Bay Guardian Archives

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

I get just as crabby and cynical as any other political reporter, but the truth is, on the index of basic competence and lack of corruption, San Francisco city government is doing way better than it was a decade ago.

We’re far from perfect: the Raker Act scandal still sours everything at City Hall, and the mayor hasn’t done much of anything in the past three years. I could go on.

But the reformers have made some tremendous inroads. I don’t know of anyone running a critical department at City Hall who is too drunk to make it back from lunch on a regular basis. Most of the senior staff actually shows up to work instead of spending the day at Nordstrom. The school district has gotten back to educating students, and the public schools improve each year. The supervisors are overall a remarkably smart, progressive bunch. I haven’t seen the FBI raid a local government office in a couple years.

And then there’s the community college district.

The board and the administration that run City College are, I think, one of the last bastions of the kind of inbred, secretive, corrupt rotten boroughs that used to dominate our dear city. Take Lance Williams’s fascinating City College story on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle on April 6.

Williams showed how a college official, assistant vice chancellor James Blomquist, allegedly steered $10,000 in rent money owed to the school into a campaign fund for a 2005 community college bond act. If that’s true — and nobody’s denying it — the deal was not only inappropriate but blatantly illegal. There should have been outrage all around — but so far only the three dissident members of the community college board have said a word. "Nobody else has said anything," said board member John Rizzo, who with Julio Ramos and Milton Marks III has called for a special meeting on this.

Perhaps that’s because what Blomquist allegedly did isn’t all that unusual at City College, where bond money is moved around and treated like personal scrip by the administration and some of the board members. Remember, these are the folks who promised the voters that they’d build a performing arts center, then turned around and spent the money on a gym — and later agreed to rent out the new pool to a private school across the street (see "Field of Schemes," 9/22/04).

This is the crew that has resisted sunshine, that has run roughshod over neighborhoods and pissed off thousands of people — for absolutely no good reason.

The district attorney needs to investigate this latest scam and ask, among other things, which board members knew about it — because I suspect this wasn’t just a junior official operating unilaterally.

This shit has got to end, folks. The chancellor, Philip Day, needs to go. The board members who have been involved in these past shenanigans (Natalie Berg, Rodel Rodis, and Lawrence Wong) all need to go. The progressives have to make this a priority; City College is a civic gem and a crucial part of the city’s future. It’s infuriating to see it run by political hacks.

And as long as this crew is still in charge, I hope they know better than to come around with their hands out, asking for more of the taxpayers’ money. *

Stop the McGoldrick recall

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EDITORIAL Jake McGoldrick isn’t perfect, but he’s been a pretty good supervisor most of the time, and the recall effort launched against him by a Geary Boulevard merchant is baseless and inappropriate.

The recall is a potent weapon, part of the Progressive Era reforms that gave California the initiative and the referendum. But it can also be easily abused to threaten an incumbent who has done nothing wrong except show political courage on tough issues.

And that’s exactly what’s happening here: McGoldrick, who represents a relatively moderate district, is taking the lead on two key attempts to challenge the city’s car-driven transportation culture. He’s the author of a measure that would close Golden Gate Park to cars on Saturdays, at least for a six-month trial — something the trustees of the de Young Museum have been fighting bitterly. And he’s the chief backer of a plan to add bus-only lanes to Geary Boulevard, which would create a relatively cheap, efficient rapid transit system along one of the city’s main commute arteries.

Those positions have angered a small group of people, led by David Heller, who owns a beauty supply store on Geary and is adamantly opposed to anything that would reduce car traffic or parking on the street. Heller — who ran unsuccessfully against McGoldrick in 2004 — now wants to recall the supervisor, who has less than two years left in office anyway. Heller insists that McGoldrick is defying the will of the voters, because a majority of District 1 voted against Saturday road closures in 2000 and because McGoldrick hasn’t adequately addressed the concerns of some merchants who fear the loss of parking spaces under the transit plan.

