Tim Redmond

A big Newsom “oops!”

-
8

By TIm Redmond

Okay, here’s a big cringe-worthy oops from the Newsom for Governor website.

The mayor loves to talk about technology, and on his campaign website he talks about transparency:

Online Government for Transparency: Mayor Newsom has used technology to cultivate an ongoing conversation with San Francisco residents and to put city services online to increase accessibility and transparency. He recently launched SFrecovery.org to allow citizens to track and provide input on how San Francisco spends federal stimulus dollars and 72hours.org to better prepare San Francisco in the case of a disaster or emergency. And San Francisco’s government television station was recently ranked first among nearly 500 government agencies archiving streaming media content from government meetings.

Anyone who has followed Newsom knows he’s the last person who ought to be bragging about transparency — the guy won’t even release his daily schedule.

But here’s the cringe: Click on sfrecovery.org.

I don’t think that’s what the mayor had in mind.

“Legalization is not the answer?” Huh?

-
6

By Tim Redmond

Bizarre story in the Chronicle today about gangs of pot growers using state and federal land for their crops. First of all, this is nothing new — there’s been pot growing on public land for years. And for years, it’s caused environmental problems (and also safety problems; nasty operatives defending crops have been known to shoot at innocent hikers walking through national forests).

But the strangest part was the line at the conclusion. After exlplaining how budget cuts have damaged enforcement efforts and Mexican gangs are getting $3,200 a plant for good bud, writer Peter Fimrite tosses in this:

Legalization is not the solution, Johnson said, given that most of the pot is being grown illegally on public parkland by foreign citizens who cannot be taxed.

Huh? Why, exactly, do these cops and Chronicle reporters think the Mexican gangs are here? Why do they think these guys are getting $3,200 a plant? Isn’t this exactly what happened during Prohibition, when rum-running created the Mob?

“It was the falsest conclusion possible,” Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, who has a bill to legalize marijuana, told me this morning.

Folks: Legalization is the quickest and surest way to get rid of the drug gangs screwing up public land. Think about it: We don’t really have a problem with illegal moonshine in this country. We don’t have a major problem with criminal gangs growing and selling tobacco on public land. Make pot legal and this problem goes away, too.

Obama and the California schools

-
0

By Tim Redmond

A lot of us have been worried about Arne Duncan, President Obama’s Education Secretary; he’s been way too close to the testing-is-all and charter schools camp. And now the impacts are starting to show. Robert Cruickshank has an interesting post at Calitics on this:

I am curious to hear how Arne Duncan and Barack Obama believe California test scores will rise when you have classes of 30-35 students. When instructional days are being cut. When school buses are being cut (meaning many students will have a harder time getting to school, or will have longer travel times, leaving less time to study and do homework).

So California schools, which just took a huge budget hit, will now have trouble getting federal money because teachers, through no fault of their own, have a harder time getting students to do well on tests that are of dubious value anyway.

Newsom loses Eric Jaye

-
5

By Tim Redmond

While everyone’s fussing over Chris Daly’s residence, here’s some seriously big political news. Eric Jaye, who was Mayor Newsom’s campaign manager almost from Day One, who has been one of his closest advisors and who has had his fingers in much of what’s happened in the Mayor’s Office all these years, just quit the Newsom for Governor campaign.

Jaye told me only that there was “a difference of opinion about campaign direction.” There was also, I suspect, a difference of opinion in general — some might call it a power struggle — between Jaye and Garry South, Newsom’s high-priced Southern California-based strategist.

For starters, it takes much of the campaign focus out of San Francisco — Jaye helped Newsom create his political image through local programs and policies. It also shifts the campaign a big step toward the dark side — South is a conservative political triangulator who was close to former Gov. Gray Davis.

This could change not just the shape of the Newsom campaign but of policy here in San Francisco. Who’s going to tell the mayor what to do?

Avalos on the budget process

-
4

Editors note: Sup. John Avalos sent this letter in response to criticism (including criticism from the Guardian) of the city budget process.

By John Avalos

Responding to Tim Redmond’s editor’s notes posted on July 22: Robocop is one of my favorite movies too, especially for its anti-privatization message. Over the last 5 years that I worked in City Hall, I have actively opposed efforts to privatize City services like the security at the Asian Art museum and custodial work at City Hall. This year, when Jail Health Services were threatened to be contracted out to a for-profit corporation, I led the effort to push back, visiting both jails and meeting directly with those most impacted by the move.

As of June 29th, the night of the last Budget and Finance Committee hearing on the mayor’s budget, the Budget Committee had freed up only $20 million in cuts to prevent the massive cuts imposed by the Mayor. This was nowhere near enough to stop all the Prop J’s, the Mayor’s effort to contract out services, and restore cuts to essential services. Stopping the Prop J’s alone cost over $20 million.

Late that night, I met with a broad array of budget constituent representatives: seniors, youth, SRO tenants, city workers, homeless advocates, to get their input on priorities and strategies before President Chiu and I went headlong into negotiations with the Mayor’s office.

By the night of July 1st, we had $43 million to stop ALL the Prop J’s and restore over 23 million in other priorities.
We kept shelters open 24 hours, restored substance abuse and mental health services such as the single standard of care for mental health, continued immigrant rights and tenant services, protected seniors from losing meal programs and having to pay social workers to help them with their finances, prevented cuts to family support and violence prevention services, restored rec director jobs, rejected charging families for their child’s detention at YGC, reoriented the Mayor’s administration towards community development, promoted transit first parking policies, and set aside millions of dollars for job programs at the airport, port and PUC.

But I would not credit two newbie supervisors’ negotiating skills for restoring an unprecented $43 million in restorations in the worst year possible.

Mexico report: The guerilla option

-
0

By John Ross

MEXICO CITY (July 26th) — One day long ago, in August 1974, the 25th to be precise, in the heat of the Mexican military’s “dirty war” to root out subversion in the Pacific coast state of Guerrero, security forces under the command of General Mario Arturo Acosta Chaparo dragged the popular musician and former mayor of Atoyac, Rosendo Radilla, off a bus along the Costa Grande highway just north of Acapulco. His son, also named Rosendo and then 11, remembers that when the musician asked the “guachos” (local vernacular for federal troops) why he was being detained he was told that it was for “writing corridos (ballads) about Lucio Cabanas,” a rebel Atoyac schoolteacher whose Party of the Poor was then roaming the sierras that soar above the Costa Grande. Rosendo Radilla never saw his father again.

This past July 7th, 35 years after the elder Radilla vanished off the face of the earth, Rosendo and his sister Tita sat in a San Jose, Costa Rica courtroom as the Inter-American Human Rights Court (CIDH) opened hearings into their father’s long-ago forced disappearance. The hearing was the first time an international court has agreed to put Mexico’s “dirty war” (1974-78) on trial.

To be sure, the corridista was not the only local to have been disappeared during the military’s long reign of terror. Families in Atoyac count more than 600 campesinos taken by security forces and never seen again. Acosta Chaparo was later convicted of dumping the bodies of 143 prisoners from Mexican air force Israeli Arava 201s into the Pacific Ocean near Acapulco. The names of 121 other victims were attached to the Radilla case before the CIDH.

Even Mexico’s Interior Secretary Fernando Gomez Mont, who oversees internal security, concedes that the military was probably complicit in Rosendo’s disappearance, but argues that the CIDH has no jurisdiction in the case — the court did not exist in 1974 and Mexico only recognized its competence in human rights matters in 1998.

At any rate, Gomez Mont insisted before the court, Mexico has made great advances in human rights since 1974. “That was another Mexico,” he said. “Mexico is different now.”

Or is it?

Another health insurance scam

-
2

By Tim Redmond

Fascinating interview this morning on Forum with Wendell Potter, former PR person for CIGNA insurance who has now become an outspoken critic of the health-insurance industry.

One little nugget that I hadn’t known about:

Most publicly traded companies worry about their price-to-earnings ratio and some other basic financial data. The health insurance industry has another indicator: The medical benefits ratio. That’s the percentage of premiums that get paid out in benefits.

Fifteen years ago, the last time the Democrats tried health-care reform, the typical insurance company had a 95 percent ratio — that is, 95 cents out of every premium dollar was paid back out in benefits. Now the big companies are down below 80 percent — and every time that number starts to creep up, their stock price tumbles.

And there are, of course, only two ways to keep that ratio low: Raise insurance rates, and reduce benefits. That’s one key reason why rates keep going up — and why the insurance companies try so hard to avoid paying benefits.

And it’s another key reason why no solution that involves the private insurance industry will ever solve the nation’s health-care crisis.

Some more thoughts on Daly

-
29

A few more thoughts on Chris Daly:

1. What’s with all the stories that say that “Daly moved his family” to the suburbs? Isn’t it possible (or more likely) that his wife, Sarah Low Daly, wanted to be close to her parents, and that SHE moved with the kids to the suburbs, and that Chris couldn’t talk her out of it and is now stuck with a situation that’s personally unpleasant and politically a mess?

2. Everyone who is in elected office in San Francisco ought to send his or her kids to the local public schools. Daly included. (I make exceptions only for people who have religious reasons to seek parochial schools.)

3. That said, Daly has about one year left in office. I suspect he’ll spend it the way he’s spent the last nine – with close to the best attendance record on the board, showing up at hearings, committee meetings and community meetings (his chief critic, Michela Alioto-Pier, has the worst attendance record on the board). At that point, he has to make a decision: If he wants to continue in any sort of elected office in San Francisco, he needs settle this issue with his family. I don’t envy him that choice, given what his wife clearly wants, but that’s political life in the big city.

4. Have all of the folks who so quickly call on Daly to “step down” have any idea what sort of pro-downtown loser Newsom would appoint to replace him? Rob Black, maybe? Ick.

Why Nevius really annoys me

-
21

By Tim Redmond

I have to add a personal note to the Chuck Nevius bullshit. Check out this little nugget from his column:

Daly would not respond to interview requests, but he has fallen into the pattern of thousands who have come before him. Idealistic, well-educated young people move into town, rent an apartment and become champions of social causes. After five years or so, when they discover that they might like to own a home, raise kids or live in a place where they don’t have to step over a homeless camper on their doorstep on the way to work, they realize they will have to move out of town.

You’re talking about me here, Chuck. Me and all my friends. And their friends. There are thousands of us — and your description is completely wrong.

I arrived in San Francisco in 1981 as an idealistic, well-educated young person. (I mean, more-or-less well educated — I have an economics degree from Wesleyan University, but I got a couple of Ds in my major and narrowly won my diploma with absolutely no academic honors or recognitions.)

I rented an apartment and did my best to become a “champion of social causes,” whatever that is.

And now, far more than five years later, I am raising two kids in the city, and I’m not going anywhere.

San Francisco has some great public schools and is a great place to raise kids. My son and daughter make friends in school who come from every ethnic group imaginable — but also from every socio-economic class, which is also really important. Everyone they meet isn’t just like them. You can’t get that experience in the leafy suburbs where Nevius lives.

Sure, my kids and I see homeless people on the streets almost every day. We usually give them money. Sometimes Michael, my son, dips into his (extremely modest) allowance and gives it away. (And sometimes, when I’m crabby or harried and I tell a panhandler that I don’t have any spare change, Michael pipes up and says “yes you do, Daddy. Give it to the man.”)

We talk constantly about why there are people living on the streets, how horrible it is, and how important it is for people like us not only to help out with money but to help by getting politically active and trying to change things. Michael is ten years old; he goes to political debates, submits questions and knows how to write to a supervisor or state legislator. San Francisco is a big city; it’s a lesson for kids in social and economic justice, every day. I think that’s priceless.

So do thousands and thousands of other San Francisco families, some of them homeowners, some of them renters, all of them living here because we still care about “social causes.” And because we love our city.

Chuck Nevius should spend a little more time in town; he might meet some folks like me.

I know Chris Daly well enough to know that he loves this city, too. His personal and family life is none of my business; I just wish him well. And I think that, unlike certain other city officials, he’s actually spending most of his time here, where I think he really wants to be.

The ultimate Newsom web site

-
0

By Tim Redmond

Okay, I have no idea who did this, but it’s wonderful — pretty much a complete compilation of all of the problems with Newsom’s record.

Prison Report: The magical zip gun

-
9

By Just A Guy

Editors Note: Just A Guy is an imate in a California state prison. His blogs run twice a week, typically on Mondays and Thursdays, although it’s sometimes hard to communicate from behind bars. You can read his last post here.

I am going to write about the budget deal and cuts to education, corrections and program spending. But I have to talk first about what’s happening at California State Prison, Solano yet again: The magic roaming zip gun.

About ten days ago officers in Building 6 “discovered” a note saying that “the blacks have a zip gun and three shells.” The entire institution was put on modified program and a search was conducted of Building 6, but no sip gun was found. Imagine that!

This morning we learned that Building 22 on Facility 4 is going to be searched because there’s a zip gun there now. We don’t know all the details yet, but do know that all programs have been shut down — except, of course, the programs that make money for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, like the Prison Industry Authority and the Substance Abuse Program, which receives money from the federal government.

This is at least the fifth time since March, 2008 that the magical roaming zip gun has made its presence known. The fifth time that programs beneficial to the inmates have been shut down — and likely the fifth time that no zip gun will be found. You can’t find what doesn’t exist.

It’s rather like the state passing a budget cutting $9 billion from education and only $1.2 billion from corrections. Wait! The schools will get the money back when times are better. Of course, by the times things are better, a lot of these could-have-been educated people will be in prison as they resorted to crime to make a living without a degree.

WiFi at City Hall — but no electricity

-
9

By Tim Redmond

Okay, so we finally have WiFi at City Hall. This is something some of us have been talking about for years; at one point, Alex Clemens and I even offered to buy and install the routers ourselves. The first step is a pilot project, currently limited to the Board of Supervisors Chamber, but it’s a start. The wireless has unlimited bandwidth at 54G and sppeds of up to 10 megabits.

Only one problem: Unless you’re a reporter in the press box (which has limited space), there’s no way to plug in your laptop. And if you want to live-blog or post video from a board meeting, you’re going to run out of battery time –meetings often go for many more hours than even the best batteries can handle.

Kimo Crossman has asked about the possibility of using one of the electrical outlets in the room; here’s what he got back, from Nilka Julio, administrative deputy director for the board:

We strive to keep everyone safe, including minimizing tripping hazards for the public and employees.
We want to avoid any disruption for the Board, public and staff who attend the meetings and that includes, no one other than the Supervisors having access to the outlets in the well in the Board Chamber or Committee room or the press having access to the outlets in the press box.

Kimo’s response:

A simple policy change to the more contemporary- “all cords should be taped” usually solves the problem.

The SF Library has found this to be a reasonable compromise.

I encourage you to walk around the main branch and see how many people need to plug in their laptops for usage – also when they run on batteries the screens are dimmed to save power so readability goes down.

Look at all the people who plug in their laptops at SFO Airport

Why not try it? that is what Pilots are for – right? How many people are binging their laptops to BOS meetings anyhow?

I get Julio’s point — you can’t have cords running all over the floor. But there has to be a way to solve this, and an easy one comes to mind. The city can purchase a nice extension cord and a power strip (about $40 for the package at Cole Hardware, and I bet Kimo would split the cost with me if it’s too much for the cash-strapped city budget). Plug the cord into the wall, tape it down (I’ve got a full roll of gaffer’s tape I’ll donate to the cause) and set up an area at the back of the chambers where laptop users can plug in. The back row of seats would probably work fine.

Every political convention I’ve been to in the past five years has set aside an area on the floor for bloggers using this exact technique.

I was unable to reach Julio by phone this afternoon, but I’ll keep trying. A lot of things that government seeks to do are incredibly hard; this one’s incredibly easy.

And once we have that settled, we can work to get the WiFi extended to the Light Courts, where reporters work on Election Night.

Editor’s Notes

-
0

Tredmond@sfbg.com

All the great sci-fi and comic book movies have some sort of larger social metaphor. Robocop, one of my all-time favorites, was really about the privatization of public resources. Our hero gets mangled in a firefight because Detroit turned its police department over to Omni Consumer Products Corp., which cut staffing to boost the bottom line and there’s no backup available.

So when I was editing this week’s cover package on the battle over health insurance, I couldn’t help thinking about The Incredibles. See, Mr. Incredible is this great superhero, but liability lawsuits force him to retire and he winds up as a claims clerk in an insurance company, where he sits around all day stamping "denied" on health insurance claims. Then he gets in trouble for quietly telling customers how they can appeal.

I’ve always imagined that real health insurance offices look exactly like that. People sit around all day and get paid to make sure that other people don’t get health care. And if they deny enough claims, they get a nice bonus. If they approve too many claims or help the poor customers appeal, they get fired.

The thing is, the bonus part is true. Many insurance companies pay their staff based on how much they have done to keep costs down — that is, to make sure expensive medical treatments are denied. I’ve been through this. The medical insurance won’t pay for the anesthesia my son needs for complicated oral surgery because the procedure happens in a dental office. The dental insurance won’t pay because the drugs are administered by an anesthesiologist, who is a doctor, not a dentist. Someone is smiling in both the medical and dental insurance offices; they just saved $1,000. Bonus on the way.

Sound familiar? I bet you’ve been through it too.

This is why the only way health insurance is going to get better is if the profit is taken out of it. And why it’s absolutely nuts that the insurance industry is still considered part of the solution.

The city budget didn’t come out well. The cops, the mayor’s press office, the mayor’s 311 call center, the places where there is still a lot of bloat, saw no real cuts. Public health and human services, which have already been cut to the bone, got hacked even more. And there is no concrete plan to even try to raise new revenue this fall.

There are some lessons here, and let me start with an obvious one. The final deal went down with two people — Sups. John Avalos and David Chiu, both new to the board — in the room with the mayor’s staff. Same thing in Sacramento — five people cut the deal. There’s got to be a better way. *

Prison report: The loss of hope

-
11

By Just A Guy

Editors note: Just A Guy is a prisoner in a California state prison. His reports run twice a week, typically on Mondays and Fridays, although the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation sometimes makes it hard to communicate in a timely manner. You can read some of his past posts here and here.
A few days ago, Walter Cronkite died at the age of 92. At one time he was considered the most trusted man in American, which is saying a lot in today’s world – particularly for a newsman.

There was a time in this country when we believed our leaders, our media, and our inalienable right to be the foundation of hope. There was a time when hope was defined by a sense of community and helping others. There was a time when helping others was the bond that tied us together, inseparable as Americans, even if our social, economic and religious beliefs were diametrically opposed.

Yes, we have progressed significantly in areas like religious freedom, gay rights and race equality. But we have regressed in the application of community toward crime and addiction, because they have become a business.

I would have loved to talk with Mr. Cronkite and heard his views on the institutionalization of California and this country he so fervently believed in. I don’t know much about Walter Cronkite, but I suspect the man who eschewed the war in Vietnam and who tirelessly promoted space research would condemn our leadership and our citizens for their inability to recognize the loss of what has made the country great: Hope.

Why the budget deal really sucks

-
2

By Tim Redmond

Calitics, which has done an outstanding job covering the state budget mess from the beginning, has the best line on the rotten deal that the Big Five reached yesterday:

Whoever cares the least about the outcome wins.

If you don’t care whether children get health care, whether the elderly, blind and disabled die in their homes, whether prisoners rot in modified Public Storage units, whether students get educated… you have a very good chance of getting a budget that reflects that.

If on the other hand you claim to care, you will concede and concede and concede so you can at least play the responsible part and say at the end that you didn’t completely eliminate the social safety net, though what you did get in return will be totally unclear.

And you will do it every single time.

On Forum this morning, the talk of course was all about the budget, and of course some of the callers were curious about the prospects for a state Constitutional Convention to rewrite the rules for approving a budget. The California Democratic Party is already on board with eliminating the two-thirds requirement, which is a fine thing and may wind up on the ballot soon. The Constitutional Convention is a bit more tricky.

See, the problem is how you decide who gets to be in the room; who will be the delegates to this convention? And one of the very bad ideas out there is to choose the delegates more or less at random, the same way we choose jurors.

What you will wind up with, I guarantee, is a majority of people who don’t want to raise taxes.

A large part of what has to happen in California is the education of the population, and that’s where the Democratic Party and the other stakeholders ought to be taking the lead. Perhaps the candidates for governor and the senior elected officials can all help raise money for a major statewide campaign explaining to people how the cut of the vehicle license fee, the lack of an oil-severance tax, the corporate loopholes and Prop. 13 have led directly to the cuts that are preventing qualified kids from getting a college education, preventing sick people from getting care, destroying public schools and the like.

Ever few years the Dems, the unions and the other activists have to raise big chunks of money to fight some ballot measure or another. How about, say, $50 million now to try to show the voters what’s really going on, so we don’t have to keep doing this dance over and over and over?

The SF budget battle continues

-
0

By Tim Redmond

The full Board of Supervisors votes on the San Francisco budget tomorrow (Tuesday), and there are still some serious issues on the table. Among other things, the budget doesn’t include adequate money for public financing of the upcoming supervisorial and mayoral elections, and that’s big deal: Public financing is a crown jewel in San Francisco’s political reform efforts. The Public Defender’s Office is way underfunded (which is silly since criminal defendants are guaranteed legal representation, and hiring outside counsel is more expensive than funding the PD). Key social services are still taking a huge hit. There are still plans for 1,500 layoffs of city employees this fall — and that means a lot of what people depend on San Francisco for won’t get done. (Among the most painful: The loss of recreation directors, who are mentors for hundreds of kids.)

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi wants to find another $4 million to $6 million to fund public financing and some other services — and he’s looking to take that from a few areas that haven’t exactly been sharing the pain. For example, thanks to a push from Budget Committee Chair John Avalos, the Fire Department actually took some cuts. But the Police Department didn’t. While the Service Employees International Union Local 1021 gave back $40 million and is facing 1,500 layoffs, the Police Officers Association gave back nothing.

The problem with that, of course — besides the fact that it isn’t fair — is that the next time the city faces a budget crisis, which is probably going to be next year, the firefighters won’t want to give up a penny. Hey, they took the hit last time, and there was no parity from other public-safety areas. And if you think Local 1021 is going to be coming to the table with more cuts, you’re crazy.

So Mirkarimi told me he thinks that between the police, the Hotel Tax funding for the Convention and Visitors Bureau and the big arts organizations (the opera and symphony, whose patrons by and large can afford to buy tickets without as much city subsidy) there’s enough to fill some critical gaps in the budget.

It’s going to be tricky — Avalos and Board President David Chiu negotiated the budget deal with the mayor, and it will be hard for them to push at this late date for more changes. But Avalos told me he’s “open to” Mirkarimi’s proposals and will give them all due consideration. So, by the way, did Sup. Bevan Dufty: “I’m open to it,” he told me. “I have some concerns about the budget and will listen to any ideas.”

So the budget battle still isn’t over — and tomorrow’s meeting will be fascinating.

Problems with the BART police plan

-
1

By Tim Redmond

The final draft of a civilian oversight plan for the BART police is headed for the full BART Board — and while it’s a whole lot better than what we have now (and BART director Tom Radulovich praises it as “the second strongest police oversight system in the Bay Area”), there are some distinctly funky things about it that the board needs to revisit.

The proposal would create a police auditor, who would investigate complaints of BART Police misconduct and recommend discipline. The auditor would report to an 11-member civilian oversight board, with each of the nine BART directors appointing one member, the full BART board appointing an at-large member — and the BART police unions appointing the final member.

That’s unprecedented, in my knowledge. I don’t think any police union anywhere in California gets to name a representative to the police oversight panel. That part of the plan has got to go.

The other problem: The final decision on discipline will be up to the BART Police chief — and if the chief (as is highly likely) refuses ever to impose effective discipline, then the auditor will be stifled.

Yes, the auditor can appeal — the the general manager, who hires the chief. Not much luck there. Beyond that, it would require a two-thirds vote of the civilian oversight board, AND a two-thirds vote of the entire BART Board, to overrule the chief and impose discipline on a cop.

That sort of supermajority requirement hasn’t worked very well at the state-budget level, and there’s a good reason: It means that a small minority (four of the 11 oversight board members, four of the nine BART Board members) can block any action.

And let’s face it — the BART Board is not a bastion of progressive thought. Just getting a majority of those folks (or their appointees) ever to agree to crack down on police misconduct will be a tough job. Getting two-thirds of both bodies is going to be almost impossible.

And since state law pretty much mandates that all police disciplinary procedures are kept secret, there won’t be any public pressure in any individual cases.

Oddly enough, BART — which is fighting bitterly to stop Assemblymember Tom Ammiano’s bill mandating tough police oversight and has got the measure bottled up — now needs state legislation to make its weaker plan work. BART isn’t currently authorized to hold disciplinary hearings or impose discipline on rank-and-file employees. So this whole issue is going to come up before the state Legislature anyway.

Which means Ammiano will have a chance to push for stronger reforms. Perhaps he could offer a few amendments to the enabling legislation that BART is proposing.

And right now, Ammiano’s office isn’t in the mood to accept the current BART plan. “It’s as if the whole Oscar Grant thing never happened,” Quintin Mecke, Ammiano’s press spokesperson, told me.

This is the way the budget deal ends — badly

-
1

By Tim Redmond

We all know that the main reason we don’t have a budget deal is that everyone — but particularly the governor and the Republicans — wants to escape from this mess with his or her political hide intact. The GOP members all signed a moronic pledge never to raise taxes, and the ones who wind up voting for even minor tax hikes get slammed in their home districts. The Democrats don’t want to cut education or health or other essential services, but have been far more willing to compromise. The governor just wants to look tough.

Seriously — he just wants to look tough, and the longer the standoff continues, the more he gets this sort of press, and the more his abysmal poll numbers go up.

So now the talks are still stalled and the state is losing $25 million a day just to make a washed-up action-movie star happy with his image.

Even after the “big five” — the leaders of the Legislature and the guv — come to a deal, it’s no sure thing. Because in the past, all of the Republicans have refused to vote for deals that their own leadership and their own governor have put together.

And some Democrats may not vote for it, either. Senator Leland Yee of San Francisco told me he won’t vote for any cuts to education. “The Republicans have drawn a line and said no new taxes,” he told me. “We need to draw a line and say no more cuts to health care and education.”

In fact, in the famous late-night session that almost led to a budget deal last week, Yee was holding out, refusing to go along with the cuts until State Sen. President Darrell Steinberg called the lobbyists from the teacher’s unions at 11:30 pm and told them to tell Yee it was okay to accept the leadership plan.

Yee, of course, wants to be able to say after the dirty deal is done that he refused to accept the cuts. So do a lot of the other Dems — but at some point, most of them will bit the bullet and accept some kind of bad deal to end the IOUs and keep the state afloat. Yee wants to see the GOP take some of the heat, too: “If the governor wants us to vote for a bad budget deal, he needs to make the Republicans vote for it, too,” he said.

Which also won’t happen.

So the most likely outcome is that the Democrats will be the ones voting for a shitty deal that screws all of the traditional Democratic constituencies.

I’m sick of being held hostage by Orange County. It’s time to split up this state.

Newsom figures out what a tax is (sort of)

-
2

By Tim Redmond

This is a fun little gotcha moment from the SF Appeal. Newsom loves to say that he balanced the SF budget withour raising taxes — but then he admits that all those fees he raised (to avoid raising taxes) were actually … taxes.

Prison report: It’s all secret

-
13

By Just A Guy
71609beef2.jpg
“Roast beef” (or so they say): It’s what’s for dinner in the state prisons (Photo by Just A Guy)

Something that successful businesses, successful people and all types of successful organizations do to gain the trust of employees, associates and citizens is to operate with transparency. Transparency opens the door to trust and keeps it ajar, as those that are able to see that an entity operates within a framework of transparency has no hidden agendas or ulterior motives that destroy(s) trust, which is the foundation of any successful relationship, be it personal, corporate or governmental.

As I watched the news last night, the reporter was discussing California’s budget deficit and I was startled to hear the reporter say that the “big five” — the governor and four Legislative leaders — realized that there were cuts that had to be made. Are you telling me that the leadership of California has not discovered that there are going to have to be cuts — detrimental reductions in myriad programs to make up for the $26 billion budget gap? I’m hoping it was just bad reporting!

But what really stunned me is when I learned that the big five were meeting behind closed doors.

Considering the state of the state and the multitude of the problems that our state leaders in the governor’s office, legislature and all public constituencies face, you would think that an attempt would be made to build trust in this state government that is already the least trusted of all 50 states.

Trust can not be built without transparency in government. Yet the budget negotiations are taking place behind closed doors and to my knowledge no one is making any waves or questioning the lack of visibility about our state’s fiscal future. This is appalling!

Also, this is a microcosm of the how the people of California have been deceived by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the California Correctional Peace Officers Association and the politicians via the lies that are given to the media and reported as fact. There is no transparency to the farce that is the institutionalization of California.

Just as the big five are hiding the budget negotiations with your money (behind your back), those that are responsible are making sure that California’s prison machine is well oiled. And they are not telling the public the whole truth. They hide behind the veil of security about the truth of the failure of CDCR.

Until you, John Q, start to question your elected government and demand transparency, you will be subject to the whims of mediocrity that your apathy has endeavored to strengthen.

There’s a book called The Speed of Trust by Stephen M. R. Covey the our government may do well to read.

Until Monday, this is Just A Guy, keeping it really real…

More free stuff: Great street art

-
2

By Michael Krimper

Some of the most innovative street art and inspired graffiti in the world calls San Francisco home. For those adventurous city dwellers whose definition of art is not circumscribed by its state of legality, there are thousands of voices that grace the city’s public spaces. I compiled a five-point list of some of my favorites as a crash course in street art exploration.

Defenestration Building – A massive fire burned out the Hugo Hotel — a four-story tenement on the corner of 6th and Howard streets — in the mid 1980s. The building quietly rotted for nearly a decade until artist Brian Goggin decided to transform the mini-behemoth SRO into a jarring public art installation. We now know the Hugo Hotel as the “defenestration” building. The name derives from a surreal picture of street-ravaged furniture desperately leaping in suspension from the skinny windows and roof. But it also means a gesture of throwing out, a spiritual act of release and possible renewal. The Defenestration building still is one of the city’s most dynamic public artworks, due in large part to its diligent curators, the legendary graffiti crew Inner City Phame (ICP). Over the years ICP has demonstrated an incredible talent for beautifying the Defenestration walls with layer after layer of spell-bounding murals. This past winter, Santa Claus and scantily clad elvish ladies bookended intricate Christmas ornamented names. Last year the crew painted a compelling memorial to the late Barbara Bode Falcon, muse and former wife of the eccentric comic book artist and inspirational source for graffiti styled illustration Vaughn Bode. And they’re probably painting something completely new right now as you’re reading this article.

Bluxome Alley — The art corridor lining the capillaries of Bluxome Alley (located between 5th and 6th off Townsend) just entered a new evolutionary stage during its formal grand opening last Saturday. Now officially baptized “Kommunitas”, the allery (alley gallery) strives towards “spreading the revolution one word at a time,” at least according to the domain site. Besides its activist mission statement, what makes Kommunitas different from your typical allery is a curious metal sign posted on the entrances outlining the guidelines to gain permission to paint. Kommunitas’ property manager, Tardon Feathered tells me in simple terms his reasons for opening the walls to artists. “[I] decided that good art looked better than bad tags, in an alley which we could not shut down the tagging.” In turn, the dusty walls, thick windows, pipelines, poles, air ducts, staircase banisters, and all other industrial furniture suddenly lose their grayness and become canvases for mesmerizing street art.

Mac Dre Memorial — Many a surprising mural abounds in SoMa’s seemingly desolate alley ways. One of the most spectacular is an enormous ICP production on the corner of Langton and Harrison in dedication to the life and work of the late Andre Hicks, better known as Mac Dre. The artists painted a monolithic memorial to pay tribute to the Vallejo-born rapper widely credited with founding the hyphy movement. On the Langton side of the warehouse, grandiose “rest in peace” block letters burst forth in all caps, floating just above a double headed thizz facing Dre. The two heads exhibit the antagonistic elements of fire and water, expressing Hicks’ versatile flow and style, combining fiery braggadocio with outlandishly cool comedy.

Oak Parking Lot — In the current social climate where rapid gentrification sterilizes neighborhoods while corporate minded policy limits artistic innovation, very few downtown spaces still allow graffiti to blossom. Nonetheless, a secluded parking lot on Oak St. just north of Market boasts some of the most vibrant, intricately woven murals in the heart of the city’s daily grind. Illegal productions elegantly grace the walls, blending seamlessly with commissioned pieces (maybe). But even if you can’t appreciate the subtle sophistication of spontaneously erupting tags, the heavily caked over walls still tote some finely crafted murals. Visit the endangered species before its imminent distinction.

Lilac Mural Project — The Lilac Mural Project, a two-block stretch between 24th and 26th Streets, is a fresh addition to staple Mission district alleries (and tourist favorites) Balmy and Clarion. But unlike its moderately bloated neighbors, Lilac possesses a youthful energy in anticipation of its open ended future. The murals gracing the walls oscillate between carefully thought out productions, whimsical tags, hastily spayed throw-ups, and the great possibility of empty space. Most recently, a old school styled memorial of New York graffiti luminary, Iz The Whiz (whose untimely death was caused by a medical condition related to breathing in an excess of aerosol spray), blessed the corridor.

Editor’s Notes

-
0

tredmond@sfbg.com

An angry reader called me years ago to complain about one of my columns, and before she hung up she informed me that "all you radical hippies want is free drugs, free love, and free lunch."

I couldn’t possibly have put it better. Especially the free lunch.

But it’s funny: As a society, Americans these days are almost afraid of things that are free. If it doesn’t cost money, it must be a scam. Or crappy. Or illegal. Nobody just gives anything away any more.

In fact, Douglas Rushkoff has written an entire book about the problem, called Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How We Can Take it Back (2009, Random House). In an interview with Cecile Lepage in this special issue (which provides dozens of great tips on things you can do and get for free), Rushkoff describes the problem:

"People prefer hiring a person to babysit for their child rather than accepting a favor from the old lady down the street — because if you accept, what social obligation have you incurred? What if she wants to join you at your next barbecue? What if she now wants to be your friend? So now we all have to work more to get money to buy things that we used to just exchange freely with each other."

Of course, if we all gave more away free, we wouldn’t need anywhere near as much money, which would change the whole way our consumer-driven society functions. People could work less and have more free time (say, to volunteer, or help babysit the neighbor’s kid). The financial institutions that so dominate our society (and that so seriously fucked up the world economy) would have less of a role in how people live their lives.

I know, I know: Ain’t no free lunch. Not in America, not in 2009. But it’s a thought.

So everyone in town was talking last week about the City College indictments. As one local wag put it to me, only partly in jest: "These folks must be guilty as sin if Kamala Harris actually indicted them." We don’t know much about their guilt or innocence before trial, but we do know that (a) our district attorney is mighty careful about filing charges in political corruption cases, so this isn’t just a set of allegations that will quickly disappear, and (b) there has been an awful lot of corruption in the local community college for a long time, and this is probably just the tip of the iceberg.

I wouldn’t be surprised, when all is said and done, if the reign of former chancellor Phil Day starts to look like that of former school superintendent Bill Rojas — a cesspool of sleaze that could take years to clean up.

And yet, college trustee Lawrence Wong was quoted in the Chronicle praising Day and calling him "probably the best chancellor we’ve had." Amazing, but not surprising. In fact, Wong and two of his colleagues — Trustee Natalie Berg and former trustee Rodel Rodis — backed up Day over and over again when he played funny with money, pissed off community groups, and acted disdainful of any criticism.

Rodis lost his re-election bid last fall, although Berg somehow survived. Wong is up in 2010. The reformers are slowly gaining control of the board, and the indictments show just how badly that was needed. *

In Mexico, the Dinosaurs return

-
0

By John Ross

714dinos.jpg

MEXICO CITY (July 16th) — Nine years ago, on a sultry July morning, Mexicans woke up and discovered to their great amazement that the Dinosaur that had hunkered down at the foot of their beds for 71 years was gone. This July 6th, when Mexicans rose in the morning, the Dinosaur was back.

In the famous short poem by Augusto Monterroso, the Dinosaur is the PRI — the Institutional Revolutionary Party — once the longest-ruling political dynasty in the known universe that controlled the destiny of Mexicans from the cradle to the grave for seven interminable decades until it was dislodged from power by the right-wing PAN party in the July 2000 presidential elections. In its unslakable thirst for power, the PRI committed unspeakable crimes against the Mexican peoples, stealing elections from the most humble city hall to the presidential palace, jailing and torturing and executing those who stood in its way, and emptying out public treasuries in an unmatched kleptocracy that was a legend throughout Latin America, “the perfect dictatorship” Latin American novelist Mario Vargas Llosa once dubbed it (for which the PRI had him tossed out of the country).

“Have we Mexicans lost our memories and our minds?” asks Sylvia Insulza from behind the counter of her newspaper dispensary in the old quarter of the capital. Tears of frustration crystallize in the corners of her eyes.

The depth and breadth of the PRI victory July 5th is nothing short of stunning. From a distant third-place finish in the 2006 presidential fiasco in which the rightist PAN stole the election from Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) and his left-wing PRD party by .57% of the popular vote, the PRI (“proven experience and a new attitude” is its current campaign slogan) took 37% of the total ballots cast, nearly doubling its votes three years back, and taking control of congress for the first time since 1997. The once-upon-a-time ruling party’s alliance with the so-called Mexican Green Environmental Party (PVEM – see sidebar below “The Green PRI”) will give it 259 seats out of 500 in the lower house, an absolute majority. In nine out of 31 states, the PRI won every office up for grabs — federal congressional representatives, local congresses, and municipal officials, a “carro completo” or “full car” in the Institutionals’ curious lexicon.

The Dinosaurs also proved triumphant in five out of six governors’ races, winning two statehouses in which the PAN had resided for 12 years. Only in the northern border state of Sonora, where the PRI governor was seen as complicit in the tragic incineration of 48 babies in a Hermosillo day care center a month before the election, was the PAN able to squeeze out a victory in an election in which the PAN and PRI candidates were cousins.

Moreover, the PRI won cities like Naucalpan, an upper middle class Mexico City suburb the right-wingers have controlled since the 1980s, and the nation’s second city, Guadalajara, which the PAN has owned since 1995. In alliance with the Mexican Green Environmental Party, the PRI won its first elected office in Mexico City since 1994. Although the left PRD maintains control of the nation’s capital, the Party of the Aztec Sun does so by a greatly reduced margin. Whereas the PRD registered 51% of the vote in Mexico City in 2006, three years later it weighs in with just 29%.

But Sylvia’s tears of frustration may soon dry. Whether the Dinosaurs are really back or just staying overnight (in Jurassic time) is not yet clear. Mid-term elections are referendums on the sitting president and his administration’s management of the country and July 5th represented a crushing vote of no confidence in Felipe Calderon on whose watch the economy has tumbled into freefall — “growth” in 2009 will measure a negative 8%, the worst slide since the Great Depression of 1929-32. Calderon, who campaigned as the “President of Employment,” has presided over the loss of 2,000,000 jobs. The president’s ill-advised war on the drug cartels has soaked the country in blood — more than 12,000 lives have been lost — and fueled corruption and human rights abuses on the part of the military and the police. Calderon’s panic-driven handling of this spring’s Swine Flu “PAN-demic” kicked the bricks out from under the tourist industry, the nation’s third-largest source of dollars, and his arrogant imposition of candidates in the July 5th vote-taking angered and turned many in his own party against him.

Prison report: Special edition

-
5

By Just A Guy

Editors note: Just A Guy is an inmate in a California state prison. His blogs typically appear Mondays and Thursdays. However, he sent over a special report today on a recent incident in Solano State Prison.

Let me tell you where your tax dollars are going — something the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation doesn’t tell you about, and its secretary, Matt Cate, and spokesperson Lance Corcoran neglect to tell you about in their disingenuous double-speak about inmates, prison, rehabilitation and spending.

Right now the California state prison in Solano is on modified program because on one of the four yards that prison, an anonymous note was found in the mail by a corrections officer. It said:

“The blacks have a zip gun and three shells.”

Because of this anonymous note, the normal program for the entire institution has been modified so that the inmates get no yard activities because the staff has been redirected to search the building in which this unsubstantiated note was discovered.

Now, in normal investigative law-enforcement practices, would it be standard operating procedure to redirect significant resources and funding based on unsubstantiated information? I highly doubt it.

Bear in mind that this is the third time since April, 2008 that an anonymous note has been discovered indicating that a zip gun was in the possession of an inmate. In April 2008, the entire institution was searched, resulting in lots of overtime for the guards, but a zip gun was never found. In the second instance, a similar note was discovered but no search was performed — but this was likely a function of senior administration in Sacramento not allowing the massive expenditure of resources and loss of revenue (from the Prison Industry Authority) that a search causes. In this most recent instance, CDCR administration is making sure that revenue-generating functions like PIA are still going strong, which is indicative of how seriously the note was taken by the administration.

Think about what the alleged anonymous note said:

“three shells.”

Now, I find it very unlikely than an inmate would us the word “shells.” We would much more likely say “bullets.” It seems to me that a person who would use that terminology has either law-enforcement or military experience, which supports the argument that it was a staff member who planted the anonymous note. I would be curious to know whether or not CDCR will try and lift fingerprints from the note to see whether or not an inmate actually touched the paper — or are they afraid of what the fingerprint results may turn up?

At the end of the day, the CDCR has a long-standing history of only instituting measures detrimental to the inmate population when unsubstantiated and unverified information crosses the staff’s desk. Such information serves their purpose, which is to redirect staff and implement overtime situations that are beneficial to CDCR employees. That information becomes gospel.

Remember the swine flu? CDCR discontinued visiting for fear of spreading the disease — yet continued transfers between institutions and had every other program running, specifically the PIA — which, of course, makes CDCR money.

I would really like to see Sen. Mark Leno or Assemblymember Tom Ammiano or some media outlet call CSP Solano and question their “modified” program. After all, it’s your money that’s being wasted.

Hmm … I wonder if they could have paid the salary of a grade-school teacher for a year with the money that was wasted on this one “modified” program?

1...707172...116Page 71 of 116

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