Bruce Brugmann

Thank God for Paul Krugman!

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What do you call someone who eliminates hundreds of thousands of American jobs, deprives millions of adequate health care, and undermines schools, but offers a $l5,000 bonus to affluent people to flip their houses?

By Bruce B. Brugmann

Jim HIgjhtower, the Texas columnist, once wrote that “there is nothing in the center of the road except yellow lines and dead armadillos.”

Paul Krugman, the Princeton Nobel prize winner, put it a little more diplomatically in his Monday column in the New York Times, “The Destructive Center.”

He led off his discussion of the Obama stimulus plan with this lead:

“What do you call someone who eliminates hundreds of thousands of American jobs, deprives millions of adequate health care and nutrition, and undermines schools, but offers a $15,000 bonus to affluent people who flip their houses?

“A proud centrist. For that is what the senators who ended up calling the tune on the stimulus bill just accomplished.”

“Even if the original Obama plan–around $800 billion in stimulus, with a substantial fraction of that total given over to ineffective tax cuts–had been enacted, it wouldn’t have been enough to fill the looming hole in the U.S. economy, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates will amount to $2.9 trillion over the next three years.

“Yet the centrists did their best to make the plan weaker and worse.”

Krugman rightly criticized Obama for offering a plan that was “too small and too heavily reliant on tax cuts” because he “wanted the plan to have bipartisan support and believed that it would.” Krugman rightly criticiazed Obama for not doing something “cruciall important: speak forcefully about how government spending can help support the economy. Instead he let conservatives define the debate…” And so Obama “was reduced to bargaining for the votes of those centrists.”

Krugman asked the critical question: “So has Mr. Obama learned from this experience? Early indications aren’t good.

“For rather than acknowledge the failure of his political strategy and the damage to his economic strategy, the president tried to put a postpartisan happy face on the whole thing. ‘Democrats and Republicans came together in the Senate and responded appropriately to the urgency this moment demands,’ he decalared on Saturday and ‘the scale and scope of this plan is right.'”

Krugman’s summing up, “No, they didn’t, and no, it isn’t.”

Thank God for Paul Krugman. B3

Click here to read Op-ed columnist Paul Krugman’s Monday, February 9th article in the New York Times, The Destructive Center.

Click here to read a CNN report on “What got cut from the stimulus bill.”

Free Press Action Fund

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Here is a timely action alert from the Free Press media reform organization. It is fighting “in the media and on Capitol Hill to make sure that the internet doesn’t get slashed from the stimulus plan.”

The internet is a tremendous engine for growth across every sector of the economy

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John McCain (known for never having gone online) has joined blowhards Rush Limbaugh and Lou Dobbs in clamoring to strip President Barack Obama’s economic recovery bill of funds to expand Internet access.

Claiming the Internet has nothing to do with jump-starting the economy, they’ve taken to the Senate floor and the airwaves in a relentless assault against efforts to give Americans the tools they need to get working again.

Boxer socks it to the Republican blockers!

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‘Where are my Republican friends when George Bush took the debt from $5 trillion to $l0 trillion over eight years? I didn’t hear a word.’

By Bruce B. Brugmann

I watched on CNN Saturday (2/7/09) as Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-California) spoke for about 20 minutes on the stimulus package. She was eloquent, she made the right points, and she whacked the Repubilcans’ “new found respect for fiscal responsibility.”

Working her arms as if she was actually throwing some punches, she said, “This election was about change, not the same-old same-old trickle down tax cuts that don’t work…They want it all tax cuts or mostly tax cuts. We tried it. It didn’t work. It’s gotten us where we are today. Huge debt, huge deficits, slow growth, no growth.”

Here are the major excerpts from her excellent remarks from a press release put out by her Washington office. Hurray for Barbara Boxer.

Senate Floor Statement of Senator Boxer

Boxer Speaks on Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act

Saturday, February 7, 2009

Washington, DC – Today, U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) spoke on the Senate floor on the Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Boxer discussed the need for quick, deliberate action to help get our economy back on track.

