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Politics Blog

Why Newsom’s flak infuriates me

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By Tim Redmond

Okay, here’s a legitimate issue. According to Paul Hogarth’s insightful piece on BeyondChron, Mayor Gavin Newsom has decided to skip a major fundraising dinner for the San Francisco Democratic Party, even though he is getting an award at the gala, and will instead show his face at an event across town hosted by the Coalition for Responsible Growth, a Republican-led outfit that is trying to push the city “on a sharp turn to the right.”

Why is Newsom skipping the annual Democratic Party event? I think it’s entirely because the party is now controlled by progressives who didn’t support the mayor’s candidates for supervisor. Since he didn’t get his way this year, he’s not going do a thing to help his own political party. CRG is raising and spending a lot of money to support Newsom’s allies in districts 1, 3 and 11, and the mayor is going to help.

If that’s the position Newsom wants to put out — he’d rather work with Republicans and big downtown interests than with elected Democrats who don’t always do what he wants — then he has every right to do so. But he ought to be honest about it.

Read the jump to see how Nathan Ballard, Newsom’s press flak, tried to duck the issue.

Prop 8: Through the big gay window

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If you liked it, then you should have put a ring on it …

So. All my gay friends, even the “radical” ones, it appears, are getting married — before Nov. 4, when Prop 8 just might pass, and the window may close for good on same-sex marriage. AG Jerry Brown has indicated that the marriages performed before then would still be considered valid, as the Chron reported. Hey, Matier & Ross, I’m expecting your penis-lily-embossed announcement any minute.

I’ve received no less than 12 frantic invites to hastily assembled same-sex weddings (although one couple took the time to register at Barney’s — Vera Wang crystalware, pshaw!). Is this the real case for how Prop 8 actually destroysl marriage — forcing people, shotgun-style, into perhaps-unthought-through unions? I jest, maybe. But the trend appears also a bit, er, defeatist in my book. Although of course I wish the happy couples, and their makeshift receptions at the Powerhouse, all the best!

Still, despite all the blackmail, violence, foaming at the mouth, Blackwater connections and rampant Mormonism, we can still beat this thing. Please give to or volunteer for No on 8 today — before I have to shoulder the costs of another seafoam and salmon crinoline-encrusted bridesmaid dress! No one makes me wear crinoline in October ….

Mayor’s power plant plan flawed

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by Amanda Witherell

Or, as Sup. Aaron Peskin put it one point during the dramatic Wed. Oct. 22 Land Use and Economic Development committee hearing, “The only thing holding this proposal together is the staple in the upper left hand corner.”

Under discussion was Mayor Gavin Newsom’s plan to retrofit 32-year-old Mirant Potrero power plant Units 4,5, and 6 to run on natural gas rather than diesel and be 97.5 percent cleaner than current operations – a retrofit and emissions reduction that’s never been accomplished and might be impossible, according to testimony from industry experts called in by committee chair Sup. Sophie Maxwell.

The plan arose in June, after a May 23 tête-à-tête between Newsom and seven Pacific Gas & Electric executives just as the Board of Supervisors was preparing to vote on a plan to construct a new power plant to replace Mirant and meet state energy requirements. PG&E opposed the new plant (referred to as the “CTs”) as it would have been owned by the city, eroding the utility company’s control of local energy resources. Prior to the May meeting, Newsom had been part of a coalition of city officials, which included city attorney Dennis Herrera and Supes. Maxwell and Peskin, who supported the new plant and had been fostering it forward for several years as a way to close down Mirant’s more polluting operations. Newsom pushed for support of retrofitting Mirant instead, billing it as a cheaper alternative that could be just as clean as the new city-owned combustion turbine facility that had been proposed.

But the results of a July feasibility study [PDF], completed by CH2M Hill and currently part of the SFPUC’s negotiations with Mirant, had Peskin comparing the idea to retrofitting a 1974 Chevy rather than going for a new Toyota Prius.

A score of issues came up as the study was discussed during what proved to be a very revealing hearing. They include an assumption of reduced air emissions for the retrofit based on reduced runtimes for a plant that the city has sued in the past for operating more than it was legally permitted, a possible ducking of CEQA environmental review, a lack of established regulatory oversight of the plant, an emissions control system that “predicts” rather than actually measures pollution, an understated project cost of $78,730,000 and the fact that executives from energy companies that routinely bid on such retrofit projects testified that they wouldn’t go anywhere near this one.

Artist’s mural used by Clean Energy foes

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by Amanda Witherell

PropHMuralAbuse

Actually, this artist disagrees.

Once art is out in the public domain, it’s fair game for all kinds of abuse, but we got the following message today from artist Chris Lux, who’s perturbed that his mural served as a backdrop in a recent anti-Clean Energy Act advertisement.

Lux said:

“Recently a No on Prop H ad caught my eye.

“There is a shot of Richard Ventura, CEO of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, in Lilac Ally speaking out against Prop H. He is standing in front of a mural that I painted there with another artist, Leslie Kulesh, in what looks like an attempt to show how he is ethnic, or whatever.

“As a big supporter of Prop H, as well as many progressives in San Francisco, I am appalled that my work was used as a backdrop for this sleazy and expensive ad campaign. This is one of the most important propositions that has come to San Francisco in a long time.

“I recently did a mural for the John Avalos Campaign Headquarters in District 11. I feel it is really important for artists to give what little they have to help make changes here in SF. I would hate for someone to see the ad and then go to Johns Avalos’ headquarters and see the same work and think there was any relation.

“As the text above reads, “SF Citizens Agree- No on Prop H” — I just wanted to speak out and say that as the person who painted the mural you are using, as a San Francisco citizen, as an artist, and someone who was born and raised here, Vote YES on Prop H.”

Here’s the original video, parroting PG&E’s tired old lies about Prop H.

Landlords against Prop. F

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I didn’t think Proposition F, which would move the mayoral races to the same year as presidential elections, was that big a deal for downtown. The left is somewhat split on it; we endorsed it, but some progressives say it’s a bad idea that will cause local issues to get lost.

But I’ve now received two slick fliers from the landlords urging No on F. I guess these guys really do think it might help a progressive get elected mayor.

PG&E’s blank check to exceed $10 million

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By Steven T. Jones

Pacific Gas & Electric has shattered previous campaign spending records by giving more than $9.7 million in cash and services to defeat Prop. H, the Clean Energy Act, as of Oct. 18, according to the latest campaign finance reporting. Is anyone else appreciating the irony of PG&E funneling its seemingly unlimited spending through the front group Committee to Stop the Blank Check? It would really be funny if it weren’t such a seriously duplicitous effort to subvert honest political debate and prevent the switch to renewable energy sources, leaving us with a PG&E portfolio that relies on fossil fuels and nuclear power.

The money is going largely to Mayor Gavin Newsom’s political team, mostly to Eric Jaye, who is spreading it around to various community groups, aggressive advertising, and paid campaign workers going door-to-door. They’re also spending tens of thousands of dollars on polling, and considering that the pace of the PG&E spending has increased since the last reporting period, perhaps they’re getting a little worried that people see through their lies and actually want a future of clean power and local control. The committee still has $1.7 million in the bank and unlimited reserves from PG&E, so watch for things to get even uglier in coming weeks.

But if you’re interested in deciding this measure for yourself, read your ballot handbook about what it will actually do and/or check out a new, fairly even-handed story on the measure from the Associated Press.

Elsbernd argues Yes on H

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A great moment at the Miraloma Park Improvement Association meeting last Sunday night. The No on H team, including Hunter Stern, the flak for PG&E’s house union, showed up to make the case against the Clean Energy Act, but because of a scheduling confusion, Julian Davis of the Yes on H campaign wasn’t there.

So the head of the neighborhood group turned to Sup. Sean Elsbernd. You’re the supervisor, he said; why don’t you make the case for H?

Well, Elsbernd said, I’m not supporting the measure, but if nobody else is here, I’ll go ahead and explain what the Yes on H people are saying. He then proceeded to make an eloquent, effective and persuasive argument for clean energy and public power.

“Hunter Stern told me that was the best Yes on H argument he’s heard all season,” Elsbernd told me.

So there is hope for the supervisor for D7.

Following the money, made easy

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By Steven T. Jones

The San Francisco Ethics Commission takes a lot of heat (some of it from us), but the employees there have created a great resource for easily following the independent expenditures that are seeking to buy the Board of Supervisors on behalf of the city’s wealthy interest groups, an effort that bodes ill for the San Francisco’s workers and renters.

Groups that include the Building Owners and Managers Association, Citizens for Responsible Growth (a new conservative group formed to counter “the left” that in an August letter pledged “an all-out attack with other like minded groups”), the Association of Realtors, and the Police Officers Association have spent more than $363,000 attacking progressive candidates and supporting their candidates in the swing districts of 1, 3, and 11. As the Guardian reported last week, some of that money originally came from other downtown players, including the Chamber of Commerce, Committee on Jobs, and Pacific Gas & Electric.

The groups aren’t legally supposed to be coordinating their “independent” efforts, either with each other or with the candidates, but the timing of their expenditures seems to suggest they are ensuring a steady, unrelenting drumbeat of political propaganda.

As the chart shows, the progressive supervisorial candidates — Eric Mar, David Chiu, and John Avalos — are also receiving some helpful independent expenditures from the San Francisco Labor Council and the San Francisco Democratic Party. So forget all these distracting nonsense involving Chris Daly, Gavin Newsom, JROTC, and prostitution — who are you going to vote for, the candidates backed by Democrats, environmentalists, and workers, or those pushed by Republicans, landlords, and big corporate interests? The choice is yours.

Streetsblog is joining SF’s transportation intellegencia

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By Steven T. Jones

San Francisco is filled with brilliant transportation visionaries, people who can see how to reach a future in which we’re less dependent on automobiles and the system not only continues to function, but it’s better, cheaper, and more efficient than what we have now.

I talked to many of them for my story this week on sustainable transportation, which was part of our larger Sustainable San Francisco anniversary package. And if you’d like to hear more from some of the sources that I assembled into a round table discussion, you can download the audio of that session here.

There’s also some other good news on the alternative transportation front in San Francisco: StreetsBlog and StreetsFilms – which do some of the best work in the country highlighting progressive innovations in getting around – have announced that they’re coming here.

That’s great news for those who prefer innovative, action-oriented approaches of our transportation future, rather than the mayor’s approach of issuing press releases and then failing to follow through, or waiting for entrenched transportation planners to make progress on important priorities. And if you’re one of those brilliant transportation wonks, consider applying to be the local editor of Streetsblog.

Norman Yee and JROTC

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I’ve gotten some calls and emails on our school board endorsements, particularly our comment that we couldn’t back Rachel Norton because of her support for JROTC. (Okay, that photo’s a bit of a cheap shot; she discusses her own position here.

Well, school activist Caroline Grannan asked me, why did you endorse Yee — who, according to the Chronicle’s summary of candidate positions, is also a JROTC backer. In fact, Fog City Journal described him as supporting the military program.

In our endorsement interview, Yee told us he would not vote to bring back JROTC and that he didn’t support Prop. V. What’s up? It’s a fair question.

I called Yee today and here’s what he said, for the record:

“My position in JROTC has been misquoted all over. I do not support the JROTC ballot measure. I will not vote to bring back JROTC to the schools. I have always said that I support JROTC if it meets state requirements. But since it doesn’t, I’m not for bringing it back. People ask these yes-or-no questions, and they don’t understand what my position really is.”

So there you have it.

The SF Weekly’s big lie

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By Tim Redmond

Will Harper, who insists he’s not opposed to public power, lashed out today at the Yes on H campaign. His claim: Supporters of the Clean Energy Act — including me — aren’t being straight with the voters about what the measure means.

Yes, Will: Much of what is in the charter amendment could be done without going to the ballot — if the mayor of San Francisco were willing. But with a mayor whose chief political advisor, Eric Jaye, is on Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s payroll, it’s a little hard to get any progressive energy policy done. Even if eight supervisors vote for, say, a study to consider public power, the mayor can do what he’s done with affordable housing: Refuse to spend the money.

And yes, it seemed to make sense to put together an overall ballot measure that included several things — aggressive clean-energy goals, an energy optioins study AND enabling legislation to allow the supervisors to issue revenue bonds for utility projects.

Harper insists that Prop. H is somehow misleading:

With the earlier power measures, their intent was always clear: Municipalize PG&E. Prop. H, however, conceals its true objective.

Um, I think if you read the Guardian, Will, you’ll see that we’ve been rather clear that this is a BOTH a clean-energy proposal and a public-power measure, and that we think that’s a good idea. The evidence is pretty clear that public power is the best (perhaps the only) way to meet strong clean-energy goals; PG&E clearly isn’t going to get there.

It’s true that the measure calls for a study on power options. If it hadn’t, then PG&E and its allies would be blasting the measure for mandating public power without a study. You can’t win with these guys.

As for his personal attack on me:

In various editorials, the Prop. H supporters at the Bay Guardian have made this seem like no big deal. The most blatant distortion appeared in its recent endorsement issue in which executive editor Tim Redmond proclaimed, “Nobody ever votes on revenue bonds. In California, we vote on general obligation bonds, which are backed by taxpayers. Revenue bonds are backed by a defined revenue stream…”

Actually, people do vote on revenue bonds. Seven years ago, San Francisco voters approved Prop. A, which authorized the city to sell $1.63 billion worth of revenue bonds to upgrade the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. The defined revenue stream: San Francisco water users, who saw their rates go up.

Will, do your homework. In 2002, voters approved two things: A revenue bond measure for water and sewer projects and another measure that allows the SF PUC to issue revenue bonds without a vote of the people..

So we don’t vote on water and sewer revenue bonds. We don’t vote on airport revenue bonds, either. The airport is in the process right now of selling revenue bonds for the Terminal 2 rebuild; nothing on the ballot about that. In fact, the mayor wants to speed up the process. The voters have decided that it’s okay to issue revenue bonds for improving the airport and the Hetch Hetchy water system; all Prop. H does is ask for the same authority for clean energy and power projects.

There’s nothing secret about this (except maybe the SF Weekly’s position on the issue). Harper writes:

I’m not opposed to the idea of public power, but I don’t like being bullshitted.

Okay, WIll, now that I’ve cleared it all up for you, are you voting Yes on H?

The two Colin Powells: Obama’s and W’s

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Colin Powell and Jeffrey Wright

By Steven T. Jones

It was weird to watch Colin Powell endorse Barack Obama for president on the same day that I saw Colin Powell (as played by actor Jeffrey Wright) help lead the country into an ill-fated war in Iraq, despite privately expressing all the right concerns and misgivings, on the big screen in Oliver Stone’s new film W.

Powell, the real one, was eloquent and insightful as he endorsed Obama on Meet the Press, in the process calling his own Republican Party to task for the nasty tactics it’s using to smear Obama. And perhaps the best scene in W is when Powell butts chests with Dick Cheney over the reasons for going to war as Karl Rove lurks in the shadows.

Mayor’s economic stimulus plan — huh?

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Gavin Newsom just announced an “economic stimulus plan” for San Francisco. Guess he wants to get in on the action.

Unfortunately, there’s not a lot in his plan that actually amounts to any local econic stimulus.

Here’s his first proposal:

Accelerate capital projects, such as the Terminal 2 rebuild at SF
International Airport, the SF General rebuild, the Transbay Transit
Center, HOPE SF and the rebuild of the Hall of Justice.

That’s nice — I’m all in favor of increasing public works spending during a recession. But there are a couple of problems. For one thing, the municipal bond market is in the toilet. The airport’s Terminal 2 bonds aren’t going to fly off the shelf right now. If Prop. A passes and the voters approve the San Francisco General rebuild, it will be months before the city can start selling those bonds at a decent rate.

And, of course, most of the money for rebuilding the airport terminal won’t do anything for local business. Those contracts go to big out-ot-town firms like Tutor-Saliba , which are not known for helping local and minority subcontractors.

Then there’s this proposal:

Increase foreign investment by establishing San Francisco as the premier
gateway between Chinese businesses and North America. A delegation of
San Francisco officials will go to China in November to set up a
“China Desk” to attract businesses to San Francisco.

You can ask any progressive urban economist what factors are effective in stimulating a local economy, and they’ll tell you that it starts with local investment, local initiative, local business. Seeking outside investment is a poor and ineffective subsitute.

Then:

Reduce the cost of doing business in San Francisco by reviewing fees on
businesses, helping local business take better advantage of federal,
state and local tax credit programs and implementing targeted tax
incentives.

Which fees is he going to reduce — and how is he going to pay for that? Cut the public workforce — in a recession? .

Finally:

Keep dollars local by creating more local jobs through City Build and
other workforce programs, expanding San Francisco tourism marketing
more regionally, revising parking and transit polices to make it
easier to visit San Francisco, expanding Neighborhood Market Place
Initiatives and Business Improvement Districts including the new
Tourism Improvement District, reducing retail leakage with the “Shop
Local” campaign, and increasing funding for business attraction and
retention efforts.

As if we aren’t already trying to expand our tourism marketing?

