Republicans

Ralph Nader writes a letter to Rep. John Boehner

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September 22, 2014

Dear Speaker Boehner,

While millions of hardworking Americans are working more and more for less and less, you and your House of Representatives seem to have no problem working less and less for more and more.

If a mother of one in Butler County, Ohio — your home county — working at the Ohio minimum wage ($7.95 per hour) wanted to make a living wage — according to MIT’s Living Calculator for the county — she would have to work 88 hours a week, which adds up to a little over 12 hours of work per day, 7 days a week. You once defended the placement of Ten Commandments on public property. If this mother wanted to obey the Fourth Commandment — “Remember the Sabbath Day to Keep it Holy” — by not working one day a week, she would have to work over 14 hours per day, leaving her with only two hours left to spend with her child, given eight hours of sleep. For millions of Americans, the fair deal of eight hours of work, eight hours of rest, and eight hours of discretionary time has been broken.

Meanwhile, the work schedule of you and your fellow Representatives cannot be more different. You took a month in August off, as well as the first week in September. Last week you worked a four day week to start the month and then another four in the second week, and then cancelled a four day session that was set to begin on September 29. As one count pointed out, over the course of 103 days between the start of August and the middle of November, you will have been in session for eight days. You are out of control. Give a listen to Republican Rep. David Jolly:

“I believe in the radical notion that Congress should work. Congress should govern. And Congress should work more, not less…By increasing the days that we are in session, I believe we will create an environment where Republicans, Democrats and Independents can work together, substantively, thoroughly, and with great deliberation. We will create a Congress that works.” (http://1.usa.gov/1obUcMi)

Congresspersons are paid $174,000 a year, meaning that your pro-rated salary for 103 days of the year is $49,101. Presuming a 10-hour work day during those eight hard days of work in September, you earned the following hourly wage: $614 per hour. That mother of one making the Ohio minimum wage of $7.95 in Butler County would have to work 77 hours to make the $614 hourly wage for your colleagues during your September House session. (This is all without mentioning that specifically you, as Speaker of the House, make $223,500 a year, meaning you make $63,070 during this 103-day period this fall: a $788 per hour wage for your eight days in session, which would take the Butler County mother of one working minimum wage 99 hours of work to catch up to your earnings for one hour of work.)

If the 1968 minimum wage kept pace with inflation, it would be $10.92 per hour, over three dollars higher than the paltry $7.25 per hour level to which Congress has let it erode. Should not hard, full-time work pay at least as much as minimum wage workers made 46 years ago? As twenty-six Republicans, spearheaded by Rep. Frank LoBiondo, wrote in a 2006 letter to you when you were Majority Leader urging you to raise the minimum wage: “nobody working full time should have to live in poverty.”

Yet you continue to prevent even a House floor vote on raising the minimum wage — a cause that is supported by a large majority of Americans. It’s time to ask yourself: while you and your colleagues make over $600 per hour of in-session work between August and November this year, do not the hard working low-wage Americans who cook, clean, farm, serve and care for people like you deserve a vote on restoring their minimum wage to its mid-century inflation-adjusted level?

Why don’t you ask the people back in your Congressional District — residents of Troy, Hamilton, Greenville, Tipp City, Eaton, and Springfield, Ohio; residents of a Congressional District where 62,000 workers would receive a raise if you allowed a vote on a minimum wage raise to $10.10; residents of a state where over 527,000 children live with a parent making less than $10.10 — these questions?

Sincerely,

Ralph Nader

(The Bruce blog is written and edited by Bruce B. Brugmann, editor at large of the San Francisco Bay Guardian.  He was the founding editor and with his wife Jean Dibble the co-founder and co-publisher of the Guardian, 1966-2012). 

Now that Willie Brown is a lobbyist, will the SF Chronicle finally cut him loose?

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Years ago, the San Francisco Chronicle handed Willie Brown a megaphone, but now that he’s officially recognized as a paid lobbyist, isn’t it time to yank it back?

Weekly Chronicle columnist and former Mayor Brown’s newest Ethics Commission filings show he’s been paid $125,000 to lobby the city on behalf of Boston Properties, negotiating for the developers who are threatening to sue the city over a tax deal worth up to $1.4 billion to San Francisco. Boston Properties were told going into the deal they’d pay taxes based on property values in the South of Market district, where the high-rise Salesforce Tower (formerly the Transbay Tower) and other developments will soon be built.

The loss of funding in the special tax zone known as a Mello-Roos District (which, in a twist of another sort, was created when Brown presided over the California Assembly) could jeopardize the high-speed rail extension from the Caltrain station at 4th and King streets to the new Transbay Terminal, possibly downgrading it into a very expensive bus station. We left an interview request with Brown’s assistant for this piece, but received no reply.

Brown has long sold his influence to the highest bidders, although he claimed to be their lawyer and not their lobbyist, but now Brown is legally out in the open as an advocate against the city’s interests. He’s now officially a registered lobbyist (finally).

But the Chronicle still publishes Brown’s column, Willie’s World, giving “Da Mayor” a weekly space in its prominent Sunday edition to charmingly joke away his misdeeds (which raised the eyebrows of the Columbia Journalism Review for its maddeningly obvious ethical concerns). In his newest column, Brown kiddingly brags about taking bribes:

“John Madden got off a great line the other night when we were sitting in the St. Regis lobby.

I was reading off my itinerary for the evening when he stopped me, turned to another guy and said, pointing my way, ‘He’s the kind of politician who goes everywhere. As a matter of fact, he’ll show up for the opening [sic] an envelope.’

It all depends on what’s in it.”

In his column the week before, he trumpeted a potential political ally while taking pot-shots at high speed rail, the very same project that Boston Properties seeks to defund by depriving the city of tax dollars for the Salesforce Tower project:

“There is a very impressive star on the horizon. Her name is Ashley Swearengin. She is the mayor of Fresno, and she’s running for controller against Democrat Betty Yee.

She is also a Republican who is being pilloried by other Republicans for her support of Gov. Jerry Brown’s high-speed rail project. Unlike some politicians, Swearengin has a concrete reason for backing what some are calling the ‘train to nowhere.’ It means a ton of construction jobs for Fresno.

Supporting high-speed rail, however, has cost her in the fundraising department because many potential Republican donors hate the project.”

And maybe because he’s digitally disinclined to use Twitter, in July he used the Chronicle as his own personal communications service to contact federally indicted and alleged-gun-running Sen. Leland Yee:

“Where’s Leland Yee? I’ve got everybody in town looking for our indicted and suspended state senator, and no one can find him. Leland, if you read this, call me.”

We reached out to Chronicle Managing Editor Audrey Cooper to ask her if San Francisco’s paper of record would consider retiring Brown’s column now that he’s a registered lobbyist, but didn’t hear back from her before we published. But you know, they could always go the other way: Why stop with Willie? Just give up guys, and give editorial space to BMWL (who are pushing against the Soda Tax), to Sam Singer (the high-powered public relations flak), or Grover Norquist (he could write about the virtues of libertarianism and Burning Man at once!).

But Brown is a special case all on his own. He’s no ordinary lobbyist: He has the ear of the mayor (and helped elect the mayor), and his influence cuts a swath through the city’s biggest power players, from PG&E to Lennar Corporation. He helped many current city politicians and staffers get their jobs in the first place.

The average reader not steeped in wonky political backdoor deals may not understand why giving him a column is such a bad idea. Journalist Matt Smith has long-written on Brown’s SF Chronicle conflict of interest, first for the SF Weekly and then for the now-defunct Bay Citizen. In 2011, an anonymous Chronicle staffer told this to Smith:

“‘Should the newspaper be in the business of helping an influence peddler peddle?’ the journalist asked.

‘If you believe him even 50 percent of the way, Willie Brown has a big say in San Francisco politics, which he reminds us of every week. He has a certain self-deprecating style that makes him even more charming, which kind of hides the fact that what he is really doing is bragging about all the people he knows, and all the influence he peddles. What that does is it has a multiplier effect.'”

That multiplier effect works in a few ways. First, it works almost as information-laundering: When Brown “jokes” about taking bribes, it makes any accusations of impropriety seem quaint. After all, it’s just Willie Brown, we already know he’s a wheeler-and-dealer, right? What harm could he do?

Second, it amplifies his already formidable position as a kingmaker in San Francisco politics, possibly allowing him to charge even more cash to special interests for his influence. Since he registered as a lobbyist, Brown has met five times with Mayor Ed Lee over the Salesforce Tower tax issue. And until the Chronicle’s surprising and incredibly rare editorial stance against Mayor Ed Lee’s deal, Brown almost succeeded in negotiating hundreds of millions of dollars out of city coffers and into the pockets of Boston Properties.

The Chronicle wrote scathingly in their editorial:

“The deal is baffling — and infuriating. The group of developers had already gotten special favors from City Hall.”

Swap the words “the group of developers” with “Willie Brown,” and you could say the exact same thing about Brown’s Chronicle column.

Brown even used his San Francisco Chronicle headshot in his lobbyist registration with the Ethics Commission. If that’s not a “fuck you” to the Chronicle’s sense of journalistic ethics, I don’t know what would be. The Chronicle’s photo editor told us in an email that Brown did not have permission to use the photo.

I don’t think he cares.

BROWN1

BROWN2

Water with a price tag

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Rebecca@sfbg.com

At the tail end of a dry, dusty summer, California continues to weather the effects of an extraordinary drought.

Wildfires have swept through forestlands in the Sierra Nevada foothills, Mendocino County, and near Yosemite recently, making for smoky skies and glaring red sunsets. Meanwhile, shrinking reservoirs have prompted the state to issue formal crackdowns on watering lawns and washing cars.

These extreme circumstances may be linked to why voter support for Proposition 1, a $7.5 billion general obligation bond for water-related projects, has initially registered high. Elected officials have trumpeted Prop. 1 as a measure that will alleviate the worst impacts of the drought.

In the Bay Area, 62 percent of likely voters said they’d vote in favor Prop. 1, while that support came in at 52 percent statewide, according to a recent Field Poll. The bill that became Prop. 1 won bipartisan support in the Legislature after lawmakers struck a deal to kill an earlier $11 billion proposal and replace it instead with the slimmed-down version.

Despite the rare consensus, opponents charge that Prop. 1 won’t actually address the water crisis.

“We really don’t deal with the drought here,” said Connor Everts, executive director of the California Watershed Alliance, after reviewing the details.

Everts spoke during a Sept. 11 conference call organized by opponents of Prop. 1. They reject the water bond mainly because it dedicates a significant chunk of funding, $2.7 billion, toward new dam projects. They view this as an unacceptable tradeoff.

“We can’t conjure water out of thin air with new dams,” pointed out Barbara Barrigan-Parilla, the opposition campaign director, who runs a grassroots organization advocating for sustainable management of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. More should go toward conservation measures, she said.

The Delta has suffered hefty ecological impacts from freshwater pumping to feed the state’s water-delivery system. “Protect the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta” is the first guiding principle to appear in a policy document establishing the basis for Prop. 1, but Barrigan-Parilla and others remain skeptical. Friends of the River has also come out against Prop. 1, as have many members the Environmental Water Caucus, a statewide coalition of grassroots organizations.

State lawmakers have been trying to pass a water bond since 2009, but earlier versions were shot down as bloated and pork-laden, failing to gain traction.

In June, Gov. Jerry Brown called for a $6 billion bond that would throw $2 billion toward dam projects, but the needle moved after Republicans — taking advantage of the fact that it needed a two-thirds majority vote to pass — withheld support unless they were promised more money for dams.

Water storage is a high priority for agribusiness farmers, whose sprawling croplands soak up vast quantities of water. A whopping 70 percent of all water rights claims issued by the State Water Resources Control Board are for agriculture, according to a University of California at Davis study.

“If these dams actually get built, we believe they will take more water out of the rivers that are dammed, and there will be less to come out of all of the environmental benefits,” envisioned by other provisions in the bill, said Carolee Krieger, executive director of the California Water Impact Network (C-WIN). “In the long run, we believe it would be way worse for the environment.”

Adam Scow, speaking during the conference call on behalf of San Francisco-based Food and Water Watch, pointed out that California desperately needs to invest in basic water needs, like fixing old leaky pipes. Nevertheless, Prop. 1 is “just prolonging these fights over new, silly dam projects,” Scow said.

Significant Prop. 1 funds would also be committed toward cleaning up groundwater, restoring damaged watersheds, advancing water-treatment technology, and ensuring safe drinking water access for low-income communities. The Sierra Club issued a statement announcing that while it’s supportive of these good programs, its official stance on Prop. 1 is “no position.”

Opponents of Prop. 1 noted during the call that California faces a fundamental problem that won’t be addressed by the water bond: The amount of water allocated by water rights claims is five times higher than what actual river flows provide in an average year.

“The one thing that must be done is to balance water rights claims to actual supplies,” Krieger said. The difference between real supplies and what’s promised in a contract, she added, is called “paper water.” This means many users receive less water in practice than what they’re technically promised, but those unrealistic promises make for confusing and conflict-heavy management of scarce water resources. The bizarre dysfunction is well-documented in a UC Davis study published in February. Of 27 major rivers, the study found, 16 had allocation levels “greater than 100 percent of natural supplies.”

The state “simply does not have accurate knowledge of how much water is being used by most water rights holders,” the UC Davis study noted, making it “nearly impossible” to reduce consumption or manage water supplies in a way that’s more equitable and environmentally responsible.

If voters grant their stamp of approval for the $7.5 billion water bond, the state may well move forward with important environmental initiatives, as well as multi-billion dollar dam projects that will take decades to build.

But no matter what happens, money still can’t buy snowfall in the Sierras, and it’s going to take more than cash to get to the root of California’s water woes.

Lee and UC Berkeley institute take on income inequality

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Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) and U.C. Berkeley’s Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society are teaming up today [Wed/10] in Washington DC to release and discuss the institute’s first policy prescriptions for reducing inequality.

The policy brief—the first to be issued by the Haas Institute—will introduce research-based approaches suggested by a diverse array of economists looking at inequality through different lenses.

The policy brief calls for the integration of regions through land use rezoning to decrease inequality, an increase in public investments in preschool programs, raising the minimum wage, and the reformation of unfair tax policy that favors the wealthiest 1 percent.

“Inequality is a defining issue for America’s future,” John Powell, director of the Haas Institute, said in a press statement. “The good news is that we know variation in inequality and mobility imply that local, state, and federal policies can have an impact. Therefore, the solution is within reach, but only if policymakers learn from and apply researched based initiatives.”

While this is the Haas institute’s first policy brief, it is far from being Lee’s first foray into the issues of inequality. In fact, it’s become an area of her expertise. Lee, will give this morning’s keynote address, has been introduced two bills to curb the growth of inequality.

The first, the Income Equity Act (H.R. 199), would limit the tax deductibility of executive compensation packages. Currently, the more a firm pays its CEO, the more the firm can deduct from its taxes, leaving “cash-strapped taxpayers picking up the tab,” said Lee in a 2013 blog post.

“Despite record corporate profits, none of it is being shared with the American working class—the strongest work force in the world,” Jim Lewis, Lee’s press director, told the Guardian. “We’re pushing for research-based initiatives that are realistic when implemented.”

Locally, state Sens. Mark DeSauliner (D-Concord) and Loni Hancock (D-Oakland) introduced a pay-disparity bill (SB 1372) in April, which would tax companies with a wide income gap between CEOs and workers, and give tax breaks to companies with lower income disparities.

The second, Lee’s Pathways Out of Poverty Act (H.R. 5352), addresses unemployment in minority communities, namely African Americans and Latinos. It aims to create good-paying jobs and increase social mobility while strengthening the social net for those still struggling.

Research based solutions seem like a perfectly practical way to go about solving our evident wealth gap, but “1 percenter” and “the 99 percent” have only been part of the national lexicon since 2011’s Occupy protests.

A Gallup poll from January this year revealed that Democrats and independents are overwhelmingly dissatisfied with income and wealth distribution, as well as a majority of Republicans. The poll also found that only slightly about half of Americans are satisfied with the opportunity to get ahead by working hard.

“For many years, income inequality was viewed as an important factor and byproduct of growth,” said Powell. “That has been largely discredited by economists. It’s not a necessary byproduct of technological advances and globalization.”

All of this comes at a time when the wealth gap in the United States—and especially in the Bay Area—is reaching exorbitant proportions.

In June, the San Francisco Human Services Agency released a report stating that while the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, the city’s middle class—those earning around the median household income of $72,500—is disappearing altogether.

A recent study by the Brookings Institution revealed that between 1990 and 2012, the city’s middle class has shrunk from 45 percent of the population to 34 percent.

“There’s no need for this kind of gap, it’s unsustainable,” Powell said. “We need to work on a local level, especially when we have a more liberal legislature in California. Closing the gap can enhance economic growth. It can bring the country together.”

Internet Slowdown marks fight on net neutrality

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Don’t be surprised if you go online tomorrow [Wed/10] and see a “loading” symbol – aka the proverbial “spinning wheel of death” – staring you in the face. No, that isn’t actually a technical problem – that’s what happens when geeks organize an online campaign.

Wed/10 marks the Internet Slowdown Day, in which sites across the web, many of which are based in San Francisco, will display the loading sign as a way to encourage web users to fight back against proposed rules that threaten net neutrality. Websites of companies and organizations ranging from Netflix to the Sierra Club will be participating in the digital show of opposition, to send a signal to the Federal Communications Commission, Congress, and the White House that the Internet should remain a level playing field.

In May, the FCC issued a proposal to allow Internet service providers to charge major companies, such as Amazon and Netflix, for faster access to consumers, creating so-called “Internet fast lanes.”

But as Evan Greer, a spokesperson for digital rights advocacy organization Fight for the Future, told the Bay Guardian, “We know that inherently that means there’s also a slow lane.”

The federal agency is now soliciting public comment on that proposal, with a deadline of Sept. 15.

Internet activists fear that as deep-pocketed companies seeking prioritized consumer access pile into the fast lanes, those without the ability to pay a premium will be relegated to the slow lane. And that sets a very bad precedent for the future of the Internet overall.

“Slowing down content is really tantamount to censorship,” Greer said. “What’s at stake here isn’t just about how fast or slow our videos load – it’s about the future of our democracy and the Internet’s role in it.”

The “spinning wheel of death” symbols won’t actually slow down access to participating websites, but the widgets will feature links allowing web users to send a petition to the FCC, Congress, and the White House.

“Everyone has a role in this, and everyone’s trying to pass the buck,” Greer noted. “Obama is saying, oh look, the FCC is an independent agency. Everyone is taking money from the telecom industry. Comcast has been donating to Republicans and Democrats across the aisle, and they’re gaining political influence because of it.”

Making matters worse, Greer said, is that Tom Wheeler, the chair of the FCC, was formerly a lobbyist for the National Cable and Telecom Association – the industry association that’s on the side of the companies advocating against the proposal that threatens net neutrality.

Other organizations involved in organizing the Internet Slowdown Day include Demand Progress, Free Press and Engine Advocacy.

And if you’re curious to learn more about net neutrality, no explanation is more fun to watch than John Oliver’s.

California water bond still fluid despite looming deadline UPDATED

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California is in the midst of a record-setting drought, but state lawmakers still aren’t fully on board with Proposition 43, a water bond measure that could finally enact the aborted Safe, Clean and Reliable Water Supply Act of 2012 if approved for the November ballot. Now, with the California Legislature working to revise the measure by tomorrow’s [Wed/13] new deadline, the original proposal might not make it onto the ballot as it currently stands.

Prop. 43, originally placed on the 2012 ballot but moved to this year’s election by the Legislature, has been criticized by Gov. Jerry Brown, who called for a $6 billion bond on June 25, nearly half the legislation’s current $11.14 billion cost. Brown called the current legislation “a pork-laden water bond…with a price tag beyond what’s reasonable or affordable,” a sentiment shared by others who see through what the California official voter information guide’s argument against the bond calls a “bloated measure.”

Now, state lawmakers are closing in on a $7.2 billion bond, with $2.5 billion set aside for water storage projects, though the approaching November election gives them a small window to make changes. The Assembly originally aimed to put the finishing touches on the legislation by Monday evening, when the voter guides were scheduled to begin printing, but it delayed the deadline until Wednesday. [UPDATE 8/14: Brown and lawmakers yesterday struck deal to place a $7.5 billion water bond on the fall ballot.]

But even the new legislation doesn’t cut it for some environmentalists, including Sierra Club California Director Kathryn Phillips, who helped pen the argument against Prop. 43 in the state’s voter information guide.

“We believe that they are essentially setting up a system that will allow big water marketers to buy water north of the [Sacramento-San Joaquin River] Delta and put it in the river as a so-called environmental flow,” Phillips told the Bay Guardian. “Then private entities will extract more water out of the Delta. Any money that is put into flow, unless you put very clear boundaries on it, can be used to just accelerate the extraction of water from the Delta.”

Instead, Phillips believes the funds should be allocated to more needy recipients. “We really think the money should increase regional resilience,” Phillips said, naming percolation and stormwater capture as examples. “There is money for those, but it’s a small amount compared to the single biggest expenditure.”

That expenditure is water storage, an important and necessary part of dealing with droughts, such as the one parching California right now. But when the money appropriated for that cause ends up funding other projects, like extracting water out of the Delta for things like “outdoor recreation,” as Phillips said, the problem isn’t really solved.

“‘Storage’ means that $2.5 billion is going to go toward three dams—and maybe a couple more projects—in the Central Valley,” Phillips said. “None of that money will be available to those on the North Coast or those west of the Delta, and it will be continuously appropriated; there will not be legislative oversight.”

And, according to Phillips, that means lawmakers can essentially do whatever they please with the funds.

“The Republicans have wanted $3 billion to be going to storage projects and they have defined them in a way that doesn’t include groundwater storage, with preference to projects that are directly linked to the Delta,” Phillips said.

Indeed, Assemblymember Connie Conway, the GOP’s minority whip, has voiced her support for Prop. 43 if state lawmakers can’t come to terms on a revised measure, and the proposition does indeed allocate $3 billion for storage, as Phillips mentioned.

“While we are currently reviewing the details, it’s clear that this latest proposal is going in the right direction. Increasing funding for storage is imperative to meet our goal of providing a reliable water source to all of California for generations to come,” Conway said in a statement on Monday. “However, the proposal fails to provide a sufficient down payment on the two large storage projects that are the backbone of any comprehensive water plan. Shortchanging water storage will result in one or both water storage projects not being built and water that could provide for millions of households per year would continue to be lost.”

Brown recently proposed a $6 billion bond, in which he did not include funding for a pair of 30-mile tunnels to be placed under the Delta, a project that Brown called for in July 2012 and one that environmental advocacy group Friends of the River calls “the worst threat to Northern California rivers in history.”

Prop. 43 does include the Delta, calling for “habitat restoration” that environmentalists say is a prime example of greenwashing Brown’s project, which would provide water from the Delta to farmers and southern California residents, at a massive cost both economically and environmentally.

Those in favor of Prop. 43 argue that it will help prepare for droughts by improving water storage ability, create jobs through its call for infrastructure improvements, and improve water supplies for farmers. Lisa Lien-Mager, spokesperson for the Association of California Water Agencies, did not respond when contacted by the Bay Guardian for comment.

The constant discourse regarding the issue (several other price tags came before the $7.2 billion figure) put in question lawmakers’ ability to come to a resolution in time for the November election. Both houses of the Legislature would have to approve a rewriting of the proposal by a two-thirds vote, on top of securing Brown’s signature.

As Conway said, “There is still work to be done to reach agreement on an alternative water bond that addresses our state’s critical water storage needs.”

Refugee crisis hits home

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joe@sfbg.com

In the small, colorful Precita Valley Community Center, a woman clutches a black ceramic goblet, circling a teenage girl with wisps of incense, and repeats the act with the 60 or so attendees. The spiritual cleansing ritual is much needed. Afterward, the San Franciscans will set their minds to saving the lives of children.

Nearly 50,000 Central American children crossed the Mexican border since October, according to federal data, fleeing targeted violence in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. This recent surge has hit home, as hundreds of those young refugees, often unaccompanied, seek asylum through immigration courts in San Francisco.

The courts often decide between life and death: Do the children stay in the safety of our sanctuary city, or return to countries from which they fled violence and chaos?

Jose Artiga, executive director of the Salvadoran Humanitarian Aid, Research and Education Foundation, told the crowd a story of life in El Salvador.

“A boy of only 11 years old waited for his grandfather one day,” he said, in Spanish. “A gang captured him, and the community organized to search for the boy. They found the child, but in six parts. The grandfather said, ‘How can I bring my grandchild back to his mother in six parts?’ This was a child. The gang showed up at the funeral, and would not let the community bury him.”

Some say the rising power of gangs sparked this surge in immigration. As President Barack Obama struggles with a bitterly partisan and gridlocked Congress to find a solution, US cities are dealing with the impacts of the overburdened immigration court system.

Now politicians of all partisan stripes, activists, and families are coming together to help the child refugees. Just last week, Sup. David Campos’ resolution to find additional aid for overburdened immigration services unanimously passed the Board of Supervisors. The next step, he told the Guardian, is to determine how best to use funds to help these children.

At the Precita Valley Community Center and beyond, activists call for that funding to reach attorneys, without which these kids will almost certainly be sent home into harm’s way.

 

OVERBURDENED

The refugees travel far. Children fleeing violence in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala trek through Mexico to cross the US border, and some die in the attempt. Those who live and are discovered by Border Patrol officers along the Southwest border are held temporarily in crowded, cold detention centers in McAllen, Texas, or Nogales, Ariz.

Images of these detention centers show groups of children lying on hard floors in thin blankets, and some advocates for the refugees reported feces and urine soaking the floors. The young refugees tell officials where they have family connections, and are flown to immigration courts across the country.

One such court is in San Francisco.

In 2005, San Francisco had 227 new active deportation proceedings for unaccompanied children, according to federal data obtained by Syracuse University’s TRAC Immigration project. That number was stable until 2012 when it jumped to 450 new cases. In 2013, the number jumped again, to 820.

San Francisco now has over 1,900 pending juvenile immigration cases, according to TRAC. Most of those children are Salvadoran, Honduran, and Guatemalan. The surge is pushing organizations that help these children to the breaking point.

Lariza Dugan-Cuadra, executive director of the Central American Resource Center, knows one thing for sure: “Things have been crazy.”

CARECEN is one of many organizations providing legal representation to Central American child refugees in San Francisco. Two attorneys and two paralegals handle the bulk of cases, which jumped from 20 children a month to 60.

“All a child is given is a court date,” Dugan-Cuadra told the Guardian. “While the US guarantees the right to court, it does not guarantee the right to representation.”

While US citizens have a constitutional right to representation by an attorney, noncitizens in Immigration Court do not. And when organizations like CARECEN can’t provide an attorney, the child loses.

“We’ve heard cases where a 6-year-old will go before a judge having to represent themselves,” she said. “The judges are throwing their hands up saying ‘Are you serious!?'”

Data obtained by TRAC Immigration backs up her claim.

Nationwide, only 52 percent of unaccompanied children are represented by an attorney in deportation court proceedings.

With an attorney, judges rule in a juvenile’s favor to stay about half the time, TRAC’s research found. Without an attorney? Only one in 10 children are granted asylum.

No legal representation means no hope. The ACLU filed a class-action suit against the United States earlier this month on behalf of unrepresented child immigrants, alleging just that.

“The onus has been hard on nonprofit providers and pro-bono attorneys,” Dugan-Cuadra said, because they know the stakes. Legal Services for Children, Catholic Charities, and the Asian Law Caucus are among the organizations calling for more aid.

Many of the attorneys are experiencing burnout. One we talked to was on a vacation for her mental health. Studies by the American Bar Association show judges are burning out too, and things are only getting worse: California has 77,000 pending immigration cases backlogged in its courts.

But locally, the children bear the worst of this: TRAC Immigration’s data shows only 71 of the new 830 unaccompanied children in San Francisco were represented by an attorney as of June 2014.

And without representation, many will be sent home to violence.

 

REFUGEES OR IMMIGRANTS?

The United Nations Refugee Agency, UNHCR, said the children fleeing Central American countries should officially be considered refugees in need of asylum, a claim with legal ramifications President Obama so far has hesitated to make.

“We’re witnessing a complex situation in which children are leaving home for a variety of reasons, including poverty, the desire to join family, and the growing influence of trafficking networks,” Shelly Pitterman, UNHCR’s regional representative in the United States, said in a press statement. “Within this movement there are also children who are fleeing situations of violence at the hands of transnational organized criminal groups and powerful local gangs.”

Those fleeing violence and persecution, said Pitterman, will require access to asylum determination procedures and will need long-term protection. Others should be sent home, she said, and assisted with reintegration.

But some can’t find refuge anywhere at home, no matter where they go.

“My brother’s son was kidnapped eight years ago by extortionists,” one Salvadoran woman at the Precita center told the Guardian, declining to give her name out of fear for her family’s safety. Her brother moved to other cities, but the gangs continued to harass him and his family in provinces throughout El Salvador.

“He got letters threatening to kidnap his child. ‘We know where you live, we know where your child goes to school,'” she said. Her nephew is now 14. The last time she visited him she saw something that chilled her.

“He was approached by gangs to be recruited. I witnessed that. One day after when we were in the car, my nephew saw the gangs in another car. He hid on the floor and started to shake.”

The woman turned her head away and held back tears.

“My brother said ‘I have to take you out of here.'”

Now her nephew is somewhere safe in the United States, she said, though she would not say where. But the reason he left is clear.

“These kids don’t want to be the next dead body on the street,” Clarisa Sanchez, a Board of Immigration’s representative from Catholic Charities CYO told the Guardian.

Nationally, Republicans are calling for the mass deportation of these children. “I won’t stand idly by while our citizens are under assault and little children from Central America are detained in squalor,” Texas Gov. Rick Perry said this week, as he announced deployment of 1,000 National Guard troops along the Texas border.

But many pin the origins of the crisis squarely on the United States.

 

DRUG LEGACY

Salvadorans are familiar with violence and cruelty. In 1932, more than 30,000 Salvadorans were slaughtered in a peasant revolt called la matanza: the slaughter. Nearly 75,000 civilians died in El Salvador’s bloody civil war, from 1980-1992.

The US government intervened in that war, sending government aid to the Salvadoran government. Now the US has a hand in today’s violence in Central America, some say, as our country’s drug habits fuel cartels throughout the region. Those cartels are arming Central American gangs, whichObama admitted in a press conference last year.

“The United States recognizes that we’ve got responsibilities; that much of the violence in the region is fueled by demand for illegal drugs, including in the United States,” the president said.

Obama requested $3.7 billion emergency funding that would bring at least $64 million to immigration courts, but also at least $1.5 billion to border security and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a troubling addition to needed funding.

Back at the Precita Valley Community Center, Jose Cartagena pled for legal aid at the border. Cartagena is intimately familiar with the need: He fled El Salvador’s civil war over 30 years ago. As he crossed the Tucson desert, 13 of his fellow border-crossers died in the blazing southwestern heat. Only Cartagena survived. Now he’s a representative for the National Network of Salvadorans in the Exterior in San Francisco.

He called for justice.

“We have to help these kids find their families or sponsors,” he said. “If we don’t provide legal support now, the Obama administration may deport all of them. We can’t wait until it’s too late.”

If you’d like to help the efforts around the Central American child refugees, you can contact CARECEN, Catholic Charities, or Superivsor David Campos’ office.

#TBT: That time we called for California’s break-up

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So another scheme — in a long and rich history of such schemes — is attempting to break California into more digestible parts, and gaining national attention. Venture capitalist Tim Draper’s Six Californias is all but on the ballot, attempting to rechristen the Bay Area as Silicon Valley. Good luck with that! (Although we have to say, it might create the first openly weed-driven state economy — Northern California — which would be fun to see.)

In 2009, we, too, put forth a proposal to split California up — building on an idea from conservative Central California, and echoed in Daily Kos. It was a doozy, but a logical one, with some actual Six Californias affinity.

Our May 27 cover story, written by Rebecca Bowe and Tim Redmond, proposed to split Cali up for better management, representation, and economic/social justice, creating the playfully named states of Greenland, Sierrastan, Pinkostan, Coastland, Palm Sprawl, North Mexico, and Disney. (The accompanying cover, designed by Ben Hopfer and shown above, aped the New Yorker’s famous “New Yorkistan” cover.)  

The cover story itself grew from a Politics Blog post Tim Redmond had written in March of 2009, asking “Should California be split up?” — read the post below. As for creating states, we’ll be dreaming of Puerto Rico …

SHOULD CALIFORNIA BE SPLIT UP?

By Tim Redmond

It’s an interesting question. Nothing new, really — folks up in the northern part of the state have been talking about secession since the 1940s.

But these days, the talk has shifted from North-South to Central Valley-Coast.

There’s plenty of discussion going on — the New York Times
reports on a move by farmers in Visalia, who say those of us in the more liberal western regions don’t understand what it’s like in the center of the state:

Frustrated by what they call uninformed urban voters dictating faulty farm policy, Mr. Rogers and the other members of the movement have proposed splitting off 13 counties on the state’s coast, leaving the remaining 45, mostly inland, counties as the “real” California.

The reason, they say, is that people in those coastal counties, which include San Francisco and Los Angeles, simply do not understand what life is like in areas where the sea breezes do not reach.
“They think fish are more important than people, that pigs are treated mean and chickens should run loose,” said Mr. Rogers, who said he hitched a ride in 1940 to Visalia from Oklahoma to escape the Dust Bowl, with his wife and baby son in tow. “City people just don’t know what it takes to get food on their table.”

A former Assembly member is pushing a vertical split, too :

“Citizens of our once Golden State are frustrated and desperately concerned about the imposition of burdensome regulations, taxation, fees, fees and more fees, and bureaucratic intrusion into our daily lives and businesses,” declares downsizeca.org, the movement’s website.

And all of this comes as reformers form both the left and the right are talking about a new Constitutional Convention.

Athough some of the proponents are clearly nutty, the idea isn’t. As the noted political economist Gar Alperovitz wrote two years ago

The United States is almost certainly too big to be a meaningful democracy. What does “participatory democracy” mean in a continent? Sooner or later, a profound, probably regional, decentralization of the federal system may be all but inevitable.

He was talking about California becoming its own nation, but I’d argue that the same problem applies here. The budget crisis, the gridlock in Sacramento … all of it suggests that maybe California itself is too big to govern. There’s also clear evidence of dramatic regional differences. If you take the Central Valley from about Redding on down, and wrap in Orange County, you have a red state within a blue state where most of the residents say they want lower taxes and smaller government. Along the coast from about Sonoma County down to the southern part of Los Angeles County, you have people who generally would like to see taxes pay for public services. If the coast were a state, we could repeal Prop. 13 and build world-class schools. We’d have same-sex marriage and single-payer health insurance. And we’d still be one of the biggest states in America.

Now, I’m not sure the people in the central valley quite realize the problem with their plans, which is illustrated in this wonderful chart that comes from the office of Assemblywoman Noreen Evans of Santa Rosa (PDF).

The chart shows that the people who dislike and distrust government and don’t want to pay taxes are in fact the beneficiaries of the tax dollars that the rest of us pay. In California, tax money from the coast winds up paying for services in the central valley.

But that’s okay — if they don’t want our money any more, maybe we should tell them we’re fine with that. Maybe we should split the state not just in two but into three: Let the northern counties become the state of Jefferson, where pot will be legal and the residents will be so wealthy from taxes and exports of that cash crop that they’ll make oil-richAlaskans seem like paupers. Pot will be legal in the coastal communities, too, and will generate tax revenue.

We’ll have a Democratic governor, and overwhelmingly Democratic legislature, fewer prisons, better schools, cleaner air, no Ellis Act, rent controls on vacant apartments, more money for transit, strict gun control, support for immigrant rights … and no more of these ugly battles over budgets held hostage by right-wing Republicans.

And in the central valley, they can have their low taxes and conservative values, and watch their roads, schools, and public services go to hell. Maybe eventually they’ll figure it out.

Of course, we’d have to figure out the water rights. The folks in Jefferson would have control over much of the water that now goes South, and there would have to be some long-term water contracts between the states, but that shouldn’t be an insurmountable roadblock.

And the solution would create its own problems; The GOP would control the central state, and would move to abolish the Agricultural Labor Relations Act and make life even more miserable for farmworkers. But then, maybe Jefferson would turn off the water and big agribusiness would be SOL anyway.

As part of the break-up, all parties would have to agree to create a special relocation fund to help lonely, sad liberals from Modesto come west and to help lonely, sad Republicans in San Francisco to move east. I wonder which way the net migration would go.

Meanwhile, Evans has introduced my favorite tax bill of the year, AB 1342, and it’s related to this entire discussion. She wants to allow counties to levy their own income taxes and vehicle license fees. “We went through this difficult process of trying to arrive at a budget,” her spokesperson, Anthony Matthews, told me. “For those communities that have a different view of government [than the Republicans], this bill would let them raise their own taxes to fund their priorities.”

 

End the open primary experiment

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EDITORIAL

This week’s primary election on June 3 occurred after Guardian press time for this issue, but there’s one conclusion that we can draw about it without even knowing the results: This is a pretty shabby form of democracy that few voters cared about. California’s experiment in open primaries is a disaster, and it’s time for a new model.

Turnout for this election was expected to hit historic lows, and for good reason: There was nothing of any real significance on this ballot, except perhaps for Proposition B on the San Francisco ballot, to require voter approval for height increases on waterfront development projects.

Even the hotly contested Assembly District 17 race between David Campos and David Chiu was simply a practice run for a rematch in November, thanks to an open primary system that sends the top two primary finishers, regardless of party, to the general election.

The system was approved by voters at Proposition 14 in 2010, placed on the ballot by then-Assemblymember Abel Maldonado as part of a deal with then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to break a budget stalemate caused by their fellow Republicans. Such horse-trading should have been a bad sign that this change wouldn’t live up to its idealistic hopes.

Its backers promised that it would favor more moderate candidates and reduce negative campaigning, but that hasn’t happened. Indeed, at press time it appeared Gov. Jerry Brown would be facing the most radically right-winger in the race, Tim Donnelly, in November.

What it has instead done is reduce the primary election to a boring and meaningless waste of time and money, turning off voters and creating low-turnout elections that are more prone to manipulation by wealthy special interests.

We at the Guardian are all for greater experimentation in our electoral models. We were big supporters of the ranked-choice voting system that is working well in San Francisco and Oakland. We support even more aggressive models for publicly financing campaigns and reducing the role on private money in electoral politics. Hell, we also support a proportional representation system and other wholesale transformations of our political system.

But while we’d love to see even more electoral experimentation, we also need to recognize when experiments are failing, as California’s open primary system now is. It’s time to try something new.

 

Left out

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steve@sfbg.com

It’s never been easy for progressives to mount a serious campaign for the California governor’s office. The high water mark was in 1934 when famous author/activist Upton Sinclair ran on his End Poverty In California platform and got nearly 38 percent of the vote despite being shut out by the major newspapers at the time.

That campaign was cited by both of this year’s leading leftist challengers to Gov. Jerry Brown — Green Party candidate Luis Rodriguez and Peace and Freedom Party candidate Cindy Sheehan — who say the goal of ending poverty is more important than ever, but who are also having a hard time getting media coverage for that message.

The latest Field Poll from April 9 shows Brown with a 40-point lead on his closest challenger, conservative Republican Tim Donnelly (57 to 17 percent, with 20 percent undecided). Republicans Andrew Blount and Neel Kashkari were at 3 and 2 percent, respectively, while Rodriguez and Sheehan are among the 11 also-rans who shared the support of 1 percent of the California electorate.

Perhaps that’s to be expected given that Brown is a Democrat who pulled the state back from the edge of the fiscal abyss largely by backing the Prop. 30 tax package in 2012, with most of the new revenue coming from increased income taxes on the rich. But to hear Rodriguez and Sheehan tell it, Brown is just another agent of the status quo at a time when the growing gap between rich and poor is the state’s most pressing problem.

“We have to put all our resources into ending poverty,” Rodriguez told us.

The campaigns that Rodriguez and Sheehan are running seem indicative of the state of progressive politics in California these days, with good work being done on individual issues by an array of groups, but little coordination among them or serious work on the kind of organizing and coalition-building needed to win statewide office.

There is still hope, particularly given California’s open primary system, where all Rodriguez or Sheehan need to do is beat the top Republican challenger in June in order to face Brown in a two-person race in November — an outcome that would definitely elevate their progressive message.

