “If you don’t have community support, you won’t have a project.” Fricke was the lone vote against the extension of the Exclusive Right to Negotiate, the special agreement the City of Emeryville has extended to Madison Marquette for 5 years in a row.   

“These issues need to be worked out before tenants and operators are chosen,” said Wei-Ling Huber, President of UNITE-HERE! Local 2850. “What if the operator chosen is Sam Hardage?” Hardage, owner of the Woodfin Suites Hotel, is in a protracted legal battle with the City over wage theft of hotel housekeepers in Emeryville amounting to nearly $200,000.  

Community members, under the banner of the “Coalition for a Better Bay Street,” has vowed to continue to push for a more inclusive and livable Bay Street project that provides family-supporting jobs for residents, affordable housing, and vital neighborhood services such as a stronger education system and more local-serving businesses. The Coalition wants to work directly with the developer to reach a formal agreement that will benefit all parties.  

Reem Assil is Community Benefits Organizer for East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, 1814 Franklin St., Suite 325, Oakland.

Prosterman’s piece is an odd mixture of sense and nonsense. As someone who has ridden a bicycle for 51 years now, in the UK, Europe and the United States, and also run a one-year Bicycle Safety Program for the City of Berkeley in the late 1970s, I sympathize with some of his points, but I contest others. In the end, I find his attitude and the details of his arguments provocative but not very useful, practical or accurate. 

There are adequate laws on the books to protect cyclists. More cyclist education would be a good thing, especially in the schools. I cling to the belief that 99.99 percent of car drivers do not want to be involved in an accident with a cyclist, and my everyday observations tell me that the vast majority of cyclists on the road are their own worst enemies, rather than the victims of other road users. So what’s the problem with Prosterman’s arguments? 

1. Prosterman’s compulsion to mandate helmet use is one peculiarity of his position. Another layer of bureaucracy would be imposed, whereas statistics from Australia and Holland suggest that cycling declines when helmets become compulsory. We want more people to ride, not fewer. Better to spend the money to teach cyclists how to ride their bikes in traffic than make them wear helmets as an alleged solution to “protect” them. It should be my choice to wear a helmet if I need its reassurance. One of the beauties of cycling is that you can just do it! 

It is not necessary to see cycling as inherently dangerous. Everything we do can be seen as accident-prone. Based on accidents per miles ridden, being a cyclist is not much more dangerous than being a pedestrian. Intelligent pedestrians tend not to get hit by cars. The same is true of cyclists. The more experienced cyclists there are—using the roads intelligently—the safer the roads become. In a typical bicycle accident, you may break your shoulder or your arm, but there is actually only a miniscule likelihood of you dying or suffering a major head trauma from an accident. Serious collisions with motor vehicles, or even self-cyclist crashes can hurt you in any number of different ways, not just head injuries. My point is that the obsession with helmets as a panacea for safety distorts the realities. 

2. As a cyclist in Berkeley, I have never had any problem whatsover with navigating the mini-roundabouts. I don’t understand Prosterman’s beef. You simply fall into the line of traffic and ride through the intersection as you do at any roundabout. Nobody needs to push anyone anywhere. And the mini-roundabouts are cyclist-friendly—they slow down motor vehicles. 

3. Now about “dooring”! Yes, cyclists can get doored if they are not alert, and don’t know how to ride on the road. But a skillful, experienced cyclist knows how to avoid being “doored” and is always ready and waiting for it. It is deeply ingrained in experienced cyclists—a kind of sixth sense—always to be aware of the cars on their right, and to listen for whatever is coming up behind them so they can be out far enough into their lane, signalling his intentions if necessary, to avoid the possible opened door. I’m willing to take a bet that a large majority of doorings occur to inexperienced cyclists or cyclists who are just not paying attention to the parked traffic on their right-hand side. Once again—take responsibility for your own actions—don’t wait for someone else not to do something wrong. They never will not do it! 

So....solutions?....conclusions? As a cyclist, you have to take full responsibility for your actions on the road. You have rights, but you also have responsibilities. Obey the rules of the road and learn to ride confidently, skillfully and with consideration for others. Behave predictably. Make your intentions clear at all times by signalling and positioning yourself correctly on the road. Wear bright clothing; have lights on your bike at night—the new generation of l.e.d.’s are fantastic! Wear a helmet if it makes you feel better. 

Don’t get stuck with the cyclist inferiority complex, (thank you, John Forrester). Your safety as a cyclist—and how other road users view you and behave towards you—depends heavily on your own behavior, not on what more bureaucrats think they can do for you, or tell you to do. Prosterman thinks he can impose better behavior on everybody by legislating it. But he can’t, and—except for the occasional citation—they (city, police, courts) can’t either. It’s up to you—the cyclist on the road, to take your safety into your own hands.  

I think I understand why, perhaps, Prosterman complains that he has difficulties ingratiating himself with City of Berkeley personnel, and why they resist him. He’s one of those people who thinks society has got to be shaped according to his own version of good, and that only his ideas are the right ideas. Idealist, yes, ok—but just a little bit too fanatical in his own egotism. 

The roads are ours as well as theirs. Cyclists were there first, before the motor car was even invented. Bicycles were born into the horse and buggy age in the 1880s. Our responsibility is to co-exist politely and in a disciplined way with those who came later. We all drive cars, too. Be nice to the other people on the roads in their cars, be expert and be visible, and you will be amazed how most of them will show you consideration in return! Of course, we know there are exceptions! They’re the ones you have to worry most about. Many drivers are even jealous of our style and our freedom! 

Andrew Ritchie has been a cyclist since 1958 and is an El Cerrito resident.

Germany’s upcoming national elections were supposed to be less of a competition than a coronation for Prime Minister Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU). But rising unemployment, the country’s worst economic crisis in 50 years, the erosion of the social safety net and the Afghan War combined to punish the right and give the newly minted Left Party a huge boost. 

The “Linke” is a merger of left social democrats, trade unionists, peace activists and the Party of Democratic Socialism based in eastern Germany. The Left Party programs calls for strict regulation of business and finance, a guaranteed minimum wage and maximum working hours. In Berlin, the Party’s slogan was “Tax the Rich,” a demand to raise the top income tax to 53 percent for those earning over $93,000 per year. 

The biggest win for the Left was in the Saarland, a state sandwiched between France and Luxembourg, which gave the new party 21.5 percent of the vote. The CDU emerged the winner with 31 percent, but their total was a 13 percent drop since the 2005 election. The center-left Social Democratic Party (SDP) took 24.5 percent. 

To remain in power the CDU will have to go into a coalition with the Party’s current national partners, the SDP, or a preferred alliance with the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP). But a CDU-FDP front will need the three Green Party representatives to pull it off, a so-called “Jamaican Coalition,” so named for the colors of the three parties: green, CDU black and FDP yellow. 

An obvious alternative would be the Greens, the Left Party and the SDP, or a red-red-green coalition. On the other hand, the Greens may choose to forget their once leftist roots and join with the CDU as it did in Hamburg. 

The CDU took a beating in the eastern German state of Thuringia, where it dropped 13 percent to 31.3 percent. The Left party came in second with 27.6 percent.  

As in the Saarland, the CDU and the FDP don’t have enough seats to govern, although both could form a coalition with the SPD or the Greens. Again, the obvious partnership would be a red-red-green alliance, but there is tension among the Greens, the SDP and the Left Party. 

In Saxony, the Left Party paid the price for internal divisions. While it emerged as the number two party at 21 percent, the CDU took 40 percent of the vote. The FDP was third, the SDP fourth. The far right took a bath. Saxony will likely be run by a black-yellow coalition. 

The refusal of the SDP to unite with the Left Party nationwide may come back to haunt it. “The SDP says it will cooperate with the Left in states but not nationally,” says political scientist Frank Decker. “They might have a perfectly good reason for that, but it is still hard for voters to understand that logic.” 

According to political scientist Karl Rudolf-Korte of Duisburg-Essen University, the SDP will eventually have to ally with the Left Party if it has any hope of returning to power, and the time seems ripe. He points out that when a red-red alliance was suggested last year in Hesse it caused a national uproar, but there has been nothing similar about the Saarland and Thuringia situation. “Evidently, no one’s afraid of ‘red-red’ anymore,” he says. 

What the recent voting showed is that the upcoming federal elections may not be a slam-dunk for Merkel and the CDU. The Left Party’s focus on unemployment, social welfare and their strong opposition to the unpopular war in Afghanistan has clearly resonated with voters. 

“This is an important day in the history of the left,” said Left Party parliamentary leader Gregor Gysi. Left Party leader Dietman Bartsch added, “Today, we’re one of the three biggest [parties].” Linke members gathered all over Germany to sing the Queen song, “We are the champions.” 

Tune in Sept. 28. 

Brazil is flexing its muscles in international trade, muscles fueled by an oil and gas bonanza that promises to change north-south power relations in the 21st century. 

For the past seven years Brazil has chafed at the $3 billion in U.S. subsidies handed out to American cotton farmers, subsidies that undercut Brazilian trade and violate World Trade Organization (WTO) rules. In 2005 the WTO ruled that the subsidies did indeed distort the international price of cotton and contravened trade agreements. 

For more than three years Brazil has tried to negotiate the issue with Washington, reluctant to pick a fight with its number one trading partner. But this past March China became Brazil’s and Latin America’s number one trading partner, and suddenly north-south chemistry changed. 

In late August, Brazil announced it would retaliate for the subsidies by allowing Brazilian pharmaceutical companies to break U.S. patents and produce cheaper generic drugs. The move will not only shake up the Americans, it will result in reasonably priced medicines for Brazilians. 

Brazilian exports to China jumped 65 percent in 2008, reaching $5.6 billion. Both countries just negotiated a $800 million credit loan between Brazil’s National Bank for Social Development and China’s Development Bank. The latter also agreed to loan $10 billion to Brazil’s state-owned oil company, Petrobras. In return, China got an agreement from Brazil to supply 200,000 barrels of oil a day. 

The $10 billion will go toward developing the huge “pre-salt” oil fields, an enormous off-shore find estimated to be as large as the North Sea oil discovery. Brazil currently has about 12 billion barrels in reserves. The new discovery could boost that to between 60 to 100 billion barrels, matching Venezuela’s massive Orinoco Basin reserves.  

Extracting the oil will be a daunting task, however, because the fields are more than 100 miles at sea and at depths of up to 20,000 feet. Once developed, Brazil will join Venezuela as a major gas and oil exporter. 

Lula da Silva’s government is developing plans to make sure the benefits go to the average Brazilian, not to the international energy cartels. Rather than handing out concessions to huge multinationals, like ExxonMobil, ConocoPhilips, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Spain’s Reposal, Portugal’s Galp, and Total Eni, da Silva has put four bills before the Brazilian congress, one of which will create a “shared production” relationship with foreign oil companies. 

The bills would also form a fully state-owned oil company, Petrosal. The government controls Petrobras, but the latter is a publicly traded company. Petrobras would also be strengthened with $50 billion in new capital. 

Most importantly, the government plans to set up a fund to direct revenues into social spending, including poverty relief, education and infrastructure. The da Silva government has already raised the national income by handing out small cash payments to the poor, which has done a great deal to close what was formally the hemisphere’s widest wealth divide. The “pre-salt” fields would allow an enormous expansion of that program.  

The off-shore fields are one reason Brazil is unhappy about Washington’s reactivation of its Latin American Fourth Fleet. The Brazilian Navy recently carried out Operation Aderex, which simulated a defense of the country’s off-shore energy resources. 

“Now, with 85 percent of the oil being taken from the ocean, protection of the continental shelf requires a greater presence of the navy,” said the commander of the Brazilian fleet, Vice-Admiral Fernando Eduardo Studart Wiemer. 

Brazil currently has five submarines, is purchasing another seven, and will eventually go nuclear. “It is essential to develop the nuclear sub,” Wiemer said, “We already know how to build a sub, and we are developing a nuclear reactor.” 

Sign wars are breaking out all over Jerusalem. “On a recent night in this ethnically divided city, an Israeli and two American Jews patrolled the streets, armed with a ladder, adhesive spray and a pile of handwritten placards,” writes Daniel Estrin in The Forward. “Every few minutes they hopped out of the car, slapped a sticker onto a road sign and snapped a picture.” 

On the placards are street names in Arabic script. The original Arabic had been defaced by ultra-nationalists. “In Jerusalem you have lots of nationalists who do not accept the very existence of Arabs,” Sammy Smooha, an Israeli sociologist at the University of Haifa, told The Forward. “Arabic signs gave them the feeling of bi-nationalism, that the Jews have no exclusive monopoly on the town.” 

In 1999, an Israeli court ruled that street signs in mixed cities had to be in Hebrew, English and Arabic. 

The ultra-nationalist vandals have little to fear from the police, who turn a blind eye to their activities. “The police are not working against this phenomenon. People are not deterred because there is no accountability,” says Abber Baker, a lawyer for the Arab rights group, Adalah. 

