Oakland Focus News | Oakland News Online Blog

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com Oakland has a new set of taxes I think are much needed and should not be a massive burden on the citizens already hurt by job losses and the credit crunch. In a very cool mail-order voting style, which really gets those people who care about the issue to actually vote for it with a chance of passing, Oakland Measures C,D,F, and H all passed, a dramatic reversal over the revenue-increase killing outcome of many of the November choices, reflecting the then-worsening economy. Now, Oakland can and will tax the gross receipts of all "cannabis businesses" with a tax of about 1.8 percent which will raise over $200,000, on top of a new 14 percent hotel occupancy tax (high, yes) for the Chabot Space and Science Center and the Oakland Museum and the convention center; meanwhile Measure 00 was reduced, which I'm not cool about but it helped solve the deficit problem, and pr...

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! YouTube , Yahoo , MySpace , Metacafe , DailyMotion , Blip.tv , StupidVideos , Sclipo and Viddler Consistent followers of my videos and Oakland Focus Blog will r emember my coverage of the proposed 1100 Broadway building in downtown Oakland at the historic Key System Building site, as well as the terrific Rocky Rische-Baird-created mural at the corner. The 20-story structure is planned as a spec office building that will dramatically transform the center of Oakland and give the American President Lines (APL) office building across the street on Broadway a lovely sibling. Its construction next to the giant APL Building will mark the first time two modern skyscrapers were constructed right next to each other but from different developers and not part of an overall master-developer plan in the history of Oakland. By contrast, the Kaiser and Ordway buildings were erected by The Kaiser Corporation, and the Fede...

The East Bay Express reported on an incident at Berkeley High earlier this year, that happened because a white student wrote the word "nigga" on their Facebook page. While some see it as an issue of lack of diversity training, and I agree, I think something else is at play: the impact of hip-hop culture. In the multi-racial world of Hip-Hop blacks using such a term is so common that whites who are consumers of the music think everyone who's black uses the term. Of course, that's not true at all. The reality is that it's has a lot of negative images and many blacks, myself among them, don't want the word to be uttered by anyone. Period. This can be confusing to anyone white who's parents aren't giving them the proper training. Couple that with the fact that there are people who still use the word offensively and you've got a real powderkeg problem. The best solution is for people to learn that even if you hear it, it's not right to use it,...

OAKLAND — A panel that is helping the city select its next police chief is paring down the field of candidates and could submit a list of finalists to Mayor Ron Dellums as soon as this week, officials said. The position became open when former Chief Wayne Tucker stepped down Feb. 28, and about 40 people applied for the job. About a quarter of those people were interviewed by a panel of police chiefs and law-enforcement experts last week, City Administrator Dan Lindheim said. The finalists who emerge out of that group will return for another interview with Lindheim, Dellums and possibly others before the mayor makes a final selection. "We're continuing the interview process and should have it wrapped up in a matter of weeks," Dellums spokesman Paul Rose said.

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! In the third installment of my series on the " Top 10 on Twitter " in different cities , I took a new look at Oakland today and found some dramatic changes. But first, from Dharmesh Shah's awesome Twitter Grader app, here's the list by name, score, and number of followers: 1. MistahFAB - 99.99 - 22,971 2. acedtect - 99.97 - 16,206 3. mollywood - 99.97 - 20,539 4. zennie62 - 99.95 - 5,878 5. mc_lars - 99.8 - 3,912 6. ktvu - 99.8 - 2,445 7. bulldogreporter - 99.8 - 1,736 8. mariedenee - 99.8 - 2,397 9. stocktwits - 99.8 - 85,623 10. pandora_radio - 99.8 - 26,844 The news? Well, compared to two day ago when I started this, I jumped from number 7 to number 4. How? Well, I really didn't set out to improve my Twitter Grade from 99.8 to 99.95. What happened was that in losing followers - which happens all the time - I gained a better score! I was up to about 6,000 fol...

Getting a deal to build at the former Oakland Army Base is turning into an exercise of patience for front-runner AMB/CCG, the team led by Rotunda and Fox Theatre developer Phil Tagami. The city of Oakland's economic development committee on Tuesday stalled the start of negotiations with Tagami's team to develop the city's 108-acre share of the base, possibly until late September. The same team is considered a front-runner among three applicants vying to develop the Port of Oakland's 168-acre share of the base, but Thursday the three-member Maritime Committee failed to forward a recommendation to the full Board of Port Commissioners.

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! YouTube , Metacafe , DailyMotion , Blip.tv , Sclipo and Viddler Who's on the "Top 10" list of Twitter users in Oakland, Los Angeles, and San Francisco? There's no question but that Twitter, the microblogging service, has become a "must be on" new media system with an engaged and loyal core group of users, all microblogging about events, activities, news and opinion. The San Francisco-based firm has grown from small beginnings just three years ago to 19 million visitors (or 17 million if one goes by the digital research service ComScore.com ) in April in what was a dramatic 83 percent jump over March, and in that month alone Twitter went from 9.8 million visitors to 17 million visitors, perhaps the fastest expansion of a new media service in the short history of the industry. It's clear that Twitter, as Eric Schonfeld with the tech industry website TechCrunch.com said , is workin...