The Wall: Commentary on Public and Private Life in San Francisco

Seismic Safety - The Final Frontier of Local Housing Law?

2011-12-01T11:36:00.001-08:00

So I went to SPUR's doggenpony show on the CAPPS process, which is coming up to fruition, with allied legislation being planned.

The major implications are of course for housing policy. Over 85,000 housing units would be essentially zeroed out in the most likely major temblor scenario. They would take years to replace:

Focusing on one possible earthquake, a magnitude 7.2 earthquake on the San Andreas fault directly offshore from San Francisco, illustrates the types of consequences the City can expect following its next large earthquake. Such an earthquake could be considered expected because enough strain to produce an event of this size has built up on the San Andreas fault since 1906.

If such an event occurs, the City should expect the following impacts:

About 27,000 buildings of the 160,000 buildings in San Francisco will not be safe to occupy after the earthquake. About 73,000 more buildings will have moderate damage but will remain usable. Most of the damaged buildings will be wood-frame soft-story buildings, which make up more than half of all buildings in the City. Other structure types, notably concrete buildings built before 1980, will also suffer heavy damage.

About 3,600 buildings will need to be demolished and rebuilt. Many of these will be older and architecturally valuable buildings; some will be historic resources. The City will permanently lose the character and feel that these buildings contribute. It will also permanently lose any rent-controlled units in these demolished buildings, due to state law.

Two hundred to three hundred people could be killed, and 7,000 more could have injuries requiring medical care. If the earthquake occurs during the day, older concrete commercial buildings will be responsible for the largest share of casualties. If the earthquake occurs at night, wood-frame soft-story and older concrete residential buildings will cause the most casualties. Casualties could be much higher if even one large, densely occupied building collapses.

Earthquake shaking sparks fires (Figure B). This scenario is likely to ignite more than 70 fires simultaneously, while impeding the San Francisco Fire Department’s ability to respond quickly. This means some fires will burn unchecked for hours. An estimated 2,700 additional buildings could be destroyed by fire, including 5,800 housing units. Damage from fire could be much higher or lower than these estimates, depending on weather, wind, and many other factors.

85,000 housing units would not be suitable for occupancy and would take months to years to be repaired or replaced. Rental and low-income housing would be the slowest to come back.

Economic losses will be huge. The cost for owners to repair or replace their damaged buildings could be $30 billion. Most of this damage will be uninsured. Only 6 to 7 percent of home owners in San Francisco carry earthquake insurance, although coverage is higher for commercial properties. An additional $10 billion could be lost in damage to building contents, loss of inventory, relocation costs, income losses, and wages directly linked to this damage. Post-earthquake fires could add over $4 billion to these losses. Secondary economic losses, stemming from reduced business and household spending, would increase economic hardships.

I think we can safely (pardon the pun) assume that most of this loss will comprise the stock of rent-controlled units.So the challenge is on for government to compel mitigation from property owners. The question is whether it takes an incentive approach or a compulsory one. The former is what has been recommended, along with some thornier suggestions such as forcing public disclosure of seismic safety status in the course of marketing for both rental purchase (the possible effects on our local housing antimarket would be interesting to say the least).

So far the powers that be say everything is on track. However the Brown administration drug its feet here in their drive to maximise investment, and I can't help but think that there are still powerful opponents to the best options here, motivated by short-term profit.

So what have you all heard about this?

Comment here, or on the forum

Are We Infomous Yet?

2011-04-24T18:56:00.000-07:00

The folks at Infomous have been kind enough to generate a topic cloud for our sisters site, the Wall message board.

Why I Hate Saint Patrick's Day

2011-03-17T13:32:00.000-07:00

Now here’s a column that I have been itching to write for years, but have been afraid to. Not a lot of folks, including people I consider friends, are going to like it. But given the city’s recent recovery toward the political center, I think this is something that needs to be said, so that hopefully, it can be swept out of the way by the time the real fight comes in November.

As a white liberal, Saint Patrick’s Day makes me very uncomfortable. If you ask me, a lot of white “liberals” who use the holiday as a political organizing opportunity or celebration aren’t particularly “liberal.” When I see Irish-American boosterism, in particular the “Stage Irish” boosterism associated with both Saint Patrick’s Day and moderate politics in San Francisco, I tend to see racism and self-serving incompetence.

Mind you, I’m not necessarily talking about going to Harrington’s for some green beer. It ain’t my thing, but that’s not what I see as socially corrosive. On balance, Iri sh America enriches our culture. It’s when the political class goes on about the Wearin’ of the Green that my hide starts to chap.

You see, Irish-Americans are white people. True, when they came to America they may not have started out as being treated that way, but the reality is that over time (historically a fairly short time) they achieved privilege. And, when they achieved that privilege, the urban political Irish-American classes tended to keep it for themselves and in turn continue to oppress others. This was particularly the case in San Francisco. Nowadays, appropriated whiteness, which would otherwise serve as a sort of Rosetta Stone for approaching equality, per Richard Rodriguez, has been corrupted by the fallacy of Irishman as "White Negro." Lots of political figures in the City have had to adopt some level of Stage Irishness to get ahead; Indeed, their chosen representative on the Board of Supervisors has a Croatian background. This romantic conceit in turn justifies all sorts of mischief on all sides of the political compass.

A good example is the political career of Terence Hallinan, a spoiled brat and scion of a wealthy Ross family that used his Irishness to excuse his sociopathy and reinvent himself into a fake working-class hero. Hallinan used the Vietnam conflict as an excuse to become a thug on the Berkeley campus, and then used his family’s privilege to escape judgment for it. He later ran for the Board of Supervisors against gay candidates like Harvey Milk and Rick Stokes by characterizing gay people as gentrifiers, and was one of the first politicians to regard gay rights as an unnecessary “special privilege.” Eventually elected to the at-large Board, he stood mainly for corruption, and in turn used that office to get away with, among other things, sexual harrassment. Later he buffaloed the local Democratic Party to support his race for District Attorney by threatening to run against Willie Brown, who would become the City’s first Black mayor. In his two terms as DA Hallinan oversaw a historic decline in prison commitments, which exacerbated the quality of life problems we have as a city now. Today, he continues to make coin at the expense of the City being the consigliore of the unlicensed pot lobby. All this time Hallinan’s only real “credentials” as a Progressive were the usual inflated references to his Irish-American heritage, which inoculated him from criticism of his own monstrous behavior.

Meanwhile, on the moderate side we have the hapless story of Frank Jordan, remembered – perhaps unjustifiably – as one of San Francisco’s most incompetent mayors. Jordan was made as a candidate for the office out of whole cloth – he hadn’t stood for election for any office before, and while effective as police chief, was not popular with the rank and file because he lacked patrol experience and was seen as a political sycophant, having demoted his own brother for mishandling what became known as the infamous “Castro Sweep.” In a more rational universe, Jordan could have been remembered as the chief who reformed SFPD from within. Instead, political insiders saw in him the raw material for the focus of a moderate political backlash against the failings of Progressive Mayor Art Agnos. Completely unschooled in electoral politics, Jordan’s election was helped by a lot of political handholding, as well as appeals to an idealized image of the city’s semi-suburban West Side – with the usual ethnic references as code.

Jordan may have had the character and intellect to be a great mayor. But he lacked experience and insight, and was led around by the nose by shortsighted moderate business and real estate interests. His attempts to undo Agnos’ mistakes on homelessness policy were more provocative than effective. Moreover his own handlers started to turn against him, with embarrassing consequences. He was beaten by Willie Brown in 1995, and quality of life as an issue was eventually put on the back burner while Dotcom cash came into the City and government used the proceeds to realign downtown development and improve infrastructure. Part of that process was derailed by yet another product of the City’s overly coddled Stage Irish political community: Joe O’Donoghue and the Residential Builders’ Association.

During the administration of Dianne Feinstein, the City adopted a General Plan, which foresaw the need for infill housing for working families as labor supply for new knowledge-based businesses. This infill housing would replace prior light industrial uses in the southeast sector of the City, as those businesses moved south. The plan was cast aside by Feinstein’s successor Art Agnos. Little was done to restore that plan under Jordan apart from negotiations and legislation to create what eventually became Pac Bell Park. While that was important, it still left the future of San Francisco’s family housing supply – and thus the City’s middle class – in limbo.

As Willie Brown took office in 1996, O’Donoghue, who had earlier worked to game city planning policy by helping to create the infamous Board of Permit Appeals, came swiftly into the debate over the future of South of Market (SOMA). Armed with a captious interpretation of a 1983 law which was meant to protect ad hoc housing for artists, O’Donoghue’s RBA successfully contracted and built project after project of new model loft housing – open plan condominiums which had little to be desired in either price or amenities by families, but worked well as bachelor pads for Dotcom executives. On top of this, they had a reputation for shoddy build quality. Working both sides of the table as usual, O’Donoghue then courted the Left in the wake of the reactionary protests that his unsustainable projects provoked, bankrolling newly elected poverty pimp supervisor Chris Daly out of campaign debt and thus tucking him into his pants pocket. The end result was that SOMA planning policy became corrupted into a donkey show of most favored luxury projects with kickbacks to affordable housing NGOs, leaving new construction available only to the very rich and poor, and the middle class left to fight for the fixed supply of rent controlled and convertible units. All though this horrifying charade, O’Donoghue endeared himself to the political class with precious references to his Irishness, including obnoxiously dull poetry; Seamus Heaney he isn’t.

We’d all like to think that things are better now. But the specter of Stage Irish pseudosuburban boosterism still exists, and at least one of its paragons has deigned to declare himself a candidate for mayor. At least one Italian candidate is taking on a frighteningly Stage Irish mien.

Let’s cut the crap, people: white is white. If you’re white, you’re privileged. If you’re not white, you’ve got a legacy of discrimination to contend with and in a political environment like San Francisco’s, that is both a curse and a blessing in that you get a natural constituency. The upshot is that white people can’t legitimately run on an ethnic constituency – they need to run on issues. And that is also a blessing and a curse. But the alternative has always proved worse.

The Progs Must Be Crazy

2011-02-24T13:32:00.000-08:00

<- A vigilant, and indignant, Bernal neighbor tries to get Supervisor Campos on the Blower. (Photo by E. Hockstein for the NY Times; appropriated under Fair Use)

With the recent ideological shift at City Hall, San Francisco's Progressives should be looking for a new, more relevant narrative to operate under. There are a lot of issues that local Progs could take the lead on, as a balance to the new Moderate political establishment - such as ensuring that the backlash against Labor in California doesn't become unjustified persecution as what seems to be materializing in the Midwest, for example. Another serious issue is police conduct, but the recent Taser controversy shows that Progs again seem to be avoiding the real issue, just as Taser proponents are: the real issue here is training, not technology.

Unfortunately, a lot of our local Left hasn't clicked onto the Big Picture yet. Their favorite poverty relief NGOs are dragging their feet on meeting community demands for public toilets, for instance. Surely people must eat, but they must also excrete, and it makes sense that the City's free kitchens help provide the facilities, along with help from government. What doesn't make sense is not even wanting to look into the issue.

But it is yet another issue which has already attracted the ire of the more supercilious among activists: a recently discovered and restored "historical" soda pop advertisement in Bernal Heights.

Usually, commercial speech and quality of life concerns are at odds. It's really no different here; it's just that one party feels that that the recently dug up commercial speech has historical value. Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn't. Unfortunately, Progressives, including District Supervisor David Campos, are railing on about how this non-issue should be a proxy war over perceived corporate responsibility for tooth decay and fat kids. Maybe, just maybe, the sign is really just an eyesore.

However, it does seem that Coca-Cola products have a tendency to cause uproar when abruptly introduced into isolated, provincial communities. Just ask the San people of Namibia, or at least some of them.

The Elephant in The Room is Not Wearing Pink

2011-02-08T10:39:00.000-08:00

There are times when certain subtle realities of politics can only be handled indelicately.

Witness for example, the memo provided to Mayor Lee by Steve Kawa's office in re commission appointments, discussed further here.

The memo as published is redacted. I'm not going to ask who did the redacting, but in many cases it's kind of obvious why redacting was done. It was done to protect the privacy of individuals.

What may be interesting is that an aspect of one's private life becomes an issue with regard to demographic representation. In other places religion generally may be treated the same way.

There are a couple of concerns that come to mind, however:

1) Regardless of noble intention, redacting almost always makes an official document worthy of derision by someone. For instance, I would not be surprised if it were to show up reprinted in VERITAS USA accompanied by the usual bigoted screeds.

2) Suppose for a moment there were an unwritten rule that 18% percent of San Francisco political appointments should be from a certain demographic feature which is relevant to one's private life. Suppose then, that some cheeky sort in Washington decided that in response there should be an unwritten rule that no more than 10% of jobs in the Capitol should come from this same demographic. It might cause a catastrophic shortage of Congressional aides.

Discuss on the Wall Message Board

Assessing Gavin Newsom

2010-12-30T11:41:00.000-08:00

As we come to the end of Gavin Newsom’s truncated second term as mayor of San Francisco, we may want to look around and see if the city is truly better off than it was seven years ago.

Recent articles in the Chronicle and Examiner have tended to celebrate the changes, at least in attitude, Newsom has brought to City Hall. However, what may smudge his mark on history seems to have been glossed over. In reality, Newsom is viewed by many pro-business and centrist liberals in much the same way that progressives now view Barack Obama; that is to say, with some sense of betrayal.

Newsom has had a very hard time finishing what he has started. The most glaring example of this is his failure to carry out his campaign promise to reform the city's homelessness policy. Walk down any part of our downtown and you'll see the situation has not changed. Instead, we got the Potemkin Village Sideshow called Homeless Connect, a facile palliative policy that was also embraced, ironically, by the Bush administration. The reality is that while Newsom aggressively brought a lot of homeless people into existing assistance networks, more so than any previous Mayor, he never put a real dent into the root problem. The only way to deal with the chronic homeless is to essentially make their “lifestyle” illegal – allowing courts to intervene and mandate life assistance. Newsom’s Community Justice Center on Polk Street is a mere token move in that direction.

Newsom also has a bad habit of sacrificing subordinates carelessly. First among these was police chief Heather Fong, who entered the job with a reputation as a strong but low-profile administrator, but was shown the door after being tarred as Newsom's political whipping girl on the increasing violent crime rate, and a seeming inability to deal with the old-boy cronyism of the police union and their contempt for the public. Only very late in the game has Newsom finally done the right thing by hiring George Gascon, a dedicated professional from outside the hidebound culture of the SFPD with a personality strong enough to work for lasting change. But by appointing Gascon so late in his term, and leaving early, Newsom has again left yet another police chief twisting in the wind.

If Gascon ends up not being able to make lasting changes to SFPD, then it could very well be argued that the only lasting positive legacy of the Newsom Administration will be the further development of the New Downtown in South of Market, solidified by the opening in 2005 of the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine on King Street. Newsom deserves significant credit for setting the policy stages for the Center and its companion ballot initiative Proposition 71, in the face of skepticism from different ideological directions at local, state, and even national levels.

Unfortunately, this early major victory for Newsom may have encouraged some hubris on his part. Much has been made of Newsom's subsequent public stand on marriage equality, which while laudable on the surface, can hardly be considered as courageous within his own constituency. Meanwhile, on the national and eventually state level, Newsom became a useful caricature of an arrogant liberal elite as a foil for social conservatives. We live in an age where politics is more often defined by irrationality and backlash. To succeed, the ongoing for struggle for civil rights must focus on achieving not merely tolerance, but outright acceptance. To this end the most effective advocates for marriage equality will always be the stakeholders in that struggle themselves: namely, gay and lesbian people. Newsom stole their thunder, endearing himself to his own constituency, while, as usual, allowing the real stakes to twist in the wind. The resulting conservative backlash not only brought shame upon California, but may have also cost the Democratic party a presidential election.

This brings attention to Newsom’s biggest, but unfortunately apparently not fatal, flaw: his venal personality. Stingy with praise, assistance and courage, Newsom may well be the ultimate egoist, a Randian Objectivist ideal type working ironically within a political framework dedicated to social justice. Many of the issues he embraces suffer as his own career benefits from them.

Now ready to assume the mostly symbolic office of Lieutenant Governor, Newsom's statewide and national image remains that of almost a professional tarbaby, permanently positioned to provoke the political right on social issues. Unlike President Obama, who aims to change peoples' minds by reaching out to them, Newsom's strident posturing is a turnoff. He is in many ways the biggest threat we have to the modern Liberal tradition in American politics.

DISTRICT 6: THE WHOLE SHOCKING STORY

2009-09-07T23:51:00.000-07:00

Message Board Down

2009-07-31T09:26:00.000-07:00

Looks like yuku has been struggling with some of their servers all week. If you have anything burning to get off your chest, you can post it at http://sfwall.yuku.com until the original board comes back up again.

(EDIT: Board back up. Profile servers fixed. Nothing to see here...)

Meet The New Mayor, But First, A Cautionary Tale

2009-06-20T11:25:00.000-07:00

HONGISTO: Long-serving Sheriff, Short-serving Chief, force of nature.

As our Absentee Landlord runs for Governor, one of the burning questions on the minds of those interested is who will succeed him. There are a number of people who are actively posturing like they want the job right now, but the most likely successor is someone who hasn't made himself noticed much recently - and that is something that people should be talking about.

But first, we have a cautionary tale for George Gascon, who as of late July, will be our new police chief. As big city police manager with experience in the quantitative performance school of police management pioneered in New York, Gascon represents one of the few substantial campaign promises that the Absentee Landlord has followed thorough on. It certainly took long enough, too.

While Gascon's main selling point is his experience being part of the Bill Bratton management regime in Los Angeles, many are also capitalizing on his recent exposure to - and survival in - the often surreal world of Arizona politics, which occasionally comes up with some real pieces of work - like Evan Meacham, and more to the point, the ever-entertaining Joe Arpaio. But dealing with Arizona's right-wing buffoons may pale in comparison to the demagogues on both the extreme left and right that a police chief must deal with in San Francisco. And this is where our history lesson begins.

Not with Charles Gain, the hyperpoliticized troll who was appointed by George Moscone and mostly did himself in by listening to Joe Freitas a little too much. For some reason Gain keeps getting trotted out as the object lesson in SFPD political mismanagement. Unfortunately, there is a much more germane - and recent - example. The best object lesson in how the city's political establishment can eat a police chief alive - even when that chief comes from that very same establishment - is Richard Hongisto.

Dick Hongisto eventually became a sort of rennaissance man of San Francisco government, serving as police officer, elected Sheriff, member of the Board of Supervisors, and as Assessor, before becoming police Chief under Mayor Frank Jordan as part of political appointment shuffle. Appointing Hongisto as Chief allowed Jordan to move Doris Ward to the Assessor's office, and Annemarie Conroy to the Board of Supervisors. It also allowed Hongisto, who made his name as a progressive activist street cop and founder of Officers for Justice, and as an equally progressive and popular Sheriff, to realize his own vision for SFPD as a progressively-run force which still emphasized respect for the law.

But Hongisto soon found himself under attack by both the hidebound police union and his former Progressive allies. Earlier as Sheriff, Hongisto burned bridges with some Progressives by being compelled to enforce the law: after spending time in jail for refusing to carry out the court-ordered mass eviction of the International Hotel, which was home mainly to indigent Filipino retirees, he finally carried out the order. In 1978, Hongisto was appointed as police chief in Cleveland by progressive mayor Dennis Kucinich. He was soon sent packing once he proved to be more popular than his boss. Now at the helm of SFPD, he would soon find himself in a similar position again, along with the burden of conservative opposition within his own rank and file.

Soon after his appointment, Chief Hongisto faced a major challenge: in the wake of the Rodney King Trial, riots in Los Angeles were soon mirrored by civil unrest in San Francisco. Fears that the deaths and massive property damage in Los Angeles would also manifest in the City prompted Jordan and Hongisto to react strictly to demonstrations - any that resulted in property damage or injury, or which deviated from agreed routes would be shut down. Local progressives didn't care much for that - they went ahead and crossed the established line of conduct, and the result was mass arrests. Additionally, Hongisto took measures, such as declaring the local jails full and processing and releasing rioters at the Santa Rita Jail across the Bay, which effectively took the wind out of the sails of any further organized unrest. Progressives were incensed, and looked for any opportunity to get Hongisto fired. They, with help of the right-wing leadership of the Police Officer's Association, would soon find that opportunity.

In response to police action against the demonstrations, a local LGBT publication, The San Francisco Bay Times, ran a cover which featured a satiric, demeaning caricature of Hongisto. Faced with continuing dissension in police ranks due to public reaction to the mass arrests, Hongisto asked a narcotics detective based out of Mission Station, Gary Delagnes, who was also vice president of the police union, to get some copies of the Bay Times and distribute them to his membership "to show them what kind of heat he was taking." Delagnes apparently misinterpreted the request - perhaps deliberately - as an order to seize over 2,000 copies of the paper out of public newsracks. Soon afterwards a "little bird" complained about missing newspapers and investigators found the papers being stored in a basement at Mission station.

The resulting hearings before the Police Commission were nothing if not a Soviet-style show trial par excellence. Hongisto was fired, and Delangnes and some other cops got off with suspensions and warnings. Indeed, after a public face-saving interregnum under moderate President Chris Cunnie, Delagnes now heads the police union.

As the new SFPD chief, George Gascon will likely have less emotional involvement and political baggage then Hongisto had. But unfortunately, the hazards faced are still the same.

Meanwhile, back to our next Mayor. An inordinate number of local politicos are acting as if Newsom is going to be the next Governor – despite the fact that his chances in that race are slim to none. Anyone with half a brain knows that either Jerry Brown or Tom Campbell will end up winning that one.

But let’s say he does win. Or, alternatively, he ends up having to leave office because one of his Caligulesque personality tics finally does him in with the public. Has anyone considered the fact that in such a scenario, our next Mayor will most likely be Aaron Peskin?

PESKIN: "So, how long do I have to wait for my closeup?"

Yep. You see, although the former Supervisor and Board President will have been out of the public eye for the better part of two years by the time he would be appointed, he is the most favored candidate for Mayor should Newsom leave office early.

Under the City Charter, the succession plan works like this: if the Mayor leaves before the due expiry of his office, then the President of the Board becomes Acting Mayor. But the Acting Mayor doesn’t get to keep the job for any specified time; unless the vacancy occurs within 120 days of a regularly scheduled election, the Board of Supervisors gets to nominate and then appoint, by majority vote, a new mayor. And they can appoint anyone.

Looking at who is on the Board now, and who will likely be elected to the Board by 2010 (Janet Reilly in District 2; Debra Walker in District 6; Carole Migden in District 10), a majority of them owe significant political favors to Peskin – including David Chiu, the current Board President and Peskin’s anointed successor on the Board.

Now before we start imagining horror scenarios of Aaron Peskin, emerging from the shadows like Pol Pot to forcibly migrate Downtown San Francisco to rural reeducation camps on Treasure Island, you may want to consider that of the last three mayors, the most effective and ultimately most true to a centrist agenda was Willie Brown – who initially ran from the Left with significant Progressive support. As Board President, Peskin ran the agenda like a Swiss watch, and has often shown a pragmatic side. But then again, that pragmatism may be put in abeyance when he is able to gain the power of incumbency as Mayor without a truly public vote.

It’s something to think about.

Discuss on the Message Board (1) (2)

Penalty Unfair

2009-05-18T11:43:00.000-07:00

The current pressure on MUNI to “get tough” on fare evaders creates an even bigger sinkhole for public funds - and more tension on trains.

This week Supervisor Bevan Dufty became the latest in the long line of public officials around the country to address the issue of MUNI fare evasion, an offense whose level of outrage seems to correlate to a city’s economic health. Dufty “is pushing to increase evasion citations by 50 percent, which would bring the fine for first-time offenders up to $75 from the current $50. Dufty is also suggesting fines of up to $250 and $500 for second-time and third-time violators, respectively.”

MUNI fares are in the news this month as the City’s economic woes bring pressure to bear on any municipal revenue stream, and the MUNI fare box has always been the subject of political tug-of-war between transit advocates who endorse cheap, plentiful transit as an incentive for citizens to stop using their polluting and sprawl-inducing cars so much, and fiscal conservatives who tend to indict transit as an exemplar of everything that is wrong about social democracy – an overpaid driver and an underpaid fare box leading the way inside a mobile aquarium of the working poor and ungovernable urban youth covered in magic marker ink, crack pipes, spilled coffee and lickspittle. The end result is that nobody seems to want to look at the issue in terms of how to effectively ameliorate the problem.

