Bruce Brugmann

Editorial: Fisher’s Folly threatens the Presidio

-
0

The commercialization of the Presidio stands as a legacy of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Back in 1994 Pelosi bowed to Republican demands and decided to take the new park away from the people who run every other national park in America and turn it over to a developer-run Presidio Trust. The result: the wildy inappropriate Fisher Museum.

EDITORIAL

The latest proposal for developing the Main Post at the Presidio national park shows exactly what’s wrong with the privatized, developer-driven planning that has plagued the 1,400-acre jewel since Rep. Nancy Pelosi took control of it away from the National Park System.

The centerpiece of the new plan, released last week, is the same old monument to the greed and ego of Gap Inc. founder Don Fisher still gets his art museum, a three-building, 200,000-square-foot development that has no place at the Presidio. Oh, it’s not quite as ugly and intrusive the original design: most of the main gallery will be underground, and the roof will be green. How lovely.

Ammiano: ‘Si se puede’

-
1

Today’s Ammianoliner:

Si se puede: Yes we Cannibus!

(From the home telephone answering machine of Assemblyman Tom Ammiano on March 2, 2009 after he introduced a bill to legalize recreational use of marijuana last week).

Meister: Baseball – more than a man’s game

-
0

By Dick Meister

Another season of professional baseball is upon us, another season of a sport that’s billed as the “National Pastime,” yet bars half the population
– the female half – from the playing field.

Major and minor league teams, as well as most amateur and semi-professional clubs, have kept the game largely what it has been since its beginnings: a chewing, spitting, macho game reserved for men. Women are allowed to watch, but only rarely have they been allowed to come out of the stands and play.

Major League Baseball made it official in 1952, when teams were banned from signing major or minor league contracts with women.

DeLong: The Stimulus Ostriches

-
0

J. Bradford DeLong is a contributing writer for the Project Syndicate news series. DeLong is Professor of Economics at the University of California at Berkeley and a former Assistant US Treasury Secretary.

The Stimulus Ostriches

By J. Bradford DeLong

BERKELEY – Of all the strange things that have happened this winter, perhaps the strangest has been the emergence of large-scale Republican Party opposition to the Obama administration’s effort to keep American unemployment from jumping to 10% or higher. There is no doubt that had John McCain won the presidential election last November, a very similar deficit-spending stimulus package to the Obama plan – perhaps with more tax cuts and fewer spending increases – would have moved through Congress with unanimous Republican support.

As N. Gregory Mankiw said of a stimulus package back in 2003, when he was President George W. Bush’s chief economic advisor, this is not rocket science. Deficit spending in a recession, he said, “help[s] maintain the aggregate demand for goods and services. There is nothing novel about this. It is very conventional short-run stabilization policy: you can find it in all of the leading textbooks…”

The Nation

-
0

Click here to read John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney’s March 18th article in The Nation, The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers.

Why is Geithner violating federal law?

-
0

This is a most revealing commentary by William K. Black, senior regulator
during the S&L debacle and a professor at the University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri.


Click here to read William K. Black’s February 23, 2009 article from the Huffington Post, Why Is Geithner Continuing Paulson’s Policy of Violating the Law?

Guardian editorial: Losing the tax argument

-
0

Raising taxes on those who can afford to pay is not only good politics, it’s good policy

EDITORIAL

The lead topic on the local cable TV show City Desk News Hour Feb. 21 was the state budget, and a panel of local reporters were talking about the mix of tax increases and service cuts the Legislature finally passed. After a bit of back and forth, Scott Shafer, host of KQED’s California Report, piped up. “Everyone knows it’s a bad idea to raise taxes in a recession” he said.

Tharoor: Slumdog Oscar

-
0

Shashi Tharoor is a contributing writer for the Project Syndicate news series. Tharoor, a novelist and commentator, is a former Under Secretary General of the United Nations.

Slumdog Oscar

By Shashi Tharoor

NEW DELHI – Indians haven’t often had much to root for at the Oscars, Hollywood’s annual celebration of cinematic success. Only two Indian movies have been nominated in the Best Foreign Language Film category in the last 50 years, and neither won.

So Indians take vicarious pleasure in the triumphs of “mainstream” pictures with an Indian connection – the seven Oscars won by Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi in 1983, for instance, or the success of The Sixth Sense, written and directed by a Philadelphian of Indian descent, Manoj Night Shyamalan.

Ammiano: the budget is a real stool sample

-
0

Today’s Ammianoliner:

Schwarzenegger and Maldonado claim that budget plan is a four legged stool. Yeah, a real stool sample.

(From the home telephone answering machine of Assemblyman Tom Ammiano on the weekend of Feb. 2l, 2008).

Another good Ammianoliner was rolling around City Hall but did not make his answering machine.
As the legislative sleepins continued, Ammiano was reported to say: I haven’t slept with so many men since the ’70s.

Ammiano: the budget is a real stool sample

-
0

Today’s Ammianoliner:

Schwarzenegger and Maldonado claim that budget plan is a four legged stool. Yeah, a real stool sample.

(From the home telephone answering machine of Assemblyman Tom Ammiano on the weekend of Feb. 2l, 2008).

Another good Ammianoliner was rolling around City Hall but did not make his answering machine.
As the legislative sleepins continued, Ammiano was reported to say: I haven’t slept with so many men since the ’70s.

Ammiano: the budget is a real stool sample

-
0

Today’s Ammianoliner:

Schwarzenegger and Maldonado claim that budget plan is a four legged stool. Yeah, a real stool sample.

(From the home telephone answering machine of Assemblyman Tom Ammiano on the weekend of Feb. 2l, 2008).

Another good Ammianoliner was rolling around City Hall but did not make his answering machine.
As the legislative sleepins continued, Ammiano was reported to say: I haven’t slept with so many men since the ’70s.

Dick Meister: Sit Down! Sit Down!

-
0

Once, autoworkers overcame even greater hardships than they face today

By Dick Meister

(Dick Meister, a San Francisco-based journalist, has covered labor and political issues for more than a half-century.)

This is not a happy time for American autoworkers. Their employers are cutting thousands of jobs, closing plants, and demanding ­ and getting ­ major pay and benefit concessions from their union.

Normally, February would be a time of celebration for the union, the United Auto Workers ­ a time to mark the anniversary of a UAW victory in a sit-down strike in 1937 that led to making its members the world’s most secure and most highly compensated production workers.

Sorry, Ilinois gets the stimulus first

-
0

Barry Schrader, a former government affairs officer for the Livermore Lab and retired in Illinois, sent along this joke that is making the rounds out there. It explains how the stimulus plan will work. B3

Three contractors are bidding to fix a broken fence at the White House. One is from Chicago, another is from Tennessee, and the third is from California. All three go with a White House official to examine the fence. The California contractor takes out a tape measure and does some measuring, then works some figures with a pencil. “Well,” he says, “I figure the job will run about $1,800: $400 for materials, $400 for my crew and $1,000 profit for me.”

The Tennessee contractor also does some measuring and figuring, then says, “I can do this job for $700: $300 for materials, $300 for my crew and $100 profit for me.” The Chicago contractor doesn’t measure or figure, but leans over to the White House official and whispers, “$2,700.”
The official, incredulous, says, “You didn’t even measure like the other guys! How did you come up with such a high figure?”

The Chicago contractor whispers back, “$1,000 for me, $1,000 for you, and we hire the guy from Tennessee to fix the fence.” “Done!” replies the White House chief of staff. And that is how the new stimulus plan will work.

—As per Sen. Tombstone Burris

Who will run a bank for $500,000 a year?

-
0

As the national economic crisis gets worse and worse, Jess Brownell sets out to find people who are willing to run a financial institution for $500,000 a year. It’s not going to be pretty.

By Jess Brownell

The national economic crisis just gets worse and worse. The time for aimless discussion is over. Now we have to find people who are willing to run a financial institution for $500,000 a year. It’s not going to be pretty.

I like to help the government when I can, so I went out to try to ascertain just how difficult the search was going to be. My first stop was at the bar down the street, an establishment I visited frequently back in the days when I was drinking seriously. I asked the bartender if he would be willing to take on a job like that. He looked at me (well, almost, he has this one eye that sort of drifts, but most of the time he gets the glass and the bottle in the same general area) and shook his head. “Are you kidding? When I can spend eight hours a day pouring cheap booze for penny-pinching losers? Mentioning no names, of course. Not me, man. I’m living my dream right where I am.”

Schell: Hillary Clinton in Beijing

-
0

Orville Schell is a contributing writer for the Project Syndicate news series. Schell is Director of the Asia Society’s Center on US-China Relations and a co-author of the recent report Road-map on US-China Cooperation on Energy and Climate Change, issued by the Asia Society and the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.

Hillary Clinton in Beijing

By Orville Schell

NEW YORK – Hillary Clinton is off to China. The US Secretary of State’s decision to make her first overseas trip to Asia, particularly China, was a smart one and, if done with aplomb, could yield enormous returns for the Obama administration as it attempts to re-establish world leadership.

The fact that Clinton chose to go to Asia now, when the State Department remains unsettled – with no ambassador in Beijing, many old officials having departed or leaving, and many new appointees still unseated – attests to her determination to stake out Asia as her own area.

Durst: Tax cut zombies from the Planet No!

-
0

Next Obama will encounter such terrifying inhuman threats as the Lobbyist Vampires of Capitol Hill, American werewolves in Baghdad, the Ethanol children of the corn, Nightmare on Wall Street, and the Texas oil profits chainsaw massacre

By Will Durst

(Will Durst is a comedian who writes sometimes. This is one of them.)

It is the stuff of nightmares. Hear the shabby shuffle of their soft somnambulant stutter and your skin begins to crawl. To see their haunted hollow eyes on the cable news shows taking no notice of their surroundings is a spiral straight into terror. The worst part is the cries of the children as they cower behind couches, hands over their ears blocking out the monotonous intonations of the mind numbing mantra- “Tax Cuts. Tax Cuts. Tax Cuts.” They are the Tax Cut Zombies from the Planet No!, and they are not of this earth. Okay, maybe they are, but they sure don’t live in the real world.

Dick Meister: Jobs may decline, unions won’t

-
0

The percentage of workers belonging to unions grew last year for the second straight year

By Dick Meister

(Dick Meister, a San Francisco-based journalist, has covered labor and political issues for a half century.)

After nearly a half-century of steady decline, American unions are showing unmistakable signs that they’re finally reversing direction.

What if Paul Krugman’s right?

-
1

Mr. Obama’s victory feels more than a bit like defeat. The stimulus bill looks helpful but inadequate, especially when combined with a disappointing plan for rescuing the banks. And the politics of the stimulus fight have made nonsense of Mr. Obama’s postpartisan dreams.

By Bruce B. Brugmann

Paul Krugman ended his column in his Friday New York Times column with this warning and a bit of paraphrase from a W.B. Yeats poem:

“And I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach–a feeling that America just isn’t rising to the greatest economic catastrope in 70 years. The best may not lack all conviction, but they seem alarmingly willing to settle for half-measures. And the worst are, as ever, full of passionate intensity, obliviious to the grotesque failure of their doctrine in practice.

“There’s still time to turn this around. But Mr. Obama hs to be stronger looking forward. Otherwise, the verdict on this crisis might be that no, we can’t.”

Click here to read Paul Krugman’s full column in the Friday, February 13 New York Times titled, Failure to Rise.

Ammiano on Bay to Breakers going puritan

-
0

Today’s Ammianoliner;

Bay to Breakers goes puritan. Is that a stimulus package or are you happy to see me?

(From the home telephone answering machine ot Assemblyman Tom Ammiano on Thursday, Feb, 13, 2009.)

NCIBA /IndieBound Bestseller List

-
0

The Northern California Indie Bestseller List, as brought to you by IndieBound and NCIBA, for the sales week ended Sunday, February 8, 2009. Based on reporting from the independent booksellers of the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association and IndieBound. For an independent bookstore near you, visit IndieBound.org.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

HARDCOVER FICTION

1. The Associate
John Grisham, Doubleday, $27.95, 9780385517836
2. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Mary Ann Shaffer, Annie Barrows, Dial, $22, 9780385340991
3. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
David Wroblewski, Ecco, $25.95, 9780061374227
4. Cutting for Stone
Abraham Verghese, Knopf, $26.95, 9780375414497
5. A Mercy
Toni Morrison, Knopf, $23.95, 9780307264237
6. Run for Your Life
James Patterson, Michael Ledwidge, Little Brown, $27.99, 9780316018746
7. The Piano Teacher
Janice Y.K. Lee, Viking, $25.95, 9780670020485
8. Beat the Reaper
Josh Bazell, Little Brown, $24.99, 9780316032223
9. The Vagrants
Yiyun Li, Random House, $25, 9781400063130
10. The Host
Stephenie Meyer, Little Brown, $25.99, 9780316068048
11. The Art of Racing in the Rain
Garth Stein, Harper, $23.95, 9780061537936
12. Unaccustomed Earth
Jhumpa Lahiri, Knopf, $25, 9780307265739
13. Going to See the Elephant
Rodes Fishburne, Delacorte, $22, 9780385342391
14. True Colors
Kristin Hannah, St. Martin’s, $25.95, 9780312364106
15. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Stieg Larsson, Knopf, $24.95, 9780307269751

KCBS Matier

-
0

Phil Matier – Wednesday AM 3/11
KCBS and Chronicle Insider Phil Matier on the complex money train led by a powerful SEIU officer who works at Muni, and runs the city’s chapter of a civil rights charitable institute.

Click here to listen to a podcast of Matier on KCBS from Wednesday morning on March 11.

Click here to read Tim Redmond’s blog The LA Times nails APRI from the politics blog.

Calvin Trillin: a deadline poem

-
0

By Bruce B. Brugmann

Calvin Trillin, the New Yorker writer and Deadline Poet for the Nation, has always been a good friend of the Guardian and the alternative press.

At our founding convention of the alternative press in l978 in Seattle, Trillin popped up to do a story for the New Yorker.
Since we had no dinner speaker, we asked Trillin to drop his reporter stance long enough to give the keynote speech at our final dinner. He did and it was a good one. HIs piece in the New Yorker was one of the most best and most prescient stories ever done on the alternative press. It drew heavily on his experience on the campus daily at Yale University, where he went to college, and on his knowledge of Henry Luce of Time magazine fame, who had been an earlier graduate of the Yale campus daily. In short, Trillin got the point of the alternative press as an important business model as well as a journalistic model and wrote it up beautifully in New Yorker style. It’s time he returned to the alternative press and updated his piece.

Meanwhile, he has developed a most enjoyable persona in the Nation magazine: “Calvin Trillin, Deadline Poet.” He turns out a splendid timely poem for each issue, on deadline. Here’s his latest in the current Feb. 23 edition of the Nation:

INCENTIVES

The Wall Street ways are mighty funny:

A bonus comes for losing money.

About this rule they’re quite devout

No wonder they need bailing out.

Nye: How Obama Leads

-
0

Joseph S. Nye Jr. writes a monthly column for the Project Syndicate news series, where he provides a unique perspective on the dynamics and principles shaping global affairs today. Nye is Distinguished Service Professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and author, most recently, of The Powers to Lead.

How Obama Leads

By Joseph S. Nye, Jr.

CAMBRIDGE – Two years ago, Barack Obama was a first-term senator from a mid-western state who had declared his interest in running for the presidency. Many people were skeptical that an African-American with a strange name and little national experience could win. But as his campaign unfolded, he demonstrated that he possessed the powers to lead – both soft and hard.

Soft power is the ability to attract others, and the three key soft-power skills are emotional intelligence, vision, and communications. In addition, a successful leader needs the hard-power skills of organizational and Machiavellian political capacity. Equally important is the contextual intelligence that allows a leader to vary the mix of these skills in different situations to produce the successful combinations that I call “smart power.”

Ammiano: Phelps goes for gold

-
1

Today’s Ammianoliner:

Michael Phelps goes for gold. Acapulco gold. Land in the Hudson. I can swim! (with an Ammiano chortle at the end.)

(From the home telephone answering machine of Assemblyman Tom Ammiano on Monday. Feb. 9, 2009.) B3

1...101112...37Page 11 of 37

48hills.org is the official publication of the non-profit San Francisco Progressive Media Center.
Contact us: info@48hills.org