Tim Redmond

Michael Irvin and gay professional athletes

Zelda Bronstein
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3
Michael Irvin and gay professional athletes

I must admit, I wouldn’t have expected it out of a Dallas Cowboys player, but let’s have a hand for Michael Irvin, who has announced (in Out Magazine, with a shirtless cover) his full support for marriage equality:


“I don’t see how any African-American, with any inkling of history, can say that you don’t have the right to live your life how you want to live your life,” he said, according to the magazine. “No one should be telling you who you should love, no one should be telling you who you should be spending the rest of your life with. When we start talking about equality, and everybody being treated equally, I don’t want to know an African-American who will say everybody doesn’t deserve equality.”


Irvin says that he believes this work matters more than his football career and would embrace any athlete who chose to come out. He thinks the team that won three Super Bowls could have integrated an openly gay teammate as well as any team. “We had a bunch of different characters on that team,” Irvin said. “Deoin [Sanders] and Emmitt [Smith]. I believe that team would have handled it well.”


It’s only a matter of time, I hope not too much time, before a professional male athlete from one of the four major sports comes out — and think what that will do for the “It Gets Better” campaign. I’ve spent some time speculating on which sport it will be; baseball’s the obvious choice, in part because of its history of breaking barriers but also because there’s, well, a lot more tolerance in general in baseball, certainly in San Francisco.


Not hockey — I mean, things are better now (and Candians have embraced same-sex marriage) but I went to hockey camp in Canada as a kid, and it was by far the most homophobic group of jocks I’ve ever met.


Basketball? Maybe. But honestly, I’m thinking the NFL. We know there are plenty of gay NFL players, and Irvin has already opened the door a little tiny crack … I don’t know. I can see it.

In defense of tabloid journalism

Zelda Bronstein
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3
In defense of tabloid journalism

Okay, I’ll admit it — I’m sad that Rupert Murdoch shut down News of the World. A lot of journalists are now out of work in the U.K. — and why? Because Murdoch hoped to buy a satellite network, which he didn’t get anyway. And now the authorities in both London and Washington are launching investigations, and there will be more calls for press regulation (harder to do in this country, but still — they’ll try).


I can’t defend what the Murdoch crew did, and I’m not going to try. But I like the piece in Gawker, which notes:


So what do you “regulate”? Voicemail hacking? It’s already illegal. Snooping into bank accounts? Likewise. A clue for the sort of restrictions Coogan has in mind could be found in his exasperated response to McMullan’s specious attempt to justify the phone snooping: “This guy sat outside my house! It’s just a risible, deplorable profession.” Well, yes: Listening in your voicemails is indeed risible and deplorable. But sitting outside your house? That doesn’t quite cry out for regulation.


And Phil Bronstein (in another somewhat convoluted column) notes:


“A criminal enterprise inside a newsroom!” Foreman teased on CNN. The spicier newsrooms always felt a little that way. I remember when the best bookies in San Francisco were Chronicle/Examiner back shop page-layout people, and we loved them for it (and placed our bets).


Fuller said on CNN last week that, for tabs, there is a limit, and it is that they ought to “obey the law.” But even the best reporters potentially break laws all the time. How many journalists have gone to jail for doing their job?


But let’s put aside the finger-wagging and somber intonations about decaying morals and taste, which can be hypocritical. Rupert Murdoch’s most luridly effervescent news property actually played an important role in our rollercoaster, adrenal-fatigue culture as a barometer of just how far we were willing to push the envelope.


Let’s remember: Some of the biggest, most important stories of the last half-century have come from some sort of lawbreaking. The Pentagon Papers were stolen property, received by the New York Times. Wikileaks puts out illegally obtained information all the time. And in this electronic era, secrets don’t last very well anyway.


I’m not for hacking into phones and most of us in this biz don’t pay sources for information. (Buy them drinks, maybe, but I suppose that doesn’t count. Or does it?) I’m not going to defend any of those tactics. Nor am I going to defend Murdoch’s politics (or his scathing attacks on politicians who disagreed with him). But until recently, most of his targets were public figures — wealthy and powerful ones.  


And the crazy tabs have a place in this world. I love the New York Post (who else would come up with the headline “PREMATURE EVACUATION” when Rep. Weiner resigned)? I guess I’m biased by the fact that I’ve never believed a lot of what I read, so I don’t take this stuff too seriously — and I worry about the people who do. But the world of journalism is a little smaller and a little less colorful after the death of News of the World.


Zero tolerance for BART cop killings

Zelda Bronstein
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27
Zero tolerance for BART cop killings

I understand how frustrated some commuters were when protesters shut down the Civic Center BART station. And you can make the argument that the protest might have alienated fewer people if it had been outside the station, or whatever. But the fact is, a man is dead because a BART cop shot him — and quite a few other people are dead because BART cops shot them, and in at least three of those cases, the shooting was unjustifiable. And the BART Board sat on its hands for almost 20 years and did nothing (until the Oscar Grant shooting was captured on video).


So I’m with the protesters on this one. It was important to make a statement, to disrupt business as usual, and to tell BART that, frankly, we’re all sick of this shit.


And now BART says it’s going to enforce a “zero tolerance” policy for protests. BART’s Linton Johnson says:


“That delay goes to the protesters. That mess, those fringe groups own it.”


I have a couple of questions: That “mess” of a police shooting — who owns that? Why are people angry (for good reason) about the BART Police suddenly “fringe groups?”


And when do we get a “zero tolerance” policy for dubious police shootings?

Guardian forum: Tenants, housing and land use

Zelda Bronstein
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Guardian forum: Tenants, housing and land use

Should be a great forum July 14. We’ve got a panel on tenants, housing and land-use issues, some of the key stuff for the future of the city. Great group of speakers — and, as always, we’ll be looking for ideas and input from the audience. This isn’t a mayoral debate (that comes later); it’s a chance for progressives to talk about the issues that the next mayor needs to address and come up with a platform.

Speakers:

FEATURING:
Sara Shortt, Housing Rights Committee
Ted Gullickson, SF Tenants Union
Nick Pagoulatos, Dolores St Community Services
Sue Hestor, Land Use Attorney

We may have some more suprise guests, too.

Lots of time for discussion afterward.

It’s at 6 pm (until 8 pm) at the City College Mission Campus, 1125 Valencia. More details here. See you there.

 

 

Editor’s notes

Andrew Lam
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tredmond@sfbg.com

I’m not prone to agreeing with right-wing nuts from Riverside County, but there’s a county supervisor down there named Jeff Stone who has a dandy idea. He wants to secede.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Stone is proposing that 13 counties in the southland and inland empire split off and become their own state, which would be called South California. We’re talking everything south of Madera, with the coastal counties (and Los Angeles) left behind. A real conservative haven of low taxes and limited regulation.

And I say: Go for it, pal. I’m completely with you.

Imagine what would happen if Supervisor Stone got his way. There would be no more budget paralysis in the California Legislature. Democrats would control two-thirds of both houses and could pass a budget that included higher taxes on the rich and big corporations. Candidates for governor wouldn’t have to worry about getting votes from the conservative parts of the state, so they could talk more honestly about the major issues. Same-sex marriage would pass the first week. Pot would be legal. The death penalty would be gone in a year or two.

It might take a while longer to amend Prop. 13, but with the ability to raise revenue instead of just cutting, California could begin to fund the schools adequately, rebuild the state university system, and move forward with projects like high-speed rail.

And let’s remember: those counties that want to leave? They elect representatives who won’t vote for taxes — but they are the biggest beneficiaries of state revenues. The northern and coastal counties, the more liberal ones, pay more in taxes than we get in services. Our taxpayers are subsidizing their tax haters.

So go on — leave. We’ll keep our money here.

Now, just to our south and east would be a train wreck of a state with few public services — but South California would still be part of America, so people could move north without worrying about immigration papers. I’d propose that we set up a state fund to resettle refugees from Republicanland.

And maybe, after a while, the people who have to live with crappy schools and crumbling roads will look across the border and say, Why do they have it so good? And maybe they’ll start to think differently about the role of government.

Government services but no government?

Zelda Bronstein
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1
Government services but no government?

There’s a fascinating study summarized on boingboing that shows that nearly half the people who are collecting social security say they have “not used a government program.” And 43 percent of people on unemployment insurance say the same thing.


You can laugh at it — but it’s actually a frightening (if unsurprising) study. Because it shows just how far the right-wing anti-government dogma has infiltrated this country.


Thanks to decades of careful, well-orchestrated attacks, more Americans than ever believe that “Government” — not just this government, but Government in general — is a bad thing. And they’ve forgotten what the public sector actually means to them.


This, by the way, is the main reason the far right would like to get rid of social security. Getting a government check every month might remind people that the government is actually helping them.


 

Will Amazon be the next PG&E?

Zelda Bronstein
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0
Will Amazon be the next PG&E?

The giant retailer is pulling a Prop. 16, seeking to get the voters to overturn a measure forcing online retailers to collect sales tax. Of course, the law simply levels the playing field for smaller businesses and brick-and-mortar stores — but Amazon’s got plenty of cash, and anyone with enough cash can put anything on the California ballot.


Brian at Calitics points out that Amazon can campaign by asking people to vote against taxes — always a good strategy in this strange state where a majority of the populace seems to believe it can have it all for free:


Beating back such a referendum will be a very tough fight on some uphill terrain.  That isn’t to say that there won’t be those who will try.  Some of the biggest backers of the Amazon legislation in the first place have some pretty big pockets, like, um, Walmart, Barnes & Noble, and Best Buy.  And it is true that the legislation benefits big box stores, but it also benefits the few remaining small retailers. And while the big box stores are (very, very) far (extremely far) from perfect, at least they do provide jobs to local communities.


So we may have a campaign that puts some big, awful corporations on the side of every small business in California — all of them supporting a tax increase. I wonder where the California Chamber of Commerce will go on this one.


