Opinion

It’s down-to-the-wire time now. On Wednesday a substantial number of my California relatives and friends told me that they’d finally filled out their absentee ballots and sent them in. What were they waiting for? Well, like all the rest of us, they were still trying to decide who to vote for in the Democratic presidential primary. Here’s the refrain: “I’d like to vote for Edwards, but if Obama and Clinton are very close I’ll probably have to choose Obama instead.” Some—a few—mentioned Kucinich instead of Edwards. -more-

In 1968, General Westmoreland announced that we could finally see “the light at the end of the tunnel” in Vietnam. That announcement has come to define a paradigm: the tendency of leaders, military and political, to declare victory long before a conflict has actually been resolved. An editorial in the influential international scientific journal Nature in February of 2007 was in fact entitled “Light at the End of the Tunnel.” It was part of Nature’s Climate Change special edition, and it warned that the world-wide acceptance of the reality of climate change brought with it new perils: business and political leaders were starting to announce what steps they were taking to combat the problems of global warning as if the problem were solved, when in fact the solutions offered were not nearly enough to solve the problem. -more-

ADIOS, BERKELEY! -more-

The Peralta Board of Trustees, faculty and staff urge voters to support Prop. 92, the Community College Initiative, which will appear on the Feb. 5 statewide ballot. Its passage is vital to our Peralta colleges—Alameda, Berkeley City, Laney, and Merritt—as well as to the 109 California community colleges and 2.5 million students. -more-

In her Children’s Hospital’s Expansion Tax Measure commentary, Joyce Roy concluded with a question: What are our community’s priorities? As an Oakland resident and child advocate, I am compelled to list a few: -more-

As Super Tuesday looms, mail boxes across California have been stuffed with slick fliers, plus a thick Voter Information Guide, about Propositions 94-97, which ask voters whether or not they approve new gaming compacts that would triple the slot machines—by 17,000—at the casinos of four Southern California tribes. I can imagine the head-scratching over the claims and counterclaims: Is so much gambling capacity healthy for the state? How big a tax windfall? How adequate the accounting safeguards? What kind of impact on poorer tribes? On the environment? Then my eye spied a paragraph by the legislative analyst about labor relations at the casinos. And on that, fellow citizens, I can shed some light. -more-

A great change is now happening, one that’s only now beginning to bubble up in the national consciousness, and this change is shaking our established institutions to their very roots. Yet this fact is barely registering among the so-called mainstream media, or for that matter, even the progressive one. Put simply, the old political definitions of left and right, liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican, are eroding away. They are indeed becoming irrelevant as the new concerns of this new Century trump the politics of the past. It’s now no longer the right against the left, but rather: “Wall Street against Main Street.” -more-

If you love the University of California, you may be interested in a study released Jan. 15 by the Center for Labor and Community Research, titled, “Failing California’s Communities: how UC’s low wages affect surrounding communities.” -more-

MONEY WISELY SPENT OR WASTED? -more-

Recent weeks have seen television ads and mailers from a broad list of progressive groups and politicians urging a yes vote on Prop. 93, which revises the state’s term limits law. Progressive groups who work at the state level have little choice but to back a measure designed to keep the current Democratic leadership in place, and Prop. 93’s passage will enable some progressive legislators to extend their careers. But Prop. 93 is a disaster for progressive interests. -more-

Berkeley’s Elected Officials Unanimously Say Yes to Propostion 92 -more-

Thousands of absentee voters registered as independents are in for a shock when they open their ballot envelopes for the upcoming primary election and discover there are no presidential candidates’ names on their ballot. If you’ve already opened your envelope and discovered this, then you’re probably one of over 10,000 California voters who have already called their county Registrar of Voters to find out how to fix the problem. You learned that the Registrar would mail you a partisan (e.g., Democratic or American Independent) ballot, which you could then fill in and mail back. (Republicans have excluded independents in this election.) -more-

The arguments for and against the California Indian Gaming agreement propositions, Propositions 94, 95, 96 and 97, has prompted me to re-examine an underlying assumption about Indian gaming. That is, does California’s $7 billion Indian gaming industry substantially benefit California Indians economically and socially? There are 105 tribal entities in California with approximately 56,158 tribal members. There are 31 gaming tribal casinos. Yes, Indian gaming revenue has been used to build houses, schools, roads and sewer and water systems and to fund health care and education for California’s gaming tribes and to a lesser extent, its non-gaming tribes. However, there remains a large economic and social disparity between California Indians and those of other Americans. -more-

Children’s Hospital and Research Center Oakland is a hospital for very sick children and serves all of Northern California. Alameda County has the good fortune of having this hospital, located in its jurisdiction and has placed two measures on the ballot to support its construction program, Measure A and Measure B. -more-

For decades, the stench from airborne chemicals emitted by Pacific Steel Casting has been allowed to pollute the air downwind from its foundries with virtual impunity. Environmental changes have come slowly to this part of the city. While other industrial polluters are much smaller, or have moved away in response to the growing residential population in this district, PSC’s operations have been allowed to expand. Until recently, it appeared that nothing would ever change. -more-

FOCUS ON AREA-WIDE -more-

To treat the spate of pedestrian traffic deaths and accidents as a uniquely Berkeley problem is blind provincialism at its worst as the problem is widespread throughout the country. There have been system change efforts to make Berkeley streets safer including lowering of speed limits, protruding peninsulas to shorten the crossing time and distance, trials of flags and flashing ground lights, the change to one lane of traffic each way on Marin, the bicycle boulevards and so forth. Many people have expressed their opinions as to whether these and other changes contribute to or alleviate the risk to pedestrians. Like one letter writer I have no doubt that talking on cell phones while driving contributes to many accidents and there is ample data from the transportation safety people to back that up. Cell phone driving has to be stopped by state laws that are highly promoted and enforced. But, beyond that hazard (and drunk driving) do we understand the major causes of such accidents? -more-