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ON MENTAL ILLNESS: Governor Newsom's Precedented Mental Health Proposal

Jack Bragen
Thursday March 03, 2022 - 10:15:00 PM

Earlier today, Governor Newsom unveiled his "Care Court System" for eliminating homeless encampments across California. It is a plan that would force homeless individuals (presumably homeless due to untreated mental illness) to go before a judge and to be subject to court orders forcing them into mental health treatment. Under the proposal, counties would be required to provide services to individuals who have been ordered to comply. This is a rehash of Laura's Law that passed the State Legislature and was signed into law by Governor Brown. This, according to a retired clinical psychologist to whom I spoke, is the same thing that has been tried repeatedly. She told me that in some instances, there is really nothing that works to help mentally ill individuals who cannot be made to have insight about their illness. -more-


California Supreme Court Denies UCB Appeal, Upholds Save Our Neighborhoods Decision

Mikhail Zinshteyn, CalMatters, CalMatters Network
Thursday March 03, 2022 - 03:24:00 PM

In summary The California Supreme Court agreed with a lower court’s order that UC Berkeley cap its enrollment, meaning 3,000 admitted students will almost certainly need to seek education elsewhere. This outcome is the result of a lawsuit based on the California Environmental Quality Act. -more-


Press Release: California Supreme Court Denies UCB Appeal, Upholds Enrollment Ban

Phil Bokovoy, Save Berkeley's Neighborhoods
Thursday March 03, 2022 - 01:05:00 PM

While we are pleased that the Supreme Court has upheld the trial court’s imposition of a temporary pause on enrollment growth pending UC’s compliance with completing an adequate environmental analysis of enrollment growth, we’d like to assure deserving California high school students that we are as disappointed as they are that UC has tried to use them as pawns in UC’s attempts to avoid mitigating the impacts from the massive enrollment increases over the past few years.

By creating a tremendous housing shortage in Berkeley, the Regents have made it impossible for many students, particularly students from lower income families, to attend Berkeley and the data show that Pell Grant recipients have fallen from 34% to 26%, with the housing crisis a major contributor to the decline.

We have offered many times to settle our case in exchange for UC Berkeley’s agreement to a legally binding commitment to increase housing before they increase enrollment. We have been rebuffed every time, most recently by Chancellor Christ in early December. -more-


Flash: California Supreme Court Denies UC Enrollment Appeal

California Supreme Court Twitter
Thursday March 03, 2022 - 11:43:00 AM

BREAKING: California Supreme Court denies petition to stay a lower court ruling that could force to cut its incoming class by one-third. Two justices dissent & call for a negotiated settlement to avoid the big cuts.
-more-


THE PUBLIC EYE: Ten Questions about Ukraine

Bob Burnett
Tuesday March 01, 2022 - 01:02:00 PM

2022 already seemed a grim year. Now we've added the Russian invasion of Ukraine. ("The hits keep on coming.") Here's my take on the key questions about this invasion. 1.Why did Vladimir Putin order the invasion of Ukraine? We already knew that Vladimir was not a nice guy. The invasion confirmed this and raised the question: Has Vlad gone mad? The answer is "sorta."

The decision to invade Ukraine was made because (a) domestic conditions have deteriorated in Russia, as they have in Russian provinces such as Uzbekistan, and Vlad wanted a diversion; and (b) Vlad lives in a bubble and believed that no one would care if he obliterated Ukraine.

Throughout the world there's an increasing gap between the "haves" and the "have nots." We've seen this in the US, represented by movements such as the trucker blockade. People are upset because of pandemic restrictions and related economic conditions, such as inflation. This is true in Russia, but more extreme because the "have nots" were already severely hurting, before the pandemic.

