Monday, August 10, 2009

Richmond, Ca Mayor on Chevron refinery issue

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On YouTube.com

In the wake of my interview with Chevron employee Dennis Roos I've gotten a number of email and calls updating me on the matter of the negotiations to restart the stopped construction of the improvements to the Richmond refinery.

One of them was this "Meet The Mayor" community meeting held Friday, August 7th at 5:30 PM. Here, one could ask questions of Richmond Mayor Gayle McLaughlin for one hour, but my intent was to attend, film residents who were concerned about the project, pro and con, and after it was over, get the Mayor's direct point of view if she would give it to me. (Take note of that.)

To review, Chevron's planned upgrade of their giant Richmond oil refinery was stalled because environmentalists sued them in court regarding what was viewed to be an inadequate environmental impact report (EIR) regarding how emissions were going to be lessened over current levels. Contra Costa County Superior Court Judge Barbara Zuniga agreed with their view and ordered planed construction stopped until Chevron could create a "better" EIR. The judge's decision threw over 1,000 construction employees out of work and threatened the future of Chevron in Richmond.

So I did arrive and sat next to a white-haired gentleman who as it happened gave me a copy of a letter I'd not seen from Richmond's Mechanics Bank. The letter stressed the importance of keeping Chevron in Richmond and arriving at a settlement to get the plant project going again.

So the meeting started and as the Mayor listened to people introduce themselves I explained that I was a video-blogger who wanted to ask her about the plant matter after the meeting was over if I could. She did say that was fine.

There were only two people who came to the meeting to talk about the refinery issue. The first person, an African American man, said that the Mayor seemed not to care about the people who need jobs and more about her own agenda (this is in the video). The Mayor said that she does did support a support a substitute to the the resolution voted on by the Richmond City Council two weeks ago calling for settlement talks (with California Attorney General Jerry Brown involved) so that all the workers can get back to their jobs and she's working to make that happen. The Mayor said doing this is important because Richmond has a 17 percent unemployment rate.

A few minutes later, and after a number of residents expressed concern for and presented programs to stop the violence plaguing young African Americans in Richmond (which was heart-breaking to see, no matter how many times I am presented with this issue), the man I was sitting next to, who's name was Richard Lompa, asked the Mayor about the bank letter, and explained that he didn't understand "why do we continuously bash Chevron" and quoted the letter written by Mechanics Bank President and CEO Stephen Foster which said the reason given for opposing Chevron doesn't stand up to scrutiny . He said no one would support Chevron putting out more pollution, and that it was as if she was plunging a dagger in the heart of the city.

The Mayor's response was that the judge made the decision and then she threw in that Chevron does not pay its fair share of taxes and talked about the company's court battle against Measure T which imposed a new tax structure for manufacturers like Chevron. She also pointed to Chevron's appeal of its property tax assessment.

After the meeting and people left the room, the Mayor did give me her time and put to rest the idea some have expressed that she was not talking to Chevron, stating that she talks to representatives of the firm every day.

Mayor McLaughlin then essentially repeated her claim that Chevron doesn't pay its taxes in response to my question that as a person trained and who's practiced economic development, tax reductions are a normal part of negotiations to make it easier for employers to maintain their business in a city. She asked if I was referring to the Measure T issue, and repeated what she said before regarding the firm not paying its fair share of taxes. Then, weirdly and after presenting herself well on camera but before I could deactivate it, suddenly turned and said "I have a community meeting" but I turned the camera to show that the meeting had ended long ago. Moreover, the Mayor agreed to give me just a moment of her time, and I gave her a platform to present herself; the Mayor didn't say she had more people to meet when we started the interview. She didn't have to essentially rain on her own parade but that's what happened as one can see and I'm really disappointed that she did that. I turned off the camcorder.

As I went outside, Mr. Lompa was talking to another person, but after he finished gave me his view. "The Mayor," he said, "was being shallow and not grounded with reality" regarding her repeating of the idea that Chevron has a $24 billion profit. He also said that he appeals his tax bill if he thinks it's not valid.

I agree with Mr. Lompa, but I'm really concerned that the good Mayor seems to have more of a personal agenda that may cloud her ability to effectively negotiate with Chevron. It's common practice for businesses to want and ask for tax reductions and its equally normal for city economic development officials (and that includes the Mayor) to structure rates that help businesses.

In all of my years in the public sector I've not seen or met a Mayor that didn't understand that, but Mayor McLaughlin's a new breed of activist city official. That's all well and good for getting elected but it seems to cloud one's ability to conduct the business of maintaining a municipality's economy. One can have their personal beliefs but when a city's unemployment rate is at almost 20 percent as is the case in Richmond, its a recession, and the job base has decreased by over 50 percent in the last two years, it's time to be more pragmatic and less antagonistic.

Tom Hayes: Another glimmer of hope for the economy

The health care sector continues to add jobs so investor confidence during the past month led the monthly Economic Recovery Reality Index (ERRI) up a modest 4.76 points over July numbers to 16.03 for August. Unemployment dipped slightly and the increase in the number of “discouraged” workers slowed, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics - but as with prior economic recessions and depressions employment changes are once again trailing the other economic indicators:

The small ERRI gain shows Wall Street's optimism hasn't yet reached most other streets; it will take some time for average Americans to feel - or believe - that this long subtle assault that started with obscure financial "devices" has eased and real recovery has begun. The problem, we know now, was not sub-prime lending, which can and does help people, but aggressive and deliberately predatory sub-prime lending from companies and CEOs who thought they were immune to the risks in an essentially unregulated environment.

The ERRI uses a hypothetical, indexed fund (similar in some ways to a mutual fund) to measure investor confidence across nearly a dozen sectors of the economy, but until jobs and wages show sustained improvements you won't see it move back closer to (or above) the 100 mark no matter how fast stock prices drive the stock/investment component higher.
"Equity investments are volatile, particularly when not carefully diversified and monitored; the ERRI would have shown even less improvement had closing prices from even a day sooner been utilized in the calculations (since that would have reduced the 'ERRI fund' improvement.)"
The modest gain in the August ERRI figures reflect both equity prices as of the close of the NYSE on Friday, August 7th and data released in the monthly update/estimate from the Department of Labor earlier the same day combined using a new calculation. Without the on-going hiring in health care and the slight turn-around in unemployment rate even the robust gains in various stock markets would not have had much impact on the index.

Michael Vick please show that you have class!

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Now as any regular follower of my blogs knows, I'm really happy former Atlanta Falcons Quarterback Michael Vick's back in the NFL, and even though he's not signed with a team yet, former Indy Coach Tony Dungy said on NBC's telecast of the "Hall of Fame Game" that a team should sign him within the next week. That's great. But just because God's smiling on Vick, doesn't mean he has to lose control of the image he's working to build so quickly, and risk blowing it all.

What do I mean? Well, there's a new set of expectations of Vick from a number of people: NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, Dungy, and anyone rooting for Vick to get a second chance and most important succeed at it. I count myself here because I embarked on an attack against on PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) for its race-tinged smearing of Vick, and I'm still not done with PETA. But because of that, I expect Michael Vick to be that guy we all want him to be, and not someone sporting the latest in thug attire and saying "I'm gonna always love my N___, you know what I'm sayin" as he did in this video:



When I got wind of this via Charles Robinson of Yahoo Sports on Twitter, I pretty much fell out of my chair. I wanted to make sure I wasn't being too anal about the whole deal so I asked my Mom, who's visiting me, to come over and watch the video. Her words came out as soon as she listened to him: "He's not gonna make it," she said.

I informed Mom that Coach Dungy said Vick would be signed by someone and she said "I hope so." So do I.

See, what Mike doens't understand is now, like it or not, everyone black's not only rooting for him and fighting for him, but demands that he represent himself in a way that justifies our actions in defending him. I write "black" because Vick's behavior ignites the age-old argument of what it means to be black in America and the idea that one does not have to act black, but that's another blog post, back to this one.

Allowing ones self to be on camera showing the best of thug life (another code word for "acting black") doesn't help us one bit. I don't know where anyone got the idea that rap culture was desirable, but Vick's got to understand if he wants to establish himself as lovable to corporate sponsors (and if you want to say that's a code word for "acting white" go ahead but my retort is that being clean, intelligent, and presentable to companies has nothing to do with race at all), he's got to lose that shtick, and fast.

Am I being harsh, yes, massively so. Do I care? No way. I'm really ticked-off with Vick's actions; perhaps T.O. (Terrell Owens) can talk me down and talk to him in the process. Protecting the proper image is at the center of this issue of Michael Vick's future. There are people betting that Vick will be just the kind of person he's showing himself to be in that YouTube moment and that's not acceptable to us, his fans. While Michael may feel he's got to "keep it real" as Chris Rock would say, "keeping it real, yeah, real dumb" is what he's doing.

Why in hell would Michael allow someone to point a camera at him and just follow him around without knowing what the digital image was going to be used for? Vick not only didn't care, he got right up to the camera and came off big in his thuggy glory.

Great, man. Just peachy.

What we want to see - Ok, what I want to see is a clean-cut, smooth, thoughtful version of Vick that by its very existence gives a collective finger to his doubters and allows him to regain then surpass the value he had before he was hauled off to jail. In the NFL, where potentially hundreds of millions of dollars can be brought to bear on one person, image is everything. One can't whine and cry about not being able to wear his gangta t-shirt or not "looking black", unless of course he wants to kiss his revenue potential goodbye. If so, then fine. There's thousands of brothers on the street trying to sell their music and "looking black in the process, perhaps Vick can join them.

Call me "Uncle Tom" or whatever. I don't care. I'm keeping it real myself. And the real story is that the Michael Vick I saw in that video is pretty much the same Michael Vick I briefly met at the 2000 EA Sports Party in Atlanta during the Super Bowl. At that event, Vick was playing video games wearing a white tank top shirt some call a "wife beater" shirt. His hair was braided. I was disappointed and wanted to kick the ass of whomever was supposedly advising him.

There's no denying Vick's physical talent, but I want to see him bring himself to an NFL-level of character and image, if anything because it's a good, positive message to send to kids. He didn't project that NFL-level of person at the EA Sports party 10 years ago, where he should have dressed business casual, and he's didn't show it on the YouTube video.

Coach Dungy, please talk to Michael before its too late. As my 74-year old Mom said "He's got to stay away from that old crowd. C'mon Vick!"

Amen.

Michael Vick please show that you have class!

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Now as any regular follower of my blogs knows, I'm really happy former Atlanta Falcons Quarterback Michael Vick's back in the NFL, and even though he's not signed with a team yet, former Indy Coach Tony Dungy said on NBC's telecast of the "Hall of Fame Game" that a team should sign him within the next week. That's great. But just because God's smiling on Vick, doesn't mean he has to lose control of the image he's working to build so quickly, and risk blowing it all.

What do I mean? Well, there's a new set of expectations of Vick from a number of people: NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, Dungy, and anyone rooting for Vick to get a second chance and most important succeed at it. I count myself here because I embarked on an attack against on PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) for its race-tinged smearing of Vick, and I'm still not done with PETA. But because of that, I expect Michael Vick to be that guy we all want him to be, and not someone sporting the latest in thug attire and saying "I'm gonna always love my N___, you know what I'm sayin" as he did in this video:



When I got wind of this via Charles Robinson of Yahoo Sports on Twitter, I pretty much fell out of my chair. I wanted to make sure I wasn't being too anal about the whole deal so I asked my Mom, who's visiting me, to come over and watch the video. Her words came out as soon as she listened to him: "He's not gonna make it," she said.

I informed Mom that Coach Dungy said Vick would be signed by someone and she said "I hope so." So do I.

See, what Mike doens't understand is now, like it or not, everyone black's not only rooting for him and fighting for him, but demands that he represent himself in a way that justifies our actions in defending him. I write "black" because Vick's behavior ignites the age-old argument of what it means to be black in America and the idea that one does not have to act black, but that's another blog post, back to this one.

Allowing ones self to be on camera showing the best of thug life (another code word for "acting black") doesn't help us one bit. I don't know where anyone got the idea that rap culture was desirable, but Vick's got to understand if he wants to establish himself as lovable to corporate sponsors (and if you want to say that's a code word for "acting white" go ahead but my retort is that being clean, intelligent, and presentable to companies has nothing to do with race at all), he's got to lose that shtick, and fast.

