The attack by a homeless person on a 26-year-old German exchange student was horrific by any standard. A violent act by a possibly deranged person now charged with attempted rape shouldn't be seen as any sort of reflection on homelessness in San Francisco; it was just awful.

But when C. W. Nevius starts talking about too many homeless people appearing in the Sunset, he needs to start a bit of self-reflection. His column states:

Whether, as many believe, the attack was a result of moving homeless encampments out of Golden Gate Park or simply an increase in homeless people in the area, the residents of the Outer Sunset are deeply concerned about the people living on their streets.

No shit, Sherlock. You (and I mean you, Chuck, since your columns drove the mayor to drive homeless people out of the park) push people out of a relatively quiet and invisible place where they've been sleeping, and they're going to wind up somewhere else. Like on the streets of the Sunset.

Then the cops can crack down on homeless people in the Sunset, and they'll move to another neighborhood, where the same game will start all over. And pretty soon a lot of the burghers will start wondering if we weren't all better off before the Chron started its sensationalist coverage and the mayor got all agitated about the homeless camps in the park. Maybe that's a better place for people to sleep than in Sunset doorways.

Huh, Chuck?

Of course Gavin Newsom knew that a budget problem was ahead. He sees the figures. He also knows that it's not about the economy or the looming recession; as Controller Ed Harrington put it, "our revenues here in the city are doing fine."

That is, the revenue is on track, on budget, as predicted.

The problem is that the revenue San Francisco brings in isn't enough for the level of spending. It's no surprise: The city has to give its key employees nice raises, as Newsom did, because it's so expensive to live here. City payroll is going to keep going up as long as housing prices do -- and as long as Newsom doesn't address the real housing issues.

All the talk of a hiring freeze and cutting out middle managers is nonsense; it won't go anywhere. And sure, there's fat in the city budget, but not $250 million worth. If Newsom were honest, he'd admit there's a real structural problem here:

San Francisco voters want extensive public services (and that's fine). City officials want to pay employees well (and they should). The city is trying to put resources into all sorts of problems that the federal and state governments have ignored (and that's just not going to change).

To make it all work, we need more money. About a quarter billion dollars a year. Once you admit that, you can start talking about how to find it -- who has to pay more taxes. But as long as you're in denial, the problem will never go away.

Check out the Barack OBollywood Youtube clip.

This is what happens when you privatize a public asset. It's hard to imagine that the spirit of the Presidio Trust Act would have allowed for this kind of new construction in a National Park, where the emphasis is supposed to be the preservation of the natural environment and historic uses of the 1,491 acres. Where does contemporary art owned by Gap founder Don Fisher fit into that mandate?

This new structure, to house Fisher's private art collection, is slated for the Main Post, the historic parade ground of the old army base, where several stately brick buildings now sit empty. The Trust Act, under section104(c) does state that new construction in the park should be "limited to replacement of existing structures of similar size in existing areas of development." Nothing on shoebox aesthetics there, and this new museum doesn't offer a way to rehabilitate the aging structures that would surround it, which is part of the Trust's Management Plan.

A meeting will be held tonight, 6:30 at the Officer's Club in the Presidio, to discuss the Fishers' proposal and a competing plan for a history museum from the Presidio Historical Association. At least their proposal actually has something to do with the park.

The San Francisco-based War and Law League has just released a survey of this year's presidential candidates, who are actively questioning whether the U.S. is now conducting an illegal war in Iraq that should be ended or properly authorized immediately. Or least that was the basic position taken by the only three candidates to respond: Democrats Dennis Kucinich and John Edwards and Republican Ron Paul. Kudos to the trio for stating their positions on a controversial question that might become painfully relevant in the coming years: Was the U.S. invasion of Iraq legal? Because if it wasn't, as many legal scholars believe, then the leaders who started it might someday be called to account for war crimes and other violations of international law.
The questions and issues raised, which were vetted by Golden Gate University of Law professor Peter Keane and touch on everything from the legality of nuclear strikes to Bush's preemptive war doctrine, are fascinating to read and consider. And the answers -- as well as the lack of answers from strong anti-war candidates like Barack Obama and Bill Richardson -- are telling indicators of where our country could be headed.

History museum proposed by Presidio Historical Association

Art museum proposed by Don Fisher

Last night at the Officer's Club about 200 Marina residents gushed over Gap-founder Don Fisher's plan to put a 100,000 square foot museum in the Presidio to house his art collection. For the most part they gave a demur nod to the Presidio Historical Association's alternate proposal for a history museum. The two museums are vying for the same slice of real estate at the head of the Main Parade Ground, facing north toward the Bay where a bowling alley and tennis courts are currently located.

The historical association made a case for the site as a place where the history they’d be presenting actually went down, and said the grounds surrounding the museum would be a part of the museum itself. “The Main Post area is the most historically sensitive area,” said Gary Widman of the Historical Association. “It’s where San Francisco really started 1n 1776 and it’s an area that has buildings from almost every major period since that time.”

The only historical connection Mr. Fisher could come up with was the original plan for the Main Parade Ground, which called for a significant building at its head to anchor the site. He was firm in saying he could think of no other possible place for his museum. “This is the only location that works for us,” he said. “Nothing like that is available anywhere else in the Presidio.” In fact, he said he was planning on gifting his art to some other, already established museums until he was approached by the Presidio Trust, which suggested he consider building his own museum in the park instead.

Before the two plans were presented, Mayor Newsom offered some very diplomatic remarks suggesting a great compromise. "These don't have to be competing projects," he said, adding that he’d appointed a staff member (Kyri McClellan, 554-6123) to this project. “My office wants to participate in this process from the beginning.”

The plans agreed on one issue -- parking would go underground. After that, they differ radically.

Yesterday, the Board faced a choice: hire legal firm Garcia Calderon Ruiz, which specializes in government law,
or run with academic lawyer Prof. Robert Weisberg, as outside counsel for official misconduct proceedings against Sup. Ed Jew.

Beleagured Sup. Ed Jew in happier times outside his flower shop on Waverly Place.
Photo by Charles Russo

Three attorneys with GCR, Mary Hernandez, George Yin and Nicolas Vaca, gave a relatively slick presentation compared to the Dumbledore-style ramblings of Prof. Weisberg.

"We have dealt with removal issues before," said Hernandez.
"We are used to working in gray areas," said Yin.
"A reasonable estimate," said Vaca,of the firm's $24,800 bid to get the project started.

But that bid appeared to be $24,800 too much, compared to Weisberg's offer to work pro-bono, even if he teaches criminal law and doesn't have experience in government agency law.

"This is not really a criminal matter," said Weisberg. "The Board is a legislative body, and so it would be unconstitutional for it to convict someone of a crime."

Maybe the Board enjoyed Weisberg's easy-to-grasp explanations,which included making an analogy between Jew's case and congressional impeachments proceedings: just as Congress indicts and the Senate then votes to remove from office, the Ethics Commission would do the "impeaching" and the Board of Supervisors would then vote whether to remove Jew from office.

Alles klar, Herr Professor.

Because in the end Sup. Geraldo Sandoval, seconded by Sup. Tom Ammiano, directed the Clerk of the Board to enter into an agreement with the professor, which does include the possibility of the $15-an-hour labor of his student research assistants at Stanford University.
.

Presidential hopeful Ron Paul
Last night at the Holiday Inn in San Francisco, an event and straw poll staged by the San Francisco Republican Alliance (a group started by former local GOP committee member and sacrificial Assembly candidate Gail Neira after she battled with local party leaders) that seemed geared toward supporting presidential candidate Fred Thompson was abruptly canceled when dozens of Ron Paul supporters showed up to vote. Rather than allow the vote to go in favor of Paul -- whose anti-war and libertarian views have generated considerable support in the Bay Area -- Neira called off the vote and offered to refund everyone's fees ($5 to vote, or $33 to attend the banquet then vote).
Check on the You Tube videos of the event here and here, and read accounts by Paul support here, here, and here.

This is big, a clear sign of how Mayor Gavin Newsom is going to operate in his next four years: Susan Leal, the head of the Public Utilities Commission, is going to be fired because she's moving too fast toward public power.

Now keep in mind: Susan Leal is not by any means a radical public-power activist. We've been pushing her on this issue for years, and she is, at best, moving slowly, cautiously, incrementally to implement Community Choice Aggregation and to look at options to create a city-run utility.

But even these cautious, slow moves were too much for Pacific Gas and Electric Company, and, according to what I've heard at City Hall, PG&E was directly behind this move. THe message that Newsom and PG&E are sending out: Nobody should dare, ever, to take even little itsy-bitsy baby steps toward public power.

Note the comment by the head of Leal's commission:

"The commission has never taken a vote on public power," commission President Ryan Brooks said Wednesday. "It's something she wants, but I don't think the commission wants it. ... I don't think it's the right time for it. It's not a policy direction she has from the commission or from me."

Leal, no fool, forced Newsom to give her a contract when she took the job, and the city will now have to spend $500,000 to buy her out. That's a lot of money -- but Newsom is apparently willing to spend it as the price of protecting PG&E.

It's going to be a long four years.

This week, we reported on Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier’s divided love between San Francisco and St. Helena in Napa County where she maintains an additional home. But she isn’t the only local official who’s heart is torn. Who else is sleeping around?

A friend of Oakland City Council president Ignacio de la Fuente who sits on the Oakland Port Commission may be living primarily in the peninsula town of Hillsborough, one of the nation's wealthiest based on per capita income, rather than a tough East Oakland neighborhood he claimed to reside in. The Oakland City Charter requires that Tony Batarse live in city limits while serving on the port commission. But East Bay Express reporter Robert Gammon bore into his claims last month revealing that the commissioner, a successful auto dealer and also a donor to powerful state Sen. Don Perata, had been taking annual homeowner's exemptions on his opulent residence in Hillsborough since at least 1985. The tax benefit can only be used against a property that the homeowner predominantly lives in.

Bay Area congressional Democrats Tom Lantos and Nancy Pelosi: fighting imperial excesses, one capitulation at a time.
So congressional Democrats are angry about the New York Times revelation that the CIA destroyed videotapes of their agents harshly interrogating (ne torturing) al Qaeda suspects. And they should be, both because its appears the tapes had been illegally withheld from congressional and 9/11 Commission inquiries, and because they might show evidence of torture authorized and/or condoned at the highest levels of government. But there's some subtext to this story that once again casts congressional Democrats in a very disturbing light. It shows them to be complicit in and enablers of the very worst of the Bush Administration atrocities: torture, illegal spying on Americans, and telling lies designed to start an illegal war under false pretenses.

When I first saw this press release, I thought: Wow. Gavin Newsom realizes that there's a $250 million budget deficit, and he's actually trying to do something about it. We tax cigarettes because they're unhealthy, why not tax carbon emissions, which are killing the planet -- and raise a little money in the process?

Well, damn: There's a problem. The key word here is "revenue neutral." Newsom's going to give tax rebates to anyone who has to pay this new tax. So it brings in no money for the cash-strapped city.

I understand the argument (let's tax carbon, not jobs) but the payroll tax doesn't tax jobs; it's just a way to measure the size of a company. It's an imperfect measure, as is gross receipts, but it's one of the few possible measures you can use for a tax. Calling it a tax on jobs is completely misleading, and the mayor knows that.

So why not keep both? Why not simply add a levy on commercial carbon use (and maybe residential, over a certain basline, so it won't be a regressive tax on renters), and bring in some cash in a way that also discourages environmental waste?

Here's an interesting chart, thanks to Marc Salomon, totalling the second- and third-choice votes in the mayor's race. SInce Newsom won a clear majority, ranked-choice voting never came in to play, but if it had, and just for fun and the permanent record, Quintin Mecke came in second, Harold Hoogasian third, Wilma Pang fourth. Chicken John didn't come close to his goal of being the Number Two candidate.

I think I'm reading this right.

Cub reporters are finding it increasingly difficult to climb out of bed each day.

The pay sucks, everyone's eager to inform you of the real story you're failing to cover, and no matter how many late nights you put in, opportunities for advancement throughout the biz are slimming down with every new round of announced layoffs.

Spend each waking moment learning how to navigate Byzantine government bureaucracies so you can write a few cool stories, and the thanks you'll get in return is the axe to help save expenses in the short term for the paper's media parent. Here's what management might say these days as an explanation:

“We are not trying to make any other statement here other than it is a competitive world out there and we are doing what we can to make sure we are putting out an excellent paper in the communities we serve.”

So the Harvey Milk Club meets tomorrow evening (Dec. 11) to consider an endorsement for state Senate. It's Mark Leno vs. Carole Migden, and it's been all too ugly.

You can read the club's press release here ; club members got in such a nasty fight at the last meeting that some don't even accept tomorrow's meeting as legitimate.

But here's the thing: At some point, we all have to put this behind us and move on.

I think the odds are pretty good that Migden will win the Milk Club. I'm not going to say it was all done with perfect adherence to the rules; the Migden forces pulled some fast ones. The Leno people pulled some stunts, too, and would have played fast and loose with the rules earlier on if it helped them. That's how these clubs work.

And frankly, a Migden nod won't surprise anyone (Carole's a former Milk Club president) and it won't be a horrible blow to Leno (who has the Alice B. Toklas Club). Leno is clearly trying to appeal to the progressives, and the Milk endorsement would help, but there are other ways he can do that. So his campaign, and the Republic as a whole, will survive this vote.

If Migden wins tomorrow, it seems to me that the Leno folks should register their protests if they please, but then let it go. And if Leno manages to pull it out, the Migden folks should do the same.

This isn't worth the sort of bitter fights, name calling and personal demonization that could be the result of an extended, bruising battle.

We can all argue forever whether Sup. Chris Daly's affordable housing plan is perfect, but in the end, it's way better than what we have now. Besides, as Daly points out, Jim Sutton is against it. Which is an excellent reason for everyone else to vote yes.

Now that Gerardo Sandoval has said he'll support the plan, the two swing votes are Sophie Maxwell and Jake McGoldrick. If either one of them opposes this, it will be a slap in the face to all the progressives who have tried to hard to support the two supervisors.

You can call their offices, right now, and demand they support the Daly plan; McGoldrick is 554-7410 and Maxwell is 554-7670.

I'm not surprised that Hillary Clinton is faring poorly in a new DailyKos straw poll; the Kos folks have never been real fond of Hillary. But it's a bit startling that 73 percent of some 700 voters are supporting John Edwards.

Thios is not a fair, scientific or random sample and doesn't count for anything, really, but it's interesting.

Most people agree it's irritating and invasive to get our dinners interrupted by calls from telemarketers. That's why our elected officials finally created the National Do Not Call Registry. But is it any less irksome when the disembodied robo-voice of Gavin Newsom or Bill Clinton disturbs our peace? Or when some chirpy young political volunteer wants to know who we plan to vote for in the upcoming election? After all, aren't they also invading your space to try to sell you something that you may not want?
That's why the nonprofit group Citizens for Civil Discourse have created the National Political Do Not Call Registry, which is signing up people who don't want political calls and working with candidates and political parties to respect their wishes.

The big Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club endorsement vote for State Senate is tonight, as you've probably already heard way too much about if you've been following the Carole Migden-Mark Leno slugfest. Frankly, the whole situation has gotten downright ridiculous, with each side alleging dirty tricks and using whatever tactics they can muster to win this supposedly influential endorsement.
But the topper is now coming from Leno himself, who has concluded that Migden has it sewn up and has decided to essentially boycott the vote, saying he's not going to show up and urging his supporters to also stay home. In other words, he's taking his ball and going home, or crying over spilled milk, or whatever metaphor you prefer.
Why can't he just lose gracefully, congratulate his opponent, and keep his dignity? After all, Leno's people engineered early endorsements from the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club and the San Francisco Young Democrats, both times using confederates to essentially rig the game. And now he cries foul when a similar episode goes against him. Puh-leeze!

Sup Sean Elsbernd says that the City's pension and retiree health care obligations are, “The most crushing fiscal issue facing this City," a crush he estimates will amount to $4 billion over the next 30 years, and growing.

"If we don’t act, people are going to kick us and throw mud in our face, 20 years from now," says Elsbernd, who, along with Mayor Gavin Newsom introduced a June 2008 charter amendment today that Elsbernd claims is a "small attempt to make sure that this it stops at $4 billion."

"I look forward to future discussions with labor on this," Elsbernd says.

But Newsom and Elsbernd are proposing to reduce retirement benefits for those hired after Jan. 10, 2009, increase years of service required to qualify for health benefits at retirement and adjust the formula for calculating retiree health benefit subsidies. Which is why labor may well decide to back a dueling charter amendment that Board President Aaron Peskin introduced today with Sups. Ross Mirkarimi, Geraldo Sandoval, and Tom Ammiano as co-sponsors.

The view from my classroom. Yes, life was good.

So yeah, I went to one of those "liberal New England colleges" that connote images of foliage and cute boys in tartan plaid scarves...but most of the 250 kids on my campus were sporting threads from the "free box" or swimming naked off the pier during lunch break. College of the Atlantic is not like other schools...at all. It's more of an experiment in what happens when you mix education with extreme environmentalism. Recycling, composting, making fuel from veggie oil, eating local food, building sustainable structures -- it's all old news for them. For almost 40 years they've been practicing and preaching so much of what's encompassed by the year's biggest buzzword -- "green."

Plenty (It's easy being green!) Magazine just profiled my alma mater, and as I was scrolling through the article online, up came an advertisement for Pacific Gas & Electric. "We can do this" it read, with a cute little wind turbine graphic.

What business -- I ask you, I deeply ask you -- does a Northern California utility company that gets most of its energy from burning fossil fuels and nuclear power have advertising in a New York-based magazine profiling a miniscule hippie school in downeast Maine?

If it weren't for the hard-charging business section of the San Francisco Examiner, we'd have never learned that the nation's largest pharmaceutical drug distributor was being sued by an employee-benefits fund on the East Coast.

Okay, okay. We had the story a year ago. We just had to gloat a little. The Chronicle caught up with it several weeks later, and the Wall Street Journal beat us all when they fronted the story on the day the suit was filed earlier in 2006.

The McKesson Corp. is based here in San Francisco, and in the Examiner's deadwood edition this morning, they explained that the company was accused in federal civil court records of conspiring with the Hearst Corp. to artificially inflate drug prices causing consumers to pay untold billions more than necessary for wholesale pharmaceuticals.

Hearst, of course, owns the Chronicle. But they also own a company that publishes drug prices called First DataBank. McKesson's corporate headquarters fill 20 floors at One Post Street where Sen. Dianne Feinstein also maintains an office. The Examiner's coverage today is a mere two-sentence brief, and without crucial context outlining McKesson's past alleged anti-competitive actions, the story is all but meaningless.

McKesson's chief exec makes more money even than the top suits at Bay Area oil companies (check the San Francisco Business Journal's "Book of Lists"). But the local press does an extraordinarily poor job covering the Fortune 500 company.

Now, we know it sounds a little self-righteous to complain about the lack of Big Pharma coverage in the Bay Area. After all, complex health-care policy just doesn't have big boobs. But isn't a Federal Trade Commission investigation kinda hot? It's in their SEC filings, you hunky business reporters.

Cindy Sheehan, who turned the loss of her son Casey in Iraq into a major national antiwar campaign, became a lighting rod for right-wing attacks, then stepped down from her leadership role, exhausted and somewhat bitter, is back on the scene -- and running for Congress in San Francisco.

She came by the Guardian office this week and talked at length about her new political challenge. She realizes it's not going to be easy taking on Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, the head of the local Democratic Party power structure and a champion fundraiser with essentially unlimited access to cash. But while Pelosi has been building up her power base in Washington, she's often forgotten her base back home -- and I hope Sheehan can push her not only on the war but on the Presidio privatization and its impacts nationwide.

You can listen to the full interview below.

From the Nuclear Information and Resource Service:

We are hearing that Senate-House appropriators are near agreement on a loan guarantee package that looks like this:

$25 billion for nukes
$10 billion for renewables
$10 billion for coal to liquids
$2 billion for uranium enrichment
$2 billion for coal to gas

While the $10 billion for renewables might be welcome, the package as a whole reflects misplaced priorities and a lost opportunity to address the climate crisis. Indeed, such an energy policy would make things far worse and make it much harder to reduce carbon emissions.

Throwing taxpayer money at wealthy utilities is not the way toward a sane, sustainable energy future.

*Please call your Senators and Representative today! No loan guarantees for nuclear power (nor coal!)! Tell them to reject the entire omnibus appropriations bill if it includes such loan guarantees.

Capitol Switchboard: 202-224-3121

*If you’ve already called them this week, or can make an additional call, then call Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and tell him to stand up to the polluting energy interests and not to allow such a parting gift to retiring Senator Pete Domenici and the outgoing Bush Administration. Senator Reid’s office is 202-224-3542.