Oh, how I wish that the SF Public Utilities Commission meetings brought me to such a brink...

Not so much. But as far as the peaker power plants are concerned there were some interesting developments today. Mayor Gavin Newsom is definitely playing the white knight in this scenario, and he's now brokering a deal in which the city fronts all the money to build the power plant, skirting the public-private partnership deal that's been floated to date. According to Jesse Blout, from the Mayor's Office of Economic and Workforce Development, the city will now be issuing debt to finance the peaker plants and own them outright, rather than have the private company, JPower, act like they own them for 13 years and then hand them over to the city.

In this new deal JPower still operates and manages the three combustion turbines that will be sited in the city. (The airport CT will still be built, owned, and operated by JPower for 30 years before it's turned over to the city, in order for them to make some $$$) The diff is that the city will own the Potrero plants straight-up, bypassing any sketchy loss of control or assets through the convolutions of a public-private partnership.

The PUC unanimously passed a really wordy resolution on all of this, and also asked Blout to check in with them every couple weeks to make sure all is on track. Blout, meanwhile, promised us a signing ceremony on an agreement that Mirant will shutter as soon as their contract is pulled and given to the city's power plant instead.

Photo from www.sfpartyparty.com
Was Halloween in the Castro this year a scary police state and fear-based waste of public resources, or was it an "incredible success" that San Franciscans should be proud of, as Mayor Gavin Newsom's press secretary Nathan Ballard argues? Will we be trying to learn from a year when poorly communicated, top-down planning triggered resentments by many citizens and business people who were intimidated into shutting their doors? When and how will the city start planning for next year, when Halloween falls on a Friday, and will the public be allowed to participate?
I tried to get answers to these questions from Ballard and it wasn't easy, as the following e-mail exchange shows.

Cambodian waterboarding photo by Johah Black from www.davidcorn.com
By Sara Knight, a Guardian intern
Our own Senator Dianne Feinstein announced today that she supports
Bush's nominee for Attorney General, Michael "waterboarding may or may not be torture" Mukasey.

Due to his equivocating remarks about waterboarding – an interrogation technique that simulates drowning – Mukasey's nomination was in danger of being stalled in the Judiciary Committee. Now, with Feinstein and Charles Schumer (D-NY) backing Mukasey's nomination, a full Senate vote is inevitable and will probably result in confirmation.

Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, continues to oppose the Mukasey nomination. "No American should need a classified briefing to determine whether waterboarding is torture."
Tell that to Mukasey, who hemmed and hawed over that question and ultimately refused to say one way or another.

And what is Feinstein's justification for supporting Mukasey's nomination? She and Schumer say the Justice Department is in desperate need of effective leadership.

The Justice Department needs many things, but expanding and exonerating the use of torture by our government under the guise of "effective leadership" is absolutely unacceptable.

Tomorrow! Go to Dolores Park at noon and for the National Day of Climate Change. Woo hoo!

March or ride in the parade of bikes and electric cars and other great, green stuff that's going down to UN Plaza. Carole Migden, Aaron Peskin, Chris Daly and Ross Mirkarimi are going to be there, as well as mayoral candidates Quintin Mecke, Josh Wolf and Chicken John Rinaldi.

According to the press release, "UN plaza will be transformed into a carnival-like atmosphere complete with a Recycle That! art show filled with recycled and reclaimed art, the Sustainable Living Roadshow's Conscious Carnival, a carbon-eating generator from the Chlorophyll Collective and smoothies made on a solar powered van. Participants will call for real political leadership on global warming, and will ask San Francisco's political leaders to pledge to the following:

Put a moratorium on new coal and nuclear plants
Cut carbon emissions 80% by 2050
Create 5 million new green jobs conserving 20% of our energy by 2015
Get back on track to meet San Francisco's Climate Action Plan

This is a national event, started by super-eco-friendly-guy Bill McKibben, but San Francisco's event tomorrow is extra-special because we're pushing an anti-nuke future, despite the kinder, gentler image that nuclear power plants have been getting lately.

Here's a fun/gross fact: every year vehicles in San Francisco emit more than 16,000 tons of nitrous oxide (nastiness that makes ozone). The Mirant peaker power plants that everyone's in a tizzy to shut down emit 92 tons.

Hmmm. The take-away = quit driving. Vote yes on Prop A!

We're having some trouble with our Web site -- until it's fixed, here's our complete local offices endorsements for the Nov. 6 elections. For more endorsements, please visit our 2007 Guardian Election Center, or for quick refence see our Clean Slate printout guide.

Mayor

1. QUINTIN MECKE

2. AHIMSA PORTER SUMCHAI

3. CHICKEN JOHN RINALDI

Let us be perfectly clear: none of the people we are endorsing has any real chance of getting elected mayor of San Francisco. Gavin Newsom is going to win a second term; we know that, he knows that, and whatever they may say on the campaign trail, all of the candidates running against him know that.

It's a sad state of affairs: San Francisco has been, at best, wallowing helplessly in problems under Newsom, and in many cases things have gotten worse. The murder rate is soaring; young people, particularly African Americans, are getting shot down on the streets in alarming numbers. The mayor has opposed almost every credible effort to do something about it — he fought against putting cops on foot patrol in the most violent areas, he opposed the creation of a violence-prevention fund and blocked implementation of a community policing plan, and he's allowed the thugs in the Police Officers Association to set policy for a police department that desperately lacks leadership. The public transportation system is in meltdown. The housing crisis is out of control; 90 percent of the people who work in San Francisco can't afford to buy a house here, and many of them can't afford to rent either. Meanwhile, the city is allowing developers and speculators to build thousands of new luxury condos, which are turning San Francisco into a bedroom community for Silicon Valley. Newsom only recently seems to have noticed that public housing is in shambles and that the commission he appoints to oversee it has been ignoring the problem.

I was on KPFA talking about the election this morning, along with Beyond Chron's Randy Shaw, and he put out there his prediction that Prop. H is going down, a point he repeated in a column today. Last I heard, this heinous measure was still too close to call, so I've been checking with people on the campaign and otherwise in the know this morning and they're all still worried. In particular, they say polls show Election Day voters evenly split on the issue. So don't put too much credence in the punditry and political prognostication -- get out there and vote No on H and Yes on A (the latter measure, by all accounts, really could go either way).

