Today’s Ammianoliner:
No, Mr. Bush. It’s Martin Luther King, not Rodney King. Can you learn anything?
(From the home telephone answering machine of Assemblyman Tom Ammiano on Jan. 29, 2008, the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr.)
Bruce Brugmann
Guardian team leaves to cover the inauguration
The Guardian’s reporter/photographer team of Paula Connelly and Rebecca Frank prepare to leave on Friday to cover the Inauguration. Being from Brooklyn (Paula) and Pittsburgh (Rebecca), they will have no trouble with the weather. See their dispatches and photos in the Guardian, the politics blog, and the Bruce blog. B3
Jess Brownell searches for the real middle
Jess Brownell searches for the real middle of the real middle America where the real Americans live. And he finds wisdom.
By Jess Brownell
Guardian publisher Bruce Brugmann has kindly asked me to produce a blog for these virtual pages. He is an old friend, and a transplanted Midwesterner, and he seems to believe, bless him, that people in the Bay area might benefit from the opinions of a cranky old man in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We’ll see about that.
Milwaukee, for those of you unfamiliar with it, is a place with piles of snow, enough water (for ourselves, mind you), and potholes big enough to engulf a Smart Car, if we had any. As for Wisconsin, it’s a relatively placid state that has never chosen a professional wrestler as governor (that was Minnesota), has never been infested by Romneys (that was Michigan), and is not required by custom to reserve a large number of jail cells for its elected officials (that, of course, is Illinois). People in Wisconsin have harbored a certain resentment towards California for surpassing us in dairy production, but given the current state of the industry, that hardly seems worth mentioning.
Robert Shiller: The value of recession insurance
When the 1990’s Internet bubble pushed markets to dizzying heights, one man warned of the dangers of this irrational exuberance, Project Syndicate columnist Robert Shiller. Schiller, a Professor of Economics at Yale and chief economist at MacroMarkets LLC, is the author of The Subprime Solution: How Today’s Global Financial Crisis Happened, and What to Do about It.
Recession Insurance
By Robert J. Shiller
NEW HAVEN – The Chief Economist of the International Monetary Fund, Olivier Blanchard, and several IMF economists have proposed in a recent paper that governments should offer what they call “recession insurance.” Companies and/or individuals would buy insurance policies, pay a regular premium for them, and receive a benefit if some measure of the economy, such as GDP growth, dropped below a specified level. Such insurance, they argue, would help firms and people deal with the “extreme uncertainty” of the current economic environment.
Obama urged to re-establish U.S. as press freedom leader
Committee to Protect Journalistss urges Obama to re-establish U.S. as a “resolute defender of media freedom at this time of growing repression, censorship, and attacks on journalists around the world”
Presidential Transition Team
Washington, DC 20270
January 12, 2009
Dear President-elect Obama:
I am writing as chairman of the Committee to Protect Journalists to seek your leadership in reaffirming America’s role as a staunch defender of press freedom throughout the world. Journalists in many countries who risk their lives and liberty upholding the values of free expression look to the United States for support.
Editorial: The challenges for Board President Chiu
Editorial in Wednesday Guardian: Chiu will have to stand up to Mayor Newsom, publicly and privately, and make clear that a cuts only budget isn’t going to fly in San Francisco.
Editor’s notes by Tim Redmond: (Scroll all the way down): Are the wealthy residents and big businesses willing to pay just a little more each year to keep basic services in place in San Francisco? The worst of the bloodbath can be avoided with a couple of fair and progressive new revenue measures on the special election ballot in June.
(Sup. Chris Daly responds and comments in the comment section.
Read advance copies of both this week’s Editorial and Editors Notes after the jump.
Help at last for air traffic controllers
The bosses who run the FAA have been mistreating the controllers since at least 1981
By Dick Meister
Few government employees have more important responsibilities than the federal air traffic controllers whose primary job is to protect the safety of the ever-growing number of air travelers. Yet few federal employees are more badly treated by their government bosses.
The bosses, who run the Federal Aviation Administration the FAA have been mistreating the controllers since at least 1981. That’s when President Ronald Reagan fired more than 11,500 controllers who, seeking to improve their onerous working conditions, struck in violation of the law that prohibits strikes by federal employees.
Kucinich: How a utility blackmailed Cleveland
Rep. Dennis Kucinich reports on how a big private utility and the banks in Cleveland tried to force him as then mayor of Cleveland 30 years ago to sell the city’s electric system, Muny Light, to the utility for what Kucinich calls a $50 million bribe. The Guardian was one of the few papers inside or outside of Ohio that at the time covered the scandal from a public power point of view.