Concerns about fare evasion are rising in all major cities. That’s because we’re in a recession, and cities need money. The fact that fare evasion rises when everyone is under economic pressure makes it an even more convenient bugaboo that allows transit agencies to vent popular pressure while increasing fares. Enforcement schemes against fare evasion are indeed more often than not more expensive than the lost fare income itself, and in a culture where the public expectation of transit fares are still based upon the outdated notion that transit is primarily for the poor to lower middle class, you’ll never get away politically with bringing fares up to the level where they actually pay for service.

The stupidity of fare evasion enforcement becomes even clearer when you combine the subsidy-vectored pressures of cities like San Francisco (where the rule against back-door boarding is broken literally hundreds of thousands of times per day out of common sense) with the individualistic cultures of Left Coast cities generally. Such schemes become characterized by the public as the urban equivalent of the old Southern “Speed Trap” as any hope to legitimize the policy goes out the window. End result: more fare evasion.

So whatever happened to Penalty Fares? Is it really more expensive to just make scofflaws pay their fare on the spot rather than process all those citations?

Now there’s an idea.

Discuss on The Wall: San Francisco Politics, Policy, and Government

SFWeekly Looks at the JROTC Issue

2009-04-08T12:07:00.000-07:00

http://www.sfweekly.com/2009-04-08/news/jrotc-under-fire-in-s-f-schools/

Interesting article. Some Observations:

1) As I've posted before, I was a JROTC cadet in two different school districts. JROTC kids get teased/bullied everywhere. Yet it's only here that the program has tried to conform to self-styled "community standards". Despite this, it's still used as an ideological hate idol. I wonder whether the decision of the local JROTC program to water down their curricula helped them at all.

2) Any attempts to create a "homegrown" leadership program within SFUSD is doomed to failure. Any realistic attempt at a syllabus for such a program would have to include instruction on the use of discipline and motivation, and any such work outside the aegis of a neutral subject venue such as national defense or public safety will inevitably be labeled as ideological. We've already seen the interim "Leadership Pathway" project exposed as a sham.

3) Some people are just nuts about this. Apparently, a certain anti-JROTC School Board Commissioner "unfriended" one of her facebook freinds because that person had the temerity to post supportive comments about Fiona Ma's pro-JROTC legislation, on Ma's facebook wall. If I unfriended people based on policy decisions I'd have shit can FB Friends left.

4) I wonder if Army TRADOC (the national command which oversees JROTC) wouldn't rather see JROTC die at SFUSD in favor of a charter school or private military academy, either here or in Daly City. Lots of military secondary schools use the JROTC program as their curricula base. This may suit the facile political goals of the anti-JROTC School Board Commissioners, and the Army, but leave both the majority of SFUSD JROTC students as well as the peace activists with a great deal of resentment.

Discuss on the message board

The Homeless, Again

2009-03-29T12:52:00.000-07:00

Funny, I still see an overwhelming number of chronic homeless on Downtown's streets. I doubt any progress has been made at all.

It goes without saying that any social service case management regime requires a way to track the process of clients. We have similar programs with GA clients and other programs. There are safeguards in those programs. SFPD can't just demand the GA or SSI address records of a given client who may have warrants, for instance.

The Board will never contribute to solving the homelessness problem because they receive endorsements and campaign assistance from homeless-oriented NGOs who want to be able to keep their service contracts. Downtown wants to see the homeless "moved along" someplace else, which is impossible. The Mayor has turned the issue into a cruel Potemkin Village sideshow with a program that allows corporations and constituents to feel better about themselves on the issue by letting them donate free massages.

The only answer to chronic homelessness is intervention. Implementation of Laura's Law, increased cooperation between MAP and SFPD, and the opening of transitional shelters for cumpulsory committment cases. And the program needs to be run directly by DSS/DPH, not contracted out.

Of course, that would violate the sensibilities of our City's political class, who use the ethical fiction "people have a right to live without money" to defend the presence of the homeless, which they in turn use to propagandize their constituents about the continuing need for their brand of social change - which never seems to arrive despite the fact that they were supposedly elected to enact it.

Richard Rodriguez once said "In the absence of government strategies of how to help the lunatic or the destitute, or the addicted, we pass out quarters. In return, the homeless give us the assurance that we live in San Francisco."

http://sfappeal.com/news/2009/03/homeless-policy-progress-made-more-accountability-needed-grand-jurors-say.php

A Board of Supervisors panel this afternoon took up a Civil Grand Jury report that found San Francisco is on the right track with its push to create more permanent housing for homeless people but that new tools are needed to make sure service dollars aren't being wasted.

In particular, it was interesting to watch members of the board's Government Audit & Oversight Committee and Newsom administration officials tip-toe around the Grand Jury's call for a computerized tracking system that confidentially assigns a number to each client of city-funded homeless services agencies to determine which programs are working best.

"The Jury believes that such a tracking system, properly designed and maintained, will be an invaluable tool for establishing the effectiveness and cost effectiveness" of city-funded service providers, according to a report, titled "The Homeless Have Homes, But They Are Still on the Street."

The tip-toeing was on display because supervisors and administration officials either don't want to take on or share the view of advocates for homeless people who see such a tracking system as a violation of privacy and potential obstacle to getting care to people who are distrustful of how the information would be used by authorities.

Dariush Kayhan, the mayor's chief homeless policy director, never addressed the call for the tracking system directly but contended the city is keeping a close enough eye on the dozens of nonprofit agencies under contract to deliver homeless services.

"We know what they are doing," Kayhan said, adding, "I am very comfortable with the nonprofit agencies and how they are performing."

Supervisor Eric Mar suggested more attention on monitoring how homeless services dollars are spent might detract from the services themselves.

"I want to see strong services to people on the street," Mar said.

Discuss on the Message Board

Chronicle: 1st & Folsom Project Needs More Scrutiny

2009-03-29T12:49:00.000-07:00

Perhaps, but maybe this way we won't get stuck with another giant condom-sheathed penis in the midst of our downtown...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/29/BAHC16NIED.DTL

Two years ago, the competition to win the rights to build San Francisco's tallest tower drew powerful developers, celebrity architects and fervent public interest in the proposed designs.

Images
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Now there's another competition just two blocks away, the grand prize a site with room for a 60-story tower at a major entrance to the Financial District. But only three teams bothered to respond - and the way the rules are currently written, the public won't be allowed to glimpse any of the proposals until the city selects a winner.

Discuss on the Message Board

The New Plan To Bring Jobs Back Downtown

2009-03-16T10:42:00.000-07:00

http://www.spur.org/documents/030109_article_01.shtm

The smart growth movement has long called attention to the problems with sprawl, but has often been focused on residential sprawl. Yet the dispersion of jobs into suburban and exurban office parks that can never be served by transit is just as much of a threat to the environment as residential sprawl, if not greater. To achieve a low-carbon future, Bay Area residents need to be able to commute to work without relying on a car.

SPUR argues that our best strategy to reduce job sprawl is to channel more employment growth toward existing centers, particularly the transit-rich downtown of San Francisco.

Other transit-served employment centers in the Bay Area, such as downtown Oakland and San Jose, as well as Concord and Walnut Creek, also should capture a growing share of regional employment. The success of the other transit-served job centers is key to a future Bay Area that uses less carbon. But most workers in these other locations, including downtown San Jose and Oakland, drive to work. Future SPUR reports will look at what can be done to improve the land use, urban design and transportation networks for the other employment hubs in the Bay Area.

But downtown San Francisco is the only employment node in the region where most people travel to work without bringing their own car. This paper focuses on downtown San Francisco as the node with by far the greatest near-term potential to accommodate regional employment growth with a low carbon footprint. In fact, if reducing emissions and the amount of driving was our only criterion, we would advocate a region that adds as much of its incremental growth as possible into San Francisco. Even if San Francisco retains its share of regional jobs (16 percent), the increase in driving and emissions in the suburbs will prevent the region from attaining climate change goals.

While done from an environmental perspective, this is an excellent plan all around. One question, though: with regard to the Market-Mission and Civic Center, is public safety the Chicken or the Egg?

Comment on the Forum

A Modest Proposal: Chris Magnus for SFPD Chief

2009-03-13T21:42:00.000-07:00

Why not?

This is a person who has worked as a police manager in three very different but challenging jurisdictions: Lansing, Michigan; Fargo, ND; and now Richmond.

He's a "stereotypical white guy" who nevertheless understands and honors diversity - and at the same time won't back down in the face of racial cronyism.

He's got experience in successfully implementing community based patrol schemes, handling community concerns from entertainment issues, tackling hate crimes, and reaching out to classified constituencies.

Most importantly, in Richmond he's learned how to survive vicious political infighting.

He even looks a little like Hennessey. Plus he's single and collects art, so certain gatekeepers in the LGBT community could just assume he's... well, no, that probably wouldn't fly.

Oh well, just a thought. Still, who in the SFPD has this kind of experience, is still young enough to care about using it right, and isn't inured to the department's archaic culture?

Just A Thought.

Discuss on the forum

Is San Francisco Calcutta, or East St. Louis? And is it The Chronicle's Fault?

2007-11-02T15:33:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, in their endorsement of Mayor Newsom for re-election, the Chronicle chided him for failing to have the fortitude to combat institutional resistance to implementing reform of homelessness policy, such as enforcing Laura's Law. However, after reading today's incomprehensible opinion piece by Callie Millner, I have come to the following conclusion: that all of the hand-wringing about homelessness in the Chronicle, whether it be the meretricious sensationalism by Sports Guy, the presumably reasoned unsigned editorials, or today's hysterical hallucination, is essentially crocodile tears.

In her editorial, Millner deliberately confabulates homelessness with gun violence, conjuring terrible images of armed homeless people just itching to shoot at overentitled white-acculturated yuppies such as herself. She compounds the injury further by contrasting these images with her tourist trip to Calcutta, stating essentially that while the homeless of Calcutta may be worse off, they at least make her feel safer because they are less likely to blow her away.

Quite frankly, if Ms. Millner was less likely to be blown away by a homeless person in Calcutta than by one in San Francisco, it would have more to do with the acceptance of homelessness in India's culture than anything else; gun ownership is legal in India, albeit tightly controlled, and let us not forget that Calcutta is a mere hop, skip and a jump down the Grand Trunk Road from Peshawar, Pakistan, where you can buy almost any sort of small arm which can be made or resold.

It's also hardly likely that the average homeless person in San Francisco, or any other US city, carries a gun. After all, they're too busy spending what money they get on drugs and booze in order to afford to buy a gun, whether at retail price or street. Most homeless people in San Francisco, however, do carry knives. They tend to use them on each other, however. Any streetwise San Franciscan knows that while they are very likely to be accosted and annoyed by a homeless person, the likelihood of being actually physically attacked by one is about the same as being eaten by a bear at Yosemite.

The bizarre hysteria exemplified by Millner and her article insults the intelligence of the public. So much so, that it becomes easier for ordinary citizens to accept the equally disengenous rhetoric of NGOs like the Coalition on Homelessness and the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, whose primary business is using shrill elitists like Millner as straw men in support of public policy designed to keep people on the streets and in slums - and keep thus these very entities in business.

Homelessness does indeed present a threat to public safety. However the threat is an environmental one, not a direct one. Where homeless people are allowed to congregate, the streets become dirty, property values fall, businesses leave, and real criminals come in to take the easy pickings. The same homeless people are just as likely to be victimised by those criminals as they are to commit any crimes themselves. We've seen it again and again, just as we've seen the Chronicle fail to adequately cover the corruption of homeless-oriented NGOs.

Maybe the Chronicle editorial board thinks that coverage of that process, and why it should be stopped, is simply too complicated for its readership to comprehend, and so they've come up with this bogeyman of the machinegun-toting homeless person ready to incite an Urban Armageddon. If that's the case, they are underestimating their readers. This imagery is far more likely to drive the average person into the arms of the opposition, and as such we will be stuck with the same problems.

Which leads us tio thinking the unthinkable: maybe the Chronicle actually has no interest in helping the public frame the homelessness issue with the goal of solving or ameliorating it; instead, they simply wish to provoke a more organized backlash against homeless policy reform by San Francisco's Progressives and corrupt, self serving NGOs. This, in turn will destroy reform politically forever and keep San Francisco's urban blight and street crime intact as a source for further sensationalist coverage which the Chronicle can continue selling to its newer, disinterested suburban readership.

Of course, that does nothing for San Franciscans who continue to put up with homelessness and dirty streets, and the resultant increase in street crime.

Then again, most San Franciscans don't read the Chronicle anymore, either.

Panic in Needle Park

2007-08-23T13:42:00.000-07:00

The Chronicle promotes harm reduction in response to heroin use in Golden Gate Park - but Washington’s Republican intolerance and local Progressives’ negligence will likely combine to make it into a disaster

The big issue in San Francisco, especially if you’re a Chronicle reader, is the squatting in Golden Gate Park by homeless drug addicts. Never mind that this issue is trotted out every few years with no solution anyway - With no serious competition for Mayor Gavin Newsdriven in his re-election campaign, the Chronicle has been running a series of stories on the ongoing junkie problem, featuring their new conscience, the flabby, mealymouthed former sports columnist, Chuck Nevius. In today’s issue, Nevius proposes a solution to the problem: setting up “injection centers” run by the City for addicts to shoot up in so that they won’t litter the park with their needles.

The idea is not without merit. Cities like Vancouver and Zurich have such facilities, which are more properly referred to by governments and NGOs as “supervised injection facilities”. Studies tend to confirm that while they by themselves do not reduce the total rate of HIV or Hepatitis infection among addicts, nor addiction rates, they do have an impact on the overall incidence of high-risk drug behaviors, and upon the public order and quality-of-life aspects of these offenses. When combined with more comprehensive measures such as needle exchange, methadone distribution and changes in administrative doctrine to “medicalize” drug use, addiction rates, to hard drugs at least, fall dramatically.

However, any attempts to rationally implement such solutions in San Francisco run into the usual codependent behaviors which mar other aspects of public policy. We already have Methadone programs, but they are impacted by accessibility problems (most are based in the Bayview and SOMA areas and have limited dispensing hours, yet the Tenderloin and Haight are our major centers of Heroin use). Newsom’s attempts to make Methadone accessible by prescription have been fought by the city’s leftist NGO establishment. As El Greco has brilliantly documented, needle “exchange” in San Francisco more often than not means mere distribution with no effort to collect used needles.

Moreover, in countries where supervised injection facilities have been successfully implemeted, it’s been done with the cooperation of their national governments. Vancouver may be about to lose that cooperation. Do you think we can get it here? California’s Prop 215, which sought to medicalize marijuana use, is ignored by the Feds, and is being used as a legal fiction by drug dealers to sell pot for recreational use with relative impunity, because there is no way to protect legimate, monitored medical uses from opportunistic Federal enforcement. Do you think San Francisco can get federal support for municipally supervised shooting galleries? Take a look at the comments to Nevius’ article and guess again. Do you think they will be properly supervised, given the negligence-oriented, corruptive influence of local NGO’s?

What the Chronicle fails to report, as it always does, is that none of these measures can be properly implemented until San Francisco’s voting public wakes up and recognizes the necessity of framing public policy according to real public needs rather than as a reflection of conceited self image, until we can remove the regime of self-serving NGO’s from the public service trough, and until we can elect politicians we can truly respect and trust - rather than simply like the idea of.

Throw The Jew Down The Well

2007-06-19T10:10:00.000-07:00

(Left) Victim of a Rush To Judgment? Or Poster Child for the Municipal Equivalent of a Failed State? You Decide.

If you live in Northern California, you know that San Francisco's District 4 Supervisor Ed Jew is in big trouble. Headlines in the city's newspapers and blogs have been dominated by the ongoing criminal and civil charges against the 47-year-old entrepreneur, activist, and since last year, elected official.

To the uninitiated, Jew came upon the political scene as an activist for the interests of New Chinatown, the community of conservative, homeowning, second and third generation middle-class Chinese-Americans who moved to the City's West Side to buy homes and start businesses. Together with more affluent recent Chinese immigrants, this community started to find its own political focus during the mid-90's over issues like the fate of the Central Freeway, the shorting of their children in public schools as exemplified by the district's busing policy, rising taxes and utility use fees, and community opposition to their tendency to remodel their new homes to accommodate larger families, which they viewed as racist.

The truth is a bit deeper than that. Just as mainstream city leaders in the 1980's saw an exodus of light industry in favor of a new upper middle class changing the face of downtown and nearby development through infill housing, some leaders in the city's Chinese American community, then still centered politically around Old Chinatown on the East Side, saw the evolving needs of the community and worked to foster a new political voice for Chinese Americans which was independent of the Progressive, benefit-oriented ethnic politics of the time.

Chief among these were Harold Yee, the founder of Asian, Inc. and his protégé Roland Quan, a major leader in the Chinese American Democratic Democratic Club (CADC) in the 1990's. These people were contemporaries of other more assimilationist and Progressive identified Chinese American leaders like Supervisor Gordon Lau, Judge Lillian Sing, Professor Ling-Chi Wang, publisher John Fang, Democratic activist Alicia Wang, and others. However, they decided to go in a different direction politically.

It was in the late 1990's and early 2000's that this political faction started making visible gains. In 1994, CADC sponsored a class action against the San Francisco Unified School District, alleging that the district busing policy negatively impacted Chinese-American students by effectively holding them to far higher standards than those for other students. In 1999, they won a court order that forced the district to stop using race or ethnicity in admissions decisions. In 1997, newly elected Supervisor Leland Yee, a former School Board member who campaigned for his job based a moderate, reality-based political platform, championed a successful ballot measure to retrofit and preserve the Central Freeway, an artery considered important to car-loving Westside Chinese but as a blight generating impediment to the density-friendly redevelopment of Hayes Valley and nearby neighborhoods.

By 2000, however, things started to slump. District Elections forced Leland Yee to reinvent himself as a NIMBY politics candidate who put forward a conservative image but who was more than willing to be pimped by Progressives on citywide issues, essentially becoming a Chinese ghola of Quentin Kopp. Further ballot battles over the Central Freeway led to victories for the Progressives. But the icing on the cake was the demise of Julie Lee, the Taraval street realtor and rising political ward boss who acquired her first fat pipe during the first Central Freeway war.

Lee started a new organization called the San Francisco Neighbors' Association, which was ostensibly dedicated to championing issues dear to new (and thus implicitly including immigrant) homeowners, such as tax and fee relief, quality of life issues, and increasing housing supply. Unfortunately, Lee's personal ambitions, for herself as well as for her son, took over. And when they came crashing down, they took the political career of Kevin Shelley with them.

It is in the wake of all this that we now see the meteoric rise and fall of Ed Jew's political career.

Jew won his Supervisor's seat with an aggressive campaign which would seem, despite the recent revelations that he didn't even live in the district, to be a model for victory under the current electoral regime of district elections by ranked choice voting. He stayed clear of the backbiting and perceived factional string-pulling between other Chinese-American candidates, and turned out a base, which he carefully cultivated as a citywide leader.

Jew may not have earned the notice of the white-dominated city political clique until recently, but within the Chinese American community he was very well known as an activist on political issues, whether based in policy (water and sewer rates, neighborhood schools) or culture (urging Japanese acknowledgement of war crimes). His family ties - his father is a former President of the Chinese Six Companies - are also well known.

And while the political community may see his agenda as fungible (Jew entered politics as a Republican, but won office as a Democrat), his base, up until now, has seen him as True Blue (when Leland Yee turned his back on his constituency for the sake of first District Elections, and then State office, Jew in turn abandoned him).

But none of that matters anymore. There are a lot of indications that Jew, despite being respected in the community and having considerable personal wealth, simply "wanted it too badly." Insiders in the community readily acknowledged that during his recent and previous runs for office, his meeting of residency requirements was facile at best. Like a lot of rich people who run multiple businesses, Ed Jew likely sees a publicly known home address as an encumbrance if not an outright invasion of privacy. Despite running as a supposed outsider, he was well connected, and benefited from a number of the many entitlements which burden the City (for instance, his family holds tight-fistedly onto a taxi medallion).

So if Ed Jew was More Of The Same, and it certainly seems he has turned out that way, what's with the spectacularly sordid explosion of his political career? Jew's residency peccadilloes, although long suspected, were not focused upon until it was revealed that the FBI were already investigating him for shaking down businesses over permits. Oh Yeah - Jew had the brass balls to ask for $40,000, as an elected official, to expedite businesses supposedly arrears permits. The business in question didn't seem to feel compromised in the situation: after all, they went to the FBI, and helped sting Jew with FBI buy money. Which begs the question: ISN'T THIS WORSE? Any why has everyone stopped talking about it and instead focused on the residency issue, despite its own fungibility?

It certainly makes one wonder.

Who, or What, is "John Nelson?"

2007-03-01T13:40:00.000-08:00

Many of you will remember the pathetic antics of Newsom Administration Professional Embarrassment Peter Ragone on the SFist blog and how it got exposed. Well, lately it appears that someone is continuing to appropriate the name in order to post some rather surreal contributions on the Wall Forum:

I Like Press Secretaries (A rather unfortunate ripoff of a widespread Net meme)

Bathroom "Humor"

And the most disturbing yet, "I Am Homer Simpson"

Maybe there's more than meets the eye here - a second look at the bathroom post indicates that the "Spock, in a chef's hat" reference may actually be Benjamin Spock, not the TV character. And the Homer Simpson reference in the newest missive is most certainly not the cartoon charcter, but from the Nathanael West classic "The Day of the Locust" (Donald Sutherland plays him in the movie.)

Notable Posts

2007-03-01T13:22:00.000-08:00

Castro's Character Threatened?

What WERE They Thinking?: "There were plenty of other hate columns Asian Week could have published. Just a simple Google search and I was able to dig these up:

9. Why I Hate People Who Work Hard, Pay Their Taxes, and Think City Government Should Be Accountable by Chris Daly

8. Why I Hate Chris Daly by the F line Muni driver who was nearly suspended for making a comment to Daly during the last election

7. Why I Hate Not Being Able to Date Nineteen Year Olds Anymore by Gavin Newsom

6. Why I Hate the US Military by Gerardo Sandoval with special guest star Sean Hannity

5. Why I Hate Hillary Even Though She Let Me Sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom by David Geffen

4. Why I Hate Chat Boards by Peter Ragone

3. Why I Hate that Son of a Bitch Even Though He's Paying Me Off by Alex Tourk

2. Why I Hate Ellen Degeneres Hosting the Oscars by Billy Crystal

1. Why We Hate Kink.com More Than Having the Armory Vacant for Thirty Years by activists in the Mission..."

This Week's Controversies

2006-10-11T11:24:00.000-07:00

San Francisco's Sex Trafficking Problem

Sabotaging the Local Democrats

Kamala Harris Criticized, Yet Again

Prurient Preservation

2006-10-02T09:37:00.000-07:00

Left: A Quonset hut at Pier 66. Some morons wish to suck more blood from the body politic to have this disposable structure preserved (Word Document).

Today's Chronicle has a story about preservationists out of control again. Fortunately, the object of the fetishists is an earthquake shack, so it could be moved to the Zoo. But not before the owner had to pay thousands of dollars to determine exactly what kind of earthquake shack it was.

This is sadly reminiscent of the recent attempt by some to preserve Quonset Huts in the Mission and Bayview. Next they'll be filing suit to save Conex Boxes at former mini-storage sites.

Discuss it here.

What to Ask of School Board Hopefuls

2006-09-28T10:57:00.000-07:00

User "mom knows best" reposts a model questionnaire for school board candidates, put together by the mod at the SFSchools Yahoo Group. And we chime in on it.

"The Decline To State State" - A Growing Empire of Indifference?

2006-09-26T09:32:00.000-07:00

Dan Weintraub's California Insider sends us over to Bill Cavalla's prognostications on the growth of Decline-to-State voters and the effect it has on political parties and campaigns:

"'The Secretary of State recently released new registration numbers for California showing a continuation of a serious trend: both major parties lost in the contest for new voters. The winner was "declined to state".'

All surveys show that "declined to state" voters are the least interested and least informed members of the electorate. They decline to state a party because they don't care about politics or government enough to learn the differences between the parties. They vote because they know good people do – sort of like brushing your teeth or combing your hair. Voting is more dutiful etiquette than thoughtful pursuit of good for the nation.'

But they do vote (albeit in lower percentages than partisans), and their vote is often the difference between winning and losing. Because they are so indifferent, they must be given the same simple message many times before it sticks enough to affect their behavior.'

That's why campaigns (and mainstream television) seem so mindless at times: they are pointed at a disinterested audience."

We discuss it here.

On Heavy Shoulders

2006-09-25T11:21:00.000-07:00

Left: Somehow, Faking It Was Easier Back Then

With people finally waking up to Mayor Newsdriven's giving away of the store and Unease of the Week - driven policies, it's no suprise that both Sofia Milos and Jack Davis have dumped him.

Can the Ungovernable Mayor save himself?

Newsom vs. Newsom on Crime

Hennessy wants a raise, but was last in line at the trough

Daly's Reign of Terror

2006-09-22T09:10:00.000-07:00

Daly: "I support Colonic Irrigation!"

KCBS reports that Supervisor Chris Daly is now actively pursuing elimination of the police chief post, something he first spoke of doing a few years ago. Instead, the elected sheriff would oversee all law enforcement in the city and county.

"If they're keep the attacks on me, I'll keep moving forward what I think is good public policy," Daly said. "What they fear is the end of their reign of terror in San Francisco."

But whose reign is he talking about? We talk about it here.

The Bay Garbagecan Still Stinks

2006-09-21T08:12:00.000-07:00

Several of us, but especially Slickwillie, are fed up with the "advocacy journalism" of the Bay Guardian.

Free Speech Should be Banned

The Oakland Horde

Technicalities Aren't Fair

Bayview Redevelopment Blocked

2006-09-20T10:01:00.000-07:00

People are pondering the upcoming plebescite on Bayview development. RandySF writes:

'So, Bayview residents, who live in some of the most squalid conditions in the city, will have to wait another year before they are allowed to improve their lives. Never mind that there will be no "emminent domain" of houses. Never mind that no less a progressive than Sophie Maxwell supports redevelopment. Never mind that the new jobs created would have to be filled by bayview residents.

'There can only be four types of people who are blocking this: Developers who do not want to employ Bayview residents; "Activists" who want to keep playing the poverty game; "Progressives" who don't want to take any chances of having more black neighbors and Chris Daley who would lose support if people realized that he doesn't have any answers.

Way to go progressives. '

We discuss it here.

West Nile Weirdness

2006-09-19T11:00:00.000-07:00

The SF Daily reports (story not online) that West Nile Virus has been found in dead birds in the Presidio. Anyone else report this?

Leave a comment or discuss it here.

Trying to Abate Daly's Mountain of Shit

2006-09-18T09:36:00.000-07:00

SPUR, and, surprisingly, the SF Chamber (which seems to have gained a backbone since Jim Lazarus came on as political director), are launching a campaign to limit the last-minute politically-driven ballot measures put on by the Board of Supervisors. These are generally measures made from bills which failed to be passed at Board voting or meaningless litmus-test measures put on to drive turnout for certain incumbents, which can be put on the ballot with only four votes.

The incumbent in question, the careerist psychopath Chris Daly, defends himself in today's Examiner:

'Daly said he has a legal right to put measures on the ballot, if he gets the support of at least three other supervisors. He added that the process was a more equitable way of "pushing issues" than well-funded initiative campaigns where petition workers are paid per signature to gather support.'

'"I'll never be ashamed of pushing turnout for elections," said Daly. "Where there is actual conflict is when there's significant money involved."'

But, isn't there already significant money involved? All that money Daly has corraled from developers who are currying his favor? Or the public money he's used to payback his political minions?

We discuss the issue here.

And Now, The Asshole Patrol

2006-09-15T09:03:00.000-07:00

Mayor Gavin Newsdriven and his minions finally put together resources to quell the obnoxious bridge-and-tunnel crowd in North Beach. We discuss it here.

I Wonder if it's Time to Do Something About The Examiner.

2006-09-14T11:03:00.000-07:00

As you will remember, we really don't care that much for the new, Anschutz-owned Examiner, its no-jump-pages allowed brand of shopper journalism, and its bizarre right-wing editorials. But an editorial in Today's edition takes the cake.

"Addressing the Chinese 'Threat'" (no link yet due to the sluggishness of Examiner.com's updates; go pick up a print copy to see this trash) by Doug Bandow is nothing more that a bought-and-paid-for advertisement for the Chinese government, downplaying China's military adventurism and still-hairy human rights record. It includes such jewels as the following:

"Fifth, the PRC insn't likely to catch the US militarily until mid-century. Beijing will match America (presumably the word "economically" goes here, damned Examiner editors!) more quickly, but Washington's advantage has always been artificial and bound to ebb. Maintaining American influence will require thoughtful diplomacy and economic openness."

In other words, the usual Chicago School line about taking advantage of China's cheaper labor markets in the face of growing regional and global military ambitions, which will inevitably come in conflict with Asian democracies - and, therefore, eventually, us.

But then, editorials are meant to be partisan. Problem is, you would think a major city newspaper, which the Examiner strives to be, would choose a better author to make this point than a hack for a fake right-wing think tank founded by Dick Armey who is so well-regarded that he has to self-publish his own policy monographs. Bandow has also been implicated in a scheme to buy editorial support for clients of Jack Abramoff, the recently deposed super-sleaze lobbyist.

Oh Well.

Sentinel Up In The Air

2006-09-14T08:52:00.000-07:00

People are speculating over what's going on at the Sentinel.

So, Pat: should we keep our link to you guys up or what?

Back to School

2006-09-13T10:25:00.000-07:00

Today's highlighted thread, whether I like it or not, is about Hydra Mendoza, the Mayoral education staffer who is running for School Board. Is this a conflict? We discuss it here.

My take? She may not have a conflict, but she made herself an issue. Isn't that bad enough?

Crime is Crime is Crime

2006-09-12T09:29:00.000-07:00

Today's headlines, and new threads, are all about crime. Feel safer?

Newsom Reinstitutes Curfew

Mug-fest! (The Examiner's words, not ours)

Ammiano: Leave Our Stoners, Like, Be

Ken Garcia on Spy Cameras

San Jose is Safer

Untitled

2006-09-11T10:10:00.000-07:00

http://www.911digitalarchive.org/

Program Advisory

2006-09-11T09:09:00.000-07:00

Haloscan tells us that 1,000 or so people still visit this place per week, despite our laziness about updating.

Well, thanks.

To that end we're going to change our focus a bit, and be more blog-like, with more frequent updates and links to news, items of note, and highlighted threads on the Wall Forum.

Speaking of which, if you haven't already, check out the current discussions on prostitution and blight, and about everyone's frustration over how to fix things.

Also, check out the new DeLeon/Latterman Progressive Voter Index study (PDF file) hosted at Usual Suspects. It would seem to confirm a move , slow as it may be, toward a new Center, with traditionally progressive scoring districts moving down, and more moderate ones moving up. And of course, we'll be discussing it here.

Pork Medallions, or The Taxi Cab Kingdom From Hell

2006-07-17T16:08:00.000-07:00

Oligopoly: A situation in which a particular market is controlled by a small group of firms. Much like a monopoly, in which only one company exerts control over most of a market. In an oligopoly, there are at least two firms controlling the market. (Definition From The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, 2005.)

By Marvin Destin, Guest Columnist

"I lease a medallion from a guy for $2,400 a month who only works four months a year, and the other eight months he is in Bangladesh with his wife," said Ehsan Wadood, 53, while waiting in the taxi queue at the San Francisco International Airport. "The people who drive cabs should get the medallions, and they should not be privately owned."

Before I begin, I feel compelled to disclose that I love taxicabs. I like the concept to begin with. You call a number and your personal limo (ok, stretching it somewhat) complete with knowledgeable (also stretching it somewhat) driver arrives, and you get taken to the location of your wish, anywhere for miles around, relax (still stretching it) and get dropped off and rid of your need to pay for parking or fear the ticket monster.

For over ten years I didn't even possess a car while living here so I took cabs, not just to the airport, but as my primary source of vehicular transportation, even to softball games I played in. Entire dates conducted with multiple cab stops at the dinner, the show and the after party, whatever that might be. From depending on cabs while in my best duds, trusting I won't get soaked going to the Symphony on rainy nights, to frantic afternoon sorties for emergency pizzas at halftime or mom's mothers day bouquet or needed cold remedies, or extension chords, saw me take cabs. And while I will admit to being concerned at the time about availability in a time of crisis, my wife and I literally, not figuratively, took a cab with her in labor to the Hospital the night our first child was born; such faith have I exhibited in the SF taxi system. Triumphantly delivered the baby home in a cab as well.

However, I have not always voted for every measure supported by taxicab drivers, though I will say that what the people in the trenches, er, cabs, tell me about such measures does in fact influence my views when the measure comes up. I listen to them because they are the hands-on people. Through countless conversations from my back seat redoubt, over the decades, as well as the actual numbers provided to me by two cabbies from alleged secret meetings, I have studied and researched the economics as well. I know economics, balance sheets, and I run a business. So I'm in a unique position as a commentator. I'm not someone analyzing and writing about something I don't actually do as much as I'm commenting as an experienced and informed user.

This article is not about specifically analyzing or number crunching the economics of the cab business in San Francisco. Nor is it about the politics of the cab business per se. Instead the objective of this article is to leave all those consistently useless things to the purported experts who will trot out for the tenth time the outcome oriented studies and political agenda posing as white papers. Ferreting through the issues involving the taxi business, the political establishment should, I repeat, should, start with the premise of making the system work in a most efficient manner for the benefit of the most people; so that it augments the other transportation elements like Muni and the shuttles. But that isn't where the consideration in this area ever starts, at all. Any time you find discussion or debate about the cab business in this City, that is never where you start. Here you always start with medallions: the license required to operate each taxicab. And once you start there you will be unable to resolve anything. It's seemingly designed that way.

This is one of those issues that has a history and an evolution. The medallion is something that was invented in another time and worked well then because it was basically organizing something small with only a few moving parts. But as the area has grown and the transportation systems and needs have mutated, the medallion is looking like the knight in the Twilight Zone episode, transported accidentally into the future, who now stands in full armor, with his sword and lance on the Bay Bridge, at rush hour. It's an amusing oddity, but it is now blocking traffic.

I have known something for some time that both goes against my capitalist worldview as well as with what the powers that be in SF consider the proper way to conduct a taxicab business. The free market system in this case doesn't work, and it will never work, as long as any and every attempt to make the system better has to start in the very place that has an element that serves to thwart any attempt to make the cab business work here. Work defined as for everyone's benefit (as opposed to an oligopoly) or even for the sake of what the heck cabs are here for in the first place, which is not to enrich a few, but to convey the many.

Two forces conspire to this end. The first is that the medallion system has created a situation not unlike that which involves seats on the New York Stock exchange. By limiting the very license to operate (access to revenue flow from an existing and extensive market) you imbue monetary value to the medallion over and above its intrinsic costs. Unless you have one, you are not allowed to operate. The second force is the gravitational pull of the oligopoly. The small clique-like assemblage of the few who have the power to control the mechanism that impacts its operation and status quo via political influence, coercion, and threats.

Try to increase the numbers (of medallions, and therefore of cabs) and you immediately hear squeals of pain from the existing taxicab industry that will claim that "you can't make a living" or "it's already hard to make a living". That's a funny statement from someone who collects a daily gate fee from the driver that is doing all the work (who we never seem to hear from by the way). And if you try to let in more cab operators and intensify competition, then you hear "no one wins and everybody loses". Except, of course, for the city's cab customers, who would see costs plummet -- but that's another story.

This is analogous to a law being passed that's says that all people who physically move furniture must now also wear a 20 pound hat and the guy who owns the furniture moving company, his feet upon the desk, claims HIS back will suffer from the horrible strain.

Nevertheless, this is where the argument for scarcity comes from, and it leads inevitably to increasing the cost for service and to further and perpetual increases. In other words, those who currently control the racket want to remain unfettered by competition, so that they can perpetuate indefinitely. And as such, they get to determine the potential earning capacity (or lack thereof) of drivers, and the efficiency of service to consumers, forevermore.

Taxicabs used to have the whole lucrative airport business all to themselves. There simply were no other practical ways to get to the airport besides driving oneself if you didn't want to pack suitcases from the Millbrae train station. Then to induce "competition" into carrying people to the airport, the City saw the entrance of the "Airporter" bus shuttle. Like an elephant ride at Marine World, it was cumbersome and slow, but cheap. It cost some ridiculously low amount of money in the beginning (4 bucks?) but after taking the Airporter a few times and seeing myself and one other person alone on this huge bus, it didn't seem like it would take long for the cost of this service was going to go up a lot or forget it. Now everybody knows that with the exception of places like Venezuela and India, bus solutions never fix anything, never are the answer to anything, except more employment positions in some niche of the macro transportation system. But this kind of system always gets a vote and support by political establishments in socialist realms like modern American cities.

In the wake of buses came the Super Shuttle vans. Again, indisputably cheap to take, when given the initial right to operate ($7), (which is WHY they got the initial right to provide services to the airport) it didn't take long for the lie, er, claim, of the cheap fares to be revealed and replaced with higher fees for service. Today , a van shuttle ride for two people is almost the cost of a cab ride. Three people and it's even more costly.

And while the rules began to be changed to favor the bus shuttles and then to favor the van shuttles, taxicabs found themselves limited again and again in terms of their access. The penalties against them for transgressions against the maze of rules are swift, sure, and heavy. Because of those limitations, the costs (mostly waiting for the next rider) increased dramatically. And predictably, a labyrinth of rules had to be erected to control all the interests ins and outs, local drop offs versus longer drop-offs (for which a multi million dollar teeny booth had to be fitted into the entire airport building plan) shuttles versus vans versus cabs.

Lastly we now have BART to the airport. And as predictable as corn in Iowa and potatoes in Idaho it's losing many millions in record time. Surprise! I've tried this way to get to the airport and the problem is you either spend two hours getting to the airport (MUNI bus then BART) or you get (ta da!) a taxi to the BART which will cost you $15 plus the $4+ BART fare. So you are defaulted back to taxis or the shuttle vans. A brain dead monkey could have figured this out.

All this brings us back to the original story, for it is airport fares that remain critical in the world of the cab driver. Without airport fares to make up for the other far less profitable rides one gets, such as waiting for 45 minutes in the cabbie queue outside a hotel downtown only to have the unknowing tourist request a ride two blocks to their destination, it's almost impossible to make any sort of decent living over the long haul.

Again, one runs straight into the medallion issue all over again. Medallion holders tend to fall into two classes: those who own them and get free money by letting other people do all the work under its auspices, and those who own it and actually drive the cars and do all the dirty and dangerous work. And that, plus the artificial scarcity limiting cab service, comprises the problem, including the current problem engulfing the relevant parties: most especially Heidi Machen, the recently dumped head of the Taxi Commission.

You see, in the way in which the cab business issues fluctuate between being considered a "free market" enterprise and, at other times, a virtual Oligopolistic Monopoly, you end up with goal posts for all parties involved constantly moving.

On one issue the justifications and considerations will hail and salute the concept of the free market ("competition is best"), then on a dime it will turn and all forms of discussion and argument will traipse around in the realm of the controlled state managed and run bureaucracy-saturated economic system. But such aspects are confined to the discussion of the better part of the systems components. But one way or the other, the discussion, when reaching resolution, will always run up against the medallions.

And since the biggest holders of medallions are the very parties who want to limit their own competition, guess which way they always argue? Keep the status quo. Sound like you want change, make noise like you are all for "reform", but fight any true reform tooth and nail. And if someone is actually successful at combating you, run them off.

As you can see, just from this brief overview, it has all the characteristics of a Gordian knot.

Let me stop here and speculate on the unspeculateable. What would happen if the medallions were eliminated? I think one could easily predict the following things.

A group of people who have depended on the medallion for income, in some cases for vital needed income, would lose. Their number is small. The old lady or man who "built the cab business" or labored "with sweat and blood" for fifty yada yada years, would no longer own that equivalent of a meal ticket. The cab companies who own a ton of them would lose as it became worthless or was purchased via eminent domain from the holders for substantially less than its ongoing cash flow would produce. Litigation would ensue, as certain as sharks chase chum, but when did cities, especially THIS City, ever worry about that, especially here?

No medallions and free entry would mean that many more people would suddenly be free to "own their own cabs" and enter the transportation business, and this dramatically enhanced competition would crush prices for that service. The daily gate fee, that people who drive cabs must pay just to exist, vaporizes. It no longer costs a tribute paid to a third party just to be allowed to drive someone from a downtown hotel to a destination. People who would like to drive cars for fares would rush into the fray and enter the industry in fairly rapid time frame. There would be a period of wrenching competition. The new yet inevitable price wars would throw all the budgets of the van and bus services into a cocked hat. They might not make it. There would be widespread weeping and gnashing of teeth. It would suddenly make sense to take BART however, because 4 plus 5 is less than half of 20.

The customers on the other hand would pay closer to peanuts compared to now for a ride either to or from the airport.

Now we would all have the obligatory senile widow of "Old Frank Peters" (note: never a real name like Muhammad, Yevgeny, Mahesh, or Skycaptain Rainforest like real cabbies), the dedicated cabbie who, for 70 years, gave rides to fares. "His widow would starve," we will be informed, should the system ever change. "Those $350,000 per year people who would pay half price to get to the airport should all feel good about widow Peters living in the manner to which she had become accustomed."

We would be informed by the City Weird Bipolar Step-Uncles (as opposed to Fathers) that a massive outbreak of crimes and robberies committed against passengers from "rogue" cabbies was sure to occur, and that "rip off" fare gouging would occur; should we ever consider opening up the cab business to all out competition. We would also be informed that "the best" cab companies are all going out of business (You know, the ones that charge $60 (tip included) for a one-way trip to the airport so medallion holders can work two months and spend the rest of the year in Bangladesh).

In other words, if we allow the free market to inflict itself upon this economic cog in the transportation market all the current benighted and blessed beneficiaries of the oligopoly would lose. Everybody else would win. Drivers currently paying the gate and scraping by hand to mouth could now pool together and share the cost of a vehicle and get what they can from the people who need rides. The only thing mandated will be that a cab has to be painted like one. A medallion will be required but there will be no limit on them just as there is no limit on area parking permits. As such entry will be easy. Exit will also. You can't make it economically, you go poof just like in every other business that the City supervisors have proven over and over they could care less about.

So on the one hand we will have "prospectors" (just like in the gold rush) who will enter the business seeking their fortune and finding less than expected go out of the business without any sort of transaction or buy out or medallion inheritance or successor interest transfer that needs a lawyer or DOT hearing. They will flood the market and collapse pricing. Then a number of them will fall by the wayside. Those who remain will be those who figured out some way to make it and prices will raise somewhat from its trough. The public throughout all this will benefit to the tune of many millions of dollars saved via lower fares.

After the liberation, "gold rush", and subsequent weeding out, the situation would stabilize at exactly the right number given the real demand. If demand rises then more will enter, as demand falls the numbers would dwindle until it would expand again. The City could post demand, supply, volume, and pricing numbers on a website or general access location and the reaction could be quite swift to any supply/demand spike. You would have a core of consistent vendors and a pool of part time vendors. What you wouldn't have is an oligopoly.

Then there is the other aspect of this: Distribution. Most of the customers are downtown. Most of the hotels are downtown. Most of the rides to the airport are downtown. What can be done to distribute just the right amount of cabs to the outer zones of the City?

The easiest way for this need to be addressed is for the person who needs a cab to post his availability at a central command center and have ALL the people operating at that moment, who have available cabs, to all be informed at once and then the cabs whether by queue or by first come first serve they race to the waiting riders location. The "bingo" race is on. The City could even make money by allowing off track betting on the winner of the race. Don't laugh. Who would win; the Yellow at Haight and Market or the Veterans at Bay and Hyde for the fare at 33rd and California? Place your bets. I'm only half kidding. Anyone think ride wait times would increase if we did that?

You see the problem now is that a person generally can only call one cab company unless your aim is to purposely stiff one or two others who arrive after the winner. As it stands now, after contact you are at the mercy of that company. The doughnut batch with ten minutes left to bake could cause your cabbie to be a little late. Other cab companies might have three waiting cabs doing nothing but they don't have the rider’s order. Just the company, the rider called. Open up that ride to all companies simultaneously and that cabbie currently sitting in a line of cabs smoking his cig and doing his crossword as opposed to transporting anyone anywhere can remain in the line of cabs or high tail it to the waiting riders location and hope he gets the fare. Its Darwinian but it works. Again, who benefits? The rider. The customer.

What about poor widow Peters? Well tell me the last time the Government ever had a molecule of heart for the person whose property they just eminent domained for political reasons. Family farms, third generation body shop or sheet metal shop? "Screw 'em. We need 'low income' half million dollar condos". I could suggest something simple such as eminent domain-ing every last medallion permit and then putting every person in the position of the widow on the City pension system -- and the problem is gone. What about those who would lose money due to making medallions suddenly worthless? Tell me the last time the Government of this City cared a whit about "speculators" and "profiteers" except to legislate against them?

The only other possible course would be to eminent domain the entire industry and totally absorb it into the City MUNI. Stop laughing, please. I know, I know, bad economic bet, but so what. At least we would have semi dependable cab service for the whole City instead of just Downtown. It may lose money like everything else the City endeavors to do but everyone would be assured of cab service everywhere. At least until the next strike.

Perhaps the downtown should be total free enterprise and the outer regions, like the Sunset and outer Richmond, City managed. Worth pursuing if not trying.

The last area I want to dwell on for a minute is, in fact, the current dust up over Heidi Machen. Naturally there are a million rumors why this has happened, including a letter to the newspapers and posts on the Wall board, but even reading between the lines, the statements by avowed enemies of her, the ultimate reason why she had to go was simple: the public voted on and passed laws designed to insure that whoever owned a permit had to work to keep it. He who owns and operates clearly takes better care of both vehicles and customers. That was precisely something the profiteers (medallion owners) did not want to hear. The law said they MUST work the cab a grand total of 800 hours per year (two whole days a week). No can do, say medallion holders. That starving widow, clutching her medallion, is rolled out onto the stage drooling so we all get the message. Ms. Machen sealed her own fate, simply by forcing them to obey the law: by saying that the person who owns the medallion can't freeload and ride the back of someone else, and charge them for the privilege.

In other words, the only controlling legal authority we can impose on this living breathing and thriving racket, is utterly subverted by medallion holders.

Now, indeed, there could be many other aspects to this matter, but that is all I had to know to understand the whole issue. Like virtually every other political and or governmental system in this City, it has the appearance of being real but that facade is only for the consumption and for the benefit of outsiders so they think we are like them, like an English language protest sign at a Palestinian street demonstration. Taxi laws will always be made to look real, but behind the scenes the termites and the saboteurs abound. From all accounts, bad letters to the editor notwithstanding, it was Machen's insistence on upholding the law that got her removed. The Mayor, who could have stood by her, was busy at the time in surgery having another go at replacing the wet noodle he has for a spinal column with actual vertebrae. A ski jump on Fillmore Street he'll stand by; upholding the law, well -- that depends.

Yes indeed, the one deduced revelation of the whole core issue to ooze out of the fog is that the medallion holders -- who comprise the oligopoly -- don't want to work, they just want to collect the money. And in so doing they make the thing everyone needs far more expensive than it would be if Government simply refused to allow conduct within the operation primarily for the benefit of a few. Yet that injustice is the one being maintained by the political establishment, for the mere sake of political stability.

What's Going (Even More) Wrong With San Francisco's Political System

2006-06-27T11:03:00.000-07:00

By Marvin Destin, Guest Columnist

It's easy to pick on San Francisco in this Era of the Progressives. I'm referring of course to the Political Establishment. It's literally a "target rich environment" as they say at the CENTCOM briefing. From preposterous stunts like the ski jump in Pacific Heights to the misguided and whimsical grandstanding on the hotel workers strike by the mayor, to the tolerance (if not outright support) of anarchy (Critical Mass; homeless vagrants in the Haight; medicalmarijuannawinkwinknudgenudge) in some cases, to the grotesquery that is Chris Daly, with petulant and vengeful Aaron "Payback" Peskin not far behind, to the Mayor's holy act of breaking State law, to an utterly demoralized and borderline incompetent Police Department and pathetically feckless Police Chief pursuing satire video crime, to the OTHER City Approved and Administered extortion racket in the form of vacancy control to... well, you get the idea.

We now are witnessing a new phase of GBS (Governmental Bipolar Syndrome): the tendency of Government behavior to be radical, impetuous, and a threat to those around them. Its called "imposed societal transformation" -- Mandated change that will impact everyones lives, imposed even though it is virtually experimental, by people (Supervisors) who could care less about what voting majorities have clearly and utterly rejected. In their opinion, if they want it, snap, its law. And don't give me no demands for statistical or reasoned justification.

So we have what amounts to an arbitrary meddlesome presence in the form of our Government. And, like Orca in your bathtub, it is swimming around everywhere. You can never get up in the morning assured that some civil right you had yesterday, like smoking legal cigarettes within 50 feet outdoors of an open air bus stop, is still in force, or whether you could get hit with a $474 fine for standing alone only 39 feet away from a busybody communist with a cell phone.

