Politics
by ISABEL ESTERMAN OCT. 19–A crowd of about 100 demonstrators greeted members of the Mortgage Bankers Association Sunday afternoon as they arrived at the Moscone Center in Downtown San Francisco for their 95th annual conference.
Business is actually brisk in one corner of American retail: Obama gear. McCain gear? In North Oakland, not so much. Click here for the story.
By MARTIN RICARD Oct. 17 — On most days, you can usually find 19-year-old Lajon Collins at the Bushrod Recreation Center, playing basketball, lifting weights or just hanging out with friends. But come Nov. 4, there is one place you probably won’t find him: at the polls. Collins isn’t registered to vote. And he doesn’t plan on voting in the upcoming election either.
By MAGGIE FAZELI FARD OCT. 21 — Three months after discovering that Oakland is facing a $42.5 million shortfall, the city council is slated to vote tonight on a budget that could cut a hundred city jobs, close several city parks, and shut down official city business over the holiday season.
After a $10 million renovation, North Oakland’s reopened Studio One is still waiting for the community to come back at full strength. Click here for the story and a historic timeline of the century-old building.
By MELANIE MASON, MARTIN RICARD and KRISTINE WONG Oct. 6–Bailouts, credit crunches, bank buyouts. In these shaky economic times, it seems like every day there’s a new phrase to learn and another concept to wrap our heads around. For a breakdown of what is going on in our faltering economy, we turned to Martha Olney, an adjunct professor of economics at UC Berkeley. Olney, who won the university’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 2003, sat down with us on Monday to…
by CLARE MAJOR The cards would look much like any other ID card—driver’s license, student or employee ID—that people use in Oakland every day. The new cards would display a photo, name, and address; a magnetic strip would run across the back. And these cards, issued by the City of Oakland, would be available to illegal immigrants—and could cause the kind of controversy that has erupted over similar programs in San Francisco and New Haven, Conn. The proposed municipal ID…
By HENRY JONES OCT. 9 — Oakland education leaders are joining in what some would consider a surprising fight: one against raising teacher salaries. They joined labor leaders and Assemblyman Sandré Swanson at a news conference today outside the state building in downtown Oakland to voice their opposition to Measure N, a parcel tax that would generate roughly $10 million a year for local schools.
Read a Twitter feed of the council meeting here By ISABEL ESTERMAN and MARTIN RICARD OCT. 8 — It’s hard to know what to expect when taking a cab ride in Oakland. But in a city that operates more than 60 taxi companies, some problems have become irritatingly predictable: People left stranded in an area because a driver deemed it too dangerous, remote or unprofitable; taxis initially dressed with good tires just to pass inspection, only to have them later…