In response to the growing opposition to proposed State Assembly Bill SB9, the Berkeley Neighborhoods Council (BNC) conducted a poll of over 13,000 Berkeley residents. The results indicated an overall 76.5% of respondents were opposed to the proposed measure SB9, which would allow property owners in single-family residential zones to split their lots and construct multiple units on each half. The bill was heavily opposed in every City Council district of Berkeley by a clear majority of no less than two-thirds of respondents in each district. -more-

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Read the fine print: Obscene development in Tassajara Valley could qualify for special protection under SB 10. Scott Wiener styles himself an environmental legislator. In February 2017, the then-rookie state senator averred that “having good, well-planned, transit-oriented, compact housing…[is] one of the most critical things we can be doing to meet our climate goals. It’s about driving less—about having to drive less.”

That rhetoric is hard to square with sprawl-inducing SB 10, which Wiener is carrying for its sponsor, California Yimby. -more-

Oh goody! UC Berkeley will more than double what it pays the city under new settlement agreement

That’s the triumphal headline on a story posted this week on a local news site.

Well, yes, it’s double, but bupkes x 2 still equals: bupkes.

If you missed out on learning Yiddish, bupkes (also transliterated bobkes, bubkes, bopkes) is a term of art glossed in a comprehensive and entertaining online etymology discussion which you can read here.

Bupkes is less than nothing. Sometimes it’s translated as “beans”, or as Spanish nada, but the really erudite think it might mean “goat turds”, which do look something like beans.

One scholar, Evan Morris, opines on the site that “when you say you got bupkes from a deal you brokered, for example, it really means you got nothing when you should have gotten at least something if there were any justice at all in this world.”

That’s a great description of the agreement announced with great fanfare last week by Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin and University of California at Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ. Here the term of art bupkes applies to the piddling amount graciously granted by UCB to the City of Berkeley coffers, up to maybe $4 million annually to compensate for the university’s use of essential city services like roads and fire fighting, conservatively estimated as being worth $20 million a year. -more-

From one of the Berkeleyans left high and dry when the Berkeley City Council led by Jesse Arreguin bailed as co-plaintiffs in their lawsuit against UCB:"This is by far the most one-sided settlement agreement signed by any UC campus." -more-

This week we're experimenting with new issues every two weeks instead of weekly. -more-

And also, with adding more frequent short items in this category. Let me know what you think. -more-

Covid cases are increasing at an alarming rate, and more than 95% are unvaccinated people. Nearly all of the recent Covid deaths were unvaccinated. Nevertheless, anti-vaxxers insist on not getting jabbed. They howl about their freedom, unconcerned that they are spreading disease to others. -more-

Where to begin? The Berkeley City Council voted Tuesday evening to extend the COVID-19 emergency to October 1, 2021, an action that makes a lot of sense given that the number of recorded daily new cases is skyrocketing even here in California. The other pieces to the City Council COVID vote are that meetings will continue as remote, new legislation is at a standstill and the stranglehold on commissions will continue. -more-

On July 20, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and three invited guests blasted off from a West Texas launch pad and soared into near-space aboard a Blue Origin missile named in honor of astronaut Alan Shepard. While Bezos flew higher than Sir Richard Branson (who beat him to first-in-space prize, albeit at a lower altitude) the event was hardly "one great leap for mankind." -more-

This feels like a week to pour a glass of wine, pick up a mindless book and eat chocolate. That is as long as there is water left to grow the grapes and the crop doesn’t cook in a heat dome and the tiny chocolate midge insects survive to pollinate the cocoa plant. The drought map https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/ looks worse each week and unless we can learn to appreciate the critical importance of insects and their host plants a lot more is at risk than just chocolate. Summer has barely started. The West is burning and so is Siberia. The flood waters in Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium are starting to recede and we are supposed to be on watch for lightening. As for mindless books, there is no shortage, but I can’t seem to pull my head out of the books on politics and the environment.

Philip Rucker and Carol Leonig just published a new book I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year. Their other book A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump’s Testing of America was loaned to me by a friend pre-pandemic. I guess it’s time to get past page 53 in A Very Stable Genius so I can pick up their newest work. While I am into finishing projects started, I need to put the pictures of the Trump family and their enablers into my artwork, “an American Icon The Real Welfare Queens Found.”

The talk all week in my usual string of podcasts has been how close we were to a successful coup and how we should think of January 6^th as a warm up, a beginning and not an end. I agree with that analysis. I felt differently back in 1983 when I met my future husband and we would get into political discussions. He warned over and over that the US democracy was headed in the direction of collapse. Over the years, I always disagreed, but that was then and this is now. With what is happening on the voting rights front, I am beginning to wonder whether our country will hold together as democracy or even hold together as a union of states for the long term. -more-

The assassination of Haiti’s current President is only but one chapter in a long history of decades of strife and foreign interference. The country was enslaved by their cruel, despotic French overlords for over 200 years and were finally able to miraculously beat back Bonaparte’s mighty army in 1803 and declare independence from their oppressor’s. In a stunning turn of events the defeated French demanded reparations from the insurrection victors. Never failing to interfere in a regional conflict, the US insisted the current assassinated President’s term of office be extended by 1 year but the Haitians rioted and demanded he leave office in February. The assassinated President Jovenel Moïse’s administration was riddled with corruption favoring Haiti’s privileged elite to the detriment of the impoverished poor. -more-

In interviews such as the one recently hosted by Project Censored's Mickey Huff for a KPFA Zoom event (on July 13, 2021), Dan Kovalik, a labor rights lawyer who also teaches at a law school, has been flogging his new book, and literally whining on and on, about what he calls the crisis of so-called "cancel culture" which he claims is contaminating, especially, leftist public discourse. Very prominent and highly respected progressives, like Mickey Huff and Chris Hedges (on Hedges' RT interview program), have very disappointingly welcomed Kovalik's views and provided a veneer of left-wing legitimacy to Kovalik's claims. -more-

24, July 2021 There is world-wide demand led by prominent human rights groups such as Amnesty Int’l to immediately halt the sale of the Israeli spyware, PEGASUS. -more-

So far, Joe Biden's presidency has been a success. Most voters continue to believe that Biden has done an excellent job handling the pandemic and the economy. As we might expect, Democrats are far more likely to approve of Biden than are Republicans. -more-

Let's Bill Billionaire Bezos and Other Big-buck Bozos

On July 20, Amazon honcho Jeff Bezos—a Master of the Universe with a net worth of $202 billion according to Forbes’ “Real-Time Billionaires List"—was not just the richest man on Earth, he also became the richest person in space.

Bezos was July's second billionaire astronaut. Music and airline magnate Sir Richard Branson (worth a piddling $5 billion) had become history's first billionaut just nine days earlier. (Tesla Titan and former Saturday Night Live guest host Elon Musk—net worth: $160 billion—plans to blast into space as well, with his eyes set on colonizing Mars.)

Meanwhile, there are a lot of serious problems erupting down on Earth that are not being addressed by these self-absorbed, star-gazing, macho-moneybag stunt-meisters. That's why Public Citizen has come up with an immodest proposal.

As Public Citizen president Robert Weissman explains, under PC's proposed Terra Tariff, "billionauts returning from orbit must plunk down 10% of their net worth as a landing fee to return to Earth. Let's call it the 'Billionaire Astronaut Reentry Fee'—BARF, for short." The BARF would apply only to billionauts, Weissman clarified, "not to sub-billionaire passengers or crew." (Note: despite his ginormous wealth, Bezos has managed to avoid paying federal taxes.)

For Bezos, the BARF would be $20.2 billion—which sounds like a lot but it's actually less than the increase in Bezos' net worth in just the past three months.

Public Citizen calculates that the Bezos BARF could raise nearly enough money to vaccinate enough people to end the global COVID-19 pandemic. So, if these costly and polluting billionaire blast-offs make you feel like you want to BARF, add your name here. -more-

It is hard in today's culture containing many fear-inducing things to prevent oneself from having symptoms of paranoia.

In modern times, it seems that paranoia is prevalent. Finding someone who isn't paranoid--that's a rare find. It would be someone who does not have any real difficulties in her or his life. Perhaps a toddler whose mind has yet to be corrupted by parents. Or maybe a dog who has Buddha Nature. Even most Zen students and teachers seem find it prudent to employ caution about the world. I've been to a Zen monastery that had a sign saying the premises are monitored by video cameras. This is because, above all, successful meditation practitioners are connected to reality. And the reality is, things are scary.

These are insane times, and if you are not affected by this, something is probably wrong with you. -more-

Just for fun, here is the actual derivation of the word “bubkes.” -more-

The Week's Best Names in the News

Here are some plop-dazed name-faves that made it into print this week: A weightlifter from Tonga, a 70-year-old lady astronaut, a Tour de France cyclist, a SF Symphony conductor, a basket-ball-juggling Spelling Bee champ and her father. In that order: Kuinini "Nini" Manumua, Wally Funk, Sepp Kuss, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Zaila Avant-garde, and Jawara Spacetime.

Oddest Phone Message of the Month

Someone left a recorded message on my phone that simply announced: "There is no one here to take your call."

False Acronyms

BART is a true acronym. ICYMI is not an acronym.

A true acronym forms a pronounceable word. If it can't be pronounced as a word, it's not an acronym.

There's not a word for this in the English language. So let's create one.

Henceforth, an inaccurately named acronym shall be called an "inacronym."

Telecom Giant Living in Terror of Electronic Radiation?

AT&T, one of the biggest players in the TeleCom gameplan to roll out millions of 5G microwave transmitters across the US, apparently has a double standard when it comes to exposing citizens to unregulated electromagnetic radiation. Visitors to the AT&T office at 1612 Solano Avenue will discover an array of warning signs plastered over the front entrance. -more-

This week's essay follows two different paths of thought, and I hope it is followable. I'm speaking of our own attitudes as mental health consumers and I'm speaking of the problems that come about through use of force on mentally ill consumers. Here it is...



Your world, consisting of stimuli reaching your mind and body, and how you process these stimuli, is partly a product of attitude. However, when someone does harm to you, you did not bring this on yourself. Attitude is only one of many factors that determine what we experience.

If we suffer from psychiatric illness, it skews how we perceive our surroundings, and how we perceive everything. This is not attitude; this is a medically caused condition affecting the mind.

Most "normal" people do not see things accurately. It takes a lot of work to teach the mind to work well and to have clarity of perceptions. And this is applicable to both mentally ill people and to the non-afflicted. People see what they expect to see, whether accurate or not. The difference with a mentally ill person is where the brain has a gross malfunction, one that might be harmful to the brain itself. (It is believed by many people that untreated psychosis, if it takes place a long time, causes loss of gray matter. This, belief, however, may not be definitively proven.) -more-

I am a U.S. Army veteran who served in Vietnam (1987-1988) as well as Germany and Okinawa. I agree with President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw all our troops from Afghanistan, America’s longest-running war or the “forever war” as some have dubbed it. Briefly, here’s why:

Maintaining the status quo there is no longer worth the time, cost, and most importantly, the risk to the American troops that would be needed to hold things together. As Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO), a former ranger and veteran of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, aptly put it, "If there was a military solution to the war, we would've found it years ago.” -more-

Worth Noting: -more-

Worth Noting:

So far, the last City Council meetings before summer recess are: July 20^th and July 27^th. City Council summer recess is July 28 – September 13, 2021. Item 28 in the July 27^th agenda is Objective Standards for Density, Design and Shadows. The mayor said he will be submitting a supplement to the standards. Keep checking as nothing is posted yet. The full July 27^th agenda follows the daily list of meetings.



Wednesday afternoon FITES meets at 2:30 pm on the plastic bag ordinance and the City Fleet Replacement Fund audit. Wednesday evening there are five overlapping meetings. The Labor Commission at 7 pm, Human Welfare & Community Action Commission at 6:30 pm and the Transportation Subcommittee on BART at 6 pm look to be the most interesting. The Transportation subcommittee on BART is taking over where CAG (Community Advisory Group for BART Station Housing Developments at Ashby and North Berkeley BART) left off on planning for BART parking.

Thursday – The Mental Health Commission at 7 pm starts with the FY 21/22 MHSA annual report presentation and public hearing. Item 5 on the agenda is the update on the SCU.

Friday – The outdoor movie in Grove Park is Akeelah and the Bee at 8:45.

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