The other shoe is the City's comprehensive attacks upon the infrastructure, if not the lifeblood, of commerce and vital needs of the everyday person: vehicular traffic. Along with the propensity to find fault with virtually any large-scale employer who might think about coming here, San Francisco attacks those that are already here, even mom and pop stores.

When I conjure up an image of the Board of Supervisors having a meeting, in my mind I see immediately Eli Wallach on a horse leading a pack of scoundrel hombres in a cloud of dust they ride into the village to demand whatever their whims of the day compel them to blurt to us, the villagers. I'm referring, metaphorically of course, to the great classic film The Magnificent Seven. Only in our case, we can't simply go find some hired guns to contest their intermittent raids on our village.

The latest campaign, a sort of stealth appropriation of property and rights begun years ago, is to force all City dwellers to either stop using their car or to pay through the nose for doing so. Elimination of passages continues quietly and incrementally but unabated. Every time you turn around there is another pedestrian, bike, skate, or hiking/walking or dog owner group that thinks that some preexisting road or area of the City actually should belong to them or, the people, which is them.

It has been said, that, if you were to put communists or socialists in charge of the Sahara Desert very soon there would be a shortage of sand. In San Francisco we have an increasing shortage of access, egress, transiting and parking. Faced with this raw reality of more people in the state, and more cars, instead of seeking measures that could enhance traffic movement and, or, parking, they have sought to get rid of (or diminish) transit by constricting and or eliminating its flow as well as places to park. The collective voice of the City fiduciaries is, "Hey, let's outlaw or make it difficult to own cars." Vague concepts justify any imaginable societal change they want.

At a time when the number of cars is unlikely to become smaller, when the City policy is encouraging garage-less apartments over garage-owning single family homes, when the City, with its other policies, is killing small business with imposed overhead costs and punishing small business customers with absurd parking ticket fines, thereby kicking everyone into their car to go to the factory outlets down the Peninsula, just when we should be building underground arteries to move the transiting passing through vehicle traffic on a few major roads, from the Golden Gate Bridge to 280 South for instance, we see, instead, movement towards elimination of roads to favor bike riders, which intensifies traffic on what's left.

Normally the media is a watchdog for the public. In this town picture the watchdog in that position where the dog lays on its back with its legs spread, tail wagging, whimpering, and waiting for aggressive petting and a Milk-Bone.

The bottom line is that, in reality, we do not have a government in San Francisco. Yes, we have elections and we have this traditional infrastructure with titles like Mayor and positions like Supervisor. But the Government here does not do what governments are supposed to do -- which is to address the present and future needs of the majority of the people. It is as if what has actually occurred here is that some loosely affiliated group of brigands kidnapped the mayor's office and real supervisors and have them stuffed in an abandoned vault at the Old Mint. They moved into the Civic Center digs and, like in some sick sitcom plot, became the de facto leaders and since then have been imposing wish list items unrelated to the general public welfare on the City.

Of course, you may beg to differ. In that case here's a very simple question for anyone who lives here and is familiar with the place: How many things have the Supervisors enacted, in the form of laws or ordinances that are NOT degrading, hindering, or terminating rights in some way? How many of their measures deprive, outlaw, or obstruct something? We have become the City of No, You Can't. Policies are no longer designed to build, enhance, create or complement. They are designed to take away. To prohibit. To stop. To forcibly change. Can't park here, here, or here, there, there, or there either. This road is closed. This park is closed. This area is off limits. This building is closed. X, Y and Z is No Longer allowed. Q, R, S, T, U, and V are being scheduled for closure. Fees for C thru P will be doubling as soon as the Board can hold hearings. Even certain coffee cups, sandwich containers, and grocery bags are evil and must be rid of and thereby worthy of Supervisor time and effort.

Of course my initial statement isn't totally true. Some things have been created enhanced and augmented. Fines, fees, costs, penalties, and punishments. THEY have all grown. And grown a lot. Fines, fees, costs, penalties, and punishments are the single focus of Supervisor creativity and expeditious action. They get watered every day. Fed protein supplements and injected with growth hormones ongoing. The regime of fines, fees, penalties, permits and punishments have become a self-regenerating, self-officious Frankenstein Monster. And while 2% profit margins for a business are declared greed (see gasoline); City permits to allow you to replace your windows are as high as 7%.

Think about it. What fine, fee, permit or penalty hasn't gone up - dramatically? And the encroachment on access, egress, and pathways via street or area closure seemingly grows with every month. Sometimes in fell swoops but more often insidiously. Sure, each deprivation act was heralded by some arcane hearing held appropriately at such time as no one to be impacted could realistically object with any meaningful impact. That's the way this particular City works. Practice Government technically but not in a real way. A way in which what is best for the common good (as opposed to limited group reward) is arrived at by weighing all evidence with objectivity is utterly alien to this regime.

Traffic is a mess. What new streets, for instance, have been opened or improved in San Francisco in terms of specifically improving traffic flow? Octavia Boulevard? That simply replaced another road. Better looking, but no net increase in pathway over its predecessor, the ugly freeway. To top it off, the stretch of road that was created has come to look like some giant Legoland or erector set replication, or abandoned film set for one of the Terminator movies, loaded with metal beams and Orwellian lights. This is an improvement? This is what Government accomplishes for a couple hundred million dollars? The replacement of a raised roadway that kept traffic out of the neighborhood with a perpetually gridlocked road right outside your home and a couple hundred bright traffic control light panels always on and blinking into your bedroom.

In any event, and by any rationalization, the brigands have significantly changed the role of the City leadership from shepherd, conservator, forward looking visionary, preparing the City for the future (Recall Dianne Feinstein rehabbing the Cable Car tracks) to a small but potent roving band of plunderers. Constantly taking and or taking away, pillaging something established, and demanding tribute. That's pretty much all they have been doing.

Two examples of the symptoms of both the narcissistic and naive mindset of the current board and mayor and sheer hope emerging from the storm are found in last Sunday's Chronicle: In one article, the Mayor has announced he has seen the future of what San Francisco needs desperately and it is (surprise!) a bike path and hiking trail across the last place a significant revenue generating industrial or commercial zone could possibly be constructed for the benefit of San Francisco City and county. Jobs, particularly good pay good benefits middle class jobs. I hasten to add, jobs that would definitely use the light rail metro extension down Third street to get to. Most other cities would look at this resource as a way to insure long-term fiscal health and insure greater economic diversity among the population. But no. Our leaders see this area of the city only as a place that provides the opportunity to parrot a Barbara Streisand sound-bite about wetlands preservation and expand the lands devoted not to revenue generation but to non vital self-indulgent pursuits that instead will COST someone money to upkeep.

In another article, hope comes in the form of a judge's grinding to a halt the San Francisco Kudzu Bike Plan of constantly eliminating car road space and transferring usage to bicycle users at everyone elses expense. Perhaps the Gypsies will blink now. Nah, they only respect courts that give them what they want. Whether its valuable city streets or a more remote area of the city our leaders opt consistently for the self indulgent. Maybe that ski jump stunt was a more serious symptom of group narcissism than we initially suspected. This judge has thrown, for now at least, a monkey wrench into the brigands' plan. He has said, gasp, that all these plans to take roads away from cars and the people who desperately need them have been, and are being, imposed without due process in the form of studied impacts. Imagine that. The great game of forcing anyone with a revenue producing idea to succumb to years and years of costly impact reports prior to obtaining a CHANCE to have a project go forward is now thrown back in the Supes face. So they must halt any further pac man-like pursuits. And he has stipulated that they need to do this before any more roads are taken from cars and dedicated to the religion of Critical Mass.

How this will turn out ultimately is anyone's guess. But perhaps we have reached the tipping point. The point in which someone goes into the Mayor's office and Supervisor meeting and tells them they have to take their feet off the desk, clean up the whiskey bottles and trash from their pizzas and fast food meals strewn about their offices, and start acting like leaders doing meaningful things instead of wish listing mandates on the populace. The kinds of people who to work with the system, not dictate to it. The kinds of people who shoot for meaningful results as opposed to pie-in-the-sky social experimentation. The kinds of people who care about doing what's really best, as opposed to what's the politically favored flavor of the month.

If Only.

Can Money Finally Buy Love?

2006-06-02T22:31:00.000-07:00

Left: Assembly Candidate Janet Reilly, in a campaign photograph staged at St. Mary's Hospital. Her husband Clint Reilly is a director at Catholic Charities.

Voters on the west side of San Francisco are faced with possibly the most vicious Assembly race in recent memory, between city District 4 Supervisor Fiona Ma and Golden Gate Bridge Commissioner Janet Reilly. Much like the Westly/Angelides match, there is a temptation to regard the candidates as similar to each other - both women and both professing political stances well within the liberal spectrum of San Francisco - but there are important differences. One candidate has worked hard within San Francisco's political establishment - as a legislative aide, commissioner, and Supervisor - to push issues important to her base while maintaining loyalty to her political mentors - always a difficult task. The other, a relative newcomer, is a former television reporter who has made up for lost time by relying on her perceived charm, her husband's legacy of political largesse, and an brazen willingness to outright deceive the electorate.

California's 12th Assembly District has up until now been the enclave of centrist San Francisco and the northern Peninsula, with past office holders - from Leo McCarthy to Kevin Shelley - carefully balancing (some better than others) the interests of labor, homeowners and neighborhoods. That changed to an extent when former city District 4 Supervisor Leland Yee was elected to that office in 2002. Yee won re-election to the Board, despite the transition to district elections, by abruptly reinventing himself from a moderate pro-education technocrat to a Quentin Kopp model: unscrupulously pandering to both ideologues on the far left and the more base, anti-tax, anti-growth, and anti-infrastructure instincts of conservatives and NIMBY groups on the right. His term in the Assembly has been benign if unremarkable, apart from a quixotic attempt to force ratings on video games. Yee now has his sights set on the State Senate, and that race is a whole other can of worms. Unfortunately, the political environment has left another can in Yee's wake.

Fiona Ma is the current District 4 city Supervisor, having been appointed by Willie Brown when Yee departed for the Assembly. Later that year, she handily won election to that office in her own right, conspicuously without Yee's support. Ma ran a broad-based, inclusive campaign based on improving neighborhood and children's services and infrastructure, creating affordable homeownership opportunities, and fiscal responsibility. All are boring but necessary municipal policy issues, and she was for the most part successful in promoting that agenda. She also attempted to push the envelope for her constituents by strengthening regulation of massage establishments, whose abuse as a cover for prostitution activity exploded in the 90's and early 2000's, and increasing fiscal scrutiny of non-profit service providers. That, and her votes in support of legislation sponsored by Mayors Brown and his successor, Gavin Newsom, has often gotten her in trouble with those who dictate the unreasonable and overradicalized agenda of the Board of Supervisors.

That trouble has come back to her this election season, as she runs for Assembly. Ma's opponent is Janet Reilly, a Golden Gate Bridge District Board Commissioner, former campaign aide to Republican Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, and corporate PR executive. Reilly, who with her husband owns houses in SF's rarefied Seacliff enclave and in Napa, has never stood for public election before. Despite this, she's won the endorsement of Assemblymember Yee, whom she hopes to succeed, and many of Ma's colleagues on the Board of Supervisors.

So how, in a loyally Democratic district, does an inexperienced, ostentatiously rich person with suspect Progressive credentials and comparatively shallow roots in the community get this sort of support? Simple. Be Clint Reilly's wife.

And it is Clinton Reilly, former political hatchet man, ostensible real estate magnate, and would-be City Father, which has become Janet Reilly's unspoken qualification for office, and as such, the unspoken issue of this campaign.

"Clint (Reilly) is one of the sickest people I've ever come across. He's always had a craving for power as the ultimate aphrodisiac... Like sucking a crack pipe for an addict - the ultimate hit. I'm probably as sick as Clint in many ways, but I'm not running for public office. I'm running for cover."

...Political consultant Jack Davis

Clint Reilly is the son of a San Leandro milkman who grew up to be one of the most effective - and vicious - political strategists in the state's history. Much of his work has changed the political landscape of California, some say for the worse. It didn't start that way. Reilly's first successful effort at campaigns was after leaving the seminary in 1971, when he helped elect progressive former cop Dick Hongisto to the Sheriff's office. This was followed by a number of Democratic-base-appeal campaigns, such as the one to defeat the anti-labor Proposition 22 (not to be confused with the more recent anti-gay Prop 22) the following year. After getting Robert Matsui elected to Congress in 1978, Reilly became a national political star and started his own firm in earnest.

It is here that things start to unravel.

On his way to becoming another Bob Shrum, he routinely got patronage campaign work from the Democratic establishment. Much of this was unchallenging work for politically safe incumbents, yet he gained a reputation as a real piece of work to work for, increasingly abusive to colleagues and co-workers to the point of psychosis. It was during this period that he became so enraged (and reportedly, inebriated) in the course of a statewide campaign that he severely beat his then girlfriend and colleague, reportedly bad enough to put her in the hospital. The accounts of this behavior are many and indeed legion, ranging in venues from parking lots to a Noe Valley pizza parlor. Most are unverified and there are no police reports, but many feel the sting of Reilly's behavior to this day.

Dissatisfied with being a political functionary, he endeavored to change the political landscape of San Francisco by marshalling former clients to support local Proposition M, an ordinance that limits the rate of commercial office development. In doing so, he built the political coalition of right-wing NIMBYs and left-wing anti-growth ideologues which continues to dominate San Francisco politics, and allowed Walter Shorenstein, the commercial real estate developer who was the primary sponsor of the initiative, to make a killing by dominating the market.

Blood money may be an acquired taste, but it is also addictive. By the late 80's Reilly had turned into a high-dollar political hack on behalf of regulated industries, running campaigns against two major insurance industry reform initiatives. He made millions on the campaigns, allowing him to enter the Monopoly world of San Francisco real estate himself. Clinton Reilly Campaigns became a pioneering powerhouse, combining strategy, print and air campaign material, and fundraising into one firm. Reilly was also a pioneer in effective and ubiquitous negative campaigning, the bugaboo of today's national politics.

The resulting wealth continued to feed Reilly's unmitigated arrogance. He got into a physical scuffle with Phil Bronstein, then editor of the Hearst-owned Examiner inside the newspaper's offices, which earned him the hostility of California's press. He drove Kathleen Brown's campaign for Governor and Mayor Frank Jordan's re-election campaign into the ground. While it was enough to make Reilly retire from political consulting, he retained his more plutocratic ambitions.

San Franciscans live with the result of those ambitions today.

In 2000, when San Francisco put voter-enacted district elections into effect, Clint Reilly took advantage of the situation by bankrolling a majority of the left-leaning "reform" candidates, who then got elected in each district by a few thousand votes each, throwing citywide policy and planning into the toilet. Among those who benefited from Reilly largesse include Jake "Anti-Homeownership" McGoldrick; Aaron "Anti-Fun" Peskin; Leland Yee (surprise!); and most famously, Gerardo "Anti-Keeping-One's-Mouth-Shut" Sandoval. Sandoval deserves extra notice here as the recurring liberal goat on Fox News shows: you see, the Reillys are major stockholders in Fox's parent company.

Reilly also has significant stock in the abortive administration-on-abdicated-autopilot of San Francisco's flake-in-the-baking-pan mayor, Gavin Newsom: not only are the crazies on the Board supporting his wife, but Newsom has refused to endorse in the race, despite Ma's legislative loyalty to him, and it has he who gave Janet Reilly the coveted Bridge board seat in the first place. Indeed if it weren't for Al Gore, Janet Reilly would probably be on the Board of Supes now.

Which brings us to the conduct of the Reilly campaign, which has become unfortunately reminiscent of the tired and clumsy final campaigns of Clint Reilly, such as his attempt to re-elect Frank Jordan with odd subliminal street signs or his own bizarre vanity campaign for Mayor in 1999, where he spent more than a hundred dollars per vote and didn't even garner 25,000.

While Janet Reilly seems like a talented and articulate individual, virtually none of her experience before meeting Clint Reilly is mentioned in her campaign material: virtually all of the qualifications mentioned come from positions which were acquired primarily through her husband's influence, mainly with the local Archdiocese. The self-reported resume has become a Clint Reilly staple.

Right: See any resemblance yet?

Then there are the wacky campaign tactics: at the recent state party convention, Reilly operatives tried to pack the 4th district caucus and block an endorsement of Fiona Ma by literally dragging people out of the halls and handing them proxies (the strategy failed). When a clerical error by the IRS linked Ma to campaign of an anti-choice Republican governor in the Midwest, Reilly operatives ran with it straight into the showers. Then Reilly's healthcare platform was revealed to have been cribbed from a bill already introduced by another serving legislator. When critics pointed out that Reilly sent her children to an expensive private school out of the district, her campaign responded by calling Fiona Ma anti-Catholic. And the netroots stuff gets worse.

There are all indications that if Janet Reilly were somebody else, she would be an admirable public figure of some kind, somewhere. But as a vessel for the vicarious ambitions of Clint Reilly, a man who already has his fingers all over a nonresponsive Board of Supervisors and a brain-dead Mayor's office, and who even now is mortgaging himself so that he can become either a one-man star chamber or a modern-day Abe Reuf, she is at once both frightening and repulsive. Given that the election is coming up this Tuesday, one can only hope that, even in the age of Marshall McLuhan, one can still be prevented from fooling all of the people all of the time.

A Tale of Two Races

2006-05-29T21:19:00.000-07:00

Left: State Controller Steve Westly: Can he save California Democrats? He'd Better.

Californians, and San Franciscans especially, have some momentous choices to make in what should be a minor off year primary. Two of the most interesting races exemplify some of the best and worst new trends in state politics - both involve independently wealthy candidates at least on one side, both have devolved into negative campaigning, both involve at least one side justifying itself on the facile of premises, and both reflect the divide - one not so much of ideology as much as posture.

Part One: Westly vs. Angelides

With Arnold Schwarzenegger facing no opposition within his own party, attention has turned to the Democratic Primary between State Treasurer Phil Angelides and State Controller Steve Westly, two candidates who appear to have as much in common as they do issues that divide them.

Both are relatively wealthy and significantly self-financed, although Westly more so. Before being elected as State Controller in 2002 against Republican Tom McClintock (and outspending him by 5-to-1), Westly was known primarily as a plank holder in the now gargantuan money tree known as eBay. Before that he was one of the first directors of Netcom Communications, one of the first consumer Internet service providers. What may not be so well known is that his successful private sector career was jump-started by a stint in government: after serving as an aide to the late Congressman Leo Ryan, Westly went to work for the Carter Administration on energy policy and then for the state PUC.

The Westly resume is noteworthy here because he has worked on both sides of the regulatory system for two industries of major import to Californians: energy and telecom. One industry saps at California's economic growth (and, it could be argued, is responsible for the undoing of the last Democratic administration here and for economically hobbling most consumers here at the same time); the other represents its future growth. It is a highly prescient combination of experience for a post-Schwarzenegger governmental landscape characterized by Legislative Capture (you will hear this phrase again, and again) by regulated service industries.

Angelides, on the other hand, made his fortune along a similar track, but in a more obvious choice of industry for getting rich: real estate. After working for the state redevelopment agency for almost a decade, he also went private, working for the Sacramento area developer Angelos Tsakopoulos, and later founding his own development firm.

Left: Angelides bought a lot of signs - and bagged the state party endorsement.

Both AKT Development Corporation (Tsakopoulos' firm) and River West (Angelides' firm) have made a significant mark on the economic landscape of Sacramento and the surrounding river delta area. The region exploded during the 1990's, turning what was once considered part of rural California into a major suburban zone - which hit the wall in the wake of the 2000 Crash. Laguna West, a River West development in Elk Grove, may well exemplify the future of suburban development in the area. Widely touted as an example of 'Smart Growth," some experts contend it's anything but.

Both have served as part of the state party leadership. Throughout the 80's as a young professional, Westly maintained a concurrent track in the state Democratic Party, serving in a number of fundraising positions and finally serving on the DNC from 1988 until 2004. Angelides also served a number of roles within the state party, eventually elected as party chair - a seat Westly tried for once and lost, to Jerry Brown - in 1991.

A casual onlooker might regard these two candidates as identical. But in many ways, they are different enough that whomever one wins in the June primary will dictate the future direction of the democratic party in California - regardless of whether or not the nominee eventually beats Arnold in November.

Westly’s primary message is one of reform and pragmatism - of turning the state’s democrats away from the insider politics and entitlement-oriented policies which have weakened the Democratic base in the state and made the Total Recall possible in the first place. Angelides has on the other hand touting himself as the "real" Democrat, lampooning Westly's wealth as if he were Al Checchi, succoring the civil service unions and keeping the hospitality suites at the conventions well stocked. Given the insular nature of party politics, it's probably not surprising that Angelides won the party endorsement, but can he win the primary? And if he does, can he beat Arnold?

Westly's campaign gained a significant amount of ground early in the campaign before most voters even knew who he or Phil Angelides was, leading him by double-digits. Most of the newspapers and a lion's share of legislators have endorsed him. The party elite and highest-profile electeds have gone to Angelides along with the state party endorsement, and polls now put either candidates' chances at dead even. Concurrent with the endorsement have been increasingly heated public appearances, which have devolved into negative campaign ads, which seem to be on every commercial break during the major newscasts now.

Schwarzenegger: Thinking of the future... (image courtesy japander.com)

California Democrats face a heady choice in the June primary, between a smart, independent and reform-minded candidate with the necessary experience to navigate the new deeper waters of state government and a party player who promises more of the same. In making that choice, it may be necessary for them to think beyond the increasingly shallow notions of party loyalty and think about the high seas facing our state in the future. And about sinking Arnold before he gives the Ship's Store away.

Next: The 12th Assembly District Race

Lyndon LaRouche's California Kool-Aid

2006-05-01T15:34:00.000-07:00

(Able Dart attended the California Democratic Party convention in Sacramento this past weekend. Here is some of what he saw. More will be posted here in the coming days.)

(Left: Supporters of Lyndon LaRouche stage a remarkably out-of-context choral performance during last weekend's state Democratic Convention.)

This year’s state party convention was a showcase of both the hopeful and horrifying in state Democratic politics. The hopeful included the endorsement of Fiona Ma in the 12th Assembly District race, and of Jerry NcNerney in the 11th Congressional District race; the horrifying include the endorsement of party eunuch Phil Angelides for Governor, and the blocking of any endorsement for 36th Congressional District Representative Jane Harman. As in San Francisco, California’s Democratic leadership continues to bite the hands that feed it and instead gets drunk on Green Kool-Aid; although at least the statewide dialogue over the future of the party is more democratic than it is here in San Francisco.

However, today we are going to discuss a different flavor of Kool-Aid.

Sick people, and evidently sick political parties, attract parasites, and one which has been getting a progressively (pardon the pun) higher profile at California Democratic events is the strange movement run by Lyndon LaRouche. In the last few elections, LaRouche supporters have picketed state party conventions, both here and elsewhere, passing out incoherent, rambling LaRouche pamphlets excoriating increasingly obscure members of Bush’s cabinet (one year it was Dick Cheney; another year it was Donald Rumsfeld; this year it was Felix Rohatyn), and with oddly staged classical choral performances; this year, they actually got themselves a booth at the exhibit hall by posing as the “Franklin Roosevelt Legacy Democratic Club” (I wonder how August Longo feels about this), which was recently chartered by the LA County Committee (Oh Well, if we can recharter Milk...). A number of conventioneers went up to the booth and got pitched by LaRouche activists, who all seem to have the same anxious cadence in their voices and the same blunted affect on their faces, and left scratching their heads. Across the hall, Bob Mulholland was shaking his head, watching the whole thing.

“They’re a cult,” shrugged Mulholland. “They fly people in from Germany and Japan.”

While the LaRouche phenomenon may seem strange and almost comical based upon its current public representations, the reality of what it is may be much more disturbing and dangerous. Many people who saw the LaRouche presence at this past weekend’s convention may come away with the impression that he and his movement is a naive and grandiose effort by a rich eccentric. So while many political veterans are familiar with the long history of Lyndon LaRouche as an ideological chameleon and criminal, it may be time to review who he really is, and what his movement stands for – if anything.

Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.’s most public reputation is as a perennial candidate for President, having stood for the ballot in every election since 1976. He has generally made these runs under the portfolio of various self-styled organizations, which claim to have a progressive or pro-labor orientation. There are a number of front organizations in the LaRouche portfolio, including: the National Caucus of Labor Committees; the Executive Intelligence Review; the Schiller Institute; the LaRouche PAC; and the LaRouche Youth Movement, among others.

(Left: Hapless conventioneer besieged by LaRouchie)

His ideological pretensions, however, can best be described as “post-Marxist,” combined with notions of the state loosely borrowed from Classical philosophy. This last element, along with the dogmatic affect of himself and his followers, his thinly disguised anti-Semitism, and a penchant for violence he exhibited in the 1970’s, often get him mislabeled by critics as a fascist. The reality is that LaRouche, a former shoe salesman with no degree (he dropped out of Northeastern University twice in the 1940’s), has cobbled together his ideological schema over time from the naive sociopolitical fantasies of junior college students, mainly to attract funding and followers for himself rather than to build any sort of articulate political regime. This is further served by his penchant for conspiracy theories, an overwhelming number of which have LaRouche himself as the focus.

Much of LaRouche’s current courting of Democrats revolves around a policy agenda based upon allusions to Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. The LaRouche version, however, features ideas such as a return to the gold standard for US currency, macroeconomic infrastructure projects such as a “Eurasian Land Bridge” and development of nuclear fusion power, and the exploration and colonization of Mars - ideas lofty enough to leave the more realistic among us shaking our heads, but unfortunately also to lure in the gullible.

(Left: The LaRouche booth at the Convention had a bewildering array of propaganda, including LaRouche himself on video {see monitor in center of picture})

LaRouche has also propounded policy which is patently offensive to both Democrats and democrats on a number of political fronts: in his 1984 campaign for President, he famously bankrolled a television infomercial which claimed that the eventual Democratic nominee, former Vice-President Walter Mondale, was “an agent of influence of the Soviet Empire and Swiss Grain Interests.” In the following midterm elections, LaRouche followers in California fielded a number of candidates for local offices, along with a ballot initiative which sought to forcibly quarantine people with HIV, based upon pseudoscientific assumptions that the virus could be transmitted by mosquitoes. During this period “LaRouchians” were also used by the Reagan Administration to serve as mouthpieces for aspects of their foreign policy as well as the Strategic Defense Initiative, or “Star Wars.” Along with Ramsey Clark, LaRouche himself visited and endorsed the Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, and the fascist/arabist Baath party.

Despite its dalliances with the course of national and foreign affairs, most informed observers regard the LaRouche organization more as a self-serving cult or fraud scheme rather than as a viable political movement. But this is where its danger lies, as well as any answers to questions like “so how do these kooks get all the money to keep doing what they do?”

In addition to his political front groups, LaRouche also maintains a number of presumably for-profit businesses, in varying degrees of sustainability, such as American System Publishing Company, PMR Printing, and the Benjamin Franklin Press, which are used to distribute and print LaRouche’s catalog of opaque literature and, according to some sources, could also be being used to launder money diverted from Federal campaign matching funds, as well as other monies defrauded from the gullible. Another source of funding is the Youth Movement, which recruits impressionable students, indoctrinates them in “cadre schools”, and buses them in vans all over the country to preach the LaRouche gospel and panhandle contributions. Many of the LaRouche activists present in Sacramento were spending the previous week in San Francisco doing just that.

LaRouche is also a convicted felon, having been jailed for wire fraud in 1988. He controls assets worth tens of million of dollars, much of it obtained by fundraisers preying upon the elderly and impressionable, which is then invested in real estate.

There is some emerging speculation about what these “fundraisers” go through themselves. There are indications that the LaRouche “cadre schools” are in fact brainwashing centers where mind control techniques based upon repetitive stress, sleep deprivation, malnutrition, forced memorization of mathematical puzzles, non-related cohesive activity such as choral singing, use of sexual innuendo as belittlement, and peer-isolating generation-gap rhetoric (“the Baby Boom Generation is lost”) are used to reprogram college kids into loyal LaRouche zombies. They travel together on long road trips where they are kept isolated from people other than their own cadre in order to reinforce their programming. This may explain the repetitive and circular rhetoric, and blunted affect, which is often encountered when talking to these people. And like in many other dangerous cults, a number of these people have died from misadventure.

The cultlike nature of the LaRouche "movement" often leads observers in the political community to regard them as a sort of joke, as yet another sideshow in the pageant of cranks that often accompanies grassroots politics. But there is serious risk in this view. Much of the LaRouche rhetoric, while evidently ridiculous to the discerning, has taken in thousands of people because it appeals to the public desire for reform in party politics. That in and of itself should make Democratic leadership take notice, as ordinary voters increasingly see our party as bankrupt of meaning and as too focused on insider politics and litmus tests (see reference to the eunuch in opening paragraph). Much of what LaRouche does to keep his organization afloat parallels efforts by some urban labor unions and poverty advocates that favor preserving existing entitlements over advocacy for new generations of at-risk workers and communities.

In some ways, it could be argued that LaRouche represents a sort of apotheosis of the corruption of American Progressivism; indeed, since he was tertiarily involved in the SDS movement during the 1960’s, it could be argued that he represents the last living artifact of the extreme abuses of that era, as manifested by the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Weather Underground, the Charles Manson movement, and the People’s Temple. While it’s highly unlikely that we’ll see LaRouchians robbing banks at gunpoint or blowing up buildings, one can’t help but think of the wasted lives and damage to our own credibility that this particular sideshow represents.

My Chronicle Columnist Problem, and Yours

2006-04-17T13:45:00.000-07:00

Second in an occasional critique of local media

It’s official: an overwhelming number of Chronicle columnists are cretins. It’s rare that the all-too-bland daily of record for our fair city manages to utterly rape the collective intelligence three times in the course of a month, but it would appear that they’ve managed to do it.

First on the Chronicle’s peeve parade is Mark Morford, who as the Chron’s sick glue-huffing son in the attic is only rarely trotted out in print; mostly he hangs from the ceiling of SFGate, the Chronicle’s online presence.

Morford: Boor

Morford gained a following as a critic of mainstream culture and its many bigoted foibles. But as time has gone on, Morford has morphed into a tiring, hateful boor, as evidenced by what can only be regarded as a bile-drenched screed, which he excreted this month:

“Scene: Friendly upscale white-bread tract-home Wisteria Lane yuppie nightmare blissland. Sunshine, manicured lawns, white male jogger casually running down street. Yuppie penguin-suited husband kisses wife goodbye in perfect utopian doorway and walks to his shiny car as smiling blond Botoxed wife goes back inside and closes front door and, oddly, immediately arms fancy home security system on ugly-ass yuppie McMansion. Beep beep beep blip. All zones secure. Yay.’

Yuppie husband pulls car out of driveway and catches eye of jogger who just that moment happens to be passing by yuppie couple's home. Jogger gives friendly nod to husband just as jogger bends to tie his shoelace. Yuppie husband thinks nothing of it as he pulls away toward miserable middle-management job that numbs his soul and induces alcoholism and Xanax and adultery and will cause bitter painful divorce in roughly 3.7 years.”

Mark: it’s one thing to defend alternative culture against the prejudiced notions of the squares. It’s quite another to effectively call for all of them to be gang-raped.

Lazarus: Asshole

Later in the month, after recovering from Morford’s editorial diarrhea, we are subjected to the humorless, bluenosed pimply-voiced assholism of the Chronicle’s poor excuse for a business columnist, David Lazarus. Lazarus is afflicted with the fatuous self-flagellating burden of believing that he must be the only business columnist at a major city paper with a conscience, and therefore must “take on” the usual whipping boys of American Industry – tobacco and firearms (how about alcohol? Oh yeah, my paper has a biweekly wine section, better avoid that), while introducing the vulnerable public to even more menace and threats to their well-being, such as the iPod.

The iPod?!

Yes, in the rubber-room that is David Lazarus’ braincase, the iPod is a threat (or menace?) to society at large because it can be used to store data:

“Making the case even more audacious, police say, is the fact that some of the stolen data were found on an iPod belonging to the suspect. Investigators say this is the first time they've seen an iPod -- which is essentially a small computer -- used to store people's personal information…’You want to think about that when you see people listening to iPods at a company where they have lots of information," he said. "They might not be listening to music.’"

Okay: so are these people scooping the privileged data off of work computer screens with their eyeballs so that it gets downloaded from their brains to the iPod via the headphones? Or are they listening to credit card numbers while working?

You know, it’s a good thing David Lazarus doesn’t slavishly read BusinessWire or other commercial press releases in searching for stories. He might’ve ended up being reported on himself by WNYC’s On The Media, who did an excellent story on Video Press Releases, the “Fake News” being eagerly lapped up by local TV stations’ news units. One of the VPRs covered in the segment was produced by Panasonic, and was aimed at slowing sales of the infamous, market-leading Apple music player:

BOB GARFIELD: Well, let's hear what this sounds like. Here's a nice feature on holiday gift-giving.

VNR TAPE (ROBIN RASKIN, “CORRESPONDENT”): Before you hit the stores this holiday season, technology experts warn some of the best gifts have the potential to go bad.

WOMAN: One of the scariest examples is Apple's new iPod Nano. It's capable of video, and now there's pornography all over the Internet.

VNR TAPE (ROBIN RASKIN, “CORRESPONDENT”): It's called I-porn.

BOB GARFIELD: Okay. I'm just curious. Who produced that? A wild guess – someone in the consumer electronics business?

If only Lazarus had been writing in the 80s: he could’ve done a piece on how you could use the Sony Walkman to pick locks. But did flacks of another manufacturer unduly influence him? Did Panasonic send a hooker over to slip him a mickey and then stick one of their cheap flash-based MP3 players into his anus in order to control what he writes? We don’t know that, but we do know that David Lazarus does indeed have something up his ass, which we wish would finally explode.

Finally, we come to today’s column by the usually incomprehensible Jon Carroll. After reading today’s column, we sorely wish Jon would follow the example of Ezra Pound and go back to writing exclusively in Chinese. Carroll fancies himself in the Hemingway vein, and today he wistfully mourns the perceived extinction of the Hotel Reina Victoria in Madrid, which is going to be purchased by Hard Rock Hotels.

Carroll: Incomprehensible Cat-Strangling Dumbass

It's a very bizarre article that lauds the hotel for it's long association with bullfighting, and yet at the same time, condemns bullfighting in a very overwrought, hand-wringing manner. All the while mourning the Reina Victoria as a victim of American cultural and commercial hegemony.

Jon Carroll did not do his research. Sol Melia Resorts and Hotels S.A. own Hard Rock Hotels.

Sol Melia is based in Spain.

Dumbass.

Discussions on The Wall Forum: 1 2 3

Pictures

2006-04-07T23:19:00.000-07:00

Keeping up Appearances, or Google and Tuberculosis

2006-03-24T12:38:00.000-08:00

Left: Gavin Newsom and UnwireNow launch free WiFi in Union Square in March 2004

It’s interesting to see how the Chronicle and Examiner
can often differ in their takes on the same or similar news items. For instance, let’s look at two subjects which are near and dear to many a San Franciscan’s heart and which in many ways are similar: Google and tuberculosis.

Today’s’ Chronicle reports on the alarming increase in drug-resistant TB, both globally and locally, pointing out that San Francisco has the highest rate of tuberculosis in the country, and that more and more TB patients are showing up with the newest drug-resistant strains. The story highlights how immigration creates a vector for the new strains, which has hit the Asian immigrant community particularly hard. Meanwhile, the Examiner ran an AP wire story with little or no mention of the local dimension.

But where the difference in coverage and viewpoint is particularly interesting is in stories running in both papers today covering the ongoing contracting process for the Newsom administration’s TechConnect project, which among other things promises a municipal wireless internet service, which would be free of charge for ordinary users.

The free WiFI project is controversial for a number of reasons. Some argue that it puts unwitting users at risk of having their personal information and browsing habits appropriated and exploited by either government (presumably for security purposes) or by commercial vendors (for marketing targeting purposes), both compelling privacy concerns. Others of a less conspiratorial tone have characterized it as fad policy, which uses the presumption of bringing poor people into the internet age to provide a convenience perk to employers, small business and yuppies. This is probably closest to the truth as poor people (particularly those without computers) need free WiFI about as much as they need cake, and we all know that the predominant user of such a free and pervasive service will be indolent yuppies snooping on their co-workers MySpace profiles while sunning in the park. One question that is rarely raised: should this be the city’s job?

Instead, today’s Chronicle focuses on the increasing appearance of an increasingly chummy relationship between Mayor Newson and Google honchos Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Google is the leading competitor for the TechConnect project, and are big on pervasive WiFI, and San Francisco is not their only target; they have been actively wooing New York, to the point of purchasing significant infrastructure related real estate in Manhattan. Google operates free WiFI pilot projects both here in Union Square and in New York’s Bryant Park.

The Chronicle story, by Verne Kopytoff, includes documentation of over 150 pages of communications between mainly secretaries of the Mayor and Google’s top twins. But while the headlines intimate the budding of a close friendship between Newsom and Brin and Page, which brings an awkward appearance to any contracting relationship, others might see business as usual. Free rides to global bullshit sessions in Davos and ski trips are not much different than what lobbyists work with in Congress, and Kopytoff’s (is that name real?) intimations that a close relationship comes from moving in the same social circles is rather precious. Of course Newsom, Brin and Page are going to be running in the same circles: they’re all rich and/or powerful and Generation X. It’s a comparatively small circle compared to elite circles of older age groups and everyone knows each other.

The more interesting story, strangely enough, is in the Examiner. But whether it is interesting because of the questions raised in the article, or because of the questions raised by the existence of the article itself, is in itself a big question.

Justin Jouvenal (where do they get these names?) writes about Kimo Crossman, a blogger who would appear to be, well, obsessive about the appearances of impropriety in the TechConnect deal. Crossman, whose blog and postings at SFLAN.org are a compendium of all things critical of the initiative, is accused of abusing open government laws in his zeal to reveal all about the deal. The article repeats many complaints from city officials that Crossman has crossed the line in advocacy by piling on more and frivolous requests for information in order to punish what he feels is municipal foot-dragging on earlier requests.

Well it IS rather clear from a review of his postings that Crossman is what many a veteran activist would call a “process junkie” or “mole person”. However, the timing of the article would seem to present yet another appearance problem for the Ex and the Newsom press office. It looks awfully “fed”, and there’s no detail on what the nature of Crossman’s requests are and how they would be considered vexatious. Also, Jouvenal got DTIS honcho Ron Vinson’s name wrong. The whole article stinks of, well, green, and I don’t mean as in Matt Gonzalez, or money. Just green.

The worst part of this whole thing is that so-called “Sunshine” ordinances are routinely used to invade the privacy of government employees and harass government departments, and have become a routine weapon of the vexatious, ranging from fake lefto journalists at the Bay Guardian to rancid right-wing “Common Law” activists who inundate local tax assessors with information requests and fake documents. One wonders what Jouvenal’s take on “Sunshine” laws would be if he worked at the Guardian.

Holy Cow

2006-03-01T09:34:00.000-08:00

Left: Scientology's Mission in San Francisco's North Beach

Apparently, the powers that be at Scientology San Francisco understand that politics is the real show business in this town. Word comes from Matier & Ross that Mayor Newsom is dating a Scientologist. Angela Alioto, whose law offices are located next to Scientology’s main offices in the city, introduced that Scientologist to the Mayor. I suppose that would be alarming to any rational person, given that Scientology has a history of using famous people, primarily in show business, to promote its agenda, and that agenda has been judged by reliable people to be questionable. It might be even more alarming if one remembered reading an item in Leah Garchik’s column last summer:

Right: Newsom has dated a wide variety of celebrities in order to cultivate an image of emotional maturity

“The winner of the Ladies of Disaster Lunch that was auctioned at a fund- raiser last spring for Yick Wo Elementary School was lawyer George Shieman, who bid more than $700. On Friday, Office of Emergency Services Chief Annemarie Conroy, Police Chief Heather Fong, Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White and District Attorney Kamala Harris went to the North Beach Restaurant with Shieman and some pals, who arrived with literature from the Church of Scientology. Shieman talked about some of the church's programs, invited the four to Scientology facilities and gave out materials at the end. Auction organizer Pia Hinckle described the women as "shanghaied ... for close to two hours'' while their host tried "to bring them to the light of Scientology.'' But Hayes-White, with whom I spoke on Friday evening, said it had been a "very interesting lunch'' and that Shieman and his friends "weren't trying to convert us.'' She said they asked many questions about their careers and seemed particularly interested in Harris' and Conroy's forays into politics. As to the tour of the Scientologist facility, Hayes-White she said she "might do it. I'm an inquisitive person.'' She said she wasn't so much interested in the program, but "I love to go into buildings and look at the fire safety aspects.'' Shieman also placed a winning bid of $1,000 for a tour of City Hall with Mayor Newsom.”

Left: Jim Jones accepts appointment to the Housing Authority Commission in 1977

While there may indeed be cause for concern, we would submit that Scientology by itself is not necessarily the vector of that concern. The real problem is that San Francisco is no stranger to the occasional emergence of crackpot religions as political players. Certainly we all remember the Burton Machine’s dalliances with the People’s Temple.

Or the fact that a number of city political luminaries – including a former police commissioner and a former redevelopment agency official – are involved with Soka Gakkai, an offshoot of Nichiren Bhuddism which has been accused in the past of having cult-like emotional and financial control over its followers, and whose increasing political power in Japan has undermined the legitimacy of a political establishment which has reigned supreme for half a century.

And, lest we forget, let us ask now: What the fuck is Amos Brown doing playing with the Moonies? Please? Somebody?

Right: Clint Reilly, Janet Reilly, and Cassock-wearing Pedophile Shield Wiliam Levada, pretending to be comfortable

But then, who are we to point the finger at these oddities? Yes, Scientology is a bizarre, power-hungry religion, which bilks millions from its followers only to reveal to them that their bad karma comes from outer space. Yes, Soka Gakkai is a bizarre, power-hungry religion, which bilks millions from its followers only to reveal to them that if they chant long and hard enough they’ll stop worrying about all the money they’ve lost. As for the Moonies, we won’t even go there. But can we even go to the enormous and real influence over politics and culture waged by the Catholic Church in San Francisco? Are Clint Reilly’s Little Black Room and his direct line to the Vatican really any less strange than Willie Brown marshalling the People’s Temple as an army of precinct captains? You tell me.

What is it about this place? You would think that as a community, we would have outgrown the self-absorbed “spiritual exploration” phase by now, especially after the particularly bad trip we went through in the 70’s.

Discussion on The Wall Forum

Outfucked

2006-02-17T14:39:00.000-08:00

Left: Gerardo Sandoval, Primate

It goes without saying that Gerardo Sandoval is probably the most stupid of our elected supervisors. And indeed, that may be saying a lot. But Sandoval’s record of self-serving lawsuits, public racist remarks (2) and out-of-town sports team pimping has been topped yet again by Sandoval himself. What did he do? He appeared on Hannity and Colmes, the Fox News program. Today’s Chronicle has a blow-by-blow account of the affair, so I won’t go into detail here, but Turdoval basically turns a commentary about the (you would think this would be stale as a news issue by now, Hannity must have a lot of time on his hands) USS Iowa affair into a self-indulgent, saliva-bubble-blowing diatribe which manages to combine neighborhood height limits with utopian pacifism.

The Chronicle relayed the sordid transcript along with an admonition against the supervisors’ recent pie-in-the-sky pronouncements on venues outside of their jurisdiction – urging impeachment of President Bush, Falun Gong, and so on. But while most observers have gotten the fact that Sandoval and most of the supervisors seem inordinately obsessed with posturing on issues outside of their control or mandate, there is a bigger problem here.

Right: Gerardo Sandoval came to the attention of Fox News producers when he won the Bicycle Stair Climbing competiton at last year's Special Olympics

Too many times, the Board of Supervisors has been used as a venue for issues which really should be the purview of Democratic Central Committee. And too many times, the Democratic Central Committee has refused to flex its muscles on key doctrinal issues, which should be its meat and potatoes. The Board of Supervisors is supposed to be a body focused on policy, but is focused instead on politics. The Democratic Central Committee should be focused on steering the politics, but instead merely reacts to political overtures put on the table by other factors, often at the Board of Supervisors.

The County Committee’s job, per its own bylaws, “is to educate voters on issues of importance to our society, to maximize Democratic voter registration and turnout in all communities, and to support and ensure the electoral victory of Democratic candidates who uphold the values of the Democratic Party.” It is most certainly a political and doctrinal body whose job is to keep Democratic activists and official public positions in line with what the party stands for, which is in turn staked out by consensus by Committees at local, state and national levels. It’s a political whip organization – not a constituent satisfaction organization. It’s not part of government, and does not need to be ecumenical or fair.

County Committees are often seen as farm teams for candidates for higher office. That’s a bit of a fallacy, which has been taken a bit too seriously in San Francisco. The Committee’s job is to marshal party activists to grow its numbers and to determine the proper litmus tests for candidates to earn its endorsement and funding. The Committees should - and in many places are – at the bleeding edge of crafting and enforcing political doctrine for Democratic politicians, who are supposed to incorporate that doctrine into the real world policy issues that they legislate.

Unfortunately in San Francisco, what we have is an ineffective, fatuous mess. This is exemplified most recently by the rechartering of the Harvey Milk Club, despite their refusal to refrain from endorsing Green candidates and the presence of Green party members on their executive board. It is also exemplified by the Committee’s silence on an unfortunate and continuing problem – the phenomenon of so-called self-respecting San Francisco Democrats making fools of themselves on Fox News shows.

Any Democrat worth their salt knows that Fox News – the bastard baby of Reagan era GOP operative Roger Ailes – is out to discredit the Democratic Party, and that any Democrat who deigns to appear on a Fox News program will end up having about the same level of credibility as if they had walked onto the set of the Jerry Springer Show. It is not an impartial organization and its only use for Democratic guests on its programs is to rip them to shreds and discredit them. Yet for some reason, some self-described San Francisco Democrats – ranging from fatuous pseudo-populist publicity whores like Angela Alioto and Jeff Sheehy to apparently hapless dupes such as Assemblymember Mark Leno and even Mayor Gavin Newsom – continue to appear on insipid hatefest programs like The O’Reilly Factor and Hannity & Colmes, and embarrass both San Francisco and Democrats nationally.

The result is unfortunately predictable – “San Francisco Democrats” have become a millstone, which weighs on the fortunes of the Democratic Party nationally. And San Francisco’s Democratic County Committee has routinely failed to grow the number of registered Democrats on its own home ground as the numbers of Decline to State voters keep on climbing.

One step in the right direction would be for the County Committee to promulgate a resolution against Democratic leaders appearing on national Fox News shows. An embargo of hate-oriented shows such as O’Reilly and Hannity would stop the continual use of San Francisco as a national whipping boy, and raise public awareness of Fox News’ propaganda agenda.

Such a move could also provide an impetus for strengthening the DCCC and restoring its natural political function, which while lost in San Francisco, is alive and well in Los Angeles and other major Democratic cities. If Angela Alioto wants to continue slandering her supposed political brethren on Fox, then the DCCC can make sure that no money or endorsements go to her idiot crank-calling Police Commissioner son, Joe Veronese, once he decides to seek public office again. And appropriate measures could be taken to ensure that embarrassments such as the walking colostomy bag Sandoval no longer infect the leadership of this City. And maybe, just maybe, the ideals that San Francisco stands for - Peace, Equality, Tolerance, and Justice – would no longer be so easily lampooned at the hands of opportunistic class traitors who claim to represent us and then stab us in the back for a fleeting fifteen seconds of personal fame.

Discussions on The Wall Forum (1) (2)

Outfoxed: The Movie - Buy it, Already

The Cheapening of The City: From Helen of Troy to Paris Hilton

2006-02-15T12:31:00.000-08:00

By Marvin Destin, Guest Columnist

Left: San Francisco's Downtown in 1962

History is an interesting thing in hindsight. Looking backwards we can always see where things went right and where they went wrong. Take the end times of any great place or civilization and its path to perdition is always crystal clear and one always wonders, with so many dead canaries in the coalmine, why no one, at any time, ever smelled the toxic fumes. The canaries certainly did.

Santayana basically laid out the drill. If you ignore history you are doomed to repeat it. So what are we ignoring? And if we continue to ignore “what”, what are we doomed to repeat.

That San Francisco is hardly what it used to be is unarguable except when the Board of Supes passes the bong. For clues to why we need to go back in time to piece together the events and trends that led the City to the pinnacle it was on about the midpoint of the last Century. Right after WW2. I know people always talk about the Gold Rush and the ’06 Quake, but the first was a locational burst of luck (gold was discovered on the City’s doorstep and the Golden Gate happened to be just north of the City’s boundaries). Hence if ships wanted to come to Norcal, they had to come HERE. Ships meant business and economic activity. Ships also meant that when WW2 broke out, to go there, one had to come here. Throw in the weather and all SF actually did was exist. It wasn’t some legerdemain of political ingenuity that made SF what it has been. It was the luck of the location and its ability to attract entrepreneurs and visionaries to it that formed the combination that, together with its scenic wonders, made it among the most unique places on the planet. No one could have screwed that up.

Left: Hollywood films like Portrait in Black, The House on Telegraph Hill, Dark Passage, and Vertigo captured the allure of pre-Sixties San Francisco

As I grew up here I fondly recall any number of things that were scattered about the City that spoke to a past that is increasingly so remote in every way to today’s Cityscape that it wont be long before they vaporize into an almost mythical haze until many more people here will not recall them at all. The jet fighter off 19th avenue. The tank on the Presidio parade ground. A short stretch of cable car track on some back street. The still abandoned lot on which sat the Sutro baths. The filled in Fleishacker pool, the longest swimming pool in the whole world. Many others. All gone. Worse, there are people fighting to eradicate what built this city. It wasn’t the Jefferson Starship or even the Jefferson Airplane or even Rock and Roll.

San Francisco reached its modern zenith because of WW2. A million men came through here from everywhere else and the last thing they could picture in their minds was the incredible hills and water vistas and the setting sun over the azure sky with the fickle finger of fog waving them good bye as they went to the Pacific theatre to fight the Japanese with the sounds of the Big Bands appearing at the Avalon Ballroom still resonating in their heads. The Bethlehem Steel plant in SSF cranking out liberty ships at the rate of one an hour. The Hunters Point shipyards. The manufacturing plants. The vast SP rail yards. The growing bank system of AP Giannini. The ethnic odors of North Beach and Chinatown. To kids from tthe colder than a witch's titty Midwest and Nor’east, coming here to go fight the Japanese in the humid hell of the South Pacific, this place was heaven in their rear view mirror. The bay area was shipping and servicemen’s watering holes, entertainment on a top level, and an incredible time had by all. "If I live through this war I’m going to come back here." And so they did. Henry Doelger built the Sunset and the Westlake areas so they could buy their own home and raise a family, snail darters be damned.

Left: The West Coast Memorial to the Missing of World War 2, at the Presidio

The residue of all that was many things. The Sixth Army base called the Presidio. One of the most important military HQs in the world. The birthplace of the UN. Right here. Cal Berkley Lawrence labs nuclear inventions. The largest bank in the world. The Pacific Stock Exchange. Big Corporate headquarters in droves all wrapped by avant-garde culture and a saucy air that cared not a fig if anyone else existed.

BUT San Francisco, because of so much of the former, was still considered an IMPORTANT part of the United States of America. One might say that because of the military presence and activities between San Jose and the Vallejo Slew this area and this city was not just legendary, but important. Important. To the whole country. Let that word sink in.

And last but anything but least, this was, and always has been, the home base of the outcasts and the weird and the cutting edge culturally. Finocchio's. The Hungry I. The Purple Onion. Jack Kerouac. City Lights. Poetry. Gays on Polk. All coexisting with the straightforward and muscular (if "square") world of the business magnets, the military elite and old money from the gold and silver rushes. Foreign embassies. And the great Herb Caen to document it all.

Left: In the 1940's and 50's, San Francisco became a magnet for artists tired of the politics of the New York scene, such as Clyfford Still (image courtesy Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum)

We even had sports covered with Joe DiMaggio at the North Beach playground, Frank Crosetti whose name still graces the wall in Crocker Amazon, Bill Russell and undefeated USF, the man who invented the T-formation for football, the man who invented the jump shot for basketball, and even, somewhat later OJ ‘the Juice” in the Potrero Hill and running wild for the Rams at CCSF. George Fenneman, Groucho's sidekick at SF State. Barbara Eden, and, of course, Marilyn marrying Joe at Sts Peter and Paul.

San Francisco used to be important. But now it is important like Paris Hilton is important. A thimbleful of talent in a sea of self-importance. A swath of irrelevance interrupted by a splash of weirdness or narcissism. Instead of a benchmark historic film with a line that stretches around the block, it’s a porno download floating on the Internet for free. How did we get to this? And where are we going from here?

Simply stated we got here piece by piece. First we stopped electing people who understood that they weren’t here to reinvent government and transition from conservator of the legacy to plastic surgeon intent on a sex change operation.

Then they disregarded many of the constituencies that used to give the City its gravity, gravitas, and prestige. You know, things that are meaningful to the whole country and the world, as opposed to just ten square blocks south of market. We chased out the military and defense, shipping and manufacturing industries, in favor of the ephemeral mirages offered by futuristic next big things. We chased away large employers because they offended the sensibilities of the political class. We chased away private sector entities in favor of public sector entities. Lastly we began to impact the ability of enterprises to make a profit by imposing costs in many ways. A profitable company is looked at here the same way the milk farmer looks at cows except even the milk farmer builds a fence so his cows don’t leave. In short it became increasingly more difficult to not “sin” in the business sense. A company (any company) either made the air dirty, made the water foul, made the street noisy, made the traffic congested, or simply annoyed a socialist activist or academic by making a profit and hiring more people.

Here if a company were to announce it was hiring 1000 new employees a lawsuit would be filed due to the probability of that creating “increased gridlock and impeding bicycle use”.

The City went, over about a thirty year period, from a vibrant place that heard music in pounding hammers to a large breasted unemployed masseuse that lays wastedly stoned in rapture to the sounds in the Ipod earphones only it could hear.

Ideologically, it eliminated its most universally talented and broadly attractive leader types and instead installed its warlords of Marxism. Each holding sway over a small piece of the kingdom, and each dedicated only to the warlords ability to bring home the ideological bacon not the Sunday Ham that all could feast on.

The concept of profits meaning jobs was dashed upon the rocks of Government grants, Earmarked freebies, and redistributed wealth of the entrepreneurial; who, in the minds of the Warlords, deserve to have it taken from them and given to the “more deserving”.

Yet amidst this transition from productive to parasitical, the City’s beauty and the private property clauses in the Constitution of the country (to which the City has become an unwilling member) conspired to produce the current wave. As businesses go away, and enterprises are squeezed by political fiat of the commercial oxygen they need, as any person with a calculator and a pencil can deduce, the only thing that still makes sense here is… non-rent controlled bedrooms. For now, anyway.

But like a Tsunami, the first wave (the closing of the door to commercial enterprise and the banishment of significant employers), isn’t the last. For after you make running a business too expensive and getting to the business a dangerous trail of parking fines and time wasted looking for spaces (or a crowded graffiti laced bus), you have instigated an inertia. The definition of inertia is the tendency of an object to remain in its current state of motion. San Francisco is headed for a place that is currently inhabited by the Morgan Hills of the world. People live and sleep there but if the place disappeared no one would notice or care.

I asked a friend if he might like to join my son and I at the IMAX theatre in the Metreon to see the film on Mars and he said, so fast it amazed me, I never go to San Francisco, besides its playing at the IMAX in Tracy! This conversation took place in Daly City folks. No, parking fees and tickets don’t matter do they.

In that small business can not survive and big business has already left, what’s left besides municipal government and public sector entities with a few choice Limousine Liberal foundations still operating via lease deals only Nancy Pelosi could finagle for them, see Tides Foundation in the Presidio.

In City Government we have The Kingdom of the Drones. An entity that can’t produce a single well mowed lawn in any of a thousand parks, but knows overtime and it is good. A city run by people who believe that its entire security apparatus must be rid of men who fight crime replaced with women who leave the criminals alone. Whose chief of police’s picture in the Chronicle looks like the lonely pet waiting for you at the SPCA instead of a leader that criminals decide any other town would be better that that guys. Where a huge law enforcement issue isn’t unsolved murders but “offensive” satires.

So with the streets increasingly dangerous, vital stores dwindling in number as well as profitability, gangs frolicking in mayhem, transportation preposterously inefficient and independent mobility under hostile assault, people will continue to turn to the Internet to get what they need to live here. I fully expect the United Parcel and Fed-ex trucks to far outnumber any other vehicle on the city streets within ten years. Think about what that means to the local stores you need.

Why this is so is, simply stated, district elections. The Marxist Warlords were born like the Alien in the Sci-Fi classic. You might notice their ancestors have never cared a fig that any land they ever ruled went the same course as this one has been put on. See Havana.

At the very moment San Francisco needs to think big and think real, it is thinking small. We used to make things like Golden Gate Park. Now we make a ski jump in Pacific Heights and pat ourselves on the back for doing THAT.

A Maryland court recently decided that Wal-Mart must pay 8% of its gross income on health care. Why 8% I asked. Why not 15%? Why stop at 8%? Why not cover all their transportation costs and school for their kids as well. Why not 30% and throw in three months with pay so the kids can get a worthwhile vacation to Orlando for, you know, their self-esteem. It’s for the children. The very idea that no court or City should be able to arbitrarily decide how much of a large employer’s (or small for that matter) revenues it can dream things up to spend it on, never occurs to Marxist warlords. And we then wonder why such companies are fleeing to India instead of coming to this beautiful place. They know botany, reptiles, and jellyfish. Some of the most beautiful are the most poisonous. It’s how they attract their food or victims. Then we wonder why India’s runaway demand for oil is pushing up the costs of OUR transportation. So to stop that from happening we demand everyone ride the bus and persist in the onslaught against the personal independent transport.

They plan to tear up Geary because they are certain you wont mind at all taking half your day to go all the way downtown to pay $3.00 for the fare, and $25 for a music CD instead of clicking on I-tunes.

And Tom Ammiano and Chris Daly and Jake McGoldrick and Mirkarimi et al celebrate their power and fondle their magic wands. And is that the sound of a canary choking?

Water On The Brain

2006-02-03T09:47:00.000-08:00

I don't fucking believe this.

According to today's news, the Mayor has decided to do something about the impending threat that the use of bottled water poses to City finances.

Yes. That's Right. Rather than push forward Civil Service Reform, rather than following up waste and pilferage at MUNI, rather than going after the police overtime racket, rather than any other sensible, meaningful, and lasting measure to control City expenditures on an institutional level, our Mayor is going after the pernicious use of bottled water, after the truly groundbreaking exposure of this highly important issue in the City's leading and most relevant newspaper, the Chronicle.

The chronology goes rather like this: Last friday, the Chron ran this story on its front page. Yes, that's right. In a city of over 750,000 residents and a million stakeholders, with important issues emerging and evolving every day, the Chronicle runs a front page story on... bottled water. Then some enterprising flack from Brita, manufacturer of the highly useful home water filters, gets in on the act. They issue a press release (which the Chronicle runs a story on) offering the City free filters, in order to flack their product.

And now, of course, Mayor Gavin Newsdriven promises to explore dealing with this life-threatening hemorrhage of half a million dollars out of the $5 BILLION City budget (now, repeat after me: a billion is one thousand million. A billion is one thousand million. A billion is one thousand million. Thank you.) by seeing if it would be cheaper to bottle and internally distribute our own water (uh-huh. everyone who has run a business knows that is really is cheaper to bottle your own water. Didn't we try that already?).

Of course, it's pretty clear that the Chronicle is appealing to base public sentiment about public spending: you know, "they're wasting our tax dollars on Fiji water from the hotel mini-bar when they could just drink tap water. After all, isn't our tap water the best in the world, like Candied Swan Shit or something?" And indeed, the whole concept of selling water in bottles is a routine target for scorn by various cranks.

Thing is, though: business ettiquette exists in government like in any other field. If you're having a meeting, you serve water. Is it cheaper or more convenient to serve bottled water, or have City employees do water service, in pitchers? What about the energy and maintenance costs of drinking fountains?

Not so clear cut, is it? Especially when the supposed paper of record runs a front page story on something that takes up on one-thousandth of the City budget.

Bronstein needs an enema. So, apparently does Newsom.

Discussion on The Wall Forum

Other Places

2006-01-27T12:47:00.000-08:00

Examining the Examiner

2006-01-23T12:21:00.000-08:00

First in an occasional critique of local media

It goes without saying that newspapers are important in forging the public consensus necessary for propounding responsible urban regimes. And indeed, the illness that afflicts San Francisco's urban regime is evident in San Francisco newspapers.

In general, newspaper reporting is San Francisco is afflicted by profound shallowness and an overly precious attitude, which emphasizes meaningless eccentricity and neglect. The sense of outrage that newspapers can generate about critical issues is very rare, and when evident is bizarrely misplaced. The end results range from the blunted affect which characterizes reporting in the Chronicle to the bizarre and intellect-insulting screeds found in the Bay Guardian.

But today, we discuss a frustration of yet another kind: the permanently unrealized potential of the San Francisco Examiner.

According to legend, William Randolph Hearst's father, George Hearst, acquired the what was to become the San Francisco Examiner as payment for an outstanding gambling debt. When he inherited the paper in the late 1880's, it became the jewel of Hearst's media empire, featuring prominent writers like Jack London and Mark Twain, and the scathing journalistic style which defined the Hearst papers of America's Imperial period, showcasing shocking scandal, biting satire, and jingoism. The Examiner remained a newspaper of national prominence until well into the 20th Century.

By 1965, the overall market for newspapers had been impacted enough by television that the Examiner entered a Joint Operating Agreement with its staid and more successful rival, the Chronicle. Outlets on the Left attacked the JOA as commercially unfair, and of narrowing and dumbing down the quality of Journalism at both papers. In reality, it allowed the Examiner to appeal to a more cosmopolitan and liberal readership than the ancien-regime-oriented Chronicle. By the 1990's, management trio Will Hearst (William Randolph's grandson), David Talbot (who had come over from, among other places, Mother Jones, and would later move on to found salon.com) and self-made maverick editor Phil Bronstein had produced a paper which featured insightful reporting, truly interesting columnists such as Rob Morse and William Woo, and a forward thinking cultural sensibility.

Unfortunately it was not to last. Already to an extent subsidized by Chronicle revenues under the JOA, circulation had shrunk to less than a quarter of that her sister paper by 1990. A crippling strike in 1994, along with rising paper costs, pretty much pegged the paper for disposal by Hearst Corporation. They hired a new publisher, and lowered the cover price to a quarter. Progressives characterized these moves as the beginning of the "Examiner Deathwatch," alleging that they were preludes to a move to buy the Chronicle and merge it with the Examiner. In other JOA cities, agreements had been allowed to expire and involved papers to merge, for the most part without public outcry. But here, the Progressive Antiregime was determined to ensure public outrage, and others were waiting to take advantage.

The Left's outcry over newspaper mergers in San Francisco was for the most part based on fallacy. They decried newspaper mergers as attempts to stifle divergent public opinion when local governments are increasingly influenced by the priorities of Big Business. This despite the fact that the objects of such hand-wringing are in fact owned by large corporations, and that their editorial stances generally favor metropolitan development and other issues which alternative papers invariably oppose. Much of the rhetoric here was based more on the desire to control public dialogue rather than on any desire to preserve diversity of public opinion. The editorial conduct of the Fang Family's San Francisco Independent during the life of "the Chron-Ex Merger Controversy" perfectly epitomized this.

That publication had repeatedly embroiled itself in pissing matches with the Examiner. Much of the vitriol was fueled by erstwhile columnist Warren Hinckle, and tended to exemplify the hyperbolic news coverage which that publication had become known for. However, there were commercial motives for these conflicts as well. In 1993, the Independent filed an antitrust lawsuit against the Examiner over their aggressive bidding to win the City's public notice advertising contract. They won at trial, but the verdict was overturned on appeal. Since then, the Independent's coverage of the Examiner, Hearst, and notably then-Executive Editor Phil Bronstein, became even more bellicose. There was even a tawdry comic strip, "Mr. Sharon Stone," that poked fun at Bronstein's marriage to the blond film star.

When Hearst announced plans to acquire the Chronicle and merge it with the Examiner unless a buyer for the afternoon paper could be found, the Independent amplified the campaign even further, with a publicly stated goal to block the deal. It was echoed, albeit in a much more genteel manner, by San Francisco's political establishment, citing the now predictable claims of preserving diversity in public opinion.

The quest to block the merger in favor of acquiring the Examiner dovetailed with the Independent's other more transparent agendas. For instance, when the Chronicle published a series of stories criticizing the record of District Attorney Terence Hallinan during his tough re-election fight, Hallinan and the Independent claimed that the Chronicle was attempting to retaliate against him for launching an investigation into the merger, which apparently never took place. As Supervisor earlier in his career, Hallinan was instrumental in ensuring the Fangs were awarded the Independent's earlier public notice contracts. Thus the District Attorney's race, as well as the Mayor's race, soon became embroiled in the Fangs' designs on the Examiner . It soon would become clear that there would be no merger without some lip service paid to an "independent" entity inheriting the Examiner name.

Once the 1999 election cycle ended, the Fangs went public with their agenda to buy the Examiner. The announcement first came through the rumor conduit, and then financier Warren Hellman volunteered to the press that he would help bankroll a Fang takeover of the paper, as long as the Joint Operating Agreement was preserved. Clearly, the Fangs were looking at simply replacing Hearst at the helm of the Examiner with little or no change in its relationship with the Chronicle. The problem is that the JOA on its face has become unprofitable for both papers; this has been an open secret for sometime, but potential investors apparently had little awareness of it. Certainly Hearst was aware of it, and resisted any attempt to preserve the JOA.

Further avenues for risk later emerged. In early February, the Independent was finally evicted for nonpayment of rent from its Burlingame offices after a long court action to delay the ouster. During the proceedings, Ted Fang told a judge that being evicted would cause "a domino effect on the health of the business" that in turn could "cause the newspaper to fail." Whether this affair was due to simply being strapped for cash, vexatious business dealings with the landlord, or indicative of a much deeper problem is subject to speculation. Some observers claim that the Independent Newspaper Group, with recent editions opened throughout the Peninsula, had stretched itself too thin. In any case, Hellman pulled out of the deal. These financial strains would continue to manifest themselves throughout the Fang family's stewardship of the Examiner, and eventually to its being sold yet again.

Nevertheless, in 2000, the Fangs obtained the Examiner name, its archives, 35 delivery trucks and a subsidy of $66 million (over two years) as part of the Hearst Corporation's acquisition of the Chronicle.

The new Fang Examiner was frought with production and proofreading problems. Media criticism sites like Poynter and mediagossip.com were regarding it as a national joke. Tainted by the hack reputation of the Fangs, the paper burned through reporters, editors, and columnists. P.J. Corkery, late of Vanity Fair, tried to give the paper some degree of urbanity, but was soon himself run through (he later returned to the Examiner after it was sold to the current owners). Virtually all national coverage was provided by wire service stories.

It was during this time that the Examiner was first marketed as a free paper, with revenue generated from commercial advertising. It was a smart move given the direction of the industry, however, a number of factors, including the Fangs' political empire-building and the lack of a sales infrastructure geared to commercial ads (as opposed political-contacts-driven public notice ad contracts) led to an increasingly untenable financial situatuion.

Finally, in 2004, the Examiner was sold to multimillionaire Philip Anschutz, then chairman of Qwest Communications International, dabbler in professional sports management, and outspoken conservative. For Anschutz, the Examiner would become part of what would soon be called the Clarity Media Group, including a sister Examiner paper in Washington DC and, eventually, other nationwide markets.

The overall concept behind the papers has not been spelled out, but both existing papers have been significantly changed: The tabloid format has been cleaned up, production has been professionalized, and the content has been tailored to a fast-paced, short-attention-span commuter readership: the front page pretty much serves as a fast table of contents, there's a crystal clear daily event index inside, no jump pages for stories, an emphasis on graphics, and a seemingly rational and centrist editorial take on local news. And the paper is still free.

But the the new editorial format lacks depth - and that impacts the quality of reporting. Rather than digging for detail, Examiner articles often seem as if they're put together from very superficial interviewing. For instance: Exhibit 1; Exhibit 2. It goes without saying that such a content format often restricts the ability of reporters to get both sides of a story. Combine that with the lack of experienced writers, the end result is empty reportage.

The Examiner briefly had made a name for itself with some fairly in-depth politcal coverage. That was lost with the departure of Adriel Hampton. Hampton's articles and regular political notebook column did a good job of naming the players and their motivations in various political moves around the City, even if it did sometimes treat some of the more malevolent ones with kid gloves. Hampton started while the Fangs were in charge, and in many ways he was their best asset, along with Samson Wong who still writes for the Fang-owned Asian Week. What stands in now for political news tends to get the names, dates, and issues spelled right, but there's no analysis. The end result is more like a political calendar of events than real political reportage. While the Examiner seems to get it most of the time in its editorial stance on local issues, the reportage on those same issues is often not there to back it up.

You would think the slack in this area would be taken up by the Examiner's columns. Not Quite, not yet anyways. PJ Corkery does a decent job of covering civic culture, but never goes too deep except when he comes across a juicy tidbit, which isn't often. We have yet to figure out what Christopher Caen's forte is; much of what he covers overlaps with the Corkery column, combined with commentary which is often best described as obtuse:

However, there is something poignant about driving down the streets of our town and seeing all the dead and abandoned trees littering the corners. A final reference to our disposable society? There is a lesson in there somewhere, but I can’t find it.

Congratulations. Neither can we.

The best opportunity for going deep into political issues is provided by the Examiner's newest columnist, Ken Garcia. Now, we've warned you about Ken in the past; but so far he's been timely and spot on in his new column; hopefully we can keep him from going down the nostalgic road of Harry Parker and NIMBY eucalyptus tree worship.

When the Fangs still ran the Examiner, Bill Picture did a wonderful quasi-social column on local club culture, but he's since disappeared, and what remains of "Scoop!" is wire-service-driven Hollywood gossip. Like we really need more of this? There's also a "Life & Style" picture section which stands in for for the usual over-embalmed society pages, and it's rather unique in that we don't see the usual over-embalmed people in it. Yet there seems to be a lot of emphasis on what everyone is wearing - but since many of these people shown off are regular people, they seem to all be wearing Banana Republic. The other entertainment columns aren't bad at all - but that isn't what we're here for.

One of the most frustrating things about the political opinion content in the Examiner is the occasional violent blurting out of random conservative opinion. It seems almost as if the editorial board is pressured to pick something conservative out of a hat and slip it in to appease corporate. Apart from the occasional absurd ranting of Kathleen Antrim, they occasionally slip in wire-service political cartoons which manage to offend both the sensibilities and intelligence of the average San Franciscan: one recent cartoon featured a presumed sequel to "Brokeback Mountain" which purported to depict a love affair between a cowboy - and his horse. Another depicted Ted Kennedy as Joe McCarthy during the Alito hearings. There are conservatives in San Francisco, and I suspect that even they are offended by these forays into talk radio sentiment. The Examiner would be better off with a regular, reasonable voice for conservative views, along the lines of the Chronicle's Debra Saunders. There's certainly some local talent they could make use of - Chris Bowman, Don Casper, Quentin Kopp (under Mara's name perhaps?), the refugees from the latest Chronwatch or Republican Central Committee purge; hell, even we publish these people. If the Examiner is charged with introducing conservative opinion to the San Francisco mainstream, they aren't doing a very good job by showing us the shrill stuff.

So the Examiner remains, for the most part, a promise unfulfilled. Tabloid papers in other cities, at the very least, will use their content to create outrage about issues that matter and enliven the dialogue. The Examiner fails to do this. Yet most people I know, when asked to choose between the Chronicle and the Examiner, will often choose the Examiner. Why?

"At least it's worth the money I paid for it," is the usual answer.

Sights Unseen

2006-01-18T11:48:00.000-08:00

The Miserable

2006-01-13T13:49:00.000-08:00

This past week, San Francisco became the venue and witness for one of the most bizarre and spectacular non-story news stories in a long while. And the participants are about as mundane and typical as you could imagine: a shoplifting crackhead, disaffected retail employees, and overeager police.

I am speaking, of course, of the Starbuck’s Bomb Scare.

This is what likely happened: last Monday afternoon, a homeless guy walked into a Starbuck's, bums a bag of some used coffee grounds, supposedly for gardening purposes, and asks to use the bathroom. Homeless guy uses bathroom and leaves, but leaves a broken flashlight, which he found in the street, in the shitter. The homeless guy picked up the flashlight thinking it might be a good club, but changes his mind after thinking about it, so he leaves it. He then goes into a Circuit City and tries to use the coffee bag to steal a camera from the store. He's caught by store security, his name is taken, and a complaint is forwarded to police.

Meanwhile a Starbuck's employee inspects the bathroom, finds the flashlight, and thinks it's a bomb. So Starbuck's calls the police, they send the Bomb Squad, who analyzes the device in situ ("well, it COULD be a bomb...") and decides to "defuse" it with the water cannon just to be safe. They then analyze the Starbucks video, and the time of incident checks out to said homeless guy. Starbuck's employees give police his name, and the rent-a-cops at Circuit City give SFPD a name and Polaroid for the shoplifting incident. Meanwhile, the homeless guy is arrested on an outstanding drug warrant the following day. When interviewed, 2 plus 2 end up making 5, and a shoplifing drug addict makes national news.

Meanwhile, police and media figures start playing telephone. The baristas get the next two days off, and SFPD spokespeople describe the flashlight as "an item that, if it had exploded, would have caused some damage.” The ATF is called in. KPIX gets a heartwarming interview with the suspect.

At which point the flashlight is revealed to be a flashlight.

I have some thoughts about all this:

1. While retail managers probably should get some basic premises security and bomb recognition traning from corporate, one wonders what kind of Starbucks employees think they are likely to be bombed. If I worked at Starbuck's I'd be more worried about laptop thieves, not bombs. Of course, Starbuck's employees routinely shug their shoulders at laptop thefts on their premises, so perhaps they think that customers who lose their laptops there will develop some sort of grudge. This is very reminiscent of what happened to City College Trustee Rodel Rodis, who got falsely arrested last year for counterfeiting when he used a older $100 bill to buy something and the pimplefuck manager thought it was fake. Bureaucratic Risk Aversion and stupidity are a dangerous combination.

2. Police spokespeople should not make shit up. If it's a real bomb, they should not say shit. If it turns out to be a fake bomb, they should not say shit. Once a suspected "bomb" is proved to be another innocent object, they should make a very clear statement of how and why it was mistaken for a bomb.

3. SFPD may wish to consider actually responding to shoplifting calls and taking shoplifters to jail, rather than citing and releasing them or passively taking reports from stores. We can always release them after booking at the jail.

4. Media pros could start asking obvious questions, like, well, WHO WOULD REALLY WANT TO BOMB A STARBUCK'S?!

Discussion on The Wall Forum

Today On The Bus

2006-01-10T18:58:00.000-08:00

I took MUNI Downtown today. A brief while into the bus ride I heard a slumping, thumping sound.

I looked behind me and saw this:

Apparently, one of our fellow passengers had a little too many.

Some passengers complained. They and the driver wondered what to do.

The driver called an Inspector and arranged to meet him at a stop. They would then tell the man to get off the bus or they would call the police.

The Inspector was waiting at the stop.

So they tell him to get off the bus. He wakes up and, apparently, is wondering what is going on.

At this point another passenger recognizes him. He tries to talk to him and convince him to get off the bus.

Our inebriated friend will hear nothing of it. He responds with obscenities.

Then, he gets up and shouts more obscenities at the man.

We become relieved for a moment as it looks as if he will finally get off the bus.

But this is not to be.

Instead, he asks the Inspector why the bus has stopped.

Instead of waiting for a response, he gets back on the bus.

And sits down, and yells more obscenities.

Finally, another bus comes and we decide to take it. The drunk stays on the first bus, presumably to wait for the police.

Have a Nice Day.

Bill Barnes is Looking at Your Underwear

2006-01-09T12:45:00.000-08:00

Everyone seems to have this fixation with Bill Barnes. Barnes made the gossip circuit again when Supervisor Fiona Ma decided to bring him on for a temporary gig in here office, filling in for aide Jaynry Mak while she’s on maternity leave.

People are scratching their heads over this, because Barnes is most associated with being the longtime chief aide and political bottle-washer to the Stalinist supervisor Chris Daly. Ma on the other hand is regarded as a pragmatic moderate, quite the opposite of Daly. Pat Murphy has even put out an opinion piece urging Ma to Redact “Barnacle Bill.” Many people see Barnes’s political record as incompatible with his new job.

How quickly people forget. Barnes first hit the political scene in San Francisco in the employ of Willie Brown, and was elected to the DCCC originally on the votes of gay liberals and moderates. Rumors that he was a registered republican back east are unsubstantiated but persistent. And while he’s repackaged himself as a progressive by standing with Daly on prurient (but nevertheless Progressive) pursuits such as throwing a monkeywrench in pot club regulation and banning legal handguns, he’s also gone against his own party by doing constituent outreach work for Prop 78, the recent pharmaceutical industry-backed voluntary subsidy initiative. Barnes is a member of the local Democratic Party Central Committee, yet no one seems to have called him on working for a measure that his own party opposed.

Barnes sees himself as a political professional, so on one level the political ecumenicalism really isn’t that odd. Also, job positions are more like currency than identities in Barnes’ chosen level of the political world, and both Barnes and Ma have strong ties to the recently retired Senate Speaker Pro Tem John Burton.

So please, stop talking about Bill Barnes. Go ahead and ooh and ahh over his Friendster profile instead. Just don’t do it in earshot of me. Thanks.

Somebody is Listening...

2006-01-06T13:20:00.000-08:00

Small Business Commissioner Jordanna Thigpen has a pretty decent column coming along in the Sentinel. And lo and behold she's come out with the truth about the San Francisco polity:

"Over the past couple months, taking stock of this year, I've been thinking a lot about the labels 'progressive' and 'moderate' in this town, and I'm mad as hell and don't want to take it anymore.

First of all, most of us are Democrats. Only 15% of San Franciscans are registered Republicans; essentially all voted for Bush II in November 2004. We are mostly all pro-choice, mostly pro-gay marriage, mostly pro-civil rights.

Yet, what's the old adage? If the left had a firing squad, it would be a circle? We are living that adage in this City in vivid color.

Stuff like this truly brings tears of joy to my eyes. Now if we can just get her to use the word "Stalinist" in future columns.

Read the rest of it here.

How to Take a Free Dump

2006-01-06T10:04:00.000-08:00

Seasonal Affective Disorder

2006-01-04T10:47:00.000-08:00

The Unraveling of Prop H

2006-01-03T10:36:00.000-08:00

Proposition H, the handgun ban measure sponsored by Chris Daly passed by voters last November, has been analyzed by up-and-coming demographic prodigy Dave Latterman. The PDF, complete with precinct maps, is online at Usual Suspects.

The upshot of this report is interesting: Prop H was driven primarily by constituencies that supported it for ideological and cultural reasons rather than policy necessity:

“This leads to the observation that, although H did well throughout the City, it did better in parts of the City less affected by the recent increase in gun violence: BV/HP and WA. With the possible exception of the Mission, which voted quite high for H, it is difficult to conclude the very high Yes on H precincts have similar crime issues than some of the aforementioned areas.”

This exposes H as being driven primarily by political expediency and bias. It’s conceivable the H would not have won if were not on the ballot during the controversial and polarizing Special Election orchestrated by Governor Schwarzenegger. Indeed, another ideological albatross on the statewide level, Prop 73, almost won. Neither H nor 73 would’ve been put on the ballot during a regular election.

The end result is that the city is saddled with a highly embarrassing legal and political paradox, as highlighted by Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders:

"San Francisco is supposed to stand for choice. This is supposed to be a town where tolerant individuals don't pass laws that, in essence, say: If I don't do it, you shouldn't either; if you do, you go to jail. Yet the gun ban ends choice -- for the law-abiding, at least."

Nevertheless, every cloud has a silver lining. Another interesting tidbit from Latterman’s report:

"It is possible that for the first time we’re seeing the new demographic in D6 start to have a slight effect. In Appendix 1, I display a boxplot of the district residuals of the above regression, which shows if the results come out as one thinks they would. While D5, as usual, is higher than the other districts, D6 – usually high – is a bit lower, with the lowest median residual value of all the districts. This simply means D6, as a whole, voted lower on Prop H than we would expect given its current demographics. Since the detailed demographic work was completed from 2000 Census data, this could indicate a significant demographic shift affecting electoral results."

The upshot: Commandant Daly’s constituency is crumbling.

Happy New Year

2006-01-01T12:27:00.000-08:00

Unititled

2005-12-30T10:58:00.000-08:00

Mind Your Own Damn Business

2005-12-30T10:31:00.000-08:00

Oh for slow news days. The most interesting article in today's Chronicle is a profile of 109-year-old Lucille Meyer: North Beach native, '06 quake survivor, and now Burlingame resident.

Some interesting insights: no, she's not going to attend the 100th Anniversary Celebration of the '06 quake. She says she's not big on celebrations. We think she's just being polite - if YOU went through something horrible like that, why would you want to "celebrate" it? particularly when the "celebration" is being used as a rostrum for useless, tinhorn bureaucrats?

Also: when asked what the secret of her longevity was, she said: "I mind my own business."

Now, that's something. A Native San Franciscan who minds her own business. Now, we know lots of Native San Franciscans who are nice, reasonable people who do in fact mind their own business. You just don't read about THOSE Native San Franciscans in the newspapers, at least until now.

So here's some advice to all those Nattering NIMBY Natives and Pseudo-Natives who like to be seen on Citywatch and in the Funny Papers: MIND YOUR OWN DAMN BUSINESS. You might live longer!

This Should be Fun.

2005-12-29T20:05:00.000-08:00

Supervisor Lorax

2005-12-28T13:34:00.000-08:00

A neighbor of mine has two cats. They’re his “sort of” pets; they’re pretty much feral, and they aren’t allowed inside, but center their territory around his back yard. One day they got my neighbor into trouble, as one of them decided to enter his neighbors’ house through a window and kill their prized Persian cat (you know, one of those pathetic inbred things with the face so smashed up it can’t eat right; I suspect that if I were a healthy cat I’d want to kill one of those on sight, too).

Now you might ask, not knowing the behavior of dumb animals, why on earth would a cat want to do that? Simple. The cat is a dumb animal, which does not recognize human property rights or boundary lines. He figures that if he can see it, it’s in his territory.

Which brings us to the latest legislative idiocy to come out of City Hall, a bill that, apparently, encourages those pesky neighbors of yours to continue thinking like dumb animals.

You see, Supervisor Jake McGoldrick has introduced legislation, which would allow people to landmark trees on private property. Not just their private property, but also other people’s private property. So this means that if you can see a tree, it’s suddenly yours! Just make sure that nobody else sees the tree, or it might become theirs!

Despite the fact that McGoldrick is the main sponsor of this bill, we see the stubby-fingered hands of a certain Board President on this one; it’s pretty clear this turd was inspired by the recent non-controversy over a Telegraph Hill resident cutting down a rotting and unsafe cypress tree in his yard, which had been home for some of the noisome parrots which habituate around there and have developed a following.

Now, we all love trees. Ken Garcia especially loves trees, as he pointed out in a column he did in the Examiner yesterday, which I can’t link to because Zoran forgot to make sure it was put up on the Examiner website. He loves some trees so much that he reminded us all of how he hates the Natural Areas Program, because they want to put up certain kinds of trees on public land that he doesn’t like, at the supposed expense of certain stinky highly flammable trees that he happens to like. But he does rightly point out (note that I must quote here, as Zoran forgot to make sure it was put up on the Examiner website):

“So why the sudden need for a new bureaucratic branch of tree police? Supporters of the legislation to give a host of city agencies to ability to nominate trees for landmark status say it’s necessary because San Francisco has one of the lowest percentages of tree cover of any city in the country. But you don’t need a law to plant new trees – which seems to be a more fruitful solution – and no garden-variety civil libertarian would give city officials the power to decide which trees someone must maintain on their property.”

(Note to Zoran: You might wanna go ahead and make sure that article gets put up on the Examiner website. Thanks.)

Unfortunately we have here yet another example of a game the Board of Supervisors has become annoyingly good at: Pander to Dumb Instincts and Damn the Unintended Consequences. Everyone agrees we could use more trees. The question is, can that be accomplished by bringing intrusive regulation onto private spheres such as one’s back yard?

Think about it. It’s one thing to legislate prohibitions in public space and commerce. It’s quite another to invade beyond that into the private sphere. Just because you can see it, whether because you can look into window or it sticks up over a fence, it doesn’t mean that that something is yours to do whatever the hell you want with it. We are human beings who govern ourselves with an accepted system of rights and responsibilities; not dumb animals. Speak For The Trees all you want, but it’s quite another thing to go after other people’s Thneeds just because you don’t like the looks of them. Somehow that standard of common decency is forgotten at City Hall.

Of course, the Board has had a history of failing to learn to avoid the unintended consequences in this area. They add more restrictions on to property conversion and eviction control because they say there are too many evictions; lo and behold after they get through with their legislative work even more evictions, now backed by state law, occur. They put a handgun ban on the ballot and it passes, despite the experience of other cities that have seen violent crime rise, not fall, in the wake of similar bans.

So will it surprise anyone that once this piece of legislative crap is adopted, that there will end up being not more, but less, trees on private property in the City?

I can just see it now: realtors and landscape architects are going to start recommending Japanese stone lanterns in place of ornamental trees. Trees will become too much trouble as too many homeowners realize that if they do want to plant a tree, they won’t be able to cut it down or even prune it if it grows into a problem.

Of course, the Supervisors aren’t thinking about that, since all those headaches will occur shortly after they move on to something else.

The Smallest House on The Block

2005-12-22T19:11:00.000-08:00

How a tiny house on Frederick street has attracted the avarice of big political juice

The swath of Frederick street near Shrader epitomizes the idyllic nature of Cole Valley: open, tree-dotted streets, houses with charming facades, interspersed with mom-and-pop coffeehouses and grocers. The neighborhood has developed a reputation for being eminently livable but at the same time unpretentious and tolerant: a combination that has attracted residents as notable and diverse as Craig Newmark and Rickie Lee Jones.

Left: 450 Frederick Street. The little house, next to the big one. Note the deck on top of the neighbor's garage.

But there is a war going on here. One which has bought out the worst motives in people who are thought of as community leaders, and has bought to bear the power of major political players. What is the war over? Is a nearby school closing? Is a major chain store moving in? Is it over the future of one of the many nearby green spaces?

Nope. It’s over the little forlorn looking house at 450 Frederick Street, it’s over the perceived status some people think they have in the neighborhood, and over supposedly genteel people who are waging war against legal construction to divert attention away from their own, illegal construction.

Left: looking down the 400 block of Frederick

450 Frederick is quite literally the smallest house on the block. Built in the 1890’s it was once a fairly decent example of a small 19th century row house. Over time and successive owners, it’s been remodeled to death and then neglected to death for years. The original façade is completely gone; the house itself is functionally obsolete and is over shadowed by virtually all the neighbors’ structures around it. Alex Gutkin, the owner of the house, wants to tear down the house and replace it with a 40 – foot, three-unit Edwardian-style building – which is more in line with the other structures on the block - and will provide housing for both him and his extended family, plus another unit to be sold at a comparatively affordable price. Gutkin followed all the necessary legal procedures to get the project approved, and received a categorical exemption from the Planning Department.

Enter Marjorie Beggs. Beggs, along with her husband Richard, a Hollywood sound editor, owns the largest house on the block. She is also the executive editor at the San Francisco Study Center, a Tenderloin nonprofit with significant ties to the city’s political establishment, and which publishes its own community newspaper, the Central City Extra. Her house, or more importantly the deck she has on top of her separate garage, is adjacent to 450 Frederick. And it is Marjorie Beggs who has instigated the war going on in the 400 block of Frederick Street, one that has marshaled citywide political juice to weigh in on a dispute over a small, insignificant, run-down house.
Beggs, along some of the adjacent neighbors, has led an appeal against the categorical exemption granted to Gutkin based upon claims that 450 Frederick still has significant preservation value, and that the new project would be a blight on the neighborhood, being completely out of character with the adjacent structures. But even a cursory analysis of the preservation value of 450 Frederick comes up nil. The façade was completely redone with stucco in the 1940s and later with aluminum siding in the 1960s. In that time any architecturally distinct features were obliterated. The house is roughly half the size of all the other structures on the block. Gutkin applied with all existing City rules that were in place at the time of the application. The parcel is rightfully exempt from any environmental review. If the house standing now at 450 Frederick were a new construction project it would never be approved, because the house as it now stands is not in line with the other structures on the block. And while Gutkin’s opponents have touted the house as potentially part of a neighborhood historic preservation district, no district is seriously planned, and the house itself has no recognized criteria under established state or national standards for being included in such a district.

Based upon all of this the Planning Commission rightly rejected the appeal. But then, Beggs and her merry band of NIMBYs took the case to the Board of Supervisors – where she knew her political connections would give her the upper hand. A move to review the appeal was introduced by Aaron Peskin and Chris Daly – despite the fact that the house is in neither of their districts.

Left: Cole Street resident Jim Krueger calls the treatment by the Board of Supervisors of the Gutkin project at 450 Frederick "Absolutely Criminal."

Last April, the Board voted to support the appeal, based upon the preponderance of appellant testimony about preservation criteria – none of which has ever been substantiated – and over concerns voiced by Peskin that the neighborhood notification process was insufficient. “It was Peskin that got Planning to suddenly change their policy…that somehow, in this one instance here, we need to figure out if the notification process is adequate,” says Jim Kreuger, a neighbor of Gutkin who testified in support of his project. “It wasn’t an issue until Marjorie Beggs came along. You can’t change the rules in the middle of the game. Gutkin already got his cat ex, now you want to talk about it?”

Left: while construction at 450 Frederick is now stalled, another project still goes on right across the street - with no scrutiny whatsoever.

So while the Board of Supervisors was able to take a stand in favor of historical preservation in this case, one has only to go back to Cole Valley to suddenly question what this case was really about. Lots of construction is still going on in the neighborhood, including a major project right across the street from 450 Frederick. So what exactly is being preserved? “Basically what I think is that it’s a tight knit block, they kind of can do as they please because they each kind of look after each other,” say Kreuger. “We’ve got a new person coming in and they feel like, ‘this is our block therefore we rule’…somebody new is moving in and they don’t like it.”

And indeed, a lot of the construction seems to being undertaken by people who were busy at the Board arguing for preservation. Take for instance Marjorie Beggs, and that deck she has on top of her garage; the one right next to 450 Frederick. It would seem that Beggs’ real concern over the project is what shadows might be cast onto that deck. So why didn’t she complain on that basis, or try to work something out?

Well for one thing, it appears that her deck is illegal. No permit was ever applied for, and there are complaints on file at the Building Department against it. There are also complaints on file against Beggs for some illegal in-law apartments, which may or may not exist on her property.

So in the end we are left with more questions than answers. Is the City’s historic preservation policy doing what it’s meant to do, or is it being misused by people who already have theirs and want to screw the rest? The Board may very well have the opportunity to answer those questions again: Gutkin is appealing his denial.

Community Policing and what it really is

2005-12-21T14:22:00.000-08:00

The Chronicle's Jaxon Van Derbeken, usually one their more feckless writers, has actually written a fairly decent article on how staffing shortages and institutional conservatism are hindering the implementation of community policing - which perhaps should be renamed neighborhood-based policing - in San Francisco.

Links:

The DOJ's Community Poilicing Page

Community Policing Checklist

Los Angeles Community Policing

Wikipedia: Broken Windows

A Leftist Criticism of Broken Windows

San Francisco's Underclass: Families

2005-12-20T12:58:00.000-08:00

by Marvin Destin, Guest Columnist

Each year my wife and I get a special visit with an old friend. As we were on our way from parking the car to his house in the Fillmore Street area we came upon a very unusual Christmas Tree outlet. Unusual, because it had lots of trees people could buy but only trees that were about two feet tall. They looked strange and somehow sad to me. My initial reaction was a joke, as in, “This must be where the seven dwarfs get their trees”. My wife however chirped up with, “they are for the people in apartments”. But of course. Things like this aren’t created via public policy. They happen to meet demand. But, for whatever reason, there are many things in San Francisco that reflect realities like this relatively minor example.

San Francisco used to be a City not much different than any other City in America in terms of demographics. It also had several industries, that are, if here at all, shadows of what they used to be. Blue-collar industries. Longshoremen, ship building and maintenance which means pipe fitters and electrical and plumbing contractors, printers, crane operators, as well as much larger fishing and various maritime related industries such as boat repair and processing plants. The City also used to have significantly greater manufacturing and building related industries. Go just on the other side south of Potrero Hill and from Bayshore to the bay and you see what remains of an old and sizeable industrial complex. Lumber companies to construction supplies and even the old expansive complex of The American Can Company and go just a little farther to my old neighborhood in the Valley and you found the expansive Southern Pacific Railroad's grand car yard and engine maintenance facility. The Hormel slaughterhouse that used to be on Third Street, and saw daily herding of pigs and cattle on the paved streets parade around, is of course gone.

Blue-collar industries, unlike Doctors lawyers or LGBT counselors consist primarily of “salt of the earth” men and women who married, had kids (more than one), and worked hard their whole lives. These people used to live here in large numbers. Yes, lawyers and doctors have kids (well, maybe A kid). But studies confirm that as societies increase in the numbers of educated professionals the number of children per capita decline.

Over the years several political ideas have set up shop in San Francisco to wit they have become ground zero for such movements. The first is that anything that “harms” the environment is bad and must be rid of. The second is the gay rights movement. A third would be the amorphous concept that involves the Governments right and or duty to intrude into, and micro control, all aspects of real estate development along with numerous other lifestyle related issues i.e. bicycles. The fourth is Western Socialist Liberalism or what is known as “collectivism”. And a big part of all that is progressive politics. Liberal politics translated through the prism of liberalism implies a power group of people who on the one hand KNOW what is good for everyone else, but refuse to believe that what they want to impose on everyone else actually applies to them. See: Independent Counsel Law. Together these philosophies or ideologies have re-written the code by which San Francisco operates.

You don’t legislate ironworkers, as people, out of the City. You outlaw their industry. It’s a dirty industry, someone will get cancer from its poisons and fumes, which some study done in Greenwich Village “proves” will give three people cancer over the next 1000 years. They must go, and with it, go its workers. And with them, their lifestyle, or demographic model. They will go where their skills tell them they need to go. Or they may switch to another industry that rewards their skill with their hands or shoulders; but few will leave welding to become Psychiatrists or LGBT float designers.

And while they are trying mightily to change this fact, few gays have the dinner table filled with three daughters and three sons that the Irish welder who worked South O’ the Slot and lived in the Sunset used to have.

San Francisco has changed in many ways for certain but none has been bigger than its transition from the town that celebrated Harry Bridges and his longshoremen to one that celebrates Bears and Dykes on Bikes.

This has been the legacy of the environmental movement. Get those dirty industries “outta here”, as Duane Kuiper of Giants broadcasts says. The gay demographic growth has had its obvious impact in terms of which demographic replaced the old. Yet gays were always here even as I was a small boy eons ago. It has in fact been the last two of the four factors that have had the biggest impact of all. That turned what could have simply been a shift of industrial policy emphasis into what has been a quiet exodus of families.

Raising kids in the modern world is expensive. Between the many visits to the doctor(s) there is education. On top of that, kids, to develop into well balanced teens or young adults, need to have a spectrum of things from sports to many other activities including the social life that will frequently include arts in some form, lessons in one of many things from music to dancing, and the social activities such as birthday parties. All this implies the “T” word. That’s “T” as in transportation. And if you have, say, two kids, or heaven forbid, three, that whole T-word thing gets beyond complicated in San Francisco.

The prior two paragraphs, when one considers that all get processed through the political gauntlet, decidedly western collectivist, atheist, and socialist, means that as the political came to drive how everything is determined and then decided, step by step, San Francisco has disassociated itself from the real world. One in which two people get married and have children. San Francisco has become the City of the Single. One walk around any section of this town will reveal in stark and ultra clear terms how far out on that limb San Francisco currently sits.

The funny thing is its almost embarrassed by its placement on the scale. Politicians and other well to do San Franciscans will all swear that San Francisco is just as family friendly as any other town. They couldn’t be more wrong. Yet they feel that way because they can not bring themselves any closer to what they have wrought than Pol Pot could when his agrarian paradise witnessed giant piles of skulls all around the countryside. They know that if they actually have to prove what they deny, they would have to accept the utter bias they have built into the system. They instinctively know that if they admitted they have made children unwelcome and their parents with them, they would have to accept the criticism, which is the one thing they cannot do.

Yet virtually every policy created. Every measure passed. Every “solution” to every problem thunk up by anyone. All lead to the same place. Family and children go away.

Housing: Obviously to have kids and a family you need housing. A studio with a view and that snappy kitchenette wont cut it. When San Francisco started down the path of “rent and vacancy control” which buildings were shackled. The old single family dwellings throughout the Richmond and sunset. Which structures were exempted? Angelo San Giacomo's new apartments. If someone wants to start a family what kind of place must they have if it isn’t the SFD in the Richmond? Two and three bedroom condominiums. When San Francisco considered Mission Bay, the last expansive tract where single-family dwellings could have been built what did the City do? Ordered with policy, renter’s apartments. I could go on but perhaps you get the trend. Virtually every aspect of the policies promulgated by the Supervisors in San Francisco when analyzed cater to natural turnover of the occupant, zero reliance on automobiles for transportation, and dare I say inclusion of “low income” (gang related friends next door anyone) housing so people could be moved from the hood to the new Section 8 complex so that guess what can be built where they used to live. It is impossible to actually find a single piece of legislation backed by the SFBOS that augured for single-family housing. All other real property related measures all involve assisting the single renter, the developer of housing for same, at the expense of anyone wanting to create a family unit.

Transportation: Without a larger vehicle than a bio-fueled putt-putt you cannot have a family. I’ve personally TRIED juggling four large and heavy grocery bags for over thirty feet while I pedal my bike and I cant. Forget sports equipment or a cello on the back of the moped along with the groceries. Step by step this town has passed measure after measure after measure designed to rid the city of cars. You simply cannot have families without them. Cars have acquired every thing from increased channeling into fewer and fewer pathways to places, to preposterous ticket costs such as never used handicapped zones at two space parking lots for the local KFC. Again, without personal transportation you cant manage a family with anything resembling convenience.

Education: In spite of the claims to the contrary (or is it screams) San Francisco Public schools, myopically inflicted with the “everybody gets dragged down to the lowest common denominator” attitude (they call it helping the mentally ill ADHD mutant miscreant feel equal to the best and brightest (self esteem comes first!!!) via making the B&B wait until the MIADHD can add the two numbers together- and that my friends is HIGH SCHOOL), are among the worst in the country by any standard with only a couple of institutions here deviating from the norm. To make matters worse, the perception is that given the City’s “Sanctuary” status it has become a magnet for those wonderful kids in the most vicious Mexican and South American street gangs. Now who wouldn’t want their kids educated in that kind of place? Lets hear it for machete’s AND diversity.

Sports: Have you ever dared to traipse around on a City playground or playing field? You would swear that the last time any of them saw a rake was oh, maybe the 1950s. Between holes randomly spaced to increase the odds on injuries to grass that was cut by the imaginary gardener, some rare species of weeds that can devour kids and small dogs when mating, drainage that would make any self respecting Sudanese jealous but leave quick sand like puddles ONLY in the batters boxes and pitchers mounds, and numerous other policies that relegate kids programs and teams to insulting conditions, even shunting them aside and canceling their games so that corporate beer games can get priority. THAT folks is only ONE of my true stories. San Francisco has loads of run down horrible parks and playing fields (see Excelsior), yet wont even ALLOW one to get fixed by an independent group lest the gardeners union gets miffed. SF athletic facilities do not need money. They simply need work. Yet the city does nothing. The funny thing is that many of the people that work in youth programs is hard working and in fact do care a whole bunch but they are thwarted at every turn by the bureaucracy and the Supervisors. They are stonewalled at every turn in terms of fixing up what needs to be fixed.

Recreation: To the powers that be, they think that something like the Exploratorium is what teens and young adults do in their recreational time. Or maybe they think that if they take away enough fun things to do, the kids will be forced to dole our mashed potatoes at St. Anthony’s so they can learn about being poor. Simply stated kids need places to hang out and pass the time hopefully in relatively healthy pursuits. Drive by any athletic field and you will find exactly ZERO teens playing some kind of game. Either they need permits (expensive and complicated) or it is closed. Outdoor basketball courts are basically in schoolyards, which are closed with high barbed wire and barricaded against entry under penalty of arrest (liability concerns you know), or in the hood where white kids (for instance) are not welcome. The ocean is dangerous. The golf is frighteningly expensive. Even the museum is closed for rebuilding. That leaves…what? Your friend’s house? See “housing”.

The rest of the environment kids must exist in: OK so healthy sports pursuits are impossible. What remains? The Library? You mean the one that the ACLU demands that it allow portals to porno? The one that insists that screaming stinking vagrants be allowed to vent off their meds while THEY hang out there? Pier 39? Try spending a day there for under $100. Much of the rest of San Francisco environment is a microcosm of the city itself, which is overtly sexualized from the gay culture and the singles culture. If a kid walks (as part of a group of say 5 10 year olds) anywhere in several “popular” parts of the city he wont just pass by some adult store or watering hole, they will be encountering the people who go in them. Try Fisherman’s Wharf and just try to NOT see tits, ass, and postcard invitations to adult stores being handed to every young person (toddlers excepted, maybe) who accidentally passes by. And those snacks they serve there by the metric ton are about as healthy as a fried ball of butter coated with candy. In short everyone, kids no exception, is bombarded with sleazy come-ons and slimy products from eatable panties to see through jock straps in storefront windows. Throw in the endless magazine racks readily observable in magazine stores, the rows of adult oriented “news” rack paper dispensers all over numerous streets in most districts, and if your kid can possibly end up innocent to any degree good luck. And don’t forget the condom dispensers in all the restaurant restrooms. “Let dad finish his salad and then Ill explain what that is OK”?

It is an understatement to say I could go on. You can add “and on” about twenty times to the last sentence. The point is that San Francisco is not just “Family unfriendly”. It is beyond that. From policies that “favor” certain demographic groups in housing, to the narcissistic NIMBY-ness that the people behind them in the first place are inflicted with, which prevents any attempt to rectify the disparity, especially in favor of families. And like communist inspired planned economies and societies, the very idea of doing something for normal families would run counter to too many special interest groups that demand all the money the City might have to do something that might benefit kids or teens. After all they let the only bowling alley (The Japantown Bowl), the one final meeting place for so many teens, be converted to apartments for singles. No thought about eminent domain for THAT purpose now was there.

Like most Communistic places, it may be hopelessly beyond fixing or even changing, any more than all the other places in the world that cling to collectivism with all its inherent pathologies. San Francisco may already have gone so far in its building policies favoring small apartments and ultra pricey condos and anti-automobiles or heaven forbid SUVs that the very concept of “family in SF” is now nearly impossible to see as feasible again. IF, a big if, anyone in power actually cared.

Marvin Destin is a lifelong City resident and is a frequent contributor to ChronWatch.

The Mole People

2005-12-19T09:34:00.000-08:00

The political establishment in San Francisco has its origins in a dedicated group of people who rallied around the prominent issues of the 1960's - civil rights, equal opportunity, peace, and the environment. Unfortunately, the lexicon by which their values were expressed has gone unchanged, and the currency of their particular style of advocacy has utterly evaporated. The primary battlefield for protecting rights in no longer the streets, but our legislatures, courtrooms and universities; the struggle for opportunity has been dulled by complacency; and history has shown that global conflict and disasters are now best handled by global management. We’ve had a hard time catching up with history.

Our political community is having a hard time getting and keeping "fresh blood". People get used up, burnt out, or scared off. This creates problems in and of itself. Most notably, the needs of the City's most important contributors to local economic growth - the growing class of knowledge workers - are increasingly misunderstood and ignored. The mostly twenty- and thirtysomethings who work in information-based industries are hard for politicians to pin down, for a number of reasons. For one, most do not hold to the same notions of race, ethnicity and class that their parents did. Yet overly simplified notions of race, ethnicity and class still mean everything to the dinosaurs in government and media who dominate political discourse in San Francisco.

In the current climate, to be an advocate for an issue, you must wrap it in the trappings of identity politics in order to be heard. Vexatious, single-issue-fixated zealotry is the order of the day. Whether the identity is based on race, neighborhood, property value level, or avocation (bicycle riders, dog-walkers, etc.), the discourse never seems to wander from the tired refrain of "more for me and mine and screw everyone else". This pervasive culture of extremism is not only a turnoff for most knowledge workers, it by its very nature makes the political system inaccessible.

If this seems incredible to you, perhaps you ought to spend time looking at who shows up to and takes up the most podium time during Public Comment at the Board of Supervisors. Only rarely will an ordinary person be found. Many of those who can be found are either lobbyists, retired people on pensions, or others who for one reason or another have too much time on their hands. Consequently, much of the rhetoric of this so-called "public input" process focuses on short-sighted, short-term, and self-interested strategies for solving policy problems. An exorbitant amount of time is spent on such esoterica as museum designs, public art, honoring obscure and irrelevant figures or events (Harry Bridges, Tinky Winky, The Zebra Killings), or offenses to the hypersensitive and blue-nosed (such as the sale of armadillo meat, cigarette smoking in cinema queues, people who wear perfume, making bicyclists stop for red lights, the stubborn insistence of scientists that HIV causes AIDS, people who want to live in condos, etc.). Often, relevant issues, such as quality-of-life matters, are championed in such a relentless and petulant manner that the personalities involved overshadow the policy problem. The result is that the system becomes devalued -- particularly in the eyes of people who routinely work up to 70 hours a week keeping up with their regular lives. Most normal people are so afraid of single-issue time-waster types in any setting that the arbiters of Web Culture have coined a name for them -- The Mole People.

THE MOLE PEOPLE was the title of a rather outrageous 1950’s horror film about archaeologists who discover a subterranean civilization based on an extreme form of mutual class exploitation. Much of the imagery and themes in this film are borrowed from the futuristic society described in the H.G. Wells story "The Time Machine", where the Beautiful People, or Iiloi, appear to dominate the culture’s means of production, but are in reality nothing more than food for the underclass, called the Morlocks. In the film, the Morlocks are so transformed by their societal role that they have evolved into frightening, mole-like humanoids; hence the film’s title.

THE ANALOGY FITS San Francisco politics well - because just as lobbyists and politicians often use our own variety of Mole People to remind Supervisors and Commissioners what they’re supposed to vote for, the Mole People, particularly if they’re precinct walkers, commissioners, or "merely influential friends", can sometimes make or break issues, elections, or political careers. More importantly, they have a tendency to survive - partially because they’re so concerned with one issue, and with one approach to dealing with it, that they never have to take the risk of becoming anything else.

THE END RESULT is that San Francisco, despite its liberal reputation, is actually a very institutionally conservative city. People say they want change, and instead vote for gridlock because that is what bellicose neighborhood bullies and "insiders" tell them to do. Indeed, whenever we are asked to vote for gridlock, it is often wrapped in the packaging of change. According to polls, San Franciscans are committed to affordable housing and are sensitive to the current housing crisis, yet attempts to build are still met by extraordinary institutional opposition. Every year, we still have many of the same problems, often connected to many of the same people.

THE QUESTION IS, "What to do about it?" The answer, at least for San Francisco’s political activists, may very well be to look at ourselves. It may be time for a little more civility, and a little more perspective. And if we think about Cleaning House, we may want to think first about which house to clean first - and how.

The Headless Chicken: Update

2005-12-16T14:07:00.000-08:00

Looks like the Sentinel's Pat Murphy has had enough of h. brown. Where will the clucking fowl go next?

Oh, and in his last column, he makes yet another enemies list.

Dumbass.

Burger King: Command-line Chicken Interface

The Other Wall, plus other images

2005-12-16T13:50:00.000-08:00

Going Dark: City Infrastructure Fraying at the Seams

2005-12-16T13:22:00.000-08:00

Left: Streetlights on Grant Avenue in North Beach.

Today's Examiner reports on the holes in streetlight service around the City, and how they appear to be growing.

Residents on Van Ness Avenue said city bureaucracy is leaving them in the dark, with streetlights on the thoroughfare constantly broken and without a city worker or agency that can tell them who will help.

A coalition of concerned residents say they have been complaining about the lights, which periodically switch off, for about a year. City officials say the problem rests with aging infrastructure and a complicated transmission system that must be shut off entirely when any work is being done.

This week, at least six blocks were left dark — and possibly the entire stretch of Van Ness Avenue — for a night after the Public Utilities Commission did some repair work.

Do you have streetlight problems in your neighborhood?
Let us know. We'll take pictures and let the right people know.

Scapegoat of the Week runs tomorrow.
Discussion on The Wall forum
DPW: Reporting Streetlight Problems

Fantasy Island: Update

2005-12-15T10:47:00.000-08:00

After the pessimistic, open-ended closing on yesterday's piece on Treasure Island comes John King's write-up in today's Chronicle Datebook section on the current development plan for the Island proposed by Lennar Communities.

The current is indeed quite attractive - and probably represents the most ambitious project Lennar has ever done design-wise (Lennar has 13 projects around California, including base reuse plans at Mare Island and Hunter's Point.

But the question remains as to whether this plan, which was only recently revised from a cookie-cutter housing tract plan similar to some of Lennar's other projects, will survive the usual politics of counterdevelopment. Keep in mind, that TI is part of Supervisorial District 6, where virtually every project has to buy off the extremely expensive and unreliable Chris Daly. The first thing Daly will likely seek to attack is the appearance of the approval process, already marred by the Hall mess, and the overall skittishness toward public review, as reported on by SFWeekly last month.

The upshot: if you thought Mission Bay was an ordeal, wait until you see Fantasy Island!

Fantasy Island

2005-12-14T11:51:00.000-08:00

IN THE FILM The Gods Must Be Crazy, a band of South African Bushmen become the hapless inheritors of an empty Coca-Cola bottle, which falls to earth after being tossed out the window of a passing airplane. Once brought back to camp, the Bushmen, who naturally assume it to be a gift from the gods, discover that the bottle has many valuable uses, from carrying water to stretching hides to milling grain. Problem was, there was only one bottle. It was impossible to replicate it, and everyone soon realized that there was no way to fairly distribute its use. This was dangerous for a society which was totally unaccustomed to concepts like scarcity or ownership, and it soon caused such discord in the camp that the Bushmen elders decided to give their best hunter the task of disposing of the hellish thing, either by finding the gods to give it back to, or by tossing it off the end of the earth. In the film, this provides the basis for two hours of amusing if ethnocentric entertainment. However, the dilemma of the Bushmen in The Gods Must Be Crazy may also have a prescient message for San Francisco, as we have a Holy Coke Bottle of our own: it’s called Treasure Island.

TREASURE ISLAND was created from landfill during the New Deal Era; a macroengineering project built on the cheap to support the Golden Gate International Exhibition of 1939. The Exhibition, as spectacular as it was, was a temporary affair, which ended the following year. Thereafter the island was used as an interim airport for China Clipper flying boats, another temporary affair. When the Japanese Empire attacked US forces based in Hawaii, the Navy took control of the island and used it as a training center to supplement needs ordinarily filled by larger facilities in San Diego and Great Lakes. Like many large bureaucracies, the Navy soon regarded its temporary use of Treasure Island as a permanent one, and kept control of it until its demobilization in 1997.

When that demobilization was first announced in 1995, the City became witness to a flurry of anticipation regarding possible uses for the island. Much of this became intertwined with the politics of that year’s Mayor’s race. The San Francisco Business Times demanded that condos be built on the island. Then-candidate Willie Brown played with a number of ideas, including a plan for a high-end, "Monte Carlo-style" casino complex, which was universally ridiculed. Then-Mayor Frank Jordan didn’t articulate a clear policy for Treasure Island, but did make clear that gambling would never be an approved use.

After the election of Mayor Brown in 1995, plans were made to create a special development authority for Treasure Island. The Treasure Island Development Authority (TIDA) was finalized in 1997 as a single-purpose authority adhering to public trust principles, acting in open meetings governed by the Brown Act, and guided by an advisory committee with significant environmental representation. Oversight and approval of major contracts is by the Board of Supervisors. Parallel with the formation of TIDA were successful initiatives by San Francisco’s Legislative delegation to legalize City authority over TI. TIDA then turned to its main goals of leasing island facilities to generate revenue to cover annual maintenance costs. Long-range development ideas floated by Brown have included a luxury hotel and golf course, and a number of theme park plans. In the mean time, lots on TI have been leased to movie and TV studios, industrial uses, as well as to the Job Corps, which maintained a number of training facilities on the island, including a cooking school. What residential uses there are on the Island - the existing former military housing - are slowly falling into dormancy. The Unified School District recently decided to close Treasure Island's only school out of safety and staffing concerns.

Nevertheless, both TIDA and Brown’s policy on TI was the subject of much media criticism, most of which has revolved around policy gaffes related to the usual San Francisco political cronyism and a perceived lack of public input in the redevelopment process. This all came to a head very quickly in late 1997 when then-State Senator Quentin Kopp and perennial political poltroon Clint Reilly sponsored Proposition K, an initiative which would abolish TIDA and turn TI’s approval process over to the Port and Redevelopment Agencies. Although the initiative passed, the Board of Supervisors never implemented it.

Much of the argument in favor of Proposition K was permeated with the notion that Willie Brown was more interested in developing Treasure Island for personal rather than public benefit, something that has never been substantiated. The Brown administration had attempted to strike a deal with Disney to develop TI as a theme park and resort complex. The plan evaporated as the fractious politics around City Hall gave the media giant a terminal case of cold feet.

There is an implicit notion in much of the debate over Treasure Island that its proper future was development for permanent residential housing. This is a very tempting notion for a City facing continual housing supply contraction. But is Treasure Island the proper place to create permanent housing? Can you build a sustainable neighborhood there?

The answer is, probably not. There are a number of daunting obstacles present to making TI suitable for residence. Although State representatives have been successful in amending existing laws to allow development, there are a number of more practical considerations. The largest one is the seismic condition of the island. As stated before, TI is almost completely landfill. The costs of shoring up this landfill area are comparable to those for building a whole new island. Then there is the question of providing the level of services that residents of such a community would require. TI is very isolated – as any sailor who has been billeted there can tell you. The experience is akin to living in a very large lighthouse. While rudimentary service infrastructure already exists, it will have to be greatly expanded upon to serve any large residential development. This means that the costs will be very high. It is more than conceivable that such high service fees will eventually lead to TI residents suing for – and probably receiving – property tax relief. Thus San Francisco would be inducted into the dubious sisterhood of municipalities throughout the West contending with the deleterious effects of gated communities on their revenues and abilities to provide services.

These problems have yet to be addressed even now. Instead, Treasure Island has become something of a sinecure for inconvenient political figures who wish to cash in juice with the administration. When Brown was re-elected in 1999, he appointed the perennial political millstone Annemarie Conroy to be the nominal head of the city development effort. When current mayor Gavin Newsom needed to free up a seat on the Board of Supervisors, he moved Conroy to the directorship of the Emergency Services Office (which was then still considered a policy backwater), and placed the obstructive Neanderthal Supervisor Tony Hall as head of Island operations.

Hall turned out to be a loose cannon. His overly outspoken and free-spending ways soon led to clashes with City Controller Ed Harrington and, last month, Hall got the boot. And some consider the move to have come just in time: Hall’s idiotic shake-em-down attitude towards the film industry and his personality clashes with Navy officials ran the risk of TI being transferred back to other Federal agencies, or being sold back to San Francisco at a higher price.

Unfortunately, recent events have obscured any discussion of concrete plans for Treasure Island. And mind you – whatever plan is agreed upon, it’s going to require a lot of concrete.

The Death Penalty and Tookie Williams

2005-12-12T20:08:00.000-08:00

By the time you read this, Stanley “Tookie” Williams, the founder of the Crips, convicted robber, murderer, and drug kingpin, will have died, having been executed on the lethal injection gurney at San Quentin.

According to numbers recorded by the Department of Corrections, California will have executed 2 criminals in 2005. The last execution was of Donald Beardslee in January. The last executions before this year’s were one each in 2000, 2001, and 2002, and 3 in 1999 (technically it’s actually two; one was extradited to Missouri and executed there).

Executions in California are not quite yet routine, as much as the Department tries to make them so. Californians still debate the morality and utility of the death penalty every time we execute another inmate. But Williams’ execution has made the debate even more prominent because he’s been the subject of a campaign for clemency that has been publicized for years. The reasons claimed for clemency – the fact that much of the testimony against him is suspect and that he’s written several books that urge children and young adults to avoid the kind of life he led – have done much to publicize his plight.

The last execution which stirred this level of doubt was that of Robert Alton Harris in 1992, California’s first in over 25 years. In many ways the two cases couldn’t be more different from each other. Harris was a mildly retarded brute who killed mainly when poor tactical choices led him to no other option. Williams however, was regarded as a gifted operator who killed mainly to expand a burgeoning and deadly illegal enterprise, and his “reform” – despite the nine Nobel Prize nominations – is often described as a cynically overstated sham. But the social consequences of their executions will be similar.

With public attention focused upon California’s first execution in a quarter century, increasing the focus upon crime and police abuse, it’s no accident that barely 8 days after Harris’ execution, the lopsided verdict in the Rodney king police brutality case led to riots which immolated Los Angeles and threatened to scorch other major cities. The fact that our state was going to start executing people again, and that executions tend to fall disproportionately upon poor and non-white people was as much on peoples’ consciousness as was the aggrieved King. This despite the fact that Harris had put up no illusions of reform or self-insight as Williams has: his last meal was a pizza and a bucket of KFC and his last words were a cutesy rhyme. Williams is skipping his last meal and plans to die with some semblance of dignity, if there really is such a thing.

People are planning marches, vigils and protests, and some police are worried: some of the scuttlebutt going around Bayview station is that since the Tactical Squad is out patrolling the hood instead of the beat cops now suspended in the Videogate fracas, that tensions in that district may get out of hand.

Death penalty advocates quietly wish that all this societal hand-wringing would simply evaporate and that a just society would routinely snuff out murderers eye-for-an-eye style and thus deter further bloodshed. Opponents continue to wring their hands, arguing that killing someone who is no longer free to threaten others offends modern civil sensibilities.

Instead, both sides should be asking themselves not whether executions are moral, but frankly, whether they are practical. Because of the legal guarantees that we all rely upon to live in a free and civil society, executing criminals will always be more costly than simply locking them up. And I don’t just mean in dollars: there is a social cost as well – our multicultural and ideologically free society will always ensure that every execution will become an opportunity to impugn the integrity of government and instill hostility among the disenfranchised. Meanwhile the supposed benefits of capital punishment – the satisfaction of victims, its deterrent effect upon other offenders - are largely dubious.

The fact is, the only societies that can successfully live with capital punishment are authoritarian ones. With no due process there is no publicity, no delay, no cost, no social criticism; executions cause no problems. As societies become more open, the utility of the death penalty becomes more problematic. The problem is that we are a democracy, based upon individual rights. We can’t sentence anyone to anything with out a guarantee of remedy in case of error – and there is no way to unring the death bell.

The fact is that scum like Harris and Williams – and they are indeed scum – cost society even more when we execute them than when we simply lock them up.

Link: Joan Ryan - Suspend executions -- for now

h. brown: voice of the headless chicken

2005-12-12T11:35:00.000-08:00

Left: online columnist h. brown

"Stupidity is the devil. Look in the eye of a chicken and you'll know. It's the most horrifying, cannibalistic, and nightmarish creature in this world."

- Werner Herzog

San Francisco's political establishment likes their mascots. They especially like their mascots to be crazy and stupid. That's rather unfortunate, since it allows them to paint a disingenuous picture of the public as an ignorant rabble, when in fact we have one of the more intelligent - but unfortunately distracted - urban constituencies in the nation. Many local politicians love to trot out various mascots as fake constituents at press conferences, public comment at hearings and the like, because they serve dual purposes: they give the politicians the illusion of public support while genuine public voices are alienated from the process, due to their natural reluctance to be part of a freak show.

Left: Frank Chu, before the Adidas Contract

That may sound harsh: the fact is most of these people really do care about the issues facing this city. They just aren't smooth or savvy or in some cases, even sane enough to carry a coherent political message, so they get misled by various people who are known for being able to trot out 500 people at City Hall hearings in order to scare commissioners into voting against the pet peeve of the week. But if you've been watching this scene as long as I have, you know as well as I do that a lot of these people are nothing but brainless starfuckers, and some are just plain walking freak shows.

As such, it's refreshing to watch the fur fly when one of them decides to pull a real boner and show exactly how disconnected their mouths are from their brains. That's what the so-called "politics and art" blogger h. brown did over the weekend. In a column where he issues year-end grades for various members of the Board of Supervisors, he includes this precious jewel:

"Gerardo Sandoval, District 11 ... A-

For taking one for the team in fighting Donald Fisher pretty much alone. I feel almost responsible because I kept writing about the Jewish cabal of Fisher & Shorenstein &amp;amp; Blum & Goldman & Hellman and how they're playing Sim City with San Francisco. It's true that they think they're better than all of us. It's true that a big part of why they think they're better than us is because they're Jewish. That's all true. But, you better not say it if you have any property to lose. Or, a family to raise."

Of course, we all remember when Sandoval pulled a similar boner when he urged a crowd of labor protestors to "picket all the bosses' Bar Mitzvahs."

Unfortunately it is precisely this sort of eruption from the caverns of the banal that many insiders at City Hall like to throw in the face of the public. Keeping lots of shit around makes the eyes of the public water.