Editors Notes Archives — Page 5 of 13 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Editor’s Notes

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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May 25, 2010

Tredmond@sfbg.com

Even the San Francisco Chronicle, which is not know for its fiery progressive editorials, took all of the major candidates for governor to task May 22 for failing to offer any real solutions to the horrific budget problem: “[A]ll three are presenting the types of phantom savings (‘Let’s slash waste, fraud, and abuse! Cut across the board!’) and the panacea of collaboration (‘Everyone to the table! Appoint a blue-ribbon commission!’) that substitute for real leadership on the campaign trail.”

It makes me want to throw up. This is not a game; there are literally people’s lives in the balance. Even Jerry Brown, the Democrat’s best hope, is ducking madly. Jerry says that the folks “with the biggest belts should tighten them.” Sounds good, but what the hell does it mean?

Well, according to his press spokesman, it means nothing at all. I called the Brown for Governor campaign last week, and asked Sterling Clifford, who handles press for Jerry (that’s got to be a tough job) whether his boss was talking about higher taxes. No: “I think he has been very clear that there will be no new taxes unless the people vote on them.” (Actually, since the Public Policy Institute says two-thirds of Californians would support raising taxes on the rich to pay for education, a vote would likely be positive — but the campaign would be expensive and Brown would have to lead it.)

But he’s not willing to commit to any specific cuts in any specific programs. He’s not saying which belts he wants to tighten.

Here’s the hard, cold fact: You can’t solve California’s budget crisis by cuts alone, not unless you want to utterly abandon the state’s commitment to public education and social services (oh, and let about half the people in prison go free). Meg Whitman wants to lay off thousands of state workers (and create more unemployment). But even if you fired every single one of the 238,575 people who work for the state of California, you still wouldn’t cover a $19 billion hole. (The state’s total payroll in April was about $1.4 billion, or $17 billion a year.)

And we’re still stuck with billions in debt from the past few years when the governor couldn’t deal with reality and bumped it off into the future.

Maybe Brown thinks the economy will magically improve when he takes office, and the problem will solve itself. But it won’t. This is a structural issue, and until everyone, including the news media, accepts that, we’re just going to get into deeper and deeper doo-doo.

Editor’s Notes

David Talbot

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May 18, 2010

3

Tredmond@sfbg.com

The governor of California released his last official state budget proposal May 14, just a few weeks before Mayor Gavin Newsom releases what might be his last official city budget proposal. The guv’s is truly ugly, so bad it’s almost hard to imagine what would happen if it passes. The mayor’s may not be a whole lot different.

Here’s why Gov. Schwarzenegger’s budget is so hypocritical. In his message, Schwarzenegger said that "employment remains the biggest source of concern" as the state emerges from the Great Recession. Then he moved to guarantee more unemployment.

I remember when a Democratic Assembly Member from San Francisco first proposed the idea that would later become the philosophical basis for the CALWORKS program. Art Agnos, who went on to serve as mayor of this city, suggested that it wasn’t such a bad idea to make welfare recipients work — as long as the state offered education, training, and, most important, affordable child care. A lot of us complained about it, warning that it would never get fully funded; it costs a lot up front to provide the services that allow long-term unemployed to transition into the workforce. Ultimately, however, most states have now created some sort of welfare-to-work program.

Now Schwarzenegger wants that completely eliminated. Along with all state-subsidized child care. So how are low-income people with kids supposed to get a job?

They’re not. They’re supposed to become a permanent underclass in a rich state. That’s exactly what the governor is talking about — destroying opportunities for hundreds of thousands of people, keeping them from joining in the productivity boom we’re going to need to get the economy going again, forcing them to live a third-world existence, at a massive cost to the state’s future. All to avoid modest taxes on the rich. If that’s not class warfare, I don’t know what is.

So how are we going to respond in San Francisco? Will Newsom’s budget — the one he will have to answer for as he runs for lieutenant governor — be cuts only? Or does he have the courage to tell the truth — that the only way the state and the city are ever going to emerge from this recession is if the folks on top of the economic pyramid chip in a little more? Well, I asked his press person, Tony Winnicker, and here’s what he said: "The mayor’s budget will not rely on taxes to achieve balance."

Nice.

Editor’s Notes

David Talbot

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May 11, 2010

1

Tredmond@sfbg.com

San Francisco has a lot of streets. Take a look at an aerial picture, or just look at the land-use statistics. More of this city is devoted to paved roads — pathways used largely and designed primarily for private automobiles — than any other single use. Parks, for example, don’t even come close.

That’s partially a matter of urban density. In more suburban-type cities like Berkeley or Portland or Seattle, the lots are bigger, yards are bigger, houses are bigger, and there’s more space between the strips of pavement.

But that density gives us a choice other cities don’t have. Maybe we don’t really need that much pavement.

I know it’s kind of a crazy thought, but imagine what some San Francisco neighborhoods would look like if we closed down, let’s say, one out of every four streets. I don’t mean open that land up for development, either — leave it as a passageway, a thoroughfare — but not for cars. Tear up the concrete, plant grass, make pathways for walking and biking … make the streets places where people can gather, kids can play, stores can enjoy the kind of traffic that only comes with a pedestrian mall, and restaurants can have outdoor seating in what would amount to a strip of mixed-use urban parkland.

Closing streets to cars creates plenty of problems, but I don’t think they’re insurmountable. Seniors and disabled people might have trouble with eliminating bus routes and parking in front of their houses, and that’s a legit concern. (Of course, the number of pedestrian seniors and disabled people killed or maimed by cars might go down too.) So maybe some streets could be turned into one-lane strips, and only people with disabled placards could use them. And ambulances and police and fire vehicles can already drive on car-free pathways in parks. And Muni could run a fleet of electric golf carts to ferry people with mobility issues up and down the grassy lanes.

Those of us who have cars would give up a certain amount of convenience; people without cars would get more of the benefits. That might discourage car use, which is good.

But even for drivers, I wonder. Would I be willing to give up the relative ease of parking near my house in exchange for letting my kids just open the front door of the house and run out and play in a safe, vehicle-free park that used to be a street? Would you?

The world is changing; the days of car culture driven by cheap oil are almost over. More and more people are going to be living in cities (that particular demographic trend is one of the most consistent in modern history). When we talk about the Streets of San Francisco, let’s stop for a moment and ask: does it all have to be about cars?

Editor’s Notes

David Talbot

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May 4, 2010

0

Tredmond@sfbg.com

I’m glad to see Mayor Gavin Newsom finally opposing the anti-immigrant bill in Arizona, and maybe, kinda, sorta, being willing to support some sort of boycott. He’s right that the Arizona law practically mandates racial profiling; he’s also right that it’s an utterly inappropriate way to address immigration and crime issues.

The problem is that the Arizona policy is awfully close to what Newsom has implemented in his own city.

As Angela Chan, staff attorney at the Asian Law Caucus, points out in an opinion piece at sfbg.com, the mayor’s policy — which mandates that juvenile probation officers report young people to federal immigration authorities if they suspect the youth may not be in the country legally — also pretty much mandates racial profiling. It also tears apart families. And makes no sense.

It’s easy to criticize a state like Arizona, run by right-wing nuts who follow the lead of nativist bigots. And that’s fine; I’m on board. But let’s not forget what’s happening right here in San Francisco, where the Democratic mayor is taking the same essential policy approach as the Republican governor of the Grand Canyon State.

Editor’s Notes

David Talbot

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April 27, 2010

0

tredmond@sfbg.com

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that there are now almost 10,000 employees with paychecks that totaled more than $100,000 last year. I can already hear the screaming: that’s close to a billion dollars! City workers are all overpaid, fat, and lazy! That’s why we have a budget crisis!

And yeah, I think it would be a lot more fair if the highest earners took the bulk of the pay cuts (5 percent for everyone in that $100K club would be $50 million a year). But Mayor Newsom wants to be sure the lowest-paid folks get their share of the hurt, so the biggest impact of his budget reductions will fall on those least able to handle it.

But I also think it’s worth looking at who these high earners really are.

Now, some of the ones at the top of the scale are political appointees. Do we really need to pay $354,000 to get someone qualified to run Muni? Is the head of the city’s Public Utilities Commission really worth $291,000? Some are getting market rate for their skills — three of the top 20 earners are doctors who work as pathologists in the Medical Examiner’s office.

But the most telling fact is that 11 of the top 20 are either cops or firefighters — and they’re collecting huge amounts of overtime. Four cops alone, all with the rank of captain or deputy chief, accounted for overtime pay totaling $588,000.

I know city employees who work at the senior management level — just like those cops — but they don’t get overtime. Neither do senior managers in most private-sector jobs. And it’s not as if these top cops are working for minimum wage; they all make around $200,000 or more as base salary. Plus they get excellent benefits and get to retire on sweet pensions.

Think of all the money and services you could save with one minor contract change: once you get to the level of captain in the SFPD, you aren’t eligible for overtime anymore.

Editor’s Notes

David Talbot

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April 20, 2010

0

Tredmond@sfbg.com

The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce decided this month to release a scorecard ranking the members of the Board of Supervisors on business-related issues. The idea was pretty clear: make the progressives on the board appear “anti jobs” — although some of the selections (naming rights for Candlestick Park?) weren’t really jobs issues at all. And the scorecard wasn’t about jobs (after all, the biggest employers in San Francisco are public agencies); it was about the downtown agenda.

