I was honored to be a guest on KQED’s Forum with Michael Krasny this morning, but I was once again dismayed by the conservative political spin of Examiner columnist Ken Garcia, another guest on the show. Perhaps I should adjust my expectations (after all, Garcia works for a paper that endorsed John McCain for president) but it’s still so frustrating to be arguing about issues we should have settled generations ago in San Francisco.
Instead, progressives are still fending off arguments by Garcia and his ilk that Pacific Gas & Electric is more trustworthy than our elected local government (a ridiculous notion that PG&E is spending record-breaking millions to push), that decriminalizing social ills such as drug use and prostitution is the same thing as condoning and promoting them (as if “harm reduction strategies” pioneered in SF is a foreign concept), that creation of affordable housing (which developers won’t build without public subsidies that Prop. B will strengthen) is something the city can’t afford, that new revenue measures are also bad, and that the best leadership program we can offer our young students is JROTC (the main purpose of which is to instill military values in our peace-loving kids and recruit them as cannon fodder for our wasteful, unnecessary wars).
I think I held my own and hopefully offered listeners a better sense of this city’s full political spectrum than they often get from the mainstream media, but I’ll let you all be the judge of that. You can listen to the show here: