Oakland Focus News | Oakland News Online Blog

Oakland Children's Hospital is being plagued by a nurses strike as this is written. As a fan of Children's Hospital and its staff, the current situation does not reflect how hard they've worked to keep the establishment a going concern in a tough economy. This blogger is not anti-union, but some unions need to be called out when they're not playing to work with administration, but against it. Such is the California Nurses Association. Someone's paying attention. Namely, Nancy Shibata, RN, MSN, Chief Nursing Officer, Children’s Hospital Oakland, who sent this opinion piece to be ran in this space: CNA Nurses Union Out of Touch With Current Economic Realities At Children's Hospital Oakland By Nancy Shibata, RN, MSN Chief Nursing Officer, Children’s Hospital Oakland Ironically, the high cost of health insurance is a difficult problem for hospitals today. Over the past 5 years, health insurance benefit costs have risen for Children's by 80 perce...

San Francisco is fortunate to be hosting not one, but two separate international art shows, one featuring antique, textile and oriental carpets and the other focusing on tribal arts from Africa, Oceania, the Americas, and Asia during this next week October 12th to 17th. It's the 2nd annual Antique Rug and Textile Show at The Motel Capri, at 2015 Greenwich St., in San Francisco’s Marina District. The event features more than 40 internationally renowned rug and textile dealers who will set up their wares in a bazaar-like setting in the Motel Capri. Show Starts Next Week Opening night of the rug and textile show begins at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 12th, and the show continues Wednesday – Sunday, Oct. 13 - Oct, 17, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily. The show and sale is free. For more information on this event, visit: www.artaa.org . A number of daily special exhibitions on Tibetan, Chinese and oriental carpets will be held as well as daily lectures for beginners, all offered free. The 6th a...

The first Oakland All Female Bartender Competition at Pican and by Grand Marnier and Zennie62 was held Tuesday night, and by all accounts, was successful. Well, except for this blogger, who's Zennie62 name was given as a sponsor - online marketing work was provided - yet, from the impression I received, no one at the event knew that I sponsored it. That even with the emails exchanged where I did agree to sponsor it, and also agreed to put up the Grand Manier logo on the blog posts.  Plus, I agreed to make a blog about the event and did so . But for all this, didn't even get a bottle of Grand Marnier. United 747 Flight Delayed What was vexing was that my United 747 Flight 973 from Chicago was delayed over three hours, which hampered my plan to show up at 6:30 PM PDT, which was when the event started. Instead, the flight was delayed two hours, then we sat on the tarmac at the gate for another hour . I called and emailed Josh at Pican to explain I would be late; I gue...

There can be no question that the greatest obstacle to rectifying Oakland’s public safety crisis is our grossly understaffed police department. There is a direct correlation between a decrease in the visibility of police officers on our streets and the disproportionate incidences of violent crime that plague Oakland. Simply put, greater police presence decreases the willingness of people to engage in violent crime; less police presence increases that willingness. This is particularly true among those individuals involved in criminal enterprises, such as drug-dealing and other gang-related activities. For these individuals, crime is a business and, like all rational capitalists, they seek the greatest return for the least investment, while attempting to avoid regulatory oversight. In terms of the street-level criminal capitalist, that oversight is provided by patrol officers. A consistently visible police presence inhibits the ability of these criminals to conduct the...

In the Oakland Mayors Race, no one person brings out more passions than Former State Senator Don Perata. Everyone has some kind of opinion about Perata. Everytime the subject of the Oakland Mayor's Race comes up, someone says to this blogger "Perata's going to win," as if they're watching a horse race, rather than participating in an election. But for those who have seen Oakland's mayoral future, and it's Perata, there seem to be many more who are set to attack him or just proclaim their hatred for him. It's a level of dislike that has led to the creation of one website and two Twitter accounts, all against him. For example, there's the website Anybody But Perata , which reads as follows: The purpose of this website is very simple: to present reasons why former State Senator Don Perata should not be elected mayor of the City of Oakland, California. While the election of Don Perata as Oakland mayor would probably be very good for Mr. P...

This is the big one. I've not liked an Oakland Mayor since Elihu Harris, whose politics I did not agree with most of the time, but who had the courtesy to actually answer the phone and speak to citizens. (Unlike Ron Dellums, whose office will tell you that he does NOT speak to citizens. But I did not vote for Ron, he's a burnt out comet, whom I remember with awe from the seventies, but who should never have taken the office in Oakland.) Jean Quan's a puzzle. I ate lunch with a friend a couple days ago, a woman who owns a local green company ( if saving the Bay is green), and we seemed to hit on the same note. Uhh, she's great for local stuff. Great! Run a city like Oakland? No way. Her idea of "taking a hit in pay" is was to take a 5% cut and a 4% COLA increase. wow. i'm so impressed. Oakland's pension burden is not going away and it is the single biggest problem the city faces. Quan's token efforts show her beliefs. Don Perata, I would not t...

Jack Clark of Cal Rugby On Tuesday, as this blogger was traveling away from the San Francisco Bay Area and Cal Berkeley, UC Berkeley was in the process of nuking it's prized Rugby Program, and destroying Cal Athletics as we know it. Rugby Coach Jack Clark was fired - his position ends June 2011 -  and the program dumped to varsity sports status. The reason given was Title IX requirements to financially equalize male and female sports, but given that Coach Clark had a plan to fund and to elevate Women's Rugby to intercollegiate status that was jettisoned by the Cal Administration, using Title IX as an excuse is pure horseshit. The overall issue has been Cal's need to cut the overall budget of the athletic department, but the one revenue-generating program, Men's Rugby, and its coach who has a plan to elevated women's rugby, was a major target. For someone not familiar with this issue at all, Cal Men's Rugby has achieved legendary status in the sport...