Once again my favorite annual San Jose festival is here. The next 11 days will be filled with many exciting events and the showing of over 150 films from 34 countries. This year’s theme is “Discover” and the lineup is very impressive. The venues, as usual, are Camera 12, California Theatre and the San Jose Repertory Theatre.

Under the city charter, the city auditor has independent authority to carry out examination of finances, documents and operations of any city department, other than the office of any elected official (too bad about that exception). A well run and honest city auditor’s department, as we have in San Jose, is the citizens’ best guard against corruption and financial malfeasance as well as overspending and misspending of public money by civil servants. To be effective, the auditor must remain separate from political control and be able to “strike at will,” something that is recognized in the mandate of the city charter.

If our city council’s holier-than-thou moral army member Pete Constant really wants to put a stop to any opportunities for “sexual misconduct and lewd behavior” in the Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) Library, why doesn’t he advocate the installation of men’s room toilet stalls with walls all the way to the floor in case Larry Craig comes to town? Or why doesn’t he work to stop distribution of applications for the Congressional page program there in case some hapless San Jose student gets an intern position with the likes of Congressman Foley or Senator Vitter? Oh, wait: Craig, Foley, and Vitter are members of the Republican moral army too. Ironically, Constant’s plan to restrict internet access at the library will presumably mean that the more than 1.25 million websites mentioning the extracurricular activities of these three men—Craig (778,000 Google hits), Foley (75,000 Google hits) and Vitter (400,000 Google hits)—will be on his porn censorship list.

The $100,000 consultants’ report to the city on the Mexican Heritage Plaza (MHP) has been completed and is available on the city’s website. However, its more than one hundred pages raise more questions than they answer. Many of those questions have to do with the consultant who wrote the report, Maribel Alvarez, and her qualifications, conflicts of interest, methods of data collection and how she was chosen.

The San Jose Mercury News is beginning to remind me of one of those aging Hollywood stars—male and female—who convince themselves that they are once again youthfully beautiful with their pumped-up lips and reconstructive plastic surgery, but actually resemble the “Phantom of the Opera” or Jack Nicholson’s “Joker” to everyone else. More plastic surgery won’t reverse the disastrous facial consequences to sixties TV stars, and a new editor-in-chief—the third in the past few months—from the corporate bowels of Denver-based MediaNews won’t fix their science experiment gone bad. And just like the old movie stars that do nothing and insist on aging naturally, the San Francisco Chronicle is now winning the Bay Area newspaper beauty contest. Go figure.

For some people the Christmas and New Year holidays were a little too happy; 792 arrests were made in Santa Clara County for DUI during the seasonal crackdown from December 14 until January 1, up from 716 last year. There were 165 arrests in San Jose and one death in the county related to drunk driving, down from four last year. That may seem like a lot of arrests, but I wonder how many drunk drivers didn’t get caught?

Merry Christmas to all SJI bloggers and readers.

In the abiding spirit of revolution embodied in the Declaration of Independence, our Founders created this country as a nation ruled by secular, Constitutional law, not religion and mythology, though the assault on this principle by theocrats is ongoing and relentless. Those who attempt to wield the Bible and the teachings of Christ as a weapon—from George W. Bush and Pat Robertson to the Catholic Church and the Texas Department of “Education”—for political and social control, to stifle intellectual debate or cover up the facts of science, do so under false pretenses. Jesus would be appalled.

I have been to the San Jose Civic Auditorium once in my eight years of living in the city: a performance by towering jazz giants Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter about five years ago. A big jazz fan all my life, I have been lucky enough to see many of the greats, from Miles Davis to Weather Report, but the best jazz concert I have ever been to was definitely the one in the San Jose Civic that night. In fact, it was the most sublime musical experience of any type I have had, and that’s a hard list to top

Why is the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors getting mixed up in setting standards for national fast food chain restaurants to display calorie counts and nutritional data of their products? Supervisor Liz Kniss has proposed such legislation applicable only to restaurants with more than 15 outlets in the county. Her stated reasoning is that she wishes to fight the epidemic of obesity in the country, but I don’t see how this no-more-than-cosmetic move will do any such thing. For one thing, it leaves out the vast majority of restaurants in the county. The only result I can see is the high cost to the county’s taxpayers of policing something which has little value to the public.

According to a very good and informative article by Vrinda Normand in the Metro last week, San Jose is the only city in Santa Clara County that allows developers to contract directly with consultants to write environmental impact reports for their proposed projects. The problem with this policy was made evident recently in the Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) for the Coyote Valley Specific Plan.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all.

Single Gal started the holiday season off this week by posting the items she felt thankful for. Now I would like to ask you this: What would you like to see happen this coming year that you will be thankful for next Thanksgiving?

I’ll start. Naturally, I turn to politics first.

Nothing makes our petty human problems seem less important than contemplating the enormity and endless wonders of the universe. This is certainly the case with me this week with the recent news that another planet has been discovered outside our solar system by astronomers working at Lick Observatory on Mt. Hamilton. This new planet is similar in size, composition and appearance to Saturn and is the fifth planet discovered to be orbiting around the star 55 Cancri, 41 light years away from us.

This week’s moderate earthquake and last week’s devastating fires in Southern Californian are a wakeup call for all of us. Are we prepared for a large-scale natural or other disaster here in San Jose? Is there a plan? How do we minimize our risk?

It has been a year since our good friend, fellow columnist and in-house San Jose historian Leonard McKay passed away suddenly. There isn’t a day that goes by that we don’t think of him and his preservation work for our community. I certainly miss the almost-daily chats I had with him the last couple of years of his life. I don’t think I ever learned so much from one person in such a short period of time. I would like to take this opportunity to remember my friend Leonard and his efforts to preserve our history—buildings, artifacts, documents and stories—for future generations of San Jose citizens. I am reprinting one of his last columns below as a tribute.

I was going to write about something completely different this week but my attention was caught by the incident this past weekend where two teenaged boys (16 and 17) were arrested for attacking a high school dance and a young woman’s sixteenth birthday party with homemade chemical bombs. Fortunately, it appears that there were no injuries or damage at the high school, but there easily could have been. However, the bomb tossed into the birthday party exploded in the birthday girl’s face, burning her skin and eyes. She and two of her friends were briefly hospitalized.  I can’t get the image of the peaceful and fun once-in-a-lifetime birthday party celebration disrupted by fright and injury out of my mind. What compelled these boys to do such a horrible thing?

On Saturday morning, a public workshop will be held at City Hall to help determine what revisions need to be made to the city’s general plan for growth. An Envision San Jose 2040 Task Force has been assembled to review the plan and they are seeking public input to assist them in setting the agenda. Since many of us will find it difficult to attend the meeting on Saturday, I thought we might give our bloggers an opportunity to express their views on the matter here on San Jose Inside where they can be seen by the denizens of City Hall.