I’m supposed to save these for only once a week. My god.
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September 24, 2018
September 21, 2018
September 20, 2018
Untruths in advertising
Just in case you believed the whole line that some candidates are spitting that they won’t accept support from this or that special interest, let’s not forget that letting a PAC put your face and your name on their collateral is a form of support.
There’s a door hanger floating around on Alamedans Facebook pages, but here’s the latest expenditure from Alamedans in Charge:
In case you’re wondering which side Trish Spencer falls on the whole Measure K issue, it’s a Yes on K for her and who cares how deceptive the information on the mailer is with her face on it.
Oh hey, this was sort of one of the questions that was posed by ACT PAC/ A Better Alameda. They asked what the candidates would do if PACs that support the candidate publish untrue and derogatory information about the candidate’s opponents. While this is not about an opponent it IS untrue information. But the so called good governance PAC is not publishing the actual responses received from candidates so we have no way of knowing what metrics ACT PAC/ A Better Alameda used to make their decision on who they would be supporting. Most, if not all, other grounds with endorsements post those answers so for full disclosure. Good governance groups, I suppose, are beyond such niceties.
September 19, 2018
Answer the question
Here’s a fun set of videos of the first question asked (not including opening remarks) of the Democratic Club’s City Council candidate forum. The question posed was “What are your top 2 or 3 accomplishments recently as part of or working with city government that have made Alameda a better place?”
As you can guess that farther the initial question from the responder the less the person actually answered the question being asked.
Some people answered the question fairly straightforward addressing the actual question, others were a little more creative with their interpretations.
September 18, 2018
The business of business
Tonight, the City Council will be tackling the subject of a $15 minimum wage which is a bold move before the election.
The TL;dr of the staff report is essentially that businesses (particularly service and retail businesses) are concerned about the rapid ramp up to $15 and its impact on small businesses. Apparently other non business owning Alamedans are largely okay with the idea of raising the minimum wage faster than the state’s timelines.
This is an issue that I’m pretty torn about because the compressed timeline is concerning for small businesses particularly. But it appears as one of the main benefits of moving to the higher minimum wage model is that restaurants have started being really creative about how they deal with the wage imbalance within their own restaurants particularly when it comes to tipping.
September 17, 2018
For one ravishing moment Italy appeared
One of the things on the City Council’s agenda for tomorrow is yet another Sister City application. This time for a small (population of 13000) town in Northern Italy.
I’m confused as to why the budget to support this relationship is coming out of the FISC fund. I’m hopeful that this question will come up because I’m not sure where the nexus between Sister Cities and lease revenue for warehouses lies.
Anyway, we have yet to resolve the whole Wadi Foquin sister city relationship as of yet and it looks like the City Council is moving on to much much lower hanging fruit before tackling an issue that came first and has proven to be a lot more controversial than a sea side Italian town will be.
From the staff report:
September 14, 2018
September 13, 2018
Give me your attention baby
I was really bummed out that I was not able to go to the City Council candidate forum hosted by the Alameda Democratic Club. But I have watched the majority of the recorded video and was able to snip out some portions. I had plans for breaking it out into chunks of questions and answers and got some of that done, so I may throw up what I have but midway in the video my download lost audio so I couldn’t complete the work.
Anyway.
There were a lot of exciting and bloggable parts to what I was able to clip out and the first came right out of the gate. There were no excuses that could be made about being tired at the end of a long meeting or being at the end of the five dude panel questioning and so the ground rules had been forgotten, no this was straight up a deliberate violation of the rules because, well, entitlement I guess.
September 12, 2018
Oh the Zhu Zhumanity
Just in case you weren’t 100% clear on which special interests Robert Matz has decided to represent, it’s the special interest that decries other special interests but tries to pretend they are not a special interest, here’s the header banner from his website:
Again, if this candidate had done some research before hand he’d know that another candidate has used the “A Better Alameda” before even ACT PAC and that’s Stewart Chen. More hilarity on Robert Matz’s burn book website includes some catty “clap backs” as he like to call it by critiquing the other candidates in the race without calling them out by name. Because, you know, you couldn’t figure it out anyway. Despite his desire to come off as witty and insightful he goes for the obvious tropes to disqualify the other candidates rather than boosting himself up.
But the most intriguing part of his website is this rather vague qualification that he presented for you, gentle voter, to consider (screen shots for posterity!):
September 11, 2018
Welcome Matz
Many thanks to the Alameda Progressives for making the answers to their questionnaire available for viewing. Since City Council candidate Robert Matz wants people to know his opinions on items of interest and I happened to read through his whole questionnaire let’s just say that my quickie summation here was pretty spot on and I truly enjoyed how Robert Matz himself displayed the thin-skinnedness by opting to point the finger in another direction rather than actually put any real meat behind his platform and ideas.
One of the things I found interesting in the summary the Alameda Progressives put together were some of the responses to national level issues. Mainly there was a lot of dismissiveness around any non hyper local issues which I found really puzzling. Yes, I — a hyper local blogger — found dismissing national level issues to be fairly disturbing. I thought maybe the Alameda Progressives truncated his responses a little too much and maybe there was more nuance to his statements. Turns out, there wasn’t a ton more nuance.
