SFBG Blogs

Nader sullies his legacy

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By Steven T. Jones

I’ve never apologized for voting for Ralph Nader in 2000 — even as I criticized his decision to run this year and that of Matt Gonzalez to join him as his running mate (for which I was widely criticized by progressives) — but I’m tempted to do so now. While I have enormous respect for Nader’s accomplishments as a consumer activist and populist hero, I do regret helping to elevate him to a position where he can do such damage to the progressive movement with reckless, divisive, racially insensitive remarks like those he made on election night, when he equated Barack Obama with Uncle Tom.

When even Fox News thinks that you’re being a racist and callous jerk, it’s probably time to gracefully withdraw from public life, as I hope Nader now does. He got about 1 percent of the national vote, just under that in California and just over it in San Francisco, where his choice of Gonzalez should have made him do better if there was any productive role for his campaign to play in national politics. Electoral reform is still an important issue, and I believe in breaking the lock of the two-party system and its sponsorship by corporate America, but Nader as a candidate is clearly no longer the best vehicle for that message. In fact, he’s now undercutting it. Goodbye, Ralph, I’m sorry it had to end like this.

Newsflash: Prop 8 doesn’t discriminate!

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Hey, everyone! Guess what? Prop 8 didn’t discriminate against us at all — and it certainly didn’t take our rights away. That’s what the “oficial (sick) statement” direct from the glorious Yes on Prop 8 bunker buried deep within Dick Cheney’s waxed asshole — cloth napkins provided — says, so you know it’s true, as well as sponsored by seething ex-polygamists who rocket to other planets in sacred Underoos when they die. And the Knights of Columbus, whatever the hell that is.

“Proposition 8 has always been about restoring the traditional definition of marriage. It doesn’t discriminate or take rights away from anyone. Gay and lesbian domestic partnerships will continue to enjoy the same legal rights as married spouses. Our coalition has no plans to seek any changes in that law.”

How christianist of them. Meanwhile, in the real world where people actually love one another, not rape them religiously, the protests are ON. Will we stop paying our taxes? Will we hold giant kiss-ins outside Catholic preschools? I’m not gonna say here, because that takes away the delicious, faggotty surprise.

However, here’s this:

Protest Proposition 8
2008-11-07 5:30pm – 8pm
Civic Center Station, SF

More to come and come.

Conservative SF capitalists waste $633,000

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Click here to give something back for all downtown has given.

By Steven T. Jones

It’ll take awhile to get a full accounting of all the money that downtown’s would-be power brokers spent in their apparently fruitless effort to buy the Board of Supervisors, but my calculation of all of their independent expenditures attacking swing district supervisorial candidates Eric Mar, David Chiu, and John Avalos — and supporting their more conservative opponents — comes to about $633,000.

We won’t know for sure whether the election day results will hold after the final absentee and provisional votes are tallied and the ranked choice voting formulas are run, which starts tomorrow, but the consensus of the political number crunchers at yesterday’s SPUR post-election event was that Mar, Chiu, and Avalos look like the winners. That means the $633,000 — which was perhaps chump change for these wealthy interest groups — succeeded only in sullying the campaign with the nastiest and most dishonest attacks of the season — and clearly identifying who’s hostile to progressives, renters, labor, and other working class San Franciscans.

Arrr, SF’s Pirates Press in the spyglass

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By Jen Snyder

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Sound advice and the name of the game for Eric Mueller, 27, who founded Pirates Press, a San Francisco vinyl record brokerage company, in 2005. Coasting on the rise – and fall – of the CD and the renewed popularity of vinyl, Pirates Press has brought in more than $5 million in sales this year.

The walls of Pirates Press’ SOMA office are coated with candy-colored singles and full-lengths – some with pictures, others with etchings. Some of these albums are as much visual art as they are musical art.
“Jocks collect baseball cards and nerds collect records,” explains Mueller, trying to make sense of the variety. “A lot of people collect something. For those people vinyl is great.”

It’s amazing to me that in a world where an album is just one click away, record manufacturing is doing so well. I love records for the way they look on my shelf, the smell of the jacket, and the pop and hiss of the needle, but in an iPod world is that enough to keep a so-called dead product alive?

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Big money wins the elections

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MONEY WINS PRESIDENCY AND 9 OF 10 CONGRESSIONAL RACES IN PRICIEST U.S. ELECTION EVER

WASHINGTON (Nov. 5, 2008) — The historic election of 2008 re-confirmed one truism about American democracy: Money wins elections.

From the top of the ticket, where Barack Obama declined public financing for the first time since the system’s creation and went on to amass a nearly two-to-one monetary advantage over John McCain, to congressional races throughout the nation, the candidate with the most money going into Election Day emerged victorious in nearly every contest.

In 93 percent of House of Representatives races and 94 percent of Senate races that had been decided by mid-day Nov. 5, the candidate who spent the most money ended up winning, according to a post-election analysis by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. The findings are based on candidates’ spending through Oct. 15, as reported to the Federal Election Commission.

Continuing a trend seen election cycle after election cycle, the biggest spender was victorious in 397 of 426 decided House races and 30 of 32 settled Senate races. On Election Day 2006, top spenders won 94 percent of House races and 73 percent of Senate races. In 2004, 98 percent of House seats went to the biggest spender, as did 88 percent of Senate seats.

NCIBA /IndieBound Bestseller List

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The Northern California Indie Bestseller List, as brought to you by IndieBound and NCIBA, for the sales week ended Sunday, November 2, 2008. Based on reporting from the independent booksellers of the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association and IndieBound. For an independent bookstore near you, visit IndieBound.org.

Santa Cruz Sentinel

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Click here to read Tom Honig’s story in the Metro Santa Cruz, The Daily Grind: The former editor of the Santa Cruz Sentinel explains how corporate indifference and the Internet gutted the hometown paper.

Click here to read a recent Bruce Blog, SPJ honors ‘The Vanishing Journalist‘.

Prop 8: Gays vs. blacks?

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RuPaul says: “Chill out! All of yous!”

Look — **high horse alert** — I’m as exhausted and disappointed by the blechy Prop 8 win as anyone with an ounce of humanity in their body. And I’m a queer radical who was kind of against this whole struggle to begin with, until I saw how happy it made my friends. Heck, I was even considering popping the question to the big bf on his birthday next year. And yes, I will probably follow up this post with a few hot satirical jabs at the ign’nt homophobes that are driving around in SUVs yelling “faggott” and blaring awful hip-pop while celebrating their “victory.”

But something needs to be addressed right now: The latest blogospheric trope of trying to suss out the no on Prop 8 failure in terms of racial breakdown. I understand we’re angry. Did I make jokes all last week about burning down Oakland if Prop 8 wins? Yes, I did. But let’s stop. Let’s get some perspective.

I’m not saying that there isn’t anything there if you look at the numbers. Blacks supported Prop 8 by 69% — and Latinos by 51% — according to (risky) exit polls. And many flamboyant black preachers came out for Prop 8. And the conventional wisdom, the bitter conventional wisdom, seems to be coming to a consensus that if we hadn’t tried so hard to get out the black vote for Obama, we wouldn’t have been defeated in the polls. Those wily negroes didn’t do what we wanted them to do! We helped them, why didn’t they help us?

But what appear to be the facts aren’t always the truth, duh.

An interview with “Stranded” director Gonzalo Arijon

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By Mara Math

No one was more surprised than I that Stranded: I’ve Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains proved to be one of my favorite films at this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival (it opens theatrically Fri/7). Like everyone else on the planet, I knew the notorious story, subject of Piers Paul Read’s 1975 mass-market book Alive, the 1993 Hollywood movie of the same title that followed, and the pop culture residue: the Uruguayan rugby team whose plane crashed in the Andes in 1972 survived their arduous ten weeks by way of reluctant cannibalism. Stranded, a thoughtful and meditative documentary by Gonzalo Arijon, which mixes interviews with silent, nearly poetic reenactments, is the anti-sensationalist antidote to the Hollywood version. Formally, the film took four years to make, but a truer reckoning would be 34 years. Arijon grew up with the young team members and had been thinking of this film ever since the event. His lifelong friendships gave him unprecedented access, not only to archived materials but to the hearts and souls of the survivors and their families.

San Francisco Bay Guardian: One source called your films “unabashedly partisan.” Would you say that’s accurate?

Gonzalo Arijon: I agree with this description. It’s true that my most of my films are about social and political issues. And this is like an exception to some people. A lot of friends and [colleagues] don’t understand really why I put so much energy and time in this subject — they don’t understand the political issue of this subject.

Newsom laments Prop 8 win

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by Amanda Witherell

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Mayor Gavin Newsom in the Prop 8 spotlight. Photo by Luke Thomas, Fog City Journal

Mayor Gavin Newsom expressed equal awe over seeing an African American elected president of the United States and a ban on gay marriage in California. “First and foremost it was an extraordinary night last night…for the country…and for civil rights,” he said at a crowded city hall press conference on the day after the election. But when it came to the rights of another population, he lamented, “I never thought in my lifetime that I’d see a constitution changed to take rights away.” He expressed particular dismay that California, “a state that has always been on the leading edge,” has become “the first state in the history of this country to take rights away.”

“Because they did nothing except fall in love and say ‘I do,’” he repeated several times.

He pointed out that the 2008 victory of Prop 8 passed with a slimmer majority than the last attempt in 2000. “We are moving in the right direction,” he said. “Millions and millions of people said it’s wrong to take rights away from people.” And he remained upbeat: “It doesn’t make me proud but it doesn’t make me, in any way, shape, or form, pessimistic.”

With some stirring words he connected the history of social change in America to the gay rights movement, concluding, “Everyone deserves the same opportunities, the same privileges, as everyone else. Separate is not equal.” For different genders, races, and ethnicities the basis of equality is a founding principle in the constitution, which has now been altered. He maintained that opponents of Prop 8 will someday be on the right side of history. “How can we, in 2008, argue for a separate track based on sexual orientation?”

And he cautioned Prop 8 supporters. “Don’t be gleeful at the expense of human beings whose lives have been devastated.”

When questioned, Newsom expressed support for City Attorney Dennis Herrera’s efforts to invalidate Prop 8. This morning Herrera, along with city attorneys from Los Angeles and Santa Clara, filed a writ of mandate with the California Supreme Court, arguing “that the California Constitution’s equal protection provisions do not allow a bare majority of voters to use the amendment process to divest politically disfavored groups of constitutional rights,” according to a press release.

Newsom cast off as “irrelevant” speculation that his run for governor would see some fallout from his vocal opposition to Prop 8, and said he hadn’t given much thought to what his continued advocacy for gay rights would be.

How This Happened

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Barack Obama in Oakland on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 2007.
Photo By Khalil Abusaba.
Text by Sarah Phelan

I’ve been a huge fan of Barack Obama since I heard him speak In Oakland in March 2007.

Since then I have hoped and believed that he would become the next President of the United States.

So, I was pretty happy to receive this “How this happened” text message from Obama at 8:34 PM last night:

“Sarah —

I’m about to head to Grant Park to talk to everyone gathered there, but I wanted to write to you first.

We just made history.

And I don’t want you to forget how we did it.

You made history every single day during this campaign — every day you knocked on doors, made a donation, or talked to your family, friends, and neighbors about why you believe it’s time for change.

I want to thank all of you who gave your time, talent, and passion to this campaign.

We have a lot of work to do to get our country back on track, and I’ll be in touch soon about what comes next.

But I want to be very clear about one thing…

All of this happened because of you.

Thank you,

Barack.”

So, here’s hoping we keep up the momentum and help Obama seize the chance to change things for the better.

Obama’s Hope Wall

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“Great Relief, Happiness…It’s like a disease was cured.”
So writes Gilda K. of New York on Obama’s great big cyber Hope Wall. where you can add your own messages and pix, too.
Or as they put it, over at the Hope Wall, Yes we can, Yes we will.

Is Prop. B still in the running?

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By Tim Redmond

Calvin Welch thinks it is. Here’s his analysis:

It’s not over yet folks. Were are down 2,400 votes with a significant number of votes yet to be counted from areas that we expect to do well in.

According to the information I got from the Department of Elections, there are some 113,000 absentee and early voting ballots yet to be counted, in addition to some 17,000 “provisional “ ballots. Discount the provisiona’s as most are not valid.

The election night count is weighted towards returns from district with supervisors races in order to get these races’ outcome first: Dist 1,3,4,5,7,9,and 11 with an undercounting from Districts 2,6,8,and 10. Since the election night pool of votes were weighted to the big conservative and “swing districts” (1,3,4,7 and 11) and only D5 and D9 of the progressive districts were included in the count, chances are that a significant portion of the yet to be counted votes are from D 2,6,8,and 10 — the last three of which we figure to be supportive of Prop B.

