Oakland Focus News | Oakland News Online Blog

Berkeley AC Transit Bus Rapid Transit Oakland, CA-based AC Transit has declared that contract talks between the Alameda - Contra Costa District Transit Company and the Amalgamated Transit Union, Local 192, (ATU) have reached an impasse. AC Transit is working to close an estimated $56 million budget deficit due in large part to reductions in revenue from property taxes. AC Transit is working to reduce labor costs by 8 percent at least; far better than cutting jobs but the ATU fails to see it that way. AC Transit has been forced to increase fares and decrease service to make up for the revenue shortfall. ATU made an offer but it reportedly wasn't enough to help close the gap: AC Transit seeks $15 million in savings. What the ATU does not understand is AC Transit's budget problems, like those of the City of Oakland itself, are due to massive reductions in sales and property tax revenue . AC Transit receives a percentage of each dollar of property tax collected in wha...

Today, Wednesday, Oakland At-Large Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan made official what many of her supporters were waiting for: that she's officially running for Mayor. She did this 49 minutes ago at the Joyce Gordon Gallery at 406 14th St. It was just two years ago in September 2008 that now-Councilmember Kaplan talked with this blogger about running for the At-Large Oakland City Council Seat: Now, less than two years later, and having successfully been elected as At-Large Oakland Councilmember,  Rebecca Kaplan announces she's running for Mayor of Oakland. What was true then in 2008 is true now, Oakland's in terrible fiscal shape and its worse today. But let's go a step further: Oakland's got a giant unemployment and underemployment problem that could sack many of the new restaurants that have opened over the past two years. Is Kaplan the person to fix all of this? Well, she just got into Oakland City Hall. Mayor Dellums?  What's up? While I don...

On Sunday, this space reported the existence of 11 examples of graffiti at various points around Oakland's Lake Merritt from Grand Avenue to Lakeshore Avenue. All of the taggings were done using red spray paint and all were messages related to the Oscar Grant, Johannes Mehserle murder case. Some of the graffiti messages seemed to wish harm to Johannes Mehserle, the former BART Police Officer who shot and killed Oscar Grant. Here's the video showing the problem: Today, all of the messages have been removed by the City of Oakland. The shores of Lake Merritt are back to their unmarked and clean look as the photo above shows.   I did not check the AC Transit Bus Stop on Grand Avenue, but since the video pointed to all of the places, and all of those points are clean, the bus shelter should be as well.  Unless, of course, the City of Oakland's not in the mood to help AC Transit.

City of Oakland At-Large Councilmember and would-be Oakland Mayor's Race participant has announced she's going to make a "special announcement" and reports that it "Will be an eventful speech solidifying her position in the Mayoral race." It will be held Wednesday at 11 a.m at the Joyce Gordon Gallery 406 14th St. In other words, after meetings, events, talks, and the parking issue, Councilmember Kaplan's going to officially run for Mayor of Oakland. And why not? The Oakland Mayor's Race is wide open race and anything can happen between now and November, when the election for the next Mayor of Oakland is held. What I hear from Oaklander after Oaklander is that not one of the candidates is exciting to them. That may be because they haven't seen all of them. The Joyce Gordon Gallery is located on 14th Street between Broadway and Franklin Streets in downtown Oakland.

Google and Twitter taking on the NYTimes While Arthur O. Sulzberger, Chairman and Publisher of The New York Times , holds that Google is the NYTimes "friend" and they have a good working relationship - even to the point of hounding SFGate.com regarding this blogger's claims to the contrary - a recent Amici  or "friend of the court" brief filed by the New York Times and other large news organizations openly attacks the work of online news aggregators like Google News. If the New York Times likes Google so much, why would it attach itself to the friend of the court brief? The backstory is the Barclay's Capital v. TheFlyOnTheWall.com case. In that case, New Jersey-based TheFlyOnTheWall.com was accused of taking information on bank upgrades and downgrades of stocks that was originally produced by Barclays and the other banks involved in the copyright infringement lawsuit lawsuit. Barclays holds that TheFlyOnTheWall.com website “systematically and...

Gen. Stanley McChrystal  The Runaway General , the Rolling Stone Magazine article that cost Gen. Stanley McChrystal his job as commander of Allied Forces in Afghanistan, and exposed a culture of McChrysal's aides that were hostile to civilian military officers, is out on newsstands and online, and it opens with the now famous blast against NATO allies slated to attend a dinner he was assigned to go to. While Gen. McChrystal's comment that there was no one in the room who could beat him up, or: "I'd rather have my ass kicked by a roomful of people than go out to this dinner. Unfortunately, no one in this room could do it." ..made the press, there's more that didn't, until now. This is what else McChrystal's aide said after the writer Michael Hastings asked "Who's he going to dinner with?" The McChrystal aide says "Some French minister. It's fucking gay." Hastings says McChrystal's staff consists of "a ...

Oakland Parking is STILL a problem Yes. Another Oakland Parking problem. This space continues to receive tips and emails from Oaklanders and people visiting Oakland who have horrible parking stories they want to share with the World. Since Oakland's At-Large Councilmember and would-be mayoral candidate Rebecca Kaplan thinks it's OK for Oakland to use parking fees to balance its budget, even at the expense of the poor from what was yelled to this blogger earlier this year, and without provocation or apology from Councilmember Kaplan (and not bloggers who support her run for Mayor), this space will continue to present each Oakland Parking problem to her. The last one was from Nick Mitchell, who complained of the ugly DMV and Oakland system that works to cause late payment of parking fines . This one is from an Oaklander, Terese Tatum, who shared a letter sent to Oakland Parking Head Noel Pinto: Dear Mr. Arnold and Mr. Pinto, I have spent hours on the phone and left...