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Politics Blog

Saturday voting — and how to fund it

Zelda Bronstein
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9
Saturday voting — and how to fund it

Alex Tourk, a local political consultant who was once Gavin Newsom’s campaign manager, came by today to pitch us on his latest project: Saturday voting. He’s generated a fair amount of press on the concept, and it sounds like one of those thing nobody could oppose; why not open the polls an extra day? In fact, why not open the polls from Friday until Monday? Why Tuesday, anyway?


Well, Tuesday voting is a creature of the mid-1800s, when it took a couple of days to get from the farm to the town center, and nobody wanted to start out on a Sunday. Now it’s in the California constitution. But there’s no law that says you can’t vote Saturday AND Tuesday.


What Tourk is proposing is fairly simple: Voting places would be open Saturday, but there would be no voting machines. You’d just go there and fill out an absentee ballot. Which you could also do at home, of course, and a citywide vote-by-mail effort might increase turnout even more. (Or maybe it wouldn’t, given the low rate at which census forms are getting returned.)


Tourk says he wants to build excitement about elections and community interest; that’s why he wants the polls open an extra day — and a day when more people are off work and thus, in theory, would have more time to vote. He’s circulating an initiative that would set up a one-time pilot project, for the 2011 mayor’s race. If it works, maybe the supervisors and the mayor will want to continue it.


Here’s my big concern: Tourk doesn’t want to ask for public money from a city that’s deep in the red, so he’s proposing to raise the $1 million or so it would cost for Saturday voting from private interests.


Of course, the names of the donors would all be public, but still: Managing elections is about the most central democratic function of a government — and I really don’t want to see private interests involved. It seems to me that if this is worth doing, it’s worth paying for with public funds.


Where would that money come from? Here’s an idea: Prop. 15, the California Fair Elections Act, would set up a pilot program for public funding for statewide elections. The money would come from fees on lobbyists. Why can’t we do the same thing in San Francisco? Fund Saturday elections with a lobbyist fee — and a tax on political consultants.


Seriously: Consultants make money by manipulating democracy. They represent, on a deep philosophical level, the privatization of American politics. I’m not saying all consultants are bad or that they should be outlawed or anything like that — but a modest levy on political consultant fees would more than fund a Saturday election pilot program.


Tourk smiled when I suggested this, and would only say it was “an interesting idea.” Now, which supervisor is going to pick up on a tax that will only offend the small number of people who help get all our local officials elected?

Roundup of depressing environmental news

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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0
Roundup of depressing environmental news

At the Guardian, we’re busy putting together our annual Green Issue to commemorate Earth Day. It’s great that recycling and general concern for the planet have been on the rise over the past 40 years, but I can’t help but notice a few Prozac-worthy reports on the environmental front recently.

First there was the bomb President Barack Obama dropped on environmentalists last week with plans to open up vast areas off the coast of the eastern seaboard and Alaska for offshore oil drilling.

Then there was the news that a host of Texas oil companies, in league with the Tea Party (Teabaggers?) and a group named for the guy who dreamed up Prop 13, are bankrolling an effort to suspend California’s landmark global warming legislation, AB 32, with a ballot initiative. (A few brave souls have launched a Boycott Valero campaign against Valero Oil Co., a major source of funding for the initiative to suspend AB 32.)

And finally, another tragic reminder that extracting and burning coal is a perilous way to keep the lights on: An explosion at a West Virginia coal mine owned by Massey Energy has killed six mine workers and trapped 21. This is why some communities in the coal-mining regions of Southern Appalachia think of themselves as residents of a national “sacrifice zone” for U.S. energy demand.

Let’s all hope the upcoming Green Festival in San Francisco this weekend is more inspiring than these headlines.

Chilling footage of journalists getting shot in Iraq

Zelda Bronstein
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77

By Nima Maghame and Rebecca Bowe

On July 12th, 2007 two apache helicopters attacked the small suburb of Al-Amin, Iraq. More than two dozen people were killed, including two Reuters journalists, driver assistant Saeed Chmagh and war photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen.

And the entire incident was recorded on video — from the helicopters.

Reuters demanded an investigation in the summer of 2007, and asked for copies of the video the choppers took. The government refused. But after three years, a copy of the video has finally been released — through Wikileaks. The chilling footage shows the helicopters firing on seemingly unsuspecting Iraqi civilians — and includes the helicopter crews’s comment, which are even more chilling.

It’s as if the gunners were playing a video game, as if they didn’t consider the people on the ground to be living human beings. “Oh, look at those dead bastards,” one crewman says. At another point, the gunners — who aren’t allowed to fire at unarmed targets — practically beg a wounded man to pick up a weapon so they can finish him off. And when the man gets into a van that arrives to help him, they ask for permission to open fire: “Come on, let us shoot!”

The U.S. Military released a memo explaining that the actions taken by the soldiers were in accordance with its own Rules of Engagement.