Check the DOE web site at about 4:30PM or so this afternoon as they will post an update. If the past is truce they will count about 20,000 votes or so (more or less) a day so we may have a day or two to go before this bad boy is done.

The district supes — what happens now

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By Tim Redmond

It’s astonishing to me that in this modern age, San Francisco still can’t get the votes counted on election night. I understand that the Department of Elections was overwhelmed by absentee ballots, but if we’re becoming a vote-by-mail city — and it appears we are, since almost half the votes this time will be absentee — then we should be prepared for it. If that means extra DOE staff in the two weeks before Election Day to tally those votes and have them ready to go, then it’s worth doing.

Anyway, that’s not where we are; where we are is that 100,000 more votes still have to be counted, and DOE director John Arnst says that won’t be finished for a couple of weeks.

And then there’s the matter of ranked-choice voting. Arnst has decided not to even begin running the RCV program until Friday, so we won’t have even unofficial results until then.

But here’s how it looks right now:

In district one, Eric Mar has 42 percent of the vote, and his closest competitor, Sue Lee, is 10 points behind. Lee just narrowly edged Mar in the first round of absentees; she was ahead 33 percent to 32 percent. So even if there are 9000 absentees in this district, AND they split as pro-Lee as the early absentees did, Mar would still be far ahead. In order to make up the 1,700 vote margin, Lee would have to win about 60 percent of the remaining votes tha goe for her or Mar, which seems highly unlikely. And if Mar is above 40 percent and needs only 10 percent more from the second- and third-place votes, he’s in very good shape. I’d say this one is pretty darn close to over.

In district three, David Chiu has 39 percent of the vote and the next in line is Joe Alioto, with 23 percent. Chiu actually came in first in the absentees. No way Alioto makes that difference up. Same as D1 — this one’s pretty safe.

D4, Carmen Chu. Re-elected.
D5, Ross Mirkarimi. Re-elected
D7. Sean Elsbernd. Re-Elected.

In District 9, David Campos has 35 percent of the vote, Mark Sanchez 29 and Eric Quezada 21. The absentees won’t change much here; Campos won the early absentees, Sanchez was second. This will come down to the Quezada votes; if they break about even (a good guess) Campos takes it. They could break overwhelmingly for Sanchez, but that’s the only way this one changes, and I doubt it will happen.

District 11 is interesting. John Avalos has 30 percent, to 24 for Ahsha Safai. Avalos beat Safai in the absentees — but in that group of voters, Myrna Lim, now at 16 percent, came in second. That suggests a heavily Asian absentee vote, and if the trend holds, Lim could pick up some more votes (athough there’s no way she could come in first, which is a very good thing.) The question is how Lim’s second-place votes break, because this one is close enough that seconds and thirds could really matter. The Avalos supporters knew that going in, and worked hard to run an RCV campaign, to reach out to Lim backers and urge them to vote Avalos #2. If that worked, he’s in.

We’ll know a lot more on Friday, when the DOE runs its first pass at RCV. I don’t understand why we have to wait that long; the program is simple, and they could run it right now. But wait we will.

Election Night Hits

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Obama tees are our overalll favorite, but John Avalos tees are a hit, locally.

The number one fashion hit, nationwide, was the ubiquitously beautiful Obama T-shirt. Ask anyone who wore an Obama tee on his election night, they’ll recall how they were greeted with high-fives and whoops of joy as the news spread that Obama had done it, just like we always hoped and prayed he would.

Ramos reflects on D11

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By Alex Jacobs

Julio Ramos calmly sat back in his election HQ late Tuesday night after hearing about the numbers. Ramos held 15% of the vote and was 240 votes behind Myrna Lim, the closest competition. The race for District 11 supervisor will now be decided through ranked-choice voting, based on voters’ second and third choices. John Avalos was leading with 29% to 24% for second place Ahsha Safai.
“Avalos ran a really good campaign,” said Ramos, who shares some of Avalos’s progressive politics.
With the theme of change constantly reiterrated this election, a push for change in the Excelsior has yet to take place. There are several capable candidates and Ramos remains hopeful.

