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Developer is not for affordable housing 

Editor: 

Patrick Kennedy and his supporters have portrayed him as a friend of affordable housing. Yet in the proposed development at 2700 San Pablo, (now before the City Council), he has allocated just 10 percent of the development for affordable housing - not the 20 percent required by city regulations! In fact, in separate legal action he is trying to undo Berkeley’s regulation concerning that requirement. This is a friend of affordable housing? 

Mr. Kennedy’s definition of a building “story” leaves many of us scratching our heads. His Gaia building - a supposed “seven stories” he says is 106 feet tall.  

That comes out to 15 feet per story. I call that a TALL story. By the same measure a “five story” building at 2700 San Pablo could reach 75 feet! These are the kinds of stories we neighbors fear. 

Bob Kubik Berkeley 

City’s tradition is not free speech, but blocking it 

Editor: 

We should stop pretending that Berkeley attaches special value to free speech.  

Episodes in which a speaker is shouted down or prevented from addressing an audience are commonplace in Berkeley and have been for at least the past thirty years.  

They occur in all of our public forums in the city and on the university campus.  

After each violation of our right to speak, some official complains that our tradition of tolerance has been stained. Mayor Dean is the latest to recite this mantra, which always lacks proposals aimed at enforcing respect for the right to speak and listen freely.  

There are appropriate administrative and legal measures which can always be taken.  

In “The Berkeley Archipelago,” Joseph Lyford defined our principal problem years ago. He said we have accommodated ourselves to the “uncivil conduct of symbolic politics.”  

The Planet could help to restore a civil atmosphere in Berkeley by doing a story that lists all the speeches that have been suppressed by protesters (it makes a long and gaudy list), and updating it whenever necessary.  

Suppression of the right of free speech interferes with everyone’s right to listen, learn, and form opinions of his or her own.  

If we change our ways, eventually Berkeley will be a community which really does have a right to take pride in a tradition of free speech.  

Phil McArdle 

Berkeley 

Citizens can influence three-strikes outcomes 

Editor: 

Since passage of California’s notorious three strikes law a few judges up and down the state have refused to preside over cases where conviction would mandate a “three strikes” 25-years-to-life sentence.  

Some district attorneys have refused to prosecute a third-strike case when conviction would result in a long sentence, hugely disproportionate to past expectations. But, unfortunately, both altruistic DAs and judges need to earn a living.  

To nullify the three strikes law, we the citizenry must look to ourselves; called to jury criminal cases, anyone can help affect needed reform - without loss of time or money.  

Questioned by judge and attorneys in California’s criminal courts, every prospective juror should ask if the case is a third felony case.  

If told it is, he or she should state that he or she is opposed to the three strikes law and, if impaneled, conscience dictates that he or she must vote for acquittal.  

If information is refused as to whether or not it is a third felony case, a prospective juror should state that their conscience also requires them to acquit.  

Few can welcome jury duty for its meager pay. Declaring oneself unable to serve impartially as juryman when one’s conscience says a trial’s outcome can only be unjust will bring rich recompense in one’s pride at setting a good example which may thereby be spread and grow to stifle the three strikes law.  

Judith Segard Hunt 

Berkeley 

Analysis shows Gore won  

Editor: 

Just as the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese inspired President Roosevelt to declare Dec. 7, 1941 as a date which will live in infamy, I will declare Dec. 13, 2000 as a date that will live in infamy, as this was the day we learned that our votes didn’t count; as the loser of the 2000 presidential election suddenly became the winner through a complicated and calculated coup d’etat.  

Let me state right off the bat that I am not a diehard Gore supporter and therefore am not suffering from sour grapes syndrome. However, I do believe in the sanctity of our right to vote and choose our leaders through fair elections but this election was not fair. Far from it.  

Like many Americans, I became confused by all the various lawsuits, pregnant chads and the like, and felt compelled to do some homework. If I could make sense of this mess, I thought to myself, I could have a deeper understanding of our political system. 

After doing some research, I came to the following cut and dried conclusion. Vice President Al Gore won this election. He won the popular vote and with his victory in Florida, the electoral vote as well.  

You may be asking yourself, what victory in Florida? Didn’t the supreme court settle that matter once and for all? Yes, the supreme court did make its decision in Bush’s favor but it was a politically biased one as I discovered.  

Following are some of the reasons I came to that conclusion: 

The Miami Herald commissioned a statistical analysis of voting patterns in all Florida’s precincts to determine what would have been the result of the election, had there been no problems with chads or butterfly ballots. The result - Al Gore wins by more that 20,000 votes as opposed to the mere 100 or so officially certified for Bush. This study was reviewed and confirmed to be accurate by several of the nation’s top statisticians.  

Steven Doig, a professor at Arizona State University and an expert in computer assisted reporting, had the following to say about the analysis: “I’m no psychic. I don’t know what they really intended to do, but I do know that almost anywhere in that margin, Gore wins. You can argue about where in the range it should be.”  

Mr. Doig also noted the following: 

1) Urban democratic strongholds such as Broward and Palm Beach counties, both punch-card counties, were nearly three times as likely to have their ballots rejected as those in optical counties. The rejection rate for punch-card counties was 3.9 percent.  

2) 11,000 of the 23,000 projected for Gore in the study would come from Palm Beach County.  

3) Only 11 percent of the precincts recorded no discarded ballots. 

The analysis even tested higher percentages of non-votes, ranging from 10 percent to 90 percent of the discarded ballots. Gore won in all instances.  

Perhaps the most disturbing of my findings, though, is of how the African American vote in Florida may have been suppressed or at least compromised.  

ChoicePoint, a private firm with strong republican ties, was hired by the office of Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris to create a “scrub list” of purported felons.  

Early this year, ChoicePoint handed over to Ms. Harris’s office, a list of 8,000 ex-felons to scrub from their list of voters. It turned out that none of the 8,000 were ever guilty of a felony, only misdemeanors.  

Moreover, it is estimated that in Florida, where 173,000 men and women were on Katherine Harris’s “purge list,” at least 30 percent of black men were not allowed to vote.  

In a state where 93 percent of the African American vote was for Gore, it would be reasonable to assume that a large percentage of these men would have voted for Gore.  

And to put the icing on the coup d’etat cake, was Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who voted in favor of upholding the Leon County rulings on absentee ballots. Funny that little was written about the fact that both Scalia’s sons worked in the very law firms that represented Mr. Bush in both the federal and state courts. Should he have rescued himself from the monumental task in front of him? You bet he should have.  

So there you have it. This is the part that scares and angers me. Bush knows if the votes are counted he lost. He knows that he lost the popular vote and the electoral vote, but yet he uses all the power he can muster from his friends and connections in Florida to prevent the will of the people.  

Yes, Dec. 13, 2000 is a sad date in American history. This is the day our president was upseated in a complex coup d’etat. You will hear the talking heads on TV talk about how the nation must heal and stand behind its new president. But to truly heal, we need to understand the nature of our illness.  

We need to forgive ourselves for allowing this to happen and to create safeguards so it never happens again. After all, we have to live four more years with George W. Bush as our first illegitimate president.  

Steve Pinto 

Albany  

Keep kids on campus and feed them there 

Editor: 

Please help me understand. A logical solution for the lunch time problem at berkeley high and the downtown area is to be keep students on campus, which is being attempted by providing vendors. Whatever happened to school lunch programs and students bringing their own lunches? Are schools no longer providing lunch for its students? What about making a school rule to keep students on campus during lunch? 

Suzan Bollich 

Berkeley