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.”

Why does this remind me, eerily, of the Gulf of Tonkin incident?

Well, it looks as if Sup. Ross Mirkarimi and state Sen. Carole Migden have managed to squeeze some real concessions out of the developers of the old UC Extension site. This is still preliminary, and the details are not confirmed, but I'm told that the percentage of affordable housing could be increased from 16 percent to more than 35 percent, a total of 80 more affordable units.

There are still issues here and the players haven't all agreed, but this is progress.

The author's son, munching on the contents of a care package sent to troops in Iraq.

Today, my son turns 21 in Iraq, where he is serving in the US Army. Happy 21st Birthday, son!

And, in an odd case of history repeating itself, I’m reminded that, three decades ago, I turned 21 across the border from Iraq, in Iran.

I wasn’t in the military, at the time, but a student visiting my soon-to-be in-laws in Teheran, who unbeknownst to any of us, were soon to become permanent exiles from Iran, after the revolution hit, the following year, in 1979.

On the occasion of my 21st birthday, celebrated with vast platters of delectable Iranian food, there were mutterings that the Shah was in dire jeopardy of being overthrown.

The prospect raised hope amongst my leftist Iranian student friends that their country would become more equitable, whilst stirring dire concern among more conservative members of Iran's older generations that total anarchy would ensue, if the Shah were to fall.

We all know now that the Shah did fall, that anarchy of sorts did ensue—and that for women, the results of the Iranian revolution were a truly mixed bag. But as we drove in Spring 1978, from Iran’s arid capital Teheran, through the Alborz mountains to Damavand, a dormant volcano that is the highest point in Iran, and from there to the jungle-like shores of the Caspian Sea, I little imagined that this beautiful and widely diverse country was about to trade places with the U.S.S.R, as bogey man of the Western world.

And there was no way in the world that I could have posited a future in which my, then unborn, son would end up serving in Iraq, while his US Commander in Chief made threatening noises about Iran, which is where half my son’s ancestors come from.

The author's son, ironically known as Casper by his buddies since he's the only man in his unit who actually looks white, in a choke hold with one of his buddies over Christmas,in Iraq.

Call me naïve, but at 21, I blithely imagined that my generation was living at a time of consciousness-raising, to use a very 70s term, in terms of increased understanding of the Other, be it other races, cultures, genders, sexual orientations, or even worlds.

But life has a way of turning out unexpectedly. And it’s oddly sobering to be sitting here, in San Francisco, where so many cultural mores and sexual taboos have been overturned, on the day of the Michigan primary, wondering if Americans will allow Bush, and whoever becomes the next President of the US, to continue whipping up Iranophobia, when it’s not clear who exactly we would send to fight an expanded war in the Middle East.

Casper and his buddy Cisco on duty in Iraq.

And when it’s clear to anyone who has been watching that geopolitical region for the last three decades that the US and other western powers, including my native country, England, tend to back whichever Middle Eastern country is most likely to help secure their interests, be it access to oil, land, money, sea or airways, or other resources, regardless of that Middle Eastern country’s record on human rights or religious or political freedom.

Hence our backing, first of the Shah of Iran, then of Saddam Hussein of Iraq, when we needed someone to fire Scud missiles at a postrevolutionary Iran, and now of the royal family of Saudi Arabia, which happens to control the world’s largest oil reserves and to whom Bush has just announced that he will sell 900 smart bombs, allegedly to help keep Iran in check.

So, as I sit here on January 15, 2008, which would have been Rev. Martin Luther King’s 78th birthday, if he hadn’t been assassinated in April 1968, is it naïve to hope that America, as well as my son, is about to come safely of age in this crazy war-racked world?

That this nation whose birth involved genocide of its native peoples, slavery of several subsequent generations of African Americans, and the continuing exploitation of workers who cross the border illegally from Mexico, is about to elect a man of color or a white woman, and start steering a path that will be sustainable, not just for its own citizens, but for the entire world?

Perhaps it is naive of me, indeed. But here’s to hope, anyway, with a “H,” including the hope that the next US President will chose not to pursue a preemptive path in dealing with the Middle East, but a course that will bring peace to all the inhabitants of a planet whose biggest challenge will be to try and sustain life as we know it, in face of climate change and the vast changes that is likely to bring to the Earth over the course of the next 1,000 years.

Sup. Chris Daly appears to be coming up just short in a power play to force affordability standards on the 10,000 housing units that Mayor Gavin Newsom, Lennar Corp., and other top power brokers are trying to build through a June ballot measure. Daly has been working with Bayview-Hunters Point activists -- including those with People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER) and Center for Self-Improvement -- to craft a ballot measure that calls for rental housing in the area to be affordable by those making half the city's median income or less and for housing sales to be affordable by those at 80 percent of the median income or less. Daly needs the signatures of four supervisors by 5 p.m. today to place it on the ballot, but right now he only has Sup. Ross Mirkarimi. Supporters of the measure just minutes ago lined up to testify during the public comment portion of today's Board of Supervisors meeting, citing the dire need for affordable housing to stem the black exodus from the city, while the African-American ministers who have been close to Lennar and Newsom urged the supervisors not to sign it. While Daly tells us there's still a chance to get signatures from Tom Ammiano and/or Gerardo Sandoval (who at one point, Daly said, seemed inclined to support it but may have gotten worried about how it might affect his run for judge at the same time), but it doesn't look good. Lennar representatives and their allies have been circulating through City Hall since the measure was completed on Friday, lobbying hard against it. Now, activists may have to gather signatures if they hope to qualify the measure for the June ballot.

I just had to chuckle at the phone message I got from a representative of this weekend's fourth annual Walk for Life, complaining that the Bay Area Coalition on Reproductive Rights had pulled city permits to gather in Justin Herman Plaza before the anti-abortion folks could secure their usual gathering spot. The pro-lifers now plan to gather on the nearby grassy knoll. Tee-hee. Nonetheless, those who want to outlaw abortion could still have numbers on their side, saying they expect to be 25,000 strong, mostly by busing in conservative churchgoers from the suburbs and all over the western U.S. The event marks the 35th anniversary of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, which these holy warriors are trying to overturn with what they dub the "new civil rights movement," even bringing in MLK's niece Alveda King as a speaker to drive home the connection.
But of course, those who favor abortion rights are having none of it -- particularly given the provocation of a march in San Francisco populated mostly by outsiders -- and they plan to actively confront and hound the marchers as they make their way down Embarcadero to the Marina. Join the fray if you're so inclined, or stay as far away as possible.

The beleaguered New College of California is facing another gloomy report just released from its accrediting agency after first being placed on probation last July. Meanwhile, two trustees of the school, Peter Gabel and Colleen O’Neal, reportedly resigned from the school’s board Jan. 15.

Representatives of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges made a special site visit to the famous liberal arts institution and training ground for social justice activists in November to see what progress the school had made since an array of deficiencies were identified in the July report. During the summer, WASC found a history of administrative “sloppiness and arbitrariness” and identified “clear and egregious violations of institutional integrity, academic integrity.”

WASC is still apparently skeptical that New College can improve its management practices despite having repeatedly allowed the school to remain on probation intermittently for years without stripping its accreditation away entirely.

“The institution has established a pattern over the years of being placed under sanction by the commission, responding with superficial adjustment, and rapidly falling back into past practices.”

For those of us who are fascinated by the San Francisco taxi industry, there's an interesting report from the city Controller's office here. It relates to a few pieces of legislation that are coming up in the next few weeks. Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier wants to raise the amount big cab companies can charge their drivers to lease cabs -- but the report shows that the big companies are all doing just fine, that revenue is up and that profits are healthy. That would suggest to me that they don't need more money -- which would come, of course, at the expense of the drivers, who would lose, according to the United Taxicab Workers, as much as $5,000 a year on the deal.

And let's remember: According to the controller, the average driver nets less than $110 for a ten-hour shift, which is barely above the city's minimum wage.

Alioto-Pier has backed off her initial plan, but there is likely some gate hike on the horizon -- and in my mind, it needs to be combined with a fare increase to keep the drivers' income from dropping.

I have to give it to Michael Petrelis -- he's taken a nice whack at the staph hysteria story. And it's created quite a discussion on dailykos.

A new report on an outbreak of drug-resistant staph is news, absolutely. But it's hard to argue that this wasn't a bit sensationalized. And since when are gay men not part of the "general population"?

Um excuse me: I suppose it's news that the guys who were mauled by Tatiana the tiger were standing on a rail and yelling at her, but that's not exactly an excuse for what happened. The animals at the zoo aren't supposed to get out. Period.

It's terrible that people taunt the animals, but they do, and they have, and they will -- and if the zoo pens and cages can't hold the animals anyway, there's a real problem.

BTW, it was highly unlikely that "taunting" got the tiger agitated. More likely she thought they were food. That's a much more common predator response.

It’s extraordinary how the SF Weekly can take a clear legal defeat and try to turn it into a victory.

Yesterday the judge in the Bay Guardian’s lawsuit against the SF Weekly and its parent corporation refused to bar the Guardian’s key expert witness from testifying. The ruling was a clear victory for the Guardian – the Weekly had tried desperately to keep accountant and economic expert Clifford Kupperberg from taking the stand to present evidence of how much the Weekly’s predatory pricing had damaged the Guardian.

And yet, the Weekly’s Snitch blog trumpets the ruling as “Bay Guardian shakedown hits a snag,” arguing that Kupperberg had somehow repudiated his own testimony.

The Guardian is suing the SF Weekly and Village Voice Media for predatory pricing in violation of California business law. The suit charges that the Weekly, with cash support from the 16-paper chain, sold ads below cost for many years in an effort to harm the locally owned competitor.

The trial got underway this week, with early motions on the evidence. Here’s what actually happened in Superior Court judge Marla Miller’s courtroom Jan. 16th and 17th:

Kupperberg, following well-established standards, had developed two scenarios to explain how much the Guardian had lost due to the Weekly’s practice of selling ads below cost. One of the scenarios used data from members of the Associate of Alternative Newsweeklies, information that the papers share with each other once a year to establish industry financial benchmarks.

The SF Weekly’s lawyers argued that part of the data – the material from AAN -- wasn’t reliable, so Kupperberg agreed to use his other standards (including New Times own figures in 17 different markets) instead. He also added data from two other Bay Area alternative papers and from local retail sales statistics to buttress his conclusions. His data suggests damages of $5 million to $10 million.

And after the SF Weekly lawyers argued for hours that Kupperberg be disqualified, Judge Miller ruled clearly and unequivocally against them. Kupperberg will be able to testify, and his damages will be admissible.

That’s a big victory for the Guardian.

And while the Weekly lawyers demanded extra time and sought to delay once again a case that’s been in the works for more than three years, Miller moved forward and started the jury selection process Jan.17.

If this is how the SF Weekly and the VVM guys from Phoenix are going to cover the trial, we’re going to have to spend a lot of time correcting the record.

For more context and background on the case, and to see one of our key legal motions and read the story on the case from the Daily Journal click here.

Last year in Davos, Newsom's avatar was interviewed in Second Life, the highlight of his trip.
While Mayor Gavin Newsom was jetting off to Switzerland to play celebrity and attend his fourth World Economic Forum – where on Friday he’ll lead a panel discussion entitled “How Cities Are Aiming For Sustainable Growth” – smart growth activists here were working with Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin to actually create sustainable growth policies for San Francisco.
In fact, the legislation Peskin has introduced to limit the amount of parking that will be built with housing downtown (and to delink parking from the housing price, thereby lower housing costs for most and making drivers pay for their impacts) is the kind of thing that Newsom has blocked or ignored in the past.
But as Peskin noted in the Examiner article, this is a smart solution that should be embraced by both environmentalists and developers. That means, no doubt, that after Newsom watches others do the work and take the political hits for being bold, he’ll swoop in later to claim the program, just as he did with Sup. Tom Ammiano’s health care measure.
BTW, on Friday morning, Newsom will be taking part in the “World Class Health Care for World Class Cities,” led by London Mayor Ken Livingstone, who willingly meets for a monthly Question Time with his city’s legislature and has led the way in the traffic congestion pricing program that San Francisco will consider adopting this summer (and which Newsom recently got on board with after Sup. Jake McGoldrick and others did the heavy lifting over the last two years).

Sup. Chris Daly has a juicy item on his blog. He’s uncovered that Lennar has already spent $500,000 to try and qualify a mixed-use development at Candlestick Point and Hunters Point Shipyard for the June 2008 ballot. This Lennar financed project is being framed as the Bayview Jobs, Parks and Housing Initiative.

But just who has benefited from Lennar’s spending spree, so far?

The city's campaign finance data base shows that the biggest beneficiaries have been business lawyers Paul, Hastings, Janofsky and Waller; political consultants Terris, Barnes and Walters; campaign law and lobbying firm Nielsen, Merkamer, Parrinello, Mueller and Naylor, Sam Singer’s public relations firm, Singer Associates, Ground Floor, the public affairs firm run by Jim Stearns and Alex Tourk, and David Binder’s polling research. Oh, and then there’s the $17,500 Lennar paid to Pacific Petition, a petition circulation subvendor, to gather signatures to qualify this puppy for the ballot.

Meanwhile, supporters of the Bayview Affordable Housing initiative, which seeks to ensure that 50 percent of all housing built at Candlestick Point and the shipyard be affordable, are likely going to have to rely on community volunteers to qualify their competing measure for the June 2008 ballot.

Q. Which initiative do you think is most likely to benefit the people who currently live in the Bayview?

p.s As Lennar argues that it can’t afford 50 percent affordable housing in the Bayview, it’s worth noting that in 2006, Lennar President and CEO Stuart Miller made $1 million in salary, but his bonus decreased (from $21.5 million in 2005, paid half in stock and half in cash) to $4. 7 million, paid entirely in cash. Poor baby.

Lawyers for the SF Weekly failed today to get a delay in the trial of the Guardian's lawsuit against the paper and its chain parent, Village Voice Media. So jury selection will begin Thursday morning.

The Weekly's lawyers, H. Sinclair Kerr and Ivo Labar, argued a computer file the Guardian had turned over to them last week amounted to a huge new pile of data that would take considerable time to review. They asked Judge Marla Miller to postpone the trial for 90 days.

But the Guardian's lawyers, Ralph Alldredge and Craig Moody, pointed out that the computer file was just an Excel spreadsheet containing data that VVM and the Guardian had exchanged some time ago. There was, they said, nothing new in the file, and Miller agreed.

The Guardian is suing the weekly for predatory pricing, arguing that the big national operation has been selling ads bleow cost in an effort to harm a locally owned, independent competitor. As part of his presentation, Alldredge noted that that Weekly lost close to $2 million in 2007, evidence that the paper continues to sell ads below cost.

Jury selection is expected to take no more than two days, and Miller has set opening arguments for Monday.

That's what it sounds like. The Chron reports that editor Phil Bronstein, who has been a key part of the operation since Hearst bought the paper in 2000, is "leaving his post to take a larger role in the newspaper division of Hearst."

His new title will be "editor at large." His job duties haven't quite been established yet.

It's funny -- a year ago, I would have said the paper desperately needed new direction. The Chron was flailing, heading nowhere, losing circulation and tons of money. But in the past few months, we've actually seen some life -- opinion pieces and campaigns on the front page (bad ones, for sure, like Chuck Nevius's crap on the homeless, but at least they were taking on issues), better design, some decent City Hall pieces etc.

So now we get a new editor with deep local roots. I'm holding my breath.

A mayoral power grab was narrowly thwarted at the San Francisco Planning Commission in a 4-3 vote, Jan. 17.

Commission Vice President Christina Olague led the counter charge against perceived interference from the Mayor's Office, questioning why there was a proposal to continue election of the Commission’s President and Vice President to Feb. 7, 2008.
According to Commission regulations, the election of these officers typically takes place on the first meeting after January 15, and Olague said she saw no point in postponing the election, which had originally been scheduled for January 17.

Olague acknowledged that Mayor Gavin Newsom requested the mass resignation of his department heads and commission appointees, last fall. But she also noted that the January 7, 2008 deadline for Newsom to accept the resignations had already come and gone.

Well, jury selection is almost complete in the Bay Guardian lawsuit against the SF Weekly. It now appears that opening arguments could begin Monday morning in Judge Marla Miller's courtroom in San Francisco Superior Court.

Since the Weekly continues to use its blog posts on the trial as a way to bash us (and me), I was pleased to see a little bit of perspective from another source: BeyondChron.org had a nice piece by Randy Shaw that points out that the Weekly may not be a confident as its blog bluster suggests and that there are larger issues here.

I finally read the entire New York Times endorsement editorial tonight. I'm not surprised the paper endorsed the hometown senator, and I respect the logic (the two top candidates have similar policy positions, but at a time when things are a godawful mess in this country, you need someone who can hit the ground running etc etc.). I disagree, but I understand.

Still, as someone who has been writing editorials for 20 years, and reading NY Times editorials even longer, I have to say: This is the most tortured, inelegant work I've seen out of that shop in a long time. It's a string of choppy paragraphs, held together with no transitions or logic; it reads like it was written by a committee, and it probably was.

You can fault the Times for their positions, and I often do, but damn: There was a time when they had some outstanding editorial writers. And this was a perfect chance to make some resounding, important and inspiring points about the future of the Democratic Party, American democracy and public policy. I'm really disappointed.

Barack Obama still trails Hillary Clinton in polling from delegate-rich California, but Obama seems to have enough momentum on his side to perhaps win it. After decisively winning South Carolina and taking a principled stand in favor of letting illegal immigrants obtain driver's licenses (which is both good policy and good politics in courting the state's Latino vote), Obama will surely get a bump from Sen. Ted Kennedy not only endorsing him, but naming him the inheritor of JFK's legacy. "It's time for a new generation of leadership. It's time for Barack Obama," Kennedy said in a fiery speech (one that even reportedly bowled over Nancy Pelosi) that was followed by an equally strong Obama speech.

Also worth watching is Obama's response the President Bush's State of the Union speech:

While the San Francisco Metropolitan Transportation Agency's politically intimidated leaders have allowed public transit funds to be used as Mayor Gavin Newsom's personal piggy bank, the city's other major transportation agency has been quietly advancing plans to improve traffic flow and make drivers pay their full costs (thus encouraging alternative forms of transportation such as bikes and Muni).
The San Francisco County Transportation Authority -- which administers transportation projects for the city and is governed essentially by the Board of Supervisors, albeit with Sup. Jake McGoldrick as chair and Sup. Bevan Dufty as vice chair -- held a quarterly press breakfast this morning. McGoldrick, Executive Director Jose Luis Moscovich, and SFTA staffers detailed the agency's progress on Bus Rapid Transit plans for Geary Boulevard and Van Ness Avenue (which would decrease transit travel times by 30 percent), $20 million worth of signal upgrades and pedestrian improvements along dangerous 19th Avenue, and congestion pricing initiatives that will be coming forward this summer.
"We are at a very important moment in terms of national transportation policy," Moscovich warned, describing ongoing efforts in Washington D.C. to set new standards for how federal transportation funds get allocated over the next 30 years. Are you listening, Mr. Mayor? It's time to stop playing games and start working with other city leaders and our congressional delegation to build a 21st century transportation system for San Francisco.

The California State Assembly is expected to vote this week on a plan to give rebates to people who buy little, awesome, eco-happy cars and tax the folks with Napoleon complexes.

The California Clean Car Discount Act would hit the gas drunks with a $2,500 fee at time of purchase, while smaller, more fuel-efficient car buyers would get a rebate for their smart shopping.

Last year a similar bill was stopped due to intense lobbying by auto dealers of a septet of wimpy LA Democrats who ultimately abstained from voting. The LA Times ran a good piece on the bill today, with some hilariously stupid quotes from folks opposing it. For example: "What if some poor guy in Watts retires and says, 'I want an SUV,' " Dymally said. "Do you punish him for that?"

Um, yeah. Precisely.

If passed, the new law could put a big dent in our greenhouse gas emissions, 40 percent of which come from vehicles. Now all we need is massive tax write-offs for people who don't own cars at all.

The Guardian v. SF Weekly trial swung into high gear today with both sides presenting opening statements and the first Guardian witnesses taking the stand. The early presentations gave a clear sense of where the trial will go.

Ralph Alldredge, representing the Guardian, laid out the essence of the case:

Over the past 11 years, the SF Weekly, later joined by the East Bay Express, have systematically sold ads below cost. The cost-cutting was so dramatic, he said, that during that period the two papers lost a total of $25 million, and those losses have been escalating.

That, he explained, was not because the people who run the Weekly and ran the Express are bad managers. It’s because they were attempting to damage the locally owned competitor. “If you’re not trying to make a profit,” he asked, “what are you trying to do?”

In fact, while the Weekly lawyers have argued consistently (and would argue later in the day) that the market is packed with different competitors, and that the Weekly didn’t see the Guardian as its only or even primary competition, internal memos show that Weekly and New Times staffers were obsessed with beating the Guardian. The memos consistently refer to the “battle” and “the way” and use terms like “frontal assault.” And those memos weren’t discussing the entire universe of competition – they focused only on the Guardian.

In fact, New Times executives put together a quarterly “Guardian report” focused entirely on how well the Weekly was doing taking ads away from the local paper.

In just one instance that Alldredge mentioned, The Weekly inked a deal with Clear Channel in 2005 that was designed in part to take ads away from the Guardian. Under the terms of the deal, the Weekly would get the bulk of the company’s alternative weekly ads – and “the competing paper [the Guardian],” a memo from a Clear Channel official states, “gets 15% to 0.”

H. Sinclair Kerr, attorney for the Weekly, didn’t deny that his client had sold ads below cost; in fact, he admitted it, right up front. But he insisted that all of those sales were perfectly legal because they were done either to increase the paper’s market share or to meet competition.

Kerr posted a graphic showing that the Bay Area is home to more than 140 newspapers and scores of radio and TV stations, and he argued that all of those outlets were part of the Weekly’s competition. “The reason we were selling below cost,” he said, “is because that’s the only price we could get.”

However, memos from his clients that were presented by Alldredge don’t mention any other newspapers or other types of media. It appears clear from the evidence presented so far that the Weekly and New Times executives considered the Guardian their single most important competitor.

The presentations today suggest that the trial will come down to the question of intent and the damage that the Weekly and its chain owners have done to the Guardian.

I took the witness stand today to testify in the Guardian's lawsuit against the SF Weekly and its parent, Village Voice Media, the chain formerly known as New Times. I talked about why I worked for the Guardian, why I'd stuck around for more than 25 years and why I believe in the paper's misssion.

The point I tried to make: The Guardian is a community institution. We care about this city; we care about people and issues and arts and culture, and whether you agree or disagree with our political stands, we're part of San Francisco -- and our readers have always known that. The Weekly is part of a chain based in Phoenix.

And yeah, I think local ownership matters, and I think independent papers matter, and I think it sucks that the Weekly has been selling ads below cost and trying to hurt our ability to compete. The Weekly has been losing tons of money; when VVM/New Times owned the East Bay Express, that paper lost tons of money, too. Over the past 11 years, the chain has lost $25 million in the Bay Area. That's what happens when you sell ads for less than the cost of producing them.

And it only works, and it only makes sense, if you have a big chain that can subsidize the losses in the hope that the locally owned competitor will be driven out of business. (That, by the way, is what this suit is all about.)

As I pointed out, I don't have the luxury the SF Weekly editors do; I have to live with the money we make by selling ads. If that revenue goes down, I have to cut costs. The Weekly editors don't have to meet that kind of budget; they can just get more money from headquarters.

The Weekly's lawyer, Ivo Labar, went after me pretty hard on cross-examination. He tried that old saw that the Guardian writes too many stories about PG&E; I told him that if the Washington Post had decided that Watergate was a one-day story, American history would be very different. He suggested that I was a bad editor and that the paper was losing readers because we had nothing valuable to say. I'm afraid I have to disagree.

But in the end, the facts and the law are on our side in this case. I'll keep you posted.

PS: BeyondChron has been doing a good job covering the trial, which, the online news outlet points out, is about more than just a business dispute -- it's crucial to the future of independent media.

After starting his day by warning the Mayor’s Open Space Task Force not to propose a big expenditure for new parks in San Francisco, Mayor Gavin Newsom then canceled a noontime rally and press conference in support of the big parks bond on Tuesday’s bond, Proposition A, in order to attend tonight’s Democratic presidential debate in Los Angeles.

“We are all about collaborative innovation,” Newsom told a room filled with department heads, parks advocates, and leading academics, clutching a disposable Starbucks coffee cup as he spoke. “If this task force comes back [at the end of the year when the report is expected] and says we need hundreds of millions of dollars, I’d say don’t waste your time.”

A waste of time was the label that many attendees applied to the meeting – which was called for by the Neighborhood Parks Council and SPUR but organized by Mike Farrah, a close mayoral confidante who Newsom recently named as head of the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Services – as mostly mid-level staffers from various city departments offered basic and fairly tedious information about existing recreational inventories and possible opportunities.

Yet the stakes couldn’t be higher on the overdue $185 million bond measure, which has wide support but needs a two-thirds vote to be approved. Newsom made oblique references to the measure, which he’s supporting, during his speech but was careful not to run afoul of electioneering laws and advocate for it inside City Hall.

I’ve questioned Newsom’s priorities before, and this seems like another good example of putting his personal political ambitions ahead of the city’s interests. But apparently he got a call from Hillary Clinton’s campaign – considering his daily schedule was modified at 10:50 a.m. to drop the rally (which representatives from five different environment groups were scheduled to attend) and add the debate – and quickly flew down to help out.

You read it here first that Sup. Gerardo Sandoval has decided to run for judge in June, and now we can report that he has picked a target: Judge Thomas A. Mellon Jr. This seems like a fine choice given that Sandoval has made his run about challenging a "bench that does not reflect San Francisco in any meaningful way." Mellon was appointed to the slot by former Gov. Pete Wilson in 1994 after serving 18 years as a business litigator, and has received generally poor ratings from the attorneys he's dealt with, particularly those in the San Francisco Public Defender's Office who have openly feuded with Mellon. "I don't have anything personal against Judge Mellon, but many of my supporters felt strongly about him and that was a very important consideration," Sandoval told us.
Keep reading the Guardian for more reporting soon on Judge Mellon (hopefully including his perspective on the race and responses to past criticism of him), this rare contested judge's race, and other issues related to the role of the courts in San Francisco.

I wasn’t in court today in the Guardian’s lawsuit against the SF Weekly and its corporate parent – the lawyers for Weekly wanted me to stay out of the courtroom because they might call me back as their own witness later (I look forward to it, guys). Judge Marla Miller ruled later that I could, indeed, attend in the future, so I’ll continue my first-hand accounts shortly.

Meanwhile, other Guardian representatives were there today, and I’ve gotten a report:

Jody Colley, the Guardian’s former sales and marketing manager, testified about her problems fighting the low advertising prices of the SF Weekly/VVM/New Times during her seven years at the Guardian.
Then she testified, as the new publisher of the East Bay Express,
about the challenges she faces in trying to increase the “unacceptably low prices” that she inherited from the

VVM/New Times ownership of the EBX. The paper was purchased in May 2007 by an independent group headed by Hal Brody.

EBX had losses of $l3 million during its six years of New Times ownership. The SF Weekly and EBX combined lost $25 million during the 11 years of New Times ownership, according to financial exhibits presented by the Guardian. This was evidence of consistent below-cost pricing.

Colley testified that she had agreed to honor the New Times advertising contracts with the EBX, but ran into difficulties because of their low prices. One example that she gave involved the Bill Graham Presents/Clear Channel concert advertising contract. She asked for a copy of the contract but neither BGP nor SF Weekly publisher Josh Fromson would give it to her. She then went directly to BGP to renegotiate the rates, but the company refused.

The trial continues at 8:30 a.m. Friday in the Superior Court of Judge Marla Miller. Carrie Fisher, associate publisher of the SF Weekly at the time of the sale in l995, and Guardian advertising rep Mary Samson are scheduled to testify.

STOP THE PRESSES: Mike Lacey, the executive of the VVM/New Times chain, was given a new title at the hearing.

It was bestowed by Jennifer Lopez, former SF Weekly and Guardian advertising sales rep. She was testified that Lacey, at a meeting of the SF Weekly staff at the time of the New Times purchase in l995, called the Guardian “a piece of shit” and threw the Guardian on the floor and stomped on it. She quoted him as saying, “We want to be the only game in town.” Then Craig Moody, a Guardian attorney, asked her if Lacey was speaking for the New Times and who he was.

She said she thought he was “the mascot for the New Times.”

By the way (and that concludes the court report, and it’s back to me again): VVM, the chain formerly known as New Times, has an out-of-town hit man named Andy Van De Voorde covering the trial. He was happy to take nasty swings at Jean Dibble and Colley (though he wasn’t quite so mean to me, go figure), but he still hasn’t explained why VVM/New Times was willing to lose $25 million in San Francisco, selling ads below cost for 11 years, if the goal wasn’t to damage the locally owned competitor.

I don’t want my coverage of this trial to be about Mr. Van De Voorde. I don’t expect him to be fair (and I’m sure nobody expects me to be fair, either – we work for the two parties to the case).

But I have to say: his reporting has been breathtaking in its personal viciousness. I’ve seen a lot of hit pieces over the years, and been subject to them myself, but this is another order of magnitude altogether.

Personal note to Andy: I don't believe I own a "puffy jacket."You might want to run a correction.