Watching City Hall #385 (7-25-05)

"My snail mail is opened.
My email is read.

My phone is recorded.
And, my TV watches me.

...

And, I'm down to stems and seeds againnn toooo."

(Bulldog serenade to Comcast)

I really like Aaron Peskin. The lousy poem above is for him. And, it's about living in an America where George Bush had a presidency handed to him through fixed courts and registrars and voting machines. Twice! (You gotta admire that.)

All I want, is to be able to watch in the mirror while my local, state and federal governments take turns fucking me. I mean, is that too much to ask?

Crude, ... yes. False? Not at all. I want to be able to watch my local, state and federal governments meet and discuss the issues of the day, region and hemisphere ... for free.

There outta be a law that says that I can. That's my own personal input into the debate on the new Comcast contract. Peskin won't tell me if he asked them to put that provision (free viewing of your government) into the new Comcast contract that the Board of Supervisors will get to see in closed session tomorrow.

You won't get to see it. Neither will I. That's because Dennis Herrera and Gavin Newsom made a deal to make certain that you have to PAY to watch recorded sessions of your government. Pay to watch sessions filmed at your personal expense. You have to pay some cable franchise to watch Peskin and his Board get overwhelmed by Downtown week after week and that ain't right. I have a right to watch my elected officials get their asses handed to them.

flash!

Peskin will schedule Rules hearing on Comcast Contract

Just off the phone to Board President, Aaron Peskin (9:20am tuesday, 3 hrs 40 minutes before full Board meeting to consider Comcast contract in closed session) ... I'd called Peskin and Matt Gonzalez over the weekend from a riverbank in northern California and asked how we could allow the public a chance to speak on the matter. ... Then, Rachel & I turned off the phones for 48 hours.

I talk to lots of people who front organizations for lots more people. All the time. The Comcast contract is a major concern to many of them and their major concern with the way this new contract has gone down has been the absence of public input.

The fault here lies with Gavin Newsom and Dennis Herrera. And, of course, Comcast which mocked the public process (I went to a scheduled meeting in the Tenderloin and the guard in front told me there wasn't one - Michael Nulty later told me that it happend, but that you had to enter through a back door off a side parking lot and it was held in a pre-school classroom and those in attendance were forced to sit on tiny childrens' chairs - I mean, shit, man!) ...

After less than half the promised, useless, hidden, poorly scheduled and sparsely attended meetings had been held, Comcast announced they'd bribed the Mayor and the City Attorney with promises of more personal free coverage ... OK, they didn't announce that, but you can bet your sweet ass that's what happened. Then Herrera announced that he and Gavin had made a deal with Comcast but that how they'd reached it without public input was a secret thing and that they'd only tell it to the Board of Supes in a private and secret way after the public was removed from the Board chambers.

Folks, democracy requires public participation and public participation requires public access. Denying the public input into consideration of access to every televised public meeting is a travesty and Gavin Newsom and Dennis Herrera need to start practicing their mea culpas. The government is not a peep show that we pay to watch. What's next, charging admission to Board meetings? Peskin, on the other hand is off the hook with me. Because.

Because he promised to announce before the Board (maybe he'll do it at Rules in less than an hour) that he will be allowing the public to present their own views on the matter of Comcast and their contract before the Rules Committee and that the Board will NOT sign off on the contract without hearing from the public on television at a properly noticed meeting. That means that you don't have to try and get a final comment on the contract in at Public Comment before the Board today. We will have our day. Amen. And, another thing about Peskin.

A reader forwarded this observation:

"I caught Aaron Peskin doing a celebrity swim
at the opening of the North Beach pool.
He was wearing Speedo's and let me tell you,
there is no shame in his game."

(thanks to Anne Kaplan of Street Sheet)

Don't dwell on that.