Tim Redmond

The honeymoon is over

-
0

Update: That alert bunch over at the SFist has raised questions about whether the photo that we published this week of Mayor Gavin Newsom (wearing a pink honeymoon kimono) and his alleged stalker Han Shin was real or altered — and we’re kinda curious about that ourselves. As we acknowledged in the paper, we got it from a source who got it directly from Shin, so we can’t verify its authenticity. But maybe you can? Is is a real photo? Or if not, which are the fake parts? Are they really together? Is Newsom really wearing a pink honeymoon over a Reelect Bevan Dufty T-shit over what looks like a business shirt?
No matter what the conclusions, we’re still glad that we published the photo, which is either real or was faked and being passed around by Shin. Either way, weird stuff. Post your thoughts below.

The Honeymoon is over
By Tim Redmond

Poor Gavin Newsom: it’s tough to be a globe-trotting, movie star–dating celebrity mayor with a lingering sex scandal … and now a stalker. But not just any stalker — Han Shin, assuming the above photo is real (we got it from a trusted source who said he got it directly from Shin), once got the mayor to pose with him in a pink honeymoon kimono.

Shin, according to police accounts, has a troubled history: the San Francisco Chronicle reported that he allegedly threatened to kill his 76-year-old mother, who said that her son was dangerous whenever he stopped taking his medication.

Shin is also accused of shining a laser into a prosecutor’s eye during a court hearing. He was arrested by San Ramon police Feb. 28 for allegedly burglarizing the home of a man officers believe he had been in a relationship with and repeatedly trying to run over the guy’s roommate with his car.

Shin told the Chron that only the cops think he’s crazy and that he’s stopped taking his meds. He says he wears purple latex gloves because purple is the color of divinity and royalty. The city got a restraining order against him after he showed up in the lobby of Newsom’s apartment building.

The man apparently has a thing for Newsom: a Bay Area Reporter story this week says that "reports have also noted that Shin has attempted to flirt with the mayor and was seen photographing Newsom from the waist down at a recent public meeting the mayor held in the Bayview."

He kind of likes Sup. Bevan Dufty too: the supervisor says he met Shin last year when he was running for reelection and the man gave him a raspberry kimono — perhaps similar to the one Newsom is wearing in this photo. Again, the BAR: "Asked if Shin identified as gay, Dufty said, ‘He is like a cross between Liberace and Hello Kitty. He is out of his gourd.’ "

Interestingly, in the photo we were given, Newsom is wearing a Dufty campaign T-shirt under his kimono.

Editor’s Notes

-
0

› tredmond@sfbg.com

I don’t think anyone has seriously challenged an incumbent San Francisco Democrat for a seat in the state legislature while I’ve lived here, and that’s going on 25 years. So we all know that the race between Mark Leno, the challenger, and Carole Migden, the state senator, marks a change in local politics.

For one thing, it’s a major race, for a key political position — and there’s no official establishment candidate. Both Leno and Migden have ties to some very powerful interests in town; both of them will be able to raise a lot of money and line up an impressive list of endorsements. But as we saw from Leno’s campaign kickoff March 2, the political split is going to be highly unusual in a town where grassroots progressives versus the downtown machine has been pretty much the political mantra for a generation.

Five years ago, when then-supervisor Leno and former supervisor Harry Britt fought for the open District 13 assembly seat, it wasn’t hard to take sides. The progressives were behind Britt (and so was Migden); the moderates, the business types, and kingmaker Willie Brown were behind Leno. But Leno has moved considerably to the left over the past few years and has been a good legislator. A lot of the former Britt supporters may well wind up in his camp this time around.

At his kickoff, though, that wasn’t what you saw: District Attorney Kamala Harris was by his side, along with Treasurer Phil Ting, Assemblymember Fiona Ma, and San Francisco Public Utilities Commission boss Susan Leal. Harris and Leal are decent people who have taken some good progressive stands, but they aren’t exactly a definitive lineup of San Francisco’s left leadership. Ma was a horrible supervisor. Community college board member Natalie Berg is nothing if not an old machine hack.

