Opinion

As Earth Day approaches, Berkeley’s ever-growing Earth Day celebration is scheduled to take place this Saturday in newly-renovated Martin Luther King Park, right between the two city halls, Old and New, and next to the Farmers’ Market. It’s a perfect location to consider a few facts about sustainability, today’s buzz word for doing whatever we can not to harm Mother Earth any more than we already have. -more-

THE IRS -more-

Sunshining (making public) city government in Berkeley has been a long and daunting task. Sometime in early 2001-2003 Kriss Worthington held a series of public meetings to begin the process of writing a sunshine ordinance for Berkeley and its citizens. This effort was followed up with the city staff drafting an ordinance. Consensus could not be found, but in March of 2007, Mayor Bates called a special council meeting to hear from the community and a panel of four people considered to be experts in sunshine laws on its reactions to staff draft no. 24. -more-

As Hillary Clinton continues to wage vicious attacks on likely Democratic nominee Barack Obama, many have suggested that John McCain now has a good chance to win the November election. But political reality says otherwise. Consider that in 2004, when the economy was not a national problem and public opinion remained almost equally divided on Iraq, a relatively weak Democratic presidential candidate came within 50,000-100,000 votes in Ohio from defeating a Republican incumbent benefiting from an unprecedented turnout of conservative voters. Ohio will go to the Democrats in 2008, as will Colorado, Iowa, and likely Virginia, three states Bush won in 2004. John McCain is on the wrong side of both Iraq and the economy, and there is no chance that voters will elect a candidate who will implement George W. Bush’s third term. -more-

Standing at the corner of Vine on Saturday morning, I look south down a vibrant Shattuck Avenue thronging with pedestrians. They fill the sidewalks and spill out across busy traffic to claim and use the grass median strip (illegal though that is.) That so many people risk tickets and traffic to create a 21st Century town square illustrates once more the deep human need for shared public spaces. Then I turn around to look north towards Rose Street. I see a perplexing expanse of impermeable asphalt and concrete, starkly contrasting with the view to the south. -more-

It is past time for the city of Berkeley to complete its long-delayed civic improvements in the North Shattuck commercial district. Approximately eight years ago, after intensive community involvement, a program of modest, incremental, civic improvements was created and approved by the community and the city council. That program became stalled when Planning Commission member David Stoloff initiated his “grand” North Shattuck Plaza plan. Mr. Stoloff’s scheme is dead, but the problems remain. Among those is the necessary redesign of the intersection at Shattuck Avenue and Vine Street. -more-

CORRECTION -more-

The recent disclosure of a memo by Boalt Law School faculty member John Yoo has given that school and the University of California itself a long overdue public relations nightmare. “Overdue” because quite enough was known about Yoo’s role in justifying the Bush regime’s claims to the dictatorial powers it has taken that a small group of concerned citizens held a weekly vigil outside his class several years ago. That vigil was almost entirely ignored by faculty and students too hurried or plugged in to their iPods to pause or take a leaflet let alone join. When Fernando Botero’s horrific paintings of torture came to Doe Library, few faculty members on panels organized to discuss them mentioned that the man largely responsible for the atrocities Botero depicted is a campus colleague. But when the New York Times published an editorial (reprinted in the International Herald Tribune on April 5) with the clause “Yoo, who inexplicably teaches law at the University of California,” mud finally stuck to Alma Mater’s teflon robes, and the administration had to act. -more-

The small number of Bus Rapid Transit supporters (one third or less of those who spoke) who showed up at the Planning Commission public hearing on BRT on April 9 spent much of their time urging the commission to endorse a “preferred alternative” route for BRT so AC Transit can move ahead with finalizing the environmental impact report on the project. -more-

No matter how you look at it, Barak Obama’s March 18 speech on race was a Category 5 news event; it did for political reporting what Katrina did for disaster reporting. It lacked the ugly pictures but it generated a comparable multitude of comments buoyed by passion and collectively covering every conceivable aspect, from the super-sublime to the hyper-ridiculous. On the left it was rated breathtaking, historic, momentous, from the center it was deemed provocative, memorable, moving and conservatives tagged it hypocritical, duplicitous, deceptive. Titled “A More Perfect Union,” the speech arrived in the aftermath of a hurricane of publicity about the passionate preachments of a man of God, Obama’s pastor, but the devastation that came later was entirely an act of man, as was Katrina’s. -more-