OPINION At the Nov. 1 meeting of the land use committee of the Board of Supervisors, a seemingly straightforward statement of policy will be heard. It simply requires that the city apply its own General Plan guidelines to future development in the eastern neighborhoods.
But the legislation, proposed by Supervisors Sophie Maxwell, Jake McGoldrick, Aaron Peskin, and Tom Ammiano, is creating quite a furor. A senior planning official has testified that if it’s adopted, the entire development boom in the eastern neighborhoods may be halted. The mayor has threatened a veto.
The policy in question calls for city planners to show how they intend to ensure that 64 percent of all new housing development is affordable to moderate-, low-, and very low-income San Franciscans. That’s what the housing element of the master plan says is needed.
Land use development policy lies at the very heart of San Francisco politics. It’s dangerous work for supervisors to attempt to determine that policy, especially if it calls for protection of existing neighborhoods and their residents.
Just ask Supervisor Chris Daly.
Don’t for a minute believe that he is in the fight of his political life because he’s rude, because he doesn’t care about law and order, or because he prefers dirty streets upon which to raise his son. These petty and silly charges mask a far more serious objection: the way his opponents see it, Daly has been too slow in adopting the massive wave of market-rate housing slated for his district and is far too protective of lower-income residents in District 6.
Never mind that since Daly took office some 3,000 units of housing have been built in the South of Market portion of his district alone or that an equal amount wait in the pipeline at the Planning Department. Mayor Gavin Newsom and his market-rate developer allies are simply not satisfied with Daly’s pro–housing development approach — because Daly has sought some balance in that development.
Likewise, the Maxwell resolution calls for plans that will be balanced, contain sustainable development policies, and guarantee a voice for residents against the headlong drive of the current administration to convert the eastern neighborhoods (South of Market, Potrero Hill, the Mission District) into vertical gated communities for Silicon Valley commuters. It states that it shall be the policy of the city that future plans explain not only how they will meet the affordability goals of the housing element but also how they will meet policies of preserving the arts and other productive activities; providing for public transit, pedestrian, and bike rider needs; protecting employment opportunities for current and future residents; and keeping families with children in the city.
There’s a working majority of the Board of Supervisors willing to fight for current neighborhoods and residents and a future that includes them. The battle in District 6 shows that the fight is not without risk. Do the rest of us realize it? SFBG
Calvin Welch
Calvin Welch is a community organizer in San Francisco.
Mayor
The risk of honest planning
Fast times in Rock Rapids, Iowa, what really happened on Halloween Eve in l951
By Bruce B. Brugmann
As I was getting ready to do my daily blog, anxiously awaiting the political endorsements in the Savage Love column in the Village Voice (see my previous blogs), a dispatch from the San Francisco Sentinel caught my eye on my email display.
“City Plans For Safe Castro Halloween,” the headline read.
A safe Halloween? Who wants to read about a safe Halloween? I can speak for a generation or two back in my hometown of Rock Rapids, Iowa, where Halloween was the one night of the year
when we could raise a little hell and and hope to stay one step ahead of the cops.
Or, in the case of Rock Rapids, the one and only cop, who happened to be Elmer “Shinny” Sheneberger. Shinny had the unenviable job of trying to keep some semblance of law and order during an evening when the Hermie Casjens gang was on the loose. Somehow through the years, nobody remembered exactly when, the tradition was born that the little kids would go house to house trick and treating but the older boys could roam the town looking to make trouble and pull off some pranks.
It was all quite civilized. The Casjens gang would gather (no girls allowed) and set out about our evening’s business, being careful to stay away from the houses of watchful parents and Shinny on patrol. Dave Dietz and I specialized in finding cars with keys in the ignition and driving them to the other end of town and just leaving them. We tipped over an outhouse or two, the small town cliche, but one time we thought there was someone inside. We never hung around to find out. There was some mischief with fences and shrubs.
After an evening of such lusty adventures, we would go home about ll p.m. and tell our parents what we had been up to and how we evaded Shinny the whole evening and they would (generally) be relieved. Shinny would just drive around in his patrol car and shine his lights here and there and do some honking. But somehow He never caught anybody or made any serious followup investigation. And the targets of our pranks never seemed to make police complaints. I once asked Paul Smith, the editor of the Lyon County Reporter, why he never wrote up this bit of zesty small town lore. “Bruce,” he said, “I don’t want things to get out of hand.” During my era, they never did.
Nonetheless, the city elders decided to keep Halloween devastation to a minimum and scheduled a dance in the Community Building, with the misbegotten idea the pranksters would give up their errant ways and come to the dance. The Casjens Gang would have none of this. In fact it was the year of the dance diversion that we made our most culturally significant contribution to Halloween lore in Rock Rapids. We happened upon a boxcar, loaded with coal, parked on a siding a block or so from Main Street, which also served as a busy main arterial highway for cars coming across northwest Iowa.
It is not clear to this day who came up with the idea of rolling the boxcar across Main Street and blocking all traffic coming from both directions. We massed behind the car and pushed and pushed but it wouldn’t budge. Then Bob Babl came up with a brilliant stroke: to use a special lever his dad used to move boxcars full of lumber for his nearby lumberyard. Bob slipped through a fence behind the yard and somehow managed to find the lever in the dark. We massed again, now some 20 or so strong, behind the car and waited for the signal to push. Willie Ver Meer climbed to the top of the car and wrenched the wheel that set the brakes. We heaved in unison and the car moved slowly on the tracks until it reached the middle of Main Street. Willie gave a mighty heave and ground the car to a dead stop, bang, square in the middle of the street. Almost immediately, the cars started lining up on both sides of the car, honking away. Grace under pressure. An historic event. Man, were we proud.
We slipped away and from a safe distance watched the fruits of our labor unfold. Shinny, the ever resourceful police chief, soon came upon the scene. He strode into the dance in the nearby Community Building and commandeered enough of the dancers to come out and help him move the car back onto its siding. We bided our time and then went back and pushed the car once again into the middle of the street. Jerry Prahl added a nice touch by rolling out a batch of Firestone tires onto the street from his Dad’s nearby store. Suddenly, Main Street was a boxcar- blocked, tire-ridden mess. Again, the cars started lining up, honking away. Then we fled, figuring we were now wanted pranksters and needed to be on the lam.
The Casjens gang and groupies have retold the story through the years at our regular get togethers at the Sportsmen Club bar at Heritage Days in Rock Rapids and at our all-Rock Rapids Cocktail Party and Beer Kegger held in the back lawn of the Mary Rose Babl Hindt house in Cupertino. We would jokingly say that the statute of limitations never runs out in Rock Rapids and so we needed to be careful what we said and ought not to disclose fully the involvement of Dave Dietz, Hermie Casjens, Ted Fisch, Ken Roach, Jerry Prahl, Bob Babl, Romain Hahn, Willie Ver Meer, and lots of others, some who were there working in peril, others who declared they were there safely after the fact.
Last year, just before Halloween, I was invited back to Rock Rapids to speak to a fund-raising event for the local high school. It was a a crisp clear night just like the night of Halloween in l95l and a perfect setting to tell the story publicly in town for the first time. The event was at the new community building, on Main Street, just a block or so from the old Community Building, and a block or so from the siding where we found the boxcar. I told the audience that Shinny had assured me the statute of limitations had run out in Rock Rapids and that I could now, 54 years later, tell the boxcar- across -Main -Street caper with no fear of prosecution. And so I did, with relish.
Chuck Telford was in the audience and I recalled that he had driven up to us that night, as part of a civilian patrol, and inquired as to what we were doing. When he could see what we were doing, he just quietly drove off. “Very civilized behavior,” I said. Afterward, I told Chuck I would back him for mayor, on the basis of that incident alone. Craig Vinson, then the highway patrolman for the area, came up to me and said he remembered the incident vividly because he was on duty that night and came upon the boxcar blocking the highway with long lines of honking cars. “I got ahold of Shinny that night and told him it was his job to move the boxcar and get it off the highway,” he said. Others said they had gotten a whiff of the story but were never able to pin it down. The high school principal and superintendent didn’t say much and, I suspect, were worried my tale might lead to the Rock Rapids version of the movie “Ferris Buhler Takes A Day Off.”
For years, I said in my talk, I didn’t think that Shinny ever knew exactly what happened or who was involved in the caper or how we pulled it off, twice, almost before his very eyes. Shinny retired in Rock Rapids and I saw him twice a year when I came back to visit my parents. But I never said anything and he never said anything but finally a couple of years ago I found the right moment and cautiously filled him in. He chuckled and said, “Let’s drink to it.” We did. And we have been drinking to it ever since. He calls me now and then in my office in San Francisco and he always tells the receptionist, “Tell Bruce, it’s Shinny. I’m his parole officer in Rock Rapids.” B3
Those were the days, my friends. The days of “safe” Halloweens.
P.S. I love smalltown lore and will from time to time lay out the life and fast times and wild adventures of my hometown, the best little town in the territory. I invite you to contribute your smalltown stories and lore. B3
Potholes, boozehounds and graffiti all stricken with fear in the wake of Newsom’s speech
By G.W. Schulz
Newsom proved during his State of the City speech yesterday at Burton High School in the Portola neighborhood that he’s got all the skills in the world necessary to … fill potholes. Look out world. Our fine-looking mayor has announced a sweeping new initiative to thoroughly repair the city’s roads.
“Not just patchwork,” he growled, as the utilities, seen regularly these days chopping up pavement across the city to mend the network of pipes underneath, trembled in fear.