Am I being harsh, yes, massively so. Do I care? No way. I'm really ticked-off with Vick's actions; perhaps T.O. (Terrell Owens) can talk me down and talk to him in the process. Protecting the proper image is at the center of this issue of Michael Vick's future. There are people betting that Vick will be just the kind of person he's showing himself to be in that YouTube moment and that's not acceptable to us, his fans. While Michael may feel he's got to "keep it real" as Chris Rock would say, "keeping it real, yeah, real dumb" is what he's doing.

Why in hell would Michael allow someone to point a camera at him and just follow him around without knowing what the digital image was going to be used for? Vick not only didn't care, he got right up to the camera and came off big in his thuggy glory.

Great, man. Just peachy.

What we want to see - Ok, what I want to see is a clean-cut, smooth, thoughtful version of Vick that by its very existence gives a collective finger to his doubters and allows him to regain then surpass the value he had before he was hauled off to jail. In the NFL, where potentially hundreds of millions of dollars can be brought to bear on one person, image is everything. One can't whine and cry about not being able to wear his gangta t-shirt or not "looking black", unless of course he wants to kiss his revenue potential goodbye. If so, then fine. There's thousands of brothers on the street trying to sell their music and "looking black in the process, perhaps Vick can join them.

Call me "Uncle Tom" or whatever. I don't care. I'm keeping it real myself. And the real story is that the Michael Vick I saw in that video is pretty much the same Michael Vick I briefly met at the 2000 EA Sports Party in Atlanta during the Super Bowl. At that event, Vick was playing video games wearing a white tank top shirt some call a "wife beater" shirt. His hair was braided. I was disappointed and wanted to kick the ass of whomever was supposedly advising him.

There's no denying Vick's physical talent, but I want to see him bring himself to an NFL-level of character and image, if anything because it's a good, positive message to send to kids. He didn't project that NFL-level of person at the EA Sports party 10 years ago, where he should have dressed business casual, and he's didn't show it on the YouTube video.

Coach Dungy, please talk to Michael before its too late. As my 74-year old Mom said "He's got to stay away from that old crowd. C'mon Vick!"

Amen.

Sunday, August 09, 2009

Canton South Marching Band HOF 2009

Canton South Marching Band during the Hall of Fame Parade August 8, 2009. The band did a great job! Including all the NICC Sr. Highers!

Police slam elderly lady, taser Oakland A's fan - what's up?

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Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums has called for reform of how police solve problems in the wake of the Oscar Grant shooting.



I'm not sure if it's because we have more digital camcorders around than ever before, or there's something sinister in the way police are being trained today, or some combination of both, but we now have two disturbing examples of excessive force applied by the people we hire to protect and to serve.

The first and most recent example comes from a Walmart in Columbus, Ohio. In the video below this elderly woman named Virginia Dodson reportedly of 84 years old is standing in a parking lot and holding a knife. The reason for holding the knife was that Dodson's daughter left her in her car while she went back into the store. The elder Dodson, an Alzheimer's Patient, got scared because she was alone and cut herself out of the car seat belt, then got out of the automobile in search of her daughter.

Some young people had talked to Virginia in such a way that she brandished the knife. In turn they called 911. When the police officer arrived she walked up to Dodson and after asking her to drop the knife, violently slammed her to the ground.

Here's the video:



What's got me is that since it's obvious the female officer (proving that its not a gender-based issue) was strong enough to take her down with ease, why not just grab the knife from her instead? All of the other moves were excessive and caused Dodson to bleed. Thankfully she was rushed to the hospital and no charges were filed.

To me, police officers are supposed to be trained to be super people in judgment not just strength. Yes, I know that what they do is dangerous, but the job doesn't have to be a thankless one. Somewhere along the way, deep in our long term backslide in education spending and the decline of leisure time we produced a society of people impatient to study a situation then react in a non-violent way. Great classic books on negotiation like "Getting to Yes" have given way to the ideas of "Ask A Ninja". Police seem to be expected to strike and make arrests by any means necessary rather than intelligently work to resolve a problem without arrests or violence. Want another example? Take the case of the Oakland A's fan who was tasered by police basically for being a big mouth.



Why taser a man sitting in his chair? What was the deal? Well, he was drunk, unruly, and refused to leave the stadium upon Oakland police orders. But here's the rub, yet again: why the totally unintelligent way of just saying "Just do as I say?" Yes, you should always follow police orders, period. That's for you and me. But what about those stupid people who don't? Why is the answer hitting them or tasering them? Why not another kind of weapon: words? It seems like we're really going backward as a society if you or anyone else feels you have to defend such an action. Again, the police are supposed to be SUPER PEOPLE. People we look up to for their extraordinary decision making skill, not people we fear because of the idea that they may go too far and harm someone.

I miss the days of community policing, when officers on the beat knew folks in the neighborhood and at the stadium. Those guys and women were a unique breed of talkers that knew how to use their brains to solve problems. At least the one's I knew in Oakland; they're retired for the most part. It seems that we have a national problem of not teaching good negotiating tactics to officers, who because of that are more prone to take a physical approach to problem resolution.

We've got to insist on smart cops. In fact, I'll call for a "smart cop" movement: a detailed list of changes in law enforcement systems that will produce more of the kind of modern problem solvers we need today. The first change should be monetary bonuses of $3,000 per officer per event for anyone that manages to defuse a situation without violence. That's a great incentive for an officer to think twice before flipping an elderly woman to the ground.

Saturday, August 08, 2009

LakeFest Street Fair in Oakland, CA - August 1st 2009

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On YouTube.com

LakeFest is a street fair that was held last Saturday and Sunday August 1st and 2nd on Lakeshore Avenue between Lake Park and Mandana near the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland. After a long absence, it's back for its second year and with great bands and vendors selling clothes and representing everything from the new Lake Chalet restaurant to "Friends of the Oakland Public Library."

I talked with a number of Oaklanders about the festival because there was a long period of time that, well, there was not an event of this kind at this location. That is until Helen Wyman stepped in.

Helen Wyman is an event producer currently best known for the first, successful Uptown street fair held June 18th of this year. She explained that this event has nothing to do with the version of year's past and is brand new. "'LakeFest' was a concept we came up with through my company Oakland Events. We decided that Lakeshore was a great spot because of the community and the neighborhood, location and the weather and so many people that can walk here. And they didn't have a festival so we wanted to bring the festival back here."

But what happened to the first version of what is now called "LakeFest"? For the answer to that question I turned to long-time Oaklander Pam Drake, who is Executive Director of the Lakeshore Business Improvement District (LBID). "WE had put it on with an art organization that didn't work with the vendors and it ended up costing us a lot of money and didn't involve our stores as much as it should. So the businesses, we weren't really sure if we wanted to go on with it.

"So, we hadn't done anything in a while and we felt like even though we have the wonderful farmers market, that people wanted to see Lakeshore on the map again. So Helen Wyman, who's someone who I worked with her mom, came up and said 'We've done all these events and I'd really like to do an event for this district.'"

LakeFest was Wyman's first independent event so she wrote a proposal to the LBID's Drake and she liked and endorsed Wyman's idea. Last year was the first one; this is the second year in a row for Wyman's festival concept.

Personally, I love what she's done. It captures the feel and the sprit of Oakland without really any "trick" other than organizing businesses and entertainment and booths. But with that, I have to complement Oakland Events on taking steps to guard against overcrowding. Many street fairs in San Francisco have the booths so close to the side walk that its hard to walk back-and-forth because folks are pressed so close together; not so at LakeFest.

LakeFest also helped the businesses along Lakeshore, especially Easy Lounge, which was perpetually crowded with a great mix of people and Starbucks and Noah's Bagels, which benefited from being near the music stage at the Mandana Avenue end of the street fair. Combined with the Grand Lake Farmers Market, the whole neighborhood was just one big party.

So, congrats to Wyman and Oakland Events for a fun time. But I look forward to the day when both Grand Avenue and Lakeshore are both closed down for one big Grand Lake Festival.