You might think the Web site of San Francisco's Office of Contract Administration is the wrong place for a reporter to go hunting for story ideas. You're wrong. Look at this gem. The Laguna Honda Hospital is competitively bidding out the task of brush clearing and lawn mowing. But the job won't go to some landscaping outfit you're imagining, one with a truck full of big sweaty guys wearing sleeveless shirts and washing down 7-11 hot dogs with hilariously large refill cups of Mountain Dew. The city wants a professional goatherder to take care of it. Sounds brilliant ecologically, but just reading the bid documents, it was still hard to see it the first time without spitting our afternoon coffee all over the monitor. Do you have several goats available for the city to use, perhaps left over from a failed indie horror flick? Are you looking to make some extra money on the side? Are you prepared to accept that the City and County of San Francisco can't be held responsible if your goats are stolen and/or damaged? Then you're in luck. Here's the description:

7/29/2008 Bid Number/Type: ITSF09000054/MQ SVC-Landscaping/Maint

Clear brush, shrubs, plants, weeds from 22 acres of property at Laguna Honda Hospital, 375 Laguna Honda Blvd. Clearing must be performed by goats and supervised by goatherders who will stay on site with the goats to monitor cutting activity, moving fences and goats. This price to include all transportation, fencing, monitoring, herders, and all other charges pertaining to proper care and handling of these animals. The city to be held harmless for any loss of goats, theft or otherwise.

Faced with an overdue state budget that is simply not going to be balanced by spending cuts alone, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has commendably reversed his longtime pledge of "no new taxes." Unfortunately, he did so by choosing the most regressive form of taxes: a one-cent sales tax hike that would hit the poor far harder than the rich.
Compare that to the budget plan worked out in the California Assembly (with the help of our own Assembly member Mark Leno), which Leno said would "restore $8 billion in the most draconian cuts that the governor proposed." How? By increasing income taxes on the wealthiest Californians, a plan that would raise about $8.2 billion per year, roughly double what the governor's sales tax proposal would bring in.
So the Democrats want to tax the rich (who would write the increase off of their federal income taxes anyway and end up paying about the same) and Schwarzenegger wants to tax the poor. But it all may be a moot point considering it takes a few GOP legislators to reach the two-third threshold for passing a budget and all the Republican legislators have signed on to an inane "no new taxes" pledge, apparently content to just starve state government.
Stay tuned...

Nice piece in the BAR by Matthew Bajko about PG&E's efforts to make nice to the queer community -- just as the company faces a huge battle over a Clean Energy Act that could lead to public power.

There's no question that PG&E needs to do some work buffing its popularity in the LGBT community, particularly after funding a homophobic mailer attacking Assemblymember Mark Leno.

"I think in addition to greenwashing, PG&E is now engaged in gay-washing, given their inappropriate attacks on Assemblyman Mark Leno," Davis told the Bay Area Reporter last week. "I think there is pretty resounding resentment in the gay community for PG&E's tactics. It is kind of obvious they are trying now to court favor in a community they offended with their unsavory tactics."

I think Leno has another good point: PG&E is going to spend maybe $10 million fighting the Clean Energy Act -- and is giving all of $250,000 to support same-sex marriage:

"I would think our community might feel we have been significantly shorted by their $250,000 contribution," said Leno.

We'll see more of this -- PG&E giving money to environmental groups, PG&E giving money to neighborhood groups and nonprofits, PG&E giving money to politicians .... whatever it takes to buy favor for a corrupt utility that can't even make the basic state goals for renewable generation.

Serpentinite is California's state rock. It can contain naturally-occuring asbestos.

Shipyard artist Jack Hain says he just wants his rocks back. Serpentinite rocks, that is.
And getting these rocks back appears to be the crux of the case that Hain has filed in Superior Court against Lennar. That and the question of whether it's OK to move materials from one part of shipyard to another.

But unlike the other shipyard-related cases involving Lennar, Hain isn’t worried about possible health risks from the serpentinite, which can contain naturally-occuring asbestos.

Veins of chrysotile, or other members of the asbestos family, can run through serpentinite rock, making it a toxic health hazard, if crushed, dug or otherwise quarried and excavated.

That’s because, says Hain, he wasn’t crushing or grading the rocks, but simply moving them across the yard.

Hain sued Lennar Communities and Lennar BVHP on May 15, 2008 in Superior Court, a month before residents sued the developer and two of its shipyard subcontractors, CH2M Hill and Gordon N. Ball, and five weeks before Lennar sued one of its subcontractors, CH2M Hill, for failure to monitor and control asbestos dust.

But unlike those suits, which center around Lennar’s failure to protect the community from naturally-occurring asbestos, while digging into a hillside full of serpentinite, Hain’s suit centers around the fact that Lennar removed three serpentinite rocks from an art work that Hain was building outside his studio in Building 116 on Parcel B of the Shipyard. (That's the parcel where the Navy is currently proposing revisions to its original plan for radiological, soil and groundwater clean up.)

Map of areas under radiologically investigation at Hunters Point Shipyard.

OK, fine. I'm sorry, but I had to. The thing that hurts is that I'm actually weighing voting for her after the past week ... once I finish this Glamour.

But the real question is: When will Britney respond?

The Mayor’s Office of Housing has come under attack for failing to construct enough inclusionary affordable housing units and for not doing enough financially to help folks facing foreclosures.

Map of SF foreclosures, as of December 2007.

The charges come as D 11 Sup. Geraldo Sandoval and D 6 Sup. Chris Daly seek to amend off-site inclusionary affordable housing requirements.

The amendments would allow that twenty-five percent off off-site units may be built outside the currently required one-mile radius from a developer’s market rate project.

They would also provide that off-site units cannot be located in industrially-zoned areas, or within one-quarter of a mile of developments containing 200 or more publicly-owned and operated affordable housing developments.

“The fact that not one affordable housing development has been promoted by the Mayor’s Office of Housing or the non-profit sector, in District 11 tells me that something is wrong,” said Sandoval, whose district includes the Outer Mission and the Excelsior and is home to the highest foreclosure rate in the City.

Sandoval noted that when he proposed an emergency fund last year to fight foreclosures, MOH opposed the idea.

“That program went nowhere,” Sandoval observed.
“And every time I have tried to get a non-profit housing developer into District 11, they do not and have not got any help from the Mayor’s Office of Housing,” he added.

Noting that the proposed amendment also amounts to a small program (Twenty-five percent of a 25 percent mandate is a small subset,) Sandoval said, “I can’t understand why the Mayor’s Office of Housing is so eager to oppose it. This is about fairness.”

MOH’s Doug Shoemaker countered that the amendments are “a solution in search of a problem.”

Shoemaker reminded the Board why the supervisors updated inclusionary affordable housing legislation a few years ago to make sure that offsite units were built within a one- mile of developers’ market rate sites.

“It was because affordable units were being built where no one wanted it, under freeways, the far end of city, and remote from retail, services and transportation,” Shoemaker recalled.

“Our main concern,” he said, “is that development will end up being built under the cloverleaf of 101 and 280. Developers seek lowest land prices. They are rational. They seek cost savings.”

Sup. Maxwell sided with Shoemaker, noting that the legislation that Daly and Sandoval seek to amend was put together less than 18 months ago.

“The poorest people need to be where the infrastructure and schools are,” Maxwell said.

Sup. Tom Ammiano also opposed the amendments.
“It takes away a lot of the choices we have,” he said

But Sup. Bevan Dufty supported Daly and Sandoval’s efforts, noting that he’s been seeking more affordable housing in his district in the last years, with almost no success.

“To me this is not a mandate that 25 percent [of these affordable units] has to be a mile away.” Dufty said.

Claiming that if developers proposed inaccessible offsite units, the Board would not support it, Dufty added, “But a little bit of flexibility isn’t a bad thing.”

“This is such a modest proposal. I can’t believe we’re denying it,” Sandoval lashed out.

Sandoval observed that thanks to the MOH opposition to the Board’s proposed $2 million revolving foreclosure fund, all the City has, on the foreclosure front, is a task force and a comprehensive report.
“That’s not the same thing as helping people, “ he said. “If this passes, we might be able to.”

MOH contends it's been busy trying to put infrastructure in place, so it can help people access the federal foreclosure package that President Bush just signed into law.

Nationwide foreclosure rate "heat" map.

In the end, the Board kicked Sandoval and Daly’s amendments back to committee.

“Perhaps some massaging is in order,” Daly acknowledged.

That was my first thought, sprawled on the pavement in the middle of a northbound lane on Van Ness Avenue: is this the city’s fault? Shouldn’t there be a goddamn bike lane here by now? And is the belated CEQA study that's stalling the city Bike Plan the real antagonist here?

Here’s what happened: I was leaving a public meeting at 25 Van Ness and heading toward City Hall, just a few blocks north. The most expeditious route is to stay on Van Ness, which is horribly unfriendly to bikes, full of fast cars and funky pavement – but I was only going a couple blocks. I was riding in the far right line, but had to move out into the second lane to get around a bus stop. That left me straddling the white line between the two lanes. The pavement here, I’ll remind you, is full of potholes and cracks that like to grab the skinny, slick tires on my Univega. I swerved right, around one of these cracks, just as a car decided to accelerate past me in that right lane. The side of the car hit the side of me and we dragged along together for several yards until it passed me and I collapsed on the pavement. Fortunately, traffic behind us stopped, as did the driver of the car that hit me.

Despite exploding immediately into tears, which I’m prone to do when bitchslapped by death...

Fromson tries the Sgt. Schultz defense

By Tim Redmond

The publisher of the SF Weekly, who harshly criticized the professional qualifications of his Bay Guardian counterpart during our predatory-pricing trial, said yesterday under oath that he knows almost nothing about his business.

Josh Fromson testified in a sworn deposition as part of the Guardian’s efforts to collect on the $17 million that the Weekly and its parent company, Village Voice Media, owe us after a jury verdict in a five-week trial.

Guardian attorney Robert Pollak was attempting to find out where the company’s resources are. The so-called debtor’s exam is a common procedure in civil cases, and the company that owes the money is supposed to provide honest information about its finances.

Fromson provided almost nothing. In fact, if the Weekly’s top local executive, who claims to run everything except the editorial department at the paper, was telling the truth, he is astonishingly lax in his understanding of his job.

Fromson testified that he was responsible for all of the business activities of the Weekly, that he oversaw everything except editorial. That’s typical for a newspaper publisher.

But from then on, his answers were – to be kind – a bit hard to believe.

Fromson started off by saying that he didn’t know who his boss worked for.

He said his immediate supervisor was Jim Larkin, who is listed on the Weekly’s masthead as the chief executive officer of Village Voice Media. Nowhere in any of the thousands of pages of lawsuit documents was there any suggestion that Larkin was anything but a VVM employee, and to my knowledge nobody at VVM has ever suggested that either.

When Fromson was asked, almost as a matter of course and for the record, who Larkin’s employer was, he said:

“I don’t know.”

That became a refrain in a deposition that Fromson clearly didn’t take seriously. He spent much of it leaning back in his chair and chewing gum.

And by the end, it became clear that Fromson – again, if he’s telling the truth – doesn’t know whether his company owns or leases its office equipmemt, doesn’t know what bank his company uses for its accounts (although he signs the checks), doesn’t know what his weekly expenses are, doesn’t know whether there’s enough money in the bank to cover the checks he signs, doesn’t know who the paper owes money to, doesn’t know who deposits the checks the Weekly gets from its advertisers, doesn’t know whether any records of those deposits exist or where they are … in short, he doesn’t know any of the basic financial information that the publisher of any newspaper I’ve ever heard of is responsible for knowing.

Some examples of Fromson’s purported ignorance:

Pollak asked him if he knew what type of corporate form the SF Weekly took.

“I don’t know,” he said. (That’s pretty lame, considering that the Weekly’s corporate structure was laid out in detail in the lawsuit.)

Pollak asked whether the Weekly owned the desks, chairs, computers and other equipment in the office.

“I don’t know,” Fromson said.

“Who would know that?” Pollak asked. “I don’t know right off hand,” Fromson said.

Pollak asked what happens to the money that the Weekly collects from its advertisers (does it get deposited in a bank account, for example?).

Fromson: “I don’t know.”

What bank does the SF Weekly use for its accounts?

“I don’t know.”

When you sign the rent check each month, what bank is it drawn on?

“I don’t pay attention.”

What are your average expenses each week?

“I don’t know.”

What bank account are the operating expenses paid through?

“I don’t know.”

Who decides which bills get paid and when?

“I don’t know.”

Pollak asked for documents showing deposits in bank accounts. Fromson said they don’t exist. He asked if Fromson ever checked the balance in the company’s account; Fromson said he didn’t. “When you write a check,” Pollak asked, “how do you know there’s money in the account?”

Fromson: “I don’t.”

When clients send checks to the SF Weekly, Pollak asked, who takes the deposit to the bank?

“I don’t know.”

When that person gets a receipt for the deposit, where is that filed?

“I don’t know.”

You get the picture.

During the trial, Fromson took the stand and launched a harsh attack on Guardian co-publisher Jean Dibble, who oversees the paper’s finances, saying she didn’t go out on sales calls (which he was proud to say he does).

But after today, I have to wonder:

Can a sophisticated operation like VVM really have a publisher who doesn’t know which bank he uses, who doesn’t know if there’s money to cover the checks he signs, who doesn’t keep track of the deposit receipts, who seems to have no knowledge of the most important aspects of his job?

Is Josh Fromson really that dumb and incompetent?

Or was his sworn testimony, perhaps, a bit short of the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

I completely agree with the cause, and I applaud the boldness of the woman who was staged a mock hanging at the Chinese consulate. Great TV, drew attention to Tibet, everything a good demonstration should do, and I'm sorry she got hurt and there ought to be an investigation and all that ....

But I must say: Climbing on the roof of the Chinese consulate was not the brightest move.

Under international law, that's sovereign Chinese territory. And the U.S. and China are not exactly on perfect friendly terms these days. I bet there's all kinds of fancy spy equipment and electronics on that roof, and there may be a way into the consulate from up there, and no nation likes people sneaking into or climbing around on their embassies and consulates.

Can you imagine what the Marine guards would do if a Chinese protester climbed onto the roof of the U.S. embassy in Beijing?

Nyendak Wangden is lucky she didn't get shot.

The word that Gavin Newsom is taking to campaign consultant Garry South is suddenly big talk on the blogs.

It started that way a growing number of political stories are starting these days, with an enterprising blogger catching someone in what was supposed to be a private meeting. In this case, Zuma Dogg of Los Angeles spied Gavin Newsom at a Starbucks (with his SUV parked in a fire lane) chatting with the prominent (and notorious) South.

Now Newsom is getting denounced on Calitics and is facing an (admittedly insider) threat that some progressives may abandon him as he moves to the political center.

A couple of thoughts on this.

1. Garry South isn't running Newsom's campaign. That's still the job of Eric Jaye. In fact, Jaye tells me that South hasn't been hired yet: "We're taling to him," Jaye said. "We're putting together a team. But nobody's been hired yet." Not saying that Jaye is going to advise against a move to the center or anything, but if South does come on, it will be as a senior advisor.

2. I get the problems with Garry South, and I'm not defending him here, but anyone who thinks Newsom will run for governor as a San Francisco progressive hasn't been paying attention to the mayor's history and career. He ran for mayor the first time as a pro-business moderate, and that's how he'll run for governor. He won't deny promoting same-sex marriage (which, frankly, won't be a big issue in the Democratic primary anyway and can only help him) and will try to be an environmentalist (isn't everyone these days?), but he won't be talking about raising taxes on the rich. Isn't going to happen.

3. What this really means is that Newsom's "exploratory" campaign is getting a little less exploratory and a little more serious. No doubt Jaye has been doing polls to see if Newsom's record would fly in a statewide race, and no doubt he's found that his man can be sold to the voters will the proper packaging. And now Team Newsom is getting into gear. Even Jaye admitted that "the exploratory campaign is stepping up its efforts."

So look for Newsom to pay even less attention to City Hall and even more to vote-rich Southern California in the next few months.

Cindy Sheehan wants to challenge Nancy Pelosi , which is a fine idea, but she's having a bit of trouble getting enough signatures to make the ballot. I quote from a press release:

The percentage of "valid" signatures that the SF Department of Elections are allowing is getting lower and lower as we get closer to our goal.

We turned in 1932 on Monday and they invalidated 49% of the signatures.

We turned in 425 yesterday and they invalidated 78% of them.
The thing about that, is that I personally checked every signature in that batch, and I came up
with a 55-60 percent valid rate.

We figure at this rate, we need to turn in 3000 by tomorrow at 5pm.

HELP! HELP! HELP! We have 24 hours......

If you want to help Sheehan make the ballot, you can stop by her campaign office at 1260 Mission St (open 24 hours) or call 415 621 5027.

Just got word that state Assemblymember (and Senator-elect) Mark Leno is going to endorse School Board member Mark Sanchez for supervisor in District 9. "We've got his endorsement," Sanchez just told me by phone. "We're putting out the press release today."

That makes two Green Party members the Democratic lawmaker is backing; he's also endorsed Ross Mirkarimi in D5. Good for Leno not to let the irrational fear of Greens that so many Democrats harbor influence him; this is, after all, a nonpartisan race.

It's a tough choice in D9 -- Sanchez, Police Commission member David Campos and housing activist Eric Quezada are all good progressives and any of the three would be a great supervisor. Quezada, I think, never had much of a chance with Leno; he's pretty close to Sup. Chris Daly, who was a strong backer of Carole Migden in the bitter Migden-Leno senate race. Campos is close to Sup. Tom Ammiano, who was neutral in the Leno-Migden brawl -- but Campos, who is on the Democratic County Central Committee, voted for Aaron Peskin as chair. Leno's candidate (and he was pusing him hard) was Scott Weiner, who narrowly lost.

Quezada also ran for DCCC, but didn't win.

Sanchez, as a Green, was able to stay out of both the Migden-Leno fight and the Peskin-Weiner contest. Oddly enough, not being a Democrat may have helped him here.

Campos, by taking the stand he thought was right and voting for Peskin (despite immense pressure), may have scotched any chance of getting Leno's endorsement. "That's politics," he told me. Yes, it is.

(UPDATE: Sanchez corrects me: He endorsed Leno for state Senate months before the election. So the Leno endorsement is even less of a surprise.)

Four environmental groups and two cities today filed a lawsuit in Sacramento Superior Court challenging the California High Speed Rail Authority's recent decision to lay track over Pacheco Pass, rather than going with the Altamont Pass option preferred by the plaintiffs.

The lawsuit isn't likely to directly affect this November's Proposition 1, the $10 billion bond measure that would allow work to begin on the San Francisco-Anaheim high-speed rail project. Yet the language in the bond measure could be updated to include new fiscal oversight and other provisions if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signs Assembly Bill 3034, which this week broke through a logjam in the Assembly and appears likely to win Senate approval next week.

The lawsuit was filed by the Planning and Conservation League, Transportation Solutions Defense and Education Fund, California Rail Foundation, Bay Rail Alliance, and the cities of Atherton and Menlo Park.
A press release from CRF says, "The environmental and transit groups advocate a well-planned, cost- effective, and environmentally sensitive high-speed rail system in California. They want high-speed trains along the Altamont route, to help commuters from the Central Valley and Sacramento, who currently clog up Interstates 80 and 580. This route would divert millions of regional trips annually to electrified rail, yielding extremely significant air quality, greenhouse gas reduction, and energy savings benefits."

CHSRA staffers and board members argued that Pacheco was a cheaper, faster route that eliminated the need for a costly and logically difficult bay crossing to reach San Francisco. South Bay political leaders also threatened to oppose the project if Altamont was chosen. Yet CHRSA is also working on a regional rail connection over Altamont that would eventually tie into the high-speed rail system, which is at least a decade away from being operational.

Bad news for all of you Cindy Sheehan haters: She announced today that she has enough signatures and will be on the fall ballot challenging Nancy Pelosi.

I don't think she's going to win, and I don't think Pelosi's going to spend a lot of time worrying about her, so I don't think this is any kind of threat to the Democratic Party gaining seats in Congress. But I do think it will be nice to have someone out there talking about the war, and impeachment, and the Presidio, and all the other issues Pelosi has ducked or been wrong on.

Officials with the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency admitted yesterday that they cooked a state grant application, by claiming that they needed the funds to fill a $25 million gap in the budget of a project that the City is developing with Lennar at Hunters Point Shipyard.

But what they really wanted the monies for, the agency claimed, was to boost a shrinking community benefit fund that was supposedly to be derived from development profits.

The admission came during a hearing into Lennar’s fiscal health. The hearing was requested by Sup. Chris Daly, following the discovery that the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency had applied for, but been denied, a $25 million grant from the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development to subsidize infrastructure costs.

The June 10 grant application discovery, coupled with Lennar's June 7 bankruptcy filing at Mare Island, heightened concerns that Lennar was planning to mothball the Shipyard/Candlestick redevelopment project, even though voters had greenlighted an increase in the size of that project, just days earlier, on June 3.

Daly’s mothballing concerns were understandable, given that Stephen Maduli-Williams, SFRA’s Deputy Executive Director of Community and Economic Development had claimed, in a May 23 letter to the state that, “without the requested $25,021,079 Infill grant allocation, our infrastructure project faces a serious risk of being mothballed. The project would face increased costs from work stoppage, remobilization efforts and substantial change orders.”

At yesterday’s hearing, Maduli-Williams repeatedly denied that there was any hole in the project's budget. Instead, he argued that he had manufactured the hole in an effort to increase funds to the project's community benefit fund.

“This was one of the resources we felt compelled to apply for, because, if successful, it would be a direct benefit to the Legacy Fund,” Maduli-Williams said, noting that 60 percent of the profits from the development go to Lennar, while only 40 percent to the Redevelopment Agency, who will turn these funds over to the Bayview.

Maduli-Williams noted that had the agency received the grant, “it would, if anything, have been a pass-through to the agency, not Lennar.”

As for the “hole in the project,” that these monies allegedly would have filled, Maduli Willians claimed he invented the hole after being turned down in the first round of applications, in which $1 billion worth of applications were vying for only $240 million in grants.

“Without this hole, we were told, we would not qualify,” Maduli-Williams said. “It’s part of our job to turn over every rock we can to benefit the Bayview.”

“Lennar is not in severe financial difficulty,” he added, observing that pursuant to the deposition and development agreement that Lennar signed, a developer is deemed to be in default, if its net worth falls below $400 million.

“Currently, Lennar has $900 milion in cash and has zero corporate debt,” Maduli-Williams claimed. “Yes, there is money to complete the project.”

Besides dumping millions of dollars on influencing the outcomes of elections, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. also doles out a lot of cash to charities – about $18 million a year, which is around one percent of their pre-tax income. It’s a gift from the shareholders back to you, the community that’s making them rich.

The list of non-profits that get grants from PG&E is long and spreads from coast to coast, but most of them are based in and around San Francisco. It’s an interesting thing to look over, for it says a lot about who might have a soft spot for PG&E, and it reminds us of the perennial shills, like the A. Philip Randolph Institute (APRI), which sends members to speak at public meetings against anything PG&E also opposes.

But I was a little surprised to see Brightline Defense Project make the list of grantees in 2007.

By popular demand, here's some highlights from PG&E's 2007 charitable giving. If you want to see the complete list, look at pages 58-90 of this PDF. That document also includes the dues they pay to belong to certain organizations which tend to have certain sway with certain politicians and voting blocks. Example: a whopping $325,000 to belong to the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce. Who shows up at the first public hearing on the Clean Energy Act, to argue -- with PG&E talking points -- against putting it on the ballot? The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce.

PG&E also paid $90,000 to the Committee on Jobs, $92,500 to the Bay Area Council (on top of the $40,000 gift they also gave the group -- which has also shilled for them at public meetings), and $26,500 for BOMA

There are some other interesting grants to note. For example, Slide Ranch got $5,000. Who's on the board of Slide Ranch? Francesca Vietor, who's up for possible appointment to the SF Public Utilities Commission.

Most of the grants are pennies to PG&E, but a couple nudge up into significant chunks of change. Over a million each went to the Foundation for Environmental Education and the National Energy Education Development Project.

See some other familiar faces, after the jump:

Sup. Tom Ammiano had a short but pointed list of questions for Michael Antonini during a Rules Committee meeting of the Board of Supervisors Aug. 7 held to determine whether Antonini should be reappointed to the San Francisco Planning Commission. Gavin Newsom nominated Antonini for reappointment July 8 after the mayor’s office refused to tell the Guardian last month if he planned to do so.

Newsom’s selection of Antonini requires majority support from the board, and its progressive faction, irked by Antonini’s pro-development tenure, took the opportunity to find out how he planned to help the city ensure that 64 percent of all new housing construction was affordable to low-income residents, as San Francisco’s General Plan calls for.

Antonini told the supervisors he felt the city could move closer to that goal by essentially redefining poverty and raising the threshold for what constitutes a low-income earner, currently based on how much people make compared to the area’s median income. If the percentile was raised, developers could describe as “affordable” costlier housing units that are actually expensive and out of reach to a lot of buyers in the city.

“One of the areas that we’re really having a problem with is middle-income families,” Antonini told the committee, “and without in any way diminishing the number of units we build for lower-income groups, I think that we can accomplish that goal more realistically by having that percentile be higher.”

Ammiano also wanted to know why the planning commissioner backed the construction of a new Walgreens at Cesar Chavez and Mission streets just blocks from two other store locations in the supervisor’s district 9.

“Do you really believe that my district is under-served by Walgreens?” Ammiano asked with a smile.

I'm surprised that this blogger is the only one who seems to have picked up on the NBC announcers' astonishing comments that the Romanian gymnastics team would have been better off if the coach was still being mean and harsh to the girls.

In the days of Nadia Comaneci, "there would have been no hugs" for a performer who fell off the balance beam," the sportscasters said after a disappointing performance.

That's right: Beat and abuse the children, and they'll do much better in prime time. Thanks, NBC.

Apparently (although this Chronicle story doesnt' show much actual evidence of it) the Obama campaign isn't happy with the idea of Hillary Clinton's name being entered in the formal nomination process in Denver. COme on; I was for Obama, Clinton was wrong on the war ... but this was an historic campaign, and she ought to have her moment and her supporters should be able to wave their placards around. She lost, fair and square, but give her some credit.

Paul Hogarth at BeyondChron raises an excellent question: Will Nancy Pelosi, who says she supports Al Gore's ambitious renewable-energy goals, support San Francisco's Clean Energy Act?

Pelosi can't easily duck it, since the Democratic County Central Committee will vote tomorrow night on whether to endorse the Charter Amendment, and Pelosi is a member of that panel. She never goes, of course, but she has a proxy, who presumably will be voting the way the Speaker has instructed. So we shall see.

We shall also see where FIona Ma, Leland Yee, and Betty Yee, all members of the DCCC, are on this landmark measure.

Gawker is all in a lather about Digg.com and the "white male nerds" there who think

whatever Bush says is wrong, whatever the MSM says is wronger, and if the two are in agreement it's clearly the wrongest idea ever.

I'm not going to comment on Gawker's rather harsh (and I must admit, amusing) descriptions of the denizens of Digg, but I will say:

I tracked down the article that the fuss is all about, which ran in the U.K. Guardian. It's not nutty at all; it's actually a thoughful, well-reasoned opinion piece about the geopolitics of the Caucaus and the reasons the U.S. should stay the hell out.

So if this is what the Diggers like, they're a lot more intelligent that Gawker would have you believe.

Well, this is a nice little tip. Check out where it leads you; what a cast of characters.

Once you get started on this stuff, it's hard to let go.

As usual, some of the best material on what's really going on in Georgia has appeared in the British press, not in the NY Times. I've put together a few links that give some perspective here.

From the London Independent: Saakashvili sucked up to the West and gambled that NATO would back him when he got in a firefight with Russia

Also from the Independent, check out the comments here on how Saakashvili may have started the whole thing

From the UK Guardian, some good background on what Russia is demanding

And I'm posting below an intelligent piece by J. Victor Marshall of the Independent Institute over in Oakland. Marshall has a bit of the Peter Dale Scott in him, but this is well worth reading.

Georgia on My Mind

By J. Victor Marshall

Whenever a crisis somewhere in the world involves Russia, members of Americas political establishment appear gripped by a collective psychosis.

The latest revival of Cold War rhetoric comes on the heels of Russias incursion into neighboring Georgia to counter its recent attack on the ethnically distinct enclave of South Ossetia.

South Ossetia, which was once part of the Soviet republic of Georgia, has increasingly asserted its independence since 1991, when several thousand Georgian troops invaded, unleashing barbaric violence on both sides.

Its no surprise that armchair warriors like Vice President Cheney, uninterested in the regions complex history, now bluster that Russian aggression must not go unanswered.

But Democratic hawks like Richard Holbrooke are no less quick to raise the specter of the Cold War and declare ominously, Moscow's behavior poses a direct challenge to European and international order.

Bob Brigham's got a good post on Calitics about Al Gore's new clean-energy ad campaign and how foolish it looks for Gavin Newsom to be on the wrong side of this issue:

This is the challenge of our time and history will record those who side with polluters like PG&E against the movement to switch that is growing every day. By the time the Democratic primary heats up, this vote will be as poison as the Iraq War vote (it is no coincidence that the polluters are using the same right-wing tactics the neocons used in their push against the reality-based community).

Yet it is not too late. Every day more and more people are realizing that the time to make the switch is now, the time for bold action is now. Hopefully, Gavin Newsom will have the wisdom to realize the how silly it sounds when he regurgitates PG&E's talking points and will stop and think about what it is Al Gore is saying.

Newsom is also looking more and more alone here, as most of the prominent political leaders in the city line up behind the Clean Energy Act. I wonder: He's the biggest name PG&E is going to have in its campaign; willhe let the disgraced private company use his picture and make him the centerpiece of the campaign against this charter amemdment? And won't that look awful?

It's no surprise that many of the items Mayor Newsom hacked out of the city budget at the last minute were important to supervisors who didn't go along with the mayor's original budget proposal.

Just look at the complete list (here as a pdf). Among the items axed: $130,000 for a Bernal Heights childcare center (a project Sup Tom Ammiano has been working on for two years or more), $397,000 for homeless drop-in services (which progresive board members have pushed for); $300,000 for home health nurses (a priority of SEIU Local 790) ... the list goes on.

The Chron quotes Robert Haaland:

"It's a very aggressive and obviously retaliatory move. But we're not just going to roll over," said Robert Haaland, a political organizer for SEIU. "Imagine you're a working person and all of a sudden your salary gets slashed. People can lose their homes just because the mayor wants to retaliate. It remains to be seen how we'll fight back, but we're certainly not going to watch our members lose their homes."

I just got off the phone with Haaland, and he went even further: "What they did is an unfair labor practice, retaliating against someone who refused to make concessions," he said.

Which pretty much sums it up. SEIU Local 1021 wouldn't play ball with the mayor, so now the union members get hit.

Ammiano was more than a bit pissed off. "It's all retaliatory," he told me. "Look at the Bernal preschool. This is a tiny amount of money, but it's important to the community. And he didn't even have the courtesy to call me himself and tell me about it."

Added Ammiano: "It's particularly ironic since he talks all the time about keeping families in San Francisco. I guess that doesn't mean low-income families."

The killer here is that these kind of cuts seem minor when they're part of a $5 billion budget, but on the ground, on the streets, they really matter.

I'm still waiting to hear if the mayor will support Sup. Aaron Peskin's revenue measures on the fall ballot, which would provide plenty of money to avoid these kinds of cuts.

The newly elected progressive block of the local Democratic Party flexed their muscles during tonight's endorsements. It was a full house, with only Rep. Nancy Pelosi's seat empty. She neglected (perhaps purposefully) to send a proxy.

Many of the supervisors' measures passed -- including the Affordable Housing measure and the Clean Energy Act. All of the items put on the ballot by Mayor Gavin Newsom failed, despite a small consistent cabal following his centrist party line. Sen. Dianne Feinstein's proxy cast steady abstentions on many local issues, with notable "no" votes against Affordable Housing, Clean Energy, and decriminalizing prostitution. She did, however, support Newsom's Community Justice Center, which some pointed out had already been funded and should have been taken off the ballot.

