OPINION Universal health care. These days, most people want it, but no one wants to pay for it.
But like it or not, we all share in the expense of providing health care. We pay for it directly in our health care premiums or indirectly from higher costs for goods, services, and taxes. According to the activist group Health Care for All, “We spend over $6,000 per person in the US — two to three times the amount spent in other countries that insure everyone and have better health outcomes.” Our health care system, if you can call it that, is currently based on a corporate, for-profit model that increasingly leaves large numbers of people uninsured — and they must rely on taxpayer-subsidized public health programs.
Mayor Gavin Newsom is pushing for universal health care in San Francisco, and there are three ways on the table to fund it.
The Committee on Jobs, Chamber of Commerce, and Golden Gate Restaurant Association champion a plan in which all businesses pay a set fee, whether or not they are providing health care for their employees. Under this plan, large businesses that are not providing health care for their employees will save big money. Small businesses — and every business already doing the right thing — would subsidize the minority of large businesses that don’t provide health care.
In fact, 63 percent of the projected $50 million in revenue raised by this plan would come from businesses with fewer than 20 employees. A full 80 percent would be paid by employers with fewer than 50 employees.
The local papers say Newsom supports a voluntary plan. I assume that means employers can choose whether to pay. I’m surprised anyone would propose this with a straight face. Most employers do provide health care. This legislation is about those that don’t. They haven’t volunteered to pay for their own employees’ health care; why would they pay for a city plan?
Then there’s Sup. Tom Ammiano’s proposal.
Ammiano’s plan includes a minimum spending requirement for health care services for all employers with 20 or more employees. Small businesses with less than 20 employees (the vast majority of registered businesses in San Francisco) don’t have to pay anything. Of the three proposals, Ammiano’s seems the fairest to the majority of employers that already provide health care.
The Committee on Jobs tells us that small businesses will be hurt by this plan. I’m always suspicious when a well-funded organization that exists to lobby for the interests of the largest corporations in San Francisco leads with an argument related to the impact to the small business community.
The SFSOS thinks that any decision on Ammiano’s health care plan will be made “predominantly by people who have never worked in retail business, never managed a staff, nor ever had to make a payroll.”
I operated a temporary employment business in San Francisco for 25 years. Ammiano’s plan levels the playing field for all businesses.
For the record, many of my former colleagues within the small business community provide very generous health care benefits. Employees in small businesses, after all, are like family. Many small business owners think that those who do not provide health care have an unfair competitive advantage.
If we’re going to have universal health care, everyone should pay. SFBG
Barry Hermanson
Barry Hermanson is running for state assembly in District 12 on the Green Party ticket.
Health
Ammiano’s health care plan is fair
Downtown’s deceptions
By Steven T. Jones
The rancorous debate over providing health care to all San Franciscans finally comes to the Board of Supervisors for a vote tomorrow, culminating a truly ugly political spectacle. The business community has aggressively gone after the measure’s sponsor, Tom Ammiano, angrily accusing him of not listening and not caring.
Now, it’s understandable that some small business people on the verge of going under would be upset about having to give health coverage to their employees. It’s a legitimate concern, but it’s also a valid point that Ammiano’s measure makes: providing a living wage and health coverage to employees is a reasonable cost of doing business in this city, and if you can’t afford to do these things, then your business plan doesn’t really pencil out, sorry.
This might have been a good political debate to have, but unfortunately, the issue has been sullied and convoluted by the intentional deceptions of a few downtown groups (notably the Committee on Jobs, Golden Gate Restaurant Association, and the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce), distorted and inaccurate presentations of the issue by the Chronicle and Examiner, and the political cowardice of Mayor Gavin Newsom.
If you’ve been reading the Guardian then you know that the “Newsom plan” was simply one component of the “Ammiano plan,” not the workable stand-alone plan that the dailies and business elites tried to present it as (by itself, Newsom’s plan didn’t pay for itself and it threatened to make the number of uninsured in the city grow by providing the perverse incentive for businesses to drop their employees’ health insurance in favor of cheaper but less comprehensive access to city clinics). Even the dailies finally got around to saying the two plans relied on one another last week after playing up the deceptive competition for weeks.
Here’s the bottom line: Ammiano’s plan got eight co-sponsors because it was an honest attempt to deal with a serious problem using an approach (employer mandates) popular with most citizens (as shown by 69 percent of the people voting for a statewide mandate in Prop. 72). But downtown has done nothing but obstruct and obfuscate the issue. And they’re loud and have tons of money, so they’ve managed to bring out Newsom’s most cowardly instincts and they’ve cowed the media into bearing false witness to what’s going on.
Will they also peel off a supervisor or two who have already pledged their support? I guess we’ll find out tomorrow.
Dist. 8 heats up
By Tim Redmond
Alix Rosenthal, who is challenging Bevan Dufty in District eight, has been getting some (electronic) press; BeyondChron has interview in which, among other things, she talks about keeping San Francisco weird. A sample quote: “I love how freaky it is. I love the freaks, and I include myself in the freaks.”
She also talks about real issues, about affordable housing, condo conversions, the loss of the city’s middle class. And she clearly has Dufty at least a little freaked; Pat Murphy over at the San Francisco Sentinel claims that he’s heard that “progressive big footers” leaned on Dufty to support Ammiano’s health-care legislation, threatening to pour money in to Rosenthal’s campaign if he didn’t.
I’m not sure the “big footers,” whoever they are, had to push much; I think Dufty sees that this won’t be a cakewalk of a re-election, and I think he also wants to run for state Assembly when Mark Leno is termed out, and he can’t really do it without some left credibility. On economic issues, particularly tenant issues, he’s out of touch with his district, and I think we’ll see him move to the left on a few select issues over the next few months to try to present some kind of case to win progressive support.
The “freaky” quote will no doubt get used to make Rosenthal sound flaky, but the truth is, she’s got a good point: When San Francisco gets too expensive, all the people who make it so special have to leave.
The best health care plan
EDITORIAL The health care model that’s been established, largely by default, in the United States is an utter mess. Most working people get their insurance through their employers. That means people who have jobs that don’t provide insurance are out of luck, and people who don’t have jobs are out of luck, and the self-employed are stuck with crazy bills, and small businesses are getting hit harder and harder with rising insurance rates that they can’t afford.
It’s a ridiculous way to handle health care: In most other western democracies, everyone is part of a national health care program, and under the best systems, the government is the single insurer and pays all the bills.
Among other things, that prevents the sort of crisis that San Francisco faces today, where the large numbers of uninsured residents have no choice but to seek care at the overburdened San Francisco General Hospital. That leaves the taxpayers on the hook for more than $100 million a year.
For businesses, particularly small businesses, that scrape and suffer to provide health insurance for their workers, the system is fundamentally unfair: Those companies pay twice, first for their own employees, and then again in higher taxes to cover the costs of the uninsured. Businesses that can well afford health insurance (the Wal-Marts of the world) but don’t pay are forcing others to cover their costs.
In a perfect world, with national health insurance, this wouldn’t be an issue. But it’s almost impossible for a single city to implement a single-payer system — which is why Mayor Gavin Newsom is struggling to present a functional health plan, and why Sup. Tom Ammiano’s employer mandate plan is absolutely necessary.
But the small business advocates who complain about the burden of paying more than $100 a month for each uninsured employee have a point, too — and this entire plan ought to be linked (at least in the long run) to Sup. Aaron Peskin’s proposals to change the city’s business tax.
Newsom’s dramatic announcement last week of a complex plan to cover all residents won overwhelmingly favorable press coverage. But so far, the plan itself is little more than a glorified press release. There are a lot of devilish details, particularly when it comes to funding.
There’s no new money in the mayor’s plan. He argues, correctly, that San Francisco currently spends $104 million on health care for the city’s 82,000 uninsured, and shifting that money into a city-run health care program will underwrite a significant amount of the cost. But that money can’t just be moved like a chess piece — it’s part of the San Francisco Department of Public Health budget, and if everyone does not sign up for the new program and very sick patients (including, say, undocumented workers who don’t understand or fear enrolling in the city plan) keep showing up at General, there won’t be enough money to go around.
There’s also the very real prospect that some unscrupulous employers will simply quit paying health insurance premiums and dump their employees into the city plan. That would overwhelm the program and push it quickly toward financial ruin.
So the mayor’s plan has no chance at success unless Ammiano’s employer mandate passes, too. The Ammiano plan would offer additional funding for the program by requiring that employers either provide private health insurance or pay into a city pool — and would prevent businesses from tossing their health expenses into the city’s lap.
Ammiano’s plan isn’t perfect — no employer-based plan ever will be. The health insurance requirement would hit all businesses with more than 20 employees, and that might be a bit low. The plan already has some progressive gradations (companies with more than 100 employees would pay a higher fee), but linking the costs more directly to the size of the business (in other words, hitting the large outfits — which can well afford health insurance — a bit harder and giving more of a city subsidy to the smallest companies) could help ease the burden on struggling merchants.
But in the end, his plan — which would have no impact on employers who already offer health insurance to their workers — is crucial to any effort to get the uninsured into a decent health program (and to end the stiff taxpayer subsidy for companies that don’t provide insurance). The supervisors should approve it.
Still that’s not the end of the story. At the same time that Ammiano’s addressing health care, Peskin has floated a proposal for a new gross receipts tax on local business. Here’s the way to proceed: The supervisors need to fund a complete study of how much gross revenue local firms take in; write a new tax that allows the city to eliminate the payroll tax; add a progressive gross receipts tax; and use the next tax policy to help deal with the costs of health care. Big, rich companies pay a lot (enough to help subsidize the citywide health plan). Small firms pay less (and the reduced tax burden helps offset the costs of paying for health insurance). In the end, San Francisco would be the first US city to launch a progressive system for providing health insurance to all. SFBG
Meth-y behavior
Perhaps a good indicator of a social problem’s gravity is the number of documentaries it inspires. This year crystal meth addiction, specifically in gay urban communities, brings us two, Meth (Todd Ahlberg, 2005; Fri/16, 3 p.m., Castro) and Rock Bottom: Gay Men and Meth (Jay Corcoran, 2006; Sat/17, 1:15 p.m., Victoria). Watching two treatments certainly seems like a good way to get to the truth — what might be downplayed in one can achieve its rightful resonance with reiteration in the other. And the irony of cautionary tales is that because they admonish by example, they’re inherently fun.
Still, the two films, while stylistically dissimilar, are enough in accordance with one another detail-wise that only one ticket need be purchased. Even the ambivalence in the two, where it shows up, is similar. Another commonality is high quality. When the interviewees in either film aren’t perceptive and articulate about their own predicaments, which is rarely, their evasions and delusions are just as revealing.
The one you decide to see may come down to a packaging preference. Meth is a sleek number whose visuals and soundtrack slyly evoke the circuit parties that took meth abuse under their wing and add the appropriate energy to rapturous accounts of nine-hour sex marathons and wholesale exterminations of self-doubts before serving as an effectively creepy counterpoint to descriptions of the drug’s eventual toll. The film relies solely on interviews with users, however, and though they’re surely an important source for information on the subject, it can feel a little claustrophobic with regard to perspective. Rock Bottom: Gay Men and Meth’s editing will appeal to those who like fewer hospital corners; it also offers more voices, from health care professionals, family, and friends, without skimping on first-hand accounts and without ever sliding into brochure-speak. Either choice is quite an education. (Jason Shamai)
Partying for Laguna Honda
By G.W. Schulz
Perhaps the most obscure and complex of the four local measures that appeared on Tuesday’s ballot was Proposition D, a land-use initiative designed to prevent San Francisco County health officials from allowing the spill-over of patients diagnosed with psychiatric or behavior problems from Potrero Hill’s San Francisco General Hospital to Laguna Honda Hospital in the western section of the city. Prop. D’s opponents defeated the measure by around 45,000 votes. Curiously, however, of all Tuesday’s races, the No on Prop. D election party seemed to be the most star-studded.
Tea – totaled
› superego@sfbg.com
SUPER EGO Gurl, I woke up on the wrong side of Tuesday afternoon. I don’t know if it was that pint of Cuervo I ordered for appetizers the night before or that quart of quinine I downed soon after for the tetanus I got from sitting on someone’s iPod, but I was hella hungover. My jaw was swiveling, my heart was pounding, and my languid extremities felt so hot that the unicorns on my nails nearly melted. One minute I was hosting the World Cup in my fantasy bra and panties, the next I was hosting it in my actual head.
“This is it,” I thought through the shuddering echo of tiny cleats. “Mama’s gettin’ middle-aged.” I’d finally hit one of midlife’s big Hs: hot flash, hair loss, hangover. And I’m only 19! Good thing I carry some Remifemin and an extra wig in my beaded Whole Foods evening bag.
Fitfully I scanned the Dumpster for any half-smoked butts and chased my scattered thoughts to their grim conclusions. Folks think I’m frickin’ Carrie Bradshaw, being a columnist, lolling around in my Blahniks, whimsically riffing on the romantic wiles of my telegenic brunchmates, leaping with a shy giggle into the magical dilemmas of contemporary life. But this is clubland, Samantha: Dive too deep down in it and — hey, presto! — abracadrinkingproblem. Ain’t nothing wrong with a little party-party, y’all, but us clubbers gotta watch for that border cross over the Rio Messy: Shit’s about as tasteful as soyr cream on a tofurkey burritofu, but with almost twice the calories.
So, maybe it was time for a tiny hooch holiday. Me, I’m an uncurbed child of the streets, where “time-out” is code for “free clinic” (and “free clinic” means “trick’s bathroom”), but in my new semi–fully employed state I’m always running into vibrant-looking Guardian people taking “a personal time-out” — from drinking, from smoking, from imported prickle-backed Peruvian shellfish, whatever. You’d think my health insurance here would cover hangovers, what with the professional risk involved in my line of work, but alas, “no dice.”
“You can do this,” I assured myself. “Just for a week. It’s not like when the government made you give up Wal-Trim diet pills. That was forever.“
But just because I wasn’t drinking didn’t mean I wasn’t going out altogether. She’s still gotta earn a living, and her living’s spilling tea. Luckily, along with the current wine bar burst, San Francisco’s having a tearoom explosion as well. (No, not that kind of tearoom, perverts. Leaves first, then you pay — not the other way around.) And the goddess of cups provides several venues for bar-hour tea-totaling glee. The slightly hoity-toity yet still chill Samovar Tea Lounge (www.samovartea.com) in the Castro is a bookish, cruisey mecca and just opened a Yerba Buena Gardens outpost to boot. Modern Tea (www.moderntea.com) has taken hold in Hayes Valley, with its stylish presentation and unequaled view of all the tipsy drag queens stumbling from Marlena’s down the street. Hang on to your saucers, ladies.
But the real news on the late-night tea front is the hip-hop-oriented Poleng Lounge. Yep, you read right, it’s a hip-hop tearoom. The kids from Massive Selector have transformed the former 1751 Social Club space into a Bali-inspired wonderland that also hosts performances by some of the top names in roots and electro (Ohmega Watts, Vikter Duplaix, Triple Threat). Poleng’s restaurant and tearoom opens to the public June 9, with a huge kickoff bash featuring Faust and Shortee, Amp Live, host Lateef, and probably more than a few chipped handles. Food and tipple are also available, but the focus, of course, is on the leaf — green and otherwise.
Whew! After all that tea I need to take a leak. But before I saunter off, look at me — I’m fantastic, I’m radiant, I’m slightly hypercaffeinated. I feel like I could do yoga in the street. Maybe I should do this personal time-out thing more often. As they say, the liver the better (just kidney!). Now somebody order me a damn mai tai already. SFBG
“LET THE RHYTHM HIT ’EM”
With Faust and Shortee and Amp Live
Fri/9, 9 p.m.–2 a.m.
Poleng Lounge
1751 Fulton, SF
(415) 441-1751
The health insurance system: a crash course
OPINION I am a family practice physician who recently opened a solo office in San Francisco. Since deciding to make a go of it on my own, I have, by necessity, undergone a crash course in the politics of medicine.
Change in our current system will only come about as the result of an educated public insisting on it. So, in terms as simple as I can manage, here is how it works:
You sign up for health insurance. You and/or your employer pay a monthly premium, and your insurer promises to cover some (but not all) of the health care costs you incur.
In exchange for the insurance company listing him or her as a network provider, your doctor agrees to accept the company’s payment rates and abide by its complex policies. These include rules to verify your insurance, document the visit, and submit the bills.
Your doctor has to hire someone to collect all your insurance information and verify the accuracy with your insurer before each visit. A second person is hired to review the charges and make sure they comply with the endless rules the insurance company has put in place.
In order to pay for the two new layers of bureaucracy, your doctor shortens the amount of time he or she spends with you. This allows him or her to see more patients per day.
The insurance company then comes up with all sorts of excuses for why it won’t pay for services you received, or won’t pay the amount it originally promised.
Your doctor now has to hire someone to fight the insurance companies for payment. Your doctor shortens appointment times further to pay for this additional level of bureaucracy.
Your doctor no longer has enough time to explore and discuss lifestyle factors that may be causing your symptoms. Instead, he or she takes the more time-efficient route of ordering a slew of lab tests and expensive studies when you come in with a complaint.
You never see the bills associated with your visits to the doctor and the testing performed, which creates the illusion that you are getting all this medical care for free.
The unnecessary testing drives up the cost to insurers.
The insurance companies see their profits decline and take steps to correct this, such as denying insurance to those with "preexisting conditions" (often something as simple as a brief period of depression).
Now your doctor has to hire someone else to deal with all the paperwork this additional bureaucratic level creates.
Again, appointment times are shortened. Not only do you have an endless wait to be seen, but you have to come back multiple times to get your questions answered.
The cost to insurers goes up further.
The insurance companies see their profits start to decline once again, so they pass the cost on to you or your employer by increasing your premium.
The patients are dissatisfied.
The doctors are dissatisfied.
And the insurance companies? Well, their shareholders are quite pleased. SFBG
Samantha Malm, MD, is one of a growing number of physicians who have decided not to contract with private insurance companies.
Downtown’s “Hail Mary” lawsuit
EDITORIAL This one is way over the top: The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and the Committee on Jobs filed suit last week against the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, alleging that the supes won’t implement Proposition I, the 2004 ballot measure that was aimed at derailing progressive legislation. The suit makes little legal sense: The downtown crew is demanding that the city do something that it’s already doing, for the most part. But it shows an aggressive new strategy on the part of Mayor Gavin Newsom’s allies, who are out to scuttle three important bills that will probably win board approval.
Prop. I was designed to do two things: Delay anything that downtown might consider "antibusiness" and promote the political fortunes of Michela Alioto-Pier, who authored the ballot measure. The idea: Create an Office of Economic Analysis, under the city controller, with the responsibility to do an "economic impact analysis" of any legislation that comes before the board. Of course, that economic impact analysis will by definition be fairly narrowly focused; it won’t consider the social impacts or consequences of decisions.
That was always the flaw in Prop. I, and that was the reason we opposed the measure. Economic impact studies that show only how much a proposal would cost or how it might harm the "business climate" ignore the fact that a lot of government regulation improves things that aren’t quantifiable. And even when they can be measured, certain effects are ignored: Clean air has a tremendous value — but typical studies of antipollution measures focus only on the costs of compliance. Safe streets, nice parks, and good schools are worth a fortune — but a study that examines the tax burden required to pay for them won’t account for that.
Downtown spent a fortune promoting the measure (and sending out colorful flyers with Alioto-Pier’s face on them, which didn’t hurt her reelection efforts). It narrowly passed — but since Alioto-Pier never put in a request for the additional money the plan would cost, it took an entire city budget cycle to fund and hire the two staff economists who will do the work.
Now, for better or for worse, they’re on board, and the analyses are beginning — but downtown isn’t satisfied. Chamber spokesperson Carol Piasente told us the group wants to eliminate any board discretion in deciding what needs analysis and what doesn’t; right now, the board president can waive the analysis on relatively trivial things like resolutions and appointments.
But what’s really going on, according to Sup. Chris Daly, is that downtown is gearing up for a full-scale attack on three bills: Sup. Tom Ammiano’s proposal to require employers to pay for health care; Sup. Sophie Maxwell’s plan to better enforce the minimum wage laws; and Daly’s proposal to require additional affordable housing in all market-rate developments. "Downtown’s hail mary pass involves using the economic analysis to kill these socially critical proposals," Daly wrote in his blog.
Oh, and while the chamber is always worried about city spending, the group’s lawyer, Jim Sutton, is asking for attorney’s fees (likely to be a big, fat chunk of taxpayer change) if the suit prevails.
This is ridiculous. City Attorney Dennis Herrera needs to defend this aggressively, but that’s only the legal side. The mayor, who has become ever more closely allied with these downtown forces (see page 11), ought to join the supervisors in publicly denouncing the suit. SFBG
Prop. D’s misinformation campaign
OPINION Why are Joe O’Donoghue and the Residential Builders Association funding Proposition D on the San Francisco ballot? Could it have anything to do with the RBA’s rapacious hunt for profits?
You bet, because Prop. D would change the city’s zoning laws to potentially allow private development on 1,600 city parcels that are now protected for public use purposes only.
The RBA has modeled its campaign on the current national trend of winning through fearmongering. That’s why the RBA sent San Francisco voters a slick campaign ad featuring an elderly woman (who is not even a Laguna Honda Hospital patient) with a photoshopped black eye, misleading "facts," and not one word about zoning.
But Prop. D is much more than a giveaway for builders — it’s also an assault on San Franciscans of all ages with psychiatric disabilities. It perpetuates stereotypes about people with such disabilities by suggesting that individuals with a primary psychiatric diagnosis are violent. Studies have consistently shown that people with mental illness are not any more likely than members of the general public to commit acts of violence.
If proponents had wanted to keep dangerous patients out of Laguna Honda, they would have proposed banning people with a history of prior violence — the best predictor, by all accounts, of future violence.
Instead, Prop. D guarantees that the stigma of mental illness will continue to dissuade people from seeking help. And it does absolutely nothing to increase safety for LHH residents.
What Prop. D does do is violate nine state and federal laws including the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Fair Housing Act, which ban discrimination on the basis of disability. Prop. D singles out people with mental illness and mandates that "only persons whose need for skilled nursing care is based on a medical diagnosis that is not primarily psychiatric or behavioral shall be admitted" to Laguna Honda. It endangers more than $100 million dollars in federal funds San Francisco receives each year, since that money is conditioned on city compliance with nondiscrimination laws.
Prop. D would force the eviction of Laguna Honda residents who have age- or HIV-related dementia. The city would be forced to transfer those residents to institutions in other counties, far from family and friends, at an annual cost of $27 million dollars. Moreover, Prop. D puts a Planning Department official in charge of making health care and admissions decisions.
All of this is why nurses, health care workers, and public health officials are opposing Prop. D, as are the members of the city’s Community Alliance of Disability Advocates and the Human Services Network, representing more than 100 organizations serving people with disabilities and those in need of all ages in San Francisco.
The RBA’s campaign for Prop. D is so misleading that one of its major proponents, the Coalition for San Francisco Neighborhoods, rescinded its endorsement when the members discovered the RBA’s lies about Prop. D.
Don’t fall for the RBA’s exploitation of LHH residents for the sake of profits. Support the city’s disability rights community. Vote no on Prop. D. SFBG
Belinda Lyons
Belinda Lyons is the executive director of the Mental Health Association of San Francisco. This op-ed is also endorsed by Steve Fields, cochair of the San Francisco Human Services Network; Bill Hirsh, executive director of the AIDS Legal Referral Panel; and Herb Levine, executive director of the Independent Living Resource Center.
{Empty title}
› tredmond@sfbg.com
I was sitting peacefully at home, watching the final episode of The West Wing, which my partner describes as "liberal porn," when Steve Westly drew first blood in the governor’s race.
We all knew there’d be some negative ads before this was over, and frankly, all the hand-wringing about the evil of negative campaigning has never really appealed to me: Politicians have been launching vicious, often slanderous attacks on their opponents since the dawn of democracy. But this one made me furious.
The simple story is that Westly — borrowing a chapter from the Book of Rove — is assailing Phil Angelides for wanting to tax the rich. And he’s doing it in the most misleading, unprincipled, and utterly disgraceful way.
The ad features what seems like a crushing list of new taxes that Angelides wants to impose — $10 billion worth, Westly’s hit squad claims. Then it winds up with a smarmy tagline: "With high gas prices, housing and health care costs, can working families afford Phil Angelides’s tax plan?"
Of course, Westly had pledged some time ago not to be the first candidate to attack the other by name, but what the hell: The election’s coming up, the race seems to be narrowing, and this guy will do whatever’s necessary to win.
But more than that, with this ad Westly is promoting the exact mentality that has damaged public education, health care, environmental protection, infrastructure needs, and so much else of what used to be the California dream. Republicans love to hit Democrats on taxes, and we’ll see plenty of that in the fall, no matter who’s the nominee. And for Westly to start the "no new taxes" cry just leaves the Democrats politically crippled.
For the record, Angelides is right: The state needs more tax revenue. And under his proposal, most of it would come not from "working families" who are worried about their gas bills but from people like, well, Steve Westly and Phil Angelides — millionaires. His proposed income tax increase only affects households with more than $500,000 in income. Sorry: You’re in that range, you can afford it.
So Mr. Westly: Stop with the antitax lies. This shit makes me sick.
On to the good news.
I get the feeling, from over here in San Francisco, that there’s a real change afoot in East Bay politics. For the past few years, a not-so-loose cadre made up of state senator Don Perata, Mayor Jerry Brown, and Councilmember Ignacio De La Fuente has been consolidating power in Oakland, calling the political shots and giving developers a blank check. Two of the three have real, ahem, ethical issues, and one’s itching to leave town for Sacramento, but so far, nobody’s been able to truly challenge them.
Until Ron Dellums.
Now, I know that Dellums has been out of Oakland for years, that he’s a DC lobbyist, and I’ve heard the rap that he’s long on rhetoric and short on urban policy ideas. But we met him last week, and I can tell you that, at 71, he’s still one of the most energetic and inspirational speakers around, and if he’s elected mayor, he will, by force of personality and national stature, instantly become a center of power that’s distinct from (and will often be in opposition to) the Perata–<\d>De La Fuente bloc. SFBG
{Empty title}
› tredmond@sfbg.com
I was sitting peacefully at home, watching the final episode of The West Wing, which my partner describes as "liberal porn," when Steve Westly drew first blood in the governor’s race.
We all knew there’d be some negative ads before this was over, and frankly, all the hand-wringing about the evil of negative campaigning has never really appealed to me: Politicians have been launching vicious, often slanderous attacks on their opponents since the dawn of democracy. But this one made me furious.
The simple story is that Westly — borrowing a chapter from the Book of Rove — is assailing Phil Angelides for wanting to tax the rich. And he’s doing it in the most misleading, unprincipled, and utterly disgraceful way.
The ad features what seems like a crushing list of new taxes that Angelides wants to impose — $10 billion worth, Westly’s hit squad claims. Then it winds up with a smarmy tagline: "With high gas prices, housing and health care costs, can working families afford Phil Angelides’s tax plan?"
Of course, Westly had pledged some time ago not to be the first candidate to attack the other by name, but what the hell: The election’s coming up, the race seems to be narrowing, and this guy will do whatever’s necessary to win.
But more than that, with this ad Westly is promoting the exact mentality that has damaged public education, health care, environmental protection, infrastructure needs, and so much else of what used to be the California dream. Republicans love to hit Democrats on taxes, and we’ll see plenty of that in the fall, no matter who’s the nominee. And for Westly to start the "no new taxes" cry just leaves the Democrats politically crippled.
For the record, Angelides is right: The state needs more tax revenue. And under his proposal, most of it would come not from "working families" who are worried about their gas bills but from people like, well, Steve Westly and Phil Angelides — millionaires. His proposed income tax increase only affects households with more than $500,000 in income. Sorry: You’re in that range, you can afford it.
So Mr. Westly: Stop with the antitax lies. This shit makes me sick.
On to the good news.
I get the feeling, from over here in San Francisco, that there’s a real change afoot in East Bay politics. For the past few years, a not-so-loose cadre made up of state senator Don Perata, Mayor Jerry Brown, and Councilmember Ignacio De La Fuente has been consolidating power in Oakland, calling the political shots and giving developers a blank check. Two of the three have real, ahem, ethical issues, and one’s itching to leave town for Sacramento, but so far, nobody’s been able to truly challenge them.
Until Ron Dellums.
Now, I know that Dellums has been out of Oakland for years, that he’s a DC lobbyist, and I’ve heard the rap that he’s long on rhetoric and short on urban policy ideas. But we met him last week, and I can tell you that, at 71, he’s still one of the most energetic and inspirational speakers around, and if he’s elected mayor, he will, by force of personality and national stature, instantly become a center of power that’s distinct from (and will often be in opposition to) the Perata–De La Fuente bloc. SFBG
Cruel and unusual punishment
OPINION Homelessness was recently put on trial in California. It was found not guilty.
The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit declared April 14 that the city of Los Angeles can’t arrest those who have no choice but to sleep on its streets. It’s a victory for those of us who believe that homelessness is not a crime, but a symptom of an unjust economic system.
At issue in the LA case was a 37-year-old law prohibiting sitting, lying, and sleeping on the sidewalks. Six homeless folks brought the complaint in 2003 with the aid of the ACLU and the National Lawyers Guild.
In her ruling against the statute, Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw wrote: "Because there is substantial and undisputed evidence that the number of homeless persons in Los Angeles far exceeds the number of available shelter beds at all times," the city is guilty of criminalizing people who engage in "the unavoidable act of sitting, lying, or sleeping at night while being involuntarily homeless." She termed this criminalization "cruel and unusual" punishment, a violation of the Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution.
Her enlightened opinion should guide public policy everywhere, especially here in San Francisco. In our "progressive" city, we have gay weddings at City Hall and an annual S-M street fair, yet our views on the homeless are as 19th century as the rest of the country’s opinions on gay marriage and kinky sex. The majority of voting people here still favor the old-fashioned method of punishing the poor and the homeless. That’s how Care Not Cash and our current antipanhandling measure managed to become law.
According to Religious Witness with the Homeless, in the first 22 months of Mayor Gavin Newsom’s administration, San Francisco police issued 1,860 citations for panhandling and sleeping on the sidewalks, as well as 11,000 "quality of life" tickets. That’s more than were issued under former mayor Willie Brown in a similar time period. How many officers did it take to issue those citations? How much money did it cost the city? What better things could San Francisco have done with the money to actually help those who were cited? How many of the people cited are now in permanent affordable housing with access to services they need to put their lives back together?
Homelessness can’t be eradicated with punitive measures. Addressing homelessness in America doesn’t mean sweeping the poor out of sight of tourists or upscale neighbors. It doesn’t mean taking away the possessions of homeless folks or fining people for sleeping in their cars. It means addressing the basic social inequities that create homelessness, among them low-paying jobs, the immorally high cost of housing, and the prohibitive price of health care.
It means having drug and mental health treatment for those who need it when they need it.
That’s the real message behind Wardlaw’s ruling.<\!s><z5><h110>SFBG<h$><z$>
Tommi Avicolli Mecca
Tommi Avicolli Mecca is a radical, working-class, queer, southern Italian activist, performer, and writer.
Heartthrobs
› kimberly@sfbg.com
SONIC REDUCER I used to think of myself as the ultimate freak magnet, fending off moist-haired gents with a fetish for girl bands. Damp palms. Foam bubbling at the corners of the mouth. Barely discernable vertigo spirals in their bloodshot eyes. Cute, huh?
But the Court and Spark have me beat. We were sitting around the high-ceilinged kitchen of their Alabama Street Station studio/flat and talking about making their new album, Hearts (Absolutely Kosher), when vocalist-guitarist MC Taylor and guitarist Scott Hirsch suddenly leapt to their feet and started pawing through a drawer by the stove. Drummer James Kim bolted down the hallway. Was it something I said or … ate?
No, they all simply hit on their most memorable piece of fan mail, which Kim pulled from his shadow files. "This is classic," Taylor said, forking the letter over. "This explains to you what the Court and Spark journey is all about."
The script on the wide-rule binder paper was large, loopy, and ever so shaky, and its author told of hearing a song from the band’s last EP, Dead Diamond River, then embarking on his own river of no return: "My life is rough. In May my mom died after having colon cancer surgery. I lost my dad months earlier to lymphoma. For 41 years I’ve been struggling since a child living with severe type 1 diabetes. Not having any health insurance is difficult. My yearly medical expenses are now over $5,000, not including doctor and lab costs. I do without. I hope you will seriously consider sending me a promo copy of your new amazing CD to brighten my life at this difficult time." The missive closed with a San Jose address and came with a checklist of meds.
Of course, the soft hearts of C and S sent the letter-writer the disc — and never heard from their diabetic sad case in the South Bay again.
Score one crazy diamond for C and S, but what’s the attraction? Are the crazies seeking the healing qualities in the band’s shimmering Cali rock ’n’ soul? Are they looking to levitate alongside the group’s increasingly psychedelic yet still hard-to-quantify sound. Am I asking the wrong people? Not for nothing did Taylor first consider titling the new album I Want to Be a Gallant Rider Like My Father Was before Me, after a line in Werner Herzog’s The Enigma of Kasper Hauser. Like Herzog, C and S seem to draw, or be drawn to, those blurry border towns between Insanity, Texas, and Epiphany, Mexico.
Despite Hirsch’s disbelief that their audience actually comes to see them perform rather than the other bands on their bills, C and S are 50 times more comfortable in their collective skin than the first time I spoke to them, around 2002, shortly after the release of their lovely 2001 second album, Bless You.
"We’ve always been the lone wolves out there," Taylor ponders. "But we’ve also played on every kind of possible bill you can possibly imagine, and on good nights, actually, we’ve been able to make it work. We’ve played with everyone from Devendra to Bob Weir."
It’s at home, however, that the onetime UC Santa Barbara students found a sense of freedom last year, tinkering with Hearts to their hearts’ content, experimenting with instruments like harp and hammered dulcimer, and falling in love with Farfisa organ and throwing it, along with a wah pedal, over everything — all while also working on Michael Talbott and the Wolfkings’ new album and the beginnings of Willow Willow’s record. They’d rent, say, a really good, $10,000 mic and then cram everyone into their space to share costs. "We’d wake up earlier than anybody else, since we lived here, and we’d set up and drink coffee and do it," says Hirsch, who also teaches recording at Bay Area Video Coalition.
It may sound too pat for these courtly Mission dwellers, but it looks like they got out of their musical comfort zone by digging deeper into their literal one. "It’s like that Steely Dan quote, ‘We used to spend five months just trying to figure out what chair we were going to sit in in the studio,’" Hirsch says with a laugh. "That’s the kind of freedom that we like and that we found for ourselves — and that maybe they had too, because they would also record a million things and pick just one thing from that. That’s why their records sound so good, I guess." SFBG
Court and Spark
With Jason Molina, Black Fiction, and the Finches
Fri/12, 9 p.m.
Great American Music Hall
859 O’Farrell, SF
$12
(415) 885-0750
Dumpling drifter
› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com
CHEAP EATS Me and Wayway went to the store and bought 67 chicken wings, a carton of buttermilk, and a big bottle of oil. Then we went out to eat. I had a show that night in the Sunset, at my new favorite bar, the Riptide, so the plan was to point ourselves in that direction and just roll.
The Riptide is on Taraval, way out there, almost all the way to the beach. But we barely got past 19th Avenue, of course, before we had to stop rolling and walk. What pulled us over was this new Hawaiian joint where JT’s diner used to be. It looks pretty good. I looked in the window, and Wayway looked at the menu in the window.
"Eggs and rice," Wayway said. "Spam and eggs."
"Hay," I said. "Straw."
We meant all these things as compliments. You know, sometimes I wear Hawaiian shirts when I play the Ping-Pong, and sometimes I wear Western shirts. If I had been wearing a Hawaiian shirt, I might have had a new favorite Hawaiian restaurant to tell you about, but as fate would have it, I was wearing a Western shirt.
Which was just as well because I’d already eaten about five eggs that day anyway. We looked into a couple other places and wound up agreeing on a hole-in-the-wall just a few doors down called White Horse Dim Sum & Restaurant.
Hot dang it smelled good in there. It smelled kind of like celery. There was no art on the walls, no music, and just a couple of tables. So the atmosphere was the smell of celery. And general hominess. The White Horse family, from little kids to Gram and Gramps, was just sitting down to eat at this one big table. Every now and again one or another of them would get up and pour our tea and take our order and cook and everything.
So now, finally, I have a new favorite Chinese restaurant. Check this out: Dim sums are 60 cents each, they have Shanghai dumplings for $3.50 for six, lunch specials for $3.95 with rice and wonton soup or coffee, and they have almost 20 kinds of soup for under 5 bucks, most of them under 4. Rice plates, noodles … a lot of $3.50s, $3.95s, and $4.50s. I don’t think anything was more than 5 bucks.
What I’m getting at: Cheap!
And don’t forget that it smells real good in there. So, OK, so what we wanted, in honor of yet another soupy San Francisco day, was soup. And the guy sitting behind us was eating dumplings, so, sure, we were going to need dumplings too. You can’t talk about frying and barbecuing chicken wings without dumplings. At least a dozen.
Wayway told me how when he was living in Shanghai he used to eat these things for breakfast every day, and how sometimes, because of the language barrier, he’d ask for six, which was one order, and they’d bring him six orders of six.
"I want to live somewhere with a language barrier," I said.
Shanghai dumplings, those are the steamed pork ones with like little bowls of soup in them. Pig drippin’s, you figure. It pools inside while the pork cooks, and stays warm but somehow not too hot, and then when it erupts inside your mouth you get this flow of buttery, greasy goodness all over your tongue, and … and … um . . .
I lost my train of thought.
Chicken wings. Buttermilk. Barbecue sauce. Strategy. Celery. Oral sex. Oh yeah, soup. That was the other thing we were eating. Fish ball noodle soup, and pork noodle soup ($3.95 either way). Both were great. The broth was excellent, the noodles had to have been homemade, they tasted so good, and the vegetables were done perfectly, with still a little life left to them. Bok choy, broccoli, celery.
I’ll tell you, I walked out of the White Horse feeling really good. And I stayed that way all through the rest of the evening. Pabst Blue Ribbon. Rum. Coffee, next morning, and we went to work like two well-oiled machines, Wayway frying, or parfrying the wings, and the chicken farmer manwomanpersoning the grill. Barbefried chicken. My joke is that it’s health food, if two wrongs make a right, which, conventional wisdom being, for our purposes, damned, they do. Right? SFBG
White Horse.
Mon.–Sat., 7 a.m.–8 p.m.; Sun., 8:30 a.m.–3:30 p.m.
937 Taraval, SF
(415) 665-9080
Takeout available
No alcohol
Credit cards not accepted
Quiet
Wheelchair accessible
Chain Alternative: Brownie’s Hardware
1563 Polk Street, SF
(415) 673-8900
It’s a Brownie’s tradition: Every owner of the hardware store has served as president of the Polk Street Merchants Association at one time or another. And the current owner, Steven Cornell, is no exception. Recently his hardware store hosted a press conference and awards ceremony for small businesses, like Brownie’s, that have been in San Francisco since the 1906 earthquake.
An open hardware store comes in handy during a disaster. Cornell remembers when his neighborhood lost electricity for three days during the 1989 quake. Neighbors came to him in need of batteries, flashlights, and candles, and nearly half of them didn’t have any cash. Cornell didn’t keep track of any names; he just kept a tally of goods that went out the door and asked people to come back when they had the money. "They all did," he says with a broad smile beneath his fatherly brown mustache. "After it all, we had one unaccounted hatch mark, and I’ll chalk that up to poor accounting."
Brownie’s seems like any other neighborhood hardware store. It’s small and crowded; shelves tower with housewares, paint, plumbing, and hardware. According to Cornell, what sets it apart is service. As many as eight employees a day sporting Brownie’s name tags work the registers and offer assistance among the narrow aisles. "Most people come in with a project,” he says. “Our job is to help them find what they need and think of the problems they’ll encounter."
That quality of service extends outside the walls of a store that’s been in Cornell’s family since 1950. Located on the corner of Polk and Sacramento — in the heart of what the old-timers still call Polk Gulch, just five blocks from where Cornell went to elementary school — the shop occupies an avenue of small businesses. "I do most of my business with people who live in apartments," says Cornell, who stocks his store for a renter’s needs. Instead of throwing down a couple hundred dollars for a drill, customers can rent one or even bring in whatever needs a hole or a screw.
From selling Muni passes at no profit to working with city legislature to get health insurance companies to cover domestic partners of small-business employees, Cornell has always been an active community member. (Amanda Witherell)