Government Archives — Page 93 of 105 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Careers and Ed: A life of death

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August 7, 2007

› culture@sfbg.com

A kid gets killed in the cross fire of a shooting. Someone digs up a human skull while planting begonias. An elderly woman dies in her sleep in an apartment no one has visited in years.

In all these cases, somebody — or somebodies — has to examine the scene and, well, the bodies to find out what happened. And as any fan of hard-boiled detective stories, CSI, or Quincy, M.E. knows, those somebodies are the forensic team, perhaps most prominently the coroner.

It’s a mysterious job with macabre connotations, imbued with a mix of excitement and dread. A new show on Spike purports to show armchair detectives what it’s really like, with Grand Guignol bravado, but I always wonder, is that really how it is? So I decided to find out.

GOING DOWNTOWN

I start with our own fair city of night, only to discover that the subject of coroners is more complicated than I thought. What TV often portrays as one or two jobs is often many different jobs. And San Francisco County doesn’t have a coroner — a position defined as an elected or appointed government official who deals with deaths that raise questions. Instead, it has a medical examiner, whose office is headed by an MD or doctor of osteopathy. The difference may seem like semantics, but it’s an important distinction for people in the field.

I also learn that it will be next to impossible to meet San Francisco’s medical examiner, Dr. Amy Hart. Unlike her predecessor, Dr. Boyd Stephens — whose media accessibility and subsequent scrutiny led to controversies about the reuse of needles, improper ventilation against dangerous pathogens in autopsy rooms, misappropriation of funds, and sexual harassment — Hart is fairly shy when it comes to the media. Public controversy can be a downside to the job, whether it’s over the contested findings of Los Angeles’ fabled "coroner to the stars" or the unpopular study by Marin County’s coroner of suicides on the Golden Gate Bridge.

So I get the basics about the job from Hart’s deputy administrative director, Stephen Gelman, at the ’50s-era Medical Examiner’s Office on the grounds of the Hall of Justice. Gelman, a middle-aged, white-haired former special agent with the Department of the Treasury, explains the makeup of the office: 32 people, including forensic pathologists and anthropologists, toxicologists, chemists, investigators, and administrative personnel.

And becoming part of Hart’s team isn’t easy, especially since forensic-themed TV shows and the office’s involvement with UC San Francisco managed to attract 160 applicants during a recent call for three positions. Preference is given to those with a background in medicine and, at the very least, the funeral industry.

"IT’S CHINATOWN …"

But those are just the facts. My experience at the Alameda County Coroner’s Bureau, an art deco, cream-colored building on the outskirts of Chinatown, is much more visceral.

Inside I meet the genial Lt. Jason Arone, who explains that the bureau has been under the jurisdiction of the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office since 1989. That gives Sheriff Gregory Ahern the title of chief coroner, but on a day-to-day basis, Arone is the guy in charge. I also meet Mike Yost, a former detective who is now a public administrator, which means he handles the belongings of decedents, from pets to hidden stashes of money.

Downstairs, the morgue is pretty much what movies would have you expect: cold metal and antiseptic green tile. Arone pauses at the sound of a saw — we can’t go inside if there’s an autopsy under way. But it’s just carpenters fixing a door. Inside, I’m struck by the lack of sliding-drawer coolers — bodies are identified by photograph these days and are kept in less-obvious storage rooms.

Then I meet autopsy technician Smiley Anderson — sometimes referred to as "the bullet finder" by resident pathologists. The 25-year veteran started working in his family’s mortuary as young man in the South — much the way many in coroner’s offices got their start. But Anderson says the field is changing now. Crossover careers are rarer, and he says the best way to get in is through an education in medicine.

As I sit at his desk outside the autopsy room, I notice what Arone calls "the meat-locker smell." It’s neither the smell of embalming fluid that I associate with funerals nor that of decay — just a stale, permeating reminder of what’s inside.

OUT IN THE FIELD

It’s midafternoon when I meet Alameda County Coroner’s Bureau detective Eric Larson, who’s agreed to show me the other side of the job: going out on calls. I wait with the jocular thirtysomething until two calls come in.

One is a follow-up from the night before. A young girl and her brother were at the house of a family friend, which also serves as a rehabilitation facility; soon after dinner both fell ill. The brother recovered, but the young girl died. Larson decides to ask some questions, though the toxicology report is still pending.

The other call is a notification about a suicide on the Golden Gate Bridge. (Sometimes Alameda County representatives will handle calls for Marin County if the next of kin is in the East Bay.)

Larson puts on his flak jacket as part of his routine, and we get into one of the department’s cars. Since it’s not a pickup, he says, we won’t need one of the vans.

The first stop is at a sagging west Oakland house. The man who answers the door is barely coherent but sends us to Children’s Hospital. When we get there, I’m amazed to see the little boy we got the call about bouncing up and down, chewing on a french fry. When he sees Larson, he starts singing, "Bad boys, bad boys …" Larson laughs and says, "That’s my favorite song, buddy." The child’s hale liveliness is heartbreaking with the knowledge I have of his sister.

Larson asks the family friend, who’s at the hospital, for any information on the night before. It’s unclear whether he’ll get answers, and he tells me that sometimes he never does. In fact, that’s one of the hardest parts of the job. "It doesn’t matter how much science you throw at it," he says. "Sometimes it comes out undetermined."

It’s getting late as we head to the home of the suicide victim’s sister in Castro Valley. No one answers the door. Larson checks with the Marin County Coroner’s Office for another address, then stops by a dispatch office to get directions. Notification is important to Larson, as people may otherwise never hear about the fates of their loved ones.

We arrive in a quiet, ’70s-era housing tract in San Leandro, at the house of the victim’s mother. Again, no one is home, but a neighbor with emergency keys checks the house, determining that the victim’s mother has gone for a walk with her dogs. We wait at the house.

When she arrives, she knows what Larson’s going to say before he opens his mouth — but the news is no less brutal. When we leave, her neighbors are sitting beside her on the couch, friends from happier, simpler times.

It’s late when we return to the office, and Larson is supposed to work another swing shift tomorrow. But he gets a message from home. The son of a friend died in an accident. The funeral is tomorrow.*

Careers and Ed: The language of learning

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August 7, 2007

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› culture@sfbg.com

Perhaps the best thing my parents ever did for me was to raise me as a Persian in America. I hated this at the time, not understanding why I needed to learn how to perform Persian dances, eat Persian food, or speak Farsi if we weren’t actually in Iran. I now realize I was lucky not only to find a cultural identity but also to experience living in two cultures — and with two languages — at once.

Not all children have a built-in culture base at home, though. But they can have the next best thing if they’re enrolled in language immersion programs, particularly if they start early.

"Language is a natural phenomenon within us, and the earlier we open it, the better," says David Fierberg, the events and communications manager of the French American International School. "It’s an important tool in a child’s development and opens up new pathways of thought, creating a stronger cultural awareness."

That’s why schools around the Bay Area are increasingly embracing this method of schooling. Some are already established in the city, such as the FAIS, which was founded in 1962. Others are just getting started, such as Starr King Elementary School, where a Mandarin immersion program for kindergarten students just finished its first year.

And such programs are available at all levels. The Scandinavian School, for example, is a preschool that uses the educational techniques of its eponymous region, while the FAIS has extensive prekindergarten–to–eighth grade and high school programs. In most cases the experience isn’t just about teaching a particular language or culture but also about presenting a different kind of education.

PARLEZ-VOUS ALGEBRA?

At the FAIS the demand for a rigorous education starts young, and admission is competitive. Those accepted are sent straight on the full-immersion pathway, with a curriculum developed by the French Ministry of Education. Grades K to three are taught 80 percent in French and 20 percent in English, while third grade through middle school is split 50-50. From then on French is a large part of the high school student’s education, with certain classes taught only in French or only in English.

"There is sort of a natural flow," Fierberg says. "The students learn both French and English history and culture, government. Drama is taught in French, as is sports, while music classes are held in English. And French and English math is taught."

French and English math? But isn’t math a universal language?

Yes, Fierberg says. But the methodologies are different. In France, math is more process oriented, focusing on formulas and word problems. American math is more answer oriented. In other subjects the FAIS places a French-method emphasis on oral presentation, memorization of poetry, and dictées, wherein teachers read a paragraph and students write what they hear.

HÄR OCH NÅ

Though the Scandinavian School only teaches preschool students, its educational methods are still clearly different from American — and French — traditions. In fact, director and teacher Mimmi Skoglund finds the Scandinavian method often challenges the expectations of her students’ American parents, who ask questions like "Why doesn’t my child come home with things done at school every day?"

"We try to clarify that it is not the product that is important, it’s the process," Skoglund explains. "That, I think, is very Scandinavian. I have never had that question in Sweden. Another question that always comes up is discipline. [We] try to solve problems, figure out what happened, and come up with a solution — and most of the time, the children are involved. Never do we use time-outs."

Another big difference, Skoglund says, is the emphasis Americans place on preparing kids for the next step in life, whereas Scandinavian education focuses on the here and now.

"It is important to just be and enjoy whatever you have. We try to create a place where children can be children," she says. "We believe we are academic, but through play and the children’s own interests."

AND THEN?

The practical implications of this type of schooling are varied, but most people agree that a bilingual education is an asset in the global economy. Furthermore, Bay Area immersion programs seek not to divide children from their American culture but to broaden their understanding of it.

"FAIS adheres to an educational methodology that has been around since the mid-1800s," Fierberg says. "Students are receiving a broad range of education that isn’t held hostage to politics and societal conventions. But it is held in the US, so it does incorporate what is going on around the kids into the English curriculum so that they have an idea of the changes in society."

It’s also important to note that the FAIS is accredited by the California Association of Independent Schools, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, and the French Ministry of Education, allowing students to transition uninterrupted to other schools in the United States and in France.

But one of the greatest goals of the program is to help participants enhance a sense of self as they learn about fellow students, their teachers, and the families they meet during homestays in Normandy in their fifth-grade year.

While all this makes immersion education sound idyllic, it can also be overwhelming for young students. FAIS alumni profiles are open, candid, and complex, revealing such a program’s potential drawbacks. Some drawbacks are merely annoying, as shown in 1974 FAIS alumna Karen Heisler’s memory of adults incessantly asking her to "say something in French" when she was too shy even to say something in English. Others are more serious.

"I remember the solitary struggle with a curriculum that none of my ‘at home’ friends shared and the lonely uniqueness of going to a school nobody had heard of," she says.

Francis Tapon, a 1988 alumnus, agrees, adding that it was often hard to relate to other people. "We were in a cocoon, sheltered from the real world, where people are proud if they can say, ‘Una cerveza, por favor.’<\!q>"

And for many, the value of bilingual education didn’t sink in until much later, just one of the trade-offs parents and students are forced to make. The others? It can be frustrating for students new to a language to be in a class with those who are already fluent. Parents often have the extra job of carrying on language immersion through home activities. And teachers say building interest in a culture completely outside themselves is difficult with children, who are the center of their own worlds. But inherent in a commitment to an immersion program is the expectation of roadblocks and challenges.

And Fierberg says it’s worth the result, the creation of well-rounded adults who understand their roles in a changing world, whether they use French in an international career or simply to order a bottle of wine at a restaurant. "We’d like for them to see difference as something that’s attractive," he says.*

The devil’s bargain at the Transbay Terminal

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August 7, 2007

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By Tim Redmond

If you don’t like the notion of a 1,200-foot tower scarring San Francisco’s skyline — and I don’t — then maybe you ought to read this fascinating piece on Calitics, and stop for a minute to think about what this city, and this state, is doing.

Why do we have to live with a giant highrise office tower near the Transbay Terminal? Because if we don’t, there won’t be any money to build what should be the central transit link for the Bay Area, a landmark bus and train station on the scale (we’re told) of Grand Central in New York. It’s an essential part of the city’s future.

But the project costs a lot of money, almost a billion dollars — and nobody wants to pay higher taxes to fund this sort of thing. In fact, nobody in California wants to pay higher taxes for anything. So the folks at City Hall have decided that the only way we can have a new transit terminal is if we hock a piece of our city and our skyline to fund it. So we take some of the land on the terminal site and let a developer build a monstrosity of a highrise on it — and that will bring in the money that we can’t get any other way.

It ‘s the same reason we have that god-awful RIncon Tower sticking its ugly head into the sky: The developer offered to pay for a fair amount of affordable housing and other community amenities that the taxayers won’t fund because local government can’t raise taxes in California without reaching extraordinary lengths that are almost politically impossible. So here’s the deal: You want affordable housing? Give a big developer the rights to do something awful, and in exchange, we’ll get a few dollops of cash for civic needs.

Imagine, for a moment, what the state might look like if we’d had to cut this kind of deal to build the University of California system. You want nice colleges? Okay — sell off the coast and let it become a giant Miami Beach. You don’t want to do that? Too bad — no world-class university system for your kids.

This is the devil’s bargain we have agreed to settle for in 2007, and it sucks.

Spy on me, Alberto!

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August 6, 2007

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Greatest career path, ever. Mental note: little flag pins.

By Marke B.

I love it. Really! Congress has just voted in a basic legal carte blanche for the Administration to spy on Americans’ emails and phone convos without any court review. Ostensibly, the new law is only to target foreigners who talk to Americans by allowing the government to tap into fiber optic networks based in the US (previously they could only tap into those based on foreign soil) — and the Administration promises — PROMISES — not to use any tips obtained this way to go after Americans on the one end of the conversation. I believe them! Only foreigners are terrorists anyway (sorry, Oklahoma).

The best parts?

*Telecommunications companies must obey the government on this. No more of those pesky legal challenges from the more skeptical among them that were gumming up the spyworks. And no more of that free market hooey from our overlords. Just make the corporations do what you want. Terror!

*Bye-bye to FISA, the oversight court set up in the ’70s in reaction to Nixonian dirty tricks re: domestic spying. Guess who gets final approval on who gets spied on when? ALBERTO GONZALES. Guess all that lying and “misremembering” and total dereliction of basic duty evidenced when he was in the congressional hotseats — what, three times in the past 3 months? — convinced Congress that he should be in charge of the nation’s privacy. Way to go Alberto! I’ve GOT to try your tactics in my own career.

Remind me why I was happy about the Dems taking Congress again? WTF?

Who’s behind the wheel?

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July 31, 2007

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› news@sfbg.com

In 1997, Dirk, a taxi driver of 20 years, was stabbed in the neck by a hitchhiker he picked up after his last shift. Ten years later, blind and brain damaged because of the loss of blood, he still receives income of roughly $1,800 a month from his taxi medallion.

Under city law, he’s supposed to be driving.

Medallions are among the most prized — and disputed — permits in town. The city owns all 1,381 of the medallions, which allow the holders to operate taxis. But under a 1978 law known as Proposition K, only active drivers — later defined as people who put in an annual minimum of 800 hours behind the wheel — are eligible to hold the permits.

The medallion holders have a lucrative deal: when they aren’t driving, they can lease out the permits to other drivers. And since a lot of cabs are on the road 24 hours a day 365 days a year, those lease fees can add up.

Not surprisingly, there’s been some abuse over the years. You get a permit by putting your name on a list and waiting as long as 15 years. Some people who haven’t driven in years — people who don’t even live in the area — have risen to the top of the list, seized medallions, and pocketed the cash, hoping nobody would notice.

Recently, though, the city’s Taxicab Commission has been cracking down — and that has put people like Dirk in limbo and raised a series of political and legal questions that go to the heart of the city’s cab-permit system:

Does a disabled driver have a right to keep his or her medallion? Is it cruel to simply yank the permit — and the income — from somebody who may have been injured in the line of work? Or is allowing nondrivers to keep their medallions unfair to the thousands of working cabbies who are paying $91.50 a shift to lease a permitted cab and waiting in line for a permit to open up?

What right should someone who gets a valuable city permit, at no cost, have to keep using that permit to earn income when he or she no longer meets the permit requirements?

Taxicab Commission executive director Heidi Machen says the answers are straightforward. "Permit holders who are not meeting their requirements are abusing a public permit," she told the Guardian. "Proposition K was never set up as a retirement plan."

Joe Breall and Elliot Myles disagree — and they’re taking the issue to court in a case that could have lasting implications for the city’s taxicab industry, medallion holders, and other drivers.

The two Bay Area lawyers filed a class action lawsuit against the Taxicab Commission on June 25 on behalf of an estimated 150 disabled drivers who hold taxi medallions in the city. They argue that the driving requirement violates the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act.

"These are long-term drivers who have a disability that simply does not allow them to drive now," said Breall, who represents National Cab Co.

One of the case’s two named plaintiffs, William Slone, is a medallion holder with a lung disease that requires him to be hooked up to an oxygen tank 24 hours a day. The other, Michael Merrithew, has a physical disability so severe that he cannot operate his taxi.

Machen has hired two investigators to crack down on medallion holders who are not fulfilling their requirements — whether a scofflaw is a healthy 30-year-old woman living in Hawaii but reaping her medallion’s profits or an elderly man who must use a wheelchair but is still using the medallion as his source of income.

"The ADA does not require a public agency to waive an essential eligibility requirement for a government program or benefit," Machen wrote in a memo dated Feb. 16, 2006.

The Taxicab Commission isn’t just yanking permits from anyone who gets hurt. Under its current policy, temporarily disabled medallion holders can apply to take one year off every five years and receive a 120-day driving exemption in each of the three years following that disability leave.

But the lawsuit argues that this policy "effectively sanctions all taxicab permit/medallion holders with disabilities other than temporary illness that prevent or substantially limit their ability to drive taxi cabs personally."

The lawsuit argues that disabled permit holders, under the ADA, should be relieved of the full-time driving requirement until their disabilities are medically resolved. In the case of some drivers, that could effectively give them use of city-owned medallions free, for life.

TRICKY ENFORCEMENT

Prop. K was written by recently retired San Mateo Superior Court judge Quentin Kopp, who was then a city supervisor. Kopp told us that permits were being bought and sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars and working drivers couldn’t afford them. The system, which is fairly unusual, was designed to ensure that cabbies — not investors, corporations, or speculators — got the benefits of the city-owned permits.

So Prop. K required that a permit be returned to city and passed on to the next person on the long waiting list if the holder stops driving. Other large cities, such as New York, still maintain a system in which permits may be auctioned off instead of being publicly owned.

The 941 post–<\d>Prop. K medallion holders, Machen said, can receive $1,800 to $3,000 a month for leasing their permits. There are roughly 6,000 taxi drivers in the city; a full-time cab driver makes about $24,000 a year, but those full-timers with permits can add another $20,000 or more to their income by leasing.

"It’s a city permit. If someone stops using it, it reverts to the city," Kopp told us. "There’s no provision for a grace period or something of that sort. Seven times voters rejected efforts to appeal or change it."

In fact, in 2003 voters overwhelmingly rejected a measure that would have allowed disabled drivers to keep their permits.

Elliott Myles of Oakland’s Myles Law Firm, which handles disability cases, told us that Prop. K is "irrelevant."

"The obligation to modify or waive comes from the ADA, a federal law binding on the commission," he wrote in an e-mail.

Although Kopp says Prop. K was intended to ensure that only active drivers get permits, the 800-hours-a-year rule isn’t in the law. Specific driving rules were added to the city’s Police Code in 1988.

And enforcement of the law has changed in the past few years. When the Taxicab Commission revoked the medallion of disabled driver Querida Mia Rivera in 2003, the decision was overturned by the Board of Appeals on the grounds that it violated the rights of Rivera — who had driven for 35 years before needing a wheelchair and becoming legally blind — under the ADA.

In response to the reversal, then-director Naomi Little implemented a policy to accommodate both temporarily and permanently disabled medallion holders, which paralleled the city’s catastrophic-injury program. This meant the modification or waiver of the 800 hours was overseen by the Department of Public Health.

"A disabled permit holder may apply for a waiver or reduction of the driving requirement, and the waiver or reduction, in appropriate cases, may be renewed on a yearly basis," Little wrote in a memorandum to Sup. Jake McGoldrick on July 30, 2003.

But in February 2006 the Taxicab Commission adopted Resolution 2006-28, which returned the city to the policy of strictly following the letter of Prop. K (although the panel allows temporary reprieves for people who are injured but could return to driving).

Michael Kwok, a former commission staffer who oversaw disability requests, said such a policy allows the permit waiting line to move faster.

Allowing a permanently disabled person to retain his or her permit is "not fair to the public," said Kwok, who uses a wheelchair. "It’s case by case."

The result is an enforcement process that can be tricky, to say the least.

On Aug. 17, 2004, for example, a physician wrote to the commission arguing that a disabled driver who was "suffering from failing eyesight and dizziness" and occasional arthritis in his hands should be taken off the road. "Please release him from taxi driving effective immediately for public safety," the doctor wrote. "He is advised not to drive a taxi as soon as possible."

Commission staffer Tristan Bettencourt, who was overseeing ADA compliance at the time, responded by reducing the driver’s yearly driving requirement to 400 hours, or 78 four-hour shifts, over the next year.

That could have left an unsafe driver on the road, Myles said.

"I find this reprehensible," he told us. "In most medical-injury suits, evidence of medical condition can only be given by qualified health care professionals."

Bettencourt, who left his job last year, said the Taxicab Commission shouldn’t be deciding whether someone is fit to drive or not. "We didn’t give out driver’s licenses," he told us. "If you hold a driver’s license, someone from the Department of Motor Vehicles has certified you."

According to Jan Mendoza, a public information officer at the DMV, a license needs to be renewed every five years — a process that can take place online if a person has a clean record. People over the age of 70, however, have to visit the office in person to take both a vision and a driving test.

Taxi drivers should not have any guarantee of lifetime entitlement, Bettencourt said. He added that the lack of a safety net for people who lose their means of employment is not something a San Francisco taxi regulator can solve; it’s a national problem.

EXIT STRATEGY?

Thomas George-Williams, who chairs the United Taxicab Workers, looks at the issue from the perspective of drivers who don’t have permits — the ones he considers second-class citizens in a two-tier system.

All San Francisco cab drivers are effectively independent contractors who are responsible for their own disability and retirement funds. And the drivers who don’t have permits get no benefits from the system at all.

Medallion holders "use the income of their medallions for disability insurance," George-Williams told us. "We need an exit strategy for all drivers, including medallion holders, and we don’t have that."

Charles Rathbone, a driver for 30 years and a medallion holder for 10, points to the harsh truth: there’s a key difference between the two cabbie classifications. "For drivers without medallions, there’s nothing to revoke," he told us.

Rathbone, a member of the Medallion Holders Association, spoke at the Taxicab Commission meeting July 13 to lay out two steps he felt the city should take before revoking a permit. He asked for two weeks’ advance warning and an appeals process.

"When I become disabled, I don’t want my only exit strategy to be a kick in the ass from the taxi commission," Rathbone later told us.

His speech was spurred by the June suicide of Lindsey Welcome, a 61-year-old medallion holder of 10 years who had not driven for seven of those years due to severe muscular dystrophy. Welcome’s medallion, which she leased out through Luxor Cabs, was scheduled to be revoked at the Taxicab Commission’s June 26 meeting.

"Her medallion was her only means of support," Kathleen Young, Welcome’s friend of 30 years, told us.

Rathbone feels many disabled medallion holders hide their disabilities for fear of the consequences, endangering themselves and the public.

One of the more severe recent taxi incidents happened March 26, 2003, when a 68-year-old permit holder crashed into a Market Street ATM, badly injuring a pedestrian and immobilizing two others.

"Too many people are driving when they shouldn’t be," said Bettina Cohen, Rathbone’s wife and editor of the MHA newsletter, which publicized the pending disability lawsuit on its front page last month.

Allowing disabled drivers to keep their permits may have its own downside: Carl Macmurdo, president of the MHA, acknowledged that the long waiting line for medallions means people will acquire them later in life and so will often be able to fully enjoy them for only a short time.

"[The city’s] giving permits to 70-year-olds and then taking them back," Macmurdo, who waited 13 years to get his permit, said.

Myles shared similar sentiments. "Every permit holder, just like every person, runs the risk of disability," he told us. "This question [of the disabled holding on to their permits] affects not only every current permit holder but every driver who is waiting in line to get a permit in the future."<\!s>*

Black and white and color

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July 31, 2007

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One of the most exciting aspects of being a newspaper editor is recognizing a wave of activity that isn’t connected to government mind control or onslaughts of corporate-sponsored and mass-marketed art. This kind of spontaneous mass energy is happening via photography in San Francisco right now. August is known as a slow month, but the city’s galleries are alive with contemporary photos. Bill Daniel’s latest look at the US landscape is opening at RayKo Photo Center, the Daniel-influenced vagabond spirit Polaroid Kidd has his first Bay Area show at Needles and Pens, Greg Halpern’s moody views of Buffalo and Kelli Connell’s double-minted prints are up at SF Camerawork, and at City Hall — through the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery — the work of 32 local photographers is on view.

Baptized in arguments regarding its viability as an art form, photography remains as contentious as it is expansive. Witness a veteran such as Duane Michals sharpening his claws on the megapopular likes of Cindy Sherman in last year’s rant-monograph Foto Follies: How Photography Lost Its Virginity on the Way to the Bank (Thames and Hudson). We live in an era when the ready availability of portraiture seems to have made its definition even more reductive; via MySpace and more explicit sites, people use cameras to readily package themselves as products. Yet when black-and-white and color and digital and film collide with unpredictable results, photo portraiture can be as varied and lively as the work you’ll find on these pages.

Thanks to fellow Guardian arts editor Kimberly Chun for suggesting, late in the selection process, a focus on portraiture. This decision necessarily narrowed the Bay Area photographers to choose from; there’s a wave of garden- and eco-driven work being done by Bill Basquin and others, while Dusty Lombardo, R.A. McBride, and Jackson Patterson are discovering tremendous depth in interiors. Thanks also to Basquin, Daniel, Glen Helfand, Chuck Mobley, Katie Kurtz, and Dave and Ray Potes for their suggestions.

Twelve years ago I interviewed therapist and author Walt Odets because he was bringing much-needed humanity to discussions of the AIDS crisis; to find out that he’s also a superb photographer whose subjects have included Jean Renoir and his wife, Dido, is a revelation. In distinctive ways, Vic Blue, Robert Gumpert, and Amanda Herman reveal what journalism usually ignores or renders shallow. The intimacy of Vala Cliffton’s photos makes one ponder her presence within the scenes she depicts. Matthias Geiger shows a city you might not have noticed even when it’s been in front of your face. Stan Banos has an eye for the many shades of gray within the multihued and the cuckoo. Job Piston is that rare Bay Area photographer whose work brandishes a sexual edge that isn’t obvious or predictable. Jim Goldberg’s urban work has been canonically influential since the publication of Rich and Poor (Random House, 1985) and Raised by Wolves (Scalo, 1995). Photography is just one aspect of Désirée Arlette Holman’s hand-fashioned fantasy world, a place that looks like a wicked satire of our own.

If you’d like to see more about some of these artists, go to www.sfbg.com/blogs/pixel_vision. (Johnny Ray Huston)

Stan Banos

NAME Stan Banos

TITLE The Marine

THE STORY "This photo was taken in San Francisco during Fleet Week in ’04."

INSPIRATION "I’ve always had a vague obsession with time and place, and the camera is the best-suited instrument to record such transient moments (particularly when you can’t draw). I generally try to incorporate whatever signs of irony life can offer within a rectangle."

FAVORITE PHOTOGRAPHERS "I have more favorite photographers as an adult than I had favorite ballplayers as a kid: Bruce Davidson, Josef Koudelka, Diane Arbus, Garry Winogrand, William Eggleston, Stephen Shore, Carl de Keyzer, James Nachtwey, Cheryl Richards, Henry Wessel, Elliott Erwitt, Martin Parr, Lee Friedlander … the list is endless."

SHOW "Our World," at SF Arts Commission Gallery’s City Hall space, through Sept. 21.

WEB SITE www.reciprocity-failure.com

Victor J. Blue

NAME Victor J. Blue

TITLE Honduran immigrants, Detention Center Tapachula Mexico

THE STORY "I went to the Guatemala-Mexico border to photograph immigration there. These guys had been caught trying to ride the freight train to the United States. We only had a few minutes to take pictures inside. They were on a bus back to Tegucigalpa within a day, probably just to try again."

FAVORITE MONOGRAPHS The Mennonites by Larry Towell (Phaidon, 2000), Exploding into Life by Eugene Richards and Dorothy Lynch (Aperture, 1986), Kosovo 1999–2000: Flight of Reason by Paolo Pellegrin and Tim Judah (Trolley, 2002), Under a Grudging Sun: Photographs from Haiti Libere 1986–1988 by Alex Webb (Thames and Hudson, 1989).

WHAT ARE YOU SHOOTING NOW? "The cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for the people of San Joaquin County."

WEB SITES www.victorjblue.com, online.recordnet.com/projects/iraq/Jose/index.html

Vala Cliffton

NAME Vala Cliffton

TITLE Unicorn

THE STORY "Unicorn is a portrait of my niece and my brother after their trip to Hawaii. My niece is in love with Hawaii and could not seem to detach herself from her scuba gear that afternoon. My brother was trying to catch a nap before dinner. The combination of elements in this unposed portrait captures an essential and intriguing aspect of their father-daughter relationship."

INSPIRATIONS "The Family of Man [Harry N. Abrams] was the first photography book I can remember picking up and being interested in. Photography was always a part of our family life. One of my projects while at the San Francisco Art Institute was to print the black-and-white snapshots taken of the family over the years."

WHAT ARE YOU SHOOTING NOW? "I have spent the past couple or years working as a filmmaker and producing music videos, some of which I have put up on YouTube at youtube.com/alavala11."

SHOW "Our World," at SF Arts Commision Gallery’s City Hall space, through Sept. 21.

WEB SITE alavala.com

Matthias Geiger

NAME Matthias Geiger

TITLE Train

THE STORY Train is taken from Geiger’s "Tide" series, which he describes as "an examination of human presence" in "places of transit and momentary rest…. The technique of layering still images allows past, present, and future moments to appear simultaneously, reflecting the notion that each moment in time is a construct of our memories, our presence, and our projections."

INSPIRATIONS "Direct physical experience such as being outdoors, dance, and meditation, as well as readings on metaphysics."

WHAT ARE YOU SHOOTING NOW? A series on utopian subcultures.

SHOW "Matthias Geiger: Tide." Sept. 6–Oct. 20. SF Camerawork, 657 Mission, second floor, SF. (415) 512-2020, www.sfcamerawork.org

WEB SITE www.matthiasgeiger.com

Robert Gumpert

NAME Robert Gumpert

TITLE Untitled

THE STORY "For the past 13 years I’ve been doing an off-and-on documentary project called ‘Lost Promise: The Criminal Justice System.’ This image was done in August 2006 while I was documenting the closing of San Francisco County Jail No. 3. Built in 1934 and beset by a number of serious issues and several lawsuits ordering its closure, the jail was finally closed in August 2006, when inmates were moved to County Jail No. 5, built on land adjacent to the old jail."

FAVORITE PHOTOGRAPHERS Don McCullin, Lewis Hine, August Sander, Leonard Freed, Gilles Peres, and Philip Jones Griffith.

WEB SITE www.robertgumpert.com

Amanda Herman

NAME Amanda Herman

TITLE Untitled

THE STORY The image is taken from Herman’s most recent work, the short film Lost Island, which looks at the impact of Hurricane Katrina on one large family two years after the storm forced them from their home in Chalmette, La. Herman met the Morris family in Oakland while doing free family portraits for survivors at a relief day in October 2005, one month after Katrina drove them from their homes, and, she writes, "over time, I became interested in exploring the intricacies of one family’s experience with the disaster." Donations and income from the sale of the Lost Island DVD will go into a family fund to assist the Morrises as they rebuild their lives in Oakland.

FAVORITE PHOTOGRAPHERS Seydou Keita, Allen Sekula, Susan Meiselas, Jeff Wall, Wing Young Huie, Wendy Ewald, Jessica Ingram, Eric Gottesman, and others.

SHOW "Inchoate," through Aug. 11. Patricia Sweetow Gallery, 77 Geary, mezzanine, SF. (415) 788-5126, www.patriciasweetowgallery.com

WEB SITE www.amandaherman.com

Désirée Arlette Holman

NAME Désirée Arlette Holman

TITLE Something Ain’t Right

THE STORY "This image is from a larger series of video and photo work depicting actors wearing crude, handmade (by me) chimp costumes. Something Ain’t Right was inspired by smoking chimps in zoos in South Africa and China. One zookeeper claimed that the chimps were smoking because they are frustrated. Could captivity make a chimp neurotic and lead it to smoke? Others claimed that the chimps were imitating tourists, recalling the cliché ‘Monkey see, monkey do.’ "

INSPIRATION "I am inspired by psychology, popular culture, figurative sculptures (including toys), art, and various types of fantasy and fiction making. I capitalize on the potential to create fantasy from realistic imagery through the use of the camera."

FAVORITE PHOTOGRAPHERS Currently include Tracey Moffatt, Liza May Post, and Suzy Poling.

SHOWS "CCA: 100 Years in the Making," at the Oakland Museum of Art, and a solo show at San Francisco’s Silverman Gallery. Both open in October.

WEB SITE www.desireeholman.com

Job Piston

NAME Job Piston

TITLE A Year Later

THE STORY "I was making portraits of young Hollywood and became interested in deconstructing glamour. This is a good friend of mine who was sent away to a facility for a long while. I took this picture the first time I visited him. Today popular figures openly go to rehab; it too has become glamorous."

INSPIRATION "Complicated personalities, intimacy in public spaces, secrets, the figure, and the fountain of youth."

SHOW "Our World," at SF Arts Commission Gallery’s City Hall space, through Sept. 21; "Evidence of Things Unseen," Peninsula Museum of Art in Belmont, through Oct. 21; solo show at Silverman Gallery in San Francisco in October.

WEB SITES www.jobpiston.com, book-of-job.blogspot.com

Walt Odets

NAME Walt Odets

TITLE Greg Hoffspiegel, Palo Alto, California, 2007

THE STORY "Because it is so instantaneous, there is much chance in photography. This photograph seems to me about the gaze and emotion of the three figures, some combination of attention, reflection, loss, and pathos, as well as the visual organization."

INSPIRATION "I have taken pictures since I was 16. If I can use the camera in a way that forces deconstruction of what we normally see but do not observe, then I feel I have accomplished something."

FAVORITE PHOTOGRAPHERS "Henri Cartier-Bresson, of course, and Ed Ruscha and Lee Friedlander, for their elegance and form, intellect, and relentless literal rendering, respectively."

SHOW An October 2007 three-person show at SF Camerawork, devoted to winners of the James D. Phelan Award for photography.

WEB SITE www.waltodets.com/photo

Jim Goldberg

NAME Jim Goldberg

TITLE Untitled

PHOTO COURTESY OF STEPHEN WIRTZ GALLERY

THE STORY The image is drawn from "The New Europeans," a project Goldberg started around the time of the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. The series focuses on the journeys of refugees and immigrants from war-torn or economically devastated homelands in Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Palestine, Afghanistan, the Philippines, and elsewhere to settle in Europe, specifically Greece and Ukraine. In June, Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris presented Goldberg with the HCB Award so he could travel to his subjects’ countries of origin and tell the complete stories of their migration.

SHOW "Jim Goldberg: New Work." Oct. 3–Nov. 10. Reception Oct. 4, 5:30–7:30 p.m. Stephen Wirtz Gallery, 49 Geary, third floor, SF. (415) 433-6879, wirtzgallery.com

Senate energy bill helps nukes

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July 31, 2007

0

By Tim Redmond

The New York Times reports today that the Senate energy bill contains huge government subsidies for new nuclear power plants. This is no joke, folks: As we’ve been reporting in the Guardian, these folks are back. And they still lie.

Will Earthlink bail on SF?

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July 27, 2007

0

By Tim Redmond

Earthlink, which is negotiating a contract to provide WiFi to San Francisco, may be in the process of bailing out of the deal – and whatever the mayor’s office or anyone else may say, it has little to do with the supervisors demanding more benefits.

Earthlink’s CEO announced yesterday that the company is changing its strategy on municipal wi-fi, and now wants cities to promise to buy a certain amount of service before the company puts up its system.

According to Muni Wireless magazine:

EarthLink President and CEO Rolla P. Huff today identified “a lot of inherent goodness” in the municipal wireless market but acknowledged his company’s current approach to that market is not working. To insure a return on investment, he wants “municipal government to step up and become a meaningful anchor tenant on completion of a build.”

The system Earthlink and its partner, Google, are talking about building for San Francisco will have no “anchor tenant.” The city isn’t planning to buy a certain bulk amount of wi-fi use; basic, slow service would be free to people who can get the wi-fi signal, and faster premium service would be available for a fee.

“They had discussed with us at some point the idea [of the city as an anchor tenant] and we explained that San Francisco is not at this point in a position to be interested in that service,” Sup. Aaron Peskin, who has been involved in the talks with Earthlink, told us.

So if what San Francisco has in mind isn’t what Earthlink wants to sell, is the deal dead?

Ron Vinson, the head of the city’s Dept of Telecommunication and Information Services, told that he has no reason to believe Earthlink is pulling out and “we look forward to closing a deal with them.”

But it’s looking shaky right now – and if the project goes kaput, look for Mayor Newsom to try to blame the supervisors for wanting to get the city a better deal.

The ugly news we’ve been waiting to hear

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July 27, 2007

0

By Bruce B. Brugmann

Alas. Alas. As predicted by the Guardian, the Bruce blog, and most everybody in and around the Dean Singleton news operations, the bad news was flashed this morning by my reliable source in Contra Costa County in his note and Singleton story below.

This was a major story on yet more news consolidation in the Bay Area, but it only rated a three paragraph burial story on page 2 of the daily digest page of the business section of Singleton’s only Bay Area daily “competitor,” the San Francisco Chronicle.

Its lively head says, “Chain consolidates newsroom operations,” which means in effect “please don’t read this story, it is damn boring.” Its boiler plate press release coverage says without blushing: “The consolidation of the papers, all owned by MediaNews Group (B3: Singleton) will result in job cuts as part of an effort to eliminate redundant positions, beef up online coverage and save money…The company said that it hopes attribution will cover the staff reductions, but added that layoffs may be necessary…Local news reporting will continue to be supervised by editors at each of the newspapers…” Wow, now that is real enterprise business reporting!

My source wrote by email:

“The following appears today in the business pages of at least the CCTimes and Oakland Trib. Times ran it below fold on pg. 1 of business section; Trib ran on an inside business page.

“I still have the image of Singleton standing in the city room of the Times at the time of the sale, saying staff and editorial direction for the various papers would remain in place. Hah. It won’t be long before there is but one newspaper to serve the East Bay, perhaps with zoned editions that are community specific.” (B3: my source, a veteran newsman who has lived in the county for years, has yet to be wrong on any of his predictions.)

East Bay newspapers plan to consolidate news operations
Owner of Times says move will improve coverage, efficiency
By George Avalos
CONTRA COSTA TIMES
Article Launched: 07/27/2007 03:05:35 AM PDT

The company that owns the Times said it will consolidate the news operations of several East Bay newspapers as a way to improve coverage of the region and create a more efficient organization.
Starting Aug. 13, all employees of the East Bay papers affected will work under the umbrella of Bay Area News Group-East Bay, said John Armstrong, vice president of California Newspapers Partnership, which owns the publications.
“We are making this change, which integrates three entities into a single operation, to allow us to maximize our East Bay news-gathering capabilities,” said Armstrong, publisher of the Times.
The daily newspapers affected by the consolidation are the Contra Costa Times, Oakland Tribune, Tri-Valley Herald, Valley Times, San Ramon Valley Times, East County Times, West County Times, Hayward Daily Review, San Joaquin Herald, Fremont Argus and San Mateo County Times. A number of nondaily papers are also included.
The reorganization will “eliminate wasteful redundancies, streamline management and redirect staff and resources to our interactive services and other priorities, such as watchdog journalism,” Armstrong said in a memo he sent to employees of the newspapers.
Job cuts could materialize as a result of the consolidation.
“As we eliminate duplication of effort in our newsrooms, we will reduce the size of the editorial staff,” Armstrong stated. “It is our hope attrition will cover this reduction, but there is no guarantee that layoffs can be avoided.”
The combined newsrooms now have about 360 employees, said Kevin Keane, executive editor of the Times and vice president for news of the regional news group. Keane will become executive editor of Bay Area News Group-East Bay. Pete Wevurski, who had been editor of ANG Newspapers, will become managing editor of the new editorial organization, reporting to Keane.
The changes come as newspapers nationwide must wrestle with defections of advertisers and readers to the Internet.
“We need to start thinking of ourselves as information companies and not just as newspaper companies,” Keane said.
He said he believes the emerging news organization in the East Bay can deploy reporters and other news employees in a way to help the newspapers embrace a fast-changing digital world.
“We can put content online virtually 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” Keane said. “We can break news online around the clock.”
Although the restructuring of the news industry has brought about painful changes and may continue to do so, Keane suggested the changes also can bring plenty of upside.
“There are a lot of challenges in the newspaper business with advertising drifting away to the Internet,” Keane said. “There is also a lot of opportunity to do things in new ways. The challenge for us is to find a balance between our reader demands for online content with our core print business.”

Watchdog journalism? C’mon. For starters, the Singleton papers will be covering even fewer night meetings of the local city councils, planning commissions, school and community college boards, and other government agencies in the East Bay and Singletonland. And they sure as hell won’t be covering the news or selling ads in a competitive newspaper environment. Alas. Alas. B3, ever more annoyed to find that newspapers, even as monopolies, continue to do such a lousy job of covering the biggest local story on their turf (themselves)

Contemputf8g Wolf

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July 17, 2007

0

› sarah@sfbg.com

Months after local videographer and blogger Josh Wolf was released from federal prison — where his seven-month stay was the longest in history for an American journalist for refusing to turn over unpublished materials to criminal prosecutors — the San Francisco Police Commission finally has decided to analyze the incident. That inquiry comes just as Wolf embarks on a campaign for mayor, which he hopes will create a dialogue about the lack of police accountability and the overzealous federal intrusions that marked his story.

Wolf, 24, told the Guardian that he’s still baffled by what transpired after he filmed the July 8, 2005, anti-G8 protest, which involved a heavy anarchist turnout, "got rowdier than local officials would have liked," and left a San Francisco police officer with a fractured skull — an incident that Wolf calls "unfortunate" but of which he claims to have absolutely no knowledge

"I’ve read the evidence that was presented in my case, but to this day no one has pointed out anything that constitutes terrorism," Wolf said.

The day after the protest, Wolf was contacted at his home by members of the FBI and the Joint Terrorism Task Force, along with two San Francisco Police Department officers. The four agents who showed up Wolf’s door, one of them dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and shorts, demanded that he hand over all his video outtakes after local and national TV stations aired edited footage that Wolf posted on his blog. The aired film included scenes of anarchists setting off firecrackers, turning over newspaper racks, and spray-painting a Pacific Gas and Electric Co. office. It also showed an SFPD officer holding local resident Gabe Meyers in a choke hold while another agent waved his weapon at the crowd and shouted, "Leave or you’re going to get blasted. I’m a fed, motherfucker."

"If any time the SFPD decides it doesn’t want to deal with some local issue, does it have the autonomy to contact the feds, and if so, doesn’t that jeopardize all the laws that the voters of San Francisco have passed?" Wolf asked July 11 as the Police Commission discussed a resolution supporting the First Amendment rights of the "new media," which is how Web-based disseminators of news, such as Wolf, are being described.

Earlier this year, police commissioner David Campos tried to pass a resolution in support of the then-jailed Wolf, but the proposal got no traction until Theresa Sparks was elected as president in May. By then Wolf had been free from jail for a month, leading Campos and Sparks to shift their focus toward investigating exactly why Wolf’s case got federalized in the first place as well as the implications for other groups that are protected locally but at risk federally.

As Campos told the commission, "A lot of people in San Francisco have been talking about how we as a department interact with the feds, to the extent that it has an impact on medical cannabis providers and immigrants and on First Amendment rights, as in the case of Josh Wolf."

Under state law, reporters’ sources and their work products are protected. A recent case involving Apple suggests that the law also extends to bloggers and independent reporters. But under federal law, reporters have no such protections, which is why former New York Times journalist Judith Miller was jailed in the Valerie Plame–CIA investigation and San Francisco Chronicle reporters Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada faced potential jail time in the BALCO affair, as did freelancer Sara Olsen in the court-martial of Army Lt. Ehren Watada.

But while these journalists refused to comply with subpoenas that were clearly related to federal matters, there was no such obvious connection in Wolf’s case. An investigation into the assault on SFPD officer Peter Shields normally would have been undertaken by local police and District Attorney Kamala Harris. Police records show that SFPD inspector Lea Militello requested "assistance from the FBI/JTTF regarding investigation of a serious assault against a San Francisco police officer." Federal investigators justified their involvement by maintaining that there had been an attempted arson on an SFPD squad car purchased in part with federal funds, even though SFPD records indicate only that the car’s rear tail light was broken.

"There was nothing incriminating on my tape," Wolf told the Police Commission, recalling how he offered to prove his statement by letting the federal judge view it in his private chambers, an offer the judge refused. "But because I had no federal protections, I had to decide whether to engage in a McCarthyesque witch hunt," Wolf added; he long had suspected that the feds wanted to profile anarchists about whom he has intimate knowledge.

Campos and Sparks hope that last week’s Police Commission discussion will be the first in a series about the protocols and procedures that the SFPD follows in deciding whether to refer matters to federal authorities. Both stress that asking for such a study does not mean they do not care that an SFPD officer was hurt. As Sparks told us, "At this point we don’t know what the deliberations behind everything that night were or how many people were deployed. For us to comment on a police officer being injured is inappropriate unless we have all the information. And all we’re hearing is anecdotal stuff. Our job is not to take sides but to figure out what the policies were, are, and what they should be."

Police Chief Heather Fong has agreed to report to the Police Commission in August on policies and procedures related to the SFPD’s General Orders, the city’s ordinances on immigration and medical marijuana, and protection of journalists’ rights. Sparks predicts that the report will tell the commission "what the SFPD’s policies do, how that compares to the Board of Supervisors’ resolutions, and whether we need to rewrite them or write new rules for the police."

Commissioner Campos told us he hopes the report will clarify whether the police have an obligation to report to the feds if an investigation involves damage to property bought with federal funding. "If it’s the case that we are obligated, then we need a discussion. Do we want to accept funds if doing so ties our hands and forces us to do something that San Francisco doesn’t want to do? For instance, if we accept funding, then does that mean we have to cooperate with [Immigration and Customs Enforcement]? If so, then a lot of us, myself included, would be up in arms and would say, ‘Let’s not.’ To the extent that it comes down to money, I’d hope that we’d make the choice that we’d rather not take the money than get in bed with the federal government."

Wolf, who was not convicted of any crime but served 226 days for being in contempt of a grand jury subpoena, was released April 3 after he agreed to post all his unedited footage online — an action the feds claimed as evidence that he had submitted to their demands. But Wolf pointed out that he agreed to do so only after the feds promised that he would not have to testify about anyone whose actions or words he had captured on tape. He also pointed out that he released the tapes to everyone, not just the federal government.

Since being released Wolf has announced his intention to run for mayor of San Francisco this fall, saying he was inspired by the recent Progressive Convention called by Sup. Chris Daly "in which they had a great platform but no declared candidate."

Wolf’s candidacy pits him against Mayor Gavin Newsom, who expressed neither support for Wolf nor criticism of his detention. That stance is in contrast with that of Harris, who is also running for reelection this fall and publicly criticized the US Attorney’s Office in March, a month before Wolf was released. In August 2006, Newsom returned unsigned the resolution of support for Wolf’s plight that was sponsored by Supervisors Ross Mirkarimi, Tom Ammiano, and Daly. The resolution, which passed on a 9–1 vote, with Sup. Sean Elsbernd voting no and Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier absent, declared that the city "resisted the federal government’s intervention in the City and County of San Francisco’s investigation of the July 8th, 2005 G-8 protest; expressed support for the California Shield Law; and urged Congress to pass Senate Bill 2831, the Free Flow of Information Act."

Asked about Newsom’s position on Wolf and related matters, spokesperson Nathan Ballard reminded the Guardian that the mayor authorized a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the assault on Shields. "We take these attacks seriously and will take the appropriate actions necessary to ensure that the person or persons responsible are prosecuted," the mayor said shortly after the assault. As for Wolf, Ballard said by e-mail, "I am not aware of any public statement [by] the Mayor on the case of Josh Wolf. The Mayor is generally supportive of the concept of a better shield law, but he has not taken a position on this particular bill at the present time."

As it happens, Wolf, who has made numerous media appearances since his release, including on The Colbert Report, could find himself in the unusual position of having more name recognition than any of Newsom’s other challengers. And with Congress currently considering a federal shield law, the cause for which Wolf went to jail remains in the news. As media activist Rick Knee put it, pointing to the "Free Josh Wolf" button that he continues to wear on the lapel of his tweed jacket, "Josh may be out, but the issue is still with us." *

iPhone politics

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July 17, 2007

2

› techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION The marketing maestros at Apple have turned the iPhone into the summer’s biggest consumer electronics blockbuster, and they didn’t even have to pay Michael Bay millions of bucks to write robot piss jokes to do it. Everybody’s talking about the damn things — of course the usual gizmo-obsessed pubs like Wired and PC Magazine are drooling all over it, but some unexpectedly political critics and fans have gotten into the mix.

The tech community made its annoyance at iPhone boosterism felt when hacker David Maynor announced that he’d found a bug in Safari (the iPhone’s Web browser) that would allow him to seize control of iPhones remotely. The Daily Show, which usually exhibits a modicum of geek savvy, blithely ignored tech criticisms and led off one episode last week with a breathy noncommentary on how the iPhone is the greatest thing ever. Then politicians started sounding off. Demos snarked at Republicans last week about the iPhone during a House subcommittee hearing on wireless innovation. Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) told the committee that the iPhone was the "Hotel California" of mobiles because of an exclusive deal Apple cut with AT&T to provide network service for the multimedia devices. (Apparently Markey’s one big pop culture moment was to listen to the Eagles’ famous ’70s song about a hotel where "you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.")

CNET commentator Declan McCullagh spoke the latent convictions of many libertarian nerds when he responded to Markey’s analogy: "Apple makes the iPhone. It has every right to sell it via only AT&T if it wishes…. More broadly, Apple has the right to [make] iPhones only available for purchase on the third Monday of the month in even-numbered zip codes if it chooses." Activist group Free Press responded to ideas like McCullagh’s by starting a "Free the iPhone" campaign (freetheiphone.org) designed to spur the Federal Communications Commission and Congress to consider passing regulations that would force vendors like Apple to make mobile phones interoperable with all phone network operators so that consumers could choose which carrier they want.

Meanwhile, digital freedom lovers have been up in arms over Apple’s many closed-door policies for the phone. Not only are the damn things locked into using AT&T as a carrier, but iPhones are also designed to prevent users from writing additional software for them. Nothing but Apple-approved software may run on the iPhone. That means people who want to play music on the iPhone will have the same problems they have with iTunes on the iPod — you can put as much music on the phone as you want, but you can’t transfer it to another device. Nor can you choose a secure browser over Safari, or an e-mail program of your choice. Even free-software activist Richard Stallman is pissed about the iPhone, and he’s a guy who rarely gives little toys from Apple a second thought.

So what’s the big deal? Why do people even want a $600 phone, and why has this luxury device for the pampered techie become such a hot political issue? I think the answer to the first question is easy: the iPhone is the first truly cool convergence phone that combines multimedia with multispectrum goodies like Bluetooth, wi-fi, and of course, a phone network. Who doesn’t wish to combine phones, iPods, and laptops into one nifty thing?

That’s where politics come in. In the United States we have a long history of government regulations on the phone network, as well as on what can plug into the phone network, so naturally the public wonders what the government is going to do with the iPhone. Especially when other components of the iPhone, such as its ability to play music, touch on another government-regulated area: copyright law. And then there’s another issue that few people have commented on, which is that Apple’s chosen carrier for the iPhone, AT&T, has a history of letting the government spy on its phone networks. So every way you slice it, the iPhone is subject to government.

The iPhone is political because it somehow manages to capture the essence of authoritarianism in its shiny little box. Totally locked down, it runs only preapproved software on a prechosen phone network that is subject to government surveillance. Long live the iPhone! Long live democracy! *

Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd who thinks the iPhone’s telephone network makes surveillance as fun as iTunes made DRM.

Green City: Slow climate change U-turn

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July 17, 2007

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› news@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY It seems like most of the recent talk about global warming has been in terms of its apocalyptic potential in the distant future. Yet Bay Area heat waves and soaring temperatures in the Central Valley of late could certainly cause me to wonder whether it’s already begun. What has happened to our legendary cold summers and heavy rainy seasons? Sure, we’ve gotten patches of fog and wind, but for the most part this summer has felt, well, summery.

And apparently I’m not the only one thinking about climate change and what we need to be doing today to minimize it. Let me tell you, it’s going to take a lot more than driving a Prius and using energy-efficient lightbulbs to get the job done. That’s why the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and the Department of the Environment published the city’s Climate Action Plan in 2004. The plan evolved from the Board of Supervisors’ 2002 resolution to reduce the city’s annual greenhouse gas emissions by 2012 to 20 percent below their 1990 levels and included a series of recommendations on how to achieve this goal.

In 1990, San Francisco emitted 9.1 million tons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, but by 2004 it was pumping out an extra 600,000 tons per year and counting. In order to get down to the ideal of 7.3 million tons by 2012, things need to make a major U-turn. Last month the San Francisco Civil Grand Jury released a report on how successful the Climate Action Plan has been so far, and while the city has made some progress in reducing its annual greenhouse gas emissions, the report noted that if the board’s goals are to be met, the entire city needs to step it up.

According to the grand jury report, the reduction of emissions in 2005 (the most recently available local emissions inventory) was "500,000 metric tons, only half the amount hoped," and "to achieve the reductions to 7.3 million tons by 2012 will require a tripling of the reduction rate."

The Department of the Environment remains optimistic. "We haven’t fallen behind," Mark Westlund, the department’s public outreach program manager, told the Guardian. "But we need to do more. We are currently at 1990 levels. At this point we’ve made the U-turn and are lined up to reach 7 percent [below] our 1990 levels, which would put us up to pace with the Kyoto Protocol’s goals, but we just need to ramp it up to reach our 20 percent."

City government can do a lot to control emissions. There are already regulations in place regarding the city’s vehicle fleets and setting green standards for municipal buildings. Mayor Gavin Newsom’s Green Building Task Force on July 11 announced a proposal to create incentives for private-sector buildings to adopt green building standards over the next five years.

Other city efforts include 2001’s Proposition B, which expanded solar power possibilities, and Community Choice Aggregation, which recently received preliminary approval from the Board of Supervisors; the latter program will allow the city to develop renewable energy projects on behalf of its citizens. But when it comes to making San Francisco a truly green city, much of the dirty work will fall to private citizens.

Nonmunicipal sources are responsible for 90 percent of San Francisco’s emissions, with a whopping 50 percent coming from private transportation, mostly cars. While the Climate Action Plan and the Civil Grand Jury report both give suggestions on how government agencies can motivate the public to reduce emissions, these suggestions can also be read as a map for how we can help ourselves. Simple changes in transportation habits — more walking, bicycling, and public transit — could cut 963,000 tons of greenhouse gases per year. And those who must use cars could carpool more often and switch to more-efficient vehicles.

The Climate Action Plan also indicates we can reduce emissions by an estimated 328,000 tons by changing how we live at home, including better energy efficiency and waste management.

Westlund told us, "Twenty percent is not just a municipal target, it’s citywide. Residences can help. Businesses can help. We’re all in this together. Getting the message out is half of it."*

The grand jury report is available at www.sfgov.org/site/courts_page.asp?id=3680#reports.

Comments, ideas, and submissions for Green City, the Guardian‘s weekly environmental column, can be sent to news@sfbg.com.

At the crossroads

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July 17, 2007

1

Part three in a Guardian series

› gwschulz@sfbg.com

San Francisco Ethics Commission executive director John St. Croix has admitted that his office knew in 2005 about the alleged laundering of public money into a San Francisco City College bond election campaign — well before the story broke in newspapers in April — but did nothing to investigate.

That startling revelation knits together two concurrent series that the Guardian has been running for the past two weeks: one on City College’s deceptive and unaccountable use of bond money and another on the uneasiness local watchdogs feel about the Ethics Commission’s ability and willingness to mete out balanced punishment to elections-law violators.

When news reports surfaced in April that City College allegedly had diverted up to $30,000 in public money to a bond election campaign committee, Chancellor Phil Day moved quickly to limit the fallout. So did independently elected trustee Rodel Rodis, who along with six other board members is responsible for controlling and managing the San Francisco Community College District.

During meetings organized that month to address the matter, Day came clean and blamed everything on a "relatively new" assistant vice chancellor. At least two trustees, one of whom had been recently elected, still wanted to know more about why it was allowed to happen. Rodis, on the other hand, complained that hiring an independent investigator at a cost of $75,000 to look into the matter was too expensive and framed the stories — written by San Francisco Chronicle investigate reporter Lance Williams — as an unfair attack on the college.

"Let’s be mindful that we’re still in a budget crisis and we still need to watch taxpayer money," Rodis said at one of the meetings.

Unlike Rodis, District Attorney Kamala Harris didn’t treat the allegations as insignificant and is now reportedly probing possible criminal violations in connection with the scandal. The investigation, Williams wrote recently, includes contributions made to the committee by contractors that did recent business with the school.

But where was the Ethics Commission during all of this? The controversy raises serious questions about why the agency never took any action against City College when, as its mission statement declares, its responsibility is to "actively enforce all ethics laws and rules, including campaign finance and open government laws."

Late in the commission’s July 9 meeting, St. Croix made the stunning admission that although his office knew about the allegations surrounding City College’s dubious handling of public funds all the way back in 2005, for some inexplicable reason it did nothing.

Staff shortages and poor financing have plagued the Ethics Commission since voters created it in 1993. Although the number of staffers has doubled during his three-year tenure, St. Croix nonetheless told the Guardian recently that his agency remains dependent on the public to help expose political candidates and campaign committees that break the law.

"We still rely on people and the city being watchdogs," St. Croix told us. "We’re supposed to be the eyes and ears for a lot of things, but we’re still extremely limited."

In this case, however, St. Croix’s office was well aware of allegations that City College bureaucrats had misappropriated public funds. The school’s Board of Trustees, along with Day’s office, created the Committee to Support Our City College in 2005 to convince voters to give the school $246.3 million in bond money to continue with a slate of capital works projects that began in 1997 and now are costing hundreds of millions of dollars more than anticipated.

The owner of a motorcycle training school claimed in a December 2005 letter to the Ethics Commission that he was told by the college to make a rent check for the regular use of school property payable to the committee instead of the school itself. Amazingly, the Ethics Commission pondered contacting the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission to disclose the allegations, which is the least it should have done, but never actually did so, as St. Croix has acknowledged only now.

"I take responsibility for that," St. Croix told us. "I don’t know who actually dropped the ball. But at the time we had less staff and there were a lot of things we were supposed to do and we weren’t doing."

Nor did the Ethics Commission contact the college to demand that it amend its campaign filings from that year to reflect the true source of that $10,000 payment and acknowledge itself rather than the motorcycle training school as a major contributor to the bond committee. St. Croix figured that could happen at the conclusion of the FPPC’s inquiry. Of course, the FPPC didn’t know about the allegations, at least not until the Ethics Commission finally contacted it in May, following the Chronicle‘s front-page stories.

The Ethics Commission’s lax approach to City College oversight also extends to trustees like Rodis, who has his own apparent campaign finance violations from his 2004 reelection campaign. That year, records show, his campaign failed to turn in three key election filings required to ensure that before heading to the ballot box, voters have a chance to see where candidates are getting their campaign money from. The commission sent his campaign several warning letters; just one of the filings finally arrived nine months later.

The trustee pointed to a campaign staffer when we contacted him regarding the tardy campaign statements. "We had someone working on the campaign who was supposed to do that," Rodis told us. "He indicated to us that everything was in order. We relied on him. We paid him. And then we found out later that he didn’t do what he was supposed to do…. It was one of those things that happen when you trust people."

The filing Rodis did manage to turn in shows that of the more than $44,000 he raised for his reelection effort that year, at least $1,700 had no identified donors, and other donations were marred by confusing data entry errors. An internal Ethics memo obtained by the Guardian that discusses the Rodis reelection campaign committee concludes that its poor reporting "appears to be a matter of willfulness and disregard for the law" and what belated filings do exist "present significant data problems." According to the memo, "Based on the record, significant questions remain regarding the true facts of the committee’s financing."

Rodis in 2004 won reelection to the board for the fourth time since he first became a trustee in 1991. According to our conservative estimates based only on the late filings, he could be liable for thousands of dollars in fines. *

Billboard sleaze

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July 17, 2007

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EDITORIAL Clear Channel is one of the biggest media companies in the world, with more than 1,100 radio stations, more than 40 TV stations, and a massive outdoor advertising network with billboards in more than 20 countries. This conglomerate, much despised for undermining independent broadcasting in this country, does business with a lot of government agencies, including the city and county of San Francisco. Clear Channel maintains the city’s bus shelters and runs the city’s pedestal-mounted newsrack program, and sells ads on the shelters and the backs of news racks.

So when Clear Channel does a favor for a local politician, it ought to raise eyebrows immediately.

That’s what’s happened with Sen. Carole Migden. Just as she’s fighting to defend local campaign reform laws (see "Gutting Campaign Reform," this page) Migden has been the recipient of tends of thousands of dollars’ worth of free billboard ads from Clear Channel. The ads were facilitated by local company executive Michael Colbruno, a former Migden aide who remains close to the senator.

We’ve been concerned about the billboards since they went up. At first, as we reported on www.sfbg.com, Colbruno refused to say who had paid for the boards, insisting they were independent issue-advocacy ads supporting Migden’s stances on the war in Iraq and rebuilding the state’s infrastructure. Migden came clean a few days later and told us that Clear Channel had, in fact, provided the ad space free; she added that her campaign had paid for the printing, although her campaign manager, Richie Ross, now denies that.

At the very least it’s awfully close to a legal issue: donors who sponsor issue-advocacy ads that promote individual candidates can’t coordinate those efforts with the candidate’s campaign. Otherwise the expenditure isn’t independent at all and ought to be reported as a campaign contribution.

Of course Clear Channel can’t contribute tens of thousands of dollars to Migden; the maximum contribution under state law is $3,600, and the company has already given her $2,500. "Therefore, presuming that the value of several billboards throughout San Francisco exceeds $1,000 dollars, Clear Channel has made a contribution to Carole Migden in excess of legal limits," states a July 16 memo from Reed and Davidson, a Los Angeles law firm hired by Migden’s primary opponent, Assemblymember Mark Leno. (Read the entire memo at .

Migden may not be the only one involved in this Clear Channel scam; the company regularly sells or donates ads to local political candidates, and it’s entirely possible that others have gotten either discounts or partial gifts from the conglomerate.

For starters we’d prefer that Migden, and everyone else who’s running as a progressive in this town, eschew contributions from Clear Channel. But if such a powerful local operator is handing out favors, the details need to be made public, fully and immediately.

What was the actual value of what the company gave Migden? How closely was the deal coordinated with her campaign? What other local candidates have gotten free or cut-rate ads from this outfit?

The San Francisco Ethics Commission and the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission ought to investigate — and if it turns out that what Migden has done is legal, then the State Legislature needs to figure out a way to ban it. Meanwhile, the San Francisco supervisors, who are about to approve a new bus shelter contract, should demand that Clear Channel first release a full list of its billboard beneficiaries. *

No suprise, but still noteworthy

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July 11, 2007

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By Tim Redmond

I’m impressed that Dr. Richard Carmona actually came out and said what everyone in Wsshington knew was going on — that even doctors couldn’t provide accurate and true information to the pubilc if it interfered with the Bush Administration’s political agenda. The details are pretty stunning:

Carmona said he also ran afoul of politics on teen pregnancy prevention. Although the administration emphasizes abstinence from sexual relations, Carmona said he believed a variety of approaches was needed, including contraception for teens who are sexually active.

The administration “did not want to hear the science … but wanted to preach abstinence, which I felt was scientifically incorrect,” Carmona testified.

On the issue of stem cell research, Carmona said he found much of the discussion within the government “devoid of science.”

When will it end?

“Transformers” without irony

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July 10, 2007

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› annalee@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION There is absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying truck commercials. Enjoying truck commercials can even be a politically innocent act — it does not signify that you secretly lust after fossil fuels. Plus, there’s a payoff to admitting that such pleasures can be had guilt free: you can enjoy watching Michael Bay’s latest sci-fi actionfest, Transformers, on its own terms. If you’re one of the people who helped the flick earn more than $100 million during its opening week, you may not need my help. For those still fighting the urge to cheer for shiny trucks, I offer a few arguments to persuade you.

The first, most obvious case in favor of this movie is that it just looks neat. There are giant robots that turn into, among other things, SUVs, tanks, fighter planes, scorpion things, race cars, and yes, trucks with flames painted on the sides. It shouldn’t be too surprising that computer-generated imagery is the perfect tool for demonstrating how cars morph into robots. Haven’t you always wished that one day your boring old Prius would twist itself into a gigantic alien robot from the planet Cybertron?

Ah, Cybertron. This brings me to my next argument, which is that Transformers is one of those rare action movies about incredibly silly things that take those silly things dead seriously. No doubt you are as heartily sick of knee-jerk irony as the next chump who shelled out cash to see Ghostrider (OK, so I liked Ghostrider, but you know what I mean). There are no great actors in Transformers showing us how distanced they are from the trashy source material by "acting" à la Nicolas Cage. In Transformers, characters discussing the robots refer to them, with straight faces, as Optimus Prime and Megatron. The good guys are Autobots and the bad guys are Deceptacons. They are all trying to find a giant, unexplained box called the All Spark. Nobody raises an eyebrow at the total goofiness of this scenario. The film’s straightforwardness is downright refreshing.

Like other kid-friendly action films, Transformers is low on bloodshed and high on "Wow, that’s cool!" Even the film’s worst bad guy, a government secret agent played with snarky relish by John Turturro, never kills anybody. Instead of murderous mayhem, the movie offers us rampaging teenage hormones, packing the dialogue with cute but groanworthy double entendres about asses and dicks and humping. Not since E.T. has a movie aimed at tweens been this honest about how kids really talk: there’s a lot of creative cursing, and main character Sam (Shia LaBeouf) spends the entire flick trying to snog his hot pal Mikaela (Megan Fox). Thank you, Michael Bay, for removing rampant death from the action-movie genre and replacing it with dumb masturbation jokes.

What truly surprised me about the movie was that Bay did a fairly good job updating the concept for the 2000s. The film’s plot hinges on something Sam is selling on eBay, and there are a few good jokes about how the Autobots learned English on the Web (surprisingly, this does not mean that they yell "LOL" or "OMG" all the time). I was deeply amused when the evil Deceptacons hunt Sam down via his eBay listing, ambush him, then grab him in their giant metal fists so they can scream in his face, "Are you user LadiesMan217?"

Another way Bay updates the Transformers premise is by connecting the Deceptacons with the Middle East. The film has this sort of murky, inexplicable opening sequence that takes place in what we’re told is "Qatar, Middle East," where good US soldiers encounter mean, scorpion-shaped Deceptacons who smash the crap out of them. The Middle Eastern ‘bots look bizarrely like improvised explosive devices come to life; made of scrap metal and old tires, they hide in the sand and strike at unwary troops who are trying to be nice to the native folks. This is possibly the only part of Transformers in which Bay attempts to grasp feebly at political relevance and make something other than a zoomy truck commercial. Of course, he fails miserably. If you want to enjoy this flick without guilt, you will have to ignore the whole Middle East issue. Of course, one could say the same thing about living in the United States. Maybe Bay has succeeded in pulling off some social commentary after all: welcome to the United States — ignore the Middle East stuff, but stay for the masturbation jokes and cool special effects. *

Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd whose battle cry is "All hail Megatron!"

Problems with Peskin’s Muni plan

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July 10, 2007

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OPINION Last week the Board of Supervisors received a proposed charter amendment that takes a misguided stab at the much-needed reform of the Municipal Transit Agency, which oversees Muni. In undertaking reforms we all agree are needed for the MTA to better serve our city, the supervisors should consider the Hippocratic oath required of doctors: “First, do no harm.”

Our union, Service Employees International Union Local 1021, which represents almost a thousand MTA workers, has enormous respect for the bill’s sponsor, board president Aaron Peskin. We know that Peskin strongly supports workers’ rights and has always stood for openness, transparency, and accountability in government. This initiative, however, undermines everything that he and his board colleagues stand for, and we urge progressives to oppose it.

Most important, the initiative is profoundly undemocratic and would transfer oversight from an elected body to an appointed one. An MTA that no longer had to answer to our elected representatives would be a less accountable and less transparent board.

Downgrading elected oversight into appointive power resting in the hands of one person — the mayor — is not reform but a political power grab. Commissioners would be well aware that they might not be reappointed if they voted too independently of the mayor’s preferences.

The initiative would present additional risks for the abuse of power in local government by allowing MTA to approve its own contracts. This is a dangerous conflict of interest that would create more opportunities for problems, not reform.

The amendment furthermore would undermine workplace protections by increasing the number of nonunion workers from the current 1.5 percent to a whopping 10 percent. Working people would serve at the pleasure of an unelected board and lose their right to collective bargaining. Seven years ago many members of the Board of Supervisors and progressives strongly opposed a nonunion special assistant position in Mayor Willie Brown’s office. The board converted this position to a civil service job because of the perception of patronage and corruption. The current charter amendment exhumes that political cadaver while hiding behind the fig leaf of flexibility — which in this case is a code word for the power to fire people without just cause or due process, or for political expediency.

On one point we agree with this charter amendment: it’s true that the MTA needs more money to serve our residents the way it should, and this amendment would take $26 million from the General Fund and transfer it to the MTA budget. But we do not believe we should be raiding the General Fund without carefully considering the possible impact.

This is a charter amendment and cannot be easily undone. If it turns out to be a disaster, as we believe it will, San Francisco will find itself in a very dire situation without a timely remedy.

SEIU Local 1021 strongly opposes this charter amendment unless it undergoes major revisions. Sup. Jake McGoldrick’s competing initiative, by contrast, offers us a path that is much more democratic, promotes accountability and transparency in government, and protects the rights of working families. We agree that reform is needed, but if passed, Peskin’s initiative will create many more problems than it purports to solve. *

Damita Davis-Howard and Robert Haaland

Damita Davis-Howard is president of SEIU Local 1021; Robert Haaland is San Francisco political coordinator for the union.

Whose Ethics?

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July 10, 2007

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Part two in a Guardian series The read part one, click here.

› news@sfbg.com

The San Francisco Ethics Commission is at an important crossroads, facing decisions that could have a profound impact on the city’s political culture: should every violation be treated equally or should this agency focus on the most flagrant efforts to corrupt the political system?

The traditionally anemic agency that regulates campaign spending is just now starting to get the staff and resources it needs to fulfill its mandate. But its aggressive investigation of grassroots treasurer Carolyn Knee (see “The Ethics of Ethics,” 7/4/07) — which concluded July 9 with her being fined just $267 — is raising questions about its focus and mission.

“For the first time in our history, we’re having growing pains,” Ethics Commission executive director John St. Croix told the Guardian, noting that the agency’s 16 staffers (slated to increase to 19 next year) are double what he started with three years ago.

Reformers like Joe Lynn — a former Ethics staffer and later a commissioner — say the commission should do more to help small, all-volunteer campaigns negotiate the Byzantine campaign finance rules, be more forgiving when such campaigns make mistakes, and focus on more significant violations by campaigns that seek to deceive voters and swing elections.

“The traditional thinking is there’s no exception to the law, and that’s been my traditional thinking too,” Lynn said. “But it doesn’t cut the mustard when you see a Carolyn Knee say, ‘I’m not going to do that again.'<\!s>”

At Knee’s June 11 hearing, Doug Comstock — who often does political consulting for small organizations — urged commissioners to reevaluate their mission. “Why are you here?” he asked them. “You’re not here to pick on the little guys.”

Yet St. Croix told us, “That’s not really the way the law is written. Everybody is supposed to be treated the same…. The notion that the Ethics Commission was only created to nail the big guns is not correct.”

That said, St. Croix agrees that regulators should be tougher on willful violators and those who have lots of experience and familiarity with the rules they’re breaking. And he said they do that. But it’s the grassroots campaigns that tend to have the most violations.

“It’s frustrating because the people who make the most mistakes are the ones with the least experience,” St. Croix said, noting that the commission can’t simply ignore violations.

A MATTER OF PRIORITIES

But critics of the commission say the problem is one of priorities. Even if there were problems with Knee’s campaign, there was no reason the commission should have launched such an in-depth and expensive investigation four years after the fact. That decision was recently criticized in a resolution approved by the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee, which argued that the approach discourages citizens from getting politically involved.

“[The] San Francisco Ethics Commission spends an inordinate amount of its meager resources in pursuing petty violations allegedly committed by grassroots campaigns; this disproportionate enforcement against grassroots campaigns is directly contrary to the goal of the Campaign Finance Reform Ordinance,” one “whereas” from the resolution read.

The resolution’s principal sponsor, Robert Haaland, is intimately familiar with the problem. When he ran for supervisor in District 5 two years ago, his treasurer had a doctorate from Stanford and still struggled to understand and comply with the law. But they made a good-faith effort, he said, and shouldn’t be targeted by Ethics.

“It’s sort of like the IRS going after the little guy,” Haaland told us. “The commissioners need to set the direction of the commission for where they’re spending their time and resources.”

Eileen Hansen is perhaps the only member of the five-person commission to really embrace the idea that its mission is to help citizen activists comply with the law and to go after well-funded professionals who seek to skirt it. To do otherwise is to harm San Francisco’s unique grassroots political system.

“It’s true, the law is the law,” Hansen told us. “But I do think the Ethics Commission needs to grapple with how to apply the law in a fair manner.”

Is it fair to apply the same standard to Knee and to the treasurer of the campaign on the other side of the public power measure she was pushing, veteran campaign attorney Jim Sutton, whose failure to report late contributions from Pacific Gas and Electric Co. later triggered a $240,000 fine by Ethics and the California Fair Political Practices Commission, while those contributions might have tipped the outcome of the election?

Sutton gets hired by most of the big-money campaigns in town, such as Mayor Gavin Newsom’s, and has a history of skirting the law, including a recent case of allegedly laundered public funds at City College; coordination of deceptive independent expenditures against Supervisors Chris Daly, Gerardo Sandoval, and Jake McGoldrick; District Attorney Kamala Harris’s violation of her spending-cap pledge in 2003; and an apparent attempt to launder inaugural-committee funds to pay Newsom’s outstanding campaign debts (see “Newsom’s Funny Money,” 2/11/04). Yet the practice of the commission is to ignore that history and treat Sutton, who did not return calls seeking comment, the same as everyone else.

“We all admire and want grassroots organizations to do what they need to do,” Commissioner Emi Gusukuma said. But, she said, “the laws are there for a reason…. We’re supposed to enforce and interpret the law. The law should only apply to big money? The law has to apply to everybody. We can’t pick or choose.”

David Looman, a campaign consultant and treasurer involved in dozens of past elections, put it wryly. “Some people talk as though the grassroots campaigns shouldn’t have to obey the law,” he said of some activists he’s worked for who consider themselves the good guys. He said he reminds them, “This is the act that you helped pass, and now you gotta abide by it.”

“But there ought to be some kind of business sense here. Most regulatory agencies have offenses which they regard as de minimis,” Looman said, meaning “you get a nasty letter that says, ‘Don’t make a habit of it,’ and when you do make a habit of it, stricter penalties come into play.”

His experience with the commission has led him to believe there’s no sense of priorities when it comes to what Ethics pursues. Many of the small campaign committees Looman represents have been audited to what he feels is a ridiculous extent.

In one case, he told us, he took over the management of the Bernal Heights Democratic Club and discovered that it hadn’t been filing certain documents for years. He ended up paying $10,000 out of his own pocket to cover Ethics fines just because his name was now on the dotted line.

“Yes, the Bernal Heights Democratic Club was in complete violation of the law. They deserved to pay a penalty, but it was so far out of proportion. It was two times our yearly income. I think that’s inappropriate,” Looman told us.

THE GRASSROOTS CULTURE

Some say the whole idea of local campaign reform is to nurture an important and unique aspect of San Francisco: its vibrant and diverse grassroots political culture. “For every two committees in LA, there are three in San Francisco,” Lynn said, adding that it used to be a more extreme, two-to-one ratio. Larger cities often have more professionals involved, he said. “San Francisco has a unique political culture, very heavy on the grass roots.”

Yet the Ethics Commission doesn’t see protection of the little person as part of its mission.

“The fundamental problem with Ethics is it is not staffed by people who have been advocates for good government reforms,” Lynn said. “The Ethics Commission needs to come to grips with the fact that they’re tampering with the grassroots political culture of San Francisco.”

Lynn would like the commission to direct some resources toward hiring assistants to staff the office during the two or three weeks prior to Election Day, a crew that would help prevent violations and inoculate campaigns against being fined for errors that do occur.

“If you looked at the money that the Ethics Commission is spending going after citizen filers and reallocated it toward a staff of clerks, the cost to the city would be minimal,” Lynn said, estimating it at about $100,000.

Calling it the “H&R Block Unit,” Lynn thinks a staff of 10 to 15 clerks could be trained to assist small campaigns, individuals, and first-time filers who would come in and be walked through the complex paperwork.

St. Croix said such services are available now to inexperienced treasurers and those who ask for help — although not nearly as extensive as Lynn envisions — and he’d like to expand them in the future. But he said there are legal and practical complications to giving campaigns formal advice in letters that they might later use in their defense.

“I think it’s a lofty goal to educate people,” commission chair Susan Harriman told us. “We have staff with the sole job to keep people educated.” She said she’s attended meetings at which outreach occurred between the commission and community, but only as an observer. She thinks it’s the job of the staff to take an active community role, although St. Croix said that’s a resource issue.

Commissioner Emi Gusukuma thinks the appointed commissioners should be more involved. “I would be happy to be part of that team,” she said of joining any Ethics community outreach. “Going to clubs — I would definitely be willing to do that.” She noted that she and her fellow commissioners are all very busy, but she still thinks the educational aspect of their role is important.

Hansen also noted that a commission filled with relatively new appointees needs to hear more about the real-world impacts of its policies. “The public can educate the commissioners, and right now the commissioners are not educated on these issues,” Hansen said.

She and other reformers would like to see St. Croix facilitate a discussion of what the commission’s enforcement history has been and where the focus should be going forward.

“The perception is all we ever do is go after the small guys, but I don’t know if that’s really true,” Gusukuma said. She’s pushing staff to do more research into past enforcement actions “so we can tell the staff … not who to prosecute but what kinds of cases are important. We haven’t been able to get that analysis yet.”

Lynn said another key component in the education campaign would be to televise Ethics Commission hearings, which would help people become more engaged with the agency’s work. Commissioners Hansen and Gusukuma agreed, endorsing the proposal in this year’s budget cycle and winning the support of Sup. Chris Daly before he was ousted as chair of the Budget and Finance Committee, after which the expenditure (estimated at about $30,000 per year) was removed from the budget.

Harriman is opposed to televising hearings and thinks the money should be spent elsewhere. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. I think interested people who are interested in items on the agenda will appear. I think it’s a waste of city funds to televise something.”

Lynn said that attitude is the problem.

“The Ethics Commission doesn’t want to be televised, which is the reason to televise them,” he said. “They don’t want it because they’re trained that they are quasi-judicial and you don’t have cameras in courtrooms. Right now Ethics is invisible. The only way it can build a constituency is if it’s visible.”

Bob Planthold, another former commissioner, agreed. “Ethics doesn’t make friends,” he said. “It doesn’t have a constituency of positive advocates, and you need that at City Hall to get money and resources.”<\!s>*

Needed: a campaign against privatization

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July 10, 2007

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EDITORIAL Of all the cities in the United States, San Francisco ought to be most aware of the perils of privatization. Much of the city burned down in 1906 in part because the private Spring Valley Water Co. hadn’t kept up its lines and thus was unable to provide enough water for firefighting. A few years later, in one of the greatest privatization scandals in American history, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. stole what was supposed to be the city’s publicly owned electricity, costing the local coffers untold hundreds of millions over the past 80 years.

This is a city that votes 80 percent Democratic and has always opposed the Ronald Reagan–George H.W. Bush–George W. Bush agenda. A large part of the local economy depends on public employment (the city, the state, the federal government, and the University of California are by far the largest employers in town, dwarfing any of the biggest private-sector companies).

And yet Mayor Gavin Newsom, who likes to say he’s a progressive, is pushing an astonishing package of privatization measures that would shift public property, resources, and infrastructure into the hands of for-profit businesses. He’s talking about privatizing the golf courses, some city parks, and even Camp Mather. He’s promoting a tidal-energy deal that would give PG&E control of the power generated in a public waterway. He hasn’t lifted a finger to stop the ongoing PG&E–Raker Act scandal. And he’s determined to hand over a key part of the city’s future infrastructure to Google and EarthLink (see Editor’s Notes, p. 1).

This nonsense has to stop.

It’s hard to fight privatization battle by battle. Every single effort is a tough campaign in itself; the companies that want to make money off San Francisco’s public assets typically have plenty of cash to throw around. They’re slick and sophisticated, hire good lobbyists, and generally get excellent press from the local dailies. And it works: even board president Aaron Peskin, who generally knows better, is now talking about accepting the private wi-fi deal.

So what this city needs is a unified, organized campaign against privatization.

When Reagan arrived in the White House in 1981, the single biggest item on the agenda of his political backers was an attack on the public sector. The way the right-wingers saw it, government took money from the rich and gave it to the less well-off. Government regulated business activity, costing major corporations a lot of money. Government — "the beast," they called it — had to be beaten back, demonized, and starved.

So the Reaganites used their top-rate public relations machine to make the public sector appear riddled with waste and fraud. They cut taxes, ran up record (for the time) deficits, and forced Congress to eliminate a lot of social programs. More and more of what the government once did was turned over to the private sector — the way the radical right liked it.

That political agenda still rules Washington, D.C., where even a fair amount of the war in Iraq has been privatized, turned over to contractors who are making huge profits while Iraqi and American kids die.

The attack on government has worked so well that even a very modest plan by Bill Clinton to create a national health care system was killed by the insurance industry.

But privatization doesn’t work. Private-sector companies and even nonprofits don’t have to comply with open-records laws and can spend money (including taxpayers’) with only limited accountability. Most private companies are about making money first and serving the public second; that means when private operators take over public services, the prices go up, worker pay goes down (and unions are often booted out), and the quality of the delivery tanks. Look at the real estate development nightmare that has become the privatized Presidio. Look at the disgrace and disaster that the privatized Edison School brought to the San Francisco Unified School District. Look at the glitzy café and the pricey parking lot that have replaced good animal care at the privatized San Francisco Zoo. Look at what has happened around the world when Bechtel Corp. has taken over public water systems — rates have gone up so high that some people can’t afford this basic life necessity.

Look what’s happened to the American health system. Look what’s happened in Iraq.

Government isn’t perfect, and the public sector has lot of management, efficiency, and accountability issues. But at least the public has some hope of correcting those problems. San Francisco ought to be a place where a major movement to take back the public sector is born and thrives.

Almost everyone in town ought to have an interest. Labor, obviously, opposes privatization. So should neighborhood advocates (who care about public parks and open space), environmentalists (because the entire notion of environmentalism depends on a healthy public sector), progressive community groups, and politicians. Even more conservative groups like the cops and firefighters ought to see the need to prevent their jobs from being outsourced to a private vendor.

A campaign against privatization could link wi-fi, PG&E, tidal power, and the golf courses. The campaign could force anyone running for office to address a no-privatization pledge. It could appear any time one of these rotten schemes pops up in town — and send a message that San Francisco doesn’t accept the economic agenda of the radical right.

Who’s going to call the first meeting? 2

Editor’s Notes

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July 10, 2007

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

I don’t think anyone except Gavin Newsom’s inner circle and the folks who run Google and EarthLink really likes the mayor’s wi-fi contract, but it now appears at least possible that the Board of Supervisors will approve some version of it.

Board president Aaron Peskin wants the service improved a bit and is demanding some written guarantees that it will actually work the way it’s supposed to. Some opponents of the deal are arguing that it ought to be treated as a franchise, not a simple contract, and they want more legal hurdles. The serious techies say it’s the wrong technology anyway and will be outmoded and worthless in just a few years.

But there’s something bigger going on here.

A high-speed broadband system for San Francisco isn’t a hot dog stand and boat-rental shop in Golden Gate Park. It isn’t a restaurant lease on port property. It isn’t the naming rights for Candlestick Park or a permit to operate a taxicab or deliver cable TV.

Those are contracts and franchises. This is a piece of municipal infrastructure; it’s more like the roads that cars and Muni buses use to carry people around town or the pipes that bring water to our houses or the public schools that educate our kids or the emergency communications system that takes the call when we dial 911.

This is part of the city’s future, part of its economic development, part of how its citizens will participate in the political debate, part of how we will all learn and think and talk to each other. This is the new public square, the new commons.

Why in the world would we want to give it to a private company?

I don’t care if EarthLink and Google are offering 300 kilobauds per second of download time or 500 or 1,000. I don’t care if they promise to give free laptops to anyone who can stand on their head and shout "search engine." I don’t care if they promise to paint every light pole in the city green. They are private outfits set up to make a profit for investors. They have no business owning what will soon be the city’s primary communication system.

San Francisco has kept private operators from controlling its drinking water. This water is considered a basic part of life, and it’s available at low cost: San Franciscans pay less than one one-thousandth the price of bottled water for the stuff that comes out of the tap, and it’s almost certainly better. Same with roads and bridges, police and fire protection, and basic education (although that’s still a struggle).

I don’t get why broadband is any different.

I don’t think this would ever have been an issue 50 years ago. The generation that survived the Depression (with massive public-sector investment and ownership) and World War II (with huge excess-profits taxes on big corporations) and built things like the interstate highway system and the University of California didn’t see government as evil and inherently dysfunctional. The public paid to invest in public services.

It was Ronald Reagan and his ilk who took a generation disillusioned by Vietnam and Watergate and turned it against the public sector (see "Needed: A Campaign Against Privatization," page 5). Now we’ve even got a privatized war (and look how well that’s going).

The supervisors should get beyond the wi-fi deal’s little details and think about what it really means. This is San Francisco. We know better.<\!s>*

The City College loophole

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July 10, 2007

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EDITORIAL The 2000 law that made it easier for schools and college districts to sell bonds for capital improvements requires every agency raising money this way to create a citizens’ oversight committee to monitor spending. It also mandates regular audits.

But it’s a bit unclear what the audit requirement actually means — and as G.W. Schulz reports on page 15, that’s allowed some outfits, including San Francisco’s Community College District, to get away with spending hundreds of millions of dollars without proper accountability.

Some lawyers argue that school districts need only undergo perfunctory financial audits. Others say the law mandates detailed performance audits. This sounds like a minor point, but it’s not: financial audits only look at what was spent. Performance audits look at how and why — and whether the money was spent in accordance with what the voters were promised.

The City College administration is only now, reluctantly, agreeing to a performance audit, something that should have been done five years ago. The school’s lawyers say bond money can be freely shuffled from project to project, at any time, and there’s no need for regular performance audits.

There’s a simple way to clear this up: Attorney General Jerry Brown needs to issue an opinion on the intent of the law. And if he won’t do that or comes down on the side of unaccountable government, then the state Legislature needs to pass a bill mandating performance audits and requiring that bond proceeds actually go where the voters were told they would.

Wolf in candidate’s clothing

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July 5, 2007

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By Steven T. Jones
Josh Wolf — the San Francisco blogger and videographer who spent months in prison for refusing to turn over to the cops raw footage of a protest where an officer was injured — has announced his candidacy for mayor, promising tor bring a host of fresh, relevant issues in the race. He’s calling for the city to sever many of its ties to the federal government, implement a community-based policing plan, bring more transparency into government (which he’ll start on the campaign by wearing a mounted streaming video camera, ala Justin.tv), making Muni free and bicycle path ubiquitous, facilitating more parties in the neighborhoods, and creating a public works program to give jobs to the poor. It’s a pretty bold and progressive agenda that will ideally spark good discussions. Maybe Newsom will even rip off a few of Wolf’s idea, as he is wont to do. But the real value of this candidacy seems to be to highlight the need for police reform and accountability, something that doesn’t seem to interest Newsom in the least.

Web Site of the Week

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July 3, 2007

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www.ushistory.org/declaration

"Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." Once upon a time, on a July 4 long ago, a group of American malcontents and revolutionaries set a high standard for what a government must safeguard. At a moment when we seem to have forgotten those ideals, it’s a fine time to peruse this comprehensive Web site.

The ethics of Ethics

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July 3, 2007

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Part one in a Guardian series

› amanda@sfbg.com

Back in 2002, Carolyn Knee did what many other citizens of San Francisco were doing — she volunteered her time and energy campaigning for a ballot measure she hoped would pass.

Five years later the retiree living on a fixed income has found herself threatened with $26,700 in fines levied by the Ethics Commission enforcement staff, who turned up several alleged violations of campaign finance laws during a random audit of San Franciscans for Affordable Clean Energy, the committee for which Knee was a volunteer treasurer.

At a June 11 probable cause hearing before the Ethics Commission, investigator Richard Mo itemized several infractions, including failure to report $19,761 in contributions on time, in addition to another $9,500 that came in right before the election but wasn’t reported until afterward; failing to notify two organizations that they were major donors who needed to file as such (one of which was the Guardian); not providing all the required information about two donors; and disparities between bank account statements and campaign finance reports.

Mo alleged Knee had "cooked the books," saying she "takes no responsibility" and "claims she was ignorant of the law, passes the blame on to her personal accountant. She cites her inexperience as a treasurer when in fact she served as treasurer for one prior committee."

It sounds like a litany of campaign crime, with Knee as the linchpin, but she maintains that none of it was intentional and that many of the reporting mistakes were made by her accountant, Renita Lloyd-Smith of the Simon Group, a company she’d hired to handle the complicated ledger of campaign finance reports. "Perhaps I was wrong in placing confidence in someone I had to hire because I didn’t know the rules," Knee told the Ethics Commission. "It was all in good faith. It was all done in love of my city. But I’ll never do it again."

Those words have a dual meaning: Knee hopes never to make another financial mistake, and she’ll never again take on the risk of steering the financial helm of a grassroots campaign.

Ethics Commission hearings such as this are usually held in closed session, but this one was opened at Knee’s insistence because she suspected she’s not the only one who’s had difficulties handling campaign finance laws or negotiating fair settlements. It was the first publicly aired probable cause hearing in the commission’s 13-year history, and both commissioners and attendees walked away with questions after issues of perceived bias and a lack of timeliness in the investigation were raised, as well as the possibility that the fines being threatened are inflated and arbitrary.

"There’s only one department in the city and county of San Francisco with no oversight — Ethics," Joe Lynn told the Guardian. Lynn is a former Ethics commissioner and staffer who still watchdogs the agency and has been openly critical of the laxness he perceives there.

His question is one of many about the commission: How does the staff conduct its investigations? Should smaller campaigns staffed with volunteers be handled differently than larger, more professionally managed operations? If resources are tight, should Ethics be more focused on going after the big guys? If the commission had more resources, would the public benefit from both a greater understanding of campaign laws and a more open, honest, and just government?

SFACE raised a little more than $100,000 during the 2002 election season (including about $29,000 from the Guardian and editor and publisher Bruce B. Brugmann), but the measure it supported — Proposition D, which would have allowed the city to set up its own public power system and break ties with Pacific Gas and Electric Co. — failed.

PG&E spent more than $2 million defeating Prop. D, $800,000 of it in the final days of the race, which campaign attorney James Sutton, the treasurer of the utility’s front group, San Franciscans Against the Blank Check, didn’t report until nearly a month after election day, a violation of campaign finance laws. That act likely scored SFACE’s opponents the win.

The Ethics Commission staff launched an investigation, and in 2004, Sutton’s old law firm was fined $100,000 — the largest amount ever levied by the city for breaking election laws. The state Fair Political Practices Commission also slapped Sutton with $140,000 in fines for vioutf8g the Political Reform Act (see "Repeat Offender," 10/27/04).

At Knee’s recent hearing, Lynn, who was once a finance officer for the Ethics Commission, pointed out she was being fined 14 times what Sutton was fined, and if the same formula had been applied, his fine would have been nearly $1.5 million. "You can’t change the standards arbitrarily," Lynn cautioned the five commissioners. "You need to establish standards for these fines, and you need to keep them across the board."

According to the governing law, which mirrors state mandates at the FPPC, commissioners may levy a fine of up to $5,000 or three times the amount of the violation, whichever is greater. Knee’s fine could be as much as $230,000, and Sutton’s could have been $2.4 million — about the same amount that it costs to run the Ethics office for a year.

The Ethics Commission has never imposed the maximum fine, and executive director John St. Croix doesn’t like to draw comparisons between campaigns. "They’re like snowflakes, very different," he said.

A review of the past three years of enforcement history, posted on the commission’s Web site, bears out this truth and shows fines ranging from a sliver to as much as half of the contested amount. In many cases, fines are dismissed completely for financial hardship reasons. The commission does not abide by a formula, fearing that would handicap it during negotiations, but a number of considerations are weighed, including the experience of the campaign treasurer, the appearance of intent, the overall outcome of the election, and a willingness to make right.

Eric Friedman, spokesperson for New York City’s Campaign Finance Board, considered by many good-government activists to be the national gold standard for ethics groups, said its members use similar tactics for settlements, but "the structure that they follow is precedent. They’ve seen pretty much everything at this point." New York’s board is about five years older than San Francisco’s and audits all campaigns.

According to investigator Mo, the $26,700 in fines pointed at Knee was an "opening salvo" designed to inspire negotiations, which have not been smooth. Knee and her pro bono lawyer, David Waggoner, initially offered $500 to settle. Ethics continued to press for more, but Knee didn’t flinch. "I don’t think I should have to pay anything," she said, pointing out that Oliver Luby, the commission’s current fines officer, recommended a complete waiver of all fines. St. Croix said Luby doesn’t work in the enforcement division and doesn’t know all the facts of the case. The current settlement offer from Ethics is $267, which Knee is willing to accept if the commissioners agree.

It’s unclear how often such hardball is played. "Frankly, we took that settlement because that’s what they were willing to pay," St. Croix said of the Sutton case. So too with a $17,000 fine imposed on Andrew Lee for a variety of campaign finance violations (see "Enforcing Equity," 5/2/07). St. Croix said that was what Lee was willing to pay on the spot.

"I’m not sure we could set a standard," said Commissioner Eileen Hansen, who thought both the Lee and the PG&E fines were too low and said if that’s the bar, it should be raised. She pointed out that the law does provide guidance, but read literally, it could mean exorbitant fines for the same slipup echoed through a whole season of paperwork. "I think it’s a good thing to have the law," she said, but "some should pay the maximum amount and some should pay less."

"I’m happy to pay $250 to get it out of the way," Knee said. "This has taken so much of my time and energy." When asked about her audit experience, she replied, "I would never do this again. It totally discourages grassroots" campaigns.

A legal assistant for 25 years, Knee was not a professional accountant but did have experience doing some bookkeeping. "The IRS is like kindergarten compared to the Ethics Commission," she said.

David Looman, a professional treasurer who’s currently managing about 10 campaign accounts and undergoing three audits by the Ethics Commission, agrees that the potential liability is a huge risk. "Twenty years ago when I started in politics in this town, nobody paid for a treasurer. Nobody had a lawyer. Nowadays you’d be crazy not to do both," he said.

The audits in Looman’s cases involve small grassroots campaigns similar to the one Knee oversaw. "There’s no good business principle for why these people should be audited," Looman said. "The fewer resources you have to employ, the more intelligent your decisions should be for how to employ them. Here they are auditing my $12,000 committee when there are clear miscreants running around."

Part of the Ethics Commission’s charter calls for mandatory audits of all publicly financed campaigns, and St. Croix said the agency does as many random audits as resources allow. Last year, he recalled, more than a dozen were completed. With full financial backing, St. Croix said, he would audit all campaigns. He said, "It’s funny. People know they’re going to get audited and they still try to get away with stuff."<\!s>*

Next: what does the Ethics Commission need to rein in the most frequent and flagrant violators?