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Yesterday I received an email from Oakland City Councilmember Jean Quan (District 4 - Oakland Hills, Montclair) regarding her decision to run for Mayor of Oakland.  Here's the text from that email:

You are receiving this because you are a subscriber to my newsletter.  A few times a year I send out separate political blasts.  You may know by now, I have launched a run for Mayor for November 2010.  We've formed an Exploratory Committee and have met with hundreds of Oakland residents in house parties and other events to hear what they want the next Mayor to do and to share my vision and passion for the Oakland we love.
My family has lived in Oakland for over a 100 years; I've raised my family here and love this city. For more than 20 years I've fought for Oakland, working with people at the grassroots to rebuild our schools, save our libraries and the arts, protect our environment, revitalize our business districts, and to make our neighborhoods safer.  I've worked with Oaklanders in every neighborhood and have taken on tough, complex issues.  As Mayor working with you, block by block, school by school, neighborhood by neighborhood...I know together we can realize Oakland's great promise.

Councilmember Jean Quan

I will stand-up for Oakland with undivided loyalty.  I am not looking for a resting spot because I am termed out of office. I am not looking for a spring board for another office. I want the job of Mayor.  I will be a full-time, accessible, hands-on Mayor who will make sure that City programs are working on the street.  I'll hold town hall meetings in every district and continue my weekly newsletter so you'll know what is happening.


I hope you will consider attending or hosting a house party and joining our campaign as a supporter, volunteer or donor. It will be an opportunity to meet many of the wonderful neighborhood activists who are joining us around the city to make Oakland a city that works for all of us.


I have a busy schedule of house meetings, community outreach and fundraisers. Right now our focus is on two important milestones:

• Raising the first $100,000 of the $380,000 maximum under Oakland Campaign Limits.
  
• Recruiting the first 250 volunteers.

Now Councilmember Quan's newsletters generally contain positive Oakland news, or information about events or concern for some issue. But when it came to writing her first message to explain why she wants to be Mayor of Oakland, she included no issue of concern that was driving her desire, save for her.

That's right. Councilmember Quan's mayor's race message used the word "I" eleven times! By contrast, Former State Senator Don Perata, who's also running for Mayor, explains that his motivation for the decision on the death of four Oakland police officers this year and his contention that Oakland lacks leadership.

Say what you will about the popular Perata, at least Don's always started a reason for being beyond himself. No, this isn't an endorsement...yet.

So the question I have for Councilmember Quan is simple: is the push to run for Mayor really about her ego? Look, everyone in politics has a large ego so if she says "yes" I give her massive points for the guts to admit it.

But if she says "no" then the other question is "What does she stand for?" There's nothing in the message to address that question. It's not enough to listen to the needs of Oaklanders because if Quan doesn't actually have each one as a priority then she's not engaging in what really motivates her.

While I disagree with Councilmember Nancy Nadel (District 3 - West Oakland, Downtown) on some decisions as well as her overall style, I know where she's coming from and what drives her. She's concerned about the poor and minority and elderly in West Oakland and how to make sure they're not pushed out due to a wave of gentrification. She's concerned about environmental pollution from development.

While she's not the best candidate for Mayor, I can see and feel what drives her.

I can't see and feel anything from Jean Quan. I'm not being mean, just honest. And also picking up on a new theme that the City of Oakland does not care about Oaklanders, it cares about itself.

It's doing everything it can to survive and at the literal expense of the people its suppose to serve. Hey, I just talked to another friend of mine who got their car towed and talked to someone on BART today who also lost their car the same way.

This is not Oakland caring about Oaklanders. Councilmember Quan's message seems to reflect that self-centered ethic.

Sad.

We need mayoral candidates driven to help Oaklanders, not themselves. I hope I'm wrong about Councilmember Quan; but if I am she's got to explain that email message as soon as possible.

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I spent so much time dealing with the Oakland Parking ticket and tow situation that I lost time working and some sleep too. Today was the day I caught up with work, but frankly I'm totally overwhelmed. I'm also not looking forward to returning to the Oakland Parking office but I'll have to bite that bullet I suppose.

I've got an occupational life beyond any one blog; it includes my simulation games for the classroom and the work I do for clients in building new media platforms for them.

So if someone reading this - it's on a bunch of my blogs - wants a small-expense pay internship learning and doing blogging, vlogging, and new media in general, drop me an email and a resume. Ideally I'm looking to restart my "SBS Personalities" program of bloggers but expand it to my Zennie.62 blog network, so up to five people will work. If you want to get your name and face out there, there's no better person to work with than me.

Pay? Small as I wrote, but you will get enough to at least cover your food expense if you blog regularly - like every day. That written, the blog traffic is growing and the more you blog, the more it helps.

And on that I'm out of town in Georgia about half the time, and I just got invited to travel to Belise in November to vlog about the nice aspects of that country. So I need to build a base of people here.

Ideally someone in college with a communications major and a keen interest in entertainment, sports, and politics is best. If you have your own blog, all the better. And if you like and follow sports and celebrity gossip, totally awesome - extra points.

Extra points for San Francisco Bay Area dwellers who have their own blogs and current or former journalists who want to learn how to blog for the Internet or just want an extra place to post their blogs. (I'm not a journalist). And major points if you're a video-blogger or a person who has a camcorder, a MacBook, and knows how to use IMovie.

If you're wondering where I'm headed with Zennie62.com, visit TMZ.com as one example.

Ok. Back to work, but man I need a lot of sleep and a great vacation away from Oakland.

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I happened on this YouTube video where famous intellectual, author, and spokesperson on the media and politics Noam Chomsky talks about right-wing media during a recent visit to San Francisco's Commonwealth Club.



I've always felt Chomsky had his pulse on the zeitgeist of what's wrong in America. My favorite was his take on mainstream media, and while it was over a decade ago, it still applies today in a way. For example, he wrote:

The elite media set a framework within which others operate. If you are watching the Associated Press, who grind out a constant flow of news, in the mid-afternoon it breaks and there is something that comes along every day that says "Notice to Editors: Tomorrow’s New York Times is going to have the following stories on the front page." The point of that is, if you’re an editor of a newspaper in Dayton, Ohio and you don’t have the resources to figure out what the news is, or you don’t want to think about it anyway, this tells you what the news is.

And that's still true today, except the New York Times is joined by Google. As a blogger I tend to use Google Trends with a passion. But it reflects what is news at the moment - what people are searching for. More democratic? Yes, but important news can get burried under the weight of too many searches for Megan Fox.

At the Commonwealth Club Chomsky compared right-wing media to Nazi Germany. Mediaite has a partial transcription what Chomsky said:

the memory that comes to my mind — I don’t want to press the analogy too hard, but I think it’s worth thinking about — is late Weimar Germany. There were people with real grievances, and the Nazis gave them an answer. ‘It’s the fault of the Jews and the Bolsheviks and we’ve got to protect ourselves from them, and that will take care of them.’ And you know what happened…

[...]Germany in the 1920s was at the peak of Western civilization. A decade later, it was at the pits of human history.

