jesse

Obama v. McCain: How much will you pay in taxes?

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Barack Obama says 95% of Americans will get a tax cut if he’s elected. McCain says … well, whatever he’s saying that day or week. But what does it all mean for you? Under a McCain or Obama regime, how much of your hard-earned booty will the IRS demand for such indispensable national priorities as, say, endless wars of choice and making sure Wall Street billionaires don’t have to sell their second ski lodges? Now you can find out at this handy new website.

I entered a few different incomes into the calculator, starting low and adding a couple-ten thousand each time. And, if this magical contraption of the netwebs and intertubes is to be believed, it does appear that Obama’s tax plan will save people making under $125,000 a few hundred bucks a year. Note: I did not enter deductions, investments, assets, etc. – just straight income.

SEIU – Why it matters

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September 26 and 27 should be eventful days at the San Mateo County Event Center. A place there called Fiesta Hall will probably be very loud, but not be very festive. Thousands of United Healthcare Workers (UHW) union members plan to protest hearings on whether to remove their leadership for allegedly misappropriating dues money.

People not involved with or knowledgeable of union activity might not think this is a big deal, but trust me – it is.

As I’ve reported here, here, and here – UHW’s leader Sal Rosselli has been feuding with Andy Stern, head of UHW’s parent union, the Service Employees International Union, over what he calls Stern’s undemocratic regime. If Barack Obama is elected, he will definitely owe Andy Stern and SEIU a major debt. SEIU is putting almost $90 million into Obama’s White House run. And if Stern is as autocratic as Rosselli and his supporters claim, the future of a Democratic majority in Washington might not be as progressive as many liberals hope – especially when it comes to lifting workers out of poverty by organizing them into unions like SEIU.

Rosselli says Stern suppresses dissent, sells out his members, and makes secret deals with corporate America. That kind of behavior in one of the Democrats’ biggest benefactors won’t help Obama bring the kind of “change we deserve.” On the other hand, if unions like UHW illegally divert millions of dollars of their members’ money into shadowy slush funds – as Stern and SEIU have charged — that won’t exactly help rejuvenate the left either.

Bottom line, even though a small percentage of workers are unionized these days, what goes on in San Mateo this weekend could have an big effect on the country’s political landscape. Stay tuned.

PS: UHW sources called me this morning and said Stern had barred observers from the federal labor department from attending the hearing. They pointed to a letter, dated yesterday, from labor department officials that appeared to confirm this. However, I just got off the phone with the person at the department to whom the letter was sent. He said SEIU has changed its mind and decided to allow the officials in if they seek access.

UPDATE: An SEIU spokesperson called this morning and insisted that the international union never actively barred Department of Labor (DOL) officials from the hearings. According to SEIU’s Michelle Ringuette, DOL made an inquiry directly to Ray Marshall, who is conducting the hearings. As soon as SEIU officials found out DOL wanted to attend, Ringuette went on, they agreed to let them in. “DOL is welcome,” she told me.

Also, I made a goof in my “PS” section above. The Department of Labor official I spoke with yesterday, Dennis Eckert at the Office of Labor Management Standards, actually sent the letter to which I linked. (I wrote that he was the addressee. Apologies.)

No Berkeley Bowl for You!

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Hats off to Mike Sugarman over at CBS-5 for his story about the Berkeley Bowl’s draconian sampling policies. In short, if you get caught sipping the soup du jour or nibbling on some dried fruit before you purchase said items, you’re likely to get detained, hassled, and eventually ostracized from the East Bay grocery mecca.

I actually got a tip about this a few months ago, but got too busy to cover it. A lifetime Berkeley Bowl patron (not one of the people Sugarman profiled) called me up and told me that for years, he had tasted the Bowl’s self-serve soup on offer near the deli counter to make sure he liked it before (usually) purchasing a bowl. Then one foul day, Bowl security swooped down on him mid-taste and frogmarched him into a little room, threatened him with arrest, took his picture, and – after a couple of hours – finally let him go with a warning that he never return.

I did make a trip across the bay to look into it and what I found was a bit shocking. In short, the general manager of the Bowl – I can’t remember his name or find my notes on the conversation – told me that he could not recall the specific incident in question (which led me to wonder – how many times does this happen, every day? Week?) but that he believed that people who get banned from the Bowl definitely, no doubt about it deserve their fate. Beware, East Bay soup slurpers and serial bulk-bin pilferers. Don’t let the tie dye fool you. The dude was serious. Berkeley Bowl will regulate …

(image courtesy of dissonanced.wordpress.com)

Lipstick on a Palin: SNL, Fox News, and Youtube

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My lovely and extremely talented significant other missed the Tina Fey as Sarah Palin tour de force this past weekend on Saturday Night Live. So she did what millions of other young Americans have done: she went to You Tube to check it out. But there was a problem, which she shared with me this morning. The first half dozen, maybe more clips on the ubiquitous video upload site are not full-length excerpts from Saturday Night Live. They are, instead , outtakes from a Fox News broadcast covering the story.

A good portion of these clips are taken up by Fox News commentators yacking about the show. (AKA: shoot me now, please.) They then switch to an extremely abridged version of the SNLsketch, about half a minute or so out of what I believe was a five minute bit. And as more cynical (or seasoned) observers might have already guessed, the part of the sketch Fox chose to feature makes our potential “Pitbull with Lipstick” Veep look downright reasonable. Meanwhile, Amy Poehler’s Hillary Clinton gets all the laughs as she practically demolishes the podium out of pent-up jealousy.

In other words: if, like untold millions of people, you only saw the sketch via the Fox News upload on Youtube there’s a damn good chance you came away thinking SNL was bashing Hillary instead of poking fun at Palin. Never mind that the other four a half, five minutes of the sketch savagely lampooned the Alaska Gov.

I know NBC won’t let Youtube post any of its content. But still, how did Fox News’ coverage come to dominate the search results like this? Anyone else detect the distinct odor of the McCain campaign here?

Here is one of the offending Fox uploads:

Mirkarimi: Don’t spray on me

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By David Carini

Opponents of the state’s plan to spray pesticides against the light brown apple moth gathered at City Hall today to support legislation introduced by Supervisor Mirkarimi. Mirkarimi’s bill urges the city attorney to find a legal method to stop the aerial spraying before it commences over San Francisco airspace on August 1.

“The spraying shouldn’t present more harm than good. Some of the chemicals used are in the list of known substances to cause cancer in California,” Mirkarimi said at the press conference.

The California Department of Food and Agriculture’s pesticide program is currently underway throughout the state. Monterey and Santa Cruz counties were sprayed in November of last year. “Lots of my neighbors are complaining about skin rashes and coughs,” Santa Cruz resident Paulina Borsook told the crowd.

In spite of 643 reported cases of illness related to the Monterey Peninsula sprayings last fall, the state has yet to disclose the exact chemical compound of the pesticide.

Bobby Bogan, spokesman for Seniors Organizing Seniors, pointed out that over 60 percent of the elderly in the city have respiratory problems, but seniors weren’t his only concern. “We don’t grow apples in San Francisco, we grow children,” he said.

The Board of Supervisors will vote on the resolution tomorrow, April 15.

Torch Songs: A report from the ground

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Ed Note: I was on my way from a press conference at the federal building at around 1:30 today when I saw the anti-Torch demonstrators, at least a couple hundred of them, surge out of Civic Center Plaza, across the street, and up the steps of City Hall. It was a pretty dramatic moment, with all their brightly colored flags whipping in the stiff wind and their chants echoing against the marble facade.

I stuck around for a few minutes, flanking a phalanx of bored media types and a line of motorcycle cops contendedly contemplating the overtime they were racking up, to see if anything else went down. I listened to more chanting and and watched more flag waving until a cameraman from one of the networks leaned over and said, “Maybe something will happen when Richard Gere speaks later.”

Guardian Intern Emma Lierley had a lot more stamina than I did. She followed the proceedings all day and filed the following report. – JB Powell

With the Beijing Olympic torch set to be received Wednesday, pro-Tibetan protestors ran their own torch through the streets of San Francisco Tuesday. The rally was held in multiple locations, including the UN Plaza, the steps of City Hall, and the section of Geary Street that boarders the Chinese Consulate. Hundreds of participants loudly denounced the “genocide torch” and called for a free Tibet.

The protest began Tuesday morning in the UN Plaza, as Tibetan flags snapped in the wind and a group of monks from the Gyuto Vajrayana Center in San Jose chanted a blessing over the crowd. The Buddhist monk Thupten Donyo, manager of the Gyuto Vajrayana Center, was very excited about the day’s events, and told the Guardian that never before had Tibet been given such a chance to speak to the world.

“We lost our country fifty years ago,” he said, “and we are struggling to keep our culture alive.”

Migden: in for the long haul

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An update to my earlier post on Migden’s court win yesterday:

I just got off the line with a source at the Eastern District courthouse. He told me the soonest Migden’s case could be heard would be 6 weeks from now. That would be mid-May, only 2-3 weeks from the election. Any sooner than that, he said, would be “extremely unlikely.” He wouldn’t go on the record with a guess as to when it would be litigated, but from what I gathered, it could be as far down the road as three months from now.

In other words, Migden’s going to have money in the bank for the foreseeable future. That means everyone hoping she would drop out to assure the District 3 seat stays in San Francisco hands shouldn’t hold their breath; it looks like it’s going to be a three horse race for the duration.

Score one for Migden and her lawyers – and also for Joe Nation, who will probably benefit almost as much as Migden herself from the decision handed down yesterday …

More on Home Depot pulling up stakes

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As Tim Redmond blogged yesterday, Home Depot has notified the city that it will not be opening a store on Bayshore Blvd. – ten years after the land entitlement process began. Guardian intern Michael Leonard spoke with several people involved in the process:

Supervisor Sophie Maxwell, whose District 10 would have hosted the outlet expressed regret at the giant retailer’s decision, “People were certainly looking forward to the jobs and the convenience…and the sales tax dollars,” Maxwell said. “Now, it’s back to the drawing board.”

Not everyone in Maxwell’s district, however, or the city at large, was eager to have a mammoth chain store located in a vital neighborhood.

“Actually, there was not a lot of community support. There were people with money who tried to override real community voice,” Marie Harrison, a community organizer for GreenAction, told the Guardian.

According to Harrison, community opposition centered around two factors: the extra traffic and resulting pollution in the already industrialized area; small, local businesses being forced to close by a large, national chain.

It remains unknown what will become of the land plot. Mayor Newsom has requested that Home Depot hold off on pulling out of the deal. Maxwell stated that the some in the community had suggested a Target store or a movie complex during talks in past years.

As for Home Depot, the behemoth home improvement firm says it is not giving up on San Francisco. Spokeswoman Kathryn Gallagher told us, “We want to reiterate our thanks to the many customers, city officials, and partners that expressed support of us…We hope to be part of the community someday.”

Harrison had some words of advice for Gallagher and other company officials should the firm opt to show up in town again. Noting that their proposed job numbers constantly fluctuated and that the estimated economic benefits of the proposed location never added up, she stated, “Don’t make promises that you can’t keep.”

Migden finally wins one …

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Yesterday, after a bruising month and a potentially devastating weekend in which she failed to win the nomination of the California Democratic Party, incumbent State Senator Carole Migden finally saw something go her way – at least for now. Judge Edmund Brennan of the Eastern District Court for California in Sacramento ruled that she should be allowed access to over $600,000 in funds the state’s campaign finance watchdog had barred her from spending.

Last month, Midgen sued the Fair Political Practices Commission to gain access to the cash. The FPPC had declared it, and a reported $400,000 more that the Senator had already spent (in possible violation of state law) “surplus.” California’s surplus funds law places strict conditions on how and when politicians can transfer funds between various accounts. Migden responded by hauling the regulators to federal court and attempting to overturn the law on First Amendment grounds – citing a landmark Supreme Court ruling which equates political money with free speech.

Judge Brennan’s ruling yesterday was not an outright victory for Migden. The judge did not officially weigh in on the law’s constitutionality. He simply stated that, until the lawsuit can proceed in earnest, she should be allowed to tap into the accounts. But Roman Porter, spokesperson for the FPPC, told us it might not be as easy to get to the money as one would think. The cash, he told us, has been shifted around so much by Migden’s campaigns, no one is quite sure how to get it into her current accounts.

“Right now we’re still trying to figure out how that can legally happen … we’ve never been in a circumstance like this before.”

But in the end, provided that regulators and Migden’s campaign can figure out a way to move the money into her coffers, the lawsuit itself might just be an afterthought. No matter how things eventually turn out, Judge Brennan’s ruling yesterday does one critical thing for the embattled incumbent – it literally buys her more time in the race.

Calls placed to the judge’s courtroom deputy, who handles his calendar, were not immediately returned, but many observers expect the legal process to drag on for weeks, even months. The primary election is on June 3rd. By the time anything gets settled for real, the race is likely to be over and Migden no doubt will have spent most, if not all, of the money in question.

New Deal Feted

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By David Carini

The New Deal turned 75 yesterday, March 31st. About 150 people turned out to the Koret Auditorium in the main SF library to mark the occasion and to listen to a six-person panel discuss the series of landmark government initiatives. Supervisors Chris Daly and Ross Mirkarimi, two authors and two union organizers called for a return to the core principles of social justice and fair treatment that led to such things as minimum wage laws and the formation of social security.

“They did it in the 30’s, we can do it now,” Harvey Smith, adviser to the Living New Deal Project, told the audience. Smith was upset over the potential privatization of the Cow Palace, and joked that the city may sell of chunks of Golden Gate Park soon.

Sup Daly’s main concern was affordable housing and making sure the city represents ordinary people instead of big downtown businesses. “We don’t have enough resources to fund what we need, like schools and hospitals because we give corporations too many tax loopholes,” Daly said.

The panel urged the audience to organize their communities in fighting the privatization of San Francisco, which they said would make this city a haven for the elite. “The New Deal wasn’t just a gift from Congress, workers had to fight for it. If change is going to happen, it will be from the bottom up,” labor activist Karega Hart said.

Torch debate: still burning

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By Megan Ma

Under pressure to reject any official welcome of the Olympic torch relay when it comes through town on April 9th, SF supervisors plan to vote on two competing resolutions tomorrow, April 1st, that will set the tone for the city’s stance on the controversy.

Board members have been wrangling over wording of potential resolutions for the past few weeks. On March 20th Sup. Chris Daly brought forward a version that called on his colleagues and Gavin Newsom to greet the torch with “alarm and protest at the failure of China to … cease the egregious and ongoing human rights abuses in China and occupied Tibet.”

Daly’s proposal was rejected the same day by Sups. Carmen Chu and Sean Elsbernd, both Newsom allies, who turned around and wrote a much milder version. Their proposal hacks out Daly’s list of grievances against China, and simply states that the city welcomes both the Olympic torch and the Tibetan Freedom Torch, which is slated to arrive a day earlier.

Daly’s offering runs 5 pages longer, and lists a number of China’s alleged human rights abuses, including its role in the Darfur genocide, its abuses against Falun Gong and the Burmese monk protests. He’s re-introducing his version at tomorrow’s meeting.

Dozens of protesters from Students for Free Tibet and Burmese American Democratic Alliance (BADA) lined city hall Friday, saying Tibet sympathizers would be there everyday until the torch arrives. And while the ultimate goal for many activists was for city officials to unanimously boycott the Olympics and reject the torch, UC Davis student Phuntsok Wangden said some would be “satisfied” with the approval of Daly’s “alarm and protest” resolution.

A representative from SF Team Tibet, an umbrella organization for Bay Area protestors, says Desmond Tutu and Richard Gere are scheduled to speak at a candlelight vigil for the Tibetan Freedom Torch on April 8 in the city.

Meanwhile, SFPD still hasn’t released the route of the torch yet.

Nurses Union Alleges Intimidation by Sutter

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By Emma Lierley

As several thousand striking nurses continue to picket ten Bay Area Sutter Health hospitals this week, the California Nurses Association announced Thursday that they have filed charges against Sutter Health for mistreatment of their members.

Alleging continued harassment and threats made against striking nurses, along with failure to bargain “in good faith,” the union lodged their complaints with the National Labor Relations Board. CNA official Shum Preston told the Guardian Thursday that the charges are being brought forward on behalf of a few specific nurses who have received direct threats, as well as many nurses who faced hostile situations in their hospitals.

Amie Davidow, a striking labor and delivery nurse with California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, told the Guardian Thursday that “nurse managers are calling people at home, threatening them with losing their job, loss of health benefits, and threats of suspension.”

Davidow said that she herself has received no direct harassment but that, “there are a lot of nurses very scared about [these threats].”

When we asked CPMC representative Kevin McCormick about the charges, he strongly disputed their validity, and claimed that they were made to drum up sensational media headlines. “This is the third time our nurses have been on strike, and we have never done anything to them in the past. Why would we do something now?”

McCormick added that the dispute was with the union, and not the nurses themselves. “We want the nurses to come back to work after the strike. We want to have the best relationship we can with our nurses,” he said.

More Trouble for Migden – $9 MILLION More?

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Earlier this month, State Senator Carole Migden sued the state’s campaign finance watchdog. Today, the watchdog fired back – with a howitzer. The Fair Political Practices Commission filed a counter-suit in federal court against the District 3 senator seeking $9 MILLION in potential damages. This comes on top of the record-breaking $350,000 the commission fined Migden last week for 89 different campaign finance violations.

At issue in Migden’s lawsuit and the FPPC’s counter-suit is nearly $1 million in cash that the commission has barred her from spending. (See earlier blog entries and also “Migden sues the FPPC” in last week’s issue) But the FPPC’s counter-suit today alleges EVEN MORE irregularities in Migden’s bookkeeping. From a commission press release: “Migden … failed to report a number of large transactions entirely, while reporting other large transactions which simply never occurred.” When I asked FPPC spokesman Roman Porter to explain these new charges in more detail, he would only tell me that the Senator’s campaigns have “had significant issues with regard to reporting.” Porter would not elaborate, but he did repeat the word “significant” twice, with emphasis.

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