Tim Redmond

SF health care, for the record

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By Tim Redmond

I’m glad to see that our new president is giving San Francisco credit for taking a big step forward toward universal health care. But this is a bit misleading:

“Instead of talking about health care, mayors like Gavin Newsom in San Francisco have been ensuring that those in need receive it,” [Obama] said.

Actually, Sup. Tom Ammiano and his colleagues developed Healthy San Francisco. Newsom joined in later, after the hard work was done. Ammiano has been very good about letting Newsom take some of the glory, but it’s a bit annoying for the rest of us to see a guy who has never been good at developing and implementing his own programs get so much praise for someone else’s work.

The parking bitch

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By Diane Sussman

There is a subterranean cache of parking spaces in the city that, if justly liberated, could get hundreds of cars off the streets.

I refer to landlords, many of them absentee bridge-and-tunnelers, who are using garage spaces that rightfully should be reserved for tenants’ cars as free storage units for their personal possessions or as permanent parking spots for their own infrequently used cars.

I personally know of two buildings – one a four-unit building in Potrero Hill and the other a 10-unit building in Alamo Square – whose tenants have been forced to vie for street parking for years because their landlords are otherwise occupying the space.

Even more galling, these same landlords have “no parking” signs posted on these garages, and have no qualms about towing or ticketing when their theoretical “driveways” are blocked. (Note to landlords: In typical shit rolling downhill fashion, these displaced tenants often block the bona fide working garages of people who do use their garages to come and go from work, errands, doctor visits and so on. Their justification: “There was no place to park.”)

It’s time for the city to get hip to this cynical practice and eradicate it. Garages should be for the people who live there — in this case, the tenants (who, let’s not forget, are paying some of the highest rents in the country for their apartments). Here are my ideas for accomplishing this.

1. Establish an anonymous tip line for tenants to report landlords who are using their garages in their buildings as storage units. If a landlord is reported, the DPT (or if there is no existing bureaucracy for this, then someone should invent one) should do an inspection. Landlords in violation should be forced to clean out the garages and offer space to their tenants.

2. Landlords who want the space for their personal use – and who have permission from a kindly car-free tenant – should reimburse the tenant at a rate commensurate with long-term parking fees in the city.

3. Landlords whose garages have no cars moving in and out should be prohibited from towing cars blocking the space. Instead, they should allow their tenants to permanently occupy the space, either by parking in the driveway or parallel to the curb in front the driveway (perfectly legal). If multiple tenants want a shot, the landlord should offer a fair rotation.

Incidentally, the DPT does not allow people with non-working garages to issue citations. “No, not allowed. No,” said a DPT dispatcher. “You must be able to demostrate that you can get your car in and out – we will absolutely make you open that garage door to prove it.”

All I’m saying is, let’s add some spirit to the letter of the law.

A couple of interesting candidates

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By Tim Redmond

A couple of interesting candidates looking at runs for those even-numbered supervisorial seats in 2010.

In district two, where the progressives have never had much of a chance (Gavin Newsom, then Michela Alioto-Pier), Janet Reilly, who ran a strong race against Fiona Ma for state Assembly, told me she’s looking at the race. She’d be well financed – her husband, Clint Reilly, is one of the top campaign donors in the city and she’s proven she can raise money on her own. She’s clearly not as far to the left as John Avalos or Eric Mar, but it’s a conservative district – and she’s a smart, articulate woman with strong policy ideas who would probably vote with the progressives some of the time and would be independent of the mayor.

Then there’s district 6. I’m starting to sense that Jane Kim isn’t pushing herself out there as a candidate right now — but another activist is, and his campaign raises some interesting questions.

Paul Hogarth, managing editor of BeyondChron, an online newspaper, is planning to file a statement of intent to run sometime this spring. “Yes, the rumor is true. I’m the candidate who can get things done for the District — having worked in the community for about 9 years,” he told me by email.

I like Paul, and I like BeyondChron, which by any standard is part of the progressive community. We’ve had some disagreements, but that’s pretty common in the San Francisco left.

And he’s certainly qualified – he’s a lawyer, a former Berkeley Rent Board commissioner, and has been a tenant organizer with the Tenderloin Housing Clinic. He’s also been pretty active in the Democratic Party and has shown some solid journalistic instincts and abilities.

So I just assumed that he would take a leave of absence from Beyond Chron when he launched his campaign. I mean, it’s a brave new world, and the line between journalists and activists has been getting pretty blurry, but I’m not sure how you can be the managing editor of a political newspaper, and actively report on and write about local politicians and campaigns, when you’re actually running for office yourself.

But no – when I asked Paul about that, he told me he saw no conflict at all. I tried to reach his boss, Randy Shaw, by phone but after we played tag a little, I went to email and asked:

“Hi, Randy, sorry we didn’t connect by phone today. I hear Paul is running for D6 supe; how you going to handle that at BeyondChron? Can he possibly cover local politics while he’s running for office? Strikes me as a problem.”

Shaw’s response:

“Why?

I pursued it: “Well, one reason is that people will think he’s promoting his own interests by the way he covers candidates and issues. For example, there might be a perception that he was writing more positive things about people who endorsed him. It’s pretty basic journalistic ethics. I have immense respect for Paul, and I don’t think he’d do anything unethical, but in the media. appearance matters. I know you aren’t a traditional news outlet, but people trust and respect you in part for your independence.”

Shaw: “This recalls a past discussion I’ve had with the Guardian, where it became clear we have different views of activists as journalists.”

I don’t recall that discussion, although I’m sure it happened, since I talk about this stuff all the time. I am an activist and a journalist, and the Guardian is a newspaper that cares about and promotes causes. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with BeyondChron, which is part of Randy Shaw’s Tenderloin Housing Clinic shop, covering the city from a pro-tenant, progressive perspective. I’m glad BeyondChron is around.

But there’s a difference between writing about and promoting causes that you care about and promoting something that gives you, personally, a direct financial or career benefit. How will we know that a piece Paul Hogarth writes about a local politician isn’t tainted by the fact that he wants that person to endorse him?

Paul seems to be aware of the problem; when he wrote about Mark Leno in the state Senate primary, he was careful to run disclosures like

EDITOR’S NOTE: As a private citizen, Paul Hogarth has endorsed Mark Leno in the State Senate race. He does not play an advisory role in the campaign, nor did he coordinate with Leno’s staff in writing this article.

Fair enough. Full disclosure is good. But what’s he going to do now – stop writing about local politics? Or end all his articles with

EDITORS NOTE: Paul Hogarth is running for supervisor in District 6, but none of the commentary about any other office holder here should be construed as a possible pitch for an endorsement?

And what if one of the other candidates argues that his paid promotional platform is in fact an in-kind campaign contribution? I’m not sure I’d buy that – there’s a First Amendment issue here – but the Ethics Commission might consider it worth investigation, which would be a huge distraction to both the candidate and his online newspaper.

It’s going to be tricky. That’s all I’m saying.

Talk about making sausage ….

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By Tim Redmond

The budget deal taht came down early this morning is ugly. One Republican, Sen. Abel Maldonado, was able to hijack the process and make some crazy demands. He singlehandly forced the Democrats to get rid of a 12 cent increase in the gas tax, costing the state billions. Then he forced the Democrats to accept a statewide ballot measure for an open primary system, which the progressives hate. (Open primaries allow Republicans to vote for Democrats who are more moderate; Nancy Pelosi went to Congress in an open primary, beating then-Sup. Harry Britt. Britt won among the Democrats, but Pelosi got enough Republican votes to give her the job.) Assemblymember Tom Ammiano told me the budget package was bad enough but he simply couldn’t swallow the open primary measure. “A lot of us didn’t vote for it,” he said. But it passed anyway, with the simple majority it needed, and that (along with a long list of other awful stuff) bought Malonado’s vote.

Ammiano’s statement on the deal reflects what a lot of progessives think:

No one is happy about the service cuts, layoffs and tax increases that were a necessary part of this plan. In voting for this budget, I want to acknowledge that we have made painful cuts to vital human services that serve the poor and the elderly as well as deep reductions in education spending for our schools. We did so with great reluctance in the hope that some of these cuts will be restored through the recently passed federal stimulus bill.

The respite we have after closing this budget shortfall is short-lived and there is a long, difficult road ahead to restore our fiscal stability. The approved plan did take a step in that direction by including a rainy day fund that will help us offset budget cuts in future years

Brian at Calitics has a nice line here about Maldonado’s hypocrisy. And there’s a nice analysis here of what the package really looks like.

State Sen. Mark Leno told me that part of the problem was that the Republican caucus was a mess — the GOP leader, Dave Codgill of Modesto, was part of the budget negotiations, but when he agreed to accept tax increases, many of his colleagues refused to go along. Leno says Codgill was a “profile in courage” — he knew that voting for tax hikes would harm, and possibly doom, his career as a Republican in a conservative district, but he did what had to be done to keep the state solvent. And when the GOP lawmakers balked, Leno announced on the floor that the should either follow their leader or find a new one. A few hours later, that’s what happened — Codgill was removed as minority leader and replaced with an even-more-ardent anti-tax guy, Sen. Dennis Hollingsworth of Riverside County, who wanted to scrap the entire budget and start over with a “no-new-taxes” plan. That was just pure political posturing — it was never going to happen.

What a mess. I’m with Jean Ross of the California Budget Project, who says that , “If this year’s budget negotiations don’t increase public support for reducing the vote requirement for approval of a budget and tax increases, it is not clear what will.”

