Chevron Richmond issue: Dennis Roos is the real "little guy"

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On July 1st, Contra Costa Superior Court Judge Barbara Zuniga issued a decision that altered Richmond, California's economic course for the future. She ordered the oil giant to rewrite its environmental impact report (EIR) because of environmentalists' contention that the EIR was flawed and that a newly refurbished Richmond refinery would not produce lower carbon emissions than the current facility.

Her decision was hailed as a victory for "the little guy" by my friend San Francisco Chronicle Columnist Chip Johnson. But his column made me ask "Who's really the little guy, here?" So in a search for the answer to my query, I did some digging and found a person who represents the real "little guy": Dennis Roos. But before we meet Roos, a brief recap is in order.

Two Sides To A View

A year ago the Richmond City Council narrowly approved a development agreement allowing Chevron to refurbish the existing refinery. The contention with the approval, according to community activists, is that Chevron's working to use a "dirtier" yet cheaper to produce grade of crude oil. Chevron's claim was that the new process would result in cleaner air.

The approval set off a lawsuit filed against Chevron under the grounds that the refinery EIR did not meet California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) quidelines. The Judge agreed and handed down the ruling which called for construction of the new facility to stop until the problem with the EIR was solved.

I think what's forgotten by many is the current state of the refinery. It's old and dirty, right now, and needs to be upgraded which will not happen because of this tribal culture we live in. What the real problem is, frankly, is that every time there's a development project there's someone who crafts a reason to stop it mainly because they're jealous that someone has done something big. Think about it. My point is not to poo-poo environmental concerns, not at all, but to get at something I've noticed and now have to ask bluntly: why are all the activists poor and struggling and always working against an organization or person they view as wealthy? It's a common theme. Some of these activists don't want to work with organizations to improve anything; they'd rather just stop them cold. Period. But why can't they pay the rent, these guys?

Chevron's not the best neighbor in all of this either. As one who's worked in government, I can say the best companies work years to gain the community's trust and to make sure that the needs of the people are met when they don't need anything. From people I've talked to for background information, this was the Chevron of Richmond's past.

Chevron would contend they're working with the community now, and their Richmond plant website gives a good presentation of what they're doing and have done in that community. From the website one can gather the idea that Chevron has been a major and positive part of Richmond's culture, or has tried to be. Somehow this news isn't reaching the community activists, but perhaps they're not listening or reading it to begin with. Maybe Chevron should try Twitter?

What happened? Why is it, particularly in California, we have "sides" to an issue that consist of people who don't talk to each other? Moreover, it consists of people who just don't like to think at all; they'd rather toss insults or lawsuits than have an intelligent conversation that leads to a workable agreement. It's all so tribal this new culture - one side puts out its view, the other has a view and we in the middle have to figure it out - it's done nothing to improve our economy or quality of life, and it cost Dennis Roos his job. I'm frankly sick and tired of this dumbed-down culture we've allowed to form. Whatever caused it, it's time for a push-back.

The Activist Mayor of Richmond

Richmond Mayor Gayle McLaughlin says the victory is a win for Richmond. But which Richmond? The people who need the jobs don't think it's a win at all and neither does the city's finance director Jim Goins, who said the ruling will "have an impact." (Hey, I guess Richmond's doing fine in this recession, huh? Someone needs to tell Mayor McLaughlin her city's unemployment rate is 10 percent and that the number of Richmond jobs has decreased 65 percent since 2007. Richmond's in trouble.

This is what I'm vexed about: the desire to "get a win" seems to have overruled any idea of "getting to yes" where both parties can agree and improve a community. Shame on Mayor McLaughlin for acting less like a leader and more like an activist. Mayor McLaughlin should talk to one of her own people about this so-called "victory": Richmond's Dennis Roos.

Dennis Roos is the little guy

Roos is a union electrician (with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers local 302 in Martinez, California) who grew up in Richmond and started working for Chevron there when he was in his 20s as a researcher of sorts. Then Roos took a series of jobs, building a reputation as an electrician who specializes in new facilities and remodeling (or what he calls an "inside wireman"), like the one Chevron had planned to build before Judge Zuniga handed down a questionable call. I talked to Roos about what happened and how it's effected him.

Roos explained that he'd already been released by Chevron and didn't know what he was going to do for income considering his normal obligations and the fact that he has two daughters: one in college and the other just graduated from high school. At any rate Roos said he was laid off, he thought prematurely, and without other job prospects forced to go on unemployment. "It's pretty detrimental to the economy (of Richmond and myself) and I'm reduced to what I call necessity spending." Roos recently bought a new home and as a result of that and the court action against Chevron, he's not in the best financial shape at all. (He's looking for work, so please contact me if you have any opening and I will relay that information to him.)

A terrible decision 

Judge Barbara Zuniga could have resolved this issue in a way that helped all parties. Rather than order a stoppage of work to solve the environmental impact report problems, Judge Zuniga should have ordered the formation of a group of community activists and environmentalists to work with Chevron and then install the project change orders necessary to make sure the refinery's production process was "cleaner" in its emissions release than before. This would have saved the 1,000 jobs that have been removed - and perhaps even the 3,000 total refinery jobs that are now in question as Chevron considers moving production south to El Segundo - and made sure Richmond got the $61 million in community benefits from Chevron it negotiated for, which by the way lead to more jobs. Instead, Judge Zuniga made a terrible worst case call that harmed Richmond, Chevron, and workers like Dennis Roos.

Sen. Feinstein Lays Out Examples Of Conservative Judicial Activism

Sen. Feinstein's speech is really worth hearing.

British govt. promotes sex, orgasm ...to kids?!!!

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It's hard to argue that "an orgasm a day keeps the doctor away", but is it something we should tell our kids? Well that's what the National Health Service in the UK is doing according to the Times Online. What vexes me is why tell kids this and not adults? Moreover, why can't the U.S surgeon general say that to adults in America?

Well, back to the Brits first.

Everything about this campaign to promote delayed sexual activity in kids is questionable but one has to applaud the British government for at least trying to take the stigma out of nookie, something they've been working at since at least 2007, when a national conference about "pleasure principals" was held. Still, consider that the title of the document reportedly given to kids is called "Pleasure". Pleasure. An item of literature given to kids is called "Pleasure" and its about sex? Yikes.

Consider the rationale for all this: Steve Slack, who's the director of the Centre for HIV and Sexual Health at NHS Sheffield has advocated that far from causing youth to actually become sexually active, it could cause them to delay having sex until they are sure they will enjoy the experience.

What!?

How the heck is a kid going to avoid having sex because he or she may feel they will not enjoy it? That's ridiculous and implies the kid's already sexually experienced enough to have had a good roll in the hay! Plus, I think about my friends who are school teachers, two of which told me about incidents where they caught their 14-year-old students doing sex acts so bizarre it would shock you. And given the cultural similarities between America and Britain, I'm sure English instructors have similar stories too.

Its true that sex and orgasms are good for you, as are hugs and great relationships. It's good for your cardiovascular system. But all of these benefits are commonly aimed at adults who may have high blood pressure and other problems, not kids, who normally don't. That's why I say the effort's misplaced; adults should be the target market, not kids. I think about the San Francisco Bay Area and how uptight so many people here are - it's obvious a good daily orgasm's missing from their lives.

 

Sex makes adults happy!

Just yesterday a woman friend I talked to at a birthday gathering at the Balboa Cafe in San Francisco - a place commonly known as a singles hangout - told me that celibacy among women in the city was so common that it's not hard to find anyone who had not "had it" in over a year. I couldn't believe it, but anecdotally it seems to be true. Given the pleasures of and benefits of sex, what does it say about a regional society which seems almost devoid of it? It says that society is perpetually stressed-out, uptight, mean, rude, and always angry about something. And with that kind of person you're not going to get one who enjoys spontaneous conversation unless they've had a few cocktails or are like me and love to engage people to begin with. A fear of talking is not good at all, but I contend that describes the San Francisco Bay Area today. Indeed, the only group of people for which this isn't true seem to be Gays, if the free-loving, expressive environment of Gay Pride weekend is any indication.

But what about us straight adult people in the Bay Area?

I think the UK's "sex ed" program should be terminated there and aimed at adults over here in America and especially The Bay Area as a kind of experiment. I firmly believe all the violence I've seen - bouncers versus patrons and loser guys beating up homeless people - would not have happened at all if we had a better and freer attitude about sex and about each other.

This part of the world, this Bay Area, has become too neurotic for its own good and that's hazardous to one's health. Indeed, the Bay Area seems to reward neurotic behavior, causing the region to degenerate into a group of people afraid to get to know to each other on public transit systems, or in cafes, or on the street, just saying "hello." Attempts at making social connections have been relegated to Craigslist, where "missed connections" are many and rather silly. Funny, because all the person who had the "missed connection" had to do was say "hello" to the person they were interested in. You can't have sex, let alone great sex, if you fear to communicate with anyone.

Pleasure for kids? Way too early for them. Pleasure for adults in the San Francisco Bay Area? Long overdue.

Sonya Sotomayor's confirmation hearing start today

As I write this, the historic Senate Confirmation Hearing for President Obama's Supreme Court Justice Designate Sonya Sotomayor have started. I'm going to tune in eventually, but I'm not expecting high drama here. As much as the GOP might trying to paint her as not-qualified she is and will sail through this process.

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Nike Censors Video of LeBron James Getting Dunked On by College Kid

A video on making pizza by "Lifes Like That" on Vloggerheads

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This is a real cool video I saw over at Vloggerheads by vlogger "Lifes Like That". She makes this fast motion video of how she makes pizza for her family. I think I'm going to copy her example! Yum!

Double Rainbow over Oakland, California (video)

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On Saturday July 11th at 5: 30 PM, I walked out of a cafe on Grand Avenue near Lake Merritt in Oakland and noticed that sweet smell that comes after a light rain and a weird amber tint of the sidewalk below me, so I looked up and was surprised by an incredible site: a remarkable double rainbow that stretched overhead and to the left and right of me.  It was such an amazing event that people came out of ZZA's and Sidebar restaurants just to take pictures of it; fortunately, I had my small Flip Video Camera.

 

Double rainbow in Oakland

There were two rainbows, one on top of the other in a perfect arch. It was such a site that people came out to their balconies to see it, and car traffic on Grand Avenue slowed because drivers were craining their necks to get a better look at it. What was remarkable was how robust the double rainbow was as I walked along, not dissolving into one rainbow. It's the first time I've ever seen a double rainbow, so I wondered what caused them to form.  Off to Google.

To make it simple, because there are a lot of complicated explainations out there, a rainbow is formed when sunlight passes through raindrops at a certain angle. According to the Natonal Center for Atmostpheric Research, a double rainbow ">happens when sunlight is reflected twice within raindrops: the "primary rainbow" is formed in the "normal" way, but the "secondary" rainbow occurs after the double reflection in the raindrop itself (and explains why the outer rainbow's color order is reversed from that of the inner or primary rainbow). Given that information, can a triple rainbow form? Yes they can and do.

How rare is a double rainbow?

Double rainbows are said to be rare, but some explain that since rainbows are an optical illusion, it may be that we're not in the right position to see the secondary rainbow most of the time.

The meaning of a double rainbow

I wondered what does it mean - if anything - to see a double rainbow? Blogger and vocalist Luna Jade believes it means the viewer will be blessed. The Osho Energy Transformation Institute, that Jade links to, explains that "the double rainbow the symbol of transformation":

The double rainbow is the symbol of transformation.
In the first rainbow we see red is at the top and
violet at the bottom.
This represents the material world.
We are a rainbow, but the red belongs at the feet and
the first chakra area and the violet at the head.
So when we see the red at the top and the violet at
the bottom, it is as if we are seeing a person upside
down or descending from heaven diving down to the
earth. In the upper second rainbow,
and remember it is not such a common sight,
the colours are the right way up,
this symbolizes the journey back to heaven,
the ascent of the kundalini,
the journey of transformation, the spiritual world.

So a double rainbow over Oakland must mean something good's going to happen for a city that can use a few blessings, or at least for the Oaklanders who saw it today. With a massive budget problem, a persistent image as a dangerous city, and a double-digit unemployment rate, Oakland people overdue for great positive developments. The double rainbow's a great start - people who didn't know each other were talking on the street which is a rare happening in a Bay Area culture I think encourages anti-social behavior.

SF Homeless man assaulted for no good reason

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This happened today in San Francisco as I was walking up Sansome toward Bush at about 1:14 PM PST. Two men were arguing for some reason - one homeless - then the other man chased him and started to throw him but we asked him to stop and walk off. Later, the homeless man admitted to me on camera he made fun of the guy (for some reason) but that didn't mean he had to try and assault the guy.

Moreover, the police came later, but threw the Homeless Man's items away. Why? He says someone called security, gesturing to the building on the corner of Sansome and Bush. Unfortunately, my camera's batteries ran out, so I went to buy new ones at the Walgreens accross the street; when I returned the Homeless Man was gone.

But the bearded, long-haired guy in black clearly had some problems himself. Total anger management issues as all he had to do was ignore the Homeless Man and walk on, but it was clear that before I arrived he was already in an argument with the guy which (my guess) has to do with the kind of camp site the Homeless Man set up on the corner. Wrong, yes. But it was much more "wrong" to assault him.

If you feel like you've got to take that kind of action against a helpless person, you're one sick dude in my view.

District 9 movie trailer shows "alien" documentary

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Peter Jackson, the Academy Award-winning producer and director of the Lord of The Rings Trilogy and King Kong took on a new and exciting movie project in 2007 that's a documentary-style movie about an alien encampment in South Africa. Called "District 9" it's set for release August 14th and features perhaps the most realistic take on the age-old story of aliens visiting Earth I've ever seen thus far.

In District 9, a giant alien ship hovers over Johannesberg, South Africa. In total the ship and its crew have been there for 28 years. Over that time, a generation, they're forced into slum-like conditions in an area called "District 9". Reportedly a government agent become a friend to the aliens and becomes a human host for their biotechnology.

The Alien Encampment and the Ship in District 9

That's as much as I'll give away but what's interesting are the questions raised by the film: why do we feel the need to imprison those who are different from us? If we were visited by alien life forms in a public way, in other words, a large ship so large you can't miss it, how would we react? What does it mean to be ready for "alien visitors"? Will such a development cause those who are racist to be challenged in their thinking about other humans, or will the visit only make what some claim to be a mental illness even more of a problem?

Given improvements in our communications technology, allowing us to "hear" into space better, and current and upcoming search programs for extraterrestrial life, we may be closer to a point of actually dealing with those questions that we realize. In the interim, we have District 9 to serve as a kind of "situation simulator."

CDFL Draft Live on the Football Reporters Show

www.blogtalkradio.com/Football-Reporters will Broadcast the CDFL draft Live tonight at 7pm eastern. Tune in!!

Rev Al Sharpton's amazing speech at Michael Jackson Memorial

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One of the highlights of the Michael Jackson Memorial is an amazing speech given by the Rev. Al Sharpton. Sharpton's always a lighting rod for criticism for his "tell-it-like-it-is" style, and he presented it at the memorial. Sharpton gave one of the best speeches I've ever heard because it cut deep to the core reasons why many people love and defend Michael Jackson and for another reason: Jackson represents the growth of mainstream American Culture, where people paid less attention race and more attention to what they liked regardless of the skin color of the person who made what they liked.

Sharpton walked up and delivered an old-fashioned unplanned stump stemwinder speech. The kind I'd expect to hear from him in church. Here's the transcript of Sharpton's masterpiece presented by Seattlemedium.com:

All over the world today people are gathered in love viduals to celebrate the life of a man that taught the world how to love.


People may be wondering why there’s such an emotional outburst. But you would have to understand the journey of Michael to understand what he meant to all of us. For these that sit here as the Jackson family - a mother and father with nine children that rose from a working class family in Gary, Indiana - they had nothing but a dream.


No one believed in those days that this kind of dream could come true, but they kept on believing and Michael never let the world turn him around from his dreams. I first met Michael around the 1970 Black Expo, Chicago, Illinois. Rev. Jesse Jackson, who stood by this family till now, and from that day as a cute kid to this moment, he never gave up dreaming. It was that dream that changed culture all over the world. When Michael started, it was a different world. But because Michael kept going, because he didn’t accept limitations, because he refused to let people decide his boundaries, he opened up the whole world.


In the music world, he put on one glove, pulled his pants up and broke down the color curtain where now our videos are shown and magazines put us on the cover. It was Michael Jackson that brought Blacks and Whites and Asians and Latinos together. It was Michael Jackson that made us sing, “We are the World” and feed the hungry long before Live Aid.


Because Michael Jackson kept going, he created a comfort level where people that felt they were separate became interconnected with his music. And it was that comfort level that kids from Japan and Ghana and France and Iowa and Pennsylvania got comfortable enough with each other until later it wasn’t strange to us to watch Oprah on television. It wasn’t strange to watch Tiger Woods golf. Those young kids grew up from being teenage, comfortable fans of Michael to being 40 years old and being comfortable to vote for a person of color to be the President of the United States of America.


Michael did that. Michael made us love each other. Michael taught us to stand with each other. There are those that like to dig around mess. But millions around the world, we’re going to uphold his message. It’s not about mess, but it’s about his love message. As you climb up steep mountains, sometimes you scar your knee; sometimes you break your skin. But don’t focus on the scars, focus on the journey. Michael beat ‘em, Michael rose to the top. He out-sang his cynics, he out-danced his doubters; he out-performed the pessimists. Every time he got knocked down, he got back up. Every time you counted him out, he came back in. Michael never stopped. Michael never stopped. Michael never stopped.


I want to say to Mrs. Jackson and Joe Jackson, his sisters and brothers: We thank you for giving us someone that taught us love; someone who taught us hope. We want to thank you because we know it was your dream too.


We know that your heart is broken. I know you have some comfort from the letter from the President of the United States and Nelson Mandela. But this was your child. This was your brother. This was your brother. This was your cousin. Nothing will fill your hearts’ lost. But I hope the love that people are showing will make you know he didn’t live in vain. I want his three children to know: Wasn’t nothing strange about your Daddy. It was strange what your Daddy had to deal with. But he dealt with it…He dealt with it anyway. He dealt with it for us.


So, some came today, Mrs. Jackson, to say goodbye to Michael. I came to say, thank you. Thank you because you never stopped, thank you because you never gave up, thank you because you never gave out, thank you because you tore down our divisions. Thank you because you eradicated barriers. Thank you because you gave us hope. Thank you Michael. Thank you Michael. Thank you Michael!

Fox News Bill O'Reilly said Sharpton's speech was racist, but that's certainly not the dumbest thing I've ever heard O'Reilly say - his crack about not knowing "Black restaurants" could be nice places to go to takes the prize - but it's close.

The bottom line is Michael Jackson did change American Culture. Think about it. He became a singing star just four years after the passage of The Civil Rights Amendment in 1964 and continued to produce hit after hit to his death, all the time gaining fans around the World who didn't care what color his skin was; they just liked his music and him. That's powerful, and all the more so when one considers the racial problems we've seen and experienced. It's really gotten better and Jackson deserves a lot of credit for that.

Conservatives can't deal with anyone telling the truth about race relations, but they'd better start because it's their inability to understand how race relations have changed that has doomed the political future of conservatives and of the GOP.

A political party historically based on hating a racial group - as was true for the GOP for decades - can't survive when people of different colors are mating as one. Causing that in a small way is but one of Michael Jackson's gifts to society. If it's hard for you to deal with that fact, one of the "hard facts that create America" as President Lincoln would say, you're not American at all because you don't get your own country.