Congress Archives — Page 16 of 32 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Welcome to Peter Darbee’s world

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

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June 11, 2010

“The only thing worse than a thug is an ineffective thug,” a source, who has closely tracked Pacific Gas & Electric Co.’s activities for years, told us yesterday. “And that’s what [PG&E CEO] Peter Darbee is revealing himself to be.”

That’s pretty harsh, and isn’t just some hot air blown off by a disgruntled employee or a customer angry about a power shutoff. PG&E’s problem now is that since Darbee set out on the political adventure known as Proposition 16, this kind of characterization isn’t so far off from the sentiments publicly expressed by a number of powerful figures that the company must continue to work with.

California Public Utilities Commission President Michael Peevey wrote in an op-ed in the San Jose Mercury News that, “Pure and simple, Proposition 16 is a clever, brazen, buzzword-driven effort by one company to manipulate the California Constitution to protect its current monopoly.” Peevey isn’t exactly known as a PG&E hater –- green-power advocates have complained to the Guardian in the past that they think he’s too willing to honor the company’s requests. But Prop 16 clearly irked Peevey, who presides over the commission that decides whether PG&E will be allowed to raise rates.

Half a dozen state senators, including Senate pro tem Darrell Steinberg, rebuked PG&E over Prop 16, writing in a formal letter in December that it “calls into question your company’s integrity.”

On June 9, the day after voters shot down Prop 16, PG&E shares dropped 2.2 percent — the greatest decline of electricity utilities in the S&P 500 — possibly signaling a fluctuation in shareholder confidence. The Los Angeles Times ran a story pointing out (as the Guardian did) that the majority of counties that voted “no” on Prop 16 overlap with PG&E’s service territory, suggesting that the initiative dubbed by opponents as “PG&E’s power grab” was roundly rejected by its own customers.

Yet amid all the signs that PG&E had gone too far, despite all the indications that the utility had alienated regulators and political allies and royally pissed off its customers to boot, CEO Peter Darbee was patting himself on the back. While others were beginning to see Darbee as an unaccountable power-monger, Darbee evidently regarded himself as a fearless, courageous leader.

In a memo obtained by the Guardian that the CEO sent out to PG&E employees the day after Prop 16 was defeated, Darbee compares PG&E’s $46 million, failed quest to alter the state constitution through Prop 16 to the company’s decision to withdraw from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The utility won the respect of environmentalists when it dumped the national business organization last fall, denouncing its do-nothing approach to climate change.

Darbee suggests that PG&E’s willingness to take a stand in both instances is evidence of strong corporate leadership, but it’s an odd comparison to make. As Steinberg and other senators pointed out in their December letter, Prop 16 would’ve served to limit renewable energy development, not facilitate it. “It is unacceptable for a company that is falling behind in meeting state adopted goals for clean energy to impede the efforts of others who would attain those goals through innovative means,” Steinberg wrote.

Without further ado, here’s what Darbee had to say after Prop 16 went down. The essay, which was submitted as an opinion piece to the San Francisco Chronicle, is prefaced with a note to employees.

——————————————————————————————–
From: A Message From Peter Darbee
Sent: Wednesday, June 09, 2010 2:18 PM
To: All PG&E Mail Recipients; All PGE Corp Employees
Subject: After Election Day, A Reflection On Leadership

To All Employees:

As we look forward after the culmination of a hard campaign on Proposition 16, I wanted to share with you a short opinion essay that we submitted today to the San Francisco Chronicle. It addresses head on some of the questions we have all seen about PG&E’s stance on tough issues-from Proposition 16 to climate change, or any number of other examples many of us can no doubt recall. It makes clear that, in each case, our focus is on leadership, even-or maybe especially-when it requires tremendous courage.

I believe passionately that this is one of the aspects of our character that sets PG&E apart from many other companies. That’s been true throughout our history, and it’s even more true today.

As is always the case, the paper may or may not choose to print this piece. We hope they will. It’s an important and timely message for our customers. But it’s just as important and timely for all of us as employees. And, whether it appears in print or not, it’s a message we can all take heart in and carry forward proudly to others.

________________________________

The Price of Leadership

By Peter Darbee, Chairman, CEO and President, PG&E Corporation

Prime Minister Tony Blair said a few years ago, “I do not seek unpopularity as a badge of honour, but sometimes it is the price of leadership. And the cost of conviction.”

I was reminded of that observation this spring, as Pacific Gas and Electric Company came under widespread criticism for its support of Proposition 16, a statewide initiative to give people the right to vote on proposals to create risky new public agencies to provide electric power.

Many of those who criticized our support of Proposition 16 have long applauded our leadership at the state and national level on environmental issues and as a clean-energy provider. At the state level, PG&E helped champion passage of AB32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006.

PG&E also supported California’s aggressive vehicle emissions standards, opposing efforts by a national business organization to overturn them.

At the national level, we were instrumental in forging an historic alliance of major utilities, other large businesses, national environmental groups and labor unions to support comprehensive and effective clean-energy and climate change legislation in Congress. The work of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, of which PG&E has been a major contributor, is widely credited with inspiring major congressional initiatives on this vital issue.

While PG&E has been frequently honored for its environmental performance and commitment, including Newsweek magazine’s ranking as the country’s greenest utility in 2009, our environmental leadership has aroused controversy as well.

Last year, in a widely discussed move, PG&E withdrew its membership in a national business organization over fundamental differences on the need for climate change legislation. While a number of other major businesses followed our lead, others questioned why we broke ranks to support actions that could increase energy costs. We have explained, without apology, the science behind our stand and our careful choice of policies to utilize market forces to minimize costs.

