News Archives — Page 126 of 137 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

The governor’s wimpy health plan

January 16, 2007

EDITORIAL The good news — and it’s very good news indeed — is that the governor of California has followed the lead of the city of San Francisco and is talking seriously about a universal health care plan. This is the first time since the early days of the Clinton administration — before the insurance companies destroyed even a modest hope of national reform — that we can sense real momentum toward the creation of a new policy to address one of the most pressing issues in the country.

But let’s be clear: the governor’s proposal falls far short of real reform. It has a few attractive features, but overall it’s underfunded, at points dysfunctional — and ducks the most basic problems with the state’s health insurance system.

Like Bill Clinton, Arnold Schwarzenegger starts with a failed premise — that private insurance, linked to employment, can somehow solve the problem. The evidence against that is so clear it’s frustrating even to have to make the argument. Private health insurance is expensive and inefficient; the amount of money that’s wasted on overhead and profits is staggering (as much as 30 cents out of every health care dollar never makes it to any hospital or clinic). The incentive to bilk consumers, avoid covering the sickest of patients, and reward suffering is disgracefully high. The fact that the United States is the only Western industrialized country without a functioning national health care program is a direct result of the fact that private insurers run the show.

Employer-based health insurance is a failed system too, an amalgam that grew out of the federal government’s failure to recognize the need for a national health system in the postwar era and the demands of unionized workers for better benefits. Workplaces offer insurance companies what they want — large pools of people among whom to share the risk. But linking insurance to employment is obviously a bad idea at a time when more and more people are working part-time jobs, contract jobs, or a series of different jobs for different companies — and when small businesses (which create most of the jobs in the country) are getting hammered by double-digit annual increases in health insurance premiums.

So any plan that accepts the private-sector hegemony over health insurance is doomed to fail in the long term.

The Schwarzenegger plan has another dangerous component: the proposal would require everyone in the state to buy health insurance (at the risk of criminal penalties for noncompliance). That, of course, is an insurance industry dream — it makes the entire population a captive customer base. And while the governor promises to offer lower-cost plans and subsidies for the poor, there’s nowhere near enough money in his proposal to make private insurance affordable to all. Low-income people would be driven to buy high-deductible plans, which undermine the entire idea of universal health care. And middle-class people who don’t have employer-based plans may be devastated: in San Francisco, for example, a family of four living on $60,000 a year would have to put as much as $10,000 of that into health insurance or risk steep fines.

The overall financing is shaky — the governor is counting on federal funding to help put an additional 630,000 people on the Medi-Cal rolls, but Congress has a long list of spending priorities, and there’s no guarantee this one will make the final cut.

There are things to like about the plan, particularly the goal of covering all children in the state, including the kids of undocumented immigrants. And the very fact that the ambitious governor of the nation’s largest state is willing to stake so much on health care reform is encouraging.

But the legislature is under no obligation to start the discussion with the governor’s plan. There’s already an excellent bill out there: SB 840, by Sen. Sheila Kuehl (D–Santa Monica). Her suggestion: get the insurance industry out of the game altogether and create a statewide fund, with premiums paid by employers and individuals, that would cover all Californians. It would save businesses in the state a fortune (and thus give the economy a jolt), cut down on waste and fraud, allow people to move from job to job without fear of losing health care, and give the government a strong incentive to push for lower drug costs.

That’s where the debate ought to begin. *

Barbara and Angela socked it to ’em! Keep it up!

January 16, 2007

By Bruce B. Brugmann

Last Thursday, Jan.llth, when Sen. Barbara Boxer confronted Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice over the casualties in the Iraq War, the San Francisco Chronicle reported four more soldiers died in the civil war.

On Friday, when the right wing commentators yelled “slime” at Barbara and tried to change the subject by updating the swiftboat routine, the Chronicle reported “At least l9 people were reported killed or dead nationwide Friday, including l0 bullet-riddled bodies found in Baghdad and an Iraqi journalist who was killed in a drive-by shooting in the northern city of Mosul. KhudrYounis al-Obaidi was the second journalist killed this year.”

Meanwhile, even the Chronicle helped change the subject by playing the Boxer/Rice story big on on its Friday Jan. l3th front page. Carla Marinucci lead posed a naive and irrelevant question: Was Boxer’s “heated confrontation” with Rice “a case of ‘vicious feminine politics–as some critics have suggested–or merely the politics of frank talk in tough times?”

Marinucci wrote that Boxer, during her questioning of Rice, said she wanted to focus attention on the human consequences of the decision.

“Who pays the price? I’m not going to pay a personal price. My kids are too old, and my grandchild is too young” to serve, Boxer told Rice. “You’re not going to pay a price, as I understand it, within immediate family. So who pays the price? The American military and their families.”

Boxer’s statement was right on target, as were those of many other senators (Democrat and
Republican) who attacked the war and Bush when she appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
But the swiftboaters were out in gale force, not to discuss the Bush casualties or the issues of a war gone to hell, but to try to change the subject and attack Boxer, whose major sin it appears is that she happens to have been right about the war almost from the beginning. The New York Post/Murdoch called her comments “a low blow.” Tony Snow, the White House spokesman and former Fox News/Murdoch personality, said the comments were “outrageous” and said that Boxer had made “a great leap backward for feminism.” Fox News/Murdoch commentator Karen Hanretty whacked Boxer for talking about Rice’s “breeding history.”
Fox/Murdoch ran screaming heads all day Friday saying “Will Boxer Apologize?” and “Boxer slimes Rice.”
And Bill O”Reilly, the FoxNews/Murdoch star of slither and slime, took up the issue Friday night with Angela Alioto.

Boxer, to her immense credit, refused to apologize in the Marinucci story. “This is just typical of what they do…
the Bush administration always goes after me, and anyone who has been against the war from the start,” she said. “It’s ‘kill the messenger.'” Boxer said she will continue to be tough on the issue of the war because the “focus (on casualties) is crucial.”

Alioto, to her immense credit, stood up to Reilly on his Fox program, ably defended Boxer, got in some nice punches and kept making the casualties point by saying that “we fight wars with other people’s children” and “if everybody in Congress had a child in Iraq, we wouldn’t be in Iraq.”

The back and forth was delicious: O’Reilly: She (Boxer) denigrated Secretary Rice because Secretary Rice…

Alioto: That is not true.

O’Reilly: …doesn’t have any children.

Alioto: She would have said the same thing to a man. She would have said the same thing to a man. (See the full transcript below.)

Good for Barbara. Good for Angela. Keep it up. Keep the pressure on.

Meanwhile the Ballis report came in this morning with this count:

+U.S. Military killed in action in Iraq today (l/l5/O7): 2

+Current Total: 3,029

+Wounded total to (l/l0/07): 22,834

Wounded (l2/28 to l/l0/07): 120

See the Guardian editorial “Cut off the war money” in our current issue and on our website. We will regularly publish a snapshot of the statistics of military, civilian, and journalist casualties that tell this tragedy that grows grimmer by the day. B3

Boxer comments to Rice draw fire from the right – Senator says she won’t apologize for ‘strong message’

Friday Night Fights: Bill O’Reilly Takes on Liberal Extremists Over Boxer’s Statements | NewsBusters.org

THURSDAY

January 10, 2007

jan. 11

event

POOR Press Reading

The Bay Area is particularly rife with innovative niche publications, one of which is POOR Magazine. POOR’s mission is to provide media access to and advocacy for very-low- to no-income inhabitants of San Francisco and beyond and has birthed both a multifaceted news service (PNN: PoorNewsNetwork) and a small-press publishing company (POOR Press). Join POOR editor Lisa Gray-Garcia at City Lights as she reads from her new book, Criminal of Poverty: Growing Up Homeless in America (City Lights, 2007), with a posse of POOR Press authors. (Nicole Gluckstern)

7 p.m., free
City Lights
261 Columbus, SF
(415) 362-8193
www.citylights.com

performance

In the Blood

What if Hester Prynne were a down-and-out African American woman living in an urban wasteland who instead of wearing the scarlet letter has the word slut spray-painted over her makeshift home under a decrepit bridge? Welcome to the brainchild of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, whose In the Blood turns the Hawthorne classic on its head while confronting questions of gender, race, and sexuality with gritty dialogue and cynical humor. (Hayley Elisabeth Kaufman)

8 p.m., $10
Through Sun/14
California State University, East Bay
25800 Carlos Bee Blvd., Hayward
(510) 885-3261
http://class.csueastbay.edu/theatre

Careers and Ed: Hard on the job

January 9, 2007

› culture@sfbg.com

Just a short walk northeast from the Hall of Justice in SoMa lies an internationally renowned palace of forbidden pleasure.

The nondescript four-story stone building is the headquarters for Kink, an online enterprise specializing in the production of short, sexy, streaming BDSM videos, available for a monthly subscription fee. Started by British bondage aficionado Peter Ackworth about a decade ago, Kink is home to such fetish favorites as Hogtied, Fucking Machines, and Ultimate Surrender (in which the winner of a female wrestling competition in a Greco-Roman setting gets to fuck the loser). It’s also — perhaps surprisingly — a great place to work, according to the people who work there. And that’s not just those strapped down in front of the cameras talking.

Granted, when you were young and dreaming of a fabulous career in film, porn might not have been your chosen niche. But if you’re looking for a job in media and are unenthused by the paltry postings on Craigslist offering the opportunity to work in the lackluster world of industrial video production, you might want to broaden your options. There used to be a steadier stream of work shooting commercials and Hollywood films on location here, but the high costs have caused that flow to taper off. Still, the Bay Area harbors a vibrant industry creating DVD and Internet adult content.

Crack all the jokes you want about the sleaziness of the porn business, but there’s some real dedication behind it. I used to have a job where I regularly interviewed people about their jobs: dot-com jobs, to be specific. Most of the time, the Web guru, marketing guru, or whatever guru I was interrogating would stare at me with a Stepford wife’s eyes and tell me what a blast it was to work at blobbity-blah.com. All the while I could hear the voice in his or her head blaring, "If my stock options end up amounting to nothing more than toilet paper, I’m gonna be pissed!"

Many local erotica production studios, on the other hand, offer a positive and creative work environment, upward mobility, and good pay with full benefits for everyone from customer service representatives to IT workers and video editors.

ONE HECK OF A DAY JOB

As I’m guided through the maze of sets at Kink — a jail cell, a dirty bathroom, a dungeon with vaulted ceilings reminiscent of the Doom video game, even a sci-fi room — I pass workers who are going about the business of making naughty fantasies come to life. Production assistants in black jumpsuits prepare sets for shoots. Set builders in flannels construct a booth in the back lot for the imminent Adult Video News Awards in Las Vegas. A model naps in the green room before his close-up.

In the office space where the postproduction editors work with the directors to piece together videos on large, brilliant flat-panel monitors, everyone I see looks like someone who could be working at an indie rock record label. They’re hip, young, hard at work, and having a good time.

I get to interview some of them on the canopied roof deck, replete with a bar, heat lamps, and a hot tub. Kelly Schaefer, a young woman with jagged layers of blond locks jutting to her chin, tells me she’s worked at Kink for about a year. Now the lead production assistant, in charge of scheduling and training all the other PAs for shoots and making sure everything runs smoothly, she started out as a model, performing in Kink’s Ultimate Surrender. The former Good Vibrations sales associate still models, because she really enjoys the wrestling. But she’s also working toward becoming a full-fledged producer.

Schaefer has a rep around Kink for being motivated, which is partly why she was able to move into a different role with greater responsibility. Since she didn’t have a background in production, being a model helped her get a foot in the door. For those interested, Schaefer says, "It’s a great company if you’re just getting started in BDSM." Kink follows the BDSM credo of safe, consensual, and respectful play and trains its PAs to make sure that all models are treated well, taking care to stop the shoot when limbs fall asleep during difficult poses involving mouth gags and rope.

Her coworker Guillermo Garcia, a videographer and PA, got his start by taking a number of production and editing classes in Final Cut Pro at City College. In addition to gaining more experience in lighting a soundstage on the job, the dreadlocked musician from Medellín, Colombia, says he enjoyed scoring the theme to Ultimate Surrender. He also has to make sure all the gadgets for the Fucking Machines series are in proper working order and, truth be told, clean the sex toys.

PERKS AND PACKAGES

Over at Colt Studios, which is in a converted warehouse near Potrero Hill that also houses an accounting firm, a team of 19 people works hard to produce slick and beautiful photos, calendars, and videos of handsome, masculine guys.

President John Rutherford, who got his degree in broadcasting at San Francisco State, realized that making internal videos at Hewlett-Packard with straight guys wasn’t in his future. He started working at San Francisco’s famed hardcore gay porn company Falcon Studios just as he was coming out. Rutherford said he aims to run a team of creative and self-directed people who are serious about attaining company goals. He likens working with porn to a nurse working with blood. "I can’t even watch Nip/Tuck, but here I think, ‘Hey, that’s a great picture; that’s a big dick.’ " It’s all in a day’s work.

His business partner, Tom Settle, says, "Our customer service agents get the question at least once a day: ‘Well, what’s it like to work there?’ People have a fantasy that models walk around servicing our customer service agents all day…. We’ve had people come to work here looking for the forbidden fruit. When they find out it’s not what they expect, they think, ‘Well, I could never tell anyone I work here.’ "

Not that it’s dull working at Colt, a company with a 40-year history of male erotica production, mind you. The elegant offices are filled with fine art. Georgia, Rutherford’s beagle, roams freely. The staff is urbane and witty.

Kim Ionesco, a Colt customer service rep who is starting to work more in marketing, jokes that she never thought her career would flourish in male porn. "I didn’t hit the glass ceiling," she exclaims, sipping a Red Bull. When she started working at Colt, all her lesbian friends began clamoring for DVDs starring Chris Wide, a hot property in Colt’s exclusive stable. She had no idea her girlfriends would know who he was. Then again, she quips, "I appreciate nice, polite, good-looking gay men." So why wouldn’t other dykes feel the same way?

Even straight IT professionals such as Aaron Golub find working in male, mostly gay porn surprisingly refreshing too. Previously, he worked as an IT director at a multinational company but quit because, as he explains, "I did not feel like what I was doing was noble. I feel more guilty about generating junk mail. I’ve never sat there and said, ‘Oh, I need some advertising,’ but I’ve definitely felt like I needed porn. I feel like what we’re doing is for people who really, truly want it. Where I worked before, I didn’t feel like that was truly the case."

Aside from working toward the common goal of providing customers with images of Colt’s much-admired, wood-chopping manly men, the twentysomething IT whiz gets to work with technology on the cutting edge. "We’re doing things you don’t do when you’re developing a site for IBM." He wouldn’t tip his hand, but basically he means that by making downloads and streams seamless and infallible, online porn is on the forefront of content delivery.

When I ask him if working in porn might cause some stigmatization with future employers, he says, "I’m in a different boat than actors or directors, because my skills are very transportable. I’m not in a situation where I’m going to have to present a reel." He also echoes what every other worker I interviewed told me.

"I wouldn’t want to work for someone who has a problem with what I do." *

www.kink.com

www.coltstudiogroup.com

Off the record

January 9, 2007

› gwschulz@sfbg.com

Among the mansions and box stores popuutf8g Silicon Valley are several major tech firms at the heart of a stock option backdating scandal that has metastasized through corporate America over the last two years.

The hall of shame includes Juniper Networks, McAfee, Nvidia, Brocade Communications Systems, and most notably for this story, a Mountain View–based firm called Mercury Interactive, which came under scrutiny in late 2004, making it one of the earliest companies identified for allegedly tampering with the lucrative stock options given to employees.

While some of the half-billion-dollar backdating mess at Mercury has appeared in the business press already, additional details contained in a civil lawsuit filed by investors are under seal in Santa Clara County Superior Court, and three news outlets want them opened up by a judge.

"These companies fleeced investors, and the public has a right to know," Karl Olson, an attorney for the outlets, told Judge James Kleinberg during a hearing Jan 5. Olson is representing the San Francisco Chronicle, Bloomberg News, and the Recorder legal newspaper. He added the defendants have "not shown an overriding interest that supports sealing any of these records."

Attorneys for the company and its fallen former executives have not cited trade secrets or proprietary information — commonly used excuses in corporate litigation — as reasons for keeping the filings sealed. Instead, they seem to be worried the documents will paint an even more sordid picture of executive misdeeds than what’s already come out, and they want to block the press from telling the full story.

But there is an interesting irony to the Chronicle insisting it is entitled to access this information. The newspaper’s parent company, the Hearst Corp., asked a federal judge to withhold from the public some of its own company records unearthed amid a federal civil suit leveled against it and other media giants over the summer.

San Francisco real estate mogul Clint Reilly filed an antitrust claim against Hearst and its rival–cum–business partner, Denver-based MediaNews Group, owner of several Bay Area newspapers, arguing that a bid between the companies to share business expenses was illegal. The Guardian has joined an effort with the nonprofit Media Alliance to unseal records related to Reilly’s suit.

But in the Mercury case, attorneys for the company and its former executives complain individuals not listed as defendants "would have their identities revealed and be implicated in alleged misconduct."

Mercury certainly would like to forget its troublesome past. Computer giant Hewlett-Packard is closing out its purchase of the company for $4.5 billion, taking on Mercury’s liabilities and obviously hoping to put the backdating matter to bed.

Nationwide, somewhere between 150 and 200 companies (reports vary) are internally investigating options problems or have received inquiries from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the federal agency charged with ensuring publicly traded firms reveal essentially every major move they make.

Mercury was founded in 1989 and produces business software for companies worldwide. In another bit of irony, Mercury specializes in making a group of applications designed to help corporate clients fully comply with the new federal financial disclosure rules passed by Congress as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act following Enron’s implosion.

Amnon Landan, the former Mercury CEO who resigned in November 2005 under pressure following an internal probe, is said to have exercised $5.5 million worth of options and sold 1.04 million company shares for a total of $73.6 million "during the period of wrongdoing," according to another suit filed by investors in federal court last spring.

Two additional executives resigned at the same time as Landan. The list of plaintiffs in the federal suit, which charges that Mercury’s backdating imbroglio greatly damaged the company’s market value, includes the retirement system for New Orleans municipal employees.

The value of a stock option is determined by its closing price per share on the day the option is granted. Instead of listing that particular date when the options are later exercised, backdating an option generally involves picking a spot earlier on the calendar. That way, employees of companies that make it big can reap huge windfall profits far bigger than they were entitled to receive. As Duke law professor James Cox somewhat famously described backdating, it’s like betting on a race and knowing who the winner will be.

Silicon Valley’s start-ups during the tech boom relied on hopes and dreams more than directly available cash assets to flashpoint their growth. To attract the best executive talent around, they offered stock options in exchange for hefty salaries. If the top suits performed well from the beginning, when the stock price was low, they could sell the shares much later when their value had climbed sky-high.

But some of the still relatively young companies that dot the fringes of Highway 101 where it weaves toward downtown San Jose are today being charged with failing to inform investors and government regulators just how many zeros were involved in those enriching IOUs.

Defense attorney James Kramer made an important point about backdating, however, to Judge Kleinberg during last week’s hearing. "There is nothing about backdating that is illegal," he said. "The issue is whether you properly account for it."

Yet Mercury didn’t properly account for more than $567 million in compensation expenses over a 12-year period in its SEC filings. And that’s what is illegal. The IRS heavily taxes earnings from backdated stock options, which are akin to tax-free bonuses that aren’t reported to the SEC. Investors say the failure to disclose the backdating exposed the company to heavy tax penalties, money that came from shareholders.

"Throughout the development of the options scandal, Mercury Interactive has been one of the most significant companies for the public to watch, due to both the primacy and seriousness of its options problems," Recorder reporter Justin Scheck wrote in a declaration to the judge last week. The Recorder, which serves about 20,000 readers in the state’s legal community, asked Jan. 5 for Kleinberg to open the records.

Recorder attorney Olson, who regularly represents the Chronicle in such open-records cases, argued in a memo to the court that the desire to shield top Mercury execs from "adverse publicity" and "potentially embarrassing corporate documents" doesn’t justify withholding up to 17 exhibits that Mercury wants to keep away from the press and the public. Petitions submitted to the court regarding the sealed portions of the case are public and were obtained by the Guardian last week.

The defendants’ attorneys said the investors signed a confidentiality agreement early in the suit so that evidence could be more freely exchanged with Mercury during discovery, and they want that promise kept.

"The plaintiffs in the [Santa Clara] suit are not roving attorneys general who are tasked with pursing every defendant who they believe has done something wrong or caused harm to someone else," Brandon Wisoff, a defense attorney in the case, said in a phone interview. "The purpose of a derivative suit is for a shareholder to recover on behalf of a corporation in which he or she owns stock, because he or she is indirectly impacted by any harm that allegedly occurred to the corporation."

The Santa Clara suit’s status as a derivative claim could lead Judge Kleinberg to toss it out, since HP has purchased Mercury. For that reason, Wisoff says, documents produced before the sale aren’t going to be used in court and so shouldn’t be accessible to the public.

"Non-defendant third parties also would have their identities revealed and be implicated in the alleged misconduct" if the records were opened, attorney Thomas Martin wrote in a declaration to the court. In other words, the documents could suggest how much was known about the problems with backdating at Mercury. And that might be of concern to more than just the company’s investors.

Martin, who declined to comment over the phone for us, is representing Kenneth Klein, a former Mercury chief operating officer who left the company in 2003 and has not officially been linked by Mercury to backdating problems but is nonetheless listed as a defendant in the Santa Clara suit.

Thomas and the other defense attorneys argue the investors’ court filings openly cite sealed discovery material, which presumably includes references to Klein’s alleged involvement in or knowledge of backdating, given his status as a defendant, as well as the names of others possibly listed in the documents. They’re arguing Mercury and its executive defendants could not publicly rebut suggestions made by the media about their involvement.

While Kleinberg seemed sympathetic to the notion that the press doesn’t always do the best job reporting on civil allegations, he said it’s a fact of life that most civil complaints — even ones that say "very outrageous things about people and institutions" — fall into the public domain.

But Amber Eck, an attorney for the investors who are now advocating for the filings to be opened, says the complaints made in the suit are far from frivolous and the company’s own board investigation identified who had participated in the misconduct and who knew about it. She said the whole story hasn’t been told.

"There’s a lot saying there was backdating and the amount of the [SEC financial] restatements," Eck said in a phone interview. "But what I was explaining to the judge was that as far as the details on the manner and the process in which it happened … that isn’t really out there yet, and that’s contained in our complaint and the exhibits."

Janet Guyon, an editor at Bloomberg News in New York who has watched the options backdating scandal unfold, told the judge in a declaration that the public deserves a "window into this litigation" to ensure fairness for investors who are expected to trust promises of transparency made by public companies.

"More than 80 companies have announced earnings restatements totaling over $8.8 billion, including $84 million most recently by Apple Computer, which admitted it forged documents recording a directors’ meeting to award its CEO backdated options," Guyon stated. "At least 65 executives or directors have resigned and 300 lawsuits have been filed against 100 companies. Yet little light has been shed on how this practice got started and why it continued." *

Declaration by Bloomberg News editor Janet Guyon to judge Kleinberg on why the Mercury records should be unsealed.

Declaration by local reporter Justin Scheck on why the Mercury records should be unsealed.

Application by attorney Jared Kopel for defendant Kenneth Klein on why the records should continue to be sealed.

Declaration by attorney Thomas Martin for defendant Kenneth Klein on why the records should continue to be sealed.

Mayor Chicken

January 9, 2007

› news@sfbg.com

The format is always the same: Mayor Gavin Newsom shows up at a carefully scouted location somewhere in the city with his perfect tie and perfect hair. He brings a cadre of department heads in tow, sending the clear message that he can deliver government services to the public. He takes a few questions from the audience, but the format allows him to deflect anything tough, to delegate any problems to department heads, and to offer a thoughtful “we’ll look into that” when the need arises.

There is no substantive discussion of anything controversial — and no chance for anyone to see the mayor debate contentious issues.

This, of course, is by design.

Newsom has made it very clear during his first term as mayor that he can’t take the heat. He is the imperious press release mayor, smiling for the cameras, quick with his sound bites, and utterly unwilling to engage in any public discussion whose outcome isn’t established in advance.

He has become Mayor Chicken.

So don’t expect any leadership from Newsom during an upcoming series of what the Mayor’s Office is calling “policy town hall meetings” that have been hastily scheduled this year, beginning Jan. 13 in the Richmond District with a discussion of homelessness. The town hall meeting is just politics as usual for Newsom. Since taking office in 2004, he’s held eight of these stage-managed events.

“He does a good Phil Donahue shtick,” says Sup. Chris Daly, recalling one such town hall meeting Newsom held in Daly’s District 6 after he was elected mayor. “Scripted town hall meetings are smart politics for Newsom.”

Scripted events weren’t what Daly had in mind when he wrote Proposition I, which calls on the mayor to appear before the supervisors once a month to answer questions. And these campaign-style events certainly weren’t what voters had in mind Nov. 7, 2006, when 56.42 percent of them approved the Daly legislation, which asks the mayor in no uncertain terms to appear “in person at regularly scheduled meetings of the Board of Supervisors to engage in formal policy discussions with members of the Board.”

Examiner columnist Ken Garcia — a conservative hack who regularly sucks up to Newsom — recently dismissed the voter-approved measure as “a silly, obvious stunt to play rhetorical games with the mayor,” which is how the Newsom camp would like to spin things. But Daly recalls how when he first mentioned the idea of a mayoral question time — back when Willie Brown was still in Room 200 — he was sitting next to then-supervisor Newsom, “who thought it was a great idea.”

It’s hardly an unprecedented concept. Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, meets with his city’s assembly 10 times a year and presents a detailed report on initiatives and progress. But now Newsom is mayor, suddenly Daly’s idea doesn’t strike him as all that great any more.

While it’s easy to accuse Daly of playing political games, it’s not so easy for Newsom — who loves to talk about the “will of the voters” — to dodge Prop. I. Newsom’s decision to snub voters and avoid real debate was so obvious that he got beat up on both the Chronicle and Examiner editorial pages, on several prominent local blogs, and in television broadcasts. Perhaps that’s why he decided this week to show up and give a speech at the Board of Supervisors inauguration Jan. 8, the first time in years he’s set foot in those chambers. He’s trying to look like he’s complying with voters’ wishes when he’s really doing nothing of the sort.

THE “KUMBAYA MOMENT”

It didn’t have to be this way. As board chair Aaron Peskin’s legislative aide David Noyola told the Guardian, immediately after Prop. I passed, Peskin tried to “depoliticize the issue” by becoming the sponsor of a motion to amend board rules.

Peskin’s motion aimed to make space on the board’s agenda for the mayor every third Tuesday so he could address the supervisors on policy matters — a matter he planned to discuss at the Dec. 7 meeting of the Rules Committee.

But two days earlier the mayor took his first jab at ducking the intent of Prop. I. He sent the supervisors a letter in which he claimed that to truly serve the public interest “we should hold these conversations in the community.”

Next, Newsom sent staffers to the Rules Committee hearing, where members discussed how not to force the implementation of Prop. I down the mayor’s throat — and the mayor’s staff claimed they’d be happy to work with the committee to that end.

As a result of this “kumbaya moment,” as Noyola calls it, the Rules Committee decided to continue the item to the following week to have more productive conversation. Meanwhile and unbeknownst to them, 19 minutes into the hearing, the Mayor’s Office of Communications issued a press release outlining Newsom’s intent to hold a town hall meeting in the Richmond District on Jan. 13 — which the mayor said would substitute for complying with Prop. I.

“The Rules Committee was blindsided by the mayor’s press release,” Noyola says.

The mayor, of course, said that all the supervisors were welcome to attend his town hall event and participate in the discussion, giving the appearance he was happy to debate but wanted to do so out in the neighborhoods. But that was a lie: Newsom and his staff knew very well that under state law, the supervisors were barred from participating in any such event.

According to the Brown Act, if a quorum of supervisors wants to be somewhere to discuss business that may be before the board in the future — such as homelessness — and if it wants policy interactions, the clerk must give notice that the supervisors intend to hold a special meeting.

The board actually discussed Newsom’s invitation, and board clerk Gloria Young estimated it would cost $10,000 to $15,000 to staff. It also raised serious procedural and legal questions for the board.

In other words, Newsom knew the supes couldn’t just show up and ask questions.

“But if the mayor wants people to just sit and attend a presentation in the background, like at a speech or a Christmas event, then special meeting notice isn’t needed,” notes Noyola, explaining why Peskin ultimately dismissed the mayor’s invite as “childish” — and why Peskin now says he’d support making question time a charter amendment, thereby forcing the mayor to comply with the will of the voters.

WHO’S PLAYING GAMES?

While the Newsom camp continues to dismiss the Daly-authored Prop. I as “political theater,” the supervisor is quick to counter it’s the Mayor’s Office that’s playing games.

“They claim political theater, but if that’s what it takes to get serious policy discussions going, then so be it,” says Daly, noting he has had one private discussion with the mayor in two years, while Sup. Geraldo Sandoval has not talked to him at all. “Newsom claims he has an open door to his office, but so do I — and he’s never been to mine. For the mayor to refuse to discuss important policy items and hide behind ‘I’m afraid of Chris Daly’ is pathetic. Willie Brown probably would have come.”

Daly also observes that San Francisco’s government is structurally unique within California because it represents a city and a county.

“It’s an awkward setup in which there is little formal communication between the board and the mayor,” Daly says, “other than when the board forwards legislation to the mayor for him to approve or veto.”

It’s a structural weakness that hasn’t been helped by the fact that in the three years since he was elected, Newsom only appeared before the board twice — this week and for the board inauguration two years ago — both times giving a brief speech but not engaging in dialogue. It’s an anomaly without precedent in the history of San Francisco. (It’s customary for mayors to deliver their State of the City speeches in the board chambers, but Newsom has done all his at venues outside City Hall.) Most mayors also make a point of occasionally appearing at board meetings (Willie Brown would sometimes even take questions from the supervisors).

On Jan. 8, Newsom slipped in at the last minute and sat next to Peskin until it was his turn to make some brief remarks, an opportunity that immediately followed public comment, during which a baseball-capped woman pleaded with the supervisors to “please kiss and make up with mayor.”

After Peskin welcomed “the 42nd mayor, Gavin Christopher Newsom, to these chambers where you are always welcome,” Newsom rose — and was hissed by a few members of the audience.

“This is a city that’s highly critical of its leadership and that expects greatness from its leaders,” the mayor said. “I have great expectations of 2007…. The key is to work together on the things that unite us…. I look forward to engaging with each and every one of you.”

WORKING TOGETHER

This isn’t just politics — there are serious issues involved. Without the monthly question time the Board of Supervisors requested and the voters approved, it’s hard for the city’s elected district representatives to figure out if this mayor actually supports or even understands the issues he claims to champion.

Last year, for example, Newsom was happy to take credit in the national press for the universal health care package that actually came from Sup. Tom Ammiano. But when Ammiano got blasted by business leaders, Newsom didn’t rush to defend the plan; it was hard to tell if he even still supported it.

Business leaders didn’t like that the proposal required employers to provide health care insurance. But Newsom’s own staff recognized that without that mandate, the plan would never work. Did the mayor support it or not?

The situation prompted Sup. Ross Mirkarimi to characterize the mayor’s proposal as “a one-winged aircraft that doesn’t fly,” and it was left to Newsom’s public health director, Dr. Mitch Katz, to confirm that both the voluntary and mandatory pieces of the legislation are joined at the hip. “One can’t successfully move forward without the other,” Katz said at a July 11 board meeting, which Newsom, of course, did not attend.

Since then, the mayor’s commitment to the amalgamated health care package has been thrown into question once again, this time thanks to a lawsuit the Golden Gate Restaurant Association filed only against the employer mandate aspect of the legislation.

The GGRA, which filed its suit the day after the election, is a Newsom ally that funneled more than a half million dollars in soft money into Rob Black’s unsuccessful campaign against District 6’s Daly and into Doug Chan’s coffers for his disastrous fourth-place showing in District 4.

Asked if he knows where the mayor stands on the city’s universal health care plan, Ammiano told the Guardian, “We’ll be meeting with Newsom in the new year and asking for a press conference in which we both pledge to give our continued support for all aspects of plan, but that’s not yet been nailed down.”

Ammiano’s experience is one example of repeated communication breakdowns between Newsom and the board, which have severely hindered policy discussions and the cause of “good government” to which Newsom so frequently pledges his fealty. As a result, Newsom has often ended up vetoing legislation only to reveal in his veto letter that all the legislation needed was a few minor tweaks — changes he might have just asked for had he been more engaged.

Consider how a year ago, Newsom vetoed legislation designed to limit how much parking could be included along with the 10,000 units of housing that were to be built in downtown San Francisco. The legislation was proposed by Newsom’s planning director, Dean Macris, and supported by every member of the Planning Commission but one.

When Newsom caught heat from downtown developers over the measure (see “Joining the Battle,” 2/8/06), he sent surrogates to muddy the waters and make his position unclear until after it was approved by the board. Newsom vetoed the measure, then proposed a couple prodeveloper amendments that hadn’t been brought to the board discussions.

“I’m trying to get the political leaders to come to an agreement because the city needs this,” a frustrated Macris told the Guardian at the time.

A few months later the board was similarly blindsided when it tried to approve legislation that would have created a six-month trial closure on Saturdays of some roads in Golden Gate Park. Newsom’s board liaison, Wade Crowfoot, worked closely with bicycle advocates and sponsor Sup. Jake McGoldrick to modify the legislation into something the mayor might be able to support.

Everyone involved thought they had a deal. Then, for reasons that still aren’t entirely clear, Newsom vetoed the measure. One of the reasons he cited was the fact that voters had rejected Saturday closure back in the 1990s, before the construction of an underground parking garage that still never fills up.

“For what it’s worth, what really sells it for me on this issue of the will of the voters was the shit I went through after Care Not Cash, when the voters supported it and [my critics] did everything to put up roadblocks. And I was making a lot of these same arguments, you know, so this hits close to home,” Newsom told the Guardian a few days after he vetoed Healthy Saturdays.

His words seem ironic: he loves the will of the voters when it suits his interest but not when it requires him to act like a real mayor.

This isn’t the first time Newsom’s been selective in honoring what the voters want: he also refused to hold up the Candlestick Park naming deal with Monster Cable, even though voters rejected it through Proposition H in 2004.

Last October, Newsom’s veto of Mirkarimi’s wildly popular foot patrol legislation led to a humiliating 9–2 override in November, but not before he’d dragged San Francisco Police Department chief Heather Fong with him through the political mud and created an unpleasant rift between himself and his formerly loyal ally Sup. Bevan Dufty.

Newsom has tried to spin his refusal to engage in question time as something other than defiance of voters by proposing the upcoming series of town hall meetings.

“Bringing these conversations to the neighborhoods — during nonwork hours — will allow residents to participate and will ensure transparent dialogue, while avoiding the politicized, counterproductive arguing that too often takes place in the confines of City Hall,” Newsom wrote in his Dec. 5 letter.

But even the Chronicle and the Examiner — neither of which have been supportive of progressives in City Hall — have condemned Newsom for ducking this fight. On Dec. 18, Chronicle editorial writer Marshall Kirduff opined, “There is no end of topics to discuss — a Muni overhaul, a new neighborhood coming to Treasure Island, police policies, the ever-with-us homeless. The city could do with more debate even at considerable risk of dopey rhetoric. That means the mayor should step out of his office, walk across City Hall and face the supervisors. It’s time to bring on the questions.”

Meanwhile, Daly notes the mayor has been spending excessive time out of state, not to mention making frequent trips to Southern California. “I think we should subpoena the guy; he doesn’t know what’s going on,” Daly quips.

A classic example of Newsom’s cluelessness about the local political scene occurred live on TV shortly after 59 percent of San Francisco voted to impeach President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Asked during a Nov. 16 City Desk News Hour interview with Barbara Taylor about Proposition J’s passage, Newsom said, “I am told Congress is going to come to a halt next week, and they’re going to reflect on this new San Francisco value. Before you impeach the president, you should consider the guy who would become president. Why don’t you start with the top two?”

Yup, it’s definitely time to bring on those questions. *

Newsom’s first town hall meeting takes place Jan. 13 at 10 a.m. in District 1, Richmond Recreation Center, at 251 18th Ave., SF.

Tantalizing question: How can the Chronicle/Hearst say one thing in superior court in Santa Clara County and the opposite in federal court in San Francisco?

January 5, 2007

By Bruce B. Brugmann

In Friday’s San Francisco Chronicle, below the fold in the business section, there was a tantalizing head with a tantalizing lead that raised a tantalizing question: how can Hearst say one thing in Santa Clara Superior Court and another in federal court in San Francisco in a similar public records case?

The head: “Media seeking backdating info, Mercury Interactive documents provide details on practice.” The lead:
“A Santa Clara County Court judge will hear arguments today from media companies, including the Chronicle, seeking to unseal documents related to stock options backdating at Mercury Interactive Corp.”

The story: Chronicle reporter Carolyn Said wrote that the Chronicle and the Recorder and Bloomberg News went into court “requesting access to court filings related to widespread manipulation of stock options at Mountain View’s Mercury, which makes business software.” At the end of the story, Said reported that “the three media outlets are seeking to unseal documents Mercury provided in the shareholder lawsuit under a confidentiality order. They say the documents might reveal the inside story on how backdating occurred.”

Good for Hearst, the Recorder, and Bloomberg News and Karl Olson, the Hearst media attorney who made a strong case to open the records. He even told the judge that as he was driving from San Francisco to Santa Clara for the hearing he realized what a beautiful sunny day it was. “Sunshine is the best bet,” he said. We hope they win. The judge said he would consider arguments in hte case.

Meanwhile, in federal court in San Francisco, Hearst is taking the opposite side of the issue in a similar records sealing case. Significantly, this case involves Hearst itself and Singleton (and their chain newspaper allies McClatchy, Gannett, Stephens) in the Reilly vs. Hearst antitrust case. The chain gang is stonewalling so hard and so high that the Guardian and the Media Alliance were forced to go into federal court to try to unseal the records and shed sunlight on this major national story: the deal that would destroy newspaper competition in the Bay Area and impose regional monopoly. The First Amendment Project in Oakland is handling the suit.

Ironically, Reilly and the Guardian are using the same argument Hearst used in Santa Clara to unseal the Hearst records in San Francisco: that they will “reveal the inside story” of how Hearst and Singleton secretly cooked up the monopolizing deal. As our Dec. 27 editorial put it, “The way the big chains have set things up, there’s no way for the public to find out much of anything–except what Hearst and MediaNews want us to know. Under the terms of a court order the chains wrote and got approved anything–evidence, briefs, depositions, even legal motions–the newspaper barons want to mark secret is automatically sealed…In other words, the newspapers–which, after all, are accused of trying to violate antitrust laws and create a media monopoly in the region–have complete control of what information does and doesn’t come out of the trial. That’s exactly how they want it–and that’s exactly how things will go if they get their way.”

And so the questions still tantalize: how can Hearst be for sunshine in Santa Clara Superior Court and for darkness in San Francisco federal court? How can Hearst report these stories with obvious contradictory positions without comment and without blushing? Don’t the contradictory positions hurt not just the Hearst case in Santa Clara but the journalistic and public interest arguments in all open records court cases? I am posing these questions by email to Hearst corporate in New York via Chronicle Publisher Frank Vega and Editor Phil Bronstein.” Check our Wednesday Guardian paper and website for a bigger story on the backdating scandal and Hearst ironies by reporter G.W. Schutz. He covered the hearing for the Guardian. B3

SF Chronicle: Media seeking backdating info – Mercury Interactive documents could provide details on practice

Rutting madly

January 2, 2007

› superego@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO Oh! Yes! It hurts! Oh yes! It hurts!

My virtual buttocks are on fire.

After my last little column about stuff I’d enjoyed in Clubland over the past year, I got spanked online for downplaying some of the Bay’s ongoing nightlife trends. Namely: breakbeats and house revivals, dubstep and kiddie rave, Burning Man, Burning Man, Burning Man. (Isn’t he burnt yet? Sheesh. It’s like a spiritual tire fire already.) That’s fine, baby: hit me one more time. Getting spanked online was my former profession. If my drag name weren’t already Pantaysia, I’d be known as Rudolpha the Red-Assed Tranny for sure. And luckily, it’s the new year — I can simply wad up my 2006 wall calendar and stuff it down my cut-off liquor store panty hose for some rough-year-behind-me relief. I’m just. That. Crafty. See?

My, but how the sting lingers, the echoing smack of keen reprimands. Whether or not the genres of clubalalia mentioned above — and I’m pretty sure one or more of my personalities has dished them all here in the past — are curvaceous and bearded enough to attract my one good eye is one thing. Whether or not my mouth is so big it can swallow all the wonders of what happens after dark and spit them whole back in your face is another. I’m just one slightly skinny leather hip-hop disco Muppet queer after all. My day job’s at a Wendy’s! I leave being everywhere to other gay peeps.

Yet the familiar finds its way into one’s regular carousing, no? What if I’m in a hot, wet rut? All those back room encounters, bathhouse sounds, bhangra parties, electro flashes, wet jockstraps, mad drag queens, hip-hop karaoke nights, bedroom DJs, shots of Cuervo … could they be of a party piece? Didn’t I once declare krumping the future? Where’s the damn risk?

Yes, I have my broad themes: 2005 was all about the democratization of Clubland via technology — and trying to get laid by a woman for the first time; 2006 was about how clubs reflected our culture’s apocalyptic visions and the return of the outlaw gay underground. Lord knows what the predawn rubble of 2007 will shape itself into. But here are some nifty things I’d like to stick my nosy pumps in.

NEOMINIMAL TECHNO

DJ Jason Kendig, Claude VonStroke, and a giant swath of relocated Detroiters are injecting tiny bleeps and beats in the strangest of places: dive bars and back rooms. What’s the deal?

GEAR CULTURE

Bars like Gestalt in the Mission District are serving brewskis to Critical Massers. Clubs like LoGear at the Transfer are making frantic pedalers dance. Will the fixed-gear explosion spawn a raucous rocker renaissance?

TABLE GODDESSES

Where are the ladies? The fierce rulers of the US club scene at the moment are women from New York City and Los Angeles. For years my money’s been on SF femmes like Jenny Fake, Forest Green, and Claire-Ahl to join them. Why are we still ruled by men?

BEAT FREAKS

Fine. For the 13th time I’m calling a house revival. House club mainstays like Fag and Taboo are still going strong. Legendary DJ Ruben Mancias is coming back from New York City for a while to restart his influential club Devotion, and DJ TeeJay Walton is launching a new club called Freak the Beat (www.freakthebeat.com), specifically aimed at attracting younger househeds. Fingers crossed.

POST-POST-IRONY

Last year all the quotes were dropped from retro. People took the sounds and styles of the past seriously, no joke. It paid off in a lot of ways (notably, people stopped laughing and erroneously screaming, "Oh my god, I used to love this song!" when a record had claps or a guitar solo in it). But post-irony was, well, not much fun. Are people on the dance floor smiling yet? That’s better. *

It’s happening, and it’s happening now. Sign up at www.sfbg.com and you can flame my frickin’ column at will (I know you’ve got scandalous New Year’s Eve tales … better share ’em it before I do). Also: hit up the Pixel Vision blog (www.sfbg.com/blogs/pixel_vision) for more club news, reviews, and how-do-you-dos. It’s all about raving in the cubicles, baby.

Localize it

January 2, 2007

› news@sfbg.com

In what some experts are hailing as a first for sustainability movements in the United States, a coalition of policy organizations has unveiled a comprehensive campaign to reduce the Bay Area’s reliance on global markets in favor of a more locally based economy.

If the plan is embraced by local government agencies and brought to fruition, it could be the first significant reversal of the decades-long march toward globalization, which encourages powerful multinational corporations to exploit cheap labor and transport goods long distances.

The Bay Area is rife with testaments to globalization, from the rusty shells of once prosperous manufacturing plants to the gleaming big-box chain stores filled with cheap Chinese-made clothing and gadgets, from the customer service call answered in India to the foreign parts in our "American made" cars and computers.

Yet at the same time, there are the countervailing forces of localism. For every grocery store stocked with out-of-season produce grown across the world with petrochemicals by big agricultural corporations, there is a community farmers market selling locally grown organic fruit.

Most of globalism’s many faces have a local equivalent. Consumers can buy a burrito at Taco Bell or El Toro, a hammer at Home Depot or Cole Hardware, a new shirt from the Gap or a recycled garment from Held Over, and a bicycle assembled at a factory in China or Freewheel Cyclery.

Or on a grander scale, utilities can import kilowatts of energy from a coal-fired plant in Utah or buy wind and solar power generated in the Bay Area, city governments can contract with out-of-state corporations or locals, and financial institutions can push the status quo or value a more diversified (if less profitable) economic system.

The idea of the localization movement is to analyze the impacts of those choices and start a discussion of how local governments can facilitate the creation of an economy that is more sustainable and less exploitive, one that is unique to the Bay Area.

BEGINNING THE PROCESS

The coalition, which formed in spring 2006, recently released a 30-page report that details the purpose of its campaign and the group’s initial strategy for achieving its goals. The report, titled "Building a Resilient and Equitable Bay Area," and a two-page summary are available online at www.regionalprogress.org. More than two dozen organizations have already endorsed the report, including Oakland’s and Berkeley’s respective sustainability offices.

The coalition’s members include Redefining Progress, Bay Localize, the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE), the International Forum on Globalization, and the Center for Sustainable Economy. With the exception of the last, which is in Santa Fe, NM, all of the groups are located in either San Francisco or Oakland.

A key feature of the campaign — and the reason some experts describe the initiative as unique in the United States — is its scope. Efforts to localize individual sectors of regional economies have been under way for years. Berkeley, for instance, is considered a leader in the growing movement to shift from a food system dominated by a handful of giant agribusinesses propped up by federal crop subsidies to a system that relies more on local production and procurement of food. Similarly, many areas are considering ways of creating and encouraging the use of alternative — and local — energy sources to limit dependence on imported oil.

What sets the new Bay Area campaign apart from other localization initiatives is that it seeks to effect change across several sectors of the region’s economy simultaneously. It hopes to do so, in part, by achieving the cooperation and coordination of businesses, government officials, and community leaders at the federal, state, and local levels.

The report defines economic localization as "the process by which a region … frees itself from an overdependence on the global economy and invests in its own resources to produce a significant portion of the goods, services, food, and energy it consumes."

In an interview with the Guardian, John Talberth, one of the report’s primary authors and a PhD economist at Redefining Progress, stressed that economic "isolationism is not the goal of the campaign."

Instead, he said the goal is "reestablishing an efficient balance between imports and products made locally for local consumption." In other words, even if the Bay Area localizes its economy according to the strategy proposed by the coalition, many products would still be imported. The economy would, therefore, remain dependent on global markets — but much less so than it is now.

And that could have significant ramifications for the region, humans, and the planet.

THE PRICE OF PROGRESS

The report acknowledges the benefits of globalization, which has kept consumer prices low and forced corporations to become more efficient. But, the authors note, "it has come at a steep price."

That price includes "a loss of economic diversity, declining real wages and working conditions, increasing inequality, offshoring of environmental degradation, and a concentration of financial capital and economic decision-making in global corporations." The changes have left people "vulnerable to inevitable supply and price shocks in the post peak oil era."

In other words, perhaps global capitalism is reaching the point of diminishing returns. The coalition posits that the antidote is localization, which has great potential "for creating a wider range of local jobs and institutions, shielding our economy from global shifts, increasing the diversity and quality of goods and services we consume, distributing economic benefits in a more equitable manner, and protecting our environment."

The Bay Area is the focus of the coalition’s campaign because its member organizations are located here and because those members believe there is already a great deal of public support in the region for such a project.

Kirsten Schwind, programs coordinator at Bay Localize, told the Guardian there was an "overwhelmingly positive response" to a recent project targeted at supporting local food producers. Both Schwind and Don Shaffer, executive director of BALLE, cited Oakland’s Kaiser Permanente as an example of the increasing number of businesses that are altering their buying habits to favor local sellers. Shaffer also said the Oakland and San Francisco school boards are buying locally produced food and the Oakland City Council is setting targets for local energy production.

But even if much of the Bay Area is receptive to the idea of economic localization, other groups are not. There remains a powerful current of support in government, business, and academia for a predominantly global economy.

Traditional economists, for instance, are reflexively hostile to localization initiatives because such projects do not conform to the concepts embodied in so-called free-trade and free-market theories.

NAYSAYERS

The Guardian interviewed three UC Berkeley professors who do not agree with the report’s view of globalism. None of the professors had read the report — despite the fact that the Guardian forwarded it to them before the interviews — but all said they were familiar with the basic ideas behind localization.

Each expressed a knee-jerk hostility to the concept, but once they began discussing the details of localization, they agreed with the coalition on many points. And the professors’ initial objections to localization — including the notion that it would return economies to a more primitive state and that it is isolationist in principle — were mostly rhetorical and unrelated to the coalition’s specific recommendations.

Two of the professors — Daniel M. Kammen, who teaches in the Energy Resources Group as well as the Goldman School of Public Policy and the Department of Nuclear Engineering, and David Vogel, who teaches in the Haas School of Business, the Political Science Department, and the Goldman School — were immediately opposed to the idea of a comprehensive localization strategy.

Vogel, in particular, seemed at first to make light of economic localization, calling it a "romantic notion that periodically resurfaces," and more than once asked laughingly whether the coalition "expects Bay Area residents to watch only movies made in the Bay Area."

Another professor, Lee Friedman, a PhD economist who teaches at the Goldman School, said, "Globalization is a lot like the problem of gays in the military: mend it, don’t end it."

But Friedman likes the idea — a central one in the report — of including all costs in the price of goods. That’s particularly true of environmental costs. This might raise the price of electronics to pay for their disposal or of gas-guzzling vehicles to pay for their global-warming impacts — both ideas being explored by the European Union.

All three professors also had some very positive things to say about economic localization. Kammen, like Friedman, strongly believes that communities should pursue local — and low-carbon — energy production because the environmental impact associated with producing in a foreign country and shipping to the United States is far greater than that of local production.

"Localization advocates are making some excellent points that people ought to pay attention to," Friedman said. He agreed the Bay Area imports too much of its food. Vogel expressed a similar sentiment, saying that buying locally is a "great idea." He also said localization could help to address urban sprawl. By the end of the interview, Vogel softened his initially dismissive attitude toward localization, deeming "aspects of it interesting and attractive."

Talberth and other coalition members say challenging the economic concepts supporting globalization — like those taught by Friedman and most other economics scholars — is a central task of their campaign.

Critics of traditional economic theory have for a long time been saying that too many economists base their research and resulting recommendations on economic models that bear little resemblance to the way the real world operates.

Although economists often bristle at that criticism, Friedman has acknowledged to his students the flaws in prevailing economic models but said, "Until someone comes up with better models, people shouldn’t complain about the existing ones."

Yet Hazel Henderson, a coalition member and the author of Beyond Globalization, and Talberth say alternatives to the current models are well established and have been around for years. They criticize the fact that economic growth is measured by the gross domestic product (GDP), a simplistic calculus that doesn’t take into account economic activity that is harmful to people or the planet.

They prefer new indicators, like the genuine progress indicator (GPI), that account for costs and benefits the traditional indicators do not factor in. The report calculates the GPI for each of the Bay Area’s nine counties. The European Union has already adopted this kind of alternative measure of an economy’s well-being.

WHAT’S NEXT?

Engaging the public is the coalition’s next big goal. Despite the overall support that Schwind and others say already exists in the Bay Area for localization, they admit there are challenges to mobilizing citizens.

"It’s well documented that people tend not to act unless there is a crisis," Shaffer said. But he also said that "giving people Armageddon scenarios" will not work because such stories are depressing and, more importantly, "people are too busy to think comprehensively about that sort of thing."

Instead, Shaffer and Schwind said the coalition plans on putting out a "positive, hopeful" message focusing on the benefits that will accrue to individuals and communities if they adopt localization.

Beyond getting the public involved, the coalition is encouraging local, state, and federal government organizations to conduct studies assessing the challenges and true costs of relying so heavily on global markets. Talberth acknowledged that:

"Getting [those] assessments done is a big challenge."

Ultimately, the coalition would like the Bay Area to serve as a model of localization for other areas in the United States. Shaffer said the group is "not looking to put a formulaic stamp on other regions" but hopes instead that such places will be influenced to adopt localization measures in light of the Bay Area’s success.

Shaffer said the food and energy sectors, along with retail, are already understood well by consumers, at least intuitively. So he predicts the coalition could achieve significant results in those sectors within five years. Spreading those advances to other parts of the economy could take another 10 years after that.

Shaffer, Talberth, and Schwind all said that change is coming whether people want it or not, mostly due to global warming. So they argue for the Bay Area to embrace change now and begin to make the needed changes gradually, before they are painfully thrust upon us. We can localize our world or simply accept whatever the global economy dishes out. *

Nick Coleman of the Minneapolis Star Tribune is mad as hell and won’t take it any more. He writes, McClatchy’s profit-and-loss statement: They profit, we lose

December 29, 2006

By Bruce B. Brugmann

For months now, as the Knight-Ridder/McClatchy/Hearst/Singleton/Gannett/Stephens debacle has unfolded, I have been looking in vain to see if a staff member on any of the papers of the nation’s biggest chains (reporter, columnist, editorial writer, editor, union spokesperson, ad salesman, letter writer, blogger, anybody) would beallowed to blast away at this deal of ultimate toxicity in their papers, on their websites, or in their blogs. (Note my postscript to the newspaper unions to this effect in my previous blog.)

The closest I have seen is an excellent First Amendment column by Thomas Peele in the Contra Costa Times/Singleton, raising the right issues about why his owner/publisher had moved to seal the court records in the Reilly vs. Hearst antitrust case in federal court. (See my earlier blog.) James Naughton, former editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer and a K-R stockholder, and a gang of former Knight-Ridder staffers, mostly retired or off staff, also published online a sharp letter rebuke to K-R Chairman Tony Ridder and the K-R board for rolling over and refusing to fight it out with the dissident private equity stockholders.

Now, two days after McClatchy tossed the Star Tribune into the snow banks of Northern Minnesota, columnist Nick Coleman on Thursday wrote a classic column that ought to go into the journalist textbooks at the University of Minnesota and everywhere else. He lays out in a snapshot of what happens to the Twin Cities when McClatchy and Knight-Ridder conspire in a misbegotten deal that leaves St. Paul with Singleton and Minneapolis with, gulp, a one-year-old New York private equity group firm with no newspaper holdings nor experience. Ironically, perhaps the reason the Star Tribune ran his column was because McClatchy was beating it out of town, fast, at full gallop, and the paper was suddenly thrust under the new ownership of Avista Capital Partners, which hadn’t gotten the knack of monopoly press control and censorship. Chalk up one good mark for the new owner.

Coleman flashed his sword in his lead paragraphs: “When the McClatchy Co. got the keys to the Star Tribune in l998, McClatchy’s patriarch hailed the merger. James McClatchy called it a wedding of two newspaper traditions that shared “‘a deep-rooted commitment to building a just society.’

“You are now permitted to laugh derisively.

“Eight years later, hardly anyone in the newspaper business talks about anything other than building profit margins that would choke a robber baron.

“Mercifully, McClatchy passed away in May and did not live to see the Sacrmento-based company that bore his name disgrace his legacy by dumping its largest newspaper–the most important one between Chicago and the West Coast, the one that serves 5 million Minnesotans and that can be a conscience, a scold, a cheerleader and an interpreter of life on the tundra.”

Coleman ended with a scathing flourish: “McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt did not bother to come to Minnesota on Tuesday to say he surreptitously had sold the paper and to kiss us goodbye.

“But McClatchy brass gave us some nice parting shots from afar, complaining that the Star Tribune had lost value (and proving it in a secret auction at fire-sale prices), calling the flagship a drag on profits and sayiong McClatchy would have shown a one-percent increase in ad sales if the Star Tribune weren’t included. One per cent Huzzah!
Sound the trumpets!

“There’s the market for you: the Star Tribune held down ad sales one percent. So One-Percent Pruitt axed his best newspaper. Brilliant.

“‘The Star Tribune is one fo the best newspapers in this country,'” Pruitt said in l998. “‘The Twin Cities is one of the most attractive newspaper markets in the country. And it was a near perfect fit in terms of values and traditions.’

“We didn’t change. But you, Mr. Pruitt? We don’t recognize you anymore. So long.

“Don’t bother to write.”

I like that, and I’ll bet a lot of Minnesotans will like that. I can speak with authority because, as a native of Rock Rapids, Iowa, situated five miles from the Minnesota state line just south of Luverne, Minnesota, I grew up with the Star Tribune and its sister paper, the Des Moines Register, both highly respected papers who looked upon the entire states of Minnesota and Iowa as their beats. They were owned at that time by the Cowles family, who lived in Minneapolis and Des Moines, and cared deeply about journalism and Minnesota and Iowa. I spent many a Sunday morning back in the late l940s riding about town proudly delivering the Sunday Register. Everybody, it seemed, in Minnesota and Iowa, read and lived by the Star Tribune and Register. They were our friendly hometown papers.

Coleman has set the standard: The least newspaper owners can do these days of monopoly mayhem is to allow their staff members and readers to write openly and honestly as appropriate in their papers and websites about the way they and their communities are being treated by their owners and publishers. In the meantime, I toast with a Potrero Hill martini Nick Coleman and his editors who passed his story into print. Bravo! keep it up!

Lingering question: Why didn’t Tony Ridder fight like hell to keep his family heritage chain of papers? And why didn’t the Knight-Ridder board, or his key executives, push him privately or publicly to put up a fight. Every Knight-Ridder executive I run into, I ask the question: how in the world did this happen and why didn’t Tony and Knight-Riddger put up a fight? I have yet to get a satisfactory answer. I kept reading Tony’s comments at the time to the effect that he had no choice and that a sale would keep the peace and minimize the tumult in his chain papers.

How could there be more tumult and more damage than there is now? Did Tony and his board really think that McClatchy could swallow their entire chain of papers and not peddle any of them off in fire sales? Why didn’t they get solid pledges from McClatchy that would at minimum save their best papers (Philadelphia Inquirer, San Jose Mercury-News, Contra Costa Times, St. Paul Pioneer Press, the Minneapolis Star Tribune et al)? I believed then, and i believe now, that Tony and the Knight-Ridder people made a bad mistake by not putting up a big public fight and talking publicly, not just about its respectable 20 per cent profit margins, but also about its reputation for quality journalism, community involvement, the prestigious Knight Foundation, and major First Amendment and public access advocacy.

Moreover, while much of the mainstream press was marching us into Iraq and practicing stenographic reporting of the Bush administration, Knight-Ridder and its Washington bureau regularly did some of the most critical news reporting and editorial writing on Bush and the war of any of the major media. I assure you, Dean Singleton and Avista Capital partners aren’t about to pick up the slack, hit hard on Bush and the war, or even try to develop much original Washington and foreign news coverage. Alas. I hope I’m wrong. I refer you to Brugmann’s Law: once you damage quality papers like these, it’s tough as hell to bring them back. Alas. I hope I’m wrong.

Stay alert–we will keep running the major stories that the Hearst/Singleton monopoly papers refuse to print. B3

Nick Coleman: McClatchy’s profit-and-loss statement: They profit, we lose

McClatchy sells the Minneapolis Star-Tribune to a New York venture capital firm with no newspaper experience. It’s sad for the staff, for the state of Minnesota, and for the newspaper business

December 28, 2006

Bu Bruce B. Brugmann

It’s yet another WLSB, another wimpy little story in the business section of the Hearst/Singleton papers, except this time it was not even in the business section of the San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst.
And it was just a couple of paragraphs boiled out of an Associated Press story in the business digest of the Oakland Tribune, Contra Costa Times, and the San Jose Mercury News (all Singleton papers).

Why? This was probably because the latest McClatchy sale was the most embarrassing media monopoly story of them all: it showed yet again how the nation’s big chains were tossing newspapers around like drunks toss cards in a monopoly game in a waterfront saloon. This time, in a most unexpected development, McClatchy announced that it was selling the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, one of the great newspapers of the country, for less than half of the original purchase price of $l.2 billion that McClatchy paid in l998 to buy the Star-Tribune and its local Cowles Media parent company.

And it sold its largest paper to a one year old NewYork venture capital firm named Avista Capital Partners with no newspaper holdings and no newspaper experience.

Word came as a shock to the newsroom in Minneapolis, reported the New York Times Thursday. Employees received an e-mail message aet 3:5l p.m. saying that there would be an important announcement at 4:00.

“You should have seen the look on our faces,” said Nick Coleman, a metropolitan editor for the paper. “It was like, who? Everyone knows the whole industry is in play and that just about anything could happen, but nobody thought we could get sold. There’s a real sense of betrayal.”

Coleman said the paper was sold in a “fire sale.” He continued, “At a fire sale, people get discounted so we’re very concerned, worried and anxious.” On the other hand, he said, “maybe it takes someone from outside the newspaper business to see the way forward.”

Dean Singleton, the new owner of the competing St. Paul Pioneer Press, was astounded and was quoted in his own paper as saying he would never have expected McClatchy to sell the paper at such a large loss. “How often does a newspaper company sell its largest paper,” he said. “It doesn’t happen.”

For those of us who grew up with the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and the Des Moines Register (both owned by the Cowles family), this is a terrible shock. It was bad enough when the Gannett Company took over the Register and turned a splendid statewide paper into a mediocre Des Moines metropolitan paper. I remember the precise moment when I knew that Gannett was ruining the Register. I was back visiting my parents in Rock Rapids, Iowa, and I stopped in to the Rexall store, as I always did when I was in town, to buy the Register from Jim Roeman, a high school classmate who ran the store. He didn’t have any and explained why: the Register had hiked the price so that the more papers he sold, the more money he lost and so he (and many other outlets outstate) stopped carrying the Register. And that was the Gannett strategy, to gradually cut back circulation and coverage to outer Des Moines and ruin a proud state paper.

It was worrying when McClatchy, a California paper, bought the Minneapolis Star but at least it was strong editorially and had solid management. But now, McClatchy sold to an unknown venture capital firm with no credentials and no track record and it did so even though McClatchy’s chainwide profit margin through September of this year was 25.2 per cent, according to Gary Pruitt, McClatchy CEO. Then Pruit coyly added without giving specifics, “Without Minneapolis, the profit margin would be higher.” Higher? That’s higher than most U.S. corporations are doing.

Even newspaper analyst John Morton, who rarely sees a newspaper sale or a merger he doesn’t like, told the Sacramento Bee that the sale was “a disappointment.” He said McClatchy is known as an operator of high quality newspapers and is giving up on a paper with a good reputation. “This is a shock,” he said.

Colby Atwood, an analyst at Borrell Associates, a media research firm, gave a chilling financial analysis to the New York Times. “The turbulence of equity holders trying to rebalance their portfolios and newspapers are properties to be bought and sold,” he said. “They’re buying cash flow and tax benefits. It’s not the sort of religious commitment that you hope to get from newspaper owners.”

The Star Tribune laid out this new form of “religious commitment” in its Wednesday story by Matt McKinney and Susan Feyder, who were assigned that uneviable job in journalism of covering the transgressions of their own paper. Here is their snapshot lead of how the nation’s second largest chain unloads its biggest newspaper:

“The Star Tribune’s new chairman is a Wall Street investor who says he’s driven by public service. Chis Harte is also a resident of Texas and Maine and a former newspaper executive who’ll be advising an investment group that has never owned a daily newspaper.

“A day after McClatchy announced the sale of the Star Tribune to a New York private equity group, there are more questions than answers about how the deal will reshape the newspaper and its community, and whether it will serve as a template for an industry in transition.

“Harte says he’s still trying to figure it all out himself.

“‘This whole transaction came together so fast, really in just the last week or so,'” Harte said. “‘At this point we just don’t know about things like my schedule.'”

The heads on the story synopsize the point about reshaping the newspaper and the community: “Twin Cities will lose Star Tribune Foundation” and “Sale could reset the bar for newspaper deals–lower.”

Well, we can get a little idea right here in the Bay Area about this kind of “reshaping” and “religious commitment.”
Only by reading the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the LA Times, and the many stories on Chain Links, the online network of the Newspaper Guild, (some links below), can you find out much of anything about this sorry deal. Not by reading the WLSBs in the local Hearst/Singleton press. And so once again we urge you to sign up for Chain Links and get the stories the local monopoly papers won’t print.

Full disclosure: we want to get the documents of collaboration of Hearst and Singleton and the other chains in the Bay Area monopoly deai (McClatchy, Gannertt, Stephens), and shed as much light as possible on the march of the Galloping Conglomerati. That’s why the Guardian and the Media Alliance, represented by the First Amendment Project, went into federal court last week to try to unseal the documents in Reilly vs. Hearst et al, the only real impediment remaining to unraveling the Hearst/Singleton deal and the fallout from the Knight-Ridder sale to McClatchy. Wish us luck. B3

P.S. I sent an email over to Ken Howe, editor of the Chronicle business section, asking him why the Chronicle did not run a story on the McClatchy sale. He had not responded by blogtime. I am sending a copy of this story (and the Nick Coleman column) to Hearst corporate in New York via Chronicle publisher Frank Vega and Editor Phil Bronstein. Will they comment? Will Hearst ever allow a Nick Coleman-type column in its paper or website SF Gate or its blogs? Will they allow David Lazarus to get to the bottom of it all in his excellent business column? Or Phil Matier aand Andy Ross…Or?…Or?…

P.S. 2: Note to the newspaper unions: the stories you are running on Chain Links are owner oriented stories, with almost no quotes from people from the community or journalism or law professors or union spokespeople. Do the unions have any comment or stories of its own that it can pass along? Any more Nick Coleman type columns?

