Lantos, Speier, Yee: The mad rush is on

I'm sorry to hear that Rep. Tom Lantos has cancer, and I wish him well. But I'm very glad he's leaving Congress; he was bad on the war and has been a foreigh-policy hawk for many years.

And now comes the scramble.

This is the first time since 1986 that a house seat has opened up in San Francisco. It's a chance that comes along once in a lifetime for many politicians, and since it's a safe Democratic district, whoever wins the primary in June will be almost guaranteed a seat in Congress for life.

Jackie Speier has already announced, and was prepared to take on Lantos. She instantly becomes the front runner. But I would be shocked if state Sen. Leland Yee didn't jump in to the race, and I suspect there will be a few others joining the mad scramble.

There's no obvious prominent progressive in the district, but let's not write this one off yet.

Newsom, Leno, Kopp -- it's a wide open field

The current field may not be thrilling, but potentially there are so many good choices.

Remember: Under the Constitution, you don't actually have to live in the district to get elected to Congress (you just have to live in the state). And it would be easy for a lot of promeninent San Franciscans to move there, anyway. Let's start the list:

Gavin Newsom. He's not doing such a great job as mayor, but he'd be a fine member of Congress. It would get him out of town, let him hobnob with Washington society, Jen would love it ... and if he won, Aaron Peskin would become mayor. Can't beat that.

Or: Mark Leno. First openly gay member of Congress from the Bay Area. A lifetime job for a guy who loves politics and never wants to leave office. Instead of running against Carole Migden, he could be the class of the Congressional race.

Or: Peskin. What the hell; he's termed out next year and has nothing to do. And just imagine him in Washington.

Or: Quentin Kopp. He's not a young man, but he's heathy and as energetic as ever -- and even as a junior member, he'd put the fear of God in Nancy Pelosi.

Or: Matt Gonzalez. He could skip the primary, let the Dems all beat each other bloody then run in the general as a Green.

Who else? Let's get the list going.

San Francisco city lawyers head back to court in the morning, trying to persuade the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to set aside last week's court ruling that the city can't require employers to help pay for Healthy San Francisco. It's disgraceful that the Golden Gate Restaurant Association challenged the employer mandate on this innovative plan to provide universal access to health care, the product of a compromise between Sup. Tom Ammiano and Mayor Gavin Newsom (a former GGRA member and the later beneficiary of the group's political support).
But then again, there's plenty of disgrace to go around here, and plenty of chances for San Francisco political leaders to fix the situation. You see, the judge ruled that the city plan violated the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act, which prohibits cities and states from demanding more of employers than the federal government has been willing to do. It's similar to a federal law that prohibits California from enacting tougher fuel efficiency standards than the feds require. In both cases, the laws favor corporate profits and convenience over reasonable labor and environmental standards.
It's probably not likely that the 9th Circuit will tomorrow rule that the city can make employers pay their fair share for Healthy San Francisco pending appeal. But the last time I checked, wasn't the Speaker of the House from San Francisco? If the courts rule that good city and state policies keep running afoul of bad federal laws, maybe it time to do something about those bad federal laws. What do you say, Madame Speaker?

Known as Snake Mountain to the Shoshone, the Dept. of Energy wants to choke it with nuclear waste

Sharpen your pencils, folks. Only one week left to tell the government what you think about the plan to bury 70,000 metric tons of radioactive waste in a leaky tunnel in the middle of a sacred mountain in Nevada.

There are a number of frightening aspects to this plan, including the thirteen fault lines that run through the mountain, mounting evidence that radioactive waste in the repository could leak into the groundwater (only 90 miles northwest of Vegas,) and the fact that waste which is, for the most part, currently stored at the nuke plants where it's used, would now be transported by rail and truck all over the country. Twenty-car pile-ups? Train derailments? Bridges collapsing? Yes, these things still happen, and even the Dept. of Energy anticipates between 150-400 accidents during the 20-30 year shipping period. Cool. Awesome.

Nevada's citizens and leaders, native tribes and environmentalists, as well as the top three democratic party presidential candidates, have already expressed strong disapproval of the Yucca Mountain repository. And yet the project forges on. Send your thoughts to: EIS_Office@ymp.gov

or:

EIS Office U.S. Department of Energy Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Mgmt
1551 Hillshire Dr.
Las Vegas, NV, 89195-7308

Here's some handy information and talking points, courtesy of Healing Ourselves and Mother Earth.

Early results from the Iowa caucus -- the first presidential poll that counts -- show a tight pack, with Edwards leading, trailed closely by Clinton and Obama. It's virtually a three-way tie and it could stay that way because nobody else really has any votes, so the Iowa provision of voters whose candidates get less than 15 percent of the vote getting to revote won't matter much.
BTW, local Obama supporters are gathering in a few minutes over at Tosca in North Beach, so head on over if he's your guy and you're looking for kindred spirits.

Actually, not such a stunner -- we all knew Obama had a hell of a political team in Iowa and was swimming in momentum. But this is a big deal -- a state that's about 90 percent white voted for a black candidate. A voice for change (that's how he sells himself, anyway) won by ten points, suggesting that people in the nation's heartland are impatient with the state of American politics. Obama will get a major bounce from this, which is a bit unfair because Iowa is such an unrepresentative state and the number of voters who go to the caucuses so small, but: The youth vote was huge, and that, as Kos points out, bodes well for the general election.

And while I'm still not ready to jump on the Obama bandwagon (I'm waiting for him to say something about taxing the rich and I'm not all that enthused with this theme of togetherness in America), this is an exciting moment.

And Hillary finished third. Rock on.

This is in response to a comment from a reader assuring us of the safety of nuclear fuel casks. Sorry the video is a little soft and fuzzy, but you'll get the drift.

Cheers to the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility for providing the clip.

Everybody loves Barack Obama today. That's good; he's generating tremendous hope and energy in the Democratic Party, he's got young people excited about politics, he's given Hillary Clinton a wallop ... and of course, of course, this country could do way worse than President Barack Obama.

His speech last night in Iowa was inspirational, full of the sort of stirring rhetoric that makes you want to drop everything and go to New Hampshire to knock on doors.

But I'm still a little nervous. Here's the line, the one we've heard over and over again:

"The time has come to move beyond the bitterness and pettiness and anger that's consumed Washington; to end the political strategy that's been all about division and instead make it about addition - to build a coalition for change that stretches through Red States and Blue States. ... We're choosing unity over division, and sending a powerful message that change is coming to America."

But see, I don't want to come together in grand unity with the religious right. I don't want to end my bitterness and anger toward Dick Cheney. I have nothing in common with Don Fisher. I think there are some real evil villains in this country, and I want a president who's willing to say that, and who wants to defeat them and consign them to the dustbin of history.

Can Obama get beyond his desire for consensus and be tough enough to go in and kick ass and take names? Cause that's what the next president has to do.

Mayor Gavin Newsom's decision to hire former U.S. Attorney Kevin Ryan to head the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice speaks volumes about his administration's philosophy and priorities.
It's bad enough that Ryan is a Republican (Newsom has appointed several Republicans to important positions, including his disgraced former OES director AnnaMarie Conroy and Planning Commissioner Michael Antonini, but never any Greens). But Ryan is a right wing ideologue and Bush loyalist who incompetently ran the U.S. Attorney's Office here into the ground and wrongfully imprisoned citizen journalist Josh Wolfe. This is the guy who will handle law enforcement policy in progressive San Francisco? Did Newsom know this stuff? Did he care? As the mayor begins his second term with nary a signal as to his intentions, Newsom isn't offering much hope that he knows what he's doing or that he plans to act in the best interests of all San Franciscans.

City Hall sources tell us that Mayor Gavin Newsom has named Controller Ed Harrington as the new director of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, his former budget director Ben Rosenfield as the new controller, and close confidante Mike Farrah at head of the Office of Neighborhood Services, although Newsom's spokespersons have not yet confirmed the news. We're also seeking an explanation of how the PUC move could be made before the commission -- which must act to fire current director Susan Leal -- formally meets to consider the matter.
But as we've reported, Newsom hasn't been terribly concerned with the City Charter or the legality of his call for massive resignations. We'll report more as we learn it, although it sounds like most city officials are bunkered down with storm response, so the details might have to wait until Monday, Jan. 7, the deadline Newsom set for himself to accept or reject all the resignations.

Today the US Supreme Court refused to consider the extremely odd request by a Dublin lawyer to strike down the trademark "Dykes On Bikes," awarded to the San Francisco Women's Motorcycle Contigent (you know, the many miles of hot revvin' lezzies that kick off the Pride parade each year), because the trademark was "hostile to men" and that the phrase was "immoral and disparaging."

Ride on, sister girlfriend

When reached by the Chron, the lawyer, Michael McDermott, described Dykes on Bikes as "an anti-male hate riot." Ha! A higher appeals court had rightly ruled earlier that the phrase "had no effect on men." I would give my left Christian LaBoutin to read those court transcripts.

This is actually an odder story than one would think: I seem to recall that the Dykes on Bikes actually made a concerted effort to be referred to as "The San Francisco Women's Motorcycle Contingent" a few years back, right around the time that the US Patent Office declined its request for a Dykes on Bikes trademark, because the patent office found the term "dykes" to be disparaging to lesbians. The patent office later rethought "based on reviewing more evidence" (like maybe thousands of dykes telling it not to tell THEM what's disparaging), and awarded the trademark.

I love the Dykes -- I tear up every time they pass. And they can call themselves whatever they want (they'll always be known as "Dykes on Bikes" no matter what happens, anyway.) But, while proud, I do have one beef. Do we really want the Pride Parade being led by a cloud of carbon exhaust fumes? When will Pride go green? (I am SO gonna get my gay card revoked for suggesting such a thing, but hey -- it's 2008. And I'm a member of the Mikes on Bikes contingent.) It'll be interesting to see if the "green" in Pride remains the beer sponsorship money.

Meanwhile, gun it for freedom, hot dykes of the world!

UPDATE: I have just been informed by a dyke in the know that her bike gets 41 mph, and that participants are very respectful and don't rev up until the parade is officially starting. Vroom!

The battle between the San Francisco City Attorney's Office and lawyer Mark Geragos is getting hot. Geragos, who doesn't mess around, is representing the two young men who were injured in the tiger attack; Herrera is trying to limit the city's liability here.

Check out the exchange of letters here.

Of course, part of what Geragos is mad about is the way Sam Singer, the press flack for the zoo, has been slinging mud at the victims. The Chron, in a stunning puff piece, puts Singer forward as a brilliant crisis-communications consultant. So far, all he's done is screw this up.

In fact, after all the claims out of Singer about how the kids were at fault, CNN reports that the kids won't be charged with anything.

Sup. Gerardo Sandoval tells the Guardian he will run for San Francisco Superior Court judge this June, creating the first contested judge's race in many years. Sandoval, who is termed out this year and says he will complete his term on the Board of Supervisors, still hasn't decided which of the 52 judges (a third of which are up for reelection this year) he will challenge, a decision he needs to make by the end of the month when he files his paperwork. But his research shows that 30 percent of the judges here are Republican, even more are politically conservative and well-connected, and there's only one Latino on the bench. "It's a bench that does not reflect San Francisco in any meaningful way," he told us.
Sandoval has been a part of the progressive block of supervisors that swept into power in the year after Tom Ammiano's run for mayor in 1999, a backlash to the powerful institutional forces that crushed that progressive populist campaign. Those same forces, led by Gap founder Don Fisher, consultant Duane Baughman, and downtown moneyman Jim Sutton, viciously attacked Sandoval during his last reelection campaign, prompting Sandoval to unsuccessfully sue them for defamation. When the judge ordered Sandoval to pay tens of thousands of dollars in the other side's attorney's fees -- well beyond his means -- Sandoval said he realized how out of touch many judges are with the average San Franciscan. "It started in part because I sued Don Fisher," Sandoval said of the process that resulted in his decision to run for judge. Now, Sandoval is navigating the tricky judicial rules that result in almost all judges being either appointed by the governor or running in uncontested elections, a self-serving dynamic he intends to challenge: "I want to be an activist judge. I'll be a troublemaker."

