Mayor

Endorsements 2008: State ballot measures

-
0

STATE BALLOT MEASURES

Proposition 1A

High-speed rail bond

YES, YES, YES


California hasn’t taken on a major improvement to its public infrastructure in several generations, the last significant one being the construction of the California State Water Project back in the 1950s. But with the state’s growing population and the travel penchant of its citizens, there will be dire consequences to ignoring the need for more and better transportation options.

The state has been studying and planning for the creation of a high-speed rail system for more than 10 years, and this is the moment for voters to make it a reality.

Proposition 1A is a $9.95 billion bond measure. Combined with contributions from the federal government and private sector, the measure would fund the first leg of a system that would eventually stretch from Sacramento to San Diego. The train would carry people from downtown San Francisco to downtown Los Angeles in 2.5 hours for just $55.

The benefits are overwhelming. High-speed rail works well in Asia and Europe, on a fraction of the energy used by cars and planes and with almost no emissions. The system is projected to pay for itself within 20 years and then be a source of revenue for the state. And it would make trips directly from one city core to another, facilitating tourism and business trips without clogging our roads.

Unfortunately, the costs of not approving this measure are also huge: more congestion for road and air travelers, more freeway lanes, larger airports, dirtier air, and increased greenhouse-gas emissions. Building a high-speed rail system is something California can’t afford not to do. Vote yes.

Proposition 2

Farm animal protections

YES


It’s hard to argue against a proposal that would allow farm-raised animals to stand up, lie down, and move around in their enclosures. This is a step in the direction of more humane treatment of animals; plenty of organic farms already comply, and the milk, meat, and eggs they produce are healthier for both humans and animals.

According to big agricultural companies and the operators of factory farms, a vote for Proposition 2 is a vote for an avian influenza outbreak, the spread of food-borne illnesses like salmonella, huge job losses, and even increased global warming. But we find it hard to believe that simply permitting creatures like veal calves, breeding pigs, and egg-laying hens to stretch their limbs and turn around will cause these Chicken Little predictions to come true. Vote yes on Prop. 2.

Proposition 3

Children’s hospital bonds

NO


This one sounds great unless you stop to think about it. Proposition 3 would provide more money for hospitals that care for sick children, which seems fine. But a lion’s share of almost $1 billion in public bond money would go to private children’s hospitals for capital improvements. While 20 percent of the cash would be tabbed for public institutions like the five University of California–run hospitals, the other 80 percent would go to places like Lucile Salter Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford. We don’t discount the valuable work these hospitals do. But many of them have sizable endowments and ample resources to fund improvements on their own — especially since voters approved $750 million in children’s hospital bond money just four years ago. Why is the state, which is broke, giving public money to private hospitals? Vote no on Prop. 3.

Proposition 4

Parental notification and wait period for abortion

NO, NO, NO


This measure was horrible when it was on the ballot twice before, in 2005 and in 2006, and it’s still horrible now. If passed, it would require doctors to notify parents of minors seeking abortions, make teenagers wait 48 hours after the notification is made before undergoing the abortion, penalize doctors who don’t abide by the rule, and make kids go through a court process to get a waiver to the law. The doctors would have to hand-deliver the notice or send it by certified mail.

Proponents have spun this as a way to "stop child predators," a baseless claim, as teenage victims of predators seeking abortions are still victims of predators whether their parents know or not. Opponents say it’s a dangerous law that will drive more kids seeking abortions underground and do nothing to truly improve family relations. This proposal represents another erosion of abortion rights.

The last two attempts to require parental notification were narrowly defeated — but this time, with so much else on the ballot, it’s attracting less attention, and polls show it might pass.

Big funders backing the measure are San Diego Reader publisher James Holman and Sonoma-based winery owner Don Sebastiani, who have collectively spent more than $2 million supporting it. A broad coalition of medical, education, and civil rights organizations oppose it. Vote no.

Proposition 5

Treatment instead of jail

YES


In 2000, California voters approved Proposition 36, which sent people convicted of certain drug-related offenses to treatment programs instead of to prison. Proposition 5 would revamp that earlier measure by giving more people a shot at addiction services instead of a jail cell and would provide treatment to youth offenders as well as adults. It would also make possession of less than 28.5 grams (1 ounce) of marijuana an infraction instead of a misdemeanor, something we wholeheartedly support.

Opponents of the plan say it would cost too much and would allow criminals a get-out-of-jail-free card. But punitive approaches to addiction clearly don’t work. And while the new programs Prop. 5 calls for will need an initial infusion of cash, taking nonviolent inmates out of jail and keeping them out of the system by helping them overcome their addictions should save the state considerable money in the long run.

Proposition 6

Prison spending

NO, NO, NO


There are 171,000 people in California’s 33 prisons. All told, the state shells out $10 billion every year incarcerating people. This prison boom has enriched for-profit corrections companies and made the prison guards’ union one of the most powerful interest groups in the state — but it hasn’t made the streets any safer.

Nonetheless, backers of Proposition 6 say the state needs to spend $1 billion more per year on new prisons, increased prison time (even for youth offenders), and untested programs that few believe will have any positive impact — without identifying a way to pay for any of it.

Bottom line, Prop. 6 would divert funding from necessary areas like health care and education and waste it on a failed, throw-away-the-key approach to crime. Even the staunchly conservative Orange County Register‘s editorial board called the measure "criminally bad." Vote no on Prop. 6.

Proposition 7

Renewable-energy generation

NO


We’re all for more renewable energy, but this measure and the politics around it smell worse than a coal-burning power plant.

Proposition 7 would require all investor-owned and municipal utilities to procure 50 percent clean energy by 2025. It would allow fast-tracked permitting for the new power plants and suggests they be placed in "solar and clean energy zones" in the desert while still meeting environmental reviews and protections. There’s a hazy provision that the solar industry groups argue would discredit any power sources under 30 megawatts from counting toward renewable portfolio standards (RPS), which the Yes on Prop. 7 people refute.

The measure is confusing. The California Energy Commission and the California Public Utilities Commission would play somewhat unclear roles in the state’s energy future. Overall, the CEC would site power plants and the CPUC would set rates. Penalties levied to utilities that don’t meet the new RPS would be controlled by the CEC and used to build transmission lines connecting the desert-sourced solar power with cities.

The coalition supporting Prop. 7 is an interesting mix of retired public officials, including former San Francisco supervisor Jim Gonzalez, former state senator John Burton, former mayor Art Agnos, and utility expert S. David Freeman. Interestingly, Gonzalez was a staunch ally of Pacific Gas and Electric Co. when he was a local politician, and Burton has done legal work for PG&E. The bankroll for the campaign comes from Arizona billionaire Peter Sperling, son of medical marijuana proponent John Sperling.

A number of solar and wind companies, which would presumably profit by its passing, are lined up against it, but the No on 7 money comes entirely from PG&E, SoCal Edison, and Sempra, which have dumped $28 million into the campaign. That, of course, makes us nervous.

But other opponents include all the major green groups — Environmental Defense, the League of Conservation Voters, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club, and the Union of Concerned Scientists — none of which were consulted before it was put on the ballot.

We’re obviously uncomfortable coming down on the side of PG&E, but renewable energy is a major policy issue, and this measure was written with little input from the experts in the field. Gonzalez told us it’s mostly aimed at pushing giant solar arrays in the desert; that’s fine, but we’re also interested in small local projects that might be more efficient and environmentally sound.

Vote no.

Proposition 8

Ban on same-sex marriage

NO, NO, NO


Same-sex couples have been able to marry legally in California since June. Their weddings — often between couples who have spent decades together, raised children, fought hard for civil rights, and been pillars of their communities — have been historic, joy-filled moments. San Francisco City Hall has witnessed thousands of these weddings — and to date, there has not been a single confirmed report that gay weddings have caused damage to straight marriages.

But now comes Proposition 8, a statewide measure that seeks to take this fundamental right away from same-sex couples.

Using the exact same argument that was used in 2000, Prop. 8 contends that "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."

Back then, the measure passed. This time, the landscape has shifted radically and is full of same-sex brides and grooms who have already legally tied the knot. This time around, the stale "man and woman only" argument is being used to attempt to deny individuals their existing rights based on their sexual orientation. Polls suggest that a majority of Californians are unwilling to support this measure, but it would only take a simple majority to deny gays and lesbians their marriage rights. Vote no on Prop. 8 and protect hard-won marriage equality.

Proposition 9

Restrictions on parole

NO, NO, NO


It’s tempting simply to repeat our reasons for voting no on Proposition 6 in our discussion of Proposition 9. While the details of the two measures are different — Prop. 6 would send more people to jail; Prop. 9 would keep them there longer — the two would have a similar unfortunate result: more people crowding our already overflowing and outrageously expensive prison system. Prop. 9 would accomplish this by making it much more difficult for prisoners to gain parole. But California already releases very few inmates serving long sentences for crimes like murder and manslaughter. Moreover, many of the other provisions of Prop. 9 have already been enacted, which would mean costly redundancies if the measure is approved.

One man is largely responsible for both the misguided "tough on crime" propositions on this year’s ballot: billionaire Broadcom Corp. cofounder Henry Nicholas, who has poured millions into the two campaigns. But a funny thing happened to Nicholas on the way to becoming California’s poster boy for law and order. In June, he was indicted on numerous counts of securities fraud and drug violations (including spiking the drinks of technology executives with ecstasy and operating a "sex cave" staffed with prostitutes under his house). He insists he’s innocent.

Vote no on Prop. 9.

Proposition 10

Alternative-fuel vehicles bond

NO


This is another "green" measure that looks good and smells bad. It would allow the state to issue general obligation bonds worth $5 billion to fund incentives to help consumers purchase alternative-fuel vehicles and research alternative-fuel and renewable-energy technology.

Proponents argue this is a necessary jump start for the industry. Opponents say the industry doesn’t need it — Priuses are on back order as it is, and the measure was craftily written to exclude subsidies for purchasing any other plug-in or hybrid vehicle that gets less than 45 miles per gallon. Though the measure would have provisions for vehicles powered by hydrogen and electricity, critics point out that the subsidies would be first come, first served and would be gone by the time these technologies even reach the consumer market.

In reality, Proposition 10 is a giveaway designed to favor the natural gas industry and was put on the ballot by one of its biggest players, T. Boone Pickens, who owns Clean Energy Fuels Corp., a natural gas fueling and distribution company based in Seal Beach. He wrote the measure, paid more than $3 million to get it on the ballot, and spent a total of $8 million supporting it.

Beyond the blatant attempt to manipulate public money for private good, there are a number of other problems with the bill. It would mostly subsidize purchases of large trucks but wouldn’t require that those trucks stay in California, so companies could use the $50,000 rebates to improve their fleet, then drive the benefit out of state.

While natural-gas-burning vehicles emit far less exhaust and air pollution than gas and diesel cars, natural gas is still a fossil fuel with carbon emissions that are only 20 percent less than that of a typical car. It’s another dinosaur technology that only marginally improves the situation. The Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters are against Prop. 10, as are consumer groups and taxpayer associations, who hate the $10-billion-over-30-years payback on this special-interest bond. Vote no.

Proposition 11

Redistricting commission

NO


Almost everyone agrees that California’s process for drawing the boundaries of legislative districts is flawed. History has proven that allowing elected officials to redraw their own political map every 10 years is a recipe for shameless gerrymandering that benefits incumbents. It has also resulted in uncompetitive districts, voter disaffection, and a hopelessly polarized legislature. But Proposition 11 is not the answer.

The idea of placing redistricting in the hands of an independent citizen commission sounds good on the surface. But as Assemblymember Mark Leno points out, the makeup of this incredibly powerful commission would be dependent only on party affiliation — five Democrats, five Republicans, and four independents. That’s not an accurate reflection of California’s population; Democrats far outnumber Republicans in this state. To give Republicans an equal number of commissioners would ignore that fact. And there is no provision to ensure that the body would reflect the state’s racial diversity, or that it would be composed of people from different religious (or nonreligious) backgrounds. The same goes for things like gender and income levels. Also, people must apply to join the body — limiting the pool of potential commissioners even further. And state legislators would have the power to remove some applicants.

In other words, the same people the law seeks to take out of the process would still wield a great deal of influence over it. Vote no on Prop. 11.

Proposition 12

Veterans bond act

YES


Proposition 12 would authorize the state to issue $900 million in bonds to help veterans buy farms and homes. It’s true that, as opponents say, the act doesn’t discriminate between rich veterans and poor veterans, and it probably should, but the vets most likely to use this — from the Gulf War and the Iraq war — have faced so many daunting problems and have received so little support from the government that sent them to war that it’s hard to oppose something like this. Vote yes.

>>More Guardian Endorsements 2008

Endorsements 2008: National and state races

-
0

NATIONAL RACES

President

BARACK OBAMA


This is the most important presidential election of our lives.

The nation is in a state of political and financial meltdown. The war in Iraq drags on, sucking money out of the US Treasury and costing more and more lives. The gap between the rich and the poor has risen to unsustainable levels, global warming threatens to permanently alter the ecology of the globe … and all the Republican candidate offers is more of the same. It’s scary.

The Democrat we proudly endorsed in the California primary isn’t the exact same candidate who’s trying to get elected president today. Barack Obama, like just about all Democrats at this stage of a campaign, has moved a bit to the right. He supported the $700 million Wall Street bailout that’s essentially a huge giveaway to the same people who caused the problem. He talks about promoting "safe nuclear energy" and "clean coal" — oxymora if there ever were any.

Back in February, we noted that "our biggest problem with Obama is that he talks as if all the nation needs to do is come together in some sort of grand coalition of Democrats and Republicans, of ‘blue states and red states.’ But some of us have no interest in making common cause with the religious right or Dick Cheney or Halliburton or Don Fisher. There are forces and interests in the United States that need to be opposed, defeated, consigned to the dustbin of history, and for all of Obama’s talk of unity, we worry that he lacks the interest in or ability to take on a tough, bloody fight against an entrenched political foe."

But Obama remains one of the most inspirational candidates for high office we’ve ever seen. He’s energized a generation of young voters, he’s electrified communities of color, and he’s given millions of Americans a chance to hope that Washington can once again be a friend, not an enemy, to progressive values at home and abroad.

His tax proposals are pretty good. He’s always been against the war. His health care plan isn’t perfect, but it’s at least a step toward universal coverage.

And frankly, the nation can’t afford another four years of Bush-style policies.

The election is a turning point for the United States. It’s about a movement that can change the direction of the country; it’s about mobilizing people in large numbers to reject the failed right-wing policies of Bush and the Republican Party. We’re pleased to endorse Barack Obama as the standard-bearer of that movement.

Congress, District 6

LYNN WOOLSEY


Lynn Woolsey comes from the more moderate suburbs, and she’s far better than Nancy Pelosi, who represents liberal San Francisco. Just look at the bailout: Pelosi wants to prop up the Wall Street banks, and Woolsey wanted to fund any bailout with a modest tax on risky financial instruments. Woolsey richly deserves reelection.

Congress, District 7

GEORGE MILLER


George Miller, who has represented this East Bay district since 1974, is an effective legislator and strong environmentalist. Sometimes he’s too willing to compromise — he worked with the George W. Bush administration on No Child Left Behind, a disaster of an education bill — but he’s a solid opponent of the war, and we’ll endorse him for another term.

Congress District 8

CINDY SHEEHAN


The antiwar leader and Gold Star mom who put George Bush on the defensive is at best a long shot to unseat the Speaker of the House. Cindy Sheehan has only recently moved to the district, has no local political experience, and is taking on one of the most powerful politicians in the United States.

But we can’t endorse Nancy Pelosi, who has consistently supported funding the war (and has refused to meet with antiwar protesters camped out in front of her house). Pelosi pushed the Wall Street bailout and privatized the Presidio.

Sheehan wants a fast withdrawal from Iraq, opposes any bailout for the big financial institutions, and is a voice against business as usual in Congress. This is a protest vote, but a valid one.

Congress, District 13

PETE STARK


After 32 years, Pete Stark has become in some ways the most radical member of the Bay Area congressional delegation. He’s furious with the war and shows no patience for the Bush administration’s nonsense. He is the only member of Congress who admits he’s an atheist. We just hope he doesn’t decide to retire any time soon.

NONPARTISAN OFFICES

Superior Court, Seat 12

GERARDO SANDOVAL


It’s unusual to see contested races for judge in San Francisco. Most of the time, incumbents retire midterm to allow the governor to appoint a replacement, and almost nobody ever challenges a sitting judge. So the San Francisco bench has been shaped more by Republican governors than by the overwhelmingly Democratic electorate.

So we were pleased to see Gerardo Sandoval, a termed-out supervisor and former public defender, file to run against Judge Thomas Mellon. A conservative Republican appointed by Gov. Pete Wilson in 1994, Mellon has a lackluster record, at best. California Courts and Judges, a legal journal, calls him unreasonable and cantankerous. In 2000, the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office sought to have him removed from all criminal cases because of his anti-defendant bias. He needed a challenge, and he’s got one: in the June primary, Sandoval came in well ahead, but because there were three candidates, this contest has gone to a November runoff.

Sandoval has been a generally progressive member of the Board of Supervisors, although we were critical of some of his votes. But he would bring the perspective of a public defender to a bench dominated by former prosecutors and big-firm civil lawyers. Vote for Sandoval.

STATE RACES

State Senate, District 3

MARK LENO


The drama in this race took place back in June, when Leno beat incumbent Carole Migden and former Marin Assemblymember Joe Nation in the Democratic primary. Like most Bay Area Democrats, he’s a shoo-in for the general election. But it’s worth noting that Leno has an extensive record in the Assembly and has demonstrated an ability to get things done. Long before the Supreme Court made same-sex marriage the law of the state, Leno got both houses of the Legislature to approve marriage equality bills (which the governor then vetoed). He got the Ellis Act, that terrible law that allows landlords to evict all their tenants and sell their buildings as condos, amended to protect seniors and disabled people. And while we were worried in the spring that Leno might be too close to Mayor Newsom when it came to local endorsements, he’s shown both independence and progressive leanings. He has been a strong, visible and effective backer of Prop. H, the Clean Energy Act and has endorsed Mark Sanchez for supervisor in District 9, breaking with Newsom (and the moderates) who backed Eva Royale. We expect Leno will go on to a stellar record in the state Senate and we’re happy to endorse him.

State Senate, District 9

LONI HANCOCK


A part of Berkeley politics since she first ran successfully for city council in 1971, Lori Hancock has spent the past six years in the State Assembly. She defeated Wilma Chan in a heated primary for this State Senate seat and faces little opposition in November. She’s one of the most experienced progressives in California and has a solid grip on the state’s budget issues. We wish she wasn’t so willing to back more moderate candidates for local office, but we’re happy to see her move up to the senate.

State Assembly, District 12

FIONA MA


Fiona Ma has been a pleasant surprise. We didn’t support her for this post two years ago, but she’s become a leading advocate of high-speed rail, a foe of plans to privatize the Cow Palace, and a visible, out-front backer of the Clean Energy Act. We hope she continues to evolve into a progressive leader in Sacramento.

State Assembly, District 13

TOM AMMIANO


The only problem with Tom Ammiano moving up to Sacramento is that we’ll miss his presence at City Hall. Ammiano’s record is stellar — although he was once nearly a lone voice for progressives on the Board of Supervisors, he’s become one of its most effective members, with a long list of groundbreaking legislation. Ammiano authored the city’s domestic partners law. He created Healthy San Francisco, the universal health care program. He sponsored the 2001 and 2002 public power measures. He created the Children’s Fund and the Rainy Day Fund, which is now saving programs in the public schools.

He’s also responsible — as much as any one person ever can be — for dramatically changing the climate of San Francisco politics. Ammiano’s 1999 mayoral challenge to incumbent Willie Brown brought the progressives together in ways we hadn’t seen in years, and the district-elections measure Ammiano authored brought a completely new Board of Supervisors into office a year later.

We’re happy to see Ammiano move on to Sacramento.

State Assembly, District 14

NANCY SKINNER


Nancy Skinner won the June primary for this seat, and while we supported her opponent, Kriss Worthington, we acknowledged that she would make an excellent assembly member. Skinner has plenty of experience: she was on the Berkeley City Council from 1984 to 1992 and has founded and run a nonprofit that helps cities establish sustainable environmental policies. She understands state budget issues, is a strong advocate for education, and will hit the ground running.

>>More Guardian Endorsements 2008

The real “blank check” — PG&E spends millions

-
14

yesonH_small.jpg

By Steven T. Jones

Pacific Gas & Electric has already reported spending $5.23 million to defeat Prop. H, the Clean Energy Act, pretty much solely funding the ironically named Committee to Stop the Blank Check. And that’s just through the end of September, according to the latest campaign finance filing. With more than a month of blank check spending to go, PG&E is on pace to spend about $10 million to try to kill a measure that would establish renewable energy goals and call for study of whether public power might be the best way to reach those goals. That would make it the most expensive campaign in San Francisco history.

The major beneficiaries of PG&E’s blank check have been Storefront Political Media, the firm run by Mayor Gavin Newsom’s chief political consultant, Eric Jaye, and politicians such as supervisors Sean Elsbernd and Carmen Chu, who have appeared on the No on H mailers that have been clogging mailboxes for more than a month. But conservative political consultants Jim Ross and Tom Hsieh have also shared in this unprecedented payday, along with a variety of individuals and community groups. Yup, the checkbook is open for anyone willing to accept dirty money and a dirty environment.

Obamarama

-
3

obamadebate.jpg
The Barack Obama campaign will host a presidential debate watching party this evening at Temple Prana, 540 Howard near First Street, so come on down to bask in the lefty love as Obama fends off the increasingly desperate (and downright duplicitous) attacks by John McCain. Even Mayor Gavin Newsom will be there. The event starts at 5:30 and the action kicks off at 6.

Nevius: check your facts

-
1

by Amanda Witherell

Last week SF Chronicle columnist C.W. Nevius waded back into one of his pet issues, homelessness, in a piece on the SF Streets and Neighborhoods workgroup. Convened by Mayor Gavin Newsom, the group is tasked with coming up with a few ideas to improve the street safety for a couple pilot projects centered around downtown. The group is stacked with local law enforcement officials, Newsom staffers, reps from the Chamber of Commerce and tourist groups, and a couple token homeless rights advocates, and the subtext of their mission seems to be implementing new quality of life laws, like a sit-lie ordinance, and double-strength enforcement zones that will further criminalize the already unfortunate condition of being homeless.

I reported on their last meeting here, a markedly different assessment than what Nevius penned.

Oh, where to start? How about the obvious: Nevius reported the wrong date of the next meeting. It’s actually going to be tomorrow, October 7 – though you wouldn’t necessarily know that since the group hasn’t posted its agenda. (Sunshine violation, anyone?) Anyway, Dariush Kayhan, the mayor’s homeless policy director, confirmed to me that the meeting is on Oct. 7, at 11 a.m., at St. Anthony Foundation’s offices at 150 Golden Gate.

Moving on: Nevius spins the group to make it sound like their work will be the first sip of a panacea long overdue – cooperation.

Will Newsom debate Clean Energy?

-
1

The Sierra Club has challenged Mayor Gavin Newsom to debate the merits of Prop. H, the Clean Energy Act that Newsom and Pacific Gas & Electric are opposing. If Newsom accepts, the Commonwealth Club has agreed to host the debate at high noon on Oct. 23. No word yet on who would argue for the measure, but it would most likely be its author, Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who is mulling a bid for Newsom’s job in a couple years.

The Mayor’s Office is treating the request like any other, with press secretary Nathan Ballard telling me, “We received this invitation this morning, and we’ll consider it along with every other invitation the Mayor has received.” It’ll be interesting to see whether Newsom, who is exploring a run for governor, rises to the challenge. His track record of helping local measures and candidates he supports is fairly dismal, and the case that PG&E (and Eric Jaye, the consultant Newsom shares with the corporate utility) has been making with regular mailers has been based mostly on alarmist lies and distortions.

Hopefully, an open and honest debate would help set the record straight, assuming Newsom has any interest in that sort of thing.

Newsom reacts to Yes on 8 ad

-
5


You Tube has already posted this parody of the Yes on 8 ad that features Newsom

By Saadia Malik

Mayor Gavin Newsom yesterday commented on the television ad urging California voters to approve Proposition 8 and reinstate the unconstitutional ban on same sex marriage, telling a small crowd of reporters, “The commercial was weak.”

The ad uses footage of Newsom’s May 15 speech to the jubilant City Hall rally that followed the California Supreme Court ruling that the ban on same sex marriage is unconstitutional. The ad claims that decision could trigger litigation against individuals’ personal beliefs, a move to revoke the churches’ tax-exempt status, and a push to teach children about same-sex marriage in public schools.

“Whether you like it or not,” is the Newsom statement that the Yes on 8 campaign turns into a mantra, associating it with their doomsday predictions about what same sex marriage will bring. At the end of the 30-second ad, the narrator declares, “We don’t have to accept this.”

Newsom sneered when asked about the commercial during an outside press conference at Justin Herman Plaza, saying “I’m not surprised they took comments completely out of context.”

“California will say no to Prop 8,” Newsom said confidently. “This is not a big issue anymore, from my perspective.”

Back to Oakland?

-
0

› jesse@sfbg.com

Big money is flowing into an Oakland City Council campaign, fueling rumors that state Senate President Don Perata might be preparing for a Willie Brown–style move from Sacramento kingpin to Bay Area mayor.

Perata’s former chief of staff Kerry Hamill is vying for the city’s at-large council seat, running against AC Transit board member Rebecca Kaplan. Two independent expenditure committees with possible links to Perata are laying out tens of thousands of dollars on Hamill’s behalf. Sources say Perata has been fundraising for his ex-staffer, as has Oakland City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente, a longtime Perata loyalist. And it appears one of De La Fuente’s efforts to raise cash may have skirted the boundaries of state law.

The stakes for De La Fuente are definitely high. Hamill’s election would help him retain his role as president of the closely divided council. But the scuttlebutt around Oakland is that a successful Hamill candidacy could have bigger implications. It might just pave the way for something many local observers see as inevitable: a Perata run for mayor.

Current Mayor Ron Dellums is reeling from a spike in violent crime, huge budget deficits, and a detached leadership style, all of which is fueling a nascent recall movement. Perata will be termed out of state office this year and has made no secret of his interest in Oakland’s top job, despite allegedly being the target of an ongoing political corruption investigation by the FBI. Having a powerful colleague like Hamill on the council, while keeping De La Fuente in control of the body, could make a run for mayor attractive to Perata (who didn’t return our calls for comment).

"He’s going to run. Everybody knows he’s going to run," Oakland City Attorney John Russo told the Guardian, adding that the flurry of campaigning for Hamill is "absolutely a signal" of Perata’s mayoral ambitions. "That group of people [Perata and his allies] clearly see their interests lying with Kerry."

Reached for comment, Hamill said, "Don’s supporting me because I’m the best candidate…. Whether it is for selfish reasons like making sure the right people for him are on the council or not, I believe he is supporting me because he likes my work."

OUTSIDE INFLUENCE


If you live in Oakland or have spent any time there recently, chances are you’ve seen the pro-Hamill campaign signs promising "Safe Neighborhoods Now" affixed to fences and lampposts all over town. Oakland mailboxes have been stuffed with flyers backing Hamill’s candidacy. The signs and some of the other materials position Hamill in opposition to Dellums more than Kaplan, with one mail piece hammering the current mayor for his handling of the city’s recent crime wave.

Hamill’s campaign did not produce the signs or much of the literature championing her. Instead, two newly formed independent expenditure committees doled out more than $87,000 on her behalf in the first half of this year alone. The groups are not required to disclose their recent spending until Oct. 6, but given the volume of material being generated, there is little doubt their combined outlays will top $100,000 for the year. Hamill told us that outside groups are also aiding her opponent Kaplan, though she did not name them. Our examination of campaign records found that the California Nurses Association paid $24,535 for a pro-Kaplan mailer in May.

"That’s definitely a lot of money," Alameda County supervisor Keith Carson told us, referring to the spending in support of Hamill. "It certainly raises your antenna. In any campaign when you have two separate entrants putting resources in, you pause and ask, ‘What’s behind it?’<0x2009>"

On the surface the two groups backing Hamill appear unconnected. But recent media reports and a Guardian examination of campaign finance records reveal several ties between both organizations and Hamill’s old boss, Perata.

The first group, which calls itself Californians for Good Jobs, Clean Streets, and Outstanding Schools, displays clear Perata associations. The group’s treasurer is Mark Capitolo, who used to be Perata’s director of communications. Many of its donors consistently give to Perata’s numerous political action committees. And its campaign documents list a Sacramento phone number that, as the East Bay Express reported in May, belongs to Perata’s chief political strategist, Sandra Polka.

Polka and employees of her consulting business appear to be deeply involved in the senator’s affairs. When we called Perata’s Sacramento office seeking comment for this story, we were told to contact Paul Hefner, who works for Polka’s firm. Polka, Hefner, De La Fuente, Capitolo, and Californians for Good Jobs president, Hilda Martinez, did not return our calls for comment.

Perata’s links to the second group, known as Oakland Jobs PAC, are not as immediately apparent, and one person involved with the group denied that the legislator is aiding their cause. But an inspection of disclosure forms did yield evidence of the legislator’s potential influence. In mid-May, Oakland Jobs received its first $10,000 from another political action committee known as Vote Matters. As the Contra Costa Times reported, Vote Matters spent more than $175,000 earlier this year trying to pass Proposition 93, which would have allowed Perata and other termed-out state politicians to remain in office. Perata strongly supported the measure, which did not pass.

Robert Apodaca, who called himself a "personal friend" of Perata’s, informed the Guardian that he recommended that Vote Matters provide the money to Oakland Jobs. Apodaca is director of marketing for the architecture and planning firm MVE and Associates, which designed the huge Oak to Ninth Project along the Oakland waterfront. Perata passed key legislation that allowed the project to move forward, though it has yet to be built. Oakland Jobs donor Signature Properties is one of the project’s lead developers and, according to the East Bay Express, Oakland Jobs’ treasurer Sean Welch has worked for Signature Properties in the past. Signature Properties has also been a donor to Perata’s political committees, as have several other Oakland Jobs contributors.

In addition to his work for MVE and what he deemed his "unpaid advisor" relationship with Vote Matters, Apodaca is listed as a paid campaign consultant for a now-defunct committee called the "California Latino Leadership Fund" (CLLF). CLLF employed Polka as well as Apodaca in 2006 and 2007. Polka is now working on behalf of the other committee backing Hamill this year, Californians for Good Jobs, Safe Streets, and Outstanding Jobs.

DEVELOPERS’ DEEP POCKETS


Apodaca told us he could not remember why he pushed for Vote Matters, which normally supports state candidates and initiatives, to give money to a local committee like Oakland Jobs. But he was certain that Perata played no part in it. "He’s not involved in [the committee’s decisions]. He’s not even in the room."

But a well-placed East Bay source told us Perata was in the room with Oakland Jobs–affiliated figures while money was being sought to support Hamill. The source, who asked not to be identified, said Perata was part of a breakfast meeting several months ago at the downtown offices of the Oakland law firm of Wendel, Rosen, Black and Dean, at which De La Fuente asked a group of prominent developers to give large sums of money to an independent expenditure committee that would back Hamill.

The source could not recall if the committee was named by De La Fuente or anyone else at the meeting. But according to the source, pro-development activist Greg McConnell was there. McConnell told us he is involved in running Oakland Jobs. His business, the McConnell Group, has received funding from the group. The source also said representatives from Signature Properties and developer Forest Hill, another Oakland Jobs donor, were in attendance and that De La Fuente expressed an interest in raising "over a hundred grand" for the race.

A second source confirmed that Perata was at the meeting in question but did not recall De La Fuente asking for the funds, though the second source did say De La Fuente has subsequently called seeking money for Hamill’s campaign.

Reached for comment, McConnell asserted that Perata is not involved with Oakland Jobs. He said a morning meeting did take place at the Wendel, Rosen firm "a couple of weeks ago," during which Perata asked the developers in attendance to contribute directly to Hamill’s campaign. But according to McConnell, Perata left the room before De La Fuente made a pitch to fund independent expenditures. Direct contributions to candidates are limited to $600 per donor in Oakland. Independent groups like Oakland Jobs are not subject to those restrictions.

‘NOT KOSHER’


In addition to learning of De La Fuente’s alleged fundraising pitch at a recent developers’ meeting, the Guardian has obtained a letter from De La Fuente to potential Hamill donors asking them to attend a $600-a-head event Oct. 2. Nothing in the letter itself, dated Sept. 16, appears to violate any campaign finance rules. But it is printed on what appears to be official City of Oakland letterhead, complete with the official seal. That could mean trouble for De La Fuente.

"That’s not kosher," Mark Morodomi, the supervising deputy in the Oakland city attorney’s office, told us. State law prohibits the use of government resources for political campaigning. Before coming to Oakland, Morodomi spent 10 years at the California Fair Political Practices Commission, the state’s campaign-finance watchdog.

A line in small type on the bottom of the letter reads, "Not printed or mailed at public expense." Morodomi said the phrase "comes close" to making the use of city letterhead permissible, but he added, "It doesn’t inoculate him. Magic language doesn’t automatically make it okay … those words have to be true."

According to Morodomi, if any part of generating and disseminating the missive involved taxpayer-funded resources — from printing costs to paper, envelopes, or stamps — De La Fuente would be in violation of the law. Using Oakland’s official seal could also be problematic.

Hamill dismissed concerns that the invitation tested the limits of the law: "I’ve been around for 20 years, and I’ve seen council members use that kind of stationary for fundraisers all the time."

But City Attorney Russo, Morodomi’s boss, that even if the letter turns out to be technically legal because no public resources were used, he is uncomfortable with De La Fuente’s decision to mix fundraising with official city documentation: "It’s not great form. You have to be really mindful as to how it would appear."

Guardian interns Katie Baker and Anna Rendall contributed to this report.

Editor’s Notes

-
0

› tredmond@sfbg.com

I was walking down Ocean Avenue the other day, and I stopped for a second to chat with two volunteers who were handing out literature for John Avalos, the leading progressive candidate for supervisor in District 11. Since everyone wants to know about the Guardian endorsements, which don’t come out until next week, we got to talking about District 9, where three good candidates are contending to succeed Sup. Tom Ammiano, who is heading to Sacramento and the state Legislature.

One of the Avalos workers was supporting Eric Quezada. The other was supporting Mark Sanchez. "But we’re still friends," the Sanchez backer said.

The supervisorial races would be very different without ranked-choice voting.

There are people who like the relatively new system, which allows voters to choose three candidates in ranked order. There are people who think it’s too confusing, or leads to the wrong outcome. But I think I can say, as someone who lives in District 9 and is in the epicenter of that very heated campaign, that a race that offers voters a choice between Sanchez, Quezada, and David Campos — any of whom would make an excellent supervisor, and all of whom have different strengths to offer — wouldn’t be possible under a traditional electoral system.

Three progressive candidates in an old-fashioned election might very well split the left vote, and leave the door open for someone like Eva Royale — a much less appealing candidate who’s backed by the mayor. There would have been a huge power struggle early on, and some of the candidates would have been under immense pressure not to run, and their backers would be running around trying to cut the other folks off at the knees.

In this case, though, one of the three good guys is going to win — and it will probably be the one who gets the most second-place votes. So it’s in everyone’s interest not to go negative. If Sanchez, say, started to attack Quezada, the Quezada backers would get mad and leave Sanchez off their ballots — and that would hurt Sanchez when the second-place votes are counted.

So everyone has been pretty well behaved in D9; I’ve heard a few whispers here and there, and a few people have tossed off a few nasty comments, but overall the candidates and their supporters recognize that it’s better to stay positive.

So let me shift for a second to District 3.

There’s a real threat in Chinatown–North Beach, and his name is Joe Alioto. As the brother of Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier, the nephew of former Sup. Angela Alioto, and the grandson of the late mayor Joe, Alioto has a legendary political name. He also has big downtown backing. And his politics are, if anything, to the right of his sister, who is one of the worst members of the current board.

Based on polls I’ve heard about, there are two candidates who have a chance to beat him — David Chiu and Denise McCarthy. Chiu, a member of the Small Business Commission, will almost certainly get hammered by downtown. McCarthy, who has run the Telegraph Hill Neighborhood Center for many years, may get hit, too. And this one, like D9, will come down to the second-place votes.

The last thing McCarthy and Chiu can afford is to attack each other. There’s been some of that going on, and it has to stop. If the progressives want to win District 3, Chiu and McCarthy have to realize that, like it or not, they are a team.

The big landlords’ blackmail

-
0

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Project Censored

-
0

› amanda@sfbg.com

The daily dispatches and nightly newscasts of the mainstream media regularly cover terrorism, but rarely discuss how the fear of attacks is used to manipulate the public and set policy. That’s the common thread of many unreported stories last year, according to an analysis by Project Censored.

Since 1976, Sonoma State University has released an annual survey of the top 25 stories the mainstream media failed to report or reported poorly. Culled from worldwide alternative news sources, vetted by students and faculty, and ranked by judges, the stories were not necessarily overtly censored. But their controversial subjects, challenges to the status quo, or general under-the-radar subject matter might have kept them from the front pages. Project Censored recounts them, accompanied by media analysis, in a book of the same name published annually by Seven Stories Press.

"This year, war and civil liberties stood out," Peter Phillips, project director since 1996, said of the top stories. "They’re closely related and part of the War on Terror that has been the dominant theme of Project Censored for seven years, since 9/11."

Whether it’s preventing what one piece of legislation calls "homegrown terrorism" by federally funding the study of radicalism, using vague concerns about security to quietly expand NAFTA, or refusing to count the number of Iraqi civilians killed in the war, the threat of terrorism is being used to silence people and expand power.

"The war on terror is a sort of mind terror," said Nancy Snow, one of the project’s 24 judges and an associate professor of public diplomacy at the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. Snow — who has taught classes on war, media, and propaganda — elaborated: "You can’t declare war on terror. It’s a tactic used by groups to gain publicity and it will remain with us. But it’s unlikely that [the number of terrorist acts] will spike. It spikes in the minds of people."

She pointed out that the number of terrorist attacks has dropped worldwide since 2003. Some use the absence of fresh attacks as evidence that the so-called war on terror is working. But a RAND Corporation study for the Department of Defense released in August said the war on terror hasn’t effectively undermined Al Qaeda. It suggested the phrase be replaced with the less loaded term "counterterrorism."

Both Phillips and Snow agree that comprehensive, contextual reporting is missing from most of the coverage. "That’s one of my criticisms of the media," Snow said. "They spotlight issues and don’t look at the entire landscape."

This year the landscape of Project Censored itself is expanding. After talking with educators who bemoan the ongoing decline of news quality and want to help, Phillips launched the Truth Emergency Project, in which Sonoma State partners with 23 other universities. All will host classes for students to search out untold stories, vet them for accuracy, and submit them for consideration to Project Censored.

"There’s a renaissance of independent media," Phillips said. He thinks bloggers and citizen journalists are filling crucial roles left vacant by staff cutbacks throughout the mainstream media. And, he said, it’s time for universities, educators, and media experts to step in and help. "It’s not just reforming the media, but supporting them in as many ways as they need, like validating stories by fact-checking."

The Truth Emergency Project will also host a news service that aggregates the top 12 independent media sources and posts them on one page. "So you can get an RSS feed from all the major independent news sources we trust," he said. Discerning newshounds can find reporting from the BBC, Democracy Now!, and Inter Press Service (IPS) in one spot. "The whole criteria," he said, "is no corporate media."

Carl Jensen, who started Project Censored in 1976, said the expansion is a new and necessary phase. "It answers the question I was always challenged with: how do you know this is the truth? Having 24 campuses reviewing all the stories and raising questions really provides a good answer. These stories will be vetted more than Sarah Palin."

Phillips said he hopes to expand to 100 schools within the year, and would like the project to bring more attention to the dire need for public support for high quality news reporting. "I think it’s going to require government subsidies and nonprofit organizations doing community media projects," he said. "It’s more than just reforming at the FCC level. It’s building independent media from the ground up."

Phillips likens it to the boom in microbrewed beer and the spread of independently-owned pubs: "If we can have a renaissance in beer-making, following established purity standards, then we can do it with our media, too." But for now, we have Project Censored, whose top 10 underreported stories for 2008 are:

1. HOW MANY IRAQIS HAVE DIED?


Nobody knows exactly how many lives the Iraq War has claimed. But even more astounding is that so few journalists have mentioned the issue or cited the top estimate: 1.2 million.

During August and September 2007, Opinion Research Business, a British polling group, surveyed 2,414 adults in 15 of 18 Iraqi provinces and found that more than 20 percent had experienced at least one war-related death since March 2003. Using common statistical study methods, it determined that as many as 1.2 million people had been killed since the war began.

The US military, claiming it keeps no count, still employs civilian death data as a marker of progress. For example, in a Sept. 10, 2007, report to Congress, Gen. David Petraeus said, "Civilian deaths of all categories, less natural causes, have also declined considerably, by over 45 percent Iraq-wide since the height of the sectarian violence in December."

But whose number was he using? Estimates range wildly and are based on a variety of sources, including hospital, morgue, and media reports, as well as in-person surveys.

In October 2006, the British medical journal Lancet published a Johns Hopkins University study vetted by four independent sources that counted 655,000 dead, based on interviews with 1,849 households. It updated a similar study from 2004 that counted 100,000 dead. The Associated Press called it "controversial."

The AP began its own count in 2005 and by 2006 said that at least 37,547 Iraqis had lost their lives due to war-related violence, but called it a minimum estimate at best and didn’t include insurgent deaths.

Iraq Body Count, a group of US and UK citizens who aggregate numbers from media reports on civilian deaths, puts the figure between 87,000 and 95,000. In January 2008, the World Health Organization and the Iraqi government did door-to-door surveys of nearly 10,000 households and put the number of dead at 151,000.

The 1.2 million figure is out there, too, which is higher than the Rwandan genocide death toll and closing in on the 1.7 million who perished in Cambodia’s killing fields. It raises questions about the real number of deaths from US aerial bombings and house raids, and challenges the common assumption that this is a war in which Iraqis are killing Iraqis.

Justifying the higher number, Michael Schwartz, writing on the blog AfterDowningStreet.org, pointed to a fact reported by the Brookings Institute that US troops have, over the past four years, conducted about 100 house raids a day — a number that has recently increased with assistance from Iraqi soldiers.

Brutality during these house searches has been documented by returning soldiers, Iraqi civilians, and independent journalists (See #9 below). Schwartz suggests the aggressive "element of surprise" tactics employed by soldiers is likely resulting in several thousands of deaths a day that either go unreported or are categorized as insurgent casualties.

The spin is having its intended effect: a February 2007 AP poll showed Americans gave a median estimate of 9,890 Iraqi deaths as a result of the war, a number far below that cited in any credible study.

Sources: "Is the United States killing 10,000 Iraqis every month? Or is it more?" Michael Schwartz, After Downing Street.org, July 6, 2007; "Iraq death toll rivals Rwanda Genocide, Cambodian killing fields," Joshua Holland, AlterNet, Sept. 17, 2007; "Iraq conflict has killed a million: survey," Luke Baker, Reuters, Jan. 30, 2008; "Iraq: Not our country to return to," Maki al-Nazzal and Dahr Jamail, Inter Press Service, March 3, 2008.

2. NAFTA ON STEROIDS


Coupling the perennial issue of security with Wall Street’s measures of prosperity, the leaders of the three North American nations convened the Security and Prosperity Partnership. The White House–led initiative — launched at a March 23, 2005, meeting of President Bush, Mexico’s then-president Vicente Fox, and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin — joins beefed-up commerce with coordinated military operations to promote what it calls "borderless unity."

Critics call it "NAFTA on steroids." However, unlike NAFTA, the SPP was formed in secret, without public input.

"The SPP is not a law, or a treaty, or even a signed agreement," Laura Carlsen wrote in a report for the Center for International Policy. "All these would require public debate and participation of Congress, both of which the SPP has scrupulously avoided."

Instead the SPP has a special workgroup: the North American Competitiveness Council. It’s a coalition of private companies that are, according to the SPP Web site, "adding high-level business input [that] will assist governments in enhancing North America’s competitive position and engage the private sector as partners in finding solutions."

The NACC includes the Chevron Corporation, Ford Motor Company, General Electric, Lockheed Martin Corporation, Merck & Co. Inc., New York Life Insurance Co., Procter & Gamble Co., and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

"Where are the environmental council, the labor council, and the citizen’s council in this process?" Carlsen asked.

A look at NAFTA’s unpopularity among citizens in all three nations is evidence of why its expansion would need to be disguised. "It’s a scheme to create a borderless North American Union under US control without barriers to trade and capital flows for corporate giants, mainly US ones," wrote Steven Lendman in Global Research. "It’s also to insure America gets free and unlimited access to Canadian and Mexican resources, mainly oil, and in the case of Canada, water as well."

Sources: "Deep Integration," Laura Carlsen, Center for International Policy, May 30, 2007; "The Militarization and Annexation of North America," Stephen Lendman, Global Research, July 19, 2007; "The North American Union," Constance Fogal, Global Research, Aug. 2, 2007.

3. INFRAGARD GUARDS ITSELF


The FBI and Department of Homeland Security have effectively deputized 23,000 members of the business community, asking them to tip off the feds in exchange for preferential treatment in the event of a crisis. "The members of this rapidly growing group, called InfraGard, receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public does — and, at least on one occasion, before elected officials," Matthew Rothschild wrote in the March 2008 issue of The Progressive.

InfraGard was created in 1996 in Cleveland as part of an FBI probe into cyberthreats. Yet after 9/11, membership jumped from 1,700 to more than 23,000, and now includes 350 of the nation’s Fortune 500 companies. Members typically have a stake in one of several crucial infrastructure industries, including agriculture, banking, defense, energy, food, telecommunications, law enforcement, and transportation. The group’s 86 chapters coordinate with 56 FBI field offices nationwide.

While FBI Director Robert Mueller has said he considers this segment of the private sector "the first line of defense," the American Civil Liberties Union issued a grave warning about the potential for abuse. "There is evidence that InfraGard may be closer to a corporate TIPS program, turning private-sector corporations — some of which may be in a position to observe the activities of millions of individual customers — into surrogate eyes and ears for the FBI," it cautioned in an August 2004 report.

"The FBI should not be creating a privileged class of Americans who get special treatment," Jay Stanley, public education director of the ACLU’s technology and liberty program, told Rothschild.

And they are privileged: a DHS spokesperson told Rothschild that InfraGard members receive special training and readiness exercises. They’re also privy to protected information that is usually shielded from disclosure under the trade secrets provision of the Freedom of Information Act.

The information they have may be of critical importance to the general public, but first it goes to the privileged membership — sometimes before it’s released to elected officials. As Rothschild related in his story, on Nov. 1, 2001, the FBI sent an alert to InfraGard members about a potential threat to bridges in California. Barry Davis, who worked for Morgan Stanley, received the information and relayed it to his brother Gray, then governor of California, who released it to the public.

Steve Maviglio, Davis’s press secretary at the time, told Rothschild, "The governor got a lot of grief for releasing the information. In his defense, he said, ‘I was on the phone with my brother, who is an investment banker. And if he knows, why shouldn’t the public know?’<0x2009>"

Source: "The FBI deputizes business," Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive, Feb. 7, 2008.

4. ILEA: TRAINING GROUND FOR ILLEGAL WARS?


The School of the Americas earned an unsavory reputation in Latin America after many graduates of the Fort Benning, Ga., facility turned into counterinsurgency death squad leaders. So the International Law Enforcement Academy recently installed by the Unites States in El Salvador — which looks, acts, and smells like the SOA — is also drawing scorn.

The school, which opened in June 2005 before the Salvadoran National Assembly approved it, has a satellite operation in Peru and is funded with $3.6 million from the US Treasury and staffed with instructors from the DEA, ICE, and FBI. It’s tasked with training 1,500 police officers, judges, prosecutors, and other law enforcement agents in counterterrorism techniques per year. It’s stated purpose is to make Latin America "safe for foreign investment" by "providing regional security and economic stability and combating crime."

ILEAs aren’t new, but past schools located in Hungary, Thailand, Botswana, and Roswell, N.M., haven’t been terribly controversial. Yet Salvadoran human rights organizers take issue with the fact that, in true SOA fashion, the ILEA releases neither information about its curriculum nor a list of students and graduates. Additionally, the way the school slipped into existence without public oversight has raised ire.

As Wes Enzinna noted in a North American Congress on Latin America report, when the US decided it wanted a training ground in Latin America, El Salvador was not the first choice. In 2002 US officials selected Costa Rica as host — a country that doesn’t even have an army. The local government signed on and the plan made headlines. But when citizens learned about it, they revolted and demanded the government change the agreement. The US bailed for a more discreet second attempt in El Salvador.

"Members of the US Congress were not briefed about the academy, nor was the main opposition party in El Salvador, the Farabundo Martí-National Liberation Front (FMLN)," Enzinna wrote. "But once the news media reported that the two countries had signed an official agreement in September, activists in El Salvador demanded to see the text of the document." Though they tried to garner enough opposition to kill the agreement, the National Assembly narrowly ratified it.

Now, after more than three years in operation, critics point out that Salvadoran police, who account for 25 percent of the graduates, have become more violent. A May 2007 report by Tutela Legal implicated Salvadoran National Police (PNC) officers in eight death squad–style assassinations in 2006.

El Salvador’s ILEA recently received another $2 million in US funding through the congressionally approved Mérida Initiative — but still refuses to adopt a more transparent curriculum and administration, despite partnering with a well-known human rights leader. Enzinna’s FOIA requests for course materials were rejected by the government, so no one knows exactly what the school is teaching, or to whom.

Sources: "Exporting US ‘Criminal Justice’ to Latin America," "Community in Solidarity with the people of El Salvador," Upside Down World, June 14, 2007; "Another SOA?" Wes Enzinna, NACLA Report on the Americas, March/April 2008; "ILEA funding approved by Salvadoran right wing legislators," CISPES, March 15, 2007; "Is George Bush restarting Latin America’s ‘dirty wars?’<0x2009>" Benjamin Dangl, AlterNet, Aug. 31, 2007.

5. SEIZING PROTEST


Protesting war could get you into big trouble, according to a critical read of two executive orders recently signed by President Bush. The first, issued July 17, 2007, and titled, "Blocking property of certain persons who threaten stabilization efforts in Iraq," allows the feds to seize assets from anyone who "directly or indirectly" poses a risk to the US war in Iraq. And, citing the modern technological ease of transferring funds and assets, the order states that no prior notice is necessary before the raid.

On Aug. 1, Bush signed another order, similar but directed toward anyone undermining the "sovereignty of Lebanon or its democratic processes and institutions." In this case, the Secretary of the Treasury can seize the assets of anyone perceived as posing a risk of violence, as well as the assets of their spouses and dependents, and bans them from receiving any humanitarian aid.

Critics say the orders bypass the right to due process and the vague language makes manipulation and abuse possible. Protesting the war could be perceived as undermining or threatening US efforts in Iraq. "This is so sweeping, it’s staggering," said Bruce Fein, a former Reagan administration official in the Justice Department who editorialized against it in the Washington Times. "It expands beyond terrorism, beyond seeking to use violence or the threat of violence to cower or intimidate a population."

Sources: "Bush executive order: Criminalizing the antiwar movement," Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, July 2007; "Bush’s executive order even worse than the one on Iraq," Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive, Aug. 2007.

6. RADICALS = TERRORISTS


On Oct. 23, 2007, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed — by a vote of 404-6 — the "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act," designed to root out the causes of radicalization in Americans.

With an estimated four-year cost of $22 million, the act establishes a 10-member National Commission on the Prevention of Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism, as well as a university-based Center of Excellence "to examine the social, criminal, political, psychological, and economic roots of domestic terrorism," according to a press release from the bill’s author, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Los Angeles).

During debate on the bill, Harman said, "Free speech, espousing even very radical beliefs, is protected by our Constitution. But violent behavior is not."

Jessica Lee, writing in the Indypendent, a newspaper put out by the New York Independent Media Center, pointed out that in a later press release Harman stated: "the National Commission [will] propose to both Congress and [Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael] Chertoff initiatives to intercede before radicalized individuals turn violent."

Which could be when they’re speaking, writing, and organizing in ways that are protected by the First Amendment. This redefines civil disobedience as terrorism, say civil rights experts, and the wording is too vague. For example, the definition of "violent radicalization" is "the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change."

"What is an extremist belief system? Who defines this? These are broad definitions that encompass so much…. It is criminalizing thought and ideology," said Alejandro Queral, executive director of the Northwest Constitutional Rights Center in Portland, Ore.

Though the ACLU recommended some changes that were adopted, it continued to criticize the bill. Harman, in a response letter, said free speech is still free and stood by the need to curb ideologically-based violence.

The story didn’t make it onto the CNN ticker, but enough independent sources reported on it that the equivalent Senate Bill 1959 has since stalled. After introducing the bill, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Me.), later joined forces with Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) on a report criticizing the Internet as a tool for violent Islamic extremism.

Despite an outcry from civil liberties groups, days after the report was released Lieberman demanded that YouTube remove a number of Islamist propaganda videos. YouTube canned some that broke their rules regarding violence and hate speech, but resisted censoring others. The ensuing battle caught the attention of the New York Times, and on May 25 it editorialized against Lieberman and S 1959.

Sources: "Bringing the war on terrorism home," Jessica Lee, Indypendent, Nov. 16, 2007; "Examining the Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act," Lindsay Beyerstein, In These Times, Nov. 2007; "The Violent Radicalization Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007," Matt Renner, Truthout, Nov. 20, 2007

7. SLAVERY’S RUNNER-UP


Every year, about 121,000 people legally enter the United States to work with H-2 visas, a program legislators are touting as part of future immigration reform. But Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) called this guest worker program "the closest thing I’ve ever seen to slavery."

The Southern Poverty Law Center likened it to "modern day indentured servitude." They interviewed thousands of guest workers and reviewed legal cases for a report released in March 2007, in which authors Mary Bauer and Sarah Reynolds wrote, "Unlike US citizens, guest workers do not enjoy the most fundamental protection of a competitive labor market — the ability to change jobs if they are mistreated. Instead, they are bound to the employers who ‘import’ them. If guest workers complain about abuses, they face deportation, blacklisting, or other retaliation."

When visas expire, workers must leave the country, hardly making this the path to permanent citizenship legislators are looking for. The H-2 program mimics the controversial bracero program, established through a joint agreement between Mexico and the United States in 1942 that brought 4.5 million workers over the border during the 22 years it was in effect.

Many legal protections were written into the program, but in most cases they existed only on paper in a language unreadable to employees. In 1964 the program was shuttered amid scores of human rights abuses and complaints that it undermined petitions for higher wages from US workers. Soon after, United Farm Workers organized, which César Chávez said would have been impossible if the bracero program still existed.

Years later, it essentially still does. The H-2A program, which accounted for 32,000 agricultural workers in 2005, has many of the same protections — and many of the same abuses. Even worse is the H-2B program, used by 89,000 non-agricultural workers annually. Created by the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, none of the safeguards of the H-2A visa are legally required for H-2B workers.

Still, Mexicans are literally lining up for H-2B status, the stark details of which were reported by Felicia Mello in The Nation. Furthermore, thousands of illegal immigrants are employed throughout the country, providing cheap, unprotected labor and further undermining the scant provisions of the laws. Labor contractors who connect immigrants with employers are stuffing their pockets with cash, while the workers return home with very little money.

The Southern Poverty Law Center outlined a list of comprehensive changes needed in the program, concluding, "For too long, our country has benefited from the labor provided by guest workers but has failed to provide a fair system that respects their human rights and upholds the most basic values of our democracy. The time has come for Congress to overhaul our shamefully abusive guest worker system."

Sources: "Close to Slavery," Mary Bauer and Sarah Reynolds, Southern Poverty Law Center, March 2007; "Coming to America," Felicia Mello, The Nation, June 25, 2007; "Trafficking racket," Chidanand Rajghatta, Times of India, March 10, 2008.

8. BUSH CHANGES THE RULES


The Bush administration’s Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice has been issuing classified legal opinions about surveillance for years. As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) had access to the DOJ opinions on presidential power and had three declassified to show how the judicial branch has, in a bizarre and chilling way, assisted President Bush in circumventing its own power.

According to the three memos:

"There is no constitutional requirement for a President to issue a new executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms of a previous executive order. Rather than violate an executive order, the President has instead modified or waived it";

"The President, exercising his constitutional authority under Article II, can determine whether an action is a lawful exercise of the President’s authority under Article II," and

"The Department of Justice is bound by the President’s legal determinations."

Or, as Whitehouse rephrased in a Dec. 7, 2007, Senate speech: "I don’t have to follow my own rules, and I don’t have to tell you when I’m breaking them. I get to determine what my own powers are. The Department of Justice doesn’t tell me what the law is. I tell the Department of Justice what the law is."

The issue arose within the context of the Protect America Act, which expands government surveillance powers and gives telecom companies legal immunity for helping. Whitehouse called it "a second-rate piece of legislation passed in a stampede in August at the behest of the Bush administration."

He pointed out that the act does not prohibit spying on Americans overseas — with the exception of an executive order that permits surveillance only of Americans whom the Attorney General determines to be "agents of a foreign power."

"In other words, the only thing standing between Americans traveling overseas and government wiretap is an executive order," Whitehouse said in an April 12 speech. "An order this president, under the first legal theory I cited, claims he has no legal obligation to obey."

Whitehouse, a former US Attorney, legal counsel to Rhode Island’s governor, and Rhode Island Attorney General who took office in 2006, went on to point out that Marbury vs. Madison, written by Chief Justice John Marshall in 1803, established that it is "emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is."

Sources: "In FISA Speech, Whitehouse sharply criticizes Bush Administration’s assertion of executive power," Sheldon Whitehouse, Dec. 7, 2007; "Down the Rabbit Hole," Marcy Wheeler, The Guardian (UK), Dec. 26, 2007.

9. SOLDIERS SPEAK OUT


Hearing soldiers recount their war experiences is the closest many people come to understanding the real horror, pain, and confusion of combat. One would think that might make compelling copy or powerful footage for a news outlet. But in March, when more than 300 veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan convened for four days of public testimony on the war, they were largely ignored by the media.

Winter Soldier was designed to give soldiers a public forum to air some of the atrocities they witnessed. Originally convened by Vietnam Vets Against the War in January 1971, more than 100 Vietnam veterans and 16 civilians described their war experiences, including rapes, torture, brutalities, and killing of non-combatants. The testimony was entered into the Congressional Record, filmed, and shown at the Cannes Film Festival.

Iraq Veterans Against the War hosted the 2008 reprise of the 1971 hearings. Aaron Glantz, writing in One World, recalled testimony from former Marine Cpl. Jason Washburn, who said, "his commanders encouraged lawless behavior. ‘We were encouraged to bring ‘drop weapons,’ or shovels. In case we accidentally shot a civilian, we could drop the weapon on the body and pretend they were an insurgent.’<0x2009>"

An investigation by Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian in The Nation that included interviews with 50 Iraq war veterans also revealed an overwhelming lack of training and resources, and a general disregard for the traditional rules of war.

Though most major news outlets sent staff to cover New York’s Fashion Week, few made it to Silver Spring, Md. for the Winter Soldier hearings. Fortunately, KPFA and Pacifica Radio broadcast the testimonies live and, in an update to the story, said they were "deluged with phone calls, e-mails, and blog posts from service members, veterans, and military families thanking us for breaking a cultural norm of silence about the reality of war." Testimonies can still be heard at www.ivaw.org.

Sources: "Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan eyewitness accounts of the occupation," Iraq Veterans Against the War, March 13-16, 2008; "War comes home," Aaron Glantz, Aimee Allison, and Esther Manilla, Pacifica Radio, March 14-16, 2008; "US Soldiers testify about war crimes," Aaron Glantz, One World, March 19, 2008; "The Other War," Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian, The Nation, July 30, 2007.

10. APA HELPS CIA TORTURE


Psychologists have been assisting the CIA and US military with interrogation and torture of Guantánamo detainees — which the American Psychological Association has said is fine, despite objections from many of its 148,000 members.

A 10-member APA task force convened on the divisive issue in July 2005 and found that assistance from psychologists was making the interrogations safe and the group deferred to US standards on torture over international human-rights organizations’ definitions.

The task force was criticized by APA members for deliberating in secret, and later it was revealed that six of the 10 participants had ties to the armed services. Not only that, but as Katherine Eban reported in Vanity Fair, "Psychologists, working in secrecy, had actually designed the tactics and trained interrogators in them while on contract to the CIA."

In particular, psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, neither of whom are APA members, honed a classified military training program known as SERE [Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape] that teaches soldiers how to tough out torture if captured by enemies. "Mitchell and Jessen reverse-engineered the tactics inflicted on SERE trainees for use on detainees in the global war on terror," Eban wrote.

And, as Mark Benjamin noted in a Salon article, employing SERE training — which is designed to replicate torture tactics that don’t abide by Geneva Convention standards — refutes past administration assertions that current CIA torture techniques are safe and legal. "Soldiers undergoing SERE training are subject to forced nudity, stress positions, lengthy isolation, sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation, exhaustion from exercise, and the use of water to create a sensation of suffocation," Benjamin wrote.

Eban’s story outlined how SERE tactics were spun as "science" despite a lack of data and the critique that building rapport works better than blows to the head. Specifically, he said, it’s been misreported that CIA torture techniques got Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah to talk, when it was actually FBI rapport-building. In spite of this, SERE techniques became standards in interrogation manuals that eventually made their way to US officers guarding Abu Ghraib.

Ongoing uproar within the APA resulted in a petition to make an official policy limiting psychologists’ involvement in interrogations. On Sept. 17, a majority of 15,000 voting members approved a resolution stating that psychologists may not work in settings where "persons are held outside of, or in violation of, either International Law (e.g., the UN Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions) or the US Constitution (where appropriate), unless they are working directly for the persons being detained or for an independent third party working to protect human rights."

Sources: "The CIA’s torture teachers," Mark Benjamin, Salon, June 21, 2007; "Rorschach and awe," Katherine Eban, Vanity Fair, July 17, 2007.

OTHER STORIES IN THE TOP 25


11. El Salvador’s Water Privatization and the Global War on Terror

12. Bush Profiteers Collect Billions from No Child Left Behind

13. Tracking Billions of Dollars Lost in Iraq

14. Mainstreaming Nuclear Waste

15. Worldwide Slavery

16. Annual Survey on Trade Union Rights

17. UN’s Empty Declaration of Indigenous Rights

18. Cruelty and Death in Juvenile Detention Centers

19. Indigenous Herders and Small Farmers Fight Livestock Extinction

20. Marijuana Arrests Set New Record

21. NATO Considers "First Strike" Nuclear Option

22. CARE Rejects US Food Aid

23. FDA Complicit in Pushing Pharmaceutical Drugs

24. Japan Questions 9/11 and the Global War on Terror

25. Bush’s Real Problem with Eliot Spitzer

Read them all at projectcensored.org

———————————————————–

CENSORED IN SAN FRANCISCO

Good stories are going untold everywhere, but Project Censored can’t cover it all. The project focuses on national an international news, but in a place politically, environmentally, and socially charged as the Bay Area, there’s plenty going on that major media sources ignore, underplay, black out, or misreport.

We called local activists, politicians, freelance journalists, and media experts to come up with a list of a few Bay Area censored stories. Post a comment and add your own!

>> The truth about Prop. H: Pacific Gas and Electric Company has been spending millions to tell lies about the Clean Energy Act, Proposition H. But the mainstream press has done nothing to counter that misinformation.

>> The dirty secret of the secrecy law: Vioutf8g San Francisco’s local public records law, the Sunshine Ordinance, carries no penalty, so city agencies do it at will. The failure of the district attorney and Ethics Commission to enforce the law has undermined open-government efforts.

>> The military red herring: The real politics of the JROTC ballot measure have little to do with this particular program. Downtown and the Republican party are using the measure as a wedge issue against progressives

>> The mayor’s war on affordable housing: Mayor Gavin Newsom, who touts his record on homelessness, has actually opposed every major affordable-housing measure proposed by the Board of Supervisors in the last five years. And since Newsom became mayor the city homeless population has increased — but shelter closings have cost the city 400 beds.

>> The hidden cost of attacking immigrants: The San Francisco Chronicle and Mayor Gavin Newsom have been demanding a crackdown on undocumented immigrants in the name of law enforcement – but the move has made immigrants less likely to cooperate with the police and thus is hindering criminal-justice

Will SF’s healthcare ordinance go to Supreme Court?

-
3

The Ninth Circuit’s decision to uphold San Francisco’s Health Care Security Ordinance got everyone wondering if the Golden Gate Restaurant Association will take the matter all the way to the Supreme Court.

GGRA’s executive director Kevin Westly told me they might, or they might ask the Ninth Circuit to do an en banque review, instead, which involves all eleven Ninth Circuit judges.

“Healthy San Francisco is a good program and employer spending mandates are a separate issue,” Westly said, repeating a position that Mayor Gavin Newsom used to share, back when Sup. Tom Ammiano, who authored this trailbreaking legislation, was trying to explain that it’s not fiscally possible to provide uninsured residents with free access to the City’s health clinics without the employer mandate , since the mandate generates the funding for the free access program.

Newsom eventually climbed on board, ( “kicking and screaming” as Ammiano recently recalled), but GGRA continues to hold that the mandate is a major fiscal and administrative burden that employers shouldn’t bear. GGRA makes that argument based on their interpretation of Congress’s intent in 1974, when it passed ERISA.

Report blasts Newsom’s top crime advisor

-
2

ryan.jpg

By Steven T. Jones

Former U.S. Attorney Kevin Ryan — who now heads Mayor Gavin Newsom’s Office of Criminal Justice and has steered the mayor toward more conservative positions on issues ranging from police accountability to the city’s sanctuary policy and plan to issue resident identification cards — was the subject of scathing criticism in a new Justice Department report that examined the Bush Administration’s controversial firing of several U.S. attorneys.

Unlike other attorneys who were fired for political reasons, Ryan was a Bush loyalist and self-described Republican “company man” fired for being “retaliatory, explosive, noncommunicative, and paranoid,” the report said. That was no surprise to us at the Guardian, who have written critically about Ryan before and fail to understand why Newsom hired him, particularly given what an incompetent toadie for a discredited administration he was.

Everyone but Newsom and those in his bunker seem to understand how disgraceful it is for San Francisco to be harboring a right-wing political fugitive like Ryan, let alone giving him a position of great influence. Newsom flak Nate Ballard amazingly told the Chronicle Ryan was “a man of unimpeachable integrity,” all evidence to the contrary.

“What is Nathan Ballard thinking, saying he’s a man of integrity and everything. Well, Hitler could paint,” Sup. Tom Ammiano, who has had to wrestle with Newsom’s Ryan-inspired policy flips on issues important to the Mission District, told us. Yet Ammiano noted that both the Chronicle and even the more conservative Examiner are highlighting the report blasting Ryan as the one U.S. attorney who deserved to be fired.

“In the long run, hopefully dissatisfaction with Ryan will grow,” Ammiano said. “He could become a liability for [Newsom], and only then Newsom fire him because that’s how he operates.”

Time to challenge conservatism

-
2


Wake up, America!!!

By Steven T. Jones

Is John McCain – who has pulled out of Friday’s presidential debate, purportedly to deal with the financial crisis — running scared? He should be, because this could be a moment of truth for conservative populism in the U.S., a time when the fantasies and outright lies behind its self-serving ideology are finally exposed.

Unfortunately, that isn’t happening yet. Sure, there’s lots of resistance to aspects of the Bush Administration’s $700 billion bailout proposal out there. And Barack Obama edges in on a progressive diagnosis with comments such as, “The era of greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street and in Washington has created a financial crisis as profound as any we have faced since the Great Depression.”

But the problem is more fundamental than that, as we at the Guardian are being reminded once again by the fiscal conservatives who have been seeking our endorsements this election season. Even here in socially liberal San Francisco, so-called “moderates” — from Mayor Gavin Newsom to his Board of Supervisors appointees Carmen Chu and Sean Elsbernd to Chu opponent Ron Dudum and Dist. 1 candidate Sue Lee – still spew well-worn but discredited conservative platitudes celebrating the private sector and demonizing government.

Progressives should push back, call their bluff, and stop being afraid to be accused of fomenting class warfare. Because the rich and powerful have been raiding the public coffers for long enough — waging top-down class warfare — and now is the time for us to fight back.

San Francisco’s 14 billionaires

-
4

The new Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans is out, and San Francisco seems to be doing just fine, thank you. This city — which can’t fund decent services for the homeless, which runs a structural budget deficit every year because it can’t raise enough revenue to cover basic city functions — has 14 billionaires.

They run from Larry Page (Google) at $15.8 billion to poor old Walter Shorenstein, who barely makes the cut at $1.3 billion.

And they are a reminder that this is a very rich city that can afford to do a lot better for its poorest people.

Here’s the list:

Larry Page (Google)
Steven Roberts (leveraged buiyouts)
Riley Bechtel (Bechtel)
Steven Bechtel Jr.(Bechtel)
Ray Dolby (Dolby)
Gordon Getty (oil)
William Randolph Hearst III (Hearst)
John Pritzker (hotels)
John Fisher (Gap)
Robert Fisher (Gap)
Thomas Steyer (finance)
William FIsher (Gap)
Don Fisher (Gap)
Doris Fisher (Gap)
Walter Shorenstein (real estate)

Let’s remember those names next time the mayor says the city doesn’t have enough money.

P is for power grab

-
0

› sarah@sfbg.com

Mayor Gavin Newsom wants voters to believe that Proposition P, which seeks to change the size and composition of the San Francisco County Transportation Authority (TA) board, will lead to more efficiency and accountability.

But Prop. P’s many opponents — who include all 11 supervisors, all four state legislators from San Francisco, the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association, the Sierra Club, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, the San Francisco Democratic Party, and the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club — say that the measure would hand over billions of taxpayer dollars to a group of political appointees, thereby removing critical and independent oversight of local transportation projects.

Currently, the Board of Supervisors serves as the governing body of the TA, a small but powerful voter-created authority that acts as a watchdog for the $80 million in local sales tax revenues annually earmarked for transportation projects and administers state and federal transportation funding for new projects.

As such, the TA holds considerable sway over the capital projects of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (MTA), which operates Muni and has a board composed entirely of mayoral appointees. Prop. P would give the mayor more control over all transportation funding, which critics say could be manipulated for political reasons.

As Assemblymember Mark Leno told the Guardian, "This is a system of checks and balances that seems to be working well." And, as Sen. Carole Migden put it, "if it ain’t broke, don’t mess with it."

But if Newsom gets his way and Prop. P passes, the TA’s board will shrink to five elected officials in February — and Newsom will be one of them.

TA executive director José Luis Moscovich told us it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have the mayor on the agency’s governing board. "But that’s different from taking the board from 11 to five members," Moscovich said. "And how would the districts be represented equally?"

Since the TA has only 30 staff members, compared with the MTA’s 6,000 employees, Moscovich finds it hard to see how overhauling his agency would result in greater efficiency.

"Our overhead is 50 percent less than the MTA’s," Moscovich said. "We are subject to all kinds of oversight. This is a sledgehammer to a problem that doesn’t require it."

Tom Radulovich, an elected BART board member and the director of the nonprofit Livable City, believes that personality and policy questions lie at the heart of Newsom’s unilateral decision to place Prop. P on the ballot.

"The mayor doesn’t get along with the Board of Supervisors," Radulovich told us. "The way things stand, the mayor effectively controls the MTA, and the board effectively controls the TA. The mayor would like not to have to deal with the board."

This isn’t the first time a merger has been suggested, and this isn’t even the first time it’s come up this year.

In February, MTA chief Nathaniel Ford suggested the merger, with the MTA in charge. At the time, Newsom was under intense scrutiny for dipping into a million dollars’ worth of MTA funds to pay his staffers’ salaries. He told the San Francisco Chronicle that taking over the TA was not his idea and not something his office planned to pursue.

But shortly after that, Sup. Jake McGoldrick tried and failed to qualify a measure that would have divided the power to nominate members of the MTA’s board between the mayor, the president of the Board of Supervisors, and the city controller.

Newsom retaliated with Prop. P, which would replace the TA board with the mayor, an elected official chosen by the mayor, the president of the Board of Supervisors, an elected official chosen by the board president, and the city treasurer.

While Newsom was honeymooning in Africa, mayoral spokesperson Nathan Ballard turned up the heat by criticizing the supervisors for spending TA funds on routine travel expenses and office supplies.

"I don’t understand why money that is supposed to go to roads is going to couches and cell phones for members of the Board of Supervisors," Ballard told the San Francisco Examiner. But according to public records, Newsom himself charged $14,555 in expenses to the TA while he was a supervisor and a TA board member, from 1997 through 2003.

Jim Sutton, an attorney who served as treasurer in both of Newsom’s mayoral campaigns, has formed a committee to support Prop. P, ironically called Follow the Money.

San Francisco Bicycle Coalition executive director Leah Shahum, whom Newsom appointed to, then fired from, the MTA board last year, said that the TA has a strong record, not only of tracking dollars and winning matching funds at the state and federal levels, but also of making sure that the needs of bicyclists and pedestrians are represented.

"The system we have now is also the most protective of our dollars," Shahum said, noting that the TA is stringent about recipient agencies’ meeting deadlines and keeping costs in check.

Moscovich warned that it’s important that the city quickly move on from the battle over Prop. P, in light of the ongoing financial meltdown on Wall Street and the federal government’s bailout plan.

"This financial tsunami that hasn’t hit us yet will make it harder to borrow money to complete engineering projects," Moscovich predicted. "So it’s important that we get beyond this and show a unified front, so that our credibility as a city is not in danger."

Newsom’s problem with affordable housing

-
0

OPINION No mayor in modern San Francisco history has opposed more affordable-housing initiatives than Gavin Newsom. It’s time to make him pay the political price.

Newsom is the primary foe of Proposition B, which would create an affordable-housing fund in the city’s budget. At a time when fewer than 1 in 10 San Franciscans can afford the cost of a median-priced home and some 40 percent of all tenants spend 50 percent or more of their income on rent, the mayor’s position is a civic tragedy.

There’s currently only about $3 million permanently budgeted to affordable housing in the city’s $6 billion budget. Proposition B would increase that to about $30 million. Half of the funds would go to the construction of homes of two bedrooms or more for families with dependents, and 40 percent would be earmarked for homes affordable to people earning $18,000 a year or less (including seniors, people with AIDS, people at risk of homelessness, and our neighbors with other special needs).

The measure is supported by the Democratic Party, the Labor Council, the Sierra Club, and more than 50 other neighborhood, community, and environmental organizations.

Newsom’s opposition to Prop. B has to be placed in the context of his opposition to every major affordable-housing initiative proposed by either the Board of Supervisors or neighborhood residents over the past five years. Newsom and his administration opposed affordable-housing mandates for the Hunters Point Shipyard, proposals to increase affordable-housing fees for market-rate developers in the Market/Octavia Plan area, and increased affordable-housing fees for developers of the high-rise luxury condos at Rincon Hill. And, in a stunning display of arrogance and indifference, he refused to allocate some $30 million appropriated for affordable housing by the Board of Supervisors last year — and then held a campaign-style rally in support of that refusal, arguing that the city already spent enough on affordable housing!

Last month, Newsom’s Planning Commission passed on to the Board of Supervisors an Eastern Neighborhood Plan under which less than a quarter of the new units would be affordable to anyone earning less than $120,000. The city’s own General Plan says San Francisco needs nearly two-thirds of all new units to be affordable if the city is to house its own workforce — a key requirement in any green, "smart growth" development policy of the type the mayor says he favors.

Newsom claims his opposition to Prop. B stems from his concern about set-asides in the budget. Yet Newsom, as mayor and supervisor, has supported every other set-aside placed on the ballot. It’s just affordable housing that he opposes — even though Prop. B, which sunsets after 15 years, would account for less than 2 percent of the budget over that period and would leave some $47 billion in discretionary funds on the table.

The fact that Newsom has paid no political price for his continuous opposition to affordable housing is stunning. It’s time to change that — pass Proposition B with a resounding yes vote this November.

Calvin Welch is a member of the campaign for San Francisco Housing Fund — Yes on B and a longtime affordable-housing advocate.

Editor’s Notes

-
0

› tredmond@sfbg.com

District elections changed everything. You can see it in the interviews we’ve been doing with candidates for supervisor. Ten years ago, most of the incumbents were political hacks, bought and paid for by the mayor and downtown. So were most of the serious candidates challenging them.

We didn’t tape the interviews back then, but I remember them well: we spent a lot of time arguing with people, trying desperately to find some reason why people who had raised more than a quarter of a million dollars to run for citywide office might possibly be worth endorsing. We spent hours arguing among ourselves about who was the least awful, trying to count to five or six to fill a slate, knowing that some of the candidates we were backing had no chance of winning — or that they were, at best, marginally acceptable.

Now almost every district has good candidates: people who have roots in the communities they want to serve, people with credible ideas about addressing the city’s problems — people who seem to be more interested in progressive policies than in making the mayor or campaign contributors happy. The problem we have this year, in some districts anyway, is not finding one tolerable candidate — it’s choosing between several very good ones.

Check it out for yourself: all of the interviews this year are on the Web, at our sfbg.com Election Center.

Of course, there are still some people who don’t get it. Sue Lee, who was once an aide to a district-elected supervisor named Nancy Walker, told us she thinks the last at-large board was better than this board, and that she’d support some sort of modification (read: repeal) of district elections.

(Excuse me, Sue: that last board was the group that then–mayor Willie Brown referred to as his "mistresses" who needed to be "serviced.")

And downtown hates the district board, because money can’t control district supervisors. So I think we’ll keep hearing about a repeal effort. I understand there are already focus groups being convened on the subject. I would never support a candidate who wasn’t fully, completely, aggressively committed to district elections — but I think it’s also important to support candidates who are going to make a functioning, as well as activist, board.

Lee also sounded like a Ronald Reagan administration official at an Iran-Contra hearing; she couldn’t remember which Pacific Gas and Electric Co. official had told her to oppose the Clean Energy Act, and she had a hard time taking a stand on anything else. Ron Dudum was even tougher to pin down. We spent an hour asking him to say he was in favor of or against any policy at all — anything — and we got absolutely nowhere. (Oh, he thinks the city has a spending problem, not a revenue problem, but he couldn’t tell us what he would cut.)

Eva Royale, who is running in District 9, told us she supports public power but opposes Proposition H. Huh?

Ahsha Safai, who is running in District 11, sent me an e-mail that said he couldn’t be bothered to come in for an endorsement interview. Joe Alioto, who is running in District 3, never returned my phone calls. That’s just lame; even Mayor Gavin Newsom, whom we criticize almost every week, comes down to talk to us at endorsement time.

We’ll come out with our recommendations Oct. 8. But for a preview of how it’s going, check out the Election Center. Never a dull moment.

An economic locavore policy

-
0

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kink dreams

-
0

› molly@sfbg.com

When it comes to BDSM porn peddlers Kink.com, apparently size does matter. At least, that’s how it seems now that the steamy studio has purchased the 200,000-square-foot San Francisco Armory. Suddenly, everyone wants to know: What’s the carnal concern going to do with all that space?

The answers are more diverse and ambitious than one might expect — ranging from creating a racy reality show to starting a perfectly PG-13 public community center. And thanks to the lascivious and lucrative imagination of Kink.com founder Peter Acworth, it might all be possible.

CONCEPTION AND CONTROVERSY


Though Kink.com has been producing independent niche fetish sites like Hogtied.com, WiredPussy.com, and FuckingMachines.com for the Folsom Street Fair crowd for more than 10 years — first from Acworth’s rented Marina District apartment and then from the Porn Palace on Fifth and Mission streets — it wasn’t until Acworth purchased the historical landmark in the Mission District, and was met with opposition, that the provocative porn empire really made it onto the public’s radar screen.

The armory, which was a training ground for the National Guard prior to its decommissioning 30 years ago, has been the center of controversy before. But that was mostly in-fighting between potential developers. Stringent zoning requirements and necessary but cost-prohibitive renovations discouraged buyers, leaving the Moorish behemoth on 14th and Mission streets vacant and outside public scrutiny.

But everything changed when Acworth got involved. His intended commercial use, for shooting scenes for all of Kink’s Web sites, complied with planning codes. And he didn’t need to do expensive renovations before he could start using, and profiting from, the building: what could be more perfect for bondage shoots or movies about women fucking machines than dungeons in disrepair? The only thing more ideal than the structure itself, according to Acworth, was its location in the heart of America’s most fetish-friendly city. "You couldn’t have dreamt up a more perfect place than a castle in the middle of San Francisco," says Acworth, who purchased the armory for $14.5 million in 2007 and started operations in January of this year. "It’s like divine intervention."

Acworth had to contend with a different kind of intervention — from a neighborhood group called the Mission Armory Community Collective, which opposed Kink.com as a potential neighbor. Though careful not to condemn porn per se, the group said it feared that the company’s presence in an already troubled neighborhood would introduce more problems. Even the Mayor’s Office, potentially bending to pressure, issued the following statement: "While not wanting to be prudish, the fact that kink.com will be located in the proximity to a number of schools give [sic] us pause."

But the sale quietly went through, and even as protesters stood outside, Kink was already filming new scenes for its subscription sites. Since then, the protests have largely died down. As the company removed graffiti from the brick facade of the armory, fixed windows, and generally improved the appearance of its stretch of Mission Street, neighbors began stopping by to congratulate Acworth — or to ask for a tour. (Incidentally, the public is invited to tour the armory on second Fridays. E-mail info@kink.com for an appointment.)

On a September afternoon, the building — mostly nondescript from the sidewalk except for the castlelike rooftop — seems quiet and innocuous. Three boys skateboard on the steps outside, stopping to talk to a woman walking her dog. The only people entering the doors, which are always locked and manned by a security guard, look as though they could’ve been going to the grocery store or the gym, wearing shorts, T-shirts, and sandals. In fact, on first glance inside, the place is almost disappointingly tame.

Acworth himself hardly looks like a porn kingpin. He’s sweetly attractive in an unmenacing, mainstream way, with an easy smile and casual style. His office, a room near the entrance to the armory, is large and comfortable, but bears no hint of his livelihood save for one tasteful bondage statue. Next to his desk are water and food bowls for the armory’s two live-in cats: Rudy and Lala. His assistant, a young girl in a minidress, leggings, and hoop earrings, looks like she could be working at American Apparel. Even the desktop pattern on Acworth’s Dell computer screen is vanilla: rolling green hills beneath a blue, blue sky. This sense of normalcy seems to be Kink’s main point.

528-cover1.jpg
Van Darkholme, Peter Acworth, and Princess Donna in the Armory boiler room. Photo by Pat Mazzera

Acworth remembers getting turned on as a child in England by scenes in movies where women were tied up — and wondering if this signaled violent tendencies within himself. It wasn’t until adolescence that he discovered the relief (and release) of bondage porn. At the same time, he was already a burgeoning entrepreneur, a child who grew vegetables behind his house and tried to sell them to his parents. By the time he read a magazine article about a man making millions from Internet porn, as a Wall Street–bound doctoral student in a Columbia University finance program, it seemed almost inevitable that Acworth would find a way to marry his two lifelong interests: bondage and business. When he founded Kink.com in 1997, the idea was not only to jump on the dot-com money train, but also to demystify and promote fetish porn as an acceptable form of sexual stimulation.

Now, each of Kink.com’s Web sites is geared toward a particular fetish, run by a Webmaster who’s not only an expert on that particular kink but also has an interest in it, just as Acworth started Hogtied.com, which features women tied up, and Fuckingmachines.com, which showcases women having sex with machinery, because that’s what turned him on. These Webmasters act as director, producer, human resources manager, and often participant as well as Web developer.

"It’s hard to guess what people want," he explains, pointing out that it’s easier to make what you know.

Which means models aren’t actors. Just as directors are expected to be interested in the fetish they’re promoting, so are participants expected to enjoy the scenes they’re in. This isn’t about fake-breasted women pretending to like a face full of come. In fact, Acworth has had trouble in the past working with models from Los Angeles, trying to get them not to act. Kink’s sites feature actual people enjoying a private play party that just happens to be taped. Videos are intimate, personal, and disarmingly real — models talk to each other before, during, and after their sessions, just the way they would in their own bedrooms. They’re encouraged to smile on camera. Whether it’s shocking a woman with electric instruments or forcing a man to eat from a dog bowl, you get the sense that these people would be playing out these scenarios anyway — Kink just provides a salary, benefits, and a really nice location.

THE KINK CASTLE


As for the building itself, Kink has just begun to scratch the surface of its possibilities. The first floor, perhaps the most institutional-looking of the four, houses offices for Acworth, the marketing team, the production team, and the break room, which features a pool table, a disco ball, an espresso machine, a drum set, and a DJ booth (all for parties as well as employee use). Directly opposite the front doors is the Drill Court, a monstrous space that looks something like an airplane hangar crossed with a European train station. This is the space Acworth hopes will become the Mission Armory Community Center (which would unintentionally bear the same acronym as one of the groups that protested Kink.com’s purchase of the armory), a public venue available for sporting events, educational seminars, film festivals, and someday maybe a Folsom Street Fair party. According to MACC coordinator David Klein, a developer who has no affiliation with Kink.com, that dream is a long way off — with plenty of renovations, public meetings, and applications standing between here and there. In the meantime, the Drill Court serves as an occasional event site (such as for the Mission Bazaar craft fair earlier this year) and an employee parking lot. Currently, the most public location is the Ultimate Surrender room, where small numbers of members are invited to sit in bleachers and watch women wrestle each other to the ground on large mats — the winner, of course, gets to fuck the loser.

The armory’s basement is by far the most interesting area. "It’s a wonderland of sets," says Acworth, and it’s hard to argue with him. Some rooms seem perfect as is, such as a former gymnasium whose floor has long since been removed to reveal gothic-looking structural planks punctuated by intimidating bolts. All it took was adding a platform in the center of the expansive room and a pulley above it to make it a perfect bondage set. Next door is an army-style communal bathroom, another favorite as-is set. Other rooms on this floor are a completely furnished 1970s New York loft; a padded cell with an observation room connected by a one-way mirror; a former hermetically sealed gunpowder room that’s been outfitted with all sorts of rings, hooks, and rope pulleys; an office connected by a cage to the "Gimp Room," where ceiling chains hang like some kind of Donkey Kong homage; a hallway storage room chock-full of expected (whips, chains, clamps) and unexpected (mops, long-handled brushes with hard bristles, small boxes with smaller holes in them) toys; the large prop room, where human-shaped cages, monstrous doghouses, and machines like the back breaker and water-torture wheel are kept; the laundry room, where shelves are lined with douches, enemas, latex gloves, and sanitized sex toys; and the former shooting range, which has a Pirates of the Caribbean feel, complete with a river running through it.

And that’s just the start of it. Just when you think every nook and cranny has been used — including an oddly shaped corner off the production gallery that looks like a 19th-century psychiatric ward — you’ll discover a hallway that’s virtually untouched. Hardly any construction has been done on the third or fourth floors, including the officers’ quarters, which occupy one turret. Even the roof, with its castle-y details and flags, seems like a perfect potential shooting location.

528-cover2.jpg
Kink’s porn palace, the San Francisco Armory. Photo by Pat Mazzera

Kink already has plans for several new sets: the military clean room, a stark ’50s-era space, slated for FuckingMachines; an abandoned electrical equipment room for WiredPussy, where dead vintage electrical equipment will line the walls; an Alcatraz-esque prison gallery for BoundGods.com; and an expanded DeviceBondage.com room, which will be clad with cultured stone to look like the basement of an old castle.

Reps won’t say just how much it costs to maintain the armory or to shoot a scene, but Acworth told 7×7 magazine last year that profits were upward of $16 million. And spokesperson Thomas Roche says that the cost of a shoot, including sets, makeup, wardrobe, video and still photo staff, and editing, would be prohibitive if Kink weren’t doing lots of them. Luckily, the armory allows for a volume of shoots that makes it feasible — sometimes four or five in a single day. And it’s good variety for viewers too, who get used to seeing the same sets over and over in various porn films — even ones by different companies.

FLIRTING WITH THE FUTURE


Perhaps the most advantageous thing about moving into the armory, though, has been the increased possibilities for Kink’s growth. With so much space, an almost infinite number of sets can be created without tearing any old ones down. Since multiple shoots can go on at once, multiple sites can be developed and maintained. And buying the building has started attracting directors, models, and Web developers on a scale Acworth hasn’t seen before.

"It was initially difficult to find people," says Acworth, who conjectures that it’s not just the publicity from the building but also the exciting prospect of working there that’s turned the tide. "Now they’ve started to approach us."

One of those who approached Acworth was Van Darkholme, a Shibari rope bondage expert, a porn performer, and the proprietor of fetish film studio Muscle Bound Productions, who was living in LA. Darkholme saw an article about Acworth and the armory in a magazine and contacted him immediately, hoping to get involved. The Vietnam-born Darkholme, who seems almost starstruck by Acworth’s genius, was shocked not only to hear back from Acworth himself, but to be offered a job at the helm of Kink’s new gay bondage site: BoundGods.com.

"What Peter does is so avant-garde and so fresh, I just wanted to come in and mop the floor," says Darkholme, who moved to San Francisco in April and launched his new site Aug. 1.

Darkholme’s BoundGods takes Kink’s principles of intimate, conversational, playful, and mutually enjoyable interactions and applies them to his particular brand of gay sexuality: lean, muscled studs. In one video, a man is tied up in the army-style bathroom at the armory while another fucks him with a large black dildo. In a similar scene, anal beads are gradually pulled from the bound, naked man — much to both participants’ obvious pleasure (though interestingly, neither are hard). Darkholme makes appearances in many of the videos, often as the dominant character — a striking contrast to the camo-shorts-and-T-shirt-wearing, somewhat shy individual I interview at the armory.

He’s clearly proud of the product, not only because it’s well produced but also because there’s almost no competition in the gay market.

"I hate to generalize, but most of what I see out there falls into this trap of gay men putting on leather and grunting and groaning," says Darkholme. "It’s visual, but doesn’t have as much dialogue. What we do is very real and very intimate, with a realness in what they’re saying."

The site marks Kink’s first serious foray into the gay market — a step the company couldn’t quite take while limited by space and resources at the Porn Palace. But set builders are already hard at work constructing an Alcatraz-esque prison gallery for new Boundgods shoots. And the creation of a sub-brand, KinkMen.com, promises more gay-focused fetish sites to come. (Incidentally, Kink tried a gay site several years ago with Butt Machine Boys, which is still online at www.buttmachineboys.com but not listed on the main Web site. Acworth said the site never took off, partly because of lack of budget and partly because, unlike Darkholme, the director wasn’t speaking to his personal interests.)

For now, though, Darkholme has his hands full with BoundGods. His immediate goal is to find and train 12 new dommes for the Web site — a tougher feat than might be expected. "Femme dommes can dish it out and can really take it," he says. "There’s a small percentage of men that can do that." In fact, during some of his first shoots, filmed in Budapest, his bevy of gay models and porn stars were shocked when Darkholme finally opened up his bag of toys.

"They looked at me like the circus had come to town, or like I was going to make one of the Saw movies. Their hands were shaking," he says.

So when Kink sets up its demonstration booth at Folsom Street Fair (Sept. 28, www.folsomstreetfair.com), Darkholme will have two purposes: recruiting talent (both people he can train and experts who have something to teach him) and publicizing his new brand.

"I want to say, ‘We’re here, we’re queer, we want to be part of your community!’" he laughs.

But Darkholme won’t be alone at his booth. Among other popular Kink stars like Isis Love, new director Lochai, expert rigger Lew Rubens, and porn stars LaCherry Spice and Natassia Dream will be WiredPussy.com creator Princess Donna, who’s launching her new pet product, PublicDisgrace.com, next month. The site will feature blatant public bondage, punishment, erotic humiliation, and explicit sex between models and, potentially, passersby.

The veteran domme is filming most scenes in Europe, where attitudes (and therefore laws) about sex are more lax. In fact, while shooting a scene on a public street in Berlin, the crew was stopped by a couple of motorcycle cops who said only, "If you cause an accident, you’ll be liable," before going on their way. In the shoot, a half-naked girl is tied to a park bench, made to carry a dog bowl while on a leash, fondled by her female master, and fucked by a man.

"It’s the adrenaline rush of potentially getting caught," says Acworth, explaining the site’s appeal and recipe for success. The site will also feature a slew of new faces. Plus, it’s the perfect time of year to launch a new fetish site. "Sales pick up when the kids go back to school," Acworth says.

There also plenty of developments in the works that don’t follow the start-a-new-fetish-site model. For starters, Kink is moving to a Flash format, where the delay is only 2 seconds instead of 20. The new technology means that users can actively participate in scenes via chat rooms, where they can give instructions to dommes and watch their demands be carried out. Members of Kink.com can already do this on DeviceBondage.com, but Acworth hopes to switch to a per-minute billing system so even more viewers can participate. At the moment, the site is structured so you must be a member of a particular site in order to watch videos; Acworth would like to move to a single-sign-on system where you can join Kink.com and have access to any of its member sites.

Perhaps the most ambitious technological plan for Kink’s future, though, is the development of an online Web community that will be called Kinky.com. Following the Web 2.0 trend of user-based content, Kinky.com will allow members and models to maintain user profiles, interact with one another on message boards, blog, and even date. Yes, it’s a way to stay up-to-date with Internet trends and to provide an experience that pirated video sites can’t, but Acworth says it’s also a natural outgrowth of the kind of porn he creates.

"In contrast with straight porn, which people want to consume in private, this is a community people want to be a part of," he says.

Which leads us to the project closest to Acworth’s heart: the reality show.

THE REAL WORLD: KINK.COM


In the spirit of community and BDSM as a lifestyle, Acworth wants to transform the armory’s top floor into a series of Victorian/Georgian-inspired rooms where couples will live and fuck on camera 24-7. Participants will be given hierarchical positions — from maid to master of the house — and live according to the rules of domination and submission. Acworth’s already started designing the grand dining room, inspired by the sets in Remains of the Day, including candelabras, elaborate draperies, and, of course, a long, long table. "I consider it the pinnacle of where everything comes together," he says.

The dream is still at least a year off: he’ll have to figure out payment and subscription details, renovate the nearly untouched top floor, and recruit couples who want to live their kinks on camera. But he’s hoping he’ll soon have more time to devote to the project. With more than 100 employees and a huge building to maintain, Acworth’s role has shifted from almost entirely creative to almost entirely administrative. He misses the early days, when he found models on Craigslist, tied them up in his rented Marina apartment, interacted with them himself, and then posted the shoots. (You can still see these early shoots online.) Soon he’ll promote an employee to chief operating officer, which will allow him to back off the business side and devote himself to the reality show.

So did he ever imagine his little project would get so big? Absolutely not, Acworth says. If he’d had any inkling, he adds, "I would’ve been terrified." But it only seems natural that the little English boy who used to try to sell his parents’ own vegetables back to them would eventually have an eye for business — and that his interest in fetish porn would lead his business instincts here.

As for how his parents feel about his chosen profession, Acworth says they’re not exactly vocally supportive, but they don’t condemn him either. His mom, a sculptor, has started creating pieces that feature couples in coital or bondage positions, and may start to sell them on the site. His dad, a former Jesuit preacher, says only, "As long as no one’s getting hurt and there are no animals, I guess it’s all right."

We won: Charges dropped against journalists

-
0

This is the kind of press release that I like to get. Think back and remember how the mainstream media virtually blacked out this important story. And note how they most likely won’t cover it now. But this was a major victory for the press, for the First Amendment, and for the citizenry. I raise my Potrero Hill martini glass to the Free Press group, the Society of Professional Journalists, the many organizations, and more than 60,000 people who helped put the pressure on the St. Paul authorities. Impertinent question: where was the rest of the press? Sign up for the next battle. B3

Free Press Action Alert:

St. Paul City Hall announced today that they are dropping all charges against journalists arrested while covering the protests outside the Republican National Convention — including Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!

Your action made all the difference.

You and more than 62,000 other people signed our open letter demanding that the charges be dropped. The day after the convention, we delivered your signatures in person to the mayor of St. Paul.

Today’s great news happened because together, we responded quickly and spoke out strongly. This is your victory.

But before you celebrate, I need you to do one thing. Please ask three friends to join the Free Press network, so that the next time we need to act, we will have an even greater number of allies to add to our collective voice. Our struggle for an open and democratic media system is so crucial right now. We need your help bringing more people to the cause.

Tell your friends to promote better media.

Our task now is to ensure that our press remains free to report on the events, issues and stories that matter to our country, our communities, and our democracy.

We’ll stay vigilant — I hope you’ll join us.

Onward,

Josh Silver
Executive Director
Free Press
www.freepress.net

What are safe streets?

-
0

› amanda@sfbg.com

The San Francisco Streets and Neighborhoods workgroup, convened by Mayor Gavin Newsom, sat down to its seventh meeting Sept. 9 "to analyze and understand the key issues impacting safety on our streets and formulate recommendations for needed improvement with the goal of creating a safe environment on our streets for everyone."

Some of the top dogs on public safety were at the table, including Police Chief Heather Fong, fire department Capt. Pete Howes, representatives from the district attorney and public defender’s offices, and Kevin Ryan of the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, who co-chairs the group.

Were they here to discuss the recent spike in shootings in the Mission District? The murder of a Western Addition teenager three days earlier? The effectiveness of gang injunctions in those neighborhoods? The upcoming march on City Hall of students from June Jordan High School demanding leadership from the mayor on the rise in violence?

Not really. A quick survey of the agenda indicated most of the talk would be focused on another great threat to public safety: homeless people.

"One of the things we never talked about is what are the specific undesirable behaviors we’re focusing on," facilitator Gary Koenig said to the group. Wielding a dry-erase marker at the whiteboard, he probed further, "In other words, the objective we set for ourselves had to do with safety on the streets. So what are the objectionable behaviors that make the street unsafe or make the street be perceived as unsafe by others?"

"Shooting people," blurted Seth Katzman, a representative from the Human Services Network, a coalition of nonprofits.

The room erupted in laughter.

"I’m going to keep bringing it up," he said, not laughing.

Koenig asked what other activities they were targeting, and a more telling picture emerged: drug dealing, aggressive panhandling, blocking the sidewalk, public urination and defecation, littering, intimidation.

"On intimidation," said Chief Fong, "if you have someone walking down the street and they’re yelling out or blasting out, sometimes they’re talking to themselves and all of a sudden, ahh! People don’t know how to respond and think that maybe there’s going to be a next step in terms of some kind of aggressive behavior."

"Would you call that scary behavior?" asked Koenig, marker poised to note.

"Just kind of unpredictable behavior in terms of how someone’s carrying themselves. They haven’t committed a crime, but …" Fong trailed off.

Koenig added "unpredictable behavior" to the list. "Remember, we’re really not talking about crimes here," he said. "We’re talking about what are we focusing on to help improve safety and the sense of safety on our streets."

That’s the real mission of the group: to make downtown more comfortable for tourists, shoppers, business owners, and condo residents; and more uncomfortable for homeless and poor people panhandling, loitering, urinating in public, acting strangely, getting loaded, or sleeping on the streets.

The group was clearly weighted toward enforcement, but coordinated with buy-in from those who demonize the homeless and those who defend them: Ryan, a law-and-order Republican, shares chair duties with the Rev. John Hardin, executive director of the homeless services nonprofit St. Anthony Foundation. Others at the meeting included Steve Falk of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce; Heather Hoell of Yerba Buena Alliance; Joe D’Alessandro, CEO of the Convention and Visitors Bureau; Bobbie Rosenthal from Local Homeless Coordinating Board; Anne Kronenberg of the Department of Public Health; Reginald Smith from the 10-Year Council on Homelessness; Jennifer Friedenbach from the Coalition on Homelessness; Human Services Agency director Trent Rhorer; and Dariush Kayhan, the mayor’s homeless policy director.

Their ultimate goal is to come up with a handful of recommendations for a street safety pilot project that Newsom will implement in two neighborhoods within six months. The group’s task, on this day, was to weed through the list and decide what the group would endorse.

So far all the proposals have targeted poor and homeless people with enhanced services, punishment threats, and new restrictions on street life. Suggestions ranged from establishing drug-free and "VIP" zones in the downtown business and tourist areas (which came from the Chamber) to COH’s suggestion to fully fund treatment on demand. But all agreed that money is tight.

"If we did a lot of the service things, we probably wouldn’t be doing a lot of the others," Hardin noted early in the meeting, indicating the enforcement and justice items.

The mayor has not set aside any funding to implement the pilot projects, according to Kayhan. And that reality steered the group away from social services and toward crackdowns.

For example, Friedenbach suggested the chronic inebriate program run by DPH does a good job, but said that it’s underfunded and should be evaluated and expanded. Koenig asked DPH’s Anne Kronenberg if this is possible.

"You know it all comes down to money," she replied. "There’s a little disconnect going on for me. What we’re saying is good but I also know what the budget situation is in the city. That’s one [sticking point] where if we could get the mayor on board … or some other creative way of funding."

"Money is a real issue," Rhorer piped up. "So I’m thinking maybe if it’s a high cost item, we take it off the list." Yet, he added, "I totally agree the chronic inebriate program needs to be expanded to more placement facilities."

Instead, it was removed from the list.

"The problem is, if we take out some of these matters, what we’re going to be left with is enforcement ordinances and the justice system. And I think we all agreed a long time ago the idea isn’t to incarcerate people, but to get housing and services for them," Katzman complained. "It’s going to leave us with the stick and not the carrot."

Recommendations in the "stick" category included establishing "drug free zones" with enhanced penalties for dealing, using, and possession. Similar zones already exist within 1,000 feet of schools and parks in San Francisco, but have been implemented more broadly in other cities.

After discussing the constitutionality of making one street corner drug-free but not others, some suggested folding it in with another idea on the list: VIP zones.

"What does VIP stand for?" someone asked.

"Very Important Person," someone else answered.

"How about B and T? Business and tourism zones?" Rhorer suggested. "Marketing of VIP sounds a little more difficult."

According to the description on the meeting agenda, VIP zones would be established around downtown, the Yerba Buena center, Fisherman’s Wharf, Chinatown, and Union Square as areas subject to "special enforcement of drug laws, aggressive panhandling, sitting/lying on sidewalks" and other "quality of life crimes."

Defending the idea, D’Alessandro said, "Just from our perspective, tourism generates $500 million a year in local taxes that fund a lot of the programs we’re talking about at this table. And we’re very threatened. We’ve lost a lot of business." He said one convention bailed because a visitor was spit on.

"There’s obviously huge problems with this. It’s specifically targeting people because of their status, their housing status," Friedenbach said, sarcastically suggesting they have a registration for homeless people entering certain areas of the city.

"I think we have to separate aggressive panhandling and blocking thoroughfares from poverty," D’Alessandro said. "This is not targeting poor people."

"When you say sitting and lying on the sidewalk, that is targeting people who don’t have a place to sit," Friedenbach countered.

"Maybe we don’t do this unless we provide places to sit," D’Alessandro replied."

"Like more drop-in centers," Rhorer offered.

But temporary places to sit and sleep don’t seem like part of Newsom’s vision. Since he took office, more than 400 shelter beds have been lost. In March, Newsom defunded the only city-funded 24-hour drop-in center serving both men and women.

By the end of the meeting, many of the ideas for enhancing services remained in play, like ramping up Project Homeless Connect and the Homeless Outreach Teams, as well as more drop-in centers, housing, and job programs. All of the law enforcement–oriented changes were still on the list, including implementing the drug-free and VIP zones.

Speaking afterward, Katzman returned to the issue of what defines safety, and for whom. "We have tenants and clients in the Tenderloin who are afraid to go out of their buildings at night because of drug-related violence. They’re not complaining to us about people peeing on the streets," he said. "No one likes it, but that’s not the big issue right now."

PG&E Lie of the Week

-
0

When you read Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s propaganda against the Clean Energy Act, it’s pretty clear that political consultant Eric Jaye is writing all the statements for the politicians who oppose the measure. Take this gem from Mayor Gavin Newsom:

"This measure gives the Board of Supervisors and the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission the right to issue bonds in any amount without a vote of the people…. That is simply too much power to give to any group of elected and appointed officials."

Excuse us, Mr. Mayor, but other city agencies, including the port and the airport, already have this authority — and neither is wasting billions of public dollars. And you, Mr. Mayor, appoint the PUC members. Are you saying you don’t trust your own appointees?

This is the theme PG&E keeps putting out: city employees can’t be trusted to run a power system. That’s not only a lie, but when Newsom plays into it, he’s essentially trashing not only his city, but himself.

Vicious circle

-
0

› sarah@sfbg.com

The Mission District has been swarming with police officers lately. They were present and visible in large numbers in recent weeks in an effort to stem a recent tide of mostly drug- and gang-related killings in the heavily immigrant neighborhood.

"When 14, 15, and 13-year olds are running around with guns, we have a serious problem," San Francisco Police Chief Heather Fong said at a recent press conference as she urged the community to call 911, or the police department’s anonymous hotline, to report suspected shooters.

"All these people come from families, and these family members may hear or know something, or see a change in behavior," Fong said.

But community advocates warn that Fong’s boss has made it less likely that immigrants will talk to the police. Since Mayor Gavin Newsom’s recent decision to notify immigration authorities the moment the city books undocumented juveniles accused of committing felonies, fear that the Sanctuary City laws are eroding may be driving the very sources Fong needs deeper into the shadows.

Shannan Wilber, executive director of Legal Services for Children, told us that the new policy is already having an impact.

"It’s a warning sign that no one is safe, that people can’t go to Juvenile Hall and pick up their kids, because they’ll be swept up by ICE, too," Wilber told us. "People are saying, ‘We don’t feel safe reporting a crime we witnessed or were a victim of.’<0x2009>"

Mission Captain Stephen Tacchini told the Guardian last week that he’s not hearing that the community is clamping up because of the mayor’s newfound willingness to send juveniles to the feds for possible deportation. But he acknowledged that he doesn’t know the immigration status of folks who talk to the police at meetings and on the street.

"How many undocumented aliens come forward and assist us?" he asked. "Well, it’s possible they use the anonymous tip line."

PROTECTING PUBLIC SAFETY?


In an Aug. 8 San Francisco Chronicle op-ed, Newsom wrote, "the underlying purpose of the sanctuary-city policy is to protect public safety."

First signed into law in 1985, the city’s sanctuary ordinance designated San Francisco a safe haven for immigrants seeking asylum from war-torn El Salvador and Guatemala. The city extended the policy to all immigrants in 1989, saying it would not use resources or funds to assist federal immigration law enforcement, except when required by federal law.

Over the years, the city’s sanctuary legislation was amended to allow law enforcement to report felony arrests of suspected undocumented immigrants. City officials, however, came to believe that state juvenile law prevented them from referring undocumented juveniles to the federal authorities.

The city’s decision not to notify Immigration and Customs Enforcement about undocumented juvenile felons came under the media spotlight this summer when someone leaked to the Chronicle that the city had used tax dollars to fly undocumented Honduran crack dealers home. Some convicts were sent to group homes in San Bernardino County, and the city was left empty-handed and red-faced when a dozen ran away.

When the Chronicle articles hit, Newsom, who had just filed to explore a run for governor, claimed that the city could do nothing — the courts had jurisdiction over undocumented juvenile felons.

But the next day, Newsom did an abrupt about-turn.

"San Francisco will shift course and start turning over juvenile illegal immigrants," Newsom said. "We are moving in a different direction."

But the public was left in the dark about how far this new direction would veer until Sept. 10, when Siffermann unveiled details at a Juvenile Probation Commission meeting.

Community-based organizations and immigration rights attorneys complained that the policy ignored all but one of the recommendations they made in July and August to Siffermann, city administrator Ed Lee, and Kevin Ryan, a fired former US Attorney whom Newsom tapped to head the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice in January.

Angela Chan of the Asian Law Caucus warned the commission that the policy, which has already resulted in 50 juveniles being referred to ICE, may result in the deportation of young people who had not committed any crime, or whose felony charges were dropped.

Community organizer Bobbi Lopez asked commissioners, "Why do we have a political will to demonize these kids who have been trafficked into this country?"

And Francisco Ugarte, a lawyer with the San Francisco Immigrant Legal and Education Network, said the policy is akin to "rounding up all of Wall Street because there are bankers involved in insider trading."

The commission decided to form an ad hoc committee to review the policy, but the immigrant advocates and attorneys we contacted expressed little hope of change, given the impending presidential election and Newsom’s gubernatorial ambitions.

Some went so far as to suggest that the Joseph Russoniello, who opposed churches and synagogues offering sanctuary to Salvadorans and Guatemalans in the 1980s, and became the US Attorney based in San Francisco in January 2008, had drafted the mayor’s new policy.

Patti Lee of the Public Defender’s Office noted that the Mayor’s Office did not discuss the policy changes with her office, the courts, the prosecutors, or the people involved in immigration litigation.

Claiming that 99 percent of kids arrested in the city are not violent felons, Lee said, "They are mostly engaged in drug sales to survive and to send money back to their families."

Probation chief Siffermann defended the new policy direction. "Just because ICE is notified about suspected undocumented juvenile felons doesn’t mean they will be deported," Siffermann told us. "I know there’s a fear that this will open an automatic trap door to horrendous facilities and poor conditions, but this is not about dropping kids off in the middle of nowhere. What we are talking about includes outreach for families with adolescent members on the road to a delinquent involvement, whose actions call attention to the entire family situation."

Reached by phone, Russoniello told us, "If the city had scrupulously followed the ordinance as it’s written, there would not have been this controversy."

POLITICAL AGENDA?


Russoniello claimed that ICE’s first concern is people engaged in criminal activity, and agreed that in some cases, petitions may not be sustained against juveniles referred to ICE.

"But ICE may determine that the person is a member of a gang or engaged in regular criminal behavior," Russiniello added.

Russoniello also told us that the city is probably looking at its past files on undocumented juvenile felons to determine its own liability.

"Certainly, if people who are now adults were committing heinous crimes as juveniles, people are going to be wondering why they weren’t deported," Russoniello said, alluding to a June 22 triple homicide in which three members of the Bologna family were shot while returning home from a picnic.

Allegations emerged in July that the prime suspect in that killing, Edwin Ramos, 21, was an undocumented MS-13 gang member who committed felonies and went through the city’s juvenile system, but was never referred to ICE. That further embarrassed Newsom.

Kris Kobach, a one-time counsel to former US Attorney General John Ashcroft and the current Kansas Republican Party chair, is representing several surviving members of the Bologna family, who filed suit against the city claiming its sanctuary policies were a "substantial factor" in the slaying and blaming the Juvenile Probation Department for adopting "official and unofficial policies."

Russoniello claims that a review of monthly records that JPD has kept since 2004 show an uptick in alleged juvenile Honduran felons, and that this should have been a tip-off. "Are people gaming the system, or are organized groups taking advantage of the city’s leniency?" Russoniello asked.

Noting that 30 percent of these so-called teens were in fact adults and that significant numbers of gang members are "illegal aliens," Russoniello claims that the spur to shift policy was the city’s attempt to transport people back to Honduras in December 2007, which was brought to his attention in January, when he took office.

"We attempted to remedy it quietly, without much success," Russoniello recalls. "The city decided to send people to group homes. If you want to find a political agenda, look to the Mayor’s Office."

Calls to Ryan remained unanswered as of press time, but mayoral spokesperson Nathan Ballard e-mailed us that Newsom ordered a new policy direction May 22 "because he felt the old policy violated the intent of a sanctuary city, which is to promote cooperation by undocumented residents with law enforcement, not to harbor criminals."

The city attorney issued an opinion authorizing notification on July 1, Ballard wrote. Notification began July 3, and written protocols were publicly presented Sept. 10.

As for Russoniello’s comment about political agendas, Ballard retorted, "This isn’t about politics, it’s about public safety. In order to preserve the sanctuary city policy, we need to ensure that it complies with state and federal law so that it is not vulnerable to attack."

1...107108109...148Page 108 of 148

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