Oakland Focus News | Oakland News Online Blog

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com YouTube , Yahoo , MySpace , Metacafe , DailyMotion , Blip.tv , StupidVideos , Sclipo and Viddler It's all over the Internet: Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates was arrested by Cambridge police officer Sgt. James Crowley after trying to pry open the lock, which was already damaged, to his own Cambridge home with the help of his driver, who picked him up from a trip to China. President Obama, in a press conference on his health care initiative, chimes in by saying "the Cambridge Police acted stupidly." President Obama's totally right. Here's why. Professor Gates problem was that he was being "an uppity black man" against an officer who looked for "uncommon" versus "common" elements to connect with Gates - no connection, or "uncommon leads to an arrest. On the plane from Chicago to Atlanta yesterday, I was in firs...

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.