California

Homecoming

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CHEAP EATS There’s only one thing in my refrigerator, and nothing at all in the nest. It’s come to this, then: two chickens left, and one of them has developed a taste for eggs.

Two weeks ago today when I flapped my wings (venison lasagna + Ativan = liftoff, plus or minus an airplane ticket), I never felt more like I needed a vacation from my life. And yesterday evening, upon touching down again at SFO, I burst into tears, grateful to be not only alive on Earth, but alive in my exact life. And dying to see Sockywonk and Weirdo the Cat and my newest and littlest love, Z.Z. de la Cooter.

Z.Z. being 15 years and 11 months away from a driver’s license, and Weirdo the Cat being a cat, Sockywonk was the one who I called, from a pay phone, as soon as I stepped off the plane.

"I’ll be right there," she said.

I got my luggage and went outside into California and waited, blinking, my mascara smeared and swirly. My neighbor from the plane walked past – an older-man businessmanperson who had stared at spreadsheets on his laptop next to me as intently as I’d been staring at pictures of little Z.Z. on mine, trying to beat back the panic with incessant cuteness.

We hadn’t exchanged more than four words on the plane – "excuse me" and "thank you" – but now he gave me a warm, almost intimate smile. I smiled back. For all I know, he has a fear of flying too.

The Wonk was in a bit of a postsurgical state still, it turned out, and I was more on drugs than she was. Plus starving. So she could hardly even talk, she was so busy being such a good driver, and it was all I could do to sit up straight, with my hand in her head of half-inch hair growth, and sort of slobber.

What I’m getting at is that last night, at any rate, the two dogs in the backseat would have been more qualified than either of us to choose a restaurant.

Me and Sockywonk, it so happens, are two of the last four people on the planet without cell phones, or else we might have maybe thought to call someone for help. It’s easy enough to think that now, fed, slept, and caffeinated. But yesterday . . .

And anyway my brother Phenomenon, my own go-to one-phone-call bastion of all-around competency, was unreachably out of the country.

Innit funny, though, how notorious goofs like me and Socky tend to have siblings whose specialty it is to take care of bidness? Just fucking get the job done? For lack of any better ideas, the Wonk drove us to her house and parked. When we went inside, I kid you not, at 8, 8:30 in the evening, her visiting sis from Florida, Sisterwonk, was under the sink in the kitchen, hammering. On her visit so far she’d already tiled the kitchen floor, which had looked more like a garage than an apartment, as I recall, rigged a new light over the dining room table, and painted the walls a cheerful yellow.

I knew immediately that, dinnerwise, we were in good hands. Sure enough: "Why don’t you get a burrito?" she suggested, without even scratching her head.

You’d have thought that we’d have thought of that, being the San Franciscans.

"Mexicana’s good," Sisterwonk said, anticipating my next question.

I looked at Socky, who had already found parking, and she nodded. "It’s right around the corner," she said. Less than two blocks. As easy a walk as two junkied goofs have ever had to walk. And just like that I had a new favorite taqueria.

Mexicana! Who knew? They steam their tortillas, but the chips are good, and the salsa’s good, and I can vouch for the spicy chipotle chicken burrito, about a third of which is the one thing in my refrigerator right now.

Probably I could have knocked it off last night. But I think instinctively I knew, deep down below the Ativan, how sad it would be to come home to an empty refrigerator.

For lunch I’m going to make me one big pan-spun homemade flour tortilla, and I’m going to chop up and reheat last night’s burrito, wrapper and all. As far as I know, it will be the world’s first ever burrito butt burrito. And I can’t tell you how happy I am about that. *

CASA MEXICANA

Daily: 11 a.m.-10 p.m.

3917 24th St., SF

(415) 648-0477

Takeout available

Beer

MC/V

Wheelchair accessible

MCMAF: Lost and Gowns

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> kimberly@sfbg.com

You can’t put your arms around a memory, as one hopeless rock ‘n’ roll soul once sang, but you can ponder a memory’s origins, observe its manifestations, and perhaps even embrace its spectral aftereffects. So it goes with Gowns’ Ezra Buchla, who currently lives with bandmate Erika Anderson in the North Berkeley "towering, crumbling Grey Gardens-style Victorian manse" where he was born. "I’ve lived in this house my whole life," he says quietly. I’ve interrupted his late afternoon soldering on a modular synthesizer – another day’s work with his father, synthesizer inventor Don Buchla. "I’ve had a lot of strange experiences, real or imaginary."

He says he’s had dreams about a woman who was buried next to his house, beckoning him over to her final resting place or hanging off the roof by her fingertips in front of a window. Another time he discovered himself in the grip of a hallucination about an agoraphobic woman who locked herself in the attic till she starved to death. He then heard laughing echoing from that floor. Footsteps have also been heard on the floor above. And one night as a child, he woke up and saw that the trapdoor to the attic, above his bed, had disappeared. "My dad ignores it, but it’s hard to," Buchla says. "For example, when the trapdoor disappeared, he said it was moved by rats, which seems impossible to me. It’s too big and too firmly attached to the ceiling."

The stories sound like the stuff of Realtors’ nightmares. Yet not surprisingly, Buchla doesn’t mind the mysterious appearances – and disappearances – at all. "I like it here. It’s pretty special."

Gowns’ music, likewise, dares to venture into alien haunts, the eerie intersections between past and present, the strange spaces where AOR rock meets the avant-garde, places where the trio, which includes percussionist Corey Fogel, finds quiet beauty and moments of bristling cacophony. That much is evident on Red State (Cardboard), on which former Amps for Christ guitarist and oscillator manipulator Anderson and ex-Mae Shi vocalist Buchla, who studied composition at Oberlin College and the California Institute of the Arts, speak in spooked whispers over fragile bits of noise and through folk-song filters.

When the pair started the band, Anderson says, "we didn’t really have grand ideas. We were just kind of hanging out a lot, and we thought, let’s record really simple things in our bedrooms. But we did want to use technology to play with sound forms and make things textural and use digital editing as a composition tool."

"The funny thing is that our knowledge base for music is almost completely opposite," Anderson says, going on to describe their recent 15-minute live "noise valentine" version of Bruce Springsteen’s "I’m on Fire" with Carla Bozulich. "I can sing almost any song on classic rock or AOR stations. I have all that oldies history or dumb classic rock history. Whereas Ezra’s got a knowledge of all the new music composers and history. When we met, there was barely anything that was similar. Now they overlap more and more." May those meetings be happier – and as dramatic – as that visitor dangling from the roof. *

GOWNS

With Bran … Pos, Kristin Miltner and Cliff Caruthers, Anti-Ear, and Core Ogg the Cool Man and Paul Baker

May 19, call for time and price

Lab

2948 16th St., SF

(415) 864-8855

www.thelab.org

MCMAF: Sweetness and light

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> a&eletters@sfbg.com

"The ghosts come quickly, and they leave quickly," remarks Philipp Minnig about his effective yet unorthodox approach to songwriting for San Francisco electro-disco group Sugar and Gold.

"I always call songwriting ‘ghostbusting,’ " he says over tapas at Picaro in the Mission District, in a German accent softened by years spent in Northern California. "There will be an idea floating around, and you zap it, throw out your trap, and there it goes. For us, our traps are chords, or a rhythm. Someone brings in the ghost, and we all work on it."

Sugar and Gold is the brainchild of the rosy-cheeked lead vocalist, guitarist, and primary songwriter and his longtime friend and collaborator, vocalist and keyboardist Nicolas Dobbratz. They met in middle school in Pacific Grove and decided after a particularly memorable acid trip to start a band. The duo – whose previous combos Dura Delinquent and Connexion were rooted in visceral proto-punk – were always set on making dance-oriented music that was inclusive, countering the snobbish in-crowd ethos of Bay Area hipster groups. It is this generosity of spirit and their infectious, unduutf8g rhythms that led to a friendship and working relationship with Oakland’s dance-punk foursome Gravy Train, who recently enlisted Minnig and Dobbratz to produce their next album.

The two bands met when Gravy Train sought advice from Sugar and Gold about a hard-to-achieve keyboard effect in one of their songs. Minnig was happy to help them out, explaining that he believes in an altruistic approach to making music: "If everyone keeps their musical techniques to themselves, the scene and the music will never expand to get bigger and better."

A beautiful relationship was born. "Sugar and Gold don’t have a too-cool-for-school vibe," Gravy Train’s brazen redheaded vocalist Chunx writes via e-mail. "At their live shows, they are all about letting go, getting wild, and just feeling the music. It doesn’t matter what kind of person you are, or what you look like, which is the same philosophy as Gravy Train." On Sugar and Gold’s debut, Creme (Antenna Farm), the sextet – including Jerome Steegmans on bass, drummer Robin Macmillan, and backing vocalists Susana Cortes and Fatima Fleming – take inspiration from the voluptuous soul of Funkadelic and Sly Stone, the subversive rock ‘n’ roll of the Cramps, and the cerebral electronic mastery of Kraftwerk, creating the seemingly antithetical hybrid of thoughtful yet sexy dance music.

Ghostbusting aside, this musical intellectualism sets Sugar and Gold apart from dance music makers who view music not as a way of life or an extension of themselves but as part of a hedonistic event experienced by a superficial persona. Minnig believes in the music he makes, and he views the process as a fundamental and spiritual necessity. "When we recorded the album, the music was giving us a feeling that was real, authentic," he says. "Music is the only spirituality we have. It’s the only way to believe in something greater than ourselves."

He has a similarly insightful answer to the question of why dance music is important. Between sips of peppermint tea, he says, "Dancing is one of those few things that, when done right, you do without an end in mind. You are free from an objective, which is rare in our society."

SUGAR AND GOLD

With Her Grace the Duchess and the Society

May 19, 9 p.m., $12

Cafe du Nord

2170 Market, SF

(415) 861-5016

www.cafedunord.com

Support for high-speed rail

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High-speed rail got a timely and significant vote of support from the California Democratic Party on April 29 when delegates at the state convention approved a resolution pushing the project. The measure was the top vote getter, tied at 24 with a resolution urging accountability for the errors and deception that led to the Iraq War.

