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SFPD responds (weirdly) to allegations of racial disparity

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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49

The San Francisco Police Department has issued a head-scratching response to charges of racial disparity in marijuana arrests, possibly in an attempt to defuse controversy over a recent incident that already has some members of the African American community up in arms.

This latest flap started Monday, when the New York Times ran a piece about an American Civil Liberties Union analysis finding that nationwide, Black Americans were four times more likely to be arrested than white people on charges of marijuana possession in 2010.

On Tuesday, the East Bay Express drew attention to that report. Then, the Chronicle ran a story suggesting that racial disparity in marijuana arrests extends to San Francisco – a city where white people have such affinity for weed that they’re known to congregate in droves not only on Hippie Hill but also Dolores Park to commemorate 4/20 with collective puffs of smoke.

The Chronicle piece seizes on 2010 data to back up its claim, noting:

“Black residents made up 6 percent of San Francisco’s population in 2010 while whites comprised 55 percent. The ACLU report said that of 298 marijuana possession arrests that year, 99 were black suspects and 195 were white suspects.” This would appear to suggest that a disproportionate number of Black suspects were arrested for marijuana possession. The Chron also pointed out, “the ACLU’s report analyzed arrest data from 2001 through 2010.”

Earlier today, the SFPD issued a response, apparently attempting to set the local press straight. It states: “This is not so. The San Francisco Police Department does not racially profile.”

To back up its claim, officers in the SFPD’s Media Relations Unit wrote: 

“In 2011, the SFPD made over 23,000 arrests, of which 14,000 were classified as misdemeanors. Today, Chief [Greg] Suhr reviewed all 11 misdemeanor marijuana arrest reports from 2011. All 11 misdemeanor marijuana charges were secondary to other charges, e.g., outstanding warrants, weapons possession, drunk in public, for which the person (four white males, three black males, two black females, one Hispanic male, and one white female) were arrested and booked. It is evident that the misdemeanor marijuana arrests cited in the article were made using sound police procedure pertaining to criminal activity and not by racial profiling.”

But this response fails to address the ACLU’s findings head on. If the New York Times and Chronicle pieces specifically hinged on 2010 figures, why did Suhr review data from 2011? The only hint comes in the SFPD statement, which notes that 2011 “was Chief Suhr’s first year as chief.”

Security guard strike is “imminent”

Zelda Bronstein
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10
Security guard strike is “imminent”

At least a hundred SEIU members in purple jackets marched down Bush St. this afternoon (June 5), in preparation for a possible strike. Security guards who are a member of an affiliated union have been working without a contract since 2012; some make so little money that they can’t afford apartments in SF and wind up living in SROs.

The signs said “on strike,” but actually that hasn’t happened yet. I spoke to some of the marchers who said they weren’t a liberty to say when the security officers would walk out, but “it’s imminent.”

And they clearly got the message out, making noise loud enough that I could hear it on the 17th floor and backing up rush-hour traffic just North of Market.

I really don’t think any of the owners of these big commercial office buildings are so hard up right now in this boom market that they can’t afford to pay the people who protect their property and tenants a living wage.

The adulation of the technoriche

Zelda Bronstein
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The adulation of the technoriche

It’s hardly news at this point that billionaire tech mogul Sean Parker tore up a public campground to build the sets for his $10 million fantasy wedding in Big Sur. And it’s been widely reported that Parker paid a $2.5 million fine to the Coastal Commission, which he tried to spin as a wonderful environmental gift to improve the state park system.

But I read with interest in the Chron that both Lite Guv Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Kamala Harris were reportedly at the wedding. Both are very smart people; both have the ability to observe the world around them. So I have to wonder:

Didn’t either Newsom or Harris think it was a little bit odd to see all this new development in a protected area? Did it occur to either of them that their richy-rich-rich pal, who has a history of snubbing laws he doesn’t like, might have done the same thing here?

Could the state’s top law-enforcement official and a member of the state Lands Commission really look at artificial ponds and large new structures, which involved bulldozers to create, and not say:

Huh? Aren’t there rules against this sort of thing?

Okay, it was a wedding, and nobody wants to be the one to throw the turd in the punchbowl. The politician guests were there to celebrate with a person who is capable of helping to fund future campaigns (and since both Harris and Newsom are considered possible candidates for governor when Jerry steps down, I bet they had a great time together).

But didn’t either of them feel at least a little weird about it?

I called Newsom’s office and left a message for Dierdre Hussey, his press person. She hasn’t called back. Nick Pacilio in Harris’s office told me someone would get right back to me; hasn’t happened yet. So we don’t know what the two were thinking.
But I do know this: The level of adulation of the technoriche has reached levels we haven’t seen since the Gilded Age.

Technology columnist James Temple puts it this way:

To the outside observer, Parker’s actions look like contempt for the piddling rules that we non-billionaires can’t buy our way around. And they certainly do nothing to alter the increasingly popular local view of the tech class as selfish and aloof, conspicuously relishing their venture capital rounds and IPO winnings, as a growing portion of the Bay Area population struggles to make the skyrocketing rents.

And politicians seem to adore the most selfish and aloof (and clueless) among them.

Take Mayor Ed Lee’s comments about Airbnb. The company is clearly cheating on its taxes. The city treasurer investigated the situation and ruled unequivocally that airbnb needs to collect and remit the Transit Occupancy Tax money that should be charged on its rooms.
When Michael Krasny asked the mayor on Forum about the issue, Lee defended airbnb (which is funded by his buddy Ron Conway), saying that the company is just “making arguments” about whether it owes the tax.

But that’s just false: The arguments are over. The company argued with the tax collector and lost. And it isn’t arguing anywhere anymore — not in court, not in the political sector. It’s just …. not paying. And because it’s a tech company, and Conway is nurturing it, the mayor seems just fine with that.

It appears that big corporations are big corporations. They may claim that they won’t be evil, and they may be headed by people in their 20s who dress like hipsters, and they may make really cool products — but their operating just like the robber barons of old. And the great wealth they’ve created has, to a great extent, also created great arrogance.