With the guts of a grizzled marine, he challenged graffiti to a duel. Forging ahead with raw conviction, he fearlessly vowed to tackle busted sidewalks. And God-damn if it ain’t tough findin’ a cab in this city when you’re wasted and the party’s movin’ from last call to a friend’s apartment. That will change under the FDR-inspired, second-term platform of Gavin “the pulpit-pounding populist” Newsom.
So why did the SF Weekly’s Matt Smith endorse a PG@E attorney for supervisor?
Matt Smith, a columnist for the SF Weekly/Village Voice/New Times, parachuted into the Sunset to check out the field of supervisorial candidates and ended up last week all but endorsing Doug Chan as the PG@E candidate for supervisor.
What Smith’s investigation didn’t turn up was the disturbing fact that Chan is an attorney whose law firm, Chan, Doi, and Leal, has received more than $460,913 in fees from PG@E in the past five years, according to documents on file with the California Public Utilities Commission. (See my earlier blog and our editorial for more details).
Chan is also the beneficiary of a tidal wave of sleazy independent expenditure mailings to Sunset residents, probably from the same PG@E/downtown gang creating the tidal wave of IE sleaze on behalf of Rob Black in the Chris Daly race. (See our stories). The PG@E gang want Chan and Black in City Hall. I asked Smith by email if this were a continuation of the PG@E-smitten campaign that then editor John Mecklin and then reporter Peter Bryne conducted on behalf of PG@E and against the two public power campaigns in 200l and 2002. He parried the question. Chan and the Weekly both ended up in the Guardian’s Hall of Shame after the PG@E victories.
The point: maybe, if this is how the New Times would go about endorsements, it isn’t such a good idea to raise the issue. Their politics appear to be desert libertarianism on the rocks, with stalks of neocon policy. What would the Village Voice/New Times position be on the war and Bush et al? Well, back to Dan Savage, the Voice/New Times sex columnist who has been known to slip an endorsement into his column. (See my previous blog).
P.S. Full disclosure: I live out in the West Portal district a few blocks from the Sunset District. And I am getting tired of supervisors like Sean Elsbernd and Fiona Ma and supervisorial candiates like Doug Chan who come on as “neighborhood” candidates but once in office quickly become anti-neighborhood, pro-PG@E, pro-Downtown supervisors and callup votes for the mayor, PG@E, and downtown. My alternative choices for the Sunset:
Jaynry Mak and David Ferguson, who understand the perils of PG@E and the virtues of public power. B3
Will Dan Savage and Savage Love save the Village Voice/New Times chain? Will the chain allow any of its 17papers to endorse candidates in this critical election?
Maybe it’s up to Dan Savage, the editor of The Stranger in Seattle who writes a sex column called Savage Love with a left political slant for the Village Voice/New Times chain of l7 papers.
Let me explain. The New Times editor MIke Lacey and publisher Jim Larkin have historically refused to allow any of their papers, including the SF Weekly and the East Bay Express, to do editorials, endorse candidates, or take real positions on such critical issues as the war and occupation of Iraq, the Bush vs. Kerry presidential race, or even local races for mayor, governor, and the U.S. House and Senate. Why? It has always baffled me and it baffles the staffs of their l7 papers. And now, this year for the first time, the staffs and readers of the six old Voice papers that were purchased by the New Times last fall (the Voice, the Minneapolis City Pages, the Nashville Scene, the Seattle Weekly, the LA Weekly, and the OC Weekly) will find that they can no longer run the endorsements and strong political coverage they ran so proudly in their papers for years.
What was the New Times position on Bush’s reelection? New Times ducked the issue and, as far as I can tell, the only endorsement published in any New Times paper came from Savage’s column just before election day. Dan, bless his heart, came out for Kerry in the last line of his column and has been pushing for impeachment. He even went out to Pennsylvania a few weeks ago to make trouble for Sen. Rick Santorum. He was successful.
There are major races in almost every one of the Village Voice/New Times cities, from New York to the state of Washington to Tennessee to Florida to Ohio to almost every city and region where the Voice/New Times has a paper. The mission of a real alternative paper is to be alternative to and competitive with the local monopoly daily. Instead, the Voice/New Times papers, by not endorsing, cede valuable political terrain and influence to their local daily competitors with their standard establishment endorsements, usually conservative and establishment to the core, in local and national races (see the Chronicle and Examiner endorsements.) And so the question remains: will Lacey and Larkin, operating out of their headquarters in Phoenix, allow any of their papers, in this terribly critical election, to finally break the taboo and take an editorial stand and do some editorial endorsements?
I bet they won’t. I bet they continue their policy of making no explanation to their staffs and readers. And so once again it will be up to Dan Savage, the zesty gay sex columnist, to save the day and come out with some anti-Bush endorsements in his pre-election column in the l7 Voice and New Times papers. Will he do it? Will Lacey and Larkin allow the Savage endorsements to run in their papers? Let us stay alert. Meanwhile, the Bruce blog will keep you posted.
