Odds and ends and odd ends

(Prominent Progs party)

(1-23-10)

I can never understand why journalists stay away from the ‘art parties’ that
Progressive politicians beginning with Matt Gonzalez have been throwing at City Hall
after work Fridays at least once a month for 10 years.

Is the free wine not good enough? Is it that those who are paid to write don’t
really give a shit about their subject and only go to events when they’re paid?
Afraid they’ll be attacked for past columns attacking the supes?

Those are bullshit reasons. Hell, I’ve written more negative things about every
single supervisor and the Mayor than all of the paid journalists in town put together
over the last decade and they’ve always been beyond civil with me.

To you editors who are paying clowns like Steven T. Jones to cover the local political
scene. Dip shits who choose to stand in a crowd of 50 reporters and news camera
crews during the week trying to shout out a question at a controlled press conference.
Who sit in the outer offices of these same supes all week waiting for a word or two
to pass up a chance to meet them on informal ground? Ok editors, here’s who I got
to talk to for free yesterday and get soused doing it :

Board President, David Chiu

No one’s hit this guy harder than I have since he first filed for public office and he
was totally hospitable. I talked a little Giants with him to let him know that I’m
not always in attack mode.

Budget and Finance Chair, John Avalos

I hit him on his attacks on Jeff Adachi and asked if he preferred to have the office of
Public Defender to be privatized bit by bit as the Mayor forces Adachi to outsource
cases. He totally held his shit together and said he in no way wanted the office
privatized and that he respected Adachi. I ranted about the constitution and the
right to an adequate defense and the like and we’ll see what happens next time Jeff
goes before Finance.

Rules Committee Chair, David Campos

He’s a real gem. I began as I always do with David. Attacking his vote for Dufty
as Transportation Authority head over Daly. Then I had a glass of wine with him and
looked at the entire calendar he had made (hanging prominently on his office wall as
you enter) … of his fab and stout little bulldog, Max. He talked about ‘Winston’
too but that might have been the good looking guy he made certain I met. We talked
Giants baseball cause we’re both rabid fans as it were. I encouraged him to take up
Bruce Brugmann’s call to potential Prog mayoral candidates to submit opinion pieces to
the Guardian.

Probable mayoral candidate, Ross Mirkarimi

Boy has he changed. A baby will do that to you. He’s about ten times as mellow as
he was before becoming a poppa. Did you know for instance that he’s only been to one
movie since his son was born and that without dinner or drinks or anything else that
just sitter and a movie ran $135? Fifty bucks an hour to see Avatar. He said it
was worth it and I encouraged him to take up Bruce Brugmann’s call to potential Prog
mayoral candidates to submit opinion pieces to the Guardian. We talked about
Gascon’s ‘Sit-Lie’ campaign at some length and I ain’t telling you more yet. Except
to say that if Gascon would order his Park Station captain to order the foot patrols
that Mirkarimi and a super-majority of the BOS and the citizens of SF voted for (a Ross
creation) … foot patrols would keep the goons under control. This one ain’t over
by a long shot folks.

Campers, that’s all 4 major movers of the Prog supes that I was able to interview
inside of 90 minutes. And, they were relaxed. They were the icing on the cake
but there were candidates too.

Jim Meko and Debra Walker from the D-6 race

Candidate Jane Kim’s surrogate (I guess), Sunny Angulo was there to push her
candidate too and I asked her and Meko and Walker if they’d join and participate in the
same kind of ‘Candidates Collaborative’ that we formed in the 2004 D-5 supe race (22
candidates ranging from Rob Anderson to Mirk and Robert Haaland and Julian Davis) and
the 2007 mayoral contest (12 candidates and only Quintin Mecke refused to join) …
asked em if they’d join and Walker hedged as did Angulo who said for me to ask Kim
directly. Meko will be a part of it.

Walker said that she’d definitely made up her mind to accept Chris Daly’s endorsement
were it to be offered. She’d hedged that one in conversations with the Weekly’s Joe
Eskenazi.

Rafael Mandelman, D-8 supe candidate

He doesn’t accept my read that he’s a shoo-in cause the Moderate candidates (Prozan and
Weiner) will hack each other to pieces. How IRV plays out in this one is key.
The Mods (and top Progs) hate IRV.

