Economy

Mayor’s economic stimulus plan — huh?

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Gavin Newsom just announced an “economic stimulus plan” for San Francisco. Guess he wants to get in on the action.

Unfortunately, there’s not a lot in his plan that actually amounts to any local econic stimulus.

Here’s his first proposal:

Accelerate capital projects, such as the Terminal 2 rebuild at SF
International Airport, the SF General rebuild, the Transbay Transit
Center, HOPE SF and the rebuild of the Hall of Justice.

That’s nice — I’m all in favor of increasing public works spending during a recession. But there are a couple of problems. For one thing, the municipal bond market is in the toilet. The airport’s Terminal 2 bonds aren’t going to fly off the shelf right now. If Prop. A passes and the voters approve the San Francisco General rebuild, it will be months before the city can start selling those bonds at a decent rate.

And, of course, most of the money for rebuilding the airport terminal won’t do anything for local business. Those contracts go to big out-ot-town firms like Tutor-Saliba , which are not known for helping local and minority subcontractors.

Then there’s this proposal:

Increase foreign investment by establishing San Francisco as the premier
gateway between Chinese businesses and North America. A delegation of
San Francisco officials will go to China in November to set up a
“China Desk” to attract businesses to San Francisco.

You can ask any progressive urban economist what factors are effective in stimulating a local economy, and they’ll tell you that it starts with local investment, local initiative, local business. Seeking outside investment is a poor and ineffective subsitute.

Then:

Reduce the cost of doing business in San Francisco by reviewing fees on
businesses, helping local business take better advantage of federal,
state and local tax credit programs and implementing targeted tax
incentives.

Which fees is he going to reduce — and how is he going to pay for that? Cut the public workforce — in a recession? .

Finally:

Keep dollars local by creating more local jobs through City Build and
other workforce programs, expanding San Francisco tourism marketing
more regionally, revising parking and transit polices to make it
easier to visit San Francisco, expanding Neighborhood Market Place
Initiatives and Business Improvement Districts including the new
Tourism Improvement District, reducing retail leakage with the “Shop
Local” campaign, and increasing funding for business attraction and
retention efforts.

As if we aren’t already trying to expand our tourism marketing?

There are plenty of things that could help. I’d even argue that supporting Prop. B, the affordable housing measure, and Prop. H, the Clean Energy Act, would create jobs in the city for San Franciscans, keep more money in the economy and provide a sustainable economic stimulus.

But oh, wait — the mayor is against those.

Obama and the SF DCCC

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So Kos reports that Obama now has so much money he’s thinking about sharing it with Democratic Party committees to help expand the majority in Congress. I’m good with that; 60 seats in the Senate and a strongly Democratic house and Obama (like FDR in 1933) would have the ability to take immediate direct action to get the economy going again — the right way.

Of course, if he has that much money, maybe he could toss some of it toward the San Francisco Democratic Party to help elect progressive supervisors, build affordable housing and pass the Clean Energy Act.

Economic stimulus, at home

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EDITORIAL Mayor Gavin Newsom is planning to announce a local economic stimulus package some time this week. The Board of Supervisors is holding hearings on how the city can help the San Francisco economy. As the presidential candidates thrash around with proposals to address the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, local politicians are hoping to do their part at home.

And that’s a fine idea. Even in this globalized economy, San Francisco can do a lot to protect its residents and businesses from the ongoing disaster. But the best way to do that will require political courage — and a recognition that economic stimulus works best from the bottom up, not the top down.

The most effective way to get a depressed economy going, in other words, is to put money as directly as possible in the hands of the people most likely to spend it. That means the sorts of policies that big business and landlords will want — say, cutting "red tape" and reducing business fees and taxes — isn’t gong to help.

Progressive economists say that on the national level, one of the most effective policies would be a short-term reduction in the payroll tax. Most working people pay 7.5 percent of their wages into the Social Security trust fund, and most businesses match that contribution. Suspend the employee contribution for three months and everyone in the nation instantly gets a significant raise. (The Social Security fund would take a hit, but this is an emergency and that can be fixed later; despite all the gloom and doom, Social Security will be fine for the next half century with just a few minor fixes.)

The idea is that people who get a raise during a recession are likely to spend it, quickly, which pours money into the economy. The same principal can work in San Francisco. Any economic stimulus package will cost money and add to the city’s deficit (unless Newsom and the supervisors are willing to raise taxes to fund it). But some short-term policies could more than pay for themselves by jump-starting local spending.

A few ideas:

• Place a moratorium on all residential evictions. Barack Obama is talking about a short-term freeze on mortgage foreclosures, which makes sense for the nation. But in San Francisco, where most residents are renters, evictions are far more of an economic threat. The mayor and the supervisors could ask the sheriff to refrain from carrying out any eviction actions for a limited period (and potentially cut off funding for eviction actions).

• Create an emergency rent-subsidy fund. Make city cash available to anyone facing eviction because of economic circumstance.

• Reduce Muni fares for a few months. Muni is in many ways a tax on the poor and working class, who have no other travel options. Almost every penny that people spend on transportation would go right back into the economy.

• Suspend the payroll tax on small businesses. Small businesses create most of the jobs in the city; suspending the tax on the smallest businesses (those, say, with payrolls of less than $500,000) would help the most vulnerable and keep the engines of the local economy from failing. Raising the tax on big businesses would, of course, more than pay for this.

• Raise the general assistance payment. Sure, some of that money would be spent on alcohol and drugs, but most would be spent on things like food and clothing.

• Spend more, not less, on the public sector. Government spending creates jobs; government programs saved the United States from the Great Depression. Taxing the wealthy to fund public jobs programs makes excellent economic sense at the city level, too.

Those are just a few ideas. The supervisors should devote their hearings to developing more. But a plan that only helps big business and doesn’t put money in the pockets of the rest of San Franciscans won’t do anything to help the local economy. *

A new New Deal

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I like Obama’s call for a moratorium on foreclosures, although it doesn’t go far enough. But The Nation has been running some great stuff on what a real plan to overhaul the U.S. economy and get us out of this crisis would look like.

William Greider has a clear, coherent explanation of what went wrong and a prescription for how to fix it here. Howard Zinn talks about how to spend the money on the middle class, not Wall Street.

Paul Krugman talks about partial nationaization of the banks here. Funny how even the mad privatizers of the Bush Administration are being forced to accept at some level that idea that the public ought to own part of the financial institutions that we’re bailing out.

Yes we can rock out

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ob.jpg
In the home stretch of a long presidential campaign, with the economy failing and politicians failing to really speak truth to power, it’s easy to feel fatigue. So if you’re looking for a bit of pro-Obama inspiration, download this awesome, free Obama mix from DJ Z-Trip and play it everywhere you go, loud. You’ll feel better, regain your perspective, and get fired up for the real struggle that begins with our vote on Nov. 4.

And if that doesn’t work, go back and watch this one again:

Same-sex marriage good for the economy

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The opponents of same-sex marraige have raised $25 million. That’s amazing: $25 million to stop people from getting married.

But apparently, it’s working. The Newsom ad has been effective, and now No on 8 folks are issuing a wake-up call to their supporters.

In the meantime, I really like the Sonoma State University study that shows how same-sex marriage is good for the economy. Sonoma County alone could see $112 million in benefits.

More jobs, more money into the economy in a depression … and these nut cases are spending $25 million to stop it?

Endorsements 2008: San Francisco measures

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SAN FRANCISCO MEASURES

Proposition A

San Francisco General Hospital bonds

YES, YES, YES


This critically needed $887 million bond would be used to rebuild the San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, which is currently not up to seismic safety codes. If the hospital isn’t brought into seismic compliance by 2013, the state has threatened to shut it down.

Proposition A has the support of just about everyone in town: Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, all four state legislators from San Francisco, Mayor Gavin Newsom, former mayors Willie Brown and Frank Jordan, all 11 supervisors, the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, Service Employees International Union, Local 1021 … the list goes on and on.

And for good reason: SF General is not only the hospital of last resort for many San Franciscans and the linchpin of the entire Healthy San Francisco system. It’s also the only trauma center in the area. Without SF General, trauma patients would have to travel to Palo Alto for the nearest available facility.

Just about the only opposition is coming from the Coalition for Better Housing. This deep-pocketed landlord group is threatening to sink the hospital bond unless it gets concessions on Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier’s legislation that would allow landlords to pass the costs of the $4 billion rebuild of the city’s Hetch Hetchy water, sewage, and power system through to their tenants.

These deplorable tactics should make voters, most of whom are tenants, even more determined to see Prop. A pass. Vote yes.

Proposition B

Affordable housing fund

YES, YES, YES


Housing isn’t just the most contentious issue in San Francisco; it’s the defining issue, the one that will determine whether the city of tomorrow bears any resemblance to the city of today.

San Francisco is on the brink of becoming a city of the rich and only the rich, a bedroom community for Silicon Valley and an urban nest for wealthy retirees. Some 90 percent of current city residents can’t afford the cost of a median-priced house, and working-class people are getting displaced by the day. Tenants are thrown out when their rent-controlled apartments are converted to condos. Young families find they can’t rent or buy a place with enough room for kids and are forced to move to the far suburbs. Seniors and people on fixed incomes find there are virtually no housing choices for them in the market, and many wind up on the streets. Small businesses suffer because their employees can’t afford to live here; the environment suffers because so many San Francisco workers must commute long distances to find affordable housing.

And meanwhile, the city continues to allow developers to build million-dollar condos for the rich.

Proposition B alone won’t solve the problem, but it would be a major first step. The measure would set aside a small percentage of the city’s property-tax revenue — enough to generate about $33 million a year — for affordable housing. It would set a baseline appropriation to defend the money the city currently spends on housing. It would expire in 15 years.

Given the state of the city’s housing crisis, $33 million is a fairly modest sum — but with a guaranteed funding stream, the city can seek matching federal and state funds and leverage that over 15 years into billions of dollars to build housing for everyone from very low-income people to middle-class families.

