Oakland Focus News | Oakland News Online Blog

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! On YouTube.com As of July 26th, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin will resign her post as Alaska's governor. I deliberately used the term "governor" twice, because even though I disagree with her politics, I always respected her as a governor of a state in America. Moreover, I root for women in politics, period. But I always believed Governor Palin - as I will continue to call her, much as some still refer to California Attorney General Jerry Brown as "Governor Brown" even though he's not been that since the 80s - had too thin a skin to deal with the new level of stardom she achieved after her time running to be vice president of the United States. A lot of this has to do with the life she crafted for herself in Alaska, which totally drove her and the GOP nuts when the media started asking her about her past. Indeed, with the spotlight on Palin came a set of issues so great in number, I

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! On YouTube.com I'm starting to get the impression that BART's workers are out of touch with the common person in the San Francisco Bay Area. According to BARTLabor.com the average union worker makes about $115,000 a year . By contrast, BART riders have an average income of just over $55,000. That means the striking union workers are doing well, and the average BART rider's just getting by in the expensive Bay Area. But with that, BART union workers want a 3 percent raise? Yikes! So let's say they strike after July 9th. That means the person who needs to use BART to get to that job interview in Concord from Oakland can't make the interview without paying money they can't afford for a cab to a place of employment that may not hire them. That's terrible. Why in Heaven's name would BART's workers who want to walk out if they don't get what they want even try to con

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! YouTube , MySpace , Metacafe , Blip.tv , Sclipo and Viddler I had the pleasure of hanging out with two of my favorite "vloggers" Irina Slutsky and Tracy Swedlow, of Geek Entertainment Television and Interactive TV Today . The idea was really just to meet at a cool cafe called "Mission Pie" on 25th and Mission in San Francisco and share ideas as friends - we all know each other already; this wasn't our first time talking but it was my first time getting together with both of them at once. We talked about events, vloggers, t-shrts, boobs, and the Karate Kid. I've long admired what both Irina and Tracy have done. I met Irina in 2006 at an event in San Francisco she helped produce called " Vloggercon " which was my first introduction to the community of video-bloggers. But what is "video-blogging"? Video blogging is the act and art of talking into a camcor

For the first time in 17 years, though it seems like yesterday to me, The State of California will have to issue I.O.Us to those owned money. I have a friend who's disability check comes in part from California and that portion has shrank from $225 per month to $162 per month over just the last three months and he's depressed. Governor California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has called a fiscal emergency forcing the legislature to work overtime in closing the $26 billion deficit the state's facing. Will they - the Gov and the Democrats come up with something they can agree on? Well, Gov. Schwarzenegger's got to stop trying to balance the budget on the backs of the poor with service cuts and higher sales taxes, then blaming the Democrats. What he needs to do is stop spending on this war on the people of color in the inner city. More soon.

The budget passed by the Oakland City Council last night in a 7-1 vote contains $83 million in cuts, but it doesn't mean the city's out of the woods just yet with respect to its $100 million projected deficit. If employees don't take the 10 percent pay cut that's part of the plan in the case of the police department , layoffs will take place. Moreover, the proposed 10 percent ticket surcharge on Coliseum event tickets is being challenged by the County of Alameda, which threatened a lawsuit. Someone in the City of Oakland should have called the Coliseum Authority before installing that plan. The lawsuit threats a reflection of lack of communication. More soon.

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! On Monday, June 29th the City of El Cerrito approved the Rialto Cinema Theater chain's proposal to own and operate The Cerrito Theater, which was the creation of Catherine and Kyle Fisher, the owners of the now-closed Parkway Theater and the executives behind " Downey Street Productions ." According to El Cerrito Redevelopment Agency records , Downey Street Productions failed to pay timely rent after doing so for the first 12 months of operation of The Cerrito Theater.   The Cerrito Theater (A personal side note: it's very painful to see Catherine and Kyle Fisher's business problems presented this way in public, but that is one downside of working with a redevelopment agency: the public gets to see the information, both good and bad. But a detailed read of the letters explains that they, working as Downey Street Productions , got into a debt problem after theater construction costs. In a le

From a Twitter feed, Oakland's City Council just approved its budget, complete with cuts and layoffs - with seven votes. More later.

The East Oakland Sports Center has been a goal of Councilmember Larry Reid for a decade. Now, it's going to be a reality. This is the Oakland Tribune's account : OAKLAND — Plans for a 25-meter East Oakland swimming pool and athletics center, in the works for decades as planners struggled to raise the cash to pay for it, finally broke ground Monday. The ceremony marked the beginning of construction for the East Oakland Sports Center, a $24 million project at 9175 Edes Ave., at Brookfield Village Park. "It's the community that dreamed of this place, and that dream, those people are responsible for why we're finally building it," said Councilmember Larry Reid (Elmhurst-East Oakland), whose work many credited as responsible for the project's long-awaited arrival. Community members began pushing for the project in 1976, when a neighborhood pool closed and children began swimming in a nearby estuary, community representative Jacquee Castain said. &q