There are plenty of things that could help. I’d even argue that supporting Prop. B, the affordable housing measure, and Prop. H, the Clean Energy Act, would create jobs in the city for San Franciscans, keep more money in the economy and provide a sustainable economic stimulus.

But oh, wait — the mayor is against those.

Sparring with Garcia

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I was honored to be a guest on KQED’s Forum with Michael Krasny this morning, but I was once again dismayed by the conservative political spin of Examiner columnist Ken Garcia, another guest on the show. Perhaps I should adjust my expectations (after all, Garcia works for a paper that endorsed John McCain for president) but it’s still so frustrating to be arguing about issues we should have settled generations ago in San Francisco.

Instead, progressives are still fending off arguments by Garcia and his ilk that Pacific Gas & Electric is more trustworthy than our elected local government (a ridiculous notion that PG&E is spending record-breaking millions to push), that decriminalizing social ills such as drug use and prostitution is the same thing as condoning and promoting them (as if “harm reduction strategies” pioneered in SF is a foreign concept), that creation of affordable housing (which developers won’t build without public subsidies that Prop. B will strengthen) is something the city can’t afford, that new revenue measures are also bad, and that the best leadership program we can offer our young students is JROTC (the main purpose of which is to instill military values in our peace-loving kids and recruit them as cannon fodder for our wasteful, unnecessary wars).

I think I held my own and hopefully offered listeners a better sense of this city’s full political spectrum than they often get from the mainstream media, but I’ll let you all be the judge of that. You can listen to the show here:

Obama and the SF DCCC

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So Kos reports that Obama now has so much money he’s thinking about sharing it with Democratic Party committees to help expand the majority in Congress. I’m good with that; 60 seats in the Senate and a strongly Democratic house and Obama (like FDR in 1933) would have the ability to take immediate direct action to get the economy going again — the right way.

Of course, if he has that much money, maybe he could toss some of it toward the San Francisco Democratic Party to help elect progressive supervisors, build affordable housing and pass the Clean Energy Act.

How to make sure Obama wins

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Yeah, the debate went well, and Obama looked cool and together while McCain looked like he was losing it, but the election is still three weeks away, and this is by no means a sure thing.

I got a great letter today from Paul Loeb, the author and activist who I’m proud to count as a friend, and his message is both inspiring and important.

Go to the jump to read how you really, really can change the outcome of this election.

Obama vs. the Penguin

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As is increasingly often the case, Kos had the best debate wrap up — McCain needed a game-changer and he didn’t get it.

What he got was more reinforcement of what people don’t like about him — he’s nasty and he spends too much time trying to attack Obama instead of offering his own ideas. (That, of course, is because his ideas suck, and everyone knows it.

But I have to say, this is uncanny (thanks, Kilian):

Again, Kevin Ryan carries the day

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Once again, Mayor Gavin Newsom appears to be letting his Bush Administration crime advisor, Kevin Ryan, , call the shots on a key policy measure. Either that or it’s his political flak, Eric Jaye.

Because Newsom used to support the idea of a municipal ID card for immigrants. Now, despite a major court victory he wants to delay it.
The truth is, the mayor has no right to put this program on hold; ten supervisors voted for the legislation, Newsom signed it, the courts have upheld it and now it’s city law. What — other than the pernicious influence of Ryan and the mayor’s desire to become governor — could be the reason for delay?

Downtown’s dirty tricks

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By Steven T. Jones

So everyone knew that downtown financial interests (such as the Committee on Jobs, Chamber of Commerce, Police Officers Association, the Association of Realtors, BOMA, PG&E, etc., not the mention their enablers at the Chronicle and Examiner) would be spending big money this election to try to buy the Board of Supervisors. And we knew they’d fight dirty, particularly in the swing districts of 1, 3, and 11.

But a couple of revelations from the past 24 hours show that the attacks that are filling mailboxes and the airwaves aren’t simply dirty – they’re dishonest, unethical, and perhaps even illegal. The Fog City Journal stumbled onto a great story that appears to show illegal political collusion between Dist. 11 supervisorial candidate Ahsha Safai (the real estate developer candidate of Mayor Gavin Newsom who refused our request for an endorsement interview and won’t return our phone calls) and the POA.