At any rate, it’s going to be a huge, expensive, bloody battle, one that will get national attention. And that may not be the best thing for Amazon. PG&E got hammered when it tried to do a blatant self-interested campaign. Amazon could get hammered, too. And there will be plenty of legislators in other cash-hungry states watching the result very carefully.

The taxi strike

Zelda Bronstein
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4
The taxi strike

It’s notoriously hard to organize cab drivers to do anything. They’re all independent sorts, and they’re split among 34 different companies. Some are permit holders, which makes them the landed gentry of the business; some are serfs who have to pay high fees to lease permits. All of them get paid only for days that they work; there is no vacation time or sick pay in the industry. So the idea that there will actually be a citywide tax strike Aug. 2 seems a bit farfetched.


On the other hand, if enough of the drivers got together, and if even 3 or 4 out of every 10 cabs sat idle, it would make a huge statement. For better or for worse, taxis are a key part of the city’s transportation infrastructure. It’s not Manhattan, which would come to a grinding halt without cabs, but San Francisco — particularly the tourist trade — still depends fairly heavily on a functioning taxi system.


And the drivers are absolutely right to be angry. The “gate” fees — the amount the drivers pay to lease a cab for a shift — go up faster than the fares they collect. Drivers pay for their own gas — and when prices go up, they don’t get to raise the rates. Over the past couple of years, the drivers have been getting squeezed tighter and tighter; it’s no wonder some of them drive at 80 miles an hour to and from the airport. It’s the only way to get enough fares in a shift to make a living.


Now the cabs are required to accept credit cards — and the companies get to charge the drivers a five percent fee on every transaction.


And is anyone surprised that they drivers don’t like having an electronic tracking system follow them around?


Part of what’s going on — let’s be honest — is that the industry is shifting away from cash. When drivers earn only cash, and there’s no way to track how much they’ve driven or how many fares they’ve collected, it’s easier for them to be a little more, shall we say, creative about what they report to the IRS. (The IRS, of course, likes to crack down on cab drivers, waiters and freelance writers, who generally make very little money, while allowing General Electric to pay no taxes at all.)


But if you take away the cash, charge credit-card fees and don’t account for the price of gas, you’re going to get an industry with fewer experienced drivers (nobody can do it for very long), more reckless driving and more scams.


Sometimes I wonder if anyone who works for the MTA has ever driven a cab. Might be an enlightening experience. 


 

Guns and necessity

Zelda Bronstein
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4
Guns and necessity

The Public Defender’s Office is getting a lot of press for its trial victory in the case of Johnny Stone. And as a big fan of the Public Defender’s Office (although not always of Jeff Adachi’s outside political ventures), I have to say: Congratulations. Arial Boyce-Smith came up with an effective strategy to keep Stone out of jail on a gun charge. I’m generally happy when the defense wins; I think our criminal justice system is so screwed up, and our prison system is a costly, brutal, inhuman and ineffective way to handle offenders. A few high-profile cases aside, the times when prosecutors put innocent people (or people who don’t deserve prison time) behind bars far exceeds the number of times when a truly guilty bad actor gets away.


So good for the PD. From the facts in this case, I see no reason why Mr. Stone should have been convicted.


But I also have to say: I’m glad this was just a trial court case and doesn’t set any precedent. Because the idea that a person can carry a concealed firearm around any time he or she can claim to be afraid of crime is a pretty dangerous idea.


I know all the gun nuts will be on my case here, but I’ve never been big on handguns, and never believed guns are a terribly good means of self-defense. And while Stone was in fact in a situation that could have made him fearful for his life, I wonder: Was he really going to point the gun and shoot somebody? Would another gun battle in front of the Sunnydale Housing Project be good for anyone?


And how scared do you have to be? I know plenty of people who worry about crime in the Mission — and I wouldn’t want any of them walking around with concealed handguns.


I appreciate the excellent trial work here. But let’s not try that too often.

SoCal secede? Why is this bad?

Zelda Bronstein
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48
SoCal secede? Why is this bad?

I’ve been talking for years now about how Californians would be better off if we split up the state. Why should those of us who want to live in a civilized society be held hostage to a small cadre of right-wing nuts who have paralyzed the Legislature and are interested only in destroying the public sector?


And now, one of those wingnuts seems to agree with me. A Riverside County supervisor named Jeff Stone wants to take 13 conservative counties from the south and the inland empire and create a new state of South California. I say: Why not?


Those counties vote for Republicans who vow to cut taxes and spending — and, of course, those counties also get more in state money than they contribute in taxes. That is, San Franciscans and people in Los Angeles are subsidizing with our tax dollars counties that elect people who don’t want taxes.


Fine. Leave us. Without those counties, California would have a two-thirds Democratic majority in both houses, easy. The state would be able to raise taxes to balance the budget. California’s credit rating would improve and the cost of bonds would drop. A Democrat could run for governor without pandering to the conservatives. Maybe we could even get rid of the death penalty.


South California would be an economic basket case — but it would still be part of America, so the Democrats and sane people who are stuck living there would be able to move north without worrying about ICE. I’d even propose setting aside a state fund (maybe equal to some percentage of what California now spends subsidizing the tax haters) to help pay relocation expenses for low-income liberal refugees.


Seriously: They want to leave, we don’t want them here … why not make everybody happy and let South California go?  

CPMC’s hospital dilemma

Zelda Bronstein
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4
CPMC’s hospital dilemma

After summarily rejecting the city’s proposals for a community benefits agreement, Sutter Health, which owns the California Pacific Medical Center, is threatening to abandon its plans for a giant hospital on Van Ness. Randy Shaw at Beyond Chron thinks the nonprofit that acts like a robber baron corporation might be ready to pull the plug. The arrogant CEO, Warren Browner, is certainly acting that way.


But that would put CPMC is a tricky situation. State law mandates that hospitals complete seismic upgrades by 2013 — and while the deadline has been delayed in the past, time is eventually going to run out. Which means at some point CPMC is going to have to spend a lot of money renovating and bringing up to modern standards a hospital on California St. that it doesn’t want to use as a hospital any more. The plan calls for that building to become an administrative headquarters — which means it won’t have to meet the higher state seismic standards.


If Sutter walks away from the Cathedral Hill project, it’s going to have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars fixing up the California St. facility — and probably won’t get the same financial return.


The only really bad thing the health care outfit could do (and it would be really bad) is to shut down St. Luke’s in the Mission, saying that the seismic upgrade is too costly. But the city has made it very, very clear that shutting down the only hospital in that part of town would put so much pressure on SF General that it would be pretty close to unacceptable — and the end of CPMC’s ability ever to so much as install a flowerbox in this town.


So I think the city can hold firm here. It’s entirely in CPMC’s interest to do the Cathedral Hill deal. I think Shaw is absolutely right that the company doesn’t want to set the precedent of offering a city a decent benefits package — but in the end, the folks in the green eye shades are going to realize they have no choice.


 


So I think the city can just hold firm here — Sutter has to come back to the table.


 

SFBG Poll: Abolishing the death penalty

Zelda Bronstein
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0
SFBG Poll: Abolishing the death penalty

State Sen. Loni Hancock is moving to abolish the death penalty. It’s something others, including Sen. Mark Leno, have pushed in the past, but it’s a tough political scrap — the move would require a statewide vote, and it’s not clear that the money or organizational effort is there for this fall. Of course, the governor could solve the problem with a stroke of his pen, by simply commuting all death sentences to life without parole — but I don’t think he’s going to do that. The best move might well be a coordinated campaign in the fall of 2012, putting together the growing number of law enforcement types who don’t like the current system, the traditional death penalty foes, and the more conservative people who just think it’s too much of a waste of money.


Is it time to get rid of the death penalty? When and how? Vote after the jump.





Free polls from Go2poll.com

The city’s godawful computer problem

Zelda Bronstein
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1
The city’s godawful computer problem

Mission Local has a stunning report on a Board of Supervisors Public Safety Committee meeting, at which the supes tried to sort out the mess that is the city’s 14-year project to combine all public safety computer systems. Check it out:


Fourteen years later, there are still no answers as to when the project will be completed. And there’s no answer to another big question, as well: At a meeting of the city’s Public Safety Committee on Thursday, Deputy City Administrator Linda Young told Supervisor David Chiu that she is not even sure what the project’s current budget is.


“This is unacceptable,” said Chiu.


And:


Supervisor David Campos, also on the committee, chimed in, asking if Young had a timeline for the project’s completion.


Young looked beseechingly at the group of JUSTIS staff members standing behind her. None of them spoke.


“No,” she said, finally.


Not a pretty picture.

SFBG Radio: Is Rupert Murdoch done?

Zelda Bronstein
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2
SFBG Radio: Is Rupert Murdoch done?

In today’s episode, we talk about the future of media kingpin Rupert Murdoch, who just agreed to shut down his flagship British paper over charges of phone hacking. Is the News of the World really dead? Will it re-emerge as some other creature? Is the tabloid world of the press baron on the edge of collapse? Check out the discussion after the jump. 

SFBGradio782011 by endorsements2010

Is Ed Reiskin the new MTA chief?

Zelda Bronstein
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1
Is Ed Reiskin the new MTA chief?

It sure looks like it. And he could be the new Muni boss by the end of the week.


Which is not necessarily a bad thing — Reiskin’s well liked around City Hall, the bicyclists and alternative transport people think he’s a decent choice and he’s certainly run a big, complex city agency. But he’s never run a big transit agency — and that’s a very different experience from managing the Department of Public Works.


Sup. John Avalos, who is running for mayor, told me he thinks the MTA ought to take its time and look around a bit. “Nothing against Reiskin, but I think it’s important we make the most thorough effort to find the best person to fun this critical city department,” he said.


But from what I hear, Reiskin’s close to a lock. I just hope the MTA knows better than to offer him one of those five-eyar contracts with a rich buy-out provision. Look how well that worked last time.

Could CA really, actually end the death penalty?