Prop. B doesn’t raise taxes, and if the two revenue measures on the ballot, Propositions N and Q, pass, there will be more than enough money to fund it without any impact on city services.

The mayor and some other conservative critics say that set-asides such as this one cripple the ability of elected officials to make tough budget choices. But money for affordable housing isn’t a choice anymore in San Francisco; it’s a necessity. If the city can’t take dramatic steps to retain its lower-income and working-class residents, the city as we know it will cease to exist. A city of the rich is not only an appalling concept; it’s simply unsustainable.

The private market alone can’t solve San Francisco’s housing crisis. Vote yes on B.

Proposition C

Ban city employees from commissions

NO


Proposition C would prohibit city employees from serving on boards and commissions. Sponsored by Sup. Jake McGoldrick, it seems to make logical sense — why should a city department head, for example, sit on a policy panel that oversees city departments?

But the flaw in Prop. C is that it excludes all city employees, not just senior managers. We see no reason why, for example, a frontline city gardener or nurse should be barred from ever serving on a board or commission. We’re opposing this now, but we urge the supervisors to come back with a new version that applies only to employees who are exempt from civil service — that is, managers and political appointees.

Proposition D

Financing Pier 70 waterfront district

YES


Pier 70 was once the launching pad for America’s imperial ambitions in the Pacific, but it’s sadly fallen into disrepair, like most Port of San Francisco property. The site’s historic significance and potential for economic development (think Monterey’s Cannery Row) have led port officials and all 11 members of the Board of Supervisors to put forward this proposal to prime the pump with a public infrastructure investment that would be paid back with interest.

The measure would authorize the Board of Supervisors to enter into long-term leases consistent with the forthcoming land use and fiscal plans for the site, and to front the money for development of roads and waterfront parks, refurbishing Union Iron Works, and other infrastructure work, all of which would be paid back through tax revenue generated by development of the dormant site. It’s a good deal. Vote yes.

Proposition E

Recall reform

YES


The recall is an important tool that dates back to the state’s progressive era, but San Francisco’s low signature threshold for removing an officeholder makes it subject to abuse. That’s why the Guardian called for this reform ("Reform the Recall," 6/13/07) last year when downtown interests were funding simultaneous recall efforts (promoted by single-issue interest groups) against three progressive supervisors: Jake McGoldrick, Aaron Peskin, and Chris Daly. The efforts weren’t successful, but they diverted time and energy away from the important work of running the city.

This measure would bring the City Charter into conformity with state law, raising the signature threshold from 10 percent of registered voters to 20 percent in most supervisorial districts, and leaving it at 10 percent for citywide office. The sliding-scale state standard is what most California counties use, offering citizens a way to remove unaccountable representatives without letting a fringe-group recall be used as an extortive threat against elected officials who make difficult decisions that don’t please everyone.

Proposition F

Mayoral election in even-numbered years

YES


This one’s a close call, and there are good arguments on both sides. Sponsored by Sup. Jake McGoldrick, Proposition F would move mayoral elections to the same year as presidential elections. The pros: Increased turnout, which tends to favor progressive candidates, and some savings to the city from the elimination of an off-year election. The cons: The mayor’s race might be eclipsed by the presidential campaigns. In a city where the major daily paper and TV stations have a hard time covering local elections in the best of times, the public could miss out on any real scrutiny of mayoral candidates.

Here’s what convinced us: San Francisco hasn’t elected a true progressive mayor in decades. The system we have isn’t working; it’s worth trying something else.

Proposition G

Retirement system credit for unpaid parental leave

YES


Proposition G brings equity to city employees who started families before July 1, 2003. Currently this group is unable to benefit from a 2002 charter amendment that provides city employees with paid parental leave. Prop. G gives these parents the opportunity to buy back unpaid parental leave and earn retirement credits for that period.

Critics charge that Prop. G changes the underlying premise of the city’s retirement plan and that this attempt to cure a perceived disparity creates a precedent whereby voters could be asked to remedy disparities anytime benefit changes are made. They claim that there are no guarantees Prop. G won’t end up costing the taxpayers money.

But Prop. G, which is supported by the San Francisco Democratic and Republican Parties, the Chamber of Commerce, SEIU Local 1021, the Police Officers Association, and San Francisco Firefighters 798, simply allows city workers to buy back at their own expense some of their missed retirement benefits, thereby creating a fiscally responsible solution to an oversight in the 2003 charter amendment.

Proposition H

Clean Energy Act

YES, YES, YES


Proposition H is long, long overdue. This charter amendment would require the city to study how to efficiently and affordably achieve 51 percent renewable energy by 2017, scaled up to 100 percent by 2040. Should the study find that a publicly owned utility infrastructure would be most effective, it would allow the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) to issue revenue bonds, with approval from the Board of Supervisors, to purchase the necessary lines, poles, and power-generation facilities. The measure includes a green jobs initiative and safeguards benefits and retirement packages for employees who leave Pacific Gas and Electric Co. to work for the SFPUC.

PG&E hates this because it could put the giant private company out of business in San Francisco, and the company has already spent millions of dollars spreading false information about the measure. PG&E says the proposal would cost $4 billion and raise electric bills by $400 a year for residents, but there’s no verifiable proof that these figures are accurate. An analysis done by the Guardian (see "Cleaner and Cheaper," 9/10/08) shows that rates could actually be reduced and the city would still generate excess revenue.

PG&E has also spun issuing revenue bonds without a vote of the people as a bad thing — it’s not. Other city departments already issue revenue bonds without a vote. The solvency of revenue bonds is based on a guaranteed revenue stream — that is, the city would pay back the bonds with the money it makes selling electricity. There’s no cost and no risk to the taxpayers. In fact, unless the city can prove that enough money would be generated to cover the cost of the bond plus interest, the bond won’t fly with investors.

At a time when utility companies are clinging to old technologies or hoping for pie-in-the-sky solutions like "clean coal," this measure is desperately needed and would set a precedent for the country. Environmental leaders like Bill McKibben and Van Jones, who both endorsed the bill, are watching San Francisco closely on this. Prop. H has been endorsed by 8 of the 11 supervisors, Assemblymembers Mark Leno and Fiona Ma, state senator Carole Migden, the Democratic Party, the Green Party, SEIU Local 1021, the Sierra Club, Senior Action Network, the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club, and the San Francisco Tenants Union, among many others.

The bulk of the opposition comes from PG&E, which is entirely funding the No on H campaign and paid for 22 of 30 ballot arguments against it. The company also has given money, in one way or another, to all the public officials who oppose this measure, including Mayor Gavin Newsom, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, and Sups. Michela Alioto-Pier, Carmen Chu, and Sean Elsbernd.

Prop. H pits a utility that can’t meet the state’s modest renewable-energy goals and runs a nuclear power plant against every environmental group and leader in town. Vote yes.

Proposition I

Independent ratepayer advocate

NO


At face value, this measure isn’t bad, but it’s superfluous. It’s a charter amendment that would establish an independent ratepayer advocate, appointed by the city administrator and tasked with advising the SFPUC on all things related to utility rates and revenue. Passing Prop. H would do that too.

Proposition I was put on the ballot by Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier as a way to save face after her ardent opposition to the city’s plan to build two peaker power plants, in which she made impassioned pleas for more renewable energy and more energy oversight. (She opposes Prop. H, which would create both.) During the debate over the peaker power plants, Alioto-Pier introduced a variety of bills, including this one. There isn’t any visible campaign or opposition to it, but there’s no need for it. Vote yes on H, and no on I.

Proposition J

Historic preservation commission

YES


There’s something in this measure for everyone to like, both the developers who seek to alter historic buildings and the preservationists who often oppose them. It adopts the best practices of other major US cities and updates 40-year-old rules that govern the Landmark Preservation Advisory Board.

Proposition J, sponsored by Sup. Aaron Peskin, would replace that nine-member board with a seven-member commission that would have a bit more authority and whose members would be preservation experts appointed by the mayor, approved by the board, and serving fixed terms to avoid political pressures. It would set review standards that vary by project type, allowing streamlined staff-level approval for small projects and direct appeals to the Board of Supervisors for big, controversial proposals.

This was a collaborative proposal with buy-in from all stakeholders, and it’s formally opposed only by the Small Property Owners of San Francisco, an extremist property rights group. Vote yes.

Proposition K

Decriminalizing sex work

YES


We’re not big fans of vice laws; generally speaking, we’ve always believed that drugs, gambling, and prostitution ought to be legalized, tightly regulated, and heavily taxed. Proposition K doesn’t go that far — all it does is make enforcement of the prostitution laws a low priority for the San Francisco Police Department. It would effectively cut off funding for prostitution busts — but would require the cops to pursue cases involving violent crime against sex workers.

The opponents of this measure talk about women who are coerced into sex work, particularly immigrants who are smuggled into the country and forced into the trade. That’s a serious problem in San Francisco. But the sex workers who put this measure on the ballot argue that taking the profession out of the shadows would actually help the police crack down on sex trafficking.

In fact, a significant part of the crime problem created by sex work involves crimes against the workers — violent and abusive pimps, atrocious working conditions, thefts and beatings by johns who face no consequences because the sex workers face arrest if they go to the police.

The current system clearly isn’t working. Vote yes on K.

Proposition L

Funding the Community Justice Center

NO


This measure is an unnecessary and wasteful political gimmick by Mayor Newsom and his downtown allies. Newsom has long pushed the Community Justice Center (CJC) as a panacea for quality-of-life crimes in the Tenderloin and surrounding areas, where the new court would ostensibly offer defendants immediate access to social service programs in lieu of incarceration. Some members of the Board of Supervisors resisted the idea, noting that it singles out poor people and that the services it purports to offer have been decimated by budget shortfalls. Nonetheless, after restoring deep cuts in services proposed by the mayor, the board decided to go ahead and fund the CJC.

