Kasperzak switches parties, your vote still worthless

Unlike most people of my political ilk, I have a few fond memories of election night 2004. For one, I got to drink on the job. I also got to take a photographer on a wild goose chase for then-Mayor Matt Pear that led us to KMVT's studios, the city attorney's house and, finally, the Mayor himself.

Nationally, the results of the "voting" that day were equal parts horrifying and disastrous. But, at the local level, the Republican Party suffered two very significant losses.

The first -- Sally Lieber's crushing victory over Marie Dominguez Gasson in Assembly District 22 -- was no suprise at all. Gasson, a Santa Clara University student who turned 21 on election night, said herself that she was a sacrificial lamb. (Interestingly, she won about the same number of votes from Mountain View voters as did George Bush, indicating that the decider-in-chief had no qualities to recommend him beyond a 21-year old college student.)

Gasson raised several hundred dollars for her campaign, much of which she sent to Steve Poizner, the charming moderate billionaire that the GOP was hoping would lead them to a victory in Assembly District 21. That didn't happen either, of course, and, despite what his altered state, it didn't take Mountain View City Council member Mike Kasperzak long to grasp the lesson that even billionaire Republicans can not win state office in Northern Santa Clara County.

This is not because we have such good taste or such good candidates around here, but that the state legislature has so gerrymandered the electoral districts that seats almost never change parties in either house. (Bonus prize to anyone who can explain why we have two houses in the state legislature).

Kasperzak (right) and others tried to use this as an argument for letting Governor Schwarzenegger appoint some retired judges to redraw the district boundaries. Voters realized this wouldn't really accomplish much and rejected the proposal. A better idea comes from Steve Chessin, a Mountain View man active with Californians for Electoral Reform, a group promoting multi-member districts and instant run-off voting as solutions to what we have now.

Of course, the corporations, trade groups and unions that control the parties don't like this either, because they would lose their stranglehold on state politics. (Newspaper editors don't like it because it's complicated). So, long story short, Kasperzak changed his party affiliation this morning, leaving behind the party that was once grand but is now just old in favor of the one that is neither, at least partly in hopes that he can keep his political career alive.

Welcome to the losing team, Mike.

So you want to build yourself an outlandishly giant house

Vicki Geers has good news for you.

One of the things I like least about Los Altos is that, while in other parts of the country and at other times in history the term "embarrassment of riches" actually had a literal meaning, it is basically impossible to be too rich here.

So I think the woman who is trying to sell the Winbigler estate at the top of S-cuve is right to target those people with more money than shame. In other communities, it might be poor form to advertise the land you are trying to sell as an ideal location for a megahome. Not here.

Luckily, for prospective buyers, the former owners have already done the hard part, illegally knocking down the house that was there. The two sides just settled the resulting lawsuit, although "settled" may be a misnomer since neither side appeared to get anything from the other. But it does allow Los Altos Hills to focus on newer outrages and injustices against its people.

White people politely applaud

How to explain the lack of outcry after the Los Altos City Council's unanimous decision to arm all 38 police officers with Tasers? Perhaps it's that any high school student who ever went on a ride-along with the Los Altos police knows that the police spend a disproportionate of their time tailing minorities and people who drive beat-up looking cars.

Tasers, like all police weapons, tend to be disproportionately used on minorities. But police frequently fire them at non-violent suspects who are disobeying orders (the link is worth reading just for the story of "Dan-o" Curran). Imagine if they said that every time they asked for more.

Local police have a few handy stories that purport to prove the necessity of Tasers, disingenuously saying that the presence of a Taser saved them from shooting a suspect.

Sometimes, though, the stories appear to bear this out. When police did not have a Taser to subdue a crazed machete-wielding man in Los Altos Hills, they wound up shooting him. (The man survived, but the Palo Alto Daily did not get the memo, leading the next day with a story along the lines of "Police shoot, kill machete-wielding man." Instead of issuing a correction, the following day the paper ran an interview with the man. I believe the headline was "Machete-wielding man tells his side of story.")

As long as we're making fun of newspapers here, a Google search for Los Altos and Tasers turned up this barely comprensible article from the Town Crier's archives.

Wasting our independence day

In Mountain View tonight, the San Francisco Symphony will celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence by playing movie songs for rich people. I haven't been since Bill Graham Presents, at the time owned by troop supporters Clear Channel, stopped giving out American flags to concertgoers and instead handed out Hillary Duff movie buttons.

Down here in San Diego, where I'm celebrating my dad's 60th birthday, the aging hippies in Ocean Beach are preparing for the 20th annual beach marshmallow fight. (I will have to report this out and post more info later).

And this comes via text message from Fort Benning, where 2nd Lieutenant Patrick Neal is still awaiting an honorable discharge for challenging the Army's handling of an $8,000 signing bonus recruiters promised in apparent violation of U.S. code.

"New Peaches album: Impeach My Bush."

God Bless America.

MV Farmers Market moving

But only to the Caltrain lot. The article doesn't mention what is being constructed. But new plans for the R Club, that weird gray building with no front door, have been in place for over a year and a half.

What took you guys so long?

A video camera captured footage of three thieves making off with a wooden cow in Los Altos Hills last week, predictably tickling the Mercury and even showing up on the United Press International wire.

You know what this means? I can now claim to have broken international news.

Caltrain raises fares, parking rates

Citing increased fuel costs, something ABC for some reason seems to find ironic, the Caltrain board today approved a fare increase that will raise the cost of a round-trip ticket from Mountain View to San Francisco from $10.50 to $12.00.

I can't wait until they electrify the line. Not only will they be able to increase service, but then the only reason for fares to go up will be because someone made a secret deal with a union.

At least he got his own name right

Have two columns to write and only enough to fill up one? Here's an idea, put a glaring error in your first one, and then dedicate your second to letting someone else correct it for you.

MV Spartans still blow goats

After all that plotting*, the best I could do is print this photo on a blog, of the Mountain View marquee artfully rearranged by my friends circa February 1998. I apologize if any of you were expecting something that would justify the furor this photo caused. (Readers of the Talon will remember that "Neely" temporarily became a verb roughly meaning "to act in an manner lacking integrity)."

I suppose the one lesson to be learned from this is that being right in the eyes of the law is less important than you might think.

Speaking of fellatio, a co-worker called my farewell column "a bj to all your sources."

If you liked electricity deregulation

You'll love the new state broadband bill.

"[Assembly Speaker] Fabian [Nunez] and I were joking," Assembly member Lloyd Levine, D-Van Nuys, told the Sacramento Bee, "Everybody's getting rich on this but us ... We're just trying to do the right thing."

The joke, I guess, is that politicians are getting rich signing away cities' rights to regulate cable and video services, their jurisdiction over the public right of way, and the future of public access television. (The Bee points out the unsurprising coincidence that Nunez, the bill's sponsor, has received heavy contributions from the telephone companies pushing for it). Now the cable companies, previously allied with the cities against the bill, are defecting in exchange for the ability to renege on their existing agreements.

If I owned a telephone company and this bill passed, I would immediately flood one city with 20 different project proposals, including two or three totally outlandish ones. After the city inevitably failed to make a ruling on all of them within the 45-day period, I would trash all but the most profitable, which I would be free to build without any public oversight.

So this is what they're spending the money on

"Maybe," a Shoreline lawyer is reported to have said as the two sides finalized the terms of a $10 million settlement, "Jon Wiener will move on to something else now."

Fat chance. Here's what's news:

1) The city filed suit Tuesday against auditor Daoro, Zydel & Holland and a host of others, seeking in excess of $5 million in damages for the firm's secret deal with Bill Graham Presents. The city is arguing that this deal compromised the auditors' independence, helped conceal revenues that should have been reported, amounting to fraud, malpractice, and lots of other bad words. (link to new article coming soon)

2) Live Nation's final settlement with the city, for $10 million plus a $1.8 million annual lease payment, far exceeded an original offer from Clear Channel that came in a letter sent last December. That proposal, quickly dismissed by the city, was for $3.6 million and a maximum of $1.35 million a year, based on the number of shows.

3) In my neutral, unbiased role, I managed to obtain two items the city produced to commemorate the case, a "Don't mess with Mountain View" tee shirt and a piece of lucite thanking "all those who made possible a sweet and important victory." What I don't understand is why, after a $10 million settlement, they don't at least make the plaques out of real quartz.

It's the traffic, stupid

Today is the third straight weekday Spare the Air day, when Bay Area smog levels reach such unhealthy levels that asthmatics stay indoors and transit agencies let people ride for free (today is the final time they will do so before the federal grant money to reimburse them runs out). After only one such day in 2005, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District has already declared three, and more are surely on the way.

The conventional wisdom is that the cause of all of this is heat and low winds. And while those are both pretty crucial, the main ingredient in smog is car exhaust, meaning the main culprits are drivers.

By the way, since VTA does not seem to have enough fare inspectors to cover the light rail system, today isn't exactly the last day to ride transit for three, just the last day to do so ethically. This makes for an interesting ethical question -- is it better to ride transit without paying than it is to drive?

"Arm, Food. Anything helps."

The text of a sign held by a homeless man yesterday at the corner of San Antonio and El Camino. The sign was tied to the sleeve on the man's right side, where his missing right arm should have been.

We are Romic

It's probably not news that a poor community that's home to a hazardous waste plant and lots of commute traffic has health problems as a result. It's still nice to seem some more attention paid to what is happening at Romic Environmental Technologies in East Palo Alto.

Three weeks ago, the company spilled 4,000 gallons of chemicals into nearby wetlands, drawing attention to its dismal safety record at a time that the state is deciding whether to grant it a permit to expand. Residents who believe Romic is a cause of East Palo Alto's disproportionately high asthma rates are using the incident to publicize their case and press the state to deny the permit.

Romic is what land use folks call a "noxious use," meaning it's the kind of place people pay extra in order to live far away from it and the kind of place that you are far more likely to find in poor communities.

A column by Don Kazak in Wednesday's Palo Alto Weekly issue even implies (perhaps unintentionally) that pollution from Romic is a serious concern only now that East Palo Alto started to gentrify, an argument that seems to keep with the Weekly's new policy of only writing positive stories about East Palo Alto.

But this is a positive story about East Palo Alto. It's a negative story about the rest of us, and our out-of-sight, out-of-mind attitude towards environmental problems that we foist on poor communities. The toxic waste flowing into Romic comes from the same Silicon Valley companies that we venerate for giving us nifty products, well-paying jobs, and (in some cases, at least) success in the stock market. Romic is not to blame for creating toxic waste, only for doing a shoddy job taking care of it.

In the afterword to the tenth anniversary edition of Out of the Channel, his book on the Exxon Valdez spill, John Keeble criticizes the outrage that temporarily consumed the public before we all got behind the first Gulf War. His words still bear repeating:

"In what does a company such as Exxon find the faith to perpetuate its half-truths and outright lies? The answer, perhaps, is in the reluctance of much of the American population to penetrate the loop of power, its preference for living in a fog, and its willing acceptance of almost anything in return for the opportunity to keep its gas tanks topped off. We are Exxon.

"The American consumer, as we have allowed ourselves to be called, is a dangerous influence -- dangerous in the sense that our insatiable appetite for raw materials causes continuous and often destructive change in the world. We seem unable to attend to the affects of our habits. ... We insist upon action only fleetingly, and only when faced with calamity. Then, as the incident in Prince William Sound would suggest, the nation flagellates itselfs itself, the press and broadcast news feed our frenzy with half-assimiliated information, and we fasten on symbols in order to allay our disturbing sense of ignorance and guilt."

Best of luck to YUCA and others in East Palo Alto speaking up for the rights of the community. But even if Romic disappears, the demand for its services will still exist. Nothing excuses what has happened at the plant over the last several decades, but it's time to stop pretending that we are not all in some way responsible for its existence.

BREAKING NEWS: Corruption still illegal

Somebody get word to San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzales, whose indictment Thursday spawned a feeding frenzy at the Mercury news and probably gave Vice Mayor Cindy Chavez whiplash from forcing her to do such a quick about-face.

In today's story, featuring a classic non-denial denial from Gonzales ("there was no alteration of public documents," he says), prosecutor Julius Finkelstein says the indictment's message "is that public officials cannot use their public office to secure benefits, either for themselves or for third parties or for political supporters.'"

Really? Not to parrot a Republican talking point here, but isn't that that what public officials do?Leaving aside that Gonzales repeatedly lied about the deal to the public and his colleagues, is procuring a contract for the Teamsters much different than Anna Eshoo's effort to procure Navy funding to restore Hangar One for the enjoyment of a bunch of Navy veterans?

In any case, kudos to the Merc for their coverage. The paper has had so many reporters on the story (14 on one article posted on the Web site site), you'd think anarchists were planning to march in downtown Palo Alto or somebody had found a finger in a bowl of chili. Not that I blame them. According to lore, when Mountain View's mayor was on trial for misconduct (with seemingly far less serious charges), a full 50 percent of the Voice staff spent days in the courtroom simply waiting for the verdict.

In the Mario Ambra case, by the way, the prosecution dropped three of its four charges, focusing only on one charge, misconduct in violation of the city charter, that was grounds to remove Mayor Ambra from the council. I wouldn't be surprised to see the same thing happen here.

The real reason to ride transit

Thursday and Friday of this week, the outdoor air was so smoggy that people with respiratory problems were advised to stay indoors. It would be nice to see transit agencies like Caltrain and VTA hammer this point home, rather than try to convince people that it's cheaper to ride transit than to drive (which is generally true but often assumes your time is worthless).

That is where I thought Gary Richards was going with his article in yesterday's paper. But the only person he found that cared about the impacts of smog was an asthmatic herself. Today, the paper followed up with a happy story about little girls in matching pink bikinis splashing in a fountain. Isn't smog fun?

Why didn't I think of this?

A group of juveniles broke into an abandoned and burned out Mountain View liquor store about midnight Thursday in an apparent attempt to steal booze, Mountain View police report...

I told you bike safety is cool

You just think my own company would be able to spell my name right. I haven't been gone that long.

Spare the Air Friday, this time for real

The Bay Area Air Quality Management District is expecting unhealthy levels of smog in the atmosphere again tomorrow, and has declared it a Spare the Air day.

VTA and Caltrain (and BART) will offer free rides again tomorrow for the second straight day. If you are like me and drove today, do your part and bike, walk or take transit tomorrow. Everyone will understand if you are unreasonably sweaty.

Like a modern-day Jean Valjean

The Mercury News finally got around to covering the Gregory Allen Wagner case, 12 days after he was sentenced. The story is fairly short and light, considering the topic, only containing one lie from Wagner's attorney. From the story:

Defense attorney James Blackman noted none of the charges Wagner was sentenced for are recent.

"There is nothing current about the case,'' he said, "but a very harsh sentence in 2006.''

Nothing recent, of course, except the confession, some child porn and an asshole lawyer.

And can you do something about this heat?

As great a public advocate as Dennis Rockstroh (of Action Line fame) is, let's not waste his time with any more questions about the weather.

Tweak power

Jim Lohse is not homeless in the traditional sense. He has a car and a roof over his head. (He is a caretaker for his sick mother, and sleeps at her home in Cupertino). Also, as he points out, "I don't stink."

Why then does he still want to run for Mountain View City Council as the homeless candidate, when he has never, at least technically, lived in the city?

Irked over Nick Galiotto's description of pot clubs as crime centers and Police Chief Scott Vermeer's decision to invite DEA agents to a city council study session, Lohse kept coming to council meetings long after the city rejected Jonathan Lustig's proposal to open a dispensary. Lohse even played back Galiotto's comments on microcassette during a public hearing.

Lohse continues to maintain that the city's policy on medical marijuana remains unclear and appears to prohibit caretakers like him from meeting with more than one patient at a time. Over time, he has gradually become more and more interested in Mountain View politics, and decided to register to vote here. In order to better make the case that he lives in Mountain View, he also receives his mail at the downtown post office and lists his DMV address as 500 Castro Street, which happens to be City Hall.

The filing period for council candidates doesn't start until July 17, so the city attorney and city clerk have a few weeks to decide whether to let him run. I hope they do, if only because it will spice up the campaign to have a candidate who -- in an essay about his dealings with the city -- includes a chapter entitled, "Other People With Whom I Have a Bone To Pick."

The ideal candidate has never read our paper

The Daily News is looking for a reporter. From the ad in Monday's paper:

"The reporter we're looking for must know how to work a beat and develop sources, turn over in-depth stories with context and make deadline. If your idea of reporting is cataloguing the minutes of a council meeting, then please do not apply."

Big talk for a paper that ran a front-page story in the same issue with the headline, "Mayfield Mall site plan may be up for discussion later in month." This could be a very good sign, but juding from the total of three non-wire stories in the entire news section on Friday, it's just wishful thinking.

Finally, a reason to look at the print version

If you don't tend to read the legal notices public agencies print in local newspapers, you might have missed some excitement this week. Foothill-De Anza is setting a deadline for Aaron Katz to file his expected lawsuit over their new bond measure. El Camino Hospital, meanwhile, is mounting a counterattack against SEIU local 715 and its ongoing campaign to make hospital directors look like tobacco executives.

In an open letter printed in several local papers, El Camino Hospital Chair Edward Bough asserts the hospital's commitment to public accountability, saying,

"The truth is that the El Camino Hospital Board of Directors conducts business in accordance with the Brown Act and the Public Records Act. In fact, we surpass all requirements for disclosure, providing transparency beyond what is mandated."

Nevermind the fact that the hospital has gone to court to keep secret some of the same documents it is now patting itself on the back for releasing.

"The future is appalling."

No wonder Santa Clara County executive Pete Kutras was not invited to give any commencement addresses this year.

"The 'G' word"

As in Google, whose hush-hush construction of a massive data center in Oregon is the subject of a front page story in Wednesday's New York Times. According to the story, local officials had to sign a confidentiality agreement under which they agreed not even to say "Google."

For one reason or another, Google has always been great at playing the press, rarely giving interviews (excluding of course, to nudie magazines) and advising company employees not to talk to reporters. I have always thought their secrecy has the effect of making them look they are hiding something. But, judging from the once-a-week fellatings Google gets from the Mercury News (here's today's article on the company's decision to purchase SGI's carcass), the policy works quite well.

Since we're on the topic, here are my two favorite exchanges with Google employees.

1) To a friend from college who was at the time working at Google
Me: I was surprised you were willing to have dinner after I told you I worked for a newspaper.
Google Employee: You're not going to fuck me over, are you?

2) To Minnie Ingersoll, unofficial community relations spokesperson for the WiFi project
Me: My name is Jon Wiener. I'm a reporter with the Mountain View Voice. We met at a City Council meeting. I'd like to interview you about (blah blah blah)...
Google Employee: You know if we got married, my name would be Minnie Wiener?

Paul Nyberg would be rolling over in his grave

The Town Crier publisher (fortunately still alive) could not have been happy about the words "Los Altos" and "child molester" appearing in the same headline in this week's edition. On the front page no less! And above the fold!

Congratulations again to the Grewals and all the others who had the strength and persistence to put Gregory Wagner behind bars, as well as those reporters at the Town Crier who have repeatedly fought to keep the issue front and center. I just don't know if this is the kind of good news that Town Crier readers have come to expect.

A tale of two schools

The Los Altos School District is pledging to reopen Bullis-Purissima Elementary School in 2008, after a unanimous vote Monday. It may not be enough to satisfy leading Hillspeople, though. Only four days earlier, Los Altos Hills leaders decided to move ahead with a plan to pull out of LASD and form their own district.

This morning, on the other side of the tracks, Slater Elementary is holding its last day of class. Much like Bullis parents, Slater parents have organized well and argued forcefully and emotionally against the decision. Mountain View residents are even readying a charter school petition, although they say they would have done so even if the board had not closed Slater. The essential difference between the two situations is that while one group of parents lives in one of the richest communities in the country, the other lives near a Superfund site. Guess which one got its way.

As a sidenote, I can't help but feeling like the reopening of Bullis somehow makes me less cool. Yes, I know many of you will say that's impossible. After all, I live with my parents, wear a bandanna and maintain a local news blog (ostensibly) about Mountain View and Los Altos. But consider the bitter, "I've-forgotten-more-about-this-town-than-you-will-ever-know" sort of pride that some graduates of old Mountain View High School have when they talk about their alma mater. We are all going to miss out on the chance to be like them.

Is this your homework Larry?

Police have concluded their investigation into an explosive letter from a Homestead High School student, reprinted in its entirety below, determining that it was a fake.

The Honorable Mountain View City Council,

I am writing to you about a problem that has occurred many times in California, and recently has happened to my friends and I in Mountain View. The problem is police brutality.

In mid February 2005, after 8 p.m., my friends, Mariana XXXXX, Frank XXXXX, and I were walking to Frank’s house down El Camino Real. We were stopped by two police officers. The reason, as we were told, was because we “fit the description” of suspects they were looking for. We were not told the extent of the crime these “suspects” committed, but we were immediately asked, “Where are you hiding the drugs?” My friends and I were dumbfounded and shocked. We looked at each other in disbelief. The officers yelled at us not to look at each other. We knew immediately that we were going to be some of the many victims of police harassment, but we had no idea it was going to escalate to police brutality.

We told them we were not carrying drugs, nor were we under this influence of them. They looked quite frustrated and responded, “We’re going to ask you one more time, and you better give us the right answer. Where are the drugs?!” We repeated to them that we did not have any drugs. They just chuckled.

This is the moment when Mariana asked the officers, “Why are you messing with us? We were just walking home. This is bullshit!” The officers then grabbed her by the arm and threw her to the ground and cuffed her. Now, she did raise her voice with an attitude, but it was under the anger of the harassment we were enduring. These police officers were not women, but full-grown men, and XXXXX is only about 5’1” and 105 pounds.

Frank and I both yelled, “Hey, what did you do that for?! You didn’t have to do that!” That is when I was grabbed and cuffed. After I was cuffed, Frank was tackled to the ground and cuffed. While he was on the ground, he said, “Look at how little those girls are compared to you! You guys are punks and should pick on someone your own size!” This is the moment when Frank was punched and kicked by both officers a few times. Mariana and I were yelling at them to stop, and they eventually did.

After all of this, the officers told us that they had to use force because we were “resisting arrest,” but we were not formally arrested and our rights were never read to us. At this time all three of us were minors, and, if we were arrested, our parents should have been called, but they were not. We all just got dropped off at home. The next day Mariana and I found out from Frank (he was the last to be dropped off) that he was pepper-sprayed in the eyes before he was dropped off on the sidewalk a block from his house.

We were left with minor injuries: a sore arm for me, a scraped arm and elbow for Mariana, and small bruises, scratches on the face from pavement, and irritated eyes for Frank. We were also left with a distrust of police, who are supposed to protect civilians and the community.

All three of us told our parents, but their responses were to do nothing, either out of fear of the police or fear no one would believe us. Unfortunately, we never caught the names or badge numbers of the officers. This fact still haunts us today, the fact that we never thought to look at the badges and we cannot bring these particular officers to justice. I am not asking you to go on a manhunt for these vicious police officers. I know it would be virtually impossible to catch them because we failed to obtain their names and badge numbers. But I am asking you to realize that these kinds of situations are not only happening in big cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco. It has happened in your city, and it probably still is because these officers are more than likely still on patrol. I am also asking you to be strict with those officers who have done this and have been caught. Bring them to justice and help bring peace to their victims. Thank you very much for your time.

Sincerely,

XXXXX XXXXX

Wagner goes to prison

Former Troop 31 scoutmaster Gregory Wagner has led his last oath about moral straightness. The confessed child molester was sentenced to 23 years and 4 months in prison Friday, at an emotional sentencing hearing that had previously been delayed several times.

"It's important not only that justice be done, but that it be seen to be done," said Judge Diane Northway, as parents of former troop members looked on.

Northway said Wagner deserved harsh treatment because he had abused a position of authority to abuse his victims Northway also credited David Grewal and his family for speaking articulately about the impact of Wagner's crimes. Grewal was the first of Wagner's victims to step forward -- two others also filed charges in this case -- and he helped police nab Wagner with a pretext call. Grewal said he was motivated by those who helped put an end to the Boston Archdiocese's coverup of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.

(Northway also complimented Grewal on his recent wedding, which, as one of his friends observed, means that is now a matter of California law that he married the right woman).

Kevin Richlin, a detective with the D.A.'s office who specializes in computer forensics, testified in uncomfortable detail about the password-protected child pornography on Wagner's computer. The files had been accessed as recently as April 9 of last year and deleted as late as Aug. 22, which district attorney Kim Connors used effectively to cast doubt on defense attorney James Blackman's argument that Wagner's behavior was a thing of the past.

Blackman, who also argued that the abuse "was mutual and voluntary" and may have had nothing to do with the victim's depression, got some deservedly cold stares from the families of troop members as he left the courtroom. I wish him luck in being able to either sleep at night or look at himself in the mirror.

By statute, Wagner will be eligible for parole halfway through the sentence.

Even the Town Crier will be there

Six months after his confession to nine counts of child molestation, Troop 31 scoutmaster Gregory Allen Wagner will go to jail in approximately 12 hours. Everyone is encouraged to come support those who put the former behind bars.

Santa Clara County Hall of Justice
190 W. Hedding (see directions)
Department 40, Judge Diane Northway
1:30 p.m.

Damn the torpedoes

Somebody forgot to tell the Valley Transportation Authority that the sales tax they were counting on for tens of millions of dollars a year failed miserably on Tuesday.

Fresh off the stunning defeat of Measure A, a business-backed half-cent sales tax for the county that the agency was implicitly counting on to fund projects it had (over)promised voters in 2000, the VTA is going ahead with plans for BART-to-San-Jose and other projects as if the tax had passed.

"They're mad," said Mountain Vice Mayor Greg Perry, the guy who gets picked last for the team whenever the VTA board gets together for barbecues.

Tonight, at a meeting of a five-member task force in Mountain View City Hall, the usual parade of critics from all over the county requested the agency consider a contingency plan, just in case $80 million a year in new revenues do not magically appear.

County Supervisor Liz Kniss -- who warned before the election that the misguided BART project would survive a Measure A defeat but county social services wouldn't -- said VTA is legally obligated to deliver all of the projects it promised in 2000, including BART to San Jose and Santa Clara. This presents a bit of a problem, because:

a) VTA is billions of dollars short of the money it needs to do this.

b) Many of the details of the BART plan are ridiculous.

Aside from being built on custom-gauge rail with custom-built cars that drive up costs and slow down construction and repairs, the plans for the BART extension will require an incredibly expensive tunnel under downtown San Jose. That portion of the line will cost so much and carry so few riders that the agency has had to exclude it from its application for federal funding. At the same time, the agency is building the line from the southern end first, meaning that -- in the event levelheadedness ever makes a comeback on the VTA board -- building a shorter, more efficient line will still not be possible.

Ironically, the failure of the only transit tax I've ever voted against won't stop the reason I voted against it, but will eliminate county social services that I support. For all of you who are in the same boat, I suppose now would be a good time for us to open our wallets for charity.

Silent majority silent

The Los Altos Hills Town Council (which, by the way, is the body's official name despite the fact that Los Altos Hills is technically a city) voted tonight to move forward with a redistricting proposal that officials from local school boards are calling selfish.

"Fuck 'em," said a certain outgoing Mountain View-Los Altos high school district superintendent, who added some other more relevant things that were way less interesting.

The Town Council had given the Los Altos elementary school district board until this week to agree to a compromise proposal that would have given control of at least part of the Bullis site to Bullis Charter School. The final version of the redistricting resolution maintains the boundaries that send some Hills kids to Gunn High School and others to Los Altos High School -- LAHS supporters had attacked the earlier plan to send all kids to Gunn as racist.

The plan requires special legislation and is sure to face a court challenge. If it goes through, the two local elementary school districts (Los Altos and Palo Alto Unified) will lose a fair amount of property tax revenue, but, by pretty much any standard, they are likely to continue to do just fine. Ultimately, the people likely hurt worst by redistricting will be Los Altos Hills kids themselves, who are now going to grow up in even more of a bubble than they already do.

Town Crier: Parade not fabulous

Two weeks after the Town Crier dedicated three entire pages to its coverage of the Pet Parade, the largest political demonstration in Los Altos history got six paragraphs and a small photo. The one person quoted in the article is Police Chief Bob Lacey, whose 19 officers stood around and did little other than cost thousands of dollars to the city and the groups involved.

Despite regular editorials and guest columns complaining about the gayness of the parade, editor Bruce Barton still had to lobby publisher/Republican activist Paul Nyberg to get any coverage of the event in the paper. Luckily, Nyberg's worst fears about the parade turned out not to be true. According to the story:

"Festivities were peaceful and free of the flamboyant costumes that have marked other gay parades."

Hopefully we can all go back to concentrating on unifying the community via the annual festival of lights parades, which features characters from Alice and Wonderland and all sorts of other children's stories, or perhaps the LAHS Homecoming parade, in which those high schoolers not in tuxes often march half-naked or in drag.

The superintendent's new clothes

Mountain View-Whisman is scrapping its simple, understated logo in favor of one that does a better job of celebrating the virtues of kinetic energy and yo-yos. See if you can tell which is which.

An extra prize to anyone who guesses the amount of resources (counting the value of the volunteer work) spent designing the new one.

"The moon is in the Seventh House"

That's right, several years after the millenium, the Age of Aquarius is finally dawning in Los Altos. Rainbow flags lined downtown streets today, as 20 members of the LAHS Gay Straight Alliance and hundreds of supporters marched through downtown. The parade, grudgingly approved by the Los Altos City Council, is believed to be (by me) the largest political demonstration in the city's history.

"In the city council's face," said MVLA superintendent Rich Fischer, one of many public officials to march or ride in the parade.

The supportive crowd, much like the partygoers in the first episode of the Boondocks, clapped politely, which made the police presence seem a little ridiculous. The only opposition I noticed along the route was a man oblivious to irony who held a sign that read, "Parading our differences does not unite us." Not clear whether he thought his sign was accomplishing that. Of course, this man was not alone. After all, Christian pet-owning high school athletes already have three parades to unite them.

Speaking of Christians: Big points for Foothills Congregational Church, which had dozens of members marching together in the parade to support the LAHS Gay-Straight Alliance. Poor performance, meanwhile, by the folks holding the sign reading "Homosexuality is Sin." According to the Palo Alto Daily, the man drove all the way down from Placerville to protest the parade.

I guess it's better for them to be trying to ruin parades instead of military funerals, but if they're such good Christians, shouldn't they have been in church?

(UPDATE: The Mercury and the Chronicle have both posted stories about the event on their Web sites. Funny how the Chronicle only covers Santa Clara County when there is a story about gay pride.)

VIPs of the world unite

For some reason, the Mountain View City Council's defense of the free VIP tickets members get to Shoreline Amphitheatre looks even sillier when someone else tries to make the exact same argument.

In this case, it's Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, who accepted free ringside boxing seats from the Nevada Athletic Commission at the same time the agency was lobbying him against federal regulation of Nevada's second-dirtiest industry.

As a sidenote, I might as well take this opportunity to point out that Council member Mike Kasperzak was spotted "seeing how the parking [was] handled" at the Jimmy Buffett concert on April 25, rather than attending that night's city council meeting.

I mean, if you can't point that stuff out on a blog, what's the point of having one?

Evil on the run across the nation

Dear readers,

That's right, both of you.

I have just returned from the Eastern Seaboard, where I celebrated Andy's graduation from Brown (which, as I learned, is an Ivy League school) and battled with the twin evils of sobriety and celibacy. I apologize for the lack of posting recently, but promise to make up for it in the coming weeks, particularly after quitting my job.

In the meantime, chew on these two articles from the New York Times,

The first details the military's plans to dismiss the murders of dozens of innocent Iraqi civilians (and the subsequent cover-up) as the work of a few bad apples in the Marine Corps. An article in the very same issue describes the acquittal (on most charges) of a soldier who admitted to using a dog to torture prisoners at Abu Ghraib, saying he was only acting within the guidelines established by military commaders.

Makes you long for the days before people stopped thinking "I was just following orders" was not an excuse for committing war crimes.

All the news that's fit to reprint

The Mercury News must really be hurting for local content. A day after running a story from the Palo Alto Daily News about a sex assault on Del Medio Avenue in Mountain View , the paper played up the story by running it word for word the exact same story again.

The only difference you can tell on the Web is that the editors decided after running the story twice they ought to give a byline to Luke Stangel (a Daily News reporter who apparently works for a no-longer-existent company called Knight Ridder). The real reason is that they either forgot or neglected to run the suspect sketch on Thursday, despite it being the main point of the story.

(Lacking a scanner, I have to ask you guys to trust me on this one).

A longer and slightly different account appeared in the Voice.

"There is a special place in hell for all of them."

Karen Meredith over at Gold Star Mother Speaks Out meets Richard Perle at a memorial for dead soldiers and confirms the man has no soul.

Good news, everyone!

The results are in, and everything is swell in Mountain View. A city-sponsored survey (cost: $25,000) shows that 96.5% of residents are either "somewhat satisfied" or "very satisfied."

Some other highlights from the report (available on-line here):

• People in households earning less than $20,000 a year are, on average, less satisfied than everyone else.
• Men feel safer walking at night than women do. Men also make up 52.5% of the city's population, plus or minus 4.5%.
• 26% of residents do not know where Cuesta Park Annex is.
• 63% of residents, counting the "probably yes" crowd, support a half-cent sales tax to bring BART-to-San-Jose. I wonder if they realize it won't be coming through Mountain View.

One interesting part of the report documents the distribution of household incomes (page 73). Assuming the numbers are statistically significant (please feel free to check my math) and the number of people who decline to report are evenly distributed, it appears that Mountain View's middle class has shrunk since the 2000 census. The number of households earning under $40k appears to be about the same. There are substantially fewer people in the next few income brackets, while the number of people earning above $120k has increased quite a bit.

It would be nice to think that all those middle class people simply got rich, but I have a feeling they just got priced out of the housing market and moved to Tracy.

Suck it, Will

Less than 24 hours after Will Evans (of the Center for Investigative Reporting fame) and I were complaining that nobody had ever leaked us any kind of classified information, I get an envelope slipped under the door at the office, containing a confidential NASA engineering analysis of the costs of demolishing Hangar One.

(See what you get for telling me not to write a "Know your Daily News reporters" post).

The case against Measure A

Mercury News columnist Scott Herhold lays out the most intelligent argument I've seen against Measure A, a nominally general tax for on the county's June ballot.

Anybody who has questions about the tax ought to the column, as well as this article in the San Jose Metro. They both make the argument against the tax that opponents should be making -- it is a dishonest attempt to build an expensive and inefficient BART extension to downtown San Jose that may ultimately be bad for transit riders.

At the same time, even Herhold's column does a much job of making the case for it than any of those silly voice-over commercials you see during the A's games -- it may be the only way to build what could be an important piece of infrastructure for a developing area of the county.

It would be nice to see both sides put those arguments out there and see what the public thinks. Instead, the they are spending all their energy making straw-man arguments and attacking each others' credibility.

This is the first tax election I've covered, and I have to say I am extremely disappointed in the way the process works.

Unemployment in Los Altos

I'm sure I already have bad karma just for thinking there might be a joke worth making about this topic, the subject of the cover story in this week's Town Crier.

Have fun waiting in line with the rest of the poor people

Organizers of what is believed to be the largest political demonstration in the city's history do some shameless but probably well-deserved self-patting of their respective backs after successfuly pulling off a huge march and rally for immigrant rights.

Oscar Garcia, whose rousing speech punctuated the event, jubilantly compared the rally to the Holiday Tree lighting ceremony. Maria Marroquin, director of the Day Worker Center, promised the movement would futilely attempt to make change at the ballot box, saying, "Today, we march. Tomorrow, we vote."

Good luck with that.

Who's afraid of Aaron Katz?

Everybody, it turns out. The Saratoga lawyer has already made more than a quarter-mil suing hospital and school districts on behalf of disenfranchised absentee landlords throughout California. Now Foothill-De Anza looks like it will be his next target as he seeks to prove either that bond measures and parcel taxes are somehow fundamentally different than other elections, or, barring that, get paid a lot of money just to shut up about it.

Maybe Katz really is a money-grubber who specializes in holding public agencies hostage. Maybe the income from all his rental properties is just not enough pay for his crusade, and that he actually needed the $200k from El Camino to keep fighting for his rights elsewhere. Who knows.

Even the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, named for the man behind Prop. 13 and perhaps the most famous crank in California history, says the law is against Katz. But the settlement with the hospital district doesn't diminish the potential ramifications of his argument. Even if he were to win only one of his cases, he could force a huge change in tax law.

One step at a time

"The Los Altos City Council early today agreed to allow gay teens to walk through the city's downtown."

This actually is a bigger deal than you might think, considering the council once passed a law targeted at keeping Latinos from standing on the sidewalk and little kids from selling lemonade.

UPDATE: Lauren McSherry points out that Los Altos Hills has its own anti-lemonade ordinance, one that has not been repealed or cost the city a $60,000 settlement.

$10,000,000

As in ten million dollars. That's how much concert promoter Live Nation is paying the city of Mountain View to settle a racketeering lawsuit over accounting practices at Shoreline Amphitheatre.

Details of the settlement came out after Tuesday night's council meeting. In addition to the lump sum, the two sides are signing a new lease that pays the city $1.8 million in annual base rent. The city also expects to get up to $1.3 million from its insurance company, since Clear Channel's original lawsuit (which does not look like it was such a good idea right now) revolved around safety issues.

The settlement money will go in part to cover the costs of the case. The city spent more than $4 million on this over the last three years, an incredible amount compared to other agencies who have fought with Clear Channel. The cost was mainly in legal fees ($3.1 million and counting), but it also included things like $200,000 in copying charges, which gives you a pretty good idea of the scale of the case.

As for what happens with the other $5-$6 million (which appears to be the back rent the city was claiming minus any damages or fees) now might be a good time to jump in with those hare-brained schemes you've been cooking up. My guess: the city spends it on something entirely reasonable and boring, like covering health benefits for retired city employees.

Now it's on to the next big story at Shoreline: why do people think it's cool to wear one band's t-shirt to another band's concert? I wouldn't wear a Red Sox shirt to watch the A's play the Mariners, why are you wearing a Bon Jovi t-shirt to a Journey concert? (Yes, I go to Journey concerts).

Thank you for trying to save my life. Here are some flowers.

I want you to imagine for a second that Carl's Jr. has hired Jerry Bruckheimer to make a commercial? Here's the script.

Jun Munakata, sitting at the drive-thru window, sees a car slam into a tree across the street, and then catch on fire. As the clerk calls 911, Munakata sprints across El Camino Real and yanks the man from his car moments before it explodes.

The driver has a different version of events -- he says he was not drinking and exited the car under his own power -- but he says he's grateful for Munakata's help. In any case, it was hard not to think of Kitty Genovese when I heard about all the people who stood around watching and doing nothing.

Asshole sells out

And I don't mean that in a bad way... Saratoga lawyer Aaron Katz has dropped his crusade on behalf of the rights of absentee landlords, taking $200,000 of El Camino Hospital's money and running to sue someone else instead. The gist of his argument is that elections for parcel taxes and bond measures are inherently unconstitutional because they allow residents rather than property owners to vote on issues that affect property.

If you thought that dispute had been settled by centuries' worth of advances in the field of voting rights, you're not alone. Nor are you right, judging from Superior Court Judge Kevin McKenney's refusal to throw the case out and risk being overturned on appeal. Katz still has cases pending against Mountain View-Whisman and two other school districts. In his e-mail quoted at the end of the Voice article linked above, he appears to threaten a suit against Foothill-De Anza.

The two sides aren't saying how they arrived at $200,000 in this case. Clearly, Katz's suit was costing the hospital an order of magnitude more than that. However, since he represents himself, it's difficult to figure his legal bills, or his tax liability, were anywhere close to this high. All I can say is that I hope one day somebody offers me $200,000 just to leave them alone.

The old new thing

SGI, the company that has donated millions of dollars to local non-profits, announced that it had filed for bankruptcy Monday. CEO Dennis McKenna told the Mercury News that the filing wouldn't change anything at the company, which would continue to operate business as usual.

Uh oh.

I sense there's some kind of Jurassic Park-related joke here, you know, something about recreating an extinct species from fossilized DNA and then Jeff Goldblum almost getting eaten.

Cam's revenge

After a hate-crime attack against him and his Jewish roomate last fall, Cam Matthews and his family have turned into activists.

The case has echoes of the beating of Angel Santuario, who was pummeled outside a gay bar by three out-of-town construction workers who were putting in the new track at Los Altos High School. Santuario is straight. Matthews is a goy. From the Merc story yesterday:

"Everybody in the community is a potential hate-crime victim,'' Tracy Matthews, 57, told the crowd. "Even if you are not part of a recognized target group, you're not safe. Our son Cameron is not Jewish, but that didn't protect him from an anti-Semitic attack. We have to make it clear that we do not tolerate hate crimes against anyone.''

The two incidents demonstrate the logic behind hate crime legislation: Theoretically, Cam (and his roommate) and Angel were not the only intended victims. The attackers were also seeking, in one way or another, to intimidate every member of a given class of people. Whether or not Cam and Angel are members of that class is almost beside the point.

But where will us journalists live?

As new residents are moving into the new (pick one) efficiency studios/single-room-occupancy/subsidized housing project at San Antonio Place, the Mountain View City Council is prepared to eliminate the city's affordable housing tax.

The timing probably could have been better for Vice Mayor Greg Perry's proposal, which would eliminate a fee charged to developers (3% of the total sales price of the project) and direct most of it (2 of those 3 percentage points) to an existing fund for park development. Tuesday night, the council will also discuss what to do with millions of dollars currently in the affordable housing fund.

Perry's argument is that the the city's so-called Below Market Rate program gives a huge subsidy to relatively few people without increasing the overall supply of housing. He appears to have the four votes he needs for his proposal, but will face strong opposition from other council members and housing advocates, who say BMR or "inclusionary zoning" is an important way to guarantee that at least a few low-wage workers will always have a place in the community. One, after hearing about Perry's proposal, said only, "That's awful."

The fighting Dorosti brothers

Good thing Cyrus Dorosti is graduating -- he might not have enough working fingers left for any more national championship rings.

Cy's Cal team upset favored BYU at Stanford yesterday, clinching their third consecutive USA Rugby title and bringing Cy's collegiate career to a glorious and merciful end while his body is still sort of intact.

Here's a recent article in the Daily Cal, headlined, "Cyrus the Great," detailing the Dorostis legendarily high tolerance for pain and suffering. My favorite part is how he went through his first two years on the team without telling the coach that he had been observing Ramadan and going without food or water. The top knuckles on his hands are all bent from snapped tendons, he wears ankle braces every time he plays anything, and his shoulder is messed up so badly that he couldn't even raise his arms over his head at the closing whistle Saturday.

Meanwhile, Cy's older brother Arcia is travelling with his Mission teammates to South Carolina in two weeks to play for the somewhat less prestigious and more alcohol-based USA Rugby Championship at the Division III level. In contrast with Cal, the Mission team has no coach (the program guide actually lists the coach as "uncoachable") and is sponsored by Fred's Place of Mountain View, "The last neighborhood bar where everybody knows your shame." That of course doesn't stop Arcia from taking it very seriously.

A great line by sports writer Vytas Mazeika in today's Daily News, which features the Mission team in an article that liberally quotes the older Dorosti: "The only thing that may match the intensity of the tournament is the drinking that follows it."

Having seen these guys drink, I figure it must be one hell of a tournament.

UPDATE: Mission won their semifinal match with a team from Toledo, Ohio today in South Carolina, on a missed point-blank kick as Arcia prayed and time expired. After they recover from their hangovers, they will travel to San Diego June 3 to play for the Division III national championship against a team from Boston.

Citizen Neal?

The army needs Pat Neal a lot more than it needs $8,000 right now. Unfortunately, there are too few people like him in the military to realize that, and barring further complications,* Pat could be coming home from Fort Benning this month after refusing to sign away his right to an improperly offered $8,000 signing bonus. In the process, he will be walking away from a commission as a second lieutenant and what would likely have been an accomplished career as an infantry officer.

Apparently, military recruiters were offering the signing bonuses despite a section of U.S. code apparently prohibits the army from paying signing bonuses to officers. The day before OCS graduation this last Thursday, the Army circulated a memo to the 115 officer candidates who had made it through the months of training, an official notification that they would not receive their promised bonuses. Their signature was a condition of graduation. 114 of the officer candidates signed it. Pat called his lawyer. Four days later, he is in a work detail, awaiting some resolution that will most likely lead to a voiding of his contract and a one-way trip home.

It is unclear whether the army ever intended to pay the bonuses at all, or, whether recruiters continued to offer bonuses once they knew they could not do so -- I haven't been able to reach anybody at the local recruiting offices yet. Many of the officer candidates who were promised a signing bonus may have passed up college loan repayments in doing so. In any case, the Army is about to lose a great man, and the local chapter of the Los Altos Water Polo Alumni Association is about to get one back.

(Apologies to any Los Charros patrons whom I disturbed Friday night by yelling about this).

UPDATE 5/19: MESSAGE RECEIVED FROM PAT THIS MORNING READS AS FOLLOWS:

THINGS MARCH ONWARD - THE COLONEL BRIEFED ME YESTERDAY THAT I'M BEING RECOMMENDED FOR AN HONORABLE DISCHARGE AND SHOULD BE ABOUT TO START OUTPROCESSING. SO HOPEFULLY I GET HOME MID NEXT WEEK.

(DOESN'T IT LOOK MORE OFFICIAL IN ALL CAPS?)

UPDATE 7/4: THERE HAVE BEEN MANY FURTHER COMPLICATIONS. A JULY 17 RETURN NOW LOOKS MORE LIKELY TO BE IN LATE SEPTEMBER, MONTHS AFTER THE ISSUE CAME TO LIGHT.

Town Crier: Parade idea is totally gay

Tortured logic in the award-winning editorial pages of this week's Town Crier argues that a planned gay pride parade is unnecessarily divisive for a community that already has an annual Homecoming parade to bring it together (except for the private school kids).

Still smarting from criticism over its decision to proclaim a ban on all offensive proclamations, most notably those regarding the extent to which high school students should be embarrassed about their sexuality, the Los Altos City Council is now under pressure to approve a June parade proposal. According to the Mercury, offers of support have poured in from all over, further embarrassing a city (and an anonymous editorial writer) that already had much to be ashamed of.

I'm not sure how the vote will go, but the Mormon mayor credited with orchestrating the rejection and subsequent prohibition of gay pride proclamations said that Los Altos is so tolerant that it doesn't need a parade.

Said Ron Packard:

The citizens of Los Altos are highly educated and already extremely tolerant and respectful of others, regardless of race, religion or sexual orientation.

Of course, we still hate gays and Mexicans, and people who celebrate Halloween.

Wagner sentencing delayed again

Apparently, judges are allowed to take a vacation from time to time. As a result, Gregory Wagner gets to spend a few more weeks of his life bumping into the parents of the children he molested.

Wagner's lawyer James Blackman has since apologized for referring to those children, now adults, as "so-called victims" after a pre-sentencing hearing in March. Of course, it was the kind of non-apology apology that people give when they are trying to maintain a bargaining position that precludes from actually saying they're sorry, or, if they are, they're only sorry that people are taking what they said the wrong way.

The sentencing hearing has already been delayed several times. The new date is June 9th, which Wagner had not wanted because it happens to be his daughter's birthday. You have to feel bad for the guy's children, and it's understandable not to want your daughter's birthday to always be the day her father was sent to jail for molesting children. Given the lack of influence a confessed criminal has over his sentencing date, this is just another of the many, many good reasons not to molest children in the first place.

Hangar One food fight

Very amusingly immature debate going on over at the Merc's Web site, where they're taking a poll on what people want done with Hangar One. "Save it" has a commanding lead right now, perhaps in part because of an e-mail going around to the Save Hangar One Committee imploring people to vote.

Scott Herhold, writing on behalf of the preservationists, compares the hangar to Ellis Island and likens the other side to the Taliban.

Patty Fisher, declaring herself "de facto torch bearer for the Hangar One demolition squad," seems to call Herhold predictable and boring, labels the Hangar a monstrosity and says ideas for preserving it are "mere fantasies."

Fun stuff, though I still think Mike Cassidy had the best column of the week. It was about time somebody called out the Black Eyed Peas ("What you gon' do with all that breast, all that breast inside that shirt") for their ridiculous lack of effort to write intelligent lyrics. Plus, Cassidy had the good sense to quote an expert in terrible writing and acting uncool.

Classing up Shoreline

Clear Channel spin-off LiveNation has made some improvements to Shoreline Amphitheatre (including knocking the price of beers down from $6 to $5) in anticipation of bringing in more acts this year after a number of pretty subpar seasons.

One of the charges in the City of Mountain View's lawsuit is that Clear Channel subsidiary Bill Graham Presents threatened to divert shows to other amphitheatres if it didn't get permission to sell the naming rights to the venue. This seems to fit in well with other local landlords' experience with BGP. San Francisco's Warfield is suing the company for selling naming rights it didn't own, making good on a threat to "fuck that place up" in order to punish the owners for not renewing the company's lease. In Concord, BGP announced that a new lease agreement that included the naming rights of the Concord Pavilion would lead directly to more shows, (none more important The Boss).

BGP/LiveNation is obivously going to direct shows to places where it's most profitable for them, but diverting shows in order to hold public agencies hostage is a serious matter. The company says that most of the fluctuation in the number of concerts is simply reflective of the status of the concert industry nationwide. Unfortunately, as the two sides near a settlement, any evidence (or lack thereof) of intentional wrongdoing at the amphitheater is likely to remain confidential. The city has made no indication as to what they're going to do with the money.

One interesting feature of the concert schedule (which is not complete yet) is none of the shows sponsored by Clear Channel-owned radio stations (KMEL, KUFX) appear to be on the schedule. According to the city's original audit, the company was holding these so-called four-wall shows without authorization and then sending all the revenue to the station so that it did not have to report it or pay a percentage of it to the city. This means more driving for the dozens of us who are vaguely interested in seeing the remnants of the Greg Kihn band perform live again this year.

Can we find some way to blame this on St. Francis?

Los Altos High students are rediscovering the joys of white collar drugs, with a little help from their parents. There are a few things I don't like about the article -- not a single kid is interviewed, it doesn't mention private schools where the problem is surely worse, the football coach quit because his assistant coach was fired for badmouthing players and then failing to apologize -- but, in my experience as a coach there, the gist of the story is dead-on, particularly the assessment that parents of sophomores and juniors are covering for their kids.

Scooped by an ad

At least we can be proud of the separation between advertising and editorial.

Last week's Voice broke the story that the Navy had taken the official position that it intended to tear down Hangar One. Unfortunately for those of us who have some modicum of pride in our newsgathering abilities, this story was broken not in the news section but in a legal notice. That's right, an advertisement.

The public has been waiting for this story for nearly a year, but no one noticed the ad until members of the Save Hangar One Committee got wind of it. Steve Williams reprinted the text of the ad on his blog Moffett Users, and the Daily News published a story today that the Merc also carried. (I was going to post on this earlier but had my fingers crossed that the competition was not on the same listservers).

This is the first time in my career (or probably anyone else's) that I have ever lost out on a story to a paid advertisement. It is probably a good time to be quitting the profession.

Deli stories

Three or four nights a year, Mr. Vaughn would show up at LAHS wrestling matches, grab the microphone, and make up nicknames for high school kids he had never met. These name weren't particularly creative -- I was "Oscar Mayer," our 215-pounder was "Mack Diesel." Whether he noticed it or not, the black kids on the teams always seemed to have race-based nicknames -- Willie "Night Train" Howard, Amir "Dark Prince" Noble, Tony "Lights Out" Suber.

Mr. Vaughn spent his mornings sitting outside the Italian deli, which happened to be owned by wrestling coach Nick Testa, who kept all the team trophies behind the counter. Last Friday, Jesse Lewin and I decided to see what all the fuss was about and take up Mr. Vaughn's old post.

We got some free shirts out of the deal, made the Town Crier's Sidewalk Interview and reminisced about favorite deli-related moments. Mine has to be when Bubba, in the middle of a lunch rush, loudly asked whether employee Arcia Dorosti was "the one with the 14-year-old girlfriend." (He was). Others include the day Nick sold the deli and gave away all the old trophies. I thought it would be cool walking through downtown Los Altos carrying a trophy, even if it was for something I had done in high school. For some reason, the girl lying in the park in a bikini did not seem to agree with me.

Her loss, I suppose.

Anyway, with the successful completion of Deli Day, two trips down Adobe Creek, and one embarrassing experience getting lit up on the court by a group of middle-aged Mormons, I fear I am slowly completing the list of clean Los Altos fun that doesn't involve high school water polo. I have a few more months left before I leave. Any suggestions?

A nation of mercy

Just got back from watching United 93, which unfortunately is at odds with the Bush Administration's official line on the military response to the hijackings Mark Bingham, was a Cal rugby player who joined other passengers on United Flight 93 in storming the cockpit.

In a statement to the national press after the jury in the Zacarias Moussaoui trial found that "the missing hijacker" was eligible for the death penalty, Hoagland said that she did not believe Moussaoui should be put to death, despite her support for the death penalty. She said:

"We in America can now demonstrate that we are a nation of mercy, as well as a nation of laws and justice. We've already demonstrated our justice by allowing him to condemn himself out of his own mouth. And if we can transcend the kind of hatred he has shown toward us by allowing him to live, we will have given him a higher standard by which to live."

Ask what you can not do for your country.

Los Altos has chickened out on its plan to build a community pool complex, instead going ahead with plans for a 25y x 25m pool that is even smaller than the LAHS pool. It will leave enough room for lap swimmers but will likely squeeze out children, the elderly and less experienced swimmers.

The Rosita neighborhood has been trying to kill this plan for years, even though a pool complex would have been a much better community (and neighborhood) asset than the municipal operations center that was moved to make way for it. But this isn't really about community. Like most of Los Altos politics, this is about people wanting to be left alone to enjoy their money.
The Palo Alto Daily News quoted Mayor Ron Packard's comments as he cast the deciding vote:

I feel that any one neighborhood can only absorb so much burden for the common good of the community. ... I feel like that neighborhood has reached that limit, even with one pool.

Kennedy's inaugural address it isn't.

Los Altos politics: "Sanity amid a din of chaos"

A letter writer to the Town Crier praises the courage of the Los Altos City Council for passing an ordinance banning future proclamations on issues the Mayor finds offensive. I'll be honest, when the Gay Straight Alliance was founded my senior year at LAHS, their tactics came off as somewhat crude. The president, channeling Jesse Jackson without the rhymes, posted fliers with all sorts of offensive slurs: "We have been called pillow-biters..."

I can see the council's reasons for not wanting to pass a "Gay Pride Day" proclamation. Los Altos is, after all, Bigotville, USA. But the council easily could have ignored the students' request with no further action or recognized the organization without declaring "Gay Pride Day." Instead, officials went out of their way to send a message to the high school students who already fairly ostracized to keep their heads down. I just don't see how that counts as being brave.

A card for my colleagues

I couldn't find a "Congratulations on your new boss" card anywhere on-line, but I did come upon a message which I think does a good job of conveying my feelings for the staffs of the San Jose Mercury and the Palo Alto Daily News.

Earlier this afternoon, they officially learned that they would be working (or perhaps not working) for new owner MediaNews, which apparently had run out of papers to ruin and felt like testing the government's stomach for antitrust cases. Soon, the paper CEO Dean Singleton called "the crown jewel" of Knight Ridder (hint: he wasn't talking about the Daily) will be another notch in the company's bedpost, right along with the Berkshire Eagle, the Oakland Tribune, the Fremont Argus, the Houston Post (R.I.P.) and the San Mateo County Times. After buying the Times, MediaNews the company forced all of the paper's editorial employees to resign, rehired only 75 percent of them and paid them at reduced salaries.

There was much celebrating at the Palo Alto Weekly offices today for breaking the story this morning, which again reminded me how little readers care anymore about who has a story first. I'm not saying I wouldn't have done it myself, but reporters' compulsion to pat themselves on the back for being the first to publish something is similar to all the hand-wringing over the sale of KR, in that we overestimate how much readers care about it.

As the Economist wrote about Katie Couric's jump to the CBS Evening News, in this week's feature story on the new participatory form of media:

Those in other countries, as well as Americans under 30, may be forgiven for thinking that a news story about a newscaster is just a spectacular bout of navel-gazing. Of course it is...

On the other hand, "Oooh, look at me, I read the Economist!"

The Hills are alive

A group of Los Altos Hills residents claiming to be a silent majority opposed to redrawing school district boundaries packed the inappropriately-named multipurpose room at Bullis Elementary Monday night.

The folks who want to create what would be an all-white district in Los Altos Hills clearly have a couple of strategic problems on their hands, particularly that it's difficult to argue with a group that says it represents a silent majority. Behave yourselves, as redistricting proponents did for most of the meeting Monday, and you appear to be outnumbered. Try to yell louder, as they did towards the end (and in their e-mails to me), and you've justified your opponents claims of intimidation.

If the negotiations fall apart and the redistricting plan does wind up going through, look for Mountain View-Los Altos High School officials to "play the race card, big-time," as one told me last night. They might have a point -- in seven years at Bullis, I met one Latino student, and, not knowing the difference, assumed he was black.

Everybody hates El Camino Hospital

State Assembly member Sally Lieber announced Friday she is sponsoring legislation that will force El Camino Hospital to operate more like the public agency that it is. Critics said that is inappropriate to write laws specific to a single agency, and hospital officials dismissed it as the work of the union.

Usually close-mouthed Jon Friedenberg -- who appears to have usurped Judy Twitchell's role as hospital spokesperson after her antagonistic behavior towards an unnamed reporter resulted in a public records lawsuit against the hospital -- was apparently spouting off to reporters during Lieber's press conference Friday.

As the Daily News wrote yesterday:

"A hospital spokesperson said Lieber was simply beholden to unions and her proposed legislation was simply a union tactic."

True on both counts, perhaps, but that doesn't really have anything to do with the issue. Just because all the people allied against the hospital (at this point that includes SEIU, Lieber and the Voice editorial pages) happen to be on the same side of other issues, that does not mean the hospital has the right to keep public records secret.

One note on the Daily story: Mountain View City Council member Laura Macias is quoted in support of the legislation. The story omits the fact that Macias is a paid staff member at Lieber's district office.

Wal-Mart gives woman heart attack

The letters section of this week's Voice is the most ironic in months. First state Senator Elaine Alquist claims that her bill to exempt manufacturers from state sales tax is in fact not a bill to exempt them from state sales tax. Then a woman forcefully argues that because she has a job, her son is incapable of biking or walking to school.

But by far my favorite is the last letter, in which a woman thanks the employees of the Mountain View Wal-Mart (her "favorite store on earth") for the actions of its employees during a heart attack she suffered last month. The employees called 911, asked her if she was okay, and then proceeded to sell her groceries while she was doubled over in pain.

Having never had a heart attack, I can't say this with any authority, but it seems that you may want to delay any purchasing decisions you can until after you've recovered, regardless of any great low prices you may have found. Given the tone of this leter, financial considerations did not seem to be a problem for this woman, but I imagine enough Wal-Mart has enough uninsured people among its millions customers that at least some of them may have to cut back the chotchkies they buy in order to cover the cost of an extended hospital visit.

"Zru the nait"

I walked into the Day Worker Center yesterday around 11:30 to find those workers who had not been hired yet (which tends to be the large majority) preparing for a May 1 demonstration by practicing the words to "God Bless America." Even though I will always associate this jingoist song with Pat Buchanan (who clearly did not know the words after winning the 1996 New Hampshire primary) and the Yankees, it was a rather touching scene.

The May 1 demonstration, part of a nationwide mobilization by immigrant groups, will include a march from the Day Worker center to City Hall via San Antonio Shopping Center. Some local businesses are already planning to close because so many of their workers will be attending. It is interesting to watch small businesses across the country accomodate their workers' freedom to assemble while larger ones are firing them.

Weekend update

May you all celebrate Earth Day by getting outdoors while managing to abstain from driving and red meat.

How are others celebrating? Well, a rather insensitive joke in one corner of the office is that every white person in Mountain View will come downtown tomorrow for the Spring Family Parade (which is sort of like the Boston marathon, except with more bare-assed Brazilian dancers and fewer men with bloody nipples -- seriously, there are bloody nipples), while much of the rest of the city heads to Los Altos High School for an AVID fundraiser.

More than you ever wanted to know about rafting Adobe Creek

He's reliable for a great number of things, but if I ever need someone to take a joke way too far, I am going to call Jesse Lewin, formerly of "Apple Computer," (by which he meant he sold iPods and fixed people's gadgets). Together with Minnesota Joe Monzel, who reprises Shelby Foote's role fro the Ken Burns "Civil War" series on PBS, Jesse compiled 11 minutes of footage of a recent trip from the O'Keefe pump station to Shoup Park.

The sequel is apparently coming soon.

(As long as you're checking inane videos on-line, here's a Nintendo RBI Baseball-based reenactment of Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, which does a good job of apportioning the blame to the Red Sox players responsible for the first time I ever saw my mother cry).

We can't all just get along

Apparently, calling for a spirit of cooperation is tantamount to political suicide in Los Altos Hills these days. That's why you won't find Los Altos Hills Mayor Breene Kerr's name on the letter circulated to local papers last week by his counterparts in Los Altos and Mountain View.

Reportedly, Los Altos Mayor Ron Packard requested Kerr sign the letter. Kerr indicated he had no problem with the letter's message, but that Bullis was still such a sore subject with Hills voters that he did not want to be making public statements in conjunction with lowland officials.

Let's just stick with Joe Hill for now

Now that the SEIU is suing El Camino Hospital for release of executive contracts and other information, it may be time to come up with a better chant than ""Try to sell our union short/See you in the labor court."

How SEIU comes up with its slogans, or knows when to instruct members to start marching in a circle, could be its own story. This one has a few things going for it, mainly that it touches on the hospital union's suspicion that its members could benefit materially from forcing the publicly-elected hospital board to act like, well, a publicly-elected board. On the other hand, it's a little disconnected in between the two lines, and I doubt this case will go to a labor court as opposed to a more regular kind.

The suit is similar to the lawsuit the Mountain View Voice brought against El Camino a year and a half ago, after disgruntled doctors suggested asking for executive contracts, knowing the inevitable refusal would make the hospital look bad.

The hospital, which said it needed to protect details of its operations for competitive reasons, eventually gave up virtually everything the paper requested, but refused to admit any obligation to do so. Instead, the district claimed that it has discretion in determining when it does and does not have to behave like a public agency.

Let's hope the SEIU case answers this question. It will be good civic education for all of us.

Judge Edwards and the 12 pool balls

Few people would turn down a nearly guaranteed seat in the U.S. Congress in order to work with troubled children on the wrong side of the Law. Judge Len Edwards did.

When political parties approached Edwards about running for the congressional seat his father Don held for more than three decades, he turned them down, choosing instead to continue his service as a juvenile court judge for Santa Clara County. Now that he is stepping down from the bench, he will spend his retirement travelling around the state helping other judges reform their courts with the goal of being as successful as he was.

The cover story in this week's Town Crier reminded me of a riddle he used to ask that nagged at me for years.

Back when I was in elementary school, on a camping trip with his son Don (who is memorialized by a tree and plaque on the front lawn of Bullis Purisssima school), Len posed us the following riddle. I think I was in high school by the time I figured it out, but I was so proud that I called him up to tell him the answer, hoping he'd be impressed with me. Here it is, in honor of perhaps the only deserving winner of the title of Los Altan of the Year.

You have twelve virtually identical twelve pool balls and one balance. The balls are all the same color and indistinguishable by touch or sight, but one of the twelve weighs slightly more or less than the others.

Using the balance only three times, can you identify the odd ball and whether it is heavier or lighter than the others?

Settlement in Shoreline case

The long-awaited (by me, at least) trial over Shoreline Amphitheatre may not happen at all, after weekend settlement talks brought the city and concert promoter Live Nation close to resolving the case.

Judge Randall Schneider announced Monday morning he would delay the trial until May 15 in order to give the sides more time to rewrite their lease agreement. Schneider, who had just emerged from a meeting with the lawyers on each side, said the parties had reached an agreement on the contentious issue of past rent.

How not to spend your weekend

A last-minute phone call from lawyers for LiveNation (formerly Clear Channel Entertainment) breathed life into seemingly dead settlement talks in the scandalous (!) case of fraud and accounting abuse at Shoreline Amphitheatre. The city council will hold a special, closed door meeting Friday afternoon to discuss its negotiating strategy and position.

We'll have an idea how those talks went by Monday morning, when the two sides are scheduled to meet in a San Jose courtroom and -- if a deal is not imminent -- proceed to trial.

City attorney Michael Martello said that it will take more than a weekend to settle the case, and that any settlement would involve renegotiating a complicated lease that is hundreds of pages long.

"He's going to get the paper he deserves."

Town Crier reporter Kathleen Acuff is quitting the paper in protest over publisher and Republican activist Paul Nyberg’s groveling apology of an editorial last week. The editorial followed Acuff's (still accurate) story that former City Council member King Lear was accusing the current council of violating the state's open meeting law, privately agreeing to tell a group of high school kids to go screw themselves (because at least that's less bad than being gay).

When someone with as few enemies as Kathleen Acuff leaves because the paper is afraid to cover the news, it’s a pretty good indication that your paper is afraid to cover the news. The Town Crier's other three news reporters have less than six months of combined experience, and are unlikely to fight Nyberg over all the good news the paper chooses to cover. Her departure further ensures that the only controversial reporting in the Town Crier will be in the sports section.

As long as Nyberg is apologizing, by the way, he ought to beg forgiveness from God and public for the paper’s disgraceful 2003 editorial backing the invasion of Iraq, particularly the use of a garbled sports cliché to justify the bombing of a third-world country. (The best offense is a good defense, not vice versa). If you think that’s bad, you’re right, first of all. But you also should have seen the print version, in which the last sentence was cut off.

Los Altos Hills taking ball, going home

A closed-door meeting yesterday between officials from all over ended boringly, according to this morning's Daily News, with Los Altos Hills mayor Breene Kerr telling a crowd of people who had nothing better to do than wait outside that there was a "reasonable chance for agreement" over the town's threat to form its own school district.

I suppose there might be a "reasonable chance" that The Heights Hills town council is serious about all of this, and is not just trying to annoy Los Altos Elementary into permanently reopening Bullis (which is just as decrepit and overly paved as it was when it was closed three years ago). But given the previous stunts apologists for my alma mater have tried, this looks like just another ploy.

Unfortunately, my father didn't fare quite well enough in last year's election to win a seat on the school board (you should have stuck to the talking points Dad). So, for the best analysis I have yet seen of this issue, we'll have to rely on the board's original message rejecting the application to form Bullis Charter School:

"Education is the child's right, not the parent's."

Fatality on Caltrain

Trains stopped at 7:30 this morning and are now "single-tracking" after a man reportedly jumped in front of a train at the southern end of the downtown station.

Caltrain's Web site says trains will be delayed 20 minutes each way until early afternoon. The San Mateo County Sherriff's office is investigating.