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Greek Security

In case you somehow missed the story of the notorious Greek prisoners escaping from Greece's maximum security prison by helicopter for the second time in three years, check it out here.

My favorite part is that their accomplice was a woman, who lowered a rope ladder from the helicopter and fired at jail guards with a machine gun. Maybe she could teach NOE a thing or two about feminism...

Kasperzak zings bag lobbyist

The Professor talked himself into a flip-flop, but the Mountain View City Council voted 5-2 to support the County's controversial bag fee. A "representative" of the "affected industries" spoke out against the measure.

After Kinney gave each member 71 single-sided pages of information,
council member Mike Kasperzak said Kinney needed to "cut down on [paper (sic) waste" with his handouts.

I think Kasperzak has spent the last two years writing and practicing one-liners he'd like to give if reelected to the council.

A meta-review of a mini-book

I want to make two things clear at the start of this post: I have not read Richard Sutherland's 43-page "book" None Dare Call it Reason, nor do I plan to.

However, I did read the Town Crier's review of it. Given that the book criticizes the Republican Party, and the Town Crier's publisher is a leader in a local Republican Party organization (a fact once again mentioned nowhere), you can probably guess that the thing did not get four stars.

This is my favorite part:

What the book doesn’t have is a consistent sourcing of the facts Sutherland cites. Considering his indignation over government officials’ so-called lies that the American people have embraced, Sutherland should have meticulously footnoted attributions lest readers suspect he is duping them, too.

Considering the Town Crier is consistently unable to point to any supporting evidence (let alone "meticulously footnoted attributions") for many ridiculous claims and assertions while ignoring overwhelming evidence against others, I hope somebody over there got the irony.

At least the review didn't criticize it for being a book.

A new entry for the Town Crier's greatest hits album

This week, we find the leaders of the fifth-most educated small town in America trying to one up each other with dumber and dumber reasons for opposing a tax on plastic bags. The Los Altos City Council began the shenanigans by voting 4-1 against Santa Clara County's proposed 25¢ per bag fee. The reasoning (apparently provided for them by the sinisterly-named American Chemistry Council) seemed to be that people ought to get paid for things that they should be doing already. A few days later, the award-winning editorial pages of the Town Crier joined the fray, and you can imagine where it went from there.

County should ‘bag’ the bag tax

Ha!

A recent proposal by the Santa Clara County Recycling and Waste Reduction Commission for paper and plastic grocery and retail bag reduction and a 25 cent per-bag tax received a cool reception from the Los Altos City Council. The issue wasn’t so much bag reduction – in these “green” times, reductions are appropriate. It was the "tax" part of it that council members rejected.

I'm sending both this headline and opening paragraph to the "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks.

We’re glad they did. Councilwoman Val Carpenter hit the nail on the head when she said the city would be better off implementing incentives for residents using fewer bags than agreeing to impose a tax. And the prospect of another tax in this weak economy is equivalent to hitting the taxpayers when they’re down. Frankly, there are far bigger environmental issues to tackle, such as toxic waste disposal and water conservation.

The Town Crier editorial writer may be happy about this, and Val Carpenter did in fact say that, but everything else in this paragraph is wrong.

the city would be better off implementing incentives for residents using fewer bags than agreeing to impose a tax.

My idea to give people an incentive to use fewer bags: charge a fee that they can avoid by using fewer bags.

And the prospect of another tax in this weak economy is equivalent to hitting the taxpayers when they’re down.

Three issues here: 1) Technically, it would be the tax itself doing the hitting, not the prospect of it, 2) this fee would be especially easy to avoid, and 3) I'm pretty sure Los Altans can afford an extra quarter in the extreme circumstances where it becomes necessary.

Frankly, there are far bigger environmental issues to tackle, such as toxic waste disposal and water conservation.

This sentence is particularly egregious. Its premise is a false dilemma that imagines society can either address the problem of plastic bags or deal with other environmental concerns, but not both. It also lacks any evidence for its claims. And given that the Town Crier still pretends that we are not changing the climate, I find it a little hard to trust assertions like this one. In fact, I even question the writer's frankness.

The editorial goes on to argue that the market should magically provide reusable bags, missing entirely the idea that plastic bags are artificially cheap because of the external costs that the market is not capturing. And in a coup-de-grace against both logic and the English language, we get this:

For anyone who’s been in Whole Foods Market, an occasional price break would be quite welcome.

Let's leave aside for now the irony of complaining about high food prices and then letting it slip that you shop at whole foods. Also, let's ignore that one of Whole Foods' main selling points is that the food it sells has fewer associated externalities than does the food from Safeway, Trader Joe's or Ralph's, thereby justifying the higher costs. The main problem with this is that Whole Foods presumably sets its prices in a way that takes into account the discounts it gives shoppers for using renewable bags, essentially taxing shoppers in the same way that the County's proposal would.

Hopefully Mountain View will have a more intelligent debate when it takes up the issue this week.

"Are they civilians now?"

How are we saying goodbye to the Bush Administration?

Having lost my motivation to write a big angry blogpost after then-President Bush paid tribute to my college teammate and his father in his farewell address, I figured I'd check out the tubes to see how other local groups are marking the occasion. (Oh sure, some people are celebrating the historic nature of Obama's inauguration, but we're not here to spread positive feelings.)

Ed Sheldon (and maybe MoveOn) reserved Civic Center Plaza in Mountain View for a "Goodbye Bush" party this afternoon.

Gimmicky new Castro St. restaurant uWink attempted some old-fashioned profiteering.

Karen Meredith mooned her tv.

A customer then fell down

New York Times columnist Tom Friedman advocated that Israel conduct terrorist attacks against civilians. But, being a local blog, we'd much rather make fun of the Town Crier's parallel construction error.

... police and fire department officials responded to a pedestrian accident and alleged fraud at US Bank. Los Altos police arrested a woman on suspicion of attempting to cash a fraudulent check, according to Detective Wes Beveridge.

Skanks for recycling

As many readers know, I license modeling shoots for my company. My favorite content harmonizes the beauty of the model with her surroundings, whether it be the mountains of Alaska, beaches of the Caribbean, or train stations of Mountain View.

Catcall-inspired HotChixDig is a burlesque modeling site that purports to raise money for environmental protection. These local envirosluts really know how to turn a fella on... to the value in replacing his water heater or clumsily attempting to fix his decades-old alarm clock.

Non-profit pimp Avida Verde who maintains a blog on the site, reports that an increasing number of prospective Hot Chix are lining up to be photographed half-naked. She indicated that she may "auction off the privilege of having the shoot at someone's house," and is currently editing video to put on the site.

Quest is back

For those of you who travel overseas (so this applies to everyone but xenophobic NOE), the name Richard Quest may ring a bell. He's the over-enthusiastic presenter/journalist on CNN International who has been away awhile since his April arrest in Central Park under particularly perverted circumstances. Up until now, I thought he'd lost his job. But alas, CNN International decided to keep him on and he's back this week with a new episode of CNN Business Traveler where he shows us about planes at London's City Airport. Check local listings for air times.

Army sends John Doe letters to 7,000 Gold Star families

Just in case anybody had any lingering feelings of positivity about the Iraq War. Len Ramirez of KPIX interviewed Karen Meredith on this story earlier today.

UPDATE: Karen, who has plenty of experience dealing with the army's bureaucratic errors (not to mention its substantive errors), puts it in perspective on her blog:

This "Dear John Doe" error is not the worst thing the Army has done and sadly if won't be the last "unfortunate mistake" they make. These kinds of errors, however unintentional, are so painful to a family member who lost a loved one. I wish the Army could get it right the first time. We deserve better.

Los Altos marches to the left

Eight years ago, when Los Altos voters favored Al Gore over George Bush, the Town Crier predictably made sure to mention "the city's rich Republican history." (Just as predictably, the paper failed to mention its publisher's prominent role in local Republican politics). Four years later, a similar article by Miss Mischief characterized my hometown as "typically a Republican stronghold."

It's time to dispense with that idea. Los Altos is a place with many problems. But I am happy to report that Republicanism is not one of them.

Since the 2000 election, the margin by which Los Altos voters have favored the Democratic candidate for President has tripled, with Barack Obama pulling in more than twice as many votes as John McCain this year.

In Los Altos Hills, the margin is slightly smaller, but the trend is the same.



The local electorate's take on Prop. 8 is further evidence of the city's liberal tilt: despite the Town Crier's courageously bad endorsement of the measure, Los Altos and Los Altos Hills strongly rejected it (63-37 and 60-40, respectively).

Has Los Altos changed, or has the Republican Party?

Nationwide, voters with postgraduate degrees went Democratic by as much as 64-36 margin. (This is not surprising given their choice between a former law professor with Joe Biden as a running mate and Warren Buffett as an economic advisor and, on the other hand, the trio of a gas tax holiday advocate, Sarah Palin and Joe "the Plumber"). With 40% of its population over the age of 25 holding advanced degrees, Los Altos is likely lost to the Republicans for the foreseeable future. It may not be long before reporters are referring to its rich Democratic history.

Is it the bike racks you don't like, or the Mexicans who might use them?

A half-dozen angry and seemingly confused neighbors showed up at a Design Review Committee meeting two weeks ago to try to get the city to reject a use permit for a new day worker center on Escuela Ave. After belatedly learning that the Design Review Committee is charged, oddly enough, with design review:

The neighbors complained about a large sign proposed the front of the facility which would list the center's fax number and Web site address. There were other proposals they also didn't like: a bike rack large enough to hold 32 bikes, the lack of a front porch, a lack of parking and a bench that made the area look like a "bus stop."

*Sigh*

A Holiday Fund appeal

Things are tough all over.

In Mountain View, the city is again facing $5 million or more in budget cuts, and the day worker center must divide among a hundred or so workers job requests that number in single digits. When one employer wrote a bad check after hiring several workers and declined to make good on it, the director drove all the way to Monterey County to collect. Things have become so bad that day workers are giving up and going back to Mexico and other home countries.

And in Los Altos, the house at 47 View St. appears to have been taken off the market after its list price was knocked down from $27 million to $19.9 million. (The absurdity of this property revealed itself again on Thanksgiving night, when a homeless veteran died in a bus stop just one mile away).

Some of you may need special encouragement to open up your wallets for charity this year, so here it comes:

It is time for NOE readers (and contributors) to support the best thing the local papers do all year -- the Holiday Fund drives through which the Voice and Town Crier fund a combined 22 local charities. The economic downturn is doubly painful for those who rely on these charities, as an increasing number of clients must share fewer resources. Even the Holiday Fund drives themselves have suffered, both at about 60% of last year's total. Please go to the websites now, read the profiles of the charities, and make a donation. For further inspiration, you can look to the example of Bob Schick, who made his dedicated his donation to the Voice fund to the memory of the prune trees in Cuesta Annex.

The tragedy of the commons of the Festival of Lights Parade

In 1968, Garrett Hardin wrote that "the inherent logic of the commons remorselessly generates tragedy," using the example of an unregulated cow pasture to demonstrate how individually rational exploitation of a shared resource tends to the lead to the destruction of that resource.

Kudos then, to the Los Altos Festival of Lights Parade Association for recognizing that the free-for-all claiming of space on downtown sidewalks in advance of the Festival of Lights parade presented a commons problem that would inevitably descend into mayhem without some form of regulation or management.

The Town Crier did an impressive job of publicizing the new rules, and its follow-up report (which seems to be at least temporarily inaccessible online) indicated that people followed them, if somewhat reluctantly.

As much as I would like to congratulate last year's civic clean-up squad for helping spur this development and ensuring that Los Altos no longer looks like an emergency shelter, I am disappointed that I won't get to see Erik Koland tape off all downtown sidewalks using Spanish surnames. Just imagine the reaction that would have elicited.

Los Altos finally Tases a dude

The back of Sgt. Scott McCrossin's trading card hopefully already credits him for hosting the most boring ridealong in the history of journalism, as well for convincing a judge that it was perfectly reasonable of him to pull a guy over for hanging an air freshener from his rearview mirror.

His stats just got even gaudier. On October 30, he became the first Los Altos police officer to use a Taser on a suspect.

By comparison, Mountain View police have had Tasers about twice as long (four-plus years compared to two in Los Altos) and used them 34 times. (I covered the the first nine of those times in one of my favorite stories ever.)

The circumstances of Los Altos getting onto the scoreboard are a little ironic:

Los Altos Police responded to a single-vehicle crash at El Monte Avenue and El Camino Real at approximately 1 p.m. Oct. 30 and observed the driver grow “combative with a Mountain View police officer ...”

You might think that having Tased people 34 times, Mountain View police are pretty set as far as their Tasing needs go. Keep in mind, though, that Mountain View has more than 34 officers, so not all of them have had the pleasure of pumping electricity into a suspect's body. Still, I wonder what happened afterward. Did the MV officer get angry about McCrossin stealing his Tasee? Or did he shed a tear about how much Los Altos police officers are growing up? Maybe share a tip with McCrossin on the best grip to use when electrocuting a suspect?

I of course haven't bothered to try to find out the facts of the case, making it hard to judge from the story what "combative" means, and in turn exactly whether the use of the Taser was appropriate. Detective John Korges told the Town Crier that it was “definitely within policy, and definitely a prudent use of the Taser.” It seems this was good enough for the Town Crier, but a routine departmental investigation is reportedly underway anyway.

More on this, perhaps, after finals.

UPDATE: The Center for Investigative Reporting has been kicking Taser's ass this week, mainly by letting company officials talk. National litigation counsel Michael Brave is quoted in California Lawyer maintaining that "Exercise is far more harmful to you." In this week's Columbia Journalism Review, Taser defends the claims it made to analysts and the SEC that it somehow has a right to review news stories about it before they are published.

The Town Crier and the importance of editorial endorsements

Q: What was the largest newspaper in the state of California to endorse Proposition 8?

A: The Los Altos Town Crier

On October 22, our hometown paper joined the Paradise Post (circulation: 8,000) as only the second paper in the state of California to endorse Proposition 8.  The Town Crier's circulation of 16,500 made it the largest newspaper in the state in favor of the measure, a distinction it held through election day.

Given that the opposition of almost every other paper in the state opposed it yet the measure still passed, it seems that either newspapers don't have quite the influence they think they do, or that the Town Crier has a lot more influence than we thought.

My guess is that the truth is somewhere in between.  Blog-hero Nate Silver, as usual, probably got this one right:

When you're voting for Dog Commissioner, and you have no information about the candidates, you might well go with whomever your local paper decides to endorse.  In a race like Obama-McCain [or a 14-word measure like Prop. 8], on the other hand, you already have all the information you could ever want, and probably have established a fairly strong preference for yourself.

Precinct-by-precinct results are yet to come out, but the Town Crier's endorsement in local elections seems to be pretty crucial to a candidate's hopes: the five candidates they endorsed this year all won election.  At the same time, the electorate probably can make up its own mind about its feelings on things like children's hospitals and veterans' services.

You stay classy, Mike Evanson

Tip to all police officers reading this blog: If you are going to sue your department for not treating its officers fairly, don't spend your off-duty time getting drunk and firing your gun.

San Francisco police are investigating Sgt. Mike Evanson after his weapon discharged at a Los Altos-area Halloween party for children and adults. Moments earlier, the host had asked Evanson not to micturate on the lawn.

Evanson, who was off-duty at the time, has previously made news for his role in a neither funny nor offensive Christmas video that tried to mock women, blacks, Asians, gays, the transgendered and the homeless. (Segments of the video are preserved in the CBS5 video library, dated Dec. 7, 2005). The department suspended Evanson and 19 other officers who participated in the video. They have since sued the city for its preferential treatment of the Asian officers involved.

NOE Newsflash: Town Crier endorses Los Altos

LOS ALTOS, CA -- The editorial board of the Los Altos Town Crier has selected Los Altos as the area in which Los Altos residents should do most of their holiday shopping.

In a studious, point-by-point analysis, the board argued, "why not shop and spend downtown and in our other shopping districts? The advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. For starters, there’s available parking."

"Shoppers may choose from 11 women’s clothing stores, eight jewelry stores, five children’s stores and a toy store," the Town Crier writes, "the downtown also has two shoe stores and two pet stores."

The decision of where the town's residents will shop may have impact on retailers from Stanford Shopping Center to as far as the Gilroy Premium Outlets.

"We're beyond humbled," said Phyllis Dreer, 78, of Main Street Antiques. "It would have been easy for the Los Altos Town Crier to have urged Los Altos to do most of its shopping outside of Los Altos."

Edward Landis, 82, quickly interjected, "Just like it would have been easy for Town Crier to have endorsed against Prop 8, like the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, Sacramento Bee, San Diego Union Tribune, and even the Orange County Register did. But no, our paper has the courage to speak out against the unpleasant things outside Los Altos, like homo-marriage and stores larger than Draeger's."

The editorial also reiterated one of its long running themes: Los Altans have more money than some other people who live nearby. "Residents from our communities will be shopping and spending more than other areas," writes the editorial.

After reading this, 36-year-old Mountain View resident Miguel Sanchez (pictured at right), an illegal immigrant living with 13 of his illegal immigrant relatives, could only cartoonishly shrug as he pulled out the insides of his pant pockets to reveal that they were completely empty.

"The new bar"

Although its exact name and precise location have yet to be determined, the new bar in downtown Los Altos is already generating buzz. Its first true test will be in eight days, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, when the sons and daughters of Los Altos (including those who consider themselves "prodigal") return home for the holiday and immediately look for somewhere to drink. A current resident (and former teammate) sends along this preview, edited for length but not for political correctness:

The new bar is cool. I definitely like the layout and the fact that there are a bunch of tables. There also are back rooms for when we go there with groups and aren't feeling like mingling with other people. The price of beer is good too; if I remember correctly, Sierra Nevada's were only $4 — maybe $4.50, but still less than the $6 you pay at Bandera’s [Los Altos Grill]. So that's a plus.

Right now it is the new thing and everybody in Los Altos wants to go there, so it's a little crowded, and unfortunately the crowds are old people trying to be young again. I'm all for partying with adults, but, at least when I was there, it seemed like there were a lot of people with a "I'm too young for Bandera's" attitude, when in reality they fit right in at Bandera's. Hopefully it will be nice when the crowds die down and it becomes a quieter place, not as crazy as it is now.

The food is good too. I tried the wings, a classic bar food, and they were good. The Boardwalk has better, and these wings were a little smaller than usual, but overall I enjoyed them. I also had a burger there, which was good as well. The garlic fries were delicious, not like at a Giant’s game, but still really good. Our waitress was pretty retarded and one of our meals came out later than the rest, not even to the point of any of us complaining, but still later. She ended up taking it off the check without us saying anything at all. So that was really nice.

Overall, I give it my approval. I think it's a really fun place to go and obviously it's great because we can walk to and from. I will be spending many a night there in the future. I talked to the owner that night, just real quick, and asked him what time they close and he said that it's usually between 12-1 AM, but that's only because people are leaving. If people stay and are partying, they will stay open until 2 AM, which is really nice. I don't know what it's like after midnight; had a late dinner there and hung out for a bit afterwards, but didn't stay late to close the place down. I really want to do that and see what it's like, but that most likely won't be until the night before Thanksgiving.

It is worth noting that our contributor's approval is essentially a necessary and sufficient condition for success as a Los Altos watering hole.

We may need to lower our expectations slightly

Contrary to the normal spirit of this blog, I thought I would use my inaugural post to deliver original news from a high level source.  

While certain elements of NOE's readership believe the Obama election is a precursor to our city's ascendency to national prominence, and perhaps will yield a key foreign policy role for the LAHS water polo team, a member of future White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's team put an end to such optimism in an exclusive interview with your correspondent.

"It is safe to say that BO [Barack Obama] has no special plans for Los Altos," says the source, a veteran staffer in Emanuel's congressional office.  "At the moment, I don't think his diplomatic efforts center around the deployment of the high school polo team, either."  The source is familiar with the Swamp Dogs, and has assured concerned parties that attempts will be made to bring their capabilities to the attention of the White House.

When pressed on the indifference the President-elect apparently feels towards Los Altos, the Emanuel staffer elaborated on the possibility that the Town Crier's endorsement of Proposition 8 may be to blame.

"What assholes.  But, no, I don't believe that has anything to do with it." 

Palo Alto still has a long way to go to be as racist as Los Altos

"At last, my hometown outdoes yours," writes a Palo Alto native, referring to Police Chief Lynne Johnson's instruction that officers who see black people in certain neighborhoods stop them and "find out who they are," especially those wearing bandannas.

Johnson quickly backtracked from what was most likely a verbal misstep. She was, after all, referring to suspects described by witnesses as bandanna-wearing black men and thought to be responsible for a rash of localized robberies. But that failed to stem the outcry against her. East Palo Alto residents organized a protest march. Congresswoman Anna Eshoo and Mayor Larry Klein condemned the remarks. The Weekly called for her to resign.

Does anybody seriously think this backlash would have happened in Los Altos?

On the ridealong I did in high school, the police officer made no secret that he was tailing people based on their race, nobody raised an eyebrow. When the city banned day workers from standing on the street, there weren't exactly a large number of people wearing paper bags over their heads. (It was a standing-room-only crowd, though, as perhaps a hundred people turned out to stop a pool from being built in their neighborhood).

If you're interested in reading more about this overblown story (or kerfuffle, if you prefer), I highly recommend the Town Square threads on Palo Alto Online. My favorite comment suggests that racial profiling would be unnecessary if black people were more like Will Smith, or perhaps his character in "The Pursuit of Happyness." It tops even the recent comment from "PA Resident" on the Voice website suggesting that Proposition 8 was justified because "the gay person I know" is happy with the way things are.

NOE 2008 Election Special

Four years ago, the day after John Kerry conceded the 2004 election -- a day so depressing I spent it staring at birds in an effort to console myself, only to make myself more upset when I realized the birds were bound to suffer worst of all -- my paper ran a banner front-page headline declaring that Matt Pear, Nick Galiotto, Laura Macias and The Professor had won election to Mountain View's four open city council seats. The story's "Klemke Wins!" quality notwithstanding, this wasn't so bad in itself. But we found out the very next day that though 100% of precincts had reported, the county had yet to count the paper votes, about 1/4 of the total cast. This led to an embarrassing headline the following week when we had to backtrack from our original story. If there was a saving grace, it was that every other paper made the same mistake in interpreting the county's data, and that none of the results actually changed.

This is a long way of saying that I have at least a plausible excuse for waiting so long to post an election recap. With the possible exception of Measure B (more on that later), the local elections finally appear set. Based on results posted as of 11:00 a.m. Monday morning, it seems safe to say that all incumbents won. But why stop there? This is local politics, after all, and therefore calls for some snide analysis.

Los Altos Hills "Town" Council: Beating John Vidovich

Complete Precincts 9 of 9
		Percent	Votes
RICH LARSEN		21.38%	2,527
JEAN (JOHN) H. MORDO		19.91%	2,354
GINGER SUMMIT		19.87%	2,349
JIM ABRAHAM		13.47%	1,593
TONI C. CASEY		13.18%	1,558
JOHN VIDOVICH		12.19%	1,441

Three-time mayor Casey, whom some observers have compared Saruman, returned to the local political scene (over the polite objection of the Town Crier) to complete her downfall. The strict property rights, anti-Barn (but, she stressed, pro-Little League) agenda on which she and Abraham ran carried the endorsement of the Palo Alto Daily News but not, to its credit, the Town Crier. She called for an unenforceable moratorium on campaign signs, as they are out of keeping with the city's character. (That character, the Town Crier immediately reminded readers, is "pleasant"). She also claimed the endorsement of both a deceased resident and, less impressively, the organization of which she is president. And, as the Town Crier accurately predicted, her organization attacked Mayor Mordo with last-minute mailers that wrongly accused him of breaking the law and labeled him as arrogant after he publicly apologized for false statements he had made.

She finished behind every other candidate except for Vidovich, who didn't spend a dime on his campaign despite the million dollars in unwanted federal subsidies he had lying around. It's refreshing to see not even Los Altos Hills is conservative enough that affiliation with the Bush Administration is a winning platform. Perhaps the town is becoming an ideopolis.

Mountain View City Council: Read NOE, win a seat

Completed Precincts 43 of 43
		Percent	Votes
LAURA MACIAS		17.73%	13,315
TOM MEANS		15.31%	11,497
MIKE KASPERZAK		13.82%	10,383
JOHN INKS		13.62%	10,231
JOHN R. MCALISTER		10.21%	7,666
CHRIS CLARK		9.76%	7,332
ALICIA CRANK		8.31%	6,240
TRACY GORDON		5.87%	4,410
DIANA WANG		5.37%	4,030

Maybe it's an infinitesimally small sample size (I'm still waiting for new correspondent Happy to run the appropriate regression analysis), but if there's one trend that jumped out at me from the Mountain View returns, it's that the winners tend to read NOE, at least occasionally. The Professor, a regular commenter, and Macias, who once called this post "smarmy" (which I still choose to take as a compliment), cruised to reelection. Kasperzak finished third, returning to the council as a Democrat. I don't have any evidence that fourth-place finisher John Inks is a NOE reader, but I also don't have any evidence that he isn't.

The surprise, according to both the Voice's analysis and this theory, is that Miz Crank did not fare better. This is somewhat of a shame for the city. Perhaps her emphasis on public safety resonated less as economic shocks and other big news made the six homicides earlier this year fade from the collective conscience. As it happens, it's beginning to look like that spike in the murder rate was more statistical noise than some kind of violent crime wave. I can't say I'm sorry about that, but it might have been better for Miz Crank's campaign had that not been the case.

Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District Board: Forgiving Phil Fallaice

Completed Precincts 76 of 76
		Percent	Votes
SUSAN SWEELEY		43.64%	24,442
PHIL FAILLACE		32.21%	18,040
COLIN RUDOLPH		24.15%	13,526

Sweeley ran away with the board's first contested election in years, overcoming an unfortunate paraphrasing about the achievement gap in a Voice profile. I'd like to think that the difference in support between Sweeley and fellow incumbent Faillace is a result of people remembering the latter's effort to ruin the science curriculum at the high school back in 1997 (an effort which in turn forced me to give a speech to the student body in protest, taking off my shirt only when the closing lines didn't go over as well as I had hoped). I think a much more likely explanation is that the district has 6,000 voters who vote like my mom.

Santa Clara County Measure B: Not forgiving BART-to-San-Jose

Completed Precincts 1,142 of 1,142
		Percent	Votes
YES		66.48%	393,322
NO		33.52%	198,319

BART-to-San-Jose looks headed to defeat, again, no thanks to the local papers. The most mystifying twist this election was that so many of them finally caved in and endorsed this misguided project. It seemed almost like they were sick of having to argue against it. Or perhaps they were adhering to Koland's stance on high-speed rail: 'We waste billions of dollars on a lot of these, and we usually don't get anything cool in return.'

The only thing about this proposal that has changed since local papers and county voters rejected it in 2006 is that BART boosters had the decency not to hold hospitals and social services hostage this time. It's not as if tunneling under downtown San Jose to pick up a small fraction of riders at a huge portion of the cost suddenly became a good idea. Of course, defeat at the polls hasn't stopped the project before, and it probably won't stop the project this time. But that's no reason to endorse it.

Loretta Sanchez is my new favorite Congresswoman

The fighting Congressional Sanchez sisters came to UCLA Law today to talk about their childhoods and hawk their book, Dream in Color.

Loretta, who last appeared on the blog two years en route to her crushing defeat of Tan "Rusty Shackleford" Nguyen, provided my favorite moments of the lecture:

• Justifying her decision to interrupt herself mid-sentence and get up from her seat to step on a cricket: "I thought it was a cockroach"
• Describing her parents' impression of her childhood intellect compared to her older brother's: "The retard."
• Recounting her decision to run against "B-1 Bob Dornan" in 1996 after he refused to meet with her: "Screw you."
  

Suck it, Paly

12-1, Los Altos water polo repeats as De Anza Division champs, claiming the sixth title for the Forces of Good in the last 10 years.

Somebody put the highlights up on TownTube.

