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Politics Blog

Prison report: The laws are wrong

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Editors note: Just A Guy is an inmate in a California state prison. His blogs typically run on Mondays and Thursdays, although it’s sometimes hard to communicate from prison.

By Just A Guy

Today Brett Pedroia, the brother of Boston Red Sox all-star Dustin Pedroia, received one year in jail and eight years probation for the molestation of a nine-year-old boy.

Last month, Dante Stallworth received 30 days in jail, community service, and probation for killing a man inFlorida while driving while intoxicated.

And here I sit, among many others, serving multiple years in prison for possession of a controlled substance — which is a victimless crime. Yes, I know that friends and family get hurt by our behavior if we’re addicts, but let’s face it – the emotional pain an addict causes to friends and family is not too different that caused by a verbally abusive spouse, parent or boss. Yet those people aren’t generally considered criminals.

Now that the governor has signed the budget, and part of the budget cuts more than $1 billion from corrections, it’s likely that a lot of us will be released. Remember thought, we are only released from prison, not from the custody of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. We will be on parole, which is change in custody status.

Let me ask you, would you rather have Brett Pedroia living next to you (a convicted child molester) or me, a recovering addict clean and sober for two years and eight months?

And what about Stallworth? Sure, he isn’t likely to rob you or molest your child, but will he drive drunk and kill your kid or someone else?

The BART police review plan

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By Tim Redmond

The BART Board has released a final draft of its new police-oversight policy, and you can comment on it at a public meeting tomorrow (Thursday) at 6:30 PM at the Joseph Bort Metro Center Auditorium, 101 Eight St. Oakland.

There’s a lot to digest; you can read the whole thing here (PDF). In essence, the Board would create an 11-member citizen oversight commission and an independent police auditor; the auditor would investigate complaints and the commission would monitor the auditor.

It’s going to be a fairly conservative commission — each of the nine BART Board member gets to appoint one commissioner, and it’s a fairly conservative BART Board. And — in a move that’s pretty shocking — BART wants to allow the police unions to appoint their own rep to the commission. (A final member would be chosen at-large by the entire BART board).

And here’s the big problem: The auditor can’t impose discipline — that’s up to the police chief (who reports, by the way, to the BART general manager, not the BART Board). Nothing weakens civilian oversight more than a police chief who won’t discipline the troops, and I suspect that’s what’s going to happen at BART, where the chief didn’t even bother to show up for most of the community meetings on civilian oversight.

The Newsom campaign’s in trouble

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By Tim Redmond

Lots of interesting opinions about what the loss of Eric Jaye means to the Newsom campaign. Paul Hogarth at Beyond Chron Thinks that Garry South, who is now in charge, could lead to Newsom’s downfall. Brian Leubitz at Calitics thinks that

Eric Jaye was an enormous asset to Newsom’s campaign. It is hard to see how a departure of somebody with that kind of relationship and with that kind of intricate knowledge of the candidate is good for the campaign.

And Jerry Roberts, who has been covering politics in this state even longer than I have, thinks this is exactly what the Newsom campaign needs:

The last political consultant to elect a Democrat governor of the state, the Duke of Darkness is a bare-knuckles, in-your-face, shoe-leather, hand-to-hand combat veteran who has two main tasks: 1) Get his candidate to raise a ship load of money and 2) Needle, badger and tweak primary rival Jerry Brown at every turn.

A few thoughts:

1. Everyone agrees that South is, in political terms, an asshole, someone who loves negative campaigning and sees the key to victory as raising tons of money and trashing your opponent. He has had both success (Gary Davis, at first) and failure (Gray Davis, later; Joe Lieberman, Steve Westly) with that approach.

But the thing to keep in mind is that, whatever you think of Newsom’s politics, this isn’t his style. Newsom’s not a brawler; he wouldn’t even show up at supervisors meetings to argue with Chris Daly. He’s much more of a stand-in-the-well-scripted-public-meeting-with-a-cordless-mike kinda guy. In fact, if this becomes a bloodbath, Newsom loses; he can’t take a punch. Real conflict makes his nervous. And I don’t think Jerry Brown will come out of the gate with a negative campaign, but if Newsom starts it, Brown will respond.

2. Newsom ought to be the clear front-runner in this race. It’s almost a textbook campaign — the new, fresh face, the young, tech-savvy charmer with the grand ideas against the been-there-done-that crabby old pol who has changed his political stripes so many times it’s hard to know what he actually believes in any more. That’s what Eric Jaye was trying to do. Sure, the fundraising was slow, and Jaye mistakenly thought that Newsom could pull an Obama (I’ve seen Barack Obama, and Mr. Mayor, you’re no Barack Obama). But if they could raise enough to be competitive, they had the right strategy.

3. It’s hard to win a Democratic primary without the progressives in California. And South has done everything possible in his career to anger and alienate progressives.

4. Eric Jaye is no fool — he had hitched his own star to Newsom long ago, was looking not just at Sacramento but beyond — and if he thought South’s approach was the correct one, that it would lead to victory, he wouldn’t have been so quick to bail.

I dunno — Jerry Brown ought to be terribly vulnerable at this point, but I think Newsom’s campaign is in trouble.

Are undocumented kids accorded due process in SF?

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Reading the Chron’s article yesterday about citizens suing the US for having been wrongly held/deported, reminded me of an email exchange I had with Mayor Newsom’s mayoral spokesperson Nathan Ballard earlier this year.

I’d asked Ballard what the city is doing to guarantee due process to juveniles who are arrested on suspicion of having committed a felony and who the city suspects are also undocumented.

It’s a question that immigrants rights’ advocates have been asking since Newsom changed the city’s sanctuary policy last summer. And the answers coming from the Mayor’s Office have been troubling to say the least

As these advocates note, using Juvenile Probation Department data to support their case, back in 2006 there were 288 petitions filed against Latin American juveniles, but only 211 were sustained. That means that if Newsom had revised the city’s policy in 2006, 77 Latin American juveniles who weren’t actually found to have committed a felony could have been reported to ICE and deported.

And as the Chronicle noted yesterday, though US citizens are a tiny fraction of the 400,000 people who pass through ICE custody each year, cases in which they are held and/or deported “occur with some regularity.”

Newsom loses Crowfoot, Coloretti, and Arata

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Text by Sarah Phelan
Images by Sarah Phelan and Luke Thomas

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Remember the time the mayor’s office locked its door and sent out Wade Crowfoot to receive a copy from then school board member Eric Mar of the school board’s unanimous resolution that asked Newsom for a temporary shutdown of Lennar’s Bayview development until health testing could be done at the site? Crowfoot promised to “pass the message along to Newsom.”

Well, news is just in that Wade Crowfoot,who was appointed a couple of years ago as Newsom’s climate change initiative director, is headed for the Environmental Defense Fund.

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And remember the time that Newsom’s budget director Nani Coloretti was left to face the press after Newsom made a shocking surprise visit to the Board of Supervisors to tell them that the budget was seriously messed up, then fled?

Well, news is just in that Coloretti, Newsom’s budget director, is going to be deputy assistant to the U.S. treasury secretary.

I don’t have any great pix or memories of political fundraiser Paige Barry Arata, but feel free to share them here, as news is also just in that Arata is quitting as the finance director of Newsom’s gubernatorial bid and returning to City Hall.

A big Newsom “oops!”

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By TIm Redmond

Okay, here’s a big cringe-worthy oops from the Newsom for Governor website.

The mayor loves to talk about technology, and on his campaign website he talks about transparency:

Online Government for Transparency: Mayor Newsom has used technology to cultivate an ongoing conversation with San Francisco residents and to put city services online to increase accessibility and transparency. He recently launched SFrecovery.org to allow citizens to track and provide input on how San Francisco spends federal stimulus dollars and 72hours.org to better prepare San Francisco in the case of a disaster or emergency. And San Francisco’s government television station was recently ranked first among nearly 500 government agencies archiving streaming media content from government meetings.

Anyone who has followed Newsom knows he’s the last person who ought to be bragging about transparency — the guy won’t even release his daily schedule.

But here’s the cringe: Click on sfrecovery.org.

I don’t think that’s what the mayor had in mind.

“Legalization is not the answer?” Huh?

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By Tim Redmond

Bizarre story in the Chronicle today about gangs of pot growers using state and federal land for their crops. First of all, this is nothing new — there’s been pot growing on public land for years. And for years, it’s caused environmental problems (and also safety problems; nasty operatives defending crops have been known to shoot at innocent hikers walking through national forests).

But the strangest part was the line at the conclusion. After exlplaining how budget cuts have damaged enforcement efforts and Mexican gangs are getting $3,200 a plant for good bud, writer Peter Fimrite tosses in this:

Legalization is not the solution, Johnson said, given that most of the pot is being grown illegally on public parkland by foreign citizens who cannot be taxed.

Huh? Why, exactly, do these cops and Chronicle reporters think the Mexican gangs are here? Why do they think these guys are getting $3,200 a plant? Isn’t this exactly what happened during Prohibition, when rum-running created the Mob?

“It was the falsest conclusion possible,” Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, who has a bill to legalize marijuana, told me this morning.

Folks: Legalization is the quickest and surest way to get rid of the drug gangs screwing up public land. Think about it: We don’t really have a problem with illegal moonshine in this country. We don’t have a major problem with criminal gangs growing and selling tobacco on public land. Make pot legal and this problem goes away, too.

Obama and the California schools

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By Tim Redmond

A lot of us have been worried about Arne Duncan, President Obama’s Education Secretary; he’s been way too close to the testing-is-all and charter schools camp. And now the impacts are starting to show. Robert Cruickshank has an interesting post at Calitics on this:

I am curious to hear how Arne Duncan and Barack Obama believe California test scores will rise when you have classes of 30-35 students. When instructional days are being cut. When school buses are being cut (meaning many students will have a harder time getting to school, or will have longer travel times, leaving less time to study and do homework).

So California schools, which just took a huge budget hit, will now have trouble getting federal money because teachers, through no fault of their own, have a harder time getting students to do well on tests that are of dubious value anyway.

Daly’s family more newsworthy than Mitchell’s “not guilty” plea

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Curious to discover how James Rafe Mitchell, who stands accused of killing his former girlfriend with a baseball bat, was going to plead, but unable to be in Marin last Friday, I searched the Chron’s Bay Area print section in vain on Saturday.

Instead, the main “news” coming out of that paper was that Sup. Chris Daly’s family no longer lives in San Francisco. And that the Guardian had risen to his defense. (Actually, we rose to defend his record on issues related to affordable housing, but sad to say, there has been no analysis of Daly’s votes on housing in the Chron.)

Later I surfed the web and discovered that Mitchell pled “not guilty” to murder, domestic violence, kidnapping, and child abduction and endangerment, and that a prelimary hearing has been scheduled for October 5.

Sadly, this news, which I thought of major significance, was buried in Section C of the Chron’s print edition. Wow.

Meanwhile, the Hamilton Cafe in Novato says it will donate 10 percent of today’s proceeds to a fund set up for Samantha, the daughter that Keller and Mitchell had a year ago, and who remains in child protective services.

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James Rafe Mitchell

Newsom loses Eric Jaye

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By Tim Redmond

While everyone’s fussing over Chris Daly’s residence, here’s some seriously big political news. Eric Jaye, who was Mayor Newsom’s campaign manager almost from Day One, who has been one of his closest advisors and who has had his fingers in much of what’s happened in the Mayor’s Office all these years, just quit the Newsom for Governor campaign.

Jaye told me only that there was “a difference of opinion about campaign direction.” There was also, I suspect, a difference of opinion in general — some might call it a power struggle — between Jaye and Garry South, Newsom’s high-priced Southern California-based strategist.

For starters, it takes much of the campaign focus out of San Francisco — Jaye helped Newsom create his political image through local programs and policies. It also shifts the campaign a big step toward the dark side — South is a conservative political triangulator who was close to former Gov. Gray Davis.

This could change not just the shape of the Newsom campaign but of policy here in San Francisco. Who’s going to tell the mayor what to do?