Before the trolls accuse me of fomenting class warfare, let me repeat: I didn’t start this war. I didn’t rig the political and tax systems so that the middle class would be wiped out as all of the net new wealth in a generation goes to the top 1 percent. I’d much prefer we all share in the bounty, as the middle class and working class did in the post-War era.

Meanwhile: Does anyone really need a $10 million wedding in a state park?

Key CleanPowerSF facts matter more than myriad details

Sasha Cuttler
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It’s great to see our colleagues down the hall at the Examiner and SF Weekly covering the evolving details of CleanPowerSF, San Francisco’s plan for offering renewable energy options to city residents. And we’re all sure to see another barrage of confusing and arcane details being blasted in all directions by Pacific Gas & Electric and its union as they try to derail the program and maintain their monopoly.

These details do matter, but not nearly as much as a couple of important central facts that are too often overlooked or are given short shrift. One, this is the city’s only plan for meeting its greenhouse gas reduction goals, the one proposal out there to actually build renewable energy capacity. There is no other plan, as a recent city study (that’s been buried, but which we unearthed and publicized) shows. We can build all the green buildings we want and fill the roadways with electric vehicles, but if we’re still using PG&E’s fossil fuels to power them, that doesn’t take us very far.  

Two, meeting our greenhouse gas reduction goals requires people to just sign up for CleanPowerSF, even if the plan isn’t perfect, because that customer base is what allows the city to issue revenue bonds to build these projects going forward. The more people there are in the program, the more clean power projects we can build for them, the less greenhouse gases we emit, period.

As the Examiner reported in its cover story today, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission has found a way to drastically lower the cost of CleanPowerSF so that its monthly bills will now be on average about $6.50 more than PG&E’s. That relies on using some renewable energy credits, such as those created in the state’s cap-and-trade program, instead of purely the juice directly from renewable energy projects.

That change is now being criticized by some of the same people who criticized the plan for being too expensive, but it’s either one or the other, folks, because renewable energy simply costs more to purchase than the energy that PG&E buys from coal plants or generates at its taxpayer-subsidzed nuclear power plant.

But again, the point that the article gets to in its bottom half is what’s important here: you gotta get people to sign up for the program, then the city will be able to bond against that customer base and build its very own renewable energy projects, which the public will control throughout their lifetimes.

The alternative is abandoning our climate protection goals, or trusting that PG&E is going to benevolently act against its financial interests after scuttling CleanPowerSF and invest a bunch of money in renewable energy projects without jacking up our bills even higher than what the city is proposing — all evidence, history, and common sense to the contrary.

And that means believing that a company that spent a whopping $50 million unsuccessfully campaigning for an audacious ruse, when it should have been using that money on promised system repairs that would have prevented the deaths of eight people — a tragedy that regulators have blamed entirely on PG&E negligence — is going to selflessly act in the public interest.

So, yes, let’s all cover the details of CleanPowerSF, which has an important hearing next month, and make sure this program is as good as it can be. But let’s also not be distracted from the crucial central point: this is about empowering San Francisco to take care of its people and the planet.

Salon says, “Ladies, shush! People paid good money for Michelle Obama and rape”

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Salon says, “Ladies, shush! People paid good money for Michelle Obama and rape”

Hey, remember Code Pink during the Bush years?  “Why can’t those old, shriveled, nagging dyke hags stop screaming about Iraq and stuff,” seemed to be the reaction of most of America and the media.

Meanwhile, even many of us wholly sympathetic to their message cringed a bit in our Internet-ringside seats as the valiant fuschia-clad ladies yelled, and yelled, and yelled. Even at Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi! (Clutch pearls.) And hey, they’re still doing it. Even at Obama! (Clutch pearls tighter.)

Weren’t they hurting our cause with all this rudeness? Why could they just sit down at their Dell Gateway computers, dial up AOL, and write a firmly worded comment on the New York Times site like the rest of us. What about civility? WHO WILL THINK OF THE CIVILITY?

Now, of course, with the distance of time and the realization of just how awful that political period was still dawning, it’s like, “Thank fucking god someone was doing something real, however quixotic.”

And yet, the sorry clutching of pearls in the face of female resistance continues. Why can’t women just pipe down about stuff? Especially those whiny ol’ man-hater ones.

If you’re awake today, you’re hearing about how Ellen Sturtz of Berkeley-based gay rights activist group GetEQUAL “heckled” Michelle Obama at a $10,000 per person DNC fundraiser by loudly demanding that President Obama issue an executive order protecting LGBTs from discrimination by companies that contract with the federal government. “I’m a lesbian looking for federal equality before I die,” she shouted. WELL, I NEVER!

Michelle Obama left the podium, confronted Sturtz (whose description in almost every major news account incorporates the phrase “56-year-old lesbian activist” or, better, “a divorced lesbian” — because you know what that means: shrieky shrieky!), and told the crowd that it had to choose whether it wanted to hear her or Sturtz. Sturtz replied that she’d gladly take the mic. But, duh, the fancy crowd chose Obama, and Sturtz was promptly hauled off by security — thank god for our great country’s sake, and that of general decorum also.

Of course this episode is being touted, even by liberal-leaning outlets, as Michelle’s great “smackdown,” a “verbal chin check,” a brilliant takedown. She has had it, get huh! That angry lesbian got what she deserved.

But the most disappointing — and frankly shocking — take was by Mary Elizabeth Williams of Salon. In an incredibly weird and misguided post this morning called “Michelle Obama’s Heckler Win,” Williams decries any kind of disruptive protest, let alone one at a $10,000 per person fundraiser, my stars, because it’s forcing your values on someone else. 

“[Sturtz] explains her actions by saying, “I simply couldn’t stay silent any longer.” And she did manage to draw attention to the issue. But she did it by being rude and boorish, so where’s the satisfaction in that? The headline-grabbing outburst is a common ploy, one that, it depresses me to say, is far too often used by those of us here on the crunchy left. We can say that dire circumstances call for extreme reactions, but really, all that heckling does is broadcast to the world, “What I feel right this moment is more important than what everybody else in the room paid money to experience.”

Nevermind for a minute if Sturtz paid her money, too, or that Williams is privileging money over expression and using a common rightwing troll attack trope (protesting is infringing on freedom) — but seriously, WTF? Heaven forbid people get what they paid for at a political fundraiser … actual politics. (Obama was on her usual schtick about ‘we must help the poor children of Chicago.” Pretty sure not much of that $10,000 was going South of the Loop.)

Could everyone please just sit quietly after they give all their money to Michelle Obama or whoever because FREEDOM OF MONEY? Thanks. If you’re upset about something, organize your own million-dollar fundraiser. These people paid to worship Michelle, not hear about your discrimination under the hypocritical administration she’s representing. Why don’t you crunchy lefties understand that?

But wait, there’s worse. In her Salon piece, Williams extends her “please don’t ruffle the money feathers” to an incident that blew up last year when a woman, during a rape-based routine at a Daniel Tosh comedy show, stood up and yelled, “actually rape jokes are never funny!” (Tosh then suggested the crowd gang-rape the woman — and oh boy, did Mary Elizabeth Williams have some fucked up opinions about that at the time.) Her post this morning continues:

“Last summer, a comedy club patron enticed Daniel Tosh to make some very unfortunate remarks about rape – an event that was set in motion when the woman decided, “I felt that sitting there and saying nothing, or leaving quietly, would have been against my values as a person and as a woman.”  In other words, much like Sturtz, she decided that her values should be made known to everyone in the audience, because they were more important than anything anybody else was saying or doing. Certainly more important than what the person the rest of the assembly had paid their money to see was saying and doing.”

Um, so of course the woman “enticed” the rape remarks by speaking out against them — she sure was asking for it. She should have just sat there and not imposed her highly unusual and embarrasing “rape is bad” values on people who paid to hear rape jokes. Williams then ends the piece:

“A no-nonsense mom like Michelle Obama could tell you that any 2-year-old in a WalMart can get noticed just by throwing herself on the floor of the sporting goods aisle. That doesn’t mean anybody is going to take her seriously.”

So, just to recap, raising your voice for equality at a $10,000 per person fundraiser is just as annoying as standing up against rape jokes (which you caused in the first place) because you’re being a bully to all these people who paid money. Don’t ever speak up about injustice because you’re being a baby. Live with it like the rest of us, especially here at Salon, which never speaks out about anything to grab attention. 

Got it. Mary Elizabeth Williams, you are a master troll. Not even Code Pink with 10,000 crimson bullhorns could fault your logic. Ellen Sturtz, go to your room — with no equality for dinner.

 

 

 

Go, New Zealand

Zelda Bronstein
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70
Go, New Zealand

Imagine if Larry Ellison lost the America’s Cup.

Imagine if the third-richest American — the guy who made the race so expensive that only billionaires (and poor Team New Zealand) could enter — became the man who lost the Cup. Imagine if the next race were held Down Under, with cheaper boats that don’t kill people — and no taxpayer subsidy from San Francisco.

I’m rooting for the upset. Go Kiwis.

Seriously: Ellison is an asshole, he’s refused to pay for his own race party, possibly sticking San Francisco with as much as $20 million in unpaid bills. Yeah, he’s the American in the America’s Cup, but I really don’t care if the trophy stays in this country.

New Zealand’s having trouble coming up the money for all the last-minute equipment changes, but I don’t see that team dropping out. The folks from NZ want this, and they want it bad. New Zealanders probably care more about the Cup than Americans do. Beating Ellison, with his unlimited cash and unlimited arrogance, would be a huge source of national pride.

So I’ll be out there watching the races, but I won’t be cheering the home team. And I’ll go home happy if Larry’s a loser.

 

The end of the Republican Party

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The end of the Republican Party

Everyone knows and loves the expression “out of the mouths of babes”, but I doubt that’s the reaction this poll got in the halls of Republican power. Apparently (and not surprisingly) younger Americans of all stripes don’t like the GOP.

Before you sputter away with “another lib poll”, this one comes to us from the Winston Group and the College National Republican Committee. Despite attempts at rebranding and spiffy stabs into high tech, the general consensus among Millenials is that Republicans are generally “closed minded, rigid, racist and old fashioned.” In related news, water is wet, the Bay Area is foggy and Justin Bieber’s career longevity is unlikely.

As marketers and businessmen of any political ilk will tell you, if you don’t get the young to buy what you’re selling, attrition is gonna wipe out your sales. As political analysts will also tell you, voting patterns are set young and when voters vote three straight elections a certain way, they tend to ossify.

The Republican Party is in a major league bind. Having relied on the “Southern Strategy” of racial resentment since 1964 when it made numerical sense (that is, not many minority voters) and now having to change and fast (30% of the electorate will be non-white in 2016), what can they do? Race is their glue. But as a twenty something today has spent most of their life among all kinds of people and is no longer isolated, racism’s zing is ineffective.

And on economic issues, they do just as badly. The poll tells us that younger voters are far more savvy and realistic than the “I know I’m gonna win the lottery” jackalopes whose sinuses seem glued to Fox 24/7. Poll says that they realize that unless they become wealthy or end up at the top of a big business does the GOP care about them. Which means they are astute enough to realize that not only are the odds against them, but they’re stacked in favor of the scions of inherited wealth. 

That these people are all under 30 and are savvy enough to grasp what their supposedly wiser elders refuse to believe tells me that what I have believed for over 20 years about the Right is plainly obvious–economic conservatism and belief in the pseudo “free market” sense is really tied to the idea of privilege. In the “natural order of things”. But if you’re on the outside looking in and know it, playing to this sentiment is a loser–which means that the supposedly naive kids are a lot more intuitive than their parents.

