San Francisco Politics Archives
|
 |
There aren't very many occasions when The San Francisco Chronicle gives me a chance to write something nice. But this Sunday they did just that.
EARN, a local organization that helps low-income families save money to buy homes, got a glowing write-up in the paper. It's a good thing, too because EARN - which has the top ad over there on the right hand side of the page - is having a fundraising drive this month. It's one of two San Francisco non-profits that are raising money in a "competition" sponsored by Amazon.com
Now, there's almost nothing harder than asking someone to give money in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. But efforts to get low-income families into housing are among the most neglected here in San Francisco, indeed across California. So EARN's work - while it won't directly help folks like those evacuated and left homeless by the hurricane - will start a lot of local residents on the path to middle-class stability.
So if you can give something, please consider a donation: Click the button on the right and learn more.
Mon 10:04 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
Heather Gold, comedian, cookie-baker and Lesbian, has served up her take on San Francisco's Gay Pride Parade.
The parade's tomorrow. You can read her essay today.
For those of you who don't understand quite what Gold is getting at, the San Francisco Bay Guardian serves up this plaintive whine.
As they say on college finals: Compare and contrast.
Sat 12:31 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
It's not worth asking what took them so long (the answer is fear. Fear of not having enough money to run for office) but the San Francisco Board of Supervisors finally voted to stand up to Residential Bully, er Builders Association Chief Joe O'Donaghue and condemn his and his members' sexist diatribe against Acting City Building Inspector Amy Lee.
What did Residential Bully Joe do? Turned right around and called Supervisor Aaron Peskin – not a tall man – an "angry dwarf." Then he called Peskin, who sponsored the legislation, a "Heinrich Peskin" Peskin's Jewish and O'Donoghue's reference was to Nazi henchman Heinrich Himmler, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Nice guy O'Donoghue. I'm related to racist blarney-spewing creeps like this and it's enough to make me choke on my corn beef and cabbage. Good thing St. Patty's isn't for almost another year.
The vote was unanimous. But Supervisor Chis Daly – another of the city's fashion statement "progressives" who likes to use the "f-word" when address the audience at public hearings and other events -- said he had to think long and hard about voting in favor of the measure.
Here's his conversation with The Chron:
Daly, a usual O'Donoghue ally, said he had written up a list of people he thought were equally worthy of condemnation."The list was quite long," Daly said. "I thought about putting forward a series of resolutions condemning a series of San Franciscans that I think have acted in bad faith."
Instead, he gave his yes vote Tuesday along with a word of caution against "opening up floodgates on whom we condemn and whom we don't."
Hmmm. Imagine that. Now, I had a black kettle around here. Where'd I put it?
Wed 03:07 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
It seems that the San Francisco Board of Supervisors resolution condemning San Francisco political bully Joe O'Donoghue has gotten referred to committee. In other words, the board couldn't or wouldn't vote to tell O'Donoghue and his trash-talking sexist membership to be more civil in public.
You remember Joe, he's the guy who doesn't think pregnant Amy Lee should run his precious Building Inspections Department. Of course, she's been on the job now for six years and this is her third kid but there's a white guy who wants the gig and Joe and his buddies think he should have gotten the nod.
Who pulled the measure to condemn O'Donoghue? Supervisor Bevan Dufty, who represents Noe Valley and the Castro. Dufty, whose political support in San Francisco comes from the city's business-minded gay community and downtown – the same group that's behind Mayor Gavin Newsom -- says he's worried about the wording in the resolution.
Well, here's some wording you can really worry about, Bevan. Substitute the words "gay" and "homosexual" for the words "women" and "pregnant" in the comments made by O'Donoguhue's thugs. Things sound very different now, don't they to you and your supporters?
Here's an example from the testimony made against Lee:
One self-employed builder took the mike to say he knows how debilitating homosexuality can be because his wife is gay and she can no longer help him with his billings."My wife refers to it as 'gay brain.' Her mind is on other things, '' he said. "I ask you today, are you going to replace this man with 'homosexual brain'?
"That's not disrespect. That's just a metaphor. But when you're gay, that's all the hormones are about. I'm just making the point.''
And yet another man: "The facts are I was there when my kids were born. I know what goes on. You don't have to be a homosexual to understand. Amy is going to have to take some medical leave. What's going to happen then?''
Here's another reason to stay up at night, Bevan: Noe Valley, San Francisco's yuppie central, has a lot of two-career families. That's a lot of working women who have to put up with different versions of what the RBA was dishing out for most of their professional lives. Let's hope they have good memories.
Wed 09:24 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
Amy Lee, the San Francisco Building Department worker who found her ability, her professional credentials and her pregnancy on trial, accused by the jerks at the Residential Building Inspectors of being unable to do her job because of her pregnancy, got the job.
In the meantime, San Francisco Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin has put forward a resolution calling for the board to condemn O'Donoghue and his buddies for the remarks they made during her confirmation hearing.
I got a better idea: Stop taking this man's money, put him out of the influence peddling business. When you run for public office in San Francisco make a point of refusing to play ball Joe O'Donoghue and the other bullies in the Residential Builders Association.
Tue 10:01 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
Yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle offered up a great illustration of why I have such increasing contempt for the movement that styles itself as "progressive." In this most self-consciously progressive of cities, it's a movement – actually, it's a fashion statement – run by hypocrites who tailor their politics to suit their needs all the while claiming higher moral ground because, well, because they're good people.
During San Francisco's last mayoral election – the one that featured art-loving hipster Matt Gonzalez against slick rich guy Gavin Newsom – there was a lot of talk about how Gonzalez's progressive "values" would be good for the city. This was a joke. All you had to do was take a look at where Gonzalez money and support was coming from. To fund his campaign, Gonzalez picked up some interesting friends, among them head of San Francisco's politically powerful Residential Builders Association, Irish tough-guy Joe O'Donoghue.
Continue reading "The Blarney Stone of Misogyny"Fri 10:23 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
This week's eWeek column is – gasp – about the blogging controversy here in San Francisco.
Last week, I took a post here on the site and turned it into a column. It was an example of how stand alone journalists can syndicate their work for other, larger publications. That trend continues today; this week's column is a wrap-up of the blogging "regulation" story, which I am convinced, now more than ever, was local politics played on the 'net through bloggers' megaphones.
Thu 09:41 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
They came, they saw and they passed two piece of legislation.
Never a group to say "enough," the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed its ethics and campaign finance legislation, twice today. One bill, has all the faults the blogosphere has derided. The other doesn’t. One – the faulty one – will move toward passage and be voted on again next week. The cleaned-up version will move toward passage, too. Only it has to go to the city's Ethics Commission for review.
Continue reading "Pajamas:1. Politicos:2"Tue 02:45 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors will take up its campaign and election law reforms today. The measure is not expected to pass – go ahead, blogosphere, breathe a sigh of relief – but it's not going to get pulled, either. Instead, there's going to be a lot of back and forth over what it means and who it will effect, which supporters hope will assuage critics. There'll be some talk about future amendments but I wouldn't hold my breathe on that.
Continue reading "Watching Sausage Get Made"Tue 07:42 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
It would be nice to say that the ethics and campaign spending legislation that's been proposed here in San Francisco by Supervisor Sophie Maxwell is an April Fool's joke.
Sad to say, it's not. It's just poorly thought out. And even more clumsily drafted. And it has a history. A not very pretty one.
Some, like my colleague at the Personal Democracy Forum, Michael Bassik are screaming that the legislation would regulate blogs and bloggers. I've read it and I’m not so sure. And as someone who's on record as favoring full disclosure of payments made to anyone during a campaign. If you blog for bucks on behalf of a candidate, you should disclose that. So should the candidate. I'm not going to hit the hysteria button. Not just yet.
But I am going to point a few fingers. San Francisco's Board of Supervisors are reacting to a nasty bit of business that was transacted during this late election. Two members of the board were targeted for defeat by the city's business community – specifically, loudly and with no-holds-barred -- by SFSOS and its founder Democratic activist Wade Randlett.
Continue reading "Who's Foolin' Who?"Fri 11:53 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
1) There are many reason to like Keith Olberman. He has nice suits. He runs a TiVo-friendly newscast. He turned down the chance to anchor Martha Stewart's jail break. And his show's coverage of Michael Jackson's trial is thoroughly, completely and utterly over-the-top. As it should be. Olberman's also funny. And smart. But there's another good reason. When he leaves the anchor chair, he lets a smart-mouthed broad – a woman just like him -- sit in. It's nice.
It would be nicer, however, if Olberman's blog actually linked to something in his sometimes amusing "Bloggerman." Hyperlinks, baby, they're the pinetar of on-line writing.
2) This site is a Michael Jackson Trial-free zone.
3) Seen Matt Smith last column in our local free SFWeekly? It's about the tense relations between the city's downtown business community and the so-called "progressive" element of city politics. A nice local issue, not a lot of new ground covered unless you’re a Democrat living outside San Francisco with a passing interest in the post-Silicon Valley career of once high-flying Democratic pol Wade Randlett.
Randlett, subject of Sarah Miles' book "How to Hack A Party Line" – a book known less formally as "Wade's World" -- has been running an outfit called SFSOS. I've been on the warpath once or twice about the group for their race-baiting "wedge issue" politicking. Now Smith weighs in detailing the monkey business Randlett's been up to this past year or so. Smith's a bit out of date, however. Financier Warren Hellman and Sen. Dianne Feinstein are no longer SFSOS backers.
4)Chuck Thompson, long-time announcer for my beloved Baltimore Orioles died earlier this week. I'm sure he had his hat on when he went, too. Speaking of which, opening day here at Giant's stadium is coming up......
Wed 04:50 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
There is no way on God's green earth that San Francisco School Superintendent Arlene Ackerman is going to stay in her job very much longer.
It's a shame. Anyone who can turn around the Washington, D.C. public schools deserves more of a fair shake than Ackerman got from the city's so-called "progressive" community. But her inability to read San Francisco's racial politics – translation, the city's increasingly vocal Asian community – is partly at fault. While former School Board member Heather Hiles was around, she got Ackerman's back. But Hiles didn't get elected to the spot Mayor Gavin Newsom gave her so Ackerman's been on her own lately.
Continue reading "Some Rumors Are Too Good to Die"Tue 08:57 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
The Chron's John King's crusade for a beautiful bridge to span the San Francisco Bay isn't getting very far. The pols have pretty much said we're getting a "freeway on stilts," an ugly low causeway instead of the soaring piece of architecture some – that's me – were hoping for.
Sigh.
Here's a picture from The New York Times of beautiful soaring bridge in France across the Tarn Valley. It's big. It's beautiful. It cost $520 million and it was privately, not publicly, funded.
The "old Europe," eh?
Wed 08:45 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
This could be interesting. The make-up of the panel I'm on Thursday evening at the Commonwealth Club's Inforum has changed to include Steven Hill from the Center for Voting and Democracy, the group evangelizing in favor of "instant run-off" voting and other voting reform efforts.
IRV is fine theory but a bad, bad idea in practice. Made popular by the New America Foundation's Ted Halstead and Michael Lind in their book, "The Radical Center," IRV is supposed to encourage the development and popularity of third parties by creating a system that – theoretically – distributes votes to a variety of candidates and does away with Republican and Democratic party dominance.
Continue reading "Irregular Voting"Mon 11:12 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
There are some times when I just miss old-school politicians like Willie Brown.
Today is one of them. The San Francisco Chronicle's John King is back in the swing of things with a piece on the beleaguered Bay Bridge rebuilding project, the one that's taken what feels like a million years, cost a billion dollars and only just started construction. That one. King's making the case that public works projects like the bridge – which will span the San Francisco Bay from Yerba Buena Island to Oakland – should be attractive.
Continue reading "Oh, Beautiful"Tue 12:09 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
This is how screwy San Francisco's instant run-off voting really is: It's so screwy you can't even build a good contest around it. Well, wait. You can build a good contest. You just have to constantly revise the winner's list.
Because of the various changes in the voting machine and tabulation software, Usual Suspects Alex Clemens has now announced five – that's one, two, three, four, five – different winners to his contest to name the first-cut vote tallies received by winners. And the way things are going, he might have a few more awards to give away before the day is done.
Continue reading "IRV Debacle"Fri 10:54 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
Alex Clemens, a friend of this site and an all-around good guy, is hosting a San Francisco election contest over at his news junkies' website, The Usual Suspects The winner gets lunch at Aqua – and, one assumes, some free advice – from Alex and his talented colleagues at Barbary Coast Consulting.
It ain't gonna be an easy win, however. To get your free lunch you have to call the city's Board of Supervisors races, giving percentages for how much of the hugely screwed up instant run-off voting tally each winner will receive. I can't think of a better way to illustrate just how wacky and unworkable this whole thing really is. Winners in these tiny supervisor districts – and I really mean District 5 with its shopping carts of candidates – will get into office with well below 50 percent of the vote.
Oh, yeah, and there are some rules and a little bit of fine print and you've got to enter by 5 p.m. Tuesday so get cracking.
Sun 11:10 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
The big excitement here in San Francisco – other than the growing conviction that instant run-off voting is a disaster waiting to blow up in the faces of the "progressives" who proposed it in the first place – is the School Board race.
It would nice to say we have a school board race that's focused on students, quality of education or oh, I dunno, decent cafeteria food but no, we have a race about money and power and pretty much anything but the kids.
Continue reading "Big Money Board"Thu 04:31 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
Apart from the tag-team electioneering that's going on in District 5 – 50,000 registered voters, 22 candidates – this election has been kind of quiet here in San Francisco.
