Tim Redmond

There goes the boat

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So the Coast Guard announced today that the Cosco Busan can leave San Francisco and head off to someplace where there will be no liens on it, no legal controls, and no way to assure that the city or people who have been harmed by the oil spill ever get any money.

Thanks to sfist for this sad tip.

See, I have been convinced from the start that the only way we would ever have any leverage over the twisted network of companies that owns or controls this ship is if we kept the goods — a boat worth hundreds of millions of dollars — in custody until the suits were settled and the owners, whoever they are, paid up.

And now, off goes the boat. Look forward to years and years of litigation before anyone sees any real money out of this outfit.

PS: Just as I was posting this blog item, I looked out my window from the Guardian office at 135 Mississippi and saw the boat sailing out of the Bay. Damn.

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

I think 2008 is going to be the year when we decide as a city if we’re serious about San Francisco.

We’re going to decide if we want this to be a place where working people can live, a place that isn’t just a playground for the rich, a place where the people who drive the buses and clean the hotel rooms and teach in the schools can get to work without commuting 50 miles.

And it’s not going to be an easy choice.

See, there’s a city charter amendment headed for the November ballot that would set aside a fairly good-size chunk of money, around $30 million per year, for affordable housing. It won’t solve the city’s housing crisis — that would take at least three times as much money, maybe more — but it will, for the first time, create a large, predictable fund of money that can be used and leveraged over the next decade to try to create the type of housing this city desperately needs.

And not entirely coincidentally (see: the subprime mortgage crisis), the voters will be considering this in a year when the city is looking pretty broke.

So the mayor, who hates this charter measure (and who won’t talk seriously about raising new revenue), is going to go all over town and tell everyone that we can’t afford it, that it will mean even more service cuts, that it’s fiscally irresponsible … that whole line. He’ll try to blame the supervisors for the cuts in Muni and the Health Department and the library — and then he’ll run his own candidates in the November board elections, all of whom will oppose the housing measure, and he’ll try to sell them as responsible managers of the city’s treasury.

And all of us will have to make some choices:

Do we recognize that if we can’t build enough low-cost housing, San Francisco will cease to exist as we know it? Are we willing to look at the long run and realize that there will always be good and bad budget years, and that saving the city’s middle-class base is actually good management? Are we willing to accept that the budget should be balanced by new taxes on the rich and not by abandoning everyone else?

God, I hope so. Happy holidays. *

FOIA reform bill passes!

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After five years of effort, a group of ten media organizations called the Sunshine in Government Initiative has succeeded in getting Congress to pass a much-needed reform bill that addresses some of the worst problems with the Freedom of Information Act. It now goes to the president — but since there are Republican co-sponsors and it passed pretty overwhelmingly, there’s a chance he’ll sign it.

Here’s the official statement:

U.S. House Sends FOIA Reforms to President’s Desk,
Media Groups Praise Changes Helping Public Obtain Documents

The ten media organizations comprising the Sunshine in Government Initiative
(SGI) applaud the House and Senate for passing important bipartisan reforms
to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), House Oversight and
Government Reform Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA), Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA), Rep.
William Lacy Clay (D-MO), Rep. Todd Platts (R-PA) and Rep. Lamar Smith
(R-TX) led the effort to pass this legislation. Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) also
played a key role in getting this legislation over the finish line.

The media group members of SGI appreciate the hard work and dedication of
these members and their staffs for their diligent work to improve the way
FOIA works for the American public. Members of the SGI coalition include:
American Society of Newspaper Editors, Associated Press, Association of
Alternative Newsweeklies, Coalition of Journalists for Open Government,
National Association of Broadcasters, National Newspaper Association,
Newspaper Association of America, Radio-Television News Directors
Association, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and Society of
Professional Journalists.

Statements from the Sunshine in Government Initiative and SGI Members
Organizations

“After years of growing government secrecy, today’s vote reaffirms the
public’s fundamental right to know,” said Rick Blum, Coordinator of the
Sunshine in Government Initiative. “Fixing FOIA isn’t a secret. This bill
makes commonsense changes to help the public know what government is up to.
We thank the sponsors who championed real changes and worked hard to keep
the government’s doors open.”

