Tim Redmond

Gavin Newsom’s “reform” pitch

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By Tim Redmond

Mayor Gavin Newsom doesn’t have enough money to do a major statewide TV buy, but he’s making his early pitch, and trying to define the race, with a new internet ad. Calitics points out that the ad

mentions not once, but twice, both the Constitutional Convention and eliminating the 2/3rds rule. Newsom is positioning himself as the candidate of not just “change” but of structural reform:

Of course, those of us who live in San Francisco know that Newsom has done nothing — nothing — in terms of real structural reform in the city, and has pused a Schwarzenegger-style no-new-taxes budget. He was at first very wary about Constitutional change, but now is embracing it, sensing, no doubt, that the mood of the public is so down on Sacramento and Sacto politiciians that the concept of fundamental change is attractive — even when peddled by someone who has no credentials as a “change” candidate.

But for Jerry Brown, this is serious stuff — the candidate who defines the race first is often in a much better position to make the case for his or her election. And Newsom is trying to define the race as insider-outsider, change v. politics as usual. Brown may have the poll numbers and the money, but if he sits around and lets Newsom define the race, he’s playing a dangerous game.

A stunning gag order

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By Tim Redmond

The Guardian of London just received a stunning gag order forbidding the paper from reporting on a Parliamentary debate.

Check this out:

Today’s published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found.

The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time in memory – from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.

Whoa. The thing is, with today’s social networking and fast-moving media, I suspect somebody’s going to leak and post the info pretty quickly anyway. And I don’t think the UK authorities can prevent web sites in other countries from publishing it.

The outcome will be interesting not just for UK media law, but for the (lack of) success of gag orders in general. At least, I hope so.

Mexico report: The anarchists return

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By John Ross

90909bomb.jpg

MEXICO CITY — An unprecedented wave of anarchist bombings here and in provincial capitals has Mexican security forces on red alert.

Beginning September 1st, bombs have gone off once or twice a week regularly as clockwork, taking out windows and ATMs at five banks, and torching two auto showrooms and several U.S. fast-food franchises and an upscale boutique in the chic Polanco district of this conflictive capital. In each case, the Anarchist “A” has been spray-painted on nearby walls along with slogans supporting animal liberation demands to stop prison construction, and calls for the demise of capitalism.

The serial bombings are the first to strike Mexico City since November 2006, when radicals took out a chunk of the nation’s highest electoral tribunal, blew up a foreign-owned bank, and scorched an auditorium in the scrupulously-guarded compound of the once and future ruling PRI party. The 2006 attacks came in the wake of a fraud-marred presidential election and federal police suppression of a popular uprising in the southern state of Oaxaca and were claimed by five armed groups, most prominently the Democratic Revolutionary Tendency, a split-off from the Marxist-Leninist Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) which itself bombed a Sears outlet in Oaxaca City in 2006 and PEMEX pipelines in central Mexico in 2007.

Anarchist cells that claim to have perpetrated the recent explosions take pains to distance themselves from the Marxist bombers.

In vindicating a September 25th blast at a Banamex branch in the rural Milpa Alta delegation (borough) of Mexico City during which the rebels claim a half million pesos were immolated, “The Subversive Alliance For The Liberation Of The Earth, The Animals, & The Humans” (in that order) charged that the U.S.-owned bank promoted “torture, destruction, and slavery. “Our motives are to stop these bastards and let them know that we are not playing games.”

SF vs. the Catholic Church, round 3

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By Ryan Thomas Riddle

A decision is expected next month in the high-stakes battle
between the Archdiocese of San Francisco and Assessor-Record Phil Ting, which will determine whether the church will pay out millions in transfer taxes.

On Thursday, Oct. 8, Ting once again went before the Transfer Tax Review Board to counter the Archdiocese’s
assertions that its extensive 2008 property transfers aren’t taxable. The board then called for final legal documentation in the case, including closing briefs, to be delivered by both sides on Nov. 9. The board will render its final ruling two weeks later, according to Ting.

“It is in the capable hands of the tax review board,” he told the Guardian.

Ting said he expects that the verdict will be in his office’s favor, which could force the Catholic Church to pay somewhere between $3 million and $15 million in transfer taxes to the city. Church officials, who have yet to respond to our calls, contend that the properties the archdiocese moved from one interdenominational entity to another are considered a “gift” under canon law, and thus do not qualify for transfer taxation since the properties still belong to the greater Catholic Church.

The Assessor’s Office reviewed a January 2009 California Supreme Court ruling that reaffirmed the national Episcopal Church’s ownership of local church buildings and properties, a case the archdiocese has cited. “Basically, it’s an interdenominational conflict that has no barring on this case,” Ting said.

