Watching City Hall #346, (2-24-05)
“School is out at laaast, and I’m so glad I passed!”
(Chuck Berry)
OK, now I know how to load the cannon. I already had something more than an intimate idea about where to aim. I have completed my 8 weeks of basic computer skills course at JVS (Jewish Vocational Services) and I’m ready to sort them and apply them. Don’t expect a big difference in the columns right away, but it will come. I’m still interviewing for a replacement for Eileen Left who went away to live with Carlos Petroni (publisher of Frontlines) in South America. … Whatever, I’m back with a keyboard under my hands, and monitors for government TV on both sides. I mean to hurt people who need hurt and help people who need helped. You think that’s simplistic? Well fuck you. Let’s see you write a better mission statement drunk on bourbon and stoned at 6am. I’m back and with Joefire and Petroni and, now Hunter Thompson gone over just the time I was in school, there aren’t many sets of sharp teeth out there on my side of the scrum. So, with that in mind, let’s get right into it. I made a deal with Comcast so’s they’ll give me SFGTV for $28.93 a month instead of the $16.94 that everyone else pays and I strung a stolen dsl line from the government building across the street, so I’m ready. While turning on and tuning in, I see the SF Board’s version of Grace Jones shooting angry darts across the top of her reading glasses at people who don’t want to feed poor black kids. … Ah, yes, Sophie Maxwell just had her best moments before the Board in 5 years and I got to watch it.
A hearing on putting food in the stomachs of poor kids in the City and County of San Francisco of which Sophie is one of the most powerful 11 people when it comes to governing same. You’d think the issue would be a no-brainer, but there are people on the school board with more outfits than a chameleon and Sophie was facing one of them.
She was squared off against one, Jill Wynns who was busy explaining how it just wasn’t cost-effective to feed all these little starving black kids in the morning and Maxwell got pissed. … Lord, she ain’t EVER gonna give us a Chris Daly moment cause she’s too much of a dignified queen to do that, but she came close. … Wonk’s, whatever the hell the Board Committee was on February 24th at 5pm in the evening (Ammiano is Chair but had to leave to do a heart-transplant, I guess – nothing else could have been more important) … Kids, go to that tape (or, whatever the recording device is now) and look it over. Sophie was great.
It was amazing to me that Supervisor Maxwell didn’t seem to know who Wynns is. Sophie, Wynns is a snake. She’s Margaret Brodkin of Coleman Advocate’s right arm. They hate dogs and gay people for starters (gays don’t make kids – Brodkin’s dad was the father of the birth control pill?) … and, Brodkin’s husband spends hours on the phone calling the cops about dogs-off-leashes in a variety of parks. … Wynns is the asshole who voted to censure School Board member, Mark Sanchez because Neanderthal, Heather Hiles told him to “FUCK OFF!!” Uh huh, she said this to him when he objected to him saying that a bunch of citizens who’d come to a hearing should be allowed to speak although Hiles wanted to cancel the thing. … She was, incidentally, the chosen School Board candidate of Bruce Buggbutt of the Guardian who never ceases to amaze.
Whatever, Sophie Maxwell was great. She was infuriated when newly minted SFUSD, CFO or whatever the hell, David Gorkin (something like that – I promise, I’m gonna learn all these names and put em on a list but we’re working without an editor here – I always get fired except by myself … I’ll learn these names and put em on a list and …) … Sophie got mad when Goredman or whatever said that they didn’t take the money available from federal free food programs for poor kids and give them free food because under certain circumstances, they lost money on the deal!
Yeah, David, he says that although it is true that they do take in 33 million a year in free food money, that they do, indeed, turn down an additional 61 million a year … cause free food might go to the wrong kids. … “Some of these kids can afford to pay.” Yep, that’s what the guy that Warren Hellman pays said. You getting this? Yep, that’s why Maxwell was pissed off. … Calm down now. I can see this is exciting you. Let’s move on to something else.
What Gonzalez really said
Randy Shaw is an opportunistic, lying sack of shit. Other than that, he’s a hell of a great guy. You remember Randy? He’s the one who gave us 401 Freelon, the product of a wild weekend-in-bed in the Tenderloin with Joe O’Donoghue (lighten up on my turkeys Joe, leave some for the other hunters) … with Joe Dough and Jack Cassidy and Brother Kelly Cullen. … Wait! Kelly Cullen wasn’t there. He’s still smarting from Randy ‘outing’ him as gay on Joe & Randy’s (guess who’s paying?) Beyond Chron blog because Cullen spoke against an RBA project.
