California Watch - General Assignment

New data tool creates visual model of information from readers

Ashley Alvarado — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 08:05:04 +0000

Ashley Alvarado

How would you change marijuana laws?

That is a question the Center for Investigative Reporting and KQED posed to readers following the Obama administration’s letter to U.S. attorneys reminding them that the cultivation and distribution of marijuana is illegal under federal law. The answers we received were thoughtful and thought-provoking, but we struggled with the best way to present them. Then our partners at the Public Insight Network announced they’d created Skyline, an interactive visualization of responses from sources in the network, and were looking for a way to unveil it. I jumped at the opportunity.

To properly explain what Skyline is and why it is so cool, I asked its creator, Barrett Fox, to share a few words with you. Fox is a data visualization designer at American Public Media working on the Public Insight Network. He has worked throughout his career at the odd but thrilling intersection of video games, animation and information visualization:

To view the results of our query on Skyline, click here. For a handy instructional video on how to use Skyline, click here. Skyline can be viewed on a PC or Mac. First-time viewers will be prompted to download the Unity 3-D browser plug-in.

Every day, journalists at California Watch and the Center for Investigative Reporting and at newsrooms around the country ask the more than 130,000 sources in the Public Insight Network to share their knowledge and insight on any number of topics of public interest. The result is a formidable amount of largely unstructured data, and this huge info cloud quickly becomes overwhelming.

The goal is to synthesize this information quickly – to make sense of it in a way that adds context, depth and relevance. So, how to do that?

Sure, we can search it, but you'd have to scroll down web pages that are miles long to get a clear sense of it all. It’s easy to lose track of the most important themes and to get lost in the details. We believe there’s value in being able to quickly see the broad strokes of these conversations, to paint a portrait of what we’re learning as we learn it.

This is where the rapidly evolving and expanding field of data visualization or, as I like to call it, information visualization, comes in. Not many years ago, data visualization was a field of charts, graphs and, if you were lucky, some diagrams. But today, we can quickly transform mountains of data into the liquid medium of interactive computer graphics, presenting us a new palette of possibilities.

Skyline is an interactive visualization of responses from sources in the Public Insight Network. It’s intended to quickly show how many people responded to a PIN query, how much they had to say and then, when you "drill down" into the Skyline, to allow you to read those responses in detail. The joint CIR-KQED query about marijuana laws is the first Skyline visualization to go live, and as you'll see, people had a lot to say on this topic. Mind you, it’s a prototype – and we want your feedback to help us take it from a cool concept to the super-useful information explorer we want it to become.

Skyline is built on the Unity 3-D game engine that provides a world of new possibilities for interactively and visually exploring information. Instead of data about how many monsters you've clobbered or gold coins you've collected, we're feeding this game engine data from the PIN queries. And then we can design how that information gets displayed with all the tools that video game designers have at their disposal.

By creating a 3-D icon for each source, we can quickly see the size of the crowd of people who wanted to talk about this subject. And by stacking their actual responses above them, we can quickly see how much they all had to say. And we can group the source based on specific questions in our queries to reveal otherwise hidden qualities about the group of respondents. For this first example, we're grouping the responses by their ZIP codes, which in this case shows that we heard from people around the state.

We’re building Skyline to visualize any query in the PIN and create groups based on any questions in those queries. And what you're seeing here is our first experiment. But what's exciting is that now that we have these sources and their responses inside this interactive 3-D medium, we'll shortly be able to explore this data in many other interesting ways. We can discover other insights on these topics by placing the sources on maps, timelines, even good old charts and graphs. But you'll always be able to drill down and read what's important – the knowledge and insights of citizens who are helping make the news more credible, relevant and transparent.

Some credit unions also do controversial payday loans, advocates warn

Kendall Taggart — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 07:05:05 +0000

Kendall Taggart

Taber Andrew Bain/Flickr

While many Californians are considering transferring their money from banks to credit unions by tomorrow as part of "Bank Transfer Day," consumer advocates are urging customers to look closely at the business practices of some credit unions.

Advocates are concerned about those involved in payday lending, small short-term loans with high interest rates.

Bank Transfer Day’s mission, according to its Facebook page, is to shift funds from for-profit banking institutions to not-for-profit credit unions.

“We will send a clear message that conscious consumers won't support companies with unethical business practices," organizers state on the page. "It's time to invest in local community growth!” More than 70,000 people already have said they're participating.

But the National Consumer Law Center says not all credit unions operate in the same manner. They single out 24 credit unions, out of roughly 7,000 nationwide, that provide loans that can lead borrowers into a destructive cycle of debt.

In California, Kinecta Federal Credit Union acquired Nix Check Cashing, one of the largest payday lenders in the Los Angeles area, four years ago. To get around the interest rate cap imposed by federal regulators, consumer advocates say Kinecta is gouging consumers with inflated application fees.

Randy Dotemoto, president of Kinecta Alternative Financial Solutions, said short-term loans provide an important service to its members.

"While our goal is to transition consumers away from short-term credit and alternative financial services, the reality is there’s a tremendous need for immediate cash solutions in the communities we serve that must be addressed," he said in a statement. "For a multitude of reasons, many people choose to get a 'payday' loan; right or wrong, consumers are accessing emergency cash loans every day to cover an urgent cash need."

Credit unions often are more consumer-friendly, said Lauren Saunders, managing attorney of the National Consumer Law Center’s Washington, D.C. office. "That said, whenever you move your money, you ought to look closely at where you’re moving it to."

David Small, a spokesman for the National Credit Union Administration, the federal agency that regulates most credit unions, said he did not want to comment on a specific credit union's lending practices. In recent testimony before congress, David Marquis, executive director of the NCUA, said, "Each of these products represents market-driven, practical attempts at providing consumer-friendly credit alternatives for unbanked and underbanked communities...NCUA believes that the ability to offer small loans helps FCUs (federal credit unions) fulfill their statutory mission to promote savings and meet the credit needs of consumers, particularly those of modest means."

Of the 24 credit unions that the National Consumer Law Center says are engaged in payday lending, most use third-party vendors, known as credit union service organizations, rather than directly offering the loans. The National Credit Union Administration is the only federal financial institution regulator that does not have authority over third-party vendors. The agency is proposing strengthening its authority, but it has met strong criticism from industry groups, such as the Credit Union National Association [PDF].

A decision on the proposal likely would not come until after the first of the year.

“CUSOs (credit union service organizations) let you do things that a credit union cannot do," said Ed Mierzwinski, consumer program director for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. "So, by definition, I just don’t like it. Credit union management should be serving the will of the members to have an alternative financial system to a stockholder-owned banking system, not an alternative financial system that is designed to extract wealth from its customers, which is what a payday lending operation is designed to do.”

In addition to the concerns about credit unions offering payday loans, consumer advocates also warn against signing up with a credit union that is not federally insured. California is one of only a handful of states that does not require credit unions to have federal insurance.

If the credit union fails, deposits are not guaranteed by the federal government. Of the roughly 450 credit unions in California, there are 13 credit unions that are backed solely by the private insurance company American Share Insurance. A list of credit unions in California without federal insurance is below.

“I would stay away from any credit union that is not federally insured,” Mierzwinski said.

American Share Insurance did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.

CREDIT UNIONS WITHOUT FEDERAL INSURANCE
California Association of Highway Patrolmen Credit Union
Christian Community Credit Union
El Monte City Employees Credit Union
Firestone Financial Services Credit Union
Fiscal Credit Union
Los Angeles Firemen's Credit Union
San Francisco Fire Credit Union
South Bay Credit Union
Southern California Postal Credit Union
Lutheran Credit Union of America
Mid-Cities Schools Credit Union
Monterey Credit Union
SafeAmerica Credit Union

State's population center near Bakersfield

Agustin Armendariz — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 07:05:04 +0000

Agustin Armendariz

Ken Lund/Flickr

Historically, California's population was centered in the northern half of the state, but it has steadily moved southward, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. It is now in Shafter, a city just outside Bakersfield.

In its 2010 Guide to State and Local Census Geography, the bureau plots the state's population center from 1880 through the 2010 census.

"The center is determined as the place where an imaginary, flat, weightless and rigid map of the United States would balance perfectly if all residents were of identical weight," according to the bureau.

In 1880, the state's center was just west of Stockton, but by 1910, it fell west of Fresno. Twenty years later, it moved closer to Bakersfield, and the middle of the state's population has roughly stayed in that area ever since.

In addition to plotting the historic center of each state's population, the guide presents facts on several aspects of state geography. For instance, California's entry tracks "108 federally recognized American Indian areas," with 104 classified as reservations and the remaining four as land trusts or tribal statistical areas.

Not surprisingly, communities in and around Los Angeles County dominate the list of biggest and most populous areas in California.

The guide covers the 50 states plus the District of Columbia and promises information soon on the U.S. island areas of American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Historic centers of population for California, U.S. Census Bureau

California population, 1880-2010

Minorities are majority in many metro areas

State projected to add 4.3M people by 2020

New seismic inventory identifies potentially unsafe buildings

Kendall Taggart — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 07:05:04 +0000

Kendall Taggart

Courtesy of the California Seismic Safety CommissionThe new Olive View Medical Center in Sylmar was severely damaged in the 1971 San Fernando earthquake.

As many as 17,000 older concrete buildings in California could be vulnerable during a major earthquake, according to a new inventory by a coalition of volunteer structural engineers, universities and government agencies.

A number of schools, state and local government buildings, and other vital infrastructure – such as police stations and hospitals – made the list.

During the San Fernando, Loma Prieta and Northridge earthquakes, several concrete buildings constructed before the implementation of modern codes collapsed or were catastrophically damaged.

“One of the problems with the concrete buildings is that they tend to be large," said Craig Comartin, director of the Concrete Coalition project, a group of volunteer structural engineers that wrote the report [PDF]. "When you have a major apartment building, there could be hundreds of people in the building. When one does come down, the potential for deaths or injuries is high.”

The coalition looked at 23 counties with the highest earthquake risk and population, as well as two cities – Fresno and Bakersfield. The group estimates there are between 16,000 and 17,000 potentially vulnerable concrete buildings in the state. More detailed information for each county surveyed is available at the coalition’s website.

Not all of the concrete buildings identified are collapse hazards or prone to severe earthquake damage, the report notes. The next stage of the project will be a more careful study of specific buildings in order to better understand which are the riskiest structures.

Unlike unreinforced masonry buildings, which structural engineers say uniformly do not perform well in earthquakes, there’s tremendous variability in older concrete buildings.

Understanding what makes a concrete building vulnerable is one of the goals of a National Science Foundation-funded research project at the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center. Under the leadership of Jack Moehle, a civil engineering professor at UC Berkeley, researchers are working on ways to quickly weed out which buildings may need more detailed evaluation and possibly a retrofit.

“If we can provide the tools that would help identify which are the highest risk, then you can develop programs that target those higher-risk buildings,” Moehle said.

Some members of the business community have said they're interested in helping mitigate the risk, but expressed concerns about the cost.

“We as an industry group would be happy to get information out,” said Martha Cox-Nitikman, senior director for public policy and education for the Building Owners and Managers Association of Greater Los Angeles. But some owners have told her that if required to retrofit the building, they might just tear it down.

It’s unclear what the next steps might be to address the older concrete buildings. The state Seismic Safety Commission’s most recent attempt to address concrete structures statewide was more than two decades ago, through a bill by the late Sen. Al Alquist.

“We’ll have more tools to make better decisions, but at this point, we don’t have enough tools in place for me to even surmise,” said Fred Turner, the top structural engineer with the Seismic Safety Commission. “We feel a lot more confident to help make informed decisions now than we did back in the mid-'80s in that we have a lot of publications that talk about the financial and social implications of retrofit programs, whether they be voluntary or mandatory.”

Hollywood's 'Moneyball' downplays steroid use

Lance Williams — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 07:05:07 +0000

Lance Williams

Bryce Edwards/FlickrJason Giambi in 2009

From 2000 to 2004, the Oakland Athletics were the greatest baseball team that never won the pennant.

Film fans can get that idea from “Moneyball,” the new Brad Pitt movie about Billy Beane, the club’s computer-genius general manager.

