The Brown Act advisor

I write to add my two cents about Tali Woodward's article "Learning about Politics" [6/15/05] and to clarify any confusion that may have arisen about my role in the two meetings of the Student Advisory Council that are the subject of Woodward's piece. As the district's general counsel, my role is to provide the SAC with objective advice about legal issues that come before it, particularly compliance with our open government laws, such as the Brown Act. Whether it is the SAC or the Board of Education, my obligation is to tell the entity that I am advising when they are about to violate the open government laws that govern them and are crucial to maintaining transparency in our democratic system. It's not a message that is always welcomed. But it's a message that as an attorney I have a duty to convey. And that is precisely what I did.

David Campos
General counsel
San Francisco Unified School District

KPFA's lack of transparency

I am grateful for A.C. Thompson's article on KPFA's personnel politics ["Perpetual Static," 6/22/05]. But I found your snarky tone – particularly in the petty judgments of station staffers – to be a detriment not only to the integrity of the piece, but also to your exploration of what should have been its focus: How is this historic station staying true to or veering from its mission, and what should be done?

You omit from your passing mention of "a massive labor dispute in 1999" that it was an issue of governance, and KPFA's relation to Pacifica, which culminated in a lockout of news staff by armed guards and the dropping of Pacifica's syndicated news by stations in other states.

The lack of transparency in KPFA's budget (which picketers claim is being siphoned from to support other stations) is not just a story about irrelevant infighting or petty bureaucracy.

Brian Griffey
San Francisco

The real KPFA problem

The recent Bay Guardian article on KPFA reveals more about the increasingly confused politics of the Bay Guardian than what's going on at KPFA. As the article says, the country is being run by barbarians, and the political situation is dire – that is exactly why we must expect better from our "alternative" media.

For example, the article blithely dismisses the fact that the current treasurer at KPFA, Marnie Tattersall, is also the chief financial officer of ABC/Disney's KGO and KSFO (the home of Rush Limbaugh and formerly of Michael Savage). Imagine what the Bay Guardian would say if she was a corporate executive at PG&E. Then the article dismisses the suggestion that, just maybe, the US government might want to "sabotage KPFA through a covert COINTELPRO-type" operation. Heavens to Betsy! The Bush-Cheney crowd would never stoop to that.

In an incredible bit, the article approvingly quotes complaints that money is being spent to support KPFA and Pacifica's directly elected governing boards – one of the chief victories won after the meltdown and listener uprising of 1999. It seems that democracy must be too expensive.

And nowhere does the Bay Guardian acknowledge that the current KPFA general manager, Roy Campanella II, was chosen in a process manipulated by the old-boy staff network. That the entrenched staff now finds itself in a knock-down, drag-out fight with its own chosen boss demonstrates just how spoiled some of the big-heads at the station really are.

Marc Norton
San Francisco

Toward a workers' paradise

Tim Redmond owes it to himself, Juliet Schor, and the Bay Guardian readership to clarify what Schor meant in her transcribed interview with Redmond ["French Connection," 6/22/05]. If, when Schor indicates that wages are linked to commodity and service prices (she's quoted as saying, "If you want an economy that pays higher wages, you will also have to pay higher prices"), she can't really mean that. If wages follow prices, then if prices fall to zero and wages fall to zero, what's the harm? Everything will be free! It'll be an anarchist's holiday! What a glorious effect of capitalism!

However, Schor's words confuse money with wages. Wages are the real things that workers want. The less labor it takes to procure goods and services, the higher are the returns to labor. Confusion arises when this labor savings disappears into monopoly and rent payments.

I believe what Schor meant (correct me if I'm wrong) comes clear when one refers to the Iraqi labor union article by Sadat Siddique. Who owns the oil value of Iraq? Is it Halliburton or the Iraqi people? And who owns the land value of the United States? Is it the people as a whole or the individual landowners? Not until Redmond, Schor, and the rest of us distinguish gifts of nature (including the land under cities) from the things people make will a workers' paradise be realized.

David Giesen
San Francisco