By Steven T. Jones
California's proposed high-speed rail project is finally getting some much needed attention, which is the only thing that will overcome Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's dishonest and secretive campaign to kill it.

The Democratic Party has made the project a top legislative priority (see my story on that in tomorrow's paper), the LA Times is publicizing it, and the Fog City Journal got this quote on the subject from Mayor Gavin Newsom: "A bond has been delayed for too many years. It's time to look forward to high-speed rail. In fact I'll be doing a press conference with Senator Kopp on it very shortly. We're blessed to have Senator Kopp to head this authority to really step it up because, definitely, it's absolutely essential. You watch the rest of the world, they've been doing that kind of system for decades and here we are still flying on Southwest, Jet Blue and United. It makes no sense between northern and southern California and it'll be a big part of solving a lot of the infrastructure and transportation challenges."
He's absolutely right. And now is the time to make sure Arnold and the more cowardly members of the Legislature don't kill this important project.

By Sarah Phelan

Somehow I assumed public transit would remain free for a week, after Sunday's meltdown. Silly me.
Never mind headlines about yesterday's commute, warning that "Monday was easy--but that won't last."
Today, we're back to paying for ferries, buses and BART--a move that will likely get commuters back into their car--and into traffic jams. Makes perfect (non) sense to me. Either way, I'm gonna keep on enjoying the brilliance of not driving, which feels a bit like this photo of traffic on the Bay Bridge, which is titled the "Traffic jam I wasn't in."

Steven T. Jones
There's been much fretting among Mayor Gavin Newsom's critics that no serious candidate has yet stepped forward to challenge him. But that's not to nobody is challenging him. In fact, according the Elections Department, a baker's dozen of San Franciscans have filed for a potential run (the list won't be finalized until August). They are Cesar Ascarrunz, Rodney Hauge, Lonnie Holmes, Kenneth Kahn, Grasshopper Kaplan, Robert McCullough, Matthew Mengarelli, David Merlin, Antonio Mims, Malinka Moye, Robert Myers, Frederick Renz, and Ahimsa Porter Sumchai. None are exactly household names. The only one I know is Sumchai, whose base is basically Bayview Hunters Point lefties. But I had a chance this afternoon to chat with the latest mayoral candidate: David Merlin.

By Paula Connelly

When I saw that it was rainy this morning at 8:00AM I decided to take the 48 Quintara line bus rather than walk, as I usually do. After waiting just shy of an hour for the bus, two arrived at the same time and half way through the ride the less crowded one reached a spontaneous end-of-the-line. When my bus driver told me that I should run if I want to catch the first bus, I explained why that was bothersome. She told me, "Get a car." Et tu, bus driver?? I have been a city girl my whole life, never had a car, and don't plan on getting one.
After the recent i880 accident, Muni should not only be encouraging people to ride, they should be demonstrating all the viability of the option to take public transportation. That's just bad marketing. It took me twice as long to get to work as it would had I walked. That's an hour and a half commute for 2.7 miles. When dealing with any large, diverse group of people, you can expect complications. But just about once a month, the frequency with which I take public transportation to work, my fervor for walking is reaffirmed by a similar experience. I can't trust Muni when even it's employees have lost faith in it's reliability. Wet socks are a bargain for my sanity.

By Steven T. Jones
As the Republican presidential candidates debate one another tonight (Thursday), they're all likely to try to position themselves as "Reagan conservatives," as distinguished from the corrupt and incompetent conservatism of George W. Bush. Republican political operatives have worked hard to transform Ronald Reagan into a mythically important figure that brought conservatism into the political mainstream and saved the country from the commies. More recently, they have worked to de-link conservatism from the failed Bush presidency, even though W has pushed more consistently conservative policies than the hallowed Reagan.

Enter Campaign for America's Future, which has kicked off its The Big Con project to argue that conservatism has failed in the U.S. In a conference call with reporters this morning, the campaign laid out its strategy for convincing Americans that they've been fooled and lied to and that the most serious problems facing the country are caused by conservatism.

By Tim Redmond

Or even a coupla pretty tame crotch shots. Check out the anchor having a laughing fit.

By Sarah Phelan

When I saw David Arquette’s The Tripper at the Santa Cruz Film Festival, I was a tad grossed out.
The screening, which follows the classic Slasher Movie format, occurred three days after the Virginia Tech massacre, and I wasn’t in the mood for carnage.
Oddly, the usually non-violent Santa Cruz crowd kept cheering through scenes in which hippies came to violent ends. I was confused. Santa Cruz must have changed a lot, I thought, since last I was here.
Afterwards, during the Q & A session, things began to make sense. Many audience members were extras in the film, which was shot in the trippy, redwood-ringed Santa Cruz mountains, hence their mirthful excitement at seeing themselves being "hacked up".
Director David Arquette, who features in the film as a hippie-hating redneck, was on hand (dressed to the nines in a white cowboy outfit, with “the Tripper” shaved into the back of his head) to answer questions, which began with someone questioning whether all the chainsawing and ax-throwing in The Tripper was really necessary.
But as Arquette quickly pointed out, the only “real violence” in the film occurred in the opening sequences, and this real blood was thanks to the blood-thirsty policies if Ronald Reagan, who happens to play a recurring and very disturbing role in the rest of the film, which, while gory, is entirely fictional.
Ohhhh. I get it. It was a SATIRE!
But what excuse do the Republican presidential candidates have for invoking Reagan and trying to con this country yet again?
Meanwhile, Arquette's Tripper went onto win the Santa Cruz Film Fest's Best Feature Narrative award.

The Audience has spoken! Now let's hope the rest of the United States gets the bloody point about what Reaganism really means.

By Tim Redmond

Theresa Sparks, a transgender activist who was honored as Woman of the Year by the state Assembly, called today to tell me she's going to run for president of the Police Commission, challenging former City Attorney Louise Renne, who currently holds the job and shows no signs of wanting to step down.

I suspect Sparks will get at least a couple of votes from the more progressive side of the panel, including David Campos and maybe Petra DeJesus. That would leave Joe Vernonese, who is about to announce he's running for state Senate, as the swing vote.

Should be a fascinating meeting May 9th.

By Steven T. Jones
San Franciscans threw an epic dance party on the streets of SOMA yesterday, one that was unfortunately cut down in its prime by official San Francisco. The How Weird Street Faire drew about 10,000 costumed fun-seekers to bop to some of the city's best DJs and soak in the warm sunshine. It was quintessential San Francisco, the kind of event that makes the city what it is, and organizers are to be commended for throwing a raucous but remarkably self-policing and harmonious party.

Photo from www.fogcityjournal.com.

But then, at 6 p.m., it suddenly ended. The city arbitrarily imposed an earlier than usual ending and won't let the event return to this neighborhood in future years, despite its success and popularity. Soon, the cops started sweeping the streets to kick the crowds out of this public place, often rudely. Capt. Denis O'Leary -- the station commander who has given How Weird such a hard time -- was even personally pushing people out and telling attendees, "Time to go, people want their neighborhood back."
Maybe, but 10,000 people want the How Weird Street Faire back and they want the city to stop placing so much emphasis on the concerns of a few sourpuss NIMBYs.

By Tim Redmond

I just thought I was asking a presidential candidate an obvious question, but my query to John Edwards about taxes -- and his hardly radical answer -- has gotten the conservatives all in a wad.

The San Diego Union even devoted an entire editorial to denouncing Edwards. My friends at San Diego City Beat asked me to respond; you can see my comments here.

By Sarah Phelan

This map shows just how huge the redevelopment project ( the yellow area) in Bayview Hunters Point has grown.

San Francisco Superior Court Judge Patrick Mahoney heard arguments in the Bayview Hunters Point redevelopment referendum case—then told both sides to file briefs more focused on the narrower question: namely, which documents should signature gatherers have attached to their petitions last summer, as they tried to put the Redevelopment Agency’s plan for Bayview Hunters Point to a public vote?

Last summer, petitioners—carrying a copy of a newly passed ordinance in which the Board of Supervisors authorized the redevelopment of 14,000 acres in BVHP—gathered more than 30,000 signatures—and therefore believed that they had succeeded in their quest to put the project to a vote on the November 2006 ballot.

By Sarah Phelan

Slow is how I was feeling in all this heat, as I drove towards the Bay Bridge, direction San Francisco, and maybe it was because I was driving slowly, too, that I saw the huge illuminated "Don't Trash California" sign that's been newly installed on the approach to the toll gates.
Brought to us by Toll Roads, an Orange County and SoCal-based organization that has partnered with Caltrans, the sign is obviously intended to stop people trashing our state (at least physically, if not verbally).
Nice touch, I thought, as the driver in front of me tapped cigarette ash out of his window, and a plastic bag flew across six lanes of freeway traffic. It's time people stopped dumping shit out of car windows. Maybe if they could see where their shit ends up, they'd give more of a shit about their shit.Maybe we need Al Gore to make another documentary, following the path of a fast food wrapper from your car and into someone else's lneighborhoods and into the waterways that lead to the giant silver mobius that is the World's Ocean.
Or maybe we could just use our friggin' imaginations. The kids in West Oakland WON'T enjoy finding your beer can in their back yard. Nor will the sea lions at Pier 39. And it won't help feed the starving polar bears.
And if the California Department of Transportation, Division of Maintenance, didn't have to spend more than $40 million just to clean up litter on freeways and highways, maybe they'd have more dough for fixing the pot holes that drivers are always complaining about.

By Steven T. Jones
After being called out by the Guardian as the main obstacle to building a high-speed rail system in California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wrote an op-ed in the Fresno Bee over the weekend claiming to enthusiastically support the project. That's good news and a sign that project supporters are making progress. Unfortunately, the op-ed continues the governor's deceptive approach to the issue as it omits inconvenient facts and makes false claims.

By Tim Redmond

Rep. Nancy Pelosi is going to announce an energy independence plan by July 4.

Gee: I wonder if she'll include a gas tax, which even Business Week thinks is a smart move.

By Steven T. Jones
The New York Times has noted Burning Man's burgeoning environmental activism, which is building to a head for the Green Man themed event this August. Most talking heads in the NYT piece -- as well as the green push itself -- will already be familiar to regular Guardian readers.

Artist rendering of the Man's green platform from www.burningman.com.