In that stretch, the A’s won 98 games per year – 20 in a row at one point. First baseman Jason Giambi and shortstop Miguel Tejada both were named the American League’s Most Valuable Player, and pitcher Barry Zito won the Cy Young Award. Oakland was in the playoffs four straight years – and lost in the first round every time.

There’s another idea fans might not get from the movie: The "Moneyball" A’s were loaded with steroid users.

Nine men who played for the A's between 2000 and 2004 used banned drugs, according to the Mitchell Report, former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell's official investigation of baseball’s steroid era.

Three were customers of the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative steroid mill. They said they bought drugs from Greg Anderson, who was a weight trainer for San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds. All three also testified for the prosecution in Bonds’ perjury trial earlier this year.

Five more were customers of Kirk Radomski, a former New York Mets bat boy who became a major steroid supplier for major league players. Another Athletics player had an online pharmacy express-mail steroids to him at the ballpark.

Of course, Oakland had a rich tradition of steroid use, according to 1980s-era slugger Jose Canseco. In his memoir, “Juiced,” Canseco described how he and fellow slugger Mark McGwire used to go into the men’s room before games at the Oakland Coliseum and inject each other with steroids.

Here’s the "Moneyball" lineup:

Jason Giambi, first baseman (1995-2001 and 2009; MVP, 2000): As Mark Fainaru-Wada and I reported in our book “Game of Shadows,” Giambi was an experienced steroid user even before he got caught up in BALCO. Giambi has testified that he switched from bodybuilders’ steroids to designer drugs in 2002, after he left the A’s for the New York Yankees. Bonds and Giambi were among stars who went to Japan for an off-season baseball tour, and Bonds brought trainer Anderson along. From Bonds' trainer, Giambi got BALCO’s undetectable steroids, the cream and the clear. Giambi cooperated with the federal probe of BALCO, at one point demonstrating to a federal grand jury how he injected himself in the belly with human growth hormone. He also testified about Anderson’s steroid-dealing at Bonds’ perjury trial.

Jeremy Giambi, outfielder, designated hitter (2000-02): Jason’s brother also was a steroid user before encountering BALCO, he testified at Bonds’ trial. Jeremy Giambi said his brother introduced him to Anderson. The trainer said he could beat baseball’s steroid testing program with BALCO drugs, Jeremy Giambi testified. Jeremy Giambi told the BALCO grand jury that he believed the drugs were safe, saying, “I didn’t think the guy would send me something that was, you know, Drano.”

Randy Velarde, infielder (2000 and 2002): At Bonds’ trial, Velarde testified that he met Anderson in 2001 through former Giants catcher Bobby Estalella, another admitted steroid user who had encountered Bonds' trainer in the San Francisco clubhouse. Velarde said he bought growth hormone and steroids from Anderson. On about 10 occasions during the 2002 season, Velarde said he met Anderson in parking lots. There, the trainer would inject him with banned drugs, he said.

F.P. Santangelo, infielder (2001): Radomski, the former Mets bat boy, said he began selling steroids to Santangelo around 1997, when the infielder was with the old Montreal Expos. Radomski also sold drugs to Santangelo while the player was on the A’s, according to the Mitchell Report. Santangelo wouldn’t talk to Mitchell. But after the report was published, Santangelo, who by then was a sports broadcaster, admitted to using banned drugs.

Adam Piatt, outfielder (2000-03): In 2002, when the A's had demoted both Santangelo and Piatt to the minor league Sacramento River Cats, Santangelo introduced Piatt to Radomski. Piatt said he continued to buy steroids and growth hormone from Radomski after he rejoined the major league club. For a time, Piatt’s locker was next to that of shortstop Tejada. Tejada asked about steroids, and Piatt said he bought the substances from Radomski for the shortstop, according to the Mitchell Report.

Miguel Tejada, shortstop (1997-2003; MVP, 2002): After he left the A’s for Baltimore, Tejada was dragged into the steroid scandal by Orioles teammate Rafael Palmeiro. In 2005, Palmeiro told a televised congressional hearing that he had never used banned drugs. When Palmeiro later tested positive for steroids, he blamed a contaminated vitamin injection he said he got from Tejada. Tejada denied it, telling congressional investigators he had never used banned drugs.

