Opinion

Famously, Calvin Coolidge said in a speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, "After all, the chief business of the American people is business." He did qualify it a bit: "Of course the accumulation of wealth cannot be justified as the chief end of existence." But the main theme of his speech was his attempt to refute a maxim from Oliver Goldsmith’s poem "The Deserted Village":

“Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay.”

Making the accumulation of wealth possible, which Coolidge promoted, seems to have again become the chief function of government in the last couple of decades. It’s interesting that we’ve recently seen a crash rivaled only by the one which followed the accumulative period under Coolidge in the 1920s.The late and much lamented Tony Judt devoted his last book (title from Goldsmith: Ill Fares the Land) to examining how and why this has happened.

The people who run Berkeley these days are engaged in a major push to re-shape the zoning of West Berkeley and modify the West Berkeley Plan. A lot of politicians and professional planners who know very little about business, especially about science-based entrepreneurial ventures, are behind this effort, as are the corporate owners of big West Berkeley parcels who are eager to build big buildings on them, along with representatives of all levels of building trades from construction workers’ unions to architects. -more-

Can You Hear Me Now? Keith Olberman’s Firing; Don’t Gut the Clean Air Act; Alzheimer’s Reign of Terror;Street Music; Basic Needs;Republicans are at It Again; Tree-Sit as Viewed by a Yahoo from La-La Land -more-

As the planning effort to revise West Berkeley zoning approaches its second public hearing before the City Council on Tuesday February 8, the environmental impacts of increased development on Aquatic Park, the aesthetics of scale, traffic, and air quality are emerging as community concerns. -more-

Sit Down With Council Members Demonstrates Strength of Existing Production & Distribution Economy -more-

The recent arrival of the library’s new bookmobile represents a door slammed shut on expectations of first-class interim service during planned closure of branches for Measure FF-related construction. -more-

Most of the nation enjoyed a white holiday season so now we fully should be prepared to enjoy a white Academy Awards. Not one African American appears on the 2011 nominees list. -more-

it hails me from the recess of my mind
I park and cross the threshold of the store
to shop, perhaps to drift among my kind
forgetting that I should have one thing more
I have my wallet, keys, my shopping list
my patience, my forbearance all in hand
my willingness to change should I insist
on suddenly a switch from fresh to canned
I’m ready! I’m a shopper! Hear me roar.
I’m headed for the register and then
that voice, that sense of something from before
speaks out just as my items hit the scan
my urge to green is sturdy, true and strong
like bags that I forgot to bring along -more-

I hope to see thousands of Americans on the street yelling and holding signs saying "Mubarek Go NOW!" We need to support the Egyptian people's desperate struggle for freedom. I heard a man in Cairo being interviewed this morning and the interviewer asked him if he would stop protesting now because of the violence. He said "Never. For the first time I feel like a man. I never knew freedom before but now I have freedom." When asked if he expected to be protesting for a year he said, "Inshallah, I will always protest for freedom." -more-

Matthew Hallinan knows perfectly well that KPFA lost over half a million dollars in 2008-2009. And lost another half a million in 2009-2010. He himself voted, not once, but twice – for budgets that called for hundreds of thousands of dollars in salary reductions at KPFA. What did he expect to happen after he did that? -more-

Editor's Note: The latest issue of the Pepper Spray Times is now available. -more-