Jerry Brown

Gavin Newsom’s “reform” pitch

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By Tim Redmond

Mayor Gavin Newsom doesn’t have enough money to do a major statewide TV buy, but he’s making his early pitch, and trying to define the race, with a new internet ad. Calitics points out that the ad

mentions not once, but twice, both the Constitutional Convention and eliminating the 2/3rds rule. Newsom is positioning himself as the candidate of not just “change” but of structural reform:

Of course, those of us who live in San Francisco know that Newsom has done nothing — nothing — in terms of real structural reform in the city, and has pused a Schwarzenegger-style no-new-taxes budget. He was at first very wary about Constitutional change, but now is embracing it, sensing, no doubt, that the mood of the public is so down on Sacramento and Sacto politiciians that the concept of fundamental change is attractive — even when peddled by someone who has no credentials as a “change” candidate.

But for Jerry Brown, this is serious stuff — the candidate who defines the race first is often in a much better position to make the case for his or her election. And Newsom is trying to define the race as insider-outsider, change v. politics as usual. Brown may have the poll numbers and the money, but if he sits around and lets Newsom define the race, he’s playing a dangerous game.

The plight of the insured

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The plight of the insured

OPINION How many horror stories will it take before Congress decides to act on the most ignored problem in the present healthcare debate, denials for people with insurance?

In September, San Francisco’s KPIX-TV reported the story of Rosalinda Miran-Ramirez of Daly City, who woke up one April morning with her left breast bleeding and her shirt soaked in blood.

She was rushed by her husband to the emergency room at nearby Seton Medical Center, where doctors found a tumor. Fortunately the biopsy was benign. Less benign was Miran-Ramirez’ insurer, Blue Shield which initially approved her emergency room claim, then denied it, demanding she pay the full charges, $2,791 under the dubious assertion she "reasonably should have known that an emergency did not exist."

After reporter Anna Werner called Blue Shield, the company decided to pay. Big of them.

We’ve seen this act before. In 2007, Cigna denied a liver transplant, recommended by her medical team, to 17-year-old Nataline Sarkisyan of Northridge. After national protests organized by Nataline’s family, community, and the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, Cigna relented — a week too late, and tragically Nataline died.

In a recent interview with New America Media, Cigna’s then-communications director, Wendell Potter, now an insurance critic, noted that "this is not an isolated case. People need to realize that there is a corporate executive who often stands between a patient and his or her doctor. That’s the reality."

Why? It pays. Insurance companies make money by selling policies they never intend to make payments on.

In August, researchers with the California Nurses Association and National Nurses Organizing Committee uncovered previously hidden data on the California Department of Managed Care Web site revealing that six of California’s biggest insurers have denied on average nearly one-fourth of all claims every year since 2002. For the first six months of 2009, PacifiCare rejected 40 percent of claims, Cigna 33 percent.

Predictably, the insurers went ballistic, issuing a stream of denials about their denials. It’s all paperwork, or merely battles with doctors and hospitals, they insisted. These denials don’t mean people are being denied care.

But, they are, every day. The insurers claim the procedure is "investigational" or "experimental" or the policy did not cover that procedure, or the patient had neglected to disclose some prior health problem.

Even if many of the denials the insurers themselves reported to the state are just "paperwork," they are a reminder that 30 cents of every private insurance healthcare dollar is wasted, much of it on warehouses of bean counters looking for reasons to deny claims.

Fortunately, California Attorney General Jerry Brown is now investigating the denial scandal.

But Congress and the Obama administration remain appallingly silent. Too timid to propose the most comprehensive reform — single payer — that would actually lift the hands of the insurers off our necks. Too timid to crack down on insurance company price gouging or denials of care.

Deborah Burger, RN is co-president of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee.

Scheer: AG Brown’s spokesman didn’t break the law

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In taping a reporter, AG Brown’s spokesman showed bad judgment, but didn’t break the law

By Peter Scheer

Attorney General Jerry Brown’s spokesman Scott Gerber was unceremoniously “disappeared” from Brown’s incipient gubernatorial campaign this week because of a lapse in judgment that, quite frankly, has been grossly overblown. Gerber’s mistake: to surreptitiously record a phone conversation with a reporter, which was later discovered because Gerber, in a plea for changes to the story, presented an editor with verbatim quotes too extensive and accurate to be the result of efficient note-taking alone.

Stopping PG&E’s fraudulent initiative

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EDITORIAL A ballot measure that could spell the end of public power in California is headed for either the spring or fall 2010 ballot — and so far, the opposition is missing in action. This is a profoundly important issue, and every elected official, city council, board of supervisors, and utility agency in the Bay Area needs to immediately come out in opposition and start organizing to defeat it.

The source of the proposition, of course, is Pacific Gas and Electric Co. PG&E is facing political wildfires all over the state as communities rebel against bad service and high rates. In Marin County, a community choice aggregation (CCA) plan is moving along, full speed. In San Francisco, CCA is a little slower, but still on track. These efforts could turn two of PG&E’s most profitable territories into public power beachheads. Meanwhile, in San Joaquin County, a public power movement is trying to take over part of PG&E’s service area, and PG&E just spent millions of dollars fighting a similar effort in Davis.