Yet a last-minute move weakening part of the measure raises questions about whether the Democrats are truly willing to fight Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has called for an indefinite delay in next year’s high-speed rail bond measure and proposed a budget that guts the California High-Speed Rail Authority (see "The Silver Bullet Train," 4/18/07).

The resolution praises the project as "a significant weapon against air pollution and global warming as it uses much less energy per passenger than cars and airplanes – and HSR will be even more essential if, as expected, petroleum supplies diminish in the future."

But state party leaders deleted language from the version that was submitted by San Francisco delegate Jane Morrison asking "that all California elected officials support the requested $103 million for HSR in the current state budget – and retain and support the $10 billion bond issue now scheduled for High Speed Rail in the 2008 election." Assemblymember Fiona Ma has emerged as the main legislative champion for the embattled project and helped push the resolution to the top of the legislative priority list. But she faces a big test in trying to get the money the project now needs.

Morrison told us, "We have to work to convince the legislature that we can afford it. That’s the hard part, so we’re not done yet."

A recent report from the Legislative Analyst’s Office criticized Schwarzenegger’s holding pattern as wasteful and concluded that the legislature should fully fund the project or vote to kill it. The report was titled "Time to Bite the Bullet for the Bullet Train."

There’s more on high-speed rail – including a telling exchange between the Guardian and the Governor’s Office – on our Politics blog, at www.sfbg.com/blogs/politics.

Ellis Act crisis

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OPINION Between 2004 and 2005, Chetcuti and Associates, a Walnut Creek real estate development company, bought eight Mission District apartment buildings. Within the first few weeks of ownership, the company served all the tenants in four buildings with Ellis Act eviction notices. In the next two months, three of the other buildings were Ellised. The company held on to the eighth building for a year before it gave those tenants Ellis notices.

The same is true throughout the city: John Hickey Brokerage, another out-of-town real estate company, gave Lola McKay (who died in 2000 while fighting her Ellis eviction) a notice within weeks after buying the building and then did the same to tenants in a North Beach apartment building – evicting those tenants just five days after a purchase deal closed.

In fact, more than half of all Ellis Act evictions in San Francisco are done by real estate speculators who have owned their buildings for less than six months. Almost one quarter are done by speculators who have owned the building for less than a month (and many of those are done in the first hours or days of ownership).

The buildings are then often sold as tenancies in common – essentially, as condos for people much wealthier than the ones who were evicted.

Rampant real estate speculation is bad enough on its own. What makes it worse is that this pattern is also an abuse of everything the Ellis Act was intended to be: a way for long-term landlords to be able to get out of the rental business and retire. When the Ellis Act was passed in 1985, its proponents said its purpose was to allow a landlord "to go out of business when he or she is convinced that they are no longer willing to devote the time, accept the frustration, expose themselves to the liability and other factors of continuing to be a landlord."

Apparently, companies such as Chetcuti and Associates and John Hickey Brokerage decided within days and weeks that they just couldn’t devote the time to or accept the frustration of being a landlord anymore and were compelled to evict the tenants. And that’s the case for hundreds of other real estate investors, many of whom are getting tired of being landlords within days of buying rental property.

Senate Bill 464 – which the State Senate will vote on any day now – would rectify this abuse and return the Ellis Act to its original intent. This bill simply says that a landlord must own property for at least five years before using the Ellis Act to evict tenants. It’s simple and fair, and it hurts only real estate speculators.

The vote is expected to be close – and unbelievably, the bill may not pass because a senator from San Francisco, Leland Yee, has indicated he may oppose it. No other city in California has been hit harder by the Ellis Act than San Francisco – yet our very own senator may kill this bill.

Thousands of residents here have been evicted under the Ellis Act, most of them senior or disabled. Ellis evictions are a crisis in San Francisco and are destroying lives and neighborhoods and communities.

Please call (415-557-7857) or fax (415-557-7864) Sen. Yee to ask him to support SB 464. *

Ted Gullicksen

Ted Gullicksen is executive director of the San Francisco Tenants Union.

Beyond the Reilly settlement

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> gwschulz@sfbg.com

Click here to read the Guardian editorial on the Reilly victory

Shortly before Clint Reilly began a press conference April 25 announcing that he’d settled his federal antitrust suit against the Bay Area’s two largest newspaper companies, Cheryl Hurd of NBC affiliate KNTV, channel 11, loudly complained to the pack of reporters that she just didn’t quite get the story.

"Why does anybody care about this?" she asked, sounding annoyed as she waved the press release listing the terms of the settlement in the air. "I don’t even understand any of this. What’s this mean?"

She wasn’t the only confused reporter. In the week since the settlement was announced, the local media have downplayed or mangled what is actually a huge story: Reilly, acting on his own, with no support from federal or state regulators, managed to scuttle a deal that would have ended all newspaper competition in the Bay Area.

"Would I have liked to see it go further? Yeah," said Bruce Cain, director of UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies, who penned a declaration supporting Reilly’s case. "But at least he was able to stop more collaboration between those two companies, and he was able to establish the legal point that this has more than just economic consequences. It has consequences for the vitality of political news coverage in the Bay Area."

The settlement involved a lot of peripheral terms, but the essence was this: the Hearst Corp., which owns the San Francisco Chronicle, can no longer consider combining printing, distribution, and ad sales with MediaNews Group, which owns almost every other major local daily in the Bay Area.

Reilly announced that the deal prevents the supposed competitors from unfairly or illegally negotiating any major joint operating arrangement in the near future. The trial was scheduled to begin just days after the agreement was reached.

"Newspapers are the intellectual bridge between citizens and their government," Reilly told reporters. "To me, one Bay Area newspaper company owning every paid circulation daily newspaper would be a very bad thing for Bay Area newspaper readers and for public discourse."

The deal nixes a plan outlined in a letter unearthed during an early phase of the trial. The letter showed that Hearst and MediaNews wanted to consolidate distribution and advertising operations among their local papers to create additional revenue and save on expenses.

Hearst enabled MediaNews to complete the purchase of several major local dailies last year by investing $300 million in the company’s stock. To survive antitrust scrutiny, the deal was crafted to make the stock’s value hinge entirely on non-Bay Area assets. But documents revealed during the suit clearly show that Hearst had planned to convert the stock so that it included MediaNews papers here as well. The settlement also prevents that from happening.

According to the terms, Reilly will recommend private citizens for appointment to the editorial boards of every California Newspapers Partnership publication in the region, including the San Jose Mercury News, the Contra Costa Times, and the Oakland Tribune.

He will also get access to advertising space in the pages of the papers for a regular column.

Reilly had originally sought to force MediaNews to divest itself of the San Jose Mercury News and other papers, but that was a long shot at best. What’s remarkable is that he accomplished as much as he did when no government agency was willing to help.

"I see in a lot of places what’s happening is owners are trying to make as much money as possible," Cain told us. "I see this in local TV, I see this in print media. I’m sure there’s an element of survival sometimes, but I think a lot of it is just trying to get profit margins up."

The US Justice Department never made a serious effort to stop the deal. The Guardian recently confirmed that the state Attorney General’s Office under the newly elected Jerry Brown has dropped its probe into the transactions. Spokesperson David Kravets refused to explain why.

The state’s treasurer and former AG, Bill Lockyer, began the investigation, and when we asked for a comment on Brown’s decision, he declined, saying he had "moved on."

Gina Talamona, spokesperson for the federal Justice Department, said its examination of Hearst’s substantial investment in MediaNews continues. But MediaNews CEO Dean Singleton told us that he expects it will not only close soon but will also clear the companies to move ahead.

Singleton said his meetings with Reilly, a Bay Area native and former mayoral candidate, were civil and there were no terms of the settlement he was displeased with. But he still doesn’t believe Reilly had grounds to bring the suit.

"A lot of wild statements have been thrown out that are simply not true," Singleton said. "There’s no evidence whatsoever that we had any discussions with Hearst about doing anything with the Chronicle that would have been improper. In fact, we’ve had few discussions about anything with the Chronicle."

Perhaps there was nothing "improper" as far as justice officials were concerned. But a March 2006 letter from Hearst vice president James Asher to MediaNews president Joseph Lodovic that surfaced during the case shows Hearst required an agreement on consolidated distribution networks with MediaNews before the company would proceed with its side of the transaction.

So let’s go back to Hurd’s question: why should anyone care about newspaper mergers in an era when there are so many other sources of information?

John McManus is a part-time journalism professor at San Jose State University and director of GradeTheNews.org, a consumer Web site on Bay Area news quality. He was hired as a consultant by Clint Reilly’s legal team to provide analysis of how consolidated or noncompetitive media outlets might fail to provide the best, most valuable news stories possible to local consumers.

His answer is simple. "Everyone is affected by the quality of newspapers because they form the bottom of the food chain for news," McManus told us. "Probably about 85 percent of the original news reporting in the Bay Area comes from newspapers, because they have much larger staffs than television stations or radio stations or Web-only operations."

McManus did his Stanford PhD dissertation in 1987 on four television news stations scattered around California, spending a month at each of them. At one of the stations, he said, what appeared in the local newspaper was so important, a station producer would clip stories directly from it and attach them to the assignments reporters were expected to have prepared by that evening’s newscast.

"The situation has gotten worse since then," McManus told us, "because local TV news staffs have shrunk."

The settlement also did not include an agreement on what would happen to the mountain of records produced in the case leading up to the trial.

Hundreds of pages previously sealed by the newspaper companies were opened to the public after the Guardian and the East Bay nonprofit Media Alliance intervened in the case. Reilly’s lawyer, Joe Alioto, recently insisted that he would petition the judge to unveil more documents, such as full depositions of company executives and additional memos and e-mails.

The settlement comes with some caveats for critics of consolidation. McManus believes that Reilly ultimately "got a quarter of the loaf." Reilly, he said, may have protected the independence of the Chronicle, but MediaNews isn’t being forced to unload any of its Bay Area properties to balance the field.

"Without [Reilly] having liberated the Mercury News and the Contra Costa Times and the smaller papers from the grip of MediaNews," McManus said, "the Chronicle‘s fate may be sealed." *

Editors note: The daily papers in the Bay Area treated the news of the settlement as a one-day story, and not a terribly big one. The San Francisco Chronicle ran it below the fold in the business section with a one-column head. But over the next few days, there were a lot of development and arguments over the deal; the trade journal Editor and Publisher was all over it. But none of that made it into the supposedly competitive local daily press.

A lot of the back and forth appeared on chainlinks.org, a Web site run by the Newspaper Guild. A selection:

Hearst-MediaNews deal scuttled: Former Chronicle City Editor Alan Mutter on the Reilly settlement

Editor and Publisher on the disagreement over the settlement

Jerry Ceppos, former executive editor of the San Jose Mercury News, whines about the deal

Romanseko links to some of the first-day stories

Editor’s Notes

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> tredmond@sfbg.com

The delegates to the annual California Democratic Party convention began trickling into the San Diego Convention Center on April 27, and one of the first people they saw was Barbara Cummings. She had stationed herself about a block away from the entrance and was holding a big "Impeach Bush and Cheney" sign.

"It’s wonderful," the San Diego activist told me. "The delegates all want their pictures taken with us. The tourists want pictures too."

Inside the convention hall, the grassroots sentiment was pretty similar. The black "impeach" lapel stickers were everywhere, hundreds of delegates wore black "impeach" T-shirts, and impeachment banners and signs flew everywhere.

Within official party circles, though, the mood was slightly different. Art Torres, the chair of the state party, told the press early on that he expected the war and impeachment to dominate the convention, but when I asked him if there was any disconnect between the party faithful calling for impeachment and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi saying that wasn’t an option, he simply said, "No. That’s the Democratic Party." He added, "We see a distance between the grass roots and the leadership. That’s not uncommon."

In many ways, that was the theme of this convention. The California Democratic Party is changing, in part driven by a new wave of young, Internet-savvy activists and bloggers who are practically screaming for respect. And the old guard is having a very hard time giving up control.

At the Resolutions Committee meeting April 27, Torres, a smooth operator with more than 30 years’ experience in party politics, gave a textbook demonstration of how the powers that be keep the grass roots in line.

On one level, the resolutions that get passed at these conventions don’t matter that much; they don’t have any binding authority. But they do express the official position of the state party, can put pressure on Democratic elected officials – and sometimes highlight the schisms in the famously fractious organization.

In this case, activists had put forward a half-dozen reform proposals that all had the same issue at heart: control of state party money.

Howard Dean took on the old guard nationally when he decided to put money into party-building efforts and candidates in all 50 states; his fans in California want to see the state party follow that model in all 58 counties. They also want more transparency in how the money is handled.

The state party chair, of course, keeps a lot of his power and authority by controlling that cash, and the legislative leaders keep their powerful posts and ensure the loyalty of their troops in part by determining which Democrats get the resources in election years.

The resolutions called for an outside audit of party money and a formal 58-county strategy. Before a single supporter of those measures had a chance to speak, the chair of the Resolutions Committee turned the floor over to Torres – who suggested the whole thing be referred to a new task force, which he would appoint, for consideration at some time in the future. The committee chair quickly called for a motion and a vote, and the panel – also all appointed by Torres – swept every party-reform resolution right off the table.

The same pattern played out with impeachment; a strong grassroots effort became a weak final resolution. As one committee member told me, "Speaker Pelosi is against impeachment, so we can’t really vote for it."

With the early California primary, the state convention was a big-time event. Seven presidential candidates showed up, more than had ever come to a state party event in history. There was a palpable feeling of energy at the convention, a sense that this time around, the Democrats might actually be ready to win the White House.

On the convention floor the mood was festive as Hillary Clinton strode through a side entrance and walked past a mob of supporters to the stage. Her speech was about what I expected – standard stump lines, but well delivered and full of energy. She had the crowd with her for about 10 minutes, until she mentioned Iraq – at which point the boos and catcalls began, the people in the seats got restive, and the mood was shattered. "She still won’t apologize," one young delegate told me, shaking her head.

Barack Obama looked like the rock star he is, jogging through the entrance with a huge smile. In person he looks like he’s barely out of his 20s – and his army, while smaller then Clinton’s, was more diverse and a lot younger. He’s a dynamic speaker and got a huge ovation when he announced that "I stood up in 2002, when it wasn’t popular to stand up, and said [the war] was a bad idea."

Obama split without talking to the press. Clinton arrived 20 minutes late to a packed press conference and said very little of note.

John Edwards, who spoke Sunday morning, April 29, got his own star treatment and demonstrated a key difference with Clinton when he announced that "I voted for this war, and I was wrong to vote for this war." He was also the only candidate who actually talked about poverty in America. He showed up on time for his press availability; I managed to get the first question.

"Senator," I said, "the 25 top hedge fund managers in this country made enough money between them last year to pay the salaries of all 88,000 New York City public school teachers for three years. I know you want to repeal the Bush tax cuts, but beyond that, shouldn’t we actually raise taxes on the very rich so we can pay the teachers a little better?"

"It’s a good question," he said, "and it’s worthy of consideration." But for now, Edwards won’t go beyond restoring the tax code to its Bill Clinton-era levels, which are still far, far too rewarding to the tiny segment of the country that earns and controls the vast majority of the income and wealth.

I got to ask Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut the same question; he kindly agreed to a private interview and gave me 10 minutes or so. He, like Edwards, was kinda sorta maybe willing to consider raising taxes on people who make upward of $250 million a year.

I suppose this is progress.

All the liberal bloggers came to the April 27 evening fundraiser for Jerry McNerney, who defeated Ricahrd Pombo, and Charlie Brown, a Democrat who wants to unseat John Doolittle in congressional District 4 (north of Sacramento). Brown is a favorite of the blogosphere; he’s also a candidate who was barely on the official party radar when he ran in 2006.

All that has changed dramatically – with Doolittle circling the drain and Brown showing surprising strength. Even Pelosi plugged him from the convention stage.

But the only elected official I saw at the fundraiser was Assemblymember Mark Leno.

The people in the room represented a very different approach to state politics. It’s not even an entirely ideological division; it’s more about a form of activism. The bloggers (who aren’t just writing about the party but trying to change it) are still the party outsiders now – but they’ve already raised more money for Brown than any other single source, mostly in small contributions. And I suspect that if he gets elected, he’ll remember the people who were there for him first.

The outsiders still don’t understand how all the hardball politics work at conventions, but they’re learning. They’re also emerging as a tremendous force in American politics, and in California they’re knocking, loudly, on the state party doors. And Art Torres is a fool if he thinks he’s not going to have to let them in. *

For much, much more on the state convention, go to the Guardian politics blog at www.sfbg.com/blogs/politics.

Cleaning the sour lake

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>amanda@sfbg.com

Pablo Fajardo, Humberto Piaguaje, and Guillermo Grefa – three natives of Ecuador – recently made a visit to the Bay Area, but not as mere tourists.

"I’ve come here to inform you, San Francisco, so that you here might know what Chevron does outside the borders of the United States," Fajardo said at a press conference outside City Hall. "They are contributing to the destruction of humanity on a global level."

Fajardo is one of the lead litigators in a 14-year-old civil action lawsuit against Texaco (which was purchased by the Chevron Corp. in 2001) accusing the multinational oil company of business practices that soured the lakes, streams, soil, air, and lives of the residents of Lago Agrio ("sour lake" in Spanish). Texaco was based in this rainforest region for 28 years and operated 343 wells and processing plants that pumped 1.5 billion barrels of oil through a 300-mile exposed pipeline over the Andes. The plaintiffs allege that substandard storage and handling of the oil and its toxic byproducts during those productive years have poisoned an area three times the size of Manhattan.

Chevron contends that it has adequately cleaned up 45 sites and anything beyond that is the responsibility of PetroEcuador, a government-owned company with which Texaco had a partnership for use, ownership, and maintenance of the wells.

Chevron is the sixth largest oil company in the world and the richest corporation in the Bay Area. The San Francisco Chronicle recently dubbed Chevron its "corporation of the year" after the oil company posted $17 billion in profits in 2006.

But by the end of this year, Chevron may have a new distinction: loser of the largest environmental remediation case ever litigated. Even though legal scholars say it’s quite possible the Ecuador court will rule against Chevron, company executives still haven’t set aside any money or fully informed shareholders of this potential liability.

A resident of Lago Agrio since he was 14, Fajardo received his law degree through correspondence school coursework just three years ago, and this is the first case he’s argued. But he’s not alone. His legal team includes New York-based Steve Donziger and a bankroll from Philadelphia’s Kohn, Swift and Graf. The recent trip was also supported by the San Francisco organizations Amazon Watch and Rainforest Action Network.

"This was to put a message to the Bay Area. This is your homegrown oil company," Amazon Watch’s executive director, Atossa Soltani, said. "This is an opportunity to hold them accountable. We need to demand they uphold the values of this community."

While in town, Fajardo invited Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to tour one of the 600 unlined oil pits that are seeping sludge into the drinking water of 30,000 Lago Agrians.

"I know that you have close ties to this company," Fajardo wrote in a letter to Schwarzenegger. "I have read that Chevron has donated over $600,000 to your campaigns and inaugurations. I have also read that your former chief of staff was a lobbyist for Chevron. However, I have faith because I know you are a man of the environment. You are making California a leader in the United States on almost every environmental issue. You are what they call a ‘green’ governor."

The governor is still reviewing the letter, his spokesperson Aaron McLear said, and has not yet decided on taking a field trip to the country. According to an Associated Press article, at an April 24 press conference Schwarzenegger was asked why he turned down an offer to meet the Ecuadorans. He responded, "Everyone has their own ideas of what it is to be an environmentalist and to protect the environment."

To convey their idea of what it means to be a good corporate citizen, Piaguaje and Grefa busted into the April 25 annual shareholders meeting at Chevron’s headquarters in San Ramon, as guests of Soltani and RAN executive director Michael Brune – who both happen to own a little stock in the company.

As three dozen protesters stood outside the meeting holding a banner that read, "Tell shareholders the toxic truth," the usual crowd of well-heeled investors dressed in prim suits and trim neckties mingled inside.

Two individuals looked a little different. Grefa wore a pale green shirt and a thick rope of multicolored beads around his neck. Beside him sat Piaguaje, in a long red tunic with a traditional headdress covering his black hair. During the question period of the meeting, they addressed Chevron board president David O’Reilly.

"Our fight is not for money," Piaguaje, the Secoya tribe leader, said through a translator. "We want you to give back our lives. We want to live in peace, harmoniously with nature. Above all, we want justice. We will continue to fight until we get justice or we will die in our struggle."

"The problems you have there," O’Reilly responded, "you need to take up with the government. There’s no credible evidence that Texaco did anything wrong."

The plaintiffs argue that Chevron’s $40 million remediation job during the ’90s is an implicit admission of some level of guilt.

Chevron says it’s being attacked for the size of its purse. At the shareholders meeting, company executives proudly reported the company made $17.1 billion last year, will be investing about $15 billion in oil exploration, and is kicking off 30 new capital projects at the cost of $1 billion apiece.

Should the Ecuadoran plaintiffs prevail, the cost of a real cleanup has been estimated at $6 billion – enough to hinder just half a dozen of Chevron’s new oil wells. Chevron contends the figure is grossly inflated. "This $6 billion assessment was made by a consultant hired by the attorneys [on the plaintiffs’ side] who only spent three days there," one of Chevron’s lawyers, Ricardo Veija, told the Guardian.

"He was there for a few weeks, actually," said the environmental scientist at his side, Sara McMillen, who’s consulting for Chevron on the case. She added that the consultants asked other experts to consider the figure. "They actually bust out laughing when they hear that number," she said. "It’s more than the cost of Exxon Valdez."

But Fajardo contends the spills in Lago Agrio are larger than the Valdez tanker spill – 30 times larger, in fact (18.5 billion gallons versus 11 million). He said Ecuadorans are more interested in drinking clean water and being treated like humans than squeezing money from Chevron.

Because of the trial, Fajardo was not allowed to attend the shareholders meeting, but we asked what he would say to O’Reilly if they were face-to-face.

"If I could speak with him," Fajardo said in clear, direct words, as if talking to a child who doesn’t want to listen, "I would tell him that I think human beings are the same. We have the same rights no matter what part of the world we live in. This company has caused great harm. Instead of spending millions of dollars in defense, they could be investing money in cleanup. It’s a question of justice."

Fajardo, his stern brow softening as he considered his words, added, "I’d also tell him I have nothing against him personally. I respect him like I respect every other person." *

High-speed rail drama

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By Steven T. Jones
California’s proposed high-speed rail project is finally getting some much needed attention, which is the only thing that will overcome Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s dishonest and secretive campaign to kill it.
hsr.gif
The Democratic Party has made the project a top legislative priority (see my story on that in tomorrow’s paper), the LA Times is publicizing it, and the Fog City Journal got this quote on the subject from Mayor Gavin Newsom: “A bond has been delayed for too many years. It’s time to look forward to high-speed rail. In fact I’ll be doing a press conference with Senator Kopp on it very shortly. We’re blessed to have Senator Kopp to head this authority to really step it up because, definitely, it’s absolutely essential. You watch the rest of the world, they’ve been doing that kind of system for decades and here we are still flying on Southwest, Jet Blue and United. It makes no sense between northern and southern California and it’ll be a big part of solving a lot of the infrastructure and transportation challenges.”
He’s absolutely right. And now is the time to make sure Arnold and the more cowardly members of the Legislature don’t kill this important project.

The Guardian Iraq War casualty report (4/30/07)

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The Guardian Iraq War casualty report (4/30/07): At least 98 Iraqi civilians were killed today. 14 U.S. Soldiers were killed in Iraq in the past 72 hours.

Compiled by Paula Connelly

Casualties in Iraq

Iraqi civilians:

At least 98 Iraqi civilians were killed today in violence across the country, according to the Associated Press:
32 civilian mourners killed today in a bombing of a Shiite funeral in Diyala.
5 civilians killed today in a car bombing in Baghdad.
4 civilians killed today in checkpoint bombing in Baghdad
4 cilvilians killed today when a tanker truck exploded near a restaurant in Ramadi.

98,000: Killed since 3/03

Source: www.thelancet.com

62,570 – 68,593: Killed since 1/03

For a week by week assessment of significant incidents and trends in Iraqi civilian casualties, go to A Week in Iraq by Lily Hamourtziadou. She is a member of the Iraq Body Count project, which maintains and updates the world’s only independent and comprehensive public database of media-reported civilian deaths in Iraq.

Source: http://www.iraqbodycount.net

A Week in Iraq: Week ending 29 April 2007:
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/editorial/weekiniraq/42/

For first hand accounts of the grave situation in Iraq, visit some of these blogs:
www.ejectiraqikkk.blogspot.com
www.healingiraq.blogspot.com
www.afamilyinbaghdad.blogspot.com

U.S. military:
Fourteen U.S. soldiers and Marines were killed in Iraq during the past 72 hours, making April the sixth deadliest month of the Iraq war, according to CNN.

3,590: Killed since the U.S. invasion of Iraq 3/20/03

Source: http://www.icasualties.org/

For the Department of Defense statistics go to: http://www.defenselink.mil/

For a more detailed list of U.S. Military killed in the War in Iraq go to:
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/2007.04.html

Iraq Military:

30,000: Killed since 2003

Source: http://www.infoshout.com

Journalists:

153 journalists have been killed in Iraq since the start of the war four years ago, making Iraq the world’s most dangerous country for the press, according to Reporters without borders.

156: Killed since 3/03

Source: http://www.infoshout.com/

Refugees:

The Bush administration plans to increase quota of Iraqi refugees allowed into the U.S. from 500 to 7,000 next year in response to the growing refugee crisis, according to the Guardian Unlimited.

Border policies are tightening because one million Iraqi refugees have already fled to Jordan and another one million to Syria. Iraqi refugees who manage to make it out of Iraq still can’t work, have difficulty attending school and are not eligible for health care. Many still need to return to Iraq to escape poverty, according to BBC news.

1.6 million: Iraqis displaced internally

1.8 million: Iraqis displaced to neighboring states

Many refugees were displaced prior to 2003, but an increasing number are fleeing now, according to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ estimates.

U.S. Military Wounded:

50,502: Wounded since 3/19/03 to 1/6/07

Source: http://www.icasualties.org/


The Guardian cost of Iraq war report (4/30/07): So far, $421 billion for the U.S., $53 billion for California and $1 billion for San Francisco.

Compiled by Paula Connelly

Here is a running total of the cost of the Iraq War to the U.S. taxpayer, provided by the National Priorities Project located in Northampton, Massachusetts. The number is based on Congressional appropriations. Niko Matsakis of Boston, MA and Elias Vlanton of Takoma Park, MD originally created the count in 2003 on costofwar.com. After maintaining it on their own for the first year, they gave it to the National Priorities Project to contribute to their ongoing educational efforts.

To bring the cost of the war home, please note that California has already lost $46 billion and San Francisco has lost $1 billion to the Bush war and his mistakes. In San Francisco alone, the funds used for the war in Iraq could have hired 21,264 additional public school teachers for one year, we could have built 11,048 additional housing units or we could have provided 59,482 students four-year scholarships at public universities. For a further breakdown of the cost of the war to your community, see the NPP website aptly titled “turning data into action.”

California Democratic Convention, 6 pm

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By Tim Redmond

I just spent an hour with the star of the day, the former senator from Alaska, Mike Gravel who made news at last night’s debate by asking Barack Obama who he’s going to nuke.

Gravel is a character. He says the other candidates are “frightening,” largely because he seems to think any of them might drop a nuclear bomb on Iran. He told us that “all of these people spend more on haircuts than I raised last quarter.” He calls the president at “mental midget.”

His main issue is a national initiative process (which, given what a mess the initiative process is in CA, makes me more than a little nervous.) But he’s way against the war, and in favor of talking to all parties in all countries. He would “immediately normalize relations with Cuba.” And he thinks the war on drugs has been a failure (“we should legalize all drugs.”)

gravela.jpg
(photo by Dave Rolland)

His other signature issue is abolishing the federal income tax and replacing it with a sales tax. We got into it a bit; I asked him how it could possibly be okay to let people making more than a billion dollars a year get away with not paying an income tax. He said that we’d get the money when they spent it — but of course, these guys don’t spend most of their money. They invest it, tie it up in tax shelters, put it in foundations, etc.

But I give him credit — he talked to me about federal tax policy for at least half an hour, which is its own kind of lunacy — and way more than any ot the other candidates would ever do. A fascinating piece of work.

California Democratic Convention, 4 pm

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By Tim Redmond

There’s a lot of talk and excitement at the Progressive Caucus. A few years ago, there were only a handful of people showing up for this meeting; today, the room is totally packed.

But the real political action is at the Resolutions Committee, where the rebels in the party are demanding more accountability, sunshine — and, in the end, more of a say in where state party money goes. They have several resolutions that call on the party to bring in outside auditors and to make sure that state money really does go to all 58 counties, the way Torres promises it will.

Torres shows up for this event, and the floor is turned over to him. He quickly executes a smooth, practiced power play that shuts all of the accountability resolutions down.

He’s very polite, very civil, talks about how happy he is that people care about where the party’s money goes — then he says that “the party is not a nonprofit, not a corporation. We are a business to win elections.” Sure, he says, he’s a little secretive at times – -“but I didn’t want the Republicans to know how we’re spending money.”

Then the committee members — all appointed by Torres — vote unanimously to send all of the resolutions in question to a new task force, that will be appointed by Torres. In other words, the issue is dead for this convention. The supporters told me they would try to get a petition drive to bring the proposals to the convention floor — but that’s not likely to happen.

California Democratic Convention, 3 pm

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By Tim Redmond

I’m down in San Diego for the state Democratic convention, which Bob Mulholland, longtime political director for the CA Democratic Party, told me is “the start of the campaign to elect a Democrat to the White House.” Seven presidential candidates will be here, more than have ever attended a state convention. California, thanks to the early primary, is very much in play.

“We’re going to see the next president speaking here tomorrow,” Mulholland told me.

Some reflections:

The event kicks off with state party chair Art Torres holding a press conference that gives him a chance to tlak about how wonderful the state party is. He talks about how he’s thrilled to work on a “58-county” strategy — that is, putitng resources into all parts of the state, the way national chair Howard Dean pushed for spending money in all 50 states. It sounds great — and in a few minutes, he’ll have a chance to completely repudiate that message.

Several reporters ask about impeachment — which, to judge from the signs and stickers around here is the issue of the day — and he says that the party’s executive commitee is on record supporting impeachment, and that he expects this convention will take a similar stance. I ask him if it isn’t contradicatory that the party wants to talk about this issue, but the speaker of the House says it’s not on the table.

“No,” Torres says. “This is the Democratic Party.”

He goes on: “Nancy Pelosi is the speaker of the House. We see a distance between the grassroots and the leadership, and that’s not unusual.”

No, Art, it isn’t.

Arnold’s dishonest rail stand

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TGVtrain.web.jpg
By Steven T. Jones
Why can’t Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger or his proxies explain their opposition to high-speed rail? They try, as they must. After all, this is a green project lauded across the ideological spectrum and around the world for its potential to prevent global warming, dirty air, and clogged freeways and airports.
But all the answers Arnold’s people give are illogical, unresponsive, or contradicted by the experts. In the end, it appears the Schwarzenegger administration is simply unwilling to support high-speed rail or to level with the public about why. Legislators and other Democrats say they’re solidly behind the project, something that will be tested this weekend in San Diego when the state party convention considers a resolution of support authored by longtime party activist Jane Morrison of San Francisco.
“It’s very timely because the governor is trying to cut the budget [for the California High Speed Rail Authority] back to $1 million and delay the bond measure,” Morrison told the Guardian. “I think this is a terribly important project.”

Barons back off newspaper trial

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See bottom of story for full Web package of Guardian newspaper-transaction coverage and documents related to the Reilly suit

Click here for the Reilly press conference documents.

Click here for the famous April 26, 2006 letter.

Well, it’s over before it ever truly began.

Clint Reilly’s federal civil suit against the Hearst Corp. and MediaNews Group, filed last year in an attempt to block the would-be competitors from sharing monopoly control of the Bay Area’s daily newspaper establishment, ended today in a settlement that left Reilly claiming victory.

The deal blocks any future business deals between Hearst, owner of the San Francisco Chronicle, and MediaNews, which now owns almost every other daily in the region.

The settlement saved some of the nation’s biggest newspaper barons from the prospect of a long and embarrassing trial that could have produced alarming revelations about the way the big publishers do business.

The case was set to go before a judge and jury April 30.

But in exchange, Reilly says he got most of what he was asking for – in particular, an end to the prospect of a Hearst-Media News business deal.

At a morning press conference April 25, Reilly announced that the settlement puts the Chronicle back into competition with local MediaNews properties.

“The purpose of my lawsuit,” Reilly told reporters, “was to ensure we will not have one company or one partnership owning every single paid subscription daily newspaper in the Bay Area … I strongly believe in newspaper competition. Newspapers create the record of our civic life.”

The local real-estate investor and former mayoral candidate forced the two companies, along with minority business partners the Stephens Group and Gannett Co., to promise they wouldn’t carry out the terms of a now-famous letter dated April 26, 2006 that outlined how Hearst and MediaNews could consolidate distribution and advertising operations among their local papers to create revenue.

That was just one of many proposed plans Reilly’s suit called a violation of federal antitrust laws. Also according to the settlement, Hearst’s $300 million stock investment in MediaNews, which CEO William Dean Singleton relied upon to complete his takeovers last spring of the San Jose Mercury News, the Contra Costa Times, the Monterey County Herald, and eventually, the Torrance Daily Breeze near Los Angeles, would rise and fall in value based only on the performance of MediaNews assets outside of the Bay Area.

The “tracking stock” scheme, as it’s known, was initially conceived this way to clear Hearst and MediaNews of immediate antitrust scrutiny by justice-department officials, but Hearst hoped it would later be converted into general MediaNews stock that included its Bay Area papers, a fact confirmed by records unearthed in an earlier phase of Reilly’s suit. Hearst, it turned out, much preferred that its huge investment include the totality of MediaNews.

But today’s settlement would keep that from happening, according to terms laid out between the parties, some of which they’ve agreed not to disclose.

Any talk of conjoined operations during the next three years between the companies would have to first be divulged to Reilly and his legal team.

Singleton has also agreed to turn over all executive meeting minutes of the California Newspapers Partnership, formed originally with Gannett and Stephens in 1999, that detail any negotiations with the Chronicle or other major media companies looking to do business with MediaNews in the Bay Area for the next three years.

In addition, Reilly will be permitted to recommend a citizen for appointment to the editorial boards of CNP’s Bay Area newspapers and will himself serve on the editorial board of at least one of them.

“The ten-month-long legal battle gave us a chance to see confidential documents between Hearst and MediaNews, Stephens and Gannett,” Reilly said. “Numerous documents show these newspaper companies and their executives are capable of the very cover-ups they so vigorously prosecute in politicians, executives and celebrities. I believe that their primary motivation for settling this case was their fear of exposing questionable competitive practices to public scrutiny.

“This is the second time Reilly has done this,” his attorney, Joe Alioto, told the reporters, referring to a 2000 suit Reilly filed to stop Hearst from shutting down the San Francisco Examiner. “And he does it because the government won’t do it. He does it all at his own cost and risk.”

—————————–

Reilly’s first antitrust assault on Hearst produced some sensational revelations – including the fact that the Examiner publisher sought to trade favorable editorial coverage of then-Mayor Willie Brown in exchange for Brown’s support of Hearst’s business deals.

With the settlement in place, Reilly’s second suit won’t produce that sort of high drama. But he has forced the release of records showing that Hearst and MediaNews wanted to develop close business ties – and there are more potentially explosive documents that may become public.

After the Guardian and Media Alliance intervened to have records previously sealed by the newspaper companies opened to public access, we learned for the first time that Hearst had considered selling the San Francisco Chronicle to Singleton in 2005. But the latter’s offer was chump change, coming just a few short years after Hearst had plowed through three quarters-of-a-billion dollars in its bid to take over the Chronicle and dump the San Francisco Examiner, which it had owned for more than a century. The terms were “totally unacceptable,” Hearst executive James Asher would tell the justice department in a September deposition that turned out to be among the most interesting and candid documents to surface from the intervention.

We learned that Hearst had spent more than 10 years gnashing at the bit for an opportunity to invest in the MediaNews business model, best described as a series of “clusters,” in which Singleton consolidates the operations of several regional newspapers, hacks madly at the payroll with a broadsword, and sends ill-fated staffers packing, from veteran editors with Pulitzers on their résumés to longtime press operators.

We learned that Hearst’s inspiration for its major stock investment in MediaNews began after the two became fast friends in Texas, Singleton’s home state. MediaNews in 1995 sold the assets of the Houston Post for $120 million to Hearst, which owned the Houston Chronicle, enabling Hearst to rid itself of a major-market competitor.

We learned that from day one, Hearst wanted its $300 million investment to directly hinge on Bay Area MediaNews properties as well, presumably meaning they believed it would make the investment more valuable, and also meaning Hearst would then have less of an incentive to compete directly with MediaNews. Would you if your competitor was holding $300 million of your money?

We also learned that an anticompetitive agreement to join advertising and distribution networks with MediaNews was required by Hearst “in order to proceed with the transaction,” according to a memo Hearst exec Asher sent to MediaNews president Joseph J. Lodovic IV in early 2006. In other words, a quid pro quo by its very definition.

We learned that contradictory legal strategies are far from off limits. The Hearst Corp. argued first in Reilly’s 2000 suit that the Bay Area is brimming with aggressive newspaper competition, and for that reason, he had no grounds to denounce the closure of the Examiner planned at the time. The papers argued in 2006, however, that newspaper competition in the Bay Area is actually all but non-existent because the markets are subdivided, so Clint Reilly doesn’t have anything to complain about.

Some of the most interesting material is still under court seal, including the depositions of senior publishing executives. But the settlement specifically allows Reilly to go back into court seeking an order to open those records, and he and Alioto vowed to do that very shortly.

—————————

Overall, it’s been a monumental year for newspapers, replete with massive waves of unfortunate irony. Banner headlines at dailies across the country have prophesied the death of newspapers, a trend story that Hearst and MediaNews tried to use in court to convince judge Illston that the industry was wilting under a consolidate-or-die atmosphere. A better analysis, of course, might conclude simply that shareholders aren’t getting the enormous returns they once did, with the exception of the Chronicle, which, we learned from Reilly’s suit, has been losing $1 million a week for Hearst — if not more.

A shareholder revolt broke to pieces one of the nation’s largest newspaper chains, Knight-Ridder, respected by many in the industry for its commitment to investigations, bold enterprise reporting and funding for national and international bureaus. The company was forced to sell after investors grew restless, and Singleton swept in to takeover the chain’s gem, the Merc, as well as the Times in Contra Costa County.

Layoffs ensued and MediaNews immediately began consolidating business-side functions in a single San Ramon office where operations for several papers could be managed at once. And MediaNews recently spiced up the company’s Web site, an emblem of its new dominant position. But like the old site, there’s very little information about the company’s journalism awards, and no bios of its editors, profiles of its reporters or portraits of anyone driving the company’s papers from the bottom up. Like the old site, there’s information for investors and photos of the company’s top executives, including one of Singleton smiling alongside company president Lodovic, who earned a $1 million bonus just as MediaNews consummated its marriage with Hearst last year.

At MediaNews papers in the Bay Area, single stories began appearing in several papers under one byline during Reilly’s suit meaning fewer perspectives for major Bay Area issues. Again with a touch of irony, one of the regular bylines on stories covering Reilly’s suit has been from veteran Merc reporter Pete Carey, who under the paper’s old owners helped win two Pulitzers, first for its joint 1985 coverage of the downfall of Filipino despot Ferdinand Marcos and second for stories explaining how red tape blocked needed retrofits at some California highways leading to greater infrastructure damage during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

In Minnesota, a Ridder family heir hung on as publisher of the St. Paul Pioneer Press after Singleton took it over last year with Hearst’s help before he left just recently for a job at the competing Minneapolis Star Tribune. The move has devolved into a bitter court dispute with Singleton, according to the Twin Cities alt weekly, City Pages. The Ridder family’s involvement with the Pi Press lasted more than 70 years.

Even Singleton’s beloved flagship paper, the Denver Post, couldn’t escape “industry changes” – that is, layoffs. The paper reported buyout offers to more than a third of its staff April 24.

But we have received a recent ominous sign of what’s to come just as Reilly inked his settlement with Hearst and MediaNews.

In an election for board directors at the April 24 annual meeting of the New York Times Co., 42 percent of the shareholders withheld their votes to protest the company’s stock structure, which keeps a controlling ownership stake in the hands of the Sulzberger family, the members of which have owned the Times for generations.

The Times – like the Washington Post – has staved off shareholder raids like the one that tanked Knight-Ridder by maintaining their own separate class of stock. The Sulzbergers have reiterated that the strategy enabled them to keep quality reporting at the paper’s forefront and short-term obsessions with profit at bay.

“Mr. Sulzberger dismissed the calls to separate his two titles,” a Times story on the meeting noted, “saying that holding both roles [of publisher and chairman] allows him to ‘balance the financial and journalistic needs of this institution.'”

But Wall Street’s war on newspapers, in the meantime, is likely not over.

“At the beginning of my case, I said that 25 years involvement in politics and government had taught me how important newspapers are to our democratic society,” Reilly said at the press conference. “I hope this lawsuit in 2007 will guarantee competition among newspapers for another generation in our city and the Bay Area.”

THE PAPER TRAIL
Several of the documents stemming from Clint Reilly’s antitrust claim against Hearst, MediaNews and other business collaborators in the California Newspapers Partnership

THE UNFOLDING STORY
Major Guardian stories and editorials published since last spring following the recent major Bay Area newspaper transactions and Clint Reilly’s resulting lawsuit

THE NEW-MEDIA SCOOP
Posts to the Politics Blog about the Clint Reilly suit

THE BRUCE BLOG ON MONOPOLY MEDIA
Keeping tabs on the Galloping Conglomerati via blog reports and impertinent questions

The Bruce Blog on monopoly media

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Still censored: the story and debate on the impacts of media consolidation in the Bay Area
Posted in Bruce (B3) on April 16, 2007 05:03 PM

Shocked! Shocked! And shocked again!
Posted in Bruce (B3) on April 13, 2007 05:44 PM

Stop the presses! Here come the documents of secrecy, stonewalling, and collaboration from the nation’s biggest chains (Hearst, Singleton, Gannett, Stephens) Why people get mad at the media (l4)
Posted in Bruce (B3) on April 11, 2007 03:53 PM

Singleton buys another daily paper and further locks up the Bay Area market .Where’s the U.S. Attorney General and the California Attorney General?
Posted in Bruce (B3) on February 5, 2007 05:11 PM

Why people get mad at the media (part 9). the Chronicle and Associated Press blow the big media story and refuse to make corrections
Posted in Bruce (B3) on January 30, 2007 01:48 PM

Eureka! More on how monopoly papers cover monopoly news
Posted in Bruce (B3) on December 20, 2006 04:35 PM

Clint Reilly wins a big one against Hearst and Singleton. Fighting to keep one newspaper towns from becoming a one newspaper region.
Posted in Bruce (B3) on November 28, 2006 03:04 PM

Memo to the city desks of the Chronicle/Hearst and Media News Group/Singleton papers and the Associated Press: the Hearst/Reilly antitrust suit is scheduled for a hearing tomorrow (Wednesday) morning before Federal Judge Susan Illston. Will you cover it?
Posted in Bruce (B3) on November 21, 2006 05:57 PM

SF Chronicle to Outsource All of Its Printing, reports Editor and Publisher Magazine. Will those “competitive” Hearst and Singleton papers cover the monopoly story and its impact on San Francisco and the Bay Area?
Posted in Bruce (B3) on November 17, 2006 12:29 PM

The Santa Rosa Press Democrat/New York Times “censors” the annual Project Censored story. Why? Some impertinent questions for the Press Democrat
Posted in Bruce (B3) on November 13, 2006 01:55 PM

More Impertinent Questions on Hearst shenanigans on the drug pricing scandal (part 5) Why did Hearst censor an AP story on McKesson profits?
Posted in Bruce (B3) on November 2, 2006 02:33 PM

Let us lift a Potrero Hill martini for Thomas Peele of the Contra Costa Times/Singleton papers. He criticized Singleton by name for sealing court records in the Hearst/Singleton antitrust case.
Posted in Bruce (B3) on October 30, 2006 03:37 PM

Dear Jerry Brown: more impertinent questions on the Hearst shenanigans (part 4)
Posted in Bruce (B3) on October 20, 2006 04:55 PM

Impertinent questions on the new Hearst shenanigans (part 2, see previous blog)
Posted in Bruce (B3) on October 18, 2006 03:52 PM

The Guardian turns 40: some things never change
Posted in Bruce (B3) on October 17, 2006 04:01 PM

Judge seals file in MediaNews trial
Posted in Bruce (B3) on September 15, 2006 02:51 PM

Eureka! Finally, Hearst covers the censored story and admits it is partnering with Singleton
Posted in Bruce (B3) on September 14, 2006 01:48 PM

Finally, the Conglomerati do a bit of reporting (actually only a little bit)
Posted in Bruce (B3) on September 8, 2006 04:22 PM

Eureka! Here comes even more Eurekaism! (part 3)
Posted in Bruce (B3) on September 5, 2006 05:35 PM

Eureka! There’s more Eurekaism!
Posted in Bruce (B3) on August 25, 2006 04:39 PM

Where are Hearst and the Chronicle? The conglomerate cometh
Posted in Bruce (B3) on August 11, 2006 05:00 PM

More on the Case of the Uncovered Bay Area Newspaper Monopoly
Posted in Bruce (B3) on August 2, 2006 12:03 PM

The press censors the press
Posted in Bruce (B3) on August 1, 2006 04:53 PM

Stop the presses
Posted in Bruce (B3) on July 31, 2006 05:40 PM

Monopolies are forever
Posted in Bruce (B3) on July 28, 2006 04:24 PM

Scott Howard

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> paulr@sfbg.com

As an aficionado of the men’s-club look, I was swept into Scott Howard as if into some beautiful dream. Beyond the set of fluttering drapes that shield the host’s station from errant breezes blowing near the front door lies a world of coffee- and tea-colored wood (floor, table and chairs, wall trim), gently dim lighting, a slightly sunken floor like that of some kind of arena, and a brilliantly backlit bar standing against one wall like a sentinel.

But … we weren’t really under any delusion of having stepped into White’s or the Athenaeum in London; although Scott Howard’s interior design relies heavily on traditional materials, it gives them a spare, modern look. Lines are clean and frivolities few, and you feel that the restaurant is meant to appeal to tasteful people who know how to make much of time. There is no wasted motion or idle effect. The Cypress Club (which long occupied the space) is indeed gone for good.

The masculine cast of things isn’t surprising, if only because the restaurant’s chef-owner and eponym bear a name of double-barreled maleness. Yet Scott Howard (the restaurant, and maybe the man too) is all about elegance, not ESPN, and elegance here is understood as flowing from understatement. In this sense the place makes an interesting contrast to nearby Bix (just around the corner, on brick-lined, lanelike Gold Street), whose aura, while also male, has a distinctly more fanciful, Great Gatsby retro element. You could easily stand at Bix’s bar and indulge a brief fantasy of waiting for Nick Carraway; Scott Howard, by contrast, is very much of the here and now, spotlighted by halogen sconce lamps in the ceiling.

The tables are set comfortably far apart – a subtle touch that helps the restaurant breathe more easily and allows the restaurant’s patrons to converse in ordinary tones. And what would they be conversing about? Why, the prix fixe, of course, an innovation Howard returned to the one-and-a-half-year-old restaurant a few months ago. The deal is $32 for a three-course dinner – starter, main dish, and dessert, with a couple of choices available in each category – or $47 for the same dinner with wine pairings. (No choices as to the wines, and none needed, so far as I was concerned. The pairings were superior.)

A la carte devotees and other iconoclasts need not fret, for an entire side of the menu card is given over to the regular menu, whose entries, from a pork chop to Maine lobster to hamachi, reveal Howard’s distinctive blending of European, Asian, and all-American cooking. His style is a bit like Bradley Ogden’s, but with a less overt Middle Western bent.

It is sometimes said by cognoscenti that when visiting London and Paris, you should always go to London first so as not to be disappointed. If you start in Paris, you might find London, for all its splendors, a little tatty. A similar advisory ought to apply to Scott Howard’s tuna tartare ($12), a disk of chopped fish atop a bed of cubed avocado, with a well-modulated chorus of piperade and crisped chorizo bits on the side and, throughout, a subtle perfume of vanilla oil. This dish is so sublime that you will struggle not to order a second one (we struggled unsuccessfully), and if you start with it, you might find that it casts a shadow over everything that follows. One solution would be to have it for dessert, but this would seem odd, despite the vanilla; another would be not to have it at all, but this would be a heavy loss.

Only marginally less rapturous but considerably earthier is the orzo "mac and cheese" with tomato jam ($7 for a sizable crock), which could pass as an especially creamy risotto. ("That stuff is evil!" our server said to us with barely restrained glee. He meant "evil," of course, in the best possible, the Dame Edna, sense.) If Howard’s sensibility glides gracefully between the earthy and the sublime, then the prix fixe cooking finds a balance somewhere near the middle, in happy-medium country. The cooking here is sophisticated rather than dazzling – the kind of food your table considers for a moment in quiet admiration but does not hesitate to eat, while talking about other matters.

A tomato soup, for instance, was rich and thick, with a few flicks of fennel pollen (which looked like black pepper) cast over the molten surface and a faint hint of smokiness that suggested roasting. A plate of smoked salmon draped over a potato pancake – really more of a fritter – and garnished with a dollop of sour cream was a classic presentation, the kind of thing you might be served at your club, if you belonged to one. (Wine pairing for both: a crispy-rich albarino.)

The recurrence of salmon – Scottish, as a main course, with hedgehog mushrooms and coins of fingerling potatoes in a tarragon broth – didn’t quite make it up the mountain for me. The poached fish was fishy, the broth watery. Much better was roasted lamb loin, ruby rose in the middle, laid in two pieces atop a bed of braised spinach and scallions and finished with dribbles of truffled jus. Your club would definitely serve this with pride. (Wine pairing for both: an intense but controlled California primitivo.)

Prix fixe desserts seldom set the world on fire, and Scott Howard’s are no exception, though the sparkling moscato sounded a festive holiday note. Warm chocolate cake with blackberry coulis and whipped cream? Nice, but a rerun deep in syndication. There was nothing showy about butterscotch pudding either, except that it was dense and good, sweet but not too. Can a dessert be manly? *

SCOTT HOWARD

Dinner: Tue.-Sat., 5:30-10 p.m.

500 Jackson, SF

(415) 956-7040

www.scotthowardsf.com

Full bar

AE/DC/MC/V

Well-managed noise

Wheelchair accessible

The unfolding story

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Media trial to proceed — in public
Reilly anti-monopoly case goes forward
BY G.W. SCHULZ

Reilly’s right to sue
The “standing” argument keeps activists out in the cold — and monopolies flush
EDITORIAL

What we know now
New court documents show the big local dailies couldn’t handle competition — but never talked much about improving their papers
BY G.W. SCHULZ

Brown must fight the media monopoly
Now that this is all out in public, will California’s new attorney general, Jerry Brown, put a stop to it?
EDITORIAL

Barons of monopoly
Exclusive: Newspaper barons have history of anticompetitive talks, court records show
BY G.W. SCHULZ

Between the sheets
Are the Bay Area’s two big newspaper barons planning to carve up the region and end competition? We’re about to find out.
BY G.W. SCHULZ

Judge opens secret media merger files
Victory! Federal judge orders newspaper barons to open secret merger documents
BY TIM REDMOND

Off the record
Billion-dollar software company Mercury Interactive wants to keep details of a backdating scandal under seal
BY G.W. SCHULZ


Collusion blocked
EDITORIAL

Opening the secret files
Guardian, Media Alliance file legal motion to open key Hearst-Singleton newspaper-merger records
EDITORIAL

Unseal the court files
The lawsuit that seeks to stop the monopolization of daily newspapers in the Bay Area isn’t just a business dispute.
BY TIM REDMOND

Media moguls get cozier
Hearst and Dean Singleton say there’s no illegal deal — but just look at the evidence
BY G.W. SCHULZ

Judge slams daily-paper monopoly
Those lying newspaper barons — Hearst, Singleton — are nailed trying to wipe out competition.
EDITORIAL

The morning after
While drunk on big newspaper purchases, Dean Singleton promised competitive papers and no layoffs. Now he’s swinging the ax, cutting deals with Hearst, and decimating local news coverage
BY G.W. SCHULZ

Journalists need to fight back
EDITORIAL

The silent scandal
How does media concentration affect the news we read? Just check out the coverage of the latest newspaper merger
BY G.W. SCHULZ

Media blues
BY G.W. SCHULZ

Feds let Singleton off the hook
Justice Department refuses to block media mega-merger
BY TIM REDMOND

The judge misses the point
EDITORIAL

Hidden in the Chron
Story buried on page B9 explains the latest in the Singleton merger case
BY TIM REDMOND

The case against the media grab
EDITORIAL

The Guardian Iraq War casualty report (4/24/07)

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The Guardian Iraq War casualty report (4/24/07): 9 U.S. soldiers killed. 25 Iraqi civilians killed.

Compiled by Paula Connelly

Today the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform heard testimony from U.S. military personnel and their family members as part of the Democratically-controlled Congress’s effort to hold the Bush Administration accountable for its conduct of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the New York Times. The hearings were intended to determine the “sources and motivations” for the erroneous accounts of the events that lead to the injury and death of specific U.S. soldiers.

Casualties in Iraq

U.S. military:

9 U.S. soldiers were killed in a car bomb attack that an insurgent group that includes al-Qaida claims responsibility for, according to the Associated Press.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/04/24/international/i042336D17.DTL

3,570: Killed since the U.S. invasion of Iraq 3/20/03

Source: http://www.icasualties.org/

For the Department of Defense statistics go to: http://www.defenselink.mil/

For a more detailed list of U.S. Military killed in the War in Iraq go to:
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/2007.04.html

Iraqi civilians:

25 Iraqi civilians were killed today when a suicide bomber attacked a makeshift football field and market in the Albufarraj area east of Ramadi, according to the Brisbane Times.

98,000: Killed since 3/03

Source: www.thelancet.com

62,281 – 68,289: Killed since 1/03

For a week by week assessment of significant incidents and trends in Iraqi civilian casualties, go to A Week in Iraq by Lily Hamourtziadou. She is a member of the Iraq Body Count project, which maintains and updates the world’s only independent and comprehensive public database of media-reported civilian deaths in Iraq.

Source: http://www.iraqbodycount.net

A Week in Iraq: Week ending 15 April 2007:
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/editorial/weekiniraq/41/

For first hand accounts of the grave situation in Iraq, visit some of these blogs:
www.ejectiraqikkk.blogspot.com
www.healingiraq.blogspot.com
www.afamilyinbaghdad.blogspot.com

Iraq Military:

30,000: Killed since 2003

Source:http://www.infoshout.com

Journalists:

153 journalists have been killed in Iraq since the start of the war four years ago, making Iraq the world’s most dangerous country for the press, according to Reporters without borders.

156: Killed since 3/03

Source: http://www.infoshout.com/

Refugees:

The Bush administration plans to increase quota of Iraqi refugees allowed into the U.S. from 500 to 7,000 next year in response to the growing refugee crisis, according to the Guardian Unlimited.

Border policies are tightening because one million Iraqi refugees have already fled to Jordan and another one million to Syria. Iraqi refugees who manage to make it out of Iraq still can’t work, have difficulty attending school and are not eligible for health care. Many still need to return to Iraq to escape poverty, according to BBC news.

1.6 million: Iraqis displaced internally

1.8 million: Iraqis displaced to neighboring states

Many refugees were displaced prior to 2003, but an increasing number are fleeing now, according to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ estimates.

U.S. Military Wounded:

50,502: Wounded since 3/19/03 to 1/6/07

Source: http://www.icasualties.org/

The Guardian cost of Iraq war report (4/24/07): So far, $419 billion for the U.S., $53 billion for California and $1 billion for San Francisco.

Compiled by Paula Connelly

Here is a running total of the cost of the Iraq War to the U.S. taxpayer, provided by the National Priorities Project located in Northampton, Massachusetts. The number is based on Congressional appropriations. Niko Matsakis of Boston, MA and Elias Vlanton of Takoma Park, MD originally created the count in 2003 on costofwar.com. After maintaining it on their own for the first year, they gave it to the National Priorities Project to contribute to their ongoing educational efforts.

To bring the cost of the war home, please note that California has already lost $46 billion and San Francisco has lost $1 billion to the Bush war and his mistakes. In San Francisco alone, the funds used for the war in Iraq could have hired 21,264 additional public school teachers for one year, we could have built 11,048 additional housing units or we could have provided 59,482 students four-year scholarships at public universities. For a further breakdown of the cost of the war to your community, see the NPP website aptly titled “turning data into action.”

Up against the police secrecy lobby

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EDITORIAL On April 17 the full weight of the state’s secrecy lobby and police unions descended on Sacramento to prevent the public from having any access to the records of peace officers who have faced disciplinary charges. The tactics were brutal: Everett Bobbitt, a police lawyer, testified to the Assembly Public Safety Committee that allowing any sunshine whatsoever would instantly threaten the lives of hardworking cops and their families.

His argument was bizarre, reminiscent of some of the tortured claims that the Bush administration made in seeking support for the war in Iraq and the civil liberties fiasco called the USA PATRIOT Act. He suggested that criminal gangs might find out something that would allow them to threaten police officers (despite the fact that until a recent court decision these records had been open for more than 20 years in San Francisco and 30 in Berkeley, and not a single cop had been in any way physically harmed by the information). He claimed that peace officers have an extraordinary right to privacy (despite the fact that as public employees who are given guns and badges and extraordinary powers, they need at least some degree of public accountability).

And the committee, despite being dominated by Democrats, was utterly cowed. It was a disgrace, and public officials and law enforcement leaders in San Francisco and the East Bay need to make a point of joining the fight to ensure that police secrecy doesn’t continue to carry the day.

At issue was a bill by Assemblymember Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) that would overturn an odious 2006 court decision known as Copley. In that ruling, the California Supreme Court concluded that all files and hearings reutf8g to police discipline must be kept entirely secret. The ruling "has effectively shut down virtually every forum in which the public previously had access to the police discipline process," Tom Newton, general counsel to the California Newspaper Publishers Association, wrote in a letter supporting Leno’s bill, AB 1648.

Newton added, "Copley represents nothing less than complete and total victory for the secrecy lobby in this state. In the ultimate perversion of legislative intent, the most powerful forces in government and their exceptionally creative and effective lobbyists have achieved a perfect storm of official secrecy – making it illegal to inform the public about official corruption…. These aren’t just any public employees that have achieved the holy grail of KGB-like official secrecy – they are the only public officials given the right by the public to affect the personal liberty of citizens and even take life, if necessary to protect the public peace."

Leno’s bill – which would simply restore the law to what it was for decades – had the support of the American Civil Liberties Union and a long list of grassroots organizations, including the Asian Law Caucus, Chinese for Affirmative Action, La Raza Centro Legal, the NAACP, and the National Black Police Association.

And yet Leno didn’t have the votes in the committee to even move the bill to the floor. Not one of his four Democratic colleagues (Jose Solorio of Anaheim, Hector de la Torre of South Gate, Anthony J. Portantino of Pasadena, and San Francisco’s Fiona Ma) was willing to move the bill forward. Ma, apparently, was among those who bought the police line: she told the Guardian she was "not prepared to vote for Leno’s bill as it was" but would be willing to accept a compromise that "also protects the rights of family members." Remember, nothing in Leno’s bill in any way endangers or provides any information on any member of a police officer’s family.

The only good news is that a similar, slightly weaker bill, SB 1019, by state senator Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles), has cleared the Senate’s Public Safety Committee and will go to the Senate floor – and if it passes, it will come before the Assembly. So there’s still a chance to pass some version of a police accountability and sunshine bill this year.

It’s crucial that public officials and particularly law enforcement leaders speak out in favor of this legislation. The city of Berkeley has formally endorsed the bill, but Mayor Gavin Newsom and Oakland mayor Ron Dellums have been silent and need to speak up. So should San Francisco sheriff Mike Hennessey (who told us he supports the idea in principle but thinks Leno’s proposal goes too far) and District Attorney Kamala Harris.

And Fiona Ma needs to hear, loudly, from her constituents: police accountability is a priority, and she can’t get away with ducking it. *

CLINT REILLY AND JOSEPH ALIOTO ANNOUNCE A PRESS CONFERENCE ON THEIR ANTITRUST SUIT AT 10:30 WEDNESDAY MORNING

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Stop the presses or rev up the presses: as the case may be. Check the Guardian website and the Bruce blog for full coverage, commentary, and viewing of all unsealed documents. B3

Media Contact: Brooke Halpin – Halpin House West 310-702-6300

MEDIA ALERT

CLINTON REILLY AND JOSEPH ALIOTO WILL BE HOLDING A PRESS CONFERENCE TO ANNOUNCE A MAJOR NEWS DEVELOPMENT REGARDING THE LAWSUIT AGAINST MEDIA NEWS GROUP, INC., THE HEARST CORPORATION; STEPHENS GROUP INC.; GANNETT CO., INC.; and CALIFORNIA NEWSPAPERS PARTNERSHIP

ATTN: BUSINESS, LEGAL and CONSUMER REPORTERS

WHAT: DETAILED NEWS REGARDING THE LAWSUIT WILL BE
DISCLOSED AT THE PRESS CONFERENCE. TIME SENSITIVE MATERIALS TO BE DISTRIBUTED.

WHEN: WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25, 2007 AT 10:30AM PACIFIC

WHERE: CLINTON REILLY HOLDINGS
MERCHANTS EXCHANGE BUILDING
465 CALIFORNIA STREET
MAIN LOBBY
SAN FRANCISCO, CA

The Guardian Iraq War casualty report (4/23/07)

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The Guardian Iraq War casualty report (4/23/07): 46 Iraqi civilians killed.

Compiled by Paula Connelly

Casualties in Iraq

Iraqi civilians:

At least 46 Iraqi civilians were killed today in suicide bombings across the country, according to the Associated Press.

98,000: Killed since 3/03

Source: www.thelancet.com

62,281 – 68,289: Killed since 1/03

Source: http://www.iraqbodycount.net

For a week by week assessment of significant incidents and trends in Iraqi civilian casualties, go to A Week in Iraq by Lily Hamourtziadou. She is a member of the Iraq Body Count project, which maintains and updates the world’s only independent and comprehensive public database of media-reported civilian deaths in Iraq.

A Week in Iraq: Week ending 15 April 2007:
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/editorial/weekiniraq/41/

For first hand accounts of the grave situation in Iraq, visit some of these blogs:
www.ejectiraqikkk.blogspot.com
www.healingiraq.blogspot.com
www.afamilyinbaghdad.blogspot.com

U.S. military:

3,570: Killed since the U.S. invasion of Iraq 3/20/03

Source: http://www.icasualties.org/

For the Department of Defense statistics go to: http://www.defenselink.mil/

For a more detailed list of U.S. Military killed in the War in Iraq go to:
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/2007.04.html

Iraq Military:

30,000: Killed since 2003

Source:http://www.infoshout.com

Journalists:

153 journalists have been killed in Iraq since the start of the war four years ago, making Iraq the world’s most dangerous country for the press, according to Reporters without borders.

156: Killed since 3/03

Source: http://www.infoshout.com/

Refugees:

The Bush administration plans to increase quota of Iraqi refugees allowed into the U.S. from 500 to 7,000 next year in response to the growing refugee crisis, according to the Guardian Unlimited.

Border policies are tightening because one million Iraqi refugees have already fled to Jordan and another one million to Syria. Iraqi refugees who manage to make it out of Iraq still can’t work, have difficulty attending school and are not eligible for health care. Many still need to return to Iraq to escape poverty, according to BBC news.

1.6 million: Iraqis displaced internally

1.8 million: Iraqis displaced to neighboring states

Many refugees were displaced prior to 2003, but an increasing number are fleeing now, according to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ estimates.

U.S. Military Wounded:

50,502: Wounded since 3/19/03 to 1/6/07

Source: http://www.icasualties.org/

The Guardian cost of Iraq war report (4/23/07): So far, $419 billion for the U.S., $53 billion for California and $1 billion for San Francisco.

Compiled by Paula Connelly

Here is a running total of the cost of the Iraq War to the U.S. taxpayer, provided by the National Priorities Project located in Northampton, Massachusetts. The number is based on Congressional appropriations. Niko Matsakis of Boston, MA and Elias Vlanton of Takoma Park, MD originally created the count in 2003 on costofwar.com. After maintaining it on their own for the first year, they gave it to the National Priorities Project to contribute to their ongoing educational efforts.

To bring the cost of the war home, please note that California has already lost $46 billion and San Francisco has lost $1 billion to the Bush war and his mistakes. In San Francisco alone, the funds used for the war in Iraq could have hired 21,264 additional public school teachers for one year, we could have built 11,048 additional housing units or we could have provided 59,482 students four-year scholarships at public universities. For a further breakdown of the cost of the war to your community, see the NPP website aptly titled “turning data into action.”

Ben Bagdikian comments on the monopolization capers of Hearst and Gannett in l937 and Hearst, Singleton, and Gannett in 2007

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A note from B3: Ben Bagdikian knows more and has written more about the monopolization of the press than
just about anybody. He is the author of six editions of the media classic, “The Media Monopoly,” and dean emeritus of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California- Berkeley.

In Bagdikian’s first media monopoly book in l983, he wrote that 50 or so conglomerates controlled most of the U.S. media. With each edition the numbers shrank and for years, whenever I would speak on journalism, I would call Bagdikian and ask him what the current magic monopoly was. It went from 26 in l987 to 23 in l990 to ten in l996 to five with his latest edition, “The New Media Monopoly.”

He is retired from teaching and living in Berkeley in the shadow of the Hearst and Singleton empires. But since I haven’t seen him quoted in any of their papers, I sent him an email asking if he would like to weigh in with any comments on the latest monopoly proceedings of his local papers and on the upcoming Reilly vs. Hearst antitrust trial. This is his answer.

ANTI-TRUST REDISCOVERED?

By Ben Bagdikian

When Judge Illston ruled recently that she may open the secret deals that turned the San Francisco Bay Area into a newspaper monopoly paradise, it’s possible that like the biblical Adam and Eve paradise, the parties —- Singleton, Hearst, McClatchy —are stark naked.
For while crazy things were happening that looked like the bad old days when monopoly was the standard newspaper mode of operation while government and judges looked the other way.
Hearst owned the wobbly afternoon Examiner and Nan McEvoy, the minority De Young stockholder in favor of avoiding monopoly, got outvoted by the new model newspaper shareholders. Hearst was about to toss the Examiner into the Humboldt Current to freeze to death while Washington Anti-Trust cops in Washington were asleep in a nice warm bar provided by the Bushies (the Bushies have a knack for finding Attorneys General whose approach is “tell me what you want and I’ll tell you it’s legal”). Most of the de Young heirs, like most third and fourth generation newspaper stockholders, sold their Chronicle stock for seven-plus-digit lump sums instead of annual dividends. They sold the Chron to Hearst.

MORE RENEWABLE THAN YOU

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by Amanda Witherell

Oakland is destroying us at the green game. All told, California is doing pretty well though, thanks to AB 32, but keep an eye on Oregon. Portland’s shooting for 100 percent renewable by 2010. How’s our evergreen Gavin going to compete with that? We better get that Community Choice Aggregation going….

Top Ten US City Use of Renewable Energy

1. Oakland, CA (17%)
2. Sacramento/SF/San Jose, CA (12%)*
3. Portland, OR (10%)
4. Boston (8.6%)
5. San Diego, CA (8%)
6. Austin, TX (6%)
7. Los Angeles, CA (5%)
8. Minneapolis, MN (4.5%)
9. Seattle, WA (3.5%)
10. Chicago, IL (2.5%)
*tied
SustainLane US City Rankings data 2006/2007

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