Furthermore, Vlad is an autocrat who lives in a bubble where sycophants constantly feed him information that he wants to hear; such as the belief that, if invaded, Ukraine would be a pushover, and the Ukrainian Army would quickly side with the Russian invaders. Putin also heard that the US was weak and Biden would not be able to rally NATO or the will of the American people. Vlad is a malignant narcissist -- sound familiar? -more-


A BERKELEY ACTIVIST'S DIARY, week ending Feb.27

Kelly Hammargren
Monday February 28, 2022 - 03:36:00 PM

The largest typeface today on the front page of the SF Chronicle is: “$1.1 million Berkeley renovation nightmare.” Friends of Adeline is not mentioned by name, but without their support and involvement, Leonard Powell would be just one more elderly Black homeowner in a gentrifying area caught in receivership and an unrelenting city.

How does a renovation bill on a house near the Ashby BART Station run up to $1.1 million with the City of Berkeley at the bottom of it? Berkeley should have found a way out of this mess years ago instead of continuing the legal battle against Mr. Powell. None of this makes any sense unless the goal from the beginning was to take away Mr. Powell’s house. Since this started with the Berkeley Police Department and the City Attorney’s office, maybe that is the first place to look, but there are plenty of City hands in the pot or maybe more aptly the plot.

The twenty-seven-month wait is nearly over for the Bird Safe Glass and Dark Skies Ordinance—at least that is the hope. The Bird Safe Ordinance is #11 on the March 2nd Planning Commission agenda as a “discussion” item. This long wait could be a plus if Zoe Covello, Assistant Planner, starts with the model legislation from the American Bird Conservancy https://abcbirds.org/glass-collisions/model-ordinance/. -more-


Opinion

Editorials

Stack'm 'n' Pack'm Does not Add Up to Education in Berkeley

Becky O'Malley
Saturday February 26, 2022 - 05:12:00 PM

Ran into an old friend not long ago. He’s been teaching at UC Berkeley in a technical department for a long time, maybe 40-50 years. He’s also made very good money with his side hustle at a techy start-up that went public at the right time. He’s still teaching, presumably because he likes it, not because he needs the income. He told me he’s been delivering his lectures online, even pre-pandemic, and he plans to go on doing that, though in-person is back.

He told me that his remote class is now 1500 undergraduates, so he has approximately a hundred teaching assistants. I gathered from what he said that he never meets with students himself, and really, why should he?

Why indeed? When I was a student at Cal, way back in the dark ages before it became generically “Berkeley”, I took a couple of entertaining English classes taught in biggish lecture halls in Dwinelle and in Wheeler Hall—maybe a one or two hundred students. My classes in the French and Slavic departments never exceeded thirty or forty. The instructors in all three departments were almost all professors.

It’s funny that with all the sanctimonious chitchat we’ve seen lately in the corporate press regarding the effects of UCB’s desire to offer admission to about 5,000 additional students next year, no one says anything about the effect it might have on the students’ learning experience. Mind you, those 5000 new bodies (actually ~3000 would accept) are over and above the ~11,000 extras who have already been added to the student body since 2005 in defiance of putative limits under the university’s long range development plan.

When there are 1500 students in a small-screen class, it’s hard to imagine what they can be learning. Before the pandemic lockdown, classes were extremely overcrowded, and if thousands more students are admitted next year it could only be worse. A total of 42,000 is bruited about.

I seem to remember that Chancellor Clark Kerr (after whom the Clark Kerr Campus is named,ironically) suggested 12,500 as a good number for each UC campus, but what’s 30,000 more, give or take?

Honest figures are hard to come by, but anecdotally I can report that a guy named Jack, who said he works for UCB, called into the KQED Forum radio show on Wednesday morning, estimating that while student enrollment has increased by a third, the number of faculty and staff members has remained the same. Another caller, Janet, who sounded like a middle-aged African American woman, scoffed at UC’S veiled threat that restricting enrollment would harm disadvantaged students, particularly people of color. She pointed out that as enrollment has grown, the percentage of such students has decreased.

Can these numbers be verified?

Setting the question of available housing near campus aside for the moment, since that’s become a political football, someone needs to ask whether it’s in the best interest of young Californians to cram as many of them as possible into a single campus. The name “Berkeley” for sure has brand advantage, particularly in Asia, and the university has the best researchers money can buy, but are today’s undergraduates getting the excellent overall education my cohort got? An increasing percentage of their classes are taught by non-tenure-track lecturers or adjuncts.

A young friend, a sophomore who did her first year remotely from a bedroom in her parent’s home, told me she was being taught by only two professors out of five. Her other three classes are led by lecturers, though she did describe them as “super distinguished” (even if underpaid). Some of her classes are in person, but the rest are still online, though she’s living in Berkeley now and could attend in the flesh if it were allowed.

Because COVID? Maybe, or maybe not. No classroom on campus holds 1500 of those paying customers.

The role of all the varied learning institutions which are characterized as “highly selective” needs examination. Somewhere, sometime, there comes a limit on the number of carefully curated young persons who can be educated at once in a given venue. My observation of three generations of students over more than a half-century is that every educational opportunity which is perceived to be excellent is de facto oversubscribed. No matter where the limit is set, someone’s left out. That includes “gifted and talented” in elementary school, advanced placement classes, elite high schools like Lowell, and yes, UC Berkeley. It doesn’t make much sense to try to respond to the demand by expanding the number of students admitted to a particular class or school instead of creating more good classes or schools to meet that demand.

A major problem adding to Berkeley’s enrollment bloat is that the state of California (overwhelmingly Democratic with a budget surplus) is no longer willing to meet its obligations to educate the next generation. Just a fraction of university costs (~14%, depending whom you ask) are paid by the state. Much of the balance is raised by shilling for lucrative out-of-state and foreign students lured by the Berkeley brand, or by sucking up to very rich donors who want to see their names on buildings.

In-state fees are non-trivial, of course, as compared to the $60/semester my father paid for me to attend Cal, but less than at most other elite schools. And no, I never had campus housing, so I lived in seedy rooming houses with the bathroom down the hall.

But now state legislators choose to pretend that the only crisis for today’s students is finding housing. Housing prices everywhere in the Bay are experiencing a big bubble. Some politicians find it convenient to blame everything on the cost of requiring big projects to be reviewed for environmental impact, but there are many more factors at work, and few magic bullets. It’s hard for many people, including students, to afford housing, given the wealth disparity which the tech boom has brought.

The all-time worst simple snake oil remedy for a complex problem has just been proposed by San Francisco State Senator Scott Wiener, a slippery fellow bought and paid for by the development industry and its YIMBY groupies.

Wiener claims, without a shred of evidence, that the reason that Berkeley students are having trouble finding a place to live is just because big new projects, including dormitories, must be reviewed under the California Environmental Quality Act. He proposes legislation to exempt projects described as student housing from environmental law.

He’s scooped up a bunch of gullible young people and the odd YIMBY lobbyist to make his case. Sample quote, from a Wiener press release which is full of fake facts:

“For far too long, CEQA has been misused to prevent students from having access to housing on our own campuses under the facade of protecting the environment,” said Michelle Andrews, Legislative Director for the Associated Students of UC Davis. A prize ribbon will be awarded to anyone who can prove that assertion.

The California Environmental Quality Act does not prevent anything. It simply requires full disclosure of what’s planned and what effect it will have—developers, including corporate universities, can and do override negative environmental impacts in order to build as they please. And anyone who thinks they don’t make mistakes should investigate the history of Evans Hall, -more-


The Editor's Back Fence

All Comments Now Together

Becky O'Malley
Sunday February 27, 2022 - 08:41:00 PM

Patience please. I'm experimenting with format--moving regular columnists into the Public Comment section. You can still see any article as a full page. Complaints/compliments to becky@berkeleydailyplanet.com. -more-


Public Comment

The Saga of Leonard Powell: You Read It First in the Berkeley Daily Planet.