Eric Smith, D-10 supe candidate

It’s always a pleasure to talk to this very talented man. He does music reviews for
Beyond Chron and I never miss one. Whiz political prognosticator, Hope Johnson has
been introducing him around to far lefties like me for the past year or so. She was
there along with Karen Babbitt who swears there is still a chance to stop the Fisher
boys from paving over the Western end of Golden Gate park for their private soccer
fields. Hope so. Doubt it.

David Onek, Police Commissioner

Mike Farah, Head of Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Services

Daniel Holmsey, Former MONS chief and I think with Ed Lee now?

David Waggoner, Prog legal foil to corrupt Ethics Commission

And, candidate for Milk Club president. I asked him about Denise D’Anne’s candidacy
for same post and he said that he and she were thinking of running together as a
Co-Chair slate. What a great idea!

Julian Potter, lobbyist for Platinum Advisers

She was Gavin’s deputy chief of staff and key policy strategist and now works for
uber-fundraiser/lobbyist Darius Anderson. This lady keeps her finger on the pulse of
every tentacle of the octopus that is SF politics. I made certain to introduce her
to Waggoner and several others who need to know her and she them. That’s always my
favorite chore at these things. Introducing old friends and acquaintances to new.

Bonnie Ora Sherk, founder and director of ‘A Living Library’

This woman transcends politics. She’s a true SF icon. Give her a barren hillside
or a narrow median strip or (luck be with her) a vacant lot and she’ll have volunteers
working alongside her to create swaths of flowers and vegetable gardens toute de suite.

Terrie Frye and Anthony Faber (another past ‘best political mind’ winner), Otto Duffy
… just a few of the others available for subtle interviews. On every topic from
Bengie Molina vs Buster Posey to where the hell is Chris Daly when he could be here
“strategizing”. These parties are gold and thanks much to John Avalos and David
Campos for having this one.

I talked to every single person I’ve listed here and I had previously met every one of
them before at parties just like this one. Reporters who claim to want to develop
contacts and institutional knowledge and dodge events like this? Hey, I’m talking
to you Joe Eskenazi. Christ, you’re a real talent and work like a dog (your output
puts Redmond and Jones together to shame) … and I have no idea what you even look
like. One two hour party like this is worth more than a full 40 hour work week of
wandering the halls of da Dome from 9 to 5.

Bruzzone and Berg praise Taibbi

Arthur Bruzzone (SF video archive political maven) is a traditional fiscal conservative
Republican (like my dad was). Phil Berg (ran against Pelosi) is a top pundit and
strategist for the Libertarians. Arthur was the head of the local Republican party
at one time. My blind buddy Berg sees the American economic picture from the
founding of the nation to the present better than almost any sighted person I know.
Y’all catch Arthur’s columns which he posts and are archived at the SF Examiner at
least weekly. When I praised the Rolling Stones’ Matt Taibbi Arthur pointed out
that he’d referred me to Taibbi’s work months ago. How embarrassing. Oh well.

Here’s Berg’s read on Taibbi:

It’s Bout time H.

Matt is terrific.

I just wish that he would study just a bit more to understand that the
three legs of the capitalist financial system need to be cut off and
put in the wood chipper. They are legal tender laws, bank charters,
and the Federal Reserve. The three things force people to take the
banking monopoly’s paper as the only thing that they can use as money.
This gives the power to enslave us with debt to them, because all our
money comes from the debt created with each new loan. The bankers
don’t even know this intellectually, but they know it in their gut. So
long as they can make money out of thin air they will rule.

President Jackson was the last one to get this. He abolished the
second bank of the US and paid off all the debt, so the taxpayers were
no longer enslaved to the rich bondholders. Boy did he get it

It’s a mystery whether Lincoln sold out or was forced by
circumstances to accede to the bankers when he allowed the bankers
to issue greenbacks backed by Lincoln’s guns, it was the end of free
market money in the US and the beginning of the Crony Capitalism. JP
Morgan was the corporate child of Salmon Chase, and remains the
de facto central bank of the US, with it’s appendage The Federal
Reserve, established in 1913.

It is great to see the left coming around to the libertarian view on
money. Unfortunately, if the left doesn’t change, they will give the
money power directly to Congress, and the biggies will still rule,
through the puppets in Congress. But maybe the left is waking up to
that too. Then we can all be libertarians together, lefty libertarians.