San Francisco

Nailing it

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Queens Nails Annex has long had its street-level glam talons on the pulse of the Mission District art scene — one that so often melds visual art, music, film and video, and performance — so it’s fitting that unexpected connections are emerging from its curatorial contribution to "BAN 5": "Estacion Odesia," a four-parter named for a metro stop that will present visual works by artists and musicians at QNA and their audio pieces at YBCA listening stations; produce a limited-edition box set of music and visual artifacts; and throw a music club with downloadable playlists, an opportunity to share tracks, and monthly meetings. One surprise at the QNA show has to be the video piece by Renee Green, the dean of graduate programs at the San Francisco Art Institute, which QNA cofounder Julio César Morales describes as an extremely media-ted portrait of Green’s brother Derrick, the vocalist-guitarist of Sepultura, painted with magazine stories and radio interviews without using any of the metal giants’ actual music. "It’s an interesting mix of documentary and her personal connection to her brother," Morales muses.

ESTACION ODESIA Sat/19–Nov. 16, YBCA, first floor galleries. Also July 25–Aug. 30, Queens Nails Annex, 3191 Mission, SF. (415) 648-4564, www.queensnailsannex.com. Music club happens Aug. 15, Sept. 15, and Oct. 17, 7 p.m.

Nuclear fallout

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› sarah@sfbg.com

As the US Navy prepares to deal with its radioactive past at the Hunters Point Shipyard (HPS) — inviting folks to submit comments by July 28 on its proposed cleanup plan for Parcel B — community members are struggling to understand the threat and its implications.

Bayview–Hunters Point residents and environmental and public health advocates gathered July 8 at City College’s Southeast Community Facility to hear from and question Navy officials, but few came away satisfied. Most expressed doubts about the Navy’s credibility, or confusion about the exact risks to human health and the environment from the plan to clean up radiological, soil, and water contamination.

For the past 25 years, this 59-acre property has housed a colony of artists in the site’s Building 103, in studios rented through the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency. In September the artists will be ejected, either to portables and buildings on the shipyard or to an offsite location, so the Navy can excavate the building’s storm drains and sewers where low levels of radiological contamination have been found.

HPS Base Realignment and Conversion Environmental Coordinator Keith Forman explained at the meeting that when the Navy first presented a cleanup plan for Parcel B in 1997, it had not surveyed for radionuclides, remnants of the shipyard’s military past.

That 2001 survey revealed that there are 14 sites on Parcel B that may have been exposed to radiation, including Building 103. The Navy’s 2004 Historical Radiological Assessment reveals that while Building 103 began as a non-nuclear submarine barracks, Operation Crossroad personnel subsequently used it as a decontamination center after an atomic test went awry in July 1946 in the South Pacific.

In that test, the Navy detonated two bombs the size used on Nagasaki in the lagoon of Bikini Atoll. One bomb, the HRA notes, was an underwater burst called Shot Baker, which "caused a tremendous bubble of water and steam that broke the ocean’s surface."

"Then a huge wave, over 90 feet high … rolled over target and support vessels as well as the islands of the atoll," the HRA records. "Vast quantities of radioactive debris rained down on the target and support ships, islands and lagoon."

Seventy-nine ships were sent to the Navy’s radiological center at Hunters Point Shipyard for decontamination, a site chosen in part because University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University were nearby to support the radiation studies.

The following year, from April through August 1947, the Navy burned 610,000 gallons of radioactively contaminated ship fuel at HPS. Also, workers sandblasting contamination at the shipyard’s dry docks showered in Parcel B’s Building 103, raising the current concern that cesium-137, cobalt-60, plutonium-239, radium-226 (from radioactive decay of uranium-238) and strontium-90 could be present in underground drains and sewers.

The 2004 HRA also identified two plots on Parcel B, IR07 and IR18, as having been used as dumps for radioluminescent devices and possibly more sandblast debris. It also listed a discharge channel between a pump house and Drydock 3 as radiologically impacted.

Currently the Navy is proposing to excavate soil from IR-07 and IR-18, including known mercury and methane spots, and ship it to dumps in Idaho and Utah; fill and seal the suspect discharge channel; cover potentially radiologically impacted soil; and stipulate that these two areas be used as open space in future plans for the base.

The cost of the Navy’s proposed radiological cleanup is $29.6 million. The Navy also proposes spending $13 million on amended soil and sediment cleanup, and $2.7 million on amended groundwater remediation.

Forman told the crowd that the Navy’s old soil remedy was a "bad fit." Excavations were larger than expected, Forman said, and showed no pattern of release. "There was no end in sight for the Navy," Forman said. "It didn’t look as if we were doing what we were meant to do: namely, find Navy-caused spills."

Forman also criticized the Navy’s old groundwater remedy as being "very passive." He proposed a remedy that includes more monitoring along the shoreline and using contaminant-eating bacteria to cleanup groundwater contaminants.

"The old remedy did not consider risks to wildlife and aquatic organisms at the shoreline, whereas the amended remedy will," Forman noted. "It was silent on this issue, yet we know the area has a shoreline."

Ultimately, amending the Navy’s cleanup plan is "about protecting human health and the environment," Forman said.

Green Action’s Marie Harrison was critical of the Navy’s failure to explain the risks in simple terms. "You talked about risk assessment, but you never told us what the risks were," Harrison said. "What is the risk to human life? How is capping going to stop it going into the bay? I’m not a scientist. I don’t have a PhD. I was hoping you were going to give me some kind of knowledge."

Harrison also worried that the Navy was not factoring in the cumulative risks for people living and working in the surrounding community who visit the shoreline to relax. Told that manganese, nickel, and arsenic are present in risky quantities, Harrison was referred to online information at www.bracpmo.navy.mil and to documents housed at the San Francisco’s Main and Third Street libraries.

Other community members criticized the Navy for not doing enough outreach to the Samoans, Latinos, and Asians in the community, and for having taken too long to acknowledge radiological impacts.

"Do you really want us to believe that no one was aware of nuclear waste and spills, given this was a Superfund site?" said Espanola Jackson, a BVHP resident since 1948.

"What I expect you to believe," Forman replied, "is that until 2002, no one who had technical and scientific expertise had looked at the evidence, sifted through history, and done an analysis to put together a radiological assessment."

Jackson also accused the Navy of "fast-tracking the cleanup in order for Lennar to build houses," referring to the efforts of Mayor Gavin Newsom, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and others to hasten the shipyard’s cleanup and early turnover to the city so the area can be turned into a massive development project pursuant to the voter-approved Prop. G.

"We are not going to accept anything less than total cleanup," Jackson said. "If you have to move that dirty dirt, do it. We need $10 billion. You said $60 million. You can’t even scrape the surface with that amount."

Melanie Kito, the Navy’s lead remedial project manager, replied that the Navy is "chartered to clean up releases of spills from Navy activities. Whatever remedy we put forth, we have to demonstrate that we are protecting human health and the environment."

Kristine Enea, a member of the community-based Restoration Advisory Board, told the Guardian that she felt that the Navy did not do a great job of explaining the risks of contaminants in, say, a major earthquake.

"If there’s an earthquake, would the risk be like getting 10 x-rays at once, or having a three-headed baby?" Enea said.

Pamela Calvert, deputy director of Literacy for Environmental Justice, told the Guardian she’s worried about shipping the contamination elsewhere.

"I’m really concerned that we don’t solve problems in Bayview by creating ones for another community," Calvert said. "It’s best to deal with it here. There is no such thing as ‘away.’ It’s someone else’s backyard."

Saul Bloom, executive director of Arc Ecology, which does contract work for the Redevelopment Agency, said that Calvert’s concerns strengthen the argument for simply capping Parcel B so that the contamination can’t escape rather than removing the material.

Bloom said he blames the Navy’s "incompetence" for the city losing the opportunity to transfer Parcel B early and speed development. "If we’d got rid of Parcel B in 2004, we would have been part of the housing boom, not the housing bust," Bloom said.

He believes the Navy’s proposed plan is acceptable, feasible, and protective, but that "whether it’s the best use given the needs of the BVHP is another debate."

While some residents are arguing for a total excavation of the site down to the sea floor, Bloom disagrees: "I think the covering strategy is a protective solution." He criticized the Navy for only having scheduled 11 days between its July 28 public comment deadline and its final draft, due out August 8.

"I’m concerned about the length of time they’ve allotted for the question that comes up and that no one has the answer to," Bloom said. "I don’t think it is adequate or seemly from a ‘we take your comment seriously’ point of view."

Shipyard artist Rebecca Haseltine, who has rented at Building 103 for 18 years, says that she has consistently trusted Arc Ecology’s advice on the shipyard cleanup. "But I also feel that we still don’t know the half of what happened on the shipyard. The Navy denied that any radioactive material had been used at the base, until a reporter with the SF Weekly published a story about it in 2001."

Campaign pain?

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

November’s presidential election already looms on the horizon like a herpes outbreak, promising nothing so much as a painful, shame-filled denouement to a drunken and ill-conceived flirtation with someone you thought you knew. So it’s refreshing that the San Francisco Mime Troupe’s seasonal offering of free, rabble-rousing political theater is an election-year special in which the opposing candidates from the two monopolizing parties are conspicuously absent. Instead, Red State, which opened by tradition July 4 in Dolores Park, focuses on the screwed-if-you-do/screwed-if-you-don’t quandary of voting itself, and does so with populist gusto tinged with a reddish hue — a thematic color imbuing everything from the design scheme to the pointedly funny dialogue’s New Deal–style social-democratic slant. It also reflects the rising blood pressure that results from underlying but palpable frustration and outrage.

Reclaiming red from the dusty color wheel of history, Mime Troupe head writer Michael Gene Sullivan’s smart and consistently funny script — brilliantly delivered by a uniformly sharp and charismatic cast and fueled by composer–band leader Pat Moran’s eclectic set of apt and catchy songs — posits FDR’s small-town America as marooned at Francis Fukuyama’s end of history. Set in a puny Kansas ‘burb named Bluebird, Red State casts November’s "Countdown to Armageddon" (as the play’s CNN reporter colorfully advertises his network’s election coverage) in the screwball style of Depression-era comedies as Bluebird becomes the unlikely tiebreaker in an electoral dead heat.

Suddenly the nation’s eyes are riveted on an otherwise microscopic microcosm of average American life at the beginning of the 21st century. This focus on the lives of the town’s humble and much abused citizens throws everyone for a loop, not least the government’s smarmy and ambitious election official (Velina Brown), who is so obsessed with thoughts of a cush Washington, DC-based promotion that she has difficulty remembering which state she’s even in.

For its part, Bluebird feels like a town under siege, but just who the enemy is remains initially hard for the inhabitants to fathom, or agree on, anyway. Is it the wrath of God? The communists? It all depends on whom you ask among the locals, a population whose representative eccentrics include a God-fearing, Jesus-toting fundamentalist (Noah James Butler, bearing cross and life-size Christ) and a rabid (and equally anachronistic) anticommunist named Eugene (Robert Ernst).

What is clear enough is that jobs have dried up (the local pencil factory — the onetime pride of the town, which liked to promote itself as "the Number 2 pencil capital of North Central Kansas" — just relocated to the cheap labor environs of Uzbekistan), public services have dwindled to nil, and the dilapidated sidewalks and roads are a physical menace (nearly undoing a local soldier, played by Adrian C. Mejia, who’s just returned in one piece from Afghanistan).

If that wasn’t enough, the town’s only electronic voting machine is on the fritz. But this little debacle, in the context of an electoral tie, ends up being an opportunity that gets the town thinking and the earth trembling beneath Washington, DC. Deciding to withhold their votes until the proper share of their tax dollars gets re-diverted back to their community where it belongs, and away from endless war-making and corporate welfare, Bluebird manages (in the most unlikely but coruscating of Capra-esque scenarios) to hold a corrupt and hubristic system at bay, spotlighting the government–big business alliance that for decades has fleeced towns like Bluebird of their taxes, able-bodied military-age youth, and everything else not nailed down. Or so to speak: before the town turns the tables on the system, even Bluebird’s fundamentalist is driven in desperation to ask the Antiques Roadshow host, "How much for Jeezus?"

RED STATE

Through Sept 28, free

Various Northern California locations

Visit www.sfmt.org for schedule

San Francisco’s undocumented children

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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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› 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)

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

Back in 2001, San Francisco came within 500 votes of approving a public power system in an election marred by lingering evidence of fraud. Ballot boxes were removed from the Department of Elections (under a bizarre, never-documented threat of anthrax poisoning) and box tops were later found floating in the bay. I still think we actually won that election. And it’s hard to see how we could have done it without organized labor.

