Bruce Blog Archives — Page 7 of 56 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Dick Meister: A sure path to economic health

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July 21, 2012

By Dick Meister

Guardian columnist Dick Meister is former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom. He 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.

It’s way past time to raise the pitifully low federal minimum wage. That would provide badly needed help to the millions who are living in poverty or near-poverty at the current rate of $7.25 an hour, and would help all Americans by stimulating the sagging economy.

Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa and Democratic Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois are carrying bills that would set a new minimum of $10 an hour. They’re pressing hard – as they very well should – to get the general public and their allies in Congress to fully appreciate the widespread good that would come from helping some of the country’s neediest workers.

“We’ve bailed out banks, we’ve bailed out corporations, we’ve bailed out Wall Street, we’ve tried to create sound fundamentals in the economy,” Jackson noted. “Now it’s time to bail out working people who work hard every day and still make only $7.25. The only way to do that is to raise the minimum wage.”

It’s been five years since the minimum was last raised, from $5.15 an hour to the current level. States, cities and counties are allowed to set their own minimums, as long as they at least equal the federal rate, and 18 states and several cities and counties have enacted minimums greater than the federal rate. But even their rates are below what’s needed for a decent living.

About four million workers are now paid at or below the federal minimum and obviously need help if they are to escape poverty. Even those paid at the full minimum earn a mere $15,000 a year before taxes and other deductions. They are among some 28 million workers whose earnings – and spending – would immediately increase under the proposed bills.

Legislation to raise the minimum has been called for repeatedly in the years since the last raise in 2007, but has gained only relatively minimal support in Congress and the White House. President Obama pledged during his election campaign to get the rate increased to $9.50 an hour by 2011, but has taken no public action. Mitt Romney, Obama’s Republican opponent in his re-election campaign this year, has wavered. He once voiced support for a raise, but later said he opposed an increase.

Polls have clearly shown strong public support for a raise. That support is likely to grow significantly if the economic benefits that a raise would undoubtedly bring to all Americans can be clearly shown – and it can.

It’s simple: Raise the pay of working people, and as the workers buy more goods and services with their new earnings, the businesses that sell them will hire more people to provide what they want to buy with the extra money they’ve earned at a higher minimum wage.

The National Employment Law Project estimates that the increased consumer spending generated by the proposed raise would create the equivalent of more than 100,000 full-time jobs. Other estimates indicate that every dollar increase in wages for workers at the minimum creates more than $3,000 in new spending after a year.

And so the cycle goes, round and round: More pay, more spending on goods and services, more hiring of people to provide them, more important government services and the taxes to support them, a healthier and wealthier economy.

Guardian columnist Dick Meister is former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom. He 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.

Callvin Trillin: Sheldon Adelson’s Free Speech

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July 16, 2012

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“Casino mogul Sheldon Adelson is on the brink of reaching $71 million in contributions thus far in this election cycle.”

–Roll Call

Yes, money is speech, so the court has decreed.

While Adelson thinks this is splendid,

The rest of us wonder, as cash calls the tune,

Is this what the Framers intended?

Calvin Trillin: Deadline Poet (The Nation, 7/23/2012)

Dick Meister: Labor and the media

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July 12, 2012

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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.

The coming of the Internet has had a profound impact on media coverage of working people and their unions. No, the mainstream media have not expanded their generally limited and shallow labor reporting or their generally anti-labor editorial positions. But there now are dozens of non-mainstream websites and blogs, such as the Bay Guardian’s, that provide in-depth labor coverage. The print versions of union newspapers and newsletters could never reach the very much larger audience that’s now available via the Internet.

There are even pro-labor broadcast outlets, such as Pacifica Radio’s KPFT in Houston, that cover labor issues in depth. The broadcasts and labor websites and blogs expose many people to labor activities and issues they may not otherwise have heard of, or understand – including pro-labor views,

Use of the Internet also has made it easier for unions to communicate with their own members.

But there’s still a major problem. Those pro-labor online outlets don’t necessarily reach the general audience that labor needs to reach. They primarily or solely reach only labor supporters and union members who often are in effect talking only to each other.

That may be good for the morale of unions and union supporters and provide them ammunition to use in their struggles. But unions need to reach a broader audience if they are to effectively combat the anti-unionism that’s so commonly voiced in the mainstream media.

How would they do that? That’s not for me to say, but I am confident that it can be done. After all, unions got their message out in the pre-Internet years when the media were at least as ant-labor as they are today, probably even more so.

The pre-Internet newspapers that unions had to rely on to spread their message were at best indifferent to working people and their unions. That basic situation hasn’t much changed. As in those days, it isn’t so much that the mainstream media are anti-union – though they are that – but that their labor coverage is generally limited. In-depth reporting of labor issues is as rare as pro-labor editorials.

As in the pre-Internet days, many of today’s media outlets are not much interested in covering labor except in a clearly anti-labor manner. They devote their closest attention to critics of union actions and especially the attacks on the public employees who have become the vanguard of the labor movement and thus the main target of anti-union forces.

But at least the Internet gives unionized workers and their supporters an option, and their militant actions, such as those opposing Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, have forced many in the previously labor-indifferent media to pay close attention to their activities, however much they may disparage them.

But it remains that despite the complexity of labor issues and the importance of labor to many of their readers, very few of today’s newspapers have reporters who are assigned to cover labor exclusively. mainstream radio and TV stations have never had such reporters.

Some media outlets assign labor coverage to business reporters, who typically cover labor from the generally adversarial approach of their business sources. They’re concerned with the effect of labor on business, and, of course, labor’s role in politics, which is also usually covered from a non-union, if not anti-union point of view.

Internal union matters such as the election of officers are generally ignored unless there’s a scandal involved. Strikes that draw lots of public attention are heavily covered, but with the stress on the strikes’ affect on the general public rather than on the issues involved. Only very rarely does a mainstream media outlet side with a striking union or even explain the union’s position thoroughly.

Part of the reason for this is simply that newspapers and other mainstream outlets generally are themselves in adversarial relationships with unions – those that represent their employees.

During the formative years of American unions long before the Internet, when unions engaged in highly visible and often exciting organizing attempts, newspapers had little choice but to cover their activities in some detail. Union activity was news, big news, as it has again become just recently with massive pro-worker demonstrations nationwide.

But there is a major difference between then and now. In those pre-Internet years labor was covered extensively and usually by reporters assigned to that specific task. Virtually every newspaper had a labor reporter or two.

But the number of labor reporters has declined steadily ever since organized labor established itself and became merged into the middle class, ever since its activities lost their novelty, and were expanded to encompass complex matters far beyond the easily covered issue of simply seeking union recognition.

The major turning point came just after World War II. At first there was a great deal of newsworthy labor activity, including many strikes and other highly visible actions as union members sought to make up for the compensation they lost under the tight wage and price controls that prevailed during the war years.

But after that surge of postwar strikes, labor turned to less exciting, less visible activities that are not as easily covered as are strikes and related matters. That takes expert labor reporters and few have been available. That basic situation has not changed over the past half-century.

There have been some important exceptions to the dismal mainstream media coverage of labor in recent years, notably including the country’s major newspaper of record. The New York Times still covers labor fairly and in some detail, and its labor reporter, Steven Greenhouse, is among the best U.S. reporters of any kind.

Most media outlets, however, are still concerned primarily with labor’s militant actions and cover even those superficially. Most see no need for coverage that goes beyond the surface excitement, no need for expert reportage, although some recent labor actions, such as those of the Occupy Wall Street movement, have forced the media to look closer at some issues that previously have been only superficially examined – if examined at all.

There are, in any case, too few mainstream reporters who are adequately versed in labor matters. There are too few who have the trust of workers and their unions, which naturally hesitate to provide them much of the information that’s needed to adequately and fairly explain labor’s positions. The result has been labor coverage that’s generally shallow, often uninformed and frequently biased.

Unfortunately, that is unlikely to change any time soon.

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: “We want bread and roses, too”

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July 5, 2012

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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.

“Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;

Hearts starve as well as bodies, give us bread, but give us roses!”

–From a poem by James Oppenheim

Bread and roses. It was the battle cry of the thousands of striking women and their supporters who marched through the streets of Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1912, in the heart of the textile industry. Although it’s been 100 years since they marched, their militancy and bravery remain among the brightest highlights in the long history of the American labor movement.

The three-months long strike in Lawrence, led by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) pitted the 25,000 workers – half of them women under 20, many as young as 14 – against the violently anti-labor textile mill owners, who were strongly backed by the press, politicians , school officials, and clergy.

Striking was difficult for the workers, who had only their poverty-level wages to live on. They had barely enough to pay the rent for the run-down, disease-ridden shacks and tenement flats where most of them lived. Many were constantly in debt, having to borrow money to meet their bare necessities. Health care and other fringe benefits were virtually unheard of, and more than one-third of the workers died in their mid-twenties.

Working conditions were brutal. They commonly worked 12 hours a day in the hot, dusty and dangerous textile mills for but $6 to $8 a week. The workers had neither the leisure time nor the means to improve the quality of their lives, no time or money to enjoy the good things of life – the roses.

They desperately needed the help that unionization could provide them, but that could come only through a strike that would impose even more hardships on the already extremely hard-hit workers. They hesitated about actually walking off the job, but finally were convinced that striking would bring long-term benefits to them, their families and their communities.

The mill workers moved into action after employers unilaterally cut their already rock-bottom pay even more. They marched to the mills and throughout Lawrence to the tune of militant labor songs by IWW bard Joe Hill and others, holding high placards that declared ,”We Want Bread and Roses too,” a demand that soon would be taken up by labor and feminist groups nationwide.

It wasn’t easy, bringing the workers together. They belonged to two-dozen different national groups, speaking 72 languages. They had been purposely kept apart by employers, who kept them in ghettoes by setting up separate housing areas for different nationalities, lest they forget their ethnic differences and join together to challenge their miserable pay and unhealthy conditions.

Employers got their friends in City Hall to enact an ordinance preventing strikers from picketing individual mills, but strikers responded by the extraordinary act of forming a picket line around the perimeters of the entire textile mill district. Thousands of pickets were on the line 24 hours a day throughout the 10-week-long strike.

Some spent part of their evenings hoping to disturb the sleep of strikebreakers who employers had hired to replace them, loudly serenading them with IWW songs.

Thousands paraded through the streets of Lawrence regularly, until the city enacted an ordinance forbidding parades and mass meetings. They switched to sidewalk parades of up to four-dozen strikers and supporters, who locked arms, blocking shoppers and others from entering downtown businesses.

Eventually, martial law was declared, enforced by violent police and militiamen, who charged in to try to break up the marches and other demonstrations. They even tried to block strikers from putting their children on trains that would take them to safety with sympathizers in other cities. The city called in the Army to block the trains from moving, which led to the killing of a woman striker and the beating of many others, including several children and two pregnant women who had miscarriages.

Then the authorities arrested two of the IWW’s principal leaders for murder, on grounds that their illegal acts had provoked police into the action that led them to kill a striker.

The widespread publicity about the strike finally helped pressure employers to settle. The terms were modest, primarily granting the workers union recognition, a 15 percent pay increase and a 54-hour workweek with overtime pay at double the regular rate. But the mere recognition of the workers’ right to make and be granted any demands was crucial. It inspired many other workers, especially women, to also assert their basic rights and brought strong support nationally for many workers who sought decent treatment.

What’s more, many textile mill owners, fearing they also might be struck, granted pay raises totaling almost $15 million to an estimated 438,000 workers throughout New England and elsewhere.

A much longer and lasting result was that the strike put the needs of working women on labor’s agenda for the first time and showed that women could very well provide decisive leadership and indeed win bread – and roses.

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 good old days in Rock Rapids, Iowa, the Fourth of July, 1940-1953

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July 2, 2012

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(Note: In July of 1972, when the Guardian was short a Fourth of July story, I sat down and cranked out this one for the front page on my trusty Royal Typewriter. I now reprint it each year on the Bruce blog, with some San Francisco updates and postscripts.)

Back where I come from, a small town beneath a tall standpipe in northwestern Iowa, the Fourth of July was the best day of a long, hot summer.

The Fourth came after YMCA camp and Scout camp and church camp, but before the older boys had to worry about getting into shape for football. It was welcome relief from the scalding, 100-degree heat in a town without a swimming pool and whose swimming holes at Scout Island were usually dried up by early July. But best of all, it had the kind of excitement that began building weeks in advance.

The calm of the summer dawn and the cooing of the mourning doves on the telephone wires would be broken early on July Fourth: The Creglow boys would be up by 7 a.m. and out on the lawn shooting off their arsenal of firecrackers. They were older and had somehow sent their agents by car across the state line and into South Dakota where, not far above the highway curves of Larchwood, you could legally buy fireworks at roadside stands.

Ted Fisch, Jim Ramsey, Wiener Winters, the Cook boys, Hermie Casjens, Jerry Prahl, Elmer Menage, and the rest of the neighborhood gang would race out of their houses to catch the action. Some had cajoled firecrackers from their parents or bartered from the older boys in the neighborhood: some torpedoes (the kind you smashed against the sidewalk); lots of 2 and 3-inchers, occasionally the granddaddy of them all, the cherry bomb (the really explosive firecracker, stubby, cherry red, with a wick sticking up menacingly from its middle; the kind of firecracker you’d gladly trade away your best set of Submariner comics for).

Ah, the cherry bomb. It was a microcosm of excitement and mischief and good fun. Bob Creglow, the most resourceful of the Creglow boys, would take a cherry bomb, set it beneath a tin can on a porch, light the fuse, then head for the lilac bushes behind the barn.

“The trick,” he would say, imparting wisdom of the highest order, “is to place the can on a wood porch with a wood roof. Then it will hit the top of the porch, bang, then the bottom of the porch, bang. That’s how you get the biggest clatter.”

So I trudged off to the Linkenheil house, the nearest front porch suitable for cherry bombing, to try my hand at small-town demolition. Bang went the firecracker. Bang went the can on the roof. Bang went the can on the floor. Bang went the screen door as Karl Linkenheil roared out in a sweat, and I lit out for the lilacs behind the barn with my dog, Oscar.

It was glorious stuff – not to be outdone for years, I found out later, until the Halloween eve in high school when Dave Dietz, Ted Fisch, Ken Roach, Bob Babl, and rest of the Hermie Casjens gang and I made the big time and twice pushed a boxcar loaded with lumber across Main Street and blocked it for hours. But that’s another story for my coming Halloween blog.

Shooting off fireworks was, of course, illegal in Rock Rapids, but Chief of Police Del Woodburn and later Elmer “Shinny” Sheneberger used to lay low on the Fourth. I don’t recall ever seeing them about in our neighborhood and I don’t think they ever arrested anybody, although each year the Rock Rapids Reporter would carry vague warnings about everybody cooperating to have “a safe and sane Fourth of July.”

Perhaps it was just too dangerous for them to start making firecracker arrests on the Fourth – on the same principle, I guess, that it was dangerous to do too much about the swashbuckling on Halloween or start running down dogs without leashes (Mayor Earl Fisher used to run on the platform that, as long as he was in office, no dog in town would have to be leashed. The neighborhood consensus was that Fisher’s dog, a big, boisterous boxer, was one of the few that ought to be leashed).

We handled the cherry bombs and other fireworks in our possession with extreme care and cultivation; I can’t remember a single mishap. Yet, even then, the handwriting was on the wall. There was talk of cutting off the fireworks supply in South Dakota because it was dangerous for young boys. Pretty soon, they did cut off the cherry bomb traffic and about all that was left, when I came back from college and the Roger boys had replaced the Creglow boys next door, was little stuff appropriately called ladyfingers.

Fireworks are dangerous, our parents would say, and each year they would dust off the old chestnut about the drugstore in Spencer that had a big stock of fireworks and they caught fire one night and much of the downtown went up in a spectacular shower of roman candles and sparkling fountains.

The story was hard to pin down, and seemed to get more gruesome every year – but, we were told, this was why Iowa banned fireworks years before, why they were so dangerous and why little boys shouldn’t be setting them off. The story, of course, never made quite the intended impression; we just wished we’d been on the scene My grandfather was the town druggist (Brugmann’s Drugstore, “Where drugs and gold are fairly sold, since 1902″) and he said he knew the Spencer druggist personally. Fireworks put him out of business and into the poorhouse, he’d say, and walk away shaking his head.

In any event, firecrackers weren’t much of an issue past noon – the Fourth celebration at the fairgrounds was getting underway and there was too much else to do. Appropriately, the celebration was sponsored by the Rex Strait post of the American Legion (Strait, so the story went, was the first boy from Rock Rapids to die on foreign soil during World War I); the legionnaires were a bunch of good guys from the cleaners and the feed store and the bank who sponsored the American Legion baseball team each summer.

There was always a big carnival, with a ferris wheel somewhere in the center for the kids, a bingo stand for the elders, a booth where the ladies from the Methodist Church sold homemade baked goods, sometimes a hootchy dancer or two, and a couple of dank watering holes beneath the grandstand where the VFW and the Legion sold Grainbelt and Hamms at 30¢ a bottle to anybody who looked of age.

Later on, when the farmboys came in from George and Alvord, there was lots of pushing and shoving, and a fist fight or two.

In front of the grandstand, out in the dust and the sun, would come a succession of shows that made the summer rounds of the little towns. One year it would be Joey Chitwood and his daredevil drivers. (The announcer always fascinated me: “Here he comes, folks, rounding the far turn…he is doing a great job out there tonight…let’s give him a big, big hand as he pulls up in front on the grandstand…”)

Another year it would be harness racing and Mr. Hardy, our local trainer from Doon, would be in his moment of glory. Another year it was tag team wrestling and a couple of barrel-chested goons from Omaha, playing the mean heavies and rabbit-punching their opponents from the back, would provoke roars of disgust from the grandstand. ( The biggest barrel-chest would lean back on the ropes, looking menacingly at the crowd and yell, “ Aw, you dumb farmers. What the hell do you know anyway? I can beat the hell out of any of you.” And the crowd would roar back in glee.)

One year, Cedric Adams, the Herb Caen of Minneapolis and the Star-Tribune, would tour the provinces as the emcee of a variety show. “It’s great to be in Rock Rapids,” he would say expansively, “because it’s always been known as the ‘Gateway to Magnolia.” (Magnolia, he didn’t need to say, was a little town just over the state line in Minnesota which was known throughout the territory for its liquor-by-the-drink roadhouses. It was also Cedric Adams’ hometown: his “Sackamenna.”) Adams kissed each girl (soundly) who came on the platform to perform and, at the end, hushed the crowd for his radio broadcast to the big city “direct from the stage of the Lyon County Fairgrounds in Rock Rapids, Iowa.”

For a couple of years, when Rock Rapids had a “town team,” and a couple of imported left-handed pitchers named Peewee Wenger and Karl Kletschke, we would have some rousing baseball games with the best semi-pro team around, Larchwood and its gang of Snyder brothers: Barney the eldest at shortstop, Jimmy the youngest at third base, John in center field, Paul in left field, another Snyder behind the plate and a couple on the bench. They were as tough as they came in Iowa baseball.

I can remember it as if it were yesterday at Candlestick, the 1948 game with the Snyders of Larchwood. Peewee Wenger, a gawky, 17-year-old kid right off a high school team, was pitching for Rock Rapids and holding down the Snyder artillery in splendid fashion. Inning after inning he went on, nursing a small lead, mastering one tough Larchwood batter after another, with a blistering fastball and a curve that sliced wickedly into the bat handles of the right-handed Larchwood line-up.

Then the cagey Barney Snyder laid a slow bunt down the third base line. Wenger stumbled, lurched, almost fell getting to the ball, then toppled off balance again, stood helplessly holding the ball. He couldn’t make the throw to first. Barney was safe, cocky and firing insults like machine gun bullets at Peewee from first base.

Peewee, visibly shaken, went back to the mound. He pitched, the next Larchwood batter bunted, this time down the first base line. Peewee lurched for the ball, but couldn’t come up with it. A couple more bunts, a shot through the pitcher’s mound, more bunts and Peewee was out. He could pitch, but, alas, he was too clumsy to field. In came Bill Jammer, now in his late 30’s, but in his day the man who beat the University of Iowa while pitching at a small college called Simpson.

Now he was pitching on guts and beer, a combination good enough for many teams and on good days even to take on the Snyders. Jammer did well for a couple of innings, then he let two men on base, then came a close call at the plate. Jammer got mad. Both teams were off the bench and onto the field and, as Fred Roach wrote in the Rock Rapids Reporter, “fisticuffs erupted at home plate.” When the dust cleared, Jammer has a broken jaw, and for the next two weeks had to drink his soup through a straw at the Joy Lunch. John Snyder, it was said later, came all the way in from center field to throw the punch, but nobody knew for sure and he stayed in the game. I can’t remember the score or who won the game, but I remember it as the best Fourth ever.

At dusk, the people moved out on their porches or put up folding chairs on the lawn. Those who didn’t have a good view drove out to the New Addition or parked out near Mark Curtis’ place or along the river roads that snaked out to the five-mile bridge and Virgil Hasche’s place.

A hush came over the town. Fireflies started flickering in the river bottom and, along about 8:30, the first puff of smoke rose above the fairgrounds and an aerial bomb whistled into the heavens. BOOM! And the town shook as if hit by a clap of thunder.

Then the three-tiered sky bombs – pink, yellow, white, puff, puff, puff. The Niagara Falls and a gush of white sparks.

Then, in sudden fury, a dazzling display of sizzling comets and aerial bombs and star clusters that arched high, hung for a full breath and descended in a cascade of sparks that floated harmlessly over the meadows and cornfields. At the end, the flag – red, white and blue – would burst forth on the ground as the All-American finale in the darkest of the dark summer nights. On cue, the cheers rolled out from the grandstand and the cars honked from the high ground and the people trundled up their lawn chairs and everybody headed for home.

Well, I live in San Francisco now, and I drive to Daly City with my son, Danny, to buy some anemic stuff in gaudy yellow and blue wrapping and I try unsuccessfully each year to get through the fog or the traffic to see the fireworks at Candlestick. But I feel better knowing that, back where I come from, everybody in town will be on their porches and on the backroads on the evening of the Fourth to watch the fireworks and that, somewhere in town, a little boy will put a big firecracker under a tin can on a wood porch, then light out for the lilacs behind the barn.

P.S. Our family moved in l965 from Daly City to a house in the West Portal area of San Francisco. There are, I assure you, few visible fireworks in that neighborhood. However, down at the bottom of Potrero Hill, the professional and amateur action is spectacular.