P.S. What has been the Lacey/Larkin/New Times position on the war and occupation? Let me recap an example from an earlier Bruce blog. Back in 2003, as the Guardian was pounding away on Bush and the invasion with front page stories and strong editorials, Lacey/Larkin/SFWeekly/EastBayExpress/NewTimes gave me a Best of Award for “Best Local Psychic.”
Their Best Of item read: “Move over, Madam Zolta, at least when it comes to predicting the outcome of wars, Bruce-watchers will recall with glee his most recent howler, an April 2 Bay Guardian cover storyheadlined ‘The New Vietnam.’ The article was accompanied by an all caps heading and a photo of a panic-stricken U.S. serviceman in Iraq, cowering behind a huge fireball. The clear message: Look out, folks; this new war’s gonna be as deep a sinkhole as the old one. Comparing a modern U.S. war to Vietnam–how edgy! How brilliant! How original! And how did the prediction pan out? Let’s see now: More than 50,000 U.S. soldiers got killed in Vietnam vs. about l00 in Iraq. Vietnam lasted more than l0 years; Iraq lasted less than a month (effectively ending about two weeks after the story ran.) Vietnam destroyed a U.S. president, while Iraq tuned one into an action hero. Well, you get the picture. Trying to draw analogies between Vietnam and Iraq is as ridiculous as Brugmann’s other pet causes. Scores of reputable publications aroiund the nation opposed the Iraq war, but did so in a thoughtful, intelligent manner. Leave it to the SFBG,our favorite political pamphlet, to help delegitimate yet another liberal cause. Bush, Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft send their sincerest thanks, Bruce.”
I am not jesting. This is what they wrote. I proudly display this Best of in my office. And this was yet another example of New Times journalism: hit, run, and hide. The article was not by-lined and I tried, again and again, by phone calls and by guerrilla emails to Lacey and his SF Weekly editors, to get someone to stand up and say who conceived, wrote, and edited the item. Nobody would fess up. But I was told reliably that the writer was the cartoonist Dan Siegler and the editor was then editor John Mecklin, who was reported to be Lacey’s top editor and hand-picked by Lacey to take on the Guardian in San Francisco. I then confronted them with emails, askijng for confirmation or comment. I got none then and, as the war worsened, I updated my request now and then. I never got a reply.
We had lots of fun with their Best Of award. We did a counter Best of, a full page ad, titled “Best Premature Ejaculation,” a special award to the editors of the SF Weekly/New Times. We ended with this note: “Sorry, folks: We wish the war in Iraq were as neat and tidy as you, Bush, Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft would like to think it is. But you, um, spoke to soon.”
We added a postscript: “Gee, what’s the New Times position on the war anyway. We can’t seem to figure it out.” Three years later, l2 days before the election that is a plebescite on the war and Bush the Perpetrator, the question is more timel than ever: what is the Lacey and Larkin position on the war?
Will they tell us? Or is it up to Dan Savage? B3
PG&E’s candidates
EDITORIAL We’ve seen plenty of allies of Pacific Gas and Electric Co. on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. We’ve seen a few PG&E bagmen, PG&E shills, and PG&E fronts. But there’s never been anyone elected to the board in our 40 years who was actually a paid attorney for PG&E.
This year there’s at least one and possibly two candidates who have worked as PG&E lawyers — and that alone should disqualify them ever from holding public office in San Francisco. The most obvious and direct conflict involves Doug Chan, the former police commissioner who is seeking a seat from District 4. Documents on file with the California Public Utilities Commission show that Chan’s law firm, Chan, Doi, and Leal, has received more than $200,000 in fees from PG&E in just the past two years.
Chan won’t come to the phone to discuss what he did for the utility, won’t respond to questions posed through his campaign manager and press secretary, won’t return calls to his law firm, and thus won’t give the public any idea what sorts of conflicts of interest he’d have if he took office.
This is nothing new for Chan: back in 2002 he put his name on PG&E campaign material opposing public power and earned a spot in the Guardian’s Hall of Shame.
Then there’s Rob Black, who worked as an attorney for Nielsen Merksamer, the law firm that handled all of the dirty dealings for the anti-public-power campaign in 2002. Black worked with Jim Sutton, his former law professor and PG&E’s main legal operative, during that period but insists he did no work on anything related to PG&E or the campaign. That’s tough to believe.
All of this comes at a time when PG&E is going out of its way, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars, to buff up its image — and to fight the city’s modest but significant plans for public power.
As Steven T. Jones reports on page 16, the notorious utility is well aware that its future in San Francisco is shaky. The city is bidding to provide public electric power to the Hunters Point shipyard redevelopment project and preparing to provide public power to Treasure Island. There is a study in the works to look at developing tidal power. The supervisors are moving forward on Community Choice Aggregation, which will put the city directly in the business of selling retail electricity to customers (albeit through PG&E’s grid). And there’s talk brewing of a public power ballot initiative for next November.
PG&E president Thomas King met with Mayor Gavin Newsom this summer and sent him a nice, friendly letter afterward discussing all the ways the city and PG&E could work together.
But in fact, the utility is already opposing even the baby steps coming out of City Hall: PG&E has bid against San Francisco for rights to sell power to the shipyard, and that’s forced the city to cut prices and reduce the revenue it could have gained from Lennar Corp., the master developer. PG&E is trying to stop the city from selling power on Treasure Island and has financial ties to a private company that has rights to Golden Gate tidal power development until 2008. Meanwhile, the utility just hired the former secretary to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission — a woman who sat in on every closed-session strategy meeting the panel held, including sessions dealing with litigation against PG&E.
In other words, PG&E is gearing up for all-out political warfare — and the mayor and supervisors need to start preparing too. From now on, people should see whatever PG&E does as hostile — and on every front the city needs to adopt an aggressive strategy to move forward toward eliminating the company’s private power monopoly.
For starters, it’s ridiculous that the city should have to fight PG&E for the right to sell power at the Hunters Point shipyard. The Redevelopment Agency should have made public power a part of the program from the start, and the supervisors should examine that plan immediately to see if it can be amended to require Lennar to buy power from San Francisco. Newsom needs to take to the bully pulpit and say that if PG&E gets this contract, nobody on the Redevelopment Agency Commission will ever be reappointed.
Meanwhile, when Chan and Black appear anywhere in public this election season, they need to be asked to fully disclose their ties with PG&E and outline their positions on public power.
And it’s time for the public power coalition to start meeting again, with the aim of crafting a ballot measure that will create a full-scale municipal system, perhaps as soon as November 2007. SFBG
PS PG&E already has one staunch ally on the board, Sean Elsbernd, a Newsom appointee who also worked in the late 1990s for the Nielsen firm. That’s three too many.
PPS If Newsom is really for public power, as he claims, then why is he pushing so hard for two PG&E call-up votes for the board? And why is he not publicly denouncing PG&E’s attempt to scuttle public power and lending his political capital to a new municipalization effort?
PPPS The SF Weekly’s Matt Smith last week all but endorsed Doug Chan — but made no mention of Chan’s PG&E ties. Did that somehow slip through Smith’s investigative reporting net?
Save Daly — and the city
EDITORIAL The sleaze in District 6 is utterly out of control. So far, five different organizations, all claiming to be independent of any candidate, have sent out expensive mailers blasting away at incumbent Chris Daly (and urging voters, either directly or indirectly, to support his main opponent, Rob Black).
The law says that these groups can spend all the money they want, without abiding by campaign contribution limits, as long as they aren’t coordinating with Black’s staff, but let’s not be naive here: this is a carefully planned and orchestrated campaign by a handful of wealthy, powerful interests that will spend whatever it takes to get rid of one of the board’s most reliable progressive leaders.
Daly’s a hard worker, has a solid record, and is popular in his district — but after a while, this much negative campaigning starts to take a toll. And for the sake of the progressive movement in San Francisco, Black and the downtown forces simply can’t be allowed to defeat Daly.
Daly is more than a good supervisor (although he certainly meets that qualification). He’s part of the class of 2000, one of a crew of activists who swept into power in the first district elections as a rebellion against the developer-driven politics of then-mayor Willie Brown. He has become one of the city’s most promising young leaders, someone who, with a bit more seasoning (and diplomacy), could and should have a bright future in local politics.
He’s also very much a district supervisor and a symbol of how district elections allowed the neighborhoods to take back the city. The attack on him is an attack on the entire progressive movement and all that’s been accomplished in this city in the past six years.
Daly needs help. He needs volunteers to walk precincts, distribute literature, and get out the vote. This has to be a top priority for independent neighborhood and progressive activists in San Francisco. There’s a campaign rally Oct. 28 at 10 a.m. at the northeast corner of 16th Street and Mission. Daly’s campaign headquarters are at 2973 16th St. The phone is (415) 431-3259. Show up, volunteer, give money … this one really, really matters. SFBG
Editor’s Notes
› tredmond@sfbg.com
The San Francisco Examiner reported last week that enrollment in the local public schools is down by another 1,000 students this year, which means, some school board members say, that more sites will have to be closed.
I understand the economic issues — the state pays for education based on average daily attendance, and if fewer kids show up, the school district gets fewer dollars. And I’ll admit I have a dog in this fight: my son goes to McKinley Elementary, a wonderful school that represents everything that’s right about public education in San Francisco — and McKinley was on the hit list last year. It’s a small school; that makes it vulnerable.
I also understand that there are some things the school board can’t control. Families are leaving San Francisco in droves. That’s largely because of the high cost of housing, which is an issue for the mayor and the supervisors (and one that’s going to take a lot more work and resolve to address). So we’re going to lose some students that way.
But we’re also losing a lot of kids to private schools; I know that because I have good friends who’ve chosen that route, mostly because they don’t think the public schools can offer what they want for their kids. This is a perception problem, and it’s something the school board doesn’t have to sit back and accept.
That, I guess, is what really frustrates me — so many people simply saying that as a matter of strategic planning, we need to assume 1,000 fewer students a year will go to the public schools. The district spent around a quarter of a million dollars last year on a public relations office, and almost all the office seemed to do was hide information from the press and promote the career of then-superintendent Arlene Ackerman. Now Ackerman’s gone, and so is her officious flak, Lorna Ho. It’s time to take district PR seriously.
How hard would it be to have one PR staffer dedicated to creating a major citywide ad campaign promoting the public schools? I suspect it would be relatively easy to find a top-flight local ad firm that would work pro bono and not at all impossible to raise money for media (billboards, bus sides, direct mail, print ads, TV, whatever). Lots of prominent people would do testimonials. Set a goal: no enrollment drop-off next year. Before we close any more schools, it’s worth a try.
Now this: Clear Channel, which owns 10 radio stations in San Francisco and does almost no local public affairs programming at all, recently dropped its only decent San Francisco show, Keepin’ It Real with Will and Willie on KQKE, and replaced it with a syndicated feed out of Los Angeles. To listen to most of Clear Channel radio, you’d never actually know that you’re in San Francisco; the giant Texas chain doesn’t care anything about this community.
If you’re sick of this kind of behavior by an increasingly consolidated monopoly broadcast industry (using, by the way, the public airwaves), you’re not alone: Media Alliance, the Youth Media Council, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People will host a hearing on media consolidation in Oakland on Oct. 27, and two Federal Communications Commission members, Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps, will be there to take public comments.
The hearing’s at the Oakland Marriott Civic Center, 1001 Broadway. For more information, go to www.media-alliance.org. SFBG
Just in: More investment info on PG&E’s candidates for supervisor
Just as the Guardian went to press on Tuesday afternoon, our investigative interns returned from the Californa Public Utilities Commission with more information on the investments that PG&E has made in supervisorial candidates Doug Chan and Rob Black through two key law firms.
Documents on file with the CPUC show that Chan’s law firm, Chan, Doi, and Leal, has received a total of $460,913 in fees from PG&E between 200l and 2005. In 2002, the year of the second public power initiative, the Chan firm received $49,969.78. Chan lent his name to PG&E for use in PG&E’s campaign material and thereby earned a spot in the Guardian’s Hall of Shame.
As our editorial and my previous blogs pointed out, Chan, his campaign, and his law firm refuse to answer our telephone and email requests for an explanation of what he did for PG&E and whether PG&E’s investment will affect his position on public power. Chan is running in District 4 (the Sunset), backed by Mayor Newsom, PG&E, and downtown money.
Black, a PG&E and downtown-backed candidate against Sup. Chris Daly in District 6, worked as an attorney for Nielsen Merksamer, the political law firm that handled all of the dirty dealings for the nasty public anti-public power campaign that PG&E and its allies waged in 2002 with a huge warchest. Black worked with Jim Sutton, his former law professor and PG&E’s main legal operative, during that period but insists he did no work on anything related to PG&E or the campaign. We and many others find that hard to believe. In any event, he is eloquently vague about his current public power position. Nielsen Merksamer received $338,294 in 200l, the year of PG&E’s first victory over the first public power initiative, and $24,303.90 in 2002, the year PG&E beat back the second public power initiative. In 2003, with PG&E fighting numerous major campaign violations on ethical and campaign spending, Nielsen and Merksamer got $496,7l6.87.
In 2004 the firm got $443,50l.24 and in 2005 it got $8l6,97l. The interns who fought their way through the CPUC bureaucracy were Jeff Goodman and Sara Schieron, adding their names to a long list of Guardian staffers who have helped fight the good fight against PG&E for almost 40 years.
“All of this comes at a time when PG&E is going out of its way, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars, to buff up its image–and to fight the city’s modest but significant plans for public power,” our editorial points out. PG&E is also fighting the city in several expensive legal actions, from conflicts over the city’s right to power municipal buildings to PG&E’s working against the city building more solar sites.
At the end of Steven T. Jones’ story on “PG&E’s Extreme Makeover,” he quotes Peter Ragone, the mayor’s press secretary, as saying, “We’re going to do what’s in the best interests of the city of San Francisco. This is the first mayor to support public power, and that hasn’t changed at all.”
Okay. Maybe so. But then why did the mayor appoint Sean Elsbernd to the board, a staunch PG&E ally who worked for Nielsen Merksamer in the l990s? And then why is he now strongly backing PG&E’s supervisorial candiates in this election (Chan and Black)? That would give PG&E three callup votes on the board for PG&E. Fair play: If Chan and Black aren’t potential callup votes on the board, then they need to come clean, right now, and give us and the public an explanation of the PG&E investments in their firms and what their position on public power is now and will be as supervisors.
SOS: it’s time for the public power forces to regroup and start hammering back at the PG&E offensive. Things of great moment are once again in the making. B3
A tissue for Newsom
By Steven T. Jones
Kudos for the Chron’s Cecelia Vega for debunking Mayor Gavin Newsom’s pity-party television interview, in which he said he may not run for reelection. Vega punches her story home with some great phrases like “20-year-old Republican girlfriend” and “Washington-size dose of political posturing,” but the real gems come from Bruce Cain and Gerardo Sandoval. Check ’em out. But I once again have to find fault with Vega and other Chron writers continuing to prop up Wade Randlett as if he’s some kind of party insider or astute political observer, rather than the discredited right wing bagman that he is. But for the Chron, this is still mighty fine work.
As for Newsom, suck it out or get out! Geez, talk about letting your sense of overentitlement show. If you want a carefree life of chasing tail in the Marina or playing the rich socialite, go to it. Your job is way too important for you to be as checked out and self-indulgent as you have been lately anyway. Sure, it’s a tough job, but there are lots of competent progressives in this city who would love to trade places with you, even with all the abuse that entails. Call Ross Mirkarimi, I’m sure he’d welcome the news that you’re stepping down and supporting him. Actually, come to think of it, maybe that is the way to go. It is a very tough job that’s only bound to get tougher, and you’re a young man who should be out there enjoying life. Get out while you can, my friend. You don’t need this shit.
Dear Jerry Brown: more impertinent questions on the Hearst shenanigans (part 4)
Followups on Hearst: No word back from the Chronicle on my questions on why they are blacking out the big local story involving three big local players (Hearst, McKesson Corporation, and First DataBank). Let me give you the lead front headline on the Oct. 6 Wall Street Journal story to make the point about what a big big story they are stonewalling on:
“How Quiet Moves by a Publisher Sway Billions in Drug Spending, Lawsuit Forces Hearst Unit To Lower Prices on List Widely Used as Benchmark, A ‘Survey’ of One Company”
Anybody out there annoyed at the ever escalating price of prescription drugs? That is the point. Below are my questions emailed Thursday to the campaign headquarters of Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, who is the candidate most likely to be the next attorney general (no word back at blogtime).
Fair warning: next week I will start asking similar impertinent questions to the Oakland Tribune, Contra Costa Times, San Jose Mercury News, San Mateo Times, and other Media News Group/Dean Singleton papers that claim, along with Hearst, that they are really aggressively competing away out there even though they have formed what amounts to a regional news monopoply. Have they done the story and if not, when will they? And will they pursue the story as real competitive newspapers once did and as they ought to do again if they want to retain credility and financial viability? Repeating: Where are Justice and Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer and their antitrust departments.
Take note, Clint Reilly and Joe Alioto, a key part of your antitrust case is being made right here and now. B3
Dear Jerry Brown,
I am requesting some information and answers to questions from you, as a candidate for attorney general, for stories we are doing at the Bay Guardian and for my Bruce blog at sfbg.com.
The Wall Street Journal on Oct. 6, and the Bay Guardian in its current edition, have done stories on a major settlement in which a Hearst subsidiary (First Data Bank in San Bruno) has ” agreed to stop publishing its list of wholesale medicine prices, which numerous critics have blamed for driving up drug costs,” as an AP story in the Houston Chronicle/Hearst puts it. (See story on the link below). Would you as attorney general investigate this issue and determine if it would save health plans $4 billion and if there should be any further action in this case?
Hearst and Singleton interests have, as charged in the Clint Reilly/Joe Alioto antitrust suit, effectively destroyed newspaper competition in the Bay Area and imposed regional monopoly. Would you continue the Lockyer investigation into this case? And/or would you join the suit as a co-plaintiff or an amicus? Thanks very much.
Sincerely, Bruce B. Brugmann (B3)
On drinking
By Tim Redmond
There are all kinds of sordid (maybe sad is the better word) things you can say about the 39-year-old mayor dating a 20-year-old. But frankly, I’m not going to get all agitated about whether she has been drinking.
I was drinking when I was 20. Actually, I was drinking when I was 17. I those days, in New York State, the law was 18, and not tightly enforced. And guess what: Nothing terrible happened to me. In fact, I’d argue that the sort of binge drinking we see on college campuses now is directly related to the foolish 21-year-old age rule. When I was in school, it was perfectly normal to go to a local bar and have a beer — not 15 beers, just one or two. Now that a single damn beer is contraband, kids have more incentive to overdo it when it’s available, and less chance to develop a mature relationship with booze.
You can get married, go in the Army and get killed, buy a house … just about anything at 18. Except legally buy a beer. Pretty stupid.
Gavin’s girlfriend
By Steven T. Jones
Mayor Gavin Newsom is now dating someone almost half his age: Brittanie Mountz, a model and restaurant hostess who recently turned 20 years old. And you can catch her in action thanks to some video that the Chronicle shot are last month’s opening of the San Francisco Symphony. Warning: the must-see part when she and the Gav talk to the cameras comes toward the end, so you’ll need to sit through some seriously nauseating high-society BS first (particularly creme-de-la-gag Dede Wilsey…ick). Even Newsom mocks the ostentation of the event before handing the mike over to his new sweetie, who sounds like…
Actually, you can just judge for yourself.
Even wrong when right
By Steven T. Jones
Even when the Chronicle gets it right, they get it wrong. Political writers Carla Marinucci and Tom Chorneau scored a great story by discovering that Amos Brown — the SF pastor and former supervisor — had been paid $16,000 by the Schwarzenegger campaign prior to deciding to endorse Herr Governor. It was disgraceful and should shred any credibility that Brown had left. But then they screwed up the story by alternately labeling Brown a “liberal” and a “progressive,” when he was neither. As a supervisor, Brown was conservative and a reliable vote for downtown, and since then, he’s been shilling for the Republican-funded SFSOS and selling out his flock to conservative nutball Rev. Sun Myung Moon. Marinucci and other Chron writers also regularly prop up disgraced SFSOS head Wade Randlett. It’s telling of the Chron’s worldview that they consider Brown to be left of center.
The paper also did some PR work for the Schwarzenegger this morning by writing about the party for Virgin Airlines, despite the lack of news. The company doesn’t yet have permission to operate and it seemed mostly about demonstrating Arnold’s bipartisan appeal by putting him next to Mayor Gavin Newsom, where they each claimed credit for “creating 1,700 jobs.” Too bad the actual total, as reported by Fog City Journal, is just 100 jobs. Oh well, can’t let those pesky facts get in the way of good politics.
Skate or die
By G.W. Schulz
Gavin Newsom has made a lot of promises during his tenure. He’s even come up with a few half-baked plans to contend with the city’s highest homicide rate in 10 years. But he recently dropped the ball on a seemingly simple gesture that could have at the very least kept a few kids out of trouble.
SF PartyParty reported a while back that the mayor has slipped on a promise to build two new skateparks for the city this year. They confirmed it with a call to Parks and Rec and noted that at the very most, the city could see one new skatepark next year.
We reported earlier in the year that kids attending an after-school program at Cellspace in the heart of the Mission off Bryant Street had grown fond of a group of skate ramps that had appeared quietly in the parking lot of the long-time flea market and bike kitchen located across the street from Cellspace’s warehouse. But the non-profit’s executive director Zoe Garvin told us at the time that the lot was slated for a new housing development, and the ramps wouldn’t be permitted to stick around much longer.
A new skatepark could have been timed perfectly. What a shame. Thanks to SF PartyParty for the heads up. By the way, Cellspace is holding a fundraiser on Saturday, Oct. 14 from 7-10 pm. Attend and help out some fine folks. While you’re there, ask Henry about his idea for a veggie-fueled lowrider with solar-powered hydraulic suspension. Awesome.
Rallying point
By Steven T. Jones
It’s good to be reminded sometimes that San Francisco is truly an oasis in a desert of fear and ignorance. Yesterday’s City Hall press conference on the terrible Court of Appeals ruling against same sex marriage was one of those moments, when we felt unified in our quest for justice and equality. Despite this disappointment on the way to the eventual California Supreme Court hearings, City Attorney Dennis Herrera said, “We are steadfast and couldn’t be prouder to be at the forefront of this battle.” And everyone felt it. Win or lose, we’re doing the right thing. “We’re making tremendous progress,” said Mayor Gavin Newsom, who didn’t mince words when describing the majority opinion that traditional marriage shouldn’t be updated by the courts: “They made a mistake.”
Both sounded notes of optimism. Said Newsom, “I’m confident we’re going to get there, but today was an emotional setback.” Yet Herrera noted that we need to be vigilant against the right wing forces that are trying to make judges fear doing what they must: “The threat to the independence of the judiciary by those screaming about judicial activism is a disgrace.”
Google’s dog and pony show
By Steven T. Jones
First, Mayor Gavin Newsom tapped his buddies at Google (in partnership with Earthlink) to build a citywide wireless system that would be free to city residents. It was a move that was done without full sunshine and it pissed off some information activists like Media Alliance, but the Department of Telecommunication and Information Services has since conducted a more open and diligent negotiations process with the companies. That caused Google to grouse to the Chron that the city was dragging its feet. So Sup. Jake McGoldrick decided maybe the city should be looking at doing a municipal wifi system instead, which he’s having the budget analyst study (if the board approves study this week) and report back on by the end of the year. That’s also when DTIS expects to have a final deal with Google/Earthlink — and when a consultant’s study on municipal broadband (that’s fiber rather than wifi) is due back. Well, with all this possibility swirling, Google and Earthlink have now announed a series of town hall meeting from now until the end of the year. Game on! Their press release follows: