containing chaos

A growing number of Berkeley residents are becoming active in fighting city hall. I guess someone is always fighting all city halls about something. And Berkeley, in its past, has had a proud history of activism. Many in other parts of this country still think Berkeley is the very progressive place it was in the sixties. Berkeley has become a victim of political, conservative wolves posing in the guise of the progressive's sheeps clothing. Our mayor is conservative, querrulous and appears to only care about what the rich want. Our mayor seems to have swallowed the same kool aid many politicians in Congress have swallowed and politicians at all levels of governance.

I gotta give the hard right a bit of credit. Accustomed to being willing to take long-term financial positions, patiently waiting twenty, thirty, even fifty years, to get a huge return on an investment, the very rich elite have patiently but steadily invested in buying judges through campaign donations, buying state legislatures that they then order to gerrymander our congressional districts, then getting people to run for Congress who will obey the rich overlords. They have funded conservative universities to groom troops for the conservative advance. They have groomed and continue to groom judges, holding conservative playbook conferences to which our U.S. Supreme Court justices, some of them, attend, in direct violation of their duty to not only be non-partisan but to avoid even the appearance of impropriety.

The appearance of impropriety has no meaning any more. Here in Berkeley, the lobbyist wolves, former city planning directors, guard the hen house full of opportunities to make hundreds of millions of dollars. Our mayor and his voting block on the council, along with planning staff who openly support developers above citizens' wishes seem, but no one can prove, to have made secretive agreements to give the lobbyist wolves what they want. And for what? What motivates a 75 year old man, who already receives a great state pension and who does not appear to be driven to accumulate accessive wealth for himself. He seems, to me, and what do I know, to be some kind of egomaniac. And a bully. Tommy Bates is such a bully.

And he has power, which a bully does not wear gracefully.

Gosh, griping about Berkeley corruptin is not my point at all.

I am interesting in thinking about, and I think better when I write, at least some of the time, the way people who oppose what's going on in Berkeley are coming together to join forces, hoping to create a grassroots coalition that will take Berkeley back from the conservatives on our city council.

It is astonishing to me how even in pseudo liberal Berkeley, a majority on our city council seems to have been given the same playbook as conservative sell outs everywhere. I don't think our city council is on the take, as in bribes.  I