Politics

The trip

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Everyone I tell about my project thinks I’m nuts. Maybe they’re right. But many progressives have been pushed to the brink of madness by what this country is becoming. Besides, it’s too late to turn back now, so I’m going to take the trip and try to drag all of you along with me.

The basic plan is to drive from San Francisco to Denver in a rented Chevy Impala, stopping by Burning Man on the way there and back, covering the Democratic National Convention in the middle, reporting and posting to the Guardian‘s Politics blog the whole way, and then producing a cover story by the end.

What do these two epic events have in common besides synchronicity? For starters, they each have strong roots in San Francisco and will be disproportionately peopled by Bay Area residents. And this year’s Burning Man art theme — American Dream — is an obvious effort to achieve sociopolitical relevance. These two great American pageants are promoting similar goals from opposite directions.

"Burning Man doesn’t mean anything unless it affects the way we live our lives back home," event founder Larry Harvey told me earlier this year as we chatted in his rent-controlled apartment on Alamo Square. "That city is connecting to itself faster than anyone knows. And if they can do that, they can connect to the world. That’s why for three years I’ve done these sociopolitical themes, so they know they can apply it. Because if it’s just a vacation," he said, pausing to choose his next words carefully, "we’ve been on vacation long enough."

Liberal Democrats also feel they’ve been lost in the political wilderness for long enough, and they hope Barack Obama is the one to lead them out of the desert and into power. And I’ll be chronicling their launch, from when I pick up my convention press credentials the morning of Aug. 25 to when Obama addresses 75,000 people in Mile High Stadium four days later, on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s "I Have a Dream" speech. Then it’s back to the playa for the big freakout.

If truth be told, which is my intention, I don’t know what I’ll write. I’ll embrace the chaos and let the road provide the narrative. But expect insightful juxtaposition of two realms I’ve covered extensively over the past two decades — the political culture and the counterculture — peppered with perspective from my yin-yang travel mates: Democratic Party bigwig Donnie Fowler and performer Kid Beyond, a.k.a. Andrew Chaikin.

This is a story of who we are and what we may become. I hope you’ll join the journey.

Money for nothing

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› gwschulz@sfbg.com

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi seems to be feeling pretty confident in her reelection prospects this November, despite an independent challenge by high-profile peace mom Cindy Sheehan.

But that hasn’t stopped the San Francisco Democrat from raising big bucks from scores of interest groups who are contributing to her campaign committee and to the political action committee she controls, known as PAC to the Future.

Most of the money she’s raising is going toward assuring her continued power in Washington by giving it to the campaigns of other Democratic members of Congress, particularly those facing tough election battles that could threaten the party’s House majority.

Pelosi’s reelection committee has raised $2.36 million over the past two years, hundreds of thousands more than the average House member, according to federal campaign disclosure records and data maintained by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Her PAC raised an additional $585,000 during the current election cycle and spent $769,000, much of which has also gone to other candidate committees in payments of $5,000 and $10,000.

Many newly elected Democrats in the House represent conservative constituencies, and with her blessing they sometimes vote with Republicans to distance themselves from the party’s perceived liberal leaders like Pelosi, according to a new book published this month, Money in the House: Campaign Funds and Congressional Party Politics (Perseus, 2008). Democratic leaders in the meantime have continued a phenomenal fundraising spree to help protect those House members.

"Speaker Pelosi’s extraordinary financial commitment to her party, and especially to her party’s vulnerable members, illustrates the overriding emphasis congressional parties and members place on money," writes author Marian Currinder, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Government Affairs Institute. "And her encouragement of selective ‘opposition votes’ demonstrates the complexity of governing in a highly partisan and highly competitive political environment."

Even the day-to-day reelection expenses of Washington’s unrivaled leading lady are outsize, as Pelosi’s spending records show. In June 2007, she celebrated her 20th year in Congress with a glitzy fundraiser held in the capital’s Union Station that cost at least $92,000 and featured a performance by soul singer Patti LaBelle.

The bill included $25,393 for a slick video production; $61,105 on catering, rentals, and securing the site; $2,000 for hairstyling and wardrobe assistance insisted on by LaBelle; $2,824 on flower arrangements; and $1,396 for chocolates from a Pennsylvania-based confection maker.

Pelosi spent at least $650 from her campaign on makeup for the steady string of appearances she made after being sworn in as House speaker in January 2007. An annual fundraiser held this year at the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco cost $23,454 for catering and other expenses.

As for the top contributors to Pelosi’s reelection committee, they include several members of the Gallo family, proprietors of the E&J Gallo Winery, who gave a total of $23,000 through maximum individual donations of $4,600. The Modesto-based company has long made contributions to both parties, particularly enriching candidates who show a willingness to scale back or even throw out the federal estate tax, which affects the inheritances of the wealthiest American families.

The Corrections Corporation of America gave $2,300 to Pelosi and $2,700 to her PAC. CCA is part of a storied group of for-profit privatization companies in Nashville, Tenn. that are closely tied to former Republican Senate majority leader Bill Frist and includes the Hospital Corporation of America and Ardent Health Services.

Just this year, the state of California hired CCA to house 8,000 inmates at six of the company’s facilities; a significant portion will go to a new $205 million CCA complex under construction in Arizona.

The nation’s largest private jail company suffered bad publicity during the 1990s due to a series of high-profile escapes and inmate killings inside its prisons. It teetered on the edge of bankruptcy after overbuilding jails without having enough inmates available to fill them, but the George W. Bush administration helped save the company with a new homeland security agenda that called for confining rather than releasing undocumented immigrants while they awaited deportation or asylum-request proceedings. The company’s revenue jumped nearly a half-billion dollars over the last five years and its lobbying activities in Washington, DC have increased similarly.

The entertainment industry has ponied up its share to Pelosi as well. The maximum $4,600 donation came from Aaron Sorkin, powerhouse writer behind the long-running TV series The West Wing and the 2007 film Charlie Wilson’s War. Christie Hefner, a regular donor to Democrats and heiress to Playboy Enterprises, contributed $1,000.

Steven Bing, a Hollywood producer who inherited a real estate fortune, and billionaire Las Vegas developer Kirk Kerkorian gave thousands to Pelosi over the last two years. Kerkorian has given to both parties, but he and Bing share a special relationship after having fought a nasty tabloid war.

Kerkorian allegedly hired private investigators to sift through Bing’s trash in search of DNA evidence that would link him to a child borne by Kerkorian’s ex-wife, whom he was divorcing, according to a lawsuit filed by Bing. Vanity Fair in July described Bing as part of a skirt-chasing entourage that ran with Bill Clinton and threatened to tarnish Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid with its freewheeling bachelor reputation.

The wealthy Herbert and Marion Sandler, major supporters of MoveOn.org and other social justice causes, gave Pelosi a combined $9,200. The couple presided over the meteoric rise of Oakland mortgage lender Golden West Financial, which sold to Wachovia for $24 billion in 2006. The housing crisis led Wachovia to post staggering multibillion-dollar losses this summer, and some business writers have attributed its declining fortunes to the Golden West purchase.

In June, George Zimmer of Fremont, founder of the Men’s Warehouse, gave $2,300. Notable husband and wife political team Clint and Janet Reilly, both active as candidates and donors, contributed a total of $19,200 to Pelosi’s campaign and PAC.

"Essentially, raising money for the party and its candidates is required of leaders," Money in the House author Currinder told the Guardian. "Pelosi wouldn’t have been elected speaker if she wasn’t a stellar fundraiser."

So where is Pelosi’s money going if not to television ads for her own campaign? She divided $250,000 among the campaigns of approximately 70 congressional candidates, and disbursed about $532,000 more to them through PAC to the Future. The beneficiaries included $14,000 to Democrat Chet Edwards of Texas, whose district includes President George W. Bush’s Crawford ranch. Pelosi has publicly recommended him to Barack Obama as a possible running mate.

In addition, about half of the money Pelosi has raised since the beginning of 2007, slightly more than $1 million, went to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in Washington, DC. She also gave to the Democratic parties of key battleground states including Indiana, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Ohio. She singled out Democrat Travis Childers of Mississippi for extra cash totaling $21,000. In May, Childers stunned observers by defeating a Republican in a special election held when a representative vacated his House seat to take over for conservative icon Sen. Trent Lott.

"She has had prodigious success raising funds for individual Democratic candidates, for the DCCC, and for her own campaign and PAC," Thomas Mann, a congressional scholar at the Brookings Institute, told us. "Most party leaders represent safe seats but nonetheless try to set a high standard for raising money to advance their party’s broader objectives."

Pelosi’s Capitol Hill and San Francisco offices directed our questions to her fundraising operations at the DCCC. Her political director there, Brian Wolff, called the war chest "another vehicle for her to communicate with constituents in California." But he conceded that the pressure is on, "especially now that we have so many candidates and incumbents that need help. It definitely falls on her to be able to have a very aggressive fundraising campaign."

Wolff insists, too, that the Democrats revolutionized fundraising by seeking out smaller donations from large numbers of people instead of returning to the same short list of affluent contributors they had in the past.

In general, top donations to Pelosi still have come from lobbyists and lawyers, the real estate industry, insurance companies, banking and securities firms, and Amgen, a major biotech researcher based in Thousand Oaks. Officials from the labor movement’s biggest new power broker, the Service Employees International Union, also gave substantial sums, as did other major unions. But they fell far behind the contributions of large business interests.

Art Torres, chair of the California Democratic Party, told us that health care reform failed in 1990s at least partly because of political spending by drug companies. But he said that Democrats winning the White House and expanding their majorities in Congress would create a greater mandate to overhaul the health care system.

"It’s always been about issues" rather than fundraising, Torres said. "When I’ve talked to her, it’s always been about ‘How can we get this or that legislation through?’<0x2009>"

It’s worth pointing out, however, that the nation’s largest drug wholesaler, McKesson Corp., is based in San Francisco, and donors from pharmaceutical companies gave Pelosi more than $85,000 this cycle. Drug companies have given freely to Democrats in the past, but Democratic officeholders "still voted against their interests every time," Torres said.

Pelosi’s campaign spending on everything but her own reelection shows she doesn’t regard Sheehan as much of a threat. But the antiwar candidate did make it onto the ballot Aug. 8 and the Sheehan campaign has raised approximately $350,000 since December in small contributions after refusing to accept money from PACs and corporations.

"We didn’t have the party infrastructure going into this," said Sheehan campaign manager Tiffany Burns, adding that Pelosi’s campaign expenditures are "just another example of how Pelosi believes she is entitled to this seat."

Pelosi can’t duck the next Bush war

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EDITORIAL The last time the George W. Bush administration began the saber-rattling that would take the nation into war, the Democratic leadership in Congress was afraid to say a word in opposition. It was that period of fear-driven politics just after 9/11, but even then, the evidence was pretty clear that Saddam Hussein and Iraq had never attacked the United States. And every intelligent observer around the world predicted (correctly) that invading Iraq would be an expensive, bloody, and ultimately counterproductive nightmare.

Now there’s talk about sending US troops to Georgia to help the Georgian army fight the Russians. (There are, according to the Army newspaper Stars and Stripes, 127 military trainers and advisors already in that country.) This time, there’s nothing resembling a national security threat; it’s just Cold War madness bubbling up again. And once again, there’s a resounding lack of protest from the leaders of the Democratic Party.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) joined the two top Republicans in the House, John Boehner of Ohio and Missouri’s Roy Blunt, in issuing a militaristic and aggressive statement that reads, in part:

"The bipartisan leadership of the US House of Representatives stands united in condemning — in the strongest possible terms — the recent Russian invasion of the sovereign state of Georgia. The United States is committed to Georgia’s absolute sovereignty."

The speaker herself, according to her press office, has said nothing further on the matter. She has not, for example, said she would oppose sending US troops to the region.

The US news media has done a terrible job of covering the geopolitics of the conflict, but if you read the British press, particularly the UK Guardian and The Independent (London), and you review what progressive think tanks are saying, you get a very different perspective. This isn’t simply a case of Russian aggression. As J. Victor Marshall, of the Oakland-based Independent Institute, put it in a piece that’s posted on sfbg.com:

"There’s no real doubt that Georgia began the latest conflict by launching an artillery barrage against South Ossetia’s main city the night of Aug. 7, though it claims to have been provoked by armed militants from the tiny region’s 65,000 people."

That’s not to say Russia reacted properly, or that the United States shouldn’t condemn the invasion. But the situation is a lot more complicated than the simple spectre of Russian tanks attacking a purported US ally.

And the prospect of the United States getting involved in that conflict — with American soldiers fighting Russians — has the potential to ignite a serious military conflagration.

Pelosi can’t be allowed to duck this time. She needs to come out strongly and say that she will not support sending combat troops to Georgia and will work to cut funding for any such military adventure.

PG&E and a Rock Rapids, Iowa, liberal

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

I confess. I am an old-fashioned Rock Rapids, Iowa, liberal. For starters, that means I grew up in a little town in northwestern Iowa that has had public power since 1896 and so i know personally that public power is cheap, reliable, and accountable.

In San Francisco, where PG&E private power is expensive, unreliable, and unaccountable, I was startled to find that I am suddenly an “ultra liberal,” along with a host of other progressives and independents who support the Clean Energy Initiative and public power.

Yes, according to PG&E and the San Francisco Chronicle, we are all suspicious characters and ought to be kept under watch for the duration for advocating such “ultra-liberal” things as clean energy, renewables, public power, mandates for making San Francisco a world leader in renewables, and kicking PG&E out of the mayor’s office and the DCCC.

As Tim Redmond points out in his Editors notes (8/20/08), the term first appeared in Heather Knight’s Aug. 15th article on the changes in the Democratic County Central Committee (DCCC), for decades the unassailable bastion of the Burton/ Brown machine. Her lead, he noted, was “almost breathtaking ” in its drama. She wrote that the party “has veered dramatically to the left,” and that it would be telling voters to vote for a raft of “ultra-liberal politicians supervisorial candidates” and, among other things, to “embrace public power.” (The Clean Energy Initiative, as it is appropriately known, mandates aggressive goals for renewables but PG&E gallops swiftly by this point and loves to say without evidence that the initiative is a $4 billion takeover of PG&E, which is yet another Big PG&E Lie.)

Meanwhile, the new Chronicle columnist Willie Brown, who ran endless errands for PG&E as mayor and as a private attorney on the public payroll, and collected a nifty $200,000 in “consulting services” in 2007 from PG&E, wrote without gulping:

“It was quite a week for local politics, with the certified takeover of the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee by outgoing Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin and Chris Daly…But what’s really going on here behind the headlines is a move by the ‘progressives’ to take over the central committee a la Tammany Hall or Richard Daley’s Chicago. The goal is to control the party money and endorsements–and that way be able to pick candidates for office as well.

“In other words the central committee will be Peskin’s shadow mayoralty, allowing Peskin to keep calling the shots even when he leaves office.”

Tammany Hall? Richard Daley’s Chicago? Why didn’t Wiillie just say what the facts are: that the Burton/Brown machine, and Mayor Newsom and PG&E et al, are no longer calling the shots on the DCCC and that a group of real progressives are cutting the umbilical cord to machine politics and calling the shots with real progressive issues and initiatives, such as the Clean Energy Act. Willie also couldn’t say of course that PG&E got much of its influence through his office as mayor and the Burton/Brown machine, which never put as much as a pebble in PG&E’s monopoly path. Thus, until now, the machine-dominated DCCC has been a safe haven for PG&E and even this time around the real progressives only won through a major organizing effort and tough battle.

Tim wrote that he thinks Newsom’s political operatives are mad that “the progressives have seized control of the term ‘progressives.’ which is in fact an accurate and historically valuable term. They’d like to call Newsom a progressive mayor, which is inaccurate and historically invalid. But since they can’t get away with that, they’ve pushed the Chronicle to use another term for people like Chris Daly and Aaron Peskin and the best the editors could come up with is ‘ultra liberal.'” The Chronicle, which appears to be once again revving up for PG&E, tosses a juicy T-bone to PG&E and its campaign theme that only the loony left would support such dread issues as clean energy and public power.

Maybe we have a new insight into the term progressive. A real progressive supports the Clean Energy Act and public power, while a phony Willie Brown/Gavin Newsom ‘progressive,’ in quotes, supports PG&E and opposes the Clean Energy Act. In short, there is a big difference between a real progressive and a PG&E ‘progressive.’

And me? I’m still just an old-fashioned Rock Rapids, Iowa, liberal.

More to come on this illuminating subject, B3

P.S. 1:Hearst ethics policy: If Hearst wants to present Willie Brown as a “legitimate” journalist and featured political columnist, making value judgments and ethical pronouncements on who is and is not a real progressive and whether the DCCC has been taken over by clean energy progressives playing Tammany Hall/Richard Daley machine politics, the Chronicle ought at minimum to require disclosure of his “consulting services” for PG&E and other private interests that would conflict his column? What specific “consulting services” did he provide for PG&E in 2007? What is he doing now for PG&E and for how much in the November election? Is he writing a political column for the Chronicle and working for PG&E at the same time? Is he advising PG&E on how to “steal” another election?
(I left a message for Willie at the Willie Brown Institute and I put out an email to Hearst corporate for comment on Willie’s PG&E/editorial role.)

It was Mayor Willie, as the public power campaign was winning in the 2001 public power election, who ordered that the ballots be moved from City Hall to the Civic Auditorium because of an anthrax scare. I remember standing with Angela Alioto about l0:30 p.m. on election night when then Elections Director Tammy Haygood, announced the anthrax move. “Angela,” I said, “we’ve lost the election.” She didn’t believe me and kept saying, “No, no, we couldn’t lose the election now.” Alas, I was right.

We raced over to the Auditorium where there was only minimal security. There was no evidence then or later of an anthrax scare. PG&E came from behind and won by a bare 500 votes. Several days later, several tops of the election boxes were found floating in the bay. There was no explanation from Willie nor his election director and no real investigation. The gallows humor was that the campaign should hire divers to go into the bay and find the missing ballots.

PG&E’s big payments: PG&E discloses the $200,000 payment to Willie Brown for “consulting services” in 2007 in its annual report to the California Public Utilities Commission. In a key section of this report (called page 257), PG&E is required to list every payment that it made to an outside company or consultant. This amounts to billions year.
PG&E has the entire annual report posted on its Investor Relations website, but, significantly, page 357 is missing.
PG&E’s statement explaining the omission says: “Details of this page are filed with the California Public Utilities Commission.” Reporter Amanda Witherell formally asked the CPUC press office for it and they said they’re “trying to track it down.” But she did get a copy.

Newsom heads South

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By Steven T. Jones
In the latest indication that Mayor Gavin Newsom intends to run as far away from San Francisco values as possible during his bid for governor, his campaign announced today the hiring of Garry South as its senior adviser.
I got to know South during my years as news editor for the Sacramento News & Review, when he was an adviser to then-Gov. Gray Davis, and I share the concerns of others that he represents the antithesis of Democratic Party values.
While the California Energy Crisis was barreling down on this state’s citizens and government, with enough time to head off the worst impacts, I listened to South indignantly defend the governor’s laissez faire approach until way after such passivity was indefensible. I argued with him as Davis became the most mindless law-and-order governor in California history (Davis famously argued for patterning our criminal justice system on that of repressive Singapore, a ludicrous South-inspired statement he never disavowed). And I sat in court while South and his Republican counterparts pleaded with a judge to overturn voter-approved campaign finance limits.
Garry South’s conservative triangulation approach to politics is arguably a big reason why Davis was recalled, leaving us with the Governator. Along with other soulless, scorched-earth political operatives in Camp Newsom — including Nathan Ballard, Peter Ragone, and Chris Lehane — South is sure to drag this campaign down into the lowest common denominator muck.
Hmm, maybe this isn’t such a bad thing after all. Newsom can run from us, lose, and then we won’t need to keep explaining why Newsom is from San Francisco, but not of San Francisco.

Willie Brown complains about political power

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Okay, this is incredibly ironic: Former Mayor Willie Brown, now a Chronicle columnist, is suddenly complaining about the use of political power. From his piece yesterday on the changes at the Democratic County Central Committee:

But what’s really going on behind the headlines is a move by the “progressives” to take over the central committee a la Tammany Hall or Richard Daley’s Chicago. The goal is to control the party money and endorsements – and that way be able to pick candidates for office as well.

In other words the central committee will be Peskin’s shadow mayoralty, allowing Peskin to keep calling shots even when he leaves office.

Willie, Willie, Willie — YOU were the one who took Chicago-style machine politics to a new level in San Francisco. You were the one who controlled the money, the endorsements, the DCCC, the Board of Supervisors … Now you’re complaining?

Breaking: Leno endorses Sanchez

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Just got word that state Assemblymember (and Senator-elect) Mark Leno is going to endorse School Board member Mark Sanchez for supervisor in District 9. “We’ve got his endorsement,” Sanchez just told me by phone. “We’re putting out the press release today.”

That makes two Green Party members the Democratic lawmaker is backing; he’s also endorsed Ross Mirkarimi in D5. Good for Leno not to let the irrational fear of Greens that so many Democrats harbor influence him; this is, after all, a nonpartisan race.

It’s a tough choice in D9 — Sanchez, Police Commission member David Campos and housing activist Eric Quezada are all good progressives and any of the three would be a great supervisor. Quezada, I think, never had much of a chance with Leno; he’s pretty close to Sup. Chris Daly, who was a strong backer of Carole Migden in the bitter Migden-Leno senate race. Campos is close to Sup. Tom Ammiano, who was neutral in the Leno-Migden brawl — but Campos, who is on the Democratic County Central Committee, voted for Aaron Peskin as chair. Leno’s candidate (and he was pusing him hard) was Scott Weiner, who narrowly lost.

Quezada also ran for DCCC, but didn’t win.

Sanchez, as a Green, was able to stay out of both the Migden-Leno fight and the Peskin-Weiner contest. Oddly enough, not being a Democrat may have helped him here.

Campos, by taking the stand he thought was right and voting for Peskin (despite immense pressure), may have scotched any chance of getting Leno’s endorsement. “That’s politics,” he told me. Yes, it is.

(UPDATE: Sanchez corrects me: He endorsed Leno for state Senate months before the election. So the Leno endorsement is even less of a surprise.)

Enviro-metalists

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"There was this fateful moment where we were like, ‘Fuck this shit! Hippie commune? Black metal band? Let’s do this!’<0x2009>" Wolves in the Throne Room drummer Aaron Weaver says, describing the synergistic beginnings of his group’s music and their 10-acre working farm, Calliope.

WITTR is living every nature-loving hessian’s dream. Not content with the icy, masturbatory satanism of Scandinavian death-metal forebears like Mayhem, or with the politics of the dogmatic punk scene from which they spawned, or about to hold hands and coo "Kumbaya," the three-piece from Olympia, Wash., has united a scathing brand of metal with inspired ecological spirituality. Say what?

To enviro-heads concerned with planetary destruction and nuclear apocalypse, and metalists banging their heads to songs about violent destruction and nuclear apocalypse, the connection is obvious.

"If we had to boil our band down to one thing: we’re just so fucking miserable and pissed all the time about the stuff that is going on in the world, just this wholesale war against anything beautiful or good or whole or pure," explains Weaver by phone from his little house across the courtyard from WITTR’s practice space.

Running counter to the activist tendencies of its punk cousins, the traditional metal scene has generally recoiled from politically correct statements. WITTR blends the two, embracing eco-feminism and radical ecology on a spiritually intuitive level rather than an overbearingly didactic one. Their second, latest album, 2007’s Two Hunters (Southern Lord), creates a dynamic continuum — not unlike nature itself — by pointedly channeling the sorrow and deep rage of a planet in crisis. Bookended by buggy chirps of the witching hour and twittering birds, the four tracks slowly creep with a plodding, atmospheric tension, climaxing in speed-of-light picking, drums to move mountains, and the throat-raking terror screams of Weaver’s younger brother and guitarist, Nathan.

Is this how Mother Earth would sound if she could respond in minor chords and time signatures? WITTR’s lyrics too are one with nature. As Two Hunters‘ 18-minute closing saga, "I Will Lay Down My Bones Among the Rocks and Roots," goes, "The wood is filled with the sounds of wildness / The songs of birds fill the forest on this new morning / This will be my new home / Deep within the most sacred grove."

Production-wise, WITTR carries through a similar awareness and intricacy, intent on crafting meticulously layered recordings. "The black metal aesthetic is just what we happen to use, but the main goal is to create soundscapes," Weaver says, noting that a typical song has about 20 guitar tracks. Earth producer Randall Dunn gave Two Hunters a palpable warmth, working primarily in analog at Aleph Studios in Seattle, and the band is planning to collaborate with Dunn again on its third full-length, due in February 2009. On it, touring bassist Will Lindsay will take over as the vocalist and second guitarist from new dad Rick Dahlin.

In a sense, WITTR’s devotion to re-awakening an ancient spirit rooted in their home turf is nothing new. Black metal is steeped in bioregional qualities, whether exuding a chilly clime and calling on Nordic deities or reading tarot cards and summoning the melancholy, intense quiet of the Pacific Northwest’s mossy old-growth forests. "That’s always been the explicit goal, to really express the spirit of this place, which has a very specific feel to it," Weaver says. "It’s a really dreamy kind of energy."

So next time you put on WITTR, remember it’ll sound best if you’re snug within a sacred grove — and make sure you have a lunar calendar and a Jepson Manual on hand. As the outfit argues in its band bio — required reading for fans of Derrick Jensen and Burzum alike — "If you listen to black metal, but you don’t know what phase the moon is in, or what wildflowers are blooming, then you have failed."

WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM

With Ludicra and the Better to See You With

Tues/12, 8 p.m., $15

Slim’s

333 11th St., SF

(415) 255-0333

www.slims-sf.com

SFPUC shuffle

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› sarah@sfbg.com

The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission is arguably the city’s most important commission. It provides water to 1.6 million customers in three Bay Area counties and handles sewage treatment and municipal power for San Francisco. But right now, it lacks a governing body.

Until recently there were no minimum job requirements for its five commissioners, who are all appointees. The only way the Board of Supervisors could block the mayor’s picks for these all-important posts was through a two-thirds vote (that requires eight supervisors) made within 30 days of the selection.

That changed June 3 when voters approved Proposition E. The board placed this legislation on the ballot in response to Mayor Gavin Newsom’s "without cause" firing of SFPUC former General Manager Susan Leal last year, and his reappointment this spring of Commissioner Dick Sklar, a former SFPUC general manager whose anti–public power tirades and rudeness to SFPUC staff was at odds with the goals and values of the board’s majority.

Prop. E’s passage required that the current SFPUC be disbanded by Aug. 1, set minimum qualifications for future nominees, and stipulated that new commissioners cannot take office until at least six supervisors confirm the mayor’s picks.

Newsom responded by renominating Sklar, along with two other incumbents—former PUC President Ann Moller Caen, and F.X. Crowley, who works for the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees.

Newsom also nominated two newcomers — Nora Vargas, executive director of the Latino Affairs Forum, a statewide nonprofit advocacy group, and Jell-O heiress Francesca Vietor, director of the city’s Department of the Environment from 1999 to 2001.

Kicked to the curb in this preliminary shuffle was David Hochschild, a solar advocate who steered the SFPUC away from building peaker plants and toward retrofitting the aging Mirant power plant. Also ousted was E. Dennis Normandy, whom Mayor Frank Jordan appointed in 1994.

On July 29, the board unanimously approved Caen and Crowley, and seemed inclined to favor Vietor, though she has yet to appear before them to answer questions.

But they rejected Vargas after Sups. Tom Ammiano, Chris Daly, and Bevan Dufty expressed misgivings about her lack of experience with local politics and the SFPUC, not to mention concerns about the $150,000 worth of community grants PG&E gave to Vargas’ Latino Issues Forum between 2004 and 2006.

And Sklar withdrew his nomination before the board could vote on it, apparently aware that the seven votes against his nomination last time meant he was destined to fall short of the new requirement.

These initial changes have led Leal to believe that Prop. E is already having the desired effect. "The rules before meant that the supervisors had 30 days to come up with eight votes, and that’s a very tough thing to do," Leal told the Guardian. "The fact that Dick Sklar had to get six votes, when he barely got four votes in February, is why he withdrew his name. And if you look at the way the supervisors handled the process last time around, this time they seem more vested in it."

Newsom has not yet forwarded any more picks to the Board, so the makeup of the body that will govern the SFPUC until August 2012 is still undecided. But it’s likely that the first matter of business for the new SFPUC will be responding to board recommendations that are sure to flow from an August hearing into CH2M Hill’s study on the feasibility of retrofitting Mirant’s Potrero units 4, 5, and 6.

Leal believes the retrofit plan is "sketchy at best."

"I think that trying to retrofit a 1973 plant is like one former PUC commissioner thinking you can repair the 50-year-old digesters out at the southeast wastewater treatment plant," Leal told the Guardian, referring to Sklar’s equally unpopular attempt to block a costly but necessary rebuild of the SFPUC’s sewage digesters.

"To me, this is Mirant and PG&E still deciding whether there will be something polluting in the air," Leal added.

On July 22, at its last meeting before being disbanded, the Sklar-led SFPUC voted to rescind its former plan to build a new peaker power plant in the city’s southeast sector, and to instead pursue the Mirant retrofit.

Sup. Bevan Dufty notes that a retrofit of this kind "hasn’t been done anywhere else in the world." Board President Aaron Peskin observes that, "unlike the peaker plan, which was subjected to thousands of pages of analysis, the retrofit plan was cooked up behind closed doors with no public hearings."

Noting that Mirant only needs a building permit to keep operating at the site, Peskin says that is why he joined Sups. Sophie Maxwell, Jake McGoldrick, and Dufty in introducing legislation to require conditional use permits of future power plants.

"ATM machines, bakeries, and restaurants need conditional uses, so why not power plants?" Peskin said.

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi believes the peakers and retrofit are competing as the lesser of two evils, which is one reason why he and Ammiano wrote the fall ballot measure called the Clean Energy Act, which would create ambitious goals for renewable power. Mirkarimi told us, "There needs to be a robust campaign for a third plan that combines a transmission-only mandate and a strong renewable energy mechanism that compensates for the Mirant shutdown."

Going green requires cooperation

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EDITORIAL There are some clear and compelling things San Francisco needs to be doing to protect the environment and reduce its carbon footprint, such as converting to renewable electricity sources and promoting alternatives to the automobile. But as the past couple of weeks at City Hall have demonstrated, city officials are letting petty politics interfere with working together to do the right thing.

Obviously, the most important step toward combating climate change is to convert the power portfolio of city residents to renewable energy sources. Nobel laureate Al Gore challenged the entire country to move toward 100 percent renewable power sources within 10 years during a landmark speech July 17.

But days later, when Gore appeared at the Netroots Nation convention in Austin, Texas, to repeat the challenge to the assembled bloggers, fellow guest speaker Mayor Gavin Newsom came out against the San Francisco Clean Energy Act, which would set even more modest goals for conversion to green power sources.

Newsom’s reason, as Sarah Phelan and Janna Brancolini explain in this week’s Green City column, is fear of provisions in the legislation that call for studying — just studying — public power options for achieving these goals. Considering Newsom has repeatedly told the Guardian that he supports public power, it’s disgraceful that he’s so beholden to Pacific Gas and Electric and so mindlessly adversarial toward the Board of Supervisors that he would oppose setting high green power standards.

But Newsom isn’t the only one playing this game. Board president Aaron Peskin is trying to scuttle Sunday Streets, which would temporarily close six miles of roadway to cars as part of an international trend to promote carfree spaces, simply because it was Newsom who proposed it (see "Pedal power," 7/23/08).

True, Newsom is a newcomer to the carfree movement — having spent years blocking proposed street closures in Golden Gate Park — but his conversion was warmly embraced by progressive groups such as Livable City and the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and should have been supported by Peskin and other supervisors.

Meanwhile, the city is doing little to fight the ongoing court injunction against bicycle projects even as required environmental work on the Bicycle Plan falls behind schedule. In connection with a July 21 hearing on that delay, both Planning Director John Rahaim and City Attorney Dennis Herrera have called for reform to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and for changes in how the city interprets traffic impacts under the act.

"It’s truly ironic that an activity that is inherently environmentally friendly is being challenged under an environmental law," Rahaim said of bicycling as he testified before the Land Use Committee. He’s right. City officials should aggressively move forward with the local reforms under consideration and push the bureaucracy to keep the Bike Plan on the fast track.

Meanwhile, our state legislators should work to amend CEQA to exempt pedestrian and bicycle improvements from costly and time-consuming environmental impact reports and our federal representatives should start laying the groundwork now to ensure next year’s big transportation bill reauthorization promotes alternatives to the automobile.

As a gesture of cooperation and goodwill, Newsom should come out and support Sup. Chris Daly’s latest proposal to close Market Street to automobiles, which would greatly speed up public transit, improve pedestrian safety, and create an attractive bicycle boulevard in the heart of the city.

The idea was first pitched by former mayor Willie Brown and has already been studied and vetted by the city bureaucracy. This could be the first big cooperative project between the board and the Mayor’s Office, a team effort against the forces of the status quo. And if it is successful, just imagine what they could take on after that.

Realism about Russia

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Here is the first column in a series we will be running from Project Syndicate. Project Syndicate is an international association of newspapers devoted to bringing distinguished voices from across the world to local audiences everywhere, strengthening the independence of printed media in transition and developing countries and upgrading their journalistic, editorial, and business capacities. To learn more about Project Syndicate visit: www.project-syndicate.org/

Realism about Russia

By Joschka Fischer

BERLIN – Russia’s strategy to revise the post-Soviet order in what it calls its “near abroad” will be pursued with even more perseverance following its victory over Georgia. Europe should have no illusions about this and should begin to prepare itself. But, as the European Union ponders what to do, cold realism, not hysterical overreaction, is in order.

Unfortunately, equating the current situation in the Caucasus with the Soviet Union’s invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 does not attest to this kind of realism. Neither the West nor NATO constitutes the decisive strategic threat facing Russia, which comes from the Islamic South and from the Far East, in particular the emerging superpower, China. Moreover, Russia’s strength is in no way comparable to that of the former Soviet Union.

Indeed, demographically, Russia is undergoing a dramatic decline. Apart from commodity exports, it has little to offer to the global economy.

Notwithstanding booming oil and gas revenues, its infrastructure remains underdeveloped, and successful economic modernization is a long way off. Likewise, its political and legal system is authoritarian, and its numerous minority problems remain unsolved. As a result, Russia’s current challenging of the territorial integrity of Georgia might prove to be a grave error in the not-so-distant future.

Given this structural weakness, the idea of a new Cold War is misleading. The Cold War was an endurance race between two similarly strong rivals, the weaker of which eventually had to give up. Russia does not have the capacity to wage another struggle of that type. Nevertheless, as a restored great power, the new Russia will for the time being attempt to ride in the slipstream of other great powers for as long as doing so coincides with its possibilities and interests; it will concentrate on its own sphere of influence and on its role as a global energy power; and it will otherwise make use of its opportunities on a global scale to limit America’s power. But it will not be able to seriously challenge the United States – or looking towards the future, China – in ways that the Soviet Union once did.

It is now clear that in the future, Russia will once again pursue its vital interests with military force – particularly in its “near abroad.” But Europe must never accept a renewal of Russian great power politics, which operates according to the idea that might makes right. Indeed, it is here that Russia’s renewed confrontation with the West begins, because the new Europe is based on the principle of the inviolability of boundaries, peaceful conflict resolution, and the rule of law, so to forgo this principle for the benefit of imperial zones of influence would amount to self-abandonment. Further eastward expansion of NATO, however, will be possible only against fierce Russian resistance. Nor will this kind of policy in any way create more security, because it entails making promises that won’t be kept in an emergency – as we now see in Georgia.

For too long, the West has ignored Russia’s recovery of strength and was not prepared to accept the consequences. But not only Russia has changed; so has the entire world. America’s neo-conservatives have wasted a large part of their country’s power and moral authority in an unnecessary war in Iraq, willfully weakening the only global Western power. China, India, Brazil, Russia, and the Persian Gulf today are the world economy’s new growth centers and will soon be centers of power to be reckoned with. In view of these realities, the threat of exclusion from the G8 doesn’t really feel earth shattering to Russia. Europe’s disunity and impotence underline this image of a West that has partially lost touch with geo-political realities.

The response to the return of Russia’s imperial great power politics has nothing to do with punishing Russia, and a lot to do with establishing innately Western – especially European – positions of power. This requires several measures:

• a new political dynamism vis-à-vis Turkey to link this country, one crucial for European security, permanently to Europe;

• putting a stop to Moscow’s divide-and-conquer politics by adopting a common EU energy policy;

• a serious initiative for strengthening Europe’s defense capabilities;

• a greater EU commitment to Ukraine to safeguard its independence;

• a greater freedom of travel for all the EU’s Eastern neighbors.

All of this, and much more, is needed to send a clear signal to Russia that Europe is unwilling to stand idly by as it returns to great power politics.

Presumably, none of this will happen, and it is precisely such inaction that is, in large part, the cause of Russia’s strength and Europe’s weakness. At the same time, however, one shouldn’t lose sight of the joint interests linking Russia and the West. Cooperative relations should be maintained as far as possible.

It is blatantly obvious that for Russia’s elites, weakness and cooperation are mutually exclusive. Therefore, whoever wants cooperation with Russia – which is in Europe’s interest – must be strong. That is the lesson from the violence in the Caucasus that Europe must urgently take to heart.

Joschka Fischer, Germany’s Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor from 1998 to 2005, led Germany’s Green Party for nearly 20 years.

Copyright: Project Syndicate/Institute for Human Sciences, 2008.
www.project-syndicate.org

PG&E’s PUC appointee

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The Rules Committee of the Board of Supervisors voted Monday to forward the appointment of Nora Vargas to the SF Public Utilities Commission, without recommendation. The three supervisors on the committee (Tom Ammiano, Chris Daly, and Bevan Dufty) all expressed concern that Vargas’ lack of experience with local politics and public utilities issues might be a setback should she fill the seat.

Vargas is director of Latino Issues Forum, a statewide nonprofit advocacy group, with offices in Fresno, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. LIF works on healthcare reform, educational issues, and consumer rights for immigrants and Latino populations. Vargas would fill the ratepayer advocate seat on the PUC.

Vargas, when questioned by the Rules Committee, said she felt confident of her ability to act independently of her appointing authority, Mayor Gavin Newsom, and that she would put ratepayers and consumers first. When asked if she’d be able to push back against powerful entities like Pacific Gas and Electric, which takes an active interest in many things the SFPUC control, Vargas cited her experience advocating on behalf of ratepayers at the California Public Utilities Commission.

We know PG&E likes to spread their money and influence throughout the city. In this case, between 2004 and 2006, PG&E has given $150,000 to Latino Issues Forum, as part of their community grantmaking.

This is the same kind of giving that would presumably end should San Francisco voters approve the Clean Energy Act this November. “We no longer will be contributing to San Francisco’s non-profits and service organizations,” PG&E’s Brandon Hernandez told a June 27 meeting of the Rule Committee, at which they voted to put the Clean Energy Act on the November ballot. The measure calls for San Francisco to move toward 100 percent clean and renewable energy, possibly through public construction and ownership, thus putting PG&E out of business in this city.

Additionally, Guillermo Rodriguez, Jr., former public relations flak for PG&E, is on the board of Latino Issues Forum (along with two other private utility executives.) Rodriguez left PG&E to head the A. Philip Randolph Institute, which also receives lots and lots of PG&E’s money on a regular basis.

Vargas’ appointment to the SFPUC is up for approval by the full Board of Supervisors at today’s meeting, along with Newsom’s four other appointments – Ann Moller Caen, FX Crowley, Francesca Vietor, and Dick Sklar. Sklar, at the last PUC meeting, withdrew his candidacy for the seat.

Letters

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PARTY PROMOTERS


The following two comments appeared with a July 21 posting to SFBG’s Politics blog, "DCCC vote: Does Peskin have it?"

We need a strong leader in our local Democratic Party that will call out our elected leaders on their BS. For example, [Nancy] Pelosi and her continued "do nothing but throw more monies at the war" approach. I have sat by and watched the DCCC leaders do nothing but carry the party line toward the right. It’s time for a change and to bring our party back to the left. Chris Daly would be the best one to make that happen, but unfortunately he is backing Peskin for that. I trust Chris, so I will have to go along with it for now. In 2010 you will have a chance to put your name on the next DCCC race if you don’t like how things are going.

Jerry Jarvis

Sup. Daly, never a fan of your brand of politics. I believe that San Franciscans will for years be harmed if your friend and colleague Sup. Peskin is elected chair of DCCC.

You will see my letter in this week’s Bay Area Reporter quoting both you and Mr. Peskin on your intent to change the way things are done on the DCCC and how you’re being termed off the Board of Supervisors seems to have energized you to find new ways to continue legisutf8g from beyond City Hall.

I fear for everyday San Franciscans, I fear for your children, I fear for businesses (who will pay taxes to support all that you and Sup. Peskin want to do?), and I fear for the survival of a united San Francisco.

Similar to the recent Leno vs. Migden race, I am deeply dismayed at the vitriol and partisan nature this race has taken.

Mark Murphy

WHAT IS JEWISH MUSIC?


The following comment appeared with a July 15 posting to SFBG’s Noise blog, "Shining a light on Diamond Days ’08 music fest."

Heeb magazine repeatedly demonstrates that it is pretty clueless when it comes to Jewish culture outside of a narrow set of tired shticks. When [publisher Josh] Neuman comments that "Jewish music" is "a murky moniker that generally signifies some sort of backwards gaze at a mythical, ‘authentic’ past," he’s demonstrating that he has no idea what’s going on in the Jewish music scene. Jewish music has never been so forward-looking as it is now. There are artists all over the country (and world) exploring what Jewish music can become. They are, with no more lofty goal than making great music, creating a new American Jewish culture that is as vibrant as anything that has come before. But Heeb hasn’t noticed and isn’t interested. In Heeb‘s world, being Jewish is nothing more than wearing a hip "tribe" T-shirt while laughing at your grandparents. Who’s looking backward?

Jack Zaint

The Guardian welcomes letters commenting on our coverage or other topics of local interest. Letters should be brief (we reserve the right to edit them for length) and signed. Please include a daytime telephone number for verification.

Corrections and clarifications: The Guardian tries to report news fairly and accurately. You are invited to complain to us when you think we have fallen short of that objective. Complaints should be directed to Paula Connelly, the assistant to the publisher. We’d prefer them in writing, but Connelly can also be reached by phone at (415) 255-3100. If we have published a misstatement, we will endeavor to correct it quickly and in an appropriate place in the newspaper. If you remain dissatisfied, we invite you to contact the Minnesota News Council, an impartial organization that hears and considers complaints against news media. It can be reached at 12 South Sixth St., Suite 1122, Minneapolis MN 55402; (612) 341-9357; fax (612) 341-9358.

Squatumentary: A Q&A with Hannah Dobbz

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By Liam O’Donoghue

Hannah Dobbz’s Shelter: A Squatumentary screens at 8 p.m. tonight at Artists’ Television Access. A 45-minute exploration of squatting in the East Bay between 2004 and 2007, it shares a bill with Sabrina Alonso’s self-explanatory 28-minute Mischief at 16th and Florida. I recently discussed the the pros and cons and politics of squatting with Dobbz, a freelance writer, editor and filmmaker.

SFBG What is your definition of squatting?
Hannah Dobbz Squatting could be using an abandoned building for a project or just for sleeping. It could be using an abandoned lot for gardening. Generally speaking, squatting is utilizing any unused space.

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Hannah Dobbz

SFBG Is there anything that could be described as a “squatting scene” in the Bay Area?
HD Hard to say, since it’s so secretive and clandestine. If people are squatting, they usually don’t want everybody to know. They might need to sneak in at night and leave early in the morning. Not all squats can be used as community spaces.
The most well-known squat was probably Hellarity in Oakland, which is featured in the film. Another squatter featured in the film is Steve DiCaprio, who is working on Banana House and another house now, but that’s more of a private project — not really part of a scene. There is definitely a community of people who would consider themselves squatters (former or current), but using the word ‘scene’ is not really applicable.

High speed rail moves forward

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The California High Speed Rail Authority, during a meeting this morning in San Francisco, voted unanimously to set the Bay Area route through the Pacheco Pass and up the peninsula into the Transbay Terminal and to approve the related environmental documents. The action ends a three-year controversy over whether to bring the proposed high-speed rail line over Pacheco Pass, a cheaper and easier option favored by most Bay Area politicians and government agencies, or over the Altamont Pass, an option favored by groups such as the Planning and Conservation League and California Rail Foundation, which are threatening a lawsuit over today’s decision. The CHSRA board also voted unanimously today to pursue creation of a separate, regional rail line over Altamont that would connect into the high speed rail system.
Meanwhile, there are battles in Sacramento over Assembly Bill 3034, which would update the language and financial oversight provisions of Proposition 1, the $10 billion high speed rail bond measure on the November ballot, replacing current language that was written six years ago when the measure was first approved for the ballot before it was repeatedly pushed back by the Legislature. That bill, which needs a two-thirds vote of both legislative houses, is being heard tomorrow by the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Once built, the high speed trains would travel at up to 220 mph and make the trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles Union Station in about two and a half hours, mostly likely running entirely on renewable energy sources without the huge greenhouse gas output from either driving or flying. For a lengthy discussion of the project, its complicated politics, today’s vote, and the dramas surrounding AB 3034 and Senator Leland Yee, read next week’s Guardian.

McGoldrick’s privatization betrayal

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OPINION This isn’t the first time it’s happened. Most politicians break promises. That’s the nature of politics. But when someone signs a pledge — twice — saying he won’t privatize city services, when he holds himself out as a champion of anti-privatization and then goes directly against that stand —well, it kind of makes you wonder.

That politician is San Francisco Sup. Jake McGoldrick. In the past, he stood against privatizing services. He has fought for golf courses, for the Internet; heck, he even fought for horses when Mayor Gavin Newsom threatened to privatize the stables. During the Service Employees International Union endorsement process, he signed a pledge that he would not privatize work currently done by city workers. We endorsed him and even fought against the effort to recall him. But when the rubber hit the road for people, he screeched out of there.

Newsom has proposed contracting out the work of the Institutional Police, a group of workers represented by SEIU Local 1021. Institutional police officers work primarily at San Francisco General and Laguna Honda hospitals, but they also provide security at health clinics throughout the city. That security — not only for the workers, but for the community that these institutions serve as well — might soon be gone.

If you have ever been in SF General’s emergency room during a violent incident, you know exactly how bad a decision that would be. A nurse who met with McGoldrick described how bad it got on her shift one night. A man who had been shot was being transported to the ER, and the shooter was following closely behind, hoping to finish off the job. When the victim and assailant pulled up to General, the institutional police were there waiting with guns drawn. They disarmed the shooter and arrested him.

The nurse who told this story looked McGoldrick squarely in the eye and told him that the community would know immediately when the ER was staffed by private security officers, and that would endanger the workers and the patients there.

Even the union that represents the private security officers — whose members would get the jobs — told McGoldrick the work should remain with the institutional police.

Training for private security officers is minimal and inconsistent. Turnover is rapid. When private security officers are transferred to new buildings, they’re often not trained on its specific emergency procedures. There is little oversight to enforce existing state training requirements.

This shouldn’t be about money. A couple of weeks ago, during public hearings on the budget, the Controller’s Office reported on the exponential growth of six-figure salaried executive positions in the past few years; 55 new management jobs were created this year alone. McGoldrick, who heads the Budget and Finance Committee, could easily have moved some of that money around, as SEIU 1021 advocated, rather than leave the city’s health care facilities at risk. But he didn’t.

Unfortunately, it only takes one bad incident to expose the false "savings" of contracting out security to inexperienced and less-trained guards. Six supervisors appear to agree. What happened to Jake McGoldrick?

Robert Haaland

Labor activist Robert Haaland works for SEIU Local 1021.

Lit: Commie Girl rips OC, invades SF

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By Kat Renz

commiegirla.jpg

Commie Girl on the OC: “It took Senor Schwarzenegger’s propositions, overwhelmingly denied through the rest of the state and overwhelmingly approved here, to make me see just how willingly I’d blinded myself. It’s not the conservatism that bothers me: it’s the nastiness. The nattering classes I’d thought were fringey were in fact the decision makers.”

First off, what a great word: nattering. Second, really? I couldn’t believe Commie Girl — a.k.a. Rebecca Schoenkopf, a.k.a. “the black widow/queen bee of alternative journalism”(Orange Country Register) — claimed forced ignorance for nine years. “ ‘That’s a bad rap’,”she told me, describing her excuses over the phone from the porch of her new-as-of-eight-days home in LA. “ ‘We have a lot of Republicans, but we’re electing Democrats in central county and blah blah blah.’ But no, I was wrong. I was totally, totally wrong.”

It seems perfect timing: Schoenkopf’s inaugural book — Commie Girl in the OC (Verso Press, 2008), a compilation of scathing tales of Orange County high and low culture written under her leftie-chick moniker – was published just as she’s moved out of the OC. When I spoke with Commie Girl, she’d just finished whirlwindedly unpacking her boxes among the blue-violet jacaranda trees and 1930’s Spanish bungalows of Los Angeles’s Wilshire ‘hood. Her relocation effectively wrapped up a 12-year tenure at the Orange County Weekly and ushered in a new one as editor of Los Angeles City Beat.

But rewind a decade, when Commie Girl was born after taking over an OC Weekly nightlife column. Schoenkopf insisted her commentary be told through her unique filters: a 25-yr-old socialist, Catholic-Jewish, educated, single mother. About five years later, a little partied-out, her column evolved into pure politics.

At his Beck and call

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

The year 1994 was when Beck Hansen finally went electric. Prior to Mellow Gold (Geffen), he lodged in a shed, made homespun cassettes of lo-fi recordings, and busked on the streets of Los Angeles. Panned by critics as a novelty for slacker-minded Gen Xers, Beck epitomized the slack, flannel-draped, messy-haired ethos of most teenagers at the time — myself included — and his post-grunge anthem, "Loser," catapulted him to buzz clip status on MTV faster then you could spell Porno for Pyros. Shortly afterward, K Records quietly released One Foot in the Grave — an album’s worth of folk songs recorded before Mellow Gold that pretty much fell upon deaf ears while Beck rode his commercial wave of fame.

Mattey Hunter of the Portland, Ore., psych-folk-noise duo Meth Teeth, however, took notice. The vocalist-guitarist revealed through an e-mail that he purchased the album when he was 12 because "Loser" was "all over the radio," and he still considers it to be at the one of his favorite records.

"It’s just Beck and some friends, a trash-can acoustic, and him playing the songs he wants to play, totally stripped down," he pointed out. "He covers blues songs and sings sad love songs. I’ve never gotten into the other stuff he did, but that one blows my mind."

Meth Teeth’s folky inclinations are foreshadowed on the CD-R Hunter sent me in the mail. The disc comprises songs from the group’s February self-titled seven-inch on the Sweet Rot imprint as well as a handful of tracks from their forthcoming debut, Taking Dude Mountain by Strategy. It’s raw, yet Hunter and drummer Kyle Raquipiso jack up the din so that the needles kiss the red. The tunes are ultra-catchy with a psych-pop garagey tang. The amplifiers sound fried and blown out with fuzz and hiss while Raquipiso bangs away at his kit, and Hunter’s drawls are syrupy and monotone in delivery. You can hear Syd Barrett and the Kinks at once, but Hunter claims he started Meth Teeth in reaction to his past musical experiences, "coming from a long line of punk bands and dealing with shitty band politics."

"There is a great to deal to be said about someone who writes about what they think or feel rather than doing that post-punk lyrical thing that sounds like you’re trying to rip off David Byrne’s ideas," Hunter writes. "I love David Byrne, but you gotta change it up every once in a while. All styles wear out their welcome, as they should."

METH TEETH

Sun/6, 9:30 p.m., $6

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk, SF

www.hemlocktavern.com

Towards Carfree Cities

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Queercore, many mornings after

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THE QUEER ISSUE Call it a harmonic convergence of two queer legends of indie rock and queercore. Victor Krummenacher of Camper Van Beethoven and Jon Ginoli of Pansy Division got together recently to talk about the way it was, coming out in the repressed 1980s and coming into their own experientially, politically, and musically in 1990s San Francisco — each, as Krummenacher puts it, a "gay guy suddenly in Candyland." Life is still sweet — and hella active — for these old friends: Krummenacher celebrates Camper’s 25th anniversary with a June 28 show at the Fillmore, and Ginoli is unleashing Pansy Division’s new documentary, Pansy Division: Life in a Gay Rock Band, at Frameline June 26, complete with an afterparty performance at the Eagle. And naturally, this won’t be the last you’ll hear from these prolific players: Pansy Division is working on a new album and Ginoli has a memoir coming next year on SF’s Cleis Press, while Krummenacher is recording as McCabe and Mrs. Miller with the Sippy Cups’ Alison Faith Levy and recently completed a fifth solo full-length. (Kimberly Chun)

JON GINOLI Before I started Pansy Division, I’d been actively trying to find other gay musicians’ records. I’d listen to records, listen for hints, and it just seemed like I was always getting disappointed in that there were musicians I heard about who were supposed to be gay that would flat-out deny it in interviews. I thought, OK, if all these people who I think are lying are not going to come out, or really aren’t … that’s when it finally dawned on me that I should do this band. At the same time I had that idea, so did Tribe 8. It was Tribe 8 and us and Glen Meadmore in Los Angeles. When we started that’s what was going on in queer rock. The only other thing I knew about — and I didn’t know about this till I started playing — was Fifth Column in Toronto.

There really wasn’t much you could point to, and that’s partly why I wanted to be as out and blunt as I could. Because it seemed like if you were gay and you liked rock ‘n’ roll, it was something you had to hide and it was something that there was some shame attached to.

VICTOR KRUMMENACHER It was an interesting time. From my perspective, we had the [Michael] Stipe rumors and we had the Hüsker Dü rumors. But it was kind of, like, don’t ask, don’t tell. Kid Congo was always out. He was always what he was, which I admired a lot.

JG I remember meeting him in New York, in ’94, ’95, and by that time, I knew he was gay. But I’d been a fan of all bands he’d been in — the Gun Club, the Cramps, and the Bad Seeds — and I didn’t know he was gay until 10 years after I’d started buying his records.

VK A lot of the reason I was attracted to punk rock was because I knew queer people in it. My friends were gay, and I was coming out, and it was just really easy to deal with because they liked the same music, and it was fun. But it was a hard time, and the ’80s sucked. I’m 43 now, and I deal with people in their 20s who have no clue how much it sucked.

JG Only the highlights have filtered down to them.

VK There was Phranc, and there was some chatter about Morrissey.

JG It’s interesting — I was thinking, OK, it’s like a ladder. You’re taking a step at a time to reach a certain place, and I was thinking about the women’s music scene, the lesbian music scene, from the late ’70s. The folk scene.

VK Which seemed a little bit more coherent.

JG But it also seemed more insular, especially when I talk to people from that period. It was about being separate, and the thing about me wanting to do Pansy Division was that I wanted to engage by using rock music. It was kind of like taking the music that’s popular but doing something that people would consider subversive with it.

People were dying, and that’s why — even though I was horny and wanted to sing these pro-gay songs — we sang about condoms a lot. We had some songs that were cautionary tales. But for somebody who was born in 1987, there’s no way that they could have much of a clue about what we’re talking about, because they just didn’t see the people dying. I moved here in ’89 from Champaign, Illinois, and one of the first things I did was join ACT UP.

VK My experiences with ACT UP and Queer Nation meetings were rowdy good times — it was go out and be visible and be noisy — and then it got very bureaucratic, which I think was a natural progression.

JG ACT UP ran its course, which was right around the time I had the idea to do Pansy Division. I’m a political person, but I don’t like too much music that’s really didactic and up front about its politics. I didn’t want to make music that people would agree with but wouldn’t really enjoy. I thought this is my way to do cultural activism.

What I wanted to mention was I had a band [the Outnumbered] before Pansy Division that had three albums. They were indie in the ’80s, and at the time, I was out to my band members, I was out to people in Champaign, but I didn’t feel like I could write about being gay in my music because I was trying to represent the band and they were all hetero.

So did you have any bands before Camper?

VK Camper was my first band, when I was 18. It was funny — I came out, and my band broke up [in 1990]. It might have had something to do with why I wanted to leave the band at the time, but it had nothing to do with the band breaking up. Basically when I came out, they were like, "And … ?" I don’t think it was any great surprise.

But the interesting thing was as soon as I came out, it was immediate acceptance. Seldom did I run into any problem, which made me wonder, why the hell didn’t I do it sooner, and why the hell didn’t more people do it?

JG It seems to me both Michael Stipe and Bob Mould have made statements about how they didn’t want to come out because they didn’t want to be seen as role models. The problem was to me, well, you’re already role models to people and some of them are gay and some of them are straight.

My own thought about it was, well, if no one is going to come out and be out in music playing the style I like, then I’ll do it. I mean, I had nothing to lose, and I do respect that other people have a lot of pressures, record companies.

VK The truth of the matter is, you guys did a lot of legwork that did ripple up.

JG So now you’re doing Camper, and you’re out, and you’re in a long-term relationship. Were you been able to meet guys at shows, even if you wanted to back then, and now that you’re out, do you have a gay contingent at Camper shows?

VK I wind up with gay contingents usually in the strangest, most unexpected ways. It’s been more than once that I’ve gone home with a guy, and he figures out, "You look familiar." Anonymity can be something you can thrive on. Or I guess, bluntly, it’s nice to fuck around and have people not know who you are — because I’ve frequently been hit on because of who I am.

What I’m interested in is, where do you see younger people going?

JG We came along pre-MySpace, pre-Internet, really. It’s so different now. It used to be a guessing game where you’d trade rumors with other gay people about people you heard that were gay. Now Pansy Division has a MySpace page, and I’m getting messages and friend requests from other queer bands all the time and a lot of straight bands, too, that like our music. So I think it’s not that big of a deal anymore unless you’re trying to make it in the mainstream. Then there’s still a wall where you can’t make it unless you’re already successful to some point, or you set out to be. Look at Rufus Wainwright. He’s on a major label, but it was obvious from the outset that he was going to be a cult figure.

VK Especially if he’s going to be doing the Judy Garland things. Not to dig too hard, but I did actually see it the other night [on PBS], and it was, like, "Why did you do that?" In a certain way, ironically, it’s great progress — "Oh, yeah, a gay guy doing all of Judy at Carnegie Hall at Carnegie Hall." My mom used to play Judy at Carnegie Hall, and I’ve always loved Judy Garland, but then I was just going, "That’s not Judy Garland. That’s just Rufus Wainwright." I feel like he’s better in his own context.

JG Given that I’ve always chafed against the gay identity that posits show tunes as part of the essential experience, I made myself sit down with the Rufus Does Judy at Carnegie Hall double CD, and, you know, his between-song patter was campy but he didn’t camp those songs up anymore than they already were. But I don’t want to hear anybody singing "The Trolley Song." I really don’t.

PANSY DIVISION: LIFE IN A GAY ROCK BAND

Screening Thurs/26, 7 p.m., $9–<\d>$10

Victoria Theatre

2961 16th St., SF

Show begins 10 p.m., $7

Eagle

398 12th St., SF

www.frameline.org

CAMPER VAN BEETHOVEN

Sat/28, 9 p.m., $25

Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

www.ticketmaster.com

Blood in, blood out

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

In John Ford’s ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, when Parma’s bright and talented Giovanni (Michael Hayden) confesses to Friar Bonaventura (Steven Anthony Jones) his passion for his equally exceptional sister, Annabella (René Augesen), the friar is quick to understand the stakes, declaring, "We have need to pray." He advises Giovanni to turn from so unnatural a desire to repentance and sorrow. "Acknowledge what thou art," he tells him, "a wretch, a worm, a nothing." But this strikes us as something of a denial of nature too, especially given our protagonist’s rare qualities. And it’s soon clear that religion will give him no solace or cure anyway. This is unsurprising, since the church — headed by a slimy cardinal (Jack Willis) — is a thoroughly dishonest institution deeply implicated in the pervasive corruption of the age. So where should Giovanni’s faith and ultimate allegiance lie in such a world? And where, in turn, should our sympathies lie?

Such questions go to the heart of what remains provocative and compelling in John Ford’s Jacobean tragedy four centuries on. It makes a kind of irrefutable sense within the context of the play that Giovanni and Annabella (clearly intended as a darker version of Romeo and Juliet) would pursue a mutual affinity and blood bond to the extremes of physical and emotional passion — with tragic consequences of course. But the surprise is that while tragic, the consequences are also, morally speaking, far from straightforward. Forging a bond that denies and defies a fallen world and its judgment, their relationship finally succumbs to the order of the day — which is to say, the disorder of violence — by self-destructing in an orgy of blood vengeance.

‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, Ford’s best-known work — whose central incest plot comes wrapped in intervening subplots driven by jealousy, power, and revenge — plumbs moral confusion and the individual conscience in a hypocritical and vicious age. No wonder it feels thematically and dramatically vital in our own spiraling time. Ford depicts a world — the tumultuous mid–17th century — where the Elizabethan certainties of Shakespeare’s day have dissolved and authority has blurred. Meanwhile, material and carnal appetites have bloomed like overripe fruit in a dilapidated garden that looks more like a jungle. The cruelty and gore here barely merit a raised eyebrow by today’s brassy standards, whether in the realm of entertainment, art, or politics. But in Ford’s time and ours, taboos don’t so much disappear as they become tantalizingly flimsy, porous and seductive, Guantánamo being one byword for this.

The still-burning fire in Ford’s tragedy is inconsistently sustained, however, in American Conservatory Theater’s new production, requiring a wade through a fairly static and fitfully persuasive first act to get to the juicier scenes and forceful momentum of the second. Artistic director Carey Perloff puts wonderful care into the production values and her casting is generally shrewd (in addition to leads Augesen and Hayden, who really heat up by the end, Anthony Fusco, Susan Gibney, and Gregory Wallace turn in particularly noteworthy performances). The baroque world of Ford’s play and our time is architecturally bridged, meanwhile, in Walt Spangler’s multileveled scenic design — an abstracted cathedral in its jewel-like beaded curtains, scattered candles in soft-colored glass, steep metallic stairways, and a treelike cluster of massive dangling organ pipes enshrouding composer-musician Bonfire Madigan Shive and her cello on a recessed tier. The "avant-baroque" cello score and Shive’s occasional anguished vocal lines add a somewhat thinner aural texture to character and scene than seems intended. But the set is stunningly integrated with Robert Wierzel’s sensual lighting design, evoking baroque canvases while draping the action in a sense of carnal luxury and exquisite decadence.

It’s a bumpy ride, but the end is well played and gripping, casting a memorable image of Giovanni drenched in the blood of his sister and lover, having utterly retreated into himself — literally into the womb of his flesh and blood, where sibling, wife, and child have all become horribly blurred. In the play’s crowning and irresolvable tension, incest is both a fundamental violation of natural order as well as an assertion of blood as the only terra firma in a world of quicksand. *

‘TIS PITY SHE’S A WHORE

Tues.–Sat., 8 p.m. (also Wed. and Sat., 2 p.m.); Sun., 2 p.m., $14–$82

American Conservatory Theater

415 Geary, SF

(415) 749-2228, www.act-sf.org

Marc Bamuthi Joseph

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PREVIEW Marc Bamuthi Joseph is an artist who makes you want to bow down in admiration or curse the gods for bestowing him with so many talents. He’s a poet. He’s a singer. A dancer. An actor. An activist. And good-looking, to boot. It doesn’t seem fair that one human being should possess so many gifts, even when he uses them for the benefit of others by revealing truths about environmental destruction, human devastation, and the experience of fatherhood. Joseph draws connections between the global and the personal to express the idea that all politics is local. Although his reputation primarily is based on his solo choreo-poems — most prominently Word Becomes Flesh (2003) — with his 2005 hip-hop Scourge, he stepped outside his comfort zone into the arena of ensemble work. For that collage-meditation on being an American of Haitian descent, he brought in a combination of actors and dancers. Now with the break/s: a mixtape for stage, he returns to the solo form. Taking Jeff Chang’s tome Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-hop Generation (Macmillan, 2005) as a starting point, Joseph puts his own perspective on the phenomenon. He has called the work "a travel diary recorded as dream. It’s Lewis and Clark at hip-hop’s Mason-Dixon line. It’s one last look at Africa."

MARC BAMUTHI JOSEPH Thurs/19–Sat/21, 8 p.m. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, San Francisco. $23–$30. (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org

Frameline 32: Sex changes

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TAKE ONE In Iranian director Tanaz Eshagian’s Be Like Others, fear hovers over a whole nation, leading to schizophrenic behavior. By concentrating on three different individuals before and after they went through sexual reassignment operations in Iran, Eshagian reveals an incredibly sad and asphyxiating society — one where homosexuality is banned and punishable by death but changing one’s sex is legal.

No matter how progressive the act of changing one’s sex might sound, Be Like Others proves that it has conservative and oppressive connotations in Iran. Most of the people considering surgery in Eshagian’s film do so because they feel that it’s their only alternative to a gay male or lesbian identity that involves disrespect, harassment, and the possibility of a horrible death. Yet instead of finding acceptance post-operation, many are even more alienated.

The reason for this insanity, as explained by one official: being gay or a cross-dresser allegedly disrupts the “social order.” In other words, gender-bending blurs the distinctions between the sexes, making Iranian social role-assignment — largely determined by sex — a confusing task.

Mind-boggling and utterly scary, Be Like Others is a great comment on people’s obsessive need to label and compartmentalize, and a statement about our disgusting fear of anything that lacks clear delineation. At first, Eshagian’s documentary might make you feel lucky to live in a country where measures against homosexuality are not as extreme. But as it sinks in, it will make you question how far removed the situation in Iran really is from that in the United States. (Maria Komodore)

TAKE TWO At first the Iranian laws that make Tanaz Eshagian’s movie necessary seem not just cruel, but absurdly and arbitrarily so. How could homosexuality be illegal and punishable by death, while the government not only sanctions sexual-reassignment surgery but acts as its facilitator?

In Be Like Others, the answer comes from Cleric Kariminiya, a so-called Theological Expert on Transexuality, during an information session for prospective patients and their families. While Islamic law explicitly forbids homosexuality, he explains, there is no such explicit restriction on changing one’s gender.

In other words, the binary sexual politics of Iranian authority are undermined by the existence of queer citizens, whose mannerisms or predilections suggest a continuum. Eshagian’s powerful film follows a few citizens who, too visibly close to the middle of that continuum, are forced to decide between the suffering and danger of their current lot and an abrupt surgical introduction into social legitimacy.

The decision-making process these individuals face is extremely difficult viewing. Those people who successfully transition often have no other option but sex work to survive. Suicide is rampant.

Eshagian’s project is exceptional because it leaves the viewer enlighteningly confused about Iranian attitudes toward gender and law. The most fascinating character in the film is a transgender woman dedicated to the care of patients in transition. She is supportive, devoted to her patients’ well-being, and fully entrenched in the traditional Iranian views of men and women. (Jason Shamai)

BE LIKE OTHERS

Mon/23, 7 p.m., Victoria

The wonderful politics of gay marriage

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I was listinging to Forum this morning on my way to work and although a few complete idiots called in, most of the talk was about how great it is that California now has legal same-sex marriage. I was struck by one caller who announced, with a kind of bemused confidence, that the protests and acrimony are really old news and will soon by ancient history.

The man, who identified himself as straight and 30 years old, said that when his generation takes control of this country, same-sex marraige will be legal, accepted and no longer an issue at all.

Michael Krasny, the host, pointed out that there are stil some young, religious types who oppose gay marriage, but the called shrugged that off. Sure, there are a few, and there will always be a few bigots and nuts around, but in fact, even the young religious types aren’t as adamant about this issue. When you grow up exposed to something as part of your culture, you come to accept it, the man said.

Yeah, I know, when I was in college I thought that when my generation took control, pot would be legal and war would be outlawed, but this guy is right. The wonderful politics of same-sex marraige is that fact that the battle is over, and we’ve won.

When two 80-year-olds who had fought all their lives for basic human rights and dignity took their vows from a mayor about half a century younger than them, it was both a victory celebration and a passing of the torch. Thanks to older queer pioneers like Lyon and Martin, and the generation that followed them, homosexuality is now a part of mainstream American society. Queers are everywhere, literally — on TV, in the movies, in magazines, in comedy, in popular music, in professional sports, going to high-school proms … and that’s never going to change.

So the religious right can make a last gasp attempt to overturn the Supreme Court decision, but that’s going to fail. The tide has turned.

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