ChainLINKS
The Star Tribune
The Minneapolis Star Tribune
The New York Times
Editor & Publisher

The P-U-litzer prizes

December 27, 2006

Competition has been fierce for the fifteenth annual P.U.-litzer Prizes. Many can plausibly lay claim to stinky media performances, but only a few can win a P.U.-litzer. As the judges for this un-coveted award, Jeff Cohen and I have deliberated with due care. (Jeff is the founder of the media watch group FAIR and author of the superb new book “Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media.”)

And now, the winners of the P.U.-litzer Prizes for 2006:

“FACT-FREE TRADE” AWARD — New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman

In a press corps prone to cheer on corporate-drafted trade agreements as the key to peace and plenty in the world, no cheerleader is more fervent than Tom Friedman. During a CNBC interview with Tim Russert in July, Friedman confessed: “I was speaking out in Minnesota — my hometown, in fact — and a guy stood up in the audience, said, ‘Mr. Friedman, is there any free trade agreement you’d oppose?’ I said, ‘No, absolutely not.’ I said, ‘You know what, sir? I wrote a column supporting the CAFTA,
the Caribbean Free Trade initiative. I didn’t even know what was in it. I just knew two words: free trade.’”

(Friedman may not have read even the pact’s title; CAFTA actually stands for the Central America Free Trade Agreement.)

LOCK UP THE FIRST AMENDMENT PRIZE — CNN’s William Bennett

Soon after being hired as a CNN pundit, Bennett went on his radio talk show and offered his views on freedom of the press — and on reporters who broke stories about warrantless wiretapping and secret CIA detention sites “against the wishes of the president, against the request of the president and others.” Bennett fumed: “Are they embarrassed, are they arrested? No, they win Pulitzer Prizes. I don’t think what they did was worthy of an award — I think what they did was worthy of jail, and I think this investigation needs to go forward.”

BROKE-BRAIN MOUTHING AWARD — MSNBC’s Chris Matthews

As the movie “Brokeback Mountain” (about a relationship between two cowboys) was gaining attention and audience in January, Chris Matthews appeared on the Imus show to hail “the wonderful Michael Savage” and the talk-show host’s nickname for the movie: “Bareback Mounting.” Matthews and Savage had been MSNBC colleagues until “the wonderful” Savage was fired — after referring to an apparently gay caller as a “sodomite” and telling him to “get AIDS and die.” Now that’s hardball.

CASUAL ABOUT CASUALTIES AWARD — Fox mogul Rupert Murdoch

Echoing an Iraq war talking-point heard regularly on Fox News, owner Murdoch said on the eve of the November election: “The death toll, certainly of Americans there, by the terms of any previous war are quite minute.” As FAIR noted, U.S. deaths in Iraq exceed those in the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War and the Spanish-American War, not to mention the combined U.S. deaths of all this country’s other military actions since Vietnam — including Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, the first Gulf War, Somalia, Haiti, Kosovo and Afghanistan.

FRONT-PAGE PUNDIT AWARD — Reporter Michael Gordon and The New York Times

With many voters telling pollsters that they want U.S. troops to leave Iraq, the Times front-paged a post-election analysis by Michael Gordon — headlined “Get Out of Iraq Now? Not So Fast, Experts Say” — quoting three hand-picked “experts” who decried the possibility of troop withdrawal. Gordon didn’t tell readers that one of his “experts,” former CIA analyst Ken Pollack, had relentlessly promoted an Iraq invasion based on wildly false claims about an Iraqi threat. Gordon took off his reporter’s hat that night on CNN to become an unabashed advocate for his view that withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq would lead to “civil war” (as though civil war weren’t already underway).

“PROVE YOU’RE NOT A TRAITOR” PRIZE — CNN’s Glenn Beck

In November, Beck — an Islamophobic host on CNN Headline News — launched into his interview with Congressman-elect Keith Ellison, a Muslim American, this way: “I have been nervous about this interview with you, because what I feel like saying is, ‘Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.’” Beck then added: “And I know you’re not. I’m not accusing you of being an enemy, but that’s the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans will feel that way.” Is it possible that primetime bigots like CNN’s Beck have something to do with the prejudices “that a lot of Americans feel”?

GROUNDHOG DAY AWARD — Ted Koppel

One role of journalism should be to help the public learn from past government policy disasters in hopes of preventing future ones. But in a New York Times column on Oct. 2, former ABC News star Koppel wrote that Washington should tell Iran it is free to develop an atomic bomb — with a Mafia-like warning: “If a dirty bomb explodes in Milwaukee, or some other nuclear device detonates in Baltimore or Wichita, if Israel or Egypt or Saudi Arabia should fall victim to a nuclear ‘accident,’ Iran should understand that the United States government will not search around for the perpetrator. The return address will be predetermined, and it will be somewhere in Iran.” In other words, no matter what the evidence, Koppel urged our government to attack a predetermined foe, Iran. Didn’t that happen in 2003 with Iraq?

Hold your nose and prepare yourself for 2007.

Norman Solomon’s book “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death” is out in paperback. For more information, go to: www.normansolomon.com

A pirate diary

December 26, 2006

When I got to Mexico City’s main ceremonial drag, where national parades and military marches are flanked by the art nouveau–style Palacio de Bellas Artes and the most striking Sears department store building you will ever see, it had transformed into a full-on tent city: blue tarp, camping tents, and thousands of political cartoons flowed east for half a mile and filled the Zócalo, the city’s vast central plaza. Just a few days before, Mexico’s highest electoral court had confirmed National Action Party (PAN) candidate Felipe Calderón as the country’s next president. His opponent Andreas Manuel López Obrador, who challenged the cleanliness of the election that had him losing by a little more than half a percentage point, had asked that his camped-out supporters stay where they were until they could force a vote-by-vote recount. The recount had been denied, and Calderón was now certain to replace outgoing president Vicente Fox, but López Obrador’s supporters were still there in their virtual city within a city.

And then it was gone. The annual military march on Mexican Independence Day saw to that. In its absence, on other streets all over the capital, another tent city continued to function, one that had been there long before the political mess and will be there long after. It shows up in the morning and gets taken down in the evening nearly every day, and it’s a hugely significant part of Mexico’s economy. In his novel Hombre al Agua, Fabrizio Mejía Madrid describes the miles of blue tarp that are the skin of Mexico City street commerce as the closest thing a landlocked resident can hope for in the way of waterfront property. Pirated movies, albums, and software are absolutely everywhere — you could drown.

According to a study conducted by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the star of the recent movie This Film Is Not Yet Rated, and cited by the Los Angeles Times, in 2005 major studios lost more revenue to Mexican street vendors, $483 million, than to those of any other country on this thieving little planet. You can mark me down as responsible for about $200 of that. In my seven months in Mexico, I went to a grand total of one museum, one cathedral, and zero ancient pyramids. Mostly, I just watched movies. And since — as we all secretly believe or at least suspect — watching movies is better than real life anyway, I ended up doing a lot of it on my return visit, with the friends I somehow found the time and opportunity to meet.

Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Passenger was my first recruit in the great battle between art and intellectual property law. In it Jack Nicholson plays a journalist who switches identities with the black-market arms dealer who’s died in his hotel, kicking off one Sunday drive of a thriller. Surely, there’s no sleepier suspense film. (Antonioni’s Blow-Up doesn’t count, since it’s an artsy fuck you to suspense films, just as Brian De Palma’s Blow Out is a fuck you to artsy fuck yous to suspense films.) Amazingly, though, the pace never dissolves the tension, despite Antonioni’s gallant attempts to try our patience, like introducing love interest Maria Schneider after a full hour of film. A much less successful test of our patience is Nicholson’s bewildered commentary, which does little more than narrate a movie you couldn’t get lost in if you were blindfolded and spun around really fast. I sat through half of it and was rewarded with one semiprecious jewel: Nicholson’s character was wearing the first digital watch ever made, by Tiffany.

After that humble start, the next day I went on a Mexican film–buying binge. Well, I tried to. You’d think the one thing you’d be certain to find in Mexico is Mexican film. You’d be right about half the time, but those are odds I don’t particularly care for. I found Carlos Reygadas’s Battle in Heaven (everywhere, in fact) but not his Japón. I found Alejandro Jodorowsky’s riot-causing Fando y Lis and El Topo (not available on DVD in the United States) but not La Montaña Sagrada. I found Los Olvidados and La Jóven but nothing else by Luis Buñuel, and he was a hard worker in Mexico. Rogelio A. González’s El Esqueleto de la Señora Morales, yes. Carlos Velo’s Cinco de Chocolate y Uno de Fresa, no. And so on. But if you like Vicente Fernández or the masked wrestler Santo, which I’m vaguely ashamed to say I do, god help you if you only have one suitcase.

I also had overwhelming success finding Tin Tan, a Mexican comedian and singer who could be described as sort of like Danny Kaye in a zoot suit. His devotees are as wide-ranging as me and the Beatles. (I recently read that he was supposed to be part of the Sergeant Pepper album cover but suggested that Ringo replace him with a Mexican tree.) By the end of the seven months I spent in Mexico City, the most Spanish I’d learned was a sort of raised-by-wolves level of communication that, though I hoped it came off as charming, made it hard for me to fully understand a movie unless I concentrated like an air traffic controller. Tin Tan was always a comfort because his movies are funny even without translation. My favorite of his movies is El Rey del Barrio, about a man in Mexico City who leads a double life as a poor sweet nobody and a ruthless, flamenco-singing street boss. It costars his brother Ramón Valdéz, from the bafflingly adored El Chavo del Ocho, a ’70s Mexican sitcom in which the titular character is a little kid played by an adult.

Which is lot less annoying and creepy than an adult played by a little kid, as Dakota Fanning’s career has demonstrated. Sadistic revenge fantasies like the Mexico City–set Man on Fire have their place in this world and are hard for me to empirically condemn, but the idea that an already irritable man would take 45 minutes of a movie to avenge Fanning’s death is something I’m just not willing to accept. I can almost never sit through her performances, but we watched this movie at the tail end of a long and drunken night, when civic pride had long since overpowered any vestiges of personal pride. (When Denzel Washington buys a Linda Ronstadt album just blocks away from the spot where we’d bought this very movie, we practically cheered.) The commentary track was sprinkled liberally with Fanning annoyingly and creepily naming people on the set who were great to work with. Why doesn’t the MPAA take a stand against mixing children and commentary tracks?

With Denzel and Dakota out of the way, we moved on to happier territory (at least I did; everyone else had fallen asleep). The Barkleys of Broadway was Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers’s Technicolor comeback after a 10-year split, and it was the last film they made together. Ira Gershwin’s lyrics are as winning as ever, but his brother was sorely missed. In other sad news, the proud tradition of the fruity character actor had been abandoned with the exclusion of Eric Blore and Eric Blore’s teeth. Oscar Levant’s piano-playing playboy was more than compensation, though (sorry, Blore). The observation, traced to a Frank and Ernest comic strip, that Rogers had to do everything Astaire had to do but backward and in high heels (Backwards in High Heels, a musical about Rogers, comes out next year) might not even be as important as the fact that she could also act circles around the guy, who always delivered his lines like he was about to sneeze.

A couple of days later, in accidental coincidence with Mexican Independence Day, we celebrated with two classics of civil disobedience. The first, The Wild One, was just as unpleasant to watch this time around as the previous time I saw it. No movie has ever given me more desire to smack Marlon Brando’s pouty little face and send him to his room without supper. Ironically, Rambo: First Blood was the perfect complement to the fireworks exploding around us, reminding us that no tyrant, be it the Spanish crown or Brian Dennehy, stands a chance against an organized and pissed-off society — or Rambo. The next morning we watched Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Fascist fuckfest, Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom, to break our spirits just enough to keep us showing up for work. I was sad to discover the copy I’d bought on Calle Arcos de Belen for 15 pesos didn’t offer English subtitles — luckily, Pasolini’s nod to the Marquis de Sade speaks the international language of eating human feces.

Next up was Lemon Popsicle, which sounds like a hentai film but turned out to be an Israeli Porky’s with dubbed English dialogue such as "I’d say the brunette’s cherry’s been well busted, for sure." Ignoring their parents’ advice not to get involved with shiksas, the horny heroes spend the whole movie trying to gain comprehensive sexual experience with the pretty girls who don’t go too far, the not-so-pretty girls who go farther, and the crabs-ridden prostitute who’ll take ’em to the moon and back. And somewhere along the way they preside over a monumentally homoerotic penis-measuring contest in the locker room. It’s all so Porky’s I was shocked to discover that it came out a full five years earlier, in 1978, spawning eight sequels and the American remake The Last American Virgin. According to Robert O’Keefe from Wales on imdb.com, Lemon Popsicle is "ONE OF THE BEST FILMS EVER MADE." Considering the emphatic use of caps and that seven out of seven people found his review useful, I have no choice but to defer to him on the matter.

The last thing I saw in Mexico was Woody Allen’s Scoop, which I watched while flying over the northern part of the country. Allen has to work harder for his jokes these days, so it was rough to see the movie’s occasional bull’s-eye apocalyptically mistranslated. Best example: the character originally says, "I was born into the Hebrew persuasion, but when I got older I converted to narcissism." This is so quintessentially him that even a translator who spoke no English at all could’ve assembled a more faithful subtitle than "I had Hindu beliefs, but I converted to Christianity." Of the two lines, though, the latter certainly got the bigger laugh out of me — I even woke up the lady in the next seat. In fact, maybe the translator did it on purpose, to give Allen and his movie the little extra push they needed. After all, that’s what the pirated movie industry is all about. People helping people. It’s beautiful, really. Please don’t turn me in. (Jason Shamai)

JASON SHAMAI’S TOP 10

(1) Battle in Heaven (Carlos Reygadas, Mexico)

(2) The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Cristi Puiu, Romania)

(3) Half Nelson (Ryan Fleck, US)

(4) Brick (Rian Johnson, US)

(5) Mongolian Ping Pong (Hao Ning, China)

(6) The Science of Sleep (Michel Gondry, France/Italy)

(7) Lunacy (Jan Svankmajer, Czech Republic/Slovakia)

(8) United 93 (Paul Greengrass, US/UK/France)

(9) Adam’s Apples (Anders Thomas Jensen, Germany/Denmark)

(10) Duck Season (Fernando Eimbcke, Mexico)

For a longer version of this article, go to the Pixel Vision blog at www.sfbg.com/pixel_vision.

The bigger picture

December 22, 2006

Considering the potential impacts of the First DataBank litigation, which easily reach the billions of dollars, and the evidence that two companies with big footprints in San Francisco (Hearst, which owns the Chronicle, and McKesson, one of the city’s biggest corporations) may have conspired to cheat consumers, this story has gotten very little press coverage.

And the news reports that have run have missed some major points.

The suit, brought by a group of unions scattered over the northeastern United States, charges that McKesson Corp, and First DataBank, a publication owned by Hearst, conspired to artificially and arbitrarily raise prescription drug prices costing health plans (such as the ones maintained by the plaintiffs’ unions), private insurers and state Medicaid offices approximately $7 billion between 2001 and 2005.

Pharmaceutical industry publications have covered the news, but otherwise, it has been relegated to the business press (the Hearst-owned Chronicle caught up to the story weeks after the plaintiffs proposed a settlement deal with First DataBank and dumped it in the business section).

When such stories are assigned to a business reporter, they can take a different dimension. The business press has a tendency to focus on how this type of litigation might negatively impact Wall Street — rather than emphasizing how class-action suits are a tool for consumers to pursue relief when they believe Big Pharma (or any major corporation for that matter) has broken the law.

Some flaws in the coverage and facts that the press hasn’t played up are listed below:

* A McKesson spokesperson told the Chronicle that the company “would certainly support a move away from [average wholesale price] that created a more logical and stable reimbursement structure for all parties in the health-care system.” But the plaintiffs contend, relying on an untold number of internal e-mails and memos obtained by their attorneys, that McKesson and First DataBank both knew exactly what was going on and actively worked to keep it a secret. McKesson flat-out denies it knew anything about what was happening to First DataBank’s published average wholesale price. But according to one e-mail cited in legal papers, the alleged scheme was so controversial that the two companies scorned drug producers who smelled legal trouble after becoming aware of it and attempted to back away.

* McKesson today is still working to recover from a $9 billion accounting scandal that in 1999 led four executives from a subsidiary to plead guilty to conspiracy and securities fraud and nearly landed two more behind bars before a federal jury deadlocked on three charges with a single holdout vote. U.S. Attorney Kevin Ryan has not yet announced whether his office will attempt to retry the two men.

* In 1998, the Federal Trade Commission blocked attempted mergers by the nation’s four largest drug wholesalers, which would have reduced the number to two. McKesson wanted to acquire the company AmeriSource Health Corp., and a company called Cardinal Health attempted to acquire Bergen Brunswig Corp. AmeriSource and Bergen did, however, ultimately merge with one another bringing the number of major wholesalers to just three. Even though the original deal was stopped, McKesson quietly revealed in 2005 through a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that the FTC had requested documents from the company and was investigating whether it had engaged in anticompetitive practices with other major wholesalers in order to limit competition. At the time that McKesson and Amerisource’s proposed merger was halted in 1998, then FTC-director William Baer expressed serious concerns about two corporations dominating a substantial portion of the drug wholesale market. “If allowed to merge into two firms, the two surviving companies would control over 80 percent of the prescription drugs sold through wholesalers in the country,” he said at the time. “That means higher prices for prescription drugs and a reduction in the timely delivery of these drugs to hospitals, nursing homes and drugstores, which could affect patient care.”

* First DataBank has had its own problems with the FTC. The company was founded in 1977, and Hearst purchased it in 1980. Federal records show that in 1998, Hearst bought another $38 million company that owned one of First DataBank’s only real competitors, Medi-Span. A later investigation by the FTC revealed that Hearst had failed to turn over key documents to the Justice Department’s antitrust division during the sale. As a result, the feds slapped Hearst with a $4 million fine in 2001, at that time the largest pre-merger antitrust penalty in U.S. history. The FTC also belatedly concluded that Hearst’s ownership of Medi-Span gave it a monopoly over the drug database market and not only required that Hearst give up Medi-Span but forced the company to disgorge $19 million in profits generated from the acquisition.

* Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access California, a health-care reform non-profit based in Oakland, told us that in past years, the state legislature has been more likely to cut the Medi-Cal budget than to look seriously at how the pharmaceutical industry might be manipuutf8g drug prices. He said only after a tough battle in Sacramento this year were Medi-Cal cuts originally supported by both Democrats and Republicans stopped. “From a state perspective, when faced with a budget shortfall, it is easier to look first at simply providing less services than the politically and operationally tougher job of trying to find savings from drug companies or others,” he said. In recent years at least, several state attorneys general, including California’s Bill Lockyer, began probing evidence that the average wholesale price was not only known to be an inaccurate benchmark by industry insiders for drug reimbursements, but that manufacturers, too, had participated in infutf8g those prices in a method similar to what McKesson is alleged to have done. Health-care policy wonks say the average wholesale price has been a problem for decades.

Schemes such as the one alleged in the First DataBank litigation are highly complex, making it difficult for laypersons to identify them. Unfortunately reporters and editors have also been known to avoid such stories like the plague, because they’re seemingly too difficult to summarize and not as sexy as local crime and celebrity gossip — even though billions of dollars could be at stake.

Of Hearst, Singleton, the WLSBs, and the documents of collaboration

December 22, 2006

By Bruce B. Brugmann

To get the citizen’s point of view, I have long maintained that every reporter and every editor and every publisher ought sooner or later to be the center of a story and see how the media works.

I found the exercise most instructive when the Media Alliance and the Guardian, represented by the First Amendment Project (Attys. James Wheaton, David Greene, and Pondra Perkins), went into federal court on Thursday to intervene and seek to unseal key records in the Reilly vs. Hearst/Singleton antitrust trial. Our three P.S. organizations put out a press release with the spokespersons listed for contact (Jeff Perlstein from the Media Alliance, James Wheaton and David Greene from FAP, and myself from the Guardian.)

I got several calls from the Associated Press (Terence Chea, who did an excellent story that ran around the country), Kate Williamson of the Examiner, James Allen from the alternative paper Random Lengths in San Pedro (who was rightly agitated about the Hearst/ Singleton deal to buy the Daily Breeze in Torrance and further encroach on his turf), Mark Fitzgerald of Editor and Publisher was in touch, and others. Significantly, even though Hearst and Singleton have a lock on the Bay Area press, not one of their many reporters nor editors contacted me. (Subtle point: that is the wave of the future with these folks). Nobody from Hearst or Singleton even called or checked in to try to make the point that, even though they have five law firms and l2 or so attorneys in federal court heaving and sweating mightily to argue they really aren’t collaborating, they don’t even have to make a show of doing the journalistic minimum of doing an honest story. More: they didn’t even have to put on a show even though the lawsuit was aimed at their Achilles heel: their secret documents of collaboration. And of course they didn’t quote me or, when they did in the case of the Examiner, they mangled my point about why we were suing.

For the record, I said in the press release and in interviews with reporters: “Our intent here is to ensure that the naton’s biggest chains (Hearst, Singleton, McClatchy, Gannett, Stephens), as they move to destroy daily competition and impose regional monopoly in the Bay Area, cannot do so in the dark of night with sealed records that set a terrible precedent for the free press, the First Amendment, and open government.”

And so the two big papers, the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Jose Mercury News, gave us two more wimpy little stories buried deep in their business section. Those who are attentive readers of the Bruce blog would know how to find them. For example, the Chronicle put its wimpy little story in the Daily Digest column just above the fold on page two of the business section under the rousing head, “Media groups want documents unsealed.”

Its last paragraph is classic monopolyese: “(Judge) Illston issued a preliminary injunction Wednesday barring MediaNews and Hearst Corp. from collaborating until at least April 30, when Reilly’s case is expected to go to trial. (B3: Is this premature collaboration? Is it like premature ejaculation?) Attorneys for MediaNews and Hearst have argued that no collaboration plan is in the works but that should one emerge in the future, it would not be illegal.” Repeating for emphasis: “Attorneys for MediaNews and Hearst have argued that no collaboration plan is in the works but that should one emerge in the future, it would not be illegal.”
Marvelous. Simply marvelous. That is Hearst boilerplate corporate policy and it is a classic of self-immolation. Compare it with AP’s version: “On Tuesday, Illston barred Bay Area newspapers owned by MediaNews and Hearst from consolidating some of their business operations until the lawsuit is resolved. When she issued a temporary restraining order against the alliance in November, Illston said she had been under the impression that Hearst’s investment was solely an equity stake, but an April 26 memo had surfaced suggesting it actually was a bid to merge some of their business operations.” Alioto got this scarlet letter in discovery and used it in his brief to show that Hearst was in effect lying in court about its documents of collaboration. The judge quoted from this critical letter, but it is still under seal and so are other key documents that would likely show the Hearst/Singleton plans for regional monopoly. Significantly, the AP story ran in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a Hearst paper.

Meanwhile, on the other end of the bay, the Mercury News
was doing its own wimpy little story in the “Business Digest” in its business section, a two paragraph story with the rousing head “Plaintiffs seek records in antitrust media case.” The story was not even a Merc story, it was pinched without attribution from the AP story (another wave of the future). From now on, I shall refer to these stories as WLSBs.

Over in the near East Bay, Josh Richman did a much better story that appeared in both the Oakland Tribune and the Contra Costa Times (a one reporter-covers-it-all concept that is another wave of the future.) Richman got some good quotes, including a notable one from Joseph Alioto, Reilly’s attorney.
“‘Oh, good, it’s about time,'” Alioto said of the lawsuit filing, adding that it was crucial for all details of an antitrust case. ‘It’s the archetypal example of hypocrisy when major newspapers take the right of the people to know applies to everyone except themselves.'”(Note the copy editing issues, another wave of the future with the staff cutbacks).

Significantly, none of the Hearst/Singleton reporters could get a single Hearst nor Singleton executive to comment on the lawsuit in their own papers. The ducking was delicious. Richman wrote: “Alan Marx, MediaNews’ attorney, declined comment. A Hearst spokesman could not be reached.” The Merc/AP reported: “Hearst officials were reviewing the motion and could not comment Thursday, said spokesman Paul Luthringer. Representatives at MediaNews did not immediately respond to a request for comment.” In short, the nation’s biggest chains are seeking to impose an ever more conservative news, editorial and endorsement line on one of the most liberal and civilized areas of the world, just as they ought to be raising holy hell about Bush, the Patriot Act, and the unending war in Iraq. And they are stonewalling like hell, in federal court and in their own papers, to keep secret the documents of collaboration.

And so there you have it: the state of daily journalism in the Bay Area, Friday, Dec. 22, 2007. There is much more to come. Follow our stories and editorials in the Guardian, on our website, and in the Bruce blog. Things of great moment are in the making.

P.S. Repeating: where the hell are the antitrust attorneys in the U.S. Justice Department? And where the hell is outgoing Attorney General Bill Lockyer and incoming Attorney General Jerry Brown? B3

Eureka! More on how monopoly papers cover monopoly news

December 20, 2006

By Bruce B. Brugmann

And so there it was, buried today in the business pages of the Chronicle/Hearst, the Contra Costa Times/Singleton, and the San Jose Mercury News/Singleton, the latest major development in one of the great buried stories of our time in the local daily press.

Editor and Publisher, the trade magazine for newspapers, got this major story right: Its online head read, “S.F. Judge Blocks Hearst/MediaNews Collaboration,” and its strong lead made the key point: “In a victory for a local businessman seeking to overturn a complex San Francisco Bay Area newspaper deal between Hearst Corp. and MediaNews Group Inc., a federal judge Tuesday issued a preliminary injunction blocking the chains from collaborating on joint distribution or advertising sales of their papers.”

This was an important ruling in the Clint Reilly/Joe Alioto antitrust case, which stands as the only real impediment to the Hearst/Singleton deal that would destroy daily competition and impose regional monopoly in the Bay Area.
(See Guardian stories and previous blogs.)

But the ruling and the coverage by burial by the Hearst/Singleton press illustrates a major problem with the case: the publishers, who are normally hollering about the government suppression of documents and government manipulation of the news, this time got the documents sealed and so only their side of the story is getting out. Hearst/Singleton got a stringent protective order that gives them essentially unreviewable discretion to control the documents in the case. (Alioto presumably agreed to the order to get an early trial date).

Here’s how this works: Hearst/Singleton designate any document they are producing in discovery as “secret.”Alioto cannot contest that under the order, nor is there any dispute mechanism by which he can challenge it. If Alioto wants the document, he has to accept it under the protective order. Then, if he wants to file it with the court, he has to do so under seal. And, under the protective order, the judge has no discretion and must appeal the seal order. Alioto’s brief is also sealed, if it references the sealed document. This was the case with the critical April 26, 2006 letter from Hearst to Singleton that outlined an agreement to explore joint national and internet adversiting sales as well as joint distribution.

The judge has referenced and quoted the letter and stated in her preliminary injunction order that the letter “is in the form of a potentially binding agremeent” and indicates the two companies have “expressed the desire, if not the intent,” to collaborate in the Bay Area. Yet the letter is under seal, as is another letter the judge has quoted and a whole batch of obviously explosive discovery documents which Alioto got under discovery.

The letter is a publisher document and is not under seal and they can talk about it if they want to. After all, if they want to disclose their own secrets, it is up to them. Thus: the publishers have crafted a protective order that gives them control of the documents, gives the court no power to control its own filings, and no way for anyone to challenge any secret designations. The effect is that the Riley/Alioto filings are secret, the publishers filings are public, the public gets only one side of the story. And then the Hearst/Singleton papers put its side out in wimpy little stories buried in their business sections with wimpy little heads. (Example: today’s Chronicle head, “Hearst-MediaNews ruling extended.” Now there’s a rouser.) And there is no explanation of how the publishers rigged the protective order to promote their side of the story and muzzle Alioto.

All of this amounts to a terrible precedent for Hearst and Singleton and their chain allies (McClatchy, Gannett, Stephens) to be setting in federal court against the free press, the First Amendment, and open government.

Repeating: Thank the Lord for Reilly and Alioto. And where the hell are the federal antitrust attorneys (they are still mucking about, pledging folks to secrecy and then asking softball questions)? And where the hell are outgoing Attorney General Bill Lockyer (who seems cowed by the case and is busy chasing those dread pre-texters in the Hewlett-Packard board room)? And where the hell is incoming Attorney General Jerry Brown (who has announced he is going to continue to live in Oakland under the heavy thumb of Singleton’s Oakland Tribune and his galaxy of East Bay papers, without making a peep to date)? B3

P.S. l: I am not blaming the reporters nor their editors for their patriotic Hearst First and Singleton First coverage. They have the unenviable assignment of covering the monopoly moves of their publishers in New York and Denver that are aimed at savaging their own papers and their own staffs and their own communities. It is not, let us stipulate, a fun job. I hope they are keeping detailed diaries. B3

Holiday Listings

December 20, 2006

HOLIDAY
Holiday listings are compiled by Todd Lavoie. Listings for Wed/20-Tues/26 are below; check back each week for updated events. See Picks for information on how to submit items to the listings.

ATTRACTIONS
“Reindeer Romp” San Francisco Zoo, 1 Zoo Road, Sloat at 47th Ave; 753-7080, www.sfzoo.org. Daily, 10am-5pm. Through Jan 1, 2007. Free with paid zoo admission ($4.50-11). Here’s a chance to show the little tykes what reindeer actually look like. Take a trip to Reindeer Romp Village and admire the beautiful creatures.
“San Francisco SPCA Holiday Windows Express” Macy’s, Stockton at O’Farrell; 522-3500, www.sfspca.org. During store hours. Through Dec 26. Free. The SF Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals presents an adorable display of cats and dogs; all featured pets are available for adoption.
BAY AREA
Knight Ridder’s Downtown Ice Circle of Palms, S Market across from Plaza de Cesar Chavez, San Jose; (408) 279-1775, ext 45, www.sjdowntown.com. Dec 20-24, 26-30, noon-midnight. Mon/25, 2pm-midnight. Dec 31-Jan 1: noon-10pm. $12-14. A glide around this outdoor rink is a perfect way to ring in the holidays; price includes skate rentals.
BENEFITS
“Donna Sachet’s Songs of the Season” York Hotel, Empire Plush Room, 940 Sutter, SF; www.donnasachet.com. Wed/20, 8pm. $60. Deliciously entertaining MC Donna Sachet celebrates her 14th year of “Songs of the Season,” a variety show benefiting the AIDS Emergency Fund. Performers include Sharon McNight, T.J. and Sheba!, and Connie Champagne.
CELEBRATIONS
“A Chaos Christmas Carol with Chicken John and Friends” 12 Galaxies, 2565 Mission; 970-9777. Sun/24, 9pm. $7. Proclaimed by the mighty entertainer Chicken John as “either the greatest show anyone has ever seen or the worst show on earth,” this holiday game show in which everyone wins is a sure thing when it comes to hilarity. Make sure to bring a gift to insure that everyone goes home with a prize!
“Dark Sparkle Christmas” Cafe du Nord, 2170 Market; 861-5016. Sat/23, 10pm-2am. $7. If too much holiday cheer is bringing you down, you might as well revel in it, right? DJs Miz Margo and Sage spin only the finest in dark and gloomy sounds with a goth-, new wave-, and punk-themed holiday party.
“Golden Age of Hollywood’s Central Ave Holiday Show” Verdi Club, 2424 Mariposa; www.oldtimey.net. Sat/23, 8:30pm-1:15am. $15. Dames and gents are encouraged to slip on their finest vintage threads and dance the night away to the sweet sounds of jazz, blues, and swing. Wax nostalgic with live music by Stompy Jones and Cari Lee and the Saddle-ites, as well as performances by the Chippenbelles and the Jitterdales. MoniKaBOOM and BeBop Becca heat things up with their Miss Sultry Claus act, and DJ Jumpin’ Jeff provides the proper martini-sipping tunes. Arrive early for Hep Jen’s helpful dance lessons.
“Latkes and Vodka Chanukah Party” Medjool, 2522 Mission; 512-6279. Thurs/21, 7pm. RSVP requested. $15. Mmmm, latkes. Sponsored by the SF Jewish Community Federation LGBT Alliance and Congregation Sha-ar Zahav, this evening of festive food and drink promises to fill the room with happy tummies and holiday cheer. Be sure to arrive early: the first 100 guests receive a free goodie bag!
“Unsilent Night” Starts at Mission Dolores Park, 18th St and Dolores; (707) 869-2778. Sat/23, 7pm. Free. New York composer Phil Kline’s free, all-volunteer outdoor boom box holiday concert and public art event returns for its fourth year of enchanting San Franciscans with glorious ambient music. Participants are invited to bring a stereo to the starting point, where Kline will hand out cassettes and CDs to be played as part of a huge, mobile sound system that will parade along a mile-long route through the Mission, Noe Valley, and Castro neighborhoods.
BAY AREA
“Russian Christmas Dance Party” Avalon Nightclub, 777 Lawrence Expwy, Santa Clara; www.novoeradio.com. Sat/23, 8:30pm-2am. $20-25. I don’t know about you, but when I think of Christmas, the words “psychedelic trance” spring to mind. NovoeRadio.com, the biggest Russian radio station in the United States, hosts a party to remember, with DJs Playdoughboy and Stranger and special guests Slon from Germany and Owonlapi from Switzerland.
“Solstice Celebration” Ashkenaz, 1317 San Pablo, Berk; (510) 525-5054. Sat/23, 6:30pm drum circle and potluck, 8pm concert. Free. Ashkenaz celebrates the solstice and honors founder David Nadel with an evening of food and music. The first portion of the program is a potluck dinner and drum jam; the second is a full itinerary of live performances, including the Afro-Caribbean flavors of the Sidewinders and the rollicking Balkan rhythms of Edessa.
“Telegraph Ave Holiday Street Fair” Telegraph between Bancroft and Dwight, Berk. Sat/23-Sun/24, 11am-6pm. Free. The Telegraph Business District transforms into a street party with an impressive array of live music, fine food, and unique handicrafts from area artisans.
“Winter Solstice Service and Celebration” Corte Madera Recreation Center, 498 Tamalpais Drive, Corte Madera; (415) 924-1494. Fri/22, 7-8:30pm. Free. The Golden Gate Center for Spiritual Living sponsors a family-friendly evening of celebrating new beginnings and spiritual fellowship. In addition to songs and prayers to warm the heart, there will be hot and hearty soup to warm the belly on a cold, cold night.
MUSIC
“A Cathedral Christmas” Grace Cathedral, 1100 California; 1-866-468-3399. Fri/22, 7pm; Sat/23, 3 and 7pm. $15-50. The Grace Cathedral Choir of Men and Boys, with orchestra, sings a program of holiday favorites.
“Celtic Christmas” Old First Church, 1751 Sacramento; www.oldfirstconcerts.org. Fri/22, 8pm. $12-15. Boasting a lively sound featuring fiddle, Celtic harp, tin whistle, and bouzouki, three-piece Golden Bough perform traditional and original holiday songs from Scotland, Ireland, and Wales.
“A Chanticleer Christmas” St Ignatius Church, 650 Parker; 392-4400. Sat/23, 8pm. $25-44. Grammy Award winners Chanticleer, a 12-man a cappella choir, sing a program of sacred and traditional holiday music. Along with holiday carols, the group performs medieval and Renaissance sacred works and African American spirituals.
“Christmas Winds” St John of God Church, 1290 Fifth Ave; 488-7632. Sat/23, 7:30pm. $15-20. Carol Negro directs the Baroque Arts Ensemble in a holiday show featuring Gregorian chants, medieval carols, madrigals, spirituals, and many other forms of celebratory music.
“Contra Costa Chorale Concert” Wells Fargo History Museum, 420 Montgomery; 396-2619. Wed/20, noon-1pm. Free. Treat yourself to an inspiring lunch break with a program of traditional and unusual Christmas carols performed by one of the oldest community choruses in the East Bay, the Contra Costa Chorale.
“Golden Gate Boys Choir and Bellringers Concert” Wells Fargo History Museum, 420 Montgomery; 396-2619. Thurs/21, noon-1pm. Free. Nothing beats breaking up your workday with an hour of festive song; the Golden Gate Boys Choir and Bellringers lift spirits with a show of seasonal favorites.
“Golden Gate Men’s Chorus Winter Concert” St Matthew’s Lutheran Church, 3281 16th St; www.ggmc.org. Wed/20, 8pm. $20. Musical Director Joseph Jennings guides the Golden Gate Men’s Chorus through a repertoire of holiday favorites and audience sing-alongs.
“Home for the Holidays” Castro Theatre, 429 Castro; 865-2787. Sun/24, 5, 7, and 9pm. $17-22. The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus celebrates its 16th annual holiday show, with a segment of the program dedicated to heartwarming tunes from the movies. The chorus will be joined by the Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco, directed by Stephanie Lynne Smith, for the 9pm show.
“Oakland Interfaith Gospel Ensemble” Slim’s, 333 11th St; www.slims-sf.com. Sun/24, 7 and 9:30pm. $15. Raise your spirits with a family-oriented holiday show bringing messages of peace, love, and joy. The soaring harmonies of the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Ensemble will provide inspiration lasting well into the New Year.
“12 Bands of Christmas” 12 Galaxies, 2565 Mission; 970-9777. Fri/22-Sat/23, 9pm. $8 one-night ticket, $12 two-night ticket. All caroled out? For a more amped-up Christmas concert, 12 Galaxies offers an eclectic roster including Ryan Auffenberg, Joel Streeter, and the Bittersweets.
BAY AREA
“Amahl and the Night Visitors” Masquers Playhouse, 105 Park Place, Point Richmond; www.masquers.org. Dec 23, 28-30, 8pm. $10 suggested donation. Members of the Masquers Playhouse and the Joyful Noise Choir of the First United Methodist Church of Point Richmond deliver a heartwarming rendition of the Gian Carlo Menotti winter favorite.
“Brian Setzer Orchestra Christmas Extravaganza” Fox Theatre, 2215 Broadway, Redwood City; (650) FOX-4119.Thurs/21, 7:30pm; Fri/22, 8pm. $60-85. Swing-lovin’ rockabilly king Brian Setzer returns with his 18-piece big band for an evening of toe-tapping, poodle-skirt-twirling holiday fun.
“A Chanticleer Christmas” First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way, Berk; 1-800-407-1400. Thurs/21, 8pm. $25-44. Grammy Award winners Chanticleer, a 12-man a cappella choir, sing a program of sacred and traditional holiday music. Along with holiday carols, the group performs medieval and Renaissance sacred works and African American spirituals.
“Expect a Miracle Holiday Benefit Concert” Ashkenaz, 1317 San Pablo, Berk; (510) 525-5054. Thurs/21, 9pm. $10-20, sliding scale. Reggae performances by Ras Kidus, Undah P, Hurricane, and Mcguyva heat things up this holiday season in an evening of spiritually uplifting music. Proceeds benefit the Urban Community Action Network and Roots Connection Reggae University Project.
“From the Darkness, Solace” Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont, Oakl; (510) 228-3207. Thurs/21, 7pm. $10-20. In honor of the darkest day of the year, more than 35 solo artists perform original music in this winter solstice celebration.
“In Harmony’s Way” Freight and Salvage Coffeehouse, 1111 Addison, Berk; (510) 548-1761. Fri/22, 8pm. $18.50. Renowned Irish singer Shay Black MCs a program of traditional carols, sea chanteys, folk ballads, and much more. Performers include Riggy Rackin, Pam Swan, and members of a cappella ensemble Oak, Ash, and Thorn.
NUTCRACKERS AND CRACKED NUTS
“Ronn Guidi’s Nutcracker Ballet” Paramount Theatre, 2025 Broadway, Oakl; (510) 625-8497. Fri/22-Sat/23, 8pm (also Sat/23, 2pm); Sun/24, 11am. $15-50. Watch the Sugar Plum Fairy and her handsome Cavalier dance along with the rest of the charming characters of the Kingdom of Delights. Members of the Oakland East Bay Symphony provide the whimsical musical accompaniment.
THEATER, COMEDY, AND PERFORMANCE
“Beach Blanket Babylon’s Seasonal Extravaganza” Club Fugazi, 678 Beach Blanket Babylon Blvd (Green St); 421-4222. Wed/20-Thurs/21, 8pm (also Wed/20, 5pm); Fri/22-Sat/23, 7 and 10pm; Sun/24, 2 and 5pm. Through Dec 31. $25-77. Sure, the label gets used a lot, but Steve Silver’s musical comedy is really and truly an extravaganza, with topical humor, dancing Christmas trees, outrageous costumes, and the biggest Christmas hat you’ve ever seen in your life.
“Black X Mass” Elbo Room, 647 Valencia; 552-7788, www.elbo.com. Mon/25, 9pm. $6.66 (of course). High Priestess Karla LaVey of the First Satanic Church hosts a variety show focusing on the darker side of things. Performers include Mongoloid, Graves Brothers Deluxe, Sergio Iglesias, Meathole Bitches, Wealthy Whore Entertainment, Theremin Wizard Barney, Tallulah Bankheist, and Ginger the Stripper. See pick box.
“Bud E. Luv Xmas Show” Red Devil Lounge, 1695 Polk; 921-1695. Mon/25, 8pm. $12. San Francisco’s smoothest operator, lounge lizard extraordinaire Bud E. Luv, throws a Christmas bash you aren’t likely to forget for a long, long time. Brace yourself: his disco and ’80s medleys contain artery-clogging amounts of cheese.
“A Child’s Christmas in Wales” Exploratorium, 3601 Lyon; www.exploratorium.edu. Sun/24, noon. Free with regular admission. The museum hosts a screening of the 1963 classic written and narrated by Dylan Thomas. Also showing will be the animated film The Sweater, a tale of boyhood in rural Quebec in the 1940s.
“Christmas Ballet” Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, theater bldg, 700 Howard; 978-2787. Wed/20-Sat/23, 8pm (also Thurs/21, Sat/23, 2pm); Sun/24, Tues/26, Dec 28, 2pm; Dec 27, 7pm. $45-55. The Smuin Ballet offers a mix of ballet, tap, swing, and many other dance styles in a holiday performance set to music by everyone from Placido Domingo to Eartha Kitt.
“A Christmas Carol” American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary; 749-2228, www.act-sf.org. Wed/20-Sat/23, 7pm (also Wed/20, Fri/22-Sat/23, 2pm); Sun/24, noon. $13.50-81.50. The American Conservatory Theater presents Carey Perloff and Paul Walsh’s adaptation of the Charles Dickens holiday story, featuring sets by Tony Award-winning designer John Arnone, original songs by Karl Lundeberg, costumes by Beaver Bauer, and choreography by Val Caniparoli.
“The Da Vinci Files” Brava Theatre, 2781 24th St; 206-0577. Thurs/21, 6pm. Free. Mystery-exploring Spanish-language network Infinito hosts a celebration dedicated to the San Francisco Latino community with a free screening of its new documentary, The Da Vinci Files, which covers the myths and mysteries surrounding the master painter. Infinito will be giving away prizes at this screening.
“Holiday Animation Film Festival” Exploratorium, 3601 Lyon; www.exploratorium.edu. Dec 26-30, noon, 1 and 2pm. Free with regular admission. The Exploratorium’s McBean Theater screens a series of quirky animated shorts and minidocumentaries certain to stimulate the mind as well as tickle the funny bone.
“It Could Have Been a Wonderful Life” Phoenix Theater, 414 Mason; 820-1400. Fri/22-Sat/23, 8pm; Sun/24, 3pm. $20-25. Fred Raker’s laugh-filled retelling of the Christmas classic delivers a distinctly Jewish spin on the Frank Capra story.
“It’s a Wonderful Life” Actors Theatre of San Francisco, 855 Bush; 345-1287. Thurs/21, 8pm; Fri/22-Sat/23, 2pm. $10-30. Joe Landry’s adaptation of Frank Capra’s classic holiday film, directed by Kenneth Vandenberg, is performed in the style of live radio broadcasts from the ’40s.
“Kung Pao Kosher Comedy” New Asia Restaurant, 772 Pacific; www.koshercomedy.com. Fri/22-Sun/24, 6pm dinner show, 9:30pm cocktail show; Mon/25, 5pm dinner show, 8:30pm cocktail show. $40 cocktail show, $60 seven-course dinner show. Celebrating Christmas with Jewish comedy in a Chinese restaurant, Kung Pao Kosher Comedy throws its 14th annual bash with hilarity from Cathy Ladman, Stephanie Blum, and Dan Ahdoot. Kung Pao mastermind Lisa Geduldig hosts the show.
“Oy Vey in a Manger” Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness; 392-4400. Sat/23, 8pm. $25-35. “America’s favorite dragapella beautyshop quartet” the Kinsey Sicks leave no taboo untouched with their over-the-top drag, fierce comedy, and truly twisted renditions of holiday classics, including the perennial fave “God Bless Ye Femmy Lesbians.”
“A Queer Carol” New Conservatory Theatre, Decker Theatre, 25 Van Ness; 861-8972, www.nctsf.org. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Dec 31, 2 pm. Through Dec 31. $22-40. The New Conservatory Theatre Center presents Joe Godfrey’s comedy A Queer Carol, a retelling of Charles Dickens’s classic tale with gay themes and characters.
“Santaland Diaries” Off-Market Theater, 965 Mission; 1-866-811-4111, www.theatermania.com. Dec 22-23, 27-31, 8 (also Fri-Sat, 10pm; Dec 31, 10:30pm); Sun/24-Mon/25, 7pm (also Sun/24, 3pm). Through Dec 31. $20-30. Steinbeck Presents and Combined Art Form Entertainment bring shrieks of glee with their adaptation of David Sedaris’s hilarious play featuring the comic genius of actors John Michael Beck and David Sinaiko.
“Trimming the Holidays: The Second Annual Shorts Project” Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter; 503-0437, www.lveproductions.com. Fri/22-Sat/23, 8pm. $17-20. La Vache Enragee Productions presents a holiday-themed evening of short plays and silent films accompanied by music composed by Christine McClintock.
“A Very Brechty Christmas” Custom Stage at Off-Market, 965 Mission; 1-800-838-3006. Thurs/21-Sat/23, 8pm. $15-35. The Custom Made Theatre Co., under the direction of Lewis Campbell and Brian Katz, brings two short socially conscious plays to the stage for a bit of holiday season perspective: Bertolt Brecht’s The Exception and the Rule and Daniel Gerould’s Candaules, Commissioner.
BAY AREA
“Big Fat Year End Kiss Off Comedy Show XIV” Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College, Berk; www.juliamorgan.org. Tues/26, 8pm. $15-17. Political satirist Will Durst is joined by a cast of barbed-tongued comics in an evening of comedy addressing the major news stories of the year.
“A Christmas Carol” Sonoma County Repertory Theater, 104 North Main, Sebastopol; (707) 823-0177. Thurs/21-Sat/23, 8pm. $15-20; Thurs, pay what you can. Artistic director Scott Phillips leads the Sonoma Country Repertory in an inventive rendition of the Charles Dickens tale.
“A Christmas Carol: A Solo Performance” Marin Art and Garden Center, Barn Theatre, 30 Sir Francis Drake Blvd, Ross; (415) 226-1316. Thurs/21-Sat/23, 8pm (also Sat/23, 1pm); Sun/24, 1pm. $10-25. Talk about juggling many balls at once! Ron Severdia portrays more than 40 different characters in his ambitious solo-show adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic.
“Christmas Dreamland” Heritage Theatre, One W Campbell, Campbell; 1-888-455-7469. Wed/20-Thurs/21, 2 and 7pm; Fri/22-Sat/23, 8pm (also Sat/23, 2pm); Sun/24, 1pm. $48-73. Artistic director Tim Bair leads the American Musical Theatre of San Jose in the world premiere of its multimedia holiday showcase.
“A Christmas Memory” Berkeley South Branch Library, 1901 Russell, Berk; (510) 981-6107. Wed/20, 4:30pm. Free. Actor Thomas Lynch performs a 40-minute abridged reading of Truman Capote’s holiday favorite, A Christmas Memory. Refreshments will be served after the performance.
“Circus Finelli’s Holiday Extravaganza” Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College, Berk; www.juliamorgan.org. Wed/20-Sun/24, 1 and 3pm (also Thurs/21, 9pm). $8-15. The Clown Conservatory of the SF Circus Center brings holiday cheer with a comedy stage show filled with acrobatics, juggling, dance, live music, and yes, clown high jinks.
“Freight Holiday Revue and Fundraiser” Freight and Salvage Coffeehouse, 1111 Addison, Berk; (510) 548-1761. Thurs/21, 8pm. $17.50. The nonprofit community arts organization Freight and Salvage hosts an evening of music, food, and Charles Dickens readings. Laurie Lewis and Tom Rozum perform blazing bluegrass numbers, Cascada de Flores explore Mexican and Cuban musical traditions, and famed Dickens actor Martin Harris reads passages from the timeless classic A Christmas Carol.
“Keep the Yuletide Gay” Dragon Theater, 535 Alma, Palo Alto; (415) 439-2456, www.theatrereq.org. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Dec 30. $10-25. Theatre Q presents this world premiere of its irreverent comedy about a Christmas Eve dinner party that devolves into chaos when one of the guests hires a mystic to try to make their gay friend straight for the hostess.
“A Little Cole in Your Stocking” Aurora Theatre Company, 2081 Addison, Berk; (510) 843-4822. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Dec 30. $25. Bay Area husband-and-wife cabaret duo Meg Mackay and Billy Philadelphia weave Cole Porter tunes and swinging holiday ditties into a mischievous, irreverent show.
TREE LIGHTINGS AND FAMILY EVENTS
“Bill Graham Menorah” Union Square; 753-0910. Sixth candle lighting: Wed/20, 5pm. Seventh: Thurs/21, 5pm. Final: Fri/22, 3pm. Observe the Festival of Lights by visiting the impressively large public menorah in Union Square.
“Boudin at the Wharf’s Old-Fashioned North Pole” Boudin at the Wharf, 160 Jefferson; 928-1849. Sat/23, 10am-5pm. Carolers, refreshments, and special visits from Santa mean family fun as Pier 43 1/2 is transformed into a wintry wonderland.
“Children’s Tea” Intercontinental Mark Hopkins Hotel, One Nob Hill; 616-6916. Sat-Sun, noon-3pm. Through Dec 30. $39. The legendary Top of the Mark sky lounge hosts a holiday-themed afternoon tea for families. In addition to some fine views of the city, guests will be treated to a magic show.
“Young and Young at Heart Open House” Wells Fargo Museum, 420 Montgomery; 396-2619. Wed/20, 11am-2pm. Free. This family event will feature stagecoach rides, trivia treasure hunts, and many other activities with a holiday theme.
BAY AREA
“Gingerbread House Party” Habitot Children’s Museum, 2065 Kittredge, Berk; www.habitot.org. Wed/20, 9:30am-1pm. Free. Take your little ones, along with a bag of candy, to the museum for a chance to decorate a giant gingerbread house. Once completed, the mouthwatering creation will be donated to a local family shelter for the children to enjoy.
ARTS AND CRAFTS
Creativity Explored’s Holiday Art Sale 3245 16th St; 863-2108, www.creativityexplored.org. Regular hours: Mon-Fri, 10am-3pm; Sat, 1-6pm. Through Dec 28. Free. The nonprofit visual arts center offers works created by artists with developmental, psychiatric, and physical disabilities.
“Great Dickens Christmas Fair” Cow Palace, 2600 Geneva; 1-800-510-1558. Sat/23, 11am-7pm. $8-20. For a slower-paced shopping experience, this winter wonderland offers a range of theater and entertainment, costumed Victorian-era characters, sumptuous feasts, and gift ideas aplenty.
“Peace, Love, Joy, ART” ARTworkSF, main gallery, 49 Geary; 673-3080. Gallery hours: Tues-Sat, noon-5:30pm. Through Dec 30. Browse locally made handiworks for holiday gift ideas.
“Public Glass Artist Showcase” Crocker Galleria, 50 Post; 671-4916. Wed/20-Fri/22, 10am-7pm. Free. More than 15 local glass artists will exhibit their work, offering many one-of-a-kind gifts. Public Glass is the city’s only nonprofit center for glassworking, and this will be its sole downtown event of the year.
BAY AREA
“Berkeley Potters Guild Gallery Show and Holiday Sale” 731 Jones, Berk; (510) 524-7031. Wed/20-Sun/24, 10am-5pm. Free. Browse through the wares of the oldest and largest clay collaborative group on the West Coast.
“EclectiXmas Art Show and Sale” Eclectix Store and Gallery, 7523 Fairmount, El Cerrito; (510) 364-7261. Wed/20, noon-6pm; Thurs/21, 11am-7pm; Fri/22, 10am-7pm; Sat/23, 10am-6pm; Sun/24, 10am-2pm. Free. Nothing says “I love you” like a sculpture or painting or photograph. Browse the gallery’s group show for imaginative gifts.
“Pro Arts Holiday Sale” 550 Second St, Oakl; (510) 763-4361. Wed/20-Thurs/21, noon-6pm. Free. This nonprofit organization supporting Bay Area artists offers jewelry, glassware, ceramics, and other potential gifts.<\!s>SFBG

Unseal the court files

December 19, 2006

The lawsuit that seeks to stop the monopolization of daily newspapers in the Bay Area isn’t just a business dispute. Real estate investor Clint Reilly argues that he would be personally harmed by the deal (which gives him standing to sue), but in reality, this is about the future of mainstream news media in one of the nation’s largest and most politically active markets. If the Hearst Corp. and Dean Singleton’s MediaNews Group have their way, it’s entirely possible one corporate entity could effectively control every single significant daily paper in San Francisco, southern Marin, the East Bay, the South Bay, and the Peninsula. And since TV and radio news stations tend to take their cues from the daily papers, that means one corporate entity would decide, to a great extent, what sort of local news will be available to several million people.
It’s more than a legal issue. It’s a major public policy issue — and that’s why the papers shouldn’t be allowed to fight this out in secret.
On Dec. 21 the Guardian and Media Alliance, a nonprofit media activism organization, filed a motion in federal court seeking to intervene in the Reilly lawsuit and asking Judge Susan Illston to unseal the key records in the case. Our point: this is a huge national story, and the public interest in knowing what the biggest and most powerful newspaper chains in the country are planning for the Bay Area is clear and overwhelming.
But the way the big chains have set things up, there’s no way for the public to find out much of anything — except what Hearst and MediaNews want us to know. Under the terms of a court order the chains wrote and got approved, anything — evidence, briefs, depositions, even legal motions — the newspaper barons want to mark secret is automatically sealed. Of course, the newspaper lawyers can decide to publicize anything they want to put out to bolster their side of the story. In other words, the newspapers — which, after all, are accused of trying to violate antitrust laws and create a media monopoly in the region — have complete control of what information does and doesn’t come out of the trial. That’s exactly how they want it — and exactly how things will go if they get away with their merger plans.
It’s hard to fight the big chains. Almost every experienced media lawyer in town works for or has partners who work for one of the chains, so they all have conflicts of interest. The news media organizations, like the California Newspaper Publishers Association, the California First Amendment Coalition, and the Society of Professional Journalists, all have board members who work for the chains.
And of course, the big newspapers themselves, which love to fight to unseal court records in other cases (like billionaire Ron Burkle’s divorce case), are all either involved or have allies who are involved, so they won’t touch the case.
So it’s fallen to the Guardian, an independent paper, and Media Alliance, an independent activist group, to work with the First Amendment Project, an independent public interest law firm, to promote the public interest in unsealing the records.
We know there’s a lot of information that ought to be out in the light of day. Already, one document discussed in open court shows that Hearst, which owns the Chronicle, has discussed ad sales, printing, and distribution deals with Singleton’s group — which is supposedly a competitor. What else do these companies have planned for the Bay Area? Will Hearst and Singleton wind up in some sort of joint operating agreement? Is this the end of daily newspaper competition? Will one billionaire publisher be able to put a conservative spin on all editorial coverage in the region? The public has a right to know.
Court documents are presumed public, and the newspaper chains have shown no reason why anything other than a few narrowly defined records should be kept secret. Judge Illston should revoke the secrecy order and open up the key documents in the Reilly case.
PS Where is the federal Justice Department? Where is outgoing state attorney general Bill Lockyer or incoming AG Jerry Brown? We haven’t heard a word from any of the public officials who ought to be intervening in this case. At the very least, they should support our efforts to open the records.
PPS: If Hearst and the big chains get away with sealing these documents, it will set a terrible precedent for future cases in which business interests want to keep secret information that ought to be in the public domain. How can any of these big media companies ever go into court in the future (as they have done in the past) to push for unsealing court record when they have gone to such lengths to seal their own records?
PPPS To see our legal brief, press release, and links to media coverage, go to www.sfbg.com.

Powell, Baker, Hamilton — Thanks for Nothing

December 18, 2006

When Colin Powell endorsed the Iraq Study Group report during his Dec. 17 appearance on “Face the Nation,” it was another curtain call for a tragic farce.

Four years ago, “moderates” like Powell were making the invasion of Iraq possible. Now, in the guise of speaking truth to power, Powell and ISG co-chairs James Baker and Lee Hamilton are refueling the U.S. war effort by depicting it as a problem of strategy and management.

But the U.S. war effort is a problem of lies and slaughter.

The Baker-Hamilton report stakes out a position for managerial changes that dodge the fundamental immorality of the war effort. And President Bush shows every sign of rejecting the report’s call for scaling down that effort.

Meanwhile, most people in the United States favor military disengagement. According to a new Wall Street Journal / NBC News poll, “Seven in 10 say they want the new Congress to pressure the White House to begin bringing troops home within six months.”

The nationwide survey came after the Baker-Hamilton report arrived with great — and delusional — expectations. In big bold red letters, the cover of Time predicted that the report would take the White House by storm: “The Iraq Study Group says it’s time for an exit strategy. Why Bush will listen.”

While often depicted as a rebuff to the president’s Iraq policies, the report was hardly a prescription for abandoning the U.S. military project in Iraq — as Baker was at pains to repeatedly point out during a whirlwind round of network interviews.

Hours after the report’s release on Dec. 6, Baker told PBS “NewsHour” host Jim Lehrer that the blue-ribbon commission was calling for a long-term U.S. military presence: “So our commitment — when we say not open-ended, that doesn’t mean it’s not going to be substantial. And our report makes clear that we’re going to have substantial, very robust, residual troop levels in Iraq for a long, long time.”

Baker used very similar phrasing the next morning in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America” — saying that the report “makes clear we’re going to have a really robust American troop presence in Iraq and in the region for a long, long time.”

That was 24 hours into the report’s release, when media spin by Baker and Hamilton and their allies was boosting a document that asserted a continual American prerogative to devote massive resources to war in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. And, in a little-noted precept of the report, it said: “The United States should assist Iraqi leaders to reorganize the national oil industry as a commercial enterprise.”

In short, the Baker-Hamilton report was a fallback position for U.S. military intervention — and for using Pentagon firepower on behalf of U.S.-based oil companies. But the report’s call for tactical adjustments provoked fury among the most militaristic politicians and pundits. Their sustained media counterattack took hold in short order.

President Bush wriggled away from the panel’s key recommendations — gradual withdrawal of many U.S. troops from Iraq and willingness to hold diplomatic talks with Syria and Iran. War enthusiasts like Sen. John McCain denounced the report as a recipe for retreat and defeat. The New York Post dubbed Baker and Hamilton “surrender monkeys.” Rush Limbaugh called their report “stupid.”

By the time its one-week anniversary came around, the Baker-Hamilton report looked about ready for an ashcan of history. Bush had already postponed his announcement of a “new strategy for Iraq” until after the start of the new year — a delay aimed at cushioning the president from pressure to adopt the report’s central recommendations. Even the limited punch of the report has been largely stymied by the most rabidly pro-war forces of American media and politics.

But those forces don’t really need to worry about the likes of Colin Powell, James Baker and Lee Hamilton — as long as the argument is over how the U.S. government should try to get its way in Iraq.

“We are losing — we haven’t lost — and this is the time, now, to start to put in place the kinds of strategies that will turn this situation around,” Powell told CBS viewers on Dec. 17. That sort of talk stimulates endless rationales for continuing U.S. warfare and facilitates the ongoing escalation of the murderous U.S. air war in Iraq.

Powell’s mendacious performance at the U.N. Security Council, several weeks before the invasion of Iraq, is notorious. But an obscure media appearance by Powell, when he was interviewed by the French network TV2 in mid-September 2003, sheds more light on underlying attitudes that unite the venture-capitalist worldviews of “moderates” like Colin Powell and “hardliners” like Dick Cheney.

Trying to justify Washington’s refusal to end the occupation, Powell
explained: “Since the United States and its coalition partners have invested a great deal of political capital, as well as financial resources, as well as the lives of our young men and women — and we have a large force there now — we can’t be expected to suddenly just step aside.”

_____________________________

Norman Solomon’s book “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death” is out in paperback. For more information, go to: www.normansolomon.com

A memo to constituents of Rep. Nancy Pelosi

December 15, 2006

By Bruce B. Brugmann

To fellow San Franciscans:

Now that even the San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst has declared in a lead front page story that Pelosi will legislate
“from the middle,” the Guardian recommends at minimum three specific proposals for her constituents to push theincoming speaker of the house to do to seriously represent San Francisco values.

l. Pelosi needs to allow Congress to start impeachment proceedings against President Bush and Vice-President Cheney. Bush has rejected the modest recommendations of the Iraq Study Group and Friday’s New York Times reported in one story that Sen. John McCain as saying in Baghdad that the “military considers sending as many as 35,000 more U.S. troops to Iraq” and another story that “Top commanders appear set to urge larger U.S. military.” Only impeachment proceedings will provide the leverage to halt the terrible losses of blood and treasure. See current Guardian editorial link above “Impeachment is now the only option.”

2. Pelosi needs to use the power of her new office to help pass a federal shield law that would uphold the rights of journalists and news outlets to protect the identity of their sources and to keep possession of their unpublished/unaired material. In the meantime, she needs to help push the Bush administration to stop wrongfully persecuting Joshua Wolfe, a 24-year-old freelance videophotograher now in federal prison in Dublin for refusing to give up his unedited tapes of a 2005 demonstration in San Francisco. He is the only journalist in jail in the U.S., has been in jail longer than any U.S. journalist ever and may stay in jail until the new federal grand jury is impaneled next July. She ought to also help push the Bush administration to hold its fire against two reporters from the Chronicle who face l8 months in jail for refusing to reveal the sources of a grand jury investigation in the Balco scandal. My feeling is that these abusive actions against the press in San Francisco by the Bush adminstration have targeted our city because of its San Francisco values, in this case its tradition of dissent and anti-war activity. Pelosi could start on this issue and promote lots of good will by meeting with the mother and supporters of Wolf. (See link below.)

3. Pelosi needs to introduce and push a a bill to eliminate the Presidio Trust, return the land to the National Park Service where it belongs, and overturn the precedent that is leading to a conservative movement to privatize the National Park system. She made the original mistake of leading the move to privatize the Presidio, on the phony argument of saving it from the Republicans, but now her Democrats are in power and it is time for her to right the wrong. Otherwise, the private Presidio Trust will keep asking for and getting tens of millions of federal money to subsidize a private, commercially driven, ruinous park operation, without sunshine and accountability, without any city zoning control, in growing opposition to neighborhors. Most important, the Pelosi park principle will further fuel the move to privatize the national park system. In effect, Pelosi created the model for the theft of one of our greatest resources, the national park system. (See Guardian editorial link, “A key test for Pelosi.”)

These are some real San Francisco values for Pelsoi to support. If she doesn’t, she risks leaving a legacy for failing to stop the Iraq War and selling off the Presidio and establishing the precedent for selling of our national parks. B3, celebrating San Francisco values since l966

PS: How to help Josh after the jump

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News

The governor’s wimpy health plan

Barbara and Angela socked it to ’em! Keep it up!

NOISE: Lady Sov with Jelly on top

New Year’s Eve letter from Josh Wolf:

THURSDAY

Careers and Ed: Hard on the job

ONE HECK OF A DAY JOB

PERKS AND PACKAGES

Off the record

Mayor Chicken

THE “KUMBAYA MOMENT”

WHO’S PLAYING GAMES?

WORKING TOGETHER

Tantalizing question: How can the Chronicle/Hearst say one thing in superior court in Santa Clara County and the opposite in federal court in San Francisco?

NOISE: 10 to the 75

Rutting madly

NEOMINIMAL TECHNO

GEAR CULTURE

TABLE GODDESSES

BEAT FREAKS

POST-POST-IRONY

Localize it

BEGINNING THE PROCESS

THE PRICE OF PROGRESS

NAYSAYERS

WHAT’S NEXT?

Nick Coleman of the Minneapolis Star Tribune is mad as hell and won’t take it any more. He writes, McClatchy’s profit-and-loss statement: They profit, we lose

McClatchy sells the Minneapolis Star-Tribune to a New York venture capital firm with no newspaper experience. It’s sad for the staff, for the state of Minnesota, and for the newspaper business

The P-U-litzer prizes

A pirate diary

The bigger picture

Of Hearst, Singleton, the WLSBs, and the documents of collaboration

Eureka! More on how monopoly papers cover monopoly news

Holiday Listings

Unseal the court files

Powell, Baker, Hamilton — Thanks for Nothing

Leno v. Migden: It’s official

A memo to constituents of Rep. Nancy Pelosi