Morning News Round-Up -- 5.20.10: (Drug Free?) Post-Peloton Thursday...

Happy post-peloton Thursday to all of you... except Floyd Landis...

More coverage of the District 5 City Council race in San Jose... this time from Scott Herhold, who acknowledges that all the hoopla about the illegal mailings is backfiring on the idiots who did it, because Carrasco is getting all kinds of coverage on the news, on the radio, and everywhere else. Herhold also doesn't think that Shirakawa is the culprit, but does point out how silly/stupid the Grand Pooba's quotes were earlier in the week...

The Mercury News thinks that story is so important that for a period of time yesterday they posted it twice...

And the San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce is putting out a reward for any information about who done it... $5,000 to anyone of the stamp-licking interns who want to turn in their co-conspirators...

Manuel Herrera, another candidate in District 5, chimed in via a Letter to the Editor...

While everyone is focused on fake campaign mailers... there was a murder in the Tropicana parking lot earlier in the week and two folks were found dead due to gun shot wounds in Alum Rock... hopefully the candidates can keep their collective eyes on the ball...

As discussed yesterday, the Planning Commission in San Jose approved an EIR for Major League Baseball in downtown San Jose. There are some interesting things to be concluded by reading between the lines of last night's Planning Commission meeting where the EIR was approved 4-1:

• Thing 1 - Planning Commissioner Chris Platten voted against the EIR,
• Thing 2 - Planning Commissioner Hope Cahan was absent from the proceedings, and
• Thing 3 - Planning Commissioner and City Council candidate Xavier Campos was absent from the proceedings.

According to spies, all three Things are related as all three Planning Commissioners are Labor-allies on the Planning Commission. Perhaps the folks at the Labor Temple are using their support (or opposition) to MLB as leverage in their contract negotiations? That may be, but missing votes (Cahan and especially Campos) is a pretty lame way to go... we wonder where these folks learned the technique of "taking a walk"...

Speaking of EIRs, Stanford's massive development project around the hospital released their draft EIR yesterday... expect lots and lots and lots of community concern, tweaking of the project, and finally the eventual development of the project... welcome to Palo Alto...

It is unlikely that anyone who sees the new plans at Stanford will be underwhelmed, but that was the reaction down the road a bit by the Mountain View City Council who caught a glimpse of the plans for a new San Antonio Center there... that's probably not the reaction the developer Merlone Geier was looking for... On the bright side, it can only get better, right?

The County Superintendent Chuck Weis gets in on the political action in today's Letters to the Editor in the Merc, chiming in on behalf of Larry Aceves for State Superintendent for Public Instruction...

Cupertino is taking a step to make Silicon Valley air a little, (perhaps a lot) cleaner by monitoring more closely the air quality around the Lehigh Cement plant... or is it Lehigh Cement plan, as it read online yesterday...

A pension reform initiative is heading to the ballot in Menlo Park. Could this be a Silicon Valley trend among cash-strapped cities? Chuck Reed has been talking about asking voters in San Jose to vote to do away with the often-expensive binding arbitration...

Silicon Valley has some serious interest in the upcoming Republican primaries for US Senate and Governor. New polls are out together. The first one actually confirms what Steve Poizner said a few weeks back -- that his race against Whitman is tightening... The second has Carly Fiorina leading (slightly) over Tom Campbell, but within the margin of error... (Joey Lucas will explain everything later...)

Finally, the Merc Editorial Board also hands Tom Campbell some bad news... they don't like his less-than-thoughtful stance on Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court. "We expected more of Campbell..."

Morning News Round-Up -- 5.6.10: Too...Many...Margaritas...

Oh, poor Mineta San Jose (International?) Airport. They are considering cutting positions, contracting out services, and generally driving Cindy Chavez absolutely bonkers... the proposed cuts/contracting could save a whole bunch of cash all in an effort to get airlines to start coming back, or at least to stop cutting flights...

And no amount of cutting or contracting out will bring Tapestry in Arts back this year apparently... it joins the fireworks display downtown as canceled events in San Jose...

Scott Herhold follows the County budget closer than some Supervisors do. Especially Supervisor George Shirakawa. (Remember, Herhold told the story about District Attorney Dolores Carr's car...) Shirakawa and his fiscally responsible staff, headed up by Eddie Garcia, are over budget and don't seem to know why, which is reassuring. The curious part is that Herhold's story doesn't mention the second in charge to Garcia: Xavier Campos. You'd think Campos would be able to deal with the budget in the office, y'know, because of the bang-up job he did as MACSA's Chief Operating Officer...

San Jose District 5 got the breakdown treatment this week, so did Districts 1 and 3 (from Joe Rodriguez), and now it is District 7's turn, where incumbent Madison Nguyen runs for that seat for the 17th time... John Woolfolk at the Merc has been very, very busy...

Speaking of the District 3 run-down, it seems Councilmember Sam Liccardo disagrees with some (or all) of what Joe Rodriguez wrote according to Liccardo's letter to the editor...

George Beattie, the not-nearly-as-much-fun successor to Bobby Lopez at the San Jose Police Officers' Association, writes for Protect San Jose about the back and forth and back and forth between the POA and the City of San Jose, with copies of the letters that are flying between North 4th and Santa Clara Street...

Guess what Steve Poizner's internal polls say? That he's catching up. Guess what Sarah Palin's polls said about her? That she was qualified... it doesn't make it so Steve, it doesn't make it so...

In other political news (about people way behind in the polls), Yoriko Kishimoto gets a write up in the Almanac/Palo Alto Weekly. She is running for State Assembly for Ira Ruskin's seat against Josh Becker and Rich Gordon.

Stanford Hospital and nurses still aren't getting along nicely. The hospitals just rejected a proposal from the nurses... who previously had rejected the "last, best, and final" offer from the hospital.

Just to give you fair warning, four students were sent home from school at Live Oak High School yesterday for wearing American flag t-shirts on Cinco de Mayo, it was viewed as incendiary. (Perhaps it was the t-shirts and the tight-cropped hair cuts...) This will be a controversial issue that will likely make Fox News, the Rush Limbaugh Show, and probably spark a Tea Party rally as well.

This is a story from Watch Dog San Mateo.. the Almanac actually... but it will send shock-waves up and down Silicon Valley. Menlo Park is imposing a two-tier pension system for its municipal employees. The beginning of a trend, or the shot heard round the union world?

More from San Mateo County... To Tweet (or Facebook) or not to Tweet during a City Council meeting... something that more than one Watch Dog has commented on in the past related to at least one San Jose City Council member whose name starts with P and ends in ETE. A Tweet from a Councilmember in San Carlos has stirred up the usually sleepy town...

Finally, Tom Campbell's campaign has released an online campaign video (and taken their gloves off) that you absolutely have to see. Seriously. It makes the weird sheep thing Carly Fiorina's campaign put out a while ago seem mild. Take a gander... love the head-bob...

Morning News Round-Up -- 4.30.10: DeadbeatDellums.com...

Sharks won Game 1... and not because the Red Wings were grounded for missing curfew either...

From the sublime to the ridiculous...

Because we can't help ourselves, Watch Dog Silicon Valley is now the "point out Mayor Ron Dellums' shortcomings" blog... yesterday we wrote about his Palin-esque (or was it Yoda-esque) quote in the paper. Today it is a story from the Chronicle about Mayor Dellums going back on his pledge to take a 10 percent paycut. (He needs the money to pay the IRS who probably have their own internal blog about Dellums' shortcomings... DeadbeatDellums.com) But should MLB really listen to guy who can't pay his taxes and goes back on his $18,000 paycut pledge? Just asking. We'll add this to the "things that won't happen in San Jose when the A's move here" list: there will be no anti-Wolff banners, there will be no anti-A's City Attorney, and there will be no Mayor that gives back his paycut... San Jose looks better and better everyday... don't you think Bud?

Super Bowl in Santa Clara? It could happen, and James Rowen will absolutely be there... His blog-enemies will absolutely not be...

But a story in today's Merc brings up the prospects of "...Raider Nation -- and its rough-and-tumble reputation -- descending on Silicon Valley for football Sundays..." and how that might impact the vote in June. It ain't the wine and cheese-going 49er crowd, that's for sure...

High-Speed Rail could be in trouble, according to a new State audit because it... "...suffers from 'weak oversight,' 'lax' management and a shaky funding plan..." Funny, we thought that was the norm for things coming out of Sacramento... One thing for sure, this audit will be the talk of the country-club set in Menlo Park and Atherton this weekend...

We'll let Sean Webby continue his work on this story and we won't comment at all: Prosecutor: San Jose cop's work on sex assault cases sloppy, but no charges...

Our only comment on this story is that the formatting, probably for a split second yesterday, was a bit screwy... so we share because we can't resist...

While we are on the San Jose Police, the San Jose POA's Vice President didn't mince words when he expressed regret that the Police Chief didn't get the Dallas job, sort of... "Chief Davis has lost the confidence of his troops..." tick tock Chief Davis, tick tock. Of course, we've said that before...

• Medical Cannabis Dude A: Dude, let's file a lawsuit against the City of San Jose for trying to screw with us...
• Medical Cannabis Dude B: Dude... let's do it...

(Don't worry all you medical cannabis users out there. I support you. But it is funnier to write about this story if we throw the word "dude" in once and awhile...)

If you life isn't boring enough, there will be public workshops will start this weekend about how to develop 2,600 acres of land around San Jose's "water treatment"/ sewage plant. Either your life isn't boring enough OR you ran out of your Ambien prescription...

Become the Lt. Governor go on Colbert... that is Maldo's path to fame.

But the special elections that the Governor is pushing got dinged in the Merc Editorial pages today... because of cost ($3 million) and because of politics...

The Board of Supervisors' plan to ban fast food toys gets some love on SFist.com... at the same time that George Shirakawa goes out for steak for a good cause (Dining Out for Life) and presumably not handing out toys... BUT wait, the comments on San Jose Inside tell a different story: apparently Shirakawa wasn't going to be there after his press release was sent out...

The City of Cupertino is laying out some cash ($2.1 million) now (with Siemens) to reap energy efficiency savings later (through cuts in energy and water bills)... How'd they find $2.1 million? $438k in grants, $562k in capital improvement reserves, and the other $1.1 will come from a private lender or reserves...

The Minton's project in Mountain View got approved. 203 "luxury apartments" will be built on the site of the old lumber yard... Prometheus Real Estate Group 1, NIMBYs 0...