Opinion

Editorials

Editorial: Getting WMD’d in Berkeley

By Becky O’Malley
Friday July 14, 2006

In the go-go era in Silicon Valley in the 1980s, we used to have a saying: “If you look around the table and don’t know who the sucker is, it’s you.” This has never been more apparent than in the outcome of the protracted discussions over the development industry’s long struggle to de-fang Berkeley’s hallowed Landmarks Preservation Ordinance, which appears, temporarily at least, to be successful. -more-


Editorial: Nurses Hold the Health Care System Together

By Becky O’Malley
Tuesday July 11, 2006

In my voicemail this Monday morning: a message from one of my many red-diaper-baby chums, born again to political activism after a brief mid-life flirtation with Republicanism. “Schwarzenegger is trying to bust the nurses’ union! Come to a rally on Tuesday! If you don’t we’ll soon see 100 patients to every nurse!” Well, she might exaggerate a bit, but she’s oh, so right in principle. Things are bad in hospitals now, and if the medical industry has its way they’ll be getting worse. -more-


Public Comment

Letters to the Editor

Friday July 14, 2006

ARTISTS’ RETREAT -more-


More Letters to the Editor

Friday July 14, 2006

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following letters appear only on our website. -more-


Commentary: Berkeley’s Image After Forty Years

By Krishna P. Bhattacharjee
Friday July 14, 2006

I visited the city of Berkeley and the campus of the University of California after a period of forty years, on my way back from participating at the U.N. World Urban Forum conference held during June 19 to 24, 2006 in Vancouver, Canada. -more-


Commentary: Let Them Eat Bush!

By Barbara Gilbert
Friday July 14, 2006

To paraphrase a famous ruler dealing with citizen discontent, “Let them eat Bush.” -more-


Letters to the Editor

Tuesday July 11, 2006

BUILDING AN ARTS COMMUNITY -more-


Commentary: Town and Gown: Great Things Are Happening...Elsewhere

By Doug Buckwald and Anne Wagley
Tuesday July 11, 2006

Want to know how Gainesville, Florida, protects neighborhood residents during college football games? How Columbus, Ohio handles the problem of trash in neighborhoods near the Ohio State campus? How Colorado State University in Fort Collins responds to calls about off-campus student behavior problems? Or how police in Boulder, Colorado and Corvallis, Oregon handle disruptive student parties? So did we. That’s why we went to the conference on “Best Practices in Building University/City Relations” last month in Colorado. What we learned there kept our eyes wide open and our pens scratching notes as fast as we could write. We learned that cities across the United States and Canada handle these problems effectively and efficiently every day—in contrast to the typical inaction of our own city officials and UC Berkeley. -more-


Commentary: Bates’ LPO Serves Developers, Not Citizens

By Neal Blumenfeld
Tuesday July 11, 2006

Because you can easily see 10-story buildings, large condo projects and several giant transit villages in the pipeline, it hardly seems that large-scale real estate development in Berkeley needs a boost. Yet the Planning Department, along with the mayor and his followers on the City Council, has drafted a new landmark ordinance that will be presented to the City Council. The bureaucratic language crafted by our local Machiavellis in the city attorney’s office—likely still spinning the regs as I write—will make you run up to Tilden for a breath of clean air, vowing you will never come within earshot of City Hall again. -more-