By Tim Redmond

The bloggers are having a bit of fun with The Chronicle's front-page New Year's Eve assertion that San Francisco's Golden Age is here again. I have to agree with Beyond Chron -- the story was an embarassment that quoted only conservative, wealthy San Franciscans and ignored much of the city.

Yeah, reporter Carl Nolte, who is a good guy (and my neighbor in Bernal Heights) made the point that there have always been problems in San Francisco, including today. But his overall theme -- that all this new development and soaring housing costs are somehow good for the city -- is a crock.

I'm always the optimist, and I think that 2006 was a great year for local politics. But a "Golden Age?" No: what's happening in the local economy is that San Francisco is becoming a bedroom community for Silicon Valley. We are building housing for people who don't live here, and destroying jobs for people who do.

I've argued in the past that in a boom-band-bust city, the busts are often better than the booms. That's because the single greatest quality-of-life issue for most people (the non-rich) in San Francisco is the cost of housing. This boom is only golden for a very few.

By Tim Redmond

If you haven't seen the truly grim footage of Saddam Hussein's hanging, you can view it here. Luke Thomas posted it on Fog City Journal, but I don't think any of the other local sites have links up.

I understand why people avoid this sort of thing: It's really nasty to look at. But there's a reason Americans should see it, and (with the advent of cell-phone cameras, and soon, little cameras hidden in all sorts of other gadgets) footage of executions, including California killings, is going to become more and more common.

The United States has tried hard to make executions seem almost clinical: The electric chair and the gas chamber have been replaced with lethal execution, which is supposed to be painless. We know that isn't always true; in fact, killing someone is never pretty and is never going to be pretty.

And if the state is going to do the killing, the public needs to know what it's paying for.

In this case, we paid for a hanging. Don't kid yourself -- your tax dollars paid for that rope and those gallows. And the United States, which controls virtually every move the Iraqi government makes, was happy to alllow this to go forward.

God bless America.

By G.W. Schulz

Sorry to piss on everybody’s parade, but a slight drop in the homicide rate isn’t exactly an excuse to break out the coke and booze. Then again, it doesn’t take much to get the frat brothers in the mayor’s office amped up for a party. Bro.

With murders down slightly in 2006 compared to the previous year, Gavin Newsom is preparing for a walk down Divisadero with Police Chief Heather Fong, an area where cops say crime has dropped. The event surely will include a healthy dose of media coverage, and going into an election year, Newsom needs all the flashbulbs he can get. In 2004, he melodramatically proclaimed that voters should recall him if the homicide rate isn’t brought down, so technically, he’s safe for now.

But a buried paragraph in the Chronicle’s front-page story from today reveals a key facet of crime statistics that should be taken into account when considering street-level violence and its effect on a city.

“Richmond Police Lt. Mark Gagan said homicide numbers tell only part of the story in Richmond, where a total of 280 people were shot last year. ‘I don’t think just the homicide rate alone is the way to determine whether violence is up or down,’ Gagan said.”

By Tim Redmond

The Ex reports this morning that Mayor Newsom claims he's just "seconds away" from cutting a deal with Google and Earthlink to provide free WiFi in the city. So this will be tossed to the supervisors pretty soon -- and already, Newsom is pulling the usual mayoral line, which is to demand that the deal be accepted as is, without a lot of changes.

Newsom will say that it took 10 months of complex talks to reach this point, and that if the board starts micromanaging the contract and making a lot of amendments, the entire deal could fall through. We've heard this same line over and over again.

The supes can't be intimidated here, and I don't think they will be. Because the deal that I've heard described is not terribly good for the city. For starters, the free wifi is pretty weak, 300 Kbs; to get a decent speed on your connection, you need to pay. Then there's the long term aspect -- it would lock the city into a private vendor for as long as 16 years.

I don't think the supes should go along with this -- at least not until there's a good-faith effort to look into a city-run system.

By Tim Redmond

Cindy Sheehan is already upstaging the House Democrats and pushing the antiwar movement to play a greater role in the new Democratic Congress. Speaker Nancy Pelosi is going to have to deal with this sooner or later.

For now, I can't even get Pelosi's office to tell me if she'll make a statement in support of Josh Wolf

By Tim Redmond

Luke Thomas had the scoop first, and now SF Gate is reporting that indeed Annemarie Conroy has -- as the report puts it -- "resigned" from her $250,000 a year job in emergency services.

Of course, she really had no choice -- the supes had eliminated the position weeks ago.

By G.W. Schulz

The head of the city's police watchdog agency announced at a San Francisco Police Commission meeting last night that he would be resigning his post in early February. The Office of Citizen Complaints is one of the few city entities in the nation that independently investigates charges of police misconduct from civilians and maintains the power to subpoena officers. While director Kevin Allen told the commission he's stepping down for health reasons, the pace of said investigations has at times been slow during his tenure, and commissioner Joe Veronese told us just moments ago that the OCC’s full responsibilities weren’t effectively being carried out.

By Tim Redmond

The NY Times today has it about right on tax policy: The Democrats are ducking for cover while Bush continues to demand that his insane tax cuts be made permanent. Lyndon Johnson was forced to recognize in the 1960s that he couldn't have both a Great Society and the Vietnam War at the same time without figuring out how to pay for it all, but back then, it wasn't considered political suicide to raise taxes on the rich. (Let's remember: Even under RIchard Nixon, the top tax rate for the very very rich reached 80 percent. Today it's 34 percent.)

At some point, Nancy Pelosi, as the speaker, is going to have to make a choice: Start to cut spending on the war -- by a lot -- or talk about at the very least repealing the Bush tax cuts.

Of course, the third choice (and perhaps the most likely) is to continue to duck, continue to go into debt, continue to screw up the economy and continue to burden our kids with the results of our greed, fear and stupidity. Nancy?

By Tim Redmond

This one is really amazing, even by the standards of our current theocracy: The National Park Service is selling a book in the Grand Canyon bookstore that argues that the canyon was created by Noah's flood. And "The Grand Canyon Park is not permitted to give an official estimate of the geologic age of its principal feature, due to pressure from Bush Administration appointees," the group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility says.

For starters, after my long years in Catholic school, I think I can pretty safely argue that Noah's flood didn't take place in North America; most biblical scholars place it in the Middle East, and say he landed on Mt. Ararat.

But never mind that level of hokum; this suggests that the creationists have gotten so powerful that even basic geology is held hostage.

Rep. George Miller, soon to take over the committee that oversees the park service, might want to look into this.

By Tim Redmond

Three interesting items today that reflect on the state of the SFPD:

David Hill is convicted of second-degree murder in the killing of Officer Isaac Espinoza. That means he'll get life without parole -- but not the death penalty. From the start of this case, D.A. Kamala Harris refused to push for death, in part because she doesn't support the death penalty but also because she insisted that it was very unlikely a jury would return a verdict of first-degree murder here. The cops went batshit on her. Guess what? She was right.

The feds put a 60-year-old woman in prison for cutlivating medical marijuana -- with the help, Fog City Journal charges, of of a San Francisco cop. Yet another example of the SF cops working with the feds to contravene local law.

The Chron finally reports on the resignation of OCC director Kevin Allen but missed the larger point: The Police Officers Association apparently cheered Allen's resignation, which was based in part on health issues. When will the chief tell her troops to stop acting like thugs?

By Tim Redmond

I think Luke Thomas at FCJ is the first one to officially claim to have unofficially announced that Matt Gonzalez is really running for mayor. But everyone in town is talking about it, and the typical discussion is around not whether but when he will join the race.

There are two conflicting schools of thought here. Some think Gonzalez would need to get in soon if he's going to raise money and be taken seriously. Others (including, I suspect, Matt himself) would rather wait until the end of the summer and get in at the last minute.

Personally, I think the late-entry plan is a mistake. Four yeas ago, nobody expected Gonzalez to enter the race; he wasn't even a factor in the discussions. I was on a tv show with him about three months before he wound up entering the race, and we both agreed that it was unlikely there would be any candidates beyond Gavin Newsom, Tom Ammiano and Angela Alioto. There really was a last-minute draft-Gonzalez movement when it became clear that Newsom was headed for an easy victory; part of his appeal was the novelty of it all.

Of course, he pissed a lot of people off, especially in the queer community, but jumping in and effectlively shooting down Ammiano's campaign. But I don't think it was a sneaky pre-meditated strategy. Gonzalez can be an impulsive guy; he just decided one day to go for it.

This time, anything he does late in the game will be seen as nothing more than a political strategy. It will look as if he's intentionally holding back to see who else runs, to let the race play out a bit, and to give himself an advantage. That won't fly so well in 2007.

There's already too much talk; too many people have too much riding on this. We need a progressive candidate, and if it's not Gonzalez, then perhaps someone else will enter (and Gonzalez will look like a spoiler at the end). If he's going to run -- and I hope he does -- he should decide soon and get on with it.

I called Gonzalez today, and he insisted that he hasn't made any announcement, prive or public, official or unofficial. "I'm not running for mayor," he said. "I've made that point over and over again. I have said that I've thought about it, and I have. But I'm not getting in anyone's way, and if another strong candidate wants to run, they should go ahead."

I told him that I think he needs to make a final decision soon, and rule himself out if he isn't going to run. "I agree with that," he said.

By Tim Redmond

Has anyone else noticed how much Gavin Newsom is starting to look like Lt. Commander Data?

By Tim Redmond

Robert Byrd is 89 years old, and still truckin' along. He lnterrupted the Senate's opening prayer this week, shouting "Yes Lord" and "yes in Jesus's name." Ted Kennedy pantomimed tuppling from a bottle during the high points of the Byrd show.

January 13 is Kay Gulbengay Day
Who is Kay Gulbengay, you ask?
The most knowledgeable person, legislatively speaking, at City Hall, judging from the accolades she received at the Jan. 9 Board of Supervisors meeting, which was dedicated to Gulbengay in honor of the 35 years that the soon to retire deputy Clerk of the Board has served at City Hall, with Board Chair Aaron Peskin also declaring January 13 as Kay Gulbengay Day.
Gulbengay is also, “a wonderful karaoke singer,” according to Sup. Tom Ammiano.
“An awesome power-walker,” according to Sup. Bevan Dufty, who admitted to having crawled back to the relative safety and comfort of the gym after accompanying Gulbengay on one of her many high-speed forays up and down Market Street.
“You didn’t get to know what it’s like to get in her crosshairs and your stuff goes to the bottom of the pile, that’s the story that won’t get told,” Board Chair Aaron Peskin told Sup. Ed Jew, who, as the newest member of Board hasn’t yet had the opportunity to get his legislative knickers in a twist.

Turns out Gulbengay is also a very funny speaker, as witnessed by the crowd of wellwishers that filled the supervisorial chambers to pay their respects.
“I’m touched, but I’m not speechless,” began Gulbengay, adding, “It sounds like I’m dying,” as she began to recall her years at City Hall in the past tense.
“At times you made me feel like a Mother Superior,” said Gulbengay, who is threatening to launch a TV series called Desperate Retirees, along with Clerk of the Board Gloria Young, who is also set to leave City Hall very soon.
“I’ve seen the make-up of the Board got from 11 men, to 10 men and I woman to 9 men and 2 women, to 8 men and three women (which I consider perfect.”
Thank you—and I will be watching.”

12-31-06
Dear Sarah
Thanks for sending me information about the latest on the BALCO leak. I remember the morning that this bit of news broke quite well as the information itself arrived to me from a number of convict sources who had just seen it on the news. Everything from telling me that the reporters had come forward with their sources to the nonsensical take that the FBI had come forward to tell the journalists who their source was. Needless to say, I spent the next 40 minutes glued to the morning news waiting for the story to come back around. When it did air again, I was still somewhat confused but at least had some idea what was going on.

Several weeks later and after having read both your letter and the Chronicle’s coverage, I am still quite a bit confused. For starters, where does Larry McCormack fit in? What exactly would Troy Ellerman gain by leaking the documents and

By Steven T. Jones
We're getting several calls -- but no callbacks from the Mayor's Office yet -- from people interested in attending Mayor Gavin Newsom's townhall meeting this Saturday who are being told by the mayor's Communications Office that the event is RSVP only. That's a surprise to us, those who have followed the issue of how Newsom is refusing Prop. I's request that he appear for a dialogue with the Board of Supervisors once a month, and those who read our cover story on the issue this week. To make matters worse, the mayor's people reportedly sent an e-mail to his supporters urging them to RSVP and attend the event, thus ensuring a supportive audience. As I said, I haven't confirmed this yet because the mayor's people haven't returned my calls and e-mails for three days. So much for wanting to make himself more accessible to the public, as Newsom argued the town hall would done when you opted to substitute that for real political dialogue in City Hall. I plan to be there on Saturday anyway. How about you?

P.S. I just got the e-mail that Newsom sent out to his friendlies. It seems the fix is in:

Subject: Re: invite to Sat Public Hearing

Subject:

Join Mayor Gavin Newsom for the first Policy Townhall - space is limited...

Dear Community Members,

Please join Mayor Gavin Newsom & members of the City's elected family
at the first monthly Policy Townhall for a community discussion on homelessness

This is an opportunity to learn about the City's efforts to end chronic homelessness and a
chance to lend your voice – and share your ideas – to help solve this problem.

Saturday, January 13, 2007 at 10:00 a.m.

Richmond Recreation Center 251 18th Avenue (between California & Clement)

San Francisco, California 94121

Space is limited so please RSVP to 415 554 6110 or send an email to mons@sfgov.org

By Tim Redmond

There's a website up from Democracy in Action that lists all the protests set for today and tomorrow against the Bush "surge" in troops. Click here to enter your zip code and use this handy-dandy guide to where to go.

By Tim Redmond

By now you've all heard or read about the exceptionally uninspiring speech, but if you want to read the full text, it's here. Beyond thinking that Bush is delusional -- 20,000 new troops in Baghdad? This really is becoming Vietnam again -- I can only say that he has handed the Democrats the best opportunity in many years. This strategy will fail -- and the Dems who come out loud and clear now, and say it 's bound to fail, and call for a quick withdrawal -- will be well poised to run for president in 2008, when the GOP is in free fall .

By Tim Redmond

Watching the speech in replay tonight, and Jesus, Bush looks terrible. I see none of the old confidence and swagger. He's stumbling over words. He looks like he's aged dramatically (like Carter did after the Iran hostage crisis). The wheels are coming off.

And it was fun to watch Anderson Cooper just skewer the plan .....

by Amanda Witherell

If you didn't make it down to Memphis for the Third National Media Reform Conference, there was a great show on Democracy Now this morning about it. Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez are broadcasting from Tennessee for the duration of the conference and had a conversation this morning with Robert McChesney of the Free Press and Jonathan Adelstein, one of the two Democratic FCC commissioners. Here's the show.

And here's the conference, where you can find the latest and greatest on media, which is supposed to be giving you the latest and greatest of what's going on in the world.

By Steven T. Jones
How brittle will Mayor Gavin Newsom be at his town hall meeting tomorrow, when he's expected to be confronted about ducking real political debate? If this interview that aired on KGO-TV last night is any indication then watch for him to flee under fire again. Are we watching a full-blown meltdown of a big city mayor?

By Steven T. Jones

Listen to a wav file of the Mayor's January 13 Town Hall meeting here.

Newsom, with another new chick

I didn't have high expectations of Mayor Gavin Newsom's "town hall meeting" in the Richmond this morning -- and I was still disappointed. What he had billed as an alternative to monthly policy discussions with the Board of Supervisors during its regular meeting in City Hall -- which voters had asked by approving Proposition I in November -- was instead ridiculous political theater on his signature issue: homelessness. As we said he would in our cover story, "Mayor Chicken," Newsom brought along a cadre a city employees and political appointees who work on the issue and they all hit their cues and sang the mayor's praises while he did his Phil Donahue shtick.

The first hour passed without taking any questions, which the audience had to submit in writing on cards. During the second hour, Newsom sorted through the stack of hundreds for the questions he liked and then asked them in his own words of his employees and panelists. After two hours, they had discussed homelessness from every possible angle and covered every detail -- and the audience was bored to tears. It was deadly dull, except for how frustrating it was. He refused to answer any questions on other topics, and while I chided him on his way out for failing to chose anything but softball questions, he had the gall to criticize the Board of Supervisors for failing to come, an angle that his press secretary Peter Ragone has also been flogging for weeks, convincing absolutely nobody.

The only bright spot in the event were the six people dressed in chicken suits who showed up, who Newsom's board liasion Wade Crowfoot tried to prevent from entering the public building unless they removed them, which they refused to do. It was a good thing they did because the only saving grace of this whole fiasco was watching Newsom get handed a written question (that he never answered) and pretend not to notice the guy was in a chicken suit. The chickens remained respectful through the whole event (not clucking or heckling), but would pop up in windows occasionally or just walk around. Hilarious!

Peek-a-boodle-doo

If you think I'm overstating what a joke this forum was -- or if you want to hear Newsom and others (like Angela Alioto, who disgraced herself by sucking up to the mayor) blather on .... click the link at the top of this blog entry. Some buried treasures in the depths of this recording are my heated discussion with Ragone about halfway through and the tough question that I asked (I'm the somebody referred to in Beyond Chron) of those frustrated by the event: Is this a filibuster or an infomercial?

Pics courtesy of Luke Thomas, Fog City Journal

By Tim Redmond

Gavin Newsom has always had sharp, well-paid political advisors, starting with consultant Eric Jaye. His public-relations operation has been well-honed, his every move designed to keep those popularity ratings soaring and keep him on the fast track to higher office.

But the wheels are starting to fall off this train.

There was, for example, the drinking issue, and his fight with Dan Noyes. That was just stupid: Newsom should have just laughed off the whole thing. Most San Francisco politicians drink; I would, too, if I were the mayor. (Well, I'm not the mayor, and I still drink.) Willie Brown, Newsom's predecessor, as known to enjoy an occasional glass of wine, even with lunch, and lord knows -- lord knows -- what kind of partying he was doing in the evenings. But he didn't care what people said about it; hey, whatever. This is a guy who impregnated his chief fundraiser and shrugged it off so quickly that it never became a political issue.

You get defensive about this stuff and it looks like you have a problem. That's where Newsom is right now.

Then there's the whole "question time" issue, which has become even more of a political embarassment.

I don't know which political genius on the mayor's staff told him it would be best ot ignore a vote of the public and refuse to comply with Proposition I. And I don't know if that same genius told him to hold a "town hall meeting" instead. But it wasn't a banner day for Team Newsom; in fact, the whole affair was a political disaster.

Steve Jones had fun with it. The SF Party Party had fun with it. Even the Chronicle story made Newsom look like a fool.

Randy Shaw thinks Newsom is acting on his own: "No political consultant would advise a Mayor to get on the wrong side of the popular foot patrol and question time issues, or to start battling with the media when facing re-election."

But I'm not so sure. Newsom doesn't do much of anything without political advice. I think he is, indeed, losing it -- but so is his hot-shot political team.

By Tim Redmond

Does Newsom's press secretary, Peter Ragone, really think it's helpful to launch personal insults at members of the Board of Supervisors? Or has this whole Yalie thing gotten so out of hand that he's lost his mind?

Check this out from the LA Times:

Some supervisors have suggested that Newsom should spend more time trying to lower the city's high unsolved-murder rate than talking about a high-profile assault case.

Responded Ragone: "Ross Mirkirimi can't walk and chew gum at the same time. What he doesn't understand is that the mayor of a major American city has to be able to focus on more than one thing at once."

By Tim Redmond

Everyone knows how power works and how daily newspapers are part of it, but it's always nice to have an insider give you the actual goods every now and then.

Jon Carroll, who is often the Chron's best columnist (although I also like Ray Ratto) weighed in today on the Yalie scandal that he's calling "Gleegate." He has little to add to the debate (actually, Ken Garcia, who is normally an idiot, actually had a more interesting hit on this.

But what Carroll said that made me smile was the following:

When I started [at the Chronicle], every editor had a list of names. If any of those names should pop up in police reports, divorce suits or on party guest lists, the publisher was to be notified before any story ran. Photographs of certain important members of society were always airbrushed (or, as you might say today, Photoshopped), sometimes quite heavily -- the artists posted a small collection of the most egregious examples on the back wall.

Again: We all knew this was happening. I'm sure it still does, at some level, at some papers. But it's refreshing to see someone actually spell it out.in print.

By Tim Redmond

The prospect of Mark Leno running against Carole Migden has set off an intriguing little internal political tiff in the progressive community. Chris Daly has a lovely little hit piece in BeyondChron about Barnes, Mosher, Whitehurst, Lauter and Parnters, the nasty political consulting firm, and in the process, he goes after Leno for his association with the frim and suggests that the Leno challenge could be primarily driven by the consultants' desire for more cash.

That appears to put Daly in the Migden camp on this one, which isn't surprising, since he's been friendly with her in the past. But it makes the potential race all the more interesting.

By Tim Redmond

I'm a little late on this; somehow, I missed it when it came out. But Leftinsf picked it right up: Mayor Newsom is against municipal Wi-Fi because he doesn't want to hurt the poor:

"I'm not going to take $10 million from poor people to pay for something that a private company has offered to pay for," [Newsom said], suggesting money for a system owned or part-owned by city government would take money from social programs.

Three things, Mr. Mayor (if you are bothering to read this from Davos, Switzerland, where all those needy poor people hang out):

1. Broadband infrastructure is a public-works project, like streets and sewers. It's the sort of thing that governments spend tax dollars on.

2. Why do we have to take money from the poor? Are you utterly opposed to taxing the rich?

3. You've managed to put money into all sorts of other projects in the city. Sasha at leftinsf nicely notes that the mayor was prepared to put a 50 cent tax on everyone's monthly phone bill to pay for his 311system. Sasha explains::

Now here’s the thing: Did he send out an RFP for the 311 system asking companies to do it for free? I’m sure that if every 311 call could have a 15 second ad at the beginning he could have gotten some company to pay for it!

If Newsom had proposed to make some private company responsible for the system that is supposed to be the one stop shop for San Franciscans looking for city information, with no standards for service, no guarantee that it would always be available, and allowing people willing to pay extra priority access to the number, San Franciscans would rightly react very badly. Instead, we are paying for it ourselves, because the quality of that information and the idea that everyone should have equal access to our government is a core San Francisco value.

Ayup.

By Sarah Phelan

No, this isn’t my secret recipe for surviving life in the city on a tight budget. Instead, this is my not-so-secret recipe for helping get wild birds out of spaces they’d rather not be in—like trapped in the bay window of Farley’s coffee house on Potrero Hill, which is what happened last week when I was having lunch in the famed establishment and a pigeon flew through the door, then tried to escape, but hit the window, instead.

Understandably, everyone panicked at the sight of a pigeon flying into a window. People screamed, customers ducked and it looked like things could rapidly turn nasty, especially for the pigeon.
At which point I surprised even myself by standing up, picking up my ratty old black jacket which was hanging on the back of my chair, instructing those sitting in the bay window to “Move!” and swiftly throwing ratty jacket over the bird so it was completely engulfed.

Immediately, the bird stopped moving, and I was able to roll it up, in one gentle move, thereby transforming bird and coat into a pigeon burrito, in which the bird was the filler and the coat was the soft shell. With the bird firmly secured, I walked to door, opened my coat and, the bird immediately spread its wings and flew up and away, over the rooftops of Potrero Hill and towards the Bay, like my soul escaping its body.

To my embarrassment, everyone clapped and a man, who was sitting on the bench that wraps around the tree outside Farley’s, shouted, “You’re a hero!”

So, next time you see a bird trapped, surprise yourself by stripping off your coat, sweater, shirt, or whatev, and making a bird burrito. You’ll be glad you did.
ps In case you're wondering, what's this doing on the politics blog, I figure bird rescue is a political statement of sorts...
pps I learned this trick from the fine folks at Native Animal Rescue in Santa Cruz

By Tim Redmond

The president's state of the union speech doesn't start for another few hours, but already anyone who cares already knows what he's going to say. But it's not going to be easy to talk about Iraq the same day that his new commander in the region calls the situation "dire.".

And it's not going to be easy to talk about reforming health insurance policy when his plan has a already been busted for fraud.

The NY Times -- much to my continued annoyance -- won't let you see its best stuff on the web unless you're a paid subscriber, so let me quote for you from Paul Krugman's latest column:

On the radio, Mr. Bush suggested that we should “treat health insurance more like home ownership.” He went on to say that “the current tax code encourages home ownership by allowing you to deduct the interest on your mortgage from your taxes. We can reform the tax code, so that it provides a similar incentive for you to buy health insurance.”

The only people the Bush plan might move out of the ranks of the uninsured are the people we’re least concerned about — affluent, healthy Americans who choose voluntarily not to be insured. At most, the Bush plan might induce some of those people to buy insurance, while in the process — whaddya know — giving many other high-income individuals yet another tax break.

No wonder the guy's poll rankings are at about the level Richard Nixon's were just before he resigned.

By Tim Redmond

I know all this talk about what New Times has done to the Voice can get a bit tiresome, but I can't resist any article that calls Mike Lacey "a Philistine who hates New York City." Enjoy.

By Tim Redmond

This is pretty funny.

By Tim Redmond

Pathetic.

It's as if nothing that has happened over the past four years has made any difference to the president. He started off by saying that the private sector, and tax breaks, were going to solve the health-insurance crisis, which is demonstrably wrong. Then he went on -- and on -- talking about the war on terror, and trying, yet again, as he has done over and over with no success, to tie the war in Iraq to Osama Bin Laden and the 9/11 attacks.

My favorite line: "This is not the fight we entered, but it's the fight we are in." Excuse me: A lot of us pointed out out from the start that this was exactly the fight we were entering. The mess that is Iraq is no surprise -- it's exactly what everyone with any sanity predicted would happen.

By Tim Redmond

--It says a lot about the state of the media when Sen. Dick Durbin decides that instead of doing TV interviews, he'll respond to the speech by blogging on DailyKos. Complete with some really dopey pictures. (Look, look, here I am, blogging! I may be a U.S. Senator but I can actually type on a computer, like the real people! I'm a blogger! Whoo Hah!)

--Chris Matthews argues that Jim Webb's response is the strongest Democratic response to a GOP State of the Union speech since Ed Muskie responded to Nixon in 1970. That's a strong statement, but it's pretty clear that Webb was the right guy for this job: He pointedly noted that he, and his brother, and his son, had all served in active duty in the Marines (unlike Bush), and that leaders who send troops to war have a responsibility to make honest judgements.

--CNN says that Bush is already a lame duck Duh.

by Sarah Phelan
Today was the first official Question Time at City Hall and, since Mayor Gavin Newsom was not in town, being tied up, among other things, at economic forums in Switzerland, Board Chair Aaron Peskin asked Sup. Sean Elsbernd, who Newsom has appointed as Acting Mayor in his absence. if he wanted to address the policy questions, instead.

“I’m not sure how hard I should laugh right now,” sputtered Elsbernd. “If we took this logically, I could stand up here and have a conversation with myself.”

“Most substitute mayors don’t exercise the full mayoral powers,” interjected Sup. Chris Daly. “Though there are some notable exceptions,” he added. Daly was of course referring to his own October 2003 surprise, in which he

by Sarah Phelan

Sup. Sophie Maxwell has introduced a resolution urging Mirant Corporation to abandon permanently its efforts to operate the Potrero Power Plant, and reaffirming the City’s commitment to closing the plant as soon as feasible, and urging all interested State and federal agencies to facilitate the closure, so the site may be developed in a manner more in harmony with surrounding neighborhoods and sound public and environmental health.

By Sarah Phelan

10,000? 30,000? 100,000?

If you guessed 32, 952 rooms, you're correct--and must be digesting the same economic reports that I’ve been calling bedtime reading this week.

According to a report fresh out of the Controller’s office, the lowest point, in terms of filling all those rooms, was the winter of 2001-2002, when 50 percent were vacant. (Remember, that was the grim post 9/11 moment, when people were afraid to fly to the USA, in case they ended up being flown into a hotel high-rise, instead of staying in one.)

The highest point? June 2000, the height of the dot-com boom, when occupancy peaked at 91.7 percent.
“These numbers suggest that it is practically impossible for a visitor to be able to find a room in the City on any given day of any given month,” the report observes, the kind of observation that just begs to be contradicted...

By Steven T. Jones
Even with Democrats retaking Congress and making tentative moves for economic justice and against this disastrous war, political communications have been less than inspiring these days. And President George W. Bush's State of the Union speech last night was a sad and dismal nadir to his sad and dismal presidency. Yet we still had to endure standing ovations that included Democrats for all his dreary non-points and poll-tested platitudes. Ugh, it was almost enough to make a political junkie want to kick the habit.
Then, Jim Webb spoke.
Holy Democratic revival, Batman, this was a knockout! I've never seen the opposition party response so thoroughly outshine a State of the Union speech, with all the pagaentry they entail. Webb, a military man turned junior senator from Virginia, eloquently and forcefully drove home the economic justice and anti-war points that most Ameircans believe in, but which Democrats have generally been too timid to really bring. But Webb brought it!
Sadly, his speech was followed by tepid, throwaway remarks from Democratic presidential hopefuls Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton, although Bill Richardson was a bit better. Yet Webb has now set the gold standard for how Democrats should be talking. Either the other contenders will take the cue and start aggressively speakng truth to power, or we're likely to see a serious grassroots effort to get Webb to run. Progressives aren't going to have a lot of patience for ending this ill-conceived war and reversing the ruling class' exploitation of the masses -- which were the two main subjects of Webb's speech. Democrats have their moment, and if Pelosi -- who has said impeachment is off the table -- doesn't forcefully challenge this imperial presidency with everything she has, it looks like we have a new kid of the block who will.

By G.W. Schulz

Every six months or so, the San Francisco Controller’s Office releases a summary of the numerous whistleblower complaints it receives from citizens and municipal employees alike.

No names are attached, unfortunately. And attempts by the Guardian in the past to obtain details of the complaints and resulting investigations through sunshine requests were rebuffed by the controller. Ed Harrington’s office argued that publicity might inhibit potential whistleblowers from stepping forward.

But for now, at least, we’ve got a good idea of which city and county offices are housing ill-behaved employees and what's been done to stop them.

By Tim Redmond

The Bay Guardian and Media Alliance have succeeded in getting about 90 percent of the previously secret records in the Clint Reilly media consolidation case opened to public review.
But you wouldn’t know that from reading the news stories in the monopoly dailies that the suit challenges.
In fact, the press coverage of Judge Illston's ruling shows very neatly how media consolidation and a lack of competition throttle public access to the news.
None of the local dailies (all of them owned by big chains involved in this case) got the story remotely right. The Chronicle’s Bob Egelko, who is normally a decent legal reporter, reported only that Judge Illston had ordered the release of “some MediaNews Group records” but “allowed MediaNews and the Hearst Corp., owner of The Chronicle, to protect most of the documents they had sought to keep sealed.” The seven-paragraph story ignored the main point: When we filed the motion in court to unseal the records, the newspaper barons immediately agreed to make the bulk of the material public. There are thousands and thousands of pages of legal material filed in the case so far, and the publishers didn’t even contest our contention that most of it should never have been sealed in the first place.
“MediaNews Group and Hearst were asked by Media Alliance and the Guardian before they intervened to unseal everything. They declined to unseal anything,” said Jim Wheaton, attorney for the First Amendment Project, which represented us. “But as soon as Media Alliance and the Guardian moved to intervene and unseal, MediaNews and Hearst surrendered on almost all the sealed documents. They fought only to keep some parts of five exhibits and one brief sealed, which comprised 19 separate excerpts (of which six were duplicates, leaving only 13 distinct items).
There’s a lot of legal gobbledegook here, but for the record, here’s how Wheaton explains it:

The following documents were originally filed under seal, in their totality (with court docket numbers):

Everything else was unsealed. All parts of all the memoranda, all the declarations, and all the other exhibits were unsealed.

Also – and this is key – Illston gave the Guardian and Media Alliance the right to remain legal interveners for the duration of the case, giving us standing to immediately seek the release of any future documents filed under seal.

In one of the nastier little twists to this story, Egelko referred only to “a media group and a weekly newspaper” without ever mentioning Media Alliance or the Bay Guardian.

I send Egelko an email, and he said the reference to the Guardian was cut for space.

The Contra Costa Times ran an Associated Press story by David Kravets that was even worse. The headline: “Judge denies request to unseal MediaNews, Hearst suit papers.” The summary: Illston denied almost everything the Guardian and Media Alliance wanted.

The San Jose Mercury News ran four paragraphs of the same AP story.

That story was, as I’ve pointed out above, utterly inaccurate, embarrassingly so. I called Kravets and asked what had happened, and he acknowledged that he had left out the background – the fact that the media barons, in response to our case, had agreed to unseal most of the records. “I plead guilty to leaving out the background,” he said.

Wheaton is contacting AP and the Chron to seek corrections; we’ll let you know.

In the meantime, think about what happened here: The Times and the Merc, both owned by Dean Singleton’s MediaNews Group, run the exact same inaccurate AP story on a major media case involving their parent companies. The Chron, which is supposedly their competitor, runs its own inaccurate story. None of these people (representing the free press of Northern California) are acting like competitors, and none of them give any support or credit to a major effort at opening up the federal courts.

Welcome to the monopoly media world of the Bay Area, 2007.

By Tim Redmond

Damn, I'd sworn off going after New Times/Village Voice Media, the parent company of SF Weekly, for at least a few days, but shit keeps happening.

Will Swaim, the editor of the OC Weekly, which was one of the papers absorbed when New Times took over the Village Voice, has resigned, citing "philosophical differences" with management. That was inevitable, but it sucks: Swaim is a good guy, a good editor and ran a good paper.

And the editor at the Minneapolis City Paper (ditto, formerly a Village Voice paper) resigned under pressure and was quickly replaced. Why? Here's what the Star-Tribune says:

"I'm not sure anyone was surprised that it happened, only that it took so long," said David Brauer, a media analyst for Minnesota Public Radio who once wrote for City Pages. "Village Voice/New Times is known for being aggressively apolitical or libertarian. Steve, although he had a pox on both Democrats and Republicans, was mostly a lefty radical guy."

So the dismantling of the progressive papers that used to be part of the Village Voice franchise continues.

By Steven T. Jones
The scrappy political blog SFist has consistently, insightfully, and with an infectious sense of voyeuristic glee been dogging Mayor Gavin Newsom and his many missteps of the last year, becoming a go-to site for local political junkies. As such, Newsom's prickly press secretary Peter Ragone and a few other Gavin supporters have taken to posting comments defending their guy.
Well, now it seems the SFist has caught Ragone apparently pretending to be a John Nelson, posting comments slamming SFist and slobbering all over Newsom. Like the SFist, I called Ragone's numbers trying to get a comment and/or confirmation, but was unsuccessful.
What the hell is going on in the mayor's office? Has their bunker mentality completely overwhelmed their sense of ethics, accountability to the public, and service to the city? Personally, I'm going to redouble my efforts to dog the mayor and put some hard questions to him -- as soon as he gets back from skiing in Switzerland with his girlfriend.

By Tim Redmond

That's the only conclusion I could reach after reading this piece of garbage that was until recently sitting high on the front page of the SF Weekly website.

It's fine for journalists to be cynical. It's fine to challenge the conventional wisdom. But all I got from this piece -- and frankly, all I get a lot of the time from Matt Smith -- is how much San Francisco sucks, how lame all of us who love this city are, how stupid local politics is, and how nobody who is a part of the fabric of this town is anything but a witless moron who can't possibly live up to Mr. Smith's standards.

Matt: Why do you live here?

By Steven T. Jones
Mayor Gavin Newsom may be unwilling to appear in person before the Board of Supervisors, but he's using his trip to the World Economic Forum to reach out to citizens of the virtual world Second Life. The cyber-Gavin gave a long but not terribly illuminating interview, although he did joke that we now have a virtual mayor "just in case the public gets fed up with the real me." I listened for some of the "new ideas" he claimed he would bring back from the Swiss Alps, but instead it sounded like he developed some new sympathies for poor, misunderstood corporate titans, such as the oil executive who wants to save the world for his children. How touching.

by Amanda Witherell

I was in seventh grade when the Gulf War started and I remember watching news coverage of the bombs over Baghdad from the back row of my history class and having no clue what it meant. Welcome to the vast and sometimes disturbing plateau that is American public education.

Which is why I'm jealous of all the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth graders at San Francisco's public schools who will have Addicted to War as a supplemental text in their history classes.

By Sarah Phelan
If you’ve read the 196-page study of fiber-to-the-premise that was posted online by he City's Department of Telecommunications and InformationServices the same week that Mayor Gavin Newsom was whooping it up in Davos, Switzerland, you’ll know that the report concludes that municipal fiber-to-the-premises is the most visionary way for San Francisco to go. Oh, and that to really bridge the digital divide, he city should build a pilot fiber network in the San Francisco Enterprise Zone--a 12-square mile economic development area that includes Bay View, Hunter’s Point, South Bayshore, Chinatown, Mission District, Mission Bay, Potrero Hill, South of Market, Tenderloin and the Western Addition.

“FTTP is the holy grail of broadband, a fat pipe all the way into the home or business,” states the executive summary, “but in the near future is only available for a privileged few located in the limited areas of private-sector deployment.”

Noting that private sector networks aren’t meeting this growing demand for bandwidth and speed in an affordable manner, the report states that “in this context of private sector disinterest, municipal FTTP would rank San Francisco among the world’s most far-sighted cities—by creating an infrastructure asset with a lifetime of decades that is almost endlessly upgradeable and capable of supporting any number of public or private sector communications initiatives.”

According to the report, fiber allows “numerous competitors to quickly and inexpensively enter the San Francisco market and offer competing, differentiated broadband services and access,” facilitates “democratic and free market values,” “affordable access” “economic development” and enhances, “the City’s reputation for visionary and pioneering projects; promoting major development initiatives such as revitalization zones.”

The report also notes that fiber “provides a highly reliable, resilient backbone for existing and future wireless initiatives,” supports current and future public safety and government communications systems, saving the City enormous unending cost of leasing circuits from telephone companies, and provides a higher quality, higher capacity, more reliable, more secure transport for key city users such as law enforcement, fire, emergency management and public health.”

In other words, it’s the kind of system that would be a life saver following a major earthquake.

None of which means that we shouldn’t be doing wireless, just not the
flawed Google Earthlink deal that Mayor Gavin Newsom is pushing.

By Tim Redmond

I'm been meaning to write something for a while now about the recent Black Liberation Army arrests, but it's tricky: I don't believe in shooting anyone, and killing a cop is a heinous crime, and there is no statute of limitations on murder, nor should there be.

But somehow, I feel the same way about this case as I did about the Sara Jane Olsen case and all these other efforts to get criminal indictments for things that happened in the heat of the 1960s, when there was, in some ways, a low-scale civil war on in this country -- and both sides were doing some nasty stuff.

If you want to indict the alleged members of the BLF for shotgunning a cop, fine. Then how about indicting Henry Kissinger for war crimes? How about tracking down and indicting all the living FBI agents who illegally wiretapped radicals? How about indicting some federal agents and Chicago cops for the killing of Fred Hampton? The list goes on.

I'm thinking that if we really want to go down this road, we should create a 1960s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It the South Africans could deal with their bloody history that way, so can we.

Otherwise, the balance of indictments hardly seems fair.

By G.W. Schulz

Looks like former Contra Costa Times editor Chris Lopez has at least found some part-time work blogging for NewAssignment.net. His most recent entries highlight technological innovations at some of the nation's big dailies, including a video obituary of Art Buchwald that appeared on the New York Times Web site.

An early January post notes that the McClatchy chain of newspapers, which owns the Sacramento Bee, has purchased the "Famous" blogs, including FresnoFamous.com and ModestoFamous.com.

The tough CoCo Times editor was unexpectedly let go from the paper in October after Denver-based MediaNews and William Dean Singleton bought the scrappy daily along with a group of other Bay Area papers. Lopez helped Singleton win a Pulitzer while working at Singleton's flagship Denver Post.

By G.W. Schulz

As we’ve reported online, federal Judge Susan Illston has largely ruled in favor of the Guardian and Media Alliance and has opened several documents originally filed under seal in Clint Reilly’s civil suit alleging that the Hearst Corp. and MediaNews Group are conspiring to monopolize the Bay Area’s newspaper market. A Santa Clara County judge ruled against one of Silicone Valley's biggest public companies last week and opened up court records to the press and public in a shareholder suit alleging problems with backdated stock options to top executives.

But coincidentally, Illston ruled in yet another open-records case recently that the feds have to pay Stanford’s Cyberlaw Clinic $67,000 to cover legal fees regarding its court-based effort to obtain records of the Department of Homeland Security’s US-VISIT system.

by Amanda Witherell

Looks like you can't just set up a porno film studio in San Francisco anymore. Neighborhood groups are looking to have more say in how kinky the Armory building at 14th and Mission is going to be now that it's been purchased by kink.com for filming fetish flicks. So the Mayor's office and the city's planning department are scheduling some meetings to hash it all over in fine San Francisco style. It sounds like they sort of wish it became pricey penthouses after all and the mayor's disgraced flak, Peter Ragone has turned on the spin, lamenting the loss of an opportunity to fill the building with affordable housing. No word yet on when those meetings will be, but we'll be sure to let you know.

By Steven T. Jones

Before hitting the latest news of ethics problems in the mayor's office, and the brilliant segment that KGO-TV's dogged investigative reporter Dan Noyes has done to highlight them, it's important to offer some context and perspective.
Mayor Gavin Newsom imported veteran Democrat Party flack Peter Ragone to be his press secretary upon taking office three years ago. Ragone didn't really know San Francisco that well, but he seemed to understand the national political landscape and therefore became a trusted adviser to our ambitious mayor. The gay marriage move was brilliant, shoring up Newsom's support in the city's queer community and positioning him as a civil rights leader for future campaigns.

Yet along the way, Ragone seemed to forget that Newsom was the mayor of San Francisco at a time when progressives controlled the Board of Supervisors and couldn't simply be dismissed. Over and over, Ragone spun stories to reporters about the incompetence and/or malevolence of progressives or other critics of the mayor -- often attacking or belittling the journalists when they expressed skepticism -- until he had very little credibility left with any of us (something I say as someone who regularly talks with journalists from all the other major news outlets in town).

So when the SFist discovered that some posters to their site were actually coming from Ragone's computer, and Ragone avoided answering questions about it and opted to instead claim on the site that allegedly pseudonymous John Nelson was a real person, his best friend actually, who often stayed at Ragone's house during the early morning and late night hours when he posted -- most people simply assumed Ragone was lying.

I wanted to give Ragone the benefit of the doubt and asked whether I could meet John or otherwise get some verification for his existence. Ragone said no, and said, "I don't think I'd like to see my friends and family put through the wringer of San Francisco politics."

By G.W. Schulz

San Francisco has always been notoriously behind statewide on skatepark construction, despite the relatively small monetary investment they require and the high civic value they produce. One spot already exists at Crocker Amazon Park, but it’s largely regarded as mediocre. Conservative states years ago were funding the construction of skateparks through their public works departments and allowing young skaters to participate in the designs. Shit, rural Kansas was doing it a long time ago.

by Amanda Witherell

Hey Mission residents: there's a public hearing tomorrow morning at 9 am, Room 400 in City Hall about street cleaning. The city is planning on having a lot more of it in the neighborhood, which means more sweeping up of newspapers and broken glass, but also more moving of your car and more getting of parking tickets. It affects everyone from Cesar Chavez to 19th Street and everything east of South Van Ness. If you have a Department of Public Works poster saran-wrapped to the street pole or tree in front of your house, they're talking to you. You can double-check here, and roll down to City Hall tomorrow morning to give your two cents.

By Steven T. Jones
SFist has a nice wrap-up on the fallout from its outing of Newsom flack Peter Ragone as a liar, but the Chron's Matier & Ross not only buried the story halfway through today's column, they also missed the point. Ragone didn't just get his "hand caught in the cookie jar" by pretending to be someone he's not online -- he appeared to have told journalists and the public direct and bald-faced lies to cover up what he did, a sin for which he still hasn't come clean.
That was the focus of the resolution Board of Supervisors president Aaron Peskin proposed during yesterday's meeting, which calls for all public information officers on the city's payroll to abide by ethical standards accepted by the public relations industry, including honesty. After all, these people work for us. We pay their salaries, not Gavin Newsom, and we don't pay them to subvert the public interest in honest, open government. Kudos to Peskin for trying to take the high road on this sordid incident.

By G.W. Schulz

Got a call this morning from Rich Hillis, a deputy in the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development. He was responding to a blog entry we posted last night pointing out that the city has made lots of promises in recent years about constructing new skateparks within the city, an inexpensive gesture any city can make for providing kids with something to do. (Our original post contains plenty of links explaining where skatepark construction is in San Francisco right now.)

By Steven T. Jones
According to KCBS radio, mayoral flack Peter Ragone has finally admitted to both posting on SFist and other blogs under a false name and lying to reporters about the existence of his imaginary friend, John Nelson. Newsom, who just returned from 10 days in Switzerland, reportedly expressed his displeasure with Ragone, but downplayed the incident.
Apparently, both men think that's the end of this, but it isn't. I had an appointment with Ragone scheduled for 4 p.m. today, but he has pushed that back to tomorrow. I'll be curious what he has to say, and what "lessons" he's learned, as he obliquely told the Chron. He directly lied to me and other journalists, a lie that KGO-TV broadcast the other night. Ragone needs to issue a public apology, he needs to directly apologize to me and others, then he needs to explain how the incident and other recent offenses have changed him and what he intends to do to restore his damaged credibility. Until he does that, none of us should believe anything that we hear from the Mayor's Office.

By Steven T. Jones
Now comes word that Alex Tourk has resigned as the campaign manager for Newsom's reelection. For "personal reasons." Yeah right. Does this have something to do with Newsom standing by Ragone, again, just as he did when he let his old chief of staff Steve Kawa resign after a power struggle with Ragone? Or was it something that happened while Newsom was in the Swiss Alps? Or maybe it was actually "personal reasons" associated with some nasty and persistent rumors that have floated through City Hall? Who knows? Whatever it was, we'll all probably have to find out for ourselves rather than count on Newsom's people for the straight scoop.

By Tim Redmond

All I can say is, think of how all the people who invested all this time and money into Gavin Newsom, the politician, must feel.

The tawdry tale was bound to come out, and it's kind of sad; it really speaks to the guy's judgement.

by Amanda Witherell

Molly Ivins, the great political columnist, ever sharp with the pen and the wit, has passed away. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1999, and it got the best of her today. The left has lost a real trooper.