Excerpts from her floor speech follow:

“Where were my Republican friends… when George Bush took the debt from $5 trillion to $10 trillion over eight years, doubled it, put it on the backs of every man, woman and child — $17,000 debt, every man, woman, and child. I never heard a word. They spent it on Iraq. They spent it on tax cuts for the richest people, those who didn’t need it. And they didn’t care about the debt.”

“I want to help the middle class and the working poor, the backbone of America because without that backbone, we have nothing.”

*****

“I want to thank those Republicans who worked with us Democrats on coming up with a solution… You stepped forward, you listened to President Obama. You stepped forward for positive change, you stepped forward to help America.”

******

“If we do nothing, if we don’t embrace this bipartisan package – and I know this isn’t perfect – but if we do nothing, that is in my view a hostile act. A hostile act, not a passive act, because to do nothing endorses the status quo.”

*****

“In my home state, I have a list here of layoffs… Target laid off 382 people in Sunnyvale. Harman Becker Automotive, 325 people in Northridge. Ghirardelli Chocolate laid off 107 of people in San Francisco. Circle Foods, 112 people in San Diego. It goes on and on and on.”

*****

“I do appreciate my Republican colleagues’ newfound respect for fiscal responsibility, but we have to admit that they never cared about it the last eight years.”

“I don’t like this. I voted for balancing the budget under Bill Clinton, and I believe we will get back to a balanced budget again. But we’ve got to take care of a crisis. We have to stem the bleeding. Every economist tells us that.”

*****

“I’m working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle. We have a chance now to get out of this recession. Will this package do it alone? It will not. ”

*****

“Come and talk to us. Come and work with us. This election was about change, not the same old, same old trickle-down tax cuts that don’t work. Yes, there’s 42 percent tax cuts in this bill. That’s not enough for my friends on the other side. They want it all tax cuts or mostly tax cuts. We tried it. It didn’t work. It’s gotten us where we are today. Huge debt, huge deficits, slow growth, no growth.”

*****

“We are headed to a better day, and this Senate debate is very important.”

Dick Meister: Less God-talk, please

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Shouldn’t freedom of religion be coupled with freedom FROM religion for non-believing citizens?

By Dick Meister

The polls say the odds against me are about nine to one, that being the
ratio between believers and non-believers in this supposedly secular
republic. But even so, let me ask that our politicians quit pushing the
views of the 90 percent who hold religious beliefs on me and the rest of the
10 percent of the population who simply do not share those beliefs.

If they won’t ease up on the constant public references to God and
similar matters for the sake of tolerance, how about doing it for the sake
of that legal business about the separation of church and state.

Or at least do it for the sake of religion. It surely is cheapened by the
ritualistic and hypocritical references to the Almighty by the politicians
and others in public life seeking to curry majority favor the easy way.

Jess Brownell: Keynes & Friedman fight it out

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“John Maynard Keynes, he’s our man. He knows more dead than Alan Greenspan”

By Jess Brownell

In the January 28 edition of the New York Times there was a full-page advertisement paid for by the Cato Institute and signed by 203 economists (if I counted correctly; I’m not an economist myself) objecting to the following statement by President Obama: “There is no disagreement that we need action by our government, a recovery plan that will help to jumpstart the economy.”

The brief text above all those signatures advises the world that the signers do not in fact agree and deeply resent being lumped with those who do. No jumpstarting needed, in their opinion. Indeed, the so-called recession/depression seems to bother them very little. Less government and lower taxes will easily solve that problem, and psoriasis better look out, too.

Stiglitz: Davos Man’s Depression

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The spirit of Davos was that we had gone from “boom to bust” to “boom and Armageddon”

by Joseph E. Stiglitz

– Joseph E. Stiglitz, professor of economics at Columbia University, and recipient of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, is co-author, with Linda Bilmes, of The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Costs of the Iraq Conflict.

NEW YORK – For 15 years, I have attended the World Economic Forum in Davos. Typically, the leaders gathered there share their optimism about how globalization, technology, and markets are transforming the world for the better. Even during the recession of 2001, those assembled in Davos believed that the downturn would be short-lived.

