"we can not transfer people out... " - Thomas Lord

Thomas Lord would benefit by reading the most recent study of San Francisco's homeless/street population, who are indeed from San Francisco. And if he takes a closer look at Berkeley's policies he would discover that our community has for years been "transfer(ing) people out" in a variety of ways. All it takes is the current city council majority's dedication to providing a severely inadequate number shelter beds, low-income housing, and case management money for voucher placement, which has been the case for decades. This is not because Berkeley doesn't have the money. This is because Berkeley's city council majority doesn't want poor people here, preferring to build high-end condos. -more-

Medicaid is the nation's largest health insurer. About 70 million low income Americans are its beneficiaries compared to about 50 million who are covered by Medicare. In California, Medi-Cal, which is what the State calls its Medicaid program, has over 12 million members, which is more than twice the number of California residents who are enrolled in Medicare. Medi-Cal recipients include, incidentally, many small business owners and those who are self-employed. -more-

Community leader and neighborhood activist David Allen Baker, 72, died on July 8, 2015, after a long and difficult illness.

David will be missed, not only by his personal friends, but also by all Berkeleyans who have benefitted and continue to benefit from his efforts. David was one of a dwindling handful of neighborhood stewards in the north end of Willard Neighborhood, between Dwight Way and Derby Street. Whatever remains of that neighborhood’s charm and livability is in large part due to David’s efforts.

David was a man of brilliant energy who had studied English literature, but whose primary passion was science, especially astronomy, evolutionary biology, and ecology. Charismatic and inspiring, contrary and cantankerous, David was also sociable, compassionate, and generous in both spirit and in deed. Although his life was far from easy, he determined to meet every day with joyous spontaneity. He loved nature, especially the star-gazing in the Pinnacles, and I fondly remember our rambling camping trips through Mendocino and Monterey Counties.

David bought his beloved Victorian house on Parker Street in the 1960s. For decades he looked after the local common spaces and even the properties of nearby absentee landlords. He viewed the urban landscape, no matter how damaged, as an ecosystem worth protecting. Though fully aware that it was city policy to let students ruin his and other neighborhoods around campus, he looked after his student neighbors with grandfatherly affection. However, he brazenly confronted anyone who impinged on others’ rights in the arenas of noise and light pollution, vandalism, and other blights. -more-

UC paid former president Mark Yudof $546000 in the year after he resigned

Berkeley Fails to Apply for Affordable Housing Grants, Loses Out

Berkeley's most active development consultant pitches new housing project

The real Jade Helm: Berkeley PD show citizens what police militarization looks like during manhunt for laundromat robber

Berkeley should revisit its balcony code changes

“If you want to talk about a nation that could pose an existential threat to the United States, I’d have to point to Russia. And if you look at their behavior, it’s nothing short of alarming.”

Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr. Chair U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff

“This is not about Ukraine. Putin wants to restore Russia to its former position as a great power. There is a high probability that he will intervene in the Baltics to test NATO’s Article 5.”

Anders Fogh Rassmussen, former Head of NATO

It is not just defense secretaries and generals employing language that conjure up the ghosts of the past. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton used a “Munich” analogy in reference to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and a common New York Times description of Russia is “revanchist.” These two terms take the Ukraine crisis back to 1938, when fascist Germany menaced the world.

Yet comparing the civil war in the Ukraine to the Cold War—let alone Europe on the eve of World War II—has little basis in fact. Yes, Russia is certainly aiding insurgents in eastern Ukraine, but there is no evidence that Moscow is threatening the Baltics, or even the rest of Ukraine. Indeed, it is the West that has been steadily marching east over the past decade, recruiting one former Russian ally or republic after another into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Nor did the Russians start this crisis. -more-

For persons with a severe mental illness, it is helpful to recognize symptoms early, and to steer clear of a relapse before it happens, rather than allowing the illness to sneak up on us. If we are undertreated or overstressed, symptoms can occur and judgment can become compromised. This can then lead to becoming "noncompliant" because insight has been obliterated by symptoms. -more-

It’s the responsibility of a presidential frontrunner to set the terms of the debate. On July 13th, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton did this in a New York city speech, describing her plans to address economic inequality and related concerns. -more-

On July 14th, the U.S., China, France, Germany, Great Britain, and Russia reached an agreement with Iran to “to limit Tehran’s nuclear ability in return for lifting international oil and financial sanctions.” In reality, the negotiations were less about curbing nuclear proliferation and more about international trade and U.S. prestige. On balance, this Iran nuclear agreement is realistic, pragmatic and, on balance, good for the U.S. -more-

West Edge Opera’s Music Director, Jonathan Khuner, has close family ties to the music of Alban Berg. Jonathan’s father was a string player who launched an international career when he performed in the première of Berg’s Lyric Suite Quartet in Germany in 1927. Later, Jonathan says he debated with his father over the respective merits of Berg’s two operas, Wozzeck (1925) and Lulu (1937). Judging from the passion for Lulu showed by Jonathan Khuner in bringing this difficult opera to West Edge Opera, I think he clearly prefers Lulu to Wozzeck.

This is a preference I wholeheartedly share. I have now seen Lulu five times, and it never fails to make a positive impression. Wozzeck, on the other hand, can drive me up the wall, as it did in a Vienna Staatsoper production I saw in Berlin in 1987. Since that time, I have assiduously avoided Wozzeck. However, when West Edge Opera scheduled Berg’s Lulu for performance in an abandoned train station in Oakland, I made sure to attend the opening night show, on Saturday, July 25. I was not disappointed. -more-

Every year, the Mendocino Music Festival--finishing this weekend its 29th season of a panoply of musical styles, from classical and contemporary orchestral pieces to big band, from jazz vocals and choral groups to international folk and popular music---stages an opera, inviting the public to the afternoon rehearsals leading up to a single evening presentation, this year producing Rossini's comic masterpiece, 'The Barber of Seville,' preceded by a lecture given by stage director and baritone Eugene Brancoveanu, who also sang the title role of the rascally barber Figaro. -more-

--One of the rarer of Shakespearean plays is in its last weekend: 'The Tragedy Cymbeline, King of Britain,' produced as early as 1611, is onstage for four more shows--two on Sunday--outdoors under the stars (and a Sunday matinee) at Forest Meadows Amphitheater, Dominican University in San Rafael, the home of Marin Shakespeare, whose artistic director Robert Currier directs a cast featuring Paul Abbott as in the title role.

With all the trimmings--a secret wedding, a young woman disguised as a man, a young hero visited by the ghost of his father--'Cymbeline' sounds at times like a compendium, too, of The Bard's plays of various genres, tragic, comic, romantic ... Indeed, academics have long argued over whether it's a Tragedy, as titled, or a Romance, like The Winter's Tale, which it in some ways resembles. -more-

Woody Allen's Irrational Man is a mildly amusing film (arguably without a single major laugh line) that revisits the director's familiar neurotic landscapes through the filter of Abe Lucas, a depressed, alcoholic philosophy professor. Once a famous author (and equally famous as a womanizer), Abe is now reduced to bouncing between jobs at second-tier universities. In the first scene, he's barreling down a narrow country road to the music of "The In Crowd" with one hand on the wheel and the other hand on a whiskey flask. (Here's an odd take-away from the film: Have you ever noticed how "The In Crowd" resembles the gospel standard, "Wade in the Water"?)

In his first meeting with the administrators at a leafy northeastern college, Abe (mumbled to perfection by Joaquin Phoenix in his patented meta-Brando mode) can barely offer one-word grunts to the effusing academics eager to sing his praises. But, although he's ill at ease and monosyllabic in social settings, when he's in the classroom, he is in his element—discussing and dissing existentialism with an ease and panache that leaves his young students spellbound.

Abe is unusual character. On one hand he is presented as a world-weary professor and, at the same time, a disillusioned social activist who has reportedly spent time trying to save the world's poor in foreign lands and also toke time to comfort the victims of Hurricane Rita in the waterlogged precincts of New Orleans.

It's not enough that Abe can find no comfort in Heidegger or Kant, his social activism has also convinced him that engaging in small acts of altruism to solve big problems is also a useless waste of time. Existence in empty; life is meaningless; Woody Allen is in the house. -more-