Mayor Gavin Newsom has made his recommendations for the five seats on the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, up for grabs after voters passed Prop E in June. His choices reflect a little out with the old, in with the new, but he’s also passed up a commissioner he appointed just a year ago and selected a veteran member who barely squeaked through the last approval process.
So, who has Newsom picked?
Yeah, we know. It hasn’t rained in months and fires, not floods, are on your mind.
But we couldn’t help noticing that 16 months after the Guardian broke the news that San Francisco is the only city in the Bay Area that does not have a flood map, (even though its surrounded by water on three sides, and sea level is on the rise, thanks to climate change), the Board of Supervisors is deciding whether to authorize enrollment in the National Flood Insurance Program and establish a floodplain management program.
The way things stand, the City has a map of “subsidence areas,” but not much else.
Right now, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is preparing a Flood Insurance Rate Map for the City and County of SF.
That map, which should be published in early 2009, will provide flood risk information for insurance and floodplain management purposes.
It could also affect development in SF.
As the ordinance that Sup. Sean Elsbernd authored notes, “FEMA’s publication of a final FIRM for San Francisco may affect new development in San Francisco, especially renovation and reuse of finger piers.”
Elsbernd’s legislation “urges the Port of San Francisco and FEMA to develop, before that final map gets published, long-term floodplain management controls that both address any flooding hazard risks and allow the City to implement the Waterfront Land Use Plan and the Capital Plan…and achieve the goals of that Plan, including the preservation of historic piers.”
Earlier this month we reported on Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez, a 17-year-old immigrant farm worker whose heat-related death sparked a public outcry against Trader Joe’s and their cheaper-than-thou “Two-buck Chuck” wine.
Jimenez was employed by Merced Farm Labor, which contracts with the same company that supplies the grapes that go into the infamous $2 a bottle Charles Shaw wine, sold exclusively at Trader Joe’s. While Jimenez was not picking grapes specifically for that wine, United Farm Workers asked supporters to pressure Trader Joe’s to ensure that their vendors are contracting with responsible companies.
Jimenez’s death also instigated an investigation by California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal-OSHA), into Merced Farm Labor’s protocols. Today, the state agency announced they’re citing the company for three alleged serious and willful violations of state laws. Penalties could run as much as $263,000.
Makes putting out a little water and shade for your workers look a lot more affordable.
If the would-be developers of a massive grocery store and condo project at the corner of Haight and Stanyan streets hope to win over the community they want to serve, the nasty hit piece they mailed out this week attacking activist Calvin Welch was exactly the wrong way to go.
The project is sort of a political wobbler. Everyone is anxious to get another grocery store into the former Cala Foods site, but the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council (of which Welch is a key member) has understandably raised concerns about the scale of the proposed project, which includes 62 condos, a Whole Foods of up to 35,000 square feet (more than double the old Cala), and three stories of underground parking that will generate about 2000 new car trips per day at the already congested intersection.
Yet rather than trying to work with the community, developer Mark Brennan resorted to character assassination that was both childish and ageist, slamming Welch as a “fossil” who is maniacally trying to maintain blight and keep fresh food away from hungry children. He even took a few swipes at Dist. 5 Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi – clearly, not a smart move.
As Welch told us, “This hit piece is a desperate act of a desperate bunch.”
Here at the hyper-local Bay Guardian, we don’t get to write about international organized crime all too often, but it’s something we truly enjoy studying when we’re off the clock. Thankfully, we were able to hoodwink our editors into allowing us to examine the subject during precious work time for this week’s cover story. Suckers.
For those of you who appreciated our profile of human rights investigator Kathi Austin, we’ve got a wealth of additional material below for you to check out, some of it great stuff we hated having to pull from the story due to space constraints and some of it links to other highly informative stories and academic studies on small-arms proliferation in the developing world.
As for Victor Bout’s arrest earlier this year in Thailand, the Russian government has reportedly worked behind the scenes to have him delivered back to Moscow. But Washington’s relatively new attorney general, Michael Mukasey, emerged from meetings during a recent trip to Bangkok declaring that the case for his extradition was “very strong,” according to press accounts. Bout has an extradition hearing in Thailand on July 28.
He fled to Moscow several years ago, probably in 2002, evading an Interpol arrest warrant in the process. Russia doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the United States, but leaving his safe confines in Moscow and heading to Thailand made him vulnerable to the arrest that occurred in February.
A photo of the arms tycoon from Agence France-Presse – one of the few seen publicly – quickly circled the globe after his capture and showed Bout dressed in a polo shirt and moustache with trim, nut-brown hair. Two massive arms are stuffed into a pair of handcuffs as he glowers at the camera and his considerable size dwarfs the Thai policemen walking next to him.
We first learned about Austin’s pursuit of Bout after reading the definitive book on him published last year by two American journalists, Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Planes, and the Man Who Makes War Possible. The co-authors are Douglas Farah, a former West African bureau chief for the Washington Post, and Stephen Braun, a national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times. The duo thanks Austin for opening up her files during their research for the book, and Merchant of Death is a must-read for anyone interested in human rights and disarmament.
More after the jump.
Lord of War, 2005
Before the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee voted tonight on its new chair, Chris Daly told me the vote was going to be 18-16 in favor of Aaron Peskin, the progressives’ pick. I didn’t doubt him. The play was going to be to elect Peskin temporary chair as the first order of business, before the public comment or chair election agenda items, and make it clear from the get-go where the votes were.
There was a mild and brief parliamentary scrum before the names of Peskin and Scott Wiener, last term’s chair and the pick of the moderates, were put up for vote. Peskin won on a 18-16 vote.
“You have my word that I’m going to work my butt off and I’m going to do it with Scott,” Peskin said during his acceptance speech before Wiener supporters reminded him he was only temporary chair and the real vote was still coming up. But I didn’t doubt it was over.
I listened to the first speaker during public comment, Senator-to-be Mark Leno, sound conciliatory notes and praise the soon-to-be vanquished candidate he supported. And then I left as the speakers lined up at the microphone to make the case for their respective candidates, telling Daly to call me if the official vote wasn’t 18-16.
Scene from last month’s ciclovia in Portland, Photo by Steven T. Jones
Sunday Streets, a proposal to bring to San Francisco’s Embarcadero the carfree ciclovias that have caught on in major cities around the world, became mired in the dysfunctional relations between Mayor Gavin Newsom and the Board of Supervisors after Fisherman’s Wharf merchants freaked out.
But even before the full board yesterday considered the resolution by Sups. Aaron Peskin, Michela Alioto-Pier, and Sean Elsbernd demanding the Aug. 31 and Sept. 14 events be postponed until a detailed economic impact analysis can be done, the Mayor’s Office had already announced the events would proceed as scheduled, critics be damned.
“The mayor’s position on Sunday Streets will not change. We will go ahead as scheduled,” Mike Farrah, head of the Office of Neighborhood Services and a longtime Newsom loyalist, told the Guardian on Monday.
In the face of that stand, and with Farrah and other event proponents promising to work with business community critics to massage the plan, Peskin opted to delayed consideration of his resolution until the Aug. 5 meeting. Yet Sup. Chris Daly (who supports Sunday Streets even though he calls it a Newsom publicity stunt) also decided to up the ante yesterday by introducing legislation to permanently ban cars from Market Street.
Bicyclists expressed their outrage, politicians offered their support, and bureaucrats said they’d do what they could to speed up the slow-moving environmental work on the city’s Bicycle Plan, which a judge says the city must complete before making any bicycle system improvements.
But for those seeking near-term relief to a stalemate expected to last at least another year found little solace during yesterday’s Land Use Committee hearing on the latest Bike Plan delays. Instead, they were offered a culprit: the California Environmental Quality Act.
The 38-year-old law was the basis for the legal challenge that led to a court injunction against new bike projects, and all involved with the plan note how perverse it is for the state’s premier environmental law to be holding up efforts to promote bicycling, an unqualified environmental good.
“It’s truly ironic that an activity that is inherently environmentally friendly is being challenged under an environmental law,” Planning Director John Rahaim, who moved here from Seattle last year, said at the hearing.
Damn, we just can’t pass this one up. A commenter over at the SF Weekly‘s blog posted a message agreeing with Benjamin Wachs that there are some fine folks in the Midwest contrary to what so many San Franciscans seem to believe. I won’t speak for rest of the newsroom here, but I agree with Wachs, too. I grew up in Tulsa and resent any implication that Oklahomans are somehow dysfunctional because popular pundits have encouraged the country to divide each state into two colors and thus make broad assumptions about millions of people. But there’s a problem. Read the comment closely:
Posted at: July 17, 2008 10:54 AM
Dan says:
When San Francisco got too expensive in the late 90s, the ex and I took our freelancing selves to a small town in the Midwest. The generalizations made by the coasters were always amusing to read; our small town of about six thousand was populated by other refugees from big towns, artists and radicals and iconoclasts made it something of a weekend destination and arts center. These people had real cultural connections and credentials but very little of the pretension you’d find at, say, the Lexington (which, more than likely, is jammed butt to nut with a bunch of people who are actually from the Midwest and would be mortified if you found out). I found that we did travel more than when we lived in California. But that was mostly because we were still making San Francisco wages but paying small town Midwestern rent.
Wait. Huh? Wha? Are you talking about the Lexington in the Mission? You’ve been there before, right? Are you sure your parenthetical description of it is, uh, accurate? You’re right about one thing, however. The Lexington, like so many other places in town, contains a lot of refugees from elsewhere who may actually be proud of where they came from but couldn’t stand being treated like second-class citizens there anymore.
Chris Daly and Robert Haaland are reporting that Aaron Peskin has lined up the votes to become the next chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party.
It’s been a long and contested fight, and Daly now says it’s over, and that Scott Wiener, Peskin’s opponnent, should essentially drop out.
But Wiener has no intention of backing down; in fact, he just told me by phone that he disagrees with Daly’s claim.
“It’s pure spin,” he said. “I have more committed votes than Aaron does.”
Peskin remains confident that he’ll prevail at the July 23 meeting and that more than half of the 34 voting members are lined up behind him. As for Wiener’s comment, he said: “On Wednesday night, one of us will be right and one of us will be wrong.”
Of course, neither side is releasing a list of names, since there’s still intense lobbying going on behind the scenes.
Should be a wild meeting.
Advocates for bicycling, walking, and the creation of more carfree spaces were already in full battle mode this week over challenges to Sunday Streets, Mayor Gavin Newsom’s plan to close the Embarcadero to cars for four hours each on Aug. 31 and Sept. 14. Then came word that the Bicycle Plan — which the city must complete in order to lift a two-year-old court injunction against any bike-related projects — is falling behind schedule once again.
The two unrelated setbacks will be the subjects of a pair of hearings at City Hall on Monday, events likely to fill their respective hearing rooms with angry bicyclists, angry business people, and angry political proxies of all stripes.
First up is a 10 a.m. hearing at the Board of Supervisors Government Audit and Oversight Committee on a pair of measures by Sup. Aaron Peskin: one a resolution calling for detailed economic studies before the Sunday Streets events, the other an ordinance that would require board approval for new athletic events that require street closure.
Then the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition has scheduled a 12:30 rally on City Hall steps before the 1 p.m. Land Use Committee hearing, which will include an update on the Bike Plan progress that was requested by Sup. Gerardo Sandoval after learning that work on the plan has fallen months behind schedule due consultants missing deadlines and other bureaucratic delays.
This is so obvious that San Francisco ought to be signing on right away (and pushing the speaker of the house to make is happen).
I’m not surprised that Matt Smith is once again looking for ways to bash the left, and that the SF Weekly is once again looking for ways to attack public power. But Smith’s latest piece is really screwy.
His thesis seems to be that the public-power movement is supporting the move to build city-owned power plants at the foot of Potrero Hill. Actually, that’s completely wrong.
There’s a measure headed for the fall ballot called the Clean Energy Act that would, among other things, move the city toward public power. But it has very little to do with the battle over the power plants.
The two cosponsors of the Clean Energy Act, Ross Mirkarimi and Aaron Peskin, are on opposite sides of the power-plant issue. And even a cursory read of the Guardian blogs demonstrates that the activists are by no means of one mind on this.
The whole idea that the peakers were a public-power plot is pretty laughable, since NONE of the leading public-power activists had anything to do with the idea in the first place. (And later, when it came out of the SFPUC — which again, has NEVER been a bastion of public-power activism) some of us liked the idea and some of us didn’t.
And the Peskin measure that Smith talks about has nothing to do with public power either.
Photo from Portland’s recent ciclovia by Steven T. Jones
It’s not easy to create carfree spaces in automobile-obsessed California, even temporary ones, as Mayor Gavin Newsom is starting to learn. His proposal to create a carfree “ciclovia” along the Embarcadero from Bayview to Chinatown was already scaled back from his original proposal of three consecutive Sundays in August to the recently approved plan for four-hour events on Aug. 31 and Sept. 14.
Merchant groups from Pier 39 and Fisherman’s Wharf lost their minds, screaming with fears of lost business even though motorists will still be able to access their tourist traps by car, and they’ll be joined by thousands of people pedaling, walking and skating past their businesses during prime breakfast and lunch hours. And now members of the Board of Supervisors have added their voices to this shrill chorus.
I knew there would be outrage, and there has been opposition in every city where it’s been tried (and it’s ultimately become popular everywhere it’s been tried). Unfortunately, Newsom has a history of caving in to overentitled motorists. So the challenge now for Newsom — and for all of us concerned about climate change, public health, and the promotion of sustainable forms of transportation — is to do what’s right in the face of fearful proponents of the status quo.
Because creating eight hours per year of carfree space along the San Francisco waterfront is the least we can do.
A GUARDIAN EDITORIAL
The supervisors are meeting a day late this week, thanks to the San Francisco Examiner’s screw-up, which means that a key vote on the city-owned combustion turbines, or peakers, will probably come Wednesday, July 16. The mayor, with some environmental backing, wants the board to kill the city peakers and leave Mirant Corp, a private power company, with the responsibility of generating extra electricity in San Francisco during peak use periods. That’s the worst possible scenario.
We recognize the contradictions inherent in any city plan to construct new fossil-fuel generation plants. San Francisco ought to be moving away from any energy solution that increases carbon emissions, and if the city wants to simply ban any facilities that burn anything to generate electricity, we would by sympathetic.
But that’s not the choice here. The mayor (and Pacific Gas and Electric Company) want to continue using natural-gas-fired turbines to generate electricity in southeast San Francisco. They just want a private company, not a public agency, running the plants.
And we’ve seen no legally binding, written guarantee that Mirant will close its big, polluting Unit 3 under the deal.
There’s some dispute about whether Mirant will operate cleaner peakers than the city, but there’s no dispute about the fact that a private company will be far less accountable than a city department that will soon by run by commissioners who must be approved by the supervisors. And if the city kills the peakers, it will have no leverage at all over what Mirant might be required to do.
The supervisors need to leave their options open here and hold off on killing the public-power peaker plan until the public can see, review, and participate in hearings on binding agreements for the future of Mirant’s plant. As Potrero Hill activist Tony Kelly, who has been working on this issue for years, put it in an email to us:
“I have to emphasize that a vote in favor of the CTs tomorrow doesn’t have to lock the city into the CTs; there’s already an amendment to the ordinances giving the city an out in case another program (Mirant retrofit, or transmission only) turns out to be better. However, if tomorrow’s ordinances fail, or are tabled, then the CTs go away as an option. That’s the problem.
Because it really looks like the PUC will formally rescind the public CTs next Tuesday, in their last act of defiance and corruption; and that will kill the public CTs, and then Mirant holds all the cards to do whatever it wants to do from then on.”
Again: We’re open to a solution that involves neither the city-run peakers nor Mirant. But we’ve been around long enough to know that when the mayor, PG&E and a private power-plant owner are mucking around with energy policy, you have to be very, very careful before you trust what comes out of the discussion. We don’t trust Mirant for a second, and the supervisors shouldn’t give up the city’s leverage too early.
Warren Hickle over at the argonaut is all in a tizzy about the prospect that mayor’s budget reduces the regularity of mechanized street sweeping on the west side of town. But I have to agree with the commenters at sfist — most neighborhoods would be thrilled to have those damn street sweeping machines gone.
Street sweeping is a tax on people who own cars but don’t have enough money to have garages. That’s mostly tenants. I’m all for getting rid of cars, and I’m all for taxing them, but the tax ought to be fair: Charge everyone who owns a car in SF a set fee a year, or even better, charge a fee based on the value of the car, so the rich pay more. Or levy a tax based on the weight of the vehicle (hits SUVs) or the gas mileage (ditto).
The sweeping is mostly a regressive way to bring in revenue for the city. I live in a part of town where we don’t have any street cleaning program, and our streets are just fine.
Besides, it’s kind of environmentally dumb: If you use your car once a week or less, isn’t it better to leave it parked instead of starting it up every couple of days and driving it around to avoid the street sweepers?
I can see sweeping on Mission, 16th Street, Haight Street and other major commercial strips, but why would anybody on the west side be mad about losing a service that costs a lot, does little good and amounts to a bad tax?
San Francisco’s proposal to install several combustion turbines, or “peaker” plants, in the southeast neighborhoods has created a firestorm of protest, particularly from environmentalists who don’t want the city building any new fossil-fuel plants.
I get that. I also know that PG&E has its dirty little fingers in the public-policy pie. And that makes it more complicated.
The lastest proposal, which comes out of the mayor’s office, calls for Mirant Corp. to retrofit its own peakers, clean them up, run them on natural gas, and put that power into the grid so the city doesn’t have to build its own plants. The argument is that Mirant’s peakers would be cleaner than the city’s, and might run less often.
I’ve always thought that leaving Mirant in control is a terrible idea. If we want to tell the state that we aren’t going to build any new fossil-fuel plants, then let’s stick to it, and rely entirely on renewables (at the possible risk of brownouts in high-use periods). But I don’t trust Mirant for a second — and I don’t think the mayor has any legal guarantee that Mirant will do what it says it will.
All that said, I got an interesting communication this weekend from Joe Boss, who’s a Potrero Hill activist. He and Tony Kelly are worried that the Mayor and Mirant will wind up creating the worst possible scenario: The big Mirant plant, with its smokestack and pollution, will continue to operate for the forseeable future.
It’s admittedly a bit of a speculative scenario, and a lot of things would have to go wrong for it to happen. (Among other things, Mirant, which loses its permit to use Bay water for cooling at the end of this year, would have to invest in a big new air-cooling system.) But it’s worth putting out there as the supervisors prepared to decide on the fate of the city peakers.
You can read Boss’s perpective after the jump.
The following is an email exchange between me and Nathan Ballard, the mayor’s press secretary, on the subject of the Clean Energy Act. It raises some interesting questions; I thought I’d just post it without further comment.
ME: Will Mayor Newsom be endorsing the Clean Energy Act?
NATHAN BALLARD: Check with Jaye.
ME: Thanks, I will. A private political consultant is now speaking for the mayor on policy positions?
BALLARD: I don’t use public resources/time to comment about endorsements on ballot measures, candidate races, etc. Eric Jaye is Newsom’s point of contact for the media on such issues.
ME: Interesting. How long as this been your policy? (And by the way, I don’t think the Clean Energy Act is a ballot measure yet. It’s still before the board of supervisors. So you can’t speak for the mayor about his positions
on pending legislation?)
I’m also intrigued by the possibility of serious conflicts here. Eric Jaye is often involved in local political campaigns as a paid consultant. Should he be speaking for the mayor if he is getting paid to take one side on an issue?
BALLARD: Yes, I can speak for the Mayor on pending legislation. Once it’s on the ballot, I probably shouldn’t. Anyways, I don’t know of any local legislation called the Clean Energy Act. Do send me the text and I’ll see
if the Mayor wants to express an opinion to you about it.