But this time, as business leaders shared their experiences, one could almost feel the clouds darkening. The spirit was captured by one speaker who suggested that we had gone from “boom and bust” to “boom and Armageddon.” The emerging consensus was that the IMF forecast for 2009, issued as the meeting convened, of global stagnation – the lowest growth in the post-war period – was optimistic. The only upbeat note was struck by someone who remarked that Davos consensus forecasts are almost always wrong, so perhaps this time it would prove excessively pessimistic.

PG&E: Blackout at Just For You restaurant

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BREAKING NEWS: PG&E electricity goes out at a restaurant just four blocks or so from the Potrero Hill power plant

By Bruce B. Brugmann

And so about 2 p.m. this afternoon (Thursday, 2/5/09), I walked in to the Just For You restaurant, just four blocks or so from the Potrero Hill power plant in the heart of Dogpatch. I wondered if PG&E had known I was coming in for my regular lunch of fried oysters.

For lights were out, the place was empty, and the proprietor, the normally jolly Arienne Landry, was sitting disconsolately in the corner with some friends and workers.

Arienne said that the electricity was off in the whole area and that PG&E had told someone who called that it would be back on at 3 p.m. “But they always say they can’t guarantee power,” she said, shaking her head at her shortened, expensive lunch hour. I asked if PG&E know I was coming. Arienne laughed.

I asked how much she was out in money. She said about $200 to $300. Arienne, who was reported in the Potrero View as a possible candidate for district supervisor, said she needed the money and would write to PG&E and ask for a reduction in her PG&E bill or other form of compensation. She said she would also copy the California Public Utilities Commission, the SF Board of Supervisors, and the Small Business Commission.
She said she would also ask the CPUC, the board, and the SBC to do a study of PG&E’s treatment of San Francisco restaurants and other small businesses on service, reliability, rates, and collection policies.

It looks to me as if she has a good and timely issue. PG&E is a notorious no or slow pay for damages to small business, but the company is quick and tough as hell on small businesses that are slow pay, which many are these days. We get lots of complaints at the Guardian about PG&E hardball policies on small business and on their customers.

Now more than ever, PG&E should be giving a break to small businesses and not shove them against the wall on compensation for blackouts and slow pay and other increasing small business concerns.

We’ll follow Arienne’s request for compensation for damages. And we urge other small business people and their customers/residents to email us their problems with PG&E service and rates. There’s no reason, except for PG&E resistance, that the CPUC and SF shouldn’t start monitoring how PG&E treats our local small businesses. More: they should provide ombudsperson help during these tough times.

Meanwhile, I must report that the power at Just For You did go back on a few minutes before 3 p.m. And I did get my usual lunch of fried oysters with lots of red cajun sauce. They were better than ever today. B3, who sees from my office window the fumes of the Potrero Hill plant, pumping poisons into the city every minute of every day, courtesy of PG&E and Hearst journalism

Meister: A porter who dared to protest

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How C. L. Dellums of Oakland organized the first union founded by black workers

By Dick Meister

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

Affluent white train passengers snapping out orders. Broadly smiling black porters rushing to carry them out, fetching drinks, shining shoes, making beds, emptying cuspidors, rarely daring to protest.

That’s how it was aboard the Pullman sleeping coaches that were the height of luxurious travel for more than a quarter- century. Nothing better epitomized the huge distance between black and white in this society. And nothing better epitomized the struggle that has finally narrowed the
distance than the long life of C.L. Dellums, a porter who did dare to protest, and who continued to do so as a major labor and civil rights leader for six decades.

Lani Silver, 1948 to 2009, activist to the last

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

Lani.jpg

And so Lani Silver, the passionate activist who organized scores of events for more than four decades for her friends and causes ranging from the Holocaust Oral History Project to the 10th anniversary of the death of hate crime victim James Byrd, put on her last and best event Sunday afternoon at Congregation Beth Israel Judea in San Francisco.

The event was her own funeral service.