So the utility has decided to fight back — not just in the local communities where activists can beat PG&E back, or in the state Legislature, where the giant company has fewer and fewer friends, but with a ballot initiative that has a misleading name, a misleading political message — and tens of millions of dollars to back it up.

Signature-gatherers are out in force already, collecting names for a measure called "New two-thirds requirement for local public electricity providers." The paid petition crews are describing it as a "right to vote" measure, giving the public a chance to weigh in on government action.

What the measure would really do is require a two-thirds affirmative vote before any public power agency could add new customers, or any local agency could get into the power business. It would force the existing CCA movements to get two-thirds of the local voters to approve their efforts.

That’s an almost impossible standard — particularly when PG&E spends millions to block public power efforts everywhere they appear.

The two-thirds voting requirement is increasingly being assailed as undemocratic. The state Legislature has been paralyzed by its own two-thirds requirement for passing a budget, and there are multiple moves to reduce that threshold. The two-thirds mandate for passing local taxes has been widely blamed for driving cities and counties to the brink of fiscal ruin.

And yet PG&E is trying to add a new, crushing mandate — aimed entirely at snuffing out public power advances. The impact on the state will be enormous. As Megan Rawlins reports on page 8, high PG&E rates and the lack of public power cost the San Francisco economy alone as much as $2.8 billion a year. Multiply that by a factor of 10 or 20, and you see what a devastating financial blow this PG&E move would be to California’s crumbling economy.

So where, exactly, is the opposition?

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi called a meeting last week at the offices of the Utility Reform Network (TURN) to try to get other public power communities involved in a statewide campaign. But it’s been slow going.

That’s not going to work. Every elected agency in the Bay Area needs to get this on the agenda — now. Every city official (starting with Mayor Gavin Newsom, who wants to be governor) and every state official (starting with Attorney General Jerry Brown, who also wants to be governor) needs to loudly and publicly denounce this move, help establish a high-level coalition to beat it back, and start raising money for the campaign.

There may be a legal strategy, too. The law that authorized cities and counties to set up CCAs bars PG&E and other private utilities from interfering with local CCA efforts — and it’s pretty clear that this initiative is designed to do exactly that. City Attorney Dennis Herrera needs to immediately investigate the possibility of suing to get this disastrous initiative off the ballot. *

Supes ask AG to drop last SF8 charges

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By C. Nellie Nelson

Late last week, three members of the Board of Supervisors signed a letter urging Attorney General Jerry Brown to drop the charges against the remaining defendant of the San Francisco 8. The letter, signed by Supervisors Eric Mar, John Avalos and Chris Daly, calls the prosecution misguided: “Based on ‘confessions’ and other testimony extracted by torture and denial of right to counsel, this prosecution has been a disservice to the people of San Francisco.” They point out that the case has cost the city millions of dollars already.

In June Sup. Mar introduced a similar resolution urging the attorney general to drop the charges against the seven men (one had had charges dropped previously) to the Board’s Government Audit and Oversight Committee. The Committee opted to send the resolution to be heard by the full Board, but ended up postponing when budget disagreements literally overtook City Hall.

Then in early July, the prosecution agreed to drop the charges against five of the men, and allowed two men to accept much lesser charges, where they were credited with time served and received only probation. The one remaining defendant is Francisco Torres, who declined an offer to plead guilty to a lesser charge.

The case being largely dismissed, the board tabled the resolution. As there is now just one attorney and assistant, compared with an original team of sixteen attorneys, so the next hearing on the case was postponed to October 9.

The Attorney General’s office had not responded to the Guardian’s request for comment by Monday evening.

Team Newsom readies the mudballs

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By Steven T. Jones
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Gavin Newsom has been openly and repeatedly signaling his intention to run a negative primary campaign for governor against Jerry Brown ever since he hired political hitman Garry South, who encouraged his client Steve Westly to beat the crap out of Phil Angelides last time, thus ensuring Arnold Schwarzenegger would keep the governor’s office. Newsom’s determination to take the low road was also reinforced by the recent departure of Eric Jaye, who opposed South’s penchant for scorched earth campaigning.

The Los Angeles County Democratic Central Committee was justifiably concerned and recently unanimously passed a resolution calling for the gubernatorial candidates to sign a clean campaign pledge. The San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee followed suit this week, overwhelmingly passing an identical resolution, with only a few staunch Newsom allies in dissent.

“Democrats cannot afford a negative, bruising primary that leaves our nominee weakened and damaged going into the general election and according to recent published press reports, negative attacks are likely to be forthcoming in the coming weeks,” reads of the resolution’s whereases.

The big prison duck

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EDITORIAL A panel of federal judges has ordered the release of 44,000 California prisoners, sending politicians of both parties scrambling for cover and throwing a crucial issue into the heart of the Democratic campaign for governor.

And so far, both major candidates are ducking, badly.

The state prison system is a mess; any sane person knows that. California incarcerates 170,000 people in facilities designed for less than half that number. Sick inmates don’t get to see doctors; mentally ill or drug-addicted inmates often get no treatment at all. It’s so bad that a federal monitor appointed by the courts has demanded that the state spend $8 billion building new medical facilities for prisoners.

Meanwhile, inmates are crowded into makeshift bunks in gymnasiums and dayrooms. The few modest rehabilitative programs California offers are stretched so thin that many inmates get no job training or violence-prevention skills at all. The parole system is overburdened and focuses far too heavily on people with minor, nonviolent offenses.

And politicians wonder why the state has a recidivism rate of 70 percent.

The solutions aren’t rocket science, either. There’s a clear reason why incarceration rates have jumped so high: harsh sentencing laws, passed by the Legislature and the voters with no concern for the costs of implementation. The state’s three-strikes law is so draconian that thousands of people are serving 25 years to life for nonviolent felonies that typically would carry a sentence of a few years. So the first thing the Legislature and the governor need to do is change the sentencing laws (and give back discretion to judges).

Then there’s a drug problem. California prisons are packed with people serving sentences for drug possession — and most of these people, and society in general, would be better served, at less than half the cost, with treatment programs.

And frankly it wouldn’t be hard to release 44,000 inmates without any new threats to public safety. The vast majority of the inmates in California prisons are going to be released at some point anyway; in fact, the state now releases about 10,000 people a month. The early releases envisioned by the federal courts could simply mean allowing people who have served, say, three years of a four-year sentence to leave prison and shift to the custody of the parole system a few months earlier than scheduled. Many of those people are nonviolent offenders, particularly drug offenders.

With the state in a catastrophic fiscal condition, the cost of corrections ought to be a huge issue for the candidates for governor, particularly the Democrats. Mayor Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Jerry Brown ought to be promoting a plan that would end the insanity of "three strikes," offer alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent offenders and drug addicts, and allow early releases to bring down the current unsustainable incarcerated population.

So what are these candidates, supposedly alternatives to the Republican agenda, saying?

Here’s Brown, quoted in the Los Angeles Times: "Government is established to protect the safety and security of its citizens, and these wholesale releases are totally incompatible with that." Where’s Newsom? We called his campaign press office for comment, and haven’t heard back.

This is unacceptable.

It’s typical for Republicans to use scare tactics and talk about crime as a cheap way to win votes. But Newsom and Brown ought to know better. This is no time for demagoguery — the prison crisis is serious, festering, and a major factor in the state’s financial mess. If the two leading Democrats can’t come up with honest answers, it’s time for someone else to enter the race. *

Run, Sanchez, run

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By Steven T. Jones
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Loretta Sanchez

The Guardian may not have been a big fan of Willie Brown when he was mayor, but I certainly appreciate his political insights now, as expressed in some of his Sunday Chronicle column items. He knows the players and their motivations better than anyone, making him one of the top sources in town for political buzz.

So his observation yesterday that others are likely to jump into the Democratic Party gubernatorial primary is good news for anyone loathe to watch Gavin Newsom and Jerry Brown beat the crap out of each other – including trying to out-tough-on-crime each other, a specialty of Newsom’s Neanderthal campaign chief Garry South — before one of them limps into a tough race against the Republican nominee.

Brown leads with the likelihood that Steve Westly will jump in, which isn’t very exciting to progressive voters. And he teases out how Dianne Feinstein is still a possibility – again, not too exciting for progressives, but at least she’d likely move the governorship into the D column.

Yet it’s the last name he mentions – Rep. Loretta Sanchez from Orange County – who would instantly become a progressive favorite if she gets in. And she’s also someone who’s proven palatable to OC conservatives and has a real independent streak that would appeal to voters who are sick of both major parties (and for good reason).

So, Rep. Sanchez, if this link finds its way to you, let me just say on behalf of San Franciscans who fear the prospect of a Governor Newsom: please run!

The Newsom campaign’s in trouble

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By Tim Redmond

Lots of interesting opinions about what the loss of Eric Jaye means to the Newsom campaign. Paul Hogarth at Beyond Chron Thinks that Garry South, who is now in charge, could lead to Newsom’s downfall. Brian Leubitz at Calitics thinks that

Eric Jaye was an enormous asset to Newsom’s campaign. It is hard to see how a departure of somebody with that kind of relationship and with that kind of intricate knowledge of the candidate is good for the campaign.

And Jerry Roberts, who has been covering politics in this state even longer than I have, thinks this is exactly what the Newsom campaign needs:

The last political consultant to elect a Democrat governor of the state, the Duke of Darkness is a bare-knuckles, in-your-face, shoe-leather, hand-to-hand combat veteran who has two main tasks: 1) Get his candidate to raise a ship load of money and 2) Needle, badger and tweak primary rival Jerry Brown at every turn.

A few thoughts:

1. Everyone agrees that South is, in political terms, an asshole, someone who loves negative campaigning and sees the key to victory as raising tons of money and trashing your opponent. He has had both success (Gary Davis, at first) and failure (Gray Davis, later; Joe Lieberman, Steve Westly) with that approach.

But the thing to keep in mind is that, whatever you think of Newsom’s politics, this isn’t his style. Newsom’s not a brawler; he wouldn’t even show up at supervisors meetings to argue with Chris Daly. He’s much more of a stand-in-the-well-scripted-public-meeting-with-a-cordless-mike kinda guy. In fact, if this becomes a bloodbath, Newsom loses; he can’t take a punch. Real conflict makes his nervous. And I don’t think Jerry Brown will come out of the gate with a negative campaign, but if Newsom starts it, Brown will respond.

2. Newsom ought to be the clear front-runner in this race. It’s almost a textbook campaign — the new, fresh face, the young, tech-savvy charmer with the grand ideas against the been-there-done-that crabby old pol who has changed his political stripes so many times it’s hard to know what he actually believes in any more. That’s what Eric Jaye was trying to do. Sure, the fundraising was slow, and Jaye mistakenly thought that Newsom could pull an Obama (I’ve seen Barack Obama, and Mr. Mayor, you’re no Barack Obama). But if they could raise enough to be competitive, they had the right strategy.

3. It’s hard to win a Democratic primary without the progressives in California. And South has done everything possible in his career to anger and alienate progressives.

4. Eric Jaye is no fool — he had hitched his own star to Newsom long ago, was looking not just at Sacramento but beyond — and if he thought South’s approach was the correct one, that it would lead to victory, he wouldn’t have been so quick to bail.

I dunno — Jerry Brown ought to be terribly vulnerable at this point, but I think Newsom’s campaign is in trouble.

It’s the insurance companies, stupid

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EDITORIAL It’s hard to imagine a better time for real, lasting health care reform. A popular president with a reform mandate has made it a top priority. The Democrats control both houses of Congress, with enough votes in the Senate to block a filibuster. Medical costs are soaring, driving individuals and businesses into bankruptcy. Even some big corporate executives, who recognize that the United States can’t compete in the global economy when companies have to spend so much on employee health insurance, are starting to come around.

So why is the bill working its way through Congress so incredibly weak?

One reason: the private insurance industry is still calling the shots.

In fact, from the very beginning, private insurers were involved in the policy discussions. Nancy Ann DeParle, President Obama’s senior health policy advisor and the White House point person on reform, brought the industry into the room on day one. Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, who heads the Finance Committee that is now considering the bill, received more contributions from the insurance industry than any other Democrat in the Senate.

And as long as the needs of an industry that makes profits by denying medical coverage to sick people matter more than the needs of the American people, there’s not going to be a decent reform bill.

The best experts all agree that the only way to hold down costs, insure everyone, and make the nation competitive again is to eliminate private insurance and create a government-run, single-payer system. That’s what almost every other industrialized country has — and it works. Canada spends far less than the U.S. does on health care — and the health outcomes for Canadians are far better by every measurable standard.

Yet single-payer health insurance was never on the table. The best Obama and Congress have to offer is a complex measure that increases some regulations on the industry and offers (for now) the prospect of a public option — that is, the ability of any citizen to buy a Medicare-style public insurance plan. The public plan is obviously an attractive option — private companies spend as much as 40 percent of every health care dollar on administrative overhead and profit. The figure for Medicare is about 2 percent. But even that option may not survive the final wording of the bill.

And in exchange for accepting a few new rules and (maybe) having to compete against the government, the insurers get a huge bounty: the plan would mandate that every American buys health insurance. Even if many people choose the public option (if it’s even available), the insurance industry will get millions of new customers.

And there’s no guarantee that those who are currently uninsured will be able to afford the plans they need. Many will probably buy a minimal policy and wind up vastly underinsured — which means they’ll go broke and fall onto the medical and social safety net if they get seriously ill. As Steven T. Jones and Rebecca Bowe report in this issue, the vast majority of the medical bankruptcies today involve people who have insurance.

The House Progressive Caucus is only willing to support the bill if it includes a strong, viable public option. We’d go even further: if Congress can’t offer a single-payer plan, it should at least allow the states to do that. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D–Ohio) has an amendment that would authorize single-payer in any state that wants to try it, and that must be part of the final bill. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who supports the current House package, should make clear that the Kucinich amendment must be part of the final package.

State Sen. Mark Leno has a single-payer bill in Sacramento that has passed twice but been vetoed by Gov. Schwarzenegger. Both Democratic candidates for governor, Mayor Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Jerry Brown, need to pledge to sign that bill if they get elected.

There’s too much at stake here to accept an industry-backed plan masquerading as reform. If this crashes and burns, it will be years before reform comes back. Let’s get it right this time. *

Charges dismissed against most SF8 defendants

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Story and photos by C. Nellie Nelson
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The case against the San Francisco 8 – defendants who have spent the last two and a half years facing controversial old murder charges – was largely dropped today without any of them doing any real time.

Attorney General Jerry Brown’s office had resurrected an old case and charged eight men in the 1971 killing of San Francisco Police Sgt. John Young. The court dismissed the case in 1975 after finding that New Orleans police officers tortured two of the suspects to make them confess. But with federal funding from the Bush Administration, the prosecutors compiled hundreds of thousands of pages of documents, citing fingerprints on a cigarette lighter as a recent development in the case.

And today, the whole ordeal looks like a phenomenal waste of time and taxpayer money.

Newsom’s poll numbers suck, but ….

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By Tim Redmond

This is not the kind of information a candidate for governor likes to hear, but the Chron reports today that Attorney General Jerry Brown is way ahead of Newsom among Democrats in the race for California’s next governor. Matier and Ross say

The poll by JMM Research of 525 Democratic and decline-to-state voters is the first snapshot since Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced last week that he wasn’t running.

With Villaraigosa in the lineup, the numbers read:

— Brown, 33 percent.

— Newsom, 20 percent.

— Villaraigosa, 17 percent.

Take the L.A. mayor out, and it’s:

— Brown, 46 percent.

— Newsom, 26 percent.

Brown does best with the voters over 40, who tend to turn out in bigger numbers on election day. Newsom thrives with the younger crowd, which he hopes to turn out big time, a la Barack Obama.

Geographically, Brown beats Newsom everywhere but the Bay Area.

But let’s be serious here: These early numbers mean exactly nothing. The race is a year and a half away, and this is nothing but name recognition and vague opinions based on current news media reports.

My take: Newsom’s toughest opposition would have been Villaraigosa, and with the L.A. mayor out of the way, he’s really the front-runner. Why? Because this is a textbook campaign — the new against the old, the fresh face against yesterday’s news, the guy who has only a very limited (and carefully crafted) record against the guy who has been around a long time and has done enough in his life to piss off both the left and the right.

I’m not a Newsom fan (in case you hadn’t noticed) and I’ve always liked Jerry Brown personally (although he was a horrible mayor of Oakland and is taking some awful positions). The fact that he’s in his 70s shouldn’t be an issue — he’s healthy, lively, full of energy, and to dis him because of his age is wrong on many, many levels … but that doesn’t mean the Newsom camp won’t (subtly) do it, and it doesn’t mean it won’t work.

I’m talking real, harsh politics here — and I’m betting that Newsom’s team isn’t a bit concerned with these poll numbers.

Editor’s Notes

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Tredmond@sfbg.com

In the midst of all that is bleak in the state of California and the City and County of San Francisco, I am having fun specuutf8g about what will happen when Gavin Newsom is no longer mayor.

It’s a fascinating exercise — and trust me, I am by no means the only person engaging in it.

The broad outline is that the race to replace Newsom at this point bears no relation to the dynamic that brought him into office. Back in 2003, the race was the progressives against downtown; Tom Ammiano, Matt Gonzalez, and Angela Alioto were competing for the progressive vote, and Newsom was downtown’s darling, running on a platform of taking welfare money away from homeless people. The Newsom-Gonzalez runoff was about as clear and stark a choice over political vision as the city could ask for.

Six years later, I can count four people who are getting ready to run, and none is much like either Newsom or Gonzalez.

Sup. Bevan Dufty, who is sometimes with the progressives and sometimes with the mayor, told me last week that he’s definitely running. He’s part of the board’s moderate wing, but isn’t the downtown call-up vote that Newsom was and clearly isn’t counting on the big-business world for most of his support. Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting has made no secret of his political ambitions and is putting himself in the limelight with high-profile statements about Proposition 13 and taxing the Catholic Church. He sounds pretty liberal these days, although his chief political consultant is Newsom (and PG&E) operative Eric Jaye.

Just about everyone in local politics assumes City Attorney Dennis Herrera will be in the mix. He’s had the advantage of not having to take stands on local measures and candidates (as the city attorney, he’s not allowed to endorse), and while some progressives see him as the most appealing choice, he’s not Ammiano or Gonzalez. And then there’s state Sen. Leland Yee, who is utterly unpredictable, sometimes great on the issues and sometimes awful — and is almost certainly going to run.

And right now, other than Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who might or might not run and isn’t putting together any kind of a pre-campaign operation, there’s no obvious progressive candidate in the race. If Mirkarimi’s serious, he needs to be moving.

But wait: There’s more.

Assume for a moment — and whatever you may think about the guy, it’s not a crazy assumption — that Gavin Newsom is the next governor of California. (How? He beats Jerry Brown in the primary by running future vs. past, then beats any Republican, who will be saddled with the Schwarzenegger mess. He isn’t remotely ready for the job, but that’s politics.)

Gov. Newsom would be sworn in Jan. 4, 2011. David Chiu, president of the Board of Supervisors, would be acting mayor — until he convenes the board and somebody gets six votes to finish Newsom’s term. That decision could be made by the current supes, who hold office until Jan. 8, 2011, if they can meet and decide in four days, or by the new supes — and we don’t know who they will be.

The person appointed doesn’t have to be a supervisor. Could be anyone. Could be Chiu. Could be Mirkarimi. Could be Dufty. Could be …. Aaron Peskin. Just takes six votes. And then that person could run as the incumbent.

Don’t go thinking any of this is just idle chatter. There are political consultants all over town having the same discussions, today. *

Is this really our only choice?

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By Tim Redmond

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Now that Antonio Villaraigosa appears not to be running for governor, the most populous state in the nation, the world’s eighth-largest economy, is headed for a very ugly choice. The Democratic Party has exactly two prominent candidates to run California — Jerry Brown, who has become a conservative with his no-new-taxes pledge and his tough-on-crime stuff, and Gavin Newsom, who has been a pretty awful mayor of San Francisco.

Is this the best that the state can do?

It might be — and here’s the problem. In a state this big, with more than 36 million people, a race for governor is all about image. It’s about television ads and media hype — and most people don’t pay attention to the details. Brown is ahead in the polls almost entirely because of name recognition; he’s the attorney general, has been govenor before, his dad was governor, he’s run for president — people have heard of him. Liberal Democrats who are older and remember when he was the dynamic young, progressive leader think back fondly to those days. Democrats who are more moderate look at his hard-ass love-developers-and-cops tenure as mayor of Oakland. Nobody has any idea how he would fix the state’s economy; I don’t think he knows himself.

Newsom is catching up, and will make this a close race, because he’s the new young face — and because he’s got a team of consultants and producers who are experts at creating false images. He’ll run as the “green mayor,” although he’s opposed the most important environmental measures in the city. He’ll run as a sensible leader who balanced a budget with no borrowing or taxes (although he’s doing it by destroying the local safety net). What most voters won’t see is the arrogant, petulant guy who has surrounded himself with fawning accolytes and nasty hit men. They won’t see a person who is way over his head in his current job, and has no business moving on to a much bigger one.

And that’s what we’ve got.

I wasn’t kidding last week when we talked about splitting up the state. It sounds like a radical idea, but think about it: If we were electing a governor of the coastal counties between Sonoma and Los Angeles, Jerry Brown wouldn’t even be a factor — and a lot of smart, experienced progressives would have a shot at the job. We wouldn’t be facing this ugly choice of finding someone either bland or conservative enough to appeal to the Central Valley. The voting population would be much smaller, and thus the vast sums of money that candidates have to raise would be significantly reduced.

We might even get a good governor.

In the meantime, we have to do better than this. Is there nobody else out there, no real change candidate who might actually be able to take on the serious problems facing California?

PG&E’s latest malevolence

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By Steven T. Jones
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Image of environment justice protest from Greenaction.org

As the Bay Guardian has documented for over 40 years, Pacific Gas & Electric Company has a sordid history of malevolent actions, including illegally cheating San Franciscans out of public power (from its initial violation of the federal Raker Act to its record-setting sums spent to defeat public power initiatives), corrupting local politics, lobbying against higher clean energy standards and consumer empower measures at all levels of government, greenwashing its dirty power portfolio (including the state’s largest nuclear power plant), transferring billions in ratepayer money to its parent company just before its utility declared bankruptcy (the lawsuit over which was recently dropped by Attorney General Jerry Brown, to his shame), screwing the city and ratepayers and then aggressively fighting the myriad resulting lawsuits, and on and on.

But now, we can add to the list mistreatment of its own employees. PG&E has reportedly ended negotiations with its Engineers and Scientists of California Local 20 labor union and announced its intention to unilaterally implement its final offer. The move has enraged both that union and its brothers and sisters on the larger House of Labor, which will be rallying and picketing outside PG&E headquarters at 77 Beale Street tomorrow at noon.

Say goodbye to Gavin

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Because he’s going to be around even less now that his campaign for governor is officially underway. Not that he’s been around all the much anyway. I like the way CBS describes how he’s spending his time:

Newsom has recently taken time off from campaigning to address budget issues in San Francisco, where he told reporters Thursday morning that he hoped to complete his budget before the June 1 deadline

Excuse me — “taken time off from campaigning?” Uh, isn’t campaiging “taking time off” from the job he’s been elected to do and is getting paid to do? Just for the record (thanks, Kimo Crossman for noticing this), the City Charter says:

CAEC § 13.5 (b)(2); Government Code §§ 24001, 24002 . The Mayor shall devote his or her entire time and attention to the duties of the office, and shall not devote time or attention to any other occupation or business
activity

Now, I know when any poitician runs for higher office, the current office suffers (Barack Obama wasn’t introducing a lot of legislation in the U.S. Senate last year). And that’s to be expected, and while the people of Illinois had a senator who was missing from the Senate a lot, I think most of them, like me, are glad that Obama did what he did.

Still, being mayor of a city that’s in a state of crisis is a little different. Running for governor is fine, but I’d rather it wasn’t Newsom’s major occupation, at least not right now.

Meanwhile, Sfist has a fascinating poll. These things are not at all scientific, and can easily be gamed, and it’s a small sample, but: remember, most sfist readers are San Franciscans, and I would guess the demographic skews young — that is, they’re Gavin’s people. And guess what?

About 50 percent like Jerry Brown. Only 30 percent like Newsom. A typical comment:

Let’s see, morally bankrupt, puppet mayor of San Francisco, morally bankrupt, idiot mayor of LA or the kooky old guy with more experience in his pinky than the other two combined.

Newsom better get his Plumpjack busboy uniform pressed or get used to being a socialite – again.

Gavin Newsom: Coming soon to a dog park near you, Mill Valley.

Now, before Nathan Ballard starts running around the office logging into every computer he can and piling up the Newsom votes, we all know that races are not won and lost on blog polls. Who knows — Jerry’s kids may have already started that game (although I don’t think they quite have it together at this point). And numbers aside, Newsom is running a sharp campaign. He’s selling himself as the agent of change, and Brown as yesterday’s news, and that will work — unless people take a hard look at what our mayor has actually done, in his own city.

Which doesn’t amount to much.

Gov opens door, a bit, on legal pot

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By Tim Redmond

Well, Arnold Schwarzenegger didn’t actually admit that he favors legalizing marijuana, which he once referred to (after taking hit on camera) as “not a drug, it’s a leaf,” but he did say that the state ought to have a debate on the issue. That’s possibly good news for Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, who has a bill to legalize pot that’s not exactly moving forward fast. Some of the Democrats in Sacramento are more afraid of the Demon Leaf than the guv is.

I don’t know if Arnold still does the 420, but I know he realizes that his budget plan is heading for defeat. And legalizing and taxing the state’s biggest cash crop would do wonders to boost state revenue.

UPDATE: Just talked to Ammiano, who told me that “I’m predicting something pretty good comes out of this.” WIth polls showing more than half the state supports legal pot, even the Democratic leadership, which has been loathe to move the Ammiano bill foward, may be ready at least to discuss the issue.

“The opposition is shrinking and the proponents are growing,” he said.

So it will be interesting to see how the Democratic candidates for governor shake down on this. “Gavin Newsom has trapped himself by saying no,” Ammiano noted. Can’t wait to hear what ol’ Jerry Brown has to say.

The trial of the San Francisco 8

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By Ben Terrall

On Monday, June 8, the seven former Black Panthers known as the San Francisco 8 will face a preliminary hearing in Superior Court. The defendants are charged in the 1971 death of a local police officer; the charges were initially brought back in 1975, and dismissed when a judge ruled that the central evidence in the case was obtained through torture.

In fact, the FBI COINTELPRO-era case has a chilling resemblance to stories of torture at Guantanamo Bay: the statements were obtained after several of the suspects were subject to sleep deprivation, wet blankets used for asphyxiation, and beatings.

Now, although the San Francisco district attorney refused to file charges, Attorney General Jerry Brown has brought the case back. In 2007, he charged eight men – all of them now in their 60s, 70s and 80s – with murder. One defendant has been dropped from the case.

The remaining defendants are Herman Bell, Ray Boudreaux, Richard Brown, Henry (Hank)Jones, Jalil Muntaqim (Anthony Bottom), Harold Taylor and Francisco Torres.

The case has attracted international attention, and Nobel Prize winners including Desmond Tutu have called on Brown to drop the charges.

Locally, it’s led to a fascinating battle within the San Francisco Labor Council.

All hail our new corporate overlords!

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Editor’s Notes by Tim Redmond

victory.jpg

It was hard in the good old days. Back when we were young and San Francisco was cheap and I was really cool with my long hair and motorcycle and stuff. You could rent an apartment for $200 a month, and even though we weren’t making much money in those days, there was plenty left over for drugs.

Back then, a guy like me would never have respected a politician like Gavin Newsom. You know: Party pooper. High-society twit. He even blamed his drinking for his tawdry affairs; we always though our tawdry affairs were the best reason for our drinking. And we never went into rehab. How, like, Betty Ford can you be?

But now I’m older and have a family and take cholesterol medication and I’ve come to realize how much I like Gavin Newsom. I mean, I don’t like him, not all Beth Spotswood or anything, but he’s growing on me.

I remember when he was running for reelection, and he came down to the Guardian to talk to us, and I asked him why he should get another term when the city was so eminently fucked up, and he said: "Gee, why did I even bother to get up this morning?"

That’s the kind of question you’d never hear Jerry Brown or John Garamendi ask. They know why they got up this morning; they are past the time of wonder and self-doubt.

Old farts is what they are.

So this week we endorse Gavin — Our Mayor — for governor of California. You won’t read that in SF Weekly — they don’t even do endorsements, pathetic little shits.

In other news, I’m happy to announce that the Guardian has settled its lawsuit with SF Weekly and Village Voice Media.

Gav for Guv! Do it to ’em, Newsom

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A special Guardian endorsement

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POTUS here he comes!

California’s a tough place. It’s a state of clashing values — of coastal liberals who want good public services, environmental protection, and gay marriage and central valley conservatives who want nothing of the sort. It’s run by a fractious, divisive legislature that desperately needs a firm hand. It’s a state so big and complex that it has defied the abilities of generations of talented politicians, from Jerry Brown and George Deukmejian to Gray Davis and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

And yet, we refuse to give up on the Golden State. It’s been the Guardian‘s home since 1966, the place where we launched what would be the first alternative paper on the West Coast. It’s a place with endless possibilities, from sunshine to public power to tax reform, and we can’t risk its future on another worthless, wimpy chief executive.

That’s why we’re taking the unusual step of announcing an early endorsement for governor. We’re backing the only candidate strong enough, smart enough, sober enough, and secure enough in his own self worth and image to take on the Sisyphean task of running California. Today, we’re endorsing Gavin Newsom.

The mayor of San Francisco may look like a lightweight fop, but that’s unfair — we know him better. This is a young man who grew up cleaning toilets then went on to found his own successful business, using nothing but the wealth and connections of a billionaire family friend to help him. A man who has never spent a day in his life without comfortable surroundings yet developed a remarkable empathy for the less fortunate, and capitalized on their misery to promote his career. A man who travels the world in the company of movies stars and brilliant entrepreneurs, fearlessly promoting his home town while the rest of the whiney little twerps at City Hall just sit in committee meetings and bitch.

Losers.

Newsom’s platform is perfect for this state, at this time. He supports marriage; after all, he’s done it twice himself. He’s even gotten involved in the marriages of close friends and advisors! And he thinks the rest of us, no matter what our sexual proclivities, should have the right to be miserable too.

Newsom talks not just of change, but of "gigantic order-of-magnitude change." He thinks we should all come together to solve the state’s problems instead of pointing fingers of blame — and isn’t that just the sweetest?

Doesn’t anybody here know how to run this state?

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By Tim Redmond

Well, the polls look pretty shitty for Gavin Newsom For Governor (thanks, sfist for the tip), and his ratings will just get worse as he attempts to solve a budget crisis without working with the supervisors or the other key stakeholders. At this rate, the way he’s treating the city employee unions, there’s no way he’s getting labor support, and for a candidate who will be running as a liberal to be shunned by labor is a major problem.

(And if he thinks a movie-star wife will give him some glam, check out the reviews.)

And Newsom’s counterpart to the south, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, ain’t looking so hot right now.

John Garamendi has been reborn as a progressive populist, but a guy who was at best a moderate state legislator is going to have his work cut out for him wooing the left in a primary. And Jerry Brown … well, Jer’s on the right side of the same-sex marriage debate (finally), but he was a terrible mayor of Oakland and has changed his political spots so many times that nobody knows quite which Jerry we’ll get this time around — or whether his current manifestation will last.

Is this really the best the Democratic Party can do?

I guess we should be glad that the Republicans have an even worse lineup. But that’s not exactly something to celebrate.

Garamendi leads the way on reform

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Some California heavy hitters, led by the Bay Area Council and including Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, are meeting up in Sacto today to talk about a California Constitutional convention (pdf).

The idea: The state’s such a mess right now that we might as well get a group of people (not elected legislators) together and rewrite the rules for governing.

It’s either a brilliant idea or a horrible one, depending, to a great extent, on whether the progressives in this state have it together to influence the outcome. Otherwise, we’ll wind up with all sorts of awful stuff in there.
Guardian report Rebecca Bowe is there, and will be blogging on it later today, but an interesting element is already emerging. I just got a copy of Garamendi’s speech, and the Lt. Guv, who based on his history would seem to be the most moderate to conservative Democrat, is going out front on the reform platform:

“We have tied ourselves in knots with the two-thirds vote requirement. It’s time to go back to what this nation established years ago – a majority rule plan, plain and simple, on every issue,” Garamendi said. “That would solve a lot of problems. Whatever the minority party is, they should not dominate the policies of the state of California. That’s the two-thirds vote requirement on appropriations including the budget and taxes.”

That makes him the only leading Democrat in the governor’s race who is willing to say publicly that the Legislature ought to be able to raise taxes on a 55 percent vote.

Attorney General Jerry Brown, who built his early career on political reform, is running for the fences and hasn’t taken any position on the 2/3 requirement.

And San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who ought to be the liberal in the race, is kinda sorta playing the halfway game. Eric Jaye, his campaign manager, told me today that Newsom supports reducing the threshold for budget approval – but hasn’t decided about the tax threshold.

“It’s a question that’s been posed to him and he’s exploring it,” Jaye said. “There’s no question that the current system’s broken and needs to be fixed.”

Yes, it needs to be fixed – but fixing it by allowing the Democratic majority to pass a budget, and then allow the Republican minority to hold the state hostage because the anti-tax nuts won’t approve the spending measures, is worse than no fix at all.

So the lineup for gov is already shaping up in odd ways, with Garamendi becoming the populist reformer, Brown acting like the kind of politician he used to despise, and Newsom getting left behind with the really squishy can’t-take-a-stand center.

Free the prisoners!

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small prison.jpg
By Steven T. Jones

For all the outrage and political posturing around federal judges ordering California to reduce the state’s prison population, this has been foreseeable for more than a decade and it’s something that our elected leaders should embrace as both humane and a partial solution to our budget woes.

The bottom line is our prisons are shamefully overcrowded, thanks largely to legislators pushing tough-on-crime and no-new-taxes measures for decades. But politicians from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to Attorney General Jerry Brown have vowed to fight the order all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“It seems like everyone’s on the same page with this as far as elected officials,” Ronn Owens said on KGO radio this morning, where Lt. Gov. (and gubernatorial candidate) John Garamendi sounded a little more reasonable than other politicians who have been tripping all over themselves to sound tough and indignant, lest someone call them soft on crime.

“We’ve known this is coming. This is not something new,” Garamendi said. “The problem is failed leadership.” He called for more creative incarceration solutions such as more conservation camps (not the best idea) and more aggressive efforts to lower recidivism rates (a better idea). But he shied away from more radical and effective solutions such as ending the war on drugs.

Brown, after taking a courageous stand in favor of judicial independence in December, should be ashamed of himself. Instead of beating his chest, he should be talking about the kinds of obvious solutions that he’s advocated in his previous iterations, such as ending the war on drugs, parole reform, and freeing most nonviolent offenders.

We can no longer afford to have some of the world’s highest incarceration rates and lowest tax rates, it’s just that simple.

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