How come? Voter burn-out, says one local sage. Last year's mayor's race and the run-off took their toll on volunteers and the pros. So did the statewide recall of Gov. Gray Davis. The biggest fight is between Newsom's supporters in the business community and the mayor himself with recently appointed District 7 supervisor Sean Elsbernd caught in the middle.
Continue reading "Be Sure and Send a Postcard"Mon 02:05 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
Chapter One: Doing It
Vote. If you live in California the registration deadline is Monday.
Vote. If you live in San Francisco, the deadline to request your absentee ballot is Oct. 26, a week from Tuesday. And the polls in City Hall are open all day until the election.
Vote. If you are a registered voter and want the chance to win $100,000 sign up for the VoterorNot contest being run by the guys over at HotorNot.com. The contest carries a no-spam guarantee. Promise.
Continue reading "Voting Round Up. It's Time."Fri 12:27 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
It's pretty clear that soon-to-be-former Secretary of State Kevin Shelley is going to need more lawyers that he, in years in politics, can count. Apart from the federal investigation, he's now got trouble with the state.
And there is no way that Shelley only accepted one check one time in his office. No way in hell. It was a habit, the kind that politicians get into when they have been in office and in power for too, too long. You want an argument against term limits? Here's one. If Shelley had stayed in the Assembly he'd have done a lot less harm and gotten caught a lot faster. This floating from office to office, racking up the campaign contributions, scrambling for favors, eyeballing the next "win-able" contest is not politics as usual. And term limits plays a big role.
Continue reading "Cherchez La Femme?"Sat 01:16 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
The San Francisco hotel lock-out started yesterday and well, things are awfully quiet, no? That our Democratic mayor is ducking the whole matter is even more intriguing.
Given the city's history of labor strife, this is both surprising and interesting. And it's not a good sign for labor coming as it does on the heels of the grocery lock out down south that ended with the unions far from victorious.
Continue reading "The Fading Union Label"Sat 01:14 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
It looks as though our pals on the Left here in San Francisco have found a well-dressed good-looking moderate Democrat -- one not named Gavin Newsom -- to kick around.
For the past two weeks, "Trail Mix," the SFBay Guardian's political gossip column has featured items on the same man and the same organization: SFSOS and its CEO Wade Randlett. The weekly column has three items at the most so this is some kind of real estate commitment.
Fri 11:32 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
So the Sacramento Bee editorial series was just the beginning of the media campaign to unflood Hetch Hetchy, the valley that holds San Francisco’s water. You were warned, weren’t you?
If SFWeekly’s Matt Smith is any guide, we’re about to see a classic Big Media roll-out of a campaign designed to make poor, environmentally conscious San Francisco look bad. You’d think it would be tough. This is, after all, the home of the Sierra Club.
Continue reading "Fish Gotta Swim"Wed 06:07 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
California’s ballot initiative process has gotten a bad name. For lots of good reasons. Hot button issues are put on the ballot to draw voters to the polls, a cheap reliable get-out-the-vote tactic that accelerates partisan bickering. Or politicians use the initiatives to cover expenses, allying themselves with one idea or another as a fundraising scheme.
But why should politicians have all the fun?
Continue reading "In Turn-Around"Fri 12:03 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
It’s the dog days of summer. The Republican National Convention is dominating the news.
Here’s something you don’t want to miss: Two stories about how private companies, interacting with California government agencies seems to have uh, cheated.
The first, from the AP courtesy of The Bee talks about Chevron’s influence on the California Performance Review. The second, from the San Francisco Examiner, tries to find out which bone-head in which San Francisco department let the developer – contrary to the plans approved by the city – tear down more of the structure than permitted.
Continue reading "Cynical Creations"Fri 10:46 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
The Sacramento Bee, picking up where the Sierra Club has never really left off, has started a series of editorials calling for the dismantling of the Hetch Hetchy reservoir.
Constructed at the turn of the century when Californians were just beginning their fight to subdue nature, construction of the dam which flooded the Hetch Hetchy valley is said to have broken California conservationist John Muir’s heart. “No holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man,’’ Muir said, condemning the project.
Continue reading "Ms. Rogers, Mr. Astair"Tue 01:31 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
Well, well, well, Gov. Terminator ain’t gonna pay for no stinkin’ bridge. The $2.3 billion in cost over-runs, he says, are the San Francisco Bay Area’s to worry about.
Oh my. Oh dear. Call me cynical – it’s okay, I can take it – but I smell a little old-fashioned political payback here. The kind that leads to naming names and assigning specific blame for cost over-runs.
Continue reading "A Long Ride Off a Short Bridge"Tue 01:25 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
As a public service, since political referees Matier and Ross are on vacation, Politics From Left to Right is providing a few little insider tidbits to help you make it through the dog days of August.
Think that fight between the strippers, the cops and the D.A’s office is over? Guess again. The San Francisco Commission on the Status of Women is gonna have a look at strippers’ working conditions. There’s a hearing set for Aug. 25. Could be an, er, eyeful.
Continue reading "Channeling Matier & Ross"Wed 11:22 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
Comedian and San Franciscan Robin Williams says he lives here because it’s one of the remaining human wildlife preserves. Amen, brother, Amen.
This weekend, a young man in San Francisco, a young man who sleeps on a futon, keeps his computer on the floor of his bedroom and who gives interviews to local TV crews in his boxer shorts, got a lot of attention for creating a video that shows him being “beheaded.”
It’s a fake, of course. And now the young man – who was once one of 30 , that’s right thirty, three-zero – people saying they’re running for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, claims the “beheading” was a test to see how well the Internet works. Sure it was. Let’s not talk high tech. Let’s talk Frat House Tricks Gone Bad.
The young man, Ben Vanderford – who Craigslist says had a fundraiser back in April at the Pot Club – has taken down his “campaign web site. But don’t be fooled. San Francisco district elections are as much name-recognition contests as anything else so this dummy has a shot, now that he’s famous, at doing well in the November election. Only about 23,00 people actually vote in his district and well, let’s just say that Vanderford’s probably wasn’t the only Pot Club fundraiser.
You see what old fashioned Liberals living in San Francisco are up against? Lady Godiva impersonators, guys who pull beheading pranks, politicians who herd sheep at home and other silliness, too frequently occurring, to mention.
But, really, how could you live anywhere else?
Mon 11:52 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
San Francisco’s self-styled Progressives got the one-two punch this week. And, honestly, it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of power-mad, holier-than-thou pains in the butt. Particularly since the take-down appear in pubs known for their liberal slants.
SFWeekly’s Matt Smith details a series of fights over land use in the Mission on a woebegone tract of land south of Market in and around the Armory. In a truly Progressive community this would be seen as short-sighted, underhanded and just plain silly. Local landowners say they plans to develop property is being thwarted so “non-profits” can buy from them at an artificially lowered (by the SF Board of Supervisors) price.
Continue reading "Knock 'em Dead"Thu 02:10 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
Seen the new SF Examiner on-line? Pretty! Someone should tell their web monkey to update the page before 10 a.m., but othewise the Ex is doing a good job of creating a web presence.
They beat the Chron on a pretty regular basis so if you’re interested in San Francisco city politics – and yes, I know some of you could care less, take a number, okay – TheEx is a good place to go. This week, P.J. Corkery, who joined the paper (again) in mid-June, got the City Hall scoop of scoops, answering one questions that’s been plaguing City Hall for years: When will Supervisor Tony Hall get a real job.
Corkery, who has proved a cause close to my heart -- that “gossip” columnists can indeed make and break news -- gets followed by, count ‘em two, Chron stories. One, dissing Hall’s credentials. Matier and Ross take a trip down memory lane and blame, er, point a finger at Newsom’s political consultant Eric Jaye as the mastermind (or leak, depending, eh?)
Wed 10:48 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
This not-so-cockamamie idea – it’s gotten endorsed by Assemblyman Leland Yee -- San Francisco Supervisor Matt Gonzalez has to allow non-citizens to vote in the city’s school board elections might have some interesting ramifications.
One of which could be the ejection of the Green Party from city politics.
Continue reading "Do It. It'll Backfire"Wed 01:03 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
Speaking of the “bloody mess” that the November ballot is expected to be, it feels like it’s getting easier to talk about what’s not going to be included, rather than what is.
As of right now, there’s a good chance that the Candlestick Park renaming, the sale tax and some budget issues might all go directly to the voters in the fall. That’s on top of the shopping list that’s being sent around from Sacramento. And let’s not forget the referendum on the Iraqi War. The Voter’s Guide is in danger of looking a lot like the phone book.
Continue reading "What's Left to Ask?"Wed 12:58 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
To grandstand or not to grandstand, it seems, is the eternal question down at San Francisco City Hall.
Whether San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly will nobly decide to go along with the rest of the board tomorrow and vote in favor of Mayor Gavin Newsom’s budget and suffer the slings and arrows of the San Francisco Bay Guardian or whether he will oppose them and urge a tax increase on the city’s businesses, is the drama du jour.
Continue reading "Center Stage"Mon 09:41 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
Get out your reading glasses. Even if you don’t wear ‘em. By the time you’re finished with the November ballot, you’ll be seeing double, if not triple. There’s the presidential election, a bunch of state offices, a U.S. Senate race and a loonnnnnng list of state and city ballot initiatives.
Dan Weintraub runs down a list of the ballot initiatives that have been certified at the state level. This is 'clip and save' territory -- you're not likely to get such sharp descriptoins of the ballot line-up anywhere else.
And here in San Francisco, we’ll get to vote on the Iraq War! Like that's going to lose? In San Francisco? I mean really. The slightly more pressing -- not to mention realistic -- needs imposed by the city budget and housing bond? Well...finally, some progress. A compromise housing bond -- $200 million -- has been approved for the ballot.
And they say -- I say, fool that I am -- that city politics are getting moderate.
Wed 10:31 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
Why oh why is taking so much time – and so much agita – for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to pass its much-discussed, much-wanted, much-agreed-upon (in principle) housing bond?
Because this is San Francisco, that’s why.
And the bullying tactics of the city’s self-styled progressives are in full swing. Supervisor Chris Daly is doing a consistent imitation of basketball coach Bobby Knight (a man who, according to author John Feinstein had no use for Daly's almost alma mater, Duke University, but felt happiest when he used the word “fuck” to describe 1)astonishment, 2)aggression 3)enthusiasm 4)anger and 5)delight). Irish class warrior Joe O’Donoghue is blowing smoke. Every one else is trying to remain civil.
Continue reading "A House. A Home. A Big Fight."Mon 03:28 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
Lady Godiva, the original, rode through the streets of Conventry naked as a protest. And the modern day version who appeared briefly at a San Francisco Board of Supervisors’ meeting last week had something similar in mind.
Continue reading "Mystery Solved; Godiva Talks. Maybe Too Much"Mon 01:27 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
Except for the weather, a toasty 80 degrees yesterday -- San Francisco's back to normal. So of course a naked woman – the Lady Godiva of affordable city housing? Someone not quite right in the head? A prankster? All of the above? -- shows up in City Hall in the middle of a Board of Supervisor’s meeting on, er, a hotly contested housing bond issue headed to the November ballot.
Tue 04:59 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
The press roll out has been steady and sure – Pete Ragone displaying once again all the tricks he learned in the Old Country (Washington, D.C.) – and finally San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom’s budget has arrived.
In a nice bit of psychic journalism, The SF Guardian doesn’t like it sight unseen. The Ex says it’s a good start and The Chron’s Rachel Gordon who is allowed to write about money but not marriage sums up the cuts and tax increases.
Here’s what looks like the biggest sticking point: Extending the payroll tax to LLCs and LLPs. That’s lawyers, venture capitalists, hedge funds, CPAs and the like, big Newsom supporters all. At least one lobbyist – who heard the screeching at one big law firm – says he can see an professional corporation exodus to Oakland.
Probably not Oakland. If they go, they'll follow the money to Silicon Valley, where office space is, for now, cheap and taxes low. San Francisco's more and more the bedroom community of choice for the valley; this is just another step on that ladder.
It's another reason -- as if we need one -- why the state's tax structure needs to be overhauled. Right now, San Francisco depends on tourists and businesses to pay its bills. That's not a stable tax base; not as stable as that which would be provided by a fair and equitable property tax system. Prop. 13 doesn't just kill schools by depriving them of property tax revenue, it set the stage for a series of municipal bidding wars -- if you don't like a payroll tax move to San Mateo! -- that are as wasteful and ineffecient as the government taxing and spending that Prop. 13 was supposed to keep in check.
Thu 11:24 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
Welcome to the new San Francisco, the city of political harmony.
Hard to believe but that’s the best way to read the latest polls presented to us today by The SF Chronicle’s Matier and Ross.
Continue reading "The City of Brotherly Love By the Bay"Wed 12:19 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
This web log has a few rules.
One of them is that I don’t post unless I’ve got something to say. And these days, well, apart from repeating my disgust with the situation in Iraq, I don’t have anything new to say. And least nothing I’m ready to publish.
Continue reading "Something Happenin' Here Con't."Tue 12:46 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
The simmering tension of the last San Francisco election between the lace curtain Irish – that’s the “Newsom family” for those of you not up on your Irish class warfare terminology – and the city’s active and strong workingmen's unions, the foundation of its progressive politics, are coming front and center this time around. [See correction below on union stuff]
Continue reading "The Fighting Irish"Tue 11:17 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
A few weeks ago, The San Francisco Chronicle tried to write about a Chinatown feud and did its usual lousy job explaining the politics of the city’s Asian population. The word “byzantine” was used. Couldn’t see that cliché coming, could you?
Tue 09:00 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
So much for Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s supporting a ballot measure calling for San Francisco School to end its desegregation plans. Her official spokesman couldn’t wait to get on the record and say no! no! no! we had nothing to do with the idea being floated by SFSOS, never saw it, don’t know about it, don’t want anything to do with it.
Mon 12:14 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
Just when it was looking like San Francisco politics were getting kinda boring -- what with a mayor we could all (almost) support and his most electable opponent going off in a poorly timed snit of self-pity that pulled the rug out from under the city’s “progressives,” – along comes SFSOS.
SFSOS, a civic organization run by long-time Democratic operative Wade Randlett with backing from wealthy business guys like Gap founder Don Fisher and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, has focused on San Francisco city schools. The group is proposing a ballot initiative – an advisory one – that would conceivably, maybe, someday after the lawyers are done, do away with the city's desegregation program and end the cross-town journeys some kids make to go to school every day. The reasons? Schools are so good throughout the city, says Randlett, the balancing that was once needed in schools isn’t necessary any more.
Continue reading "Save Our Schools"Fri 09:19 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
So Green Party Board of Supervisor President Matt Gonzalez says he’s going into private law practice? He wants to disengage from politics? Odd. In character. But odd.
And weirder still, he makes his announcement the day before a piece of legislation he says he’s the most proud of is ready for its second vote before the board? Huh? What’s up with this guy? Sand-bagging – himself and other so-called Progressives – is his favorite game, isn’t it?
Continue reading "Stop Making Sense"Mon 12:21 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
The Fagan family -- former police chief Alex and his son, now disgraced cop, Alex Jr. -- really know how to protect their good name, don't they?
The two got into some kind of public brawl in Scottsdale, Ariz. over the weekend and the dumber Fagan -- Jr. -- got arrested. That's right. The fomer police chief -- the guy who fought to keep his job -- and his son were fighting. In public. And they were drunk.
How dumb is that?
The fight apparently started when the two rocket scientiests were discussing the dumber and younger Fagan involvement in the street brawl known as "Fajitagate." Fajitagate -- the fight where Alex Jr. is alleged to have beaten up a Union Street bartender for a late-night dinner of left-over (and probably not very warm) Mexican food -- helped Alex Sr. out of the police chief's job.
Alex Sr. is such a bright light he probably think it's his kid's fault he didn't get to keep the big job with the big pension. And how dumb is that?
Mon 09:39 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
Man. Just when it was looking as though being a progressive Liberal wasn’t some sort of redundant joke – what the Sentinel is calling the Gay Marriage Rebellion -- the San Francisco School Board has to come along and, well, embarrass everyone.
The school board has been debating a plan to ban irradiated meat from school cafeterias. It’s been debating this plan, brought forth by the Green Party members of the board, for four month. It’s going to have yet another meeting on the subject this week.
Continue reading "Keep Hope Alive. Please."Thu 12:23 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
San Francisco Supervisor Jake McGoldrick’s chief aide, Jerry Threet writes in with some outsourcing comments and he makes a smart observation to counter what appeared here yesterday.
I think you may be missing part of the outsourcing story, though. Many of those who have suffered the worst fall-out from outsourcing phenomena are those same Progressive Libertarians who benefited from the dot.com craze.
Continue reading "Local Outsourcing"Wed 10:32 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
In response to a piece I wrote earlier in the week about hating the California Legislature, Tracy Hall writes in sums the whole mess up.
“Californians don't hate their legislators - they hate your legislators,” Hall writes.
Well put.
That’s right, it’s not my guy – I live in Mark Leno’s district – it’s someone else’s fault! This thinking seem to apply at all levels. People don't like Congress but they keep re-electing their Congressman. And it applies to the San Francisco Board of Superivisors. As much as they’re disliked and distrusted, surveys show city residents still prefer candidate to run from individual districts.
Fri 11:34 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
If it weren’t for the growing popularity of gay marriage – yesterday you could get married in New Palz, N.Y., today it’s Portland, tomorrow, who knows? – next Wednesday’s SF Bay Guardian would probably carry this headline:
Until Gavin Newsom told city officials to start granting marriage licenses to same sex couples, his credibility as a mayoral candidate was wrapped up in passage of a “workforce housing,” initiative.
Continue reading "Party On"Wed 03:54 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
The sheep have lawyered-up.
The man who would be San Francisco District Attorney -- three time loser for the job -- Bill Fazio is now defending black sheep.
Well, more precisely, he’s defending the owner of a flock of blackbelly Barbados sheep found living in a Bayview/Hunters Point junk yard. The little sweater factories, all 13 of them – get this 13 black sheep -- are owned by Mike Garza. Garza’s a busy guy. In addition to sheparding and running a wrecking business, he is seeking to unseat Rep. Tom Lantos and is running the Republican primary for that Congressional seat.
Sheep and politics. You can’t make this stuff up.
Fri 11:21 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
|
|
For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been mulling over that old saw about people “getting the government they deserve,” in terms of the Bush presidency. When only about half of registered voters actually turn up at the polls, it seems somehow fitting that we get a government that has contempt – that isn’t too strong a word – for its citizens. If half of us don’t care about them, why should they care about us?
Arrogant? Hell yes. But in the past few months, it’s started to feel like more people are paying attention to what’s going on politically than they were a few years ago. Total Recall has energized California, bringing newcomers into politics. Howard Dean has done the same for younger people and tech Geeks. But are they hanging around?
A plaintive email yesterday and a civic association meeting last night – hors d’oeuvres and white wine so you know we were in San Francisco – got me thinking a little more about this and about how people enter politics. I don’t mean enter in the “run for office sense.” I mean get involved in the “go to meetings, get involved” sense.
The email came from a SoMA resident upset by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors’ decision to ban the demolition of buildings with more than rental 20 units. “This project is the absolute linchpin to the revitalization of Market Street from Van Ness to the waterfront,” the SoMA resident wrote. “This is not just about the rent controlled apartments, this is about the health of a major artery in SF that has been inextricable intertwined with the homeless, drug, and crime problems that have become intractable along one of our urban lifelines.”
He’s right. But the ban was a smart, grand-standing political move on the part of Supervisor Chris Daly. It neatly put board members in the position of having to vote in favor of evicting tenants and to support a landlord with a record of treating residents poorly. That’s why it passed. But it also passed because no one’s really paying attention to the politics that are involved here. And the reporting that’s been done on the demolition ban has been sloppy and superficial. The SOMA resident who’d like to see his neighborhood improved seemed to think the board’s vote was the final word on the development. You can’t blame him. That’s what The Chron implied in its brief write-up – that’s after the paper wrote a story predicting weaker support for Daly’s measure. The SoMA guy just figured he’d been sold down the river by his supervisor and was almost – not quite but almost – ready to bring down a pox on all their houses.
But, as the civic association folks were told Thursday night, it remains to be seen if Daly’s measure will stand up to what’s certain to be a mayoral veto. It’s also unclear if the law will withstand court challenges. Oh, and the actual construction of the project, some 1,400 apartments at the now forlorn corner of 8th and Market, is years away. The thing hasn’t even finished its full planning review. Meaning there’s lots of time and plenty of maneuvering in the weeks and months ahead. Daly really was showboating and The Chron played along. He’ll have plenty of time to negotiate on tenants’ behalf – as he and the board should do -- as the approval process ground on.
Ah, yes, but to counter Daly moderates on the board are going to have to start maneuvering. Deal making. Compromising, engaging in the dirty work of politics. Listen to supervisors who felt compelled to support Daly’s measure because of the tenants’ rights issues and you hear them say one thing: Politics ain’t a pretty business. You want a better city, a country run the way you want it run, well you might actually have to spend a little time thinking about what’s going on. And you might have to organize. And roll with the punches. And come back for more. Again.
This is what’s so disappointing about the Geek chorus that’s following Joe Trippi as he preaches the power of the net. Geeks – political newcomers like that SOMA resident – are upset about nominee Howard Dean’s replacing campaign manager Joe Trippi with Washington insider Roy Neel. It’s corrupt. It’s politics as usual, they grouse, and politics – as opposed to policy – is a nasty business. There’s some truth to this; Roy Neel is indeed everything the Geeks hate about politics and politicians. But like all broad generalizations, it’s not entirely accurate. These political newcomers are using Neel as a way to cover their embarrassment – or their frustration -- with the messy business of having to deal with other people, in this case voters who don’t like Dean.
It’s not a massive retreat, of course. But people once in love with Dean, folks upset to find that politics doesn’t mean you get your way – exactly what you want all the time, every time – are pulling back. This sort of disengagement is how grandstanders like Chris Daly get their more moderate colleagues on the defensive. There’s no one around to say “yes, but…” so the simple easy argument is the one that gets play.
It doesn’t help that the press, from Big Media on down to The Chron, are so involved in what they’re doing that they can’t see its effect. Or, more importantly, how things look to outsiders. They reach for the cliché – the Dean campaign was about lonely young people looking for love – or the simple explanation – the Daly maneuvers have kill