Steven T. Jones

Muni cuts spark popular backlash

Sasha Cuttler
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Muni cuts spark popular backlash

Tomorrow’s big showdown over the latest round of Muni service cuts and fare hikes seems to be galvanizing transit supporters and giving birth to a rejuvenated progressive advocacy effort, including a new transit riders union led by noted alternative transportation advocate Dave Snyder. And that hearing is just a prelude to a taxi medallion privatization plan that will be heard in the afternoon and another big Muni budget blowout on Tuesday.

“We are asking everyone to show up and complain about the mayor and the MTA board’s failure to prepare for this and find alternatives to the drastic cuts they’re proposing,” Snyder told us, referring to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s plans to close a $16.9 million mid-year budget deficit (which is what’s left after the $11 million from the taxi permit selloff, which the MTA has already figured into the budget) almost entirely on the backs of Muni riders, who have already seen their fares double since Gavin Newsom became mayor in 2004.

The hearing is Friday at 9 a.m. in City Hall Room 400. That afternoon, Snyder will meet with a broad-based advisory board that he’s assembled to lead (and to name) the new transit riders union that he’s been working on for months, and his tentative plan is to formally launch it on Monday.

For now, those interested in being part of this fledgling organization can sign up here. The new organization is being launched as the MTA board moves from tomorrow’s controversial meeting into another one on Tuesday, that one to start grappling with the huge budget deficit the agency will still face in the next fiscal year that begins in June, even if it’s successful in closing this year’s.  

Snyder is probably just the right person to lead this effort, having directed the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition in its formative years before founding Transportation for a Livable City (now known as Livable City) and then becoming the transportation policy director for the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR), a post he left last year during a controversy surrounding Snyder’s appointment to the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway, and Transportation District Board of Directors. 

Snyder said Newsom and the MTA board have failed to plan for this foreseeable funding shortfall, saying they should have accelerated plans for extended parking meter hours (particularly ending the free parking on Sundays), a congestion pricing program, a local vehicle license fee, or measures like a gas tax, transit assessment fee, or a parcel tax – all of which the MTA board and mayor could have placed on the ballot for voter approval. Instead, they did nothing and are now pursuing a 10 percent reduction in Muni service, which could start a disastrous downward spiral.

“They need a stable, long-term funding source,” Snyder told us. “The charter actually says they’re supposed to aggressively seek new sources of funding.”

MTA spokesperson Judson True said that neither tax increases nor extended parking meter hours among the proposed solutions for Friday’s discussion, but they’re likely to be raised as part of a longer term strategy during the meeting on Tuesday: “It’s likely that the various tax measures will be part of that discussion.”

That could include reviving the extended parking meter hours proposal, which the MTA board heard last year during a rancorous public meeting, directing staff to do more community outreach on it. As True said, “We did a fair amount of outreach on it so we’ll see where the discussion goes on the two-year budget.”

Snyder is hardly alone in his local advocacy for budget solutions that spare Muni from deep cuts. In fact, the Transit Not Traffic coalition that successfully pushed the 2007 MTA reform measure Prop. A – which includes the Bike Coalition, Livable City, Walk SF, and other progressive groups – has revived itself in advance of tomorrow’s meeting and will be flying outside City Hall starting at 8:30 a.m.

There is broad support on the left for seeking more funding from drivers and the general public, but it’s not unanimous. The anti-war ANSWER Coalition frustrated many of its usual progressive allies last year by organizing against extended meter hours, claiming it was a hidden tax of low-income motorists. And Newsom has stubbornly resisted supporting new revenue measures, even in the face of unprecedented budget shortfalls, which makes the quest to win the support of two-thirds of voters difficult.

But the popular outrage that’s been expressed in recent weeks about how much Muni has been cut, year after year since Newsom became mayor, will likely put pressure on him and the MTA board (all of whom Newsom appointed) to pursue new revenue options.

True sounded weary as we spoke, noting how much anger has been expressed at the recent series of town hall meetings. “We know where people stand on these proposals,” True said. “The board is going to have some tough decisions to make, clearly.”

SF officials tap corporate cash

Sasha Cuttler
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SF officials tap corporate cash

San Francisco’s $500 campaign contribution limit makes it tough for rich individuals and corporations to curry favor with local politicians, right? Well, not really. Actually, politicians can still tap wealthy interests for tens of thousands of dollars for their special events and pet projects, as long as they fill out a form called “Payments Made at the Behest of an Elected Officer” within 30 days.

Traditionally, those forms have been buried in the files of the Ethics Commission, but the agency recently put them online, a rare bit of user-friendly sunshine from this often-toothless watchdog body. A Guardian review of the forms shows it is almost exclusively the city’s most fiscally conservative elected officials who use this tactic, tapping a relatively small pool of downtown power brokers.

When Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier wanted to support a Bizworld Foundation event in December, she had Pacific Gas & Electric donate $5,000 on her behalf. Sup. Sean Elsbernd throws a big annual crab-feed fundraiser in February, with proceeds going to the Laguna Honda Foundation. The form for this year’s event isn’t in yet, but last year he got $5,000 each from all the top anti-progressive funders: Don Fisher, Dede Wilsey, Charles Schwab, Warren Hellman, Platinum Advisors, and the San Francisco Association of Realtors.

But far and away the biggest beneficiary of these kinds of corporate donations is Mayor Gavin Newsom, who submitted more than half the forms on file. For last year’s Sunday Streets events, he tapped the Hellman family for $30,000, Blue Shield for $10,000, his favorite developer Lennar for $10,000, and Lennar subcontractor CH2M Hill for $5,000. The year before, the top Sunday Streets donors (at $20,000 each) were California Pacific Medical Center (which is seeking city approval to build two new hospitals) and Catholic Healthcare West.

For his swearing-in events in 2008, Newsom tapped old family friends Gordon and Ann Getty for $30,000, the Fisher family for $20,000, and Charles Schwab, Dede Wilsey, and Marc Benioff for $15,000 each. And, of course, PG&E gave him $10,000.

When Treasurer Jose Cisneros was starting his Bank on San Francisco program in 2008, he had Wells Fargo donate $20,000. When Sup. Bevan Dufty wanted to create Mission High School scholarships in his name, he called his friends Denise and John York, owners of the 49ers, to cut a check for $19,000.

Only one official from the progressive side of the local political spectrum turned to these big donations for help, and that was then-Sup. Aaron Peskin in 2007, when he wanted to raise $84,000 to buy a Telegraph Hill property to turn into open space. His top donors were the Gerson Bakar Foundation for $34,000 and 1301 Sansome LLC for $15,000.

So if you want to find out how downtown corporations are supporting the politicians they favor, keep your eye on this valuable new online resource.

John Yoo’s torturous book tour

Sasha Cuttler
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1
John Yoo’s torturous book tour

By Adrian Castaneda and Steven T. Jones

John Yoo – the infamous author of legal memos justifying torture for the Bush Administration and a controversial UC Berkeley law professor – continued his surreal book tour yesterday, stopping in San Francisco yesterday to appear on KQED’s forum.

And while host Michael Krasny did little to challenge Yoo’s tortured logic, including the ludicrous assertion that tactics like waterboarding are legal because they weren’t specifically outlawed by Congress, two callers who are lawyers correctly noted that the U.S. is bound by several treaties that bar torture, as well as inhumane or degrading treatment of prisoners, which the U.S. clearly engaged in based on Yoo’s legal advice that only pushing a prisoner to the brink of death or major organ failure constitutes impermissible torture.

One of those callers specifically asked Yoo why his memo to the White House – written in the wake of 9/11, which Yoo considers an “unprecedented” event that conveyed great new powers to the president – didn’t cite the U.S. constitutional provision that makes Congressional-approved treaties the “supreme law of the land,” comparable to any other laws Congress approves.

Yoo never answered that question, and Krasny quickly dropped the issue to quote an e-mail that was supportive of Yoo, the only such comment during the hour-long show. It’s a shame that Krasny was far easier on this locally infamous figure than the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart, whose interview with Yoo last month was far tougher and more revealing.

That’s particularly galling given that is was just last week that the Department of Justice issued its final report criticizing Yoo’s “flawed legal reasoning” even though it stopped short of finding professional misconduct that would warrant criminal sanctions or disbarment. That final report by David Margolis of the Justice Department overruled a preliminary report by the Office of Professional Standards that did find professional misconduct based on the fact that Yoo “knowingly provided incomplete and one-sided advice” to justify the Bush Administration’s desire to torture detainees that it dubbed “enemy combatants.”

Protesters with World Can’t Wait and other groups have been hounding Yoo on his tour to promote his new book, “Crisis and Command: A history of executive power from George Washington to George W. Bush,” calling him and Jay Bybee (another Bush Administration lawyer who approved torture and is now a judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco) to be tried for their role in facilitating war crimes.

“These are men covered with the blood of countless victims of unspeakably cruel torture, rendition, and imprisonment without any recourse to trial in hell hole dungeons across the planet,” reads a World Can’t Wait missive.

For his part, Yoo is unrepentant and dismissive of critics, repeatedly citing unnamed polls that he says indicate most Americans support the so-called “enhanced interrogation methods” and believe they have prevented terrorist attacks. “I don’t think the majority of the American people think we went too far,” Yoo told Stewart.

On Forum, Yoo criticized the Office of Professional Responsibility’s finding as “shoddy,” saying that the investigators did not take into account the pressure and national urgency of the months just after the 9/11 attacks. Yoo placed blame for the torture scandals not on the one-sided misinformation in his legal briefs but on the fact that Congress didn’t create specific laws to define torture technique after adopting international torture treaties into American law. Yoo also blamed Congress for its inability or unwillingness to reign in the President’s broad wartime powers. “Congress still has enormous authority over national security matters when it chooses to use them,” he said.

Congress also has the power to subpoena Yoo and hold public hearings on the latest Justice Department report, which critics say whitewashed what many consider to be blatantly illegal activities by Yoo and other Bush Administration officials – or to formally support the indictment of Yoo and others by a Spanish judge investigating U.S.-approved torture — if it chooses to do so.

Clean money campaign launches in SF

Sasha Cuttler
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Clean money campaign launches in SF

The campaign for Prop. 15, the California Fair Elections Act, kicks off in San Francisco this Sunday afternoon. It’s an appropriate city to launch this effort, given San Francisco’s leadership on electoral reform, from our pioneering ranked choice voting system to our low political contribution limits to the public financing available in the races for mayor and the Board of Supervisors.

