News and Politics | San Francisco Bay Guardian

News & Opinion

Party on

-
0

› amanda@sfbg.com

"San Franciscans will still be able to enjoy their beer in the park at the event," an elated Robbie Kowal told the Guardian on the afternoon of June 2, fresh out of a meeting in which the Mayor’s Office brokered a deal to save the North Beach Jazz Fest.

The event had been jeopardized by the May 30 decision by the Recreation and Park Commission to uphold a move by its staff and Operations Committee to deny the sale of alcohol in Washington Square Park. The San Francisco Examiner even erroneously declared the event dead on its June 1 cover.

But the Mayor’s Office intervened and hosted a long day of negotiations among the event organizers — Kowal, Alistair Munroe, and John Miles — and representatives from the commission, the Rec and Park staff, and the San Francisco Police Department.

In keeping with the commission’s May 30 decision, alcohol will not be sold in the park but on the street adjacent to the park in a gated beer garden. A portion of the park will be designated for people wishing to enjoy a glass of beer or wine while remaining near the live music.

"We’ve worked something out that allows everyone to move forward and the commission to stand by its policy," Yomi Agunbiade, general manager of the Rec and Park Department, told us.

"It doesn’t change the nature of the event," said Kowal, who had been concerned that a change in practice from minibars in the park to beer gardens in the streets would deter festivalgoers and detract from the general enjoyment of the event.

The organizers were prepared to fight for their vision of the festival and had filed an appeal with the commission to review the issue. Without the sale of alcohol, the festival anticipated losing between $20,000 and $40,000, enough to potentially necessitate calling the whole show off.

But after nearly four hours of public testimony at the last meeting about the jazz fest and the North Beach Festival, commissioners weren’t too excited about another round and were pushing for a compromise. "Everybody was interested in making sure the jazz festival folks knew the event was supported and that we wanted it to stay," said Agunbiade. "The right people were in the room."

Yet those not in the room were the North Beach NIMBYs who forced the booze ban, and it’s unclear how they’ll react to the decision. Event organizers around the city have been closely following the North Beach situation, concerned that it was the start of a conservative trend in policy and a new wave of intolerance for alcohol consumption in public (see "The Death of Fun," May 24).

Commissioner Jim Lazarus cited the inherent dangers of a hard-line policy, telling the Guardian, "The precedent could be very bad. I don’t know how we’re going to deal with it at other parks."

The San Francisco Outdoor Events Coalition, a newly formed group of events organizers and promoters, has been calling for a hold on radical changes in policy until after the summer festival season, and it seems as though that call has finally been answered at City Hall.

"What we all have learned from this process was we should have communicated earlier," Agunbiade said after the meeting. "What we will do after events are over this year is sit down and discuss any changes more in depth and evaluate how it went."

Agunbiade said they will be looking at each festival on a case-by-case basis and will try to work with the individual needs of the venues and events. He added that they plan to "communicate a lot sooner and a lot more often to make sure these kinds of situations don’t occur."

The compromise for the jazz fest has been extended to the North Beach Festival as well, but promoter Marsha Garland faces other obstacles. After the commission denied her festival a permit for booze sales in the park, Garland received permission from the Interdepartmental Staff Committee on Traffic and Transportation for additional beer gardens on the street.

But that decision has been appealed by Anthony Gantner, a local lawyer and president of the North Beach Merchants Association (rival to Garland’s North Beach Chamber of Commerce, which hosts the North Beach Festival).

Garland says she won’t breathe a sigh of relief until after the ISCOTT hearing June 8, just a week before the festival. SFBG

Questioning their bosses

-
0

gwschulz@sfbg.com

Telephone interviewers for the influential San Francisco–based Field Research Corp. are trying to unionize but are getting resistance from the company. They have filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board asking that the federal agency oversee their election for membership in an AFL-CIO affiliate.

About 40 of the employees out of 50 have so far signed up to join Communication Workers of America Local 9415, hoping to secure increased hourly wages (they currently start at San Francisco’s minimum hourly wage of $8.62, earning 50¢ or so more if they’re bilingual), a health care package, and other improvements that will stem what they say is a chronically high turnover rate.

Field Research is one of the most respected political pollsters in the state. Major newspapers across California, including the San Francisco Chronicle, regularly rely on the company’s Field Poll to gauge public opinion on everything from electoral candidates and earthquakes to steroids and immigration. The company also performs taxpayer-subsidized surveys for some county health departments.

But Field Research’s employees say they’re not being paid nearly enough to cold-call strangers at supper time to ask them if they support queer marriage rights or whether they think Barry Bonds should be penalized for doping. The workers claim the company offers no holiday or sick pay and requires them to average 37.5-hour weeks for six months before becoming eligible for health care benefits. Their schedules never permit them to meet the average, they say, and predictably, just a handful of workers have the benefits. And raises, they contend, are mere pennies.

When a delegation of the interviewers arrived at Field Research’s Sutter Street corporate offices on May 30 to request recognition of the union, they say, CFO Nancy Rogers refused to speak with them and threatened to call the police. Their only legal option then was the NLRB, which will first direct Field Research and the workers to determine who is eligible to vote on union membership and then set an election date.

"We wanted to say, ‘Look, you’re a San Francisco institution,’” said Yonah Camacho Diamond, an organizer for Local 9415. “‘You pride yourself on integrity. Will you voluntarily recognize?’ They threw us out of the building."

Daniel Butler began working for Field Research in October 2003, he told the Guardian during a small press conference at City Hall June 2. He was soon promoted to a quality monitoring position. But, he says, after he expressed his concerns to management about the quality of survey information gathered by temp workers the company had hired, he was suspended for three days and his position was eliminated. He says he was told that his complaints were "unprofessional."

"The message they were sending was, rather than make an effort to improve quality or encourage better work through higher wages, let’s just get rid of the position that monitors quality altogether," said Butler, who eventually sought Local 9415’s help in March.

Rogers sent a memo to the staff May 31 stating that the workers had a right to a union election, while also issuing a warning that could portend rocky relations between management and workers at the company.

"Many of you think that by getting a union, your wages, hours and working conditions will automatically change," the letter reads. "That is simply not the case. If the union gets in, the company will bargain in good faith, but it will not enter into agreements that are either not in its best business interests or that could eliminate the jobs of many of our part-time employees."

Rogers, for the most part, declined to comment for the Guardian when we reached her by telephone, citing the NLRB’s ongoing procedures.

"All I can really say is this is now before the National Labor Relations Board," she said. "We want to make sure this is fair and equitable and follow due process."

Tim Paulson, executive director of the San Francisco Labor Council, told the workers at the June 2 press conference that they were within their rights to pursue unionization.

"This is a union town," he said. "One of the goals we have is that people should have a voice at work." SFBG

The cable that bind s

-
0

› sarah@sfbg.com

Oakland, San Francisco, and other California cities have in recent years tried to negotiate maximum public benefits under their franchise agreement with cable television provider Comcast, but all have backed down when the telecom giant threatened costly litigation.

The latest episode played out May 30 at the Oakland City Council meeting when the council voted to repeal an ordinance that would have required franchisees like Comcast to allow workers to decide whether they want to form a union.

Comcast — dubbed the “Wal-Mart of Telecom” by the American Right to Work Foundation — not only sued Oakland over the ordinance but also decided to void a tentative franchise agreement with the city that had taken three and a half years to work out.

Comcast officials claim the company walked away from the contract because two years had elapsed since major parts of the agreement had been hammered out and during that time the competitive field had shifted.

As for the lawsuit, company officials argue that Oakland’s union ordinance is preempted by federal law and that the city doesn’t have a “proprietary interest” in its franchise.

A proprietary interest occurs when a city has to manage critical public rights-of-way, such as streets, alleys, and utility easements, and must make sure it receives fair compensation for the ongoing use of those public properties by private entities, like Comcast.

In such situations, a city must ensure the efficient and cost-effective management of its public rights-of-way and must maximize benefit and minimize risk, including the risk of a labor-<\h>management conflict that could arise from a union organizing campaign.

That, at least, was the argument the city of Oakland made when it drew up its labor ordinance, and it was the argument that city council president Ignacio De La Fuente continued to make at the May 30 council meeting.

Councilmember Desley Brooks managed to sound like a Comcast apologist by claiming the city had been wrong to pass the ordinance in the first place.

“We knew that when this ordinance was passed, we had no basis to do it,” Brooks said. “We can try and justify why we did it, but federal law is settled in this matter.”

But De La Fuente was joined by Councilmember Jane Brunner and Vice Mayor Jean Quan in insisting that the city wasn’t backing down because it was wrong, but because it couldn’t afford to fight with a deep-<\h>pocketed monopoly in court.

That was the same argument that led the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to narrowly approve a four-year contract extension with Comcast last September, rather than negotiate better public access and other community benefits as part of the contract.

San Jose, Walnut Creek, and other cities have also been tied up in expensive litigation with Comcast, which has virtually unlimited resources and a willingness to spend big in court fights and the political arena. But a bill now moving through the California State Legislature has the potential to shake up the cable television playing field — some say, in ways that are hard to predict.

The Digital Infrastructure and Video Competition Act, authored by Assembly speaker Fabian N??ñez, seeks to allow telephone companies like AT&T and Verizon to provide television services through fiber-<\h>optic lines and thereby compete with Comcast and other cable providers.

The landmark bill, AB 2987, cleared the Assembly on a 70–<\d>0 vote the day after the Oakland City Council repealed its ordinance. It is now awaiting consideration — and possible modification — by the Senate.

It is being watched carefully by Communications Workers of America, which represents 700,000 workers nationally, including 2,000 in the Bay Area, and is one of the few labor unions that is growing.

As CWA field coordinator Lisa Morowitz explained, for cities to take on Comcast individually, as Oakland, Walnut Creek, and San Jose have tried without success to do, is like David fighting Goliath.

“It’s one step forward, two steps back,” Morowitz told the Guardian. Nevertheless, she believes Oakland has substantial leverage in future negotiations with Comcast, precisely because of the N??ñez bill.

“CWA supports AB 2987,” Morowitz said, “because we believe it’s going to create conditions more favorable for cities, communities, and workers by bringing competition to video service.”

She acknowledged that the bill won’t directly address the issues raised during Oakland’s ordinance battle, but, she said, “theoretically, it will create more accountability.”

CWA argues that in addition to creating competition in the video services marketplace, the bill will replace city-by-city franchising deals that have led to steep rate increases, protect revenue streams for local governments, and expand local tax bases.

But Sydney Levy of San Francisco–<\d>based Media Alliance worries that it will simply help the titans of industry and not the communities they supposedly serve.

“I understand that labor thinks it has a better chance of being able to organize within companies if there’s more competition and AT&T is pitted against Verizon is pitted against Comcast,” Levy told us. “But I disagree with CWA on how to have that competition be fair. It’s like energy deregulation. It sounded cute, but it wasn’t. So, we can’t be stupid this time around. We need to do it in a way that’s good for cities, consumers, and communities.”

The goal of franchise agreements that cities enter into with cable companies is to ensure that providers cover the entire city, provide public affairs programming, and pay for their use of public rights-of-way.

“But with the new bill, there’s no enforcement, no contractual obligations, no timetable,” claimed Levy, who worries that under the proposed arrangement Comcast’s competitors could say, “We can’t put fiber everywhere; we’ll upgrade as we see fit.”

“But that’s not good enough,” said Levy, who also worries that the bill will screw up community media locally and that redlining — providing new services in higher-<\h>income neighborhoods while bypassing areas already underserved by broadband services — may well occur.

And then there’s the sticky matter of ceding control to Sacramento.

“If we don’t have the ability to complain at the city level, then we’ll have to take all our fights to Sacramento, where we don’t have equal access,” Levy said. “That would be disastrous for local decision making.”

To his mind, AB 2987 is about cable vs. phone companies, and not about what’s best for the public interest.

“Having competition is a good thing for cities, consumers, and communities, but having competition that is unfair to communities and dismantles protections is not. We need to fix what’s in the Senate version,” he argued.

Levy believes that Comcast is playing a wait-and-see game as the N??ñez bill makes its way through Sacramento and that Oakland should continue to negotiate with Comcast for the best franchise deal possible.

“Because it may be the last franchise deal Oakland gets,” he explained, warning that if AB 2987 passes unmodified in the Senate, “we’re going to go from an irresponsible monopoly system to one that’s a system of unfair competition.”

But N??ñez deputy chief of staff Steve Maviglio told the Guardian that without the N??ñez bill, “cities have as much choice as they did in the former Soviet Union…. This bill is a powerful incentive for other providers.” Maviglio said that the bill language could still be modified in the Senate, but that its basic goal is clear.

“We hope this bill will save consumers money, lead to more competition, and prevent redlining,” he said. “We want to make sure under<\h>served communities don’t get left out of the digital picture.”

Comcast is the 800-pound gorilla lurking behind the vote in Sacramento, the force that all cities are looking to find some leverage against.

San Francisco supervisor Ross Mirkarimi told us that the Board of Supervisors had tailored legislation that mimicked Oakland’s union-<\h>organizing ordinance but abandoned it on the advice of CWA and the SF Labor Council because of what was happening to Oakland at the hands of Comcast.

To Mirkarimi’s mind, the best solution is neither piecemeal ordinances nor statewide laws, but for cities to municipalize their telecom and Internet systems.

“We would not be facing these kind of legal challenges if San Francisco was able to municipalize,” he told us.

And that’s precisely what San Francisco is now pursuing. A proposal by Sup. Tom Ammiano to study the creation of a citywide municipal broadband system — to be installed as streets are opened up for sewer lines or other infrastructure needs — was recently put out to bid.

Ammiano told the Guardian he expects to get some preliminary indications as to whether the system would be viable as soon as this summer, and he’s confident San Francisco will ultimately be in the position to offer television and other broadband services to city residents.

Mirkarimi, who supports the proposal, said it’s the best hope to “redeem our utility democracy as it pertains to our cable industry.” SFBG

Big Brother, where art thou?

-
0

›gwschulz@sfbg.com

One question seemed to stand out at the San Francisco Police Commission’s May 24 meeting, where it was considering the issue of security cameras being placed in high-crime neighborhoods across the city.

"Is there a plan to phase these out at any time?" commissioner Joe Veronese asked Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who was presenting his recently proposed legislation to regulate the cameras. "Or is the idea that we just have more and more of these going up?"

Mirkarimi admitted that the idea of at some point phasing out the cameras has so far not been considered by the Board of Supervisors. He told the commission that it’s still too early to even determine how much the cameras would help in mitigating crime. But he added that some of his constituents who support the cameras "are very insistent that this not be layered with red tape."

Worried about privacy rights, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California wants the board to do away with the cameras completely and consider alternatives such as community policing. Even Mirkarimi compared the cameras to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, which is getting closer to nonfiction. But he insisted to the commission that the cameras "are not a substitute to policing, whatsoever."

Mirkarimi would seem an unlikely proponent of the cameras. He’s one of the most progressive supervisors on the board; yet he represents a Western Addition neighborhood with growing crime problems. Mirkarimi’s aide Boris Delepine told the Guardian that the cameras were inevitable — strongly pushed by Mayor Gavin Newsom — and the supervisor was simply hoping to get some civil liberties protections in place before the program stretched across the city.

"We feel that the cameras are going up regardless," Delepine said, "and we’d like for there to be a public process when they do."

London has perhaps the largest number of citywide security cameras, with around 200,000; other industrialized cities are just beginning to debate and install them. The cameras raise real civil liberties questions, but supporters want their help with evidence gathering when witnesses are too afraid to step forward.

Since installation of the cameras began in San Francisco as a pilot program last July, the ACLU has pointed to a batch of studies it claims dispute any suggestion that the cameras elsewhere have either reduced crime or provided valuable evidence for criminal prosecutions, including in London.

"The ACLU is opposed to video surveillance cameras because they intrude on people’s privacy and they have no proven law-enforcement benefit," Elizabeth Zitrin, a board member of the ACLU’s San Francisco chapter, told the commission May 24.

Critics have acknowledged some of the protective measures that Newsom included in the original pilot program: Footage is erased after 72 hours unless it is believed to contain evidence of a crime, and where possible, cameras are not trained on individual homes. But ACLU Police Practices Policy director Mark Schlosberg told us he fears proliferation of the cameras will be impossible to stop.

"Privacy is sensitive," he said. "Once you lose it, it’s very difficult to get it back."

Indeed, commissioner Veronese’s question seemed to answer itself for the most part. Would there ever come a time in San Francisco when crime rates were so low that the city would remove the cameras in deference to civil liberties? Presumably not.

Two board committees have reviewed Mirkarimi’s legislation since it was introduced in January, but the full board recently delayed its vote until after the proposal could be considered by the Police Commission, which voiced its unanimous support May 24. The board was scheduled to vote on a first reading June 6 after Guardian press time.

Mirkarimi’s measure would require that the Police Commission hear public comment from affected residents before new groups of cameras are installed in individual neighborhoods. In addition, signs would be posted nearby to inform residents that the cameras were operating, and police inspectors would have to file a written request with the Emergency Communications Department before footage could be obtained and used as evidence of a crime.

The Office of Emergency Communications currently oversees two of the cameras, but did not know how often the Police Department has used any of the surveillance footage. The department’s Investigations Bureau could not respond to our inquiries by deadline.

Last July’s pilot program began with 2 cameras in the Western Addition. Since then, 33 more cameras have appeared at 14 locations in the Mission, Bayview, and Excelsior districts, and Newsom recently proposed the installation of around 20 more.

Mayoral spokesperson Peter Ragone said Newsom reviewed similar security camera programs in several other cities, including LA, Chicago, and New York, and insisted that case law confirms surveillance footage can be used as effective criminal evidence. He wasn’t aware of cases in San Francisco in which such evidence had been used, however.

"We asked the ACLU to sit down and help us develop guidelines for the placement and use of [the cameras],” he said. "They said no, so we went around the country and looked to other best practices for guidelines and procedures." SFBG

The health insurance system: a crash course

-
0

OPINION I am a family practice physician who recently opened a solo office in San Francisco. Since deciding to make a go of it on my own, I have, by necessity, undergone a crash course in the politics of medicine.

Change in our current system will only come about as the result of an educated public insisting on it. So, in terms as simple as I can manage, here is how it works:

You sign up for health insurance. You and/or your employer pay a monthly premium, and your insurer promises to cover some (but not all) of the health care costs you incur.

In exchange for the insurance company listing him or her as a network provider, your doctor agrees to accept the company’s payment rates and abide by its complex policies. These include rules to verify your insurance, document the visit, and submit the bills.

Your doctor has to hire someone to collect all your insurance information and verify the accuracy with your insurer before each visit. A second person is hired to review the charges and make sure they comply with the endless rules the insurance company has put in place.

In order to pay for the two new layers of bureaucracy, your doctor shortens the amount of time he or she spends with you. This allows him or her to see more patients per day.

The insurance company then comes up with all sorts of excuses for why it won’t pay for services you received, or won’t pay the amount it originally promised.

Your doctor now has to hire someone to fight the insurance companies for payment. Your doctor shortens appointment times further to pay for this additional level of bureaucracy.

Your doctor no longer has enough time to explore and discuss lifestyle factors that may be causing your symptoms. Instead, he or she takes the more time-efficient route of ordering a slew of lab tests and expensive studies when you come in with a complaint.

You never see the bills associated with your visits to the doctor and the testing performed, which creates the illusion that you are getting all this medical care for free.

The unnecessary testing drives up the cost to insurers.

The insurance companies see their profits decline and take steps to correct this, such as denying insurance to those with "preexisting conditions" (often something as simple as a brief period of depression).

Now your doctor has to hire someone else to deal with all the paperwork this additional bureaucratic level creates.

Again, appointment times are shortened. Not only do you have an endless wait to be seen, but you have to come back multiple times to get your questions answered.

The cost to insurers goes up further.

The insurance companies see their profits start to decline once again, so they pass the cost on to you or your employer by increasing your premium.

The patients are dissatisfied.

The doctors are dissatisfied.

And the insurance companies? Well, their shareholders are quite pleased. SFBG

Samantha Malm, MD, is one of a growing number of physicians who have decided not to contract with private insurance companies.

{Empty title}

-
0

› tredmond@sfbg.com

I sat in the second row at McKinley Elementary School’s “junior Olympics” last week, right behind Superintendent Gwen Chan, who is doing a pretty good job so far, and district spokesperson Lorna Ho, who remains the most annoying public relations person I’ve ever had to deal with, and as I watched the kids do this amazing opening ceremony on the playground, I realized how much I love San Francisco public schools.

I don’t always love the school board, and I don’t always love the flacks at headquarters, and I really, really didn’t love the last superintendent, but on some level, that doesn’t really matter. On the ground — in the places where teaching actually happens, in the classrooms, in the auditorium, on the playground — my public school is amazing.

There’s nowhere near enough money. It’s not an easy, upper-middle-class student population. But the principal, Bonnie Coffey-Smith, is fantastic, the teachers are all full of energy, and the students — all of the students — are learning.

I could have spent tens of thousands of dollars a year on a private school, and I don’t think my son, Michael, could possibly have gotten a better educational experience than the one he’s getting now.

Onward: It’s been 25 years, exactly, since the first AIDS cases were documented, and 10 years, more or less, since Paul O’Connell died.

Paulo was my best friend. We met in college, smoked a lot of pot, and dreamed about world revolution. After we both (narrowly) emerged with our diplomas, we drove out west, escaping a nasty law enforcement problem in upstate New York, losing all of our worldly possessions to burglars in Chicago, scrounging some blankets from an old motel so we wouldn’t freeze when we slept on the ground in the Rockies, and finally running out of gas and money in San Francisco. We stayed for a while, then hit the road again and wound up in an apartment in East Hartford, Conn.; in a commune (of sorts) in the New England woods; in a house in Croton, NY; and on a buffalo ranch in Oklahoma before we eventually came home, to a slum on Hayes Street with no shower and no doors.

And always, everywhere, Paulo loved life.

We lived together for three years or so, all told, until I moved in with my girlfriend and Paulo went to work for Ralph Nader in DC. I saw him a few times a year, usually when the Grateful Dead were in town. It was about 1987 when he told me he was gay, which was a big whatever — except that Paulo was never good about safety, and that was a dangerous time. He loved to party, hated condoms because they never seemed to fit right, and figured if he got an AIDS test every couple of months, he’d be OK.

Then one of the tests came back positive.

Paulo fought bravely: He never once complained, never slowed down, and refused to give up the pursuit of happiness. But that was before the drug cocktails, when there wasn’t any truly effective treatment. In the end, the plague was stronger than Paulo. I still miss him, every damn day.

And here’s the thing: There are 80,000 stories like that one, just in San Francisco alone.

As long as the rest of us live, that’s something we should never forget. SFBG

Live election coverage!

-
0

A simple, fair tenant bill

-
0

 

 

A simple, fair tenant bill

 

 

 

Legislation that would ban landlords from arbitrarily eliminating services or restricting access to common space in residential units is likely to get seven votes at the Board of Supervisors June 6th. It’s also likely to get a mayoral veto. So tenant advocates ought to be putting the pressure on Sup. Bevan Dufty, who is one of the mayor’s allies – but is also in a district where a majority of the voters are renters.

 

The bill, by Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, would end what some tenants say is a growing practice: Landlords suddenly take away parking spaces, access to laundry facilities, or the use of storage space, in the hope that it will drive out tenants who are protected by rent control. The current law forbids evictions without “just cause” – but that provision apparently doesn’t apply to anything other than the actual place where a tenant lives.

 

There are all sorts of opportunities for abuse here: A landlord could evict a tenant from his or her parking or storage space, then offer to rent it back at a high price. Or those sorts of amenities could be doled out to tenants who never complain about living conditions, and withheld from tenants who try to exercise their rights. Or – most likely – a landlord desperate to get rid of a tenants who is paying below-market rent could take away every possible amenity until that tenant gives up and moves away, allowing the landlord to raise the rent for the next tenant.

 

The fix is simple, and won’t cost landlords any extra money. Mirarimi’s bill is just basic fairness: If you offer a garage as part of the original rental deal, you can’t suddenly take it back without a valid reason. If you include on-site laundry facilities as part of the lease, you can’t arbitrarily lock the door to the laundry room and give only certain favored tenants a key.

 

Dufty is up for re-election this fall, and is almost certain to face some serious opposition from the left. With three of the mayor’s four allies – Sean Ellsernd, Michela Alioto-Pier and Finoa Ma – pretty much immovable, Dufty’s been in a position to make or break legislation by being the eighth vote to make a bill veto-proof. And since Newsom has vetoed every significant piece of tenant legislation to come before him, Dufty needs to feel the heat: Is he on the side of tenants – when it matters?

 

This one is a great test case: The legislation is so simple and fair, it’s hard to imagine how a reasonable landlord could oppose it. Let’s see if Dufty’s willing to stand with the tenants on one that ought to be a no-brainer. Give him a call, at 554-6968.

 

Dastardly dailies

-
0

Why oh why does San Francisco have such terrible daily newspapers? In one of the most progressive cities in the country, why must we be subjected to Carla Marinucci’s regular hit pieces on the most liberal candidate in any race on the Chronicle’s front pages, or Examiner columnist Ken Garcia’s sanctimonious, truth-challenged screeds against progressives? Why do these papers so consistently sabotage human progress?
If you’re looking for evidence of the Chron’s political agenda, just read Marinucci’s two front-page stories in the last two days, both of which made the exact same accusation against gubernatorial hopeful Phil Angelides: The stories said rich developer Angelo Tsakopoulos was trying to buy the election, and a future governor’s allegiance, with about $9 million worth of independent expenditures favoring Angelides.
Such editorial overkill is clearly designed to hurt Angelides and help his Chronicle-endorsed challenger, Steve Westly. Why else would both articles bury or ignore key facts in the story?
Tsakopoulos isn’t the political neophyte Marinucci pretends he is. He’s actually been one the top regular contributors to Democrats for almost a generation (Bill Clinton used to stay with Tsakopoulos during California visits throughout his presidency); he’s also a close friend and mentor to Angelides, not simply someone trying to buy his way into a position of influence. Tsakopoulos already had Angelides’ ear; he didn’t need to spend a dime to get it.
I’m certainly not arguing that sizable independent expenditures aren’t notable, worrisome, or newsworthy. In fact, the Guardian this week reported that Sup. Fiona Ma has benefited from more than $750,000 in IEs on her behalf, most of that from the same sorts of corporate power brokers that the Chronicle regularly supports.
So why didn’t this story make the Chronicle’s front page even once, let alone on two consecutive days the week before the election? After all, the money spent on Ma’s behalf was a far higher percentage of the campaign spending in that race – and will likely have a bigger impact – than what Tsakopoulos spent on the governor’s race.
And it came from sources who really do have an interest in influencing Ma – the tobacco and liquor lobbies, gaming interests, developers, and her old boss, John Burton, who wants to retain his power broker status.
Maybe one reason is the fact that the Chronicle endorsed Ma and has been running the very attack ads that these IEs paid for (which, not so coincidentally, run right next to the web versions of Marinucci’s stories).
Another reason could be Marinucci’s barely concealed schoolgirl crush on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who her articles have described in terms that are flattering and deceptive (see “Couple in the news," www.sfbg.com/40/17/news_shorts.html). It happens again and again. Just pop over to sfgate.com, do a search using “Marinucci and Schwarzenegger” and you’ll see what I mean.
I sent an e-mail to Marinucci and five Chronicle editors raising these points, and here was Marinucci’s response: “As a longtime reader of the San Francisco Bay Guardian, I’m going to refer you to a wonderful motto which I know your publisher, Bruce Brugmann, and many of the people on your staff understand. It’s on your paper’s masthead: "It is a newspaper’s duty to print the news and raise hell.”
    “It’s absolutely your right not to like our stories. Sometimes, the candidates — Republicans and Democrats — don’t like them either.  There’s no hidden agenda or anything else in play, another than another old newspaper motto that Brugmann also understands well: that we do the job "without fear or favor, regardless of party, sect, or interest involved."
I responded that her quotes didn’t seem to answer my questions, particularly because the second one seems to directly contradict her approach to political coverage, in which she seems to reserve her attacks for the most liberal candidate in any race. But she didn’t respond to my follow-up questions. 
We at the Guardian have our own bias – a progressive bias – and we spend more column-inches helping our friends and hurting our enemies than the other way around. It’s something we’ve always been honest about, unlike the Chronicle, which pretends to the high standard of “objectivity.” We strive for fairness to all sides and don’t apologize for advocating the broad public interest.
But we have no self-interest in our approach. We don’t like Ma’s opponent, Janet Reilly, because she’s going to defend our corporate interests in Sacramento. We like her simply because she’s far smarter and more progressive than Ma. And we don’t like the IEs attacks on her because they attempt to fool voters into believing just the opposite – deceptively misrepresenting where these two candidates fall on the political spectrum — something all newspapers should actively oppose.
Yet neither Ma, Marinucci, Garcia, nor any of the wealthy interests they represent seem to have much regard for the truth, at least around election time. I suppose that’s their prerogative, and perhaps just the nature of the beast. But San Franciscans deserve better, and they should be offended that they aren’t getting it from their daily newspapers.    
 

Ma’s moneybags

-
0

› amanda@sfbg.com

As many predicted, late independent expenditures on behalf of District 12 California Assembly candidate Fiona Ma are flooding into the race, aimed at tarnishing her opponent, Janet Reilly, with Web ads, TV spots, and mailers. To date, more than $750,000 has been spent by nine IE committees supporting Fiona Ma. In addition to the million dollars flowing through her campaign’s piggy bank, that bumps her into the bucks-deluxe category of the 2006 primaries.

More than $500,000 comes from the Sacramento-based Leaders for an Effective Government, which got its initial funding from Ma’s former boss and current political benefactor, powerful former senator John Burton. The other eight IEs are Californians United, Professional Engineers of California Government, Cause Law Enforcement Independent Expenditure Committee, San Francisco Association of Realtors, Peace Officers Research Association, Committee for a Better California, Teachers United with Firefighters and Correctional Officers, and Asian American Small Business PAC. All are based in Sacramento or Los Angeles and have an incestuous web of contributing organizations, in some cases with the same contact information (none of which returned Guardian phone calls).

The Reilly campaign made a big stink back in April when Leaders for an Effective Government spent $33,000 on pro-Ma mailers. The campaign filed complaints on April 27 with state attorney general Bill Lockyer, San Francisco district attorney Kamala Harris, and the Fair Political Practices Commission, claiming an illegal connection between the IE, Burton, and the Ma campaign. It still stands by those concerns, citing a state law that bans coordination between an IE and the campaign its spending benefits.

"Bullshit," Burton told the Guardian when asked about the complaints filed by the rival campaign. As far as his relationship to Ma’s campaign goes, he said, "I don’t have a fucking story. I’m helping her campaign." He claimed no connection to the half million spent on her behalf, but did admit to being a big early benefactor of Leaders for an Effective Government.

Ma is benefiting from the lion’s share of that IE’s spending, although it also spent $33,900 on the Johan Klehs campaign for California Senate. While Districts 18, 45, and 69 are seeing a lot of financial activity, no other Assembly race comes close to touching Ma’s IE total, with the second highest clocking in around $300,000.

"It could be the most expensive primary race ever," Bob Stern, president of the Center for Governmental Studies, told us.

While an IE’s intervention probably isn’t illegal, "it has made campaigns dirtier," said Theis Finlev, a policy advocate for Common Cause. IEs have found new life breathing the polluted air of Proposition 34, passed in 2000 with the good intention of capping amounts of campaign contributions to control the financial investments of special interests. Unlike with campaigns, there’s no limit on how much an individual can contribute to an IE.

"The point of limits is to look like you’re not beholden to anyone, but this is a huge economy with many interests concerned about what happens in Sacramento," said Finlev. In addition to having no spending limits, IE committees disclose contributors at different intervals from campaigns and typically don’t start spending money until weeks before the election.

"It’s like a shell game," Finlev said. "Wealthy contributors can hide until after the election is over."

When asked about the money IEs are spending for Ma, campaign spokesperson Tom Hsieh aligned it with Reilly’s use of personal finances. "Janet and Clint Reilly have spent over $300,000 to date. They’ll probably spend another $400,000 to $500,000 by the end of the election," he conjectured.

Reilly spokesperson Eric Jaye said it was unlikely they’d spend much more: "She’s near the limit. If she has to search the couches, she will."

"We’ve been outspent in the last four weeks at least two to one," Reilly told us. She hopes to keep up financially, but she was critical of the contributing sources of the IEs. "It’s the tobacco lobby, the liquor lobby, large developers, gaming industries, spending unprecedented amounts of money getting Fiona Ma elected."

"I believe the campaigns are equalized by those contributors," Hsieh said, but claimed no control over any of them. "Fiona does not support any of those industries." He said there wasn’t much they could do about the fortuity of hundreds of thousands of dollars being spent to support Ma.

"People in this district should be making the decision," Reilly concluded. "Not the Sacramento insiders." SFBG

Crisis on infinite Earths

-
0

› omegamutant@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION This is really embarrassing. Last week I started crying while I was reading a comic book on the StairMaster at the gym. I got into this unenviable, geektastic situation because I’ve been reading everything I can find by Grant Morrison — the British comic book writer who reinvented the X-Men in the late 1990s with his fantastic New X-Men series — and it just so happened that I wasn’t prepared for the plot of Morrison’s "We3," a short series about three cybernetic animals. Frank Quitely’s anime-influenced art on the cover had me lulled into thinking "We3" would be a tale of animal heroism about a cute talking bunny, kitty, and doggy who escape the evil government that made them into cyber-weapons and find their way home.

But no. Instead, it was one of the most horrifying portraits of war I’ve ever seen. Fluffy creatures are mangled. Soldiers are sliced into bits. A senator pats himself on the back for getting animals to do his dirty human work. The animals, who’ve been given the power of speech and turned into highly efficient assassins via cybernetic implants, couldn’t be more tragic as they try to understand what’s happened to them. When the bunny got shot after innocently asking a human to help him fix his broken tail, I just couldn’t take it anymore. Hence, the tears.

The older I get, the more I’m obsessed with comic books. Ironically, this is partly a result of what many call the end of the comic book. These days publishing houses like Marvel and DC are making most of their money on quality paperback–style bound collections, rather than on classic, individual issues. This shift is perfect for someone like me, who started reading comics as books rather than as monthly-installment magazines. Plus, collections are really the only way for a late bloomer like myself to get caught up with the soap operas behind four-decade-old titles like The Hulk and X-Men.

Like video games today, comic books were once the objects of intense moral outrage. During the 1950s anti–comic book crusader Frederic Wertham condemned the adventures of Batman, Green Lantern, and pals for promoting juvenile delinquency and homosexuality. Now, of course, his accusations sound positively quaint. How could any type of book promote anything among young people? These days it’s "common sense" that games like Grand Theft Auto and World of Warcraft are to blame for angry kids.

Maybe comic books are the bugaboos of yesteryear, but they still share with video games one subversive characteristic that makes them dangerous to anyone — politician, moralist, or other — who clings to the status quo. Comic books lend themselves well to fantasies about multiple, parallel universes. Because these are narratives that last over decades and spawn multiple spin-offs by hundreds of different authors and artists, comic books inevitably train readers to imagine how one scenario might lead to several different outcomes. And comics also invite readers to explore how one little change in the present can lead to whole new interpretations of history. There’s even a word — retcon, for retroactive continuity — that comic book geeks use to describe what happens when a new comic book author changes a character’s history to explain a new present. Like video games, where different characters and players take the game play in new directions, comic books remind us that there is no one perfect path to follow, and that the future can always be changed.

When the retconning and multiple story lines get too complicated, though, sometimes a crisis occurs. Thus the subject of my current obsession: the "crisis on infinite Earths" story lines from DC comics of the 1980s. This was a period when DC decided its authors had created too many parallel worlds containing multiple versions of each character. To solve the problem, DC wiped out all but one Earth and all but one version of every hero, in a plot tangle that spanned several dozen titles. In fact, I don’t claim to understand it all — I haven’t read enough from that era. Honestly, it’s probably better in concept than execution.

But I love the concept: the idea that there are many Earths existing in parallel and all of them are having a crisis at the same time. It’s a perfect reminder that our lives are a tangle of possible futures, struggling to extricate themselves from a morass of multiple pasts. Choosing between them, and choosing justly, is what makes heroes out of ordinary people. SFBG

Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd whose favorite comic book store is still Comix Experience because Brian Hibbs is a hero.

Newsom loses control

-
0

› steve@sfbg.com

In the early days, the mayor tried to sound like a practical, hands-on executive who was ready to run San Francisco.

Mayor Gavin Newsom used his inaugural address on Jan. 8, 2004, to emphasize that he was a uniter, not a divider — and that he wanted to get things done.

"I say it’s time to start working together to find common purpose and common ground," he proclaimed. "Because I want to make this administration about solutions."

It’s a mantra he’s returned to again and again in his rhetoric on a wide range of issues, claiming a "commonsense" approach while casting "ideology" as an evil to be overcome and as the main motive driving the left-leaning majority of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

"Because it’s easy to be against something," Newsom said on that sunny winter day. "It’s easy to blame. It’s easy to stop…. What’s hard is to hear that maybe to come together, we need to leave behind old ideas and long-held grudges. But that’s exactly what we need to do."

But if that’s the standard, Newsom has spent the past 17 months taking the easy way.

It’s been a marked change from his first-year lovefest, when he tried to legalize same-sex marriage, reach out to Bayview–Hunters Point residents, and force big hotels to end their lockout of workers.

A Guardian review of the most significant City Hall initiatives during 2005 and 2006 — as well as interviews with more than a dozen policy experts and public interest advocates — shows that Newsom has been an obstructionist who has proposed few "solutions" to the city’s problems, and followed through on even fewer.

The Board of Supervisors, in sharp contrast, has been taking the policy lead. The majority on the district-elected board in the past year has moved a generally progressive agenda designed to preserve rental units, prevent evictions, strengthen development standards, promote car-free spaces, increase affordable housing, maintain social services, and protect city workers.

Yet many of those efforts have been blocked or significantly weakened by Newsom and his closest allies on the board: Fiona Ma, Sean Elsbernd, Michela Alioto-Pier, and Bevan Dufty. And on efforts to get tough with big business or prevent Muni service cuts and fare hikes, Newsom was able to peel off enough moderate supervisors to stop the progressives — led by Chris Daly, Tom Ammiano, and Ross Mirkarimi — at the board level.

But one thing that Newsom has proved himself unable to do in the past year is prevent progressive leaders — particularly Daly, against whom Newsom has a "long-held grudge" that has on a few recent occasions led to unsavory political tactics and alliances — from setting the public agenda for the city.

Balance of power

The Mayor’s Office and the Board of Supervisors are the two poles of power at City Hall — and generally the system gives a strong advantage to the mayor, who has far more resources at his disposal, a higher media profile, and the ability to act swiftly and decisively.

Yet over the past year, the three most progressive supervisors — along with their liberal-to-moderate colleagues Gerardo Sandoval, Jake McGoldrick, Aaron Peskin, and Sophie Maxwell — have initiated the most significant new city policies, dealing with housing, poverty, health care, alternative transportation, violence prevention, and campaign finance reform.

Most political observers and City Hall insiders mark the moment when the board majority took control of the city agenda as last summer, a point when Newsom’s honeymoon ended, progressives filled the leadership void on growth issues, problems like tenants evictions and the murder rate peaked, and Newsom was increasingly giving signs that he wasn’t focused on running the city.

"Gay marriage gave the mayor his edge and gave him cover for a long time," said Tommi Avicolli Mecca, a queer and tenants rights activist. "About a year ago that started to wear off, and his armor started to be shed."

Daly was the one supervisor who had been aggressively criticizing Newsom during that honeymoon period. To some, Daly seemed isolated and easy to dismiss — at least until August 2005, when Daly negotiated a high-profile deal with the developers of the Rincon Hill towers that extracted more low-income housing and community-benefits money than the city had ever seen from a commercial project.

The Newsom administration watched the negotiations from the sidelines. The mayor signed off on the deal, but within a couple months turned into a critic and said he regretted supporting it. Even downtown stalwarts like the public policy think tank San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association noted the shift in power.

"I think we saw a different cut on the issue than we’ve seen before," SPUR executive director Gabriel Metcalf told us. "Chris Daly is not a NIMBY. I see Chris Daly as one of the supervisors most able to deal with physical change, and he’s not afraid of urbanism…. And he’s been granted by the rest of the board a lot of leadership in the area of land use."

SPUR and Metcalf were critical of aspects of the Daly deal, such as where the money would go. But after the deal, Newsom and his minions, like press secretary Peter Ragone, had a harder time demonizing Daly and the board (although they never stopped trying).

Around that same time, hundreds of evictions were galvanizing the community of renters — which makes up around two-thirds of city residents. Newsom tried to find some compromise on the issue, joining Peskin to convene a task force composed of tenants activists, developers, and real estate professionals, hoping that the group could find a way to prevent evictions while expanding home ownership opportunities.

"The mayor views the striking of balance between competing interests as an important approach to governing," Ragone told the Guardian after we explained the array of policy disputes this story would cover.

The task force predictably fell apart after six meetings. "The mayor was trying to find a comfortable way to get out of the issue," said Mecca, a member of the task force. But with some issues, there simply is no comfortable solution; someone’s going to be unhappy with the outcome. "When that failed," Mecca said, "there was nowhere for him to go anymore."

The San Francisco Tenants Union and its allies decided it was time to push legislation that would protect tenants, organizing an effective campaign that finally forced Newsom into a reactionary mode. The mayor wound up siding overtly with downtown interests for the first time in his mayoral tenure — and in the process, he solidified the progressive board majority.

Housing quickly became the issue that defines differences between Newsom and the board.

Free-market policy

"The Newsom agenda has been one of gentrification," said San Francisco Tenants Union director Ted Gullicksen. The mayor and his board allies have actively opposed placing limitations on the high number of evictions (at least until the most recent condo conversion measure, which Dufty and Newsom supported, a victory tenants activists attribute to their organizing efforts), while at the same time encouraging development patterns that "bring in more high-end condominiums and saturate the market with that," Gullicksen explained.

He pointed out that those two approaches coalesce into a doubly damaging policy on the issue of converting apartments into condominiums, which usually displace low-income San Franciscans, turn an affordable rental unit into an expensive condominium, and fill the spot with a higher-income owner.

"So you really get a two-on-one transformation of the city," Gullicksen said.

Newsom’s allies don’t agree, noting that in a city where renters outnumber homeowners two to one, some loss of rental housing is acceptable. "Rather than achieve their stated goals of protecting tenants, the real result is a barrier to home ownership," Elsbernd told us, explaining his vote against all four recent tenant-protection measures.

On the development front, Gullicksen said Newsom has actively pushed policies to develop housing that’s unaffordable to most San Franciscans — as he did with his failed Workforce Housing Initiative and some of his area plans — while maintaining an overabundance of faith in free-market forces.

"He’s very much let the market have what the market wants, which is high-end luxury housing," Gullicksen said.

As a result, Mecca said, "I think we in the tenant movement have been effective at making TICs a class issue."

Affordable housing activists say there is a marked difference between Newsom and the board majority on housing.

"The Board of Supervisors is engaged in an active pursuit of land-use policy that attempts to preserve as much affordable housing, as much rental housing, as much neighborhood-serving businesses as possible," longtime housing activist Calvin Welch told us. "And the mayor is totally and completely lining up with downtown business interests."

Welch said Newsom has shown where he stands in the appointments he makes — such as that of Republican planning commissioner Michael Antonini, and his nomination of Ted Dienstfrey to run Treasure Island, which the Rules Committee recently rejected — and by the policies he supports.

Welch called Daly’s Rincon deal "precedent setting and significant." It was so significant that downtown noticed and started pushing back.

Backlash

Board power really coalesced last fall. In addition to the housing and tenant issues, Ammiano brought forward a plan that would force businesses to pay for health insurance plans for their employees. That galvanized downtown and forced Newsom to finally make good on his promise to offer his own plan to deal with the uninsured — but the mayor offered only broad policy goals, and the plan itself is still being developed.