Unless an answer can be given to these people, unless they can be led to understand what’s really happening to them, we could be in for trouble.

He's right. I continuously say and write this, but we've got to fix this economy if only to make sure political unrest does not set in. I think part of what fuels the couch potato conservatives is that they aren't making ends meet like many in America. But their response to the economic problem has been to become anti - government. How far that goes is anyone's guess.

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As the SF Chronicle's Henry Lee explains, Oakland's City Auditor Courtney Ruby officially tells us what some Oaklanders have always known: that the City of Oakland's hiring practices in the 5,500-employee organization have the "appearance of favoritism". I didn't need a report to support what I've seen and experienced in the past and the present, but I'm glad it's released. Let's take a closer look.

The report, which you can download with a click on this link to the Oakland City Auditor's website, was prepared for Ruby's office by the Sacramento consulting firm of Sjoberg and Evashenk.

The 123-page document is not kind to the City of Oakland, and Oaklanders should be concerned with what the comprehensive report reveals. Here's just a taste of what the Oakland City Auditor's report states:

1. People were promoted through a "desk audit" and not a competitive, open process.
2. People were given appointments with job classifications that did not respect established organizational rules and took advantage of Oakland City Charter and Oakland Civil Service rules.
3. People who had part-time and temporary jobs were allowed to hang around longer than the time the position was to end.

The report also asserts that the City of Oakland appears to have an "underlying disregard for the tenants of fair and open hiring practices" (page 9).

But it's not all bad in the City of Oakland. The report says that Oakland Police Officer trainee hiring was "generally fair and rigorous" which is a complement to the officers on the beat, who can now comfortably say they were the best selected for the position of peace officer. But the Fire Department's trainee process needed "considerable improvement".

The Oakland Fire Department problem rests in the inability to find documents to back the selection process. Also, the report says that "many academy records were mishandled, lost, or damaged." So if you're reading this and didn't get a job at the Oakland Fire Department, you may have a case to make a big stink if they can't find your record as a trainee. That's terrible.

Terrible is the state of hiring practices in the City of Oakland. And at a point when people are looking for jobs like never before, Oaklanders should be concerned that their city government does not provide a totally fair and level hiring playing field.

The question is what will the Oakland City Council do?

I wish the City Auditor would look at how Oakland governs the taxi cab system. Especially considering what I experienced Sunday:



Stay tuned.

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This week for me in the City of Oakland has been one in hell. First, some housekeeping: for anyone who came to see my experimental Oakland talk show at the Lake Chalet, I'm sorry for not being there Wednesday as I was dealing with this City of Oakland issue far longer than I expected to. I'm going to do it again on Friday at 4 PM.

It's one thing to deal with tickets, but quite another to learn that if you pay the California DMV , the City of Oakland will not honor that payment for Oakland tickets if your car was towed. I also learned that its common for Oaklanders to "double pay" - that is pay the DMV first, but then be arm-twisted into paying the City of Oakland for the same set of tickets already paid for at the DMV!

Got that? And while the City of Oakland says it will pay you back, it takes almost a year to do, when it's done! In other words, you're paying for the City of Oakland's money collection issues with the DMV.

And a lot of Oaklanders have had their cars towed because the city "needs the money" from all the people I talked to at City Hall Wednesday.

The person who caused me to understand this apparent policy (I have my doubts) ia Claudia Herrera, the City of Oakland's parking supervisor, who's over the mess that is the sixth floor Oakland Parking Office at the Oakland City Administration Building at 250 Frank Ogawa Plaza, next to Oakland's City Hall.

Why do I know this? Because yesterday, in explaining why she could not clear the documents that read I paid Oakland tickets at DMV, she gave me a verbal run-around that bent logic and time and space in such a way that by the time I was done talking to her, I was in a near catatonic state.

She assumed I paid all of it to the DMV by cashier's check (some of it) and said "we don't accept cashier's checks. But I paid the DMV not the City of Oakland, and Oakland tickets were part of that payment.

She told me that a cashier's check is like a personal check! I'm serious. That was when I figured that nothing was going to get done. See, they're supposed to help you, not hurt you.

Plus, both Herrera and her assistant at the front counter didn't even look closely at my document to see what was paid until I insisted that they look at it.

I wound up being the last person to leave the office, and even then I didn't get the help I needed and as I sat in a state of shock over what I was going through, Herrera just walked off.

So I asked for her to come back - everyone of the parking patrons was gone by then and there was just staff - but she didn't and some person came out and said suddenly if I didn't leave she was going to call security. At that point, I whipped out my Flip Video Camera.

Oh, I've got that on video to come, so they can't twist the story!

I understand Claudia Herrera didn't create the system, but she can fix it. She's in the best position to do it. This isn't personal - she seems like a very decent person - but it's important because her decisions impact a lot of people in Oakland. And with Oakland's focus on gaining revenue from parking, people like Claudia Herrera should be known to the public.

So my next move is to call the DMV but perhaps take some measure that makes this whole deal go away for me. But I'm on the offensive because the City of Oakland needs to put a stop to this "misery industry" they've created.

Here's how it works:

The City of Oakland makes it hard for you to park your car. Then you get ticket after ticket. Once you get over five tickets, you become a tow target. If they tow your car and you pay DMV the City of Oakland will still hold you up from getting your car back from the tow yard.

Why have you not heard about this before? Because people don't want to talk about their misery from something that leads to the comment "Well you should not have parked there." Everyone knows that, but in Oakland a whole industry has been created from it, with the parking office, the police department, and the tow companies and this "double charging" of tickets already paid for at the DMV.

Parking rates are raised to levels that should be illegal, tickets are written, cars are towed at an alarming rate, and people are harmed by the misery industry.

It must stop. More later.

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Oakland Local's something Susan Mernit has talked about and worked on for the better part of 2009. It's a comprehensive blog in a kind of "DailyKos-style". Now, after a lot of blood sweat and tears, it's done and has gone live this week.

Welcome to Oakland, Oakland Local!

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 DMV: Where's the Money?

I just returned from another really harrowing experience with the California Department of Motor Vehicles office on Claremont Avenue in Oakland .

Between this and the taxi cab issue, and the Oakland parking problem, anti-car forces should not complain about California not charging enough to operate a car. In fact I've determined that many of them don't own cars; no bumming rides from me in the future, OK?

I think God's putting me through this just to shine a good media light on these problems.  So be it.  To that end, I got the email of the director George Valverde which I will not share, the DMV Twitter account, and his Twitter account, which I will share: @GVCADMV.

George Valverde

Mr. Valverde to date has been helpful in directing my emails, though we've not talked as of this writing, but it's these revelations below that really need to be looked into.  It may be that he's not aware of what's happening under his nose.  He should be. 

