SFBG Blogs

Bad Pope

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By Tim Redmond

When I was in college, my friend Dave formed a group called Rastifarians for an Inherited Papacy. (Think about it — Pope. Kids. Sex. Female heirs. As we said back then, Whoa …) That pretty much reflected my views on the institution of the Papacy.

Even the good nuns and priests at my Catholic middle school couldn’t convince me of the Pope thing; I’ve never been much for humans who claim to hear the exclusive word of God. I had plenty of problems with JPII.

But this is different. We don’t just have a Pope who’s kind of a wanker; we have a really BAD Pope. A bad man, a consumate asshole, a real evil presence as the head of 1 billion religious souls. Holy shit.

Bad soccer dads (and moms)

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By Tim Redmond

My mom and dad never wanted me to play Little League baseball, and they were very clear about the reasons: They didn’t want to deal with the other parents. Me, I’m glad my kids are in a local soccer league. I’m the team dad for the Pumas (Go Pumas!); we have a great coach and great kids and parents, we don’t keep score at the games, and nobody takes it too seriously as long as the kids are having fun. The main job of the team dad is to make sure there’s an adequate snack for halftime at every game. My main job as a parent is to try to make sure that Michael, who likes to play goalie, is actually paying attention when the ball comes near him, instead of searching for bugs in the grass.

But apparently it’s getting ugly out there, even in microscoccer, where all the kids are under 8.

I realize that parents have been known to go completely crazy on the fields of play, but I’ve never seen it in San Francisco. So when I showed up for a mandatory parents meeting for all microsoccer kids — attend or your kid can’t play — last Sunday afternoon, I wasn’t prepared for what was coming. A league official gave us a handout that set the tone:

“Reasons for this meeting:

Six assault charges in two years
Parents yelling and screaming from the sidelines
Coaches making up their own rules
Dads walking onto fields and taking whistles from moms
Coaches fighting over practice fields
Parents walking onto the field during hte middle of the game to videotape their child
Hired coaches (!?) not knowing any of the league rules”

and on and on.

It offered us this training scenario, which actually happened last season:

“A parent from the other team doesn’t like the way you are refereeing a game. She has been complaining bitterly about your calls, challenging your authority. She has become increasingly exasperated. You hear a whistle. Play has stopped and now you know why. The woman upset with your calls has gotten a whistle, called a ball out of bounds and is now walking onto the field, picking up the ball and about to award the ball to her team when one of your parents confronts her and yanks the ball away from her. The sideline “ref” responds by hitting your parent. What do you do?”

All of these problems — all of them — came from parents with kids under 7 years old.

Somebody needs to take a chill pill.

PS: “Dads walking onto the field and taking whistles from moms?” How exactly does that work?

Hotel Workers win after 2-year struggle

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UNITE HERE Local 2 has reached an agreement with San Francisco’s leading hotels after a two-year struggle.
So far, 13 CLass A hotels have agreed to a settlement that includes card check neutrality, which means that if a hotel buys up a smaller, or non-unionized hotel, workers at the non-unionized hotel have a right to join the union, too.
This settlement covers 4,200 workers.

UNITE HERE Local 2 is now working on settling with another 30 SF hotels, where contracts of 5,000 workers have expired.
As UNITE HERE Local 2 president Mike Casey put it, ” we’re not done until all of the hotels are settled.”
Casey feels that the hotels that have settled have created a pattern for others to follow.”
“It would be unacceptable for a hotel to think it could get some cheaper deal or have a competitive advantage over other hotels,” he said of what he sees as a “citywide standard that doesn’t create 2nd class citizenship for other hotel workers.
Casey is hopeful that the ovewrwhelming majority of hotels will settle up in next 30-45 days. He notes that for the handful of hotels that are non-unionized but that some day could be bought by a uionized chain, the settlements include a provision that allows their workers to join the union and raise their standards.
“The hotels resisted and said they’d never allow it,” says Casey of the card check provision. “It’s quite unprecedented. I think the hotels finally decided to make a smart business decision. They realized it was costing them more to fight than to settle with us.”
Unite Here Local 2 spokesperson Valerie Lapin also told the Guardian that settlements had been reached in New York, Chicago and Monterey and that others are still being negotiated in a number of cities, including San Francisco, Hawaii and a couple of hotels in Monterey that aren’t covered by the settlement that’s already been reached in that city.
While the details of each settlement varies, Lapin said that overall the settlements are good.
“The wages and benefits are very good, which is a reflection of how prosperous the industry is, and the settlements guarantee the rights of workers to join a union,” she said.
In additFor more details of the settlement, check out www.unitehere2.org.

T. Rowe Price: how to annoy the hell out of a good customer (Part 2)

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Repeating the positioning line at the top of the T. Rowe Price website:

“Investment management excellence, world class service and guidance”

As you will recall from my Part l blog on T. Rowe Price, I put in a call and left a message last Friday with the official at T. Rowe Price mutual fund family who could explain the mysterious restrictions and penalties placed without notice on my wife’s IRA account by Price for selling a volatile Price fund in some sort of violation of Price redemption policy.
Price also mysteriously applied the restrictions and penalties to my IRA account.

I asked for a call back and I still have not gotten a callback. So I called twice today and neither time could I even get through to an answering machine. The phone just rang and rang.

So I checked with the Price website and found five general information email addresses to send my blogs and questions to in an attempt to get someone to talk to me. Again, I am seeking an explanation of what happened and why we should ever again invest in the Price family of funds and “its investment management excellence and world class service and guidance.” Stay tuned.

Memo to Price: Where does a customer go with questions and complaints? B3, looking for just plain old-fashioned Rock Rapids (Iowa) service and guidance

The heroes BITE BACK!

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From the Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim show, Robot Chicken. So ridiculously stupidly funny.

One strike and you’re out

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DVD available from Choices Video.

My introduction to director William Gazecki came with his 1997 debut, the Oscar-nominated doc Waco: The Rules of Engagement. I distinctly remember sitting alone at the Red Vic, my jaw on the floor, watching the damning footage he’d unearthed solve the riddle of who fired first (’twas our government, not the Branch Davidians). In 2002, he released Crop Circles: Quest for Truth, which happened to come out the same year as Signs, marking some kind of crop-circle zeitgeist that may or may not have been informed by occupants of inteplanetary craft. (The doc — which was not nearly as well-received as Waco — doesn’t prove it either way, alas).

Between this pair of films, in 2000, Gazecki released Reckless Indifference, newly available on DVD. The doc recounts the 1995 crime that’s been held as an example of what’s wrong with California’s felony murder rule. (Read CBS News’ take on the case here.) Picture a Larry Clark-directed episode of American Justice, and you’ll get a feel for the cast of very real characters: a teenage drug dealer who operated out of a backyard “fort;” a gaggle of middle-class white kids whose suburban boredom inspired them to drink and commit mean-spirited pranks; and parents who took an interest only when it was far too late.

San Francisco could totally kick Google’s ass

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By G.W. Schulz

It’s always been difficult to imagine that privatization could become so popular entire cities would actually begin outsourcing all of their administrative functions. But it’s occurring, according to the USA Today. Truly scary. Anyone who thinks private companies that claim they can handle the public sector and save mobs of money won’t eventually get into some kind of trouble in their haste to generate profits isn’t thinking clearly.

PRICE CHECK: $40? Oh the Humanity!

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Is it really $40 to go see the Human League at Red Devil Lounge? Retro hipsters start saving up now! Here’s new intern Chris Cooney’s brief, decidedly non-retro hipster take on the event.

I invented a new stupid-pet trick: ask 10 of your friends to tell you something about the Human League, and nine of them will start singing, “Don’t you want me Baby? Don’t you want me ohhhhh!” It’s adorable.
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A woman’s place is in the House — and the Senate

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By G.W. Schulz

I’ll never forget the first time I stood in the presence of Ann Richards.