But the mayor needed an issue to grandstand on this election, so he placed this measure on the ballot. All Proposition L would do is fund the center at $2.75 million for its first year of operations, rather than the approved $2.62 million. We’d prefer to see all that money go to social services rather than an unnecessary new courtroom, but it doesn’t — the court is already funded. In the meantime, Prop. L would lock in CJC program details and prevent problems from being fixed by administrators or supervisors once the program is up and running. Even if you like the CJC, there’s no reason to make it inflexible simply so Newsom can keep ownership of it. Vote no.

Proposition M

Tenants’ rights

YES


Proposition M would amend the city’s rent-control law to prohibit landlords from harassing tenants. It would allow tenants to seek rent reductions if they’re being harassed.

Proponents — including the SF Tenants Union, the Housing Rights Committee, St. Peter’s Housing Committee, the Community Tenants Association, the Affordable Housing Alliance, the Eviction Defense Collaborative, and the Tenderloin Housing Clinic — argue that affordable, rent-controlled housing is being lost because landlords are allowed to drive long-term tenants from their rent-controlled homes. Citing the antics of one of San Francisco’s biggest landlords, CitiApartments, the tenant activists complain about repeated invasions of privacy, constant buyout offers, and baseless bogus eviction notices.

Because no language currently exists in the rent ordinance to define and protect tenants from harassment, landlords with well-documented histories of abuse have been able to act with impunity. Vote Yes on M.

Proposition N

Real property transfer tax

YES, YES, YES


Prop. N is one of a pair of measures designed to close loopholes in the city tax code and bring some badly needed new revenue into San Francisco’s coffers. The proposal, by Sup. Aaron Peskin, would increase to 1.5 percent the transfer tax on the sale of property worth more than $5 million. It would generate about $30 million a year.

Prop. N would mostly affect large commercial property sales; although San Francisco housing is expensive, very few homes sell for $5 million (and the people buying and selling the handful of ultra-luxury residences can well afford the extra tax). It’s a progressive tax — the impact will fall overwhelmingly on very wealthy people and big business — and this change is long overdue. Vote yes.

Proposition O

Emergency response fee

YES, YES, YES


With dozens of state and local measures on the ballot this year, Proposition O is not getting much notice — but it’s a big deal. If it doesn’t pass, the city could lose more than $80 million a year. With the economy tanking and the city already running structural deficits and cutting essential services, that kind of hit to the budget would be catastrophic. That’s why the mayor, all 11 supervisors, and both the Republican and Democratic Parties support Prop. O.

The text of the measure is confusing and difficult to penetrate because it deals mainly with legal semantics. It’s on the ballot because of arcane legal issues that might make it hard for the city to enforce an existing fee in the future.

But here’s the bottom line: Prop. O would not raise taxes or increase the fees most people already pay. It would simply replace what was a modest "fee" of a couple of bucks a month to fund 911 services with an identical "tax" for the same amount, while also updating the technical definition of what constitutes a phone line from a now defunct 1970s-era statute. The only people who might wind up paying any new costs are commercial users of voice-over-internet services.

It’s very simple. If Prop. O passes, the vast majority of us won’t pay anything extra and the city won’t have to make $80 to $85 million more in cuts to things like health care, crime prevention, and street maintenance. That sounds like a pretty good deal to us. Vote yes.

Proposition P

Transportation Authority changes

NO, NO, NO


Mayor Gavin Newsom is hoping voters will be fooled by his argument that Proposition P, which would change the size and composition of the San Francisco County Transportation Authority, would lead to more efficiency and accountability.

But as Prop. P’s opponents — including all 11 supervisors, the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association, and the Sierra Club — point out, the measure would put billions of taxpayer dollars in the hands of political appointees, thus removing independent oversight of local transportation projects.

The Board of Supervisors, which currently serves as the governing body of the small but powerful, voter-created Transportation Authority, has done a good job of acting as a watchdog for local sales-tax revenues earmarked for transportation projects and administering state and federal transportation funding for new projects. The way things stand, the mayor effectively controls Muni, and the board effectively controls the Transportation Authority, providing a tried and tested system of checks and balances that gives all 11 districts equal representation. There is no good reason to upset this apple cart. Vote No on P.

Proposition Q

Modifying the payroll tax

YES, YES, YES


Proposition Q would close a major loophole that allows big law firms, architecture firms, medical partnerships, and other lucrative outfits to avoid paying the city’s main business tax. San Francisco collects money from businesses largely through a 1.5 percent tax on payroll. It’s not a perfect system, and we’d like to see a more progressive tax (why should big and small companies pay the same percentage tax?). But even the current system has a giant problem that costs the city millions of dollars a year.

The law applies to the money companies pay their employees. But in a fair number of professional operations, the highest-paid people are considered "partners" and their income is considered profit-sharing, not pay. So the city’s biggest law firms, where partners take home hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in compensation, pay no city tax on that money.

Prop. Q would close that loophole and treat partnership income as taxable payroll. It would also exempt small businesses (with payrolls of less than $250,000 a year) from any tax at all.

The proposal would bring at least $10 million a year into the city and stop certain types of businesses from ducking their share of the tax burden. Vote yes.

Proposition R

Naming sewage plant after Bush

NO


This one has tremendous emotional and humor appeal. It would officially rename the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant the George W. Bush Sewage Plant. That would put San Francisco in the position of creating the first official memorial to the worst president of our time — and his name would be on a sewage plant.

The problem — not to be killjoys — is that sewage treatment is actually a pretty important environmental concern, and the Oceanside plant is a pretty good sewage treatment plant. It’s insulting to the plant, and the people who work there, to put the name of an environmental villain on the door.

Let’s name something awful after Bush. Vote no on Prop. R.

Proposition S

Budget set-aside policy

NO


This measure is yet another meaningless gimmick that has more to do with Mayor Newsom’s political ambitions than good governance.

For the record, we generally don’t like budget set-aside measures, which can unnecessarily encumber financial planning and restrict elected officials from setting budget priorities. But in this no-new-taxes political era, set-asides are sometimes the only way to guarantee that important priorities get funding from the static revenue pool. Newsom agrees — and has supported set-asides for schools, libraries, and other popular priorities.

Now he claims to want to rein that in, although all this measure would do is state whether a proposal identifies a funding source or violates a couple of other unenforceable standards. Vote no.

Proposition T

Free and low-cost substance abuse treatment

YES


Proposition T would require the Department of Public Health (DPH) to make medical and residential substance abuse treatment available for low-income and homeless people who request it. DPH already offers treatment and does it well, but there’s a wait list 500 people long — and when addicts finally admit they need help and show up for treatment, the last thing the city should do is send them away and make them wait.

Prop. T would expand the program to fill that unmet need. The controller estimates an annual cost to the General Fund of $7 million to $13 million, but proponents say the upfront cost would lead to significant savings later. For every dollar spent on treatment, the city saves as much as $13 because clinical treatment for addictive disorders is cheaper than visits to the emergency room, where many low-income and homeless people end up when their untreated problems reach critical levels.

This ordinance was put on the ballot by Sups. Daly, McGoldrick, Mirkarimi, and Peskin, and has no visible opposition, although some proponents frame it as a way to achieve what the Community Justice Center only promises. Vote yes.

Proposition U

Defunding the Iraq War

YES


Proposition U is a declaration of policy designed to send a message to the city’s congressional representatives that San Francisco disproves of any further funding of the war in Iraq, excepting whatever money is required to bring the troops home safely.

The progressive block of supervisors put this on the ballot, and according to their proponent argument in the Voter Information Pamphlet, the Iraq War has cost California $68 billion and San Francisco $1.8 billion. The Republican Party is the lone voice against this measure. Vote yes.

Proposition V

Bringing back JROTC

NO, NO, NO


The San Francisco school board last year voted to end its Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program, which was the right move. A military-recruitment program — and make no mistake, that’s exactly what JROTC is — has no place in the San Francisco public schools. The board could have done a better job finding a replacement program, but there are plenty of options out there.

In the meantime, a group of JROTC backers placed Proposition V on the ballot.

The measure would have no legal authority; it would just be a statement of policy. Supporters say they hope it will pressure the school board to restore the program. In reality, this is a downtown- and Republican-led effort to hurt progressive candidates in swing districts where JROTC might be popular. Vote no.

>>More Endorsements 2008

Endorsements 2008

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Just about everyone in San Francisco who isn’t clueless or soporific will be going to the polls Nov. 4 to vote for Barack Obama. Turnout will be heavy; even though Obama is likely to win California by 10 points and John McCain isn’t campaigning here, the hope and promise of the Democratic nominee — coming at a time when the nation is in terrible shape and the economy is on the brink of collapse — will bring people to the polls in droves.

We’ll be among those voters, proudly casting our ballots for Obama. The thought of another four years of George Bush-style policies is terrifying; nobody wants to sit this one out.

But while so much attention is on Washington, there’s a lot at stake in San Francisco, too — and it’s critical that all the Obama voters don’t just stop at the top of the ballot.

The city’s future is also on the line — downtown, frustrated by the policies a progressive Board of Supervisors has introduced in the past eight years, is fighting back hard, trying to regain control. The direction of the next board — and city hall — will be determined in Districts 1, 3, and 11, where the incumbents are termed out and progressives are fighting downtown-funded candidates.

There’s so much else on the ballot — public power (yes on H!), tax policy (yes on N and Q!), crucial affordable housing (yes on B!), races for school board and community college board … And that doesn’t even count the East Bay.

We have spent months going over ballot measures, interviewing candidates, and coming up with our best suggestions for offices and propositions. Check out our Election Center 2008 for interviews with many of the candidates.

On Nov. 4, vote early, vote often, and vote as if your country — and your city — depends on it. Our recommendations follow.

