Page One

BOSS WOES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Your story on BOSS (“BOSS Accounting Woes Force Cutbacks, Layoffs,” Daily Planet, Oct. 21-23) missed two critical issues that are at the heart of the agency’s financial problems. First, providers of social services pursuant to government contracts are not given the funding to hire the high-priced accounting staff they need. While federal, state and local contracting requirements are becoming more and more complex, these public entities will not give nonprofit groups money to hire the high-skilled administrative and financial support required for such programs. It is easy for local officials to blame BOSS for “failing to upgrade its accounting department” to handle the added bookkeeping complexity, but with the group’s budget being cut there was no new money to provide such an upgrade (and you can imagine how the BOSS employees facing layoffs and benefit cuts would have felt if the agency then went out and hired a high-priced financial officer). Bookkeeping errors due to a lack of highly skilled staff continue to undermine nonprofit groups throughout the Bay Area; this structural problem has only become more evident as cutbacks in the social service budgets have grown. 

Second, the framing of your story as one involving an allegedly poorly managed nonprofit ignores the real villains: the Bush Administration and Republican Congress that has bludgeoned social service funding while lavishing tax breaks on the wealthy. BOSS would not be having any of its problems had their public funding not been decimated, and nearly all homeless serving groups must watch every dollar even in the “good” times. Conservatives love the idea of contracting out social services to the nonprofit sector but then provide the bare minimum of necessary resources. When the downturn comes the blame then all goes to groups like BOSS, while the real perpetrators of the service cuts and layoffs are not held responsible. 

Randy Shaw 

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THE GENERAL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Wesley Clark, a sometime Democrat, made general by being a good soldier in wars that I and many other vigorously opposed--Viet Nam, Kosovo, the Gulf War and others. Now we should admire him for his experience and judgment because he out-militarys Bush!  

There is something wrong with this picture.  

No thanks... 

Margot Smith 

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MORE BOSS WOES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Your recent front page story, “BOSS Accounting Woes Force Cutbacks, Layoffs” (Daily Planet, Oct. 21-23) was very interesting.  

The Building Opportunities for Self Sufficiency (BOSS) agency, a non-profit overseer of several programs to help the East Bay homeless, seems to be plagued by accounting errors and omissions. In the middle of the article it is revealed that BOSS has been staffing the accounting and bookkeeping departments with its former clients: homeless from the streets. So this is not a case of the lunatics running the asylum, but merely of the lunatics auditing the books of the asylum. Hmm. Just what exactly is the root of problems of doing government bookkeeping in the East Bay? Is it the air? Is it the fog? It there a noxious mental drift from Baghdad-by-the-Bay? Or is it merely the coming together of white upper class liberal guilt interacting with the allegedly downtrodden lower classes?  

It seems to be part and parcel of the functioning of the school districts and local governments in the East Bay that they cannot add and subtract dollars and 

cents when attempting to create and maintain budgets. Are these folks all graduates of Oakland and Berkeley public schools? Maybe they are operating under the 

notion that if they don’t add up the bills, that the deficits won’t exist. Dreamland, thy name is East Bay. 

BOSS has placed some 40 homeless into housing with a budget of about $5 million per year: This amounts to $125,000 per formerly homeless person per year. That should cover the rent, I guess. Does it really require 100 staff members to cut rent subsidy checks to forty persons per year? What do the other 99 staff members do in the remaining 51 weeks each year? Assuming that the 40 formerly homeless persons each get $10,000 per year in rent subsidies, this amounts to an overhead rate of over 90 percent. Kids, can you say “boondoggle?” Maybe BOSS needs to hire some outside auditors, say some good Republicans from Florida, à la Arnold? Maybe Berkeley and Oakland could also place “Arithmetic Free Zone” signs on its borders. 

James K. Sayre 

Oakland 

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A FEW POINTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

J. Douglas Allen-Taylor should read Partners in Power by Roger Morris for a thorough critique of the Clintons from the Left. Bill Clinton did indeed physically assault several women over many years. Many of us believe that Clinton has been credibly accused of rape. 

As far as Molly Ivins goes, she is like an old comedy act that was stale forty years (like much liberal thinking in Berkeley). Molly was a shill and an apologist for the Center-Right Clinton policies for years. 