Some of our longtime supporters, who decried Proposition 16, believe the PG&E they once admired lost its way somewhere along the line. I would tell them that their disagreement with us-which we respect-is the price of our leadership on important issues of the day. By staking out bold positions, we of course invite controversy. But the alternative is to be cowed by fear of criticism into ducking our leadership opportunities and responsibilities. Surely our society needs more leadership, not less.

After a lively debate, the voters have now spoken on Proposition 16 and we respect the outcome. We hope our critics will equally respect our willingness to participate in the system and engage on the important issues of the day. Through mutual engagement and mutual dialog, we can improve our company, our communities and our country.

Death and (estate) taxes

Zelda Bronstein

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June 10, 2010

14

There’s an interesting story in the NY Times about a Texas billionaire whose entire estate will be passed along tax-free, thanks to a rather silly act of Congress. It’s obviously a bit of a scandal that a guy worth $9 billion will pay no estate tax at all, but the really interesting tidbit was deep in the story:

The United States enacted an estate tax in 1916, and when John D. Rockefeller, America’s first billionaire, died in 1937, his estate paid 70 percent. Since then, the rates have fluctuated, but this is the first time the tax has been repealed altogether.

John D. Rockefeller’s estate was taxed at 70 percent.

Of course, since the guy died with a couple of billion to his name, his kids had to make do with a paltry few hundred million — and oh, how it crimped their lifestyles. I grew up about five miles from the Rockefeller estate in Pocantico Hills, New York, and I can tell you: The family owned 7,000 acres of pristine, beautiful land only 30 miles north of New York City. Chauffers drove the brothers, Nelson and David, to their offices every day. Security guards armed with salt guns patrolled the property to keep kids like me out. Nelson managed to get elected governor of New York and became vice-president of the United States (before dying of a heart attack while having sex with his secretary). David was the chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank. The brothers donated an original Chagall window to their tiny church in the nearby town, and bought their wives brand new Rolls Royces every year.

Their kids have managed to survive on the tiny remants of that fortune, too. And their kids’ kids.

The point is, the 70 percent estate tax didn’t wipe out John D. Rockefeller’s wealth or harm his family’s future. There was plenty left. That’s the thing to remember when we talk about taxing the rich: They always wind up with plenty left.

Now: full-speed ahead with CCA

David Talbot

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June 9, 2010

2

EDITORIAL Proposition 16 — Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s monopoly power grab — has to rank as the most venal, corrupt abuse of the initiative system in California history. The utility spent nearly $50 million to pay for a misleading signature drive, mount a campaign of lies and distortions, create bogus front groups, and flood the airwaves with ads — all in an effort to convince Californians to vote against their own interests. It’s a case study in why the state needs initiative reform (a ban on paid signature gatherers and limits on corporate campaign contributions would be good places to start).

At press time, we didn’t know how the election would turn out — but this much is clear: San Francisco needs to move ahead with community choice aggregation and continue to push for public power anyway.

Prop. 16 was never about "taxpayer rights." The whole point of the initiative was to block communities from replacing PG&E with public power. But it’s too late to stop San Francisco. Thanks to heroic efforts by Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, the city has already reached a deal with Power Choice LLC to create and operate a CCA system in town. Under state law, every resident and business in the city is automatically a customer of the CCA unless they opt out — so Prop. 16, which bars public-power agencies from signing up new customers, doesn’t apply.

It was a battle royal to get to this point. The PG&E-friendly San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, operating under a PG&E-friendly mayor, had more than a year to find a vendor and negotiate a contract. But PUC General Manager Ed Harrington dragged his feet at every turn. In fact, just a few weeks ago, Harrington tried to delay the contract until after the June election — thus giving PG&E a better shot at invalidating any contract. But with enough pressure from the supervisors, the basic terms of the deal were sealed in plenty of time.

Besides, San Francisco is in a unique position. Federal law (the Raker Act) requires the city to operate a public power system — and that act of Congress would trump any state law.

So the supervisors should move forward on finalizing the CCA, Mayor Gavin Newsom should sign off on it, and City Attorney Dennis Herrera should prepare to defend it vigorously if PG&E tries to sue.

Herrera has told us repeatedly that he thinks the city’s legal position is sound. In the past, he’s refused to use the Raker Act as a legal strategy — to go to court and force his own city to follow the law — but he needs to be ready to use that powerful weapon if PG&E tries to interfere with the implementation of CCA.

City officials at every level also have to make a concerted effort to counter PG&E’s lies — particularly the sort of misinformation that made it into the Matier and Ross column in the Chron June 7, the day before the election. Quoting unnamed sources, the reporters insisted that San Francisco CCA’s electricity rates would be higher than PG&E’s. That’s only true if you ignore the fact that PG&E’s rates are unstable and going up every year and that the cost of alternative energy is coming down every year — and if you don’t consider the costs of climate change, oil spills, coal mining disasters, nuclear waste storage, and all the other impacts of PG&E’s nonrenewable energy mix. And remember: San Francisco is asking the CCA to provide 51 percent renewables by 2019; PG&E’s portfolio doesn’t even meet the state’s weak 15 percent requirement. (There is also, of course, the multibillion dollar risk that San Francisco could lose the Hetch Hetchy dam if the city continues to violate the Raker Act.)

But the private utility that spent gobs of money on the Prop. 16 campaign will spend millions more in San Francisco to convince customers to opt out of the CCA. So the city needs its own campaign to explain why public power is not only much greener, but in the long run, much, much cheaper.

San Francisco has had a mandate for public power since 1913, nearly 100 years. The implementation of CCA would be a big step toward fulfilling that mandate. The supervisors should not let anything stand in the way.

Editorial: No matter who wins on Prop 16, full speed ahead with CCA

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June 7, 2010

0

EDITORIAL Proposition 16 — Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s monopoly power grab — has to rank as the most venal, corrupt abuse of the initiative system in California history. The utility spent nearly $50 million to pay for a misleading signature drive, mount a campaign of lies and distortions, create bogus front groups, and flood the airwaves with ads — all in an effort to convince Californians to vote against their own interests. It’s a case study in why the state needs initiative reform (a ban on paid signature gatherers and limits on corporate campaign contributions would be good places to start).

At press time, we didn’t know how the election would turn out — but this much is clear: San Francisco needs to move ahead with community choice aggregation and continue to push for public power anyway.

Prop. 16 was never about “taxpayer rights.” The whole point of the initiative was to block communities from replacing PG&E with public power. But it’s too late to stop San Francisco. Thanks to heroic efforts by Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, the city has already reached a deal with Power Choice LLC to create and operate a CCA system in town. Under state law, every resident and business in the city is automatically a customer of the CCA unless they opt out — so Prop. 16, which bars public-power agencies from signing up new customers, doesn’t apply.

It was a battle royal to get to this point. The PG&E-friendly San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, operating under a PG&E-friendly mayor, had more than a year to find a vendor and negotiate a contract. But PUC General Manager Ed Harrington dragged his feet at every turn. In fact, just a few weeks ago, Harrington tried to delay the contract until after the June election — thus giving PG&E a better shot at invalidating any contract. But with enough pressure from the supervisors, the basic terms of the deal were sealed in plenty of time.

Besides, San Francisco is in a unique position. Federal law (the Raker Act) requires the city to operate a public power system — and that act of Congress would trump any state law.

So the supervisors should move forward on finalizing the CCA, Mayor Gavin Newsom should sign off on it, and City Attorney Dennis Herrera should prepare to defend it vigorously if PG&E tries to sue.

Herrera has told us repeatedly that he thinks the city’s legal position is sound. In the past, he’s refused to use the Raker Act as a legal strategy — to go to court and force his own city to follow the law — but he needs to be ready to use that powerful weapon if PG&E tries to interfere with the implementation of CCA.
City officials at every level also have to make a concerted effort to counter PG&E’s lies — particularly the sort of misinformation that made it into the Matier and Ross column in the Chron June 7, the day before the election. Quoting unnamed sources, the reporters insisted that San Francisco CCA’s electricity rates would be higher than PG&E’s. That’s only true if you ignore the fact that PG&E’s rates are unstable and going up every year and that the cost of alternative energy is coming down every year — and if you don’t consider the costs of climate change, oil spills, coal mining disasters, nuclear waste storage, and all the other impacts of PG&E’s nonrenewable energy mix. And remember: San Francisco is asking the CCA to provide 51 percent renewables by 2019; PG&E’s portfolio doesn’t even meet the state’s weak 15 percent requirement. (There is also, of course, the multibillion dollar risk that San Francisco could lose the Hetch Hetchy dam if the city continues to violate the Raker Act.)

But the private utility that spent gobs of money on the Prop. 16 campaign will spend millions more in San Francisco to convince customers to opt out of the CCA. So the city needs its own campaign to explain why public power is not only much greener, but in the long run, much, much cheaper.

San Francisco has had a mandate for public power since 1913, nearly 100 years. The implementation of CCA would be a big step toward fulfilling that mandate. The supervisors should let nothing stand in the way.

In Mexico, turtles and oil privatization

Zelda Bronstein

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June 4, 2010

0

In Mexico, turtles and oil privatization

MEXICO CITY (June 3rd) — The turtles of Caribbean Mexico are an ancient race. Their ancestors paddled with dinosaurs and prehistoric fish. Kemp’s Ridley turtles were burying their eggs in Gulf Coast sanctuaries countless millennia before the Olmecs, Mexico’s matrix civilization, installed their mysterious giant heads on the Veracruz plain. The presence of turtles in indigenous iconography is evidenced by artifacts displayed in anthropological museums in Mexico City and Jalapa Veracruz. The 20th Century naturalists recorded “arribos” (“arrivals”) of tens of thousands of Kemp’s Ridley females at Rancho Nuevo beach Tamaulipas; with few exceptions, Kemp’s Ridleys (named for an amateur turtle-ologist and the smallest and rarest of all sea turtles) nest only at Rancho Nuevo and Padre Island, Texas.

But for Gulf waters, turtles are like canaries in the coalmines. The 1979 blowout of Ixtoc 1, a Mexican National Petroleum Company (PEMEX) platform off the southern state of Tabasco, gushed uncontrollably for nine months. Some 3,000,000 barrels spewed into the Gulf of Mexico, fouling beaches and nesting grounds. The Rancho Nuevo arribos shrank below 4,000. Although Mexican Kemp’s Ridleys have staged a modest comeback (the population is now calculated at 8,000), the April 20th explosion of a British Petroleum deep-sea drilling rig on the Macondo Prospect (with apologies to Gabriel Garcia Marquez) 130 miles southeast of New Orleans could spell doomsday for these primordial creatures.

Across the Gulf, Mexican authorities are watching this travesty unfold with furrowed brows. The blow-out of the Deepwater Horizon platform that killed 11 and wounded 17 workers is now the largest oil spill in U.S. history, almost doubling the size of the Exxon Valdez fiasco in Alaskan waters (10,000,000 gallons) and threatening biblical devastation of Caribbean wildlife from Mexico to Cuba. Already, Gulf Coast fishing grounds have been shut down, shrimp and oyster beds contaminated, colonies of marine mammals such as dolphins and manatees are menaced, and bird life, particularly brown pelicans, is at extreme risk. In just the first 20 days of the catastrophe, 156 dead Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles were counted.

