By Steven T. Jones

This morning's San Francisco Examiner, with its ridiculous cover story puff piece on Pacific Gas & Electric CEO Peter Darbee, offers another compelling reason why it would be disastrous if Hearst Corp. shuts down the San Francisco Chronicle.
This great city simply can''t have its sole daily newspaper, owned by a right-wing zealot from Colorado, claiming that our only hope for dealing with global warming is a business executive whose company isn't even meeting the modest renewable portfolio goal of 20 percent and who admits to only recently being convinced that climate change is happening and expressing surprise that those who long denied it were full of shit.
It was embarrassing enough that the Examiner endorsed John McCain for president, but now we have obvious and dubious corporate flackery being presented as journalism. For all the Chronicle's flaws and shortcomings -- and there are many -- they at least maintain some semblance of professional journalism standards. With the exception of some solid local stories by real journalists, the Examiner is simply a newsletter for the narrow corporatist perspective. It's an insult to San Francisco.

By Steven T. Jones
Last year, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed legislation by Mark Leno (then an Assembly member and now a Senator) to establish May 22 as "Harvey Milk Day," honoring the late San Francisco supervisor's birthday with a "day of special significance" marking his causes and encouraging schools to teach children about his life.
Tomorrow, Leno will try again with Senate Bill 572, and this time he's appealing with Schwarzenegger's Hollywood side by tapping Sean Penn, who just won the Best Actor Academy Award for his title role in "Milk." Leno and Penn will appear at 11 a.m. tomorrow at Tosca Cafe (242 Columbus) and will be joined by Assembly member Tom Ammiano, Geoff Kors of Equality California, activist Cleve Jones (a character in Milk and consultant to the film), and Milk's nephew Stuart MIlk.
Mindful of not pushing too far in tough fiscal times, Milk Day would not be an official holiday from work, but it would finally recognize a civil rights leader who was ahead of his time.

By Tim Redmond

I get the concerns about Sup. Chris Daly’s proposal to amend the city’s Rainy Day Fund. But in the end, there’s probably a way to make it work that’s better than a lot of unpleasant alternatives.

The Rainy Day Fund was Tom Ammiano’s gift to San Francisco, a brilliant piece of legislation that has saved the public schools and will save hundreds of jobs and critical public services this year. The bill ensures that the city sets aside some of its money in good years, so there’s something to draw on in really bad times.

And these are really bad times.

Last year, money from the Rainy Day Fund saved the school district from laying off hundreds of teachers. In the wake of the governor’s assault on public education, the local schools will need another allocation to prevent this year’s disaster.

The way the bill works, the city can take up to half the money in the fund in dire times, and the schools can get up to 25%. That means there’s no temptation to raid all the money at one time.
If we hadn’t had the fund – and there were plenty of people who didn’t think it was a good idea when Ammiano introduced it – we’d be in way worse shape now.

What Daly wants to do – with the support of city employee unions – is amend the legislation to allow the supervisors, by majority vote, to take as much of the money as they need to preserve health and human services if the city’s deficit exceeds $250 million.

Ammiano is against that; he sees it as an attack on the idea of the fund, which is supposed to ease budget problems not just in one year but for the future as well. Sup. David Campos, who I respect and trust, is also against the Daly measure. “This year is bad, but next year is going to be bad, too,” he said.

And I get that, and I get that labor wants to preserve services (and jobs) right now, because once those jobs and services go away, it’s really hard to get them back.

So let’s recognize that both sides have a point, neither side is bad or evil, there are good progressives who disagree on this – and take a look at the numbers.

By Tim Redmond

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi has introduced a measure that might help save public-access TV, in San Francisco and elsewhere. It’s not that radical – just a nonbinding resolution calling on the federal and state government to make a small amendment to legislation that currently threatens the existence of PEG – public, educational and government – programming on cable TV.

But it’s got the giant AT&T all agitated, and lobbyists are descending on City Hall to crush it.

The background is a bit complicated, but I’ll try to make it simple. In 2006, the state of California passed a very bad law called the Digital Infrastructure and Video Competition Act (DIVCA), which took away from cities and counties the ability to regulate cable-TV franchises. Now the state Public Utilities Commission – a crew of pro-industry hacks if there ever was one – has that jurisdiction.

One of the results: The city of San Francisco no longer has the ability to require that the operator of its cable franchise provide money for PEG programming. Meanwhile, an old federal law (from 1934) allows cities to mandate that cable franchises pay for capital facilities for PEG – but not for operating expenses.

And the city’s franchise agreement with Comcast is ending this year, and with it will go some $600,000 in operational funding for the city’s public-access TV. More than a dozen PEG channels in Los Angeles county have already gone dark; that could happen here as soon as June.

Mirkarimi wants the state and the feds (that is, our powerful Congressional delegation and our relatively powerful folks in Sacramento) to revisit this, and make a very modest change in law that would allow franchise money to be used not just for capital expenses but for operating budgets.

AT&T dashed off a letter to Mirkarimi Feb. 27th whining about the measure and insisting that the city should pay the PEG expenses out of its existing franchise-fee money. That money goes to the general fund; at a time when the entire social safety net in San Francisco is about to collapse, who really thinks that money will be diverted to public-access TV?

The measure comes up tomorrow at the board. Seems like a no-brainer to me. Who will the AT&T lobbyists get to?

By Rebecca Bowe

As the economic downturn deepens, millions in state and federal funds have been allocated to struggling homeowners who are falling behind on mortgage payments. Today, Supervisor Chris Daly will ask the Board of Supervisors to extend a life raft to another group of people who are worried about losing the roofs over their heads: tenants.

"Homeowners aren't the only ones struggling with the financial crisis. Most San Franciscans are renters,” Daly points out. “It's about time we do something to help tenants who are losing their homes. In this crisis, it is not appropriate for landlords to be raising rents that tenants can't afford."

Toward that end, Daly will introduce a “renters economic relief package” at today’s board meeting, which proposes several amendments to the city’s rent-control law. The three changes are designed to ease some of the pain for San Francisco renters, who face the pressure of rising rents even as the economy continues to slide. In 2009, the Board of Realtors projects a 7 percent rent increase for vacant units, a measure that's looked to as a barometer for how the rental market is behaving, according to Ted Gullicksen of the San Francisco Tenants Union.

EDITOR'S NOTE: THIS STORY CONTAINS TWO CORRECTIONS.

By Deia de Brito

When a coalition of 30 immigrant rights organizations held a town hall meeting at Horace Mann Elementary School last week, Mayor Newsom skipped the session and sent an aide. That's too bad-the testimony was chilling and the mayor might have learned something about the tragic consequences of his policies.

The San Francisco Immigrant Rights Defense Committee has been mobilizing since Newsom announced last July that the city would contact federal immigration authorities whenever youth suspected of being undocumented were arrested on felony charges. The key word is "arrested" - young people in this city are taken into custody and charged on thin or false evidence all the time. So an innocent person whose charges are later dropped could still face deportation.

Among those present were City Assessor Phil Ting, representatives of the San Francisco Police Department, the Immigrant Rights Commission, the Office of Civic Engagement and Immigrant Affairs, the San Francisco Unified School District, and supervisors David Chiu, David Campos, Eric Mar, and John Avalos.

"The biggest problem was that the mayor didn't attend," said SFIRDC organizer and Asian Law Caucus attorney Angela Chan. "There's been no discussion about a policy that has had such a huge impact on the immigrant community."

And there's no doubt, based on what we heard that day, that the impact is indeed huge - and disturbing.

"ICE came to my home and took five people, including my husband. He's in jail and I don't know when he'll be home," said a Mission District resident. Similar stories echoed across the room. Fear and uncertainty were tangible.

By Molly Freedenberg

My dear friend Hollis Hawthorne, a major force in the San Francisco art and bicycle scene, is in critical condition in India. The 31-year-old dancer, artist, and activist was in a tragic motorcycle accident near Pondicherry last Tuesday, February 24, which left her with severe head injuries and in a coma. As of today, she is at Apollo Hospital in Chennai and still unconscious, though she’s finally breathing on her own. Her prognosis is still unknown.

(For the full dramatic story, including heartbreaking details of how her boyfriend kept her alive for 30 minutes doing CPR, and the freak occurrence that rendered her motorcycle helmet useless, check out the blog www.friendsofhollis.blogspot.com. For updates on her health status, check out www.helpholligethome.blogspot.com. Donations can be collected at both sites.)

Hollis is known in San Francisco as co-founder of the Bay Area Derailleurs , an all-female bicycle dance troupe whose purpose is bike activism and female empowerment; founding member of the Cheese Puffs, a tap-dancing burlesque troupe who’ve performed at Hubba Hubba Revue, BootieSF, and for the Guardian at Maker Faire and the DeYoung Museum; member of Burning Man Organization’s DPW; and as a part of Ron Turner’s Last Gasp operation. Her community of friends, family and collaborators also extends to the Sprockettes in Portland, Oregon; Chicken John; the Yard Dogs Roadshow; Extra Action Marching Band; Cyclecide Bike Rodeo; ArtSF; promoters and owners of 1015 Folsom, the Independent, Rickshaw Stop; Los Angeles performance troupe Lucent Dossier (who starred in a Panic at the Disco video on MTV); and many more art, fashion, and activism groups. She is vibrant, creative, inspiring, and passionate – as are the communities she’s a part of.

by Sarah Phelan

Chronicle employees have remained silent about Hearst Corp.’s claims that it needs to make major cuts now, or it will sell or shutter the paper. Their silence is understandable: folks everywhere are afraid of losing their jobs in a major recession. And, as the California Media Workers Guild reports, talks with Chronicle management representatives continue, focusing on management’s latest response to the Guild’s proposals to minimize job losses through cost cuts and business-recovery initiatives.

The Guild previously reported that their negotiators had offered Chronicle management representatives, “a comprehensive package of proposals to cut costs, minimize layoffs, generate new revenues and speed the transition from newsprint to online communications," but Chronicle management expressed doubts about whether the would be enough to avert deep job losses in the Guild’s ranks.

But while Chronicle workers remain mum, and Chronicle editor-at-large Phil Bronstein tries to take credit for this crisis, Denis Mosgofian, a past president of Local 4, which has represented pressmen in the Bay Area for 110 years, has shared his theory about what just happened.

Mosgofian, who has been in the printing trade since 1972 and with the Chronicle since 1987 until he retired in 2001, believes Hearst may be overstating just how bad its finances really are. He also doubts whether Hearst is sharing its books with the Chronicle in a way that would help the newspaper evaluate Hearst’s claims. Here's what he said:
March 2, 2009

"This announcement comes at the midst of the recession/depression. It comes after the Chronicle has already shut down its Richmond and San Francisco production operations and just four months before closing its very large Union City production plant and outsourcing its production to a Canadian non-union printing company named Transcontinental, which has built a brand new production plant in Fremont, California, scheduled to begin production of the Chronicle on June 29, 2009."

By Tim Redmond

Well, the polls look pretty shitty for Gavin Newsom For Governor (thanks, sfist for the tip), and his ratings will just get worse as he attempts to solve a budget crisis without working with the supervisors or the other key stakeholders. At this rate, the way he's treating the city employee unions, there's no way he's getting labor support, and for a candidate who will be running as a liberal to be shunned by labor is a major problem.

(And if he thinks a movie-star wife will give him some glam, check out the reviews.)

And Newsom's counterpart to the south, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, ain't looking so hot right now.

John Garamendi has been reborn as a progressive populist, but a guy who was at best a moderate state legislator is going to have his work cut out for him wooing the left in a primary. And Jerry Brown ... well, Jer's on the right side of the same-sex marriage debate (finally), but he was a terrible mayor of Oakland and has changed his political spots so many times that nobody knows quite which Jerry we'll get this time around -- or whether his current manifestation will last.

Is this really the best the Democratic Party can do?

I guess we should be glad that the Republicans have an even worse lineup. But that's not exactly something to celebrate.

Steven T. Jones blogs the Prop 8 case

Photos by Steven T. Jones

Thousands of people on both sides of the same sex marriage issue have filled Civic Center Plaza as the California Supreme Court begins to hear oral arguments in the case on the constitutionality of Prop. 8. Ukrainian churches are the largest faction of same sex marriage opponents, along with "God hates perverts" wackos, while gay marriage supporters have rainbow representation. Come on down and watch the arguments on the Jumbotron outside City Hall.

Steven T. Jones on the Prop 8 case

Attorney Shannon Minter had just started arguing that Prop. 8 violated equal protection provisions of the state constitution when Chief Justice Ron George cut him off with questions and arguments, and the hearing has been going like that ever since, with lots of rapid fire back and forth between judges and attorneys.

"Clearly, they are deeply engaged and the read the briefs. Shannon just got one sentence out," Attorney Kate Kendall with the National Center for Lesbian Rights told me at the group's watch party in the basement of the main library.

Newsom confers with Kendall.
Mayor Gavin Newsom showed up, and was called by Kendall to be recognized by the crowd "whether you like it or not," but he didn't have much to say this time. He watched the proceedings as George summarized arguments from pro-same-sex marriage intervenors as, "it is just too easy to amend the Constitution."

Kendall said it's tough to read the tea leaves just yet. Deputy City Attorney Terry Stewart is up now and arguing passionately. The infamous attorney Ken Starr (booed earlier by the crowd) is up soon.

Text by Sarah Phelan

Insiders at the Chronicle, which Hearst threatened with massive cuts or closure last week, are saying that Hearst has announced this week that it wants to cut 150 union workers, most of them in the newsroom, which employs a total of 275 workers. In other words, half the newsroom would be laid off.

Hearst also wants to end seniority at the paper. This means the highest paid, and often most experienced workers, could be let go, now and in future rounds of negotiations. And the depth, breadth and quality of coverage of the entire Bay Area will shrink.

The Guild has yet to respond. But critics warn that Hearst has yet to prove that its financial loss claims are true, nor have they put them in the context of their entire corporate financial picture or the current economic meltdown.

And so far, Hearst has not invited the public to weigh in on this issue, which will critical impacts on local communities. We still don't see anyone marching in protest on the streets. Does this mean the terrorists have won? Or that no one reads any more? Or that folks don't agree with the Chronicle's editorials? Or only like some of their reporters? Hell, if heads are going to fall, it would be interesting to know what criteria will be used. Is it because a reporter is too old, too expensive, too radical, too irreverent? Or what?

Sonnez le claxon! (Sound the alarm!) Is Inspector Clouseau headed to SF to investigate the de la Plaza mystery?

Text by Sarah Phelan.

In a sign that the ghost of Hugues de la Plaza swirls restlessly around the city by the Bay---and will keep making headlines until his death is ruled a homicide and resolved--the New York Times ran a story about his case.

In another sign, de la Plaza's ex-girlfriend, Melissa Nix, who attended last week's Feb. 26 press conference looking Betty Paigesque thanks to a long dark mane and a lacy black top, and his handsomely graying father, Francois de la Plaza, continue to assert that Hugues, a French and American citizen, was murdered in his Hayes Valley apartment on June 2, 2007. (All of which suggests, citizens of San Francisco, that de la Plaza's killer is still at large.)

And then there is the fact that the San Francisco Police Department took pains to clarify, the day before this press conference, that the San Francisco Medical Examiner concluded that the manner of De la Plaza's death was "undetermined," in face of claims, made by Nix and Francois de la Plaza, that French investigators have declared that Hugues death was 100 percent a homicide.

On Feb. 25--and the day before de la Plaza's father announced a $100,000 reward (the proceeds of his son's life insurance policy) for information about his son's death, the SFPD issued a press release, stating that they wished to clarify certain public statements about Hugues de la Plaza's death.

"The French police never took over the case with the sanction of the U.S. Department of Justice, as has been publicly stated," the SFPD's Public Affairs department wrote. It is simply policy, through international treaty, to report the case to DOJ. The San Francisco Police Department never declares deaths as homicides or suicides, and has never ruled the death as 'suspicious' as has been publicly stated. It is the Medical Examiner's Office, not the police department, that determines a death as homicide, suicide, or death by natural causes. In this case, the Medical Examiner's Office concluded that the manner of Mr. de la Plaza's death was "undetermined.'"

"Although the Medical Examiner's Office has classified Mr. de la Plaza's death as an "undetermined' death, the police department handles and investigates all 'undetermined' deaths as if they were homicides," SFPD continued.

"It has been reported that the French investigating magistrate concluded that Mr. De la Plaza's death was a homicide. Two of our most experienced investigators have been unable to respond to the French findings because we as yet have not been afforded the opportunity to review those findings, which have been communicated to Mr. de la Plaza's family. A formal request for the French investigative file and their official conclusion is in progress."

"San Francisco investigators continue to investigate the death in an impartial and far from 'lackluster' manner, as was publicly reported. The SFPD anticipates reviewing the French investigative documents once they are received and to continue to work with our French colleagues."

At last week's press conference, de la Plaza's father said that French investigators had concluded that his son's death was a homicide for a number of reasons, including the fact that the murder weapon had not been found and the angle of the knife wounds on his body precluded the possibility of suicide.

Photos by Charles Russo

Alexander Sanchez waves a freedom flag

Cleve Jones addressing the crowd at Harvey Milk Plaza

Maceo Garza lets it fly

The Guardian http://www.sfbg.com/blogs/politics/2009/03/call_for_help_sf_artist_in_com.html continues to follow the condition of local dancer and activist Hollis Hawthorne, who was in a serious motorcycle accident in India and is in a coma.

Things are still dire for Hollis in India. She’s still in a coma. She still needs to come home. And her family still doesn’t have the money to bring her here.

Hollis and Harrison, the man who saved her life, at the beginning of their trip.

But there is good news. For starters, Hollis’ condition has improved. She’s breathing completely on her own, the swelling in her face has gone down, and apparently she’s indicating that she can feel pain – all good signs. If she continues getting better, she may even be able to come home on a commercial flight (with oxygen tanks and attendants).

Diane Wesley Smith, owner/broker of DWS/BVHP Real Estate Services, says that a newly formed group, the Bayview Hunters Point Real Estate Professionals, will meet at 1 PM, Friday, March 6 to discuss the current real estate situation in Bayview Hunters Point and how folks can help protect the BVHP community.

Afraid that the current redevelopment plans for the BVHP won't help folks who grew up and live in the community to get jobs or stay in the BVHP, including those who hope to live in public housing, but have felonies on their record, Wesley Smith believes the time is right for concerned citizens to come together and brainstorm about this ongoing crisis.

Part of this crisis has been documented by Mayor Gavin Newsom's African American Outmigration task force, which showed that African Americans are leaving San Francisco at a higher rate than any other U.S. city. But a visit to the taskforce's website suggests that the taskforce has not met since December 2007. Equally disturbing is the fact that the task force did not present its findings to elected officials until August 2008. In other words, voters were not able to access relevant data about the plight of their city's African American community, until six weeks after they had voted on--and endorsed--a conceptual framework that is now being used to drive an urban design plan that has environmental and social justice groups raising their eyebrows.

Fast forward to March 2009 and Diane Wesley-Smith is hoping that folks can come together and reach out to the Obama administration to make sure that the federal government realizes that the city is moving forward with plans to simply cap a radioactively contaminated landfill in the BVHP, even though the mess was created by the federal government, lies next to the San Francisco Bay and will be capped adjacent to a massive condo development.

"At the very least, Lennar should have online disclosures about the condition of the land they plan to develop," says Wesley Smith, noting that she is concerned about all the people living in the BVHP.

The Bayview Hunters Point Real Estate Professionals will meet at DWS/BVHP Real Estate Services, 4636 Third Street at Newcomb Avenue.

Warmest Regards,

Diane

Diane Wesley Smith, Owner/Broker
DWS/BVHP Real Estate Services
4636 Third Street
San Francisco, CA 94124
415 821-2847 Office
415 342-5970 Cellular

By Steven T. Jones

The scene at Civic Center Plaza today showed that the culture wars are still raging in the United States, with same-sex marriage arousing strong feelings on both sides of the debate. But it’s a clash that the California Supreme Court could largely end if it sides with San Francisco and finds that same-sex marriage rights aren’t subject to majority will.
That ruling isn’t expected for several months. While there was no clear sign during today’s oral arguments whether the court would uphold Proposition 8, swing vote Justice Joyce Kennard did seem to be leaning toward letting the measure stand, emphasizing that changing the constitution (in this case, to remove same-sex marriage rights) is “a basic right, a fundamental right” and how “this case is different from last year’s case,” when she found the ban on same-sex marriage to be unconstitutional.
But San Francisco Deputy City Attorney Therese Stewart engaged with Kennard for a long time, arguing that constitutional protections of minority rights are worthless if they can be simply voted away at the ballot box. As she said outside the courtroom after the three-hour hearing, “We hope the court will not sell our constitution down the river.”

By Tim Redmond

Gavin Newsom got some attention when he announced that he would start running "corrections" to news media stories he doesn't like. His corrections site is pretty lame, not a lot on there (maybe because the mayor doesn't get much bad press, or maybe because everything negative we write about him is true).

But it's inspired Sup. Chris Daly to issue a few corrections of his own. This arrived today:

March 5, 2009

Correction to Article: “S.F.’s New Community Court Opens”

Nathan Ballard, Newsom’s press secretary said, “the mayor won’t be
balancing the budget at the expense of mental health and substance abuse
treatment providers – and that the court will go along way to help the same
population.”

Not true. In fact, Newsom’s 2008-2009 mid- year cuts to mental health and
substance abuse treatment programs include approximately $5.32 million
dollars in cuts to mental health and substance abuse treatment.

The Newsom Administration is currently contemplating an additional $6.58
million cuts to mental health and substance abuse programs for the
2009-2010 budget year.

In today’s Chronicle article, the Mayor’s Office provided false information
by obfuscating their $11.9 million dollar in mid year and proposed cuts to
mental health and substance abuse treatment programs. Supervisor Daly
expressed concern about the impacts of the Mayor’s cuts. “These cuts will
devastate treatment and services for San Francisco’s most vulnerable
residents.”

Mr. Mayor?

By Tim Redmond

According to the Chron, it's all personal -- Chris Daly doesn't like Michela Alioto-Pier, so he engineered a way to keep her off the "plum assignment" of a seat on the Bay Conservation and Development Commission.

Actually, there are very good public-policy reasons why Alioto-Pier shouldn't be on the BCDC. That's a powerful agency, whose job is to make sure developers don't run amok with bay-fill and shoreline projects. People who represent San Francisco need to be able to hold the line with developers, to say "no" on a regular basis to people who have a lot of money and clout. Alioto-Pier has always been one of the most pro-developer members of this board -- and if, lord help us all, she's actually serious about running for mayor, she'll be shaking down that same crowd for money.

So forget the personalities -- Daly did what any progresive would have done and made sure the developers didn't get a friendly vote on the BCDC.

Plus, the last time she was appointed to an outside board it didn't go too well.

Text by Sarah Phelan

The chips are down at the Chronicle--and it sounds like the California Media Workers Guild tried, but did not succeed, in striking a bargain with the devil.

According to a bulletin posted at the Guild’s website, Hearst Corp. ultimately told the union that even if its members agree to cutting the bejeezus out of the paper, it won’t be enough to save 150 layoffs and won’t necessarily prevent Hearst from shuttering the Chronicle. Hot damn.

No wonder a Chronicle employee by the fabulous name of Delfin Vigil posted a paid advertisement in the San Francisco Examiner, describing Hearst’s suggestion to close the 144-year-old newspaper as “unacceptable, unforgivable, or even un-American.”

Vigil suggests that Hearst give Chronicle workers the “right of first refusal” to takeover the paper, or "a newly formed group of past and present Chronicle employees who still believe in its value."

So far, online comments suggest that the blogging public doesn’t care about or understand the value of newspapers. At least not in this modern world, where you can bounce around online to multiple postings and links for free, but end up, perhaps, never actually getting to the end of, or fully digesting, anything you read.

But as Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Arlington, Virginia-based nonprofit, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, points out, " this nation will be in a world of hurt,” particularly concerning the battle to create open and transparent government, if major daily newspapers like the Chronicle go down.

As Dalglish notes, for the last 50 years, mainstream media organizations—not the alternative press—waged most of these battles, suing the government to access documents and information.

And then there is the fact that newspapers, unlike laptops, can be left in the car, taken to the beach or read in the bath without fear that a $1,000 piece of hardware will be stolen or destroyed. They make great hats, birdcage liners and fish wraps. They are recyclable and biodegradable. Heck, a drag queen once even made a dress out of a cover story that was written about her. And, occasionally, the words printed on their pages will bring you to laughter or tears, thanks to a team of largely invisible, but always overworked and underpaid workers.

Meanwhile, a “negotiations summary” posted at the California Media Workers Guild shows just how many pounds of flesh Hearst wants Chronicle workers to give—and then bleed them to death.

This Christian minister had "gay's" [sic] debating with him all day, but his main "argument" was simply a faith-based belief that God opposes homosexuality.

Text and photo by Steven T. Jones

I got a call from Sen. Mark Leno, who was frustrated by dealing with what he labeled “religious zealots” during yesterday’s Prop. 8 hearing and rally, and wanted to talk about my reporting on how churches bused in conservative Christians from former Soviet-bloc countries whose immigration was sponsored by Sacramento area churchgoers.

The problem isn’t with religion. After all, Leno noted that the California Council of Churches opposed Prop. 8 and the stripping away of same-sex marriage rights. People are entitled to their beliefs. The problem is with religious fundamentalists who want government and laws to conform to their religious values. Several Prop. 8 supporters told me they were trying to implement God's will, and a couple even said that God told them to be there.

“These folks are theocrats. They want a theocracy,” Leno said. “We’re spending tens of billions of dollars fighting theocracies around the world, because they’re antithetical to the concept of democracy.”
Assembly member Tom Ammiano agreed, telling us that he’s drawing a line in dealing with these hateful religious zealots. He said someone from the Catholic League sitting near him in the hearing tried to be chummy with him, and he told him, "I don't want to talk to you."

Ammiano was also irritated by attorney Kenneth Starr, the darling of the religious right who argued their case yesterday, whose main argument Ammiano summarized this way, "I felt like he was saying, what are these slaves complaining about? They've got a house to sleep in. What, they want clothes now?"

The Guardian continues to follow the condition of local dancer and activist Hollis Hawthorne, who was in a serious motorcycle accident in India and is in a coma.

By Molly Freedenberg

More news from the front lines!

First off, the interwebs are all atwitter about how much Hollis is improving. According to www.helpholligethome.blogspot.com", Hollis opened an eye for the first time today. And according to the doctor quoted in a story in the Indian paper, The Hindu (which is published by a friend of Guardian publisher Bruce Brugmann), she may even be back to her normal self (which, lucky for all of us, is not “normal” at all) within the next six months.

The other good news? We have an amazing fundraiser planned for next Thursday. Thanks to generous help from Extra Action Marching Band, Slim’s, Robert Levy of 12 Galaxies, Will Chase, and a whole slew of fantastic, fun-loving people, we’ve organized (in under a week!) the following for March 12...

By Tim Redmond

The Sunday Chronicle story on the power struggle at Your Black Muslim Bakery that led to the murder of Chauncey Bailey is a reminder of why the world needs newspapers. The latest installment of the Chauncey Bailey Project, which shows the tight connections between homicide inspector Sgt. Derwin Longmire and bakery leader Yusef Bey IV, is another.

These stories could never have been put together by part-time bloggers and citizen journalists. Investigative reporting on this level requires staff -- experienced, full-time reporters who have the resources to did into stories.

This is serious stuff: WIthout the Chauncey Bailey Project and the Chron, it's entirely possible that Chauncey Bailey's murderer(s) would never be brought to justice. The Oakland cops were bungling the case; it took the newspapers, with a team of paid reporters, do get to the bottom of it.

So as much as the Chronicle drives me nuts, and as much as I'm not sure what the business model should be in the future, democracy is going to require some sort of old-fashioned newspapers.

UPDATE: Ken Conner, the Chron's Metro editor, just sent me the following:

A minor point about the reference to the Chauncey Bailey project story about the link between the lead detective on the case and the bakery members. Actually we broke that story on Nov. 11, 2007 — months before the project. Both the New York Times and NPR have corrected stories about the project that made the same mistake.

Okay, then. My basic point remains.

By Tim Redmond

The big front-page heqad in the Examiner screams: "CUTTING VOTERS SERVICES: Budget could close a quarter of polling places."

The story is a bit milder, but still: Outrage over the fact that, to quote the inside head, "the cost of democracy takes a big hit."

Just for the record, the reason this is all happening is that the mayor is promoting a cuts-only solution to the budget crisis, something even GOP Governor Schwarzenegger agreed was a bit much. And the Examiner has fully supported the mayor in that effort and opposed new taxes.

Just so you know who to blame.

By Steven T. Jones

Fresh off of a nearly averted city crackdown on partying at the Bay to Breakers race, the Chronicle has back-to-back reports that city officials are planning to crackdown on nightlife and on impromptu dance parties, zombie infestations, pillow fights, and other flash mobs. Further embarrassing this city that once embraced parties is the fact that this threat has already made international news.

Why must city officials use threats and zero tolerance as their first resorts? Problems with trash and noise can be solved if there’s creative leadership in City Hall willing to work with the community, and leaders that value San Francisco’s unique, messy, and fun culture. Instead, we have the absentee and conflict-averse Mayor Gavin Newsom, shorttimer Police Chief Heather Fong, and Newsom’s dour, judgmental special events coordinator Martha Cohen playing reactionary roles, time and again.

By Tim Redmond

Nice piece on Calitics about how the California budget crisis is by no means over. David Dayen explains how the state balanced its budget -- so to speak -- based on projections for tax revenue that were higher that what's actually coming in. It looks as if the February numbers will be off by $900 million, and if the economy continues to get worse, we could be looking at ANOTHER $10 billion deficit by summer.

The same holds true for San Francisco. The mayor insists there's no crisis, but even the numbers he used to make his mid-year cuts aren't going to hold up. The way things are going now, the half-billion-dollar shortfall will be even bigger by the time the supervisors have to make next year's budget balance.

It's hard to imagine what this is going to mean. I was cautious about the Rainy Day Fund, but I think we're going to need that money. And we're going to need major, major new revenue sources. And we're still going to face horrible cuts.

Mayor Newsom isn't dealing with reality here. He needs to be preparing the city for what's to come, and he needs to start now.

By Sarah Phelan

Next stop the Supreme Court?

That at least is where Kevin Westley, executive director of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, said his group would take its challenge of San Francisco’s Universal Health Care Program, after the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decided this week not to grant GGRA a rehearing request.

But does this threat have any teeth and why is GGRA making it?

GGRA’s threat came even as Mayor Gavin Newsom was expressing his hope, by way of a press release, natch, that GGRA, “will work for, not against, the City and County’s efforts to expand health care access.”

“With an estimated 60,000 uninsured adults, it is time for all of us to collectively focus our efforts on providing health care to our uninsured residents,” Newsom said, after the Ninth Circuit upheld the city's employer spending mandate.

That mandate requires companies with 20 to 99 employees to spend $1.23 per worker per hour, and companies with 100 employees or more to spend $1.85 per worker per hour.

Newsom called the court’s decision, “a significant victory for the thousands of San Francisco workers who now have access to health care.”

Deputy City Attorney Vince Chhabria said he found GGRA's insistence on taking the case to the Supreme Court, "very disappointing."

"26,000 San Francisco workers have become eligible for coverage in San Francisco's program,as a result of the court's ruling," Chhabria told the Guardian. "One can understand why GGRA filed the suit, but now to continue and try to get this ruling overturned is to take away health coverage from thousands of workers."

So, what are the chances of the Supreme Court taking the case?

"The Supreme Court will take the request seriously, probably, because there was dissent by a handful of the Ninth Circuit's most conservative judges," Chhabria said, as he listed the top three reasons why he believes the Supreme Court probably won't take this case.

By Sarah Phelan

The California Media Workers Guild’s Local 39521 is recommending approval of concessions that Hearst and the Chronicle's management are demanding in connection with losses that, the privately-owned Hearst alleges, will otherwise force it to sell or close the 144-year-old newspaper.

The Guild reports that management wants an expanded ability to lay off employees without regard to seniority.

“All employees who are discharged in a layoff or who accept voluntary buyouts are guaranteed two weeks’ pay per year of service up to a maximum of one year, plus company-paid health care for the severance term, even in the event of a shutdown - which today’s agreement is designed to avoid,” the Guild stated, in a bulletin posted to its Web site.

Pension changes are not part of the agreement, so far, the Guild observes. But they are being discussed and must be implemented under terms of the Pension Protection Act, due to the recent turmoil and decline in investment markets.

“Because those changes may affect the decisions of many members concerning buyouts, we are attempting to reach some key understandings now as to the nature of the changes and when they will take effect," the Guild explains.

By Tim Redmond

State Sen. Mark Leno has taken on the long campaign to enact single-payer health reform in California. He's announcing tomorrow (Wed) morning that he's introduced SB 810, which follows (and is nearly identical to) SB 840, the landmark measure by former Sen. Sheila Kuehl that passed the Legislature and was vetoed by the governor.

The bill is remarkable in its simple premise: Everyone -- consumers, businesses, government -- will save money if the public sector takes over the role of providing health care from the private insurance industry. "We don't have a health-care policy right now," Leno told me. "We have a risk-management policy. When the private insurers talk about paying for health care, they cal lit a 'medical loss.'"

By Leno's estimates -- and those of about every other credible analyst and study -- businesses would see lower costs, individuals would pay lower premiums and the state would spend less on health care if only the insurance industry were out of the picture.

"We pay more for health care than any other industrialized country, and we get worse outcomes," he said. "The system is broken."

But it won't be easy. Leno is confident that SB 810 will pass both houses of the Legislature -- and that the governor will once again veto it. "And that's why we need to make sure we elect a Democratic governor in 2010 who will promise to sign this bill in 2011," he said. "And we need to start organizing now to defeat the referendum the insurance industry will put on the ballot in 2012 and the hundreds of millions of dollars they will spend to confuse Californians."

In other words, it's a long-term battle. I wonder if any of these business groups like the California Chamber of Commerce will come to their senses and recognize that this is about the most pro-business thing you could do in this state. Health-care costs are slamming small businesses, hurting our ability to compete as a state and a nation -- and the entire economy of California is more important than the profits of one industry.

We shall see.

Fascinating story in the LA Times today about the A. Philip Randolph Institute.

It focuses on James Bryant, the APRI president who earns $117,000 a year from the nonprofit while also working full-time for the city as a Muni station agent (at $68,000 a year), who hired his son as a $62,000 acting executive director and who charged APRI $5,000 in rent for the use of his half-million-dollar house.

"There is just a conflict of interest all over this thing," said Ken Berger, president of Charity Navigator, an online review service. "It looks like something that should be reported to a government entity."

Daniel Borochoff, president of the American Institute of Philanthropy, said Joseph Bryant's job -- the son says his salary last year was $62,000 -- is similarly troubling.

"In effect, it's like putting himself on the payroll," Borochoff said of James Bryant.

The story also notes that Bryant is on the executive board for SEIU Local 1021 and that there’s an internal union complaint against him.

But it mentions only in passing that APRI has received $290,000 from Pacific Gas and Electric Company since 2005, and tens of thousands more from Lennar Corp;, and in many ways, that’s the real scandal here.

Because APRI, named after the legendary African American trade unionist, has become little more than a shill for PG&E and Lennar. APRI worked against the public power campaign, worked against city efforts to install peaker plants (and thus compete with PG&E for energy generation), and worked in favor of giving Lennar control of the entire Bayview Hunters Point revedelopment project.

It’s a bogus astroturf front group for corrupt big businesses. That’s the real issue with Bryant and his sleazy organization.

Why is this guy chairing the political committee for Local 1021, a progressive union that has always supported public power? Now that the whole world knows that he's PG&E's guy, he should resign from that job.

The Guardian continues to follow the condition of local dancer and activist Hollis Hawthorne, who was in a serious motorcycle accident in India and is in a coma.

Miracles do happen! Hollis is doing better than expected. Though still not responding to commands, she is opening both eyes and squeezing the hands of her mom and boyfriend. She's also been moved to a private room while her family works with several airlines to try to get her home. More info here.

Meanwhile, friends and family have raised $75,500 as of Monday. Almost halfway there! And we've been blown away by the support we've gotten for tomorrow's Gold Rush fundraiser at Slim's. It's truly going to be a spectacular night - one we only wish Hollis could be present for.

Highlights? Extra Action Marching Band, who Hollis danced to just hours before she left for India last month; A raffle for two Burning Man tickets or two tickets to Teatro Zinzanni; An art auction curated by Will Chase, also known as the man at the helm of Jack Rabbit Speaks; Bohemian Carnival favorites Gooferman; performances by both of the dance troupes Hollis helped found; Live auction by Chicken John; and so much more... Pre-purchase your tickets at www.slims-sf.com and get there early, because this is going to be one fantastic, and PACKED, show.

By Steven T. Jones

It’s still an open question whether the trains will ever arrive at the new Transbay Terminal, an impasse that the Transbay Joint Powers Authority Board of Directors will discuss tomorrow morning in City Hall.
After breaking ground on the new terminal in December, the project was thrown into doubt last week with surprise revelations that officials with both the California High-Speed Rail Authority and Caltrain say there are fatal design flaws that could preclude their use of the multi-modal transportation hub.
Since then, there’s been lots of finger-pointing but no real progress, frustrating city officials and transportation advocates. As Dave Snyder, transportation policy coordinator for the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR), told the Guardian, “The most important thing really is that the different agencies stop fighting and figure it out so we can get this downtown extension.”

By Tim Redmond

If Hearst Corp. isn't satisfied with the concessions it gets from San Francisco Chronicle unions -- or if the media giant never intended to keep the paper open -- the time may come when the only major daily in San Francisco is circling the drain.

At this point, SF Appeal is reporting, the unions would like a chance to buy the paper , and Gawker is playing around with names of people who might invest.

A little perspective here.

First of all, the Chron isn't worth much of anything right now. Hearst paid $660 million for the paper, but I'm sure the accountants have already written that off as a total loss and are ready to take the tax deduction. Nobody should be serious thinking that they have to raise a lot of cash to take it over.

The bigger issue is running the thing. Even with really smart management, and a new editorial plan, , the Chron will be losing money for a while, and it would take, say, $50 million to guarantee operating expenses for a couple of years. So any angel investor would need deep pockets and a willingness to lose money for quite some time.

But let's stop and think about this. When Hearst bought the Chron, the bean counters in New York wanted to shut down the Examiner, but after the feds intervened, the company was forced to sell the Ex to the Fang family. Although "sell" isn't actually the right word -- the Fangs got the paper for nothing, and got $66 million cash to run it.

So why should we tolerate Hearst simply stopping the presses?

We shouldn't.

Mayor Newsom, Speaker Pelosi, Senators Feinstein and Boxer -- all the political leaders in this town -- should be demanding that Hearst make a reasonable effort to sell the Chronicle. And by "reasonable," I mean a deal no worse that what the Fangs got with the Ex.

If the Guild (or some other credible group with a reasonable business plan) wants to buy the paper, Hearst should give it to them -- and provide $66 million in transition money. That's still a good deal for the conglomerate -- if the Chron is in fact losing $50 million a year, then the transition pay isn't much more than one year's losses. Hearst gets a major tax write-off, gets rid of a money-losing headache, and looks like a decent corporate citizen.

San Francisco gets to keep a daily newspaper, and somebody else gets a chance to try to make it work.

I'm not sure if the feds can order a company not to fold a newspaper right now, but I know that Congress has the power to pass a law preventing a newspaper closure unless and until every effort is made to find a buyer (at a cost the reflects the actual value of the asset, which in this case is about $1.75). Nancy? Dianne? Barbara?

Text by Sarah Phelan

Just kidding about the binge drinking. But the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists has chosen St. Patrick’s Day to sponsor “A Conversation about the Chronicle," a public discussion about the severe cutbacks and threatened closure of the Chronicle, and the impacts those developments will have for Bay Area readers.

And it's likely that this meeting, (5:30-7:30 p.m, Tuesday, March 17, Koret Auditorium, San Francisco Main Library, 100 Larkin St.) will leave folks tempted to hit the bottle, given the grim situation that newspapers face nationwide.

Or maybe it will be an upper, in which folks will come together, figure out a way to buy the Chron and every other hurting paper in the nation, and we can all go drink champagne, along with our green beer. Which brings me to my dream of a world where everyone is literate and able to digest newspaper articles, online and in print.

Before we get to that, it’s worth reading David Carr’s analysis of the newspaper industry's current problem. (Or at least, read Carr's first suggestion, since research suggests that online readers only read part of an article before jumping to another link.)

