NBC's Saturday Night Live staff does it again with this hilarious segment featuring Star Trek's Zachary Quinto and Chris Pine (Spock and Kirk respectively) making an appearance on SNL's "Weekend Edition" to address the concerns of Trekkers who were upset that the J.J. Abrams-directed blockbuster didn't follow "Star Trek history."
(Ha. Which includes me. Well, I was only mildly concerned, and not so much so that I didn't enjoy the movie. It was excellent!)
At any rate, Pine starts opens with an apology of sorts and Quinto follows up by explaining how they did incorporate some well known Trek lore like the "Vulcan PonFar" ritual. Then Pine stumbles on his words while trying to explain the technology of the "Transporter" and just as all seems lost for the two new megastars, Leonard Nimoy walks in to an ovation and saves the day, expaining "Any Trekker who doesn't like the movie is..." something I can't print here but they can say on live television.
What's so funny are the two "Trekkers" in costume in the audience making "We're watching you" faces at the stars during the segment.
All of this fun causes me to wonder if we will see a "Star Trek Blooper Video" with outtakes from the film, much as we enjoyed the Star Trek Blooper Real of the past with some funny errors caught on tape as the cast of the television show was at work.
Stay tuned!
Hollywood Suprised At "Star Trek" Boxoffice
Meanwhile, Nikke Finke, who's "Deadline Hollywood" blog is the best source for inside information on Hollywood, revealed that not only did Star Trek surprise Hollywood, earning 76.5 million for the weekend, but the audience was 60 percent male, 40 percent female, which surprised me as I expected a 70 percent / 30 percent split based on the demographics for Star Trek videos on YouTube.
Finke writes:
To put that in perspective, a domestic weekend total under $50M would have meant the pic didn't attract a new and younger audience and relied instead on the franchise's older but loyal fanbase of Trekkies. It was risky for Paramount to market the movie as "not your father's Star Trek". But the critical reviews for JJ Abrams' reboot are 96% positive.
Today, I saw Star Trek with my longtime friends Bill Boyd and Lars Frykman at matinee showing at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland, thus following through on a plan we formed almost a month ago and I wrote about a few days ago. It was a cool reunion as I'd not seen Lars for just over 30 years and Bill and I get together for lunch maybe twice a year. Regardless of how little you see of each other, there's something about the friends you had when you were a teenager, especially when they last as long as ours has. Star Trek was always a rallying point for us, so today's meetup was a perfect way for the originators of the Bret Harte Star Trek Club to reconnect.
We're all fans of the original series, and consider ourselves experts on it. What we liked about J.J. Abrams version was the attention to detail in referencing certain episodes and music themes.
The scene where Kirk and Spock (Nimoy) enter the outpost on Delta Vega has music that recalls entering the hatchery of the Horta in "The Devil in The Dark" or the discovery of the real "Balok" in "The Corbomite Manuever". And as in the series Captain Pike was alive and bound to a wheel chair before being disfigured in a reactor accident. To kill him would have not been according to Star Trek history.
In fact, that's where we were confused in the loss of Spock's mother. She didn't pass on in the series, so her death here was not understood by us. Also the Enterprise was constructed in Hunter's Point Naval Shipyards in San Francisco, not Riverside, Iowa as in the movie.
The matter of the shipyards leads us to the Enterprise. What a terrific job Industrial Light and Magic did in making the ship look real, especially the daylight scene where Kirk reports for duty. That's the first time we see the giant vessel as if it were really in drydock on Earth. An excellent achievement.
Bill made the observation that because we're from an older generation this movie didn't have enough dialog. I agree but I don't say the movie wasn't well done. Still we're concerned that a society that wants stimulus over substance can be easily duped in a number of ways and this problem is something I will explore more of.
But even with that issue of style, Star Trek was a good, tight, entertaining film. Did it live up to our Trekker seal of approval?
I'm often surprised by the number of people who don't catch on to the fact that for me making videos is much more than a hobby, it's a job I earn a living from. I recently created a video on the Star Trek movie that pointed to its depiction of the San Francisco skyline as unrealistic because of the size of the buildings relative to The City's culture of demanding "a human scale" of structures, and Star Trek's new generation of fanboys coupled with Internet trolls jumped all over me, saying "Get a life" and stop making videos, all the while contributing to the 43,000 times my creation was seen..and to my pocketbook.
