Cartoonist Louis Dunn comments on the “free speech zones” at the national conventions. Where were they? Click on the artwork to view the full size.
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Bruce Blog
Louis Dunn: “Free speech zones” at the conventions?
Reinstate Ross! Reinstate Ross!
More than l00 women supporters of suspended Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi gathered on the City Hall steps Sunday to stand with Ross in a show of support and a photo shoot.
The women held signs reading “Stand with Eliana and Ross, Reinstate our Sheriff” and “I believe Eliana” in English and Spanish.
Ross told the women that Mayor Ed Lee was seeking his ouster as sheriff as a way to knock out the top elected progressives in the city and to consolidate power against the progressive community.
But, he said, “as a community we stand our ground and we maintain the principles of what is just and fair.”
He said that Lee was orchestrating the supervisorial vote on his ouster to come before the November election and thus put maximum pressure on the supervisors. He called on the community to fight back, contact the supervisors and the media and let them know that the public wants Ross to be reinstated as sheriff.
His outreach information, distributed at the event, stated: “Let the Board of Supervisors and media hear from you on behalf of Ross Mirkarimi. He is a good man who has dedicated himself for years to serve the citizens of San Francisco. Ironically, although his career is in Justice, he has experienced the lack of Justice at the hands of City Hall.”
And: “We elected Ross and should be the only ones to determine who is our sheriff. Not the mayor, not the Ethics Commission, but the voters.”
The statement noted that Ross got more votes in November than did Lee for mayor and that the voters have been disenfranchised by Lee. It also noted that “there is no precedent for suspending an official without pay. What a terrible, unjust thing to do to a man.”
Louis Dunn: A woman’s place
Louis Dunn puts Ann Romney in her place. Click on the art to see the full size poster.
Louis Dunn: Clint and Mitt
Louis Dunn, longtime Guardian cartoonist, comments on the entry of Clint Eastwood into prime time television before Mitt Romney’s acceptance speech at the 2012 Republican National Convention. Click on the art to view the full poster.
Follow the jump to watch Clint’s 12-minute improv “speech.”
Louis Dunn: Republican Convention manual
Louis Dunn, longtime Guardian cartoonist, comments on an incident at the Republican National Convention where two attendees threw peanuts at a black CNN camerawoman and said, “This is how we feed animals.” Click on the art to see the full size poster.
Click here to read the full story.
Dick Meister: Clint wasn’t always this politically inept
By Dick Meister
Dick Meister is a San Francisco columnist and serious ice cream aficionado who has covered politics for more than a half-century as a reporter, editor, author and commentator. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com
You might reasonably think Clint Eastwood lacks political savvy, given his bizarre presentation at the Republican National Convention. But he was once plenty savvy, as he showed clearly during his two-year stint as mayor of tourist favorite Carmel, California.
Prior to his election, folks in Carmel and elsewhere tended to think of Clint as just a rugged, handsome movie actor playing at politics. But, boy, were they wrong. Listen to what Carmel resident Jean Lajigian said after Eastwood took office in 1986:
“When I voted for Clint Eastwood, I knew that democracy worked, that we could change things. Since he’s been mayor, there’s been just an upbeat feeling in the community.”
Mrs. Lajigian and her husband Michael were merchants in heavily-touristed Carmel and, as such, had been at odds with local politicians. The politicians did not share the great fondness for tourists expressed by the Lajigians and other merchants. At best, the political leaders believed, tourists were to be endured. They were not to be encouraged, despite the many dollars they spent in the coastal village, aka Carmel-by-the-Sea.
Carmel has marvelous beaches, spectacular ocean views, a loveable colony of sea lions and much more of special interest that draws a large and seemingly endless stream of visitors. Although not fond of tourists, Carmel authorities did allow merchants to set traps for the tourists – but discreet traps.
The use of neon or any other garish means to identify businesses, advertise goods for sale or otherwise attract customers was outlawed. Small wooden signs with elegant lettering were preferred. Nothing was permitted that could cheapen the tasteful display of goods, including cashmere, Shetland and plaid from England, the home country of many residents’ forebears, and the other often imported and invariably expensive merchandise that filled Carmel’s shops – or “shoppes.”
You know those resort towns where stores display notices asking that shoppers carry “no food or drink, please”? In Carmel, the request covered the whole town. Under an ordinance adopted by the City Council a year before Eastwood took office, for example, the sale of take-out food of any kind was forbidden – not even fish and chips to go.
“Litter was a concern – the idea of having people walk around on the streets with pieces of pizza or plastic containers with sundaes and milkshakes . . . the trash tends to end up on the ground,” explained Ken White, chairman of Carmel’s Planning Commission.
Ice cream cones were a particular worry. You know, the way ice cream tends to melt in the sunlight and drip on sidewalks, the way people carelessly toss aside the remains of cones after eating up the ice cream, or drop entire cones on the street, ice cream and all.
The city council took care of that by simply banning the sale of ice cream cones within city limits.
Black market cones might be had occasionally if you knew the right ice cream vendor, but generally there were none to be had anywhere in downtown Carmel. That deeply troubled lots of Carmel citizens.
Ah, but then came Clint to end the suffering, just as he had promised he would during his pro-merchant, pro-tourist and assuredly pro-ice cream campaign for office.
One of the first acts of the newly-elected mayor and the pro-Eastwood majority on the newly-elected city council was to adopt an ordinance that allows the sale of cones. The first permit allowing the sales went to Jean and Michael Lajigian and their store, where they soon were selling Italian gelato cones, along with their chocolate truffles and other treats. The day they got the permit, declared Michael, was “one of the happiest days of my life, a dream come true.”
You may certainly have considered Clint Eastwood’s convention bit politically lame, but at least, once-upon-a-time, he did show evidence of effective political skills. He brought ice cream back to Carmel!
Dick Meister is a San Francisco columnist and serious ice cream aficionado who has covered politics for more than a half-century as a reporter, editor, author and commentator. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com
Dick Meister: Labor Day began in San Francisco in 1886
By Dick Meister
Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 350 of his columns.
By some reckoning, this is the 118th Labor Day, since it was first observed as a national holiday in 1894. But the observation actually began a quarter-century earlier in San Francisco.
It was on Feb. 21, 1868. Brass bands blared, flags, banners and torch lights waved high as more than 3000 union members marched proudly through the city’s downtown streets, led by shipyard workers and carpenters and men from dozens of other construction trades.
“A jollification,” the marchers called their parade – the climax of a three-year campaign of strikes and other pressures that had culminated in the establishment of the eight-hour workday as a legal right in California.
New York unionists staged a similar parade in 1882 that is often erroneously cited as the first Labor Day parade, even though it occurred 14 years after the march in San Francisco.
Honors for holding the first official Labor Day are usually granted the state of Oregon, which proclaimed a Labor Day holiday in 1887 – seven years before the Federal Government got around to proclaiming the holiday that is now observed nationwide.
But Oregon’s move came nearly a year after Gov. George Stoneman of California issued a proclamation setting aside May 11, 1886, as a legal holiday to honor a new organization of California unions – the year-old Iron Trades Council.
That, said renowned labor historian Ira. B. Cross of the University of California, was “the first legalized Labor Day in the United States
San Francisco also played a major role in that celebration of 1886. The city was the scene of the chief event – a march down Market Street by more than 10,000 men and women from some 40 unions, led by the uniformed rank-and-file of the Coast Seamen’s Union. Gov. Stoneman and his entire staff marched right along with them
The process was seven miles long, took more than two hours to pass any given point, and generated enthusiasm that the San Francisco Examiner said was “entirely unprecedented – even in political campaigns.”
Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 350 of his columns.
Louis Dunn: Summing up Christie’s keynote speech
Louis Dunn, longtime Guardian cartoonist, sums up the keynote speech of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at the Republican convention.
Click on the graphic to get a fuller poster effect.
Louis Dunn: Who is Paul Rand?
Louis Dunn, longtime Guardian cartoonist, answers the question on the eve of the Republican convention in Tampa Bay.
Click on the cartoon for a fuller poster effecf. b3
Dick Meister: Let’s count our blessings on Labor Day!
By Dick Meister
Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 350 of his columns.
OK, it’s time to celebrate Labor Day, time to celebrate the labor movement that won a wide range of benefits for working people. That includes, of course, a paid day off on Labor Day and other holidays or extra pay for working on the holidays. But there’s much more than that. Much more.
We can also thank unions for:
* The eight-hour workday with meal and rest breaks.
* Forty-hour work weeks and three-day holiday weekends.
* Overtime pay and paid vacations, sick leave and maternity leave.
* Major help in the enactment of anti-child labor law laws and increased public education funding.
* Medicare and retirement and disability benefits.
* Job security and other workers’ rights.
* A strong political voice for unions that helped enact Social Security, unemployment insurance, workers compensation, health and safety and minimum wage laws and has helped elect pro-worker office holders.
* Important help in the passage of key civil rights and civil liberties laws that have particularly helped political dissidents, women and minorities and military veterans.
Certainly not every worker enjoys all the union-backed benefits. But even the non-union workers who make up the vast majority of working people these days have many of the benefits. And, thanks to the efforts of unions, they have the opportunity to win all of the benefits.
You can be sure that on this Labor Day, as on all others, political candidates will have lots to say about unions. You can expect, however, that not much will be heard from Republicans. Their usual ranting in behalf of their moneyed backers about the evils of “Big Labor” and “union bosses” will be muted, lest they offend potential blue-collar supporters. Democrats undoubtedly will voice their usual support for union members and workers generally, many sincerely, some simply in hopes of gaining blue-collar support.
Union opponents seem to forget that unions are democratic organizations, whose members generally have a strong voice in their unions’ activities. Union officers are elected, after all, and so are answerable to their members.
Union positions on political candidates and issues, as well as financial contributions to candidates, are not dictated by union officers, despite what anti-union politicians assert. Union positions and union political spending are determined by the votes of union members, usually on the recommendations of their Committees on Political Education (COPE). Officers who don’t reflect their members’ position face replacement by membership vote.
Once, Labor Day meant big parades in cities nationwide. But no more. Although union numbers continue shrinking, unions are surely here to stay. They’ve fought their way into the Establishment. They still parade here and there, but no longer feel that parading is necessary to show their strength and importance.
Unions are much more likely to mark Labor Day with the political activity that has become as important to them as economic activity since their arrival into the ranks of the economically accepted.
Thus the Labor Day messages of union leaders will stress politics. That will largely include support for President Obama, despite union complaints that he has not worked hard enough to overcome congressional opposition to pro-labor reforms that he’s proposed or supported. From labor’s point-of-view, Obama is nevertheless very much preferable to Mitt Romney, just as most other Democrats are preferable to their Republican opponents.
Despite much opinion to the contrary, the union stress on politics, rather on winning broader public support for unionization, does not mean that all unions have reached a permanent, unshakeable position in society.
Nor does it mean that unions are not still fighting battles that are as almost as significant as those of the 1930s and 1940s that drew broad support from a public which sometimes frowns on unions, now that they have secured the strong position in society which the public helped them win.
Labor influence is not measured strictly by the number of union members, because of labor’s strong influence in politics and because the wages and conditions of unionized workers set the standard for all workers. Yet numbers are important, and unions generally have been struggling just to keep overall membership steady.
Currently, only about 12 percent of privately employed workers are unionized. But while their numbers have remained low, the figure for unionized public employees has grown to nearly 40 percent. That has put public employee unions in the vanguard of the labor movement, and given the movement new, badly needed strength, although also raising strong political opposition to public employee unions.
There are some fairly solid reasons for the decline in union membership overall, ironically including the unions’ loss of their position as underdogs, the widespread granting of union conditions to non-union workers and illegal employer interference in voting by workers on whether to unionize.
Perhaps the most important reason for the decline in union membership has been a fundamental change in the workforce. Once dominated by blue-collar production workers, it has come to be dominated by white-collar service workers. But organized labor sometimes has been slow to move into white-collar fields outside of public employment.
Labor Day should cause us to reflect on the great importance of the labor movement’s vital mission – its organizing of workers to win economic and political strength and helping elect pro-worker officeholders, its help in creating jobs and otherwise aiding the millions of Americans who remain unemployed or otherwise in economic distress.
So while you may not be able to see a parade on Labor Day, labor is still doing many other things well worth watching, and well worth supporting.
A footnote: Despite what the standard history books say, the first real Labor Day celebration was not held in New York City in 1882, but 14 years earlier right here in San Francisco. That was on February 21, 1868. Three thousand paraded the city’s streets by torchlight to mark enactment of the 8-hour-day law in California.
Happy Labor Day!
Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 350 of his columns.
Dick Meister: Green is good for us all
By Dick Meister
Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 350 of his columns.
Millions of American workers badly need jobs, and the owners of many thousands of commercial buildings badly need “green retrofitting” to improve their energy efficiency and thus cut operational costs while simultaneously helping clean up the environment.
The conclusion should be obvious: Let the retrofitting begin, for the benefit of everyone – those who need the work, the employers who want it done, and the rest of us , who would benefit greatly from it.
Details of what could and should be done – and why and by whom – are laid out in a new briefing paper from the well-regarded National Employment Law Project, otherwise known as NELP.
Perhaps what’s most important about green retrofitting is that it’s what NELP calls “a powerful job creation tool.”
It can indeed be that. As NELP reported, “Estimates show that a mix of tax credits, new building code requirements and loans for commercial energy efficiency upgrades would create upwards of 160,000 new jobs,” possibly hundreds of thousands more, over the next year. That certainly would significantly lower the high unemployment rate that has plagued the country for far too long, encourage investment and otherwise jolt the lagging economy.