But then the Mitchell Report quoted Piatt about buying drugs for Tejada. The report included copies of Tejada's canceled checks. Tejada was charged with lying to Congress. He pleaded guilty and was put on probation.

David Justice, designated hitter (2002): Radomski told Mitchell that he sold growth hormone to Justice after the 2000 season, when Justice played for the Yankees. Brian McNamee, the trainer who claimed he provided banned drugs to Yankees pitching star Roger Clemens, said he had heard from Radomski about drug sales to Justice, according to the Mitchell Report. Justice denied the allegations.

Cody McKay, catcher (2002): His name and phone number appeared in Radomski’s address book. The former bat boy said he couldn’t remember how they met, but he said he sold banned drugs to McKay when the catcher played for the minor league team in Indianapolis in 2001 and again in 2002, when he was with the A’s. McKay wouldn’t talk to Mitchell.

Jose Guillen, outfielder (2003): In September 2003, Guillen paid an online pharmacy in Florida $2,083 for growth hormone, steroids and syringes, billing records show. He had the drugs sent to him at the Oakland Coliseum, according to the records.

Firm offering job search assistance shut down

Agustin Armendariz — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 07:05:04 +0000

Agustin Armendariz

Missy Schmidt/Flickr

A California company selling government job listings that were available for free on the Internet was shut down by the Federal Trade Commission, the agency announced yesterday.

Since at least 2007, Santa Barbara-based Frontier Publishing, doing business as American Data Group, placed ads in newspapers and on websites like CareerBuilder.com offering government jobs earning $12 to $48 per hour. When consumers called the toll-free number at the bottom of the ad, telemarketers charged $69 for access to information, applications and job listings, according to the complaint filed this month.

In their pitch, telemarketers claimed that the list of jobs wasn't available to the general public and that they also would provide sample questions and answers to exams used by the federal government in the hiring process.

After paying the fee, a packet was mailed out containing a one-page cover letter, a spreadsheet listing general information about jobs in the area and a 119-page booklet titled, "Federal Employment Resource Workbook." If a consumer called back for more help with the job search, the customer service department searched usajobs.gov and sent the search results back via e-mail, mail or fax, the commission stated in the complaint.

As part of the settlement, Frontier and its owner, William J. Clayton, agreed to pay $100,000 to the commission within 10 days of court approval of the proposed final judgment. If the company doesn't pay the fine in that time, it will be required to pay the total $7.5 million judgment levied by the commission. Because the financial information Frontier submitted to the commission didn't list enough assets to cover the entire judgment, the lesser sum was agreed to.

The agreement also prohibits the firm from "selling employment products" and "permanently prohibits them from misrepresenting any product or service, and from violating the FTC's Telemarketing Sales Rule," according to a commission statement.

State pays lower unemployment benefits, but for longer

Brown's jobs proposal gives tax break to cable companies

Bill would increase oversight of small-business contracts

Kendall Taggart — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 07:05:03 +0000

Kendall Taggart

AlexKalina/istockphoto.com

Newly proposed legislation would increase oversight of federal small-business contracts, which in recent years have gone to several large companies.

“Large companies need to stop masquerading as small businesses to get government contracts,” said the bill's author, U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga. “Especially given how many small businesses are struggling in this economy, my bill will go a long way in helping stop this abuse.”

All told, 61 of the top 100 recipients of federal small-business contracts for fiscal year 2010 were large firms, according to an analysis by the American Small Business League, an advocacy group based in Petaluma. The group defines small businesses as those with fewer than 100 employees.

A few California Fortune 500 companies made the list of small-business contracts in 2010, including Northrop Grumman and Hewlett-Packard.

The Fairness and Transparency in Contracting Act targets provisions that have allowed large, publicly traded and foreign-owned companies to qualify as small businesses.

The federal government is supposed to award 23 percent of its contracts to small businesses. In fiscal year 2010, that amounted to approximately $100 billion.

But some have criticized the contract process. In 2005, the Small Business Administration's Office of the Inspector General called the diversion of federal small-business contracts to large corporations "one of the most important challenges facing the Small Business Administration and the entire Federal government today."

The inspector general found that government contracting staff have not always thoroughly verified companies' self-certification as a small business, allowing larger companies to illegally access small-business contracts.

In addition to widely recognized companies such as Hewlett-Packard and Northrop Grumman, the American Small Business League said other firms too big to qualify as small businesses got contracts. In California, the group singled out Ocean Systems Engineering in Oceanside; Innovative Technical Solutions Inc. in Walnut Creek; and Cobham Analytic Solutions, formerly known as SPARTA Inc., headquartered in Lake Forest. California companies won more than $180 million in small-business contracts during fiscal year 2010, according to data provided by the American Small Business League.

Sophie O’Donnell, vice president of contracts at Cobham Analytic Solutions, which has more than 1,200 employees, declined to comment.

Although the bill takes important steps to prevent abuse, it is not as rigorous as the program California has in place for state contracts, said Marty Keller, former director of the state Office of Small Business Advocate and founder of the political group Small Business Revolution.

“In California, in the four years I was a small-business advocate, I’m unaware of any cases where a big business got around the system illegally," he said. "So that tells me it’s pretty effective.”

In contrast to the federal system, where businesses self-certify their size, California has a certification process to weed out big companies up front.

“You’d have a hard time getting through the sieve,” Keller said.

1991 Oakland firestorm: 'You want to save a house? Go ahead!'

Lance Williams — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 07:05:02 +0000

Lance Williams

emilydickinsonridesabmx/ Flickr

On Oct. 20, 1991, a firestorm in the Oakland hills killed 25 people and burned 3,500 homes, including some of the most expensive and beautiful structures in the Bay Area. As the 20-year anniversary of one of the state's worst disasters approaches, California Watch reporter Lance Williams, then with the San Francisco Examiner, describes what it was like inside the fire lines:

By midmorning Sunday, the fire obviously was out of control, and the city desk was sending every reporter it could find to Oakland.

I went to the pricey hillside neighborhoods between the Claremont Country Club and Lake Temescal, where dozens of homes were ablaze.

The firestorm had swept west from the lake into Upper Broadway Terrace, but there were only a couple of fire trucks and perhaps a dozen Oakland firefighters on the scene.

And so much of the firefighting was done by volunteers – residents who had ignored the police evacuation order in hopes of saving their homes, teenage boys who had abandoned pickup basketball games at the Chabot Elementary School when the fire broke out.

The scene was unbelievably chaotic. I remember the choking clouds of smoke, dark as twilight; the bursts of flame, red-orange and intense, as the eucalyptus trees caught fire; the sudden crashing sounds as houses exploded and the plate glass broke; and the ugly hissing sound of gas mains burning inside houses that were already on fire.

Some of the volunteers were bold.

On Buena Vista Place, I met Jeff Henshaw, a carpenter with an ax and a fire hose. As I watched, he climbed into a burning home through a smashed picture window and began chopping a hole in the hardwood floor of the living room. Flames shot through the hole; he blasted them with a jet of water.

“I just think the fire department is overwhelmed,” he told me. “Ever since I got up here, they look at you and it’s like, ‘You want to save a house? Go ahead.’ ”

Quickly, a system evolved. The Oakland firefighters also served as fire captains. They directed the volunteers to haul hoses, wield axes and shovels, and even work the hoses themselves.

Derek Yegian, a teenager, was one of the volunteer hosemen.

“You open up and lean way into the hose and fire at the base of the flame,” he said.

“Fun? Not fun, but exhilarating.

“Everyone wants to be a hero once.”

At about 3 p.m., I walked south, over the ridge to the upper end of Ocean View Drive, an area of some particularly lovely old homes.

I passed what I used to call my “win-the-lottery house” – a gorgeous Spanish-style mansion with sweeping bay views, worth millions. The roof and upstairs were aflame. There wasn’t a firefighter in sight.

Fire was just reaching that area. The high winds were blowing embers, and a few shake roofs were smoldering. Down on Margarido Drive, amongst a cluster of homes untouched by fire, I could see one roof burning.

I clambered over a back fence and made my way to the house. I grabbed a garden hose and began trying to climb up onto the structure, hoping I could attack the burning roof. An Oakland motorcycle policeman pulled up and began shouting.

