By G.W. Schulz

The absolute best (and darkest) moments in Rolling Stone contributor Matt Taibbi’s book on the 2004 presidential election are not when he attacks the contemptible political antics of the candidates themselves, but when he savagely launches mortar shells at the national press corps trailing along on the campaign planes.

His most memorable direct hit is leveled at the New York Post and its election coverage under the weighty tutelage of media mogul Rupert Murdoch in a single, brilliant paragraph:

“It’s always a little surprising to remember that the New York Post has a ‘Washington bureau chief’ filing ostensibly factual stories from the Hill about the movements of the president and other real, breathing government officials. The effect of reading these touchingly earnest impersonations of credible journalism is a little like watching Koko the gorilla play with a kitten or punch the ‘buttons’ on a toy telephone. My God, you think. It’s so human! But sooner or later Koko plugs her ears with her own turds again, and she’s back to being just another loveable ape.”

Our illustrious executive editor, Tim Redmond, may actually dislike our praise of Taibbi’s ferocious Post critique. Long-time Guardian readers familiar with the paper’s old design know Tim adores the Post’s screaming banner headlines and splashed them similarly across the Guardian’s former front-page template for years without shame.

By Steven T. Jones
With the Healthy Saturdays measure headed for an April 9 hearing by the Board of Supervisors' Land Use and Economic Development Committee, Mayor Gavin Newsom has decided to step in and try to broker a compromise. Mediating between the two sides will be his chief of staff and former labor negotiator Phil Ginsburg, who has asked Sup. Jake McGoldrick to delay the committee vote by a week to accommodate his planned vacation. McGoldrick agreed. Newsom had signaled his plans to veto the measure, which would close some Golden Gate Park roads to cars on Saturdays as well as Sundays, but swing vote Sup. Bevan Dufty might be willing to override the veto this year. Advocates on both sides had called for Newsom to get involved to avoid another fight at the ballot box -- where whoever loses was likely to try to take it. Some fear this is just a last minute stall tactic by a mayor who expects consensus on an inherently polarizing proposal. But press secretary Nathan Ballard said that's not the case, telling the Guardian: "The Mayor has asked Phil Ginsburg to try to broker a compromise in this matter. He has already had productive meetings with both sides. We've asked
Supervisor McGoldrick to delay the final committee vote until the negotiations are complete. The Mayor is cautiously optimistic that the parties will be able to reach a good result."

By Steven T. Jones
The Chronicle's Matier & Ross would have us believe that Critical Mass riders went nuts on Friday and started attacking a poor innocent family. I was on the ride and know how ridiculous that story was so I wrote Andy Ross (a colleague of mine on the City Desk NewsHour cable television program) the following e-mail. I'll let you know how he responds.

by Amanda Witherell

Did poo get washed into the bay or not? Mark Leno and Fiona Ma really want to know. They've written another letter to the National Park Service's Superintendent, Brian O'Neill, calling for an independent investigation, and essentially telling him his excuses and explanations hold no water.

Back in January, the two California State assembly members asked O'Neill to look into allegations that a sewage holding tank on Alcatraz Island overflowed and was hosed into the bay rather than wiped up properly.

O'Neill wrote back that an internal investigation had been done and all claims were false -- except according to our elected officials, his evidence doesn't support his claims. In addition, one of the whistleblowers who saw the spill, a National Parks Conservancy employer named Dan Cooke, has been fired, apparently for speaking up.

By Steven T. Jones
Despite finally getting the bicyclists' perspective into today's story, the Chronicle continues its misleading and irresponsible effort to demonize Critical Mass and bicyclists in general. And the result has been dozens of angry and menacing online posts by overentitled car drivers who threaten the lives of those opting for a more environmentally friendly transportation option.

Unlike the more reasonable Examiner account, the Chronicle seems to have lost all sense of proportion, with its reporters trying to push Mayor Gavin Newsom (who was also fairly measured in his reaction) into cracking down on Critical Mass. As I mentioned in my post yesterday, I sought a reaction from the Chron's Andy Ross, which I've now received and am posting below followed by more discussion.

by Amanda Witherell

Looks like Senator Dianne Feinstein has stepped down from her seat on the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee, where she's spent the last six years as chairperson and ranking member.

While serving on that committee, which is tasked with reviewing and supervising federal military contracts, her hubby Richard Blum was making millions of dollars on the same deals his wife was overseeing.

No statement or press release yet from Feinstein on why she quit, and the right-wing bloggers are going nutty for an investigation, perhaps to vindicate their champ, Dick Cheney, who made a pretty penny with Halliburton. What can we say: greed is a universal human ailment and war profiteering is certainly a non-partisan sport.

by Sarah Phelan

“What will everyone do now?” asked a fellow Guardian-ista, when freelance videojournalist and blogger Josh Wolf was released. She was referring to those who fought to get Wolf freed after the feds locked him up last summer. Don’t worry, I thought, the war over why Josh Wolf has been freed is about to begin.
Sure enough, war broke out that afternoon.

With Wolf set to speak on the steps of San Francisco City Hall on April 3, after 226 days inside, everyone was asking “So, what’s changed?” Had Wolf, tiring of prison food, thrown in the towel and told the feds everything they always wanted to know about anarchists? Or had the feds, weary of the fired US Attorney General scandal, decided it was time to score Brownie points in Nancy Pelosi’s home town by letting Wolf go, no questions asked?

Sup. Tom Ammiano, fresh from Giants opening game told the crowd, "Josh Wolf did what the Giants failed to do today: he hit a home run!"

By Steven T. Jones
Why is the Chronicle having such a hard time understanding this Critical Mass incident? In my televised discussion with four Chron reporters last night (City Desk NewsHour, Comcast Ch. 11, replaying tonight at 8:30 and Saturday and Sunday nights as well...sorry, not Internet availability) and in today's Chron story, they just can't seem to grasp the meaning of one key fact or smell-test their original version of the story. Here's the key fact, from today's story: "After finding herself in the middle of the ride, she said, she nervously made her way through the bicyclists, carefully watching them." Translation: she used her SUV to nudge her way through a group of bikes. That's not legal, it's not safe, and it's why the bicyclists became upset. Hell, she even admits that her car made contact with a bike, and still she kept driving.

2nd Anniversary flyer illustration by Jim Swanson

By Steven T. Jones
Why does attorney Jim Sutton seem to be involved in every major campaign finance scandal in San Francisco? In the latest, Sutton's firm reportedly advised a local motorcycle training company on how to allegedly launder money into a City College bond campaign (Sutton isn't mentioned in the story, but in a letter the company wrote to the Ethics Commission that the Chron featured on today's front page). Shouldn't the State Bar take an interest in this at some point?

By G.W. Schulz

There’s never a shortage of bitching over at the San Francisco Police Officers Association. And the best place to find it lying exposed, unshaven and clad in patent-leather stirrups without so much as a single blush is in the cop union’s monthly newsletter, the POA Journal.

As attorney Mark Schlosberg at the ACLU of Northern California will tell you, there’s no better place than the POA Journal for an honest assessment of what the SFPD’s rank and file is really thinking. And leading each edition of the Journal is a scribe from outspoken union president Gary Delagnes that's sometimes funny but mostly unsettling.

Without further ado, ladies and gentleman, welcome to another edition of “What’s the city’s cop union bitching about now?”

This past year actually treated the POA quite well, what with the state Supreme Court’s Copley decision sealing off police disciplinary records from public scrutiny, Berkeley losing a subsequent legal challenge to the ruling and the SFPD’s general success in slowing down the implementation of a program designed to track and flag lunatic cops.

By Steven T. Jones
Do people really praise a company for polluting the planet and local ecosystems, exploiting indigenous people and propping up corrupt regimes around the world, and making $17 billion in annual profits in the process? People do, and those people write for the business pages at the San Francisco Chronicle, which has just named Chevron its company of the year.

This is astonishing beyond words and surely a sign that the Chron doesn't hold anything close to San Francisco values, which extend far beyond just corporate bottom lines. Consider that Chevron is a company that helped get us into the disastrous war in Iraq. It is a company waging economic warfare against people around the world. It is a company that has gouged American consumers to reap record profits and spend them against the public will.
This is the best company in the Bay Area? It's closer to the worst.

By Steven T. Jones
Like a bad movie that gets turned into a worse sequel, actress Jennifer Siebel has returned to the pages of another Bay Area corporate daily for another vapid puff piece filled with lines that will make grown women groan.

But conspicuously missing from this profile of Mayor Gavin Newsom's girlfriend are gratuitous (and possibly libelous) shots that she took at her boyfriend's controversial former fling, Ruby Rippey-Tourk, sins that Siebel magnified with over-the-top comments she posted on the SFist. That incident earned the blog more than 600 comments on a single thread, and they today return to that comment-cow with a funny post. But aside from priceless quotes, such as "I grew up in a very beautiful, magical bubble," Siebel this time manages to avoid politics, character assassination, or, really, anything of substance. I suppose that's progress.

by Amanda Witherell

The ongoing saga at Alcatraz has finally caught the attention of Rep. Nancy Pelosi. While sewage spills and a fired whistleblower interested legislators in the State Assembly, it's labor practices and land use planning that have Pelosi concerned -- both of which have been issues since Alcatraz Cruises assumed control of the lucrative contract from Blue and Gold back in September.

photo courtesy of alcatrazunion.com

By G.W. Schulz

Investigative reporter Sy Hersh in an interview with Rolling Stone national correspondent Matt Taibi on what could be done to improve big media's tepid coverage of the Bush White House:

"You'd have to fire or execute ninety percent of the editors and executives. You'd actually have to start promoting people from the newsrooms to be editors who you didn't think you could control."

Sy Hersh looking murderous

Guardian staff writer G.W. Schulz in an open response letter to Hersh:

"Dude. Fuck yeah. You should be in a metal band. All this talk about executions."

By Tim Redmond

Casey Mills, the former managing editor of BeyondChron, has a great piece today that explains how too much of the "new urbanism" fails to consider affordable housing:

A disturbing trend already underway involves sustainability and ‘green’ advocates aligning with developers to promote density above all other considerations. Requiring developers to contribute towards affordable housing, for example, simply represents a roadblock to the more important overall goal – brining more housing downtown. If affordable housing becomes viewed as a necessary component of sustainability, not a roadblock to it, this sort of alliance would be impossible to maintain.

He's right: as market-rate housing in urban centers drives out poor people (and it does, always), those people have to live further and further from work. Since there will always be a need for less-well-paid service workers (not to mention the likes of bus drivers and teachers, who can't possibly afford any of the new housing we're building) in cities, gentrification and displacement are significant causes of sprawl.

And yet San Franicsco continues to build housing for people who don't live here (or even work here), driving out the people who do work here and promoting exactly the kind of sprawl everyone at City Hall is officially against. Insane.

By Steven T. Jones
The City Attorney's Office this morning released its investigation of payments the city made to Ruby Rippey-Tourk after she left her job as appointments secretary to Mayor Gavin Newsom, with whom she had an illicit affair, to enter substance abuse treatment. The report found no wrongdoing by any city officials and indicates Rippey-Tourk can keep the $10,000-plus that she received. But it also highlights the special treatment that Rippey-Tourk received and notes that investigators were hindered by her refusal to waive medical privacy rules.

By Sarah Phelan
Last week, a judge granted four unions--The S.F. Labor Council, SEIU Local 1021, SEIU United Healthcare Workers West and Unite Here Local 2—an intervention in the suit that Golden Gate Restaurant Association, a non-profit trade association, has brought against the City and County in the matter of the soon-to-be implemented San Francisco Health Care Security Ordinance.
GGRA is arguing that the mandatory aspect of this local ordinance is preempted by federal law.
Specifically, GGRA’s beef is with the part of the ordinance that requires employers with 20 employees or more to spend a minimum amount per hour worked to provide health care benefits. Employers would also have to maintain records of health care benefit spending, record and report such spending and make records available for inspection. These mandatory requirements won’t be implemented until January 2008, but the City and County will start coverage of unemployed (and therefore uninsured) San Francisco residents, as of July 1, 2007.

By Sarah Phelan
Lennar has been giving contractors a choice between a rock or a hard place: reduce your unpaid invoices by up to 20 percent—or be excludedfrom bidding work for a minimum of six months. Nice, real nice.

Marc McGuire, a tile contractor from San Diego, and CALPASC’s Brad Diede on CNBC yesterday to discuss accusations that Lennar is extorting contractors

Three top Lennar executives sent these demands to contractors in Southern California in a letter dated January 16, 2007. So far, no similar letters have emerged locally, but that doesn’t mean similar demands haven’t been happening here, warns Brad Diede. Diede is executive VP of the Sacramento-based California Professional Association of Specialty Contractors, which represents 500 trade contractors and construction suppliers nationwide.

Outraged, Diede fired off a letter to Attorney General Jerry Brown, in which he wrote,
“We believe this potentially criminal act is a flagrant example of the abuses of power builders exercise over trade contractors in the State of California.”

But so far, Lennar has not been found guilty of civil or criminal violations in this case.

By Steven T. Jones
Mark Leno lost the debate, but won the vote, showing that Carole Migden has some work to do if she's going to keep her Senate seat. The takeaway here is that charm and gravitas are not good substitutes for the attentiveness to constituents and diligent relationship building that have been Leno's strong suits, particularly in the last couple years. The two candidates squared off in front of the San Francisco Young Democrats for their first debate last night, and Leno initially appeared tentative, apologetic, and inarticulate, almost as if he was scared of Migden. He started off trying to explain why he was taking on a fellow Democrat in a primary challenge and could only mumble some vague appeal to challenging the status quo. Then Migden introduced herself, "Hello, my name is Carole Migden and I'm the status quo," before going on to sound as strong, clear, and charming as I've ever seen her, describing herself as "a woman with a lot of gumption and a lot of tenacity." Her approach seemed to put Leno back on his heels even more, as he offered a bad joke that fell flat and descended into wonky details before finding his form late in the debate. But it didn't seem to matter. Despite Migden's efforts to call in the votes -- during which she likely learned the lesson that she can't count on as much support as she assumed she had -- Leno had this endorsement won before either of them started talking.

By Tim Redmond

You've seen the late-night cable-TV ads. You've seen the drag queens portraying him on Halloween in the Castro. He fixes my teeth (well, one of his associates does, but I've met The Man.) And now Beth Spotswood wants him to run for mayor!.

I love her candidates list: Brian Boitano, Cheech Marin ("you know what the mayor's office is missing? A bong"), and -- of course -- George Clooney ("he's already broken up with Jennifer Siebel.") But I'm voting for Dr. Jang.

By Steven T. Jones
How Weird Street Faire's fate got even worse since my last post, with the San Francisco cops now saying the organizers need to cough up $23,833 in fees, to be paid before the May 6 event. What is this, a shakedown? Somebody call a cop. Or maybe someone at City Hall should call off the cops.

Unfortunately, the city's punitive approach to its most beloved street fairs and festivals only got worse last night when Recreation and Park Department staff convened members of the Outdoor Events Coalition to say they're recommending substantially increased special event fees, so big that events like Bay to Breakers, Love Fest and other events could cease to exist. Rec and Park, an increasingly incompetent department that has bungled its way into a $2 million budget deficit, say they need big bucks to cover their costs and wipe out the red ink. Their proposal calls for charging $50,000 to use the Golden Gate Park polo field, $25,000 for Civic Center Plaza, and $12,000 for Mission Dolores Park. And on top of all this, the city has banned booze from the Haight Ashbury Street Faire of all places. Last year, we warned that fun in the city was under siege. Now it's starting to look comatose.

Pulitzers announced. Weeklies still in the game.

Joe Pulitzer

By G.W. Schulz

Dean Singleton is fuckin' stoked! Check him out below! That's him on the right there. He's the CEO of MediaNews Group, beloved by laid off reporters and editors everywhere, some who adore him so much, they throw empty beer cans at him.

Dean Singleton (right) with dreamy blue eyes
and conservative red tie. Tighten that knot, Dean!

If you owned as many newspapers as this guy does and flew around the country in your own private jet to deal with each one, you'd probably be able to hammer out a slightly bigger smile than this, huh? Dean's spicing things up at MediaNews Group with a brand spankin' new Web site and a recent office move across town to swankier digs in Denver, where the company has long been based.

So who's that guy on the left there? That's Joseph J. Lodovic IV, president of MediaNews. He earned a fat $1 million bonus last summer after the Hearst Corp., owner of the San Francisco Chronicle, gave MediaNews nearly $300 million to complete its big local newspaper buyouts that included the San Jose Mercury News and the Contra Costa Times. Joe's muggin' big 'cause he knows he'll have his own private plane soon enough!

By Tim Redmond

Sad news. For months now, all of us in the neighborhood have enjoyed watching a pair of Great Horned owls, who had made their home in a tree on Bernal Hill. They were a reminder that amazing bits of nature can appear in this crowded city; we all hoped they were a nesting pair, and that we'd see owlets this summer.

But alas, one of the owls was found dead last week. Nobody knows why; they seemed to be quite happy eating mice, voles and snakes on the hill. I hope it wasn't some sort of pesticide poisoning, which would be a different kind of reminder indeed.