And the Chronicle reports on the complaint that Dist. 3 candidate David Chiu filed with the Ethics Commission after a television ad falsely claimed that he supports legalizing prostitution, despite his consistent opposition to Prop. K, the ballot measure that would do so. The commercial and several mailers also falsely claim that Dist. 11 candidate John Avalos still works for Sup. Chris Daly, who downtown is trying to make the poster child for all that’s wrong with San Francisco.

Of course, PG&E and downtown’s bagman, attorney Jim Sutton, have already been the subject of the biggest fines that the Ethics Commission has ever levied for illegal campaign behavior. So perhaps they’re content to just keep lying now and worry later about paying fines with their seemingly bottomless reservoirs of cash.

The wonders of the Bible

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This morning’s Chronicle has an article about religious supporters of Prop. 8, and it included a chart of Bible verses that relate to homosexuality. Matthai Kuruvila, the Chron’s religion writer, tried desperately to be “objective” about what both sides say on the issue. She quotes Leviticus 20:13, for example:

“If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.”

According to the religious right, she says, “The injunction against homosexuality is timeless law, though Jesus changed penalties for sin.” (And thank God for that — it seems as if Jesus had some good reasons to oppose the death penalty.) The other side says “Times have changed, and the verses applied to those times only.”

Ya know … I grew up in the Catholic Church, and I realize my school was run by the Carmelites and my parents’ friends were Jesuits and it was, after all, the Sixies … but nobody, not even the priests, took the Bible at its literal word. When I asked one of the nuns during science class how God could have created the world in seven days and she said “don’t worry about that, honey, God’s time is a little different from our time.”

So in that spirit, I thought I would quote a few of my favorite Bible verses that demonstrate how utterly silly it is to believe that this particular collection of writings has any relevance to the discussion of same-sex marriage.

There’s loads more at Thebricktestament, one of my favorite Biblical sites.

Back to Bush

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McCain’s new economic plan is all about getting the government out of the financial industry:

“When that is accomplished,” McCain said, “government will relinquish its interest in these private companies. We’re going to get the government out of the business of bailouts and equity stakes and back in the business of responsible regulation.”

Oh, and he’s going to give tax breaks on capital gains. That will help most of us.

A new New Deal

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I like Obama’s call for a moratorium on foreclosures, although it doesn’t go far enough. But The Nation has been running some great stuff on what a real plan to overhaul the U.S. economy and get us out of this crisis would look like.

William Greider has a clear, coherent explanation of what went wrong and a prescription for how to fix it here. Howard Zinn talks about how to spend the money on the middle class, not Wall Street.

Paul Krugman talks about partial nationaization of the banks here. Funny how even the mad privatizers of the Bush Administration are being forced to accept at some level that idea that the public ought to own part of the financial institutions that we’re bailing out.

Obama and the ’60s

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By Tim Redmond

When I read all the crap about Barack Obama and Bill Ayers — Jesus, Obama was a kid when the Weather Underground was active — it reminds me of a story we ran back in 2002, when the Symbionese Liberation Army was back in the news and the history of the violent radicals of the 1960s was in the headlines.

Tommy Tompkins, our arts editor at the time, wrote the story, which we called “Burying the 60s with the T-Word.” It got buried in a web crash we had a few years ago, so it isn’t on sfbg.com, but I’ve pulled it out of our archives and I’m going to post it here.

Warning: It’s long. And it’s six years out of date. But it offers some insight into how the powers that be want us to think about the Sixties.

You can read it after the jump.

Newsom proposes marijuana crackdown

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By Steven T. Jones

The Examiner reports that Mayor Gavin Newsom is proposing a crackdown on the city’s medical marijuana clubs, including requiring them to keep detailed patient records that advocates say could easily be used by the federal government to prosecute people for smoking pot, which is legal under California law but not under federal law.

And once again, it appears that Newsom’s increasingly conservative approach to policing and regulation is being driven by his top crime adviser, law-and-order Republican Kevin Ryan, the former US attorney who was fired for incompetence by the Bush Administration despite his deep political loyalty to Bush and the GOP. Ryan, who led the federal government’s war on drugs against San Franciscans (including an overzealous prosecution of Ed Rosenthal), is quoted by the Examiner trying to justify going well beyond recent state guidelines.

Newsom’s office didn’t respond to our questions, but the latest proposal is directly at odds with the city’s innovative approach to regulating the clubs, which had among its central tenets protection of patient privacy and wariness of giving the federal government information that could be used to prosecute San Franciscans.

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