“Pancake Ride for Dick’s,” Restaurants and Cafes Critic’s Pick,
8/26
Gratitude for Flack
I just wanted to thank you for finding and adding our bicycle ride
as an event Pick of the week. Although I am a habitual reader of the
EB Express, I didn’t pick up last week’s edition since it was
such a busy week. I found out that we made it into the paper from a guy
who showed up at the start line after seeing it listed in the
Express. It was a great surprise! The pancake feast and bike
ride was a great success, despite the heat. Everyone had a great time
and we are definitely planning the next one already. As the main
organizer I know I did a terrible job of publicizing this event, so
good detective work finding it! And thanks again for putting us in
print! One question, I’m curious about the decision to truncate the
name of our event by removing the words “Memorial Karin Herrick.”
Jesse Cortez, Alameda
Editor’s Note
The omission was an error.
“Enter the Economic Sociologists,” Raising the Bar, 8/26
More, Please
Fascinating article about the sociologists contemplating finance.
More! This is rich.
Carol Denney, Berkeley
“Racial Bias Exists. Can We Train Cops to Deal With It?,” 9/2
Let’s Learn
Thanks for publishing Micky Duxbury’s thoughtful piece on the fact
that BART police are not trained to avoid racial bias during critical
incidents. I wish there was more of this kind of insightful reporting,
so that something useful could be learned from the tragic death of
Oscar Grant.
Emily Stoper, Oakland
“Van Jones and the Right-Wing Attack Machine,” 9/9
Who’s Racist?
Yes, Van Jones is a racist; the name of the organization he more
than “helped launch” and conveniently left to join the Obama’s
campaign, Color of Change, gives a hint. It’s the same racist garbage
like the term “people of color,” which obviously implies that there are
people of “no color”; these people are just racist of color. There’s
also a clip that’s circulated where Van Jones declared something like
“You’ll never have a Columbine by a black guy”; another piece of racist
garbage. Everyone knows that there are more people killed in the United
States by black criminals in one day than all the people killed at
Columbine; including mass killings like the one by a black guy in
California who killed his entire family, 7 or 9, or a racist black, I
think it was in New York, who killed a bunch of white people; there are
a lot more cases.
Van Jones’ firing has nothing to do with signing a petition;
petitions in this area circulate like condoms in a gay parade. Van
Jones has always been an opportunist: He played the “marxist” angle in
the ’90s at UC Berkeley, working very close with the Communist Party
USA, which supported the Democratic Party for the last seventy years;
Van Jones later adopted the “environmental” angle, Al Gore, the
Democratic Party and Obama’s presidential campaign. Had Obama known his
full background, Van Jones wouldn’t have gotten in; Obama dropped his
pastor of twenty years, Van Jones is nobody. Van Jones didn’t resign,
he was dropped like an used condom.
The former “marxist” Van Jones should have paid attention to that
Marx’s sentence = “The petty-bourgeoisie is the scum of the
society.”
Leo T. West, San Leandro
Investigate Bush
Robert Gammon writes that Van Jones made a “serious mistake” by
signing a petition calling for an investigation into whether the Bush
administration had allowed the 9/11 terrorist attacks to
happen.Â
Why was that a mistake? Don’t the American People have the
right to know?There is certainly ample reason and probable cause to
suspect the Bush administration of such malfeasance on
9/11. Numerous high-level Bush administration officials, prior to
the 2000 election, had signed a manifesto as members of the Project for
a New American Century. In that manifesto, they expressed their
desire for a 9/11-type catastrophe to occur in order to further their
goals of world domination. Bush and his administration ignored
warnings from several intelligence agencies, and even President Putin,
that the attacks were going to take place. High-level FBI
officials put a stop to FBI agents’ investigations into certain
terrorist activities; such investigations may have prevented the
attacks. In the days prior to the attacks, John Ashcroft suddenly
quit flying on commercial aircraft. Willie Brown, who was about to
fly to a mayors’ conference on 9/11, got a call, reportedly from
Condoleeza Rice, warning him not to fly on that day. On 9/11, the
Air Force and NORAD, contrary to standard operating procedure, failed
to respond to multiple airline hijackings. Researcher John Judge
reports that one Air Force pilot who happened to be flying toward one
of the hijacked planes was ordered to turn around and go back to the
base! Why?
On 9/11 Cheney was caught in the basement of the White House
repeatedly confirming to a young Air Force officer that the orders
still stood not to intercept the plane that was rapidly approaching the
Pentagon. Minutes later, the Pentagon was hit.In spite of all
this, Gammon seems to think either that the Bush administration is far
too sweet and virtuous to ever dream of allowing the 9/11 attacks to
occur; or maybe he thinks they should be allowed to get away with
it. Either way, it’s disgraceful to have Gammon spreading his
ignorance on your pages. There should indeed be a full
investigation into Bush officials’ complicity in the 9/11 attacks.
Dave Lebowitz, San Leandro
“A Tribute to NUMMI Workers,” 9/9
Championing Scabs
The first thing to analyze about this article is the author, David
Bacon. David Bacon is an advocate for illegal Mexican scabs; he spends
80 percent of the time of his segment on KPFA, the illegal scabs’
radio station, advocating for the illegal Mexican scabs.
David Bacon has also written a book in defense of the illegal scabs
so let’s take this piece of news from whom it comes.
The ranks of the United Auto Workers Union have been decimated when,
in the last 20 years, Ford, GM, and Chrysler eliminated entire sections
of the parts machining units, outsourcing the work to hundreds of
machine shops around the country, which employed mostly illegal scabs,
for a mostly automated operation, at a third of the UAW’s wages, at
double the rate of production and with no adherence to safety rules.
The UAW workers’ job is being done by David Bacon’s illegal scabs.
Of course, the illegal scabs haven’t only taken the UAW workers’
jobs, they’ve also taken the meatpacking industry jobs, the
construction jobs, hotels, and restaurants; the union hiring halls have
been replaced by Centros de Jornaleros for scab labor and scab
contractors, and so on.
The union at NUMMI has a concessionary beginning and a misleadership
that has already signaled its willingness to make greater concessions
to Toyota. The workers at NUMMI have a tough fight ahead of them but
they’re screwed up if they rely on an illegal scabs’ advocate like
David Bacon to become their champion.
Antonio Trossero, San Leandro
“Punk Rock Opera,” 9/2
I Bought Tix
As a fellow journalist (I do sports in Santa Barbara for the News
Press), I must say that I was glad I accidently saw your article in
Oakland while visiting my brother. I had no idea that it was
opening already. After I read the article, I actually called and
bought tickets for my wife and I. Great story.
Mike Takeuchi, Goleta
“Shame on You Pro-Degenerate Media,” Letters, 9/2
Don’t Print Hate
The letter you published last week from Leo T. West of San Leandro
refers to gay people as “degenerates,” which is a vicious and very old
slander that has historically been attached to pretty much whatever
reviled group is currently being scapegoated. Mr. West may think he is
not a Nazi, but his train of thought — that certain people are by
their very existence a threat to the purity of the “species” (read:
race) and therefore need to be excised from society — leads
inevitably to the logic of gas chambers and genocide.I must ask the
East Bay Express if it would print a letter from a white
supremacist calling for the ethnic cleansing of blacks, or an
anti-Semite describing Jews as a problem requiring laws that limit
their rights? I didn’t think so.Don’t print hate speech, please. Free
speech is fine until it gives Nazis opportunities to gain recruits.
Right-wing haters have more than enough media bullhorns for their
hysteria right now.
Jeffrey Obser, Oakland
Miscellaneous
Awful School Funding Formula Plagues
Alameda County
California’s fiscal outlook continues to worsen. Concern is now
mounting over the impact the state’s budget deficit will have on
education funding.
The California Teachers Association (CTA), along with State
Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell, claims
California’s per-pupil funding now ranks 47th nationally. In reality,
most experts agree California is around the middle of the pack when it
comes to school funding, including the CTA’s own parent organization,
the National Education Association.
But what matters to most California parents isn’t how much other
states are spending — it’s the results their children’s school
districts are getting compared to other school districts right here in
California.
And on that front, California is doing poorly. It’s not because
there’s too little funding. It’s because the state’s school financing
system is illogical and inequitable.
The California School Finance Center database — a new project
from the Pacific Research Institute and Just for the Kids-California
that compiles data from a dozen California Department of Education
sources — helps shed some much-needed light on this reality. The
database is designed to help parents and policymakers find out how
their local districts stack up.
The data show some glaring discrepancies among similar school
districts. In Alameda County, for instance, a majority of students in
both the Fremont Unified district and the Castro Valley Unified
district scores proficient in English and math on the California
Standards Test. Yet Castro Valley, which enrolls a smaller proportion
of English learners and low-income students, receives nearly $3,400
more per student — $13,324, compared to Fremont’s $9,907.
Conventional wisdom suggests that districts with more money perform
better — but that’s not always the case.
Alameda City Unified and New Haven Unified have similar
socioeconomic profiles and enroll similar proportions of English
learners. But Alameda outperforms New Haven by nearly 12 percentage
points in English and nearly eight percentage points in math. Despite
the scoring discrepancy, both school districts receive about the same
level of funding per student — $10,099 for Alameda and $10,196
for New Haven.
Alameda County parents and taxpayers are entitled to wonder why
their school districts may be spending more money for inferior results.
So are other Californians.
Statewide, school districts where a majority of students is not
proficient outnumber those where a majority is proficient by about
three to one. In fact, average student proficiency rates in English and
math at the state’s bottom twenty revenue districts, which average
$8,900Â in funding per student, are actually higher than
proficiency rates at the top twenty revenue districts, which average
more than $19,200 in funding per student.
State and local per-student funding should also be higher in
districts that enroll children whose educational needs make them more
expensive to educate, like low-income students or English-learners. Yet
on average, state and local funding actually decreases as the
proportions of these children increase.
Such funding disparities can translate into hundreds of thousands of
dollars less for classrooms with the greatest need for additional
teachers, books, and intensive instruction programs.
Money does matter when it comes to public school performance, but
just as important is how effectively that money is used. The California
School Finance Center database is designed to present the most complete
picture possible of how much funding California public school districts
and charter schools receive — and how well they perform. With the
database, it is now easier to identify which public school districts
and charter schools are making the most of every education dollar and
emulate their success.
Vicki E. Murray, associate director of Education Studies, Pacific
Research Institute, Sacramento