That's because I'm a YouTube Partner or "YTP". The YouTube Partner's program was established in late 2007 as a way to For YouTube to share its advertising revenue with its most popular video producers like Renetto and Lisa Nova, as well as frequent contributors like me. At first, YouTube sent invitations to channel vloggers - I received mine on November of 2007 - then opened up the program to an application process. In other words, you too can become a YTP and here's how.
First, you have to make videos and upload them to YouTube on a regular basis. For me I have a schedule of a video a day and a subject mix of the topical, local, and political. Some people like Lisa Nova have shows within their channels like "The Affirmation Girl" that draw micro-audiences for that specific video playlist. What ever the case, do what is comfortable for you to start, but do something and do it often. And don't upload TV content because you don't own the rights to it; make something original.
I explain what video blogging is and how to do it above.
Second, you have to gain subscribers and that's the real meat of viewership and not an easy task at all. Michael Buckley of "What The Buck" has over 400,000 subscribers, Phil DeFranco has over 300,000 subcribers, where's Lisa Nova has 41,000, and I have just 3,000. It takes years and constant work - some people use PC-based YouTube subscriber software services - to get to those levels.
Third, make sure you have a blog to place your videos on. Blogs and websites are the main driver of video views other than subscriptions. The more visits your page gets, the more views your video will have.
Fourth, have an email list of people to send your videos to, or work them into your social networks, as I do. I'm on 41 different social networs, some that allow video embeding and I have a network of blogs, each with my video channel's latest creation in a special view box.
Once you've done all of that, and have reached a subscriber base of 300 people, apply for the program. It's connected to Google AdSense, the Google revenue sharing system, so the check you gain comes from them, but you only get paid when your monthly income reaches over $100. So you're wondering "How much can I make?"
Buckley is perhaps the most successful partner, bringing in a reported "six figure" income annually. I'm certain both De Franco and Lisa Nova are not far behind and I know Renetto's made a healthy living from YouTube but doesn't tell people about it, unlike Buckley. It's possible to clear $10,000 a month from YTP, and no, I'm not any where near that at all, so don't ask me for a loan!
So that's the YTP. Give it a try with the steps I listed and if you have more questions just ask. And if you want to know how to make a video, or how I do it. See the video above.
Today the long awaited Star Trek movie is out and like any nerdy Trekker, I'm excited. I got our tickets 10 days ago and didn't have to stand in line, contrary to what you might think. But the real story here is that on Saturday, May 9th, I'm going to see Star Trek with my long time friends Bill Boyd and Lars Frykman.
This is an Oakland Trekker story in brief.
Bill, Lars, and I met in Oakland in 1976 when we were 14 years old at what was then called Bret Harte Junior High School, now Bret Harte Middle School. I was new to Oakland, having moved with my mom to the city from Chicago as my mom was in search of better schools for me. How times have changed!
The Bret Harte Star Trek Club
I was a big Star Trek fan and wanted to start a club at Bret Harte. I had no clue how to do this, so my friends said "You should talk to Bill Boyd or Lars Frykman!" So I was introduced to Bill, who at 14 had the deepest voice I've ever heard in my life, and has the same voice today! Then there was Lars, who's just unique and uses terms like "GROK" the meaning of which I've forgotten.
At any rate, Bill and Lars are white; I'm black. But in Star Trek, as Doctor McCoy once said, "People are different. You get used to those things." We formed a diverse set of people, all interested in science and led by Craig Pryor who famously worked through all of the problem sets in our calculus book before the end of the semester. But whom I bested in a massive debate on American versus foreign cars - I took American and won!
But we were and to this day are great friends. At Bret Harte in 1976 we made the most money of any club at our carnival taking in $104.76. We did it with a game Craig came up with where you throw a set of "Tribbles" (from the Star Trek episode "Trouble With The Tribbles") our moms made from fur and stuffing at a ping pong ball suspended from the air from a vacuum cleaner.
You laugh.
But Star Trek was the show that brought all of us together and caused us to work conventions in Oakland and have parties and get girlfriends. And it was because Star Trek continues to show a positive view of the future and how we relate to each other.
