A plan by technology developer Mitchell Kapor to build a 6,478-square-foot house with a 10-car garage on a Berkeley hillside has moved a step closer to fruition as a result of a favorable state appeals court ruling.
A three-judge panel of the California Court of Appeal ruled in San Francisco on Wednesday that the plan by Kapor, the founder of Lotus Development Corp., and his wife, Freada Kapor Klein, did not need an environmental study under state law.
The couple's proposal for the house and garage on a Rose Street lot with a 50 percent slope was approved by the Berkeley City Council in 2010.
A citizens' group, Berkeley Hillside Preservation, and city resident Susan Nunes Fadley argued in an Alameda Superior Court lawsuit that the project required environmental study because of its size, scale and potential earthquake hazards.
A trial judge rejected the lawsuit, but in 2012 the Court of Appeal said the project presented unusual circumstances requiring study under the California Environmental Quality Act.
In March of this year, however, the California Supreme Court set aside that decision and sent the case back to the appeals court for further consideration. It said the intermediate court should have used a more stringent standard with more deference to the City Council when evaluating whether unusual circumstances existed.
In Wednesday's decision, the appeals court said that under the guidance provided by the state high court, no environmental review was required.
The decision could be appealed to the state Supreme Court. Susan Brandt-Hawley, a lawyer for Berkeley Hillside Preservation, said, "We're evaluating that," and declined to comment further.
A lawyer for Kapor and Klein was not available for comment.
A federal judge in San Francisco ruled today that the city of Berkeley can go ahead with requiring cellphone retailers to provide a warning about possible radiation exposure if one sentence is removed from the message.
The decision was issued by U.S. District Judge Edward Chen in a lawsuit in which an industry group, known as CTIA-The Wireless Association, sought a injunction blocking the warnings. CTIA was formerly called the Cellular Telephone Industries Association.
Berkeley's ordinance, enacted by the City Council in May, would require retailers to provide the warning to each customer who buys or leases a cellphone. The implementation of the law has been on hold while the lawsuit proceeded.
The planned notice would first inform consumers that the federal government requires that cellphones meet radio frequency exposure guidelines.
It would then warn, "If you carry or use your phone in a pants or shirt pocket or tucked into a bra when the phone is ON and connected to a wireless network, you may exceed the federal guidelines for exposure to RF radiation."
Chen said that part of the notice "contains accurate and uncontroversial information - i.e., that the Federal Communications Commision has put limits on RF energy emission with respect to cell phones and that wearing a cell phone against the body (without any spacer) may lead the wearer to exceed the limits."
The additional sentence that Chen said must be deleted would have said, "This potential risk is greater for children."
Chen said the FCC has never made such a statement, and that sentence interfered with federal regulation of the phone industry.
Chen issued a preliminary injunction only against that one sentence, and declined to block the rest of the warning. CTIA could still seek a full trial on whether a permanent injunction should be issued against the entire warning. The Washington, D.C.-based association could also appeal the ruling and seek a stay during an appeal.
The group's lead lawyer, Theodore Olson, said in a statement, "As the federal government has repeatedly recognized, the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence refutes Berkeley's ill-informed and misleading mandatory warnings about cellphones.
"We are confident that ultimately the entire ordinance will be struck down," Olson said. City of Berkeley spokesman Matthai Chakka said, "We're pleased with the ruling."
Chakka said the City Council will discuss amending the ordinance to remove the one sentence at its Oct. 5 meeting. He said "the goal would be" to have the ordinance go into effect in mid-November, 30 days after a second reading of the amendment on Oct. 13.
Police are looking for a man who jumped out of a silver Cadillac and grabbed cash from a man walking on the north side of the University of California at Berkeley campus on Friday afternoon.
University police said the robbery was reported at 2:52 p.m. Friday near the corner of Hearst Avenue and La Loma Avenue.
A man was walking with cash in his hands when a silver Cadillac pulled up beside him and a passenger he described as a European-American man wearing a white T-shirt and black shorts got out and took his money, police said. The victim was not hurt.
The suspect got back into the Cadillac and fled west. Police searched the area for the man and the Cadillac but could find neither.
Anyone with information about the robbery has been asked to contact Berkeley city police at (510) 981-5900.
Friday morning, at approximately 8:20 a.m., two middle school students were walking on Telegraph Avenue near Stuart Street. As the students were walking a van pulled up next to them with the window rolled down. The driver then told them to get into the van. The students said no and continued walking; the suspect pulled up next to them and once again told them to get in. The students quickly went to the school office and reported the encounter to staff, who called 911.
During the initial investigation, BPD was made aware of a second incident that occurred at approximately the same time at the intersection of Telegraph Avenue and Derby Street. In the second incident the suspect waved towards another student standing on the sidewalk and motioned for her to approach the van. The suspect suddenly drove off when the student’s father walked up.
The suspect in both incidents was described as a Hispanic Male, 30-40 years old, dark hair, mustache, heavy set, wearing baseball cap, driving an older model, dark green mini-van, possibly a Nissan Quest, with rear tinted windows.
The students in this case used excellent personal safety habits, immediately leaving the area of the suspect, and reporting the matter to school staff.
The Police Department has been in close contact with Willard staff and Berkeley Unified School District personnel to share information regarding these incidents, and personal safety measures.
This case is under active investigation. Anyone with information regarding these incidents is asked to contact the Berkeley Police Department at 510-981-5900. If you a person wishes to remain anonymous he/she can call Bay Area Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.
Lara Kiswani, Noah Sochet ,Rochelle Gause (National organizer for Friends of Sabeel North America)
Friday September 18, 2015 - 02:48:00 PM
In an unprecedented move, Berkeley City Councilman Darryl Moore has terminated his appointee on the city's Human Welfare and Community Action Commission (HWCAC) after her refusal to withdraw a proposal for the city to divest from companies complicit in human rights abuses in the Palestinian Territories.
Cheryl Davila, a commissioner on the HWCAC since 2009, described feeling appalled by what she saw taking place in Gaza last summer, "the Israeli bombardment was a disgraceful human rights violation that has caused a severe social welfare crisis, particularly for children, women, and the elderly in Gaza. Given that Berkeley was one of the first municipalities to pass an anti-apartheid resolution in support of South African human rights, it is time for Berkeley to do the same for Palestinians who are living under an Apartheid regime. We cannot be silent any longer."
Davila authored a resolution calling on the city to divest from certain Israeli companies, and to add Israel's military regime in the Palestinian Territories to the city's oppressive states list, which restricts city purchases from oppressive regimes including that of the Tibet autonomous region.
At a dramatic meeting Wednesday night, the HWCAC took up the resolution in front of a standing-room-only crowd of supporters. As she arrived, Ms. Davila was informed that she had been terminated. Speaking to the commissioners from the audience, she said "councilman Moore called me yesterday morning and told me that if I would not withdraw this resolution, he would remove me from the commission. I told him that I feel passionately about this issue and I urge you to pass it today."
Scores of speakers urged the commission to respect Ms. Davila's wishes and send the recommendation on to the city council. Cindy Shamban expressed enthusiastic support for the resolution, and declared, "as a longtime Berkeley resident and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace, I was surprised and disappointed to see that a commissioner who has done such stellar work over the years would be silenced by her councilman simply for speaking her conscience. Why is Councilmember Moore so afraid of the commission discussing Palestinian rights? There is no justification for Ms. Davila's dismissal."
Commissioners voted to empanel a subcommittee to revise the resolution, committing to vote again at their next meeting in October.
This resolution joins a growing chorus of official outcry against Israel’s regime in the Palestinian Territories. The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement began in 2005 when over 170 Palestinian civil society organizations in Occupied Palestine issued a call for BDS until Israel abides by international law and human rights standards. The BDS call has become an international movement, endorsed by renowned figures such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Alice Walker. Churches, labor unions, students, faculty, and citizens around the world are encouraging divestment from companies that profit from Israel’s ongoing occupation, including the student governments of six UC campuses.
The resolution, citing UN and Amnesty International reports, found that “the occupied Palestinian Territories are controlled militarily by the Israeli government, and the occupation is characterized by overreach and brutality, including the injuring and killing of Palestinian civilians, the destruction of Palestinian civilian infrastructure, a blockade of the Gaza Strip, and the construction of illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem”, and called on the Berkeley City Council to take three steps to condemn the Israeli Occupation:
divest from all companies profiting from on-going violations of human rights and international law in the Occupied Palestinian Territories
add the Israeli Military Regime in the Occupied Palestinian Territories to the city's Oppressive States List, thereby restricting City purchases of goods manufactured in the Occupied Territories
send a letter to the board of CalPERS urging it to implement its existing responsible investment policies equitably and to divest all holdings in companies complicit in Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Territories.
Lara Kiswani, executive director of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center said, "this effort is indicative of the long standing work between poor, Arab, Black and Brown communities to raise awareness and organize around issues of state violence and racism. We encourage the City of Berkeley to stand on the right side of history as they did during Apartheid South Africa, and advocate for justice and dignity for Palestinian people. Doing so is in fact taking a stand for justice for all people," adding "councilman Moore should re-appoint Cheryl and issue a public, written apology for his attempt to censor her on an issue of human welfare."
This is not the first time that pro-Palestine campaigners have faced repression in the United States. Liz Jackson, staff attorney for Palestine Legal and cooperating counsel with the Center for Constitutional Rights said, "we have responded to hundreds of incidents of suppression of Palestinian human rights advocacy over the past few years, including firings, harassment, and false accusations of terrorism. These efforts target the movement for Palestinian rights in the US, which has grown significantly over the last decade."
The resolution has been endorsed by local organizations including Jewish Voice for Peace, Friends of Sabeel North America, American Friends Service Committee, Students for Justice in Palestine, the Middle East Children's Alliance, American Muslims for Palestine, Arab Resource and Organizing Center, QUIT, IJAN, and UAW 2865.
It’s sort of like when you have to admit to the kids that Santa Claus didn’t actually fill up those stockings. Deep in your heart of hearts you know that they already know, but they’ve been pretending for the last couple of years because they were afraid the goodies would stop coming if they admitted that they knew who brought them.
Right here in beautiful Berkeley CA there live a couple of pretty bright guys who often opine on urban planning topics who MUST be aware that their ability to live in nice middle class single family homes in long-since-gentrified North Berkeley or even Upper North Berkeley has been ensured over the years by the efforts of others. What ticked me off on Thursday morning was this subject line in my email update from BeyondChron, a San Francisco blog edited by Upper Berkeley resident Randy Shaw: NYC Takes NIMBYISM to New Levels.
And inside, this headline on the lead story: NIMBYISM HITS NYC. And then there’s the text:
“While Nolita’s opposition is driven by a desire to maintain open space rather than fear of the poor, the net impact of their success is the same: to deny low-cost housing to a population that desperately needs it. Such is NIMBYism—a term for those who resist developments in their own neighborhood that they would accept elsewhere—New York City style.”
It’s a story about a Manhattan neighborhood that’s objecting to a development which might be built on what is now a neighborhood park. I don’t know the pros and cons of the project, but what I object to is the facile way Shaw appropriates the NIMBY label. He surely must know that Not In My Back Yard was coined by those who were affected by the toxic dump that was Love Canal.
Somewhere, he must have been exposed to the idea that the way he uses the term is every bit as objectionable as k---, w--, f--, n-----, s--- and all the other generic terms of opprobrium that have no place in civilized discourse. Yes, the First Amendment protects his right to be uncivil, but those of us who are tired of juvenile name-calling don’t enjoy reading this stuff.
