Sunday, November 5th 2006
November Issue Out
Hey look, a new Patriot. As always, read it online or pick it up on Sproul.
Highlights:
Chris Page on Student Action nonsense. And also on the campus’ sometimes-overlooked memorials to veterans.
Rohit Joy gives us his picks on the statewide propositions, while Alex Marlow takes on the Berkeley measures. James Fullmer writes about why we should re-elect Arnold, while Sunthosh Madireddi and Aditya Kashyap argue over whether we should punish the Congressional Republicans. To wrap up our election coverage, Derek Yee interviews John den Dulk and Matthew Vasquez interviews Mike DeNunzio.
James Fullmer thinks that USC should be our new rival, not Stanfurd.
Sid Radhakrishnan closes the magazine with a piece on an Iraqi hero.
Football rivalries are based more on geography than ability. While I will be more excited to watch the Cal-USC game we have to average things out over 100 years and then we get to see that the Cal-Stanfurd crosstown rivalry is indeed a solid and traditional one that is worth maintaining. Stanfurd sucks.
Comment by BallzDeep — 11/6/2006 @ 12:24 am
Marlow advocates a YES on J? WTF?? A ‘yes’ is a vote in favor of all the loonies on the Landmarks Commission (who are career obstructionists). How much time did he devote to exploring this measure?
Comment by longtimer — 11/6/2006 @ 3:19 am
I especially like his suggestion that supporting J limits government authority.
Comment by Beetle — 11/6/2006 @ 5:03 am
We vote = …more government authority? Explain.
Comment by Alex Marlow — 11/6/2006 @ 1:03 pm
The most telling element of Sid’s patronizing article about the so-called “moderate Muslims” is the following sentence: “The fact Abdul-Aziz had a Kurdish father and an Arabic mother should have pushed the Sunni extremists to the brink….” Really? This statement, besides hyperbolizing the ‘evil’ mindset of the Sunnis (who are bad in Iraq, but good in Lebanon), makes no actual sense. There is nothing that precludes either a Kurd (who is good in Iraq, but bad in Turkey) or an Arab (who is bad in Sudan, but good in Saudi Arabia) from being Sunni, and there is nothing inherently anti-Kurdish or anti-Arab about Sunni Islam. In fact, Arabs and Kurds in Iraq do have such a thing as free will and often turn out to be Shia, Sunni, Christian, or, despite popular precepts, atheists. They even go so far as to intermarry. Perhaps these truths were conveniently overlooked for stylistic purposes, or perhaps Sid is really unaware that Arab and Kurd are not actually religions. After all, wasn’t it our own brave leader who proclaimed that he had no knowledge leading up to the colonization of Iraq that there was even such a split in Islamic theology?
Nevermind, though. This is meaningless bickering, a simple play on words that has no effect in real life decisions. What is important is that I completely support Sid’s brave call for Muslims everywhere to embrace non-violence instead of violence. Take the moral high ground. And, if you don’t, America will benevolently amass several hundred thousand of its peaceful troops, aircraft, vehicles, and hundreds of billions of dollars, in order to non-violently liberate you from your heritage and to show you the way of peace and prosperity. It would also be nice if you left the mosques, let your women leave their harems, and actually participated in civic life so that we could grade you on your respectable ‘moderate’ views–nevermind that such views (non-violent, since that is what Sid is talking about) are printed almost daily in Arabic newspapers and similarly echoed on television, including channels like Al Jazeera. As for the definition of ‘moderate,’ we mean that it would be nice if you left your religion of submission to God and instead replaced it with a religion of submission to American corporations and America’s inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, at the expense of everybody else. At the very least, greet our armies of peace with rice and flowers. Please?
Comment by Yaman — 11/6/2006 @ 2:05 pm
Alex, Prop J maintains the current landmark ordinance. The ordinance is designed so that people who want to piss off their neighbors can go landmark their house, and then the government essentially seizes your house and refuses to allow you to do anything with it. It politely lets you live there, though.
The Bates version would make this process harder. It would also allow people to get the Landmarks commission to rule on whether their house is a landmark or not without pressure from angry neighbors, so that once the owner decides to do something, their house won’t magically acquire historical and cultural value.
Comment by Beetle — 11/6/2006 @ 2:45 pm
Oh, and as for “voting = more government authority,” people vote in more governmental authority all the time. People vote in gun control and such. The whole point of rights and freedom is that you have the freedom to do things even if most people aren’t happy about it. When approving the use of the government as a tool to force others to conform to the whims of the majority, then yes, “voting = more governmental authority”
Comment by Beetle — 11/6/2006 @ 2:48 pm
I’m glad to see Rohit’s analysis of Prop 90 includes all the nuances that have led to NO endorsements by the California Taxpayers Association, League of California Homeowners, California Small Business Association, California Chamber of Commerce, and Governor Schwarzenegger. Not to mention a slew of groups I actually side with. List of opposition here: http://www.noprop90.com/coalition/index.php . Reasons why Prop 90 is a horrible idea that only uses eminent domain as a vehicle to fool the voters can be found therein.
Comment by Augie — 11/6/2006 @ 4:12 pm
Beetle, I had heard your side articulated before I wrote the endorsements (FYI to longtimer, I spent the most time on this Measure and found it easily the most difficult decision of all of the measures), and ultimately, I decided that I trusted voters more than city council bureaucrats. Unfortunately, I don’t really trust either, and I don’t like the idea of letting voters decide things are monuments for the sake of not having their peace and quiet disrupted, but I also don’t like the city council members doing the exact same thing for more possible reasons.
Your argument implies that measure J will lead to an influx of unnecessary monuments, and the Bates plan will diminish them. I think this is unlikely, which is why I am supporting J. In two years, if I am wrong, I will be more than happy to apologize for the endorsement.
Comment by Alex Marlow — 11/6/2006 @ 5:31 pm
‘..in two years..’? Measure J ensconces the STATUS QUO. WE DON’T HAVE TO WAIT TWO YEARS. We’re talking about and voting on this because lots of people are unhappy with the status quo, Alex. With your ‘two years’ remark, I suspect you still don’t grasp this. Measure J was created by supporters of the current bunch on the Landmarks Commission. Did you read the East Bay Express’ article on this? (’Berkeley’s Hysterical Landmarks’)…it’s required reading on the subject. (I get the feeling you haven’t.) All the local Greens are voting YES on J. What does that tell you? I’m a homeowner in Berkeley, and I urge everyone to vote NO on J!!!
Comment by longtimer — 11/7/2006 @ 12:10 am
Cop-out. This is abortion logic: “If you don’t like abortions, don’t get one!” Or, if you don’t like development, don’t develop! Or, “It’s none of your business!” This measure isn’t nearly that simple.
It is easy to scream “home-owners rights at all costs!!!! Lol Marlow blew it rofl!!1!” But a NO vote on this measure renders the community meaningless in decision making on age-old buildings and properties.
When you move into a city, when you move into a neighborhood, when you move onto a block, you do so largely based on a perception of the neighborhood at the time when you purchased your property. If you take some of houses near the Clark Kerr Campus, for example, or those on the North Side, they will run you $2 or $3 million, but if you stick the same house in the Bayou of Louisiana, you are looking at what? $100,000? Maybe. Location, location, location! You move to a place for the neighborhood itself, not just for the physical house, and I believe if you can mount 50% of Berkeley voters to determine a spot in that neighborhood is so important that they want to take away the homeowner’s rights to alter it, then lets call it a landmark.
Keep in mind, J makes concessions to make the process harder than it already is to make something a landmark.
It is short-sided to only consider the property owner, especially considering a lot of the people we are talking about are developers who couldn’t care less about the neighborhoods except for the fact that nice neighborhoods are money-makers.
I am all for the individual, but there are a lot of individuals that are involved in a community, and a lot of individuals are affected by substantial real-estate developments. When the boundaries of where the individual rights end and community rights begin are as blurry as they are in the situations this measure addresses, I see no other solution than to VOTE ON IT! Which we can continue to do if we pass J.
That being said, here are some other neat comments.
1) Who cares if the greens are voting for it? There are tons of people supporting this measure, from a lot more diverse crowd than the Bates-plan folks.
2) Drop the elementary school “he doesn’t get it” malarkey. What I don’t get is why people like you feel like they have to go party-line on every issue, without doing any actual thinking.
Comment by Alex Marlow — 11/7/2006 @ 2:12 am
If you believe that because you have the deed to a house that you can do whatever you want with it, then we are on different wavelengths. If you do think that way, you should first reevaluate (because you are wrong), and then give me your address so that I can drop by and give you a sash to wear around your kingdom…err…house.
Comment by Alex Marlow — 11/7/2006 @ 2:28 am
Alex, J does not put the decisions about landmarking in the hands of voters. It keeps it in the hands of the bureaucrats who have that power now. It’s not a matter of getting 50% of voters to support calling a location a landmark.
Comment by Beetle — 11/7/2006 @ 3:22 am
…and I still get the feeling you’re not familiar with how those bureaucrats (the Landmarks Commission) have abused their power in the name of ‘preserving’ Berkeley. Again, that abuse is why we’re talking about all this in the first place. The commission has ‘landmarked’ parking lots, retaining walls, broken-down old shacks–if it’ll help thwart a developer they happen not to like (which is pretty much all of them). The commission’s supporters put J on the ballot. Alex, you should really read that article I mentioned…it lists the abuses and presents an accurate indictment of the folks you’re (perhaps inadvertently) defending. There’s a good reason they entitled the article ‘Berkeley’s Hysterical Landmarks’.
So if the Greens are on one side of an issue, and moderates/conservatives are on the other–you don’t infer anything from that? (Not that THAT by itself determines my vote–it’s one factor among many–but it’s certainly revealing.)
And yes, I can think independently. I also know how to spell ‘throne’ (in another of your posts, you spelled it ‘thrown’.)
Comment by longtimer — 11/7/2006 @ 4:46 am
…it’s ‘throne’ when referring to a king’s chair, as Mr. Marlow was attempting to do, that is.
Comment by longtimer — 11/7/2006 @ 6:24 am