Opinion

After what seems like years but in fact has only been months of reading everything available and going to endless panel discussions, lectures and conferences about the state of the News Biz, we’ve finally come to a conclusion. We’d like to say we were the first to have this immortal insight, but in fact it seems to be the same conclusion now being reached by our colleagues at other papers large and small. -more-

BULLIES -more-

For President Obama, single-payer health care financing is now “off the table.” I’m told that Mark Leno, sponsor of SB 810 California’s Single Payer legislation (it passed last year as Sheila Kuehl’s SB 840 only to be vetoed by Governor Schwartenegger), thinks the Single Payer vote in the Legislature should be delayed to the 2010 session. Yet everyone from these politicians to the SF Chronicle admits that there is a health care crisis that must be addressed now. What exactly does the footdragging mean? -more-

Since I became mentally ill in my early adulthood, it has been deemed by physicians, by family and by my own best judgment that it is necessary for me to always take psychiatric medications. For practical purposes, I don’t have a choice in the matter, since the alternative is a relapse into my psychotic condition, which itself is a trauma to my brain and which causes me to behave in strange ways, resulting in re-hospitalization. Once in the hospital, the first thing that happens is I am given medication, against my will and with a court order, if need be. This is what some mental health professionals call “the revolving door” of mentally ill patients. The revolving door begins when the psychiatric consumer decides that they would rather not take medication. Is this too much information? -more-

We don’t have a homeless problem. We have a de-veloper problem. You’ve probably been to the PowerPoint presentation by your local developers who wring their hands over the rising costs of construction and explain, as patiently as they can to people who don’t understand the business, that unless their project is aimed primarily at housing people who make $150,000 to $200,000 or more a year, it just won’t pencil out. -more-

Having followed the planning process for the Water Emergency Transportation Authority’s (WETA) proposed Berkeley ferry project, most analyses to date appear to have focused on environmental and traffic issues. I would like to address what I perceive to be another important issue—the probability that the City of Berkeley will be expected to subsidize this expensive amenity. -more-

Since January 21 the Obama team has been struggling—with mixed success—to stabilize the ship of state, to plug its leaks, to change its direction and set a new course. The ship our 44th president took command of cannot be righted easily or quickly; it is foundering due to two terms of venal management by its previous captain. -more-

Color-blindness. This term is often touted by those who claim that race, in our present day circumstance, is a somewhat over-used conceptor at least insignificant, in other words, that one will be measured by virtue of one’s work and character—not by one’s race. However, individuals who often ascribe to this philosophy—such as residents of North Berkeley, for instance—often live in areas where one would be hard pressed to find a black neighbor. Oh, I know a few middle-class blacks who actually live in North Berkeley, but they are the exception, trust me; they live in a city where recent census stats calculate the white population there to be 82 percent. So, my question is this: how can those who purportedly profess that race is insignificant also live in areas that statistically guarantee that racial complexity will be very low? If race was, as these individuals confess, truly insignificant, then it seems that they would likewise unassumingly or incidentally meander and drift into areas where racial diversity is proportionally higher. These enlightened individuals are, after all, “color-blind,” and they’re not attuned to artificial racial signifiers such as white, black, brown, red or yellow. Right? -more-

Franz Fanon, the revolutionary Algerian psychiatrist, noted that when darker-skinned, oppressed and colonized peoples begin to talk among themselves and plan their liberation, the colonizers, and those who have cast their lot with them, become very anxious and are prone to all sorts of irrational responses. -more-