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.
Several weeks ago I started my first look at the East Palo Alto problem of tenants being evicted from apartments by the housing developer Page Mill Properties and discovered a small group of "tenant activists" were behind a kind of smear campaign that blocked the real truth from seeing the light of day: that Page Mill Properties was facing a terribly-designed rent control system and an underground economy where apartments were sublet by the tenants at markup rates. In my alternative approach talking to planning professionals I know and who are familar with the problem in EPA, I've come up with a solution.
The irrrational activists
This revelation of Page Mill's "underground economy" problem earned me the ire of activists who started a massive personal attack campaign against me, paced by representatives of Tenants Together and Chris Lund who really represents himself as Tenants Together associates say he's not a part of their organization.
The attacks centered on the idea that I was paid by Page Mill and even had Paul Hogarth of BayondChron "friend" me on Facebook, thus becoming one of almost 3,000 contacts, then because a Pat Murphy was one of my Facebook Friends, asserted that we must be working together, forgetting that such illogic (an appropriate term as this is "Star Trek" week and that was Spock's favorite word) would mean I was working with everyone from perennial Republican Presidential Candidate Allan Keyes to conservative columnist Michelle Malkin as both are or were Facebook Friends. But then Hogarth "defriended" himself so I could not point out that he and I were friends.
He forgets that such acts leave a trail. Here's a screenshot of the email subject heading where Hogarth "friended" me and reads "Paul Hogarth added you as a friend":
But all of this crap masks the real story of what's going on in East Palo Alto. In one of his email tirades, Hogarth wrote that he didn't care about the involvement of the East Palo Alto Redevelopment Agency. That's true for many of the so-called activists, and the truth is they don't have the background to even analyze what the agency has or has not done, let alone an understanding of what such agencies do under California law.
What Redevelopment Agencies Do
Redevelopment agencies in California are generally established by a city or county's elected body of officials (but as a side note, a joint powers authority or even, say, the Port of Oakland, can establish its own redevelopment agency.) The intent of the agency is first to establish an area called "blighted" as a "redevelopment study area" and then after the agency's report on and plan for the area is complete to get state approval for the establishment of a "redevelopment project area" where the agency can collect property taxes via a formulation method called "Tax Increment Financing", or "TIF".
TIF is where we start with what's called a "base year" of assessed value of say, 1 million. Then according to state law and re-established with the passage of Proposition 13 in 1998, the agency can mathmatically increase that value by 2 percent annually. So say two years later, the project area has a value of $1,020,000. The agency will add that percentage increase each year and have an increment of $30,000 and from that a tax revenue (at one percent of the increment) of $300 by the second year.
But let's say that's part of a bond the agency has floated and it's 20 years long. That means the agency can collect a total of $194,000 in revenue from an increment of $20,400,000 minus the base-year assessed value. Doesn't sound like a lot of money, right? Well, project areas are much more valueable than a milion bucks, more like billions, so that TIF money can add up and can be used to provide "bridge loans" to developers trying to provide affordable housing in an area like East Palo Alto. And that's why I asked "Where was the East Palo Alto Revelopment Agency?" in this whole "Page Mill Affair".
EPA's redevelopment planning mistake and a solution
According to an unnamed source, the reason the EPA was not and is not involved in the Page Mill issue is because the housing they purchased is not in a redevelopment project area so TIF funds can't be used to help Page Mill, and for reasons that are not clear to the person I talked to, the EPA's project areas were not drawn to include housing units. The source also agrees that was a huge planning mistake.
From my experience, what EPA's agency did was to form the project area boundary lines such that money from office and retail developments - which are more expensive than housing - was captured. But the problem is they can't use the money for housing because the boundaries don't include the housing units that were later purchased by Page Mill Properties.
Another source says the other issue is simply one of money. Even with its development activities, EPA is still a relatively poor city. In cities like Oakland, where I worked for its redevelopment agency and two Oakland mayors Harris and Brown, we commonly approached developers to build projects using the money generated from our project areas as an attraction tool; EPA's agency doesn't have such wealth so it's far less likely to show up as, say, The International Council of Shopping Center's Spring Convention in Las Vegas, looking to do deals with developers.
That written, EPA's redevelopment body and not Page Mill, which was a late-comer, has been at the forefront of gentrification in that city and as far back as 2001. One example is the decision to help developers build an IKEA store rather than a grocery store, upseting some local residents. Today, in his state of the city adress, EPA's Mayor Ruben Abrica points to IKEA as a symbol of the city's growth:
In East Palo Alto, "you can get the best Mexican food, the best barbecue, the best island food. You can even get Swedish meatballs up at IKEA."
And in the same speech, Mayor Abrica stressed the need to update the city's rent control laws, which started the whole problem with Page Mill and led to the unusual rate of subleted apartments that Page Mill discovered. The evictions the activists complain about were - for the most part - actually those sublets; the tenants didn't even live there in those cases. Moreover, the East Palo Alto Rent Board was allowing arbitrary rent increases which Page Mill contends were given to tenants who were then "re-renting" their units.
Now the EPA Rent Board is seeking the advice of the members of rent boards in Berkeley and Oakland to, as Mayor Abrica said "update the city's rent control laws".
Meanwhile the pace of gentrification continues and the EPA Redevelopment Agency has three project areas active, the University Circle, the Gateway/101 corridor, and the Ravenswood Industrial Area. The University Circle Project Area includes a Four Seasons Hotel (called "The Four Seasons Silicon Valley")
The African American population in EPA has given way to a diverse group of Latinos, Asians, and Blacks but the city is still largely politically controlled by older African Americans. It may have been this political rub between older Blacks who see what they knew fading away due to demographic change and gentrification and a White developer new to the EPA political scene, that led to the flurry of lawsuits from both sides. But also a lack of good, sound technical expertise and input was and is the problem; politics has ruled the day even as the City of EPA has excellent professional staff. They should listen to them.
The solution is the EPA's redevelopment project area boudaries need to be redrawn to incorporate the housing that Page Mill's upgrading. The improved property values will be a new source of agency revenue that it can use with Page Mill to keep the units at affordable levels while maintaining Page Mill's ability to take care of them and realize a good rate of return on their investment. Moreover, EPA and Page Mill will emerge as true partners. I admit re-drawing redevelopment boundaries is a time-consuming issue, but the rewards are worth it for city, building developer, and tenant. To it's credit, Page Mill's Jim Shore, after I explained this idea, expressed to me that "We would be willing and happy to work with the (East Palo Alto) redevelopment agency."
This is the kind of professional problem solving approach not brought to this issue by the activists who've attacked me. As far I'm concerned, their lack of technical planning experience, and their unwillingness to work with people who have it, let alone really learn about redevelopment, and coupled with their desire to smear and demonize and harrass people have only made the Page Mill issue an ugly mess. Unless they're willing to embrace an intelligent, professional, technical, detailed, urban planning approach, and advocate for EPA redevelopment project area redesign, they should stay out of this issue.
Pican Restaurant is in the middle of the revived Uptown in Oakland.
Ok. After blasting the organizers of the previous Oakland Blogger's Party for not inviting me and for it being an "All Whites gathering" Oakland Blogger VSmoothe (A Better Oakland) was cool enough to invite me to last Wednesday's party, and you know, it was a good event with some diversity in the house. My only misgiving is that the folks' of color were not all active Oakland Bloggers like me or Michael Caton (An Oakland Citizen), or...VSmoothe or the good folks who write the Myrtle Street Review, who didn't make it but I'll get them to the next one!
(That's a bit of a prod to get it going, folks!)
But that written, it was a total blast! I'm happy to see that Oakland has a vibrant culture of people who care enough to write about what's happening in it. I love that they're engaged and it's good to see that they're active even as I'm off chasing windmills of national stardom and this television show of mine ; I'm all over the map and they're focused on Oakland. Thanks to Vivian for her critique of my Oakland Focus Blog's over stylized comment system (she can't see it) and always great to see the Oakland Legend Naomi Schiff of the Oakland Heritage Alliance, and of course, Libby Schaaf who really should be the Mayor of Oakland. (She's gonna kill me for that one, but it's true and insiders know that she's the only one who doesn't have any - as former Oakland City Manager Robert Bobb would put it - "sniper fire" coming at her from enemies.)
A good home base of people to keep me sane.
It was also cool to see all of the people waltz in and out of the event, like Phil Tagami, my long-time friend who just finished developing the Fox Oakland Theater (A place so nice, Sean Penn crossed the pond to see it.) and to who the City of Oakland owes a massive debt of gratitude, if they would for once stop being jealous of him (ah the Oakland Crabbarrel mentality!).
(By the way Phil, are you running for Mayor? What's up?)
But back to the party.
The real star was "Ave", (needs an updated website) the bar and eatery on 2020 Telegraph in the Uptown Entertainment District and next to the parking lot on Telegraph and Thomas Berkeley Ave, next to the Sears building - or across from it - and a hip place with the right amount of subdued lighting, and good wine and food. Stop by and try the pasta while you're watching the basketball game.
It's really cool to see Downtown Oakland just plain come alive with places to go and things to do after dark. I've got to admit, it's a little weird not crossing the bridge to find a party, now I've got to get my San Francisco friends over here where there's a "there, there" - finally!
If you've not been there, Pican Restaurant is a "must" on your restaurant list at 2955 Broadway and part of the Broadway / Grand Development. Try the mac and cheese and chicken or the salmon dish. It's the best in the Bay Area, and if you need a visual preview of the place, well the video above has it!
Accessory to Further By Michael – Louis Ingram BASN/FRO
“An NFL player who played 10 years in the league gets a pension of $2500 a month; yet in Major League Baseball, that same player over a similar period receives $10,000 a month (in spite of the fact pro football makes more money).We didn’t know we were going to live this long – everyone told us we would all be dead by age 55, and these guys that are out here, -- they’re hurting. And rather than address it, the NFLPA does things to defame and further diminish these men…” - Jane Arnett, wife of former NFL player “Jaguar Jon” Arnett, co- founder of the Retired Professional Athletes Association (RPAA), an advocacy group for ex-players.
In a few hours from now a handful of young men will have their names called in front of the grand stage at Radio City Music Hall in New York City; and an audience of millions of cable and satellite television viewers will see approximately 60 or so of these cats become millionaires -- literally overnight. The National Football League presents this transformation every year in an orchestrated production called the NFL Draft, replete with pomp and fanfare as the next wave of gridiron gladiators are put out in public display before the masses. It wasn’t that long ago where there were no bells and whistles, or continuous coverage or fantasy geeks to masturbate on statistics and create a cottage industry based on…potential.
Jane Arnett is someone who also believes in potential. As co – founder of the Retired Professional Athletes Association (RPAA), her goal is to help bring back dignity to those who labored for thousands so a few could make billions. “You know, we’re seeing an event – and that’s what it’s become, an event,” says Arnett. “The NFL Draft will call these young men and change their lives with relative ease; but they are so difficult in allowing some of the same men whose names were called long ago to reacquire their sense of self and bring quality of life back to their spirits.” As with these new millionaires, many of the retired heroes who are directly responsible for the Draft becoming Fat City for these kids came from the same talent pool; from schools like Penn State & Michigan; universities like Washington and Southern California; small schools like Occidental & Kutztown State; and historically Black colleges & universities like Grambling, Morgan State, and Florida A&M. From the meager bonus dollars that may have bought a car or put down a payment on a house in the 1950s, 1960s or 1970s, the size of the contract and bonus money awarded to the first selection in this year’s 2009 NFL Draft will exceed the $28.1 million awarded to these same retired players, who won the amount in a class action suit – against their own union last year. Apparently these words – “class action suit” are significantly diluted and remade as abomination in the aftermath of the ruling; there has been anything but class shown on the part of NFLPA/Players, Inc. counsel in paying out the cash; their stalling actions and vindictive attempts at appeal smack more of greedy family members waiting for an old relative to die so they can do whatever suits their own selfish interests with his remains, rather than have that uncle or grandfather live out the rest of his days with dignity. And as a Matthew Stafford or a Jason Smith gets to put their “John Henry” on that first contract, the other side of the NFL’s mouth will scream bloody murder about being broke. Broke? How broke can you be when the first team on the clock, the Detroit Lions, who haven’t won a regular season game all last season have spent money on changing their logo? Never mind the millions they will spend on improving the Lions; this is a team that in spite of going 0 – 16 all year (how do you make a highlight Yearbook film out of that?) are still worth far more than their Motor City counterparts:
According to numbers by Forbes.com, the Tigers, who did compete in a recent World Series, are worth $239 million; the Pistons, who have recent NBA championships to their credit, are worth $363 million; and the Detroit Red Wings, a perennial winner, a team and organization so dominant in the NHL hierarchy, they have earned the nickname “Hockeytown,” are worth three times less ($303 million) than the 0 – 16 Lions, who are worth $917 million. Y’all didn’t hear me – I said $917 million. And Detroit (24th on the NFL value pole) is not even the lowest ranked team; that distinction belongs to the Minnesota Vikings, who are worth “only” $839 million dollars – in spite of being a playoff team last year! You call that broke??? And the Lions that helped make that money were men like Bobby Layne, Charlie Sanders, Yale Lary, Patrick Studstill, Lem Barney, Joe Schmidt, Dick “Night Train” Lane, Altie Taylor, Darris McCord, Greg Landry, Mel Farr, Roger Brown, Alex Karras, Billy Sims – and Wayne Walker. Arnett, wife of Jon Arnett, a 10 year NFL veteran who played with the Los Angeles Rams and Chicago Bears, formed RPAA in large part after seeing the plight of former players whose bodies, once young and strong have betrayed them with the ravages of time and scars on the gridiron. “All these players are very prideful, and are only asking for what they’ve earned; or at the very least, a chance to again earn some revenue and feel relevant again,” says Arnett. “But whenever we have sought to help out a player with a chance for work or to make a public appearance, the League is insistent in clamping down on what specifics allow for any affiliation – and it stinks. “As the wife of a former player it is a struggle for many spouses and loved ones to handle the challenges of being with someone who they have to be caretaker, provider and often breadwinner because of circumstances due to ongoing medical, physical and emotional stresses which can tear couples and families apart.” Given the amount of revenue garnered by advertising on the part of ESPN, the NFL Network and all other League – connected apparatus, the idea of continuing to maintain a hard line approach to men who only want their fair share remains a mystery to the most logical of minds.
Bernie Parrish, former Cleveland Browns defensive back and architect of the successful class action suit, when asked if the delaying tactics on the part of NFLPA were tantamount to them being an accessory to the murder of many players, replied, “I definitely feel that way. I’m in my early seventies, and many of my peers died off much earlier than they should have. “The average lifespan for players has been hovering in the low - to – mid fifties, and the pain of enduring long – term issues of drug addiction, injuries, lack of proper medical care because of insurance companies not allowing for disability claims brings us back to where we started – the NFLPA’s violating their fiduciary duty – that means they stole our money; but they have ultimately taken more from us then that. “The mantra has long been, ‘delay, deny, and hope we die’ – and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out this is what NFLPA has decided on as their modus operandi for showing their thanks to the men who built this League,” Parrish said. The actions and inactions that have brought these factions to this point seem to have clearly defined the roles of the principals:
(“Heroes & Villians” – lyrics by Brian Wilson & Van Dyke Parks, performed by the Beach Boys) I’ve been in this town so long that back in the city I’ve been taken for lost and gone And unknown for a long long time Fell in love years ago With an innocent girl From the Spanish and Indian home Home of the heroes and villains Once at night Catillian squared the fight And she was right in the rain of the bullets that eventually brought her down But she’s still dancing in the night Unafraid of what a dude’ll do in a town full of heroes and villains Heroes and Villains; just see what you’ve done Heroes and Villains; just see what you’ve done Stand or fall I know there Shall be peace in the valley And its all an affair Of my life with the heroes and villains My children were raised You know they suddenly rise They started slow long ago Head to toe healthy, wealthy and wise I’ve been in this town so long So long to the city I’m fit with the stuff To ride in the rough And sunny down snuff I’m alright By the heroes and Heroes and Villains Just see what you’ve done Heroes and Villains Just see what you’ve done
I saw an interesting blog post today over at Webguild.org reporting that Twitter is "Doomed" (in fact the title is "Twitter Doomed") and I had to laugh. There have been any number of people explaining either why they don't use Twitter or predicting its demise. There's even a website-style blog called "Twitter Backlash". But back to the post that got my laugh banks engaged and this sentence:
Apparently more than 60 percent of Twitter users fail to return the following month and pre-Oprah more than 70 percent of Twitter users failed to return to the site according to David Martin, Vice President, Nielsen Online.
Apparently Nielsen believes it appropriate to lump in Twitter with social networks like Facebook, MySpace, and others, and that's the problem. Twitter's a micro-blogging environment much more than a social network and thus should not be compared to Facebook and MySpace. Facebook and MySpace have places for photos of whatever you're doing or a place for installing your favorite music to share with others. That's not what Twitter's designed to do. Thus comparing them is lumping Apples with Oranges.
Twitter, again, is for the act of "micro-blogging" or explaining something in less than 150 characters. That's a system that can be and has been incorporated into a social network like Facebook, but it's not a social network like MySpace and Facebook.
I think what's happening is because one can communicate with others on Twitter, or have "friends", it's viewed as a social network as opposed to something that allows social-networking.
Two different actions.
In Facebook I have various pages, I'm a "fan" of President Obama, and I can see my friends photos, attend events I'm invited to, and play games they invite me to engage in (when I have time).
I can't do any of that on Twitter.
So it should come as no surprise that Twitter has a lower retention rate than Facebook or MySpace. Hey, people like to learn about other people which is what we use Facebook and other networks for. (Personally, I swear by Linkedin which I use far far more than MySpace.)
I don't see Twitter as a competitor to Facebook, but as complementary to Facebook. My Tweets go from my Twitter page out to my followers then onto my Facebook page and for good measure migrate over to my FriendFeed page as well. And my blogs are hooked in the same way: Blog to Twitter to Facebook to FriendFeed. Hey, that horizontal subscription count can add up!
The reason Twitter has a lower retention rate is simple: there's less there. It's a great place for the rapid transfer of information but that's it and you have to use it to understand its value.
Alas, Twitter doesn't have the revealing voyeur factor, so unless someone comes up with an app to send Paris Hilton sex tape through Twitter, the retention rates always going to be less than for Facebook, and that's just fine with me. Twitter's going through a shake out period where everyone thinks they have to use it. It's not for everyone. Eventually, we'll get rid of the wanna bees and be left with a really engaged Twitterverse.
Single payer is not socialized medicine, it's how Medicare works. 