It was in this climate that many of Newsom’s big-business supporters, including Don Fisher — the Republican founder of the Gap who regularly bankrolls conservative political causes in San Francisco — demanded and received a meeting with Newsom. The December sit-down was attended by a who’s who of downtown developers and power brokers.

"That was a result of them losing their ass on Rincon Hill," Welch said of the meeting.

The upshot — according to public records and Guardian interviews with attendees — was that Newsom agreed to oppose an ordinance designed to limit how much parking could be built along with the 10,000 housing units slated for downtown. The mayor instead would support a developer-written alternative carried by Alioto-Pier.

The measure downtown opposed was originally sponsored by Daly before being taken over by Peskin. It had the strong support of Newsom’s own planning director, Dean Macris, and was approved by the Planning Commission on a 6–1 vote (only Newsom’s Republican appointee, Antonini, was opposed).

The process that led to the board’s 7–4 approval of the measure was politically crass and embarrassing for the Mayor’s Office (see “Joining the Battle,” 2/8/06), but he kept his promise and vetoed the measure. The votes of his four allies were enough to sustain the veto.

Newsom tried to save face in the ugly saga by pledging to support a nearly identical version of the measure, but with just a couple more giveaways to developers: allowing them to build more parking garages and permitting more driveways with their projects.

Political observers say the incident weakened Newsom instead of strengthening him.

"They can’t orchestrate a move. They are only acting by vetoes, and you can’t run the city by vetoes," Welch said. "He never puts anything on the line, and that’s why the board has become so emboldened."

Rippling out

The Newsom administration doesn’t seem to grasp how housing issues — or symbolic issues like creating car-free spaces or being wary of land schemes like the Bayview–Hunters Point redevelopment plan — shape perceptions of other issues. As Welch said, "All politics in San Francisco center around land use."

N’Tanya Lee, executive director of Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth, said the Newsom administration has done a very good job of maintaining budgetary support for programs dealing with children, youth, and their families. But advocates have relied on the leadership of progressive supervisors like Daly to push affordable housing initiatives like the $20 million budget supplemental the board initiated and approved in April.

"Our primary concern is that low- and moderate-income families are being pushed out of San Francisco," Lee told us. "We’re redefining what it means to be pro-kid and pro-family in San Francisco."

Indeed, that’s a very different approach from the so-called pro-family agenda being pushed by SFSOS and some of Newsom’s other conservative allies, who argue that keeping taxes low while keeping the streets and parks safe and clean is what families really want. But Lee worries more about ensuring that families have reasonably priced shelter.

So she and other affordable housing advocates will be watching closely this summer as the board and Newsom deal with Daly’s proposal to substantially increase the percentage of affordable housing developers must build under the city’s inclusionary-housing policy. Newsom’s downtown allies are expected to strongly oppose the plan.

Even on Newsom’s signature issue, the board has made inroads.

"In general, on the homeless issue, the supervisor who has shown the most strong and consistent leadership has been Chris Daly," said Coalition on Homelessness director Juan Prada.

Prada credits the mayor with focusing attention on the homeless issue, although he is critical of the ongoing harassment of the homeless by the Police Department and the so-called Homeward Bound program that gives homeless people one-way bus tickets out of town.

"This administration has a genuine interest in homeless issues, which the previous one didn’t have, but they’re banking too much on the Care Not Cash approach," Prada said.

Other Newsom initiatives to satisfy his downtown base of support have also fallen flat.

Robert Haaland of the city employee labor union SEIU Local 790 said Newsom has tried to reform the civil service system and privatize some city services, but has been stopped by labor and the board.

"They were trying to push a privatization agenda, and we pushed back," Haaland said, noting that Supervisor Ma’s alliance with Newsom on that issue was the reason SEIU 790 endorsed Janet Reilly over Ma in the District 12 Assembly race.

The turning point on the issue came last year, when the Newsom administration sought to privatize the security guards at the Asian Art Museum as a cost-saving measure. The effort was soundly defeated in the board’s Budget Committee.

"That was a key vote, and they lost, so I don’t think they’ll be coming back with that again," Haaland said, noting that labor has managed to win over Dufty, giving the board a veto-proof majority on privatization issues.

Who’s in charge?

Even many Newsom allies will privately grumble that Newsom isn’t engaged enough with the day-to-day politics of the city. Again and again, Newsom has seemed content to watch from the sidelines, as he did with Supervisor Mirkarimi’s proposal to create a public financing program for mayoral candidates.

"The board was out front on that, while the mayor stayed out of it until the very end," said Steven Hill, of the Center for Voting and Democracy, who was involved with the measure. And when the administration finally did weigh in, after the board had approved the plan on a veto-proof 9–2 vote, Newsom said the measure didn’t go far enough. He called for public financing for all citywide offices — but never followed up with an actual proposal.

The same has been true on police reform and violence prevention measures. Newsom promised to create a task force to look into police misconduct, to hold a blue-ribbon summit on violence prevention, and to implement a community policing system with grassroots input — and none of that has come to pass.

Then, when Daly took the lead in creating a community-based task force to develop violence prevention programs with an allocation of $10 million a year for three years — Measure A on the June ballot — Newsom and his board allies opposed the effort, arguing the money would be better spent on more cops (see “Ballot-Box Alliance,” page 19).

"He’s had bad counsel on this issue of violence all the way through," said Sharen Hewitt, who runs the Community Leadership Academy Emergency Response project. "He has not done damn near enough from his position, and neither has the board."

Hewitt worries that current city policies, particularly on housing, are leading to class polarization that could make the problems of violence worse. And while Newsom’s political allies tend to widen the class divide, she can’t bring herself to condemn the mayor: "I think he’s a nice guy and a lot smarter than people have given him credit for."

Tom Radulovich, who sits on the BART board and serves as executive director of Transportation for a Livable City (which is in the process of changing its name to Livable City), said Newsom generally hasn’t put much action behind his rhetorical support for the environment and transit-first policies.

"Everyone says they’re pro-environment," he said.

In particular, Radulovich was frustrated by Newsom’s vetoes of the downtown parking and Healthy Saturdays measures and two renter-protection measures. The four measures indicated very different agendas pursued by Newsom and the board majority.

In general, Radulovich often finds his smart-growth priorities opposed by Newsom’s allies. "The moneyed interests usually line up against livable city, good planning policies," he said. On the board, Radulovich said it’s no surprise that the three supervisors from the wealthiest parts of town — Ma, Elsbernd, and Alioto-Pier — generally vote against initiatives he supports.

"Dufty is the oddity because he represents a pretty progressive, urbane district," Radulovich said, "but he tends to vote like he’s from a more conservative district."

What’s next?

The recent lawsuit by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and the Committee of Jobs — urging more aggressive use of a voter-approved requirement that board legislation undergo a detailed economic analysis — shows that downtown is spoiling for a fight (see “Downtown’s ‘Hail Mary’ Lawsuit,” page 9). So politics in City Hall is likely to heat up.

"There is a real absence of vision and leadership in the city right now, particularly on the question of who will be able to afford to live in San Francisco 20 years from now," Mirkarimi said. "There is a disparity between Newsom hitting the right notes in what the press and public want to hear and between the policy considerations that will put those positions into effect."

But Newsom’s allies say they plan to stand firm against the ongoing effort by progressives to set the agenda.

"I think I am voting my constituency," Elsbernd said. "I’m voting District Seven and voicing a perspective of a large part of the city that the progressive majority doesn’t represent."

Newsom flack Ragone doesn’t accept most of the narratives that are laid out by activists, from last year’s flip in the balance of power to the influence of downtown and Newsom’s wealthy benefactors on his decision to veto four measures this year.

"Governing a city like San Francisco is complex. There are many areas of nuance in governing this city," Ragone said. "Everyone knows Gavin Newsom defies traditional labels. That’s not part of a broad political strategy, but just how he governs."

Yet the majority of the board seems unafraid to declare where they stand on the most divisive issues facing the city.

"The board has — really, since the 2000 election — has been pushing a progressive set of policies as it related to housing, just-taxation policies, and an array of social service provisions," Peskin said. "All come with some level of controversy, because none are free." SFBG

Thimk!

-
0

› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:
When my husband and I first got together in our mid 40s 10 years ago, he was fairly adventurous in bed, and I’m sure you saw this coming, but now the sex is really boring. No spontaneity, nothing different than intercourse, no passion. It’s like brushing your teeth — a necessary nuisance — except it gets the sheets dirty.

I know I have half the blame, but when I’ve come on to him at other than the "usual" time and location, he’s tired or has something else important to do that I didn’t know about. He does work long hours. I’ve tried fancy underwear. Sex toys don’t really interest him. Bubble baths are history. He prefers to shower alone. I’m reluctant to arrange for an X-rated video because the ones I’ve seen can be really distasteful. And I don’t want to get sexually aroused by something that doesn’t excite him.

We love each other very much, and neither of us is getting any action on the side. Suggestions?

Love,

Midlife Stasis

Dear Stace:
See, this is why I hate sex advice columns. We’ve been out here for decades, dishing out the same old tired cure-alls (well, not me, of course!) without, frankly, really having the slightest idea if they work or not. There are efficacy studies on therapy but not, as far as I know, on fancy underwear or weekends away, and yet off everyone dutifully trudges to the bed-and-breakfasts and the Kama Sutra Dust and the surprise appearances naked except for (choose two) frivolous footwear, plastic wrap, leather collar, chocolate sauce. Is it any wonder that by now people with troubled sex lives just sort of automatically print out one of these mental checklists and grimly put themselves and their partners through the paces, exactly the same way they got themselves into trouble in the first place? Keeping a sex life lively takes thought, not just a menu of goofy variations, and bringing one back from the dead takes just as much thinking, if not more. Put down the list and let’s think about this.

First off, I ask you to differentiate between "seriously no more exciting than brushing your teeth" and "normal for 10 years into a midlife relationship." Not that I think the latter has to be tooth-brushingly dull, mind you, but let’s all give ourselves a break and remember that things do tend to get a little, well, let’s call it "familiar," once we have enough years together under our belts. There are worse things than familiarity.

Next, I wonder if you have any idea what, if anything, he might be interested in trying. And not to slag your personal tastes or anything, but showering together and bubble baths are not sex acts; they’re hygiene acts, and rather femmy ones at that. Nice enough as far as they go, but I’m not surprised he wasn’t overcome with passion at the mere idea of sharing a moisturizing lilac-hibiscus bath bomb with you. The only thing on your list I see as having any serious hotcha-hotcha potential is the porn, which you are shying away from. I have no doubt that you’ve seen something icky, but there’s so much choice out there that I hate to see you shrug off the entire category without even taking a peek at the reviews on sex toy sites like Blowfish and Good Vibrations. Hardworking lesbians were paid inadequate wages to watch and review all that stuff! They’re bound to have seen something that both you and your husband would find acceptable. I notice that you didn’t say he finds porn distasteful, just that you have, in the past. Your concern that you might be turned on while he isn’t — well, if that isn’t a bridge to cross when you get there I don’t know what is.

