Election

Polling problems

-
2

The Chris Daly campaign just issued the following statement:

Almost 20 percent of the polling places in San Francisco’s District 6 are experiencing problems and irregularities in the early hours of Election Day, according to Supervisor Chris Daly’s campaign.

According to the Daly campaign, at least 10 out of 52 precincts have experienced problems ranging from late openings to voting machine failures to incomplete ballots. In one case, a precinct did not open until almost 90 minutes after the official 7 AM opening time, preventing many voters from casting their ballots. At the same time, the Department of Elections was telling the Daly campaign that the precinct was open. In another instance, witnesses saw a voting machine that was not turned on.

The Daly campaign encourages all media outlets to remind voters that the polls are open until 8 p.m. The campaign encourages all voters within District 6 to vote throughout the day.

Pacificans continue their battle with a Miami developer

-
0

By G.W. Schulz

For locals familiar with the small town of Pacifica, nestled quietly off Highway 1 a few miles south of the city, major commercial development isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. It’s mostly a residential town with a Safeway, a Taco Bell, and not much else comprising its business community as far as chains go.

Over the years, various developers have targeted a patch of empty land near the beach that once served as an 87-acre rock quarry (known as Rockaway Quarry) until its owner grew old and Pacificans began using the now naturally outgrown tract as a network of unmarked trails.

An East Coast developer named R. Donahue Peebles bought the quarry last summer for $7.5 million and has pledged to build 350 exclusive hotel suites, 130 single-family homes, more than 200 town houses, live-work lofts and apartments, and an untold number of stores, such as the Gap and Trader Joe’s.

But Peebles is up against one thing that has stopped developers in the past: a 1983 city ordinance that requires any developer to receive voter approval before including a housing element in the quarry’s future. Pacifica has so much residential property as it stands that its early hope was to attract some commercial businesses to help fortify city coffers with new tax revenue. But Peebles stands to make a hefty chunk of change if housing is included in the development; he’s told the business press in the past that single-family homes on the property could range anywhere from $3 million to $8 million.

Peebles has so far shrewdly declined to submit an official plan to the city, but through a series of public meetings has been promising a mixture of housing and commercial elements, both designed with New Urbanism concepts.

When we first reported this story a few months ago, records we’d obtained from Pacifica’s City Hall showed Peebles had already spent $163,000 attempting to overcome the 1983 law with Measure L, which Pacifica residents will vote on today. Since then, we’ve learned that Peebles has spent $1.3 million, and critics are now complaining about two push polls residents have received in recent months. (One reported question: “Would you prefer this project or the big-box store it’s currently zoned for?”)

We noted that Peebles had hired a costly public relations firm (two staffers worked as communications hacks for both the Democratic AND Republican parties; only big money consulting gigs can truly ease partisan woes) and a group of Sacramento lawyers known for their success at carrying ballot measures. Tens of thousands more went to professional petition circulators. Peebles is no virgin to development battles. He’s played a role in erecting major hotels and commercial office buildings inside cities on the East Coast where cronyism and pay-to-play politics are a fact of everyday life.

And Peebles isn’t the first developer to take on Pacifica’s 1983 law. Just a few years ago, a publicly traded Texas developer named Trammell Crow spent nearly $300,000 in an attempt to build 165,000 square feet of retail space, over 300 apartments and townhouses and a town center. The effort was easily defeated by voters. Some concern over how development at the quarry would impact the area ecologically still exists today.

Rain or shine, opponents of Measure L say they’ll be taking a walk along the quarry this evening after an election party.

Under attack

-
0

By Tim Redmond

Well, my friends, once again it’s election day, and once again, our site is under attack. It looks like a serious, well-orchestrated effort aimed at shutting us down just when readers look to us the most for ballot recommendations.

The attack started around 10 last night, and continues to this minute. Fortunately, we were well prepared this time, and with our IT director, Joe Pennant, our web designer, John Adams at eline.com, and our host, Ronnie Enriquez at Infraswitch, all doing heroic work, we’re still up and running.

We have backup plans, so we should be available all day no matter what. But if the site goes down briefly, don’t panic — just check back a few minutes later.

More Hellman and SFSOS

-
0

By Steven T. Jones
I just got another call from Warren Hellman, who said he was saddened to see a group he founded but later disavowed — the sleazy conservative attack organization SFSOS — is one of the only groups in town to oppose the school bond measure Proposition A, which Hellman actively supports (his band will even be playing the campaign’s election night party at Slim’s tonight).
“For once, there is goodwill all around on something,” Hellman said of the school bond, which business groups such Committee on Jobs and progressives such as the SF People’s Organization enthusiastically support.
But he’s ashamed to see SFSOS opposing it, sending messages of concern to the group’s leader, Wade Randlett, and funder, Don Fisher, asking the group to send a message to its list noting that most business groups support it.
“It’s a personal vendetta on the part of the guy who runs SFSOS,” Hellman said.
That guy, Randlett, suddenly started attacking the school district last year when the superintendent was at odds with the school board. Randlett was secretly having an extramarital affair at the time with the superintendent’s spokesperson Lorna Ho (Randlett has since left his wife, Tamsin Randlett, and is still with Ho), which seemed to have been what prompted SFSOS to flip its focus from parks and potholes to the schools. And apparently, Randlett holds a grudge like few others, so he’s urging voters to deny needed school facilities to the kids. It’s a telling testament to the guy and the group that is leading the attacks on Chris Daly and openly supporting challenger Rob Black. It’s not too late to grab a Daly sign from his 16th and Mission HQ and do everything you can to keep this kind of sleaze out of City Hall.

More Hellman on SFSOS

-
0

By Steven T. Jones
I just got another call from Warren Hellman, who said he was saddened to see a group he founded but later disavowed — the sleazy conservative attack organization SFSOS — is one of the only groups in town to oppose the school bond measure Proposition A, which Hellman actively supports (his band will even be playing the campaign’s election night party at Slim’s tonight).
“For once, there is goodwill all around on something,” Hellman said of the school bond, which business groups such Committee on Jobs and progressives such as the SF People’s Organization enthusiastically support.
But he’s ashamed to see SFSOS opposing it, sending messages of concern to the group’s leader, Wade Randlett, and funder, Don Fisher, asking the group to send a message to its list noting that most business groups support it.
“It’s a personal vendetta on the part of the guy who runs SFSOS,” Hellman said.
That guy, Randlett, suddenly started attacking the school district last year when the superintendent was at odds with the school board. Randlett was secretly having an extramarital affair at the time with the superintendent’s spokesperson Lorna Ho (Randlett has since left his wife, Tamsin Randlett, and is still with Ho), which seemed to have been what prompted SFSOS to flip its focus from parks and potholes to the schools. And apparently, Randlett holds a grudge like few others, so he’s urging voters to deny needed school facilities to the kids. It’s a telling testament to the guy and the group that is leading the attacks on Chris Daly and openly supporting challenger Rob Black. It’s not too late to grab a Daly sign from his 16th and Mission HQ and do everything you can to keep this kind of sleaze out of City Hall.

STOP THE PRESSES: The most timely reason to vote against Bush and his Iraq policy

-
0

I posed a question to my grandson Nicholas Perez, age l2, a math whiz and computer games afficionado,
to figure out for the Bruce blog how long the Iraq War has lasted in comparison to the U.S. involvement in World War II.

He just sent me an email answer, on deadline, for my pre-election blog.

He says that WWII lasted l,328 days from Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, l94l, to VJ day (Victory in Japan) on Aug. l5, l945.

Which means, he says, that Nov. 7, the day of the election, the Bush War in Iraq has lasted as long as did the U.S. involvement in WW II.

Imagine: That ought to be front page news on election day across the land: REPEATING AND UNDERSCORING: THE WAR IN IRAQ HAS LASTED AS LONG AS THE U.S. INVOLVEMENT IN WW II. Vote against Bush and for peace on as many fronts as possible. Vote early and often.

Personal note to Tara and Murali in Chennai, India: Thanks for your call just now on my blog deadline and your encouragment to Sock It To Bush. My prediction is that the U.S. voters will put the Democrats back in power in the House, will win or come very close in the Senate, and will all in all deliver a resounding rebuke to Bush on Iraq.

Postscript: On the non issue of Kerry’s “botched joke”: I found most annoying the people who criticized Kerry, and who ought ought to have known better and were purely grandstanding (starting with Hillary Clinton among the Democrats and John McCain among the Republicans) and the media that took it seriously and helped the Republicans pump up yet another phony campaign issue. They gave the cheap shot a new dimension. b3

Wisdom of former presidents

-
0

By Steven T. Jones
Jimmy Carter said something truly remarkable on National Public Radio last night. The segment was about how the former U.S. president and his Carter Center are monitoring the elections in Nicaragua, just as they have in 67 other elections around the world over the last two decades.
For her final question, NPR’s Debbie Elliott asked about repeated voting irregularities here in the U.S. and whether maybe we should have international monitors to ensure our elections are free and fair. Carter agreed that “the United States electoral system is severely troubled and has many faults in it. It would not qualify at all for instance for participation by the Carter Center in observing.”
Among other things, the Carter Center requires uniform voting procedures through the country, roughly equal access to the media by major candidates, some kind of federal agency to ensure sound democratic standards, and the poor having equal access to polling places as the rich – none of which exists in the United States.
Think about this for a second: just as our current president is starting wars in the name of spreading democracy, a former president who is widely recognized as the premier international expert on democratic standards says that our system is worse that most others in place around the world. And that statement doesn’t even warrant a headline in the major newspapers on the day before a national election.

Lacey’s Wednesday night massacre. The LA Weekly’s Harold Meyerson says to all staffers on the l7 Voice/New Times papers: Don’t deviate from the template or you are out. Lacey publicly savages Meyerson.

-
0

By Bruce B. Brugmann (B3)

As the rest of the press (mainstream and alternative) was publishing endorsements and election coverage for Tuesday’s referendum on Bush and Iraq, Mike Lacey, editor in chief of the Village Voice/New Times papers, was down in Los Angeles at the LA Weekly stoking yet another of his signature bloodbaths (see my previous blog below).

Lacey killed the Weekly’s influential and widely read political endorsements, making this election the first time in memory that the Weekly did not run endorsements. He oversaw the firing of News Editor Alan Mittelstaedt and the hiring of Jill Stewart, described by Kevin Roderick in LA Observed as a “Lacey favorite columnist at the old New Times Los Angeles.” Lacey also oversaw the sacking of Harold Meyerson, the highly respected veteran political columnist who was regarded as a Lacey target because he was liberal and activist. (Lacey wouldn’t renew his contract.) And, when Meyerson complained in an email to the staff about a front page story in the current edition in the New Times template, Mike savaged him publicly with a classic New Times rant and rave.

Michael Sigman, former president and publisher of the LA Weekly, made the appropriate comment to LA Observed: “I worked with hundreds of smart writers and editors during nearly 20 years at LA Weekly. Harold Meyerson is one of maybe two or three whom I would describe as a genius. His loss is unfortunate for the paper, and more unfortunate still for LA.”

Sigman was being diplomatic. In my five decades or so in journalism, I do not know of a more vicious public attack by an editor on a staffer. Moreoever, this was not just an attack on Meyerson as a columnist and major Weekly presence for years but it was an attack on the paper, on principled journalism, on the Weekly constituency, and on Los Angeles by the editor of a predatory chain headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona. Here is the lineup that shows the Voice/New Times priorities in the runup to the election:

+Meyerson’s farewell column.

+Meyerson’s email to the LA Weekly staff in which he said, among other things, that “Anyone who spends a nano-second looking at the paper understands that New Times template is already in place, and I know from countless conversations that editorial staffers live in fear of geting the ax if they deviate from it. That’s sad for the city, sad for the paper, and sad for those of you who work there and are in no financial position to leave (a position I understand very well).”

+Lacey’s “Hey Hack” response.

+And my previous blog on Voice/New Times policy of not allowing their papers to endorse–and my critical question arising therefrom: Does Dan Savage or Mike Lacey have the real balls? My vote is for Savage. He got endorsements in every one of his pre-election sex columns run by New Times papers. A bravura performance on pre-election deadline. And Lacey of course was being Lacey. And, thanks to Lacey and his regime, the LA Weekly of Jay Levin, Ron Curran, Harold Meyerson, Mike Sigman, and scores of fine journalists and staffers on a special journalistic mission is gone. Alas. Alas.

Our Town, Our Paper
L.A. and the Weekly, in hindsight and foresight
By HAROLD MEYERSON

Lacey on Meyerson and LA Observed

Dear kids: Meyerson sad about Contreras piece

The comments roll in on the search for endorsements in Village Voice/New Times papers? Is it a snipe hunt? Does San Savage or Mike Lacey have the real balls?

The comments roll in on the search for endorsements in Village Voice/New Times papers. Is it a snipe hunt? Does Dan Savage or Mike Lacey have the real balls?

-
0

I put out a call to the alternative press across the country to see if anybody could spot an endorsement or strong political story in pre-election issues of Village Voice/New Times papers. (Scroll to the bottom for some vintage Mike Laceyism and some answers to the pressing question of the day: who has the real balls: Dan Savage or Mike Lacey?

The OC Weekly in Orange County did endorsements this year, but that appeared to be the only one of the l7 Voice/New Times papers that did. I also asked Voice/New Times CEO Jim Larkin and Editor in chief Mike Lacey, as well as the new Voice editor David Blum for their comments and for their rationale for not running endorsements in one of the most important mid-year elections in U.S. history. No reply. Here are a few of the replies that came to me by private email:

From: Ron Kretsch, Art Director, Cleveland Free Times, which competes with the Voice/New Times-owned Cleveland Scene

Sending the entire altweekly industry on a snipe-hunt, Bruce? Niiiiiiice.

(B3 comment: Back where I come from, at Camp Foster on Lake Okoboji in northwest Iowa, we called it whippenpoof hunting. But we never found any.)

Actually, I found something – Derf has this in the obScene this week: Cleveland Scene Election 2006. Then again, you did specify “serious coverage” – yeah, go ahead, post my comment. I doubt I’ll have much crow to eat.

And yeah, we had pretty substantive election coverage – I think in terms of quantity of coverage we actually outdid our election ’04 issue, which by my reckoning has never happened before for a midterm or an off-year. Even some obscure-seeming judicial races got the flashlight shined on ’em. It worked out to be a pretty damn fine issue.

************************
From: an East Coast blogger
Okay, I’ll play. Here’s a story broken by Bob Norman in Broward-Palm Beach that could have a big impact on the gubernatorial race there.
Broward Palm Beach

You won’t find endorsements, of course, because they don’t do any. But you will find coverage of the elections. Bob Norman down in south Florida (who wrote the piece I just sent you) is one of their good reporters on the politics beat.

(B3 comment: Thanks, glad to see an election story in a New Times paper in Florida. But they still didn’t do endorsements. And I’m still looking for someone who can tell me the reason for this policy.)

************************
From: Jonny Diamond , editor in chief of The L Magazine in New York City

Yes, the Savage stuff is in, but it’s the only thing remotely related to the election in the entire issue. This is the cover story: Village Voice Cover Story – remarkable stuff from the country’s formerly foremost alt-weekly on the eve of the most important midterm election in a long, long time.

I’d say this is the final, no-doubt-about-it end of the Voice. As for our own coverage, we’re working on something for Friday… best Jonny Diamond

It is as silly as it seems. The movie stuff is atrocious. The cover stories laughable. And people are noticing. Here’s our endorsement, btw. The L Magazine Endorsements. I’d really appreciate if you could link to this, it deals explicitly with the The Voice’s failure to step up. Thanks, jd

(B3 comment: Perhaps this is a snapshot of the situation in New York. The Voice, a liberal bastion in New York for its entire history, endorser in all elections, didn’t endorse or even run a strong election story in its pre-election issue or an explanation of its knuckling under to the New Times template. However, the L Magazine, a a relatively new arts and entertainment fortnightly, did, happily and with gusto and with every intention of beating the Voice/New Times in every election hereafter. Note its coverage in the link above.)

************************

From: a Manhattan media watcher

Bruce, they don’t have anyone on staff at the Voice any more who is either competent or even interested in covering local politics. It’s just way too cerebral for any of them now. Sad to say, but it’s all fluffernutter stuff. Anything above 34th Street doesn’t exist.

++++++++++++++

From: Anthony Pignataro (former OC Weekly staffer)

Editor, Maui Time Weekly
This week’s OC Weekly has tons of political coverage, including this list of actual endorsements: OC Weekly

(B3: at last, a Voice/NewTimes paper that made endorsements, the OC Weekly in Orange County. So Will Swaim, a strong liberal editor, joins Dan Savage, the gay sex columnist, as the only two who got endorsements into New Times papers. How did Will do it? I sent him an email but didn’t hear by blogtime.)

************************
From: The Association of Alternative Newsweeklies
Speculation About VVM’s L.A. Moves ‘Simply Silly,’ Lacey Says
From: LA Observed
Dear kids: Meyerson sad about Contreras piece
Lacey on Meyerson and LA Observed
Scene at the Weekly
Stewart gives notice
On Jill Stewart at the Weekly
Big turmoil at the Weekly

(B3: There was so much turmoil at the LA Weekly that it was hard to tell what happened this year. Harold Meyerson “quit” writing his excellent political column and no endorsements appeared in the paper, though the paper has for years been a traditional endorser and many ex-staffers and ex-managers were pushing for endorsements this year.)

Meanwhile, the LA Observed media site summed up the Weekly’s sudden knuckling under to Voice/New Times non endorsement policy: “Since the Weekly has dropped its well-read pre-elecition endorsements, City Beat (B3: the competitive alternative in LA) has jumped in to fill the void. The paper backs Democrats for all the state offices except Governor (no endorsement) and insurance commissioner (Steve Poizner over Cruz Bustamente.) Locally, they recommend yes on H and no on R.” And they give a link to the full list.

Meyerson addressed the issue in a farewell email to the staff (see link above) in which he addresses the New Times template: “The paper’s decision, for the first time since forever, not to run endorsements makes that even clearer (that Lacey/New Times have have forced a reverse in editorial policy). Tha’s unfortunate, but it’s no disgrace. But becoming a tabloid in the New Times model is absolutely a disgrace. The New Times model churns out ‘gotcha’ news stories, it snipes at an undifferentiated establishment, it makes little effort to understand larger social issues at work in a city (that would require deviations from the model), it has a weakness for rants. It produces columns like ‘LA Sniper,’ in the Jill Stewart mode of reducing commentary to drive-by shootings…” (B3: Stewart is the new deputy editor in charge of news and wrote in her last independently syndicated column that
she was “thrilled to be joining the Village Voice Media chain under Mike Lacey.”

More on Lacey’s management style: In a letter responding to Meyerson’s criticism of the LA Weekly (see above link), he sums up: “But the reasons why Meyerson’s contract with LA Weekly was not renewed transcend finance and are on display in his embarrassing note to the staff. His ethical lapses, motivated by decades of cronyism, are aggravated by his insufferable pomposity.

“‘Hey, Kids,’ is his salutation.

” ‘Hey, Hack,’ is my response.”

(B3: Lacey, for all his lathering and steaming, still does not address the fundamental issue of why the New Times and now, sadly, the Voice papers, refuse to endorse. So once again: Is there someone somewhere, inside or outside the Voice/New Times, who can say why their papers do not endorse in any election and in particular in a extraordinarily critical election that amounts to a referendum on Bush, the war, the occupation, and his domestic policies?

What’s Lacey and the New Times afraid of? Of annoying their advertisers? Of giving up control to local chain editors who may (gasp!) be more liberal than the gang in Phoenix? Are they worried their endorsments would disclose just how cynical Lacey and the New Times are in their politics and in their view of the cities in which they have papers? MIke? Mike? You sound real big and tough, writing from a safe haven in corporate headquarters in Phoenix, and attacking as a hack a highly respected liberal LA Weekly veteran.

(Could you explain why Dan Savage, the gay sex columnist, has the only real endorsements in all the Voice/New Times papers in his sex column (excepting the OC Weekly, bless their hearts)? Why do you and the Voice/New Times contiinue to duck the tough issues and endorsements in election after election as a matter of institutional policy? As you will recall, Dan went into Pennsylvania at a critical moment in the campaign and gave Sen. Rick Santorum some much justified trouble on the gay family issue. if Santorum goes down, Dan can take some credit. What can you and the Voice/New Times say about the way you wimped through another election? Why does Dan have the balls and you do not? Mike?

B3, working hard in San Francisco to create and perpetuate San Francisco Values (note: SF Chronicle head yesterday: THREE DIRTY WORDS: SAN FRANCISCO VALUES, front page, lead story, big type, no blushing)

Daly Tube

-
0

By Steven T. Jones
There’s a fascinating mix of videos about Sup. Chris Daly on You Tube these days. You can hear Chris speak or people speak about him, or you can watch political ads with stark contrasts between the Daly lovers and haters. The ads for him are funny and whimsical, the ones hitting him are dark, scary, misleading, and in one case, racist. They say Daly “never passed a single law to combat crime,” even though he chaired the committees that passed two budgets filled with crime-fighting measures, as well as placing the crime-fighting Proposition A on the June ballot, which narrowly failed because it was opposed by Mayor Gavin Newsom, opponent Rob Black, and the pro-Black Police Officers Association (which was loathe to spend $10 million on violence prevention programs instead of just more cops and overtime, which is the Newsom/Black strategy). But the funniest accusation is how Daly is now in the pocket of downtown interests, with one video showing Daly morphing into former Mayor Willie Brown, who Daly has a storied history of fighting on behalf of the anti-downtown forces. Yes, it’s true that Daly has gotten some developer money in this election, but that’s only because he’s made himself the go-to person for facilitating projects by developers who are willing to provide the maximum community benefits and affordable housing payments — which is what progressives demand of developers. Even downtown interests like SPUR have said this is true (the whole story is here). The bottom line: Black and his downtown buddies (from mentor Jim Sutton to SFSOS to BOMA) know D6 voters want someone to stand up to downtown, so they’re throwing a bunch of smoke and misinformation up in the air to confuse the issue. Don’t be fooled…but enjoy the show.

Links (NOT TO PUBLISH)

-
0

San Francisco Bay Guardian : Home Page
… BY AMANDA WITHERELL Rob Strange Project Censored

Bruce B3: The Santa Rosa Press Democrat/New York Times “censors” the annual Project Censored story.

Bruce B3: The Santa Rosa Press Democrat/New York Times: still no answers on why…

Bruce B3: The new media offensive for the Iraq War. Why the Santa Rosa Press Democrat/New York Times…

U.S. MEDIA CENSORSHIP / CONTROL

***************************
‘SF Chronicle’ to Outsource All of Its Printing By E&P Staff
*******************
ChainLINKS. Scroll to the bottom of the website to join the e-mail list

*******************
PRESS RELEASE: The Hearst Corporation
TRANSCONTINENTAL SIGNS 15-YEAR DEAL TO PRINT HEARST CORPORATION’S SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

*******************

*******************
The New Media Offensive for the Iraq War by Norman Solomon

B3,
You`ll be pleased to hear we run our endorsements in a sidebar on the cover monday in addition to longer editorials in the weeks leading up to the election.
Bruce Mitchell
Publisher
The Athens NEWS
(740) 594-8219

The Wall Street Journal
Justice Department Press Release
A tough pill to swallow by G.W. Schulz

**************************************
Nov. 7
Culture war at LA Weekly: A former sales staffer speaks out…

Dan Savage comes through in the clutch. The gay sex columnist endorses in his pre-election column in the Voice and other New Times papers, but the Voice and New Times papers do not endorse. Hurray for Dan Savage!!!

-
0

By Bruce B. Brugmann

Hurray for Dan Savage, the gay sex columnist for the l7 Village Voice/New Times papers in major markets with major battleground races for the election.

Savage performed heroically under fire and managed to get some key election endorsements into the second to last paragraph of his syndicated sex column in the crucial issue before one of the most important elections in modern history, a plebescite on Bush, the war, and the occupation. (New Times papers historically don’t do endorsments and don’t allow their writers to endorse.) He ran a letter in his column from a Wisconsin male who wrote, “Wisconsin needs your help!. On Tuesday, Nov. 7 we’re voting on an amendment banning gay marriage. As a married heterosexual male I’m supposed to feel threatened by gays getting married, but I’m smart enough to realize it doesn’t affect me at all. I also realize that I got to marry whomever I wanted, and everyone should have that right. Urge your readers in Wisconsin to vote NO on the marriage amendment. Thanks!”

Savage gave the writer the ultimate Savage compliment: “You put it better than I could, JIW. I would add: The amendment in Wisconsin bans gay marriage and civil unions. Vote no.”

Then Savage continued his endorsement: “And to my readers in Colorado, Idaho,
South Carolina, Tennessee, Virignia, Arizona, and South Dakota: Please vote against the gay marriage bans in your states, too. And in South Dakota, please vote to overturn your state’s idiotic abortion ban. And to my readers in Canada: Be glad you don’t have to put up with any of this shit.”

In the presidential race two years ago, Savage snuck his Kerry for President endorsement in the last line of his pre-election column. This time, he slipped his endorsements into the second to last paragraphs, with a neatly disguised ending to his column with a diverting letter from a woman who claimed she couldn’t have an orgasm until age l8. She then took some pot with a “cooperative boy friend and–bam! –six orgasms in five minutes.” And he signed off, “Thanks for sharing.” And sent his readers off to a Savage website to learn more about pot and sex. Well done, Dan. A masterful job.

Meanwhile, Savage’s endorsements were the only real endorsements to be run in the pre-election issue of the Voice, probably one of the first times in Voice history, if not the first, that this bastion of New York liberalism has been Voiceless and neutered and has not endorsed candidates or run serious political coverage in an election. (Why? I put the questions by email to Voice/New Times CEO and chief executive officer Jim Larkin, Executive Editor Michael Lacey, and David Blum, the new Voice editor in chief, but got no reply by blogtime.)

Instead, the Voice this week ran a gripping “report from the trenches of ‘Saturday Night Live’–dress rehearsals, wrap parties, last-minute sketch changes, a l a.m. phone call from Lorne Michaels (and yes, Andy Samberg!”) with a front page illustration of a smiling comedian doing the Bronx shrug. I kid you not. Check the link below and the Voice website and see what has happened to the mighty Voice in the short nine months since Larkin, Lacey,and the Arizona Gang got ahold of it. Meanwhile a quick check showed that none of the other l6 Voice/New Times papers ran any endorsements in their pre-election issues, with the possible exception of the OC Weekly in Orange County. An editor sent me an email saying they were doing endorsements but I could not find them at blogtime.

Well, Nathan Blumberg, my first journalism professor at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln in l953, used to say that a paper that didn’t run endorsements didn’t have any balls. He used the word testicles, because this was Nebraska in l953, but the class all got the point. So: does this mean that Dan Savage has balls, and Jim Larkin and Mike Lacey don’t have balls? Let us let the readers decide.

P.S.1 It’s hard for the staff members of a Village Voice/New Times paper to say much inhouse or publicly about the management style and editorial policies of Larkin and Lacey. For example, note what happened to poor David Schneiderman, the former Village Voice top guy since l978, who they sacked unceremoniously last week. VOICE BOSS GAGGED,” chided the New York Post head. The Post noted Larkin’s subtle style when it quoted an insider as saying about Schneiderman: “The new guys held him in complete disregard. It got so bad that one source said that while Schneiderman was in New Orleans recently delivering a presentation on the company’s web progress, Larkin made a point of taking out a newspaper and reading it while Schneiderman spoke.” Schneiderman will go down in journalism history as the guy who sold the Voice to New Times, and pocketed $500,000 for his work on the deal, but even he probably didn’t deserve the Larkin/Lacey treatment.

P.S 2: Meanwhile, back in San Francisco, the SF Weekly/
Village Voice/New Times ran a front page page illustration of two gay comic figures I can’t quite characterize, but sported the head, “DRAWN TOGETHER, Graphic Homosexual comics and the young women who love them.”
Smith came the closest to a political endorsement when he meandered around with the two major candidates in District 6, Sup. Chris Daly and challenger Rob Black, and wrote a self-immolating piece titled, “Vulgar posing, How our columnist was seduced into watching the World’s Largest Female Bodybuilder beat up on Rob Black.” After missing, mangling, mushing, and making fun of the issues, Smith came up with two summary questions but no clear endorsement: “Isn’t Daly the vulgar jerk who threatened the democratic process? What about the gentility-in-public-life rap Black’s been giving SOMA condo dwellers? Black is gone. I don’t feel like chasing after him with my facile questions.” Well, Smith concludes, “Alone, in SF Weekly’s offices, beer on my breath, an awful sort-porn video on the VCR, I realize I’ve beens seduced by the poses of two political hacks.”

News flash to Smith: There are real major issues in this district. For example, Calvin Welsh lays out a big one in a Guardian op ed this week, “Don’t for a minute believe that he (Daly) is in the fight of his political life because he’s rude, because he doesn’t care about lw and order, or because he prefers dirty streets upon which to raise his son. These petty and silly charges mask a far more serious objection: the way his opponents see it, Daly has been too slow in adopting the massive wave of market rate housing slated for this district and is far too protective of lower income residents in District 6.” He concludes: “There’s a working majority of the Board of Supervisors willing to fight for current neighborhoods and residents and a future that includes them. The battle in District 6 shows that the fight is not without risk. Do the rest of us realize it? Smith, Larkin, Lacey, Voice/New Times folks, do you realize it?

P.S.3: At blogtime, Jonny Diamond, the editor in chief of L magazine in New York, replied to my query about Voice endorsements with this quote: “Yes, the Savage stuff is in, but it’s the only thing remotely related to the election in the entire issue. This is the cover story (and he gave me the link). Remarkable stuff from the country’s formerly foremost alt-weekly on the eve of the most important midterm elections in a long, long time. I’d say this is the final, no-doubt-about-it end of the Voice. As for our own coverage, we’re working on something for Friday.”

So, to get election endorsements and coverage in New York, forget the Voice and
go to the website of the L magazine, a zippy New York arts and entertainment biweekly under the direction of the Steadman brothers.

And with that, ladies and gentlemen, we may have heard the final word on the eve of the election from the Larkin/Lacey/VillageVoice/NewTimes/SF Weekly crew in San Francisco and New York. Maybe Larkin will stop reading the paper long enough to send me comments or explain to the readers of his l7 papers why they don’;t endorse or do serious election coverage. I’ll let you know. If anybody spots a political endorsement in a Voice/New Times paper, flash me the word. B3, hoping good news is on the way on the way Nov. 7th

VOICE BOSS GAGGED: SCHNEIDERMAN IS OUSTED BY NEW OUT-OF-TOWN OWNERS:
By KEITH J. KELLY

October 27, 2006 — DAVID Schneiderman is out as president of Village Voice Media nine months after Phoenix-based New Times took over the alternative weekly newspaper chain.

Following the takeover of the Voice by New Times CEO James Larkin and Editorial Director Michael Lacey, Schneiderman stayed on as president of the combined company, which took on the Village Voice Media name. He split his time between the company’s headquarters and Seattle, where his wife Dana Faust, a New York Times ad executive handling the Pacific northwest, is based.

However, few expected him to stay for long as he was clearly a man without a power base. He was given the job of exploring Web opportunities for the company, an area in which he had scant expertise. Even after he immersed himself in the new role, it didn’t impress the new cowboys from Phoenix.

“The new guys held him in complete disregard,” said one insider. It got so bad that one source said that while Schneiderman was in New Orleans recently delivering a presentation on the company’s Web progress, Larkin made a point of taking out a newspaper and reading it while Schneiderman spoke.

Reached yesterday, Larkin said of Schneiderman, “He resigned.”

Asked if there would be a replacement, Larkin said, “We are going to restructure.” He declined further comment, saying, “We don’t comment on personnel matters,” he said.

When reached by Media Ink, Schneiderman, said, “I’ve been approached by people in the venture capital and private equity world. I just felt the time to move on was now.”

He insisted that his deal as Voice president was “open ended” and that he could have stayed longer.

But making frequent trips between New York, Phoenix and Seattle “was wearing on me.”

“Waking up in my own bed for awhile is important to me,” he said.

The Boston Phoenix was reporting yesterday that its editor Bill Jensen had resigned to accept a job running Web operations for Village Voice Media, its parent company.

vvcover.jpg

sfweeklycover.jpg

Pelosi’s perplexing pledge

-
0

› news@sfbg.com
When my friend Salli Martyniak heard that Nancy Pelosi would be featured on the CBS news program 60 Minutes, she got excited. Like a lot of professional women who have been turned into political activists by six years of Bush-Cheney-ism, Martyniak’s doing everything she can to end Republican control of the House of Representatives. She’s got the right campaign signs in her yard, she’s writing checks and hosting fundraising events, and she’s knocking on doors and making calls in a politically competitive precinct of the battleground state Wisconsin. And she has always lit up at the prospect of the first female speaker of the House.
But when Pelosi’s segment aired on 60 Minutes three Sundays before the election, Martyniak said, “I was shouting at the television. How could she say that? How could she so miss the point of being an opposition leader?”
What was it that so infuriated my friend and millions of other Americans who want this election to be about holding an out-of-control presidency to account?
Pelosi, the House Democratic leader who may well surf a wave of voter resentment against the Bush administration and Republican misrule into the speaker’s office after the votes are counted Nov. 7, bluntly declared that it would not be the purpose of a Democratic House to restore the rule of law, despite the fact that more than three dozen members of her own caucus are calling for an inquiry into possibly impeachable offenses by the administration, led by Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, who is in line to become chair of the Judiciary Committee if the Democrats retake the House.
“Impeachment is off the table,” Pelosi declared.
“And that’s a pledge?” asked CBS’s Lesley Stahl.
“Well, it’s a pledge in the — yes, I mean, it’s a pledge,” Pelosi responded. “Of course it is. It is a waste of time.”
A waste of time?
Not in the eyes of the American people. A majority of those surveyed last fall in a national poll by Ipsos Public Affairs, the firm that measures public opinion on behalf of the Associated Press, agreed with the statement “If President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable by impeaching him.”
It was not entirely surprising that 72 percent of Democrats favored impeachment. What was more interesting was that 56 percent of self-described Independents were ready to hold the president to account, as were 20 percent of Republicans. And given what has been learned over the past year about the deceits employed to guide the United States into Iraq and about the quagmire that has ensued, support for impeachment has undoubtedly risen.
So why has Pelosi been so determined to disassociate herself and her potential leadership of the House from talk of impeachment?
Is she, like former House speaker Carl Albert, the Democrat representative from Oklahoma’s “Little Dixie” region who cautiously approached the issue of impeaching Richard Nixon, fearful that challenging a president who is still popular with conservative voters will cause trouble at home? Spare me. Pelosi represents what may well be the most impeachment-friendly congressional district in the country.
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted last February to ask Congress to pursue Bush’s impeachment for leading the country into war in Iraq and undermining civil liberties. And on Nov. 7, San Francisco voters are all but certain to approve Proposition J, urging impeachment. If anything, Pelosi creates political problems at home by being on the wrong side of the impeachment issue, as the spirited challenge she faces this year from proimpeachment Green Krissy Keefer well illustrates.
Since it is impossible to imagine that the House Democratic leader honestly disagrees with the merits of calling the president and vice president to account — especially when, if seen through to its conclusion, the successful impeachment of Bush and Cheney could make her president — she must believe that impeachment is bad politics on the national scale.
But is impeachment really a political loser? Not if history is a guide. There have been nine attempts since the founding of the republic to move articles of impeachment against a sitting president. In the cases in which impeachment was proposed by members of an opposition party, that party either maintained or improved its position in Congress at the next general election. In seven instances the party that proposed impeachment secured the presidency in the next election.
Pelosi’s problem appears to be that she doesn’t want to be accused of repeating the partisan misuse of impeachment that Republicans perpetrated in 1998 and 1999. But the misdeeds of Bush and Cheney are precisely the sort of wrongdoing that impeachment was designed to check and balance.
As a political reporter who has spent a good many years trying to unlock the mysteries of the contemporary Democratic Party, I contend that an openness to impeachment is not just good but essential politics for Pelosi and her caucus. If Democrats retake the House on Nov. 7, it will not be because the party proposed a bold agenda and won on it. Pelosi has shied away from making presidential accountability a central theme of the campaign; arguably, she has shied away from central themes in general — except, of course, to promise that Democrats will behave more admirably than Republicans.
Russ Feingold, the senator from Wisconsin who learned a hard lesson about his party’s interest in accountability when he mounted a lonely effort to censure Bush for authorizing illegal spying on telephone conversations, argues that Democrats are doing well this fall in spite of, rather than because of, their cautious approach. “I hope that people don’t think we are winning because of our meekness,” Feingold said. “We are being handed a tremendous gift, but the voters are going to expect us to do something with it.”
To “do something” that will matter in the long term, something that will give Democrats the moral authority and the political pull that will allow them to correct the country’s course, Pelosi and her fellow partisans must abandon the ahistoric and hyperstrategic politics of a contemporary status quo, which seeks to keep both political parties operating within the narrow boundaries that prevent surprises for entrenched officials, wealthy campaign contributors, and powerful lobbyists. And the first step in that process involves embracing the oath members of the House take — to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
It is impossible to support and defend the Constitution in this era of executive excess while at the same time taking impeachment off the table. As long as impeachment is wrongly portrayed as the political third rail by Pelosi, standards of accountability remain low, and prospects for fundamental improvement in the national condition are diminished. When it pulls its biggest punch, the opposition party that covets power is limited in its options, tempered in its approach, and muted in its voice.
The benefit of an impeachment fight to an opposition party comes not in the removal of an individual who happens to wear the label of another party. Rather, it comes in the elevation of the discourse to a higher ground where politicians and voters can ponder the deeper meaning of democracy and the republican endeavor.
When the whole of a political party finally concludes that it must take up the weighty responsibility of impeaching a president, as Democrats did in 1974 but Republicans never fully did in 1998, its language is clarified and transfigured. What Walt Whitman referred to as “long dumb voices” are suddenly transformed into clarion calls as a dialogue of governmental marginalia gives way to discussion of the intent of the founders, the duty of the people’s representatives, and the renewal of the republic.
When a political party speaks well and wisely of impeachment, frustrated voters come to see it in a new way. It is no longer merely the tribune of its own ambition. It becomes a champion of the American experiment. To be sure, such a leap entails risk. But it is the risk-averse political party that is most likely to remain the permanent opposition. This is the requirement of politics, not as the game that is played by both major parties but as the essential struggle in which the founders engaged.
If Pelosi hopes to build a new and more vital relationship with the American people, a relationship that runs deeper than any particular issue or individual, she must overcome the irrational fear of presidential accountability in general and impeachment in particular that have so paralyzed Democrats as an opposition force. If Democrats win Nov. 7, it will be because the voters recognize that America needs an opposition party, not to reshuffle the deck chairs on the Titanic that a federal government thrown off course by neoconservative foreign policies and neoliberal economic policies has become, but to turn the ship of state in a new direction.
Pelosi owes it to Salli Martyniak and all the other activists who are pouring themselves and their dollars into making her the next speaker of the House to put impeachment back on the table. Pelosi owes it to her San Francisco constituents who so clearly favor impeachment. Most importantly, Pelosi owes it to the republic that as speaker she will have it in her power to restore and redeem. SFBG
John Nichols, a political writer for the Nation, is the author of The Genius of Impeachment: The Founders’ Cure for Royalism (The New Press). He will discuss the book and impeachment Nov. 1 at 12:30 p.m. at Stacey’s and 7 p.m. at the New College Cultural Center.

