Features

BERKELEY BUDGET 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

I find it highly amusing to read all the whining about the Berkeley budget when Berkeley is about to spend a couple of million dollars for the rich peoples’ amusement by replacing perfectly serviceable boat docks down at the Berkeley Marina. This approximately $2 million is going to only maybe 20 percent of the slips, so they’re going to be spending more in the future. 

I suggest they be a little more socially responsible and maintain what they’ve got and put those resources to housing the latest round of boat people they kicked out. 

Carl Max 

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LACKING SPECIFICS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The recent letter from Latinos Unidos criticizes some board candidates and touts two candidates who are running. But they neglect specifics. What exactly did the two school board members do or not do? What are the “innovative and effective solutions” which they didn’t “prioritize?” And what is the “vision” of the two candidates? How do they propose to achieve “excellence, equity, and achievement for all students?” 

Without specific details, it is impossible to take their letter seriously. 

Jenifer Steele 

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BAREFOOT CHILDREN 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

A recent article cited a lieutenant in Iraq who called his mother in Danville and told her that the heat makes it hard for barefoot Iraqi children to get about. Consequently, a collection of sandals for Iraqi children was initiated at a local school. With religious fury the shoes poured in. 

Piles and piles of shoes poured in, many donated by loving children who understood that other children have no shoes to protect their feet from the hot, hard ground. They don’t know, because we don’t tell them, that the lieutenant and his comrades are killing Iraqi fathers and mothers and yes, even barefoot children, because they live on land which has oil and waterways coveted by our government. Nobody tells the lieutenant and his comrades, either, but everybody knows. 

The husband of a friend of mine has lived for many years in a mental health institution. Every night he dreams of little brown, bare-bottomed children running away. He was told by his commanding officer in Vietnam to “shoot anything that moves.” He was a good soldier and he followed orders. 

Piles of shoes may soothe our consciences, but a dead child is still a dead child, with or without shoes.  

Lillian Euchenhofer 

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DRIVER LICENCES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As a life-long Democrat, I applaud Gov. Schwarzenegger’s veto of Assembly Bill 2895 to grant driver licenses to undocumented immigrants. I was told by a deputy of Loni Hancock that such licenses would improve traffic safety, but he provided no supporting evidence. Common sense, as well as my personal experience as a result of a temporary illness, suggests that unlicensed people drive more carefully, not less carefully, in order to avoid detection. 

A reported 1,000 undocumented immigrants cross from Mexico into the U.S. each day, and the U.S. Census Bureau projected that California population will increase 52 percent between 2000 and 2025. We need to plan and pay for expanded infrastructure which is not being done, for budgetary reasons, at the present time. Encouraging or partially legitimizing undocumented immigration with driver’s licenses demeans other individuals who follow the rules, both in the native and the host country (my legally adopted son was born in the Dominican Republic). I have not heard good reasons from my fellow liberal Democrats for granting such licenses except political expediency. 

Robert Gable  

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JOHN SELAWSKY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Latinos Unidos commentary opposing the re-election of Berkeley School Board President John Selawsky (“Latino Group Praises Board Candidates,” Daily Planet, Sept. 28-30) was not only misdirected but entirely omitted any mention of John’s many significant accomplishments as board president. 

It is critical to understand that within the first two months of John’s term, he inherited a fiscal nightmare (the district was $5-$6 million in the red at the time) that threatened to implode the school district and likely force it into a state receivership similar to the state takeover of the Oakland School District. 

Under John’s leadership, a successful three-year recovery plan was implemented that rebuilt the district’s fiscal, personnel and payroll systems. Without this recovery plan, the challenges within the Berkeley Unified School District would likely have been very difficult or impossible to address. 

Working with Berkeley Arts in Education, John spearheaded the effort to maintain art and music program needs for all of Berkeley’s middle schools. Moreover, John has overseen the successful transition to establish “small school” academic settings in district schools—a crucial component toward improved academic success across the district.  

As a middle school teacher, I appreciate John’s professional integrity, knowledge and accessibility as a board member. His board colleagues selected John as board president for these qualities. John is also the father of a Berkeley High School student. 

John is endorsed by Alameda County Schools Superintendent Sheila Jordan, veteran BUSD teacher Jessie Anthony, Community College Trustee Darryl Moore, Mayor Tom Bates and dozens of community members. 

Chris Kavanagh  

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KEEPING SCORE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The president was applauded at the beginning of his campaign for declaring that given a choice between defending Saddam Hussein and defending America, “I’ll choose America, every time.” Last week using similar logic Mr. Bush repeated what has become a campaign leitmotiv: “If we stop fighting terrorists in Iraq, they would be free to plan attacks in America and other countries.”  

No one of sane mind advocates giving up the struggle against terrorism. Furthermore, there were no terrorists in Iraq before the occupation and that means his invasion of Iraq was not to fight terrorists. Nevertheless, despite or maybe on account of such meaningless statements, Mr. Bush maintains a high approval rating. 

The same logic is used in the president’s unilateral promise: “I will never cede to other nations responsibility for the security of the American people.” 

The art of politics requires the ability to fashion statements that resonate among voters. Politicians score big if they say things so devoid of meaning that they cannot later be held accountable. In this respect Mr. Bush consistently scores higher than Mr. Kerry. 

Marvin Chachere  

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THE PAPER TRAIL 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

There has been a ridiculous amount of debate over the feasibility of a paper trail for electronic voting in order to later recount the votes cast to verify the tally—how impossible and/or expensive it would be, etc. Why, I don’t understand. Every time I buy groceries at any of at least four of my local food chains I get a highly itemized receipt telling me not only what I bought but how much, the regular price, the sale price, the quantity, any tax charged, and the amount of money I saved, the date, and the name, address and phone number of the store, and whether or not I am entered into some contest. I go to my local library and leave not only with my books but a printed receipt of the name of the book, its author, bar code number, when it is due, the present date, my name and the name and hours of the branch I visited.  

Yet the argument is that it would be impossible to do this sort of thing on a ballot! Let me point out that voting is not a peculiar, frivolous activity people get up to in a democracy but the very heart of democracy itself! The fact that here in the U.S. we have people who don’t vote because they are sufficiently ignorant about what’s on a ballot that they think there is nothing there for them since they don’t like the choices of candidates at the top only reflects how poorly we educate our populace. Even an enterprising chicken can find a whole corn kernel in what the cow leaves behind—surely there is something on a ballot which affects the voter such that a choice is desirable and welcome. It isn’t necessary for a paper ballot receipt to print out every item of choice available on the ballot, but simply the choices the voter has actually made—just as my supermarket sales receipt does not print out the name of everything available in the store but only what I bought at that time. 

We have sent people to the moon, we have cloned sheep, we have persuaded stem cells to turn into various new body cells—but somehow we find it too difficult to provide a paper trail to make sure there is an accurate recount in an election if any question arises! The makers of voting equipment with ties to particular political parties tell us to trust them, their software is honorable, impeccable and fail-proof as well! Remember Saint Ronald? “Trust, but verify!” Nevada recently managed this. So where in hell are the rest of us?  

Marcia Frendel 

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TAX MEASURES 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

Mayor Tom Bates should start telling the truth to the taxpayers of Berkeley. The increased taxes are to pay for the outrageously generous salaries, benefits and perks, enjoyed by members of the city’s bloated bureaucracy. City employees, unlike other municipalities, do not contribute to their own retirement fund. They can retire at age 50 at as much as 90 percent of their highest yearly salary for the rest of their lives. This fact alone will keep Berkeley in growing budget deficits year after year and the City of Berkeley will have to continue to raise taxes each year to pay for it! 

When you add the city-negotiated, automatic, five percent yearly salary increase, health and dental care (including family members), city-paid life insurance, city-paid membership to the YMCA, subsidies for public transportation, 14 sick days a year, three weeks paid vacation after four years, every holiday known to man, free parking, and the list goes on and on, you begin to have a real problem. We have more city employees per capita than any city in the East Bay and they can be neither fired or laid off. Mayor Bates signed away any right to renegotiate a contract and then has the nerve to come and ask the tax payers for more money or he is going to close the libraries! 

The people of Berkeley have to say no to any new taxes. They must demand an audit of the city finances and a renegotiation of contracts with the over-numerous and over-compensated city workers. They must wake up and realize that every time a project is approved for one of the numerous “nonprofits,” that parcel of property is taken off the tax rolls. The budget problem is then compounded because the “residents” of these now tax-exempt properties are the very ones who use a disproportionate amount of Berkeley’s generous services and resources. Taxpayers take a double hit. 

The City of Berkeley has been very smart in systematically increasing the number of renters and, therefore, their chances of passing tax increases. If Berkeley was truly concerned with helping families and improving neighborhoods, they would promote home ownership and sell condos instead they are building apartments at break neck speed and keeping people renters all their lives. But, homeowners, of course, bear the tax burden and are less likely to continually vote to raise taxes and more likely to ask questions and demand accountability form Berkeley city government. It is time for Berkeley to get a reality check instead of a blank check. Vote no on all tax measures.  

Michael Larrick  

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A CROOK 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates, has been a devious crook since way back. He now calls for a tax increase in Berkeley. He ought to cough up the money he misappropriated! Mr. Bates is the kind of Democrat who gives his party a black eye. 

Max Alfert 

Albany 

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BETTY OR NORINE? 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

Hillside District 6 was shaped by dedicated early citizens who melded homes and byways with the natural environment. We must continue that stewardship and elect a councilmember who knows this district via shoe sole route, who will protect the essence of this very special place. We need Norine Smith. 

When the shocking plans to destroy the most beautiful section of Codornices Creek at 1301 Oxford St. came forward, Norine protested, portraying a tree holding the bank, an essential component of a natural creek. The green canopy that attracted the first farm in Berkeley is now gone. A treeless channel has been substituted to make way for a driveway wide enough to load six buses. The current representative of District 6, Betty Olds, voted for it! Old’s aide and appointee to the Planning Commission had been instrumental in preventing any expansion on the site by the Chinese Christian Church; then her own congregation purchased the site and brought forward a plan for 35,000 square feet of development and Betty Olds voted for it! 

When a plan more recently came forward to remove a hundred trees from the Marina in order to pave a “spur trail” next to the south shore, Norine Smith led the protest as a member of the Waterfront Commission. Given the limited green space on the south shore of the marina and the necessity of boats crossing to the dock, kids crossing to the little beach to cross this new “spur trail,” and a more than adequate parallel roadway a block away, the proposal was a dangerous and destructive use of Bay Trail funds—funds still needed to complete Bay Trail. Betty Olds voted for the “spur,” to remove trees and widen paving in its place. 

Betty Olds has gone along with many development plans for certain developers that violate our adopted policies. For example, new buildings cantilever out over narrow sidewalks downtown so that there can never be effective street trees—even where the adopted Downtown Plan specifically says wider setbacks should be provided along Oxford Street and no other open space is being provided for all the new residences!  

Norine Smith knows our city as a pedestrian and will protect a human-scale, planet-friendly Berkeley. Betty Olds has demonstrated that she will not protect our heritage. 

It’s past time for a change. 

Eva Bansner 

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OAKLAND CRIME 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Kudos to Anthony Moore for his excellent letter in the Sept. 28 Daily Planet. 

Frankly, I have long been appalled at J. Douglas Allen-Taylor’s contorted defenses of the lumpen criminal element in Oakland ( “Police Chief Oversteps Bounds in Banning Shrines,” Daily Planet, Sept. 24-27). There is nothing cute or charming or funky about Oakland’s criminal element. Leftist apologias for underclass crime have longed played into the hands of the Right as the elections of the past 40 years have demonstrated. Nor does the law abiding element of the whole community, regardless of race, benefit from the permissive attitudes toward anti-social behavior indulged in by various public officials. 

That said, I do support the Daily Planet’s call to vote for Prop. 66 to reform the utter arbitrariness of the three strikes laws. One of the more asinine attacks on Prop. 66 came from our right-wing mayor, Jerry Brown, who by the way has done nothing to fight crime in Oakland. Let’s remember that when this joker runs for attorney general in 2006. 

Michael P. Hardesty 

Oakland 

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BRACE YOURSELVES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Voters in Berkeley and others in California hope that in November Bush will be kicked out of the office he was put into by the Supreme Court. 

Unfortunately, after the media took Howard Dean and John Edwards out of the running for the Democrat nomination to be president, the hope for exciting speeches and a lively campaign for ending the disaster in Iraq ended. 

The Kerry campaign seems to think it will win the election on the basis of Kerry being a better war president than Bush. He says he will continue the Bush War in Iraq. The very reasons for Kerry and many others to had for opposing the war in Vietnam and Richard Nixon are the same reasons of those opposing the Bush War in Iraq today. The U.S.A. does not need another “war president.” 

The U.S.A. does not need more billions of dollars to spend on the war. Instead of admitting the war was a mistake and is making this country less safe, not more safe from attacks by those who hate what the Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest of the Bush gang are doing in the Middle East.  

Republicans have gotten control of the commercial TV stations and Dick Cheney, and Dr. Strangelove Rumsfeld and Karl Rove are having their lies believed by over half of the American voters. It was a propaganda coup. If Bush Gang win this election they will also make over the Supreme Court—an issue seldom spoken about by the Kerry campaigners. Berkeley Democrats may think that all those demonstrations at the GOP convention reflect the mood of the rest of America, but unfortunately they do not. 

Unless someone convinces John Kerry that his present campaign strategy will lead to his defeat in November we had better brace ourselves for four more years of Cheney and Rumsfeld in control of the government and W. Bush as their dummy in the White house. 

If you want to know what the U.S.A. will be like then, read what happened in Chili after General Pinochet came to power. 

Max Macks 

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LAURIE CAPITELLI 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As a student and renter on a limited income, I did not attend the Alligator’s Ball Fundraiser for District 5 Candidate Laurie Capitelli so cannot comment about which developers attended (“Deconstructing the Alligator’s Ball,” Daily Planet, Sept. 24-27.) However, I do know a few things about Capitelli’s record that should alarm all District 5 voters who are concerned about keeping Berkeley an affordable place to live. 

While on the Planning Commission, Laurie Capitelli unsuccessfully attempted to get language into the Berkeley General Plan that would have called for the repeal of rent control. In 2000, he also signed the ballot argument against Measure Y, which helped stop phony owner move-in evictions by real estate speculators. Berkeley voters passed Measure Y with 57 percent of the vote. 

Berkeley Citizens’ Action refused to endorse Capitelli at its meeting on Sunday, precisely because of his record opposing rent control. Nobody benefits if housing is made less affordable except for the real estate industry—which Capitelli has been a part of for over 20 years. Every District 5 voter should think hard before supporting him, and I am extremely disappointed at some progressives for supporting his candidacy because they view him as less objectionable than candidate Barbara Gilbert. 

Fortunately, there is a third candidate running in this race: Jesse Townley. Jesse Townley is the only District 5 candidate who supports rent control, and has been endorsed by City Councilmember Dona Spring, School Board President John Selawsky, and myself. He is also the only District 5 candidate to endorse the four pro-tenant candidates for the Rent Board. Townley deserves our support. 

Paul Hogarth 

Vice-Chair, Berkeley Rent Board  

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MEASURES J AND K 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As the executive director of LifeLong Medical Care, Berkeley’s Community Health Center organization, I have decided to endorse Measures J and K. 

Every day LifeLong provides approximately 300 much needed medical visits to area residents. This amounts to 100,000 visits a year to people who have no insurance, people who have complex health problems, and people who need health services which fit their language or culture. Most of these people would have no other way to get health care except by waiting hours at a local emergency room to get very expensive and inappropriate care. Many, like our elders, also come to LifeLong because they know that we provide the best care available for their particular problem. 

In addition to payments from public insurance, LifeLong relies heavily on government grants and contracts to pay for the care and pharmacy costs for those who have no insurance. In the last several years we have seen those government funds reduced as budget makers at the federal, state and local levels struggle with deficits related to our war spending and tax cuts for the wealthy. When funds are reduced LifeLong is forced to turn away some of the uninsured people who seek care with us or restrict the pharmaceuticals that we can purchase for their care. 

I have decided to endorse Measures J and K because it is time to say, at least at the local level, that we as a community support people getting basic services and that we will not cave into Bush and Schwarzenegger policies. No budgeting process is perfect but Berkeley has done a good job trying to balance its budget and meet all of our needs at the same time. The city needs Measure J to avoid further cuts and it needs Measure K to assure that our kids get the services they need. 

Please support basic services in our community and join me in voting for Measures J and K. 

Marty Lynch 

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A CENTRIPETAL FORCE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’m reading the follow-up book to Bowling Alone and came across this quote in the chapter titled Portland: Rick Seifert, publisher of the Hillsdale Connection: “Mass media are centrifugal. They pull your attention away from the community. A local paper is centripetal, it draws you in.” I thought it applied beautifully to your paper. That chapter, if no other in the book, is well worth a read. 

Dale Smith 

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GETTIN’ BUSY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Are you one of the millions of American who believe George Bush’s policies are bad for our country? 

If so, I urge you not to become discouraged by polls or media coverage of this campaign. Don’t let anything deter you from your objective. If you want to defeat George Bush do everything in your power to register new Democratic voters and get them to the polls. Join a local phone bank calling swing states, write letters to unregistered women in swing states with Mainstream Moms Opposing Bush (www.themmob.com) or go to Nevada or Oregon to help register voters and get out the vote. 

The best political analysts are saying the voter turnout will decide the election. So don’t get discouraged, roll up your sleeves and get busy! 

Carole Bennett-Simmons 

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