Maybe the answer is to reclaim the term, as Queers have done with some success. NIMBY and proud! It has a nice ring to it.
Cities need housing, true, but they also need parks, and pointing this out does not make New York City building opponents suitable targets for derogatory epithets. I would take his comments a lot more seriously if he were proposing to build a low-income housing development on the site of the Berkeley Rose Garden or in Cordonices Park, near both his home and mass transit, right there on the bus line which goes up Euclid.
And then, not in BeyondChron but actually In TheChron, we have John King, who lives in North Berkeley within walking distance of the North Berkeley BART station. He writes about Bay Area architecture and related topics from time to time in the San Francisco daily print paper. Here’s the money quote from a recent frontpage piece he did for that Hearst publication about opposition to a big development sought for downtown Berkeley, reprinted on berkeleyside.com, “Berkeley CA’s Independent News Site”:
“Most of the attacks… come from longtime city residents who seem repelled by the idea that young people with good jobs might want an urban buzz close to home. At the Landmarks Preservation Commission this month, for instance, roughly 50 people spoke against the proposal before it was approved on a 6-3 vote. The website Berkeleyside reported that one speaker told the commission he and other critics are in their 50s and 60s and should be listened to because they are ‘the intellectual and cultural treasure of Berkeley.’
As far as I’ve been able to determine, King himself has not attended any of the meetings on which he bases this opinion. If he’d been there as I was, he might have understood better than the reporter he quotes that the speaker wasn’t referring to the age of the opponents, but to their resumes, which are impressive, e.g. Maxine Hong Kingston is against it.
If he’d been there, he might also have noticed a sizable number of U.C. Berkeley students and a good sampling of people in their 20s, 30s and 40s, at least the ones not kept home on week nights by those good jobs and kids to take care of. Not all young people want to party all the time, and those who aren’t working too hard do speak up at public meetings in Berkeley and elsewhere.
Don’t get me wrong. Both Randy (whom I’ve known for a while) and John King (whom I’ve met) are nice guys. But both of them need to acknowledge that they’re daily beneficiaries of the efforts of those who have worked to keep their home neighborhoods livable.
When King was on KQED Forum last week flacking his new book, he mentioned that he lives in a nice little house in North Berkeley. Possibly breaching the limits of civil discourse myself, I called in to say that he and his wife are “freeloaders”—which of course caused host Michael Krasny to hit the squelch button. But the plain truth is that Mr. and Mrs. King live very near to the home of Martha Nicoloff, the author of Berkeley’s seminal Neighborhood Preservation Ordinance, which in the 1960s halted the spread of what Martha labelled Cash Register Multiples, those cheap soft-story apartments with first floor garages which are now earthquake disasters waiting to happen. The nice little house which the Kings enjoy could very well have been demolished if Martha (now in her ninth decade) and her friends, who might be called NIMBYS today, hadn’t organized to save Berkeley’s housing stock from that generation of speculators.
Berkeley still needs decent low income housing, and Berkeleyans are working to provide it, but speculative luxury developments downtown like the ones King discussed will not help. One opponent at the last ZAB meeting referred to projects like that as “gentrification of mass transit”: They’re sucking up all the possible sites for affordable units near BART with buildings designed to appeal to the lifestyles of the rich and famous, or at least to commuters to San Francisco’s lucrative technical industry. Most of the workers who serve these affluent residents—housekeepers, janitors, street sweepers, plumbers et al.—will still be commuting in autos from distant less expensive suburbs.
King says we should “forget Berkeley’s political liberalism: For many local residents, conservative architecture is their creed. The review process, meanwhile, is a confusing journey that many applicants respond to by doing just enough to win their approvals.”
He seems not to have been aware of the credo I learned as a Cal undergraduate, “form follows function”. In the case of the tall buildings proposed for downtown Berkeley and many similar urban locations, their main function is to stoke the greed of investors who are not satisfied with the low interest rates now available for other kinds of investments. Aesthetic considerations are a distant second to ROI, which is why their buildings are so undistinguished or even ugly. The purpose of the public design review process is to act as some kind of brake on unbridled cupidity, but since the supposed regulators are appointed by elected officials whose campaign treasuries are funded by developers, this mostly doesn’t work.
Then there’s King’s recent, generally fine, article chiding the Bay Area for not acting promptly to combat the predicted effects of climate change on the shrinking Bay shore. Here’s an excerpt:
“The answer, simply, is that this region has charted an unknown course before. The 1960s quest to “save the bay” was likely nothing that a metropolitan region before had attempted, and its success has been a defining factor of our region’s vitality ever since…Such trailblazing could happen again. The Bay Area could craft wetlands or landscaped levees that would protect existing communities and roadways while enhancing public access to a varied shoreline. “There’s no reason the Bay Area should not be a model, for the nation if not for the world,” [Warner Chabot, executive director of the San Francisco Estuary Institute] said. “One can only hope that we have elected officials who want to be visionary civic leaders, not just good day-to-day leaders.”
Elected officials? Yeah, sure, but what about Sylvia McLaughlin, Kay Kerr and Esther Gulick? They were the civic leaders who saved the bay, the real visionaries who saw the whole Bay Area as their back yard. Amateurs all, and proud of it. No elected officials they, and not kids either when they did it, card-carrying NIMBYs all three. (Donating a dollar made you a Save the Bay member, and you got a card to prove it.) The electeds were very late to the starting gate, as they usually are unless goaded by NIMBYs.
This week on Friday, September 25, Berkeley will have a chance to hear John King in person at Mrs. Dalloway’s book store on College Avenue in the Elmwood. This would not be possible were it not for a web of protections that have been woven around this neighborhood–serving business district. Without the quota system promoted by, yes, NIMBYs, this valuable commercial strip would be dominated by Starbuck’s and Subway and all the other chains which would love to have access to the lucrative student population which is sprawling inexorably south from the UC campus. Bookstores like Mrs. Dalloway’s just can’t compete for space with national corporations without the kind of protection Tom Hunt and other civic commercial preservation activists have secured for them.
Just down the street and around the corner from Mrs. Dalloway’s is the former home of King’s late predecessor at the Chronicle, Alan Temko, who was considerably more acerbic than King but not always right either. He once characterized U.C.’s Zellerbach Plaza as a public open space second only to Venice’s St. Mark’s Square, but now it’s been rebuilt in the wake of a chorus of recent “how could they” critics who thought the original was dreadful. Everyone doesn’t always agree on aesthetic questions.
King’s book talk should be interesting, and if he takes questions it might offer an opportunity to open some kind of dialogue with someone who is in a position to influence what happens in the region in the next decades, to educate him to respect the crucial role played by ordinary citizens in preserving the civic fabric that we all enjoy. Maybe Randy Shaw would like to come too—he too might learn something.
Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina emerged as a fierce hawk on foreign policy issues. Kentucky Senator Rand Paul denounced U.S. interventionist policies abroad, which have largely proven to be major foreign policy debacles (Iraq, Libya to name just a few). Fiorina promised to avoid all communication with ‘big bad wolf, Vladimir Putin and would resurrect Reagan’s disastrous Missile Defense System. It is a pity that Fiorina and her ilk, who habitually fawn over Reagan’s legacy, ignore the fact that he negotiated the INF treaty with the former Soviet Union. Trump received too much airtime and said very little of substance. Jeb Bush made the preposterous claim that his brother, President George Bush, should receive credit ‘for keeping American safe’, ignoring the inconvenient truth that 911 occurred on his watch. Scott Walker claimed that trashing the union workers in Wisconsin offered conclusive proof that he would make a great President.
Although Rand Paul lacks charisma and failed to deliver a knockout punch he was the only speaker who offered sensible ideas on domestic and foreign policy issues resisting the ‘trash Obama’ rhetoric of the other speakers. He was one the few senators who opposed the Iraq war. Trump scrupulously offered no details how he would organize a posse and round up 11 million illegals. Many women would be aghast that the speakers planned to defund Planned Parenthood, perpetuating the myth that they were selling fetal tissue for profit relying on a highly deceptive, edited video.
Eleven presidential candidates had three prime-time hours on the national stage to offer their vision for the country. What followed was extremely disappointing bordering on the surreal – no effort to adhere to the truth, perhaps a new game of no truth, no consequences! It was a pity CNN who seem very adept at slick visuals, didn’t offer a fact check for viewers. The issues glaringly omitted were income inequality and race relations. A recent Gallup poll ranked these two issues high on Americans concerns. Police brutality has soured relations among blacks and Hispanics. Kentucky Senator Rand Paul was right in accusing former Florida Governor Jeb Bush of hypocrisy in his position on marijuana legalization. Jeb Bush admitted taking marijuana but escaped punishment because of his privileged position and appeared to be quite content letting poor people languish in jail for the same crime. Paul correctly stated that far too many poor in our inner cities are jailed for relatively minor drug related offenses and called for rehabilitation and less incarceration.
For the record, Trump was right when he accused Carly Fiorina of grossly mismanaging both Lucent and Hewlett Packard. In the same vein, Fortune magazine rated Trump’s companies at close to the bottom by every category as measured against 500 large companies.
Following the debate, at a town hall meeting, Trump got into hot water by failing to challenge a racist spectator who ‘wanted to rid the US of Muslims’.
If you have a psychiatric disability and live with minimal responsibilities, adapting to changes may not be incredibly hard. You probably have a cellphone or an iPhone and a computer. You probably understand how to use these.
This is not to say that mentally ill people always lack responsibilities in our lives. Not all of us are able to live with parents or in a situation in which there are people to take care of us. Some of us cannot be happy living in an institutional place, and we are too old to live with mom. Thus, we may have the responsibility of fending for ourselves while lacking the income of full time work.
While some persons with mental illness can work, those of us more severely afflicted, or with additional disabilities resulting from the physical long term side effects of psychiatric drugs, may be forced to get our income from Social Security.
In the distant past, Social Security and SSI provided enough income to live without too much discomfort. However, the cost of living has sharply risen. Rents have risen, food has risen, basic essentials have gone up, and SSI benefits have failed miserably to keep up with this or, in some instances, benefits have been cut outright.
At one time, someone living on SSI could pay for subsidized rental of some kind, could buy enough food, could pay utilities, and could often afford to pay cash for a used car or perhaps make a car payment. We could order pizza one or two times per month, and we might've been able to afford a Denny's meal.
This has changed. SSI pays for living in an institutional situation, or you might be able to make it with an extremely barebones budget, and you would certainly not be able to afford car expenses. And then, Social Security has the brazenness to use intimidation tactics when they interview you.
Governor Schwarzenegger slashed SSI benefits. When we get an annual increase in SSDI from the federal government, the State of California eats up at least half of that with a reduction in SSI.
Grocery stores have become the domain of the rich. If you live on disability, you can get free food from the food bank, you can go get some essentials at Wal-Mart, and going to Dollar Tree is a must.
We must also adapt to increased restrictions and increased scrutiny. If you fail to check in with mental health treatment providers on a regular basis to show that you are complying with treatment, difficulties could come about. Officials in the mental health treatment system may retaliate. If we fail to stick to our treatment plan at a less restrictive venue, we risk being cut off from services, and we do not want that.
Because of the violent incidents that have occurred in recent years in which perpetrators have been believed to be mentally ill, there is more pressure to keep mentally ill people monitored.
I need to remain in good standing with the mental health treatment system, since I am not in a position to try to go it alone. If I didn't have the cooperation of treatment practitioners, it would have disastrous results for me.