>>National and state races

>>San Francisco races

>>State ballot measures

>>San Francisco measures

>>East Bay races and measures

>>Guardian 2008 Election Center

Obliterating the dollar

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REVIEW Andrew Schoultz is prescient. A week or two before Wall Street and Washington were forced to admit they’d obliterated the US economy, he unveiled new work that literally slices and blows up the dollar bill. In his A Litany of Defense and a Liturgy of Power (Come) from the Palm of His Hand, shards of the pyramid, all-seeing eye, and other mint-y green fixtures slice through the air alongside similar fragments of currency from other countries. These literal markers of economic chaos add yet more kinetic distress signals to the meta-intersections of iconic bird flocks, medieval warhorses, and whirlpools in Schoultz’s already claustrophobic vision. A hand-rendered George Washington stares blankly from the center of one relatively quiet piece, unaware that his image needs to be multiplied 700 billion times to begin to balance a different George’s checkbook.

"In Gods We Trust" finds Schoultz adding flagrant emphasis to his political content — most of his titles are declarative mouthfuls. Conversely, he veers away from wall murals into mixed-media pieces that only might be more market friendly. He braids collage elements into drawings and paintings. He’s also constructed a centerpiece installation that presents scales of justice set catastrophically awry. Subtlety isn’t on the agenda, and maybe it shouldn’t be. After all, Schoultz’s timing couldn’t be more right.

The visual impact of the work in Schoultz’s first major SF solo show in four years is best experienced one piece at a time, and at close range. Obsessive-compulsive repetition is a chief facet of some of the best San Francisco paintings and drawings of the past decade, and Schoultz, who has lived here around that long, is a standout representative of the practice. But unlike OCD peers’ veerings toward op art or pointillist tactics, his graffiti or mural aesthetic doesn’t always fit into a frame — it can seem murky from afar. This isn’t a matter of scale — in fact, my favorite pieces in "In God We Trust" are small ones — as much as perspective. I like Schoultz’s art most when I’m close enough to stare into the eye of the storm, or, in Sinking Slaveship, the blue (as opposed to black) hole.

ANDREW SCHOULTZ: IN GODS WE TRUST Through Oct. 25. Tues.–Fri., 10:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m.; Sat., 11 a.m.–5 p.m. Marx and Zavaterro, 77 Geary, second floor, SF. (415) 627-9111, www.marxzav.com

Manifestos and sodas

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

INTERVIEW Joshua Clover is probably just as well known as alter ego jane dark. It’s the pseudonym under which s/he writes sugarhigh! (janedark.com), which makes equal space for dialectical thinking, pop and country music, and film. I’ve spent time talking with friends about his criticism and his two books of poetry, 2006’s The Totality for Kids (UC Press, 76 pages, $16.95) and 1997’s Madonna anno domini (Louisiana State University Press). On the page and in person, he radiates the kind of information-density that encompasses everything from Gossip Girl to Karl Marx, Taylor Swift to John Ashbery.

Clover grew up in Berkeley, went to school there and graduated, then went to Iowa and graduated, then spent a period as an "indigent, unskilled worker" before the first, extremely limited-run issue of sugarhigh! landed him a job writing for Village Voice and, soon after, Spin. Which he did for a couple of years, until he didn’t like it anymore and began teaching at UC Davis. When I approached him about this Q&A, he — perhaps slightly jokingly — agreed on the condition that we talk about the economy.

SFBG You’ve written about the value-density of art — as the economy has gotten less stable, works from a Damien Hirst or Francis Bacon go for record prices. This makes me think of the value-density of poetry relative to visual art, and what Wittgenstein wrote about poetry not being involved in the "language-game of giving information" that’s connected to the functioning of capitalism. Is poetry’s struggle for a popular audience connected with the fact that it explicitly undermines the structure of capitalism?

JOSHUA CLOVER That’s a very noble way to frame poetry that’s politically righteous — like it can’t be swallowed by the maw of capitalism and spat out. But one of the best-selling books of poetry in the 20th century, Howl by Allen Ginsberg, is an explicitly brutal critique of different kinds of domination, including economic domination.

The sad fact about poetry in the US [today] is not that political poetry cannot be swallowed, but that it can be swallowed quite easily. There are always a couple pages in Poetry magazine set aside for left liberal carping. Poetry is having an event for the 100th anniversary of Filippo Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto, asking various writers to write manifestos to be read at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. The obvious irony is that any manifesto worth its salt would be a manifesto against Poetry, the kind of poetry they publish there, their $150 million [donated by Ruth Lilly], and their alliance with MOMA. It’s a lovely museum, but it lives because manifestos died.

We haven’t had many famous manifestos since the great ironic manifesto that is Frank O’Hara’s "Personism" [1959]. The period of famous, powerful, persuasive, well-known manifestos — from 1905 to 1925 or 1930 — was an age of desperate terror and unhappiness at the historical victory of the bourgeoisie. That victory is complete now.

Political poetry is popular in other countries not because America is apathetic or has forgotten how to read poetry, but because those are countries where political closure hasn’t happened, where social relations can change. From the right and the left, there are poets who’ve filled coliseums in Poland in the ’80s or in South America now. If people want politically powerful poetry that’s popular, they have to produce situations of political openness — then poetry that was true all along will have its opportunity to be true on a mass scale.

SFBG Here’s one question I’ve long wanted to ask you: is there any chance of convincing you to write a 33 1/3 book on Cupid & Psyche ’85 (Warner Bros., 1985)?

JC I would think about it. Scritti Politti is truly great and I had the opportunity to spend some time on the phone with Green Gartside. We talked about what you’d expect — Derrida and Hegel. Although the one time I met Keanu Reeves we talked about Schopenhauer, so you’d be surprised who’s smart. If I were to do one of those books, it wouldn’t be about Scritti Politti —

SFBG — [Neneh Cherry’s] Raw Like Sushi (Virgin, 1989)?

JC Wow, that’d be great. Since [Prince’s] Sign o’ the Times (Warner Bros., 1987) has already been done by Michelangelo Matos, I’d try to do Girly Sound, the non-record of demos that Liz Phair made while she was at Oberlin. It circulated as a tape in several different versions. It has some of the songs that later appeared on her first record, Exile in Guyville (Matador, 1993), and other songs that didn’t. It can be reassembled. I’m interested in albums that don’t quite exist, so another possibility would be … is the Guns N’ Roses album called Chinese Arithmetic?

SFBG It’s Chinese Democracy.

JC Chinese Democracy. "Chinese Arithmetic" is an Eric B. and Rakim song. The Guns N’ Roses CD which has been in the offing for 15 years — I think that would be a fun one to write a book about as well.

LIT CRAWL 2008: THE BEST OF THE BELIEVER

with Joshua Clover, Jessica Fisher, Troy Jollimore, and Melinda Mellis

Sat/11, 8:30–9:30 p.m.

Latin American Club

3286 22nd St., SF

www.litquake.org

The big landlords’ blackmail

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EDITORIAL The landlords who are threatening the San Francisco General Hospital bond are thugs, and the supervisors and the mayor need to hold firm and refuse to pay their blackmail.

It’s almost too amazing to believe — an organization financed and controlled by the biggest residential property owners in town is trying to hold Proposition A — without which the city’s entire public health system will collapse — hostage to an unrelated policy dispute.

The landlords, represented by the Coalition for Better Housing, want the city to let them pass increased sewer charges through to their tenants. The sewer charges, a 9 percent hike, will pay for the massive rebuild of the city’s aging water and sewer infrastructure.

The supervisors have been reluctant to allow the pass-through, and for good reason. Even in this slack housing market, landlords in San Francisco have a great deal. Rents are strong, even rising, as would-be homebuyers find it hard to get financing. Property values in this city seem immune to the market forces that are devastating housing markets elsewhere. And the big property owners who run the coalition can hardly claim they are having problems making ends meet — most own hundreds of units and are very wealthy. They’ve all done quite well, thank you, under the George W. Bush tax cuts. And they prosper under Proposition 13, which keeps their property taxes artificially low.

We have no sympathy at all for big landlords who complain about paying a few bucks extra for public services. And it’s staggering to think that some of the richest people in San Francisco would be whining about what amounts to about $6 a month increase per apartment.

But we’ve seen these same folks take greed to mind-bending levels in the past, and we’re seeing it again now. The landlord group has filed papers to oppose Prop. A — and while virtually every elected official and community group in the city agrees that rebuilding San Francisco General is a top priority, a bond act needs 66 percent of the vote. And while polls show support for Prop. A at more than 75 percent right now, a well-funded and deceptive landlord campaign could trim that margin by enough to sink the measure.

So the Mayor’s Office is pushing the supervisors hard to come up with a compromise that would let the landlords pass half the new sewage costs along to their tenants. That’s a bad idea, and the board should stay firm.

Property owners benefit when the city’s infrastructure is improved. They have immensely favorable tax laws as it is. And as the economy tanks, tenants are hurting much more than landlords.

There’s no good argument for allowing the pass-through — and there’s a very good argument for blocking it. If these thugs can threaten a popular and essential public works program just to make themselves a tiny bit richer, then the mayor and the supervisors will forever be vulnerable to this sort of threat.

The board needs to call the landlords’ bluff. If the Coalition for Better Housing really wants to undermine the central public health facility in San Francisco and take the only trauma center in the city off the map, then the mayor needs to stand up and expose these folks for who they are.

We’re with Sup. Aaron Peskin, who says he’s "not interested in negotiating with terrorists." The supervisors should reject the pass-through with extreme prejudice.

Stiglitz: Bailout Blues

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Here is our monthly installment of Joseph E. Stiglitz’s Unconventional Economic Wisdom column from the Project Syndicate news series. Stiglitz is a professor of economics at Columbia University, and recipient of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, is co-author, with Linda Bilmes, of The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Costs of the Iraq Conflict.

Bailout Blues

By Joseph E. Stiglitz

NEW YORK – It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the United States’ financial system – indeed, global finance – is in a mess. And now, with the US House of Representatives having rejected the Bush administration’s proposed $700 billion bailout plan, it is also obvious that there is no consensus on how to fix it.