Newsom’s green words for Obama

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by Amanda Witherell

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photo courtesy of Green Guerrillas against Greenwash

Environmental news web site, Grist, tapped a short list of people perceived as environmentalists and asked them to “imagine they found themselves in an elevator with the president-elect — giving them one minute of his undivided attention.”

Top of their list: our Mayor Gavin Newsom. Despite his lack of support for local environmental initiatives, in the national spotlight Newsom offers more comprehensive suggestions than many of the others posted by Grist.

They include following up on that $150 billion promise to invest in clean technology, more aggressive national efficiency standards for automobiles, buildings, and appliances, national cap and trade for carbon emissions, bilateral energy summit with China, green collar jobs, and financial support for local greening initiatives.

Read them all here.

The Chron notices Prop. H — when it loses

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By Tim Redmond

Isn’t it interesting that the Chronicle, which mostly ignored the Clean Energy Act when it was on the ballot, suddenly gives it a big headline — lead story on the local page — when PG&E beats it?

Ya think the result might have been different if the daily had covered the issue all along like this and reported on PG&E’s big-money lies? Ya think?

High speed rail coming to SF

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By Steven T. Jones

Amid all the hoopla about last night’s big election, many people are overlooking another big win for San Francisco: the narrow approval of Prop. 1A, the $10 billion bond measure that is the first huge step to bringing high-speed trains into San Francisco. Just imagine walking, biking, or taking BART or Muni to the Transbay Terminal in downtown San Francisco, buying a $77 ticket, hopping on a sleek train that reaches up to 220 mph, and then arriving a Union Station in Los Angeles two and a half hours later.
In 10 years, you may not have to imagine it because it’ll be a reality. We’ll have more on this in the next couple days, including what those next steps will be and the status of a couple of lawsuits that challenging the project.

Late night on the Prop. 8 watch

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Anna Rendall reports:

Now that The First Big Win was out of the way, the happy masses thronged down the halls of the Westin St. Francis Hotel to the next meeting room where the focus was on No on 8. That was before 10 p.m.

By midnight, the halls were cleared and in the ballroom, scattered couples danced leisurely to “New York, New York” as others booed and hurrahed the overhead projector, which showed poll results from different counties in California. San Francisco got a big whoop from the crowd for its No on 8 votes, but others, like Sutter County with a 70 percent approval of Proposition 8, didn’t fare well with the audience. By the time the crowd was gently sent off, no solid results had come in.

Yee and Fewer enthused about elections

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By Alex Jacobs

Norman Yee and Sandra Fewer’s campaign party kicked off with a bang as Barack Obama was announced the President Elect at 8pm. Displayed on an enormous flat screen television, the news was met with wild applause and jubilant cheers. Both schoolboard candidates were ecstatic about the Obama victory.
“It’s so exciting,” said Sandra Lee Fewer.
Fewer told the Guardian that running in this historic election was a wonderful experience.
“I am very hopeful for this country, for this city, and hopeful that there will be change,” said Fewer.

A coupla sobering moments

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By Tim Redmond

WIth all the celebrating going on, it’s worth noting that Prop. B — the affordable housing measure — is still too close to call, and Prop. 8 — the attack on same-sex marriage — is still ahead.

And there are still 100,000 absentee ballots to be counted in San Francisco.

The new school board

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By Tim Redmond

Looks like the new school board will be …. new. Three of the four seats elected will go to newcomers. Norman Yee was re-elected, but longtime incumbent Jill Wynns apparently didn’t make it. The new members will be Sandy Fewer, Bobbi Lopez and Rachel Norton.

Rodel Rodis, a longtime member of the Community College Board, didn’t make the cut either; Milton Marks was re-elected, and so was Natalie Berg (boo), but progressive Chris Jackson won, along with Steve Ngo, who is kind of a question mark.

So more change.

A night for progressives

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By Tim Redmond

The amazing thing tonight is that district elections — celebrated in the Harvey Milk movie, brought back by Tom Ammiano — continues to work.

I ran into Republican consultant Chris Bowman early this evening, and he told me that he thought the 2000 election, which brought a progressive majority to the Board of Supervisors, was an unusal event, driven by anger at then-Mayor WIllie Brown. This time around, he was expecting a more moderate slate to win.

But guess what: Organizing on the ground still beats big money when you elect supervisors by district.

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