I encourage you to read Kucinich’s account because it shows for San Franciscans, living in a city poisoned for decades by the ever more costly PG&E/Raker Act scandal, the lengths to which another private utility in a big metropolitan city will go to try to snuff out a public power system. Note also Kucinich’s point about how the private utility subverted the Cleveland media to back the utility in its brutal power play. It’s tough to go up against the private utility, their banking allies and the media, but Kucinich did it and ultimately won in Cleveland. B3
Truthdig.com Report: Rep. Dennis Kucinich on His Battle With the Banks
By Rep. Dennis Kucinich
Once they were as gods, but the deities of the American banking system are now in ruins, plunged from their pedestals into the maw of taxpayer largesse. Congress voted to give the banks $700 billion, lifting them temporarily out of their sepulcher of debt, while revealing a deep truth about the condition of America’s financial powers:
They never had the money they said they had as they constructed their debt-based monetary system which now lies in ruins. Their decisions on behalf of depositors, shareholders and investors were lacking in basic integrity and common sense. Green gods bailing out with their golden parachutes.
There was a time when their power was real. Come with me to Cleveland three decades ago.
Click here to read the full article on Truthdig.com, where Kucinich is a contributing writer.
The Daily Chronicle newsroom in crisis mode
By Barry Schrader
Chronicle Columnist
Feb 11, 2009
It was 3 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 14, 2008, and the Daily Chronicle news operation had wound down for the day; most of the staff either out on assignment or headed home. But what happened that day and hour will remain seared into the memories of everyone connected with the Chronicle, and I assume many others in the DeKalb area and on the Northern Illinois University campus, for the rest of their lives. I wasn’t there to witness the tension and emotion that ran so high that day, but two weeks later decided there should be a permanent record of the tragic events, so asked the staff if I could interview each of them on video as an oral history project. Some of them were in their first jobs as professional journalists, about the same age as the older students at NIU. It was a very emotional and shocking experience for everyone involved, whether inside that newsroom or out at the campus where the shootings took place. I wanted to capture the feelings and reactions of those closest to the events as things unfolded. The tapes will be turned over to the NIU archives and Joiner History Room where they can be perused by future journalists and historians. Now, as I replay those interviews and recall those horrendous hours and days, I realized that nearly half of those news people interviewed have either left DeKalb for other jobs or changed careers. I wonder how much the impact of that day had on their decisions to move on. One of the most succinct statements was given to me in writing by then Chronicle production superintendent, Bruce Bieritz, a 29-year newspaper veteran, who recalled it this way: “Anyone in the newspaper business lives for days like today (Feb. 14). While being tragic in nature, the events of today are in itself exhilarating in nature from a news standpoint … To be sitting in the editorial area when this tragic event unfolded was one of the most impressive things I have ever seen.
The word from Ammiano’s answering machine
For years, Sup. and now Assemblyman Tom Ammiano has been leaving an Ammianoliner voice message on his home answering machine.
Today, Friday, Jan. 9, 2009, the word on Ammiano’s answering machine was two words: “Message me.”
B3
The news from Rock Rapids, Iowa
The news from Rock Rapids made the Keith Olberman show on MSNBC cable television. Watch the report below.
By Bruce B. Brugmann
Last night my daughter Katrina Perez called me from her home in Santa Barbara, quite excited, with a field report to the San Francisco correspondent on breaking news from Rock Rapids, Iowa. That would be me, of course.
She reported that Keith Olberman featured an item about Rock Rapids on his evening MSNBC cable news show. Something about a deer breaking into a bank.
She suggested I watch the show, which airs an hour later in San Francisco, and get all the details.
I did and to my surprise found that the show, which featured news on the Obamas in Washington, the worst person in the world (Bill O’Reilly of Fox News), fighting in the Gaza strip, and the latest moves to seat the senator=designate from Chicago, also featured a breaking news item from Rock Rapids.
A deer on Sunday had “busted” the window in the Frontier Bank in Rock Rapids which had “loads of money,” according to Keith. The deer tripped the alarm, got into the bank, and wandered around. The bank’s video camera caught the deer in action and Keith showed it as he commented on what the caption said was “Deer Day Afternoon.”
As to motive, Keith said the “coppers” reported that the deer was “looking for a few bucks,” attempting to “pass along fawny checks,” or “simply trying to reign in spending.” By the time the “coppers” got to the scene, the deer had fled the scene of the crime. And Keith, having exhausted all his bad puns for the night, moved on to the next item.
So, as Paul Harvey would say out of his Chicago radio station, “what’s the rest of the story?”
To me, the rest of the story was how this deer-in-the-bank incident from a small town in northwest Iowa and got to New York and on to the Keith Olberman national television show. I promptly emailed Ken Barker, the star page two columnist of the local Lyon County Reporter, to check it out for me. He said he was worried that the deer had gotten in to his account. But he said he would nail down the rest of the story and get back to me. I’ll keep you posted.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Nat Hentoff’s last column in the Village Voice
By Bruce B. Brugmann
Nat Hentoff, a graduate with honors from the George Seldes/I.F. Stone School of Journalism and a great journalist on his own, wrote his last column for the Village Voice on Tuesday, Jan. 6.
The Village Voice newspaper chain laid off Hentoff, 83, on Dec. 30 of last year, signalling that the New Times owners from Phoenix, Arizona, had officially and formally ruined the legendary alternative paper.
Read Hentoff’s last column and see what the Voice since 1958 had as a writer, talent, jazz critic, First Amendment guru, and distinguished civil libertarian with a civil sense of rage and what they will have no more. And read Louis Menard’s Jan. 5 piece in the New Yorker that told how the Voice was once “one of the most successful enterprises in the history of American journalism.” Alas. Alas.
Click here to read, Nat Hentoff’s Last Column: The 50-Year Veteran Says Goodbye
Click here to read the Guardian’s politics blog, How New Times ruined the LA Weekly.
Click here to read Stephanie Clifford’s December 30th article in the New York Times, Village Voice Lays Off Nat Hentoff and 2 Others.
Chris vs. Ross on the board presidency
The Guardian last week wrote an editorial endorsing Sup. Ross Mirkarimi for the presidency of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Sup. Chris Daly and Mirkarimi responded. Here are their letters that will appear in Wednesday’s Guardian. The president will be chosen by the new board on Thursday in a special board session following the swearing in ceremony of the supervisors at noon in the supervisors’ chambers at City Hall. B3
DALY MAKES THE CASE FOR AVALOS
I support John Avalos for board president because I believe he is the best choice to lead the new progressive Board of Supervisors in these tough times (See “The next board president,” 12/31/08). His progressive politics are grounded in decades of community and labor organizing work. Avalos is universally liked and respected (which seems to differentiate him pretty well from me!) and has an uncanny ability to bring people together.
Let’s be honest with everybody here. There are maybe five or six legislative assistants who are more involved in the day-to-day running of the board (and the city, for that matter) than several members of the board. Over the last four years, I have watched as Avalos adroitly guided the budget process, always taking time to hear from everyone while watching out for our city’s most vulnerable. He may know more about the city budget than I do. Putting the supervisor with the most hands-on budget experience in our top leadership spot is not risky, it’s smart.
I am not angry with Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, and I never claimed to be. Mirkarimi did, however, compromise the progressive position in 2007 when he chose to fund more cops over affordable housing and gave the People’s Budget little to no political cover when the mayor’s forces unleashed a full assault against our budget priorities.
Mirkarimi’s four years on the board does not automatically make him the best candidate, but it should provide him with enough insight to make the same choice I did to allow another progressive to lead.
Chris Daly
San Francisco
MIRKARIMI: IT’S ABOUT ISSUES
I thank the Guardian for the endorsement for Board of Supervisors president. The contest for the presidency needs to reflect our values and focus on record and vision.
The leadership fight thus far has taken on an unprogressive machine-like demeanor, bullying for a desired outcome. This sets a troubling tone, one that I haven’t responded to because the real fight is defending our city and those most vulnerable from the economic crunch that threatens to claim all. The real challenge is to innovate revenue enhancement and job creation measures that hedge against a sustained downturn. The real need is to develop an inclusive climate on the Board of Supervisors that respects our differences while advancing progressive governance. And the real difference is that I am independent enough where I see consensus building as a more effective method than division and dysfunction.
Ross Mirkarimi
San Francisco
Robert Scheer
Click here to read Robert Scheer’s online op-ed column on SFGate.com, Runaway Wall Street.
Stiglitz: The rocky road to recovery
Here is our monthly installment of Joseph E. Stiglitz’s Unconventional Economic Wisdom column from the Project Syndicate news series. Stiglitz is a 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.
More progressive taxation will help stabilize the economy
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 – A consensus now exists that America’s recession – already a year old – is likely to be long and deep, and that almost all countries will be affected. I always thought that the notion that what happened in America would be decoupled from the rest of the world was a myth. Events are showing that to be so.
Fortunately, America has, at last, a president with some understanding of the nature and severity of the problem, and who has committed himself to a strong stimulus program. This, together with concerted action by governments elsewhere, will mean that the downturn will be less severe than it otherwise would be.
Stiglitz: Davos Man’s Depression
Here is our monthly installment of Joseph E. Stiglitz’s Unconventional Economic Wisdom column from the Project Syndicate news series. Stiglitz is a 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.
Davos Man’s Depression
By Joseph E. Stiglitz
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.
Ammiano lives with nice Sacramento Mormon family
Today’s Ammianoliner:
Gov. Schwartzenneger extends an olive branch to Tom Ammiano and finds him a place to live in Sacramento. With a nice Mormon family.
(From the home telephone answering machine of Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (yes, assemblyman) on Sunday,
Jan. 4, 2008.) B3
Steiner: A Global Green New Deal
Achim Steiner, a UN Under-Secretary General, is Executive Director of the UN Environment Program. This column is a part of Project Syndicate, an international association of quality newspapers.
By Achim Steiner
NAIROBI – With unemployment soaring, bankruptcies climbing, and stock markets in free-fall, it may at first glance seem sensible to ditch the fight against climate change and put environmental investments on hold. But this would be a devastating mistake of immediate, as well as inter-generational, proportions.
Far from burdening an already over-stressed, over-stretched global economy, environmental investments are exactly what is needed to get people back to work, get order books flowing, and assist in powering economies back to health.
In the past, concern for the environment was viewed as a luxury; today, it is a necessity – a point grasped by some, but by no means all, economic architects yet.
Meister: Imagine, a pro-labor Secretary of Labor
OBAMA’S PRO-LABOR SECRETARY OF LABOR
By Dick Meister
Rarely has a nominee for any cabinet post drawn such widespread praise as
President-elect Obama’s choice for secretary of labor and for good reason:
Hilda Solis has the potential of returning the Labor Department to its
mission of defending and strengthening the status of American workers.
Solis, daughter of immigrants from Mexico and Nicaragua, has the skill,
experience, determination and firm presidential backing to shift the
department from what’s been the opposite direction under President Bush’s
secretary of labor, Elaine Chao.
Stiglitz: Whither the Obama economy?
Here is our monthly installment of Joseph E. Stiglitz’s Unconventional Economic Wisdom column from the Project Syndicate news series. Stiglitz is a 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.
The Dismal Economist’s Joyless Triumph
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 – I have long been forecasting that it was only a matter of time before America’s housing bubble – which began in the early days of this decade, supported by a flood of liquidity and lax regulation – would pop. The longer the bubble expanded, the larger the explosion and the greater (and more global) the resulting downturn would be.
Economists are good at identifying underlying forces, but they are not so good at timing. The dynamics are, however, much as anticipated. America is still on a downward trajectory for 2009 – with grave consequences for the world as a whole.
Durst: Top comedy news stories of 2008
When everybody in America knows the name of the Secretary of the Treasury, that’s not good news.
By Will Durst
Okay. Just so you know: the Top Ten Comedic News Stories of the Year are as different from the Top Ten Legitimate News Stories of the Year as a tarantula infested banana tree is from a small paper bag of locking quarter- inch steel washers painted blue. Other stuff might have had a bigger impact on America and the World, such as an African American guy whose middle name is Hussein winning the Presidency of the United States. But so far, Mister Agent of Change is about as funny as over the counter ear drops. You can’t mock hope right now. Too much like kicking small whimpering furry things with big eyes. Oh, he’s bound to loosen up after a few weeks getting kicked around on Pennsylvania Avenue, but until then, here are the stories from 08 that were most filled with humorosityness.
10. Proposition 8. Organized religion goes out of its way to guarantee that gays will not be burdened with the right to be as miserable as the rest of us.
9. New York Governor and Emperor’s Club member, Elliott Spitzer. Flies a hooker from New York to DC, because as we all know, there aren’t enough hookers in DC. (535 that I can think of offhand) Gives her 4 grand and puts her up at the Mayflower Hotel. Now, that’s a liberal. A conservative will try to get it for free in an airport men’s room stall. Demonstrating fiscal responsibility.
LaHood slithering in under governor cover
Click here to read John Kass’ article from the Chicago Tribune on January 23 titled, LaHood slithering in under governor cover.