News Archives — Page 98 of 137 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

America, meet your new gay bachelor

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July 22, 2008

Yes, the meat is in! But first, let us pause for some sad news. Estelle Getty, beloved Golden Girl, has passed on to that pastel lanai in the sky. (queer tear.)

Yet we move on … to myPartner.com‘s crowning, last week, of America’s Most Eligible Gay Bachelor. It was inevitable, I guess, and my inbox has been absolutely flooded of late with what the more or less cynical among us would regard as desperate capitalization on the whole legal same-sex marriage thing. But I must admit that myPartner is a tad genius. It set itself up before the California Supreme Court ruling as a matchmaking site for gays looking for “long-lasting relationships” — kind of a Bizarro Manhunt, except that Manhunt’s recently evolved into the gay MySpace (it’s no longer crossing the line to know what your bff’s dick looks like, zomg). It all seemed a bit confusing initially, especially since the promotional materials featured hot shirtless guys rolling around in bed and promised the possibility of “making connections” on business trips out of town. Slutty! Hedging their bets! But when that ruling came down, myPartner was perfectly positioned to pimp its romantic fantasy wares, and boy did it jump on that shit with this nationwide Most Eligible Gay Bachelor contest. Good for them.

But enough of that — let’s get to the goods. Here he is ladies and gentlemens, after 35,000 big gay online votes (that’s 350,000 in heterosexual votes!) and a live runoff in San Diego during Pride Week, your new husband on the hoof (with foof) is …. Abel Lima, Mr. Rhode Island, who, oddly perhaps, resides right here in San Francisco!

Just look at that smile! He won $25,000.
Photo by Tara Luz Stevens.

Abel was the winner, out of five finalists, based on high ratings in the category of “mind,” “body,” and “soul.” No word on how he did in the quantum mechanics portion of the contest. Coming in 2020: Most Eligible Gay Widower contest. It’s the Golden Girls all over again!

To scope the other contestants — rather handsome I must say, although I’m still into Polk Street hustlers badly in need of dentistry — click here.

Judge denies SF Weekly motion for new trial

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July 18, 2008

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Judge Marla Miller July 18th rejected attempts by the SF Weekly and its chain owner to overturn the Bay Guardian’s victory and $16 million jury award in a predatory pricing case.

The ruling on the defendants’ post-trial motions marked the end of the first full round of this legal fight and sets the stage for a shift to the California Court of Appeal. All that remains to be decided by Judge Miller is the Guardian’s upcoming motion for attorneys’ fees, which are expressly allowed to a prevailing party under the California Unfair Practices Act.

SF Weekly and Village Voice Media had asked Miller to overturn the jury verdict or order a new trial, and the company lawyers spent hours July 8th arguing that the evidence presented in a five-week trial didn’t justify the jury’s decision. And they claimed, in a laundry list of challenges, that Miller had issued improper jury instructions and erred in admitting evidence at trial.

Defense attorneys James Wagstaffe and H. Sinclair Kerr also tried to get the judge to overturn the 16-paper chain’s liabilty for any damages awarded by the jury. That would have left the Weekly as the only guilty party. VVM had admitted in earlier post-trial proceedings that the Weekly has a negative net worth and alone would be unable to pay the Guardian anywhere near $16 million.

Miller, with little comment, denied those requests.

In her “order denying defendants’ motion for new trial” Miller stated:

“To the extent that the motion for New Trial is based upon the grounds of insufficiency of the evidence to justify the verdict (Civil Procedure Code #657(6) and excessive damages (Civil Procedure Code #657(5) the court has weighed the evidence and is not convinced from the entire record, including reasonable inferences therefrom, that the jury clearly should have reached a different verdict. To the extent that the motion for New Trial is based upon errors at law which Defendants contend occurred at the trial and were excepted to by them (Civil Procedure #657(7), the Court finds these contentions lack merit.”

The defendants have said they plan to appeal.

The case centered around the Guardian’s charge that the Weekly had for years violated California’s Unfair practices Act by selling advertising space below the cost of producing it for the purpose of injuring the locally owned, independent competitor.

Evidence presented at trial showed that the Weekly had consistently lost money, as much as $2 million a year, since New Times, now known as VVM, bought the paper in 1995.

The chain later bought the East Bay Express, and transformed it from a profitable paper to one that consistently lost money. Between the Weekly and the Express, VVM has lost some $25 million in San Francisco.

The evidence also showed that VVM’s executive editor, Michael Lacey, had vowed to put the Guardian out of business, and that Weekly advertising and business staff were instructed to try to take business away from the Guardian by below cost pricing, whatever the sacrifice in revenue and profits.

And while the VVM lawyers mounted a convoluted legal argument to claim that the parent company wasn’t legally liable for any damages, the trial showed that the senior executives at the Phoenix-based chain were not only aware of the predatory strategy but were active participants in enabling the Weekly to carry out its pervasive program of below-cost sales..

In fact, two senior officers, CFO Jed Brunst and Controller Jeff Mars, testified on the stand or in pretrial depositions that the SF Weekly would have gone out of business years ago if the chain hadn’t made a policy of shipping large sums of money from headquarters into the San Francisco operation to subsidize below-cost sales.

After the trial, jurors said they were convinced that VVM sought to destroy local competition. Juror Kerstin Sjoquist, a local business owner and graduate student, said in an interview that “it felt overly predatory on the part of the Weekly” and that “the predatory intent trickled down from the top.”

Although the VVM lawyers have 60 days to file their notice of appeal, there’s already some indication of what the chain will try to argue to the higher court. Even before the trial started, Andy Van De Voorde, VVM executive associate editor, who flew in from Denver to cover the trial for the Weekly, argued in his blogs that the California Unfair Practices Act was out of date and irrelevant. Referring to the act as a “depression era law,” (actually, the act dates back to 1913, California’s Progressive Era), Van De Voorde suggested that modern competitive markets made such a law pointless.

The law bars any business from selling a product or service below cost with the intent to harm a competitor or destroy competition. That prohibition has been upheld by many appellate court decisions, some as recent as the 21st century. The state Legislature has reviewed and even amended that part of the state code many times in recent decades, but has declined to make any fundamental changes in the protections afforded by the Unfair Practices Act.

And the trend toward chain ownership and consolidation of businesses in everything from coffee shops to bookstores and hair salons would seem to suggest that the need for a law protecting independent local merchants from predatory chains is greater than ever today.

That’s certainly true for the news media: One company new owns almost every daily newspaper in the Bay Area.

Both before and after the trial, the VVM lawyers also argued that a ban on predatory pricing would violate the Weekly’s First Amendment rights. If the paper was forced to live within its means – that is, to raise ad rates and stop relying on big subsidies from the chain – Weekly managers might have to cut the size of the staff, thus reducing editorial coverage, the lawyers argued.

Two judges – first Richard Kramer, who handled pre-trial rulings, and later Miller – rejected that argument wholesale.

As the Guardian’s lawyers argued, newspapers have always had to follow basic business regulations – even when they might cost money that could have gone to editorial staffing. No newspaper has ever seriously tried to claim that labor laws, or environmental laws, or workplace-safety laws, or tax laws were a First Amendment violation.

Still, those claims may appear again in the appellate briefs.

Meanwhile, the costs to VVM and the Weekly will continue to rise: If the verdict is upheld on appeal, the chain will have to pay interest on the jury award, which is now accruing at about $4,300 a day. And at this point the Guardian has an additional statutory right to recover reasonable attorney’s fees, which could add a substantial amount to the current judgment of more than $16 million

The Guardian’s lawyers are Ralph Alldredge, Richard Hill and E. Craig Moody.

You can read the Guardian’s key legal brief on the post-trial motions here. For a detailed history of the case, click here

Bad news for SF bicyclists causes bad blood at City Hall

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July 17, 2008

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cic 3.jpg
Advocates for bicycling, walking, and the creation of more carfree spaces were already in full battle mode this week over challenges to Sunday Streets, Mayor Gavin Newsom’s plan to close the Embarcadero to cars for four hours each on Aug. 31 and Sept. 14. Then came word that the Bicycle Plan — which the city must complete in order to lift a two-year-old court injunction against any bike-related projects — is falling behind schedule once again.

The two unrelated setbacks will be the subjects of a pair of hearings at City Hall on Monday, events likely to fill their respective hearing rooms with angry bicyclists, angry business people, and angry political proxies of all stripes.
First up is a 10 a.m. hearing at the Board of Supervisors Government Audit and Oversight Committee on a pair of measures by Sup. Aaron Peskin: one a resolution calling for detailed economic studies before the Sunday Streets events, the other an ordinance that would require board approval for new athletic events that require street closure.

Then the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition has scheduled a 12:30 rally on City Hall steps before the 1 p.m. Land Use Committee hearing, which will include an update on the Bike Plan progress that was requested by Sup. Gerardo Sandoval after learning that work on the plan has fallen months behind schedule due consultants missing deadlines and other bureaucratic delays.

Tres Agaves

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July 15, 2008

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› paulr@sfbg.com

If you’re one of those people who’s always on the lookout for the next big thing, and you think the next big thing might be tequila bars, you might feel a pang about Tres Agaves, the brick cathedral of tortillas, margaritas, and fun that opened about two and a half years ago in the ever-more-crowded environs of AT&T Park. Tequila is, at its best, a New World riposte to the single-malt scotches and fancy brandies of the Old World: a carefully made and indigenous essence worthy of thoughtful appreciation. Its source plant is the agave, a succulent that is often supposed to be a kind of cactus but is really a member (along with garlic and onions) of the lily family.