Years ago during the late 90s when I lived in Austin, I worked at a little natural foods grocery store on the west side of town. Richards used to come into the deli quite frequently. Although she was a short woman, there was something about her stature that simply commanded respect. Plus, she was the widely revered former governor of Texas. She just exuded principled toughness. I was sad to learn this week that she had succumbed to cancer at the age of 73. One thing the Democrats can’t afford to lose right now is anyone with a sense of humor.

Judge seals file in MediaNews trial

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Some documents to be kept under wraps in suit claiming purchase of Times, Mercury News creates local monopoly

To the good: this is not a Bruce Blog head. This is the head and subhead on a surprisingly good story by George Avalos in today’s Contra Costa Times that gives some indication that the old Knight-Ridder fighting spirit on public access and accountability is still in play despite the new ownership of MediaNews Group/Dean Singleton.

More to the good: the story, unlike the Chronicle/Hearst coverage, lays out one of the key points of the Clint Reilly/Joe Alioto antitrust suit: that, as the lead says, “a wide range of documents could be kept secret in a lawsuit involving a realty executive and the owner of most of the Bay Area’s newspapers, including the Times.” Still more: the ruling by a federal judge “enables the parties in the suit, including defendants MediaNews, Hearst, Gannett Co., Stephens Group Inc, and a partnership of several of the newspaper companies, to keep numerous documents confidential and free from public scrutiny.” And Avalos got a key point into his story with a quote from Reilly attorney Daniel Shulman: “Newspapers believe the public should know about everything, unless it is information about newspapers.”

To the bad: Avalos allowed Media News/Dean Singleton to put its position in the story via an anonymous “representative for one of the newspaper companies that are defendants in the lawsuit.” This anonymous source put forth without gulping the monopoly boilerplate position: gosh, golly, gee, “the newspaper companies could be hurt competitively if some of the information is released to the public.”

Unsolicited advice to reporters and editors who have the uneviable task of covering the monopolizing moves of their monopolizing superiors: Do not let them get away with anonymous quotes from anonymous executives. Tell them to speak by name and title or the Bruce Blog will get them.

The critical point: there is a big difference between sealing records in a standard civil lawsuit between two competing companies and sealing records in a lawsuit that aims to, as Avalos rightly puts it, “derail and unravel the MediaNews Group purchases of the newspapers” and stop MediaNews from wielding “monopoly power over the Bay Area newspaper market.”

The Galloping Conglomerati, as I call them, already operate in effect unregulated public utilities, because of their monopoly positions in their (mostly) one newspaper towns. And, unlike PG@E and other utilities, they are exempt from public regulation because of the First Amendment. Now they are quietly seeking to lock up the area for good and impose in effect a regional unregulated public utility under one partnership on the entire Bay Area. This is heavy stuff and every major development in this saga ought to be on the front page of every paper and lead the broadcast news of every station in the Bay Area.

Go, Clint, go!!! B3, still blogging away on behalf of independent and competitive journalism

Contra Costa Times

T. Rowe Price: how to annoy the hell out of a good customer (Part l)

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“Investment management excellence, world-class service and guidance.” Positioning line at the top of the T. Rowe Price website.

This morning, my wife and I had an unusual message on our answering machine at home from a customer representative at Charles Schwab. It said that Schwab was notifying us formally that the T. Rowe Price fund family had notified Schwab that “they are restricting your account from any further purchases into Price funds. If you have any questions please call me back.”

I picked up the phone and asked the representative, a most friendly and helpful fellow in Schwab’s Phoenix office, to explain his mysterious message. He said, a bit sheepishly, that my wife had sold a Price fund in her IRA account after holding it for six weeks and that Price had a policy (unbeknownst to us) that you can’t sell a fund until you have held it for six months. Price was penalizing us by restricting us from making any further purchases in the Price family by my wife or me in our Schwab accounts. She bought the fund in July, on advice of our investment advisory newsletter, and sold it last week because it had become volatile.

