By Tim Redmond
Now THIS is really scary.
Tim Redmond
Political priorities
By Tim Redmond
I know, I know: everyone is obsessed with Elizabeth Edwards’s cancer. But should that really be the lead of the Chronicle’s story about a presidential candidate’s visit to the Bay Area — or might John Edwards actually have some policy positions to talk about?
David Lazarus v. the blogosphere
By Tim Redmond
I didn’t say anything when David Lazarus first created a modest stir by suggesting that newspapers should charge money for online content. I figured the world of bloggers would have a field day with this, and I didn’t want to pile on. They did; I can’t fit links to all of them, but Lazarus quotes the most savage in his column today. Even Jon Carroll weighed in, suggesting that journalism schools begin teaching porn reporting because that’s where the money is.
But I think all of them are missing the point.
Memorial for transgender woman
By Tim Redmond
We still have no idea who killed a transgender woman whose body was found on Cesar Chavez and Indiana March 19. But these deaths are far too common, and the community is coming together to hold a memorial Friday night. Keep checking Leftinsf for more details.
The big housing lie
By Tim Redmond
This is big news.
Marc Salomon, a local activist, has done something that the City Planning Department should have done years ago: He’s carefully tracked who’s moving into new housing in San Francisco, using voter registration data. His conclusion: Fully two-thirds of the people moving into the new market-rate units are from out of town. That is, the vast majoirty of the new housing the city is allowing developers to build does nothing for the San Francisco renters who want to buy homes, the familes who are being driven out of town …. and nothing for the local housing market.
We are building housing for very rich people who don’t live here. That’s exactly the opposite of what the city’s official policy is and what any sane housing policy would do.
Alice Club endorsement — no debate?
By Tim Redmond
The Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club may wind up endorsing Mark Leno for state Senate next month without even hearing from his opponent, Carole Migden.
The club voted March 12 to go ahead and suspend the normal rules to allow an early endorsement of Leno, who is challenging Migden for state Senate. Frankly, it’s not a big surprise — everyone knew that Alice would wind up backing Leno. That club is very much his political base.
Still, some club members thought that there ought to at least be a candidate’s forum before the final vote, where Migden would have a chance to show up and make her case. A motion to make the early endorsement contingent on that was handily defeated.
Now, club president Rebecca Prozan is scrambling to pull a forum together before the final endorement vote in April — but there’s guarantee it will happen. Prozan told me she thinks Migden should have been invited to speak before the final vote, “but the membership rejected that position.”
This strikes me as a bit unfair — and not a terribly productive way to go about local politics right now. Sure, Leno’s the club favorite, and that’s fine — but Migden is also a legitmate LGBT community leader with a credible record and constituency, and a queer San Francisco political organization in a potentially divisive race like this ought to go out of its way to be fair to all involved and not to leave anyone with bitter feelings.
Jerry Brown loses his records
By Tim Redmond
The CoCo Times has this beauty of a report on the missing records from the mayoral administration of Jerry Brown. This kind of crap has been commonplace in San Francisco — exiting officials grab anything that might be negative or incriminating and flee with it — but I didn’t expect that from Jerry, who is not the state’s attorney general. Bad news.
Alice Club endorsement — no debate?
By Tim Redmond
The Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club may wind up endorsing Mark Leno for state Senate next month without even hearing from his opponent, Carole Migden.
The club voted March 12 to go ahead and suspend the normal rules to allow an early endorsement of Leno, who is challenging Migden for state Senate. Frankly, it’s not a big surprise — everyone knew that Alice would wind up backing Leno. That club is very much his political base.
Still, some club members thought that there ought to at least be a candidate’s forum before the final vote, where Migden would have a chance to show up and make her case. A motion to make the early endorsement contingent on that was handily defeated.
Now, club president Rebecca Prozan is scrambling to pull a forum together before the final endorement vote in April — but there’s guarantee it will happen. Prozan told me she thinks Migden should have been invited to speak before the final vote, “but the membership rejected that position.”
This strikes me as a bit unfair — and not a terribly productive way to go about local politics right now. Sure, Leno’s the club favorite, and that’s fine — but Migden is also a legitmate LGBT community leader with a credible record and constituency, and a queer San Francisco political organization in a potentially divisive race like this ought to go out of its way to be fair to all involved and not to leave anyone with bitter feelings.
Jerry Brown loses his records
By Tim Redmond
The CoCo Times has this beauty of a report target=”blank” on the missing records from the mayoral administration of Jerry Brown. This kind of crap has been commonplace in San Francisco — exiting officials grab anything that might be negative or incriminating and flee with it — but I didn’t expect that from Jerry, who is not the state’s attorney general. Bad news.
Editor’s Notes
› tredmond@sfbg.com
Four years ago we shut down the city. None of us who were there will ever forget it: so many peaceful protesters showed up that the police had to close down Market Street. Mission Street was pretty much the same way. You couldn’t get anywhere downtown; nobody seemed to be at work. The police were, in more than a few instances, out of control — but there were no water cannons or rubber bullets, just a lot of arrests. Overall, it was a day of joy: the United States was going to war, and San Francisco would have no part of it.
The anniversary protests, while exuberant, weren’t quite that dramatic. I understand: it’s been a long, long war, and we’ve all be fighting for a long, long time, and things just seem to be getting worse. The antiwar movement, and the frustration of the nation at a conflict that has dragged on longer than US involvement in World War II, tossed the Republican majority out of both houses of Congress, but the Democrats are still talking about nonbinding resolutions and incremental plans that can’t be backed up. The war seems to be without end. Even the New York Times, that voice of mainstream moderation, is starting to sound pissed off: the March 18 lead editorial referred to "the unnecessary, horribly botched and now unwinnable war."
I know this doesn’t help the families of the more than 3,000 already dead soldiers or the tens of thousands more who are still stuck in a desert quagmire, but the good news is we’ve won the debate. Almost nobody running for president wants to say the war was a good idea, has been handled well, or ought to continue much longer. The only question on the table now is how best to get the hell out. And in the long term, this really has become the new Vietnam — just as the very name of that southeast Asian country struck fear in the hearts of American imperialists and military adventurists for a quarter century, the legacy of Iraq will almost certainly be stricter controls on the ability of rogue presidents to invade countries for their own geopolitical agendas.
So let’s keep the pressure on the likes of Nancy Pelosi (it’s so heartwarming to see protesters camped outside the house of the new House speaker — and it’s stunning that Pelosi has been such a jerk and refused to be civil to them). And take heart: we can still end this war — and go a long way toward preventing the next one.
And on a totally different note: I was somewhat amazed to see that the Hearst Corp. and MediaNews Group — the companies that own all the major newspapers in the central Bay Area — have come up with a new tactic to get rid of that pesky antitrust suit filed by Clint Reilly.
The suit charges that the deal giving two giant corporations control of so much of the region’s media will deprive readers of diverse viewpoints and advertisers of competitive alternatives. The evidence in favor of Reilly’s claim is pretty strong.
So now the newspaper barons are taking a new tack, arguing that Reilly has no standing to sue. He’s just one person; what’s the harm to him?
Well, gee, if one person who cares about the community has no standing to sue, who does? Hearst and MediaNews, I suspect, would like to leave that to the state and federal attorneys general. And look how that’s worked out. *
Public power football
By Tim Redmond
The City of Santa Clara has a lot that the San Francisco 49ers find attractive: A nice site for a stadium, a local fan base — and, it turns out, $200 million in cash. That money, which the team has its eyes on, is sitting in the bank — it’s the surplus from the city’s municipal electric utility.
Isn’t it funny: San Francisco may lose a football team in part because our competing city did what we should have done many years ago, and created a public-power agency. Now it’s got some money to spare.
This all came up at Mayor Gavin Newsom’s weekly department heads meeting March 18. when a mayoral staffer gave a briefing on the Santa Clara 49ers situation, including an explanation of how the Niners want that $200 mill (which the Santa Clara power agency is reluctant to part with). In the middle of the briefing, Sheriff Mike Hennessey dared to interrupt with the obvious question:
“Are you saying,” he asked, “that a city can make a profit from public power?”
The staffer’s response: “No comment.”
Newsom’s latest hypocrisy
By Tim Redmond
Gavin Newsom has a slick new website, which his campaign team has decided to call actlocallysf.org, I guess to give the impression that it’s more than flackery for the mayor. The lead item on it is, in fact, a nice piece by the head of the Business Alliance for Living Local Economies, talking about how to create an economically sustainable city.
But that’s actually a serious policy challenge that involves taking on big, powerful international interests — and Newsom isn’t doing any of that. In fact, if you scroll down the page, you find an article on why San Francisco should turn over the future of its electronic communications infrastructure to a couple of giant corporations.
A real sustainable city would look at creating the network locally, using city funds and local nonprofits and small businesses, and keeping control of it in the public sector. Gavin: get with the program.
PS: BeyondChron has a nice takeout on the new website.
PS2: The Bay Guardian and Beyond Chron both have links on the site, under the category “mean but interesting.” Mean? To the poor little mayor who can’t take any criticism? Jesus. At least we’re interesting.
Everyone’s against the war …
By Tim Redmond
… Even Donald Trump . He says Bush is a liar, the war is a disaster and the U.S. should immediately withdraw. He’s ahead of Nancy Pelosi!
G.W.: You’re fired
Where are the protesters?
By Tim Redmond
That’s the question ABC news is asking It’s always annoying when this sort of stuff comes from the mainstream media, which always tend to downplay the size of protests. (Note that the Chronicle ran a big story about pro-war demonstrators on Saturday).
But it’s absolutely true that there were fewer people on the streets this weekend than we saw four years ago, and that the crowd was mostly controlled and orderly. Even the die-in was fairly orderly, and the arrests went without incident.
I know there’s a lot of protest burnout going on, and people don’t feel like the White House cares. Which is absolutely true. But there’s also been a shift here: The battle has moved to Congress, and activists are putting pressure on everyone from Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic leadership to the likes of Ellen Tauscher in the East Bay, who is almost certainly going to face a primary challenge over the war.
Remember: We have won the debate. Almost everyone agrees now that the war was a bad idea and has to end. Don’t get discouraged; keep up the pressure.
The dreaded school letters
By Tim Redmond
The letters go out today assigning kids to SF public schools, and often there is wailing and gnashing of teeth when parents don’t get their very first choice. I agree, the system isn’t perfect, but my advice, as someone who went through it and though he’d been utterly screwed, is: relax. There are a lot of good schools in SF; you don’t have to be in Rooftop or Clarendon.
We visited all the supposedly top schools, applied for seven of them, and got none of our choices. Then on the second round, we discovered McKinley — and we couldn’t be happier.
So don’t freak if you don’t get Clarendon. I complain about the administration all the time (well, not so much now that Arlene Ackerman is gone), but the truth is, the district has come a long way, is improving, and there are lots of great places to send your kid.
So don’t panic.
A scary school poll
By Tim Redmond
Kim Knox at leftinsf has posted the minutes of the Community Advisory Committee looking for a new SF school superintendent. Mostly pretty predictable stuff — except for a poll commissioned by a business group that has some really scary results:
To the question, is SF Unified School District going in the right direction or the wrong track:
Right Direction-22%
Wrong Track-54%
To the question, how would you rate the quality of the education provided by SFUSD:
Good to Excellent-28%
Not So Good to Poor-54%
To the question, how well do you think SFUSD manage its funds:
Excellent 20%
Not So Good to Poor 53%
One leftinsf commenter, Nakayama, concluded:
What ignorance. Anybody keeping a close eye on our public schools in SF –whether parent, student or administrator–can readily see that the schools are much better now than they were five or 10 years ago.
Why the misconception?
Because very few San Franciscans have children, and they have no idea what is happening in our schools.
I agree with the first part — I have a kid in the public schools, I’m really happy about his school (McKinley) and I think the public schools have improved dramatically in the past few years. But I don’t think the misconception is entirely due to the fact that most people in SF don’t have kids.
Let’s remember: Of the two superintendents who have been in charge since the 1990s, one ran an administration riddled with corruption; the other, while a talented educator, was arrogant, vindictive and disdainful of the community. That sort of thing doesn’t help with the perception of the district.
The second problem is that the district has spent a lot of money on a public-relations office whose chief job in the past has been to protect and promote the superintendent — so not a lot of effort has gone into promoting the schools in general. That’s changing now, under Acting Superintendent Gwen Chan, who seems to be doing a great job so far — and with a little effort, SFUSD could (and should) organize a major advertising and public-relations campaign to promote the quality and importance of public education in the city. That would help a lot.
Because those numbers really suck. And we all have to work to change them.
Editor’s Notes
› tredmond@sfbg.com
I am not taking sides yet in the Carole Migden–Mark Leno race; the election is still a blessed 14 months away. But I think that at this point I can stake out a clear position against calling one of the candidates a "kiddie porn king."
I wish this were a joke, but it’s not. A former aide to Migden, Michael Colbruno, who (like most of the rest of the known world) has a blog, posted an item earlier this month headlined "Kiddie Porn King in Senate Race."
Colbruno clearly supports his former boss, who is defending her State Senate seat against Assemblymember Leno. That’s fine. But attacking Leno as a kiddie porn king is the exact sort of nasty, sleazy, Karl Rove–style stuff that ought to have no place in a San Francisco campaign.
Let me lay out the background here, since it’s a case study in how political smears are created.
About a year ago Republicans in the state legislature started work on a bill that was aimed at cracking down on child molesters. It wound up on the ballot as Proposition 83, a draconian law that, among other things, would have barred any registered sex offender from living within 2,000 feet of a school or park and required them to wear an electronic monitoring bracelet for life.
Leno and Migden both opposed it.
But in the meantime, while the bill was being debated, Leno, chair of the Public Safety Committee, tried to offer a less heinous alternative. His measure was called AB 50, and while it tightened laws on sex crimes, it didn’t include the bracelets or the 2,000-foot residency requirement (which many law-enforcement types said were ineffective and unworkable).
During discussions on the bill, Leno tells me, Assemblymember Todd Spitzer, an Orange County Republican, approached Leno with an offer. "He told me that if I would accept several amendments, he’d support my bill," Leno says.
One Spitzer amendment would have tightened the laws on child pornography. At the time, possession of kiddie porn was a misdemeanor on the first offense; Spitzer’s proposal would have made it a felony if the offender possessed more than 100 pieces.
Sure, said Leno. No problem. (Spitzer, by the way, confirmed this account to me.)
That, in retrospect, was a mistake; in fact, I could argue that Leno was set up by the GOP. Because shortly afterward, the right-wing media blew up. Leno was accused of supporting the child-porn lobby; according to the likes of Fox News’s Sean Hannity, Leno was arguing that 99 pieces of kiddie porn were just fine. (The federal felony standard, by the way, is 75. Leno’s bill was amended — with his support — to 25, then one.)
Let’s remember: Leno’s bill actually tightened the existing law. I have two kids, and I’m not about to defend the peddlers of underage smut, but I really don’t think AB 50 made Leno a kiddie porn king.
I shudder to think about this becoming a campaign issue; I can already see the hit pieces (or whisper campaigns) circuutf8g in Marin and Sonoma counties, the more conservative parts of the district. Mark Leno, kiddie porn. Hard to turn that around.
Paul Hefner, a spokesperson for Migden’s campaign, told me she doesn’t approve of the post and wants to see a positive race. Good for her. But I suspect that if she were as offended as I am, she would call Colbruno and tell him to take that shit down. Now.
UPDATE: After ppress time for the print edition, Migden’s office informed me that the senator had asked Colbruno to take the post down. Colbruno told me he would do so. That was the right outcome; now let’s hope we don’t ever have to go through all of this again*
Leno attack is pulled
By Tim Redmond
Carole Migden has finally done the right thing: She has requested Michael Colbruno take down his nasty posts about Mark Leno, and Colbruno just called to tell me he is going to do it.
So this is a victory for the collective efforts of many on the left to prevene mud-slinging, and let’s hope we can keep things (somewhat) civil going forward.
Leno, Migden, porn and sewer politics
By Tim Redmond
I really, really wish I didn’t have to write about this. But here we go.
I’ve spent far too much of the past few days researching a 2006 bill by Mark Leno that has led a local blogger to dub him a “Kiddie Porn King.” I now understand exactly where this came from, and I’ve talked to all sides, and I can fairly conclude that it’s a stupid, vicious, shitty little allegation that doesn’t belong in San Francisco politics.
The guy responsible for this is Michael Colbruno, a former aide to Migden who now works for Clear Channel Oudoor. I finaly got a comment from Migden’s campaign today; spokesman Paul Hefner told me Migden “does not approve of this” and “wants her supporters to run a positive campaign.” Which is nice, but I think she should go a step further: If the senator called Mr. Colbruno and told him to take that shit down, now, I suspect he’d comply.
Anyway, let me lay out the background here, since it’s a case study in how political smears are created.
The kimono photo is real …
By Tim Redmond
Or so says the person who took it.
Remember: I was given a print of the photo of Newsom in a pink kimono with alleged stalker Han Shin from someone who says he got if directly from Shin. I had no idea who took it. But the photographer just came forward and called me. I can’t use his name, but here’s the story he tells (and it rings true).
The photo was taken at Sup. Bevan Dufty’s campaign kickoff. Newsom was there, wearing a Dufty t-shirt over his dress shirt. Han Shin showed up and presented Dufty with the kimono. Dufty tried it on, then Shin took it over to Newsom and draped it over the mayor’s shoulders. Then Shin handed his little camera to a person on the scene — the one who just called me — and that person snapped the pic.
It wasn’t a high-quality camera and there were lots of sources of light on the scene, which explans the weird shadow patterns.
For the record, the person who called me has a history in local politics and no reason to make this up.
What’s up, Carole?
By Tim Redmond
I’m still waiting to hear something from Carole Migden about this truly offensive blog post by her former aide, Michael Colbruno.
For the record, this attack on Mark Leno started when right-wingers went after him for opposing Proposition 83. We opposed Prop. 83, too. So did San Francisco Sheriff Mike Hennessey. So, I’m told by Migden’s office, did Migden.
I left word for Migden two days ago. She ought ot come out and say that this is bullshit and that she won’t have her supporters pulling this stuff. (And if any of Leno’s people try to do the same kind os smear-stuff, I hope he smacks them down as well.)
Fun at the Village Voice
By Tim Redmond
Lotsa fun talk about the new editor at the Village Voice. That would be editor number five since the boys from Phoenix took the place over.
Apparently the new guy isn’t so fond of literary language. But it looks like the boss likes him.
And these guys are having a good time with Mike Lacey’s inability to spell the names of dead Soviet generals.
Free Muni: You read it here first
Tim Redmond
I’m glad to see the Mayor Newsom is looking into free bus service. It’s a great idea, even if, as Leftinsfnotes, it’s probably just a political ploy in an election year. And even if the Chron is already already trying to shoot it down.
When I first saw the headlines, I had one of those flashback moments; I realized that we’d already done this story, a long time ago. In fact, it was December, 1993 when the Guardian ran a cover story on the case for Free Muni. I dug it up from our archives; you can read it here.
Back then, the local economy was kind of a wreck, and beyond the environmental arguments, we wanted to make the case that eliminating bus fares would give the mostly working-class folks who ride the buses more moneny in their pockets, which would be a nice economic boost. The way to pay for it, of course, would be to tax downtown (making this a transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor, one of my favorite things in the world).
I don’t think Newsom is even looking at the economic arguments, but he should.
He also isn’t calling for a downtown transit tax increase to pay for this, either — but that’s the way to do it. Put the whole thing on the ballot — free Muni, paid for by, say, a $150 million annual assessment on downtown buildings. That might even win. Would Newsom support it?