Who'll be mayor when Gavin's gone?

Regarding the selection of the next mayor of San Francisco, Chris Daly told KPFA Weekend News, on Sunday, 11.14, that "what we don't want to see is San Francisco's downtown interests to continue their rule in San Francisco."  

I'd like to see an end to downtown's rule myself, but I'd also like to see an end to South Florida's rule, i.e., that of the South Florida based, multinational Lennar Corporation, with the collaboration of San Francisco's ruling class and their national electeds, whose financial empires, profit thereby. 

The Board meets at San Francisco City Hall tomorrow.   Starting at 4:00 P.M., it will consider items 45 and 46:

45.  Board of Supervisors Sitting as a Committee of the Whole (Pursuant to approval of Item No. 55, File No. 101404)
[Public Hearing - Appointing a Successor Mayor]  Sponsors: Avalos; Campos and Daly  


Hearing to consider the motion to take nominations and appoint a successor Mayor in the event of a vacancy in the Office of the Mayor. 
Question: Shall this Hearing be HEARD AT PUBLIC HEARING?   (YES.)


46.  Committee of the Whole Adjourn and Report
[Appointing a Successor Mayor]  Sponsors: Avalos; Campos and Daly  Motion to take nominations and appoint a successor Mayor in the event of a vacancy in the Office of the Mayor. 
Question: Shall this Motion be APPROVED?  (YES.)

As Chris Daly pointed out, in this KPFA News, "It's unclear right now . . . where the votes are."   I.e., members of the current Board, who'll get to vote, are talking to one another, and those who don't get to vote, but have access to those who do, are no doubt talking to them too.   


Supervisors are likely to vote as they think those who helped to elect them, and may help to elect them again, want them to vote.   

Be there or be colonized.   --Ann Garrison

KPFA Weekend News transcript re San Francisco's mayoral succession:

KPFA/Anthony Fest:
Turning now to Bay Area News, earlier this week Oakland City Council member Jean Quan was declared the winner of the Oakland mayor's race.  She'll become the first woman and the first Asian American to be elected Mayor of Oakland.

San Francisco will soon have a new mayor, although the office was not on this month's ballot, but incumbent Mayor Gavin Newsom won the race for Lieutenant Governor, and will resign as mayor once he's sworn into the statewide office.   Newsom's impending resignation has touched off widespread media speculation about who the next mayor will be.  It's the cover story of this week's Bay Guardian and also has been heavily covered by San Francisco Chronicle political columnists.  If the Board of Supervisors takes no action, Board Chair David Chiu will become Acting Mayor.  However, by majority vote, the Board could choose an interim mayor to serve out the remaining year of Newsom's term.

Current State Assembly Member and former mayoral candidate Tom Ammiano is considered the only prospect who could win a majority vote of the Supervisors, but Ammiano has said he wants to stay in his present job.

The Board will begin discussion of the issue at its meeting this coming Tuesday.  Supervisor Chris Daly told KPFA he hopes the City will finally get a mayor from the progressive wing of San Francisco politics, and he says he also thinks it important that the choice take place as a public debate.

San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly: 
Hopefully we'll see dozens if not hundreds of folks who care about San Francisco, who care about progressive politics and what is to become of the Mayor's office in San Francisco, say that 'Hey, we do need a very public process, that the discussion needs to happen with full sunshine, sooner rather than later.  And that what we don't want to see is downtown interests to continue their rule in San Francisco.'

KPFA/Anthony Fest:
So do you anticipate taking up nominations on     Tuesday?

Supervisor Chris Daly:
It's unclear right now, y'know, where the votes are.  I think that it's safe to say that there isn't any individual name at the moment who is likely to emerge at the moment, with the appointment, as successor mayor on Tuesday.  But that may be a good thing.

Hopefully we can have a more robust discussion on Tuesday, and maybe that can continue, but, at a certain point, it would be nice if the next Mayor of San Francisco had at least a few weeks,

KPFA/Anthony Fest:
San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly; his essay about the mayor succession can be read at FogCityJournal.com, http://goo.gl/NCZEe.

The Board of Supervisors will meet this coming Tuesday at City Hall.  The regular meeting begins at 2:00 P.M. and the mayoral succession issue will be addressed at 4:00 o'clock.

Harvey Milk Day or Milktoast Milk Day?

Graphic, Queerty

I was glad to see California celebrate the first Harvey Milk State holiday on Saturday, May 22, but, by the end of the day, I felt like I'd been through the first Milktoast Milk Day--not a day honoring the revolutionary Harvey, who as he himself said, was far more than a gay politician:

"I understand very well that my election was not alone a question of my gayness but a question of what I represent. In a very real sense, Harvey Milk represented the spirit of the neighborhoods of San Francisco. For the past few years, my fight to make the voice of the neighborhoods of this city be heard was not unlike the fight to make the voice of the cities themselves be heard." --Harvey Milk, San Diego, The Hope Speech, 1978

Pirate Cat Radio's League of Pissed Off Voters' broadcast, often my favorite radio hour of the week,  appropriately featured District #8 candidate Rafael Mandelman, who, of the candidates running for Harvey Milk's seat, would no doubt be Harvey Milk's choice over Scott Wiener, and Dan Nicoletta, one time employee of Harvey's at Castro Camera and acclaimed photographer of Harvey, with fond memories, but they didn't share any of Harvey's own words.

Then KPFA's Saturday Evening News segment featured Mark Leno, an Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club Dem, not a Harvey Milk Democratic Club Dem:  

               Click to play KPFA Radio News on the first State Harvey Milk Day Holiday

Leno has, endorsed the Alice Club's candidate, Scott Wiener, rather than the Milk Club's candidate Rafael Mandelman.

KPFA News reporter Cameron Jones isn't gay, and doesn't live in San Francisco, so he probably doesn't know the difference between Alice Democrats and Milk Democrats, or realize that Leno is an Alicecrat.   And, since the legislation making May 22nd Milk Day was Leno's legislation, Leno's account of how he got Governor Schwarzenegger to sign the bill, after the movie "Milk" became a box office hit, was indeed news.   

However, despite being an openly gay politician benefiting from the ground Harvey Milk laid, Leno is hardly a bearer of Harvey's legacy, having joined his D8 candidate, Wiener, and Senator Dianne Feinstein and State Assemblywoman Fiona Ma in opposing a D.C.C.C. resolution calling on Nancy Pelosi to co-sponsor  H.R. 2404 requiring the Secretary of Defense to submit to Congress a report outlining the government’s military exit strategy of US forces participating in Operation Enduring Freedom, a.k.a., the War in Afghanistan.   Harvey Milk marched against the Vietnam War, and said, at the 1978 Gay Freedom Day Parade:

"What standards? The standards of the rapists? The wife beaters? The child abusers? The people who ordered the bomb to be built? The people who ordered it to be dropped?  The people who pulled the trigger?  The people who gave us Vietnam?  The people who built the gas chambers?  The people who built the concentration camps, right here in California and then herded all the Japanese-Americans into them during World War II.   The Jew baiters?  The nigger knockers?  The corporate thieves?  The Nixons?  The Hitlers?  

What standards do you want us to set?  Clean up your violence before you criticize lesbians and gay men for their sexuality.  It is madness to glorify killing and violence on one hand and condemn the sexual act . . . " 

Leno has also been a devoted advocate for the South Florida-based Lennar Corporation, an industrial homebuilder and predatory lender whose reckless building and lending has in recent years both built and destroyed communities whole all over California and thus played a major role in ravaging both City and State budgets.

Harvey Milk instead stood for neighborhoods and community:

"The American Dream starts with neighborhoods. To sit on the front stoops--whether it's a veranda in a small town or a concrete stoop in a big city--is infinitely more important than to huddle on the living room lounger and watch a make-believe world in not-quite living color. . ." --Harvey Milk, City of Neighborhoods Speech, 1978

More vintage Milk:

"I don't think the American Dream necessarily includes two cars in every garage and a disposal in every kitchen. What it does need is an educational system with incentives. To spend twelve years at school---almost a fifth of your life---without a job at the other end is meaningless." --Harvey Milk, City of Neighborhoods speech, 1978

". . . I'm tired of the conspiracy of silence. I'm tired of listening to the Anita Bryants twist the language and the meaning of the Bible to fit their own distorted outlook, but I'm even more tired of the silence from the religious leaders of this nation who know that she is playing fast and loose with the true meaning of the Bible. I'm tired of their silence more than of her Biblical gymnastics." --Harvey Milk, That's What America Is Speech, Gay Freedom Day Parade, 1978

"The Blacks did not win their rights by sitting quietly in the back of the bus. They got off! Gay people, we will not win our rights by staying quietly in our closets. . . We are coming out! We are coming out to fight the lies, the myths, the distortions! We are coming out to tell the truth about gays!" --Harvey Milk, Gay Freedom Day Parade, June 25, 1978

All quotations can be found in the Appendices of Randy Schilt's biography of Harvey Milk, The Mayor of Castro Street, online in the Google Books version, and a record of Harvey in his voice ad his own words and voice, in the "Hope Speech," on the Youtube, which Milk Club President and District #8 candidate Rafael Mandelman posted to his Facebook page this weekend:

Hulu has made the full length doc, The Life and Times of Harvey Milk, available online. Great film, though still not quite equal to the best of Harvey in his own words:

KPFA Radio News: Keith Harmon Snow on Rwandan Police in Haiti

Keith Harmon Snow, independent journalist and human rights investigator, photographed here in D.R. Congo.

On 03.13.2010, I reported for KPFA Radio about Rwandan police undertaking special training to serve as "peacekeepers" in Haiti, which I had reported on Colored Opinions and the San Francisco Bay View, National Black Newspaper, in "Just what Haiti doesn't need: Rwandan police," http://bit.ly/9kJjp7   For KPFA, I recorded Keith Harmon Snow's response:

KPFA Radio News, 03.13.2010: 
Rwandan Police in Haiti, http://bit.ly/a4pYqa


This seems to have struck a nerve, making Rwandan reality more real to people in this hemisphere, even way out here on the Pacific Coast.  Progressives are very conscious of Haiti in the San Francisco Bay Area, and of Palestine, largely because these are the two hot spots that the popular KPFA Flashpoints Investigative Radio show focuses on most faithfully.

Consciously or not, we consume the resources of the Great Lakes region every day, including Starbuck's coffee and tea from Rwanda, and coltan and cassiterite from eastern Congo, smuggled across the border for export from Rwanda, for all the electronic gadgetry designed and manufactured in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Apple Computer, Hewlett Packard, and Google headquarters are all roughly an hour away from the City of San Francisco, in Silicon Valley, as are many military industrial contractors, who rely on cobalt ore mined in the Katanga Copper Belt running through southeastern D.R. Congo into Zambia.



 

Contemporary colloquial use of the word "fuck"

 

San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly promised to say "Fuck!" in every Board of Supervisors' meeting until he terms out in 2010. 

My hometown San Francisco's bad boy politician Supervisor Chris Daly, local champion of tenants' rights and other peoples' politics, recently got into a scrap with Supervisor David Chiu, President of the City and County Board of Supervisors, over the use of the word "fuck" in the Board of Supervisors Chambers.  Afterwards Chiu reportedly dropped a bar of soap off at Daly's office, suggesting he wash his mouth.  Chiu reportedly has a foot long rod up his ass.

Supervisor Daly responded, in his Facebook status, by swearing to say "Fuck!" in every Supervisors' meeting till he terms out of office this year, which won him a lot of press, and a deluge of wildly enthusiastic Facebook friend requests.

He responded to critics, including San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, in "Profanity vs. the Truly Profane," in San Francisco's Fog City Journal.  Local politico Marc Salomon, who ran against Daly two terms ago, posted this video to Daly's Facebook page, as an example we might all aspire to, further demonstrating that the sexual definition of "fuck," especially in the expression "Fuck!" is now secondary to the word's primary colloquial meaning as an expression of outrage, disgust, and sociopolitical, cultural, environmental, and/or gender opposition:

Et tu, San Francisco, and California?

Budget strapped San Francisco, and California, bail out Lennar, an ailing subprime lender

At the close of 2008, and throughout 2009, we watched the federal government reward the reckless multinational financial sector with trillions of dollars for causing the worst hardship since the Great Depression.

San Franciscans and Californians joined in the agony but few understood that both San Francisco and California have come up with their own bailout for one of the major players in the meltdown, the South Florida based Lennar Corporation, thanks to Proposition G, followed by State Senator Mark Leno's Senate Bill 792, which legalizes the transfer of 23 acres of pristine waterfront parkland to Lennar.

Lennar is not just a big industrial homebuilder; Lennar is also a big mortgage lender.  Like D.R. Horton, Pulte, and all the rest of the big builders, Lennar has its own mortgage lending subsidiary, Universal American Mortgage Company (UAMC), which makes loans to sell its own properties.

UAMC's top competitors, according to Hoover's, are Bank of America, D.R. Horton's DHI Mortgage, and Pulte Homes' Pulte Mortgage.

During the years leading up to the subprime loan meltdown, home builder mortgage operations plied customers with incentives far beyond the common 1% for one month teaser rate.   On 10.13.06, Marketwatch reported, in "Home builders up ante to lure buyers," that:

"The NAHB found 55% of companies were offering home-option items such as granite countertops and landscaping at no charge, up from 37% the prior year. About 43% were offering to pay the closing costs on the buyer's previous home. . . "

Forty-four percent of builders were reducing home prices, 4% were including a new car with the home, and 5% were offering a free holiday trip."
 
Marketwatch also quoted Lennar CEO Stuart Miller on the increasing use of incentives and price cuts, and Lennar's need to keep cash flowing, at whatever cost, even in October 2006.
Why?  Because Lennar had overbuilt, way beyond new housing demand, and had to keep overlending to keep moving it.

Less than a year later, in "House of Cards," published in Builder Online, 08.07, John Caulfield described the pressure Lennar had put not only on borrowers, but also on UAMC managers:

Another source, who worked 2 ½ years as a manager for one of Lennar's UAMC offices in Nevada before she was laid off in October 2006, says the pressure to approve buyers for loans was “overwhelming.”  That pressure came directly from Lennar's divisional president, "who told us the relationship between the builder and the mortgage company was ‘master and slave.'”   When this source says she got tougher about qualifying buyers, Lennar removed several communities from her loan office's territory. When asked why Lennar would sanction its mortgage subsidiary to approve loans for buyers it knew would not be able to pay them, this source replies, “Lennar wasn't thinking long term; it's a publicly traded company that's judged on how many homes it closes.”

Never mind how many UAMC mortgages were bound to go bad.

Never mind that the prices of Lennar properties, even after deep discounts, were artifically inflated by UAMC's approval of buyers for more than they'd be able to pay.

Never mind that financially unsophisticated borrowers would eventually drain any and all resources that they and their families could earn or liquidate to keep up with negative amortization payments, adjustable rates, and/or balloon payments.

Never mind that these borrowers would be left trying to talk to distant "loan servicing" bureaucrats, who would have no memory or concern for the borrowers, or the negotiations that had led to the loans.

Never mind that the loan servicers would demand payment and/or threaten foreclosure, but refuse to reveal the names of the new "lenders," those who had bought their mortgages from UAMC on the secondary mortgage market, even though they, the new lenders, were the only ones who could have agreed to renegotiate loans.




Investment banks, the master subprime puppeteers

Much has been written and said about the Machiavellian machinations of investment banks like Deutschebank, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs, who bought megamillion dollar bundles of loans from Lennar's UAMC and all the other reckless builders and mortgage lenders, then turned them into securities that could be bought and sold speculatively, insured themselves against losses they well knew were coming, and sold "pass through certificates," a.k.a., income strips, on securities that they themselves were selling short.

Pension funds and municipalities that bought income strips no longer producing income are still scrambling.

The results:

-a staggering upward transfer and concentration of wealth, long before the bailouts,

-global recession far worse than capitalism's usual boom and bust cycles,

-hardship, and despair from Australia, where mortgage and credit card debt now exceeds even that of Americans, to D.R. Congo, where the crtiical mining contract review was finally abandoned under World Bank, IMF, and recession pressures, and,

-ongoing waves of foreclosures and layoffs, and new tent cities,

-falling home values, property and income tax revenues.

Reagan redux

Throughout 2009, city, county, and state legislatures, battled over what to cut next, health, schools, arts, or public transportation, as federal trillions flowed into financial industry coffers, all in the name of Reaganite trickle down economics.

And nobody knows where it went, only that that it hasn't trickled down.

Lennar and the other overbuilders and lenders stepped up for another $33 billion handout in the Worker, Homeownership and Business Assistance Act of 2009, which became law on 11.06.2009, prompting NY TImes financial columnist Gretchen Morgenson to ask "would it be so terrible if some builders that lost their heads during the housing mania ceased to exist?"

Lennar, the most aggressive overbuilder/lender, spent $240,000 lobbying for its share,
spent $240,000 lobbying for its $250,000,000 share, proving yet again that politicians offer an astounding return on investment----a 1,041.66% return for Lennar on this one.

Et tu, San Francisco?   Et tu, California?  

At the San Francisco City and County Board of Supervisors, in the San Francisco Bay View, National Black Newspaper, and on the phone to Mark Leno and other Sacramento legislators, I keep asking why cash strapped San Francisco and California are rewarding Lennar/UAMC for all this, and, urging them on, with more "public private partnerships," and "title transfers," a.k.a. land grabs, including 23 acres of pristine waterfront parkland at Candlestick Point? 

This corporation has not changed its ways.

When foreclosed properties flooded the market, competing with its new properties, it launched an ongoing ad blitz to buy new, asking, "Why take the risk and buy a used foreclosed home or a short sale when you can afford a brand new one?"

Indeed.  Especially if it's a foreclosed Lennar Home, quite likely built with toxic Chinese dry wall, or, on top of a bomb test range with live ordinance still underground, or any number of the other toxic dumpsites Lennar specializes in building on, like San Francisco's Hunters' Point Naval Shipyard, the hugely contaminated home of the now shuttered Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory.

Lennar's marketing team even produced a newly aggressive video argument for exhausting the planet's resources, "Why buy new?"

Last spring Lennar's Southeast Florida division announced a weekend sale, "THIS BAILOUT'S FOR YOU":

PR Log (Press Release) – Apr 14, 2009 – LENNAR CELEBRATES ‘THIS BAILOUT’S FOR YOU’ SALES EVENT THIS WEEKEND IN SOUTH FLORIDA   MIAMI, Fla. - Corporations should not be the only ones benefiting from bailouts. This weekend April 18 and 19, the Southeast Florida division of Lennar, one of the nation’s leading homebuilders, is bailing prospective homebuyers out with incredible prices, incentives and interest rates that make it simple to buy a new home in today’s current real estate market.

As with the war, if we can't stop it locally, I don't know where we can.

Open letter to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, on the City's commitment to the U.S.A.'s perpetual war on people and the planet

San Francisco Board of Supervisors

 
On October 9th, 2009, the  Blue Angels FA-18 jet fighter bombers flew past my window, in San Francisco, in diamond point formation, at close to the speed of sound, with about 3,000 gallons of kerosene based jet fuel on board.  

The FA-18s are wired to drop B-61 nuclear warheads, from their wingtips, though, so far as I know there were none attached this year. I nevertheless remembered 2007, when nuclear warheads were “accidentally” attached to the wingtips of a B-52, at the Minot, North Dakota, Air Force Base, unbeknownst to the pilot, who then flew the B-52 across the heartland to the Barksdale, Louisiana Air Force Base without knowing that he could have dropped nuclear warheads on Iowa, or other parts between. 

Flying with nuclear warheads attached to the wing tips is a practice called “airborne alert” which ended after one of our B-52s flying in airborne alert crashed in Greenland in 1968, but, it was accidentally revived in 2007.  Greenland, which was a colony of Denmark at the time, later sued Denmark for not protecting them---from us, the U.S.A.                                           

I now seem to be San Francisco's lay expert on the history, culture, technology, and official procedure that brings the annual Blue Angels military recruitment fest to San Francisco.  This year I finally learned that there was a Blue Angels TV drama series, starring Dennis Cross and Don Gordon, filmed with the cooperation of the Navy, and aired in syndication from September 26, 1960 to July 3, 1961.  

So, shortly after four Angels roared past my window, KPFA Radio News called me and Laura Magnani of the American Friends Service Committee's Bay Area office, after which I made this little video, posted it to the Youtube, and sent it to all of you, San Francisco Supervisors, and to Mayor Newsom, though I have yet to receive any indication that any of you watched it:

After I talked to KPFA News, I called Mayor Newsom's office, for the fifth time this year, to ask who had requested this year's Blue Angels Air Show, and he said---through his press office-- that you had: the government of the City and County of San Francisco, which includes you. 

In 2007, Mayor Newsom was proud to say that he had requested them; in 2008, he claimed that the Port Commission had, and that he therefore had nothing to do with it; and, in 2009, this year, he—through his press office--claimed that the government of the City and County of San Francisco, including you, requested it.

The Blue Angels recruitment drive doesn't come unless you request it. That's official procedure. Dianne Feinstein requested it in 1981, eight years after the end of the draft, six years after the end of the Vietnam War, and three years after the assassination of Harvey Milk.

So, officially, you, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, joined the mayor in requesting the 2009 military recruitment drive, tacitly or no. 

If, for any reason, you'd like to cancel the 2010 request already submitted at the end of September, all you have to do is write a letter to Secretary of the Navy Donald C. Winter. , preferably before the end of December, but anytime between now and next October.  Blue Angels Air Shows are often canceled, for many reasons.  The mayor can request the Blue Angels, but you can tell the Secretary of the Navy that you, the Board of Supervisors, would rather not host them in 2010.

Even if the Mayor requested it in your name, you could write a letter to the Secretary of the Navy saying that you'd like to cancel the request. There is nothing in the San Francisco City Charter that says who has the power to request or cancel a Blue Angels recruitment drive. So, the Mayor can request it, and you can write a letter saying that you'd like to cancel it.

It's not a legal issue; it's a cultural issue; it's about the culture of militarism, or peace.  Three entities---the Mayor, the Board, and the voters are legally constituted to express San Francisco's culture, by requesting or canceling the 2010 recruitment drive.   


But, all three have requested it, even if only tacitly, by allowing the mayor to request it, since 1981.


 

Uganda's gay "death penalty" bill a distraction

The City of San Francisco, CA, is united behind the right to love whom you love, how you love, if by nothing else.  This is international gay rights hero Harvey Milk's town; Harvey's bust graces the entrance to the City's legislative chambers and the Harvey Milk Democratic Club is one of the most influential here.

So, some San Franciscans have now turned their attention to Uganda, to protest its gay nightmare legislative proposal, which includes the death penalty for a list of offenses labeled "aggravated homosexuality."  Like other human rights activists around the world, they're responding to action alerts from the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, even though Central Africa is rarely on the radar screen out here on the Western edge of the Pacific, in a city now only 3.5% African American, with immigrant populations largely from Asia and Latin America.

I was glad to be able to share "Bahati's Bill, a convenient distraction for Uganda's government," a  Pambazuka News article, which gives Uganda's nightmarish legislative proposal a Ugandan and African context.    I hope that some will read it and understand that we need to protest not only the proposed law, in Uganda, but also the role of U.S. foreign policy, U.S.-based corporations, oil, and AFRICOM, the U.S. Africa Command, in "creating the conditions keeping so many Ugandans in poverty. . .," and thus, creating a need to scapegoat same sex lovers.

Bahati’s bill: A convenient distraction for Uganda's government

  

"As Ugandan MP David Bahati spearheads a campaign around the adoption of the homophobic 'Bahati's bill', Solome Nakaweesi-Kimbugwe and Frank Mugisha call for an unwavering rejection of a piece of legislation entirely against the interests of wider Ugandan society.  With strong suspicions of Bahati's financial backing by extreme-right Christian groups in the US, the bill seeks not only to establish draconian punishments for homosexual acts but also to actively encourage Ugandans to snoop on one another indefinitely for the supposed good of the nation. If homophobes like Bahati were really worried about 'protecting the traditional family', Nakaweesi-Kimbugwe and Mugisha argue, they'd concern themselves with tackling the conditions keeping so many Ugandans in poverty, rather than making scapegoats of homosexual people. The authors conclude that with an election approaching in 2011, the momentum behind the bill smacks of a none-too-subtle attempt to divert attention away from Uganda's true issues."

Full text at http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/452/uganda_gay_rights.jpg

See also GayUganda, an exquisitely written blog, Sexual Minorities of Uganda SMUG, and,  Resist AFRICOM: