Democrats

Endorsements: The Greens

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EDITORIAL We’ve long encouraged the California Green Party to focus its energy on local races, and in San Francisco, the Greens have had considerable success: Matt Gonzalez and then Ross Mirkarimi were elected supervisor as Greens (and Gonzalez made a hell of a run for mayor). Sarah Lipson and Mark Sanchez won school board seats. The idea of someone from the Green Party running citywide is no longer all that unusual, and if the party can continue to generate energy and enthusiasm over the next few years, it will become even more of a source of progressive leaders and provide competition to the Democrats who have controlled city politics for decades.

We focused in last week’s endorsements issue on a few contested Democratic primaries for state assembly and senate, but there are several Greens worthy of note who are challenging entrenched incumbents. Our Green primary endorsements:

For US Senate: Todd Chretien

Chretien is one of the most exciting Green Party candidates in the country. He’s trying to turn a nonrace into a referendum on war and abuse of power. This East Bay resident has spent years fighting for social justice, first as a socialist and then as a Green. He’s smart, passionate, eloquent, and right on the issues. He’s clearly not going to beat Dianne Feinstein, but if he gets any media attention, he’ll be able to raise some important issues.

For US Congress, District 8: Krissy Keefer

Keefer, a dancer and Guardian Goldie winner, has long been an active part of the city’s arts community. She’s always been political, and became an antigentrification activist during the dot-com boom. She has virtually no hope of beating incumbent Nancy Pelosi, and her platform is a little, well, abstract. But we’ve always liked Keefer and we appreciate her spirit in trying to hold Pelosi accountable.

For State Assembly, District 12: Barry Hermanson

Hermanson spent 25 years putting his ideals into action as the owner of a small employment agency, where he sought to raise pay rates for temporary workers. His strategy: reduce his own commission, and pay the temps more. He put a bunch of his own money into a successful citywide campaign to raise the minimum wage. If Janet Reilly wins the Democratic primary for this seat, most progressives in town will probably stick with her but if Sup. Fiona Ma comes out on top June 6, Hermanson could emerge as the only alternative. SFBG

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

I was sitting peacefully at home, watching the final episode of The West Wing, which my partner describes as "liberal porn," when Steve Westly drew first blood in the governor’s race.

We all knew there’d be some negative ads before this was over, and frankly, all the hand-wringing about the evil of negative campaigning has never really appealed to me: Politicians have been launching vicious, often slanderous attacks on their opponents since the dawn of democracy. But this one made me furious.

The simple story is that Westly borrowing a chapter from the Book of Rove is assailing Phil Angelides for wanting to tax the rich. And he’s doing it in the most misleading, unprincipled, and utterly disgraceful way.

The ad features what seems like a crushing list of new taxes that Angelides wants to impose $10 billion worth, Westly’s hit squad claims. Then it winds up with a smarmy tagline: "With high gas prices, housing and health care costs, can working families afford Phil Angelides’s tax plan?"

Of course, Westly had pledged some time ago not to be the first candidate to attack the other by name, but what the hell: The election’s coming up, the race seems to be narrowing, and this guy will do whatever’s necessary to win.

But more than that, with this ad Westly is promoting the exact mentality that has damaged public education, health care, environmental protection, infrastructure needs, and so much else of what used to be the California dream. Republicans love to hit Democrats on taxes, and we’ll see plenty of that in the fall, no matter who’s the nominee. And for Westly to start the "no new taxes" cry just leaves the Democrats politically crippled.

For the record, Angelides is right: The state needs more tax revenue. And under his proposal, most of it would come not from "working families" who are worried about their gas bills but from people like, well, Steve Westly and Phil Angelides millionaires. His proposed income tax increase only affects households with more than $500,000 in income. Sorry: You’re in that range, you can afford it.

So Mr. Westly: Stop with the antitax lies. This shit makes me sick.

On to the good news.

I get the feeling, from over here in San Francisco, that there’s a real change afoot in East Bay politics. For the past few years, a not-so-loose cadre made up of state senator Don Perata, Mayor Jerry Brown, and Councilmember Ignacio De La Fuente has been consolidating power in Oakland, calling the political shots and giving developers a blank check. Two of the three have real, ahem, ethical issues, and one’s itching to leave town for Sacramento, but so far, nobody’s been able to truly challenge them.

Until Ron Dellums.

Now, I know that Dellums has been out of Oakland for years, that he’s a DC lobbyist, and I’ve heard the rap that he’s long on rhetoric and short on urban policy ideas. But we met him last week, and I can tell you that, at 71, he’s still one of the most energetic and inspirational speakers around, and if he’s elected mayor, he will, by force of personality and national stature, instantly become a center of power that’s distinct from (and will often be in opposition to) the Perata<\d>De La Fuente bloc. SFBG

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

I was sitting peacefully at home, watching the final episode of The West Wing, which my partner describes as "liberal porn," when Steve Westly drew first blood in the governor’s race.

We all knew there’d be some negative ads before this was over, and frankly, all the hand-wringing about the evil of negative campaigning has never really appealed to me: Politicians have been launching vicious, often slanderous attacks on their opponents since the dawn of democracy. But this one made me furious.

The simple story is that Westly borrowing a chapter from the Book of Rove is assailing Phil Angelides for wanting to tax the rich. And he’s doing it in the most misleading, unprincipled, and utterly disgraceful way.

The ad features what seems like a crushing list of new taxes that Angelides wants to impose $10 billion worth, Westly’s hit squad claims. Then it winds up with a smarmy tagline: "With high gas prices, housing and health care costs, can working families afford Phil Angelides’s tax plan?"

Of course, Westly had pledged some time ago not to be the first candidate to attack the other by name, but what the hell: The election’s coming up, the race seems to be narrowing, and this guy will do whatever’s necessary to win.

But more than that, with this ad Westly is promoting the exact mentality that has damaged public education, health care, environmental protection, infrastructure needs, and so much else of what used to be the California dream. Republicans love to hit Democrats on taxes, and we’ll see plenty of that in the fall, no matter who’s the nominee. And for Westly to start the "no new taxes" cry just leaves the Democrats politically crippled.

For the record, Angelides is right: The state needs more tax revenue. And under his proposal, most of it would come not from "working families" who are worried about their gas bills but from people like, well, Steve Westly and Phil Angelides millionaires. His proposed income tax increase only affects households with more than $500,000 in income. Sorry: You’re in that range, you can afford it.

So Mr. Westly: Stop with the antitax lies. This shit makes me sick.

On to the good news.

I get the feeling, from over here in San Francisco, that there’s a real change afoot in East Bay politics. For the past few years, a not-so-loose cadre made up of state senator Don Perata, Mayor Jerry Brown, and Councilmember Ignacio De La Fuente has been consolidating power in Oakland, calling the political shots and giving developers a blank check. Two of the three have real, ahem, ethical issues, and one’s itching to leave town for Sacramento, but so far, nobody’s been able to truly challenge them.

Until Ron Dellums.

Now, I know that Dellums has been out of Oakland for years, that he’s a DC lobbyist, and I’ve heard the rap that he’s long on rhetoric and short on urban policy ideas. But we met him last week, and I can tell you that, at 71, he’s still one of the most energetic and inspirational speakers around, and if he’s elected mayor, he will, by force of personality and national stature, instantly become a center of power that’s distinct from (and will often be in opposition to) the PerataDe La Fuente bloc. SFBG

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

EDITOR’S NOTES

I’ve been having mixed feelings about this Matt Gonzalez for Congress thing. I mean, I was one of the first people to start talking (more than a year ago) about how Gonzalez ought to challenge Nancy Pelosi: Despite all the accolades she gets as the first woman minority leader and potentially the first woman speaker of the house, Pelosi is a terrible politician. She’s venal, driven by campaign money, and has no real agenda except power. She’s the one who privatized the Presidio, potentially paving the way for the privatization of millions of acres of national parkland. And as the representative of one of the most liberal districts in the country, it took her forever to even sort of come out against the war.

My original thought was that Pelosi has never been held accountable for her actions, and a good solid challenge from the left would force her to come back and actually campaign. She’d have to face her constituents, answer some questions and possibly even move a bit in the direction of the district on some key issues.

Besides, it would send a lovely shock wave through the local Democratic Party, where a significant number of local leaders privately despise Pelosi, but would be pressured by the national heavies to endorse her. We could see who really has political courage in this town.

Of course, there’s a serious downside to all of this. Progressive San Francisco is in a somewhat precarious state right now: We have nobody who looks like a mayoral candidate, and the coalition that came together around the Gonzalez mayoral campaign was always fragile anyway. A major congressional campaign by the Greens right now with the battle to oust the Republicans from the House in full swing would create a lot of bitter feelings, and the fact that a guy was taking on a nationally prominent woman wouldn’t make it any better.

Still, there will always be those issues, and you can always argue that it’s not the right time to do something bold and dramatic, and the Green Party has as much right as anyone to run a strong candidate for Congress. A couple of months ago, I was still open to it.

And then it got to be April, and the filing deadline passed, and frankly, I didn’t get the sense Gonzalez was that eager. Now some of his allies are pushing him to mount a write-in campaign for the Green Party nomination and frankly, with all due respect, the whole thing has a sort of last-minute, half-assed look to it.

So I called Gonzalez this week to bat things around, and it turns out he’s in almost exactly the same place I am. You want to run for the US Congress against a nine-term incumbent, you have to start early, take it seriously, raise a bunch of money, deal with the problems head-on … and frankly, that’s not where we are right now. "If it was a year ago, I might be thinking different," Gonzalez told me.

So I think he’ll pass this time, and I think that’s right. But that’s not the end of the story. As he pointed out, if the Democrats do retake Congress, they’ll probably turn out to be a disappointment on about a hundred levels, and even more power will even further corrupt Pelosi. And if we start thinking about it early enough, 2008 could be a fine year. SFBG

The lessons of East Timor

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Chega, the 2,500-page, recently completed final report of East Timor’s Commission for Reception, Truth, and Reconciliation, will probably attract little notice in the United States, and it’s not clear whether it’s the Timorese or the Americans who will be the worse off for that.

If Americans were to take the document seriously, the benefit for East Timor would be obvious: The tiny, half-island nation off the north coast of Australia might hope to receive justice for what it has suffered, rather than just the charity of wealthier nations on which it now depends.

Less obvious is what Americans stand to gain from the report: an understanding of just how far off the mark mainstream political discussion really is when it comes to the legitimate role of the world’s only remaining superpower.

A single sentence from Chega (which means enough in Portuguese) says it all: "In response to the massive violations that occurred in Timor-Leste [East Timor’s official name] in September 1999, President Clinton threw the considerable influence of the United States behind efforts to press the Indonesian Government to accept the deployment of an international force in the territory, demonstrating the considerable leverage that it could have exerted earlier had the will been there."

The "massive violations" referred to were the killings of more than 1,000 Timorese and the burning down of virtually every structure in the emerging country following its vote for independence from Indonesia. The United States’ "considerable influence" stemmed from the fact that it supplied the bulk of Indonesia’s weapons, as it had done throughout the entire occupation of the former Portuguese colony. The prompt effectiveness of a US government that was actually motivated to end the carnage after the 1999 plebiscite demonstrated what some had argued all along: As a junior military partner, Indonesia could never have invaded East Timor in 1975 without tacit US approval.

Five presidents occupied the White House during the Indonesian occupation: Republicans Ford, Reagan, and Bush; and Democrats Carter and Clinton. For 24 years, none of them opted to utilize America’s "considerable leverage," despite repeated United Nations condemnations of the invasion and occupation.

The history is very relevant: In this case we find a dramatic reminder of the continuity of American foreign policy — from the cold war to the war on terrorism — in the person of Paul Wolfowitz. The neoconservative Wolfowitz, now president of the World Bank, served as undersecretary of defense at the start of the Iraq War, and a lot of people who might have known better took him at face value when he argued that the war was all about democratizing the Middle East.

Wolfowitz, however, displayed no such overriding concern for democracy in East Timor when he served as ambassador to Indonesia from 1986 to 1988, nor as assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs from 1982 to 1986. In 1997 he told a congressional committee that talk of East Timor’s independence was "destructive," a view he maintained until 1999.

Chega demonstrates the truth of the exact opposite point of view. In 1999 the US government acted effectively to end the suffering of East Timor because it finally lived up to a principle that ought to be the cornerstone of our foreign policy: It required that one of our allies live up to the ideals we demand of our enemies.

Tom Gallagher

Tom Gallagher was a United Nations election officer in Lospalos, East Timor, during the 1999 plebiscite.

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So let’s get this straight:

The lieutenant governor is running for insurance commissioner. The insurance commissioner is running for lieutenant governor. The former governor is running for attorney general. The attorney general is running for treasurer.

Round and round and round we spin. Talk about a clusterfuck.

There was a time, and it wasn’t all that long ago, when every single constitutional office in California was held by a Democrat. And it’s entirely possible that this fall — with the Republican president and Republican governor in political free fall — the Democrats will actually lose some top jobs in Sacramento.

Let me humbly suggest one reason why: We have a bunch of people running for office who really ought to find something else to do with their lives.

I’m not the only one who thinks this. If you talk to people who think about the future of the California Democratic Party — people who might actually play a role in it, say, 10 years from now — what you hear is this: Why are the same old names bouncing around like petrified Ping-Pong balls?

John Garamendi has been running for some office or other (including unsuccessfully for governor) for the past 20 years. He’s been insurance commissioner twice. Now, since he clearly can’t get the top job, he’s angling for number two.

Cruz Bustamante has virtually disappeared since he dared run in the recall election that brought Arnold Schwarzenegger to power. Perhaps he can slip into Garamendi’s post for a while, while he figures out what else to do. Bill Lockyer thought about running for governor but realized he wasn’t going to win, and although he’s not a terrible attorney general, he’s decided to run for treasurer, which makes no sense unless he’s waiting around to try another office at some point.

Jerry Brown was governor once, and after a period of self-imposed exile, he decided to run for president (of the United States), then mayor of Oakland. By the way, he’s a lawyer, so now he wants to be attorney general.

None of these people is evil, and the state could do worse — way worse — than electing any of them. But is anyone else getting the distinct feeling that we’re the party of, well, yesterday?

Just thought I’d ask.

One of my favorite political movies is Robocop, the 1987 Paul Verhoeven sci-fi film that is not generally considered a great social statement about anything. But when you pay attention (and watch it with the right, um, mind-set), Robocop is actually a story about privatization: Detroit has turned over its police force to the Omni Consumer Products Corporation, which decides to save money (for the company’s bottom line) by cutting staff and squeezing pay — to the point where there’s inadequate backup when our hero gets into a firefight with the bad guys and almost gets shot to bits. They revive him as a cyborg, and he tries to be an honest cop — but deep in his electronic DNA is a rule that he can’t arrest or harm any officer of the Omni Consumer Products Corporation.

I thought about that when I heard that the patrol specials — a crew of private armed civilians who wear uniforms and badges and walk the streets under a 19th-century tradition — was asking for expanded authority in San Francisco (see page 5). The message that the group recently sent to the Police Commission: Privatization is the wave of the future in urban law enforcement.

Yikes. *

The three-year nightmare

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The air of unreality in Washington, DC, is, well, unreal. On Face the Nation March 19, Vice President Dick Cheney proclaimed that the war in Iraq is going well, that the insurgency had reached "a stage of desperation" — and that the prediction that Americans would be greeted as liberators was "basically accurate." There’s no civil war, the administration insists, no catastrophic political failure, no evidence that the war is well on its way to becoming the new Vietnam. No, Cheney insists, the problem is just the overcritical news media.

For the record, more than 2,300 United States soldiers are dead. So are as many as 37,000 Iraqis. Countless more have been maimed, lost limbs, seen their lives destroyed. And three years after the invasion, there is no end in sight. More than 130,000 US troops are still fighting in Iraq, and they are utterly unable to keep the peace. The Iraqi forces are poorly trained and can do little to help.

Ayad Allawi, former acting prime minister and a man Bush used to see as a key ally, isn’t mincing words: "If this is not civil war," he told the BBC, "then God knows what civil war is."

To say the Bush administration lied about the invasion is a severe understatement. Bush and his team are lying every day. And at this rate, the US death toll could be in the tens of thousands by the time the nation extricates itself from this morass.

And yet the Democratic Party leadership is still way too tentative about making this the defining issue of the midterm elections. That’s crazy: Even in the red states, the war is increasingly unpopular. And Bush’s insistence on staying the course is starting to sound like Richard Nixon’s secret plan to end the Vietnam War.

The truth is, Iraq is an artificial construct, a nation pieced together from three ethnic and religious groups that have never gotten along. If it weren’t for the oil (ah, it’s always the oil), Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis might each have their own states.

Perhaps a working government can still be created with all three parties involved. But the presence of huge numbers of US troops isn’t, and won’t, help that process.

The Democrats need to get behind Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) and demand a timetable for withdrawal of all troops. That might even lead to a Democratic Congress. *