Becky O'Malley
Sunday February 27, 2022 - 10:18:00 PM

Gee, it's terrific that the San Francisco Chronicle finally got the sordid story of what the city of Berkeley did to Leonard Powell. Of course, if they read the Planet, they might have known about it as far back as May of 2018, when Steve Martinot wrote his first expose of what was happening to Mr. Powell. If you missed that, read Berkeley: City with a Heart of Stone, by Steve Martinot, and then the four-part story he wrote for the Planet in 2021. What the Chron leaves out was the extraordinary support Leonard Powell's neighborhood provided for his legal battle to save his home , including the Friends of Adeline, the late lamented Margy Wilkinson and Steve Martinot himself. But how impressive to see the story, complete with big color photos, on the front page today, plus a full page on the jump. The Chron's kinda slow, but they occasionally catch on. Their piece adds a few factoids from other cities where similar things happened, and a few historically dubious comments about the history of single family homes in South and West Berkeley, but otherwise it's pretty much the same story Steve Martinot wrote for the Planet years ago. But even though what happened to him has now been doubly exposed, Mr. Powell still has legal problems ahead. -more-


ON MENTAL ILLNESS: Persistence vs. Harassment

Jack Bragen
Saturday February 26, 2022 - 08:57:00 PM

When I was a young man, an eighteen-year-old, to be exact, I was psychotic, and I was unaware that what you do can have consequences. Some consequences of actions, even actions taken at the tender age of eighteen, even while psychotic due to a developing case of schizophrenia, can alter the course of a person's life. When you are psychotic and delusional, you do not think about these things. This is because you are delusional, and somehow you believe that your actions are necessary to save the Earth.

I learned a lesson--a hard lesson. And, in fact, much of my life when I was nineteen, when I was in my twenties, thirties, has been crap.

Harassment exists where someone doesn't want to be contacted, and where the other person is violating this expressed need. Harassment can exist in numerous contexts. Harassment causes people to lose their jobs. Even presidents of universities have lost their beloved job because they have abused their position. Harassment is a major issue in the modern world, where society is trying to evolve into something better. -more-


SMITHEREENS: Reflections on Bits & Pieces

Gar Smith
Saturday February 26, 2022 - 09:06:00 PM

Trump Reveals New Campaign Promise: A Fascist Coup

At one of his ego-stroking political rallies, Mr. Twice-Impeached revealed a chilling new slogan that strikes at the heart of democracy and raises the odds of an authoritarian takeover.

The threat was revealed in the signage being waved by partisans in the crowd assembled before Trump's podium. In addition to large signs that read "SAVE AMERICA" there were several placards that bore a darker threat. They read: "TRUMP 24: OR BEFORE."

Hold Trump to Account

Common Cause is so steamed that the Department of Justice still hasn't announced plans to investigate Sir Trumpalot for his growing list of serious criminal charges that it's started a petition calling on Attorney General Merrick Garland to crack down on the Big Nut for crimes before-during-and-after the January 6 coup attempt. I was happy to sign on, with the following comment:

We've recently seen that even Trump's accountants want to hold him accountable on account of his accounting not being something you can count on.

Walk the Chalk

Someone opposed to UC Berkeley's collaboration with the military wing of the Department of Energy has written the following message in chalk on the sidewalk before Berkeley's main Post Office: UC MAKES NUKES.

And chalk-up another only-in-Berkeley sidewalk salute: on the cement sidewalk alongside the MLK Jr. Middle School, one of the youngsters participating in a public art exercise to honor Rev. Martin Luther King, left behind the following note: "Marx Lenin MLK."

In the South that would be a note of contempt. In Berkeley, it's a righteous recognition of common purpose.

Fashion Plates

Recently spotted in downtown Berkeley: a red Ford sporting a plate that read: TUTNKMN. I'm guessing the driver might be an Egyptologist, specializing in the reign of Tutankhamun, the ancient pharaoh better known as "King Tut."

Also prompting a roadside double-take: a risible bumper sticker that encouraged one and all to: "Honk If You Love Relational Aesthetics."

Karmic Strips

On February 15, Darrin Bell's Candorville lived up to its name when a Trump-loving cartoon character quoted from one of Lemont Brown's published opinion pieces and accused him of being a "Terrorist-lover." The citation read:

"Just a little while ago, the general we just assassinated was leading the fight to crush ISIS. We were all praising him. When we get on our high horse about freedom and liberty, much of the world wants to gag because they notice how we love butchers until we no longer need them."