The good news — at least for Mexico — is that deep-water oil plumes have been caught up in loop currents that threaten environmental mayhem as far east as the Florida Keys and Communist Cuba, but will not touch home. The bad news is that, come August, when the hurricane season blows in (2010 is being touted as a record year for tropical hurricanes with 15 giant storms headed for the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico), those currents will shift dramatically south towards Mexico. Even now, deep water “cyclones” are sweeping gobs of oil towards Veracruz and Tamaulipas turtle breeding grounds, and Mexico’s environmental secretary, Rafael Elvira, is preparing to file suit against BP, whose $325 billion earnings in 2009 is larger than Mexico’s total annual budget.

BP efforts to plug the leak with everything from old tires to tons of mud, robot submarines and never-before-tested “domes” have met with serial failure. A slant drill to relieve pressure on the undersea gusher will not be in place until August, when the currents turn towards Mexico. Kemp’s Ridleys nest from April through August.

President Felipe Calderon’s brow is further corrugated by the prospect that the mammoth BP spill will torpedo his pledge to privatize (he calls it “modernize”) both Mexico’s oil industry and PEMEX, the national petroleum consortium. The explosion of the Deepwater Horizon, a joint venture between BP, Halliburton, and TransOcean (controlled by a Swiss holding company), has certainly slowed, if not slain, Calderon’s plans to contract similar transnationals for deep sea drilling in Mexico’s slice of the Gulf.

According to U.S. Department of Energy evaluations, Mexico has only nine years of proven reserves left before it becomes a net oil importer. Major offshore wells like Cantarell in the Sound of Campeche are played out, and no new land-based deposits have been located. Rummaging through the remains of the old Chicontepec field in Veracruz (Halliburton is an important subcontractor) has yielded meager results.

One joke making the rounds has Calderon delighted by the BP spill, because it will bring more oil to Mexican waters.

In the vision of Big Oil, Mexico’s only hope for economic survival lies in its “aguas profundas,” or deep waters, five miles down in the Gulf. Of course, only Big Oil has the technology to get at these riches. According to the transnationals, PEMEX must be reformed and partner up with them (“an association of capitals”) for a percentage of the take. So-called risk contracts are currently barred by the Mexican Constitution.

Following orders from his backers (Halliburton, the number one PEMEX subcontractor, was a generous contributor to Calderon’s fraud-tarred 2006 election victory), the Mexican president submitted “energy reform” legislation to Congress in 2008 that laid out a “strategic alliance” with Big Oil and “flexibilization” of PEMEX opening the state company to private investment and risk contracts. The Calderon media machine cranked up an infomercial campaign depicting an azure Caribbean under which Mexico’s true wealth lay buried. “The Treasure of Mexico” was repeatedly shown at prime time on this distant neighbor nation’s two-headed television monopoly, Televisa and TV Azteca.

Mexico is fast running out of oil, the president warned to make his point. Deep sea drilling is the only option. “Energy reform” was put on congressional fast track.

By seeking to privatize Mexico’s petroleum industry, Felipe Calderon is swimming against global currents. World-class producers like Russia and Saudi Arabia are consolidating their state-run oil companies, Glasprom and Aramco, rather than selling them off to the private sector.

Petroleum is a volatile liquid in the Mexican mix. Oil and sovereignty have been joined at the hip ever since depression-era president Lazaro Cardenas expropriated and nationalized the industry in 1938 from Anglo and American owners — the so-called Seven Sisters — when they defied the Mexican Supreme Court during an oil workers’ strike. Those opposed to Calderon’s scheme went into hullabaloo mode to push back his privatization legislation.

Ex-left presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, from whom many Mexicans believe Calderon stole the 2006 election, organized his social base and the “Adelitas,” women partisans dressed up as “soldaderas” or female fighters in the Mexican revolution, donned sombreros and long skirts, toy carbines and bandaleros of fake bullets crisscrossed across their breasts, and encircled the Mexican Senate. Inside both houses of congress, Lopez Obrador’s colleagues seized the podiums and paralyzed all legislative activity for ten days.

The stand-off resulted in a series of nationally televised debates over the next four months during which energy experts, academics, Big Oil reps, PEMEX honchos, lawyers, leftists, senators, deputies, impresarios, and even a poet or two argued about the privatization proposal. The debates were carried live on a big screen in the great Zocalo plaza, where hundreds of outraged citizens gathered every afternoon to cuss out the privatizers.

By autumn 2008, a compromise was struck between Calderon’s PAN party and the former ruling PRI, which still holds a majority in both houses. Anti-Lopez Obrador elements within the left-center PRD also signed off on the deal, which delineated hundreds of exploration tracts in Mexican deep sea waters, but put a hold on transnational participation and risk contracts. The compromise did not please the transnationals, but Calderon okayed it reluctantly and was preparing fresh legislation to assuage their concerns when the Deepwater Horizon blew out at the bottom of the Gulf, putting the kibosh on Big Oil’s pipedreams.

The struggle to stop the privatization of PEMEX is symbolic and illusory. Thirty one out of the company’s 41 divisions are, in effect, subcontracted out to the likes of BP and Halliburton; most contracts are concentrated in the PEP or exploration and perforation sector. Ironically, players like BP, the biggest producer in the Gulf of Mexico today, and Shell are reincarnations of British interests that dominated petroleum production in Veracruz before expropriation — Royal Dutch Shell evolved from Lord Cowdry’s (Weetman Pierson) Aguila Oil. Moreover, Exxon is reported to be dickering for BP (which now incorporates Amoco and Atlantic-Richfield), a merger that would restore John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil taken down by trustbusters in 1911. Standard Oil’s James Doheny and Pierson ruled Mexican oilfields before 1938, and once threatened to secede and form their own “Republic of The Gulf of Mexico.”