“One of our sayings is ‘second place wins the race,'” Sheehan told the Guardian.

But at this point, that seems unlikely, a longshot that points to the need for progressive-minded Californians to rebuild the movement and win over new generations of voters, particularly the young people disconnected from electoral politics and largely behind by the economic system.

 

REACHING VOTERS

When we asked Sheehan how her campaign was going, she replied, “It’s going.” When we pushed for a bit more, she told us, “It’s very, very grassroots and we’ve been trying to get the word out.”

And by “very, very grassroots,” Sheehan seems to mean that it’s not going very well, in terms of fundraising, volunteer support, media exposure, or any of the things a campaign needs to be successful. It’s been a disappointment for a woman who started her public political life as a media darling.

The year after Sheehan’s son Casey died fighting the Iraq War in 2004, she set up an encampment outside then-President George W. Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, instantly becoming a high-profile anti-war activist just as public opinion was turning strongly against the war.

Sheehan parlayed that fame into international activism for peace and other progressive causes, writing a pair of autobiographical/political books, and mounting a primary challenge against then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi in 2008, finishing in second place with about 16 percent of the vote. Sheehan was also the running mate of presidential candidate Roseanne Barr in 2012, although their Peace and Freedom Party ticket didn’t appear on the ballot in most states.

But these days, Sheehan has found it tougher to recapture the media spotlight she once enjoyed, causing her to sometimes bristle with frustration and a sense of entitlement, as she did with us at the Guardian for failing to help her amplify her message before now.

“Who came in 2nd against Pelosi? Who received well into ‘double digits?’ The campaign can’t get steam if ‘lefties’ put the same criteria as the [San Francisco] Chronicle for example for coverage. If I were truly in this for my ‘ego’ I would have quit a long time ago. You write, I campaign all over the world for the things I care about,” Sheehan wrote in a testy April 3 email exchange with me after a supporter seeking our coverage sent her a message in which I questioned the prospects of her campaign.

But getting progressive support in a race against Pelosi in San Francisco clearly isn’t the same thing as having a progressive campaign gain traction with a statewide audience, particularly because Sheehan doesn’t have many prominent endorsers or organizational allies.

By contrast, Rodriguez seems to be outhustling Sheehan, racing up and the down the state to promote his candidacy and work on rebuilding the progressive movement, with an emphasis on reaching communities of color who feel estranged from politics.

“People like me and others on the left need to step up if we’re not going to just accept the control of the two-party system. We have to fight for that democratic reality, we have to make it real,” Rodriguez told us. “You can’t just say vote, vote, vote. You have to give them something to vote for.”

 

ON THE ISSUES

Rodriguez is the author of 15 books, including poetry, journalism, novels, and a controversial memoir on gang life, Always Running, winning major writing awards for his work. He lives in the Los Angeles area, where he’s been active in community-building in both the arts and political realms.

Rodriguez is running on a platform that brings together environmental, social justice, and anti-poverty issues, areas addressed separately by progressive groups who have made only halting progress on each, “which is why we need to make them inseparable.”

While he said Brown has improved the “terrible situation he inherited from Schwarzenegger,” Rodriguez said that the fortunes of the average Californian haven’t turned around.

“People are hurting in the state of California. I think Brown has to answer for that,” Rodriguez said, noting that people are frustrated with the economic system and looking for solutions. “I don’t think Gov. Brown has a plan for it. In fact, I think he’s making it worse.”

Sheehan is critical of Brown for his opposition to full marijuana legalization, his resistance to prison reform, for allowing fracking, and for doing little to challenge the consolidation of wealth.

“My main issue is always, of course, peace and justice. But a corollary of that is for the resources of this state to be more fairly distributed to help people’s lives,” Sheehan said, calling that economic justice stand an outgrowth of her anti-war activism. “Since my son was killed, I’ve been starting to connect the dots about the empire we live under.”

When she studied California history at UCLA, Sheehan said, “I was inspired by Upton Sinclair and his End Poverty In California campaign in the ’30s.” She reminisces about the California of her childhood, when college education was free and the social safety net was intact, keeping people from economic desperation.

“It’s been done before and we can do it again,” Sheehan said. “I love this state, I love its potential, and I miss the way it was when I was growing up.”

 

OBSTACLES TO OVERCOME

Money is a challenge for statewide candidates given the size of California, which has at least a half-dozen major media markets that all need to be tapped repeatedly to reach voters throughout the state.

“I won’t take any corporate dollars and only people with money get heard,” Rodriguez told us.

But he says California has a large and growing number of voters who don’t identify with either major party, as well as a huge number of Latino voters who have yet to really make their voices heard at election time.

“I’m really banking on the people that nobody is counting,” Rodriguez said. “This is the time when people need to come together. We have to unite on these central things.”

That’s always a tough task for third-party candidates. Sheehan has a paltry list of endorsers, owing partly to the left-leaning organizations like labor unions staying with Brown, even though Sheehan claims many of their members support her.

“The rank and file is supportive of our message, but the leadership is still tied in with the Democratic Party,” Sheehan told us. “This state is deeply controlled by the Democratic Party, even more than it was a few years ago.”

But Sheehan considers herself a strong and seasoned candidate. “I’ve run for Congress, I’ve run for vice president, and I think that politics should be local,” Sheehan told us, saying her main strength would be, “I would work with people to create a better state, not against people.”

It was a theme she returned to a few times in our conversation, her main selling point. “It’s about inspiring a movement,” Sheehan said. “My biggest gift is getting out there and talking to people.” But if her strengths are indeed inspiring a movement, working with allies, and building coalitions, then why isn’t her campaign doing those things? Sheehan admits that it’s been difficult, telling us, “I found it easier in San Francisco to get the word out.”

“Are Alt Weeklies Over?” Hell no! We’re needed now more than ever.

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The New York Times yesterday ran an insightful and widely circulated op-ed from a fellow alt-weekly editor, Baynard Woods of Baltimore City Paper, that emphasized the important role that a staff of full-time alt-weekly journalists play in urban life, a niche that neither big daily papers nor online-only outlets can replicate.

“An alt weekly has a staff of paid reporters and editors whose jobs are not only to know the city, but to love it, to hate it, and to be an integral part of it, cajoling, ridiculing, praising and skewering city officials, artists and entrepreneurs alike, while giving voices to the ‘city folk,’” Woods wrote after ruing the economic forces that have hobbled our profession and given rise to the article’s headline: “Are Alt Weeklies Over?”

As someone who has worked for four alt-weeklies in California after starting my career at daily newspapers, I can attest to the unique and valuable role that they played in each of those cities: San Luis Obispo, Monterey, Sacramento, and San Francisco. Eschewing the tired and unattainable goal of “objective journalism,” the alt-weeklies help provide a bottom-up framing of local issues and serve as a check on the dominant economic and political forces.

When I made the transition from dailies to alt-weeklies in 1995, I felt like a whole new world had been opened up for me, a feeling that I’ve heard expressed by many others in my business. Daily newspaper writers generally hew to the orthodoxy of their local Chamber of Commerce in economic coverage, while political news tends to split the difference between the two major political parties.

But in a dynamic world with major long-term problems that aren’t being addressed in a serious way — from global warming and environmental degradation to extreme wealth disparities and lack of investment in critical public infrastructure — sometimes the Chamber, the Democrats, and the Republicans are all wrong.

Saying so often falls to the alt-weekly writers and editors who can speak with a clear and true voice, and who can back up their perspective with years of diligent reporting to support it. When the Guardian says PG&E corrupts our political system, that’s not a statement of opinion, but a conclusion backed up by dozens of well-reported articles going back decades. In this instantaneous yet forgetful society we’re creating, that kind of institutional knowledge is invaluable.

That’s especially true when it comes to city life and the struggles we cover all day, every day, something that writers who strive for clicks from readers around the world can’t provide. Locally based reporters working local beats with adequate resources is essential to civic accountability.  

For example, it’s easy for us to see how the current displacement crisis will change San Francisco in unacceptable ways, and to see the echoes of previous political moments — the freeway revolts of the ‘60s, the anti-Manhattanization struggles of the ‘70s, resistance to trickle down economics in the ‘80s, warnings about the last dot-com economic cleansing in the ‘90s — in this current political moment. So we amplify the many voices crying out for reform and we’re willing to call our untrustworthy politicians and business leaders on their bullshit. We’re not afraid to call the liars “liars.”

“Alt weeklies can be harsh in their criticism, whether it’s aimed at a blowhard politician or an overrated artist. Some people say we’re too eager to charge people with selling out, with trafficking in an insular cultural elitism. But alt weeklies don’t simply delight in being mean; they are harsh because they care about the city and what goes on in it,” Woods wrote.

We at the Guardian love San Francisco, and we’re going to keep fighting for its soul — and the panopoly of inspired and inspiring people who feed that soul — with everything we’ve got, and neither the people who fund our paychecks nor those who populate our blogs are going to deter us from that mission.   

A look back: The “Candlestick Swindle” in ’68

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San Francisco spent this week saying goodbye to its beloved foggy stadium, Candlestick Park. Amidst the farewells, the Guardian spotted a post from sports blog Deadspin, which reprinted one of our articles from 1968  titled, “Before We Build Another Stadium… The Candlestick Swindle.” 

When we saw the post, we started thumbing through our archives looking for the article. Though Deadspin said it was from 1972, we found it in Vol. 2, Issue no. 10, May 14, 1968, it’s a down and dirty tale of intimidation, bypassing voters through dummy corporations, profiteering, and racism. Candlestick has a colorful history, to say the least. 

The author, Burton H. Wolfe (Burton, not “Mr. Wolfe,” he wrote via email), gave us permission to re-publish it in full here. Just for fun, we’re also embedding the original issue as a PDF, which can be download and printed. Looking through the issue, it’s heartening (and disheartening) how much, and how little, changes.

 

The Candlestick Swindle

It all began early in 1953. Mayor Elmer Robinson’s administration—and local businessmen—decided to import big league baseball for San Francisco’s economic and recreational benefit. A downtown stadium was adequate for San Francisco’s AAA minor league club, the Seals, but not for major league fare.

Hence, Robinson asked the Board of Supervisors to approve a $5 million bond proposition to construct a new stadium. Among the supervisors in approval: George Christopher, soon to become mayor; Gene McAteer, headed for the state senate; Francis McCarty, a future judge; Harold Dobbs, restaurateur and budding Republican candidate for mayor, and John Jay Ferdon, future district attorney.

In July of that same year, 1953, a local multi-millionaire contractor named Charles Harney purchased 65 acres of land at Candlestick Point from the city of San Francisco for $2,100 an acre.

Next year, a band of publicists headed by Curley Grieve, S.F. Examiner sports editor, beat the drums and called the natives to pass this bond issue proposition:

To incur a bonded indebtedness in the sum of $5 million for the acquisition, construction and completion of buildings, lands and other works and properties to be used for baseball, football, other sports, dramatic productions and other lawful uses as a recreation center.

Major league baseball, they proclaimed, would bring untold wealth to the city for a mere $5 million, a price that would be returned many times. After voters approved this in November, 1954, the search began for a site. If there were any doubts the stadium would cost more than $5 million, they were dispelled in a personal meeting between Robinson’s successor, Mayor Christopher, and the owner of the New York Giants, Horace Stoneham.

In April, 1957, Christopher and McCarty flew to New York to talk Stoneham into bringing the Giants to San Francisco. The Giants were losing money in New York, and scouting the country for a new home base.

To prove San Francisco’s support for professional baseball, Christopher waved the $5 million stadium bond issue at Stoneham. According to testimony reported by the 1968 grand jury investigation, Stoneham replied contemptuously:

Any figure other than 10 or 11 million dollars shouldn’t even be discussed because there would be no possibility or probability of a major club moving to that particular community.

Back in San Francisco, Christopher reported the need for more money to other city leaders and businessmen. Since the proposition suddenly to double the original bond issue might run into trouble with the voters, they decided to create a non-profit corporation called Stadium, Inc., as a legal arm of the city.

Bypassing the Voters

Operating through this dummy corporation, the Christopher administration could bypass the voters to raise more money.

Harney and two of his employees were selected as the first board of directors of Stadium, Inc. Christopher told Harney that he would be the contractor to build the new stadium, and his 41 acres of Candlestick land would be the heart of the 77-acre location.

In 1957, Harney sold back 41 acres of the parcel he had purchased from the city in 1953 at $2,100 an acre. The 1957 price the city paid to Harney for its own former land was $65,853 an acre. That’s a crisp total of $2.7 million.

The city’s Real Estate Department approved the deal even though other land adjacent to Harney’s was bought at about the same time for just $6,540 an acre. Harney made a profit of $2.6 million on the four-year land ownership switch.

Not so, Christopher and Harney later contended. Harney had graded and filled the land, and so naturally he was paid for his improvements. One fact raised doubts about that explanation: a $7 million fee awarded to Harney to construct the new stadium included $2 million for stadium construction, $2 million for grading and filling and $2.7 million for real estate.

Had it not been for the creation of Stadium, Inc., the Christopher administration would have been required to hold open, competitive bidding for the contract, and voters would have seen the price tags.

By operating through Stadium, Inc., Christopher was able to evade the city charter and arrange the contract in a privately negotiated deal.

Through the same apparatus, his administration was able to float another $5.5 million bond issue without voter approval. The interest rate on these bonds was set at 5% whereas the interest on the original $5 million bond issue was only 2.4%, a difference that would eventually cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Evading an Investigation

In February, 1958, Harney and his employees were removed from the board of Stadium, Inc., after, as the grand jury report later pointed out, “Three influential men then were substituted to represent the city’s interest—Alan K. Brown, W.P. Fuller Brawne and Frederic P. Whitman.”

The maneuver came too late to prevent Henry E. North from instigating a Grand Jury investigation into the strange transactions.

North, like Christopher, was a Republican and a conservative member of the San Francisco business community. Until his retirement, at 70, he had been executive vice-president of one of the largest property owners in the city: the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. He had a strong sense of civic duty, however, and the Candlestick Park deal smelled to him of garbage.

The report North issued, as the result of the Grand Jury investigation, was potential dynamite. It showed that, shortly before the city purchased Harney’s land at $65,853 an acre, adjacent pieces of tideland were sold by the city for less that $4,000 an acre. It did not make sense that Harney’s land, partly under water, should have brought $61,000 more from city coffers.

On Dec. 2, 1958, the San Francisco Chronicle carried partial coverage of the Grand Jury report. On page 5, the year Harney purchased the city land was stated as 1933 rather than 1953. Of course, the 20-year difference would provide a reason for the tremendous increase in value, because the initial purchase price would have been at depression levels.

Undoubtedly, it was a typographical error. And no doubt it was by unintentional omission that other salient features of the Grand Jury report were omitted altogether and never printed by the Chronicle or any other major newspaper.

North charged that all bond issues negotiated by Stadium, Inc. were illegal evasions of the city charter. Bond payments had to be made from city funds, not the dummy nonprofit corporation, and so the whole deal amounted to legal subterfuge; a way to make taxpayers foot the bill without letting them vote on it.

The report, drafted by North and signed by 18 other citizens, estimated annual payments on the bonds of $990,000 for the first 15 years of the debt period. Against that, the city was to draw $225,000 a year in rent from the Giants and $225,000 a year from advertising and parking revenues, leaving a balance of $640,000 to be paid annually from taxes or city funds. It was estimated that the city could make up the balance by commanding the juicy television rights; instead, Christopher arranged for rights to go exclusively to the Giants.

Altogether, it was a marvelous deal for the Giants. In their last New York season, attendance at the Polo Grounds plummeted to 684,000. The club had gone broke and it was almost impossible to give away its stock. After the Giants first season in San Francisco in 1958, attendance tripled over its last year in New York, and their stock soared to $1,000 a share. In terms of revenue, the increase in gate receipts alone meant $3 million the first year.

While the Giants were reaping enormous profits at taxpayers expense, City Hall and the local newspapers were trying to make it appear that San Francisco, too, was earning money. The News-Call Bulletin, the now defunct Hearst paper, once stated that when all returns are in, the season just ended (1960) will have yielded the city about $530,000. The fact was that the sole revenue to the city was $50,000 received to maintain buildings and grounds.

The other Hearst paper, the Examiner, stated, on the other hand: City Hall officials said $375,000 of the revenue figure will be used to pay the annual cost of the city’s $5 million bond issue. The Chronicle published this figure: Of the remaining $527,000, the first $375,000 must go toward payment of the city’s $5 million stadium bond issue.

The fact was that all revenues from the ball park and its parking lot had to be used to pay off the $5.5 million worth of bonds issued by Stadium, Inc., with the exception of the $50,000 maintenance income. The other $5 million worth, issued by the city, had to be paid off through real and personal or property taxes collected by the city.

The result: a projected loss, not profit, of $640,000 the city must pay from taxes or other general city revenues (according to the Grand Jury report), and a loss this year of at least $360,000 (according to figures supplied to The Guardian by the city controller’s office and Mike Barrett, the Bank of America executive who handles Stadium, Inc.’s trustee account.)

Some annual loss on Candlestick Park will continue until 1993, when the stadium will finally be free of debt and owned completely by the city—unless, it is torn down before then or reconstructed, which will add more debt.

There was another interesting development at Candlestick: Stevens California Enterprises, which got the food and beverage concession at the ball park, bought all its milk until two seasons ago from Christopher’s milk company, Christopher Dairy Farms. The Borden Co. now has the lucrative contract.

Even though City Hall and the newspapers were misstating facts about the Candlestick story, San Francisco restaurateurs, hotel owners and shopkeepers at least began to realize that they were not making any money from the ball park, as promised by the ballyhooers. Only the Giants, Harney, and Christopher were making money. The Giants were attracting few additional tourists to San Francisco, and area fans who journeyed to isolated Candlestick Point, several miles away, did not stop to patronize downtown establishments. Some downtown business men were angry, and if North’s crusade were given time and publicity, they might cause an uncomfortable controversy.

Christopher sent emissaries to North, but he would not be wooed or pressured from his stand. To the contrary, he made even more vigorous attacks on Christopher and the ball park deal. The lives of future generations had been mortgaged by this shoddy piece of business, he maintained. Christopher was diverting city funds from various departments: $1.4 million from street improvement bonds, $1.2 million from state gasoline taxes given to the city for road improvements, $1.5 million from sewer bonds for services to the Giants ball park.

A Hidden Payoff?

Already the cost was $15 million, and it might exceed $20 million when various exits, entrances, widened access streets and the like were built to handle the anticipated large crowds. Privately, North informed civic and business leaders that there was an underhanded payoff in the deal, and he intended to expose it.

Christopher reacted viscerally to North’s charges. With newspapermen present, he asserted North was drunk, incoherent, and fixable. The description was published in the newspapers.

North went to Nate Cohn, one of the foremost criminal lawyers in California, and they filed a $2 million libel suit against Christopher. In a pre-trial hearing, Christopher’s attorney filed a thick brief with 45 motions for dismissal of the suit, hoping to tie up the case inextricably. In just an hour and a half, Superior Court judge Preston Devine threw out all 45 motions, indicating clearly that Cohn and North had a good case.

Breaking Down North

Christopher’s friends in the business community went to work on North. The publisher of one of the three daily newspapers, North told me, called on him and said, “Henry, why don’t you play ball? You’re giving the city a bad name, stirring things up like this.”

At the Pacific Union Club across the street from the Fairmont Hotel on Nob Hill, where North was already in disfavor for bringing Jewish guests despite the no-Jews-allowed policy, fellow Republican business executives started a snub-North routine. One day, for example, an old business friend greeted North:

“Say, Henry, I see in the papers there’s some fellow named Henry North filing a suit against the mayor and stirring things up. Must be another Henry North in this town, huh?”

“No, that’s me,” North told him.

“Is that so?” the old friend said. He turned his back on North and never spoke to him again.

I talked to North several times during the siege because I was publishing articles about Candlestick Park in my magazine, The Californian (now defunct). In those days he was full of fight, willing to take on City Hall and the entire business establishment even if it meant losing every friend he had. He promised to tell me the names of the men involved in the payoff, and he excoriated Christopher.

“You know what I call men like George Christopher? Black Republicans. Men who never did anything in their lives for the good of the common people. They’ve never realized that this country as a whole is no better off than the great masses of its people.”

The Fateful Fifth

Then they went to work on his wife. Unlike Henry, she was not involved in politics and her life revolved around her friends and social affairs. Her friends snubbed her and she no longer received invitations. She cried, she pleaded, she begged Henry to call off the ball park investigation and the lawsuit, when that did not move him, she threatened him with divorce. Henry began hitting the bottle.

On June 2, 1960, shortly after I published a detailed article by Lewis Lindsay called “The Giants Ball Park: A $15 Million Swindle,” the press broke the story that North had buried the hatchet with Christopher. In its first edition, the Chronicle correctly reported that North and Christopher had drunk a fifth and a half of Scotch together at Christopher’s home, and praised each other for publication. “He’s a great mayor,” North said—and agreed that legal entanglements were finished. The Chronicle dropped mention of the Scotch in later editions that went to most of its readers.

Cohn was outraged. “We had this suit won,” he told me. “North assured me he was going through with this no matter what happened. But they got to him through his wife, the poor old bastard. You see how they do things in this city? It’s so goddamned rotten you can’t believe it.”

When I called on North again, I found a complete transformation in his appearance. The look of a peppery fighter with ruddy cheeks had given way to a physical wreck; a baggy-eyed, tired, meek looking man weighed down by defeat.

The saddest part of the story was that his wife divorced him anyway. Not long afterward, North died of a heart attack. Harney died in December, 1962.

With North out of the way, with the daily newspapers blacking out the most important parts of the Candlestick Park story, with The Californian reaching only a few thousand citizens, it looked as though the scandal would never be investigated. In an effort to stir up something, I personally appeared before the Finance Committee of the Board of Supervisors and urged their help. One committee member, Al Zirpoli, had said before that he would favor an investigation.

No committee member challenged any facts I presented. When I finished, John Jay Ferdon, Committee Chairman, said only that he would not favor an investigation. He did not say why. (Six years later, when he had become District Attorney, he told me I was right about Candlestick.) Zirpoli, later to become a federal judge and the judge to hear draft resistance cases, said, “I agree with what Mr. Ferdon says.” He suggested, “If there is wrongdoing, your best course of action is a taxpayers’ suit.”

I went looking for wealthy liberals to finance a taxpayers suit, but none were in season. Cohn would have taken the suit if I could have found somebody to pay him for his time. All that he could do now was take me to business friends and introduce me.

The typical reaction came from Sam Cohen, owner of a plush restaurant on Maiden Lane said:

“Sorry, Burton, I can’t get involved. Do you know what Christopher can do to me with his power at City Hall? A Health Department inspector can find something wrong with this restaurant any time he wants. A door is too narrow, my stove does not meet regulations, anything to run me out of business. That’s how they do it. You can’t fight them.”

Since nobody in the city would fight, I asked Sen. Estes Kefauver, chairman of the Antitrust and Monopoly Sub-Committee of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, to investigate. He replied: “As interesting as a study of how the San Francisco ball park deal took place would be, I do not conclude that it is a matter that should be gone into on the federal level. I think that it is entirely a local or state matter, and that the Subcommittee would perhaps be criticized if it moved into this area.”

Now Another Ballpark

Here we are eight years later, with a Candlestick Park that enrages so many people that a new mayor, Joe Alioto, wants to scrap it for a new stadium. His announced philosophy is that great public projects should not be waylaid just because all of the people aren’t getting enough spaghetti and zucchini. And no doubt many San Franciscans believe that a ball park is a great public project, greater than a school, housing complex or a modern transportation system. That attitude could be the most tragic part of this story.

 

Single-payer is the cure

168

EDITORIAL We’re sorry to see all the problems surrounding President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, which has made some important improvements to the country’s healthcare system, such as helping those with preexisting conditions get coverage and preventing those who do have coverage from being arbitrarily dropped. Given a break from being exploited by the insurance industry, there’s no way this country’s citizens will want to go back to how things were.

But the convoluted Obamacare system was a foreseeable mess, one that is now causing unnecessary anxiety across the country and bringing right-wing extremists back from the political dead as the mid-term elections approach. Republicans may not be correct when they trumpet the old system as the best on the world, but their criticisms of Obamacare are already finding increasing resonance, and we haven’t even gotten to the point yet where it will be illegal not to have health insurance.

It doesn’t make sense to leave something as important as our healthcare system in the hands of for-profit corporations with the incentive to drive up costs. The New York Times has done some excellent work this year showing how US residents pay astronomically more for every procedure and drug than citizens of other countries. We should have all been suspicious when the insurance industry cooperated with enacting Obamacare and helped preclude a public option, leaving us with the insurance exchanges that have been so problematic.

There’s really only one remedy to this country’s ailing healthcare system, which we said at the time that Obamacare was being passed and we’ll repeat again now that there’s even more evidence supporting our position: We need socialized medicine in this country.

Conservatives who read that assertion are probably shaking their heads in disbelief right now, believing that Obamacare’s shortcomings prove that government can’t run a healthcare system. And the inexcusable technical problems with the federal healthcare.gov website and its related state exchanges unfortunately reinforce that view. But they’re wrong, and the single-payer advocates have been right all along, noting among other things that the government runs Medicare well and with far lower overhead than insurance companies.

The problems with Obamacare are similar to the problems it sought to address, and they stem from the fact that an insurance-based model is a terrible way to run a healthcare system. It’s too expensive and does too little to hold down medical costs, it’s confusing and stressful to people who are already wrestling with disease or injury, and it unjustly creates different standards of care for the rich and poor.

Socialized medicine — or a single-payer system, administered by either government or a private contractor, but paid for automatically through our taxes — works well in just about every other industrialized country, most of which are far less expensive and yet have better healthcare outcomes. A single-payer system could utilize the existing healthcare infrastructure, it would simply change how we pay for it and bring much-needed price controls and regulatory oversight.

Think about it: Healthcare coverage is something that every citizen needs in equal measure. We all need the right to see a doctor when we’re sick or injured. None of us should have to gamble with our health by weighing the cost of various monthly insurance premiums against our likelihood of ending up in the hospital. And it really shouldn’t be up to struggling small businesses to pay expensive health insurance premiums for their employees, even though that’s really the only way to make the fatally flawed insurance model work.

There’s infighting among congressional Democrats now about whether to roll back parts of Obamacare, such as hospital subsidies and whether to let people remain on minimal catastrophic coverage plans, and all that will do it upset the careful balance the plan tried to achieve to hold down long-term costs.

For now, we need to apply whatever bandages needed to stop the bleeding and limp the flawed Obamacare along for a little while. But we also need to immediately start the difficult work of transitioning to a socialized medicine system.

 

SF General will lose much of its federal subsidy under Obamacare

137

As President Obama’s Affordable Care Act is phased in over the next couple years, San Francisco General Hospital will lose at least 25 percent of the $123 million it receives from the federal government to offset costs of caring for the uninsured, but hopefully that will be offset by its expansion of those who will have health insurance.

General Hospital receives those funds for being a so-called “safety-net hospital,” a place where those without insurance can still get quality healthcare. Even though the need for such safety nets is supposed to diminish under Obamacare, SF General will remain a critically important safety-net hospital.

Many San Franciscans – including non-U.S. citizens who won’t qualify for coverage under the Affordable Care Act, as well as homeless individuals – will continue to rely on the hospital when in need of medical care.

Yet here and nationwide, concern is brewing about whether funding for safety-net hospitals could be impacted if enrollment in the new state health exchanges doesn’t reach anticipated levels.

“The financial question every state is asking is: What are the newly eligible patients going to do? What plan will they enroll in? Will they enroll?” Greg Wagner, CFO of the San Francisco Department of Public Health, told the Guardian, referring to the health insurance marketplaces created under the Affordable Care Act.

Most safety-net hospitals in the country are bolstered with federal subsidies, and are especially reliant on funds known as disproportionate share hospital payments, or DSH. However, those subsidies are about to be slashed with machete-like strokes.

All told, as much as $18 billion nationwide could be siphoned away from safety-net hospitals by 2020. Compounding that is another $22 billion that could be cut from Medicare subsidies, depending on the number of insured.

There’s an expectation that the looming safety-net budget cut will be offset by the burgeoning population of insured residents who would flock to state health exchanges. It makes sense: Instead of absorbing the entire cost of an uninsured patient, hospitals would be getting money from newly active insurance policies, and no money would be lost.

The New York Times recently ran a story detailing how low-income patients in Georgia may be put in a precarious position under federal healthcare reform because safety-net hospitals in Georgia might not be able to make up for lost funding once DSH payments evaporate.

California isn’t likely to experience this problem to the same degree, Wagner said, because the state chose to expand Medi-Cal, the state version of Medicaid, to include all low-income residents and not just those who previously qualified under a narrow set of criteria. Georgia had the same option to expand, but chose to keep its Medicaid qualifications in place, like many states led by Republicans looking to tweak President Obama.

As things stand, enrollment in Covered California – the state’s health insurance marketplace under the Affordable Care Act – remains low. Until enrollment closes at the end of March, it’s an open question whether it will reach the necessary levels to make up for pending cutbacks.

So far, 59,000 Californians had completed applications and enrolled in health insurance plans within the new marketplace as of Nov. 13. That’s a drop in the bucket, considering that 2.3 million are eventually expected to enroll. According to state data, 203,904 applications had been started online (reflecting an estimated 370,000 individuals). In addition to those applying for Covered California plans, another 72,000 people were determined eligible for Medi-Cal. 

“SF General operates on a huge amount of federal money,” Wagner explained. “Some comes directly from the federal government, and some comes from DSH.” He said the hospital received $123 million in DSH funds last year, “and not all of that will go away” once cuts go into effect.

“Healthy SF will still be around after March 31,” said Wagner. “We’re still retaining the program for anybody not eligible for Medi-Cal, and through Healthy SF those people can still access primary healthcare.”
He even said that under extreme circumstances, like the delivery of a child, for instance, some undocumented immigrants will have the opportunity to enroll in Medi-Cal. 
And it’s not all gloom-and-doom on the subsidy front, either. There is a safety-valve for the safety-net hospitals: If everyone who is expected to enroll in Covered California actually does so, the funding will be available without the need to rely on federal aid. 
But in order to achieve that idyllic plateau, a serious push is needed on the enrollment level. Granted, those enrollment figures should rise. But what if they don’t? 
“If people don’t enroll in the new programs, it will be a big problem,” said Wagner. “If we have a significantly lower enrollment number than we initially predicted, we will have some major financial issues. There’s still some uncertainty.”

He added, “We’ll still provide care for the uninsured at SF General. The money will decrease, but it won’t disappear. By no means will all of the money go away. The hope is that the newly enrolled will offset the decreasing number of uninsured, then the federal government could take the DSH payment and redirect it to the providers.” 

That being said, “we still have lots of optimism moving forward,” Wagner said. “We think people will enroll.”

[Correction: We corrected the amount of the reduction from 50 percent down to 25 percent].

 

Schooled

10

joe@sfbg.com

Federal politicians are blasting the commission that would close City College of San Francisco, calling the entire accreditation process a debacle.

At a forum US Rep. Jackie Speier (D-SF) and Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Palo Alto) convened at City College on Nov. 7, Speier trumpeted what local advocates have said all along: The evaluation of CCSF was bungled, lacked transparency, and violated federal education regulations, all pointing to a desperate need for reform of its accreditors.

Accreditation has been the means to check the quality of education in colleges, but now a growing chorus of critics says the process can be used to carry out an ideological agenda and usurp local control (“Whose college?” Aug. 13).

Yet upending the accreditation process could also have unintended consequences, perhaps letting corporate and conservative interests seize the chance to implement their long-simmering agendas.

Either way, it is beginning to look like the fight to save City College could end up being about more than just City College.

 

ACCJC UNDER FIRE

The Accrediting Commission of Community and Junior Colleges keeps a watchful eye on the community colleges of California, Guam, and Hawaii. After a six-year review, the ACCJC this summer rocked City College by terminating its accreditation, pending appeals before the sentence is carried out in July 2014.

At the forum, Speier said the debacle with the ACCJC signaled a need to reform accreditation on a national level, citing a lack of public accountability.

“I think the ACCJC has run amok, they have lost their vision — if they ever had one,” Speier said in an interview after the forum. “They are riddled with conflicts of interest and arbitrariness.”

Teachers, faculty, and education advocates packed City College’s Diego Rivera Theater, all cheering at every jibe toward the ACCJC. Pressure on the group is mounting. A third lawsuit against the body was announced the day of the forum, this one filed by the activist group Save CCSF.

But Speier sees the problems as stemming from the US Department of Education, which she said needs the tools to correct problems at the ACCJC, something she plans to meet with Education Secretary Arne Duncan to discuss.

“The Department of Education only has one hammer, and that is to deny the ACCJC certification,” she said.

The group is slated to undergo this evaluation in December, which could spell its end. But if the fight for City College sparks a change in accreditation nationally, what would take its place?

There are wolves at the door of the US education system, for-profit colleges with a history of taking vulnerable students to the bank with nothing to show for it. And they want accreditation reform too.

 

THE DEVIL YOU KNOW

The ideological argument between the ACCJC and City College is taking place nationally.

President Obama called for a change to college accreditation in his last State of the Union speech, calling for higher graduation and transfer rates for community colleges (see “Who killed City College?” July 9).

One of the biggest cheerleaders of the president’s reform is the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. At a conference it held on accreditation last month, AEI and its partners lampooned accreditation as it stands now.

“This is a system that is flawed, unable to deal with the rapidly changing higher education landscape,” Anne D. Neal, a partner of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a national education reform group, said at the conference. “If meat inspections were as loose as college accreditation… most of us would have mad cow disease.”

On the surface, the critique seems reasonable. More people should transfer, and more people should graduate. But how colleges get those numbers is the challenge. The ACCJC asking City College to jettison students not aiming for a higher degree was just the start, one higher education watchdog told us.

“There are people on both sides saying that accreditation is broken. The White House is pushing this, as are Republicans. You almost never hear that,” Paul Fain, a reporter for Inside Higher Ed, told the Guardian.

But the reform may lead to the transformation of accreditation, allowing tech companies and long distance online learning universities to bypass the process entirely.

Accreditation is seen as “holding back innovators who are trying to transform the Internet,” Fain said.

These “innovators” are largely for-profit colleges that want to offer single courses or shortened courses online, like the Minerva Project or Straighterline, both online universities lobbying Congress to loosen accreditation requirements.

But for-profit colleges have been attacked nationally for their abysmal job placement rates, and their graduation rates aren’t much better. A widely circulated 2010 report by the think tank Education Trust found that for-profits in the U.S. had a graduation rate of 22 percent.

And with many of those for-profits fighting for accreditation reform by Congress, it’s unclear how a push to reform accreditation from Speier would aid or stall them.

 

FEAR FACTOR

ACCJC President Barbara Beno said that City College is having problems facing reality. Beno would only speak with the Guardian by email through a representative. She defended the accountability of the ACCJC, saying that her doors were always open.

“Colleges don’t need a forum like that held on Nov. 7; they can write to the commission at any time, or ask to address the decision-making commissioners at one of their two meetings each year, or can call up the commission chair or president,” Beno wrote.

“Instead of joining forces to help improve City College, many purported supporters of the college are bent on disrupting the ACCJC operations. It is simple to blame the messenger of bad news,” she wrote. “People unhappy with the commissioners’ decisions are targeting [me] for doing [my] job.”

But Rafael Mandelman, a newly elected member of CCSF Board of Trustees, told those assembled at the forum that ACCJC was unprofessional and unduly punitive: “I went from ACCJC agnostic, to skeptic, to foe”

Dr. Sarah Perkins, vice president of instruction of Skyline College, told the forum that ACCJC is hard to work with.

“I came here to California after spending 25 years in the middle part of the country under the Higher Learning Commission,” she said, contrasting that accrediting agency with the bullying done by ACCJC. “That I even feel like I’m putting my college at risk by speaking at this forum speaks volumes.”

Indeed, the ACCJC even makes criticism of the agency or its methods grounds for a revocation of accreditation, making “collegiality” part of its “policy on institutional integrity and ethics.” CCSF Special Trustee Bob Agrella in September cited that as one reason not to criticize the agency.

Sen. Jim Beall and Assemblymember Tom Ammiano were also in attendance at the forum, and promised to continue the fight at the state level to preserve City College. The Joint Legislative Audit Committee is evaluating ACCJC at the request of those legislators and Sen. Jim Nielsen (R-Gerber).

“We will kick a lot of butt, with class, of course,” Ammiano said.

And would City College close down? “It’s not going to happen,” Speier said to the cheering crowd.

Government smackdown

1

arts@sfbg.com

THEATER The premise of Bay Area playwright Lauren Gunderson’s latest, The Taming (not to be confused with her other latest, I and You, running more or less simultaneously at Marin Theatre Company), felt riotously germane on opening night, less than a week into the recent shutdown of the federal government. But only at first.

With a vague nod to Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, this ultimately superficial but consistently witty and rapid-fire political farce takes place in a Washington, DC, hotel room, where a crazed but seriously intelligent, professionally charming Miss America contestant named Katherine, aka Miss Georgia (a superlative Kathryn Zdan), holds hostage two political animals, one liberal and one conservative, while she tries to talk them into helping her bring about a new constitutional convention.

This Southern Liberty Belle is incensed by the status quo and aims at serious reform, seeing nothing short of a new constitution as the way past the political intransigence keeping America from living up to the vision of its Founding Fathers — especially the Constitution’s principal author, James Madison — as she understands it. And she’s willing to go to extreme lengths to see it happen, including drugging her captives and, worse, hiding their cellphones.

Initially, of course, her hostages will have none of it. They immediately wage a rapid-fire quip-war in which the usual stereotypes become so many grenades lobbed at either side of the room and the political aisle.

Bianca (Marilet Martinez) is a liberal blogger in braids, leggings, and hipster hat whose hatred of Republicans is matched by her passionate commitment to the salvation of a tiny, endangered mammal known as the North American Great Pygmy Panda Shrew — a veritable dog pile of qualifiers half-burying the allusion there to Shakespeare’s “taming” play.

Her Republican counterpart, Patricia (Marilee Talkington), is aid and brain to a powerful far-right senator from the South, predictably dim-witted and obsessively predatory on his nubile young interns. Her problems are initially geared to managing her loose cannon of a boss. “What if he actually says what he means? What if CNN asks him to spell something?” But soon we discover that Patricia’s passion lies in the legislation she has devoted her professional life to seeing come to life. It’s actually a jobs bill, in her fashioning, thus pitting ordinary American workers against Bianca’s furry charges in the political melee. Interestingly, the Republican character comes across as the more reasonable of the two.

A dream sequence returns all three to the good old days, 1789, for a brush with Washington and Madison, played amusingly as just two dudes with power in early America, as well as Martha and Dolly, forces in their own right if not always in their right mind. The gender confusion and the erotic charge between the characters throughout (especially, per the Bard’s original, Katherine and Patricia) adds a subversive sexual politics to the proceedings that makes for some interesting dynamics and reflections, if nothing too radical finally.

In artistic director Marissa Wolf’s sharply choreographed production for Crowded Fire (which produced Gunderson’s other Shakespeare-sprinkled contemporary comedy, Exit, Pursued by a Bear, in 2011), the play’s giddy speed also serves it well. While all three performances are strong, Zdan’s tiara-wearing revolutionary, with a fine Southern drawl and a wonderfully composed, perfectly modulated delivery, holds center stage from the first moment we see her — during an exuberant sound check on the pageant stage. Meanwhile, Talkington succeeds best at humanizing her own zany character, infusing her conflicted Republican operative with the hint of melancholic depths that makes her more interesting than the comparatively one-note liberal played by Martinez with punch but less subtlety (which is maybe inevitable given the character’s heavier burden of strained stereotype).

If the play’s timeliness also adds to its enjoyment, the initial frisson of righteous laughter at the expense of politics as usual ends up short-lived. The spectrum of possibilities represented here, political and otherwise, is just too narrow to allow real distance on the hopeless, hideous spectacle of Washington corruption. So resolutely does The Taming stay in the world of red-state, blue-state clichés that the play unintentionally reproduces that sense of hopelessness, in which the world at large comes bounded solely by Democrats and Republicans — a narrow spectrum of humanity that makes one identify more readily with that doomed shrew. *

THE TAMING

Wed/23-Sat/26, 8pm, $10-$35

Thick House

1695 18th St, SF

www.crowdedfire.org