Conservative

Criticism of BART oversight plans grows

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By Tim Redmond

I’m not the only one criticizing the BART Board’s weak and ineffective proposal for police oversight. The conservative Contra Costa Times weighed in today with a strong editorial saying that the BART proposal doesn’t go far enough and suggesting that BART adopt a San Francisco-style model:

BART should consider putting together a review board similar to what San Francisco has with its police review commission. It has a say over discipline of officers for serious offenses.

At the very least, a BART auditor and review panel should have a strong voice in developing hiring and training policies for BART officers. They also should be trusted to do more than simply offer their opinions regarding discipline of transit officers.

So when the Guardian and the CoCo Times agree on something, it’s pretty clear that a wide range of people with divergent viewpoints want more action than the BART Board has offered. I hope the board members are paying attention.

House of Horrors

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER Thrills and chills and disco ball spills — that’s what the Horrors are made of? After Shih Tzu-banged frontman Faris Badwan brattily ripped the mirror ball off the ceiling of 330 Ritch a scant two years ago, who knew the U.K. band would show its true, formative, and fundamentally curious colors? The hues and cries streaming off the Horrors’ second album, Primary Colours (XL) read as a limpid, moonlit pop-sonnet to true-school proto-goth-rockers and morbidly fixated post-punk upsetters like Siouxsie and the Banshees and Killing Joke.

Just don’t flash that dance-floor orb in front of Badwan again. "Mmm, Faris never really liked mirror balls," mumbles guitarist Joshua Third, né Hayward. It’s frozen in Boston, where the group is performing that night, and the chill that drops momentarily over the conversation is brief yet bracing. "Luckily we haven’t played anywhere with a mirror ball for ages."

Despite the menace — or maybe because of it — the goth-punk movement has always seemed fundamentally conservative. But the Horrors don’t peddle the shockabilly moves so common among goth-identified SoCalis. In contrast to the easy-sleazy comic-book corn of today’s prominent goth-punk purveyors — pass the Horrorpops and just keep walking — the group now draws from exploratory originators Joy Division and ornery rabble-rousers the Birthday Party. Primary Colours boasts driving tunes carved from silvery synth textures ("Three Decades") and Jesus and Mary Chain-like buzz-saw pop that thumps with creative negativity ("Who Can Say").

The group capers on the same frosty darkling plain as Interpol, judging from tunes like the Velvet-y, string-strewn "I Only Think of You," which may turn off those with a low tolerance for pop pomposity. Still, the opening track, "Mirror’s Image," sets the tone for pleasing surprise with its initial lush, plangent soundscape — more akin to Lindstrøm than Sisters of Mercy — before gently plunging into spiraling reverb, effects-gristled guitar, and a nodding keyboard fragment that will have some recalling Echo and the Bunnymen and others Kraftwerk.

Third says Primary Colours was "the first chance we had as a band to shut ourselves away and work on the record on our own. We’d retreat into a rehearsal space and get completely lost in it. Yeah, I think that really comes through."

The Horrors titled the first song they ever wrote "Sheena is a Parasite," so yes, this is throwback rock, It gazes directly into the eyes of the more serious Anglo art-rock makers of the ’80s with self-conscious affection, especially on haunted, haunting songs such as "Do You Remember." And what’s wrong with that?

"We actually made a record that’s a complete trip, from start to finish — it takes you through different moods," Third explains. "Also, you can listen to it on repeat, because the last track plays into the first track. I’ve always been quite into the idea because I like to sit down and listen to things over and over again." It’s a quality he misses in many new albums. "Yeah, partly the Internet’s to blame. Partly labels are to blame. Partly bands are to blame — because they don’t seem to care anymore," he says, capping the remark with a small grim chuckle.

In the Horrors’ hands — the ensemble coproduced along with longtime collaborator Craig Silvey, Portishead’s Geoff Barrow, and video artist Chris Cunningham — Primary Colours sounds astonishingly unmusty, stirring with tangible signs of life. The group has managed to find a pulse — while maturing into, yikes, artists. "We were all 19 when we wrote the first record — now we’re in our early twenties!" Third exclaims. "I think it’s the typical growing-up … malarkey." *

THE HORRORS

With the Kills

Tues/19, 8 p.m., $22.50

Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

www.livenation.com

————

MORE LIVE:

COMEDIANS OF ROCK II

Musical funny folk Tara Jepsen of Lesbians, Chris Portfolio of Hank IV, and Matt Hartman of Sic Alps pit wits and carve out snarfs at this comedy two-fer. Wed/13, 9 p.m., free. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

BLACK JOE LEWIS AND THE HONEYBEARS

And what a long, sweet name it is: the Austin, Texas, soul-stirrers cook up hot ones from Tell ‘Em What Your Name Is! (Lost Highway). Sat/16, 9 p.m. $17. Slim’s, 333 11th St., SF. www.slims-sf.com

JOHN VANDERSLICE

The Tiny Telephone operator’s new Romanian Names (Dead Oceans) rolls out Moog moods and Byzantine yarns. Mon/18, 6 p.m., free. Amoeba Music, 1855 Haight, SF. www.amoeba.com. Tues/19, 7:30 p.m., $16. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. www.rickshawstop.com

Marin paper chokes on Mirkarimi appointment

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By Tim Redmond

The Marin Independent Journal is going nuts about the fact that San Francisco Sup. Ross Mirkarimi got a slot on the state Coastal Commission. The IJ wanted a Marinite, Sup. Steve Kinsey, and is blasting Sen. Mark Leno for recommending Mirkarimi (which for all practical purposes guaranteed that the San Francisco environmental leader would get the post).

According to the IJ:

Leno said it was a difficult choice and that he respects Kinsey’s experience. He said Mirkarimi offers strong environmental credentials and stressed that a San Franciscan has not held the North Coast seat for 32 years. He pointed to Mirkarimi’s leadership in winning passage of San Francisco’s ban on plastic bags. Leno said he also heard from some environmentalists who asked him not to pick Kinsey. Apparently Kinsey works harder than they would like to balance historic private property rights and local agriculture with protection of California’s coast.

You get the point — Kinsey thinks that the Coastal Commission should “balance” property rights and coastal protection. Actually, that’s not the panel’s job. The commission was set up to prevent development along the coast; it’s supposed to be really, really hard to get a permit to do anything that would limit public access or damange a pristine coastal area.

A former Sierra Club president makes the point nicely here.

But wait — the IJ isn’t done. In an oped column May 5th, Brad Breithaupt insists that Leno was snubbing the northern part of his district:

For the first time in 30 years, a Marin resident isn’t serving on the commission, even as an alternate.

Guess what? It’s been more than 30 years since San Francisco had a seat on the commission.

But that’s not the issue. The issue is that coastal protection is more important than whether someone lives in San Francisco or Marin — and on an increasingly conservative and pro-development commission, the representative from the SF/Marin/Sonoma area needs to be a hard-core enviro, someone who isn’t looking to compromise with property owners or developers.

“And I think Ross Mirkarimi has already proven he’s doing an excellent job,” Leno said. So lighten up, Marin.

On the (closet) case

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While gay rights have been a hot political button for a solid three decades-plus now, there is at least one arena in American life where the issue remains hush-hush: the corridors of actual political power. Such is the thesis — or rather accusation — of Kirby Dick’s new documentary, which wants to light a shaming agitative fire like his last one (2006 MPAA expose This Film Is Not Yet Rated), and with any luck will do so. His subject is the bizarre, undiminished existence of top U.S. politicos rumored to be gay, living as "confirmed bachelors" or "devoted family men." Despite their carefully groomed public images, however, the D.C. bubble is rife with first-person accounts of their ex-boyfriends and tricks, not to mention sightings at gay bars or even cruisey parks and washrooms. Whether due to inculcated self-loathing, ruthless careerism, or both, they live as if it were still the pre-Stonewall 1950s, their "secret" known only to a reliably zipped few.

Trouble is, the political system and mainstream media collude in maintaining that secrecy, for the sake of both convenience and a wariness toward scandal they seldom exhibit in any other realm. Nearly all of the closet cases Dick selects to out here are far-right Republicans who profit from the worst kind of hypocrisy: enjoying same-sex relations on the sly while publicly feeding conservative hysteria about the homosexual threat to family values. They’ve voted again and again against even partly pro-gay legislation, from anti-discrimination laws and (of course) gay marriage to AIDS services and research funding.

Because Outrage aims to have an explosive breaking-news impact, I won’t name the specific politicians targeted here. Suffice it to say they include a governor, Congress member, house representatives, mayors, and high-powered lobbyists, plus a couple of network news reporters. Is it anyone’s business what they "do" in private? Hell yes, when the public words and actions of these "traitors to their own people" result in hate crimes, disinformation, legalized biases, and worse. There’s nothing particularly elegant about this doc’s presentation, but then the point it has to make is blunt, and its effect is as righteously infuriating as intended. That clanging sound you hear is the closet-door lock in the executive men’s room being boot-kicked off its hinges. (Dennis Harvey)

OUTRAGE opens Fri/8 in Bay Area theaters.

Beyond Beat: The late artist Michael Bowen

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Michael Bowen, who died March 7 in Sweden at the age of 71, was a seminal Beat figure who inspired the famous “Turn On, Tune in and Drop Out” dictum of the “Human Be-In” in San Francisco in 1967. Click here for a photo essay of his life and art.


By Marlena Donohue

(Marlena Donohue is Associate Professor of Art History and Critical Theory at the Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, and Managing Editor of ArtScene in Los Angeles.)

Michael Bowen recently passed away in Sweden after five decades of exhibiting art in major international art museums and private collections. He passes away before his career or work could be adequately evaluated in the context of history, particularly those epoch-altering years marked by the 1960s-1970s he is most closely associated with.

Born in Beverly Hills to a famous dentist into a legacy of great wealth, Bowen was the quintessential drop out from consumer culture long before the term was made popular in SF cafes. On the road, so to speak, from his teens, Bowen traveled the globe, engaging life and making art alongside some of the art world’s major luminaries.

Primarily self taught, Bowen coined an art style and remained committed to it for over forty years of changing art world styles and alternatively hip and conservative social mores. He is associated with a distinct visionary surreal art whose nearly hallucinatory intensity came to be identified with the Beats and with the drug and underground culture.

Gay marriage? In Iowa?

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What happens when Iowans discover that gay marriage is legal? Jess Brownell provides some clues in the classic Iowa movie “State Fair”

By Jess Brownell

Iowa is in the news just now, and for a reason I must confess I would never have anticipated: Gay marriage turns out to be legal there. Who’d have thought it.? Not many Iowans, I’d venture.

I know a little about the state. I was born in Iowa, and grew up a few miles to the west in Nebraska. I had cousins living on Iowa farms whom I visited. (My host on this blog was born and raised in Iowa, and I imagine has his opinions on what’s happening in the Hawkeye State.) Frankly, I have no idea what to expect now.

Generally, Iowa hits the public eye only when the caucuses gather every fourth year, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t weird all the time. Iowans seem to be of two minds about almost everything, this tension being best represented by the two senators they have chosen to send to Washington. One, Tom Harkin, the Democrat, is a stalwart liberal (except where agricultural subsidies to factory farmers are concerned); the other, Charles Grassley, the Republican, is a fierce fiscal conservative (except of course where agricultural subsidies are concerned) who is still remembered for his objection to an eternal flame at JFK’s grave because of the unfair burden keeping it lit would place on the American taxpayer. I suppose you could say that like all of us Iowans have a lively sense of self-interest, but they do seem to have a hard time making up their minds about anything else.

Tax pot and the rich, or bury our heads

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By Steven T. Jones

Newspapers and politicians can empower citizens, or they can promote cynicism and gridlock. The package of bad choices being presented to voters in the coming election are an example of the latter, and so is an article in today’s Chronicle reporting poll results showing voters want neither tax increases nor spending cuts.

It’s certainly true that most people want maximum services and minimal taxes, but Chron’s writer Carla Marinucci does a real disservice by her selective presentation of the Field Poll results. Rather than writing “state voters strongly oppose both new taxes and cuts in their favorite programs and services,” she could have written this: A new poll shows state voters want to close the budget gap by legalizing marijuana and increasing taxes on millionaires.

Instead, readers must make the jump to learn that 56 percent of voters want to legalize and tax marijuana, something legislation by Assembly member Tom Ammiano would do. And they have to make it almost to the end of the story to read that, “Three-quarters also supported more taxes on millionaires.”

It’s sad that veteran Chronicle political writer John Wildermuth has decided to take the Hearst buyout and leave the ailing paper, and we’re left with Marinucci and her consistently disempowering and conservative point-of-view. If the Chronicle wants to become relevant to this city, they should find a political writer who can recognize and present opportunities for progress.

Splurge and save

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We often find ourselves at a crossroads between what we want to eat and what we can afford to eat. I want champagne and caviar, but I settle for beer and a tuna sandwich. I want stuffed quail, but I buy a rotisserie chicken. Given the economy, there is something about splurging on food that seems almost inappropriate. These are uncertain times, when everyone is trying to save money and even the most extravagant are keeping an eye on the size of their wallets. In the hierarchy of oxymorons, "cost-effective splurge" ranks up there with Microsoft Works, compassionate conservative, and Gov. Schwarzenegger.

We live in a city where the average meal cost is $38.70, according to the most recent Zagat survey, and the price of a splurge can land well into the three digits. Even so, treating yourself to good food doesn’t necessarily mean an orgy of excessive expenditure. And if you spend your money wisely, you’ll find that even in a city as expensive as ours, great dining deals can be found — even if your cravings are more Niman Ranch and your budget more Oscar Meyer. The following are some tips on how to get the most out of your money when you treat yourself to a gourmet meal on the town.

1. BYOB. The cardinal rule of smart splurging is to bring your own alcohol. Alcohol has a notoriously exorbitant mark-up at restaurants, but some restaurants allow you to BYOB for a small corkage fee or, even better, for free. Anchor Oyster Bar (579 Castro, SF. 415-431-3990, www.anchoroysterbar.com), Indigo (687 McAllister, SF. 415-673-9353, www.indigorestaurant.com), and PlumpJack Cafe (3127 Fillmore, SF. 415-563-4755, www.plumpjack.com) never charge corkage. Some restaurants will comp corkage one or more nights of the week. Laiola (2031 Chestnut, SF. 415-346-5641, www.laiola.com) has free corkage on Mondays, Zazie (941 Cole, SF. 415-564-5332, www.zaziesf.com) on Tuesdays, and Alamo Square Seafood Grill (803 Fillmore, SF. 415-440-2828, www.alamosquareseafoodgrill.com) on Wednesdays.

2. Parlay happy hour. Bars and restaurants regularly offer great deals in that dead-zone between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m., a time I fondly refer to as "lunchtime." At Andalu (3198 16th St., SF. 415-621-2211), Tuesday happy hour means $1 ahi tuna tacos. At Olive, (743 Larkin, SF. 415-776-9814, www.olive-sf.com) drink a perfectly mixed, classic martini for $5 on weekdays, followed by a $7 pizza large enough to split with friends. And don’t forget the tastiest of all happy hours: oysters! Happy hour oysters are $1 each at Woodhouse Fish Company (2073 Market, SF. 415-437-2722, www.woodhousefish.com) on Tuesdays, at Hog Island Oyster Company (1 Ferry Bldg, SF. 415-391-7117, www.hogislandoysters.com) on Mondays and Thursdays, and at Waterbar (399 The Embarcadero, SF. 415-284-9922, www.waterbarsf.com) on weekdays before 6pm.

3. Explore specials. Restaurants are feeling the economic downturn just as much as we are, and to usher in customers, many been offering tempting and reasonable "recession specials". Case in point: on Sunday through Thursday nights, Luna Park (694 Valencia, SF. 415-553-8584, www.lunaparksf.com) currently offers a rotating "blue plate special" priced from $10 to $12, with accompanying drink specials for $5.

4. Decide ahead. Most restaurants have online menus, and if you choose what you want before you get to the restaurant, you’ll prevent yourself from making impulse orders at the last minute.

5. Go prix fixe. At many restaurants, you can eat a delicious three-course meal for under $25 if you order off the prix fixe menu. Baker Street Bistro (2953 Baker, SF. 415-931-1475, www.bakerstbistro.com) offers a popular three course prix fixe dinner menu that includes soup, chef’s choice of an entree, and any dessert for $14.50. At Pisces (3414 Judah, SF. 415-564-2233, www.greenopia.com), start off with an organic green salad, followed by Muscovy duck leg with pear compote, and end with a crème brulée, all for $23.

6. Try lunch. According to Zagat’s San Francisco Dining Deals Guide, lunch items are generally 25 percent to 30 percent less expensive than dinner items, even if both menus are exactly the same.

7. Take a class. Give a man a fish taco and he’ll eat for a day. Teach him how to sauté a whitefish and make his own fish taco with mango salsa, and he’ll eat well for the rest of his life, plus impress his friends. Emily Dellas (www.emilydellas.com) at First Class Cooking, teaches three-course cooking classes out of her beautiful SoMa studio for $55, which covers all the ingredients. Post-cooking, you’ll sit down and eat the gourmet goodies you learned to make.

8. Go ethnic. Dining at ethnic restaurants is a great way to eat sumptuously without spending every penny in your pocket, since hole-in-the-wall places are almost always better than the expensive versions. Shalimar (532 Jones, SF. 415-776-4642, www.shalimarsf.com) is easily one of the best Indian restaurants in San Francisco, and most entrees on the menu are under $5 (BYOB). With prices like that, you can justify heading up the street afterward to The Hidden Vine (620 Post, SF. 415-674-3567, www.thehiddenvine.com) for some chocolate truffles and a glass of wine.

Fun under seige

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news@sfbg.com

As San Francisco’s party season gets underway — a time when just about every weekend includes street fairs and festivals, venerable celebrations like Bay to Breakers, quirky cultural events such a flash mobs, promoter-created club nights, and underground parties designed to raise funds for Burning Man camps and other endeavors — police and other party-poopers keep finding new ways to crack down on the fun.

The latest: potentially fatal price gouging of the How Weird Street Faire, a series of bizarre police raids on underground clubs, and state alcohol officials threatening to yank local club licenses.

For years, the Guardian has been warning that NIMBY neighbors, intolerant enforcers, and indifferent city officials were threatening the vibrant social events that make San Francisco such a fun and unique city (see “Death of fun,” 5/23/06, “Death of fun, the sequel,” 4/25/07, and regular recent posts on the SFBG Politics blog).

Lately the situation has gotten so bad that even the conservative San Francisco Examiner has written about the problem (“Squeezing the fun out of festivals,” 4/13/09) and followed it up with an editorial calling for city officials to address the issue and ensure that the cultural events can keep happening.

Overwhelming public opposition to recently proposed restrictions on the May 17 Bay to Breakers and April 12 Bring Your Own Big Wheel events led City Hall to pressure the San Francisco Police Department into reversing promises of a crackdown, although many events are being threatened.

The How Weird Street Faire is scheduled for May 10, although organizers say they can’t come up with the nearly $10,000 the San Francisco Police Department is demanding by May 1. Organizer Brad Olsen sought help from City Hall (Sup. Ross Mirkarimi and senior mayoral aide Mike Farrah — who helped save BYOBW — have both tried to intervene, so far to no avail) and unearthed city codes that seem to cap police fees for events like How Weird at $5,494, but the cops haven’t budged.

“Although we appreciate your position, it would be unwise for the SFPD to risk public money by not collecting the required fees prior to the event. If the event is the only way your group is able to pay for police services, we are all betting that the event will be as successful as you hope,” SFPD Lt. Nicole Greely wrote to How Weird promoters on April 13, suggesting that organizers take out a loan to pay the escautf8g protection money demanded by SFPD.

But Olsen said his grassroots group, which barely breaks even on the event, has never in its 10-year history been required to pay in advance and told us that entrance donations at the event are the only real source of revenue for the popular dance party.

Meanwhile the Guardian has heard multiple reports of undercover cops infiltrating underground parties in SoMa in the early morning hours of April 11 and 12, followed up by groups of more than a dozen uniformed officers storming in and roughly making arrests for resisting arrest, illegal alcohol sales, and drug possession.

“All of a sudden an undercover cop just tackled someone on the dance floor,” 27-year-old San Francisco resident Ryan Parkhurst told us, describing the scene at one party. “Then at that point, more than 10 officers came upstairs … I asked an officer, ‘What’s going on?’ and he said, ‘Arrest this guy.'”

Parkhurst said four cops then jumped on him, roughed him up, and arrested him. “Another guy was beat up worse than I was, with severe bruises and scratches all over his face.”

Parkhurst said he was charged with being drunk in public, resisting arrest, and assaulting an officer, but when he went to court on April 13, he was told all charges had been dropped.

SFPD spokesperson Sgt. Lyn Tomioka spent several days trying to gather information on the raids, but had little to offer by Guardian press time. “I can’t give you the answers you’re looking for based on what the computer is telling me,” she said. The District Attorney’s Office also did not respond by press time.

The attention that the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) is paying to licensed venues seems to have ratcheted up lately as well. DNA Lounge, a nightlife haunt for freaks of all stripes, was cited by ABC in February for operating “a disorderly house injurious to the public welfare and morals” after undercover agents for the department witnessed brief instances of nudity and simulated intercourse during the DNA’s popular regular queer parties Cream and Escandalo.

These instances occurred during go-go and stage routines, mostly involving flashing buttocks and a wet T-shirt contest. In a statement on the DNA Lounge Web site , www.dnalounge.com, DNA owner Jamie Zawinski contends that ABC is retaliating against his club for appealing the department’s decision not to grant DNA a conversion of its license from a Type 48 (21-and-over bar) to a Type 47 (all-ages venue that serves food). During the appeal process, a settlement was reached, and the DNA successfully converted its license.

“As a direct result of our having filed an appeal, ABC began sending undercover agents into the club during our gay and lesbian promotions looking for dirt,” Zawinski writes, drawing attention to the specific targeting of DNA’s queer nights, a particular that inflamed the gay community when a story about it was published in the Bay Area Reporter.

It is the specific requirement that all-ages venues collect 50 percent or more of their revenue from food sales that has gotten several other San Francisco clubs in trouble with ABC. The state requires that venues possessing a Type 47 (“bona fide eating place”) license, a requirement for most all-ages clubs, earn just as much revenue from food sales as liquor sales. That’s particularly daunting for businesses that have traditionally made most of their money at the bar.

“There is grave concern and fear,” San Francisco Entertainment Commissioner Terrence Alan told the Guardian, “that the recent conflicting and oftentimes underground regulations [of ABC] could undermine the great and ongoing work of the Entertainment Commission and Sup. Ross Mirkarimi’s proposed cultural legislation.”

Alan was referring to the “Promoting and Sustaining Music and Culture in San Francisco” charter amendment sponsored by Mirkarimi that would “produce a master plan and vision that promotes a sustainable environment for music, culture, and entertainment throughout the city.”

It appears the law enforcement types are doing everything possible to make sure Mirkarimi’s vision never becomes reality.

Uncivil unions

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steve@sfbg.com

Who really cares about an appointment to the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District Board of Directors? There isn’t a delicate balance of power on the board or any major initiative at stake in this fairly obscure district. San Francisco certainly has more pressing issues and concerns.

Yet the Board of Supervisors’ April 14 vote to reject Larry Mazzola Jr. and select Dave Snyder for that board says more about San Francisco’s political dynamics, the state of the American labor movement, the psychological impact of the recession, how the city will grow, and the possibilities and pitfalls facing the board’s new progressive majority than any in recent memory.

It was a vote that meant nothing and everything at the same time, a complex and telling story of brinksmanship in which both sides of the progressive movement arguably lost. And it was a vote that came at a time when they need each other more than ever.

"It was a win for the Newsom-oriented elements of labor," Sup. Chris Daly, who helped spark the conflict, told the Guardian.

The bloc of six progressive supervisors who shot down Mazzola — who helps run the powerful plumbers union and was the San Francisco Labor Council’s unwavering choice for an appointment that has traditionally been labor’s seat on the bridge board — is the same bloc the unions helped elected last year. It is also the same bloc that has been fighting the hardest to minimize budget-related layoffs.

The vote says a tremendous amount about the crucial alliance between progressives and labor, how that delicate partnership formed, and what the future holds.

PLUMBERS VS. PROGRESSIVES


The Mazzola name carries a lot of weight in San Francisco labor circles. The Web site for the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipefitting Industry Local 38 (UA 38) features a photo of U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis standing between Larry Mazzola Sr. and Larry Mazzola Jr., the father and son team that runs the union.

But the Mazzolas and their union are also controversial. As the Guardian has reported ("Plumbers gone wild," 2/1/06), the union owns a large share of the Konocti Harbor Resort (which a lawsuit by the Department of Labor said was a misuse of the union’s pension funds) and owns the Civic Center Hotel, which tenants and city officials say has been willfully neglected by a union suspected of wanting to bulldoze and develop the site. The plumbers and other members of the building trades have also fought with progressives over development issues and generally back moderate-to-conservative candidates.

Sup. Chris Daly and several progressive groups locked horns with the union over the hotel a few years ago, and Mazzola Sr. responded by opposing Daly’s 2006 reelection campaign, targeting him with nasty mailers and donating office space to Daly’s opponent, Rob Black. Yet more progressive unions like Service Employees International Union Local 1021, which represents city employees, convinced the Labor Council to back Daly and union support helped Daly win.

So when Mazzola Jr. came before Daly’s Rules Committee last month, the supervisor unloaded on him, and Mazzola gave as good as he got, telling Daly he didn’t want his support and defiantly telling the committee he didn’t know much about the bridge district, or its issues, but he expected the job anyway. Those on all sides of the issue agree it was a disaster.

"He was just patently unqualified for the position," Daly told the Guardian. Mazzola tells us his experience with labor contracts would be an asset for the position, but he admits the committee meeting didn’t go well. "I was caught off-guard and put in a defensive mode that altered my planned presentation," Mazzola told us.

Whatever the case, Sup. David Campos joined Daly in keeping the Mazzola nomination stuck in committee while the progressive supervisors privately asked labor leaders to offer another choice. "We said, ‘Give us anyone else as long as they can intelligently talk about transportation issues and the bridge district," Daly said.

But labor dug in. "It seemed as though the board was trying to dictate to labor what labor should do," Michael Theriault, who heads the San Francisco Building and Construction Trade Council. And the other unions decided to back the trades, for a number of complicated reasons.

"The reason we supported Larry Mazzola is because this was important to the plumbers union," said Mike Casey, president of the Labor Council and head of Unite Here (which includes the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees and the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union). "To the extent we can support the trades, we want to."

So when the four most conservative members of the Board of Supervisors used a parliamentary trick to call the Mazzola nomination up to the full board on April 14, the stage was set for the standoff.

THE STATE OF LABOR


Labor is truly a house divided, despite its universal interest in minimizing recession-related layoffs and taking advantage of a new Congress and White House that is generally supportive of labor’s holy grail: the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it far easier to form unions.

The April 25 founding convention of National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) in San Francisco caps a years-long battle between Sal Rosselli’s United Healthcare Workers (UHW) and their SEIU masters (see "Union showdown," 1/28/09). Rosselli and many others say SEIU under Andy Stern has become undemocratic and has climbed in bed with corporate America, while SEIU says getting bigger has made the union better able to advocate for workers. Both accuse the other of being power-hungry and not fighting fair.

"Inside SEIU, we’ve been struggling for four years basically on a difference of ideology and vision of what the labor movement is," Rosselli told us. David Regan, who SEIU named as a UHW trustee after ousting Rosselli, told us the union divisions have been overstated by the media. "Everyone is together in pushing the Employee Free Choice Act," he said, glossing over the fact that the legislation is in trouble and recently lost the support of U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

Nationally, SEIU has been at war with all of the most progressive unions. The union recently made peace with the California Nurses Association after a particularly nasty struggle that involves many of the same dynamics as SEIU vs. NUHW, including accusations by CNA that SEIU was a barrier to achieving single-payer healthcare and was illegally meddling in its internal affairs.

SEIU is also accused of breaking up Unite Here, which fought the most high-profile labor battle here since Newsom became mayor in its contract fight with the big hotel chains. Last month, a large faction from the old Unite affiliated with SEIU, whose officials say they were just helping out after the end of what all knew was a bad marriage. "This is an example of a merger that didn’t take," SEIU spokesperson Michelle Ringuette told us. But the building trades have backed Unite Here in its fight against Sterns’ SEIU. As Casey told us, "We’re in a major fight over our right to exist. There’s no other way to characterize it."

Yet in San Francisco, SEIU plays a different role. Local 1021 is the advocate for the little guy, representing front-line city workers who deliver social and public health services. It is the union facing the deepest layoffs in the coming city budget fight and is still negotiating contract givebacks with the Mayor’s Office. The union’s biggest allies in City Hall are the exact same six supervisors who voted against Mazzola.

So why this standoff? SEIU, Unite Here, and other progressive unions share the Labor Council with the building trades, which are traditionally more conservative and friendly with downtown and, these days, starting to really get desperate for work. "We have thousands of guys on the verge of losing their homes and families," Theriault said. "We are desperate."

That was one reason the San Francisco Labor Council last year cut a deal with Lennar Corporation to back Proposition G, which lets Lennar develop more than 10,000 homes in the southeast sector of the city. Daly, who wanted firmer guarantees of more affordable housing, was livid over the deal and has been at odds with the council ever since. But Daly said labor’s undercutting of progressives goes back even further and includes the early reelection endorsement Rosselli’s UHW gave Newsom in 2007, which helped keep big-name local progressives out of the race.

Tenants groups, affordable housing advocates, and alternative transportation supporters form the backbone of progressive politics, but on development projects, they often clash with the trade unionists who just want work. And labor expects support from the progressive supervisors. As Mazzola pointed out, "It was labor that got most of those guys elected."

But labor has its own fights on the horizon. SEIU fears deep city job cuts if the Mayor’s Office can’t be persuaded to start supporting new revenue measures. NUHW is getting challenged by SEIU for every member the try to sign up. And Unite Here’s hotel contracts start expiring in six months, reopening its battle with downtown hotel managers.

"We’re going to be in a real war with some of those employers," Casey said. Yet he said its actually good time for the otherwise distracting fights with SEIU over how nice to play with big corporations. "I embrace this fight because I think this is exactly the struggle we need to have in the labor movement."

But the Mazzola fight was one that neither side relished.

TO THE BRINK


The Board of Supervisors chambers was filled with union members flying their colors on April 14, but the progressive supervisors were just as unified, voting 6-5 to reject Mazzola. All that was left was the political posturing, the decision of what to do next, and the fallout.

"I am disappointed and surprised by the board’s action," Sup. Sean Elsbernd (who voted for Mazzola and publicly called it "a sin" to deny him) told us, refusing to confirm the private joy over the outcome that many sources say he has expressed. "What shocked me is a majority of the board turned their back on labor."

Daly admits that the standoff hurt progressives. "I’m not sure who came up with it, but it’s certainly true that the Sean Elsbernds of the world were able to take full advantage of the situation to drive a wedge between unions and progressives," Daly said.

Yet Daly noted how ridiculous is was for Sups. Elsbernd and Michela Alioto-Pier to be publicly professing such fealty to labor while opposing revenue measures that would minimize layoffs. "At the same time the plumbers were attacking me, I was sponsoring paid sick days," Daly said. "It’s the six members of the board that are the most pro-labor who voted against Larry Mazzola."

Politically, Elsbernd says the progressives misplaced their hand. "I think the easy middle ground for them was to reject Mazzola and send it back to committee," Elsbernd said. Others echoed that point. Instead, supervisors appointed Synder, a widely acclaimed transportation expert who created the modern San Francisco Bicycle Coalition then started Transportation for a Livable City (now Livable City) before becoming the first transportation policy director for the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR).

"I don’t like how that went down, and I’m not happy with the inability of the board and labor to come to an agreement," Snyder told us. "I was stuck in the middle. I wish they had sent someone the board could have agreed to."

After the vote, Snyder went back to the SPUR office and resigned. SPUR director Gabriel Metcalf admits that labor leaders lobbied him to pressure Snyder to withdraw his name, and that he asked Snyder to do so. But Metcalf said he didn’t want to lose Snyder, whose vast knowledge of transportation issues as been a real asset to SPUR. "It was his choice and not my preference."

"This issue is not why I left SPUR, but it was the precipitating event," said Snyder, whose progressive values have occasionally differed from SPUR’s stands. "My sense of social justice has more to do with class issues than I was able to pursue at SPUR."

In fact, the clashes between progressives and developers (who are often backed by the trade unions) often revolve around how much affordable housing and community benefits will be required with each project approval. Snyder said the defining question is, "How do we accommodate development in San Francisco and maintain progressive values in a capitalist economy?"

He didn’t answer that question, but it is one the building trades also understand. Theriault said he supports holding developers to high standards, even when progressives have block certain projects to get them. "I’m okay with that as long as I see the endgame," Theriault said.

He expects the progressive board to listen to labor more than Daly or Democratic Party chair Aaron Peskin, who Theriault said helped shore up the progressive opposition to Mazzola (which Peskin denies). "With the exception of Daly, the relationships are reparable. But they have to show some independence from Daly and Peskin," Theriault said. "The real fear for me is what comes next."

Theriault was referring to things like new historic preservation standards that supervisors will soon consider, as well as the string of big development projects coming forward this year. And for progressives, they hope their efforts to save city jobs will be followed by labor support for progressive candidates for the Board of Supervisors (such as Debra Walker and Rafael Mandelman) in next year’s election.

"The one thing I know about labor is, we’ve been screwed by politicians on the left and the right," Casey said. "Are we angry about this and disappointed? Yes. But does that mean the alliance between labor and progressives is dead? No. We’re going to work through this stuff, talk, take deep breaths, and move forward."

NUHW’s founding convention takes place April 25 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Everett Middle School, 450 Church St., San Francisco.

Visceral reality

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Already a veteran Irish Republican Army volunteer serving his second penitentiary term at age 27, Bobby Sands was leader of Republican prisoners at HM Prison Maze, a.k.a. Long Kesh, outside Belfast in 1981. Early that year he commenced a hunger strike joined by numerous other inmates, an action intended to define IRA incarcerates as political rather than criminal prisoners while boosting international attention for the independence cause.

After 66 days, he was the first of 10 participants to die. The strike’s cessation five months later (participants joined in at staggered intervals) was claimed as a victory by Conservative P.M. Margaret Thatcher and the mainstream British press. Yet the inmates won most of their demands, IRA membership surged, and the "Iron Lady" was thereafter target No. 1 for patriotic loathing among Irish free-staters.

Hunger is the first feature by Steve McQueen, the London photographer, sculptor, and maker of often black and white shorts created primarily for the more rarefied atmosphere of museums and galleries. Their minimalist rigor is very much present here in the exactitude of composition as well as their emphasis on physical detail and visceral experience. It took Julian Schnabel until The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007) to find a full-length subject that suited his tactile sense while excusing a lack of narrative instinct or interest; McQueen’s got there on the first try. Hunger is completely realized, without compromise. It’s convincingly ugly in an aesthetically beautiful way, cool to the touch, admirably near-perfect, and off-putting.

We’re introduced to Sands only after several lesser figures take brief center stage: Raymond Lohan (Stuart Graham), a guard whose work weighs heavily on him; new prisoner Davey (Brian Milligan), who refuses to wear "the uniform of a criminal," thus joining the already in-progress "blanket protest"; and older cellmate Gerry (Liam McMahon), who introduces him to the "dirty protest." That protest consisted of caking walls with smeared feces, directing urine into the corridor, and letting uneaten food rot. We finally glimpse Sands (Michael Fassbender) during visiting hours; he puts up a fierce fight as he and others are violently dragged to a forced shave-and-wash.

Hunger is clinical, politically neutral, almost purely observational — interested in simply displaying rather than commenting on the sacrifices made. It’s not unlike McQueen’s series of postage stamps commemorating British soldiers killed in Iraq — created as part of his role as "official war artist" — that were opposed by the Royal Mail and Ministry of Defense.

Ethical debate is limited to one, 17-and-a-half minute shot in which Bobby and Father Moran (Liam Cunningham) lay out personal, political, and religious arguments for and against a potentially lethal strike. It’s only in the subsequent, equally stock-still sequence — a guard sweeping an entire hall-length of piss — that the director’s severity risks feeling schematic.

Needless to say, the final act is unrelenting, with its hallucinations, open sores, and actors starved under medical supervision to scarifying effect. But McQueen finds unsentimental poetry in surprising places throughout, from the snowflakes falling on Lohan’s beating-scarred knuckles to Sands’ lifeless face as a winding sheet is drawn over it. The institutional palette, bare-bones use of sound, even the fully exposed sinewy-to-sticklike male bodies turn docudrama into a kind of exquisite art project, at once devastating and hermetically sealed. *

HUNGER opens Fri/3 in Bay Area theaters.

MORE ON SFBG.COM

Pixel Vision blog: Johnny Ray Huston’s interview with Hunger director Steve McQueen.

Ask Nate

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The Guardian introduces a new weekly advice column from Nathan Ballard, press secretary to Mayor Gavin Newsom. We hope you enjoy his insights as much as we always have.

279-nate_ballard.jpg

Dear Nate:

Times are tough in San Francisco for a lot of people, but my life seems to be bottoming out these days. My good city job just got eliminated, the after school program my kids love was cut, my elderly grandmother just lost her home health nurse, and the police still have no idea who murdered my husband last year. He was even shot right in front of one of those crime cameras. What should I do?

Desperate for Help

Dear Dessie:

I reject the premise of your question. Things are going great in San Francisco, particularly under this mayor’s strong leadership. But we feel your pain, which seems to stem from the Board of Supervisors refusing to give the Police Department more money or the authority to constantly monitor those cameras. Sup. Aaron Peskin is the reason your husband’s killer hasn’t been caught. He may actually be the murderer.

Nate

Dear Nate:

I was thinking about going into politics. Do you have any advice for someone considering running for office?

Budding Candidate

Dear Bud:

As my boss has repeatedly said, being mayor is the toughest and most thankless job in the world. He’s constantly dealing with uppity supervisors and complaining constituents, at least when he’s in town. And if you’re one of those spineless, whiny so-called progressives, my advice is to just do something else. Get a real job, something in the private sector. But if you share Mayor Newsom’s belief in building a better San Francisco with more public-private partnerships — and you’ve got a lot of rich friends — I say go for it. But make sure you hire the best advisers by calling Storefront Political Media and Earned Media. We — , er, uh, I mean they really know what they’re doing.

Nate

Dear Nate:

I’m new to San Francisco and trying to understand the political dynamics here. Is the central struggle really between progressives and moderates? Those are the two labels I hear the most, but it doesn’t make much sense to me. What about liberal vs. conservative?

Political Science Student

Dear Poli-Sci:

I reject the label progressive, and so does the San Francisco Chronicle now that we convinced them to. So actually the central struggle in this town is between the radical and unrealistic ultra-liberals and moderates like Gavin Newsom. The mayor can be a fiscal conservative when he needs to be, and he’s liberal on social issues, which makes him a moderate and therefore the voice of reason. He could even be a progressive on some issues, if there were such a thing as a progressive, which there’s not. But he’s never ultra-anything, because that would make him crazy, which he also isn’t. Is that clear?

Nate

California is NOT a high-tax state

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By Tim Redmond

Next time a politician tells you that businesses are leaving California because of high taxes, try the truth. California is #12 on the list of state tax levies per person.

