A bomb squad detonated a suspicious package found today in a pickup truck belonging to a man involved in an early-morning shootout with police on Interstate 580, a California Highway Patrol spokesman said. -more-
A popular video rental store in Berkeley closed its doors for good this week after fighting to stay in business when its parent company filed for bankruptcy earlier this year. -more-
A man in his 30s was found fatally shot in a parked car in Berkeley today, a police spokeswoman said. A neighbor identified the victim for the Planet as Marcus Mosley Jr., and said that he grew up in Berkeley in the Savo Island Co-op and had attended Berkeley High. -more-
A BART police oversight bill signed into law on Thursday will take effect on Jan 1, 2011, exactly two years after a BART police officer shot and killed an unarmed passenger on the Fruitvale station platform in Oakland, BART officials announced today. -more-
Tuolumne Camp News Update (July 15, 2010): Due to multiple cases of an intestinal illness at Tuolumne Camp, the camp is being closed to campers for the weekend of July 16-19, 2010. Camp will re-open for dinner on Monday, July 19. -more-
California’s Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. is striking back in defense of PACE programs. PACE (“Property Assisted Clean Energy”) programs, such as Berkeley FIRST, are described in a July 13 story in the Berkeley Daily Planet. Brown has filed a suit on behalf of the state of California against the Federal Housing Finance Agency, its director Edward DeMarco, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Freddie Mac, its CEO Charles E. Haldeman, Jr., Fannie Mae, and its CEO Michael J. Williams.. -more-
In the nearly five years since the City of Berkeley started preparing a new plan for downtown, the actual costs of the planning process have never been publicized. On July 1, two days after the council voted 6-2-1 to place the “Green Vision for the Downtown” sponsored by Mayor Bates and Councilmembers Moore, Maio and Capitelli on the November 2010 ballot, the City’s Budget Office told this writer that since Fiscal Year 2006, the City has spent $939,760 on the still-to-be-formulated Downtown Area Plan. Of that sum, officials said, $651,827 has gone to the planner who’s overseeing the project, Matt Taecker. Taecker was reportedly paid with funds the City received from UC as part of the secret 2005 agreement that settled the City’s lawsuit of the University over campus expansion. What remains unclear is whether these arrangements honor the terms of the settlement agreement, and how these two avowedly cash-strapped public entities have found a million dollars (and counting) between them to fund this project. -more-
A plan that might sound like the work of those hooligans on Wall Street was in fact invented by an employee of the City of Berkeley in cooperation with Renewable Funding LLC, an Oakland-based corporation that helped to design, administer, and fund the Berkeley FIRST solar installation project.
Conceptually, it’s a simple business model: Issue loans to homeowners based on the value of their property, no deep credit check required. Combine those loans into pools and sell shares in those pools. The interest rates will be a bit high, so welcome borrowers who already have a lot of outstanding debt against their homes. Ensure that tax-payers are on the hook for these loans as much as possible. If you can, try to get some laws passed to ensure that, in the event of foreclosure, these loans are repaid first—even ahead of a primary mortgage on the property and even, if necessary, at taxpayer expense.
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Beginning next month, San Francisco's transit hub will move from the existing Transbay Terminal at Mission and First streets to a temporary terminal at Howard and Main streets. -more-
There is increasing evidence that United States physicians, psychologists, nurses, and medics have been complicit in torture and other illegal procedures in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo. They violated one of the principal precepts of medical ethics: "First, do no harm." Government physicians and psychologists who participated in and authorized the torture of detainees have escaped discipline, accountability or even internal investigation. The Pentagon, the C.I.A., state licensing boards, and professional medical societies have not initiated any action to investigate, much less discipline, these individuals. Presumably these health care professionals continue to treat an unknowing public with little or no fear of prosecution or disciplinary action. -more-
The big news last week was the relatively restrained reaction to an L.A. jury’s verdict that Johannes Mehserle was guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the shooting of Oscar Grant. Last week’s Planet covered it in depth, on the theory that the Berkeley Bubble is not an island unto itself. We hope to cover, as well as we’re able, significant stories like this one which affect the whole urban East Bay, both Berkeley and beyond. Oscar Grant was a Hayward resident, and the policeman who shot him worked for BART, a regional agency which includes Berkeley in its coverage—it just happened that the initial outraged reaction to the shooting manifested itself in Oakland, many of whose citizens, like Oscar Grant, are African-Americans. Many Berkeleyans and people from all over the Bay Area took part in last week’s demonstrations—among those few who were arrested for intemperate behavior, 75% were from outside Oakland, some perhaps even from Berkeley. -more-
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