When mentally ill people reach middle age and approach being a senior, the health problems caused by the medication and/or by poor self-care begin to arise. Even while we are trying to maintain our mental health treatment, we must at the same time somehow deal with physical health problems. It necessitates having a reliable car just so that we can get to all of our doctor's appointments.
Overall, many persons with psychiatric disabilities may find ourselves in scenarios that border on being unmanageable. If parents help us with certain things, or if we have an inheritance, we are more likely to have a workable budget.
It is harder for many mentally ill people to adapt to changes in the human environment. Even the issue of global warming seems to come into play. In California, the hot weather we've been getting this year makes it a lot harder to go outdoors. Persons on psychiatric drugs often can't tolerate high temperatures. The medication in some instances interferes with regulation of body temperature.
If we are talking in terms of "survival of the fittest" I would assert that some of the fittest, paradoxically, live with a psychiatric disability.
During the “summer of Trump,” there’s been a flood of negative news about Hillary Clinton. As a result, the race for the Democratic presidential nomination is closer than expected. There are five reasons why Hillary’s campaign has faltered.
The CNN/ORC poll indicates that in the last three months, Clinton’s lead over Senator Bernie Sanders has shriveled from 43 percent to 10 percent – Hillary now commands 37 percent of prospective democratic voters, Sanders 27 percent, and (undeclared candidate) Vice President Joe Biden has 20 percent. The Huffington Post poll of polls also indicates Clinton’s lead over Sanders is dwindling (Hillary 44 percent, Sanders 25 percent). Five factors have contributed to her decline.
1. Donald Trump’s candidacy has hurt Hillary. In the long-term, if Trump wins the Republican nomination, this should enhance Clinton’s chances of being elected President: Trump’s misogyny will underline the basic differences between the two candidates. Nonetheless, in the short term his candidacy hurts Clinton because he is running as an outsider. (It’s no accident that two political outsiders, Trump and Ben Carson, lead the GOP field.) The Republican base is wary of Washington politicians. And this is true of voters, in general. One year ago, a Gallup Poll found that 81 percent of respondents trusted the government in Washington to do the right thing “only some of the time.”
Most voters regard Hillary Clinton as a Washington politician – an insider. Interestingly, Bernie Sanders, who has been in Washington far longer than Clinton – 24 years – is regarded as an outsider; perhaps because he is a self-declared socialist democrat and not the preferred candidate of the Democratic establishment.
2. The relentless news about the Clinton State Department emails has damaged Hillary. The continuing drone of negative news has driven down her favorability ratings. The Huffington Post poll of polls finds that Hillary’s favorability has gone negative: 53.4 percent unfavorable to 40.7 percent favorable. (The same poll shows Sanders at 36.9 favorable to 36 percent unfavorable; Donald Trump is 52.4 percent unfavorable to 40.4 percent favorable – Clinton is now more unfavorable than Trump.)
The relentless focus on the Clinton emails has also meant the mainstream media (notably the New York Times) has emphasized this aspect of her campaign rather than the many positive proposals that Hillary has advanced. Media critic David Brock believes that the New York Times has become “a megaphone for conservative propaganda.” On the day Clinton unfurled her plan to overhaul political campaign finances. the New York Times headline was that the Clinton campaign was retooling because of the email scandal.
3. Bernie Sanders’ campaign strategy has worked better than Hillary’s. From the start, Clinton has emphasized small listening groups. Trying to increase his name recognition, Sanders has run a more conventional campaign (focusing on Iowa and New Hampshire) and drawn far larger crowds. On August 15th, Bernie Sanders appeared at the Iowa State Fair and drew larger crowds than did Hillary Clinton (or Donald Trump).
4. Bernie Sanders wants to rein in Wall Street; Hillary Clinton doesn’t. There are many similarities between the Clinton and Sanders policy perspectives. Both support Obamacare; both warn of the peril of global climate change; etcetera. They differ on the scope of Wall Street reform. Sanders says, “It is time to break up the largest financial institutions in the country.” Clinton has been far more cautious on this subject.
Recent polls indicate Americans want Wall Street reform. Sanders has capitalized on this and picked up energy initially generated by Senator Elizabeth Warren.
5. Hillary is not “press friendly.” In 1998, while she was still First Lady of the US, Hillary Clinton suggested that “a vast right-wing conspiracy” had long been conspiring against her and her husband. Many Democrats believe this is true (and attribute the relentless State-Department-Email news as a reflection of this conspiracy).
As a consequence, Hillary Clinton is guarded around the press. When she started her current campaign for President, she restricted access to her “listening” events. This incurred the animosity of reporters. Now, when she does give press conferences they are not well attended.
In contrast, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump give press conferences all the time. And, as the new kids on the block, they get more positive coverage than Clinton.
Hillary Clinton’s decline in the polls means her nomination is no longer a sure thing. To recover, Clinton should immediately address her campaign issues; she needs to: boost her favorability ratings; provide easier access to the press; and encourage more debates with Bernie Sanders and the other Democratic contenders.
Bob Burnett is a Berkeley writer. He can be reached at bburnett@sonic.net
On Friday, September 11, 2015, California lawmakers passed legislation that would allow the state to grant terminally ill patients the right to end their own lives legally with prescribed medication. Under the End of Life Option Act, patients with six months or less to live would have the option of authorizing a doctor to administer fatal doses of medicine. The bill then went to Gov. Jerry Brown to sign or veto before it automatically goes into effect in January 2016.
“This bill is for Californians who have been waiting for a compassionate choice [and those] who are suffering from terminal illnesses and would like another choice beside what is currently available to them,” state Assemblywoman Susan Eggman, the primary sponsor of the bill in the Assembly, said at a press conference after the passage. “That is justice, kindness and compassion.”
The controversial measure was met with opposition from religious groups, hesitant Democrats and advocates for people with disabilities, who argued that it puts terminally ill patients at greater risk of coerced death. The measure passed the California state Assembly with 42-33 votes, and 23014 in the Senate. California would join Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont and Washington state, which have similar laws.
Still no laughs in euthanasia
You may have heard about The Farewell Party via the Jewish Film Festival. The original Hebrew title was Mita Tova. It won the Israeli Oscar for best motion picture direction.
The New York Times described “laughs in euthanasia, steering a careful course between humor and pathos while playing down overtly political and religious arguments for and against assisted suicide.” How can there possibly be laughs in euthanasia, in ending the life of a person or animal having a terminal illness or medical condition causing suffering seen as incompatible with an acceptable quality of life…? If not actual laughs, what then? Joy!
The Farewell Party is a French dialog with English subtitles, comedy-drama about the end of life. The Motion Picture Association of America’s film rating system evaluated cautiously, citing elderly, nudity, and frank confrontations with taboo topics, but not citing terminal illness, dementia, and assisted suicide.
Max is a friend of Yehezkel and Levana, a couple in their 70s. He is dying of cancer. Despite great suffering, he is kept alive against his will by doctors.
Yehezkel is a Jerusalem retirement home (nursing home, rest home, whatever) resident and an amateur inventor. Yana, Max’s wife, entreats Yehezkel to help Max. Yehezkel devises a mercy-killing machine, a knockoff of Dr. Jack Dying is not a crime Kevorkian’s assisted suicide machine. (The Senior Power column published in the November 24, 2010 Planet was about Jack Kevorkian. He died in June 2011.)
Now stuff begins to happen. News of Yehezkel‘s device leaks to other residents, and he is overwhelmed by suicide help! requests from senior citizens. It is difficult to turn down those who beg and sometimes extort him. Until, Levana’s secret, early-stage Alzheimer’s worsens, and she wants to avoid the disease’s inexorable deterioration. Then Yehezkel wishes he had never dabbled in life and death matters. Levana had been the only member of the group who was morally opposed to euthanasia, but her attitude softened when she realized to her horror that she was “disappearing.”
Dr. Daniel, a retired veterinarian, also a resident of the retirement home, has put down many animals. He agrees to help Yehezkel perfect the design of a machine that will allow Max to end his own life by pushing a button. A retired police officer commends a pre-taped video from Max stating that he is responsible for his suicide.
Yehezkel does indeed take his assisted suicide machine and covertly helps Max achieve a dignified end to his agony.
Globe correspondent Peter Keough commends The Farewell Party to viewers who found the depiction of old age in Michael Haneke's Amour film (2012) “too bleak.” Amour is a touching tale of a loving couple whose unbreakable bonds of marriage are tested by life’s greatest challenge. You could learn a lot from it. Consider these two films together. Both DVDs have English subtitles and are in public libraries’ collections.
Some [re-]viewers wonder why Amour, with its dying, aging, happily married, demented elderly characters, won the Palme d'Or. Perhaps they are uncomfortable with its end-of-life subject-- “a grim anatomy of elderly debility and dementia, complete with incontinence, forced feeding and the eventual stench of putrefaction,” as one reviewer put it while lauding “Haneke's unsparing quest for the truth about the way we live and die.”
Recommended September reading
While you’re at the library, borrow the You’ve Been Trumped video (lacks subtitles,) originally released as a 2012 motion picture about The Donald. Then restore your morale with Mr. Turner, a brilliant docpic about the final twenty-five years of artist Joseph Mallord WilliamTurner (1775–1851,) and a visit to the DeYoung Museum’s current special Turner exhibition.
Fear of Dying is Erica Jong’s latest novel-- a psychological and erotic love story. Sandra Sing Loh’s review is "The Fearless Erica Jong: In her 70s, she’s as eager as ever for sex and adventure." (The Atlantic [Washington, DC], Sept. 2015).
"UCLA (University of California at Los Angeles) study finds million-plus elderly Californians in poverty," by Dan Walters (Sacramento Bee, Sept. 1, 2015).
In Obergefell v. Hodges, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment requires a state to license a marriage between two people of the same sex and to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when their marriage was lawfully licensed and performed out-of-state. Thus, the same-sex marriage issue has been won.
Kim Davis -- the Rowan County, Kentucky clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples -- is just an unfortunate sideshow.
However, there is still work to be done. Discrimination against members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community, based on sexual orientation and/or gender identity continues in other areas. According to the ACLU, twenty-two states and the District of Columbia have laws that ban discrimination in housing and employment with respect to either sexual orientation or gender identity or both. While three states ban state-wide employment non-discrimination, these laws cover only sexual orientation (not gender identity). Many cities and counties have enacted comprehensive anti-discrimination laws, and others have enacted incomplete ordinances that leave out the transgender community or that only provide limited protections.
In 1993, Bill Clinton signed into law the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) that "ensures that interests in religious freedom are protected." The federal RFRA prohibits government from "substantially burdening" individuals' exercise of religion unless it is for a "compelling government interest" and is doing so in the least restrictive means. The federal RFRA does not apply to states.
What should concern us now is that many states have passed, and others are considering passing, Religious Freedom Restoration Acts which expand the religious freedom defense not only to government action but to businesses. Business owners will now have a stronger legal defense if they refuse to serve lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender customers and want to cite their faith as justification for their actions, especially in those states without an LGBT anti-discrimination law. I bet we will see these laws used to refuse service to LGBT people from accessing employment, housing, and public accommodations.
What is needed is passage of the proposed federal Equality Act, which would establish explicit, permanent protections against discrimination based on an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity in matters of employment, housing, access to public places, federal funding, credit, education and jury service. In addition, it would prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex in federal funding and access to public places.
Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Martin O’Malley have endorsed passage of the Equality Act. To my knowledge, no Republican candidate for president has endorsed the Equality Act.
Given the Republican control of Congress, passage of the Equality Act is unlikely.
