Go, Cavs

The Warriors' great Klay Thompson pumped as if to shoot. Trevor Ariza (6' 7", 225 lbs) leaped to block the shot, but Thompson stayed bent down instead of rising up and Ariza's left knee clipped him behind the right ear. Thompson fell to the floor in pain. He was taken to the locker room, woozy, with a laceration behind his ear. The Warriors medical staff "could not find evidence of a concussion" and sent him back out to report for action. But as he sat on the bench, blood started trickling from behind his ear, down his neck, and he returned to the locker room for stitches. He was not put back in the game. The statement issued by the team afterwards said: no concussion.

This is from Jeff Faraudo’s coverage of the episode in the Oakland Tribune May 28 (the day after the game):

“Warriors owner Joe Lacob kept a good thought after watching the play unfold.

"’I didn't think it was very serious,’ Lacob said. ‘I figured he just got a knee to the head or something.'"

Joe Lacob was sitting about 20 feet away, on his courtside throne. He saw the encounter, probably heard the crack of kneecap on cranium. He saw Thompson fall, saw how concerned his teammates were, how he needed help to get up and stagger away...

The classic line elucidating the boss's twisted empathy for "his" athlete, spoken as the beaten boxer stands by bloody and swollen, is: “he never laid a glove on us." Joe Lacob’s “He just got a knee to the head or something” has a similar ring, but it lacks the irony and empathy expressed by Blinkie Palermo.

Thompson was woozy and vomiting the night after he just got a knee to the head or something, and next day a concussion was diagnosed. "No timetable for his return," reported the Trib.

The owner's credo should be engraved into a bronze sculpture of Thompson lying on his back outside the stadium that Team Lacob will be financing construction of in San Francisco (because Oakland isn't classy enough for them): "He just got a knee to the head or something."

Relax, pot people, this will get around to your issue in due course. Fire one up.

One day in 2011 there appeared on a public school wall in Alameda some corporate logos and a big sign proclaiming "Joe Lacob Court."

It didn't seem right that the island city was providing free advertising to two corporations —the Bank of America and the Golden State Warriors —and to their narcissistic co-owner. I asked school board member, Neil Tam if it was legal to use public school facilities to fill the minds of children and passersby on Lincoln Boulevard with favorable thoughts about commercial brands? He said he would look into it.

The Warriors had paid for two new baskets (with cool glass backboards), fresh asphalt and a paint job. That might warrant a thank-you letter from the mayor and a photo op, but the Warriors got a billboard-sized sign on a busy thoroughfare, which stayed up for two years conveying the message that Joe Lacob and his company provide resources for our kids... I rode past it almost every day and wondered how many tickets the Warriors were providing to city officials? And how much a billboard like that would cost on Webster Street, where billboards are allowed... I never called an ad agency to inquire.

Corporate advertising at Haight Elementary School is just a wee, small step towards the privatization of what we, the people, own in common. Much bigger steps towards privatization are being made all around the world all the time. In Alameda, the power to privatize —or defend the commons— resides with a five-person city council. The politicians who let the Warriors use a public school wall for ad space was in a hurry to privatize the decommissioned Alameda Naval Air Station —some 2,000 acres on San Francisco Bay that we, the people, still hold title to. Fortunately, the clique running the city got overconfident and last November they lost their majority.

Team Lacob is moving the Warriors from Oakland to classier San Francisco. Mayor Ed Lee, another priss, has already welcomed them "home" —as if the Warriors didn't come from Philly.

Paying off the Politicians

Although the Alameda Sun didn't protest the sign proclaiming "Joe Lacob Court," co-editor Dennis Evanosky more than made up for it in March of this year with a detailed piece describing the freebies provided to an Alameda politician by Your Golden State Warriors and other corporate entities. This piece is must reading for anyone seriously interested in the California legislature's efforts to regulate the medical marijuana industry because its focus is on Rob Bonta —formerly Alameda's vice mayor, now an Assemblyman and author of AB 1324. And it identifies a identifies a formidable enemy we didn't even know we had.

Here's Evanovsky in the Sun:

Bonta’s statement shows that Alameda’s representative in the Assembly and the city’s former vice-mayor listed items that include $400 worth of Golden State Warriors tickets from Alameda County Supervisor Wilma Chan. Chan represents Alameda on the Board of Supervisors. While Bonta was enjoying the game a Jumbotron message appeared to let his fellow spectators know he was in the house. The Warrior Community Foundation picked up the $250 tab for the message.

Bonta attended more Warrior games in 2014, one compliments of the Warriors themselves and another of Shawn Wilson, who served as former Alameda County Supervisor Alice Lai Bitker’s chief of staff. Wilson paid for a pair of Warriors’ tickets for Bonta.

Bonta also enjoyed a Bruno Mars concert on Wilson’s dime. Wilson had ties to Alliance Campaign Strategies. The company lists former councilwoman Lena Tam as a past client along with Bonta and Jeff Cambra. Cambra ran an unsuccessful campaign for City Council in 2012.