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! On YouTube.com With BART's deadline to reach a new union contract or face a worker strike extended to July 9th but still coming up on us fast, I took to the streets to learn what the public thinks about this possible event. What I found was that many claimed they didn't even know of the possibility, but of those who did they all believed it would "severely cripple" transportation service in the Bay Area. I didn't tell those I talked to that the average BART union worker's salary was $115,000, or that the public ridership took in an average of $55,000, as that would be leading the witness. I wanted to learn what was on their minds and you can see that in the video. But people not being informed about this? That's crazy. But I encountered a frightening number of people who were not informed. It's not that they don't care, but I think they see themselves as powerless to

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! Right on the heels of the passage of the landmark American Clean Energy and Security Act , which establishes a kind of "cap-and-trade" system for greenhouse gas emissions, we have a project I'm excited about as it will be the first power plant in America designed with a federal greenhouse gas limit. It's called the Russell City Energy Center and will be constructed in Hayward, California. The facility is slated to employ 650 people and generate a one time tax revenue of $30 million and an annual revenue of $6 million for the City of Hayward, according to the website for the proposed facility. What's exciting about the development that we're finally seeing a project that languished in development hell since 2001 finally see the light of day under the Obama Administration and the new act. The act calls for modernization of the electric grid; this is a brand new power plant. It calls for

From bavc on YouTube: The 1981 Oakland Tech High School senior class fought to make MLK day a nationally recognized holiday. The story of the Apollos is a story of those who reach beyond the stars. Created by Jazmin Jones and Nick Parker. 6 minutes.

From DidiHirsch on YouTube: Cheri Renfroe-Yousem and Andrew E Rubin introduce Emcee Brian Copeland Oakland california comedian and advocate On Friday, May 8, 2009 Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services held the13th annual Erasing the Stigma Leadership Awards - www.erasingthestigma.org to help dispel myths and prejudices and honor advocates who have advanced our understanding of mental illness. The focus was on schizophrenia. Joe Pantoliano introduces Elyn R. Saks - advocate, professor and author of the book "The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness"

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! YouTube , Blip.tv and Sclipo For weeks now, BART management and labor have been arguing over who should give up what on the eve of the expiration of contracts with the five unions that represent BART workers. But there's a problem: the matter of the murder of Oscar Grant and the revelation that another BART officer used a racial slur, and this was captured in a new video, raise questions regarding labor's moral standing to strike. While BART's police can't strike, as one officer told me, the unions essentially represent the labor issues for the police. Thus, the use of the racial slur by a BART officer with BART Officer Johannes Mehserle, coupled with the murder by Mehserle, opens the accusation that it was a hate crime. According to the San Francisco Chronicle , it was officer Tony Pirone who yelled "Bitch-ass N__, right?" As he was hitting Grant while Grant was on the ground. Wh

More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! YouTube , Yahoo , MySpace , Metacafe , DailyMotion , Blip.tv , StupidVideos , Sclipo and Viddler Michael Jackson's passing is still a shock to me. The very idea that someone I feel like I grew up with left us at the age of 50 is just not right at all. I first saw Michael perform when I was 10 years old at the old Chicago International Amphitheatre in 1972; the Campbell family, who babysat me, took me and I remember it like it was yesterday. The Jackson Five was then the must see event and Michael was the star. Michael was like my brother. In a way for many African Americans he was just that, a sibling. I knew him as the guy who grew up in Gary, Indiana. We knew people who knew them in Chicago, so I felt close to him long ago. I think it's for that reason so many African Americans were on Michael's side during the years when it seems he was kind of flying the coup: changing his skin color fro

Ever see a copter in the air during the Oakland Riots after the Oscar Grant shooting? No more. The Oakland Police Air Support Unit has ben grounded due to the major budget problems of the City of Oakland. KPIX's Sherry Hu reports.

From cxc6191 on YouTube - John Pew conducts Temple Hill Symphony Orchestra on Suppe's Light Cavalry Overture on May 16, 2009 in Oakland, California

From CBS on YouTube: Three quarterbacks were taken in the first round of the NFL Draft. Pat Kirwan and Jason Horowitz see how much of an impact each player could make on their respective teams this season.

I'm starting to really feel sorry for Oakland's KTOP, who's efforts at getting out the Mayor's message don't work at all. For example, their presentation of Mayor Dellums videos is such that they're only seen by less than ten people, if that, over a five-day period. That's a laugh to say the least. The videos should draw over 1,000 views over that period of time, each. I could make a long list of performance errors, but they're getting paid for this, so I'm not going to bother at all. I have several reasons for my admittedly snarky prose: 1) they should be more curious about how this works, 2) they're not media distribution specialists but try to be, 3) they've got the resources to do much better.

By the SEIU on YouTube which writes: Rene C. Davidson Courthouse (Oakland) - On June 23, Superior Court workers throughout the Alameda Co. court system held noontime informational pickets at all of the county's six courthouses. They protested 73 layoffs -- 10% of the court system staff -- that are taking effect on Monday. The result will be courthouse closures and longer lines on the days that courts remain open.