Viewpoints: Clear Channel violates First Amendment rights Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/03/25/4362382/clear-channel-violates-first-amendment.html#storylink=cpy

By Sue Wilson
Special to The Bee

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/03/25/4362382/clear-channel-violates-first-amendment.html#storylink=cpy

The First Amendment protection of freedom of speech is a treasure. I stand up for the rights of Rush Limbaugh, Garry Trudeau, Bill Maher and everyone else to have their say, whether I agree or not (outside incitement to violence). I do not condone censorship.

But private censorship has crept into our public airwaves, and we must stand against it.

I'm not talking about newspapers that didn't print Trudeau's Doonesbury strip, a daily 30-second read. Newspapers are private enterprise: Anyone with enough capital can start a newspaper and write what they will. Nor cable programs like "Real Time with Bill Maher," which produced 35 hours of lefty snark in 2011. Cable TV is private enterprise: when people write a check to Comcast or Direct TV, they pay private contractors, via cable or satellite, to bring programs from Playboy to Disney into their homes.

I'm talking about local TV and especially local radio, where a host like Limbaugh dominates the dial with right-wing commentary for about 750 hours each year. Broadcasting is a public-private partnership: The public owns the airwaves needed for transmission; private businesses own the buildings, equipment, etc. needed to broadcast programming. When private business goes into broadcasting, it makes a deal with the public: a free license from the Federal Communication Commission if it agrees to "serve the public interest, convenience and necessity."

Broadcasting differs from newspapers and cable; the number of frequencies available in one community are few, so only a limited number of local stations are possible. Physical scarcity is the foundation of all broadcast law.

In Sacramento, Clear Channel Communications broadcasts about 190 hours per week of one-sided political talk over three giant stations, KFBK-AM, KGBY-FM and AMFM Holding's KSTE-AM. Clear Channel management disputed that at a recent meeting with Media Action Center, Sacramento Media Group and Occupy Sacramento. But general manager Jeff Holden said he's very comfortable airing only one-sided political talk on three stations – during an election year.

But Clear Channel is violating the First Amendment rights of all who equally own the public airwaves, disagree with right-wing politics, but are not allowed to be heard at all. It is a matter of access, says the Supreme Court.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/03/25/4362382/clear-channel-violates-first-amendment.html#storylink=cpy

San Jose meth bust: 750 lbs

A Palo Alto police investigation into stolen iPads has led to one of the largest methamphetamine busts in the country's history, federal investigators said Saturday.

Police and federal agents seized 750 pounds of methamphetamine, with an estimated street value of $34 million, from a San Jose apartment Thursday after Palo Alto investigators spotted the drugs while following up on stolen iPads, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

The bust "is one of the largest we are aware of," DEA Special Agent Casey Rettig said.

Investigators found "boxes and boxes and boxes containing bags and bags and bags of methamphetamine" inside the apartment, Rettig said.

The 750 pounds, or 340 kilograms, of methamphetamine confiscated in San Jose is equal to about 16 percent of all methamphetamine seized across the country last year, according to figures on the U.S. Department of Justice website.

Three people were arrested on state drug violations after the raid on an apartment in the 4400 block of Woods Drive, authorities said. They have not released their identities. Rettig described the investigation as "very fluid" and said "there is definitely the potential for more arrests."

The home is part of the Woods, a subdivision in south San Jose that its website highlights as a "park-like setting of mature trees, formal landscaped gardens, greenbelts and tranquil ponds maintained to award-winning standards."

Palo Alto detectives pursuing the electronics theft conducted a preliminary search of the apartment and saw "a large quantity of methamphetamine," according to the DEA. They then called in help from San Jose police and the Santa Clara County district attorney, who called the DEA.

Investigators believe the home was being used both as a residence and as a laboratory where powdered methamphetamine was converted into a crystal form, also referred to as "ice." Such methamphetamine has an appearance often described as that of broken glass or shattered ice and is ingested by smoking, federal officials said.

Rettig said it was too early in the investigation to link the lab to known drug cartels or trafficking networks, but she indicated that the trend in large methamphetamine busts in Central and Northern California involves ice conversion labs for drugs primarily smuggled in from Mexico.

Last month, the Mexican army seized 15 tons of pure methamphetamine with an estimated U.S. street value of $4 billion. The sheer size of the haul from that raid in western Mexico "could potentially put a huge dent in the supply chain in the U.S," DEA spokesman Rusty Payne said at the time.

Investigators in the San Jose raid also found stolen items that had initially led Palo Alto police there, Rettig said, including iPads.

Chronicle news services and San Francisco Chronicle staff writer Jill Tucker contributed to this report.

John Coté is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer.

Today I am Stating Publicly, My Candidacy For The Office Of Mayor

Today I am announcing that I will be running for Mayor, In the city of Stockton, California. This will mark my 4th year living in stockton, the All-American City. I fell in Love with this port-side town while I was commuting here from Manteca during my years at Delta College. My First Semester at the school, I was privileged enough to sign up for a psychology class with Dr. Blanchard. She was a fiesty lil-Oriental Lady, who had a dictatorial image about the way she taught that seems almost enriched somehow. Well I learned a lot from her, especially the social life of a socialite. She asked me to be a busboy at a reception she was holding for Dennis Cardoza, A District Representative in the 18th district of California. I agreed to participate, and help set the tables and break them down afterwards. Going to a Congressional Dinner, held by the wealthiest patrons in our surrounding areas. And did they know how to Party. There were Cases of wine from all the local grower's, Corona's, New-York Steaks, Caviar, and the list goes on, it wasn't the nicest event I've partaken in, but definitely the funnest. I met the Congressman on the Casino side of the Boat, where he asked me to join him in playing roulette, and later taught me how to play Craps. What happens in Stockton, Stays in Stockton, Really this was a charity event, so it was all fun and games. This is what got my interest focused on public office, politics, and the key issues that take away from what moral standards we still see today. After soaking up everything around me for the past four years, and not changing my set core values, I believe I am ready to take on these challenges that are still ahead. I decided to run for the office of Mayor this year, because I am fed up with what we are being told. I want accountability from these elected officials that were carelessly taking our Country Joyriding with not a care in the world.

Silicon Valley: The rise of the adolescent CEOs

By Sarah McBride

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Josh Buckley, chief executive of an online gaming start-up, is looking forward to next month's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, particularly for the parties and the accompanying schmoozing with industry A-listers.

There's one problem: Buckley, who will turn 20 this week on February 22, may be turned away from many of the parties because he is not old enough to drink. His fake ID was recently confiscated, and the two new ones he ordered from a company in China have not yet arrived.

Such are the dilemmas facing the ever-younger entrepreneurs that Silicon Valley investors are backing these days. While little data on the phenomenon exists, venture capitalists say they are funding more chief executives under age 21 than ever before.

"At a certain point, they can't get much younger or we're going to be invested in preschool," quipped Marc Andreessen, whose venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz is one of several that backs Buckley's company, MinoMonsters.

Andreessen and other venture capitalists say the entrepreneurs they fund at 18 or 19 typically have been prepping for years -- learning computer code, taking on ambitious freelance projects and educating themselves on the Internet.

Some are self-consciously molding themselves in the image of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, 27, who created computer games as a child and was taking a graduate-level computer course by his early teens. Internet businesses that target consumers make a sweet spot for the baby-faced, because online companies often require relatively little capital. A semiconductor start-up might require $10 million to $20 million in the early stages, noted Joe Kraus of Google Ventures, and that would be tough even for the most talented youngster.