I can't wait for Bill, Lars, and Craig to see this and I can't wait to see Star Trek, even if the movie messes up the San Francisco Skyline.
Single payer is not socialized medicine, it's how Medicare works. Do you know the facts? Medicare runs with between 2-3% overhead - that compares very favorably to private insurance, where overhead by most estimates is over 30% of the cost.
Why don't the big insurance companies want to let everybody have a choice to get affordable coverage? Who has so much influence over Democratic Senators like Max Baucus of Montana that they oppose a choice, as suggested by President Obama? Follow the money.
73% of voters want a choice of a private or public health insurance plan. Have you told your U.S. Representative and/or Senator? It's not about party, folks; this idea has phenomenally broad support, and it's totally congruent with what President Obama and his administration are trying to achieve. It provides coverage to the tens of millions of uninsured Americans without forcing anybody who likes their current system to change.
Broken down by party affiliation, it's:
77% of Democrats 79% of Independents 63% of Republicans
Tell your U.S. Senators and the Congressional Representative from your district what the Chief Economist of the World Bank says:
People who work hard for their money deserve to have a voice in how it's spent. The insurance industry and their lobbyists have been writing rules that boost their profits not protect Americans, and tax-payers are tired of bailing them out while worrying if we'll even have jobs. We need our leaders to take control and look out for our interests, not special interests.
In a short time, Miss California, Carrie Prejean has made herself into a household name first by "outing herself" stating that she believed marriage was between a man and a woman, then by going out and talking about it, then posing with Michael Phelps. But now and I think because of her views, Miss California is going to have her crown taken away.
The cover for this is the discovery of a semi-nude photo of her posing for a lingerie company when she was 17 years old. Personally, my 74-year-old Mom doesn't care about the issue, so why should I? My feeling is yes, she did reportedly sign a disclosure agreement and claimed she didn't do what she was found to have done, but the way all of this came about seems to be based on her views and not on the action itself. Take the way "The Dirty" reported their discovery of the nude photos, using terms like "self proclaimed bible thumper", etc. The point is there's a concerted effort to discredit Prejean because of her conservative views.
I frankly think that's terrible and I'm liberal. But I'm totally tired of these attempts to make someone who has a different point of view "the other" and a bad person. It has to stop. If Carrie wants to make her pointof view known here, why not. I do have concerns with the issue of discriminating against one's civil rights however and I think Prejean should think about what she's doing, but she has the right to say it.
What about the moral issue of the lie about the photos? Look, yes, she lied, but I don't think she should lose her crown over it. She won. OK. I have an issue with her not telling the truth, but it happens in the context of this effort to demonize her so I just can't embrace the view that she should be de-throwned.
At first I wasn't going to weigh in on the Ecuador issue for a bit, especially considering the recent and on balance really interesting 60 minutes segment that aired Sunday of this week. But then I ran across a paragraph that popped up in an Internet search for oil spills and Ecuador that reported this:
In 2006 to date, the country has reported 117 oil spills, which have jointly cost the company more than 27 million U.S. dollars in environmental compensation.
The "country" is Ecuador and the "company" is not Chevron, for who we in America have been almost programmed to think is responsible for all of the oil spills in that country, but Petroecuador, the state-run oil company. Now, from my reading Petroecuador's mentioned by Chevron but the blame for oil spills in the Amazon region doesn't stop there.
The simple sad fact is the government of the country of Ecuador has maintained a cozy relationships with multinational oil companies over the years. For example, in 2003 Ecuador embarked on a plan to expand oil production in the Amazon by constructing a then-new pipeline, the "Oleoducto de Crudos Pesados" or OCP and to the ire of AmazonWatch, which reported:
Set to go online in October 2003, the pipeline will transport heavy crude from the country's Amazon rainforest region to the Pacific Coast, placing fragile ecosystems and dozens of communities along the 300-mile route in jeopardy.
The damaging impacts of the new pipeline will be felt far beyond the immediate pipeline route. To fill the OCP, Ecuador must double current oil production by embarking on an unprecedented wave of new oil exploitation in vast areas of Amazon frontier forest. Plans are already underway for dozens of new oil wells, roads, flow lines, and associated processing plants that will litter some of the country's last remaining old growth rainforests and territories of isolated indigenous peoples.
