Bulldog 2007 Article 107

(7-12-07)

Gavin Newsom is sounding more and more like George W. Bush.       While Bush’s hard-wired mantra for every problem is:   “What we need is more tax cuts for the rich!�, Newsom’s has become:   “What we need is HOPE SF!�.

Face it, HOPE SF, like the federal government’s HOPE VI, is designed to move the poor (mostly black) from valuable land within the City limits of San Francisco.       Hey, maybe he’s right.       Maybe getting rid of the poor will reduce crime.      It makes sense.      Then, if he can figure out how to keep the displaced thugs from BART’ing back into the City, he might just be onto something.

Fact is, moving the poor doesn’t solve the ever-increasing problem of income inequality.      Only taxing the rich can do that.      Let’s hear Gavin start yelling:   “The answer is to tax the rich so that we’ll have the funds to house, educate and re-habilitate our underclass!�.       Fat chance.

Nathan Ballard cuts out the Middle-Man

That would be the Mayor.      The guy getting cut out of the conversation, I mean.       You catch the exchanges the other day when the press asked Newsom if he favored over-turning the Copley decision (protects cops from Sunshine – aptly named, huh?)?

Virtually every elected official in the City supported the repeal of Copley through legislation stuck in Fiona Ma’s Public Safety Committee in the state legislature.      But, not Gavin.      He hemmed and hawed and talked about not having a position on the matter.

His spokesman had no such problem.        With a cold clarity and emotionless delivery that forever eluded  his predecessor (Peter Ragone), Nathan Ballard explained at some length why it was important to support the massive law enforcement move to kill the legislation.       What he was delivering in sub-text was that Gavin needs the support of law enforcement at the local, state and federal level if he’s to continue his rise.       Oh, and screw the people getting their heads bashed in by cops on roid rage.

Peskin trades Manhattan for beads

The average speed of internet service in Tokyo, Amsterdam and any of a number of other international business centers is 30 times faster than the hook-ups planned for the City’s proposed Earth-Link service.       That’s because they have total fiber-optic hook-ups throughout their municipalities.

That’s 30 times faster, after you add in the Peskin ‘compromise’.     Again, Peskin plays bitch for giant corporations to the detriment of the City and its citizens.        Fiber-optic hooks are the basic building block of any modern business community and Peskin opposes spending the half billion it will take to achieve such a network in San Francisco.

However, he has no problem with spending 3 times that much on a boondoggle subway to Chinatown.      Oh yeah.      He wants to spend a billion and a half dollars on that one and it will end up costing double that (the approved plans to date don’t even include a ventilation system for tunnels that will run under BART.      It’s insanity but that’s Peskin politics.

New York Times likes Chinatown subway

I thought Evelyn Nieves (Ross Mirkarimi’s ‘paramour’ – that means ‘lover of an important man’) was SF Bureau Chief for the NY Times?      Where were you on this one, Evelyn?      Did you see the article in the Times this morning mocking the SF left?      Their sources were the likes of Newsom in-house pollster (accuracy guaranteed to be + or – 100%), David Binder.

Oh, they interviewed Eric Jaye too.       And Chicken John told them that he didn’t think Newsom was a bad mayor but was running against him just so that someone would.

They didn’t interview me and they won’t.      They didn’t interview Dr. Ahimsa Porter-Sumchai and they won’t.      They don’t want to hear about the increased murder rate, police brutality, or the waves of asbestos dust Lennar blankets the BayView with.      They’d rather mock the defenders of the poor.      That makes it easier to marginalize and ignore the suffering.

Did Peskin take bribes for CEQA work?

When Board prez, Aaron Peskin took office in 2000 he kept his little CEQA business going on the side.       He’s a specialist in water rights or something like that.       He needed to because Matt Gonzalez had yet to present and pass his charter amendment giving the supes a living wage.       Nobody accused Aaron of having a conflict-of-interest.     I don’t know if he still has that business, but if he does, he’s open to a charge that any fees he takes are bribes.

He’d call them legitimate payment for services rendered.      However, when Ed Jew does the same thing, it’s a bribe.      That is simply a steaming heap.      It is racist.     It is hypocritical.     Virtually every member of the Board takes bribes daily in the form of $500 checks which they describe as ‘campaign contributions’.

The Mayor has taken millions of dollars in cash and property and other favors from the likes of Walter Shorenstein.       Last year when Shorenstein didn’t like the final version of a piece of legislation designed to hold down auto traffic in downtown SF, Newsom overruled his Planning Director (Matt Franklin, Newsom’s Housing chief actually forged a letter purported to be from the Planning Chief – Dean Makris) his Planning Commission (he appoints majority), the Planning staff and, the Board of supes  …  Newsom was led around by Shorenstein fixer, Robert McCarthy while they erased and whited-out and did whatever until Walter had what he wanted.       These actions, I will contend, were return payment for the millions Shorenstein and others like him have showered upon the Mayor.       There is no difference, I am saying, in accepting a minority ownership in a string of restaurants for your favors and work, then taking a stack of sequenced bills for same.

But, the Mayor isn’t Chinese!

Had he been, he’d have accepted much of that largesse in cash.      That’s the way Chinese do business.      I’m gonna bet here that Gavin Newsom’s attacks upon Supervisor Ed Jew are going to backfire on him in the same manner his attacks upon Officer Andrew Cohen rebounded upon him.       In the same manner his promise to “sign for my own Re-Call� if the murder rate goes up has slammed back into his incompetent face.

A few years back, one of the local dailies’ political gossip columnist related a hilarious story.       It seems that Willie Brown was sitting in a restaurant having a meal with friends when a man walked in and put a bag on their table.