We typically wait until election time to review how the supes voted over the past two years, but since the Chamber is launching its assault early, we thought we’d add a dose of reality. On page 13, you can find our list of 20 key votes on a broad range of progressive issues and see how the district supervisors did.

There’s another guide in this issue, too — our annual look at the San Francisco International Film Festival. And in honor of the festival, we’ve done something unusual. There are two different versions of the Guardian cover, highlighting two different movies. Go ahead — collect ’em both.

Editor’s Notes

David Talbot

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April 13, 2010

0

tredmond@sfbg.com

We’ve been talking to people who want to be judges, seven of them. One is already a judge and wants to keep his job; two are challenging him; and four are competing for an open seat. They all talk about their impressive legal backgrounds, life experience, desire to be fair and impartial, and to make the system of justice work for all.

The two who emerge as the winners will take their seats on the bench, and the presiding judge of the San Francisco Superior Court will decide what happens to them next — whether they handle felony murder trials, or juvenile hearings, or family court, or complex civil litigation, or small claims court. The P. J. oversees the court budget and things like the indigent defendant fund. So I asked them all: how does the presiding judge get chosen, anyway?

And all of them, including the sitting judge, said: Dunno.

Now, how can it be that six of the top attorneys in the city and one incumbent jurist don’t know how the person who runs the local courts gets that job? Well, maybe nobody cares — or maybe the whole process is so secretive nobody gets to learn about it.

See, the courts aren’t covered by the Brown Act, which mandates public meetings. So when the judges get together and meet (bimonthly in San Francisco), there’s no meeting notice and no press or public allowed.

I’m told by reliable sources that the P.J. is typically elected by acclamation when there’s only one candidate, and by secret written ballot when there’s competition. The ballots are tallied by the outgoing P.J., then discarded. Nobody knows who voted for whom.

Years ago, when the state Legislature (led by SF senators John Burton and Quentin Kopp) was updating the Brown Act, Ralph Grace, the publisher of a Los Angeles legal paper the Metropolitan News, went to Sacramento to argue that the courts, like any public agency, should operate openly. He got nowhere. "When you’re talking about running a public institution, you should do it in public," Grace told me this week.

There’s no law saying the P.J. has to be elected privately. The California Rules of Court say that local courts can set their own policies and procedures. So it appears that the San Francisco Superior Court could — if the judges wanted — open the doors.
They could. If they wanted to.

Editor’s Notes

David Talbot

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April 6, 2010

0

Tredmond@sfbg.com

A couple of weeks ago, political consultant David Latterman, who often works with downtown interests, sent off an e-mail warning that the pro big-business, moderate bloc needed to get its act together. "It appears as if different groups are unwilling to set aside their egos or agendas, and pool together resources in a comprehensive plan to take back the [Democratic County Central Committee]," he wrote. "And guess what, we’re going to lose, in June and November."

His point: the DCCC matters, a lot. "The DCCC controls the supe endorsements that matter most," he noted, adding, "The mayor’s race starts now."

And that’s absolutely true — and unless the folks downtown are foolish or have given up (and neither is terribly likely) they’re going to get the message, and there’s going to be a big-money push in the next two months to oust the progressive majority on the county committee.

The DCCC controls the Democratic Party endorsements — and the party slate card is among the most influential political slates in a city where the vast majority of the population votes for Democrats. The DCCC could well make the difference in some of the key supervisorial races this fall — and could play a key role in choosing the next mayor of San Francisco.

But it’s not a high-profile election. More than half the votes will probably be absentees. That means it’s critical that the progressive candidates can raise money, do mailers, and fight back.

At this point, there’s a pretty good consensus on a progressive slate. We published our endorsements last week, and the Milk Club, Sierra Club, Tenants Union, and Assembly Member Tom Ammiano have endorsed most of the same candidates. In the fall, labor, environmental groups, tenants, and other progressive interests will be putting a lot of money into the races for district supervisor. But I could argue that the DCCC is just as important — and if we don’t fight this one to win, it’s going to be a lot harder in November.

Editor’s Notes

David Talbot

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March 30, 2010

4

Tredmond@sfbg.com

The pot initiative’s going to pass in November. California’s going to legalize personal use and small sales. I think that’s clear from the polls, and from the fact that the pot supporters are raising a fair amount of money, and the fact that there won’t be much effective opposition.

The state Legislature might not like it — ballot measures are impossible to amend, and with debate and discussion the measure might be a little different. But Assembly Member Tom Ammiano has tried, again and again, to get his colleagues to see the light: this is going to happen, and if the folks in Sacramento are afraid of it, then they’re not going to have any influence over the final product.

And it’s amazing to me how many people are afraid of this issue.