And the country is trying to gain more oil revenues, called "petrodollars" by eliminating foreign country oil producers like Occidental Petroleum in 2007 and Chevron in 1992, and even the state-run organization in Brazil late last year, and in Canada, and move all production activities toward Petroecuador. And that all companies, not just Chevron and Petroecuador, have been responsible for oil spills and Chevron has not produced oil their since 1992, but again, the spills have been many since their departure.
Ecaudor's grab for money
The problem is the Ecaudor and Petroecuador lack the annual revenues to maintain oil facility production and performance, and so have embarked on a massive campaign to gain such monies by "user fees", the revenue from the new-to-Ecuador petrodollar sources, and the Chevron lawsuit.
There's no indication Ecuador intends to start environmental cleanup actions in the Amazon beyond what Petroecuador has done already. But Petroecuador's work and the large number of oil spills lead me to ask if the oil we saw on the waters in the Amazon shown on 60 Minutes was actually caused by one of these 117 oil spills? It's said that oil spills are almost a way of life in the Amazon today and it has been that way for some time and in the country in general.
For example, In 2001, 144,000 gallons of diesel and "bunker" fuel were spilled near the Galapagos Islands and then made its way to shore. And that same year in the Amazon itself Petroecuador failed to contain oil spilled from "an abandoned exploratory well." And in this year 2009, February, 14,000 gallons of oil were spilled by Petroecuador as the country's second largest pipeline ruptured, causing oil to ooze out onto the banks of the Santa Rosa river. “The river was completely covered with oil from bank to bank,” according to a Reuters' update.
Not all oil production activity in Ecuador has been by American companies. World environmentalists have waged war against a Canadian oil firm called EnCana. In a presentation of a documentary film called Between Midnight and The Rooster’s Crow it was reported that..
The Aguarico and the Napo rivers, which have sustained the native tribes—the Cofan, the Secoya, and the Siona—for thousands of years, have been systematically contaminated since intense oil extraction began in the 1970s. Drost documents crude oil leaking into the now noxious rivers, and interviews locals swearing that eating river fish tastes like eating pure crude. It appears as though while the oil companies have reaped their record profits, skyrocketing cancer, broken promises, miscarriage, and skin disease have been the dividends paid to the local populace...When the Amazonian locals decide to take direct action to ensure that their interests are not overlooked, the military and police step in with an excessive amount of force to ensure that nothing stops corporate profit (oil) from flowing. Drost—giving the viewer a candid glimpse at the seedy underbelly of corporate globalization—interviews a man who, while peacefully protesting at a roadblock with a group of locals who were demanding clean water, sewage, electricity, and jobs, was shot by Ecuadorian soldiers. Given that the soldiers who shot him were flown into EnCana’s private airport, picked up by EnCana trucks who were driven by EnCana drivers, one must wonder how Gwyn Morgan (President and CEO of EnCana—and before that President and CEO of AEC since 1994) keeps a straight face when he comments, at the end of the film: “People fail to understand how little influence companies have on government.”
That was by first-time Canadian filmmaker Nadja Drost who created the movie in 2003, and over ten long years after Chevron's presence in the Amazon region was replaced by Petroecuador, and shows the real truth: with so many companies both foreign and domestic involved in oil production in the region since 1992, the real cost of environmental damage is impossible to pin to just one company. Ecuador itself and many oil companies from various countries from the United States, Canada, Brazil, and Ecuador itself are responsible for the environmental damage caused by oil spills, and which continues through today.
Oh, and considering the level of interest in this by so-called activists, for the record, I'm not paid by Royal Dutch Shell, Occidental Petroleum, Chevron, or their affliates for this post. What bothers me here is the constant insistence that oil production problems here and in the Third World are the fault of rich, White American firms working against the poor people of color in those areas. If one tells the complex truth, where the assignment of blame is more complicated, they're demonized and told to shut up.
If paying taxes to support our military, the interstate highway system, the FAA, satellites, and a Medicare system that insures senior citizens can afford health coverage, etc., offends your sense of fair play, you’re living in the wrong country. You want tax havens? Move to Somalia, my friend, while real patriots pay their fair share in the USA!