The idea for countering right-wing graffiti came from Ilana Sichel, a New Israeli Fund Fellow. She recruited another Fellow, Josh Berer, who studied traditional Arabic calligraphy in Yemen. Calling themselves “The Maintenance Group,” they drive around repairing signs where the Arabic has been blacked out. 

“This is fundamentally an issue of decency and neighborliness,” Sichel told The Forward.  

The cost of the project comes from the Maintenance Group’s pockets. If you want to make a donation to the New Israel Fund, send a check to the organization’s Washington office at 1101 14th Street, Sixth Floor, Washington DC, 20005, or to New Israel Fund, P.O. Box 53410, Jerusalem 91534. You can also go to the organization’s website and donate on-line. 

This is the kind of graffiti you can get behind.

Some years ago, in my South Carolina days, I was part of a delegation that met with an old-line civil rights leader in an attempt to get him to join us in a more militant campaign. The leader—a Baptist minister—seemed somewhat befuddled by the initial presentation, and so, midway through the meeting, I weighed in with what I believed were my formidable talents for bringing clarity to an issue. The more I clarified, however, the more confused the old man got, until, finally, the meeting dissolved in frustration, without his having committed either to support or to oppose what we proposed. 

On our way out to the cars, I was venting my frustration to a friend of mine—a native Southerner—and he turned to me with a small smile and said, “You know, you can’t wake up someone who ain’t asleep.” 

It was one of those pithy, insightful sayings that make the South such a delightful region to live in. The point of it, of course, was that, when faced with someone deliberately feigning misunderstanding, no amount of clarity will clarify. 

Thus our conservative Republican friends and President Barack Obama. 

What caught my eye this week was a David Neiwert posting on the Crooks and Liars website debunking an assertion by our old Fox News friend, Glenn Beck. In a video posted with the story, taken from a late August show, in which a line of African-American teenage men in black T-shirts and army fatigue pants step up in turn and chant “because of Obama, I aspire to be the next lawyer” or “because of Obama, I aspire to be the next doctor.” Mr. Beck described the youth as “a very militant-looking group.” The clip was played immediately after one with black-bereted and black-leather-jacketed members of the Black Panther Party (presumably the new version). 

Anyone with 15 minutes of insight into African-American culture had to be hooting when they saw the clip of the fatigue-clad youth and heard Mr. Beck’s assertion, of course, knowing what these young men were representing. But for those to whom African-Americans are still somewhat of an exoticism, Mr. Neiwert explained in Tuesday’s posting: the youth in the original YouTube video from which the Beck clip was taken are members of the Urban Community Leadership Academy in Kansas City, Missouri, who are emulating not the gun-waving of militant Panthers but, rather, the step-dancing of typical African-American college fraternities. 

“The young kids … are emulating a historically black fraternity that is found on college campuses throughout the nation,” Mr. Neiwert quotes the original YouTube video text as explaining. “Young men in this fraternity DO go on to become teachers, doctors, lawyers, architects and engineers.”  

(Niewert, by the way, credits Huffington Post’s Matt Osborne for doing the legwork that uncovered the original leadership academy video.)  

The Neiwert posting and the Osborne reporting and column shows the proper way to respond to these types of attacks. Good research, patient explaining to those who might have some confusion, an answering of the charges, and then moving on. Debunking false assertions, it might be called. There is no attempt to convince the attackers. 

The futility of such attempts at convincing is made manifest by reviewing one of the comments to the original posting of the entire Urban Community Leadership Academy video. The video starts with the young men marching into the room chanting “Alpha, Omega.” One would naturally surmise that, ummmm, this refers to the Hellenic names common to college fraternities and sororities, both black and white (for the uninitiated in black culture, or fraternity-sorority culture, Psi Phi Omega and Alpha Phi Alpha are two of the oldest, largest, and most famous of the African-American college fraternities). In any event the one commenter, self-named “islamsucksallah,” had other ideas. “ ‘Alpha Omega’? Say what?” the commentator writes. “Only Christ is Alpha and Omega. Who does this Obama cunt think he is? And what’s with the ‘O’ yell at the end when these little turds jump back in line? They must have got rammed up the ass by Hussein Obama’s islamic cock.” 

