Comment Archives: Stories
Re: “Updated: Retiring Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan Said to Have 'Serious Medical Condition'”
'Councilwoman Libby Schaaf said this afternoon that the 47-year-old Jordan really does have "a serious medical condition."'
Really!
When is "a serious medical condition" really "a serious medical condition?"
Answer: When it has some sort of name other than "a serious medical condition."
Re: “Frazier to Reexamine Police Misconduct”
National Institute of Justice: ~ Five Things Law Enforcement Executives Can Do To Make A Difference. http://nij.gov/five-things
DoD study on random polygraphs for personnel. http://t.co/Tr7uafTd
"the polygraph is the single most effective tool for finding information people were trying to hide." - DoD, NSA
Make policy that polygraphs for all new hires expire every 2-5yrs. http://shar.es/epfm2
Top Baltimore jail executives to be polygraphed following gang indictment. http://shar.es/lmevh
California laws strengthened wall of silence around officers. http://shar.es/lITUZ
The California Peace Officers Bill of Rights needs to be reviewed and revised. Especially section 3007.
RANDOM. ROUTINE.
Break the code. Break the culture.
And Walk the Talk.
Re: “It's Time for the Union Fighting to Stop”
I'm sorry, but this article misconstrues everything that's actually going on at ground zero in these Kaiser facilities. Jay, I implore you to ACTUALLY GO INTO A FEW FACILITIES AND TALK TO THE WORKERS YOURSELF. This is the umpteenth journalist that's written on this issue without actually having talked to workers (or at the most they'll simply obtain one quote from either side to 'get a balanced story').
You should be ashamed for how you framed this issue. The first time around, NUHW was barely even allowed into the hospital and yet SEIU had access to regular staff meetings to preach their gospel - that doesn't constitute a fair election according to the NLRA! The second election was not much different either: Kaiser called the police on NUHW, SEIU called Kaiser security regularly to eject NUHW from the facility, and SEIU harassed workers and NUHW staff at each and every Kaiser site. The funny thing is that many hospitals, workers still refuse to accept SEIU'S representation, now that they recognize who they really are: management's lap dog. When a union bullies its own member and threatens to report them to management (and often does report them), it ceases to be a union. I'm sorry, but I think calling them a mafia would be a better characterization.
Lastly, before you call CNA the 'loser' here, I must once again ask that you actually make the effort to step into one of these hospitals before you write this BS. The nurses have a newfound camaraderie with their co-workers, which is more essential than any union label or brand. In fact, because of the affiliation, many of the workers have learned more about their rights under the NLRA and how to approach a dispute with management from the RNs. One worker was going to receive punitive action for getting hurt on the job before an RN stepped in to help inform him of his rights - I thought that was the stewards job? There's a reason NUHW keeps coming back, they're for the workers by the workers. That's why there was hundreds of rank and file NUHW supporters out at the ballot count, but less than 40 paid SEIU stewards and staff - the rest of SEIU's paid staff was enjoying an-all expense paid trip to the Disneyland resort. And the dues went up recently...
Re: “Frazier to Reexamine Police Misconduct”
Keep in mind that when individual cops or soldiers for that matter, misbehave, their leaders and those that set policy are also responsible and need to be brought to justice. Think of George Bush and Dick Chaney with regard to civilian slaughter in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have problems not just with Gonzales, but also with the Police Chief, the Mayor, the City Administrator and the City Council.
Re: “It's Time for the Union Fighting to Stop”
First, full disclosure: I am a member and a shop steward in NUHW. The real problem with both elections, 2010 and last week, is the framing of the question. SEIU framed it this way: why would you go with a small upstart union with no power, when you have always been with us, a large, powerful union that has won you great contracts?" This is a distortion. SEIU did what amounts to a hostile takeover when it put the local in trusteeship, and the leaders who were erroneously charged with malfeasance and thrown out formed NUHW. They are the strong leadership that Kaiser workers always had, and the trustees, who are now the leadership under SEIU, have been working with Kaiser behind closed doors to erode the good contracts that the ousted leaders won for the workers. So NUHW is not a rogue union trying to steal members from SEIU. NUHW is the Kaiser workers old union, reconstituted after a hostile takeover, trying to rescue Kaiser workers from a union that wants to sell them out to make the boss happy. Estimates are that SEIU's agreed cuts to retirement has saved Kaiser something like $1.8 Billion already, at the workers' expense. Meanwhile, Kaiser, supposedly "non-profit," makes larger and larger profits each year. The Kaiser workers who, after last week's vote, remain stuck in SEIU, stand to lose healthcare benefits, watch jobs be subcontracted, and other protections eroded. SEIU sided with the Healthcare industry in lobbying against staffing ratios that protect patient care.
I am glad to be represented by NUHW. Time will tell, but this reminds me of the Pacifica / KPFA civil ware several years ago. That fight went the other way and Goliath was pushed back by David. We are still a David, fighting the Goliath of Kaiser and its ally SEIU, who will make contract concessions to Kaiser at the expense of its own members. Last week's vote is being investigated for irregularities similar to the ones that prompted NLRB to void the 2010 election. I do think that the voters were lied to and intimidated. The intimidation seems not to have been as much of a factor this time, but the lies were rife and oft-repeated, so that in the end, SEIU was believed. The workers and their patients are the ones who will suffer for this, and SEIU and Kaiser, both large corporations scratching each others' backs, will profit.
Re: “Divesting From Dirty Energy”
Plug your Tesla S, electric car into your household, solar array.
Re: “Frazier to Reexamine Police Misconduct”
Gonzales shot 4, killed all but one. And he's some kind of hero in OPD, and punches out citizens "because [I] can." It's a good move by Frazier to start with him.
Re: “Do Disabled Motorists Need Free Parking?”
Or how about color coding for gender and or age or put the license number of the car on the placard. This way the young basketball player wont be able to use his grandmother placard even if the license number matches the car.
Most people don't know that all blue placard can carry more information than can easily be seen by the untrained person. For instance, a trained person can see if the placard is issued to a male of female and the number of the placard can be traced//identified to match the person using it...."entering or leaving the vehicle" as the law states.
Re: “Do Disabled Motorists Need Free Parking?”
In most states, Doctors are the ones that allow this travesty to continue. Citizens must get a doctor to sign off that they have a disability. So take a poll of which doctors are abusing this and "fine" them significantly .
My son is a quadriplegic, who must be driven everywhere. I am usually the one driving him and 99% of the time I can not find a disabled parking spot. Yet I see women in "spiked heels" or runners dressed like runners, or men carrying basketball under their arm or students parted at the train station or people getting out of "very fancy" cars placing placards on their cars.
The medical expenses of a quadriplegic are enormous. Not only medical equipment, housing and car modifications, special computer and computer equipment, eating utensils and the list goes on and on. And now you want to charge him to park. How about "Fining" the drs. that sign off on the documentation giving his ....friends or his wife or parents or basketball players or the coaches in the athletic departments or just plain lazy or cheap people ....the Disabled Placard.
Simple solution: Find out which drs. are abusing this privilege for the disabled and "Fine" the doctors.
Re: “California Supreme Court: Cities Can Ban Medical Marijuana Dispensaries”
FDA approved Prescription drugs kill some 200,000 Americans every year.
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/feature…
"An estimated 770,000 people are injured or die each year in hospitals from adverse drug events (ADEs) defined as an injury resulting from medical intervention related to a drug. Not all, but many, IF NOT MOST, of these adverse drug events are preventable."
http://www7.nationalacademies.org/ocga/tes…
* The number of deaths from drug poisonings in the U.S. has increased sixfold since 1980.
* In 2008, more than 41,000 people in the U.S. died from intentional and accidental poisonings. Nine out of 10 were due to drugs. These deaths exceeded the number of deaths from automobile accidents making poisoning the leading cause of injury death. (CDC National Center for Health Statistics 1980 to 2008)
Fully 40% of these deaths in 2008 involved the use of prescription opioid pain relievers such as codeine, fentanyl, hydrocodone, morphine, and oxycodone, (was 25% in 1999) - In 2008, Cocaine was involved in about 5,100 deaths and heroin was involved in about 3,000 deaths.
http://www.webmd.com/pain-management/news/…
* PRESCRIPTION PAINKILLERS: drugs like oxycodone and hydrocodone, the main ingredients in Oxycontin and Vicodin, landed 305,885 Americans in emergency rooms in 2008 -- more than double the 144,644 visits in 2004, (2010 study by Samsha and the CDC)
Overdose deaths involving these opioid pain relievers (oxycodone and hydrocodone; and synthetic narcotics such as fentanyl and propoxyphene) now exceed deaths from heroin and cocaine combined (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
Prescription drug overdoses have been increasing in the United States over the last decade, and by 2008 had reached 36,450 deaths—almost as many as from motor vehicle crashes (39,973).
http://www.acep.org/MobileArticle.aspx?id=…
* VIOXX: On January 24, 2005, the medical journal The Lancet published on its website a report on Vioxx risks that was previously blocked by the FDA. The study found that Vioxx may have caused as many as 140,000 cases of heart disease in the United States and as many as 56,000 deaths during the five years that it was on the market. The newly published study of 1.4 million patients shows that that low doses of Vioxx increased the risk of heart disease by about 50%, and higher doses increased it by 358%.
http://www.vioxxnews.com/
* ACETAMINOPHEN: ( found in more than 300 products with sales in the billions of dollars annually) Acetaminophen overdoses are the leading cause of acute liver failure (ALF) in the United States, Great Britain and most of Europe. Acetaminophen toxicity accounts for approximately 50% of all cases of ALF in the United States and carries a 30% mortality—More than 100,000 calls to Poison Control Centers, 56,000 emergency room visits, 2,600 hospitalizations and nearly 500 deaths are attributed to acetaminophen in the United States annually.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002…
* ANTIDEPRESSANTS: The respected journal, PLoS ONE, published a study in June 2010, showing that men who are depressed and take trycyclic, SSRI, or any other antidepressants die at a significantly greater rate than those who don't. - Performed in Australia, the study followed 5,276 men aged 68-88.
"The results of this study indicate that the 6-year adjusted mortality hazard is twice as high for men with depression compared with non-depressed men and that the use of antidepressants is associated with an independent rise in mortality of 30%. .. We found that antidepressant treatment increases the mortality hazard of men by 30%, and this association is independent of the presence of clinically significant depression. .. It is also important to consider that the use of antidepressants has been associated with numerous potentially harmful effects, some of which may increase morbidity and mortality. For example, antidepressant treatment has been linked to increased risk of injurious and non-injurious falls in cross-sectional and longitudinal studies, and there is some evidence that the use of common antidepressants increases the risk bleeding in various body systems, including the central nervous system, as well as the risk of incident diabetes. In addition, recently published findings from the Nurses' Health Study showed an increase in the number of sudden cardiac deaths associated with the use of antidepressants, a result that is consistent with our observation of an excess of cardiovascular deaths amongst men using antidepressants."
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%…
Postmenopausal Women on antidepressants are 45% more likely than those not on such medication to have a stroke, and 32% more likely to die of any cause. - There is an increased likelihood of Hemorrhagic strokes (bleeding in the brain) which is possibly the result of the anti-clotting effect of selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs) which are most frequently prescribed for depression. The authors of the study noted that since post-menopausal women make up the largest segment of patients in the United States on antidepressants, the resulting increases in strokes and deaths across the country could be significant.
http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/s…
A study published in 2009 found that SSRIs interfered with the breast cancer medication tamoxifen, with tumors more than twice as likely to return after two years in women taking antidepressants compared with those taking tamoxifen alone.
Children whose mothers take Zoloft, Prozac or similar antidepressants during pregnancy are twice as likely as other children to have a diagnosis of autism or a related disorder.
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/07/04/a…
Re: “Do Disabled Motorists Need Free Parking?”
Driving is not a human right.
Re: “Highest-Paying Clothing Buyers”
The people that work at the Crossroads on Shattuck are so rude. I absolutely hate doing business with them. Why have an attitude when you work in retail....at a used clothing store....in Berkeley? They act like they are working at Chanel on Rue Cambon! Enough with the sour attitude already. Next.
Re: “Breaking News: San Jose Dispensary Landlords Threatened with 40 Years in Prison as Feds' Marijuana Crackdown Continues”
This comment was removed because it violates our policy against anonymous comments. It will be reposted if the commenter chooses to use his or her real name.
Re: “Gut Feeling: Pot Eases Crohn's Disease”
I use cannabis oil or edibles for my pain and it does help my pain
Re: “Oakland Deemed "Most Exciting City in America"”
Guess I'm here at the right time!
Re: “I am Annoyed and Disappointed”
It's logical for Ritter to have assumed that the Landmark Forum was not "mandatory", since it was "recommended" by the Cafe. However, as someone who took Landmark's Forum in the 1990's, I can say that Landmark has a different definition of "recommended". Landmark has one list of "requirments" to attend the Forum and a separate list of "recommendations". However, if you refuse to accept their "recommendations" without giving them an acceptable explanation as to why you will not promise to abide by their "recommendations" (Yes, they actually ask you to stand and promise to abide by their recommendations if you have not sought an exemption from the recommendations, and if you receive such an exemption, they actually instruct you to sit during this portion), instantly those recommendations become a requirement for you. They'll even threaten to call the police to have you removed. In the Forum I attended, they actually threatened one participant with that. A lot of mind control at the Forum! It may not meet the technical definition of a cult, but there is definitely some mind control going on there!
Re: “First Friday, the Movie”
great stuff. Look at my film Oaktown. its just this, it was screened at the oakland international film festival
Re: “Activists Try to Get Rid of Juvenile Records Fee”
This comment was removed because it violates our policy against anonymous comments. It will be reposted if the commenter chooses to use his or her real name.
Re: “Hacking Oakland's Budget”
Thanks Leonard. Though we'd love to, there's no rushing any data that's confined to a PDF, which is where it is for now.
Also, creating a tool to consider different budget scenarios would require vastly more technical and research capacity than we now have as an all-volunteer group. We'd be happy to collaborate with folks that want to support that work though -- we meet every Tuesday at City Hall.
And to the city's credit, they have visualized the 5-year projection -- http://www2.oaklandnet.com/oakca1/groups/c… -- what is lacking are opportunities to have a public dialogue about it, and ways to capture the best ideas that surface as a result. That's what we're working on.
Re: “White Punks on Warner Bros.”
So did they actually sign to Warner or just to Warner distribution or Warner publishing. There are many parts to signing onto a label. its not as simple as it seems.