Closing loopholes that reward wealth instead of work is fine with me. I've had enough of special interests inserting ways to keep big business from paying taxes. Any tax incentives ought to discourage outsourcing, not promote it!
On the other hand, if you like the constitution, and want the government to "provide for the common defense" then a system that makes the rich and the mega corporations contribute their fair share is just basic old-fashioned patriotitism.
I guess that's parallel to what puzzles me about talk of Texas seceding. They wanted the benefits - so, if they go can we bill them for their interstates and the big ol' wall?
Ok. On the A's stadium issue I've read a lot of stuff from a lot of different people, sat in on my last Mayor's Office Sports and Entertainment Task Force Meeting (I quit), read and published John Russo's letter, and now I'm going to give the "once over" to Oakland A's Co-Owner Guy T. Saperstein's letters (plural) that have been bouncing around the Internet.
I'm starting a plain old bare knuckles brawl here, as I'm throwing another set of punches to add to John Russo's Ali-like jabs of last week, only my punches are not jabs; I'm going for the knockout. A lot of people aren't going to like what I'm about to write, but others are going to be happy someone said it.
Before I turn my anger to Mr. Saperstein, I have to give a tongue-lashing to three people: Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, Oakland Planning Commisssioner Doug Boxer, and Oakland Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Joe Haraburda. But before I do, I want to thank Haraburda for coming to the Sports and Entertainment Task Force last week. Regardless of my view of how Haraburda handles sports issues in Oakland, I was happy to see him there.
Now, no more Mr. Nice Guy.
What bothers me is I've been involved in policy formation regarding sports issues in Oakland in one way or another since 1987, first as the intern who worked on the Coliseum Redevelopment Area when it was just a "study area" and created the tax increment estimates that formed the basis of the plans created by the agency (I even created something called "The Area Redevelopment Economic Model" or AREM); second, as the writer for the Montclarion from 1993 to 1996, and who broke the story that the Raiders were returning to Oakland and weighed in on a number of redevelopment issues even so forcefully challenging then-City Manger Craig Kocian's Redevelopment Budget that he took out a special agenda item to address my assertions before the Oakland City Council; third in 1995 when Elihu Harris hired me as first his economic consultant, then hired me as his adviser in 1996; forth to 1999-2001, when I came to within eight NFL owner votes of bringing the 2005 Super Bowl to Oakland, and in the face of terrible behavior on the part of then-Mayor Jerry Brown, who once told a group of business people visiting Oakland that "we didn't have enough hotel rooms for the Super Bowl" (he was misinformed) and according to a source at the NFL at the time, was working to undermine my work by having his aides call the NFL to ask questions I'd already addressed and told him the answer to.
(Jerry didn't even show up for the rehersal meeting I called the night before our presentation at the 2000 NFL Fall Owner's Meeting in Atlanta,, leaving Jennifer Gonsalzes and Sue Robachez of the NFL to say "Zennie, we feel for ya" upon observing first hand how Oakland was treating me. Memo to Jerry Brown: the NFL's has been very, very good to me in part because they saw how crappy you treated me and because I'm one of the ambassadors for its key event product, the Super Bowl.)
And Haraburda? After I went to him with the idea of housing the Super Bowl effort within the Oakland Chamber of Commerce, I had to wait for him to act and all that time Jim Steeg, then the NFL's Senior Vice President for Special Events ("Mr. Super Bowl") and now the President of the San Diego Chargers, was calling to remind me of the NFL's timetable, not Oakland's timetable. So I broke from the Chamber and created, from scratch, the non-profit Oakland Alameda County Sports Commission and got IRS approval two years before then-Oakland-City-Attorney Jane Williams said I could do it. What did Haraburda do? Instead of joining my commission, he wrote me a letter explaining that he could not join it. Our Oakland Super Bowl Bid Book has no - not one - letter of support from the Oakland Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and I've got the bid book today if you want to see it.
So you can see that I've had so much experience with Oakland and the matter of sports, politics and economics, I know what's coming before it happens. Hey, I'm not bald for nothing. Oakland will do that to you if you care about it. I told Oakland A's Ownership Group member emeritus Jon Fisher (at his "Project Red" Party) that crazy land-buying spree they went on down in the Fremont area wouldn't work almost two years before they had to go hat-in-hand to the City of Fremont asking for public money they knew they weren't going to get.