But the article reminds me that I'm long overdue to get back onto the Burning Man beat and start writing about some of the wonderful environmental projects now underway around town, including Jim Mason's gasification project (in which he turns coffee grounds and other garbage into fuel), something he has successfully applied to Chicken John's truck and will be turning into a giant garbage-eating slug called Mechabolic with the help of artist Michael Christian (whose Flock piece was displayed in Civic Center Plaza in 2005). So there's that, the homegrown Cooling Man project, Tom Price's manic push to green the burn, and lots of other exciting projects that are being birthed here and will make an appearance on the playa before taking over the world. Stay tuned.

by Amanda Witherell

I don't know how you were feeling after you saw Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, but my first thought was, "Wow, I'm definitely not having children. The year 2050 is going to suck for them."

Some Brits agree.

By G.W. Schulz

Remember how when Nancy Pelosi ascended to the speakership of the House, you were all proud because it happened in your lifetime? “A woman has come mightily close to the presidency,” you told yourself. “Slowly but surely, we’ll get over this whole ‘women in positions of power scare the living shit out of us, but we’re afraid to admit it’ thing.’”

But remember, too, how that cynical voice inside of you also said “Yeah, sure, it happened in my lifetime, but Pelosi is as cold and calculating as every other creep inside the beltway. How much of this should I be proud of?”

You have something else to be proud of now with a little less cynicism, and Washington is a long way from achieving what your city has.

A transgendered woman with a strong head for reform has taken over the top seat at the San Francisco Police Commission. Her name is Theresa Sparks. You may know her as CEO of Good Vibrations, the sex shop. Hell yeah.

By Steven T. Jones
Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean fired up the party faithful during a fundraiser at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco last night, displaying the passionate oratory that inspired the grassroots but prompted the mainstream media to turn on him during his run for president in 2004.

File photo from the Guardian of London

He said the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994 started "a national nightmare," but with the Democrats retaking Congress in November, "we are on the way back." He implored party activists that the power to fundamentally transform the country is in their hands. "It is all about grassroots and knocking on doors," Dean said. "The 30-second ads are not going to cut it anymore."
Yet for all his rhetoric about the superiority of Democratic Party values -- such as environmentalism and opposition to poverty and war -- there was something unsettlingly simplistic in Dean's tendency to label Democrats good and Republicans bad.

By Steven T. Jones
Just as I was writing about wanting to get back into covering the fantastic alternative energy creations now being developed by Burning Man artists, Berkeley officials were in the process of shutting down an important hub for this work. The Shipyard is a live-work industrial arts space just off Ashby Avenue built from steel shipping containers, which city officials apparently don't think is safe, so they've ordered the artists out and the place shut down immediately, with owner Jim Mason risking $2500 per day fines until he can get out. "It's a major blow to the underground arts community," Burning Man's environmental director Tom Price told me this morning. Even worse, it's a blow to Mason's main project for the year, Mechabolic, a gasification system that turns garbage into usable energy without producing carbon or greenhouse gases, the very thing that Berkeley officials claim to support. We're just diving into this developing story now, so check back for the complete story next week. Or if you want to help them break down many years of funky hard work, stop by the shop at 1010 Murray Street this weekend.

By Tim Redmond

The mayor's office is still mum on this, but we've heard today from several good sources that Mayor Gavin Newsom is planning to veto Sup. Chris Daly's $28 million affordable housing package.

This after the mayor made a big deal of saying he wants to spend money helping children and families.

The mayor, our sources say, has also indicated that if the board overrides his veto, he will simply refuse to spend the money.

None of this will go over well with the supervisors, particularly Daly, who chairs the Budget Committee and thus will be overseeing Newsom's budget.

By Tim Redmond

The Chronicle was a day late with the news of what went on at the Police Commission Wednesday night, and its story today was stunning in how it missed the point. Is it not at all worthy of mention that, for the first time in the history of the United States, a transgender person became president of a big-city police commission?

No, apparently not for the Chron, which instead refered to new president Theresa Sparks as "chief executive officer of sex-toy retailer Good Vibrations." The person who she defeated for the top job, Joe Marshall, was referred to as "a nationwide expert on juvenile justice."

No mention in this story of Sparks rather remarkable life and her qualifications for the job. (That info couldn't have been too hard to find; it was right in the Chron's own archives.)

My opinion? Outgoing president Louise Renne has been trying to marginalize Sparks and undermine her authority before she can even get started. Robert Haaland has a nice analysis in Leftinsf.

Full disclosure: My domestic partner is acting director of the Office of Citizen Complaints, which means she works for the Police Commission.

By Tim Redmond

So Rep. Jerry McNerny, who ran against Richard Pombo and told us all he was against the war, voted against withdrawing from Iraq. This has created a fascinating discussion on Calitics, which shows both how seriously the bloggers take their politics -- and how forums like this have become THE place for political discussions of this sort.

And in the end, this is pretty fucking brilliant.

By Tim Redmond

Supervisor Chris Daly is calling for a convention June 2nd to nominate a progressive candidate for mayor. It's a nice idea, and I'm all for it -- except that it would be a pretty major bust if we didn't have anyone prepared to acutally run for mayor at that point.

So the convention forces the left to get its act together and sets a deadline for someone to come forward and agree to be the nominee. At this point, I'm seeing Ross Mirkarimi and Daly as the only two viable options, and I'm not yet entirely sure either one of them wants to do it. If Matt Gonzalez is going to run, it won't be at this convention; he's nowhere near ready to announce anything yet, and he tells me the only way he'd get in the race is later on, if there's no viable candidate. (If either Daly or Mirkarimi is in the race, he won't run at all.)

Paul Hogarth at BeyondChron argues that perhaps we shouldn't bother at all; Newsom hasn't been able to do all that much damage since he's so weak, and every now and then he does something decent, so

"progressives should consider what part of their issue-based agenda is really getting stalled. It’s frustrating to have a Mayor who won’t even attend Question Time after the voters approved it, but the real question is whether progressives are better off letting Newsom be a lame duck for the next five years – than awakening a vindictive Mayor who would be more formidable after his re-election."

I think there's just too much coming up in the next four years (including the wholesale rezoning of the eastern neighborhoos, which is the last battle for blue-collar jobs and affordable housing in San Francisco) to let Newsom win without a fight. We might as well get on with it.

(Edwards in Allendale, S.C. 4/26/07 Photo by Rachel Feierman.)

By Tim Redmond

I've been dubious all along of a candidate who wasn't exactly a left-wing leader when he was in the U.S. Senate. But these days he's at least willing to talk about taxing the very rich. And I just read an interesting diary on daily kos that looks at his record in some depth. Granted, it's by an out-front Edwards supporter, but it's worth a read.

By Tim Redmond

Quite the hearing yesterday on the mayor's wi-fi plan. Newsom has a lot riding on this, and he got out his troops to insist that even slow wi-fi is better than no wi-fi in addressing the digital divide.

I have a real problem with turning over a crucial part of the city's future infrastructure to private companies. But I think it's also worth noting that this probably won't be any effective answer to the digital divide. Sasha at LeftinSF quotes a fascinating Business Week article showing that in Anaheim, the much-touted wi-fi system doesn't work very well at all. In a lot of palces, you can't get any signal.

Listen: I love wi-fi. My whole house is abuzz with a wireless cloud, thanks to a cable modem and few hundred dollars worth of routers, repeaters and cables. The internal wi-fi card that came with my Toshiba laptop didn't satisfy me, so I went out and bought a fancy external one. And still, I can't always sit on my couch and watch golf on TV while I read my email. Sometimes, the reception is slow and spotty.

San Francisco International Airport is supposedly set up for wi-fi everwhere; it's a T-Mobile system with a high-speed connection that costs $6 an hour. It's a far higher quality product than what Google/Earthlink is offering San Francisco -- and at lest 50 percent of the time, I can't get it to work.

Now imagine the low-income person in the Tenderloin or in Hunters Point public housing with a cheap laptop that has a cheap internal wi-fi card. If this person is, say, a student looking to do homework in his or her bedroom, and that bedroom is more than 10 or 20 feet from the street, and the walls are concrete or brick (hello?) then the free wi-fi, which is already way slow, isn't going to work at all.

You want reliable universal broadband, the way to do it is run fiber under the streets.

Here's who Newsom's plan will work well for: Business people and the cafe crowd who want to sit on park benches in Union Square or at a table outside a Starbucks and surf the net. They'll also be able to pay the money for a faster connection.

And let's remember: These are Gavin Newsom's real constituents.

By Tim Redmond

Back in the early 1980s, after Sister Boom Boom ran for supervisor on the "nun of the above" ticket, Jerry Falwell sent out a mass mailing to raise money for the Moral Majority featuring the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. The letter included a Gay Pride photo and a description of my favorite nuns as a deep threat to the moral fiber of America.

I did a story about it, and Sister Sadie Sadie the Rabbi Lady called me to get a copy of the letter and the photo, which the sisters took to Melvin Belli, the famous tort lawyer, who then sued Falwell for misappropriation of their images. I don't know where the suit went in the end, but the whole thing made for a lot of fun stories -- because back then, frankly, Falwell was the Devil Incarnate.

You don't hear as much about him anymore, but now that he's dead, it's worth remembering that this guy was a key player in the birth of the religious right, the election of Ronald Reagan, and the beginnings of a movement of intolerance and hatred that still plagues us today.

I saw him debate Larry Flynt on Nightline once, shortly after Falwell sued Flynt for a parody ad in Hustler suggesting that the televangelist had sex with his mother in an outhouse. Falwell was sputtering about how horrible it was to even suggest such a thing; Flynt laughed and said:

"You forgot to tell em, Jerry, that you had to kick the goat out of the outhouse first."

Falwell's suit went all the way to the US Supreme Court, and wound up in a stunning victory for the First Amendment; the court ruled that obvious parodies of public figures can't be grounds for libel or defamation suits. That decision was key to the Guardian's victory in a libel suit brought by a local landlord, Adam Sparks, who we had accused in a parody issue of using electroshock treatment on his tenants.

So we've had some history with the prick. And with all due respect to the dear departed, I can't say I'm sorry he's finally out of the way.

NOTE: There will be quite a rally at 5 pm on 18th and Castro to speak out against Falwell's legacy.

By Steven T. Jones
We all hate to speak ill of the dead, but my reaction to the news that Rev. Jerry Falwell have died was: Whoopee!!! Apparently, I'm not alone in wanting to dance on this hatemonger's grave. Check of the comments to the NYT blog. My favorite was "bury him deep."

By Sarah Phelan

Mayor Gavin Newsom’s tactics to push through a Google Earthlink Wifi franchise are beginning to look a lot like Bush’s efforts to invade Iraq: only this time the invasion is of Internet privacy, the big lie is that the Google Earthlink deal will bridge the digital divide, and critics of the deal are being smeared as racists.

Nothing of course could be further from the truth behind why the Board has been questioning Newsom's Google-Earthlink deal for years, but trying getting that message through when the Mayor’s PR machine is set on a deafening pre-election spin cycle of false messaging.

By Steven T. Jones
Toward the end of Christopher Hitchens' wonderfully caustic anti-tribute to Jerry Falwell on Slate today, he chides the Democratic Party for trying to follow the Republican Party in pandering to the religionists. That's a very real fear that has the potential to do immense damage to this country and its constitutional separation of religion from government.

Image from Sunday's New York Times Review of Books

Just last week, during the Democratic Party fundraiser in San Francisco on which I reported, both national party chair Howard Dean and state party chair Art Torres talked about reaching out to churchgoers. "We believe God is not a Democrat or a Republican. He's a social progressive," Torres said. It was a funny line that broke up the room of party faithful, but it has some serious implications.

By Steven T. Jones
The Examiner's Ken Garcia just loves to sneer at progressives and puff up Mayor Gavin Newsom, as he did again yesterday. In fact, this seems to be Garcia's sole raison d'etre. Yet the problem with Garcia disguising his mayoral flackery as independent journalism is that some ill-informed readers might actually believe what he has to say, no matter no bogus his points or flawed his logic.

By Sarah Phelan

In his time, City Attorney Dennis Herrera has been accused of paying too much attention to dress codes, cuff links and time schedules. But on Friday, members of the AIDS/LifeCycle Riders team in his office, along with anyone who has contributed to their 545-mile Trek to Los Angeles fundraising efforts will be allowed to wear jeans. Or, to quote Herrara's legalese, they will be given "a first-ever, one-day-only 'dress code dispensation'".
The blue jeans butt off begins with a 10:00 a.m. photo op on the City Hall steps to celebrate the ten riders who are representing Herrera's the office in the 545-mile ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles, June 3-9, and the idea is to raise money and awareness for the cause, but you know you're wondering, er, what kind of jeans Chief Trial Deputy Joanne Hoeper, and her husband, Steve Tomich, ; Deputy City Attorneys Kimberly Bliss, Ronald Flynn (and his partner, Neal Schwartz), Andrew Gschwind, John Kennedy, Kathryn Luhe and Kristine Poplawski; and Investigator Anne Taupier will be wearing. And, of course, who has the best jeans butt. Or is it illegal to say things like that about city attorneys?

By Sarah Phelan

My 20-year-old son called me on Mother’s Day. He could only talk for a minute, because he was calling from a National Guard camp, where he’s training before deploying to Iraq, and all the other soldiers-in-training wanted a turn talking to their moms and families, too.Afterwards I choked up. I’ve been opposed to invading Iraq, ever since Bush began banging the anti-Saddam war drums in November 2001, so it’s hard to see my son volunteer at this time in history. I worry about what will happen once my son gets to Iraq, but I can’t stop him from making his own decisions.
What I can stop is Bush from getting away with bloody murder. We all know that his administration spun up a bunch of lies to invade Iraq in March 2003. We all found out the hard way that it was easier for Bush to tell these lies than it was for us to debunk them, especially once US troops were on the ground. Since then we’ve all witnessed how ruthless the Bush regime has been when it comes to smearing those who have challenged their lies. And no one wants to be accused of not supporting the troops.
But giving Bush more money for his war in Iraq is not supporting the troops. It’s supporting the Bush lie. I don’t blame America that my son signed up, but I will blame myself, if I don’t try to air the truth about Bush’s war. And if my son, who is Canadian, is prepared to fight for this country, Americans should be prepared to defend their Constitution, which has been under constant attack since Bush and his cronies came to power. So, don't tell me there's nothing you can do. Support the troops, bring them home. Defend America, defend the Constitution. It's in your hands.

By Steven T. Jones
Last night's San Francisco Tomorrow 37th annual dinner on Fisherman's Wharf offered a who's who list of environmentally engaged political leaders and activists -- a testament to the important role this venerable organization has played in creating the San Francisco of today (full disclosure: my sweetie, Alix Rosenthal, recently joined the SFT board).

Supervisors Chris Daly, Aaron Peskin, and Tom Ammiano all showed up, as did Sen. Carole Migden, Assessor Phil Ting, and Democratic Party stalwart Jane Morrison. Activists being honored by the group were filmmaker Judy Irving (who made "Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill" and other films focus on SF urban environment), recycling scold and innovator Denise D'Anne, and Amy Meyer and Dr. Edgar Wayburn, who have worked for more than 30 years to create the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

Yet to me, the most interesting award and resulting speeches were for the special award that Ammiano received for creating a universal health care program for the city, in the process braving aggressive attacks by downtown and finally winning over Mayor Gavin Newsom.

By Steven T. Jones
The San Francisco Chronicle is planning to lay off about a quarter of its editorial staff -- 20 managers and 80 rank-and-file journalists -- in the next two weeks, according to sources at the paper. Exactly how the cuts will go down and who will be let go is still being worked out by Hearst Corporation in consultation with the union, creating serious anxiety in the newsroom, even though they were told in March that this might be coming. Sources say their union contract requires a two-week notification for staff reductions, so by the end of the month there could be substantially less news gathering going on in the Bay Area and 100 media professionals wondering what's next. It's a sad time for journalism in the U.S.

Media Workers Guild logo

Me and Newsom at last year's Bike to Work Day
By Steven T. Jones
San Franciscans pedaled past an important milestone during yesterday's Bike to Work Day: on the morning commute along Market Street, bicycles outnumbered cars for the first time. Traffic engineers counted 647 cyclists riding eastbound on Market near Van Ness from 8-9 a.m., or 54 percent of the total traffic. That number was also a 27 percent increase over last year's bike tally. Bike advocates were thrilled with the turnout and further elated when Mayor Gavin Newsom, fresh off his ride to City Hall, announced his Bike SF 2010 Milestones. He promised to shepherd the bike plan to completion next year and ensure it studies 50 projects, including some key missing links in the current network. And to reach the plan's goal of 10 percent of all vehicle trips being by bike by 2010, he promised to create 20 new bike lanes by then, reduce bike collision injuries by 50 percent, and to actively support so-called LOS reform, which could exempt many new bike projects from needing detailed environmental studies. It was a big day for bicycling and great first step to making San Francisco the greenest big city in the country.

By Tim Redmond

The good news -- and it's very good news -- is that the East Bay Express is no longer a member of the Village Voice Media chain that owns the SF Weekly. I'm a day late with this news; it's taken me a bit to process, because our ad director (and my good friend) Jody Colley has left the Guardian to go work with the new ownership. But most of the reports have been upbeat, emphasizing that Express editor Steve Buell and his partners, Hal Brody, Kelly Vance and Bradley Zeve have done a very unsual thing. They've taken a chain paper and made it an independent.

And although none of the principals are talking about the price, I think they got it pretty cheap. In essence, the big, bad VVM couldn't make it in the East Bay, and was forced to bail.

Of course, it's going to take a while to disentangle the VVM connections. The Express was very much a cog in the borg machine: The website was designed and run by VVM. The movie reviews came from VVM. The accounting and systems were all handled through VVM. And -- perhaps most important -- the ad sales were closely linked to the SF Weekly.

In fact, the Weekly's ad materials these days all cite the circulation not of the SF paper but of the combined Weekly and Express, and for a lot of accounts, buying an ad in the Weekly meant a free one (or heavily discounted one) in the Express. So the two were almost like an old-fashioned joint operating agreement. They even ran the same cover story a few months ago.

I suspect on the sales side, that won't change immediately. There are contracts and deal and money is involved, so I expect the nonsense will continue for a bit. But in the end, I hope and believe the Express will once again be a community-based and community-serving paper. And I wish them all the luck in the world.

By Tim Redmond

I'm not going to jump to any conclusions here; I'm an innocent-until-proven-guilty kind of guy. But I will say that there's some very funky looking stuff in the daily papers right now about Sup. Jew. The Chron had the basics in its first-day story, but raised more questions than it answered, especially around the fact that Jew doesn't seem to be living in the house that he owns in the Sunset. The Sunday Chron story follows that up a bit, exploring the fact that Jew's wife and daughter apparently live in Burlingame.

But the Examiner had the most juicy bit of the scoop, something that somehow got left out the the Chron story (and now is not, apparently, on the Ex website, or at least I couldn't find it.)

Here's the Ex:

"Jew said the storeowners [who needed help with permits] paid $40,000 for [consulting] services, half of which ended up in his safe and which, he said, he planned to spend on community needs in his district, including playgrounds. Jew said FBI agents Friday confiscated the $20,000. He did not elaborate on how the money came to be in his safe."

Whoa. $20,000 in cash in his safe, and he "did not elaborate" on it. That's a question I would have pushed a bit more if I were the Ex reporter on that story, but it's too late now: Jew has a lawyer, and won't be making any more comments.

But we do know the FBI search warrent mentioned that the agents were looking for cash, and had a long list of currency serial numbers.

So let's see if I've got this right: Jew sends some constituents to a consultant, the constitutents pay him -- not the consultant -- $40,000 cash, and $20,000 ends up in his safe. If that's true -- and again, I'm basing this on one Examiner story that seems to have vanished from the web (the paper is now using a brief AP report on its site) -- it sure looks bad.

And to answer the question Brian poses at Calitics -- if Jew was forced to resign over this, who would replace him? -- that's easy. The mayor gets the appointment, and it will be Newsom's buddy, Doug Chan.

Guardian photo of Ed Jew by Charles Russo
By Steven T. Jones
The Examiner today repeats their big scoop in the FBI raid of Sup. Ed Jew's office: that agents found $20,000 in his safe that had come from a constituent seeking help with regulatory issues. This is the real story, which the Chron has missed as they chase the small potatoes allegation that he doesn't regularly sleep in his house in the district.
"The men paid $40,000 for the consultant’s services, Jew said, $20,000 of which ended up in Jew’s safe. He did not elaborate on how the money got into his safe, but told The Examiner on Friday that he planned to spend it on community needs, including a playground, in his district," reports the Examiner.
If that's true -- and the Examiner now appears to be standing by its initial report -- then Jew should resign immediately and focus on trying to stay out of prison

No bookcase.

By Tim Redmond

Here's one of the saddest statistics I've seen in a long time: California will soon spend more money on prisons than on its university system.

Everyone in Sacramento seems to agree this is wrong. Nobody does a damn thing about it.

In fact, the state Legislature just agreed to spend another $8 billion on more prison beds.

More on this tomorrow.

By Steven T. Jones
Even before reading the article about Club Six's conflict with neighbors that I wrote for tomorrow's paper, Paul Hogarth (a half-time housing activist with Tenderloin Housing Clinic and half-time managing editor for THC's Beyond Chron blog) has concluded that I'm being terribly unfair to the SRO residents of Sixth Street, all because Club Six advertises with us. Apparently he's psychic.
Actually, Paul's poorly executed preemptive strike illustrates the danger of activists masquerading as pseudo-journalists. Under Hogarth's direction, Beyond Chron has already slammed Club Six without bothering to contact owner Angel Cruz, who is at the club everyday and easy to reach. And that article didn't disclosure Hogarth's role in organizing the NIMBY mob until I asked him about the apparent conflict of interests (difficult questions that Hogarth considers "hostile").
So now he's bending over backwards to explain why they're the good guys and we're the bad. I won't deign to address his many illogical accusations and willful misinterpretations except to say that I've been a professional journalist for more than 15 years and I've been known for my integrity, independence and willingness to slam advertisers when that's how I see a story. And I've interviewed all sides of this story and read all relevant documents, so the story that you'll read tomorrow is actually journalism.

Artist's rendering of Jim Mason's Mechabolic project
By Steven T. Jones
For the last two weeks, Berkeley bureaucrats have been clashing with The Shipyard's countercultural artists and engineers, ordering facility owner Jim Mason to shut the place down or jump through some difficult hoops to bring it up to code.
Mason had threatened to follow in the Crucible's footsteps and leave Berkeley for what he saw as more hospitable environs next door in Oakland. But first, he had a meeting yesterday with Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates that by all accounts went well. The upshot: Bates told city fire, building, and planning officials to find a way to let the Shipyard stay.

Guardian photo of Ed Jew by Charles Russo
By Sarah Phelan
Before leaving the country at 1am this morning for the home of his ancestors, beleagured Supervisor Ed Jew managed to find time--in between luggage packing and driving to the airport--to dash off a letter to City Attorney Dennis Herrera, requesting an inquiry into "the apparent willful disclosure of confidential personal information by an employee or employees of the Public Utilities Commission."

Wow. We knew that Jew wasn't a big fan of the PUC, as witnessed by his ultimately unsuccessful 2005 battle against sewer, water and garbage hikes. But who knew that the supervisor, who is being investigated by the FBI for demanding money from a tapioca bubble drink shop chain in exchange for mucho cash would end up accusing the SFPUC of releasing cherry picked information to the running dogs of the press to make him look bad. Hot diggitty!

Sarah Phelan

In addition to telling Supervisor Ed Jew that disclosure of his public records, including his PUC water usage records is permitted "because you stated in your letter and in comments to the public that your father's home is also your residence", City Attorney Dennis Herrera has asked the beleagured supe to provide the following information before next Tuesday, May 29 (which could be tricky since Jew is currently in China),: a copy of Jew's 2006 state and federal tax returns; a copy of his driver's licence; a copy of his vehicle registration cards; a copy of his utility bills--gas and electric, waste removal; cable or satellite TV bills; and telephone bills for his 28th Avenue residence between June 1and April 30, 2007. (Note to self: don't get into hot water with city attorney, until you've got your personal records filed and ready to go.)
Meanwhile, further analysis of Jew's water usage shows that no water was consumed in March and April 2007, that only 3 units (3 x 748 gallons) was consumed in January and February 2007, and I unit (748 gallons) was consumed in November and December 2006. Prior to that, the only water units shown are from an unbilled balance already on the account before Jew established service there on September 11, 2006.

By Tim Redmond

Yeah, I'm all for saving the whales and I even worked for Greenpeace once. But I have to say: Coast Guard boats and helicopters. Camera crews from all over. Front-page headlines. Tens of thousands of dollars, maybe millions of dollars, spent on two wayward whales that at this point will probably die anyway.

That's a lot more attention than anyone pays to the homeless people who wander the streets of San Francisco and die just about every week of every year. Kids sicker than that whale calf could use just a tiny bit of that money we're spending in the Sacramento River.

Don't get me wrong: I love the whales. But let's have some perspective here.

By Steven T. Jones
Last night's annual dinner of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club was a truly memorable event that stands as testament to the strength, vitality, depth, and verve of this city's progressive movement. Political events can be deathly boring, but not this one, not with back-to-back speeches by Senator Carole Migden and Assembly member Mark Leno (who is running for Migden's seat), presidential candidate Mike Gravel hitting the most progressive themes of his field, masseur Mike Jones talking about how and why he outed the closeted Rev. Ted Haggard, Sup. Chris Daly being honored for his work on affordable housing, the irrepressible Donna Sachet serving as MC, a snappy and well-produced ensemble musical tribute to the Summer of Love, and a crowd full of notables.

By Tim Redmond

So much going on right now in the local political world -- and some of it so ephemeral.

Chris Daly's progressive convention is June 2, coming right up, and we still don't have a candidate for mayor. Matt Gonzalez gives an interview to BeyondChron and says he's not ruling out a run, but won't be making any announcement in time for the June 2 event. Will anyone? Or is this going to be a convention without a candidate?

The 08 supes races, on the other hand, are heating up and full of candidates. Cecilia Chung just announced she's running in district 11, creating the possibility for a fascinating bit of history: As Chung just told me, It will be 30 years next fall since the assissination of Harvey Milk, and his killer, Dan White, represented what is now D-11. Electing a transgender woman from that district would make big national news.

Chung won't be the only candidate: I'm told John Avalos, aide to Sup. Chris Daly, is also planning to run, as is Community College Board member Julio Ramos.

And in District Nine, Police Commission member David Campos is clearly running to replace Tom Ammiano, as is housing activist Eric Quezada, who will have a kick-off event at Galleria de la Raza June 1.

By Sarah Phelan

You can't blame antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan for hanging up her helmet, but what excuse do the rest of us have? Sheehan kept the memory of her son alive and didn't flinch from confronting the truth that her son died for a lie. With the bloodiest month since the US invaded Iraq coming to an end, it's time for the rest of us to debunk Bush's "war" myth. There were no WMDs. And there is no enemy, now Saddam is gone. Instead, we have an occupation, which can only end one way: when we leave. How many more American troops have to die for Bush's war lie? One more is one too many. Tell Congress that it's the decider, not Bush. Tell Congress to take back its power. Now.

By Sarah Phelan
Wolfowitz may be on his way out, but get this: Robert Zoellick the guy picked to replace him, was one of the signatories (along with Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, Zalmay Khalilzad, John R. Bolton, Richard Armitage, William Kristol, and others) of a Jan. 26, 1998 letter to President Bill Clinton drafted by the Project for a New American Century calling for "removing Saddam's regime from power."

By Steven T. Jones
I'll be the first to admit that I barely understand the complexities of futures markets, but I'm proud to say that I've already made a few hundred bucks off this fall's mayor's race. OK, it isn't real money, and this market for who will be our next mayor is a contrivance of the SF Usual Suspects. Yet it's a fun and interesting new way to handicap the upcoming race. BTW, I'm swimming in Ross Mirkarimi shares in case anybody wants to make me a good offer.

by Amanda Witherell

The pugnacious Nathan Nayman photo courtesy of examiner.com

Now, I know it's easy to get really jealous when other people write better than you do but plagiarism is still the deadliest of sins when it comes to putting the word out.

But don't let that stop Nathan Nayman!
Did you catch his op-ed against Community Choice Aggregation in last Wednesday's Examiner? Did you catch that two paragraphs of it were lifted nearly WORD-FOR-WORD from a letter PG&E sent to community organizations about a month ago? The statement expressed the utility company's concerns, STRANGELY SIMILAR to Nayman's, about the CCA plan to bring more renewable energy to San Francisco. I guess PG&E sent one of those letters to Nayman's Committee on Jobs, too. I wonder if they put a check for another $50,000 in the envelope, too. I called Nayman to ask, but he hasn't called me back yet.

By Tim Redmond

An important bill to reform the federal Freedom of Information Act has cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee, but can't go to the floor for a vote because one senator has placed an anonymous hold on it.

The Society of Professional Journalists has a good running total of which senators said they didn't place the hold and which are not responding; you can find it here

Word in Washington is that the guilty party -- the senator who wants to secretly block more public access to government -- is John Kyl of Arizona.But the only way to prove that is to rule the others out, and that's been done before. From SPJ's action notice:

In August 2006, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) put a hold on a bill to create a searchable public database of all federal grants and contracts. Stevens' role was revealed only after online public advocates and journalists forced senators to go on the record about whether they placed the hold.

Both of California's senators deny placing the block. If you live in one of the states where the senator hasn't responded, call or email right away.

By Tim Redmond

This was hardly secret, but now it's official: School Board member Eric Mar, long a progressive leader, will announce soon that he's running for supervisor in District One. And in the meantime, he's working against the McGoldrick recall.

By Steven T. Jones
The Legislature is poised to rebuke Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's obstructionism on creating a much-needed high-speed rail system for California. As Guardian readers know, the California High Speed Rail Authority had asked for a $103 million budget allocation this year to move the project forward in advance of next year's planned bond measure, but Arnold only offered them $1.2 million in his budget. Since then, the Assembly (where SF's Fiona Ma has been championing the project) approved a $51 million budget for the agency, while the Senate voted for give it $40 million. A conference committee will determine the actual budget amount, likely somewhere between those figures. It's a good sign, particularly if the Legislature holds firm and refuses the governor's request to indefinitely postpone the $10 billion high-speed rail bond issue now set of the November 2008 ballot.

By Tim Redmond

The new owners of the East Bay Express are settling into their offices -- and already, the current and former ownership has become something of an issue. The Berkelely Daily Planet last week quoted Express editor Steve Buel -- who ran the paper when it was owned by Village Voice Media (formerly New Times) and is now part of the independent ownership group -- saying some rather unkind things about his former bosses:

While Buel wouldn’t confirm reports which had the Express alone losing $500,000 every year, but he did say that the previous owner, New Times—which owned the paper outright between 2001 and late 2005 before merging with VVM—“doesn’t do well in places with competition.”

He added, “If you look at the paper in the past year or so, you will see that it has gotten a lot thinner.” The chain does well in places like Denver, Phoenix and Miami, he said, “which are basically suburban markets, which are not competitive. But they didn’t do well here.”

Now, “out from under the ax of New Times, we will be able to make a much better paper,” Buel said.

I was a bit startled to read those comments, since Buel has never said anything harsh about the big VVM/NT chain, and in fact defended chain management at some length when the two of us debated the issue at a forum a few months back.

But of course, Buel is absolutely right: