Opinion

Out and about in Berkeley over the weekend, we had a chance to observe numerous examples of the truism that it’s not what you do, it’s who you are that counts. We walked up Ashby to Peet’s on Domingo, one of the oldest locations for Berkeley’s pride and joy, the original leading edge of the gourmet coffee revolution. In the many years we’ve been walking to Peet’s, the shops in the small commercial enclave on that corner have had a lot of turnover. Since we’ve been in the business of selling newspaper advertising, we’ve learned that there are many more people in Berkeley who’d like to run small businesses than there are people who know how to do it. -more-

If you want a good laugh, type “sex on the sidewalk” into Google News. This will give you the opportunity to witness, firsthand, the birth of an urban legend. And where has it been born? Why, in our beloved San Francisco Chronicle, of course. Carolyn Jones reported on Tuesday that: “The new plan cracks down on yelling, littering, camping, drunkenness, smoking, urinating and sex on sidewalks and in parks.” I know she was at the City Council meeting—so was I, and I saw her. But where did she get that sentence? Never mind, it’s been picked up all over the map as the key component of whatever the City Council thinks it passed on Tuesday night. -more-

AC TRANSIT NEEDS IMPROVEMENT -more-

I like Judith Scherr. She puts in long hours trying to get the story right and it’s not too easy in a town that has become as shady as our Berkeley has become of late. So I will forgive her if she has failed to see what the true purpose behind what is known to us as Options Recovery Services. When I went public a few months ago with my opposition to the mayor and City Council giving Options $200,000 at a time when food and housing to the poor was being cut by precisely the same amount, Judith asked me a good question. “How successful does a program have to be before you would support it?” It was busy and loud in the council chambers that night and I didn’t get to answer her. -more-

It is devastatingly ironic that the world’s poorest countries are, to some degree, subsidizing the healthcare of the wealthiest nations. For years, rich nations encouraged African countries to invest in infrastructure (education, hospitals, medicine); much aid was given to strengthen these very systems. Although it was unintentional, the donations proved to be quite self-serving. As wealthy countries give aid to struggling nations to improve healthcare outcomes with one hand, they siphon off graduates of medical schools with the other. The developed world benefits from the skills and knowledge of newly arrived doctors and nurses while the countries that produced these professionals suffer from staffing shortages. -more-

EDITOR’S NOTE: This commentary was submitted to the San Francisco Chronicle but was not published. -more-

WORK IT OUT TOGETHER -more-

In last Friday’s issue of Berkeley Daily Planet, Jonathan Stevens asks one of the most discussed questions today: “Whom do we blame....” for the failures in public education? This is easy to answer: let’s start with the citizens of California, who passed Proposition 13 and began the process of starving what was once considered the premier public education system in the country. That initiative quickly gutted the state budget and made it unlikely that, without an appeal, California could ever add the per pupil funding expenditures necessary to achieve the results citizens say they desire. California has the highest class sizes in the nation and moves between 40th and 48th in per pupil expenditures (depending upon which numbers one uses). Thank God for Mississippi, one of the poorest states in the nation, and one of the few to be as consistently stingy as we are with our students. Nina Simone said it all in her classic song! And thanks to Berkeley citizens for Measure A and all of the bond measures which have supplemented the district budget. -more-

In “The State of Education” in the Nov. 23 Daily Planet, teacher Jonathan Stephens decries the “diminishing intellectual returns” in today’s classrooms, but fails to appreciate the deepened understanding of other cultures and behaviors, and the internalization of the idea of justice, that students achieve in today’s multi-cultural equal-opportunity classrooms. -more-

The following text is the United In Action “Talking Points for Superintendent Selection Process,” submitted to the Leadership Associates (“Leadership”) consulting group. Leadership is the agency contracted by the BUSD to find our next superintendent. -more-

Richard Brenneman’s comment in Nov. 20 issue of the Planet continues to point to the deficiencies of the BP grant and agrofuel programs, but the real deficiency has gotten little mention until Dr. J. Overpeck’s statement on the last IPCC report in the San Francisco Chronicle on Nov. 18. In the front page article, Dr. Overpeck, director of the University of Arizona, Institute for the Study of Planet Earth and member of the IPCC, is cited as saying “It’s going to get warmer” from industrial emissions remaining in the atmosphere for decades to centuries without making mention of new emissions that will be adding to raise the level of greenhouse gases (GHGs) mainly carbon dioxide. The real issue that has to be addressed to get some control of global warming is finding a means to remove some of the 35 percent overload of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere since the start of the Industrial Revolution. In the same article, Dr. S. Schneider of Stanford cited that overload in the article as being the main cause of warming seen in the last 40-50 years. Almost all proposals for curbing of emissions from vehicles and power plants, which still allows some adding to that 35 percent, and for growing agrofuels, which allow a lot of non-energy generating recycling of that gas, do nothing to remove any of that 35 percent. -more-