Where did this policy come from, I asked, and why were we not notified of this policy when we bought and sold Price funds, and why were we suddenly hearing of it in this embarrassing way. I told him that our investment advisory newsletter had advised its readers to buy the fund and wrote that there was no redemption fee. Neither Schwab nor Price had given us any notice of such redemption restrictions and penalties. And, I emphasized, I had never heard of Price and Schwab imposing such restrictions and penalties on longtime investors and added that I had never heard of any funds or fund families anywhere imposing such restrictions and penalties without proper and timely notice to its investors. What in the world was going on here?

The Schwab rep apologized, said he was just the messenger bearing the bad news for Price, and gave me the name of a Price rep that the company had designated to answer questions on restrictions: Mia Bartee, at 4l0-345-5597.

I called her immediately and got an answering machine and instructions to leave a message. I detailed my complaint on her answering machine and asked her to call me back as soon as possible and explain the mysterious restrictions and penalties to me. I also asked her to give me any reason why we should ever again invest in the Price family of funds and its “investment management excellence and world class service and guidance.”

At blogtime, still incredulous, I am anxiously waiting for her to call back. Stay tuned.

P.S. Justice through blogging: I will regularly report on consumer problems that I or my colleagues encounter and you can follow how I go about it, as a semi-professional consumer complainer. Let me know of any juicy ones you encounter and how you have fared. Maybe we can provide some object lessons on how to get some justice through blogging. Anybody having any luck with Comcast? B3

Toronto International Film Festival: Five for the road

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B. Ruby Rich reflects on some of her favorite TIFF ’06 moments.

* The scene: the world premiere of Dixie Chicks: Shut Up And Sing. Filmmakers Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck (daughter of Gregory) were in the audience, as were the Dixie Chicks themselves. The documentary tells the story of the past three years as the Chicks dealt with protests, concert cancellations, radio blackouts, and a death threat resulting from Natalie Maines’ remark: “We’re ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas.” When a scene played showing the decision to re-route the tour to Canada after Toronto was the only city to sell out immediately, the whole theatre erupted in wild hooray-for-us applause.

* Christine Vachon at TheatreBooks, one of Toronto’s great bookstores, signing copies of her new memoir about her experiences in the indie-film trade, A Killer Life Of course I bought one. She’s only in town for one night: she’s in the middle of shooting Todd Haynes’ new opus on Bob Dylan. Cate Blanchett just finished her section, so she got a break to come to Toronto for the premiere of Infamous. Vachon tells me she’ll be in San Francisco, at the Commonwealth Club, at the end of the month.

* Camila Guzman Urzua’s screening of The Sugar Curtain, her documentary on growing up in Cuba during the golden age of socialism. One audience member, an exiled Uruguayan, objected to her clear-eyed view of the terrible failures of the Revolution in the years since her childhood era. “Why don’t you talk about the embargo?” he wanted to know. Yeah, like every other Cuban film that’s ever been made. Old patterns die hard.

* Crowds jammed the sidewalk outside the Four Seasons, driven into a frenzy by a bumper crop of celebrities this year. My standards are different: Costa-Gavras at the Unifrance party was my idea of stardom. Talking to SFIFF’s Linda Blackaby and the NY Film Festival’s Marian Masone, he tried to explain the arrival of so many French films dealing with Algeria. “One million people left Algeria for France after the end of the war,” he said. “There are many stories, and different points of view. They should have been made ten years ago.”

* The moment the rain starts. Every year, mid-festival, the hot waning days of summer stop abruptly for a rainstorm. When the rain ends, the thermometer drops and fall is here. The mid-point of the festival is the change of seasons, and today I saw my first leaves turn red. Shadows of mortality. There’s nothing sadder than the end of a film festival. And at this writing, it’s only four days away.

Toronto International Film Festival: When Bond met Qui-Gon

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Michelle Devereaux reports.

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Before the world premiere screening of Seraphim Falls at the Elgin Theatre Wednesday night, Pierce Brosnan acted gruff and uncomfortable onstage, but Liam Neeson worked the crowd like a pro (even throwing out the old nugget “It’s all about you guys!”). He had some choice insights into the movie’s themes too, insisting that the western by first-time director David Von Acken — a cat-and-mouse tale featuring Neeson hunting Brosnan through snow and sand — is about forgiveness.
“The heart of this film is about forgiveness,” he reiterated. “Remember that.” Neeson thanked the production company behind Falls, as well as the company’s head, to general enthusiastic laughter from the adoring audience. The company? Icon. Its head? Why, that would be Mr. Mel Gibson. Maybe Gibson can get Neeson to make the same speech at the Apocalypto premiere in a couple of months. He’s probably going to need an icebreaker.

Eureka! Finally, Hearst covers the censored story and admits it is partnering with Singleton

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And now this: Are the Conglomerati going to buy the Santa Cruz Sentinel?

The timing was exquisite. This morning, in preparing to appear on the Will and Willie show on 960 the Quake, I checked the Chronicle/Hearst to see if there were any timely new developments on the biggest censored media story of the year—how the Conglomerati are censoring and trivializing their coverage of their move to regional monopoly. (See my blogs and the Guardian’s Project Censored package in last week’s edition).

I checked first to see if a Hearst policy story was tucked away as it often is on page 2 of the business section under the “Daily Digest” head. (The last one was a Reuters story out of New York.) Today I found that the Chronicle moved the story up a notch but still buried it under the fold on page l of the business section under a head that read “Complex deal ties Bay Area papers” and continued the Hearst strategy to confuse and bore anybody trying to follow its monopolizing shenanigans.

And so I was able to report on how Hearst portrayed the unprecedented deal: folks, this is a complex deal and a complex story and it doesn’t affect you and please don’t bother reading about it. Just move on.

But I noted that the story did acknowledge what the Bruce Blog and the Guardian had been reporting for weeks: that Hearst and MediaNews Group/Dean Singleton were partners in the regional monopoly deal, according to a sworn affidavit by James Asher, Hearst’s senior vice president and chief legal and development officer, filed in the Clint Reilly/Joe Alioto antitrust suit against Hearst and Singleton. And the story used this lead to characterize the partnership: “The two companies that own all the major daily newspapers in the Bay Area could become even more closely intertwined, according to a court papers filed in a federal antitrust lawsuit.” The second paragraph said that “New York’s Hearst Corp. could become part owner of MediaNews, a Denver company that owns the San Jose Mercury News, Contra Costa Times, Oakland Tribune, Marin Independent Journal and several other Bay Area. papers.”

I also pointed out that, to my knowledge, none of the Conglomerati (Hearst/Singleton/McClatchy/Gannett/Stephens chains) had (a) run the big Project Censored story and all had (b) censored and/or trivialized their coverage of their own deal. And I noted that all of this confirmed in 96-point Tempo Bold the value and virtue of Project Censored.

I was also happy to congratulate Willie Brown and Will Durst (the Will and Willie duo) and producer Paul Wells for being the only mainstream media show to my knowledge to give Project Censored an airing (featuring an extensive interview yesterday of Censored Project Director Peter Phillips and my Censored update today.)

Later, when I got back to my office, I found that a Peninsula Press Club blog jumped on paragraph eight in the Chronicle story, which said that the two parties in the lawsuit on Monday had “agreed to seal documents in the lawsuit unless they are already public information.” The blog noted that “newspapers usually fight attempts to suppress public records” and labeled the move a “self-imposed secrecy order” by Hearst and Singleton. It all but asked the obvious question: Will this kind of secrecy be yet another adverse effect of the coming of the Conglomerati? B3

Postscript: And now this: the Santa Cruz Sentinel reported today that the Conglomerati may soon own yet another daily on the outside ring of the Bay Area: the Sentinel, which competes for now with the nearby Monterey Herald/Hearst/Singleton and is up for sale by its owner Ottaway/Dow Jones. The Sentinel reported that “bids for the Sentinel are due today and while no one is making public who, if anyone, is interested in the paper, industry analysts name William Dean Singleton…” Media consultant John Morton said, “‘I wouldn’t rule out anybody, but the most likely buyer is the one who owns the most newspapers in the area.’” Hearst and Singleton papers didn’t carry this story. When will they?

Impertinent questions: Where are the antitrust consolidators in Justice and AG Bill Lockyer’s office? Will they once again remove all pebbles and hurdles in the path of yet another clustering consolidation?

Callers to the Quake show had good questions: what can be done about this march to newspaper monopoly? Not much, I said, ending with my stock answer: support your local alternatives.

Personal note to the caller who said I brought up these issues when he was a student in a journalism class I taught at Cal-State-Hayward in the early l970s: answer my blog or send me an email at bruce@sfbg.com and let’s catch up.

Santa Cruz Sentinel

Peninsula Press Club

Shoot me instead!

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By G.W. Schulz

It’s not healthy for the press to be relentlessly pessimistic. In that spirit, hats off to Gavin Newsom for introducing a new plan designed to counter the city’s surge in violence. Critics, including this newspaper, have repeatedly demanded a bold plan, and the mayor appears to be stepping up to the plate. Here’s part of it.

There are a few problems with the plan, however. Newsom intends to enforce a controversial city curfew for kids 13 and under that’s already on the books. He says he’s willing to expend the political capital necessary to make it work. We’re proud of you for being bold, Gav. Seriously. This city needs strong leadership.

Toronto International Film Festival: Behold the “filth elder”

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Toronto International Film Festival: Viggo, we love you, yeah yeah yeah

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Celebrity sightings? Michelle Devereaux just spotted God at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival:

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Toronto, Wednesday, 12:09am: I have just left the Ryerson Theatre, where I fear I have contracted a serious case of Viggomania — a condition characterized by fever, light-headedness, and general idiocy when Ultimate Man Viggo Mortensen is in the vicinity. And he happens to be in town for the premiere of Alatriste, a swashbuckling Spanish-language adventure epic he stars in as titular anti-hero Diego Alatriste, a 17th-century Spanish mercenary.

NOISE: contracts japanese noise

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Toronto International Film Festival: “I look for that stare that says, ‘I’m not a big fan of the President.'”

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Still from D.O.A.P. (aka Death of a President).

The Kirby grip: A talk with director of This Film is Not Yet Rated

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While briefly in San Francisco during an intense media tour promoting his much-buzzed doc This Film is Not Yet Rated, filmmaker Kirby Dick sat down with Jonathan L. Knapp to discuss the process of challenging a powerful institution, John Waters, chasing Jack Valenti, and media conglomeration.

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Guardian: Thank you for taking time to meet with me; you seem to be doing an insane amount of press for this movie.
Kirby Dick: Actually, I find that the press outside of New York and LA do far more interesting interviews, so I’m happy to be here.

Project Censored on the Will and Willie show at 8:05 a.m. Wednesday on 960 the Quake radio

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Why didn’t the Conglomerati Media cover this major local news story?

Peter Phillips, director of Project Censored, will make a rare mainstream media appearance at 8:05 a.m. Wednesday morning (Sept. l3) to discuss the l0 big stories the nation’s major news media refused to cover last year, as the Bay Guardian put it in its cover story of the last issue.

Peter will explain lay out the stories and explain why the media
censored the following top l0 stories (in descending order):

l. The Feds and the Media Muddy the Debate over Internet Freedom.

2. Halliburton Charged with Selling Nuclear Technology to Iran.

3. World Oceans in Extreme Danger.

4. Hunger and Homelessness Increasing in the United States.

5. High-tech Genocide in Congo.

6. Federal Whistleblower Protection in Jeopardy.

7. U.S. Operatives Torture Detainees to Death in Afghanistan and Iraq.

8. Pentagon Exempt from Freedom of Information Act.

9. World Bank Funds Israel-Palestine Wall.

10. Expanded Air War in Iraq Kills More Civilians.

And then there are the junk food news stories that got far more attention than they deserved:

(l) Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt Got Together. (2) Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson Break Up. (3) “American Idol” Hits an All-Time High. (4) The Runaway Bride who didn’t. (5) Martha Stewart is Back in Town. (6) “Brokeback Mountain” Breaks Through. (7) Britney Spears (it just wouldn’t be a list without her. (8) MySpace Infiltrates our Space. (9) Steroids in Baseball Get Pumped Up. (l0) “The DaVinci Code” ad nauseam.

A tip of the derby to Willie Brown and Will Durst and Producer Paul Wells and the Quake/Clear Channel Radio for being the only mainstream media in the Bay Area to our knowledge to give the proper publicity to this important local story and local project (Sonoma State University).

Memo to Phillips, Will and Willie: ask if anybody has spotted the story in any mainstream media. That proves the censorship point.

I (B3) will appear on the show at 9:05 Thursday morning (Sept. l4) to discuss why the local regional monopoly (Hearst/Singleton/McClatchy/Gannett/Stephens) has not only blacked out this major story but also one of the biggest local censored stories of the year (the regional monopoly). Memo to the editors and city desks of the Conglomerati: why did you black out these major censored stories? B3

The quiet force of Frontline II

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By G.W. Schulz

I mentioned yesterday that I’d been downloading older episodes of Frontline from the PBS Web site. The show has three major new episodes coming out next month. But yesterday I didn’t get a chance to summarize what I felt were some of the better pieces they’d done over the last few years that contained some cool local angles.

On Sunday night I went back and watched 2004’s “Tax Me if You Can,” which appears to have been inspired at least in part by David Cay Johston’s spectacular tax-beat reporting for The New York Times. Johnston made popular what was long considered a dreadful area of government to cover as a Times reporter – the IRS. We localized some of his more recent reporting for the Times on big IRS layoffs and the estate tax a while back.

Burning reentry

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By Scribe
I returned from Burning Man a week ago today, one of the nearly 40,000 souls reentering the real world from the one that we call “home.” There are more of us than ever given that the population of Black Rock City jumped more than 10 percent this year to by far it’s largest level yet, with the Bay Area still the main source of BRC citizens. The event is growing fast, and at a time when there is increasing concern about global warming and other environmental problems associated with unsustainable consumption of resources. So I was pleased to see founder Larry Harvey and his board announce next year’s theme — Green Man — just as this year’s event was wrapping up. The idea is to better connect the isolated event with the larger world, to increase awareness of our impacts on the environment, and to start offsetting that impact with tree planting and other year-round projects. It’s a natural step in the evolution of an event that began on Baker Beach in 1986, but one that needed to be deliberately taken, a challenging move than will test whether Burning Man is ready to return from the desert and project its values outward.

Progressive Voter Index

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By Steven T. Jones
Despite Mayor Gavin Newsom’s rhetorical efforts to dismiss the importance of ideology in San Francisco politics, this is a town the is deeply divided between progressives and Establishment moderate-to-conservatives. And the battle we fight is an important one that will determine whether San Francisco remains open to low-wage workers, tolerant of diversity, and a leader in combatting the dismal and divisive policies being perpetrated on the state and federal levels.
OK, OK, maybe y’all know that. But to get more insights in where the battlelines are drawn in San Francisco — right down to the level of individual precincts and neighborhoods — you’ll need to spend a little time studying the latest version of the Progressive Voters Index. Kudos to political scientists Rich DeLeon and David Latterman — and the good folks over at www.sfusualsuspects — for providing this valuable resource.

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