Check out this nifty chart from the Sacramento Bee:

Per capita

U.S. total $2,571
Alaska $12,276
Vermont $4,095
Wyoming $4,070
Hawaii $3,996
Connecticut $3,818
North Dakota $3,604
New Jersey $3,526
Minnesota $3,509
Mass. $3,360
Delaware $3,357
New York $3,356
California $3,193

Imagine — good ol’ conservative red-state don’t-tax-me Wyoming has higher per-capita taxes than California. Alaska, home to Sarah Palin, has the high oil-severance tax (which California still lacks, despite being an oil-producing state). I guess it’s cold in Minnesota, so they need higher taxes to heat all those state buildings — but wait! It’s warm in Hawaii, and they have higher taxes, too.

As Calitics notes:

The chart shows little overall trend – big states and small states, states with high unemployment and low unemployment, they’re all there. One cannot draw a conclusion from this chart that there’s any correlation between high taxes and high unemployment or poverty rates.

Of course, no amount of evidence or fact is likely to change the minds of California conservatives and their fellow travelers, who continue to cling to 30 years of failed policy and insist that any tax increase is going to destroy our state.

And none of that includes the fact that overall, people and businesses in the United States pay far lower taxes than just about any other industrialized country. Which may be why the recession isn’t as bad in Europe, where there’s a solid social-safety net:

The Europeans say they have no need for further stimulus right now because their social safety nets, derided in good times by free market disciples as sclerotic impediments to growth, are automatically providing the spending programs that the United States Congress has to legislate.

Something to think about.

Save the Chronicle!

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EDITORIAL The San Francisco Chronicle story March 15 on Mayor Gavin Newsom’s frequent absence from the city drew comments from many who believe the mayor is out of touch, wandering the state seeking votes for governor at a time when the city is facing a historic financial crisis. The news was really nothing new — we’ve been reporting for months now that the mayor is disengaged in the business of running the city. But it appeared on the front page of the local daily newspaper, and that put the story right in the center of civic discourse.

We’ve been as critical of the Chron as anyone in town. For 42 years, we’ve been reporting on the failures of the daily newspapers in San Francisco, and we regularly blast the Hearst-owned near-monopoly daily for its failure to cover major stories and its biased slant on others.

And as the first alternative newspaper in the country founded specifically to provide an editorial and advertising alternative to the moribund dailies, we’re the first to agree that the Chron doesn’t, and shouldn’t, have the final word on what’s important in this city. We’re big supporters of all sorts of alternative media, and we’re glad to see that Web-based news publications, some of them daily, are appearing and offering different ways for people to find information.

But if the Chronicle dies, the city will lose an important, if often infuriating, civic institution. Hearst should not be allowed to turn San Francisco into the first major American city with no major daily newspaper — not without extensive oversight, hearings, and a chance for somebody else to take over the paper and try to make it work.

Hearst is complaining that the Chronicle is losing about $50 million a year. Of course, Hearst, a private corporation, won’t show anyone, even its own unions, its books.

We realize the newspaper business is rough right now, but we’re not convinced that running a daily paper in San Francisco is a doomed proposition. This is one of the wealthiest, best-educated markets in the world — and the fact that Hearst can’t sell enough newspapers and ads to float its operation is in significant part a sign of how miserable the paper’s management has failed. It tried to be a regional paper, which flopped. It’s become so politically conservative that progressives, particularly young progressives who make up the future of its demographic base, see little reason to subscribe.

And let’s not forget — Hearst has made a fortune in San Francisco. In 1965, the Hearst-owned Examiner and the family-owned Chronicle formed a joint operating agreement — a government-sanctioned monopoly, blessed by special legislation, that allowed two ostensibly competing companies to fix prices, share markets and pool profits. For the next 26 years, the JOA was a license to print money. Local advertisers paid billions in high rates to the newspaper combine, and those profits far, far eclipse anything the Chron has lost since Hearst bought it.

When the New York company bought out the deYoung Thieriot family in 2001, it sought to create a true monopoly by shutting down the Ex entirely. A local outcry, a lawsuit by Clint Reilly, and threats by federal regulators forced Hearst to sell the bones of the Ex to the Fang family, which essentially got the paper free and was given a $66 million subsidy to run it.

Now, after all this, Hearst is threatening to close shop and walk away, destroying hundreds of union jobs and wiping out a newspaper that is, by its nature, something of a public utility. And once again — ironically, just as the Chron reported — Mayor Newsom is missing in action. Newsom should be taking the lead on preventing the loss of a major local business. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who is asking the Justice Department to relax anti-competitive rules on newspaper ownership (a bad idea), should instead push legislation barring a daily newspaper in a one-paper town from closing down unless and until the owners offer it for sale at a fair price and give someone else a chance to run it. Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer should join her.

The Chron unions have talked of an interest in buying the paper. Financier Warren Hellman confirmed to us that he supports creating a nonprofit entity to take over Chronicle operations. Hearst Corp., which has almost certainly already written off its $600 million purchase as a tax loss, should be forced to work with potential buyers — and give them a deal no worse than what the Fangs got in 2001.

The future of the Chron has implications for the entire industry — and if Hearst is going to carry out the assassination of a newspaper, it should be done in a fishbowl. Congress, the state Legislature, and the San Francisco supervisors should hold hearings, subpoena the Hearst executives, and push alternatives. And Newsom needs to quit gallivanting around the state and start working on his own city’s problems. *

Real set-aside reform

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Whenever conservative elements within San Francisco’s political mix put forth measures that carry the moniker "good government," liberals, progressives, and those of us concerned that good government serve the people rather than the corporations should take notice.

Last year, one so-called good government measure usurped the right of four members of the Board of Supervisors to check a mayoral veto by putting a measure on the ballot at the last minute. The reform imposed a requirement that hearings be held before the supervisors put any legislation on the ballot.

Never mind that empirical evidence shows no correlation between the route to the ballot and the quality of measures; good as well as crap has made it onto the ballot and into law from all origins. Never mind that there were other ways to ensure that voter-initiated ordinances were amendable and flexible. Downtown wanted to crimp the power of the Board of Supervisors and our neighborhoods and, with the help of some progressives, succeeded.

They’re back at it again, as government grapples with revenue shortfalls caused by the second Great Depression, a depression caused by the economic policies championed by our local conservative/moderate coalition. We are seeing another effort at good government that would only benefit those who wish to destroy popular public services, to enable Reaganism, and to wipe away much of the public sector.

In order to secure a dedicated, reliable stream of funding, activists have run campaigns to create set-asides for various public programs. The earliest funded the San Francisco Symphony during the first Great Depression. Since then, programs that carry great public appeal, from the Children’s Fund to the Open Space Fund to Muni have been given set-asides by the votes.

The proposal on the table now would change the way the city handles budget set-asides, ostensibly to allow greater flexibility during tough times. It would allow the Board of Supervisors, under certain budgetary shortfall conditions, to dip into funds earmarked for particular purposes. But the result would be dangerous to the ongoing essential function of government. And the proposal would prevent the voters from solving a problem created by our City Charter — the inability to do multiyear budgeting.

What this city needs is a way for voters to express their long-term funding priorities and to hold the feet of elected officials to the fire in funding those priorities — but in a manner that accounts for the vicissitudes of the economy.

The reason the city can’t do multiyear budgeting without a Charter set aside is that any regular ordinance passed by the board and the mayor can override any other ordinance. One way to approach the problem: amend the charter to create a new class of ordinance, one that would allow for multiyear budgeting. This class of ordinance would need to be classified as a multiyear budget ordinance when proposed, and would require either a vote of the people or a super majority at the Board of Supervisors and a mayoral signature to enact.

The multiyear budgeting ordinances would govern subsequent years’ budgets and could be overridden only with a super-majority vote, and only under conditions of economic hardship. In normal times, the city could set longer-term spending priorities for projects and priorities that last longer than one budget year, as well as those areas that are important to San Franciscans year in and year out. *

Marc Salomon is a neighborhood activist in San Francisco.

Should California be split up?

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By Tim Redmond

It’s an interesting question. Nothing new, really — folks up in the northern part of the state have been talking about secession since the 1940s.

But these days, the talk has shifted from North-South to Central Valley-Coast.

There’s plenty of discussion going on — the New York Times
reports on a move by farmers in Visalia, who say those of us in the more liberal western regions don’t understand what it’s like in the center of the state:

Frustrated by what they call uninformed urban voters dictating faulty farm policy, Mr. Rogers and the other members of the movement have proposed splitting off 13 counties on the state’s coast, leaving the remaining 45, mostly inland, counties as the “real” California.

The reason, they say, is that people in those coastal counties, which include San Francisco and Los Angeles, simply do not understand what life is like in areas where the sea breezes do not reach.
“They think fish are more important than people, that pigs are treated mean and chickens should run loose,” said Mr. Rogers, who said he hitched a ride in 1940 to Visalia from Oklahoma to escape the Dust Bowl, with his wife and baby son in tow. “City people just don’t know what it takes to get food on their table.”

A former Assembly member is pushing a vertical split, too :

“Citizens of our once Golden State are frustrated and desperately concerned about the imposition of burdensome regulations, taxation, fees, fees and more fees, and bureaucratic intrusion into our daily lives and businesses,” declares downsizeca.org, the movement’s website.

And all of this comes as reformers form both the left and the right are talking about a new Constitutional Convention.

Athough some of the proponents are clearly nutty, the idea isn’t. As the noted political economist Gar Alperovitz wrote two years ago

The United States is almost certainly too big to be a meaningful democracy. What does “participatory democracy” mean in a continent? Sooner or later, a profound, probably regional, decentralization of the federal system may be all but inevitable.

He was talking about California becoming its own nation, but I’d argue that the same problem applies here. The budget crisis, the gridlock in Sacramento … all of it suggests that maybe California itself is too big to govern. There’s also clear evidence of dramatic regional differences. If you take the Central Valley from about Redding on down, and wrap in Orange County, you have a red state within a blue state where most of the residents say they want lower taxes and smaller government. Along the coast from about Sonoma County down to the southern part of Los Angeles County, you have people who generally would like to see taxes pay for public services. If the coast were a state, we could repeal Prop. 13 and build world-class schools. We’d have same-sex marriage and single-payer health insurance. And we’d still be one of the biggest states in America.

Now, I’m not sure the people in the central valley quite realize the problem with their plans, which is illustrated in this wonderful chart that comes from the office of Assemblywoman Noreen Evans of Santa Rosa (PDF):

317chart.jpg

The chart shows that the people who dislike and distrust government and don’t want to pay taxes are in fact the beneficiaries of the tax dollars that the rest of us pay. In California, tax money from the coast winds up paying for services in the central valley.

But that’s okay — if they don’t want our money any more, maybe we should tell them we’re fine with that. Maybe we should split the state not just in two but into three: Let the northern counties become the state of Jefferson, where pot will be legal and the residents will be so wealthy from taxes and exports of that cash crop that they’ll make oil-richAlaskans seem like paupers. Pot will be legal in the coastal communities, too, and will generate tax revenue.

We’ll have a Democratic governor, and overwhelmingly Democratic legislature, fewer prisons, better schools, cleaner air, no Ellis Act, rent controls on vacant apartments, more money for transit, strict gun control, support for immigrant rights … and no more of these ugly battles over budgets held hostage by right-wing Republicans.

And in the central valley, they can have their low taxes and conservative values, and watch their roads, schools, and public services go to hell. Maybe eventually they’ll figure it out.

Of course, we’d have to figure out the water rights. The folks in Jefferson would have control over much of the water that now goes South, and there would have to be some long-term water contracts between the states, but that shouldn’t be an insurmountable roadblock.

And the solution would create its own problems; The GOP would control the central state, and would move to abolish the Agricultural Labor Relations Act and make life even more miserable for farmworkers. But then, maybe Jefferson would turn off the water and big agribusiness would be SOL anyway.

As part of the break-up, all parties would have to agree to create a special relocation fund to help lonely, sad liberals from Modesto come west and to help lonely, sad Republicans in San Francisco to move east. I wonder which way the net migration would go.

Meanwhile, Evans has introduced my favorite tax bill of the year, AB 1342, and it’s related to this entire discussion. She wants to allow counties to levy their own income taxes and vehicle license fees. “We went through this difficult process of trying to arrive at a budget,” her spokesperson, Anthony Matthews, told me. “For those communities that have a different view of government [than the Republicans], this bill would let them raise their own taxes to fund their priorities.”

Weirdness at the Washbag

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By Steven T. Jones

There was a surreal air to last night’s celebration of the Board of Supervisors’ Class of 2000 at the Washington Bar and Grill in North Beach. That weird vibe was created mostly by the fact that the event was sponsored by Platinum Advisors and the Residential Builders Association, two groups that didn’t always see eye-to-eye with that progressive-dominated class.
That class – which included progressive firebrands Matt Gonzalez and Chris Daly, liberals Aaron Peskin and Jake McGoldrick, and independent conservative Tony Hall – were swept into office largely as a backlash against the top-down rule of then-Mayor Willie Brown, who shares both an office and a corporatist ideology with Platinum.
All those guys were in attendance and the mood was buoyant, helped by the free booze and food. Hall called the supervisors elected in 2000 “the original class of rebels,” while Peskin told the crowd, “Thank you for keeping the progressive spirit of San Francisco alive.”
But it was Brown who had the quote of the night in his not-so-subtle dig at the prickly current Mayor Gavin Newsom (who was rumored to be upset about the gathering): “My guess is if that class was still in place today, they would want me as their mayor.”

Freeing the press

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Norwin S. Yoffie Career Achievement Award

ROBERT PORTERFIELD


Bob Porterfield is a shit-disturber, an old-fashioned investigative reporter who has no favorites, no sacred cows, and no fear of offending anyone. Since his first story — a profile of a YMCA social program published in Eugene, Ore.’s The Register-Guard in 1959, when he was 15 — Porterfield has had ink in his veins. He’s shared two Pulitzer Prizes (first for an Anchorage Daily News report on the Teamsters Union in 1975 and then for a series on the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority for The Boston Globe), won more than two dozen other prizes and worked on a long list of major investigative projects.

He has become something of an expert in computer-assisted reporting and information systems — but is still a down-to-earth guy who never forgot the value of traditional, hands-on digging. Back in 1986, he was on a team at Newsday looking into the federal Synfuels Corp., a scandal-plagued agency that was shut down in the wake of his stories.

"I remember once we were looking for property records on a Synfuels Corp. project linked to [former CIA Director) Bill Casey," he told me. "I wound up going down to Plymouth, N.C., (population 4,000), and I found this musty old office with two older women sitting there, knitting. There was no index book, nothing computerized. But when I explained what I was looking for, one of the women remembered the parcel of land I was talking about and pulled out the exact documents for me."

Porterfield has devoted a tremendous amount of time to teaching and mentoring, showing young reporters how to use public records to find stories. "I’m glad to see [President Obama’s] new directive on openness, but I hope it trickles down to the independent agencies," he said. "Because there’s been way, way too much secrecy." (Tim Redmond)

Beverly Kees Educator Award

ALAN GIBSON


Alan Gibson is reclaiming the Founding Fathers from conservatives with

his recent book Understanding the Founding: The Crucial Questions (University Press of Kansas, 2007). It examines the progressive ideals that guided early American political thought.

"The Founding Fathers are often captured by conservatives," Gibson told the Guardian. "But there is no clear line of legacy. It is much more complex than that. Conservative restoration politics are dangerous and not historically accurate."

As an undergraduate, Gibson cultivated an interest in issues of separation of church and state, which led to doctoral studies on James Madison, the namesake of the Society of Professional Journalists’ annual Freedom of Information awards. "Madison was the most progressive of all [the Founding Fathers] when it comes to freedom of the press," Gibson said. "He helped develop the idea that American government should be responsive to public opinion, and the role of newspapers was to make sure that an authentic public opinion was set forth." Gibson, a political science professor at California State University-Chico, lectures at various colleges across the country. Understanding the Founding will be published in paperback later this year. (Laura Peach)

Professional Journalists

MARJIE LUNDSTROM


Journalists often get alarming tips about practices within Child Protective Services (CPS) agencies, but it has always been a nearly impossible task to overcome privacy protections and get even basic information about how CPS handles reports of child abuse or neglect.

"It’s a difficult agency to write about, for some good reasons," Sacramento Bee reporter Marjie Lundstrom, who set out in 2007 to investigate complaints about Sacramento’s CPS, told the Guardian. "They operate in such a vacuum with very little public scrutiny."

She had started to piece together some information from coroner’s records and other public documents when Senate Bill 39 went into effect in January 2008, "and it was just amazing what it opened up."

The bill reveals CPS files in cases where the child has died, allowing Lundstrom to expose the negligence of CPS workers in responding to abuse reports, even those from doctors. "I do feel like what we were able to show, because of the law, where workers made flagrant mistakes that costs kids their lives," she said.

But many CPS records are still secret. Next, after writing several stories about CPS that sparked a grand jury investigation, Lundstrom intends to expose problems within the internal accountability procedures at CPS. (Steven T. Jones)

HILARY COSTA AND JOHN SIMERMAN


When the news broke last September that 15-year-old Jazzmin Davis had been murdered by her aunt after suffering months of abuse and neglect in her Antioch home, Bay Area News Group reporters Hilary Costa and John Simerman submitted a public records request about the girl’s case history with the San Francisco Human Services Agency.

The city denied the request for nearly two months, using a privacy claim. Undeterred, the journalists took the step of testing out Senate Bill 39, a relatively new piece of legislation that mandates public disclosure of findings and information about children who have died of abuse or neglect. A judge eventually ordered that the records be released.

Although highly redacted, the nearly 700-page paper trail told the girl’s story in the form of hand-written notes, report cards, medical records, caseworker visits, and other detailed documents. The records led to a package of stories that exposed a series of failures and violations of state regulations by an HSA social worker, raising questions about agency practices and spurring a review of hundreds of other foster care cases.

"This story’s been so important to me," Costa told the Guardian. "It felt like somebody owed it to Jazzmin to find out what happened to her." (Rebecca Bowe)

Interactive Media

AUTUMN CRUZ AND MITCHELL BROOKS


Sacramento Bee photographer Autumn Cruz had been covering the trial of three-year-old K.C. Balbuena’s murder for several months when she came up with the concept of creating an interactive online courtroom. With the help of Bee graphic journalist Mitchell Brooks, Cruz made public the essential pieces of evidence and information to those outside the courtroom doors.

Viewers can take a virtual tour of the exhibits and documents, along with video and audio statements and interrogations. "As a journalist, you’re fighting every day for your right to information," Cruz told the Guardian.

Although Balbuena’s mother and roommate were found guilty of the murder in early 2008, Cruz laments her inability to bring back the child she grew to know so intimately only after his life was cut short. "I think my bringing his plight to the public will hopefully prevent similar things from happening to other children." (Joe Sciareillo)

Citizen

BERT ROBINSON


Journalist Bert Robinson is a longtime journalist who now serves as assistant managing editor for the San Jose Mercury News. But he’s being honored for his work as a citizen serving on San Jose’s Sunshine Reform Task Force.

"We set out on our sunshine ordinance adventure a few years ago. We found we were faring worse in court, and we couldn’t afford increased court costs," Robinson, a member of the California First Amendment Coalition, told the Guardian.

The project received political endorsements across the spectrum, but the initiative has had problems with the city council’s Rules Committee, controlled by San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, who has supported sunshine in the past.

"We achieved progress with public meeting requirements, but when you get into public records, city staff argue that rules are ‘too cumbersome’ … They say all sorts of things might happen if they become public, [which is] entirely hypothetical," Robinson said.

Task Force work that was slated to last six months has now dragged on for two years. "The city process grinds you down," Robinson said. But he says he’s committed to seeing it through. (Ben Terrall)

Legal Counsel

JAMES EWERT


James Ewert, an attorney with the California Newspaper Publishers Association, has long battled what he calls widespread secrecy in government. So in 2004, he played an instrumental role in providing greater public access to government meetings and records, resulting in the passage that November of Proposition 59, the Sunshine Amendment of California’s constitution.

Most recently Ewert helped Sen. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) with legislation protecting teachers from retribution from administrators when they defend the First Amendment rights of journalism students. Next Ewert hopes to allow greater scrutiny of public/press partnerships and how tax dollars are used in labor negotiations by the public university systems.

Ewert says the public’s right to know is still severely hampered by public safety concerns, including restrictions on journalists’ rights to interview prisoners and obtain information about police officers. But luckily for the public, Ewert is still on the job. (Andrew Shaw)

Student Journalists — High School

REDWOOD BARK


Before April 2008, Drew Ross had never had to defend the existence of the Eureka High School Redwood Bark, where he was the editor. But after arriving on campus one Monday morning to find that former principal Robert Steffen had removed 450 copies of a 20-page color edition of the paper, Ross and his staff fought back.

Steffen claimed that the nude, dream-like drawing by artist Natalie Gonzalez had ushered in a handful of complaints from students and parents. Steffen justified the action by saying he was "stomping out the flames before they became a forest fire."

"We told him we wanted to hold onto the paper but he recycled them," Ross told the Guardian. "We don’t make the paper for it to be thrown away. And we lost a lot of advertising on this."

Ross complained about censorship and got help from the Student Press Law Center and the American Civil Liberties Union. By the next day, the censorship story went front page at newspapers and Internet sites all over the country. Eventually Steffen not only sent out a public apology, he paid for the next 20-page color edition.

"We are now armed with knowledge of our rights," Ross said. "And the community knows the Redwood Bark has rights." (Deia de Brito)

SHASTA HIGH SCHOOL’S THE VOLCANO


Shasta High School student Amanda Cope speaks passionately about freedom of speech after her brush with censorship, telling the Guardian, "We are preserving the validity of the Constitution. Free speech is a protection, a safety, that lets us function normally without fear."

Cope was editor-in-chief of the Shasta High School student paper, The Volcano, when a controversy flared over the paper’s end-of-year issue, which featured a front-page image of a student burning an American flag. Shasta High principal Milan Woollard was already considering shutting down The Volcano when the issue came out and publicly stated: "This cements that decision."

But following a maelstrom of objection from Cope and the rest of The Volcano staff in what looked like a form of censorship in schools, the school district reversed its decision. "I think a lot of students feel they are marginalized in society. They’re teenagers. They don’t have many rights and they feel like they’re squished by adults and people in general," Cope said. "The student paper becomes an outlet for those feelings, and a way for students to explore their world." (Juliette Tang)

THE SCOTS EXPRESS


Last November, the principal of Carlmont High School in Belmont shut down the student paper, The Scots Express. School officials claimed that the paper lacked adequate faculty oversight after it published a satirical article about the writer’s sex appeal.

Editor-in-chief Alex Zhang fought back against what he saw as censorship and rejected school officials’ justifications. "I just wanted my paper back," he told the Guardian.

In response to the uproar over what many saw as a muzzling of the press, the Sequoia Union High School District began training Carlmont staff on First Amendment rights and mandated an overhaul of the school’s freedom of speech policy. The district is planning an expansion of its journalism programs in the school curriculum and a partnership with the San Francisco Peninsula Press Club.

Zhang is working on relaunching the publication in late March under the faculty oversight of English teacher Raphael Kauffmann. "You can’t have a democracy without freedom of information," Zhang said. "And I’m proud to be one of those young journalists who care about the freedom of information." (Joe Sciarrillo)

Advocacy

KATHI AUSTIN


As the Guardian chronicled in a cover story last year ("Hunting the lord of war," June 23, 2008), San Francisco-based human rights investigator Kathi Austin has spent almost two decades tracking down and exposing those who have made a business out of human rights violations.

Most recently, Austin helped bring the notorious Viktor Bout, a Russian entrepreneur accused of illegally trafficking weapons to brutal regimes from Colombia to the Congo.

"A human rights violation is considered a violation that is carried out by a state actor," Austin told the Guardian. "We were trying to change the whole field of human rights to philosophically say we should be going after these private perpetrators as well."

Thanks largely to Austin’s work, Bout was arrested in Thailand in March 2008 and will likely face criminal charges in the United States. Despite working in treacherous places like Angola and Rwanda, doing meticulous and time-consuming research, Austin said her approach is simple: "What’s wrong and who’s doing it?"

Her patience and persistent pursuit of international justice have led Austin to positions at the U.N., the World Bank, the Center for Human Rights, and the Council on Foreign Relations, to name a few. A Paramount picture featuring Angelina Jolie as Austin is reportedly in production — a fittingly karmic return of celebrity for someone who has worked so long under the public radar. (Breena Kerr)

Electronic access

MAPLIGHT.ORG


Once upon a time, before 2005, the only way to connect the dots between the dollars contributed to politicians and the special access and favorable laws they subsequently granted to contributors was to wade through reams of campaign finance filings. While everyone knew that money talked, few knew just how much campaign cash was dictating public policy.

But now, thanks to MAPlight.org, a Berkeley nonprofit that uses sophisticated analytical tools to produce visually pleasing, easy-to-use charts, there is now a fun, simple way to follow the money.

MAPlight began by putting up data connected to the pro-consumer bill informally known as the Car Buyer’s Bill of Rights. "The data showed that car dealers gave twice as much to Sacramento legislators who voted to kill the bill than to those who voted to pass it," executive director David Newman recalled.

Next, MAPlight pioneered the combination of campaign dollars and politicians’ votes when it launched its U.S. Congress site in May 2007. Most recently its research showed that House members who voted for the $700 billion financial bailout bill received 50 percent more money from the financial services industry than those who voted against it.

Newman plans to expand to all 50 states. "Wherever there is journalism to be done, MAPlight can provide support and help promote openness and transparency in government." (Sarah Phelan)


The Northern California Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists hosts its annual James Madison Awards dinner March 18 in the New Delhi Restaurant, 160 Ellis St., SF. The no-host reception begins at 5:50 p.m. followed by dinner and the awards programs at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $50 for SPJ members and $70 for non-members. For reservations or information, contact Freedom of Information Committee chair David Greene at (510) 208-7744 or dgreene@thefirstamendment.org or visit www.spjchapters.org/norcal.

Will the Supremes take Healthy SF challenge?

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By Sarah Phelan

Next stop the Supreme Court?

That at least is where Kevin Westley, executive director of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, said his group would take its challenge of San Francisco’s Universal Health Care Program, after the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decided this week not to grant GGRA a rehearing request.

But does this threat have any teeth and why is GGRA making it?

GGRA’s threat came even as Mayor Gavin Newsom was expressing his hope, by way of a press release, natch, that GGRA, “will work for, not against, the City and County’s efforts to expand health care access.”

“With an estimated 60,000 uninsured adults, it is time for all of us to collectively focus our efforts on providing health care to our uninsured residents,” Newsom said, after the Ninth Circuit upheld the city’s employer spending mandate.

That mandate requires companies with 20 to 99 employees to spend $1.23 per worker per hour, and companies with 100 employees or more to spend $1.85 per worker per hour.

Newsom called the court’s decision, “a significant victory for the thousands of San Francisco workers who now have access to health care.”

Deputy City Attorney Vince Chhabria said he found GGRA’s insistence on taking the case to the Supreme Court, “very disappointing.”

“26,000 San Francisco workers have become eligible for coverage in San Francisco’s program,as a result of the court’s ruling,” Chhabria told the Guardian. “One can understand why GGRA filed the suit, but now to continue and try to get this ruling overturned is to take away health coverage from thousands of workers.”

So, what are the chances of the Supreme Court taking the case?

“The Supreme Court will take the request seriously, probably, because there was dissent by a handful of the Ninth Circuit’s most conservative judges,” Chhabria said, as he listed the top three reasons why he believes the Supreme Court probably won’t take this case.

Talk about the passion

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There’s an argument to be made that record love really begins when you start noticing the labels. Slumberland was one of my earliest such epiphanies. I was bit by one of the label’s groups, Velocity Girl, because, as much as anything, I felt I had come to them on my own. This secret knowledge kept me satisfied until an older friend made me a cassette mix heavy on the Slumberland set: pastel guitar music by Rocketship, the Softies, Lilys, Black Tambourine, the Ropers, and Amy Linton’s much-missed Bay Area groups, Henry’s Dress and the Aislers Set. I started paying more attention to the sleeve.

Slumberland has been a byword for the more melodic runoff of post-punk since 1989, when its premier release — a three-band 7-inch titled What Kind of Heaven Do You Want? — closed the gap between New York noise and English indie-pop. This is an area of music subject to quarrelsome subdivisions (see shoegaze, C86, dream pop), but Slumberland’s common denominator is the taste and passion of Mike Schulman, former member of Black Tambourine, Powderburns, and the underrated Whorl.

Though still associated with its initial crop of D.C.-area groups, Schulman has run Slumberland from the East Bay since 1992. After a dry spell in the early aughts, the label is disproving F. Scott Fitzgerald’s quip about second acts with a much-buzzed-about round of releases by Brooklyn pop stylists Crystal Stilts, Cause Co-Motion, and the Pains of Being Pure at Heart — an impressive slate that puts Schulman in the unusual position of encountering his own footsteps.

“I look at what we’re doing now, and I could easily imagine any of these bands being on Slumberland 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago,” Schulman tells me between sips of coffee on a gray Sunday morning in Oakland. He’s expansive about the joys of record collecting and vicissitudes of music press in spite of having been up since 4 a.m. with his new baby. Schulman’s tastes are eclectic — he ran the dance record store/label Drop Beat in Oakland’s Rockridge District from 1996 to 2000 and is happy to gab about doo-wop or Japanese noise — but Slumberland was dedicated to scruffy pop from the start. It was an obvious niche, though striking for its proximity to D.C.’s thriving hardcore scene. “I used to go see Minor Threat, Rites of Spring, and I loved those bands, but there were tons of hardcore labels,” Schulman reflects. “I couldn’t have named three labels in America that would do stuff by HoneyBunch or Small Factory. That music just seemed underserved.”

The Slumberland aesthetic was also a romance with a format. Schulman traces his own 45 rpm fixation back to his father’s R&B collection as well as a life-altering experience with the Jesus and Mary Chain’s 1985 A-side “Never Understand” (Blanco y Negro). “It just makes so much sense — the one great song on the one great side, something that fits in your hand. You can pick it up and carry it around. You can have a little box to take it to your friends to play it for people…. Historically, it was a very economical way to transmit the most amazing three minutes of music you’ve ever heard.”

This kind of object-oriented pleasure, along with visual aesthetics and the relative gender equity of the Slumberland bands, tends to get short shrift from blog critics who take the label to task for “playing it safe” with unabashedly melodic music. “I just think rock music is inherently conservative,” Schulman weighs in. “Everyone goes back to the same 15 references. I love the Siltbreeze stuff — those are great records — but you can’t tell me that there’s something shocking or new about them.”

Of course, a credible brand has the upshot of generating its own ancestry. The Brooklyn bands are all well-versed in the Slumberland back catalog — easily navigable on the label’s smartly designed Web site — though the Pains of Being Pure at Heart earn extra points for tapping Archie Moore (Velocity Girl, Black Tambourine) to mix their eponymous debut. Listening to the first 10 declarative seconds of every song on the album is a humbling refresher course in the elevating art of the single.

The Crystal Stilts don’t play for the same caffeinated high, but their 2008 full-length, Alight of Night, is addictive nonetheless. The disc’s zoned out, organ-laced stomps pull off the neat trick of making New York City post-disco punk sound good again. The creamiest song on the album, “Prismatic Room,” lights up the same pleasure zones in my brain as those early Velocity Girl tracks. I find myself going for seconds as soon it finishes — something I didn’t think I did anymore

www.slumberlandrecords.com

Prop. 8 and American Theocracy

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debate.jpg
This Christian minister had “gay’s” [sic] debating with him all day, but his main “argument” was simply a faith-based belief that God opposes homosexuality.

Text and photo by Steven T. Jones

I got a call from Sen. Mark Leno, who was frustrated by dealing with what he labeled “religious zealots” during yesterday’s Prop. 8 hearing and rally, and wanted to talk about my reporting on how churches bused in conservative Christians from former Soviet-bloc countries whose immigration was sponsored by Sacramento area churchgoers.

The problem isn’t with religion. After all, Leno noted that the California Council of Churches opposed Prop. 8 and the stripping away of same-sex marriage rights. People are entitled to their beliefs. The problem is with religious fundamentalists who want government and laws to conform to their religious values. Several Prop. 8 supporters told me they were trying to implement God’s will, and a couple even said that God told them to be there.

“These folks are theocrats. They want a theocracy,” Leno said. “We’re spending tens of billions of dollars fighting theocracies around the world, because they’re antithetical to the concept of democracy.”
Assembly member Tom Ammiano agreed, telling us that he’s drawing a line in dealing with these hateful religious zealots. He said someone from the Catholic League sitting near him in the hearing tried to be chummy with him, and he told him, “I don’t want to talk to you.”

Ammiano was also irritated by attorney Kenneth Starr, the darling of the religious right who argued their case yesterday, whose main argument Ammiano summarized this way, “I felt like he was saying, what are these slaves complaining about? They’ve got a house to sleep in. What, they want clothes now?”

Ask a Porn Star: Sex with Stephen Boyer

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In which super sexy porn people answer questions – each week – from Bay Area locals. View the last installment here.
Mediated by Justin Juul

pornstarstephen_0309.jpg

Fielding your questions this month is local writer/porn star, Stephen Boyer. Check out some of his movies/pics here and an excerpt from his upcoming novel here. Read our 2008 interview with Boyer here.

Gerry H: Do you ever get bored in the middle of a sex scene?

Boyer: I tried to do a scene with a trans-woman once and she couldn’t get it up. Then she started to complain that she was sick. After that, she started having all of these negative body issues and eventually broke into tears. A few minutes later, she was saying she wanted to leave the porn world once and for all. I wasn’t bored, but the experience was sad and disheartening. So no, I’ve never been bored but I’ve had negative experiences.
Another experience that comes to mind happened a few years ago on set in Los Angeles. The shoot lasted four days and was a porn version of the popular TV show “Survivor.” Every day a few of the boys would get kicked off. One of the boys had just turned 18 and had recently run away from home because his parents were really conservative. He was struggling to pay rent so he got into porn. The “Survivor” thing was his first shoot and the director wanted him to bottom, but not just for anyone; the director specifically made him bottom for a guy with a 12-inch dick that was also really thick. When the boy’s scene finally came up, everyone was watching because no one believed he could take it. But he did. The kid took the dick for like four minutes and then a huge pool of blood shot out of his ass. He was kicked off the show that weekend. He was paid but he didn’t make as much as the rest of us who had “survived” the whole thing.

Losing the tax argument

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EDITORIAL The lead topic on the local cable TV show City Desk News Hour Feb. 21 was the state budget, and a panel of local reporters were talking about the mix of tax increases and service cuts the Legislature finally passed. After a bit of back and forth, Scott Shafer, host of KQED’s California Report, piped up. "Everyone knows it’s a bad idea to raise taxes in a recession," he said.

Shafer, who was a press secretary to former Mayor Art Agnos, is hardly a conservative commentator. In fact, at the risk of damaging his credentials as an unbiased reporter, we might even call him a liberal. And to judge from the response of most of the panel, nothing he said was particularly controversial. Sure, raising taxes in a recession is bad; so is cancer, and violent crime. Next question.

But that’s not just a limited viewpoint — it’s factually inaccurate. Raising taxes during a recession can be an excellent economic idea, if it’s done right. Because the one thing almost every credible economist outside of the far-right intellectual swampland agrees on these days is that cutting government spending during a recession is a terrible idea — and if the only way to keep the public sector jobs, the social services, and the welfare payments going is to raise taxes, then raising taxes on those who can afford to pay is not only good politics, it’s good policy.

And it’s infuriating that this point seems to have dropped out of the mainstream of debate. That’s a major failure of the Democratic leadership, in California and nationwide.

Historians can argue forever about the direct impact the New Deal had on ending the Great Depression. But it’s pretty clear that what Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman calls the great jobs program of World War II turned the American economy around. And during World War II, tax rates, particularly on the wealthiest individuals and corporations, were exceptionally high. The top marginal income tax rate exceeded 80 percent. Corporations that made more than a modest return paid a high excess-profits tax. The high income tax rates on the richest Americans remained through the postwar boom era, a time when inequality declined and overall wealth grew.

That money went into the public sector, not just for the war but for retooling and rebuilding U.S. industry. High taxes on the rich paid for the interstate highway system, the University of California system, the California Water Project, the birth of the Internet. It took almost half a century for the Republicans and no-taxers to wreck the economic gains of that high-tax era.

And yet, despite all the consistent, clear evidence, we still hear the news media, the commentators, and even liberal Democrats saying that tax cuts are good for the economy and tax hikes are bad.

What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.

One of the most important goals of the next year or two, under the Obama administration, is to change the national debate over public and private priorities. That won’t be easy. President Obama has started off in the right direction, although the Republicans forced him to include several hundred billion in wasteful tax cuts in his stimulus bill. The tax hikes in the state budget plan are almost entirely regressive (sales taxes and a flat increase in the income tax.)

Here in California, and here in San Francisco, elected officials who claim to represent the Democratic Party’s future need to stop mouthing the old Republican line. None of the Democratic candidates for governor, including Mayor Gavin Newsom, have been our front about the need for more government spending, even if it means higher taxes on the wealthy (say, a business tax that hits harder on the biggest and less so on the small). In fact, Newsom has taken the opposite line, writing in a Feb. 13 San Francisco Chronicle op-ed piece that "we have to reduce spending." The San Francisco supervisors are at least talking about new revenue sources, but polls show that will be a hard sell.

Why do the polls show that? Because people like Newsom — and to some extent, the supervisors — aren’t using their bully pulpits to change the tone of the discussion, to make the case for economic sanity, to challenge the demented wisdom that’s brought us to this nightmare.

That has to change, now, or there will be no way out. *

Garamendi leads the way on reform

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Some California heavy hitters, led by the Bay Area Council and including Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, are meeting up in Sacto today to talk about a California Constitutional convention (pdf).

The idea: The state’s such a mess right now that we might as well get a group of people (not elected legislators) together and rewrite the rules for governing.

It’s either a brilliant idea or a horrible one, depending, to a great extent, on whether the progressives in this state have it together to influence the outcome. Otherwise, we’ll wind up with all sorts of awful stuff in there.
Guardian report Rebecca Bowe is there, and will be blogging on it later today, but an interesting element is already emerging. I just got a copy of Garamendi’s speech, and the Lt. Guv, who based on his history would seem to be the most moderate to conservative Democrat, is going out front on the reform platform:

“We have tied ourselves in knots with the two-thirds vote requirement. It’s time to go back to what this nation established years ago – a majority rule plan, plain and simple, on every issue,” Garamendi said. “That would solve a lot of problems. Whatever the minority party is, they should not dominate the policies of the state of California. That’s the two-thirds vote requirement on appropriations including the budget and taxes.”

That makes him the only leading Democrat in the governor’s race who is willing to say publicly that the Legislature ought to be able to raise taxes on a 55 percent vote.

Attorney General Jerry Brown, who built his early career on political reform, is running for the fences and hasn’t taken any position on the 2/3 requirement.

And San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who ought to be the liberal in the race, is kinda sorta playing the halfway game. Eric Jaye, his campaign manager, told me today that Newsom supports reducing the threshold for budget approval – but hasn’t decided about the tax threshold.

“It’s a question that’s been posed to him and he’s exploring it,” Jaye said. “There’s no question that the current system’s broken and needs to be fixed.”

Yes, it needs to be fixed – but fixing it by allowing the Democratic majority to pass a budget, and then allow the Republican minority to hold the state hostage because the anti-tax nuts won’t approve the spending measures, is worse than no fix at all.

So the lineup for gov is already shaping up in odd ways, with Garamendi becoming the populist reformer, Brown acting like the kind of politician he used to despise, and Newsom getting left behind with the really squishy can’t-take-a-stand center.

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