Carr’s first suggestion--that there should be “no more free content"--is a tempting, but unlikely prospect, given that folks are already sucking for free on the Internet’s ever ready teat. Not unless someone sells the next generation and their parents on the need to pay for the news equivalent of an iPod-- the “iPad," if you will--if they want to avoid being brainwashed and brainshrunk by PR firms, Fox News and other celebrity news outlets.

Take, for instance, today's second most read online story. It's about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's 18 year-old daughter Bristol breaking up with the father of her baby.

Now, while it's true, as TMZ's celebrity news guru Harvey Lezin points out, that stories about Rihanna raise "all kinds of issues about domestic violence," (and therefore Bristol's breakup raises all kinds of issues about the inefficacy of politicians who promote celibacy and oppose birth control, n'est-ce-pas?) does this mean that the future of the news industry hinges on the reality that most people really just want to sit and look at pictures and articles that prove that the stars really are just like them, black eyes, teenage pregnancies, and dating boys who aren't ready to be men, and all?

And what about those folks who can't afford a computer at home? Or like to read the newspaper in the bath? Can't the newspaper industry find ways to reduce the cost of newsprint, so that print products remain fiscally viable? California is already talking about legalizing cannabis, so why not talk about hemp as a low cost, environmentally friendly alternative to cutting down trees for newsprint?

If you are reading this and thinking you have a better idea, great: come on down to the SF Public Library on Tuesday and share your hopes and fears. Journalists the world over will be glad to hear that you cared.

By Rebecca Bowe

Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, who serves as chair of the Local Agency Formation Commission, frowned at what he characterized as “shadiness” at a March 6 LAFCo meeting, and ultimately moved to hold off on a decision to award a contract that would have pushed things forward with San Francisco's Community Choice Aggregation program.

Ironically, many of the advocates who typically voice concerns that the municipal-power program is moving too slowly expressed relief that this decision was stalled, saying that if the contract had gone to the wrong firm, the integrity of San Francisco’s CCA program would have suffered.

LAFCo is charged with working alongside the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission to implement a community-choice aggregation program, which would bring municipal electricity to San Francisco using locally produced, cleaner energy generation.

By Steven T. Jones

There was a surreal air to last night’s celebration of the Board of Supervisors’ Class of 2000 at the Washington Bar and Grill in North Beach. That weird vibe was created mostly by the fact that the event was sponsored by Platinum Advisors and the Residential Builders Association, two groups that didn’t always see eye-to-eye with that progressive-dominated class.
That class – which included progressive firebrands Matt Gonzalez and Chris Daly, liberals Aaron Peskin and Jake McGoldrick, and independent conservative Tony Hall – were swept into office largely as a backlash against the top-down rule of then-Mayor Willie Brown, who shares both an office and a corporatist ideology with Platinum.
All those guys were in attendance and the mood was buoyant, helped by the free booze and food. Hall called the supervisors elected in 2000 “the original class of rebels,” while Peskin told the crowd, “Thank you for keeping the progressive spirit of San Francisco alive.”
But it was Brown who had the quote of the night in his not-so-subtle dig at the prickly current Mayor Gavin Newsom (who was rumored to be upset about the gathering): “My guess is if that class was still in place today, they would want me as their mayor.”

By Steven T. Jones

Scott Wiener seems to have a real zeal for his job as a deputy city attorney defending San Francisco against police abuse lawsuits, but his attitude and public statements raise serious concerns about his goal of being elected to the District 8 seat on the Board of Supervisors next year.
Take this story, for example, in which Wiener is defending the city in an excessive force case in which Officer Sean Frost and other SFPD officers chased down Chen Ming after being called to a loud argument in SoMa. After they caught him and held him down, Frost hit Ming in the face with his billyclub, breaking Chen’s jaw and knocking out 10 of his teeth.
“The officer did not do anything wrong,” Wiener told the Chronicle, a statement he repeated to me the other day, although he wouldn’t say more about how he arrived at that conclusion (such as whether it was supported by an internal affairs investigation), claiming he could not discuss the facts of the case.
Yet excusing such obviously excessive force -- including use of a billyclub in a way that goes against officer training and SFPD general orders, and using extreme violence against a suspect who was down and not threatening anyone -- is commenting on the facts of this case.
Wiener could have simply denied the city’s culpability in a general way, but he chose to go further, excusing inexcusable police conduct and sending a scary message to the general public.

Hearst and the Chronicle's refusal to share its audited books should raise serious red flags for workers.

Text by Sarah Phelan.

We all know that the economy is in bad shape and that the newspaper industry is hurting. But before Guild members vote this Saturday at the Parc 55 Hotel on whether to accept a deal that cuts 150 jobs and eliminates seniority, they should demand to see the audited records of both the Hearst and the Chron.

Back in 2005-2006, Local 4, which represent pressmen at the Chronicle, hired Peter Donahue of PBI Associates to assess allegations that the Chron and/or Hearst could not meet its obligations to the pressmen and other Chronicle employees.

To assess these claims, Donahue suggested the union should request audited financial statements for Hearst for the past ten years, audited financial statements for the Chron, and detailed statements of non-operating and operating costs, "distinguishing clearly between actual expenditures, set-asides and inter-corporate transfers" for Hearst, the Chron, SFgate and the San Francisco Newspaper Agency, for the past 10 years.

"No such information was provided by Hearst,: Donahue advised Local 4's then President Anthony Price. "Without such information, allegations that the newspaper or the Corporation are unable to meet their obligations are unfounded, only repeat claims that the company has been unwilling and unable to support with credible evidence."

To see the full text of Donahue's letter, click here.

Moveon.org is encouraging folks to pass on this chart:

They saw it in the Washington Monthly and think it's a good way to show that Obama's plan to roll back Bush's tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans from 35 to 39.6 percent will still leave them ahead of what they paid under Reagan, Nixon and Eisenhower.

So feel free to share and use in that tax argument you just know are going to have with your wealthy Uncle Stan.

By Tim Redmond

So why is Sen. Feinstein the only Democrat in the California delegation who hasn't signed on as a cosponsor of the Employee Free Choice Act, labor's number one priority for the year?

Curious -- she supported it in 2007, and it's exactly the same bill. I called her press office, and they promised to get back to me. Haven't heard yet, but I'll let you know.

Meanwhile, Steve Smith, a spokesperson for the AFL-CIO in California, told me that Feinstein "has said nothing one way or the other in public. But she was very clear in her support for the bill two years ago, and we fully expect she will support it in 2009."

Let's keep on eye on her, eh?

UPDATE: Feinstein's office got back to me with this statement:

Senator Feinstein has supported the Employee Free Choice Act in the past. She is not a co-sponsor of the current bill at this point, but is considering it very carefully. She is concerned about this extraordinarily difficult economy and is taking a very serious look at the legislation.

By Tim Redmond

Assemblymember Tom Ammiano is finding that the moderate Democrats up in Sacramento can be just as annoying as the Republicans. Take two of his top priorities right now, a bill to force the BART police to adopt civilian oversight, and a measure to legalize marijuana.

The BART police measure is going to the Public Safety Committee, chaired by Jose Solorio, a moderate Democrat from Santa Ana.

Some of Ammiano’s Democratic colleagues are nervous about even bringing the bill up for a hearing. “They say is an incendiary situation, that even talking about this could cause riots. I’ve told them the opposite -- that if there’s any whisper that we’re screwing around with this bill up here, that when the trouble is going to start.”

The pot bill is scheduled for a hearing in Public Safety March 31, and again, Ammiano worries that “they’re not taking it seriously.” They should -- all the signs around the coutnry are changing. The federal government is going to stop chasing after medical pot clinics.
This is a way for the state, which is facing even more serious red ink than the governor admits, to bring in a billion dollars or so in taxes -- not to mention the amount saved by not wasting police time (and jail space) on marijuana.

Text by Sarah Phelan

It's not as snappy sounding as Bush's "Axis of Evil," but Reporters without Borders "Enemies of the Internet" report lists Iran and N. Korea among its 12 top perpetrators, along with Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.

According to RWB, all 12 have transformed their Internet into an "Intranet in order to prevent their population from accessing ‘undesirable’ online information."

Reporters Without Borders has also placed 10 other governments “under surveillance” for adopting worrying measures that could open the way to abuses, and draws attention to Australia and South Korea, where they say recent measures may endanger online free expression.

“Orchestrating the posting of comments on popular websites or organizing hacker attacks is also used by repressive regimes to scramble or jam online content," RWB adds, noting that 70 cyber-dissidents are currently detained because of what they posted online, and that China is the world’s biggest prison for cyber-dissidents, followed by Vietnam and Iran.

Notably, Iraq did not make it onto RWB's list.

The California Media Workers Guild voted today to accept a proposal that Hearst Corp. says is necessary to avoid closing the 144-year-old San Francisco Chronicle.

You can read the full proposal at the Guild's website at http://mediaworkers.org/index.php?ID=6223.

By Rebecca Bowe

Oakland activist Tristan Anderson, 38, was critically wounded March 13 in the village of Ni’lin in the West Bank, when he was shot in the head with a high-powered tear-gas canister fired by Israeli forces.

The shooting occurred during a protest over the separation barrier that Israel is erecting between itself and the West Bank, according to a press release from the International Solidarity Movement.

Anderson is a dedicated activist who has traveled to conflict zones in Oaxaca, Iraq and other conflicted regions and reported on the struggles there. He was also among a group of tree-sitters who fought to save a grove of oaks and redwoods next to UC Berkeley's Memorial Stadium.

He was taken to an Israeli hospital, Tel Hashomer, near Tel Aviv, where he underwent brain surgery and is in critical condition. In-depth reports, including a graphic video filmed just after the shooting took place, can be found here, here and here.

The Israeli army began using to use a high velocity tear gas canister in December 2008, according to ISM. The black canister can shoot over 400 meters.

On March 16, at 4 p.m., a protest will be staged in front of the Israeli Consulate in San Francisco, according to a post on IndyBay.org.

Text by Sarah Phelan

Unable to find a buyer for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which it put up for sale in January, Hearst is kiling P-I's print version. Starting tomorrow.

Hearst's chief honchos, Frank A. Bennack, Jr., vice chairman and chief executive officer, Hearst Corporation, and Steven R. Swartz, president of Hearst Newspapers, tried to give the announcement a positive spin, stating that the P-I "will become the nation's largest daily newspaper to shift to an entirely digital news product."

(But for those of us who love and appreciate everything about newsprint, this is like saying, it's too expensive to grow flowers anymore, but hey, you will be able to see cyber flowers online.)

“The P-I has a rich 146-year history of service to the people of the Northwest, which makes the decision to stop publishing the newspaper an extraordinarily difficult one,” Bennack said. “We extend our profound gratitude and admiration to our P-I colleagues who have done such an exemplary job under extremely difficult circumstances over the past several years. Our goal now is to turn seattlepi.com into the leading news and information portal in the region.”

“Seattlepi.com isn't a newspaper online—it’s an effort to craft a new type of digital business with a robust, community news and information Web site at its core,” said Swartz.

“On the business side, we are assembling a staff to form a local digital agency that will sell local businesses advertising on seattlepi.com as well as the digital advertising products of our partners: Yahoo! for display advertising, Kaango for general marketplaces and Google, Yahoo!, MSN and Ask.com for search engine marketing,” Swartz said.

Hearst also noted that in January, Nielsen ranked seattlepi.com among the top 30 newspaper Web sites with 1.8 million unique users. The site has an average of 4 million monthly visitors, according to internal Hearst tracking.

You can read Hearst's full statement about the Seattle P-1 here.

The annoucement came two days after workers at the San Francisco Chronicle voted 10-1 to accept Hearst's proposal to cut 150 jobs and end seniority, moves Hearst Corp. stated were necessary to avert the immediate closure and/or sale of the city's major daily newspaper. But even Guild workers were clear that voting to accept Hearst's proposal was no guarantee that the Chronicle would thrive, unless a new business model can be found.

Carl Hall, the Guild's lead negotiator for workers at the Chroncile, said that no amount of concessions can prop up a failed business model for long.

“This is the start of the real battle,” Hall said. “We have to find a solution, a real solution, to save what we really care about here – quality journalism and quality jobs.”

.

The Guardian continues to follow the condition of local dancer and activist Hollis Hawthorne, who was in a serious motorcycle accident in India and is in a coma.

As friends began to realize Hollis has started to become a symbol of hope, and her name a rallying cry, they began to joke she was the "new Obama."

Our golden girl is back on American soil! Words can't express the elation, relief, and - in anticipation of facing the reality of her situation live - trepidation we're all feeling as we imagine her on the way to world-class care at Stanford. In my community, Facebook and Gmail status updates are full of exclamation points. I imagine everyone's going to start getting a bit more sleep too ... for now.

But first, the details: As of 4pm today, Hollis Hawthorne's family blog reports that Hollis, her mom, and Harrison (as well as the attendants to accompanied them) have landed safely in San Francisco. Rick Lamark, from the San Mateo division of American Medical Response, has donated an ambulance to take Hollis directly to Stanford.

Details are still a bit spotty - everyone's too busy helping her get home or celebrating her arrival - but it seems her family secured a large loan sometime late last week and were able to transport Hollis on a commercial flight with medical equipment and medical attendants. Though she still isn't responding to commands, she continues to open her eyes and squeeze the hands of her mom and Harrison. She also was put into a wheelchair for the first time before boarding the plane, which doctors say she tolerated well.

So what of the fundraising efforts? The money that's been raised?

Does this mean the work is over? Hardly.

Harrison singing to Hollis in India.

The Guardian continues to follow the condition of local dancer and activist Hollis Hawthorne, who was in a serious motorcycle accident in India and is in a coma.

Just thought folks would be interested in the text message I just received from Eliza Strack, who's maintaining www.friendsofhollis.blogspot.com:

"Hollis is being admitted to Stanford right now! Her color looks good and her eyes are slightly open despite being in a coma. About2meet w harrison&diane."

Woot woot!

A multitude of friends took photos with this sign at Gold Rush.

By Steven T. Jones and Joe Sciarrillo

The California Nurses Association (CNA) today filed a federal lawsuit to compel the California Pacific Medical Center to comply with two previous binding arbitration rulings and restore healthcare benefits that the unions says the Sutter Health-affiliated facility illegally cut.

The arbitration helped resolve last year's CNA strikes at CPMC facilities, and they came against the backdrop of other controversies involving CPMC in San Francisco, including efforts to scale back primary care services at St. Luke’s Hospital, which serves poor Mission residents, while trying to open a high-end hospital on Cathedral Hill.

Sutter and CPMC have long tried to break its outspoken nurses union, which has pushed progressive reforms such as single-payer health care and high nurse-to-patient ratios. A March 2008 CPMC press release (PDF) criticizing the CNA strikes quoted a nurse claiming that employee conditions were fine. "During the time I've been working here the conditions have been great," said Rosangel Klein, R.N., an oncology nurse at the Pacific campus.

But Nato Green, the labor representative for the CNA nurses at CPMC and St. Luke’s hospital, believes that CPMC is acting like an elite employer out of step with San Francisco values. He claims that it is “the worst non-profit hospital when it comes to charity care,” and he also fault its for union busting and rejection of recent arbitrations.

Despite CPMC’s refusal to uphold healthcare contracts and reimburse nurses’ medical payments, the Guardian has reported that its parent organization enjoyed a net income in 2006 of more than $500 million and employed sketchy tactics to pocket millions while maintaining its non-profit tax status.

By Rebecca Bowe

At least 200 demonstrators gathered outside the Israeli Consulate on Montgomery Street in downtown San Francisco March 16 for a rally and march organized by friends and supporters of Oakland activist Tristan Anderson, who was critically wounded in the West Bank by Israeli Defense Forces on March 13.

Anderson, 38, was shot in the head with a high-velocity teargas canister while demonstrating against a wall that is being constructed through the West Bank village of Ni’lin. He was transported to a hospital in Israel, where he underwent brain surgery the following day. He remains in stable, yet very serious condition, according to demonstrator David Martinez.

By Tim Redmond

It’s an interesting question. Nothing new, really -- folks up in the northern part of the state have been talking about secession since the 1940s.

But these days, the talk has shifted from North-South to Central Valley-Coast.

There’s plenty of discussion going on -- the New York Times
reports on a move by farmers in Visalia, who say those of us in the more liberal western regions don’t understand what it’s like in the center of the state:

Frustrated by what they call uninformed urban voters dictating faulty farm policy, Mr. Rogers and the other members of the movement have proposed splitting off 13 counties on the state’s coast, leaving the remaining 45, mostly inland, counties as the “real” California.

The reason, they say, is that people in those coastal counties, which include San Francisco and Los Angeles, simply do not understand what life is like in areas where the sea breezes do not reach.
“They think fish are more important than people, that pigs are treated mean and chickens should run loose,” said Mr. Rogers, who said he hitched a ride in 1940 to Visalia from Oklahoma to escape the Dust Bowl, with his wife and baby son in tow. “City people just don’t know what it takes to get food on their table.”

A former Assembly member is pushing a vertical split, too :

"Citizens of our once Golden State are frustrated and desperately concerned about the imposition of burdensome regulations, taxation, fees, fees and more fees, and bureaucratic intrusion into our daily lives and businesses," declares downsizeca.org, the movement's website.

And all of this comes as reformers form both the left and the right are talking about a new Constitutional Convention.

Athough some of the proponents are clearly nutty, the idea isn’t. As the noted political economist Gar Alperovitz wrote two years ago

The United States is almost certainly too big to be a meaningful democracy. What does “participatory democracy” mean in a continent? Sooner or later, a profound, probably regional, decentralization of the federal system may be all but inevitable.

He was talking about California becoming its own nation, but I’d argue that the same problem applies here. The budget crisis, the gridlock in Sacramento ... all of it suggests that maybe California itself is too big to govern. There’s also clear evidence of dramatic regional differences. If you take the Central Valley from about Redding on down, and wrap in Orange County, you have a red state within a blue state where most of the residents say they want lower taxes and smaller government. Along the coast from about Sonoma County down to the southern part of Los Angeles County, you have people who generally would like to see taxes pay for public services. If the coast were a state, we could repeal Prop. 13 and build world-class schools. We’d have same-sex marriage and single-payer health insurance. And we’d still be one of the biggest states in America.

Now, I’m not sure the people in the central valley quite realize the problem with their plans, which is illustrated in this wonderful chart that comes from the office of Assemblywoman Noreen Evans of Santa Rosa (PDF):

The chart shows that the people who dislike and distrust government and don’t want to pay taxes are in fact the beneficiaries of the tax dollars that the rest of us pay. In California, tax money from the coast winds up paying for services in the central valley.

But that’s okay -- if they don’t want our money any more, maybe we should tell them we’re fine with that. Maybe we should split the state not just in two but into three: Let the northern counties become the state of Jefferson, where pot will be legal and the residents will be so wealthy from taxes and exports of that cash crop that they’ll make oil-richAlaskans seem like paupers. Pot will be legal in the coastal communities, too, and will generate tax revenue.

We’ll have a Democratic governor, and overwhelmingly Democratic legislature, fewer prisons, better schools, cleaner air, no Ellis Act, rent controls on vacant apartments, more money for transit, strict gun control, support for immigrant rights ... and no more of these ugly battles over budgets held hostage by right-wing Republicans.

And in the central valley, they can have their low taxes and conservative values, and watch their roads, schools, and public services go to hell. Maybe eventually they’ll figure it out.

Of course, we’d have to figure out the water rights. The folks in Jefferson would have control over much of the water that now goes South, and there would have to be some long-term water contracts between the states, but that shouldn’t be an insurmountable roadblock.

And the solution would create its own problems; The GOP would control the central state, and would move to abolish the Agricultural Labor Relations Act and make life even more miserable for farmworkers. But then, maybe Jefferson would turn off the water and big agribusiness would be SOL anyway.

As part of the break-up, all parties would have to agree to create a special relocation fund to help lonely, sad liberals from Modesto come west and to help lonely, sad Republicans in San Francisco to move east. I wonder which way the net migration would go.

Meanwhile, Evans has introduced my favorite tax bill of the year, AB 1342, and it's related to this entire discussion. She wants to allow counties to levy their own income taxes and vehicle license fees. "We went through this difficult process of trying to arrive at a budget," her spokesperson, Anthony Matthews, told me. "For those communities that have a different view of government [than the Republicans], this bill would let them raise their own taxes to fund their priorities."

Discuss the future of the Chronicle and other print media organizations at the SF Public Library, TONIGHT!

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s letter to US Attorney General Eric Holder, seeking changes to the antitrust restrictions that govern newspapers, is a revealing document.

Pelosi states that her decision to write Holder wasn’t just prompted by the economic challenges facing the San Francisco Chronicle and other Bay Area news organizations, “but also by major news organizations across the country.”

“I am sure you agree that a strong, free and independent press is vital for our democracy,” Pelosi continues, noting how newspapers have been, “the indispensable source of public information and a check on the abuses of government and other powerful interests,” for more than two centuries.

And then she signals that the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts and Competition Policy, which is chaired by Rep. Hank Johnson, (D-Ga.) will soon hold a hearing and discuss the implications of newspaper survival for antitrust policy.

Pelosi acknowledges that “antitrust laws have been an essential protector of competitive choice in the newspaper business,” and that, “the antitrust laws are every bit as vital in this industry as elsewhere in the economy, and perhaps more so given the First Amendment issues that are also at stake.”

But then she asserts that she is, “confident" that the AntiTrust Division, "in assessing any concerns that any proposed mergers or other arrangements in the San Francisco area might reduce competition, will take into appropriate account, as relevant, not only the number of daily and weekly newspapers in the Bay Area, but also the other sources of news and advertising outlets available in the electronic and digital age, so that the conclusions reached reflect current market realities.”

“This is consistent with antitrust enforcement in recent years under both Republican and Democratic administrations,” Pelosi concludes. “And the result will be to allow free market forces to preserve as many news sources, as many viewpoints, and as many jobs as possible. We must ensure that our policies enable our news organizations to survive and to engage in the news gathering and analysis that the American people expect.”

Pelosi reportedly released this letter, which you can read here, after meeting with Hearst general counsel Eve Burton and Chronicle at-large editor Phil Bronstein in D.C. last week, where they discussed the future of the Chronicle as well as federal media shield legislation.

Her letter immediately fueled rumors that Dean Singleton’s MediaNews chain, which already owns the San Jose Mercury News, the Contra Costa Times and the Oakland Tribune, and Hearst, which has a one-third stake in Singleton’s non Bay Area papers, are hoping to consolidate operations.

If so, that’s doesn’t bode particularly well for newspaper workers, who have only lost jobs, suffered pay cuts and seen reduced investigative reporting under both regimes. But maybe they can use Pelosi’s letter to open up a much needed public discussion of the future of newsprint.

Ironically, that discussion is already going on within the blogosphere. And judging from the comments, some folks don’t give a toss if print newspapers die, right here, right now.

By Rebecca Bowe

A proposed solar-power project slated for discussion at the city’s Budget & Finance Committee on March 18 could help San Francisco edge a little closer to its greenhouse-gas reduction goals. But instead of owning and operating the solar photovoltaic system itself, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission would enter into a long-term contract with a private entity – and the new approach has raised questions from committee members.

Supervisor Carmen Chu and Mayor Gavin Newsom proposed the deal. The idea is to establish a 25-year power purchase agreement between the SFPUC and Recurrent Energy for a solar-photovoltaic power plant. The large-scale system would be constructed atop a 480,000-square foot rooftop at the SFPUC’s Sunset Reservoir. The city would lease the space to the company for $1 a year, and the SFPUC would agree to purchase power from Recurrent Energy at a rate estimated to be just under $2 million a year. According to a report prepared by the city’s Budget Analyst’s Office, the cost for electricity over the entire 25-year stretch would come out to about $68.5 million.

By Tim Redmond

San Francisco Assembly member Fiona Ma led the battle in Sacramento to derail a pro-Tibet resolution, leaving some activists scratching their heads.

Sure, the measure was sponsored by a Republican, Sam Blakeslee, R-San Luis Obispo, and sure, that made some Democrats nervous. But frankly, it wasn't that big a deal -- the Assembly passed a virtually identical resolution last year, honoring the Dalai Lama. The U.S. Congress has passed stronger pro-Tibet resolutions.

Ma, however, insisted it would harm U.S.-China relations:

"[The Obama] administration has been proactively engaging in diplomacy with China including human rights," Ma said. "I believe we shouldn't undermine the proactive efforts being done at the federal level."

I asked her by email why it was fine to pass a pro-Tibet resolution last year, but not okay this year. Her response:

Last year was a different time and situation. I asked to send this Resolution back to committee for further review. I'm proposing amendments so will let you know what happens.

Tom Ammiano, who also represents San Francisco, scoffed at the move to send the measure to the Rules Committee, which typically means a bill is dead. "I wanted it voted on on the floor," he told me. "It had the votes to pass."

Typically, sending a bill

By Rebecca Bowe

The city’s Budget & Finance Committee voted 3 –2 this afternoon to table the discussion about the Recurrent Energy power purchase agreement until April 22.

The 25,000 solar panels that would be installed upon the roof of the Sunset Reservoir could generate enough power to serve 2,500 San Francisco households, Barbara Hale of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission told the committee. It would increase the city’s solar generation from 2 to 7 megawatts, she said, and it would become California’s largest solar photovoltaic system. But while everyone applauded the idea of going solar, some supervisors said they weren't comfortable with the terms of the contract with Recurrent Energy.

Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi said he had a problem with the city cementing a 25-year agreement to pay $235 per megawatt-hour, a rate that will escalate at 3 percent per year, when there is uncertainty about how the renewable-energy market will behave. If the going rate for solar power drops significantly in the next two decades, he pointed out, the deal could leave San Francisco locked into paying a high price to a private company.

Text by Sarah Phelan.
Q. “How many Irish does it take to change a light bulb. “
A. “Never mind, we’ll drink in the dark.”

I was reminded of this (potentially racist, but I'm part Irish, so screw it) joke yesterday during a two-hour conversation about the Chronicle that took place, mostly between media people, in the basement of the library, on St Patrick’s Day.

The fact that any reporters showed up to talk about journalism on St Paddy’s Day is a good indicator of just how troubled they are feeling about the state of the news industry.

Normally, reporters would be writing about folks drinking too many Irish car bombs, or, if they weren’t working that night, drinking too many green beers themselves.

Instead, they sat and talked about the challenges facing San Francisco’s main daily newspaper, and the future of journalism in the Internet age.

Now, you’d think this would be easy for a bunch of folks who are used to digging into other people’s business and publishing what they find out, including the for-profit-driven doings of this or that evil corporation.

Only this time, the folks being bullied are the workers at the San Francisco Chronicle, which is owned by Hearst. a privately held corporation. This means the Chronicle won’t be publishing the findings of its own journalists’ findings on this matter. Instead, it’s been running reports that have no bylines and sound like Hearst press releases.

And then there’s the disquieting reality that Hearst has refused to open its books to the unions that represent the workers at the Chronicle. This means that all Hearst’s claims, including the statement that the Chronicle is losing $50 million a year, remain just that: claims, until proven otherwise.

No one is disputing the fact that newspapers have been losing advertising revenue to the Internet. Or that few of us have figured out ways to recapture that revenue. Or that many of us have been laid off, suffered pay cuts and/or seen an end to our careers, even as more people read our stuff than ever.

So, are we going to drink in the dark, or shine some light on the situation?

Personally, I don’t want the Chronicle to die. I want it to improve. And, as an investigative reporter, I want proof that Hearst’s financial claims are real.

Long time Chronicle reporter Carl Hall, the local representative of the California Media Workers Guild, confirmed last night that Hearst refused the Guild’s requests to open its books.

Hall also confirmed that Guild members voted to accept the loss of 150 jobs and the elimination of seniority rather than risking calling Hearst’s bluff over the corporation's threats to close or sell the Chronicle.

Of course the workers did. They’re newspaper men and women. Like doctors and teachers, they love their jobs, no matter who is running the hospital, school or newspaper.

But I wonder if the rest of the media have fallen down on the job, by not challenging Hearst’s unsubstantiated claims, even as the entire nation is discovering that it has been Ponzi-schemed up the kazoo.

I was heartened to hear Chronicle forum panelist and social entrepreneur Tom Murphy point out that some of the industry’s current problems are related to the newspaper-buying binges that Hearst Corp. and Dean Singleton’s MediaNews indulged in during the past decade.

And it was interesting to hear Oakland Tribune editor Martin Reynolds, which itself got swallowed up by Singleton in recent years, admit that many newspapers chains are in a similar situation to the owners of foreclosed homes: “They are upside down on their mortgages, right now," Reynolds said.

Connect those financial dots to the fact that readership of the Chronicle is growing online, and you begin to realize that there is a way forward through all this, even if we haven’t figured it all out yet.

As Center for Investigative Reporting cofounder and forum panelist David Weir put it last night, ‘Don’t blame the Internet for journalism’s demise. The Internet is not a choice, it is a fact. It is a technical and historical reality.”

By Tim Redmond

The Columbia Journalism Review trashed the Chronicle this week, in a harsh, pointed and entirely on-target piece by Pulitzer Prize winning reporter David Cay Johnston.

Johnston’s chief complaint: The Chronicle has done a miserable job of reporting on its own possible demise. In sharp contrast, he says, the Seattle P-I ran some well-reported stories about the papers’s closing that let readers know what was actually going on.

The blog post raises some interesting journalistic questions, though, that are going to be echoing through this entire debate about the future of newspapers.

The first thing I noticed when I read Johnston’s piece was that he singled out the Chron’s editor, Ward Bushee:

under editor Ward Bushee the Chronicle has provided little actual news reporting about its prospects for dissolution unless its unions agree to drastic job cuts and givebacks for those who remain on the payroll.* Mostly, Bushee gave Chronicle readers unsigned “staff reports”—actually rewritten Hearst press releases.

He later attacks Phil Bronstein, the former Chron editor who is still a top Hearst executive:

At least the careful reader found out that Phil Bronstein, the journalist who is now editor-at-large, has abandoned that role to become an unregistered lobbyist seeking political favors for his employers.

Johnston is a careful, weidely respected reporter who does his homework. And in this case, his analysis of the situation seems entirely accurate. The Chron hasn’t been giving us the real story of what’s going on -- and the stuff left off the news pages is really interesting.

But I was surprised that neither Bushee nor Bronstein were quoted in the piece; I’ve always thought that before you attack someone in print (or online) -- particularly when you call into question their professionalism or ethics -- you should call first to get that person’s response. It’s not only common courtesy and standard journalistic practice; it makes for a better story.

So I emailed both Bushee and Bronstein, and both confirmed that Johnston had never contacted them. Bushee:

I will not comment about the Chronicle's situation during the union negotiation period. I've told this to every reporter who has called to ask. I have never been asked for comment by the (sic) David Cay Johnson. I was called by him one evening several weeks ago to tell me to look up another story on CJR.com -- and then he promptly hung up. In his latest posting on CJR, he continues to get my name wrong (my father, who has been dead for seven years, was Ward Bushee Jr.). But that is only the start of his errors.

Bronstein:

I’m not going to debate someone who has no real information and hasn’t tried to get any. In general, we all ought to be talking about the value newsrooms and journalists bring to society – as Bruce Bruggman (sic) did very articulately the other night - to anyone who is willing to listen. As columnist J.R. Labbe wrote in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram about that paper, "This newspaper gave more ink to the campaign to save the Texas Ballet Theater than it has to making this case for its own future. Time for that to change."

Okay, fair enough. But here’s where it gets interesting.

I called Johnston to discuss all of this, and he was happy to talk to me. “This was a blog,” he said. “If I were writing a story for the New York Times, I would have absolutely called them.”

Why is a blog at CJR any different from a newspaper story? Johnston:

“I’m the definintion of a dinosaur, but I’m trying to embrace the idea that this is a new era. This is an experiment for me. I’m trying to see what happens when we embrace the values of the blog world. What if we just write what we see? I’ll take some slings and arrows, but I’m trying it out.”

He promised to correct the error on Bushee’s name, and did.

David Cay Johnston has done some phenomenal work He’s a perfect example of the value of a major newspaper -- the New York Times had the money to pay him to spend weeks and months digging into the federal tax code so he could tell the world how government policies were helping the rich screw the poor. We’d all be a lot less informed without him.

But I have to say, with all due respect to one of the great reporters of our time, I don’t think a blog for CJR is any different than a story in the Times. The world of journalism is changing, and in a few years, none of us will be putting stories on dead trees any more -- but the delivery vehicle isn’t the issue. There will be millions of bloggers who comment on things, which is a positive development and I love it, but there will also have to be real news institutions that pay staff people to report stories. And those reporters still have an obligation to call the objects of their attacks and scorn and get a response.

The future isn’t going to be about newspapers vs. online publications. It’s gong to be about journalists doing one kind of job, and others using the web to do something different. Not bad, not wrong -- just different.

By Steven T. Jones

Today is the sixth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, a decision that diminished our democracy, our moral standing, and our empire. There’s much to be said about this legacy, and we plan to post some reflections on the subject today and tomorrow, but first I’d like to link to my lengthy look at its implications from a year ago, a widely reposted story that was recently named as a finalist in the Best Essay category for the Western Publishing Association’s 58th annual Maggie Awards (I find out next month whether I win).
If you missed it last year, please give it a read today because I think it raises issues that are still relevant under our new regime, maybe more than ever.

Text by Sarah Phelan

Why doesn't the end of stop-loss mean the end of war? The short answer is, "It's the economy, stupid."

That said, it was good to hear Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announce yesterday that he has approved a plan to eliminate the use of stop-loss for deploying soldiers.

“Our goal is to cut the number of those stop-lossed by 50 percent by June 2010 and to eliminate the regular use of stop-loss across the entire Army by March 2011,” Gates said, noting that the Department of Defense still retains the authority to use stop-loss under extraordinary circumstances.

Asked what he considers extraordinary circumstances, Gates told reporters, “I would say that it would be some kind of an emergency situation where we absolutely had to have somebody's skills for a specific limited period of time.”

Asked who would make that decision, Gates said it would “probably ultimately be up to the Secretary of the Army.

Reminded that the argument for stop loss has always been, at least in public, unit cohesion, Gates told reporters that cohesion remains very important, but that retention is up, fairly significantly.

“And we are expecting the tempo of operations to be reduced over the next 18 months or so as we do draw down in Iraq,” Gates continued. “We will -- as best I understand, we will be drawing down in Iraq, over the next 18 or 19 months, significantly more than we are building up in Afghanistan, in terms of the Army.”

Stop-loss, Gates added, isn't a violation of the enlistment contract.

“But I believe that when somebody's end date of service comes up, to hold them against their will, if you will, is just not the right thing to do,” he said.

Asked about suicides in the military, Gates observed that “About a third of the suicides are members of the military who have never deployed.What I am told is that one of the principal causes of suicide, among our men and women in uniform, is broken relationships. And it's hard not to imagine that repeated deployments don't have an impact on those relationships.”

To understand war by the numbers, here is a list of some of the more salient statistics:

By John Ross

Ink drizzles through my punctured veins. Indeed, the toxins that ooze from chemical inks and pulp during a lifetime of reading and writing for newspapers may well have contributed to the tumor that now weighs upon my liver.

Genetics predisposed me to such contamination. My dad was a founding member of the Newspaper Guild when he toiled with Hayward Broun at the old New York World-Telegram (later the World Telegram & Sun.) On December 7, 1941, a day that will live in infamy for more than one reason, George Ross, the WT's drama critic, restaurant reviewer, Broadway columnist, and general lout-about-town, pushed my stroller into the Telly's frantic newsroom in lower Manhattan and there, wedged between knobby-kneed reporters, I was introduced to the frenzy of a big-city paper at a maximum moment of world crisis. I was hooked for life.

Newspapers provoke liver cancer. It's not just the ink and the pulp. Reporters are forever hunched over the bar at the dark dives that abut the rags where they slave, morosely drowning their resentment at editors who just eviscerated their big scoops, in an excess of cirrhosis-generating booze.

Here in San Francisco, working saloons like Hano's and the M&M, where the newshounds once gathered, have been yuppified into oblivion in this suddenly one-newspaper town. I mourn them as deeply as I mourn my liver.

Although I was on staff at the Examiner (now free and "worth every penny of it"), I never spent much time pounding out my stories on the premises. I had an editor named Jack McCarthy, bless his soul, who insisted that the paper paid me to run away from the pack. The "Monarch of the Dailies" had just been handed over to Willie Hearst, Patty's cousin, and I found myself a frequent contributor (ten front pages during the stolen 1988 Mexican election) along with Hunter S. Thompson and Zippy the Pinhead as the scion of Citizen Kane commited to going head to head with the Chron. This didn't last long.

My M.O. at the Zam, much as it had been at the Bay Guardian and Pacific News Service was to ir al lugar de los hechos - to go to the place where it happens - rather than hanging around the phones doing dumb desk stories. I was always on the road. But whether they ran in the dailies (I was big in the Chron-Zam Sunday bulldog edition), Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, the Northcoast Environmental Center Econews or the National Horseshoe Pitching Journal, my reportage always appeared in print. Your thumb got inked with the words I wrote.

Now I'm reduced to bloodless ciphers streaming across Internet pages. Counterpunch serves a function but it hardly satisfies my craving for real live chemical inks and pulp.

By a synchronistic twist of fate, newspapering in the U.S. is dying as fast as my liver. Pretty soon they both will be heirlooms, yellowing ancient slabs like the binders of Mexican newspapers at my corner library in the Centro Historico of Mexico City, El Gran Monstruo, to which my neighbors return time and time again to revisit the heartbreaks of the past.

Just in time for sunshine week, Attorney General Eric Holder declares that government records should henceforth be presumed public.

Attorney General Eric Holder’s much anticipated memo on new Freedom of Information Act general guidelines is a hit with sunshine advocates.

That’s because it rescinds the Bush administration’s information withholding standard, which was set by former Attorney General John Ashcroft on October 12, 2001, just one month after the September 11 attacks, and five days after the US invaded Afghanistan.

By contrast, Holder's memo orders that government agency records should be presumed public.

In so doing, Holder follows through on statements that President Barack Obama made on his second day in office and sets the tone for how executive agencies interpret and administer FOIA.

FOIA remains one of the most important tools available to the public and the press, in terms of finding out what the federal government is, and has been, up to.

"The Holder memo is a refreshing change from the disastrous standard set by former Attorney General John Ashcroft in 2001," said Reporters Committee Executive Director Lucy A. Dalglish. "We hope it empowers federal employers who manage these public records to improve their services to the taxpayers who request them."

Of course, the proof will be in the pudding, and I'm waiting to see how the feds respond to recent FOIA requests, but in the meantime, you can read the full text of Holder's memo here.

By Steven T. Jones

The labor movement, which in recent months has been destroying itself with bitter infighting among various unions, today announced an important accord that could help achieve health care reform and passage of the landmark Employee Free Choice Act.

Service Employees International Union and the California Nurses Association (which recently joined forces with the National Nurses Organizing Committee) jointly announced a “dramatic agreement” to cease recent hostilities, organize and divide up potential new members in health care, support allowing states to create single-payer systems, and work together on political objectives such as the EFCA, which would make it far easier for employees to unionize.

“ We are lining up to make sweeping changes to this country’s broken healthcare system, and as we wait for the starting gun it is imperative that we put the past behind us and move forward by putting all healthcare workers in the strongest possible position to define reform, move legislation and make the new healthcare system operational,” SEIU president Andy Stern said in the statement.

"This agreement provides a huge spark for the emergence of a more powerful, unified national movement that is needed to more effectively challenge healthcare industry layoffs and attacks on [Registered Nurses’] economic and professional standards and patient care conditions,” said CNA/NNOC Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro.

Meanwhile, the National Union of Healthcare Workers – formed by local labor leader Sal Rosselli and others following divisive battles with Stern’s SEIU – finally has its first 350 official members after organizing four Northern California nursing homes and it hopes to soon add tens of thousands more (most of those current SEIU members) as it prepares for its founding convention in San Francisco on April 25.

It's too bad the SF Examiner doesn't appear to get why six members of the Board of Supervisors voted this week to ask Obama and Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein to appoint a new US Attorney for Northern California.

No, it wasn't just because "current U.S. Attorney Joseph Russoniello has made some anti-Hispanic remarks that have angered numerous minority groups," as the Examiner implies.

The Board's vote came about after the year-long pushing of an anti-immigration agenda that included intensified ICE raids, the undermining of San Francisco's long-standing sanctuary city ordinance, and a Grand Jury investigation of the city's Juvenile Probation Department--moves that collectively angered immigrant rights advocates nationwide.

And no, it isn't just the case that these supervisors, who just spent four days in Washington, "can just pick up the phone and make this change happen," as the Examiner implies.

If you want to connect the dots and understand why the Board members voted the way they did, and who appears to be directing San Francisco's public safety policy, read this or this or this or this or this.

By Andrew W. Shaw

Both the media and the anti-war movement are hurting today, on the sixth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, but a growing information clearinghouse that combines both continues its quiet but surprisingly well-resourced fight from its home base in San Francisco’s Sunset District.

Antiwar.com disseminates information about developments in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as stories on the Middle East, Sudan, various other hot spots, and what it calls "the war at home." The site – with up to 120,000 hits per day and up to 500,000 regular visitors -- has a paid staff of 10 people, funded by donations and philanthropic foundations.

"There's a lack of original sources," Eric Garris, who started the site in 1995 during the US intervention in Bosnia, told us. "At the beginning there were a lot of reporters in Iraq. Now it’s a lot of 'official reports' and unverifiable blogs. We incorporate both."

Garris edits and publishes the site, drawing from a broad range of regular contributors.He said the site has grown more sophisticated with each military deployment, illustrating Randolph Bourne's philosophy that "War is the health of the State."

"Americans are suffering war fatigue and are vulnerable to myths. Most people think Obama is going to end the wars, so they don't have to worry about it anymore,” Garris said, a sentiment he disagrees with. “Obama seems weak on foreign policy: he keeps [Hilary] Clinton, [Robert] Gates. That's a slight shift, not really a change."

Moveon.org has come up with a very pleasing game in which you get to throw online tomatoes that make a satisfying squishy sound each time they hit AIG's cyberspace storefront.

(The downside, if you're playing at work, is your boss can hear the squishy sound, too.)

Throw 11 tomatoes and you discover that AIG paid 11 bonuses to people who no longer work at the company.

Throw 29 tomatoes and...wait, you'll have to play yourself.The boss is headed my way.

Says it all.

Photo and story by Ben Terrall

Popular anger at obscene corporate bonuses being issued in the midst of economic collapse was directed at Wells Fargo’s offices in the SF Financial District yesterday.

Wells Fargo received a $25 billion bailout from the federal government. And while its CEO was paid $26.6 million last year, the bank’s tellers make a median wage of $10.20 per hour.

The San Francisco rally was part of a national day of action that included protests in 33 states. The crowd of around 60 people waved signs that included, “IT’S TIME FOR AN ECONOMY THAT WORKS FOR EVERYONE.”

Photos and text by Ariel Soto

This weekend, March 21st, marked the sixth year of the US occupation of Iraq. Hundreds took to the street, despite the rain and cold winds, to sing, drum and dance for peace. Even though the new administration has picked a withdrawal date, many protesters believe it really isn't soon enough if there is an honest effort to end the mass killings in Iraq. There was also a strong voice at the march against the violence in Gaza.

So the BART Board is looking at whether BART cops should carry handguns. Nice. They don’t do too well with shotguns, either.

Seriously, what that department needs, more than anything, is civilian oversight, and if this study is about deflecting that, then it’s a worthless idea.

Assembly member Tom Ammiano has a bill that would force the BART Board to create a San Francisco-style oversight agency.

Ideally, the state Legislature wouldn’t have to spend time on this issue; the BART Board would just do it. But the BART Board is made up largely of lame, lazy hacks who have ignored this issue for years. I called Tom Radulovich, one of the few decent members of that board, and he told me he’d support the bill, but wanted it amended. “It’s too prescriptive,” he said. “We all agree on what the elements should be, but I’m not sure locking a variety of the San Francisco Office of Citizen Complaints into state law is the best idea.”

Radulovich had some suggestions -- audits, ways to measure how well the system is working, etc. -- which all make sense. And I’m sure there are all sorts of ways that Ammiano’s bill can be improved. But here’s the bottom line:

The final measure that comes out of Sacramento MUST be prescriptive. It must outline in very clear detail exactly what the BART Board has to do. The very fact that Ammiano is pushing this issue, and that the BART Board hasn’t already established an effective oversight plan, is all the evidence you need that it simply won’t happen without a firm state mandate.

I like the OCC model; it’s as imperfect as any government system, and a weak or compromised director and a police chief who refuses to cooperate can undermine its effectiveness. But it does the right thing, which is to take all internal affairs-type civilian complaints out of the hands of the police.

I’m sure Ammiano would be more than open to amendments, but if the BART Board members try to argue that the state should simply set broad guidelines and let them handle the details themselves, the answer is simple:

You’ve had more than 20 years to do that, and you’ve failed, and at least three people who ought to be alive today are dead because of that. No way we’re trusting you to get it right this time.

SFBC director Leah Shahum addressed the Land Use Committee today.

Photo and story by Joe Sciarrillo

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s (SFMTA) today quelled fears that its $120 million budget deficit might kill or delay implementation of the long-awaited Bicycle Plan and its 56 near-term projects, which have been stalled by a three-year court injunction.

Timothy Papandreou, assistant deputy director of Transportation Planning and Development at the SFMTA, told the Board of Supervisors Land Use Committee that a new expanded bike network of paths, lanes, racks, and signage will likely get underway in July.

“July/August, we’ll physically start putting things on the street,” he said to a packed room of bicycle supporters, with neon green “Bike Plan Now!” stickers on their shirts and helmets, enthusiastically greeted the news.

During yesterday’s Board committee hearing, which Sup. Eric Mar called, " to obtain community input on the creation of jobs-- particularly green collar jobs, in San Francisco, as the city is positioning itself for federal investment dollars"—Board President David Chiu made two requests of the city: a) please publish information about the status of all the city's efforts in going after the stimpack dollars on the city's website and b) let's have a public hearing on the impact of these stimpack dollars on communities of color.

"Who is going to get jobs and be stimulated by these federal funds?" Chiu asked.

That's when representatives from the city's Department of Technology announced that the city iis constructing a website to track all the money coming from the $787 billion federal stimulus package and being sunk into San Francisco’s “shovel ready” projects.

So far, all the website shows is a photo of Gavin Newsom, assumedly saying, "Today we face extraordinary challenges," and a pie chart that indicates that 70 percent of the funds are allocated to a category that is vaguely defined as “green”, with the remaining 30 percent split between “technology” and “education.”

The website is a good start in helping the public with what is usually an extraordinary challenge: trying to follow taxpayer dollars once they get into government coffers.

And as folks who attended yesterday's hearing discovered, the first wave of federal funding--the formula funding that was calculated on the basis of census tract data--has already been allocated, mostly to shovel ready projects such as the Doyle Drive rebuild, Treasure Island and the Hunter's Point Shipyard, with a second wave expected if the state uses some additional state formula funding, and a third wave of discretionary funding accessible, if San Francisco is successful at competing for it.

Folks at the hearing made some great suggestions as to how they'd like to see the money tracked: track it by district, by zip code, by jobs available, by training programs created, by energy efficiency block grants.

Let's see how that plays out in the weeks and months to come.

By Tim Redmond

Well, this is pretty fucked. I can't reach school board member Norman Yee, but the Examiner says he supports bringing back JROTC.

That's absolutely NOT what he told us when we endorsed him last fall.

Yee was the swing vote to end JROTC. The issue was phys ed credit, but the politics were clear: Voting to stop allowing kids to fulfill their gym requirement with JROTC would spell the end of the program. He did the right thing.

He later told us that if the issue were simply up or down on JROTC, he might have voted to save it, but it's clear that the JROTC program fails to meet state standards for physical education.

But here's the rub: Yee told us -- told me, personally -- that he wasn't going to bring this issue back up again, that as far as he was concerned it was done. Technically, he hasn't brought it up again -- Jill Wynns and Rachel Norton did. (BTW, lots of people criticized us for not endorsing Norton. I hope you now see why we didn't.) But if Yee votes to save the program, it will be a slap in the face to all the progressives who supported him.

JROTC, whatever its supporters say, is a military recruitment program. After our school board endorsements last fall, I got comments like this one:

No one's forcing your kids to join the JROTC. But not having a JROTC forces other kids not to join. That's wrong.

That's what all the supposedly liberal people who say they support JROTC talk about: choice. Why not let the students who want to be recruited by the Army on a public high school campus have the right to do that?

And here's what I -- the parent of two public-school kids -- have to say:

If I asked my kids if they'd rather have Pepsi or milk with their lunch, they'd say Pepsi in a second. My kids are still in elementary school, but most high school kids would say the same thing. The reason you take soda machines out of high schools is precisely so that kids DON'T have that choice. The reason you don't let 15-year-olds buy alcohol is that society has decided they aren't old enough to make that choice. Sometimes, you have to tell impressionable young people that certain things just aren't good for them.

You can't join the military until you're 18. That's because even the Pentagon has to accept that minors aren't ready to make those sorts of life decisions. (If it were up to me, I'd raise the age to 25.) If military recruiters want to solicit young people and rope them into that culture before they have enough sense to think twice about what they're signing on to, I sure as hell don't want to make it easy. And I don't want to let them do it in public schools.

Norman -- This is madness. Don't do it.

By Rebecca Bowe

At meetings of the Local Agency Formation Commission, it’s all too common to hear concerns that the whole Community Choice Aggregation program endeavor is moving along at a snail pace. At today’s Board of Supervisors meeting, there will be vote on whether to approve two new LAFCo staff positions, which could jump start CCA. But is there enough support for eight votes, which would ensure that the decision could withstand a veto? And will Supervisor Sophie Maxwell, who voted against it at the last meeting but for it at a committee meeting the day before, stick with her 'no' vote?

LAFCo plays an advisory role in the implementation of San Francisco’s CCA program, which would allow the city to combine electricity needs of residents and businesses into a citywide electricity buyers’ program. Administered by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, the plan includes ambitious targets for clean and renewable-energy generation.

But the process of getting such a massive project off the ground has been fraught with delay, and it’s not uncommon for citizens to get up during the public comment session at LAFCo meetings to voice their anxiety that an environment threatened by climate change can’t afford to wait any longer.

By Tim Redmond

Calbuzz, the blog by former Chronicle managing editor Jerry Roberts and former Mercury News politicial editor Phil Trounstine, has a great item about Gavin Newsom's campaign lingo.

Newsom routinely stems the flow of his words by suddenly inserting a phrase like, “I always say,” then quickly follows with an aphorism that makes it seem he’s channeling Tony Robbins channeling the Book of Proverbs with a dash of Khalil Gibran thrown in. No wonder this guy loves Twitter.

They have some wonderful selections from a recent speech, including:

“I always say . . . the difference between success and failure is the difference between interested people and committed people." (Wait, didn't he get that backwards?)

“I always say . . . that it’s decisions, not conditions, that determine our fate."

And:

“To say is not to do,” he said at least three times, as a way of explaining how his self-described accomplishments as the mayor overseeing the San Francisco Miracle contrast to the utter failure by every other California politician to achieve much of anything at all.

Amazing. To say is not to do. And this from Mr. Press Release, the man who runs the city by saying and not by doing.

Guess maybe he's right.

Artists rendering for Burning Man's current theme, "Evolution," by Andrew Johnstone and Rod Garrett.

By Steven T. Jones

Burning Man is an annual event in the Nevada desert. But the organization that stages Burning Man, Black Rock City LLC, is a San Francisco-based company now being uprooted by UCSF’s rapid development of Mission Bay and actively looking for a new headquarters.

Company spokesperson Marian Goodell said she’s been working with the Mayor’s Office and the vast network of local burners to find what they need: a 20,000 square foot showcase space with room for its core staff and the ancillary organizations its has spawned, such as Black Rock Arts Foundation and Burners Without Borders. So far, they’ve come up empty, even as a May 1 deadline to vacate the current spot at 3rd and 16th streets rapidly approaches.

“We really need a home for the development of our culture,” Goodell tells the Guardian. “For us to have the right office building would give us a lot of credibility.”

Do you sometimes forget to flip the manual light switch when you leave the office? If so, Board President David Chiu hopes that the prospect of fines will help you break this environmentally unfriendly habit.

Chiu has introduced an ordinance that prohibits commercial buildings from lighting unoccupied interior spaces after business hours. The idea is to conserve electricity and use cost-effective lighting control technology that turn lights off automatically, when the last person leaves the office.

"Not only are lights typically left on in buildings when occupants leave an office during the middle of the day, but the night skylines of all U.S. cities are filled with lights from countless empty offices, and San Francisco is no exception," states the "findings" section of Chiu's ordinance, noting that almost half of the electricity in typical office buildings is used to keep lights on, and commercial establishments account for about half of the lighting energy used in the United States.

"No person may illuminate any unoccupied space in a commercial building after hours except for exit signs, path of travel lighting and utilization equipment lighting," states Chiu's ordinance.

If the ordinance passes, the Department of the Environment will be able to issue warnings to folks, a year after the ordinance becomes effective. If that doesn't change folks' behavior, DOE will be able to fine them $100 for a first violation, $200 for a second violation in the same year, and not more than $500 for each subsequent violation in the same year. Wow, that could add up. Pretty soon folks won't be able to pay their electricity bill, which would be yet another way to turn the lights off.

By Tim Redmond
The issue before the Democratic
County Central Committee tonight is immigration, and delegates will face a pair of conflicting resolutions. In reality, though, the two resolutions are a referendum on the city’s -- that is, mayor Newsom’s -- shift in immigration policy.

The milder, watered-down measure is sponsored by Scott Wiener, one of the centrist leaders on the DCCC, and more-or-less endorses what Newsom has been doing. His consponsors are Connie O’Connor, Mary Jung, Arlo Hale Smith, and Matt Tuchow.

The competing measure takes not-so-subtle issue with City Hall’s position and urges greater respect and tolerance for immigrants of all legal status. It’s backed by Aaron Peskin, Debra Walker, David Campos, Robert Haaland, Rafael Mandelman, Chris Daly, Joe Julian, Michael Goldstein, Hene Kelly and Michael Bornstein.

You can read both resolutions and the politics of this after the jump.

I got voice mail from Ron Vinson, chief administrative officer of the SanFrancisco Department of Technology, today, advising me that the City's website to track Obama's stimpack dollars is still under construction.

When I checked the link, which is where I downloaded the piechart (shown above) yesterday, as part of my quest to find out just who is being stimulated in San Francisco by these anxiously anticipated federal dollars, sure enough I got that frustrating "the requested URL was not found on this server" message.

Calls to Vinson to find out just when the website might be functional have yet to be returned. So, stay tuned.

In the meantime, you could visit the WhiteHouse's site, and amuse yourself by clicking on their map of the United States, which claims that 396,000 jobs will be created/saved in California the next two years. I wonder how many of those will be in San Francisco and just who will benefit?

>
U.S. Senator Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD) has introduced legislation that would allow newspapers to become non-profits.

Cardin says the Newspaper Revitalization Act is intended to help the faltering newspaper industry survive.

But there’s a snag: under the act, newspapers would not be allowed to make political endorsements.

They would, however, be allowed to freely report on all issues, including political campaigns.

Advertising and subscription revenue would be tax exempt and contributions to support coverage/operations could be tax deductible.

“The measure is targeted to preserve local newspapers serving communities and not large newspaper conglomerates,” states the press release posted at Cardin’s website.

It's not easy being mayor. Especially, when you are running for governor.

In the past few years, Mayor Gavin Newsom appeared to have mastered the way to silence his critics: he avoided debating them.

He refused to show up to Board meetings. And when he finally did, it was to drop a shocking financial bomb, then run away before the supervisors could ask informed questions or participate in a collaborative solution to the City’s woes.

And since announcing his gubernatorial run, Newsom has been increasingly missing in action, even though the city is facing a massive economic crisis.

But now one of Newsom’s fiercest critics has found a way to get his attention.

The Nation of Islam’s Minister Christopher Muhammad has been showing up at town-hall meetings that Newsom is holding statewide as part of his gubernatorial campaign, complaining about unresolved issues around asbestos dust and other toxic materials at the Hunters Point Shipyard.

So far, Muhammad and his followers have showed up in Oakland, Napa and San Diego, and it’s likely they are not going to go away, any time soon.

As columnists Phil Matier and Andy Ross report in today’s Chronicle, after an item about assault rifles flowing in from Nevada, Newsom’s “handlers have a queasy feeling that they will be hearing more from the minister and his friends as the gubernatorial race heats up.”

It’s not clear the minister’s appearances make audiences sympathetic to his cause.

As one source reported, during Newsom’s March 12 town hall in Napa, which was held at the local fairgrounds, “it was standing room only and went fairly well until a group from Bayview/Hunter's Pt. showed up and demanded to vent their spleen.”

“This really pissed off the over 55 crowd, thinning the herd somewhat,” said our source.

But, according to M&T, Newsom “even promised to sit down with the Nation’s leadership if only they would let the rest of the audience get some questions on.”

M&T claim that “no meeting, however, ever took place.”

But it makes you wonder what would happen, if other advocates who have been unable
to get Newsom’s ear, started to show up at his gubernatorial town-halls, too.

Carl Hall, the Chronicle’s California Media Workers Guild representative, just emailed me, regarding my article in today's newspaper about the future of journalism

Hall wrote to point out that I had inaccurately reported that the Guild has “voted to accept 150 layoffs and accept seniority considerations” at the Chronicle.

But as Hall notes, “Our contract like most guild contracts does not contain any prohibition against layoffs, and there's not been any requirement that the employer obtain our agreement before laying anyone off. We voted to lift seniority protection against layoff in exchange for severance – that’s the new part. We also voted a number of other changes to reduce costs one way or another.”

“One other detail you might not realize,” Hall continued, “is that the Guild contract already had a provision allowing the management to protect up to 25% of low-seniority employees in a layoff round, meaning they could keep those individuals because of their importance in the operation and lay off more senior employees instead.”

Hall said he was saying all this because he continues to see, “everybody claiming that we voted to accept layoffs, when in fact we did not.”

“The company told us they were prepared to implement layoffs of about 225 of our members, with no severance, or close the paper or sell it, in which case all 500 of us would risk being laid off, with no severance,” Hall explained. “Maybe we could have chosen some suicidal path of bluff-calling or whatever, but our members chose the path we are on -- a selfless choice for the senior people who nearly all voted to open themselves up to more individual layoff risk for a mere one year's pay.”

“As a union however we did not vote to accept 150 layoffs,” Hall stated. “ We expect that number will be laid off because of this management's short-sighted, destructive business plan and failure to make the Chronicle thrive as a top-quality paper, in print and online. I don’t hold any particular ill will toward the Hearst Corp., and credit them for the patience they have shown over these past few years when they've tolerated purported losses far exceeding those being reported elsewhere.”

Hall ended by saying that he was, “encouraging our members and the entire community to focus on what truly matters -- quality jobs and quality journalism, and yes we do see a quality connection between the jobs and the journalism. (i.e., no reliance on "volunteers" or low-paid exploited at-will news workers, such as may be the case at the anti-union outfits such as -- cheap shot alert! -- the SFBG.)

"In a word, here's the plan," Hall stated. " Organize! If you want to start, we will show you how."

The Guild is holding its first meeting of its newly formed freelancers unit at Noon, Friday April 3. Third-floor conference room, California Media Workers. 433 Natoma Street, San Francisco.

For more information, or to R.S.V.P., check out the Guild’s site here, where you can also watch the video of the Society of Professional Journalists' March 17 "Conversation about the Chronicle<" in which 15 panelists brainstormed about the crisis currently affecting the newspaper industry,

The How Weird Street Faire has become a popular event, particularly with the Guardian staff, including (from left) Associate Art Director Ben Hopfer, Culture Editor Molly Freedenberg, City Editor Steven T. Jones, and Art Director Mirissa Neff.

By Steven T. Jones

The city’s budget crunch and stricter policies on making special events pay up front for all city services that they’re required to use are once again threatening the How Weird Street Faire, a popular dance festival now in its 10th year that seems to battle city bureaucracy every year. Now, the grassroots organizers are challenging policies that could leave San Francisco with only events sponsored by deep-pocketed corporations.

Organizers say they can’t come up with the almost $10,000 that the San Francisco Police Department is requiring them to pay up front, a tab needed to pay for cops that do little except stand around at an event that would rather be allowed to police itself. The May 10 event is scheduled to take place around Howard and 2nd streets after city officials made them move from their previous spot 10 blocks away.

“The SFPD is demanding we pay them nearly $10K up front for police services, which was not discussed at the ISCOTT [the city body that issues street closure permits] hearing and is twice the amount of 2007. We simply do not have the money for this and they are threatening now to not plan for our police services. I have a bad feeling they will not sign off on our ABC license [needed for beer sales],” lead organizer Brad Olsen recently wrote in an appeal to City Hall for help.

City Attorney Dennis Herrera has announced a stimulus spending taskforce, which he says will aim, " to coordinate legal compliance and guarantee maximum transparency, efficiency and accountability for city investments made possible by the federal government's recently enacted $787 billion economic stimulus package."

"Our paramount duty is to ensure that this unprecedented level of federal funding is invested honestly and in ways that deliver real value to our communities and our children -- we will not tolerate waste, fraud or abuse," Herrera said in a press release.

"When President Obama signed the recovery and stimulus package into law, he challenged all of us in public life to prove to the American people that their trust in government is not misplaced,” Herrera said.

The Democratic County Central Committee voted last night by an overwhelming majority (20 ayes, 5 abstains, I no) to support Debra Walker’s strong resolution, recommitting “support of the Constitution and our city’s Sanctuary Ordinance for all,” and rejecting Scott Wiener’s watered-down version (19 noes, 3 abstained, 5 ayes).

Walker, who plans to run for District 6 supervisor, when incumbent Chris Daly is termed out next year, says DCCC’s vote made her, “ feel good about the party.”

“It’s been way too long that this has been happening and we have done nothing substantive, on the part of the party,” said Walker, noting that a companion resolution asking President Barack Obama to stop the ICE raids will be introduced next month.

Last night’s vote came after several dozen immigrant residents attended the DCCC hearing and testified about the impact of San Francisco's new policies toward immigrants.

As Angela Chan, staff attorney for the Asian Law Caucus told the Guardian, “One teenage girl bravely stood before the DCCC and said that as a result of the change in climate in San Francisco toward immigrants, she lived in fear each day that she would come home to find that her parents had been taken away by ICE. Another immigrant resident said that if the DCCC takes a stand to support immigrants, he would raise his children to become proud Democrats. Another immigrant resident, who was a mother and a child care provider for many families in SF, said it is difficult to know that the image of criminality is being projected onto her and her community, when most members of the community are hardworking, law-abiding, and family-oriented people.”

Chan says she appreciated the supportive comments she heard from Sups. David Campos, Daly, Robert Haaland, Michael Bornstein, and resolution co-sponsors Walker and Peskin.

“They demonstrated a strong commitment to upholding immigrant rights and a deep understanding of the contributions of immigrant residents to San Francisco,” Chan said. “I hope Mayor Newsom will take the cue from his own party (and his own residents), and swiftly move to rescind his undocumented youth policy and work with the immigrant community to develop a more thought-out and balanced policy that respects the due process rights of youth and the goals to the juvenile justice system.”

That vote confirms that Mayor Gavin Newsom’s decision to do an about face last summer on San Francisco’s long standing sanctuary city ordinance is coming back to haunt him, as the gubernatorial race heats up.

Asked if the policy direction that Newsom ordered in 2008 guarantees due process for all, Newsom’s communications director Nathan Ballard did a classic obfuscation, telling the Guardian, “Yes. It was thoroughly vetted by the city attorney.”

But according to the City Attorney’s office, the original ordinance never did assure due process, “ if an individual was arrested for felony crimes.”

As for the revised policy direction, it directs police officers to report any juvenile “suspected of being present in the United States in violation of immigration laws,” and “booked” for commission of a felony” to federal immigration authorities,

The language, which is contained in the juvenile probation department’s policies and procedures section, directs officers to take into consideration, amongst other things, prior criminal history and “presence of undocumented persons in the same area where arrested or involved in illegal activity.”

To Walker’s mind, such direction amounts to a, “slippery slope.”

“It puts a lot of discretion in the hands of the police on the streets, and can end up with juveniles being referred to ICE and taken back to their country of origin, without any representation,” Walker said.

By Rebecca Bowe

T. Boone Pickens, 80, is a Republican billionaire living in Dallas whose spot-on predictions about the petroleum industry have earned him the nickname the “Oracle of Oil.” More recently, the founder and chairman of BP Capital Management has garnered media attention for reinventing himself as a proponent of clean energy. On March 25, hundreds of San Franciscans came out to the Intercontinental Mark Hopkins Hotel to listen to the former oilman discuss the Pickens Plan: a blueprint for curing America’s addiction to foreign oil.

Pickens launched his campaign last July with a slick Web site designed by one of the top brains behind Obama’s online presidential campaign. So far, some 2 million supporters have signed on, Pickens said. “I found out this,” he told a team of reporters shortly before his talk. “When I was a rich guy going to Washington trying to get something done, I got in to see everybody and they were all nice, but not much happened. Today, with 2 million people with me, I’m a hell of a lot more important when I go to Washington.”

A main component of his plan is the installation of thousands of wind turbines through the central corridor of the United States, harnessing what has been called the “Saudi Arabia of wind” to provide what Pickens estimates to be 20 percent of the nation’s electricity supply. To make it work, transmission lines must be constructed to move that power east and west. And according to his vision, domestic natural gas currently used to fire power plants can be utilized as a transportation fuel instead.

Story by Steven T. Jones, Photos by Neil Motteram

Yesterday’s federal raid on the locally permitted SoMa medical marijuana dispensary Emmalyn’s California Cannabis Clinic caused confusion about what local growers can expect from an Obama Administration that recently announced that it would no longer be conducting such raids.

Drug Enforcement Administration officials are saying little about the raid, which came on a Wednesday, the day Emmalyn’s gives out free marijuana to poor patients. But the DEA seemed to be trying to dance around the conflict with the public statement, "Based on our investigation, we believe there are not only violations of federal law, but state law as well.”

Assembly member Tom Ammiano, whose Assembly Bill 390 would decriminalize even recreational uses of marijuana, told the Guardian that the raid sends a troubling message and could indicate internal conflicts within the administration.

“It’s a little vigilante for me. They’re obviously try to flex their muscles, probably to have a showdown with the Obama Administration,” Ammiano said of the DEA. “The dispensaries are going to be in the crosshairs of this struggle.”

By Melody Parker and Steven T. Jones

The Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee yesterday held a hearing on deep budget cuts proposed for city health and welfare programs and tried unsuccessfully to get straight answers to why the Newsom Administration isn’t planning to use federal stimulus money to offset those cuts.
Congress and President Barack Obama specifically offered economic stimulus money to prevent cuts in things like housing, homeless, and social services that are most needed during hard economic times. San Francisco’s share is more than $50 milllion. As Obama said, "This plan will also help ensure that you don't need to make cuts to essential services Americans rely on now more than ever.”
But Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and David Campos expressed frustration that the Mayor’s Office has said it doesn’t want to use these one-time funding to cover ongoing expenses and that they’ve refused to engage in a dialogue about that stand. At a press conference before the hearing, Mirkarimi said dealing with the administration has been like pulling teeth: “The Board had received zero word from Mayor Newsom.”
So they pressed Newsom’s Public Health Director Mitch Katz at the hearing, but still made little progress on getting a straight answer. As a lawyer, Campos said he was “familiar with nuanced language” and told Katz that he didn’t feel the administration is being responsive.