Let’s get a couple things straight: the 2000 ballot had a pair of competing road-closure measures that left a lot of voters confused — and the museum people ran a misleading campaign that helped muddy the waters even more. The vote that year was hardly an accurate reflection of how San Franciscans or people in the Richmond view weekend road closures.

In fact, the car-free Sunday in the park is one of the city’s most popular regular events — and a study commissioned by Mayor Gavin Newsom, who is not a fan of road closures, showed that the traffic and parking impacts on the neighborhoods are almost nonexistent. McGoldrick has been willing to stand up to the mayor and the powerful museum board on this, and that’s a good thing.

The Geary transit corridor is tough: any solution that improves transit on the road — and that’s a priority for the city — will leave less room for cars. But that’s the direction the city has to go in. Public transit will only be effective in this city if it can operate quickly and reliably on routes such as Geary — and that can’t happen without some disruption to car travel. The proposal McGoldrick supports would close one lane to cars (possibly by eliminating street parking) and dedicate it to buses only; the buses would have the ability to control traffic lights and would thus in theory be able to operate almost like underground or elevated trains, avoiding the delays caused by car traffic. Digging a subway below Geary would cost several billion dollars and take years; giving buses one exclusive lane in each direction is cheaper and can be done fairly quickly.

No, it won’t be painless, and it’s not perfect — ideally, there probably ought to be a light-rail line on Geary — but in an era of global warming, with all the costs associated with the use of private cars, it’s imperative that San Francisco move aggressively toward improving transit. McGoldrick is absolutely right to be looking for ways to encourage people to get out of their cars — and punishing him for it by forcing a recall campaign is a serious mistake.

Heller needs about 3,000 signatures to move forward. Don’t sign the petition. *

Blue Door’s Delroy Lindo — an ethic for theater

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Delroy Lindo has appeared in dozens of films over the years. Currently, he’s directing Tanya Barfield’s Blue Door at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Lindo, who played Herald Loomis in the Broadway run of August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, has only recently returned to the stage. He brings the intensity and drive that comes through on the screen to his directorial work – this is the first time he’s directed in the Bay Area – and to his conversation. Tommy Amano-Tompkins recently spoke with him.

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Delroy Lindo

Guardian: There’s a scene in Blue Door in which the protagonist, Lewis, the only black man at a faculty party, looks at his hands and feels a kind of cosmic dislocation – misunderstood and out of place. You’re nearly six feet four inches tall – did you ever wish you were a few inches shorter?
Delroy Lindo: You mean as a black man? Did I ever wish I stood out less because of how people react to me? No, never. Would I prefer because of my size that I not be responded to the way I am? Certainly. Because often people don’t respond to the way a person is but to the way they think a person is. That’s the problem. And that’s exactly one of the things that the play is examining.

After Dark tote bags — on the phone with Lypsinka

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No one knows more about timing than Lypsinka, who could school every MTV video clone of the past two decades on the art of talking silent and saying something. The lady is in town at the Plush Room with her most recent show, The Passion of the Crawford. While Passion draws upon an onstage interview with a drunk, fiesty and almost huggable Joan Crawford for much of its material, Lypsinka’s portrayal is still hypnotically scathing, while also appreciative of the star’s pre-feminist power. It’s completely amazing how Lypsinka can mouth the words of someone long dead more convincingly than just about any stage actor can deliver words using his or her own voice.

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Lypsinka as (and in front of) Joan

I recently gave Lypsinka’s leading man, John Epperson, a call to discuss matters of great importance: After Dark magazine, Marilyn Maye, Greer Garson, Grayson Hall, Bette vs. Joan, Pepsi, and the glory of The Fury. Click and ye shall find.

Why people get mad at the media (l3) The latest example of how Hearst and Singleton monopolize the news in the Reilly antitrust case

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

The Guardian and Media Alliance won a major victory in federal court to unseal the records in the Reilly vs. Hearst antitrust trial but it didn’t last long: Hearst and Singleton quickly went into overdrive to maintain their cloak of secrecy and monopolize the news in the latest round in court.

