Democratic Party Archives — Page 15 of 17 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Something worth fighting for

September 25, 2007

› tredmond@sfbg.com

REVIEW If you want a guide to the players who are trying to refashion the Democratic Party in America, Matt Bai’s The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers, and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics is a nice handbook. It’s easy to read, brings the characters to life, and reveals how big chunks of money from a few very rich liberals are going to a handful of organizations and think tanks most people have never heard of. Not everything Bai says is true, but even where he’s wrong, it’s an interesting read.

Bai, a writer for the New York Times Magazine, offers a lot of interesting and useful history about the Howard Dean phenomenon and the rise of bloggers and online politics in the Democratic Party. His portrayals of some key bloggers, like Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos, as people who lack ideology but demand respect is a bit off base, though. I think Moulitsas, for one, could easily outline an ideology, and if you read his stuff regularly, you get a pretty good sense of it.

Bai gives some credit to Dean and his supporters for creating a successful "50 state" strategy — investing party resources throughout the country, not just in targeted swing districts — and then claims (not entirely inaccurately) that the battle within the organization has been more about empowering the grassroots than about any specific policy prescription. But he doesn’t seem to recognize the inherent politics in community organizing: Saul Alinsky argued half a century before Dean that teaching marginalized groups how to exercise power was in itself a radical act, whether or not it was driven by a specific political analysis or ideology. (The Marxists have typically disagreed, and that battle has raged on the left for a long, long time, but Bai, who rarely writes about anything outside the mainstream of political thought, pays that history no heed.)

Still, Bai’s overall point — that the reformers in the party, particularly the ones with the big money, lack a coherent ideological vision for the country’s future — is both accurate and alarming. Nobody, Bai says, is making "the Argument" — the case for electing Democrats. In the 2006 congressional elections, "what voters had not done was endorse any Democratic argument — because, of course, there wasn’t one." All the party under the likes of Rep. Nancy Pelosi has been able to do is point out that Democrats aren’t Republicans (and aren’t quite as bad on the Iraq war) — and that, he notes, will never be a recipe for long-term success.

Anyone interested in the future of the Democratic Party and progressive politics ought to read this book, if only to get the discussion started. Bai makes a powerful statement: that transformational political change has typically come when there is a set of issues and governing philosophies that can be presented to the voting public. But he leaves the reader deeply dissatisfied — because he doesn’t offer any answers. It’s all fine and good to bash the reformers in the party, and I agree with a lot of his criticisms. But if you want to whine about the lack of an argument, you ought to spend some time thinking about what that argument might look like and putting it on paper.

A couple of years ago I was on a right-wing talk show arguing that Pelosi wasn’t exactly a "San Francisco liberal," and one of the hosts asked what that term mean. I gave it a try, on the fly, in the few seconds they allowed me. A San Francisco liberal, I said, believes that we should tax the rich to feed the poor, that we should protect the environment, including the urban environment, from the attack of greedy developers. A San Francisco liberal believes in civil liberties and civil rights, including same-sex marriage, and isn’t afraid to say so.

A San Francisco liberal, I would have added if they hadn’t cut me off, thinks the invasion of Iraq was wrong, the occupation is a disaster, and the only sane approach now is to get the US troops out of there. A San Francisco liberal believes that money has ruined politics and that the answer is not for the Democrats to try to raise more than the Republicans. A San Francisco liberal believes this city can and should be a force for progressive thought and set the standard for the rest of the country.

A San Francisco liberal isn’t afraid to lose.

There’s a lot more I could say, but that’s the start of an Argument. That wasn’t so hard, Matt, was it?

THE ARGUMENT: BILLIONAIRES, BLOGGERS, AND THE BATTLE TO REMAKE DEMOCRATIC POLITICS

By Matt Bai

Penguin Press

336 pages

$25.95

Democrats can end the war

September 13, 2007

Photo from www.mindprod.com/politics/iraqwarpix.html

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) today published an excellent analysis of how the mainstream media and Democratic Party are falsely conveying a sense of official powerlessness to end the war in Iraq. The reality is that the Democrat-controlled Congress could defund the war effort immediately if it had the will to do so, forcing the Bush Administration to pursue a new strategy (ideally something along the lines of the McGovern plan).
Unfortunately, Nancy Pelosi is more concerned with expanding her party’s power than taking a principled stand that would save thousands of lives and begin restoring this country’s image in the eyes of the Muslim world. And none of the presidential candidates (except also-rans Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich, and Mike Gravel) are offering plans for Iraq that will substantially reduce the long-term U.S. military involvement in the Middle East. That’s a disgrace that is being compounded by the mainstream media and its campaign to disempower the average American and ensure that our imperial experiment continues unchecked and unquestioned.

Leno, Migden and Sacramento madness

September 7, 2007

Migden, Leno: Who’s killing the bills?

By Tim Redmond
It’s been a wild few days in Sacramento.

On Thursday afternoon, the state Senate narrowly passed a terrible campaign finance bill that could strictly limit the ability of local governments to control political money. Although Common Cause and the League of Women Voters opposed it (as did San Francisco’s Ethics Commission director, John St. Croix) it had the support of the Democratic Party and had sailed through the Assembly, 77-0. On the Senate floor, Carole Midgen and Sheila Keuhl both made strong speeches against it – and almost, almost convinced enough of their colleagues to vote it down. Instead, it squeaked through 27-9 (needing two-thirds).

Migden at least tried. Good for her. Leland Yee voted the right way. But the arm-twisting by the party was too much.

And frankly, the opponents of the bill weren’t exactly on their game: There was no opposition when the bill went through the Assembly, and when it came to the Senate floor, the good guys were noticably absent.

Meanwhile, Randy Shaw reports on BeyondChron that Migden is making sure some of Assemblymember Mark Leno’s key bills never get a vote on the Senate floor. The reason: Migden (and her ally, state Senate President Don Perata) don’t want Leno to have any legislative success to brag about next spring when he challenges Migden in the Democratic primary.

See, one of Migden’s central arguments is that she’s an effective legislator. Sure, she cuts deals, she compromises – but in the end, she gets things done. And pointing out that none of Leno’s bills for 2007 actually became law would be a powerful campaign theme.

Among the Leno bills held hostage: A measure that would limit toxic chemicals in household furniture (AB 709) and AB 1590, which would allow San Franciscans to vote to raise local car taxes to provide revenue for city services.

Migden’s office insists that Shaw has it wrong: Tracy Fairchild, communications director, told me: “The root cause of Assemblyman Leno’s problems lies not with Senator Migden but rather with the entire Senate, whose bills met with unusually harsh treatment last week in the Assembly Appropriations Committee which he chairs. Rather than tell that truth, Mr. Leno has chosen to disparage Sen. Migden’s reputation by blaming all his problems on her and that is simply not the case.”

But Leno has another take: “Eight of the nine bills by Carole Migden that came to my committee [Appropriations] made it out, and I will make sure that every one of her Senate bills will leave the Assembly floor.” Only five of Leno’s 13 bills went forward, even though the ones that were bottled up had little real opposition.
The one Midgen bill that Leno didn’t let out of committee, interestingly, was SB 11, which would have extended domestic partnership rights to unmarried opposite-sex couples. Leno says the $33 million price tag doomed it, but I think the real problem was that, while I supported the bill and think it’s a fine idea, there wasn’t any real visible upwelling of support for it.

Overall, the Assembly Appropriations Committee let 74 percent of Senate bills out; only 63 percent of Assembly bills made it out of the corresponding Senate committee.

Part of what’s going on here may be the natural tension between the houses, but I think that Perata is sending a message to Leno and his colleagues: Don’t you dare take on an incumbent senator, or your bills will be held hostage.

I suspect that if Migden doesn’t like this message (and she shouldn’t) she could tell Perata to back off, and Leno’s bills would move forward.

Project Censored: The Byrne ultimatum

September 5, 2007

amanda@sfbg.com

Sometimes the story behind a story is just as juicy as the story itself. One of Project Censored’s picks for the 2008 list – “Senator Feinstein’s Iraq Conflict” started out as a project funded by the Nation Institute, and was supposed to splash the cover of the Nation magazine prior to the November 2006 election. Instead, it took some interesting peregrinations – involving some charges of partisan political influence — before it was finally printed in the North Bay Bohemian on January 24, 2007.

Petaluma-based freelance journalist Peter Byrne was originally paid $4,500 by the Nation Institute to research connections between lucrative defense contracts granted to Perini and URS companies, in which Richard C. Blum held stock, and the Senate Appropriations Military Construction subcommittee (MILCON) that funds the contracts– and which includes Blum’s wife, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, as a ranking member.

Blum’s companies were involved with more than $1.5 billion in defense contracts between 2001 and 2005. Michael R. Klein, Blum’s business partner and Feinstein’s legal advisor, had been informing the senator about specific federal projects in which Perini had an interest, specifically to avoid conflict of interest issues, but Byrne reported Feinstein was not told about potential URS contracts. So, in the case of Perini, Feinstein would be informed and recuse herself from pertinent decisions, but with URS, she’d remain in the dark, and because the detailed project proposals don’t include the names of the companies bidding, the senator wouldn’t know it was URS.

“In theory, Feinstein would not know the identity of any of the companies that stood to contractually benefit from her approval of specific items in the military budget – until Klein told her,” Byrne wrote.

According to Klein, a Senate Select Committee on Ethics ruled, in a confidential decision, that this was all above board.

But Byrne contends, “That these confidential rulings are contradictory is obvious and calls for explanation.”

Furthermore, Byrne’s research concluded that the senator could potentially look at the lists from Klein, compare them to the nameless funding requests and contracts coming before MILCON, and draw substantial conclusions on her own about where the money would end up.

“Klein declined to produce copies of the Perini project lists that he transmitted to Feinstein. And neither he nor Feinstein would furnish copies of the ethics committee rulings, nor examples of the senator recusing herself from acting on legislation that affected Perini or URS. But the Congressional Record shows that as chairperson and ranking member of MILCON, Feinstein was often involved in supervising the legislative details of military construction projects that directly affected Blum’s defense-contracting firms,” Byrne wrote.

A month after Byrne turned the story in to Bob Moser, who was the Nation‘s editor on the story, the piece was killed. In an email to Byrne, Moser wrote, “The main reason is that with Blum’s sale of

Perini and URS stock last year, this became an issue of what Feinstein did rather than an ongoing conflict. Because of that, and also because Feinstein is not facing a strong challenge for re-election, the feeling here, finally, was that the story would not likely have the kind of impact we want from investigative stories.”

Later in the email, Moser writes the story lacks a “smoking gun,” apparently because Byrne lays the case for a perceived conflict of interest and relies on the testimony of non-partisan ethics and government experts for support.

Still, Byrne told us, “I was shocked. The story was really solid, completely fact-checkable, and even though it was complex I think I boiled it down pretty well.”

The Nation‘s publicity director, Ben Wyskida, told us it’s rare for the magazine not to publish a story in which the Institute has invested significant time and money, but in this case the editors decided to pass. “Ultimately they just didn’t feel like he delivered the story that we’d hoped.”

“At the same time, we do think it’s an important story,” he added.

Undaunted, Byrne took it to Salon.com, which initially agreed to buy it, but then killed it as well. When asked why, news editor Mark Schone told us, “We don’t discuss those kinds of editorial decisions. We have a long history of publishing investigative pieces.”

Byrne thinks it was political. “In my opinion it’s because both the Nation and Salon have an editorial allegiance to the Democratic Party.” It was, he said, too sensitive a time to publish a story critical of a Democrat when the party was positioning to take control of the legislative branch.

The Nation vehemently denied the decision to kill had anything to do with that. “It’s absolutely false that we had any political biases that caused us not to run the piece. It was the reporting and the timeliness,” said Wyskida.

Salon would not comment on Byrne’s political theory.

When pushed for specifics on what the story lacked, Wyskida said, “Generally, we felt like it was possible there were pieces of the story we could not verify or stand behind.”

Byrne went on to pitch the story to Slate, the New Republic, Harper’s, the Los Angeles Times, and – thinking that conservative publications might bite – American Spectator and Weekly Standard. “Most of the editors praised the reporting, but turned down the story,” Byrne writes in an update for Project Censored’s publication. “So I sold the tale to the North Bay Bohemian, which, along with its sister papers in San Jose and Santa Cruz, ran it on the cover – complete with follow-ups. After it appeared, the editors and I received a series of invective-filled emails from war-contractor Klein (who is also an attorney) but, since he could show no errors of fact in the story, he did not get the retraction he apparently wanted.”

Klein, a key figure in the series of stories, is chairman and founding donor of the Washington, DC-based Sunlight Foundation, an organization that promotes more government transparency and grants investigative work undertaken with those goals. The Blum Family Foundation has also given seed money to Sunlight.

The foundation’s Web Site has posted a rebuttal to Byrne’s story, written by senior fellow and veteran investigative journalist, Bill Allison. It includes a spirited exchange between Byrne and Allison on some of the finer points of Byrne’s reporting, and links to the original Congressional hearings that Byrne cites for some of his evidence of Feinstein’s questionable ethics.

Shortly before Byrne’s story was printed in the North Bay Bohemian, Feinstein quit MILCON. Byrne reported this resignation in a March 21, 2007 story, in which he speculates thinks it was because of his questioning her ethics.

Feinstein’s office denies any connection. Press officer Scott Gerber said that at the start of a new Congressional session, “She took the opportunity to become chair of the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee. It’s a better subcommittee for California.” Her office also attempts to blow holes in Byrne’s story with a detailed rebuttal similar to Allison’s – not issued as a press release but provided upon request (and available here in pdf form.)

Despite the rebuttals, which contend that facts have been distorted, Byrne says no evidence exists that merit any retractions.

“Stories get killed all the time for various reasons but what I found interesting is that they paid me almost $5,000,” said Byrne, who expressed admiration for both the Nation and Salon. “The editor worked really hard with me but it was leading up to the elections. I’m not actually accusing them of anything nefarious. They basically told me they weren’t going to print it for political reasons.”

Peter Phillips, director of Project Censored, which rated the Byrne story as #23 out of the top 25 stories the mainstream media missed last year, said it played a part in prompting him to conduct a survey of 10 popular “left”-leaning publications. The survey looked at whether or not liberal news outlets touched stories that weren’t reported by the mainstream media and the results were included as a chapter in Project Censored 2008.

EDITORS NOTE: The above story reports that the piece on Dianne Feinstein’s conflicts of interest was slated to
run on the cover of The Nation. Ben Wyskida of the Nation contacted us after publication say that “we just don’t make promises like that; our covers never get decided until all the edits are in.”

Their neighborhood

August 14, 2007

› amanda@sfbg.com

Some interesting mail landed in the boxes of Potrero Hill residents last week: flyers with a photograph of industrial stacks spewing plumes of pollution. They read, "Potrero Hill doesn’t need three more power plants in our neighborhood."

There’s a handy clip-out membership card to join the Close It! Coalition, from which you can "find out more about the city’s rush to judgment and their plan to put more power plants in our neighborhood." The return address on the card is 77 Beale, which isn’t in "our" neighborhood at all.

It’s the address of the downtown headquarters of Pacific Gas and Electric Co.

The utility, in the guise of a grassroots community organization, is opposing the contract that the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission is currently hammering out with a private company, J-Power USA, to build a new 145-megawatt, natural gas–<\d>fired power plant on a four-acre plot at 25th and Maryland streets. The plant would be owned and operated by J-Power for a period of 10 to 12 years, after which the title would turn over to the city.

This so-called peaker plant, one of three that would run when San Francisco’s power needs exceed the normal load, would be cleaner burning than Mirant’s dirty old Potrero Hill power plant, which city officials and environmentalists want closed. Mirant’s "Reliability Must Run" contract with the California Independent System Operator (Cal-ISO) could be terminated once the three peakers (whose generators the city received years ago through a lawsuit settlement) are built, according to the SFPUC.

Though PG&E, which has a questionable environmental record, claims to be against the peaker plants for pollution reasons, public power advocates say this is really opposition to the city owning its power sources. "PG&E has finally gone over the line. This is a good thing because this is so egregious and so transparent," said Joe Boss, a Dogpatch resident who received the mailer. "They’ll do all they can do to kill public power in San Francisco."

Boss and a group of neighborhood activists who support the construction of the peakers have put together their own mailer countering the claims of the Close It! Coalition, which has been dormant lately but was active prior to 2006, when community activists were fighting for the shuttering of PG&E’s Hunters Point power plant.

Other anti–<\d>public power literature also circulated recently in supervisorial district 11, where the California Urban Issues Project sent a flyer urging residents to oppose Community Choice Aggregation, the city’s gradual public power plan that is focused mostly on renewable energy sources. The mailer was apparently sent before the Board of Supervisors voted to approve the plan, which it did in June.

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who coauthored the CCA legislation with Sup. Tom Ammiano, called the CUIP flyer "shameful" and told the Guardian, "This is signature PG&E, but it’s not just PG&E. It now very well implicates the [Gavin] Newsom administration either with complicity or silence." The CUIP board includes Committee on Jobs director Nathan Nayman, small-business advocate and Newsom appointee Jordanna Thigpen, Democratic Party political consultant Rich Schlackman, Golden Gate Restaurant Association executive director Kevin Westlye, and other Newsom supporters.

Newsom signed the CCA legislation but tacked on a letter vaguely expressing concerns about the plan. He recently authored a letter to Cal-ISO expressing his support for the peaker project. While PG&E is opposing peakers here, it has plans under way to build at least two farther south, near communities it is also battling.

The San Joaquin Valley Power Authority has filed a formal complaint against PG&E with the California Public Utilities Commission regarding how the utility is conducting itself as the community moves forward with a plan for public power.

The SJVPA is a group of 11 cities and two counties, representing about 300,000 citizens, that has filed a plan with the CPUC to purchase its power through a CCA plan. Assembly Bill 117, written by Sen. Carole Migden when she was in the State Assembly and made law in 2004, allows communities to act as their own wholesale power customers and purchase electricity for residents.

San Francisco, Marin, Berkeley, Oakland, and Emeryville are working on CCA plans, but the SJVPA is the furthest along. With CCA, power is still transmitted by utility companies, but residents pay their electricity bills to the city. The SJVPA plans to build its own 500 MW power plant — which PG&E also opposes, claiming studies show it isn’t necessary — and has issued a request for proposals from interested companies for 400 MW of renewable energy. It estimates citizens would save about 5 percent with CCA.

But representatives of PG&E have been attending city council meetings in the area and even holding their own informational workshops at which they refute elements of the CCA plan.

In a lengthy memo sent to a Hanford City Council member and very similar in tone and content to one distributed to San Francisco nonprofit organizations a couple of months ago, PG&E offers misleading claims such as "Over 30 percent of PG&E’s supply comes from a diverse portfolio of renewable energy … about 20 percent comes from PG&E’s large hydro system, and approximately 12 percent comes from smaller renewable generation sources."

But according to state law, a large hydro system does not qualify as a renewable energy source — a rule the utility doesn’t apply to itself but is quick to point out a paragraph later when it attacks the CCA plan for renewable energy.

The SJVPA complaint details several examples of PG&E spokespeople cautioning against the plan in local media and at public meetings. CEO Peter Darbee even penned an editorial for the Fresno Bee in which he wrote, "The fundamental problem with the program is that the numbers don’t add up," a statement he attempted to clarify with unsourced data showing that rates will go up even if the CCA plan says they won’t. Darbee went on to say that PG&E is just looking out for the best interests of the people.

The Fresno City Council recently voted 4–<\d>3 not to join the SJVPA, a close vote that "was based in large part on PG&E raising questions," said David Orth, the general manager of the Kings River Conservation District, which is overseeing the implementation of the CCA plan. "That is their intent, frankly — to clutter the discussion and decision-making field with a lot of uncertainties and threats of complexity."

Fresno would have been the largest consumer of power in the coalition, using 45 percent of its electricity.

Orth said obfuscation has been the utility’s tool, coupled with reassurances that power "is too difficult for you to understand, so accept the status quo."

He said PG&E hasn’t been entirely factual with its advice and cited a specific example in which PG&E claimed that if a community opted out of CCA after joining, it could be liable for as much as $11 million. "It was a fabricated number, and it was a fabricated scenario, but it lead certain council members to believe there was a risk we weren’t explaining," Orth said.

Lawyers representing the SJVPA say the utility is using ratepayer funds for its anti-CCA marketing, and that’s a violation of the CPUC’s rules. AB 117 states clearly that utilities should cooperate fully with municipalities enacting CCA plans. In a December 2005 decision seeking to clarify how CCAs will be implemented, the CPUC wrote, "There is little if any benefit from permitting a battle for market share between CCAs and utilities. Of course, we expect utilities to answer questions about their own rates and services and the process by which utilities will cut-over customers to the CCA. However, if they provide [sic] affirmatively contact customers in efforts to retain them or otherwise engage in actively marketing services, they should conduct those activities at shareholder expense. We do not believe utility ratepayers should be forced to support such marketing."

"SJVPA is informed and believes and thereon alleges that these marketing and related activities were undertaken at PG&E’s ratepayer expense to compete against SJVPA," the authority’s lawyers wrote in the complaint to the CPUC.

Even if PG&E is drawing from the proper budget for the marketing, the appearance that it isn’t needs to be addressed, and the SJVPA complaint further calls on the CPUC to clarify its rules on what utilities can and can’t do. Local customer representatives, usually salaried by ratepayer funds, are telling folks to stick with PG&E, and that’s a betrayal of trust. "You have someone who’s worked with a customer for years and years and years saying, ‘Don’t support CCA,’<\!q>" Orth said.

PG&E, which has disputed the allegations in the SJVPA complaint, did not return our calls seeking comment. The two parties are currently in mediation, and SJVPA attorney Scott Blaising said the utility has yet to provide solid evidence that ratepayer money isn’t footing the bill for the anti-CCA marketing. Southern California Edison Co., which provides about a quarter of the SJVPA’s current power, has not been as contentious as PG&E, Orth said.

"Theoretically, [anti-CCA marketing] should be covered by shareholders," said Bill Marcus, an energy consultant who works with the Utility Reform Network. "Realistically, a bunch of it leaks into ratepayer accounts."

He pointed out that PG&E’s budget allocation for local public affairs has stood at 22 percent over the course of several general rate cases, despite clear peaks in marketing for certain campaigns.

Some San Franciscans will be closely watching what happens next as a sign of things to come as this city moves forward with its CCA plan. As Mirkarimi told us, "What San Joaquin is experiencing is likely a prelude to what San Francisco will be confronting as it pertains to PG&E’s desire to deny CCA and San Francisco’s pursuit of energy independence."

Migden, who wrote the CCA law, said, "PG&E’s alleged actions controvert the letter and the spirit of the bill. The utility and the SFPUC should take heed, because green public power is the people’s passion."<\!s>*

PS PG&E can’t even get its own Web site right.

Gutting campaign reform

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July 17, 2007
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EDITORIAL A bill that could gut many local campaign finance laws is zipping through the legislature with the support of both the Republican and Democratic parties — and only a few activists seem to be paying attention. We’ve written about the bill, AB 1430 by Assemblymember Martin Garrick (R–San Diego), on the politics blog at www.sfbg.com. It has already cleared the State Assembly, 77–0, and is headed to the State Senate floor, where only one member — Carole Migden of San Francisco — has come out in opposition.

The Republicans and the Democrats love this bill because it would allow their parties to use unlimited amounts of money to support local candidates. That’s become increasingly common in this state; when cities set strict limits on contributions to political candidates, the candidates simply ask their big-money backers to give the money to the state Republican or Democratic Party — which then funnels the laundered, uncontrolled, and often unreported cash into local campaigns.

In fact, the bill comes from the San Diego GOP, which is angry that the San Diego Ethics Commission tried to crack down on nearly a million dollars in unregulated money that went to local races last year.

The bill talks about "membership communications" — as if the parties were simple nonprofits that wanted to send newsletters to their members. That’s not what’s going on at all, and everyone with any sense knows it. Here’s the real story: while the federal and state governments have refused to do any real campaign finance reform, cities and counties all over California have tried to fill the gap. The San Francisco Ethics Commission — for all of its obviously failings (see "Whose Ethics?," 7/11/07) — has the authority and the mandate to regulate local campaigns far more tightly than the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission. So the big donors, working through the state parties, are trying to figure out ways to circumvent local rules.

The conservatives in the State Legislature love to talk about local control when it comes to workplace regulations, environmental protection, and schools — but when a bill like this comes along and threatens to eviscerate local control, they utter not a peep. Nor, for the most part, do the liberals, who are aligned with the Democratic Party and don’t want to defy its mandates.

The San Francisco Ethics Commission has asked Mayor Gavin Newsom and the supervisors to oppose this bill, but the board has taken no action, and the mayor says he actually supports the bill. That’s a disgrace: at the very least, the supervisors should pass a resolution opposing AB 1430 and force the mayor to veto it.

Migden, after talking to the folks at California Common Cause, the public interest campaign organization, took a bold stand against the measure, and she deserves tremendous credit for that. Now the rest of the senate — starting with Leland Yee of San Francisco and President Pro Tem Don Perata of Oakland — needs to go along and kill this monster. *

This campaign money bill is nasty

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July 13, 2007
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By Tim Redmond

Update on the :campaign-finance bill I mentioned a few days ago

This thing is pretty bad, and it’s winging its way through Sacramento with very little opposition. The bill number is AB 1430; it’s sponsored by Assemblymember Martin Garrick, a San Diego Republican who is mad that the San Diego Ethics Commission cracked down on unlimited GOP donations to local candidates.

The bill would limit the ability of local governments to control spending by political parties. Here’s an analysis by San Francisco Ethics Commission Director John St. Croix.

But the Democratic Party likes it, too, so the bill sailed through the state Assembly 77-0, and is headed for the floor of the state Senate. California Common Cause is against it, as is the League of Women Voters. The Ethics Commission has asked the San Francisco supervisors to oppose it, but nothing has happened yet.

The only member of the state Senate to come out against the bill is Carole Migden, who opposed it in committe and told us she will vote against it on the floor.

This one needs some attention, fast.

Fix Newsom’s bad budget

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June 26, 2007
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EDITORIAL Annual budgets can seem wonky and impenetrable, but they’re perhaps the most important statements of a city’s values and priorities. That’s why it’s critically important for the Board of Supervisors to make significant changes to Mayor Gavin Newsom’s proposed $6 billion spending plan, which is out of step with what San Francisco should be about.

Ideally, this month’s budget hearings would be informed by an honest and open discussion of what Newsom proposed in his June 1 budget, how it affects residents and Newsom’s political interests, and where the board might want to make some changes.

Unfortunately, both the San Francisco Chronicle and the Examiner have failed to offer a substantial analysis of the budget; instead, they’ve focused on sensational headlines about whether the mayor has used cocaine, personality conflicts between Newsom and Sup. Chris Daly (including a pair of over-the-top hit pieces on Daly in the June 23 Chron), and misleading spin coming from Newsom’s office and reelection campaign.

But there’s plenty of good budget analysis out there, thanks to the work of city agencies such as the Controller’s Office and the Board of Supervisors’ Budget Analyst Office, nonprofits like the People’s Budget Coalition, smart citizens like Marc Salomon, and reporting by the Guardian‘s Sarah Phelan ("The Budget’s Opening Battle," 6/20/07) and Chris Albon ("Newsom Cuts Poverty Programs," 6/20/07).

What that analysis shows is that the mayor’s much-ballyhooed "back-to-basics" budget — which prioritizes public safety, cityscape improvements, home ownership programs, and pet projects such as Project Homeless Connect — would make unconscionable cuts to essential social services and affordable housing programs, rely way too much on gimmicks and private capital to address public needs, and offer almost nothing that is innovative or befitting a progressive city at a crucial point in history.

Some specific examples and recommendations:

• Newsom’s 4 percent cut in the Department of Public Health budget — which his appointed Health Commission took the unusual step of refusing to implement because the fat has already been trimmed away in previous budgets — is unacceptable. It would slash substance abuse treatment, homeless and HIV/AIDs services, and other programs that would simply be unavailable if the city didn’t fund them. The board should fully restore that funding and even consider providing seed money for innovative new programs that would help lift people out of poverty. Only after the city fully meets the needs of its most vulnerable citizens should it consider cosmetic fixes like expanded street cleaning.

• The budget should strike a balance on cityscape improvements that is lacking now. Contrary to the alternative budget proposed by Daly, which would have cut the $6.6 million that Newsom proposed for street improvements, we agree with the SF Bicycle Coalition that many streets are dangerous and in need of repair. It’s a public health and safety issue when cars and bikes need to swerve around potholes. But the $2.9 million in sidewalk improvements could probably be scaled back to just deal with accessibility issues rather than cosmetic concerns. And we don’t agree with Newsom’s plan to add 100 blocks and $2.1 million to the Corridors street-cleaning program, which already wastes far too much money, water, chemicals, and other resources.

• As we mentioned last week ("More Cops Aren’t Enough," 6/20/07), the police budget doesn’t need the extra $33 million that Newsom is proposing, at least not until he’s willing to facilitate a public discussion about the San Francisco Police Department’s mission and lack of accountability. Sup. Ross Mirkarimi (a progressive who is strong on public safety and even clashed with Daly over the issue) was right to recently challenge the terrible contract that Newsom negotiated with the cops, which gives them a 25 percent pay increase and asks almost nothing in return.

• Newsom’s housing budget would move about $50 million from renter and affordable-housing programs into initiatives promoting home ownership, which is just not a realistic option for most residents and represents a shift in city priorities that serves developers more than citizens. Some of that change is specific to a couple of big owner-occupied yet fairly affordable projects in the pipeline for next year, but the budget also does little to address the fact that we are steadily losing ground in meeting the goal in the General Plan’s Housing Element of making 62 percent of new housing affordable to most residents, when we should be expanding these programs by at least the $28 million that the board approved but Newsom rejected. Similarly, the board should keep pushing the Housing Authority to apply for federal Hope VI funds to make needed improvements to the public housing projects rather than supporting Newsom’s Hope SF, which purports to magically turn a $5 million expenditure into $700 million in housing — as long as we accept the devil’s bargain of 700 to 900 market-rate condos along with the public housing units.

• Finally, there are lots of little items in Newsom’s budget that could be cut to find funding for more important city priorities. Don’t give him $1.1 million to hassle the homeless in Golden Gate Park or $700,000 for his New York–style community court in the Tenderloin.

The bottom line is that a progressive city should not be pandering to the cops, punishing the poor, and polishing up its streets when so many of its citizens are struggling just to find shelter and make it to the next month. Newsom has forgotten about the ideals that the Democratic Party once embraced, but it’s not too late for the Board of Supervisors to correct that mistake. *

Hazy recall

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June 5, 2007
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› steve@sfbg.com

They gathered May 30 in the Richmond District’s Lee Hou Restaurant to voice their anger and outrage at Sup. Jake McGoldrick, calling him incompetent, unaccountable, hostile to the will of the voters, and a "born liar." They blamed him for everything from potholes to the state of the economy.

Yet a closer examination of why the Citizens for the Recall of Supervisor Jake McGoldrick say they are trying to get rid of the elected official reveals that this campaign is based on just a few controversial issues that animate these two dozen fairly conservative people.

Primarily, they’re mad at McGoldrick for sponsoring Healthy Saturdays, which sought a second day of closing some Golden Gate Park roads to cars, and for his support for studying a Bus Rapid Transit system on Geary Boulevard, which some merchants fear will disrupt their business.

"The problem with Jake McGoldrick is he does not allow us to have our issues," said David Heller, a Geary Street merchant who has led the charge against BRT and who ran against McGoldrick three years ago but has since moved from the district.

"Jake McGoldrick has not been responsive to our needs. He’s not there when we need him," said Paul Kozakiewicz, the Richmond Review publisher whose inflammatory and misleading front-page commentaries "The Case for Recalling McGoldrick" over the past two months have been the main rallying point for the recall effort.

As he spoke at the press conference kicking off the recall drive, Kozakiewicz was flanked by Heller and Howard Epstein, a member of the San Francisco Republican County Central Committee, the only political group to endorse the recall drive so far. Democratic Party clubs have all opposed the effort, as did the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee on a rare unanimous vote.

McGoldrick and his supporters say this isn’t about accountability but about his policy disagreements with a handful of particularly vocal constituents. "What you have here is some folks who just have to have it their way," McGoldrick told us. "The bottom line is we have a situation where some folks disagree on some issues. But to use this to threaten a politician into backing off these issues is an abuse of the recall."

There’s also an ironic note to all of this: if Kozakiewicz had been more truthful in his high-profile attacks, his readers might know that McGoldrick actually watered down the BRT study to appease the Geary merchants and that he resolved the long-simmering park road closure issue in a way that maintains full auto access to the museums and prevents alternative-transportation advocates from reviving the fight for at least five years, much to the chagrin of many walkers, skaters, and bicyclists.

Recalling McGoldrick would require the valid signatures of 3,573 registered voters from District 1, or 10 percent of the total, according to the city’s campaign services manager, Rachel Gosiengfiao. The campaign has until Sept. 14 to gather signatures, although Gosiengfiao said that if recall supporters want to make the November ballot, they need to submit the signatures for verification by June 22.

If the signature drive is successful and a majority of voters then decide to remove McGoldrick, Mayor Gavin Newsom will appoint a replacement who will stand for reelection at the end of next year, when McGoldrick’s term expires.

"We’re not getting involved with replacing the supervisor," Kozakiewicz said. "We’re going to leave that up to the mayor."

Kozakiewicz’s "The Case for Recalling McGoldrick" started with this description of how the effort began: "In March, a dozen community leaders from a broad cross-section of the community gathered for breakfast at the Video Cafe on Geary Boulevard. The topic of discussion was the district’s supervisor, Jake McGoldrick, and what should be done to limit the perceived damage the supervisor was doing to the City."

He then went through a litany of supposed abuses, presented in a seemingly factual and straightforward way — BRT, Healthy Saturdays, various "Attacks on Families and Property Owners." At least, they might appear objective to those not familiar with the details. The approach sparked more interest in the recall.

"This is a new venture for me, so I’m a little nervous," Richmond resident Margie Hom-Brown said at the event before attacking McGoldrick’s Healthy Saturdays stand. "Two-thirds of San Francisco has voted repeatedly not to close the park. He went on year after year and made it his number one priority…. The actions seem to me rather unethical."

Kozakiewicz used the November 2000 vote against park closure to conclude that McGoldrick "ignores the will of the voters" and used a large, bold pull quote to feature the Measure G question and the fact that 62 percent of the voters rejected it. But what Kozakiewicz doesn’t say is that the measure was placed on the ballot by closure opponents trying to defeat Measure F, which called for immediate closure (before construction of the garage that has since been built) and got 46 percent of the vote (a figure Kozakiewicz conveniently leaves out).

Because of the confusing nature of the two measures, it’s impossible to know how many voters wanted permanent closure at some point, let alone the six-month trial period that Healthy Saturdays called for. But Kozakiewicz has no use for such nuance in his conclusions, remarking at our questions during a phone interview, "Now you’re going into shades of gray."

Similarly, he casts McGoldrick as "forcing BRT on [the] district without notification," despite the fact that the project has been contemplated for decades and that it is now being studied with plenty of future opportunities for public input rather than being a done deal created through some secret McGoldrick plot.

In fact, transit advocate Tom Radulovich, executive director of Livable City, said Kozakiewicz’s commentary is misleading in several ways, most notably in that it fails to say that McGoldrick, as chair of the San Francisco County Transportation Authority, actually prevented the BRT study from looking at light rail because of his fears that it would be too disruptive for the Geary merchants.

"The sensitivity of merchant concerns is one reason why the best option isn’t even being studied," Radulovich said. "It’s ironic that he’s being recalled over this. In a way, you could say Jake is kowtowing to the merchants too much and dismissing good transportation options."

Nonetheless, the recall has a decent shot at qualifying, particularly given the fact that the committee has already raised about $24,000, including $5,000 from the Residential Builders Association and $1,500 from the Small Property Owners of San Francisco. It has also hired a firm called JKW Political Consulting, which is not registered with the city as required.

"In reality, the 10 percent threshold is pretty low. Whether you’re paying people or using volunteers, you can get that," McGoldrick campaign consultant Jim Stearns said. "So I told Jake we need to be prepared to fight the recall."

And McGoldrick said he is. "We’re talking here about ultraconservative, right-wing Republicans," McGoldrick said of the recall proponents. "And they’ve said that I vote far more progressively than my district…. But I’m trying to do some things that are good for the entire city." *

The convention was no bust

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June 4, 2007
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Run, Ross, Run

By Tim Redmond

No, we didn’t walk away with a candidate for mayor, and yes, that was disappointing to a lot of us. I actually thought for a brief moment that the chants of “Run Ross Run” as Sup. Mirkarimi took the stage late in the day would make a difference, that he would realize he has a constituency and that running for mayor would be a good move for him politically, but that didn’t happen. After a strong speech proclaiming that “somebody” has to take on Gavin Newsom, Mirkarimi made clear that it wasn’t going to be him.

And Chris Daly, who had at one point said that he would run if noboby else did, bowed to the reality of the fact that he has a young child and another on the way, and took a pass.

But overall, the convention was uplifting, inspiring and productive. Whatever the daily papers may say, Daly made the right point at the end: The state of the progressive moment in San Francisco is strong. Progressives control the Board of Supervisors, the School Board, and a number of other top positions; half of the elected officials in San Francisco now put themselves under the progressive banner, Daly noted.

And the green and blue baloons and beads represented what could be a very hopeful future trand — the left wing of the Democratic party and the Green party, working together on what is for most a shared aganda.

We ought to do this sort of thing more often.

A few great moments:

The good side of Daly for Mayor

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June 1, 2007
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By Tim Redmond

Late this afternoon, I’m hearing rumblings that Ross Mirkarimi is, indeed, reconsidering his options and might possibly be considering a mayor run, after all. Maybe he’ll show up at the convention tomorrow and announce. I’m only talking rumors here; I can’t reach Mirkarimi himself, and he has come pretty close to ruling himself out in the past few weeks. It would be a big change of mind.

I think I’ve made it pretty clear that Ross would be one of my top choices for mayor. But if he doesn’t run, and Chris Daly does, well … my previous blog item notwithstanding (as the lawyers say), I want to go out on a limb here and point out some of the positive things that could come out of that campaign.

Just off the top of my head:

1. It sure would be lively. Daly’s a fighter; he has a temper and sometimes says things (and does things) that are a bit impolitic, but he wouldn’t back down and wouldn’t give Newsom even a little break.

2. He’s good on all the issues. Daly’s a real left-progressive, and (unlike Newsom) he actually cares about, and talks about, and works on, issues of poverty, inequality and injustice.

3. He’s a Democrat, which means Democratic party loyalists like Carole Migden wouldn’t be able to duck the race or side with Newsom on the basis of party affiliation. Migden might even endorse him.

4. In fact, a lot of people who try to walk a middle line and still be called progresisves would have to make a bright-line choice here. Daly v. Newsom; it don’t get much more basic than that.

5. Daly complains all the time that he hates being a politician, but the truth is, he has a future in this town. He’s young and bright and will be a serious candidate for higher office in the future. A good run in the mayor’s race this year could set him up for future campaigns.

6. Just imagine if he won.

Tomorrow’s honorees

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May 17, 2007
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By Steven T. Jones
Last night’s San Francisco Tomorrow 37th annual dinner on Fisherman’s Wharf offered a who’s who list of environmentally engaged political leaders and activists — a testament to the important role this venerable organization has played in creating the San Francisco of today (full disclosure: my sweetie, Alix Rosenthal, recently joined the SFT board).

Supervisors Chris Daly, Aaron Peskin, and Tom Ammiano all showed up, as did Sen. Carole Migden, Assessor Phil Ting, and Democratic Party stalwart Jane Morrison. Activists being honored by the group were filmmaker Judy Irving (who made “Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill” and other films focus on SF urban environment), recycling scold and innovator Denise D’Anne, and Amy Meyer and Dr. Edgar Wayburn, who have worked for more than 30 years to create the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

Yet to me, the most interesting award and resulting speeches were for the special award that Ammiano received for creating a universal health care program for the city, in the process braving aggressive attacks by downtown and finally winning over Mayor Gavin Newsom.

Chasing the church

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May 16, 2007
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By Steven T. Jones
Toward the end of Christopher Hitchens’ wonderfully caustic anti-tribute to Jerry Falwell on Slate today, he chides the Democratic Party for trying to follow the Republican Party in pandering to the religionists. That’s a very real fear that has the potential to do immense damage to this country and its constitutional separation of religion from government.

Image from Sunday’s New York Times Review of Books

Just last week, during the Democratic Party fundraiser in San Francisco on which I reported, both national party chair Howard Dean and state party chair Art Torres talked about reaching out to churchgoers. “We believe God is not a Democrat or a Republican. He’s a social progressive,” Torres said. It was a funny line that broke up the room of party faithful, but it has some serious implications.

Dr. Dean’s cure for division

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May 10, 2007
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By Steven T. Jones
Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean fired up the party faithful during a fundraiser at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco last night, displaying the passionate oratory that inspired the grassroots but prompted the mainstream media to turn on him during his run for president in 2004.

File photo from the Guardian of London

He said the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994 started “a national nightmare,” but with the Democrats retaking Congress in November, “we are on the way back.” He implored party activists that the power to fundamentally transform the country is in their hands. “It is all about grassroots and knocking on doors,” Dean said. “The 30-second ads are not going to cut it anymore.”
Yet for all his rhetoric about the superiority of Democratic Party values — such as environmentalism and opposition to poverty and war — there was something unsettlingly simplistic in Dean’s tendency to label Democrats good and Republicans bad.

The promise of high-speed rail

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May 8, 2007
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EDITORIAL Imagine — there’s a project on the drawing board in Sacramento that would:

• Get two million cars off California’s roads.

• Eliminate any need for expensive and environmentally damaging new runways at the San Francisco International Airport.

• Create tens of thousands of high-paying jobs for economically depressed Central Valley communities.

• Generate untold billions of dollars in long-term economic development in the state.

• Make the ugly trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles a simple and affordable pleasure.

• Represent the single most important contribution California could make to cutting global warming.

• Pay for itself in 10 years.

Why isn’t everyone in the state demanding that it go forward immediately?

That’s the strange question about high-speed rail. It makes perfect sense on every level. It’s the sort of project that ought to satisfy every interest group in the state. The environmentalists love it; so does the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce.

Yet Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is prepared to effectively defund the agency that is planning the project, the California High-Speed Rail Authority, and is moving to ensure that the first installment of the money the project needs won’t be in the next set of infrastructure bonds, on the 2008 ballot.

The governor’s position is baffling, and the only explanations his staffers have offered are so factually inaccurate that they’re laughable. The Democratic Party supports it — but this project needs more than just a few statements of support. It needs to become such a priority for the state that the legislature can force the governor to move forward on it.

A high-speed rail line would carry people from downtown San Francisco to downtown LA in a little more than two hours. At current estimates, the trip would cost about $40. The technology is proven; high-speed rail works all over the world. In terms of energy use, it’s about the most efficient and environmentally sound way of moving people around that exists. The demand is clearly there. The total price tag — about $40 billion for a full build-out from Sacramento to San Diego — isn’t cheap, but every estimate shows that the project will pay for itself a decade after the first trains start running. That’s a great deal, even a spectacular deal, for any public works project.

But time is of the essence. Every year of delay hikes the price of the project by $2 billion. The high-speed rail agency ought to be racing at full throttle to get a plan on the next possible ballot — but instead, the governor’s budget is giving the authority less than a tenth of what it needs to keep going.

The nonpartisan legislative analyst says in a recent report that if the governor won’t fund the high-speed rail authority this year, the legislature might as well shut it down.

This is utter insanity. High-speed rail is crucial to the state’s future and needs a lot more champions. Don Perata, the senate president, and Fabian Núñez, the assembly speaker, need to tell the governor in no uncertain terms that the high-speed rail agency must be funded, and the first installment of bonds must be on the November 2008 ballot.

Support for high-speed rail

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May 1, 2007
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High-speed rail got a timely and significant vote of support from the California Democratic Party on April 29 when delegates at the state convention approved a resolution pushing the project. The measure was the top vote getter, tied at 24 with a resolution urging accountability for the errors and deception that led to the Iraq War.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Editor’s Notes

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May 1, 2007
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> tredmond@sfbg.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I suppose this is progress.

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

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

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

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

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

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

High-speed rail drama

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May 1, 2007
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By Steven T. Jones
California’s proposed high-speed rail project is finally getting some much needed attention, which is the only thing that will overcome Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s dishonest and secretive campaign to kill it.

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

Dem Con, Saturday noon: Hillary’s speech

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April 28, 2007
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By Tim Redmond

Shortly before Hillary Clinton takes the stage this morning, perhaps 200 cheering supporters are lined up just inside one of the side doors that lead into the cavernous convention center. The rest of the press folks are mostly hanging out on the raised press platform or in the media section, watching state party chair Art Torres vamp on the main stage, so I wander over to the Hillary crowd see what’s going on. Bob Mulholland, the veteran political director of the CA Democratic Party, wanders over, too. “What are you all waiting for?” he asks. “Hillary!” they shout. “Well, I don’t know why you’re waiting here,” he says, “She’s already backstage.”

But no: For once, big Bob is wrong. I can overhear a Clinton operative on her cell phone saying “one minute, folks, she’s walking down the corridor.” And then the door opens and out comes the senator, smiling and waving as she walks through the center of the packed main floor and makes her way to the stage. It’s a great media stunt, and when she takes the podium, she shows what a pro she’s become. She seems relaxed and at ease with the crowd, and her speech is lively. She talks about universal health care (“people tell me you’ve tried that before, and I say I’m proud I did”), makes a veiled reference to the insurance and drug industries, then shifts into energy independence and “doing education right.”

It’s all a nice stump speech that contains absolutely no new or substantive policy proposals — and then she comes to Iraq.

California Democratic Convention, 3 pm

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April 27, 2007
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By Tim Redmond

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

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

Some reflections:

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

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

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

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

No, Art, it isn’t.

Healthy Saturdays gaining ground

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March 30, 2007
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By Steven T. Jones
Environmentalists and alternative transportation activists are winning some key endorsements in the run up to next month’s second annual Healthy Saturdays showdown. Mayor Gavin Newsom vetoed the Golden Gate Park road closure to cars last year and doesn’t seem interested is pushing for a compromise on a measure he criticizes as too polarizing (ironically, his detachment from the issue is precisely what’s feeding the polarization). But last year’s swing vote on overrriding the veto, Sup. Bevan Dufty, has indicated an openness to supporting it this year. And that became all the more likely last night when the San Francisco Democratic Party County Central Committee (DCCC) endorsed the measure. They join other key Dufty allies in endorsing the measure, including the Harvey Milk Democratic Club and Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club, as well as the Young Democrats club and both Senate contenders: Mark Leno and Carole Migden. The first committee hearing on the measure is April 9.

Antiwar movement turns four

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March 20, 2007
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By Amanda Witherell

› amanda@sfbg.com

The Iraq War turned four years old March 19, but so did the antiwar movement, and thousands of people marked the event with protests, rallies, and direct actions around the Bay Area.

The largest event was the March 18 march on Market Street, led by the ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) coalition, one of more than 1,000 rallies around the country. The protesters marched under a "No Blood for Oil" banner, "Impeach" signs donated by Working Assets, and Whole Earth flags that fluttered in the westerly wind funneling down San Francisco’s main drag. The Chronicle estimated the crowd at 3,000; ANSWER claimed it was 40,000. We estimated the march at 10,000 strong.

Education seemed to be the point protesters were driving home, as if the knowledge of the war’s injustices would reverberate like the chanting voices against the walls of the Financial District and into the minds of the children who wandered through the crowds of thousands.

"Will this stop the war May First?" Glenn Borchardt asked. "No, but it will stop it some day."

Sandee Dickson, a retired teacher, was with about 50 other purple-shirted Democrats of Napa Valley and said she was protesting "to keep it on the front page."

"There are all sorts of people here, from all walks of life, sending the message that American people say, ‘No more war.’ "

More than 40 cops watched the chanting crowd from their post, leaning against the front of the Westfield shopping center, guarding the commerce. "A couple of years ago a couple windows got smashed," one of the police officers said to the Guardian. "I guess they’re pretty expensive."

The crowd was pretty tame, though, and there were no arrests. There seemed to be just as many baby strollers in the crowd as people marching alongside them. Balloons bounced from the wrists of children, and a Girl Scout was making a killing selling cookies off the back of her Radio Flyer wagon for $3.50 a box.

Captain Denis O’Leary from Southern Station said there were about 270 officers on patrol, plus additional platoons of traffic and tactical officers, prepared for violence he wasn’t really anticipating.

"They might get arrested," he said, gesturing to some anarchists waving red and black flags at the edge of Larkin Street. A cop in this city for 25 years, O’Leary has responded to many demonstrations of all sizes and flavors and thinks they’ve changed a lot over the years. He mentioned the 1989 protest outside the Westin St. Francis against the first President George Bush. "That was an angry tone, it was massive, and there were arrests."

When asked if he looks at the crowd and worries about the safety of all the children who could get caught up in a sudden action, he said, "Yes, because my daughter is out there." He said she’s 15.

Sue Martin was marching with her son, Sean Martin-Hamburger. For his first protest, the eight-year-old had made a colorful cardboard sign that read, "Have some peace in your heart." He was too shy to say much to us, but his mom was less reticent: "We’re demonstrating because we don’t want to see any more violence, anywhere actually."

Though it was Sean’s first march on Market, his mother has been protesting for 35 years and agreed the age range was one of the big differences, as was the energy. "It feels more creative and less angry, like we’re starting to embody the peace and not respond to the violence with violence. It doesn’t feel vengeful, but maybe I’m just getting older."

On March 19, there were some people willing to face off with the police at a die-in. Hundreds of protesters lay down on the sidewalks and in the streets of downtown San Francisco, representing the 3,200 American soldiers and the estimated 160,000 Iraqi civilians who have died in the past four years. A helicopter whirring overhead and the corpses under blood-spattered sheets gave the direct action an eerie Vietnam feel, but there seemed to be more cops than corpses. They got something to do when 57 protesters became the walking dead, rising up from the sidewalk and dying again in Market Street traffic, disrupting the flow of daily life and garnering some misdemeanor charges.

Across the bay, 14 people also prepared for arrests, locking themselves into a human chain across the entrance to Chevron’s corporate headquarters in San Ramon. For the third time in four years, more than 100 representatives from Bay Rising, US Labor Against War, Amazon Watch, and Students for a Democratic Society gathered to speak against the other axis of evil: oil, profits, and war.

"Under the new Iraqi Oil Law, Chevron is standing to directly benefit from a law that comes from Bush. Two-thirds of [Iraq] oil will be owned by foreign companies," Sam Edmondson of Bay Rising said. "The fear is that US troops will be used to secure that oil."

Back in San Francisco, in front of the office of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, "Stop Funding the War" called on the woman who controls the purse strings to tighten them.

A few hundred people gathered outside the Federal Building to hear veterans, mothers of soldiers, local progressives, and city officials, such as Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who’s authored local resolutions against the war.

"I think [Pelosi] should be lining up votes to cut off funding for the war," former supervisor and 2003 mayoral candidate Matt Gonzales said. "If they cut off money, there’d be an interesting crisis."

Former congressional candidate Krissy Keefer was there as well. When asked where she’d be if she’d been voted into Pelosi’s seat, she said, "I would be here to provide leadership to San Francisco. San Francisco is really, really important, and we need to constantly reinforce the position that we play. The middle-of-the-road position that Pelosi takes squashes the best intentions of the Democratic Party." *

Sam Devine and Sarah Phelan contributed to this story.

It’s on

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March 7, 2007
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Invoking the spirit of George Moscone and Harvey Milk "so that we may be worthy of their powerful legacy," Assemblymember Mark Leno announced his candidacy March 2 for the State Senate seat now held by Carole Migden, setting off a high-profile fight between the two for the Democratic Party nomination next year.

"Welcome to democracy in action. Welcome to people power," Leno told the large crowd that gathered under the warm noontime sun at Yerba Buena Gardens, adjacent to the Martin Luther King Memorial and Moscone Center with its rooftop array of solar panels, which Leno said he will work to bring to more buildings.

MCing the event was Assessor Phil Ting, who praised Leno’s efforts to legalize same-sex marriage and said, "That’s the kind of leadership and integrity we deserve in San Francisco." District Attorney Kamala Harris then told the crowd, "I stand here in strong and unequivocal support for Mark Leno."

Among the other local notables on hand to support Leno were Fiona Ma, Susan Leal, Laura Spanjian, Julian Davis, Kim-Shree Maufas, Hydra Mendoza, Norman Yee, Lawrence Wong, Donna Sachet, Theresa Sparks, James Hormel, Natalie Berg, Bob Twomey, Jose Medina, August Longo, Linda Richardson, Calvin Welch, Jordanna Thigpen, Leah Shahum, Tom Radulovich, David Wall, Tim Gaskin, Esperanza Macias, and Espanola Jackson.

Notably absent were all the members of the Board of Supervisors, but it’s still very early in a campaign that is bound to be heated. (Steven T. Jones)

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