Tres Agaves does have a tequila tasting lounge, and maybe tequila geeks really can get some pondering done in there — but maybe not. Tres Agaves isn’t about cozy spaces or nuanced discussions of a pedigreed drink; it’s a huge party full of sports whoops, big plates of likable food, and plenty of semiblitzed people. As parties go, it’s not bad at all. True, prices are on the high side; some of the dishes are ordinary; and most of the tequila goes into margaritas, which, for all their many innovations, are basically fruit drinks to get plastered with. But if, like me, you have a vestigial fondness for Chevy’s, Tres Agaves will seem pleasantly familiar.

The sense of déjà vu makes itself felt early, once you’re through the front door and past the host’s station, which is screened from the rest of the immense dining room by a half-wall that reminded me of an oversized ant farm, with stones instead of grains of sand (and, presumably, very large ants). The restaurant opens out around you like another country: a rolling plain of tables bounded by a line of booths, another dining area behind that, and, to the left, another province of tables. Far in the distance: a wall of exposed brick rises two stories high.

Now that the airlines have decided to start charging passengers for water, we must be extra grateful for those freebies that remain, such as chips and salsa in Mexican restaurants. Tres Agaves’ offering is especially good here: fresh, delicate, still-warm chips (as good as Chevy’s) along with two kinds of salsa, tomatillo and chipotle. The latter was deliciously smoky and bristling with chili heat but perhaps too salty. When we vacuumed up the first bowl of chips, another was swiftly brought, no questions asked.

Much of the food is exactly what you would expect to find in this kind of setting — guacamole ($8), for instance, served in a pestle-like bowl and notable not only for its price but for a freshness that goes a long way toward justifying it. The guac was a wonderful bright green (avocado flesh begins to turn a gray-brown on exposure to air, so color is an important index of freshness) and carried a definite chili kick. Queso fundido ($9.50) — a shallow bowl of melted white cheese suitable for scooping into warm corn tortillas or up with chips — was dotted with chunks of pork rather than chorizo, and while I love chorizo (in both its Mexican and Spanish guises), it can be overbearing. The pork here was better-behaved.

At $19, a plate of chiles rellenos seems a little pricey, but at least you get two peppers (poblanos) — big, fresh, and a vivid green — stuffed with corn kernels, mushrooms, zucchini slivers, and melted white cheese. Like Newfoundland dogs, the poblanos look formidable but are quite mild-mannered (i.e., no discernable chili heat). They’re also charred and peeled, not batter-fried, which makes them less caloric and greasy-looking.

A few of the dishes were news to me. One, costillas ($9.75), consisted of pork knuckles braised in an ancho chile broth, and the result was something like a spicy osso buco. (The meat disappeared considerably faster than the broth, which we mopped up with a trayful of warm corn tortillas.)

Another, carne en su jugo ($17.50), turned out to be a kind of beef and bean stew traceable to the Mexican state of Jalisco (which is, not coincidentally, the heart of tequila country). The meat was obviously an obstinate cut that was going to require some serious tenderizing; it had been carved into ribbons, then simmered with red beans in a broth of lime juice, cilantro, and onions, almost like a cooked beef ceviche. The final product was puckeringly flavorful and nearly too salty — I almost never say such a thing — but was redeemed, in the end, by the acidity of the citrus.

A common experience in Mexican restaurants (at least for me) is to have done so much front-loading on chips, salsa, and the sundry delights known as antojitos at the beginning of the meal that, approaching the end, the mere thought of dessert becomes unbearable. Particularly if the dessert is flan, which it often is. Mexican flans aren’t bad, but I’ve never had one to compare with a good crème caramel or panna cotta. A simple solution to this problem, if it is a problem, is to offer something else, and Tres Agaves does, several times over.

Nonetheless, we didn’t quite warm to a chocolate-cinnamon cake ($6), despite its reasonable price and its attractive disk shape. The cake appeared with suspicious swiftness after we’d ordered it, leading us to suppose it had been sitting around for who knew how long, just dying to be summoned — like an anxious junior-high-schooler at a dance. And it was dry — from undue refrigeration? My kingdom for a flan! *

TRES AGAVES

Dinner: Mon.–Wed., 5–10 p.m.; Thurs.–Fri., 5–11 p.m.; Sat., 3–11 p.m.; Sun., 3–10 p.m.

Lunch: Mon.–Fri., 11:30 a.m.–3 p.m.

Brunch: Sat.–Sun., 10 a.m.–3 p.m.

130 Townsend, SF

(415) 227-0500

www.tresagaves.com

Full bar

AE/DISC/MC/V

Noisy

Wheelchair accessible

San Francisco’s undocumented children

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July 15, 2008

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OPINION The recent news stories criticizing the city’s juvenile probation department for sending undocumented children home instead of handing them over to the federal immigration authorities has ignited a firestorm of negative attacks.

However, the stories missed a key fact: the city’s practice of transporting youth home was enacted with the full knowledge and cooperation of the Immigration and Naturalization Service 12 years ago.

San Francisco’s 1989 voter-approved sanctuary law specifically forbids city officials from providing information to federal immigration authorities to aid in deporting noncitizens. While the law does not protect adult felons, it’s silent on the issue of what the city should do with undocumented children after their juvenile cases are concluded.

In 1996 the city’s Juvenile Probation Department drafted a set of policies declaring that undocumented children were entitled to due process of the courts. The policies stipulated that juveniles who wanted to return to their families would be given an airline ticket home after completing their sentences. Children whose families could not be located would be released to halfway homes or foster care, consistent with the way other minors were treated.

In 1993 the INS was sued in the class action suit Flores vs. Reno for unlawfully housing undocumented minors in juvenile correction facilities without access to their families or legal representation. The case settled in 1997 with the INS agreeing that detained children should be placed in the "least restrictive environment," and that every effort would be made to reunite minors with their families.

Prior to the Flores settlement, juvenile probation officials and an attorney for the SF Public Defender’s Office met with representatives from the regional INS office to review San Francisco’s policies.

In 2002 the INS was subsumed by the Department of Homeland Security and became Immigration and Customs Enforcement. While ICE was given the task of prosecuting undocumented children, the Office of Refugee Resettlement, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, was given the responsibility of protecting these children. Unsurprisingly, in the post-Sept. 11 era, ICE took a more aggressive stance against immigrant youth, particularly those involved in the juvenile justice system.

Meanwhile Congress began debating what to do with unaccompanied children who are taken into ICE custody. In 2002, Sen. Dianne Feinstein introduced the Unaccompanied Alien Child Protection Act, stating that "unaccompanied alien minors are among the most vulnerable of the immigrant population." Feinstein noted that "many of these children have entered the country under traumatic circumstances … they are young and alone, subject to abuse and exploitation."

San Francisco’s solution of sending kids home to their families, while imperfect, served at least one purpose: of the seven children represented by my office who were sent home in the last 18 months, none have been rearrested in the United States. San Francisco’s reunification policy was legally justified, fair to youth and their families, and cost-effective.

Jeff Adachi

Jeff Adachi is San Francisco’s public defender.

Red ink stains green rhetoric

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July 15, 2008

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› news@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY Environmentalists are pondering the state’s seemingly schizophrenic approach to fighting climate change after a recent state report encouraging increased use of mass transit came out at the same time that the governor’s budget proposal denies the state’s public transportation fund more than $1 billion.

The California Air Resource Board’s June 26 Draft Scoping Plan to combat global warming, released pursuant to Assembly Bill 32, the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, is at least the second major report this year to recommend expanding public transit. But the governor’s latest spending plan redirects that sizeable chunk of money — gasoline tax revenue that voters who approved Prop. 42 in 2002 directed toward transportation projects and agencies — to help reduce the state’s $17 billion budget deficit.

"There’s a lot of misallocation of resources going on," said Tom Radulovich, executive director of the San Francisco nonprofit Livable Cities. "The governor on the one hand wants to say, ‘You should all ride mass transit.’ But on the other hand, he is taking away [transit] support from the state budget."

The governor’s press secretary, Aaron McLear, said the budget proposal spares transit from cuts faced by other programs during these tough economic times.

"Funding for public transportation stays level in the governor’s budget proposal. That’s in the face of a $17 billion deficit. The fact that it remains level is better than a lot of cuts we’ve had to make," McLear said. "We wish we could increase it, because it certainly is something the governor believes in. But again, the state is facing a $17 billion shortfall. We can only spend the money that we have. There will have to be some tough decisions to be made."

The CARB plan calls for California to lead by example by encouraging state employees to take advantage of public transportation during their commutes. It notes that transportation accounts for 38 percent of California’s greenhouse gas emissions, most of which comes from cars and trucks, and that curbing these emissions is critical to reaching California’s goal of reducing total emissions by 30 percent over the next 12 years.

"Overall I think this is headed in the right direction. For better or worse, this really does put California ahead of any other state if we fully implement this plan. Of course, having a good plan does not guarantee that it will be implemented, but this is a very serious attempt," said Gabriel Metcalf, executive director of the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association, of the state’s global warming plan.

Yet he also said that reaching the plan’s ambitious goals for reducing greenhouse gases means people will have to drive less and use transit more, and that local governments will need to stop approving urban sprawl projects.

"The easy answer that most Americans would rather have is to keep driving just as much as always, but have alternative fuels. And that just is not going to work. AB 32 has a major land use change component. Is it enough? No, it is not. But it is at least an acknowledgment of what we have to do," Metcalf said. "Overall I’m pretty impressed, but they’re not proposing enough land use change and they’re not proposing transit funding increases. They are still unwilling to face facts about the role of the automobile and climate change."

Yet instead of increasing funds for mass transit, the governor has redirected billions of public transportation dollars into the general fund, maintaining status quo transit funding in the face of increased gasoline prices and the new climate change mandate. At the same time, billions of dollars have been allocated to highway expansion programs, exacerbating the global warming problem.

"Anybody’s budget should be a reflection of their values, whether it’s an individual or an agency," said Carli Paine, transportation program director for the Transportation and Land Use Coalition. "The state is saying, ‘We value public transportation as a climate friendly choice.’ Yet when it comes to expressing those values in the budget, we say, ‘It doesn’t matter that much,’ so we’re actually undermining those original statements."

The governor’s revised state budget allocated $306 million to the State Transit Assistance Program, the state’s source of funding for mass transit operating costs such as maintenance, drivers, fuel, and mechanics.

This is the same amount that was allocated last year, even though transit ridership is the highest it has been in more than 50 years, according to a June report by the American Public Transportation Association. And factor in that crude oil is about $140 per barrel now compared to about $73 per barrel this time in 2007, according to the Energy Information Administration, a federal agency. "The budget is kicking transit in the teeth when it needs it [money] the most," Radulovich said.

The $306 million allocated to the State Transit Assistance Program comes from funds generated by Prop. 42, the voter-approved gasoline tax measure. But Paine said the STAP should also be entitled to what is called "spillover" money. Spillover refers to additional funds generated when the price of gas rises faster than inflation on other goods, leading to unusually high revenue from the tax.

The governor’s budget predicts $1.77 billion in spillover for the 2008–09 fiscal year, but he decided to put the money toward shrinking the deficit instead of funding public transportation. The current fiscal year was the first time since the proposition passed that the spillover did not go toward public transportation.

Radulovich said he believes the state is hesitant to fund mass transit — even though it recognizes the importance of reducing the number of cars on the road — because building more roads and freeways leads to more expansion and urban sprawl.

"Sprawl makes a lot of people a lot of money," he said, including oil companies, car companies, homebuilders, construction firms, and trucking companies. "These are political questions, not policy questions. The policy answers in many ways are very clear. The question is whether there is the political will to deal with it, and that’s what we’re going to find out."

Radulovich said this reality is why many California business groups support outward expansion and put pressure on the government to fund highways over mass transit. The Bay Area Council, for example, pushed aggressively for highway expansion during the last budget cycle.

Paine said she believes political pressure also comes from structural flaws in the state’s budget system.

"It’s the legacy of Prop. 13, which really froze the income our state received from [property] taxes," she said. "Public entities that are committed to social services, such as education, are still receiving property taxes at levels that are decades behind what they used to be." This puts a strain on the state’s general fund, and money has to be diverted from the mass transit account to relieve the burden generated by California’s low income tax levels, Paine explained.

Paine said a new budget proposal has been submitted to the California legislature that would restore hundreds of millions of dollars to the mass transit account for the 2008-09 fiscal year by generating additional revenue for the general fund. She said that since 2000, more than $3 billion of mass transit money has been redirected to the general fund, and the number will exceed $4 billion if the governor’s current proposal goes through.

"This isn’t just a problem this year — it’s a chronic problem. And public transportation is chronically being leaned on for relief," she said. "It’s just not a sustainable system."

TRANSIT FUNDING 101

Carli Paine of the Transportation and Land Use Coalition explained the finer points of California’s complicated system for funding — or not funding — improvements to the public transit system. Transit’s main account is called the State Transit Assistance Program. This money is flexible, but is mostly used for transit operations (maintenance, operations, fuel, mechanics, drivers, and so forth). Sometimes, though, it is used for capital projects (such as buying new tracks or replacement cars).

The STAP is the largest portion of the public transportation account, and the funding is critical. As Paine put it, "If you can’t even operate the system that you have, it doesn’t help much to have money to lay new tracks." The STAP is therefore often the focus of discussions about transit funding.

Prop. 42, which directs California’s gas tax to transportation projects, funds the STAP, although not all Prop. 42 money goes there. For example, 25 percent of Prop. 42 revenue goes to a special account for transit capital projects.

Prop. 1B is another big source of transit funding. It is the 2006 measure that allowed California to sell $19.9 billion worth of bonds to fund transportation programs. Only about $4 billion of that was allocated to public transportation, with the lion’s share of the money going toward new freeway projects.

This is where things get a little complicated.

California originally had a sales tax on all goods except gasoline. In the 1970s, voters passed Prop. 42, which decided that it would be more equitable to reduce the sales tax rate by a fraction of a percentage point, but expand the sales tax to include gasoline.

This was expected to be revenue-neutral for the state, so it wouldn’t cost people more. That was true unless gas prices rose quicker than the cost of all goods, which it eventually did.

Then-Gov. Ronald Reagan argued that it was important to return the extra revenue to public transportation because when gas prices rise, more people use public transit. As a result, this "spillover" has been set aside for transit expansion.

Last year was the first year in which the spillover was diverted to the general fund instead of being given to the STAP. It was redirected to help close the state deficit, and the 2008–09 budget proposes doing the same thing this fiscal year. (Janna Brancolini)

Vega leaving the Chron for KGO-TV

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July 11, 2008

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Cecilia Vega — who covers Mayor Gavin Newsom for the San Francisco Chronicle, where she broke big stories ranging from the big sex scandal to the mayor’s extravagant spending during hard times — has taken a job with KGO-TV Channel 7 covering Oakland City Hall.
It’s a loss for the newspaper industry, which Vega has worked in for about 10 years, reporting for the Santa Rosa Press Democrat and San Bernardino Sun before joining the Chron four years ago. But Vega — who has been a colleague of mine on the City Desk News Hour (a TV show she’ll also be leaving) for the last couple years — sees it as a good opportunity during these trying times for the Chron, which has made deep staff cuts to cope with declining readership and big financial losses.
“Making the decision to leave newspapers wasn’t easy — even in these uncertain times in the industry. It’s not something I ever thought I would do. But I’ve got a great opportunity to learn a new form of story telling at Channel 7. And besides, with all the scandals going on in Oakland City Hall right now, what political reporter isn’t itching to do stories there? It’s an exciting opportunity I just couldn’t pass up,” Vega told me.
Her last day at the Chron is July 25 and she’ll be starting her new gig in early September after getting married in August. The word is reporter Erin Allday, a novice to political reporting, will take over the Newsom beat.

Speed Reading

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July 8, 2008

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BALDWIN’S HARLEM: A BIOGRAPHY OF JAMES BALDWIN

By Herb Boyd

Atria

272 pages

$24

Herb Boyd’s Baldwin’s Harlem is a successful primer on James Baldwin’s work and a well-researched travelogue through the history of ever-changing Harlem. But it’s also something more.

When Boyd, an accomplished journalist for the Amsterdam News in Harlem, was approached to write a biography of a native son and his native soil, it probably seemed like an apt placement. And therein lies the rub.

In the book’s preface, Boyd writes that he "felt a pressing need to defend [Baldwin] from some of those writers and critics who seemed to relish bashing him with each new publication, or renouncing him for being less than totally committed to the struggle for Black liberation." He then proceeds to relish in a similar type of bashing and renouncing — in this case, connected to sexual liberation.

Over the course of Baldwin’s prolific writing career, he had more beef than 50 Cent and LL Cool J combined. Baldwin may have possessed a postmodern understanding of beef as a way to gain notice, a knowledge employed later by the aforementioned rappers. Boyd continues this legacy by excoriating Baldwin (and the word excoriate). He does this through off-hand commentary wedged between well-researched biographical and bibliographical elements. These comments reveal more about the biographer’s none-too-flattering personal opinion than they do his subject’s life. One striking example occurs when Boyd describes a young Baldwin’s sexual deflowering by an older tough as his being "turned out." The homophobic contempt in that chapter alone taints Boyd’s portrait of Baldwin. Being a black writer from New York is simply not enough to give James Baldwin the justice he deserves.

Real money, false arrest

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July 8, 2008

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› gwschulz@sfbg.com

The false arrest of an elected official in San Francisco for using a $100 bill that police wrongly thought was counterfeit has evolved into a potentially precedent-setting legal struggle over police accountability.

The San Francisco City Attorney’s Office is seeking to appeal the case all the way to the conservative-dominated US Supreme Court, an expensive fight that could overturn what would seem a welcome ruling in liberal San Francisco. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals last August affirmed in the case that citizens have the right to sue police officers after being unreasonably arrested for a crime they didn’t commit.

After a federal district judge refused to grant qualified immunity to the officers and throw out the lawsuit, City Attorney Dennis Herrera’s office insisted on repeated appeals argued by deputy city attorney Scott Wiener, rather than settling for a few thousand dollars and accepting that the cops simply screwed up.

"There are some people who would say ‘Why don’t you just pay a little money to settle it?’<0x2009>" Wiener told the Guardian. "But we have to take a broader institutional perspective, because if you start settling cases that don’t have merit, you’re going to wind up with a lot more cases like that than you would have otherwise."

At the center of the story is attorney Rodel Rodis, a Filipino activist and elected trustee of City College of San Francisco, who was arrested in the spring of 2003 and dragged to a police station for supposedly trying to buy a handful of items from a Walgreens with a counterfeit $100 bill. The bill turned out to be real.

But by the time the officers came to that conclusion, Rodis had suffered what he regarded as the terrible embarrassment of being shoved into a squad car with his hands behind his back in front of neighbors and constituents. It also occurred just around the corner from his longtime law practice and the main campus of City College, where he’s been an elected trustee since 1991.

Rodis promptly filed a $250,000 claim against the city, former Police Chief Alex Fagan Sr., and two officers at the scene alleging false arrest, excessive force, and the negligent infliction of emotional stress, among other things. He later offered to settle the suit for $15,000, but the City Attorney’s Office refused to accept the deal.

Five years and innumerable legal bills later, the case just keeps getting worse for the city — even before it lands in front of a jury to determine if indeed the police should compensate Rodis.

"Part of my mind was saying … ‘I’m not going to argue. I’m not going to resist,’<0x2009>" Rodis said of the arrest. "I put my hands behind my back but I’m thinking ‘This has got to be a mistake. Somebody here has to have some sense.’<0x2009>"

Rodis was suffering from minor allergy symptoms on Feb. 17, 2003, when he headed to a Walgreens on Ocean Avenue he’d been going to for 20 years. It was located near his Ingleside home and a law office he’s had in the neighborhood since 1992.

He picked up some cough syrup, Claritin, toothpaste, and a few other things. The total came to $42 and change, so he tried to pay with a $100 bill.

"I just happened to have it in my wallet," Rodis said.

The drugstore clerk used a counterfeit detection pen to be sure the bill was legit. It was, according to the marking, but the bill was printed in the 1980s before watermarks and magnetic strips were used to help stop counterfeiting.

The young clerk was unfamiliar with the bill’s design and called a manager to be sure. He, too, used a counterfeit pen to confirm that it was real. But the manager told Rodis he was still going to call the police, fearing it was fake. That’s when things turned surreal. Two officers showed up and almost immediately placed Rodis in handcuffs before trying to ascertain if he’d actually attempted to defraud Walgreens.

"They made no effort to determine what the situation was … they just assumed," Rodis said. "When she said ‘Put your hands behind your back,’ I thought I was in some Twilight Zone moment."

A third ranking officer on the scene, Sgt. Jeff Barry, had known Rodis for years as a local lawyer and City College trustee. Their sons were classmates. But Barry allegedly failed to step in and question whether Rodis was likely to be a fraud artist.

Another officer, Michelle Liddicoet, told Rodis she knew who he was and that he "should be ashamed of himself," according to the suit.

Feeling humiliated as other Filipinos he knew looked on, Rodis was put into the back of a patrol car and taken to Taraval Station, where he was handcuffed to a bench. There he waited another 30 minutes or so until the police officers were able to reach the Secret Service, which investigates currency for the US Treasury Department. A federal agent confirmed that the bill was likely genuine. The whole ordeal lasted about a couple of hours and Rodis was driven back to the drug store.

"This wasn’t a situation where Mr. Rodis was held in jail overnight or for a week or had to post some large amount in bail," Wiener said.

Fagan sent out a department memo shortly afterward stating that suspects have to know the currency they’re using is counterfeit before being arrested, and in any event, if they insist it’s real, the officer can book the bill as evidence for later examination and give them a receipt without arresting anyone.

But by then the damage was done and the hasty reaction of police would lie at the heart of the case that Rodis subsequently filed.

Rodis is an unlikely champion of police accountability. Known for his cantankerous personality, he all but accused the secretary of the San Francisco Veterans Equity Center last month in his regular column for the Philippine News of supporting a band of communist guerillas in the Philippines known as the New People’s Army, a charge the man angrily denied.

He bitterly responded with a string of e-mails last year when the Guardian reported he was several months late in sending legally required campaign disclosure forms from his 2004 reelection to the Ethics Commission (see "At the crossroads," 07/17/07).

But the city’s police academy also has invited Rodis to lecture recruits about San Francisco’s Filipino community as part of the department’s sensitivity training. A week after the incident involving Rodis, an elderly Filipino man who sold the San Francisco Chronicle downtown was savagely beaten and robbed of $400. He never found a police officer while walking to his Tenderloin home, where he died. The two incidents, one following on the heels of the other, enraged the city’s Filipino population of 36,000, and Rodis believes it proves the police department continues to have trouble with discrimination.

"The fact that it happened to me meant that I was in a position to do something about it," Rodis said of his dust-up. "For many [Filipino immigrants] … they wouldn’t have had the resources or the knowledge of the procedures to fight back. Even up to now, five years later, I still bump into people who appreciate the fact that I filed the action."

The case was assigned to Wiener, who is coincidentally the elected chair of the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee and a longtime party activist in a city that’s famously wary of any perceived threat to civil liberties.

In his capacity as a lawyer for the city, though, Wiener tried to have Rodis’ suit tossed using a common courtroom maneuver known as summary judgment. Civil defendants request them from a court by arguing that a claim is so lacking in merit that they shouldn’t have to endure a costly, time-consuming jury trial.

He also made the standard claim that city employees — in this case police officers — are shielded by what’s known as qualified immunity, a legal argument designed to allow them room to make honest mistakes without facing an endless barrage of expensive litigation.

In March 2005, federal district judge Maxine Chesney granted the request in part, throwing out Rodis’ claim of liability against the city and county. But she allowed the part of the suit involving the two officers to move forward, arguing the arrest was illegal because they didn’t have probable cause that Rodis intended to defraud the store.

So Herrera’s office turned to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and in a move that surprised Wiener, the panel ruled 2-1 that public employees are entitled to qualified immunity, but not when they fail to act on their considerable law enforcement powers in a reasonable way and take into account all factors present at the scene.

To put it bluntly, cops sometimes make an error in judgment but they still have to use their brains for establishing probable cause. The panel also argued that even if the bill was counterfeit, Rodis did nothing wrong if he wasn’t aware of it.

"Even without knowledge of Rodis’ identity and local ties," the majority wrote, "based on the totality of the other relevant facts, no reasonable or prudent officer could have concluded that Rodis intentionally and knowingly used a counterfeit bill."

Now Herrera had on his hands published legal precedent that his staff believed imposed a new requirement on police officers to not only conclude that perpetrators passed counterfeit currency but also that they intended to defraud their victims. The decision, city officials claim in their pleading to the Supreme Court, could hamstring local and federal law enforcement investigating counterfeit currency and some other types of fraud.

"They said it was clearly established that probable cause is a fluid concept," Wiener said of the ruling. "Well, that’s a meaningless statement. Of course probable cause is a fluid concept. But the point of qualified immunity is that officers are entitled to rely on the current state of law about what the requirements are and shouldn’t have to predict what a judge is going to do down the road."

Lawrence Fasano, a lawyer for Rodis, counters that Fagan’s memo to the department reinforced the court’s opinion. Considering that the police and people in the neighborhood had known Rodis for years, the officers on the scene should have concluded that it was out-of-character for him to pass a counterfeit bill.

"All the evidence that was looked at by the police officers at the time indicated that he did not intend to pass counterfeit currency, including the fact that he had other $100 bills in his pocket that were genuine," Fasano said.

Fasano argued, too, that case law in California made clear the issue of intent cannot just be set aside by police.

Other cities and counties in California so fear the case’s impact that two interest groups representing them, the League of California Cities and the California State Association of Counties, filed a joint friend-of-the-court brief after the Ninth Circuit’s ruling, arguing that digital counterfeiting was a "threat to the nation’s fiscal health" that could grow in the future, and if allowed to stand, "the panel majority’s decision would eviscerate the doctrine of qualified immunity to the detriment of the public."

Wiener filed the Supreme Court petition in May after a larger panel of Ninth Circuit judges rejected a request for rehearing earlier this year. While the Supreme Court accepts only a fraction of the thousands of cases it receives annually, Wiener believes there’s a chance it will be accepted because of another such case it’s examining from the Tenth Circuit. The city won’t know for sure until the fall.

He adds that it’s extraordinarily dangerous for police to be forced to consider a citizen’s status as an elected official before concluding that probable cause exists for an arrest. The City Attorney’s Office won’t disclose how much has been spent on the case until it’s resolved, but Rodis estimates he’s spent more than $50,000.
The US dollar may be losing value internationally, but a $100 bill from the 1980s could cost San Francisco big bucks.

Man with a plan

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July 8, 2008

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GREEN CITY Environmental groups have voiced cautious optimism about the California Air Resources Board’s new draft plan for fulfilling the legislative mandate of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent from 1990 levels by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050. It relies primarily on greater conservation and efficiency, and a push for new technology.

But skeptics await the forthcoming details behind the plan’s vague outlines and openly worry that the complex "cap and trade" system for selling the right to pollute, an approach favored by industry executives, could be counterproductive. Many experts say we need a more radical reevaluation of the current system, such as that proposed by California’s S. David Freeman in his book, Winning Our Energy Independence: An Energy Insider Shows How (Gibbs Smith, 2007).

Freeman has advised presidents and governors on energy policy, run the Tennessee Valley Authority and major municipal utility districts, and recently activated a fleet of all-electric vehicles as head of the commission overseeing the Port of Los Angeles.

His book lays out a plan to phase out Big Coal, Big Oil, and nuclear (which he dubs "the Three Poisons") over 30 years while meeting the needs of our high-energy society by implementing renewable technologies that already exist: sun, wind, and renewably generated hydrogen, supplemented by small hydroelectric, geothermal, and certain biofuels.

"[I]t is entirely practical and feasible to get all our energy from renewable resources and to do so with today’s technology," Freeman writes, contradicting energy industry spin that beginning the switch would take decades. Footnoted calculations and renewable resource maps show that renewables will cost the public less, with supply "over twice as large as what we may need," if used efficiently.

The transition he proposes could eliminate many of the physical, economic, and political risks of our current unsustainable oil addiction, but only if environmentally concerned Americans — which, he posits, are a majority — close ranks and demand a national renewable energy policy that started immediately.

Freeman’s plan also relies heavily on conservation: it recommends federal government-mandated efficiency programs for utilities, auto companies, manufacturers of energy-using equipment, and homebuilders to offset rising consumer demand. Increasing fuel mileage standards by 1 mpg per year for 24 years (to 48 mpg), for example, would push automakers to steadily improve their products.

His second step: retire aging, highly polluting coal and waste-generating nuclear plants, outlaw new ones, and phase in renewable power-generating alternatives using sun, wind, geothermal, biomass, and municipal waste (going from 9 percent renewable now to 60 percent in three decades, at five-year intervals). Forest, agricultural, and municipal waste are preferable to food-based ethanol.

Freeman encourages consumers to get vocal with manufacturers and demand flex-fuel and plug-in hybrid cars (with batteries you can recharge at home) and, ultimately, all-electric cars. Rechargeable types require less gasoline, freeing us from reliance on foreign oil, a militaristic foreign policy, and habitat destruction at home. An excess-profits tax can supply consumer and manufacturer incentives to speed production within a decade.

Because green cars mean more demand for electricity, Freeman looks beyond new thin-film solar rooftop panels, calling on the federal government to develop "Big Solar": desert installations capable of generating 500 MW of power (the largest US solar farm now generates 16). Such a facility could fuel the energy-intensive electrolysis process needed to free clean-burning hydrogen from water (to replace gasoline), which can then be piped and stored.

Sure, this kind of approach will be expensive. But it would be attainable when looked at against the high cost of oil wars and steadily rising gas prices; habitat and health benefits further tip the scales.

To supplement lulls in sun and wind, the "cleanest of the fossil fuels — natural gas plants — should be allowed to continue to generate power … to assure reliability during hours when the renewables are not available," Freeman writes.

Freeman incites a people-power surge to usher in the big transition: "A favorite trick of the energy establishment is to say our problems are so big that we have to try everything, which means drilling where oil companies want to drill, strip mining coal, and building prohibitively costly, high-risk, toxic nuclear reactors.

Freeman said we need that same strong commitment to transition away from the Three Poisons, because "coal, oil, and nuclear cause the problems while renewables are the solution."

Support SF’s Clean Energy Act

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July 8, 2008

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EDITORIAL The long-awaited charter amendment that would transform San Francisco’s energy policy will come before the Board of Supervisors within the next few weeks. The measure, known as the Clean Energy Act, deserves strong support.

The proposal is fairly simple, but far-reaching. It includes ambitious targets for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and a mandate that the city shift to entirely renewable electricity by 2040. That would turn Mayor Gavin Newsom’s green city rhetoric into enforceable reality and put the city where it ought to be — in the forefront of global efforts to end reliance on fossil fuels.

And the sponsors of the charter amendment, Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and Aaron Peskin, realize that the only way the city will ever get serious about sustainable energy programs is to get rid of Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s monopoly and shift to a publicly-run local utility.

The measure would, for the first time, create a detailed municipal energy policy and put control of the city’s energy future in the hands of city officials, not those of a private corporation. The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission would have a mandate to ensure that by 2017, 51 percent of the electricity used in the city came from renewable sources. By 2030 that number would rise to 75 percent, and by 2040 the city would be seeking a 100 percent renewable portfolio. (Energy from the city’s existing Hetch Hetchy hydroelectric project would count as renewable power, and since Hetch Hetchy already covers a significant percent of the municipal load, the targets are entirely reasonable.)

The PUC would have to prepare a report every two years advising the supervisors on how it is moving to meet the targets.

The measure also directs the PUC to come up with a plan to put San Francisco into the business of retail electric power. That’s something activists have been pushing for since the 1920s. The federal law that gave the city the unique right to build a dam in a national park additionally mandated that San Francisco use the electricity from the dam to establish a public power system. The city has been in violation of the Raker Act for some 90 years now. As we’ve reported in numerous stories going back to 1969, the city built the dam in Yosemite and managed to construct a world-class municipal water system — but PG&E, through bribery, corruption, and political influence, hijacked the dam’s electric power. Although San Francisco is the only city in the nation with a federal public-power mandate and one of the few that owns and operates a major public hydroelectric project, residents and businesses are still stuck with PG&E’s soaring rates and lousy service.

And PG&E — which uses fossil fuels for much of its power and operates a nuclear plant — won’t make even the state’s mild mandate of 20 percent renewable energy by 2010.

Public power cities all over California have lower rates and better service. The Sacramento Municipal Utility District, one of the largest public power systems in the state, is a national leader on renewable energy and conservation efforts. And public power makes tremendous economic sense: a municipal utility would bring tens, maybe hundreds of millions of dollars per year into the city’s coffers. That money could be invested in solar, wind, and tidal energy, and some could go to reduce the structural budget deficit that haunts City Hall every year.

PG&E is already nervous about the prospect of a renewable energy and public power measure passing this fall, and has cranked up a campaign of lies and misinformation. The news media are already starting to pick up the pro-PG&E stance — the San Francisco Business Times is running a "poll" on public power that leads off with the tired old claim that "San Francisco can’t make the buses run on time. But it can find power to keep the lights on?" (A bit of reality here: urban bus systems are tough to run because they lose money. Public power systems make money. The lights stay on in Sacramento, Palo Alto, Los Angeles, Alameda, Santa Clara, and a lot of other cities — and the people who live there pay less, get more reliable service, and are more likely to see reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.)

Six votes are needed to put the Clean Energy Act on the ballot. Any supervisor who doesn’t support it will forever be known as someone who puts the interests of PG&E ahead of the needs of San Francisco, the nation, and the planet.

Alejandro Escovedo is a ‘Real Animal’

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July 3, 2008

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Alejandro Escovedo recently performed “Always a Friend” with Bruce Springsteen.

By Todd Lavoie

How about some good news for a change? Alejandro Escovedo’s comeback keeps getting stronger.

When the singer-songwriter collapsed post-show back in 2003 after contracting Hepatitis C, the outlook was pretty grim – as it turned out, he had had the disease for several years, and his body was in greatly compromised condition. Consequently, his musical career had to be back-burnered for a few years, to allow time for recovery – surely a painful option for the musician, who had more or less been playing nonstop ever since forming San Francisco punk legends the Nuns back in the mid-’70s.

His return to recording, 2006’s The Boxing Mirror (Back Porch), was a triumphant, frequently touching announcement of recuperation, but the just-released Real Animal (Back Porch/ Manhattan/Blue Note Label Group) resolves any fleeting doubts about the state of Escovedo’s health after his brush with death.

The great crack-dealer escape

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July 2, 2008

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The Chronicle’s big front-page two-days-in-a-row expose on a handful of undocumented kids escaping from a group home has the mayor scrambling, the city attorney scrambling, the DA scrambling and the national media in a crazy-San-Francisco twitter.

In the end, the pressure’s going to be on to sidestep or undermine San Francisco’s sanctuary-city law, which forbids local authorities from cooperating with the feds in immigration cases.

There’s a good reason for that law: If undocumented immigrants fear the local government will turn them in to be deported, they won’t report crimes, won’t report extortion from employers, won’t seek medical care, etc. It’s also, frankly, a statement that San Francisco doesn’t support and won’t support the horrible anti-immigrant policies of the Bush Administration.

As usual when the Chron gets onto one of these crime stories, the whole thing has been blown way out of proportion. Here’s a little perspective::

When juveniles are arrested in San Francisco, they go into the juvenile justice system, and are placed in the Youth Guidance Center, better known as Juvenile Hall. When the kids in custody are here illegally, and have no parents or legal guardians in town, it’s a bit of a challenge; the sanctuary law (and common sense) say the young people shouldn’t be turned over to the feds, particularly given the horror stories these days about what happens to immigrants in custody.

The Washington Post has done a major report on this, and the tales from behind the concertina wire are horrifying.

No decent judge or prosecutor in San Francisco would want to send nonviolent offenders into that system, particularly minors.

And since they offenders aren’t citizens, they can’t be sent into traditional youth rehab centers.

So for a while, the city just put them on airplanes and sent them home to their families. That wasn’t a perfect solution, but it was better than most of the available options. The feds found out about it and cried foul.

So the city started sending nonviolent minors who lacked documentation to private rehab centers. Not perfect either, but no solution is perfect in this fucked up system. Not surprisingly, eight Hondurans, who were convicted of dealing crack, escaped recently – and that’s what really sent the Chron over the edge.

But remember: These were nonviolent offenders. Many, according to the Public Defender’s Office, are victims themselves, driven (or forced) into the drug trade. They haven’t killed anyone, or robbed anyone.

Of course, the whole thing now has Mayor Newsom ducking, the city attorney saying it wasn’t his fault, the courts pointing at the city – and ICE and the US attorney, along with the likes of Fox News, using this as an opportunity to attack the city’s sanctuary ordinance.

I send Jaxon Van Derbecken, the Chron’s chief reporter on this series, an email this morning asking what he thinks the city ought to do instead – turn the kids over to the feds? He hasn’t answered me yet. I’ll let you know when he does.

Nader questions Obama’s blackness

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July 2, 2008

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Photo from Rocky Mountain News
This is the kind of thing I feared when I criticized Matt Gonzalez for joining Ralph Nader’s latest run for president. I cringed when listening to Nader tell the Rocky Mountain News that Obama “talks white” and doesn’t express enough concern for life in “the ghettos,” using anachronistic and extremely paternalistic language to essentially hector Obama for not being black enough.
Progressives have a hard enough time convincing communities of color that we’re on their side without arrogant old white guys talking down to them and the nation’s first black presidential candidate. Nader says he sees no difference between Obama and the other Democrats he’s challenged and says Obama’s campaign is an appeal to “white guilt.”
The best part of the interview is when Nader levels this criticism at Obama: “He censors himself.” Guess what, Ralph? In civil society, we all censor ourselves from time to time, something that is particularly important for a presidential candidate. It’s advice this campaign would do well to adopt before Nader’s antiquated, quasi-racist rhetoric takes that desperate campaign down even further into infamy.

Bad medicine

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July 1, 2008

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Let’s say you were recently diagnosed with a serious medical condition — depression, for instance. Your doctor thinks medication is the way to go, but says it may take some experimentation to find the right drug. The first try: Paxil.

For two weeks, you don’t notice a difference. But then suddenly you can’t sleep and you’re suffering from headaches. So you call your doctor, who tells you to stop taking the meds and come in to discuss your condition further. In the meantime, you get an unusual mailer from Walgreens, your local pharmacy, saying "please remember to take your medication." Perplexed, you wonder if your pharmacist knows something your doctor doesn’t, and you consider resuming the Paxil. Then you take another look at the mailer.

In fine print, you see that the message wasn’t sent by Walgreens, but by a company called Adheris. Since you’ve never heard of Adheris, you call your pharmacist for an explanation. The pharmacist tells you that Walgreens has been selling your prescription information to outside companies, which are contracted to send you these "reminders."

Sound creepy? Well, that’s the scenario that came within a hair’s breadth from becoming a potential reality recently via a state bill that would have eroded California’s strong medical privacy laws. The legislation passed the state Senate May 29 before dying in the Assembly June 17.

The bill, SB 1096, was sponsored by Sen. Ron Calderon (D-Montebello) and would have allowed pharmacies to sell patients’ prescription and medical information to third-party entities — including Adheris, Inc., the bill’s main business backer. The ostensible goal behind the bill was to allow Adheris and other similar marketing companies to mail "reminder" notices to patients so they wouldn’t forget to take their medication.

The Mental Health Association of California, the National Association of Cancer Patients, and other important health advocacy organizations supported the measure, saying they believed it would improve compliance and save lives. But the bill’s opponents, which included the California Medical Association and many consumer groups, asserted that the legislation was not really about helping patients.

Jerry Flanagan of Consumer Watchdog led the fight against the bill. Flanagan called the legislation "insidious" and "dishonest" because it was really about marketing pharmaceuticals and "boosting drug company profits." Adheris does receive funding from the pharmaceutical and retail pharmacy industries, and Flanagan pointed to a Wall Street Journal article from 2002 revealing that Adheris was essentially created to help drug companies ensure consumer loyalty to expensive, brand-name pharmaceuticals. Furthermore, Flanagan’s records show that Calderon received more than $89,000 from the drug and retail pharmacy industries over the past few years.

Sen. Calderon did not reply to specific questions, but pointed to a statement on his Web site saying he was "deeply disappointed" with the demise of his bill, and with critics who "completely mischaracterized [its] intentions." The statement asserted, "SB 1096 was about protecting patient health and reducing health care costs."

Pam Dixon, executive director of the California-based nonprofit World Privacy Forum, also opposed the bill. She said that in addition to its shortcomings, the measure was poorly timed. "What’s really tragic is that just as California is pushing new electronic initiatives — e-prescribing, assembling a diabetes registry, digitizing more and more information — we have a politician trying to give a marketing company a bite of the apple. Now is when we need to be protecting the exceptionally strong privacy laws we have, not weakening them."

So why would such a bill surface in perhaps the most pro-privacy state in the nation? Perhaps because in other states, pharmacies can already do this. No other state has the equivalent of California’s Confidentiality of Medical Information Act, so there is nothing to prevent pharmacies from selling patient information. And they’re selling that information, although not without controversy. Indeed, Adheris is still fighting a class-action lawsuit in Massachusetts for allegedly vioutf8g consumers’ privacy through just this type of campaign.

But what about federal law? Doesn’t the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) prevent this?

No. HIPAA was enacted by the Clinton administration to safeguard medical information. But according to Peter Swire, who was Clinton’s chief privacy counselor and helped draft the legislation, the law permits pharmacies to contract with outside firms to engage in reminder campaigns. As originally drafted, the law included an opt-out. But the George W. Bush administration ditched it in 2002, weakening the law. Swire said Calderon’s bill appeared to be an attempt to "shift California law to the federal standards."

Dan Rubin, CEO of Adheris, said California’s strict law hurts patients. He cited a 2003 World Health Organization study suggesting that "increasing adherence [to prescription drug regimens] … may have a far greater impact on patient health than any improvement in specific medical treatments." But to many in the health care community, the debate wasn’t about whether adherence was a problem — they all agreed it was — but about how to best address it.

Dr. Jack Lewin, former CEO of the CMA and current chief of the American College of Cardiology, said that although patient compliance is a "critical" issue, Calderon’s bill was a "Band-Aid solution." Lewin pointed out that non-adherence usually stems more from personal choice or denial than forgetfulness.

Dr. Sharon Levine, associate executive director of the Permanente Medical Group, said the problem with SB 1096 was that it was not "evidence-based."

"The science of non-adherence is in its infancy," she added. "We just don’t know what kind of effect, if any, a mailed piece of information is going to have."

But thanks to Flanagan of Consumer Watchdog, among others, Californians won’t need to worry about such mailings — for now, anyway. When asked if the bill was dead for good, Flanagan warned of the need for continued vigilance. "It can always come back," he said, adding that a similar bill, AB 1587, is being presented to the Assembly Judiciary Committee this month.

Lennar’s bombing range in Orlando

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July 1, 2008

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Explosive news from Orlando: unexploded bombs found on Lennar housing site

How did Lennar build homes on a former military base without the live ordnance first being cleared? That’s the subject of a CNN report about a neighborhood in Orlando that was built on the former Pinecastle Jeep Range.

And as questions swirl about who knew what and when, a bigger question is coming into focus: who will the homeowners be able to hold accountable, now that their homes have been built? Is it the Army Corps of Engineers, the developer?

The report notes that “multiple lawsuits have been filed, accusing builders of gross negligence and seeking unspecified monetary damage.”

NIMBY nightmare: top ten things you don’t want to find in your backyard.

So, is this “real estate fraud” as one commentator on the CNN online edition claims?

And is it true that the government would have to step in and help the banks if all these property owners refused to pay their mortgages, claiming that the contract to buy the property was fraudulent, due to non-disclosure?

Either way, here is an interesting comment that should give prospective home owners pause:
” The twisted thing about real estate is you owe the bank not the developer. The bank pays the developer, and the home-owner is left with 30 years of house payments on a piece of property not safe to live on and lower in value than they paid for it. “

MediaNews lays off toilet paper, pens

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June 30, 2008

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Denver-based MediaNews Group announced today that it plans to lay off all pens, note pads and toilet paper declaring that the cuts would enable the company to remain profitable while continuing to serve news to its readers.

The company, which owns several major daily newspapers in the Bay Area including the Oakland Tribune, the San Jose Mercury News and the Contra Costa Times, also disclosed that its reporters will no longer gather in buildings leased or owned by MediaNews as the company will be shedding all of its commercial office space in order to save yet more money. Instead, they’ll meet in freely accessible public parks where they will use scattered twigs to etch their stories into the dirt relying on cans and rope to call their sources. Bloggers will then summarize the etchings by peering over their shoulders, but attribution won’t be necessary, because, well, you can’t link readers to sodden earth.

MediaNews CEO Dean Singleton asked company employees during a press conference in a Denver city park to refrain from throwing beer cans at him so the company can recycle them for pocket change to pay down his vast army of creditors, which is currently threatening mutiny.

Singleton has also reportedly done away with “beats” at his newspapers and his few remaining reporters will from now on cover “whatever they can gather with crude tools available on the ground,” according to the only reporter capable of actually documenting the conference with a pen and note pad, a bored-looking Entertainment Tonight producer who was apparently passing time in the park before Val Kilmer made a rare, rumored appearance in an opulent Denver restaurant around the corner.

“These are strange times,” Singleton said at the conference. “It may appear on the surface that the American people care about the Zimbabwean elections considering the recent demand for coverage there. But my nose for news tells me its anti-union editorials on the front page of the Denver Post that they really want and need.”

Friday Special: Feds cough up $2.8 million over anthrax

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June 27, 2008

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Anthrax: the bacteria that wormed its way into the consciousness of an entire nation, thanks to who?

I like to cruise the news on Fridays in search of breaking stories that someone hopes will be buried by the weekend and forgotten by Monday.

I bet the feds are hoping that Steven Hatfill will be one such case.

That’s because they have just agreed to pay the former bioweapons researcher $2.825 million and a $150,000 annuity.

Hatfill, who lost his job, but was never charged, sued the Justice Department in 2003 for violating his privacy , after he was designated a “person of interest” following the deadly anthrax attacks in October 2001.

Five people were killed, 17 became seriously ill–and an entire nation was traumatized, on top of the already traumatizing 9/11 attacks.

Two post office workers died in Washington. An employee of American Media died in Florida; an elderly woman died in Oxford, Connecticut, as did a hospital worker in New York.

At least 24 FBI agents undertook 900 interviews, but no one was ever charged.

It sounds ridiculous in retrospect, but at the news organization where I was working at the time, we were instructed to open the mail wearing gloves and mask, after anthrax-laced letters were sent to the offices of U.S. Sens. Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Patrick Veahy of Vermont and a TV news network.

I also remember local law enforcement turning out in full force, after white powder was found on the street outside my office. It turned out to be flour, scattered in a beer run, in which someone had gone jogging, marking the path from bar to bar with flour.

Asked if the perpetrators could be prosecuted, a local fireman told me , “Well, you could stretch it out to littering.”

Wish that we could prosecute whoever was responsible for littering an entire nation’s psyche with fear of anthrax.

But with the feds declaring the case “stone cold,” feel free to share your “anthrax memories” here, lest we forget how thoroughly terrorized we all were–and lest we ignore, at our own peril, how some will seek to reactivate those fears as the November election approaches.

Lennar asks feds for help–Republican senator blocks bill

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June 26, 2008

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Are we worried, yet? With San Francisco having climbed deeper into bed with Lennar thanks to Prop. G’s passage, the bad news coming from Wall Street and beyond can’t exactly be music to Mayor Gavin Newsom’s ears.

As Lennar reported bigger-than-expected quarterly losses today, Lennar’s Chief Executive Officer Stuart Miller expressed hope that the federal government would soon belly up and help bail out the beleagured housing industry.

Miller cited increased foreclosures, higher unemployment rates and diminished consumer confidence as reasons why the Florida-based mega developer experienced a 61 percent loss in revenues this quarter.

“With the U.S. housing inventory growing in excess of absorption and limited credit available, the prospect of further deterioration in the homebuilding industry will likely become reality absent Federal government action,” said Miller, who is apparently hedging his political bets by making the maximum campaign contribution to both presidential candidates.

“To that end, we are hopeful that the Federal government will acknowledge the need for further reform and will institute programs designed to stabilize and facilitate the recovery of the housing market.”

But a government plan to address the nationwide foreclosure crisis hit a roadblock in the Senate yesterday in the shape of a Republican from Nevada, Sen. John Ensign.

Sen. John Ensign (Nevada) wants $7 billion for renewable energy tax credits before he’ll support foreclosure bill.

This isn’t the first time that Ensign has played the role of lone obstructionist.

In September 2007, the Senate discovered that Ensign was using the “secret hold” to obstruct a bill that requires senators to file fund-raising reports electronically, rather than bury the identity of their benefactors in paper filings.

And for a short period in March 2006, Ensign blocked the nomination of Vice Admiral Thad Allen (who replaced FEMA director Mike Brown in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina) to become the next Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard.

But now Ensign, who reportedly has been tasked with assembling a staff to win back the U.S. Senate for Republicans in November 2008, is blocking a foreclosure rescue plan that has broad bipartisan support until he gets a vote on his amendment to provide almost $7 billion in renewable energy tax credits.

As a result, passage of the housing bill to create a multi-billion fund to aid thousands of homeowners refinance costly mortgages into more affordable government-backed loans, will likely be delayed until after July 4.

“In an election year, very few things are actually going to make it into law,” Ensign told reporters, “So if you actually want to get something done, you need to be on that train that is basically going to be leaving the station.”

While Lennar spent $5 million to defeat a grassroots coalition that wanted 50 percent affordable housing in the Bayview, the City applied for $25 million in grants to bail out Lennar’s Shipyard development.

Here in San Francisco, Lennar Corp. has assured elected officials that there is no relationship between LandSource, a land and development company that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Sunday, June 8, and Lennar’s Bayview Hunter’s Point project.

In a June 9 letter to San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, Lennar Corporation’s Chief Investment Officer Emile Haddad wrote, “We anticipate that there may be some effort to link LandSource to other Lennar ventures, including Hunters Point Shipyard. Let me be clear: There is no relationship between the two entities. Hunters Point has its own capital structure and financial partners.”

Haddad does not however explicitly mention that LandSource, which owns properties in California, Arizona, Florida, Texas and New Jersey, does have a relationship with Lennar Mare Island, which also filed bankruptcy June 8, leaving city officials in the already bankrupt Vallejo doubly stressed.

And nowhere does Haddad guarantee San Francisco a smooth, obstacle-free redevelopment of Bayview Hunters Point, which apparently is already facing a potentially fatal $25 million funding gap, according to City officials.

“Lennar is committed to continuing to work closely with our community partners and the City and County of San Francisco to overcome any obstacles and to work toward a successful venture,” Haddad writes. “You have my personal reassurance that we will keep you fully informed of any and all significant developments that may impact the project.”

“Likewise, we will continue to utilize the development’s partnership experience and qualifications to leverage all state and federal funding sources to enhance the project and ensure its timely completion.”

As for Lennar’s CEO Stuart Miller, he told investors that “notwithstanding the bleak operating environment, Lennar made significant progress during our second quarter.”

This progress included reducing unsold completed inventory. “We now have on average less than one completed unsold home per community.”
Lennar also reduced selling, general and administrative expenses by 60 percent.

“Given our success with asset reduction, we have shifted our primary focus to the execution of an efficient homebuilding model through the repositioning of our product to meet today’s consumer demand and by aggressively reducing our construction costs.”

Sounds like a potential Triple Uh–oh.

‘we are very pleased to end our second quarter with approx $880 million in cash and no outstanding borrowings under our credit facility. We have reduced our maximum joint venture recourse debt by approximately $1 billion from its peak level in 2006, which reflects a decrease of over 50 percent.”

“We recognize that the remainder of 2008 will likely see further deterioration in overall market conditions; however, we are confident that we will remain well positioned with a strong balance sheet and properly scaled operations to navigate the current market downturn as a leaner and more efficient homebuilder.”

Meanwhile, following a posting of a video showing some community members less than positive take on Lennar, someone replied with a video about Lennar’s homebuilding operations in Texas.

Seems like some folks in the Bayview aren’t the only ones, er, frustrated with Lennar.

Weekly paper dies in Cleveland

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June 25, 2008

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Curious deal creates alternative weekly monopoly

By Tim Redmond
I’m a little late on this, but it’s taken me a while to figure out the back story.

The parent company of the SF Weekly, which a few months ago sold off the East Bay Express, is shedding another money-losing paper — in the process, ending alternative weekly competition in Cleveland.

Village Voice Media will sell the Cleveland Scene to Times Shamrock, a chain that owns five other alternative weeklies. Times Shamrock is also buying the Cleveland Free Times, and will merge the two papers under the Scene name.

“It’s a sad day,” David Eden, former Free Times editor, told me. “This is a strong voice that being silenced.”
It’s also a curious new chapter in a six-year-old saga involving the nation’s largest alternative weekly chain, the U.S. Department of Justice and a scheme to wipe out competition in two markets.

The Scene was losing gobs of money, more than $1 million last year alone, according to documents filed in court as part of the Guardian’s lawsuit against VVM. The Free Times, owned by The Times-News of Erie Pennsylvania, was also struggling, publisher Matt Fabyan told me, “although we were much closer to stable.”

Still, there’s been talk of shutting the Free Times for months now: Back in December, 2007, Justice Department lawyers contacted Eden and asked him if he thought the Cleveland market was big enough for two competing alternative papers. “I told them it was,” Eden said.

Among the proposals on the table: VVM was interested in buying the paper and merging it with the Scene. But federal regulators wouldn’t allow it.

The reason: Back in 2003, the Justice Department and the attorneys general of California and Ohio filed suit against New Times, then the owner of the Scene, and VVM, which owned the Free Times. The two chains, which have since merged, had entered into a shady – and, it turns out, illegal – arrangement to create alt-weekly monopolies in Cleveland and Los Angeles. VVM agreed to shut its paper in Cleveland, and in exchange, New Times shut a paper in Los Angeles that was competing with the VVM-owned LA Weekly.

Justice forced the chains to sell the Free Times to a group of investors who vowed to keep it open and continue competition. The consent decree the chains signed bared them from taking any further anticompetitive actions in Cleveland or L.A.

But although VVM couldn’t create a monopoly, another newspaper outfit apparently can.

Fabyan said he had been in contact with the Times Shamrock people for some time, and that “I told them you really want to buy both papers. I don’t think this is a market big enough for two alternative weeklies.”

Eden was willing to try to save the Free Times: He said that he’d raised enough money to make a “substantial offer” for the paper: “I’m told that VVM had offered $450,000 for the Free Times,” he said. “We were close to that figure.” But his bid was turned down.

Don Farley, who runs the alt-weekly group at Times Shamrock, said he couldn’t comment on the details of the negotiations except to say that “we’ve been back and forth looking at the Free Times, and Scene became available as well.”

That was clearly part of the appeal: Running a paper that has no competition is typically more lucrative. “We can serve the community better this way,” said Fayan, who will be publisher of the Scene.

Andy Van De Voorde, executive associate editor at VVM, told me that his company didn’t see this as a three-way deal. “We sold our paper to Times Shamrock, and that’s our only role,” he said.

But he also confirmed that VVM had wanted to buy the Free Times and merge the two papers, but had run afoul of the Justice Department. “I’ll leave it to you to speculate on why we couldn’t do this deal, but Times Shamrock could,” he said.

Well, for one thing, Times Shamrock isn’t a previous offender, under a consent decree to stop trying to monopolize markets. But I’m also curious why Justice is allowing this to happen.

I’ve been trying to get a comment out of the Justice Department since Friday. The PR people keep telling me they’ll get back to me. I’ll let you know if I hear anything.

Rock Candy

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June 25, 2008

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REVIEW May 15 was one of those few cheery days in San Francisco when a sunny morning transitioned into a "warm wind blowing, stars are out" night. Oh yeah, and that whole State Supreme Court lifting the ban on gay marriage thing probably raised overall spirits a bit. But no, that wasn’t the reason the evening mood was so upbeat. In fact, the joyous news that day was that a straight couple, refusing to be disenfranchised any longer, announced their engagement at the Stud’s mixed, bimonthly, electro-punk-pop night Rock Candy. I know, it’s all so unclear, but it wouldn’t be the city by the Bay if the fog didn’t continuously roll in, right? And as I rolled into the club, ready to rock, I too refused to be left out in the cold any longer and searched the venue for my next ex.

Sure, I came up in the age of rock star divorces like those of Tommy Lee and Heather Locklear or Locklear again and Richie Sambora. So I vow that if I were a rock, I’d be jade — because I no longer have faith in the so-called sacrament of marriage. Still, I say if straight people want to live in acrimony, they should be able to. But ear candy beat eye candy for the night-creatures in attendance amid the polyamorous union of DJed new rave, goth, indie, and Brit-pop, and club hosts Marc Blinder and Virginia Suicide’s rousing gay marriage-themed sing-along, which culminated with the inspiring "We Are the Champions." Truth be told, I think it’s great that the happy couple delayed their announcement until everyone achieved the freedom to marry. Nonetheless, my more disillusioned half wondered what all the commitment-phobic gay partners, who previously shooed off marriage with "Darling, I’d marry you if I could," will do now.

ROCK CANDY First and Third Thursdays, 9 p.m.–2 a.m., $5. Stud, 399 Ninth St., SF. www.elasticfuture.com

Editor’s Notes

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June 25, 2008

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

The San Francisco Chronicle has suddenly discovered that the middle class is leaving San Francisco.

Staff writer James Temple broke the news on the front page of the Sunday, June 23 paper with a lead sentence that boggles the mind in its insight and news value: "The number of low- and middle-income residents in San Francisco is shrinking as the wealthy population swells, a trend most experts attribute to the city’s exorbitant housing costs."

I don’t want to downplay the importance of this story. It could have (and should have) been written a decade ago, when Willie Brown was mayor and city planning policy, combined with the dot-com boom, started San Francisco on the path toward becoming the first fully gentrified big city in America. And I’m always frustrated when a daily newspaper reports after the fact on something that could have been prevented, or at least slowed, back when the story first became a story.

But the news is still news today, and the fact that the Chronicle has facts and figures and demographers denouncing and community leaders deploring means the problem will be getting some additional attention this fall. That matters, because this November, the future of San Francisco will again be on the line.

And that could be a very good thing.

Calvin Welch, who has been fighting for a progressive city longer than many of today’s activists have been alive, remembers the summer 1972 state ballot: "You had George McGovern. You had the Coastal Commission [Act]. You had the farmworkers [labor law]. You had marijuana [decriminalization]. And you had every constituency on the left coming out to vote for them all. And they all won."

This fall in San Francisco we will have perhaps an even greater perfect storm: a proposed rebuild of SF General Hospital, which is a huge priority for organized labor. A housing justice measure that sets aside money for affordable housing (and could help address the single biggest issue in the city, something even the Chronicle now puts on page 1). A green energy and public power measure (which would shift energy policy toward renewables and bring in millions of dollars). Two new revenue measures that tax the wealthy. Six seats on the Board of Supervisors, including three swing districts that will determine whether the progressive majority that has controlled the board since 2000 will remain intact. And all of that will happen in the context of the Obama campaign and a massive statewide mobilization to protect same-sex marriage.

We are a fractious crew, the San Francisco left, but if we can come together this fall, share resources, and run some sort of large coalition campaign for progressive values, this could be an election for the ages.

Tim Russert – an alternative view

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June 23, 2008

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

I started cringing early on when the floodtide of eulogies came in for Tim Russert. I cringed because NBC and MSNBC forgot about journalism and went instead for self-reverence to the maximum. And I cringed because so many politicians came forward so quickly to praise him so glowingly and NPC was so happy to run them. And I cringed because all of this once again made the point so dramatically about the incestuous relationship between the press and the political establishment inside the Beltway in Washington, D.C.

I liked Tim Russert, NBC’s Meet the Press anchor and Washington bureau chief. I realized that he had taken a moribund television news program and transformed it with his personality and ability into the premiere Washington television news program. And I liked the fact that he volunteered to cover the presidential primaries and provided some zest and insights.

But there were many things I didn’t like about Russert’s approach to journalism, most notably the fact that the Bush administration loudly claimed it used his Sunday morning show as its favorite to promote its war in Iraq and that Russert never properly challenged them. “In reality, Meet the Press was the venue for some of the White House’s most audacious lies about the Iraq War–most of which went unchallenged by Russert,” according to an excellent critique of Russert by the media organization Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting…

“Recalling such softball questioning, it’s easy to believe the advice that Cheney press aide Cathie Martin says she gave when the Bush administration had to respond to charges that it manipulated pre-Iraq War intelligence: ‘I suggested we put the vice president on Meet the Press, which was the tactic we often used,’ she said (Salon, l/26/07). ‘It’s our best format.'”

Russert also demonstrated the problem with Beltway access. He had access to the politicians and political establishment for his shows but he refused to use his powers of access for critics of the war and people outside the political establishment.
FAIR pointed out that in Bill Moyers’s documentary “Buying the War” (PBS, 4/25/07), Russert said he wished that dissenting sources would have contacted him: “My concern then was, is that there were concerns expressed by other government officials. And to this day, I wish my phone had rung, or I had access to them.” Of course, as FAIR noted, “any journalist could have found such sources–and few critics of the war would have passed up an opportunity to air their views on such a prominent media platform.” Why didn’t he have access to Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, the authors of Project Censored stories, or the director of Project Censored, the Nation people, Frank Rich at the New York Times, or other major war critics who, among other things, weren’t lying and happened to be proven right on their positions against the war, the occupation, and the surge?

FAIR quoted Russert as saying that the White House claims “were judgments, and there was no way at that time to say, ‘You’re wrong. How could you possibly say that? You’re lying.’ That’s just not the style of Meet the Press, nor I think the style of good journalism, but we now have a permanent record as to the judgments believed by the Bush administration going into the war and you can look at them three years later and decide whether they were correct or not.'”

Well, as FAIR concludes, “there are journalists who examine the claims made by politicians at the time they make them, and some were doing just that with the assertions Bush Administration officials used to justify the invasion of Iraq (Extra!3-4/06). Had a journalist with the prominence of Tim Russert done so, it’s possible that the debate could have had an entirely different outcome.”

The example I like to use is that the Guardian, and many other alternative newspapers and voices, with no special sources in Washington or Iraq, could figure out that this was the wrong war at the wrong time for the wrong reasons and opposed it strongly and continuously from the very beginning. Why couldn’t Russert, the White House press corps, and the mainstream media figure this out, the biggest foreign policy blunder in U..S. history?
The coverage of his death gives us a clue. B3

Click here for the FAIR blog, Remembering Russert: What media eulogies remember–and forget.

Click here to read the Orlando Sentinel blog, The Tim Russert coverage: one of the most embarrassing chapters in television journalism.

Five big stories the sportwriters missed …

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June 23, 2008

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… and five more we wish they’d never covered

To much, too litte: Joba, Ramirz, Uggla

By A.J. Hayes

Like their colleagues in the hard news division, sportswriters under-report certain stories and blows others out of proportion. As the 2008 major league baseball season reaches its midpoint, we take a look at the five most underreported and the five most over hyped stories of the season so far.

TOO MUCH HYPE:

The Yankees (Natch)

The closing of Yankee Cathedral, er, Stadium. A David Ortiz jersey buried in concrete at the “new” Yankee Stadium. Horse’s ass Hank Steinbrenner’s latest doltish remarks. Manager Joe Girardi’s secretive ways with the press. And, when, oh when, will Joba Chamberlain be moved into the starting rotation?

Stories that would otherwise be minor notes in other cities immediately turn into banner tabloid headlines when the name Yankees is attached. Call us when the Bronx Bombers leapfrog the Tampa Bay Rays.