The problems in the US economy and financial system have been apparent for years. But that didn’t prevent America’s leaders from turning to the same people who helped create the mess, who didn’t see the problems until they brought us to the brink of another Great Depression, and who have been veering from one bail-out to another, to rescue us.

Multilingual beats, Obama love: Brazilian Girls move on with ‘New York City’

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By Brandon Bussolini

Brazilian Girls just released an album named for a city that they’ll be leaving for a little bit. They used to tour a lot, but now vocalist Sabina Sciubba, keyboard player Didi Gutman, and drummer Aaron Johnston are leaving New York City to spend time elsewhere. This makes sense since Brazilian Girls’ music has no single place of origin or definite direction. Their new album, like its predecessors, sits across several different styles and changes from minute to minute.

It can be a fun game to chase down the kinds of music Brazilian Girls incorporate into their own, but the sound itself has very little to do with tradition or context – it’s synthetic, and at its best is good enough to stop you from wondering whether what you’re listening to is world music or not – and whether there’s even anything wrong with that.

Sciubba’s voice is the band’s most distinctive element, but the songs themselves are little intelligent machines, and they work unhurriedly and with economy. The new full-length’s first song, “St. Petersburg,” is where this clicks into place immediately, with its samba-techno rhythm and big triumphant chorus, where Sciubba’s typically arch delivery breaks with sophistication and becomes uncomplicatedly raw and moving. I had the opportunity to speak with Sciubba as the group began a short tour supporting New York City (Verve Forecast). Brazilian Girls play Mezzanine Saturday, Sept. 27.

SFBG: I read that after completing the album you took off for Paris. Was this a vacation, or something more permanent?

Capitalizing on science

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› steve@sfbg.com

The new California Academy of Sciences, which opens to the public Sept. 27, combines creatively reimagined old standards such as the Morrison Planetarium and Steinhart Aquarium with a strong new focus on climate change and imminent threats to the planet’s biodiversity.

"That’s why I call it a natural future museum instead of a natural history museum," Greg Farrington, the academy’s executive director, told journalists on Sept. 18 at the start of a press tour of the new facility.

The facility was built with roughly equal amounts of public and private money. Yet when visitors show up for the opening weekend’s festivities, they’ll be told they have Pacific Gas and Electric Co. to thank for the museum’s opening, which includes free admission on the first day.

The central role that PG&E bought for $1.5 million has included lots of signage at the museum, prominent mention in academy press releases, subtle plugs to journalists by museum staffers, and a spot on the five-person panel of academy leaders that addressed the assembled media.

The private utility company’s high-profile opportunity to be associated with science, progress, and environmental concern comes as PG&E is spending many millions of dollars to defeat Proposition H, the Clean Energy Act, and after decades of regularly lobbying against higher environmental standards for utilities.

"I think it’s a perfect example of PG&E greenwashing its image and trying to associate itself with environmentally friendly policies," Aliza Wasserman of the activist group Green Guerillas Against Greenwashing told the Guardian. "PG&E is the very institution that can implement the technology we know we need to deal with this environmental crisis, and they haven’t been doing so."

Ironically, while regular PG&E mailers decry local government’s supposed untrustworthiness and warn against granting the city a "blank check" to issue revenue bonds to pursue public power projects, San Francisco taxpayers and government were the major sponsors of the museum’s rebirth.

In addition to $120 million in revenue from SF-voter-approved general obligation bonds (paid back by all city taxpayers, unlike revenue bonds, which are repaid through an identified revenue source), the Academy of Sciences got $30 million in state and federal grants and receives $4.8 million from the city’s General Fund each year.

"The hypocrisy," Wasserman said, "is striking."

FRAGILE PLANET


From the cutting-edge living roof through the steamy simulated rainforest and down to the rippling walls of the basement aquarium area, this is a truly stunning facility that has earned its many accolades. Yet PG&E’s involvement seems to undercut the academy’s new focus on climate change, which pervades many of the exhibits.

"Altered State: Climate Change in California" is an exhibit that takes up much of the museum’s main floor, including many eye-opening, interactive displays and poignantly featuring the bones of both an endangered blue whale and the extinct Tyrannosaurus rex to drive home the alarming call to action.

"In California, our climate, our way of life, and our economy will all be affected by climate change," Carol Tang, director of visitor interpretive programs, told journalists during the tour, adding, "The T. rex reminds us that mass extinctions have happened and we’re in a mass extinction right now."

Yet as she discussed the academy’s climate change research and advocacy role on the issue, she also noted the important involvement of Bay Area universities, Silicon Valley technology innovators, and PG&E, which contributed some clean technology gizmos to the exhibit.

Next, journalists were ushered into Morrison Planetarium for the debut of "Fragile Planet," an academy-produced show that lets viewers tour the cosmos and includes scary information about global warming and the need to aggressively address the problem by turning our expansive scientific inquiries inward toward saving the planet.

Afterward, journalists were offered a question-and-answer session with a panel of experts that included Farrington; the academy’s chief of public programs, Chris Andrews; architect Kang Kiang; Peter Lassetter, a principal with Arup, which did engineering work on the building; and, incongruously, Hal LaFlash, the director of emerging clean technology policy at PG&E.

I asked about the academy’s new focus on climate change and why the venerable institution had allowed PG&E to play such a central role. I got a nonresponsive answer from Farrington, who said, "PG&E sells power because we all want power" and "The most important wells in the future aren’t going to be oil wells, but wells of the mind."

LaFlash insisted that PG&E is one of the greenest utility companies in the country, an early sponsor of the landmark climate change legislation Assembly Bill 32, and that the utility is currently working on wind and solar projects throughout California. I noted that PG&E is also currently building four new fossil-fuel-powered plants in California, but then decided to avoid turning the session into an argument about PG&E.

Wasserman pointed out that PG&E now gets less than 1 percent of its power from solar and 2 percent from wind, and that the company’s involvement with AB 32 helped water down the bill and protect PG&E’s heavy investment in nuclear power. She also noted that PG&E is failing to meet state mandates of 20 percent renewable power by 2010.

By contrast, the Clean Energy Act would mandate a more rapid switch to renewable energy sources, calling for 51 percent of the energy powering San Francisco to come from renewable sources by 2017 and 100 percent by 2040. PG&E is aggressively opposing the measure, focusing on its call for a study of public power.

Academy spokesperson Blair Shane sought to minimize PG&E’s role when I asked her about how the institution seemed to be helping the utility greenwash its image, saying the company was simply playing a role in the opening festivities and not influencing content at the museum: "We feel really good that our content is being driven by the scientists."

LIVING ROOF


Since its founding back in 1853, the California Academy of Sciences has been a respected research institution, a popular museum, and a political player in the community. With powerful friends, it resisted an effort in the 1990s to move the museum out of the park and successfully fought for a new parking garage and against creating more car-free spaces in the park.

The academy is a living, dynamic institution, much like the building’s signature living roof — and subject to the same kinds of hard choices in coming years about whether to emphasize scientific purity or pursue more pragmatic pathways.

After touring the museum, I did a telephone interview with Paul Kephart, CEO of Rana Creek, which designed the roof and wanted to simulate a local ecosystem of flora and fauna that went through natural life cycles, including periods of death and decay.

"Selling the idea to the academy and the board was one of the most challenging aspects of the project," Kephart said.

He explained that the idea is to maintain the roof using an irrigation system for the first couple years, until it establishes itself, then remove the irrigation and stop actively tending the space, letting nature take over, even if that means weeds.

"I think that’s a good thing," he said. "The roof should be allowed the opportunity for nature to express itself and be less controlled and more adaptive to climate and environment…. I always saw the roof as an experimental design."

Yet it’s also an integral part of the building’s design and aesthetics, and the academy has not yet decided how much of the roof will be allowed to go natural and how much will be managed. Kephart said it has amazing research possibilities because "nature will have the most influence on how the roof will behave."

Similar choices were at play in other parts of the museum, such as the Steinhart Aquarium, which was designed by the New York City firm Thinc.

"The whole idea underlying the aquarium is, this is an institution that studies the natural world," Thinc president Tom Hennes told me at the academy. While the new aquarium is larger than its predecessor, a few of its more ambitious plans — such as an open ocean exhibit and twice as many dive stations as the current five — were scaled back.

"Any exhibit starts with a huge dream," Hennes said. "Then you whittle it down to size."

An economic locavore policy

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EDITORIAL Local food is all the rage in San Francisco these days. The locavores and the slow-food people held a conference at Fort Mason a couple of weeks ago that drew huge crowds. Mayor Gavin Newsom is on board, and he loves to talk about creating a sustainable San Francisco. There are people in town who talk about energy independence, who talk about shopping locally, about building a city where people can live and work without using private cars.

We’re all for it — but in the wake of the wrenching meltdown in the financial markets, San Francisco needs to take a broad approach to the city economy. It’s time to develop a comprehensive plan to turn San Franciscans (and their government, businesses, and institutions) into economic locavores.

There are three basic reasons why the housing, credit, and financial markets are in the worst crisis since the Great Depression. The first two are related: The complexity of the financial instruments and securities being traded has increased so dramatically that even the heads of big investment banks didn’t know exactly what they were buying and selling. And the regulatory system under the George W. Bush administration has been unable and unwilling to keep up.

There’s not a lot San Franciscans can do locally to fix either of those problems (other than work to elect Barack Obama in November).

But the third factor in the current crisis is the globalization of money — and that’s something San Francisco can address.

For years, most famously in Seattle in 1999, protesters in this country have clashed with major institutions like the World Trade Organization over globalization issues. For the most part, they’ve focused on trade — on America losing jobs to low-wage companies, on big American chain stores selling goods made in third-world sweatshops, and on American money going to multinational corporations that prey on impoverished people and foul the environment. All of those are crucial issues — but so is the globalization of finance, which has received less attention.

And we’re not just talking about the stock market. The money San Franciscans deposit every day in local banks, the payments on mortgages and credit cards, the insurance premiums … all that cash goes into a financial system that instead of reinvesting in communities is buying and selling complex international securities like credit default swaps and derivatives. The traders and top executives who make these markets get colossal paychecks and bonuses — and most of us get nothing. Now that the whole house of cards is starting to topple, the small businesses and the people who need credit to buy cars or washing machines or bicycles or a house — the ordinary residents of cities like San Francisco — are the biggest losers.

The plan the White House has put forward is one of the grossest examples of corporate welfare in a generation — and even the Democrats in Congress are hesitant to oppose it.

But if San Francisco is serious about building a sustainable city, the mayor and the supervisors ought to start working, now, to create a citywide policy for economic localism. Among the elements:

•Banks that do business with the city should be required to set aside a significant amount of their loan portfolio for local small-business and housing loans. (The Treasurer’s Office can start with Bank of America, which currently holds the city’s deposit and payroll accounts.) The Community Reinvestment Act is far too weak and rarely enforced; San Francisco, with the leverage of a $6 billion city budget, can do much better.

•Most city contracts go to companies outside of San Francisco. Local businesses need to get a strong preference.

•The San Francisco controller needs to start looking at the city’s balance of trade — what do we import, what do we export, and how can we use more local products?

•The city needs to use tax policy to encourage local enterprise and discourage the out-of-town chains that use San Francisco as a strip mine.

There’s much more on the agenda, and there are plenty of people with good ideas. The crisis will define our political era; the city ought to be moving now to be in the lead.

Lotsa press on Prop. H

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The SF Weekly is usually against anything we’re supporting (they love to bash the left over there, and particularly like to bash us), but to my astonishment, along with his typical snide comments, Benjamin Wachs actually has some intelligent comments on the Clean Energy Act:

The city has the right -even the duty- to plan responsibly for its future, and then follow-up. Prop H shouldn’t even need to be on the ballot, it should be standard practice. Yes, let us evaluate our options and pick the best one. I wish the city would run its economy, law enforcement, and housing offices the same way. To be clear: anyone who is against Prop H isn’t against public ownership of utilities – they’re against planning.

Randy Shaw’s on the case, too. He’s a little dubious about the political hopes for Prop. H, since it doesn’t fit his own rule of “Keep it Simple,” and he suggests that the measure may get buried in the PG&E propaganda and the flood of other stuff on the ballot. The problem is, you can’t make a serious clean-energy initiative simple; there’s just too much policy involved. And if it were simpler, PG&E would call it “a simplistic solution.”

We all knew from day one that PG&E had endless money and would spend whatever it thinks is necessary to defeat Prop. H. But Shaw acknowledges that

With Mark Leno, Susan Leal, and Bevan Dufty taking high-profile roles in backing Prop H, the initiative has a broader and more diverse base than its similar predecessors.

And the Yes on H campaign is only really starting.

If this wasn’t going to be close, PG&E wouldn’t already be pulling out all the stops.

Palin’s veto power

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By Sarah Phelan

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So, maybe the pen IS mightier, after all? Palin’s budget vetoes.

Forget about using Wikipedia to find out the truth about GOP VP nominee Sarah Palin.

As online reports have noted, a sockpuppet called “Young Trigg” scrubbed the entry for Alaska’s first female governor the day before McCain publicly announced his VP pick.

That story should be a wakeup call for those tempted to rely on doctored or poorly researched online articles, in trying to find out who Gov. Sarah Palin really is.

The good news? There are plenty of other online resources that provide valid insights into Palin’s political priorities.

Consider, for instance, Governor Palin’s vetoes of Alaska’s FY 08 and 09 capital budget.

This shows that Palin vetoed a $350,000 statewide school substance abuse education and prevention program.

She also vetoed funding for wireless access and laptops in Alaskan community schools, including those in the North Pole district. (Guess Santa can spring for those, right?.)

And she eliminated funding for several native community projects, including the Kluti Kaah community recreation and learning center in the Interior Villages, the Jilkaat Kwaan cultural heritage center and Bald Eagle observatory in the Southeast Islands, and the Ilisagvik College Workforce Development program in the Artic.

Palin also vetoed a snow fence in the Bering Straits, a Zamboni blade sharpener for the Homer Hockey Association, statewide boy scout camp upgrades.

Oh, and she vetoed the Anchorage Police Department’s $17. 5 million request to expand its headquarters, for the second year in a row, along with a number of fire department’s requests for emergency safety equipment.

This summer, Alaskan lawmakers argued for a robust capital budget, which they said would help build the state and boost its economy. But Palin disagreed, saying she wanted to limit spending to public safety, health and infrastructure, and angering some representatives, by not giving them a chance to defend programs which either fell entirely victim to, or were halved, as Palin made $268 million worth of cuts, leaving Alaska with a $3.6 capital budget.

Here are Palin’s views on the line-item veto, taken from KTUU’s site.

“Well, you know, that’s the beauty of our system here — is checks and balances, provide for that tool to be used, if they deem that necessary, those who hold the purse strings and that’s the lawmakers if they want to override,” Palin said.

In addition to vetoing a $100,000 KTOO Government Transparency Project, Palin also axed a $50,000 community development center’s video project that was to have been called, “Alaska Teen Talk Show.”

The project aimed to produce pilot talk shows written and produced by the students, with students advised to audition several prospective hosts, rating each one on poise, intelligence, personality and looks.

“You should ultimately base your choice on a host’s familiarity with your show’s theme,” states the application.” If you hire the most attractive but vapid interviewer to host a political talk show and they don’t know anything about the presidential race, viewers will know it and change the channel.”

Sadly, I’m not at all convinced that viewers do change channel, just because a good-looking host is vapid. And while I don’t know why this particular project didn’t get funded, I can’t help imaging that whoever wrote this grant application must be wishing that they’d chosen some other example, when applying for this grant.

Stiglitz: Learning the Lessons of Iraq

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Here is the first column in a series we will be running regularly from Project Syndicate. Project Syndicate, based in Prague, is an international association of newspapers devoted to bringing distinguished voices from across the world to local audiences everywhere, strengthening the independence of printed media in transition and developing countries and upgrading their journalistic, editorial, and business capacities. To learn more about Project Syndicate visit: www.project-syndicate.org

Learning the Lessons of Iraq

By Joseph E. Stiglitz

NEW YORK – The Iraq war has been replaced by the declining economy as the most important issue in America’s presidential election campaign, in part because Americans have come to believe that the tide has turned in Iraq: the troop “surge” has supposedly cowed the insurgents, bringing a decline in violence. The implications are clear: a show of power wins the day.

It is precisely this kind of macho reasoning that led America to war in Iraq in the first place. The war was meant to demonstrate the strategic power of military might. Instead, the war showed its limitations. Moreover, the war undermined America’s real source of power – its moral authority.

Recent events have reinforced the risks in the Bush administration’s approach. It was always clear that the timing of America’s departure from Iraq might not be its choice – unless it wanted to violate international law once again. Now, Iraq is demanding that American combat troops leave within twelve months, with all troops out in 2011.

To be sure, the reduction in violence is welcome, and the surge in troops may have played some role. Yet the level of violence, were it taking place anywhere else in the world, would make headlines; only in Iraq have we become so inured to violence that it is a good day if only 25 civilians get killed.

And the role of the troop surge in reducing violence in Iraq is not clear. Other factors were probably far more important, including buying off Sunni insurgents so that they fight with the United States against Al Qaeda. But that remains a dangerous strategy. The US should be working to create a strong, unified government, rather than strengthening sectarian militias. Now the Iraqi government has awakened to the dangers, and has begun arresting some of the leaders whom the American government has been supporting. The prospects of a stable future look increasingly dim.

That is the key point: the surge was supposed to provide space for a political settlement, which would provide the foundations of long-term stability. That political settlement has not occurred. So, as with the arguments used to justify the war, and the measures of its success, the rationale behind surge, too, keeps shifting.

Meanwhile, the military and economic opportunity costs of this misadventure become increasingly clear. Even if the US had achieved stability in Iraq, this would not have assured victory in the “war on terrorism,” let alone success in achieving broader strategic objectives. Things have not been going well in Afghanistan, to say the least, and Pakistan looks ever more unstable.

Moreover, most analysts agree that at least part of the rationale behind Russia’s invasion of Georgia, reigniting fears of a new Cold War, was its confidence that, with America’s armed forces pre-occupied with two failing wars (and badly depleted because of a policy of not replacing military resources as fast as they are used up), there was little America could do in response. Russia’s calculations proved correct.

Even the largest and richest country in the world has limited resources. The Iraq war has been financed entirely on credit; and partly because of that, the US national debt has increased by two-thirds in just eight years.

But things keep getting worse: the deficit for 2009 alone is expected to be more than a half-trillion dollars, excluding the costs of financial bail-outs and the second stimulus package that almost all economists now say is urgently needed. The war, and the way it has been conducted, has reduced America’s room for maneuver, and will almost surely deepen and prolong the economic downturn.

The belief that the surge was successful is especially dangerous because the Afghanistan war is going so poorly. America’s European allies are tiring of the endless battles and mounting casualties. Most European leaders are not as practiced in the art of deception as the Bush administration; they have greater difficulty hiding the numbers from their citizens.

The British, for example, are well aware of the problems that they repeatedly encountered in their imperial era in Afghanistan. America will, of course, continue to put pressure on its allies, but democracy has a way of limiting the effectiveness of such pressure. Popular opposition to the Iraq war made it impossible for Mexico and Chile to give into American pressure at the United Nations to endorse the invasion; the citizens of these countries were proven right.

But back in America, the belief that the surge “worked” is now leading many to argue that more troops are needed in Afghanistan. True, the war in Iraq distracted America’s attention from Afghanistan. But the failures in Iraq are a matter of strategy, not troop strength. It is time for America, and Europe, to learn the lessons of Iraq – or, rather, relearn the lessons of virtually every country that tries to occupy another and determine its future.

Joseph E. Stiglitz, professor of economics at Columbia University, and recipient of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, is co-author, with Linda Bilmes, of The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Costs of the Iraq Conflict.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2008.
www.project-syndicate.org

American Dreamer: Notes from Underground

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TheRoad.jpg
Steven T. Jones and Kid Beyond are driving to the Democratic National Convention in Denver, stopping by Burning Man on the way there and back, reporting on the intersection of the counterculture and the national political culture.

By Kid Beyond

Wednesday afternoon: the nominating speeches. They’re playing against type. Third-youngest delegate Jordan Apollo Pazell, from a 720-person town in Utah, seconds Hillary’s nomination on behalf of his two great- grandmothers — both still alive and in Utah, both born before women had the right to vote. Nominating Obama is Michael Wilson, a young Iraq War vet and lifelong Republican.

Speaker after speaker, the talking points are the same. The failing economy. Health care. A swift exit from Iraq. A more nuanced foreign policy. Clean energy, and clean energy jobs. Restoring the American Dream — prosperity through hard work.

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

Suppose you don’t care about the war in Iraq. Suppose you have a secure job, and you aren’t in trouble with your mortgage, and don’t spend much time worrying about climate change. You’re thinking about No. 1, and that’s how you plan to vote.

Let me ask you a question:

Who’s more likely to cut your taxes — Barack Obama or John McCain?

If you figure that the heir to the Bush mantra — cut taxes, cut regulation, cut government programs (except for wars) — is the guy who will reduce your tax burden, try again.

I refer you to a very intelligent article by David Leonhardt in the Aug. 24 New York Times Magazine. Leonhardt is not a radical leftist, and he’s not an Obama campaign operative. He’s an economics columnist who has spent a lot of time trying to understand what both of the candidates are really proposing, and here’s his conclusion:

"Obama would not only cut taxes for most people more than McCain would. He would cut them more than Bill Clinton did and more than Hillary Clinton proposed doing."

Obama is offering big middle-class tax cuts, reductions that would actually put a lot more money in the pockets of the people who are most likely to need, and spend, that money. And he’d do it by raising taxes on the very tiny percentage of people who make very high incomes.

McCain loves to talk about tax cuts, but what he has in mind is cutting taxes on the 0.1 percent of earners who have average annual incomes of $9.1 million. Those people would pocket an additional $190,000 a year, which, frankly, would make absolutely no visible difference to their lives or lifestyles.

Obama would raise that group’s taxes by about $800,000 annually — which would also make absolutely no visible difference to their lives or lifestyles. As the Times notes, "The bulk of Obama’s tax increases on the wealthy — about $500,000 of that $800,000 — would simply take away Bush’s tax cuts. The remaining $300,000 wouldn’t nearly reverse their pretax income gains in recent years."

So when it comes to putting more money in your pockets — as the free-marketeers like to say, giving the middle class more cash to spend as it wants, thus stimuutf8g the economy — the Democrat is far, far ahead. And all he’s going to do is put the very rich back where they were a few years ago, which was, well, very rich.

This message isn’t getting out.

Part of the problem is that tax policy is complicated (Jesus, just look at all those numbers in the past few paragraphs); analyzing the competing tax plans can make my head hurt, and I love this stuff. Part of the problem is that the Obama campaign is leery of sounding too populist a note; class warfare makes people like me happy, but it doesn’t tend to win national elections. (Part of the problem is that a large percentage of middle-class Americans seriously believe they’ll be stinking rich someday, which is why lotteries make money.)

But the economy is gong to be the issue that decides this election, and the Democrats have to sell two messages. One, we’re better than the Republicans at managing economic policy (not hard, when you look at how the last GOP chief has handled things). And two, we know you’re hurting (Bill Clinton became president by feeling people’s pain) — and we’re going to make it better.

Do the math: under Obama, around 90 percent of the country would get an immediate raise. That might be worth mentioning in his acceptance speech.

Dreams of Obama

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› news@sfbg.com

Barack Obama, it is true, is a transformational leader. But he needs a transformational movement to become a transformational president.

He is transformational not only by his charisma and brilliance, but by embodying the possibility of an African American being chosen president in the generation following the civil rights movement. Whether he wins or loses, the vast movement inspired by Obama will become the next generation of American social activists.

For many Americans, the possibility of Obama is a deeply personal one. I mean here the mythic Obama who exists in our imaginations, not the literal Obama whose centrist positions will disappoint many progressives.

Myths are all-important, as Obama writes in Dreams from My Father (Three Rivers Press, 2004). Fifty years ago, the mythic Obama existed only as an aspiration, an ideal, in a country where interracial love was taboo and interracial marriage was largely banned. As Obama himself declared on the night of the Iowa primary, "Some said this night would never come."

The early civil rights movement, the jazz musicians, and the Beat poets dreamed up this mythic Obama before the literal Obama could materialize. His African father and white countercultural mother dared to dream and love him into existence, incarnate him, at the creative moment of the historic march on Washington. Only the overthrow of Jim Crow segregation opened space for the dream to rise politically.

In one of his best oratorical moments, Obama summons the spirit of social movements built from the bottom up, from the Revolutionary War to the abolitionist crusade, to the women’s suffrage cause, to the eight-hour day and the rights of labor, ending with the time of his birth when the walls came down in Selma and Montgomery, Ala., and Delano. As he repeats this mantra of movements thousands of times to millions of Americans, a new cultural understanding becomes possible. This is the foundation of a new American story that is badly needed.

Obama’s emerging narrative also includes but supercedes the other major explanation of American specialness, the narrative of the "melting pot," by noting that whatever "melting" did occur was always in the face of massive and entrenched opposition from the privileged.

John McCain represents a very different aspect of the American story. His inability to limit the adventurist appetite for war is the most dangerous element of the McCain, and the Republican, worldview. It is paralleled, of course, by their inability to limit the corporate appetite for an unregulated market economy. In combination, the brew is an economy directed to the needs of the country club rich, the oil companies, and military contractors. A form of crony capitalism slouches forward in place of either competitive markets or state regulation.

Yet McCain has a good chance, the best chance among Republicans, of winning in November. He appeals to those whose idea of the future is more of the past, buying time against the inevitable. And McCain is running against Obama, who threatens our institutions and culture simply by representing the unexpected and unauthorized future.

My prediction: if he continues on course, Obama will win the popular vote by a few percentage points in November, but will be at serious risk in the Electoral College. The institution, rooted in the original slavery compromise, may be a barrier too great to overcome.

The priority for Obama supporters has to be mobilization of new, undecided, and independent voters in up-for-grabs states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan, while expanding the Electoral College delegates in places like New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, and possibly Virginia.

There are many outside the Obama movement who assert that the candidate is "not progressive enough," that Obama will be co-opted as a new face for American interventionism, that in any event real change cannot be achieved from the top down. These criticisms are correct. But in the end, they miss the larger point.

Most of us want President Obama to withdraw troops from Iraq more rapidly than the 16 months promised by his campaign. But it is important that Obama’s position is shared by Iraq’s prime minister and the vast majority of both our peoples. The Iraqi regime, pressured by its own people, has rejected the White House and McCain’s refusal to adopt a timetable.

The real problem with Obama’s position on Iraq is his adherence to the outmoded Baker-Hamilton proposal to leave thousands of American troops behind for training, advising and ill-defined "counterterrorism" operations. Obama should be pressured to reconsider this recipe for a low visibility counterinsurgency quagmire.

On Iran, Obama has usefully emphasized diplomacy as the only path to manage the bilateral crisis and assure the possibility of orderly withdrawal from Iraq. He should be pressed to resist any escalation.

On Afghanistan, Obama has proposed transferring 10,000 American combat troops from Iraq, which means out of the frying pan, into the fire. On Pakistan, and the possibility of a ground invasion by Afghan and US troops, this could be Obama’s Bay of Pigs, a debacle.

On Israel-Palestine, he will pursue diplomacy more aggressively, but little more. Altogether, the counterinsurgencies in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are likely to become a spreading global quagmire and a human-rights nightmare, nullifying the funding prospects for health care reform or other domestic initiatives.

In Latin America, Obama has been out of step and out of touch with the winds of democratic change sweeping the continent. His commitment to fulfilling the United Nations anti-poverty goals, or to eradicating sweatshops through a global living wage, is underwhelming and — given his anti-terrorism wars —will be underfinanced.

And so on. The man will disappoint as well as inspire.

Once again, then, why support him by knocking on doors, sending money, monitoring polling places, and getting our hopes up? There are three reasons that stand out in my mind. First, American progressives, radicals, and populists need to be part of the vast Obama coalition, not perceived as negative do-nothings in the minds of the young people and African Americans at the center of the organized campaign.

It is not a "lesser evil" for anyone of my generation’s background to send an African American Democrat to the White House. Pressure from Obama supporters is more effective than pressure from critics who don’t care much if he wins and won’t lift a finger to help him. Second, his court appointments will keep us from a right-wing lock on social, economic, and civil liberties issues during our lifetime. Third, it should be no problem to vote for Obama and picket his White House when justified.

Obama himself says he has solid progressive roots but that he intends to campaign and govern from the center. It is a challenge to rise up, organize, and reshape the center, and build a climate of public opinion so intense that it becomes necessary to redeploy from military quagmires, take on the unregulated corporations and uncontrolled global warming, and devote resources to domestic priorities like health care, the green economy, and inner-city jobs for youth.

What is missing in the current equation is not a capable and enlightened centrist but a progressive social movement on a scale like those of the past.

The refrain is familiar. Without the militant abolitionists, including the Underground Railroad and John Brown, there would have been no pressure on President Lincoln to end slavery. Without the radicals of the 1930s, there would have been no pressure on President Franklin Roosevelt, and therefore no New Deal, no Wagner Act, no Social Security.