All the progressive candidates handily won top seats, with David Campos beating out Eric Quezada in the hot district nine race. Nods went to incumbents Elsbernd and Chu. There was a lot of debate over whether to select second and third choices for ranked choice voting in the district supervisor races. Though there were attempts to get second and third seats filled, there was too much division among candidates and enough progressives stuck with "no endorsement" for those seats to keep solidarity behind the top seeded candidate. After some talk about the need to have at least one woman on the slate, Denise McCarthy, running in district three, was the only candidate to receive the second billing, getting votes from Debra Walker and Michael Goldstein, who stepped outside the progressive contingent that was urging a "no endorsement" vote to keep loyalty lined up behind Chiu.

The Clean Energy Act received a healthy majority of 22, with more choosing to abstain than cast a "no." Tom Hsieh, Joe Julian, Megan Levitan, Mike Tuchow, Dianne Feinstein, and August Longo, voted against it while Laura Spanjian, Scott Wiener, Jackie Speier, Leland Yee, and Fiona Ma, abstained.

The complete rundown, after the jump:

By Steven T. Jones
The big Ringling Bros. elephant abuse trial that I wrote about in the current issue of the Guardian has been delayed by two weeks -- for a politically interesting reason.
Federal District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, who is hearing the Ringling Bros. case, is also presiding over the political corruption trial of U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), who has asked for a speedy trial to try to clear his name before the fall election, when he will try to continue as the longest serving Republican in the U.S. Senate. To accommodate the Stevens trial, Sullivan moved the Ringling trial start from Oct. 7 to Oct. 20. Apparently he wants to dispose of one elephant case before dealing with the next.
Meanwhile, also in a Washington D.C. court, another big Ringling-related lawsuit is moving forward. Superior Court Judge Brook Hedge yesterday ruled on motions for summary judgment in the strange case of journalist Jan Pottker vs. Ringling owner Ken Feld, which involves allegations of using former CIA operatives to sabotage Pottker's efforts to write about Feld. Judge Hedge granted motions removing National Press Books and other ancillary defendants from the case, but denied Feld's motion and will apparently allow the nine-year-old case to move toward trial.
"The filings are voluminous, but the core facts relevant to the claims are set forth above and revolve around the admitted plan to divert plaintiff from authoring any more works on the circus," the judge wrote in a 45-page opinion.
For more details, read my story.

By Tim Redmond

I don't know what Heather Knight means by "ultra-liberal," but to say that the San Francisco Democratic Party has taken a "sharp turn to the left" is a bit miselading. Yes, the progressives ran an agressive campaign and picked up some seats this spring, but most of the votes on most of the issues were pretty close to unanimous; public power, fro example, had support from across the spectrum. Same with most of the supervisors races.

In fact, the only reason the Democratic Party seems a little more progressive now is that it has so often in the past been controlled by moderates (and in the days of Willie Brown, by a political machine).

So what's up with the "ultra-liberal," anyway?

I mean, the word "liberal" used to mean someone who believed that government was part of the solution to social problems, that income ought to be redistributed and the weathy should pay their fair share and that taxes levied and collected in a progressive fashion should be used for programs to help the needy.

That describes most of the people the Chron is now calling "ultra-liberal." It does not describe, for example, Gavin Newsom.

In San Francisco, taking liberal stands on social issues is easy. The economic issues are a lot more tough, and that's where you can draw political lines. The Shorensteins, Walter and Doug, are (generaly speaking) social liberals who give money to Democrats, and they always have. But when it comes to regulating land use and development and taxing downtown -- when it hits the Shorensteins in the pocket book -- they're as anti-tax and anti-regulation as most Republicans.

John Burton asked me once why I didn't call him a progressive, and I told him that the difference between a liberal and a progressive these days is that progressives don't trust real-estate developers. That's just a small example, but it makes the point. The progressives in San Francisco stand for both social and economic justice.

Here's what I think is going on: The Newsom camp is angry about the use of the term "progressive" to describe Newsom's critics, because it implies that Newsom somehow isn't progressive. (Honestly, by any meaning of the word, he's not. Care not Cash was the opposite of a progressive program. His budget is the opposite of a progressive budget. On economic issues, he's very much a centrist.)

But Newsom's operatives have been putting pressure on the media, and I'm sure on the Chron, to change that terminology. So now that Chron has come up with the disparaging term "ultra-liberal."

Really, based on the recent endorsement, the Democratic Party in SF today pretty closely reflects San Francisco values. The nasty label's got to go.

Okay, this is incredibly ironic: Former Mayor Willie Brown, now a Chronicle columnist, is suddenly complaining about the use of political power. From his piece yesterday on the changes at the Democratic County Central Committee:

But what's really going on behind the headlines is a move by the "progressives" to take over the central committee a la Tammany Hall or Richard Daley's Chicago. The goal is to control the party money and endorsements - and that way be able to pick candidates for office as well.

In other words the central committee will be Peskin's shadow mayoralty, allowing Peskin to keep calling shots even when he leaves office.

Willie, Willie, Willie -- YOU were the one who took Chicago-style machine politics to a new level in San Francisco. You were the one who controlled the money, the endorsements, the DCCC, the Board of Supervisors ... Now you're complaining?

By Steven T. Jones
In the latest indication that Mayor Gavin Newsom intends to run as far away from San Francisco values as possible during his bid for governor, his campaign announced today the hiring of Garry South as its senior adviser.
I got to know South during my years as news editor for the Sacramento News & Review, when he was an adviser to then-Gov. Gray Davis, and I share the concerns of others that he represents the antithesis of Democratic Party values.
While the California Energy Crisis was barreling down on this state's citizens and government, with enough time to head off the worst impacts, I listened to South indignantly defend the governor's laissez faire approach until way after such passivity was indefensible. I argued with him as Davis became the most mindless law-and-order governor in California history (Davis famously argued for patterning our criminal justice system on that of repressive Singapore, a ludicrous South-inspired statement he never disavowed). And I sat in court while South and his Republican counterparts pleaded with a judge to overturn voter-approved campaign finance limits.
Garry South's conservative triangulation approach to politics is arguably a big reason why Davis was recalled, leaving us with the Governator. Along with other soulless, scorched-earth political operatives in Camp Newsom -- including Nathan Ballard, Peter Ragone, and Chris Lehane -- South is sure to drag this campaign down into the lowest common denominator muck.
Hmm, maybe this isn't such a bad thing after all. Newsom can run from us, lose, and then we won't need to keep explaining why Newsom is from San Francisco, but not of San Francisco.

Marian Residence for Women has been called a “model for shelter and transitional services for women,” yet it’s closing for good on August 31, adding another 60 beds to the 400+ that have been lost from the San Francisco's homeless shelter system since Mayor Gavin Newsom took office.

That fact was reiterated once again during an August 7, 2008 City Operations and Neighborhood Services committee hearing on the closure, a mostly somber affair except when Quintin Mecke, chair of the city’s Shelter Monitoring Committee, praised the shelter’s model service, eliciting cheers and applause from the crowd of onlookers – many of whom were current or former Marian residents. “It really is a catastrophic loss,” he added. Mecke and the committee are tasked with monitoring health and safety in the city-funded shelters. Marian receives no city money.

The 60-bed shelter and transitional housing facility is owned by St. Anthony Foundation and, as we previously reported, the nonprofit is short on cash and shuttering the facility. To generate revenue it’s hoping to lease the building – and as testimony at the hearing showed, it’s the city who will be renting the space and converting it to a medical respite facility, thus serving a different, yet equally desperate homeless population.

Currently, medical respite – which provides bed and care for homeless patients too ill for the streets but not critical enough for the hospital – is conducted at two different locations in the city, though the Dept. of Public Health and Mayor Newsom have long desired a single, comprehensive facility.

Joyce Crum of the city’s Human Services Agency said they were working with St. Anthony Foundation to ensure that all of the women staying at Marian would have a place to go. In an effort to ramp up the waning services for women, HSA has also identified a building with 56 units that they plan to lease and devote entirely to housing homeless women. Mayor Gavin Newsom’s homeless policy director, Dariush Kayhan, said the mayor had set aside $500,000 for the project.

That’s a far cry from the $1.3 million St. Anthony spends every year to run Marian Residence. While some might say that’s what it takes to run a model shelter, Kayhan said, “It seems that it’s an unsuitable program design.”

It's no secret that Gavin Newsom wants to be the greenest mayor that ever walked our fair state. So, the solar-powered necktie seems like his obvious fashion choice this fall, even if it doesn't come in blue. According to the folks at the Coolest Gadgets website, this tie has a hidden pouch for stashing your cellphone away while the tie charges it up, using only the power of the sun.

Or is Newsom's greenness more talk than walk?

by Sarah Phelan

“Follow the money." That's what Deep Throat told reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward in All the President’s Men, William Goldman’s classic film about the investigation that led to President Nixon's resignation.

It was good advice then and now, no matter what story you are investigating, no matter what city you live/work in.

But Deep Throat’s classic advice got a tad harder to follow in the city by the Bay, thanks to kinks in new software, plus the overzealous efforts of some interns who apparently got carried away with the black pen, while redacting campaign finance records down at the San Francisco Ethics Commission.

The SF Ethics Commission, just in case you are wondering, is where people running for elected office, and people running political campaigns, file their financial disclosure reports.

All of which makes Ethics a good place to start if you want to follow the money in a particular political race.

It’s a pathway that you need to keep watching for months, if not years, after a race, since many donations and expenditures are made at the last minute and aren’t recorded, until long after the victory champagne has gone flat.

These days, campaign filings can be made the old-fashioned way, with paper filings, or the new Internet-enabled way, with online filings.

If you file electronically, Ethics’ software automatically redacts the street addresses and signatures of campaign donors from these online records.

These redactions aren’t undertaken because of new redaction policies over at City Hall, Ethics officials say, but to put the department in compliance with the Secretary of State.

But when Ethics started contracting with private vendor Netfile this spring, Netfile’s software apparently began deleting donor’s zip codes, too.

As a result of these unsanctioned redactions, it became impossible to follow online, exactly which parts of the City, the money was flowing from, in the June 3 election.

Meanwhile, the address of the Ethics Commission itself got redacted from a couple of online reports. (You can view an example of this redaction classic, by clicking here:

“For them to redact the actual address of the Ethics Commission speaks volumes about the mood over there,” one City Hall insider told us.

But the way Ethics’ executive director John St. Croix explains it, this classic blooper occurred because Ethics was trying to expand the amount of information that available online.

“Some overzealous interns got carried away,” St. Croix said, as they tried to help Ethics redact donor street addresses from paper filings, before posting them online.

“This happened because we were trying to scan copies of paper filings and post them online, which has never been done before, “ St. Croix explained.

“We decided it wasn’t worth the effort to redo it, all over again, St. Croix added, noting that you can still view the original, non-redacted paper filings at the Ethics Office.

Provided, that is, that you have Ethics street address, which is at 25 Van Ness Avenue. But shh, don’t tell anyone!

Bird, cat, dog.

By Sarah Phelan.

Walking on Potrero Hill at lunch time, I saw a $1,000 reward posted for a gray cockatiel.

The poster suggested catching the bird by the burrito method (throw a towel over bird, roll it up gently with bird inside, and voila!) or by dousing it with a water hose.

Around the corner, I saw a poster announcing the disappearance of a black and white cat called Sumo. (The photo is of a similar cat “though Sumo is much bigger around," according to the poster.)

Watching from inside a house was a dog, who may or may not know about the whereabouts of the bird and the cat, but apparently is for progress and Obama. Woof!

By Steven T. Jones

It’s been almost a year since Larry Harvey announced the 2008 art theme for Burning Man: American Dream. I hated it and said so publicly.

But I later came to see a bit of method behind Harvey’s madness, and on Friday I will take my sixth trip to Black Rock City, this time treating it as an extended checkpoint on my drive to and from an even bigger patriotic pageant, the Democratic National Convention in Denver. It’s a trip made possible by synchronous – but probably not coincidental – timing.

The purpose of this post isn’t to announce the project, which I did in yesterday’s paper. Here, I want to offer a bit more background and relevant links, make few disclosures, clear my head and throat, and give you a better idea where this is headed.

by Amanda Witherell

Just in case you had any questions about our Mayor's relationship with private utility monopolies. And they co-opted Jenny Lewis!

My colleague Paula is, like me, an Obama Girl.

And like me, she was beginning to feel down after reading reports that McCain is narrowing Obama’s lead in the polls.
And then there are the columnists, who are attacking Obama for not being tough enough on Clinton, McCain, and everything.

Rather than letting the media spin get to me, I took another lunch time walk in the neighborhood, on the look out for more signs and portents.

This is what I found:

Obama has coast to coast support.

Gavin Newsom's coziness with PG&E and other big businesses is starting to come back to haunt him as he stumbles forward in his campaign for governor.

Newsom has this big party planned for the Democratic National Convention in Denver, and as Leftinsf blogger Sasha McGee reported, he had listed his sponsors as PG&E, AT&T and MoveOn.org. Getting MoveOn behind him would be a major coup and would create considerable liberal cred for a guy who can't possibly win a Democratic primary without progressive support.

But the Newsom camp made a big mistake: MoveOn isn't terribly fond of PG&E, but is really pissed at AT&T. The organization now says that it was all a miscommmunication, that MoveON was actually sponsoring another event at the same time. And for the record, MoveOn is NOT sponsoring the Newsom gig.

But the whole thing makes Team Newsom look foolish -- and gives bloggers the chance to once again poijnt how that Newsom, the purported green mayor, is siding with PG&E and against the Clean Energy Act.

The folks at Usual Suspects have come up with a wonderful challenge: Who has the best political mind in San Francisco? Predict the outcome of the (local) fall races and win fabulous prizes (like lunch with Alex Clemens! -- oh, and $500.)

All it requires is a donation of $5 or more to one of eight worthy local charities.

Check it out. I am always, always, wrong about my predictions, since I tend to be my heart instead of my head, so even if you don't win lunch with Alex, you'll do better than me.

Here's the link.

One of the most annoying parts of the No on H campaign -- and campaigns against public power before it -- is the consistent drumroll of attacks on city employees. This year's flyers, some quoting elected city officials, dredge up the old crap about the city not even being able to run Muni.

When the Labor Council meets Monday to decide on its endorsements, I hope the members keep this in mind: PG&E is saying that unionized city employees are incompetent. Typically, unions don't stand for that kind of nonsense, and indeed, the city employee unions will support Prop. H.

But PG&E"s house union, the IBEW, is against the measure, and PG&E's allies are trying to convince other unions to oppose it, or at least to take a neutral stand -- in the spirit of labor solidarity.

How about standing up in solidarity with the city workers, who are being directly attacked by PG&E's minions?

Fact is, San Francisco already runs a water system and a power system. It also runs a major hospital with the region's only Level One trauma unit, one of the busiest airports in the country, and a lot of other things that involve employees with high levels of skill. Running a retail power business isn't all that difficult (and unlike Muni, it's profitable). To say that city employees can't run a power system is a huge insult.

I was reminded of all this when Amanda Witherell forwarded me a link from a story about Dianne Feinstein the last time public power was on the ballot. Back then, the Chron was actually covering the issue -- and Chuck FInnie and Susan Sward caught Feinstein trashing her own city and making a fool of herself, all in her desperate efforts to help PG&E.

Check it out.

By Sarah Phelan

Biden bidden?
Online reports say Sen. Barack Obama has picked Sen. Joe Biden as his vice presidential nominee.
Obama supporters are supposed to hear by email early Saturday, so they'll soon see for themselves.

...and here is the email confirmation, sent around 2 a.m:

Sarah --

I have some important news that I want to make official.

I've chosen Joe Biden to be my running mate.

Joe and I will appear for the first time as running mates this afternoon in Springfield, Illinois -- the same place this campaign began more than 19 months ago.

I'm excited about hitting the campaign trail with Joe, but the two of us can't do this alone. We need your help to keep building this movement for change.

Please let Joe know that you're glad he's part of our team. Share your personal welcome note and we'll make sure he gets it:

http://my.barackobama.com/welcomejoe

Thanks for your support,

Barack

P.S. -- Make sure to turn on your TV at 2:00 p.m. Central Time to join us or watch online at http://www.BarackObama.com.

Bay Guardian City Editor Steven T. Jones is driving to the Democratic National Convention in Denver, stopping by Burning Man on the way there and back, reporting on the intersection of the counterculture and the national political culture.

By Steven T. Jones

Burning Man is thick with deep drifts of dust this year, making it a difficult and tiring bicycle trek to make it into the deep playa, where San Francisco artist Peter Hudson and his crew are building Tantalus. But it's worth the ride, particularly if seeking a great take on the American Dream theme.
Like most creations out here, it isn't up and running yet, but it will be by tomorrow when the event officially begins. Still, even in its static state, it is an art piece that already resonates with my exploration of how the counterculture sees the national political culture.
Tantalus looks like a red, white and blue top hat, with golden arms and bodies around it. And when it spins on Monday, powered totally by the manual labor of visitors working four pumper rail cars, they'll see that man – a modern American Tantalus -- reaching for the golden apple that is being dangled just out of his reach and falling back empty handed.
It's a telling metaphor for such a big week in American politics.

By Steven T. Jones

Kid Beyond and I arrived in Denver about an hour ago after a 16-hour drive from Black Rock City, cruising through Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado, a couple of which Barack Obama will probably need to win in November if he’s to take the White House.

We headed south toward Denver just as a gorgeous dawn was breaking, arriving with a few hours to spare before our Democratic National Convention press credential would have been redistributed to other journalists, who reportedly number more than 15,000 here.

I’d hoped to post another missive from Burning Man, but it was difficult to get on line there, so you’ll have to settle for the short post below because now it’s time to change gears and focus on the convention, which kicks off tonight with Michelle Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Jimmy Carter, and Ted Kennedy, among others.

But first, it’s time to get down to the Sheraton, where we get our credentials and where the California delegation is staying. And then we might just need a bit of sleep. Check back later tonight for more.

Clay Doherty, Laura Spanjian, and Mirian Saez are Clinton delegates from San Francisco.

By Steven T. Jones

The massive Pepsi Center was less than half full a couple hours after the gavel fell to open the Democratic National Convention, but the city of Denver is bustling and eventually so was the hall.

I rode my bike along the beautiful and efficient Cherry Creek Bike Trail to get here and it was a smart move because most of the streets around the convention are closed off and patroled by police in riot gear riding trucks with extended running boards, with military helicopters circling overhead. Many here say it took them a long time to get from their hotels into hall. Even riding a bike here involved a long walk because of the huge perimeter they've set up around the hall.

But the broadcast media have it good, with prime floor space that makes it all the more congested for the delegates and others with floor passes. Most journalists are tucked behind the stage or up in the cheap seats, and we can't even get free internet acces in the hall to tell y'all about what's happening.

CNN also has a great looking patio restaurant set up across from the entrance advertising, “CNN Bar: Burgers, Beer, Politics.” But by the “must have credentials” sign on the door, they actually meant CNN personnel only, not their media colleagues in general. Jesus, how many of them could there be?

by Amanda Witherell

Graph from San Francisco Chronicle, July 26, 2007

Literally.

Last night while the San Francisco Labor Council was meeting to vote on endorsements for the November election, the power cut out.

“I immediately started chanting public power, public power,” said Robert Haaland, who was there on behalf of SEIU 1021. He was referring to the Clean Energy Act – Prop H on the ballot.

Haaland called the experience surreal. “It was literally in the dark and the people counting votes were doing it by flashlight.” Because voting was by delegates, with people standing up for or against it in a dark room it was impossible to see who exactly voted for each side. “Maria Guillen, the COPE chair for 1021 gave a very impassioned speech for public power and also addressed how the campaign against public power has been attacking city workers,” said Haaland. SEIU’s Joint Council voted in favor of endorsing the measure.

Despite the PG&E power outage, the Council chose to go neutral. PG&E has more power outages than any other utility company in the state, according to a July 26, 2007 article in the Chron.

Apparently representatives from some of the trades urged neutrality on the issue, and expressed concern about how retirement and pension benefits would be affected should the city go into the retail power business and buy out PG&E’s infrastructure. According to the Clean Energy Act’s website, “any PG&E employees who become City employees as a result of this Act will not suffer any reduction of compensation or seniority.

If passed, the Clean Energy Act would force the city to establish a long-term energy plan with renewable power benchmarks more aggressive than current state mandates. The city will study how best to achieve this and if it’s determined that a municipally owned electricity system is the most efficient and expeditious way to achieve 100 percent renewable power by 2040, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission will have the authority to issue revenue bonds to purchase and construct the infrastructure to do that.

The full list of Labor Council endorsements can be found in this PDF.

Steven T. Jones and Kid Beyond are driving to the Democratic National Convention in Denver, stopping by Burning Man on the way there and back, reporting on the intersection of the counterculture and the national political culture.

By Kid Beyond

Monday morning. Just finished the 18-hour drive from Black Rock to Denver -- Steve and I switching shifts throughout the night, fueled by Radiohead, live Floyd, Rage Against the Machine and drive-thru Burger King.

I’m aching to augment my 2.5 hours of sleep, but there’s only enough time to wash the playa dust out of most of my crevices and head downtown to the Circus.

And a circus it is: part rock concert, part revival meeting, part infomercial, part telethon.

By Mirissa Neff

Just back from a day of DNC madness. After haggling to get my press pass I walked through downtown Denver to meet up with Steve Jones and Kid Beyond at the "Big Tent." Along the way were some young protesters and some local color:

Kid Beyond was interviewing a delegate as I arrived then he and Steve blogged away:

Renowned LGBT activist Del Martin died today, according to a press release from State Senator Carole Migden.

Del Martin, 87and her partner Phyllis Lyons, 83, became the first gay couple in the nation to legally marry on Feb. 12, 2004, after having spent almost 50 years as a couple.

Their marriage was deemed void later that same year, but this summer, when the California Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage is legal, Del and Phyllis were, once again, the first to wed.

State Senator Carole Migden’s (D-San Francisco/North Bay) released the following statement today in response to Martin's death:

“Del Martin slipped away from us just moments ago but her spirit and legacy will never be extinguished within the LGBT community. Del and her loving, longtime partner, Phyllis Lyon, were harbingers for change and activism long before lesbian issues became au courant and socially acceptable. All people and movements in search of true liberation owe an immeasurable debt to Del Martin who, along with other early brave souls, was determined to speak out and change the world to better the plight and lives of those whose voices are not heard. “

Steven T. Jones and Kid Beyond are driving to the Democratic National Convention in Denver, stopping by Burning Man on the way there and back, reporting on the intersection of the counterculture and the national political culture.

By Steven T. Jones

The Big Tent, which is the central hub for bloggers and progressive activists here in Denver, offers more than just free beer, food, massages, smoothies, and Internet access. It offers up the amplified voice of grassroots democracy, something finding an audience not just with millions of citizens on the Internet, but among Democratic Party leaders.

New media powerhouses including Daily Kos, MoveOn, and Digg (a Guardian tenant in San Francisco which sponsors the main stage in the Big Tent) have spent the last year working on the Big Tent project with progressive groups in Denver, many of whom have offices in the Alliance Building, the parking lot of which houses the Big Tent (a simple wood-framed floor, stairs, and decks above it, covered by a tent).

“This is where we have the people on the ground doing the work on progressive causes,” said Katie Fleming with Colorado Common Cause, one Alliance Building tenant. “It’s been a year in the planning. The idea was having a place for blogs to cover the convention,…It’s a way for us to all come together for the progressive line that we carry.”

But it’s really more than that. It’s a coming together disparate, ground-level forces of the left into something like an real institution, something with the power to potentially influence the positions and political dialogue of the Democratic Party.

“When we started doing this in 2001, there just wasn’t this kind of movement,” MoveOn founder Eli Pariser told me as we rode down the Alliance Building elevator together. “The left wing conspiracy is finally vast.”

by Amanda Witherell

Berkeley-based Disability Rights Advocates filed suit in US District Court today against the city of San Francisco for denying access to shelter beds for disabled homeless people. The suit alleges that Mayor Gavin Newsom’s Care not Cash program sets aside a certain amount of beds that are thus unavailable to disabled people who are banned from the program.

“There are limited resources in the shelter system and there are large numbers of beds that are set aside that people with disabilities don’t have access to as a statutory matter,” said Julia Pinover, DRA’s attorney on the case. “The city has a responsibility to provide services equally.”

Care not Cash, which was passed by voters in 2002, pools the General Assistance money that used to go to individuals into a fund for financing housing and supportive services. People still receive small portions of their $395 GA cash -- $29 checks every two weeks – and they’re guaranteed shelter beds in exchange for giving the rest of the cash to the city. Not everyone uses their allocated beds, but they still must be set aside – thus eliminating them from the pool of beds available to other people seeking shelter.

Homeless people who receive Supplemental Security Income, Social Security Disability Insurance, or veterans and disabled benefits do not get GA money and therefore cannot participate in Care not Cash. The suit alleges there are 60 to 80 Care Not Cash beds that go unfilled every night while hundreds of people seeking shelter are turned away. At least 50 percent of homeless people self-identify as disabled, though many consider that a low figure. “Because any person who is eligible for disability benefits is not able to participate in the CNC program even is there is an empty CNC bed at a shelter, a homeless person with a disability may be denied shelter solely because of his or her disabled status,” states the claim.

“Right now the shelter system for disabled people with mental illness is the equivalent to having a shelter at the top of a hill with a giant staircase and you’re in a wheelchair,” said Paul Boden of Western Regional Advocacy Project, a nonprofit homeless rights group based in San Francisco that is party to the class action suit. “It’s being run more like a capitalist venture than a social program. If it was a social program with a soul then disabled people, seniors, and women would be your priorities.”

Steven T. Jones and Kid Beyond are driving to the Democratic National Convention in Denver, stopping by Burning Man on the way there and back, reporting on the intersection of the counterculture and the national political culture.

By Kid Beyond

On Tuesday afternoon, to a half-filled hall, Dennis Kucinich gives the best speech you won't see on any front page, at the top of any news hour. He has the audacity to shout from the rooftops that the Emperor Has No Clothes. "Wake up, America! The insurance companies took over health care! Multinational corporations took over our trade policies! Wake up, America! We went into Iraq for oil!"

The man is en fuego. He's a mean, green, righteous-indignation machine. In the crowd, mouths are agape. Check out the short guy! Incredulous jaws are hitting the floor. He's whipping them into a frenzy. Black folks, white folks. It's like Showtime at the Apollo, when the audience finally realizes, "Hey, that white boy can sing."

Content-wise, it's old news to most Guardian readers. But in the centrist halls of the DNC, speaking naked truth to power is a subversive act indeed. They're still cheering Kucinich 30 seconds into the next speaker, the unfortunately-slotted California Controller John Chiang.

Steven T. Jones and Kid Beyond are driving to the Democratic National Convention in Denver, stopping by Burning Man on the way there and back, reporting on the intersection of the counterculture and the national political culture.

By Steven T. Jones

San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly was giddy when I joined him in the two-thirds full California delegation this afternoon during the nominating speeches for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. It was partly because he was finally an official delegate, having gotten called up from his roll as alternate a couple hours earlier. But an even bigger reason for his joy was that he’s a serious political wonk and just loves the Roll Call, the only official business of the convention.

“This is the best part of the convention, roll call. It’s cool,” Daly, the consummate vote counter, told me as we watched the chair ask each state for their votes. “The speeches are OK, but this is what it’s about.”

And pretty soon, this kid in the candy shop was losing his mind as we watched a series of genuinely newsworthy developments in an otherwise scripted convention: California party chair Art Torres saying “California passes” rather than reporting our votes, states like New Jersey and Arkansas awarding all their votes to Obama and causing the room to go nuts, and the series of states yielding to others that culminated in Clinton herself, after a dramatic entrance into the hall, making the motion to end the count and name Obama as the nominee by acclimation of the whole convention.

By Mirissa Neff

After picking up my photo credential downtown this morning I got a bicycle from one of the "Freewheeling" stations. It's a free bicycle program set up specifically for the convention. Then I rode over to grab lunch at an amazing taqueria in the Highlands:

Things were just starting up at the convention center and on the way to the security check Reverend Al Sharpton was holding court:

After making it into the building and finding a seat in the nosebleeds, Pelosi began the role call:

At that point I knew I had to get down to the floor...

Steven T. Jones and Kid Beyond are driving to the Democratic National Convention in Denver, stopping by Burning Man on the way there and back, reporting on the intersection of the counterculture and the national political culture.

By Steven T. Jones

Gavin Newsom threw a great party last night, drawing a mix of young hipsters, youngish politicos, and a smattering of corporate types in suit and tie. Even though he didn’t get a speaking slot at the convention, Newsom is widely seen as a rising star in the party, far cooler than most elected officials, maybe even too cool for his own good.

Comedian Sarah Silverman did a funny bit to open the program at the Manifest Hope Gallery (which featured a variety of artworks featuring Obama), then introduced Newsom by saying, “I’m honored to introduce a great public servant and a man I would like to discipline sexually, Gavin Newsom.”

Apparently Newsom liked it because he grabbed Silverman and started to grope and nuzzle into her like they were making out, then acted surprised to see the crowd there and took the microphone. It was a strange and uncomfortable moment for those who know about his past sex scandal and recent marriage to the former Jennifer Siebel, who watched the spectacle from the wings.

But it clearly shows that Newsom is his own biggest fan, someone who think he’s adorable and can do no wrong, which is a dangerous mindset in politics.

Steven T. Jones and Kid Beyond are driving to the Democratic National Convention in Denver, stopping by Burning Man on the way there and back, reporting on the intersection of the counterculture and the national political culture.

By Kid Beyond

Wednesday afternoon: the nominating speeches. They're playing against type. Third-youngest delegate Jordan Apollo Pazell, from a 720-person town in Utah, seconds Hillary's nomination on behalf of his two great- grandmothers -- both still alive and in Utah, both born before women had the right to vote. Nominating Obama is Michael Wilson, a young Iraq War vet and lifelong Republican.

Speaker after speaker, the talking points are the same. The failing economy. Health care. A swift exit from Iraq. A more nuanced foreign policy. Clean energy, and clean energy jobs. Restoring the American Dream -- prosperity through hard work.

Steven T. Jones and Kid Beyond are driving to the Democratic National Convention in Denver, stopping by Burning Man on the way there and back, reporting on the intersection of the counterculture and the national political culture.

By Steven T. Jones

Barack Obama finally took center stage as the Democratic National Convention drew to an explosive close tonight in a packed Mile High Stadium. Most on hand thought he gave a great speech and left smiling and enthused, but I and some other progressives had a few cringing moments that left us slightly unsettled.

While Obama and the Democrats made a clear and compelling case for how much better for the country they are than McCain and the Republicans, there were also many points of concern for progressives and the alienated Left. Obama did little to address their issues while reaching out to Republicans, churchgoers, and conservatives.

“All across America something is stirring. What the naysayers don’t understand is this isn’t about me, it’s about you,” Obama said in one of his biggest applause lines of the night.

If this is really about me and my people – those in the streets protesting war and the two party system, people at Burning Man creating art and community, those of us on the coasts frustrated by the political influence of heartland voters – then it appears the election of Obama is just the beginning of the work we need to do.

Steven T. Jones and Kid Beyond are driving to the Democratic National Convention in Denver, stopping by Burning Man on the way there and back, reporting on the intersection of the counterculture and the national political culture.

By Kid Beyond

Thursday. The Big Event. We've moved to Mile High Stadium (I refuse to call it "Invesco Field at Mile High"). It's sweltering outside. 70,000 people are streaming into the stadium. Beaming young volunteers in their 20's and 30's. Families. Boy Scout troops in full uniform. Bubbly, wholesome, multi-racial excitement pervades. It's like a Black Eyed Peas show.

Howard Dean lands with a thud. "I'm the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and I know exactly how many houses I own." He's halting, rusty. The crowd is non-plussed. He's done wonders for the party as Chairman, but it's hard to believe this was the Obama of 2004.

Martin Luther King III, marking the anniversary of the "I Have A Dream" speech, honors the legacies of both his father and Bobby Kennedy -- the fallen warriors of 1968. If Martin and Bobby had had a kid, it would be Barack Obama.

By Mirissa Neff

Here was my perspective for most of the evening... there was a lot of vying for position:

I got to the stadium around 1:30pm and got in line for the security check:

It goes without saying that security was extremely tight... here's a shot of the lookout standing atop the stadium:

The hockey mom's got a gun!

Ed Note: Not scary enough? Check out this blog post on Jezebel which really lays it out.

Ed Note: Some great coverage of how different women are reacting to the choice, including highlights of Palin's introduction speech, can be found on Slate's XX Blog. PS: And how bad is it that I've now counted more than 10 "MILF" comments on YouTube about her?