Chuqui 3.0

MercuryNews.com | 05/15/2006 | S.J. voters jeer ballpark plan

MercuryNews.com | 05/15/2006 | S.J. voters jeer ballpark plan:

As their elected leaders spend millions to acquire land for a future ballpark, San Jose's voters say they oppose use of their money to bring baseball to the city, according to a new Mercury News poll.

Asked if they support ``spending public funds to bring professional baseball to San Jose,'' only 32.1 percent of voters who were surveyed said yes, while 53.6 percent were opposed.

Barry Witt is back with more on the San Jose stadium boondoogle.

For what it's worth, I don't have a problem with the city buying up the land and holding onto it for use later; once saner heads give up on the stadium fantasy, it'll be a nice investment, both in terms of financial and in giving the city a stronger say in how those acresw il be redeveloped. Heck, if the city doesn't think downtown acreage is a good investment, why should anone else?

Sacco and Vanzetti innocent

Sacco and Vanzetti innocent:

I'm suprised this got no play in the blogosphere. Has the past become that irrelevant?

"This is a stunning revelation," said Anthony Arthur of Los Angeles, a retired literature professor and author of the recently released biography, "Upton Sinclair: Radical Innocent."

"I've never heard of this," added Lauren Coodley, a professor of history and psychology at Napa Valley College who edited a recent Sinclair anthology. "It's one of those amazing things. That's why history is so fascinating, because we keep revising it."

Upton Beall Sinclair was a giant of the nation's Progressive Era, a crusading writer and socialist who championed the downtrodden and persecuted. President Theodore Roosevelt, who pushed through the nation's first food-purity laws in response to "The Jungle," coined the name for Sinclair's craft: muckraker.

Sinclair wasn't alone in believing Sacco and Vanzetti were innocent when he began researching the book that fictionalized their case. On Aug. 23, 1927, the day they were executed, 25,000 protested in Boston.

The men have been viewed as martyrs by the American left ever since. Historians agree that prosecutors in the case were biased and shoddy, and that the two men failed to receive a fair trial.

On the 50th anniversary of their execution, Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis all but pardoned the pair, urging that "any disgrace should be forever removed from their names." But the fearless Sinclair was left a conflicted man by what Sacco and Vanzetti's lawyer — and later others in the anarchist movement — told him.

"I faced the most difficult ethical problem of my life at that point," he wrote to his attorney. "I had come to Boston with the announcement that I was going to write the truth about the case."

Other letters tucked away in the Indiana archive illuminate why one of America's most strident truth tellers kept his reservations to himself.

"My wife is absolutely certain that if I tell what I believe, I will be called a traitor to the movement and may not live to finish the book," Sinclair wrote Robert Minor, a confidant at the Socialist Daily Worker in New York, in 1927.

"Of course," he added, "the next big case may be a frame-up, and my telling the truth about the Sacco-Vanzetti case will make things harder for the victims."

He also worried that revealing what he had been told would cost him readers. "It is much better copy as a naïve defense of Sacco and Vanzetti because this is what all my foreign readers expect, and they are 90% of my public," he wrote to Minor.

So, it seems Upton Sinclair, who wrote The Jungle and more or less invented modern investigative journalism (or Muckraking), who created a tradition that carries forward to Woodward and Bernstein and which many journalists aspire to today (but few achieve, and a few, unfortunately, abuse, had his own darker side.

It looks like, in his book Boston, about Sacco and Vanzetti, he promoted a position he knew to be untrue -- that the two were innocent scapegoats -- because he was afraid it would hurt his socialist cause, and perhaps cost him readers.

It's almost as if he worked for the New York Times or something.

But it's scary to both find evidence that one of the founders of modern journalism purposefully lied -- and to find out that another common truth that's taught in our schools is found to probably be wrong.

And nobody seems to care.

Hacking NetFlix : Mel Gibson Suing CleanFlicks

Hacking NetFlix : Mel Gibson Suing CleanFlicks:

Mel Gibson's Icon Entertainment is suing CleanFlicks because they removed 3 minutes from The Passion of the Christ, according to a report on KUTV.com (watch the video).

The movie is 127 minutes long and Ray says he took out three minutes worth of the most graphic parts. According to the lawsuit, what he did was copyright infringement.

Gibson's lawsuit is not seeking compensation; his hope is to shut CleanFlicks down for good.

CleanFlicks has edited profanity, graphic violence and nudity from more than 900 movies.

I realize this is old news, but I wanted to comment on it.

Is anyone else amused that a bunch of highly religious people are being sued for taking the violence out of a movie about the life of Christ -- the life of christ is, well, too violent for christians? Huh?

But in all honesty, in general, I support the CleanFlicks folks here, beacuse they're creating a system that allows for personal choice, instead of (say, Wal-Mart or the Christian Coalition does) pushing those 'standards' back on the studios to inflict them on us in the general release?

I have no problem if someone decides to build a system that turns every blond into a redhead -- if it's something a person can use to use or ignore. Stuff like CleanFlicks is *good*, because it means they aren't trying to put it in *my* living room for my own good.

and besides, there's nothing CleanFlicks is doing that airlines haven't been doing to movies for decades. I just don't see the problem here -- and yes, I understand the wish of the artist to control how their work is used -- but the reality of the market just isn't like that in the real world. In fact, it's usually a lot worse, since these kind of morals end up getting imposed on the master print instead, and therefore on all of us. This is a technology that allows those people to have what they want and leave the rest of us alone. We should be sending in donations to them, not trying to shut them down.

The upcoming special election in california...

My absentee ballot for the upcoming special election showed up, so it's time to fill it in and get it back in the mail, so I can laugh at all of the campaigns that try to annoy me at the last minute trying to influence my vote...

I admit up front I was one of those people who voted for Schwarzenegger, as I felt the partisan logjam in sacramento had gotten too entrenched, and I wanted to throw a monkey wrench into the works to try to shake it up and maybe change some of the toxic dynamics. In that, I think Arnold's succeeded, if only by convincing everyone to gang up against him (I wasn't asking Arnold to be better than Gray Davis, merely NOT Gray Davis).

On the other hand, any possible support I had for hizzoner died when he made promises to the schools and then broke them. While breaking promises is a time-honored tradition in politics, his "yeah, so?" attitude just bothers me; most politicians at least pretend to find a reason to justify it. Arnold didn't even bother.

And so, inevitably, his raft of governmental revolutions came to a staggering halt. And once they did, Arnold chose to call a special election to try to force some of his proposals through "by going to the people". In fact, he's trying to force some of his proposals through by spending a significant chunk of money ($45 to $80 million dollars), backed by his financial sponsors to get the message through to convince the public to support him.

It ain't working. Whether through arrogance or stupidity, he chose to take on some of the unions here in the state: the nurses, the teachers, and the firefighters -- and they have political engines that can fight just about anything, and aren't afraid to fight dirty (not that they need to this time). Hence a couple of the special propositions aimed directly at these groups (Prop 75 and Prop 74, and to a lesser degree Prop 76). There's a good chance all of these initiatives will fail, which should be the hint to the governor that maybe he shouldn't run for re-election (oops. too late, he's already announced).

Things are so bad for Schwarzenegger, a previously unheard of event has occurred, on the same order of likelihood as the return of Halley's comet at the wrong time: my father, my mother, and I, all agree on how to vote. See, my dad is a diehard, classic constitutionalist liberal, and even rarer, an Orange County democratic liberal. My mother, on the other hand, is a classic Orange County Republican conservative. If you're wondering how they stayed together 50 years, so are a lot of people. It should be no surprise, then that I grew up a die-hard, Orange County moderate, primarily to avoid siding with each side in the wars. (please, whatever you do, don't mention Nixon or Clinton in their hearing when I'm in the room).

But -- for the first time we can remember, we all agree: and we're all voting no on every proposition. If Arnold has the three of us united against him: he has no hope.

At least, I hope he has no hope.

Here are some thoughts on the propositions, for your amusement:

Prop 73: waiting period and parental notification: more attempts to limit the scope of Roe v Wade. By definition, no. Not because I'm pro abortion by any means, but because I'm against the government telling someone what they can do to their body. And fi the parents haven't built a relationship where the teenager can talk to them willingly, using a government fiat to force this is not just stupid, it's dangerous. It forces the teen into covert situations that can't be monitored and managed. Trying to use the government to force an action the parents haven't made possible on their own -- no, hanks.

Prop 74: limits on tenure, lnoger waiting periods for permanent status for teachers: I'm actually tempted to vote yes for this. In theory, I think it's a good idea to put teachers more on a "pay for performance" basis. this is the wrong way, and ignores many other issues that should be addressed as well. instead, this is just retribution by Arnold for the teacher's union calling him on he broken promises, and I won't be party to that.

Prop 75: limitations on union due usage for political purposes: another attack on unions, which have been fighting Arnold (quite successfully) on various issues. He's simply attempting to legislated weapons out of the hands of his enemies. Sorry, nope.

Prop 76: State spending changes: modifying Prop 98. While I think the state (and the broken initiative process) has created a budget situation that's ludicrous in how money is spent -- this is using a broken initiative to attempt to not FIX a broken initiative, but simpy change how it's broken and who gets whacked by its brokenness. It doesn't solve the problem, it simply shifts the burden of hurt -- to Arnold's enemies.

Prop 77: redistricting: I'd love to vote for a redistricting plan that removes partisanship and stops the gerrymandering of districts. But this proposition merely replaces the existing partisan cronies with new partisan cronies. gee, thanks.

Prop 78 and Prop 79: prescription drug discounts: can anyone show me any proposal like this that hasn't been a disaster? No, I didn't think so.

Prop 80: electric service providers: basically seems to limit any aspect of free market in the state; it's unclear what good this will do, and it's unclear why we're doing it, and it's unclear what imact it'll have on prices or supplies. But it gives more power to the public utilities commission, those wonderful folks who helped us avoid the last energy crisis. Oh, wait... (and, TURN is for this. that tells me enough....)

Buzzmachine: dowd vs. miller

Buzzmachine: dowd vs. miller:

Dowd is defending journalism against the latest attack on its credibility from within.
Judy admitted in the story that she 'got it totally wrong' about W.M.D. 'If your sources are wrong,' she said, 'you are wrong.' But investigative reporting is not stenography.
Then she recounts the ways in which Miller has been an unreliable narrator, which a journalist should never be.

I put this even more simply, in a way that Judy Miller still doesn't understand:

If your sources play you for a fool, you're a fool.

If your sources play you for a patsy, you're a patsy.

Judy Miller has gone from being a poster child FOR the need for journalist shield laws to a casebook example of why shield laws need oversight by the court. She was clearly too interested in the material being fed to her to be questioning, both of the material itself, and of the agenda of the sources feeding her. Like any good covert source playing disinformation games, you feed them solid but not terribly controversial data until they stop questioning your reliability, and then you can salt the information with whatever you want to do.

Which is why a good journalist never stops questioning the data, or the motives. Neither of which Miller seems to have done.

Good lord -- I'm not even talking about advanced CIA tactics here, either. Doesn't anyone read Le Carre any more?

If Miller does ever return to a newsroom, if I were her desk editor, she'd be assigned to shopping mall openings and the crontroversy over the homecoming queen's bosom. That's about all I'd trust her with. And if Miller believes she can go back into the newsroom and g back to the kind of reporting she used to do -- she is a fool. And it's only a matter of time before someone makes her a patsy again.

E-mail Peril

E-mail Peril:

After serving as Bill Clinton’s chief of staff, Leon Panetta taught a course at Santa Clara University, his alma mater, about the White House.  In early 1999, I met with Panetta to get his advice on how to organize an executive level political operation since I was running a mayor’s office.  He told me something I never quite fully understood then:  he never used e-mail.

I asked him how that was possible considering the fast pace a White House or any major political organization has to move these days.  His answer was really simple.  Your e-mail is subject to subpoena. 

There is a really important lesson in this article for everyone. I don't think the lesson is "don't use e-mail" (although it might be 'sometimes, email isn't appropriate') -- but instead, it's "make sure you understand how e-mail fits into the larger picture", because we do tend to think of it as water cooler conversation, and it long since left that realm. Those who aren't aware of that can regret it.

I think, however, that the informality of e-mail will change how we do things, we aren't going to change the informality of e-mail.

San Jose Inside - A Few Mistakes

San Jose Inside - A Few Mistakes:

Tom McEnery: I have seen one of my mistakes, the light rail line on First and Second Streets, devastate the small businesses of our downtown. The current plans for BART construction will bring much greater calamity, as Mark Twain said, “…the difference between the lightning and the lightning bug.” With trenches running 600 feet in length and sixty feet or so in depth through the heart of our city and at the HP Pavilion/Diridon Station area, the problems cannot be overstated. It will be horrific. And no one, not the City, the Downtown Association, or the VTA bigwigs have come up with a plan to mitigate the economic terror that will be visited on these largely unsuspecting merchants. Not another meeting should occur until a plan is presented to save these unsuspecting and trusting souls. Time is not on our side – there is a train running down the track and it’s running at a full tilt.

I continue to feel that BART to San Jose is more about the city's insecurities than it is about transit. It will never see itself as an equal to San Francisco without "equal" transit. But San Jose civic leaders have forgotten that equal transit is about access, not about which system comes into the city.

What San Jose and the south bay needs isn't BART -- it's connections. Extending the VTA light rail to Fremont would be a faster, cheaper alternative to BART to San Jose, but it doesn't have the panache of BART. The access would be similar, if not better, and with the run up to Mountain View, if we could ever convince Caltrain fanatics that there are other options, we could extend VTA up the Caltrain right of way and connect in the other side as well.

But BART is sexy. So the push is for BART. Even, as Mayor McEnery points out, it's going to create a level of chaos in the city that'll make the building of the light rail seem like a picnic.

But it has to be BART.

WHY?

Because San Francisco and Oakland have it, so San Jose should, too? Or is there a better answer? I sure haven't heard one. It's almost as bad as the babbling about bringing the A's to San Jose, which would be another fiasco.

San Jose, and the larger Bay Area, has some difficult choices to make on transit. The revenue pie is too small, the number of needs huge. Why insist on building the system that's the most expensive (to build and operate), take the longest to build, and which requires the most disruptive construction?