“We applaud Congress for resolving the differences that existed in the House
and Senate versions of this important legislation and making its passage a
reality,” said Gilbert Bailon, president of the American Society of
Newspaper Editors and editorial page editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
“This action reaffirms the public’s right to know and buttresses a statutory
right vital to our Democracy.”

Long-time open government advocate Pete Weitzel, Coordinator of the
Coalition of Journalists for Open Government, which is a member of SGI,
called the vote “a true holiday gift from Congress.”

Community newspapers particularly sought an independent office to resolve
disputes. “Strengthening the Freedom of Information Act will pay dividends
in public information for a long time to come. This new law has many
virtues. But as community newspaper journalists, we particularly celebrate
the development of an ombudsman office under the Office of Government
Information Services,” said Steve Haynes, President of the National
Newspaper Association and Publisher of the Oberlin (KS) News. “We hope it
will open doors that have too long been locked by delay and inattention to
information requests. National Newspaper Association congratulates Senators
Leahy, Cornyn and Kyl and House Chairman Henry Waxman for their authorship
and contributions to this bill. We hope this will be the first of many
enactments to improve transparency and help citizens better understand how
the government operates.”

Other media leaders praised today’s vote and the bill’s sponsors. ³The
Freedom of Information Act is an indispensable tool for citizens and
businesses to access information about their government, which,
unfortunately, too often includes government waste and wrongdoing,² said
John F. Sturm, President and CEO of the Newspaper Association of America.
³Today¹s bipartisan passage of the OPEN Government Act to strengthen and
reform FOIA is a great day for the public¹s interest in good government. We
applaud the dedication of all the lawmakers who pushed this important
measure forward, particularly Senators Patrick Leahy, John Cornyn, Jon Kyl
and Reps. Henry Waxman and Todd Platts.²

³This is a huge advancement for open government, thanks to the leadership of
Senators Leahy, Cornyn and Kyl and Representatives Waxman and Platt,² said
Barbara Cochran, president of the Radio-Television News Directors
Association. ³But this isn¹t just a victory for journalists; it¹s a victory
for every single member of the American public. This legislation will
eliminate some of the lengthy delays and persistent backlogs in the FOIA
process that create obstacles and limit the public¹s ability to make
informed choices in their communities.²

Other SGI members saw this as a strong change in direction. “Passage of the
FOIA bill will allow not only members of the press but all Americans to hold
their government more accountable. In a time when First Amendment rights
are under attack almost daily in this country, this bill is a major step to
ensuring America has a free press and a government that is transparent and
open,” noted Clint Brewer, president of the Society of Professional
Journalists and Executive Editor of the City Paper in Nashville, Tennessee.

The health-care bill mess

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The Democrats in the state Assembly managed to pass a complicated health-care bill that the governor likes, his own party members oppose and the nurses and the insurance companies both hate.

Over at Calitics, David Dayen has a nice analysis of some of the financial problems with the bill — including the fact that it might all amount to absolutely nothing a few years down the road.

The Cal Nurses Association is even harsher:

Insurance companies can continue to deny medical care they brand as “not medically necessary” or experimental, deny access to specialists, and deny tests – even when those care options or treatment are recommended by a physician.
Insurance companies can continue to charge whatever they want. The bill has no limits on escalating premiums, deductibles, co-pays, or other rising costs.
Individuals are still forced to buy insurance without guarantees of what they are buying or whether they can afford it.

I recognize that some progressives support this (Andy Stern and SIEU are big fans) , and that you can’t make the perfect the enemy of the good .. but let’s be serious — this is never going to work.

There’s only one way to solve the health-care crisis, and that’s to get the private insurance companies the hell out of it. This kind of hodge-podge that still lets these greedy crooks set the rates, decide what they’re going to pay for and make life difficult (and expensive) for patients and doctors simply can’t be effective in controlling health-care costs.

Maybe it’s better than nothing, but not a whole lot better.

Watch those deadly commas

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Why the world needs good copy editors: Just think about how many people have been killed because of a couple of misplaced commas.

SPORTS: A free pass for owners

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Mitchell, the owners’ man

By A.J. Hayes

Boy, George Mitchell’s juicy report on baseball’s performance enhancing drug epidemic sure pepped up the news week.

The 409-page report was part CSI Cooperstown, and part gossipy tattler sheet with tons of tasty tidbits ranging from the names of nearly 100 players (the big one being Roger Clemens), to anecdotes detailing some of the black market purchases, including dealer Kirk Radomski returning home to find an overnight package stuffed with $8,000 in cash laying in a rain puddle at his doorstep.

But the more you delve into the Mitchell Report the fishier it smells.

First off couldn’t baseball find someone other than Mitchell, a minority owner of the Boston Red Sox, to head the investigation? Mitchell may very well be ethically impregnable, but the fact is he has both feet planted in an owner’s box. Was it a coincidence that virtually no current or former Red Sox players, besides Mo Vaughn, disliked in Boston for the way he departed the team, was mentioned in the report?

Was George Will too busy rearranging his bow-tie collection?

In the report, Mitchell gave ownership a slap on the wrist. The lion’s share of the blame went to the players – most of them little known utility-infielders and back of the bullpen relief pitchers.

The fact is baseball was rolling along happily collecting the real cash box profits garnered by artificially inflated players over the past decade.

After the owners canceled the 1994 World Series, baseball’s popularity took a nose dive. It wasn’t until Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa’s thrilling competition for the single season home run record in 1998 did the fans come back.

Why, because it was damn entertaining. These buffed out sluggers had their selfish reasons for juicing, yes, but they also helped save the sport in the process. The owners knew it, the players knew it and any fan that it isn’t natural for a 38-year-old pitcher to get drastically better, knew it as well.

It wasn’t until congress got involved, threatening baseball with the removal of it anti-trust exemption that the owners considered a clean-up.

One of the players named, former San Francisco and Oakland bench warmer F.P. Santangelo, has come out this week and admitted his usage.

It’s time for an owner came out and said the same thing. Yes they had knowledge that something was up but did not act because the fans were eating the homers and strike outs, not to mention stadium hot dogs, up like crazy.

Someone has to say that, because the Mitchell Report does not.

The gov’s emergency

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Governor Schwarzenegger is about to declare a state of economic emergency, which will give him broad powers to cut spending in the state.

The law that lets him do this has never been used before; it’s 2004’s Proposition 58, and you can read a pretty good analysis of it here. The basic language says that the governor can call the Legislature back into session and propose measures to address the fiscal crisis. The Legislature has 45 days to act on those proposals and can’t adjourn or move on to any other business until it does.

The problem here is that the state Constitution requires any budget bills to pass the Legislature with a two-thirds vote. So in effect, the guv can send over a list of nasty cuts, and a handful of Republicans can block the Democrats in the Legislature from enacting any tax hikes (or, for example, restoring the motor vehicle license fee, which would bring in about $6 billlion alone).

So Schwarzenegger can come pretty close to demanding deep cuts in social programs and in aid to cities and the Legislature will have a hard time doing anything but enacting them.

That will suck for San Francisco, which, like all cities, will get slammed as state money vanishes.

A key legal filing in the Guardian’s lawsuit

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Since it appears that our lawsuit against SF Weekly and its parent company isheaded for trial the first week in January, and the Weekly has been running a lot of misleading stories about the case, I thought I’d post the key document in the case so far — our brief explaining why the case should not be dismissed and should go to trial.

Here’s the brief, as a pdf. Although it’s marked “confidential,” it was introduced and discussed in open court and is now public record.

The judge in the case, Richard Kramer, tossed out the SF Weekly’s summary judgment motion, and the court of appeals rejected an SF Weekly writ seeking to have that dismissal overturned. So the case is going forward, and if you read our brief, you can see what this is all about.

Cindy Sheehan takes on Pelosi

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Cindy Sheehan, who turned the loss of her son Casey in Iraq into a major national antiwar campaign, became a lighting rod for right-wing attacks, then stepped down from her leadership role, exhausted and somewhat bitter, is back on the scene — and running for Congress in San Francisco.

She came by the Guardian office this week and talked at length about her new political challenge. She realizes it’s not going to be easy taking on Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, the head of the local Democratic Party power structure and a champion fundraiser with essentially unlimited access to cash. But while Pelosi has been building up her power base in Washington, she’s often forgotten her base back home — and I hope Sheehan can push her not only on the war but on the Presidio privatization and its impacts nationwide.

You can listen to the full interview below.


Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

I don’t like the George Lucas building at the Presidio. I don’t like the idea of an 850,000-square-foot commercial office complex (with a Starbucks!) in a national park, and I don’t like the fact that Lucas got a $60 million tax break for locating in one of the most desirable locations on Earth. But at least the Star Wars man made some effort to ensure his $350 million headquarters looks a little bit like the historic buildings around it.

And by that standard, I really hate the plans for the new Don Fisher museum.

Fisher wants us all to think he’s a great guy because he’s going to spend his own money to build a grand hall to display his own modern art for all of his adoring subjects to see, and he’s hired a fancy architect to design it. But check out the drawings — the thing is an abomination. It looks like something an alien dropped out of another galaxy far, far away and into the parade grounds of an old military base. It has no context, no connection whatsoever to anything that’s already there. I’m sorry, but it’s ugly. Butt ugly.

And it really doesn’t belong in the Presidio.

Think about it for a second: This is a part of the city that has almost no public transportation. The old Sixth Army headquarters was never set up to handle hundreds of thousands of visitors (on the contrary: like most military bases, it was designed around security, with limited, narrow access gates that could be quickly closed down). The roads aren’t wide, the nearby city streets are already pretty crowded, and there isn’t a lot of parking.

So anything that brings large numbers of tourists in large numbers of cars to the center of the Presidio is going to be a problem. It’s nuts that the Presidio Trust is even considering this project — either the museum is going to be a waste of everyone’s time and money because it doesn’t attract visitors or it’s going to be a nightmare of traffic and crowds.

If the great Mr. Fisher wants to put his art on public view, he could offer to donate or loan it to the existing Museum of Modern Art, which is situated downtown, near tourist hotels and lots of transit. But he doesn’t want to do that; the way I’ve heard it, the MOMA folks weren’t quite ready to bow down and let Fisher run the place any damn way he wanted. So he took his art and walked away.

Since he’s worth more than a billion dollars, he could also buy an existing building near MOMA or buy a parking lot and build a museum, but Fisher wants to pollute the Presidio instead. And guess what? He thinks he’s going to get away with it.

See, he helped Rep. Nancy Pelosi create the privatized park, and he was one of the original trust members, and this is how the rich think: We took this land from the public. We’ll do with it exactly anything we please.

Pelosi made sure the San Francisco government has no direct say over this decision, but the supervisors should at least try to fight it. They should hold hearings on this, pass a resolution opposing it, call on Pelosi to oppose it (and blast her publicly if she won’t), refuse to provide municipal water and sewer service, refuse to make traffic improvements … and make it clear what this is: a billionaire’s attempt to stick it to the rest of us.

73 percent for Edwards? Whoa …

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I’m not surprised that Hillary Clinton is faring poorly in a new DailyKos straw poll; the Kos folks have never been real fond of Hillary. But it’s a bit startling that 73 percent of some 700 voters are supporting John Edwards.

Thios is not a fair, scientific or random sample and doesn’t count for anything, really, but it’s interesting.

Support the affordable housing plan!

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We can all argue forever whether Sup. Chris Daly’s affordable housing plan is perfect, but in the end, it’s way better than what we have now. Besides, as Daly points out, Jim Sutton is against it. Which is an excellent reason for everyone else to vote yes.

Now that Gerardo Sandoval has said he’ll support the plan, the two swing votes are Sophie Maxwell and Jake McGoldrick. If either one of them opposes this, it will be a slap in the face to all the progressives who have tried to hard to support the two supervisors.

You can call their offices, right now, and demand they support the Daly plan; McGoldrick is 554-7410 and Maxwell is 554-7670.

The Milk Club: Remain calm …

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So the Harvey Milk Club meets tomorrow evening (Dec. 11) to consider an endorsement for state Senate. It’s Mark Leno vs. Carole Migden, and it’s been all too ugly.

You can read the club’s press release here ; club members got in such a nasty fight at the last meeting that some don’t even accept tomorrow’s meeting as legitimate.

But here’s the thing: At some point, we all have to put this behind us and move on.

I think the odds are pretty good that Migden will win the Milk Club. I’m not going to say it was all done with perfect adherence to the rules; the Migden forces pulled some fast ones. The Leno people pulled some stunts, too, and would have played fast and loose with the rules earlier on if it helped them. That’s how these clubs work.

And frankly, a Migden nod won’t surprise anyone (Carole’s a former Milk Club president) and it won’t be a horrible blow to Leno (who has the Alice B. Toklas Club). Leno is clearly trying to appeal to the progressives, and the Milk endorsement would help, but there are other ways he can do that. So his campaign, and the Republic as a whole, will survive this vote.

If Migden wins tomorrow, it seems to me that the Leno folks should register their protests if they please, but then let it go. And if Leno manages to pull it out, the Migden folks should do the same.

This isn’t worth the sort of bitter fights, name calling and personal demonization that could be the result of an extended, bruising battle.

Mecke second, Hoogasian third

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Here’s an interesting chart, thanks to Marc Salomon, totalling the second- and third-choice votes in the mayor’s race. SInce Newsom won a clear majority, ranked-choice voting never came in to play, but if it had, and just for fun and the permanent record, Quintin Mecke came in second, Harold Hoogasian third, Wilma Pang fourth. Chicken John didn’t come close to his goal of being the Number Two candidate.

I think I’m reading this right.

Newsom’s new tax

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When I first saw this press release, I thought: Wow. Gavin Newsom realizes that there’s a $250 million budget deficit, and he’s actually trying to do something about it. We tax cigarettes because they’re unhealthy, why not tax carbon emissions, which are killing the planet — and raise a little money in the process?

Well, damn: There’s a problem. The key word here is “revenue neutral.” Newsom’s going to give tax rebates to anyone who has to pay this new tax. So it brings in no money for the cash-strapped city.

I understand the argument (let’s tax carbon, not jobs) but the payroll tax doesn’t tax jobs; it’s just a way to measure the size of a company. It’s an imperfect measure, as is gross receipts, but it’s one of the few possible measures you can use for a tax. Calling it a tax on jobs is completely misleading, and the mayor knows that.

So why not keep both? Why not simply add a levy on commercial carbon use (and maybe residential, over a certain basline, so it won’t be a regressive tax on renters), and bring in some cash in a way that also discourages environmental waste?

PG&E FIRES PUC DIRECTOR!

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This is big, a clear sign of how Mayor Gavin Newsom is going to operate in his next four years: Susan Leal, the head of the Public Utilities Commission, is going to be fired because she’s moving too fast toward public power.

Now keep in mind: Susan Leal is not by any means a radical public-power activist. We’ve been pushing her on this issue for years, and she is, at best, moving slowly, cautiously, incrementally to implement Community Choice Aggregation and to look at options to create a city-run utility.

But even these cautious, slow moves were too much for Pacific Gas and Electric Company, and, according to what I’ve heard at City Hall, PG&E was directly behind this move. THe message that Newsom and PG&E are sending out: Nobody should dare, ever, to take even little itsy-bitsy baby steps toward public power.

Note the comment by the head of Leal’s commission:

“The commission has never taken a vote on public power,” commission President Ryan Brooks said Wednesday. “It’s something she wants, but I don’t think the commission wants it. … I don’t think it’s the right time for it. It’s not a policy direction she has from the commission or from me.”

Leal, no fool, forced Newsom to give her a contract when she took the job, and the city will now have to spend $500,000 to buy her out. That’s a lot of money — but Newsom is apparently willing to spend it as the price of protecting PG&E.

It’s going to be a long four years.

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

OK: a 26-year-old German exchange student was stabbed in the Outer Sunset two weeks ago by a man who appeared to be homeless. It was a terrible incident, an awful crime; we’ll all stipulate that. And although C.W. Nevius, the San Francisco Chronicle columnist, splashed it all over the front page of the Sunday paper Dec. 2, it really shouldn’t have anything to do with how the city sets homeless policy.

But it’s got me thinking.

Nevius is apparently shocked that there’s been a sudden increase in the number of homeless people living in the Sunset. I could have told him and the mayor and the police department a month ago that this was going to happen.

See, thanks to a series of Nevius columns about homeless encampments in Golden Gate Park, Mayor Gavin Newsom got election-year tough this fall and created special teams to go into the park and roust the residents. The mayor, of course, said that all he wanted was to get people into shelters, to get them treatment, to provide them the support that he insists his administration is delivering.

But the fact is, there aren’t enough decent places for all of these people to live. Some day, I still believe, the people in San Francisco (and the people who run the country and the state) will come to their senses and realize that it’s entirely possible to end urban poverty, but that it will take big chunks of money, multiple billions of dollars, and that the wealthy people who like to complain about the folks on the streets will have to pay higher taxes to make it happen. We live in a rich city and a rich country; we can afford to build housing and create jobs and fund welfare programs. We just don’t want to — because we’re Americans and we’ve been told for a couple of generations now that we don’t have to sacrifice for social progress.

In the meantime, no law-enforcement crackdown or Care Not Cash program or shelter system is going to end homelessness in San Francisco. There are going to be people living on the streets because they can’t afford to pay rent on even a nasty single room and they don’t want to deal with the rules and structure of the shelter system.

And I have to wonder:

Weren’t we all better off when we let them sleep in the park?

I know that’s not a terribly satisfying approach to public policy; I know there were and are problems (dirty needles, human waste, befouling of valuable and rare public space) associated with the camps. I know that in theory nobody should be camping in Golden Gate Park; as one city resident reminded me at a neighborhood forum not long ago, the park isn’t a wilderness — it’s a garden.

But nobody should be sleeping in doorways or on sidewalks or in makeshift shelters in industrial areas either. I refer you to paragraph five above.

I ask you (and Newsom and Nevius): where are these people supposed to sleep? No, the park isn’t a home, but a camp hidden in a rarely used corner is more of a home than a bed in a nasty, crowded shelter where you have no rights at all, not even the right to come and go when you want. I know where I’d rather sleep.

Maybe, in the spirit of harm reduction, we should just leave the park campers alone.

The endless budget deficit

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Of course Gavin Newsom knew that a budget problem was ahead. He sees the figures. He also knows that it’s not about the economy or the looming recession; as Controller Ed Harrington put it, “our revenues here in the city are doing fine.”

That is, the revenue is on track, on budget, as predicted.

The problem is that the revenue San Francisco brings in isn’t enough for the level of spending. It’s no surprise: The city has to give its key employees nice raises, as Newsom did, because it’s so expensive to live here. City payroll is going to keep going up as long as housing prices do — and as long as Newsom doesn’t address the real housing issues.

All the talk of a hiring freeze and cutting out middle managers is nonsense; it won’t go anywhere. And sure, there’s fat in the city budget, but not $250 million worth. If Newsom were honest, he’d admit there’s a real structural problem here:

San Francisco voters want extensive public services (and that’s fine). City officials want to pay employees well (and they should). The city is trying to put resources into all sorts of problems that the federal and state governments have ignored (and that’s just not going to change).

To make it all work, we need more money. About a quarter billion dollars a year. Once you admit that, you can start talking about how to find it — who has to pay more taxes. But as long as you’re in denial, the problem will never go away.

Look inward, Mr. Nevius

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The attack by a homeless person on a 26-year-old German exchange student was horrific by any standard. A violent act by a possibly deranged person now charged with attempted rape shouldn’t be seen as any sort of reflection on homelessness in San Francisco; it was just awful.

But when C. W. Nevius starts talking about too many homeless people appearing in the Sunset, he needs to start a bit of self-reflection. His column states:

Whether, as many believe, the attack was a result of moving homeless encampments out of Golden Gate Park or simply an increase in homeless people in the area, the residents of the Outer Sunset are deeply concerned about the people living on their streets.

No shit, Sherlock. You (and I mean you, Chuck, since your columns drove the mayor to drive homeless people out of the park) push people out of a relatively quiet and invisible place where they’ve been sleeping, and they’re going to wind up somewhere else. Like on the streets of the Sunset.

Then the cops can crack down on homeless people in the Sunset, and they’ll move to another neighborhood, where the same game will start all over. And pretty soon a lot of the burghers will start wondering if we weren’t all better off before the Chron started its sensationalist coverage and the mayor got all agitated about the homeless camps in the park. Maybe that’s a better place for people to sleep than in Sunset doorways.

Huh, Chuck?

GOP initiative backer says gays are “loony”

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A Republican initiative that would split California’s electoral vote and almost certainly give the White House to the GOP is still alive, according to the Brad Blog, which has a remarkable interview with one of the measure’s chief backers.

Anthony F. Andrade Jr. told the blog’s Brad Freidman that the measure could still make the June ballot. He also showed a bit of his political colors, saying that he’s all about stopping Hillary, that the Clintons are “pricks” and that gay people are “loony.”

“The people that are involved in that lifestyle have a lot of emotional problems. You know what I mean?,” he asked. “Look, I don’t know if you’re gay or not, but the people that I know who are, who are involved in that, are a little bit loony, if you know what I mean.”

What a sweet bunch of folks over at the GOP. I wonder if Giulinani and his pals will at the very least repudiate Andrade’s remarks.

Some questions for Jackie Speier

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I’m told Jackie Speier is making calls to local elected officials seeking support in her unofficial but very active campaign to unseat Rep. Tom Lantos. I’m sure it’s not an easy decision for some folks: Speier is probably going to run to the left of Lantos, especially on the war – but Lantos will get the support of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and, I suspect, most of the rest of the Bay Area Congressional delegation. Lantos is far more of a hawk than his regional colleagues, and privately a lot of them say he ought to retire – but they all hate primary challenges and will be loathe to say anything positive about Speier.

So the local party power structure will be solidly behind Lantos, and I bet that Democrats who are considering endorsing Speier will feel some pressure.

They ought to put some pressure on Speier, too.

If the former state Senator wants progressive support, activists, groups and elected officials need to ask her a few tough questions, to pin her down on what we could expect from a Congressmember Speier.

Here’s a short list for starters:

The left and Ron Paul

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It’s tempting to want to promote the GOP’s dark-hourse phenon, Rep. Ron Paul, because all he can do in the primaries is beat up and damage the front runners. And in fact, he’s gotten a lot of unexpected support, particularly from young people, because he’s so strongly against the war (and because he’s a libertarian sort who hates the war on drugs and supports medical marijuana). There have even been rumors about a Dennis Kucinich/Ron Paul ticket.

There’s a somewhat softball Chronicle interview with Paul here. (Amazing how gentle the Chron editors are on these politicians; not even any tough follow-up questions. If you’ve ever listened to a Guardian political interview, things are a little different around here ….).

But even the cursory stuff in the Chron interview should be enough to make any progressive very, very nervous about Ron Paul. Among other things, the man who insists “I don’t think the government should be interfering in your personal life” is strongly anti-choice, opposed to Roe v. Wade and apparently sees no federal right to privacy. (The Chron editors never pursued the issue with him and let him get away with a rambling and inconsistent answer, which was rather lame of the Fifth and Mission journos.)

He’s also against income taxes and national health care. And he’s against gun control. And he against any sort of amnesty for undocumented immigrants.

I’m not saying he’s any worse than the rest of the Republicans in the field; I’m just saying that he’s not exactly the sort of candidate who ought to get the young progressives in the Bay Area excited.

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

Asbestos is nasty stuff. It’s the scariest kind of environmental contaminant: you often can’t see it, you can’t smell it, you can’t taste it, it hangs around for a while, and it’s hard to get rid of. Asbestos fibers are tiny, invisible to the naked eye — and once they get in the air, they don’t tend to settle quickly. A single fiber can take eight hours to fall six feet in utterly still air; with the wind blowing, the stuff can float around for days or weeks. If you inhale it, you don’t typically notice, and there’s no easy test for exposure. But it sticks around in your lungs forever and can cause cancer and other deadly diseases 10 or 20 years down the road.

At that point, of course, it’s nearly impossible to prove exactly where and when you were exposed.

I learned all of this years ago when I was writing about asbestos contamination in the San Francisco public schools. For years the stuff was used as insulation (and as linings in automotive brake pads), and for good reason: it’s essentially a rock that you can weave into something resembling cloth. And because it’s a rock, it’s tough and doesn’t burn. Of course, when the insulation coverings get old, as they did in the schools, and the asbestos starts to leak out, you have a public health emergency of such major proportions that schools have to be shut down and lots of expensive, difficult remediation work done.

Now there’s another asbestos story in San Francisco, and it’s a more tricky one: Lennar Corp., which has the master redevelopment contract in Bayview–Hunters Point, has been digging up an area that’s full of naturally occurring asbestos. The area badly needs economic development, so it’s harsh to ban any type of construction there. And I think it’s possible to build safely in the area — but it’s complicated and expensive, and since there are residents (and schoolkids) nearby, there’s zero margin for error. You have to be willing (or forced) to watch every whiff of dust, to monitor the air with sophisticated equipment — and to shut down work the moment it appears that the dust isn’t being or can’t be controlled.

That doesn’t mesh well with a financially troubled company that is trying desperately to avoid costly construction delays.

As Sarah Phelan reports on page 16, a Lennar manager who was threatening to shut down work because subcontractors weren’t controlling asbestos-laden dust was fired and is now suing. The Bay Area Air Quality Management District is threatening multimillion-dollar fines. Yet Lennar is still complaining that any effort to shut down the site, even for short periods of time, would be unfair — because, the company says in a confidential memo, that would cost $40,000 a day.

This doesn’t sound like a company that can be trusted — yet Mayor Gavin Newsom now wants to give the outfit even more public land. A measure headed for the June 2008 ballot would allow Lennar to develop thousands of homes at Candlestick Point — and possibly build a new stadium for the 49ers. The stadium deal is pure political bullshit; Newsom doesn’t want to be accused of "losing" the local football team, so he’ll toss whatever public cash he can scrape up in the Niners’ direction. But the team wants to leave, the stadium does little for the neighborhood economy, and Lennar is going to keep cutting corners (and public safety) to improve its bottom line.

Sounds like a bad deal to me.

Prop. 83 will never work

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The LA Times reports that “Jessica’s Law,” which mandates electronic tracking of all sex offenders, is never actually going to work.

The law — which was nothing but a Republican bid to embarass Democrats in a key election year — is too expensive, impractical and unenforceable, the Times reports:

“I don’t know of any agency that has the resources to track and monitor . . . in real time,” said Vacaville Police Chief Richard Word, president of the California Police Chiefs Assn. “You’ll need an air traffic controller to track these folks.”

That’s what happens when Republicans push a dumb law and most Democrats are too chicken to fight it.

(Thanks to David Dayen at Calitics for catching this.)

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