The Denver Post, flagship paper for Dean Singleton's MediaNews chain, went on a blinding-mad rampage against Colorado's governor in a rare front-page editorial Nov. 4.

If there was any doubt in your mind that Dean "Pinkerton" Singleton hates labor unions, this should be enough to dispel it right away. In a 2003 profile of Singleton that appeared in the Columbia Journalism Review, Scott Sherman explains that Singleton receives regular calls from the Post's editorial-page editor to finalize the paper's opinion pieces before going to press.

But placing Singleton's deep animosity toward labor unions on the front page would make even William Randolph Hearst blush. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that they share similar qualities.

In the editorial, the Post decries Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter as "a toady for labor bosses" and "a bag man for labor unions." Ritter signed an executive order Nov. 2 giving unions that represent state employees official recognition and bargaining powers covering such crazy bullshit Communist principles like improved health care, wages and workplace safety.

A news story that ran in the Post shortly after the announcement implies bargaining will be a bad deal for state workers, and another suggested bidness would flee the state as a result of the decision, a common refrain from anti-union factions.

According to the editorial:

"When Coloradans elected Bill Ritter as governor, they thought they were getting a modern-day version of Roy Romer, a pro-business Democrat. Instead, they got Jimmy Hoffa. Ritter campaigned under the guise of a moderate "new Democrat" but now we know he's simply a toady to labor bosses and the old vestiges of his party — a bag man for unions and special interests. The governor on Friday unveiled his plan to drive up the cost of doing business in Colorado by forcing collective bargaining on thousands of state employees. We're concerned this may be the beginning of the end of Ritter as governor."

Singleton's MediaNews empire snapped up nearly every major newspaper in the Bay Area except the Chronicle last year in a complex series of buyouts. The union representing Oakland Tribune employees has since charged Singleton with trying to stamp out guild representation there.

Just for the record, because there’s always some confusion this time of year:

The Guardian doesn’t distribute doorhangers or political fliers. We don’t print them, we don’t pay for them.

We don’t object to them, either.

Every year, someone we’ve endorsed wants to get the word out, and prints up a guardian slate card. That’s fine with me; I want our endorsements distributed as widely as possible. I’m happy that people want to reprint them. We do a lot of work on this stuff; the more people who see it, the better.

In this case, the Quintin Mecke for mayor campaign put the doorhanger together, with some financial help from other candidates. I didn’t see it in advance; if I had, I would have pointed out an error. The flier has our position as NO, NO, NO on Prop. F. We actually support that one. Not a huge deal, since Prop. F – a minor police pension issue – isn’t terribly controversial and is going to pass anyway. If you aren’t sure, just download our official slate here.

The main point is that the Mecke card pushes Yes on A and No on H, and promotes our three alternatives to Gavin Newsom. We didn’t do it, but I hope it helps.

The Chron story Sunday portrayed the battle over transportation policy in San Francisco as Don Fisher vs. Aaron Peskin, but actually, Fisher is going further. He's mounting an all-out attack on the Board of Supervisors -- and a pro-Newsom campaign committee is helping out.

Fliers that went to the west side of town attack the supervisors as childish -- and attack Prop. A as "another transportation solution from the Board of Supervisors." The first flier is from the campaign against Prop. E -- that's question time, the measure that would require the mayor to appear before the board once a month. The second is from Fisher's campaign against Prop. A.

The nearly identical messages aren't a coincidence -- the fliers have the same return address (150 Post St. Suite 405, the office of campaign lawyer Jim Sutton) and both were done by Rich Schlackman, a campaign consultant who is working with both No on A and No on E.

The plan, clearly, is to make people think the supes are idiots -- then saddle Prop. A with that image. The fact that Schlackman, who is one of nation's top direct-mail experts and who also works with Nathan Nayman and the Committee on JOBS, has adopted this strategy signals downtown's continuing effort to go after the district-elected board. Expect more of this crap in the months to come.

BY THE WAY: The battle over Props. A and H is still close. Labor and environmental groups had 250 people out on the streets talking up Yes on A and No on H over the weekend, but if people don't turn out to vote, Don Fisher could get his way.

The Yes on A/No on H party is Tuesday night at El Rio.

What do Newsom and Bechtel have in common?

They both oppose Prop. E, which requires the next Mayor of San Francisco to appear before the Board of Supervisors for public policy discussions.

Up until now, Newsom has been framing Prop. E as work of Sup. Chris Daly that will only lead to “political theater.”

Then, boom, four days before the election, Bechtel goes and plonks down $5,000 to defeat Prop. E, on top of the last-0minute plonking down of $10,000 from Republican Warren Hellman, $20,000 from the San Franciscan Association of Realtors, $25,000 from the Committee on Jobs Government Reform Fund, and $1,000 from socialite Dede Wilsey.

Looking at all these “No on E” money bags, it’s hard not to conclude that what Newsom’s No on E “Let’s Really Work Together Coalition” is really working together on is avoiding having to publicly debate tough issues, like the lack of affordable housing, or the rising tide of violence, or mental health issues among the homeless--issues that folks who aren’t millionaires and realtors would like to see their elected representatives hash out with the Mayor, but that rich folks can chat privately with the Mayor over fund raising dinners.

What’s bizarre about all this is that when you actually get Newsom talking, he seems perfectly capable of carrying out a well-argued and coherent debate.

So why don’t his handlers want their boy to be drawn into public debates? Could it be that they understand that once you get drawn into an argument, and express your opinion, people will take sides? That’s it safer to maintain a remote, inaccessible position, while you prepare for the next big thing, like governor, senator, or President?

But this is San Francisco, where people thrive on debate. So here’s hoping that the next Mayor of San Francisco spares us the fake question time and does as voters requested last fall: show up before the Board and answer their gosh darn questions.

Turnout was pretty light in my Bernal Heights precinct this morning. Some projections say as few as 100,000 people will bother to vote. That would be less than 25 percent of the electorate choosing the next mayor and making key decisions on transportation policy. Which is exactly what Don Fisher and the downtown types hope for -- in fact, the only way something as dumb and regressive as Prop. H could ever pass is San Francisco is in a very-low-turnout election.

So if you're reading this, take a few minutes and go vote. Our endorsements are here.

**Commenting is temporarily disabled

by Tim Redmond

This blog is typically crowded on election night; I’m down at City Hall posting updates as the results come in and various Guardian staffers are reporting in from the evening’s events. It will be a little calmer tonight; we’ll get one set of results, at 8:30 pm, when the Elections Department releases its count of early absentees. But since the rest of the ballots have to be counted by hand, we won’t know much beyond that until later in the week.

So you can look here for the party scene, our analysis of the early results and some other fun – but we probably won’t be able to call the election until later in the week.

** Commenting is temporarily disabled

"However many votes we get,we know the Bay Guardian will say it wasn't enough." That's what Mayor Gavin Newsom's campaign manager Eric Jaye said in the intro of today's C.W. Nevius column in the Chronicle, so I thought I might as well address it and get into the political prediction game.
Also in the column, consultant Jim Stearns said of Newsom, "I would expect that he gets 75-85 percent easily." Stearns is probably the best consultant in town, so I don't dismiss his numbers, but if Newsom really gets that much, the Bay Guardian will definitely say, "Whoa, that's a lot." Even against a weak field, if Newsom gets 80 percent of the vote, he'll have his voter mandate and be in a strong position to set the agenda in the coming years.
Does that mean the Guardian will roll over and support that agenda? If he does things like legalize gay marriage, support the labor movement, and offer universal health care, you bet. We've always been supportive of the mayor when he's done the right thing, but unfortunately, that doesn't happen very often, which is why we didn't endorse him. And we won't support his efforts to subvert progressive values, no matter what kind of mandate he claims.
But I also think this is a moot point, because my prediction is that he won't get anywhere near 80 percent.

Start the night off at the Bay Guardian’s “Don’t Dodge the Drafts” party at Doc’s Clock, 2575 Mission Street, between 21st and 22nd Streets, from 7-9 p.m. Music and drink specials for attendees who bring their “I voted” sticker or ballot stub.

Right next door at 12 Galaxies, mayoral candidate Chicken John Rinaldi will be throwing his “Loser’s Ball” election night party. He hasn’t made many details available, but knowing Chicken, expect the evening’s most fun and unconventional party.

Most parties start at 8 p.m., hit a premature climax at 8:30 when absentee results (the only numbers of the evening due to state-mandated manual ballot checks) are announced then continue well into the evening, to varying degrees. Some of the parties:

· Quintin Mecke for Mayor: Peacock Lounge, 552 Haight Street
· Yes on A/No on H: El Rio, 3158 Mission Street
· Gavin Newsom for Mayor: Ferry Building, Embarcadero at Market Street
· Kamala Harris for DA: Tosca Café, 242 Columbus

The question of the day, of course, is What’s the Number? What percentage of the votes does Gavin Newsom get, and what does that mean?

The last time a mayor of San Francisco had such weak opposition was in 1983, when Dianne Feinstein ran all-but unopposed. It was a bleak time in the city, with the mayor openly selling the city to developers and the left lacking a contender who could take her on. Feinstein had just crushed a batty recall effort by a finger group of leftist gun nuts called the White Panther Party.; the White Panthers were mad that Feinstein had singed a bill controlling handguns in the city. The recall lost overwhelmingly, and left Feinstein appearing unbeatable.

Newsom isn’t in quite the same position; there are actually some candidates who have a bit of traction. The progressives are way better organized than we were in 1983 – and this race has a lot more, well, character.

I think Steve Jones is pretty much on point; I’ll go a step further. Let’s assume that 100,000 people vote; it may be a bit more, but I think 120,000 is tops. Say Quintin Mecke, the progressive front-runner, gets 15,000 votes, or 15 percent – not an unreasonable guess. He’s been working hard, had Chris Daly’s endorsement, and has a lot of boots on the street. I say Chicken John gets 10 percent anyway; he’s got a solid base in the artist/counterculture/weirdo community, and that’s a significant number of people. Between them, Ahimsa Sumchai and Josh Wolf get maybe 7,000 votes. Harold Hoogasian is the only Republican in the race, and has great name recognition because of his flower business; besides, the people who think Newsom is too liberal will vote for Hoogasian. That’s got to be worth 3,000 votes. So that’s already 35 percent – and there are quite a few other candidates who will pick up a few hundred votes here and there. By the time the counting is finished, Newsom may be stuck around 60 percent – hardly a stunning victory.

From the good folks over at the Union of Concerned Scientists, this is the coolest tool ever for tracking the oops I did it again spills at our nation's nuclear power plants. Plus, there are deets on all the plants-to-be, now that -- wipe the sweat off your brows, people -- nuclear power is going to save us from global warming!

You're probably already acquainted with the Guardian's 2007 endorsements for the Nov. 6 elections -- but what about the city's other hot and steaming political bodies (yes, that sounded dirty). Below are endorsements from other groups, from the Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club to the San Francisco Tenants Union. (All files below are PDFs.)

San Francisco local offices

San Francisco ballot propositions

Early results are in, and the mayor's race is no real surprise -- Gavin Newsom's at 77 percent, which is just the absentees, and that will drop. But the big news: In the very conservative absentees, Prop. A is just slightly behind -- and Prop. H is actually LOSING. That's over, and it's over big -- in the most important race for progressives, it looks like a clear and convincing victory. You can take this one to the bank -- Don Fisher has lost, big, and Prop A, the competing transit measure, has won.

The other big surprise: Prop. E, the measure that wll require -- and I said WILL require -- Gavin Newsom to appear before the Board of Supervisors for "question time" looks like it's going to pass. So Newsom wins -- but he's going to have to answer to his critics.

Gavin Newsom has obviously won re-election, although we don't know his total yet. But the other winners tonight are Aaron Peskin and Chris Daly.

Peskin's Prop. A is an almost certain winner -- it's ahead 51-49 in the absentees and that's the most conservative of the votes, so it will win handily. His Prop K, the measure limit new billboards, is winning, too, overwhelmingly (60-40).

What this means is that Peskin defeated a rather vicious campaign by Don Fisher to smear him and the Board of Supervisors; in fact, the attacks on the Board didn't seem to work. And the measure Newsom and his allies really wanted to stop -- Daly's Question Time -- is behind by only two points, and will more than likely win. Again, the Newsom campaign was an attack on the supervisors, particularly Daly -- and it doesn't appear to have worked.

The traditional wisdom is the the progressives lose in low-turnout races -- and turnout here looks terrible. John Arntz, the elections director, says it looks like 26 percent turnout, only around 100,000 votes. And yet, on the key progressive measures, we're doing really well.

Lots of celebration at the Yes on A/No on H party at El Rio. Robert Haaland, who ran the field campaign, was justifiably exuberant -- the passage of A and defeat of H, which appears all but certain, was a demonstration that even in a low-turnout election, progressives can prevail. The labor-and-environmental-backed campaign did an extensive absentee-voter effort, extensive get-out-the-vote and effective mail. It helped that Sup. Aaron Peskin helped raise more than $400,000 for the battle.

Peskin said the results were a great victory for the battle against global warming, which is true -- but it was also a victory for the president of the board -- and for the idea that policy in San Francisco remains centered at the Board of Supervisors.

The polls that political consultants rely on show that the board's popularity is low compared to the mayor -- but on the ground, where it mattered, that wasn't the case tonight.

By David Crockett
In what was maybe the least surprising news story since that guy from ‘N Sync announced he was gay, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom seemed headed for an easy reelection, even with the sparse returns on election night, when he and his supporters gathered at the Ferry Building.

“The best is yet to come,” Newsom told his followers, at the beginning and end of his speech, adding, “As great as we are, we can still be so much more.”

San Francisco may have to wait weeks for election results and undergo an complicated ballot-counting procedure, but we may not end up having to pay for it. That's because the city is suing its election vendor, ES&S, for breach for contract, City Attorney Dennis Herrera and other city officials announced this morning. His press release follows:

What does it take to override a wartime Republican president’s veto? Water, apparently.

Thirty five years ago, facing a rising tide of discontent over polluted water, Congress overrode d Nixon’s veto of the October 15, 1972 Clean Water Act. As a result, municipalities were able to apply for federal funds to help build and improve their local sewage treatment plants, and water got cleaner, as a result.

Yesterday, facing a mounting tide of discontent over global warming and rising sea level are real, Congress (unable to end the war or provide health care for kids,) united to reject Bush’s veto of the Water Resources Development Act.

As a result, 900 water projects will receive federal funds, including restoration in the Florida Everglades and the replacement on the Upper Mississippi and Illinois rivers of locks that farm groups say are crucial for shipping grain.

Here in California, the Act authorizes $1.3 billion for 54 projects, including $106 million to strengthen the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta levees—a shoring-up project that has profound implications for San Francisco Bay.

As Will Travis of the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission told me this week, one of the central questions now facing this region is, 'How do we build around a Bay that we know is going to get bigger, but we don’t yet know by how much?

"It’s a bit like seismic safety," Travis said, noted that the 8-year plan that BCDC is proposing is just a proposal.

“It’s the beginning of a long conversation," Travis explained. " What’s not in that proposal yet is how the federal agencies and the business sector and the research facilities and laboratories fit in.”

Travis also admitted that this conversation could be "a struggle.”

“The first reaction of most people when they realize that sea level is rising and that we have a lot of extensive development on low lying areas around the Bay is, ‘Run for the hills!’"

"And that’s a reasonable course, until you realize the implications in an estuary that is the most urbanized in the United States," added Travis, who believes that what's needed is "a more nuanced approach.”

Part of that approach, suggests Travis, may involve some counter intuitive steps.

“In some places, we may see the encouragement of more development along the waterfront so we can use the economic engine to protect that development—and the low-lying areas behind it. That’s where it’s going to get interesting.”

As a harbinger of what’s to come, consider the battle that is breaking out over 1,400 acres that Cargill owns in Redwood City. Save the Bay and other environmental groups are urging Cargill to abandon plan to build homes on those acres, while Cargill is committed to developing those lands, and Redwood City is trying to decide what to do.
Fun, huh?

Guardian illustration by Danny Hellman, from our Oct. 31 cover story
The big story of this election was the improbable triumph of environmentalists over car culture and grassroots activism over downtown’s money, a story being played out in the likely approval of the Muni reform measure Prop. A and lopsided defeat of the pro-parking Prop. H.
The latest elections results show Prop. A extending its narrow election night lead to a seven point margin and Prop. H being rejected by almost 64 percent of voters, despite its poll-tested simplicity and big time backing from Don Fisher and other downtown conservatives.
As expected, Mayor Gavin Newsom’s election night high of 77.46 percent of the early absentee votes has fallen to 72.47 and will probably continue its downward trend, while progressive favorite Quintin Mecke is slowly climbing out of the electoral cellar to third place with 6 percent now, a trend also likely to continue. Harold Hoogasian has 6.83 percent and Wilma Pang dropped to 5.6 – expect both to keep falling.
Prop. E, the question time measure where Newsom invested all his political capital trying to defeat, could still go either way: 48.7 percent say yes and 51.3 percent no. That will be a big test of whether Newsom has any political pull at all, capping off a string of electoral failures since he took office.
But as I said, the big story is the Yes on A/No on H campaign, which threw a jubilant party at the El Rio last night.

New election results are out, and Mayor Gavin Newsom's winning percentage continues to drop. He's gone from the high 70s in early returns to 68 percent now. Quintn Mecke is now in second place, with almost 8 percent, and Harold Hoogasian is in third with 6.5 percent. These numbers will change more, and probably not in Newsom's favor: Although the results page says that 94 percent of the precincts have been counted, only about half of the mayoral votes are tallied so far. That's because the counting machines don't handle ranked-choice voting the way they're supposed to, so unless a voter fills in three choices for mayor, the machine kicks the ballot out and it has to be hand counted.

So look at Newsom coming in with a final vote of less than 65 percent. It's almost certain that he'll get fewer votes than he did last fime around (although that was a tightly contested election.)

Prop. A continues to widen its margin of victory. Oddly, though, and quite inconsistent with my election-night proclamations, Prop. E, the question-time measure, is actually LOSING votes as the election-day precinct totals come in. That's a surprise -- typically progressive measures that lag in the absentee count pick up several points, and sometimes more, when the precincts are tallied.

It's not over yet -- there are still 40,000 more absentee votes out there.