All three major candidates for governor, including Jerry Brown, who must have smoked pot at some point in his life (would Linda Ronstadt have gone out with a guy who never smoked weed?), are publicly opposing the measure. Ammiano can’t get a majority of the Assembly to vote yes on his legalization bill — and Democrats control things. You wonder when these people are going to understand that the voters, most of them, really don’t care if pot becomes legal. It doesn’t frighten anybody anymore — except elected officials.

Humboldt County is already preparing for this; business leaders are talking about the economic impact on the region and how the North Coast can become the Napa Valley of green bud. The Obama administration needs to get ready too — ready to tell the federal drug agents to leave California alone. And a few years from now, life will go on, and everyone will take legal pot for granted — and I wonder how silly Jerry Brown’s going to feel. *

Editor’s Notes

David Talbot

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March 23, 2010

6

Tredmond@sfbg.com

In 2003, after the United States invaded Iraq, a San Francisco Chronicle technology columnist named Henry Norr got fired for participating in an antiwar demonstration. Marching against the war, the Chron’s managers decided, was a conflict of interest. Although Norr didn’t write about politics, or international affairs, or anything other than computers, he was sent packing.

A year later, Chronicle reporter Rachel Gordon was barred from covering the biggest story in town — Mayor Gavin Newsom’s decision to allow same-sex marriages — because she’d married her same-sex partner. Again the paper’s editors went up on their big high horses and pronounced her conflicted.

So how come it’s fine for columnist and former mayor Willie Brown — who writes about politics all the time — to work as a flak for Pacific Gas and Electric Co.?

Brown was on hand to represent PG&E March 17 at a California Public Utilities Commission hearing on Proposition 16, a statewide ballot measure aimed at blocking public power. He sat with the PG&E executives and said in public that he was there on PG&E’s behalf. PG&E has been a client of his private law firm, and he acknowledged that the company "sought my counsel" over the past few years.

Sounds like a lot more obvious conflict than anything Norr or Gordon did.

But guess what? The Chron has a different standard for celebrity former mayors who carry water for corrupt utilities. When we asked Chronicle editor Ward Bushee about Brown’s obvious conflict, here’s what he said: "Willie Brown writes a popular weekly column for the Chronicle, and readers frequently tell us that they look forward to reading his informed insights and entertaining opinions on issues ranging from politics to movies.

"Our readers like his column to a large degree because he’s the Willie Brown with a long and colorful political history and many connections," he continued. "Willie is not an employee or a member of the Chronicle staff but his columns go through standard editing procedures. He understands conflict of interest as well as anyone. I’m confident that he would not use his column to promote or benefit outside interests or clients. But if you feel differently, why don’t you contact him and ask him these questions directly."

Um, actually, Mr. Bushee, you need a history lesson. Brown was notorious for using his position as speaker of the state Assembly to promote the interests of his private law clients — something that could have gotten him disbarred in 47 states (but not this one). So he has a long history of "promoting … outside interests or clients."

And I did try to contact him. The first time I called, he answered his phone but said he was too busy to talk. I’ve left messages since then, and he hasn’t called back.

For the record, I enjoy Brown’s column too. And for the record, I have no problem with a journalist taking stands on issues. I speak about issues all the time — on panels, on the radio, at community events … anytime anyone’s willing to listen, I’ll tell you what I think. Which is pretty much what you read right here.

But I never get paid for advocating for anyone, certainly not PG&E. And I don’t like double standards.

Frankly, Bushee is wrong here. If Willie Brown can show up as PG&E’s spokesperson at a public hearing on a major political issue and still cover San Francisco and California politics as a columnist (without, by the way, ever disclosing in his column that a major player in the political world is a private client of his), then the Chron should give Henry Norr his job back. And Rachel Gordon should be able to write about the politics of same-sex marriage. Because this looks really, really bad.

Editor’s Notes

David Talbot

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March 16, 2010

0

Tredmond@sfbg.com

For decades, the San Francisco City Charter has had a fairly simple process for filling vacancies in local elected offices: the mayor makes an appointment. A supervisor leaves office, or the district attorney leaves office, or the city attorney leaves office, or the controller leaves office, or the assessor leaves office, or the public defender leaves office … there’s no election. It’s up to the mayor to fill the job. It gives the person in Room 200 a tremendous amount of power.

Gavin Newsom’s a beneficiary of this system — he didn’t run for election the first time he took elected office. A mayor named Willie Brown appointed him to the Board of Supervisors.

If the mayor leaves office, on the other hand, the Board of Supervisors, by a majority vote, gets to fill that position. And while Newsom has never complained about any of this in the past, now that he thinks he’s going to get elected lieutenant governor, he’s got a campaign underway to make sure the current district-elected board doesn’t get to name his successor. He wants to change the City Charter to mandate a special election if a mayor leaves office before the end of his or her term.

It’s about as hypocritical and self-serving as you can imagine, although he carefully talks about “democracy” and “the voters choosing.”

I find it kind of silly (and expensive) to plan a special election for mayor in March or April of next year when there’s already a regular election for mayor in November. And special elections have notoriously low turnout (favoring candidates with money and name recognition). But let’s play this out.

I’ve always thought it was odd that the mayor got to appoint supervisors. The governor can’t appoint state legislators; the president doesn’t appoint members of Congress. So if we’re going to change things, let’s be sure to change that, too. And then let’s take away the mayor’s ability to fill any vacancy in any elected office.

But you see, Newsom’s office told me he’s against that. He doesn’t want to limit the mayor’s power — just the power of the supervisors. Go figure.

Editor’s Notes

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March 9, 2010

0

Tredmond@sfbg.com

The crowd protesting at San Francisco’s Civic Center March 4 had a different demographic than we’re used to. There were families, moms and dads with their kids. A lot of the people there don’t demonstrate and protest on a regular basis; they have jobs and families and can barely keep up with their day-to-day responsibilities. I know the drill.

But they were out in the streets because they’re furious at what’s happening to public education in California — and they should be. It’s criminal. The state is headed for the very bottom, and at this rate we’ll soon have the worst-funded public schools in America. And a gem of a state higher education system is on its way to becoming a set of overpriced, second-rate institutions.

And now everyone who stood up to be counted last week needs to take the next step and support the only solution that will actually work. It’s called raising taxes.

California’s more than $20 billion in the hole. There’s money going to waste, plenty of it. We could release every prisoner doing time on drug charges and save a few billion. But even that wouldn’t be enough to save the education system.

We all knew, or should have known, back in 1978, when Proposition 13 passed, that this day was coming. When you cut off the main source of revenue for schools — local property taxes — and rely on state funding, and the state Legislature can’t raise new revenue without a two-thirds vote, which means a handful of troglodyte Republicans can prevent it, this kind of crisis is inevitable.

So some intense, ongoing political action has to come out of the exciting and wonderful Day of Action. And if it’s going to make a difference, the action has to take place on three fronts.

1. We’ve got to get rid of the two-thirds majority requirement. There’s a ballot initiative circulating now that would do that.

2. We’ve got to amend Prop. 13. Assembly Member Tom Ammiano is pushing for a split-roll, to tax commercial property at a higher rate. That’s an excellent start.

3. We’ve got to push local government to raise taxes — right here at home — to help fund schools and public services. That means pushing Mayor Gavin Newsom, who loves to crow about education, to work with the supervisors on some major new revenue measures.

Either that or we let the politicians point fingers and blame each other. And the schools fall apart.

Editor’s Notes

David Talbot

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March 3, 2010

0

Tredmond@sfbg.com

Hundreds of parents packed the Marina Middle School auditorium last week to talk about cuts to public education — and Assembly Member Tom Ammiano, who spoke about reforming Proposition 13, said he thought the response to his suggestions was overwhelmingly positive. That’s not surprising — public school parents in San Francisco are not really the demographic you worry about when you talk about raising taxes to pay for education.

And until fairly recently, I thought it was impossible to do anything worthwhile about tax policy on a statewide level. I figured the state Legislature, with its obstinate Republicans, could never launch a tax reform movement, and that passing a ballot measure to alter Prop. 13 was a long shot at the very best. I was the one telling local officials that we had to look to our own resources, right here in San Francisco.

But when I see hundreds of parents organizing around school cuts, and hundreds of Muni riders organizing around transit cuts, and tens of thousands of students organizing around cuts to higher education, I start to think: maybe there’s hope.

Maybe the state has gotten so bad, the red ink so awful, that Californians will finally realize that they can’t have good public services for free. And maybe they’ll realize that Prop. 13 does a lot more for big commercial property owners than for homeowners, and that a split-roll measure like the one Ammiano is proposing could raise the kind of money we need for decent schools and public services.

I have to hope so.

Editor’s Notes

David Talbot

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February 23, 2010

0

Tredmond@sfbg.com

Gavin Newsom never got any traction in the race for governor, in part because he completely alienated the progressive base in his hometown. And when you have unionized city employees holding protests outside your campaign fundraisers — and you’re in a Democratic primary in California — you’ve got serious problems.

And now, oddly enough, the progressives in San Francisco may be his biggest allies in the race for the second-place job of lieutenant governor.

There are some good reasons for that.

For starters, a lot of us thought that Newsom, whatever his positions on issues, wasn’t ready to run California — to deal with all of the massive problems the state faces and to take on the brutal politics of Sacramento. And I think his behavior during his brief gubernatorial campaign demonstrated that we were right.

But the Lite Guv job is a lot different. You don’t have to balance a state budget that’s $20 billion in the red; you don’t have to solve water problems. It’s a place where you can learn about state politics on the job, without really screwing things up.

And if his real goal is to run for U.S. Senate down the road, say, when Dianne Feinstein retires, he’ll be in a good place to launch that campaign.

But let’s face it. A lot of this is practical politics. With either Jerry Brown or Meg Whitman in the Governor’s Office, the state will continue to be screwed up and it will be even more important that cities take on their own economic destinies. And Newsom, as a bitter lame duck, simply can’t do that.

The progressive political community isn’t unanimous at all. But a lot of people are thinking that if Newsom’s ascension to Sacramento means that the district supervisors will have a chance to appoint a progressive mayor, it’s worth the trade-off.

Editor’s Notes

David Talbot

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February 16, 2010

1

Tredmond@sfbg.com

I have been watching and listening to the Meg Whitman for Governor ads, and they all seem to have the same basic message, one we’ve heard many times before from rich former executives wanting to get into politics. Whitman thinks that her experience in private business will make her a good governor, that she can run the state the same way she ran eBay.

Her policy proposals are horrible (just check out what she wants to do to the schools and how she plans to cut the state workforce by 40,000 people, a brilliant move in a recession). But beyond that, there’s a serious disconnect here.

See, California isn’t a business. And private-sector training, private-sector models, and private-sector management don’t translate very well.

At eBay, Whitman’s goal was to make money for shareholders. The idea was to expand markets, grow market share, increase revenue, and keep expenses low enough that at the end of the year, there’s a nice profit left over. Not to go all Marxist or anything, but you had to pay every employee a bit less than actual value of their work; that’s how investors make money.

California is — at best — a nonprofit, and even that model doesn’t directly apply. Forget the political skills it takes to work with the Legislature and thousands of interest groups and stakeholders. Just consider the basic economics.

The state doesn’t exist to make money, but to provide public services. Fiscal prudence may be necessary to keep things afloat, but it’s not the point. As the late, great David Brower used to say, any environmental group that isn’t busting its budget, isn’t doing enough work. Revenue doesn’t exist to pay dividends, or even big salaries. In a well-run state, just about every dollar that comes in gets spent. And many of the outcomes — the results that CEOs are always looking for — can’t be easily quantified, certainly not in the short term. (Spend an extra $20 billion on public education and you’ll definitely get better schools — but you might not get better test scores, certainly not for the first few years.)

There’s a reason that CEOs don’t tend to do well in politics. It’s a different game.

Editor’s Notes

David Talbot

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February 9, 2010

0

tredmond@sfbg.com

Progressives don’t have to be afraid of economic development, don’t have to be afraid of promoting business and creating private-sector employment. And we don’t have to be terrified of a mayor who wants to label anyone who opposes Reagan-era economic policies as anti-jobs.

The thing is, San Francisco needs to promote the biggest engine of new employment — small business — and needs to encourage entrepreneurship and innovation. But there’s enough good economic science out there, enough evidence of what works and what doesn’t, that we don’t have to be stupid.

The most obvious example of that is tax cuts. We talk about the mayor’s tax plans this week — and what’s most remarkable is the consensus among economists, even the city’s own economist, that what Newsom is proposing won’t work.

If cutting specific taxes for certain businesses — say, waiving the 1.5 percent payroll tax for biotech — would actually lead local companies to hire hundreds of new people, it might be worth the budget pain. But that’s not going to happen. If allowing developers to pay their affordable housing fees years down the road would put thousands of construction workers back on the job, you could make the case for it — but nobody with any sense really thinks that’s likely.

What do we know would create employment opportunities? Well, a giant affordable housing bond, hundreds of millions in city money going to build new apartments, would generate construction jobs. But what most small businesses really need, what would really encourage hiring, is credit. If San Francisco took the money it’s going to expend (and tax cuts are an expense; let’s be honest) and put all of it into a revolving microloan fund for community businesses, we’d get a lot more jobs. In fact, almost any way that San Francisco spends that money on direct services would create more jobs than these tax cuts.

That’s not politics or ideology or anything else. It’s just reality.

Editor’s Notes

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February 3, 2010

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The mayor of San Francisco is mad that the Board of Supervisors won’t even schedule a hearing on his proposals to stimulate business and job creation in San Francisco. He ought to be happy. If this loopy plan ever gets to the point of open, full discussion, Gavin Newsom will wind up with a real political embarrassment.

Let’s analyze, for example, the suggestion that the city waive payroll taxes for biotech companies. That’s supposed to make those companies more likely to hire new people. After all, any economist knows that taxing something discourages people from doing it, so taxing a payroll ought to make companies less likely to hire. And getting rid of that tax ought to create jobs.

Well, since one of the things I do is help run a small business in San Francisco, let me explain how it actually works.

Say you’re a biotech company that wants to hire a new entry-level worker at a modest $35,000 a year. Can you afford it? Let’s cost it out.

There’s the salary, of course. Then there’s the 7.5 percent you’re paying in federal Social Security tax. That’s $2,626 more. And since you’re in San Francisco, you’re paying for health insurance; that’s probably between $2,000 and $4,000 a year, depending on the plan, but let’s peg it at the city’s minimum mandate, which is $1.09 an hour, or $2,267.

So now your $35,000 worker costs $39,893. Then there’s unemployment and disability insurance and workers’ compensation. The person’s going to need a desk and a chair, or a lab bench and a stool (and they have to be ergonomically correct), and probably a computer, a phone line, and software. And you’re going to have to spend some money on training. You’re going to offer a couple weeks of paid vacation, right? And you have to give sick days. So you have to account for the money you’re spending to cover your new worker when he or she isn’t working. If it all pencils out at less than $42,000, you’re doing well.

Oh, wait, I forgot — there’s the damn city payroll tax. That job-killing factor that could make the difference between hiring and not hiring. Better account for that; it could be a deal breaker.

Are you holding your breath? Ready for the ax to fall? Here you go: the payroll tax on your new hire is a whopping $525 a year. About $10 a week. You probably spent more on the help wanted ads.

So let’s be honest — the payroll tax may sound awful (and actually, I think a gross receipts tax would be more fair, for a lot of reasons). But suspending it won’t create a single new job. It’s too small a factor to count as more than decimal dust in anyone’s hiring decisions.

Here’s what suspending the payroll tax for biotech companies will do: reduce city revenue, almost certainly by enough to force more program cuts, and that means more job cuts for city workers. So you gain no private sector jobs — zero — and you lose public sector jobs. How, exactly, is that encouraging employment growth?

Quit complaining, Mr. Mayor — the last thing your proposals need is real public scrutiny.

Editor’s Notes

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January 27, 2010

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When Ronald Reagan took office as president in 1981, Democrats controlled the House of Representatives and the Republicans only had a narrow majority in the Senate. Yet Reagan was able to undertake a series of profound, far-reaching and radical policy changes that transformed the United States. He cut taxes on the rich, deregulated industries, drove up the military budget (and the deficit) and reshaped the Supreme Court — all without seeking bipartisan unity or offering major concessions to the Democrats.

That, I think, is why so many people are so mad at the Obama administration — and why we shouldn’t panic about the loss of a Senate seat in Massachusetts. Yeah, it’s terrible (and historic) to lose Ted Kennedy’s seat to a weak and lame Republican. And it’s alarming to think the Democrats could lose several more Senate seats this fall.

But that shouldn’t either stop Obama from pushing a legislative agenda or terrify the Democrats into paralysis.

Look, the Democrats still control Washington. The Republicans still have no ideas of their own, and are doing nothing but obstructing progress so the Obama administration will fail. And nobody seems to be calling them on it. The Democrats were a lot more vocal (and acted a lot more like Democrats) when Bush was in office.

I can’t get too agitated about the loss of a 60-vote majority in the Senate; the Democrats never really had that anyway. One of the 60 was Joe Lieberman, who isn’t even a Democrat in name anymore and who held Obama hostage, demanded concessions and cave-ins for his vote on health care, and still couldn’t be trusted. Now there are 58 Democrats instead of 59; most Democratic presidents in the past century would have loved those numbers. So would most Republicans.

And let’s remember — the economy was almost as bad during Reagan’s first year as it is now, and it wasn’t showing any signs of getting better.

Reagan was a Hollywood-trained actor who’d been a pitchman for cigarette companies; he knew how to look into a camera and make an emotional case for his positions. Obama is by far the best speaker the Democrats have had in decades, and he has the natural ability to go beyond what Reagan did. He can go after the Republicans, make the case for legislative action, push the voters to push their senators and Congress members to approve his agenda, and turn this political funk around. But he’s got to give up the bipartisan rhetoric (been there, tried that), convince the millions of people who put their hopes in him that there’s still reason to believe, and stop looking at the Massachusetts vote as a rejection of progressive policies.

The mood in the country is anxious, restive, impatient, and displeased — not with the ideas Obama presented during his campaign, but with his failure to make them happen. He can still turn this around by talking about the economy, creating (public sector) jobs — now — and using the still-solid majorities in Congress.

Or he can get all defensive and change course. We know how well that’s going to work.