Migden isn’t exactly pals with everyone on the left in this town either: she pissed off a lot of party activists by supporting Steve Westly over Phil Angelides for governor (although she could certainly argue now, given Angelides’s rather poor showing, that the centrist Westly was a more practical choice). And she’s been far less visible in town than Leno, who really works the San Francisco constituency.

Neither Leno nor Migden has done anything remotely close to what Brown and Phil and John Burton did in their days in the state legislature (and later Congress). The level of fear and intimidation from the top dogs in the Democratic Party is well on the wane.

It’s going to be hard for local politicians to make a choice in this race — but not because they fear the consequences of defying one side or the other. Frankly, if you’re a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors or the school board or community college board, or a prominent fundraiser in the Democratic Party, neither Migden nor Leno is terribly scary.

This is a good thing. We’re making progress.

For the grassroots activists who will be propelling the campaigns on the ground, the challenge will be not just to promote their own candidates but to avoid a queer-left schism that will last beyond the election. Queer-labor activist Robert Haaland has a proposal, which is posted on the politics blog at www.sfbg.com: he suggests that everyone — not just the candidates but also their supporters — promise not to resort to sleazy attacks and to remember that we will all have to work together another day. Migden and Leno have both signed on. Now let’s see if they can force their campaign consultants and political allies to get with the program.

That would be progress indeed. *

Why we need a no-attacks pledge

-
0

By Tim Redmond

The shit is already flying in the Migden-Leno race. Check out this nice piece of sleaze attacking Mark Leno as “the Kiddie Porn King.”

No kidding.

That’s why Leno and Migden both have to tell their supporters to knock it off.

Sucking up to PG&E’s flack

-
0

By Tim Redmond

Isn’t this special? All of these liberal politicians in San Francisco happily sucking up to the chief hired gun for Pacific Gas and Electric Company.

For the record, Don Solem has made gobs of money over the years defeating public-power initiatives in San Francisco. That’s not something I really want to celebrate.

Does it have to be a bloodbath?

-
2

By Tim Redmond

Already, I’m hearing whistpers from both sides of the Leno-Migden contest, and already, they’re getting nasty. Mark Leno told me this week that he will run an upbeat campaign, and that any negative attacks on Midgen “won’t come from me.” I suspect I will hear the same from Migden. But it’s common in campaigns for elected officials to try to take the high road and let others — their allies and suppoerters — do the dirty work.

So queer/labor activist Robert Haaland is asking not only the candidates, but their supporters in the queer and progressive communities, to pledge to keep this fight out of the gutter. Here’s a piece he sent me; I think everyone ought to read it, take it seriously, and sign on.

Our community was divided. Our LGBT clubs were separated. The streets of the Castro were full of opposing forces and consternation. During the 2001-2002 campaign for the 13th Assembly District seat, we were split and it was a difficult time.

Following that election campaign, we made a decision to begin the process of healing those divisions. The leaders of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club and the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club, and the leaders of the campaigns, met together to salve these wounds and form a new alliance. This was not easy. It took years and much work within each to heal, listen, understand, and move forward together.

In the years since that election, our community has been in a renaissance. Our two LGBT Democratic Clubs have worked together like never before. We have seen tremendous and amazing accomplishments through those efforts. Our coordinated efforts as a community in opposition to the statewide Special Election in 2005 are an astounding example of what we can do when we work together.

Additionally, as efforts have moved forward in the LGBT community on issues such as marriage equality on the stairs of our City Hall, opposing racial discrimination in the Castro, speaking out against anti-LGBT commentary from the news media about our LGBT families, supporting statewide efforts for the advancement of our LGBT rights, and stopping attacks from the right-wing on our community, we have been able to work side-by-side in a way that was unthinkable during the 2001-2002 campaign.

This newfound coordination and organization between our Clubs and within our community has been crucial in working for the betterment and strength of our community as a whole. And we will not allow this community to be torn asunder again. Our friendships are too strong now. Our knowledge of the power of our coordinated efforts and their success is too deep. And our realization that we can move beyond minor disagreements and continue forward as friends and colleagues and community brothers and sisters is definite.

As our community begins the process of working on the upcoming state Senate campaign for June of 2008, we will not allow this to break our bonds. We demand that the candidates in the race do the following:

–Pledge that there will be no negative campaigning, against each other or supporters on any side
–Pledge that they individually will work to strengthen our community’s ties with one another
–Pledge that they will not work to form wedges and divisions among us as a community
–Pledge that they will regularly form bonds with all sides in the campaign
–Pledge respect, honor, decency, and above all, civility, towards all parties

We also urge our community’s leaders to pledge that they do the same. Regardless of anyone’s personal affiliations during this campaign, we will continue to form our alliances and friendships and move this community forward together. We are not going back. We have too much to gain by moving forward together.

Culture war at the Village Voice

-
0

By Tim Redmond

Good article in the Boston Phoenix on the fallout from the New Times-Village Voice merger. The basic point that writer Adam Reilly makes:

The core of the old New Times chain was Southwestern and Southern. And those regions of the country have a different political culture — more socially conservative, more reflexively anti-government — than coastal markets like Los Angeles and New York, or progressive Midwestern enclaves like the Twin Cities. “Phoenix, Denver, Miami — there’s something about the culture of those cities that’s similar,” says Robson. “There’s a frontier mentality that New Times’ libertarian nihilism matches up with.”

None of the old VVM papers fits this description, but New York fits it the least.

Considering that New Times (Now Village Voice Media) owns the SF Weekly and East Bay Express, the article is well worth a read.

Editor’s Notes

-
0

› tredmond@sfbg.com

It’s funny: the transcontinental railroad was born in San Francisco, and it transformed California. But the West Coast has pretty much lost the train thing. You want to go from here to Los Angeles, there are pretty much two choices: you can fly or you can drive. In theory, you can ride Amtrak, and I’ve done it, but it doesn’t run very often and takes about 12 hours. Fun, if you like that sort of thing, but not at all practical.

But on an early Sunday morning last week, I was traveling from Washington, DC, to Philadelphia, and between 8 a.m. and noon there were about half a dozen trains running on that route. The high-speed Acela got me to Philly in 90 minutes, downtown to downtown, way faster than I could drive. Another hour or so, and I could have been in Manhattan.

There are flights from Washington, DC, to New York, but these days it seems kind of silly to fly: by the time you arrive at the airport, get through security, go up, go down, deplane, and get from the airport to the city, you’re well beyond three hours. The train’s way cheaper too.

Yeah, I love trains (actual legroom, no seat belt signs, scenery, bar cars), so I’m biased, but it seems silly that California is spending billions of dollars on highway projects (including a new bore for the Caldecott Tunnel, a colossal waste if there ever were one), and we still aren’t talking seriously about high-speed rail to Los Angeles, which would probably bring more environmental and economic benefits than all of the other transportation projects in the state put together.

There are plenty of reasons to wring your hands over Assemblymember Mark Leno’s decision to challenge incumbent state senator Carole Migden in 2008. The race will almost certainly be bitter and ugly; both sides have an incentive to go negative. It could split the queer community, leave progressives wondering whom to support, and turn political allies into enemies.

Or maybe it won’t: I wonder if San Francisco’s progressive community is mature enough today to handle this without any bad long-term impacts. Some of the city’s left leaders will back Leno, and some will back Migden, but in the end, neither one of these candidates is the enemy, and if everyone keeps a sense of perspective (the way we were able to do in the District 5 race in 2004), it doesn’t have to be a bloodbath.

I realize that Leno is running in part because of term limits, which might not be the most noble of motivations. And I’m against term limits. But there’s actually a reason to be happy about this race: it’s a demonstration that old-style machine politics is dead in San Francisco.

Ten years ago this race would never have happened. Willie Brown was in charge — really in charge — and no local Democrat would have dared to defy his will. Brown didn’t like contested races between Democrats, and he would have told one of the two candidates to back off, and that would have been that.

We live in a different political world now. Mayor Gavin Newsom will probably support Leno, but he has way too much on his mind right now to be involved in any kind of backroom deal. Neither Migden nor Leno has the kind of clout to scare the other away, and nobody else in this town does either.

Democracy isn’t always pretty, but after living under the machine for a couple of decades, I find this almost refreshing. *

PG&E is radioactive

-
0

By Tim Redmond

A couple weeks ago, we gave Mark Leno a little slap for showing up to celebrate Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s solar project at the LGBT Center. Today, Beyond Chron is whacking Carole Migden for being too frinedly with PG&E.

