Tim Redmond

Peskin takes on BART

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By Tim Redmond

BART’s a system close to meltdown, with a strike possibly looming, a police scandal still lingering and now the San Francisco Airport furious about a surcharge that’s forcing SFO employees to take a shuttle bus into work from Millbrae.

It’s also a political opportunity for somebody to run against James Fang, the last remaining Republican in San Francisco elected office, a BART Board member since 1990, an opponent of effective police oversight and reform — and a big supporter of the BART airport surcharge.

Aaron Peskin, chair of the Democratic County Central Committee, has introduced a resolution blasting BART for the surcharge and blaming it in part on Fang:

Whereas; BART Director James Fang, San Francisco’s only elected Republican, proposed and championed the surcharge as a revenue stream for BART. A BART Director, not subject to term limits, has represented San Francisco since 1990, and is the only San Francisco BART Director not to call for the resignation of General Manager, Dorothy Dugger in wake of the mishandling of the Oscar Grant BART Police shooting on January 1, 2009;

It calls for an end to the surcharge for airport employees — and take a bit of a swipe at a certain local elected board member:

San Francisco Democratic Central Committee supports the Airport in demanding BART reverse the inequitable and punitive surcharge at San Francisco International Airport. The SFDCCC asks San Francisco BART Directors, elected to serve, to lead the way in waiving the punitive fee hurting many minimum wage workers and their families and reexamining the financial relationship with SFO, as BART to the Airport continues to grow in ridership and popularity.

And it suggests that the campaign to elect someone other than Fang in 2010 is well underway. Can you say BART Director Aaron Peskin?

Prison report: The Machine rolls on ….

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By Just A Guy

Editors note: Just a Guy is a prisoner in a California state prison. His blogs appear Mondays and Thursdays. You can read his last post here.

It’s a travesty that California is willing to remove so much money from the state university system that CSU is not going to accept any new applications for the Spring, 2010 semester. And the governor has ordered that state workers not go to work the first three Fridays of every month and all state court houses will be closed one day a month.

Is it just me, or are the Legislature, the governor and the media all insane? What happened to early releases of nonviolent/nonserious offenders and illegal immigrants being deported? Wasn’t this supposed to be save more than $1 billion? All I have heard is that they are taking away our Friday visits and plan on feeding us only one hot meal a day and two sack lunches. I’m sure that cutting us down to two days of visiting a week is a sure sign of the rehabilitation experts represented by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

On a positive note I read yesterday that 89 technical parole violators with less than 60 days remaining on their sentences were released in an effort to help with the budget. Wahoo! Eighty-nine people. What a dent I’m sure that makes. Maybe they can use the money they just saved to send a few people to college next spring.

I keep saying it over and over – all the people that California is talking about releasing are going to get out anyway. So what difference does it really make if they get out six months early? I’m sure the kids who wanted to go to school this spring (and their parents) won’t mind if some inmates who were going to get out this year go home a little earlier.

So, who is it that really cares? The California Correctional Peace Officers Association, CDCR and the politicians who see it as political suicide to release prisoners. But the real murder is of your children’s educational opportunities.

The machine rolls on …

Ken Garcia’s wilderness

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By Tim Redmond

Wow, and environmental issue that Ken Garcia can actually get excited about! The Examiner’s house curmudgeon, who loves to beat up on progressives, is outrages that the supervisors might consider putting parking meters in Golden Gate Park:

Our fabled greenbelt is about to become a money belt. Our forested treasure is about to be turned into a treasure chest.

The idea of sacrificing the beauty of Golden Gate Park to feed the fiscal hole created in part by the mayor and the board is ridiculous. Planting metal posts in our parks is a crime against nature.

Um, sorry Ken, but the “fabled greenbelt” is already a bit tainted — by thousands of cars that park along those “forested” streets every day. You want nature in the parks, fine — I’m with you. Close most of the East End to vehicle traffic and get rid of all the parking spaces. But no, Mr. Garcia never wants to mess with cars; he’s the most pro-automobile columnist in town.

He just wants people to be able to park in, and befoul, this urban treasure — for free.

(And by the way — I’m all for charging money for parking in GG Park — but I continue to wonder how long those nice, juicy meters plump with coins will last when it gets dark and hungry, and every creative, folks start thinking about all that spare change.)

Honduras: Nostalgia for the gorillas

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By John Ross

MEXICO CITY (July 9th) — The June 28th coup d’etat in Honduras that toppled leftist president Mel Zelaya invokes nostalgia for the bad old days of the “gorillas” — generals and strongmen who overthrew each other with reckless abandon and the tacit complicity of Washington during the last half of the past century.

Perched on a hillside in the Mexican outback, we would tune in to these “golpes de estado,” as they are termed in Latin America, on our Zenith Transoceanic short wave. First, a harried announcer would report rumors of troop movement and the imposition of a “toque de queda” (curfew.) Hours of dead air (and probably dead announcers) would follow and then the martial music would strike up, endless tape loops of military marches and national anthems. Within a few days, the stations would be back up as if nothing had happened. Only the names of the generals who ruled the roost had changed.

Guatemala was the Central American republic par excelencia for such “golpes.” Perhaps the most memorable was the overthrow of General Jacobo Arbenz by Alan Dulles’s CIA in 1954 after Arbenz sought to expropriate and distribute unused United Fruit land. Like Mel Zelaya, the general was shaken rudely awake by soldiers and booted out of the country in his underwear.

Coups in Guatemala continued unabated throughout the 1970s and ’80s. General Efrain Rios Montt, the first Evangelical dictator in Latin America, who had come to power in a coup himself, was overthrown in 1983 by the bloodthirsty Romeo Lucas, a much-decorated general. In 1993, the Guatemalan military brought down civilian president Jorge Elias Serrano, the last gasp of the Gorillas until Zelaya was deposed last week. It has been 15 years since the generals have risen in arms in Central America.

Zelaya’s overthrow has stimulated generalized repugnance throughout the world. The Organization of American States, the General Assembly of the United Nations, the European Union, virtually every regional organization in the Western Hemisphere, and the presidents of 33 Latin American republics have condemned the Honduran Gorillas — yet U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton can’t quite get her plumped-up lips around the word “coup,” preferring to describe the low-jinx in Tegucigalpa as an “interruption of democracy” or some such euphemistic flapdoodle.

One wonders what descriptives Hillary would have deployed if she and Bill had been aroused from a deep snooze in the White House master bedroom on a Sunday morning by gun-toting troops and put on the first plane for Ottawa in their pajamas?

Prison report: Detached from humanity

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By Just A Guy

This morning, as the officers prepared paper trays with cold, soggy pancakes from a serving cart outside of my cell, I overheard a female officer chatting with a fellow officer. She was telling him that she had visited various historical sites, like the book depository in Dallas and the site of the Oklahoma City bombing, and that going to these places made her very emotional, so much so that when she was visiting Oahu she refused to visit the site of the U.S.S. Arizona because of the feelings such a visit would engender in her.

When I heard this, I couldn’t help but laugh at what she’d said as I considered where she works from the confines of my graffiti-scrawled 6-by-9 cell in which the view of the outside world through the 6-inch-by-4-foot window has been purposefully obstructed except for about half an inch along the edges.

A short while later this same officer was going from cell to cell picking up trash. When she arrived at my cell, she asked me if I was new. I asked her why. Was it obvious, because I had no personal property to speak of? She said no, that it was my mood—which probably wasn’t chipper. I then asked her if I might ask a question and told her that I’d overheard her discussion with respect to visiting tragic historical sites and was curious to know if she was aware of the irony of getting emotional at such sights, when going to work in a prison, specifically the “hole” in a prison, didn’t get her emotional.

Her answer, to me anyway, was a sad and tragic condemnation of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation system, and quite frankly, of society’s outlook on things as a whole. Also, her answer was quite disturbing—this I’ll explain further as I go on.

What she said to me is that she “detaches” herself when she comes to work. She then said that when talking to fellow officers, she can be herself, but then motioned toward me and said that when she’s dealing with us, meaning inmates, she detaches.

Editor’s Notes

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Tredmond@sfbg.com

There was plenty in the long New York Times Magazine cover story profile of Gavin Newsom to induce the Technicolor yawn. But the sentence I found most offensive was buried after the jump, down at the bottom of a page of type: "While generally considered a liberal by people outside of San Francisco, Newsom has not shied from confronting the left with tough love."

Say, what?

Whenever you read something in the Almighty Times that uses terms like "generally considered," you need to stop and think. Considered by whom? And what the hell does the Times mean by "liberal?"

You can define that word any way you want — Wikipedia has a long history, and outlines the difference between the classical liberalism of John Locke, Adam Smith, and David Ricardo (much of which we would now call libertarianism) and the social liberalism of the postwar era. I think any honest definition, though, rests in significant part on the notion that unregulated free markets are not always the best way to allocate resources, that government has a role in helping the needy, and, perhaps most important, that one of the primary functions of government is to reallocate income and resources to increase equality — that is, to tax the rich to feed the poor.

Liberalism got a bad name in the 1960s, particularly when it was used to apply to politicians like Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey, who had the right ideas about using exceptionally high taxes on the very rich (the marginal rate in that era was more than 70 percent) to fund programs like the Great Society, but were utterly wrong about the Vietnam War and the use of U.S. military force abroad. And in the 1970s and 1980s, liberal politicians like Phil and John Burton in San Francisco became way too close to the real estate developers.

But words have to mean something, or the whole gig is over. And, as far as I’m concerned, a mayor who refuses to raise taxes to cover a huge budget deficit, and instead cuts wholesale from programs that help the poor, is not by any definition a "liberal."

He’s not terribly good at "tough love," either.

The Times uses his implementation of Care Not Cash as an example — the program, the magazine says, "essentially ended direct payments to homeless people and put the money into service agencies instead." Not exactly true — Newsom ended direct payments to homeless people, but the "care" part of the package was never really there. And it’s all gone in this latest budget. That’s not tough love — it’s just tough.

The idea that Mayor Newsom of San Francisco is a good liberal who is still willing to challenge the left every now and then is just mythology. Newsom (generally, to use the Times’ favorite word here) has no relations whatsoever with the left. That fact might help him in the campaign — Californians as a whole are not as progressive as San Franciscans. But let’s at least be honest about it.

And of course, the lavish story is another sign that the Newsom campaign is rolling ahead very nicely. "The fact that a national newspaper of the stature of the Times decides that Gavin Newsom is the story in the governor’s race is certainly a plus," Eric Jaye, Newsom’s chief political advisor, told me. I’d say that’s a bit of an understatement. *

Editor’s Notes

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tredmond@sfbg.com

Lucy Dalglish, the director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, is about as much of a national leader on open-government and free-speech issues as we have in this country. She’s been watching (and fighting) the battle against government secrecy for more than a quarter century as a reporter in St. Paul, a media lawyer, and since 2000 the head of RCFP. So when she sounds an alarm, it’s worth listening.

And at the annual conference of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, she warned that the decline of daily newspapers — something those of us in the alt-media often treat as a spectator sport, jeering at the losers who for years couldn’t figure out how to print news people wanted to read — is going to have a serious impact on open government.

The thing is, conservative, weak, and lame as so many dailies were, they have been the ones funding almost all of the major freedom-of-information lawsuits and organizations. The case law that protects the news media (including bloggers) from nuisance libel suits? That came from The New York Times. The law preventing the government from using prior restraint to block the publication of material it thinks might damage national security? The New York Times. The most important open-government cases in the nation? Mostly filed by medium-sized dailies like The Press Enterprise in Riverside.

I’m not here — lord knows, I’m not here — defending the likes of Knight-Ridder and Copley and Scripps-Howard, which are mostly very conservative newspaper chains that have decimated news coverage, kowtowed to the powerful, and screwed up a lot of communities. But Dalglish has a point: as the old guard in the media spirals into decline, who’s going to take up the free-speech and open-government banner — and by that I mean, who’s going to put up the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars it takes to file and defend these key lawsuits and keep these organizations alive?

"It isn’t," Dalglish said, "going to be Google."

The Chronicle ran a story June 29th talking about the growing discussion of the need to reform Proposition 13. It was mostly a political piece, looking at the popularity of the measure and the complications of trying to change a law that has pretty much defined public finance in California for 30 years.

Robert Cruickshank at Calitics.com brought up something in response to the Chron story that hadn’t really occurred to me:

"Since 1978," he wrote, "California has experienced two massive housing bubbles. The 1980s bubble, which seemed large at the time, was primarily focused on California and caused widespread unaffordability before the 1989 crash. The 2000s bubble was a nationwide phenomenon, but Prop. 13 played a role by removing a brake on housing inflation. If homeowners saw tax assessments rise in relation to their values, instead of being largely fixed at the rate at the time of purchase, it seems unlikely we would have had the enormous and destructive boom and bust in the housing market we witnessed."

So Prop. 13 causes high housing prices. Probably high rents, too. Worth thinking about. *

Prison Report: Donte Stallworth and me

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By Just A Guy

Editors note: Just A guy is an inmate in a California state prison. You can read his most recent blog, and links to past blogs, here. He will try to respond to comments, but communication from prison is often difficult, so be patient.

I just read in USA Today about the penalty Cleveland Browns wide receiver Donte Stallworth received for killing someone while driving drunk in Florida: Thirty days in jail, two years of house arrest, eight years probation, and 1,000 hours of community service.

I guess it really does pay to have money!

I know of a man who has been in prison in California for 21 years now on his 15-to-life sentence. He’s been found suitable for parole three times, and has had the governor deny his parole three times. This is a man who, like Stallworth, had NO criminal record, but wasn’t rich or a football star.

This man has not received one incident report for violating prison rules in 21 years of incarceration, has a wonderful support network, from a good family, and has a job waiting for him.

This scenario is just as likely to happen in California as in Florida, where they actually kill people with the death penalty.

What’s going on here? I find it stunning that the disparity of such type of cases is still so apparent, but the enormity of it is .. God, I’m truly at a loss for words.

Oddly, I’m sitting here in the hole, 33 months in to a 48 month sentence for possession of a controlled substance. I wasn’t allowed into Prop. 36 (the state’s version of a drug program) because when I got arrested I was also charged with driving under the influence, which eliminated my eligibility to enter the treatment program. Some loophole, eh?

Have you seen this van?

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63009van.jpg

Here’s how bad the economy is: Somebody broke into the Bay Guardian parking lot last night, rammed through the chain-link fence and drove away with our van.

Kinda crazy — it’s ten years old, it’s all beat up — and it has the Guardian logo all over it and a Best of the Bay mural on the side. Hard to hide.

It’s value is probably more sentimental than economic at this point, but we miss it — after all, we used the van as the cover of our Best of the Bay issue back in 1999, when it was brand new. We commissioned the van-mural, designed by Tim Racer at Racer-Reynolds Illustration and painted by Rich Ayer at Signmakers, and we’d hate to see the artwork chopped up or painted over.

So if you see it, call SFPD burglary at 553-1261. Or call us.

Protest HIV program cuts

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By C. Nellie Nelson

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Pride At Work protests the mayor’s budget on Pride day. Photo: Luke Thomas, Fog CIty Journal

Today at 5 pm the LGBT labor group Pride at Work will hold a vigil on the steps of City Hall protesting the mayor’s deep budget cuts to programs that are vital to much of the queer community. The vigil runs until midnight, so you can stop by after work.

As Fog City Journal reports, this is the second major Pride at Work protest over the budget cuts — the group staged a die-in in front of Mayor Newsom’s car in the Pride Parade. As Newsom attempted to step around the protesters, they let him have an earful on the effects of his budget cuts that slashed funding for the Departments of Public Health and Human Services

“The die-in demonstrated reality. When you cut HIV programs, people will sero-convert. When you cut the drug programs, people will die,” Harvey Milk Club president Rafael Mandelman told the Guardian today. He said the protest indicates that the mayor “can’t ride same-sex marriage forever. We’re grateful for the mayor’s efforts in that area, but we need budgets that will protect vulnerable populations and queers. People’s lives are at stake.”

Despite the passage of Prop. 8, Newsom does indeed seem to still be riding the crest of same sex marriage. In a recent fundraising letter for his gubernatorial campaign, a supporter enthuses: “Mayor Newsom married S– and I in his office in 2004. He always held our relationship equal to his own… S– and I will always love him for standing with us and fighting for us.”

But some LGBT leaders are starting to feel that the choices of what departments to cut back are not equal in the least.

Robert Haaland is a labor activist and long time leader of the local chapter of Pride at Work. He told us the budget cuts “are no different from what Schwarzenegger is doing. No new revenue, deep cuts to health and human services. It’d be fine if he was running as a Republican governor.”

Haaland pointed out that when Newsom ran against Supervisor Matt Gonzales in 2003, Newsom was neutral on gay marriage, and Gonzales got the majority of votes in District 8, which includes the Castro.

“He changed his position on marriage, but that doesn’t give him license to use marriage as a shield for budget cuts affecting LGBT and poor people,” Haaland said.

And Mandelman sums up, “It’s great to celebrate marriage, but for a lot of people it’s a luxury.”

Newsom’s poll numbers suck, but ….

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By Tim Redmond

This is not the kind of information a candidate for governor likes to hear, but the Chron reports today that Attorney General Jerry Brown is way ahead of Newsom among Democrats in the race for California’s next governor. Matier and Ross say

The poll by JMM Research of 525 Democratic and decline-to-state voters is the first snapshot since Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced last week that he wasn’t running.

With Villaraigosa in the lineup, the numbers read:

— Brown, 33 percent.

— Newsom, 20 percent.

— Villaraigosa, 17 percent.

Take the L.A. mayor out, and it’s:

— Brown, 46 percent.

— Newsom, 26 percent.

Brown does best with the voters over 40, who tend to turn out in bigger numbers on election day. Newsom thrives with the younger crowd, which he hopes to turn out big time, a la Barack Obama.

Geographically, Brown beats Newsom everywhere but the Bay Area.

But let’s be serious here: These early numbers mean exactly nothing. The race is a year and a half away, and this is nothing but name recognition and vague opinions based on current news media reports.

My take: Newsom’s toughest opposition would have been Villaraigosa, and with the L.A. mayor out of the way, he’s really the front-runner. Why? Because this is a textbook campaign — the new against the old, the fresh face against yesterday’s news, the guy who has only a very limited (and carefully crafted) record against the guy who has been around a long time and has done enough in his life to piss off both the left and the right.

I’m not a Newsom fan (in case you hadn’t noticed) and I’ve always liked Jerry Brown personally (although he was a horrible mayor of Oakland and is taking some awful positions). The fact that he’s in his 70s shouldn’t be an issue — he’s healthy, lively, full of energy, and to dis him because of his age is wrong on many, many levels … but that doesn’t mean the Newsom camp won’t (subtly) do it, and it doesn’t mean it won’t work.

I’m talking real, harsh politics here — and I’m betting that Newsom’s team isn’t a bit concerned with these poll numbers.

Prison report: In the Hole

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Prison report: Inside the Hole

By Just A Guy

Editors Note: Just A Guy is an inmate in a California state prison. His blogs typically run Monday and Thursday, but prison authorities have just sent him into the Hole, a punitive isolation facility. So this blog is a little late, and he may have trouble responding to comments.

I’m sitting here in the Hole, also known as Administrative Segregation, contemplating how difficult it’s going
to be to write a politically relevant blog from the confines of the cell in which I have no access to current media/news, one stamped envelope, a pen filler rolled in paper to make it thick enough to
write with, two ancient fantasy books, no clock or watch, no cellmate and racing thoughts. …

I was going to write about SB 678, which is a bill proposed by Sen. Mark Leno allocating funds toward increasing the efficacy of probation, but can’t do it now because I didn’t finish reading it.

I suppose I could stare at the dirty walls and metal toilets, try and ignore slight hunger pangs, and attempt to decipher the various graffiti on the walls, which is endemic to any facility’s holding tank, holding cage, and cell within the system. At the same time I’m trying to ignore the scent of metal on flesh that the sweat from my left palm causes when it touches the paint- worn- down-to metal desk that’s bolted to the wall, or even worse the pain in my ass from sitting on a metal stool trying to write. But how we’re treated isn’t politically relevant any more either, right?

I won’t go into the dynamics, yet, as to why I’m in the Hole, but let’s just say that it was bound to happen because there are forces greater than I that do not like me.

Berkeley’s budget success

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By Tim Redmond

Berkeley isn’t in the financial mess San Francisco is, and while you can’t compare the two cities at all — SF is a city and county, has far more people and much more demand for services — there are two telling points in today’s Chronicle story:`

While sales tax revenues have plummeted elsewhere, they’ve actually risen in Berkeley. (Union City, Albany and Alameda were the only others in Alameda county to see a year-to-year rise.)

The sales tax increase is due, in part, to the quirky nature of the Berkeley economy. The city has virtually no big-box retailers. Instead of shopping malls, the city has clusters of stores in various neighborhoods, Elmwood to Solano Avenue.

The result is that “during times of prosperity, we don’t grow that much,” said Kamlarz. “And during downturns, we don’t decline that much.”

In other words, a diversified economy of local small businesses is more sustainable and better in tough times than one based on big chains.

The other:

Of course, this couldn’t happen without city voters who continue to tax themselves at among the highest levels in the state. Libraries, fire stations and school measures all continue to get support.

You want good libraries, good schools and no fire-station closures? Be willing to pay for them.

Of course, this shouldn’t be seen as any sort of surprising news.

Classes for sale

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By Tim Redmond

So City College is going to start selling naming rights to its classes. From the Chronicle story, it looks as if the chancellor, Don Griffin, has the whole thing planned out — he told the paper where to send checks for $6,000 and exactly how to make sure your name gets in the books.

There’s a minor problem, though: He never mentioned any of this to the Community College Board.

“When I read about it in the paper, that was the first I’d heard of it,” board member John Rizzo told me.

It’s not as simple a fundraising scheme as it seems. Besides the tacky factor (which doesn’t trump the desperate need for money) there’s the potential for conflicts, both real and imagined.

“What if PG&E wants to buy a class — or maybe ten of them?” asked Rizzo. What if big pharma companies want to sponsor chemistry classes? What if big agricultural congomerates want to sponsor nutrition classes? This could get ugly fast.

“I have a lot of serious concerns about it, and it’s certainly a new policy,” Rizzo noted. “I’m amazed that the chancellor never even mentioned this to the board.”

Mr. Prez — just don’t fuck things up worse

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By Tim Redmond

I heard a lot of discussion on KQED’s Forum this morning about President Obama and his affronts to the queer community, and several callers — all folks who claimed to be “supportive of the the LGBT community” — suggested that the president is doing the right thing by taking it slow. First, he has to fix the economic mess, restore the banking system, put about 10 million people back to work, close the Guantanamo Bay torture chamber and create a national health-care system. Then, after he takes a little nap and has a nice healthy snack, he can get to work on human rights and equality.

Bill Clinton, one caller said, screwed everything up by moving too fast; his health-insurance reform collapsed, Congress wouldn’t go along with allowing gay people to serve openly in the military, and before long, the Republicans were kicking his ass all over Washington.

I know the song: A president only has a certain amount of political capital, and he can’t just go flinging it all around at once. And he needs Congress for his health plan, and overturning the Defense of Marriage Act or Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell could alienate those same moderates who might be the swing votes on health reform. He also has to deal with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose district may include the single largest concentration of active queer people in the United States, but who long gave up representing San Francisco. She’s more worried about electing Democrats in conservative districts to keep her majority and her power — and if that means lesbian and gay people have to go the back of the bus for a while, oh well. That’s politics.

But there are so many things Obama could do, right now, without Congress (and without making a big fuss) that would make a huge difference to the queer community. He can’t get rid of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell — but as commander in chief, he can simply order the office of the Judge Advocate General of each of the services to suspend indefinately all prosecutions seeking to discharge service members for homosexuality. The military doesn’t do everything right, but the one thing the leaders of that august institution understand is taking orders. Just tell them to stop kicking gay people out — and not to make a big deal of it. Then the problem will at least be something we can ignore while Obama is taking his sweet time and collecting political chits to deal with it properly.

Same thing with DOMA. I don’t know who exactly approved the legal brief defending that law — and I suspect somehow that Obama himself never read it — but that shit has to go. Just withdraw that brief, submit another one that doesn’t compare homosexuality to incest (and that’s kind of badly written and not particularly persuasive), and hope to god the government loses.

Yeah, the president ought to stand up publicly for equality — and unlike Willie Brown, who thinks that’s never going to happen, I suspect it will. By the end of his first term, he’ll come around. But in the meantime, Mr. President, remember the Hippocratic Oath of politics: First, don’t fuck things up worse.

Will downtown go after IRV?

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By Tim Redmond

Interesting meeting at the Chamber of Commerce office yesterday. In attendance, I’m told by a good source, were Chamber CEO Steve Falk, Senior Vice President Jim Lazarus, Nathan Nayman from the Committee on JOBS, Pamela Brewster, vice-president for government affairs at Charles Schwab, Wade Rose, vice president at Catholic Healthcare West, and some other downtown types.

Among the topics: A campaign to repeal the city’s Ranked-Choice Voting system.

Downtown has never liked RCV, also known as Instant Runoff Voting. The Chamber and Committee on JOBS folks also dislike the fact that they’ve gotten their butts kicked in the past few supervisorial elections — and instead of finding better candidates, or recognizing that the electorate really isn’t interested in a pro-corporate Republican-style agenda, they’ve decided to go after “the system.”

I couldn’t reach Falk today, but Lazarus called me back. He said the Chamber had polled this year on both district elections and IRV, and found (no surprise) that the public loves district elections, and that trying to return to a citywide system was a nonstarter. And while support for IRV was also strong, the voters, according to the Chamber poll, would be willing to consider direct runoffs between the top two finishers if the voting were all done by mail.

That, presumably, would keep the cost down and the turnout up.

“The Chamber has always been in favor of direct runoffs,” Lazarus told me. That allows the top two candidates to directly address their differences on the issues. With multiple candidates in the race, the issues aren’t well defined.”

Steve Hill, who works at the New America Foundation and was one of the architects of IRV in San Francisco, pointed out that direct runoffs have been tried in San Francisco. “That what we used to have,” he told me. “And we saw regular attack ads and nasty campaigning. The Ethics Commission found a four-fold increase in independent expenditures during direct runoffs.”

In other words, direct runoffs allow groups like the Chamber and its allies to dump huge amounts of money into negative campaigns in a short election period. “Getting rid of IRV is a vote to empower special interests,” Hill said.

Lazarus told me he’s not sure what the next steps would be, and whether the Chamber would push a Charter Amendment campaign to repeal IRV. “We’ve talked about it,” he said. “That’s all.”

Some nice words from Phil Bronstein

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By Tim Redmond

Wow, we’re not used to hearing nice words from the folks at the Chron. But Phil Bronstein really likes our coverage of Newsom.

PUC nomination delayed

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By Tim Redmond

The nomination of Anson Moran for a seat on the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission was delayed today after Sup. David Campos asked for more time to review Moran’s record.

We’ve argued against the nomination, as have many public-power advocates. There is, of course, the argument that Moran is better than some of the turkeys Mayor Newsom might put forward and at least has some qualifications for the job. But on balance, this is someone who, when he had a chance as the agency’s general manager, did his best to sabotage public power.

After the jump is an excerpt from a detailed chronology of the PG&E/Raker Act scandal that we did back in 1997. The entire chronology — the most detailed history of the scandal every published, as far as I know, is available here.

Fireworks at the DCCC

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By C. Nellie Nelson

The San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee heard a resolution urging city agencies to not privatize city services last night. It’s the sort of measure that would normally pass without much debate — the local Democratic Party has always taken the side of the unions on contracting-out disputes.

But in the midst of the budget mess, the head of the firefighters’ union, John Hanley, showed up to berate the committee members, some of whom are also supervisors, over the latest budget moves.

As Hanley raged about putting firefighters’ lives on the line, committee chair Aaron Peskin and other members tried to make the point of order that this resolution was about privatizing city services, not changes to the budget. Hanley raised his voice louder yet, and, with his face a deep shade of red, he waved a pointed finger around as he yelled about $80 million in cuts.

At that point DCCC member and supervisor Chris Daly rose from his chair and pointing his finger at Hanley demanded, “Don’t point at me!” Hanley became even further agitated, and some committee members demanded that both Daly and Hanley leave. Both then ultimately quieted down, and neither was forced to leave.

In spite of the jarring display and repeated attempts to bring the focus back to the privatization of city services, commenters continued to speak on budget concerns. Former DCCC member and Deputy Sheriff David Wong said the Democratic Party should be for working people, and asked to not have the sheriff’s budget cut. Committee member Robert Haaland asked him if he supported or opposed contracting out sheriff services, but Wong didn’t answer.

Several SEIU members and Department of Public Health workers followed, speaking of seniors missing meals, nursing-to-staff ratios at SF General that result in less skilled workers doing responsibilities above their level of training, and even clients who had just been killed while on a wait list for city services.

When public comment closed, committee members addressed the hotly contended budget decision in a general way. Peskin began, “I want to refute the politics of fear and demagoguery,” referring to Hanley’s intimidating style of speaking. “There’s no question the pie has shrunk,” he continued, reiterating that in a fundamental notion of fairness, all departments must share the pain.

Haaland noted that 1,500 people would be laid off in the Department of Public Health, and that just wouldn’t be true of all departments. He said that cutting the DPH by $100 million would gut the Healthy San Francisco program, and result in $4 million cut from HIV services.

Peskin followed, declaring flatly, “I don’t want my house to burn down either.” He urged everyone to be part of the solution.

The members moved to take out language referring to specific professions that might be privatized, and with those changes, overwhelmingly passed the resolution against privatizing city services.

Sacramento insanity

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By Tim Redmond

Now the non-tough-guy gov says he’s going to veto the state budget if it includes any new taxes.

The new taxes, of course, include the repeal of a couple of big tax breaks that essentially hand state money to a tiny number of giant businesses.

But Schwarzenegger doesn’t care — he’s going to keep threatening the Legislature and putting forward random deadlines and trying to get an all-cuts budget.

Remember: It’s going to be hard to get to the two-thirds requirement for any new taxes anyway. (BTW, Sen. Mark Leno points out (and Assemblymember Tom Ammiano agrees) that in fact, due to some complicated legal stuff, it will indeed take two thirds to repeal the tax breaks. So already we’re looking at a budget that will need GOP support.

And the taxes are about $2 billion, matched with more than $11 billion in cuts.

And while the governor, and the major news media, keep talking about a budget deadline as if this were a typical summer, Leno points out that the Legislature has already passed a budget. This is all about revisions.

But I’m starting to think that ol’ Arnold really wants to shut down the state. There’s no other way to explain his behavior.

Mexico report: The addiction of power

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By John Ross

MEXICO CITY/MORELIA — Despite a raging war against homegrown drug cartels, politics may well be Mexico’s most dangerous drug. Addicted to authority, Mexican politicos crave more and more power and are disposed to obtain same by any means necessary. Conversely, the powerless, who are legion, crave drugs to assuage their condition.

In three years of Felipe Calderon’s questionable presidency, both drug use and the powerlessness of the poor have skyrocketed. Meanwhile, Calderon’s self-inflicted war on drugs that has taken 10,000 lives since his dubious 2006 election has itself become an instrument of political power.

Witness events in Michoacan last month.

More train wrecks at BART

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By Tim Redmond

61709train.jpg

Lots of trouble brewing at BART.

In a conference call yesterday, the unions representing BART workers talked about management’s insistence on a new contract — one that includes major concessions — by the end of June. That’s too soon, the union folks say; the BART proposal is too complicated and the system’s finances too confusing to sort out in just a couple of weeks.

In fact, when I asked the three union reps (Jean Hamilton of AFSCME, Jesse Hunt of ATU and Lisa Isler of SEIU 1021) whether they thought BART, even in these tough times, had enough money to meet the workers’ demands without further fare hikes, they insisted the money was there.

They also said that they won’t accept management’s plan to impose a new contract unilaterally July 1 — which means there could conceivably be a BART strike this summer. That would utterly screw up Bay Area transportation. I don’t think it’s going to happen, and neither, I gathered, did the union reps, but the threat is out there.

Meanwhile, the BART police oversight situation continues to deteriorate.

The cops and the carpetbaggers

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By Tim Redmond

The Chron’s Marisa Lagos got a nice little snipe in at the bombastic leader of the San Francisco Police Officers Association, Gary Delagnes, who was blasting the supervisors for asking cops and firefighters to share some of the financial burden of the budget deficit.

Police Officers Association President Gary Delagnes went even further, specifically attacking Avalos, the board’s budget committee chair.

“I’m sick and tired of carpetbaggers coming into this city and making decisions about how we live our lives and how we’re protected,” said Delagnes, who now lives in Novato. “I grew up here, I care about this city. It’s about time these idiots over here start caring about this city.”

What the fuck right does Delagnes, who doesn’t live in the city, doesn’t pay property taxes in the city, doesn’t even get to vote here, have to complain about Avalos (who has lived here for years and been an active part of the community)?

The truth is, a lot of the cops who whine about the supervisors don’t live here. They’re off in the suburbs, where there aren’t as many homeless people, poor people, people who need city services … and that’s the attitude these carpetbagger cops bring to City Hall.

Editor’s Notes

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Tredmond@sfbg.com

In the midst of all that is bleak in the state of California and the City and County of San Francisco, I am having fun specuutf8g about what will happen when Gavin Newsom is no longer mayor.

It’s a fascinating exercise — and trust me, I am by no means the only person engaging in it.

The broad outline is that the race to replace Newsom at this point bears no relation to the dynamic that brought him into office. Back in 2003, the race was the progressives against downtown; Tom Ammiano, Matt Gonzalez, and Angela Alioto were competing for the progressive vote, and Newsom was downtown’s darling, running on a platform of taking welfare money away from homeless people. The Newsom-Gonzalez runoff was about as clear and stark a choice over political vision as the city could ask for.

Six years later, I can count four people who are getting ready to run, and none is much like either Newsom or Gonzalez.

Sup. Bevan Dufty, who is sometimes with the progressives and sometimes with the mayor, told me last week that he’s definitely running. He’s part of the board’s moderate wing, but isn’t the downtown call-up vote that Newsom was and clearly isn’t counting on the big-business world for most of his support. Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting has made no secret of his political ambitions and is putting himself in the limelight with high-profile statements about Proposition 13 and taxing the Catholic Church. He sounds pretty liberal these days, although his chief political consultant is Newsom (and PG&E) operative Eric Jaye.

Just about everyone in local politics assumes City Attorney Dennis Herrera will be in the mix. He’s had the advantage of not having to take stands on local measures and candidates (as the city attorney, he’s not allowed to endorse), and while some progressives see him as the most appealing choice, he’s not Ammiano or Gonzalez. And then there’s state Sen. Leland Yee, who is utterly unpredictable, sometimes great on the issues and sometimes awful — and is almost certainly going to run.

And right now, other than Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who might or might not run and isn’t putting together any kind of a pre-campaign operation, there’s no obvious progressive candidate in the race. If Mirkarimi’s serious, he needs to be moving.

But wait: There’s more.

Assume for a moment — and whatever you may think about the guy, it’s not a crazy assumption — that Gavin Newsom is the next governor of California. (How? He beats Jerry Brown in the primary by running future vs. past, then beats any Republican, who will be saddled with the Schwarzenegger mess. He isn’t remotely ready for the job, but that’s politics.)

Gov. Newsom would be sworn in Jan. 4, 2011. David Chiu, president of the Board of Supervisors, would be acting mayor — until he convenes the board and somebody gets six votes to finish Newsom’s term. That decision could be made by the current supes, who hold office until Jan. 8, 2011, if they can meet and decide in four days, or by the new supes — and we don’t know who they will be.

The person appointed doesn’t have to be a supervisor. Could be anyone. Could be Chiu. Could be Mirkarimi. Could be Dufty. Could be …. Aaron Peskin. Just takes six votes. And then that person could run as the incumbent.

Don’t go thinking any of this is just idle chatter. There are political consultants all over town having the same discussions, today. *

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