As I discussed in an article this week’s paper, the measure would create a pilot public financing program in the 2014 and 2018 races for the Secretary of State, funded by a $350 annual fee on lobbyists and their employers. It was placed on the ballot by legislation pushed primarily by Bay Area legislators Loni Hancock, Mark Leno, and Tom Ammiano.

Those legislators, along with Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, campaign chair Trent Lange, and California Nurses Association president Deborah Burger, are scheduled to speak at the event, with takes place at 1 p.m. outside the Main Library, 100 Larkin Street.

Notes from the Sierra Club’s gala dinner

Sasha Cuttler
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0

While I focused on Jerry Brown’s disappointing speech to the Sierra Club San Francisco Bay Chapter’s gala dinner on Wednesday night, there are a few more notable nuggets in my notebook worth posting here, starting with what appears to be the collapse of plans for a California Constitutional Convention.

The Guardian recently reported on the difficulties that the campaign was having, but consultant Clint Reilly told me that the effort is basically over, with fundraising shortfalls being the final nail in the coffin. That’s one more reason why “hope” seems to be in such short supply on the political landscape.

The event was held in the Merchant Exchange, a building owned by Reilly, who helped underwrite the gathering. So it was no surprise that the evening was MCed by his wife, Janet Reilly, who is running a strong campaign to replace Michela Alioto-Pier on the Board of Supervisors.

There were lots of political luminaries at the event (list to follow), but there was one particularly notable attendee and particularly notable absence. Los Angeles City Council member Janice Hahn was one of the few politicos from down south, making the rounds in support of her run for lieutenant governor. But Mayor Gavin Newsom, who is considering challenging her, didn’t show up.

Also a no-show was U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, who appeared by video to address the gathering and express appreciation for being the recipient of the Sierra Club’s first Phillip Burton Badge of Courage Award for environmental stewardship. Accepting the award on her behalf was California Democratic Party chair John Burton, who was his usual salty self, taking a dig at the San Francisco Chronicle by referring to someone who wrote “for the Chronicle back when that was a newspaper,” and describing the award’s namesake thusly: “My brother was an outstanding environmentalist who didn’t like the outdoors much.”

He also made this funny, self-effacing crack at the start of his speech: “I think a third of the people in this room would like to see the accelerator stuck on the rug of my Prius.” I was not among that third.

There was a strong turnout of local political leaders, but tellingly, only from the left side of the political spectrum. The members of the Board of Supervisors who turned out were David Chiu, Chris Daly, Ross Mirkarimi, Eric Mar, and John Avalos. Other political luminaries on hand included City Attorney Dennis Herrera, Sen. Leland Yee (Yee and Herrera are each running for mayor) City College trustee John Rizzo (who introduced Brown), Senator-turned-Oakland mayoral candidate Don Perata, District Attorney Kamala Harris, Rep. Jerry McNerney, and Sen. Loni Hancock.

And speaking of pot…

Sasha Cuttler
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And speaking of pot…

Just minutes after my last post on medical marijuana, Assembly member Tom Ammiano announced that he has reintroduced state legislation that would legalize and tax marijuana. Assembly Bill 2254 follows an earlier bill by Ammiano, AB 390, which made history in January by clearing the Assembly Public Safety Committee, only to die from failing to clear a second committee before the legislative deadline.

“Just look at what is happening in our state and it’s obvious that the existing model of prohibition has been a tragic failure. Our prisons are overflowing and it’s easier now for teenagers to get marijuana than alcohol. But yet we continue to spend our limited resources on a failed war on drugs instead of education, health care or job training. With this bill, California can finally have a policy towards marijuana that reflects reality,” Ammiano said in a prepared statement. “We simply cannot afford to continue keeping our heads in the sand and pretend that everything is fine.  It’s time for California to regain control of this issue by taxing and regulating marijuana.”

Marijuana really is medicine

Sasha Cuttler
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Marijuana really is medicine

Just in time for Medical Marijuana Week comes word that the first U.S. clinical trials on marijuana in more than 20 years has found that it is effective in relieving pain and treating multiple sclerosis and other ailments, potentially opening the way for the federal government to revisit its longstanding claim that pot has no medicinal value.

Most significant are findings that even low levels of marijuana offer significant pain relief with minimal health consequences. Unfortunately, the San Francisco Chronicle also reports that the UC San Diego researchers have almost run out of funding before all its planned tests have been completed.

San Francisco has long been a leader in the medical marijuana movement, both with its proactive approach to regulating cannabis clubs, and with the sponsorship of efforts to decriminalize pot by state legislators Tom Ammiano and Mark Leno. Oakland’s pot-cultivation school Oaksterdam University also bankrolled an initiative aimed for the November ballot that would legalize weed for even recreational use.

Rambling Jerry Brown speech raises fear among Dems

Sasha Cuttler
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Rambling Jerry Brown speech raises fear among Dems

If Jerry Brown’s keynote speech last night to a gala environmentalist dinner is any indication, the Democratic Party faces an uphill battle to win this year’s governor’s race. The rambling, alternately vague and academic, and often pointless address did little to inspire or excite a large, sympathetic crowd that was loaded with top Democrats. In fact, some party luminaries were openly aghast at the poor performance, with one making this succinct (if off-the-record) assessment: “We’re fucked.”

Brown has never been a dynamic speaker, but the unscripted, half-hour speech – given at the Sierra Club San Francisco Bay Chapter’s David Brower Dinner in San Francisco, a $250 per head affair that drew top Bay Area Democrats – illustrates the danger of letting a primary be decided by legend and money rather than political persuasion.

Brown’s fundraising prowess and strong poll numbers chased Gavin Newsom and other potential rivals out of the Democratic Party gubernatorial primary, even though Brown hasn’t really outlined his political vision for California, given many extended speeches since being discussed as a candidate for governor, or even officially declared his candidacy (he and others have until March 12 to do so).

“This thing is really daunting,” Brown said of the governor’s race toward the end of the speech, seemingly unsure that he was ready to run, but saying he would make an announcement sometime in the next couple weeks.

Brown started his speech by telling the crowd that he didn’t know what he was going to talk about, so when he arrived (late) for the speech, he asked San Francisco Democratic Party chair Aaron Peskin what he should say, and Peskin told him to talk about how there were more salmon in the streams and better overall environmental health back when Brown was governor in the ‘70s.

But rather than taking that advice and giving a forceful call to strengthen environmental regulation or conjure up California’s better days, Brown meandered around and mused on that and other topics, feeding fears that the 71-year-old candidate might come off as a nostalgic, slightly senile former-Governor Moonbeam rather than an effective agent of needed change.

“During that period when I was governor, I’m not going to call it the golden age because some people think I’m in the golden age, so I don’t want to get people confused. That’s why I don’t want to talk about way back then, because there are a number of people I can see weren’t even born then, so it gets a little embarrassing and I like to pretend it was just yesterday. But in that period, California created almost twice as many jobs as the nation did. We created jobs at about 24 percent over eight years and the nation grew jobs at 13 percent, so almost twice as much. And then Deukmejian did pretty good, he had about the same, maybe half a percent more,” Brown rambled, ticking off statistics, hedging his point by noting how little governors can really do to create jobs, before working up to a decent line that was flatly delivered: “It was a time when the environment got its biggest boost, as far as public policy.”

Nobody applauded, so he continued. “I was thinking tonight, I was trying to figure out that if I did announce, what the hell would I say? And so I decided to go back and read my first announcement, January 24, 1974. I was 35 then, it was another time, I’m now a little older than that. But I talked about clean air, I talked about the energy crisis and getting new sources of energy. I talked about statewide land use planning” – that last item drawing some applause – “and I talked about jobs. And I was thinking, wow, we still got a jobs problem, we got an energy problem, we have a land use problem that feeds into the energy problem, and while the air is cleaner in many respects, it’s not clean enough, or it isn’t healthy enough.”

On substance, Brown had his moments. But even on the need for better statewide land use planning, he went off on a tangent, saying he didn’t even know what that meant when he filled out a Sierra Club questionnaire back in the ‘70s, and he’s not sure how to accomplish it now. 

“You have to make it easier to live closer to where you work,” Brown said in what of his few lines of the night that drew applause, although he didn’t begin to explain how he might achieve this goal. And on a controversial subject that is easily attacked by the right – big government wants more control over private property – Brown’s lackadaisical discussion of the issue was disconcerting.

He even rankled a few Sierra Club members by vaguely criticizing East Bay growth controls designed to reduce sprawl, which the Attorney General’s Office is seeking to overturn: “Pleasanton wants to create 50,000 jobs, but they have a housing cap – for all I know, Sierra Club probably supported that housing cap, so I want to just rub your nose in the housing cap for just a minute – the trouble with the housing cap is they want to create all these jobs.”

Brown tried to argue that allowing more housing in Pleasanton is a strategy for combating global warming because there are jobs there and it would reduce commutes, but he’s going to need to be more on his game than he is right now to win that argument. Instead, we get his fairly dismissive summary of this important issue: “Land use is a big deal, it’s difficult, lots to do on that.”

Against businesswoman Meg Whitman, the Republican gubernatorial primary frontrunner, there is real potential in Brown’s basic belief that markets need to be regulated and that running the government isn’t just like running a business. And somehow, Brown will need to find a way to better distill and deliver that message to counter the right’s pro-business sound bites. 

“There are people saying business knows best,” Brown said, meandering off about companies and widgets for a minute before continuing his point. “But when you look at what we really have to deal with, it’s not just about economics and the market. It’s also about ecology and morality, and morality is about customs, it’s about traditions, it’s about our deepest patterns of how we all relate to one another and that can’t just be assimilated into market incentives. The market assumes honesty, you meet your promises, and also assumes there’s a framework, because things can just run off the cliff and that’s exactly what’s happening. As you add more people, you have more cars, and when you have more cars, they burn fossil fuel and what’s happening in California is you have cars reproducing faster than people…That’s the real challenge here, that we’re trying to get the idea out that we’re trying to save the future.”

The people vs. corporate power

Andrew Lam
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The people vs. corporate power

steve@sfbg.com

The June 8 election is shaping up to be one that pits the people against powerful business interests, a contest that will demonstrate either that money still rules or that growing public opposition to corporate con-jobs has finally taken root.

On the state level, the five ballot measures include two brazen money-making schemes and two experiments in election reform, along with primary races that are still in flux. In San Francisco, where the ballot measures still have a few more weeks to shake out, the election will feature two rarely contested judges races, recession relief for renters, City Hall fiscal reforms, and a fight for control of the local Democratic Party.

So far, only four local measures have qualified for the San Francisco ballot, all placed there by members of the Board of Supervisors. Progressives qualified the Renters Economic Relief package (which limits rent increases during recessions and sets conditions for landlords passing costs to tenants), an initiative establishing community policing standards, and one affirming city support for making Transbay Terminal the northern high-speed rail terminus. Supervisors were unanimous in supporting a charter amendment governing the Film Commission.

But the board is still hashing out changes to the more controversial ballot proposals, a debate that will continue at its Feb. 23 meeting. They include an overhaul of how the city funds its pension program and an effort to remove Muni salary minimums from the city charter, both by Sup. Sean Elsbernd; a $652 million seismic safety bond proposed by Mayor Gavin Newsom; and a Sup. John Avalos charter amendment that would prevent the mayor from unilaterally defunding certain budget expenditures. All measures must be approved by March 5.

Also still forming up in the coming weeks are primary races for legislative seats (although no incumbents appear to be facing strong challenges) and all eight state constitutional offices, including governor (where Attorney General Jerry Brown seems poised to easily win the Democratic nomination), lieutenant governor, and attorney general (which District Attorney Kamala Harris is running for).

Candidates have until March 12 to declare themselves for statewide and legislative offices, as well as for the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee, which could play a key role in this fall’s Board of Supervisors elections. Two years ago, a slate of progressives led by Aaron Peskin and Chris Daly launched a surprise attack to wrest control of the board away from the moderates who have long controlled it. Newsom, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, and their downtown allies are expected to try hard to regain control over their party’s purse-strings and endorsements.

 

JUDGING THE JUDGES

Another struggle from two years ago is also being replayed. In 2008, then-Sup. Gerardo Sandoval successfully challenged Superior Court Judge Thomas Mellon, arguing the Republican-appointed jurist was too conservative (and the entire court is not diverse enough) for San Francisco. This time the target is Judge Richard Ulmer, a conservative appointed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Ulmer is being challenged by two LGBT attorneys, Daniel Dean and Michael Nava, the latter endorsed by Sen. Mark Leno, Assembly Member Tom Ammiano, and Peskin, who chairs the Democratic Party and could be helpful in the race. “He’s a brilliant guy,” Leno said of Nava.

Leno also has endorsed deputy public defender Linda Colfax, a Latina lesbian, in a four-way race to replace retiring Judge Wallace Douglass. The other candidates are Harry Dorfman, Roderick McLeod, and Robert Retana. If no candidate wins a majority of votes, the top two finishers square off in a runoff election in November.

Leno said he’s thrilled to see a diverse crowd of attorneys seeking judgeships: “This governor has failed horribly in his appointments, not only with the LGBT community, but with communities of color as well.”

 

TWO COMPANIES TRY TO BUY CALIF.

The struggle between the broad public interest and the wealthy power brokers that have long-dominated California politics is most apparent in the state propositions, which have been certified and for which ballot arguments are now being collected by the California Secretary of State’s Office.

Two of those ballot measures, Propositions 16 and 17, are blatantly self-serving efforts by a pair of powerful corporations to increase their profitability, however deceptively and with overwhelming amounts of campaign cash they are presented.

Prop. 16, sponsored by Pacific Gas & Electric Co., would require local governments to get two-thirds of voters to approve creation of energy programs like Clean Power SF, San Francisco’s plan for developing renewable energy projects and selling that power directly to citizens.

As we’ve reported (“Battle royale,” Jan. 13, and “PG&E attack mailer puts City Hall on defensive,” Dec. 22, 2009), PG&E placed the measure on the ballot to avoid having to repeatedly crush public power initiatives around the state with multimillion dollar campaigns, even though political leaders like Leno and Sup. Ross Mirkarimi say the measure violates the state’s community choice aggregation law. That law allows local governments to create energy programs and prohibits PG&E from interfering with those efforts.

“The unregulated behavior of corporate arrogance is killing our democracy. Prop. 17, sponsored by Mercury Insurance, would let companies increase car insurance premiums for a variety of reasons that are now prohibited by the 1988 measure Prop. 103. Mercury has continuously attacked that landmark law, using lawsuits, huge political contributions, sponsored legislation, and, according to newly released documents from the California Department of Insurance (see “The malevolence of Mercury Insurance,” Feb. 10, Guardian Politics blog), blatantly illegal activity in setting premiums and excluding certain customers, such as artists, bartenders, and members of the military.

“The Mercury initiative is even more pernicious than what it was doing before,” Harvey Rosenfield, who wrote Prop. 103 and works for Consumer Watchdog, told the Guardian. “Under Mercury’s initiative, if you’ve never had prior insurance, you can be surcharged for the first time. Then they’ve thrown in some other tricks and traps.”

Mercury spokesperson Coby King told us the company has been unfairly maligned and denies that the measure is simply about boosting its profits: “Prop. 103 is the law of the land, but to the extent there are improvements that can be made that are pro-business and pro-consumer, Mercury has not been shy about acting in the public interest.”

Yet few public interest groups or public officials believe the claims being made by Mercury or PG&E, and they hope that the public won’t be fooled.

“These are measures designed to give a financial advantage to a specific industry or company,” U.S. Rep. John Garamendi, who battled Mercury as California’s first insurance commissioner, told us. He strongly opposes both measures, but did say, “Money talks. It always has, particularly in propositions.”

Yet Leno said he’s a bit more hopeful: “Californians have been savvy in the past, and I do believe they’ll be able to see through the tens of millions of dollars in misleading ads.”

“To me, it’s a classic case study of what’s going on with the initiative process in California and with politics in general,” said Derek Cressman, western regional director of California Common Cause. “There are two initiatives literally sponsored by corporations to push very narrow interests.”

Yet Cressman said recent events could help. There’s been a big public outcry in recent weeks over the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to allow unlimited corporate spending to influence elections, the role that insurance companies played in sinking federal health care reform efforts, and the way businesses interests are hindering efforts to deal with global warming.

“It makes people aware of the overwhelming role corporations are playing in dictating government policy,” Cressman said.

 

TAKE OUT THE MONEY

A pair of election reform measures might help lessen the influence of money and political parties. Prop. 14 is an open primaries measure that Sen. Abel Maldonado (R-Santa Maria) got placed on the ballot as a condition for breaking last year’s budget stalemate. It would create a single primary ballot and send the top two finishers to the general election, regardless of party.

Prop. 15, the California Fair Elections Act, takes direct aim at the corrupting influence of money in elections, creating a pilot public finance program in the secretary of state races for 2014 and 2018. The measure, which has broad support from politicians and good government groups in the Bay Area, is modeled on successful programs in Maine and Arizona.

“No elected official should be in the fundraising game the way they are now,” campaign chair Trent Lange told us. “This is a way to change how we fund elections.”

The idea is to create a model that will eventually be used for other offices. The campaign fund would be generated by a $350 annual fee on lobbyists, lobbying firms, and lobbyist employers. Currently lobbyists pay just $12.50 per year to register, which Lange said, “just shows the power of lobbyists in Sacramento.” *

 

Honor Joe Lynn’s life and work

Sasha Cuttler
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Honor Joe Lynn’s life and work

Friends and allies of Joe Lynn – perhaps the most diligent and public-spirited citizen ever associated with the San Francisco Ethics Commission, an agency he pushed hard to fulfill its campaign finance watchdog role – will celebrate his life Saturday, Feb. 20, during memorial services from 3-5:30 p.m. at the LGBT Center, 1800 Market Street.

Lynn died Dec. 9 after a long battle with leukemia and HIV-related ailments. As an Ethics Commission staffer and then an appointed commissioner, Lynn took seriously the mandate to root out and expose political corruption of all kinds, often defying powerful interests to do so. Much of his work was laid out in the pages of the Guardian, which regularly celebrated Lynn’s courage, insights, and hard work, as well of those of the protégés that he trained, Kevin De Liban and Oliver Luby (who is still with Ethics and carrying on Lynn’s work in the face of regular threats and sanctions from his bosses).

In fact, to mark what Lynn’s supporters see as the woefully lax and occasionally corrupt operations of the Ethics Commission under director John St. Croix and his chief deputy Mabel Ng (who, in 2004, ordered the destruction of documents implicated the Newsom for Mayor campaign in a money-laundering scheme), attendees will march on the Ethics Commission following the service.

For more on Lynn, see this obituary published in the Fog City Journal.

The Gavin and Leah Show

Sasha Cuttler
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With rampant rumors that Mayor Gavin Newsom will announce his candidacy for lieutenant governor as soon as today – and with San Francisco Bicycle Coalition executive director Leah Shahum today announcing a leave of absence – it’s interesting to see the two paired up in Newsom’s latest You Tube video.

While Newsom has been a terrible mayor in many ways – from his frustrating fiscal conservatism to his petulant approach to politics and working with progressive supervisors – he’s actually not too bad on some of the greening initiatives he discusses in this video (which was the subject of our Nov. 18 cover story, “Seizing space”).

Bike Coalition chief takes a leave

Sasha Cuttler
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Bike Coalition chief takes a leave

Leah Shahum, longtime director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, will be taking an eight-month leave of absence to live with her partner, Ted Strawser, in Amsterdam, which is widely considered one of the world’s most bike-friendly cities.

“As committed to bicycle advocacy as I am, the idea of living in Amsterdam is like a dream come true, so there’s no way I couldn’t do it,” Shahum said of the opportunity created when Strawser, an accountant for Dolby Laboratories, was transferred to Amsterdam for a year.

Under Shahum, the Bike Coalition has grown to become San Francisco’s largest grassroots advocacy organization, boasting more than 11,000 members. Shahum leaves in May and will be temporarily replaced by Renee Rivera, who served for several years on the SFBC board.

Shahum said the current strength of SFBC should allow for a fairly seamless transition: “We have such a strong organization that they can afford to have me gone.”   

Day laborers protest U-haul and police crackdown

Sasha Cuttler
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Day laborers protest U-haul and police crackdown

Every day, on my bike ride to work, I see the day laborers lined up along Alameda Street across from the U-haul office, hoping to get work. It’s a great little community, full of friendly people (mostly Latino men, but sometimes a couple young African-Americans as well), and they wave, smile, and try to get me to jingle my bell or honk my horn at them as I pass, which I always oblige.

But a couple months ago, the scene changed. Police officers now show up more often to hassle the day laborers, often demanding they clear the street. So they linger on adjacent streets, still trying to make themselves available for work, but clearly intimidated and wary of getting busted.

Well today, the workers pushed back, with the help of La Raza Centro Legal’s Day Laborer Program and nearly 100 supporters, who came to chant and protest a new U-Haul manager who they say constantly harasses them and calls the police three times a day. That manager, who was chatting with two cops at the scene, refused to identify himself or speak with me, referring me to their corporate flak (who hasn’t returned my call).

Anecdotally, we’ve heard that day laborers around the city have been rousted by police far more often in recent months, just one more of the SFPD crackdowns under new Police Chief George Gascon, which include raids on pot growers in the Sunset, mass arrests in the Tenderloin, regular raids of underground parties in SoMa, and lots more citations for drinking in Dolores Park and other parks.

Newsom’s $72 million corporate giveaway

Sasha Cuttler
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Newsom’s $72 million corporate giveaway

City economist Ted Egan yesterday released his analysis of the payroll tax exemption for new hires that Mayor Gavin Newsom has proposed, one of several business tax cut proposals that we discuss in this week’s Guardian. Egan estimates that the net revenue loss (which takes into account taxes paid by the new hires) to the city would be $72 million over the next two years.

“The proposed policy will have a strong positive effect on local hiring, albeit at a steep costs the City’s General Fund,” Egan wrote, later adding, “The policy would also make the City’s serious current budget deficit worse, and likely lead to significant employment reductions in the City’s workforce.”

While the tax breaks amount to only about 1 percent of businesses’ payroll costs, Egan’s models predict they would spur the creation of 4,330 jobs, or about 5 percent of the jobs lost since 2007. Yet he also notes that the unemployment rate in San Francisco has been dropping in recent months and the economy is predicted to add about 20,000 jobs in the next two years even without this subsidy by taxpayers.

Both Newsom and Egan have tried to cast these tax breaks as similar to the approach being taken by President Obama. Egan writes, “The policy is a targeted tax cut that mirrors the President’s New Jobs Tax Credit, which is supported by a wide range of economists.”

But the big difference is that the federal government can deficit-spend and doesn’t have to reduce its own spending, which would have a negative impact on economy, as Egan’s report acknowledged a few pages later: “Because the City cannot run a fiscal deficit from one year to the next, the lost revenue would necessitate reductions in City staffing and services, like any revenue shortfall.”

The report specifically doesn’t analyze the impact of that reduced government spending on the local economy, with Egan writing that, “is not considered, because the City could adjust to that impact in many ways.” New taxes, for example, which Newsom has avoided proposing as a partial solution to the city’s gargantuan $520 million projected budget deficit.

In an interview with the Guardian this morning, Egan also affirmed what he has told us before, that the consensus among economists is that direct government spending stimulates the economy more than tax cuts, even though these tax cuts tied to new hiring are better than general tax cuts.

For example, Egan said that another current Newsom tax cut proposal – a $2,000 tax break for businesses that provide health care to employees – “would have a negative effect on the economy” because it doesn’t encourage hiring.

While the report is generally favorable to the notion of these targeted tax cuts, it doesn’t make a recommendation. And it does take away a key argument that Newsom and other believers in trickle down economics generally make, that the tax cuts will ultimately be paid for by increased economic activity. Instead, the report shows the cuts will cost $85 million of two years and the new hires will generate $12 million in increased sales, hotel, and other taxes. Even stretching that analysis out over 10 years, assuming the new hires remain employed after the tax exemption ends, the reports says the policy will still cost the city $42 million.

Sup. John Avalos, the chair of the Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee who has been skeptical of Newsom’s tax cut proposals, has set a Feb. 24 hearing on the proposal.

Basically, this is a policy decision rooted in ideological beliefs: Should the city subsidize private companies at great cost to the public treasury, payroll, and services? Does the public sector exist solely to serve private corporations? Economic conservatives who are hostile to government generally think so, but progressives think it’s crazy to make deep cuts to government spending and services just to subsidize private sector economic growth, most of which is going to occur naturally anyway.

The malevolence of Mercury Insurance

Sasha Cuttler
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The malevolence of Mercury Insurance

Yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle reports on a long history of illegal practices by Mercury Insurance – including discrimination against soldiers, artists, bartenders, and other professions in auto insurance coverage and rates – and the long-overdue political and regulatory attention being paid to the company.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The real story of Mercury’s dealings in California is even more insidious, and it has implications to the health care reform legislation being pushed by President Obama and congressional Democrats, which would require all Americans to buy health insurance, just as all California motorists are required to buy car insurance from Mercury and other companies.  

Documents from the California Department of Insurance (275 pages worth, which we also obtained and which you can download here) detail the Mercury’s deceptive practices, but it was hardly a secret how Mercury operated, brazenly and openly defying standards and regulations that voters created in 1988 by approving Prop. 103.

The author of that measure, respected activist Harvey Rosenfield of Consumer Watchdog, has been sounding the alarm about Prop. 17, a measure that Mercury has placed on the June ballot that would overturn key parts of Prop. 103, allowing insurance companies to jack up premiums for those who haven’t been loyal and continuous insurance customers that paid every bill on time.

Rosenfield recently stopped by the Guardian and offered a fascinating history of insurance regulation in California – and his battles with his number one nemesis, Mercury Insurance.

“Prior to the passage of Prop. 103, which the voters approved in 1988, insurance companies were not regulated in California. They could basically get away with anything and they did. In 1984, the state Legislature mandated that people buy auto insurance and guess what happened? After that, everyone in the marketplace is required to buy insurance and there’s no protection against how much insurance companies could charge you for it or even if they refused to sell it to you because of where you lived or the color of your skin, there were just no protections,” Rosenfield told us.

“One of the most pernicious practices after the Legislature said you have to buy insurance was that when you went to the insurance companies and said, ‘OK, I’m required by law to buy insurance, now sell it to me.’ They’d say, well you didn’t have it before, so we’re not going to sell it to you now. Or, you didn’t have it before so therefore we’re going to surcharge you and double the price of insurance. Talk about a Catch 22.”

So consumer groups sued and Rosenfield started writing Prop. 103. In 1987, the courts said this was a legislative issue, not a judicial one, so the groups turned to the California Legislature.

“Of course, the Legislature was too beholden to the insurance lobbyists to do any of the proposals that we were offering, so we went to the ballot box in 1988. Prop. 103 did many things: it called for a rollback, requires insurance companies to open up their books and justify premiums, it requires auto insurance companies to base your premium on your driving record, the number of miles you drive every year, and your driving experience. No longer would your ZIP code be the dominant determinant for how much you pay. And that battle, just to get that put it in place, we didn’t win that until 20 years after 103 began. We won in basically in 2006, 18 years later, after court challenges and going to the commissioner.”

While Prop. 103 allows the insurance commissioner to set additional reasonable factors in setting insurance premiums, Rosenfield said, “The one rating factor that Proposition 103 prohibits is the one that insurance companies used before. Prop. 103 says you cannot base insurance premiums or refusing to insure somebody on the absence of prior insurance.”

But as the new documents and other court findings showed, Mercury ignored that provision and used it as a factor anyway, setting a surcharge of about 45 percent of the premium price if you hadn’t had insurance before, for which they were again sued.

“Mercury realizes they’re going to lose the civil suit, goes to Sacramento, spreads a fortune in campaign contributions, and lo and behold, gets a bill passed overriding this provision of Prop. 103, legalizing its surcharges. [Gov. Gray] Davis vetoes it in 2002 on the grounds that it violates Prop. 103. Another year goes by, Mercury spreads even more money around, and this time Davis is up in a recall election and needs Mercury’s money. So he takes the money, it’s $100,000 or more, and Davis signs the bill. We have to go to court and challenge the bill as an unconstitutional amendment to Proposition 103, which we finally succeed in doing and it’s upheld by the Court of Appeals in 2005. All that time, Mercury is overcharging people. Ultimately, Mercury is told, the law you sponsored is invalid and you can’t do it anymore, so it stops in 2005 – 10 years of wanton, brazen violation of the law. And that brings us to the Mercury initiative.”

But because these surcharges are so lucrative – in some states, a Consumer Watchdog investigation found, doubling or tripling premiums – Mercury decided to spend millions of dollars to place Prop. 17 on the June ballot, and it will spend millions more to fool consumers into believing that its somehow good for them.  

“The Mercury initiative is even more pernicious than what it was doing before, and here’s why. Under Mercury’s initiative, if you’ve never had prior insurance, you can be surcharged for the first time. It overturns the Prop. 103 provision and legalizes these surcharges. Then they’ve thrown in some other tricks and traps, as you’d expect an insurance company to do on a ballot measure.”

What are those tricks and traps? How have they been able to get away with this for so long? Why did Attorney General Jerry Brown, a candidate for governor, give the measure such a favorable and misleading ballot title and summary? Why has the Democratic Party been so unwilling to challenge them? We’ll have much more on Mercury and its corrupting corporate influence in future issues of the Guardian.

Coby King, Mercury’s vice president and spokesperson, wouldn’t speak directly about the newly revealed documents or the concerns they’re causing among regulators and politicians, sending us the same prepared statement he send to Chronicle, which says consumer groups are trying to “mislead consumers and rehash old allegations.”

Yet I pressed him on why Mercury has for decades shown such contempt for the regulatory framework created by Prop. 103, which the company has now challenged through lawsuits, sponsored legislation, lavish political contributions, the new ballot measure, and even through blatant violations of the law. He tried to refer me to Kathy Fairbanks, who headed the Mercury-backed front group, Californians for Fair Auto Insurance Rates, which is pushing Prop. 17.

But when I noted that the group is supposedly independent of Mercury, and it is the company’s hostility to Prop. 103 that I was asking about, he finally said this: “Prop. 103 is the law of the land, but to the extent there are improvements that can be made that are pro-business and pro-consumer, Mercury has not been shy about acting in the public interest.”

Ah, so it’s the public interest that Mercury has been acting in. Got it.

 

The “jobs” shell game

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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The “jobs” shell game

Written with Nima Maghame

news@sfbg.com

While many San Francisco city officials have been trying to figure out how to close a projected budget deficit of more than $520 million, Mayor Gavin Newsom has spent the last month trying to make that spending gap even larger by aggressively pushing a variety of business tax cuts that economists say will do little to improve the local economy and could actually make it worse.

Newsom first proposed his so-called “local economic stimulus package” a year ago during his ill-fated run for governor, just as President Barack Obama was pushing his own economic stimulus plan. But unlike the federal government’s $787 billion plan, about a third of which involved tax cuts demanded by conservatives, Newsom proposed to cut local business taxes while also deeply slashing local government spending and laying off hundreds of city workers.

Most economists say that’s a terrible idea. In fact, a report issued at the time by Moody’s Investor Services made it clear that every dollar of direct government spending adds about $1.60 into the economy (or $1.73 if it’s on food stamps, the most stimulative spending government can make), whereas business tax cuts add only about $1 to the economy for every dollar spent.

We clashed with the Mayor’s Office at the time on our Politics blog (see “Mayor Newsom doesn’t understand economics,” 2/13/09), with Newsom’s spokesperson telling us the mayor was relying on the input of City Economist Ted Egan. But when we interviewed Egan about the issue, he agreed that it’s a bad idea to slash government spending to pay for tax cuts.

“We were in no way saying you should cut taxes to stimulate the economy, particularly if it means reducing government spending,” Egan told us then. And when we asked directly whether it’s better for San Francisco’s economy for the city to directly spend a dollar on payroll or to give that dollar away in a private sector tax break, he told us, “The consensus among economists is that most of the time government spending stimulates the economy more.”

The Board of Supervisors basically ignored Newsom’s proposal. But he revived it last month, expanding the proposals with even more private sector subsidies and making them the centerpiece of his Jan. 13 State of the City speech, publicly pushing it since then with a series of public events at businesses located in the city.

And this time — with the local economy still slow, projected city budget deficits bigger than ever, and little serious talk about how the city can bring in more money — it appears the proposals will be the subject of a series of hearings before Board of Supervisors’ committees in the coming weeks.

Newsom’s tax cut proposals include a proposal to waive the 1.5 percent payroll tax (the city’s main business tax) for all new hires; extend and expand the payroll tax exemption for biotech companies (see “Biotech’s bonanza,” p. 12); give small businesses tax credits for their spending on health plans; and allow developers to pass one-third of their affordable housing in-lieu fees onto future homeowners.

Newsom and his Press Secretary Tony Winnicker have spoken euphorically about the proposals, saying they’re desperately needed to spur the local economy. “We believe that enacting these tax incentives, particularly the payroll tax credit for new hires, is one of the single biggest things we can do for economic growth,” Winnicker said.

Despite repeated questions about the economists’ concerns over financing tax cuts with government spending cuts, we couldn’t get them to address the tradeoff directly. “The mayor will support critical public services,” was all Winnicker would say about the deep cuts that Newsom is expected to announce in his June 1 budget.

Sup. John Avalos, who chairs the Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee, expressed more skepticism about the mayor’s proposals. “Do tax breaks have the intended effect of stimulating the economy? As we underfund government services, are we getting a net gain or are we getting something taken away? For the very small businesses in my district, it’s going to be trickle-down economics. It’s very unrelated and unmeasurable in benefit,” he told us.

David Noyola, board aide to President David Chiu, said his boss is supporting the biotech tax credit but reserving judgment on the rest. “It’s going to be a cost-benefit analysis,” Noyola said. “When we’re talking about jobs, we’re talking about public and private sector jobs, always.”

While Egan’s economic analysis predicts tax cuts will encourage some economic growth, even he is circumspect about the good it will do, particularly without finding a way to avoid deep cuts in city spending. “The truth of the matter is that our stimulus efforts are small because the city has relatively small power to affect the local economy,” Egan told us.

That’s the consensus economic opinion. Huge federal spending can help a national economy a little bit, but local economies are just different animals that local governments are largely powerless to really alter, particularly through tax cuts.

“I agree with Egan: city government has little power over the local economy,” Mike Potepan, an urban development economist at San Francisco State University, told the Guardian.

Both economists agree that tying tax cuts to job creation or development stimulus is better than general tax cuts, but that neither is good if it means laying off more city workers.

“Research shows that by cutting taxes you have more business activity where studies show it is likely to effect employment,” Potepan said. “On the other side, you have to think about revenue. Cities are going to have to balance their budgets, which could mean a cut in services.”

Author Greg LeRoy expresses a more critical perspective in his book The Great American Jobs Scam: Corporate Tax Dodging and the Myth of Job Creation (1995, Berrett-Koehler), amassing evidence from economic studies and CEO surveys that corporate tax breaks, even those tied to new job creation, have almost no effect on private companies’ decisions about where to locate and whether to hire.

“How can companies get away with this? Because the system is rigged. Corporations have it down to a science. They have learned how to chant ‘jobs, jobs, jobs’ to win huge corporate tax breaks — and still do whatever they wanted all along,” LeRoy writes. “That’s the Great American Jobs Scam: an intentionally constructed system that enables corporations to exact huge taxpayer subsidies by promising quality jobs — and lets them fail to deliver. The other benefit often promised — higher tax revenues — often proves false as well.”

While proposing to forgo collecting millions of dollars in payroll taxes (the Controller’s Office is still working on a projected total for the tax cut package), the Mayor’s Office also wants to spur development of new housing with a proposal that would delay collection of needed affordable housing money by more than a decade.

After hearing mostly from a large crowd of desperate developers and construction workers during a Jan. 21 hearing on the proposal, the Planning Commission approved the package on a 4-3 vote, with the mayor’s appointees in agreement and the board’s appointees in dissent. It will be considered by the Board of Supervisors Land Use Committee sometime after Feb. 12.

The most controversial part of the fee reform package involves reducing the fee developers pay to support affordable housing by 33 percent, then charging a 1 percent transfer tax to subsequent buyers of those homes. Egan estimates developers would save almost $20,000 per housing unit, and that it would take an average of 16 years for the city to recover that money. But for high-rise luxury condos, the city would eventually recover about $27,000 per unit.

“It’s a classic make-an-investment-now-to-get-more-later strategy,” Michael Yarne, who crafted the policy for the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development at Newsom’s direction, told the Guardian.

“If it makes it feasible for projects to be started, then it is worth passing,” Tim Colen, a representative of San Francisco Housing Action, said at the Planning Commission hearing, expressing hope that it will help create desperately needed construction jobs and new market rate housing.

But affordable housing advocates and some progressives criticize the policy as completely backward, saying that affordable housing development is desperately needed now, during these tough economic times, rather than a policy that encourages more market rate housing and bails out bad investments made at the height of the real estate bubble.

“What the city needs to do is directly build affordable housing, for which there is a demand,” affordable housing activist Calvin Welch told us. “The problem is that the banks don’t want to lend these guys money because they know nobody can afford to buy houses at the prices that these guys are demanding.”

Debra Walker, who is running for supervisor from District 6 and voted against the proposal when it came before the Building Inspection Commission (the sole vote on a commission dominated by mayoral appointees), agrees.

“The whole argument is that it stimulates development, but it doesn’t,” Walker said, arguing that the incremental gains (about 25 housing units per year, Egan estimates) will be offset by delayed affordable housing construction. “There would be more economic stimulus by using the fee to build more affordable housing.”

Instead, it simply shifts resources to favored entities: from home owners to developers, in the case of the affordable housing fees, or in the case of the tax credits, from the public to the private sector. But Newsom’s office just doesn’t see it that way.

“The Guardian believes in protecting public sector employees over private sector employees,” was how Winnicker formulated our understanding of what the economists are saying. “Most people don’t work for the city, and if we can support private sector jobs, that adds to sales tax revenues and benefits the economy. Despite a short-term impact of the tax credit, that’s a benefit.”

Adam Lesser contributed to this report

 

Newsom’s perplexing attack on San Francisco’s economy

Sasha Cuttler
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Newsom’s perplexing attack on San Francisco’s economy

There’s a crazy disconnect in City Hall these days over how to help the local economy. Mayor Gavin Newsom has spent much of the last month focusing on “jobs” and “local economic stimulus,” proposing to give a few million dollars in tax breaks to local companies while refusing to discuss new tax measures to help close the city’s $522 million budget deficit.

As we explain in detail in tomorrow’s Guardian, economists just don’t think the tax cuts will help the economy much at all – particularly if the city is reducing its spending and payroll to do so — but even some progressive supervisors are playing along to appease the anxious business community. For example, Board of Supervisors President David Chiu supports an extension of the biotech tax, denying city coffers the benefit of efforts by the city and UCSF to become an important hub for the industry.

Then, in today’s Chronicle, Newsom floats the idea of unilaterally shortening the workweek for city employees in order to save $50 million in payroll costs, firing 10,000 workers and then rehiring most of them to do so. But let’s be clear about this: that means removing $50 million from San Francisco’s economy, or even more once you figure in the multiplier effect that would more than double that loss.

As much as Newsom and his Chamber of Commerce allies love to bash government, the city is one of San Francisco’s largest employers, a clean industry with good-paying jobs. And it just makes no sense why they prefer to inflict mass layoffs on that employer – not to mention the reduced city services that will hurt even private sector productivity — rather than increase taxes on large corporations that ship their profits out of the city and therefore offer minimal benefits to this city’s economy.   

 

Drinking the tea, ignoring the facts

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Drinking the tea, ignoring the facts

Listening to members of the Tea Party movement on KQED’s Forum this morning, I and many callers to the show were struck by the basic inaccuracy of their core beliefs, these revanchist delusions about what’s in the U.S. Constitution and how this country really operates.

There’s a lot of justifiable anxiety out there over the state of the country, and the Tea Party movement has tapped into that with bumper sticker slogans that are just broad enough to capture alienated Americans from across the political spectrum. One recent poll shows that 41 percent of respondents are sympathize with the movement, stronger support than either major political party now enjoys.

But facts should matter, and they just don’t to many teabaggers or their high priestess, Sarah Palin, who is headlining the current national Tea Party convention in Nashville. For example, the two self-described “patriots” on this morning’s show railed against all the unconstitutional actions of the runaway federal government in ways that reveal an astonishing ignorance about the document they claim to prize so highly.

An East Bay woman from Bay Area Patriots, Heather Gaas, complained that the “government takeover” of the health care system is specifically prohibited by the constitution, seemingly unaware that there is no takeover, and even if there was, the federal government is specifically empowered to “regulate commerce” and see to the country’s “general welfare.”

North Bay teabagger Gary Hahn claimed that a free market system with minimal government is enshrined in the Constitution, another false claim. The words “capitalism” or “free market” aren’t in the Constitution, which doesn’t prescribe an economic system for the country and would even allow socialism to exist if we had to votes to approve it.

Luckily, while host Dave Iverson did little to correct the teabaggers’ inaccuracies on the first half of the show, a series of callers did that work on the second half. One caller, who was a self-described Tea Party member and Ron Paul supporter, criticized the hypocrisy of the guests’ for criticizing “big government” while supporting its wars and imperial overreach, sounding the anti-war position that is also an element of this broad and unfocused movement.

And that’s really why we shouldn’t read too much into this movement’s power and its implications (check out this interview for an insightful take on why conservatism no longer contributes anything useful to American politics). The Tea Party is best understood as a primal scream rather than a political movement. I’m a big government progressive, yet I share the teabaggers’ outrage over the Wall Street bailouts and the corruption and unresponsiveness of the two major political parties.

We may even share a few revanchist impulses, concerns that powerful forces have steered this country away from what it once was. But my concern is with Big Corporations that have eroded basic egalitarian principles expressed from the Declaration of Independence (the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” talk about radical!) to the New Deal, not with Big Government (except for its biggest and most wasteful element, the bloated military budget).

But the revanchist fantasies of most tea baggers long for a time that is no longer possible, when there was still a frontier on which rugged individualists could stake their claim, for that “shining city on the hill” that their god, Ronald Reagan, once conjured up in the national mind’s eye. They want to smite their liberal enemies and restore this country to a position of deserved greatness, an attitude that frankly scares the crap out of me, with its echoes of 20th Century fascism.

The realities of today are much more complex than the teabaggers’ simplistic beliefs. They want to deeply cut government spending, despite the damage that would do to the fragile economy. They want us to get tough with the terrorists, unaware that every bomb we drop has the potential to create new enemies. They want more power for the “real Americans,” however racist and divisive that judgment is made.

Yet their primal scream shouldn’t be ignored because it is the manifestation of frustration that cuts across a wide swath of the country that is fed up with politics as usual. But in the teabaggers’ ignorance of the Constitution and the basic social contract on which any country or government is based, we can see just how much work there is to do before we have an educated and engaged citizenry that is even capable of participating in a democracy. So this is still a party worthy of our attention.

 

CPMC’s battle with its nurses continues

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CPMC’s battle with its nurses continues

CNA labor rep Nato Green told the Guardian that CPMC is trying to low-ball its nurses to help pay for the two hospitals and a proposed expansion of its Davies Campus. “It’s to pay for all the construction they want to do…CPMC wants to stick us with a worse contract even than at other Sutter facilities,” Green said, accusing CPMC of trying to break the union. “CPMC believes this is their opportunity to get rid of 60 years of union representation.”

CPMC spokesperson Kevin McCormack said both its salary offers and the health plan it instituted have been as good or better than what CNA has accepted at other facilities, and the reason for the protracted impasse is CNA‘s insistence that workers at the upscale Cathedral Hill hospital be union members.

“The difference is we’re building a new hospital and it might open as a non-CNA facility,” McCormack said, calling the disputed health plan “the same plan that they’ve accepted at other facilities.”

But the NLRB complaint faults CPMC for unilaterally changing the terms of the contract that expired in 2007, first by changing the work hours and duties for pediatric and neonatal nurses last July, then by imposing a new health plan that steeply increases costs for using non-Sutter specialists, in both cases without bargaining in good faith for the changes.

“It was presented at fait accompli, and then they just imposed it. It’s on ongoing systemic problem with CPMC,” Green said. “It demonstrates what we’ve been saying all along, that they aren’t trustworthy.”

 

SF Critical Mass under review

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SF Critical Mass under review

San Francisco Police Chief George Gascón said Friday that he has ordered a review of policies related to Critical Mass, offering veiled threats of an impending crackdown to the unpermitted monthly mass bike ride. As SFPD learned from a 1997 crackdown, that won’t work, and will more likely make the event even more popular and provocative.

But if he’s serious about improving police procedures surrounding Critical Mass, that would be a welcome change. Ever since the March 2007 ride, in which the local media fed hysteria over the ride after an altercation between a driver and cyclist, there’s been a big but confused and confusing police presence on the rides, the result of wanting to “do something” but having no discernible policy or strategy for what to do.

Meanwhile, within the community of longtime Critical Mass riders, there was already a discussion brewing about how to self-regulate and prevent conflicts with drivers. Some of that discussion has been occurring on a new website devoted to the event, and much of it centers on communicating to riders that the event is about celebrating bikes, not purposely pissing off drivers.

There are no official leaders, procedures, or route to the 18-year-old event, making overt negotiations and policies difficult. But if Gascón is serious about the value he said he places on community outreach, there have got to be ways to lower police costs, lessen community conflicts, and preserve what thousands of San Franciscans still see as an important San Francisco tradition.

Obama to base: “Continue to fight”

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Obama to base: “Continue to fight”

Tosca in North Beach was packed last night for the State of the Union watch party that was thrown by Organizing for America, President Barack Obama’s grassroots organizing operation, and the crowd was predictably supportive of the president despite his political difficulties and declining popularity.

Karen Buchanan — who volunteered on Obama’s presidential campaign and has continued to do so since then, including phone banking to support his health care reform effort – responded positively to the speech’s call for renewed activism, even though she was less than thrilled with some of Obama’s policy prescriptions.

“I don’t agree with him 100 percent, but I’m not going to join the circular firing squad. I continue to support him,” Buchanan said. “He had a nice tone of optimism and we needed that.”

That may be true. Obama’s poignant call for the country’s political, corporate, and media institutions to make strong, good faith efforts to regain the public’s trust was the emotional high point of this speech. But unfortunately, Obama’s muddled and often contradictory policy priorities are frustrating to progressives who have been turning away from this president.

Howard Zinn has died

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By Steven T. Jones

Historian and social justice advocate Howard Zinn – whose work inspired me and countless others to look at history and the world from the people’s perspective, rather than that of the conquerors and power-brokers – has died.

Zinn’s People History of the United States was performed at Mission High School last year, and my preview of that prompted criticism on his scholarship. But he is truly one of the great progressive thinkers of the 20th Century, someone who took courageous actions on behalf of his ideals, and he’ll truly be missed.

Marijuana goes mainstream

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Marijuana goes mainstream

I’ve smoked marijuana on and off for most of my adult life, usually in the evening to help let go of the anxieties associated with being a progressive wage slave in an increasingly conservative capitalist country.

Buying my pot, which is California’s biggest cash crop, has always been a criminal transaction: in hushed tones or coded language, I arrange to meet a dealer I’ve been set up with through friends. And when I meet him (they’ve always been men), I give him cash in exchange for an eighth- or quarter-ounce of whatever kind of pot he’s selling.

I don’t know what variety I’m buying, who grew it, or how it was grown; whether violence or environmental degradation have occurred along the supply chain; or even whether it is an indica or sativa, the two most basic cannabis families that have differing effects on users.

I’ve been completely in the dark, both in terms of what I was buying and who was benefiting from the transaction, but that changed recently. I obtained a doctor’s recommendation to legally smoke weed — honestly citing anxiety as my affliction — and set out to explore the area’s best cannabis clubs.

It was a little strange and disorienting at first, this new world of expert purveyors of the finest Northern California marijuana and the various concentrates, edibles, drinkables, and other products it goes into. But what eventually struck me is just now normal and mainstream this industry has become, particularly in San Francisco, which has long led the movement to legalize marijuana.

Unlike in cities such as Los Angeles, where the rapid proliferation of unregulated pot clubs has made headlines and raised community concerns, San Francisco years ago made its clubs jump through various bureaucratic hoops to become fully licensed, permitted, and regulated, free to join the mainstream business community, pay their taxes, and compete with one another on the basis of quality, price, customer service, ambiance, and support for the community.

As Californians prepare to decide whether to decriminalize marijuana for even recreational use — on Jan. 28, advocates plan to turn in enough valid signatures to place that initiative on the fall ballot — it’s a good time to explore just what the world of legal weed looks like.

Pretty much everyone involved agrees that San Francisco’s system for distributing marijuana to those with a doctor’s recommendation for it is working well: the patients, growers, dispensary operators, doctors, politicians, police, and regulators with the planning and public health departments.

“It works and it should continue to be replicated,” Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who created the legislation four years ago that led to the current system, told us. “It’s now mainstream.”

Public health officials agree. “In general, we’re very happy about our relationship with the industry and their commitment to the regulations,” said Dr. Rajiv Bhatia, San Francisco’s environmental health director. “We did this well and we did it cooperatively with the clubs.”

Bhatia said there are now 22 fully-permitted clubs (and two more under review) in San Francisco, less than half the number operating when the regulations were created. He also said the city no longer receives many complaints from neighbors of clubs.

Misha Breyburg, managing partner of the nonprofit Medithrive, which opened just a few months ago on Mission Street, supports the process too. “The regulations generally are not easy, but I think that’s okay,” he said. “The process was long and cumbersome and stressful, but very fair.”

Martin Olive, director of the Vapor Room, one of the city’s largest and best dispensaries, agrees that the permitting process professionalized the industry: “I’m proud to be here because the city government has been amazing.”

Richard Lee — founder of Oaksterdam University in Oakland, which teaches marijuana cultivation and is the main financial backer behind the initiative to legalize and tax pot — said San Francisco and Oakland have demonstrated that cannabis clubs can function like any other legitimate industry and become a real asset to their neighborhoods and the local economy.

“Once they started legalizing the clubs, they had no more problems,” Lee told us. “It really is boring and really not a big deal. It’s only the prohibition that makes it exciting and a little scary.”

In fact, Lee said that normalizing and legalizing the marijuana industry is the best way to deal with the problems associated with the illegal drug trade, such as violence, creation of a criminal class, respect for law enforcement, wasted public resources, lost tax opportunities, unsafe growing operations, and environmental damage.

“We need to end cannabis prohibition to end the violence,” Lee said.

Bringing marijuana above ground also has created an artisanship that’s similar to the wine industry, elevating cultivation practices to an art form, improving the science behind it, and making users more sophisticated about subtle differences in taste and effect among the dozens of varieties now on the market.

But the growers themselves still exist in a murky gray area. Although they can get some legal cover as registered caregivers to a cooperative’s members, they’re still exposed to thefts, shakedowns, logistical difficulties, and raids by federal agents or even local police, such as the series of raids in the Sunset District last fall that targeted even legitimate growers for the clubs.

“Right now, cultivators have no air cover at all and they’re getting mixed messages,” Mirkarimi said, calling for the city to better protect growers and even consider getting into the business of growing pot for the clubs and patients. “General Hospital should dispense medical cannabis.”

That issue and others related to the city’s relationship with the industry are currently the subject of a working group convened by Sup. David Campos, a byproduct of which is the proposal to create a Medical Cannabis Task Force to advise the Board of Supervisors, an item the board was scheduled to vote on Jan. 26.

Mirkarimi said he’s also concerned about current rules that ban smoking in clubs that are within 1,000 feet of schools or drug treatment facilities, which has served to prohibit smoking in all but a few San Francisco clubs. Oakland bans smoking in all its clubs. “That’s where the laws could be modified, because you don’t want to take away that social vibe,” Mirkarimi said. “San Francisco needs to be a leader in activating the next step.”

Olive, whose club allows smoking and has a great social scene, agrees that something is lost when the clubs are forced to be simply transactional.

“This is a social healing medicine, and we’re here to promote an inviting atmosphere where people can share their stories,” Olive said. “The whole point is not to just come in and get your medicine, but to be a part of a community.”

That community can range from young stoners to dying old patients, who can both benefit from their communion. “It’s the hippies and the yuppies. Everyone comes here,” Breyburg said. Or as Olive told me, “There is something intrinsically rewarding to sharing a joint with someone, as silly as that sounds.”

The voter-approved Proposition 215 and state law are deliberately vague on what ailments qualify for a doctor’s recommendation, spawning a sub-industry of physicians who specialize in pot, like the ones at the clinic I visited, Dr. Hanya Barth’s Compassionate Health Options in SoMa.

The busy clinic charges around $130 for an initial visit and patients walk away with a legal recommendation, which is all state law requires to legally use marijuana (the clinic recommended also buying a $100 state ID card or a $40 card from the Patient ID Center in Oakland, but I didn’t need them to enter any of the clubs I visited).

The long forms patients fill out even suggest anxiety as an affliction that pot can help, but the clinic also asks patients to sign a waiver to obtain detailed medical records supporting the recommendation. When Barth learned that I have a shoulder separation for which I underwent an MRI a few years ago, she requested those records and added “shoulder pain” to my “anxiety” affliction.

“My goal is not just to give people a recommendation. I look at how I can help or support the person beyond just giving them a recommendation,” Barth told me, illustrating her point by showing me two packs of cigarettes from patients whom she said she convinced to quit smoking.

Her vibe combines the healer and the old hippie, someone who sees a plethora of uses for marijuana and generally thinks society would be better off if everyone would just have a puff and chill out. The clubs also don’t draw distinctions based on their customers’ reasons for smoking.

“There is a distinct difference between medical use and recreational use,” Olive said, telling stories about amazing turnarounds he’s seen in patients with AIDS, cancer, and other debilitating diseases, contrasting that with people who just like to get high before watching a funny movie, which he said is also fine.

But Olive said there’s an important and often under-appreciated third category of marijuana use: therapeutic. “They use cannabis to cope, to unwind, to relax, to sleep better, or to think through problems in a different way,” Olive said.

This third category of user, which I officially fall into, seems to be the majority people I encountered in the local clubs. And while it may be easy for cannabis’ critics to dismiss such patients as taking advantage of laws and a system meant to help sick people, Olive says they play an important role.

“They make it easier for the cannabis clubs to give it away to the people who really need it,” Olive said, referring the practice by most clubs of giving away free weed to low-income or very sick patients, which is supported by the profits made on sales.

The Vapor Room is widely regarded as having one of the best compassionate giving programs, and Olive estimated that the operation gives away about a pound per week through local hospice programs and by giving away edibles and bags of cannabis vapor at the club.

Some of the profits are also used to offer free massage, yoga, chiropractic, and other classes to their members, a system being taken to new heights by Harborside Health Center in Oakland, which has fairly high prices but uses that revenue to offer an extensive list of free services and laboratory analysis of the pot it sells, identifying both contaminants (such as molds or pesticides) and the level of THC, the compound that gets you high.

Olive said there’s also a positive psychological impact of legitimizing the use of marijuana: “It no longer feels like you’re doing a bad thing that you have to be sneaky about.”

As I created my list of the clubs I planned to review, I found abundant online resources such as www.sanfranciscocannabisclubs.com and www.weedtracker.com. But an even better indicator of how mainstream this industry has become were the extensive listings and reviews on Yelp.com.

I combined that information with recommendations from a variety of sources I interviewed to develop my list, which is incomplete and entirely subjective, but nonetheless a good overview of the local industry and the differences among the clubs.

Also, like our restaurant reviewers, I didn’t identify myself as a journalist on my visits, preferring to see how the average customer is treated — and frankly, I was amazed at the high level of friendly, knowledgeable customer service at just about every club. To comply with city law, all the clubs are fully accessible by those with disabilities.

So, with that business out of the way, please join me on my tour of local cannabis clubs, in the (random) order that I visited them:

————

DIVINITY TREE

While the reviews on Yelp rave about Divinity Tree (958 Geary St.), giving it five stars, I found it a little intimidating and transactional (although it was the first club I visited, so that might be a factor). But if you’re looking to just do your business in a no-frills environment and get out, this could be your place.

The staff and most of the clientele were young men, some a bit thuggish. One worker wore a “Stop Snitching” T-shirt and another had “Free the SF8.” But they behaved professionally and were knowledgeable and easy to talk to. When I asked for a strain that would ease my anxiety but still allow me enough focus to write, my guy (patients wait along a bench until called to the counter) seemed to thoughtfully ponder the question for a moment, then said I wanted a “sativa-dominant hybrid” and recommended Neville’s Haze.

I bought 1/16 for $25 and when I asked for a receipt, it seemed as though they don’t get that question very often. But without missing a beat he said, “Sure, I’ll give you a receipt,” and gave me a hand-written one for “Meds.”

Buds weighed on purchase

Open for: three years

Price: Fairly low

Selection: Moderate

Ambiance: A transactional hole in the wall

Smoke On Site: No

Thug factor: Moderate

Access/Security: Easy. Membership available but not required

————-

GRASS ROOTS

Located at 1077 Post St. right next to Fire Station #3, Grass Roots has the feel of a busy saloon. Indeed, as a worker named Justin told me, many of the employees are former bartenders who know and value customer service. With music, great lighting, and nice décor, this place feels comfortable and totally legit. Whereas most clubs are cash-only, Grass Roots allows credit card transactions and has an ATM on site.

The steady stream of customers are asked to wait along the back wall, perusing the menus (one for buds and another with pictures for a huge selection of edibles) until called to the bar. When asked, my guy gave me a knowledgeable breakdown of the difference between sativa and indica, but then Justin came over to relieve him for a lunch break with the BBQ they had ordered in and ate in the back.

Justin answered my writing-while-high inquiry by recommending Blue Dream ($17 for a 1.2-gram), and when I asked about edibles, he said he really likes the indica instant hot chocolate ($6), advising me to use milk rather than water because it bonds better with the cannabinoids to improve the high. Then he gave me a free pot brownie because I was a new customer. I was tempted to tip him, but we just said a warm goodbye instead.

Buds weighed on purchase

Open for: five years

Price: Moderate

Selection: High

Ambiance: A warm and welcoming weed bar

Smoke On Site: No

Thug factor: Low

Access/Security: Easy

————–

HOPENET

Hopenet (223 Ninth St.) is one of the few places in the city where you can smoke on site, in a comfortable, homey style, as if you’re visiting a friend’s apartment. In addition to the loveseat, two chairs, and large bong, there is a small patio area for smoking cigarettes or playing a guitar, as someone was doing during my visit.

Although the small staff is definitely knowledgeable, they all seemed stoned. And when I asked about the right weed for my writing problem, a gruff older woman impatiently dismissed any indica vs. sativa distinctions and walked away. But I learned a lot about how they made the wide variety of concentrates from the young, slow-talking guy who remained.

He weighed out a heavy gram of White Grapes for $15, the same price for Blue Dream, and $2 cheaper than I had just paid at Grass Roots. That was in the back room, the big middle area was for hanging out, and the front area was check-in and retail, with a case for pipes and wide variety of stoner T-shirts on the walls.

Buds weighed on purchase

Open for: seven years

Price: Low

Selection: Moderate

Ambiance: Like a converted home with retail up front

Smoke On Site: Yes!

Thug factor: Low

Access/Security: Easy

————

VAPOR ROOM

Vapor Room (607A Haight, www.vaporroom.com) is San Francisco’s best pot club, at least in terms of feeling like an actual club and having strong connections to its community of patients. It’s a large room where customers can smoke on site, giving this collective a warm, communal vibe that facilitates social interaction and fosters a real sense of inclusiveness.

Each of the four large tables has a high-end Volcano vaporizer on it, there’s a big-screen TV, elegant décor, and large aquarium. There’s a nice mix of young heads and older patients, the latter seeming to know each other well. But, lest members feel a little too at home, a sign on the wall indicates a two-hour time limit for hanging out.

Its early days in the spot next door were a bit grungier, but the new place is bright and elegant. It has a low-key façade and professional feel, and it strongly caters to patients’ needs. Low-income patients are regularly offered free medicine, such as bags full of vapor prepared by staff. Mirkarimi said the Vapor Room is very involved in the Lower Haight community and called it a “model club.”

But they’re still all about the weed, and they have a huge selection that you can easily examine (with a handy magnifying glass) and smell, knowledgeable staff, lots of edibles and concentrates, a tea bar (medicated and regular), and fairly low standardized pot prices: $15 per gram, $25 per 1/16th, $50 per eighth. And once you got your stuff, grab a bong off the shelf and settle into a table — but don’t forget to give them your card at the front desk to check out a bowl for your bong. As the guy told me, “It’s like a library.”

Buds weighed on purchase

Open for: six years

Price: Moderate

Selection: High

Ambiance: Warm, communal hangout

Smoke On Site: Yes!

Thug factor: Low

Access/Security: Easy, but membership required

————-

MEDITHRIVE

The newest cannabis club in town, MediThrive (1933 Mission, www.medithrive.com) has a bright, fresh, artsy feel to it, with elegantly frosted windows and a welcoming reception area as you enter. This nonprofit coop takes your photo and requires free membership, and already had almost 3,000 members when I signed up a couple weeks ago. Tiana, the good-looking young receptionist, said the club recently won a reader’s choice Cannabis Cup award and noted that all the art on the walls was a rotating collection by local patients: “We’re all about supporting local art.”

The decorators seemed to have fun with the cannabis concept, with a frosted window with a pot leaf photo separating the reception area from the main room, while the walls alternated wood planks with bright green fake moss that looked like the whole place was bursting with marijuana. There’s a flat-screen TV on the wall, at low volume.

The large staff is very friendly and seemed fairly knowledgeable, and the huge selection of pot strains were arranged on a spectrum with the heaviest indica varieties on the left to the pure sativas on the right. Lots of edibles and drinkables, too. The cheapest bud was a cool steel tin with a gram of Mission Kush for $14 (new members get a free sample), while the high rollers could buy some super-concentrated OG Kush Gold Dust ($50) or Ear Wax ($45) to sprinkle over their bowls.

Prepackaged buds

Open for: three months

Price: Moderate

Selection: High

Ambiance: Professional, like an artsy doctor’s office

Smoke On Site: No

Thug factor: Very low

Access/Security: Easy, but membership required

————

KETAMA COLLECTIVE

At 14 Valencia St., Ketama is a testament to how silly it is that clubs within 1,000 feet of schools aren’t permitted to allow smoking on site. This former café has a large, comfortable seating area and full kitchen, both of which have had little use since a school opened way down the street last year, causing city officials to ban smoking at Ketama.

Pity, because it seems like a great place to just hang out. Yet now it just seemed underutilized and slow. The staff is small (one door guy and a woman hired last summer doing sales), and we were the only customers during the 20 minutes I was there (except for the weird old guy drinking beer from a can in a bag who kept popping in and out).

But it still had jars of good green bud, several flavors of weed-laced drinks and edibles, and a pretty good selection of hash and kief at different prices, and the woman spoke knowledgeably about the different processes by which they were created. To counteract the slow business, Ketama has a neon sign out front that explicitly announces its business — another indication the industry has gone legit.

Buds weighed on purchase

Open for: five years

Price: Low

Selection: Limited

Ambiance: Dirty hippie hangout, but with nobody there

Smoke On Site: No

Thug factor: Low

Access/Security: Easy, but free membership required

————

MR. NICE GUY

Belying its name, Mr. Nice Guy (174 Valencia St.) thrilled and scared me, but not necessarily in a bad way. Located across the street from Zeitgeist, the thug factor here was high and so was the security, allowing no human interaction that wasn’t mediated by thick Plexiglass, presumably bulletproof.

After initially being told by a disembodied voice to come back in five minutes, I submitted my doctor’s recommendation and ID into the slot of a teller’s window, darkened to hide whoever I was dealing with. Quickly approved, I was buzzed into a small, strange room with three doors.

I paused, confused, until the disembodied voice again told me, “Keep going,” and I was buzzed through another door into a hallway that led to a large room, its walls completely covered in brilliant murals, expertly painted in hip-hop style. Along the front walls, a lighted menu broke down the prices of about 20 cannabis varieties.

Then finally, I saw people: two impossibly hot, young female employees, lounging nonchalantly in their weed box, like strippers waiting to start their routines. The only other customer, a young B-boy, chatted them up though the glass, seemingly more interested in these striking women than their products.

I finally decided to go with the special, an ounce of Fever, normally $17, for just $10. I opened a small door in the glass, set down my cash, and watched the tall, milk chocolate-skinned beauty trade my money for Fever, leaving me feeling flushed. It was the best dime-bag I ever bought.

Prepackaged buds

Open for: ???

Price: Moderate, with cheap specials

Selection: High

Ambiance: Hip hop strip club

Smoke On Site: No

Thug factor: High

Access/Security: High security but low scrutiny

————-

BERNAL HEIGHTS COLLECTIVE

Bernal Collective (33 29th St. at Mission) seemed both more casual and more strict than any of the other clubs in town — and it also turned out to be one of my favorites.

After refusing to buy pot for a guy out front who had just been turned away, I entered the club and faced more scrutiny than I had at any other club. It was the only club to ask for my doctor’s license number and my referral number, and when I tried to check an incoming text message, I was told cell phone use wasn’t allowed for “security reasons.” On the wall, they had a blown-up copy of their 2007 legal notice announcing their opening.

But beyond this by-the-book façade, this club proved warm and welcoming, like a comfortable clubhouse. People can smoke on site, and there’s even a daily happy hour from 4:20–5:20 p.m., with $1 off joints and edibles, both in abundant supply. Normal-sized prerolled joints are $5, but they also offer a massive bomber joint with a full eighth of weed for $50.

The staff of a half-dozen young men were knowledgeable about the 20 varieties they had on hand and offered excellent customer service, even washing down the bong with an alcohol-wipe before letting a customer take a rip from the XXX, a strong, sticky bud that was just $15 for a gram.

Buds weighed at purchase

Open for: five years

Price: Fairly low

Selection: High

Ambiance: A clubhouse for young stoners

Smoke On Site: Yes

Thug factor: Low

Access/Security: Fairly tight

————-

LOVE SHACK

This longtime club (502 14th St.) has had its ups and downs, the downs coming mostly because of its location on a fairly residential block. After taking complaints from neighbors, the city required Love Shack to cap its membership, although that seems to be changing because the club let me in, albeit with a warning that next time I would need to have a state ID card. It was the only club I visited to have such a requirement.

Once inside this tiny club, I could see why people might have been backed up onto the street at times. But the staff was friendly and seemed to have a great rapport with the regulars, who seemed be everyone except me. The knowledgeable manager walked me through their 20-plus varieties, most costing the standard street price of $50 per eighth, or more for stronger stuff like Romulan.

On the more affordable end of the spectrum was the $10 special for Jack Herrer Hash, named for the longtime legalization advocate who wrote The Emperor Wears No Clothes, a classic book on the history of the movement.

Buds weighed at purchase

Open for: eight years

Price: Moderate

Selection: High

Ambiance: Small, like a converted apartment

Smoke On Site: No

Thug factor: Moderate

Access/Security: Tight

————-

COFFEE SHOP BLUE SKY

Blue Sky (377 17th St., Oakland)is based on the Amsterdam model of combining marijuana dispensaries with coffee shops, although it suffers a bit from Oakland’s ban on smoking. Still, it’s a cool concept and one that Richard Lee sees as the future of marijuana-related businesses because of the synergy between smoking and grabbing a bite or some coffee.

Most of Blue Sky is a small coffee shop and smoothie bar, but there’s a little room in back for buying weed. “We’ve got the best prices around,” said the guy who checked my ID, and indeed, $44 eighths and $10 “puppy bags” were pretty cheap. Customers can also sign up to do volunteer political advocacy work for free weed.

The only downside is the limited selection, only four varieties when I was there, although the woman at the counter said the varieties rotate over the course of the day based on the club’s purchases from growers.

Prepackaged buds

Open for: 14 years

Price: Low

Selection: Very limited

Ambiance: A fragrant little room behind a coffee shop

Smoke On Site: No

Thug factor: Low

Access/Security: Easy

————–

HARBORSIDE HEALTH CENTER

I have seen the future of legitimized medical marijuana businesses, and it’s Harborside (1840 Embarcadero, Oakland). With its motto of “Out of the shadows, into the light,” this place is like the Costco of pot — a huge, airy facility with a dizzying number of selections and even a “rewards card” program.

All new members are given a tour, starting with sign-up sheets for daily free services that include yoga, chiropractic, acupuncture, reiki, consultations with herbalists, and classes on growing. Then we moved to a section with the clones of dozens of pot plant varieties available for purchase (limit of 72 plants per visit), along with a potted marijuana plant the size of a tree.

Harborside is also blazing the trail on laboratory services, testing all of its pot for contaminants and THC content, labeling it on the packaging just like the alcohol industry does. Some of the smaller clubs don’t like how over-the-top Harborside is, and they complain that its prices are high. But those profits seem to be poured back into the services at this unique facility.

Prepackaged buds

Open for: three years

Price: High

Selection: Huge

Ambiance: A big, open shopping emporium

Smoke On Site: No

Thug factor: Low

Access/Security: Tight

————-

SANCTUARY

The people who run Sanctuary (669 O’Farrell St.), the first club to fully comply with the new city regulations and get its permanent license, have been active in the political push for normalizing medical marijuana, as a wall full of awards and letters from politicians attests. Owner Michael Welch was commended for his work by the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, where Sanctuary employee Tim Durning has been an active longtime member and former elected officer.

Sanctuary has a generous compassionate giving program and caters to lots of poor residents of the Tenderloin neighborhood. While the club is prohibited from allowing smoking, they fudge the restriction with a Volcano vaporizer. “A lot of patients are on fixed income and live in the SROs, where they can’t smoke, so we let them vaporize here whether they buy from us or not,” Durning told us.

Those who do buy from them find a huge selection — including 20 different kinds of hash and 17 varieties of buds — at a wide price range. Staffers know their products well and take their business seriously, giving a regular spiel to new members about responsible use, which includes maintaining neighborhood relations by not smoking near the business.

Buds weighed on purchase

Open for: five years

Price: Low to moderate

Selection: High

Ambiance: Campaign headquarters for the marijuana movement

Smoke On Site: No, but vaporizing OK

Thug factor: Low

Access/Security: Easy

————–

GREEN DOOR

If low prices or a huge selection of edibles are what you seek, Green Door (843 Howard St., www.greendoorsf.com) could be the club for you.

Eighths of good green buds start at a ridiculously low $25 and go up to just $50 (the cheapest price for eighths at many clubs and also the standard black market price). If that’s not low enough, super-broke users can buy a quarter-ounce bag of high-grade shake for $40.

If you didn’t already have the munchies going in, you’ll get them perusing the huge menu of edibles: from weed-laced knockoffs of Snickers bars and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups for just $5 to cupcakes, ice cream, or Chex party mix. They have lots of hash and other concentrates as well.

Somehow, the club also manages to have a strong compassionate giving program and contibutes to local civic organizations that include the Black Rock Arts Foundation, Maitri AIDS Hospice, and Friends of the Urban Forest.

The club itself is a little sterile and transactional, with an institutional feel and employees stuck behind teller windows. But even though that and the steady flow of tough-looking young male customers raise its thug factor a bit, the employees all seemed friendly and helpful, giving free edibles to first-time customers.

Prepackage buds

Open for: 8 years (4 here, 4 in Oakland)

Price: Cheap

Selection: High for edibles, moderate for weed

Ambiance: Like a community bank of cheap weed

Smoke On Site: No

Thug factor: Moderate

Access/Security: Easy access, high security

————–

RE-LEAF HERBAL CENTER

While I had heard good things about Re-Leaf (1284 Mission St.), my first impression was that it’s a little sketchy. As the door guy was checking my recommendation card and ID, I asked whether they allow smoking on site. He looked as if this was a difficult question, paused, and finally told me to ask the people behind the counter.

The small club was blaring gangsta rap when I entered, after a while lowering the volume to compete less with the blaring television set to an ultimate fighting match. It had two small fridges filled with tasty-looking edibles and lots of vaporizers and other merchandise for sale, but only eight varieties of marijuana.

But the service was good, and after knocking $5 off my gram of Jim Jones (a variety I only found here) because I was a first-time customer, he told me it was OK to smoke on site. I sat down on the couch, but there were no bongs, vaporizers, pipes, or even ashtrays to use.

Buds weighed on purchase

Open for: two years (three years at previous SF location)

Price: Fairly low

Selection: Limited

Ambiance: A loud head shop that also has some weed

Smoke On Site: Yes and no

Thug factor: Moderate to high

Access/Security: Easy

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