Here’s how they did it: The newspaper chains that are trying to kill daily competition and impose regional monopoly in the Bay Area tried to knock Reilly out of court by claiming in a specious argument for summary judgment that he was just a lone reader, poor soul, and thus did not have standing in court. Reilly and his attorney Joe Alioto are suing to block the Hearst/Singleton deal.

The San Francisco Chronicle story on the filing, by Bob Egelko, laid out the publishers’ case in detail with lots of quotes in a page 2 story in the Bay Area section. He didn’t report the Reilly side of the story because (a) he didn’t contact either Reilly or Alioto for comment and (b) Reilly’s legal response was under court seal and Federal Judge Susan Illston allowed them to stay under seal despite her earlier ruling to open.

The publishers, who usually are bellowing away about courts and government suppressing documents, submitted declarations in support of keeping the documents secret from Daniel S. Ehrman, vice president of planning and development for Gannett, and Joseph J. Lodovic, president of Singleton’s Media News Group.
And then, in virtually identical proposed orders to seal, they laid out the “compelling reasons to maintain the documents and excerpts of documents…under seal.”

So the Hearst/Singleton side of the story got published in their papers, not the Reilly side. And then on Saturday April 7 the Chronicle continued the publishers first coverage with a short story on the hearing the day before.
“Mr. Reilly’s injury here is pure speculation,” the Chronicle quoted Gary Halling, Singleton attorney, as saying.
The Reilly/Alioto comments were at the end of the story. The story reported that Illston was inclined to allow Reilly to sue as an individual, which is likely to be her ruling.

Hey, Citizen Reilly here is representing the public and he, as well as the rest of us, deserve to know the grisly details of how the barons got together and how they are dividing and clustering up the Bay Area newspaper market to their financial advantage and to the public’s disadvantage. So our attorneys, James Wheaton, David Greene, and Pondra Perkins of the First Amendment Project in Oakland, went back into court to reup their court victory and try to open up the records and maintain a public policy of sunshine in the courts.

The key journalistic and public policy point: not one iota of the Hearst/Singleton’s repeat move for secrecy was considered newsworthy by any of their papers. The first time around, as attentive Bruce blog readers will remember, they mangled the story, made it look as if the Guardian lost our motion to open the records, and we even had to ask the Associated Press, their wire service, for a correction.
Stay tuned. B3

P.S. The Hearst/Singleton reasons for secrecy and stonewalling are delicious, so delicious that tomorrow I will put them up on line for readers to savor in the original (I am a typewriter fugitive and need help on these things.)
A preview of coming attractions: the proposed order to seal the documents says, for example,
that “the court finds that the Subject Documents contain information that was not prepared not for public consumption but to analyze the proposed acquisition of the McClatchy newspapers and to negotiate a single equity investment by Hearst. these documents contain detailed non-public financial information about MediaNews and/or CNP (the special partnership arrangement), including valuations of certain company assets, projections for future earnings, pro forma financial information about the company’s current and future business plans. MediaNews and CNP do not publicly disclose information of this nature.”

Tough: if you want to monopolize an entire region, and seriously undercut the marketplace of ideas principle underlying the First Amendment the big boys love to quote, then you’d better be prepared to disclose these basic documents in court when you are sued in a public-spirited antitrust case.

P.S. Repeating for emphasis: Where is the U.S. attorney’s office, which was so quick to put Josh Wolf in jail and keep him there for 226 days, when the real lawbreakers in the publishing business are making monopoly millions by eliminating competition? And where is Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown, who lives in Oakland under the shadow Dean Singleton’s Oakland Tribune?

green, and affordable

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By Tim Redmond

Casey Mills, the former managing editor of BeyondChron, has a great piece today that explains how too much of the “new urbanism” fails to consider affordable housing:

A disturbing trend already underway involves sustainability and ‘green’ advocates aligning with developers to promote density above all other considerations. Requiring developers to contribute towards affordable housing, for example, simply represents a roadblock to the more important overall goal – brining more housing downtown. If affordable housing becomes viewed as a necessary component of sustainability, not a roadblock to it, this sort of alliance would be impossible to maintain.