Willie looked into the bag, let out a big whoop and a laugh and poured the contents out.       Why, goodness gracious me, it was full of cash money.       Willie explained that it was for “legal work�.

Now, the columnist didn’t say if Willie checked the cash to see if the serial numbers were sequenced.       He didn’t have to.      Wouldn’t have mattered if they were.      Willie was accepting money for work he had done, was doing, or would do.      That’s called business.

Ed Jew has done no more.      Much less, actually.      When it comes to milking your political stature, no one surpasses our Mayor.     He and his team have made a big boo-boo on this one.      Ed Jew has violated no law.       This is simply a smear campaign engineered by Downtown in an effort to take back through subterfuge what they couldn’t win fairly at the polls.      And, it is going to cost them Chinese-American votes come November.

No one beats the Mayor at tripping over his own various appendages.      As the pieces of the case against Jew have fallen apart, Team Newsom comes up with lines such as the one Gavin announced yesterday:

“I didn’t really mean where Ed lives was most important.
I meant to say that the accusations of bribery are foremost.�

(that’s paraphrase from written notes)

When a horrified Eric Jaye saw the residency case against Jew disappear like an airplane in the Bermuda Triangle, the “challenge to our democracy by carpet-bagging officials�  (another paraphrase – sorry, but trust me, these are spot-on)  …  Jew’s residency wasn’t so important after all.

No, what the Mayor suddenly realized he meant to say was that it was Supervisor Jew’s business practices that troubled him the most.      My, my, my.

At least Jew got his start and his property from his own family.      At least the various properties he and his family shift about belong to them and not to some greedy gang of billionaires.

Newsom is a hypocrite and he knows it.       All that Jew had to do to make both of these cases go away was to:

1.    Prove residency at 2450 28th Avenue

He’s done that.      His driver’s license lists that address.     He’s on the deed to the friggin’ place.      He stays there lots more often than Al Gore stays in his local digs.     Or Feinstein.      Or, Pelosi.      Or, Migden.     Or, Pier?

2.    Declare any payment for services such as the Quigley money within 30 days of receiving it.

He’s done that.

Ed Jew is innocent of all charges.       You don’t have to like the man’s politics to help him if you see him being gang-raped by a bunch of thugs.       I don’t like Ed Jew’s politics.      I like the Downtown machine’s less.       At least they didn’t call him a nazi who hates Jews.     Believe me, if they could have fit that one in, they would have.

Jake  …  back away from the stables slowly.

Jake McGoldrick is being taken for a ride on the issue of the public stables in Golden Gate Park (punny things happen when you write while stoned).       He is supporting the near-future privatization of the public’s 100 year-old  horse houses and he don’t know it.

Google the gang of Swells who call themselves the ‘Park Trust’ or ‘Friends of the Parks’ or whatever and you’ll see the plans for the stables and they do not include the likes of you unless you are a millionaire with a fancy horse.

The first item for construction is, as always with these people, a place for them to party hearty.       We don’t need another clubhouse for the wealthy.       For God’s sake, when is enough, enough for them (that would be ‘never’)?

There was nothing the matter with the stables when they were closed.       The things were built by the WPA and they were built more powerfully than any stables I’ve seen on Earth.      Reinforced concrete walls with thousand-year tile roofs?     C’mon, they didn’t need closed.

They were closed (I saw the hearings on sfgtv – one woman whose horse had been living in them for most of its life, said she’d kill her horse on the stairs of City Hall if he wre evicted)  …  they were closed in order to get the horses belonging to the poor people out of them.       It is simply that simple.      They figured they’d wait a few years and come back with a plan that would reserve the stables for the wealthy.     Which they’ve done.      And, sadly, Jake McGoldrick is shilling for them.

The Board President doesn’t like to listen to anyone who’s not what he calls: “a Playah!�.       That, particularly includes the people who come to City Hall to protest and plea at Public Comment.

It is a rare item before any committee of the Board these days in which the public is allowed the full 3 minutes of times they may be allotted to speak.       This is because Peskin sets the tone and his tone is to cut them off at the knees.

It’s sad when the person is mentally impaired.      Watching Peskin attack poor Sylvia Johnson yesterday at Budget was pathetic.     For a man who has himself been ridiculed unfairly for things over which he has no control, this guy can be a real prick to the less fortunate.

It’s clear Aaron has decided he’s going to tame or get rid of the public comments of the totally non-linear (yet, related) observations of one, Sylvia Johnson, Board fixture at virtually all Public Comment.

I shouldn’t have been surprised when Peskin interrupted Johnson continuously.      Hell, I go there to speak only a couple of times a year and he interrupted me.       What I thought was interesting was when Aaron challenged the already amply challenged lady to explain why she talked funny, as it were.

Every time she came up to talk, he asked her if she knew what the subject was and if what she said had anything to do with it.      Every time, she said ‘yes’ and continued.

Every time, he interrupted her over and over again and hassled the poor lady.      Finally, she pulled her thoughts together enough to explain to the prick why she talked differently.      I swear, this is what she said and the sympathetic house was quiet as a morgue:

Peskin didn’t understand.      He only understands money and power and has no sympathy for the poor and afflicted.      But, wait!     I know how Sylvia can get him to listen.       She can go to his office and give him $500.       Hopefully, it will be in sequenced bills.

At the initial meeting of the D-5 Candidates Collaborative, I suggested that all 22 candidates sign-on to push cop foot patrols.      Only Ross Mirkarimi demurred.      Now, he’s leading the charge.

Salon tomorrow 1-3pm

Go figure: