Morning News Round-Up – 4.21.09: It was an interesting fact...

It's been a fun filled month in San Jose with Porn BFF's Larry Pegram and Pete Constant battling for headlines over Mayor Chuck Reed's "clownish" IPA mishap and the ongoing Drunk Task Force drama. Rep's from the rest of Silicon Valley are breathing a deep sigh of relief as San Jose stays firmly in the spotlight.

San Jose’s IPA screw-up continued. Unless you were under a rock you saw this one coming…

• The newly appointed Independent Police Auditor Chris Constantin quits under the growing outrage.
• San Jose officials sheepishly admit newly appointed Independent Police Auditor Chris Constantin would be auditing his own brother.
• Watch Dog posted the early rumor about the eminent demise of Chris Constantin as Independent Police Auditor.
• Mayor Reed : When asked about the brother “It was an interesting fact and probably should have been in there. But it was one of a whole series of facts about the man.''
• Councilmember Nora Campos stomps her foot saying she received a promise from the Mayor.
• Merc Editorial : Constantin did not disclose the brotherly love in his application. City leaders did not tell a citizen review panel about Constantin’s brother, those same leaders did not ask the city attorney about any conflict.
• Scott Herhold : Mayor Reed’s staffers were unenthusiastic about Constantin, it was a clownish affair. Way to turn on the boss...
• San Jose Revealed : That was quick, followed by a public spanking of Constantin and Mayor Reed.

Tonight San Jose’s city council will decide whether to back the guy with limited punctuation skills!!!! Or, library proponents, Books Not Filters. For all your (unfiltered) viewing pleasure…

• The Spartan Daily revisits the redux of the decade old proposal. With millions of visitors and internet sessions were the handful of complaints worth all the hoopla?
• A Watch Dog tipster sent the message Pegram had his army storming city hall, much to the dismay of the folks on the 18th floor. (Thanks, tipster, if you see them today shoot Watch Dog a note)
• Watch Dog shares Exclamation Points from the Loudest Filter Screamer, the Rovian Larry Pegram!!! Exclamation point count: 5.
• A pissed off library patron shared Pegram’s (not so) well designed flyer. Exclamation point count: 8.
• Pegram sends email with dire warnings. Exclamation point count: 5.
• The Merc Editorial Board appears bored with the ongoing BFF Pegram/Constant drama.
• Newsweek takes a shot at Pegram with the End of Christian America.
  Watch Dog spies at city hall, keep us informed…
  

If you live in Mountain View, well, you probably can’t afford it, or anywhere else in Silicon Valley. The Environmental Planning Commission hears the grim news this week. Mountain View planner Scott Plambaeck was philosophical saying “yeah, housing’s expensive here.”

Morgan Hill’s Measure A advocates are leaving nothing to chance. They’ve got their own blogging and mixers with movers and shakers, including Mayor Steve Tate and former Mayors John Varela and Dennis Kennedy. Without any organized opposition the measure depends on voters optimism about the future.

A few of Gilroy’s finest received raises over 30% in the last few years. Councilmember Craig Gartman is getting pissed at slow disclosure from city administration and wonders if he should keep turning over rocks or ignore them. This is one case where ignorance is not bliss…

Yesterday’s 420 was largely ignored by the local press but Watch Dog bets the Beer Tax will get pot brewing. Assemblymember Jim Beall is hoping the second time around will help to fill the state’s empty coffers. Prepare for marches from pissed off grape stompers and hops swillers…

Los Gatos town council is proposing more new and higher fees to help raise funds. You know that safe where you hide your guns to protect you from thieves, count on it costing you…. Mayor Wasserman wants to charge for false alarms and you might end up paying more for using that park.

Open space in Mountain View is about to become a Summerhill Homes construction zone. The Los Altos NIMBY’s are getting support from Los Altos councilmember David Casas who says “I will be encouraging the neighborhood ... to vocalize and coordinate their activities to make sure that their interests (are represented).”

Julie Packard, yes, that Packard, was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Morning News Round-Up -- 2.26.09: Spring (Training) has Sprung...

In case you missed it yesterday, Watch Dog noted that the recent bad weather had the effect of sprouting some new grassroots efforts: Baseball San Jose (to promote baseball) and Books Not Filters (to fight the so-called Values Advocacy Council and Ball Gag)...

It isn't just a grassroots baseball effort however. Former Mayoral candidate Michael Mulcahy, Councilmembers Liccardo, Oliverio, and Kalra, and others seem to be in a planning mode as well...Are downtown pieces (finally!) all coming together? These folks think so...(FYI: The A's tied (?) the Brewers yesterday 3-3.)

One of the overlooked, but beloved, pieces of a complete downtown San Jose, is the Sainte Claire News Stand. They are reopened next to Cafe Trieste and are having a grand opening party tomorrow night...the owners are perhaps the nicest people in Silicon Valley.

If you murder someone in the UK and want to get out of dodge and never be found again, apparently San Jose is not the place you want to go to...Jaswinder Singh Rana found that out yesterday.

A Gilroy High School teacher was arrested for sexual assault of a 14 year old who was not his student. The teacher met the girl on Tagged.com -- a social networking site. (The brain trust of Constant/Pegram must be working overtime to try to figure out how to make political hay out of this...insert your own brain/Constant/Pegram joke here _________)

Here is something new to Watch Dog -- the Saratoga City Council is adding a fee to the garbage rates in order to pay for road repairs...interesting concept. Perhaps they should also put up tolls for the thousands of massive SUVs that cruise Saratoga's tiny streets...

Just as San Jose is changing the way Police interact with downtown nightclub/bar goers -- Campbell (the party capital of Silicon Valley?) is changing their rules about downtown (drinking) festivals too...

The National Cheerleading Competition is a big deal to some folks -- including a group of students from Morgan Hill's Sobrato High School. But these (devastated) students won't be able to go because their coach turned in the paperwork 2 weeks late. Watch Dog is certain there is a an After School Special-type lesson in this story somewhere about being on time...

Surprise, surprise. A city-wide fiber optic network built by the City of Palo Alto is not likely to happen -- it seems -- after a decade of hoping and wishing and studying. It turns out it is expensive to build and maintain such things...really? (Joint Venture Silicon Valley Network figured out the same thing about a County-wide wireless network and apparently gave up on that effort...)

Or, perhaps it isn't the money, but the fact that Palo Alto-based utility-type things sometimes seem to be (perhaps) corrupt. The Palo Alto Utilities Department is being investigated by the US Department of Transportation for conspiracy to alter records...

And from the part of the media landscape that isn't imploding (blogs)...

Revealed gives the blow-by-blow of Tuesday night's Council meeting -- which, as always, is a pretty compelling read. Revealed has often pointed out racially insensitive remarks that sometimes appear in the "Comments" section of San Jose Inside -- but I guess when Revealed makes fun of Italian-Americans, that's ok. Not to sound too much like Dale Warner, but...

Erin Sherbert at the Metro/Inside digs a little (well, a lot) deeper into San Jose's Vietnamese community describing the competing business interests of the Yes on Recall and No on Recall folks. Surprise, surprise...one Vietnamese business owner has a strip mall called Little Saigon and another has one called Vietnam Town...

Finally, we never got around to talking about Mission City Lantern's love affair with Watch Dog. Thank you, James. We appreciate your kind words and we feel the love -- but Herb Caen we are not.

Grassroots Sprout from Bad Weather...

The wet weather has apparently had the effect of sprouting grassroots in San Jose.

First, we have baseball...

With the (amicable divorce between Fremont and the Oakland A's, the grassroots group Baseball San Jose has launched some activity. Jacquie Heffner is posting on Baseball San Jose's blog, she started a group on Facebook, and has launched a website (well, not yet) at mlbsanjose.com. (Watch Dog hopes this blog (and the baseball movement overall) are more successful than Heffner's last blog-venture with San Jose Revealed...)

Next, we have libraries...

Also on the grassroots front, a website calling itself Books Not Filters has been activated to fight library censorship being proposed by Councilmember Pete "Ball Gag" Constant and Larry Pegram of the (so-called) Values Advocacy Council. (Of course) a Facebook site has also been launched. (Watch Dog has written about this issue before, and if it comes forward again, we won't be shy Ball Gag...)

Watch Dog understands that grassroots is not about competition...but...the Books Not Filters folks have more "Facebook Friends" than the Baseball San Jose people right now: 36 to 17. That probably means more in middle school than it does in real life, but we thought we'd share...

Sprout on grassroots activists!