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Politics Blog

“Privacy? Screw that.”

05.17.13 - 9:45 am | Rebecca Bowe |
(5)

At a party the other night, somebody convinced me to try out Google Glass. I let curiosity get the better of me, succumbed to peer pressure, and put the frames on my face for a few seconds.Read more »

Is Larkin Street Youth Services using public funds to fight a union organizing drive?

05.16.13 - 12:03 pm | Steven T. Jones |
(50)

Larkin Street Youth Services does great and important social work with homeless youth in San Francisco, for which it receives generous support from city taxpayers, as well as federal grants. That’s why its employees and some prominent local officials are questioning the organization’s aggressive, deceptive, and anti-union resistance to the request by a majority of its 88 employees to be represented by Service Employees International Union Local 1021.Read more »

Cryin' wolf

05.16.13 - 10:56 am | Johnny Angel Wendell |
(123)

This has been a wretched stretch of brutal press for Barack Obama lately. Battered over and over by revelations of IRS malfeasance, aggressive assaults on press freedom at the AP and Benghazi ad infinitum, the hits keep on coming, amplified by the dual forces of the "Conservative Entertainment Complex" (as exemplified by this great pundit) and a "liberal media" that has realized that Internet hits are their most likely saving grace and revenue stream. It has reached such fevered pitch that the media is making a chilling analogy commonplace! Read more »

Why is the SF housing market "positive?"

05.16.13 - 9:32 am | Tim Redmond |
(79)

It's been a long, long time since anyone said that traffic is terrific. When there are too many cars on the road, it's considered bad, not healthy -- even if the boom in single-occupant auto travel is a sign of a recovering economy and lots of job creation.Read more »

Campos to Pride: City funding requires transparency, meeting about Manning decision

05.15.13 - 4:23 pm | Marke B. |
(44)

Over the weekend, Pride posted a Facebook note saying that, despite its promises, it would not be holding a public meeting to address its horrible handling of the Bradley Manning for Grand Marshal scandal until after Pride, and that "SF Pride’s decision concerning the election process of Bradley Manning as Grand Marshal being consistent with SF Pride’s long-standing Grand Marshal election policy is firm. Thus, the discussion of that matter is closed for this year."

People were not very happy about this. Last night a well-attended "mock Pride board meeting" protest was held, with a row of empty chairs symbolizing Pride's absence of leadership.

Now Supervisor David Campos has issued a stern letter to the Pride Board, citing Pride's status as a city-funded organization and its failure to operate with transparency, and advising them to meet with the public before the festival at the end of June.

Read more »

More protests over Willits bypass project

05.15.13 - 11:25 am | Dylan Tokar |
(3)


Controversy over the Willits Bypass continued Monday, as Willits protesters sought to block Caltrans contractors from continuing work on the highway construction project. Protester Robert Chevalier, 66, locked himself to a Caterpillar tractor used for hauling felled logs using a steel “lock box.” At another location, four other protesters unfurled a banner to block work trucks that were preparing for pile-driving tests. Read more »

Can the tech boom solve our housing crisis? No, but it can make it worse

05.15.13 - 10:27 am | Steven T. Jones |
(62)

 San Francisco Housing Action Coalition and San Francisco Magazine posed an intriguing question at a forum they sponsored last night in the W Hotel: “San Francisco’s Housing Crisis: Can the Tech Boom Help Us?” Unfortunately, it wasn’t a question they ever really addressed at an event of, by, and for developers and their most ardent supporters.Read more »

Brown raids cap-and-trade funds, delaying action on climate change

05.14.13 - 4:21 pm | Steven T. Jones |
(5)

Greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere continue to rise to dangerous levels, but still our political leaders delay taking meaningful actions to address the looming crisis. The latest example: Gov. Jerry Brown is borrowing $500 million from the state’s new cap-and-trade program -- money designated specifically for efforts to address climate change -- to help balance the revised state budget proposal that he released today. Read more »

Randy Shaw just loves Capitalism

05.14.13 - 3:30 pm | Tim Redmond |
(204)

Well: We all know that Randy Shaw, director of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic and editor of BeyondChron, is a loyal, devoted fan of Mayor Ed Lee. We know that he pretty much sees no wrong in the Lee Administration. Read more »

Tech guru says Internet destroying middle class

05.14.13 - 2:55 pm | Tim Redmond |
(16)

Jaron Lanier isn't a Luddite. He can't be dismissed as a crackpot, whiner critic who is jealous of the success of others. He virtually invented virtual reality; he was a tech guru when most of today's tech titans were still in diapers. So when he says that the Internet is destroying the middle class, maybe everyone ought to stop for a second and listen.Read more »