$1.2 Billion Deal Creates Media Giant

Just days after the Sacramento-based McClatchy Company announced it would sell the San Jose Mercury News to pay down debt acquired with the $4.5 billion takeover of Knight Ridder, an unlikely “white knight” has stepped in to purchase the local rag vowing to keep it “viable and local.”

All those concerned about the future of our community should be concerned about what is happening to our newspaper. Knight Ridder has been sold to the Sacramento-based McClatchy group who says it will sell the Mercury News. While rumors abound about who will be the final owner, our paper and its staff are going through an excruciating period in limbo.

I was on a bike ride with my friend the other day and we decided to take the path through the new Guadalupe River Park.  We rode our bikes to Coleman and got on the path to ride towards the Arena and on to Willow Glen, but were frustrated by what we encountered.  It turns out that we should have brought a compass, night-vision goggles and a periscope, because riding a mere 15 feet without a fork in the road was impossible.  The path is broken up by chain-linked fences that either force you to turn back, return you unwillingly back up to the street, or send you through a confusing maze in another direction.  On one turn, we ended up taking our bikes over a rickety railway crossing, only to be turned back on the other side, forcing us to go back over the tracks and retrace our steps. 

“Too Much Public Participation” Say Williams and Campos

Calling for more secrecy in government and saying they want to encourage less public participation, San Jose City Council members Forrest Williams and Nora Campos are proposing a series of “sunset” reforms.

Over a period of sixteen years, Cinequest, the San Jose film festival celebrating independent filmmaking, has quietly developed into the premier downtown cultural event. I say quietly because, unlike the current favorite of our evidently lowbrow city council, it doesn’t get a $4 million subsidy (although I am sure they would LOVE to have it), uproot trees and citizens, and disrupt downtown residents and workers for six weeks while they construct, then deconstruct, a racecourse and stands. And, unlike that other event calendar high point, Mardi Gras, it doesn’t attract even one single drunken, underage troublemaker bent on late-night destruction and mayhem.

It is that most pleasant time of year—a season when inveterate lobbyists and flimflam men get a conscience and speak of reform; a season of ethical proposals by those who have exhibited terminal lockjaw on the issue for years; a remarkable era of ideas for a better political process springing full-blown from the heads of consultants, paid hacks and cynics of every type. Move over folks, it’s election time.

Why is it that during every Mardi Gras this city is overrun with troublemakers who scare anyone decent away? 

Businessess to Relocate at Fairgrounds

Just days after the Mardi Gras melee, and in anticipation of St. Patrick’s day celebrations, several city department heads called a community wide meeting with downtown business owners, property owners, and nightclub operators to announce downtown was being converted into one big nightclub.

There is an interesting battle brewing in Santa Clara County that will decide the future of transit, transportation and, perhaps, a politician or two.  It revolves around the recent county effort to place a half-cent sales tax increase on the June ballot. It is intended to bail out the BART project; maybe “bail out” is incorrect—more appropriately we might say “save.”  But it is being strangely combined with other county projects as a tax to fund several items other than BART, like hospitals and housing for low-income people. You see, put in this form the measure needs only a bare majority vote to pass, while as a transit measure, it would take an unlikely two-thirds vote.

I was driving in my car last night and an advertisement came on the radio supporting Michael Mulcahy’s campaign for mayor.  It wasn’t his platform that struck me but his opening statement that he is “not a politician.”  Has politics gone so wrong that someone who is running for public office would state such a claim? Isn’t it a little like interviewing doctors to help with what ails you and one doctor saying, “And best of all, I am not even a doctor!”

$4 Million Subsidy Approved for Bare-Breasted Bacchanalia

The City of San Jose has chosen Team San Jose, a California non-profit public benefit corporation led by Con-Vis Chief Dan Fenton, to organize and run a Girls Gone Wild Silicon Valley Edition that will take place in downtown San Jose in mid-August.

Yesterday, Single Gal gave her unvarnished look at the six who would be mayor, unfazed and unfettered by any personal knowledge or great familiarity with any of them. I am more encumbered—I know all of them and I like them all as people. Many of them have done good things on the council and in their public careers.  But this is not an election about who we like, though some make their choices in this manner.  It is about the type of city we wish to build for our children and grandchildren and want to live in ourselves. We need to decide who can best deliver this kind of city.

Alright, alright people!  Not enough politics on this site?  Well here is my two cents on the political scene, Single Gal style (as I am sipping Mai Tais in a tropical location far from San Jose).  Here are a couple of quick, initial thoughts on the candidates before the real fun begins!

Watchdog Groups Fear Censorship

Hot on the heels of Google’s successful implementation of their internet-censoring product in China, Mayor Gonzales has ordered the popular new totalitarian version of the search engine’s “Great Firewall” software to be immediately installed on his City Hall net servers. All internet searches originating within the city will now be routed through this new google.com/rg network.

Well, here we go—the race for mayor is on. With the addition of David Pandori, the field is now at six. Or is it? 

After a Friday night out in San Jose that consisted of a Sharks game and a trip to O’Flaherty’s for a few drinks, my group of friends and I decided that we wanted to go dancing.  But, since it was nearly one o’clock in the morning, did the desire to dance in San Jose mean I needed to take my life into my own hands?