CHANGE!!!!!

Change comes to Los Altos!!!!

I love the postal service as much as anyone, except maybe my college friend Addorio. I mean, just think how mind-blowing it is that you can put a letter in a box in Los Altos and for 42 cents have it probably show up in a box you've chosen 3,000 miles away. (And nevermind the fact that you could do the same thing much faster for free via e-mail). But: really? Still no mention anywhere on the site of the fact that Obama won?

The Town Crier isn't ignoring the election entirely. It has the results of the high school board election, although for some reason not the Los Altos Hills City Council race. (More on both races in a later post). Also, this:

This year’s presidential race and state propositions have engendered hurt feelings that go beyond the election results.

Also, with help from the Town Crier, they've engendered hurt feelings that are directly attributable to the election results. Of course, it hurts more to lose a campaign sign than to lose a fundamental right.

So Much for "Change"

Barack Obama's "change" is starting to look a lot like Clinton redux. Someone might want to tell him that reassembling the Clinton administration and appointing the same, old Democratic party faithfuls isn't "change."

In fact, its quite the opposite.

Good to see that Lawrence Summers hasn't lost any respect from the people in power after his humiliating, forced resignation from his post as president of Harvard in the wake of ignorant, sexist comments.

I bring out the worst in people

An election recap is coming soon, but first: The high school teammate responsible for talking me into starting a blog does his first bit of correspondent work today, reporting from the scene outside the Westwood Mormon temple -- which happens to be built, I believe, by the grandfather of a fellow teammate and friend of the blog. The correspondent sent two drafts of his report. One was mature and informative. The other is below. Pictures will be uploaded tomorrow.

Throngs of queers, queens, and quacks queued up on the streets of Los Angeles today to collectively piss on the outcome of Tuesday's election. Angelenos who had forgotten about the political predispositions of Orange County and most of Central California gathered outside the three-hundred foot Mormon Temple, made of white Utah cement by men in ordained undergarments, to protest the decision to amend the Golden State's constitution to prevent these crudes and creeps from slipping rings onto each others fingers for a change. The irony of exercising their constitutionally-protected right to free assembly was indeed lost on this crowd, as they were more concerned with displaying their wit and verve with signs like Shame on You, Joseph Smith: Prophet Polygamist Pedophile, and You Have Five Wives I Want One.

The party soon began sauntering up Westwood Boulevard in search of more impressionable citizens to molest and riot police to dance in front of. It wasn't long before the honking horns and gawking onlookers weren't enough attention and the whole gaggle decided to sit in the road and pout, flashing a red pair of ass-less chaps at the shield-and-jack boot bulls. Unfortunately for those of us looking for simple, animal entertainment, once the Freedom-Protector-in-Charge bellowed for everyone to move along, the crowd responded as if someone had muttered the safe word through a ball gag. Once it became clear that the leaders of the protest weren't going to spill any precious bodily fluids in the name of civil disobedience, the whole scene took on the flavor of a Gay Pride parade, but without the clever outfits. And that's when the author and his male coed compatriot got the balls out.

Congrats to the Bastards at the LATC

Bruce Barton and other Freedom Haters look as if they have scored a victory for the forces of darkness in an otherwise bright day. Proposition 8 looks to have passed with the full support of out-of-staters, the Mormon Church (which donated 40% of Yes on Prop 8 funds), ignorant LATC directors and the very slim support of California voters.

Its a sad thing when 1) there is a vote to deny rights to a certain sector of the population and 2) when it passes.

At least Toni Casey lost.

Acres of suspense, possibilities captivate Los Altos residents

LOS ALTOS, CA -- A group of perhaps 14 people gathered outside the Los Altos Civic Center for the unveiling of the precise number of Acres of Possibilities.



Bill Bluth, 76, openly admired the City Council's dedication to cost savings, exemplified by the decision to leave the remaining 40 percent of the 6' x 10' high-resolution printed color sign uncovered.

"They covered the most important part," he said. "We have absolutely no idea how many acres of possibilities there could be."

Onlookers offered various guesses.

"They're using an exclamation point, so I figure it's at least 10,000," said Jarvis Whitaker, 73.

A woman in her 60s, who declined to give her name, took the unveiling in a more serious fashion. "I've had a life of misery, and frankly, I can't take another disappointment in my life. As long as there are no fewer than 19 acres of possibilities, I think I'll be OK."

Many were simply happy that the unveiling was covered by Town Tube, the Los Altos Town Crier's new video endeavor.

"I'm just so thrilled that this going to be on Town Tube," said Phyllis Dreer, 78. "They really don't have much in the way of compelling content. Most of the videos are just pleas from Bruce Barton to submit videos."

Edward Landis, 82, quickly interjected, "Oh, and then there's that video of the (Los Altos) pet parade. It's like a minute long and it's all kids. I didn't even see a damn pet in it. What the fuck was that about? It makes our town look retarded."

Mayor Val Carpenter pulled back the construction paper to reveal 18 acres of possibilities.

Breaking: Town Crier endorses Prop. 8

Why can't the Town Crier just come out and say it doesn't like gay people? Then we wouldn't have to endure a constant stream of illogical excuses for its positions:

We think it is time to stop the courts from making our laws. That’s why we elect a representative government. The ripple effect of letting the current court ruling legalizing gay marriage stand will be endless lawsuits, especially regarding tax-exempt status for churches and educational institutions.

If I were more mature, I could write several law review comments on all the things that are wrong about these three sentences. Instead, I'll do this my way.

We think it is time to stop the courts from making our laws.

The Supreme Court upheld the decision under due process and equal protection law. Other examples of courts "making our laws" under these doctrines include:

• Skinner v. Oklahoma, 1942, preventing the forced sterilization of a robber
• Brown v. Board of Education, 1954, desegregating public schools
• Griswold v. Connecticut, 1965, allowing married people to use contraception
• Loving v. Virginia, 1967, striking down bans on interracial marriage
• Roe v. Wade, 1973, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 1992, protecting women's right to reproductive autonomy

Obviously, it is time to put a stop to this nonsense.

That’s why we elect a representative government.

The California State legislature has voted twice to allow same-sex marriage. The governor vetoed the bills both times, saying he would prefer the courts to sort out the constitutional issues. The proposal that the Town Crier is endorsing circumvents representative government by asking the entire electorate to amend the Constitution in a way that would eliminate certain due process and equal protection rights for one group of people.

The ripple effect of letting the current court ruling legalizing gay marriage stand will be endless lawsuits,

It was not the gays who brought the original lawsuit; and, to repeat, they based their argument on due process and equal protection rights. Those are not the kinds of lawsuits we should fear.

especially regarding tax-exempt status for churches and educational
institutions.

This is a particularly obnoxious claim that basically threatens that churches and religious schools will illegally take political stances against the Constitutionally protected rights of gay people, and implies that the right itself is to blame, rather than the people consciously breaking the law.

Pointless or worthless?

I can't speak with any authority about Charlotte Jarmy's personal finances, even though I did have an unread compendium of her columns collecting dust in the "free book" pile atop the filing cabinet at the Voice. I am confident, though, that when politicians and talking heads refer to "Wall Street" and "Main Street," the latter is not a substitute for "Elite-Super Rich Families."

They are simply being good neighbors

Months ago, the Town Crier referred to Los Altos Hills as an environmental leader. If that seemed phony at the time, consider it again in light of last week's rather unsurprising report that the Hillpeople don't really give a damn if everybody else has to conserve water.

Responding to California’s second year of below-average rainfall and the driest spring on record, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger issued a proclamation in June, officially declaring that the state is facing drought conditions and calling on citizens to reduce their water consumption by 10 percent voluntarily.

While the 27 water district agencies that serve the Bay Area have reduced water usage by 13 percent, Purissima Hills Water District, which serves two-thirds of Los Altos Hills residents, has cut back its water usage only 2 percent, according to data from the Bay Area Water Supply and Conservation Agency.

If any city has reductions to make, it's Los Altos Hills, where the residents use twice as much per capita as the rest of the Bay Area. At least, I suppose, they're not slobs.

Mom, maybe it's time to talk about those five lawns again.

The French Still Just Don't Get It

French politicians are outraged that their anthem was booed during a soccer game that pitted the home team "Les Bleus" against ex-colony Tunisia.

In my experience (which includes extensive research into France's former and present colonies), the French just can't imagine why people wouldn't like them as colonial masters and why people might harbor some hard feelings about their colonial legacy and their current situation as immigrants in France. Its the same pompous, self-righteous attitude that when confronted with major riots by minorities in the fall of 2005 that led French politicians to a botched response that failed to address the underlying causes and allows those social tensions to continue to simmer and make people want to boo La Marseillaise.

Even Americans aren't so stupid as to be shocked and demand an official investigation when their anthem is booed.

Somali Pirates Are the F#*$in' Best!

Piracy off the Somali coast has been getting more and more press of late - especially with the pirates recent (and awesome!) seizure of a Ukranian cargo ship carrying tanks destined for god-knows-where (there is dispute - some say Sudan, though Kenya insists they are for its own military) to undoubtedly wreak further havoc on poor Africans.

After France, the US and several other nations decided to begin patrolling waters near the Somali coast, NATO now wants a piece of the pirates.

So far this year, our favorite bad guys have cost "up to $30 million." No word yet on how much this NATO deployment will cost. My guess is that it'll be a little more than $30 million.

Yom Kippur Rules!

1) Don't drive your car

2) But rioting and destroying property are just fine.

What a holiday!

Congratulations to this "Matt" fellow

As the High Holy Days draw to a close, I realize that it has been a while since I've blogged about what is truly important in life: water polo.

So, leaving aside the question of whether "Matt Wiener" is actually my brother, congratulations to him on his award.

(Also, so long as we're talking about important stuff: go Sox.)

Welcome to the blog

Some chick, as she prefers to be called, is this month's featured employee at the San Francisco Aids Foundation. The accompanying profile is semi-accurate, poorly written, somewhat trivial and mildly embarrassing to somebody close to me. It is, in other words, a perfect excuse for a post.

It finally makes sense

The Los Altos City Council spent September caricaturing itself, first by ensuring that First Street remains inconvenient for bicyclists and then by putting the brakes on a proposed link to the Stevens Creek Trail.

Here is a sampling of quotes from the meetings, helpfully provided by the Town Crier.

Councilman Ron Packard:

"We want to encourage bicycling on the whole Peninsula. On the other hand, do we want to become part of a bigger community?"

Resident David Lambourne:

"It’s hard to support any plan in which a path runs in and out of our city."

Mayor Val Carpenter, paraphrased:

Mayor Val Carpenter said the project had already eliminated multiple street parking spaces, and that she was loath to remove more for a bike lane, noting that she observed many cyclists using downtown as a launching point for regional travel rather than a family-oriented destination.

Packard again, paraphrased:

City Councilman Ron Packard referenced the city’s Fremont Bridge remodel as a project that sacrificed charm for bicycle friendliness, and suggested that he didn’t want to make the same choice for First Street.

The takeaway from all of this: the City Council finds parking spaces charming, but not bicycle facilities, especially if they somehow connect to places outside of Los Altos.

Yes, Los Altos has a proud history of treating bicyclists like they were Gypsies. Perhaps that is what the Town Crier was getting at.

Happy New Year, Jews

I won't be posting much this week; I have a lot of people I need to apologize to.

Oh Snap!

Our Fearless Publisher has strongly discouraged more Intrade posts from this reporter.
However, Oh Snap!

Dead guy endorses Toni Casey

This might have been an honest mistake, but it's still really funny.

On the other hand, Duffy Price, who leads the town activist group Hills 2000 and is helping Mordo’s campaign, noted that council candidate Toni Casey is listing endorsers on her materials who are, in fact, not endorsing her. One resident, Lou Antonioli, said Casey listed her husband, who has been dead 10 years.

She "took full responsibility for the error," but that hasn't mollified the town vandals.

Casey showed me campaign cards that had been defaced, with devil’s horns and a mustache drawn over her image, saying things like, “She has caused enough damage to LAH.”

It occurs to me that a certain of our correspondents is currently neither in Argentina nor in England.

Me? A hothead?

As BigDra recently reminded me, and as I recently for some reason mentioned during an interview with a judge, I have a blog. I suppose I should post something.

It has been a busy few weeks: a certain individual visited, and I earned my first ever red card this Sunday while politely explaining to a referee why he had misapplied a well-known rule.

Speaking of mistaking reasoned analysis for anger, the Voice celebrated the unveiling of Mountain View's new child care center in Rengstorff Park, crediting "cooler heads" for the completion of the project. Readers familiar with the project may remember that city used millions in taxpayer dollars and eliminated an acre of parkland in the part of the city that can least afford it in order to subsidize one private company over others in the same industry.

Being cool-headed himself, perhaps The Professor can explain why we shouldn't use the word "boondoggle."

UPDATED UPDATE: To be fair, for once, the Voice refers specifically to Jac Siegel's concerns about parking and Matt Pear's "grumbling" about liability, presumably for the cost of the loan should the operator go belly up. While those are hardly the best arguments against the project, I don't think they indicate a lack of cool-headedness. Pear's previous complaints that the project was "cradle-to-grave" socialism, on the other hand, might qualify.

Feedback on a Business Idea

Dear Readers. Just wanted to pick your collective brains on a business venture I've been thinking about for the last few weeks. What is this business you ask? Well its quite simple. After the Palin-McCain victory in November, I would be all set (website, etc) to help sane Americans establish themselves abroad. What do you think?

Oh yeah, when my email and phone are jammed with emails and calls on November 5th, make sure to mention the NOE blog and I'll give you guys priority...

Actually, I think we have a law against this

Big news out of Mountain View this week: police rounding up suspects in July's double murder; NASA stepping up with money to restore Hangar One; an 18-year-old (?) girl disappearing from the Monte Carlo.

By contrast, over in Los Altos, this typo is really funny.

About Goddamn time

A while back I made an observation that the much-vilified airline industry was responsible for far fewer greenhouse gas emissions than the global beef industry, yet no one was calling for a cut in beef consumption.

So now, a year and a half later, the UN is calling on people to reign in on their carne consumption.