Construction workers have been hit particularly hard by unemployment, and it is they who have the skills and knowledge “that could be put to work cutting greenhouse gas omissions and making our cities cleaner and more efficient places to live,” notes Christine Owens, NELP’s executive director.
She says many construction workers, as well as other workers, also are needed to improve existing commercial buildings “in a common-sense way while also meeting the challenges of climate change.” NELP says more than three-fourths of all the electricity produced in the United States is used to operate the buildings, “making improved energy efficiency an increasingly recognized part of reducing the nation’s greenhouse gases.”
Simply providing jobs would not be enough. NELP argues that government policy makers supporting green retrofitting and the jobs it creates should make certain they are “good jobs with strong workplace standards and fair pay and job security.” That’s an absolute necessity if jobs in the retrofit industry are to be truly sustainable. At a minimum, that would call for providing workers increased pay and better chances of being promoted to higher-paying jobs.
NELP cites three cities – Los Angeles, Seattle and Milwaukee – that have developed programs which have won the support of workers, environmentalists and commercial building owners, in large part by backing retrofitting projects that, while creating jobs, also help owners cut their costs and increase their income.
Los Angeles has adopted a city ordinance that calls for retrofits of city-owned buildings, a process for settling labor conflicts that arise during the work, and an effort to ensure that Los Angeles residents have access to training for retrofitting work.
In Seattle, the city has an agreement with retrofit contractors on setting pay and providing job training for their employees.
Milwaukee has a new energy-efficiency program that offers building owners the chance to qualify for financial aid in exchange for using contractors committed to hiring local workers and “adhering to quality workplace standards.”
It’s now time for other cities nationwide to take action. There’s no legitimate reason for inaction. We have a great need to modernize and expand our infrastructure, diminish environmental pollution and provide work for the jobless. We have shown it can be done. So let’s do it!
Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 350 of his columns.
The Ed Kennedy project: Journalists push for two posthumous Pulitzer prizes
It is one of the great ironies of American journalism that Edward Kennedy, once vilified by colleagues, ejected from Europe by the U.S. Army and sacked by the AP for his exclusive report of Germany’s World War II surrender in defiance of political censorship, is now the subject of two efforts to rectify a journalistic injustice by awarding him a Pulitzer Prize posthumously.
One effort is a grassroots campaign launched from, of all places, Cedarville, CA in rural Modoc County by Ray A. March, editor of the Modoc Independent News monthly newspaper, to win a posthumous Pulitzer for hard news international reporting. March worked for Kennedy as a cub reporter at the Monterey Peninsula Herald half a century ago,
“After reading and reviewing ‘Ed Kennedy’s War: V-E Day, Censorship & The Associated Press,’ it was obvious to me that Kennedy had been denied a Pulitzer and it was time to correct an injustice,” March said, emphasizing that campaign supporters are professional reporters, editors, and photographers, and the campaign is catching fire.
They include San Francisco Chronicle editor Ward Bushee, Pulitzer Prize winning photographers Kim Komenich and Sal Veder, San Francisco Bay Guardian editor at large Bruce B. Brugmann, former AP legal reporter Bob Egelko and Frank McCulloch, former managing editor of the Los Angeles Times, executive editor of the Sacramento Bee and chief Southeast Asia correspondent for Time, Inc.
“Formal acknowledgment by the Pulitzer people of Ed Kennedy’s courageous and enterprising news reporting is 67 years overdue,” said campaign co-chair Eric Brazil, retired Los Angeles bureau chief for USA Today and a former reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle.
The other effort is a move by Louisiana State University and retiring AP president and CEO Tom Curley to enter “Ed Kennedy’s War,’’ recently published by LSU Press, in the Pulitzer competition based on its literary qualities.
The memoir has reposed, unpublished, in a filing cabinet since Kennedy’s death at age 58 in November, 1963, when he was struck by a car while a pedestrian in Monterey, where he was editor and associate publisher of the Monterey Peninsula Herald.
In a formal apology last May, Curley said that its repudiation of Kennedy “was a terrible day for the AP. It was handled in the worst possible way… Kennedy did everything right.’’
In a subsequent interview, he elaborated: “Once the war is over, you can’t hold back information like that. The world needed to know.’’ Curley has co-written the introduction to Kennedy’s memoir.
Kennedy was among 17 reporters from major western news outlets allowed to witness Germany’s formal surrender on May 7, 1945, on condition that they agreed not to break the news for 36 hours. Unbeknownst to the reporters at the time, that suppression was the result of an agreement between U.S. President Harry Truman and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to allow Russian Premier Joseph Stalin to hold a second surrender ceremony in Berlin.
