Watching City Hall #387 (8-9-05)

"If you can't get them to fight the most unpopular corp. in the country, you're fucked!"

(Rachel reads my notes on 'Free 26 or Fight!!')

She's right, you know. Word is that the discussion of the new Comcast contract will be continued by the full Board of Supervisors for another week at their regular meeting today. Ammiano will be absent and Peskin wants to have everyone there for the vote. This is definitely the issue of the year and those rare politicians with higher ambitions and common sense are starting to realize this.

My little mission

Like all good Americans, I hate Comcast Cable with every fiber of my body. But I absolutely love knowing more about the happenings in local government than almost anyone in the City. For this, you gotta watch everything they do twice. You can't do that in person. It took me 2 months and over 50 phone calls to get SFGTV in my SRO after I rejected a bait and switch they tried on me and asked for simply the most basic service. They told me for weeks that they had "upgraded" the government channel into a package that costs $45 a month. Basic costs $17. After complaints to DTIS and all over Comcast, they finally gave me SFGTV for $23. What really pisses me off about the bill is that I don't want their service (leave it alone). All I want (and must have) is free access to the TV coverage of the Board of Supervisors, their committees, related agencies ... all that is presently sold by Comcast as local cable channel #26. ... While other anti-Comc ast activists are asking for more money from the beast for their own pet projects, I want the City to free us completely from them. The first step is freeing our own government station. I approached Matt Gonzalez about the possibility of suing the City and Comcast on this basis and he wants to meet to talk about it. ... Taking on the Newsom machine and Comcast at once is a job for a serious, serious lawyer.

Yeah. It's privatization. The City pays to film the meetings. The City officials get no money from Comcast for their appearance on the various shows. The City (SFGTV - San Francisco Government Television) then takes this finished product and gives it free to Comcast Corporation to sell back to the people who paid to make it in the first place.

Now, like all other good Americans, you're probably asking the same question right now, i.e. "Who gives a shit!?!" ... That's a good question. Answer is, thousands of people who refuse to patronize Comcast, have no computer and want to watch their government at work, unfiltered by the corporate censorship of the Hearst Corporation or a fundamentalist evangelical billionaire (that takes care of the Chron & the Ex) ... they can't see the government they pay in meetings filmed by their own Department of Telecommunications. Comcast has effectively privatized the broadcast of City government and the Mayor is at fault.

Newsom bought by Comcast

I believe the price was $30,000. That's what they gave him in his race for mayor against Matt Gonzalez. Plus, a million or more in free advertising. Presently, Newsom gets more flattering face time than Willie ever got. He's paying them back by trying to ram a sham contract negotiated with no public input in closed meetings through the Board of Supervisors today before the opposition has a chance to react. I think Peskin is going to stop him. ... While I'm talking about Peskin ...

I owe Dennis Herrera & Aaron Peskin apologies for accusing them of being complicit in the matter of this contract. Sources close to the negotiations tell me that the entire thing was driven by the Mayor's office. The City Attorney's only responsibility in the matter was to give the City a legal and enforceable contract, not to insure that it's fair. That's up to the Mayor. It hasn't been up to Aaron Peskin to insure that there was adequate public input into the process. That was up to the Mayor. Well, the Mayor sold out on both matters to the corporation voted worst in the U.S. by consumers. It almost worked as planned, but a few gadflys caught word of it and yelled to their district supes who listened. Mirkarimi spoke passionately against deciding the matter behind closed doors and urged the Board to send it to a committee for hearings which they did.

Indeed, Peskin called a hearing before the Board's Rules committee last week which provided the only credible forum thus far at which the public was allowed to be heard. The Mayor didn't want this. The Mayor pushed for a decision by the Board in a closed session with the City Attorney. Mirkarimi and Peskin blocked him and at least have gotten (so far) one hearing. Though I seldom speak at these things (I'm happy thus far with my own little soapbox - and, they don't let you drink whiskey and smoke pot in chambers) ... but, I spoke at this hearing. I called for the matter of the contract to be continued in committee while all public stakeholders are heard and the entire fucking contract is rewritten. I predicted that the committee would vote 2-1 to send the matter to the full Board for approval with Pier & Peskin voting in favor and Mirkarimi against. I was wrong. Peskin didn't vote in favor of the agreement. However, he didn't vote against it eit her.

What happened was that even Mirkarimi didn't make a motion for the matter to be continued. The 5th District's rising star could have scored serious points with around 150,000 people if he'd made a motion to reject the contract outright and call for new negotiations that include the public. Indeed, he let Peskin off the hook by voting with Pier and Peskin to pass the matter to the full Board without recommendation. Of course, in the Chronicle the following morning, lying editor, John Diaz wrote a headline over the piece on the hearing indicating that the Rules committee had approved the contract. That was a simple lie. A favor from one avaracious billion dollar corporation to another. Jeez, the Chronicle is a piece of shit.

Well, I gotta get this thing in the mail. It's almost 11am and the Board meets at 2pm. With any luck I can get this out to my blast list before lunch, go over to Jens' place and get further ripped and be back to watch what happens by 2pm. You owe me for following this issue so closely campers. Comcast has a grip on the broadcast of local government television all over the U.S.. If we can get Gonzalez into the ring against them and he frees SFGTV, we could have free access to the deliberations of local government all over the country in no time. If that happens, you owe me a beer.

A person of interest