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Politics Blog

Young journos doomed to poverty and pink slips

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Cub reporters are finding it increasingly difficult to climb out of bed each day.

The pay sucks, everyone’s eager to inform you of the real story you’re failing to cover, and no matter how many late nights you put in, opportunities for advancement throughout the biz are slimming down with every new round of announced layoffs.

Spend each waking moment learning how to navigate Byzantine government bureaucracies so you can write a few cool stories, and the thanks you’ll get in return is the axe to help save expenses in the short term for the paper’s media parent. Here’s what management might say these days as an explanation:

“We are not trying to make any other statement here other than it is a competitive world out there and we are doing what we can to make sure we are putting out an excellent paper in the communities we serve.”

Mecke second, Hoogasian third

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Here’s an interesting chart, thanks to Marc Salomon, totalling the second- and third-choice votes in the mayor’s race. SInce Newsom won a clear majority, ranked-choice voting never came in to play, but if it had, and just for fun and the permanent record, Quintin Mecke came in second, Harold Hoogasian third, Wilma Pang fourth. Chicken John didn’t come close to his goal of being the Number Two candidate.

I think I’m reading this right.

Newsom’s new tax

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When I first saw this press release, I thought: Wow. Gavin Newsom realizes that there’s a $250 million budget deficit, and he’s actually trying to do something about it. We tax cigarettes because they’re unhealthy, why not tax carbon emissions, which are killing the planet — and raise a little money in the process?

Well, damn: There’s a problem. The key word here is “revenue neutral.” Newsom’s going to give tax rebates to anyone who has to pay this new tax. So it brings in no money for the cash-strapped city.

I understand the argument (let’s tax carbon, not jobs) but the payroll tax doesn’t tax jobs; it’s just a way to measure the size of a company. It’s an imperfect measure, as is gross receipts, but it’s one of the few possible measures you can use for a tax. Calling it a tax on jobs is completely misleading, and the mayor knows that.

So why not keep both? Why not simply add a levy on commercial carbon use (and maybe residential, over a certain basline, so it won’t be a regressive tax on renters), and bring in some cash in a way that also discourages environmental waste?

Democrats again reveal their complicity in BushCo misdeeds

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Bay Area congressional Democrats Tom Lantos and Nancy Pelosi: fighting imperial excesses, one capitulation at a time.
So congressional Democrats are angry about the New York Times revelation that the CIA destroyed videotapes of their agents harshly interrogating (ne torturing) al Qaeda suspects. And they should be, both because its appears the tapes had been illegally withheld from congressional and 9/11 Commission inquiries, and because they might show evidence of torture authorized and/or condoned at the highest levels of government. But there’s some subtext to this story that once again casts congressional Democrats in a very disturbing light. It shows them to be complicit in and enablers of the very worst of the Bush Administration atrocities: torture, illegal spying on Americans, and telling lies designed to start an illegal war under false pretenses.

Polyamorous politicos

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This week, we reported on Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier’s divided love between San Francisco and St. Helena in Napa County where she maintains an additional home. But she isn’t the only local official who’s heart is torn. Who else is sleeping around?

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A friend of Oakland City Council president Ignacio de la Fuente who sits on the Oakland Port Commission may be living primarily in the peninsula town of Hillsborough, one of the nation’s wealthiest based on per capita income, rather than a tough East Oakland neighborhood he claimed to reside in. The Oakland City Charter requires that Tony Batarse live in city limits while serving on the port commission. But East Bay Express reporter Robert Gammon bore into his claims last month revealing that the commissioner, a successful auto dealer and also a donor to powerful state Sen. Don Perata, had been taking annual homeowner’s exemptions on his opulent residence in Hillsborough since at least 1985. The tax benefit can only be used against a property that the homeowner predominantly lives in.

PG&E FIRES PUC DIRECTOR!

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This is big, a clear sign of how Mayor Gavin Newsom is going to operate in his next four years: Susan Leal, the head of the Public Utilities Commission, is going to be fired because she’s moving too fast toward public power.

Now keep in mind: Susan Leal is not by any means a radical public-power activist. We’ve been pushing her on this issue for years, and she is, at best, moving slowly, cautiously, incrementally to implement Community Choice Aggregation and to look at options to create a city-run utility.

But even these cautious, slow moves were too much for Pacific Gas and Electric Company, and, according to what I’ve heard at City Hall, PG&E was directly behind this move. THe message that Newsom and PG&E are sending out: Nobody should dare, ever, to take even little itsy-bitsy baby steps toward public power.

Note the comment by the head of Leal’s commission:

“The commission has never taken a vote on public power,” commission President Ryan Brooks said Wednesday. “It’s something she wants, but I don’t think the commission wants it. … I don’t think it’s the right time for it. It’s not a policy direction she has from the commission or from me.”

Leal, no fool, forced Newsom to give her a contract when she took the job, and the city will now have to spend $500,000 to buy her out. That’s a lot of money — but Newsom is apparently willing to spend it as the price of protecting PG&E.

It’s going to be a long four years.

Poll canceled after Ron Paul backers crash the party

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Presidential hopeful Ron Paul
Last night at the Holiday Inn in San Francisco, an event and straw poll staged by the San Francisco Republican Alliance (a group started by former local GOP committee member and sacrificial Assembly candidate Gail Neira after she battled with local party leaders) that seemed geared toward supporting presidential candidate Fred Thompson was abruptly canceled when dozens of Ron Paul supporters showed up to vote. Rather than allow the vote to go in favor of Paul — whose anti-war and libertarian views have generated considerable support in the Bay Area — Neira called off the vote and offered to refund everyone’s fees ($5 to vote, or $33 to attend the banquet then vote).
Check on the You Tube videos of the event here and here, and read accounts by Paul support here, here, and here.

Law professor to be Supes counsel against Jew

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Yesterday, the Board faced a choice: hire legal firm Garcia Calderon Ruiz, which specializes in government law,
or run with academic lawyer Prof. Robert Weisberg, as outside counsel for official misconduct proceedings against Sup. Ed Jew.

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Beleagured Sup. Ed Jew in happier times outside his flower shop on Waverly Place.
Photo by Charles Russo

Three attorneys with GCR, Mary Hernandez, George Yin and Nicolas Vaca, gave a relatively slick presentation compared to the Dumbledore-style ramblings of Prof. Weisberg.

“We have dealt with removal issues before,” said Hernandez.
“We are used to working in gray areas,” said Yin.
“A reasonable estimate,” said Vaca,of the firm’s $24,800 bid to get the project started.

But that bid appeared to be $24,800 too much, compared to Weisberg’s offer to work pro-bono, even if he teaches criminal law and doesn’t have experience in government agency law.

“This is not really a criminal matter,” said Weisberg. “The Board is a legislative body, and so it would be unconstitutional for it to convict someone of a crime.”

Maybe the Board enjoyed Weisberg’s easy-to-grasp explanations,which included making an analogy between Jew’s case and congressional impeachments proceedings: just as Congress indicts and the Senate then votes to remove from office, the Ethics Commission would do the “impeaching” and the Board of Supervisors would then vote whether to remove Jew from office.

Alles klar, Herr Professor.

Because in the end Sup. Geraldo Sandoval, seconded by Sup. Tom Ammiano, directed the Clerk of the Board to enter into an agreement with the professor, which does include the possibility of the $15-an-hour labor of his student research assistants at Stanford University.
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Art and History vie for Presidio spot

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History museum proposed by Presidio Historical Association

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Art museum proposed by Don Fisher

Last night at the Officer’s Club about 200 Marina residents gushed over Gap-founder Don Fisher’s plan to put a 100,000 square foot museum in the Presidio to house his art collection. For the most part they gave a demur nod to the Presidio Historical Association’s alternate proposal for a history museum. The two museums are vying for the same slice of real estate at the head of the Main Parade Ground, facing north toward the Bay where a bowling alley and tennis courts are currently located.

The historical association made a case for the site as a place where the history they’d be presenting actually went down, and said the grounds surrounding the museum would be a part of the museum itself. “The Main Post area is the most historically sensitive area,” said Gary Widman of the Historical Association. “It’s where San Francisco really started 1n 1776 and it’s an area that has buildings from almost every major period since that time.”

The only historical connection Mr. Fisher could come up with was the original plan for the Main Parade Ground, which called for a significant building at its head to anchor the site. He was firm in saying he could think of no other possible place for his museum. “This is the only location that works for us,” he said. “Nothing like that is available anywhere else in the Presidio.” In fact, he said he was planning on gifting his art to some other, already established museums until he was approached by the Presidio Trust, which suggested he consider building his own museum in the park instead.

Before the two plans were presented, Mayor Newsom offered some very diplomatic remarks suggesting a great compromise. “These don’t have to be competing projects,” he said, adding that he’d appointed a staff member (Kyri McClellan, 554-6123) to this project. “My office wants to participate in this process from the beginning.”

The plans agreed on one issue — parking would go underground. After that, they differ radically.

War and law

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The San Francisco-based War and Law League has just released a survey of this year’s presidential candidates, who are actively questioning whether the U.S. is now conducting an illegal war in Iraq that should be ended or properly authorized immediately. Or least that was the basic position taken by the only three candidates to respond: Democrats Dennis Kucinich and John Edwards and Republican Ron Paul. Kudos to the trio for stating their positions on a controversial question that might become painfully relevant in the coming years: Was the U.S. invasion of Iraq legal? Because if it wasn’t, as many legal scholars believe, then the leaders who started it might someday be called to account for war crimes and other violations of international law.
The questions and issues raised, which were vetted by Golden Gate University of Law professor Peter Keane and touch on everything from the legality of nuclear strikes to Bush’s preemptive war doctrine, are fascinating to read and consider. And the answers — as well as the lack of answers from strong anti-war candidates like Barack Obama and Bill Richardson — are telling indicators of where our country could be headed.

Modern art infiltrates Presidio

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This is what happens when you privatize a public asset. It’s hard to imagine that the spirit of the Presidio Trust Act would have allowed for this kind of new construction in a National Park, where the emphasis is supposed to be the preservation of the natural environment and historic uses of the 1,491 acres. Where does contemporary art owned by Gap founder Don Fisher fit into that mandate?

This new structure, to house Fisher’s private art collection, is slated for the Main Post, the historic parade ground of the old army base, where several stately brick buildings now sit empty. The Trust Act, under section104(c) does state that new construction in the park should be “limited to replacement of existing structures of similar size in existing areas of development.” Nothing on shoebox aesthetics there, and this new museum doesn’t offer a way to rehabilitate the aging structures that would surround it, which is part of the Trust’s Management Plan.

A meeting will be held tonight, 6:30 at the Officer’s Club in the Presidio, to discuss the Fishers’ proposal and a competing plan for a history museum from the Presidio Historical Association. At least their proposal actually has something to do with the park.

Barack OBollywood–dizzying

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Check out the Barack OBollywood Youtube clip.

The endless budget deficit

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Of course Gavin Newsom knew that a budget problem was ahead. He sees the figures. He also knows that it’s not about the economy or the looming recession; as Controller Ed Harrington put it, “our revenues here in the city are doing fine.”

That is, the revenue is on track, on budget, as predicted.

The problem is that the revenue San Francisco brings in isn’t enough for the level of spending. It’s no surprise: The city has to give its key employees nice raises, as Newsom did, because it’s so expensive to live here. City payroll is going to keep going up as long as housing prices do — and as long as Newsom doesn’t address the real housing issues.

All the talk of a hiring freeze and cutting out middle managers is nonsense; it won’t go anywhere. And sure, there’s fat in the city budget, but not $250 million worth. If Newsom were honest, he’d admit there’s a real structural problem here:

San Francisco voters want extensive public services (and that’s fine). City officials want to pay employees well (and they should). The city is trying to put resources into all sorts of problems that the federal and state governments have ignored (and that’s just not going to change).

To make it all work, we need more money. About a quarter billion dollars a year. Once you admit that, you can start talking about how to find it — who has to pay more taxes. But as long as you’re in denial, the problem will never go away.

Look inward, Mr. Nevius

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The attack by a homeless person on a 26-year-old German exchange student was horrific by any standard. A violent act by a possibly deranged person now charged with attempted rape shouldn’t be seen as any sort of reflection on homelessness in San Francisco; it was just awful.

But when C. W. Nevius starts talking about too many homeless people appearing in the Sunset, he needs to start a bit of self-reflection. His column states:

Whether, as many believe, the attack was a result of moving homeless encampments out of Golden Gate Park or simply an increase in homeless people in the area, the residents of the Outer Sunset are deeply concerned about the people living on their streets.

No shit, Sherlock. You (and I mean you, Chuck, since your columns drove the mayor to drive homeless people out of the park) push people out of a relatively quiet and invisible place where they’ve been sleeping, and they’re going to wind up somewhere else. Like on the streets of the Sunset.

Then the cops can crack down on homeless people in the Sunset, and they’ll move to another neighborhood, where the same game will start all over. And pretty soon a lot of the burghers will start wondering if we weren’t all better off before the Chron started its sensationalist coverage and the mayor got all agitated about the homeless camps in the park. Maybe that’s a better place for people to sleep than in Sunset doorways.

Huh, Chuck?

The Alcatraz Conversion Experience…

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….is one helluva trippy trip, one of those moments that makes me truly thankful to be covering politics in San Francisco.

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It’s not just the bejeweled image of a converted Alcatraz by night, or the the image of a white-domed daytime Alcatraz ‘Peace Center” Island that got me tripping.

No, to get the full impact of the trippy conversion experience, scroll down the Global Peace Foundation’s website to their YouTube video clip. It’s an election prelude quite unlike anything I’ve seen before.

Protecting air quality, by car only

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Now this is truly outrageous: a local blog called Bikescape has unearthed a Bay Area Air Quality Management District memo banning employees from using bicycles while carrying out their duties of promoting clean air. The memo states, “While biking to work is an option that the District supports, employees are not to ride their bikes in the course of their work duties. The potential for serious injury is much greater when riding a bicycle than driving a car in the event of an accident.”
And the potential for dirtier air is much greater if even our air quality officials are required to drive cars.

GOP initiative backer says gays are “loony”

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A Republican initiative that would split California’s electoral vote and almost certainly give the White House to the GOP is still alive, according to the Brad Blog, which has a remarkable interview with one of the measure’s chief backers.

Anthony F. Andrade Jr. told the blog’s Brad Freidman that the measure could still make the June ballot. He also showed a bit of his political colors, saying that he’s all about stopping Hillary, that the Clintons are “pricks” and that gay people are “loony.”

“The people that are involved in that lifestyle have a lot of emotional problems. You know what I mean?,” he asked. “Look, I don’t know if you’re gay or not, but the people that I know who are, who are involved in that, are a little bit loony, if you know what I mean.”

What a sweet bunch of folks over at the GOP. I wonder if Giulinani and his pals will at the very least repudiate Andrade’s remarks.

Young people and their ideas for SF

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Everyone gets all misty about kids. They’re the future and our greatest natural resource, blah, blah, blah — or so they say. That’s why voters placed Prop. H a few years ago, which sent tens of millions of dollars in city money over to the school district. But are we willing to actually listen to what young people have to say? Because they have some pretty good ideas sometimes.
For example, the San Francisco Youth Commission earlier this month unanimously approved resolutions calling for some of that Prop. H money to go toward free Muni passes for students, new bike racks at schools that don’t now have adequate facilities, and a study of health impacts on young people related to the asbestos dust Lennar has been kicking up next to schools on Hunters Point.
The Community Advisory Committee on Prop. H is holding a hearing tomorrow to discuss recommendations for allocating $15 million in Prop. H money and the youth and their supporters plan to be there (Saturday, 1:30 p.m. at 555 Franklin Street). For more information, contact the Youth Commission office at YC office at 554.6446 or email kevin.liao@sfgov.org and diana.pang@sfgov.org. Because it’s all about the children, right?

Cut the cleaners

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In stories on the $229 million budget deficit that San Francisco could be facing next year, both the Chronicle and the Examiner used the same telling quote from Mayor Gavin Newsom’s press secretary, Nathan Ballard: “Although he wants to trim the fat, the mayor made it abundantly clear he doesn’t want to see a reduction in people sweeping streets or police officers walking beats.”
Why is this guy so obsessed with street cleaning? As a bicyclist, I get irritated by the wet streets, which they often are since Newsom became mayor. As an environmentalist, I see this city’s manic scrubbing as a waste of water (which will grow more precious with climate change) and money and source of more toxic waste (as the Guardian reported last spring). My sense of social justice is also disturbed when street cleaners become a weapon against homeless loiterers, the working class, and street parties.
But the mayor seems to think daily street scrubbing is more important than the social services that his budget will ultimately target. Hell, his official website still prominent features (under “Recent News”) his “Back to Basics Budget” proposal from last spring, which focused on clean streets. With all due respect, Mr. Mayor, maybe it’s time to stop pandering to the conservatives and the business community and develop some kind of vision and agenda that we can all support.
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Images from SF Department of Public Works website

Angels and Demons

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For as long as humans have been migrating, but not conquering their host countries, they have been demonized. Check out the Jews under Hitler. The Arabs in France. The Pakistanis in England. And all the jokes about the Poles/Irish/ Mexican (fill in ethnicity of the most reviled group of) immigrants in your ‘hood.

So, the Thanksgiving story about the young boy who was rescued by a Mexican who had just crossed the border in southern Arizona was miraculous in a number of ways.

Without the intervention of a 26-year-old Mexican called Jesus Manuel Cordova, things might have ended badly for the 9-year-old son of an American woman, who lost control of her van in a remote area just north of the Mexican border, and eventually died while awaiting help.

As the local county sheriff, Tony Estrada, reported to major news outlets, Cordova came across the boy, told him that everything was going to be all right, gave him a jacket, built a bonfire and stayed with him until about 8 a.m. the next morning. That’s when hunters passed by, called authorities–and the boy was flown to hospital.

The story was miraculous for the way it got all the major news outlets casting an “illegal immigrant” named Jesus as an angel.

What wasn’t miraculous about the story was how the boy’s rescuer then got taken into custody by the Border Patrol, who, assumedly, will deport him.

So, while it’s depressing to read the ugly comments at sfgate about “illegal immigration,” unfortunately, they aren’t at all surprising.

Call me a bleeding heart legal immigrant who, yes, had to pay through the teeth to get her green card, but I’d argue that millions of “illegal immigrants” are angels every day, as they look after the children, homes, gardens and farmlands of a nation full of people grown rich on the spoils of their own historically illegal settlement.

Kinda demonic, ain’t it?

Some questions for Jackie Speier

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I’m told Jackie Speier is making calls to local elected officials seeking support in her unofficial but very active campaign to unseat Rep. Tom Lantos. I’m sure it’s not an easy decision for some folks: Speier is probably going to run to the left of Lantos, especially on the war – but Lantos will get the support of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and, I suspect, most of the rest of the Bay Area Congressional delegation. Lantos is far more of a hawk than his regional colleagues, and privately a lot of them say he ought to retire – but they all hate primary challenges and will be loathe to say anything positive about Speier.

So the local party power structure will be solidly behind Lantos, and I bet that Democrats who are considering endorsing Speier will feel some pressure.

They ought to put some pressure on Speier, too.

If the former state Senator wants progressive support, activists, groups and elected officials need to ask her a few tough questions, to pin her down on what we could expect from a Congressmember Speier.

Here’s a short list for starters:

The left and Ron Paul

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It’s tempting to want to promote the GOP’s dark-hourse phenon, Rep. Ron Paul, because all he can do in the primaries is beat up and damage the front runners. And in fact, he’s gotten a lot of unexpected support, particularly from young people, because he’s so strongly against the war (and because he’s a libertarian sort who hates the war on drugs and supports medical marijuana). There have even been rumors about a Dennis Kucinich/Ron Paul ticket.

There’s a somewhat softball Chronicle interview with Paul here. (Amazing how gentle the Chron editors are on these politicians; not even any tough follow-up questions. If you’ve ever listened to a Guardian political interview, things are a little different around here ….).

But even the cursory stuff in the Chron interview should be enough to make any progressive very, very nervous about Ron Paul. Among other things, the man who insists “I don’t think the government should be interfering in your personal life” is strongly anti-choice, opposed to Roe v. Wade and apparently sees no federal right to privacy. (The Chron editors never pursued the issue with him and let him get away with a rambling and inconsistent answer, which was rather lame of the Fifth and Mission journos.)

He’s also against income taxes and national health care. And he’s against gun control. And he against any sort of amnesty for undocumented immigrants.

I’m not saying he’s any worse than the rest of the Republicans in the field; I’m just saying that he’s not exactly the sort of candidate who ought to get the young progressives in the Bay Area excited.

Newspaper editor briefly seized by rationale

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Another of Dean Singleton’s editors has hit the dust. Here’s what Santa Cruz Sentinel editor Tom Honig — who stepped down after more than 35 years — had to say about the matter. For the record, the reporting staff of the San Francisco Bay Guardian couldn’t agree more:

“If I had two wishes, this is what they’d be: that people would stop complaining about hard-working, honest mainstream journalists long enough to appreciate the work they do — and second, that the people could be paid what they’re worth.”

At least an occasional love note from readers would be nice when another day at the office has crept into the wee hours yet again. All newspaper execs — including those at the helm of Singleton’s MediaNews — should be forced to cover a beat or balance several stories at once for at least three months out of each year.

Perhaps then all of the bloodletting would slow. They certainly shouldn’t be paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in compensation if the only idea they have for saving the news is to kill the very people who gather it. How unoriginal for an industry that should always be one step ahead.

Prop. 83 will never work

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The LA Times reports that “Jessica’s Law,” which mandates electronic tracking of all sex offenders, is never actually going to work.

The law — which was nothing but a Republican bid to embarass Democrats in a key election year — is too expensive, impractical and unenforceable, the Times reports:

“I don’t know of any agency that has the resources to track and monitor . . . in real time,” said Vacaville Police Chief Richard Word, president of the California Police Chiefs Assn. “You’ll need an air traffic controller to track these folks.”

That’s what happens when Republicans push a dumb law and most Democrats are too chicken to fight it.

(Thanks to David Dayen at Calitics for catching this.)

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