As far as Becky O’Malley’s repeated snide comments on Dean, he is the only genuine anti-war candidate running that has a chance at the nomination and beating Bush. The only “populist” constituency that John Edwards represents is the trial attorneys. Clark voted for Reagan and Bush and Nixon ! He’s no alternative, which is precisely why he is being pushed by the DLC-Clinton crowd. Kerry sold out long ago and has been endorsed by Feinstein, which all one needs to know about him. 

Michael P. Hardesty 

Oakland 

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GOVERNATOR 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Does California really deserve the privilege of voting? Of those who actually take the time to vote, most do not make an informed decision--rather, they vote for who they think is funny, or cool, or perhaps they just vote on a whim. Our last election shows us what completely ridiculous ways the minds of the voters of California can work in. First off, Schwarzenegger is misogynistic and fairly unintelligent. Many have argued that his repeated harassment of women is his own personal business and does not reflect his ability as a politician. This would be true, if these situations were consensual. However, they were not. We have elected a man who does not know that “no” means “no”—not much better than a hormone-driven teenage boy. As for his intelligence, it should be clear to anyone who watched the debate that Schwarzenegger is not very smart. It is disgusting that we would vote for someone whose resume consists mostly of B movies. But, of course, we did elect Reagan as governor and then as president. Other candidates, such McClintock, Bustamante, Camejo, are much more intelligent and had good platforms, while Schwarzenegger’s was barely defined. But, we elected him because he’s a famous household name. Do we even deserve democracy when we aren’t even informed on the issues? We spent billions of dollars that could have been used for welfare or education; billions of dollars that we didn’t have to put on another gubernatorial race because someone decided that since Davis only won by three percent, he shouldn’t be governor. But he still won. Of course, after Bush and Gore, it seems like anything goes. The recall passed. By 54 percent. That’s only 5 percent off. And now all I can say is: time to recall the recall!  

Melissa Steele-Ogus  

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$87,000,000,000  

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As a retired math teacher large numbers get my attention. I revived some skills and did a little arithmetic with the number of dollars the president wants to “do the right thing” in Afghanistan and Iraq.  

The figure 87 followed by nine zeros represents an increase of about 24 percent in the defense budget, at $368 billion it is larger than the combined military spending of our closest allies.  

It also represents roughly the average of the president’s latest tax cut, about $300 for every man, woman and child in the country.  

Put another way, if each person in the country sent the president 83 cents a day for a year he’d have the money he wants. Congress has already allocated the money. So in effect the Bush administration reduced taxes and now takes back a daily average of a few cents more than it gave. 

Finally, $87 billion will enable the president to hang onto the tiger’s tail in Iraq until after the next presidential inauguration.  

Marvin Chachere 

San Pablo 

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GET IN SYNCH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Notice how dark it is in the morning? How more difficult it is to awaken before the sun? It’s more than 4 weeks since the Autumn Equinox (Sept. 21), when daylight and nighttime are of equal duration. Now that days are shorter and nights are longer, our clocks should revert from Daylight Savings back to Standard Time. That is scheduled to happen at the end of October, but it would be better if it were done at the end of September. 

Similarly, in the Spring, we start Daylight Saving Time much later than the Spring Equinox (March 21), thereby loosing precious daylight in the late  

afternoon. 

It’s time to adjust the way we set our clocks. Let’s get better synchronized with the reality of Nature. 

Bruce Joffe 

Piedmont 

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WHAT’S IN A NAME 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Apropos the ongoing flap over PETA’s proposed name change for the town of Rodeo, CA a REAL rodeo is now underway at the San Francisco Cow Palace, the annual Grand National Rodeo & Livestock Show. Legalized cruelty at taxpayers’ expense, some would call it. 

A lobbyist for the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, the event’s sponsor, recently opined in the East Bay Express that the terrified roping calves were not “babies” but “livestock.” In the same spirit of concern, the PRCA has recently changed the name of the calf roping event to “tie-down roping,” a transparent attempt to deflect growing criticism of this brutal activity Can you spell “hypocrisy”? Words DO matter. 

Eric Mills, coordinator 

Action for Animals 

Oakland