What happens, and this is from the personal experience I have gone through complete with extensive notes and papers, is that the registration paid to the DMV is not immediately assigned to whatever citations a driver gets. Plus, it may take as long as three years before a ticket or toll violation is paid from DMV to FastTrak or the California municipality!  

During that time you could wind up paying for a ticket twice and not be reimbursed - once to the DMV via registration or to clear a tow and once to the city or agency. How often this happens is not clear but I learned this from a very enterprising young man at the California vehicle collection division.

It was there that part of my horror started. They sent a "Demand for Payment" for an amount of money I already paid.

When I sent the cashier's check to prove it, it should have ended there, right? Nope. It got worse. Guess why?

They couldn't find it.

That's right. But the enterprising young man I'm taking about kept digging and determined that DMV never assigned my payment. Meanwhile the toll tickets I paid were gaining interest because FasTrak said they were not paid. It turned out that they never got the money from DMV. Now, that's not my fault - I gave them a cashier's check.

Turns out this happens to Californians more than a few times and especially when FasTrak's involved.

What's an outrage is that we allow this to go on without challenge or initiative. We as Californians worry more about being able to smoke weed than having correct and reasonable vehicle costs.

And the City of Oakland's not safe here either. It has parking records that are not accurately updated and suffer from the same DMV payment delay issues FasTrak has.  I have seen three documents with three different amounts on them. 

But what really galls me is today's discovery that DMV Sacramento can "at will" delay or adjust payments for you. It's up to how the manager looks at the situation - well, how the manager feels that day. It's discretionary, which means they can play favorites if they want to but it also means they can work to correct a mistake or at least not stick you with an obvious one.

Too much of what DMV does is so disjointed and uncoordinated that I'm really shocked the California Legislature hasn't called for an investigation. For example I got something like four different print letters from vehicle collections with different amounts. But a person in a good position at DMV told me today they should all be the same and not different. 

This person also told me that the agency - like FasTrak - that requests the money from DMV sends the payment amount and DMV doens't double check it. In other words FasTrak can send one request for $50 and then up it to $100 within a month and DMV will not question it - meanwhile FasTrak's charging weekly interest to the cost.  (Isn't that illegal?  Don't we have usery laws here?)

It's no wonder an irate Yelp user referred to FasTrak's accounting practices in a way that points to some untoward intentions.

But. But. But. She says DMV expects the documents to have the same amount. Isn't that crazy-making? But she said in one sentence that DMV doesn't care what they're charge or how it changes - (my words now) because they're just going to stick you with it, anyway.

Someone's making some extra money here. I said this to one Oakland DMV office staffer today and she agreed. "Not me" she said. But someone is. This money trail's not adding up properly, yet everyone I talked to agrees there's a problem.

This is not a good situation for the State of California to be in as it looks like and feels like it's trying to cheat California residents to clear a massive budget deficit.  I said it, and I challenge the DMV to show me that it doesn't look like that.  It does. 

Balancing the budget on the backs of California drivers is, to use a street term, just plain lame.  Ok.  It's criminal.  Moreover, it's a highly regressive practice, hurting the poor more than anyone else. A sad state of affairs.

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UPDATE: Do you know where your DMV Money goes?



What happened to me on Sunday October 18th should not happen to anyone in Oakland, or anywhere.

I was just going to go into San Francisco to catch up with my friend who was finishing the Nike Women's Marathon.  I called "Friendly Cab" to take me from my place near Lake Merritt in Oakland to 19th Street BART Station in downtown Oakland.

I was in a hurry to get there as it was around 3 PM, so even though its just about a mile away I figured cabbing it, as they say, was faster.

So the cab - car number 236 - showed up as I was standing out there early.  Well, what happed was the cab driver activated this automated call system that says "Welcome to DDS; your cab has arrived."   Well I went out to meet the vehicle and there was no cab for a solid four minutes of time.  Then he rounded the corner.

I got in the cab and calmly and normally explained where I was going.  So the cabbie starts down a street such that once he got to Grand Avenue he would pass through five stop lights before we got to Grand and Harrison.  I figured the cabbie could just turn right and use a faster path without stop lights.

But once he did as I really asked him to do without a second thought, he slowed the cab down and tried to just go deliberately slow. I asked if something was wrong. I explained that I was trying to meet my friend and it would be great if he could go faster. I then said I would give him a good tip if he helped out in that way.

So we rounded the corner on Lenox Avenue and all of a sudden the guy pulls over at what was the driveway of an apartment complex at 325 Lenox - without warning and blocking the driveway - then gets out of the car and says I can have the cab but he's going to secure it and then, yelling frantically, ordered me to take my bag out of it. He also said, "You can call the police."

At that point I pulled out my Flip Video Camera and turned it on.

The video tells the rest of the story.

As you can see, he just takes his stuff and walks off.  I got on the phone and told the cab company what happened.  I also explained that I was making a video of the incident.  I wasn't angry at the time; more like surprised and confused because I didn't say anything mean to him and there was no argument until he flew the coup.

I called Friendly Cab and the guy who came over to get me was someone I'd had as a driver before and is a very professional person. He took me to BART without charging me.

But that's happened to me before but it was in 2007.

I was returning from the Miami Super Bowl and got a cab near 12th Street BART in downtown Oakland to go home. The cab driver did not like that I asked to go down Franklin rather than some weird and costly route combination he had in mind.  So he stopped and as he was getting me to leave his car I called the Oakland Police.

They took me home.

Now all of this seems to be just because I make a request that any customer has the right to make.  But here in Oakland we have  cab drivers who seem to want you to spend more money than you should and then try to abuse you when you don't let them.  Here's my evidence.

There should be some kind of law against this action by cab driver as its dangerous. Suppose I was left in an area where I could be robber or worse? And all for what? Because I want to go my way? Come on!

This has gone on for sometime and the City of Oakland has done nothing about it.  The City of Oakland has allowed one cab company, Friendly Cab, to maintain a monopoly and in turn maintain some drivers who treat Oaklanders like this guy treated me.  But the company does have some good and fair drivers who I know - just not that guy.

That cab driver is not the norm in San Francisco, where cabbies really know their stuff and take pride in what they do.  Plus, there's more competition.  In Oakland its like they're doing you a favor rather than providing a service.

Also there's an element of racism of a different kind here: a black man cabbie who does not want another black man passenger to "give him an order," even if taking that order part of the deal of being a cab driver.

And that's the rub: it wasn't "an order" but a request I as a customer have a right to make. I was not acting weird or diva-ish and I talk to everyone. I even asked the cabbie about the warm weather before he went AWOL.

Something has to be done.  I also am explaining my personal fear because that guy knows where I live and was nutty enough to take the action of walking off.  What will he do when he can't get work because of his actions?

I have no idea.

But I do know that I had to show this. I had to take action to show people what's really wrong in Oakland from the position of how Oaklanders are treated.  Be it parking or this, the City of Oakland does not take care of its people.

Isn't it time for that to change?  I think so.  Once again, the City of Oakland, and this time its taxi detail, needs to make a better place and stop maintaining a cab system that harms Oaklanders. 

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Tuesday, Beverly Johnson, the Mayor of Alameda, said she essentially went away from the wishes of the over 8,000 people who signed a petition to have the Alameda Naval Air Station / SunCal development proposal placed on the ballot for vote next year. Mayor Johnson has pulled back on her support for the initiative at least for now.

According to the blog "The Islands of Alameda" Mayor Johnson based her decision on a city staff report I've not yet seen but reportedly would give the developer more money than the city if the initiative passed in its current form.

The blog says:

The report’s authors also asked whether the taxes to be collected on the development would be enough to cover an $4.8 million annual hit to the city’s general fund, and it pointed out that the initiative would give the developer breaks on some fees it would normally pay.

I write that because the City of Alameda and SunCal are still in negotiations as of this writing. The way this is structured is such that the development agreement is being put to a vote, which is not the normal course of action.

Because of this, the city and SunCal are basically working out the deals of that agreement before the initiative is voted on.

So this appears to be a kind of negotiating move by Mayor Johnson to gain what she feels is a fairer agreement before the vote in 2010. Still, I've not seen an elected official go public in this way in the middle of closed-door talks. I think it could have been handled better behind the scenes.

But in this, there seems to be a lack of understanding of the kind of land uses needed to generate more money for the City of Alameda. If the City is limiting the creation of new retail and business development, then it places the developer in a bind when trying to identify revenue to the City of Alameda.

Again, I've not seen the city staff report but having been through these redevelopment issues too many times, they're not so complicated that the matter can't be resolved quickly.

Stay tuned.

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According to a number of postings there was a small earthquake near Pleasanton, CA, not far from here as the crow flies.

What's interesting is the "Bay Area Earthquake" isn't showing up on the news pages of the mainstream media press in the area but the blog sites have it on Google Trends. Reportedly it was 3.7 on the Richter scale.

I didn't feel the damn thing. And from what I've read it happened while I was working on my Phil Matier video blog. I know it's long at 21 minutes, but wow!

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San Francisco Chronicle Columnist Phil Matier is a friend and one-half of the well-known reporting team of Matier and Ross.

I've known Phil since 1993 when I started as a columnist for the Oakland-based Montclarion and he and his professional sidekick Andy Ross were working under the same "Matier and Ross" title. Over the years Phil has always lent an ear and advice.

Now, since I blog on the SF Chronicle's website SFGste.com, I figured I'd take time to do something that was always in the back of my mind: make a vlog featuring an interview with Phil. The result is this 21 minutes long video.

Frankly, it also a way of paying back those at the SF Chronicle who've given me the freedom to express myself and bring light to some issues that ordinarily would be ignored.

Phil and I met at Merritt Station. A local cafe near Lake Merritt in Oakland on Sunday, September 27th.

Me: The legendary Phil Matier. Phil, my audience is national and international. Tell people about yourself. You're probably the most well-known - in the United States - 'muckraker', I would say. Ah. I don't really like that term. How would you describe yourself?

Phil Matier: I think I'm pretty much a political columnist, and uh, zeroed in pretty much on the San Francisco Bay Area and the state of California. Which, in a lot of ways, leads the nation both in content and in controversy when it comes to politics.

So I've been doing it for quite a number of years right now and I've seen a lot of interesting changes. In both parties and in the emergence of the third party, which is the 'decline to state' - people who don't really feel aligned with either of the two.

So, California is in some ways again on the leading edge of American politics, including the growth in the sort of disillusionment about the political system.

Me: Let's go with that, but before we get to that, what was your first big scoop?

Phil Matier: You know, Zen, scoops, they come and they go whether they be on the police beat, the court beat sports and politics. Sit back sometimes and flip through your clips and take a look at things. To be quite honest, they just sort of fly by like waves on a beach.

Me: Ha. There's so many you forgot, right?

Phil Matier: Well, its not just - there are a lot of what we call scoops - is that in retrospect what we look at as scoops: somebody, a gaffe, something on the goppip front, nonprofits not being on the up and up.. We've covered them all - me and my partner Andy Ross in the Matier and Ross column.

But sometimes you wonder whether these are the waves on the beach. And while they look big at the time they crash, it's really the tide that dictates sort of what goes in and out of this harbor. So when I look back on them I go 'That's interesting but I try to look at the tied and the bigger shifts that go on.

Me: Is California ungovernable? Because we have the initiative process. We saw the circus with Prop 8 and what happened with the California Supreme Court's decision. I want to hear your view. Is California ungovernable?

Phil Matier: Well, part of your question is (really) is California governable or is it over-governable at this point. We have very active governments on a number of different fronts.

We have, of course, your standard political government, which is elected every couple of years to your state assembly, your state senate, your governorships, different elected offices, your mayors, your city councilors, your town councilors, all down the line. On top of that we have the judicial system which can turn around and say 'yes or no' to whatever laws or decisions those various entities make.

Some say, well, is California being governed by the courts. If you look at things like prisons, roads, schools, and such like that, sometimes it appears that the courts are making the primary decisions.

In California we have another layer over that which is the initiative process. Which was initially the idea that if the voters didn't like something they could put it on the ballot and they could change it. Especially if the legislature or the courts were simply inactive or chose to ignore it.

The first big - it was a dormant thing (the initiative process) for many many year, before it sprang to life a couple of decades back with Proposition 13. The passage of that: the great California tax revolt, which in turn led to the rise of (Ronald) Reagan and other things nationally. As I was saying California in some ways moves the country.

That inspired people to say we can take government into our own hands when government refuses to act. The intiative process became a gauge of the overall political tides. If a City like Oakland didn't want to do tax reform then the people would do it for them.

That morphed into a process where people and businesses were putting things on the ballot to put them on for ballot's sake. So now we have three layers of politics in California. Three layers of governance, all competing at times, but at times all working together.

As an illustration, California's many problems with its budget. The legislature didn't have the will or the votes to pass various things to they said we will put it to the voters and have them decide.

That didn't work.

Another question is, let's say Gay Marriage in California, Proposition 8. Voters said 'no' to it, City of San Francisco said 'yes' to it, triggering a court fight, that turned around and said 'no' to it and then the voters were asked again and they said 'yes' to it, (which was a 'no' to Gay Marriage), but that is a process. Like it or not. People - if it works in your favor, people like it. If you don't get the results you want it needs fixing.

California's having these discussions about having a constitutional convention and try to remake the playing field, yet again.

Me: Can we get there, though?

Phil Matier: We may get to a constitutional convention. I'm not sure we're going to get anything out of it that's going to be substantive.

At the key to all of these problems, as (former Speaker and San Francisco Mayor) Willie Brown likes to say, it's not the system, it's the players.

Speaker / Mayor Willie Brown

And if you're a football team and you've lost the Super Bowl in politics these days in California we say 'Well, we need to change the rules' - make the goal posts closer. We almost could have won if we'd gotten those last 10 yards, so let's make the field 90 yards rather than 110 yards.

We do these under the name of reform and all they do is often times all the do is change the rules. But if you don't have the talent, it's not going to work.

Me: How much of these problems are borne of the fact that we seem to have two states in one? We've talked for years about a split state need. But we've never done anything about it.

Phil Matier: People would say we have two states, Northern California and Sounthern California because they have the water. Now, California's spliting into two states, coastal and interior of California which is exurban and suburban. What the coast has to sell, the inland's going to buy. We have two Californias, now you can say we can split them but I'm not sure it's going to work. Many states have a split; it's just that ours is a little bigger than others. 

Me: Let me ask you a blunt question, first, about San Francisco and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. Why is he running for governor when there are those who feel he hasn't finished being Mayor of San Francisco?

Mayor Gavin Newsom

Phil Matier: Well, Zennie, let's be honest. If there was a rule in politics that if you were going to run for another office you could not do so until you were finished with your current one, we wouldn't have a President Obama.

Me: Are you comparing Gavin to Barack?

Phil Matier: Only in that we have this evolution in American politics to where you pass through rather than necessarily complete. So that's not a new phenomenon at all. History is full of governors and senators - congresspeople - who have moved on to other offices midterm and cast their eye high and kept going.

Zennie Abraham: But Phil, come on. I know Gavin. I love Gavin. I think Gavin's a great guy, but I keep wondering why he didn't do the 'Jerry Brown move'. Jerry was Mayor of Oakland; he remade himself. Concentrate on being Mayor, and then..

California Attorney General Jerry Brown

Phil Matier: Zennie you have to dust off your memory a little bit. Jerry Brown, no sooner did he get elected Governor of California with his father's help, did he too run for President.

Me: That's true. I stand corrected.

Phil Matier: Now he says the voters never forgave him for that; he didn't think it was a smart move but that didn't stop him from running for President again and again and again.

Zennie Abraham: Three times, I believe.

Phil Matier: With age comes wisdom. But in California we also have Jerry Brown who, while not declared is going to run for governor and who well could get into the Guiness Book of World Records for having been the first guy to be governor twice - non consecutively. And the first to have gone from governor to attorney general.

I think what you're saying is 'Why the leapfrogging' and you want to know about Gavin Newsom and wha the future holds for him.

He obviously sees himself as a person of destiny of which the mayorship of San Francisco was a step to that. Well, you would say the governorship would be a step to another office? Yes. He is a creature of that world. It's an interesting paradox that he is at once an agent of change and very much something out of a television politician, running from one office to another.

That is politics as well. It is a game of ambition. It is a game of high ideals. Very rarely do we have situations where people who are underestimated wind up in positions where they achieve greater than anyone expected.

Harry Truman, for example, was a pretty much a political machine product and had been parked in the vice-presidency as a caretaker know body though was going anywhere.

Zennie Abraham: Reagan?

Phil Matier: No Ronald Reagan was always a rising star - a man on the move. He was the first true multi-media president - Jack Kennedy was probably the first televised one - Ronald Reagan took it further.

On the next mayor of San Francisco and Black Politics in Oakland

Phil Matier: Gavin has not really laid down a political infrastructure in San Francisco It's going to be a bedoin regime when Newsom picks up his tent and moves on - the sands will, within a day, cover up most of what political tracks he had left.

Zennie Abraham: Any surprises in the City Attorney's Race that might lead to mayor?

Phil Matier: The City Attorney of San Francisco Dennis Herrera's obviously a top candidate for mayor. State Senator Leland Yee would like to see himself the first Chinese-American mayor of San Francisco. Bevan Dufty would like to be the first Gay mayor, We have a number of people out there.

But in politics, Zennie, as you well know, you don't know the field until the bell rings. Because things changes quickly. Here in Oakland, you had the return of Ron Dellums, then before that Jerry Brown. Who knows? In Oakland you have everyone asking 'Who's going to run?'

Zennie Abraham: Perata?

(Fmr.) State Senator Don Perata 

Phil Matier: He's already running but who knows, Sean Penn may move to Oakland and run for mayor. I'm just joking on that, but the point is in politics you just don't know.

Zennie Abraham: In Oakland it seems like (Don) Perata is unbeatable. I can't see anyone that can beat him. I admire Don but I always thought his want was to ascend beyond mayor, instead of be Mayor of Oakland. Am I looking at that the wrong way?

Phil Matier: I think that for Don Perata there's always been a split path there. I think that he thought he could go high in state government and I think he ran for controller on the state level and he didn't make it in the primary. There's ambition there.

But he did go up there. He did get a look inside the governor's office. There are two types of politicians: the executive types and those that enjoy the debate. Willie Brown knew he couldn't win (for governor) state wide, but he went to the state and got as far as he could. I think Perata's more on the executive side. Senator Diane Feinstein's more on the executive side, but she's in the Senate acting as an exective.

Zennie Abraham: If Perata wins, does that mean Black politics is dead in Oakland?

Phil Matier: No. Zennie you have to understand the art of politics can be very obvious on the street or very subtle. You could make an argument that if I was talking in straight political numbers, if I ..OK. I are saying that the absence of a Black mayor would lessen the political power in Oakland?

Zennie Abraham: It's not so much black mayor as councilmembers, people who are active.

Phil Matier: Let's take a look at this.

Zennie Abraham: Sure.

Phil Matier: Two (black) members on the city council.

Me: Right.

Phil Matier: Two members on the (Alameda) county board of supervisors?

Me: Right. But Phil, we...

Phil Matier: Excuse me. Your congress. Your Congresswoman Barbara Lee.

Me: Yes.

Phil Matier: That is a pretty strong..black police chief. Black fire chief.

Me: Right.

Phil Matier: There's a pretty strong front there within the infrastructure of government and on the elected front.

Zennie Abraham: Phil, I gotta ask ya, we had more black councilmembers 15 years ago.

Phil Matier: There's also been a change in the population of Oakland.

Me: Yes. Yes. Yes. Very true.

Phil Matier: Now, is it reflective of the city? If that is the goal is it reflective of the ebb and flow as well.

Me: Yes. It is reflective of the city. We have change. We have our first Lesbian councilmember. We have a large lesbian population per capita. But even with that, my contention is that those who are African American and politically involved are not as cohesive as they used to be.

Phil Matier: What is the reason for that?

Me: I don't know.

Phil Matier: Well, part of it is, possibly, with success comes complacency.

Me: Also lack of leadership.

Phil Matier: I don't think..What leadership. I don't...you have a black congresswoman, a black..

Me: Mentors. Lack of mentors.

Phil Matier: I don't think that's for lack of leadership.

Me: Ok.

Phil Matier: Now, Ron Dellums was congressman he handed it to Barbara Lee. Right?

Me: But they're older than me.

Phil Matier: Well, OK. That is universal in politics - young versus old cuts across all political lines. Now whether the young organize around political issues that remains to be seen. Now whether a Perata ..You could make an argument that a Perata or a Jerry Brown perhaps increased African American participation because they felt like they needed to fight for something.


Me: In Oakland, I see younger talented white women in politics. Frieda Edgette who runs the East Bay Young Democrats is well-liked and moving forward, as just one example. But that's why I say: there's a strong group over there that's unmatched in any area.

Phil Matier: Well, all I can say is at the core of politics in America a person gets to decide their willingness and level of involvement It's not mandated. You don't get drafted. You decide how much you want to be involved or not be involved.

In terms of politics if we go back to the idea of courts, we have organizing tools as economics - getting the piece of the pie. If it attracts quotas or whatever you want to call them is there a need to organize?

Me: Forecast the Governor's Race.

Phil Matier: It hasn't started yet. We have people hovering around. We have Gavin Newsom. We have Jerry Brown. We, on the Republican side, we have Meg Whitman. We have Steve Poisner. Tom Campbell. A race is when the running starts. What we have are people putting on their sneakers and looking in the mirror.

Me: Senator Boxer. Vulnerable?

Phil Matier: Anybody is going to be vulnerable when we have national issues like heath care in this situation. It's no secret that when your party's president is in office and its midterm elections, you're vulnerable. Yes. She's vulnerable. I don't have to say that; every politician feels that in their bones. Even if they're uncontested they always feel vulnerable.

Me: Phil, I can sit here and talk to you all day but I know you're a busy man. We can catch you at SFGate, and Channel Five.

Phil Matier: and on KCBS (radio) in the mornings and the afternoons.

Me: Phil, thank you so much.

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I just read the Oakland Tribune's editorial (Monday, October 12th) on the City of Oakland's parking enforcement policies and the word that immediately came to mind when I was done was this one: irresponsible.

Somewhere along the way the Oakland Tribune forgot that it was supposed to represent the needs, hopes, and wants of the people of the City of Oakland, not the City of Oakland.

The Tribune editors wrote:

Some of the most irrational parking opponents still aren't satisfied. They're demanding — which is utterly absurd — that the council set parking rates at 50 cents per hour, end aggressive ticketing, forgive all tickets issued since July 1 and issue an apology for instituting the parking changes in the first place.

Irrational? Under the Tribune's twisted logic, the "Shop Oakland" program of free parking on Christmas holidays is just plain insane!

What kind of "Tribune" is this? It's certainly not the one that was created by the late editor and publisher Bob Maynard, a local Oaklander who cared about the city's people and wasn't afraid to take on the city's elected officials.

Bob Maynard (left) cared about Oakland and its people

This media organization that happens to have an Oakland presence, called "MediaNews", has little to do with Oakland and seems to have more of a - dare I say - "Tri Valley" outsider point of view. But you'd think even with that fact, the firm would be smart enough to have figured out that if Oaklanders were able to save money on parking, that's at least 75 cents they could spend on one of the Oakland Tribune papers!  

But I guess helping people save money in this recession is something beyond the Oakland Tribune's consideration. Should the Tribune stop the presses it would have no one to blame but itself - it's already advocated for the bankruptcy of Oaklanders.

Geez.

Youth at What Now America (WNA) express their views on Oakland through pictures.

The Blog Michael d's Buzz Report features Oakland's Lake Chalet Restaurant in full palm tree mode! My favorite place, for which now after all my self-starting advocacy I'm a spokesperson of sorts, is still drawing great crowds especially for Taco Tuesday's. Here's one of my videos - more to come - on the great new place to eat and hang:

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I watched as much of the NY Giants' mugging of the Oakland Raiders 44 to 7 as I could stand, even as the CBS Sports NFL group was apologizing for the game!

CBS Football Analyst and NFL great Boomer Esiason said it looked like the Washington Generals versus the Harlem Globetrotters, and one had to assume the Raiders were the Generals, which were always beaten by the Globetrotters. Seeing them actually do that was a low point in Oakland Raiders football history, and now we must call into question everything the Raiders are doing on the field.

Especially on offense with the Oakland Raiders passing game.

I've said and written it before, and I'll do it again. The Raiders passing offense lacks the basic practices used by organizations that install timed passing games. The lack of use of hashmarks as landmarks is just the start of the problem. It's the overall passing game philosophy that I now question.

The Oakland Raiders seem obsessed with using the run to set up the pass, even when they're down by 30 points and everyone in the building knows they've got to throw. Yet, time and again, the Raiders' coaches insisted on having quarterback Jamarcus Russell run play action passes.

I couldn't believe it.

But then I realized the Raiders' coaches were under the impression that such a move would slow down the pass rush. Only someone forgot to tell that to the New York Giants. The Raiders's Russell was sacked six times, three times in the first half, three times in the second half.

One particularly memorable slamming of Russell came on a play action fake out of the I formation where Johnathan Goff came around end on a blitz and met Russell as soon as he came out of the play fake.

The Raiders play selection and formations were terribly predictable. Just having two backs in the I Formation means they can't quickly release for a pass and causes the defense to constrict, making blitzing easier because the outside linebackers are closer to the quarterback than would be the case in a spread formation.

Why didn't the Oakland Raiders just use five wide receiver sets and throw short passes? You know: three steps here, five steps there, one step, and then a screen pass of some kind. It's not a hard something to coach - the examples of how are all over the Internet of one cares to look, especially for the Walsh Offense.

I'm going to push this until it gives, but I'll start by asserting if the Oakland Raiders gave me their third string offensive players and quarterback, we could beat their starting defense in a seven-on-seven drill starting at the 50 yard line. Our offense would score on each of, say, five drives. I'm that confident I can prove just how much behind the state-of-the-art the Raiders passing game is.

Points to A Win

Their are several approaches the Raiders need to adopt to have a successful passing game. This is how I would attack a defense.

1) Using formations to direct the defense: The first problem is that the Raiders don't use formations to "direct" the defense. For example, it's impossible to play an effective zone defense against a five wide-receiver system. Many defenses are forced to play some kind of man-for-man coverage. Some of those coverages would result in a defense with no middle linebacker and starting their we would exploit it.

2) Preshifts cause defenses to "keep it simple": The Dallas Cowboys under Tom Landry popularized the "preshift" where the offense would start in one formation, then shift to another, before the snap of the ball. In our case we would shift receivers - from three wide to a cluster, for example - to discourage cornerback blitzing and render any zone blitz ineffective, and force a basic man-for-man coverage.

3) Early motion forces defenses to reveal coverages: Into this we mix motion before the snap, especially the backs from the backfield, or wide receivers from running back positions, to cause the defense to show if it's playing man or zone. We also use motion to stretch the defensive coverage, then attack the seams with a variety of pattern combinations.

4) Multiple launch points keep the quarterback on the move: Against us the defense will see rollouts, sprint passes, one-step passes, three-step passes, five-step passes, and delayed passes which are plays where we throw to a receiver, who then throws back to the quarterback, who then throws. (Yes, I know the throw to the receiver must be such that it's not a pass, else we would throw two passes.)