When Brown asks: "How does that make me a terrorist-lover?" the response was: "When we get introspective, the terrorists win."

It's Not a Typo: It's a New Word

In early February, the live online video-sharing platform known as Zoom, emailed a dispatch announcing the addition of "many exciting and useful features" to the Zoom experience. "Zoom recently became the first video communications client to attain Common Criteria Certification—an international security standard," the missive boasted. It then invited readers to "learn more about this distinguishment from our press release."

Distinguishment? Did they mean to write "distinction"? Nope. Turns out there is such a wordy word. It's from the Brits and the definition reads: "the quality or condition of being distinguished."

Ukraine, the US, the UN, and the Nazis

In the course of a long, televised February 24 address—and in the midst of a brutal act of aggression that included the bombing of targets in Ukraine's capitol city of Kyiv—Vladimir Putin raised a surprising complaint: "I would like to additionally emphasize the following. Focused on their own goals, the leading NATO countries are supporting the far-right nationalists and neo-Nazis in Ukraine."

It turns out that you can't debate Ukrainian politics without addressing the role of neo-Nazis,

In a largely unreported vote on December 16, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution titled "Combating Glorification of Nazism, Neo-Nazism and Other Practices that Contribute to Fuelling Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance."

The resolution passed resoundingly with 130 nations voting to condemn Nazism. There were only two countries that refused to sign—the US and Ukraine.

Another 49 countries (mostly US allies) abstained. They included NATO member nations joined by Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.

The US defended its vote by arguing that condemning racial hatred would violate the First Amendment.

Nazism still thrives in some parts of Europe. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania still continue to honor Nazi leaders from WWII and, as Consortium News points out: "several European countries have right-wing governments or strong right-wing opposition sympathetic to neo-Nazi groups."

In 2014, the US relied on neo-Nazis to topple Ukraine's elected pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych. Senator John McCain and State Department rep Victoria Nuland were among those Americans who flocked to Kiev to pose alongside avowed Ukrainian neo-Nazis like Svobada leader Oleh Tyahnybok and Andriy Biletsky. Biletsky has written that Ukraine’s mission is to “lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade . . . against the Semite-led Untermenschen.”

Ukraine even has a branch of the military—the Azov Battallion—that touts the Nazi line.

It's shocking that Putin—who has publicly condemned the Nazi movement—has resorted to the use of military force that will, in the minds of many, incriminate him as a war criminal in the bloody tradition of Adolf Hitler.

Speaking of Invasions, Who's the Bigger Bully?

In response to Vladimir Putin's shocking invasion of Ukraine, Joe Biden has imposed economic sanctions while proclaiming: "We're America and America stands up to bullies."

Well, that's not quite what our history shows. As Richard Sanborn, a resident of Humboldt County pointed out in a recent letter to the Chronicle:

President Biden says the Kremlin flagrantly violated international law.

Vietnam. Cambodia. Laos. Lebanon. Cuba. Grenada. Panama. Libya. Somalia. Bosnia. Kosovo. Afghanistan. Pakistan. Yemen. Syria. What hypocrisy!

Another Petition: Vote to Vote

America likes to justify its global empire by proclaiming its divine duty to use soldiers and tanks to spread "freedom and democracy" around the planet. But somehow, many residents of the global Empire's colonized territories have never been given the voting rights granted ordinary citizens. And, if they don't have the right to vote—in local and federal elections—they aren't citizens, they are captives.

Good news: A MoveOn member named Isabel Walker has posted a petition to correct this injustice. (If you've already signed a petition to grant voting rights to the disenfranchised citizens of Washington, DC, you might want to sign on to Walker's petition as well.) Walker writes:

"Many Americans often fail to recognize one of the most prominent examples of voter deprivation that continues to undermine the very ideals that our nation rests upon. Currently, millions of American citizens residing in the five US overseas territories (Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Northern Mariana Islands, US Virgin Islands, Guam) are denied voter participation in federal elections. The US government actively silences the voice of territorial residents and consistently ignores their desperate cries for full equality. The United States Constitution must adopt an amendment granting citizens of American territories the right to express their political beliefs via access to the ballot." -more-


ECLECTIC RANT: Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Ralph E. Stone
Saturday February 26, 2022 - 09:17:00 PM

ladimir Putins aggression toward Ukraine took an ominous turn on February 21 when he recognized the independence of the breakaway Ukrainian enclaves of the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk Peoples Republics and ordered Russian troops into them as peacekeepers.” No matter what Putin calls it, when you send troops into another country without its permission, it's an invasion.

The introduction of troops to these breakaway enclaves could be the prologue for further attacks on Ukraine with the sovereignty of Ukraine and the loss of thousands of lives at stake.

The U.S. has already imposed some sanctions against Russia, and Germany has halted the certification of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline designed to bring natural gas from Russia directly to Europe. But is not time for the full weight of sanctions threatened by the United States and NATO; the U.S. and NATO hold back on some of the sanctions in hopes that a full invasion will be less likely.

In addition, the Russia-Ukraine situation is a major test for President Biden, who has made the defense of democracy a cornerstone of his administration.

Why should the U.S. care about Russia's invasion of Ukraine? The issue is not about whether Ukraine joining NATO. NATO countries must unanimously agree to let Ukraine join and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has publicly announced that Ukraines NATO membership is not on the agenda.

If Putin is allowed to invade a sovereign country in violation of international law and threatens its democracy, it would be a signal to others to do the same, which in turn, will affect us. The U.S. is part of a global world interdependent economically, socially, and politically. If Putin succeeds in Ukraine, he wont stop there. He didnt stop after seizing Crimea in 2014.

Biden has made it clear that helping Ukraine will not include boots on the ground in Ukraine. The U.S..has already deployed or repositioned some 6,000 U.S. forces to Germany, Poland and Romania near those countriesborders with Ukraine for defensive purposes only.

Appeasement is not a viable option. So far, I agree with President Biden's response to Putin's invasion of Ukraine. -more-


Arts & Events

The Berkeley Activist's Calendar Feb.27- March 6K

Kelly Hammargren, Sustainable Berkeley Coalition
Sunday February 27, 2022 - 07:23:00 PM

Worth Noting:

Sunday – If you are not participating in the half marathon and plan to go out Sunday morning check the map for approximate times the marathon will be in which Berkeley neighborhoods.

Monday the Seismic Cost Study for Maudelle Shirek and Veterans Buildings is on the agenda at the CCCC meeting at 12:15 pm. the Redistricting Commission at 6 pm will vote on the final map. Amber 2 remains. The Violet map was eliminated. The Zero Waste Commission at 7 pm will hear Public works priorities.

Tuesday there will be a webinar on the Hopkins street Corridor. There is no council meeting.

Wednesday the FITES Policy Committee meets at 2:30 on regulating plastic bags, GHG limits and process for updating the climate action plan. The Disability Commission meets at 6 pm. The Homeless Panel of Experts at 7 pm agenda includes Measure P, shelters and budget questions. The Planning Commission at 7 pm is holding a public hearing on citywide affordable housing requirements and will hold a presentation and discussion on the Bird Safe Glass and Dark Sky ordinance (referred to Planning 11/12/2019).

Thursday the Citywide Affordable Housing Requirements is on the agenda at the Housing Advisory Commission at 7 pm. The LPC and Public Works Commission also meet at 7 pm. WETA meets at 1 pm. The Berkeley Pier and Ferry are scheduled for the March 17 WETA meeting. The Groundbreaking Ceremony for the $725,000 tree planting grant is at 3:30 pm at James Kenny Park 1720 8th Street & Virginia.



The March 8 City Council Regular meeting agenda is available for comment and follows the list of city meetings. Fair and Impartial Policing Report and the Crime and Collision Reports are the only action items.



Sunday, February 27, 2022

Berkeley Half Marathon 7:30 am – 1 pm

I-80 exit at University closed from 6 am – 12 pm,

go to website for Half Marathon course if you did not receive a postcard notice

https://berkeleyhalfmarathon.com/



Monday, February 28, 2022 -more-