Avalos on the budget process

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Editors note: Sup. John Avalos sent this letter in response to criticism (including criticism from the Guardian) of the city budget process.

By John Avalos

Responding to Tim Redmond’s editor’s notes posted on July 22: Robocop is one of my favorite movies too, especially for its anti-privatization message. Over the last 5 years that I worked in City Hall, I have actively opposed efforts to privatize City services like the security at the Asian Art museum and custodial work at City Hall. This year, when Jail Health Services were threatened to be contracted out to a for-profit corporation, I led the effort to push back, visiting both jails and meeting directly with those most impacted by the move.

As of June 29th, the night of the last Budget and Finance Committee hearing on the mayor’s budget, the Budget Committee had freed up only $20 million in cuts to prevent the massive cuts imposed by the Mayor. This was nowhere near enough to stop all the Prop J’s, the Mayor’s effort to contract out services, and restore cuts to essential services. Stopping the Prop J’s alone cost over $20 million.

Late that night, I met with a broad array of budget constituent representatives: seniors, youth, SRO tenants, city workers, homeless advocates, to get their input on priorities and strategies before President Chiu and I went headlong into negotiations with the Mayor’s office.

By the night of July 1st, we had $43 million to stop ALL the Prop J’s and restore over 23 million in other priorities.
We kept shelters open 24 hours, restored substance abuse and mental health services such as the single standard of care for mental health, continued immigrant rights and tenant services, protected seniors from losing meal programs and having to pay social workers to help them with their finances, prevented cuts to family support and violence prevention services, restored rec director jobs, rejected charging families for their child’s detention at YGC, reoriented the Mayor’s administration towards community development, promoted transit first parking policies, and set aside millions of dollars for job programs at the airport, port and PUC.

But I would not credit two newbie supervisors’ negotiating skills for restoring an unprecented $43 million in restorations in the worst year possible.

Mexico report: The guerilla option

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By John Ross

MEXICO CITY (July 26th) — One day long ago, in August 1974, the 25th to be precise, in the heat of the Mexican military’s “dirty war” to root out subversion in the Pacific coast state of Guerrero, security forces under the command of General Mario Arturo Acosta Chaparo dragged the popular musician and former mayor of Atoyac, Rosendo Radilla, off a bus along the Costa Grande highway just north of Acapulco. His son, also named Rosendo and then 11, remembers that when the musician asked the “guachos” (local vernacular for federal troops) why he was being detained he was told that it was for “writing corridos (ballads) about Lucio Cabanas,” a rebel Atoyac schoolteacher whose Party of the Poor was then roaming the sierras that soar above the Costa Grande. Rosendo Radilla never saw his father again.

This past July 7th, 35 years after the elder Radilla vanished off the face of the earth, Rosendo and his sister Tita sat in a San Jose, Costa Rica courtroom as the Inter-American Human Rights Court (CIDH) opened hearings into their father’s long-ago forced disappearance. The hearing was the first time an international court has agreed to put Mexico’s “dirty war” (1974-78) on trial.

To be sure, the corridista was not the only local to have been disappeared during the military’s long reign of terror. Families in Atoyac count more than 600 campesinos taken by security forces and never seen again. Acosta Chaparo was later convicted of dumping the bodies of 143 prisoners from Mexican air force Israeli Arava 201s into the Pacific Ocean near Acapulco. The names of 121 other victims were attached to the Radilla case before the CIDH.

Even Mexico’s Interior Secretary Fernando Gomez Mont, who oversees internal security, concedes that the military was probably complicit in Rosendo’s disappearance, but argues that the CIDH has no jurisdiction in the case — the court did not exist in 1974 and Mexico only recognized its competence in human rights matters in 1998.

At any rate, Gomez Mont insisted before the court, Mexico has made great advances in human rights since 1974. “That was another Mexico,” he said. “Mexico is different now.”

Or is it?

Another health insurance scam

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By Tim Redmond

Fascinating interview this morning on Forum with Wendell Potter, former PR person for CIGNA insurance who has now become an outspoken critic of the health-insurance industry.