As to your question about Eric Jaye, it sounds like you are suggesting that he is doing something wrong. I know and respect Eric, and so I know that you are on the wrong track. His professional ethics are unimpeachable. But
instead of spreading rumors about Eric through third parties, why don’t you just pick up the phone and call him with your accusations? I am confident that he will be quite happy to set you straight.
ME: Eric Jaye informs me that since he is, in fact, working for PG&E in opposition to the Clean Energy Act, he has a conflict (as I had suspected) and can’t speak for the mayor on this issue.
There was a hearing on the measure this week, and I’m sure the mayor is aware of it and what it entails. Can you let me know if he has taken a position or plans to?
Thanks for your help.
BALLARD: The Mayor says he is aware of this legislation and he is looking into it.
By John Bardis
Mayor Newsom has proposed some disturbing legislation. He wants whistleblower citizens to pay a $500 filing fee to exercise the right to request the Planning Commission to hold a public hearing on proposed construction projects that might violate the Planning Code.
What a shameful example of misguided legislation in San Francisco. It’s akin to the Mayor of Boston in 1775 requiring Paul Revere to pay a fee before he could ride to sound the alarm that “The British are coming!”
Instead of encouraging citizen participation in our democracy, the mayor is promoting a plutocracy. While residents in wealthier neighborhoods like Pacific Heights and Sea Cliff will be able to afford this proposed fee increase, its imposition discriminates against citizens living in the less affluent neighborhoods.
A Request for Discretionary Review is a cornerstone of the planning process. Residents can exercise their right to request a public hearing on a proposed construction project that might violate the city’s Planning Code or Master Plan.
Years ago, there was no fee for filing a Request for Discretionary Review. In those days, civic leaders welcomed volunteers who gave freely of their time to provide an invaluable service for our city by monitoring proposed construction projects to ensure they complied with the law — and blowing the whistle on developers violating the law.
Back then, all costs associated with processing a Request for Discretionary Review were logically and rightfully included as part of the fee charged for the filing of building-permit applications. City officials recognized that, since the submission of a questionable building permit application triggered the Request for Discretionary Review, it was only reasonable that the burden of all costs associated with the processing the request should fall on the developer.
This is not the case today. The city began requiring citizens to pay a fee for filing a Request for Discretionary Review, which presently is a ridiculous $300. And now Mayor Newsom has proposed to add insult to injury by increasing this fee by 67.5% to an absurd $500.
The mayor’s proposal penalizes less affluent citizens and neighborhoods by restricting their right to protest questionable developments by raising the financial hurdle for citizen participation. It discourages all citizens from participating actively in the city’s planning process by sending a punishing financial signal that their participation is not wanted.
On June 19, 2008 the Planning Department and Planning Commission ignored public protests over this fee increase and voted to recommend that the Board of Supervisors approve it.
At its meeting on Tuesday, July 15th, the Board of Supervisors will take up the mayor’s misguided proposal. The mayor and our city officials should encourage rather than discourage and penalize San Franciscans – our citizen volunteer “Paul Reveres” who sound the alarm about possible code violations that make possible the lawful implementation of San Francisco’s Planning Code.
The Board of Supervisors should reject the 67.5% fee increase – if not the entire fee altogether! The Board should amend the legislation to recover any such costs associated with the filing of a Request for Discretionary Review by making an appropriate increase the fees charged for building permit applications.
John Bardis is a former San Francisco Supervisor and former President of the Coalition San Francisco Neighborhoods..
Cecilia Vega — who covers Mayor Gavin Newsom for the San Francisco Chronicle, where she broke big stories ranging from the big sex scandal to the mayor’s extravagant spending during hard times — has taken a job with KGO-TV Channel 7 covering Oakland City Hall.
It’s a loss for the newspaper industry, which Vega has worked in for about 10 years, reporting for the Santa Rosa Press Democrat and San Bernardino Sun before joining the Chron four years ago. But Vega — who has been a colleague of mine on the City Desk News Hour (a TV show she’ll also be leaving) for the last couple years — sees it as a good opportunity during these trying times for the Chron, which has made deep staff cuts to cope with declining readership and big financial losses.
“Making the decision to leave newspapers wasn’t easy — even in these uncertain times in the industry. It’s not something I ever thought I would do. But I’ve got a great opportunity to learn a new form of story telling at Channel 7. And besides, with all the scandals going on in Oakland City Hall right now, what political reporter isn’t itching to do stories there? It’s an exciting opportunity I just couldn’t pass up,” Vega told me.
Her last day at the Chron is July 25 and she’ll be starting her new gig in early September after getting married in August. The word is reporter Erin Allday, a novice to political reporting, will take over the Newsom beat.
The stock market took another tumble today on the work that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which guarantee a large percentage of the mortagages in the United States, are in crisis and may be nearing collapse. Word is that the Bush Administration may have to step in with a bailout plan that could compare with the massive S&L bailout of the early 1990s.
Why are the two giant corporations, without which the entire housing market could collapse, in so much trouble? Dave Iverson discussed that on forum this morning, and some interesting points came out. According to his guest, Thomas Davidoff, a business-school professor at Berkeley, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were doing what short-term profit-seeking companies do — investing in instruments that do well when the economy is doing well, particularly, and ironically, in mortage-backed securities. Now that the housing markets are tanking, and those securities have fallen in value, and the two companies are facing huge liabilities for the mortgages they guaranteed, the taxpayers are going to have to step in.
But here’s what a lot of people forget: Fannie Mae, the Federal National Mortgage Association, was originally a government agency, created by Roosevelt as part of the New Deal. In 1968, it was privatized. Freddie Mac, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, was never a public entity, but was created to provide competition in the market when Fannie Mae was privatized. (By the way, these are the outfits that have made the securitization of morgtages possible.)
But of course, both have operated with what finance experts call an “implicit guarantee” of federal backing. Everyone assumes that if they screw up, Uncle Sam will come to the rescue.
So we have the worst of both worlds: A private outfit making bad investment decisions because there’s no real downside fear — and the taxpayers, who have little control over it, having to foot the bill.
Privatization has done such wonders for the mortgage-finance market, eh? Perhaps President Obama and Speaker Pelosi will have enough sense to stop bailing these companies out and turn them back into government agencies.
When I first heard about current plans to build a “Victory Garden” in Civic Center Plaza — which will be officially planted tomorrow at 10 a.m. in a ceremony featuring Mayor Gavin Newsom and Alice Waters, the pioneering restaurateur who founded Slow Food Nation — I thought it was a really cool idea. Here was the city of San Francisco giving some of its most prime and high profile real estate over to the urban gardening movement, which seeks alternatives to the fossil fuel dependent industrialized food system.
And the Victory Garden concept is great, conjuring up the collective commitment to our national interests that inspired patriotic citzens to plant gardens during the two world wars. Sure, the logistics of tending and securing the garden might be tough, but Newsom seemed to be making a commitment to put city resources behind this important symbolic statement.
Then I heard that they’re going to rip out the garden in a couple months, in my mind reducing the garden to a mere photo op for our jolly green would-be governor. Ick. Just what this country needs, another hollow gesture toward environmental sustainability rather than the bold collective action that we actually need to tackle serious problems like climate change, resource depletion, and a wasteful, polluting, and ineffective global food system.
Musical support alone might be enough to swing undecided voters in the November presidential race.
On the one hand, you could vote for a guy who has “It’s Rainin’ McCain, Hallelujah!” kinda musical backup:
I’m sorry, but whatever way you look at it that video sucks. Unless you are an Obama supporter, which makes me wonder just who made this fiasco.
Or you could vote for a guy who has a whole string of musical support. The latest I’ve seen is Coco Tea’s reggae Obama, which is a nice mellow tune for a Friday.
but my alltime favorite remains Barack O’Bollywood:
It’s described as “east meets west meets acid”. Enjoy–and enjoy your weekend!