I'm just waiting for our patriotic backlash against this call and stereotyping to begin because the UN official making the call is an Indian (most likely a Hindoo).

What's not to celebrate?

The great nation of Swaziland recently celebrated the 40th anniversary of its independent and its bonehead King's 40th birthday. The King celebrated in style, which is nothing new. No one was celebrating the world's highest HIV rate...

You, too, could be a victim

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Los Altos police have accused three people of trying to blackmail a Silicon Valley businessman by threatening to publish video of him having sex with an alleged prostitute.

Poor guy.

The alleged extortion ring probably had other victims as well. Police searched the home of one of the suspects and found cell phones, cameras and computers with footage of other men visiting prostitutes, said Detective Sergeant John Korges of the Los Altos Police Department.

"How many more victims are out there who don't know they're victims?" he said.

Probably not too many, but just in case, if any readers have recently had sex with a prostitute you met on a social networking site and faced demands to pay a lot of money or have videos of the encounter posted online, you might be a victim.

The alleged scam began when the businessman, whose name is being withheld by police, contacted the prostitute on a social networking web site, police said. They arranged to meet, and had sex in a Palo Alto hotel room.

About a week later, the man received an e-mail containing explicit photos of the encounter and demanding $250,000.

The businessman - who Korges said is in his 50s, married and has children - contacted police. Acting on their suggestion, he arranged a meeting on Thursday with the alleged extortionists at Rancho San Antonio Open Space Preserve, a location police chose to minimize the number of people nearby. He also haggled with the alleged extortionists, convincing them to lower their demands to $50,000.

Nothing undermines a blackmail attempt like having the Chronicle printing that you are willing to settle for 20 percent of your original demands.

Also:

Police said they have not located the prostitute.

Whatever, we're rich

Grace Acosta is usually one of the few tolerable writers for the Town Crier, so I have been trying to give her the benefit of the doubt for this week's tired column about how much Jason Lezak pulling off one the greatest swims meant to Michael Phelps.

It's hard though, given sentences like this:

At a time when it seems like “whatever” can be a response to everything from “Soup or salad?” to “Atrocities are being committed in Darfur and the Congo,” there is nothing more gratifying than witnessing someone care a lot and/or express joy.

If my hometown doesn't have a motto (and I can't seem to find one anywhere online if it does), I propose that we adopt "Los Altos: Where "whatever" can be a response to genocide."

Loyal readers may remember that it can also be a response to earthquakes in China and flooding in Buurma.

Maybe a giant birdhouse or the world's largest jungle gym

Everybody's got an idea for what to do with Hangar One, at least so long as somebody else is paying.

Imagine for a second that the hangar never existed. Now imagine that somebody offers to pay the Navy $500,000 for the right to build a giant steel skeleton that is going to cost somebody -- either the public or some enterprising business -- more than $10 million to either use or demolish. Is that a deal the public wants the Navy to take?

The Navy announced last month that it could strip the hangar's contaminated siding and clean its steel frame for about $500,000 less than it would cost to take down the whole thing. (Notably -- and I'm only pointing this out to needle my sister's fiance -- the costs of demolition are more than twice the Navy's original number, but the estimated costs of fully restoring the hangar are also much higher than previously suggested).

That simple comparison tends to obscure the point, though. If the Navy goes with its preferred option, at some time in the future somebody is going to have to put up a whole lot more money either to replace the siding or to take the structure down.

Anna Eshoo, resisting calls to get the federal government to be this somebody, framed the issue to the Voice's Daniel DeBolt as follows:

Further appropriations money "would have to come up in a new Congress," she said. "I don't think it's news to anyone that dollars are scarce. When the country is spending $2.5 billion a week on the war it really hits home. Funding for infrastructure, funding for education -- as sad as it sounds all of these areas are really pushed. If this is to be a priority I will work on it. But it's tight, everything is tight."

I'm not ready to admit that tearing down Hangar One is the best option, but it is refreshing to see a Democrat actually stand up against earmarks. I suppose that it is a little easier to do so when nobody is even in place to benefit from this one.

Over the LATC's Head

Despite my recent resignation from this blog, NOE has yet relinquish my access to the site. So, I feel compelled to post, though I will resist from posting about how NOE and Koland's Labor Day Party at their new place in LA has been canceled and instead post about our favorite whipping-boy/rag the Los Altos Town Crier.

A while back I posted about local scholar David Grewal's new book Network Power and how the LATC probably would not cover it. Well, either LATC staff reads this blog or they actually flipped through the copy Yale University Press sent them a few months ago, because this past week someone "special to the Town Crier" decided to review it. But don't worry folks, the LATC hasn't lost its touch. The reviewer complains that it was over her head and makes a comparison of the theory of network power to that of String Theory. She wishes Grewal could use "techniques of creative nonfiction" to clarify his argument. If anyone knows what "techniques of creative nonfiction" are, please let me know.

Oh yeah, and for a more educated review of Network Power, check out today's Boston Globe.

My sister, gardening neocon

Recently retired from the Sacramento Bee, my sister apparently has nothing better to do than go on local public radio and suggest I am naive about pest control in gardens.

Ironically, just days after her piece aired, I remained alone among my family members in both knowing of and heeding the brown apple moth quarantine, which, as a reminder, prohibits moving fruit out of yards in Los Altos, Mountain View, and most parts of Los Altos Hills.

Georgians show creativity with dead primates

Popular things to do with a primate carcass in the state of Georgia--

1. Cut off its tail, shave, bleach and dye it green, then set it on fire and leave it on the side of rural country road.

2. Put the "creature" in a freezer, call it Bigfoot, then drive the frozen carcass to Palo Alto for a press conference.

1953



2008

Maybe they are compensating for something

Since you keep asking, the 140-foot phallic symbol next to City Hall is a communications tower for the police department, and not just a way of taunting local peaceniks for their pole on the other side of the library being only eight feet tall.

One of the most interesting parts of this story is that it turns out "monopole" actually is a word.

The waterfall in the neighbors' backyard is really for the good of the community

A few backdated posts aside, it's been, in the words of Jim Anchower, a long time since I rapped at ya.  So I won't argue with you guys if you want to call me lazy for writing about a letter to the Town Crier rather than something for which the paper was itself responsible.  But Barney Dragony's complaints about increases in water rates are too positively Los Altan for a blog purporting to be about Los Altos to ignore.

Water rates - (sic) don't reward the slobs

Unbelievable. We Los Altos citizens who keep our town looking nice by keeping our lawns and trees green plus adding the very essential element, oxygen, to the atmosphere are to be penalized for doing so, while the slobs among us get rewarded for letting their properties dry up and go to seed and blight our town. Unbelievable!

Suppose we all get together and let the town revert to a desert. Swell, I can just imagine the uproar.

Five bucks says his proposed solution is to pay people based on how much water they manage to use each month, generating the revenue by a tax on people who irresponsibly conserve electricity.

Somebody call a doctor

I've got Olympic Fever.

UPDATE 7/13: And also a massive crush on Natalie Coughlin.

"лицеме́риe" Means Hypocrisy in Russian

And so does invading Georgia.  With the world's attention distracted by the spectacle and controversy of the Beijing Games, Russia invaded Georgia to support the breakaway province of South Ossetia. Thus far about 1500 have been killed.  Russia has constantly opposed any independence movements (and most recently opposed independence for Kosova) so as not to give any legitimacy to its own rebel province of Chechnya.  So, this recent move of violating the territorial sovereignty of a neighboring country to support the splintering of a country seems a bit inconsistent, no?

Violence has been reported in the Georgian city of Gori.  Gori, is the hometown of Russian hero Joseph Stalin and high on the Foreign Correspondent's list of places to visit since Gori boasts what is presumed to be the world's last standing statue of Joe Steel.  So far there has been no mention on any damage to the statue...

NOE 1, Taxi driver 0

"The case is closed."

An officer with the San Francisco Airport police taxi division proudly informed me last week that he had cited a driver, suspended him without pay for a day, sent him to taxi school, and made his company refund my money.

"He took advantage of you," the officer explained.

"I bet he won't do that again," I replied.

"If he does," said the officer, "he'll be terminated."

So, what did the poor driver do to me to deserve such vindictiveness?  If you guessed "failed to inform you that a trip to Los Altos would cost meter-and-a-half, which didn't really matter because Koland's company was covering your travel expenses anyway, and you probably only cared about it because your dad made you feel like a pushover afterward and your mom told the driver that you were an attorney and wouldn't let him get away with this," you were right.

Goddamnit

McCain's price has risen 20% in the last two weeks. Not coincidentally, it was two weeks ago that McCain and the GOP embarked on a slathering of attacks on Obama.

Happy Belated Birthday Ken Ballard

I'm all for hoisting conservative "hatemongering a-holes" (as one local newsperson described them) on their own petards. But it was still disappointing to see chickenhawks Michelle Malkin and Melanie Morgan get coverage when they came to town a month ago to dumb down our national discourse, while a heartfelt birthday celebration for native son and actual patriot Ken Ballard go ignored.

I had the privilege of joining Ken's other Karen Meredith along with other family and friends Saturday at Cuesta Park, who gathered to hear stories and release gold balloons in his honor. This somber annual tradition is documented in Neil Young's new film "CSNY: Deja Vu," now playing at the Aquarius in Palo Alto.

I had the privilege of meeting two of the other Bay Area Gold Star Mothers in attendance: Mary Tillman, whose new book about the simultaneously inspirational and infuriating story of her son Pat just arrived in the mail, and Nadia McCaffrey, who made international news when she invited the press to see her son's flag-draped coffin and is in the midst of launching a hospice for veterans in upstate New York. These mothers are linked in their loss, their antiwar activism, and the indignity they suffered when the Pentagon lied to them about how their sons died.

I did not get a chance to talk to Dolores Kesterson, who was also there, but the 2005 interview in which she humiliated Bill O'Reilly through the simple act of remaining sane is still a revelation to watch.

Now you guys are just baiting me

The days appear numbered for La Costena, a fixture in the Latino community for decades. Naturally, the Voice article quotes only a customer with a Jewish last name.

The paper also boldly refuses to examine the factual claims it attributes to the restaurant's owners.  One would think that, of all publications, the Mountain View Voice would look in its archives to see whether the restaurant actually has won eight Best Of contests in a row.  (It hasn't).  On the other hand, a very quick check of the Voice website also confirms that Las Costena did in fact set the record for world's largest burrito.  But who has five minutes to look these things up? 

Next week: An in-depth look at the greenness of our lawns

In more than two years at the Voice, I'd estimate I wrote around 500 articles. Perhaps 15 times did my my editors allow me to write 990 words on any particular subject. These were stories about the city's legal battle with Clear Channel, the effort to clean up Moffett Field, the police department's use of Tasers on unarmed (and often intoxicated) suspects who were doing little other than resisting arrest, the fight over BART-to-San-Jose, the push to open a medical marijuana facility in Mountain View, feature stories on immigrants and firefighters, and a drugging at a downtown bar. I also wrote one about bird-watching, but thankfully it doesn't seem to be online.

The Town Crier's Mary Beth Hislop just wrote 990 words about a hole.

Locals sustain injuries in city parking lot

To be fair, it's not just any hole.

Let me start by wishing a speedy recovery the nice-seeming old ladies injured in this non-news event. That being said, let's get back to aimlessly rambling about how this article is too long.

Instructor Barbara Klee is known to bring the students in her Stretch & Flex classes at the Hillview Community Center to their knees with floor exercises. But on April 17, Klee and friend Marjorie Lins were apparently brought to their knees -- by a hole outside the Los Altos center.

The awkardly forced irony -- a style known as Sutcliffian to baseball fans -- is but one of the paragraphs this article could have done without. The worst offenders might be the paragraphs of weird, irrelevant and barely readable legal jargon at the end, or perhaps this one:

"I put my arms around her," Klee said. "As I stepped back on my right foot, I could not find the ground to place my foot on because my was over the hole. ... I lost my balance and, hanging onto my student, we both fell and crashed onto the asphalt pavement."

Put another way, they fell. I know it's sick, but I couldn't help thinking of An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. when I saw the incredible level of detail here.

There's a place in hell for you Angelo Mozilo

SANTA MONICA, CA --
While driving back to work, having just secured an apartment for our esteemed publisher, I saw this.

Foreclosures take place in even the best times. The jobless rate is a fluctuating number. A run on the bank is (at the very least) an unmistakable sign of a crisis in public confidence. I feel bad for the people spent their entire day waiting in line hoping they could get all their money back.

What's safe (unlike people's deposits above exceeding $100k) is the bottom line of the bank's founder, Angelo Mozilo. Mozillo, who also founded subprime uber-predator Countrywide Financial earned more than $200 million in salary and bonuses from 2001-2006. As of press time, he has made no plans to use a portion of those earnings to replace borrowers' lost savings.

What's scaring us: Art & Wine edition

I've been a little under the weather the last few days, so it feels like the right time for a linkdump, in the form of a list of things people are afraid of this week:

The Bush Administration: The Environmental Protection Agency protecting the environment.

Speaking of which: Jesus.

Congress: Big campaign donors being unable to use "I was just following orders" as a defense for helping the government spy on citizens.

Remember when people said that was not a defense?

Los Altos Hills residents: Toni Casey running for office

Personally I hope she does, because I am curious whether Los Altos Hills is conservative enough that her affiliation with George Bush might actually be to her advantage.

Los Altos residents: Mountain View residents

Don't worry Mom and Dad, the police think she was adopted.

Mountain View residents: Brown people, and also gays

Last week, I lamented that people were more upset about the Voice's use of the non-word "preggers" in a headline than they were about a double-murder that orphaned an 8-year-old boy. Readers of the Voice site responded (with some prodding from yours truly) in a flurry of posts insanely blaming the tragedy on low-income housing and federal immigration policy. (Not a single poster said anything along of the lines of 'I hope the police catch the people responsible for this.')

For sale: Coverage in The Economist ($1,000 obo)

The 2003 California Recall Election offered one of the best values for shameless self-promoters in recent history. For $3,500 and 65 signatures, your name and personal statement would reach tens of millions of people as a candidate for Governor.