Winning in 2006 — and beyond

-
0

EDITORIAL There are plenty of Democrats running for the House and Senate this fall who don’t exactly qualify as liberals. Howard Dean, the (somewhat) grassroots-oriented, progressive party chair, has been largely aced out of a meaningful role in the fall campaigns, which are being run by Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY), who have said repeatedly that they’re willing to eschew a coherent program or ideology because what they want to do is win. In fact, there isn’t much of a clear Democratic Party platform at all.
But in a way, that doesn’t matter. The Nov. 7 midterm election is all about President George W. Bush, the war in Iraq, and the precarious state of the US economy. The (ever more likely) prospect of the Democrats taking back both houses of Congress would be a clear and profound statement that the country wants a change.
This year’s Democratic Party is not about fundamental social and economic change. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who will likely be the next House speaker, has said she won’t consider hearings on or an inquiry into the impeachment of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. The Democratic leadership under Pelosi and Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) would likely be far more bipartisan than the Republicans have been. And there are a lot of things that just won’t be on the agenda.
But there are some very strong Democrats who will be in position to chair powerful committees. Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Rep. Maxine Waters (D–Los Angeles) would be in line to run the House Judiciary Committee. That committee would never allow another PATRIOT Act to emerge. But even more important, Conyers and Waters would likely launch detailed investigations into a long list of Bush administration misdeeds. And with this congressional committee using the investigative authority and subpoena power it holds, the White House would lose a lot of its imperial immunity.
But if the Democrats are going to emerge from the next two years of leading the national legislature with the kind of momentum they’ll need to field a strong presidential candidate in 2008, they’ll need to do more than serve as the loyal opposition. Democrats need to take on some big issues — and the first one is the war. Congress can effectively end the war any time, simply by cutting off funding for it — and while that’s not likely to happen in the first 100 days, the Democrats can and should demand that Bush offer a clear and acceptable timetable for withdrawing from Iraq — and prepare to start cutting appropriations on that schedule.
That would tell the public that the Democratic Party believes in something — and is willing to listen to the large and growing majority in this country who are sick of Bush’s pointless war and want it to end, now. SFBG

Prosecute election theft

-
0

EDITORIAL There’s no doubt at all that a group of downtown businesses operating through a series of supposedly independent political committees organized in part by attorney Jim Sutton have used every tool at their disposal to influence the outcome of the District 6 supervisorial election. And there’s no doubt that what these folks have done violates at least the spirit of the city’s election laws, which were designed to offer, as much as legally possible, a level playing field for candidates and full disclosure of campaign expenses.
There’s also no doubt that Sutton has been willing to bend and at times break the rules: in 2002 his law firm was fined $240,000 — the largest penalty of its kind in city history — for failing to disclose late contributions from Pacific Gas and Electric Co. to a campaign to defeat a public power initiative.
At some point this sort of conduct rises to the level of a crime — and at least some respectable, credible activists and observers think the attacks on Sup. Chris Daly have reached that level. In a letter to the Guardian, published on page 8, former ethics commissioner Joe Lynn argues that Sutton and his allies are guilty of attempting to steal an election.
There’s no crime in the books called “Grand Theft, Election,” although there probably should be. But Lynn says that what’s happened here — unregulated committees raising and spending tens of thousands of dollars and not fully disclosing it until late in the cycle — is not merely sleazy and unethical but criminal.
We’re always nervous about bringing the criminal justice system into political disputes (we still remember how then-mayor Art Agnos pushed the district attorney into conducting a witch-hunt investigation into the opponents of a downtown ballpark ballot measure). But we’re also sick of seeing the likes of Sutton, Don Fisher, and SFSOS operate with virtual impunity when what they are doing comes very, very close to a conspiracy to subvert local election laws. The Ethics Commission needs to conduct a full investigation here, but that body can impose only civil penalties, which means cash fines — and for billionaire Fisher, whose money is behind a lot of these shenanigans, a stiff fine is just the cost of doing business.
District Attorney Kamala Harris ought to look into this. The problem is that Sutton was her lawyer in a heated campaign in 2003 during which her opponent, Terence Hallinan, raised similar charges. So Harris is conflicted; the best solution would be to appoint outside counsel — a special prosecutor, to use the Washington terminology — to investigate whether Sutton, Fisher, SFSOS, or anyone else ought to face criminal prosecution. The sooner that process gets started, the better. SFBG

Governor Hummer

-
0

› steve@sfbg.com
If there is a single symbol of American wastefulness, military fetishism, and willful ignorance about what it means to be heating up the planet at the end of the age of oil, it is the Hummer. And if there is one American who is most closely associated with the Hummer, it is Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
So why, in a state whose voters consistently rank environmentalism as one of their most important concerns, is Governor Hummer considered such a lock for reelection? And why haven’t the mainstream media made more of Schwarzenegger’s stubborn refusal to give up the four Hummers he still owns?
For that matter, why is the press overlooking his opposition to Proposition 87 (which would tax oil companies to support research of alternative fuels) and tacit support of Proposition 90 (which would make environmental protection far more costly for governments), both positions on close races that are at odds with environmental groups? Is he really that good an actor?
The visceral response that Hummers elicit from true environmentalists is perhaps best captured on the Web site www.fuh2.com, which has posted thousands of pictures of people flipping off Hummers, what it refers to as “the official Hummer H2 salute.”
The H2 is the slightly less offensive version of the original Hummer, a 10,000-pound monster adapted from the Humvee military vehicle that gets about 10 miles per gallon. The high cost and negative stigma attached to the original Hummer eventually caused sales to lag, and General Motors stopped making them earlier this year.
Schwarzenegger was the first private citizen to own a Hummer, back in 1992, reportedly encouraged American Motors (which GM later bought) to produce them for civilian use, and at one time owned at least seven of them.
Environmentalists have been chiding Schwarzenegger for years to set a good example and get rid of his Hummers, but he has only thrown them a couple of bones: he had GM develop one hydrogen-powered Hummer (at a cost of millions of dollars) and has publicly mused about converting one of his four Hummers to biodiesel, a project he hasn’t yet begun.
At one point Schwarzenegger was rumored to have given up his Hummers. But Schwarzenegger spokesperson Darrell Ng told the Guardian the governor still owns four Hummers, which are now in storage while he drives state vehicles, and that he has no plans to get rid of them. Environmentalists say it is a missed opportunity at a critical juncture in the world’s relationship with oil.
“He could say, ‘I was part of the commercialization of these vehicles, and it was a mistake,’” Bill Allayaud, state legislative director for the Sierra Club, told us. “He could have a press conference and have one of his Hummers crushed or blown up, say these were the products of another era, and it would be a very important symbolic gesture.”
We talked to Allayaud just after Schwarzenegger was elected three years ago, and he was “cautiously optimistic” that the governor would protect the environment. Initially, Allayaud was disappointed: “He vetoed a lot of good bills in those first few years.”
Now, after the governor signed landmark legislation to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions and a few other bills that the Sierra Club supported and made a couple of good appointments to regulatory agencies, Allayaud said, “I feel like we’re right back where we were in 2003, like he might be OK … but what do we get in the second term? It’s anybody’s guess.”
After all, every environmental bill Schwarzenegger signed was someone else’s idea, Allayaud said, and many had to be significantly weakened to gain his support. Schwarzenegger also enraged environmentalists and some lawmakers two weeks after signing the global warming measure by issuing an executive order that seemed to weaken its enforcement provisions.
Schwarzenegger starts to sound like an environmentalist only around election time, his critics say, indicating where he really stands. And so does his choice of vehicles.
“It’s a window into the real Schwarzenegger,” Dan Newman, the spokesperson for challenger Phil Angelides, told us. “It exposes the governor as a complete and utter fraud. Someone with seven Hummers pretending to be an environmentalist is akin to Attila the Hun claiming to be a pacifist.”
Others say “the real Schwarzenegger” is reflected in his positions on Props. 87 and 90.
“It’s a neck and neck race, and the oil companies are pouring unprecedented sums against us, $80 million so far [a figure that had risen to more than $90 million by press time],” said Yusef Robb, communications director for the Yes on 87 campaign. As for Governor Hummer, Robb was critical but diplomatic (noting that Schwarzenegger wasn’t actively campaigning against 87), telling us, “Personally, we think it’s an unfortunate choice of vehicles.”
The Schwarzenegger campaign says he would like to see oil companies pay for alternative energy development, but the measure violates his “no new taxes” pledge.
“The governor is opposed to tax increases. Personally, he opposes the initiative, but he strongly supports its goals,” Schwarzenegger campaign spokesperson Julie Soderlund said.
Apparently, such vague statements of support for good environmental policies are enough for the many daily newspapers that have endorsed him, including the San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco Examiner. But Chronicle staffers did ask about the Hummers at his endorsement interview, and the paper was apparently satisfied with his answer: “As far as my Hummers are concerned, they are very safely stored in some warehouse garage. I have not had an opportunity to drive them, but I don’t think they are polluting the air or ocean sitting in the garage.”
Allayaud said he prefers to focus on indicators with more direct impact, such as the fact that Schwarzenegger’s best annual rating by the California League of Conservation Voters (the 58 percent he received last year; this year he got a 50 percent) was worse than former Gov. Gray Davis’s worst annual rating (72 percent) — and on Schwarzenegger’s stance on Prop. 90.
“If this is close and we lose it,” Allayaud said of the measure, “it’ll be another thing that he didn’t do.” SFBG

Late breaking news: Just as this story was going to press, Schwarzenegger finally came out with a statement opposing Prop. 90, something he resisted doing until a week before election day when many absentee ballots have already been turned in.

Who will Dan Savage endorse in his column in the Village Voice/New Times papers? Will the Voice and other New Times papers be allowed to endorse in this crucial election?

-
0

Who will Dan Savage be endorsing in his pre-election sex column in the Village Voice/New Times chain of l7 papers?

Since his is the only endorsement that may see the light of day in any VV/NT paper (they don’t allow endorsements),
I emailed him on Friday in hopes I could get a scooplet. Dan was uncharacteristically shy. He didn’t respond by blogtime.

Savage, the editor of The Stranger alternative paper in Seattle who writes “Savage Love,” two years ago managed to slip in a Kerry for President endorsement in the last line of his last pre-election column two years ago. The crucial questions: What will he do this time? Will he be allowed to do it again?

Savage has already in his current column done more on the endorsement front than his New York paper, the VV/NT. In a note to his New York readers, he plugged a political fundraiser by writing, “I hauled my ass all the way to Philadelphia to help raise money to defeat Rick Santorum. The least you can do is haul your ass to the party at Drop Off Service…Admission is free, but it is a fundraiser. So, like, bring some funds.”

He ended his column with an even more subtle pitch to his Phiadelphia readers: “I had a blast at the Trocadero–and hey, a a shout-out to hometown hero Atrios, whom I neglected to mention when I rattled off a list of inspiring lefty bloggers. The whole country is counting on you guys to get out and vote against Rick Santorum on Nov. 2. To raise money and help get out the vote, Philadelphians Against Santorum is hosting a Halloween party at Ortlieb’s Brewery Cabaret…Free if you’re wearing a costume, $l0 otherwise. If you don’t live in Philly but would like to help defeat Santorum, go to www.phillyagainstsantorum.com and make a donation.”

I’m emailing NT Chairman and CEO Jim Larkin and Editor in Chief Mike Lacey, at New Times headquarters in Phoenix, and Voice David Blum to see if they will allow Savage to keep endorsing and to see if they will allow the Village Voice to endorse this time around (a Voice tradition)–and if they will allow the other five Voice papers now under NT aegis to endorse (Minneapolis City Pages, Seattle Weekly, Nashville Scene, LA Weekly, OC Weekly, all papers in areas with critical races). Also: to see Larkin and Lacey will maintain this ban on endorsements on their other ll papers.

I’m not hopeful in reaching Larkin and Lacey. The New York Times, in its Oct. 28th story headlined “Village Voice Stalwart Resigns In Latest Postmerger Shake-up,” ran into the Larkin/Lacey stonewall in reporting that longtime Voice CEO David Schneiderman resigned last Thursday. Schneiderman, who came to the Voice in l978 from the New York Times, told the Times that it was his decision to resign. “I knew once we’d completed the merger and everything went smoothly, that would be the proper moment,” he said, adding he had no regrets about the merger. “I felt then and I feel now that it was a very smart business decision.”

And then the Times reported as many of us have for years: Neither Larkin nor Lacey “responded to messages left yesterday.”

Smart business decision? Well, maybe, but Schneiderman couldn’t say “smart editorial decision” after Larkin and Lacey quickly gutted the Voice, cut out much of its cultural staff, and neutered its political coverage. Would the Voice be voiceless on Bush, Iraq, and other major political endorsements for the first time in memory? Thank the Lord for Dan Savage! l B3

Village Voice Stalwart Resigns in Latest Post-Merger Shake-up

VOICE BOSS GAGGED: SCHNEIDERMAN IS OUSTED BY NEW OUT-OF-TOWN OWNERS

Will Dan Savage and Savage Love save the Village Voice/New Times chain? Will the chain allow any of its 17papers to endorse candidates in this critical election?

-
0

Maybe it’s up to Dan Savage, the editor of The Stranger in Seattle who writes a sex column called Savage Love with a left political slant for the Village Voice/New Times chain of l7 papers.

Let me explain. The New Times editor MIke Lacey and publisher Jim Larkin have historically refused to allow any of their papers, including the SF Weekly and the East Bay Express, to do editorials, endorse candidates, or take real positions on such critical issues as the war and occupation of Iraq, the Bush vs. Kerry presidential race, or even local races for mayor, governor, and the U.S. House and Senate. Why? It has always baffled me and it baffles the staffs of their l7 papers. And now, this year for the first time, the staffs and readers of the six old Voice papers that were purchased by the New Times last fall (the Voice, the Minneapolis City Pages, the Nashville Scene, the Seattle Weekly, the LA Weekly, and the OC Weekly) will find that they can no longer run the endorsements and strong political coverage they ran so proudly in their papers for years.

What was the New Times position on Bush’s reelection? New Times ducked the issue and, as far as I can tell, the only endorsement published in any New Times paper came from Savage’s column just before election day. Dan, bless his heart, came out for Kerry in the last line of his column and has been pushing for impeachment. He even went out to Pennsylvania a few weeks ago to make trouble for Sen. Rick Santorum. He was successful.

There are major races in almost every one of the Village Voice/New Times cities, from New York to the state of Washington to Tennessee to Florida to Ohio to almost every city and region where the Voice/New Times has a paper. The mission of a real alternative paper is to be alternative to and competitive with the local monopoly daily. Instead, the Voice/New Times papers, by not endorsing, cede valuable political terrain and influence to their local daily competitors with their standard establishment endorsements, usually conservative and establishment to the core, in local and national races (see the Chronicle and Examiner endorsements.) And so the question remains: will Lacey and Larkin, operating out of their headquarters in Phoenix, allow any of their papers, in this terribly critical election, to finally break the taboo and take an editorial stand and do some editorial endorsements?

I bet they won’t. I bet they continue their policy of making no explanation to their staffs and readers. And so once again it will be up to Dan Savage, the zesty gay sex columnist, to save the day and come out with some anti-Bush endorsements in his pre-election column in the l7 Voice and New Times papers. Will he do it? Will Lacey and Larkin allow the Savage endorsements to run in their papers? Let us stay alert. Meanwhile, the Bruce blog will keep you posted.

P.S. What has been the Lacey/Larkin/New Times position on the war and occupation? Let me recap an example from an earlier Bruce blog. Back in 2003, as the Guardian was pounding away on Bush and the invasion with front page stories and strong editorials, Lacey/Larkin/SFWeekly/EastBayExpress/NewTimes gave me a Best of Award for “Best Local Psychic.”

Their Best Of item read: “Move over, Madam Zolta, at least when it comes to predicting the outcome of wars, Bruce-watchers will recall with glee his most recent howler, an April 2 Bay Guardian cover storyheadlined ‘The New Vietnam.’ The article was accompanied by an all caps heading and a photo of a panic-stricken U.S. serviceman in Iraq, cowering behind a huge fireball. The clear message: Look out, folks; this new war’s gonna be as deep a sinkhole as the old one. Comparing a modern U.S. war to Vietnam–how edgy! How brilliant! How original! And how did the prediction pan out? Let’s see now: More than 50,000 U.S. soldiers got killed in Vietnam vs. about l00 in Iraq. Vietnam lasted more than l0 years; Iraq lasted less than a month (effectively ending about two weeks after the story ran.) Vietnam destroyed a U.S. president, while Iraq tuned one into an action hero. Well, you get the picture. Trying to draw analogies between Vietnam and Iraq is as ridiculous as Brugmann’s other pet causes. Scores of reputable publications aroiund the nation opposed the Iraq war, but did so in a thoughtful, intelligent manner. Leave it to the SFBG,our favorite political pamphlet, to help delegitimate yet another liberal cause. Bush, Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft send their sincerest thanks, Bruce.”

I am not jesting. This is what they wrote. I proudly display this Best of in my office. And this was yet another example of New Times journalism: hit, run, and hide. The article was not by-lined and I tried, again and again, by phone calls and by guerrilla emails to Lacey and his SF Weekly editors, to get someone to stand up and say who conceived, wrote, and edited the item. Nobody would fess up. But I was told reliably that the writer was the cartoonist Dan Siegler and the editor was then editor John Mecklin, who was reported to be Lacey’s top editor and hand-picked by Lacey to take on the Guardian in San Francisco. I then confronted them with emails, askijng for confirmation or comment. I got none then and, as the war worsened, I updated my request now and then. I never got a reply.

We had lots of fun with their Best Of award. We did a counter Best of, a full page ad, titled “Best Premature Ejaculation,” a special award to the editors of the SF Weekly/New Times. We ended with this note: “Sorry, folks: We wish the war in Iraq were as neat and tidy as you, Bush, Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft would like to think it is. But you, um, spoke to soon.”

We added a postscript: “Gee, what’s the New Times position on the war anyway. We can’t seem to figure it out.” Three years later, l2 days before the election that is a plebescite on the war and Bush the Perpetrator, the question is more timel than ever: what is the Lacey and Larkin position on the war?

Will they tell us? Or is it up to Dan Savage? B3

The dirt in D6

-
0

› amanda@sfbg.com › sarah@sfbg.com If you live in San Francisco’s District 6, it’s pretty difficult to avoid what some residents are calling a new filth polluting Tenderloin corners and SoMa streets. It’s not overflowing trash bins or urine-stained door frames — it’s the relentless election billeting that uses those images to support Rob Black and oppose Chris Daly for the district’s seat on the Board of Supervisors. “We’re tired of talk. Of loud, whining, condescending, offensive, abusive, lying, showcasing, arrogant talk,” reads a recent poster on a telephone pole. “District 6 is dirty and dangerous. District 6 is still poor. Chris Daly is why. Dump Daly. Back Rob Black.” “I was totally offended by this,” Debra Walker, a progressive activist and resident of the district for 25 years, told the Guardian. “This kind of message intentionally suppresses the vote. People I’ve talked to in the district who aren’t very political are totally turned off by the mailings from Rob Black or made in his benefit.” Some of the mailings, posters, and literature can be directly attributed to independent expenditure (IE) committees recognized by the Ethics Commission and acting legally. Some, however, have more dubious ancestry but apparent links to a campaign attorney with a long history of using millions to control the outcome of elections in San Francisco: Jim Sutton (see “The Political Puppeteer,” 2/4/04). Sutton did not return calls for comment. Most of the anonymous literature directs people to the Web site www.DumpDaly.org. SFSOS’s Wade Randlett told us his group paid for the site and a volunteer set it up. SFSOS and Sutton formed Citizens for Reform Leadership 1–6 — IE committees listed on many of the signs and much of the literature, including the poster quoted above. The committees haven’t filed any IE reports with the Ethics Commission. Walker, along with Maria Guillen, vice president of SEIU Local 790, and another District 6 resident, Jim Meko, submitted a complaint with the Ethics Commission on Sept. 29 with nine pieces of physical evidence supporting their concern that the roof had been blown off the $83,000 spending cap on the campaign, in place because all candidates agreed to public financing. The evidence submitted with the complaint varied and included three different mailers from “Concerned Residents of District 6,” a committee that has yet to exist on paper in the Ethics Commission filing cabinets. The mailers from the “Concerned Residents” are glossy triptychs critical of Daly but not explicitly advocating for another candidate. They do not state the amount the committee paid for them, which is required of any electioneering communication. On Oct. 6 the Ethics Commission released a statement saying the spending cap for District 6 was no longer in effect. John St. Croix, executive director of the commission, has identified at least $90,000 in IEs, including three unreported mailers. “At some point we will attempt to determine who distributed the mailers,” St. Croix said. “But it’s not likely before the election.” The tactic of breaking the law before the election and taking the heat after the ballots are in has been used in the past, and this new example flouts recently passed legislation. These mailings should have been filed with the Ethics Commission, according to an ordinance passed in 2005 in response to similar anonymous hit pieces that came out in the elections of 2003 and 2004 against Supervisors Gerardo Sandoval and Jake McGoldrick. (Sutton defended SFSOS’s main funder, Donald Fisher, in his successful Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation against Sandoval over the issue.) “It’s a strategy taken straight from Karl Rove’s playbook,” Meko, a 30-year SoMa resident, told us. Joe Lynn, former Ethics Commission member and staffer, told us “all the committees in San Francisco should turn their backs on contributions from people who are involved in this scheme — at least until they explain their involvement. These are the most sophisticated folks in San Francisco politics. I think a full investigation including possible criminal activity ought to be assigned to a master.” He said District Attorney Kamala Harris used Sutton in her race and therefore may have a conflict of interest. The Rob Black for Supervisor committee claims no connection to the literature that hangs on doorknobs and clogs mailboxes, the push polls calling people, or the postings in the streets and tucked under windshields. “I don’t support the anonymous pieces. If people are doing it on my behalf, I don’t want it,” Black told us. But Daly told us “the IEs appear to be coordinated…. The Black committee is not running a campaign that would be independently competitive. He’s only sent one piece of mail, but he’s had eight sent on his behalf.” Residents suggest it’s even more than that: Walker received three more anti-Daly mailers Oct. 20. Black confirmed that he had only sent one mailing to the district, and he’s “not surprised” that so many IEs have sent out mailings in his support. With the exception of a filing from the Police Officers Association, the only legal IEs reported with the Ethics Commission so far are from the Building Owners and Management Association (BOMA) and Golden Gate Restaurant Association (GGRA). They also trace back to Sutton, Black’s former boss at Nielsen Merksamer, a law firm that represented PG&E in the 2002 campaign against public power, for which the firm was fined $100,000 for failing to report until after the election $800,000 from PG&E, the biggest fine ever levied by Ethics. Sutton left the firm shortly after. Black stayed on until 2004, when he took a position as legislative aide with Michela Alioto-Pier. The most recent poll released by Evans McDonough purports to show Black ahead by six points (with a five-point margin of error). It was commissioned by Barnes, Mosher, Whitehurst, Lauter, and Partners, which has also been employed by Sutton through BOMA and the GGRA for the IEs in the District 6 election. The financial shenanigans have been a rallying point for the Daly campaign. More than 70 volunteers signed in at an Oct. 21 rally and hit the streets: shaking hands, distributing literature, and making phone calls raising support for Daly. Sup. Ross Mirkarimi criticized the soft money’s “ugly, nasty, mean-spirited tactics” to oust Daly. “If they have to resort to these tactics, is that the kind of government we want in San Francisco?” he asked the crowd. “This is the nastiest, most personal and hateful thing I’ve ever been involved with,” Daly said. “It’s very painful.” But, he said, “our people power is better than their money power.” Outside a volunteer shouted into a bullhorn, “Don’t let downtown interests buy your democracy!” SFBG

Solomon’s, mine

-
0

› kimberly@sfbg.com
SONIC REDUCER Boo! And hiss, while you’re at it. Isn’t it scary how the music retail biz has changed? As a onetime music store flunky, I was hard-pressed to decide whether it was a trick or treat when I heard a few weeks back about the liquidation of Tower Records — this after filing for bankruptcy twice in the last two years. After all, I wasted a good, penniless year and a half of the late ’80s behind a register in the “tape” room and then behind a clipboard at one of the Sacto chain’s flagship stores at Columbus and Bay in San Francisco.
Those were the days — the horror, the horror of trying to subsist on megamuffins and minimum wage. The fun of stacking and alphabetizing cassettes under the benevolent leadership of the azure-Mohawked experimental musician Pamela Z. The joy of talking psychedelia and envisioning earth-shattering cultural epiphanies (one fave: imagining Sonic Youth teamed with Public Enemy years before “Kool Thing”) with Winter Flowers’ Christof Certik. The insanity of controlling the red-eyed, camped-out crowd from behind the Bass ticket booth when the final Who tour went on sale — and getting a Tower sweatshirt when my $50,000-in-two-sellout-hours register totaled to the penny.
The shock of realizing, as a budding world music buyer, that my assistant was thieving bags of Van Morrison and Chieftains CDs from my section. The starstruck bedazzlement of glimpsing the musicians and celebs pour through the glass doors on a regular basis (following a testy Todd Rundgren around with a drooling coworker, catching a lady-killing grin from Chris Isaak, and listening to Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys praise the version of Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem pouring out of the speakers). The weirdness of instructing shut-in customers on what to do when the cassette ends (you press “rewind” or you find Scotch tape and record over it in disgust). The surprise of ordering vinyl and CD versions of the same release and finding certain humongous labels unwilling or unable to ship records, making available only the higher-priced so-called alternative. The pleasures of the lurching, lumbering 1 a.m. Muni ride home after completing the midnight closing shift, back to my digs in the Lower Haight. The switch-flipping surrealness of realizing I was the only one actually bothering to work during most of my shifts — while everyone else was down the street on three-hour lunches or fielding drinks with label reps.
Sure, the party was great while it lasted, and in pop cultural backwaters like Honolulu, Tower became the only, life-changing game in town — jetting in imports, hard-to-find discs, zines, and books at below list prices — and likewise you could get your hand-stapled xeroxed zine into Towers from Tokyo to Paris. And while the sprawling stores flourished, they drove out of business the local mom-and-pop music stores that didn’t recalibrate and start to sell used music and books, collector’s cards, comics, and games.
So now it’s being boiled down to end racks and wire fixtures — after a 30-hour bankruptcy auction ended in favor of the Great American Group’s $134.3 million bid rather than that of Trans World Entertainment, which said it would have kept most of the stores open. And frankly, I feel only somewhat sentimental — despite the initial quality of in-house magazine Pulse and the quasi-democratic, carry-everything supermarket atmosphere — because Russ Solomon’s retail model was far from carefree. The reason the prices were so low was that the workers there were barely scraping together a living (therefore often resorting to unrepentant graft — one staffer funded his trip to Italy on returned, unmarked promo music). At the time it felt like the glamorous equivalent of a record store sweatshop, with its overeducated, obsessive employees bitterly muttering to themselves about the amount of money that would pass through their hands — and straight into Solomon’s coffers.
Why stay? Pre–Amoeba Music, Tower was the biggest and best music store in San Francisco. And did such rampant thieving make a dent in profits, leading to the chain’s demise? Maybe it only started to show when downloads began their rule and the market shattered into a grillion niches, when even a megalith like Tower didn’t seem able to keep up.
As Tower crumbles, I may not be able to find the music I passionately want or need at 11:55 p.m., but I might shed a tear for my last shred of connection with the store — those times I’d trot up Market, between sets at Cafe du Nord, when most shops are darkened and early birds are tucked in bed, and duck into the Castro Tower to browse the magazine racks, those fluorescent lights beating down and the words dancing beneath my ringed eyes.
NO PAIN, NO DOCTORS If you think this election season is painful, tell it to the Bay Area–by–way–of–Chicago art-rock transplants No Doctors. Their whistle-stop tour of sorts stops this week at Club Six in San Francisco and ends at Eli’s Mile High Club in Oakland — and takes the formidable loudness of the foursome to some scenic points such as Joshua Tree and Lompoc. A working vacation with a message?
The tour has been dubbed “US out of CA,” guitarist Elvis DeMorrow told me. “I think everyone can get behind secession at this point.” After spending most of the past year working on their new LP, Origins and Tectonics, due spring 2007 on Yik Yak, the band “somehow arrived on an all-California thing, playing all the places no one even tries to play,” he continued.
Luckily for the No Doctors, DeMorrow is keeping his administrative job at the Stanford medical school’s pain research division. “To me, it’s totally relevant to playing music with a band and the effects it might have in your life,” he declares. Playing music as pain control? Don’t tell that to the bright bulbs at the CIA who came up with the Red Hot Chili Peppers as an instrument of torture. SFBG
NO DOCTORS
Tues/31, 8 p.m.
Club Six
60 Sixth St., SF
$5–$7
(415) 863-1221

PG&E’s candidates

-
0

EDITORIAL We’ve seen plenty of allies of Pacific Gas and Electric Co. on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. We’ve seen a few PG&E bagmen, PG&E shills, and PG&E fronts. But there’s never been anyone elected to the board in our 40 years who was actually a paid attorney for PG&E.
This year there’s at least one and possibly two candidates who have worked as PG&E lawyers — and that alone should disqualify them ever from holding public office in San Francisco. The most obvious and direct conflict involves Doug Chan, the former police commissioner who is seeking a seat from District 4. Documents on file with the California Public Utilities Commission show that Chan’s law firm, Chan, Doi, and Leal, has received more than $200,000 in fees from PG&E in just the past two years.
Chan won’t come to the phone to discuss what he did for the utility, won’t respond to questions posed through his campaign manager and press secretary, won’t return calls to his law firm, and thus won’t give the public any idea what sorts of conflicts of interest he’d have if he took office.
This is nothing new for Chan: back in 2002 he put his name on PG&E campaign material opposing public power and earned a spot in the Guardian’s Hall of Shame.
Then there’s Rob Black, who worked as an attorney for Nielsen Merksamer, the law firm that handled all of the dirty dealings for the anti-public-power campaign in 2002. Black worked with Jim Sutton, his former law professor and PG&E’s main legal operative, during that period but insists he did no work on anything related to PG&E or the campaign. That’s tough to believe.
All of this comes at a time when PG&E is going out of its way, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars, to buff up its image — and to fight the city’s modest but significant plans for public power.
As Steven T. Jones reports on page 16, the notorious utility is well aware that its future in San Francisco is shaky. The city is bidding to provide public electric power to the Hunters Point shipyard redevelopment project and preparing to provide public power to Treasure Island. There is a study in the works to look at developing tidal power. The supervisors are moving forward on Community Choice Aggregation, which will put the city directly in the business of selling retail electricity to customers (albeit through PG&E’s grid). And there’s talk brewing of a public power ballot initiative for next November.
PG&E president Thomas King met with Mayor Gavin Newsom this summer and sent him a nice, friendly letter afterward discussing all the ways the city and PG&E could work together.
But in fact, the utility is already opposing even the baby steps coming out of City Hall: PG&E has bid against San Francisco for rights to sell power to the shipyard, and that’s forced the city to cut prices and reduce the revenue it could have gained from Lennar Corp., the master developer. PG&E is trying to stop the city from selling power on Treasure Island and has financial ties to a private company that has rights to Golden Gate tidal power development until 2008. Meanwhile, the utility just hired the former secretary to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission — a woman who sat in on every closed-session strategy meeting the panel held, including sessions dealing with litigation against PG&E.
In other words, PG&E is gearing up for all-out political warfare — and the mayor and supervisors need to start preparing too. From now on, people should see whatever PG&E does as hostile — and on every front the city needs to adopt an aggressive strategy to move forward toward eliminating the company’s private power monopoly.
For starters, it’s ridiculous that the city should have to fight PG&E for the right to sell power at the Hunters Point shipyard. The Redevelopment Agency should have made public power a part of the program from the start, and the supervisors should examine that plan immediately to see if it can be amended to require Lennar to buy power from San Francisco. Newsom needs to take to the bully pulpit and say that if PG&E gets this contract, nobody on the Redevelopment Agency Commission will ever be reappointed.
Meanwhile, when Chan and Black appear anywhere in public this election season, they need to be asked to fully disclose their ties with PG&E and outline their positions on public power.
And it’s time for the public power coalition to start meeting again, with the aim of crafting a ballot measure that will create a full-scale municipal system, perhaps as soon as November 2007. SFBG
PS PG&E already has one staunch ally on the board, Sean Elsbernd, a Newsom appointee who also worked in the late 1990s for the Nielsen firm. That’s three too many.
PPS If Newsom is really for public power, as he claims, then why is he pushing so hard for two PG&E call-up votes for the board? And why is he not publicly denouncing PG&E’s attempt to scuttle public power and lending his political capital to a new municipalization effort?
PPPS The SF Weekly’s Matt Smith last week all but endorsed Doug Chan — but made no mention of Chan’s PG&E ties. Did that somehow slip through Smith’s investigative reporting net?

Just in: More investment info on PG&E’s candidates for supervisor

-
1

Just as the Guardian went to press on Tuesday afternoon, our investigative interns returned from the Californa Public Utilities Commission with more information on the investments that PG&E has made in supervisorial candidates Doug Chan and Rob Black through two key law firms.

Documents on file with the CPUC show that Chan’s law firm, Chan, Doi, and Leal, has received a total of $460,913 in fees from PG&E between 200l and 2005. In 2002, the year of the second public power initiative, the Chan firm received $49,969.78. Chan lent his name to PG&E for use in PG&E’s campaign material and thereby earned a spot in the Guardian’s Hall of Shame.

As our editorial and my previous blogs pointed out, Chan, his campaign, and his law firm refuse to answer our telephone and email requests for an explanation of what he did for PG&E and whether PG&E’s investment will affect his position on public power. Chan is running in District 4 (the Sunset), backed by Mayor Newsom, PG&E, and downtown money.

Black, a PG&E and downtown-backed candidate against Sup. Chris Daly in District 6, worked as an attorney for Nielsen Merksamer, the political law firm that handled all of the dirty dealings for the nasty public anti-public power campaign that PG&E and its allies waged in 2002 with a huge warchest. Black worked with Jim Sutton, his former law professor and PG&E’s main legal operative, during that period but insists he did no work on anything related to PG&E or the campaign. We and many others find that hard to believe. In any event, he is eloquently vague about his current public power position. Nielsen Merksamer received $338,294 in 200l, the year of PG&E’s first victory over the first public power initiative, and $24,303.90 in 2002, the year PG&E beat back the second public power initiative. In 2003, with PG&E fighting numerous major campaign violations on ethical and campaign spending, Nielsen and Merksamer got $496,7l6.87.

In 2004 the firm got $443,50l.24 and in 2005 it got $8l6,97l. The interns who fought their way through the CPUC bureaucracy were Jeff Goodman and Sara Schieron, adding their names to a long list of Guardian staffers who have helped fight the good fight against PG&E for almost 40 years.

“All of this comes at a time when PG&E is going out of its way, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars, to buff up its image–and to fight the city’s modest but significant plans for public power,” our editorial points out. PG&E is also fighting the city in several expensive legal actions, from conflicts over the city’s right to power municipal buildings to PG&E’s working against the city building more solar sites.

At the end of Steven T. Jones’ story on “PG&E’s Extreme Makeover,” he quotes Peter Ragone, the mayor’s press secretary, as saying, “We’re going to do what’s in the best interests of the city of San Francisco. This is the first mayor to support public power, and that hasn’t changed at all.”

Okay. Maybe so. But then why did the mayor appoint Sean Elsbernd to the board, a staunch PG&E ally who worked for Nielsen Merksamer in the l990s? And then why is he now strongly backing PG&E’s supervisorial candiates in this election (Chan and Black)? That would give PG&E three callup votes on the board for PG&E. Fair play: If Chan and Black aren’t potential callup votes on the board, then they need to come clean, right now, and give us and the public an explanation of the PG&E investments in their firms and what their position on public power is now and will be as supervisors.

SOS: it’s time for the public power forces to regroup and start hammering back at the PG&E offensive. Things of great moment are once again in the making. B3

Chan stonewalls on PG@E questions: will anybody be able to pin him down before the election?

-
0

As our editorial for the Wednesday Guardian states, “We’ve seen plenty of allies of Pacific Gas and Electric Company on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. We’ve seen a few PG@E bagmen, PG@E shills, and PG@E fronts. But there’s never been anyone elected to the board in our 40 years who was actually a paid attorney for PG@E.

“This year, there’s at least one, and possibly two candidates who have worked as PG@E lawyers–and that alone should disqualify them from ever holding public office in San Francisco. The most obvious and direct conflict involves Doug Chan, the former police commissioner who is seeking a seat from District Four. Documents on file with the California Public Utilities Commission show that Chan’s law firm, Chan, Doi and Leal, has received more than $200,000 in fees from PG&E in just the past two years.

“Chan won’t come to the phone to discuss what he did for the utility, won’t respond to questions posed through his campaign manager and press secretary, won’t return calls to his law firm and thus won’t give the public any idea what sorts of conflicts of interest he’d have if he took office.

“This is nothing new for Chan: Back in 2002, he put his name on PG&E campaign material opposing public power and earned a spot in the Guardian’s Hall of Shame.”

At blogtime last Monday afternoon: still no word from
Chan, his campaign, nor his law firm. (See my blog below for the Guardian questions.) Key question: will anybody be able to pin Chan down on his PG@E connections before the election? Let us know. B3

Reforming democracy

-
0

By Steven T. Jones
Wtih ranked choice voting up and working well in San Francisco, four other communities around the country are poised to approve it in the upcoming election. In addition to Prop. O in Oakland, ranked choice is on the ballot in Davis, Minneapolis, and Pierce County, Washington.
“I see these four elections as key. If we can sweep them, that’s a tipping point,” activist and former Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic said last night at a Prop. O fundraiser in the law office of Matt Gonzalez, who championed the San Francisco measure while serving on the Board of Supervisors.
Novoselic got involved in politics back in his Nirvana days, fighting to overturn a Seattle law that prevented people under 18 from attending concerts.
“Along the way, I got enthusiastic about democracy and participation,” he said. But even among those working on his campaigns, many felt their votes for candidates didn’t count. Reading SF-based democracy reform leader Steven Hill’s book, “Fixing Elections,” he learned about the concept of the “surplus voter” whose preference for a candidate other than the Democrat or Republican is essentially discarded. With ranked choice, voters can cast a ballot for their favorite candidate and also for the lesser of two evils, thus allowing minor parties to gain support. As such, Novoselic called democracy reform “the Holy Grail of the Green Party.”
Hill said he is cheered by the current situation. “It’s starting to happen, but these things take time. It’s a big country, but we’re making progress.”

1...626364...67Page 63 of 67

48hills.org is the official publication of the non-profit San Francisco Progressive Media Center.
Contact us: info@48hills.org