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Politics Blog

DPH Budget Cuts: The saga continues

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By Rebecca Bowe

The ongoing saga of budget cuts affecting a majority of people of color and women in the city’s Department of Public Health took yet another twist this afternoon.

For now, the Budget & Finance Committee has voted to restore the cuts, but it won’t be heard by the full Board of Supervisors until next Tuesday, when eight votes will still be needed to pass the $8 million supplemental appropriation. Meanwhile, in the wake of the city controller’s dramatic pronouncement yesterday that the Board wasn’t allowed to take anything out of the General Fund reserve, Sup. Chris Daly had to do some fancy footwork to come up with a new way to restore the cuts.

At a special meeting of the Budget & Finance Committee this afternoon, Supervisors voted to restore the cuts — but since City Controller Ben Rosenfield said he was unable to certify a spending decision that would draw approximately $8 million from the General Fund reserve, Supervisors voted to dip into the $45 million that the Board placed on reserve across major city departments at the 11th hour of budget deliberations back in July. In the Department of Public Health, it represents about $11.9 million in salaries and benefits. Since drawing from this pot of money wouldn’t render the budget out of balance, the city controller can sign off on it as a legitimate move.

The idea to use the DPH reserve, instead of General Fund reserve dollars, was suggested by Sup. Chris Daly after City Controller Ben Rosenfield announced yesterday afternoon that he would not allow the Board to vote on a supplemental appropriation that spent General Fund reserve dollars because the city is projected to be in dire straits financially. “The previously appropriated spending no longer appears to be supportable,” Rosenfield told the Supervisors this afternoon. “The difference exceeds the value of the General Fund reserve.”

The city controller has never barred the Board from taking a vote on a supplemental appropriation due to a budget deficit. But Rosenfield said this afternoon that in the handful of instances when the controller has had to notify the city of a projected budgetary shortfall, this was the first time that a vote was pending on a supplemental appropriation.

Another rat leaves Newsom’s ship

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By Steven T. Jones
ryan.jpg
Controversial crime czar Kevin Ryan has resigned from Mayor Gavin Newsom’s administration, the Examiner is reporting, the second high-profile defection in as many days.

While this could be a sign of a sinking political ship, both departures are big improvements from a progressive perspective. Ryan, a Republican who was forced from his US Attorney’s post for incompetence, has pulled Newsom in a conservative direction on issues ranging from medical marijuana policy to municipal ID cards to public surveillance.

Most recently, Ryan advised the mayor to adopt a harshly nativist policy change to the city’s sanctuary city policy, with Newsom refusing to enforce a newly adopted city law requiring due process to play out before city officials turn juveniles over to federal immigration authorities – a stance Newsom took with no public input and after refusing to meet with immigrant families or activists.

The Newsom Administration now appears to be in full meltdown mode, with Newsom acting bizarrely and refusing to hold announced public events or answer media inquiries. But as I wrote yesterday upon the resignation of press secretary Nathan Ballard, this could be an opportunity for Newsom to reinvent himself and engage with city constituencies that he has scorned, if only he had the will to do so.

The Jerry Brown tapes

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By Tim Redmond
111709brown.jpg
Hillary Clinton never did this!

I think it’s pretty clear now that Jerry Brown’s press office made a huge mistake in secretly recording conversations with reporters. (For starters, why do it in secret? I’ve done plenty of interviews where I turned on the tape recorder and the politician’s press secretary said, hey, I’m going to record this, too, just so we have a copy and we can be sure you’re report is accurate. Which is always fine with me, and I’m sure would have been fine with the reporters in this case.)

But one good thing came out of it: We have the full transcripts of some fascinating interviews.

Joe Matthews at Foxandhoundsdaily has posted the full 93-page pdf here.

I agree with Matthews — the best interview is the one with AP reporter Beth Fouhy. It shows the good and the bad side of Jerry Brown in full glory, more than any summary or even detailed profile could. It also shows why the progressives need to be prepared to really push Brown on some critical issues — because whatever he was in the 1970s, he’s not acting like a progressive today.

Some of the remarkable details from the interview:

Fouhy: I think you make a really good point. Hillary [Clinton] had never been a candidate.

JB: She doesn’t have the scope. She didn’t work with Mother Theresa. She didn’t spend six months working in a Zen Buddhism. She didn’t take Linda Ronstadt to Africa. She didn’t have her own astronaut. I had Rusty Triker (sic), an astronaut. I put him on the state energy commission. There is a certain texture to who I am, and it’s unique, so I don’t know how you compare it.

JB: I’d like to do something about the prisons. They’re very expensive and have a gross inefficiency, the recidivism rate in California prisons is the highest in the country. What that means is that they’re not working. They keep people off the street, but when they return them, they’re as bad as when they went in, if not worse.

JB: The last time there was real creativity in the state was when I was governor. We created the California Conservation Corp., made the state the leader in wind energy, that was the time when these new innovations in Silicon Valley came along. I brought people into government. We protected the wild and scenic rivers. In fact, people stigmatized, they said there were too many new ideas.

JB: Is the past yesterday? Or ten years from today?

Fouhy: Do you think that Prop. 13 needs to go away?

JB: The real estate taxes have grown since Prop. 13 dramatically. Because property has shifted. Property shits, the tax rate goes up to the current assessed value. …. 13 has centralized decision making in state government and it may be that local government needs more authority to make decisions and I think that’s worth looking at.

So Brown at least gets the point on the state prisons — but he pulls a world-class duck on Prop. 13. He talks about creativity in government, and it’s true — back in his first term, the state did all sorts of cool stuff. But that was when Brown was willing to take risks. Now he’s sounding too much like a grump who doesn’t think anything can really change — witness his battle with John Burton, in which he proclaimed that single-payer “is never going to happen.”

The old Jerry Brown would never have used that term.

So he’s got his old weird (sometimes lovable) spacy-ness, but not so much of the bold vision. Not a great combo.

Controller, in radical move, defies supes

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By Tim Redmond

In a move that’s unprecedented in modern San Francisco history, city controller Ben Rosenfield appears poised to try to block the Board of Supervisors from approving a $7 million supplemental budget appropriation to prevent 500 layoffs of frontline health department workers.

It’s the latest twist in a convoluted battle that pits SEIU Local 1021 and the progressives on the board against the mayor, who wants to lay off nurses aides and clerical workers.

In a budgetmessage posted today, Rosenfield says that the city is running $53 million in the red, and that “until this shortfall is addressed, the Controller’s Office will not be able to certify funds from the General Fund Reserve for other appropriations.”

Rosenfield, a Newsom appointee, is apparently relying on a very old City Charter section that looks like this:

S.F. Charter Sec. 9.113 (d) “General Fiscal Provisions”

No ordinance or resolution for the expenditure of money, except the
annual appropriation ordinance, shall be passed by the Board of
Supervisors unless the Controller first certifies to the Board that
there is a sufficient unencumbered balance in a fund that may legally be
used for such proposed expenditure, and that, in the judgment of the
Controller, revenues as anticipated in the appropriation ordinance for
such fiscal year and properly applicable to meet such proposed
expenditures will be available in the treasury in sufficient amount to
meet the same as it becomes due.

But in my 25 years of covering City Hall, I have never once seen this happen. There have been bad budget deficits before, and supplemental appropriations, and the controller has never told the supervisors that they can’t spend reserve money.

“About the only thing Rosenfield and I agree on is that this has never been done before,” Sup. Chris Daly told me this evening.

The controller’s report notes that several city departments are running over budget — but interestingly, Human Services and Public Health, the targets of the layoffs, are running a surplus of $8.1 million (exactly what the supervisors want to spend).

Among those departments facing shortfalls: The Sheriff’s Office, which is in the red because of “an increase in jail population” — possibly due to the new police chief’s crackdown on drug dealing in the Tenderloin.

I couldn’t reach Rosenfield tonight, but Daly notes that the same legislation was before the board last week, and Rosenfield didn’t object. “So he’s already certified it,” Daly said. “And I’m not sure how he can decertify it now.”

I’m not going to argue that the city has money to burn, but there are always mid-year budget changes in bad times. The supes and the mayor are going to have to make some budget adjustments. But there’s also unanticipated money coming in — for example, San Francisco stands to get about $33 million in federal stimulus money for the Department of Public Health in April, and that funding will be retroactive to the previous year. So this year’s shortfall will actually be $33 million less.

Tina Johnson, a legislative affairs staffer for the state Department of Health Care Services, confirmed the near-certain availability of that money in a Nov. 16th letter to state Sen. Leland Yee.

In any other year, I suspect the controller would follow the normal practice of informing the mayor and the supes that the budget was out of line (as it is, in one way or another, almost every year) and then allow them to come up with some mid-year corrections. But this battle between Local 1021 and the mayor has gotten ugly, and I’m sure there was pressure on Rosenfield.

Look for a showdown at the board meeting tomorrow (Nov. 17). Daly told me that whatever Rosenfield says, “we’re going to have a vote on this.”

Ballard is out, but will Newsom’s tone change?

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By Steven T. Jones

The Mayor’s Office has announced the departure of press secretary Nathan Ballard, a glib and caustic communicator who unnecessarily sowed division with members of the Board of Supervisors and various community groups. The question now is whether this represents an impending change in tone for the lame-duck mayor.

While this afternoon’s press release makes the split sound amicable, it’s hard to know what’s actually going on in this increasingly squirrely administration. But Mayor Gavin Newsom’s quote in the release is telling: “Nathan Ballard is unflappable, smart and a fierce advocate.”

I would agree with each of those adjectives, but it was the last one that really characterized his approach and its contribution to the bunker mentality that the Newsom Administration has developed over the last few years, with its Nixonian penchant to treat all potential opponents as enemies to be publicly scorned and belittled.

Newsom continues to duck the press

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By Tim Redmond

The missing mayor is still missing — and he’s not even talking to the Chron reporters or to C.W. Nevius. He did, however, agree to an interview with the Examiner’s Ken Garcia — and for a guy who was the only one allowed to talk to the mayor since his campaign for governor collapsed and he fled the city, Garcia completely failed to ask any serious questions. Here’s the entire report on Garcia’s hard-hitting interview:

Besides, Newsom told me, “I love this town and I love this job, and I still have a few years left to do some of the things I want to.”

As for ducking from the press, he said the whole idea is “delusional.”

“I’ve been out doing events. I just haven’t had a news conference,’’ Newsom said.

Man, with Ken Garcia on the case, we have nothing to fear.

Sophie Maxwell’s big test

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By Tim Redmond

Shortly after the new supervisors were elected last fall, Sup. Sophie Maxwell came by the Bay Guardian to talk about the board presidency. She was a candidate, and she knew she needed progressive support to get the job. So she told us about her political views and accomplishments and asked why we didn’t consider her a “progressive.”

Well, we’ve had some (respectful) disagreements with Sup. Maxwell over redevelopment and Home Depot. But what really concerned us, then and now, was whether Maxwell was willing to defy the mayor and take a hard line on city budget issues.

And now comes a major test.

The progressives on the board — along with Sup. Bevan Dufty, who is often a more moderate vote — are pushing to force the mayor to rescind the layoffs of 500 front-line health-care workers.

The nurses aides and clerical workers are almost all people of color, mostly women, and mostly making less than $50,000 a year. Sup. John Avalos has proposed that the city take $7 million out of reserves to save their jobs. That’s a temporary fix — in the long run, San Francisco needs to raise taxes to get some more revenue in, or at least do layoffs more equitably.

The Avalos legislation requires eight votes. Union activists say Maxwell appeared to be on their side last week, but after meeting with the mayor’s chief of staff, Steve Kawa, she voted against the measure Nov. 10th. That left it one vote short of passage.

It also sparked a fight between Maxwell and Sup. Chris Daly, which isn’t doing anyone any good.

But it’s not over. The Avalos bill is back in committee, and will come before the board again in the next two weeks. And Maxwell has to face a tough decision.

The argument that there’s no money available to save these jobs doesn’t make sense to me. The city’s likely to receive $33 million in extra public health money next year through a state bill known as AB 1383.

Besides, the entire city budget is out of whack already; revenue isn’t up to expectations and the deficit is growing for next year, so the mayor could (and should) make some mid-year changes — like layoffs at the top.

I haven’t been able to reach Maxwell by phone. But this one’s going to go down as a litmus test: When it comes to saving the jobs of working-class people of color, or siding with the mayor, where will she come down?

It’s clear where all the progressives on the board are. And that’s where Maxwell should be.

Lessons from New London debacle

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By Tim Redmond

New London, Connecticut, became famous a few years back for seizing the homes of dozens of families to make way for a commercial development by the pharma giant Pfizer. Now, a major Supreme Court case later, the project has gone forward, the houses have been demolished — and now Pfizer, after years of tax breaks and tens of millions of dollars in public subsidies, is bailing on the whole thing.

It was on odd Supreme Court case, with Justice Clarence Thomas, of all people, making the case against a private company getting tax benefits. But it’s hard to argue with the results — this was a major disaster. And there’s a lesson here: If governments put too much faith and hope in the promises of big business to save their economies, they’re going to be badly disappointed.

Lennar Corp. isn’t demolishing any houses in Bayview/Hunters Point, but the construction giant will completely transform that area — and then what? Suppose Lennar goes broke halfway through? San Francisco’s handing over a lot of its future to one company that can’t be trusted. Not so smart, I think

John Ross at Modern Times

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By Tim Redmond

John Ross, author, poet, civic honoree and longtime Bay Guardian Mexico City correspondent, will be at Modern Times Nov. 18th to read from his new book, El Monstruo.

John is a San Francisco treasure, and his events are not to be missed. Here’s the scoop:

SAN FRANCISCO (Nov. 2nd) – Poet/author/journalist/ and globe-trotting troublemaker John Ross will present his latest cult classic “El Monstruo – Dread & Redemption In Mexico City” (Nation Books) on Wednesday, November 18th at Modern Times Bookstore, 888 Valencia Street in San Francisco’s Mission District beginning at 7:00 PM.

“El Monstruo” (“The Monster”) tells the sordid tale of Mexico City, the most contaminated, corrupt, crime-ridden, and conflictive megalopolis in the Americas, where Ross has lived for the past quarter of a century. The narrative spans no less than 50,000,000 years, beginning way back in the Paleocene and time traveling all the way to last spring’s swine flu panic.

“John Ross sings a lusty corrido about a great betrayed city” writes Mike Davis, author of “City Of Quartz” and “Planet Of Slums.” “Ross has fashioned a stirring love letter and cautionary tale about his beloved Mexico City,” adds Kirkus Reviews.

John Ross is the author of ten books of fiction and non-fiction and an equal number of poetry chapbooks, the most recent of which is “Bomba!” (Calaca de Pelon, Mexico City.) “Iraqigirl”, a diary of a teenager coming of age under U.S. occupation that Ross developed and edited was published by Haymarket this July. John Ross is the winner of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Upton Sinclair Prize (The “Uppie”) for his 2005 phantasmagorical autobiography “Murdered By Capitalism – 150 Years of Life & Death On The American Left” and the 1995 American Book Award for “Rebellion From the Roots”, the first published account of the Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas that the author has accompanied from its earliest hour and about which he has written four books.

