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.