This bar-lowering allowed people often left out of gubernatorial politics, such as brewers, satanists, pornographers, railroad car brake operators, prop-based comedians and tiny thespians, a chance to get their name and message across in an arena where millions were likely to notice.

Fast forward to 2008. This time it's The Economist offering low cost publicity.

Attempting to justify an article attacking Senator Jim Webb as a poor choice for Barack Obama's running mate, despite neither Webb nor anyone in Obama's campaign suggesting he's under consideration or would take the position, presented the following explanation:

"No one but Mr. Obama knows whom he will pick, but the buzz around Mr. Webb is loud enough to make in the favourite on Intrade, a betting website. So it is worth examining his weaknesses, too."

The problem with this is that only about $1,000 was actually wagered on Jim Webb via InTrade. Don't tell Gallagher.

They don't know how to haggle

Last week's settlement in the Westwind Barn lawsuit closed an embarrassing chapter in the history of Los Altos Hills. It takes a lot to embarrass Los Altos Hills, but allegations that the ranch hands at such an iconic location endured racial slurs, lived in unventilated rooms and worked overtime without pay should be enough to do it.

Interestingly, the plaintiffs alleged $500,000 in damages only to wind up getting $675,000 from the settlement. This is probably because the lawyer could have filed an additional claim for attorney's fees, but I prefer to attribute it to an inability to haggle on the part of Friends of Westwind Barn. I imagine the negotiations went something like this:

Friends of Westwind Barn lawyer: How much will it take to make this case go away?

Plaintiffs' lawyer: Since the City of the Town of Los Altos Hills already settled with my clients for $75,000, they are willing to deduct that from their overall claim, bringing the total request to $425,000.

Friends of Westwind Barn lawyer: How about $600,000?

MOSPR ad absurdem

If Mountain View has ever made a more ironically misguided decision than Tuesday's vote to hold the new train depot tenant responsible for creating new parking spaces, I can not imagine what it might have been.

Personally, I can't see myself interrupting my commute for "artisan cheese," shrimp scampi and oysters, but I suppose it's better use than the train museum idea readers used to suggest to me.

As embarrassing as it was to see the place lying empty for the first six years after the city spent millions to build the plaza, imposing $54,000 of extra costs for minimum off-street parking requirements is especially indefensible.

'Preggers' headline shocks city

A gruesome double murder last week left two siblings dead in Mountain View last week, after the 911 system completely failed them. While a little boy slept in the next room, Omar Aquino and Teresa Sanchez became the victims of Mountain View's fourth and fifth homicides this year. The tragedy came only a few days after Leonardo Dizon Hilario was stabbed to death at his girlfriend's home.

Also, the Voice used an arguably inappropriate word in a headline.

Guess which one readers are upset about.

Don't get me wrong: I thought the "preggers" headline was juvenile and the article -- a short breaking-news type of story about the fact that women have babies -- was pointless. But also: really? That is the thing we're all concerned about?

I bet they thought this was over

Remember Rickenbacker?

Erik Koland does.

Now that his crusade has turned the company into the subject of an investigation into a potential class-action lawsuit, I don't think Rickenbacker will be forgetting about him any time soon.

(I want to assure readers that I have done some research into the Sturdevant Law Firm and have reached the conclusion that it is an actual place with real lawyers and not just something Erik made up to get mentioned on the blog.)

Let this be a lesson to readers: just because the way you might have wronged Erik was trivial in no way guarantees that he will pass up the opportunity to avenge that trivial wrong later.

(Disclosure: Erik sometimes claims to be a correspondent for this blog).

Swellness abounds

The Merc's special "report" on Los Altos describes in detail the way in which nothing bad ever happens here. The article begins by glorifying the asinine practice of staking claims on downtown streets in advance of the Festival of Lights Parade, while the map accompanying the story makes the two cities appear to have two country clubs and only one school.

It's a different story in Mountain View, where the city just experienced its fourth and fifth homicides of the year.

Clash of the Genocidal Powers

The final four teams in the UEFA Euro Cup 2008 are familiar names to students of modern history. Turkey (Armenia), Germany (Jews, Gypsies, Gays, etc.), Spain (all New World indigenous peoples) and Russia (Ukraine and their own) made it through to the semifinals from a wider field of European nations vying for this years cup.

Germany dispatched Turkey late yesterday and Spain and Russia are now set for the kick-off. I sit amused as I listen to the Russian anthem play since it is sung to the tune of the old Soviet anthem thanks to a change Putin made in 2000.

Perhaps our Predictive Markets Correspondent can figure out some odds for this game and the final based on the scale and date of the genocides?

When you are engulfed in flames

KQED radio's traffic reporter said yesterday that "the Bay Area is surrounded by fire."  For a split-second, I thought Armaggedon was here, albeit slightly sooner than I thought.

 

Today, with 800 fires raging and the air quality only getting worse, I asked BigDra to finally put his world travels to use for someone other than himself and share some lessons about living in a ring of fire.

His suggestion: "Go to Peru."

Speaking of unfortunate juxtaposition

Seen next to each other on the table in the reception area at my office on Monday:

Headline from the front page of the New York Times: Obama camp closely linked with ethanol

Headline from the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle: Oil drilling question looms as election issue

Essentially, our presidential candidates are competing to see who can offer the most counter-productive solution to our oil addiction.  One day I would love to see a candidate suggest people drive less.

Working People Lose Again; Big Business Wins

Today's Supreme Court decision to drastically reduce ExxonMobil's fine for its 1989 Valdez oil spill in Alaska is just another in a long line of decisions by Our Nation's highest court to reduce punitive damages for large companies at the expense of the environment and Working Americans.

Its also interesting to keep in mind the record profits that this company has been reaping in recent years. For an flurry of articles published on ExxonMobil's record profits over the past 7 years click here, here, here, here, here and here. Be sure to note the dates and profit numbers in each articles.

Perhaps I'm missing something

Last Friday, the Mercury's top story was about immigration status of the driver who killed a 12-year-old bicyclist in front of her school on the last day of class.  The Merc made a self-fulfilling prophecy about the story "renewing the debate on whether undocumented people should be allowed to apply for driver's licenses."  Lo and behold, after some interviews suggested they should be, several letter writers wrote to argue the point.  Voila: debate renewed.

Appearing immediately below this story was an article about the sheriff's deputy who killed two bicyclists receiving only misdemeanor charges.  (This is not a surprise.  Given our district attorneys' track record of failing to prosecute drivers for killing bicyclists and pedestrians, the easiest way to kill somebody and get away with it is to do it from behind a steering wheel.) Nowhere did the article suggest that we should have a debate about whether sheriff's deputies should be allowed to apply for driver's licenses.  

Perhaps we should be debating whether people who kill other people with their cars be allowed to have driver's licenses.  I will start: no.

Travels in the Colonies

I've recently become a big fan of visiting modern-day colonies. My first experience with a formal modern-day colony was in New Caledonia, the most populated Non-Self Governing Territory in the world (some readers may be familiar with my work on mining impacts in New Caledonia) Recently, I had the opportunity to visit a couple other Pacific colonies. Although not formally on the United Nations Decolonization list, some people on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) clearly think they're a Chilean colony (see photo at right) and French Polynesia certainly has that anachronistic colonial feel - complete with impoverished indigenous peoples next to the mansions of the rich white French.

So if you're looking for a holiday with a little more edge - perhaps something with a bit more social tension, economic disparity, or disenfranchisement look beyond your local Native American reservation and perhaps book travel to one of these exotic modern-day colonies in the Pacific. Plus, there's also Western Sahara.

The Russian is cut!

Taser held responsible in Salinas death

The child molester's guide to junior high school graduations

Courtesy of the Merc.

No no no no no no no no no.

*Exasperated sigh*

Parking structure downtown necessary

Rather than buying a gift for my dad, I spent a good part of Saturday analyzing all the logical fallacies in this editorial. (Sorry Dad). However, I'm not exactly a logician, so I deleted them and will just give you the gist:

It's wrong.

Two days before this editorial ran, the city council told the high school administrators they needed to do more to encourage students to make more responsible transportation choices. Now, inspired by the putative failure of completely baseless parking regulations that ignore basic principles of economics, the city is considering a massive subsidy to encourage people of all ages to drive to downtown, which is about half a mile from the high school.

To briefly engage in my own fallacious ad hominem attack, the best information I have on this subject indicates that Town Crier employees are among the worst offenders at evading local parking regulations, so I guess we shouldn't expect objective analysis.

Let them eat tacos

Note to self: speaking at city council meetings may be more effective than wearing a paper bag over your head.

The taco truck survived, for now, as Megan Satterlee and David Casas joined Ron Packard in opposing an ordinance to force mobile food vendors away from school property. Mayor Val Carpenter and Council member Lou Becker were silent on the issue.

MVLA Superintendent Barry Groves presented the problem to the combined city council and school board, and seemed perplexed that people would see this as an issue of social justice. I followed by reminding the council of the last time it got in the business of telling people where they could stand and pointing out that cities with laws against gypsies need to be extra careful when passing discriminatory ordinances.

Re-ducks

I almost missed it, but this:

,

just happened again.

Does anybody know if there is a reason the openings in storm drain grates are duckling-sized?

Journalism is the new baseball

Two weeks ago, the law firm where I am working this summer took us to Palo Alto Bowl. Shamefully, I rolled an 85 and a 90. My team averaged 107, which, while far better than my own scores, should not have been good enough for us to finish third among the 10 teams that were there.

The Palo Alto Daily News -- which is not actually located in Palo Alto, contains a regular feature dedicated to unsourced rumors, and has gotten so bad even by its own standards that its founders have started a competing paper -- pulled off a similar feat last week, winning 17 awards from the Peninsula Press Club, including one for general excellence. (I know what you're thinking, but there was not a category for Falsest Story.)

This may actually be even less impressive than our bowling prize, as more than 43 percent of entries in this contest win an award. (I have not found out how many the Daily submitted). As Michael Lewis once said about major league baseball front offices, "there really is no level of incompetence that won't be tolerated."

UPDATE, 6/16: I forgot to mention the paper's history of plagiarism.

Local News Almost as Bad as LATC...Almost

So there's an oil spill off the coast of Buenos Aires, but you wouldn't know it by watching local news here. After being sent the BBC article by a friend, I flipped to the numerous local news channels available here. I saw plenty about the continuing farm protests and also an interesting piece on a photo of Pamela Anderson without make-up. But nothing about the oil spill...

"The proposed ordinance smacks of socio-economic discrimination."

Tensions are rising (with an assist to the Daily News) over a rejected proposal to discuss term limits for board members at next week's joint meeting between the Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District board and the Los Altos City Council. Just imagine what they will say when they actually do discuss something.

Next Monday's meeting will feature a long-awaited decision on the high school district's request for the city to do something about all those damn taco trucks.

Council member Ron Packard, whose position on this issue won him the blog's endorsement in the fall, e-mailed his reasons for opposing a potential ban to colleague David Casas. He is so thoroughly correct that I am going to reprint them here sans commentary. (Also, I can't think of anything funny to say.)

The proposed ordinance smacks of socio-economic discrimination. Students with vehicles can drive and eat wherever they want. Those without vehicles cannot. If the major concern is quality of food consumption, then the District should consider alternatives (whether closed campus or whatever) that apply to all groups, not just one.

The city has already had to allocate police time and efforts to enforce the parking restrictions around the high schools due to the District's approach to student parking. I suspect the high school would be a vigilant complainer each time the vending vehicle exceeded its limited stay. As such, the city's police resources would often be removed for other important functions to enforce the vending vehicle restrictions during school day. I do not feel that is a wise allocation of our police resources.

While nutritional eating habits are important, here the market-place has met a need for the less-mobile, which is already met by other means for the mobile. Let the District go back to the drawing board to come up with another solution that doesn't tax our police department and smack of discrimination.

A skull-cracking analysis of what ails the Mercury News

After trying and failing to explain to a confused out-of-town guest why the news section of the Saturday's San Francisco Chronicle consisted of only eight pages, I sat down this morning to thumb through a hard copy of the Merc for the first time since I got home two weeks ago. My mom took the front and my dad took the "local," leaving me with sports. A teaser on the front page of the section read:

"The Giants' young lineup did not score till the ninth inning."

There are far better reasons to mock the Merc, but none that require so little work on my part.

A closed mouth gathers no flies

Yesterday was Miss Prescott Day in Los Altos and Los Altos Hills.

Parents and former students organized a surprise reception at LAYC to recognize the Egan Junior High language teacher's 40 years of teaching approximately 8,000 students, including all four of Los Wiener. Los Altos Mayor Val Carpenter and Los Altos Hills Vice Mayor Jean Mordo read proclamations honoring her (after which emcee Rick Lanman told them "Thank you mayors.") My favorite story from the reception was about a student whom Miss Prescott (who is blind) caught making spitballs in class -- she made him stay until he had made 1,000. (My eighth-grade history teacher, who earlier told me that I "turned into a stud" and "should have three or four wives," claimed credit for the idea.)

Miss Prescott (soon to be Mrs. Kavinoky) had a regimented style of instruction that gave students a better understanding of English grammar than we ever got from an English class. At her reception, a parade of former students spoke about how she taught them so much that they didn't learn anything new until Spanish IV. I remember when my classmates and I arrived at Los Altos High School as freshman, a large group of us protested that Spanish II Honors was not hard enough. We expected to be learning new tenses and made to conjugate more verbs. We failed to realize that they were none left to learn (until we got to past subjunctive-conditional constructions in the aforementioned Spanish IV).

Miss Prescott also introduced me to the phrase "En boca cerrada no entran moscas," forcing me to write it 50 times after I had mocked a student who was struggling with his oral exam. (In my defense, I was only retaliating against him on behalf of a student that he had mocked). I had no idea what it meant, even after using a Spanish-English to translate it literally. When I finally asked someone to explain it to me, the answer was, "It means you should shut up."

Congratulations to the only teacher to ever get that across to me effectively.

You can always give it back

Last year, the federal government gave John Vidovich $1 million of your money.

Vidovich, a Los Altos Hills developer whose Sunnyvale-based Sandridge Partners was the top recipient of the unconscionable corporate welfare in last year's farm bill, gave what appears to be his first interview on the subject with the Town Crier this week.

You can almost see a little piece of Vidovich's soul dying as you read him telling the TC that he doesn't really want the money, but will reluctantly accept it because the farm bill is a boon to small farmers and an important step in achieving food security. Vidovich received his $1 million for growing cotton, which by the way, you can't eat or even turn into a soft drink.

The (white) couple behind the day workers

If I didn't know better, I'd say Mexicans are boycotting the Voice. The last three articles about the Latino community have relied almost exclusively on people from outside the Latino community for information.

But this is one of the few times in my life that I do, in fact, know better. The best book I ever read about journalism contained a list of what readers like, with talking heads at the very bottom, ahead of only "numbers." (At the top of the list? Furry animals, followed by small children). As you might imagine, though, it turns out that it's much easier to get a quote from a talking head than from somebody you've never met before that isn't accustomed to talking to the press.

That's why the most recent feature story on the day worker center was about a white couple from Los Altos, a story on the deportation of day worker and youth leader Luciano Casiano-Miranda relied on Phil Cosby for perspective*, and a story about the graduation ceremony of sorts for English learners quoted only Maurice Ghysels and Judy Crates (and that one was about Latinos who speak English, no less). Ironically, only the story about the couple from Los Altos had an original quote from a Latino, and it was from Maria Marroquin, director of the center.

Don't get me wrong, I like white people as much as the next guy. But if 40 percent of students in the Mountain View school district really are Latino, it would be nice to hear from one of them once in a while. Unfortunately, given its reliance on real estate advertisements, the paper is more likely to boycott Mexicans and other non-home-buying populations, rather than al reves.

UPDATE: The story on Caciano-Miranda included a lifted quote from him, though the source unknown. And Maria also has a quote -- as does John Rinaldi -- in a story about the unexpected cost of the day worker center's new location. Looks like it's time to get in touch with those white folks from Los Altos again.

Something You Won't See in the LATC

Among other newsworthy stories, you probably won't read anything in the Los Altos Town Crier about "Network Power," a book by Los Altos native and scholar David Grewal. His work focuses on globalization; the Financial Times calls it "brilliant" and it is quoted extensively in a piece in today's International Herald Tribune.

Having read advance chapters of the book (an exclusive benefit for being the Foreign Correspondent for a well-respected blog), I can vouch that it is an important work for understanding our world. I'm still awaiting delivery of the book so I can finish it. In my experience, mail delivery in much of the world seems to be holding back globalization...

This is almost too perfect

Imagine you are assigned to write a fake editorial in the voice of the Town Crier. And it has to reference the earthquake in China AND the cyclone in Burma. I bet it would look something like this.

POSITIVE CHANGE AHEAD FROM LOS ALTOS

Every once in a while, the paper caricatures itself so well that the only possible explanation is that someone at the printer slipped in a mock article for their own amusement or that the writers took it upon themselves to satirize the publisher's world view. They could have done a better job with the headline -- something along the lines of "Don't let poverty, death of others get you down" -- but perhaps they were just trying to be subtle.

Recent news beyond Los Altos has been less than sunny, let’s face it: The national economy remains shaky, gas is officially more than $4 a gallon, the death toll from last week’s cyclone disaster in Myanmar could exceed 100,000 and another disaster close behind it – the 7.8 earthquake that hit China on Monday, killing nearly 9,000 people.

I'll give you some time to guess why the paper is bringing up the earthquake in China. (And ignore the disastrous punctuation and the tragicomically low alleged death toll -- I'm posting this at least a week after the editorial went to press).

Did you guess yet? Here's a hint.

All the more reason to count our blessings on the local scene.

This is some great character-writing here by the forger -- bringing up terrible calamities simply so that we can dismiss their importance by discussing our money. Can you think of the last time even tens of thousands of Los Altans died in a cyclone? I can't. We're rich. Leave us alone, world.

Certainly, the high quality of life in Los Altos is well documented, but here’s another thing to consider: Numerous plans and projects under way bid to make this community even better.

In the interests of time, let's use a mathematical equation to express the relative importance the forger places on these numerous plans and projects:

(Burmese cyclone + Chinese earthquake + foreclosures + high gas prices) < (New flowers and plum trees on San Antonio Road + two new downtown buildings + plans to sell lot at State and Main + Safeway expansion + post office replacement + new Loyola Corners landscaping + possible civic center renovation)

I just saved you six paragraphs.

It’s also encouraging that Los Altos residents don’t act like they live in a bubble, but are compassionate and continue to help others. Witness, for instance, the bake sale in front of Starbucks in downtown Los Altos last weekend in support of the Myanmar survivors.

Los Altos residents don't act like they live in a bubble? Sure, the city incorporated mainly to keep out low-income residents, and it has pass laws banning Mexicans and Gypsies from the town, and its local paper repeatedly writes about how great it is that bad things happen other places but not here (even when they actually do happen here). But we had a bake sale.

I like "It's a Wonderful Life" as much as any Jew I know, but this is a little too much.

While the structural improvements are nice and we look forward to them, ultimately we’re proud of the quality of people that make Los Altos the great community it is.

This conclusion is another reason I think this editorial might be a fraud. I suspect the real Town Crier cares more about the structural improvements.

Three things you might believe if you'd been reading the Town Crier instead of studying the last few weeks

1) Day workers sued the City of Los Altos as payback for the termination of a lease to which the city was not a party and not over an unconstitutional law forcing poor people to stand on the other side of El Camino.

2) Enabling more students to park closer to Mountain View High School will somehow reduce traffic there.

3) The South Peninsula Area Republican Coalition gets free advertising for its electioneering efforts because they are somehow newsworthy and not because the publisher founded the organization.

Meanwhile, the Daily News recently discovered that at least three Los Altos City Council members are rich.

I thought we were the Popular Front

My alma mater may change its name today.



Says kindergarten teacher Pam Loebner:

"For the past 3 years we have had parents go to the wrong schools (both ways) substitutes go to the wrong schools (both ways) and there is concern that in an emergency situation that someone might be confused and go to the wrong school."

Unlikely. We all know nothing bad ever happens in Los Altos. But just in case, I suggest "The Real Bullis" or asking the splitters to change their name to "Bullis Charter School for White Kids." More specificity never hurt.

Say It Ain't So!

This is just the latest accusation in the ongoing downfall of NOE's idol.

Please forgive me for overstepping the bounds of my assignments, but I don't think NOE had the courage to post this himself. Or maybe he's considering how to post about this...?

Hi guys

I don't know if you remember me, but I used to write for this blog.

With finals approaching, I've been spending a lot of time studying recently (and, it turns out, inspiring the creation of other blogs). A few things I've learned:

Everybody in Los Altos Hills is rich, which, as a matter of federal law, means its okay to keep poor people out. Ybarra vs. Los Altos Hills, 503 F.2d 250. (9th Cir. 1974).

I live next to the stupidest bike lane in America. The only one that might be dumber is one I lived near last summer.

Minimum sentencing laws still suck. We can blame them both for the large-scale disasters like the unconstitutionally shameful condition of the health care system in our state prisons as well as for the more personal tragedies like the harsh prison term facing troubled Iraq veteran Sarge Binkley. Binkley may yet catch a break from the District Attorney, but other defendants from different backgrounds are unlikely to get the same treatment.

I've got to get back to studying administrative law, so I can explain why the County Board of Education inexplicably prevailed against the Los Altos School District's case alleging that Bullis Charter School's charter was too racist for the County Board to approve. I know that part of the answer has to do with the chemicals used by downtown Los Altos dry cleaners. Stay tuned.

Ahora Mas Malos Aires

Three hundred grass fires are burning just outside the city limits of Buenos Aires. Over the past ten days a huge cloud of smoke has hung over the city further polluting the city's already dirty air.
These types of fires, lit to clear fields for grazing, are not unusual this time of year. However, timing and number of fires so close to the city cannot be coincidence. Farmers, who make up some of the richest Argentines, are locked in an ongoing dispute with the government over export tariffs. With the steep rise in commodity prices, the central government has been recently trying to raise revenues by increasing taxes on agricultural exports. The farmers haven't been having any of it and in March and early April, blocked roads and food deliveries to the capital.

The Foreign Correspondent had the luck of breathing fresh Andean air in Peru until last night. Right now, the skies look like a typical LA day, but the smoke is due to return tonight as firefighters continue to battle the blazes.

For some photos of the smoke, check out the "fotogaleria" link below the photo in this article.

Are you aware this person taught poor children?

Ahh, Los Altos Parents... tirelessly striving to make sure that the term "Los Altos Parent" still conjures up exactly what you'd imagine.

"They [the parents] still do not understand why Justus chose a principal from a school [Oak Grove High School in south San Jose] with different demographics and lower test scores than Almond."

It's nice to see that the running gag, so often exploited on this blog, about folks from The 'Tos not liking folks that aren't from The 'Tos is alive and well -- and thus the main staple of NOE is safe and sound.

Services help inexpert writers

In a rather slow news week on campus, you'd think somebody would have caught the irony in this headline.

If we can't annoy people into thinking they're unhappy enough to give us money, the terrorists have already won

Leave it to these guys to make these guys and these guys seem reasonable in their use of the word "terrorist."

Let's hope the rest of society can still recognize the difference between holding a sign that expresses your opinion and hijacking planes in order to fly them into buildings.

Chorizo's probably not a great name for a boy anyway

I just got back from a Bruce Springsteen concert, which is why I don't have a better joke to make about the following Palo Alto Daily police blotter item (via photobasement). I'm not sure of the date or the details, but it seems to be making its way around the internet, and far be it from me to stand in the way. Feel free to submit your own.

Stupid idea finished, woe is us.

It's time for another NOE Reader Quiz.

A headline in last week's Voice declared "Tunnel's done, time to celebrate." Before I give you the link, guess whether that headline appeared in the news section or the editorial pages.

...

You were right.

I'm as big a fan of the Stevens Creek Trail as anybody, and I understand the importance of maintaining good relationships with people at City Hall. But, just off the top of my head, I can think of enough potential criticisms of this project that it may not be the best candidate to induce the paper to drop all pretense of objectivity. (The article, of course, mentions none of them).

• $3.5 million is a large amount of taxpayer money to spend to extend the trail a very short distance.
• The city used eminent domain to complete this section of the trail, which should always give us pause even when it's justified.
• And, as the residents who posted comments on the Voice website pointed out, the city has yet to address concerns about inadequate lighting, lack of emergency phone access and displacement of homeless people.
  

Does anybody have an image of the page from Our Dumb Century in which the Onion ran a photo of the Hindenburg going down in flames underneath the headline: "AWESOME! Nation wowed by tremendous Hindenburg Explosion." I feel like that would be appropriate here.

Even gang members recognize bad journalism when they see it

Usually, when local papers write about gangs, they generally focus on what gang activity means for white people. They include the perspective of police, teachers, non-profits and government officials, but almost never gang members themselves.

This is not surprising, as most reporters generally don't have a lot of contacts who belong to the economic class that makes up gang membership. And with local newspaper profits largely dependent on real estate advertisements, publishers have little incentive to include the perspective of people who can't afford to buy houses.

So when two recent shootings renewed my alma mater's interest in gang activity in Mountain View, the only person who seemed to be concerned enough to do something about the unbalanced coverage was a Norteno.

The Voice received an unexpected visit last week from a Mountain View Norteno who says he is trying to clean up his life for the sake of his child.

...

The gang member, whose name is being withheld for his safety and his family's safety, wanted to shed light on the gang culture ...

The article goes on to cite a single anonymous source, even when he makes factual claims that could be easily verified or disproved. You almost have to admire a story that is this open about how little work actually went into it.

I would call for a boycott if I thought we'd have any material left

The governments of 113 countries, including our own, agree that the observed rise in global temperatures is "unequivocal."

The Los Altos Town Crier, though, not so much:

There may not be consensus that Earth’s atmosphere is warming, but that’s not keeping governments, groups and individuals from taking decisive action to assess their energy consumption and adopt sustainable strategies in conservation for the future of the planet.

As Earth Day, April 22, approaches, event coordinators are encouraging citizens to deluge Congress with phone calls on that day, insisting that lawmakers enact legislation promoting renewable energy and carbon-neutral buildings and calling for a moratorium on new coal-burning plants.

I don't believe Hell exists, but if it does, I can only imagine there's a special circle reserved for these people.

What would John Rocker do?

Former Atlanta-Braves-closer-turned-essayist John Rocker is making a stand against not speaking English in the U.S. with a 1300 word post on the home page of his official Website.

Rocker may have decided against "Teach English," in favor of "Speak English," because one's investment in improving the English language skills of recent immigrants need not go beyond telling them that they need more practice.

The site offers a glimpse into the impressive consistency that is the legendary Rocker.

Rocker is most famous for 1) taunting New York baseball fans (condoned by NOE) and 2) a notorious expose by Jeff Pearlman where he landed a xenophobic tour-de-force, berating gays, people who drive slowly and/or dye their hair, unwed mothers, minorities, women drivers, convicts, and, of course, foreigners (not condoned by NOE, despite one correspondent's rich use of "Macaca").

But you may not know that he also loves fireworks, hates high gas prices and purveys a remarkable selection of products.

Recession or Depression?

Wow.

Almost ten percent of our population on food stamps? Here's a grim look at the current state of affairs in the Homeland.

Things look worse than I thought. May have to stay out of the country longer than expected...

Los Altos cancels election

Seriously.

It seems that my hometown can save $100,000 every election cycle by moving city council contests to even-numbered years.

You know what else would save money? Not having elections.

In vintage Town Crier fashion, much of its coverage focused on the unruliness of a member of the public, but reassured readers that this sort of rambunctiousness is uncommon.

The Town Crier editorial gets it half-right, criticizing the plan for its potential impact on the school district. Ignoring for a minute whether the district would be smart enough to make the same change rather than shoulder the costs of an off-year election itself, the bigger and more obvious problem is that the change would allow the council to unilaterally extend their own terms. I'm no fan of voters, but not even the Los Altos Water Polo Alumni Security Council is that undemocratic.

22 years ago today

My sister came into my room to wake me up.

"Dad got you a puppy for your birthday! Dad got you a puppy!"

By way of background, I had wanted a dog ever since I could talk. My first word was "dog." My best friend had been the neighbor's cocker spaniel, Molly. (I was three or four years old when she died -- my parents told me it was because she went into the creek in our backyard and got poison oak -- and honored her memory by subsuming her identity and insisting on eating my dinner underneath the table.)

Anyway, this was the most exciting thing I had ever heard in my life (certainly more exciting than when I was three and they told me I was getting a brother). I shot out of bed and bolted upstairs, my sister trailing behind. I ran into my dad standing near the front door.

"Where is it?! Where is the puppy?!"

"It's outside," he said, "playing on the porch."

I opened the door and looked around, but there was no puppy to be seen. Confused, I turned back to see my dad, with my sister standing next to him.

"Where is it?" I asked.

"April Fool's!" they both said.

To clarify, my birthday is not on April Fool's Day, it is today. My father explained that it would be too obvious if they had waited until the one day of the year that is reserved for telling lies to six-year-olds and laughing at them when they believe you.

Any readers out there still trying to come up with a gift idea?

They are going to go far in this field

Yesterday, the number of American soldiers who have died in Iraq reached 4,000.

With this milestone approaching, shortly after the fifth anniversary of the invasion, the Daily Bruin ran the following two stories side-by-side on the front page:

Girl Scout cookies popular
Individual responsibility vital to future of Undie Run

The Sacramento Bee marked the occasion by reprinting a year-old e-mail from my sister about her faceplant into a duck pond (which was first published here last year).

I really wish they would identify these kids by their high schools instead

Then the Mercury's story about a property theft ring at Santa Clara would reference "St. Francis water polo."

I probably should have expected this

This week marked the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War. How did the Town Crier commemorate this tragic milestone?
Seriously, this was the cover story. Here's the lede:

Many decisions across Los Altos are made under the influence of coffee – companies come together, civic policy is dissected, book club alliances are formed and neighbors nestle for a chat.

The coffee bean is one of the world’s largest agricultural exports by value, and the United States is the No. 1 coffee importer, trailed by Germany and Japan. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Americans consumed an average of 24.2 gallons of coffee in 2005 – enough fluid to fill two tanks in a typical sedan.

Coffee consumption peaked in volume in the 1940s, when Americans drank nearly twice as much as they do now. But today boutique drinks like espressos, lattes, mochas and coffee-style beverages that totally lack bean, such as chai or high-end teas, share the mass market.

The only mention of the war in this week's issue was Charlotte Jarmy's discussion of why she doesn't care about it.

How to make lawyers work for the public welfare:

Bribe them.

Congrats to our esteemed publisher on managing UCLA's PILF auction two weeks ago, which, sadly, had nothing to with auctioning any of these kind of PILFs. Though lacking sexually attractive Platypi, our publisher raised funds in excess of $100,000 towards grants for UCLA law students who work in summer public interest or governmental legal internships.

Some highlights:
- As our publisher attempted to win a John Wooden Autographed Pyramid of Success, the auctioneer encouraged him to increase his bids because he was, "from Los Altos," and "could afford anything." He however, ducked out when the price went beyond $800.00.
- Later, he auctioned himself and sold for $15.00 (to his Mom).
- The singer was "good looking" and "good."

A pointless post about a pointless article

It's late, I'm tired and nobody is reading, but boy is this awful.

Riding shotgun with LAPD

I did a ridealong once when I was in high school. All I remember is that the cop struck me as rather racist. Something about a prostitute, too.

Head out for a night on the streets with Los Altos Police Sgt. Scott McCrossin, and you’ll be prepared for almost anything.

I doubt this is this case, but I trust you'll show us with some good expository writing.

There’s a riot helmet and gas mask in his trunk. He has books on case law and hazardous materials at the ready, along with a Spanish/English dictionary and detailed maps compiled by the fire department. For quiet moments in the night, the policeman’s pleasure reading: an industry SWAT magazine. But McCrossin’s No. 1 tool, used much more than the AR-15 strapped behind the driver’s seat, is a beefy flashlight. He deploys it through the night on parked cars, construction sites and suspects on the city’s dark streets.

Things the officer appears to be prepared for:

• a riot
• a gassing
• a legal argument
• a Mexican
• getting lost
• doing nothing

Things Eliza Ridgway appears to be prepared for:

• awkwardly watching the officer encounter the things on the above list.

In daylight, Los Altos police often chat with residents taking in sun outside the Sub-Acute Rehabilitation Center, neighbors walking dogs and business owners. At night, it’s a different story. That’s when the illicit and forgotten – the homeless, drug abusers, burglars and vandals – tend to come out.

"The illicit and forgotten" = the homeless? I hope that was a typo.

[Bunch of truly, stunningly boring stuff happens]

...

“All of your reports need to be nice and perfect here,” Langone said, speaking ruefully of what a vocal and close watch the community keeps on the department.

I'm too sleep-deprived to understand sarcasm right now, let alone be able to do it myself. So, rather than try to write something clever, I'll just say that I still can't figure where anybody would get the idea that Los Altos keeps a "vocal and close watch" on the police department. If that were the case, shouldn't more people (perhaps the local newspaper) have opposed the department's effort to enact an unconstitutional law banning day workers and lemonade stands from the city's streets?

Am I missing something?

Terrorists, your game is through

An injunction! (And also one of these!) Why didn't we think of that earlier?!

University officials filed a lawsuit against the Animal Liberation Front, the Animal Liberation Brigade and five unnamed individuals because of various attacks on professors who have been conducting animal research over the last two years.

While the concept of filing for an injunction against people you can't identify is funny, the organization's planned defense is even funnier:

“The Animal Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Brigade are two underground organizations that do not exist."

It's not clear how these non-existent organizations are planning to go about filing this defense or the threatened countersuit, but it should be interesting.

You people still aren't getting your land back

Far more stunning than Fidel Castro announcing his resignation in today's edition of Cuba's amusingly-named government newspaper was that BigDra had nothing to say about it. Perhaps he's still paranoid or embarrassed about this.

Speaking of embarrassing, the New York Times had this to say about the leader of the Cuban Revolution this morning:

He embraced a totalitarian brand of communism and allied the island with the Soviet Union. He brought the world to the brink of nuclear war in the fall of 1962, when he allowed Russia to build missile launching sites just 90 miles off the American shores. ... His record has been a mix of great social achievements, but a dismal economic performance that has mired most Cubans in poverty.

As Joc said, that's one version of history. Another might attribute the poverty and lack of political freedom to the Bay of Pigs, the crushing embargo, the CIA's efforts to assassinate him, attempts to seed rain clouds over the mountains in order to kill crops in the plains and the continued harboring of terrorists in South Florida.

I'm not saying Castro's perfect. As a loudmouth, I found the restrictions on the press and other forms of expression particularly bothersome, especially when the social accomplishments of the Revolution are such a source of pride for the people that it's hard to imagine how democratic reforms would endanger them. But choosing from between Fidel and the types of people featured in the Museum of the Revolution's "Hall of Cretins" (Reagan, Bush I, and Batista), it's hard to see Castro as the bad guy.

Also, it's hard to deny that this story, from Tad Szulc's biography Fidel: A critical portrait, is cool. It takes place right after the Granma (the boat for which the newspaper is named) landed in the Sierra Maestre. The rebel army was nearly destroyed in the ensuing ambush, its forces scattering into the mountains, where they hid for several days before a local sympathizer alerted Fidel that this brother was camped out close by:

Just before midnight, the brothers embraced in the canefield. Fidel asked Raul: "How many rifles did you bring?" and Raul replied, "Five..." Fidel shouted: "And with the two I have, this makes seven! Now, yes, we have won the war!"

Viva Kosova Libre!

The dissolution of Yugoslavia was finally completed today as members of the Kosovar parliament declared independence. It's been a long road for the majority ethnic Albanian population of the former Serb province. In 1999, NATO forces led by the US and UK bombed targets in Serbia stopping the Serbian military's latest campaign of ethnic cleansing in the region. Since then Kosova has been in limbo as a UN administered territory. Perhaps now it can move on, garner investment, invest in infrastructure, health, and education and move towards eventual EU membership.

At the independence celebrations today in the capital city of Pristina, many of newly independent Kosovar waved American flags. Kosova is perhaps the only place in the world where NOE can sport his stars and stripes bandana and people won't think he's an asshole. Maybe he should go and have a proud stroll down Bill Clinton Blvd, one of Pristina's biggest avenues. Now the only question is: can he use his Rapid Rewards to get there?

The Town Crier's brave stand against the Kyoto Protocol

Boooo!

Politically correct, yes, but practical?

It's not often the Town Crier actually comes out against anything. It backed the war in Iraq using a sports cliche that it got backwards. It stayed entirely silent when a confessed child molester awaiting sentencing was free to visit local elementary schools. This is no knee-jerk reactionary opinion page -- it takes something that's really wrong to garner criticism from the Town Crier. Gay kids qualify, of course. But efforts to stem global warming? This should be interesting.

The Los Altos City Council’s Jan. 22 decision to allocate $14,600 to begin investigating what the city can do to reduce air pollutants comes across – initially – as the right thing to do in this era of CO2 emissions consciousness.

Please enlighten us as to why it isn't.

As part of the recent action to evaluate current greenhouse gas emissions at the city level, the council directed Mayor Val Carpenter to add her signature to the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement.

Didn't they realize that Mountain View already did this? Shouldn't we just freeload off of their efforts -- we do it for everything else.

It seems politically correct to take this action. But from a practical standpoint, we wonder about the priority and direction of the effort, and whether the study is money well spent.

Zing! It's politically correct! I knew it was a bad idea. Q.E.D.

First, the study is only to determine the current emissions levels in city-operated vehicles, wastewater operations and other sources within the city of Los Altos. This seems like a good first step, but the net needs to be cast citywide. We think the $14,600 could be better used on a marketing campaign beyond city government to reach the community at large, to get people out of their vehicles. Walk-to-School days are fine but not nearly enough.

They better make it more than $14,600, given that the town newspaper consistently belittles the importance of climate change and has in the past advocated against enforcement even of existing parking restrictions.

Will the commendable volunteer energy that has pushed through this first effort be able to take the emissions information and use it to enact change, particularly given the city’s slim budget?

Let’s imagine that the study concludes in part that Los Altos police vehicles emit a high level of air pollutants. The council then recommends that level be lowered as part of the “Cool Los Altos” philosophy. Would this mean replacing an entire fleet of vehicles with more environmentally friendly ones to the tune of millions of dollars?

First of all, asking rhetorical questions is not the same thing as making an argument or taking a position. How in God's name do people give them awards for this sort of garbage? (That's not rhetorical, by the way, I'm really curious about the thought process that leads to the determination that this is good writing.)

Secondly, yes. As in, yes, it might mean that, if the emissions inventory suggested that this was a cost-effective place to make reductions. It's easy to imagine that it would be, considering that the city already spends money replacing its fleet periodically. Mountain View, for example, has rules in place that prioritize emissions reductions when fleet vehicles are being replaced.

We want to lower greenhouse gas emissions as much as the next city. But such thinking also needs to take into consideration bottom-line costs and available funding to address any recommendations.

Hard-hitting stuff there TC. Way to be the voice of reason. It was looking for a minute like the Los Altos City Council might run off spending money willy-nilly on environmental protection.

While the lobbying to get this part of the plan through was clearly effective, it failed to offer any examples of likely action to take. It would be easier to support this project if we had some examples, now, of possible solutions. We shouldn’t need an emissions study to come up with those ideas. We need a task force that is working on it – which is the only thing the city didn’t decide to do.

It's an INVENTORY. You measure things first, then you decide where best to place your effort. That said, here's a suggestion: stop killing trees to print this drivel.

Given a lack of direction and available budget, is this another study that leads to nowhere (most likely created by a new cottage industry)?

Hmm, after reading that cutting parenthetical aside, I am reconsidering my concern about climate change. It's all just a cottage industry lobbying effort. Exxon was trying to tell us all along, but we didn't listen.

Yes, we have nothing better to do

Speaking, as I often am, of the Bullis class of 1992, Becky Remmel has launched one of the best online stalking efforts I have ever seen. "Where in the World is Molly Curfman" is a Facebook group dedicated to tracking down former classmates who moved before the time capsule was buried underneath the Bullis Bear -- not just Molly but also the tall kid known as "Joshua Giraffe" and our one and only Latino classmate. (For the record, I was not the one who made Ms. Kates cry.)

Readers can infer a number of things from our ongoing obsession with elementary school. I choose to focus on the fact that growing up during the drought wasn't so bad -- our parents inability to water our lawns was a small price to pay for it being 80 degrees and sunny every day.

(This means Jon had sex!)

Congratulations to Jon and Kara Sigua, proud parents of Jackson William Sigua, born Feb. 1 in the 8-pound weight class. (Also, congratulations to Jackson. Although upon seeing a picture of him, one of Kara's friends remarked that Kara "should make babies professionally," he deserves some credit for the achievement.)

Jackson's middle name comes from his uncle Will, NOE's choice for Los Altan of the Year. Jackson was born almost exactly one year since Will was killed in action in Iraq, inspiring an unprecedented show of community support and unity. His nephew will be proud to carry the name.

Pressure's on

Sorry about the lack of posts recently. I've been playing hooky and spending my weekends skiing rather than scouring the local news. In the meantime, some of the Wiener children have actually been productive:

Jocelyn won a McClatchy Presidential Award, one of nine the newspaper conglomerate gave out in the second half of 2007, for her article on the fates of the former members of an inner city pee wee football team.

Fifteen years later, Sacramento Bee reporter Jocelyn Wiener tracked down the survivors of a champion youth football team from a rough part of the city. In a series of interlocking profiles she told a heartbreaking story about the terrible risks and temptations that African American boys face growing up. Combined with extensive web presentations, the effort turned stories that might well have faded from view into a compelling and challenging public portrait.

Andy (despite the fact that the last "book" he read was Johnny's Damon's autobiography Idiot) has been left and right getting into law schools that rejected me.

Bubba qualified for boardercross nationals, though I'm betting he's prouder of the following comment on the sophomoric college rumor Web site juicycampus.com (which features recent posts entitled "Being Drunk" and "Jews, thoughts?"):

i agree theres a big difference between hot and well known, but if you were just doing this within the sophmores (which are usually most social) in the greek system I would say...

5 most "popular" boys: (I would do them all)
carmel ashur- social and pretty hot
lorenzo einaudi- sig nu social chair, not as hot but great body :)
asher luzzatto- social and hot, good style
adam groth- knows everyone, one of the coolest guys
matt wiener- phi psi social chair, pretty hot too

Somehow, I feel that correctly answering a trivia question in class last week is not quite the same.

Sports Stars Love Animal Cruelty

Its been well-established that sports fans and even the public generally care more about the way professional athletes treat animals than the way they treat women. The latest example of sports stars lust for violent animal deathmatches brings together past and present baseball greats. A video briefly posted on youtube last week apparently showed perhaps the two best Dominican pitchers of all-time (NOE may dispute that assertion) releasing fighting cocks into the biggest cockfighting ring in Santo Domingo. Juan Marichal and Pedro Martinez were reportedly 'soltadores' for a cockfight in the country's premier cockfighting battlefield. Cockfighting is legal in the Dominican Republic, but that doesn't mean that Americans don't frown upon this off-season pastime. The venue is called Coliseo Gallistico de Santo Domingo which doesn't really compare to Bad Newz Kennels…

Political Gangs Run Riot After Stolen Election

No, this isn´t a post about the 2000 US election. However, where people don´t have bread and circuses (and People magazine) to distract them from thinking about politics, things can turn violent after rigged elections.

For educated insights on the continuing violence in Kenya, see Oxford scholar Dave Anderson´s article from yesterday´s Independent.

Wouldn´t it just be easier if they had computer voting machines like we do here?

Focus the 'Tos

Today is "Focus the Nation," a national teach-in on global warming. It comes amidst a lot of exciting progress on climate change at UCLA Law. Last week's law review symposium highlighted some of the best idea for addressing the problem. The school announced that it had received a $5 million gift to open the country's first center for climate change law. A group of students has embarked on an effort to personally comply with the Kyoto Protocol. And I even got to meet one of the impostor Jonathan Wieners. (Details to follow in another post).

But this blog is not about the nation, the globe, or even UCLA Law. It is about the 'Tos, which joined the party last week.

Thanks to the efforts of Kacey Fitzpatrick and the other folks behind Cool Los Altos, our city has pledged to meet the Kyoto Protocol by 2012. This seems like it will require rethinking, among other things, how much we want to continue use free public parking to subsidize driving. I'm not optimistic that we will necessarily pull it off -- at least so long as council member and blog whipping boy Ron Packard believes that the only thing Los Altos should do about the great challenge of our time is promulgate weak revisions to the building code. But at least it will be nice to know that we inspired Iraq.

An exquisitely crafted tribute to folly

If you've got $24.5 million lying around, 47 View St. is unsurprisingly still on the market.

(If this is your first time at the blog, and you are already convinced it is not worth your time, please at least watch the video in the above link).

Whatever else you want to say about the house, you can't deny that it's ironic. The contractor bought it during the tech crash, and is now trying to sell it during a housing crash. Moreover, I'm not an architect, but "modern life as a celebration of nature" probably does not entail living in a house made out of Honduran mahogany.

Perhaps we do still have some shame in this town. Then again, if the Winbigler property sold, why shouldn't this one?

(Speaking of "art," if you only have $41,000 lying around, perhaps you can pay Rachel Slick not to build a sculpture of birds in the Shoreline wetlands)

NOE's Recycled Bullis Bench: Finished or Poised for Revival?

In 1991-92, with help from Karen and Bruce, NOE established an environmental club at Bullis. The hallmark achievement of this group was the acquisition of a bench made from recycled plastic. The bench was subsequently commemorated “from the class of 1992” and proudly placed in front of the school next to the famous Bullis Bear statue.

Sadly, however, NOE’s bench now sits dejectedly among some rusting exercise equipment (that BigDra still uses) behind the school. Perhaps decision makers at Bullis are saving the bench for eventual reinstallation at the front of the new school?

We shall overcome

In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr., I figured today would be a good time to direct readers to the lawsuit LASD has filed against the County Board of Education for its preposterous approval of Bullis Charter School's effort to restrict poorer kids from enrolling.

After the Voice editorial blasted LASD for picking a fight with rich people, one commenter equated the lawsuit to "ultimately the greatest sin in American history."

"Behind every great man is a surprised mother-in-law."

NOE congratulates The Professor on his ascension to the mayor's office. NOE would also like to congratulate Laura Macias on a successful term in which she spearheaded a climate change initiative and helped beat back the squirrel insurgency.

African no longer welcome in Los Altos Hills

Although he has not been implicated in growing marijuana on the periphery of the "town" as other immigrants have, Los Altos Hills residents still want the African immigrant out of their upscale community.

"I'm getting tired of him," said Thomas Puorro, 82.

At first, the African immigrant intrigued neighbors, even though residents suspected that he was an escapee from a holding area in South San Francisco. A native to Uganda, the immigrant caught the attention of a Ugandan ambassador who sent a friendly note to "The Heights" Hills on the immigrant's behalf.

Despite international goodwill for the African, tensions are high.

Puorro added, "I'm getting closer and closer to getting myself a slingshot."


*John Rocker was unavailable for comment at press time.

For those of you looking for actual information

Perhaps out of post-Rwanda and ongoing Darfur guilt (or because its a big tourist destination), the Western media has been giving a lot of coverage to the recent violence in Kenya. However, the tendency has been to oversimplify the situation and chalk it up as just another example of horrific "tribal conflicts" in Africa. Even the regional head of the ICRC, who should certainly know better, has made ignorant statements along these lines.

The violence began after there were delays in declaring a winner in the recent presidential election. The vote counting was subsequently stopped (sound familiar?) and current president Mwai Kibaki quickly declared the winner after trailing his opponent Raila Odinga. The majority of those killed have been protestors shot by security forces, but because Odinga is Luo and Kibaki is Kikuyu, Western media outlets have quickly jumped to the conclusion that “tribal rivalries” are at the root of the conflict. However, according to an anonymous expert on ethnic conflicts in Western Kenya, the unrest stems more from disenfranchised youths and anger over years of corrupt governments.

"No one is focusing on the real cause of violence ... which is political disillusionment," she said in an exclusive interview with Nemesis of Evil. "It's the young unemployed men who were told to vote and promised change, and who en masse were voting for the opposition, despite the fact that he was Luo."

News articles on the crisis have overlooked another crucial fact: that Odinga's opposition coalition was multi-ethnic in nature.

"What Raila (Odinga) did was tap into leaders in the other provinces and into the general feeling (outside of the central province) of wanting a new political system -- federalism, which to most people on the ground literally means roads," said the expert.

Hopefully a better understanding of the causes of the conflict will lead to a more effective solution. I'm waiting for Obama, whose father is Luo, to weigh-in on the matter. It's too bad he’s got other things on his mind right now, because he’s hugely popular in Kenya and might be able to help the move towards peace.

Problem solved

Facing a severe funding shortfall, Hidden Villa is hosting a community meeting Jan. 13 to discuss how to accomplish its goal of creating a $10 million endowment. The Town Crier favors leasing some space to Bullis Charter School as a start. I have another idea.

That felt weird

Let's get back to founding principles...

The Voice is running a three-part series on the problems media consolidation poses for democracy. Part one includes the following:

"Award-winning media critic Ted Glasser says the Bay Area's media consolidation is emblematic of a larger problem and leads to three things: fewer journalists, homogenization of coverage (with the same story appearing in multiple newspapers), and poor media coverage of journalism itself."

Glass houses, guys.

The article is written by the publisher of the Pacific Sun, which was an independent paper up until a few years ago, when it was purchased by Embarcadero Publishing Company. The story has already appeared in other understaffed EPC papers, including the flagship Palo Alto Weekly (where readers had plenty of critiques of the article itself), the Pleasanton Weekly and the Danville Weekly.

I can't decide whether this is actually ironic, or if it just looks really silly.

Local holiday fund profiles

I figure we might as well kick off 2008 with a positive post.

Two days are left to donate to the Voice Holiday Fund (so named as part of the paper's ongoing War on Christmas). The paper has lined up foundation grants to match donations, so doing so is doubly worth it.

The recipients include:

• Community Health Awareness Council
• Support Network for Battered Women
• Partners for New Generations
• Community School of Music and Arts
• Mountain View Day Worker Center
• Community Services Agency, and
• RotaCare Clinic

The Town Crier's Holiday Fund, which is much older and tends to raise more money, is benefitting 17 organizations this year, including:

• EPA Kids Foundation, Truck of Love, Community Services Agency
• Help One Child, Partners for New Generations, Community Homeless Alliance Ministry
• Rotacare, Mother Branch, Community Health Awareness Council
• Sunday Friends, Challenge Learning Center and Career Closet

(The rest of the profiles either are not yet posted or I just can't find them.)

What do you have in common with residents of San Juan Court?

You haven't had a hostage crisis at your house either.

For a brief tense moment Wednesday, a Los Altos neighborhood came to a standstill as police searched for a gunman with hostages.

An emergency phone system warned residents to stay inside; police helicopters circled overhead and SWAT vans filled the street.

As it turned out, nothing had happened. It was all a hoax.

Kudos to the Town Crier for having the restraint not to blame this on Mexican nationals.

(While this is sort of a "things that are not happening in Los Altos" story, it differs from the prototypical entries in that series, because -- unlike contaminated pet food, bowling and Black Friday -- a hostage crisis would be interesting if it were to actually happen.)

Bullis Charter School: not just for poor kids anymore

The County Board of Education believes that allowing Bullis Charter School to reserve spots for the richest areas of Los Altos and Los Altos Hills will increase its minority enrollment.

Which minorities could they mean? Children of people who think Toni Casey ought to hold elected office? Gypsies?

As a sidenote, BCS board president Ken Moore cites Bullis's historical efforts to serve rich neighborhoods as a reason to let it continue to do so. Aside from the fact that appeals to tradition tend to be logical fallacies, Bullis has been around for fewer than 3.5 years. By comparison:

• This blog has been around for 2.1 years
• The Red Sox have been officially better than the Yankees for 3.2 years
• The Navy has been promising to have a final proposal on Hangar One for 3.5 years
• Major combat operations in Iraq have been over for 4.6 years
• And the "tradition" of private individuals illegally trying to reserve portions of the public-right-of-way for themselves in advance of the Festival of Lights parade has been around for 9 years

In conclusion, sucks to your history.

Booooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Below is an e-mail from the principal of Los Altos High School sent out to all coaches earlier today.

From: Satterwhite, Wynne
Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2007 12:02 PM

To: Cave, Kim
Cc: Cave, Ralph; O'Neal, Morenike; Dawson, Cristy
Subject: Music at Athletic Events

Hi Kim,

At the Board of Managers meeting this morning, we voted that lyrics will no longer be allowed at athletic events. Please make sure that your coaches know that this rule goes into effect immediately. (Minutes to follow).

Thanks!

Wynne

The Daily Bruin violates the Best Evidence Rule

A year after repeatedly electrocuting a kid who was lying on the floor of the library in pain, UCLA has finally come out with a new policy regarding when officers can use Tasers. (This according to the Daily Bruin, which has not actually seen a copy of the new policy).

The highlights include a prohibition on Tasing people engaged in passive resistance and a requirement that police officers actually get trained by someone other than the company who makes the weapon.

Can someone please tell me why it took more than a year to come up with this?

Who owns the sidewalk?

I don't know of any studies that conclude one way or another whether there is in fact enough room in downtown Los Altos for everyone who wants to get a good view of the Festival of Lights parade. But, if there were, why would Town Crier-letter writer Anna Durante feel the need to tape off space and claim it as her own? And wasn't she just "scoring a spot" at another family's expense?

This supposed "tradition" of reserving spots has quite a few problems: it encourages private individuals to monopolize public space (for longer and longer periods of time), it creates a lot of litter, and it smacks of Los Altos's embarasingly recent efforts to exclude the poor and the brown through an unconstitutional and costly ordinance that forced day workers to cross the street and stand on the sidewalk in Mountain View.

Another letter writer, Honor Spitz, raises one other concern I didn't think to include. It makes downtown Los Altos look like "one great big outdoor emergency shelter." (Isn't "Spitz" a Jewish name? I guess Mark Zuckerberg isn't the only Member of the Tribe who wants to ruin Christmas.)

Next year, I'm going to kidnap somebody, blindfold them, drive them around for a while, and drop them off in downtown Los Altos, just to see if they think they have arrived at an emergency shelter.

Honoring our choices

Today marks one year since my friend and teammate Nate Krissoff died in Iraq. After writing and rewriting drafts of this post several times, I've decided I can not articulate what an inspiring person Nate was. Here's someone who can...

At 61, doctor joins Navy to honor his son

After his eldest child is killed in Iraq, Bill Krissoff decides to enlist. With help from the White House, he joins the medical corps.

By Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

December 1, 2007

SAN DIEGO -- When Marines came to his door a year ago to tell him that his eldest son had been killed in Iraq, Bill Krissoff reacted like any father: with confusion, devastation, then numbness.

Nathan Krissoff was so young, a lover of poetry, a champion athlete, a leader whose maturity and selflessness had impressed fellow Marines.

The father in Krissoff found no resolution to his grief. The physician in him did.

At an age when many people think about retirement, Krissoff decided earlier this year that he would enlist as a doctor. He was 60 years old, decades above the military's preferred demographic.

Catching up with a former Voice intern (unfortunately not THAT one).

The Economist has apologized for plagiarizing a story that former Voice intern David Herbert wrote while in Uganda this summer. Yes, that David Herbert. (Turns out I'm not the only Voice alum who's "basically ethically bankrupt.")

Suggests Herbert, "If you reference this on your blog, try not to talk about my own indiscretions."

Sorry Dave. Maybe next time you'll think twice about telling a higher-up, "That's your lede? Why don't you print that out so I can wipe my ass with it."