Politics Blog Archives — Page 210 of 258 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Another peaker analysis

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May 7, 2008

Steven Moss, of SF Community Power, an organization that does energy efficiency work with small businesses, sent us an analysis showing we don’t need the peaker power plants.

Check it out. (It’s an Excel file.)

“This is all publicly available data,” Moss told us. “And all the data is right there. People can mess with it any way they want,” he added, encouraging number crunchers to dig into the spreadsheet.

For example, the tab titled “DC Line 72 Trans” was generated “based on Cal-ISO’s claim that 28 percent of transmission is not available,” said Moss. According to their analysis, with the Transbay Cable online, we’d still have a 100-megawatt cushion of extra power.

Moss said the data was collated and crunched by James Fine, an economist for the Environmental Defense Fund, and Richard McCann, of M.Cubed, who doesn’t seem like a slouch either.

Fine told me they did the analysis about a year ago and it came from questioning whether or not the city needed the 400 megawatt Transbay Cable. They assumed we’d have the peakers and factored them in. Now we’re getting the cable but questioning if we need the peakers, so the data’s the same but the question is different. Moss presented this data to the Mayor’s office last week. Mayor Newsom’s support for the peakers seems to have waned a bit recently.

Woolsey endorses Leno

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May 7, 2008

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Just heard from Mark Leno that Lynn Woolsey, the popular Democratic Congressional Rep. from the North Bay, has endorsed him for state Senate. I suspect Woolsey, like many of us, has come to believe that, for better or for worse, this is a two-person race at this point between Leno and Joe Nation.

Hillary Clinton, CTD

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May 7, 2008

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Among the most fascinating items in a day when the pundits declared the race over, no less than George McGovern told Clinton to drop out and Drudge reported that superdelegates don’t want to meet with her: CNN says Dianne Feinstein, a superdelegate and Clinton loyalist, has been trying to reach the candidate for two days and can’t get her calls returned.

I saw Hillary on TV last night vowing to fight on, and talking about seating the Michigan and Florida delegations, which would tear the Democratic convention apart and almost hand the election to McCain. But the Clinton campaigning is clearly circling the drain. She’s canceled all public appearances today; maybe she’s getting ready to do the right thing for the party and call it quits.

Oaklanders pissed about robberies

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May 7, 2008

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Just got a call from the folks over at Uhuru Furniture & Collectibles in Oakland. They’re involved with a press conference that will take place today at noon calling on the city of Oakland to deal with a spate of recent aggressive robberies on Grand Avenue. Uhuru endured a takeover robbery on Sunday that left eight customers and two employees short of $1,000 in cash. Silver Screen Video at 3850 Grand Ave. has been robbed twice recently, as has Grand-Piedmont Liquors.

The press conference will be held at Uhuru, 3742 Grand Avenue, in Oakland.

“We recognize that the robbery at Uhuru Furniture & Collectibles and the increased robberies of Oakland businesses go hand in hand with the sharp escalation of desperate poverty of Oakland’s black community,” store coordinator Joel Hamburger said in a presser. “Although we denounce this attack on our nonprofit work, we are calling on the city to respond in a way that will not exacerbate the terrible conditions in the African community but address the root causes of crime and poverty.”

Uhuru Furniture & Collectibles is a nonprofit project of the African People’s Education and Defense Fund (APEDF) that relies on support from community donations. Residents are mad about the robberies, but organizers of today’s press conference want the city to respond by improving economic development in the neighborhood.

How many San Franciscans are there?

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May 6, 2008

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The U.S. Census Bureau estimates there were about 765,000 people living in San Francisco last year, down from about 777,000 in 2000. But a pro business non-profit group called Social Compact came out with a study a few months ago that claims our population is closer to 865,000 — and that we’re wealthier than official estimates because of our underground economy and other factors — so Mayor Gavin Newsom has announced that he’s challenging the Census figures to try to get us some more money.

“Every San Franciscan counts, and I am serious about ensuring San Francisco receives our fair share of federal
and state funding and attention,” Newsom said in a press release that went out less than an hour ago. “We can use this new data to attract high quality retailers to our under-served markets and make sure we develop the neighborhoods that have been unfairly under-counted.”

Erin Brockovich hits Lennar in South Carolina

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May 6, 2008

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Seems that Erin Brockovich is testing levels of methane and hazardous chemicals at a Lennar housing complex in South Carolina. The EPA previously tested the site and claimed all was well, but Brockovich is challenging those results. Hardly the kind of sound bite that Lennar’s well-financed Prop. G supporters in San Francisco were hoping for.

Peaker Plan moving forward

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May 6, 2008

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Early Monday morning about a hundred citizens gathered in front of City Hall to protest the construction of two natural gas-burning “peaker” power plants in the city — one at the airport and one in the Bayview/Portero district. Representatives opposed to the plan, from a coalition of 20 different environmental and social justice organizations, articulated in so many ways that San Francisco should be moving toward green energy and away from fossil fuels.

Then the crowd, about 100 strong, filed inside to speak their minds about it at a Government Audit and Oversight Committee hearing — last stop for the plan before it heads to the full Board of Supervisors. But 10 hours later, only a handful of people were still in the room when the chance to speak was finally given.

The insanely long hearing had a loaded agenda, with topics ranging from funding the airport to defunding Edgewood foster care center, not to mention six separate bits of legislation related to the peaker power plants. The public comment requests were piled high and proceedings slammed to a halt during Item #5 when Stephanie Gates, a rep for Edgewood, fainted to the floor in the middle of her testimony about foster care in San Francisco.

It was well into the evening and most of the audience had left for home or work by the time talk finally turned to the peakers.

Who’s afraid of public nudity?

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May 5, 2008

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George Davis, the naked former mayoral candidate , was arrested again — on May Day, no less — and has reached a scientific conclusion:

“From my field experience with public nudity, I can state that the only people who have emotional problems with public nudity are angry people, excessively authoritarian personalities, and fundamentalist religious nut cases.”

Oh, and he thinks Pope John Paul II was a big fan of nudity.

You can read his entire letter after the jump.

Tipping your waiter health coverage

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May 5, 2008

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Here’s another example of a restaurant passing on the cost of Healthy San Francisco to its patrons. The lady and I had brunch at the Slow Club in the Mission on Saturday and this is our bill. Healthy San Francisco is the program created by Sup. Tom Ammiano to reach the more than 73,000 uninsured San Franciscans with a reasonably inexpensive form of health insurance.

The program is tied up in federal court right now because restaurants have sued arguing that it’s illegal for local governments to require employers to fund health insurance for their employees, which Healthy San Francisco does. About 19,000 San Franciscans had already signed up for the plan by last week and on Wednesday about 13,000 more were added as local businesses met a deadline for registering with the program.

Part of the idea is that without insuring more Americans, you and I pay for it each time someone who lacks coverage ends up making a costly emergency room visit at a public hospital with a preventable disease, illness or injury because they couldn’t access advance treatment, mental health assistance or any other type of care before they reached a tipping point. This program might actually prove that if the government extends coverage to more people who haven’t traditionally received it, we may all save money in the end.

For now, you’re stuck with the bill while the restaurant industry sues to ignore the true cost of our robust local economy.

ICE raids San Francisco restaurants

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May 2, 2008

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We’re receiving early reports from the Bay Area Immigrant Rights Coalition that federal immigration officials have raided restaurants around the Bay Area and are arresting undocumented workers including in the Haight. So much for our sanctuary city “awareness campaign” that San Francisco launched in April. Limited details below.

*ENGLISH VERSION*
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, May 02, 2008

Contact:
Evelyn Sánchez, (415) 572-0639, evelyn@immigrantrights.org
Larisa Casillas, (415) 640-4557, larisa@immigrantrights.org

ICE Unleashes Immigration Sweeps Against Bay Area Restaurant Workers, Arrests Dozens of Workers
Coalition Urges People to Call Hotline to Get Legal Help

We are calling on members of the Bay Area community to be alert to an immigration police presence in your neighborhoods or workplaces. Today, the Bay Area Immigrant Rights Coalition started receiving reports of immigration police raids, carried out by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). ICE arrested dozens of restaurant workers in El Balazo restaurants in San Ramon, Lafayette, Concord, Pleasanton, San Francisco and Danville. ICE arrests were also reported in Oakland. The numbers of workers detained, which cities, and if only EL Balazo restaurants were targeted have not yet been fully confirmed. Please report the names of any individuals, your co-workers, neighbors and others, who may have been picked up by ICE to BAIRC.

More on the raids including who to contact for help and a Spanish translation of the presser after the jump.

Postal workers go postal with picket

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May 2, 2008

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*SEE UPDATED RESPONSE FROM RON MALIG BELOW*

A group of local postal workers are hitting the streets this afternoon, Friday, and going postal on their boss who they say won’t stop going postal on them. Okay, that’s not the best way to put it. Local postal carriers say there’s a guy working as a supervisor at the Bryant Annex Post Office in the Mission named Ron Malig who’s simply out of control. This postal boss, they allege, has long abused and discriminated against his underlings, behavior they describe as “obnoxious” from finding ways to punish fellow postal workers he dislikes to claiming certain colleagues are “disrespecting” him.

The highly publicized postal shootings of the ‘90s helped create an unfortunate image of letter carriers. But two union officials from the AFL-CIO’s National Association of Letter Carriers, Golden Gate Branch 214, told us that over the last few decades, their local hasn’t resorted to pickets all that often, maybe a handful of times. Mostly a quiet bunch, says union vice president Bill Thornton, at least compared to the ILWU, which briefly shut down West Coast ports this week on May Day to protest the Iraq war.

“We don’t picket. It has to be a really bad situation,” said Don Limin, a steward for Branch 214.

In fact, the last time Bryant Annex employees did hit the streets was for a vigil in late 2006 when a postal supervisor named Genevieve Paez from the 180 Napoleon St. post office in the Bayview was shot to death execution-style outside of her home in Visitacion Valley. Paez, who Limin said once worked at the Bryant Annex, had been involved in a dispute with another postal employee named Julius Tartt. The next day, Tartt himself was found in a Livermore parking lot dead from what the Alameda County Coroner’s Office declared was a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Police believed Tartt killed Paez and then took his own life.

No May Day party for day laborers

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May 2, 2008

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Power tools, light fixtures, house paint, lumber, immigration raids. You can find it all at Home Depot. While everyone else was celebrating the May Day holiday of international solidarity and workers’ rights, a group of undocumented workers were either sitting in jail waiting to hear if they’d be permitted to stay in the United States or they’d already been deported.

Last month, law enforcement officials including the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department and the federal Immigration and Control Enforcement bureau arrested several workers waiting for jobs in front of the Home Depot location on Ice House Terrace in Fremont.

“They detained many of us, leaving only a couple of us behind. From what we know, most of them were deported,” one worker told KCBS April 29.

Just before the holiday, immigration activists from La Raza Centro Legal, the Living Wage Coalition and other groups held a press conference to denounce the raids.

“These are human beings we’re talking about, workers who were simply trying to work and earn a living,” a La Raza organizer said in a prepared statement. “We’re going to find out what happened to them.”

NBC 11 reported that several weeks ago Home Depot called the Fremont Police Department complaining about workers loitering in front of the store and 13 people were eventually taken to the Santa Rita Jail because they could not be properly identified.

Regulating marijuana slooooooooooowly

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May 2, 2008

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San Francisco blazed a new trail back in 2005 when the Board of Supervisors approved comprehensive regulations governing the city’s medical marijuana dispensaries, which numbered more than 40 back then. Fast forward to 2008 and not much has changed, with the 33 club operators and city officials still struggling to get these places permitted. On Tuesday, the board will consider a third delay of the deadline, pushing it back to Jan. 19, 2009 which, not coincidentally, is the day after the inauguration of a new U.S. president.

What’s the problem? Well, according to my sources and a recent Chron piece, the clubs are facing a confluence of difficulties. Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier’s insistence that clubs meet the highest standards of access for those with disabilities has caused club operators to have to develop detailed applications which are then reviewed by the Mayor’s Office of Disabilities, which wasn’t given any new staff or resources for this new role. And then when club operators are forced to make improvements, to get the building permits they need approval from their landlords, which are freaked out these days after receiving threatening letters from the Drug Enforcement Administration. Add to that permit costs of $7,000 and improvement costs in the tens of thousands of dollars, fear of creating a paper trail for federal prosecutors, and the nature of bureaucracy and it’s clear that the problem isn’t simply one of stoners who can’t get their shit together.

Merc circ up despite newsroom bloodbath

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May 2, 2008

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How is it possible that one of the only major daily newspapers in the United States to show an increase in circulation over the last six months is the closest to up and dying? The San Jose Mercury News added 4,000 weekday copies over the last half-year, according to their most recent figures.

The Merc, once the prestigious gem of the Knight-Ridder chain of newspapers, has undergone heartbreakingly massive staff cutbacks and turnovers of top editors over the last two years. One editor even tragically took his own life. Knight-Ridder was one of the few chains in the United States that aggressively challenged the White House on the war, something they didn’t get proper credit for until much later when Bill Moyers made his triumphant return to public television.

Besides the Merc, everybody’s down in circulation by several percentage points these days: the LA Times, the Chronicle, the Sacto Bee, the Orange County Register. And we all know why, of course. People don’t want to pay for paper anymore. So how could a paper product like the Merc, which is losing all of its talent and enduring the infamous operations consolidations of parent company MediaNews that predictably lead to more boring and error-laden copy, actually be raising the number of people who read the deadwood version at home?

Their circ is up by a seemingly small 1.7 percent, but when you consider the most attention the Merc has gotten lately came from a series of depressing photos portraying the Merc newsroom as a graveyard, this seems like a pretty big deal for the Silicone Valley daily. We couldn’t actually find a good explanation for why their circ is up … anywhere. Folks linked to the news but no one explained the turnaround. We weren’t able to reach anyone in the Merc‘s circ department right away either. They may have blitzed the city with subscription deals, but that seems unlikely if MediaNews CEO Dean “Obama Bin Laden” Singleton, like everyone else, is gravitating toward the Web, even if the Web formula he’s come up with for all of his newspaper holdings frankly looks like crap. I mean really, Dean. The MediaNews sites aren’t nice to navigate or look at. Moyers and Singleton videos after the jump.

What’s up with the restaurant surcharges?

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May 1, 2008

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The last time I had lunch at the Slow Club, the check came with a little notice: $1 was added to the cost of every meal to cover the cost of complying with the city’s new health-care mandate. That was fine — if I can afford to eat at the Slow Club I can afford an extra buck so the people who work there can get health insurance.

But it’s interesting that the place didn’t just raise prices by $1 (which most people wouldn’t have noticed — restaurant prices go up all the time). They made a point of letting everyone know that the money was for a new government mandate. It was, in its own way, a political statement: Hey, sorry we have to charge you more, but the city is forcing us to do it.

That’s made some local activists a bit angry (there’s a fascinating little bit on it in the San Francisco Magazine blog — Sup. Tom Ammiano (who wrote the health-care bill) and labor leader Chriss Romero were eating at 2223 Restaurant on Market, and Romero got pissed off when the tab came with a four percent service charge that mentioned the insurance rule.

I get Romero’s point, and we supported the Ammiano legislation — and as someone who works at a small business that has always provided health insurance to employees and is still getting hit with some serious additional expenses to comply, I understand why the restaurants are trying to make a point about it.

And it’s absolutely true that restaurants never do this when other mandates, taxes, fees and expensive compliance rules take effect (you never see it for increases in the minimum wage, for example).

Mild statement or annoying protest? Thoughts?

PUC adds two cents on peakers

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May 1, 2008

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Actually, it’s more like 200. Kinda lengthy, and a PDF, but here’s what to expect from the SFPUC at next Monday’s meeting on the issue of building two power plants in the city.

Huffman clarifies on CCA

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May 1, 2008

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I just spoke with Assemblymember Jared Huffman, who was concerned about my post the other day suggesting he’d be up for changing the rules for Community Choice Aggregation. I’d parroted a Marin Independent Journal report that said he’d work to change the CCA law so that people have to “opt in” to the power co-op, rather than being automatically enrolled – which is how it currently works.

Huffman said the IJ didn’t put the full context around his quote – he’d only do it if the people in his district said that’s what they wanted, because that’s his job. “I want to be supportive. I represent this district and if the people in this district tell me they want the law changed, then that’s what I’ll do,” he said, adding that no, his constituents hadn’t been asking for him to change it.

But apparently there’s been a lot of hype in Marin over this provision, with the IJ editorializing against it.

Historic day

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May 1, 2008

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Today’s various May Day celebrations and demonstrations in San Francisco are unique. Never before have we seen the labor, immigrant rights, youth, and anti-war movements joined so closely and seamlessly into a coalition that is demanding a fundamental shift in U.S. foreign and economic policies. The messages from the podiums in Civic Center, Dolores Park, Justin Herman Plaza, and the ILWU Hall sounded surprisingly similar and unifying themes, making common cause of their struggles for a more just world that empowers all people, regardless of the artificial borders that separate them.
ILWU made history by shutting down all West Coast ports over a war. Previously, such tactics would only be employed for labor contracts, while the AFL-CIO and other major unions have never voted to oppose a U.S. war. It probably didn’t make much of a difference in the prosecution of the war, but it does signal a possible turning point and a coalescing of disparate groups around a set of issues that need to be more forcefully embraced by those in power (are you listening, Madame Speaker?) if they want to remain there.
Yes, it was a beautiful day in San Francisco in more ways than one. We’ll have more on what it all means — including color from the events and reporting on the issues — in the days to come and in next week’s paper.

Leno’s next move

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April 30, 2008

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Mark Leno called today to thank us for endorsing him. I reminded him that this was a leap of faith for us, and that I’d gotten a lot of shit from some of my best political friends over the endorsement, and I told him that (a) he better not ever do anything boneheaded like endorsing Michael Yaki again, and (b) he needs to start now trying to repair the rifts that this race has caused. He promised me that was a top priority.

And then after I got off the phone I got an idea, which — like just about everything I’ve said to Leno — is worth putting out in public.

Mark: Why not start the process now by annoucing that you’ll support Debra Walker for District 6 supervisor in 2010?

She’s running. She told me that last week. She’s going to be the consensus progressive candidate to succeed Chris Daly. She’s a queer community leader, a leader in the arts community, an experienced political activist and city commissioner … she’s pretty much perfect for the job.

And she’s a supporter of Carole Migden.

That’s the sort of bold move it’s going to take to prove that you’re serious about bringing people together. And it’s a no-brainer, since Walker is such an extraordinary person and exceptional candidate. Nothing to lose here, Mark, and everything to gain. I have her phone number if you need it.

PS: Update: I’ve apparently been wrong in one of my criticisms — Leno says he never endorsed Michael Yaki. Sorry about the error.

CA’s horrible net metering law

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April 30, 2008

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Up until now, net metering has been a sort of mythical to me. I understand how it works – you put up solar panels or wind generators and the utility company rebates you for the power you make – to an extent. You can’t be paid for any extra power you generate. I get that, but I’d never actually seen what it looks like.

Then I checked my mail today and found a letter [PDF] from JB Neilands, a retired UC Berkeley biochemist and past writer for the Guardian who broke the original story about the Raker Act scandal. Six years ago Neilands put solar panels on his Berkeley home, and now PG&E sends him a summary of all the excess power he’s generating for them – that they don’t pay him for. He could have made $122.86 off his panels last year. That’s not a lot, but it certainly would have helped pay back some of the cost of purchasing the panels. Plus it gives you a good feeling about what you’re doing, and that can go a long way.

Instead, how crummy it must feel to get a letter from PG&E detailing the money the AREN’T reimbursing you. As Neilands points out in another letter [PDF]to Assemblymember Lloyd Levine, ten states surveyed by Home Power magazine (gotta be a member to read) found that California is the only one that doesn’t pay people for the extra power they generate.

This is ridiculous. California legislators need to rise above the lobbying of overly powerful utility companies and change this law. This is a disincentive to put up more panels than you need. Energy misers with huge roofs could be selling renewable power into the grid for the rest of us to use, but they’re not going to buy more panels than they need unless the cost can be recouped.

Assemblymember Jared Huffman has introduced legislation to fix this, but it appears PG&E has already gotten to him.

Happy May Day!

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April 30, 2008

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May Day is the most peculiar of the American non-holiday holidays. Throughout Europe, South America, and much of the world, it is known as International Workers Day, a day celebrating labor solidarity that marks the 1886 Haymarket massacre in Chicago. Ironically, it never really caught on in the U.S., with our fears of all things even a bit Red.
But this being San Francisco, there’s still a strong contingent of lefties and other labor supporters that will be marking May Day tomorrow with marches and events covering a variety of related causes. Starting at 10:30 a.m., dock workers and anti-war activists will gather at the International Longshoreman and Warehouse Union Hall at Mason and Beach streets, from which they’ll hold a march in support of the ILWU decision to take the day off in protest of the Iraq War, thus slowing down the war machine just a bit. The march ends at Justin Herman Plaza for a noon rally.
Then at 2 p.m., supporters of immigrant rights will gather in Dolores Park and march to Civic Center for a 5 p.m. rally. And that evening at 7:30, the feisty Young Workers United will throw a May Day party at Balazo Gallery, 2183 Mission at 18th.
So, comrades, join the festivities and have a happy May Day.

Finally a fix for Fell-Masonic

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April 30, 2008

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Image from sfist.com

I and other bicyclists and pedestrians have long been urging the city to do something about the dangerous intersection of Fell and Masonic, and that pressure yesterday yielded a small but significant victory.
City attorneys persuaded Judge Peter Busch to make an exception in his injunction against bicycle projects so that the city can create a dedicated left turn lane and traffic signal phase for cars, which now cut across the pedestrians and bicyclists in a way that often leads to life-threatening collisions.
Kudos to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency and City Attorney’s Office for taking this seriously enough to head back to court over it, and another big raspberry to anti-bike blogger Rob Anderson (the guy responsible for the injunction) for forcing the city to jump through so many legal hoops just to make some common sense improvements to promote safe bicycling.
The project must still go through the city approval process — where Anderson will likely to be speaking against it and threatening to sue again — but it appears to be a done deal that will be built by early summer.

Migden-Leno: Did we get it right?

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April 29, 2008

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318-cover.web.jpg

We took the State Senate District 3 endorsement seriously, and agonized over it for weeks. What do you think — did we get it right?

We’ve been greenwashed!

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April 29, 2008

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Ha! I love this. Somebody over at Venables Bell, PG&E’s big greenwashing firm, isn’t paying attention at all. What a gaffe. And last year the corporation paid them $5,678,182 from a $6,855,643 ad budget. Five million bucks and you run ads in the Bay Guardian? Whoops. I hope we’re charging top dollar.