The creative tension between large social movements and enlightened Machiavellian leaders is the historical model that has produced the most important reforms in the course of American history.

Mainstream political leaders will not move to the left of their own base. There are no shortcuts to radical change without a powerful and effective constituency organized from the bottom up. The next chapter in Obama’s new American story remains to be written, perhaps by the most visionary of his own supporters.

Progressives need to unite for Obama, but also unite — organically at least, and not in a top-down way — on issues like peace, the environment, the economy, media reform, campaign finance, and equality like never before. The growing conflict today is between democracy and empire, and the battle fronts are many and often confusing. Even the Bush years have failed to unite American progressives as effectively as occurred during Vietnam. There is no reason to expect a President McCain to unify anything more than our manic depression.

But there is the improbable hope that the movement set ablaze by the Obama campaign will be enough to elect Obama and a more progressive Congress in November, creating an explosion of rising expectations for social movements — here and around the world — that President Obama will be compelled to meet in 2009.

That is a moment to live and fight for.

Tom Hayden is a longtime political activist and former California legislator. This article was commissioned by the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, of which the Guardian is a member, and is being carried in newspapers across the country this week.

Speed Reading

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THE THREE TRILLION DOLLAR WAR: THE TRUE COST OF THE IRAQ CONFLICT

By Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes

W.W. Norton & Company

192 pages, $22.95 (hardcover)

336 pages, $14.95 (trade paperback available next month)

Since the recent television writers’ strike seemed to have a greater impact on the nation than our two ongoing wars or the frequently floated possibility of a third, maybe it’s money that matters. After all, a trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon you are talking real money. In The Three Trillion Dollar War, Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and co-author Linda Bilmes try to illustrate what it means to spend $3 trillion on the Iraq war.

Arguing that “money spent on armaments is money poured down the drain,” Stiglitz and Bilmes dismiss the notion that wars are always “good for the economy.” Their arguments are bolstered by the grim reality that during the Iraq conflict oil prices have risen from $25 a barrel to more than $120 a barrel, while household savings rates have gone “negative for the first time since the Great Depression.” Meanwhile, as they point out, the National Guard has been under-equipped in the face of domestic disasters such as Hurricane Katrina due to Iraq deployment.

Unfortunately supporters of Sen. John McCain, who foresees a century of Iraq occupation, aren’t likely to read this book. But it would not be wasted on Barack Obama’s supporters since — much as they might want to overlook it — his presidential plan also envisions tens of thousands of American troops remaining in Iraq after the combat troops have gone. (Tom Gallagher)

THE COMIC BOOK HOLOCAUST

THE KLASSIC KOMIX KLUB

By Johnny Ryan

Buenaventura Press

128 pages each

$9.95 (Comic Book Holocaust)

$14.95 (Klassic Komix Klub)

If there were such a thing as achieving the zen of filth — the zero-sum nirvana of willful wallowing in sweat, spunk, excrement, and blood till one has achieved the nihilistic bliss of transgressive freedom — then cartoonist Johnny Ryan might be dubbed our comic book bodhisattva. The evidence is all over two handsome volumes on Oakland’s Buenaventura Press: The Comic Book Holocaust, the cartoonist’s 2006 send-up (and put-down) of mainstream and underground/alternative comics from Thor to Persepolis, and The Klassic Komix Klub, his short, sharp wholesale demolition of literary warhorses à la Ulysses and, hey, Siddhartha (the search for enlightenment ends with a diaper loaded with poo, home to “Osamarexic Slim Laden”).

Sure, the unrelenting butt-violation, mutilation, rape, boner, crap-eating, racial stereotype, and flying vulvas jokes tend to hit or miss — and get monotonous. Reading Ryan panels in, say, Vice offers hipsters the fast, nasty frisson of a chuckle, while reading more than 50 in one sitting can be quease-inducing, which is more than Mad can claim. Ryan’s quick ‘n’ dirty, reductionist aesthetic, absurdist and disgust-centered shit-vision, and all-inclusive takedowns come off as a bit dated for these post-9/11 times — redolent of a ’90s alt-nation, slacker pessimism fed by punk rock, J.K. Huysmans, Howard Stern, and Peter Bagge. Still, at its most effective, Ryan’s work is the funny-book equivalent of watching nonstop war footage. He gives us a dirty-bird cartoon version of the Marquis de Sade, leavened by the occasional chortle at Garfield’s expense. (Kimberly Chun)

 

Dolly Parton

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PREVIEW That fact that Dolly Parton simply exists makes me happy. Of course, if the now-62-year-old lady from Locust Ridge, Tenn., didn’t exist, it’s likely she would have been invented by some lonesome trucker with a Venus of Willendorf complex — or by Merle Haggard. (Witness Redding’s Cali–country legend crushing hard in 1981’s Sing Me Back Home [Times Books]: "I didn’t just fall in love with the image of Dolly Parton. Hell, I fell in love with that exceptional human being who lives underneath all that bunch of fluffy hair, fluttery eyelashes, and superboobs.") The mythology is firmly in place: the dirt-poor upbringing as the fourth of 12 hungry mouths to feed in a broken-down, one-room cabin in Tennessee’s Great Smoky Mountains. There’s the idea that despite the protestations of so many smitten suitors, including the Hag, Parton has remained wedded to Carl Dean, raising and playing "Aunty Granny" to younger siblings — and filling in as godmother to Miley Cyrus. Her accomplishments as a songwriter and vocalist almost seem like mere frosting next to the C&W tales and Tinseltown efforts, though numbers like "Coat of Many Colors" match many tunes in Haggard’s catalog in their economy, storytelling, and resonance, while such cover turns as mentor Porter Wagoner’s "Lonely Comin’ Down" still possess an emotional power more than three decades along, thanks to Parton. And the moths still flutter toward her flame: Parton recently contributed vocals to a new song written for Jessica Simpson ("Guess you could say it’s the ‘blonde leading the blonde’," Parton has quipped), and a 9 to 5 musical, for which Parton wrote the music and lyrics, premieres in Los Angeles Sept. 20. Word has it that back problems kept the Tennessee Mountain thrush from South By Southwest this year, but one can only hope her recent, wildly successful European tour supporting Backwoods Barbie, her first self-released long-player, will smooth the way to the Greek’s stage. So say hello.

DOLLY PARTON Tues/5, 8 p.m., $39.50–$125. Greek Theatre, UC Berkeley, Hearst and Gayley, Berk. (510) 809-0100, www.apeconcerts.com

Clean Energy Act makes ballot

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› news@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY The San Francisco Clean Energy Act isn’t the only charter amendment on the November ballot, but it’s already shaping up to be the political lightning rod of this fall’s election.

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. sent out mailers opposing the measure even before the Board of Supervisors voted 7-4 on July 22 to place it on the Nov. 4 ballot. Mayor Gavin Newsom also announced his opposition to the act moments after Assemblymember Mark Leno, former San Francisco Public Utilities Commission General Manager Susan Leal, and a cadre of progressive supervisors announced their support for it on the steps of City Hall.

Authored by Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and Aaron Peskin, the Clean Energy Act requires San Francisco to fulfill 51 percent of its electricity needs through renewable sources by 2017. That requirement rises to 75 percent by 2030, and to 100 percent, “or the greatest amount technologically feasible or practicable,” by 2040.

The SF Clean Energy Act also mandates that a feasibility study be undertaken to look at the best way to provide clean, green energy, which could lead to PG&E losing its stranglehold on energy if the study finds public power to be the best option.

Explaining the importance of mandating a feasibility study, Mirkarimi said, “Otherwise PG&E has a monopoly here until the planet dies.”

Supporters say it is important for San Francisco to set up a model that others can follow. “As goes San Francisco, so goes the state of California, and so goes the nation,” Peskin said at the July 22 rally, just before the Board voted to place the act on the ballot. “This is a time when people can change the destiny of the planet.”

Moments after that rally ended, Mayor Newsom took a minute to explain his opposition.

“We have other things we should be focusing on,” Newsom told reporters at a press conference at the War Memorial Building to announce housing bonds for veterans. “Let’s call it what it is. It’s a power takeover of PG&E,” he said.

But the elected officials and myriad organizations who showed up at City Hall to support the Clean Energy Act say that public vs. private power is not the main issue.

“The public power considerations have been drafted in a thoughtful and reasonable way,” Leno told the crowd. “It would involve study after study after study, and testimony from experts.”

Leno noted that 42 million Americans have public power, and if San Francisco did turn to public power, it would be embracing something as American as mom and apple pie. “Unlike their private power company counterparts, public power systems serve only one constituency: their customers,” Leno said.

Sup. Gerardo Sandoval opined that government is better able to assume renewable energy risks. “The private industry is not going to take that risk,” Sandoval said. “It’s always going to take the cheap way out, which is fossil fuels.

Others warned the audience not to be swayed by PG&E’s anti–Clean Energy campaign, which Newsom’s chief political consultant Eric Jaye is working on.

“This is not some crazy takeover scheme,” Leal said. “It’s about protecting the environment and the rights of San Franciscans and their rate payers.”

The Clean Energy Act has been endorsed by the Sierra Club, San Francisco Tomorrow, ACORN, the San Francisco Green Party, the League of Young Voters, Green Action for Health and Environmental Justice, the San Francisco Green Party, and the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights.

Mark Sanchez, president of the San Francisco Board of Education and a supervisorial candidate in District 9, described showing “An Inconvenient Truth” to the eighth-grade science class he teaches. “What can I say to my kids — we don’t have the policies in place to mitigate the damage they see?”

The Sierra Club’s John Rizzo noted, “This act insures that San Francisco is at the center of this economy. Not in Japan, China, or Germany. It will be here.”

Aliza Wasserman of the League of Young Voters stated that “PG&E is not investing $1 in renewable energy beyond state mandates, and they lobby against measures to raise those mandates.”

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