The Pepper Spray Times offers this quick review of the performances of the Republican candidates’ September debate in the hope of helping our thoughtful readers sort the crowded field with the assistance of some of England'’s most articulate critics.
Donald Trump: turning the show into a black-draped harlequinade conjured out of a dressing-up box and laden with gratuitous business argot, focused on powdered wigs and shells of costume dangled from on high.
Ben Carson: if it was perhaps not the critical darling he might have hoped for, Untouchable, his sociopolitically-minded debut piece for the Royal Ballet which premiered in March, was rapturously received by Covent Garden audiences.
Jeb Bush: The production may have been heavy-handed, but every phrase of the music floated. Salzburg'’s Vienna Philharmonic under Dan Ettinger seemed plodding in comparison.
Marco Rubio: His coiled, lolloping, muscular steps have an intensely feral energy and can turn on a sixpence between blazing with anger, effervescing with celebratory fervour, or radiating abject despair.
Scott Walker: Though he took a little while to get his voice moving with total freedom, Walker didn'’t disappoint. He delivered that first-act aria, L’espoir renait dans mon âme, with easy mastery of its coloratura, and balanced that against his unadorned sincerity in the most famous number of all, J’ai perdu mon Eurydice.
Carly Fiorina: a protégé of the great Renata Scotto, sings the dippy heroine Elvira with all her mentor’s questing intelligence. Warm and easy in her top register, she phrases sensitively, shaping the line into expressive meaning and colouring words with imagination. Her Mad Scene in Act 2 was exquisitely done, as was the miraculous (if implausible) recovery of her senses that ensues.
Ted Cruz: There’s not a glimmer here of Cruz as the doomed outsider, scarily different from the other guys, mysterious and alluring, predatory and dangerous, and neither do we sense Cruz’s decline from decent ordinary bloke into half-crazed monomaniac. There’s no intensity, no violence, no sex, no transgression.
Mike Huckabee: seen as an Anna Magnani figure in sombre puritanical black. Quite what lunar cult he leads is left unexplained and it seems inconceivable that he could have concealed two pregnancies over five years, but the concept is broadly effective.
Rand Paul: arrestingly baroque and expressionist in character. Sometimes contradictory events, dreams and reality bleed into one another, while grinding discords yield to gentle neo-Baroque madrigals, only to be obliterated by military marches and Viennese waltzes.
John Kasich: a lot of windy poetic posturing that fails to add any flesh to the characters’ motives, experience or background. The end result is so opaque and navel-gazing as to seem merely a bit silly.
Chris Christie: the orchestration embraces the distinctive sonorities of the pub band: cheap electric guitar, wheezing accordion and penny-whistling tenor recorder and piccolo. It’s music that looks in different directions: I only wish that Christie had avoided the post-modernist cliché of pushing his soprano into a hysterical top register where words vanish.
Berkeley Symphony & Friends, the chamber music series on four Sundays at the Piedmont Center for the Arts, will dedicate this Sunday's 5 pm concert--featuring former San Francisco Symphony Concertmaster Stuart Canin on violin, pianist Janet Guggenheim and cellist Jonah Kim--to the memory of Robert Commanday, former Chronicle music critic and founder of the SFCV--San Francisco Classical Voice--website, often called the dean of Northern California performing arts critics. Commanday died September 3 at his Oakland home, age 93.
The program will feature Stravinsky's Duo Concerte, Prokoviev's Violin Sonata No. 2 in D Major and Arensky's Piano trio No. 1.
Piedmont Center for the Arts, 801 Magnolia Avenue, Piedmont. $25. 841-2800 x 1, or berkeleysymphony.org
Oakland's Third Annual Matatu Film Festival: September 23-26
Review by Gar Smith
Rev your engines, film lovers, it's time to get on board for Oakland's third annual Matatu Film Festival, an international convoy of cinematic screenings set to run from September 23-26 at The Flight Deck (1540 Broadway) and the Starline Social Club (645 West Grand Avenue Oakland, CA 94612).
The festival is named after East Africa's "matatus," a Swahili word that celebrates the colorfully decorated minibuses that skitter through crowded streets jammed with passengers and blasting local music. Festival founder Michael Orange explains the connection: both movies and matatus transport people to new (and sometimes surprising) destinations. The films in the Matatu collection, have been chosen to "spotlight a unique journey, regardless of age, geographical bounds, sexual preference, race, and socio-economic status."
As Orange notes: "Oakland is one of the most diverse cities in the United States; over 100 languages are spoken by children in its classrooms everyday. In merely five years, it has traversed a great distance of sacrifice and reward, from being considered one of the most wretched places upon the Earth, to gaining cool kid props as one of the most walkable, one of the most artful, one of the most tourist friendly destinations. . . .
In Oakland, new baby strollers, food trucks, Teslas, and Ubers begin to run the streets. But what of the quest for liberty, equity, and for food, and for joy? What of the questions we'd address if we all rode the same Matatu? What stories would surface? These will be our concerns, explored through four evenings of Music, Film, and Performance."
Wednesday, September 23, 2015 7:00pm – 9:00pm (Starline Social Club)
SOUTH AFRICA · SIBS SHONGWE-LA MER · 93 MIN · 2015
Jabz and September are two twenty-something suburbanites drifting through a day of drugs, sex, and philosophizing in their privileged Johannesburg neighborhood. The story is anchored by the live-streamed suicide of their friend Emily. Jabz and September find they are ill equipped to handle the tragedy. Facing adulthood and forced to confront a changing society today's disaffected youth ultimately confronts a hard truth that can't be ignored.First-time director, 23-year-old Sibs Shongwe-La Mer, depicts a raw and captivating post-apartheid Johannesburg.