Editor’s Notes

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January 20, 2010

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I was in the Haight the other day, and saw something that would have made Police Chief George Gascón and Chronicle columnist C.W. Nevius apoplectic. A group of young people, mostly men, were sitting right in the middle of the sidewalk. The scofflaws weren’t blocking my path since I was on Haight and they were a ways up Ashbury. But if I had wanted to walk in that direction, they would have been in the way. Which means they were already breaking the law, and if I’d complained and a cop had come along, they probably would have stood up and walked away. I can’t imagine they would have been arrested. In fact, if a beat officer had been walking Haight Street, they wouldn’t have been sitting there in the first place.

Gascón and Nevius are beating the drums for a “sit-lie” law, which would make it a crime to sit or lie on a public sidewalk. Since young thugs hassling residents, tourists, and shoppers in the Haight have become a problem, the sit-lie thing has legs; it could become this year’s version of Care Not Cash, the utterly bogus but politically catchy slogan that put Gavin Newsom in the Mayor’s Office.

There’s a populist anger about the poor behavior of a relatively small number of losers who are making life difficult for the generally upscale residents of the Haight, and progressives can’t ignore it. Frustration over decades of failed homeless policies made Newsom’s tough-love measure attractive. Explaining that it would never work, that it wasn’t a rational policy response, didn’t get the left anywhere.

That’s what we’re dealing with here. I can tell you, after watching Haight Street and its various generations of problems for more than 25 years, that a sit-lie law won’t solve anything. I can tell you that as soon as an officer approaches the troublemakers sitting on the street, they’ll do what any sane small-time crook would do: they’ll stand up. Then they’ll walk a few blocks away. If it keeps up, they’ll stop sitting down altogether. You can threaten, bully, and hassle people just as easily from a standing position.

And if they do get arrested, they’ll be released quickly (the city’s overcrowded jails, packed to the gills with the folks Gascón has rounded up in his Tenderloin sweeps, has no room for people charged with a minor crime like sitting on the sidewalk). Then they’ll be back.

I can tell you that the cost of arresting, charging, prosecuting, defending, and incarcerating these jerks would be way higher than the cost of having two cops walk up and down Haight Street all day, in uniform — a move that would absolutely solve the problem.

But this isn’t about rationality — it’s about emotion. Gascón has done a brilliant job, with the help of the Chron, of framing this as hard-headed law enforcement against the liberal supervisors.

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, no fan of street crime, wants a hearing on the issue, to get some rational facts on the table. That’s a good start — but we need an alternative proposal. How about a test: try having two cops walk the beat every day for three months, a visible community policing presence on Haight Street. If that doesn’t work, we can always try something else.

Editor’s Notes

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December 29, 2009

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A year ago, we were dancing in the streets celebrating Barack Obama’s election. Now we’re marching in the streets protesting his escalation of the war in Afghanistan — and a lot of us are calling for the defeat of his signature legislation. That’s a failure that goes well beyond a couple of bad policy decisions, and it threatens more than just the next few years of Obama’s presidency.

The late philosopher Herbert Marcuse used to say that the worst disaster of the Vietnam War was the division it created between the baby boomers and their parents, the generational distrust that would last well beyond the final artillery fire. And I fear that the worst legacy of Afghanistan and the mess that is health care reform will be another deep blow to whatever fragile faith remains among young Americans that a well-meaning president and his party can make a difference, the faith that government can accomplish something worthwhile — and that the public sector is worth the fight it takes to save it from a well-organized and lavishly funded effort to continue the privatization of the United States.

The fight over the public option in the health care bill wasn’t just about containing costs, or preventing tax hikes, or mandating fair competition. The insurance industry knew that from the start.

One of the reasons the radical right has always hated Social Security is that it’s a government program that helps people, one that tens of millions of citizens rely on and support. When the government sends you a check every month, you tend to think of the folks in Washington as something other than crooks, liars, and villains.

And if the government offered health insurance that cost less than the private companies, covered more, and was less of a hassle to use, then millions more American voters would begin to realize that the public sector can do some things very well — much better than private industry. And that would be a social transformation on the scale of the New Deal.

So that’s why the insurers and their toadies wouldn’t allow it to happen — and why, in the wake of the Afghanistan fiasco, Obama’s failure to force the issue is such a momentous disappointment.

Just look around the streets of San Francisco at any antiwar demonstration and you see the problem. We’re mad at the president, not at the insurance industry. Nobody’s marching in front of the headquarters of the handful of big companies that have — as a matter of course and intentional policy — destroyed the health care system in America. We figure: hey, they’re just big businesses, doing what they do.

So instead, we’re going to be pissed off for a long time at the man who — maybe for just a moment, one bright shining moment — had the ability to turn around about 50 years of cynicism and distrust that has poisoned American politics. And we should be pissed, because he let us down. He promised us hope. Now he’s giving up, without even putting up much of a fight.

Editor’s Notes

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December 21, 2009