The U.S. and Mexico dispute a pair of potentially abundant fields in the deep waters of the Gulf. Designated “Donas,” the eastern polygon is triangulated between the Yucatan, New Orleans, and Cuba. The much-larger (16,000 square kilometers) western polygon sits between Tamaulipas and Texas. Mexico’s share of the western “Dona” (62%) purportedly holds up to 34,000,000,000 barrels, twice current reserves.

Preliminary delineation of the Donas was agreed upon by Washington and Mexico City in 2000, and deep-sea drilling is set to begin as early as next year. Chevron and Shell have reportedly already won contracts to work the U.S. sites. But Mexico does not have the technology to get at its “treasure” and Houston oil guru George Baker confirms that it will be another decade before PEMEX comes into possession of the tools to drill baby drill at such depths.

Advocates for continued state control of Mexico’s oil like Professor Fabio Barbosa of the National Autonomous University (UNAM) rebut the claim that PEMEX cannot drill deep, citing development of the Nab platform in mile-deep waters off Yucatan (the Dona reserves are thought to be three to five miles down in the Gulf.)

In a recent El Universal op-ed, Barbosa recalled then-BP vice president Cris Sladen’s warning to a 2006 oil conference in Veracruz that Mexico would go belly-up if it didn’t dissolve PEMEX and let the latest version of the Seven Sisters handle the deep sea exploration and drilling.

Closer to the bottom of the food chain, the voices of the turtles are not heard in this debate between privatizers and nationalists. Deep sea drilling presages unprecedented carnage for their already exhausted species. BP itself has an unblemished record of species genocide — its Arctic projects threaten protected bowhead whales in the Beaufort Sea and a 900,000 gallon spill in Prudhoe Bay in 2000 plus its plans to trash the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge put dozens of species, from Polar bears and caribou to the Arctic tern, the longest-flying migratory bird on Planet Earth, on the brink of extinction.

In an exhibition of unbridled cynicism, BP greenwashes its tarnished image with full-page New York Times professions of its concern for the environment and by handing out conservation awards and grants. So far as is known, no Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle has ever won one.

The indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest liken the American continent to the back of a turtle — humans are allowed to live on it but must do so in harmony with the planet. “Turtle Island” is the translation of the name of the place where we live in several Indian languages, a designation that once lent its name to Gary Snyder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning poems imploring environmental respect and salvation.

But the poet’s metaphors do not carry much weight in the boardroom. BP and its cronies in corporate crime and capitalist greed have put Turtle Island at the top of their hit list.

John Ross is back in “El Monstruo,” the title of his latest cult classic (“pulsating and gritty” the NY Post) and can be reached at johnross@igc.org

Labor’s small business friends

David Talbot

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June 2, 2010

0

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 250 of his recent columns.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other outspoken foes of organized labor like to claim that small business owners are as anti-union as the notoriously anti-union Chamber and its big business members. But don’t you believe it.

Unfortunately, plenty of people do believe it. They accept the conventional wisdom that employers, large or small, don’t like unions in general and especially don’t like their employees joining or organizing unions to represent them in determining their working conditions.

Certainly many employers resist unionization. But what the Chamber of Commerce and its corporate friends don’t tell you is that many employers welcome unions for a variety of pragmatic as well as philosophical reasons.

Listen, for instance, to a small business owner in Virginia who was included in a representative sampling of some 1,200 small business owners and self-employed workers who were surveyed recently by American Rights at Work, a respected labor advocacy group:

“When workers form unions, they can secure benefits and rights in the workplace, including a decent wage and health care. They have economic and job stability. Unions lift workers and workers lift the economy. It’s as simple as that.”

The survey included much more that you’re not likely to hear from the Chamber of Commerce. “Unions,” said one small businessman, “help level the playing field for companies that voluntarily treat their employees right and compensate them fairly, When companies compete on equal footing, consumers fare better.”

Among the many other contradictions of the Chamber of Commerce ‘s anti-union line was this from a small businesswoman in Boulder, Colo.:

“The free market system is driven b y workers’ productivity and unions tend to produce more educated and well-trained – and therefore productive – employees. When competitors prevent their employees from forming a union, it is usually a pretty good indication that they are also underpaying their employees. That hurts our business and others in the industry because it allows them to unfairly undercut the market.”

Kimberly Freeman Brown, executive director of American Rights at Work, noted that unionization not only helps individual businesses and their employees, but also “makes the free market system stronger by increasing consumer purchasing power – which is good for their businesses’ bottom line.”

Eighty percent of the small business owners surveyed by Brown’s organization agreed. Other significant findings:

* About half of those surveyed expressed “strong concern that unions have been weakened so much our economy has actually been hurt.”

* More than half agreed that “strong unions make the free market system stronger.”

* Almost 60 percent “strongly agreed that labor unions are necessary to protect the working person.”

* Nearly 70 percent said it was very important for their businesses that Congress “enact legislation that rewards employers who respect their workers’ right to join a union.”

* More than 70 percent agreed that “a good business person can make a profit and respect their workers’ choice to form a union.”

* Eighty-two percent “strongly agreed that it’s morally wrong for employers to fire or threaten employees for wanting to form a union.”

So, despite conventional anti-union wisdom, many small businesses are quite aware that unionization benefits them, their employees and society in general.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its anti-union members and allies know that, but their interest is not in benefitting those who do the work of society. Their interest, of course, is in maximizing the profits of big business.

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 250 of his recent columns.

The hidden zinger in Prop. 14

David Talbot

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June 1, 2010

11

By Richard Winger

OPINION Proposition 14, a June 8 ballot measure, would mandate that all candidates for Congress and state office appear on the same June ballot, and that all voters use that ballot. Only the two candidates who got the highest vote totals could run in November. Even write-ins would be banned in November for Congress and state offices.

Prop. 14 also has a hidden zinger in it that would remove the Peace and Freedom and Libertarian parties from the ballot. But so far only one daily newspaper has mentioned it — the San Francisco Chronicle, in a March 11 story by Wyatt Buchanan. The state ballot pamphlet says nothing about this particularly nasty detail of Prop. 14.

California has six recognized political parties: Democratic, Republican, American Independent, Green, Libertarian, and Peace and Freedom. The parties remain ballot-qualified either by polling 2 percent of the vote for any statewide race in a midterm year (all parties get a free ride in presidential years) or by maintaining registration equal to 1 percent of the last gubernatorial vote.

In practice, it’s far easier for the smaller parties to meet the first test. The Peace and Freedom Party has 58,000 registered members, and the Libertarian Party has 85,000 registered members. But these parties always meet the 2 percent vote test. Minor parties typically draw far more votes than they have registered members.

The problem is that Prop. 14 eliminates, in practice, the 2 percent vote test. Under Prop. 14, no party officially has any nominees for any office except president and vice-president. And since minor party candidates almost never place first or second in the June primary, minor party members would never be able to run for statewide office in November. And, the catch is that only the November vote counts for meeting the 2 percent vote test.

Prop. 14 also says that members of unqualified parties will not be permitted to list their party label on the June ballot.

The real irony is that the big newspapers of California know about this problem with Prop. 14 but refuse to mention it. That’s ironic because back in 1981, when Democrats in the Legislature wanted to toughen the ballot-access requirements, the big newspapers of California denounced that bill with full fury. Forty of California’s biggest newspapers, TV stations, and radio stations editorialized against that measure.

This year the Los Angeles Times (which led the charge for minor-party access in 1981) refused to mention that Prop. 14 has the same characteristic as that bill, only worse. The Times has rejected at least 10 op-eds submitted by various individuals in the last year that mentioned this problem. None of the Los Angeles Times stories about Prop. 14 have mentioned it. None of the political columnists for that newspaper have mentioned it.

Prop. 14 is supported by the Chamber of Commerce, the for-profit health insurance companies, the for-profit hospitals, and various multimillionaires, and the Yes on 14 campaign has a huge war chest. Why won’t the L.A. Times even mention this flaw in the measure? Who are the big dailies afraid of offending?

Richard Winger is the editor of Ballot Access News.

Why is SFUSD signing on to Race to the Top?

Zelda Bronstein

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May 27, 2010

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Why is SFUSD signing on to Race to the Top?

The Obama administration, to its credit, is actually paying attention to, and putting money into, urban public education. But Arne Duncan, the education secretary, is using some of the money to push a broad agenda that, frankly, drives me nuts and undermines a lot of what public education ought to be about.

The New York Times Magazine did a good job laying out the agenda May 23. The self-styled reformers want to encourage charter schools, push standardized testing (and other easily quantifiable methods of evaluating classroom performance) and change the way teachers are hired and fired. In fact, in many ways, the Duncan agenda is all about blaming the teachers for the problems in public schools.

There are, absolutely, some bad teachers out there. There are people who are so burned out they should leave and find other work. There are people who never were terribly good at teaching anyway. There are people who can’t do the job, and somehow stick around year after year, dooming students to poor-quality classes. There are 300,000 public-school teachers in California; not all of them will be great. (There are also, by the way, terrible lawyers who never get disbarred and terrible doctors who kill and maim patients and manage to protect their medical licenses.)

But in California, certainly, the relatively modest number of poor teachers is not by any stretch the biggest problem with public education. And tests, particularly standardized tests, are not remotely a valid way of determining which teachers are good and which aren’t.

Teachers in California cities face widely divergent student populations. In some San Francisco classrooms, a majority of the students are English learners, or come from broken or troubled families, or lack proper nutrition, or are homeless … and those are just the surface issues. Telling a dedicated first-grade teacher that he or she is going to be fired because of test scores in a classroom where it takes heroic efforts every day to get 20 troubled kids to sit down and pay attention for even 15 minutes isn’t just unfair. It’s crazy.

The teachers unions have fought some of these efforts, and — thanks to world-class organizing efforts and a fair amount of campaign money — have managed to beat some of them back in Congress and state Legislatures. That’s where Race to the Top comes in.

Duncan and his merry band of “reformers” are dangling out federal money to districts that desperately, desperately need any pennies they can get — but the price is high. In essence, you have to sign on to at least part of the Duncan agenda, which promotes testing, charter schools, etc.

The highest number of points — 138 of the 500-point scale that Duncan and his staff created for the Race — would be awarded based on a commitment to eliminate what teachers’ union leaders consider the most important protections enjoyed by their members: seniority-based compensation and permanent job security.

It’s almost a cruel bargain: You don’t have enough money to buy chalk for the chalkboard or pencils for the kids, and the feds are happy to help — as long as you stick it to the teachers unions and sign onto an agenda that a lot of progressive school boards despise.

And that’s where San Francisco is.

In a special meeting May 20, the San Francisco School Board signed on to a Memorandum of Understanding with the state of California that will be part of California’s application for Race to the Top funding. You can read the MOU here. It’s not as bad as some of what Duncan is pushing, but still: SFUSD is participating in this madness.

I asked Jane Kim, president of the School Board, about it, and she told me that the district’s proposal “doesn’t have anything about charter schools or merit pay. It’s really just a continuation of the work that we’re already doing.” And that’s true, although Dennis Kelly, the head of the local teachers union, United Educators of San Francisco, isn’t happy about it, though; he told me that “this is not something we could sign on to. It’s pretty much the standard state form.”

And the board passed it unanimously, and a lot of the local board members are good progressives who know more about education than I do. And as Kim pointed out, at a time like this, “I don’t think we should refuse to go for the extra funding.”

Frankly, the San Francisco Unified School District isn’t going to get any Race to the Top money anyway — not with districts all over the country selling their souls and going way, way further than we are to scrap for that cash. But I have to ask: Since Race to the Top is such a bad idea, why are we even playing the game?

An extraordinarily good man

David Talbot

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May 26, 2010

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Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for a half-century. Contact him through his Web site, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 250 of his recent columns.

It was 40 years ago this month that Walter Reuther died in a plane crash. Forty years. Yet the auto workers leader remains an important inspirational figure – a man whose life holds crucial lessons for those who are today seeking to revitalize the American labor movement.

I came upon him late in his career, and to me he seemed verbose, distant and a bit pompous: a do-gooder who didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, didn’t wench; who did only good things, and always in the artfully arranged glare of publicity.

He couldn’t possibly be as good as those who had known the man for a long time claimed him to be. But they were right. Walter Reuther was an extraordinarily good man.

He was truly the conscience of organized labor – a crusader struggling very, very hard against the stagnation he found in a movement he had helped found, lead, and, finally, had tried to reform.

Reuther was the conscience as well of a lot of people who never paid union dues in their lives. I mean those who saw him as the embodiment of their hopes to change this imperfect society in ways that would better the lives of those at the bottom of its social, economic and political ladder.

It was Reuther, as much as any union leader, who brought dignity and economic security to the mass of Americans, expanding the country’s major concerns beyond the elementary economic concerns that preoccupied most people in the years before World War II.

Reuther’s specific contributions were many. There was the central role he played in establishing the United Auto Workers Union, over which he eventually presided. There was his role in forging together the country’s industrial unions and in leading them, as president of the Congress of Industrial Organization – the CIO – in struggles for broad economic and social causes.

There was Reuther’s exceptional success in negotiating better wages, hours and working conditions for the auto workers that were pace-setting marks for workers in all industries and all occupations.

And there were Reuther’s many efforts to shift the labor movement in new directions. His last attempt, and surely his boldest, came in 1969 when he led the United Auto Workers out of the AFL-CIO and into an “Alliance for Labor Action” with the then-unaffiliated Teamsters Union.

Reuther hoped the alliance of the country’s two largest unions could begin carrying out the programs he had suggested repeatedly to the AFL-CIO, only to be rebuffed by the former American Federation of Labor leaders who dominated the federation.

The alliance planned organizing drives among white-collar workers and other groups, particularly in the South, that the AFL-CIO had been neglecting. But the new organization hoped to go beyond organizing the unorganized, as important as that was.

The goals of the alliance were nothing less than a summary of the great needs of the country: Helping build low-cost housing, for instance; developing new job training programs; unifying the poor and minority groups; vastly improving education and health services; effectively attacking racial discrimination, poverty, consumer fraud, and the particular problems of the young and the aged, and attacking urban decay, pollution and other environmental problems.

The alliance never really got going before Reuther’s death and dissolved shortly afterward. Some of Reuther’s fellow labor leaders had scoffed, in any case, that it was actually nothing more than an attempt by Reuther to satisfy the ambitions for broad union leadership he had been unable to realize within the AFL-CIO.

“Walter,” they would tell you, “is just being Walter – all talk and no action.”

Well, they were right about one thing at least. The man could talk. Others were accustomed to it, after three decades of Reuther-watching, But he was new to me, and I marveled to see him hold audiences of thousands for an hour and more while speaking without a single note – strictly off the top of his head – and doing so with great and forceful eloquence.

I especially remember a talk he gave in 1966, in a dilapidated little auditorium in Delano, California, where vineyard workers led by Cesar Chavez just a few months before had begun the strike that someday would capture the attention of the entire country.

I played the sophisticate and smiled knowingly over Reuther’s wordy and dramatic promises to the farm workers. But then came the terrible news, four years later, of a plane down in Michigan, and I thought back to that cold December day in the grape country.

I remembered what those words had meant to the penniless, obscure and powerless band of farm workers who had gathered in the auditorium. There he was, one of the great leaders of America, promising to “stand with you until the end.”

I may have been fooled, but the farm workers were not fooled. They knew that Walter Reuther meant exactly what he said. He always did.

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 250 of his recent columns.

Immigration update: good news, bad news

Mary Magee

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May 26, 2010

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Yesterday, the Board of Supervisors unanimously appointed tireless immigrant rights advocate Angela Chan to the San Francisco Police Commission.
That’s the good news.
The bad news? Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown declined San Francisco Sheriff Mike Hennessey request to allow San Francisco to opt out of Secure Communities, ICE’s latest federal-local law enforcement collaboration.
“I think this program serves both public safety and the interests of justice,” Brown said. “ICE’s program advances an important law enforcement function by identifying those individuals who are in the country illegally and who have a history of serious crimes or who have previously been deported.”
“ Before the inception of Secure Communities allowing fingerprint identification, if a county suspected an arrestee was in the country illegally, the county submitted the person’s name to ICE for a background check,” Brown stated.

What Brown’s letter didn’t say was that, up until now in San Francisco, the county only submitted folks’ names to ICE if they were charged with a felony. Nor did he address why the federal government is sneaking around, switching this program on, without openly and transparently announcing their intentions to the local community.

Eileen Hirst, spokesperson for the San Francisco Sheriff’s Office said that, as a result of Brown’s letter, “As far as we know, San Francisco will be a part of Secure Communities as of June 1.”
In a statement, Sheriff Hennessey said, “I am disappointed with the Attorney General’s position and continue to be concerned that U.S. citizens and minor offenders will be caught up in the broad net of Secure Communities, and I will be studying the issue further to see how this program can be applied as fairly as possible and in the spirit of the sanctuary ordinance.”

So far, ICE’s data reveals the number of folks caught up in the Secure Communities net, plus a brief breakdown of the deportees’ level of crime.