The nice side of all of this: It clear that both candidates consider PG&E to be politically radioactive, and simply proximity can breed political fallout. It’s about time.

Who will be with Leno at the kickoff?

-
0

By Tim Redmond

That’s the question all over San Francisco politics now that Leno has announced he’s running against state Sen. Carole Migden. His campaign kickoff is at noon this Friday, at YBC, and it will be the first sign of what sort of support he’s been able to line up.

The people who show up will risk infuriating Migden, which is nothing to trifle at (and will make it tougher for city officials, who have to work with her on legislation). Leno is much calmer and milder, but he’ll also remember who his friends are (and aren’t).

Sup. Tom Ammiano, who is running for Leno’s seat (with the endorsement of both Leno and Migden) tells me he’s staying neutral. It would be hard for him to do anything else at this point. But soon, lots of local politicos are going to have to take sides, then live with it for a year as the race gets hotter and hotter.

Friday is Opening Day. Let’s see who comes out to play.

SF Democrats and the war

-
0

By Tim Redmond

The San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee is going to vote Feb. 28th on a resolution against the war. That shouldn’t be a big deal; everyone in San Francisco is against the war, right?

But the resolution, by Rafael Mandelman, Robert Haaland, and Michael Goldstein, does more than oppose the war; it calls on the Democratic leadership in Congress — that’s our own Nancy Pelosi — to overturn the resolution authorizing the president to use force and to cut off all funding for further hostilities, “except as necessary to provide for the safe and orderly withdrawal of all troops in Iraq.”

It ought to be a slam dunk in this city, but I bet there will be some strong opposition to the resolution — from people who fear embarassing or confronting Pelosi.

Crazy: This doesn’t hurt Pelosi a bit. In fact, it gives her leverage with the moderates in her party to say that back home, her constituents are demanding action.

This ought to go to a roll-call vote; I’ll keep you posted on how it comes out.

Will they have to cancel Easter?

-
0

By Tim Redmond

About 20 years ago, a group of crazed anarchists put out a parody of a major national newspaper with a banner headline that read:

EASTER CANCELLED! CHRIST’S BODY FOUND!

I can’t quote the exact language of the story, since that was way back when, but it read just like a standard New York Times report, except that it focused on how several major world religions had been thrown into chaos by the news that Jesus’s bady had been found — something that undermined one of the fundamental tenets of Christianity, the ressurection of Christ.

To a Catholic-school kid like me, it was funny largely because the Roman Catholic Church was, and is, so utterly paranoid about any historical evidence that might cast doubt on any of the scared rules of the church. (Most biblical historians, for example, agree that Jesus never said anything about priests being celebate or women being unable to serve as priests; that comes from medieval popes, who were not always a savory bunch.)

So I loved the Da Vinci Code, and I loved Cross Bones, just as I’ve always loved discussions about the historic arcania of Jesus, the Holy Family and the Popes. And now I love this.

I’ve already read a few books and articles that get into the Jesus Cave — the idea that archeologists have found bodies in a cave that may be Jesus, Mary Magdelene and their son (think about it: If Jesus had a son, presumably — immaculate-conception powers aside — he had sex, which would means this whole celebate priest thing would be utterly bogus).

But this documentary is getting a fair amount of blog press; my fave is the argument that James Cameron wasn’t satisfied with sinking the Titanic; he now wants to sink Christianity

Go team.

PS: My colleague Cheryl Eddy worries that if Easter is cancelled, she’ll have to stock up quicly on Peeps.

Politics blog: Leno vs. Migden

-
0

@@http://www.sfbg.com/blogs/politics/2007/02/lenos_running_against_migden_1.html@@

Leno’s running against Migden

-
2

By Tim Redmond

It’s official: I just spoke with Assemblymember Mark Leno, and he is, indeed, running for state Senate against incumbent Carole Migden. Leno will formally announce at a March 2 campaign kickoff fundraiser at Yerba Buena Gardens. But he’s in the race — and he told me very clearly that he’s in the race for good, even if the the voters overturn term limits for state legislators.

“I want to allow the voters of this senate district to have a choice,” Leno said. “My record of nine years in elected office demonstrates a very different style of inclusivity and respect.”

And that’s really what this race is going to be about: political style. There aren’t a whole lot of major issue on which Leno and Migden disagree, so while Leno told me he would “really be focussing on what I’m going to do positively,” there’s no doubt that the campaign will turn negative. Leno has to point to some of the problems Migden’s had in Sacramento — and Migden, who is a scrapper, will fight back.

The first big sign of how this race will play out will be who shows up to support Leno March 2. My bet: Mayor Gavin Newsom will be there (Leno is a big Newsom backer). Another guess: Sup. Chris Daly, who has been more friendly with Migden, will take a pass. So will Sup. Aaron Peskin.

In the end, this is going to be a bitter, ugly fight with San Francisco progressives on both sides (and caught in the middle). On the positive side, it’s a clear sign that the days of machine politics in San Francisco are over, dead, done for. Can you imagine Willie Brown letting an actual contested election happen on his watch?

And who knows; maybe Migden will decide she’d rather run for mayor.

I haven’t been able to get Migden on the phone directly, but she relayed this comment to me:

“I have not heard a credible justification for [Leno’s] candidadacy other than the fact that he’s out of a job.”

And so it begins.

SF Weekly’s bizarre source

-
0

By Tim Redmond

Whoa.
I just read Ron Russell’s big story in the SF Weekly about former Police Chief Earl Sanders, and I’m a bit dumfounded.
The gist of the story is that Sanders – the city’s first black police chief and the author of a a new book on the Zebra killings – trumped up his record as a civil-rights leader in the department and glossed over some real problems in his tenure as a homicide cop. That may be true; I haven’t read the book, although I know that Sanders was involved in a frame-up that sent two innocent young men to prison. (I know that because A.C. Thompson, who now writes for the Weekly, wrote about it for the Guardian – a fact conveniently left out of Russell’s story.)
But what left me reeling was Russell’s use of a source named Louis Calabro.
In the story, Calabro is portrayed as an entirely credible former cop whose comments about Sanders are worth legitimate consideration. He’s quoted numerous times. High up in the piece, he’s described as the emcee of a memorial for victims of the notorious Zebra killings and as “one of Earl Sanders’ staunchest critics [who] heads the European American Issues Forum, a group whose proclaimed mission is to promote the rights of persons of “European American” heritage.”
Actually, there’s a bit more to the story.
It’s not hard to learn about Calabro’s organization and his background. You can Google him and it comes up pretty quickly. This is a guy whose website eaif.org, has headlines like“Why the World Hates Jews Part 1” and “Why Do So Many People Hate Jews? He tried to trademark the term “white pride country wide” (the government demurred).
He has gone off on a tear, over and over again, against groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center, which provide anti-hate-speech materials to schools.
Calabro came by the Guardian office once to complain that I wouldn’t run his letters, and he tried to convince us that the real story about World War Two was the internment of German-Americans.
Calabro insists that his group is not racist and that it doesn’t condone negative comments about any racial group. And while the white-nationalist people at Stormfront post his stuff, some of the denizens there don’t particularly like him. In fact, he (properly) calls the hard-core white power people out for being racists.
Still, this is not a man who has any credibility whatsoever when it comes to criticizing the conduct of an African American cop in a complex racially charged murder case.
When I asked Russell about it, he emailed me and said: “Of course I know who he is. The story makes it abundantly clear where Mr. Calabro is coming from. I fail to see why you think quoting him was inappropriate.”
Well: I don’t think I’ve ever seen another credible media outlet refer to Calabro as anything other than someone whose opinions on race are well outside the mainstream of acceptability in a multicultural society.
Oops. I suspect that over at the Weekly, they’re having what we call the Big Cringe.

Editor’s Notes

-
0

› tredmond@sfbg.com

I made it through the week without anyone calling to complain about my analysis of the mayor’s race, so maybe for once I got it right: unless Gavin Newsom drops out or a third strike drops and it’s pretty bad, we already know what things are going to look like in the fall.

So we might as well get on with it: Matt Gonzalez and Ross Mirkarimi should get together and talk it out, then one of them should just go ahead and announce.