I don’t, by the way, recommend just swapping out his Sopranos DVDs for Driving Miss Daisy Crazy II without warning. You are not trying to trick him into an accidental resurgence of passion. Here’s what I suggest: You didn’t specify “the ‘usual’ time and location," but you did say you have one. If it isn’t earlyish in the morning, in bed, try that. Few men, even busy, tired men, will turn down a roll in the hay if all it takes to get one is rolling over. If it works, you can talk later, emphasizing not the part about how unsatisfied and neglected you’ve been feeling, but how nice it was to rekindle things all accidental-like this morning — what fun! And damned if it didn’t leave you feeling a bit frisky. Would he like, perhaps, a little blow job? Or how about you set aside Friday evening to watch some of these prevetted, guaranteed nondisgusting, and yet oddly stimuutf8g DVDs you rented? I don’t expect this to work in the absence of an afterglow or some reasonable facsimile thereof, so strike while the iron is, if not exactly hot, at least still plugged in.

Love,
Andrea

Ballot-box alliance

-
0

› gwschulz@sfbg.com

Maggie Agnew knows more about gun violence than anyone should ever have to know. Three of her children have been murdered since 1986, all of them during altercations that involved guns.

The church she attends has done all it can to help her and other parents of homicide victims. But not everyone attends church, she says. More needs to be done.

That’s why she — along with three other women affected by the city’s epidemic of violence — has signed her name to Proposition A, a June ballot measure authored by Sup. Chris Daly.

Prop. A would allocate $10 million a year for homicide-prevention services from the city’s General Fund for each of the next three years.

It would also create a survivors’ fund in the District Attorney’s Office to assist with burial expenses and counseling.

Agnew says that it’s a good start.

"There are so many parents who are like me; they can barely have a funeral and bury their children," Agnew told the Guardian recently. "You’re left with big bills, heartache, and pain. If you don’t have support, you’re out in the cold."

The Prop. A campaign is about more than just the relatively modest $10 million. Progressives and communities of color have begun to build an alliance around the measure that hasn’t always existed in the past — which is a polite way of referring to the left’s sometime failure to address problems afflicting minority communities.

The San Francisco Peoples’ Organization, PowerPAC, and two past presidents of the Harvey Milk Democratic Club have appeared as supporters in election literature, along with Agnew, Betty Cooper, Kechette Walls Powell, and Mattie Scott, four women who have lost relatives to homicide. The effort began earlier this year as the board debated making supplemental appropriations from surplus budget money for similar support services after the city’s homicide rate approached the triple digits.

Sharen Hewitt, director of the Community Leadership Academy Emergency Response project, said the alliance is a small step in the right direction.

"It ain’t been no lovefest," she said frankly. "I am a progressive, as you know. But my community has been dropping dead in the street, and we’ve been focused on bike lanes…. We came together with a struggle."

Hewitt said the proposition allows for a considerable amount of flexibility: Money will go to the neighborhoods most affected by homicide, not simply those presumed to be in the most need. Overall, she said, the city has relied too much on the police, and the symptoms of violence, such as poverty, still need to be addressed.

"We have to be candid with each other, so we can form a real progressive agenda and not leave anyone behind," Hewitt said.

Prop. A is not without its critics. Sups. Sean Elsbernd, Michela Alioto-Pier, and Jake McGoldrick and Mayor Gavin Newsom all oppose it.

San Francisco is already struggling to abide by a charter mandate that requires the city to maintain a force of at least 1,971 police officers at all times, critics complain. Newsom and his allies on the board believe hiring new cops is more important than what the ballot measure proposes.

Elsbernd told us he’s also opposed to Prop. A because it locks in yet more budget requirements, when supplemental appropriations could be used to keep control in the hands of board members.

"My concern is it’s a set-aside," he said. "It binds the hands of the executive and legislative branches…. This is ballot-box budgeting."

Money from Prop. A would target areas with high rates of violence by focusing services on job creation and workforce training, conflict resolution, substance abuse and mental health treatment, and probation and witness relocation services. The measure would also form an 11-member community planning council charged with drafting and revising an annual homicide-prevention plan.

PowerPAC president Steve Phillips agrees with the other Prop. A proponents that the police approach hasn’t been sufficient, and says progressives and minorities need to show more allied leadership to promote better answers.

"There’s been an epidemic of violence that the city’s been unable to address," he said. "We wanted to give money to those communities most impacted by violence." SFBG

Downtown’s “Hail Mary” lawsuit

-
0

EDITORIAL This one is way over the top: The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and the Committee on Jobs filed suit last week against the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, alleging that the supes won’t implement Proposition I, the 2004 ballot measure that was aimed at derailing progressive legislation. The suit makes little legal sense: The downtown crew is demanding that the city do something that it’s already doing, for the most part. But it shows an aggressive new strategy on the part of Mayor Gavin Newsom’s allies, who are out to scuttle three important bills that will probably win board approval.

Prop. I was designed to do two things: Delay anything that downtown might consider "antibusiness" and promote the political fortunes of Michela Alioto-Pier, who authored the ballot measure. The idea: Create an Office of Economic Analysis, under the city controller, with the responsibility to do an "economic impact analysis" of any legislation that comes before the board. Of course, that economic impact analysis will by definition be fairly narrowly focused; it won’t consider the social impacts or consequences of decisions.

That was always the flaw in Prop. I, and that was the reason we opposed the measure. Economic impact studies that show only how much a proposal would cost or how it might harm the "business climate" ignore the fact that a lot of government regulation improves things that aren’t quantifiable. And even when they can be measured, certain effects are ignored: Clean air has a tremendous value — but typical studies of antipollution measures focus only on the costs of compliance. Safe streets, nice parks, and good schools are worth a fortune — but a study that examines the tax burden required to pay for them won’t account for that.

Downtown spent a fortune promoting the measure (and sending out colorful flyers with Alioto-Pier’s face on them, which didn’t hurt her reelection efforts). It narrowly passed — but since Alioto-Pier never put in a request for the additional money the plan would cost, it took an entire city budget cycle to fund and hire the two staff economists who will do the work.

Now, for better or for worse, they’re on board, and the analyses are beginning — but downtown isn’t satisfied. Chamber spokesperson Carol Piasente told us the group wants to eliminate any board discretion in deciding what needs analysis and what doesn’t; right now, the board president can waive the analysis on relatively trivial things like resolutions and appointments.

But what’s really going on, according to Sup. Chris Daly, is that downtown is gearing up for a full-scale attack on three bills: Sup. Tom Ammiano’s proposal to require employers to pay for health care; Sup. Sophie Maxwell’s plan to better enforce the minimum wage laws; and Daly’s proposal to require additional affordable housing in all market-rate developments. "Downtown’s hail mary pass involves using the economic analysis to kill these socially critical proposals," Daly wrote in his blog.

Oh, and while the chamber is always worried about city spending, the group’s lawyer, Jim Sutton, is asking for attorney’s fees (likely to be a big, fat chunk of taxpayer change) if the suit prevails.

This is ridiculous. City Attorney Dennis Herrera needs to defend this aggressively, but that’s only the legal side. The mayor, who has become ever more closely allied with these downtown forces (see page 11), ought to join the supervisors in publicly denouncing the suit. SFBG

Why Conroy should go

-
0

EDITORIAL Mayor Gavin Newsom made a weak attempt to deal with the political fallout from the Office of Emergency Services audit last week, appointing Laura Phillips, who appears to have some qualifications for the job, as the head of emergency communications.

But Newsom refuses to follow the most important recommendation from the scathing audit. OES director Annemarie Conroy still has her job.

It’s more than a little bit unsettling: Newsom, who claims to be a competent manager, is sticking with Conroy, the Donald Rumsfeld of San Francisco, an incompetent political crony who won the job only as part of a stupid and transparently political deal.

The audit, by Board of Supervisors budget analyst Harvey Rose, shows why this sort of political chess game is such a bad idea. Conroy, who had no credentials whatsoever for the top disaster planning job, has, not surprisingly, fared poorly. Her office, the audit says, is larded with top management — a full 40 percent of her staff are at the highly paid management level, which Rose called "unacceptable" — while little of the $82 million it’s received in federal and state grants has gone to emergency training. Conroy has bungled efforts at coordinating disaster planning with other departments and hasn’t even applied for federal reimbursement for some $7.6 million that the city is owed.

Conroy, a lawyer and former supervisor, got the $170,000-a-year job largely because Newsom wanted to get Tony Hall off the Board of Supervisors. So he offered Hall a plum job running the Treasure Island Development Authority — but since Conroy was already in that job, Newsom had to move her someplace else, and he chose emergency services. The problem is, this is no sleepy bureaucratic backwater where a hack can rest on a nice salary for a few years without doing any real damage. The OES handles a huge amount of money and is responsible for getting the city ready for things like a major earthquake, which every scientist agrees is overdue, or a terrorist attack, which is certainly not outside the realm of possibility.

This was the sort of game former mayor Willie Brown played all the time, shuffling political allies around to agencies and commissions without much regard for the public policy impact. Newsom promised to do better, but the fact that he’s still standing behind Conroy is evidence that he’s letting old-fashioned politics get in the way of running the city.

Let’s face it: Annemarie Conroy should never have been appointed to the OES and clearly isn’t up to the job. Rose recommends abolishing her position and letting the new head of emergency communications run the whole show. That seems like an excellent idea. SFBG

Prop. D’s misinformation campaign

-
0

OPINION Why are Joe O’Donoghue and the Residential Builders Association funding Proposition D on the San Francisco ballot? Could it have anything to do with the RBA’s rapacious hunt for profits?

You bet, because Prop. D would change the city’s zoning laws to potentially allow private development on 1,600 city parcels that are now protected for public use purposes only.

The RBA has modeled its campaign on the current national trend of winning through fearmongering. That’s why the RBA sent San Francisco voters a slick campaign ad featuring an elderly woman (who is not even a Laguna Honda Hospital patient) with a photoshopped black eye, misleading "facts," and not one word about zoning.

But Prop. D is much more than a giveaway for builders — it’s also an assault on San Franciscans of all ages with psychiatric disabilities. It perpetuates stereotypes about people with such disabilities by suggesting that individuals with a primary psychiatric diagnosis are violent. Studies have consistently shown that people with mental illness are not any more likely than members of the general public to commit acts of violence.

If proponents had wanted to keep dangerous patients out of Laguna Honda, they would have proposed banning people with a history of prior violence — the best predictor, by all accounts, of future violence.

Instead, Prop. D guarantees that the stigma of mental illness will continue to dissuade people from seeking help. And it does absolutely nothing to increase safety for LHH residents.

What Prop. D does do is violate nine state and federal laws including the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Fair Housing Act, which ban discrimination on the basis of disability. Prop. D singles out people with mental illness and mandates that "only persons whose need for skilled nursing care is based on a medical diagnosis that is not primarily psychiatric or behavioral shall be admitted" to Laguna Honda. It endangers more than $100 million dollars in federal funds San Francisco receives each year, since that money is conditioned on city compliance with nondiscrimination laws.

Prop. D would force the eviction of Laguna Honda residents who have age- or HIV-related dementia. The city would be forced to transfer those residents to institutions in other counties, far from family and friends, at an annual cost of $27 million dollars. Moreover, Prop. D puts a Planning Department official in charge of making health care and admissions decisions.

All of this is why nurses, health care workers, and public health officials are opposing Prop. D, as are the members of the city’s Community Alliance of Disability Advocates and the Human Services Network, representing more than 100 organizations serving people with disabilities and those in need of all ages in San Francisco.

The RBA’s campaign for Prop. D is so misleading that one of its major proponents, the Coalition for San Francisco Neighborhoods, rescinded its endorsement when the members discovered the RBA’s lies about Prop. D.

Don’t fall for the RBA’s exploitation of LHH residents for the sake of profits. Support the city’s disability rights community. Vote no on Prop. D. SFBG

Belinda Lyons

Belinda Lyons is the executive director of the Mental Health Association of San Francisco. This op-ed is also endorsed by Steve Fields, cochair of the San Francisco Human Services Network; Bill Hirsh, executive director of the AIDS Legal Referral Panel; and Herb Levine, executive director of the Independent Living Resource Center.

{Empty title}

-
0

› tredmond@sfbg.com

The San Francisco Board of Education agreed this month to spend a little north of $1.3 million fixing up some dilapidated bungalows at Rooftop Elementary, which happens to be one of the most popular schools in the district. This sounds like a fine idea. The school has too many kids to fit in the classrooms, and the outdoor bungalows, which handle the overflow, are in pretty bad shape. The school district’s facilities officer, an architect, says the students are in no immediate danger, but seriously: How can anyone be against repairing rotten old school buildings?

Well, I’m against it.

Here’s the thing: The board just shut down a bunch of schools, many of them serving primarily nonwhite populations, to save a few million bucks. The rationale: The district is short of money, and those schools were underenrolled — there were too many empty spaces in the classrooms. So they could be closed and the kids sent to other schools. Closing John Swett in the Western Addition, for example, infuriated a large African American community, but saved around $650,000.

Now think about this slowly for a moment, and see if it makes any sense to you: We’ve got a school that has too many kids, so they’re crammed outside in old bungalows. And we’ve got a school that has empty classrooms, so we’re going to shut it down. Instead of trying to move some of the kids from Rooftop to Swett — which costs nothing — we’re saving $650,000 by closing Swett, then spending twice as much as we saved rebuilding the Rooftop bungalows.

Isn’t there something really screwy here?

Well, of course, there’s an explanation: Rooftop has a long waiting list, and all the upper-middle-class white people want to send their kids there. I understand — it’s got a great program, great teachers, and a parent community that raises a ton of money every year for curriculum enrichment.

And I know I’m not as smart as all the people with advanced education degrees at school district headquarters. But I have to wonder: Why can’t we take what’s good about Rooftop — a couple of the teachers, the overall program approach, maybe even (gasp) some of that fundraising cash — and, you know, export the revolution? Why not make Swett sort of a Rooftop Annex? Save the money, help the kids, don’t close anything — everybody’s a winner.

Sarah Lipson, one of two school board members who opposed the bungalow rebuild (Mark Sanchez was the other) told me the whole deal was crazy. "How can we talk about long-range planning and then do this?" she asked.

The district wouldn’t have to kick anyone out of Rooftop this year — the bungalows aren’t going to fall off the hillside, and they’ll hold up another 12 months. There’s supposed to be a real community-based process to evaluate facilities and school closures anyway; why not make this part of it?

Do I really have to answer that question?

Now this: The attack ads and scare tactics of this spring’s campaign are even worse than usual. The "shocking secret" flyer, with the older woman with a photoshopped black eye, attempting to convince people to vote for Proposition D, ranks number one on the sleaze list. The hit on Mike Nevin for a 30-year-old voter fraud charge is truly special, as is Nevin’s hit on Leland Yee, which purports to show Yee lifting weights with the governor.

Aren’t there any real issues in these races? SFBG

Here’s Bill!

-
0

 
 
 

The gluttonous Willie Brown era lead to a city workforce of mangers who earned princely salaries in exchange for their political loyalty, but appeared to have little in the way of clear job responsibilities.

The cries for reform from auditors and other watchdogs eventually fueled the creation of a Management Classification and Compensation Plan designed to both streamline the city’s hiring process and trim a top-heavy class of department managers.
 
The process has been slow and complex, to put it lightly. But one way to measure its effectiveness so far may be to consider the complaints coming from political hacks bitter about losing status on the city’s totem pole.
 
In April, the Guardian reported that former board supervisor Bill Maher, now a “regulatory affairs manager” at the San Francisco International Airport, seemed to have difficulty showing up for work even half the time, according to documents we’d obtained that tracked his usage of a complimentary airport parking card included in his compensation package.

Maher was a Willie Brown political ally who earned his $95,000-a-year post at the airport in 1998 under the former mayor. Since then, he’s managed to hang on to the job and sail through more $30,000 in raises, to $128,000, despite a dubious job description.

But when the human resources department set its sights on Maher’s job through an MCCP review, he was knocked back from a Manager V position to Manager III in early 2004.
 
Maher shouldn’t have had much to complain about; the change did not affect his current salary. But the change did affect his eligibility for certain types of pay raises in the future, so Maher lashed out, warning MCCP Team Coordinator Robert Pritchard in an April 2004 letter that he planned to appeal the decision to the Civil Service Commission. In the letter, Maher valiantly made a renewed attempt to describe exactly what it is that he does for the airport:
 
“Reporting directly to the airport director, this position serves as a political consultant/advisor to the Airport Director regarding the political climate and assists the Director in the overall management, planning and coordination of highly political, sensitive and politically visible projects as assigned.”
 
Huh? Wha?
 
Apparently, the position wasn’t “political” enough, because after further review, Pritchard recommended to the commission earlier this month that Maher’s appeal be denied. According to Pritchard’s findings, “ …the position has no supervisory or budgetary responsibilities typical of the higher level classes.”
 
As it happens, the city’s budget analyst, Harvey Rose, agreed Maher’s duties seemed vague at best, because he recently made the preliminary recommendation that Maher’s job be eliminated entirely. According to a May 22 report from Rose’s office, the decision was based on “the lack of workload and deliverables information, the duplicative nature of the position’s functions, and the position’s high cost …” (Rose’s final budget recommendations won’t be finished until June 5.)
 
The Guardian also reported in April that management excess appeared to exist elsewhere at the airport. We noted that sources of ours had complained about the airport’s International Economic and Tourism Development Director, a post created for the politically well-connected Bill Lee under Gavin Newsom after the mayor removed Lee from his job as city manager. (The San Francisco Chronicle’s Matier & Ross have published versions of this story as well.)
 
Lee’s salary and mandatory fringe benefits, including a city car, cost taxpayers nearly $186,000 a year. His job, according to Rose’s report, is to “support international business growth.” But the airport never provided to Rose data that proved Lee had inspired any growth in international cargo or passengers. Rose, subsequently, made the preliminary recommendation that Lee’s position also be eliminated by late September “based on the lack of quantifiable economic benefits and cost savings associated with this position …”
 
No one at the airport’s Bureau of Community Affairs was available to comment on either Lee or Maher’s positions. But in April, Lee disputed any suggestion that his job was merely a “soft landing,” and insisted that he’s continuing to establish new business relationships between the city and key Asian countries.
 
Airport Spokesman Michael McCarron also told us in April that Maher spends much of his time off site “reviewing and attending appropriate board, commission and regulatory meetings.”
 

As part of his explanation, McCarron added at the time, “It is important for the airport to be aware of community sentiment that may impact the airport and the regulatory climate within in [sic] which it must exist.”

 
Clear as a bell.
 

The NSA’s political fiction

-
0

› unsealtheevidence@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION Here’s what disturbs me: In light of recent revelations that the National Security Agency has been illegally collecting vast databases of information about every single phone call made in the United States since late 2001, only 53 percent of US citizens polled by Newsweek think the government has gone too far in its efforts to stop terrorism. That’s a majority, but not a very large one. And in the same poll, 41 percent said they thought spying on phone calls made to and from everyone in the country was necessary.

This arouses the same sinking feeling I got many years ago when I was a young graduate student at UC Berkeley, grading my very first set of papers. From that sample, and many others in subsequent courses, I learned that 70 percent of college students in an upper-division English course at a top university cannot construct a coherent argument using evidence taken from books they’ve read. That’s what convinced me that most people, even highly educated ones, go through their lives without ever examining the way rhetoric works, and the way evidence is used (or abused) in its service. These people weren’t stupid by any stretch of the imagination. They simply didn’t understand how narrative persuasion works, in the same way that many people who are smart nevertheless don’t understand how their car works.

And just as technical naïveté makes you vulnerable when your car breaks down on a deserted road, so too does narrative ignorance when your nation is breaking down right before your eyes. That such a paltry majority is convinced the government has gone too far with surveillance is a perfect example of this. The Bush administration has cited no evidence to justify snooping on innocent people’s telephone calls. In fact, government analysts have admitted that the reason they didn’t know about the impending Sept. 11 attacks had to do with poor foreign intelligence. You can’t remedy poor foreign intel with domestic spying on the telephone network. Nor do you strengthen your nation’s cohesiveness by allowing the government to break the law, gathering private information from corporations like AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth without any court oversight, without any warrants.

Certainly the government can and will argue that certain interpretations of the USA-PATRIOT Act allow the NSA to snoop on my telephone calls in the name of national security. But where is the proof that it’s necessary to log my telephone calls? When my fundamental right to speak privately is violated in such an extreme manner, along with the rights of all my fellow US citizens, we deserve some hard facts to back up the claim that this unambiguously totalitarian strategy is for our own good.

Instead of evidence, however, we’re given incoherent emotional appeals. We’re told that the danger from terrorism is so great that the government should be allowed to do anything it likes — including emuutf8g the blanket surveillance strategies of the now-defunct USSR. We’re told that civil liberties groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation can’t sue AT&T for handing over personal information to the government without a warrant because examining the evidence in a court of law would violate national security and endanger us all. But appeals to fear are not counterevidence. They do not bolster a logical argument. They simply add punch to what is nothing more than a fictional narrative about how monitoring electronic communications will somehow magically stop terrorism.

Cyberpunk author William Gibson has said that this disastrous episode in our nation’s history is about our struggle to deal with the scope of new technologies. Our vast telecommunications network, including cable, phones, and the Internet, has made it easier than ever for telecom companies to expose our private lives to authority figures with the power to punish us severely — even kill us. What the NSA has done, Gibson argues, is the result of evolved but unregulated computer storage and search capacities that make it possible to record, search, and maintain archives of the whole nation’s telephone calls.

Certainly technical evolution has made it easier for the government to place us under surveillance without revealing it — and without any oversight by the judicial system. But it’s not technology that’s stoppering the country’s outrage. That’s a problem as old as recorded communication itself. Most people cannot take apart a piece of rhetoric and tell you whether its component parts are facts and evidence or merely seductive fiction. SFBG

Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd who can take apart and reassemble an argument in one minute flat.

Bimbo on the box

-
0

› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I recently bought my first “rabbit” vibrator from a nice feminist sex toy vendor’s clearance sale (honeysuckleshop.com), and I love it. (“My First Rabbit” sounds like a Judy Blume title, doesn’t it?) I had no idea how much I preferred the woman-friendly approach until I went to the nonfeminist Pleasure Place in DC to buy a dildo and couldn’t make myself buy a thing. Why does all the packaging on toys meant for my pleasure have to have a fake woman on it? Like that would turn me on?

Anyway, I protested with my wallet and didn’t buy anything. But I still need a dildo, so I thought I would ask you for recommendations. What qualities should I be looking for in my new friend?

Love,

Disgusted

Dear Disgo:

What, they didn’t have any of those boxes where a well-groomed MILF type holds the toy up to her neck or cheek with her eyes closed and her mouth dropped open in inexplicable ecstasy? I guess not — those pics are generally found on “therapeutic massagers” and the like, not static space fillers like dildos or butt-plugs — but I’ve always gotten a kick out of them.

OK, so what’s bugging you is the big-haired, big-boobed, bleached, shaved, and shiny-mouthed porn starlets on the dildo boxes, who are clearly there to attract a certain sort of male interest and purchasing power? I can sorta see your point, but then again, it’s OK with you if men buy dildos too, right? So it’s more a sort of “hostile atmosphere” problem, where you feel a little threatened by the aggressive sleaziness of the packaging? Despite my nearly irresistible urge to snap, “Butch it up, babe,” and leave it at that, it’s clear that a lot of women do mind sleazy marketing, hence the many, many jobs for many, many of my friends at many, many women-owned clean, well-lighted, nonporny places for sex toys over the years. If that’s the sort of atmosphere you prefer (and I get it, I really do — I’m just yanking your chain) and you can’t find one in your area, just hop online and read up at one of the places (Toys in Babeland, Blowfish, or Good Vibrations) that have extensive descriptions, recommendations, and even in-house reviews of every product on the premises. Be prepared to spend some money (silicone outperforms latex and jelly rubber by nearly every measure, for instance, but if you want it you’re gonna pay). You don’t need to drop the bucks right out of the gate, though. Unless you’re positively set on a certain shape (Corn Goddess! Buck Rogers Ray Gun!) or know for a fact that the “Mr. Big Stuff” model is the one for you, consider buying some cheaper disposables and experimenting.

So far so good, but you’re still wondering why those bimbos are gasping fake-orgasmically all over the box for a toy you plan to use for your own special secret female purposes. Heck if I know. I do know people in the business, though, so I passed your question on to my friend the writer and anthologist Thomas Roche of skidroche.com, who currently edits Eros-Zine (www.eroszine.com) but has more than paid his dues flacking sex toys for the manufacturers of exactly the sort of goods you’re wondering about. Here’s his (typically crass and cranky, god love him) answer:

I have no idea what the people who design sex toy packaging are thinking, but I can take a wild guess. There are ten bazillion of these friggin’ products released every ten minutes. I suspect the packaging designers are given vast folders of digital clip art bought en masse from porno houses and have, like, fifteen minutes to design each package based on a small selection of templates that don’t change much.

I also suspect that the majority of people, when they go to buy a sex toy, are less concerned with the packaging than with the fact that they are buying a sex toy. People in the “alternative” sexuality market are fond of expressing outrage and bewilderment that the adult industry doesn’t cater more to the needs of whomever they think the companies aren’t catering to, but successful businesses tend to do things based on the bottom line, and if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Therefore, I can only assume that this packaging moves product. I don’t like it any better than anyone else does, and I have no idea who’s “supposed” to buy it, but they sure buy a lot of it.

Smaller manufacturers and boutique shops are much better about coming up with tasteful packaging (and also tend to offer higher quality product) but having been to so-called “boutiques” all over the country, I can say that most of those smaller shops stock the same tastelessly packaged dildos as the porn shops, though that is starting to change.

Crankily,

Thomas

Thanks, Thomas, and good luck, Disgusted. Buy American!

Love,

Andrea

Endorsements: The Greens

-
0

EDITORIAL We’ve long encouraged the California Green Party to focus its energy on local races, and in San Francisco, the Greens have had considerable success: Matt Gonzalez and then Ross Mirkarimi were elected supervisor as Greens (and Gonzalez made a hell of a run for mayor). Sarah Lipson and Mark Sanchez won school board seats. The idea of someone from the Green Party running citywide is no longer all that unusual, and if the party can continue to generate energy and enthusiasm over the next few years, it will become even more of a source of progressive leaders and provide competition to the Democrats who have controlled city politics for decades.

We focused in last week’s endorsements issue on a few contested Democratic primaries for state assembly and senate, but there are several Greens worthy of note who are challenging entrenched incumbents. Our Green primary endorsements:

For US Senate: Todd Chretien

Chretien is one of the most exciting Green Party candidates in the country. He’s trying to turn a nonrace into a referendum on war and abuse of power. This East Bay resident has spent years fighting for social justice, first as a socialist and then as a Green. He’s smart, passionate, eloquent, and right on the issues. He’s clearly not going to beat Dianne Feinstein, but if he gets any media attention, he’ll be able to raise some important issues.

For US Congress, District 8: Krissy Keefer

Keefer, a dancer and Guardian Goldie winner, has long been an active part of the city’s arts community. She’s always been political, and became an antigentrification activist during the dot-com boom. She has virtually no hope of beating incumbent Nancy Pelosi, and her platform is a little, well, abstract. But we’ve always liked Keefer and we appreciate her spirit in trying to hold Pelosi accountable.

For State Assembly, District 12: Barry Hermanson

Hermanson spent 25 years putting his ideals into action as the owner of a small employment agency, where he sought to raise pay rates for temporary workers. His strategy: reduce his own commission, and pay the temps more. He put a bunch of his own money into a successful citywide campaign to raise the minimum wage. If Janet Reilly wins the Democratic primary for this seat, most progressives in town will probably stick with her — but if Sup. Fiona Ma comes out on top June 6, Hermanson could emerge as the only alternative. SFBG

Next: Shut down Mirant

-
0

EDITORIAL It’s taken years, even decades of fighting, but the noxious, deadly Hunters Point power plant finally shut down this month. After a string of lies and broken promises, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. bowed to community pressure and pulled the switch May 15, stopping the flow of asthma-causing pollution from the ancient smokestacks and immediately offering cleaner air to a neighborhood that has been plagued by respiratory illness.

It was huge victory for groups like Greenaction, which has been pushing for a shutdown, and community leaders like Marie Harrison, who helped keep the plant on the political agenda. The deal they finally forced on PG&E: The company had to agree that as soon as state regulators agreed that San Francisco had adequate electricity sources without the plant, it would be closed.

And now it’s time to use the momentum to go after the other pollution-spewing power plant in the southeast — Mirant Corp.’s Bayside behemoth. The Mirant plant not only spews pollution into the air, but it also causes extensive environmental damage to the bay. According to Communities for a Better Environment, the Mirant plant uses 226 million gallons of bay water every day for cooling. The water is sucked in, circulated to cool the turbines, and then discharged. The process stirs up sediments at the bottom of the bay that are laced with toxic mercury, dioxin, copper, and PCBs — and then those sediments are drawn into the plant, whirled around, heated up, and sent back out into the bay, where they contaminate fish and generally wreak environmental havoc.

The old-fashioned cooling system doesn’t meet modern environmental standards, but Mirant wants to keep using it. There are alternatives — including so-called dry cooling, which uses little water — but the company doesn’t want to pay to retrofit the plant. Instead, Mirant has applied for an extension of its existing permit from the Regional Water Quality Control Board.

City Attorney Dennis Herrera filed an opposition brief, and a decision is pending. The water board should deny the permit and force Mirant to either abide by modern standards or close the place down.

In fact, that ought to be the endgame anyway: Mirant has never committed to shutting down the plant, even if it becomes unnecessary as a local power source. The Board of Supervisors should pass a resolution establishing as city policy the need to close the facility, and should demand that Mirant agree to a schedule to turn off its fossil-fuel power generation program as soon as the city can replace the energy with renewables.

This is exactly the sort of decision a public power agency could and would make — and Mirant’s intransigence is another sound reason for San Francisco to proceed at full speed with plans to implement a full-scale public power system, in which elected officials, not private corporations, control the city’s energy mix. SFBG

{Empty title}

-
0

› tredmond@sfbg.com

Look: The Transbay Terminal project is all fucked up, about as bad as anything in city government could be, and a lot of people are at fault.

Supervisor Chris Daly isn’t one of them.

I say this because the No on Proposition C campaign has become little more than a personal attack on Daly, who authored the measure that would change the makeup of the Transbay Terminal authority. I’m not voting for Prop. C — I don’t think it’s going to solve the problem — but I do think Daly makes a very good case that change is needed, and I think he’s making a good faith effort to fix it. I mean, at least he’s doing something.

So why are there flyers and posters all around town attacking Daly and saying he is trying to “hold up” the Transbay Terminal project? Mark Mosher, who is running the No on D campaign, argues that Daly “should be held accountable” for his proposal, but that’s horseshit. The real reason, Mosher agrees, is that attacking Chris Daly wins votes in many parts of town.

It’s a sleazy way to run a campaign, and the mayor — who is really behind all of this nonsense — needs to put an end to it, now.

Onward: much, much ado at the Coalition of San Francisco Neighborhoods meeting May 16. The agenda for a group that has too often been under the sway of Joe O’Donoughue included a proposal to rescind the coalition’s endorsement of Prop. D, the badly flawed Laguna Honda measure.

Joe and his ally, former CSFN president Barbara Meskunas, had pushed for (and won) an early endorsement of the measure, which would use zoning rules to ban certain types of patients from the hospital. Somehow, though, the Yes on D presentation wasn’t entirely complete: Most CSFN members who initially voted to back the plan didn’t realize that it had potentially much more sweeping impacts, and could legalize private development on a lot of other city property.

As news about what Prop. D really meant began to get out, some coalition members demanded a new vote — and after a month’s parliamentary delay, they got one.

The debate, I’m told, was lively: At one point, Tony Hall, whom the mayor appointed to head the Treasure Island Development Authority, accused Debra Walker, a longtime progressive, of being a "stooge for the mayor." Ultimately, though, the vote to rescind the endorsement won, 23–8, with Hall, Meskunas, and Newsom-appointed planning commissioner Michael Antonini in the minority.

Shortly afterward, the members voted on new officers, and a slate of candidates led by Meskunas was roundly defeated. At which point Meskunas stormed out of the room, later resigning from the organization.

"This was a battle for the soul of the coalition," Tony Kelly of the Potrero Boosters told me. "It’s been brewing for a while."

Yeah, it’s just one more San Francisco political group and one more internal battle, but it might mean a lot more. First of all, it shows that Hall and Antonini — both, remember, Newsom appointees — are coming on strong against the mayor, fueling the theory I keep hearing that Hall will challenge Newsom from the right in 2007 (and try to get his friend Matt Gonzalez, who also supports Prop. D, to mount a challenge from the left).

Gonzalez told me he hadn’t heard anything about that plan yet (and he found it quite odd), but (of course) he’s not ruling out another mayoral campaign. SFBG

1...148149150...154Page 149 of 154

48hills.org is the official publication of the non-profit San Francisco Progressive Media Center.
Contact us: info@48hills.org