San Jose and the south bay area have a choice to make. Right now, they're making the wrong one, for the wrong reasons. San Jose is headed down the path Seattle chose -- we can even ignore the ever more expensive boondoggle that is the Monorail and look to the bus tunnel -- and a city now under massive disruption to rebuild a transit system only 20 years old because basic requirements were ignored that now need to be beaten into the system with a large, painful-to-the-citizens stick.

If that doesn't sound like what tearing up San Jose for BART would do here, what does? Especially when the light rail already exists downtown, and a new line could be built up into Fremont that attaches in much as the existing Vasona line did. Make downtown the transit hub where the lines come together for transfers, where someone from Vasona can catch the Fremont connect, or the Mountain View line. Extend the Mountain View line up the Caltrain right of way to SFO, and then on to the transit terminal and SBC park. Then we would have transit rounding the bay -- with two systems, not one, but right now, we're paying for three incompatible systems anyway.

That's what portland did. The tri-met has its issues (I wish they'd passed the vote to send it to Vancouver, for one), but it's a great system, and it works. But when they needed to add transit for the Northwest sector and the Pearl district? They added trolleys that interconnect, not more of the heavy-duty Tri-met. Cheaper, faster, less intrusive, and it works. And -- it draws people downtown. And they did it with minimal disruption during building.

But bringing BART to San Jose is sexy. So is pretending you can bring the A's down. It gets headlines. It makes people think San Jose is trying to go places.

It's bread and circuses -- spending too much money for the wrong reasons.

We need the transit, desperately. But we can't afford to spend all of our transit money on the wrong projects. Interconnecting with BART in Fremont is a great thing. Doing it by extending BART?

Not so.

Plastic: Should FEMA Use Taxpayer Money To Reimburse Religious Charity?

Plastic: Should FEMA Use Taxpayer Money To Reimburse Religious Charity?:

Should the Federal Government be in the business of reimbursing aid given in the name of charity? The recovery effort is expensive enough without deciding to reimburse faith based organizations that acted charitably in accordance with their mission.

If the Federal Government is reimbursing non-faith-based charities for the same actions, the answer is an unambiguous yes (but I think there needs to be some some firewall between the religious aspect and the charity actions). I believe they are, in fact, reinbursing other organizations, so I have no problem with this.

But they need to be reinbursed for the charity, not the faith.

Workbench: Grading the War in Iraq

Workbench: Grading the War in Iraq:

Frontpage Magazine, the right-wing publication founded by David Horowitz, has been conducting a symposium with several experts on how well the Iraq War is going.

[...]

The symposium was abruptly cancelled when word arrived that Vincent had been kidnapped and executed in Basra.

ooph.

Daring Fireball: Trusted

In this corner: Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing.

In the other corner: John Gruber of Daring Fireball.

And Gruber leaves no prisoners in showing out just how irrational Cory's become.

Daring Fireball: Trusted:

When I told a few friends this week that I planned to write about
Doctorow's outburst, several indicated that I shouldn't bother, more
or less on the grounds that Doctorow deserves to be cut a bit of slack
because his heart is in the right place. The idea being, OK, sure,
he'9s out of line in complaining about this, but at least he's just
looking out for users' rights.

But the fact that his intentions are good doesn't make it right to let
this pass. Doctorow is clearly ascribing deviousness onto Apple,
without a single shred of evidence to back it up.

The people who ran the Spanish Inquisition thought they were doing right.

The people who burned witches in Salem thought they were doing right.

THINKING you're doing right isn't the same as doing right -- and when you let your zealotry for a cause tint your view so that everything becomes an attack on your cause, you stop being useful to the cause, and start hindering it. I long ago stopped listening to Cory on privacy and other issues, because of his extremism. And I know I'm not the only one -- which means, increasingly, Cory speaks not to the issue, but to his own small, self-perpetuating core of true-believers, and lost to the larger, real debate.

Or as Laurie so calmly puts it "I use the phrase echo chamber -- because circle jerk gets me in trouble with HR".

And that, unfortunately, sums up Cory and his followers. And Cory is the reason why, despite strongly supporting EFF's causes, I won't give EFF a penny, because Cory is a public representative of theirs, and is constantly proving to me that he (in their name) is not an activist for these causes, but an extremist -- and EFF supports his view of this.

(This is the same reason why despite a strong support for animal rights and the humane treatment of animals, I'd give every penny to the American Nazi party before a penny went to PETA. And anyone who thinks my comparing Cory to PETA is a compliment to him also needs to take off their tinfoil beret....)

Cory's a nice guy. Too bad he's lost a rational view about all of this. We could use his expertise and voice in the debates. But his view is so extreme, it's no longer even amusing, much less useful in shaping the debate.

(update: John Gruber. Gruden? what WAS I thinking?)