The embargo was broken shortly after Kennedy learned that news of the German surrender was being broadcast to Germany from a radio station in Flensburg, Germany. He contacted military censors and said that since the cat was out of the bag and the security of Allied troops was no longer an issue, he intended to defy censorship and report the news, which he proceeded to do – using a military phone line — thereby registering the biggest news scoop of the entire war.
Julia Kennedy Cochran, Ed Kennedy’s daughter, saved his unpublished memoir and pressed for its publication. She was the first to join March and Brazil in the campaign to see her father awarded a Pulitzer.
When asked how she felt about a network of journalists supporting her father for a posthumous Pulitzer, she said she was surprised and honored.
“It is astonishing that my father’s story still elicits so much interest among journalists. I am thrilled and honored that so many of them are signing on to the campaign for a posthumous Pulitzer for him,” she said in a recent interview.
Anyone interested in joining the “Ed Kennedy Project,” can do so by contacting March at ramarch@frontiernet.net.
Eric Brazil and Ray A. March
Carl Nolte’s piece in the San Francisco Chronicle: http://www.sfgate.com/nation/article/Pulitzer-campaign-for-Edward-Kennedy-3802586.php
Cartoonist Louis Dunn: Welcome to Florida
Louis Dunn, longtime Guardian cartoonist and graphic artist, comments on the upcoming Republican convention in Tampa Bay, Florida.
Eliana steals the show at Thursday’s dueling City Hall rallies
Eliana Lopez once again stole the show as the Ethics Commission Thursday debated the “ethical fate” of her husband Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi inside City Hall while the Stand With Ross forces and their opponents staged back to back rallies on the City Hall steps.
Eliana sat with and supported her husband during the morning at the hearing on the misconduct case and then made an early afternoon dramatic entrance to the Mirkarimi rally. (The commission later Thursday unanimously rejected most of Mayor Ed Lee’s official misconduct charges against the suspended sheriff but voted 4-l to recommend the Board of Supervisors find him guilty of official misconduct for grabbing his wife’s arm on Dec. 31 and pleading guilty to the resulting misdemeanor charge of false imprisonment. See Steve Jones Guardian blog.)
Eliana was greeted with cheers as the tv cameras and reporters crowded in on her.
She spoke with ease and authority, greeted many friends, spoke in Spanish to several Spanish language radio and television reporters, and walked easily through the crowd shaking hands and talking with supporters in two languages.
“We don’t want any more hate,” she said. “We want love.” She said the case was
“about democracy” and she said that the community stands behind her husband.
I asked her about her plans. She said she had finished her movie in Venezuela and was back living with Ross in their home with their young son Theo. “I have good feelings,” she said.
The two groups worked out an informal modus vivendi. The Remove Ross group had a permit for using the steps so they went first with their press conference rally with banners saying “We stand with survivors” and “The facts do matter.” Their group was largely from the three organizations leading the charge against Ross, La Casa de las Madres, Domestic Violence Consortium and Futures Without Violence.
The Mirkarimi group initially gathered across Polk Street, waved signs and chanted “Stand With Ross.” The group then got a permit to use the City Hall steps and held its rally after the first rally ended. Sharon Hewitt, executive director of the Community Leadership project, said that the city owed an “act of apology for the violence” that it had caused to Ross and his family.
The police officer on duty estimated to me that there were 40 or so in the domestic violence group. My count was about 50 or so. The Stand With Ross group had more people and they were more spirited in their chants and marching.
Dick Meister: The billionaire’s bill of rights
By Dick Meister
Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister, which includes more than 350 of his columns.
Billionaire corporate interests and other well financed anti-labor forces are waging a major drive to stifle the political voice of workers and their unions in California that is certain to spread nationwide if not stopped – and stopped now.
At issue is a highly deceptive measure, Proposition 32, on the November election ballot, that its anti-labor sponsors label as an even-handed attempt to limit campaign spending. But actually, it would limit – and severely – only the spending of unions while leaving corporations and other moneyed special interests free to spend as much as they like.
Unions would be prohibited from making political contributions with money collected from voluntary paycheck deductions authorized by their members, which is the main source of union political funds.
But there would be no limits on corporations, whose political funds come from their profits, their customers or suppliers and the contributions of corporate executives. Nor would there be any limit on the political spending of the executives or any other wealthy individuals. What’s more, corporate special interests and billionaires could still give unlimited millions to secretive “Super PACs” that can raise unlimited amounts of money anonymously to finance their political campaigns.
The proposition would have a “devastating impact” on unions, notes Professor John Logan, director of labor and employment studies at San Francisco State University, writing in the Hill’s Congress blog. As he says, it would likely all but eliminate political spending by unions while greatly increasing political spending by business interests and wealthy individuals.
Anti-labor interests are already outspending unions nationwide by a ratio of more than $15 for every $1 spent by unions. Between 2000 and 2011, that amounted to $700 million spent by anti-labor forces, while unions spent just a little more than $284 million.
Proposition 32 would even restrict unions in their communications with their own members on political issues. That’s because money raised by payroll deductions pays for the preparation and mailing of communications to union members, including political materials.
Unfortunately, there’s even more – much more –to Proposition 32. It also would prohibit unions from making contributions to political parties and defines public employee unions as “government contractors” that would be forbidden from attempting to influence any government agency with whom they have a contract.
That restriction applies not only to unions. It also would cover political action committees established by any membership organization, “any agency or employee representation committee or plan,” such as those seeking stronger civil rights or environmental protections.
Proposition 32 seeks to weaken, that is, any membership group which might seek reforms opposed by wealthy individuals or corporations and their Republican allies. It’s no wonder the measure is actively opposed, not only by organized labor, but also by the country’s leading good-government groups, including Common Cause and the League of Women Voters.
Yet the proposition’s sponsors have the incredible gall to bill their measure as genuine campaign finance reform. They obviously hope that claim, which Common Cause accurately describes as a “laughable deception,” will win over the many voters who have been demanding reforms and who, in their eagerness, will fail to recognize the measure’s true nature.
“This is not genuine campaign finance reform,” as San Francisco State’s John Logan says, “but a bill of rights for billionaires.”
The losers would include teachers, nurses, police, firefighters and other union members and those who benefit from the essential services they provide – students, the elderly, and the ailing, the poverty stricken, those who work and live in unsafe conditions and other needy citizens, and consumers, environmentalists and others who also are neglected by the profit-chasing corporate interests that dominate political and economic life.
Make no mistake: Lots of money is being funneled into the Proposition 32 campaign by some of the same wealthy backers who bankrolled such anti-labor efforts as the campaign that blocked the massive attempt to recall virulently anti-labor GOP Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin this year.
Should the anti-union forces also prevail, it will undoubtedly lead to what Logan says “will promote a tsunami of ballot initiatives in 2013 at the local level and in 2014 at the state level designed to drive down working conditions in both the public and private sectors.”
Logan adds, “Lacking the ability to oppose these reactionary measures under the new election rules, California’s workers could soon face the weakest labor standards in the country”. But if the measure is rejected, it “may slow the momentum behind other attempts to increase the corrosive impact of money in politics.”
It’s true that some states already have laws and regulations seriously limiting labor’s influence. But it’s certain that victory by the anti-labor forces in California will slow any attempts at reform in other states and lead as well to attempts to impose anti-union measures elsewhere, as well as expanding those that already exist.
The stakes are huge. If the 1 percent have their way in California, the country’s largest state, other states are certain to follow.
For more from John Logan, check his piece in the East Bay Express, “If you liked Citizen United, you’ll love Prop 32.” http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/if-you-liked-citizens-united-youll-love-prop-32/Content?oid=330613Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister, which includes more than 350 of his columns.
Stop the presses: Elaina is back and stands with Ross at a noon rally today at City Hall!
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Here is the latest advisory from the Stand With Ross forces. Note below in particular the op ed piece in today’s Examiner by Geoff Brown, former San Francisco public defender. He argues persuasively that “Ross Mirkarimi deserves another chance.” b3 Hello Friends of Ross, Great news!!! Elaina and Theo have returned from Venezuela to support Ross. Please join Eliana tomorrow, Thursday 8/16, at noon on the Polk Street side of City Hall to show your support for our sheriff. Wear your ‘Stand With Ross’ buttons (will be provided, if needed). RSVP here or at https://www.facebook.com/StandWithRoss so we have enough buttons – or just show up and Stand With Ross!!! Please join us in support of our Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi — in support of our sheriff, his family and our city! Read the great Op Ed in today’s Examiner by Geoff Brown “Ross Mirkarimi deserves another chance.” Your support is greatly appreciated. We need you to make sure the will of the people is not usurped by Mayor Lee! Here’s how you can help. San Francisco residents may get their own “I Stand With Ross” window sign by contacting Tami Bryant at tamibryant@aol.com Contact The Board of Supervisors and let them know that you will not stand for anything less than the reinstatement of Sheriff Mirkarimi. You can contact the Board of Supervisors via letter, email, telephone, Facebook or Twitter Board of Supervisors Contact Page. Click to Donate to the Ross Mirkarimi Legal Defense Fund Thanks and hope to see you at this Thursday’s hearing and gathering on the Polk Street Side of City Hall to Stand with Ross!!! – Friends of Ross |
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Contact Contact us at standwithross@gmail.com. Contact Tami Bryant @ 415-595-4729 |
Stand with Ross at a major rally Thursday noon at City Hall
The Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi forces put out a call to action Wednesday to mobilize their supporters for a show of force at a noon rally at City Hall on Thursday.
