Politics Blog

David Chiu's flextime

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I'm not surprised that the folks at the Chamber of Commerce are all agitated about Sup. David Chiu's proposal to expand family-friendly scheduling at local businesses. The Chamber's Jim Lazarus is typically out of control:Read more »

Explaining Osama and 9/11

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My oldest son just graduated elemetary school and so my wife and I gave him an IPad as gift. He loves the thing. Unlike his gadget n geegaw loathing father, he takes to that stuff with a vengeance.Read more »

The Mission 'douchebags'

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Okay, you have to read this. When a 1990s tech-startup guy who admits he was part of the last generation of gentrification is now so fed up with the new arrival of high-paid techies that he's ready to leave, it's pretty serious.

Chris Tacy makes an excellent point: When you move into the Mission, you need to understand that there are already other people living there, some of whom have been there a long time, and that it isn't just you're rich-kids playground:Read more »

Distance and racism

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Right now, I'm approximately 116 miles from the Mexican border.

When I was growing up, I was 1600 miles from the same border. I was in Boston--I had a discussion today with some musicians from Boston that are "alarmed" at "the end of America" because of "amnesty". When I pointed out that in the last 24 years, LA had become more "Latino" (I sussed out that the issue wasn't illegal immigration as it never really is, when they started in with "press 2 for English") and that crime and pollution was down and land values up--might as have been talking to my toenails.Read more »

Supervisors approve condo legislation with veto-proof majority

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The San Francisco Board of Supervisors today voted to approve compromise legislation that will allow more than 2,000 tenancy-in-common homeowners to convert to condominiums in exchange for a 10-year moratorium on the city’s current condo conversion lottery that now allows 200 conversions annually.Read more »

Dede Wilsey re-elected prez of Fine Arts Museums board with little fanfare

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At a quarterly meeting on June 6, Diane “Dede” Wilsey was summarily re-elected as president of the Board of Trustees of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF). The election marks her sixth consecutive term in a post she’s held since 1998, a tenure made possible when the board eliminated term limits in 2009.

She ran uncontested, and her unanimous endorsement by the board’s Nomination Committee was granted, in the words of Committee Chair Lisa Zanze, to be “mindful of the need for continuity” at FAMSF.Read more »

8 Washington and the Warriors

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I won't be a bit surprised if the Warriors start putting money behind Simon Snellgrove's efforts to win ballot approval for his 8 Washington condo project. And it won't be just because of general developer solidarity. And I don't think the basketball team owners are counting on a lot of fans living just down the Embarcadero -- odds are a lot of the people who buy Snellgrove's ultra-luxury condos won't live in San Francisco much of the time anyway.Read more »

Icelandic MP Birgitta Jónsdóttir talks asylum options for NSA whistleblower

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Birgitta Jónsdóttir is waiting for Edward Snowden to drop her a line.

The Icelandic Member of Parliament and Wikileaks supporter happens to be in San Francisco at the moment, working to raise awareness about the trial of Wikileaks whistleblower Bradley Manning, and preparing for a speaking engagement this evening where she’ll appear alongside Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971.Read more »

Supervisors pose tough but important questions to Mayor Lee

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There’s a full agenda at the San Francisco Board of Supervisors meeting today, from the condo conversion lottery bypass legislation to approval of the term sheet from the massive development project at Pier 70, but some of the most interesting and potentially newsworthy items are at the very beginning of the agenda, when Mayor Ed Lee will answer questions posed by the supervisors.Read more »

There's gonna be a morning after (pill)

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The Obama adminstration has decided not to block the over the counter availability of "morning after contraceptives". Simply put, any woman or girl (or man, assuming he's either motivated or very confused) can buy a medication that prevents pregnancy up to 72 hours after sexual intercourse.Read more »