Here is our monthly installment of Joseph E. Stiglitz's Unconventional Economic Wisdom column from the Project Syndicate news series. Stiglitz is a professor of economics at Columbia University, and recipient of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, is co-author, with Linda Bilmes, of The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Costs of the Iraq Conflict.

The Dismal Economist’s Joyless Triumph

by Joseph E. Stiglitz

- Joseph E. Stiglitz, professor of economics at Columbia University, and recipient of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, is co-author, with Linda Bilmes, of The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Costs of the Iraq Conflict.

NEW YORK – I have long been forecasting that it was only a matter of time before America’s housing bubble – which began in the early days of this decade, supported by a flood of liquidity and lax regulation – would pop. The longer the bubble expanded, the larger the explosion and the greater (and more global) the resulting downturn would be.

Economists are good at identifying underlying forces, but they are not so good at timing. The dynamics are, however, much as anticipated. America is still on a downward trajectory for 2009 – with grave consequences for the world as a whole.

OBAMA'S PRO-LABOR SECRETARY OF LABOR

By Dick Meister

Rarely has a nominee for any cabinet post drawn such widespread praise as
President-elect Obama's choice for secretary of labor ­ and for good reason:
Hilda Solis has the potential of returning the Labor Department to its
mission of defending and strengthening the status of American workers.

Solis, daughter of immigrants from Mexico and Nicaragua, has the skill,
experience, determination ­ and firm presidential backing ­ to shift the
department from what's been the opposite direction under President Bush's
secretary of labor, Elaine Chao.

Today's Ammianoliner:

Gov. Schwartzenneger extends an olive branch to Tom Ammiano and finds him a place to live in Sacramento. With a nice Mormon family.

(From the home telephone answering machine of Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (yes, assemblyman) on Sunday,
Jan. 4, 2008.) B3

Here is our monthly installment of Joseph E. Stiglitz's Unconventional Economic Wisdom column from the Project Syndicate news series. Stiglitz is a professor of economics at Columbia University, and recipient of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, is co-author, with Linda Bilmes, of The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Costs of the Iraq Conflict.

More progressive taxation will help stabilize the economy

by Joseph E. Stiglitz

- Joseph E. Stiglitz, professor of economics at Columbia University, and recipient of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, is co-author, with Linda Bilmes, of The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Costs of the Iraq Conflict.

NEW YORK – A consensus now exists that America’s recession – already a year old – is likely to be long and deep, and that almost all countries will be affected. I always thought that the notion that what happened in America would be decoupled from the rest of the world was a myth. Events are showing that to be so.

Fortunately, America has, at last, a president with some understanding of the nature and severity of the problem, and who has committed himself to a strong stimulus program. This, together with concerted action by governments elsewhere, will mean that the downturn will be less severe than it otherwise would be.

The Guardian last week wrote an editorial endorsing Sup. Ross Mirkarimi for the presidency of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Sup. Chris Daly and Mirkarimi responded. Here are their letters that will appear in Wednesday's Guardian. The president will be chosen by the new board on Thursday in a special board session following the swearing in ceremony of the supervisors at noon in the supervisors' chambers at City Hall. B3

DALY MAKES THE CASE FOR AVALOS

I support John Avalos for board president because I believe he is the best choice to lead the new progressive Board of Supervisors in these tough times (See "The next board president," 12/31/08). His progressive politics are grounded in decades of community and labor organizing work. Avalos is universally liked and respected (which seems to differentiate him pretty well from me!) and has an uncanny ability to bring people together.

Let's be honest with everybody here. There are maybe five or six legislative assistants who are more involved in the day-to-day running of the board (and the city, for that matter) than several members of the board. Over the last four years, I have watched as Avalos adroitly guided the budget process, always taking time to hear from everyone while watching out for our city's most vulnerable. He may know more about the city budget than I do. Putting the supervisor with the most hands-on budget experience in our top leadership spot is not risky, it's smart.

I am not angry with Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, and I never claimed to be. Mirkarimi did, however, compromise the progressive position in 2007 when he chose to fund more cops over affordable housing and gave the People's Budget little to no political cover when the mayor's forces unleashed a full assault against our budget priorities.

Mirkarimi's four years on the board does not automatically make him the best candidate, but it should provide him with enough insight to make the same choice I did to allow another progressive to lead.

Chris Daly

San Francisco

MIRKARIMI: IT'S ABOUT ISSUES

I thank the Guardian for the endorsement for Board of Supervisors president. The contest for the presidency needs to reflect our values and focus on record and vision.

The leadership fight thus far has taken on an unprogressive machine-like demeanor, bullying for a desired outcome. This sets a troubling tone, one that I haven't responded to because the real fight is defending our city and those most vulnerable from the economic crunch that threatens to claim all. The real challenge is to innovate revenue enhancement and job creation measures that hedge against a sustained downturn. The real need is to develop an inclusive climate on the Board of Supervisors that respects our differences while advancing progressive governance. And the real difference is that I am independent enough where I see consensus building as a more effective method than division and dysfunction.

Ross Mirkarimi

San Francisco

By Bruce B. Brugmann

Nat Hentoff, a graduate with honors from the George Seldes/I.F. Stone School of Journalism and a great journalist on his own, wrote his last column for the Village Voice on Tuesday, Jan. 6.

The Village Voice newspaper chain laid off Hentoff, 83, on Dec. 30 of last year, signalling that the New Times owners from Phoenix, Arizona, had officially and formally ruined the legendary alternative paper.

Read Hentoff's last column and see what the Voice since 1958 had as a writer, talent, jazz critic, First Amendment guru, and distinguished civil libertarian with a civil sense of rage and what they will have no more. And read Louis Menard's Jan. 5 piece in the New Yorker that told how the Voice was once "one of the most successful enterprises in the history of American journalism." Alas. Alas.

Click here to read, Nat Hentoff's Last Column: The 50-Year Veteran Says Goodbye

Click here to read the Guardian's politics blog, How New Times ruined the LA Weekly.

Click here to read Stephanie Clifford's December 30th article in the New York Times, Village Voice Lays Off Nat Hentoff and 2 Others.

The news from Rock Rapids made the Keith Olberman show on MSNBC cable television. Watch the report below.

By Bruce B. Brugmann

Last night my daughter Katrina Perez called me from her home in Santa Barbara, quite excited, with a field report to the San Francisco correspondent on breaking news from Rock Rapids, Iowa. That would be me, of course.
She reported that Keith Olberman featured an item about Rock Rapids on his evening MSNBC cable news show. Something about a deer breaking into a bank.
She suggested I watch the show, which airs an hour later in San Francisco, and get all the details.

I did and to my surprise found that the show, which featured news on the Obamas in Washington, the worst person in the world (Bill O'Reilly of Fox News), fighting in the Gaza strip, and the latest moves to seat the senator=designate from Chicago, also featured a breaking news item from Rock Rapids.

A deer on Sunday had "busted" the window in the Frontier Bank in Rock Rapids which had "loads of money," according to Keith. The deer tripped the alarm, got into the bank, and wandered around. The bank's video camera caught the deer in action and Keith showed it as he commented on what the caption said was "Deer Day Afternoon."

As to motive, Keith said the "coppers" reported that the deer was "looking for a few bucks," attempting to "pass along fawny checks," or "simply trying to reign in spending." By the time the "coppers" got to the scene, the deer had fled the scene of the crime. And Keith, having exhausted all his bad puns for the night, moved on to the next item.

So, as Paul Harvey would say out of his Chicago radio station, "what's the rest of the story?"

To me, the rest of the story was how this deer-in-the-bank incident from a small town in northwest Iowa and got to New York and on to the Keith Olberman national television show. I promptly emailed Ken Barker, the star page two columnist of the local Lyon County Reporter, to check it out for me. He said he was worried that the deer had gotten in to his account. But he said he would nail down the rest of the story and get back to me. I'll keep you posted.

Club Prez? Power lunch on steroids? Exclusive fraternity hazing?

By Will Durst

It is the wackiest photo- op since Sarah Palin went herself a- turkey- farming. 3 ex presidents, the current president and the future president all kicking it old school, chilling in the Oval Office talking about what cool carpeting abounds. The five of them together IS a great image. And if Barack Obama is serious about that economic stimulus plan of his, we could raise a ton of money selling poster- sized copies of this gathering for use as a bipartisan dartboard. And George the Younger conveniently positioned himself in the middle to act as a natural bulls eye.

For years, Sup. and now Assemblyman Tom Ammiano has been leaving an Ammianoliner voice message on his home answering machine.

Today, Friday, Jan. 9, 2009, the word on Ammiano's answering machine was two words: "Message me."
B3

Rep. Dennis Kucinich reports on how a big private utility and the banks in Cleveland tried to force him as then mayor of Cleveland 30 years ago to sell the city's electric system, Muny Light, to the utility for what Kucinich calls a $50 million bribe. The Guardian was one of the few papers inside or outside of Ohio that at the time covered the scandal from a public power point of view.

I encourage you to read Kucinich's account because it shows for San Franciscans, living in a city poisoned for decades by the ever more costly PG&E/Raker Act scandal, the lengths to which another private utility in a big metropolitan city will go to try to snuff out a public power system. Note also Kucinich's point about how the private utility subverted the Cleveland media to back the utility in its brutal power play. It's tough to go up against the private utility, their banking allies and the media, but Kucinich did it and ultimately won in Cleveland. B3

Truthdig.com Report: Rep. Dennis Kucinich on His Battle With the Banks

By Rep. Dennis Kucinich

Once they were as gods, but the deities of the American banking system are now in ruins, plunged from their pedestals into the maw of taxpayer largesse. Congress voted to give the banks $700 billion, lifting them temporarily out of their sepulcher of debt, while revealing a deep truth about the condition of America’s financial powers:

They never had the money they said they had as they constructed their debt-based monetary system which now lies in ruins. Their decisions on behalf of depositors, shareholders and investors were lacking in basic integrity and common sense. Green gods bailing out with their golden parachutes.

There was a time when their power was real. Come with me to Cleveland three decades ago.

Click here to read the full article on Truthdig.com, where Kucinich is a contributing writer.

The bosses who run the FAA have been mistreating the controllers since at least 1981

By Dick Meister

Few government employees have more important responsibilities than the federal air traffic controllers whose primary job is to protect the safety of the ever-growing number of air travelers. Yet few federal employees are more badly treated by their government bosses.

The bosses, who run the Federal Aviation Administration ­ the FAA ­ have been mistreating the controllers since at least 1981. That's when President Ronald Reagan fired more than 11,500 controllers who, seeking to improve their onerous working conditions, struck in violation of the law that prohibits strikes by federal employees.

Editorial in Wednesday Guardian: Chiu will have to stand up to Mayor Newsom, publicly and privately, and make clear that a cuts only budget isn't going to fly in San Francisco.

Editor's notes by Tim Redmond: (Scroll all the way down): Are the wealthy residents and big businesses willing to pay just a little more each year to keep basic services in place in San Francisco? The worst of the bloodbath can be avoided with a couple of fair and progressive new revenue measures on the special election ballot in June.

(Sup. Chris Daly responds and comments in the comment section.

Read advance copies of both this week's Editorial and Editors Notes after the jump.

Committee to Protect Journalistss urges Obama to re-establish U.S. as a "resolute defender of media freedom at this time of growing repression, censorship, and attacks on journalists around the world"

Presidential Transition Team
Washington, DC 20270
January 12, 2009

Dear President-elect Obama:

I am writing as chairman of the Committee to Protect Journalists to seek your leadership in reaffirming America’s role as a staunch defender of press freedom throughout the world. Journalists in many countries who risk their lives and liberty upholding the values of free expression look to the United States for support.

When the 1990’s Internet bubble pushed markets to dizzying heights, one man warned of the dangers of this irrational exuberance, Project Syndicate columnist Robert Shiller. Schiller, a Professor of Economics at Yale and chief economist at MacroMarkets LLC, is the author of The Subprime Solution: How Today’s Global Financial Crisis Happened, and What to Do about It.

Recession Insurance

By Robert J. Shiller

NEW HAVEN – The Chief Economist of the International Monetary Fund, Olivier Blanchard, and several IMF economists have proposed in a recent paper that governments should offer what they call “recession insurance.” Companies and/or individuals would buy insurance policies, pay a regular premium for them, and receive a benefit if some measure of the economy, such as GDP growth, dropped below a specified level. Such insurance, they argue, would help firms and people deal with the “extreme uncertainty” of the current economic environment.

Jess Brownell searches for the real middle of the real middle America where the real Americans live. And he finds wisdom.

By Jess Brownell

Guardian publisher Bruce Brugmann has kindly asked me to produce a blog for these virtual pages. He is an old friend, and a transplanted Midwesterner, and he seems to believe, bless him, that people in the Bay area might benefit from the opinions of a cranky old man in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We’ll see about that.

Milwaukee, for those of you unfamiliar with it, is a place with piles of snow, enough water (for ourselves, mind you), and potholes big enough to engulf a Smart Car, if we had any. As for Wisconsin, it’s a relatively placid state that has never chosen a professional wrestler as governor (that was Minnesota), has never been infested by Romneys (that was Michigan), and is not required by custom to reserve a large number of jail cells for its elected officials (that, of course, is Illinois). People in Wisconsin have harbored a certain resentment towards California for surpassing us in dairy production, but given the current state of the industry, that hardly seems worth mentioning.

The Guardian's reporter/photographer team of Paula Connelly and Rebecca Frank prepare to leave on Friday to cover the Inauguration. Being from Brooklyn (Paula) and Pittsburgh (Rebecca), they will have no trouble with the weather. See their dispatches and photos in the Guardian, the politics blog, and the Bruce blog. B3

Today's Ammianoliner:

No, Mr. Bush. It's Martin Luther King, not Rodney King. Can you learn anything?

(From the home telephone answering machine of Assemblyman Tom Ammiano on Jan. 29, 2008, the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr.)

By Bruce B. Brugmann

And so George W. Bush, after two wars, Katrina, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, the Israeli mess, and a deepening recession, after trashing the New Deal, the middle class, the poor, the environment, education, and the constitution for eight years, summed up his presidency at his final press conference.

"We had fun," he said.

The rest of us inside and outside the U.S. didn't have much fun during the Bush years. Bush ended up with a 22 per cent approval rating. Obama comes in with an 80 per cent approval rating.

Calvin Trillin, deadine poet, made the point eloquently in an epitaph for Bush in the Jan. 26 edition of The Nation. It was titled "The Way People Feel About the End of the Bush Administration And the Future of George W. Bush."

Trillin buried Bush in two lines:

"So when he leaves we won't be keeping track of him.

We're just relieved as hell to see the back of him."

Bush ended up with a 22 per cent approval rating. Obama comes in with an 80 per cent approval rating. The way people feel about Obama and the beginning of the Obama administration is one of the most dramatic and exciting things to happen in the history of the United States of America. The dreams of our founding fathers, and the dreams of Martin Luther King Jr., are being realized in Washington, D.C., in a massive, historic three day Inauguration celebration and flashed round the country and the world.

Let us savor the moment. And then let us get to work and keep the pressure on to see that Obama and his administration continue working to realize the dreams. The process will never end.

Mayor Newsom promised last year in writing that he wouldn't privatize taxicab permits. It's infuriating to see him so quickly break that promise.

EDITORIAL In tough times, political leaders with no backbone for making hard decisions tend to look for easy, short-term fixes. And Mayor Gavin Newsom's proposal to auction off taxicab permits to the highest bidder is just that - a quick fix with serious long-term problems. In fact, it amounts to the privatization of a lucrative public asset.

A bit of background: since 1978, when then-Sup. Quentin Kopp authored a measure called Proposition K, San Francisco has issued some 1,500 taxi permits, known as medallions, to working cab drivers. Under Prop. K, the medallions can't be owned by corporations, and they can't be bought and sold as speculative commodities. They're owned by the city, and only people who actually drive cabs for a living can use them.

There's a logic to that. The permits are valuable - a medallion holder not only has the right to drive a cab, he or she can lease that permit to other drivers for additional shifts. Since a taxi can be on the road 24 hours a day, the lease income is substantial, roughly $30,000 a year. But only active drivers get that benefit; nobody can hold a permit, sit at home (or work another job), and just collect that cash.
The process isn't perfect. The waiting list for a medallion takes more than 10 years. Some medallion holders cling to their permits long after they should have retired (and thus keep driving when they should no longer be on the road).

There's no process for compensating a permit holder who becomes disabled.
But those are issues that can be addressed. The basic fact is that San Francisco has taken the position that the public benefit - a license to drive a cab for hire - should be given only to those who are using it. Prop. K prevents consolidation of ownership in the industry, prevents speculators from turning medallions into a new form of securities (which worked out so well with mortgages), and gives people who have spent 10 years or more driving a cab a chance to reap the full benefits of their work.

Newsom, however, sees those permits as a gold mine. If the city auctioned them off, they might bring $100,000 apiece. Under Newsom's plan, much of that money would go to the city, although some would go to current medallion holders.

The plan is full of problems. For one, it could completely change the cab business in San Francisco, shifting control of the industry away from drivers and giving it to big businesses and investors. Very few working drivers (who are lucky to clear $30,000 a year) could afford to buy permits, particularly at auction. So the first people in the market would be the cab companies, which for years have wanted the right to own and control the medallions. Private investors - wealthy individuals and institutions - would see the permits as an asset likely to appreciate, and would buy up medallions, then seek to raise the lease fees for drivers.

The only way drivers could buy permits would be to seek the equivalent of mortgage loans - but the banks that handle that sort of loans typically require 20 percent down, putting many drivers out of the running. Unless, that is, some shadowy characters come along with cash loans - or unless the cab companies handle that payment, thereby getting further control).
Unless medallion ownership is limited to drivers, the entire process will get corrupted. People will drive for a minimal period of time, bid on medallions, then go into another line of work - and keep the medallion. Newsom's office says he's going to do that, but there are no details on the plan yet.

Cab drivers in the city talk about the need for security and retirement income. After years of driving with a medallion, they want the right to sell it for a chunk of cash. But under the current system, drivers are - and most of them like being - independent contractors.

Freelance writers, consultants, small business owners, and many others who are self-employed are responsible for their own retirement planning. Why should cab drivers get a special deal from the city?
Privatizing the permits is just a bad idea. Newsom promised last year - in writing - that he wouldn't seek to change Prop. K. It's infuriating to see him so quickly break that promise.
The supervisors should reject this proposal.<0x00A0>2

President Obama: "Let me say it as simply as I can: Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of my presidency"

President Barack Obama in a statement to the press on his first hours on the job said, "Let me say it as simply as I can: Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of my presidency." Now that is good news.

Peter Scheer, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition (CFAC), flashed the word about Obama's new press policy in a special communique.

Scheer reported, "Obama apparently has signed executive orders whose effect, among
other things, is to reverse the so-called "Ashcroft Memorandum,"
which (in)famously authorized executive branch agencies, when
responding to FOIA requests, to use their discretion under the law to
err on the side of withholding government information rather than
disclosing.

Today's Ammianoliner:

Dick Cheney at the Inauguration in his Baby Jane wheelchair. I'm not done. But you are, man, you are.

(Ammiano ended his Ammianoliner with a sneer in his voice that outsneered the best of Dick Cheney sneers.) Heard on the home telephone answering machine of Assemblyman Tom Ammiano on the day after the Inauguration on Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2008. B3

The stimulus bill is our best chance to get meaningful government investment in faster, affordable, and open internet.

This is an action alert put out by the Free Press Action fund, a non profit media reform organization that is "fighting to insure stimulus funds are used to support broadband innovation and competition, not to line the coffers of Comcast and Verizon."

Hearings began this week on President Obama's massive economic stimulus package. That gives us only a few weeks to protect its multibillion dollar investment in a nationwide broadband buildout.

Without a strong public interest voice at the table, lobbyists could steer the money into a corporate welfare boondoggle, gobbling up those billions and squashing the innovation and competition we need to close the digital divide. Unless you and I take immediate action, they'll succeed.

We need your help to convince Congress to resist the tidal wave of industry lobbying and set strict standards for every taxpayer dollar allocated to broadband -- standards that will bring us closer to a national broadband system that is universal, open, affordable, innovative and accountable to public scrutiny.

AG Jerry Brown’s decision to oppose Prop 8 in the Supreme Court will,
ironically, only help the pro-Prop 8 forces

By Peter Scheer

(Peter Scheer is executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition, a non profit advocacy group.)

The California Supreme Court, in one of its most important cases, is
weighing a challenge to Prop 8, the constitutional amendment banning
gay marriage. If the Court upholds Prop 8, one of the people you can
blame is Attorney General Jerry Brown.

But wait a minute. Didn’t Brown make headlines recently by filing a
brief in the Supreme Court arguing that Prop 8 should be overturned?
Yes, he did. And that’s the problem.

In cases before the Supreme Court, it is the Attorney General’s job
to defend California’s laws unless they are so plainly invalid that
no plausible defense can be offered. However objectionable on moral
grounds, Prop 8 is not legally indefensible. Brown knows that. By
switching sides in the Supreme Court, the Attorney General ripped up
his job description--a political gambit that no doubt pleases his
supporters but, ironically, only makes it harder for the Court to
overturn Prop 8.

The California Supreme Court is in a tough spot in the Prop 8 case.
It went out on a limb a year ago to strike down a state statute
forbidding same sex marriage, ruling that the law violated
California’s constitution. Prop 8, which voters enacted by a margin
of 52% to 48%, responds directly to that controversial decision by
amending the state constitution, thereby removing--or attempting to
remove-- the basis for the Court’s prior ruling.

The current Prop 8 case poses a test of the Court’s legitimacy, its
most valuable asset, at a crucial moment in its history. The Court is
the only institution of California government that is seen as able to
take on hard issues, to decide them in the public interest, and to
act decisively. Although its authority has never been greater, that
authority derives from the public perception that the Court is above
the political fray.

Should the Court strike down Prop 8--overriding an electoral majority
for the second time on the issue of same sex marriage--it must do so
for reasons that are seen as legitimate and legally convincing, even
though most Californians may disagree with the outcome. The Court
must avoid the appearance that it is asserting a political preference
disguised in legal principles. That is a tall order.

In this context the last thing supporters of gay marriage need
is a grandstanding attorney general who, by abandoning his assigned
institutional role, creates doubts about the fairness of the Supreme
Court proceeding and provides an opening for Prop 8 supporters to
argue that the case has been transformed from a legal to a political
contest in which victory goes to the most powerful interest groups.

Can the Court still overturn Prop 8 in a way that will not compromise
its legitimacy? I think so, although the best course at this stage
may be a ruling grounded in the US Constitution instead of the
California Constitution. Under a federal approach, Prop 8’s
problematic status as a state constitutional amendment loses
relevance: vis a vis the US Constitution’s equal protection
guarantee, Prop 8 is no different than any state statute or city
ordinance.

Deciding the case on the basis of the federal constitution also would
legitimize the Court’s ruling because application and interpretation
of federal law is part of its essential function in the original
federal judicial scheme. Legitimacy also comes from the fact that the
Court’s decision, if based on the federal Constitution, would not be
the last word, but would be subject to review by the US Supreme Court.

Of course, the availability of federal Supreme Court review is also
the main disadvantage of this strategy. Still, the US Supreme Court
might decline to review the case, leaving in place a ruling blocking
Prop 8. Or it could review it and surprise everyone with a decision
overturning Prop 8. (Don’t underestimate the influence of the Supreme
Court’s mostly liberal clerks on the gay marriage issue.)

Let’s just hope Jerry Brown keeps his distance from any further judicial
proceedings. With friends like Brown, Prop 8’s opponents don’t need
adversaries.
------
Peter Scheer is executive director of the California First Amendment
Coalition, a nonprofit advocacy group. www.cfac.org

Dick Meister, a San Francisco-based journalist, has covered labor and political issues for a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com.

Labor to Bush: Good Riddance!

By Dick Meister

With the departure of George Bush from the White House, working people and their unions have finally ended one of their toughest fights ever ­ an eight-year struggle with the most virulently anti-labor president in American history.

Of all those bidding Bush good riddance, none have more reason than organized labor and the workers it champions. The record of Bush's antipathy to them is truly staggering.

Consider, for starters, Bush's appointment of a notoriously anti-union secretary of labor , Elaine Chao, and an anti-union majority to control the National Labor Relations Board.

The Bush appointees have played a major role in stripping union and civil service rights from more than a million federal employees, cutting back raises that had been due them and most others on the government payroll, and shifting thousands of unionized federal jobs to private non-union contractors.

They've increased the staff and budgets for investigating and auditing unions, while decreasing those for enforcing employer violations of labor standards, including those covering child labor and pay discrimination and violence against women.

Today's Ammianoliner:

Oscar, my name is Harvey and I'm here to recruit you.

(From the home telephone answering machine of Assemblyman Tom Ammiano on Monday, Jan. 26, 2009.) B3

While the supervisors, labor, and citizens have been working on the unprecedented budget crisis, Newsom has been out of town campaigning for governor or gallivanting off to Paris and Davos, Switzerland. What's his plan to handle the budget deficit?

This week's editorial. Scroll down to read Editor's notes.

EDITORIAL In Washington, Rep. Nancy Pelosi - who has never been known as a radical leftist - is proposing that Congress repeal the Bush tax cuts, now, two years before they expire. That would bring $226 billion into the federal till, enough to fund a good part of the stimulus package.

In Sacramento, Democrats are moving toward a special election this spring to allow the voters to approve a tax increase - a move that would prevent disastrous service cuts in this horrible economic climate. Even the Republicans in the state Legislature - about as intransigent a group of people as you're going to find in public service in America - are actually discussing the possibility that they might accept a tax increase as part of a budget deal.

Mom and Pop lose their voice as the recession-racked small business community is feeling City Hall neglect and used by PG&E and big downtown business

By Bruce B. Brugmann

(Scroll down for a list of the Small Business Commissioners)

Here's a snapshot of how the Pacific Gas & Electric Company and its downtown allies operate to keep City Hall safe for the illegal private power monopoly. Rebecca Bowe's story in the current Guardian shows how a PG&E spokesperson, Darlene Chiu, and a Bank of America ally, retired Bank of America executive Irene Yee Riley, have taken control of the Small Business Commission through key commission appointments by Mayor Gavin Newsom, a PG&E ally.

PG&E's interest is clear: to grab as many City Hall appointments as possible to protect and enhance the position of this corrupt and corrupting private utility. (See Guardian stories and editorials since l969.) And, at the Small Business Commission, to help insure that the commission does nothing to injure PG&E's position, such as raising questions about the many terrible problems small business has with PG&E's high rates, unreliable service, onerous collection policies, and unaccountability. How, many small business people ask, does a small business complain about any of these problems with PG&E?

Timely example of PG&E unaccountability: Chiu, since Newsom appointed her last March, has missed four commission meetings, more than any other commissioner. Bowe called Chiu at PG&E to ask why she had missed so many meetings, but Chiu did not return her calls by press time. I will try myself tomorrow. However, I am not optimistic. PG&E has long maintained a corporate policy of not returning Guardian phone calls or providing information even when its representatives are sitting on public commissions purportedly doing public work representing small business.

Mom and pop lose their voice

By Rebecca Bowe

Bank of America and Pacific Gas and Electric Co. are quite the opposite of mom-and-pop operations, yet two of the seven members appointed to San Francisco's Small Business Commission hail from these corporations, much to the chagrin of true small business leaders.

In a heated e-mail fired off to an assortment of City Hall staffers Jan. 13, Small Business Commissioner Michael O'Connor criticized the Mayor's Office for diluting the commission — which was set up to go to bat for the little guy — with big business appointees.

Meanwhile, funding for the Small Business Assistance Center was almost eliminated last month by the Board of Supervisors.

Click here to continue reading.

Previous Guardian coverage:

>>Volume 20.02 (PDF) An exclusive Bay Guardian study in 1985 challenges the convention wisdom that downtown development creates jobs. Instead, our study by an MIT economist shows that small business have created virtually all the new jobs in San Francisco since l980.

>>Volume 21.02 (PDF) Our updated study in l986 shows that as highrises have gone up, downtown San Francisco has lost jobs. In fact, all the net new jobs in the city have come from new and small businesses in light industrial areas and the neighborhoods

>>October 1, 2003 (PDF) The Guardian's small business agenda for San Francisco

I am sorry to report that our good friend Lani Silver, a remarkable woman of endless good causes and good results, died early this evening at the home of her sister in San Francisco. She had been battling brain cancer since last September. B3

By Will Durst

A politician making lemonade after being pelted by a bushel of media chucked lemons is as familiar as red yarn on the handle of a black bag on the luggage carousel at O’Hare. But few alive have seen the likes of Rod Blagojevich. Not content to stir up a nice cold pitcher or erect a simple stand, the former Illinois Governor is challenging Minute Maid’s supremacy in the field of citrus concentrate. Refusing to exit the stage quietly after removed from office, he instead has gone on the offensive. Some might argue the 52 year- old Democrat has given a whole new meaning to the word “offensive.”

The reaction to Silver's condition was a remarkable display of affection and respect for the political activist who "fought the good fight for Bay Area community."

By Bruce B. Brugmann

1948-2008

Services for Lani Silver, a passionate activist for more than four decades in San Francisco who died Wednesday, will be held at 12:30 p.m. Sunday at Beth Israel-Judea, 625 Brotherhood Way. A burial service will be held at 2:30 p.m. at Hills of Eternity Memorial Park, 130l El Camino Real, Colma. She was 60.

Silver died at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday night in the home of her sister Lori in San Francisco. You can leave your remembrances -- and find out more about her life -- here.

"Lani is gone," her sister Lori wrote an hour later on the CaringBridge.org website. Lani was diagnosed with a brain cancer in September and has been fighting a brave battle ever since. "Lani has always been terrified of being sick, but with this illness, was serene," Lori wrote in the latest of a regular series of posts on Lani's condition. "And she died with that same calm and serenity. She was surrounded by her family."