Bay Guardian lawyers win major award

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The Dream Team: From left, paralegal Karen Douglas, Craig Moody, Guardian publishers Jean Dibble and Bruce Brugmann, Ralph Alldredge and Rich Hill.

By Tim Redmond

California Lawyer magazine has given the attorneys who represented the Bay Guardian in our predatory-pricing case against SF Weekly a CLAY award, citing the case as one of the most important legal battles of 2008.

The legal team of Ralph Alldredge, Rich Hill and Craig Moody – all solo practitioners – won the coveted award, which reflects the significance of a victory by a local business against a predatory chain.

In what the magazine called “a David and Goliath face-off,” the Guardian sued the Weekly and its chain parent, Village Voice Media, alleging that the big publishing outfit had for years sold ads below cost in an attempt to damage the locally owned competitor.

A jury found unanimously in favor of the Guardian, and awarded us $6.3 million. Judge Marla Miller later raised the damages to $15.6 million. With attorney’s fees and interest, VVM now owes us roughly $20 million. The case is on appeal.

Congrats to Ralph, Rich and Craig, who labored for years on this case, at every moment and every level fighting a bigger and better-financed opponent that went through a string of large and small law firms, seeking someone who could stand up to our team. In the end, the law, the facts and three tough, smart attorneys were on our side, and the SF Weekly just couldn’t compete.

The case is on appeal.

Newsom says no budget crisis

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By Tim Redmond

Well, what do you know? The mayor doesn’t think San Francisco has a budget crisis. At least, that’s what he told the Chronicle’s editorial board::

“We’re not in a crisis, but we’re acting as if we are,” Mayor Gavin Newsom said in a phone interview over the weekend. “We’re paying our bills, there’s no threat of IOUs.”

Um, a few months from now the mayor and the supes have to figure out how to cut half the discretionary money in the General Fund. That’s pretty much the definition of a crisis. And while Board President David Chiu is holding meetings and talking about it, the mayor is acting like we can worry about this tomorrow. Tra la la.

Appetite: Food, drink and urban hunting

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Oakland’s Sidebar Restaurant

By Virginia Miller

Welcome to Appetite, a new column on food and drink. A long-time San Francisco resident and writer, I’m passionate about this incomparable city, obsessed with finding and exploring its best spots, deals, events and news. I started with my own service and monthly food/drink/travel newsletter, The Perfect Spot , and will pass along up-to-the minute news.

Openings:
Sumi Sushi reinvents a Castro classic
Sumi Hirose’s restaurant, Sumi, was a Castro stalwart for over 20 years, only recently shuttered. But Sumi is back in the same cozy space, reincarnated as Sumi Sushi, a 20-seat sushi joint with a gold and black color scheme. The menu offers playful rolls like “The Spicy Girl,” plus sashimi or savory cooked plates like bacon-wrapped scallops, and 20 sakes show up on the drink list to pair with sushi. It feels right that the space should stay with the same person – we all need a little reinvention from time to time.
4243 18th Street
415-626-7864

Cocktail events
Feb. 18 – Winter Farmers’ Market Cocktail Night at the Ferry Plaza

The Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture is hosting an event this Wednesday that gets cocktail fiends like myself all worked up. The all-star bartender line-up: Elixir’s H. Joseph Ehrman, Sierra Zimmei of Seasons Bar at the Four Seasons, Jardiniere’s Brian MacGregor, Greg Lindgren and Jon Gasparini of Rye and Rosewood, 15 Romolo’s Scott Baird, Eric Castro of Bourbon & Branch, Thirsty Bear Brewing Company’s Alex Smith, and more. …

For a $25 admission price (buy tix online), the bartenders will prepare and serve you two full-sized cocktails (a John Collins and an Old Sydneytown Winter Punch) plus 12 samples of seasonally-inspired cocktails while you nosh on bites from restaurant greats like Beretta, Michael Mina, Conduit, Globe and Zuppa. You’ll even be eligible to win bartending and farmers’ market prizes by casting a vote for your fave drink.

Ferry Plaza Building
San Francisco
415-693-0996
Or contact Christine Farren, 415-291-3276 x 103

Feb. 21 – Hands-on artisanal cocktail class with Scott Beattie at the Ferry Plaza

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As if Wednesday night’s Ferry Plaza cocktail event wasn’t cool enough, Saturday brings author Scott Beattie and distiller Marko Karakasevic for a $25 interactive class on creating three citrus-based drinks (Meyer Beautiful, “Pelo del Perro or “Hair of the Dog” and Bleeding Orange) while learning about small-batch distilling. Beattie, the man behind the masterpiece cocktails at Healdsburg’s best restaurant (and, I think, one of the country’s best), Cyrus , has also written what has quickly become the industry standard on artisanal cocktails: “Artisanal Cocktails: Drinks Inspired by the Seasons from the Bar at Cyrus” (signed copies if you want ’em at the event). Scott doesn’t just throw together a drink, he creates beauty, perfecting the art of the cocktail with cutting edge garnishes, foams and sugar/salt rims (using seasonal fruit and ingredients from the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, of course). Karakasevic brings decades of experience as master distiller (and founder) of Domaine Charbay in Napa, well known for their flavored vodkas but also for whiskey, rum, grappa, ruby port, etc. … Sounds like an ideal Saturday afternoon to me.
2-4 pm Ferry Plaza Building
(in CUESA’s Dacor Teaching Kitchen in the North Arcade)
415-693-0996

Deals
Feb. 19: Learn about tequila for free: Cortez starts its first Coctail College

Cortez’s chic restaurant and bar is the location for a special kind of cocktail class: the free kind! Pay for drinks ordered but otherwise, education is free every third Thursday of the month, starting this week. They’re on the right track with the first workshop: Tequila is the “subject” and bar snacks are supplied to munch as you “study.” Sorry, but you can’t get course credit for this one.

5:30-7 pm
Hotel Adagio
550 Geary
415-292-6360

East Bay News:
Zax Tavern morphs into Sidebar

It wasn’t without a sense of loss that locals saw Berkeley long-timer Zax Tavern, close in 2007. But now, after a wait, the Zax crew just opened Sidebar, a gastropub serving surprisingly affordable plates (like stuffed portobello mushrooms, oven-roasted poussin, double-cut pork chops, all in the $6-19 range). The place wins further points by being open pretty much all day. The bar is stocked with plenty of beers on tap or by the bottle and a cocktail menu from none other than Absinthe’s master-mixologist, Johnny Raglin.

542 Grand Avenue Oakland
510-452-9500

Peninsula news:
Palo Alto is spruced up with Mayfield Bakery & Cafe
Spruce is the kind of SF restaurant that shows up on Top 10 lists and gets rave reviews. Palo Alto locals or those who head down the Peninsula can hit a brand new second restaurant, Mayfield Bakery and Cafe. It’s a French cafe-style bistro serving lunch and dinner, as well as a cafe issuing coffee and pastries all day long. Yes, Spruce’s quality level remains but the vibe is decidedly more low-key.
Town & Country Village
855 El Camino Real
Palo Alto
650-853-9201

Ransom news:
SF’s first urban hunting club? The Bull Moose Hunting Society is here

Um, a club where for only a $50 one time fee to be a part of the club for life, you can learn the ins-and-outs of safe gun use, the permit process, how to clean, gut, butcher and vacuum-seal your meat… and share quality meat tastings with fellow hunters? Can this be San Francisco? If the Bull Moose Hunting Society has anything to say about it, this’ll be a new kind of breed: the urban hunter who conscientiously prepares and shares his/her spoils of wild boar, pheasant and deer. Join BMHS this Thursday, Feb. 19, for their very first ‘meat and greet’ (yes, I know) at the society’s headquarters.

8-10 pm
561 Baker Street # 8
San Francisco
Contact Nick Zigelbaum with questions: nick@bullmoosehunting.com

Editor’s Notes

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› Tredmond@sfbg.com

Two noteworthy meetings took place in the past couple of weeks. One was led by David Chiu, the president of the Board of Supervisors, the other by Ryan Chamberlain, a downtown political consultant. Other than the sfbg.com politics blog, no local media have been paying much attention. But both ad hoc gatherings could have tremendous political significance.

Chiu was trying to solve the budget crisis, or at least get a handle on it. He called together the major stakeholders in the hope that some sort of consensus, or at least reluctant, unhappy common ground, could be found on the worst fiscal crisis in 80 years.

Chamberlain invited a group of downtown power brokers and moderate-to-conservative political candidates to try to map out a strategy to oust the progressives from control of the board in 2010.

If Chiu succeeds, and crafts a budget compromise that most of the competing interests can accept, it will be a huge victory for the freshman supervisor — and a big win for the progressives he’s aligned with. Governing — actually making tough choices in tough times and finding workable solutions — is much harder than simply leading the opposition. And if the left in this town can show that we can run things better than the Newsom camp, Chamberlain and his big-money crew won’t do much better in 2010 than they did in 2008.

Chamberlain’s group is looking for new approaches and new strategies, and they’ll focus on things like "quality of life" (read: homeless people on the streets). Chiu ought to be able to tell the downtown folks (who, interestingly, are probably going to both meetings) that the Newsom administration’s budget cuts are going to make the homeless problem way worse.

So all this political and policy debate is going on quietly in San Francisco. And what’s most interesting is that the person who should have the most at stake in both areas isn’t even at the table. He’s too busy running for governor.

If you think this guv is bad ….

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By Tim Redmond

And he is bad, one of the worst in modern history … just consider one of the leading GOP contenders to succeed him. Meg Whitman — who doesn’t want to raise taxes on the rich but doesn’t seem to have any other ideas about balancing the budget — announced in her first public campaign appearance :

“Californians can no longer afford the government they have. … “I will give them the government they deserve.”

The government we deserve? That’s pretty harsh.

Downtown marshals its forces

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By Tim Redmond

The folks who got their collective asses kicked in last fall’s elections also got the message — that their politics, their candidates and their messages aren’t working — and they’re quietly meeting to map out a new strategy to try to take back some seats on the Board of Supervisors in 2010.

A meeting earlier this week, convened by former SFSOS staffer Ryan Chamberlain, drew representatives of the Chamber of Commerce, the Committee on JOBS and candidates like Scott Wiener, a Democratic County Central Committee member who is planning to run in District 8.

“What we’re doing isn’t working,” Chamberlain told us. “The progressives are winning.”

So downtown is looking to build grassroots operations — and the message right now is “quality of life.” That means cracking down on homeless people, cleaning up the streets, more cops, probably a move toward allowing more condo conversions (homeowners tend to vote more moderate than renters, so these folks love the idea of having more owners and fewer renters in town).

Chamberlain wouldn’t give us a list of who attended, but one source familiar with the meeting told us the Chamber and JOBS were well represented. Wiener confirmed that he was there, but wouldn’t say anything else about the meeting. Sup. Sean Elsbernd told us he was invited, but couldn’t make it.

So let’s remember: The progressive victories last November were hard-fought. This is still a battle for the soul of the city, and the other side isn’t anywhere near ready to concede. In fact, the downtown guys have plenty of money and sophisticated political strategists and they’re lining up candidates.

The state budget deal

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By Tim Redmond

The state Legislature is scheduled to vote Friday on a budget deal that nobody likes.. I’m told that labor groups will urge Democratic legislators to oppose the deal; it’s not even clear that Republicans — whose leaders helped negotiate it — will vote for the proposal.

The GOP members still insist, for the most part, that they won’t accept new taxes, and this plan has $14.3 billion in new taxes, some of which are pretty good. It calls for a 12-cent increase in the gas tax, which is a great way to raise money and should be higher, and a slight increase in the car tax (ditto). I don’t like the 1-cent sales tax hike, and while I’m all for raising income taxes on the rich, a 2.5-percent across-the-board surtax isn’t even remotely fair (esp. since the higher earners, who tend to itemize deductions, will wind up deducting the higher tax from the federal income taxes, while the average person won’t get that benefit.) Still: at least some of the budget gap will be addressed with new revenues (which the mayor of San Francisco can’t seem to accept as a solution back home.)

The cuts are awful. The schools will get hammered . According to the Sacramento Bee

Welfare recipients and low-income disabled, blind and elderly individuals would not receive cost-of-living increases

which is awfully harsh.

And it goes downhill from there — among other things, the budget would eliminate state support for local transit systems, which is going to be a brutal hit for San Francisco.

So the more liberal Dems are going to get pressure to say no, and even the Republican leaders who worked on the deal won’t promise to vote for it. But as state Sen. Mark Leno told me:

“Given the nature of the $42 billion deficit, our budget resolution is by definition painful all around. And we have to move forward to get the state off life support.”

Newsom still MIA

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By Tim Redmond

You know the mayor is in serious trouble when his business allies say he’s missing in action. From the Chron this morning:

Scott Hauge, a San Francisco business owner who is president of the advocacy group Small Business California, said the meetings that Chiu organized this week were the first occasions small business has been brought into City Hall talks since budget negotiations started heating up several weeks ago.

“The mayor has not brought us to the table, which is very frustrating because we are the major employers in San Francisco and we are really hurting right now,” said Hague, adding that he’s worked with every mayor since Dianne Feinstein and that it is unprecedented to have a board president, not the mayor, convene these types of discussions.

While nobody who has been attending Board President David Chiu’s meetings will talk about the details, I’m getting the clear impression that business (including the Chamber of Commerce and the Committee on JOBS) and labor (particularly SEIU Local 1021) are actually making progress toward a July special election that could help prevent a total meltdown in city services.

And Newsom didn’t even send a representative to the meetings.

My favorite comment from the mayor:

“But I guess the question is, what more can I do? I can make things up to do today in order not to go down there (to San Jose)

Newsom has to “make things up to do today?” How about talking to the key stakeholders and trying to arrange a deal on a budget that everyone can live with?

Nathan Ballard, the mayor’s press flak, told us that

The mayor has been meeting with labor, business and the supervisors to work together on solutions.

But nobody in business or labor or on the board of supervisors seems aware of that.

Governor attacks the schools

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By Tim Redmond

Just for the record, according to the California Budget Project, the proposed budget that the guv is putting forward would cut $39 million from the SF public schools.
And although the city’s Rainy Day Fund (thanks to Tom Ammiano) might — might — be able to provide $24 million, it’s still going to be a year of ugly, ugly cuts.

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

It was kind of weird to be standing in front of the White House last week and not protesting anything. I’d been there so many times before, but always with a sign or a shout or at the very least a sneer: the White House wasn’t a symbol of hope as much as it was a monument to everything that infuriated me about the United States of America. The Reagan years, the Bush years, the Clinton years, the Bush years … I used to say, and it wasn’t that long ago, that I didn’t think the United States could ever elect a president I could actually believe in.

And late Saturday night, I was sitting in a hotel bar with a bunch of cynical editors and publishers from a bunch of cynical alternative newspapers — and everyone was talking about walking over to the White House. We knew the Obamas weren’t even there (they’d gone to Camp David for the weekend). And there wasn’t much to see, particularly late at night. But it felt like the street in front of the White House was just a cool place to be.

Pretty amazing.

Barack Obama has a remarkable amount of good will built up. He has a honeymoon period like no president has had in my lifetime. The left is generally patient, the center seems enthralled, and the right is a lot more muted in its criticism than we were when, say, Ronald Reagan took office on a wave of popularity. And his political capital is already getting tested.

It was astonishing listening to some of the debate over the stimulus plan. I’m not thrilled with the way the thing is coming down — it’s too small, it’s too focused on the private sector, there’s too much in tax cuts and not enough in spending. But the way the Republicans have been talking about the bill, particularly in the Senate, is mind-boggling.

John McCain (didn’t he just lose an election or something?) was blubbering away about "pork." Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona insisted that the bill "wastes a ton of money." Sen. Susan Collins of Maine introduced (and remarkably enough, got passed) an amendment reading: "None of the amounts appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used for any casino or other gambling establishment, aquarium, zoo, golf course, swimming pool, stadium, community park, museum, theater, art center, and highway beautification project." As if parks, theaters, and art centers are the same as casinos. (Remember, the Works Progress Administration, one of the most successful parts of the New Deal, built theaters and parks — and put artists to work, something missing from this bill).

Look: the only way the federal government can pull us out of this tailspin is with huge amounts of spending. You can’t spend $800 billion without wasting something, somewhere; some dollars will wind up getting stolen or diverted or used for the wrong thing, and some of what’s in the bill will be foolish.

But the notion that the people who created this mess, who used tax cuts and lax regulations to wreck the economy, should be criticizing government spending is more than a little nuts. You have to wonder: Why does anybody listen to these people any more? And why is Obama even trying to work with them?

Obama’s first prime-time press conference was a little shaky (although it’s hard to blame a guy who’s got the future of the world’s largest economy in his hands for not having a clear position on the A-Rod steroid scandal right now). The stress on Obama is already showing.

But he still has the political capital, and he ought to be playing a little more public hardball.

Boycott Kelloggs!

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By Tim Redmond

I don’t eat that shit anyway, but my kids do,and I’m not going to buy it any more. I’m supporting the Kellogg’s boycott. Drunk driving’s okay but a bong hit isn’t?

Besides, everyone knows it’s better to eat at Subway.

Why we’re broke

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By Tim Redmond

State Sen. Mark Leno explained to me a few days ago that, despite the GOP’s claim that California has “a spending problem,” when you actually look at how state spending has increased over the past 20 years, you get a very different picture. Actually, after accounting for inflation and population growth, state spending would have been relatively flat — save for the insane prison expansion and the governor’s car-tax cut.

There’s an interesting analysis of all this at Calitics, which looks at the Monterey Herald’s story on Where the Money Went. Bottom line: The state’s problem — as I keep saying — is that Californians want all kinds of services — good education, parks, roads, transportation systems and yes, sadly, prisons — but nobody wants to pay for them. It’s expensive to run the world’s eighth-largest economy, a state with more people than most countries and a wide range of social problems. And there is plenty of money floating around — even in this economy, California is a very wealthy state.

But as long as we aren’t willing to raise taxes on the wealthy and look at issues like Prop. 13, these budget problems aren’t going to go away.

Bipartisan stimulus puke

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By Tim Redmond

The version of the stimulus bill that just passed — with some of the much-vaunted “bipartisan support” — has serious problems. And Wall Street isn’t too thrilled either.

The response of the public is more complicated, but I think Randy Shaw is right: We need a major political push right now, focused on Rep. Nancy Pelosi, to turn this thing around before it’s too late.

A-Rod and other types of stimulus

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By Tim Redmond

Can you believe that in the middle of a press conference on the meltdown of the world’s largest economy some joker from the Washington Post asked President Obama about A-Rod?

Overall, a decent press conference, but the prez looked a little shaky at times. You can see the stress of trying to save us from another Great Depression with the bipartisan Republicans refusing to help.

Ken Garcia’s cuts

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By Tim Redmond

Okay, this is the sort of thing that really, really annoys me. Ken Garcia is against a June election, which is fine if he thinks no tax measures will pass and thus it’s a waste of money.

But then he says this:

The City doesn’t have a revenue problem, it has a spending problem. It spends wildly on public health programs and hospitals that most cities long ago curbed, and its health care costs and pension benefits spike around 25 percent each year.

So what the board must do, which it hasn’t to any formidable degree, is start cutting into the bloated bureaucracy our fearless leaders have created during the past 20 years, while the mayor tries to renegotiate labor contracts that always seem to sail through during election years.

And then cut. And then cut some more.

When people bloviate about bureacracy and cuts like this, I think they have a responsibility to tell us all, specifically, what they want to cut. It’s easy to talk about spending “wildly and public health programs,” but it’s another thing to say which programs, serving which people, ought to be eliminated.

I asked Garcia what his proposals were and he said he had no comment but would make some suggestions soon.

Frankly, this is horseshit. Half a billion dollars is a lot of money, and while I agree there’s waste at City Hall, there’s not anywhere near half a billion dollars worth of waste. If you don’t want to raise taxes, fine — tell us what you’ll cut instead. Or shut up.

Our kind of guy in the A.G.’s office

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By Tim Redmond

The United States Justice Department has a long history of trying to turn porn into a crime. I still have my personal copy of the Meese Commission report, which includes perhaps my favorite line in the history of governmental bureaucratise:

“We will now address the problem of mere nudity.” (A lot of that going around.)

So I have to say, I was pleased to see that the Obama administration is close to giving the Number Two job at Justice to a guy Goodvibes describes as “pro-porn, pro-choice.”

David Ogden would probably use other words to describe himself; he’s a widely respected lawyer who served in a number of jobs in the Clinton Administration. But, oh, he has the right-wing up in arms.

Imagine: He actually represented the American Library Association. And he represented the National Association of Social Workers in arguing that gay people still face discrimination in America.

Oh, and yes: He has represented Playboy. He once argued that it was okay for the Library of Congress to use federal money to print Playboy articles in Braille. (Interesting concept, there; I wonder what they did with the pictures.)

So he’s hardly a crazy radical, but he’s our kind of guy. And that would be a very nice change in Washington.

Editor’s Notes

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› Tredmond@sfbg.com

This is what happened in the office of the mayor of San Francisco last week:

1. One of the most highly respected members of the Newsom administration — quite possibly the only department head the mayor ever hired who has the unquestioned respect of every sector of the community she works with — was forced to resign, for reasons the mayor won’t explain. In fact, in a lame attempt at spin, the mayor’s press office put out a statement suggesting that Margaret Brodkin, who ran the Department of Children, Youth and Families, was leaving to take a new position.

Wrong, as Brodkin quickly (and predictably) pointed out in her own release, which hit my inbox at almost exactly the same time. Brodkin told the truth: the mayor, who has had nothing but praise for her in public, fired her, summarily.

2. Just a few weeks after vowing to begin a new era of mutual respect and a desire to work with the new Board of Supervisors, the mayor tried to override the board, quietly, and place his own unqualified ally on a key state commission.

The supervisors had voted 8-0 to nominate Sup. Ross Mirkarimi for a slot on the state Coastal Commission. That’s an important job: the commission regulates development all along the state’s coast, and the person who represents San Francisco, Marin, and Sonoma counties needs to be a strong and reliable environmentalist. Mirkarimi, a Green Party member, has devoted much of his life to environmental causes; his colleagues on the board agreed he was the best candidate to forward to the state Senate Rules Committee, which has the final say on appointments.

Without informing Mirkarimi or Board President David Chiu, Newsom tried to pull a fast move: he forwarded the name of Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier to Senate Rules, hoping, perhaps, that as a Democrat, Alioto-Pier might get the nod. There’s a good reason the supervisors didn’t nominate her — her record on environmental issues is awful, she’s way too friendly to developers, and the last time she had an outside job, as a delegate to the Golden Gate Bridge board, she missed half the meetings. But Newsom wouldn’t trust the board, and wanted his own candidate.

Which was not only wrong, but stupid: turns out state law gives the supervisors, not the mayor, the exclusive right to nominate Coastal Commission candidates. Newsom’s office didn’t even check the regulations, and by the end of the week, his spinmeisters were pretending that they’d never really forwarded her name in the first place.

3. The mayor came out strongly against a June special election to raise taxes to cover some of the half-billion-dollar deficit — but offered absolutely no alternative. That left the supervisors, city employees, the press, and the public wondering what exactly the mayor has in mind — 1,000 layoffs? 2,000? Major service cuts? — and when he’s going to tell us about it.

Oh, and while all of this was happening, Himself was out of town, hobnobbing with the hip swells at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

I don’t think I’m the only one who’s asking — what the fuck is going on in Newsom-land, anyway? *

Parking meters in GG Park?

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By Tim Redmond

Actually, I’m not against the idea of charging for parking in the parks. Parks are free open space, for use by all, but cars have a clear and negative impact on the park (and I say this as someone who drives my kids there to ride bikes, since they’re not old enough yet to ride on the city streets). Paying a modest fee to put your dangerous, polluting vehicle in the middle of public green space shouldn’t be such a horrible burden.

And I’m all for making commuters who use city parks as parking lots pay.

But I’m not really sure how this would work. Parking meters are the only logical option, but since most people who drive to the park spend a fair amount of time there, the meters have to allow, say, four hours worth of time without requiring users to carry $20 in quarters.

And I wonder: If thieves can dig under the ground and rip up miles of copper wire, what will become of all those nice juicy meters filled with cash, deep in the park late at night?

Why newspapers won’t die

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By Tim Redmond

But before I get into that:

Doesn’t the Chronicle’s new design look awful? I mean, it’s cluttered and backward-looking and I don’t think it’s going to save THAT newspaper from its financial problems. Why doesn’t the Chron just take local news seriously, cover San Francisco, and hire just one, just one progressive urban political columnist to balance the suburban Chuck Nevius?

Okay: But newspapers aren’t going to die. I try to explain this to people all the time. I tell students that journalism is going to be around forever, even if we stop killing trees to make paper and the internet morphs into a consensual hallucination or people screw sockets into their brains to learn things or whatever. There will still be communication, and some of it will still involve journalists.

I don’t always agree with Bill Keller, the editor of the NY Times, but in a recent column answering readers’ questions, he got this one just right:

First, there is a diminishing supply of quality journalism, and a growing demand. By quality journalism I mean the kind that involves experienced reporters going places, bearing witness, digging into records, developing sources, checking and double-checking, backed by editors who try to enforce high standards. I mean journalism that, however imperfect, labors hard to be trustworthy, to supply you with the information you need to be an engaged citizen. The supply of this kind of journalism is declining because it is hard, expensive, sometimes dangerous work. The traditional practitioners of this craft — mainly newspapers — have been downsizing or declaring bankruptcy. The wonderful florescence of communication ignited by the Internet contains countless voices riffing on the journalism of others but not so many that do serious reporting of their own. Hence the dwindling supply. The best evidence of the soaring demand is the phenomenal traffic to the Web sites that do dependable news reporting — nearly 20 million unique monthly visitors to the site you are currently reading, and that number excludes the burgeoning international audience. The law of supply and demand suggests that the market will find a way to make the demand pay for the supply.

And it doesn’t take that much money to create a news operation on the web. The giants in the industry (and some of the not-so-giants, like the SF Chronicle) may fall by the wayside, and we may see much more web-based local reporting from a larger number of smaller and more diffuse news outlets (already happening in SF) and that won’t be such a bad thing.

But newspapers, in the traditional sense of organizations that pay staffers to report and deliver news and charge people (in our case, by showing them ads) to access it … that’s not going anywhere.

American Apparel battle heats up

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editors note: updated information at the end

By Andrea de Brito

When local author Stephen Elliot saw a sign reading “American Apparel: Coming Soon” in a vacant storefront window near 21st and Valencia two weeks ago, he told himself: “What? No way!”

Within 24 hours, he had whipped up a Stop American Apparel website and spent $750 – money that he didn’t really have — to print thousands of posters reading “Your Mission—Not Theirs” (though that side of Valencia Street technically belongs to the Castro).

You can see the simply designed posters in many storefront windows along Valencia Street, where the overwhelming majority of independent businesses—including Ritual Roasters, Modern Times Bookstore, Dog-Eared Books, Aquarius Records, and Borderlands Books— have taken a strong stand against the mega-chain, which boasts 200 outlets in 19 countries worldwide and is known for its ads featuring skinny teenage girls in skimpy cotton rags.

The issue has generated considerable discussion on the neighborhood blog MissionMission and in our past coverage.

“I do not want to live in a shopping mall,” said Elliot, claiming residents he’s interviewed were largely unaware of the imminent prospect of the chain’s grand opening. Though the company’s progressive position on fair labor practices and immigrant rights may blur the lines between good and evil, most opponents claim the campaign is not a crusade against American Apparel. It’s a crusade against formula retail, already completely banned in several affluent commercial districts of San Francisco.

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