One little nugget that I hadn’t known about:

Most publicly traded companies worry about their price-to-earnings ratio and some other basic financial data. The health insurance industry has another indicator: The medical benefits ratio. That’s the percentage of premiums that get paid out in benefits.

Fifteen years ago, the last time the Democrats tried health-care reform, the typical insurance company had a 95 percent ratio — that is, 95 cents out of every premium dollar was paid back out in benefits. Now the big companies are down below 80 percent — and every time that number starts to creep up, their stock price tumbles.

And there are, of course, only two ways to keep that ratio low: Raise insurance rates, and reduce benefits. That’s one key reason why rates keep going up — and why the insurance companies try so hard to avoid paying benefits.

And it’s another key reason why no solution that involves the private insurance industry will ever solve the nation’s health-care crisis.

Some more thoughts on Daly

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A few more thoughts on Chris Daly:

1. What’s with all the stories that say that “Daly moved his family” to the suburbs? Isn’t it possible (or more likely) that his wife, Sarah Low Daly, wanted to be close to her parents, and that SHE moved with the kids to the suburbs, and that Chris couldn’t talk her out of it and is now stuck with a situation that’s personally unpleasant and politically a mess?

2. Everyone who is in elected office in San Francisco ought to send his or her kids to the local public schools. Daly included. (I make exceptions only for people who have religious reasons to seek parochial schools.)

3. That said, Daly has about one year left in office. I suspect he’ll spend it the way he’s spent the last nine – with close to the best attendance record on the board, showing up at hearings, committee meetings and community meetings (his chief critic, Michela Alioto-Pier, has the worst attendance record on the board). At that point, he has to make a decision: If he wants to continue in any sort of elected office in San Francisco, he needs settle this issue with his family. I don’t envy him that choice, given what his wife clearly wants, but that’s political life in the big city.

4. Have all of the folks who so quickly call on Daly to “step down” have any idea what sort of pro-downtown loser Newsom would appoint to replace him? Rob Black, maybe? Ick.

Why Nevius really annoys me

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By Tim Redmond

I have to add a personal note to the Chuck Nevius bullshit. Check out this little nugget from his column:

Daly would not respond to interview requests, but he has fallen into the pattern of thousands who have come before him. Idealistic, well-educated young people move into town, rent an apartment and become champions of social causes. After five years or so, when they discover that they might like to own a home, raise kids or live in a place where they don’t have to step over a homeless camper on their doorstep on the way to work, they realize they will have to move out of town.

You’re talking about me here, Chuck. Me and all my friends. And their friends. There are thousands of us — and your description is completely wrong.

I arrived in San Francisco in 1981 as an idealistic, well-educated young person. (I mean, more-or-less well educated — I have an economics degree from Wesleyan University, but I got a couple of Ds in my major and narrowly won my diploma with absolutely no academic honors or recognitions.)

I rented an apartment and did my best to become a “champion of social causes,” whatever that is.

And now, far more than five years later, I am raising two kids in the city, and I’m not going anywhere.

San Francisco has some great public schools and is a great place to raise kids. My son and daughter make friends in school who come from every ethnic group imaginable — but also from every socio-economic class, which is also really important. Everyone they meet isn’t just like them. You can’t get that experience in the leafy suburbs where Nevius lives.

Sure, my kids and I see homeless people on the streets almost every day. We usually give them money. Sometimes Michael, my son, dips into his (extremely modest) allowance and gives it away. (And sometimes, when I’m crabby or harried and I tell a panhandler that I don’t have any spare change, Michael pipes up and says “yes you do, Daddy. Give it to the man.”)

We talk constantly about why there are people living on the streets, how horrible it is, and how important it is for people like us not only to help out with money but to help by getting politically active and trying to change things. Michael is ten years old; he goes to political debates, submits questions and knows how to write to a supervisor or state legislator. San Francisco is a big city; it’s a lesson for kids in social and economic justice, every day. I think that’s priceless.

So do thousands and thousands of other San Francisco families, some of them homeowners, some of them renters, all of them living here because we still care about “social causes.” And because we love our city.

Chuck Nevius should spend a little more time in town; he might meet some folks like me.

I know Chris Daly well enough to know that he loves this city, too. His personal and family life is none of my business; I just wish him well. And I think that, unlike certain other city officials, he’s actually spending most of his time here, where I think he really wants to be.

Chuck Nevius is such a twit

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By Guardian News Staff

C.W. Nevius’ ridiculous, illogical hit piece on Sup. Chris Daly on the front page of this morning’s Chronicle is almost too distorted to respond to, but we’re going to try, simply because of how he’s trying to use a minor news item to attack the entire progressive agenda. And because he’s such a twit about it.

Unable to get Daly on the phone to find out why he his family moved to Fairfield, Nevius decided to get one of Daly’s political foes, Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier, to speak for him. Given that neither of them live in San Francisco – Nevius lives in Walnut Creek and Alioto-Pier has a pied-a-terre here but spends most of her time at her family home in St. Helena – it was actually kind of funny to hear them rail against someone who actually does live here for “abandoning” the city.

In Alioto-Pier’s view, Daly “sends his family out of S.F.” (nevermind that his independent wife, Sarah Low Daly, was actually the driving force behind the decision) because he didn’t like “the way the city looks.” And in Nevius’ own insightful view, the decision was because, like “thousands who have come before,” didn’t want “to step over a homeless camper on their doorstep on the way to work.”

Trouble is, even though Daly wouldn’t grant Nevius an interview, the reason for his decision was publicly available — in fact, his announcement on Fog City Journal is the thread that started the whole debate. In a blog post, Daly writes, “Sarah and I are determined to do what is best for our kids — which means moving them closer to multi-generational family support.” And he makes clear that he’s staying here to finish his term.

PG&E watch: The rate hike, the LNG pipeline and the $82 million corporate giveaway

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By Rebecca Bowe

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Image courtesy of TURN

Pacfic Gas & Electric Co. collected $82 million from the state last year as a reward for running energy-efficiency programs, even though an independent verification report conducted by the California Public Utilities Commission showed that the utility failed to reach target goals for curbing power usage.

In addition to the $82 million bonus, PG&E and other utilities received millions in ratepayer dollars to administer the energy-saving programs. But under utility management, large portions of these energy efficiency funds go to administrative costs, leaving less for actual energy-reducing measures. The funds are derived from fees on ratepayers’ utility bills. And despite its past failure to meet the goals, PG&E is asking for even more money on the next round.

Groups like The Utility Reform Network (TURN) and Women’s Energy Mattters (WEM) have long advocated for independent administration of energy-efficiency programs, citing evidence that nonprofits have had better performance at the helm, with lower administrative costs and greater success at curbing electricity consumption.

On Tuesday, members of the public — who foot the bill for these programs — will get a rare opportunity to weigh in on how their money is spent.

A “Public Participation Hearing” (PPH) will be held at the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) in San Francisco to discuss energy efficiency spending. The meeting is scheduled for 2 p.m. on July 28th at the California Public Utilities Commission, located at 505 Van Ness Ave. in the Auditorium.

The ultimate Newsom web site

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By Tim Redmond

Okay, I have no idea who did this, but it’s wonderful — pretty much a complete compilation of all of the problems with Newsom’s record.

Prison Report: The magical zip gun

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By Just A Guy

Editors Note: Just A Guy is an imate in a California state prison. His blogs run twice a week, typically on Mondays and Thursdays, although it’s sometimes hard to communicate from behind bars. You can read his last post here.

I am going to write about the budget deal and cuts to education, corrections and program spending. But I have to talk first about what’s happening at California State Prison, Solano yet again: The magic roaming zip gun.

About ten days ago officers in Building 6 “discovered” a note saying that “the blacks have a zip gun and three shells.” The entire institution was put on modified program and a search was conducted of Building 6, but no sip gun was found. Imagine that!

This morning we learned that Building 22 on Facility 4 is going to be searched because there’s a zip gun there now. We don’t know all the details yet, but do know that all programs have been shut down — except, of course, the programs that make money for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, like the Prison Industry Authority and the Substance Abuse Program, which receives money from the federal government.

This is at least the fifth time since March, 2008 that the magical roaming zip gun has made its presence known. The fifth time that programs beneficial to the inmates have been shut down — and likely the fifth time that no zip gun will be found. You can’t find what doesn’t exist.

It’s rather like the state passing a budget cutting $9 billion from education and only $1.2 billion from corrections. Wait! The schools will get the money back when times are better. Of course, by the times things are better, a lot of these could-have-been educated people will be in prison as they resorted to crime to make a living without a degree.

Arc Ecology’s ballsy Save our Park video: 2

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Ten days ago, I posted about how the folks at Arc Ecology have put together a video appeal, on behalf of Candlestick Point State Recreation Area, in which they ask the California State legislature and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to help save the Bayview’s only major piece of open space from greedy developers.

Today, I discovered that the Youtube link has since broken, hence this repost, with a link that works when you push the play button below:

What hasn’t changed is the content of the video, which explains how the city and developer Lennar plan to take 42 acres of a state park, which happens to be the only major piece of open space in the Bayview, and build mostly luxury condos on it.

Arc’s executive director Saul Bloom (the guy with the pony tail on the far right of the screen above) says his group will “certainly catch hell for doing this,” and definitely the content of the video is not designed to kiss ass. But like they say, a picture is worth a thousand or so words,so click on the link above, and take a look.

You’ll be shocked by what you see.

SF overdue to put anti-gay discrimination on trial

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Text and photos by Sarah Phelan

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City Attorney Dennis Herrera wants to join the fight to challenge Prop. 8, which eliminates the rights of same-sex couples to wed. Between May and November 2008, couples like Spencer Jones and Tyler Barrick (above) wed legally in California.

City Attorney Dennis Herrera has petitioned a U.S. District Court Judge today to allow San Francisco to intervene as a party plaintiff in a federal constitutional challenge to Proposition 8, the state constitutional amendment which eliminated the fundamental right of marriage for gay and lesbian citizens in California.
http://www.sfgov.org/cityattorney/

The American Foundation for Equal Rights filed the original federal lawsuit this May on behalf of two California same-sex couples: Kristin Perry and Sandra Stier of Berkeley, and Paul Katami and Jeffrey Zarrillo of Burbank.

Filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on May 22, 2009, the original suit is led by attorneys Theodore Olson and David Boies, who were one-time political foes in the Bush v. Gore US Supreme Court case that decided the outcome of the 2000 presidential election. They argue that Proposition 8 “denies the basic liberties and equal protection under the law that are guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.”

The City’s motion comes in the wake of a federal judge’s order to develop significant factual evidence in the case – something, Herrera says, his office has already done as a lead plaintiff in the landmark Marriage Cases, which the state supreme court decided last year, in May 2008.

“San Francisco is a singularly well-prepared co-plaintiff in this case, both in terms of the wealth of evidence it has already developed, and its unique public sector perspective in having to enforce a discriminatory law,” Herrera said. “We are long overdue to put anti-gay discrimination on trial based on the facts. The San Francisco City Attorney’s Office has the experience and expertise to aggressively assist in doing precisely that.”

On May 15, 2008, the landmark California Supreme Court ruling In re Marriage Cases, in which San Francisco was a lead plaintiff, struck down previous state statutes that defined marriage solely as a union between a man and a woman.

As a result, thousands of same-sex couples wed in California/

But that discriminatory marriage exclusion was later enshrined into the California Constitution with the passage of Prop. 8 on Nov. 5, 2008, and the state high court upheld it on May 26, 2009.

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After the state high court upheld Prop. 8, couples like Sharon Papo and Amber Weiss, pictured above when they wed in June 2008, said they were relieved their marriage was not invalidated.

” But this is a hollow victory because there are so many that are not allowed to marry those they love,” Weiss said, while her partner Papo added. “I feel very uncomfortable being in a special class of citizens.”

Obama plugs single-payer…sort of

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By Steven T. Jones

Only a single-payer system eliminates health insurance companies, which are portrayed as predatory pirates in this cartoon by Consumer Watchdog, with music by the Austin Lounge Lizards.

As President Barack Obama held a prime time news conference yesterday to boost his health care reform efforts, he tried to recast the imperative as saving the system for the average American rather than focusing on the 45 million Americans without insurance. But in the process of defending his plan, he also subtly reinforced the need for the single-payer system, as discussed in our cover story this week.

When asked about the approximately 2 percent of Americans that will be left uncovered by the Democrats’ plan, Obama said, “I want to cover everybody. Now, the truth is unless you have what’s called a single-payer system in which everyone’s automatically covered, you’re probably not going to reach every single individual.”

As Peter Baker wrote in the New York Times online story yesterday, Obama didn’t explain why he doesn’t then support single-payer, but Baker wrote, “In the past, he has said such a system might be preferable if the country were inventing a new health care structure from scratch but he does not want to completely upend the current system, which does work for many or most Americans.”

Unfortunately, that final statement is bullshit. Polls show most Americans don’t like the current system (56 percent want “major health care reform” this year, 62 percent want more government control over health care, etc.), although right-wing and insurance industry propaganda have made them scared of the change that is needed to realize the president’s goals of holding down costs, emphasizing preventive care, and ensuring universal access to quality and affordable care.

Upending the current system is precisely what needs to happen.

A messy wrap for city budget

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By Rebecca Bowe

Emotions run high and things get messy when there’s so much less cash to go around. Just as San Francisco’s 2009-2010 fiscal year budget was finally approved at yesterday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, the news from Sacramento was that the long-awaited state budget deal bridges California’s gaping budget deficit in part by raiding local-government coffers.

San Francisco’s own hacked-up budget went through a round of last-minute changes at yesterday’s meeting before approval, marking last-ditch efforts by Sups. Chris Daly, Ross Mirkarimi and David Campos to try and preserve add-backs to critical services and safeguard against future cuts. By the time a roll call vote was held on the final budget package, the document had been tweaked enough by last-minute revisions that Sups. Sean Elsbernd and Carmen Chu voted against it. And while those last-minute efforts might preserve some critical services, there’s no guarantee at this point that any new revenue measures will move forward to soften the blow of the cuts that were already made.

Herrera moves to close down Heaven

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Text by Sarah Phelan

Funny as the title of this blog post may sound, it’s actually directly taken from a press release that the City Attorney’s office issued today, noting that Dennis Herrera has moved to shutter a North Beach strip club named Heaven at 1045 Kearny Street.

Soliciting,jpg.jpg

According to Herrera’s press release, the club has continued to operate in defiance of repeated notices of violation, cease and desist orders, and police citations for prostitution, dating back more than a year.

Heaven was allegedly also implicated in a April 9 shooting, in which a witness claims that an alleged Heaven employee was the gunman who shot two doormen, Ian Heibel and Rodger Mac, at the Broadway Showgirls Nightclub in apparent retaliation for a physical altercation the previous week.

“Naming a business ‘Heaven’ doesn’t place it beyond earthly laws and regulations, but that appears to be exactly what operators of this illicit enterprise think,” Herrera stated.

Police declarations included with court filings detail a March 12 sting in which an undercover officer entered the club and was solicited for oral copulation and sexual intercourse.

“As the arrest team entered Heaven Mini Theater, with our stars visible on our outermost clothing, I saw [a Heaven employee] running down the hallways yelling, ‘police, police!’ [The employee] was also knocking on the closed room doors to notify everyone of our presence,” Sgt. K. Delaney stated, recalling how he immediately went to the room where the undercover officer had gone and saw another Heaven employee standing there in a thong and attempting to cover her naked breasts with her bra.”

While Herrera may be right in wanting to declare Heaven “a public nuisance” for operating in violation of state and local laws, and to try and close down the enterprise, the episode makes me wonder why, in a city that has led the way in attempting to legalize gay marriage, we, as a city, have not been able to figure out a way to legalize prostitution, which everyone knows is happening every single day in every big city in the world.

Meanwhile, to read more about behind the scenes doings in the sex industry, check out our coverage of the Mitchell Brothers’ family saga, here, here and here.

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