Put plainly and simply, it’s impossible to persuade someone that the mythical 50’s were better than now, if the person and question has no connection to that era, save a few minutes of Weezer’s famous Happy Days spoof. The invocation of “good old days” only reminds kids that their inflexible, narrow-minded reactionary elders aren’t living in the here and now. Not a winning strategy ever for anyone.

SF homeless services budget item < 0.25 percent of Larry Ellison’s net worth

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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Billionaire Larry Ellison, the vainglorious CEO of Oracle and yachtsman responsible for bringing the America’s Cup to San Francisco, has come a long way since 2010, when he first floated the idea of hosting the elite regatta against a Golden Gate backdrop.

On Forbes’ 2010 list of the world’s wealthiest individuals, Ellison’s estimated net worth of $28 billion earned him a spot in sixth place. That amount gave him a slight edge over the current GDP of Panama, but the superrich seafarer is doing waaaaay better than that Central American nation these days. On the 2013 Forbes roster, the tech mogul rose to No. 5, and his estimated net worth had ballooned considerably, to an estimated $43 billion.

As it happens, the additional $15 billion Ellison managed to attract in the last three years is nearly twice the total spending plan unveiled by San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee last week, when he presented the largest proposed city budget in history.

Lee made a point of noting in press statements that he’d taken pains to preserve social services; even tossing an additional $3.8 million toward funding for homeless prevention and housing subsidies. Nevertheless, some dust seems to be kicking up over how equitably Lee would have public dollars distributed across the board.

With the America’s Cup looming on the horizon, the mayor’s budget now awaiting supervisors’ review, and an ever-widening gulf between the haves and the have-nots in San Francisco, we began to ponder: Just how does Ellison’s wealth compare to the amount spent on, say, homeless services in San Francisco?

In Lee’s proposed 2014-2015 budget, “homeless services” is allotted $101,669,214 via the Human Services Agency, about $1.5 million less than the amount included in the city’s 2013-2014 budget. 

That figure could also be expressed as 0.236 percent of Ellison’s estimated net worth. Decimal dust.

Within a week or so, we’re told, the Human Services Agency will release an updated estimate of the city’s homeless population, along with historical comparisons suggesting whether the ranks of the un-housed has grown or waned in recent years. Weeks after that, San Francisco’s waterfront will be transformed by a sporting event that only the superrich can afford to compete in.

The Warriors Arena: Art Agnos v. Gary Radnich

Zelda Bronstein
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8
The Warriors Arena: Art Agnos v. Gary Radnich

Here’s a fun one: former Mayor Art Agnos debating the Warriors arena with Gary Radnich and Larry Krueger. Radnich has always been my favorite sports guy, ever since his days on KRON TV (although Kruk and Kuip are the best live-action announcers), and Agnos is my favorite ex-mayor. (Lord, I gave him a hard time when he was in office, and he sometimes deserved it, but he’s been great as a former.)

The two go at it — mostly in good spirts, although Agnos can’t avoid getting in a dig about male enhancement.

The sports guys talk about how great it would be for San Francisco to have another tourist attraction (and more customers for the city’s number one industry.) Agnos points out that it’s not just a basketball arena we’re talking about — it’s a huge shopping mall, with more square footage than all the restaurants at Fisherman’s Wharf (wow, that’s what Agnos says, I didn’t realize it was so big), plus a highrise hotel, plus a highrise condo tower.

Radnich likes to compare the new arena to the Giants stadium, which is on the waterfront but not built on the water, on a concrete slab in the Bay, but the Giants didn’t build two highrises and a mall.

It’s not a long debate, but it’s interesting.

Reactionaries hate bicycles

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After perusing a rather bizarre Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal the other day on the issue of bicycles as instruments of totalitarianism and being reminded of the idea that bike paths are part of a “new world order”, I’ve been asking myself, what is it that right wingers have against goddamn bicycles?

Is it because riding a bike means consuming no gasoline and that their mouthpieces have been paid oil company hacks for so long, it’s reflexive? Or because the paragons and heroes of the American right tend to be as far removed from physical exercise as their rank and file is from mental health? Or because pedaling people somehow intrude on the divine right of the sacred automobile?

I figure it’s got to be a bit of all of these plus the idea that people getting around by self-propelled two wheelers is, well, European, hence evil. Which flys in the face of everything conservatives are supposedly in favor of: self-reliance, personal responsibility and ingenuity. 

Yet the human propelled bike itself may be disappearing with the advent of an electric one whose price isn’t that steep. Like an electric car, it has a 40 mile radius on its charge, but unlike a car, you can turn the engine off and make it go yourself. As lots of riders that are less than fanatical may not care to brave SF’s steep hills on every trip, this could mean an enormous new wave of riders, making Critical Mass almost a daily event.

Damn right I’m for it, too. Yeah, watching out for bikers while driving takes more concentration and sometimes cyclists stray out of their lanes and wreak havoc. But compared to the noise, stink and glut of the car (and in a city where parking is almost impossible), this is a great development–regressives be damned!

 

Kickstarter America’s next war!

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Got an email this morning from the pressing plant down in OC that is stamping a three-song vinyl single I recorded earlier this year. Ready next week–hoo-hah! As I did one of these last year also, the drill begins again–mailers to vinyl specialists and radio and first and foremost, to the backers of this project. “SHE” is the result of a successful Kickstarter campaign that I did last year.

For the 23 San Franciscans whose friends in the arts have not yet put the bite on them for project backing (not to mention the 23 San Franciscans that don’t have such projects brewing themselves), Kickstarter is a “crowd sourced” mechanism of raising capital for an artistic venture. Namely, Kickstarter  handles the logistics of  fund raising for music, art, film, tech and all kinds of other hobbies/dreams over the Net. In a given period of time (usually 30 days) the project’s creator has to raise a certain amount of cash or all of the donations are returned to the donors. Once the cash is raised, Kickstarter (and Amazon) take their cut and then transfer the money into creator’s bank account. Yes, the creator could do this themselves and cut out the middle man, but Kickstarter does confer a level of legitimacy to the process and can spread word on the Net past the circle of family, immediate friends and fans.

I’ve done two of them and they’ve been grand. My goals were modest–5K and 3500.00 respectively. Being a small fish in the great sea, it was better than I expected and nowhere near the level of what must be the most successful of all time, former Dresden Dolls singer, Amanda Palmer, who raised 1.2 million off hers in a month. (and preceded to piss off the music community with some remarkable post-Kickstarter chintziness by trying to get backing musicians to play for free, hugs or for beer. (What she lacks in musical talent, she makes up for in chutzpah)

Around the same time as I was reading my emails, news came over the wire about how Iraq is on the brink of descending into another civil war. 1,000 Iraqis have been killed as the reinvigorated and displaced Sunni are waging war against the Shi’a majority. Which is buried in American news as Americans really don’t want to think about Iraq, arguably the greatest foreign relations blunder and disaster in American history.

No one in the US wants to re-live this madness and certainly none of its avid proponents will ever admit what a catastrophe they brought down on both the US and Iraq with this. An unprovoked, unneeded invasion and occupation of a sovereign state that posed no threat to the US or its neighbors, everything the first Bush feared would happen (when he declined to invade Iraq in 1991) did happen. An unending guerilla war with 4600+ American servicemen killed, over 30,000 wounded and well over a quarter million Iraqis killed or wounded themselves. It is saddening and revolting to hear the justification for this idiocy now from the war’s defenders, who are the hawkish intellectual version of “ten minutes to Wapner” as they blandly recite lie after lie. About how Iraq is “free” and “better off”. And that it was “worth it”. 

If the latter is true in their minds, then I have a novel suggestion. Next time the Neo-Cons and their chickenhawk armchair keyboard commandos want to go to war, be it in Iran or Syria, let them pay for it–via Kickstarter.

Why the hell not? Lest the legions of war-mongers that would happliy have lined up to kiss Don Rumsfeld’s flabby ass in 2003 complain about how “war is a shared sacrifice”, ahem–the last 4 of 5 wars this nation has indulged in–Iraq, Afghanistan, Gulf War1, Vietnam and Korea–were all completely optional. And Afghanistan is a stretch–the state’s military never attacked the US. That would make 5. So, if one truly and really believes in these excursions, you fucking pay for them completely–and not off the books like the last two wars were waged by W.

I believe this would be called “putting your money where your mouth is”. And as any Kickstarter donor or creator knows, part of Kickstarter’s appeal is the “rewards program”–the more you donate, the more you get back (Amanda Palmer may have auctioned off a day or a dinner with her for some phenomenal sum, if memory serves). 

The real reason something like this would never come to pass is that optional war’s real proponents do so because it makes them money. The idea that they’d have to contribute cash for a “holy cause” is ridiculous, their cause is wealth accumulation, not the protection of the American people. That they can stick the bill for these follies on the American taxpayer via crap-spouting bought and paid for mouthpieces in Congress and the White House is more shameful than a million Amanda Palmer’s soaking her star struck Suburbo-Goth fans for a few bucks. And that’s being charitable.

The incoherence of the American right

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According to the American Right, circa now, the following are truisms:

The bias in the liberal media is crippling the valiant patriot but to re-implement the Fairness Doctrine (where both sides would get equal time) stifles the same valiant patriot.

An undocumented immigrant must wait ten years and pay massive fines to become an American citizen or at least work here legally and that’s nowhere near the imposition of a half hour background check.

Scientists on no industry’s payroll that say man made climate change is real only do so for “reasons of political advantage” (that are never explained) while scientists that do not are always on the petroleum industry’s payroll are work in “think tanks” funded by same.

In order for Jesus to return, Jews must occupy certain sections of Jerusalem and once they do, Christ (a Jew) will slaughter all but 144 of them. AKA “The Rapture”, a biblical event that’s not in the Bible.

Poor people caused the real estate crash of 2008. Without owning anything.

ACORN’s fraudulent voter registration cost the GOP the White House in 2008 as well. ACORN registered 2 million voters over the course of its entire existence and Obama won by 9.7 million votes.

Sharing bicycles in New York, says one of their mouthpieces in the Wall Street Journal, is “totalitarianism” (because the bikes all look alike)(Bicycles really do set these people off, bike lanes in Colorado, according to the same Right is part of the UN-installed New World Order).

Solar power is more effective in Germany, because they get more sunlight. Never mind that Boston is hundreds of miles south of middle Germany as is Seattle, those two bastions of great sunny weather.

These came to me in 10 minutes. 

These are core beliefs of one of this country’s two major political parties.

Nah, we’re not fucked–really. 

 


Google and Wikileaks: The takedown

Zelda Bronstein
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4
Google and Wikileaks: The takedown

By now half the Internet has read the New York Times piece Julian Assange wrote on Google. In theory, it’s sort of an analysis of “The New Digital Age,” a book by Google Chairman Eric Schmidt and former State Department official Jared Cohen, which got a lukewarm review in the Times a month ago. In practice, it’s a total slam at Google and its “don’t be evil” slogan.

Assange isn’t impressed by the Googlers; in fact, he argues that the book is just a manifesto for a new digital age of American imperialism:

 The book proselytizes the role of technology in reshaping the world’s people and nations into likenesses of the world’s dominant superpower, whether they want to be reshaped or not. The prose is terse, the argument confident and the wisdom — banal. But this isn’t a book designed to be read. It is a major declaration designed to foster alliances.

 “The New Digital Age” is, beyond anything else, an attempt by Google to position itself as America’s geopolitical visionary — the one company that can answer the question “Where should America go?” It is not surprising that a respectable cast of the world’s most famous warmongers has been trotted out to give its stamp of approval to this enticement to Western soft power. The acknowledgments give pride of place to Henry Kissinger, who along with Tony Blair and the former C.I.A. director Michael Hayden provided advance praise for the book.

More:

 Google will interpose itself, and hence the United States government, between the communications of every human being not in China (naughty China). Commodities just become more marvelous; young, urban professionals sleep, work and shop with greater ease and comfort; democracy is insidiously subverted by technologies of surveillance, and control is enthusiastically rebranded as “participation”; and our present world order of systematized domination, intimidation and oppression continues, unmentioned, unafflicted or only faintly perturbed.

It’s easy to paint Assange as a crazyman seeing conspiracies everywhere (I’d get that way too if I were cooped up in an embassy and unable to escape.) And that’s how some of the tech journals are playing it.

But let’s get beyond Google Glass and information capture and the scary shit that technology will be doing to us all in a couple of decades. Let’s take Google out of this altogether.

Is it unusual for giant corporations based in the US that control important technology to work closely with the government? Of course not; it’s been going on for more than a century. Standard Oil, J.P. Morgan, General Motors, Lockheed Martin … the list goes on. Corporations that operate on that level are and always have been a part of American foreign policy — and almost always for the worse.

Google doesn’t build missles or spy satellites (although you know they’re working on drones), but what it does is even more powerful — it collects and controls information. And while much of its mission involves making the world’s knowledge available to all, there are other sides to that. And it would be shocking if the State Department/CIA/Industrial Complex DIDN’T involve Google.

At a certain level, if you’re running a big coporation, you have to do more than have a slogan to avoid being evil. Assange’s article is a bit over the top, but I think that’s what he’s trying to say. And it’s absolutely true.

 

 

 

Some wins, some losses in Sacto

Zelda Bronstein
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Some wins, some losses in Sacto

The state Assembly and Senate passed the usual flurry of bills on May 31, the last day for initial-house approval, with some unusual drama that temporarily sidelined a medical-marijuana bill by Assemblymember Tom Ammiano.

By the time it was all over, several other Ammiano bills passed, a measure by Assemblymember Phil Ting to ease the way for a Warriors arena on the waterfront won approval, and state Sen. Mark Leno got most of his major legislation through.

The pot bill, AB 473, would have established a state regulatory framework for medical cannabis, something that most advocates and providers support. Still, because the subject is marijuana, it was no easy sell — and at first, a lot of members, both Republicans and Democrats, expressed concern that the measure might restrict the ability of local government to ban or limit dispensaries.

Ammiano, in presenting the bill, made it clear that it had no impact on local control, and that was enough to get 38 votes. Typically, when a bill is that close to passage, the chair asks the sponsor if he or she wants to “hold the call” — that is, freeze the vote for a few minutes so supporters can make sure all of their allies are actually on the floor and voting and to try, if necessary, to round up a couple of wobblers.

In this case, though, Speaker Pro Tem Nora Campos, of San Jose, simply gaveled the vote to a close while Ammiano was scrambling to get her to hold it. “That’s very unusual, not good behavior,” one Sacramento insider told me.

Ammiano was more respectful toward Campos, simply calling it a “procedural mistake.” He told us he would be looking for other ways to move the bill. “The door is never fully closed up here,” he said.

However that turns out, the veteran Assemblymember, now in his final term, won a resounding victory with the passage of his Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, AB 241. The bill would give domestic workers some of the same labor rights as other employees, including the right to overtime pay and breaks. “These workers, who are mostly women, keep our households running smoothly, care for our children, and enable people with disabilities to live at home and remain engaged in our communities,” Ammiano said. “Why shouldn’t they have overtime protections like the average barista or gas station attendant?”

An Ammiano bill restricting the ability of prosecutors to use condom possession as evidence in prostitution cases also cleared, as did a bill tightening safety rules on firearms.

Ting’s bill, AB 1273, would allow the state Legislature, not the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, to make a key finding on whether the new area is appropriate for the shoreline. Mayor Ed Lee and the Warriors strongly backed the measure, clearly believing it would make the path to development easier. Ammiano voted against it — showing that the San Francisco delegation is by no means unanimous on this issue.

Leno had a string of significant victories. A bill called the Disclose Act, which would mandate that all campaign ads reveal, in large, readable type, who is actually paying for them, cleared with the precise two-thirds majority needed — and it was a straight party-line vote. Every single Republican was in opposition. “They know that if their ads say “paid for by Chevron and PG&E, the won’t work as well,” Leno told us.

He also won approval for a bill that would ease the way for people wrongfully imprisoned for crimes they didn’t commit to receive the modest $100 a day payment the state theoretically owes them. There are 132 people cleared of crimes and released from prison, but the process of applying for the payment is currently so onerous that only 11 have actually gotten a penny. “We victimized these people, and we shouldn’t make them prove their innocence twice,” Leno said.

Bills to better monitor price manipulation by oil companies and to expand the trauma recovery program pioneered by San Francisco General Hospital also cleared the Senate floor.

But Leno had a disappointing loss, too: A bill that would have helped tenants collect on security deposits that landlords wrongfully withheld died with only 12 vote — a sign of how powerful the real-estate industry remains in Sacramento.

 

Mt Everest and tantrum-tossing talk junkies

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The world has been rather ugly of late, hasn’t it? From man-made horrors in Turkey as the government sprays its people with agent orange to Syria’s unending conflict to Mother Nature’s wrath in Oklahoma–more trouble every day as the Mothers sang in 1966. So when I saw an article on Mt. Everest, the highest place on the planet (outside of Burning Man, of course), I figured it might be a heartwarming look at mountaineering. Oh how wrong I was.

Anecdotally and via computer model, Mt Everest and much of the Himalayas have become ground zero for a warming earth. With a snow line rising almost 600 feet and glacier fed rivers drying up, the world’s summit is like a rocky measuring stick for the damage fossil fuels are doing. In fact, the Sherpas–the locals that haul climbers up and down the mountain for a living–are saying that the climb is becoming much more dangerous, as what was once frozen is now thawed and loose and falling. 

Not like this is really any surprise to legitimate science, which by 97% believes climate change is happening and man made. Nor is it any surprise to deniers of same that will contort themselves into pretzel shapes trying to defend their paymasters, the oil, natural gas and coal companies. But at this point, given that predictions of more severe climate have come to pass, how can anyone anywhere say this isn’t so (Joe)?

The reason is the same as it’s always been, at least in the US. An enormous segment of the population feels put upon and offended at the idea that their God-derived right to squander resources is being impacted. The fact that said segment considers itself “conservative” is one of the cruelest and most insane semantic games extent–cherishing the privilege to waste as an almost constitutionally-mandated right is the polar opposite of conservation.

These are, after all, the same foolish people that blew a headgasket over energy-saving lightbulbs. That so many of them live proximitous to beaches and continue to act so capriously when their own property may resemble a structure in an aquarium in 30 years matters not–why is this?

Because at heart, the American reactionary is a tantrum-throwing five year old. Exercising their power by screaming and throwing themselves on the ground when they don’t get their way 100% of the time is how a kid makes their unhappiness felt by an adult. That these are adults, at least by age, is flummoxing. By making the rest of the world suffer from their fit throwing is ultimately gratifying to people who have no real say in anything–best of all, it “pisses off the libs”, which translated into English means “anyone smarter and saner than I am who I resent for that”. Oy.

Any San Franciscan that goes along with this ugly strain of arrested development has a slow death wish. Rising seas mean a flooded Marina and Mission frequently as opposed to rarely. They mean Treasure Island disappears sooner rather than later. But because the sheer, puerile joy of giving the raspberry to those tweedy know it alls from Berkeley is too much fun, they’ll happily see lower Market Street into a Venetian canal.

As Ray Davies sang, ‘‘they’re conditioned that way”. Too bad the rest of us have to suffer physically because these fools refuse to face reality even as it drowns, floods or draughts them to death.

 

 

Lou Reed’s not so perfect day

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Last Friday, it was revealed that Velvet Underground co-founder and occasionally proclaimed “godfather of punk rock” Lou Reed had undergone a life-saving liver transplant in Cleveland. Reed, 71 was “dying” according to his third wife, Laurie Anderson. She says that Reed is already improving and up and around doing tai chi, but that “he will never be completely better”.

Given that Reed is in his eighth decade on the planet and is notorious for drug-related anthems like “Heroin”, “Waiting For The Man” and “White Light/White Heat”, there is a pushback of a sort. Why would this elderly reprobate, surely the cause of his own misery get leap-frogged ahead of a younger person. Someone more deserving.

This kind of ridiculous moral posturing and shrill self-righteousness is at the heart of every argument when anyone with a self-inflicted ailment seeks treatment. First of all, Reed’s liver failed from complications from Hepatitis C. Like many intravenous drug users, he had no idea this existed when he was using–no excuse you say? He should have known better–how? And that if he’d only lived an ascetic existence, this never would have happened? Reed has been intermittedly sober for almost 30 years as documented on his album “The Blue Mask”. Secondly, that he’s 71, why “waste” an organ on him? 

Because he’s ill. Just as you’d wish a measure like that would be taken if you had made it to 71 and had loved ones. The idea that a chronic smoker shouldn’t get a lung, or an obese person a lapband because they’d brought this onto themselves and were now too old to benefit–that’s a rather strangely “anti-life” attitude.

Yeah, it isn’t fair that Reed or David Crosby, Mickey Mantle or Phil Lesh got priorities for a new liver having run the old one down to nothing (which is quite a feat, as Cedars’ liver expert John Vierling told me years ago, the liver is the body’s strongest organ). Especially when there are younger people whose livers didn’t fail from abuse but from organic causes. But the afore-mentioned have something in common–they’re wealthy. Perhaps if the financial issue weren’t part of it and it was a “liver lottery” and paid for by Medicare, this would be “fairer”. But as long as moral scoldery and the adoration of the “free market” seem to be on the same (right) side of the political coin, fat chance.

I’m happy for Lou and Laurie. Lou’s songs are among my favorites and anyone that nay-says his skill because it’s simple music sung by someone with a limited vocal range can pound sand. Long may he run.

 

Jean Stapleton, RIP

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Jean Stapleton, best known as “Edith Bunker” on TV’s “All In The Family”, passed away in New York. She was 90.

Not only was she an actress of amazing skill and poise, but consider the obvious: There would never be an “All In The Family” today (discounting cartoons like “The Simpsons” or “Family Guy”).

Every lefty PC pressure group would be screaming bloody murder about Archie’s “hate speech” and every RW blabbermouth would be spittle-flecking mics everywhere about how “this show makes real Americans look stupid”. (With subtle and probably not so subtle references to the show’s “Hollywood elite producers”, ie, Jews).

In reality, Archie was a lovable character, as was Edith. His daughter’s husband, the leftist meathead, no. Edith balanced off her husband’s reactionary nitwittery with common sense, as opposed to the dopey rhetoric spouted by the collegiate know it all. Which is how life is supposed to work and why it was the greatest TV show of all time.

Nothing without daddy

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Reading Rand Paul’s prescription for a bigger and better GOP, I was struck by an interesting thought–since 1988, only one Republican nominee (coincidentally the only one I thought of voting for, Bob Dole), owed virtually none of his success in life to his dad. ( Rand Paul to say the least, owes everything to his dad). The rest–wow!

George HW Bush’s dad was a US senator. Bush’s son’s dad was the POTUSA. McCain’s dad was an admiral and Romney’s the governor of Michigan/CEO of American Motors. (In McCain’s case, his second wife’s dad bankrolled him–double nepotism!).

In contrast, for the Democrats in this time frame, only Al Gore was a “daddy’s boy”.

For a party that believes in “pulling yourselves up by the bootstraps” to become a “self made man” that’s a “maker and not a taker”, their role models are more or less the opposite in real life, ain’t they?

 

Staggering Hypocrisy

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Apparently, the Republicans in Congress are railing against food stamps–fosters a “culture of dependency”, they say.

A few things–most of the beneficiaries of TANF are children–who are dependents.

Secondly, who is more dependent on the government than a congressman?

Thirdly, also completely dependent on the government are the farms where food is grown or meat is herded. One such farmer is leading the charge in Congress against food stamps.

Fourth, “food stamps” are the biggest economic stimulation the government provides–about a buck seventy five for every buck spent on them. Contrast that with “weapons”, where even the military wonders what benefit such spending does. 

Lots of people lost their jobs and homes through no fault of their own–and must learn “self-reliance”–while the people that caused this situation “had to be rescued”.

Beating up on people that have little to placate the misguided hatred of same that is at the heart of every reactionary would be considered “bullying” on my kid’s schoolyard and cause to be expelled.

Expel these assholes now.

Activists to governor: Please un-frack California

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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A statewide coalition of more than 100 environmental organizations has formed to pressure California Gov. Jerry Brown to ban fracking – an environmentally harmful oil extraction method technically known as hydraulic fracturing.

On May 30, environmental activists from the Center for Biological Diversity, Credo Action, Food and Water Watch, Environment California and other nonprofits rallied outside the state building on Golden Gate Avenue in San Francisco to launch the campaign and hand-deliver stacks of petitions calling on Brown to put an end to the practice. The action coincided with a similar show of opposition to fracking at the state building in Los Angeles.

Fracking has already taken off in Pennsylvania and North Dakota, and has the potential to transform vast swaths of landscape in California, where a geologic formation known as the Monterey Shale is estimated to contain some 15 billion barrels of oil.

With chants of “Jerry Brown, take a stand, don’t let frackers ruin our land,” the activists waved signs proclaiming, “Don’t frack California.”

“In California, water is more precious than oil,” said Becky Bond, political director at Credo Action. “It’s not just a question of will this produce some jobs.”

Bond added that the activists were targeting Brown because “we know that special interests have so much more influence in the Legislature than they do in the governor’s mansion.” And besides, she added, “even if good legislation passes, it ends up on the governor’s desk.”

Earlier in the week in Sacramento, legislation that would have imposed an indefinite moratorium on fracking was scaled back, much to the dismay of environmentalists. AB 1323 was introduced by Assemblymember Holly Mitchell, and would have imposed a statewide moratorium on fracking until an independent evaluation of the health and environmental impacts of the practice could be completed.

However, changes to the language of the proposed bill did away with the independent evaluation process and called for a moratorium only until the California Department of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources finished hammering out a set of regulations around the practice. A similar piece of legislation to impose a fracking moratorium, AB 1301, was kept on suspense file and won’t move forward this year.

“It renders the moratorium essentially meaningless,” Food and Water Watch political director Adam Scow told the Bay Guardian shortly after the changes were made. “We have a bill that is inadequate for protecting Californians from fracking.”

And that’s partly why Brown is the new target for anti-fracking activists. Elijah Zarlin, a campaign manager at Credo, jumped on the megaphone during the rally. “We’ve seen what fracking has done in Pennsylvania,” he said. “Governor Brown has the power to not let that happen in California.”

Both sides DON’T do it

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As someone with a lot of friends and contacts in the real world and on the Net, I hear pretty much every opinion under the sun. From die-hard Communist all the way to equally didactic (and tellingly similar) Objectivist, I get it all day every day. 

Lots of interesting stuff. And it’s no secret where my head is at on most things. I’ll listen to pretty much anything with one major exception–this odd idea that “both sides do it“, that right and left are equally to blame for the gridlock in DC and the animosity elsewhere.

The basis for this thinking, I assume, is Newtonian. For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. If it isn’t physics, it’s metaphysics best expressed by the Byrds’ biblically-derived second #1 hit song, that there’s a time and purpose for everything.

But there isn’t. Politics isn’t physics and left and right aren’t identical yet opposite, which would have to be the case for this proposition to be true. The psychology of the authoritarian vesus that of the anti-establishmentarian is completely dissimilar. If one side sees everything as black and white and a struggle where it’s good vs evil (and they’re the good guys) 100% of the time and the other side believes in nuance, degree of intensity, reason and logic based on evidence, both sides don’t do it. Yes–both sides are engaged in politics. But if one side “makes shit up and then sues for the right to do it legally” and the other is “if it isn’t factual, lose it”, then both sides don’t do it.

Filmmaker Michael Moore expressed it best when talking about his 2007 movie, “Sicko”. Every fact in that film was picked over by fine-toothed comb because he knew that any fuck up would be blasted over our “liberal media” 24/7. Contrast that to the soon to be retired from Congress Michele Bachmann or 2012 GOP candidate Mitt Romney who lied so much that it became impossible to keep up with them. And yet, until her recent campaign finance troubles, Bachmann was rarely if ever called to task in her hometown paper and with Romney, his unending string of fibs actually endeared him to his supporters!

If “both sides do it”, explain this remarkable bit of Anti-Americanism?

Because ”lying for the “cause” is, in the mind of the American Rightist, acceptable, because the cause is a holy war for the “soul of America”. Odd that the same people that lobby for the posting of the 10 Commandments everywhere seem to forget #9, the “false witness” one. 

People on the left lie, too. There is no doubt of that, all people lie to a degree. But claiming that one side’s crapola is identical to the other is like saying that “Red Sox 12, Yankees 2” is a tie, because, after all, both teams scored runs, so they’re equal. Nope, were that so, the score would be 7-7. But that’s math. Which doesn’t lie. And as such, is pesky.

(It has to be said that the people that claim “both sides do it” in correspondance with me are always right-leaning. I think they’re have trouble letting go, but they’re getting there). 

Adlai Stevenson, failed candidate for president said it better than I or anyone else can: I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends… that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them. 

That was 61 years ago. If he could only see us now. 

 

 

 

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