Comment Archives: stories
Re: “Tuesday Must Reads: Oakland Goes Green to Fight Crime; State to Nearly Triple the Number of Refinery Inspectors”
Oakland Council member Desley "Lightbulb" Brooks says "you can't arrest your way out of crime."
I would add that you really can't lightbulb your way out of crime, either.
Re: “Tunnel Vision Part One: Delta in Peril”
Humans have done so much damage in the past 200 yrs to our California landscape. People can't see it, don't even know the damage we continue to inflict on our environment and on other living things. Industry has the money, the political influence to do what's best for themselves and what is harmful to our future and our children's. Our health is directly linked to the health of the bay and the ecosystem services provided by the Bay. SF Bay & Estuaries were named a Wetland of International Importance in April 2013. It's high time we stood up to monied and political interests--for the environment and our own well-being.
Re: “Is UC Berkeley's Plan to Cut Down 54,000 Trees Necessary?”
Had the author exercised a modicum of due diligence, she could have saved the East Bay Express a lot of paper and ink.
The letter cited by the " respected environmental engineering company" is over four years old. A trip to the Claremont Canyon or a visit to my blog, where I have shared hundreds of recent photos, prove the " respected environmental engineering company" was dead wrong!
http://ccfirestorm.blogspot.com/2013/06/ar…
The biologist was right, the contractor was wrong. The stunted riparian woodland recovers quite rapidly once the oppressive eucalypti are eradicated.
The alternative to eradication, Thin, limp, and scrape, is not best practice for the developed sections of the park.
http://ccfirestorm.blogspot.com/2013/06/eu…
It is totally unworkable in the steep, rugged, undeveloped forest.
http://ccfirestorm.blogspot.com/2013/06/he…
I don't know if Kathleen Richards has an agenda or not. Deliberately misleading, or just grossly misinformed, either way, this article is waster of paper and ink.
Re: “Categories We Didn't Think Of: Goods and Services”
Best affordable acupuncture: Oakland Acupuncture Project
Re: “Categories We Didn't Think Of: Arts and Culture”
Best acupuncture: Oakland Acupuncture Project
Re: “Sista Sandwich Allows Gluten-Free Diners to Grab and Go”
Here's hoping some more like-minded people will do this all over the country. It truly is hard to find a gluten-free snack when travelling around. Thank you to these sisters for taking this first step!
Re: “Is UC Berkeley's Plan to Cut Down 54,000 Trees Necessary?”
Oh oh - que the filthy hippie freakout!!!! Where is Dumpster Muffin?!? Get her on the scene, stat!!! I anticipate an incredibly drawn out and unnecessary 'argument.'
Hey Berkeley....this time, don't feed them!!!
Re: “Yelp and the Business of Extortion 2.0”
Beware of Yelp and their extortionist tactics to push you into advertising with them. After complaining that two of my reviews were being "filtered" and hidden from viewers, I called them out on Twitter. Within the hour, a Yelp salesman called and urged me to advertise with them ($300) and suggested that it would help my reviews from being filtered. (These reviews are from legitimately satisfied customers that happen to really like us.) After rejecting Yelp and calling the tactics "bullying to small startups", I've discovered that ALL my legit reviews are now concealed, giving my business a disadvantage to the other businesses when being searched locally. I apologize to those of you who gave us great feedback.
Re: “Best Buds: Harborside Health Center Reveals Entries for High Times Medical Cannabis Cup San Francisco 2013”
Smoke
Re: “Sean Whent Appears to be the Right Choice to Lead OPD”
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Re: “Is Berkeley's New Build Pizzeria More Than Just a Gimmick?”
I ate here last week, it was the best pizza that i have ever had. haters gonna hate.
Re: “Tunnel Vision Part One: Delta in Peril”
Hot doggy ! Mike Wade says we should have concerns with the BDCP.
Hey Mike, some of those concerns ARE accurate and based in facts not emotions.
How about we concentrate on the one fact and glaring omission that is not in dispute.
1. The BDCP has cancelled their Benefit/Cost analysis,
http://valleyecon.blogspot.com/2013/04/bdc…
and is instead feeding us misleading piecemeal propaganda.
http://valleyecon.blogspot.com/2013/06/cha…
Who should we trust Mike, a paid propagandist for Central Valley Big Ag or Jeffrey Michaels, the Director of the Business Forecasting Center at the University of the Pacific.
It's an easy call for me.
Re: “Is Berkeley's New Build Pizzeria More Than Just a Gimmick?”
I'm not a super big fan of design your own, despite being a passable home cook and all. We were in Westwood LA last weekend and visited a pizzeria there serving thin-crust in 800 degree ovens (name of restaurant was...800 Degrees) and the pizza was pretty good even if we chose our own add-ons to the base sauces.
It reminds me vaguely of those casual restaurants that ask you to bus your own dishes...which I have no problem doing. I simply have a problem leaving a tip when I do my own bussing.
Re: “Rich, Black, Flunking”
It's important to remember that Ogbu's research was referring to black failure at this particular privileged high school. He never said it was the reason for all black failure, and I doubt the parents would have called him in if he always found blacks responsible for their own failures. Black organizations that condemn him for these findings only discredit themselves. A true scientist will honestly report all findings, whether those findings support an agenda or not, and Ogbu wants people to trust his research, so he's willing to admit when he didn't find racism. If all you ever find is racism, people stop listening to you, because you are the boy who cries wolf. People will now be more likely to listen when Ogbu does find racism, because he has demonstrated he won't call it where it doesn't exist. I'm aware racism exists, but that's in spite of people like Al Sharpton and Kanye West, not because of them. What I've seen of Shaker Heights speaks volumes, and the school aims to enroll black students and has very enthusiastic, idealistic (and often young) teachers who try hard to make learning fun. They should be rewarded with equally enthusiastic students.
I have taught 1st and 2nd grade in Oakland, and I was surprised at how many kids, even at this young age, would skip school! When I was a child, only the worst kids would skip a class, and that was in middle and high school. NOBODY skipped class in elementary school! If they had, the teacher would have reported this to the parents, who would spank the child. There was also no bribing with toys in my elementary school, which I saw many Oakland teachers doing. The teachers would control classroom behavior by dropping marbles into a jar and, when the jar was full, they'd let the class watch a movie. This technique was sufficient to control the behavior of the entire class, because our parents handled discipline problems at home. It seems some Oakland parents don't understand what's normal.
Watching Sesame Street, and other educational childhood shows, is normal. Playing educational games with your children is normal. Reading your children bedtime stories every night, until they are old enough to read, is normal. YOU are expected to teach your child to read. If you rely solely on the school, his reading skills will be poor. When I learned about plate tectonic theory, as a child, I asked my father why Pangea was not in the Bible. He told me "Because it's a lie. There never was any Pangea, and plate tectonic theory is a lie." I got a D in science that year. The problem is, there is no point in learning a lie, so I just didn't. Your attitude towards your child's education will become their attitude towards it.
Re: “Thursday Must Reads: Oakland Budget Battles Heat Up; Mayor Quan’s Chief of Staff Appointed to School Board”
I wrote an article about the lawsuit against the city of San Leandro last week, including the complaint filed with the court. Anyone interested can find it here: http://sanleandrotalk.voxpublica.org/2013/…
Last summer, after this botched sting operation, I wrote to San Leandro's Mayor Cassidy about how targeting gay men for this type operations and then using the press humiliate them and "out" them was wrong. Unfortunately the Mayor disagreed. My correspondence with Cassidy and my subsequent remarks to the City Council can be found at http://sanleandrotalk.voxpublica.org/2013/…
Re: “Privatizing UC Instruction”
UCB was incredible in 1990 for me simply because of the serendipity of who I met in which classes. The heated debate following us to Cafe Strada. Meeting in person and going to real time office hours of faculty who I then sought out later as advisors. Relationships matter...having paid canned instruction just doesn't replace that. My daughter at CSUEB took online remedial math and easily passed. But she had to drop the next class in math...she wasn't adequately prepared. Public and when online, online with UC faculty to supplement, not replace real in class debate!
Re: “Thursday Must Reads: Oakland Budget Battles Heat Up; Mayor Quan’s Chief of Staff Appointed to School Board”
For the record: it's not necessarily the budget that "will ultimately determine" whether employees get raises. Mayor Quan's proposal to the Council is that they leave some flexibility in the budget, to allow the City's negotiating team to seriously consider employee compensation issues at the bargaining table. We can have both: a big investment in public safety AND a fair contract.
If we respect the collective bargaining process, we can avoid pitting employees' compensation against public safety funding. Setting aside some funds to let the City bargain in good faith is the best way to do it.
Re: “Is UC Berkeley's Plan to Cut Down 54,000 Trees Necessary?”
I don’t think any trees should be cut, not even for thinning. It’s not necessary, especially if dry litter is removed periodically. Besides being unnecessary, tree cutting is harmful because it is being followed up by herbicide on the stumps and on “unwanted foliage.” No herbicides should be used, ever. All living organisms, including us humans, are already poisoned through and through. This means enormous suffering in the form of illness, disability and death. It makes no sense to continue poisoning ourselves and all life around us.
The proposed plan would create a definite ecological and health disaster lasting for generations while actually increasing the risk of wildfire—all on the pretext of preventing a fire disaster that might never happen. There are real fire prevention measures, like creating and enforcing better building codes and better landscape maintenance by homeowners, some of which have already been done.
A life-sustaining plan would be to hire unemployed people to clear dry forest litter whenever needed and maybe remove low-hanging branches. Don’t give more money to Monsanto and Dow or to logging companies.
For some great national and international perspectives on this profit-driven plan, see http://www.care2.com/causes/fema-to-replac…
The comments include one from a Katrina survivor who warns against trusting FEMA. And this pithy comment from Gloria p., “What about filling up the oceans with cement so we don’t have hurricanes?”
Re: “NLRB Rules in Favor of Oakland Airport Workers”
We know that Ken Meyer is a wingnut supreme, as he has taken the talking point currently loved by people like him who hate working people. Earlier this year, one of the nine Federal Circuit Courts ignored over a century of precedence by holding in a singular case involving a single employer/employee dispute that Obama is, in effect, barred from making appointments to the NLRB Board. No other Federal court has made a similar ruling.
Ken may be made sad by Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts, a Republican appointee who has rarely seen a corporate-restraining, worker-supporting law he didn't want to strike down. He joined the majority a couple of years ago in a Supreme Court judgment which invalidated hundreds of NLRB judgments because the NLRB Board lacked a quorum. When the Solicitor General explained that the Senate Republicans had made a mockery of the traditional "advise and consent" role of the Senate by opposing ALL of Obama's choices for the NLRB Board because they don't want the NLRB to function, Roberts responded to the Government's attorney by asking, "Well, why doesn't the President use his recess appointment powers?".
So, Ken, the President must be allowed to use his recess appointment powers to overcome kneejerk, complete and irrational obstruction by the minority Senate Republican caucus, unless you believe that every single President going back to the mid-19th Century should not have been allowed to make any recess appointments. Or unless you want to disable the functions of agencies meant to uphold the law. Hey, maybe that's what you're up to,,,
It's funny how when you elect and appoint people who hate the government, we all end up with a government we hate.