He’s right: as market-rate housing in urban centers drives out poor people (and it does, always), those people have to live further and further from work. Since there will always be a need for less-well-paid service workers (not to mention the likes of bus drivers and teachers, who can’t possibly afford any of the new housing we’re building) in cities, gentrification and displacement are significant causes of sprawl.

And yet San Franicsco continues to build housing for people who don’t live here (or even work here), driving out the people who do work here and promoting exactly the kind of sprawl everyone at City Hall is officially against. Insane.

Seymour Hersh weighs in on who deserves to die

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By G.W. Schulz

Investigative reporter Sy Hersh in an interview with Rolling Stone national correspondent Matt Taibi on what could be done to improve big media’s tepid coverage of the Bush White House:

“You’d have to fire or execute ninety percent of the editors and executives. You’d actually have to start promoting people from the newsrooms to be editors who you didn’t think you could control.”

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Sy Hersh looking murderous

Guardian staff writer G.W. Schulz in an open response letter to Hersh:

“Dude. Fuck yeah. You should be in a metal band. All this talk about executions.”

Pelosi steps up

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by Amanda Witherell

The ongoing saga at Alcatraz has finally caught the attention of Rep. Nancy Pelosi. While sewage spills and a fired whistleblower interested legislators in the State Assembly, it’s labor practices and land use planning that have Pelosi concerned — both of which have been issues since Alcatraz Cruises assumed control of the lucrative contract from Blue and Gold back in September.

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photo courtesy of alcatrazunion.com

How Weird gets walloped…again

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By Steven T. Jones
When the How Weird Street Fair last month barely survived the city permit process to get the OK for one final gathering on Howard Street on May 6, I warned that they were likely to have a hard time with the cops. After all, Southern Station Capt. Denis O’Leary, the guy charged with setting their police fees, had come right out and sided with the handful of neighbors who were trying to kill the popular event. O’Leary promised to be fair. But now, How Weird organizer Brad Olsen tells the Guardian that the cops have more than doubled his fees, demanding $17,700 for beefed up patrols. That’s despite the fact that this year’s event ends two hours earlier than last year (another city demand), has never had significant law enforcement problems, and it’s fee last year was $7,700. O’Leary hasn’t yet returned my telephone call asking what this is about, but it doesn’t sound like he’s living up to his comment to me, “I’m very fair.” Meanwhile, the newly formed Outdoor Events Coalition is pushing City Hall to ease the administrative crackdown on street fairs. Stay tuned.
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Eek, she’s back

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By Steven T. Jones
Like a bad movie that gets turned into a worse sequel, actress Jennifer Siebel has returned to the pages of another Bay Area corporate daily for another vapid puff piece filled with lines that will make grown women groan.
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But conspicuously missing from this profile of Mayor Gavin Newsom’s girlfriend are gratuitous (and possibly libelous) shots that she took at her boyfriend’s controversial former fling, Ruby Rippey-Tourk, sins that Siebel magnified with over-the-top comments she posted on the SFist. That incident earned the blog more than 600 comments on a single thread, and they today return to that comment-cow with a funny post. But aside from priceless quotes, such as “I grew up in a very beautiful, magical bubble,” Siebel this time manages to avoid politics, character assassination, or, really, anything of substance. I suppose that’s progress.

People do

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By Steven T. Jones
Do people really praise a company for polluting the planet and local ecosystems, exploiting indigenous people and propping up corrupt regimes around the world, and making $17 billion in annual profits in the process? People do, and those people write for the business pages at the San Francisco Chronicle, which has just named Chevron its company of the year.
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This is astonishing beyond words and surely a sign that the Chron doesn’t hold anything close to San Francisco values, which extend far beyond just corporate bottom lines. Consider that Chevron is a company that helped get us into the disastrous war in Iraq. It is a company waging economic warfare against people around the world. It is a company that has gouged American consumers to reap record profits and spend them against the public will.
This is the best company in the Bay Area? It’s closer to the worst.

People do

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By Steven T. Jones
Do people really praise a company for polluting the planet and local ecosystems, exploiting indigenous people and propping up corrupt regimes around the world, and making $17 billion in annual profits in the process? People do, and those people write for the business pages at the San Francisco Chronicle, which has just named Chevron its company of the year.
logo_chevron.gif
This is astonishing beyond words and surely a sign that the Chron doesn’t hold anything close to San Francisco values, which extend far beyond just corporate bottom lines. Consider that Chevron is a company that helped get us into the disastrous war in Iraq. It is a company waging economic warfare against people around the world. It is a company that has gouged American consumers to reap record profits and spend them against the public will.
This is the best company in the Bay Area? It’s closer to the worst.

International Ms. Leather: “A stick of gum, a SuperBall, and a frog”

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Well, I didn’t get to go to any Cat Circus like Ms. Cheryl Eddy (see previous post), but I DID get to attend the fantastic International Ms. Leather competition at the Holiday Inn on Van Ness on Easter Vigil Saturday.

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The contestants — a little blurry cuz the lens was steamy
(All pics by Hunky Beau)

The leather community still manages to amaze, and pump out enough fetishistic mojo to keep cultural critics scratching their spinning heads. The International Ms Leather contest — IMsL, or “imzel” — is only a small part of a grand weekend for leather women (and admirers — there were a lot of men and pansexuals in attendance) that’s been going on annually for 10 years. This year, it was also accompanied by the Internal Ms. Boot Black competition — or “imzbuhbuh.”

One weird Easter

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I blame the cats. The Russian cats. The Moscow Cats Theatre. First of all, when the cat circus comes to town, I’m pretty sure there’s a law on the books that you don’t miss it under any circumstances. Actual performing cats! Kitties in little sparkly ruffs, scampering across high wires and jumping through hoops! Who passes that up??

Pretty much everyone I happen to know, it seems. I was already in a grumbly mood because I didn’t get a scrap of ham all day, nor did I even come near any sort of ham, or even spam — dude, I didn’t get corned beef on St. Patty’s, either, so the holiday-meat-deprivation pity party is only getting worse. On Thanksgiving I fully expect to be hunched over my Hello Kitty toaster, jar of Smuckers in hand, weeping over birds that are going uneaten. Yeah, I’m bitter. Feed me a cheeseburger, I’ll get over it. Anyway, the point is, I was already in a grumbly mood, like I said, when I hauled my carcass down to the Palace of Fine Arts. Alone. To see performing cats. Once I got there, I actually ran into some folks I knew — but the off-kilter tone of the day was already set.

The Guardian Iraq War casualty report (4/6/07): 20 Iraqis killed today.

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The Guardian Iraq War casualty report (4/6/07): 20 Iraqis killed today.

To hear how the war in Iraq has effected some Midwest families of soldiers, click here.

Compiled by Paula Connelly

Casualties in Iraq

Iraqi civilians:

At least 20 people were killed when a chlorine bomb was detonated in Ramadi today, according to the New York Times.
Source:

98,000: Killed since 3/03

Source: www.thelancet.com

60,835 – 66,757: Killed since 1/03

For a week by week assessment of significant incidents and trends in Iraqi civilian casualties, go to A Week in Iraq by Lily Hamourtziadou. She is a member of the Iraq Body Count project, which maintains and updates the world’s only independent and comprehensive public database of media-reported civilian deaths in Iraq.

Source: http://www.iraqbodycount.net

A Week in Iraq: Week ending 1 April 2007:
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/editorial/weekiniraq/38/

For first hand accounts of the grave situation in Iraq, visit some of these blogs:
www.ejectiraqikkk.blogspot.com
www.healingiraq.blogspot.com
www.afamilyinbaghdad.blogspot.com

U.S. military:

3,499: Killed since the U.S. invasion of Iraq 3/20/03

Source: http://www.icasualties.org/

For the Department of Defense statistics go to: http://www.defenselink.mil/

For a more detailed list of U.S. Military killed in the War in Iraq go to:
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/2007.01.html

Iraq Military:

30,000: Killed since 2003

Source:http://www.infoshout.com

Journalists:

153 journalists have been killed in Iraq since the start of the war four years ago, making Iraq the world’s most dangerous country for the press, according to Reporters without borders.

Source: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=21339

155: Killed since 3/03

Source: http://www.infoshout.com/

Refugees:

The Bush administration plans to increase quota of Iraqi refugees allowed into the U.S. from 500 to 7,000 next year in response to the growing refugee crisis, according to the Guardian Unlimited.

Source:

Border policies are tightening because one million Iraqi refugees have already fled to Jordan and another one million to Syria. Iraqi refugees who manage to make it out of Iraq still can’t work, have difficulty attending school and are not eligible for health care. Many still need to return to Iraq to escape poverty, according to BBC news.

Source:
1.6 million: Iraqis displaced internally

1.8 million: Iraqis displaced to neighboring states

Many refugees were displaced prior to 2003, but an increasing number are fleeing now, according to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ estimates.

Source: http://www.unhcr.org/iraq.html

U.S. Military Wounded:

47,657: Wounded since 3/19/03 to 1/6/07

Source: http://www.icasualties.org/

The Guardian cost of Iraq war report (4/6/07): So far, $414 billion for the U.S., $52 billion for California and $1 billion for San Francisco.

Compiled by Paula Connelly

On the fourth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war, Bush asks congress to pass an emergency war-spending bill, according to the New York Times.

Source:

Bush asked congress to approve $622 billion for defense spending, most for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in a $2.9 trillion budget request for 2008, according to Reuters.
Source: http://today.reuters.com/

Here is a running total of the cost of the Iraq War to the U.S. taxpayer, provided by the National Priorities Project located in Northampton, Massachusetts. The number is based on Congressional appropriations. Niko Matsakis of Boston, MA and Elias Vlanton of Takoma Park, MD originally created the count in 2003 on costofwar.com. After maintaining it on their own for the first year, they gave it to the National Priorities Project to contribute to their ongoing educational efforts.

To bring the cost of the war home, please note that California has already lost $46 billion and San Francisco has lost $1 billion to the Bush war and his mistakes. In San Francisco alone, the funds used for the war in Iraq could have hired 21,264 additional public school teachers for one year, we could have built 11,048 additional housing units or we could have provided 59,482 students four-year scholarships at public universities. For a further breakdown of the cost of the war to your community, see the NPP website aptly titled “turning data into action.”

Gore speaks, conveniently

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Intern Sam Devine snuck into Al Gore’s recent local event. Here’s his report

On Tuesday night Former Vice President Al Gore appeared at the Nob Hill Masonic Center in an event sponsored by City Arts and Lectures and the California Academy of Sciences. He spoke in discussion with John McCosker, Chair of Aquatic Biology at the Academy, on the recently championed topic of global climate change.

Copies of Gore’s books, including “An Inconvenient Truth”, were for sale in the lobby. A few minutes after 8p.m. the lights went down in the sold-out Masonic Auditorium. Greg Farrington, Executive Director of the California Academy of Sciences, gave a brief introduction; noting that the Academies’ soon-to-be Golden Gate Park building will be one of the first publicly owned “green” buildings in the nation.

Gore and moderator McCosker took the stage and sat down in the artificial living room habitat – cushy red chairs and a round wooden coffee table with tulips. Gore wore a blue suit with the standard democrat blue tie and choice Tennessee footwear – cowboy boots. It’s safe to say that no one can recall the clothing McCosker wore -– his black-and-white Wicked-Witch-of-the-West socks eclipsed all else.

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Ranting Gore
Photo from uglydemocrats.com

test

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‘WHEN WE WERE YOUNG’: Gen Xers don’t wanna be cops ‘cause they’re fat and lazy, says Gary Delagnes — PLUS! Police commissioner David Campos responds to the POA’s call for his resignation

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By G.W. Schulz

There’s never a shortage of bitching over at the San Francisco Police Officers Association. And the best place to find it lying exposed, unshaven and clad in patent-leather stirrups without so much as a single blush is in the cop union’s monthly newsletter, the POA Journal.

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As attorney Mark Schlosberg at the ACLU of Northern California will tell you, there’s no better place than the POA Journal for an honest assessment of what the SFPD’s rank and file is really thinking. And leading each edition of the Journal is a scribe from outspoken union president Gary Delagnes that’s sometimes funny but mostly unsettling.

Without further ado, ladies and gentleman, welcome to another edition of “What’s the city’s cop union bitching about now?”

This past year actually treated the POA quite well, what with the state Supreme Court’s Copley decision sealing off police disciplinary records from public scrutiny, Berkeley losing a subsequent legal challenge to the ruling and the SFPD’s general success in slowing down the implementation of a program designed to track and flag lunatic cops.

The dark prince of SF elections

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By Steven T. Jones
Why does attorney Jim Sutton seem to be involved in every major campaign finance scandal in San Francisco? In the latest, Sutton’s firm reportedly advised a local motorcycle training company on how to allegedly launder money into a City College bond campaign (Sutton isn’t mentioned in the story, but in a letter the company wrote to the Ethics Commission that the Chron featured on today’s front page). Shouldn’t the State Bar take an interest in this at some point?

Missive from Whiskeyville

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From the files of our cocktail sniffer Jonathan Beckhardt

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Dear Mom,

I am sorry that I only contact you when i need something, but I was wondering if you could send me my whiskey-shoes. I imagine they’re on the bottom shelf of my dresser, since I haven’t worn them since Jim Holt’s barbecue last summer. If you could get them in the mail this week, that would be great, as I need them for next Saturday. I am covering the Whiskeys of the World Expo on Saturday, April 14th. Whiskey vendors from all over will be serving samples from across two ballrooms of the Palace Hotel (yes, the same Palace Hotel where pneumonia got the best of Warren G. Harding). All that, while we get to listen to the Peninsula Scottish Fiddlers, and hopefully even check out some great speakers, like Lorne Mackillop, from MacKillop’s Choice Whisky. This is my chance to be something more than a Jim Beam hack, and I don’t want to blow it. Thanks mom,

I hope everything else is well with you,

Love,
Jonathan

Final word

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By Steven T. Jones
Why is the Chronicle having such a hard time understanding this Critical Mass incident? In my televised discussion with four Chron reporters last night (City Desk NewsHour, Comcast Ch. 11, replaying tonight at 8:30 and Saturday and Sunday nights as well…sorry, not Internet availability) and in today’s Chron story, they just can’t seem to grasp the meaning of one key fact or smell-test their original version of the story. Here’s the key fact, from today’s story: “After finding herself in the middle of the ride, she said, she nervously made her way through the bicyclists, carefully watching them.” Translation: she used her SUV to nudge her way through a group of bikes. That’s not legal, it’s not safe, and it’s why the bicyclists became upset. Hell, she even admits that her car made contact with a bike, and still she kept driving.
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2nd Anniversary flyer illustration by Jim Swanson

The Guardian Iraq War casualty report (4/5/07): 7 U.S. soldiers killed.

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The Guardian Iraq War casualty report (4/5/07): 7 U.S. soldiers killed.

Compiled by Paula Connelly

Casualties in Iraq

U.S. military:

7 U.S. soldiers were killed in the Baghdad area over the past two days, according to the Associated Press.

Source.

3,498: Killed since the U.S. invasion of Iraq 3/20/03

Source: http://www.icasualties.org/

For the Department of Defense statistics go to: http://www.defenselink.mil/

For a more detailed list of U.S. Military killed in the War in Iraq go to:
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/2007.01.html

Iraqi civilians:

98,000: Killed since 3/03

Source: www.thelancet.com

60,480 – 66,383: Killed since 1/03

Source: http://www.iraqbodycount.net

For a week by week assessment of significant incidents and trends in Iraqi civilian casualties, go to A Week in Iraq by Lily Hamourtziadou. She is a member of the Iraq Body Count project, which maintains and updates the world’s only independent and comprehensive public database of media-reported civilian deaths in Iraq.

A Week in Iraq: Week ending 1 April 2007:
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/editorial/weekiniraq/38/

For first hand accounts of the grave situation in Iraq, visit some of these blogs:
www.ejectiraqikkk.blogspot.com
www.healingiraq.blogspot.com
www.afamilyinbaghdad.blogspot.com

Iraq Military:

30,000: Killed since 2003

Source:http://www.infoshout.com

Journalists:

153 journalists have been killed in Iraq since the start of the war four years ago, making Iraq the world’s most dangerous country for the press, according to Reporters without borders.

Source: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=21339

155: Killed since 3/03

Source: http://www.infoshout.com/

Refugees:

The Bush administration plans to increase quota of Iraqi refugees allowed into the U.S. from 500 to 7,000 next year in response to the growing refugee crisis, according to the Guardian Unlimited.

Source.

Border policies are tightening because one million Iraqi refugees have already fled to Jordan and another one million to Syria. Iraqi refugees who manage to make it out of Iraq still can’t work, have difficulty attending school and are not eligible for health care. Many still need to return to Iraq to escape poverty, according to BBC news.

Source.

1.6 million: Iraqis displaced internally

1.8 million: Iraqis displaced to neighboring states

Many refugees were displaced prior to 2003, but an increasing number are fleeing now, according to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ estimates.

Source: http://www.unhcr.org/iraq.html

U.S. Military Wounded:

47,657: Wounded since 3/19/03 to 1/6/07

Source: http://www.icasualties.org/


The Guardian cost of Iraq war report (4/5/07): So far, $414 billion for the U.S., $52 billion for California and $1 billion for San Francisco.

Compiled by Paula Connelly

On the fourth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war, Bush asks congress to pass an emergency war-spending bill, according to the New York Times.

Source.

Bush asked congress to approve $622 billion for defense spending, most for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in a $2.9 trillion budget request for 2008, according to Reuters.

Source: http://today.reuters.com/

Here is a running total of the cost of the Iraq War to the U.S. taxpayer, provided by the National Priorities Project located in Northampton, Massachusetts. The number is based on Congressional appropriations. Niko Matsakis of Boston, MA and Elias Vlanton of Takoma Park, MD originally created the count in 2003 on costofwar.com. After maintaining it on their own for the first year, they gave it to the National Priorities Project to contribute to their ongoing educational efforts.

To bring the cost of the war home, please note that California has already lost $46 billion and San Francisco has lost $1 billion to the Bush war and his mistakes. In San Francisco alone, the funds used for the war in Iraq could have hired 21,264 additional public school teachers for one year, we could have built 11,048 additional housing units or we could have provided 59,482 students four-year scholarships at public universities. For a further breakdown of the cost of the war to your community, see the NPP website aptly titled “turning data into action.”

Free Josh Wolf from the Media spin

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by Sarah Phelan

“What will everyone do now?” asked a fellow Guardian-ista, when freelance videojournalist and blogger Josh Wolf was released. She was referring to those who fought to get Wolf freed after the feds locked him up last summer. Don’t worry, I thought, the war over why Josh Wolf has been freed is about to begin.
Sure enough, war broke out that afternoon.

With Wolf set to speak on the steps of San Francisco City Hall on April 3, after 226 days inside, everyone was asking “So, what’s changed?” Had Wolf, tiring of prison food, thrown in the towel and told the feds everything they always wanted to know about anarchists? Or had the feds, weary of the fired US Attorney General scandal, decided it was time to score Brownie points in Nancy Pelosi’s home town by letting Wolf go, no questions asked?

JW-3C.jpg
Sup. Tom Ammiano, fresh from Giants opening game told the crowd, “Josh Wolf did what the Giants failed to do today: he hit a home run!”

Josh Wolf vs. Howard Kurtz

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Read the full Josh Wolf vs. Howard Kurtz, the Washington Post, and the inside-the-beltway gang blog here.

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