The rally is scheduled to be across Polk Street from the City Hall entrance because they fear that their opponents will be holding a rally on the City Hall steps with a sound system.
The possibility of dueling rallies comes as the Ethics Commission is set to hear closing arguments on Thursday in a fact-finding hearing in the Mirkarimi removal case.
Mirkarimi’s rally is the latest event in an accelerating grassroots effort by his supporters to put pressure on the Ethics Commission and the Board of Supervisors who will have the ultimate decision on whether Mirkarimi stays or goes as sheriff.
I particularly like the statement of the National Lawyers Guild on Mirkarimi: http://www.nlgsf.org/news/statement-suspension-sf-sheriff-ross-mirkarimi-and-ethics-commission-proceedings
Calvin Trillin: Mitt Romney’s tax returns
Mitt Romney’s tax returns
Demands come from left and right.
Mitt Romney, though, says he’ll sit tight.
We’ve given you people enough,
Says Ann, sounding suddenly tough.
Conspiracy theories abound.
Mitt’s critics relentlessly pound.
Why go through this sort of ordeal?
What doesn’t Mitt want to reveal?
Some shelters far off from our shore?
Well, sure, but there has to be more.
And, really, we already know
His tax rate is terribly low.
Could some corporate losses have meant
That one year he paid not a cent?
What’s in there to make voters squeal?
What doesn’t Mitt want to reveal?
What deed was so sleazy that he’ll
So desperately try to conceal
Exposure with such stubborn zeal?
What fiddling did Romney feel
Should even a wealthy big wheel
Who feels some gray area’s appeal
Is slippery, just like an eel?
What doesn’t Mitt want to reveal?
Calvin Trillin: Deadline Poet: The Nation 8/13/2012Impertinent question for Sup. Malia Cohen
As attentive readers know, I get most annoyed when a “neighborhood” supervisor, who ran as a “neighborhood” candidate, gets to City Hall and then votes the Chamber of Commerce/big development line without gulping. And so I pop off Impertinent Questions now and then to pin the “neighborhood” supervisor on key votes to illuminate the issue. My latest Impertinent Question went by email last Friday to Sup. Malia Cohen of District l0 (Potrero Hill, Bay View, Hunters Point) on her swing vote to keep the developers’ quarterback on the Planning Commission. City Editor Steve Jones makes the point neatly about Michael Antonini in his blog. http://www.sfbg.com/politics/2012/08/01/antonini-quarterback-development-interests-wins-game
Cohen has earned an 80 per cent vote in the recent Chamber of Commerce’s mid-year “Paychecks & Pink Slips” voting scorecard for supervisors. And she is likely to do even better on the next score card with her votes for astroturf at Golden Gate Park and to shut down the Sunshine Task Force.
“Dear Sup. Cohen,
“Why did you as a neighborhood supervisor from District l0, a neighborhood anxious about massive development from Potrero Hill to Hunters Point, provide the swing vote for Antonini who operates as a quarterback for big development interests on the planning commission? I would appreciate an answer for my Bruce blog at sfbg.com.” I gave the supervisor a Monday deadline but I still had not heard from her by Tuesday evening.. I’ll keep trying to reach her for comment and keep you posted. B3
Calvin Trillin: Deadline Poet: Ohio
Ohio
(A 2012 version of the Wonderful Town classic)
With the rest of the states either solidly red or solidly blue,
the election will be decided by nine or ten swing states.
–News reports
Why oh why oh why oh?
Why did I ever leave Ohio?
Why did I locate where, since it’s no swing state,
Pollsters don’t trouble to track?
Zero is my vote’s weight.
Reason to vote? That’s what I lack.
Oh why oh why oh did I leave Ohio?
Maybe I better go O-H-I-O,
Where I could have my vote back.
Calvin Trillin: Deadine Poet: (the Nation)
Guardian editorial: The real Mirkarimi question
Do you believe Eliana?
After more than five months of legal and political wrangling, after criminal prosecution and a guilty plea, misconduct charges that are costing both sides hundreds of thousands of dollars, and lengthy hearings at the Ethics Commission, the case against Ross Mirkarimi comes down to a simple question: Do you believe Eliana?
Because if you believe Eliana Lopez, and, tangentially, Linette Peralta Haynes, and take the testimony the two women have given under oath as credible, then the entire prosecution turns into something between a misguided disaster and a mean-spirited political vendetta.
Read more here http://www.sfbg.com/2012/07/31/guardian-editorial-real-mirkarimi-question
Dick Meister: Good news–and bad–about jobs
By Dick Meister
Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com
It’s of course good news that unemployment among workers in private industry has been steadily declining. But that comes along with the bad news that unemployment among public employees has been growing – and with it a decline in vital government services.
A recent report in the New York Times has made that very clear. Reporters Shaila Dewan and Motoko Rich noted that government payrolls grew in the early part of the recovery from the Great Recession in 2009, mainly because of federal stimulus measures. But they said that since then, “the public sector has shrunk by 706,000 jobs. The losses appeared to be tapering off earlier this year, but have accelerated for the last three months, creating the single biggest drag on the recovery in many areas.”
Albeit slowly, the economy generally has been improving, with state tax revenues expected to go beyond pre-recession levels by next year. Yet the Times’ reported that “governors and legislatures are keeping a tight rein on spending, whether to refill depleted rainy day funds or because of political inclination.”
Holding tight won’t be easy, with the costs of health care, social services, education and employee pensions steadily rising, and property taxes and other tax revenues steadily shrinking. More than a dozen states have tried to do it by trimming their aid to local governments. And that will undoubtedly lead to more public worker layoffs, more unemployment and more reductions in important public services.
Local governments already have been making budget cuts that far outweigh the slight economic relief that’s come with a recent growth in state and federal jobs. It’s certain to worsen, since more than 25 percent of municipalities are planning layoffs this year.
President Obama has proposed easing the financial plight of states and their employees by providing $30 billion more for teachers, police officers and firefighters. Such aid is essential if public services – and the compensation of those who provide them – are to be maintained at a significant yet reasonable level.
Predictably, the conservatives who don’t really care for government are in a snit over Obama’s proposal. The Times quoted Michael D. Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, as complaining that the additional public sector jobs “must be paid for with more debt and taxes borne by the private sector.”
Now, isn’t that a revelation! Imagine that, people taxing themselves and hiring people to provide services they and everyone else needs if they are to live a decent life, if they are to find meaningful work.
We need more, not less government, and we can provide it by employing for reasonable compensation many of the millions of Americans now suffering from unemployment. We need to open more government jobs for them so they may help provide essential services.
The lack of sufficient public workers, as the Times said, “can mean longer response times to fires, larger class sizes, and in some cases lawsuits when short-staffed agencies are unable to provide the required services.”
The Times quoted Mike Whited, president of the firefighters union local in Muncie, Ind., who said the area which could be reached within eight minutes after an alarm was sounded was cut in half.
The Times said, “Mr. Whited chafed at portrayals of public workers as overpaid or greedy, saying his union and others had made concessions, including paying more for their health insurance and forfeiting raises. I think a lot of people don’t understand what we do. They’re looking for somebody to blame, and I think they’re being led the wrong way.”
One of the hardest hit cities, Trenton, New Jersey, has laid off fully one-third of its police force, hundreds of school district workers and at least 150 other public employees, and now faces loss of 60 more firefighters.
More than half the job losses in local governments have come in education. Thousands of teachers have been laid off throughout the country, and thousands more are being threatened with layoffs.
Many teachers have agreed to help ease their school districts financial problems by taking unpaid “furlough days” or agreeing to less pay and benefits than they had sought or had been granted in contract negotiations.
The widespread teacher layoffs have nevertheless continued. In Cleveland, for instance, more than 500 teachers were laid off this spring because of a claimed $66 million budget shortfall. That came after two years of cutbacks and $25 million in concessions, teachers union leader David Quolke told the Times’ reporters.
One consequence: Some classes will have more than 40 students, a serious hardship on students and teachers alike.
Relatively large teacher layoffs and cuts in public jobs and services generally have hit every state hard, including the largest, wealthiest and most influential states. In California, for example, Gov. Jerry Brown is threatening to eliminate 15,000 state jobs.
The Times said Pennsylvania “has shed 5,400 government jobs this year, and many school districts and social service agencies are contemplating more layoffs.”
Yes, it will take higher taxes and more public debt in Pennsylvania, California and everywhere else to combat the severe economic problems that have left millions of Americans without the jobs and public services they so badly need.
Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com
The British press: “Nowhere Man” and “Mitt the Twit”
I like one liners that make the point.
As Maureen Dowd put it in her Sunday (7/29/2012) column in the New York Times on “Mitt’s Olympic Meddle,”
“The alarming thing about Romney is that he has been running for president for years, but he still doesn’t know how to read a room.”