Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Morning News Round-Up -- 4.20.10: 420, need we say more?

420... 'nuff said. Now, onto November...

It has been a bad few weeks for the South Bay Labor Council head honcho Cindy Chavez. First she got Jude Barry blacklisted -- which led to bad press. Then she sent a threatening letter to several Democratic Assemblymembers because they are supporting her "opponent" in a City Council race -- which led to bad press. Then her strong, yet unsuccessful, push to get Republican Dolores Carr endorsed for DA was uncovered -- which led to bad press. Today, the Merc's Scott Herhold ties it all up in a bow... He concludes: "...For such a sunny personality, hers are cold tactics indeed..."

"Hi Phil, it's Cindy. Can you relaunch sanjoserevealed as soon as possible? Thanks..."

Check out Watch Dog's piece from yesterday about Cindy Chavez, Dolores Carr, and Xavier Campos: United Carr Workers and Xavier Campos.

Watch Dog didn't really know something like this was possible, but... National Hispanic University was sold to a for-profit college conglomerate. Think of it as Walmart coming in to buy your small school. Laureate Education is the purchaser and their company is valued at $3.5 billion. If you are going to sell out, go big or go home, we guess...

Lately when anyone has been talking about Santa Clara, it has been about the 49ers or Yahoo... that's because everyone has stopped talking about the BAREC housing development that was controversial and contentious. But it is finally FINALLY moving forward as the clean-up starts... (If you know nothing about this development, then don't even try to understand the history...)

Yesterday was a bad day to be train-dependent. First a bomb threat that screwed up the afternoon/ evening community, then a suspicious package at the Caltrain Station in Mountain View closed things down for a while last night...

Speaking of trains... but a much, much faster one, hopefully. The Mountain View Council is studying the High-Speed Rail alignment options for Mountain View, and they really don't know what they like best... or least.

One Silicon Valley-ite who is running for high office has released his tax returns... Tom Campbell. And we learn what we already knew... he isn't a rich as Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorina, or Steve Poizner... Most stunning of all, he donated only $600 to charity in 2009. ... that's it. Perhaps the library in Almaden didn't need his help last year.

Speaking of Silicon Valley types running for office... Chris Kelly is a former Facebook executive running for Attorney General. (In case you didn't know that, and if you didn't know that, then you are in the majority...) He is facing some tough questions about Facebook's privacy policies. Questions like, does Facebook have a privacy policy?

Palo Alto is celebrating 420... well, Earth Day actually. They have a bunch of new enviro-sheek things happening.

To the blogs...

Protect San Jose answers a real(?) "Ask a Beat Cop" question today about a car getting stolen in downtown San Jose... of course the answer is about high-capacity night clubs...

Mission City Lantern has some advice for Cindy Chavez...

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