The Central Labor Council backed public power. Service Employees International Union Local 790 poured resources into it. The labor-environmental coalition that came together around building a city-run system that would rely on clean energy was unprecedented.

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. knows this. That’s why the company is trying mightily to keep labor from backing this year’s Clean Energy Act. And at the center of that battle is Mayor Gavin Newsom’s chief political consultant and close advisor, Eric Jaye.

The Clean Energy Act, as we point out on page 5, would give the city control of its energy future and put San Francisco at the forefront of national efforts to reduce carbon emissions. It also opens the door to public power — and Jaye has been hired by PG&E to try to keep the supervisors from putting it on the ballot, and to defeat it if they do.

He has a powerful weapon to use: labor’s determination to pass a giant bond act to rebuild San Francisco General Hospital.

A billion-dollar bond act is a tough sell, and harder still during a recession. Labor is also making a big push for progressive supervisorial candidates in Districts 1, 3, and 11. And the labor council director, Tim Paulson, tells me that he really wants to keep the city’s disparate and sometimes fractious labor unions united around those goals.

The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, PG&E’s union, will oppose any public power measure, any time, no matter what it says, and IBEW walked out of the labor council in 2001 over the issue. Now Jaye is telling labor people that the Clean Energy Act (and other issues that are "crowding" the ballot) may undermine public support for the hospital bond. "I have an early poll showing that these other measures have a negative impact on the hospital," Jaye told me. "I have been pointing to that fact and asking if we really need to do [the Clean Energy Act] this year."

John Whitehurst, who is running the SF General bond campaign, says his polls show that there was no correlation between an affordable housing set-aside measure and the hospital bonds, and presumably the same is true of the Clean Energy Act. On the other hand, he says, "if Jaye runs a campaign that says ‘Gee, the city can’t do anything right,’ it could create problems for the hospital measure."

Would Eric Jaye threaten the SF General bonds (which his client, Gavin Newsom, strongly backs) to keep labor from backing public power? He insisted to me that he would never do that, and that he and the mayor fully back the bonds. But PG&E, I think, cares nothing about the hospital — or the city — and will do whatever it can to scuttle this measure.

So will labor be intimidated by the threat of divisiveness (from the IBEW) and the political scare tactics from PG&E — or will labor leaders tell the mayor to knock it off?

Newsom and the Clean Energy Act

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EDITORIAL A progressive measure that would make San Francisco one of the greenest cities in the nation will be on the ballot this fall. It’s designed to lower energy costs, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and promote green-collar jobs. It has all the elements that Mayor Gavin Newsom has been talking about in his high-profile speeches, press conferences, and celebrity appearances. It’s a perfect vehicle for a mayor who wants to stand out as a candidate for governor of California. It has the backing of some of Newsom’s close allies, like state Sen. Mark Leno.

That’s why Newsom ought to support the Clean Energy Act.

The charter amendment, sponsored by Sups. Aaron Peskin and Ross Mirkarimi, seeks to make San Francisco more energy independent. It sets ambitious goals for renewable energy and would put the city on track to create its own public power system. It’s not a radical measure — in fact, it’s milder than we would have liked. It doesn’t mandate an immediate takeover of Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s facilities. It doesn’t turn the Public Utilities Commission into an elected body. And no matter what lies PG&E puts out, it won’t raise electric rates or cost the taxpayers money.

It does, however, mandate that the PUC look at the best ways to ensure that by 2017, 51 percent of the electricity used in the city comes from renewable resources. By 2040, that number should be 100 percent. And the evidence from across the nation shows that the best way to promote renewable energy is to shift from private control of utilities to public power.

Again, that’s hardly a radical notion: more than 2,000 cities in the United States have public power. Palo Alto is among them; so are Alameda and Santa Clara. The Sacramento Municipal Utility District provides reliable service to Sacramento County at rates 30 percent below what PG&E charges customers in adjoining areas — and SMUD has one of the best records in the nation for promoting conservation and renewable energy.

Of course, the very existence of any sort of plan to consider energy alternatives for San Francisco seems to terrify PG&E. Already the giant private utility is pulling political strings and retailing outrageous lies to try to scare the supervisors away from placing the charter amendment on the ballot. And we expect to see a savage, multimillion-dollar campaign against the measure this fall.

That’s because PG&E wants no hint of competition, no chance that the city might actually consider the benefits of public power. It’s no secret why. When you look at the facts, compare how public and private systems have fared in the past decade, and line up the financial figures and the prospects for sustainable energy policies, public power wins.

The biggest misinformation PG&E is putting out these days involves the cost of creating and running a public power system in San Francisco. The company is throwing out numbers like $4 billion, and suggesting that the taxpayers would be on the hook for all of it if the city tried to take over the company’s system.

For starters, there’s nothing in the Clean Energy Act that requires a takeover. It might turn out to be more prudent, for example, to slowly build a new city-owned infrastructure. More important, if the city did decide to buy out PG&E’s wires, poles, and meters, the cost would be nowhere near what the company is claiming.

How much is the system really worth? Well, one way to find out is to check the assessed value, the figure the state uses for property-tax purposes. And as Amanda Witherell reported July 2 (see "The dirty fight over clean power"), the state says all of PG&E’s property within San Francisco city limits is worth only $1.2 billion — and that includes the company’s downtown office complex, which is worth at least several hundred million. So the actual cost of the system might wind up at less than a quarter of what PG&E claims.

And none of that money — none — would come from taxpayers. The PUC could issue only revenue bonds, backed by future electricity sales, to finance any buyout or construction. No tax money would ever be in play. And our past analyses have consistently shown that the city could buy out PG&E’s system, cut electric rates, and still wind up with a sizable surplus every year.

Newsom is aware of all of this, and has said that he’s willing to consider supporting public power. Now there’s a measure heading for the ballot that would also mesh with all of the mayor’s environmental goals. The only argument against it is that PG&E — in the past a backer of the mayor — doesn’t want it to pass.

Newsom needs to support the Clean Energy Act. If he doesn’t, it will demonstrate that he lacks the backbone to stand up to special interests — and has no business running for governor of this state.

A kickoff press conference on the Clean Energy Act will be held at 11 a.m. Tuesday, July 22 on the steps of City Hall.

Don’t kill the peakers — yet

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A GUARDIAN EDITORIAL

The supervisors are meeting a day late this week, thanks to the San Francisco Examiner’s screw-up, which means that a key vote on the city-owned combustion turbines, or peakers, will probably come Wednesday, July 16. The mayor, with some environmental backing, wants the board to kill the city peakers and leave Mirant Corp, a private power company, with the responsibility of generating extra electricity in San Francisco during peak use periods. That’s the worst possible scenario.

We recognize the contradictions inherent in any city plan to construct new fossil-fuel generation plants. San Francisco ought to be moving away from any energy solution that increases carbon emissions, and if the city wants to simply ban any facilities that burn anything to generate electricity, we would by sympathetic.
But that’s not the choice here. The mayor (and Pacific Gas and Electric Company) want to continue using natural-gas-fired turbines to generate electricity in southeast San Francisco. They just want a private company, not a public agency, running the plants.

And we’ve seen no legally binding, written guarantee that Mirant will close its big, polluting Unit 3 under the deal.
There’s some dispute about whether Mirant will operate cleaner peakers than the city, but there’s no dispute about the fact that a private company will be far less accountable than a city department that will soon by run by commissioners who must be approved by the supervisors. And if the city kills the peakers, it will have no leverage at all over what Mirant might be required to do.

The supervisors need to leave their options open here and hold off on killing the public-power peaker plan until the public can see, review, and participate in hearings on binding agreements for the future of Mirant’s plant. As Potrero Hill activist Tony Kelly, who has been working on this issue for years, put it in an email to us:
“I have to emphasize that a vote in favor of the CTs tomorrow doesn’t have to lock the city into the CTs; there’s already an amendment to the ordinances giving the city an out in case another program (Mirant retrofit, or transmission only) turns out to be better. However, if tomorrow’s ordinances fail, or are tabled, then the CTs go away as an option. That’s the problem.

Because it really looks like the PUC will formally rescind the public CTs next Tuesday, in their last act of defiance and corruption; and that will kill the public CTs, and then Mirant holds all the cards to do whatever it wants to do from then on.”

Again: We’re open to a solution that involves neither the city-run peakers nor Mirant. But we’ve been around long enough to know that when the mayor, PG&E and a private power-plant owner are mucking around with energy policy, you have to be very, very careful before you trust what comes out of the discussion. We don’t trust Mirant for a second, and the supervisors shouldn’t give up the city’s leverage too early.

Sports: The Giants’ quiet hex

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Eddie Grant, swinging from the heels in the pre-hex days
By A.J. Hayes

When compared to other noted sports hexes – notably, the Chicago’s “Billy Goat Jinx” and Boston’s now squelched “Curse of the Bambino” – the San Francisco-directed “Plague of the Plaque” falls short of the fences in terms of romantic heft.

The mysterious malediction is not centered around a larger-than-life superstar who was peddled to a rival club to help finance a Broadway play, nor does it have anything to do with a rogue farm animal that was ejected from Wrigley Field during the 1945 World Series for behaving and smelling like an, er, rogue farm animal.

No, the protagonist in this whammy was a gaunt infielder turned World War I hero named Eddie Grant, who only managed to hit his weight in 10 big league seasons because he was so darned skinny.

But if you’re inclined to believe in the sporting spirits, or you think “Field of Dreams” was a pseudo-documentary, you just might buy into the “Plague of the Plaque,” AKA “Eddie’s Affliction.”

Mirant plant staying open?

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San Francisco’s proposal to install several combustion turbines, or “peaker” plants, in the southeast neighborhoods has created a firestorm of protest, particularly from environmentalists who don’t want the city building any new fossil-fuel plants.

I get that. I also know that PG&E has its dirty little fingers in the public-policy pie. And that makes it more complicated.

The lastest proposal, which comes out of the mayor’s office, calls for Mirant Corp. to retrofit its own peakers, clean them up, run them on natural gas, and put that power into the grid so the city doesn’t have to build its own plants. The argument is that Mirant’s peakers would be cleaner than the city’s, and might run less often.

I’ve always thought that leaving Mirant in control is a terrible idea. If we want to tell the state that we aren’t going to build any new fossil-fuel plants, then let’s stick to it, and rely entirely on renewables (at the possible risk of brownouts in high-use periods). But I don’t trust Mirant for a second — and I don’t think the mayor has any legal guarantee that Mirant will do what it says it will.

All that said, I got an interesting communication this weekend from Joe Boss, who’s a Potrero Hill activist. He and Tony Kelly are worried that the Mayor and Mirant will wind up creating the worst possible scenario: The big Mirant plant, with its smokestack and pollution, will continue to operate for the forseeable future.

It’s admittedly a bit of a speculative scenario, and a lot of things would have to go wrong for it to happen. (Among other things, Mirant, which loses its permit to use Bay water for cooling at the end of this year, would have to invest in a big new air-cooling system.) But it’s worth putting out there as the supervisors prepared to decide on the fate of the city peakers.

You can read Boss’s perpective after the jump.

Newsom slaps down the Paul Reveres

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By John Bardis

Mayor Newsom has proposed some disturbing legislation. He wants whistleblower citizens to pay a $500 filing fee to exercise the right to request the Planning Commission to hold a public hearing on proposed construction projects that might violate the Planning Code.

What a shameful example of misguided legislation in San Francisco. It’s akin to the Mayor of Boston in 1775 requiring Paul Revere to pay a fee before he could ride to sound the alarm that “The British are coming!”

Instead of encouraging citizen participation in our democracy, the mayor is promoting a plutocracy. While residents in wealthier neighborhoods like Pacific Heights and Sea Cliff will be able to afford this proposed fee increase, its imposition discriminates against citizens living in the less affluent neighborhoods.

A Request for Discretionary Review is a cornerstone of the planning process. Residents can exercise their right to request a public hearing on a proposed construction project that might violate the city’s Planning Code or Master Plan.

Years ago, there was no fee for filing a Request for Discretionary Review. In those days, civic leaders welcomed volunteers who gave freely of their time to provide an invaluable service for our city by monitoring proposed construction projects to ensure they complied with the law — and blowing the whistle on developers violating the law.

Back then, all costs associated with processing a Request for Discretionary Review were logically and rightfully included as part of the fee charged for the filing of building-permit applications. City officials recognized that, since the submission of a questionable building permit application triggered the Request for Discretionary Review, it was only reasonable that the burden of all costs associated with the processing the request should fall on the developer.

This is not the case today. The city began requiring citizens to pay a fee for filing a Request for Discretionary Review, which presently is a ridiculous $300. And now Mayor Newsom has proposed to add insult to injury by increasing this fee by 67.5% to an absurd $500.

The mayor’s proposal penalizes less affluent citizens and neighborhoods by restricting their right to protest questionable developments by raising the financial hurdle for citizen participation. It discourages all citizens from participating actively in the city’s planning process by sending a punishing financial signal that their participation is not wanted.

On June 19, 2008 the Planning Department and Planning Commission ignored public protests over this fee increase and voted to recommend that the Board of Supervisors approve it.

At its meeting on Tuesday, July 15th, the Board of Supervisors will take up the mayor’s misguided proposal. The mayor and our city officials should encourage rather than discourage and penalize San Franciscans – our citizen volunteer “Paul Reveres” who sound the alarm about possible code violations that make possible the lawful implementation of San Francisco’s Planning Code.

The Board of Supervisors should reject the 67.5% fee increase – if not the entire fee altogether! The Board should amend the legislation to recover any such costs associated with the filing of a Request for Discretionary Review by making an appropriate increase the fees charged for building permit applications.

John Bardis is a former San Francisco Supervisor and former President of the Coalition San Francisco Neighborhoods..

Gear stolen from Maria Taylor and Taylor Hollingsworth

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Looking for help: Maria Taylor.

This just in from Taylor Hollingsworth’s people:

“Taylor Hollingsworth, sideman for Maria Taylor, had some of his and Maria’s gear stolen on Thursday, July 10, on tour promoting Maria’s newest EP, Savanna Drive. The band were tucked in for the night in San Francisco when some folks busted out the back window of Maria’s van and stole six guitars, two suitcases, two pedals, and some boxes filled with copies of Maria’s newest EP. Luckily, the band recovered one of the bass guitars at a local pawnshop. Here is a list of all the stolen goods:

– Left-handed Red Gretsch Tennessee Rose Guitar.
– Left-handed Martin Acoustic Guitar.
– Right-handed Purple Fender Jazz Bass guitar.
– Right-handed 1976 Black Les Paul Deluxe.
– Right-handed Alvarez acoustic guitar (Hand painted white w/ black swirls. Guitar strap is nailed on.)
– Boss Tuner Pedal.
– Boss Distortion Pedal.

“If you have any information regarding the items listed above, please contact info@saddle-creek.com, jeff@saddle-creek.com, or publicity@teamclermont.com. In the meantime, Maria plans to finish up the last two dates of her tour; one show in LA and one in Sonoma.”

Vega leaving the Chron for KGO-TV

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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.

Stirring Matmos: a chat with the ex-SF duo

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Excitable: Matmos’ “Exciter Lamp and the Variable Band” from their new album, Supreme Balloon (Matador).

While you were dozing, the rabidly talented Matmos quietly slipped out of town, relocating to Baltimore, MD., from their longtime home in San Francisco’s Mission District. I recently caught up with MC (Martin) Schmidt and Drew Daniel as they drove through the Northwest on their current US tour, which stops in SF on July 12 at Great American Music Hall.

SFBG: I’ve been enjoying the record – it has this great Wendy Carlos/Switched on Bach quality to it, which is a departure, no?

Martin Schmidt: We take turns being in charge of the record – and this was my turn. I wanted to go away from our shtick – like we’re the goofy sound band – and I thought a simple short cut to that would be to make the rule that we would use no microphones. It quickly turned into a synthesizer record from there. We love, love, love, love Wendy Carlos, and I don’t mean just Switched on Bach, we love her compositions as well, like Sonic Seasonings and the Clockwork Orange stuff and so on, so we figured we couldn’t do this without a nod to her.

SFBG: So the Carlos influence was very conscious…?

MS: We’re not DFA but I must admit I think a lot of our music is the result of wearing our record collections on our sleeve. I don’t mean DFA, I mean that guy in LCD Soundysystem. He’s the most, “I took all my records and boiled them down…” I think we’re a little like that, too. Guilty, guilty…


Matmos perform “Rainbow Flag” from Supreme Balloon in Baltimore on Feb. 9.

A hollow victory for urban gardening movement

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When I first heard about current plans to build a “Victory Garden” in Civic Center Plaza — which will be officially planted tomorrow at 10 a.m. in a ceremony featuring Mayor Gavin Newsom and Alice Waters, the pioneering restaurateur who founded Slow Food Nation — I thought it was a really cool idea. Here was the city of San Francisco giving some of its most prime and high profile real estate over to the urban gardening movement, which seeks alternatives to the fossil fuel dependent industrialized food system.
And the Victory Garden concept is great, conjuring up the collective commitment to our national interests that inspired patriotic citzens to plant gardens during the two world wars. Sure, the logistics of tending and securing the garden might be tough, but Newsom seemed to be making a commitment to put city resources behind this important symbolic statement.
Then I heard that they’re going to rip out the garden in a couple months, in my mind reducing the garden to a mere photo op for our jolly green would-be governor. Ick. Just what this country needs, another hollow gesture toward environmental sustainability rather than the bold collective action that we actually need to tackle serious problems like climate change, resource depletion, and a wasteful, polluting, and ineffective global food system.

Stevie Wonder satisfies onboard the Sleep Train

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Don’t you worry ’bout a thing: Stevie Wonder, circa the ’70s.

By Joshua Rotter

When two travel four hours to see one of their all-time favorite artists, Stevie Wonder, perform at a venue that should have been a 40-minute drive away – the usual journey from San Francisco – a simple outing becomes a vision quest.

En route to Wonder’s Sleep Train Pavilion show in Concord on Tuesday, July 8, amid triple digit temperature, and dehydrated and dampened by sweat in my friend’s passenger seat, I was convinced that we would never see the legendary R&B performer. Car accidents and heat-induced area power outages seemed to conspire against us. San Francisco may have been as hot as July elsewhere in the county, but Concord was hotter than hell. We inched closer and closer, but the venue, obscured by rolling hills, wasn’t even in eye shot, much less the eighth Wonder of the world.

Whether it was the excess of heat, the lack of liquids and nicotine, or being hopped up on myriad packs of sugary gum, an image of the vocalist suddenly appeared in my mind’s eye, and I was set adrift on memory’s bliss, imagining much of his career, from the innocent tracks of his early Motown period – “Uptight (Everything’s Alright),” “My Cherie Amour,” “For Once in My Life” – to his ’70s consciousness-spreading classics “Superstition,” “Living for the City,” and “Higher Ground,” through the Stevie of my youth – “I Just Called to Say I Love You,” “Part Time Lover,” and “That’s What Friends Are For,” as well as his guest-starring role on The Cosby Show, in which he invites the Huxtables to join him in the studio after his driver hits two in a fender bender. But traffic was too stalled at this point for any such luck to befall me.

Local Artist of the Week: Jen Merrill

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LOCAL ARTIST Jen Merrill
TITLE The Proportion of Perception
THE STORY Inspired by scientific anatomical studies and human interactions, Merrill uses paper, paint, and her scalpel to create a three-dimensional world of eerie, sometimes humorous figures. They are at once clinical and viscerally powerful, betraying a battle between emotional restraint and an unruly body and conscience.
BIO Jen Merrill first took scalpel to paper at San Francisco Art Institute, where she received her MFA in 2006. She continues to hone her paper-cutting skills in Oakland, where she lives and works.
SHOW “Demikhov’s Hands of Glory.” July 12 through August 10 (reception Sat/12, 7–9 p.m.). Wed., 4–7 p.m.; Sat., 1–4 p.m. Iceberger Gallery, 3150 18th St., # 109 (18th and Treat), SF. (415) 225-8932, www.icebergergallery.com
WEB SITE www.jenmerrill.com

I’m for PG&E, at 50 bucks a head

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If public power can work in Rock Rapids, Iowa, why can’t it work in San Francisco?

By Bruce B. Brugmann

When I came into yesterday’s public hearing at City hall on the emerging clean energy act initiative, I wasn’t surprised to see the room stacked with people obviously rounded up by PG&E for the occasion. After 42 years of covering PG&E, I know how private utility operates.

I asked the man sitting next to me, obviously not a
City Hall regular, why he was attending the hearing. His answer was vague but he was obviously agitated about the clean energy act initiative. Was he going to testify against the initiative? Yes, he said. Was he paid to attend the hearing?
He mumbled a bit and then said, yes, $50 bucks. But, he pointed out, he hadn’t been paid yet.

The word got around the hearing room that PG&E’s going rate for this hearing was $50. Julian Davis, the chair of the clean energy campaign, was first up to testify and promptly mentioned the going rate.
He then said that he considered it “cynical and tragic” for a corporation like PG&E to take advantage of communities of color into advocating on behalf of an agenda that ultimately does not serve their interests. (Many of the members of the audience were persons of color. Davis is black.)

Many of them testified, arguing that the initiative, which calls for setting renewable energy goals and making San Francisco the nation’s greenest clean energy city, would be too expensive and burdensome and ought to be killed forthwith. They testified that they couldn’t afford higher electric rates, higher taxes, higher anything in the city’s tight economy. Several said they were living on fixed incomes and simply could not afford another penny on anything.

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, sponsor of the bill, and Sup. Chris Daly, chair of the rules committee meeting, Sup. Bevin Dufty, and many pro-clean energy speakers pointed out the many advantages of clean energy and public power. Cities with public power across the state and country had lower electric rates, better service, and extra money for their general funds. The Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) is a national leader in renewable energy and conservation efforts, while still keeping its rates far below PG&E rates in adjoining communities.

After hearing the clean energy speakers, several people came up to Davis after the hearing and said they were confused and annoyed that they had been misled by PG&E. They were interested in the arguments for clean energy and the initiative and wanted to know more.

Davis said he told them, among other things, that “one of the essential components of the clean energy act is a mandate to offer the kind of jobs and job training in the clean energy industry that PG&E is not currently offering to the very communities they are willing to exploit to promote their status quo agenda.” The jobs idea was of particular interest, he said.

And, yes, I testified at the hearing. I sometimes do this to counter the time worn PG&E line that, gosh, golly, gee, electricity is so complicated, city workers are so lazy, dumb, and incompetent, how in the world can they run an electrical company if they can’t make the muni run on time. Wheeze, wheeze, and wheeze again.

And so I pointed out that in my hometown of Rock Rapids, Iowa, population 2,800, a bedrock conservative Republican farming community way out in the northwestern part of the state,
the town has successfully operated a public utility since l896, and it’s doing just fine. It provides good, reliable, hometown electricity, has good low rates and excellent service, makes money for the general fund and subsidizes projects such as the local swimming pool, and doesn’t gratuitously cut off service with no way to appeal or complain, as is PG&E policy. And the public utility is locally accountable to a local board of directors composed of local townsfolk, such as my old friends Dave Foltz, a local real estate man, and Eugene Metzger, a local banker.

To this day, I told the supervisors, II always carry in my pocket a little blue coin purse that eloquently makes the local point. And I pulled the purse out of my pocket and read the inscription to the supervisors: “Call before you dig, Rock Rapids Municipal Utilities, (7l2) 472-2513.)”

And so my central argument is unbeatable: If public power works in Rock Rapids, Iowa, why can’t it work in San Francisco, California? PG&E has yet to get back to me on this one. Meanwhile, I’ll keep you posted throughout the campaign on public power in Rock Rapids. On guard, stay plugged in for the duration, the fun has just started, B3

Newsom political loyalist to head staff

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In another sign that Mayor Gavin Newsom is increasingly looking past San Francisco’s needs into his own political future as a candidate for governor, he has announced the resignation of chief of staff Phil Ginsburg, a competent manager and bureaucrat who appears to have been forced out for not having sharp enough political teeth. Replacing Ginsburg is Newsom’s longtime homeless policy point person, Trent Rhorer, a young political animal whose fierce loyalty to Newsom has often been at odds with his obligations as a public servant. As head of the Human Services Agency, Rhorer recently helped gut services to humans in favor of big executive salaries for partisans like himself. In covering eight California counties over my newspaper career, I’ve never encountered a more politicized and less diplomatic department head than Rhorer, who seems acutely aware that Newsom is his meal ticket. “He’s a Newsom sycophant,” Sup. Chris Daly said.
Board of Supervisors president Aaron Peskin also makes another salient point about Rhorer: “This will be the first time in the history of San Francisco that we’ll have a chief of staff who lives in Oakland.” In fact, Rhorer has often joined the chorus of other outsiders like the Chronicle’s CW Nevius in sounding the suburban perspective on the realities of urban life, an approach we’ll likely see more and more of out of Newsom, whose recent flip-flop on cooperating with the feds is just the beginning of the jilting of San Franciscans in favor of more conservative Californians.
I asked Newsom’s press office (which has also become more partisan in the last year or so) about all of the above via e-mail, and press secretary Nathan Ballard responded simply, “Smart remarks like that one cost Peskin his seat on the selection committee.”

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.

Weekly tries to overturn verdict

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Lawyers for the SF Weekly and its parent company tried July 8 to overturn the Bay Guardian’s $16 million predatory pricing verdict, rehashing several old arguments and trotting out a few new ones.

Judge Marla Miller took the case under submission and is expected to rule within ten days.

The Weekly and Village Voice Media asked the judge to throw out the jury verdict or order a new trial. The gist of their arguments: The evidence presented in court didn’t support the decision that a San Francisco jury reached after a five-week trial.

The arguments were at times highly technical, and hinged on the finer points of the definitions of words. In the same way the Bill Clinton once asked what the meaning of “is” is, James Wagstaffe, one of the VVM lawyers, tried to insist that the judge and jury had misinterpreted the term “agent” – and thus improperly concluded that the Phoenix-based chain was equally responsible for paying the damages.

The argument was aimed at severing VVM – a company with $190 million in sales and $11 million in profits – from the verdict. That way the only guilty party would be the Weekly – which VVM admits has no assets and would be unable to pay the Guardian anywhere near $16 million.

Evidence presented at the trial had shown that VVM executives were well aware of, and directly involved in, the SF Weekly’s long pattern of selling ads below cost in an effort to harm a locally owned competitor. In fact, two senior officers, CFO Jed Brunst and group publisher Scott Tobias, admitted on the stand 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.

And yet, Wagstaffe claimed, the law required that VVM be acting as an “agent” for SF Weekly in order to be equally liable. “You have to act on behalf of someone else to be an agent,” he argued. “It is not enough to aid or assist.”
Since VVM was the parent company, Wagstaffe told Miller, nobody at that entity was taking orders from the local subsidiary. So VVM and its officers couldn’t have been SF Weekly’s “agents.”

He also said that Miller had screwed up and given the jury the wrong instructions about the presumption of intent. He said the instructions improperly allowed the jury to assume that VVM and the Weekly intended to harm the Guardian.

At the time those instructions were hammered out, later in the trial, “it was nine o’clock at night and we were all running around,” he told her with typical animation. “I was there with my usual energy but everyone else was tired.”
Guardian lawyer, Ralph Alldredge calmly asked Miller to look directly at the statute involved in the case. “The language is remarkable in its breadth,” he said, explaining that the state Legislature had clearly written the Unfair Practices Act to prevent big companies from hiding their assets by blaming subsidiaries for illegal acts. The law, he said, “refers to aiding and assisting, directly or indirectly, and says that the people who do that are equally responsible.”

He added: “What more aid and assistance could you possibly provide in a predatory pricing case than to fund it?”
As for the jury instructions, Alldredge pointed out that the issue of presumption is hardly new. “That court has already looked long and hard at this,” he said. “There were long discussions about jury instructions.”
Alldredge agued that the state law applied directly to the facts at trial, and that the jury properly applied that law. “This is exactly the sort of scenario that the law was written to cover,” he said. “A big company with operations in many markets was going after a smaller entity in one market.

“That statute,” he concluded, “was set up to presume that if you can prove below-cost sales and damages, intent shouldn’t be the sticking point.”

H. Sinclair Kerr, Wagstaffe’s partner and the lead Weekly lawyer during the trial, then rehashed the VVM argument from the trial that the Guardian profits over the seven year period of the complaint were not sufficient to justify the $6.3 million in damages that the jury awarded. (Miller later ruled that much of the damages should be trebled).
Alldredge countered that the Guardian financial expert, Clifford Kupperberg, had calculated the profit the Guardian could have made during that period without the Weekly’s below-cost pricing and the losses the Guardian experienced. The combination of the two would be around a million dollars a year, he said.

Although Kerr claimed the damages were “excessive,” Alldredge argued the Guardian had to shrink its business to survive the predatory onslaught and would have to make major investments to build the paper back up. “The Guardian must get back the profits and invest to rebuild the business,” he said. There was “nothing excessive about what the jury found,” he said.

At one point, as Kerr tried to bring back the VVM argument about the extent of the competition for the two alternatives Judge Miller interrupted and said, “Do you mean the poetry journal and the paper in Livermore?”

She was referring to the VVM argument during trial in which it cited a huge list of papers, from the Gilroy Dispatch to the Bodega Bay Navigator to a paper in Livermore, as competition. Alldredge made fun of the reference during trial. Miller’s remark stopped Kerr from continuing this line of reasoning.

The hearing lasted four and a half hours, and Miller allowed both sides considerable latitude in speaking and addressing the arguments. Both of the top executives of VVM, Mike Lacey and Jim Larkin, were on hand, as was Brunst and Andy Van De Voorde, who has been covering the trial for VVM.

Van De Voorde, whose reports have been long on rhetoric and personal attacks, posted an atypically short and non-bombastic story on the hearing.

The Guardian is represented by Alldredge, Hill and E. Craig Moody. The Weekly has brought Forrest Hainline onto its legal team after the trial, but he is no longer involved, so the case is in the hands of Kerr and Wagstaffe.

Click here to see the Guardian arguments as laid out in our opposition brief.

King Khan and the Shrines

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PREVIEW Local booty-shakers are hip to the musical ruler known as King Khan: when the two-member King Khan and BBQ Show played 12 Galaxies in December 2007, the joint was packed to the sweaty rafters. A bigger band calls for a bigger venue, so when the Montreal native returns to the Bay Area with his other project, King Khan and the Shrines, the faithful will no doubt follow him to the Great American Music Hall. His just-released latest, The Supreme Genius of King Khan and the Shrines (Vice), is a compilation of sorts, including an array of songs from earlier, difficult-to-track-down King Khan and the Shrines discs. "I love playing with BBQ as much as playing with the Shrines," he told me by e-mail — a necessary interview tactic due to his cell phone–deprived status in deepest Europe. "In the Shrines, we play bad-ass, ball-crushing R&B. The influences are pretty much the same, though the Shrines are more inspired by New Orleans 1960s funk and Sun Ra."

Although both of Khan’s bands are retro-influenced, he doesn’t feel stuck in the past. "I believe this music is an everlasting tradition that must be preserved and carried on," he wrote. "I don’t think we are that retro since we mix everything from free jazz to hardcore. Music is my religion, and I wanna preach the words of the masters to the masses and throw some of my own words in there too."

Khan fans may recall that his last trip to San Francisco wasn’t all rock ‘n’ roll romance, since one of his favorite guitars was lifted by some scumbag. "I am sad I lost it because it was really a Frankenstein guitar from the 1960s made by Harvey Thomas," he wrote. "I have put a hex on whoever stole it, and if you see a one-eyed man with a piece of spaghetti for a penis dangling between his legs, then ask him where my guitar is and punch him in the face."

Fortunately, he doesn’t hold it against the rest of us: "I love SF! I love America, and am so happy to bring my soul band back to where soul was born."

KING KHAN AND THE SHRINES With Jacuzzi Boys. Fri/11, 9 p.m., $13. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. (415) 885-0750, www.gamh.com

Sound in the balance

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"Anger is an energy," sang John Lydon in the Public Image Ltd. tune "Rise." San Francisco electronic artist Kush Arora harnesses a similar combustible force in his live shows and on the three full-length recordings that have made him an established club fixture and touring act. "I try to do something different with music and express the frustrations of the youth in this country," says the affable 26-year-old Haight District resident, who performs with Chicago’s MC Zulu July 13 at Dub Mission.

Arora’s ragga-techno fusions have struck a chord with audiences from the Bay Area to New York, while monthly hybrid live/DJ sets at Club Six’s Surya Dub night have earned him a broad audience that includes dubstep heads, bhangra fans, experimental electronic admirers, and grime listeners. It makes sense as the former Montessori School teacher has always balanced different cultures.

Born in San Leandro and educated in Orinda’s leafy suburbs, Arora ingested death metal, punk, and experimental-industrial sounds, as well as his family’s Indian and Punjab music, learning traditional instruments like the single-stringed tumbi and algoze flute. His music experience increased after interning at his uncle Aman Batra’s Manhattan hip-hop studio Sound Illusions, and later working for sound-editing software company Arboretum Systems.

In high school he formed an experimental band called Involution, which he helmed for six years before launching his solo noise project Clairaudience in the early ’00s. But it was while attending a 14-month audio recording course at Emeryville’s Ex’Pressions that he learned a signature skill: recording live vocals. "When I was writing songs for my first album [2004’s Underwater Jihad (Record Label/Kush Arora Productions)], I wasn’t impressed with my own work or where electronic music was at the time. It wasn’t badass enough," explains Arora, who also felt there was a lack of high quality, vocal-based dance music in the Bay.

Soon Arora contacted and tracked stateside Punjabi singers and ragga MCs, including Chicago’s MC Zulu, Trinidad’s Juakali, Jamaica’s N4SA, Los Angeles’ Wiseproof, and San Jose’s Sukh and Sultan. "I wanted to work with people who were dangerous and different, especially vocalists who didn’t fall into their music’s niche or category," Arora says of the often confrontational and political artists he’s recorded on full-lengths like 2006’s Bhang Ragga and 2007’s From Brooklyn to SF, both released on his Kush Arora Productions imprint. The albums brought club bookings far and near.

Over the past several years Arora has played large Indian gatherings, small IDM shows, underground warehouse events, raves, and the monthly Non-Stop Bhangra party in San Francisco. His performance breakthrough happened in 2006 at DJ Sep’s weekly Sunday-night reggae party at the Elbo Room, Dub Mission. "That changed my whole presence in the city," he says.

Arora believes his family’s roots in the often-volatile Punjab region between India and Pakistan breathes through his music. "That’s why I like bhangra. It has an element of aggression and sadness," he reflects, acknowledging that those also are traits he looks for in his vocal collaborations. "The artists I work with have a real tug-of-war between good and evil in their lives. My music is their redemption and my redemption in a fateful balance." *

KUSH ARORA

Dub Mission on Sundays, 9 p.m., $6

(Arora and MC Zulu on July 13, $7)

Elbo Room

647 Valencia, SF

www.dubmissionsf.com

I’m here with lonesome

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Loneliness is invoked on three of four songs on the White Buffalo’s MySpace page: "Love Song 1" finds its narrator on an island for one, staring at the sun; "The Moon" visits the shadows and grays of solo days; and "10 ‘Til 2" revolves around hopes to screw a hooker in the morning. Yet the White Buffalo’s main man himself — a.k.a. Jake Smith — is far from some namby-pamby Elliott Smith or any number of whiny hand-me-a-tissue, I’m-not-long-for-this-tortured-life modern singer-songwriters. Though Smith admits some compositions are personal, most, he says on the phone from southern California, are "fantastic, darker, little evil journey songs that are just imagination things and aren’t inspired by anything — at least, not to my knowledge."

Venture along the White Buffalo’s dark little journeys, for they’re good ones to take — full of the character-building that comes from Greyhounding through the rolling West. You end up resigned yet hopeful, with no obligations other than dreams of your next stop. The real white buffalo is a rare creature, and the White Buffalo — at times a solo project, at others a trio — conjures a similar mythos: Smith’s bio trumpets his solid stature, heavy boozing, and ability, like that of bygone legends, to marry his lifestyle with his art. And though this sounds sort of cheesy, White Buffalo’s music is not. On the contrary, what I love about the White Buffalo is his evident sincerity. Smith’s voice plunges you into clear, deep pools: infinite, enveloping, fully resonant like Eddie Vedder at his best — by far the easiest comparison — but with hints of Cat Stevens’ whispery warble and Joe Cocker’s soulful rasp. The occasional twang is likely derived from Smith’s childhood musical diet of Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson. Wielding an acoustic rock, alt-country folkiness that lacks pretension, Smith could’ve written the score accompanying the vast geographical and philosophical landscapes of Into the Wild (2007).

Though he now lives in Orange County, Smith’s music may ring a bell if you were lucky enough to catch one of his handful of shows during the few years he resided in San Francisco, where he "just raised hell and waited tables." Since then he’s toured the world, developed his guitar chops — which remain simple and "just a way to get the message and the vocal across" — and recorded a self-released, self-titled 2005 EP. "Let the suuunnn / Fill me up again," he croons on "Where Dirt and Water Collide." My response? Let this voiiiccce fill me up again — and again and again. Between the sun and the White Buffalo, there’s no loneliness here, really.

THE WHITE BUFFALO

With the Blank Tapes and Agent Ribbons

July 17, 9 p.m., $10

Hotel Utah Saloon

500 Fourth St., SF

(415) 546-6300

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