In addition to Modern Times, John Ross will present “El Monstruo” at Northtown Books, 957 Street in Arcata California on Friday the 13th at 7 PM and will bring the Monster to the UC Berkeley campus when he speaks at the Center for Latino Policy Research, 2547 Channing Way, on MonsY, November 30th at Noon.

In recognition for his decades-long accomplishments as an activist and writer, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors recently declared May 12th “John Ross Day.”

Declaring that San Francisco has become “a sanctuary city for the rich,” Ross declined the “honor.”

Inside the mayor’s office with SEIU Local 1021

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By Rebecca Bowe

Yesterday, around 4 p.m., 22 union members rushed into the mayor’s office (the plush reception area on the other side of those stately double doors) and demanded to meet with Mayor Gavin Newsom. Immediately blocked by security from continuing all the way to the mayor, they vowed to wait — and remained there for about two hours. The protesters were there as representatives or supporters of SEIU Local 1021, which has launched a months-long fight against Newsom in the wake of layoffs and deep salary cuts in the Department of Public Health inflicted by city budget cuts.

In the City Hall corridor just outside the mayor’s office, scores of other SEIU members gathered in support of those inside the reception area. Chants, cheers, and the refrain from Bob Marley’s “Get Up, Stand Up” could be heard from outside. The SEIU members inside, meanwhile, circled up and prepared to be arrested. Meanwhile, the clerks working in the reception area continued diligently working away at their desks. (Each of the mayoral staffers declined to comment. At one point, mayoral spokesman Nathan Ballard walked through the room, and the union members hollered at him to please ask the mayor to show some leadership. “Will do,” he said with a smile, and disappeared behind a door.)

The mayor never showed. Nor did any clash take place between the union members and the plainclothes security officers who were coolly guarding the doors leading out to the corridor and back to the mayor’s actual office. The union members stayed until approximately 6:15 p.m., chanting, singing, delivering impromptu speeches, and resolving that they would keep up the fight. Here’s what it was like in there.

They finally negotiated an exit with the security officers, and joined the others outside the doors.

Then, they flooded into the street outside City Hall with the other workers and proceeded to circle around the intersection of Polk and McAllister. Sup. Chris Daly joined them and thanked them for their work, vowing to do what he could to restore the cuts.

At Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, supervisors voted seven to four to dip into the General Fund reserve to restore the jobs of certified nursing assistants and unit clerks in the city’s Department of Public Health.

But after it was announced that the ordinance had passed on first reading, and the SEIU workers who’d packed the Board Chambers let out a celebratory whoop, some one pointed out that eight votes were needed for approval. The measure had actually failed — and the disappointment in the room was palpable.

Wanna side of Candlestick EIR with turkey dinner?

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Text by Sarah Phelan
For those brave folks who plan to read the newly released six-volume EIR for Lennar’s proposed redevelopment of the 770-acre Hunters Point Shipyard/Candlestick Point site, the holiday season promises to be a busy time.

First, you need to actually find the report, which is buried over at the San Francisco Planning Commission’s site. To help you find your way there, click here.

Nex, you need to figure out when you’ll have time to read it before two public hearing which are scheduled for Dec. 15 & 17—just ten and eight shopping days before Christmas.

And then, if you plan to make a difference, you’ll also need to figure out when you’ll have time to write and submit public comments, which will be accepted until Dec. 28 (three days after Christmas, three days before New Year)

Now, maybe this timing will work marvelously, what with the economy in the shitter, and no one having money to spend on the holidays, and more and more people unemployed and therefore in possession of the time needed to read, digest and comment on all six of these crucial tomes.

Or could it be that most people won’t be doing any of this, and especially not during and in between the biggest celebrations –in terms of family gatherings and feasts?

To motivate y’all to sit up and start tracking this plan, which promises to majorly impact the city’s southeast, may I point you to a Nov. 5 presentation on the proposed plan that was made before the San Francisco Planning Commission last week, in anticipation of the EIR’s release.
(You can watch it or read the captions, depending on your mood). in anticipation of the EIR’s release, by clicking on the Nov. 5 links listed at the Planning Commission’s site.)

What struck me when I watched it was the overall vagueness, on the part of city officials, when it came to explaining the plans, and the desperation of community members, on the one hand, to get jobs, and, on the other, to get the shipyard thoroughly cleaned up (and not just cleaned up to Lennar’s “intended use”) and to get Lennar to keep its promises, be they to monitor the dust, or build 32 percent affordable housing, or create thousands of permanent jobs. Enjoy.

1989: The Velvet Revolution, rewound

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By Marke B.


Sametová revoluce – předchozí demonstrace 1988-1989, záběry jednotlivců — scenes from demonstrations in Prague, 1988-1989

I spent many hours of my life standing in those crowds, in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, and Prague; their behavior was both inspiring and mysterious. What had moved these individual men and women to come out on the streets, especially in the early days, when it was not self-evidently safe to do so? What swayed them as a crowd? Who, in Prague, was the first to take a key ring out of his or her pocket, hold the keys aloft, and shake them—an action that, copied by 300,000 people, produced the most amazing sound, like massed Chinese bells?

So writes European historian Timothy Garton Ash in “1989!” — part one of his wonderfully cogent reckoning of the history of the so-called end of the cold war published in the New York Review of Books this month. (Part two, “Velvet Revolution: The Prospects,” to be published next month, just became available online.) It’s the 20th anniversary of those immense events, including the fall of the Berlin Wall, so it’s time to size up what happened and how we think of it all, I guess.

Garton Ash takes a long and involved look at how scholars have weighed the events of 1988-1989 — and 1980-1981 in Poland — from the theory that a bankrupt East Germany had no choice but to dissolve itself, as it had become too much in debt to the West, to the hilariously ludicrous notion that Reagan tore down the Berlin Wall himself, brick by brick, shirtless, in jodhpurs and suspenders, the Brill Creme streaming in manly rivulets down his unvacillating brow. Of course, new archival information is becoming available all the time, revealing shocking new things. (In one stunning instance we’re reminded that Dick Cheney was a troglodyte long before Iraq. As President George H.W. Bush’s Defense Secretary he advised that all of Glasnost, then politically melting an entire continent of policies, “may be a temporary aberration in the behavior of our foremost adversary.” He needs enemies to live.)

In any case, Garton Ash’s major recommendation is that historians approach the “fall of communism” less from the top down, digging through acreages of bureaucratic documents, and more from the bottom up — a sort of historical revitalization of crowd psychology, paying closer attention to the participation of the people within the churning movement toward democracy itself. (I wonder what he thinks of this.) So I searched around and found the video above, which really does drive home the huge cajones and audacity of hope, not to mention the sheer higglety-piggletyness, among those Velvet Revolutionaries.

(I was in Berlin in the summer of 1988 — and was almost jailed on the Eastern side for importing homosexual pornography, i.e. a Damron Gay Europe travel guide with a picture of a tacky guy with a Speedo on the cover, until they realized I was under 18 and would have too many legal problems — and it really seemed like East Germans were roiling with angst that summer, maybe more than usual. At least, they weren’t the stony-faced apolitical drones that I’d been led to believe by the American media. Hindsight, of course, is 20/20 — something Garton Ash’s essays handily take on. Really, my main observation was probably that East German dudes were way hotter than the West German ones, who were undergoing some sort of ghastly hippie fashion revival at the time.)

One more money quote from “1989!”:

The end of communism in Europe brought the most paradoxical realization of a communist dream. Poland in 1980–1981 saw a workers’ revolution—but it was against a so-called workers’ state. Communists dreamed of proletarian internationalism spreading revolution from country to country; in 1989–1991, revolution did finally spread from country to country, with the effect of dismantling communism.

Meet the mothers, Mister Mayor

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Text and video by Sarah Phelan


Abigail Trillin reads a letter from an immigrant mother who wants to meet Newsom in person and hear him explain why he supports a policy that has led to her son being needlessly placed in a federal detention facility in Oregon

As the father of a newborn, Mayor Gavin Newsom is doubtless having sleepless nights and tiring days, as he learns to change diapers, burp and even bathe his young daughter, in between his duties as San Francisco’s CEO.

Presumably, he’s already gained the fiercely protective perspective of a parent–a point of view that could help him realize why it would be humane to meet with the parents of immigrant teens who have been whisked out of the city and away to federal detention facilities in other states, thanks to a policy that Newsom ordered last year.

One such mother wrote a letter requesting a meeting with the mayor to discuss why her son is sitting in a federal detention facility in Oregon, even though the SF District Attorney has dismissed all the charges in his case.

Abigail Trillin, staff attorney with Legal Services for Children, read that letter aloud at City Hall this week, shortly after the Board voted to override Newsom’s veto of amendments to the sanctuary policy (and you can listen to it, by clicking on the video above.)

The Board’s amendments seek to ensure that teens who haven’t done anything wrong aren’t turned over to the feds for possible deportation. The amendments would therefore also ensure that families aren’t needlessly put through hell, just because someone accuses their kids of doing something they never did.

But Newsom has said- indirectly through his spokespeople–that he plans to ignore the Board’s amendments, claiming that his hands are tied by federal law.

The Board believes otherwise and currently a nasty legal battle seems eminent.

In the meantime, families of immigrant children in San Francisco are left worrying if their kid is going to be the next child to be referred to the feds and disappeared to a detention facility in Oregon or Miami or Indiana or wherever for deportation to a country they never knew for a crime they never did.

So if Newsom, as a mayor and a parent, believes in his policy, then surely he is willing to defend and explain it to those directly impacted by his decisions.

Because this isn’t a game, or another piece of political theater. It’s a case of immigrant parents desperately fighting to protect their kids from needless harm, which could include death at the border or being recruited into a gang.

Now, folks tell me stuff like, well, these parents should make sure their kids don’t get into trouble in the first place.
But the truth is that some of these kids didn’t get into trouble in the first place. Or not into trouble that was so serious that it warranted being referred to the feds. And that’s why their mothers have a problem with Newsom’s current policy and want him to amend it, as he has been directed, or at the very least explain it, as mayor of San Francisco, to them in person.

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GOP makes lame attack on Jerry Brown

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By Tim Redmond

Okay, I promise this is the last item about Jerry Brown today (two’s plenty enough).

The CA Republican Party has released an attack on on the attorney general, trying to make a huge deal out of the secret taping of reporters.

I’m not much in favor of secret taping of anyone, although some leading thinkers on First Amendment issues aren’t sure this is such a huge deal. Peter Scheer at the California First Amendment Coalition, for example, argues that

Talking to a reporter on the phone (or in person) is about as open and nonconfidential an exchange as sitting for a live television interview or typing into a blog on a public, unrestricted website. The whole point of a conversation with a print journalist is to provide her with information to be communicated to her paper’s entire readership. A genuinely confidential communication with a reporter is the rare exception, not the rule.

But that’s beside the point. Carla Marinucci at the Chron says

Ouch. The ad pounds Jerry in the same way that Jerry’s GOP guv rivals and other GOPpers did earlier this week: Point out that ordering a self-investigation will fail you in Conflict of Interest 101 every time.

But really, is this the best the GOP can do? There are so many things to criticize about Jerry Brown, and we’ll be hearing them over and over all next year. This one just seems kind of lame. I think this whole “scandal” is over, and nobody really cares anymore.

The Examiner’s swipe at Jerry Brown

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By Tim Redmond

Newspapers that subscribe to wire services like AP have the right to condense, edit, and pretty much use the material any way they want. The results can be telling.

Witness the AP story that ran today on Jerry Brown’s campaign for governor.

You can read what appears to be the full, unedtied version here.

Then there’s the version that ran in the print edition of the Examiner. You can find that by going here and paging through to p. 17.

I got an interesting email from h. brown on the two stories. His analysis:

What was cut:

“Obama [won] the biggest margin of victory in a
California presidential election since at least
WW II.”

Praise for Brown:

“opening government for women and minorities”

“Democratic party becoming increasingly diverse”

[The original story] said that Brown is: “famously independent”

The Examiner editors changed it to:

“famously erratic personality and propensity
for outlandish statements”

Again: Nothing out of the ordinary here at all, editors do this stuff every day. But it’s an interesting window into how media bias shows up in the most subtle little ways.

Bloody shoeprints and stab wounds suggest de la Plaza murdered

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Text by Sarah Phelan

hugues12acd.jpg
A newly released forensic report suggests that Hugues de la Plaza (pictured above) was murdered in San Francisco two years ago.

Francois de la Plaza, the father of deceased French-American citizen Hugues de la Plaza, sent me a copy of a report today that forensic pathologist Michael Ferenc prepared for SFPD Deputy Chief David Shinn, concluding that Hugues’s death was a homicide, as his family and the French authorities have long claimed.

“In my opinion, the death of Mr. Hugues de la Plaza is a homicide,” Ferenc writes in his report, which was prepared nine months ago, (and not in Feb. 2008, as the Guardian initially claimed, thanks to a typo on the report itself). Curiously, the SFPD has never publicized Ferenc’s findings, even though it has divulged preliminary findings from an as yet unpublished LAPD report, which allegedly supports the SF Medical Examiner’s finding that the cause of death was “undeterminable.”

Ferenc notes that SFPD Inspector Casillas gave him, “an excellent overview of the case” when he met with him and his colleagues,” earlier this year.

” It was very thorough and detailed,” Ferenc writes.

In his report, he summarizes several key points that support his murder conclusion, (based on his review of the SFPD’s crime scene photos, video and autopsy report.), before inferring, Sherlock Holmes-style, the following sequence of events:

“Mr. De La Plaza returned home from nightclubbing around 0200 hours and entered his residence,” Ferenc states. “There he ate some food and apparently made phone calls and utilized his computer (approximately during the next half hour based upon Inspector Casillas’s investigation). For some reason(s) he exited his apartment ( or at least stepped outside to answered his door). Either upon exiting or at his subsequent return, an assailant(s), who was(were) most likely positioned on the lower landing of the stair case, stabbed Mr. De La Plaza while he was on the lower steps. The victim retreated inside the apartment and the assailant(s) probably did not follow inside. The victim went to the kitchen and returned to the front room bleeding profusely all the time. He soon collapsed from hemorrhagic shock in the front room where he was found.”

To support his conclusions, Ferenc highlights the following key points:

Food fights and deportation

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By Tim Redmond

It’s a good thing these kids weren’t in San Francisco — they might wind up in federal prisons or getting deported.

Herrera to Russoniello: Back off or we’ll see you in court!

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By Steven T. Jones

In the wake of today’s Board of Supervisors vote to override Mayor Gavin Newsom’s veto of requiring due process to play out before city officials turn undocumented juveniles over to federal immigration authorities, City Attorney Dennis Herrera sent an fascinating letter to U.S. Attorney Joseph Russoniello, a conservative who had threatened to bring charges against employees who follow the new law.

Herrera is walking a thin line between Newsom, who unilaterally weakened the city’s long-standing Sanctuary City law last year under pressure from nativists and the San Francisco Chronicle; and supervisors and immigrant rights activists who say the mayor’s new policy violates the principle that people are innocent until proven guilty. Newsom has threatened not to enforce the new policy, which becomes law in 30 days, citing the legal threat to city employees.

But Herrera has now attempted to remove that threat by asking Russoniello to withdraw it, and issuing a threat of his own if the holdover Republican attorney doesn’t back down: San Francisco may turn to the courts to overturn Russoniello’s interpretation of federal law, which Herrera calls “broad.”

The important part of the letter states: “Because of the Board of Supervisor’s adoption of the Amendment, and in view of your earlier assertions that certain City officials may have violated federal criminal laws regarding their past handling of certain juvenile arrestees and your seemingly broad interpretation of the harboring statute, I ask that the U.S. Attorney’s Office provide an assurance that if the city proceeds to implement this Amendment in accordance with its terms, City law enforcement officers and employees will not be prosecuted for violating federal criminal laws. I would appreciate your timely response to this letter, preferably by December 7, 2009. If the U.S. Attorney’s Office does not provide us with an adequate assurance that it will not prosecute City officials or employees who would implement the Amendment, my Office may be compelled to explore with City policymakers other options regarding the implementation and enforcement of the Amendment, including the possibility of filing a declaratory relief action in federal court.”

For a complete interpretation of the frightening implications of Newsom’s policy stance, read tomorrow’s Guardian cover story.

Golfers and garter snakes

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By Tim Redmond

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The golfers-against-snakes fight at Sharp Park has been in the headlines for a while, and KQED held an hour-long discussion on it Nov. 9th.

It gets really confusing and crazy: The city owns the park, although it’s in Pacficia. That means San Francisco taxpayers have to fork over the millions of dollars it costs to operate and maintain the place, while San Mateo County residents get the advantages of it.

It’s also a public golf course — and while San Francisco has other public courses, Northern California overall lacks places for people who aren’t rich to play the game. It costs about $30 to play at Sharp Park, and well over $100 at the private places.

The endangered San Francisco garter snake and the Califoria red-legged frog live at Sharp Park. The SF Rec-Park Department says we can save both the golf course and the critters

But Brent Plater, executive director of the Wild Equity Institute, which wants to turn the golf course into a hiking park with a major species-restoration element, says the snakes and frogs may be okay where they are right now and where the city wants to protect them — but when climate change causes a rise in sea level, the fresh-water species will need to retreat upland, and the fairways and greens are in the way.

And Rep. Jackie Speier, whose district includes Sharp Park, says what the hell — in 50 years, if we don’t slow climate change, San Francisco International Airport will be flooded, too, so let’s not go overboard about the fate of the garter snakes (although she told Forum that she got to hold a San Francisco garter snake the other day, and it was very beautiful).

There’s a point that gets too easily lost here, though. The course loses money; the taxpayers subsidize it. And fixing the seawall and doing all the things the city’s report suggests will cost millions more. “When we’re laying off a third of our rec directors, and shutting down recreation programs in the inner city, why are we spending millions of dollars subsidizing a golf course in San Mateo County?” Mirkarimi asked when I spoke to him this morning.. “If it’s a regional asset, why aren’t we getting any help?”

Well: Guess what? Now that the report is out, and now that Mirkarimi has made a fuss about this and there’s a real movement out there to get rid of the links altogether, the golfers and Rep. Speier are starting to talk about the need for someone other than the city to step up. Although Speier was awfully condescending and harsh on Forum (“San Francisco is the property owner, and property owners need to protect their property”), I thnk she’s got the message. If we’re going to keep Sharp Park for the golfers, then a city that has more than 700 acres of golf courses and about 30 acres of soccer fields, a city that can’t afford to keep rec centers open in neighborhoods where those facilities are lifelines for at-risk kids, ins’t going to be able to foot the entire tab.

And whatever the outcome, getting that on the radar of Congress and San Mateo County has been a public service.

Freedom Archives celebrates 10 years of keeping progressive history alive

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By Melanie Ruiz
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“Preserve the past – illuminate the present – shape the future.” That’s the battle cry of the Freedom Archives, an extensive and inspiring media archive of progressive politics and culture located in the Mission District. This Wednesday, Nov. 11, the Freedom Archives is throwing a 10-year anniversary party at 330 Ritch to honor the imaginative volunteers and interns who have worked so hard to build the archives and keep this important history alive.

There’s plenty for FA and the community at large to celebrate. FA director Claude Marks has been acting guardian of the many important voices comprising its collection, including exclusive material from political prisoners, the gay and lesbian rights movement, and Native American struggles. It’s recognized as one of the best sources anywhere for material on the history of California’s prison system and La Raza.

Finding unfiltered history is, well, like finding a fallacy-free argument from Bill O’Reilly. At FA, you can find Maya Angelou reciting poetry at an Angela Davis benefit, interviews with Dolores Huerta, and coverage of May Day in 1970. Its simple Mission digs are filled with awe-inspiring artifacts of our history. The shelves are stacked with videos, cassettes, and reel-to-reels comprising a treasure trove of speeches, interviews, rallies, poetry, music, and community events.

What’s up with the Ramos red herring?

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Text by Sarah Phelan

My editor Tim Redmond just asked why just every story about the city’s sanctuary ordinance seems to start with Ramos?

It’s a good question, especially since the Campos legislation would ensure that folks like Ramos would be deported, “not once, but twice,” as Campos puts it.

So why does the Ramos red herring keep popping up? Maybe it’s because anti-immigrant groups keep mentioning Ramos in an effort to keep the media focused on “security” issues, and not on “child welfare” arguments.

Most arguments around juvenile immigrant policy issues typically split into these two camps–the security camp and the child welfare camp– as noted in a 2009 Congressional Research Services report on juvenile immigrants by Chad C. Haddal.

In his 28-page report, Haddal observes that the debate over policy questions regarding unaccompanied alien children, or UAC, (as the federal government describes juvenile immigrants who appear to be here without family) “has polarized in recent years between two camps: child welfare advocates and immigration security advocates.”

As Haddal observes, tthe child welfare group “has for decades advocated a more refugee-oriented policy toward UAC, arguing that the UAC are largely victims of trafficking, abuse and economic circumstances. Security advocates, by contrast, advocate a more restrictive policy of deportation and repatriation, charging that unauthorized immigration is associated with increased community violence and illicit activities such as gang memberships. The UAC policy question is how to provide for the security of the United States while simultaneously safeguarding the rights and safe treatment of unaccompanied alien children.”

What’s interesting about Haddal’s analysis is that it poses the question of why the “child welfare” side of the argument fell by the wayside in San Francisco, under Mayor Gavin Newsom’s leadership.

Could it be because the mayor’s criminal justice department was dominated by Republican leaders who had Newsom’s ear last summer, just as he was making his doomed entry into the gubernatorial race? And that now that Newsom has let himself be backed into a policy corner, he doesn’t seem to be able to acknowledge the child welfare argument, let alone debate it with Campos in a public arena?

Why I love MissionMission

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By Tim Redmond

Because where else would you read stuff like this?

Will a donor boycott move the Dems?

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There’s a lot of frustration over the failure of the Democratic congress and administration to move on marriage equality and Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell, and it’s going to get worse — I fear that in the wake of the loss in Maine (which was really just a setback on the inevitable the path to equality) will scare Congress even more and convince Rep. Nancy Pelosi to keep anything this “divisive” off the agenda going into next year’s midterm elections.

So the progressive blogosphere is trying a new tack: A boycott on donations to the Democratic National Commitee. It’s catching on — the folks at FireDogLake just endorsed it, and I just got off the phone with Markos at DailyKos, and he told me he’s signed on (though he hasn’t posted on it yet). Dan Savage is on board , no surprise.

Normally these things don’t make much of a difference — but in the past couple of years, donations from readers of blogs like DailyKos have been a significant factor in close Congressional races. So the DNC might actually feel this.

Drive the bridge slowly: it could save your life

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Text and video by Sarah Phelan

I shot this footage of driving across the Bay Bridge, the day after the bridge re-reopened the second time this fall.

I’d already filmed this stretch before, the day it reopened for the first time in September. At the time, I wanted to capture what the new approach to San Francisco looks like, and I was extra thankful for the renewed access, which was sorely missed by my family over Labor Day weekend, when my sister-in-law had to be taken by ambulance from Oakland to San Francisco via the San Mateo bridge.

When I shot the bridge the first time, my family was concerned that my sister-in-law didn’t have much time left on this planet, and sadly, they were right: she died Oct. 8, after a long battle with breast cancer.

But I little suspected that I would be filming the bridge re-reopening so soon, or that the newly installed S-curve would be the site of 44 accidents in the ensuing two months. Today’s accident, in which a man driving a truck full of pears lost control and plunged to his death in the Bay, in the wee morning hours, sounds particularly gruesome.

So, maybe it’s worth watching videos like this, just to familiarize yourself with the road before you get behind the wheel. Especially if you have a heavy load on board. (The other major major accident, so far, involved a guy who lost control of a Safeway big rig, scattering frozen pizzas across the top deck and jamming up traffic for hours.)

If you compare the two videos, you’ll see that flashing lights have now been installed, just before you hit the curve, which is serious enough that it makes me want to go, “Wheee!” each time I round it.

I’ve also shot the drive (this time at night) from San Francisco to Oakland, which so far has witnessed far less accidents, possibly because folks have to squeeze through a tunnel before they hit the curve on the lower deck of the bridge.

And please, excuse my music choices and/or background commentaries on these videos. Because as history shows, when you’re driving the bridge, you can’t afford to get distracted by anything else, including whatever’s playing on the radio of my music-challenged car.

But I guess you could watch these videos from the comfort and safety of your laptop, while listening to the music or commentary of your own choice. So enjoy–and keep your hands on the wheel, as the song goes, next time you drive the Bay Bridge, and slow down. It really could save your life.

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