There is really nothing appropriate to directly answer such assertions other than, what the Cincinnati Bengals’ Chad Ochocinco might say, that is, “child, please!” (There’s another, richer version of that saying that I can’t repeat in a mixed-race or, more appropriately, non-black newspaper forum.) Anyways, too many of our friends on the left make the attempt at rebuttal that leads to attempts to convince and win over those who are being rebutted. 

That seemed to be the case when some of our conservative friends appeared practicing what appears to be deliberate dumbness this week in the case of Mr. Obama’s address to the nation’s schoolchildren. 

In the case of the schoolchildren speech, conservatives leveled their criticism that Mr. Obama’s national address intended to be broadcast directly to students in American classrooms was an attempt to “indoctrinate” the nation’s youth into what they were calling the president’s “socialist agenda.” The clamor over it got so loud that some parents began opting their children out of the exercise, in some cases keeping their children home on the day of the president’s address so that they would not have to be “subjected” to it. 

Progressives, liberals, and other presidential supporters on the left responded—in some cases—by pointing out that a presidential address to the nation’s schoolchildren was hardly a new event. The same was done by Presidents Ronald Reagan and at least one of the Bushes. 

In a Sept. 8 posting to Scienceblogs.com called “Reagan’s Speech to School Kids,” journalist Ed Brayton pointed out the hypocrisy in conservative attacks on the Obama speech. Posting the text of a 1986 Regan speech to American schoolchildren, Mr. Brayton wrote that “I suggest putting your irony meters away before you read this. Unlike the bland pep talk Obama is giving, Reagan actually did exactly what the fantasists of the lunatic right have been claiming Obama was going to do, pushing specific policies and lauding how great his administration had been for the country. ... I want to see just one of these lunatics throwing a fit about Obama’s speech admit that their hero Reagan did exactly what they’ve falsely accused Obama of doing. But I’m not holding my breath until it happens. They are as immune to intellectual honesty as it is possible to be.” 

My problem with Mr. Brayton’s argument is the point where he says that he wants to “see just one of these lunatics throwing a fit about Obama’s speech admit that their hero Reagan did exactly what they’ve falsely accused Obama of doing.” While one might simply excuse that as rhetoric—and I don’t know Mr. Brayton or his writing well enough to know if that’s the case—this sort of formation turns up again and again in political discussions in the post-Clinton years. First is the need to, over and over again, point out hypocrisy and the practice of your-side, my-side situational ethics on the right. At some point, just like we did on the earth circling the sun and other general theorems, we ought to accept this as a truism, and move on. The second is an almost plaintive need not just to point out the hypocrisy of our conservative cousins, but to have them admit it. And when one or two do, there is a round of chortling and hand-slapping on the left, as if somehow firmament and fact were only made manifest by a conservative word confirming it. 

This type of argument puts the center of the moral compass of the country squarely on the right-hand side of the equation. Implicitly, it justifies actions on the left by stating that the same actions were once done by the right as if somehow that alone makes such actions, um, right. 

This is the type of argument that little children make. It’s OK to do because Daddy once did it. 

Ultimately, attempting to justify actions to those who are not seeking justice simply do not work. Faced with cogent argument that their reasoning is wrong, they either shift the terms of the debate or blithely move on to another subject without acknowledging error. If the point is to make them admit wrongdoing, it almost never happens. 

When Mr. Obama’s office released—in advance—a transcript of his speech to the children showing no sign of indoctrination in left-wing ideology, at least one critic alleged that the “original speech” had been trashed in the face of conservative criticism. 

“Clearly last week there was a plan with the Department of Education,” Florida Republican Chairperson Jim Greer told CNN a day before the president’s speech. “When you ask students to write a letter to the president on how we can help you with your new ideas, Mr. President, that is leading the students in an effort to push the president’s agenda. Now that the White House got their hand in the cookie jar caught, they changed everything, they redid the lesson plans, they released the text, and tomorrow he’s gonna give a speech that every president should have an opportunity to give.” 

The point of this barrage of attacks on Mr. Obama is not to foster debate or even to advance an ideological position. It is simply to batter the president as Katrina once battered the Louisiana-Mississippi coast, mindlessly, relentlessly, pushing at every perceived weak point, until the levees fail and the water surges in and washes all away. This is Great Flood politics by those who sincerely believe themselves the sons and daughters of Noah, and who think that somehow America will be cleansed and blessed by the deluge they release. There is a biblical passage that seems to fit such thinking: “For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind”—and if I were a Sunday School scholar I could point to the book and chapter (Hosea 8:7), but I’m not, so I won’t. 

Instead, I’ll recall another of my favorite Southern sayings that seems more appropriate: “You can’t win at mud-wrestling with a pig. You’ll only get dirty, and, regardless of the outcome, the pig always loves it.” 

And a final note to our homeboy, Van Jones, coming back battered and wounded from the Washington wars. Perhaps, upon reflection, Mr. Jones might want to amend the apology that did nothing to save his job with the Obama administration. “On further review,” his statement to the press might read, “I believe I was correct in the beginning, and some Republicans are assholes.” 

I guarantee, that would wake up some of our good friends on the right. 

It had to happen. Some enterprising folks at UC Davis have launched the California Roadkill Observation System (CROS), an interactive database whose users can report deceased wildlife they observe while driving. You can either submit your sightings online (wildlifecrossing.ucdavis.edu) or download and mail in a printed form, indicating species if identifiable, location, type of road, and speed limit.  

Although there are a couple of data points from 2007 and 2008, the observations really began to accumulate in mid-July of this year. They tend to cluster around Davis, with a few from more outlying areas. So far it’s about what you’d expect for summer, heavy on the raccoons, skunks, jackrabbits, and coyotes. Barn owls, which have an unfortunate tendency to fly in front of passing vehicles, are the most common avian victims. Reptiles are sparsely represented by a kingsnake, a rattlesnake and a racer. 

The CROS site also features a map with individual death spots color-coded for large, medium, and small mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians. For the truly hard core, there’s a photo gallery. 

I think this is a fine idea. Those so inclined have a new way to entertain themselves on those long road trips, and an opportunity to contribute to science in the bargain. (Just for starters, most of the data on barn owl vehicular collisions comes from Europe.) 

But as a longtime observer, I can anticipate some challenges the system may encounter, beyond the common situation where’s there’s just not enough left for a definitive ID. 

A dead animal out of context may be hard to recognize. Once, while in Little Rock on family business, I passed a defunct roadside beaver half a dozen times before it occurred to me that it was not just an exceptionally ugly dog.  

Then there’s the faux-roadkill problem. The late great Florida herpetologist Archie Carr, who was primarily a turtle man but had a keen eye for snakes, described in his classic The Windward Road how it takes practice to identify a snake species from a moving car “when a layman is still insisting it was a twist of orange peel you passed, or a dead cat.” 

I’ve heard about the tourist driving through Redwood National Park who pulled in at the visitor’s center and, visibly shaken, cornered a ranger. “The highway is full of dead Irish setters!” he blurted out. The ranger had to explain about the strips of redwood bark that fall off log trucks. 

Likewise, a visitor to Hawai’i—I don’t remember which island—was puzzled by the small, furry, flattened creatures she saw all over the back roads. They didn’t quite look like mongooses, but she couldn’t imagine what else they might be. Someone finally apprised her of the local custom of eating mangoes in the car and tossing the pits out the window. 

As data accumulates, it will be interesting to look for seasonal trends. For example, do striped skunk road deaths really increase during the late winter mating season, when the animals are fatally preoccupied?  

And why not take the project national? Is anyone in Texas keeping track of their state mammal? Maverick politician Jim Hightower once proclaimed that there was nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos. These odd but endearing creatures are prone to leap straight up when startled, not the best thing to do with a vehicle bearing down. Texas A & M students have been known to prop them up at the side of the road with Lone Star bottles in their paws. 

The South proper would also be rich in data. In my day, Southerners considered it a point of pride to run over any reptile they could manage to: snakes, of course, but also unoffending turtles. If that has changed, it may only be because they’ve exhausted the supply of reptiles. Carr again, in the Handbook of Turtles: “There exists a curious lot of witless or psychopathic characters who love to run over box turtles on the roads to hear them pop, and there is probably nothing much that can be done about these people except to hope they skid.” 

In all fairness, though, I’ve seen a presumed Californian stop after crushing a Mojave rattlesnake, get out of his car, and shoot the snake, out of concern that it might somehow levitate into the vehicle with his children. 

I don’t keep a list, but there are some critters, like the aforementioned armadillos, badgers, and weasels, that I’ve seen far more often as roadkill than alive. On the other hand, some are seldom if ever observed among the dead. I’m not just thinking about Bigfoot. Have you ever noticed a road-killed crow, raven, or vulture? It must take good reflexes to be a successful highway scavenger.