Public Comment

UC BERKELEY Administration Pay 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am a recent graduate of the University of California. I have been following the recent protests and budget crisis. This morning I received the chancellor’s e-mail about reducing existing costs at Berkeley though the Operational Excellence (OE) program (berkeley.edu/oe). 

While I understand that everyone needs to make sacrifices, including temporary reductions, I thought, should not the chancellor and other top ranking salary administrators also take temporary reductions? 

I looked at ucpay.globl.org to see what UCB employees make. Last year there were seven administrators that made more than $445,000 per year. For perspective, President Obama is paid $400,000 a year—and what a job he has! 

As a show of support to the university and public education, these top making administrators and employees should reduce their own pay “temporarily.” Leading by example would make everyone feel that this is a unified effort to make it through the budget crisis. Otherwise, I see wealthy administrators and employees slashing the salaries of those that really need it, those that make less than $40,000 a year. 

Roland Saekow 

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UC Corporate Takeover 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’ve been a clerical worker at UC Berkeley for 25 years, and I’m encouraged to see the Daily Planet finally begin to report in detail on UC’s corporate takeover.  

Please, Planet, follow up on Cal’s Bain & Company alliance. It’s going to get dirty fast, and we sure don’t get the inside story from the university. There was information in your in-depth piece in the Oct. 1-7 issue that I haven’t seen anywhere else. 

Make no mistake, this is the coup de grace, happening now. The protests of Sept. 24 were very important, and continuing actions are equally important, but in spite of increased awareness in the community, complacency persists. 

UCB workers are losing their jobs every day. Simultaneously, the structure of the university is being pared down to bare bones at an incredible rate, and public education in California is dying.  

Your readers would be shocked to know all that’s happening, and how fast.  

Please shock them. It’s our only hope. 

Bronwen Rowlands 

Albany 

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Football Game Days 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Today, Sat. Oct. 3, is a football game day, unfortunately for me. I lived on Panoramic Hill as far back as 1947 when football games were a homespun affair. But now, because of the selling of games to television and modern methods to make a lot of noise, I am being forced from my home. Long before the game started, the noise sounded like a freeway immediately next to my house. Then shortly after the game began a large airplane flew exceedingly low over my neighborhood. 

If you stand outside the stadium you hear very little. But if you go up on a hill, you hear very loud noise. 

I have no understanding why UC has to make so very much noise. Years ago, Councilmember Fred Weekes told me that the noise level inside the stadium was much too loud. That was in the late 1980s. Now it is much louder. Noise has adverse health impacts, but apparently the university does not understand that.  

I am fully aware that UC does not have to follow City of Berkeley laws. I am also aware that the state office that deals with noise complaints has been closed for a very long time. 

But this is a nuisance. No one should be driven from their home. And that is what is happening to me.  

Ann Reid Slaby 

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Biofuels Downtown 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I just heard BP is going to set up its biofuels research in 75 percent of the new facilities that will go where the nine-story State Health Building is now located. Just another advance warning from the ecological point of view: it’s a take over of the university and a disaster for the planet.  

Some people seem to think anything called biofuels has the gloss of beneficence, but even burning waste cellulose is a theft from the soils, as well as more carbon in the atmosphere. That’s the least of it as the ongoing destruction of Indonesia and Malaysia’s forests progresses rapidly for biofuels. Biologically based “road fuels” comes at the cost of the last of biodiversity in forests and so-called waste lands, which are the grass and shrub lands of the world, which, like forests, are the remnant repositories of the earth’s biodiversity. Very bad business!  

Sorry to see that seems to be happening—another chapter in the take over of education by corporations for narrow profits, painted green.  

Richard Register 

President, Ecocity Builders  

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Bear’s Lair Vendors 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

There is another aspect to the Bear’s Lair vendor story: The three current tenant businesses are considered to be ugly, unappealing, disgusting, informal, and embarrassing eyesores by the Store Operations Board. It was an issue when I graduated from Cal in 1980, and I assume it still is. One business is little more than a card table with a heat lamp and cash register. Another is just an ugly steam table that looks much like the old meal line at Unit 3 with an ugly, homemade-looking sign on the back wall. The third is little more than a pastry case, a soda refrigerator, and another card table for the coffee stuff. They tried to force out these vendors then, and are still trying to do so. 

The Store Operations Board wants fluorescent plastic, ginza flash, and bright, colorful, lighted signage with an impressive corporate logo and miles and miles of shiny stainless steel. They want something they can be proud of and brag about to their counterparts at other UC campuses and big wigs from the regents. They want modern, high tech, expensive, impressive, and state of the art food service facilities. Having available to students little more than a tiny, $7.99 roasted turkey breast sandwich ($1.75 more if you want cheese) on Tuscan ciabatta bread and a $5 cup of flavored coffee is a small price to pay. 

If they want to really support minorities, now is the time for the Store Operations Board to put their money where their mouth is. The vendors are minority success stories. They feed hungry, poor students who need something filling but only have $1 or $2 in their pocket. 

Jerry Hashimoto 

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BRT on Telegraph 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Telegraph Avenue attracts visitors from all over the world. They come because of its history, unique shops, handcrafts, coffee, and the variety of foods. They would not come to see a bus turnaround, or a fast vehicle whizzing by. Telegraph should be declared a historical district. 

I am one of the craftspeople. We count passengers on the humungus hinged Van Hool—made in Belgium, not Hayward—busses. Numbers go from three to eleven. It would be cheaper to pay for individual taxis. People have said that they’re fuller below Dwight. Maybe that could be the turning point. 

Who profits from this project? 

Why the hurry? Perhaps someone from our fine meditation centers could teach passengers to savor the few extra minutes their journey takes. 

Ruth Bird 

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CITY COMMONS CLUB 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I greatly appreciated the letter from Dorothy Snodgrass pertaining to my recent lunchtime talk at the City Commons Club. It was a great pleasure to speak to such an interested and enthusiastic group. 

I did want to make just a few minor corrections in regards to items mentioned by Ms. Snodgrass. 

The Stein salon in Paris was at 27 rue de Fleurus. Also it was Gertrude’s oldest brother Michael who brought the first Matisse painting to the United States in the first decade of the 20th century. I don’t know, however, if he was the first person to purchase a Matisse work. 

Lastly, the Stein family collection exhibition will be in late 2010 to early 2011 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art with additional showings in NYC and Paris. In the spring of 2011 there will also be an exhibition called “Seeing Gertrude Stein” at SF’s Contemporary Jewish Museum. That exhibit will then move to Washington, D.C.’s National Portrait Gallery. 

Again thank you to the CCC for the invitation and to Ms. Snodgrass for her gracious comments. 

Hans R. Gallas 

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BHS Small Schools 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am writing to correct an error in Riya Bhattacharjee’s otherwise accurate Oct. 1 article, “State, PG&E Pick Berkeley High for Green Energy Program.” Ms. Bhattacharjee writes that the new small school that is scheduled to open next fall will be, “Berkeley High’s seventh small school.” This is inaccurate; it will be the fifth. Currently BHS students enroll in either a small school—Communication Arts and Sciences (CAS), Community Partnerships Academy (CPA), Arts and Humanities Academy (AHA) or School for Social Justice and Ecology (SSJE)—or one of two large programs, Academic Choice (AC), or Berkeley International High School (BIHS). 

As we move into the time of year that eighth grade families are considering their options for next year, it is especially important that they understand their choices. There are significant differences between small schools and large programs and size is perhaps foremost among them. AC and BIHS both serve more than 1,000 students while each of the small schools serve 240. Even the Berkeley High website is confusing; it refers to all six options as “small learning communities,” or SLC’s. In an effort to clarify the range of choices offered to incoming families, it would be helpful if we reserve the word, “small” for the schools within Berkeley High that truly are.  

If you’d like to learn more about small schools at Berkeley High (including the ways in which our small student populations help us serve students), please feel free to contact me or any one of the Lead Teachers of the small schools at Berkeley High. E-mail addresses are: Phil Halpern, CAS, philiphalpern@mac.com; Ray Cagan, AHA, cagan@berkeley.k12.ca.us; Kate Trimmlet and Andy Peck, SSJE, ktrimlett@berkeley.k12.ca.us, andrew_ 

peck@berkeley.k12.ca.us; Annie Johnston, CPA, ajohnston@berkeley.k12.ca.us 

Phil Halpern 

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BHS Math Program 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I think the small-school concept at Berkley High School is admirable and can offer substantial benefits to students. However, the recent decision to rescind previously available options in mathematics instruction for small school students calls for reconsideration.  

If a student is assigned to one of the small schools at BHS, they are also assigned to a single option for the continued study of mathematics, regardless of individual interest, abilities or aspirations. Thus, my freshman daughter, who desires to study and learn Geometry, is placed in the only option available, IMP (Interactive Math Program).  

My wife and I believe that the IMP program is not an appropriate course of instruction for our daughter needs, as it doesn’t offer a complete instruction in common mathematical techniques and falls short of logically interrelating core mathematical concepts. Our specific concerns are: IMP does not emphasize the language of mathematics. (symbols, vocabulary, structure); IMP does not offer sufficient examples of the use and techniques of mathematics in problem solving; IMP does not encourage practicing technical aspects or assigning repetitive exercises as needed to reinforce and to imprint the language; and IMP fails to allow that the language of mathematics has any merits onto itself as a worthwhile discipline. 

But, whether you are a proponent of or in opposition to one approach over the other, I believe the one common interest and goal we likely share is to obtain the best educational opportunities possible for our children.  

BHS, and the School Board, are entrusted and duty bound to provide these opportunities, within available means, for each and every student. However, we fail to understand why they would permanently seal certain doors of opportunity to a significant number of students, based solely on small school affiliation. A student’s aptitudes, interests or aspirations are not considered. 

Students, freshmen in particular, should be encouraged to explore options, interest and test their abilities while in high school to better find their path in life. Most freshmen don’t have a whole life plan about what interest they may pursue in the future or what job opportunities they may hope for down the line. However, as currently implemented, the small schools rigidly deny a reasonable and available educational opportunity to a select group of students.  

IMP should not be a mandatory course of study for or the only available option for every individual student within the small schools.  

We implore the BHS administration and Berkeley School District to reinstate additional academic course options, specifically math, to students within AHA, and the other small schools. Students currently assigned to IMP should be allowed the option to pursue an alternate course in mathematical study without delay. A rigid and inflexible system that limits available educational options may risk diminishing a students’ future interest and opportunities in education and life. 

Charles Bryant, Catharine Trowbridge 

BHS Parents 

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Building Heights 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In my Oct. 1 letter, NIMBY, I praised Gerry Tierney’s commentary. 24 article on the issue of building heights in Berkeley. In the letter immediately following mine, Mr. Tierney is challenged by Arthur Fonseca for his statement that “the residents of Manhattan have the lowest carbon footprint of anyone living in North America.” Mr. Fonseca scoffs at this by offering the absurd example of “a campesino living in the mountains of southern Mexico”—absurd and specious because this entire debate is about living in cities. Dismissing that, however, let’s look at the logic behind Mr. Tierney’s perhaps counter-intuitive statement: 

Consider a hundred people living in a Manhattan high-rise with well-engineered central heating and cooling. Now let’s put them in Allentown PA, a city of Berkeley’s population but a climate similar to NYC. They live in older buildings of two to six stories, with a far greater ratio of surface area to floor space than the high-rise, heated by steam radiators and space heaters and cooled by energy-sucking window-mounted air conditioners. Guess which hundred have the lower carbon footprint. Add to this the fact that few of those in Manhattan own cars, depending entirely on a tightly integrated transit system, while most of those in Allentown, as in Berkeley, still need cars to get to work and school. I hope this may offer Mr. Fonseca and others a glimmer of understanding. 

Jerry Landis 

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Berkeley Health Center 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Berkeley City Council may pass a resolution to help the non-profit clinic to renew their county funded medical insurance program contract. It may say, “Resolved that the City Council communicates to our County Supervisor to use his office to renew the CMSP (County Medical Services program) contract for the Berkeley Health Center for Men and Women.”  

This center located in 2908 Ellsworth has been serving the low-income people of Berkeley with distinction. For the last one year, Dr. Donald Golden has been heading it who has re-invigorated its service. He is a professor at two schools: UCSF medical school training its medical residents and the Samuel Meritt College training its physical assistant interns. He has taken a 25 percent pay cut in order to return to Berkeley, where he was born, and serve the people here.  

Recently, the center’s CMSP contract has been denied under the pretext that there were some program violations. However, all that was under the past administration. Since a year ago Dr. Golden had started to head it, the center has been scrupulously following all the rules. Why should the indigent citizens of Berkeley suffer for the mistakes that a past administration did?  

Irshad Alam 

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Portrait of a Crime Wave 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

We white people get respect and help when we need it from police officers, and we commend them. But what can one think, I ask you, of the alleged attitude and behavior of those reported about by Carol Denney in “Portrait of a Crime Wave”? It would be good to have a follow-up for the whole story. 

Carmel Hara 

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Music at Brower Center 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Cheers to public discourse! This letter is in response to Tree Fitzpatrick’s letter to the editors of the Berkeley Daily Planet, on Oct. 1 and titled “Brower Center Noise.”  

Ms. Fitzpatrick attended an informational meeting we recently held for nearby residents to visit with the owners and management of Gather Restaurant, formerly called Terrain, slated to open in the coming months in the David Brower Center. After meeting with us, she sent an email that expressed the same concerns she shared in her letter to the editor. Clearly, we did not do a good enough job of explaining our plans for live music. Below is a verbatim copy of the letter we sent in response:  

Thank you for taking the time to visit with us at our Public Information Meeting on Tuesday to share your thoughts. It is important to us to know our neighbors and we appreciate you making the effort to introduce yourself. We completely understand how important your home is to you and agree that it should be a comfortable place for you to live. You have stated your concerns clearly, and as a result, we can do our best to address them. 

We would like to address your stated concern that we plan to “blare live, albeit acoustic, music into my home nine hours a day.” We agree that nine hours of live music a day would be overwhelming and we hope you will be relieved to know that our plans are much simpler. 

Our foremost goal is to create a place for community to gather, to offer healthy food that supports our local farmers and the local economy, and to help make Berkeley an even more wonderful City than it already is. Our plan to provide live music is intended only to enhance this experience and to provide opportunities for local artists to share their music at limited times 

To clarify our intentions, we plan to offer live music only at select times on select days during the week. For example, here is a sample music schedule: Monday, 12-2 p.m, Tuesday, 5-7 p.m., Wednesday, 12-2 p.m., Thursday, 5-7 p.m., Friday, 12-2 p.m. and 5-7 p.m., Saturday, 7-9 p.m., Sunday, 12-2 p.m. 

One of our primary goals at Gather is to be mindful at all times. We read your note carefully and particularly noticed your comment, “I can’t imagine how a group of business people could be so insensitive to the real needs of the real humans living nearby.” This is a powerful statement that we truly take to heart and it helps us to understand the depth of your concerns. We are committed to being a business that puts people first. Towards that goal, please know that our door is always open to you, and to all of our neighbors living nearby. We appreciate your proactive communication and welcome your thoughts at all times. 

Ari Derfel, CEO 

and the Gather Restaurant Team 

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Afghanistan 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

We’ve done our duty, vented our spleen, had our politically correct catharsis, it’s high time we turned back and looked at our history in Vietnam and the Russian’s history in Afghanistan. We need to exit now—with a red ribbon on the tail between our legs. 

Mitch Vanbourg 

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Insurance Racket 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

What’s wrong with this picture? You attend a wedding, and when the preacher says “you may kiss” someone steps in and kisses both partners. Then he wants to go on the honeymoon! The interloper at the wedding is the Insurance Racket, and he looks a lot like Senator Max Baucus. The married couple is you and your doctor. Majorities of doctors and patients in recent polls want a government option, or single payer, and the U.S. Senate wants to keep the insurance interloper. The insurance racket supports this, and has bought the Senate with a paltry amount of campaign and lobbyist cash. So the public must look to the Fourth Estate, battered as it might be, for editorials exposing this scam and supporting what the people want, a public option for health care. 

Tom Price 

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Fix Health Care 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

My younger brother died from cancer at 40. His job as a poorly paid electrician in a struggling small business in Fort Worth, Texas, did not provide health care. Early on, he knew he was sick, but his lack of resources stopped him from seeking costly help, and his pride stopped him from exploring other options like free clinics. By the time he did seek care, it was too late. Among other expensive intervention in a noble effort to save his life, he had an $80,000 operation on his skull, leaving him with a scar from ear to ear. Until his dying day, the hospital tortured him with bills. With early intervention, no doubt costing much less, he may still be alive today living his dream of starting his own business of house renovation. Instead, I have this bitter memory of a failed health system that can’t provide for us all. I often hear heartening stories of people who have beaten the scourge of cancer. Early intervention is a common theme in these tales. Who chose to leave my brother out? Please help President Obama and Congress fix this. 

Russell Kilday-Hicks 

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DEAD PEASANT INSURANCE  

POLICIES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I learned about a new low in corporate greed from Michael Moore’s latest documentary, Capitalism: A Love Story, which, by the way, I highly recommend. It is called “dead peasant” insurance. Companies take out secret insurance policies on their employees and name themselves as beneficiaries. And we are not talking about key employees since losing their expertise, knowledge and contacts of top managers can be financially devastating for companies. Rather, companies also write policies for rank-and-file employees. When the employee dies, the company, not his or her family, gets the insurance money.  

In Moore’s movie, Wal-Mart took out a secret policy on a cake decorator, and when she died, Wal-Mart received $80,000, but her family received nothing but medical bills and funeral costs. I cannot take out an insurance policy on my neighbor’s life with me as the beneficiary because I have no insurable interest in his life. That would be an invitation for me, if I was that kind of guy, to bump him off.  

Insurance is largely regulated by the individual states and, in the 1980s, many states permitted these type of insurance policies. Congress over the years has tried to crack down on the practice, but the insurance industry so far has managed to derail reforms. Hundreds of companiesCincluding Dow Chemical, Procter & Gamble, Wal-Mart, Walt Disney and Winn-Dixie—have purchased this insurance on more than 6 million rank-and-file workers. Companies pay $8 billion in premiums each year for such coverage. The policies make up more than 20 percent of the all the life insurance sold each year and companies expect to reap more than $9 billion in tax breaks from these policies over the next five years. The policies are treated as whole life policies. Therefore, companies can borrow against the policies. And the death benefits are tax-free. No one knows how many corporate-owned policies are issued on executives versus rank-and-file workers. Wal-Mart alone had taken out about 350,000 such policies between 1993 and 1996. Nestle USA had policies on 18,000 workers in 2002. Enron had $500 million in policies on workers.  

Congress should ban the practice for rank-and-file employees or at the very minimum require companies to obtain employees’ permission for the policies. 

Ralph E. Stone 

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STILL IN AFGHANISTAN? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Are we there to win? Everyone wants to win but no one knows what it means to win. Thus, it is possible that we have already won (or lost) and don’t know it. 

Are we there to succeed? Of course we are. The problem is that over the years our goal has shifted so much that what counts for success today is not what counted for success yesterday and success tomorrow may be different still. 

Are we there to strengthen our security? If so, then concern for security has burst the bounds of reason; you have to stretch imagination into the realm of fantasy to see in such a distant and desolate land a serious threat to our well-being.  

Finally, are we there to defeat the terrorists? Terrorists are, so to say, in the eyes of the beholder; one man’s (woman’s) terrorist is another man’s hero. Defeating terrorists is like a video game, a challenge with no standing in the real world.  

We can capture and kill them, but terrorists, like the poor, will always be with us. It’s not because they are so numerous, smart or determined, nor that they hide their identity and move freely among us. The real problem is that no one can ever be sure a given terrorist act will be the last.  

Marvin Chachere 

San Pablo 

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NFL Football 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Football 

Now that the NFL has reluctantly acknowleged the obvious truth that their sport causes players head injuries leading to quantifiable brain damage, how many decades will it be before we acknowlege that watching poeple injure and maim themselves causes brain injury to the fans?  

Sam Greyson