From any Potrero Hill height, you can see the fireworks in several directions: the waterfront fireworks in the city, fireworks on the Marin side of the Golden Gate bridge, fireworks at several points in the East Bay, fireworks along the Peninsula coast line.

And for the amateur action, parents with kids, kids of all ages, spectators in cars and on foot, congregate after dusk along Terry Francois Boulevard in San Francisco along the shoreline between the Giants ballpark and Kellys Mission Rock restaurant.

The action is informal but fiery, fast, and furious: cherry bombs, clusters, spinning wheels, high flying arcs, whizzers of all shapes and sizes. The cops are quite civilized and patrol the perimeter but don’t bother anybody. I go every year. I think it’s the best show in town. B3.

Eat your veggies and join a union

Zelda Bronstein

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June 26, 2012

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Mom and the AFL-CIO have an intriguing new message for America’s working people: “Eat Your Veggies – and Join a Union.”

Many moms know, of course, that unionized workers are paid better than their non-union counterparts, have better benefits, better working conditions and stronger voices in what goes on at their workplaces, as well as in off-the-job political activities.

And now comes a Duke University study – “Unions – They Do a Body Good ” – which suggests, as the AFL-CIO notes, “that labor unions also are good for your health.” It would indeed be difficult to effectively argue with that conclusion, whether you are pro or anti-union.

The Duke study was based on a sampling of more than 11,000 full-time union and non-union workers who answered questions about their general health. It showed that , whatever the reason, there are many more unionized workers who consider themselves healthy than there are non-union workers who say they’re healthy.

On the surface, the numbers might not seem significant – 85 percent of unionized workers said they were in good health compared with 82 percent of non-union workers. But that 3 percent gap between 82 and 85 percent represents 3.7 million workers – 3.7 million more healthy union members than healthy non-members.

But why so many more healthy union members? The study’s lead author, doctoral student Megan Reynolds, speculates – correctly I think – that the generally higher pay and benefits earned by union members “help hold off the anxiety that comes with trying to pay rent and feed a family on basement-level wages.”

She notes that “decent employer-paid health insurance means you’re seeing the doctor when needed. Paid vacation means your body and soul are getting a rest now and then. Grievance procedures and increased job security help you breathe a bit easier.”

Reynolds and co-author David Brady, a Duke sociology professor, believe their study clearly illustrates “that union membership is another factor – like age, education level and marital status – that affects a person’s health.”

The AFL-CIO, and hopefully your mom, agree. Veggies are indeed good for you, and so are unions. The likelihood of better health for union members should give union organizers a compelling new pitch to make in their attempts to sign up new members.

Better pay, better benefits, a stronger voice on the job and elsewhere – and better health. What more could a worker or a mother ask?

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

Calvin Trillin: The Bain of Mitt Romney’s Existence

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June 18, 2012

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He’s running on all of his triumphs at Bain,

But some say the Democrats refrain

From saying Bain’s gain was at times inhumane

(Because of its strategy aiming to drain

A company’s treasure, no matter what pain

Is caused to the workers whom it won’t retain).

Yes, Bain did some good, its defenders explain:

Some pension funds shared in its capital gain.

So vulture’s a label for Mitt they disdain–

Though buzzard’s OK, and is just as germane.

Calvin Trillin, Deadline Poet, The Nation June 18, 2012

Dick Meister: Dolores Huerta merits our highest honor

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June 14, 2012

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By Dick Meister

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, is co-author of “A Long Time Coming: The Struggle To Unionize America’s Farm Workers” (Macmillan). Contact him through his website, www.dickmeiste.com, which includes more than 350 of his columns.

How fitting it is that Dolores Huerta has been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Her many years of hard and invaluable work for union rights and civil rights generally deserve no less than the country’s highest civilian honor, bestowed on her May 30 by President Obama.

Huerta, now a vibrant 80 years old, has had a remarkable career spanning more than a half-century. She’s probably best known for her work with Cesar Chavez in the founding and operations of the United Farm Workers union. But that’s been just part of her lifelong and extraordinarily successful and courageous fight for economic and social justice.

Huerta, five-foot-two, 110 pounds, hardly looks the part. What’s more, she’s had 11 children to raise along the way, much of the time as a single mother. She’s traveled the country, speaking out and joining demonstrations in behalf of a wide variety of causes.

She’s lobbied legislators to win important gains for Latino immigrants and others. She was a leader in the worldwide grape boycott that forced growers to agree in 1970 to the country’s first farm union contracts. Which she negotiated despite her utter lack of experience in negotiating. She remains a leading Latina, feminist, labor and anti-war activist, and a key role model for women everywhere.

Huerta started out as an elementary school teacher in Stockton, California, in 1955. But she quickly tired of “seeing little children come to school hungry and without shoes.”

That, and her anger at “the injustices that happened to farm workers” in the area, led Huerta to quit teaching to join the Community Services Organization, the CSO, which helped local Chicanos wage voter registration drives and take other actions to win a political and economic voice.

Cesar Chavez, who was general director of the 22-chapter CSO, stressed above all what he called “grass roots organizing with a vengeance.” Huerta agreed, and generally agreed with Chavez on tactics as well. That included an unwavering commitment to non-violence.

But where Chavez was shy, she was bold and outspoken. She had to be if she was to assume the leadership to which her commitment had drawn her. Mexican-American men did not easily grant leadership to women, most certainly not to small, attractive women like Huerta.

She was assigned to the State Capitol in Sacramento as the CSO’s full-time lobbyist. It was an unfamiliar task, but during two years at the capitol, Huerta pushed through an impressive array of legislation, including bills that extended social insurance coverage to farm workers and immigrants and liberalized welfare benefits.

Huerta soon realized, however, that legislation could not solve the real problems of the poor she represented. What they needed was not government aid passed down from above to try to ease their poverty, but some way to escape the poverty. The way out, Huerta concluded, was farm labor organizing.

Chavez agreed. And in 1962, when the other CSO leaders and members rejected his plans for organizing farm workers, he quit the CSO to start organizing on his own. Huerta soon followed, helping create the organizations that evolved into the United Farm Workers, the United Farm Workers with Chavez as president and Huerta as vice president and chief negotiator, later as secretary-treasurer. She, like Chavez, was paid but five dollars a week plus essential expenses.

Chavez quarreled frequently with Huerta. That was inevitable, given Huerta’s excitable temperament and the harsh discipline Chavez imposed on himself and his close associates. But they were always headed in the same direction. And though Chavez was not entirely immune to the Mexican ideal of male supremacy, he was not the traditional macho leader by any means, He marveled at Huerta for being “physically, spiritually and psychologically fearless – absolutely.”

Like Chavez, she believed fervently in getting people to organize themselves, to get them to set their own goals and decide for themselves how to reach them. Huerta directed the message particularly to the many women among the farm workers.

She joined their picket lines outside struck fields, defying growers, sheriff’s deputies and other sometimes violent opponents. As one picket said, “Dolores was our example of something different. We could see one of our leaders was a woman, and she was always out in front, and she would talk back.”

Huerta paid a heavy physical price for her militancy. She nearly died in 1988 after being clubbed by a policeman while demonstrating with about 1,000 others outside a fundraiser for the presidential campaign of then Vice President George H.W. Bush, who had ridiculed the UFW and the grape boycott. Huerta’s spleen was ruptured and had to be removed, leading to a near fatal loss of blood.

She was operated on for other serious problems in 2000. Huerta stepped down as a UAW officer that year to join Democrat Al Gore’s presidential campaign, and has remained active in UFW and Democratic Party affairs, notably by lobbying for immigrant rights, helping train a new generation of organizers and joining campaigns to improve the lot of janitors, nursing home employees and other highly exploited workers.

Dolores Huerta has shown us, beyond doubt, that injustice can be overcome if we confront it forcefully, if we heed the demand she has been known to shout in urging passers-by to join picket lines and other demonstrations: “Don’t be a marshmallow! Stop being vegetables! Work for justice!”

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, is co-author of “A Long Time Coming: The Struggle To Unionize America’s Farm Workers” (Macmillan). Contact him through his website, www.dickmeiste.com, which includes more than 350 of his columns.

Meister: Walker won in Wisconsin, but so did labor

Zelda Bronstein

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June 8, 2012

15

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.

Yes, labor lost its attempt to recall Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, one of the most virulent labor opponents anywhere. But as AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka declared, the heated election campaign was “not the end of the story, but just the beginning.”

The campaign, triggered by Walker all but eliminating the collective bargaining rights of most of Wisconsin’s 380,000 public employees, showed that labor is quite capable of mounting major drives against anti-labor politicians, a lesson that won’t be lost on unions or their opponents.

And labor’s political enemies, while perhaps emboldened by labor’s failure in Wisconsin, undoubtedly will hesitate, lest they be confronted with similarly heavy union opposition in their attempts to restrict the bargaining rights of public employees.

Think of it: Labor was outspent hugely by outside corporate interests that funneled $50 million into Walker’s campaign, outspending labor seven-to-one. Yet labor managed to capture nationwide attention and support, and though losing the gubernatorial race, managed to wrest control of Wisconsin’s State Senate from Walker’s Republican allies.

Trumka was rightly awed by “the tremendous outpouring of solidarity and energy from Wisconsin’s working families, against overwhelming odds. Whether it was standing in the snow, sleeping in the Capitol, knocking on doors or simply casting a vote, we admire the heart and soul everyone poured into this effort” in response to “a gargantuan challenge” to labor.

The Senate victory was almost as important as recall of Walker would be. It gave Democrats a one-seat majority in the 33-seat Senate, which will make it much harder for Walker and his Republican allies to enact his anti-labor agenda.

Trumka says he believes “the new model that Wisconsin’s working families have built won’t go away after one election – it will only grow.” The election, he adds, was “an important moment, and an important message has been sent: Politicians will be held to account by working people.”

Walker, as Trumka says, was forced “to answer for his efforts to divide the state and punish hard-working people.” Trumka optimistically believes that inspired working people elsewhere, union and non-union alike, will follow the lead of the anti-Walker forces and “forge a new path forward.”

Trumka concludes that the challenge to labor and its allies in Wisconsin and everywhere else is “to create an economy that celebrates hard work over partisan agendas.” He said the recall election moved that goal closer.

Of course Richard Trumka is highly partisan, as he should be. But that doesn’t necessarily lessen his credibility. Facts are facts. Although not victorious, labor waged an extraordinary campaign that laid the groundwork for future campaigns that could result in important labor victories.

That would at the least increase the strength of the nation’s working people and diminish the strength of those who, like Scott Walker, would weaken the vital rights of workers and their unions.

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.

Vote yes on Prop A for competitive bidding for garbage and against Recology monopoly

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June 3, 2012

12

As a reporter for the old Redwood City Tribune in 1965 or so, I got a call one day from the late Luman Drake, then an indefatigable environmental activist in Brisbane. “Bruce,” he said, “you are good at exposing scandals on the Peninsula, but you have missed the biggest scandal of them all. Garbage, garbage in the Bay off Brisbane, garbage alongside the Bay Shore going into San Francisco.”

He then outlined for me, his voice rising in anger, how the scavengers of an early era had muscled through a longtime contract to dump San Francisco’s garbage into the bay alongside the Bay Shore freeway. And, he said, they are still doing it. Why can’t you fight it? I asked naively.

“Fight it, fight it,” he replied. “The scavengers are the most powerful political force in San Francisco and there’s not a goddamn thing we can do about it.” I checked out his story, then and through the years, and he was right. Everyone driving in and out of San Francisco could watch with horror for years as the scavengers kept dumping San Francisco garbage into a big chunk of the bay. (Note the oral history from Drake and then Mayor Paul Goercke and others who fought the losing fight for years to kick out the scavengers from Brisbane.) http://legendarymarketingenius.com/oralhistorySBMW.html)

Five decades later, the scavengers are still a preeminent political power in San Francisco. The scavengers (now Recology) have operated since 1932 without competitive bidding, without regulation of its high residential and commercial rates, without a franchise fee, and without any real oversight. Finally, after all these years as king of the hill, Recology’s monopoly is being challenged by Proposition A, an initiative aimed at forcing Recology for the first time to undergo competitive bidding and thereby save city residents and businesses millions of dollars in rates and service.

Let me say up front that I salute former State Senator and retired Judge Quentin Kopp and Tony Kelly, president of the Potrero Hill Boosters and the Guardian’s candidate for District l0 election (Potrero Hill/BayView/Hunters Point). They have taken this measure on when nobody else would, without much money or resources, and up against a $l.5 million campaign by Recology and enormous, nasty political pressure. I also salute those who publicly signed on to their brochure: Coalition for San Francisco Neighborhoods, San Francisco Tomorrow, SF Human Services Network, David Bisho,Walter Farrell, George Wooding, Irene Creps, Alexa Vuksich, the San Francisco Examiner, SF Appeal.com, and the Guardian.

I was delighted to get a Yes on A brochure at my house in West Portal and find that Kopp and Kelly et al had money enough to make a strong statement in a strong campaign mailer. Kopp and Kelly persuasively summarized the key points for A and against more galloping Recology monopoly in the brochure. Meanwhile, the Recology forces have been using gobs of money, a massive mail campaign, robot calls, and deploying the kind of political muscle their predecessors used to keep dumping garbage in the bay off Brisbane for decades. Since the Yes on A camp has trouble cutting through the cannonading and the flak, let me lay out the A arguments verbatim from its brochure.

Question in the brochure: “Why is Recology spending millions to buy this election? Recology has contributed $l,580,292.70 against Prop A. (Form 460 SF Ethics Commission.” Answer in the brochure; “So they can raise your garbage rates after the election! ‘San Francisco Prepares For Recology to Raise Garbage Rates’ (Contract is Proof Recology Plans to Hike Garbage Rates Following Election’”) Then they laid out l0 reasons to vote Yes on A.

1. “71 Bay Area cities have competitive bidding or franchise agreements for garbage services. Because San Francisco doesn’t, residential trash collection rates have increased 136% in the last 11 years, with another massive increase coming after the election! We pay more than twice as much for garbage and recycling as San Jose, a city with twice the land and about 400,000 more people.

2. “The garbage collection/recycling monopoly now grosses about $220 million per year from the city’s residents and businesses, without any regulation of commercial rates.

3. “How did we end up paying so much? In 2001 the monopoly requested a 52% rate increase, Department of Public Works staff recommended 20% and the then DPW director (now Mayor) Ed Lee granted a 44 %rate increase. That’s why the Examiner said: ‘no-bid contracts generally make for dirty public policy, and this includes…The City’s garbage collection monopoly…’

4. “Don’t believe the monopoly’s 78% recycling rate claim backed only by its puppet city department. A former Recology recycling manager has testified under oath that fraudulent reporting, excessive state reimbursements and even kickbacks to and from Recology employees are behind this bogus claim. Another ‘whistleblower’ has revealed that even sand removal from the Great Highway was included in this 78%.

5. “With a far smaller population, Oakland receives $24 million each year as a franchise fee, which supports city services and prevents other tax and fee increases. San Francisco receives zilch from the monopoly holder in franchise fees for our General Fund.

6. “Proposition A is on the ballot through citizen/ratepayer time and effort, in the face of intimidation and harassment by the monopoly’s agents and its multi-million dollar campaign against it.

7. “Proposition A is simple: it authorizes the Director of Public Works and the Board of Supervisors’ Budget Analyst to prepare competitive bidding regulations for residential and commercial collection, recycling, and disposal, by modifying an outdated 1932 ordinance.

8. “Like all other competitive-bid city contracts, the winning garbage service bid will be ratified by the Board of Supervisors without any political tinkering. The winning bid will contain the best deal for city ratepayers.

9. “If the monopoly is truly the corporation portrayed in its expensive campaign to defeat Prop A, it would easily win every bid. As the Examiner stated last year, ‘…contracts won by competitive bidding are always better for the public in the long run.’

10. And then the list of endorsers ‘and tens of thousands of other ratepayers.’”

Kopp and Kelly et al are providing a major public service by challenging an arrogant monopoly of an essential public service and keeping alive the concept of competitive bidding on city contracts in San Francisco. I drink to them from a pitcher of Potrero Hill martinis. Vote early and often for Prop A. B3

Dick Meister: Two big tests for labor

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June 3, 2012

1

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.

Helping get President Obama re-elected tops organized labor’s political agenda. But for now, unions are rightly focusing on special elections this month in Wisconsin and Arizona, where other labor-friendly Democrats are being challenged by labor foes.

Coming up first, on June 5, is the Wisconsin election to recall Republican Gov. Scott Walker, who’s been labor’s public enemy No. 1 for his blatant anti-union policies. He’s been acclaimed by anti-labor forces nationwide and as widely attacked by labor.

Both sides see the election as highly symbolic, a possible guide for those seeking to limit the union rights of public employees and other workers or, conversely, for those attempting to halt the spread of Walker-like attacks on collective bargaining in private and public employment alike.

There are many reasons for replacing Walker with his recall election opponent, Democratic Mayor Thomas Barrett of Milwaukee. The AFL-CIO has come up with about a dozen reasons, headed by Walker’s severe limiting of the bargaining rights of Wisconsin’s 380,000 public employees – a key action that helped trigger what Obama has described as a national “assault on unions.”

The AFL-CIO also complains that Walker has:

*”Led Wisconsin to last place in the nation in job creation.”

*”Disenfranchised tens of thousands of young voters, senior citizens and minority voters with voter suppression and voter ID laws.”

*”Put the health care coverage of 17,000 people at risk with unfair budget cuts.”

*”Allowed the extremist, corporate-backed American Legislative Council to exercise extraordinary influence.”

*”Made wage discrimination easier by repealing Wisconsin’s Equal Pay enforcement law.”

*”Attacked public workers’ retirement security.”

*”Blocked the path of young workers to middle class jobs by repealing rules on state apprenticeship programs.”

*”Killed the creation of more than 15,000 jobs when he rejected $810 million in federal funds to construct a passenger rail system between Milwaukee and Madison.”

*”Sponsored new tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations that will cost the state $2.4 billion over the next 10 years.”

*”Proposed cuts to the state’s earned income tax credit that will raise taxes on 145,000 low-income families with children.”

Despite all that – and more – polls show the recall vote could go either way, with lots of campaign funding for Walker flooding in from corporations and other union opponents across the country.

Unions have lots of tough campaigning ahead, as they do in Arizona. There, on June 12, a special election will determine who will serve in the Congressional seat held for three terms by Democrat Gabrielle Giffords. She resigned in mid-term this year while still recovering from the serious wounds she suffered during a 2011 shooting in Tucson in which six people were killed.

Ron Barber, a Giffords’ staffer who was wounded in the Tucson attack, will challenge Republican Jesse Kelly in the race to elect a representative to serve the rest of Giffords’ term. Kelly, who ran a close losing race against Giffords in 2010 , opposes much of what the AFL-CIO supports.

The labor federation is especially unhappy with Kelly’s support for GOP proposals in Congress “which would turn Medicare into a voucher system,” and for getting $68 million in federal stimulus funds for his family’s construction firm while at the same time attacking Obama for creating the stimulus program.

Apparently, says the AFL-CIO, “Kelly lining his own pockets with stimulus dollars is proper. Everything else is socialism.” The AFL-CIO is likewise unhappy with Kelly’s endorsement by organizations considered “extremist and racist” by civil rights groups.

Like labor, Barber is a strong supporter of Social Security and Medicare. But Kelly says that Social Security is a “giant Ponzi scheme” and that Medicare recipients are “on the public dole.”

He’s said health care is a “privilege” and so presumably should not be a government-guaranteed right, and claimed that “the highest quality and lowest cost can only be delivered without the government.”

Kelly wants to reduce the Federal Drug Administration “as much as humanly possible.” He’s also advocated an end to government food safety inspections, leaving individuals to do their own inspections rather than rely on “the nanny state” to do it for them.

No wonder labor is mounting major campaigns against Kelly in Arizona and Walker in Wisconsin. Labor victories are needed there to help protect unions, their members and many others from attempts to weaken the rights, protections and other essential aid provided through government.

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: Make it a truly happy graduation day

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June 1, 2012

0

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.

It’s that grand time of the year for high school and college seniors. Time for graduation. Time for them to enter the world of full-time work. Conventional wisdom insists their education will enable them to find good job opportunities and financial rewards.

A new report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) shows, however, that recent graduates are generally having far more problems with the job market than conventional wisdom would suggest.

The basic economic facts make that all too clear. Consider these EPI findings :

*About one-third of high school graduates aged 17 to 20 are unemployed and more than half are underemployed – involuntarily working only part time or holding jobs that don’t require skills they’ve learned in school. The rates for African-American and Latino graduates are particularly high.

*As for college graduates, about 10 percent of them are jobless, about one-fifth of them underemployed.

College and high school graduates alike may find that their lack of on-the-job experience will cause employers to bypass them, regardless of their academic background.

Even if they do manage to find full-time jobs, graduates’ lack of seniority, as the EPI studies note, “makes them likely candidates for being laid off when the firm falls on hard times.”

Graduates aren’t the only young workers unable to find secure jobs. The unemployment rate for workers under 25, whether graduates or not, has remained at about 16 percent, or twice the rate for workers generally. That’s higher than it has been in nearly 30 years.

Unemployment is but one of the serious economic problems facing graduates. Wages for the jobs that are available to them have been steadily declining to barely adequate levels. For instance: In 2011 wages paid college graduates aged 21 to 24 averaged only about $17 an hour or roughly $35,000 for the year.

Between 2000 and 2011, college graduates’ pay dropped an average of more than 5 percent, less than 2 percent for men, 8.5 percent for women. High school graduates’ pay overall dropped by about 11 percent.

There are state and federal assistance programs that could help poorly paid graduates. But the programs often don’t cover young workers because the workers do not meet such eligibility requirements as having previously had significant work experience.

Many of the college graduates have the added burden of trying to pay back college loans. As the EPI report notes, “The cost of higher education has grown far more than median family income, leaving students with little choice but to take out loans” which they may spend years trying to repay.

What’s needed above all – and needed quickly – are government policies that, as EPI economist Heidi Shierholz says, are new policies “that will generate strong job growth overall, such as fiscal relief to states, substantial additional investment in infrastructure, expanded safety net measures, and direct job creation programs in communities particularly affected by unemployment.”

She’s right. Such government action will be essential if the promise of their education is to be fully realized by the young people who are about to graduate from America’s high schools and colleges, if all young Americans are to reach their full potential, and if the nation is to reach true prosperity.

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.

Sup. Cohen answers some Impertinent Questions on sunshine

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May 30, 2012

1

b3 Note: I sent some Impertinent Questions to the supervisors who voted against Bruce Wolfe, an excellent task force member, and for Todd David (See other sunshine blogs.) To their credit, Sups.Elsbernd and Malia Cohen responded, Sup. David Chiu said he could not make the deadline but would reply with a new deadline. Sups.Wiener and Farrell and Carmen Chiu have not responded.

Dear Bruce –
It was nice to see you the other night at the Potrero Hill Boosters dinner. I believe very strongly in the Sunshine Ordinance, transparency and efficiency in government. I also believe that the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force is an essential component of ensuring that our City departments are open with members of the public. As I mentioned in my comments on Tuesday, I have significant concerns with opinions of some of the Task Force’s members that the City Charter does not apply to them in the same manner as it applies to all other elected and appointed bodies in the City. I also have concerns about the inefficiency of Task Force meetings and the process by which complaints are adjudicated. I was encouraged by the qualifications of a number of new applicants that applied to serve on the Task Force. In particular I believe that the newly appointed members bring a diverse skill set in consumer advocacy, media relations and community involvement in governmental issues. It has also been one of my commitments as a member of the Board of Supervisors to increase the diversity of the membership of our City’s appointed bodies, whether that be on the Small Business Commission, Entertainment Commission or the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force, and I believe that the new appointees bring a much needed level of diversity to this body. I also want to stress that we still have a number of seats that the Rules Committee has not yet recommended appointments to. I know that it is my intention and I would also bet that it is the intention of my colleagues to ensure that these remaining vacant seats meet the requirement to have a physically handicapped individual on the Task Force, as well as individuals who bring expertise and experience in the above mentioned areas.

Always at your service,
Supervisor Malia Cohen

B 3 comment: Your “strong” belief in the sunshine ordinance and task force is admirable but would be more so if you didn’t reject knowledgeable representatives from the organizations with open government and public access credentials and experience. And if you weren’t voting for the big development projects that want as little sunshine as possible on their contracts and operations and lobbying.

Stop the presses: Sup. Elsbernd blasts B3 for Impertinent Questions on sunshine

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May 30, 2012

0

Elsbern answers Impertinent Questions from B3 and James Chaffee (Scroll down)

First off, to your reference about still looking for me at Que
Syrah, or one of the other great West Portal establishments, you have been
saying this to me repeatedly for a long time now. Initially, it was a bit
funny, a nice little inside joke (although since you post on your blog our
e-mail exchanges, not so “inside”) between a couple of people who really do
not see eye to eye on many issues.

However, as you continued to perpetuate
this inside joke, it transitioned from being a bit funny, to a bit odd. If
you’d like to meet with me, let’s schedule a time. Thus far, you have only
offered Que Syrah’s happy hour time, which I have explained to you, on at
least two occasions, does not work for me as it is a weeknight immediately
after work – a time I reserve for my wife and son. I can meet with you
during the day most week days, or later in the evening after I put my son
to bed

Now, if I am wrong here, and just misreading your intentions by
misunderstanding the tone in your e-mails, I apologize. I know you are a
journalist and like to write, but maybe we would do better if you picked up
the phone and called me rather than solely initiating communication with me
by e-mail. If it is simply your intent to catch me in the act of enjoying a
meal on West Portal, I plan on having breakfast there this Saturday at 8:00
am at the Village Grill with my son – come join us if you’d like, although
to warn you, breakfast with a 3 year old is not necessarily that conducive
to a productive policy discussion. (B3: Sorry I couldn’t make your date but let’s reschedule. I didn’t phone because I wanted your reply in writing and on the written record.)

Second, congratulations to you on the sale of the Guardian and the
associated real property, assuming the recent media reports are true. I am
thrilled that the economic climate in San Francisco is allowing you to make
a little bit of money. As an aside, I hope you complete the real estate
transaction before the November election; there is a proposed property
transfer tax increase on the November ballot that could hamper your

profits. B3: As a small business, the Guardian pays high business and property taxes.
We don’t get Twitter type tax breaks nor friendly PG&E/Recology monopoly concessions. And we are annoyed

that the wealthy individuals and businesses intown are shifting more and more taxes to small businesses and residents,

I hope you can work on this.

Third, on to the Chaffee letter and his points. I do agree with his
point that what happened on Tuesday has happened before. In fact, on March
8, 2011, at a meeting of the full Board of Supervisors, the full Board was
asked to approve the nominations of the Rules Committee for three seats on
the Citizen’s Committee on Community Development. Nicole Rivera was one of
the 3 nominees approved by the Rules Committee; Charles Scianmas applied
and appeared before the Rules Committee, but was not put forward as one of
the 3 nominees. At the full Board meeting, Supervisor John Avalos moved,
with Supervisor David Campos seconding the motion, to remove Ms. Rivera and
replace her with Mr. Scianmas. The full Board approved this motion to
amend (Avalos, Campos, Chiu, Kim, Mar, and Mirkarimi voting aye), and then
appointed Mr. Scianmas. They did all this without taking any public
comment on Supervisor Avalos’s motion. This is the exact same process
Supervisor Weiner used when he moved to amend the item on Tuesday.

Refresh my memory – did you write Supervisor Avalos an e-mail asking
him why he did this after the March 8, 2011 Board meeting without taking
public comment? Did you contact any of the other five Board members who
voted for this motion without taking public comment first? Did you blog
about why the Board majority took this action without taking public
comment? Did the Guardian publish an article about why the Board took this
action without taking public comment? Or, in the converse, did the Guardian
trumpet this move by Supervisor Avalos because it liked the result?

Obviously, the point I am making is that you are criticizing a
process today because you simply do not like the outcome. If the outcome

was one of which you approved, I doubt very much you would be forwarding meMr. Chaffee’s letter. And, in fact, your past practice proves my point. B3: Your coup sabotaged the sunshine ordinance and task force on behalf of the Willie Brown gang and the boys and girls in the back room. It particularly galls me and others when it is done in violation of the spirit and letter of the city’s sunshine ordinance. Your vote for the developer’s shady last minute maneuvers on the Park Merced deal in your district is a good example.

Finally, to your general concerns about replacing the Sunshine Task
Force incumbents with new citizens, I believe Supervisor Weiner articulated
the need for this action quite well during the Board meeting. Frankly,
let’s be honest, if any other City Board, commission, or task force decided
to take it upon themselves, ignore every bit of City Attorney legal advice
and every known precedent under the Charter and Robert’s Rules of Order, to
take official actions even when a quorum is not present, the Guardian would
be critiquing, if not execrating said body and all of its members. Wait, I
take that back. If LAFCO took that action, it would probably get a pass
too.
Sincerely,
Sean
P.S. Please let me know if I should get a booth for two or three this
Saturday morning.

From:        Bruce Brugmann <bruce@sfbg.com>
To:        Sean Elsbernd <sean.elsbernd@sfgov.org>
Date:        05/24/2012 10:57 AM
Subject:        On Guard: Some more questions on “The Return of Willie
   Brownism to the sunshine task force”

Dear Sup. Elsbernd, (Chaffee letter below) I am still looking for you
at Que Syrah and this morning at the Manor and last week at the Village
Grill
I am now sending you a copy of an open letter from James Chaffee to the
board (dated Tuesday, May 22, the day of the 6-5 vote) that was done with
the intention in my view (and that of many others) of knocking out the
knowledgeable and experienced people from the task force and in effect
gutting the body. I would appreciate your comments on his points that the
maneuvering and his point that the the vote “was the perfect example of a
failure to follow the Sunshine Ordinance that led to the sort of problem
that it was intended to forestall.” Chaffee served with me as the chair
on the sunshine task force and was the chair. He is a longtime proponent
of open government. I would also appreciate any comments you have on the
bruce blog I sent you earlier, “The Return of Willie Brownism to the
sunshine task force.”

In short, why are you and Sup. Wiener and Farrell making this attack on
open government and the sunshine ordinance/task force.? Many thanks, b3

—– Forwarded Message —–
From: “James Chaffee” <chaffeej@pacbell.net>
To: “board of supervisors” <board.of.supervisors@sfgov.org>, “Carmen Chu”
<Carmen.Chu@sfgov.org>, “Christina Olague” <Christina.Olague@sfgov.org>,
“David Campos” <David.Campos@sfgov.org>, “David Chiu”
<David.Chiu@sfgov.org>, “Eric L. Mar” <Eric.L.Mar@sfgov.org>, “Jane Kim”
<Jane.Kim@sfgov.org>, “John Avalos” <John.Avalos@sfgov.org>, “Malia Cohen”
<Malia.Cohen@sfgov.org>, “Mark Farrell” <Mark.Farrell@sfgov.org>, “Scott
Wiener” <Scott.Wiener@sfgov.org>, “Sean Elsbernd” <Sean.Elsbernd@sfgov.org>
Cc: mpetrelis@aol.com, Pmonette-shaw@earthlink.net, “rita august”
<rita_august@msn.com>, hopeannette@earthlink.net, hgarfolocgj@yahoo.com,
dougcomz@mac.com, amwashburn@comcast.net, kimo@webnetic.net, “jay costa09”
<jay.costa09@gmail.com>, “ben rosenfeld” <ben.rosenfeld@comcast.net>,
grossman356@mac.com, smanneh@newamericamedia.org, han467@yahoo.com,
editorcitireport@gmail.com, “mother ed” <mother_ed@bigeds.com>,
missforties@hotmail.com, libraryusers2004@yahoo.com,
derekonvanness@aol.com, bruce@sfbg.com, rwhartzjr@sbcglobal.net,
karenrolph@hotmail.com, sotf@brucewolfe.net, “Richard Knee”
<rak0408@earthlink.net>
Sent: Wednesday, May 23, 2012 12:18:34 AM
Subject: Chaffee — Perfect Example, Sunshine Appointment Today

Dear Friends,

Today’s Board of Supervisor’s meeting included an item for approval of
appointments to the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force.

Supervisor Weiner moved to amend the motion to delete Bruce Wolfe from the
recommendation that was passed out of committee and replace him with David
Todd. That amendment passed.

As almost everyone knows, there is no public comment on a motion that was
heard at a committee. It has been accepted by the Supervisors in the past
and acknowledged by the City Attorney’s Office that if the motion that was
heard in committee is changed substantially so that what is being
considered no longer reflects what was passed out of committee, public
comment needs to be taken again. This is designed to give people time to
lobby the supervisors, or point out any mistakes, and not to be subjected
to surprises. As a matter of fact, it has been past practice for the
Supervisors to list the appointee’s names on the agenda. This is the first
time I have noticed it was not done. Is this another example of the
Supervisors hiding a proposed action to give them “flexibility.”

Yet the Supervisors passed the amended motion without taking public
comment.

As probably everyone but Scott Weiner knows, the Sunshine Ordinance at
§67.30(a) states that: “At all times the task force shall include at least
one member who shall be a member of the public who is physically
handicapped and who has demonstrated interest in citizen access and
participation in local government.”

Bruce Wolfe has been filling that requirement on the Task Force. Is David
Todd physically handicapped? What plan do the supervisors have to assure
that this requirement is fulfilled?

If there had been the required public comment, someone could have brought
it up? As a matter of fact, the idea for public comment is not just to
make the commenter feel better. The primary idea is that public decisions
will benefit from the collective wisdom of the citizens.

This is the perfect example of a failure to follow the Sunshine Ordinance
that led to the sort of problem that it was intended to forestall, namely
the Supervisors taking an action without being informed of what they are
doing. If Scott Weiner and David Chui and the rest of the crew did not
consider the citizens the enemy and exercise judgment about whether they
were complying with the spirit of open government rather than just shaving
off letter of the law as closely as possible, this could have been avoided.

Of course, I don’t know for a fact that Todd David is not physically
handicapped. I took a look at his application and he is self employed as
an investor, obtained a B.A. from Stanford in 1993, has never attended a
Task Force meeting, and left the statement of his qualifications blank. I
took a look at the video of the May 17, Rules Committee meeting and he had
no obvious physical handicap. It is easy to see why Scott Weiner likes
him; he said it would be a long road before he would go against the City
Attorney’s office, and when it came to constitutional law he would place
the City Attorney’s opinion above his own because the City Attorney is an
“expert.”

James Chaffee

City attorney responds on sunshine task force attacks

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May 30, 2012

4

B3 note: Here are responses from City Attorney Dennis Herrera to Impertinent Questions from B3 on why the city attorney helped facilitate the supervisorial attack on the sunshine ordinance and task force (See previous B3 sunshine blogs).

Regarding recommended SOTF candidates

Section 67.30 (a) of the San Francisco Sunshine Ordinance provides that the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force’s eleven voting members be “appointed by the Board of Supervisors.” That same section designates that a total of four members be appointed by the Board from names submitted for consideration by: the local chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists; the League of Women Voters; and New California Media. I’m informed that when the Board’s Rules Committee conducted its hearing and interviewed SOTF applicants, only one person was recommended for each seat by these entities. The Rules Committee then continued action on those seats until the entities submitted additional names. Legally, there is nothing problematic about such a continuance.

Regarding designated seats

Section 67.30 (a) includes specific designations for each of the seats on the SOTF. It additionally provides that one of those seats be a person with a disability, although it does not prescribe which of the 11 seats be designated to a person with a disability. I’ll be honest here: I’m not aware of whether Mr. Todd has a disability or not. But given that the Board still has to fill four remaining vacant SOTF seats, it will comply with the Sunshine Ordinance so long as one of the SOTF seats is timely filled by “a member of the public who is physically handicapped and who has demonstrated interest in citizen access and participation in local government.”

Regarding public comment

Public comment occurs in board committees. Each SOTF applicant spoke at the Rules Committee, and members of the public had the opportunity there to offer their comments on all of the applicants. Although the Rules Committee forwarded six recommendations out of committee, the record transmitted to the full Board included the entire file — including all the other applicants. The City Attorney’s Office has long advised the Board of its authority to amend appointing motions, and to instead appoint someone else, so long as that appointee’s name and application was before the Rules committee, and so long as it was subject to public comment. That was indeed the case here. At the committee level, applicants speak; members of the public speak about the applicants; and then public comment is closed. The committee then decides on its recommended appointments — but public comment is not reopened to comment on the committee’s choices.

Regarding the role of the City Attorney

With respect to your question about why the City Attorney is “allowing” certain actions by clients, I should briefly address the role of the City Attorney under San Francisco Charter § 6.102. Beyond the particular set of circumstances addressed in this email, most questions about what the City Attorney “allows” or “disallows” really misinterpret the office’s function. In many contexts over many years, the office has reiterated that “[t]he City Attorney is not a policy maker.” (See: http://www.sfcityattorney.org/modules/showdocument.aspx?documentid=953 ) The City Attorney’s Good Government Guide (pages 19-21) addresses at length the role the City Attorney plays in providing legal counsel to the City and its elected officers, commissions and employees (See: http://www.sfcityattorney.org/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=686 )

This office provides legal advice to clients, while also acknowledging that the policy-making authority of the Board and Mayor includes the prerogative to assess for itself the relative legal risks of its actions, understanding that this office will defend its actions “so long as there are legally tenable arguments to support doing so.” In that sense, the role is no different from that of any lawyer providing advice to a client: attorneys counsel; but clients, ultimately, decide.

Best,
MATT DORSEY
Press Secretary to City Attorney Dennis Herrera

B3 comment: The city attorney has made the case for the task force to get independent legal advice and to bring in an independent attorney to represent the task force. More: It is yet another reason to have an independent attorney as a task force member who is strong enough to go up against the city attorney as appropriate on critical issues. This was the original reason for SPJ, with its experience in public access and First Amendment issues and litigation, to nominate an experienced attorney. This was the first time the supervisors rejected the SPJ nominee (and nominees from other organizations as mandated by the charter) without a proper explanation or apology or a nice word of thanks. .He helped Willie Brownism prevail for the first time with the sunshine ordinance and task force.

Sunshine eclipse: Supervisors ramp up their war on sunshine

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May 30, 2012

1

And so the San Francisco supervisors ramped up their war on sunshine on Tuesday (May 22) when they rejected five qualified candidates for the sunshine task force and substituted five in experienced in candidates with no experience or visible qualifications.

The key vote was to reject Bruce Wolfe, an experienced task force member, and substitute Todd David, a self-employed investor whose application for the task force said he had never attended a task force meeting and left blank the statement of his qualifications. Here’s the story I wrote for the current Guardian:

http://www.sfbg.com/2012/05/30/sunshine-eclipsed

Dan Rather exclusive: The health of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is “dire”

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May 30, 2012

1

In his familiar “this reporter has been told” style on CBS television, former CBS anchor Dan Rather sends out an “exclusive” report from his home state of Texas. I can hear his gravely Texas voice from his old anchor chair. The good thing about Rather was that he was a real reporter and editor and that shows regularly in his Dan Rather Reports, an excellent one man news operation. I said at the time and I say now that he got a raw deal from CBS. More: that CBS handled Walter Cronkite badly (forcing him to retire at 65) and they handled Rather badly by firing him over a story on President Bush’s MIA days as a Vietnam era reservist. Whether he was right or wrong on the details of this particular story, he had a distinguished record for years of breaking and covering major stories for CBS and 60 Minutes television shows. Scroll down for information on how to sign up for Dan Rather Reports. b3

DALLAS (May 30, 2012)

“DAN RATHER REPORTS” EXCLUSIVE: THE HEALTH OF VENEZUELAN PRESIDENT HUGO CHAVEZ IS “DIRE”
HDNet’s Dan Rather (Anchor and Managing Editor of “Dan Rather Reports”) has filed this exclusive, in his own words:

“This reporter has been told that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has metastatic rhabdomyosarcoma, an aggressive cancer that has ‘entered the end stage.’ The information and the quote come from a highly respected source close to Chavez and who is in a position to know his medical condition and history. This source says the prognosis is dire and that Chavez is now not expected to live ‘more than a couple of months at most.’ Chavez is running for re-election in Venezuela but several sources–including the one who revealed the exact kind of cancer– have told me that they believe it is doubtful the dictator will live to see the results.

Voting is scheduled for October 7th. Chavez has been treated three times in Cuba but the exact kind of cancer has been a closely guarded state secret.

Reporter’s note: There is only one source for identifying the cancer and for the prognosis quoted in the first part of the above story. This is a person whom your reporter has very good reason to trust, but you should know that there is only one source so far; no other immediate confirmation. All sources asked for and were granted anonymity because to reveal their names could place them in danger or, at the very least cost them their positions.

Follow Dan Rather Reports on Twitter:
@HDNet
@DanRatherReport

Like us on Facebook:
www.facebook.com/hdnet
www.facebook.com/danratherreports

Memorial Day in Rock Rapids, Iowa, circa 1940s to 1950s

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May 25, 2012

2

(Reprinted by popular demand)

When I was growing up in my hometown of Rock Rapids, Iowa, a farming community of 2,800 in the northwest corner of the state, Memorial Day was the official start of summer.

We headed off to YMCA camp at Camp Foster on West Okiboji Lake and Boy Scout camp at Lake Shetek in southwestern Minnesota. The less fortunate were trundled off to Bible School at the Methodist Church.

As I remember it, Memorial Day always seemed to be a glorious sunny day and full of action for Rock Rapids. The high school band in black and white uniform would march down Main Street under the baton of the local high school band teacher (in my day, Jim White.) A parade would feature floats carrying our town’s veterans of the First and Second World wars, young men I knew who suddenly were wearing their old uniforms. And there was for many years a veteran of the Spanish American War named Jess Callahan prominently displayed in a convertible. Lots of flags would be flying and the Rex Strait American Legion Post and Veterans of Foreign Wars would be out in force. We never really knew who Rex Strait was, except that he was said to be the first Rock Rapids boy to die in World War I and the post was named after him.

After the parade, we would make our way to our picture post card cemetery, atop a knoll just south of town overlooking the lush green of the trees and the fields along the lazy Rock River.

A local dignitary would give a blazing patriotic speech. A color guard of veterans would move the flags into position and then at the command fire their rifles off toward the river. I remember this was the first time I ever saw a color guard in action, with a sergeant who moved his men with rifles into position with strange “hut, hut, hut” commands.

After the ceremony, everyone would go to the graves of their family and friends and people they knew and look at the flowers that would be sitting in bouquets and little pots by the headstones. The cemetery was and is a beautiful spot and many of us who are natives have parents, friends, and relatives buried here. It is one of the wonderful things that connects us to the town, no matter where we end up.

And so this year I got my annual telephone call from the Flower Village florist in Rock Rapids, reminding me two weeks ahead of Memorial Day about the flowers I always place on the graves of my relatives in the Brugmann plot. I always get a kick out of doing business with Flower Village, because it once was in the Brugmann Drugstore building on Main Street that had housed our family store since l902. It later moved across the street to the building that once housed the Bernstein Department store.

I always ask for the most colorful flowers of the moment and the Flower Village people always put them out on the headstones in the Brugmann plot a couple of days ahead of Memorial Day. This year, I called Pauline Knobloch to pick up the flowers and put them in her garden. Pauline and I go back to 1947, when she was a young clerk, just in from Lester, in the store. I started clerking at age 12 that year, selling stamps and peanuts in the front of the store. Pauline worked for many years in our store and is still going strong, as they say in Rock Rapids.

Ours is an unusual plot, because it holds the graves of my four grandparents, my parents, my aunt and uncle and someday my wife and I. My grandfather C. C.Brugmann and my father C.B.Brugmann spent their entire working lives in Brugmann’s drugstore, which my grandfather started in l902. My father (and my mother Bonnie) came into the store shortly after the depression.

My grandfather A. R. Rice (and his wife Allie) was an eloquent Congregational minister who had parishes throughout Iowa in Waverly, Eldora, Parkersburg, and Rowan. He retired in Clarion. My aunt Mary was my father’s sister and her husband was her Rock Rapids high school classmate, Clarence Schmidt. He was a veterinarian and a reserve army officer who was called up immediately after Pearl Harbor and ordered to report to Camp Dodge in Des Moines within 48 hours. He did and served in Calcutta, India, as an inspector of meat that was flown over the hump to supply the Chinese forces under Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek.

Through the years, Elmer “Shinny” Sheneberger, the police chief when I was in school, would say to me, “Well, Bruce, you and I have to get along. We’ll be spending lots of time together someday.” I never knew what he meant until one day, visiting the Brugmann plot, I noticed that the Sheneberger family plot was next to ours. Every Memorial Day, Shinny took pictures in color of the flowers on the Brugmann and Sheneberger family graves and would send them to me. I would them on to my sister Brenda in Phoenix and the families of the three Schmidt boys John in Cedar Falls, Iowa, and Conrad and Robert in Worthington, Minnesota. Well, Shinny died last year and so I won’t be getting his annual batch of pictures. But he was right. We will be together for a long, long time.

Every year the rep from our American Legion Post puts a small American flag on the grave of every person buried in the cemetery who served in the Armed Forces. Chip Berg, who was three years ahead of me in school, performed this chore every year. My uncle gets one. And, Chip assured me, I will get one someday. I earned it, I am happy to report, as a cold war veteran in 1958-60, an advanced infantryman at Ft. Carson, Colorado, a survivor of two weeks of winter bivouac in the foothills of the Rockies, and bureau chief in the Korea Bureau of Stars and Stripes, dateline Yongdongpo. I am proud of the flag already. B3, who never forgets how lucky he is to come from the best small town in the country.

P.S. As the years went by, I became more curious about how my uncle Schmitty, as he was known, could leave his three young boys and his veterinary practice in nearby Worthington, Minnesota, and get to Camp Dodge so fast and serve throughout the entire war. I asked him lots of questions. How, for example, did he handle his veterinary practice? Simple, he said, “my partner just said let’s split our salaries. You give me half of what you make in the Army and I’ll give you half of what I make in veterinary practice.” And that’s what they did and that’s how the veterinary practice kept going throughout the war. Schmitty returned to a healthy practice, retired in the 1960s, and turned it over to his second son Conrad.

P.S. 1: Confession: I was not drafted. I enlisted in the federal reserve in the summer of 1958, which amounted to the same thing. Two years of active duty, two years of active reserve, and two years of inactive reserve. I did this maneuver so that I could formally say that I beat Elmer Wohlers. Elmer was the local draft board chief who had spent a little time in World War I, “the big one,” as he would say. The word around town was that he never got out of Camp Dodge in Des Moines. He had a bit of black humor about his job and we had a running skirmish for years.

Whenever he would see me on the street in Rock Rapids, he would say, ” Bruce, I’m going to get you, I’m going to get you.” And I would reply, “No, no, Elmer, you’ll never get me.” I think he was particularly annoyed when I escaped his grasp and went off for a year to graduate school at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York City. I would send him cards through the years, from an ATO fraternity party at the University of Nebraska, or from my hangout bar in New York City (the West End Bar, across from the Columbia Journalism building.) I would write in effect, but with elegant variations, “Elmer, having a wonderful time. Keep up the good work. Wish you were here.” When I was in town, I would invite Elmer over to the Sportsmen’s Club for a drink, but he always refused, most testily. And so I joined the federal reserve and ended up with the initials FR instead of US on my dog tags that hung around my neck for two years. I was officially FR17507818 and rose from recruit in the 60th infantry at Ft Carson to E-5 in the Stars and Stripes bureau in Yongdongpo. But my big accomplishment was that Elmer didn’t get me. I still feel good about beating Elmer at his own game.

P.S. 2: Here’s how things work in Rock Rapids. Last year, I mentioned my annual Memorial Day drill in an email note to Rock Rapids alumni of my era. I recounted the Shinny anecdote and placed the Brugmann and Sheneberger plots in the southeastern corner of the cemetery. I promptly got an email note back from Joanne Schubert Vogel (class of ’49). She wrote that she had sent my note to her brother Dale Schubert in Rock Rapids (class of ’55, who was a halfback when I was a quarterback on the celebrated Rock Rapids Lions football team.) Dale called her and said that I had made an error and that the Brugmann and Sheneberger plots were in the southwestern corner of the cemetery, not in the southeast corner. Amazing. He was right and I was wrong. Joanne softened the blow by saying she was sure that this was the first error I had ever made.

Julian Davis announces for supervisor in the key battleground district for progressives (5)

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May 22, 2012

29

Julian Davis, a widely known progressive activist and organizer in San Francisco since 2002, declared Tuesday his intention to run for supervisor in District 5, the city’s most liberal district and a battleground district for progressives seeking to regain control of the Board of Supervisors.

He joins eight other challengers to Sup. Christina Olague, appointed by Mayor Ed Lee to replace former Sup. Ross Mirkarimi. He was considered by many to be the board’s most reliable progressive. He succeeded Matt Gonzales, a strong progressive. The battle will center on which candidate will be the most reliable progressive vote–Olague, whose votes are being carefully watched by progressives, or by one of her challengers.

Davis, a Bay Area native, is a graduate of Brown University and UC Hastings College of the Law, where he graduated magna cum laude. He has worked in government and non-profit and legal sectors on community development, civil rights, social justice, public power, and environmental causes. He has worked on several candidate and ballot measure campaigns including John Avalos for mayor (20ll), Jane Kim for supervisor (2010), Prop H (2008), Clean Energy Act.) He also led a succeesful campaign in 2007 to free journalist Josh Wolf from federal prison for refusing to reveal sources in a demonstration he was covering.

“I was drawn to San Francisco by the creative energy and culture of the city–by what makes this place so special,” Davis said. “Over the past l0 years, I’ve devoted myself to developing healthy communities. I’m running for supervisor to keep the city a vibrant home for the every day people that make San Francisco real.” b3

Editorial: The war on sunshine

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May 22, 2012

7

EDITORIAL The Rules Committee of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors joined the war on sunshine May 17 when it rejected four qualified candidates from three organizations who are mandated by the ordinance to choose representatives for the task force because of the organizations’ special open government credentials.

The representatives served as experienced, knowledgeable members who were independent counters to the nominees of supervisors who were often promoting an anti-sunshine agenda. The committee asked the organizations to come up with more names.

That was a nasty slap at members and organizations that have served the task force well for years. And this arbitrary demand will make it virtually impossible for these organizations to come up with a “list of candidates” to run the supervisorial gauntlet. Who wants to go before the supervisors on a list for a bout of public character assassination?

Specifically, the committee:

•Unanimously moved to sack the two incumbents (Allyson Washburn from the League of Women Voters) and Suzanne Manneh (New California Media now known as America New Media.) The League was mandated to name a representative because of its tradition and experience with good government and public access issues. America New Media was mandated to name a member to insure there would always be a journalist of color on the task force.

•Unanimously refused to seat two representatives from the Northern
California chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, the sponsor of the ordinance with a long tradition in open government and First Amendment issues. One SPJ mandated representative was for a journalist (Doug Comstock, editor of the West of Twin Peaks Observer, one of the best neighborhood papers in town and a former chair of the task force.) The second mandated seat was for an attorney (Ben Rosenfeld).

•Tried to knock out incumbent Bruce Wolfe, an excellent member, on motion of member Mark Farrell, but Wolfe survived on a 2-l vote.

•Voted unanimously for four new persons to the task force while sacking and refusing to appoint able members with experience and expertise without a word of thanks, explanation, or apology.

Committee Member David Campos later told me that he went along because he could see he didn’t have the votes. He said the organizations’ candidates “were eminently qualified,” that they should have been appointed, and that he would fight for them. He said he would ask the office of Jane Kim, who chairs the committee, to set the issue for hearing at the next rules meeting or call for a special meeting.

We asked Campos what the organizations should do. “They should stand by their candidates,” he said. We concur.

The Society of Professional Journalists, the League of Women Voters, and America New Media and their open government allies should stand by their candidates, lobby for them with the rules committee and the full board, and get out the word about this attempted coup in the most important court of all, the court of public opinion.

The Sunshine Task Force has annoyed some elected officials with its dogged efforts to promote open government. City Hall is again trying to find ways to undermine it. That needs to end, now.

The return of Willie Brownism to the sunshine task force

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May 21, 2012

35

As an advocate for the passage of the San Francisco sunshine ordinance and task force in the early 1990s, I felt obligated to take my first and only City Hall position and serve as a founding member of the task force. I served for l0 years and helped with many other good members to build the task force into a strong and respected agency for helping citizens get access to records and meetings and hold city officials accountable for suppressing access.

The task force is the only place where citizens can file an access complaint without an attorney or a fee and force a city official, including the mayor, to come before the task force for questioning and a ruling on whether they had violated sunshine laws, The task force lacked enforcement power, but it still annoyed of city officials, including Mayor Willie Brown.

In fact, Willie spent a good deal of time trying to kick me off the task force. He used one jolly maneuver after another, even getting an agent to make a phony complaint against me for violating the ordinance with an email. (The complaint went nowhere.) I refused to budge and decided to stay on the task force until Willie left office—on the principle that that neither the mayor nor anybody else from City Hall could arbitrarily kick members off the task force. When Willie left office after two terms, I resigned with the hope that the Willie principle had been established.

The principle held, until last Thursday (May 17) when the board’s rules committee (Sup. Mark Farrell, Chair Jane Kim, and Sup. David Campos) brought Willie Brownism back to the task force with a vengeance. The committee moved to sabotage the task force by sacking or refusing to appoint four qualified candidates from three organizations who are mandated by the ordinance to choose representatives for the task force because of the organizations’ special open government credentials. Their representatives served as experienced, knowledgeable members who were independent counters to nominees of supervisors who were often promoting an anti-sunshine agenda. The committee asked the organizations to come up with more names. There was no explanation nor apology to the candidates nor to their organizations. It was a nasty slap at members and organizations that have served the task force well for years. And this arbitrary demand will make it virtually impossible for these organizations to come up with a “list of candidates” to run the supervisorial gauntlet. Who wants to go before the supervisors on a list for a bout of public character assassination?

Specifically, the committee:

+unanimously moved to sack the two incumbents (Allyson Washburn from the League of Women Voters) and Suzanne Manneh (California New Media.) The League was mandated to name a representative because of its tradition and experience with good government and public access issues. California New Media was mandated to name a member to insure there would always be a journalist of color on the task force.

+unanimously refused to seat two representatives from the Northern
California chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, the sponsor of the ordinance with a long tradition in open government and First Amendment issues. One SPJ mandated representative was for a journalist (Doug Comstock, editor of the West of Twin Peaks Observer, one of the best neighborhood papers in town and a former chair of the task force.) The second mandated seat was for an attorney (Ben Rosenfeld.)

+tried to knock out incumbent Bruce Wolfe on motion of Farrell, but Wolfe survived on a 2-l vote.

+voted unanimously to approve David Pilpel, a former task force member who is known by observers for delaying meetings with is bursts of lengthy nitpicking on almost every item. He then usually votes against citizen complaints and for protecting city officials on the basis of spotting “onerous” burdens caused by the complaint

+voted unanimously for four new persons to the task force while sacking and refusing to appoint able members with experience and expertise without a word of thanks. The four new members are “a “a bunch of neophytes,” according Rick Knee, outgoing SPJ member for 10 years.

Knee, a former task force chair surveying the carnage, said that the committee’s actions stemmed “partly from a desire by some supervisors to sabotage the task force and the ordinance itself, and partly from a vendetta by certain supervisors after the task force found several months ago that the board violated local and state open meeting laws when it railroaded some last minute changes to a contract on the Park Merced development project without allowing sufficient time for public service review and comment.” He noted that the developer “had slipped in a 14-page package of amendments at the llth hour” to get board approval.

Knee said that the rules committee is recommending sacking two incumbents and apparently hopes to sack two more. Farrell wanted to push out a fifth but was outvoted by Kim and Campos. All five candidates, he said, “have done excellent work, each brought a unique perspective and, while we had our share of disagreements among ourselves, all shared a passion for open government and for making sure that everyone who came before us got a fair hearing.”

Hanley Chan, an outgoing task force member, backed up Knee’s point in an email. He wrote that “I spoke with Sup. David Chiu and he told me that the rest of the supervisors will not appoint any incumbent, because we defied the city attorney’s opinion (the Park Merced case). “”You should have made a right decision. I was told by the city attorney that it was legal, my aides explained it to the task force and you should have made a better judgment.'” Chan said that the rules committee ouster move was “retribution on how we voted that day.” Chan said that “Bruce Wolfe and all the task force members made a wonderful argument and stuck to their guns.” The task force vote was a unanimous 8-0 vote.The point: defy the supervisors and city attorney and the boys and girls in the back room and get blasted off the task force, bang, bang, bang, bang.

The committee choreographed the move smoothly. Farrell as the heavy would make the move. Kim would agree and facilitate as chair. Campos would go along reluctantly. The deputy city attorney would be supine through the process even though the supervisors were breaking precedent and misinterpreting the ordinance. Sunshine candidates and advocates in the audience were furious and emails have been crackling back and forth ever since.

Campos later told me that he went along because he could see he didn’t have the votes. He said the organization’s candidates “were eminently qualified,” that they should have been appointed, and that he would fight for them. He said he would ask Kim’s office to set the issue for hearing at the next rules meeting or call for a special meeting. Kim did not return calls for comment.

I asked Campos what the organizations should do. “They should stand by their candidates,” he said.

I concur. The Society of Professional Journalists, the League of Women Voters, and California New Media and their open government allies should stand by their candidates, lobby for them with the rules committee and the full board, and get out the word about this attempted coup in the most important court of all, the court of public opinion. Make this an election issue with all incumbents and candidates. Let public officials know there are serious consequences to supporting Willie Brownism on the sunshine task force, the first and best local task force of its kind in the country if not the world.

The good news is that the rules committee has demonstrated, with its sneak attack, the value of the task force for citizens and open government and why it is a San Francisco institution that needs to be saved and strengthened. All of this illustrates once again my favorite axiom of mine. In San Francisco, the public is generally safe, except when the mayor is in his office and the supervisors are in session. b3

Meister: Another presidential step against anti-gay bias

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May 18, 2012

1

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.

President Obama’s bold endorsement of same-sex marriage should be only the first of his key acts in behalf of gay Americans. It’s now past time for him to redeem a 2008 campaign promise to issue an executive order barring federal contractors from discriminating against gay workers.

Such discrimination is already banned in Washington, D.C., and 21 states, including California. A presidential order would cover the millions of federal contractor employees in the other states. Building roads, bridges and dams are among the many essential tasks they perform throughout the country.

Previous executive orders, first issued seven decades ago, have made it illegal for contractors to discriminate on the basis of race or religion. Recent investigations by the San Francisco Chronicle and the gay publication Metro Weekly noted that Obama made his promise to add a ban on anti-gay discrimination during a meeting with a gay rights group in Houston four years ago.

The Chronicle quoted Heather Cronk, director of the gay rights group Get Equal, as noting that a non-discrimination order “would give concrete, real-life workplace protections to people who work for federal contractors like ExxonMobil that refuse, year after year, to add those protections on their own.”

Cronk recalled that former Bay Area activist Cleve Jones recently presented Obama with a binder containing more than 40 accounts of workplace discrimination in hopes of making a decisive case for a presidential order. The president accepted the binder, Cronk said, without saying a word. But later, Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett said the president had no immediate plans to ban contractor discrimination on his own.

That was confirmed a day later by Jay Carney, Obama’s press secretary. Carney claimed the president nevertheless “is committed to securing equal rights” for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans. He cited Obama’s long-time support for the proposed Employment Non-Discrimination Act that would give federal protection to LGBT workers in government as well as private employment.

Instead of issuing an executive order, Carney added, the president’s plans are to take “a comprehensive approach” by pushing for passage of the non-discrimination act.

But, as the Chronicle noted, “the legislation has no chance of passing in the current Congress,” whereas congressional approval is not needed for an executive order to go into effect. In any case, there seems to be only a slight chance that Obama would suffer serious political harm for issuing an order, since polls show strong public support for him doing so.

The president has in fact been losing support because of his refusal to act. The Chronicle, for instance, noted the anger of Log Cabin Republicans, the gay rights group that led the legal fight against the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that had excluded gays and lesbians from military service. The GOP group complained that Obama has “turned his back on 1.8 million LGBT workers” and failed to deliver on a policy that has broad, bipartisan support among the American peopl

Harsh criticism came, too, from a former congressional staffer, Tico Almeida, who helped draft the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and now heads a group called Freedom to Work. He called Obama’s refusal to act “a political calculation that cannot stand” as he announced that his organization was launching a campaign to increase pressure on Obama to issue an order.

One prominent – and wealthy – activist who’s pledged to contribute $100,000 to the drive to get Obama to change his mind called his refusal to sign an order “craven election-year politics.”

Pretty strong language, but Obama’s inaction on such a vital issue rightly opens him to such harsh judgment. His endorsement of same-sex marriage took genuine political courage. It proved he has the strength, the will and the ability to take the country another step closer to granting true equality to all Americans. Now the president needs to take that next essential step.

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.

Editorial: The business tax debacle

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May 15, 2012

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Labor and much of the progressive community worked with downtown and the Mayor’s Office last year to craft a pension-reform bill that took away benefits from city employees. The unions came to the table, recognized the city’s financial problems and bought into a compromise, even though it took money out of their pockets.

And now big business, with the support of Mayor Ed Lee, wants to reform the local business tax in a way that doesn’t bring the city a dime of new revenue (and hurts small business in the process).

In other words, it’s fine to seek compromise when it’s about cutting workers pay and city costs. When it’s about asking big business (and a lot of big businesses, particularly tech businesses, in this town are doing exceptionally well right now) to chip in just a little more, to do the right thing, address the revenue side of the ledger and pay a fair share, the answer is No.

That’s not ok — and the supervisors shouldn’t go along with it.

The essence of the proposal from the mayor’s office (orchestrated in significant part by billionaire Ron Conway) is to shift the city’s main business tax from a levy on payroll to a levy on gross receipts. There are winners and losers in that scenario, and the business community is split: High-tech firms tend to have high payrolls compared to gross receipts, and finance, insurance and real-estate tends to have high gross receipts compared to payroll. So the burden could shift from the likes of Twitter and Zynga, who would pay less, to the commercial office and financial-services sector, which would pay more. In other words, the new business elite likes the change, and the old guard doesn’t.

Small business doesn’t like it much, either — a lot of the tiniest companies in town now pay no tax at all, and would be hit with at the very least an annual license fee. So the percentage paid by the smallest would go up

You can certainly argue that tech is creating more jobs than other sectors of the economy these days. And while it’s fun to watch the Chamber of Commerce and Conway’s San Francisco Citizens for Technology and Innovation butt heads (and progressives are looking for ways to exploit those differences), the fight between Twitter and the Business Owners and Managers Association is a sideshow.

The real problem is that the mayor’s plan would be revenue-neutral — that is, the big business community, which has never paid its fair share of the city’s tax burden, would be doing nothing at all to help with the structural budget deficits that plague San Francisco. Labor gives up hundreds of millions of dollars. Neighborhoods suffer with service cuts. The poorest San Franciscans give up housing and health care and social services in the name of balancing the budget. And the wealthiest companies in town smirk and say: Sorry, we won’t help. Screw you, buddy.

That’s a nonstarter. A lawsuit by 52 big businesses over an earlier gross receipts tax, settled in 2001, cost the city as much as $50 million a year — and at the very least, this new tax should get that back. A plan that doesn’t at the very least bring in $50 million to $100 million a year of additional revenue from the big operators — tech, finance, real-estate, and the rest — amounts to the proverbial shifting of deck chairs on the Titanic. If the mayor won’t move, a grassroots alternative needs to be on the November ballot.

Dick Meister: Union rights are civil rights

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May 14, 2012

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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.

The right of U.S. workers to organize and bargain collectively with their employers unhindered by employer or government interference has been a legal right since the 1930s. Yet there are workers who are unaware of that, and employers who aim to keep them unaware, meanwhile doing their utmost to keep them from exercising what is a basic civil right.

Many employers often claim working people are in any case not much interested in unionization, noting that less than 15 percent of workers currently belong to unions.

But as anyone who has looked beneath the employer claims has discovered, it’s the illegal opposition of employers and the failure of government regulatory agencies to curtail the opposition that’s the basic cause of the low rate of unionization.

If most workers do indeed oppose unionization, then what of the recent polls decisively showing otherwise? And why do so many employers go to the considerable trouble and expense of waging major campaigns against unionization ? Why do they take such illegal actions as firing or otherwise penalizing union supporters?

Could it be that union campaigners might be able to persuade workers to vote for unionization, despite what their employers might have to say? Or despite employer threats to punish them for voting union?

Some employers have now taken the outrageous step of trying to keep employees from even knowing of their legal right to unionization.

Under a National Labor Relations Board ruling last August, employers were to be required as of this April to post notices at their workplaces telling employees of their union rights.

The ruling stemmed from the labor board’s finding that young workers, recent immigrants and workers in non-union workplaces were generally unaware of the labor laws’ guarantees and protections – including, of course, the basic right of workers to unionize.

As the New York Times observed, “the backlash was furious.” The notoriously anti-union National Association of Manufacturers and U.S. Chamber of Commerce filed suits in two federal courts, claiming the law does not expressly permit the NLRB to require employers to post such notices. An appeals court has postponed the effective date of the rule pending further appeals.

The Times noted that the case involves more than “the legality of having to hang a poster in the coffee room. It’s about industry’s attempt to delay rules whenever it cannot derail them outright. It is about preventing workers from gaining knowledge and support to help them press their concerns.”

So unless and until a court rules otherwise, workers will have the right to protections from the labor laws, but not the right to be informed of that through workplace notices and otherwise. Bizarre, certainly, is the word for that.

What workers need above all, even above the right to know their legal rights, is a firm strengthening of those rights. Why not add the right of unionization specifically to the Civil Rights Act? It is, after all, on a par with other basic civil rights such as the right to an education free of discrimination.

The Civil Rights Act, which makes it illegal to discriminate against workers on the basis of their race, ethnicity, gender, religion or national origin, should be expanded to include a specific prohibition of discrimination against pro-union workers.

No less a civil rights champion than Martin Luther King Jr. would agree to that. He knew that the right to unionization is one of the most important civil rights. Virtually his last act was in support of that. For he was slain by an assassin’s bullet in 1968 as he was preparing to lead yet another of the many demonstrations he had led in behalf of striking black sanitation workers in Memphis who were demanding union recognition.

That was but one of many examples of King’s support for workers seeking union recognition as their civil right – a right guaranteed not only by the 77-year-old National Labor Relations Act but also by the Constitution’s First Amendment guarantee of freedom of association.

King declared that the needs of all Americans “are identical with labor’s needs: Decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old-age security, health and welfare measures, conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children, and respect in the community.”

There could be no civil right greater than the right of working people to try to meet such paramount needs, as well as to be clearly informed of their right to

do so through unionization.

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.