Dick Meister: Bolsheviks? In Seattle?

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Dick Meister is a distinguished labor reporter who has spent more than 50 years covering labor and issues of workers on their jobs. There are very few real labor reporters in the mainstream press these days, so I asked Meister to put his regular Guardian column in context. B3

Dick Meister explains his labor coverage:

There’s a vibrant labor movement in this country, a source of important information that is ­ or should be ­ of great interest to most people. Most people, after all, spend at least half their lives working and, in fact, define themselves by their jobs. Yet the labor movement that has so much to do with their working lives, be they union members or not, is largely ignored by the mainstream media.

I’ve spent most of my professional life covering the labor movement as a reporter and commentator, for the Chronicle, KQED-TV and other mainstream outlets as well as a wide variety of non-mainstream outlets, including the Bay Guardian. I’ve recently begun a series of columns for the Guardian that deal with labor issues that have received but slight attention, if any, in the mainstream media.

Among other matters, they covered the extraordinary qualifications of Hilda Solis, President Obama’s nominee for secretary of labor, the extraordinary anti-labor acts of Bush’s secretary, Elaine Chao, and the legendary career of Franklin Roosevelt’s secretary, Frances Perkins.

The columns also concerned labor’s forceful anti-war demonstrations last May Day, labor’s major role in Obama’s election and its eight-year struggle with Bush, the most virulently anti-labor president in history. As another column noted, Bush was particularly harsh on the long-suffering air traffic controllers who Obama promised to help.

Other columns detailed the blatant job discrimination suffered by gay workers in Harvey Milk’s time ­ and now, the significant but ignored 40th anniversary of the faculty strike that was waged at San Francisco State at the same time as the widely celebrated student strike, and the 84-hour workweeks and 30-hour workdays that hospitals impose on young doctors-in-training.

My current column deals with a subject most mainstream outlets probably will also ignore, or at best treat very lightly. The column deals with one of the most important events in U.S. labor history, the Seattle general strike that began 90 years ago this month.

BOLSHEVIKS IN SEATTLE?

A bit of labor history the mainstream media will likely ignore: the general strike in Seattle 90 years ago this month

By Dick Meister

It’s the 90th anniversary this month of the general strike that brought the city of Seattle to a virtual standstill — one of the very few general strikes in U.S. history and certainly one of the most dramatic and disruptive.

Seattle Mayor Ole Hanson described it this way: “Street car gongs ceased their clamor. Newsboys cast their unsold papers into the streets. From the doors of mill and factory, store and workshop, streamed 65,000 working men. School children with fear in their hearts hurried homeward. The life stream of a great city stopped.”

Extra! Gov. Schwarzenneger furloughs himself

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Today’s Ammianoliner:

Governor Schwarzenneger furloughs himself. No one notices, including Maria.

(Assemblyman Tom Ammiano gets his bearings in Sacramento. From his home telephone answering machine on Monday, Feb. 2, 2008) B3

Services for Lani Silver set for Sunday

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The reaction to Silver’s condition was a remarkable display of affection and respect for the political activist who “fought the good fight for Bay Area community.”

By Bruce B. Brugmann

Lani.jpg
1948-2008

Services for Lani Silver, a passionate activist for more than four decades in San Francisco who died Wednesday, will be held at 12:30 p.m. Sunday at Beth Israel-Judea, 625 Brotherhood Way. A burial service will be held at 2:30 p.m. at Hills of Eternity Memorial Park, 130l El Camino Real, Colma. She was 60.

Silver died at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday night in the home of her sister Lori in San Francisco. You can leave your remembrances — and find out more about her life — here.

“Lani is gone,” her sister Lori wrote an hour later on the CaringBridge.org website. Lani was diagnosed with a brain cancer in September and has been fighting a brave battle ever since. “Lani has always been terrified of being sick, but with this illness, was serene,” Lori wrote in the latest of a regular series of posts on Lani’s condition. “And she died with that same calm and serenity. She was surrounded by her family.”

Durst: The school for scandal. Version 2.1

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By Will Durst

A politician making lemonade after being pelted by a bushel of media chucked lemons is as familiar as red yarn on the handle of a black bag on the luggage carousel at O’Hare. But few alive have seen the likes of Rod Blagojevich. Not content to stir up a nice cold pitcher or erect a simple stand, the former Illinois Governor is challenging Minute Maid’s supremacy in the field of citrus concentrate. Refusing to exit the stage quietly after removed from office, he instead has gone on the offensive. Some might argue the 52 year- old Democrat has given a whole new meaning to the word “offensive.”

Lani Silver died early this evening

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I am sorry to report that our good friend Lani Silver, a remarkable woman of endless good causes and good results, died early this evening at the home of her sister in San Francisco. She had been battling brain cancer since last September. B3

PG&E/BofA take over the Small Business Commission

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Mom and Pop lose their voice as the recession-racked small business community is feeling City Hall neglect and used by PG&E and big downtown business

By Bruce B. Brugmann

(Scroll down for a list of the Small Business Commissioners)

Here’s a snapshot of how the Pacific Gas & Electric Company and its downtown allies operate to keep City Hall safe for the illegal private power monopoly. Rebecca Bowe’s story in the current Guardian shows how a PG&E spokesperson, Darlene Chiu, and a Bank of America ally, retired Bank of America executive Irene Yee Riley, have taken control of the Small Business Commission through key commission appointments by Mayor Gavin Newsom, a PG&E ally.

PG&E’s interest is clear: to grab as many City Hall appointments as possible to protect and enhance the position of this corrupt and corrupting private utility. (See Guardian stories and editorials since l969.) And, at the Small Business Commission, to help insure that the commission does nothing to injure PG&E’s position, such as raising questions about the many terrible problems small business has with PG&E’s high rates, unreliable service, onerous collection policies, and unaccountability. How, many small business people ask, does a small business complain about any of these problems with PG&E?

Timely example of PG&E unaccountability: Chiu, since Newsom appointed her last March, has missed four commission meetings, more than any other commissioner. Bowe called Chiu at PG&E to ask why she had missed so many meetings, but Chiu did not return her calls by press time. I will try myself tomorrow. However, I am not optimistic. PG&E has long maintained a corporate policy of not returning Guardian phone calls or providing information even when its representatives are sitting on public commissions purportedly doing public work representing small business.

Mom and pop lose their voice

By Rebecca Bowe

Bank of America and Pacific Gas and Electric Co. are quite the opposite of mom-and-pop operations, yet two of the seven members appointed to San Francisco’s Small Business Commission hail from these corporations, much to the chagrin of true small business leaders.

In a heated e-mail fired off to an assortment of City Hall staffers Jan. 13, Small Business Commissioner Michael O’Connor criticized the Mayor’s Office for diluting the commission — which was set up to go to bat for the little guy — with big business appointees.

Meanwhile, funding for the Small Business Assistance Center was almost eliminated last month by the Board of Supervisors.

Click here to continue reading.

Previous Guardian coverage:

>>Volume 20.02 (PDF) An exclusive Bay Guardian study in 1985 challenges the convention wisdom that downtown development creates jobs. Instead, our study by an MIT economist shows that small business have created virtually all the new jobs in San Francisco since l980.

>>Volume 21.02 (PDF) Our updated study in l986 shows that as highrises have gone up, downtown San Francisco has lost jobs. In fact, all the net new jobs in the city have come from new and small businesses in light industrial areas and the neighborhoods

>>October 1, 2003 (PDF) The Guardian’s small business agenda for San Francisco

Editorials: So what are Newsom’s budget plans?

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While the supervisors, labor, and citizens have been working on the unprecedented budget crisis, Newsom has been out of town campaigning for governor or gallivanting off to Paris and Davos, Switzerland. What’s his plan to handle the budget deficit?

This week’s editorial. Scroll down to read Editor’s notes.

EDITORIAL In Washington, Rep. Nancy Pelosi – who has never been known as a radical leftist – is proposing that Congress repeal the Bush tax cuts, now, two years before they expire. That would bring $226 billion into the federal till, enough to fund a good part of the stimulus package.

In Sacramento, Democrats are moving toward a special election this spring to allow the voters to approve a tax increase – a move that would prevent disastrous service cuts in this horrible economic climate. Even the Republicans in the state Legislature – about as intransigent a group of people as you’re going to find in public service in America – are actually discussing the possibility that they might accept a tax increase as part of a budget deal.

Ammiano for best supporting assemblyman

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Today’s Ammianoliner:

Oscar, my name is Harvey and I’m here to recruit you.

(From the home telephone answering machine of Assemblyman Tom Ammiano on Monday, Jan. 26, 2009.) B3

Meister: Labor to Bush: Good Riddance!

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Dick Meister, a San Francisco-based journalist, has covered labor and political issues for a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com.

Labor to Bush: Good Riddance!

By Dick Meister

With the departure of George Bush from the White House, working people and their unions have finally ended one of their toughest fights ever ­ an eight-year struggle with the most virulently anti-labor president in American history.

Of all those bidding Bush good riddance, none have more reason than organized labor and the workers it champions. The record of Bush’s antipathy to them is truly staggering.

Consider, for starters, Bush’s appointment of a notoriously anti-union secretary of labor , Elaine Chao, and an anti-union majority to control the National Labor Relations Board.

The Bush appointees have played a major role in stripping union and civil service rights from more than a million federal employees, cutting back raises that had been due them and most others on the government payroll, and shifting thousands of unionized federal jobs to private non-union contractors.

They’ve increased the staff and budgets for investigating and auditing unions, while decreasing those for enforcing employer violations of labor standards, including those covering child labor and pay discrimination and violence against women.

AG Brown’s flip flop will help pro-Prop 8 forces

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AG Jerry Brown’s decision to oppose Prop 8 in the Supreme Court will,
ironically, only help the pro-Prop 8 forces

By Peter Scheer

(Peter Scheer is executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition, a non profit advocacy group.)

The California Supreme Court, in one of its most important cases, is
weighing a challenge to Prop 8, the constitutional amendment banning
gay marriage. If the Court upholds Prop 8, one of the people you can
blame is Attorney General Jerry Brown.

But wait a minute. Didn’t Brown make headlines recently by filing a
brief in the Supreme Court arguing that Prop 8 should be overturned?
Yes, he did. And that’s the problem.

In cases before the Supreme Court, it is the Attorney General’s job
to defend California’s laws unless they are so plainly invalid that
no plausible defense can be offered. However objectionable on moral
grounds, Prop 8 is not legally indefensible. Brown knows that. By
switching sides in the Supreme Court, the Attorney General ripped up
his job description–a political gambit that no doubt pleases his
supporters but, ironically, only makes it harder for the Court to
overturn Prop 8.

The California Supreme Court is in a tough spot in the Prop 8 case.
It went out on a limb a year ago to strike down a state statute
forbidding same sex marriage, ruling that the law violated
California’s constitution. Prop 8, which voters enacted by a margin
of 52% to 48%, responds directly to that controversial decision by
amending the state constitution, thereby removing–or attempting to
remove– the basis for the Court’s prior ruling.

The current Prop 8 case poses a test of the Court’s legitimacy, its
most valuable asset, at a crucial moment in its history. The Court is
the only institution of California government that is seen as able to
take on hard issues, to decide them in the public interest, and to
act decisively. Although its authority has never been greater, that
authority derives from the public perception that the Court is above
the political fray.

Should the Court strike down Prop 8–overriding an electoral majority
for the second time on the issue of same sex marriage–it must do so
for reasons that are seen as legitimate and legally convincing, even
though most Californians may disagree with the outcome. The Court
must avoid the appearance that it is asserting a political preference
disguised in legal principles. That is a tall order.

In this context the last thing supporters of gay marriage need
is a grandstanding attorney general who, by abandoning his assigned
institutional role, creates doubts about the fairness of the Supreme
Court proceeding and provides an opening for Prop 8 supporters to
argue that the case has been transformed from a legal to a political
contest in which victory goes to the most powerful interest groups.

Can the Court still overturn Prop 8 in a way that will not compromise
its legitimacy? I think so, although the best course at this stage
may be a ruling grounded in the US Constitution instead of the
California Constitution. Under a federal approach, Prop 8’s
problematic status as a state constitutional amendment loses
relevance: vis a vis the US Constitution’s equal protection
guarantee, Prop 8 is no different than any state statute or city
ordinance.

Deciding the case on the basis of the federal constitution also would
legitimize the Court’s ruling because application and interpretation
of federal law is part of its essential function in the original
federal judicial scheme. Legitimacy also comes from the fact that the
Court’s decision, if based on the federal Constitution, would not be
the last word, but would be subject to review by the US Supreme Court.

Of course, the availability of federal Supreme Court review is also
the main disadvantage of this strategy. Still, the US Supreme Court
might decline to review the case, leaving in place a ruling blocking
Prop 8. Or it could review it and surprise everyone with a decision
overturning Prop 8. (Don’t underestimate the influence of the Supreme
Court’s mostly liberal clerks on the gay marriage issue.)

Let’s just hope Jerry Brown keeps his distance from any further judicial
proceedings. With friends like Brown, Prop 8’s opponents don’t need
adversaries.
——
Peter Scheer is executive director of the California First Amendment
Coalition, a nonprofit advocacy group. www.cfac.org

Don’t let lobbyists control broadband billions

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The stimulus bill is our best chance to get meaningful government investment in faster, affordable, and open internet.

This is an action alert put out by the Free Press Action fund, a non profit media reform organization that is “fighting to insure stimulus funds are used to support broadband innovation and competition, not to line the coffers of Comcast and Verizon.”

Hearings began this week on President Obama’s massive economic stimulus package. That gives us only a few weeks to protect its multibillion dollar investment in a nationwide broadband buildout.

Without a strong public interest voice at the table, lobbyists could steer the money into a corporate welfare boondoggle, gobbling up those billions and squashing the innovation and competition we need to close the digital divide. Unless you and I take immediate action, they’ll succeed.

We need your help to convince Congress to resist the tidal wave of industry lobbying and set strict standards for every taxpayer dollar allocated to broadband — standards that will bring us closer to a national broadband system that is universal, open, affordable, innovative and accountable to public scrutiny.

Connecticut Yankee

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BruceBatConnecticutYankee.jpg

Steve pouring a Potrero Hill martini at the Connecticut Yankee.

Good news: Obama issues executive orders on FOIA

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President Obama: “Let me say it as simply as I can: Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of my presidency”

President Barack Obama in a statement to the press on his first hours on the job said, “Let me say it as simply as I can: Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of my presidency.” Now that is good news.

Peter Scheer, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition (CFAC), flashed the word about Obama’s new press policy in a special communique.

Scheer reported, “Obama apparently has signed executive orders whose effect, among
other things, is to reverse the so-called “Ashcroft Memorandum,”
which (in)famously authorized executive branch agencies, when
responding to FOIA requests, to use their discretion under the law to
err on the side of withholding government information rather than
disclosing.

Editorial: Don’t privatize taxicab permits

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Mayor Newsom promised last year in writing that he wouldn’t privatize taxicab permits. It’s infuriating to see him so quickly break that promise.

EDITORIAL In tough times, political leaders with no backbone for making hard decisions tend to look for easy, short-term fixes. And Mayor Gavin Newsom’s proposal to auction off taxicab permits to the highest bidder is just that – a quick fix with serious long-term problems. In fact, it amounts to the privatization of a lucrative public asset.

A bit of background: since 1978, when then-Sup. Quentin Kopp authored a measure called Proposition K, San Francisco has issued some 1,500 taxi permits, known as medallions, to working cab drivers. Under Prop. K, the medallions can’t be owned by corporations, and they can’t be bought and sold as speculative commodities. They’re owned by the city, and only people who actually drive cabs for a living can use them.

There’s a logic to that. The permits are valuable – a medallion holder not only has the right to drive a cab, he or she can lease that permit to other drivers for additional shifts. Since a taxi can be on the road 24 hours a day, the lease income is substantial, roughly $30,000 a year. But only active drivers get that benefit; nobody can hold a permit, sit at home (or work another job), and just collect that cash.
The process isn’t perfect. The waiting list for a medallion takes more than 10 years. Some medallion holders cling to their permits long after they should have retired (and thus keep driving when they should no longer be on the road).

There’s no process for compensating a permit holder who becomes disabled.
But those are issues that can be addressed. The basic fact is that San Francisco has taken the position that the public benefit – a license to drive a cab for hire – should be given only to those who are using it. Prop. K prevents consolidation of ownership in the industry, prevents speculators from turning medallions into a new form of securities (which worked out so well with mortgages), and gives people who have spent 10 years or more driving a cab a chance to reap the full benefits of their work.

Newsom, however, sees those permits as a gold mine. If the city auctioned them off, they might bring $100,000 apiece. Under Newsom’s plan, much of that money would go to the city, although some would go to current medallion holders.

The plan is full of problems. For one, it could completely change the cab business in San Francisco, shifting control of the industry away from drivers and giving it to big businesses and investors. Very few working drivers (who are lucky to clear $30,000 a year) could afford to buy permits, particularly at auction. So the first people in the market would be the cab companies, which for years have wanted the right to own and control the medallions. Private investors – wealthy individuals and institutions – would see the permits as an asset likely to appreciate, and would buy up medallions, then seek to raise the lease fees for drivers.

The only way drivers could buy permits would be to seek the equivalent of mortgage loans – but the banks that handle that sort of loans typically require 20 percent down, putting many drivers out of the running. Unless, that is, some shadowy characters come along with cash loans – or unless the cab companies handle that payment, thereby getting further control).
Unless medallion ownership is limited to drivers, the entire process will get corrupted. People will drive for a minimal period of time, bid on medallions, then go into another line of work – and keep the medallion. Newsom’s office says he’s going to do that, but there are no details on the plan yet.

Cab drivers in the city talk about the need for security and retirement income. After years of driving with a medallion, they want the right to sell it for a chunk of cash. But under the current system, drivers are – and most of them like being – independent contractors.

Freelance writers, consultants, small business owners, and many others who are self-employed are responsible for their own retirement planning. Why should cab drivers get a special deal from the city?
Privatizing the permits is just a bad idea. Newsom promised last year – in writing – that he wouldn’t seek to change Prop. K. It’s infuriating to see him so quickly break that promise.
The supervisors should reject this proposal.<0x00A0>2

“We had fun,” W sums up W

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

And so George W. Bush, after two wars, Katrina, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, the Israeli mess, and a deepening recession, after trashing the New Deal, the middle class, the poor, the environment, education, and the constitution for eight years, summed up his presidency at his final press conference.

“We had fun,” he said.

The rest of us inside and outside the U.S. didn’t have much fun during the Bush years. Bush ended up with a 22 per cent approval rating. Obama comes in with an 80 per cent approval rating.

Calvin Trillin, deadine poet, made the point eloquently in an epitaph for Bush in the Jan. 26 edition of The Nation. It was titled “The Way People Feel About the End of the Bush Administration And the Future of George W. Bush.”

Trillin buried Bush in two lines:

“So when he leaves we won’t be keeping track of him.

We’re just relieved as hell to see the back of him.”

Bush ended up with a 22 per cent approval rating. Obama comes in with an 80 per cent approval rating. The way people feel about Obama and the beginning of the Obama administration is one of the most dramatic and exciting things to happen in the history of the United States of America. The dreams of our founding fathers, and the dreams of Martin Luther King Jr., are being realized in Washington, D.C., in a massive, historic three day Inauguration celebration and flashed round the country and the world.

Let us savor the moment. And then let us get to work and keep the pressure on to see that Obama and his administration continue working to realize the dreams. The process will never end.

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