The most recent issue of the New York Review of Books has a fascinating piece by Michael Massing on a blog run by Iraqi journalists that work for McClatchy Newspapers, one of the few outfits that has kept a Mideast bureau despite its fall into the black hole of massive media consolidation.

Inside Iraq consists of intense, personal accounts of day-to-day life for these Iraqi journalists, who mask their identities in order to avoid the death threats that many Iraqis receive for helping Americans. The blog posts include fears of being gunned down by Americans for driving to close to convoys as they travel to and from work, intense encounters with American and Iraqi soldiers randomly searching their homes, their cars, the details of their lives, what it's like living without electricity for hours on end, day after day. (While here we whine way at PG&E...) All the essential details of life in Iraq that have been irrevocably altered by the war.

It's scary, tense reading, and puts a real face on and beating heart in this war, which is sorely lacking from so much media coverage, as Massing points out in his article.

Apropos for today's New Hampshire primary, a Jan. 3 post includes a plea to Americans to choose our next candidate wisely: "...Your choice will determine the main lines for our life ... Yes your choice will change our life for good or for bad," writes Jenan.

We hear you. I hope.

Wow, will California ever matter. Clinton defied the polls and won in New Hampshire, but Obama will almost certainly win South Carolina and probably Nevada, and it will be a heated two-person race in California with both campaign fighting it out to the last voter.

I'm with Kos -- it's very cool that the first two democratic primaries went to a woman and an African-American. I like what John Edwards has been saying, but he's CTD at this point. It's about Clinton and Obama.

Majority Report has some advice for Clinton; she and Bill have been through this many times, and they don't give up easy. Obama's going to have to get down to some real specifics and get off his lofty cloud.

But boy howdy, this is going to be fun.

Gosh, look at that. The city has a brand spankin' new Web site appearing just as the mayor is inaugurated to his second term. There are even riveting photos of the mayor looking down right gubernatorial, but the board's section of the site still mostly looks the same. Why aren't there any steamy photo slides of Mirkarimi or Elsbernd? The latter made a compelling speech at today's board meeting about, um, well, we're not quite sure 'cause he mumbles a lot. But we know that there were tigers involved.

Sen. Feinstein swore in DA Kamala Harris as well. It is indeed a new day in San Francisco, people. Okay, maybe not for that guy who was shot several times shortly before Midnight on Monday at 26th and Mission. But hey, we were still able to find the city's vendor database on the snappy new site, so we can at least see who's doing business with San Francisco and for how much. There's actually a lot about the site that doesn't look all that new, save for how press releases from the mayor's office are presented.

Maybe today was just another day in San Francisco after all.

First of all, I"m still undecided. This is in no way an endorsement of my views or the Guardian's regarding the upcoming presidential election. That said, this evening after toiling away in the Guardian batcave I walked up the hill to Bloom's Saloon on 18th Street where the Potrero Hill Obama contingent gathered to watch the results eek in from New Hampshire.

It was something of a mad house. The bar was more packed than I've ever seen it. The music was off and CNN was turned up loud. Silence fell as we listened intently to Obama's speech, with the people standing around me clapping with the crowd on tv. (Which always strikes me...they can't hear you. It's purely cheering for the sake of cheering.) They listened carefully to Hillary Clinton's speech as well, and as soon as she was done the room was thick with insightful criticism of her words and sentiment.

There were two distinct things I noticed from the experience this evening:

1. The crowd was truly a mixed bag. Young, old, black, white, Asian, Latino. You couldn't pigeonhole this group, which is completely unlike a recent rally I attended for Dennis Kucinich where the crowd was distinctly white and old, and it felt strangely disconcerting to realize I was one of a small handful under the age of thirty in the gathering of 200 people. The group at Bloom's really seemed more representative of America.

2. People were talking to each other. A LOT. And randomly - turning toward each other during commercial breaks, chatting about work and life or intently discussing the election. People caught wind that I grew up in New Hampshire and were seeking me out for inside information on which towns and counties were more liberal than others. It felt more like a very engaging mixer where everyone's horny, and despite the second place results for Obama, there was a lot of excitement and momentum in the room.

I'm not sure what else to say about this, but I'll add that the invite to Bloom's showed up in my Guardian email and I got nothing from Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, or any of the other contenders for the White House. There's definitely a movement here.

A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that San Francisco employers must support the city's new universal health care plan after all, setting aside enforcement of a judge's ruling that the mandate violated federal law, noting that the city has a strong likelihood of winning its appeal of the lawsuit challenging the plan brought by the Golden Gate Restaurant Association. That's great news for the city and residents who don't have health insurance, and one more indication that the Ninth Circuit is still a holdout against the federal courts' shift to the right. The appeal will be heard this spring on an expedited schedule.

Gavin Newsom, flanked by his sister, Hillary Newsom Callan, her two young daughters and his fiancee, Jennifer Siebel, prepares to be sworn in for a second term as Mayor of San Francisco by his father, retired Judge William Newsom.

Promises, promises. Newsom takes the oath, using an old family Bible, held by Siebel.

Mayor Gavin Newsom's 2008 inaugural address under City Hall's caverous domed rotunda looked like a rehearsal for his upcoming wedding to actress Jennifer Siebel, what with the choir trilling, the reverend pronouncing his blessings, the family Bible, the bucket loads of roses, and Newsom’s sister’s cute little kids running all around.

Siebel clutches Newsom's niece, Talitha Callan, while the Mayor listens to event emcee Carlos Garcia, before launching into his hour-long inaugural address

Less adorable was the fact that Newsom’s speech contained a not so thinly veiled attack on the November 2008 charter amendment, which seeks to set aside $2.7 billion in city funds for affordable housing over 15 years.

The amendment would give affordable housing the same baseline of funding that the city already allocates to the Recreation and Park Department Fund and the Library Preservation Fund—and less than it already sets aside for the Children, Youth and Families Fund.

Sounds reasonable to those of us who have no hope of owing a home in San Francisco and are either having difficulty cobbling together the rent each month for our lowly studio/room/apartment/shack in the City, or are already displaced to the East Bay.

It’s a point that a super majority of the Board of Supervisors, along with State Senators Carole Migden and Leland Yee, and Assemblymembers Mark Leno and Fiona Ma, all seem to get, given their support for the affordable housing set aside.
But not, apparently, Newsom, who smeared this amendment as "a political gambit," while pushing a Lennar-backed measure that promises to build 10,000 housing units at Candlestick Point, but does not specify what percentage of these units would be below market rate, for rent, or affordable, to people who currently live in the Bayview.

“In the next four years we are going to keep offering real solutions on affordable housing, not fall prey to political gambits that offer attractive promises but not sound policy," Newsom said, during his address.

But is the newly resworn-in Mayor's resistance to the Board's affordable housing charter amendment rooted in the fact that it would require the Mayor’s Office of Housing to prepare an affordable housing plan every three years, present an annual affordable housing budget and do so before the rest of the Mayor’s annual budget proposals are finalized?

All these steps are crucial, in terms of transparency, accountability--and ensuring that the affordable housing needs of low-income and working class folks get top priority, instead of becoming an annual political football. They are also logical steps, for those seeking sustainable solutions to homelessness and climate change, as Newsom claims to be doing.

But instead, Newsom continues to lend his support to the Lennar-backed measure on the June 2008 ballot, even though Lennar broke its promise to build rentals at its Hunters Point Shipyard Parcel A site, where it is constructing 1,500 condominiums, and failed to live up to its promise to proactively protect local residents from asbestos dust.

Let’s Newsom sees the light, uses his political capital to support the affordable housing charter amendment, and thus lives up to his promise to protect all of the City's residents, for the next four years.

In the wake of Mayor Gavin Newsom's meddling with the leadership of the supposedly independent San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and San Francisco Metropolitan Transportation Agency Board of Directors, activists and members of the Board of Supervisors are engaged in active behind-the-scenes debates about how to respond.
Generally, they're resigned to accepting that SFPUC general manager Susan Leal is out (the SFPUC commission has yet to actually remove Leal, who is on disability leave after being hit by a car in front of City Hall, but Newsom is thought to have the votes lined up), and so are his MTA appointees Leah Shahum, Wil Din, and Peter Mezey (Why those three? Read item two here for a possible explanation). The ousted trio submitted the resignation letters that Newsom requested, thereby giving up their legal right to finish out their fixed terms (two of which ended in just a couple months anyway).
But the supervisors and activists still may exact a price for Newsom's hubris and short-sighted power grab.

San Francisco's Medical Examiner is refusing to rule the gruesome June 2 death of French national Hugues de la Plaza a homicide, releasing an autopsy only recently after the man's friends and family waited six months for its conclusion.

There's no doubt de la Plaza's life ended due to multiple stab wounds, but the December report describes the manner of his death, i.e. who wielded the knife, as "undetermined."

Assistant medical examiner Venus Azar admits that no one close to him was aware of any suicidal inclination on his part, and therefore, it was not possible for her to rule out homicide. But the scene at his apartment where he was found "was not inconsistent with self-inflicted stab wounds," she wrote (our emphasis).

The Guardian reported in September that no obvious weapon or suicide note was found at de la Plaza's small Linden Street apartment in Hayes Valley where his body was discovered. A neighbor told us he heard a distinct set of footsteps running away from the apartment shortly after de la Plaza's front door slammed three times around 2:30 in the morning.

The neighbor, Orion Denley, said the questions asked of him by police all revolved around whether or not de la Plaza suffered from depression, one of many clear indications that the San Francisco Police Department believed from the start that de la Plaza took his own life.

"It's fucked-up in retrospect," Denley told us at the time. "I kept thinking, 'How come they aren't asking me if I heard anything?' All they did was ask over and over again if he was suicidal, like they had already made up their minds that he had committed suicide."

Remember those stories from Lance Williams at the Chronicle that surfaced awhile back about City College of San Francisco improperly diverting public funds to a campaign committee? The school's Board of Trustees promptly called for an internal probe, and all 232 pages of it are now publicly available. The executive summary downplays the significance of the allegations and lauds the school's administration for fully cooperating with the investigation:

"The proponents of California ballot measures tend to seek contributions from those who stand to benefit financially from the passage of the measure. This can lead to the criticism that such fundraising has the appearance of "pay to play." One need only conduct a cursory review of each campaign statement ... filed by the Committee to Support Our City College to find numerous engineering firms, building trades and other construction businesses who could benefit from the proceeds of the bond.

Sup. Ed Jew, shown here at a previous court appearance, has been under pressure to resign since last May.
Photo by Charles Russo

Nearly eight months after FBI agents found $40,000 in allegedly extorted cash during raids on his home and office, Ed Jew has resigned from his District 4 seat on the Board of Supervisors, effective at noon tomorrow.

The negotiated deal – announced today by Jew attorney Stuart Hanlon and City Attorney Dennis Herrera – calls for the city to drop its official misconduct and quo warranto actions against Jew in exchange for his resignation, relinquishing any potential claims against the city, and pledging not to seek any public office for at least five years.

“I cannot continue to fight all the battles I’m now facing,” Jew said in a statement read by Hanlon, referring to the criminal prosecutions that are still active, including federal charges of extorting money from the Quickly tapioca stores that faced permitting problems and local charges of perjury and voter fraud for allegedly not living in San Francisco when he ran for supervisor, which was the basis for the city’s efforts to remove him.

Mayor Gavin Newsom suspended Jew in September, replacing him with interim Sup. Carmen Chu. But during a press availability following the announcement of the Jew deal, Newsom was cagey about whether the job now belonged to Chu: “I will be meeting with Supervisor Chu later this afternoon and tomorrow I’ll make my determination.”