Shaw is a shark. He can never get enough attention or money or power. And, … it ain’t necessarily cause he wants to use it for the public good. Oh, that’s the cover and Joe provides him with the muscle to preach in public and private. … Consider, I pay $211 a month for a comfortable little room a couple of blocks from City Hall. Place is run by Cullen’s TNDC. Few blocks over, in the Mission … good friend pays an extra hundred bucks a month for a comparable room to Shaw and his THC (Tenderloin Housing Corporation). Comes the end of the month, my friend is always broke cause Shaw’s outfit (he also owns half of the building THC is housed in through a straw party) … cause Randy takes more of the welfare money from recipients than Cullen does.
Further, Shaw regularly sends his troops into Cullen’s hotels to raise hell. They do, really. I mean, would I shit you? … When the furnace at my building (huge place, 204 units) did a melt down, Shaw had troops from his Central City SRO Collaborative in the building within hours encouraging tenants to complain … or sue … or, do whatever else to weaken Kelly Cullen. What a prick. … What’s my point?
Yeah, everyone knows that me and Randy and Joe and Willie and Wynns and Brodkin are slime. What was I thinking about? …
(After refilling my glass with bourbon and consuming part of another bowl of ‘Alaskan Thunderfuck’ – great weed, try it) … I remember now. I was talking to Matt Gonzalez the other day and he said that I should mention that Shaw was not being honest when he said that Matt was “furious” that a commissioner Matt had appointed to the Department of Building Inspections had voted for a Newsom appointment as Commission President. “I never told any of my appointees how to vote on anything.” said Gonzo. “I just told them to vote their own conscience.”
Point is that Shaw and O’Donoghue are lying backstabbers out for themselves first and I’m not even going to get into the rumors about their sexual relationship because I’m just not that kind of a journalist. C’mon Randy, you know you’ve got a not-so-secret thing for all those hunky Irish construction guys. You outed Cullen. Now, do the right thing. Randy Shaw … ‘C’MON DOWN!!’.
Peskin’s brilliant move
He made the fuckers do a book report. … Simple. True. Yet, the effect was amazing. … Gonzalez created the ‘request’ that Board members should use part of their presentations in ‘roll call for introductions’ presentations to tell the rest of the Board, the City and the Word what they learned and did at the last meetings they attended of the Golden Gate Bridge Authority and the Association of Bay Area Governments and the SF Bay Protection District and shit like that. It’s different with Aaron Peskin. … While Gonzo ‘asked’ that Board members take some of their ‘Roll Call for Introductions’ time to report on what happened at the meetings of the various regional authorities they attended over the past week, Peskin called upon them individually and the results were wonderful for not only the new Board President, but for the individual supervisors. … Oh yeah. They were not only present at the meetings of the individual boards and commissions and witches groups and whatever, … they contributed … and, what they said was revealing.
Peskin knew the most
He lacked entertainment or passion in his presentation, however. He talked about something called ABAG or something-or-other. It could be ‘Association of Bay Area Governments’ or something like that but don’t quote me. I mean, shit, I only watch this stuff 12 to 20 hours a day and who can keep up with all these acronyms?
Still, Peskin immediately cut to the core of the issue. He’s good at that and I’ll vote for him for mayor 3 years from now if he runs. … Did I get off course?
Peskin said that it was clear that regional legislative bodies of various dimensions and orientations were targeting San Francisco for an ‘influence-reduction due to the economic downturn. … Other SF representatives on various other regional groups brought home the same tales.
Quicky
The reason it costs $5 to get across the Golden Gate bridge today is because I can walk across my Tenderloin street in downtown San Francisco and get on a comfortable bus (a toilet would be nice) & ride 60 miles to Santa Rosa for under $6. Hey, I like it, but the Bridge District is losing big money on subsidizing people from Napa and Sonoma who live nowhere near the bridge. Ferries too.
Bottom line is that expenditures of most of the funds received from the fees received from vehicles crossing Golden Gate Bridge go to paying for things like Bus Stations named after the grandfathers of District Board members from Marin & Sonoma … even though these stations are 60 miles from the bridge and between buses, you read bronze plaques on the bus terminals saying just exactly that kind of thing. …They should sell the buses and terminals and boats and ferry slips and every God damned thing they own except the bridge and take care of it and let the free market take care of the rest.
Best book report
Best ‘book report’ came from Michela Alioto-Pier who jumped in to support the newly boarded, Ross Mirkarimi from District 5 when he said that the first thing Anne-Marie Conroy and Chris Cunnie did at their last meeting of the Emergency Preparedness Board (something like that) was to try and get them to rubber-stamp some kind of study they’d done or had done.
“They handed it (the report) to us as we entered the room and tried to get us to vote on it before we had a chance to read it.”
Now, coming from Alioto-Pier, that’s some damning shit. She’s a Downtown politician and when even she complains about the way decades-long public trough suckers like Conroy and Cunnie do business, we could be in for a change.
It all depends upon what Saint Gavin does
Newsom is a gentleman. He doesn’t crack the whip like Willie Brown did over commissioners or other political appointees who might occasionally have a different slant on things. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Newsom ain’t Willie. He’s a lot closer to being like Bevan Dufty. Both have spent most of their lives sucking up to the power brokers from Sea Cliff to Pacific Heights. And now. Now, they have power of their own and they don’t always get down and kiss the bloated asses of the Chamber of Commerce or SFSOS or the Committee on Jobs or any of the other fronts paid for by the billionaires who put them where they are. Trust me on this one campers, no one is further left than me without being right and Newsom ain’t acting like the puppet we thought he’d be. The new guy from Chicago (Silvermann?), brought in to run the Juvenile Justice system is a good example. … There’s so much more.
Mirkarimi has part of brain removed
What the fuck’s next? How about a committee to look into abuses of free verse poetry? Maybe a grand jury investigation of nipples in art? … Yeah, I’m talking about new District 5 supervisor, Ross Mirkarimi’s call for an investigation into the City’s pot clubs. This, I’d expect from D7 supe, Sean Elsbernd who shook his head and smiled in wonder as Ross spoke.
Has he lost his mother-fucking mind? In a script that was probably written by a hack at the DEA in Washington, D.C. and passed through underlings on down to Mirkarimi, the sometimes puzzling and inscrutable new kid on the block called for more regulation of the American pot capitol’s 34 pot clubs. I mean, God DAMN!! Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying he realizes he’s acting as a John Ashcroft stalking horse. … That’s the problem.
Talk about unclear on the concept. Does he want to drive medicinal pot back into the Civic Center and Delores Park? Does he want us buying from people who’d just as soon cut our throats?
D-5 office targeted
I’m very curious as to Sheriff Michael Hennessey’s views on legal pot. I’d ask him but the prick has never answered any of my phone calls, so I think I’ll just guess. What I do know is that his deputies at City Hall have begun a crackdown on Ross Mirkarimi’s office.
Yesterday, deputies at the Polk street entry detained Mirkarimi office volunteer, Marc Salomon while they searched and researched his back pack. It was clearly a ruse just to give a lefty some shit. They left him standing and waiting while they did the wand thing over people who came in later. And, they made him wait. And wait. And wait. Later, when a group came to meet with D-5 legislative assistant, Cheryl Brodie, the deputies refused to allow them all into the building.
I shit you not. They called Ross’s office and proposed just allowing a half dozen of them into the building at a time. Can you believe this!?! When told the people had been invited for a conference, the deputies brought them up to the supervisor’s chambers and posted 2 guards at each door to watch the citizens. … Really. … Honest.
Does Hennessey know about this shit? I seem to recall him running on a pro-pot platform for the last 20 years or so. He’s one of the few elected officials whose integrity I’ve never questioned. Now, I’m wondering.
I know who tells them where to stand during Board meetings. Guy named Eric Steinberg. Last few times I went to meetings in person, he showed up with a deputy or 2 and brought them over to stand next to where I was sitting. … Weird shit. Out of the cops, I’d expect this kind of action. It surprised me from Sheriff’s deputies. Fucking Steinberg, literally brought them into the room, pointed me out, then led them over. He says he repairs camera lenses and he just wants to make sure that SFGTV has good shots.
He’s a lying sack of shit. His business card says: ‘Media Security Specialist’ and SFGTV denies hiring him but admits that he has “total access” to every part of their operation. Think Homeland Security in charge of City Hall’s access. All the recordings of all the protestors over all of the years. Targeting malcontents for an over-eager segment of the SFPD and Sheriff’s department. Then, sending all of the tapes back to Washington. It don’t look good.
I’ve warned the moderate anarchists who people the Mirkarimi base and they’re mostly in denial. I see big, big problems for them if Ross ever does actually live up to his campaign promise to continue the D-5 office’s City Hall monthly art openings. The deputies have been primed and trained to handle any influx of people headed for the D-5 office. All that’s prevented a clash to this point is the fact that aside from the few people who came for the meeting yesterday, there hasn’t been an occasion for the pigs to use their own new skills.
Incidentally
Wendy Chen, who is in charge of the parties that have yet to happen says she’ll be notifying you all that the gatherings will be on the 3rd Friday of each month instead of the first. All of you who are free-loaders of booze, art, poetry and food jot that down on your calendar. Also, expect a ration of shit from the deputies at the front door. The guy standing behind them with arms crossed (wire rim glasses, 35-40, lean, white, close-cropped U.S. Army haircut) … that’s Eric. Michael Hennessey takes his orders from him at City Hall now. You’ll have no trouble finding Ross’s office. It will be the one surrounded by Sheriff’s deputies.
Is there a point?
Yeah. Point is that Monday there is a hearing (hosted by Mirkarimi) at the Board to consider the SFPD pulling some 130 press credentials. It’s really about free speech and if you attend, you’ll be coming past all these newly empowered cretins. Anyone who doesn’t think that the actions of the cops and the deputies and the feds are related needs to get drunk and look again.
You talking to me?