Zelda Bronstein
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32
Could CA really, actually end the death penalty?

I don’t know. Maybe not this year. But we’re getting a lot closer — and in the end, it’s not coming down to morality or cruelty or effectiveness but to money.


State Sen. Loni Hancock of Berkeley had a hearing July 7 on the issue, and has a bill to replace death sentences with sentences of life without parole. Honestly? It’s the same thing right now, for all practical purposes — the number one cause of death on Death Row is old age. The whole process is so (necessarily) lengthy and expensive that it just doesn’t work. And it’s costing the taxpayers a fortune.


Wouldn’t it be odd if, after all these years people like me have spent talking about the inhumanity, unfairness and grisly brutality of the death penalty, it fiscal conservative argument carried the day and we stopped executions to save money? But hell, I’ll take it.

The BART shooting: Fishier and fishier

Zelda Bronstein
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2
The BART shooting: Fishier and fishier

BART’s official account of the latest shooting — and the assertion that the officers acted properly — is starting to look more and more dubious.


Props to the Bay Citizen’s Zusha Elinson for getting the first real break on the case — an interview with a witness who says the man who got shot wasn’t running or lunging toward the cops, that he didn’t seem to pose an immediate threat, and that the shooting may not have been justified:


Hollero said that from her view of the incident, police officers should “absolutely not” have shot the man, who she said “just looked like a drunk hippie.”


That’s the kind of information that will be key to the investigation — was this guy just a drunk with a knife who could have been restrained without lethal force? Or was he an immediate threat to the lives of the cops?


One of the nice things about having some journalistic competition in town is that it drives reporters to go beyond the official statements. When I covered the Jerrold Hall shooting in 1992, nobody from the Chronicle or its (then) sister paper, the Examiner, lifted a finger to challenge what BART was saying.


This time around, after all the bad publicity BART has been getting from police shootings — and with more reporters covering the story — BART’s not going to be able to keep a cover-up going. (In fact, I’m surprised nobody’s come forward yet with a cell-phone video of the shooting; if you’ve got one, call me). At some point all of this will come out — and the more BART tries to pretend everything is just fine, the worse the agency is going to look.


Obviously, there has to be a full investigation here, by the SFPD,  the BART Police and BART’s new civilian review operation. And the officers involved shouldn’t be disciplined until all the facts are in and the various agencies come to their various conclusions.


But opening some of this up to the public now won’t hinder the inquiry; if anything, more discussion will bring more witnesses forward. That’s why BART absolutely needs to release the security video feed from the station, make the initial police reports public and stop stonewalling reporters.


There may be — may be – a valid legal reason for BART to refuse to release information on the case; the California Public Records Act gives some latitude to police agencies involved in ongoing investigations. But there’s nothing in any law that says the material MUST be confidential; BART has full discretion to release that video.


It’s going to come out at some point anyway. Why wait? 

(Summer) Trash Lit: Adrenaline

Zelda Bronstein
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0
(Summer) Trash Lit: Adrenaline

Adrenaline, by Jeff Abbott


Grand Central Publishing, 400 pages, $24.99


There’s a CIA agent who has a wife who also works for the CIA, and she’s seven months preggers with their kid, and life in the London Station is just dandy. Already a very bad sign: CIA agents with spouses and kids are prime fodder for thriller writers. It never works out. James Bond figured that out early, and since then, everyone else in the genre has fallen in love at his or her peril.


So naturally the wife gets kidnapped (or maybe she’s really a double agent) and the London CIA Station is blown up by a bomb that she might have planted (or maybe she didn’t) and our hero, agent Sam Capra, gets the full-on spook interrogation treatment, including all manner of fine drugs and devices, to see if he’s a traitor, too.


Of course, he’s entirely clueless. But by the time the manages to (maybe) convince CIA management that he doesn’t know where (or who) his wife is, he realizes it’s been nine months and the baby must have been born. So he sets off to find the kid, and the wife along the way, and the guy who either snatched her or hired her.


It’s a fun ride. Capra has to pretend he’s a smuggler who’s ready to steal counterfeit goods from Chinese gangs and reuse their trucks to get some nasty stuff into Great Britain. Much discussion of the modern underworld:


The postmodern criminal networks come together for a particular function — smuggling in ethnic laborers, muling heorin hidden inside televisions from China that were diverted first to ports in Pakistan, or setting up a train bombing to short-sell a transportation stock price. The cells are small and nimble, and they snap together and break into new shapes, like a child’s plane of tank or wall made from little plastic blocks. … When you cannot break a wall, you can shatter a single brick. I just needed to find the right brick.


In the weak tradition of this year’s top thrillers, there’s absolutely no sex. But Adrenaline does offer more than the usual amount of shooting, beating, and assorted personal violence:


[I] Found two Glock 9 mms, spare clips, silencers.


“What else do you need?”


“I have to fight a large number of people,” I said. “They will be heavily armed and I’ll be alone. So I guess I have to kill them all.”


You get the picture.


In the end, nothing is as it appears, the whole situation is a masterfully tangled mess that works its way through a string of bars in Europe and winds up with an ending that makes it very clear this is just the start of a Capra series. Don’t get too drunk when you read it or you’l lose track; the twists and turns require a little more concentration than the typical beach novel. But that’s not a bad thing, and this one goes on my summer list.


 

CPMC to City: Drop Dead

Zelda Bronstein
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21
CPMC to City: Drop Dead

The astonishing cluelessness of the folks at California Pacific Medical Center continues.

In our last episode, CPMC’s chief, Dr. Warren Browner, announced to the City Planning Commission that the hospital had no interest in following the normal rules that apply to every developer planning a massive $2.5 billion project. Developers have to pay fees for transit and affordable housing. Nonprofits like CPMC are supposed to spend money on charity care. Nobody — not even the more moderate members of what is by no means an anti-development commission — was ready to accept Browner’s line.

And now the hospital chain has officially told San Francisco to go fuck itself. 

Sorry, Doc — this isn’t going to work.

IF Ed Lee has any integrity at all (and I hope and believe that he does) he’ll stick to his original position and demand a reasonable community benefits agreement that includes housing money, transit money, increased charity care and a commitment to keep St. Luke’s Hospital open in the Mission for the forseeable future. And he’ll tell the white coats and suits at CPMC that if they don’t want to do that, then San Francisco isn’t interested in their project.

CPMC can’t exactly pull up stakes and move: The Sutter affiliate makes its money by serving San Francisco residents (and working with San Francisco doctors who send insurance money into the hospital system). Go ahead, Dr. Browner — try to build in Brisbane. You’ll lose all your San Francisco patients — and all that Brown and Toland insurance money.

The activists at every level have made it pretty clear that they’re willing to work with CPMC and accept a gigantic project on the edge of the Tenderloin, on a street that already has terrible traffic and transit problems — but not without a solid, acceptable community benefits agreement. So the hospital crew is going to have to learn to work with San Francisco. 

 

 

 

 

 

Editor’s Notes

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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25

tredmond@sfbg.com

I had, as they say, a spirited and frank discussion last week with Enrique Pearce, the political consultant working on the Run Ed Run campaign. I chided Pearce, whose firm is called Left Coast Communications, for leading an effort that, at the very least, involves some touchy legal and ethical issues. (After all, the group is raising money for a campaign for a candidate who hasn’t filed as a candidate. There are reasons why federal, state, and local laws mandate that people who are running for office declare that they want the office before they start raising money.)

Pearce insisted he was doing nothing illegal. (Okay, if he says so.) He also argued that his firm is the most progressive consulting operation in the city. (Whatever.) But the real focus of our discussion — and the reason it’s worth talking about — was the question of whether corruption really matters.

I think sleaze — and the appearance of sleaze — is a defining progressive issue. If Pearce agrees, he’s got some ‘splainin’ to do.

Let’s back up here. When Willie Brown was speaker of the state Assembly, he passed some good legislation, and allowed some very bad legislation to become law. But his greatest legacy is term limits — and the terrible public perception of what was once one of the best state legislatures in the nation.

Brown was the epitome of corruption, a guy who actively flouted the notion of honest, open government. Among other things, he had a private law practice on the side — and clients would pay him big money because of his influence on state legislation. Of course, we never knew who the clients were; he wouldn’t release the list.

When he was mayor, his sleazy ways continued — and left even progressive San Franciscans believing that you can’t trust City Hall with your money. Which means, of course, that it’s harder to convince anyone to pay more taxes.

There’s no question that Brown and Chinatown powerbroker Rose Pak (don’t get me started) were key players in putting Mayor Ed Lee in office, and that they’re playing a big role in this new effort. Which means, as far as I’m concerned, that it’s utterly untrustworthy — and that progressives should be miles and miles away.

I’m not arguing that Ed Lee is a bad mayor (he’s way better than the last guy). He might even turn into a good mayor if he runs for a full term. Pearce thinks he’d be better for progressives than state Sen. Leland Yee. We can argue that later.

But as long as his campaign is directly linked to people whose standard practices undermine the heart of the progressive agenda (which depends on a belief that government can be trusted to take on social problems), then you can count me out.

Another BART Police shooting

Zelda Bronstein
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Another BART Police shooting

It’s still too soon to determine whether the latest BART Police shooting was legit. There were witnesses. There’s station security video. Maybe the victim really was attacking the officers with a knife and a broken bottle. Maybe he was drunk. Maybe something else was going on.


But given BART’s horrible record on police shootings (even before the Mehserle case), this one ought to be investigated and debated in as open a manner as possible.


And already, the cone of silence has descended. BART public affairs says the station video won’t be released. The San Francisco Police Department, which is also investigating, won’t release any documents or information, the Public Affairs Office tells me.


I’m already dubious. Technically, it might be legal for a cop to shoot a man who has a knife — but is shooting a drunk guy really necessary? How much of a threat was he, really? Were there other ways to subdue him?


The BART Board ought to be asking these questions, too — in public. Because right now, I suspect I’m not the only one who doesn’t trust anything that BART administration or the BART Police say.


This is going to be a major test of how the new BART police oversight policy works. And since Step One is rebuilding the public’s trust, the typical secrecy has to end.  

Here’s tax reform, Jerry

Zelda Bronstein
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Here’s tax reform, Jerry

Everyone knows I’m a fan of taxing the rich and that I think most of the economic problems in our country have their roots in the growing inequality of the past few decades, so it should come as no surprise that I enjoyed the Cruickshank piece on Calitics. He’s got exactly the right idea: Tax reform that benefits the wealthy (or, in fact, tax reform that doesn’t force the wealthy to pay more) isn’t tax reform at all.


I was on a houseboat at Lake Shasta over the 4th of July, arguing with some very smart people about why the economy is so fucked up (yeah, for relaxation I go someplace beautiful — then sit around and talk about economic policy), and we covered a lot of ground. My friend the investment banker and corporate executive said that out-of-control CEO pay — and bonus payments for failure, and lack of corporate accountability — were a bit part of the problem. “If corporations succeed, then everyone — all the people who work there, at every level — ought to benefit,” he pointed out. True: In the early post-War era, labor union clout in major industries (automotive, for example) forced corporations to pay a decent middle-class wage — that is, to share the fruits of success with the workers. That’s all gone now. “Corporations don’t pay enough taxes,” my friend the corporate salesman said — and he’s right, too.


And all of us agreed that higher taxes won’t drive corporations out of the country or out of states or even out of cities; the actual numbers of businesses that pick and and move because of taxes (as opposed to labor-force issues, rents, land availablity, access to transportation etc.) is so minor it’s not even worth talking about.


But those are just pieces of the puzzle. Here’s what I always come back to: Over the past couple of decades, the size of the U.S. economy has doubled — and real wages have been essentially flat. All that new money has gone to the very, very top. Robert Reich explain this brilliantly in exactly two minutes — and I don’t care how busy you are, you have two minutes to watch this video.


That, really, is the root of everything, the reason we’re still in a recession, that people are losing their homes, that government debt is soaring … it’s all because this country, as a matter of public policy, has allowed the very, very rich to take almost all of our wealth. We have become a banana republic, a corporate kleptocracy, a place so badly managed that it we weren’t the United States, the news media would be reporting on our utter lack of economic democracy. And they’d be saying that the system is so unsustainable that one way or the other, it’s going to collapse.


Jerry Brown must know this. He’s not going to run for another term. There’s no excuse at all for not at least proposing a modest tax increase on the highest earners and the most profitable big businesses. Come on, guv: What are you waiting for?


 

(Summer!) Trash Lit: The Profession

Zelda Bronstein
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0
(Summer!) Trash Lit: The Profession

By Steven Pressfield. Crown, 320 pages, $25


Wow, they still drink Rolling Rock in 2032. And they still use military laptops and handhelds and complain about bad TV reception. The web doesn’t seem to have advanced much, and people still rely on the Al Jazeera video feed to see what’s going on in the Middle East.


There’s a lot that’s jarring in The Profession, a military thriller set in the Middle East 20 years in the future. For one thing, the future looks a lot like today, except that there’s been a dirty bomb attack on Long Beach and the Chinese are starting to cash in their U.S. debt, putting the world economy into turmoil. (It takes China 20 years to figure that out? Damn.)
So it’s pretty bad sci-fi. But it’s not a bad adaptation of the Heart of Darkness/Apaocalypse Now myth of the powerful general who goes rogue with his loyal troops and tries to take over part of the world.


In this case, it’s the Middle East, where (again, bad sci-fi) they’ve just found some more really rich oil fields. And much of the military work of the major nations is done by mercenaries.


One of them is General James Salter, who got cashiered out of the Marine Corps for defying the president’s orders, but who has a MacArthur-like following in both the military and the civilian worlds. He’s a private soldier now, and he’s got this plan to take control of much of the world’s oil, and then return in triumph to Washington, where he can become president (oh, and marry the widow of the prez who cashiered him, who is also involved in this plot.


Our hero, Gilbert Gentilhomme (and what kind of name is that for an action hero?) is one of Salter’s best friends and loyalists, one of the few who can get close to the great man. And he knows he can’t let the general get away with his plan.


Lots of desert battles. Random brutality. International intrigue, of sorts. A bleak and dusty vision of the future — but one where there’s no climate change or peak oil. No sex (and how come none of this summer’s thrillers have any sex?). But not bad for a quick beach read.
 

The Village Voice, Ashton Kutcher and prostitution ads

Zelda Bronstein
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13
The Village Voice, Ashton Kutcher and prostitution ads

There’s some fascinating back and forth in media circles about the Village Voice, its chain (which includes SF Weekly), Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, prostitution, and layoffs and budget cuts as the nation’s oldest alternative weekly.

It’s all so juicy I don’t know where to begin. Perhaps with the SF Weekly’s cover story this week, which also ran in the Voice and most of the chain’s other papers.

The story takes Kutcher and Moore to task for launching a campaign against child prostitution using bogus numbers.
For the record: I have no reason to doubt the Voice’s conclusions here. I have no problem with adult ads (which the Guardian also takes). And frankly, I have no problem with prostitution, which, like gambling and drugs, ought to be legalized, regulated and taxed.

And the Voice was scrupulous about disclosing that it has a financial interest in this issue. How much of an interest? Well, a lot. In fact, according to the New York Observer, the prostitution ads could well be floating the financially troubled chain:

Backpage, which is a fraction of the size of Craigslist, is the only popular classifieds site left willing to host the paid escort and body-rub ads that are often thinly veiled fronts for prostitution. In the month after Craigslist closed its erotic services sections under pressure from Congress and state attorneys general, Backpage enjoyed a half-million-visitor bump in traffic, according to Quantcast, and became the No. 1 publisher of escort ads on the Internet. The Aim Group, a media consulting firm, estimated that in January, Backpage brought in $2.1 million in revenue from erotic services ads alone.

That would be about $24 million a year — and the Observer notes that VVM desperately needed the cash:

For more than two decades, Village Voice Media executive editor Mike Lacey employed a simple, often devastatingly successful strategy for gaining control of the country’s alternative weekly business: acquire the local paper, cut editorial costs (lay off critics, reporters and, reportedly, entire fact-checking departments), pump the paper full of nationally syndicated content and splash an occasional local investigative piece on the cover. It was working like a charm until 2004, when the San Francisco Bay-Guardian sued VVM’s SF Weekly for manipulating ad prices in an attempt to drive the rival paper out of business. According to court transcripts, Mr. Lacey told the staff on his first day as owner of SF Weekly that this was precisely his intention.

Despite facing legendary antitrust lawyers in a state notorious for its aversion to monopolistic practices, Mr. Lacey spent years appealing the court’s award of $16 million, which grew to $21 million with interest, until the California Supreme Court threw out VVM’s petition. During the proceedings, the company revealed that it owed creditors $80 million and claimed it could not afford to pay the award. Lawyers for the Bay-Guardian threatened to force bankruptcy.

In January 2011, VVM and SF Weekly settled the issue privately. Though the terms of the agreement were not disclosed, between the settlement and what one attorney familiar with the case said were legal fees of at least $5 million to fight the case, VVM was likely left with an eight-figure hole burned in its pocket.

Since last spring, the company’s efforts to patch that hole up have included the unthinkable (laying off legendary Village Voice investigative reporter Wayne Barrett in January); the surprising (selling off Kansas City Pitch to Tennessee publisher South Comm, Inc., in mid-March); and the long overdue: shutting down an experiment with a pair of sex blogs that were never publicly launched despite being published for nearly a year.

(For the record: The Guardian and VVM have agreed not to discuss the terms of the settlement.)

Mike Lacey, the executive editor of Village Voice Media, shot back with a letter to the Observer featuring his typical wild-ass metaphors and flowery prose:

In fact, in just the past few months Backpage.com has spent millions of dollars policing content to attempt, for example, to keep underage kids out of adult listings. Despite Trench’s professed lack of knowledge, which we do not doubt for a second, anyone looking at Backpage will notice the absence of nudity-merely one of thousands of changes over the past year.

Damn — no more nudity on Backpage. Then Lacey goes on to describe what he found at the Voice when he took it over:

We found a Voice “library” where an individual sat with scissors and clipped out articles from other publications for filing. The age of the Internet stopped at the library’s doors. Town cars arrived to ferry one late working chap to Westchester County. While we kept critics at Cannes, Toronto, and Sundance, we equivocated on sending them to Rotterdam. The Voice was the only alternative newspaper in the country that thought its reporters needed to have their facts checked in addition to being edited, copyedited, and proofread. I disagreed. (Though I do not wish to presume that the Observer might not benefit from such staffing.)

Actually, it was a little more than that. There were a number of longtime Voice staffers — mostly with politically left views — who earned, by alternative press standards, fairly high salaries. They’ve been shoved out the door. Nat Hentoff, James Ridgeway, Wayne Barrett … all gone. They were, in some ways, the soul of the old Voice — scrappy, unafraid to be progressives (and to care about political causes) and interested in social change. That didn’t fit with Lacey’s world view.

But it gets better: The Voice and Kutcher are now in a tweet war — and all of this is going to bring more attention to Backpage and the sex ads — which, again, don’t bother me, but do bother a lot of stuck-up law-enforcement types, who will now have even more reason to go after VVM. At the Observer notes:

As Backpage grows in popularity, more news stories have emerged suggesting that the kinds of abuses that led lawmakers to demand Craigslist shutter its erotic-services section are increasingly occurring on the site. In September a former child prostitute sued VVM for knowingly publishing advertisements of her, and later that month 21 attorneys general called on the company to follow Craigslist’s lead and ban escort ads. VVM declined, but offered to continue cooperating with law enforcement officials on cases originating on the site.

I’m not sure all this publicity is exactly what Lacey had in mind.

 

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