The Opinion Pages

Most of the publications I read regularly (the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Nation) have had back-to-school stories carrying on at length about a perceived crisis in childhood nutrition. This year’s version is anxiety about obesity in children—a few years ago the same kinds of articles were being written about anorexia and bulimia, but this year it’s obesity. I’ll leave it to Malcolm Gladwell and Michael Pollan to determine if the epidemiology justifies the perception of crisis, but I can’t help being bemused by the discussions of remedies in these articles, all written for the consumption of the chattering classes, though coming from various points in the left-right spectrum. -more-

As a sometime contributor to the Daily Planet who knows its executive editor and publisher pretty well, I’m perplexed by the recent fireworks on these pages over the paper’s own past Middle East commentary. -more-

The Daily Planet’s Sept. 12 article, “Pacific Steel Emission Reports Turned Over to Air District,” was missing several important facts. If you take a look at the article, PSC’s public relations firm is the most common source for information (and reminds us all of the questionable and sad transformation from public servant to public relations consultant for Dion Aroner and company) -more-

Berkeley, California has long been America’s leading municipal incubator of progressive social change. Berkeley was the home of the nation’s first alternative, listener-sponsored radio show (Pacifica), and was the first city to ban Styrofoam and disinvest from South Africa. Berkeley was the first city west of New York to enact rent control (in 1973), it is the home of the visionary and politically powerful MoveOn.org, had the first gourmet coffeehouse in Peets, and its Chez Panisse invented what became known nationally as “California cuisine.” The Berkeley Free Speech movement in 1964 legitimized campus protests across America, and Berkeley’s congressmembers have been the leading opponents of America’s military industrial complex. Yet Berkeley has become so desirable that those who made it an activist stronghold can no longer afford to live there. There is no better evidence of Berkeley’s political decline than the current mayor’s race, where incumbent Tom Bates is assured of re-election despite maintaining a record that would have him on the political ropes elsewhere. -more-

The Planning Commission caved to a posse of developers Wednesday evening: They left the meeting jubilantly. The commission voted to make no recommendation to the city council on the subcommittee’s recommendations on density bonus. The most important stakeholders in this issue, the homeowners and tenants whose homes are directly affected, were not notified that the issue was coming up. The one citizen who spoke against the developers and in favor of the recommendations said she was there only because she always comes to these meetings. She characterized the developments that have proliferated in Berkeley as providing substandard housing, impinging on neighbors’ light and air, and being ugly; “looks like a prison,” she said of one building. -more-

Concerning the debate about land use and density in Berkeley, I believe it is helpful to keep in mind the strong link between housing supply and the price of housing. Most of us who have lived in Berkeley for a few decades (I arrived in 1979 for grad school) long for the days when it didn’t take being a millionaire to buy a modest home in a nice neighborhood close to shops. What has happened, simply put, is that the available stock of single-family homes has barely changed since 1980, while the demand to live in Berkeley (which we all agree is one of the best places to live in America) has soared. Combined with historic low mortgage rates, this has lead to a situation where even homes in “less desirable” neighborhoods go for half a million or more. -more-

The following are letters to the editor commenting on the Middle East and the Arianpour commentary that we haven’t yet had space to publish. Some of them may yet appear in our print edition. -more-

OFFER TO MEET IS STILL OPEN — WITH NO RESPONSE YET -more-