We live and move daily amidst the remains of a lost civilization that we do not see but that we cannot do without. Nor, I suspect, do those who have loathed Franklin Delano Roosevelt ever since he made good on his promise to deliver a New Deal to Americans 75 years ago want you to see them. To do so would shatter myths beloved of free market fundamentalists whose economic flimflam has—at least until they bring on the next bust—triumphed over what Roosevelt and myriads of Americans accomplished and left us. -more-

More questions are swirling around the cleanup efforts at two adjacent contaminated sites in Richmond this week. -more-

BP—the multinational once known as British Petroleum—will be able to move into its new digs in Berkeley in three years, according to plans given to would-be builders. -more-

The president of the School Board for the Oakland Unified School District said late this week that State Superintendent for Public Instruction Jack O’Connell will come to Oakland next Monday to announce his decision to immediately turn over the area of “Community Relations And Governance” from state control to control by the school board. -more-

Alameda County’s first detox center is scheduled to open in November in San Leandro, although Berkeley and UC Berkeley officials had pushed for a center closer to home. -more-

Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice used to say in Wonderland. The belief that government is something that should take place outside the view of the governed seems to be growing by leaps and bounds, both nationally and locally. At the national level we have Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Cheney claiming that he’s got a whole new branch of government that doesn’t have to tell anyone what they’re doing, while Nominal President Bush commutes Cheney staffer Scooter Libby’s punishment for perjuring himself before the grand jury investigating Team Cheney misdeeds. And in Berkeley we have the continuing assertion that important city policy decisions can only be made by those who have no opinions on the matters before them. -more-