Morning News Round-Up -- 2.25.10: Dolores Carr... again again

Another day, another story featuring District Attorney Dolores Carr...sort of. Part A of this story is that a judge found a man that had been charged (but then uncharged) of murder "factually innocent." Part B of the story is that the judge finding the dude "factually innocent" stood up for the judge that is being boycotted by the DA's office for "standing up for her convictions." Part C is that the judge questioned why the District Attorney's office was fighting the "factually innocent" ruling... A response from the DA's office is expected today, apparently. Watch Dog anxiously awaits...

Speaking of the DA...

The Merc's Scott Herhold looks into the future about "How the Phuong Ho case will unfold"... He agrees with Watch Dog (read this) that the Police Officers in the video beating will not face charges from the District Attorney's office, but doesn't think it has much to do with the endorsement of the Police Officers' Association of the District Attorney... Herhold concluded with this about the Ho case: Put succinctly, Phuong Ho was beaten and shocked with a Taser without adequate reason. If there had not been a cell phone video, he would have been found guilty like dozens of others. It's the way our system works. Not the most reassuring few sentences in the paper this morning...

Picking up where Herhold left off, the Merc Editorial Board looks to the Police Chief to actually take some disciplinary action against the Officers involved in the beating/ Tasering of Ho and to make that action public. About the Officers' actions, the Ed Board concludes: "It may have been legal, but that doesn't make it right"... (Watch Dog predicts no action from the Police Chief.)

This was in yesterday's Chronicle, sorry we missed it: The folks that run Oakland Coliseum -- a.k.a. Alameda County -- are planning to build another stadium that will house two football teams, the Raiders and the 49ers. (Of course, the 49ers don't want to be there, but that's another story.) County Supervisor Scott Haggerty said: "There is only going to be one stadium in the Bay Area, and it's not going to be in Santa Clara... We have a better location, a better infrastructure and better access to roads and mass transit." Unfortunately, Oakland's ability to do anything is seriously in question -- just ask Lew Wolff.

We learn from San Jose Inside that most/all Mayor Chuck Reed's political people are working to get Sheriff Laurie Smith unelected... Mayor Reed isn't involved in the race... yet. The Mayor's political brain trust (?) is all behind former SJ Police Captain Richard Calderon...

In other political news...

Politicon Valley announced Vice Mayor Judy Chirco's endorsement of Supervisorial candidate Teresa Alvarado...

And the race to replace Judy Chirco on the City Council is heating up... and Larry Pegram seems to be in (with Jim Cogan and Don Rocha). There is also a Santa Clara University student in the race... because we all know what great decisions college kids make.

In case you were living inside a Bloom Box, you know that a thingy called a Bloom Box is being touted as the new, new thing in the clean tech world... We'll see. But certainly their PR agency is energized. 60 Minutes. NPR. Every TV station in the world. The Merc's front page. The Chronicle. etc. etc. etc.

A ban on pot in Mountain View... but they have all those yummy restaurants on Castro Street...

The lawsuit filed against San Mateo County's elections office is moving forward. This is about electronic signatures captured via iPhone being used to sign State elections petitions and is being brought by Verafirma, a Silicon Valley start-up. San Mateo County Elections' chief Warren Slocum rejected the signatures because he couldn't figure out a way to verify the signatures under California law. (This is a start-up that involves Silicon Valley man-behind-the-curtain Jude Barry...)

Morning News Round-Up -- 2.16.10: Lobbying Sacramento finally pays off for San Jose...

It has been a very long weekend... but we'll try to remember what the news was on Friday afternoon, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. Here we go. Let us know what we missed -- which you usually do anyway...

Well, San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed and Councilmembers Pete Constant, Ash Kalra, Nancy Pyle, and Judy Chirco's lobbying Assemblymembers Paul Fong and Joe Coto paid off... Fong and Coto are pulling their request for a State audit into the San Jose Police Department. With that success rate, we wonder if Reed/ Constant/ Kalra/ Chirco/ Pyle should head back to lobby for school funding. (San Jose Inside had the scoop first, then the Merc... for those of you keeping score at home.)

Speaking of folks who don't like others looking over their shoulders...

Diversity in Silicon Valley companies was all over the news this weekend. Some folks (Google, Yahoo, Apple, Oracle, and Applied Materials) don't really like to share their diversity data with folks... folks like the Mercury News. Don't be evil... ahem...

The San Jose Police Officers Association has been working overtime... with the Mayor's very public and very strongly worded letter to Assemblymembers Fong and Coto to call off the audit dogs in Sacramento. Followed by the aforementioned lobbying trip to Sacramento by the Mayor and four Councilmembers. Then, in Sunday's paper, the POA got former Mayor Tom McEnery to chime in against the newspaper and activists. But Watch Dog's favorite line was this:

But questions long avoided by the media must be asked. How do a few politically connected mega-nightclubs, with their hand-picked lobbyists, put thousands of alcohol-infused young men on a collision course with our police? And why let clubs that generate hundreds of calls for service each year, stripping the city's neighborhoods of cops, be subsidized by everyone else?

Watch Dog has asked those questions Mayor McEnery, we really, really, really have...

The Merc chimes in on the City of San Jose budget -- and they think employees need to step it up, cut their salaries, or expect to lose their jobs... There is a study session today in San Jose to talk about the budget. That should be fun...

There was a revised report about baseball in downtown San Jose that re-did the numbers on noise and traffic. If you start from no noise and no traffic, like in downtown San Jose, of course there will be more if you add something fun to do... No doubt NIMBYs are meeting at the Peet's on the Alameda today to discuss what to do next...

And while San Jose looks for a MLB stadium and Santa Clara looks for an NFL stadium, the good folks in Morgan Hill are just hoping for a proper football stadium at Sobrato High School... but unlike in San Jose and Santa Clara, the charge is being led by high school seniors in Morgan Hill... One small problem, the stadium would actually be in San Jose's 'greenbelt' and Councilmember Ash Kalra isn't having any of it.

Tom Campbell switched races... and raised some money too!

The good folks at Internal Affairs in the Merc must be getting inundated with campaign stuff... because their column was very, very full this weekend:

• Larry Pegram of censorship fame is considering a run for San Jose City Council District 9... didn't Watch Dog hint at that recently?
• Madison Nguyen's re-election campaign is full of challengers... and one of them is Andy Diaz. Are you surprised?
• The San Jose Police Officers' Association gets an airing and IA runs down their questionnaire and the "correct" (or pandering) answers.
• Whitman didn't push Tom Campbell out of the Governor's race... money did
• And it became very clear that IA reads our sister blog, Watch Dog San Mateo, because they go into Watch Dog-esque detail about San Mateo County's big name departures from the political scene, including Warren Slocum...

Not only was IA on their political game... the Merc's Scott Herhold was also on the political beat and wrote an incredibly long breakdown of local races. He touched the big ones (Governor, US Senate), the medium ones (Sheriff, DA, Supervisor District 1), and the little ones (San Jose City Council Districts 5, 7, and 9).

Finally...

Raj at DeBug, this headline is made for your snickering: Normal police presence planned for Mardi Gras... We guess that is open to interpreting the word "normal"...

Morning News Round-Up -- 2.11.10: Reed, Constant, Kalra, Chirco, and Pyle agree on something...

Earlier this week, Protect San Jose posted a letter Mayor Reed wrote to Assemblymembers Paul Fong and Joe Coto essentially telling them to back off their request for a State audit of the San Jose Police Department... yesterday, Mayor Reed (and the POA?) convinced some of his colleagues to make the trek to Sacramento to do the same thing. Pete Constant, Ash Kalra, Judy Chirco, and Nancy Pyle all met with Fong and Coto and asked them to hold off on their State audit. (Watch Dog is impressed that Constant, Kalra, Chirco, and Pyle all agree on anything... We would bet they didn't carpool up there.) All of this prompted the local ACLU chief Skyler Porras to respond with this witty alliteration, calling Mayor Reed's actions: "...petulant political posturing..."

We don't know the saddest part of this story and delays, or lack thereof, at SJC... so we'll just lay out the sad parts.

• Sad Point 1: There is a massive storm blanketing much of the Midwest and a separate, week-long storm from the Mid-Atlantic northward... and those storms have virtually no impact on San Jose Airport travel.
• Sad Point 2: There is only one, daily, non-stop flight to the East Coast.
• Sad Point 3: This quote from the airport guy, "Most of our flights from San Jose are in the western United States."

For those of you out there who can stay awake long enough to sit through all the States of the (Fill in the Blank) that happen this time of year probably already heard everything that Supervisor Ken Yeager said in his speech a while back... the Merc Editorial pages were nice enough to run an excerpt today...

Santa Clara Unified hasn't been in the paper lately -- mostly because the Broom Closet Modeling Agency flap has died down... and the news about the Principal who once dated a recent graduate at a previous job has died down... but the story about the teacher who had sex with a student is back on the front burner. That's because the former Wilcox High School teacher pleaded guilty yesterday and has already begun to serve his sentence of 2 years and 8 months...

High Speed Rail NIMBYs might have to take a chill pill after Jeff Barker of the High Speed Rail Authority announced that there was a typo in a report they issued about ridership numbers. NIMBYs were hanging on to that typo as proof that the High Speed Rail Authority was full of shit...

Mission City Lantern explains his thoughts a little bit better today about why he thinks Watch Dog was wrong on who wrote the new ballot language for the 49er's measure... thank you James. We heart you too... all the way from Hawaii...

Morning News Round-Up -- 2.1.10: Scary Legroom...

Before we do anything else, Watch Dog must welcome Sunnyvale Councilmember Otto Lee back from his one-year tour of duty in Iraq.

Sunday had the Merc's Internal Affairs center-stage on the political gossip front:

IA delved a bit into the departure of the once-considered Chris Constantin from the City Auditor's office to San Diego and what is likely to happen next in that office. IA also talked about San Jose City Council races that are taking shape -- District 9 (Judy Chirco's seat) and District 5 (Nora Campos' seat) are predicted to be battles.

• In District 5, we learn from IA that Magdalena Carrasco is slated to join the race. She has a high-placed ex-husband helping her out and we hear that former Supervisor Alvarado is also on the Carrasco train. Word on the street is that the Campos Camp is worried...
• In District 9, IA missed the entrant into the race that everyone is talking about and whose name rhymes with Scary Legroom... (Ironically, the aforementioned Chris Constantin was once rumored to be in the race...) Meanwhile in District 9, Don Rocha sent an email to supporters (and everyone else) to announce some key endorsements (Assemblymember Jim Beall and current District 9 Councilwoman Judy Chirco) and his fundraising total: $33,000. Everyone else's fundraising totals will be available today/tomorrow. We'll report on those numbers later.

In other political news... the Merc Editorial Board used Jeff Rosen's website to write an editorial against Dolores Carr... just kidding. But the Editorial Board was not shy in its criticism of the District Attorney, running through her ethical lapses and tone-deafness, from the De Anza rape case to the judge boycott... not missing a beat, Rosen has it up on his website with this url rosen4da.com/arrogance.html ...

Perhaps this DA, or the next, will get a chance to prosecute this: two young men beat a homeless man with a stick, and strangled him, in Gilroy last week. The Police are still investigating.

San Jose Family Camp, that family haven near Yosemite, may not open this coming summer because the dining hall is apparently unsafe and the drinking/ cooking water has E. Coli in it. San Jose, which owns and runs the Camp, is trying to figure out what to do and will have a meeting in late February or early March. Expect a big turnout for that meeting. On a someone separate note: Does anyone else find it ironic that there is tainted water at San Jose Family Camp? You could through a rock from that place and hit Hetch Hetchy...

Speaking of overdue repairs: the Merc did some digging and found that the expense to seismically retrofit homes could be too expensive for homeowners to actually do the work. And the cost varies greatly from city to city...

Scott Herhold takes a bunch of people to task for locking the doors of the Fairmont on the First Street side... he says they were always meant to be open, but the crowd is now "rougher"...

Oh no... "Sacramento to consider Little Siagon designation" Let the games begin...

Right Wing takes a blow...

Watch Dog bets that some (most) of our loyal readers were present (or watching) the goings on in San Jose City Council Chambers last night well past mid-night. If you watched, you saw that the right wing in San Jose took a blow (ha!) in their efforts to decide what you can and cannot view on a computer. More moderate voices prevailed...and there were many.

The final vote was 7 to 3, with the 7 supporting a proposal by Vice Mayor Judy Chirco, Councilmember Ash Kalra, and Councilmember Sam Liccardo and opposing Councilmember Pete Constant/Mayor Chuck Reed's proposal. (Chirco was not at the meeting, but would have voted for her own Memo, bringing the vote to 8 to 3.)

There was drama and anger last night. There was intelligent public testimony given and no shortage of misinformed hysteria. But like Wasilla, Alaska, cooler heads prevailed. What started 19 months ago ended (at least for now)...

The big winners of the night were the 7 (8 with Chirco) who stood up the right wing and took a tough vote:

• Councilmember Ash Kalra
• Councilmember Sam Liccardo
• Councilmember Kansen Chu
• Councilmember Nora Campos
• Councilmember Madison Nguyen
• Councilmember Rose Herrera
• Councilmember Nancy Pyle

As they took their vote, they were told that they didn't care about kids, and heck, those kids that view pornography are likely to become serial killers... Also, it was good to see a grassroots group combat the far right. Kudos to Books Not Filters as well.

The losers of the night are Councilmember Pete Constant, Mayor Reed, Councilmember Pierluigi Oliverio, and the "Values" Advocacy Council.

• Constant: It took him 19 months to get 3 votes on a proposal. Which are probably the two other votes he would have had in 2007 when he raised the bad idea. He was clearly pissed at the end of the night and asked for one, last-ditch vote to save his proposal -- which was rejected by Councilmember Liccardo. (Perhaps Constant wants to re-think this. This might be legislative-courtesy karma coming back around...)

• Reed: We've said it before, this is an issue the Mayor should not have let come back to Council. It is divisive and anyone with any knowledge of the 18th floor would know it was going to fail. So, Watch Dog can only assume that the Mayor got threatened by a right wing opponent next year if he didn't bring the issue forward, just like Larry Pegram and the "Values" Advocacy wanted. It is never a good thing for the Mayor to be on the losing end of a 7-3 vote.

• Oliverio: Watch Dog doesn't care as much about how he voted, but does care that the guy seems to not be able to draw the line between appropriate and inappropriate. Now, Watch Dog isn't one to talk, we can be very inappropriate. (Heck, check out the title of this post.) But Councilmember Oliverio is a Councilmember and used words like "fisting" and "double penetration" and few others that Watch Dog didn't even recognize. Thank you Pierluigi...we guess you really are familiar with erotica...

• Larry Pegram/"Values" Advocacy Council: The Council rejected his efforts to impose filters on San Jose Libraries. It is that simple. Watch Dog knows that Pegram isn't going away, but a short respite in his right wing efforts in San Jose would be nice...plus, exclamation marks will be outlawed on Watch Dog today...

Metro versus Merc: Yesterday's Coverage...

In the news business, speed is important. Reporters, Editors, and newspapers fall all over themselves to be first with a scoop...

Yesterday, sad news broke about about Councilmember Judy Chirco and her being diagnosed with breast cancer. Our best wishes go out to her, her family, and her staff.

But the news roll-out of this story was interesting to watch unfold yesterday:

4:19 p.m.
Erin Sherbert with the Metro posts the story on San Jose Inside

5:47 p.m.
John Woolfolk with the Mercury News posts the story on the Mercury News website

Woolfolk has an office in City Hall, has all the sources in the world in City Hall, and works for the local "paper of record." He got scooped by an hour and a half on this story...that's pretty weak.

Sherbert works for the Metro outside of City Hall and some folks inside City Hall won't even talk to the Metro. Her scooping Woolfolk is pretty cool.

Is this just another sign of the Mercury News' downfall? Or perhaps is Woolfolk at fault? We know how Revealed feels about him...

Or perhaps the Weekly + Blog model just opens up new scoops for the Metro/Inside family of publications...

Again, this is not to undermine the seriousness of Chirco's health -- rather, a summary of the news surrounding the news...