As for accusations from the more militant church supporters that this is the city’s retaliation for the passing of Proposition 8
, Ting said that his office made overtures on the transfer taxes long before the same-sex marriage issue went to the election ballot. Craig Dziedzic, manager of the recording division within the Assessor’s Office who testified in Thursday’s hearing, sent emails out to the legal counsel for the diocese regarding the transfer taxes back in April 2008, months before Prop 8 was passed.

Duck under your desk!

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By Tim Redmond

Yes, that sound overhead is the annual display of America’s military might, the Blue Angels. And as always, I ask myself: Is this a good idea in a big city?

The Chron, the guv and the issues

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By Tim Redmond

It’s as if the San Francisco Chronicle didn’t recognize that there are real issues facing California — and that the governor is acting like a thug, threatening the future of the state and clowning around like it doesn’t matter.

Check this out: The Chron’s editorial page criticizes Tom Ammiano for standing up to the governor:

But Assemblyman Tom Ammiano crossed the line when he shouted “You lie!” at Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger during a Democratic fundraiser in San Francisco on Wednesday night. Ammiano reportedly went even further on the crass-o-meter when he suggested that the governor could kiss his posterior.

.

(By the way, this is San Francisco — it’s okay for the daily newspaper to say “ass.”)

And then suggests that this was just a nice event at which

The governor was invited for a brief visit to a Democratic Party event by former Mayor Willie Brown

(By the way, Brown is also a San Francisco Chronicle columnist)

without ever saying that Brown had no business bringing the governor — who is so openly threatening the Democrats with mass bill vetoes that Sen. Mark Leno is forced to ask “are we dealing with the Mob or the governor of California?” — to a Democratic party fundraiser.

Brown was playing his normal games, goofing around and ignoring the life-and-death issues at stake. He and Arnold are buds, and Brown backed Schwarzenegger for governor over a Democrat. He knew bringing the guy into that room would create a furor, and he knew that the governor would love it (it helps him with his conservative base to get booed by San Francisco Democrats.)

Ammiano knows all that, too, and frankly, was somewhat reserved in his comments. I would have gone further; I would have called out Willie Brown for a back-stabbing political stunt.

And don’t the Chron editorial writers have any sense of humor? “You lie” was a joke, guys, a parody. Please: Lighten up, and get a clue.

The Democrats wild night

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By Tim Redmond

Well, I’m really sorry I missed the Democratic Party gala Wednesday night. Apparently it was quite a show. Brian Leubitz has a great report at Calitics on the unexpected appearance of Gov. Schwarzenegger and the overwhelmingly negative response by the attendees, including Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, who stood up and shouted “You Lie!”

“It was political theater of the type we love,” Ammiano told me.

Seriously, though: Former Mayor Willie Brown apparently told the guv that the event was happening, and since Schwarzenegger was in the same hotel for a President’s Cup event, he decided (perhaps at Brown’s invitation, it’s not entirely clear) just to drop by. And everyone was supposed to act all nice and pretend that they’re aren’t real, serious issues in Sacramento and that the governor isn’t really, really screwing up the state and hurting a lot of people.

“This wasn’t the Legislative Chambers, where you have to put up with this shit,” Ammiano said.. “It’s like this guy just showed up and took a big dump in my living room.”

Labor folks weren’t happy, either, and a bunch of them walked out. Then Ammiano (and we should all give thanks that he’s in the Legislature, reminding everyone what San Francisco stands for) accepted an award and made a speech:

And then he proceeded to bludgeon the Governor’s record. He questioned why he was holding bills hostage to get a bad water deal. He questioned why a Governor who has vetoed the Harvey Milk Day bill would stand up in front of a room that was at least 25% LGBT. He politely asked Mayor Brown to send a message to the governor to sign the bills already.

And finally, Senator Mark Leno closed the proceedings for the evening. Leno took a different tack than Ammiano’s passion. He simply stated the facts. He said that the events of this evening were all funny and stuff, but the fact is that this Governor had cut state workers salaries by 15% with the furloughs. This Governor wanted to cut IHSS salaries to minimum wage. This Governor illegally used the line item veto to slash funding for domestic violence shelters. And that he, and the Senate Democrats, were going to fight him tooth and nail.

And to a loud applause, Leno stepped off the stage and the crowd began to thin. And everybody was saying, “um, wow.”

The other thing Ammiano said in his speech was that Democrats have gotten a little lax on standing up for their friends — and he mentioned both ACORN and Kim-Shree Maufas, and both times was met with huge applause.

And, of course, the Chron’s Carla Marinucci focused her reporton Willie Brown’s comments about how inappropriate this all was and how everyone needed to make nice to poor Arnold. But there are serious issue here that aren’t just fun and games, and when the stakes are as high as they are here, I’m glad to see them Democrats (or at least some of them) deciding not to play so nice with a governor who is smiling while he drives the state into bankruptcy and despair.

PS: Ammiano told me that when Marinucci called him, she seems astounded that he had said “kiss my gay ass” while walking out of the governor’s speech. “I told her, I don’t remember, but I probably did say that,” Ammiano said. “After all, it’s safe sex.”

Editor’s Notes

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Editor’s Notes

Tredmond@sfbg.com

The folks at SEIU Local 1021 have been getting the mayor’s panties in a bunch lately — and it’s caused Newsom to make something of an ass of himself.

The union, which represents city employees, is still seething about the mayor’s failure to follow through on a deal he cut during the summer budget crunch. The way it was supposed to work, the union members gave $38 million in concessions, and Newsom agreed to hold off on major layoffs until this November — when he was going to support a measure to raise new revenue for San Francisco.

That never happened, and the layoff notices — more than 600 of them — have gone out, mostly to women of color who work on the front lines in the Department of Public Health. At the same time, the city’s forcing some skilled workers into lower-paid job classifications, in essence slicing their pay by more than 20 percent.

So the union put out a flyer demanding that Newsom stop the layoffs — and when a Local 1021 member handed it to the mayor at an event Sept. 28, Newsom went ballistic. According to union member (and certified nursing assistant assistant) Evalyn Morales, the mayor "said, ‘this is a lie,’" referring to the flyer. He then went on to say: "I don’t want to do anything to deal with the union. I hate Robert [SEIU organizer Robert Haaland]. What you’re doing now is hurting me … I hate Robert. I don’t want to do anything for the union."

Which is all too typical of how Newsom responds to criticism — particularly when the critics are going around to his gubernatorial campaign events and reminding people that this is the mayor who, like (Republican) Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, produced an all cuts, no-new-taxes budget. He gets pissy. He loses his shit. He looks like … well, like someone who isn’t quite ready to be the governor of the nation’s most populous and probably most complex and contentious state.

Prison report: No accountability

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By Just A Guy

Editors note: Just A Guy is an inmate in a California state prison. His dispatches run twice a week.

By Just A Guy

There are a lot of things I would like to talk about, to be more explicit about, but fear of retaliation stops me, for now.

One of the things I find disconcerting is how many of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation staff and administrators have the ability to lie to cover up things without any thought of being held accountable. CDCR’s staff are able to do whatever they want, with impunity, because they believe that most people just don’t care what happens to inmates.

Sadly, this belief is mostly true — they can lie, cover up, spend your money and do whatever they want to inmates. They can, and they do.

When the jailer becomes guilty of the same sins as the jailed, but is allowed to continue because he or she is “just doing it to inmates” something is fundamentally flawed.

Some of the CDCR staff justify their behavior because it’s the only way many of them can sleep at night. The fact is that if you do things at the expense of others for personal gain or to protect yourself you are wrong, just as most of us were wrong in the crimes we committed that hurt other people and landed us in prison.

“People are sent to prison as punishment, not for punishment.”

How can the same people that say they are protecting the public use diabolical means and excuses to do whatever they want to inmates, but not be judged for it?

What makes those people at CDCR guilty of such acts exempt from investigation or suspicion? I guess Abu Ghraib is okay when it’s inmates in California.

The bogus credit-card “scandal” st SFUSD

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By Tim Redmond

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Maufas didn’t steal money or cheat the public

Let’s get this out of the way immediately, so my dear commenter trolls won’t take my head off and call me a hypocrite: I don’t think Kim-Shree Maufas should have used her school district credit card for personal expenses. It wasn’t illegal, and she quickly reimbursed the district for all those expenses — but it still wasn’t a good idea.

And I fully agree that the daily newspaper in town has every right and responsibility to check the expenses of all public officials and local agencies.

But let’s have a little perspective here: Was this really such a huge scandal that it deserved to be the lead story on the front page of the Sunday Chronicle?

Because the more I look into it, the more I think it’s really not front-page news.

Newsom agrees to meet with Local 1021

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By Tim Redmond

The members of SEIU Local 1021 have agreed to stand down for a day, suspend their unfair labor practices claim and hold off on sending protesters to Mayor Gavin Newsom’s campaign events — and he’s agreed to meet with the union tomorrow (Tuesday) morning to discuss their grievances.

Larry Bevan, a Local 1021 shop steward who works as a site tech at Laguna Honda Hospital, told me that Labor Council director Tim Paulson has agreed to mediate the discussion.

“I am told that the mayor will be there personally,” Bevan said. “Going through intermediaries doesn’t seem to be working.”

The union wants to challenge the mayor to live up to his promise during budget season — that he’d work to find a way to raise new revenue this fall so that 600 union members, most of them women of color, most of them front-line service workers in the Department of Public Health, wouldn’t face layoffs.

It’s too late for a ballot measure to raise new revenue. That plan fell apart when it became clear that the supervisors would not unanimously declare a state of fiscal emergency — a move that would have allowed a revenue measure to pass with a simple majority of the vote. WIthout all 11 supervisors, any attempt to raise taxes would require an insurmountable two-thirds majority.

The Oakland City Council agreed unanimously to seek new revenue, but in San Francisco, Supervisors Sean Elsbernd, Michela Alioto and Carmen Chu refused. All three were originally Newsom appointees.

Elsbernd told me that the mayor’s office tried to get him on board, but he refused to bend. The reforms that the mayor was proposing weren’t strong enough to get the relatively conservative supervisor to drop his opposition to new taxes. “Oh, they tried, all right,” Elsbernd said. “But the reform was bogus. I said no.”

But I have to wonder how serious Newsom was: He never picked up the phone and called Elsbernd personally. His chief of staff, Steve Kava, did that job.

Sorry, Mr. Mayor — when there are millions of dollars and hundreds of jobs on the line, if you actually want to get a reluctant supervisor who owes his career to you on your side, you talk to him personally. It still might not have worked — but sending an aide over with the message was clearly doomed to fail. It almost seems as if Newsom was fine with that.

At any rate, the unions will try to get Newsom’s support for a new fee on alcoholic beverages, money that could go directly to DPH. Maybe he’ll go along; maybe he’ll drag his feet. Still, Local 1021 got him to the table, which these days, with this mayor, is quite an accomplishment.

Best Castro Street Fair T-shirts

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By Tim Redmond

My cell phone battery was dead, so I didn’t get pictures, but I’ll give you the slogans on may two favorite T-SHirts from the Castro Street Fair Sunday:

1. “Marriage is SO gay”

2. “I’d fuck me.”

And bright sunshine and cold beer … you couldn’t beat it.

Newsom goes ballistic at SEIU

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By Tim Redmond

The mayor is getting a wee bit sensitive about a flier from SEIU local 1021 that accuses him of breaking his word during contract talks. And he’s clearly getting more and more angry at the 1021 activists who are following him to fundraising events and making noise about his labor record. (The union plans to appear in Los Angeles Oct. 5 when Newsom holds a gala with Bill Clinton)

In fact, on Sept 28th, around 6:45 p.m., union member (and certified nurses assistant) Evalyn Morales approached the mayor at a Filipino Americans for Progress event and handed him a copy of the flier (PDF). It charges that the mayor had cut a deal with the union that he hasn’t kept:

“The deal was that city workers would make $38 million in concessions to help with the city’s half-billion budget deficit if the city would let the workers keep their jobs long enough (5 more months) for government, business and city workers to put a revenue measure on the Nov. 2009 ballot. …. Suddenly, the deal’s off … Newsom and his board allies prevented a revenue measure from reaching the ballot.”

And it notes that 600 union workers have received layoff notices — and virtually all of them are women of color.

(They’re also mostly lower-level jobs — the Management Employees Association hasn’t faced any real layoffs, and the mayor’s staffers — including five people in the press office — continue to be well compensated.)

Newsom, according to Morales, was furious to see the flier. And apparently he lost his shit. Here’s her account of the interaction, taken from a sworn statement she filed with the union:

“He said ‘this is a lie,’ referring to the flier. “I don’t want to do anything to deal with the union. I hate Robert [SEIU organizer Robert Haaland]. What you’re doing now is hurting me …. I hate Robert. I don’t want to do anything for the union.”

Harsh.

In fact, Local 1021 is planning to file a complaint with California’s Public Employee Relations Board citing the mayor’s statements as intimidation and harassment.

Now: I can’t speak to the legality of what the mayor did under labor law, but I can say that it fits in with something we’ve seen all too much over the years: Newsom loses his temper over little stuff. He can’t take a punch; the minute you go after him he gets all pissy and says stupid stuff (like “I hate Robert.” How statesmanlike and gubernatorial.)

Nathan Ballard, his press secretary, isn’t exactly conciliatory, either. Here’s what he sent me when I asked him about the incident:

Prison report: The cell phone question

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By Just A Guy

Editors note: just A guy is an inmate in a California state prison. His reports run twice a week.

By Just A Guy
 
It’s been about six months since Tim Redmond asked the question, should prisoners be allowed cell phones? Back in April, there was quite a furor about inmates and cell phones, but since that time there hasn’t been much mention of it, so I thought I would chime in on the subject, as it bears discussion and analysis.

 The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation claims that inmates having cell phones is a huge security risk — that we can plan escapes, plan simultaneous riots, or call in hits on people. While all those things are true, they are certainly things that were done in prisons by inmates before cell phones existed! Cell phones just make those things quicker to accomplish.

 Those are words meant to scare the public into believing the inmates that do have cell phones all use their phones for negative things.

Another reason that CDCR is against cell phones, just possibly, is that cell phones have things like cameras, video records, and voice recorders. God forbid an inmate take a picture of a cop “sleeping the toughest beat,” or take a video of cops beating someone’s ass, or maybe recording conversations in which the officers or others were threatening or just disrespectful.

 Today’s technology even allows for real-time streaming if you have the right type of phone. Can you imagine the doors of possibility that this opens up? Hello, You Tube!
 And what about the amount of money that the collect-call phones generate for GTL.

Doesn’t CDCR get $30 million a year from GTL for giving them the contract?

Few folks know that even though the collect call phones we are allowed to use are monitored, there is really no way for the staff to find out who made a call. And this is especially true if you make a three-way call; they can know the number you dialed but not the third-party number. Also, you ever heard of call forwarding? Duh!
 
What if CDCR contracted with a company like AT&T? Here’s what I propose:
 AT&T or the like should be allowed to sell phones to prisoners. There could only be one type of phone, and this found would not have a camera or Internet capability, but would have text. There could be a number of different plans for inmates to choose, from cheapo to unlimited minutes.

 The provider would be responsible for the monitoring the calls and text messages. (They could even contract this out.) All cell calls go through supercomputers anyway, and those computers have very complex algorithms that can detect all kinds of stuff, from key words to language spoken. (The Department of Defense uses this technology).

 Each phone would be registered to the purchaser so that if anything unlawful was done, it could automatically be attributed to the registered user. If there is someone at CDCR, or any other agency, that is suspicious of, how much easier will it be to track their calls? Using another inmate’s phone would result in your phone privilege being suspended as well as that of the inmate who allowed you to use his or her phone.  
Maybe there could be a limit on the number the phones could dial.  There would be a limit on hours of operation, say, 6 am to 10 pm. The scenarios are endless on how CDCR could control this.

Imagine — what cell phone company wouldn’t be interested in having its customer base increase by 160,000 users, with no competition?

 Before cell phones came to prisons, the collect-call phones we are allowed to use were busy all day and there was a line to use them. Now they are empty all day.

 I’ve done the math before, but here is is again: Ninety six collect call phones (in this prison) being used a minimum of 12 hours a day. With calls limited to 15 minutes at a minimum of $3 a call. One phone generates a minimum of $144 a day. Times 96 phones equals a minimum of $13,824 a day, times 365 days a year equals $5 million a year. I wonder what the net profit of that $5 million is? Remember too that there are 33 prisons in California — and even if you cut my numbers in half, it’s still $2.5 million, at just one prison.

 You know the very same people who are saying it’s a huge security issue are the ones bringing in the phones — ‘cause I have yet to meet an inmate capable of sticking a cell phone, charger, and headset up his ass, let alone in the visiting room.

 By the way, that $29.99 version mobile phone you can buy at Best Buy costs $600 in here. Who do you suppose is making that profit?
 
And while possession of cell phone in prison is not a crime, it would be great to get some statistics on how many raids are focused on cell phones vs. drugs – — and possession of drugs is a felony.

 Look, there are fucking cell-phone sniffing dogs now. It’s safer to be a drug dealer in prison than a cell phone user. because they rarely go for the dealer. Why should they — we’re only hurting ourselves with the drugs anyway.
 

Stop the pot fires!

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By Tim Redmond

So the Fire Department is worried about pot farms in the Sunset catching on fire. That’s valid — a lot of underground growers patch into the electrical grid illegally and don’t exactly follow the highest fire-safety standards. And we know the stuff burns nice.

But why does this have to be a problem? Why can’t the city simply legalize pot farms by allowing that use under city planning and building inspection codes? We already have legal nurseries in the city; I don’t think it would be a huge step to issue permits for indoor nurseries, set fire standards, require safety inspections (before the seeds are planted but after the electricity, plumbing and lights are hooked up), mandate on-site security and then take a don’t ask-don’t tell approach to the whole scene?

We’d get a better class of growers (people who operate legally don’t tend to have big caches of nasty weapons), we’d get some tax revenue — and most important, we’d be able to prevent fires. Once there was a legal way to do this, the underground operators would be forced out and the Sunset would be safe and secure once again.

Who wants to take this one on?

Editor’s Notes

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tredmond@sfbg.com

We were talking at dinner the other night about how — how? — Barack Obama, who is so good at communicating to the voters, who has a chief of staff with world-class political savvy and some of the best advisors in the business, who has from the start exuded this aura of competence … managed to get so badly rolled in the health-care debate.

One of my friends, who has a background in business and finance, suggested that the president could have gone to the Republicans with a grand deal — in exchange for accepting some major changes in the health-care system, including dings for big pharma and health insurance companies, the Democrats would accept tort reform in the medical malpractice arena, sticking it to their traditional friends the trial lawyers. A few national opinion columnists have suggested the same thing.

Then we heard the argument that Obama shouldn’t have let Congress set the terms of engagement, that he should have presented a specific plan of his own, or at least the basic outlines of a plan, and pushed for it. Or maybe he should have just accepted the fact that the Republicans would never go for anything he wanted and given up on bipartisanship from the start.

But all that misses an essential fact: there is still a climate of hostility toward government in this country, and the insurance industry is expert at using right-wing populist sentiment for its own political ends. Once the discussion was about the government deciding whether to kill grandma, the whole thing was in the shitter.

It didn’t have to be that way. Suppose Obama had started off by accepting that populist anger and then did what the likes of ol’ Huey Long used to do — turn it against not just the government, but big business? What if he’d started on day one saying that the issue wasn’t health care reform, it was insurance company reform, pointed directly to the villains here — the big, rich, Wall Street-backed New York insurance giants — and asked whether you wanted not bureaucrats but high-roller greedheads in fancy shoes deciding that grandma had to die?

Play the outsider here — Obama’s never had much dealing with the big insurance folks. Force the likes of Max Baucus (D-Mont.) into a corner. Make the plutocrats — and, yes, their captive Washington pawns — the target of that populist anger. It’s like his line on the banks — I don’t want to take them over, but the folks in charge have screwed up so badly that I have to.

Sun Tzu, the great Chinese general and philosopher, always said that the winner in a battle is not the one with the superior army, but the one who chooses the battlefield. Obama chose wrong here, and even all the power of the presidency and solid majorities in both houses might not be enough to turn it around.

Tax reform plan goes nowhere

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By Tim Redmond

The governor’s tax-reform commission released its report today, and it probably won’t amount to much, because nobody seems to like it.

But the report shows how badly skewed the whole notion of “tax reform” has been warped in this state. The central premise of the report is that the top income tax rate — the rate that the very rich pay — should be reduced, and the overall income tax structure flattened. The argument: Since the income of the richest Californians changes with the economy, flattening out the tax structure will give us more budget stability.

But that’s an utter crock. As Lenny Goldberg, the director of the California Tax Reform Association, notes:

1. The top personal income tax rate should not be lowered, since figures presented to the Commission demonstrate clearly that the volatility problem is a function of the distribution of income, not a steeply progressive tax. In fact, the tax is relatively flat, assessing the same marginal rate on the upper-middle class (90k +) as the very rich, with a very quick ride through the brackets. If anything, the bracket structure should reflect the federal structure, which has increasing brackets and rates at $137,000, $208,000, and $372,000.

As Phil Spilberg’s presentation on March 16 pointed out, the top 1% take an extraordinary share of income (25%), nearly doubling since the early 1990’s. Their tax burden moves consistently with their share of income, so their disproportionate share of taxes is a function of their disproportionate share of income. That fact alone is what leads to volatility, but lowering their tax burden only exacerbates the mal-distribution of income. And any tax cuts share income with the federal government at a marginal rate of 35%, likely to become 39.6%, so are effectively a capital outflow.

In other words, the reason that tax receipts drop off so much during recessions is that the very rich have too much of the state’s total income. If anything, the tax rate is too flat now.

I’m somewhat intrigued by the new business tax proposals, which amount to what the Europeans call a “value added tax.” You take the total sales of a business, subtract its total costs, and tax the net proceeds, which are supposed to represent the value added during production. It’s a little trickier when you apply that to services, but I don’t think any sane person watching the state’s tax system disagrees with the concept that services ought to be taxed.

But overall, the tax reform commission has offered a very limited perspective — which is too bad, because California’s tax system is a mess and badly needs a comprehensive overhaul.

The national parks: A radical idea

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By Tim Redmond

I have two kids (with piano, gymnastics, tae kwon do, PTA and assorted play dates and sleepovers), a busy job, a dog to walk, dirty dishes to wash … you know the drill. So I haven’t been able to watch every minute of every episode of Ken Burns magnum opus on the national park system. I don’t think I know anyone who has that kind of time these days.

But I tuned in for a while last night, to Episode Two, which tracks John Muir, Teddy Roosevelt, the Antiquities Act etc., and I walked away with a very clear message:

This is a series about what government does right.

In the segment I saw, the feds were the good guys — Congress was saving wild areas, and when the western ranchers and developers tried to commercialize the Grand Canyon (in the name of private enterprise), Roosevelt used his authority to block them, infuriating the states-rights and anti-government Westerners but (of course) preserving what everyone know agrees is a national treasure.

There was a fabulous quote from environmental journalist Juanita Green.

“In other parts of the world,” she says, “there are places that are wild because some nobleman decreed it. In the United States, we don’t need a nobleman. … that’s democracy.”

At a time when the mayor of San Francisco is lauding the death of a billionaire who believed just the opposite — that the private sector should decide what gets saved and that private philanthropy (from fortunes built on tax cuts) is a better solution than public spending (fueled by taxes on the wealthy), we all ought to think about that a little.

If the national parks are “America’s best idea,” as Burns dubs his documentary, then the best thing this nation has ever done is exerted government supremacy over the private sector when it comes to the use of land. It’s sad to think how radical that sounds today.

Why health-care reform is depressing

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By Tim Redmond

Here’s why:

Because the Senate is ready to kill the public option, because the deal is already done, and Obama has already decided that he doesn’t want to fight the insurance industry.

I keep wondering: How did the likes of Obama and Rahm Emmanuel get rolled by the insurers? How did a Democratic president with solid majorities in both houses let this get so screwed up? Why has the best chance for real reform in decades gone down the tubes?

Robert Reich thinks that the deal was cut a long time ago.

Last January, the White House made a Faustian bargain with Big Pharma and Big Insurance, essentially scuttling both of these profit-squeezing mechanisms in return for these industries’ agreement not to oppose healthcare legislation with platoons of lobbyists and millions of dollars of TV ads, and Pharma’s willingness to cut drug prices by some $80 billion over the next ten years. The White House promised these industries they’d come out way ahead — getting tens of millions of new customers who’d be buying private health insurance policies and thereby paying for an almost endless supply of new drugs. Healthcare reform would be, in short, a bonanza

.

I knew that, sorta. I know people who were watching last spring, and they told me that the Bad Guys were at the table from the first day. I just don’t see how Obama and his team figured they could get any meaningful reform done without insurance industry opposition — and I don’t see how they could actually believe that the industry wouldn’t do exactly what it’s done, which is to fuck with the president’s modest agenda and spend millions to be sure that nothing worthwhile happens.

Sometimes, you can’t negotiate with terrorists. It’s a hard lesson for Obama, and the country, to learn right now.

Prison report: Why guards like violence

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By Tim Redmond


Editors note: Just a Guy is an inmate in a California state prison. His dispatches run twice a week.

By Just A Guy

An officer and I had a discussion a couple of weeks ago. I asked him a question; I don’t remember exactly what it was. But what I remember about the conversation is interesting. He told me he hated working here, that this place has the worst morale of all the prisons in California, that the administration has the corrections officers concentrating on all kinds of pettiness in order to keep them occupied — and that there is so little violence and need to watch one another’s back that there is no unity among the COs as there is at prisons with more problems.

To me it’s very discouraging that a lack of violence and other problems endemic to prison life would be a catalyst for enmity between officers, that it would cause a lack of unity and lack of respect among the staff.

I would think it would be the goal of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to create prisons with no violence , no racial divide and prison politics and mechanism that make prison a recidivist machine.

But, as it turns out, a prison with less violence, racial division and those other mechanisms is considered an awful place to work because it creates a divide between the people running the prison.

This, my friends, is irony.

William Safire — an appreciation (of sorts)

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By Tim Redmond

William Safire was wrong about Vietnam. He was wrong about Watergate. He was right about poor Bert Lance, but wrong about Jimmy Carter. He was very, very wrong about Saddam Hussein, 9/11 and the Iraq War. He was, as the Telegraph of London says, “tall, dishevelled, slouching and dour.”

But Lord, what a good writer.

His conservative columns sparkled with style and wit — and often, with intelligence (that factor so utterly missing from the right wing of American politics today). I read him regularly, not just his language columns (which got more dreary as he aged), but his political commentary, which was sharp up until the day he retired from the New York Times op-ed page.

And while he was often horrendously wrong and politically awful, he was pretty consistent. After complaining repeatedly about the climate of secrecy in the Bush Sr. administration, he made it very clear in 1992 that a president who refused to accept sunshine in the White House was unacceptable and that “this lifelong Republican” was going to vote for Bill Clinton.

(He later chided Barbara Streisand for refusing to take his phone calls. “She told me if I voted for Bill Clinton, she’d [grant an interview.} I did; she didn’t.”) And, of course, he famously turned on the Clintons, referring to Hillary as a “congenital liar.”

And unlike a lot of conservatives of his era, he was willing to change with the times. By the late 1990s, he had become pro-choice on abortion, and once commented on a rally to save Roe v. Wade: “Nothing warms the heart of an old conservative as much as seeing thousands of protestors stare decisively at the Supreme Court and demonstrate in support of the status quo.”

Back in 2003, he opened the door to conservatives accepting same-sex marriage (“I’m a ‘libcon.’ To that small slice of the political spectrum called libertarian conservative, personal freedom is central,” and if he were still writing today, I’m pretty sure he’d be out front on that issue (and on allowing gays in the military).

So I’ll miss the crusty old right-winger. He did a lot of damage, and when he first started writing his column in 1973, as a former Nixon speechwriter, he was an apologist for an administration that was pretty much indefensible. But he was thoughtful and somewhat open-minded and sharp and funny and creative. There are no conservative writers who come even close today.

Health care reform, in simple terms

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By Tim Redmond

My old friend Dan Roam, a former Guardian associate art director and the author of The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas With Pictures, has taken on health-care reform.

He’s done it the Dan Roam way — by outlining the issue and the various problems and proposals with colored markers on napkins. It’s a fun and useful demonstration — although he doesn’t explain why a single-payer option would make so much more sense than everything else that’s on the table.

Remarkably enough, Fox News has given him a platform to explain his ideas — and on the air, he makes a very good point. This isn’t about health-care reform; it’s about insurance reform. And maybe if Obama had started off saying that the issue was insurance companies instead of letting the right wing drag doctors and death panels into this, we’d all be a lot better off.

Prison report: Who are the bad people?

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By Just A Guy


Editors note: Just A Guy is an inmate in a California state prison. His dispatches appear twice a week.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Poizner was recently quoted in the Sacramento Bee saying: “You have to be a really bad person to get into state prison. So I’m opposed to releasing people who are dangerous, absolutely opposed. That’ s no way to balance the budget.”

I’m curious to know what Poizner thinks everyone is in prison for. Does he even realize that at least 18 percent of the population is in prison for drug crimes? If so, then is he saying that all people in prison for drugs are “really bad people?”

As if the stigma of being an addict and in prison isn’t enough.

I wonder if Poizner thinks alcoholics are “really bad people” — or just people who need a 12-step program.

What is a “really bad person” anyway? Are the many of you who have done some stupid things in your past but just didn’t get caught “really bad people” too? Or does the stereotype apply only to people in prison?

I’m opposed to the early releases of people who are dangerous, also. But how does one determine who’s dangerous? Is the 80-year-old infirm man in a wheelchair a danger? Let’s be honest — who doesn’t have the capacity to be dangerous? Prisoner or not?

Poizner says this is no way to balance the budget. But what about the consequences of cutting even more money from other services? (See my most recent blog here.
Has he considered that the industrialization of prisons in California with the three strikes, archaic laws and sentencing, is no way to create jobs?

The other Republican gubernatorial candidate, Meg Whitman, said “the most important role government has is public safety. It’s very important to be consistent.” She’s also opposed to early releases and prison reform. Odd that the former CEO of Ebay is so short sighted about the long-term effects of the current budget and prison situation. Isn’t this a women who had to please stockholders and a board of directors and had to have insightful long-term visions planning Ebay strategy — which she did quite successfully? I guess your strategy changes drastically when you’re selling a service as opposed to selling fear.

The only things consistent about California prison policy are lock-em-up-and-throw-away-the-key strategies. Most politicians are also consistently spouting tough-on-crime policy against their better judgment because they are consistently afraid of the Willie Horton syndrome.

A couple of gubernatorial candidates from the Democratic side are, amazingly, looking at prison reform as a way to alleviate some of California’s budget problems.

The biggest threat to public safety is not the people in prison or their releases (most of them are going to get out anyway). It’s consistently cutting money for health care, education, welfare and myriad other programs that help to create a brighter future for Californians. Public safety also means maintaining roads and bridges, supplying water, educating citizens etc. The best way to have public safety is to have an environment that creates hope, not antipathy.

Finally, the Canadian government is considering creating a prison system similar to California’s — and a rather scathing indictment came out from opponents who say doing so is a bad idea.

The majority of first world countries see California and its prison policies as insane — why can’t we see that for ourselves? It’s like we have “prison addiction.”

I wonder if people with prison addiction should be consistently labeled “really bad people.” The rest of the world seems to think so.

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