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.

“He remained popular with voters (if not insiders) throughout the whole of his first term (after gay marriage), even through some trying personal times. Effectively, with an absence of challenge, his high poll numbers transferred directly to the ballot—rare in American politics.” David Latterman on Mayor Gavin Newsom’s 2007 reelection.

Photo from sfgov.org's Mayoral homepage.

“Trying personal times!” Don’t you just love how Fall Line Analytics President David Latterman tiptoes round the eggshells scattered on Newsom’s reelection path in Spring ‘07, following the news that Newsom had had an affair with the wife of his campaign manager, Alex Tourk?

And you’ve got to give it up to Latterman when it comes to analyzing quantitative and graphical political data, as he has just done for the November 2007 election. Plus, his scatter graphs look mighty festive

Latterman’s “trying times” comment also reminds me why I missed the initial media frenzy that news of Newsom’s affair broke. I was attending a day-long, ground breaking climate change conference, convened by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.

I remember it well, because that was the day that SFPUC General Manager Susan Leal kicked off the conference by announcing that we’d be drinking from decanted water that day, since bottled water was bad for the environment--and we have all that great clean water coming from Hetch Hetchy.

Then Newsom made a few comments, before scampering back to the City Hall, where, as it later turned out, all hell was about to break loose, although it took Newsom 24 hours to talk about it.

Who would have thought back then, on January 31, 2007, that by year's endr, we would see Newsom handily reelected—and Leal, who has worked hard to bring San Francisco’s water and power policies into the 21st Century, with her head on the chopping block?

Now, there’s an explanatory scatter graph I’d like to see, showing Leal’s popularity with the Mayor decreasing, I guess, as her efforts to make San Francisco's utilities truly public increased, and as the Mayor, I suppose, increasingly took the credit for many of the initiatives that Leal has led the way on? Sweet. Now there's justice.

The Road to Newsom's rise and Leal's demise is as winding as the City's map of how water gets to San Francisco.

Since it appears that our lawsuit against SF Weekly and its parent company isheaded for trial the first week in January, and the Weekly has been running a lot of misleading stories about the case, I thought I'd post the key document in the case so far -- our brief explaining why the case should not be dismissed and should go to trial.

Here's the brief, as a pdf. Although it's marked "confidential," it was introduced and discussed in open court and is now public record.

The judge in the case, Richard Kramer, tossed out the SF Weekly's summary judgment motion, and the court of appeals rejected an SF Weekly writ seeking to have that dismissal overturned. So the case is going forward, and if you read our brief, you can see what this is all about.

Governor Schwarzenegger is about to declare a state of economic emergency, which will give him broad powers to cut spending in the state.

The law that lets him do this has never been used before; it's 2004's Proposition 58, and you can read a pretty good analysis of it here. The basic language says that the governor can call the Legislature back into session and propose measures to address the fiscal crisis. The Legislature has 45 days to act on those proposals and can't adjourn or move on to any other business until it does.

The problem here is that the state Constitution requires any budget bills to pass the Legislature with a two-thirds vote. So in effect, the guv can send over a list of nasty cuts, and a handful of Republicans can block the Democrats in the Legislature from enacting any tax hikes (or, for example, restoring the motor vehicle license fee, which would bring in about $6 billlion alone).

So Schwarzenegger can come pretty close to demanding deep cuts in social programs and in aid to cities and the Legislature will have a hard time doing anything but enacting them.

That will suck for San Francisco, which, like all cities, will get slammed as state money vanishes.

Why the world needs good copy editors: Just think about how many people have been killed because of a couple of misplaced commas.

The Democrats in the state Assembly managed to pass a complicated health-care bill that the governor likes, his own party members oppose and the nurses and the insurance companies both hate.

Over at Calitics, David Dayen has a nice analysis of some of the financial problems with the bill -- including the fact that it might all amount to absolutely nothing a few years down the road.

The Cal Nurses Association is even harsher:

Insurance companies can continue to deny medical care they brand as “not medically necessary” or experimental, deny access to specialists, and deny tests – even when those care options or treatment are recommended by a physician.
Insurance companies can continue to charge whatever they want. The bill has no limits on escalating premiums, deductibles, co-pays, or other rising costs.
Individuals are still forced to buy insurance without guarantees of what they are buying or whether they can afford it.

I recognize that some progressives support this (Andy Stern and SIEU are big fans) , and that you can't make the perfect the enemy of the good .. but let's be serious -- this is never going to work.

There's only one way to solve the health-care crisis, and that's to get the private insurance companies the hell out of it. This kind of hodge-podge that still lets these greedy crooks set the rates, decide what they're going to pay for and make life difficult (and expensive) for patients and doctors simply can't be effective in controlling health-care costs.

Maybe it's better than nothing, but not a whole lot better.

After five years of effort, a group of ten media organizations called the Sunshine in Government Initiative has succeeded in getting Congress to pass a much-needed reform bill that addresses some of the worst problems with the Freedom of Information Act. It now goes to the president -- but since there are Republican co-sponsors and it passed pretty overwhelmingly, there's a chance he'll sign it.

Here's the official statement:

U.S. House Sends FOIA Reforms to President's Desk,
Media Groups Praise Changes Helping Public Obtain Documents

The ten media organizations comprising the Sunshine in Government Initiative
(SGI) applaud the House and Senate for passing important bipartisan reforms
to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), House Oversight and
Government Reform Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA), Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA), Rep.
William Lacy Clay (D-MO), Rep. Todd Platts (R-PA) and Rep. Lamar Smith
(R-TX) led the effort to pass this legislation. Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) also
played a key role in getting this legislation over the finish line.

The media group members of SGI appreciate the hard work and dedication of
these members and their staffs for their diligent work to improve the way
FOIA works for the American public. Members of the SGI coalition include:
American Society of Newspaper Editors, Associated Press, Association of
Alternative Newsweeklies, Coalition of Journalists for Open Government,
National Association of Broadcasters, National Newspaper Association,
Newspaper Association of America, Radio-Television News Directors
Association, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and Society of
Professional Journalists.

Statements from the Sunshine in Government Initiative and SGI Members
Organizations

"After years of growing government secrecy, today's vote reaffirms the
public's fundamental right to know," said Rick Blum, Coordinator of the
Sunshine in Government Initiative. "Fixing FOIA isn't a secret. This bill
makes commonsense changes to help the public know what government is up to.
We thank the sponsors who championed real changes and worked hard to keep
the government's doors open."

"We applaud Congress for resolving the differences that existed in the House
and Senate versions of this important legislation and making its passage a
reality," said Gilbert Bailon, president of the American Society of
Newspaper Editors and editorial page editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
"This action reaffirms the public's right to know and buttresses a statutory
right vital to our Democracy."

Long-time open government advocate Pete Weitzel, Coordinator of the
Coalition of Journalists for Open Government, which is a member of SGI,
called the vote "a true holiday gift from Congress."

Community newspapers particularly sought an independent office to resolve
disputes. "Strengthening the Freedom of Information Act will pay dividends
in public information for a long time to come. This new law has many
virtues. But as community newspaper journalists, we particularly celebrate
the development of an ombudsman office under the Office of Government
Information Services," said Steve Haynes, President of the National
Newspaper Association and Publisher of the Oberlin (KS) News. "We hope it
will open doors that have too long been locked by delay and inattention to
information requests. National Newspaper Association congratulates Senators
Leahy, Cornyn and Kyl and House Chairman Henry Waxman for their authorship
and contributions to this bill. We hope this will be the first of many
enactments to improve transparency and help citizens better understand how
the government operates."

Other media leaders praised today's vote and the bill's sponsors. ³The
Freedom of Information Act is an indispensable tool for citizens and
businesses to access information about their government, which,
unfortunately, too often includes government waste and wrongdoing,² said
John F. Sturm, President and CEO of the Newspaper Association of America.
³Today¹s bipartisan passage of the OPEN Government Act to strengthen and
reform FOIA is a great day for the public¹s interest in good government. We
applaud the dedication of all the lawmakers who pushed this important
measure forward, particularly Senators Patrick Leahy, John Cornyn, Jon Kyl
and Reps. Henry Waxman and Todd Platts.²

³This is a huge advancement for open government, thanks to the leadership of
Senators Leahy, Cornyn and Kyl and Representatives Waxman and Platt,² said
Barbara Cochran, president of the Radio-Television News Directors
Association. ³But this isn¹t just a victory for journalists; it¹s a victory
for every single member of the American public. This legislation will
eliminate some of the lengthy delays and persistent backlogs in the FOIA
process that create obstacles and limit the public¹s ability to make
informed choices in their communities.²

Other SGI members saw this as a strong change in direction. "Passage of the
FOIA bill will allow not only members of the press but all Americans to hold
their government more accountable. In a time when First Amendment rights
are under attack almost daily in this country, this bill is a major step to
ensuring America has a free press and a government that is transparent and
open," noted Clint Brewer, president of the Society of Professional
Journalists and Executive Editor of the City Paper in Nashville, Tennessee.

The California High Speed Rail Authority will convene tomorrow in Sacramento and could decide on the system's Bay Area track alignment, but Chairman Quentin Kopp tells the Guardian that they probably won't be able to make that crucial decision yet. That's because powerful advocates for the Pacheco Pass alignment and those who favor Altamount Pass are each firmly entrenched in their respective positions and threatening to derail the already difficult project if they don't get their way.
"People will either come to their senses or there won't be any high speed rail in California until the next century," said Kopp, who created the project as a legislator back in the mid-'90s. "If people want to be destructive instead of constructive, people can try to sink this project."
High speed rail, which would take passengers from San Francisco to Los Angeles in two and a half hours at far lower financial and environmental costs than traveling by car or air, already faced problems with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has repeatedly delayed a $10 billion bond measure now set for fall of 2008. And now, even its supporters are threatening to jump ship over the Bay Area alignment.

Insight, the Nuclear Energy Institute's monthly pro-nukes pamphleteer, did a survey of the presidential candidates positions on nuclear power. The only one that's explicitly against more nuclear power plants is John Edwards. Fred Thompson managed to answer the question without really answering the question. They panned Dennis Kucinich, but for the record, in an interview with Grist’s Amanda Griscom Little, he said, “Nuclear has to be phased out. The hidden costs of nuclear are enormous -- of building these plants and storing the waste forever. It's not financially or environmentally sustainable.”

Here are the quotes NEI printed:

Hillary Clinton: "When it comes to nuclear power, I'm an agnostic. We've got two big problems: What to do with waste? And how do we afford to build and maintain nuclear power plants? If we can deal with those two big question marks, I'm not against it."

John Edwards: "Wind, solar, cellulose-based biofuels are the way we need to go. I do not favor nuclear power.....It is extremely costly...and we still don't have a safe way to dispose of the nuclear waste."

A small town in Italy has been getting all of its energy from renewable sources for the last six years, and now generates three times more than it needs, netting them a half a million dollar rebate from the private company that owns the grid.

Meanwhile, back in La-La Land, President Bush has signed our gutted energy bill. The upside: better fuel standards...in 12 years; improved efficiency standards for appliances and a ban on 100 watt incandescent lightbulbs. Also major funding for biofuels but not the other renewables preferred by environmentalists. According to the Washington Post, "Not everyone was happy at the end of a year of haggling and lobbying. To secure passage for the bill, congressional leaders dropped a tax package that would have reduced breaks for the biggest oil and gas companies and extended breaks for wind and solar projects."

We can't even get a national requirement for 15 percent renewable energy. Our Rep. Nancy Pelosi said, "This legislation will benefit our consumers, with savings at the pump, it will strengthen our national security, and it will preserve God’s beautiful creation for our future generations."

So the Coast Guard announced today that the Cosco Busan can leave San Francisco and head off to someplace where there will be no liens on it, no legal controls, and no way to assure that the city or people who have been harmed by the oil spill ever get any money.

Thanks to sfist for this sad tip.

See, I have been convinced from the start that the only way we would ever have any leverage over the twisted network of companies that owns or controls this ship is if we kept the goods -- a boat worth hundreds of millions of dollars -- in custody until the suits were settled and the owners, whoever they are, paid up.

And now, off goes the boat. Look forward to years and years of litigation before anyone sees any real money out of this outfit.

PS: Just as I was posting this blog item, I looked out my window from the Guardian office at 135 Mississippi and saw the boat sailing out of the Bay. Damn.

Well, not everyone, but there's a fascinating bit of political polling intelligence here. The site, designed by Matt Waterman, allows you to select positions on key issues and then matches the positions of the various candidates to see who comes closest to your opinions.

It's no surprise that Dennis Kucinich was the winner when I did the survey; I knew I agrred with Kucinich on almost everything. But check out the results so far. More than 200,000 votes, and the candidate who most fits the actual positions of the voters surveyed is -- overwhlemingly -- Dennis Kucinich.

Interesting. This is obviously unscientific and self-selecting (and there's a link to it on Kucinich's site, which probably drove a bunch of traffic), but it's also insightful: Since Kucinch is nowhere near the top in the "real" polls, one could conclude that either (a) a lot of people don't fully understand where their candidates actually are on the issues, or (b) they are going to vote for a candidate whose views they don't really accept, just because they think that person can win.

And while this survey has a tiny sample and probably doesn't reflect the electorate as a whole, both of the above conclusions are, unfortunately, quite accurate.

(BTW, the photo above comes from an item on the Kucinch web site called "How Kucinich found love," which I must say is one of the more embarassing things I've ever seen a candidate post. TMI, Dennis. TMI.)

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition has abandoned plans for a June ballot measure that would approve some bicycle projects and bypass the court injunction that is blocking all bike system improvements until 2009 at the earliest. SFBC director Leah Shahum tells us the group had been working hard on the ballot measure, enjoying good political support and doing a poll that showed wide public support. "But it started to look uglier and uglier from a legal perspective," she said. Lawyers working with the SFBC worried that the ballot measure would need to be extremely specific in identifying all aspects of every project it proposed -- right down to which parking spots might be lost and exactly where a bike rack would be placed -- and that specificity would create lots of opportunities for the measure to be challenged later. Ironically, the Muni-reform Prop. A that the SFBC helped win approval on also created other legal hurdles by transferring control over bike projects from the Board of Supervisors to the MTA. And with the SFBC needing to gather signatures in January, there just wasn't enough time to make the measure bullet-proof.
But Shahum said the SFBC is still considering doing some kind of measure on the November ballot and pushing the city hard to expedite work on the Bike Plan as much as possible.

If you want a little perspective on the Governor's health plan, take a minute and read this amazing story (thanks, Calitics) about a massive protest organized to get a desperately ill 17-year-old girl a liver transplant. The liver was available; the doctors were ready. The insurance company wouldn't pay for it.

Here's what Rose Ann DeMoro of the California Nurses Association had to say:

"Every politician who thinks the answer to our healthcare crisis is more insurance should stop and think about Nataline Sarkysian," said DeMoro. "Insurance is not care. Paying for insurance coverage is not the same as assuring you will receive appropriate care, even when recommended by a physician as it was for Nataline. Insurance corporations profit by denying care to the sick, and that is no way to run a humane healthcare system."

I hope the California state Senate is listening.

photo courtesy of Tony on flickr

The Washington Post reports today that the US fertility rate is back up to replacement level. The article generally spins this as a good thing, with a token quote of caution in the last paragraph from environmentalist Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute.

But I’m particularly curious about this paragraph: “While the rising fertility rate was unwelcome news to some environmentalists, the "replacement rate" is generally considered desirable by demographers and sociologists because it means a country is producing enough young people to replace and support aging workers without population growth being so high it taxes national resources.”

During my research on the issue I came across all sorts of evidence that we’re already taxing our natural resources. According to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, a 4-year project initiated by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and on which more than 1,300 scientists collaborated, of 24 ecosystem services vital to humans, 15 are “being degraded or used unsustainably, including fresh water, capture fisheries, air and water purification, and the regulation of regional and local climate, natural hazards, and pests.”

Back in 1993 the Union of Concerned Scientists issued a “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity” which stated, “Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course,” and recommended a stabilization of population.

As Lindsey Grant succinctly sums it up in his 1996 book Juggernaut, “Perpetual physical growth is impossible on a finite planet.”

How can the people of San Francisco make it through the holiday season without crying uncontrollably over the just-announced departure of San Francisco City College Chancellor Phil Day? In a statement, Day apologized profusely for destroying your Christmas.

"I am truly sorry that I must deliver this message on the eve of our traditional holiday break but I did not want you to find out about this by reading the papers or having it via news reports."

Thank you for being so kind, Chancellor. Clearly the media frenzy resulting from your official announcement to step down is making it difficult for San Franciscans to concentrate on their celebrations -- including the public and private critics of your administration, many of whom worked hard to help us understand just how much of a mess the school's costly bond projects are in.

Well, Dennis Kucinich had a good excuse for missing the kick-off of his “Peace Train” presidential campaign in San Francisco – the untimely death of his brother, Perry.

The media, however, didn't have an excused absence. Despite the lack of Dennis, over 200 people turned up last Friday night to hear the Nation’s John Nichols, writer Michael Parenti, Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin, Bill Simpich from the Iraq Moratorium, and Kucinich scheduler, Amy Vossbrinck, laud the Ohio congressman and his bid for the White House.

While all of the speakers had interesting points to make, Parenti made the really obvious one that had to be in the backs of all the minds sitting in the audience – that no one’s paying attention to Kucinich’s campaign. “Candidates used to hide how much money they had. Now they brag,” said Parenti, and the more money they have, the more “serious” their candidacies. But, said Parenti, it’s the newscasters that really call the shots. “The media makes these designations. They say these are the leading candidates.”

The late Tatiana. Photo by Charles Russo

Okay, so we all know now what a mess this has been: The wall in the tiger grotto was too low. The reponse plan wasn't followed. I understand that there was, and is, a lot of confusion ....

But why is everything at the zoo now such a damn national-security secret?

Zoo employees are banned from speaking to the press. The zoo won't answer questions except in carefully staged events. You'd think there was a nuclear bomb hidden in the tager grotto.

The zoo used to be a public agency; now it's run by the private Zoological Society. That's created problems. And while I can't say that the escape was directly related to the management issues, I can say:

This secrecy is ridiculous, and needs to end. It seems like the private zoo wants to cover its own ass more than it wants to figure out what went wrong and let the public know what's being done about it.