Well, in the end we need to recognize that this was a disaster waiting to happen with thousands of ships coming into the bay carrying nasty fuel oil and a Coast Guard that appeared to be lackadasical about the potential for disaster.

But for now, sfist has a nice handy guide on how you can help.

SFist has posted a link from BoatingSF that shows the path of the Cosco Busan, based on freely available data that even amateur boaters have. The Chronicle reports that the Coast Guard knew the ship was headed for the bridge. The Vehicle Tracking Service on Yerba Buena Island has sophisticated radar and GPS gear and can watch every damn boat on the Bay; why didn't anyone tell the captain and pilot to get back on course?

What’s newsworthy about Board of Supervisor President Aaron Peskin changing his vote three weeks ago on Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier charter amendment tightening laws controlling the Ethics, Elections and Sunshine Commissions?

Nothing—except the real reason the Chronicle’s running dogs of the press were dragged out of their kennel this weekend to tear into Peskin’s Oct. 23 change-of-heart vote: the Gap’s Don Fisher is pissed off that he poured $185,000 into Prop. H, only to see it fail on the Nov. 6 ballot. So, now, he and his Republican allies are punishing Peskin for having the nerve to place the ultimately successful Prop. A on the ballot, thus defeating their well-heeled efforts to turn San Francisco into a giant parking lot.

photo courtesy of wmchu on flickr

I've ridden my bike across the Golden Gate Bridge hundreds of times, and often stopped to watch the sunset or to look down at the awesome power of the tide ripping by, but yesterday, for the first time, I walked all the way across. I noticed something I'd never seen before.

On the south tower, tucked among all the brass plaques noting the officials and feting the feat of construction that is the bridge, there was a monument to Pacific Gas & Electric, thanking them for donating all the lighting for the bridge.

I was standing with my friend, who's an electrician, and who wryly noted that it's PG&E that really won in that deal -- the free lighting fixtures just translates to another guaranteed customer.

But what I was thinking was, gee, there was all this dust-up and opposition to any corporate sponsorship of the bridge to raise a portion of the $60 million for future repairs. Despite assurances from authorities that the bridge wouldn't be renamed or adorned with company banners, it seems that nobody was interested in having the name of a corporation anywhere near the bridge or its immediate environs.

And here we have a corporation that has a long, litigious relationship with San Francisco, that costs taxpayers and ratepayers millions of dollars, and that regularly tries to purchase our goodwill through massive greenwashing campaigns and big dollar donations -- and their name is bronzed right onto the bridge.

Nice. Classy.

Another set of election results are in, and now Gavin Newsom is up above 72 percent. Interesting that he's picked up as the precinct ballots are counted; obviously, the absentees were particularly conservative this time around.

This hasn't been that big a deal in the local press, but isn't it pretty screwed up that the mayor of San Francisco, the day after an oil spill that was causing catastrophic environmental problems in his city. took off to Hawaii on vacation?

I mean, he's supposed to be in charge here, supposed to be a leader. He could have postponed his trip a few days, right?

I've wanted to do this since about 1982, but now there's a grassroots movement in the California Democratic Party to censure Sen. Dianne Feinstein over her decision to support Michael Mukasey for attorney general.

The party leadership's going to go nuts over this, but the blogger/grassroots/progressive movement within the party is going to make it into a major issue. How fun.

I attended SPUR's regular post-election wrap-up yesterday, which was a bit irregular in that it was almost a week after the election (owing to the delayed election results) rather than the next day and it wasn't hosted by respected local pollster David Binder. Instead hosting duties were split three ways among consultant Jim Stearns (engineer of the big win this election, Yes on A/No on H), consultant and number cruncher David Latterman, and pollster/hired gun Ben Tulchin of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, whose work I have quibbled with in the past.
And once again, Tulchin claimed to be objective and pointed out that he doesn't work for Newsom before going on to play the spinning pro-Newsom partisan. "It was historic, it was a landslide, and the mayor and his team deserve a lot of credit," Tulchin gushed, going on to argue that this election showed the mayor had coattails and was now a force to be reckoned with -- all evidence to the contrary.

...may be a bad joke, but this is funny!

Assemblymember Mark Leno told me yesterday that he's going to pursue one of the suggestions in our oil-spill editorial and see if the state can put a lein on the Cosco Busan. That way California could compensate the local crab fishers, whose livelihood is in danger, and get the money back directly from the ship's owners.

The crab folks are hurting: The governor has suspended all fishing in and around the Bay and within three miles of the coast. And local processing facilities can't accept crab, so they're shut down.

But there are still big crab boats from Oregon, Washington and Vancouver that come down and place crab pots outside of the three-mile limit, Leno told me, and then haul the crab back up north -- where it gets processed and sent back down here as "safe."

It will be a nightmare trying to sort out who actually owns the ship, and if the crabbers sue, it could take many, many years before they ever see the money; the fishermen who sued Exxon over the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill still haven't seen a penny of the $5 billion they won at trial.

So seizing the ship and putting leins on it may be the only way anyone's going to see any compensation for this mess.

Fifty-three comments in 20 minutes. Extraordinary. Here's the original press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Natalya LaBauve
November 15, 2007 (415) 436-7055

WWW.USDOJ.GOV/USAO/CAN Natalya.LaBauve@usdoj.gov

BARRY BONDS INDICTED FOR PERJURY ARISING FROM HIS TESTIMONY IN THE BALCO INVESTIGATION

Indictment also includes charge of obstruction of justice.

SAN FRANCISCO – United States Attorney Scott N. Schools, Special Agent in Charge Scott O’Briant of the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation and Special Agent in Charge Charlene Thornton of the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced today that a federal grand jury in San Francisco indicted Barry Lamar Bonds, age 43, of Beverly Hills, California, on November 15, 2007, with four counts of perjury, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1623(a), and one count of obstruction of justice, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1503(a).

Bonds is charged with knowingly and willfully making false material statements, regarding his use of anabolic steroids and other performance-enhancing substances, while under oath during his testimony before the federal grand jury that was conducting the investigation into the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative (“Balco”), and with obstructing justice in the same investigation. A copy of the indictment is attached to this press release.

The penalty for perjury is up to five years imprisonment and three years of supervised release. The penalty for obstruction of justice is up to ten years imprisonment and three years of supervised release. However, any sentence following conviction would be imposed by the court after consideration of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and the federal statute governing the imposition of a sentence, 18 U.S.C. § 3553.

Bonds is scheduled to make his initial appearance before United States Magistrate Judge James on December 7, 2007, at 9:30 a.m. in San Francisco.

An indictment contains only allegations against an individual and, as with all defendants, Mr. Bonds must be presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

Matt Parrella, Jeff Nedrow, and Jeff Finigan are the Assistant U.S. Attorneys who are prosecuting the case. The prosecution is the result of an investigation by the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Electronic court filings and further procedural and docket information are available at https://ecf.cand.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/login.pl.

Judges’ calendars with schedules for upcoming court hearings can be viewed on the court’s website at www.cand.uscourts.gov.

All press inquiries to the U.S. Attorney’s Office should be directed to Natalya LaBauve at (415) 436-7055 or by email at Natalya.LaBauve@usdoj.gov.

Guardian photo by Lane Hartwell
Presidential hopeful Barack Obama's speech last night in Bill Graham Civic Auditorium looked more like a rock concert than political rally, with a crowd of about 7,000 snaking through San Francisco for almost a mile and taking several hours just to get inside, past the metal detectors and large contingent of Secret Service agents. "I am fired up!" he told the enthusiastic crowd when he finally appeared on stage at 9 p.m., about two hours late.
Many attendees I interviewed before the speech were eager for Obama to take a bold stand -- to come out and finally support gay marriage, socialized medicine, fundamental political reform, or leaving Iraq completely rather than having massive permanent U.S. military base there -- and he didn't go there, sticking to a fairly safe platform.
But his rhetoric was still inspiring and he captured the potentially epic nature of this race: "What's next for America? We are at a defining moment in our history. The nation is at war. The planet is in peril." And he took a couple of veiled swipes at frontrunner Hillary Clinton -- "When I'm the Democratic nominee, my Republican opponent will not be able to say I voted for the Iraq War because I didn't." -- and the timidity of his party: "The triangulation and poll-tested positions, because we're afraid of what Mitt or Rudy will say about us, just won't do it...If we're going to seize the moment then we can't live in fear of losing."

Click below to listen to Obama's full speech of about 30 minutes:

Part 2

Yes, this is news. The guy who broke the all-time home run record has been indicted. It even belongs on page one of the local paper. But is it the most important thing happening in the world right now, worth two-thrids of the entire Chronicle front page, the top six or seven minutes of the evening newscasts and all the talk shows?

No, it's not. I have to agree with Dave Zirin: This is a silly indictment and a distraction from the real issues of the world.

I almost (almost) feel sorry for Barry Bonds. Think about his dilemma here: He goes before a grand jury, and is promised that if he tells the truth, he will never be prosecuted for it -- and anything he says will remain totally secret. But Bonds knows better; there's no way his testimony will remain confidential. Whatever he says is going to leak out (guess what -- it did), and if he admits anything, his career is over.

Of course, if he hedges, then he can be indicted for perjury (if the U.S. Attorney's Office has nothing better to do, which it apparently doesn't).

I heard somone ask on Forum this morning why Bonds just didn't tell the truth to the grand jury. That assumes, of course, that he's guilty, that he actually lied, and I have no way of knowing that. But let's, for the purpose of argument, say he did lie. Why? Perhaps because he didn't trust the grand jury process. That's a reasonable point of view that later events totally vindicated.

Does that justify lying under oath? Of course not. But I can understand what he must have been thinking.

A disingenuous ploy (reported by us but mostly ignored by the other media outlets in town) by the Hotel Council and Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier to have San Francisco taxpayers give millions of dollars in corporate welfare payments to the national airlines will be heard Monday at 11 a.m. by the Board of Supervisors Government Audit and Oversight Committee. The three-person committee is weighted in favor of the conservatives on the board, and this will likely be the only opportunity for public testimony, so come by the board chambers if you want to help counter the politically influential Hotel Council. Also on the agenda is a proposal by Alioto-Pier to increase taxi gate fees.

The City Hall rotunda was packed last night for the Jim Rivaldo memorial. I knew him as a political guy, a campaign consultant and activist with a strange and wonderful sense of humor and a big heart. But many of the people who spoke, including Judge Ellen Chaitin, her husband, defense lawyer V. Roy Lefcourt, and their two children, talked about Jim as a part of the family, an honorary uncle who loved kids and acted like a kid himself, to the very end. There were, safe to say, plenty of tears -- and plenty of smiles and laughs as the speakers reminded us of how fun, and funny, he was. Which would have made Jim Rivaldo very happy.

Thanks to Luke Thomas for the photo.

Well, the move to censure Dianne Feinstein was shot down by the Democratic Party, but not before party Chair Art Torres was forced to give a painful, embarassing speech about it.

So, there's this cool thing called the Sunshine Ordinance, which allows people to access public records generated by our dear city family, including the daily calendars of the Mayor, City Attorney, and all department heads.

A group of Sunshine activists have been trying to get copies of Mayor Gavin Newsom's calendar regularly emailed to them, but rather than just hit the forward button, a mayoral aide dutifully copies the daily calendar into a Word document, prints it out, turns it into a PDF, and THEN sends it, attached to an email.

Sounds efficient. Needless to say, the calendars arrive in fits and spurts -- days, weeks, months after originally requested.

A new batch came in today, which the activists posted on the PROSF group email list. I was clicking through it, checking out what the Mayor's been up to when I noticed a glaring omission.

According to my calendar, on October 1, 2007, me and my fellow editorial staff met with Mayor Newsom at 11:30, here at SFBG headquarters.

According to his calendar, no such meeting occurred.

One could reasonably infer that someone redacted that bit of information for some bullshit security reason. However, there are several other entries on several other days showing the Mayor met with the Examiner editorial board, the Chronicle editorial board, and -- in a whirlwind press tour on October 12 -- the editorial boards of the World Journal, Sing Tao Daily, and Ming Pao. (Sorry for all the PDFs. That's how the Mayor rolls.) He also regularly met with anonymous local and national press members throughout the month of October.

So it looks as if two former mayors -- Willie Brown and Dianne Feinstein -- are going to be the chairs of a campaign for a new 49ers stadium. It's a bit odd, especially since the chief consultant to the current mayor, Gavin Newsom, is helping run the campaign ... does Eric Jaye think Feinstein and Brown play better in the city right now than his main client, who just got re-elected with more than 70 percent of the vote?

So there's finally a candidate willing to challenge Tom Lantos. This has been floating around since early last year , but it appears to be serious now, and it's much overdue.

Speier isn't the most progressive politician in California (or even in the district) but she's a lot better than Lantos. Naturally, I assume Rep. Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the incumbents will support Lantos, but he's way out of touch with his district and should have (been) retired long ago.

Assemblymember Chuck DeVore (R-Irvine) has withdrawn a ballot initiative that, if passed by voters, would have allowed more nuclear power plants in California. In a statement on his website, DeVore says:

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. While I am disappointed we will not be moving forward on a nuclear power ballot initiative for 2008, I am heartened by the fact that over the next two years we should see applications to build 32 new reactors in America. Eventually, California will catch up to reality."

Yeah. Will do.

A Reuters article published today reports that the initiative was pulled for lack of support and DeVore plans to introduce a bill in January. Try, try again.

The initiative, if passed, would have overturned a 1976 state law banning the construction of new nuclear plants until a safe, reliable solution for the waste is established.

Joshua Arce has an interesting opinion piece in the Examiner in which he argues that San Francisco doens't need the new Peaker plants at all.

The argument, in essence, is that Mirant could keep running its least-polluting turbine for a few more years, and by then the city will have renewable alternatives.

I like the idea -- except for one key point. If there's a choice between a city-owned plant that pollutes a little bit and a privately owned plant that pollutes a little bit, and the levels of pollution are roughly equal, I'll take the city-owned plant any time. If we own it, we can control it; we can shut it down whenever we want. If it's privately owned, any effort to mandate a shutdown on any particular date will be a legal and political hassle.

So sure, let's add as little fossil-fuel generation to the southeast as possible -- but if we're going to have one turbine running, let's have it be the one the city owns.

Here are a few things I learned at Saturday's debate among the three Senate candidates, which was sponsored by the Harvey Milk LGLT Democratic Club:
- Mark Leno is desperately seeking Milk's endorsement and thinks he can get it by pointedly attacking and trying to discredit incumbent Carole Migden (a strategy that may backfire).
- When shoved, Migden shoves back hard (also a strategy that may backfire).
- Joe Alioto-Veronese doesn't belong on the same stage as Leno or Migden -- and, frankly, doesn't seem ready for a Senate race (being named "Alioto" just ain't enough) -- but he clearly thinks he can run to the right of the main event and have a shot.
- I came up with far too many questions for my role on the media panel at the event, and maybe I should have worn something a bit more stylish.
- There's still a very long way to go in this race...and it ain't gonna be pretty.

So C.W. Nevius, who doesn't live in San Francisco and loves to whine about homeless people, has shifted his attack to the San Francisco supervisors. In a rambling and typically vitriolic column, he insists that the supes have wrecked Mayor Gavin Newsom's efforts to clean up Golden Gate Park.

Here's what really happened: Newsom, through Sup. Bevan Dufty, introduced a bill that would have further criminalized homelessness. Sup. Tom Ammiano asked the obvious questions: Is it fair to make camping in the park a crime if there's noplace else for people to go? Shouldn't there be some sort of link between available shelter and criminal penalties? Shouldn't the city demonstrate that there are alternatives before arresting homeless people? And most important, will this sort of legislation actually work?

For doing his job, and not simply rubber-stamping the mayor's bogus proposal, Ammiano gets slapped. That's incisive journalism, Chuck. Go team.

The LA Times reports that "Jessica's Law," which mandates electronic tracking of all sex offenders, is never actually going to work.

The law -- which was nothing but a Republican bid to embarass Democrats in a key election year -- is too expensive, impractical and unenforceable, the Times reports:

"I don't know of any agency that has the resources to track and monitor . . . in real time," said Vacaville Police Chief Richard Word, president of the California Police Chiefs Assn. "You'll need an air traffic controller to track these folks."

That's what happens when Republicans push a dumb law and most Democrats are too chicken to fight it.

(Thanks to David Dayen at Calitics for catching this.)

Another of Dean Singleton's editors has hit the dust. Here's what Santa Cruz Sentinel editor Tom Honig -- who stepped down after more than 35 years -- had to say about the matter. For the record, the reporting staff of the San Francisco Bay Guardian couldn't agree more:

“If I had two wishes, this is what they’d be: that people would stop complaining about hard-working, honest mainstream journalists long enough to appreciate the work they do -- and second, that the people could be paid what they’re worth."

At least an occasional love note from readers would be nice when another day at the office has crept into the wee hours yet again. All newspaper execs -- including those at the helm of Singleton's MediaNews -- should be forced to cover a beat or balance several stories at once for at least three months out of each year.

Perhaps then all of the bloodletting would slow. They certainly shouldn't be paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in compensation if the only idea they have for saving the news is to kill the very people who gather it. How unoriginal for an industry that should always be one step ahead.

It's tempting to want to promote the GOP's dark-hourse phenon, Rep. Ron Paul, because all he can do in the primaries is beat up and damage the front runners. And in fact, he's gotten a lot of unexpected support, particularly from young people, because he's so strongly against the war (and because he's a libertarian sort who hates the war on drugs and supports medical marijuana). There have even been rumors about a Dennis Kucinich/Ron Paul ticket.

There's a somewhat softball Chronicle interview with Paul here. (Amazing how gentle the Chron editors are on these politicians; not even any tough follow-up questions. If you've ever listened to a Guardian political interview, things are a little different around here ....).

But even the cursory stuff in the Chron interview should be enough to make any progressive very, very nervous about Ron Paul. Among other things, the man who insists "I don't think the government should be interfering in your personal life" is strongly anti-choice, opposed to Roe v. Wade and apparently sees no federal right to privacy. (The Chron editors never pursued the issue with him and let him get away with a rambling and inconsistent answer, which was rather lame of the Fifth and Mission journos.)

He's also against income taxes and national health care. And he's against gun control. And he against any sort of amnesty for undocumented immigrants.

I'm not saying he's any worse than the rest of the Republicans in the field; I'm just saying that he's not exactly the sort of candidate who ought to get the young progressives in the Bay Area excited.

I’m told Jackie Speier is making calls to local elected officials seeking support in her unofficial but very active campaign to unseat Rep. Tom Lantos. I’m sure it’s not an easy decision for some folks: Speier is probably going to run to the left of Lantos, especially on the war – but Lantos will get the support of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and, I suspect, most of the rest of the Bay Area Congressional delegation. Lantos is far more of a hawk than his regional colleagues, and privately a lot of them say he ought to retire – but they all hate primary challenges and will be loathe to say anything positive about Speier.

So the local party power structure will be solidly behind Lantos, and I bet that Democrats who are considering endorsing Speier will feel some pressure.

They ought to put some pressure on Speier, too.

If the former state Senator wants progressive support, activists, groups and elected officials need to ask her a few tough questions, to pin her down on what we could expect from a Congressmember Speier.

Here’s a short list for starters:

For as long as humans have been migrating, but not conquering their host countries, they have been demonized. Check out the Jews under Hitler. The Arabs in France. The Pakistanis in England. And all the jokes about the Poles/Irish/ Mexican (fill in ethnicity of the most reviled group of) immigrants in your 'hood.

So, the Thanksgiving story about the young boy who was rescued by a Mexican who had just crossed the border in southern Arizona was miraculous in a number of ways.

Without the intervention of a 26-year-old Mexican called Jesus Manuel Cordova, things might have ended badly for the 9-year-old son of an American woman, who lost control of her van in a remote area just north of the Mexican border, and eventually died while awaiting help.

As the local county sheriff, Tony Estrada, reported to major news outlets, Cordova came across the boy, told him that everything was going to be all right, gave him a jacket, built a bonfire and stayed with him until about 8 a.m. the next morning. That's when hunters passed by, called authorities--and the boy was flown to hospital.

The story was miraculous for the way it got all the major news outlets casting an "illegal immigrant" named Jesus as an angel.

What wasn't miraculous about the story was how the boy's rescuer then got taken into custody by the Border Patrol, who, assumedly, will deport him.

So, while it’s depressing to read the ugly comments at sfgate about “illegal immigration," unfortunately, they aren't at all surprising.

Call me a bleeding heart legal immigrant who, yes, had to pay through the teeth to get her green card, but I'd argue that millions of "illegal immigrants" are angels every day, as they look after the children, homes, gardens and farmlands of a nation full of people grown rich on the spoils of their own historically illegal settlement.

Kinda demonic, ain't it?

In stories on the $229 million budget deficit that San Francisco could be facing next year, both the Chronicle and the Examiner used the same telling quote from Mayor Gavin Newsom's press secretary, Nathan Ballard: "Although he wants to trim the fat, the mayor made it abundantly clear he doesn't want to see a reduction in people sweeping streets or police officers walking beats."
Why is this guy so obsessed with street cleaning? As a bicyclist, I get irritated by the wet streets, which they often are since Newsom became mayor. As an environmentalist, I see this city's manic scrubbing as a waste of water (which will grow more precious with climate change) and money and source of more toxic waste (as the Guardian reported last spring). My sense of social justice is also disturbed when street cleaners become a weapon against homeless loiterers, the working class, and street parties.
But the mayor seems to think daily street scrubbing is more important than the social services that his budget will ultimately target. Hell, his official website still prominent features (under "Recent News") his "Back to Basics Budget" proposal from last spring, which focused on clean streets. With all due respect, Mr. Mayor, maybe it's time to stop pandering to the conservatives and the business community and develop some kind of vision and agenda that we can all support.

Images from SF Department of Public Works website

Everyone gets all misty about kids. They're the future and our greatest natural resource, blah, blah, blah -- or so they say. That's why voters placed Prop. H a few years ago, which sent tens of millions of dollars in city money over to the school district. But are we willing to actually listen to what young people have to say? Because they have some pretty good ideas sometimes.
For example, the San Francisco Youth Commission earlier this month unanimously approved resolutions calling for some of that Prop. H money to go toward free Muni passes for students, new bike racks at schools that don't now have adequate facilities, and a study of health impacts on young people related to the asbestos dust Lennar has been kicking up next to schools on Hunters Point.
The Community Advisory Committee on Prop. H is holding a hearing tomorrow to discuss recommendations for allocating $15 million in Prop. H money and the youth and their supporters plan to be there (Saturday, 1:30 p.m. at 555 Franklin Street). For more information, contact the Youth Commission office at YC office at 554.6446 or email kevin.liao@sfgov.org and diana.pang@sfgov.org. Because it's all about the children, right?

A Republican initiative that would split California's electoral vote and almost certainly give the White House to the GOP is still alive, according to the Brad Blog, which has a remarkable interview with one of the measure's chief backers.

Anthony F. Andrade Jr. told the blog's Brad Freidman that the measure could still make the June ballot. He also showed a bit of his political colors, saying that he's all about stopping Hillary, that the Clintons are "pricks" and that gay people are "loony."

"The people that are involved in that lifestyle have a lot of emotional problems. You know what I mean?," he asked. "Look, I don't know if you're gay or not, but the people that I know who are, who are involved in that, are a little bit loony, if you know what I mean."

What a sweet bunch of folks over at the GOP. I wonder if Giulinani and his pals will at the very least repudiate Andrade's remarks.

Now this is truly outrageous: a local blog called Bikescape has unearthed a Bay Area Air Quality Management District memo banning employees from using bicycles while carrying out their duties of promoting clean air. The memo states, "While biking to work is an option that the District supports, employees are not to ride their bikes in the course of their work duties. The potential for serious injury is much greater when riding a bicycle than driving a car in the event of an accident."
And the potential for dirtier air is much greater if even our air quality officials are required to drive cars.

....is one helluva trippy trip, one of those moments that makes me truly thankful to be covering politics in San Francisco.

It's not just the bejeweled image of a converted Alcatraz by night, or the the image of a white-domed daytime Alcatraz 'Peace Center" Island that got me tripping.

No, to get the full impact of the trippy conversion experience, scroll down the Global Peace Foundation's website to their YouTube video clip. It's an election prelude quite unlike anything I've seen before.