Bonta also used "gift" tickets to attend a San Francisco ‘49ers game, compliments of United Airlines, and an Oakland Athletics game with the A’s paying the tab. Oakland City Council President Rebecca Kaplan gave Bonta $314.60 worth of tickets to hear Miley Cyrus belt out "Party in the U.S.A." and "We Can’t Stop" up close and personal.

The political-campaign management firm of Duffy & Capitolo sprung for a photo shoot for the Assemblyman at a cost of $200.

Bonta also received sizable gifts from Yale Law School ($996.57); the California Dental Association ($1,889.19) — Bonta shares a seat on the Committee on Appropriations with Jim Wood, the only practicing dentist in the Assembly; and the Filipino organization Gawad Kalinga USA ($1,250).

Bonta listed his most sizable gift at $2,290. He stated that, in return, he "made a speech and participated in a panel" — boiler-plate language that allows lawmakers to skirt the $390 limit on gifts.

"Various exceptions to the gift limit may apply if the official travels to give a speech, or travels on behalf of a government agency or nonprofit organization for a governmental purpose," the California Fair Practices Commission states.

Bonta failed to mention (he was not required to) that he was among more than 24 lawmakers Independent Voter Project (IVP), a San Diego nonprofit, jetted to Hawaii for a weeklong excursion last November. IVP purports to educate citizens and energize "decline-to-state" voters to participate in public dialogue and elections. IVP paid an average of $2,500 to fete each lawmaker at the Hawaiian junket in 2013.

The annual conferences have become an "unwelcome tradition," Sarah Swanbeck, a legislative affairs representative of California Common Cause told Los Angeles Times reporter Thomas McGreevey. Common Cause has called for stricter limits — even a ban — on such conferences.

In a November 2012 story about the junkets that year, journalist Derrick W. Roach wrote that "IVP is the parent organization of a web of subsidiary organizations with officers and directors who are anything but independent."

According to McGreevey, IVP has accepted money from 24 interest groups, each ponying up as much as $7,500. His research showed interest groups that contribute money to IVP to help the nonprofit pay for the trips to Hawaii include:

• The California Cable and Telecommunications Association, whose members include Comcast

• The California Correctional Peace Officers Association, which represents the state’s prison guards

• The California Distributors Association, which represents distributors of tobacco and other products to grocery and convenient stores

• Occidental Petroleum, the state’s largest oil and natural gas producer

• The Western State Petroleum Association that, according to its website is currently opposing "any California legislation or regulatory mandates designed to force a 50 percent reduction in the amount of gasoline and diesel California consumers and businesses use by 2030"

• The drug firm Eli Lilly whose website says the company is committed to participating in the political process

• The Altria tobacco firm (which is Phillip Morris Tobacco rebranded), a tobacco company that recently introduced its own e-cigarette.

As a non-profit, IVP is not required to disclose the identity of any of its funding sources. The Internal Revenue Service only requires that the organization disclose its total income. Last October, just a month before Bonta’s trip to Hawaii, Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed legislation that would have required nonprofits like IVP doing business in California to disclose their funding sources.

Roach writes that "it is estimated that for every four dollars spent in politics, one dollar now goes through nonprofit organizations, which are not required to disclose donor identities."

In other words, the big corporations are bribing politicians at every level of government. The corruption is total and ststemic. Pot partisans know that law enforcement is invariably joined by The League of Cities in lobbying for the rollback of Proposition 215. Why does the League of Cities care so much about upholding marijuana prohibition? Like the "Independent Voter Project," the League of Cities is a neutral-sounding mechanism through which the corporate state sustains itself.

Tim Heart Joe

Sportswriters tend to be obsequious —they crave access to the press box and the locker room and the clubhouse (the finest catering money can buy) and rides on the team plane. But Tim Kawakami's front page paean to Joe Lacob in the May 31 Oakland Tribune is an embarassment.

Has the Oakland Trib no pride? Joe Lacob is moving the team to 'Frisco. For this the Oakland media thanks him? Which side (of the bay) are you on? Maybe the callousness of Lacob's comment about Klay Thompson called for some prompt image burnishing. "Joe Lacob's labors" consisted of hiring two men who know basketball —Bob Myers and Jerry West. The word "labors" was chosen purposefully by Kawakami and/or the editor who wrote the headline. It upholds the myth that the owner's wealth and power is actually deserved.

Lacob told Kawakami that he would take the microphone again at center court when the Warriors won the championship. Makes you want to root for Kyrie and LeBron. Too bad the Cavaliers didn't keep Anthony Wiggins. And LeBron (the real coach, obviously) might have helped young Anthony Bennett reach his potential.

Add Look-alikes: Cavs coach (in name only) Dave Blatt and Russ head (for real) Vladimir Putin.