For a long list of reasons, there has to be a real mayor’s race this fall — and Tony Hall plus a few nutcases against Mayor Newsom doesn’t count. The progressives need someone to rally around, to get the old troops out and in the streets and some new ones trained and energized. We need to keep Newsom on the defensive, to keep our issues out there, to hold him accountable not just to his donors but to the rest of the city.

Never discount what a good challenge can do: there are a lot of reasons why Sup. Bevan Dufty has moved a few steps to the left over the past few months, but one of them is absolutely the fact that he had a progressive candidate running against him in the fall.

Besides, I actually think Newsom can be defeated.

Just look at his record. Since he hasn’t accomplished much of anything, he’s vulnerable on almost everything. Other than same-sex marriage, his major legacy at this point seems to be trying to hand out the city’s information technology infrastructure to Google and EarthLink. Go team.

And the city’s two leading Greens both have a distinct advantage at this point — nobody is going to accuse them of jumping into the race to take advantage of Newsom’s personal problems. Long before city hall got all steamed up, Mirkarimi and Gonzalez were talking about running — on the issues.

Gonzalez can raise a lot of money. Mirkarimi has done something few progressives ever pull off: turning public safety into one of our top issues. Like almost all candidates, they both have strengths and weaknesses, but in the end, it looks like one of them is going to be our contender this fall, and that’s not at all a bad thing.

We went after District Attorney Kamala Harris a couple weeks ago when she tried to make some changes in the pretrial diversion program that would have cut back on its effectiveness. Harris did the right thing; she and Public Defender Jeff Adachi reached an agreement that preserved the best of the program, which tries to steer first-time misdemeanor offenders into counseling and out of the criminal justice system.

Harris didn’t have to do that; the program is entirely under her control, and she could have told Adachi (and us) to take a hike and done it her way. But she showed that she’s a reasonable DA who is willing to listen.

Now, however, the thugs at the Police Officers Association are attacking her for her willingness to include misdemeanor noninjury assaults on cops as crimes that are eligible for diversion. (This is typically stuff like someone spitting at an officer or brushing against him or her during an arrest. We’re not talking about serious assaults here.)

Harris is standing up to the POA, but the rest of the city, including the mayor, needs to get behind her. *

Guess who supports term limits?

-
0

By Tim Redmond

I’ve never been a big fan of legislative term limits. Sending legislators packing after a few years shifts to much power to the lobbyists and the executive branch. So I’m glad to see that labor is pushing to modify San Francisco’s term-limits law. Bevan Dufty, who says he is only going to serve two terms anyway, is taking the political heat and leading the charge on this; good for him.

Who do you suppose is leading the campaign to keep the current two-term limits? It’s Wade Randlett and the folks at SFSOS! No surprise: They desperately want to get rid of sups. Aaron Peskin, Chris Daly and Jake McGoldrick, and since they can’t seem to do it the old-fashioned way, by winning elections, they want to make sure the progressives are termed out.

That puts them right up there with the Republicans in Sacramento.

Editor’s Notes

-
0

› tredmond@sfbg.com

If the Matier and Ross report in the San Francisco Chronicle on Feb. 11 is to believed, then Mayor Gavin Newsom is actually taking his alcohol problem seriously. Mimi Silbert, who runs Delancey Street, told the dynamic duo that Newsom has been showing up every night for three or four hours of intense counseling and therapy. Good for him. If his problem is bad enough that he needs that much help, he’d probably be better off taking some time away from work, but I’m not him, and at least he’s trying.

Or so they say.

Of course, if the whole "treatment" thing is just an attempt to gain sympathy from the public and take the story away from his sordid affair, I suspect Newsom’s visits to Delancey Street will start to taper off fast — in which case a lot of people who have friends and family who truly have struggled with alcoholism will be properly pissed at his honor the mayor.

It’s going to sound like a cliché at this point, but I kinda think it’s true enough to make it our mantra for the fall: Newsom has been doing a rotten job of late, and if his personal problems are to blame for that, then he needs to get the hell out of politics until he’s a lot stabler, and if his personal problems aren’t to blame, then he’s just a weak and lame mayor. Either way, four more years doesn’t work.

Which brings us to the real question that was on everyone’s mind at the Guardian‘s 40th anniversary party last week: who?

Let me throw out some thoughts.

I’ll start with the wild card. There isn’t one. I see nobody hiding in the bushes who can run as a progressive and mount a serious campaign. We’ve got what we see. (Don’t talk to me about Art Agnos; the guy would have to enter a political 12-step, make a lot of amends, and admit all the things he did wrong as mayor last time around, and it ain’t happening.)

So here’s Scenario One: Newsom toughs it out, nothing else awful drops, and he stays in the race. Honestly, very few people are going to challenge him. Not Mark Leno, not Carole Migden, not Dennis Herrera, not Aaron Peskin. They don’t want to look like they’re exploiting Newsom’s personal problems, so they all wait four years.

So the left candidate is Ross Mirkarimi or Matt Gonzalez. If Gonzalez wants it, Mirkarimi steps out of the way. That could set up Matt vs. Gavin, round two, with Gonzalez as the candidate of the left and the Residential Builders Association, leaving people like me (who think land use is supremely important) tearing our hair out. And let’s remember that Jack Davis, the political mastermind, is going to be a player this time, and it won’t be with a loser like Tony Hall.

Scenario Two: Newsom decides, for whatever reason, to withdraw — and it’s a free-for-all. Gonzalez is suddenly not the leading candidate; that’s probably Leno, Herrera, or, on the outside, Kamala Harris. Which leaves the progressives with a sticky choice: stay with Gonzalez or accept someone who on paper (and on the record) is more centrist but will promise a whole lot to get our support and could be the odds-on favorite.

Throw in public financing and ranked-choice voting, and the election’s going to be like nothing there ever was in this town. I can’t wait. *

Another problem with Googlink Wifi

-
0

By Tim Redmond

Or maybe I should call it Earthgoo.

Either way, Sasha at Leftinsf has a good summary of the pros and cons of the mayor’s plan. I’ve been following this for a while, and my analsyis (no surprise) has always been based on the notion that the city shouldn’t allow a private vendor to build and control such critical infrastrucutre.

But there’s another issue here. Sarah Phelan gets into it here. Sasha puts it this way:

The network will be exclusive. Although the network is not an explicit monopoly, it will essentially take up all the bandwidth at the frequency wi-fi uses, so it would be difficult or impossible to have a competing network without using a completely different (and likely more expensive) technology.

Think about this for a second. San Francisco is full of all sorts of little (and not-so-little) wi-fi networks. SFLAN, for example, is building a free wifi service with a rooftop-to-rooftop backbone. Lots of people have smaller wi-fi setups that let them, for example, sit out in their backyards with a laptop and check their email. And if Googlink puts up its private wi-fi cloud, all of those other networks will run into interference.

I’m not an expert on the technical details here, but Tim Pozar, who runs United Layer, is, and here’s how he explaned it to me:

“The type of spectrum we’re using is interference-prone. There’s just not that much space on the spectrum. The number of access points that are required [to set up citywide wi-fi] could mean one every block. That’s a lot of radio frequency energy. It will significantly impact others who are trying to use that same part of the spectrum.”

If your entire wi-fi network is inside your house or business, it might be okay, since these radio signals degrade quite a bit when they pass through walls. If you use wi-fi outside, or if it connects to anyone else outside, it might not work any more. Same goes for a cordless phone.

The problem, Posar told me, is that federal law pretty much forces you to accept interference on the wi-fi spectrum; there’s nothing legally you can do to stop a big operator from stepping on little guys.

the Googlink system won’t be that fast — but if anyone else wants to get into the game and offer something better, it will be nearly impossible.

If the city were controlling this, we could do something about it. But it will all be in the hands of a private corporation.

Whoa, that’s a lot of highrises

-
0

By Tim Redmond

I know that we’re all supposed to love urban density these days, and even Sup. Chris Daly likes tall buildings, but at a certain point, you have to say:

Holy shit. This is way too much.

Check out the presentations here, from a recent SF CIty Planning Commission discussion on development around the new Transbay Terminal and Rincon Hill. Forget the early stuff; click down to around page 39 of the pdf and look at how this part of the city is going to look and feel.

I’m still one of the loney dissenters: I don’t think the days of the highrise wars are over, and I don’t buy the notion that we have to accept ever-higher towers that turn the city even more into a jungle of steel canyons that block out lihgt and sun. And I don’t think these “slender” towers that city planners love to talk about are going to be anything but urban blight once you get too many of them in the same place.

And I wonder why we’re doing all of this when the stated premise — to create more urban density instead of sprawl — is such a provable lie. We are building housing for people who will drive or take vanpools to big-money jobs on the Peninsula. We are encouraging car-based commuting and office-park sprawl by building an urban bedroom community for high-paid young workers who want a San Francisco lifestyle but have jobs somewhere else. That and jet-set pied-a-terres for wealthy retirees and world travelers.
We are giving up human-scale neighborhoods and views of the Bay for a a failure of a housing policy.

Hell of way to plan a city.

The real story of the Watada trial

-
0

By Tim Redmond

There’s been a lot of press on the weird turn in the trial of Lt. Ehren Watada, but this piece, (by my old friend Bill Simpich, a lawyer in the East Bay) is by far the most interesting and cogent analyis. It really leads you to wonder: What is the U.S. Army afraid of here — and could it be that the Pentagon just wants this case to go away?

Speier v. Lantos?

-
0

By Tim Redmond

Everyone’s kind of ducking around it, but according to the Ex, there’s someone in San Mateo County with money who wants to see if Jackie Speier could challenger Tom Lantos for his Congressional seat. Former state Senator Speier is ambitious and out of a job; Lantos is decidedly to the right of his district and needs to retire. Hmmmm.

Forget loyalty — the guy’s a liar

-
0

By Tim Redmond

Randy Shaw is calling on the mayor to fire Press Secretary Peter Ragone, saying that Ragone lacks loyalty. Maybe so, although I still think there’s a lot more spin going on here than meets the eye.

But the bigger issue that Shaw entirely misses is this: Peter Ragone lies to the press. Nobody is going to trust him any more, so he can’t do his job. That’s the problem.

Editor’s Notes

-
0

It’s been almost a week. The Guardian has moved on — to our annual sex issue.

And now Gavin Newsom is seeking "treatment" (which sounds like a lot more than it apparently is) for alcohol abuse, and he wants everything to go back to normal. But as we report in "More Than the Affair," this page, normal at Newsom’s City Hall isn’t much to be proud of. And in the meantime, a lot of damage is done — and not just (or even primarily) to the mayor’s career.

When it comes to the sex scandal, Newsom made his own bed. And I wish him well in his battle with alcohol — I know how tough that can be. But there’s another point here. Newsom is more than just a politician. He’s more than the mayor of San Francisco. He’s become a national symbol, particularly for same-sex marriage, and his reputation as an honest, ethical guy, a young rising star in the Democratic Party — and yeah, an Irish Catholic — has helped that cause.

The Ruby Tourk affair may well have been consensual, and if so, we can let it lie. But it undermines the one really good thing Newsom has done. Predictably, the right wing is having a field day: the mayor of San Francisco loves gay marriage, but he doesn’t respect traditional marriage. It’s a stupid line, but it hurts. And Newsom’s weak, simpering apology doesn’t help San Francisco or any of our shared causes either. He just looks like a loser.

I have to say: drinking or no drinking, the guy just isn’t mature enough to be in room 200.

Yeah, Willie Brown went out with younger women and impregnated a campaign fundraiser, and nobody cared. That was in part because he didn’t screw city employees who reported to him and in part because he knew how to handle the press, but it was also in part because, by the time he was mayor, Brown didn’t stand for anything. He was a political wheeler and dealer; there weren’t many people who had invested hopes and dreams in him.

Newsom took on that role a few years ago, and when you do that, the disappointments are that much bitterer. *

On a lighter note (maybe)

-
0

By Tim Redmond

I still wonder if our mayor is really an android. A Soong-type android.

ba-220x214-newsom03g130pc.jpg

Data2364.jpg

I mean, Data had some problems of his own when he hit the Polywater.

1...105106107...116Page 106 of 116

48hills.org is the official publication of the non-profit San Francisco Progressive Media Center.
Contact us: info@48hills.org