5) No huddle offense to take advantage of defenses that heavily substitute players: This is pretty straight forward. We give the quaterback the freedom - teach this really - to call plays at the line of scrimmage and have a special package of plays that give receivers option routes so one play has a better chance of working.

That's the approach. Again, this is a rather general presentation as I didn't talk about such things as route design or route combinations. But I'm convinced any Raider quarterback would thrive in my system, but I know JaMarcus Russell would be an all pro in it.

I understand that the Raiders' coaches give Rusell only a few plays, but they're the wrong plays.  Even if it's a package of 15 plays, that can be 15 of the best plays the league's ever seen. 

If the Oakland Raiders disagree, all they have to do is take me up on my challenge. I know I will prevail.

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I've received a lot of comments, calls, and texts since I revealed the City of Oakland's parking tow sting operation on Saturday.

Working backward and reading some of them, a friend told me just a few minutes ago that just last, on College Avenue and Kasel, she saw an Oakland parking enforcement person - she used the term "meter maid" but that implies a level of civility of behavior I've not yet seen in the staffers - actually measuring the distance of a car's wheel to the curb and a red zone before giving them a ticket!

Now, to say that's beyond the pale is an understatement but it shows just how much the City of Oakland's trying to squeeze money out of Oaklanders where they feel it the most (other than housing): transportation.

The other story comes from a reader who explains:

Not only is the city selectively issuing parking tickets by neighborhood what the city is doing is an unfair practice. It is akin to the banks "generating" exorbitant charges just by the order they allow over drafts to be paid. Yes the account is over drawn, but five small checks would not have been if the banks would not have forced the largest amount to the head of the payment line depleting the account. This created multiple bank overdraft charges when there may have only been one overdraft.


In prior years we complained about that bank practice but feeling isolated we were unable to act collectively. Now the government has called this an unfair practice. Parking enforcement in Oakland has headed down the same trail. The $55 expired meter ticket charge is too high and it is applied arbitrarily. Some cars' tires are mark while others' car is ticketed. Some people are given a grace time of a few minutes while others are left standing watching the car being ticketed after being 2 minutes. Recently the assembly line ticketing was so aggressive (multiple parking enforcers on same block at the same time) I asked the shop owners to tell the officers that I just pulled in and was running to the pay station to get a coupon. They laughed and asked which car.

I think one reason the City of Oakland gets away with the aggressive parking enforcement and high-rate strategy is that it (at present) legally can. The law should be changed, or at the very least some kind of Oakland measure be structured (it would win an election vote), to prevent the City from charging parking fines over the legal California usery rate of 10 percent interest.

The City's unemployment rate was estimated to be 17.5 percent as of August 2009 according to Oakland's own economic development department. That means one out of every five people in Oakland is jobless. And with that comes crime.

As I write this in a cafe in Oakland, the police are outside writing a report because a woman was just mugged over on Broadway. Earlier today I saw a window of a car smashed in near Euclid Avenue. Two days ago a downtown Oakland salon was vandalized on Washington Street; I made a video of the shattered glass and talked to the business owner.

This city's getting more and more dangerous and the City of Oakland's acting more like one of the muggers, taking money from its citizens who need it more than the City. This has got to stop.

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As Oakland Councilmembers like Jean Quan remind you that on Tuesday they voted to roll back parking enforcement times from 8 P.M. to 6 P.M., a terrible and really hurtful act is being done by the City of Oakland and its harming a lot of Oaklanders.

The City of Oakland's instructed parking enforcement staff to just check license plates on cars to make sure the registrations' up to date. If it's not, even if the car's legally parked and regardless of the records error the driver is fighting, they will tow it. This is happening every day and now it happened to me.

I had a DMV registration charge that I proved was too high from 2008. My 2009 costs were paid already but this matter has been in dispute and we finally resolved it and at a cost I could afford. Meanwhile I was barely using the car for obvious reasons, and staying around the neighborhood. But, late for a lunch meeting on Thursday, I parked on the street, paid the meter ticket, and when I came out less than the time I had paid for, the car was gone.

That was a punch in the stomach. Fortunately I am able to pay DMV on Monday, but I learned the City of Oakland's towing cars on what many, many people have described as a "sting" operation. I've walked by random Oaklanders who say they can't afford to get their car out of the tow yard and they were legally parked.

That's terrible.

Yes. We can all say that we should work to keep our registration up to date, but in the past the City of Oakland would give you an "expired tag" ticket which at least gave one time to get the money to fix the problem.

A lot of people are without work - no job at all. No money coming in to pay for anything or just barely getting by. I overheard one man say he had to spend almost $2,000 for his car. A friend of mine on Facebook posted that she owed $1,400 in tickets. Fortunately she, like me, has a job.

But the problem is the City of Oakland's parking records are faulty and don't reflect if a payment for a ticket was made through DMV (as I do) in a timely fashion. In other words, it could take years for the payment of a ticket to show up in the City's records.

Does that mean if you paid DMV registration which covered a ticket two years ago, the City of Oakland's records may not reflect that - and you could pay twice?

Yes.

This is an outrage of massive proportions because it comes at a time when people need their money just to make ends meet. I'm happy to be in the position I'm in and have money coming in, but I feel for those I just happen to over hear on the street or the gym or talk to.

It's a rampant Oakland parking tow sting operation.

Some people don't like to talk about it which is why it goes "under the radar" while the City Council pats itself on the back for rolling back parking times. Big deal. I'm blogging about it because I'm no different than anyone else except I do have a "big mouth" and I'm using it to help those less fortunate.

City of Oakland, stop this sting operation, NOW. Please. You're hurting a lot of Oaklanders in a city who's unemployment rate is at around 25 percent or more in some areas. It's not right to try and balance the budget on the backs of Oakland's poor. They need their cars just to get to whatever job they may find; now you take that away from them for your own money needs.

That's not right at all. Help Oaklanders, don't hurt them. Some cold folks out there may jump for joy over the misfortune of others because they are "anti-car" but that's really selfish. Some of those same Oaklanders have no problem asking a person with a car for a ride home. Now if that person doens't have a car, the anti-car person's stuck too, right?

Geez.

City of Oakland and City Administrator Dam Lindheim, how about a more civil way of handling this? Or does it have to happen to you before you get what others are feeling? I hope not.

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I took a self-created video tour of Alameda Naval Air Station, and I must say that I'm profoundly disappointed that this once great facility, the economic engine of Alameda when it was open and running, is in what can only be called a horrible state of disrepair.

In other words, it's blighted.

The land that was this great "Aviation Gateway to the Pacific" supports some of the largest buildings I've ever seen in my life. As a member of the first "Alameda Base Reuse Committee", it was our collective dream to see this 1,500 acre monument to America's Military history redeveloped.

Now, after years of not visiting the land as extensively as I did Wednesday, I'm really shocked that basically nothing has been done to improve this property and restore it to economic production.

A remade and expanded trail is not enough. Even SunCal's terrific development proposal, while needed, only covers 700 acres of the property. In a time of serious economic need, using "NAS Alameda" as the center of the rebirth of the Bay Area economy should be a not just a priority, but a cause.

I'm not at all sympathetic to the opponents of the development plans for the station, who want to maintain Alameda's "small town character" because they (with all due respect to them) don't seem to understand that the SunCal idea does not represent "building up" because what's being proposed for resuse is a huge, unused part of Alameda. It's so big, that the new mix of uses could go in and barely - really not - impact Alameda's image.

I could really understand if the proposal was for the "upzoning" of downtown Alameda to allow buildings 40 stories tall, but that's not what this is. Again it's the reuse of a once-proud part of the City of Alameda. In fact, it's replacing a population that was forced out by the Navy's closure decision.

In 1938 Alameda lobbied to get the Naval Air Station; they got it. Over time, Alameda's benefited from it both economically and socially and no one complained that the "small town character" was hampered by its existence. Now, when it and the people who inhabit it are gone, we have people actually complaining that replacing the lost activity would hurt Alameda!

That's nuts.

We need the redeveloped Alameda Naval Air Station now, not later. If you have a chance, visit the grounds. You'll see first hand just how much of a blighted ghost town it is and agree that something should be done.

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The Oakland Gang Task Force, that was the much talked about unit of the City of Oakland's Police Department in the Discovery television series "Oakland Gang Wars", has been disbanded.

In fact, this action happened just about a month ago according to sources who do not wish to be named. The reason for the action is a combination of budget cutting and political infighting out of the view of Oakland's City Council.

Reportedly, but I offer this is not the exact explanation and only a caricature of entire story, the eight-person unit had one officer who was not well liked by the commanding sergeant, who wanted him reassigned. The other officers involved like and respect the officer and so disagreed with the planned removal. That set in motion a number of actions, some involving high level OPD execs, that my sources did not fully disclose but had something to do with the eventual end of the task force.

The officers which made up the group were reassigned to the narcotics beat.

I was told that the Oakland Gang Task Force did such a good job that even the criminals they caught pointed to their fairness and professionalism in their work. No, I'm not kidding when I write that. (As a point of information, I'm told that in Oakland, the estimate of 10,000 gang members may be an undercount.)

Many of the group officers are Oaklanders and former gang members themselves, who understand how that way of life works and how to navigate within it. They truly care about Oakland and reportedly conducted their work in that way.

While political infighting and budget cuts doomed the Oakland Gang Task Force, one may aak if the recent $10.8 million grant from the Obama Administration helped. I'm told it did, in that it caused Oakland to be able to retain all of the recently hired officers.

The unfair system

Some have written that the Oakland gang effort targets black neighborhoods in our city. I do agree because the other part of the problem is the demand for drugs in areas that have the resources and are mostly white but go "unpoliced". In fact, I'm told the former members of the Oakland Gang Task Force state that's a large problem.

The answer may be to increase police activity in areas of demand, perhaps even to home inspections with a search warrant. What that would do over time is wake up the population to the severity of the gang and drug problem.

But - and I'm willing to bet - that some would claim cocaine is used for medicinal purposes, and push for the legalization and taxation of its use.

I'm being "tongue-in-cheek" here to a degree, but look folks, it's really an out-of-whack society that punishes one group with arrests for selling drugs, the poor and minority, and rewards the other group with freedom of use of drugs, the rich and white.

Fortunately, Oakland's finest agree with me.

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Kanye West has done it again. Proving that President Obama was right and he indeed is a jackass just weeks after his celebrated break in on Taylor Swift as she was accepting the award for "Best Female Video of The Year" at the MTV Video Music Awards...



Kanye West opened his mouth and told a TMZ.com reporter that he wanted chicken because "I'm black."

You know, there's an old saying that if you forget the past you're doomed to repeat it. In this case, younger African Americans like Kayne obviously weren't instructed that being black does not come with a set of instructions or limitations, as we were told in the past, as much by ourselves as by others.

This - his comment - strikes a heavy nerve with me (and I don't care if he was kidding) because when I was little, specifically between the ages of 4 and 13 while growing up on the mostly black South Side of Chicago, I was told repeatedly by others who were black like me that I wasn't black.

"You talk white", was all I was told again and again. And if it wasn't that, it was this by the African American adults: "Well, you talk 'proper'. (Thank God for my Mom and Dad, who never, ever, pushed that idea in my head.)

The point is I was bombarded with constant signals telling me how I was supposed to act and be as an African American person. And signals telling me that I should not expect to achieve because I'm black.

Those signals that I ignored at and pushed against, at times deliberately, and eventually I created something I called "My Iron Man Suit", in a Chronicle column two years ago. It wasn't until we moved to Oakland in the early 70s that I stopped hearing that because I wasn't in an entirely black environment. Sorry, but was my experience.

Yeah, I'd evolved to the point where most of my friends were not only black but white, Latino, and Asian, and not the kind of people who would tell me that, "Star Trek's for white people", for example.

Are you anti-diversity folks paying attention here?

To me freedom is the ability to be who you are, free from the chains others try to confine you with, and chains crafted from their own insecurities. Heck, I got those messages constantly when I worked at the City of Oakland between 1987 and 1989 and then again from 1995 to 2001.

When I was an intern in 1987, a person, black, who I know to this day and respect told me something that still makes my blood boil, even if I knew what he meant. He said "Man, you've got three problems: you're young, gifted, and black."

In other words, society can't stand an intelligent African American man. That's what he was saying to me.

Someone else said that my problem with trying to bring the Super Bowl to Oakland was that some thought a high-profile white person should do it (and the Oakland Chamber of Commerce certainly sent that message to me at the time).

I'm not kidding.

Another Oakland employee in economic development said "I guess you can tell we don't like smart people around here."

But those were the 80s and now in 2009 I can say the are a lot of blacks like me who've risen to public view, which makes me smile. One of those people is in the White House. I know, without knowing all of them personally, what kind of struggle they endured just to be themselves.

Kanye is channeling those messages all over again here in 2009, and there's a part of me that just wants to grab him by the collar and yell "Knock it off, will ya?!!" Thanks to Kanye West, we can see that regardless of how much one talks about progress, integration, and President Obama as the first black president, we still have people who talk as if being black is a kind of confinement of personality and extinguishing of ambition.

That's why when Barack won the Presidency last year, I cried. I just cried.

Kanye, hear me on this: try sending a signal to your followers that one can be anything they want to regardless of color, but especially young black men. I think a large part of black-on-black crime is self-hatred. We've got to stop that, and you can help, big time. Do that for me. Heck, do it for society because you have a big voice. But lately, your voice been an irresponsible one. Please step up and help advance us, not knock us back. Yes, I like Chicken, but it's not because I'm black.

Thanks!