“You! You! Get down from there!” he yelled.

As the house continued to burn, he threatened to arrest me for looting.

A fire truck pulled up. Out jumped a fire department photographer, two volunteers and one Oakland firefighter. They went to work on the fire.

Yards away, a big two-story house was starting to burn. I helped some of the young basketball players drag a hose inside – the front door was unlocked. We dragged the hose up the front stairs into a child’s upstairs bedroom. We stuck the hose out the window to get at the roof, but there was no water pressure. Firemen finally arrived.

By then, the houses up and down the street were aflame.

I saw a man in a vintage Studebaker pull out of a driveway and speed away from his burning house.

A woman asked me to help her find her lost pets. We went around the side of her house, into the backyard, and found the whole rear of the structure was on fire.

Nearby, a homeowner was protecting his house with hose and shovel, attacking every spark that flew onto the property. His house was still OK, but the house next door already was ruined.

“It went up like an oil refinery,” the man said.

He let me use his phone. I called the city desk and dictated some information. Then I checked in with my wife. I was shocked to learn that the fire had swept into Berkeley and was coming down Alvarado Road by the Claremont Hotel. Police were evacuating streets around the hotel. I went home after that and filed my story from there.

That night, we watched the hills burn. One beautiful white mansion on the ridge was ringed by burning houses, but seemed invulnerable. For a long time, we thought it might survive. But finally, it, too, was consumed.

Memories fade of former Oakland baseball owner Charles Finley

Lance Williams — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 07:05:04 +0000

Lance Williams

Courtesy of Nancy FinleyCharles O. Finley

Charles O. Finley moved the A’s to Oakland and won the World Series three years in a row, from 1972 to 1974.

He spearheaded changes that transformed the sport – the designated hitter rule, night World Series games – and pushed for others that didn’t get any traction, like orange baseballs and designated runners.

Finley also inadvertently helped bring about baseball’s big-money era of free agency by losing a particularly bitter contract dispute with star pitcher Catfish Hunter.

Along the way, this hard-charging Chicago insurance tycoon drove a lot of people – players, fans, other owners and especially the baseball establishment – to distraction.

Now, 39 years after his ball club began its brilliant run, and 15 years after his death, baseball is trying to pretend the Finley era never existed, complains Nancy Finley, who is Finley’s cousin and who spent her girlhood in Oakland with her father, Carl Finley, the team’s longtime vice president.

“I’ve had so many people say, ‘(Baseball) should do this or do this or do that to honor your family,’” she says. “I have tried and tried, and what I get from Oakland is total silence.”

The Athletics dispute her contentions, saying the club honors its history and regards Finley as a remarkable innovator.

But Ms. Finley, who now lives in the East Bay suburbs, cites a series of slights, oversights and public misstatements that by her account reflect baseball’s attempt to write the Finleys out of the game’s history.

For example, in 2008, there was a pre-game event at the Oakland Coliseum marking the 40^th anniversary of the team’s move to Oakland from Kansas City. But the Finleys weren’t included, she says, and it was the same story at an Old Timers’ game the following year.

The club has created a tribute jersey to honor the memory of Walter Haas Sr., the wealthy sportsman who bought the A’s from Finley and built the team that won the 1989 World Series over the San Francisco Giants.

Jimmy Tyler/FlickrFinley lost a particularly bitter contract dispute with star pitcher Catfish Hunter.

But she says there’s no jersey for Finley, even though his teams won more championships and weren’t implicated in steroid abuse, as were the ’89 A’s.

“I had an e-mail from someone in Japan who’s a 1970s A’s fan,” she says. “He said, ‘I don’t see a Finley tribute jersey.' ”

Meanwhile, the baseball Hall of Fame credits the late Commissioner Bowie Kuhn with initiating night World Series games, she complains, even though everybody knows Kuhn fought the idea tooth and nail when Finley first pitched it.

Then there’s the matter of a recent “80’s Night” promotion featuring famed Oakland rapper M.C. Hammer.

Once again, the Finleys weren’t involved, she claims, even though her father discovered Hammer when he was a kid hanging around the Coliseum parking lot looking for odd jobs.

At Charles Finley’s insistence, the teenage Hammer later was brought into the radio booth to broadcast an inning of an A’s game, she recalls.

In an e-mail, Athletics spokesman Bob Rose said he didn't understand Ms. Finley's complaints.

“We absolutely appreciate the role Charles O. Finley has played in our franchise’s history,” he wrote. The club has had a number of events honoring players from the great teams of the 1970s, he noted.

Of the M.C. Hammer event, Rose wrote: “M.C. held court with the media before the game and perhaps his main message was ‘Charlie Finley belongs in the Hall of Fame.’

“We concur.”

With her other concerns in mind, Ms. Finley says she has come to dread the upcoming release of “Moneyball,” the new Brad Pitt film celebrating the Oakland Athletics of a decade ago. The low-budget team won 20 games in a row in 2002 but didn’t make it into the World Series. She fears the film will give no sense of the team’s glorious winning history.

“There was as commercial on TV, a preview of ‘Moneyball,’ and I just wanted to go in the corner and lay in fetal position for a few weeks,” she says.

Ms. Finley speculates that baseball and the A’s want to downplay the success of the '70s because they want to give up on Oakland.

For years, present owner Lewis Wolff has pushed to move the team to San Jose, but so far the effort has stalled because of opposition from the San Francisco Giants.

“I don’t think he wants to be here,” she says. “I don’t even know if he knows about the Finley years.”

Courtesy of Nancy FinleyNancy Finley, right, takes in an Oakland A's-Texas Rangers game in April 2011.

Ms. Finley acknowledges that her complaints may be so intense because she has such fond memories of Oakland and the A’s.

When the team moved West, her father came along to run day-to-day operations, while Charles Finley remained in Chicago. Ms. Finley went to Westlake Junior High School and then Oakland High.Ms. Finley acknowledges that her complaints may be so intense because she has such fond memories of Oakland and the A’s.

For a time, she and her father lived in an apartment on the top floor of the 1200 Lakeshore highrise on Lake Merritt.

Another top-floor unit was occupied by Black Panther leader Huey Newton, who had been freed from prison after appealing his conviction for killing a police officer. A nearby unit was occupied by an FBI surveillance team, she recalls.

Newton, whom she often saw in the elevator, was “very nice,” she says, and his bodyguards were “very polite.”

Ms. Finley says she often helped out in the A’s front office. She got to know the stars of the era – Hunter, slugger Reggie Jackson, relief pitcher Rollie Fingers and manager Dick Williams, all later elected to the Hall of Fame.

On a visit to Oakland when she was 16 or 17, Mr. Finley was so pleased with her work that he announced he was promoting her to vice president, she says. Her father took the title away the following day.

Now she has created a website devoted to A’s history and hopes to write a memoir of the team.

The definitive book on the A’s of the 1970s is sportswriter Ron Bergman’s “Mustache Gang, the Swaggering Saga of Oakland’s A’s.” It features a brittle portrait of Finley as a penny-pinching, wheeler-dealer sports executive.

Airlines rake in billions in baggage fees

Agustin Armendariz — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 07:05:03 +0000

Agustin Armendariz

U.S. airlines collected $15 million more in baggage fees in the first quarter of 2011 compared with the first quarter of last year, according to airline financial information released yesterday by the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

Baggage fees have gone from adding $119 million to the bottom line of U.S. airlines in 1990 to $3.4 billion in 2010, according to the bureau's data.

As fees make up more of the total cost of flying, the Department of Transportation has proposed collecting more data on the various fees. Right now, only baggage and reservation change fees can be tracked independently. If approved, the data would track "16 additional categories of fee revenue in addition to the baggage and reservation change fees to provide additional airline pricing information to consumers and airline analysts," according to the bureau.

A notice of the proposed rulemaking posted in the Federal Register stated: "Many air carriers have adopted a la carte pricing with separate fees for such things as checked baggage, carry-on baggage, meals, on-board entertainment, internet connections, pillows, blankets, advance or upgraded seating, telephone reservations, early boarding, canceled or changed reservations, transportation of unaccompanied minors, pet transportation, third-party services such as hotel rooms, car rentals, and pick-up and delivery services, et cetera."

Pilots can earn less than airport window washers