Bolsavik.com

Not just one, but two idiocies relating to the same person.

That person would be Al Hoang, aka Hoàng Duy Hùng, the councilman-elect of Houston. His honeymoon didn’t last very long.

See that photo above? That was taken at his victory party.

No sooner had the picture appeared on Radio Free Asia’s web site here that right-wingers jumped on it.

Seizing on the starry/flowery golden pattern on her dress, these commiephiliacs (Bolsavikspeak for people who see commies everywhere) accused the man’s wife of wearing the colors of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

Check this out:

OK so that’s one not-bright thing. Moving on the next, this time on the part of the councilman himself.

The Houston Chronicle published a story here, accusing the man of sundry violations. (Turns out, here, there’s probably nothing to it.)

A reporter at Nguoi Viet called the councilman-elect for comments, here, and he accused the Chronicle of racism.

Wait, that’s not it yet.

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No sooner has a Vietnamese-American won a hard-fought election to the City Council of Houston that news of his victory was pushed off track to become fodder for right-wingers to crap against the BBC’s Vietnamese Service.

Al Hoang, better known by his Vietnamese name Hoàng Duy Hùng, won the Dec. 12 elections to represent District F on the Houston City Council. Election results here. The BBC, whose World Service provides news in 33 languages including Vietnamese, ran a story here proclaiming, “Anti-communist figure becomes council member.” Which pleased right-wingers plenty.

But then the BBC also ran an interview with Hoang, and allegedly the BBC wrote that “Hoang and his allies did not oppose the opening of the Vietnamese General Consulate in Houston.” That made right-wingers mad, and people such as this one attacked the BBC as being untruthful. The link provided by that person, however, did not contain that quote, though, so it is unclear what happened.

Nonetheless, even if Hoang did not say so in the audio of the interview, that statement is not too far from Hoang’s actual position. In an interview with Nguoi Viet here, Hoang said that even though he personally opposes the General Consulate, he thinks having the communist diplomatic mission in Houston does have some benefits for the city.

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The ousted mayor of Rosemead is getting ready to be sworn in to another office he just won last month.

John Tran (pictured), who in May lost his seat on the Rosemead City Council by 1 vote (in the same election that voted in Steven Ly, at 24 the youngest Vietnamese-American officeholder) is getting sworn in to the El Monte Union High School Board this Wednesday, says he on Facebook.

Out of an office, Tran then ran for the school board. And he successfully unseated two-term incumbent Tonson Man.

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There were three 9-1-1 recordings plus the recording of the police dispatch communications, released by the City of San Jose in the case of the police shooting death of Daniel Pham. The recording that’s the longest, and also holds the most information among the three 9-1-1 calls, is the one placed by the girlfriend of Daniel’s brother - whom Daniel cut up.

The morning of May 10, 2009, at around 11:30 or so, as the brother was sitting down at his computer in the living room, Daniel (whose Vietnamese name is Sơn) came up from behind and cut the man from ear to ear. The brother fought off Daniel, and got cut some more, screamed for his girlfriend to lock herself in the bedroom and call 9-1-1, and fled to a neighbor’s house. The neighbor also placed a short 9-1-1.

The only thing the girlfriend knew, however, was that the two brothers were fighting and her boyfriend told her to lock herself up and call 9-1-1. She did not know that Daniel had a knife. But she did know Daniel was strange and the family always locks up their bedrooms when Daniel’s around.

Following are annotated video of the girlfriend’s 9-1-1 call, broken into 3 parts to meet YouTube’s 10-minute maximum limit.

Part 1 consists of the first 9+ minutes. In this part, it is revealed that the parents and other brother were not in the house, the woman was unaware whether Daniel was armed, and she didn’t know but thought he was probably mentally ill. She told the dispatcher the man’s name is Son, and did not say Daniel. Toward the end of this part, police came and can be heard yelling at Daniel Pham to put the knife down.

Part 2 (below the jump) overlaps by a few minutes with Part 1 and goes for 6 minutes or so. This part starts from where the woman can hear the police coming. 

Sounds from the outside, including yells of “Put the knife down” and “He’s still holding the knife” can be heard. Shots can also be heard, but the caller didn’t realize that’s what it was. On this tape, it sounds like 5 or 6 bangs, but when the two officers’ guns are examined, it turned out each had fired about 7 times. (Autopsy reports belong to the Coroner’s office and are not part of materials released by the city.)

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The release of the 9-1-1 emergency recordings as well as police reports in the case of the police shooting death of Daniel Pham explains a lot of the police action, but raises an important question on the Police Chief’s and District Attorney’s sense of judgment: Why put the city through months of pain in resisting the publication of the documents and an opening of the grand jury proceedings?

Nothing frustrates more than the concealment of information, and when the recording and police reports can clarify so many things, why hold them back? The information was released only after numerous demands, a full City Council meeting that rejected the release, until a Rules and Open Government Committee finally agreed.

Now, obviously, all documents — all facts, all evidence, everything under the sun — can be interpreted in more than one way. True enough. But that’s no excuse for hiding them.

The information released by the San Jose Police Department consists of:

* Recording of the 9-1-1 call from a neighbor. After Daniel Pham (whose Vietnamese name is Sơn) stabbed his brother, the brother ran into the neighbor’s house, and the neighbor called 9-1-1. Click here to download the sound file.

* Recording of the 9-1-1 from the brother’s girlfriend, who had locked herself in the bedroom. This long 22-minute recording contains a lot of information, including sounds from outside that could be heard in the bedroom. Click here to download the audio. The Bolsavik is working on an annotated video of this recording.

* Recording of a call from a friend’s house asking when the family can come home. Click here to download the sound file.

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Voting on principle can be costly. U.S. Rep. Joseph Cao is hit with a backlash for being the lone GOP vote for the health care reform bill, even as the party’s leaders are denying they’re osctracizing him.

After the vote, a GOP colleague, minority whip Eric Cantor, refused to shake Cao’s hands, according to the Orlando Catholic Examiner.

Cao has also had two fundraisers canceled on him, and some contributors are demanding their money back, reports the AP.

Rep. Cao had always said that he supports universal health care access, but had a problem with abortion funding in the law’s previous version. Once abortion was taken out of the bill, he voted for it. After the vote, Cao told CNN’s Betty Nguyen that his vote was a “decision of conscience.” (See first video below the jump.)

Lobbying for Cao’s vote was intense, with President Obama and Cantor both vying for the man’s attention, reports The Hill in details here. 

Cao later told the AP that he had asked the White House for help with rebuilding Katrina-ravaged New Orleans, but rejected the claim that there was horse trading: The White House did not promise anything, said Cao, and vice-versa, “I’m pretty sure that if I were to vote no against the bill the president would still continue to work with me to address the needs of my district.”

That, however, didn’t stop conservative pundit Rush Limbaugh from giving the only Vietnamese-American in Congress the moniker “Cash Cao” on his radio show.

Well aware that a backlash against Cao can cause a backlash-to-the-backlash, Republican leaders argue they are not taking revenge on Cao.

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When push comes to shove, the sole Vietnamese-American in Congress proves he can buck partisan pressure. In the final House vote on health care reform, Rep. Joseph Cao broke with his GOP colleagues and voted for the bill.

And so it was that when health care reform passed the House 220-215, mostly along partisan line, Cao was the only Republican to vote for the law. Thirty-nine Democrats voted against it. Roll call on the Clerk of the House web site here.

Earlier, the former Jesuit voted for an amendment, offered by Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan, which would restrict abortion coverages provided by private insurers. It passed (see roll call here) 240-194.

Abortion is a huge issue for Rep. Cao. He is on the record saying he would vote against any health care reform law that had a mandate for abortion coverage. Cao said:

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Tapes of the 9-1-1 call and other reports in the case of the police shooting death of a Vietnamese mentally ill man will be released, after redaction to remove names of witnesses, a San Jose city committee decided yesterday.

The San Jose Mercury News reports here that the committee, chaired by Mayor Chuck Reed, voted unanimously to release the actual 911 recordings and police reports in the Daniel Pham case. The committee decided that public interest outweighs privacy concerns in the May incident in which officers fatally shot Pham while responding to reports he had attacked a family member.

“There are lots of reasons not to release information,” Reed said at the meeting of the council’s Rules and Open Government Committee. “I don’t think any of those outweigh the public interest in getting it out.”

Others on the committee include Vice Mayor Judy Chirco, Councilwoman Nancy Pyle and Councilman Pete Constant, a retired police officer.

The tapes and police reports will be released online by noon November 13, after redacting witness names.

This latest decision is another result of Reed carefully walking a tight rope between satisfying the police union happy and preserving transparency in government work.

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A Santa Clara County grand jury last Thursday declined to indict any of the police officers who were involved in the shooting death of a mentally ill Vietnamese man, reports the San Jose Mercury News here.

Daniel Pham, 27, was fatally shot by police last May. He had attacked his brother with a knife, and the family had called 9-1-1.

When police arrived at the scene, they claimed they didn’t know Pham was a mental patient. The family, however, insisted that they were screaming and yelling, in English, to the police, that Pham was mentally ill. Police shot and killed Pham.

Two weeks ago, several community groups in San Jose, Viet and non-Viet, protested the shooting and presented a petition with a thousand signatures calling for the D.A. to open grand jury proceedings. (In the picture are Daniel Pham’s mother, his older brother, and the brother’s ex-girlfriend.)

The D.A. Dolores Carr, however, had left the building by the time the group got there. She had earlier said that she has a long-standing belief that grand jury investigations into police shootings should not be open to the public. This is a reversal from her predecessor’s policy, who opened the grand jury proceedings into shooting of Bich Cau Thi Pham, who was killed by San Jose police for holding a vegetable peeler smaller than a regular steak knife.

With the proceedings closed, the grand jury promptly rendered its decision not to prosecute any police.

Which raised even more questions. As anyone remotely connected to law enforcement knows, grand jury proceedings are the D.A. office’s one-man show, and the grand jury almost always does whatever the D.A. wants.

The Assistant D.A. in charge of the case, Dave Tomkins, told the Mercury News, “The grand jury heard all the evidence in the case and they declined to criminally indict. That says it all.” By “that says it all,” Tomkins may have meant whatever –  but to everyone else, that does say it all: That the D.A.’s office was slanting the evidence toward no indictment.

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Long Kim Pham, the perennial candidate who surprised everyone by winning a seat on the Orange County Board of Education, on Thursday sent out emails claiming the priests-rectors of the Vietnamese Catholic Martyrs Church in Sacramento are communists. Not just Viet communists, but Chinese communists.

Calling the church leaders “traitors in priests’ clothing,” Pham quotes a news item, apparently from haivannews.com, claiming the priests allowed communist Chinese to use the church hall to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. (Click on the picture to read the email in full; click here to read the email’s attachment.)

Haivannews.com, however, apparently has taken down that news item, supposedly dated October 4. It does keep a letter from a reader (here) explaining that the event was, in fact, not political but a mid-Autumn Festival celebration by the local Chinese-American community.

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