But they didn't listen.
In fact, only Alameda County Supervisor Nate Miley listened to me and he thanked me for the free advise. I told him to wait the A's out because the deal was going to flop and I wrote down a detailed list of reasons why and actions he should take, because their arrogance was going to get the best of them in this economic climate and they would spend a lot of money on land they couldn't get rid of and still remain in Oakland.
How ya like me now? (And Guy Saperstein, I've not got to you in this blast, so don't even think of relaxing, pal. As LL Cool J would say in Mama Said Knock You Out, "I'm just gettin' warm!")
So it's that wealth of experience at seeing Oakland stumble all over itself with secret meetings between people who think they know when they can't even crunch fiscal data let alone craft a decent set of planning scenarios that's got me riled up. And it's the fact that we have as of this writing four committees and groups - The Oakland Mayor's Sports and Entertainment Task Force, Doug Boxer's MLB Task Force, and the Oakland Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce's Land Use Committee, and the Oakland Alameda County Joint Powers Authority - looking at the A's stadium issue and yet never having met as one to talk about this matter and trade information in the objective of presenting a united front that really has been the last straw for me.
Look, Mayor Dellums, you should have and still can bring all of us together as one. I don't know who's giving you advise in your office, but it's not good at this point. As former City Manager Robert Bobb would say "We need all hands on deck" on this issue, not some hands. Doug Boxer, with all due respect, is too inexperienced in the matter of the history, politics, and economics associated with this stadium issue in Oakland to go and handle it as he's done. He's about to reinvent the wheel and get ran over by it by the crafty Mr. Wolff. Doug, one of your first phone calls should have been to me.
(And to be fair, when I took over the Oakland Super Bowl effort, I too was young and inexperienced, but intellectually determined and well-schooled by the Oakland Raiders. The reason Robert Bobb put me in charge of the Super Bowl effort was because in a pivotal meeting against SMG's Sally Roach, who was in charge of management of the Coliseum at the time (1999), Bobb had originally asked to be in charge of the effort, I proved that I knew how the bid process worked, and who the players were and why, and Roach didn't. And that knowledge I have thanks to now-former Oakland Raiders Executive Assistant Al LoCasale, who in a series of lunches from 1997 to 1999 instructed me on how to work with the NFL and NFL politics; it was from LoCasale that I came to know then-NFL Executive Vice President Roger Goodell, who's now the Commissioner.)
And that leads me to the Oakland A's and Mr. Guy Saperstein's laughable communications. Guy, let's take your claims one by one for the letters you've written. This is going to be fun. First you write that during the 70s, the A's "drew less than a million fans per year and that number dwindled to 306,000 in 1979" - as they say on the street, dude, you're so wrong. During the glory years of 1971, 72, 73, 74, and 75, the A's topped 900,000 fans each year save for one and went over one million twice. Then attendance did dip, but it was because the A's weren't winning! Why you didn't check this is a wonder to me.
Your statement that the "Haas family was losing money" was nothing more than a cheap shot at a fine group of people. As the A's have demonstrated with the genius of General Manager Billy Beane, a team can win with a lower than normal payroll and that could have happened with the Haas Family, but they chose a different way. To bring them out the way you did was just terrible and you should apologize for writing a paragraph that makes them look less than favorable to the uninformed. You know they're loved in Oakland and for good reason; making them look bad is just bad form when you know it was their decision and not a function of a problem with Oakland. Billy Beane proved that.
Your comparison of the A's and Giants ticket prices and sales is wrong-headed. Why? Well, Guy, the Giants' play in what? A new stadium! During the 70s, when the Giants shared Candlestick Park with the San Francisco 49ers, they only drew a million more fans than the A's over the entire decade, and that's counting the A's dramatic fan from World Series grace. A new stadium is a game-changer, but to use it to then say "See. Oakland's just not working economically" is just plain wrong.
(As a side note, I'm the developer of the simulation game called The Oakland Baseball Simworld that's used in colleges. It's a 15-year-simulation of the business of your organization that I update annually, so I will dare say that I know your organization's business dynamics better than you do. I even offered Lew Wolff the chance to use it for free to run some stadium scenarios. His response? "Free. I like free." Geez.)
Then, Guy, you point to Oakland's population of 400,000 as being less than San Jose's population of almost 1 million people. That's the most terrible comparison I've ever seen. Everyone knows that Oakland's at the center of an East Bay Area that's almost 3 million people in size and all freeways come through Oakland. For you to leave that out proved to me you were either playing games with numbers or just plain didn't know what you were doing.
You then called Oakland's political leadership "inept" but here's where I attack you and the A's ownership for being the same. Look, you're part of this mess, and the political establishment, so pointing a finger at us has the same finger coming right back at you, you just fail to see it. The A's have consistently failed to be steady political leaders in development of a stadium that Oakland can be proud of. Instead of fist-pounding on Jerry Brown's desk to get him to build a downtown stadium, you sat back and waited for John Russo and Robert Bobb the fans involved to bring plans to you; when it didn't work, you just weren't around to help them lick their wounds. If you care about Oakland, you dive in, take your lumps, and comeback swinging again and again and again. You don't give up. The Oakland A's never really took a good at bat for Oakland for anyone who really honestly knows to talk about. If you're really tough, you fight for Oakland, so let's see how tough you are!
Regarding the Coliseum Authority, and your claims of lack of long-range planning..I'll let ya have that one. The JPA burned me on the Super Bowl with their behind-my-back manuevering and I'll never forget that as long as I live or until someone over there personally apologizes to me for it. See Guy, I'm not so angry I can't see straight. Under Robert Quintella and George Vukasin, the Coliseum Complex did have the long-range planning activities well in place; not so with this organization. The overall problem is with Oakland's political culture, which tends to avoid the development of an "institutional memory" where people who had past experience are called on; instead many like myself and former Oakland Assistant City Manager Ezra Rapport are demonized for the silliest of reasons.
In Ezra's case, he created the Raiders Deal which didn't work, but he also crafted the financing plan for the Oracle Arena, which did work. Ezra also wrote a classic must-read document, the business plan for the Oakland Coliseum (Have you read it?). (I'll never forget Ezra sitting down with then-Aide To Councilmember Ignacio De La Fuente Lewis Cohen and myself in 1996 and explaining that we should know the Raiders Master Lease Agreement and Oakland A's Coliseum lease "chapter and verse," and I did.) But is he called on by Oakland's political structure? No. Or what about former Mayor and my boss Elihu Harris or for that matter Vukasin, they should be involved here too.
What we have in Oakland is a "throw them away because we're new and know better" culture that then goes off and makes the same mistakes! Hilarious! But Guy, don't think for a moment that doesn't include you and the Oakland A's. It does.
The A's unrealistic Oakland stadium plan
Regarding the plan the A's developed that called for the removal of 80 to 100 businesses, the problem was you were talking to San Jose as you all were planning the A's stadium "baseball village concept" with the housing nearby in Oakland. Plus Wolff was so in love with this baseball village concept (which by its nature calls for the purchase of a lot of land) he refused to see any other alternative. And on top of that, what's normally a three year predevelopment period for a new stadium, Wolff tried for some reason to fast track to one year. I said and wrote then and say again now, if you were really interested in doing a stadium in Oakland, you and Lew would have not been so bull-headed as to stick with just one concept and a tight and unrealistic timetable. You could have taken your time, focused, and established a kind of design-build competition and gotten the fans involved, but nope. Nothing.
The A's need to present a range of development plans for Oakland, some calling for public money and others not - give us an honest picture ;it's really not Oakland's job to do that on its own because with the exception of people like me who has a device to use, Boxer and his people don't really know baseball business dynamics enough to come up with a plan you will like right off the bat. You all need to get up, roll up your sleeves, help Doug, and prove you're committed to this great city of Oakland and stop mentioning San Jose.
Guy, you should not have "serious reservations" about Oakland. Give up the baseball village concept; for God's Sake, it's a looser in this economic climate. Doug Boxer, don't even walk into that meeting with that idea in mind, someone will lose their shirt -- again.
The solution is simple: all of us need to talk and work together and place these petty differences aside, and that includes you Guy. You're as much part of the problem - and part of the solution - as the rest of us.
Single payer is not socialized medicine, it's how Medicare works. 
