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Top Stories: Feb. 4, 2010

Yahoo's New Monster; Religious Groups Join Fight Against Prop 8; Feds Approve BART-to-San Jose line

by Danny Wool on Feb 04, 2010
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49ers Cream Rivals in Stadium Funding
If money talks, lots of money talks loudly. That's what opponents of the Santa Clara stadium project learned this week. The 49ers obviously want to move down here. So far they've spent $350,000 in November and December alone, supporting Santa Clarans for Economic Progress, a local group that support the stadium. To be fair, $250,000 was staff time, but that still leaves $100,000 in cash to help promote "the cause." It's the team that keeps on giving too, or as their spokeswoman Lucy Lang says, they plan to keep on donating "as necessary."

As for Santa Clara Plays Fair, the group opposed to the new stadium, they're not doing as well. So far they've raised $825. That's all—no commas, no zeros—just $825. It seems that the taxpayers don't mind the stadium, even with its $937 million price tag.
Read More at ABC 7.


Yahoo Gets a Boost from Monster.com
For years, Yahoo's HotJobs website has been competing with Monster.com. They were the third largest job-search website in the U.S., while Monster took the number 2 spot. Both competed with Indeed.com, but that could soon change. Yesterday, Monster announced that it would be purchasing Yahoo's job search site for $225 million. As part of the deal, Monster has committed to providing Yahoo with job search content for the next three years.

It couldn't come at a better time. Yahoo wants to repeat the profit it showed at the end of last quarter, while Monster wants to take on Indeed, especially with so many people across the country looking for work. To do that it needs over 2 million new hits per month: HotJobs gets 5.4 million.
Read More at the Business Journal.


Religious Groups File Briefs Opposed to Prop 8
While Justice Vaughn Walker considers his ruling in the Prop 8 trial, opponents of the proposition have received the support of dozens of organizations. Eight of them have already filed amicus briefs with the court. Some of them were professional organizations; others were gay rights groups. Perhaps the most telling was a coalition of religious groups, Christian and Jewish, who argued that "strongly negative religious attitudes toward homosexuality and homosexuals [are] not universally shared by all faiths and denominations."

Major supporters of Proposition 8 included Evangelical, Catholic, and Mormon churches, but opposition to gay marriage is not universal among all faith-based communities. The General Synod of the United Church of Christ has already spoken out against the ruling, and now these groups are saying that "California should not be permitted to strip a disfavored minority of a fundamental civil right by enacting its most powerful sects' religious doctrine as general law." In other words, don't let the biggest religious groups impose their religious values on smaller religious groups. Isn't that what freedom of religion is about?
Read More at CBS 5.


Is BART Finally Arriving in San Jose
It's been a long time coming, but it could finally be on its way. The Federal Transit Administration has approved the inclusion of a planned extension of the BART line in its "fresh starts" program. The new line would eventually run from Alameda County to downtown San Jose and from there to Santa Clara. In the past, the $6 billion project was considered too expensive.

FTA approval means that BART and the VTA could be in the running for federal grant money as early as next year. It will still have to compete against other projects nationwide for a slice of the $2 billion allocated every year.

One of the biggest problems facing the extension was that the financially strapped VTA lacked the money to pay for the new line's operation. This changed in November 2008, when voters across the county approved a new sales tax to run the proposed train.
Read More at The Mercury News.


Whitman Won't Debate Poizner in Santa Clara
There's no love lost between Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner. Whitman has announced that she will not debate her rival at the GOP convention in Santa Clara this March. She has, however, agreed to debate Poizner at a meeting of Republican donors in Orange County three days later.

Her decision has upset some GOP officials, who argue that the party's convention open to all party supporters would be the ideal spot to engage in a debate. The current venue is only open to people who have donated $10,000 or more to the party. Poizner himself has not adopted this tactic, but he has asked that the debate be televised and moderated. Whitman's campaign has responded that the candidates agreed in September that the debate would take place on March 15 in Orange County.

Poizner himself is coming under fire for his recent calls for a criminal investigation into the Whitman campaign. According to him, Whitman's team has used bribery and extortion to undermine his candidacy. As tempers flare, this could be a very heated debate, no matter when it is held.
Read More at NBC Bay Area.
Read More at The Mercury News.
Read More at the LA Times.



by Danny Wool on Feb 04, 2010
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