Thursday, September 24, 2015 7:00pm – 9:00pm (Starline Social Club)
USA · JASON ZELDES · 93 MIN · 2015
A fatal turf war between neighborhoods haunts the city of Richmond, California. Donté Clark transcends the violence in his hometown by writing poetry about his experiences. Using his voice to inspire those around him, he and the like-minded youth of the city mount an urban adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, with the hope of starting a real dialogue about violence in the city.
September 24, 2015 7:30pm – 9:30pm (The Flight Deck)
SENEGAL · ELIZABETH CHAI VASARHELYI · 94 MIN · 2015
In the Spring of 2011, Senegal was pitched into crisis when President Abdoulaye Wade decided to change the constitution to allow for a third term. An artist-led youth movement erupted to protect one of Africa's oldest and most stable democracies. In a time where democracy is under siege in many parts of the world, 'Incorruptible' (formerly 'An African Spring') offers a positive, hopeful message while honestly examining the sustainability of a people's movement, and the role that youth are taking in shaping the future of their own country.
RED LEAVES
September 25, 2015 7:00pm – 9:00pm (The Flight Deck)
ISRAEL / ETHIOPIA · BAZI GETE · 90 MIN · 2015
Meseganio Tadela, 74, is a hard, obstinate, and nervous man. He immigrated to Israel from Ethiopia 28 years ago with his family. He has chosen to zealously retain his culture, talks very little, and hardly speaks Hebrew. After losing his wife, he sets out on a journey that leads him through his children's homes. Having come to know some of life's new realities, he tries to survive according to his own ways.
September 25, 2015 8:00pm – 10:00pm (Starline Social Club)
ETHIOPIA · RACHEL SAMUEL · 80 MIN · 2013
Hailed as "the Billie Holiday of Ethiopia," Asnaketch Worku lived her life on the edge of her artistry, over the edge of her passions. To separate Asnaketch from the social and political climate of conservative Ethiopia was impossible, particularly in the 1950's and 1960's. Artists in that time were looked down upon as people who were "not going to heaven." This film is as much about Ethiopia as it is about Asnaketch, a substantive part of the fabric of Ethiopia, past and present.
Special Performance
Zéna is a multi-instrumentalist, singer/songwriter and visual artist based in the Bay-Area. As one of the few traditionally trained women who specialize in Kora, the West African harp, Zéna has immersed herself in learning the oral histories and accompanying music of the Jaliyaa tradition within which Kora music exists. She has studied with kora masters from the United States, Guineau, Mali, the Gambia, and France where she trained under Mali's Grammy Award-winning kora master, Toumani Diabate. Zéna will present new arrangements from her upcoming album, "Beautiful News," a cycle of songs composed on Kora, the West African harp, and ukelele.
September 26, 2015 5:00pm – 6:30pm (The Flight Deck)
NETHERLANDS / SURINAME · MARIA VISSER · 53 MIN · 2015
Just as Marga Weimans was about to graduate, this Rotterdam native decided to change course and follow her dream to become a fashion designer. This candid portrait follows Weimans during a turbulent, successful year in which dreams sometimes clash with reality. She creates a retrospective exhibition for the Groninger Museum, presents a new collection at FashionWeek Amsterdam and also undergoes significant personal growth. The camera in her wake, Weimans travels to the interior of Surinam. Footage of Weimans' daily activities is intercut with modified, colourful (archive) footage of Surinam, symbolising Weimans' inspiration and family history.
September 26, 2015 7:00pm – 9:00pm (Starline Social Club)
USA · BOBBITO GARCIA · 96 MIN · 2015
During the 1990s, Stretch and Bobbito introduced the world to an unsigned Nas, Biggie, Wu-Tang, and Big Pun as well as an unknown Jay-Z, Eminem, and the Fugees. The total record sales for all the artists that premiered on their radio show exceed 300 million. The late night program had a cult following in the art/fashion world and prison population, as well. All would loyally tune in for the humor just as much for the music. Stretch and Bobbito brought a unique audience together, and created a platform that changed music forever.
Note: Stretch Armstrong & Bobbito Garcia speak after the film screening.
September 26, 2015 7:30pm – 9:00pm (The Flight Deck)
ETHIOPIA · MIGUEL LLANSÓ · 60 MIN · 2015
Decades after the apocalypse and after extraterrestrial life had been discovered, the few inhabitants left in a hostile Earth still struggle to survive as an alien spaceship hovers in the skies, slowly rusting away. Tired of picking up the crumbs of gone-by civilizations, Gagano dreams his life away when not living in a state of perpetual fear. After a series of freak incidents in the bowling alley that Gagano and Selam call home, Gagano embarks on a surreal journey that will leads him through the post-apocalyptic Ethiopian landscape where he encounters witches, second-generation Nazis and even Santa Claus.
What is Black Guilt? This film questions the responsibility of African artists in an ever more globalised universe. Are we victims of our past—forever beholden to our so-called arrested development? How much do these relationships to the ghost of our continent's violent collective history of oppression, exploitation and struggle haunt us? Is there such a thing as Post Colonialism or indeed Neo Colonialism if Colonialism never ended in the first place?
Special Closing Night Performance
#MATATU15 concludes with the Alonzo King LINES Ballet dancers in an excerpt of "RASA," music by Zakir Hussain, followed by the North American premiere of BLACK PRESIDENT, directed by Mpumelelo Mcata and premiered at the 65th Berlinale.
Alonzo King LINES Ballet is a celebrated contemporary ballet company that has been guided since 1982 by the unique artistic vision of Alonzo King. Collaborating with noted composers, musicians, and visual artists from around the world, Alonzo King creates works that draw on a diverse set of deeply rooted cultural traditions, imbuing classical ballet with new expressive potential. Alonzo King's visionary choreography, brought to life by the extraordinary LINES Ballet dancers, is renowned for connecting audiences to a profound sense of shared humanity.
MATATU EVENTS
Here is a list of some of the events and performances that will accompany "Matatu Week" in Oakland.