It would be helpful, as several immigrants rights groups have suggested, if ICE revealed the nationality of these deportees, clarified if these folks were convicted of crimes or simply charged with them, and had to make frequent reports to Congress in which they included this data along with evidence that the program actually deports convicted criminals rather than folks simply arrested. Otherwise, the program could potentially be abused by renegades who realize that all you have to do to get someone deported is arrest them on trumped up charges

Anyways, you can read the rest of AG Brown’s letter below. My favorite line from Brown’s letter is, “Many of the people booked in local jails end up in state prison or go on to commit crimes in other counties or states.”

Hmm. Does that mean that folks charged with crimes in this state are presumed guilty then, until proven otherwise? Or is that just the presumption about immigrants?

AG Brown’s letter:
“Dear Sheriff Hennessey:

I am writing in response to your letter regarding the Secure Communities program developed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The program is scheduled to be rolled out in San Francisco next month. You requested that the California Department of Justice (DOJ) block ICE from running checks on the fingerprints collected in San Francisco. The Secure Communities program is up and running in 169 counties in 20 states, including 17 counties in California. Because I think this program serves both public safety and the interest of justice, I am declining your request.

The DOJ Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigative Services is the entity designated by California law to maintain a database of fingerprints used in the state for law enforcement purposes. When someone is arrested, the county forwards the fingerprints to the DOJ to identify the person, determine his or her criminal history and to discover any outstanding warrants. As in every other state, the DOJ forwards those fingerprints to the FBI to check for a history of criminal activity outside of the state. Under the Secure Communities program, the FBI forwards fingerprints collected at arrest to ICE. If ICE finds a match to prints in its database, ICE notifies the county. ICE’s stated intent and practice is to place holds on those individuals who are in the country illegally and who have a history of serious crimes or who have been previously deported.

Prior to the Secure Communities program, the name, but not the fingerprint, provided by an individual on arrest was run through ICE’s database of people known by ICE to be in the country illegally. Often, individuals with a criminal history were released before their immigration status was discovered. Using fingerprints is faster, race neutral and results in accurate information and identification.

In these matters, statewide uniformity makes sense. This is not simply a local issue. Many of the people booked in local jails end up in state prison or go on to commit crimes in other counties or states.

I appreciate your concern. But I believe that working with the federal government in this matter advances important and legitimate law enforcement objectives.

Sincerely,

EDMUND G. BROWN JR.
Attorney General.”

A public power landmark — and the battle to come

David Talbot

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May 26, 2010

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CCA allows communities to offer an alternative — to buy cleaner power in bulk and resell it at comparable or cheaper rates to residents and businesses

EDITORIAL It’s been 97 years since Congress passed a landmark law mandating public power in San Francisco, 67 years since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the city was violating the law by allowing Pacific Gas and Electric Co. to operate a private monopoly in town, and 42 years since the Guardian first broke the story of the Raker Act scandal and launched a campaign to bring public power to the city. And now, even operating under a tight PG&E-imposed deadline, the San Francisco is moving very close to establishing a modest type of public power.

Community choice aggregation (CCA) isn’t what John Edward Raker and his supporters had in mind in 1913 when they allowed San Francisco to build a dam in Yosemite National Park, breaking John Muir’s heart. The idea — which the city explicitly accepted in a formal written agreement — was to use the dam not just for water but for electricity, specifically to create a public power beachhead in Northern California that would prevent any private company, specifically PG&E, from getting control of the electricity grid.

CCA leaves PG&E’s private grid in place and allows the investor-owned utility to continue to sell power in the region. But it also allows communities to offer an alternative — to buy cleaner power in bulk and resell it at comparable or cheaper rates to residents and businesses.

Since 2002, when the state Legislature passed a bill authorizing CCAs, the concept has slowly started to take hold. Marin County launched its CCA this spring. San Francisco last week reached an agreement with PowerChoice LLC, a vendor that will oversee the procurement of electricity, to begin service here, and the contract is headed to the SF Public Utilities Commission and the Board of Supervisors for approval.

That’s a huge step forward for public power — but the city faces a tight deadline. PG&E has placed Proposition 16 on the June 8 ballot, which would require a two-thirds vote before any local agency could get into the electricity business. That’s an almost impossible threshold (see: the state Legislature). Prop. 16 may still go down to defeat, despite PG&E’s $45 million campaign to pass it.

But even if it passes, any existing agency — that is, any community that has its CCA in place before the election is certified — will be grandfathered in.

City Attorney Dennis Herrera argues, with good authority, that San Francisco is already protected from Prop. 16. The city already has taken enough steps to implement CCA (the implementation plan has been approved by the supervisors) that the inevitable lawsuit by PG&E will probably fail. But every step the city takes to bring the process closer to completion provides more protection, and the stakes could not be higher.

With CCA, the city will have control of its own energy future, be able to offer power that doesn’t contribute to global warming — and be able, at long last, to take a step toward complying with the Raker Act. (And remember: the law says, and the Supreme Court confirmed, that the federal government can move at any time to seize the Hetch Hetchy dam and uproot the city’s entire water system for failure to comply with the 1913 agreement.)

It seems almost certain that by June 8 the city will have a contract with a vendor and state certification that defines San Francisco as a CCA. Then, whatever the outcome of Prop. 16, the city needs to move forward with the program. And if PG&E sues to block it, then every official in San Francisco will have to be prepared to wage the legal and political battle of all time. PG&E can and probably will take the city to court — and the city can immediately start talking about breaking the 1930s-era franchise agreement that gives PG&E a low franchise fee in perpetuity, and enforcing the Raker Act, and taking the corrupt utility to task on every possible front.

A public power landmark — and the battle to come

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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May 26, 2010

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A public power landmark — and the battle to come