 

The 17-minute video was posted online at Wikileaks.org, an investigative Web site that publicizes sensitive documents and
information leaked by anonymous sources in order to expose corruption and wrongdoing. Wikileaks obtained the footage “from a number of military whistleblowers,” according to a description accompanying the footage on the Web site CollateralMurder.com. Wikileaks editors had to decode the encrypted version of the leaked video in order to view its contents and air it.

In the video, when shooters inside the helicopter start to zero in on the pedestrians below, they can be heard identifying the objects they are carrying as an AK-47 and an RPG. But according to an Associated Press article quoting an unnamed U.S. military official, “a military investigation later concluded that what was thought to be an RPG was really a long-range photography lens; likewise, the camera looked like an AK-47.”

Reuters stopped short — way, way short — of making a big issue of the killings. “The deaths of Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh three years ago were tragic and emblematic of the extreme dangers that exist in covering war zones,” said David Schlesinger, editor-in-chief of Reuters news We continue to work for journalist safety and call on all involved parties to recognise the important work that journalists do and the extreme danger that photographers and video journalists face in particular.”

David Finkle wrote about the incident in his 2009 book The Good Soldiers. Finkle, who was following military personnel in charge of training Iraqi national forces, had only been a few streets away when the attack took place. The author had also been friends with Noor-Eldeen and Chmang.

Finkle wrote that both Reuters staff were working independently — that is, they weren’t officially embedded with the U.S. forces — and he claims that’s is why the military didn’t know of their existence. “There had been reports of sniper rifle, rooftop chases, and rocket-propelled grenades being fired at Bravo Company, and as the fighting continued, it attracted the attention of Namir Noor-Eldeen, a 22-year-old photographer for Reuters news agency who lived in Baghdad, and Saeed Chmangh, 40, his driver and assistant,” wrote Finkle, who was close to where the Apaches attacked but not an eyewitness.

“There was a one-second pause and then came the fourth burst. In the cloud, NE could be seen trying to stand, and then he simply seemed to explode,” wrote Finkle. Chmang tried to stand up and run away before falling down again. The video’s audio picked up two of the drivers urging Chmang to arm himself so they can kill him.

“Come on, buddy” says one driver. “All you gotta do is pick up a weapon,” says the other driver.

A Kia passenger van stopped by Chmang and attempted to rescue him. The helicopters radioed for permission to fire on the van and received confirmation just as Chmang was being helped into the van. The soldiers blasted the van just as it started to roll away.

Two children were wounded in the attack as well, and were evacuated by US. Military personnel.

Big Wheel + Big Hill = Big Fun

Sasha Cuttler
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1

After barely surviving a brush with city bureaucracy last year, Bring Your Own Big Wheel yesterday returned to the steep streets of San Francisco for its 10th year in a row, once again proving that incredible stupidity can be incredibly fun.

Hundreds of costumed participants riding Big Wheels and other plastic-wheeled kids toys braved driving rain to race in packs down steep and curvy Vermont Street on Potrero Hill, offering colorful crashes and zaniness galore and eliciting big dumb grins from both participants and spectators, who were there in roughly equal numbers.

And for such a crazy event with throngs of people, it was remarkably problem-free and required almost no police presence. Last year, after the SFPD threatened to cancel the event and arrest anyone riding Big Wheels, a citizens’ group (including many from the Burning Man world) stepped up to manage an event that has gotten exponentially larger since its early days on Lombard Street.

City officials including Neighborhood Services Director Mike Farrah brokered last year’s compromise and helped facilitate this year’s event, for which volunteers made all riders fill out waiver forms and get wrist bands to minimize the city’s liability. With minimal official involvement, this was crazy fun by the people, for the people, with what costs there were (such as Porta-potties) covered by passing the hat.

It was a great day to live in San Francisco.   

Unfortunately, print and still photography just don’t do this race justice, so check out this video from VidSF and the folks over at Mission Mission (but pay no attention to that first guy that correspondent Sunny Angulo interviews because he’s clearly insane) to get a sense of the action.

Momentum shifts against sit-lie

Sasha Cuttler
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19
Momentum shifts against sit-lie

Proponents of criminalizing sitting or lying on San Francisco sidewalks have seen their prospects of success steadily dwindle in the last week, starting with the creative and well-covered Stand Against Sit-Lie protests on March 27 and continuing through last week’s Planning Commission vote against the measure to yesterday’s debate on BBC’s The World, in which opponent Andy Blue clearly bested proponent Ted Loewenberg.

In fact, Blue and his grassroots band of progressive allies deserve tremendous credit for flipping the momentum on the issue away from the narrative pushed by Mayor Gavin Newsom, Police Chief George Gascon, and the reactionary Haight area property owners from Loewenberg’s Haight Ashbury Improvement Association.

While Newsom and Loewenberg tried to argue this was about giving police another “tool” to use against violent street ruffians, Blue and the progressives have correctly pointed out that the overblown examples proponents cite (ie hoodlums punching passersby, barricading businesses, and spitting on babies) are already illegal and that the law actually punishes the simple act of lounging in public.

That argument by progressives got strong support from a Planning Department report on how the sit-lie ordinance cuts against a variety of city policies and goals that promote open space and using sidewalks for more than just transportation, a view that the Planning Commission endorsed on a surprisingly lopsided 6-1 vote, with even Newsom’s appointees crossing him on the issue.

Few members of the Board of Supervisors have embraced the push for sit-lie, so it’s likely to be dead-on-arrival when the board considers it later this month, but Blue’s group isn’t taking any chances. Stand Against Sit Lie is planning another day of creative protest – with more sidewalk picnics, games, and maybe a return of Chicken John’s sidewalk hot tub – on April 24.

Will Whitman’s spending backfire?

Zelda Bronstein
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11
Will Whitman’s spending backfire?

The political graveyards of California are littered with the bones of candidates who tried to get elected to statewide office on the basis of their own great wealth. Steve Westly, Al Checchi, Jane Harmon, Michael Huffington, Darrell Issa … lots of people though they could buy the job of governor or senator. Most of them failed — in part because they couldn’t craft a message that appealed to the voters.


But I think they also failed because on some level, California voters don’t like being bought. The idea that someone is so rich that he or she can spend around $50 million to get elected governor is kind of appaling, particularly in an era when people aren’t so happy with the very rich.


Calbuzz had a little fun looking at all the things Meg Whitman could buy with the $40 million she’s already spent (Madonna’s apartment, Conan O’Brien’s silence, a Cape Cod wastewater plant), but really: You have to wonder what she could have done for society if she’d used that cash for something other than her vanity campaign.


I have no polling data on why mega-millionaires don’t win; the current polls show Meg’s ahead of Jerry Brown . But I’m not sure her cash and her obscene spending won’t become a negative at some point.

Why does the Catholic Church still exist?

Zelda Bronstein
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6
Why does the Catholic Church still exist?

Johnny Angel Wendell, who wrote a piece for us this week about talk radio, does a show Sunday night on LA’s KTLK radio called Southern California Live, and this week — on Easter Sunday — he had a great rant about the Catholic Church. You can listen to it here — it starts about 22 minutes into the show. (Full disclosure — I’m often a guest on the show, and was on last night, and you can listen to me talk about Meg Whitman and Gavin Newsom at the end of the session, but Johnny’s bit on the church was better).


His question: Why does the Catholic Church still exist?


If any other major institution was caught doing what the Catholic hierarchy did — allowing, or even encouraging, the abuse of children by its frontline workers — nobody would go there any more. Imagine if Disneyland had this sort of scandal; no parent would ever take a kid there again. No school, or club, or program that involves or caters in any way to kids would survive a scandal like this.


I know, I know: It’s about religion and faith that’s supposed to transcend the foibles of the humans who run the show. But Jesus — how can even devout Catholics allow this to continue? The pope and all the corrupt, sleazy bishops and cardinals ought to be thrown out like the devils cast from heaven in the Bible — and until that happens, maybe all those devout Catholics should stop putting money in the collection plate.

One question for Tiger Woods

Zelda Bronstein
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1
One question for Tiger Woods

So Tiger Woods is finally talking to the press. I don’t get invited to the press conferences at Augusta National (imagine that), but if I were there, I’d have tried to ask exactly one question:


Mr Woods: Can you explain why your personal life is any business of anyone in this room — and if you can’t, then why don’t you stop answering questions about it?


Seriously: I’m tired of it. The guy has sex with people to whom he wasn’t married. His wife got pissed about it. Is that not the story of millions of couples all over the world? Just shut up and ask him about his practice rounds, or his new swing, or why Augusta still doesn’t have any women members.


The cover story in the American Journalism Review this month is called “Lost in the Woods: Sinking standards, the Media and Tiger Woods.” It’s by Washington Post reporter Paul Farhi. AJR is pretty stodgy for my taste most of the time, but Farhi has it right:


For all its lurid aspects, the Woods scandal may have constituted a watershed in American journalism: A major news story in which many “respectable” news outlets ditched traditional newsgathering methods and standards of fair play and piggybacked on aggressive but not always accurate tabloid reporting. The distinction between “mainstream” and “tabloid” may never have been so blurred as it was in the whirlwind of reporting on Woods.


I don’t fucking care who Tiger fucked. As John Madden might say, just let the guy play the game.

It’s raining reindeer babies in Alaska

Mary Magee
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0
It’s raining reindeer babies in Alaska

Whenever I want to find out the goods on Republican nutjob Sarah Palin I turn to www.themudflats.net, which also happens to be a great blog about all things Alaska.

And this time, instead of finding the latest scoop on Sarah “Moose in the headlights” Palin, I discovered that it’s reindeer birthing season. And that mudflats’ readers are being invited to submit names for the 18 or so reindeer calves that are expected to be born any day now at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks research facility.

Readers have already submitted names like Holden and Zoe and Saami and Tasha.

So, while Christmas is still over 260 shopping days away, and you probably don’t believe in Santa Claus anyway, if you want to have input on names that could feature in the next rendition of the most famous reindeer song of all time, submit suggestions now.

As mudflats notes, “On Daniel, on Dawson!  On Pookie and Velvet!  On Coffee, on Cowgirl, on ….. Giggles and Ricardo? It could have potential.”

And while you’re at the mudflats site, check out their information on wolves. Because if there is one thing Palin has taught us, it’s not to take our eyes off the most remote states in the union, lest bad things happen to the wild things there.

ACORN did not commit voter registration violations

Mary Magee
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16
ACORN did not commit voter registration violations

One of the craziest aspects of the whole ACORN saga has been how rightwing lies about the organization have been repeated so often that they have come to replace the truth in most people’s minds.

For instance, according to the Office of California Attorney General Jerry Brown, there are no reports of votes that were cast fraudulently, thanks to anything ACORN did.

As Brown’s press secretary Christine Gasparac clarified today, “ACORN itself did not commit, counsel, or aid and abet registration violations. Some of the canvassers employed by ACORN and paid on per registration basis handed in phony registrations in order to make money and all were all caught and rejected by the Registrar.”

Now, I’m not saying everything ACORN has done has been without fault, or that the left isn’t guilty of distorting facts, too.
I’m just saying that it’s too bad that political discourse in this country has descended to the point that the truth is now irrelevant.

And if you’re following the latest Vatican scandal …

Zelda Bronstein
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1
And if you’re following the latest Vatican scandal …

… and you’re reading about the Pope and his ol’ chum from San Francisco, and how the Catholic League blames homosexuals for the pedophilia scandal, and how the Vatican now equates bad press to the Holocaust, you might enjoy this nice little video. It’s funny, but it’s not funny — when I was a kid in Catholic school, we all knew you didn’t want to be chosen to be an altar boy. We could have used some of this fine product back then.

Judge sets hearing on contempt order for SF Weekly’s bank

Zelda Bronstein
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7
Judge sets hearing on contempt order for SF Weekly’s bank

Superior Court Presiding Judge James McBride April 1 granted a motion by the San Francisco Bay Guardian to set a hearing for the Bank of Montreal, the lead bank for the SF Weekly and its parent chain, to show cause why it should not be held in contempt of court for interfering with a judge’s order in the Guardian’s attempt to collect on its $2l million plus judgment in a 2008 predatory pricing trial.


McBride set the hearing for April 30 and said that he would not hear the case but would assign another judge to hear it.


He said at the beginning of his remarks that the Guardian in its briefs had established a prima facie case for a hearing.
After hearing oral arguments from Guardian attorneys Richard Hill and Jay Adkisson, and Bank of Montreal attorney
Dan Falk, McBride ruled in favor of the Guardian’s motion.


The motion addresses the latest twist in the efforts by the Weekly’s parent company, Village Voice Media, to duck payment of the judgment. For more than two years, since a jury ruled in the Guardian’s favor, VVM and the Weekly have been hiding behind a complex corporate structure and a cozy relationship with a banking syndicate and have refused to pay the debt.


The Guardian has seized two of the Weekly’s vehicles and the rent that subtenants pay the Weekly, and on March 9th, Court Commissioner Everette A. Hewlett Jr. ordered the Weekly to turn over half of its ad revenue to the Guardian.


The Guardian contacted the Weekly’s advertisers and advised them of the order. But, according to the Guardian brief, “after BMO received notice of the 9 March 2010 order, it began contacting all of the advertisers subject to the Assignment Order and instructed them to disregard that order and make payments directly to BMO.”


The Bank of Montreal, which heads a banking syndicate that has helped finance VVM’s expansion over the years, argues that VVM owes $77 million on a loan, and on March 12th, the syndicate declared the loan in default. That, the bank argues, means that BMO gets all of VVM’s money and that the Guardian is second in line.


However, the chain was valued just two years ago at $191 million, and under California law, BMO is required to marshal the assets of VVM – that is, to do an inventory of what the company owns and what it’s worth – so that other debtors can be paid.


“I have three times requested in writing to BMO that they marshal the assets of SF Weekly LP and New Times Media LLC, however BMO has never responded,” Adkisson stated in his court filing.


Hewlett has already said in open court that “it is possible that [BOM is] in contempt of court.”


The Guardian will be back in court April 14th asking that a receiver be appointed to take control of SF Weekly’s finances.


The banks in the syndicate that are holding the VVM debt (as of March, 2009) are Bank of Montreal, U.S. Bank, Wells Fargo, WestLB AG, Rabobank, BNP Paribas, and Brown Brothers Harrimann. You can read Adkisson’s filing here (PDF)

Did Fox dump Yee to spare Palin?

Sasha Cuttler
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29
Did Fox dump Yee to spare Palin?

Fox News seems to be having a hard time playing the victim card in the controversy over Sarah Palin’s upcoming speech at a cash-strapped California State University campus, for which she’s being paid an undisclosed — but likely huge — amount of money. And the network has been jerking around the chief critic of the deal, Sen. Leland Yee (D-SF), as it looks for a way to martyr poor Palin, a new Fox News commentator.

As we wrote, the issue that Yee raised and generated media attention for was why CSU-Stanislaus and its foundation were able to cut a secret deal with Palin. Yee was scheduled to appear on Fox’s America Live with Megyn Kelly on Wednesday about the controversy, but Yee chief of staff Adam Keigwin told us Fox News cancelled the appearance less than an hour before taping.

“They probably saw that this was indefensible and they didn’t want negative publicity for Palin,” Keigwin speculated.

But then Fox News representatives called again, and this time they wanted Yee to appear on tonight’s (April 2) The O’Reilly Factor with Bill O’Reilly, and Keigwin said Yee reluctantly agreed to do so: “I was a little hesitant to do it, knowing it’s a no-win situation, but we decided to do it,” Keirwin said of the show that O’Reilly dominates in bullying fashion.

But then, a couple hours later, Fox called back. “The producer called to ask, ‘Now you’re saying she shouldn’t speak, right?’” No, Keigwin explained, the issue was one of disclosing how much she was being paid and whether public funds were involved, and nobody was trying to censor her.

“So he said, ‘We’re looking for someone who doesn’t think she should speak at all,’” Keigwin said. Eventually, the producers decided to nix Yee again and instead tap some CSU students who were allied with Yee. They’ve already taped their interviews, so we’ll see what happens once they’re edited over several hours and turned into tonight’s broadcast.

Meanwhile, Yee is still waiting for a response from CSU officials about the Palin gig, and Keigwin said CalAware and the California First Amendment Coalition have also formally requested public records associated with the appearance, the disclosure deadline for which is next week.

Yee is the chair of the recently created Senate Select Committee on California’s Public Records and Open Meeting Laws, and Keigwin said, “This could be the subject of our first hearing.”

O’Keefe and Giles may still face charges over ACORN tapes

Mary Magee
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5

It’s true that California Attorney General Jerry Brown gave Republican activists James O’Keefe III and Hannah Giles immunity from prosecution in exchange for their full, unedited videotapes of ACORN employees.

But that doesn’t mean the couple is necessarily off the legal hook entirely.

As Brown’s own report notes, because of the immunity deal, his office did not determine if the couple violated California’s Invasion of Privacy Act when they recorded ACORN employees.

But, as Brown’s report observes,  “if the circumstances meet the requirements of the Act, the ACORN employees may be able to bring a private suit against O’Keefe and Giles for recording a confidential conversation without consent.”

That’s an important point to remember, given that rightwing groups are bragging that O’Keefe recently saw felony charges, filed in connection with his recent invasion  of the Louisiana office of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), reduced to a misdemeanor.

Could O’Keefe’s apparent ability to walk away relatively unscathed from acts that would land other folks in jail have something to do with his life of privilege as outlined at Gawker, using O’Keefe’s Facebook photos? Or is it more to do his close ideological ties with the increasingly aggressive Republican attack machine?

Catholic Church equates bad press with the Holocaust

Sasha Cuttler
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2
Catholic Church equates bad press with the Holocaust

On the anniversary of the day when Jesus Christ was supposedly crucified, the Catholic Church has ratcheted up its counterattack on the journalists and victims’ advocates who have the gall to be concerned about the church covering up an epidemic of pedophilia by priests, taking its feelings of persecution to a ridiculous extreme.

The New York Times reports that during the Good Friday services at the Vatican, with Pope Benedict sitting in attendance, Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa equated negative news articles about the still-unfolding pedophilia scandal with the history of persecution suffered by the Jews, saying, “They know from experience what it means to be victims of collective violence and also because of this they are quick to recognize the recurring symptoms.”

Are you fucking kidding me?!?! Did he really equate valid criticism of a very real church scandal to the Holocaust, in which more than 6 million Jews were killed by a Nazi regime that was playing footsies with the Catholic Church at the time? Shameless, utterly shameless.

Why is the Potrero Power Plant still going strong?

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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7
Why is the Potrero Power Plant still going strong?

The Potrero Power Plant, a longtime source of pollution and health concerns for residents of San Francisco’s southeastern neighborhoods, is slated for partial closure once the Trans Bay Cable begins transmitting electricity into the city.

The Trans Bay Cable is an undersea cord that will transmit 400 megawatts of power underneath the San Francisco Bay from power plants in the Pittsburg / Antioch area. Last we heard, from a January article in the San Francisco Examiner, the project was running a full month ahead of schedule.

From the Examiner update:

“The cable was scheduled to become operational in March. However, the $505 million project is moving ahead of schedule, according to PJ Johnston, a spokesman for the joint venture that’s financing and installing the cable. The planned date to switch on the cable is now Feb. 1, according to Johnston.”

Well, Feb. 1 came and went. March came and went. Now, it’s April – and the Potrero Power Plant is still going strong, its telltale plume issuing from the tall brick smokestack.

We called PJ Johnston, the spokesperson, for another update. “We’re still testing,” he explained. “We’re going to be testing at least into the next month or longer. We’re working with the [California Independent System Operator] to determine a commercial operation date.”

The construction of the Trans Bay Cable and the converter stations were completed last year; and the system was energized in December; Johnston noted.

“We won’t speculate on a latest start date,” he responded after being asked when, at the very latest, it would go into service.

That elusive date is key, because that’s when the city can kiss the primary unit of its only remaining power plant goodbye. Unit 3, which accounts for the lion’s share of harmful emissions, will no longer be required to operate by the California Independent System Operator (Cal-ISO) once the alternative source is in place, clearing a major obstacle that stood in the way of the plant’s closure for years. Three smaller diesel-fired units at the plant will remain in service until a Pacific Gas & Electric Co. cabling project is finished later this year, but they’ll run far less frequently than the workhorse Unit 3, according to Cal-ISO spokesperson Gregg Fishman.

“We had heard March too,” Fishman commented. He confirmed that “the large unit at Potrero will no longer be needed,” once the cable comes online, and referred us to Johnston for more information. In an accord reached with City Attorney Dennis Herrera last year, Mirant — the company that owns the Potrero plant — agreed that it would shutter the plant once the Cal-ISO gives the nod.

When the cable comes online and Unit 3 finally does become history, the air quality in San Francisco’s Bayview Hunter’s Point neighborhood is sure to improve. Yet as the Guardian has noted in the past, there are environmental justice questions surrounding a project that essentially shifts the pollution impact of the city’s energy needs from one low-income community to a similar neighborhood, farther away. 

Caltrain faces deep cuts, perhaps even closure

Sasha Cuttler
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13

Serious doubt was cast over the future of Caltrain today, with this vital commuter rail link threatened by the same funding cutbacks that are hobbling other regional transit agencies. The joint-powers agency might be forced to cut its service in half this summer – probably by eliminating night and weekend service — or perhaps even shutting the system down.

San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency is in a fiscal emergency and moving ahead with service cuts and small but controversial revenue enhancements, all approved Tuesday by its Board of Directors, and the nearby San Mateo County Transit District (SamTrans) and Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) are in similarly desperate straits.

Those three agencies run Caltrain, and all have had to scale back their funding commitments in order to preserve bus and light rail services in their core communities. “We’re rapidly approaching a cliff,” Caltrain CEO Mike Scanlon told the Caltrain Board of Directors today, according to the San Mateo Times. “It’s going to be very, very painful. It’s probably going to force people back on congested freeways.”

Caltrain spokesperson Mark Simon told the Guardian that the agency is fully funded through the current fiscal year that ends June 30, but after that, “I don’t know how long we can survive.”

“I don’t think I need to tell someone at the San Francisco Bay Guardian how bad things are at the SFMTA,” he said, adding that the situation is as bad or worse at the other two agencies, and that Caltrain has no other sources of operating revenue.

“That issue has come to a head and it’s come to a head because the state has zeroed out how much money it gives to public transit,” Simon told us. “What’s really heartbreaking is that this is a time when we should be adding service.”

Indeed, Caltrain has been moving ahead with plans to electrify its track, which would increase train speed and therefore system capacity while polluting less. But while it seeks federal grants for that capital project, the operating funds that have traditionally come from the state via SFMTA, VTA, and SamTrans have dried up (state and federal transportation funds are strictly divided between capital and operating funds).

Unlike Caltrain, SFMTA and many other transit agencies have the authority to put general tax measures on the ballot to fund transit services, but so far in San Francisco, neither Mayor Gavin Newsom nor the seven SFMTA board members he appointed have shown any leadership is doing so.  

Newsom wants more authority for party-crashing cops

Sasha Cuttler
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12
Newsom wants more authority for party-crashing cops

At a time of rising concern about police crackdowns on San Francisco nightlife – including the use of unprovoked brutality, selective harassment, and punitive property seizures – it would seem a strange time to call for abolishing the Entertainment Commission and returning its authority to the San Francisco Police Department. But Mayor Gavin Newsom has now called for doing just that.

Newsom last week refused calls to get involved with mediating a nasty dispute between the SFPD and nightlife workers and advocates, who have filed claims and lawsuits against the city alleging improper police behavior, including a racketeering lawsuit and another lawsuit alleging police retribution against promoter Arash Ghanadan for complaining about mistreatment, for which Police Chief George Gascon is scheduled for a video deposition on April 8 (other depositions involving Gascon and the undercover partners Officer Larry Bertrand and ABC agent Michelle Ott will follow in coming weeks).

The police crackdown, the subject of recent cover stories in both the Guardian and the SF Weekly, has been underway for more than a year and nightlife advocates say it is reminiscent of the arbitrary police enforcement against disfavored clubs and parties in the late 1990s that led to the creation of the Entertainment Commission in the first place.

Making Newsom’s new stance even more puzzling, the commission has been responsive to the overhyped criticism of the commission by nightlife critics, some politicians, and the San Francisco Chronicle and Examimer. The commission voted last night to suspend Suede for shooting out front, a decision that Board of Supervisors President David Chiu (whose North Beach constituents have put pressure on him to rein in problem clubs) cast as a litmus test for the commission, and one it apparently passed. In addition, Commissioner Terrance Alan, who had been criticized for his conflicts of interest, last week announced that he will be stepping down from the commission when his term expires in June. 

“Isn’t anyone paying attention? It’s really got me baffled,” Alan said of the continuing calls to kill the commission. “I don’t know what this is about.”

He isn’t the only one. Commissioner Jim Meko, who had been critical of the commission’s industry-heavy makeup and reluctance to take aggressive action against problem clubs, told the Chronicle that turning permitting and enforcement over to the cops would be much worse.

Sen. Mark Leno, who as a supervisor created the commission back in 2002, agrees. He told us that he opposes the change proposed by Newsom.

“I strongly believe the original reasons for the creation of the commission, an inherent conflict in having the same body that enforces licensing to also issue those licenses, remains,” Leno told us.

Leno also noted that it was only in November that the Board of Supervisors voted to give the commission more authority to suspend the licenses of problem clubs, which they used with Suede, delivering the maximum penalty possible: a 30-day suspension.  

“If they just gave them additional authority, let’s give it a little time to work out before we talk about disbanding them,” Leno said. He also noted that it’s strange to see the mayor and supervisors criticizing the industry-heavy makeup of the commission considering that they’re the one who make those appointments: “That’s in the hands of the board and the mayor.”

Neither Chiu nor Newsom have returned our calls seeking comment, but several Guardian sources with long involvement in the conflict between the SFPD and the nightlife community say the cops – particularly hardasses like Commander James Dudley, who has often made comments critical of nightlife and its promoters — have long sought to have more power over nightclub, private parties, and the citizens who attend them.

But until there is a fair airing of and resolution to the trend of overzealous and belligerent enforcement actions by the SFPD, any move to give that agency more authority to kill the fun in San Francisco is likely to be met with heavy opposition.

 

UPDATE: David Chiu just got back to me, saying Newsom hadn’t consulted him before taking his stand and telling us, “I don’t agree that we need to abolish the commission.”

But as the supervisor from a sometimes-rowdy district that includes a couple of clubs where violence has occurred, Chiu does want to make some changes in how nightlife is governed in San Francisco, seeing a conflict between the Entertainment Commission’s role promoting nightlife and regulating it: “The Entertainment Commission has conflicting missions.”

Chiu said he would like to see nightclub permitting turned over to a body like the Interdepartmental Staff Committee on Traffic and Transportation (ISCOTT), which handles street closure permits and has representatives from several city agencies. It would exist alongside the Entertainment Commission, whose work Chiu said has become “overly politicized” in recent months.

At the same time, Chiu said, “I generally agree with” the Guardian’s coverage of the War of Fun, and said that he’s helped facilitate meetings with SFPD to deal with issues like the inappropriate police seizures of DJ’s laptops: “From my perspective, I want to make sure people’s civil rights aren’t being violated.”

But Chiu said the problem seems to lie more with the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control than the SFPD: “It appears the ABC has been inappropriately cracking down on the mainstream venues that are trying to do the right thing.”

Chiu said there isn’t a pressing need to act quickly on the Entertainment Commission issue and said that he would work with Leno on the solution, something Leno confirmed, telling us, “I have had some conversations with David Chiu and I’m going to get more involved.”

Judicial candidates: Dan Dean

Zelda Bronstein
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Judicial candidates: Dan Dean

Dan Dean is one of two candidates challenging Superior Court Judge Richard Ulmer in the June primary election. You can listen to our editorial board interview with him here.

 

Dan Dean by endorsements2010

The pope’s supporters are truly horrible

Zelda Bronstein
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12
The pope’s supporters are truly horrible

I’m glad I’m not the only one who noticed the astonishing ad that ran in The New York Times defending the pope. Maureen Dowd picked it up in a nicely savage column that suggests the holy father undergo an inquisition. I agree that medieval practices are about what’s needed for the Vicar of Christ — but his supporters are even worse. Here’s Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, who bought space on the Times oped page to spill a screed of mind-boggling ignorance and hate:


The Times continues to editorialize about the “pedophilia crisis,” when all along it’s been a homosexual crisis. Eighty percent of the victims of priestly sexual abuse are male and most of them are post-pubescent. While homosexuality does not cause predatory behavior, and most gay priests are not molesters, most of the molesters have been gay.


Yes, this guy, who leads a major Catholic organization, is really arguing in public that the problem isn’t that abusive priests were protected by the church; it’s that there are (gasp) homosexuals in the priesthood.


This isn’t an April Fool’s joke. The guy really wrote that. It really ran in a major American newspaper in 2010. And unless I missed something, not one leading voice in the Catholic Church — not one bishop, or cardinal, or Vatican official, or even an intellectual leader in the Church — has stepped forward to publicly criticize Donohue.


Let’s bring back the Spanish Inquisition.

Judicial candidates: Rod McLeod

Zelda Bronstein
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0
Judicial candidates: Rod McLeod

Six candidates are running for two judicial seats in San Francisco, and over the next few weeks, we’ll be interviewing all of them (and at the end of April, we’ll be publishing our endorsements). The interviews make for interesting listening, so we’re posting the sound files on the web. Here’s Rod McLeod, who is one of four candidates seeking to replace retiring judge Wallace Douglass.

 

 

Rod McLeod by endorsements2010

Sit-lie: A city planning issue?

Zelda Bronstein
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4
Sit-lie: A city planning issue?

The City Planning Commission will be taking up the proposed sit-lie law April 1. No, that’s not an April Fool’s joke — city planners are going to take testimony and weigh in on the proposal to ban sitting on the sidewalks. Why is this a planning issue? Well, Commissioner Michael Antonini asked for a hearing to see what other cities do (and he’ll probably push the commission to endorse the law) — and Commissioner Christina Olague wanted to see what impact the law would have on the city’s Pavement to Parks program.

It’s a serious question: A Planning Department staff report (PDF) discusses the issue in some depth, noting that the General Plan suggests that “parts of wide sidewalks can be turned into children’s play areas and sitting areas for adults.” General Plan policy 26.1 calls on the city to “consider the sidewalk as an important element in the citywide open-space system.” After all, streets and sidewalks take up 25 percent of all the land in San Francisco — far more than the parks.

And the Planning Department has been moving actively in the past year to turn more bits of pavement into temporary urban parks, places that used to be streets or sidewalks where people are now encouraged to …. sit. “It is unclear if the ordinance would apply to the temporary plazas and informal seating crated by Pavement to Parks,” the report concludes.

So expect some sparks to fly here, and for a heated debate if the commission tries to take action supporting or opposing the law.

 

Alice Waters protested for supporting using human waste as compost

Sasha Cuttler
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8
Alice Waters protested for supporting using human waste as compost

By Brady Welch

In a story that continues to amuse and fascinate, it appears that the human biosolids compost shit show we wrote about last week has left town… and ended up in, of all places, Alice Waters’ own backyard garden. That’s right: the seasonal, local, and cage-free proprietor of Berkeley’s fabled Chez Panisse has emerged as a staunch and unlikely defender of fertilizing your garden with sewage sludge compost, which San Francisco officials have recently discontinued giving away because of environmental concerns.

It all started when the Organic Consumers Association found out that Francesca Vietor, executive director of Chez Panisse’s non-profit arm promoting safe and healthy food for kids, was the same Francesca Vietor who is vice president of the SFPUC Board of Commissioners, which had until very recently been pawning off toxic compost made from human waste contaminated with industrial chemicals and heavy metals.

The news was like finding Mom (Chez Panisse) in bed with a Hells Angel (the SFPUC).

But we understand organizational slip-ups happen, and we trusted Waters to do the right thing, issue an apology, and figure out what to do with Vietor. But it turns out that the Bay Area’s advocate for a slow food economy that is “good, clean, and fair,” has decided instead to stand in defense of a system that is, frankly speaking, fast, cheap, and out of control.

On March 23, OCA National Director Ronnie Cummins wrote a letter to Waters asking how this could be. The letter reads, in part:

“Considering that the sludge was given to several local schools for use on their educational gardens, your work with the Edible Schoolyard should especially elicit your concern. This is certainly in direct opposition to the standards that Chez Panisse Foundation and the Edible Schoolyard encourage and uphold. It seems to us a clear conflict of interest that Francesca Vietor should serve as both the Executive Director of the Chez Panisse Foundation and the Vice President of the PUC.”

Waters wrote back March 30:

“I have been involved with the organic garden movement for 40 years. I believe in the transparency of public institutions and count on the government to offer the highest standards outlined by the Organic Consumers Association and other reliable advocates. I look forward to reviewing the science and working with the SFPUC to ensure the safety of composting methods.”

Well, the science is already in, and as we reported, it isn’t pretty; and more, our public institutions aren’t that transparent either, especially when it comes to sewage sludge compost. So on April 1, the OCA plans to hold a protest at noon to commemorate Chez Panisse Café’s 30th anniversary and perhaps remind the East Bay bastion of sustainability why diners have patronized them for so long.

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