District 5 Diary

Huffington Post SF piles on Mirkarimi

2012-02-02T11:57:00.000-08:00

Carly Schwartz is "editor of Huffington Post San Francisco." I get their "San Francisco alerts," like the daily links I get from BeyondChron, Streetsblog, etc., but there's rarely anything of interest or worth a comment.

Until the other day, with Schwartz's dumb, lemming-like piece on Ross Mirkarimi. Schwartz has nothing new or interesting to say on the matter, but she just wanted everyone in SF to know that she too is piling on Mirkarimi.

Schwartz begins by trying to establish her credibility as a San Francisco progressive:

As a longtime resident of the Haight, I've been a fan of Mirkarimi, my progressive former District 5 Supervisor, for ages. The gregarious politico champions causes like marijuana legalization and equal rights for homeless people; issues near and dear to my heart.

If those issues were really "near and dear" to Schwartz, she would know that Mirkarimi has had little to do or even say about homelessness in his years as District 5 Supervisor. Is she referring to his opposition to the sit-lie law? Hard to say, but it's apparently just pro-forma bullshit, a failed attempt to demonstrate some kind of political credibility. And, except for carrying the legislation to regulate the city's pot clubs back in 2005, the pot issue hasn't been particularly important for Mirkarimi or anyone else in San Francisco, where it's not controversial.

No, Mirkarimi's career as supervisor is highlighted---if that's the word---by his support for the city's foolish, smart-growth development policies: he was the front man for both the Market and Octavia Plan and for allowing UC to hijack the old extension property on lower Haight Street.

Just as important, Mirkarimi has been the go-to guy for the city's bike people for the last seven years, since he supported the Bicycle Plan and whatever else the Bicycle Coalition wanted to do to our streets on behalf of that special interest group with the effective lobbying organization.

And now, sadly, I count myself among the ranks of San Franciscans who believe the time has come for our sheriff to step aside. At least until this whole mess resolves itself...Local and national commentators weren't shy with their opinions, and the chorus of cries for Mirkarimi's resignation grew louder and louder until it completely drowned out his steadfast claims of innocence.

Oh, yes, it's so sad to join the mob. Why not wait until the "mess resolves itself," that is, until the man has had his day in court? That's not a question political lemmings often ask themselves. Schwartz knows which way the wind is blowing here in Progressive Land, where Mirkarimi is facing stiff headwinds.

I rarely agree with resident Chronicle curmudgeon C.W. Nevius, but I must join him in saying the best thing for both Mirkarimi and his family would be for the sheriff to take a leave of absence until the storm passes. At the very least, San Francisco will have less of a reason to hate him if he's ultimately proven innocent.

Yes, joining Nevius---whose opinions are reliably aligned with those of City Hall---is the safe thing to do. And if he's found innocent? Well, Schwartz will then put her finger to the wind to determine which way the wind is blowing.

The whole thing ultimately just makes me want to take a long shower. I feel dirty being privy to the intimate details of Mirkarimi's dark personal life. Shouldn't the man be entitled to at least a little bit of privacy when slapped with such loaded charges, despite his stubborn refusal to step aside? A young child's well-being is at stake.

Hard to beat that for hypocrisy and sheer phoniness, but Schwartz manages to do it with this:

And yet as HuffPost SF's editor, it's my job to amplify the important parts of the tale to a much larger audience. So I'll continue to comb the Internet for every nugget between now and February 24, when his trial begins.

Yes, it's a dirty job, but Schwartz will continue doing it, as if people of San Francisco need her to "amplify the tale." The local media is already doing that, thank you. But apparently Schwartz missed this in Bay City from Mirkarimi's former partner:

“I was shocked when I read about it,” Evelyn Nieves, a journalist and a past partner of Mirkarimi’s, said in an e-mail. “Ross and I were together for the better part of a decade — eight years or so — and never once did he even come close to being physical during an argument. It’s just not his way,” Nieves added. “He was way more prone to proposing that disagreements be talked out."

This doesn't absolve Mirkarimi of the current charges, but it's a "nugget" Schwartz might have considered before piling on before the man has been convicted of anything.

Schwartz squeezes out a few crocodile tears in a contemptible last sentence: "Maybe it's my District Five loyalty talking, but I have to admit I feel kinda bad for the guy."

Neighborhood revolt against parking meters

2012-01-31T11:54:00.000-08:00

Nice work by Rigoberto Hernandez on Mission Local covering the revolt against the city's attempt to install thousands of parking meters in and around the Dogpatch and Portrero Hill neighborhoods:

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) agreed Monday night to assess people’s parking needs block by block in the Mission and other southeastern neighborhoods before installing any new parking meters. That marked a change in the agency’s attitude since a Jan. 13 meeting in which a hearing officer approved the installation of about 5,000 parking meters in several eastern neighborhoods despite the objections of hundreds of people who spoke unanimously in opposition to the proposal...

The rest of the story here

See also the Dogpatch Howler

Cindy Wu and the "female point of view"

2012-01-30T11:32:00.000-08:00

David Chiu has appointed Cindy Wu to fill the Planning Commission seat vacated by Christina Olague. Wu is evidently a suitable replacement, since like Olague she shares the delusion about women and people of color: "I'm proud to bring a person of color's point of view and a female point of view and continue that from Christina."

Identity politics is alive and well here in Progressive Land. What does the "female point of view" really mean in politics? When Olague or Wu invoke this nonsense, they probably don't mean Ann Coulter, Margaret Thatcher, or Sarah Palin, but that doesn't make it any less nonsensical. With Olague's appointment as District 5 Supervisor, there are now four female supervisors. Exactly how has the voting record of the other three women reflected anything like a "female" perspective? Is there a female perspective on Muni or on development and planning? Of course not. In fact---and unfortunately---Olague and other women on the board agree with their male colleagues on all the important issues facing San Francisco. GroupThink as per The Family in San Francisco transcends gender and ethnic categories.

There are now four supervisors of Asian descent on the Board of Supervisors. As "people of color" in Wu's terminology, do they represent an oppressed group or a unique perspective on city issues?

Since Wu comes out of the Chinatown Community Development Center, where she did "outreach"---that is, PR---for the Central Subway boondoggle, does she agree with Rose Pak that Dennis Herrera and Aaron Peskin are racists for opposing the project?

Olague replacement: The empty seat on the Planning Commission may soon be filled by Cindy Wu, a planner with the Chinatown Community Development Center.

Board of Supervisors President David Chiu will nominate Wu to replace Christina Olague, who recently stepped down from her position as commission president to become District Five's supervisor.

Wu is a community planning manager at the increasingly powerful neighborhood organization with ties to Mayor Ed Lee and power-broker Rose Pak. The center has strongly advocated for the Central Subway, which will connect Chinatown with the rest of the city.

Chiu is running for re-election this year in District Three, which includes Chinatown.

Wu has spent more than four years in her job, where she did outreach for the Central Subway and oversaw various Chinatown planning projects.

"I'm proud to bring a person of color's point of view and a female point of view and continue that from Christina," she told The Chronicle.

Wu holds a master's degree in city planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a bachelor's degree in architecture from UC Berkeley.

After the Rules Committee considers Wu's nomination next week, the Board of Supervisors will confirm or deny her.

- Stephanie Lee

The Myth of American Decline

2012-01-29T15:47:00.000-08:00

From Robert Kagan's important article in The New Republic:

...Success in the past does not guarantee success in the future. But one thing does seem clear from the historical evidence: the American system, for all its often stultifying qualities, has also shown a greater capacity to adapt and recover from difficulties than many other nations, including its geopolitical competitors. This undoubtedly has something to do with the relative freedom of American society, which rewards innovators, often outside the existing power structure, for producing new ways of doing things; and with the relatively open political system of America, which allows movements to gain steam and to influence the behavior of the political establishment.

The American system is slow and clunky in part because the Founders designed it that way, with a federal structure, checks and balances, and a written Constitution and Bill of Rights—but the system also possesses a remarkable ability to undertake changes just when the steam kettle looks about to blow its lid. There are occasional “critical elections” that allow transformations to occur, providing new political solutions to old and apparently insoluble problems. Of course, there are no guarantees: the political system could not resolve the problem of slavery without war. But on many big issues throughout their history, Americans have found a way of achieving and implementing a national consensus.

When Paul Kennedy was marveling at the continuing success of the American superpower back in 2002, he noted that one of the main reasons had been the ability of Americans to overcome what had appeared to him in 1987 as an insoluble long-term economic crisis. American businessmen and politicians “reacted strongly to the debate about ‘decline’ by taking action: cutting costs, making companies leaner and meaner, investing in newer technologies, promoting a communications revolution, trimming government deficits, all of which helped to produce significant year-on-year advances in productivity.” It is possible to imagine that Americans may rise to this latest economic challenge as well...

The rest of the article here.

President Obama likes it.

Willie Brown and Jerry Brown: Development Democrats

2012-01-27T16:40:00.000-08:00

Photo by Luke Thomas of Fog City Journal

What's increasingly clear about the high-speed rail project is that, as Martin Engel has been telling us, this project is not about the train; it's about the money---and the jobs that money will allegedly create. After all, even dumb projects can create a lot of jobs. The most important, steadfast supporters of the project are the leadership of the Democratic Party, including, alas, President Obama. Since he didn't mention high-speed rail in his State of the Union speech, apparently the president understands that the point is now moot, since obviously congress isn't going to give the project any more money.

But California Demcratic Party leaders are still on board, so to speak, including Governor Brown, Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, Mark Leno, Tom Ammiano, Scott Wiener, and Mayor Lee.

In a recent column in the Chronicle, Willie Brown provides a good example of what I call Development Democrats, the party leaders who consider the merits of projects a secondary consideration. The main thing is jobs for the unions, an important part of the party's base:

Gov. Jerry Brown is doing exactly what he should do with his call to go ahead with building the high-speed rail system: He's looking out for his legacy. You've got to do projects when you're governor, or mayor for that matter. The bigger the better. Jerry is trying to match his father, Pat Brown, who oversaw the building of the state highway network, the California Aqueduct and California's higher education system when he was governor. Jerry is thinking about what the John Kings of the world will say about him in 50 years. For me, there are few things more pleasing than having The Chronicle's peerless architecture writer praise projects I helped bring into being, such as the Giants' ballpark and Mission Bay. Nobody remembers all the things I screwed up, but they do remember the buildings. That's the legacy we politicians can show the Lord when we're trying to get into heaven.

If Governor Brown persists in pushing the high-speed rail project, his legacy will include support for the dumbest, most wasteful public works project in California's history.

Odd that Willie Brown mentions only the Giants' ballpark (a great success) and Mission Bay (jury still out) and not the Ferry Building, the City Hall makeover, and Union Square, all genuine successes done while he was mayor. Maybe those wonderful projects weren't big enough---and didn't create enough jobs---for a Development Democrat to brag about.

Odd too that he thinks the good opinion of John King---who likes Octavia Blvd, the Beth Shalom synagogue, and the "vision" of more highrises in downtown San Francisco---is something to be coveted. Among the important things Mayor Brown "screwed up": the homeless issue. He doesn't mention an important part of his "legacy": the Central Subway, the political deal disguised as an expensive, poorly-designed transportation project.

If the State of California goes ahead with the high-speed rail project, it will force the neglect of other important issues, like the $11 billion water bond that Governor Brown is now hoping to take off the ballot to clear the way for his proposed tax hikes.

And there's the "wall of debt" the state faces that will force cuts in other programs, including the public school system:

Brown first used the "wall of debt" term last year in describing the accumulated borrowing that allowed lawmakers and past governors to claim they had balanced the budget. The largest piece of the wall is $10.4 billion in deferred payments to K-12 schools and community colleges. Deferred payments are those promised in one year but then paid in the next, even as schools are told to spend as if they actually had the money. The deferrals have continued year after year, and today schools are receiving about 20 percent less than they should, forcing districts to borrow, dip into reserves or spend even less. California also still owes more than $6 billion from traditional borrowing used to balance the budget under former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, along with other billions in internal borrowing and delayed payments to Medi-Cal, CalPERS and local governments for unpaid mandates, among other things...

...Still, making cuts like those proposed to the state's welfare program, which would reduce the amount of time most people receive aid from four years to two years, along with the proposed elimination of 71,000 subsidies for child care, would have a negative economic impact, said Jean Ross, executive director of the California Budget Project. The nonpartisan group advocates for low-income Californians.

President Obama didn't mention high-speed rail

2012-01-25T11:24:00.000-08:00

President Obama didn't mention high-speed rail in last night's State of the Union speech, which means that he and Ray LaHood now admit that they won't get the money from Congress for the project. And the California State Auditor just issued a critical report on the project pointing out that the CHSRA can't explain why it's still counting on the federal government as its biggest source of money.

From a summary of the auditor's report:

The high-speed rail network's (program) overall financial situation has become increasingly risky.

The cost estimates for phase one increased to between $98.1 billion and $117.6 billion—of which approximately $12.5 billion has been secured. Although the Authority identifies the federal government as its largest potential funding source, the plan provides few details about how it expects to secure this money. The cost estimates do not include phase one's operating and maintenance costs, yet based on data in the plan these costs could total approximately $96.8 billion from 2025 through 2060. The accuracy of the Authority's estimates of the program's profits depends upon[sic] its ridership projections, which are fundamental to private investors' interest. An independent assessment of ridership projections was conducted by a handpicked group. The ridership review group presented several long-term concerns.

Thanks to the Community Coalition on High-Speed Rail for the link.

Court rejects city's vindictive cost claim

2012-01-23T16:54:00.000-08:00

Recall that the City Attorney hit us with a cost claim of more than $52,000 after the court certified the city's EIR on the Bicycle Plan. We of course contested the claim, which was punitive and in retaliation for our successful litigation forcing the city to do an EIR on the Bicycle Plan. In a tentative ruling (below in italics) before tomorrow's hearing on the matter, Judge Kahn agrees with our objections, completely rejecting the city's claim.

Recall too that City Attorney Dennis Herrera admitted during his campaign for mayor that he advised the city to do an EIR on the Bicycle Plan before it was implemented on city streets. Herrera was overruled---probably by Mayor Newsom---and the city began implementing the Plan, which is when we asked the court for an injunction that was granted by Judge Warren. Even though he advised doing an EIR in the beginning, Herrera's department proceeded to wage a relentless, meritless, expensive, and ultimately futile legal battle to be allowed to implement the 500-page Bicycle Plan without any environmental review, culminating in the vindictive cost claim against us.

The entirety of the City's costs memorandum is stricken. The proceedings on the return are not separate and independent from the proceedings that led up to the return and thus the City is not entitled as a matter of right to costs because it is not a "prevailing party" as that phrase is defined in Code of Civil Procedure section 1032(a)(4). Assuming without deciding that the court has the authority to award costs in its discretion per section 1032(a)(4), the court declines to do so because petitioners were the prevailing party on the initial writ and petitioners elected to prepare the record on the return, and an award of costs is fundamentally unfair given that petitioners were never provided with paper copies and the City does not dispute that the electronic version had little or no utility. Moreover, an award of costs to the City under these circumstances could be viewed as having a deterrent effect on future CEQA petitioners, which is contrary to the enforcement provisions of CEQA, and the City's hourly rates for paralegal time appear to be significantly beyond the actual costs incurred by the City.

And earlier post on Herrera and the Bicycle Plan.

High-speed rail: A poison pill in Governor Brown's tax plan

2012-01-23T14:22:00.000-08:00

Howard Jarvis and Jerry Brown in 1979

Governor Brown will be asking the state's voters to raise taxes on themselves to support, among other things, the high-speed rail project that recent polls show they now oppose (here and here). In fact almost two-thirds of the state's voters want another chance to vote on high-speed rail so that they can reject it.

The budget cuts are deep and painful:

In terms of sheer dollars, the steepest cuts affect the most vulnerable in the state, including a $1.7 billion cut to Medi-Cal, the state’s health insurance program for poor families and disabled people; a $1.5 billion reduction in its welfare-to-work program; and $750 million cut from the agency that provides services to those with developmental disabilities. The state’s higher education system---including the highly regarded University of California---would lose $1.4 billion.

People are apparently willing to pay higher taxes for schools---and maybe for programs for the poor and the disabled---but public opposition to high-speed rail could doom Governor Brown's proposed tax hikes in November.

Public resistance to phony planning process

2012-01-21T11:31:00.000-08:00

Residents express outrage at planning meeting
Alan Wang
Wednesday, January 11, 2012

DUBLIN, Calif. (KGO)---In the next 25 years, it is estimated that two million more people will be living in the Bay Area. To accommodate them, a long-range, land-use and transportation plan is being launched.

In Dublin Wednesday night, officials were met by a rather angry crowd. The gathering was part of a series of meetings designed to get feedback on a project called "One Bay Area." The strategy is to get more people living near their jobs and mass transportation, which would reduce greenhouse gases. Opponents are calling this "social engineering."

One man stood up and said, "If we need stack and pack housing because there's a sufficient market for it that's willing to pay for it, it will get built without your intervention."

A growing opposition is forming against One Bay Area---an integrated land-use and transportation plan for the nine Bay Area counties.

"You are forcing the plan on these cities despite your pretty words about it not being forced, that they have a choice," said Castro Valley resident Mimi Steel.

There are 200 priority development areas, much of it planned for high density living that would rely on mass transit.

"You're going to make it harder for the middle class to use their cars, their cost of living is going to go up, and so how are people in the low-income going to move up, have upward mobility?" said Pleasanton resident Lydia Barrington.

The plan is led by the Association of Bay Area Governments and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. They say it's based on the changing demographics of the Bay Area.

"With the change and the preferences by young professionals, by new families, pursuing a more urban environment," said Miriam Chion, the principal planner in the Association of Bay Area Governments.

But the biggest issue these opponents have with the plan is the process. Many called it a sham because the public is left to make only minor decisions.

"All of the most important decisions on this subject have all been made. They've been made by big developers and high-density growth advocacy groups and we were not at the table when all of those decisions were made," said Berkeley resident Doug Buckwald.

The largest development calls for 24,000 housing units in Downtown San Francisco. The smallest is 20 units in Sonoma County.

Plan Bay Area is scheduled to be adopted in April of 2013...

The Central Subway money pit

2012-01-20T12:47:00.000-08:00

We're already in a hole, but our leaders keep digging

A story in yesterday's SF Chronicle (Central Subway funds get a key OK) told about Mayor Lee in D.C. trying to firm up money for the Central Subway. The city is counting on the feds to pick up $1 billion of the $1.6 billion project:

Lee has been a strong supporter of the subway, which became an issue in his election race last fall. The estimated cost of the project has more than doubled from estimates of $650 million in 2003. A civil grand jury report last summer concluded that the project should be scrapped because it would strain the struggling Muni system and is poorly designed. The total federal commitment would be $983 million; the state has committed $471 million and San Francisco voters approved Proposition K in 2003 to levy a half-cent sales tax to cover $123 million.

Muni's deficit this year is $28 million; it will be $34 million next year, and $46 million the year after that, $108 million in red ink that could easily be covered by the money spent on the Central Subway. MTA itself, according to page six of this document, is chipping in another $163.89 million in "parking revenues" to the Central Subway project. Gee, I wonder why our Muni system is always in the red.

The city makes more than $170 million a year from its parking lots, parking meters, and parking tickets. Funny but it's hard to find on the SFCTA's website how much the city brings in every year from the Prop. K sales tax. I had to contact the agency to eventually learn that, according to page 14 of this document, the tax brings in $70-$80 million a year from Prop. K.

Even with all that transportation money, the City That Knows How, the Transit First city, can't keep its transit system solvent---or even pave its streets without borrowing money.

Save Muni is the best source of information and analysis of the Central Subway project.

Governor Moonbeam boards the train to nowhere

2012-01-19T16:01:00.000-08:00

Hard to believe Governor Brown really thinks that high-speed rail is a sensible project for California. In a speech that also calls for budget cuts and tax hikes, the governor provides no substantive argument for a project that has never been based on realistic numbers, whether on construction costs, ridership, or where to get the money to even get it built.

As an example, let's look at just the ridership numbers. From pages 21-23 in The Financial Risks of California's Proposed High-Speed Rail Project, September 2011:

In 2008 the California High Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) asserted there would be over 90 Million riders annually on the LA to SF route. Their 2009 forecast reduced it to 39 Million riders in 2030, while increasing the fares...Even the lower 2009 CHSRA projection was accused of inflating some stations’ boardings, artificially increasing revenues, justifying specific routes and therefore financial credibility...In July 2011, Amtrak’s Vice-President for High Speed Rail opined that an enhanced Acela service would attract 18 Million passengers on the NE Corridor when it opened. This official claimed the market catchment area for the enhanced Acela is presently 50 Million, less than ten percent more than the 46.4 Million the Census Bureau forecasts for California in 2030. Acela has the NE Corridor’s very good links to urban transit, its higher population density and its 150-year history of train travel. How does the CHSRA expect to capture more than twice the ridership in just the Phase One Corridor between LA and SF that Acela expects to have with roughly the same market catchment area?

The Draft 2012 HSR Business Plan projects 43 million passengers by 2030, even though, as pointed out above, Amtrak's Acela train, the closest thing the US has to a high-speed rail line, in the most densely-populated part of the country, expects only 18 million passengers. If the projected ridership numbers for the California system are bogus, none of the assumptions about future costs and profits are valid.

After the jump, below the rest of the story on Brown's speech, is a story on tuition at UC:

UC receives slightly more than $2 billion from the state's General Fund, about $1 billion less than it had been getting in recent years. Lawmakers cut $750 million from UC's budget this fiscal year alone. As a result, the world-class public university system considers itself in a financial crisis: Course sections have been eliminated, maintenance drastically cut back, and staff laid off. UC is also providing millions of dollars in raises this year, which the regents have said are needed to maintain the quality of the university. Today, as the regents conclude their two-day meeting, they expect to focus almost entirely on developing revenue sources beyond the state, and beyond tuition.

Appropriately enough, on the last page of the same section of today's Chronicle, there's a story on Alaska's Bridge to Nowhere, which will cost the State of Alaska a mere $150 million, not the $100 billion California's taxpayers will be looking at if Governor Brown's dream/nightmare becomes a reality.

The best site for critical analysis of the project is here.

A good site to track the day-to-say media reports on the project is here.

Of course the Bay Guardian was thrilled with the governor's speech.

Parking meter backlash

2012-01-16T13:41:00.000-08:00

MTA board member Cheryl Brinkman

The city is experiencing a backlash in opposition to its SFPark plan to put parking meters in Portrero Hill and Dogpatch neighborhoods. When some complained that the city didn't inform them and their neighbors about the plan, Cheryl Brinkman, an anti-car bike person, responded:

“Sometimes you feel like you could send an engraved invitation and people would still say they’ve never heard about it,” said Cheryl Brinkman, a member of the SFMTA Board of Directors. She pointed out that even though flyers were put on every door in the outreach for the Masonic Avenue redesign project, some still complained it wasn’t enough. “I think as city dwellers, we sometimes underestimate what people are willing to do for free parking,” she added.

Of course most people here and everywhere else ignore the government as much as possible---until that's no longer possible, like now in Dogpatch and on Portrero Hill. People are too busy living their lives to go to public meetings after working all day, not to mention that most meetings are held during the day when people are working. The first thing they know about city "improvements" to their neighborhood streets is when the heavy equipment arrives and goes to work.

Brinkman and other leaders of the city's anti-car movement---including Tom Radulovich, the Bicycle Coalition, and Jason Henderson---have long strived, with some success, to make it as difficult and expensive as possible for people to drive in San Francisco. The Bicycle Plan is about both bikes and anti-carism, since the Bicycle Coalition's agenda can't be completely implemented without taking space---traffic lanes and parking spaces---from cars on city streets.

Here's Brinkman several years ago, sneering at people who drive motor vehicles:

With the gas prices high I'm now hoping for a short sharp supply shock---to really bring the point home to the people. I was cycling yesterday and just wished that the car drivers would all run out of gas all of a sudden and have to push their heavy hunks of steel with their bare hands to move them. A week or two of limited gas.

As an MTA Director, she is now able to stick it to drivers as that board makes city traffic policy.

The Bay Guardian and SF Streetsblog disapprove of this kind of neighborhood activism by people who drive "death monsters," known as cars and trucks to the rest of us.

MTA pretends that it only wants to "manage" parking on city streets, but parking meters, parking lots, and parking tickets are a major source of revenue for San Francisco.

President Obama will be re-elected

2012-01-16T10:47:00.000-08:00

Andrew Sullivan on why President Obama will be re-elected.

The lesson from Spain: Don't build high-speed rail

2012-01-15T12:13:00.000-08:00

Photo by Tim Sheehan for the Fresno Bee

Two stories on the front page of the Chronicle this morning: one about how Spain built a high-speed rail system, and another with the head "Brown pushes $1 billion in cuts." The sub-head on the high-speed rail story: "What California can learn from Spain's system." The main lesson: Spain can't afford the system it has built, and California can't afford its high-speed rail project.

In spite of the Chronicle's deceptive head---"Revenues fall short despite popularity"---the Fresno Bee story tells us that "Service between some smaller cities has been cut because too few people ride the trains, leaving some wondering whether it is anything more than a luxury commuter service." How popular can the system be if "too few people" ride it?

Spain has spent $60 billion to build a system that still requires government subsidies:

But despite assurances from the Spanish government that the long-distance AVE trains operate without a public subsidy, academics and analysts don't believe that even the busiest high-speed route---between Madrid and Barcelona---musters enough riders to cover operating costs, much less the billions of euros invested to build the infrastructure over the past 20 years.

This is why governors in Florida, Wisconsin, and Ohio rejected federal high-speed rail money: They understood that state taxpayers, not the federal government, would have been responsible for both cost-overruns in building the system and for operating the system after it was built:

In recent years, the European Union funneled about $17 billion in grants and billions more in low-interest loans to Spain to improve its high-speed rail. But [Andreu]Ulied said that will end in a couple of years, leaving Spain to bear the entire cost of its ambitious expansion plans. Ulied and GermÀ Bel, a professor of political economics at the University of Barcelona, agree that none of the Spanish high-speed rail routes has enough riders to make the system financially sustainable. "There is no question whether (Spain's system) can cover its costs. It cannot," Bel said. "It actually has not recovered one single euro from the infrastructure investment. The government claims they are recovering the operating costs, but the numbers are not clear."

This is exactly what critics of California's high-speed rail project have been saying for years: It's not only that California can't afford to build this luxury rail system, but it also can't afford to subsidize its operation if/when it's built.

In fact the authorizing legislation for 2008's Proposition 1A prohibits any taxpayer subsidy to operate the system.

The only question now is, When will Governor Brown face the facts and pull the plug on this dumb, wasteful project?

Mayor Lee thinks it's a great idea: "California and the United States need high-speed rail, so let's keep going."

So do the Bay Guardian, Scott Wiener, and Gabriel Metcalf.

Ganging up on Mirkarimi

2012-01-13T09:32:00.000-08:00

Photo by Matt Smith for Bay Citizen

I've been Ross Mirkarimi's harshest critic during his seven years as District 5 Supervisor, but there's something ugly about the furor over the domestic abuse allegations. Surely a bruise on his wife's arm isn't enough to justify destroying this man's life and career. And we get this hyperbole from this morning's Chronicle: ""How can people feel safe? The sheriff should not be putting his political career over the safety of domestic violence survivors and their children in this city." As if Mirkarimi represents an immediate threat to public safety! Why not wait for the D.A. to bring or not bring charges?

Bay Citizen provides testimony this morning from a woman who was his partner for years that physical abuse is not characteristic of Mirkarimi's personality or behavior.

Of course C.W. Nevius joins the mob, devoting a whole column to an incident over which there have been no charges filed.

The left and high-speed rail

2012-01-11T12:59:00.000-08:00

Seems like the only people left supporting the California high-speed rail project are editorial writers, Democratic Party leaders, and of course unions, since even bad projects create jobs.

The Chronicle's John Diaz is still on board, but, like his poorly-informed editorial on cycling in the city, he doesn't deign to deal in specifics, even though the Devil is in the details on this project. It's easy for windbag editorialists and other supporters to defend high-speed rail in the abstract. Gee, a fast train between LA and SF! What a great idea!

The Bay Guardian supports the project, which is in line with a recent public opinion poll showing that liberals and the Occupy Movement are the boondoggle's strongest supporters, as if the liberal/prog left was determined to verify the tax-and-spend label pinned on them by conservatives. But Californians overall now oppose the project by a 2-1 margin.

I understood how poorly conceived the project is after looking at the alleged sources of capital to build the system as per the CHSR authority's 2009 business plan:

State funding: $9 billion from Proposition 1A
Federal funding: $17‐19 billion
Local funding: $4‐5 billion
Private funding: $10‐12 billion
Total: $45 billion

According to the latest CHSRA business plan, the total cost of the project is now estimated to be $99-118 billion. But the project only has $3.3 billion in federal money and $2.7 billion in state bonds authorized by Prop. 1A in 2008. The Peer Group recommended last week that the legislature not authorize the $2.7 billion in bonds the CHSRA is asking for. Obviously, more money from the federal government is highly unlikely, and can anyone think that local governments are going to contribute $4-5 billion to build high-speed rail? Nor has any "private funding" materialized, since return guarantees to private investors to build the system are prohibited by Prop. 1A.

Beyond Chron published a piece the other day by Michael Bernick on the job creation numbers claimed by the project, with a final paragraph as a murky disclaimer:

The Mercury News is correct that the project stands or falls on criteria beyond employment. The main decisions should be made on the project’s role in meeting transportation mobility and environmental policies. The draft 2012 Business Plan does correctly set out its projections in “job years”, though greater precision in language is warranted in the Plan’s final version.

Okay, but while CHSRA's jobs projection---like ridership forecasts and ticket prices---is an interesting and contested subject, the fact that the authority doesn't even come close to having enough money to build the system makes the issue of only academic interest.

For thorough discussions of all these issues, see this website.

Parking in San Francisco

2012-01-11T10:43:00.000-08:00

Mr. Anderson,

I am a fellow SF resident (and reader of your blog) and was wondering if you were aware of the MTA’s SFpark plan? The plan calls for the installation of adjustable rate metered parking all over the city (where there is currently no metered parking, or only residential parking).

Unfortunately, my neighborhood of Dogpatch/Potrero is one of the targets for the “pilot” program. I am unfortunately familiar with the way city agencies function. By the time the citizens find out about their plans, they can’t be stopped. I know you were successful in holding up the implementation of the citywide bike plan (also MTA?) and was wondering if you had any advice for a strategy to delay or derail the MTA’s plan.

Is legal action the only real alternative?

Sincerely,

Ari Benderly

Rob responds:

Yes, I'm afraid so. I don't know if the city did any environmental review of this plan, but since it's called a "pilot" project the city may assume it doesn't have to. Sounds like your neighborhood will be guinea pigs for the program. As you know, the city's official ideology is anti-car. SFPark is ostensibly created to make it easier for motorists to find parking in SF, but it will also make money for a city where motorists are considered primarily as a source of revenue for a city increasingly desperate for money to maintain its bloated payroll and employee benefits, even as it pours money into the bottomless Central Subway pit.

The politics of Christina Olague: Mirkarimi in drag

2012-01-10T16:42:00.000-08:00

Olague is both an opportunist and a party line San Francisco progressive. As a Planning Commissioner, she voted to illegally implement the Bicycle Plan even though that ambitious project had had zero environmental review. Hard to believe that a Planning Commissioner didn't know about CEQA, the most important environmental law in California. She knew about it, but, like the Planning Department and the City Attorney, she chose to ignore the law, because, like Dennis Herrera and all ambitious city politicians, she understood that opposing the Bicycle Coalition would be a bad career move. With Mirkarimi and Kim, she dumped the Green Party when Barack Obama and the DCCC made being a Democrat fashionable again. Of course as a supervisor she'll support screwing up traffic on the Panhandle and on Masonic Avenue on behalf of the bike people. With Mirkarimi she shares responsibility for allowing the derelict, undistinguished Harding Theater to continue to blight the middle of Divisadero.

Why Beyond Chron is boring

2012-01-07T17:36:00.000-08:00

With the mentality of a PC commissar, Beyond Chron's Randy Shaw is ill-suited to be a political editor. As I've pointed out before, Shaw apparently thinks he's obligated to "monitor"---that is, filter and reject---letters to the editor: "We not only do not have the staff to monitor such comments, but believe that the public gains little from exposure to potentially uninformed and factually inaccurate quick takes on articles."

Nothing Shaw has ever written demonstrates any aptitude for political journalism or the backbone to take the heat for a controversial position, which is why Beyond Chron can be boring to read. Why, for example, Shaw thinks his or his contributors' ideas on national political issues are of interest is a puzzle, since there are so many easily available online sources that are obviously superior. Oddly, Shaw has even written that his readers aren't interested in local issues, but the reality is that Shaw himself apparently isn't particularly interested in local issues, which is a shame, since that leaves the field mostly to the mainstream media. The fact that so many of the letters to the editor Shaw does publish---always on national and international issues---are from out of town should tell him he's on the wrong track.

I rarely bother to send letters to BeyondChron, since I was evidently blackballed years ago. (My critique of Beyond Chron on their fifth anniversary probably didn't help.) But I couldn't resist responding to Michael Bernick's odd piece the other day on jobs and California's high-speed rail project:

Building the pyramids in ancient Egypt created a lot of jobs, too, but the utility of the structures for most Egyptians is doubtful. The high-speed rail project must be judged on its merits as a transportation system and as an infrastructure investment for all Californians. As such it not only doesn't make sense, it would actually threaten the financial well-being of the state. Fortunately, there's no money---federal, state, local---for this luxury rail system for the rich, as the peer review panel pointed out yesterday.

Pretty tame stuff by my standards---or by anyone's standards, for that matter---but it didn't make the cut over at PC Central. It's not the contents of the letter that bother Shaw. I've been banned for my past sins against his lame notion of intellectual propriety. For one thing, I didn't show any sensitivity to the Islamic bullyboys who intimidated the media so effectively after the Danish cartoons and then at Comedy Central a few years ago. Not a word on either controversy was heard over at Beyond Chron. As an editor if you can't even bring yourself to defend free speech against that kind of intimidation, you only show that you're not fit for the job (Neither is Bruce Brugmann, for that matter).

Of course Shaw doesn't rely on Beyond Chron to make a living. The Tenderloin Housing Clinic is his main move, which is why his thoughts on Care Not Cash and housing the homeless are of more interest than his writing on other subjects.

District 5 Diary's Year End Awards for 2011

2012-01-03T14:09:00.000-08:00

Ed Lee: Liar of the Year

Most Implausible Cover Story of the Year: The District Attorney on why no charges were filed before the election against the cyclist who killed a pedestrian:

"According to[spokesman] Talai, the coroner's office didn't finish Cherney's autopsy report until Oct. 31st, which delayed the police department's investigation. Talai said that police gave the D.A.’s office a complete report on the incident on Nov. 9, the day after Gascon was elected to his first full term. Gascon's office made the decision to charge Ang the next day..." Bullshit.

Good News Story Ignored: The increasing safety of city streets

Instead of celebrating this progress---and giving the MTA credit for a job well-done---the SF Chronicle publishes scare stories based on misinformation from the Bicycle Coalition and WalkSF. The latest SF Collisions Report with the numbers on accidents on city streets shows that our streets have been getting steadily safer for years.

Honorary Person of Color Award: Randy Shaw

White guy Randy Shaw apparently thinks people of color---especially people of Asian descent---make better political representatives than white people. Based on her performance so far, Supervisor Kim, one of Shaw's successful candidates, demonstrates that people of Asian descent aren't necessarily any smarter than, say, Randy Shaw.

The Most Bogus "Preservation" Fight: Progressive Opposition to Richard Johns

According to city progs, being president of the Historical Society for years didn't qualify Johns for the Historical Preservation Commission. Progressives would have more credibility on preservation if for years they hadn't been supporting destructive development policies---"smart growth," highrise development, transit corridors, etc., including the Market/Octavia Plan, which failed to do a legally-required historical resources study of the project area until after the Board of Supervisors okayed the project's EIR.

The Vancouverization of San Francisco: A Warning from Vancouver

John King and the Planning Department may be surprised to learn that highrise-dominated downtown Vancouver isn't universally admired in Vancouver itself.

Bogus Multiculturalism: Supervisor Mirkarimi, Mayor Lee, and Japantown

Mirkarimi and Mayor Lee tour Japantown with journalists to affirm that Japantown will be "preserved." According to the Japantown Task Force, only 10% of the residents of that neighborhood are of Japanese ancestry. But why should we preserve ethnic enclaves? Isn't assimilation what the United States is about? During that tour---really just a photo-op---Mirkarimi mentioned again the idea of eliminating the underpass at Geary and Fillmore, which in 2008 the Examiner accurately called "the worst idea of the year."

Democratic Party's Shame of the Year: Continuing to support high-speed rail
Like William Grindley, as a Democrat I'm ashamed of my party for continuing to push a project that would be ruinous for California. Of course the unions are for it because even bad/dumb projects create jobs. Bay Area politicians---all Democrats---continue to support high-speed rail. California's high-speed rail project: Debra Saunders aptly called it the Democratic Party's Bridge to Nowhere.

Anti-CEQA alliance: Republicans, Developers, and the Bicycle Coalition

The inevitable alliance of developers, Republicans, and bike fanatics to undermine environmental rules. These folks all have their own reasons for joining this alliance. The Bicycle Coalition finds itself in this dubious company because it's always been narrowly focused on pushing its agenda regardless of the consequences.

Dumbest City Development Project of the Year: Parkmerced

The Parkmerced project will add more than 15,000 new housing units to an already dense housing development near an already-congested traffic corridor. The supervisors who voted for the project will be retired before that part of the city is gridlocked with traffic generated by this long-term project.

Dumbest Project of the Year, Runner-up: Treasure Island

Treasure Island now has 2,300 residents. Think traffic on the Bay Bridge and in downtown San Francisco is bad now? Wait until this project adds 16,000 more residents to the island.

Elitists of the Year: LA's MOCA for its graffiti/tagging exhibition

What's a little surprising about LA's exhibit is that they beat SF MOMA to the punch, since this form of vandalism gets widespread approval among SF's political elite.

History Rewrite, Foreign Affairs: the SF Bay Guardian

We learn from the Guardian that War is Bad, especially wars involving the United States. Turns out that Osama Bin Laden wasn't in Afghanistan after all, and maybe the 9/11 fanatics weren't trained there, either, since the Guardian doesn't mention it. And the Guardian knew that Iraq didn't have any WMD, but for some reason the president didn't consult Brugmann, Redmond, and Jones before invading Iraq.

Best Execution of the Year: Osama Bin Laden
We finally got the bastard.

Worst City Legislator of the Year: Supervisor Scott Wiener

First Wiener proposes legislation allowing City Hall to tamper with initiatives passed by city voters, even though he couldn't provide a single example showing why that legislation was needed. Then, instead of an ordinance to ban public nudity, he proposed legislation to require the Castro's nudists to put napkins on public seating before they sit down.

Grand Jury Award to C.W. Nevius
For failing to criticize a single important city policy or project in 2011.

C.W. Nevius Award to the Grand Jury

For its report on the Parkmerced project that fails to challenge this dumb project for its inevitable impact on city traffic. The Grand Jury is probably reluctant to challenge City Hall's traffic policies because it would then have to criticize other important city projects, not only Parkmerced but Treasure Island, the Market/Octavia Plan, and UC's massive housing project on lower Haight Street. The Grand Jury couldn't bring itself to criticize how the city handled the Bicycle Plan, but it did do a good job on the shortcomings of the Central Subway project, though it provided a pathetic pre-emptive roll-over on the first page: "The project will proceed." If the project is so poorly designed and such a drain on the city's transportation revenue---which it clearly is---why not call for it to be stopped? Because that might have made some members of the City Family cross.

Best Exposure of a Lie by City Department: MTA's collisions report showing that the Masonic/Fell Intersection is not particularly unsafe. On page 16 we learn that the number of accidents at that intersection have been remarkably consistent over the last ten years. Too bad Judge Busch didn't see those numbers before he lifted the injunction to allow the city to redesign that intersection. Turns out that the City---led by City Attorney Dennis Herrera---lied to Busch to pander to the Bicycle Coalition, since Herrera didn't want to antagonize the city's bike people before he ran for mayor.

MTA's Lie of the Year: Covering bus windows with ads doesn't obstruct passengers' views of the city

That this is a lie is obvious to anyone who rides Muni. The question is, Why does MTA have such contempt for its passengers in our supposedly transit-first city?

Suspicions Confirmed Award: the Demographics of Cycling in SF
Most cyclists in SF are young, white, transient, and 72% are guys.

Suspicions Confirmed, Runner-up: People drive to work because it's a lot faster than public transportation, which isn't available for most commuters anyhow: the Brookings Institution and the Census Bureau.

A Trifecta for City Firefighters: Bullies, Crybabies, and Scammers of the Year

The union leaders bullied Jeff Adachi when he attended a funeral for firemen killed on duty and whined about pension reform, even though in 2010 the Grand Jury revealed that firemen are the worst gamers of the city's retirement system.

The Unlikeliest Claim of the Year: that SPUR's Gabriel Metcalf is a dissident!

Still waiting to learn about a single important city issue that Metcalf has dissented on.

Worst Appointment of the Year: Putting a Bike Guy in Charge of screwing up Masonic

Screwing up traffic on Masonic Avenue on behalf of the city's bike people is a terrible idea, but I suppose it's appropriate that a bike guy be put in charge of the project, since he and his comrades will be its primary beneficiaries.

Liar of the Year: Ed Lee

Congratulations to the folks at Save Muni for their consistent, principled, and well-informed opposition to the Central Subway.

Worst Promotion of the Year: Ed Reiskin

The City That Knows How puts someone who wants to slow down city traffic in charge of our transit system.

Lemmings of the Year: The candidates for mayor

They all pandered shamelessly to the Bicycle Coalition.

Better Late Than Never Award:

Dennis Herrera, Jake McGoldrick, Tom Radulovich, Jeff Adachi, and Aaron Peskin for their belated opposition to the Cenral Subway project.

Not Better Late Than Never Award: Michelle Alioto-Pier

Asked about the impact of the Market/Octavia Plan on transit---which, as a supervisor, she voted for---Alioto-Pier's answer: “I would certainly like to know before we start some of these larger projects that we have an idea of how we’re going to get people to and from them...We didn’t pay as much attention to the types of impacts on our neighborhoods and our communities as perhaps was needed.”

Identity Politics Award: City Hall for okaying UC's massive housing development

For allowing identity politics to trump the interests of the people of SF. UC played the gay card by including housing for gay seniors in the UC Extension project, even though UC had the property tax-free from the city for more than 50 years only because of its education "mission." City Hall---with Supervisor Mirkarimi leading the way---has now allowed UC to privatize that property to fatten its bottom line with the gay housing as a PC figleaf for betraying the interests of the people of San Francisco. An individual award to Ross Mirkarimi, who talked tough when UC first proposed this bad project, but of course he eventually rolled over.

Admission of the Year: Dennis Herrera

After years of misguided, expensive litigation on the city's Bicycle Plan, City Attorney Herrera told bike guy John Murphy that in the beginning he advised the city to do an EIR on the Plan: "He said that he had told the City to do an EIR, but they were so anxious to get the thing started that they took the shortcut."

Child Endangerment Award: Bicycle Coalition and City Hall

Even though experts agree that riding bikes is dangerous for children, especially the risk of head injury, City Hall joins the Bicycle Coalition in trying to get more children riding bikes in San Francisco. (How will the new state car seat regulations for children impact the parents who put their children in those canvas trailers and haul them around in traffic with their bikes? Not at all, I bet, since for bike zealots everything---even their children---is an accessory to their risky hobby.)

Most Deceptive Ballot Statement of the Year: City Auditor on the Street Bond

Compare the forthright statement by the Legislative Analyst in the 2008 voter's guide on the cost to taxpayers of high-speed rail bonds ("State costs of about $19.4 billion, assuming 30 years to pay off both principal ($9.95 billion) and interest ($9.5 billion) costs of the bonds. Payments of about $647 million per year," page 4) to the SF Auditor's murky, unhelpful statement (page 41) on the street bond in last November's voter's guide.

Worst Deal of the Year for City Taxpayers: the Street Bond

The $248 million street bond passed by city voters last November will end up costing city taxpayers $437,249,617 after the interest is included.

Ranked Choice Voting: Another Progressive Fiasco

Ranked-Choice Voting is another "good government" progressive idea that only confuses voters and needlessly complicates election results.

Masochistic Political Party of the Year: SF Green Party

The Green Party endorsed Supervisor Mirkarimi for sheriff even though he dumped them when being a Democrat became fashionable again in San Francisco. The Murk finally understood that being a left-wing Green wouldn't help him get elected to citywide office.

Dead Man Walking Award: California's High-Speed Rail project

Drop in the Bucket Award: Bicycle Coalition's Leah Shahum

Shahum thought that $225 million to put a bike/pedestrian path on the west span of the Bay Bridge was "a drop in the bucket," and she's unfazed by the latest $550 million estimate for that project.

Here's Your Hat What's Your Hurry Award: Ross Mirkarimi

Since 2004 Mirkarimi has represented District 5 on the Board of Supervisors, where he's also represented the worst in San Francisco progressivism, consistently voting for projects that will damage the city for years to come.

Playing the Race Card Award: Rose Pak

Pak played the race card against Aaron Peskin and Dennis Herrera after they came out against the Central Subway, the political deal disguised as a transportation project. Why else would they not support such a great project?

Bike Demagogue of the Year: blogger Michael Helquist

Helquist provided his readers with a steady stream of misinformation on Masonic Avenue and, as a bonus, threw in some bullshit on the makeover of Divisadero.

2005 Awards

2006 Awards

2007 Awards

2008 Awards

2009 Awards

2010 Awards

High-speed rail whistles past the graveyard

2012-01-02T11:00:00.000-08:00

Happy Holidays from the high-speed rail boondoggle! In spite of the happy-talk from the United States High-Speed Rail Association, this is the year that this dumb project will die in California. Martin Engel at High-Speed Train Talk will be witnessing its death throes.

The anti-development myth in SF

2012-01-01T15:54:00.000-08:00

Apparently Matt Smith brought to Bay City from SF Weekly the unsupported notion that development in San Francisco has long been hindered by an anti-development movement. In today's Bay City/NY Times: "After more than a decade in which San Francisco politics was partly defined by antidevelopment and historic preservation forces, a backlash has begun."

Like the lie that the Fell/Masonic intersection is dangerous, the claim about the existence of a significant anti-development movement in San Francisco is apparently now firmly established in local journalism. The opposite is the case, as progressives and the Planning Dept. subscribe to the "smart" growth, dense development doctrine that holds that we can build as much housing as we want along major city traffic corridors.

C.W. Nevius insists on the mythical existence of an anti-development movement in SF, as does Matt Smith, who, with John King, SPUR's Gabriel Metcalf, and the SF Planning Dept., also wants to build a lot of residential highrises in San Francisco. Smith thinks lining Golden Gate Park on Lincoln Avenue and Fulton Street with residential highrises is a great idea.

Parklets: Institutionalizing the smoking section

2011-12-29T10:42:00.000-08:00

Photo © Søren Schaumberg Jensen/REBAR

For coffeehouses and restaurants, the sidewalk used to be for smokers, who were accommodated with a few plastic chairs next to the traffic noise, the carbon monoxide, and the diesel fumes. Now those small business owners are benefiting from the parklet craze, which originated in the city's anti-car bike movement that sees anything---like taking away scarce parking spaces---that makes it more difficult and expensive to drive in San Francisco as a Good Thing.

John King likes parklets ("Parklets: a little tour of a major trend"), but he also likes highrises, the traffic-clogged Octavia Boulevard, and the ridiculous Congregation Beth Shalom synagogue at Clement and Park Presidio.

In a sidebar, King lists city fees of "$982.50---plus $650 more if parking meters are taken out of commission---and a $221 annual fee." According to the MTA's Transportation Fact Sheet (at the MTA website, click on "reports"), the annual revenue for the city per parking meter is $1,435. The average parklet takes away at least two metered parking spaces, which means a permanent loss of $2,870 a year for the city for each parklet. Some parklets, like the one at Cafe Mojo on Divisadero, take away three parking meters for a loss of $4,305 a year.

The parklet movement now has a city department, Pavement to Parks, dedicated to taking away street space from motor vehicles, also known in SF as "death monsters." Originally conceived to use "excess roadway" and to "reclaim public space," the idea quickly morphed into an anti-parking program, as if the streets of the city are better used for anything but traffic.

Naturally, Steve Jones, bicycle correspondent for the Bay Guardian, voice of the city's PC trendies, likes parklets.

Scott Wiener "making sure high-speed rail happens"

2011-12-26T16:56:00.000-08:00

Photo: Dennis Hearnes Photography

Supervisor Wiener keeps demonstrating that he's an unabashed elitist. First there was his "good government" reform of the initiative process that would have enabled the supervisors to correct initiatives passed by the voters. Fortunately, that misguided measure was rejected overwhelmingly by city voters. Now we have his thoughts on transportation (below), which includes this about taxis: "People need to know that if they need to get somewhere quickly, they can jump in a cab and get there." Wiener and his friends probably don't need to worry about it, but the flag-drop in city cabs is now $3.50 and then 55 cents for every 1/5 of a mile.

Wiener brags about getting Proposition B, the street repair measure, passed last month. But that was no victory for city taxpayers, who, once the interest is figured in, will end up paying $437,249,617 for that $248 million loan.

Wiener not surprisingly is equally cavalier about the price tag on the California high-speed rail project: "The press has sort of gone on a feeding frenzy against high-speed rail, and that’s unfortunate. Yes it’s expensive; yes it’s going to take a long time. But that’s true of any transformative infrastructure project."

The "press" has only been reporting the steady rise in costs of the system since state voters passed Prop. 1A in 2008. Wiener doesn't cite any actual numbers, but he probably hasn't done any homework since he graduated from Harvard. State voters okayed $9.95 billion in bonds to build the system, which, once the annual interest is factored in, will cost state taxpayers $19.4 billion. From the 2008 Voters Guide:

State costs of about $19.4 billion, assuming 30 years to pay off both principal ($9.95 billion) and interest ($9.5 billion) costs of the bonds. Payments of about $647 million per year. When constructed, additional unknown costs, probably in excess of $1 billion a year, to operate and maintain a high-speed train system.

$647 million a year when California is cutting aid to education and raising college tuition and cutting social services!

Wiener's homework assignment: read the many studies on this site about the infrastructure issues he mentions.

Thanks to SF Streetsblog for the link to the interview.

GJEL interviews San Francisco Supervisor Scott Wiener

Posted on Wednesday, December 21st, 2011

San Francisco Supervisor Scott Wiener is one of the most outspoken street safety advocates in the city government and Mayor Ed Lee’s appointee to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (a four year term).

In 2011, he was instrumental in passing Proposition B, which will allocate $248 million in General Obligation Bonds for fixing San Francisco’s streets, bridges and public spaces. In 2012, he’ll be tackling another far reaching transportation renovation: bringing high-speed rail to the Bay Area.

We spoke with Supervisor Wiener about improving the transportation experience in San Francisco, thinking long term on high-speed rail, why more taxis means fewer drivers, and other street safety issues.

GJEL: You’ve lived in San Francisco for 14 years. Has the way people travel changed significantly since you moved here?

WIENER: Not dramatically. We do see more people biking and I do know of more people who have gotten rid of their cars or have a car but hardly ever drive it. You know, I have some friends I never thought would ride Muni who now ride Muni at least some of the time.

GJEL: To what would you attribute that change?

WIENER: I think that’s a combination of the fact that parking can be challenging but also there are a lot of people who are realizing that just driving in this town is not always so fun.

And I’m realistic. I have a car. I don’t drive it that much, but there are times when I need to drive. I don’t subscribe to the belief that we are going to create a non-car paradise. There are people who need to drive whether that’s because of their job or to get groceries or getting their kids around.

But for the people who are only driving because they can’t get where they want to go otherwise, we want to give them the option to travel in a different way. So by improving Muni, by making the streets more walkable, by getting more cabs on the street there will be more people who decide that is more desirable to not drive.

GJEL: You mention taxis on your city council homepage. Why are cabs such a big part of your agenda?

WIENER: If you want to be a transit first city, if you really want to get people out of their cars, cabs are an important part of that system. Even if we had 100 million dollars each year to improve Muni to address its structural deficits, to expand service and to really upgrade the system, Muni is never going to be able to get you anywhere you want to go at any time. If you look at a city like New York, this city has a world-class transportation system, one of the most amazing subways around. That is part of what gets people out of their cars in New York, but their cab system is just as important.

People need to know that if they need to get somewhere quickly, they can jump in a cab and get there. And I personally have people tell me that if they knew they could get a cab when they wanted, they would sell their cars tomorrow. But we have a relatively low number of cabs, and our cab service is bad.

GJEL: The passing of proposition B was a big win for you this year. The city has tried to pass similar bond measures in the past, in 2005, what was different this time?

WIENER: A couple things: We put together a very strong coalition to get the streets bond passed of all sorts of different people including the Bike Coalition, the safety advocates, labor, the business community. We had a lot of different people involved who could agree that we needed to fix our roads and fix a lot of other infrastructure that this bond addresses.

It’s also important to keep in mind that in 2005, the last bond that failed, it got in the high 50s (in terms of votes), so that bond did well, it just didn’t make it to two-thirds. That was a much smaller campaign so we knew with the right campaign we’d have a shot at the two-thirds and I also think that, as time goes by, people just become more convinced that we need to do something drastic to getting our roads fixed.

GJEL: On transportation issues, some might see a tension between function and experience in urban planning. That is, there’s a belief that the things we do for quality of life, wider sidewalks, etc, are not the most functional improvements. This bond sort of addresses both needs. Can you talk about your emphasis on quality of life in San Francisco?

WIENER: I think anything we can do to improve our public spaces is going to bring people together and build communities. So when we now have $10’s of millions to spend on street safety and making our neighborhoods more walkable, to make room for outdoor seating by making the sidewalks a little wider–that improves our experience as a community. When we improve Muni with signal upgrades, it improves the public experience. When we make our streets more bikeable–that improves the public experience.

GJEL: Speaking of bikeable: The relationship between Muni buses and city cyclists isn’t all that great. There have been a number of collisions in the last year. Is the problem one of education for riders and drivers, or is it an infrastructural issue?

WIENER: We live in a very cramped city in a lot of ways. Geographically it’s a small city that’s densely populated. Many times we have narrow roads, and on these cramped spaces we have cars and large busses and cyclists and pedestrians so there’s a lot of potential for conflict on our roads. So we’re not going to make our geographic space bigger, but what we can do is make sure our roads are structured in a way so that everyone can use them and its clear who should be where and that it’s as easy as possible to make sure everyone can travel on our roads in a way that reduces those conflicts. That’s a real challenge but we have been moving in that direction.

GJEL: One of the crucial tools for a lot of the pedestrian advocacy organizations we talk to are strong statistics that help pinpoint where we can make manageable improvements. Are metrics an important tool for you?

WIENER: Yes, because they really help us make the case for why we’re doing this. Sometimes when we make changes, let’s say by having a longer crossing time for pedestrians. Sometimes people will say “you’re just doing this to undermine driving because you’re anti-car,” or something like that. And that’s not the case. We’re doing this because we have an unacceptable rate of injuries and fatalities for pedestrians.

[Stats] really help justify why we’re doing it. We’re not doing it for the heck of it, for unfounded reasons. We’re doing it because we have a lot of pedestrians in this town and too many injuries.

GJEL: What are you big transportation agenda items in 2012?

WIENER: I’m already engaged–and will be even more so–in high speed rail and making sure it happens and that it goes to down town San Francisco.

GJEL: That’s another controversial topic, what’s the status of that initiative right now?

WIENER: It’s in flux now. The press has sort of gone on a feeding frenzy against high-speed rail, and that’s unfortunate. Yes it’s expensive; yes it’s going to take a long time. But that’s true of any transformative infrastructure project.

You know the interstate highway system was not built overnight, and when the decision was made to build it, they didn’t have all the money in the bank. These projects take years and years and years and investment over time. But we know that without high speed rail we’re just going to have to spend an enormous amount on highways and doing a lot of things that are very expensive, have significant negative environmental impacts and then we still wont have a good transportation system.

GJEL: What do you think the hang up is? Is it that people do not think this sort of infrastructure is important, or is it a sort of cognitive issue where people recognize that they want or need these changes, but it’s such an enormous project that right now, with the economy not so flush, people aren’t willing to take the plunge?

WIENER: The short term, easy answer is to say, “let’s not take on these big projects because they’re expensive and they take a long time and they’re controversial.” So it’s easy just to throw up your hands and say, “lets not do it.” But if you look at what made this country great, it was our willingness to say, “we’re going to do something big and it may be expensive and it may take a longtime and politically it may be a heavy lift, but its going to be transformative.”

So whether it’s the interstate highway system, whether its building BART and Muni underground–whatever it may be—it almost always ends up being worth it. Can you even imagine what would have happened if people would have killed BART because it was going to be expensive and take a long time and be disruptive while they’re building it?

Look at the fact that we made the huge blunder of allowing Marin County and San Mateo to opt out of BART. If we had BART all the way up to Santa Rosa and down through the Peninsula to San Jose, it would be so much better. With these kinds of infrastructure projects, far more often than not, you regret not doing it, and you regret not going further.

GJEL: What are some things that people who are passionate about high-speed rail can do to aid its progress?

WIENER: When there are negative stories about high-speed rail, for example, write a letter to the editor. Keep lobbying officials, keep all of our spirits up and make sure that we’re focusing on high-speed rail, that we’re committed to it.

Sometimes you only hear from the people who don’t want it. As committed as you may be, sometimes you only hear from the opponent. And that’s tough psychologically for any public official, so it’s important to keep communicating and keep talking about how important it is.

Hope for 2012 with new leadership

2011-12-25T00:10:00.000-08:00

Thanks to James Fallows for the link

The rehabilitation of Warren Hellman

2011-12-23T17:24:00.000-08:00

Photo by Alexander Warnow

Everyone---even the Bay Guardian---is talking nice about Warren Hellman now, but it wasn't always thus. Hellman got a lot of shit for his role in creating the parking garage under the Concourse in Golden Gate Park. Parking in the park! The horror! And a billionaire is doing it! A story in the Guardian was entitled "Hellman's Hole" ("The wealthy interests behind Golden Gate Park's museums are destroying a popular civic treasure").

When Judge Warren ordered the Concourse Authority to study the idea of creating a dedicated entrance to the garage that begins outside the park as per Proposition J, the Authority proposed widening MLK Drive to the garage entrance by taking away parking on both sides of that street.

That led to a story in Beyond Chron: "Public Kept in the Dark over Golden Gate Park Garage" was the hed of a story raising suspicions about the process, quoting only people who were opposed to the garage ("... a non-profit organization backed by Warren Hellman, who also happens to foot the bill for the park's annual Strictly Bluegrass festival. With Hellman's help, the GGPCA raised $35 million").

Some accused Hellman of controlling the Councourse Authority, which was wreaking havoc in the park: "Warren Hellman's MCCP Destroys Northeast Pedestrian Tunnel."

Others saw Hellman as just one of the "plutocrats behind the privatization scam" in Golden Gate Park. The Guardian bought into the "privatization" line as late as 2006.

Eventually Hellman reached out to the city's progressives, including the Bicycle Coalition's Leah Shahum---the coalition opposed the garage---and Hellman gave them some money, which probably helped with the healing.

Soon Hellman appeared on the cover (the picture above) of the Bay Guardian with Shahum and Andy Thornley, and his political rehabilitation in Progressive Land was complete.

For some background/context on the garage issue, an interview with Mike Ellzey, executive director of the Concourse Authority, which actually got the garage and the remodeling of the Concourse done.

The latest Transportation Fact Sheet

2011-12-21T11:17:00.000-08:00

The MTA's annual Transportation Fact Sheet provides a dozen pages quantifying how people in San Francisco get to work and get around in general (go to the MTA website and click on "reports"). In the ongoing debate about Muni and cars versus bikes, this document provides a factual basis for the discussion and a reality-check for City Hall's anti-car policies.

Comparing the report of November, 2011, with last year's report:

The latest DMV numbers show that there are 461,536 registered motor vehicles in San Francisco, which is down slightly from last year's number of 461,827. There were 537,613 driver's licenses issued to city residents in 2010, which is up from 534,829 in the last report. SF has 9,933 registered vehicles per square mile.

"Vehicles Available by Household": Only 21.6% of households in SF have no motor vehicle, with 78.40% of households having between one (36.6%) and five (1.6%).

On the "net change in the number of vehicles in the city between 4 a.m. and noon on a work day": 35,000 come into the city over the bridges and from San Mateo County.

"Means of Transportation to Work" for San Francisco residents: 46% commute by motor vehicle (car, taxi, motorcycle, etc.), 34.1% by public transportation, and---wait for it---3.5% by bicycle. That percentage is up from 2.1% in 2000, a not-so-whopping increase of 1.4% in ten years, after years of anti-car, pro-bike propaganda from the Bicycle Coalition and City Hall.

An oddity: Though the city claims that more people are commuting by public transportation (34.1% from 31.8% in the previous report), average weekday boardings for Muni have supposedly plummeted to 673,196 from 707,459 boardings in the previous report. That anomaly is unexplained, since the report doesn't provide any analysis or commentary on the numbers.

In spite of the hysteria from Walk SF, the SF Chronicle, and the anti-car movement, the city is actually getting safer for pedestrians. There were 695 "non-fatal pedestrian injury collisions," which is down from 799 in the previous report. The Fact Sheet cites the latest city Collisions Report (see pages 26, 27) for those numbers, showing a steady decline in both pedestrian injuries and fatalities on the streets of San Francisco.

But non-fatal bicycle injury accidents are up to 531 from 468 in the previous report.

Parking meters, city parking lots, and parking tickets are a major source of revenue for the city. Alas, much to the distress of the MTA, that income is down to a mere $171,610,099 from the previously-reported $180,015,984, probably because people are driving less in the recession.

Fell and Masonic---again

2011-12-20T12:01:00.000-08:00

Photo by Jim Herd, the anonymous blogger at SF Citizen

Poor reporting by the Examiner in today's story on the latest accident at Fell and Masonic that injured a cyclist. To show that the intersection is "accident prone," the reporter links a previous Examiner story about accidents that happened nowhere near the Fell and Masonic intersection.

The Bicycle Coalition's long Big Lie campaign about that intersection has succeeded in establishing as fact the falsehood that the intersection is dangerous.

Monday Night Football at the Stick

2011-12-19T17:24:00.000-08:00

C.W. Nevius: City Hall megaphone

2011-12-19T12:08:00.000-08:00

Photo by Luke Thomas at Fog City

C.W. Nevius apparently sees himself as a scourge of obstructionism and nimbyism in San Francisco. He assumes that sensible policymakers in City Hall are routinely being thwarted by pointless protests and litigation.

He's promoted this grotesquely false picture before. He wondered a couple of years ago whether a compromise on the Bicycle Plan couldn't have been reached before the court decision ordering the city to do an EIR on the Plan. That column only showed his ignorance of the California Environmental Protection Act (CEQA) that requires developers and government agencies to do an environmental review of any project that even might have an impact on the environment. The City of San Francisco was intransigent and refused to do any environmental review of its 500-page Bicycle Plan before it began implementing it on the streets of the city, which is why we had to sue to get a court order enforcing the most important environmental law in California.

Nevius evidently doesn't like to read anything. His modus operandi seems to involve a few phone calls before tapping out his ill-informed columns. His column the other day on the America's Cup demonstrated his continuing ignorance of that important law:

It would have almost been disappointing if the environmental impact report for the America's Cup had sailed through City Hall without dissent. C'mon, this is a city that protests paper shopping bags and Happy Meals.

Both the shopping bag and the Happy Meal issues came out of City Hall and the Board of Supervisors, not from "protests."

No worries, San Francisco didn't disappoint. No sooner had the Planning Commission voted unanimously to approve the report---while praising its comprehensive look at environmental concerns---than a small group of activists filed an appeal to stop everything. That's fine. A certain number of the groups seem genuinely---if a little obsessively---concerned about matters like the health of native plant life and traffic flow. Those concerns will be heard at a Board of Supervisors meeting in January, a few tweaks will be made, and the preparations for this gigantic, global sporting event will continue on schedule.

Oh, yes, those bunny-hugging enviros are so fussy about plants and traffic. But, as Nevius correctly notes, those "obsessives" will be turned away with a "a few tweaks" and a project Nevius and City Hall support will go forward. So what's the problem?

But there's another group that's more troublesome. They are talking tough, and seem perfectly willing to stretch the debate out until the Cup is on the brink of collapse. Some are the bay swimmers who are threatening to paddle out in the middle of the races because they aren't getting enough swim space. Then there is former Board of Supervisors president Aaron Peskin, who said at the Planning Commission on Thursday that there might be legal ramifications if the Port Commission went ahead with plans to start construction of a cruise ship terminal at Pier 27 before the appeal is heard. That sounds like the warning of a lawsuit.

Well, yes. But Nevius apparently doesn't understand that now that the Planning Commission has okayed the America's Cup project, the final appeal will be heard in a couple of weeks by the Board of Supervisors, which will duly reject the appeal, which is what they always do on major city projects. Once that appeal is rejected by the BOS, that will be the time for litigation. The Port Commission can't wait a few weeks before breaking ground on the project? No one embarks on this kind of litigation lightly, since it's very expensive and time-consuming.

No, what Nevius objects to is the very idea that someone would object to a City Hall project that he, Mayor Lee, and most city residents support:

I would just say one thing to those people. You'd better check your back, because there aren't many people behind you. The America's Cup is wildly popular in San Francisco. A University of San Francisco poll found support at nearly 80 percent. If the swimmers stop a race out of simple pique, or if a tedious lawsuit jeopardizes the event, those groups will look like petulant kids.

Either there are serious issues with the EIR on the project or there aren't. That's a legal issue and isn't something that can be decided by simply counting heads. But Nevius doesn't deign to deal with the facts on actual issues (and I can't find the poll he refers to). Instead he warns dissidents to "check your back"!

Peskin is far too smart not to see this, of course. But it is hard to see what concession he wants.

Did Nevius ask Peskin what he wants? Hard to believe that Aaron Peskin doesn't know what he wants.

This Cup can happen. It can be awesome. The idea of stopping the whole thing dead with a lawsuit, just because you can, is the worst kind of cynicism...Mess with the Cup and they'll be something more---furious.

Aaron Peskin better watch his back! Nevius is mad and he's not going to take it anymore! He'll lead a mob of City Hall insiders---with Larry Ellison, Mayor Lee, and Christina Olague---to Peskin's house on Telegraph Hill!

"In the end, if you are always the one who says no to everything," [Christina]Olague said, "eventually you are going to exhaust the public."

This is a trope trotted out by city insiders whenever a project they favor faces any serious opposition, as if development in San Francisco has been the least bit hindered in the last ten years. The contrary is the reality, as city neighborhoods are increasingly threatened by an aggressively pro-development City Hall with its trendy, half-baked dense development and "transit corridors" theories. Peskin is opposed to the Treasure Island project, and for good reason, but the notion is ludicrous that the former supervisor who supports highrise development in SF, including on Rincon Hill, is now some sort of anti-development obstructionist.

If Olague runs for District 5 Supervisor next year, it will be interesting to hear her justify the massive housing projects she and the Planning Commission have okayed---the Market and Octavia Plan, the UC housing development, Treasure Island, and Parkmerced. While she's at it, maybe she will try to justify waving the Bicycle Plan through the process with no environmental review.

Nevius raised a similarly bogus alarm a year ago about the entirely imaginary "development wars" in San Francisco, where good projects are delayed by people and organizations "just because they can." The reality: the only leverage neighborhood groups have to modify, mitigate, or stop unwise City Hall projects is to appeal to the Board of Supervisors and/or threaten litigation. Once the BOS rejects the appeal---as they always do on major projects---the only recourse people have is litigation.

Christopher Hitchens, 1949-2011

2011-12-16T15:27:00.000-08:00

Photo by Chad Rachman

Christopher Hitchens, 1949-2011
New Statesman
by George Eaton
16 December

"I have decided to take whatever my disease can throw at me," wrote Christoper Hitchens in his most recent essay. But today, after 18 months, his duel with cancer ended. He was 62 years old. The world has lost one of its most outstanding and prolific journalists and a wonderful polemicist, orator and bon vivant. Hitchens could write brilliantly about an extraordinarily wide range of subjects and people: the death penalty, religion, Leon Trotsky, Evelyn Waugh, the British monarchy, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, George Orwell, Saul Bellow, the Elgin Marbles, North Korea, the Balkans, Henry Kissinger, Thomas Paine and Philip Larkin.

In recent months, we had sad cause to add cancer to that list. The series of essays Hitchens wrote for Vanity Fair about his illness stands as the finest writing on the subject since John Diamond's C: Because Cowards Get Cancer Too. Without a hint of self-pity or sentimentality, Hitchens confronted his fate with pure reason and logic. "To the dumb question, 'Why me?' " he wrote, "the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: 'Why not?' " Nor did his humour desert him. To a Christian who insisted that God had given him "throat" cancer in order to punish the "one part of his body he used for blasphemy," he replied: "My so-far uncancerous throat...is not at all the only organ with which I have blasphemed." And to those who insultingly suggested that he should embrace religion, Hitchens's flawless riposte: "Suppose there were groups of secularists at hospitals who went round the terminally ill and urged them to adopt atheism: 'Don't be a mug all your life. Make your last days the best ones.' People might suppose this was in poor taste."

I interviewed Hitchens for the New Statesman in May 2010 during the UK leg of his Hitch-22 tour. Over several glasses of Pinot Noir and Johnnie Walker Black Label, we discussed, among other things, religion, neoconservatism ("I'm not a conservative of any kind"), his time at the NS, Zimbabwe (his biggest regret was that he hadn't been tougher on Mugabe in the 1980s) and the euro. Hitch was on form that day, calmly eviscerating the likes of David Cameron ("He seems content-free to me. Never had a job, except in PR, and it shows. People ask, 'What do you think of him?' and my answer is: 'He doesn't make me think.' ") and Sarah Palin ("I think she's a completely straightforward cynic and opportunist and I think she's cashing out...She's made a fortune and she'll make another. But she's not actually going to do the hard work of trying to lead or build a movement"). Two days later he returned to the US. A month later he was diagnosed with cancer. He never returned to the country of his birth.

It was the United States, where Hitchens lived for more than 30 years, that he came to call home. By the end of the 1970s, he had tired of Britain ("Weimar without the sex", was his verdict on the Callaghan era) and longed for the bigger stage of America, moving first to New York and later to Washington, DC. He struggled at first, eking out a living writing a biweekly column for the Nation magazine and relying on the kindness of friends such as the radical journalist Andrew Cockburn. But the move paid off when he landed a column for Vanity Fair in 1992, greatly increasing his income and his readership. It was also there that he met his adoring second wife, Carol Blue, who once remarked of him: "I was just glad such a person existed in the world." He is survived by Blue, their daughter, Antonia, and two children from his previous marriage to Eleni Meleagrou, Alexander and Sophia.

...Hitchens's allegiance to the US (he became a citizen in 2007) had more to do with its secular constitution and its commitment to free expression but America did make his fortune. By the end of his life, with regular slots in Vanity Fair, the Atlantic and Slate, several bestselling books and a lucrative place on the lecture circuit, Hitchens was earning nearly $1m a year.

His extraordinary output---12 books, five collections of essays---was suggestive of a solitary, bookish man, rather than a compulsively social hedonist. In resolving this apparent paradox, Hitchens was aided by two attributes in particular: his prodigious memory (as Ian McEwan once remarked: "It all seems instantly, neurologically available: everything he's ever read, everyone he's ever met, every story he's ever heard") and his ability to write at a speed that most people talk. The late, great Anthony Howard, who as New Statesman editor hired Hitchens in 1973, told me last year: "He was a very quick writer...Hitch could produce a front-page leader, which would take me a couple of hours, in half an hour."

In his final interview, with Richard Dawkins (published in the current issue of the NS), Hitchens reflected, with touching modesty, on his status as an essayist. After Dawkins told him that he could think of no one since Aldous Huxley who was so well read, he replied:

It may strike some people as being broad but it's possibly at the cost of being a bit shallow. I became a journalist because one didn't have to specialise. I remember once going to an evening with Umberto Eco talking to Susan Sontag and the definition of the word "polymath" came up. Eco said it was his ambition to be a polymath; Sontag challenged him and said the definition of a polymath is someone who's interested in everything and nothing else. I was encouraged in my training to read widely---to flit and sip, as Bertie [Wooster] puts it---and I think I've got good memory retention. I retain what's interesting to me, but I don't have a lot of strategic depth.
A lot of reviewers have said, to the point of embarrassing me, that I'm in the class of Edmund Wilson or even George Orwell. It really does remind me that I'm not. But it's something to at least have had the comparison made---it's better than I expected when I started.

Hitchens's modesty was unwarranted. In this age of high specialisation, we will not see his like again. It was God Is Not Great, his anti-theist polemic, that sent him supernova. While Dawkins's atheism is rooted in science, Hitchens's was rooted in morality. He was repelled by the notion that people do good only because they fear punishment and hope for reward. The question he often posed about believers was: "Why do they wish this was true?" Heaven for Hitchens was a place of "endless praise and adoration, limitless abnegation and abjection of self; a celestial North Korea".

It is Hitch the controversialist that many will remember. The man who said of Jerry Falwell, "If you gave Falwell an enema he could be buried in a matchbox," and of Ronald Reagan: "Reagan is doing to the country what he can no longer do to his wife." But as John Gray wrote in his NS review of Hitchens's fifth and final collection of essays, Arguably, he was no mere provocateur or contrarian. Throughout his career, Hitchens retained a commitment to the Enlightenment values of reason, secularism and pluralism. His targets---Mother Teresa, Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, God---were chosen not at random, but rather because they had offended one or more of these principles.

Over the past decade, many on the left came to regard Hitchens not as a friend but as an enemy. Tariq Ali...wrote: "On 11 September 2001, a small group of terrorists crashed the planes they had hijacked into the Twin Towers of New York. Among the casualties, although unreported that week, was a middle-aged Nation columnist called Christopher Hitchens. He was never seen again...The vile replica currently on offer is a double." And yet, contrary to reports, Hitchens did not perform a crude midlife swerve from left to right (also known as doing a "Paul Johnson"). Unlike Johnson, a former New Statesman editor who became a reactionary conservative ("Pinochet remains a hero to me," he wrote in 2007), Hitchens did not give up everything he believed in. He maintained, for instance, that the US invasion of Vietnam was a war crime, that Kissinger belonged behind bars (see his 2001 book The Trial of Henry Kissinger for a full account of the former US secretary of state's "one-man rolling crime wave") and that the Israeli occupation of Palestine was a moral and political scandal.

His support for the "war on terror" was premised not on conservative notions but on liberal principles. As he wrote in a column for the Nation published on 20 September 2001, "What they [the 9/11 attackers] abominate about 'the west', to put it in a phrase, is not what western liberals don't like and can't defend about their own system, but what they do like about it and must defend: its emancipated women, its scientific inquiry, its separation of religion from the state."

He was wrong, badly wrong about Iraq, but for the best of reasons. His support for the invasion arose out of a long-standing solidarity with the country's Kurds (see his long, 1992 piece for National Geographic, "The Struggle of the Kurds", collected in Love, Poverty and War) and his belief that even war was preferable to the survival of Saddam Hussein's totalitarian regime ("a concentration camp above ground and a mass grave beneath it"). It was not an attempt to ingratiate himself with the neoconservatives, whom Hitchens had fought and continued to fight with on issues from gay rights to the death penalty to Israel...

Yet those who stopped reading Hitchens after 11 September 2001 are all the poorer for it. They have not read his haunting account of napalm's deadly legacy in Vietnam: "Some of the victims of Agent Orange haven't even been born yet, and if that reflection doesn't shake you, then my words have been feeble and not even the photographs will do." Or his unrivalled indictment of capital punishment: "Once you institute the penalty, the bureaucratic machinery of death develops its own logic, and the system can be relied on to spare the beast-man, say, on a technicality of insanity, while executing the hapless Texan indigent who wasn't able to find a conscientious attorney." Or his unique denunciation of waterboarding: "I apply the Abraham Lincoln test for moral casuistry: 'If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.' Well, then, if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture."

The tragedy of Hitchens's illness was that it came at a time when he was enjoying a larger audience than ever. Of his tight circle of friends---Martin Amis, James Fenton, Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie---he was the last to gain international renown, yet he is now read more widely than any of them.

In his later years, Hitchens was fond of quoting his late mother's assertion that "the one unforgivable sin is to be boring." Today, as I realise I will never hear that resonant baritone again, that Hitchens's mighty pen is still, I feel certain in saying that the world has become a more boring place.

The Book of Jobs

2011-12-15T15:38:00.000-08:00

By Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, this article is the best thing I've read about both the current recession and the cause of the Great Depression:

The Book of Jobs

by Joseph Stiglitz

Vanity Fair

January, 2012

Forget monetary policy. Re-examining the cause of the Great Depression—the revolution in agriculture that threw millions out of work—the author argues that the U.S. is now facing and must manage a similar shift in the “real” economy, from industry to service, or risk a tragic replay of 80 years ago.

The Murk's farewell message

2011-12-15T12:02:00.000-08:00

I won't have Ross Mirkarimi to kick around any more, although, as he notes in his farewell message below, he's not going far! In todays' Chronicle Rachel Gordon calls him "wonkish." Wikipedia defines a policy wonk as a "person who studies or develops strategies and policies, especially one who has a keen interest in and aptitude for technical details." That's the problem with San Francisco progressivism: Mirkarimi is its idea of a policy wonk. As Gordon also reports, the Murk's real talent is his use of the language, which is why I gave him a Nikita Award a few years back.

The Murk was also known for his opportunism in abandoning the Green Party, covering up that betrayal with some classic flab-gab. And for his revolutionary rhetoric at the hot-air festival called the Peoples Populist Party convention---whatever happened to that project?---and his support for the martyred Josh Wolf, who, to hear local lefties tell it, was plucked off the streets of San Francisco because he was a national security threat to the Bush Administration.

On every major issue facing District 5 and San Francisco, Mirkarimi supported policies that actually harm the city. Those policies---like surrendering the Extension property on lower Haight Street to a predatory UC, and the Market and Octavia Plan that will overdevelop the middle of the city, including a cluster of high-rises at Market and Van Ness---will continue to damage the city for years to come.

With the Murk's departure, the Bicycle Coalition will have to find a new errand boy on the Board of Supervisors, but David Chiu is eager fill that role.

The Murk leaves us with some new Rossisms in his farewell message: "Our District is one of the most diverse, nonlinear demarcated districts in the city." As opposed to unhip, linear districts, like District One and those districts that have yet to be "demarcated"? Ross looks fondly back on the "centrifugal force of neighborhood activism that caused us to reconcile important competing considerations." And he will doubtless still be "bettering" the city as our sheriff, where he will face different challenges---make that "nuanced" challenges.

Dear Friends,

This will be my last newsletter as District 5 Supervisor. It’s hard to summon seven years of memories in this brief note, so come celebrate with us at our last holiday City Hall office party on Friday, December 16, 5:00 to 7:30 PM.

I want to take this opportunity to express my immense appreciation to my past and present office staff who blazed the journey with me, remaining focused on the job at hand while performing simultaneous constituent and legislative acts on a daily basis. The greater the challenge, the better they did. A conventional work day was rare. Often, work followed staff home---I’m grateful to the family and friends who supported their efforts while they gave it their all.

Thank you also to the fleet of amazing volunteers and interns who did everything from mundane clerical tasks, to delving into complicated or controversial projects. There is nothing more rewarding than hearing from former interns who parlayed their positive experience with us into a vocation that truly inspires them.

Most importantly, I want to thank the people of San Francisco and District 5. Our District is one of the most diverse, nonlinear demarcated districts in the city. The range of challenges was often nuanced depending on the specific neighborhood, but they all embodied the fusion of big urban demands with village interests. And I loved that because it was the centrifugal force of neighborhood activism that caused us to reconcile important competing considerations, no matter the issue big or small. Thank you to the volunteer-driven dedicated network of neighborhood groups and its leaders for their commitment to bettering one of the most majestic cities in the world.

I will be sworn in as San Francisco’s next Sheriff on January 8th.

Happy Holidays.

Yours truly,
Ross Mirkarimi

City meter guy issued "as many citations as I could..."

2011-12-14T14:29:00.000-08:00

Not that there's any doubt about it, but the story in yesterday's Chronicle by the retiring meter guy provides more confirmation of the predator/prey relationship the city has with motorists :

I started in 1987, when we were still part of SFPD. Back then, it was about issuing as many citations as I could because that's what I was told I was being paid to do. We had a work performance average of 13.8 tickets per hour under SFPD. Of course, back then the bail for expired meters was $8. Today it's $55 or $65. For a bus stop, it's $255; for a fire hydrant, $90. I tell people, "Rather than expose yourself to a citation, park in a garage. It's a lot less expensive, especially if you're just doing something really quickly."

As if "a garage" is always available!

The city has always had a quota system for its meter maids and meter guys.

A couple of years ago Will Reisman reported in the Examiner how the city insists that "parking control officers step up their production" to make money for the city ("Parking citations on the decline," Jan. 8, 2010).

Bay Bridge bike path: $550 million

2011-12-13T11:23:00.000-08:00

rmleczko / Courtesy MTA

Along with its contents, there are a couple of oddities about this story in today's Chronicle: the picture (above) accompanying the story, and the fact that you can't find it on the SFGate site except by entering the headline in the search function. Maybe someone at the Chron wanted to bury the story, especially the $550 million price tag for adding a bike/pedestrian path to the west span of the Bay Bridge. That number is buried at the end of the story, along with the inevitable approval from Leah Shahum:

...Leah Shahum, executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, said the study makes the possibility of pedaling from Oakland to San Francisco closer to reality. "It moves the idea of a bike/pedestrian/maintenance pathway from the idea stage to the official project stage," she said. "Now we can seek funding."

Shahum thought that $225 million for this project was "a drop in the bucket." The drops are getting bigger!

Didn't the Chronicle and the MTA think there was something a little strange about a graphic that seemed to show people, including a man in a wheelchair, about to go over the edge into the bay?

Mayor Lee's Hobson's Choice

2011-12-12T11:17:00.000-08:00

Thomas Hobson

Mayor Lee has nothing but a Hobson's Choice in appointing a District 5 Supervisor. If he picks a so-called moderate, he/she will be successfully opposed in November by one the district's party-line leftists---Quintin Mecke, Julian Davis, John Rizzo, etc., which I call the Juanita Owens Effect. If he appoints a progressive, he'll strengthen his leftist opposition on the Board of Supervisors, while giving the appointee a boost in the November election, though even a progressive would be tainted just by being appointed.

Yesterday the Examiner listed a number of other candidates for the mayor's kiss-of-death appointment: London Breed, Michael Breyer, Phil Ginsburg, Christina Olague, Malcolm Yeung, Michael O'Connor, Gabriel Haaland.

Cop-killer's life spared

2011-12-12T10:40:00.000-08:00

Illustration by the Bridge and Tunnel Club

With the help of progressives, including our Board of Supervisors in 2005, Abu Mumia Jamal won't be executed for killing Philadephia cop Daniel Faulkner thirty years ago. Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders is the only local journalist to write about this.

Inside the progressive bubble

2011-12-10T15:55:00.000-08:00

Tim Redmond revisits the high-speed rail issue on the Guardian's political blog. Apparently even he suspected that the column on his road trip to LA didn't do the subject justice. As I pointed out, that column was completely fact-free. The latest attempt has facts, but they are completely irrelevant, as he fails to come to grips with the specifics of this project. Instead he compares the cost of California's high-speed rail project to BART, the Golden Gate Bridge, the California Aqueduct, etc. He seems to think that all that's required to make meaningful comparisons is to change the old numbers into 2011 dollars.

Redmond provides a link to an article by Robert Cruickshank, who does a pro-HSR blog, where his latest post tries to explain away the recent Field Poll showing that public opinion has turned decisively against the project.

There are other, better sources by people who have been focusing on this project for several years. The best, most thorough analysis of every phase of the project is done by the Community Coalition on High-Speed Rail. Mark Powell is excellent on Against California High Speed Rail. Martin Engel looks at the literature on the subject regularly at High-Speed Train Talk.

The official California High-Speed Rail website isn't particularly useful, except for providing the project's documents, like the latest business plan.

Redmond's approach to the high-speed rail issue is characterisitic of the Bay Guardian and the city's left in general: a massive intellectual failure on a number of important city issues. When I started this blog seven years ago, I was surprised at the shoddy, poorly-informed performance of the progressives who were still opposing the parking garage then being built underneath the Concourse in Golden Gate Park. It soon became apparent that that slipshod approach was typical of how they dealt with other important issues: homelessness, planning, development, traffic and the Bicycle Plan, etc.

On issue after issue, progressives failed to their homework. Important documents went unread and unanalyzed; progs proceeded as if they were automatically in the right and had no need to engage with the facts. The Guardian never did any in-depth analysis of Mayor Newsom's Care Not Cash or his subsequent initiatives on homelessness. Same thing on the Bicycle Plan. Steve Jones, a dedicated cyclist, wrote clearly on the subject, but he never took a close look at the EIR on the Plan. The Market/Octavia Plan and UC's hijacking of the old extension site on Haight Street for a massive housing development were mostly ignored, with an occasional item fostering the illusion that those projects were about affordable housing.

The failure of the city's left over the last ten years can't all be blamed on the Guardian, but they were/are the left's main source of information and ideas in San Francisco. Fog City, Beyond Chron and other more or less progressive online publications haven't been any better.

Population and auto commuting gain in suburbs

2011-12-10T09:48:00.000-08:00

Suburbs not doomed

Joel Kotkin

...Perhaps no theology grips the nation’s mainstream media---and the planning community---more than the notion of inevitable suburban decline. The Obama administration’s housing secretary, Shaun Donavan, recently claimed, “We’ve reached the limits of suburban development: People are beginning to vote with their feet and come back to the central cities.”

Yet repeating a mantra incessantly does not make it true. Indeed, any analysis of the 2010 U.S. Census would make perfectly clear that rather than heading for density, Americans are voting with their feet in the opposite direction: toward the outer sections of the metropolis and to smaller, less dense cities. During the 2000s, the Census shows, just 8.6% of the population growth in metropolitan areas with more than 1 million people took place in the core cities; the rest took place in the suburbs. That 8.6% represents a decline from the 1990s, when the figure was 15.4%.

Nor are Americans abandoning their basic attraction for single-family dwellings or automobile commuting. Over the past decade, single-family houses grew far more than either multifamily or attached homes, accounting for nearly 80% of all the new households in the 51 largest cities. And---contrary to the image of suburban desolation---detached housing retains a significantly lower vacancy rate than the multi-unit sector, which has also suffered a higher growth in vacancies even the crash.

Similarly, notes demographer Wendell Cox, despite a 45% boost in gas prices, the country gained almost 8 million lone auto commuters in the past 10 years. Transit ridership, while up slightly, is still stuck at the 1990 figure of 5%, while the number of home commuters grew roughly six times as quickly...

Rather than flee to density, the Census showed a population shift from more dense to less dense places. The top ten population gainers among metropolitan areas---growing by 20%, twice the national average, or more---are the low-density Las Vegas, Raleigh, Austin, Charlotte, Riverside–San Bernardino, Orlando, Phoenix, Houston, San Antonio and Atlanta. By contrast, many of the densest metropolitan areas---including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boston and New York---grew at rates half the national average or less.

Less friendly to the meme of density’s manifest destiny has been a simultaneous meltdown in the urban condo market. Massive reductions in condo prices of as much as 50% or more have particularly hurt the areas around Miami, Portland, Chicago and Atlanta. There are open holes, empty storefronts, and abandoned projects in downtowns across the country that, if laid flat, would appear as desperate as the foreclosure ravaged fringe areas...

In fact the media reports about the “death” of fringe suburbs seem to be more a matter of wishful thinking than fact. If the new urbanists want to do something useful, they might apply themselves by helping these peripheral places of aspiration evolve successfully. That’s far more constructive than endlessly insisting on---or trying to legislate---their inevitable demise.

HAIA opposes MTA's plans for bike lane

2011-12-09T12:56:00.000-08:00

The Haight-Ashbury Improvement Association supports Page and Hayes Streets as an alternative to MTA's plans for a bike lane on the Panhandle.

Scott James strikes again

2011-12-09T12:35:00.000-08:00

Bay City's Scott James performs an important public service for San Francisco. First he annoys the bike nut community (BNC) by writing objectively about the city's anti-car movement, and in today's Bay City he's stirring up the city's dog people, a k a, the Dogshit Producing Community (DPC). Of course he's not doing this gratuitously, since these are both important city issues. We look forward to stories with his byline.

Interesting to note that District 5's Bruce Wolfe, quoted by James in the story, is president of DogPAC San Francisco. Last time we heard from Wolfe here at District 5 Diary was back in 2005, when he was an opponent of the garage under the Concourse in Golden Gate Park: here and here.

Dead Man Walking 2: high-speed rail

2011-12-08T12:43:00.000-08:00

Assemblywoman Diane Harkey (R-Dana Point)

Governor Brown appointed Dan Richard and Michael Rossi to the California High-Speed Rail Board in an attempt to save the sinking high-speed rail project. Allowing for the fact that no one can save that misconceived project, Richard and Rossi didn't distinguish themselves the other day when they testified before an Assembly committee.

I was channel-surfing the other night---looking for Two and a Half Men---and stumbled on the California Channel's (108 on Comcast) rerun of the hearing. Instead of saving the project, the latest CHSR business plan only reinforced public doubts, since it confirmed what critics have been saying for the last two years: the price tag on the project was always understated, and the money to build the project was never really there.

The latest business plan now gives Governor Brown the perfect opportunity to kill the project, since he can legitimately claim that he did what he could to save it. It just sank from the weight of its own implausibility.

Richard even mentioned Bent Flyvbjerg, co-author of "Megaprojects and Risk." Flyvbjerg could have been writing about the CHSR project when he wrote, "Cost underestimation and overrun[for mega-projects] cannot be explained by error and seem to be best explained by strategic misrepresentation, namely lying, with a view to getting projects started." (page 16, emphasis added)

And he mentioned the most thorough-going critics of CHSR, the folks at the Community Coalition High-Speed Rail, though he called them "the three gentlemen from Palo Alto."

Assemblywoman Diane Harkey (R-Dana Point) was particularly good during the hearing. While most of her colleagues in the state legislature slumber, she's been on the case for months now.

The latest Field Poll shows that public opinion is finally catching up with all the PR bullshit produced by the CHSR Authority and the project's supporters.

Martin Engel at High-Speed Rail Talk asks the project's supporters a good question about the long-promised "private investment" in the project. If passenger rail in the US is a good investment, why did Warren Buffet buy Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway---a rail freight company---and not Amtrak? Because not only does Amtrak not make money, it is subsidized by the American taxpayers with $1 billion a year.

More advice for the Examiner

2011-12-06T12:25:00.000-08:00

One thing the new owners of the SF Examiner---and the Chronicle, too, for that matter---could do to help their readers is provide more online links, especially for government reports and documents. When Examiner reporter Will Reisman recently wrote about the city's "transit first" policy ("In transit-first San Francisco, cars still rule the road"), he relied on the useful MTA Transportation Fact Sheet for a lot of his information. Alas, he didn't---or couldn't---provide readers with a link to the important document, which I got from SF Streetsblog.

Since reporters like Reisman go to the important meetings and have access to public officials---his phone calls are more likely to be returned than mine---they often have access to documents the rest of us, whether bloggers or interested citizens, don't have. They can empower the rest of us by providing links to crucial documents on city issues.

We can take a lesson from the late, great I.F. Stone, whose newsletter I read religiously in the 1960s and 1970s: "Go into the bowels of government where the really good sources are. They are good public servants, very often breaking their hearts with frustration.They're the best kind of source...I made no claims to inside stuff. I tried to give information which could be documented, so the reader could check it for himself."

Even though the official City Hall policies are often foolish and city government can seem bloated and dysfuntional, there are "good public servants" doing good work. Another document that shows that the MTA is making our streets safer over time is its annual "collisions" report on all injury accidents on the streets of San Francisco, the latest version of which is here.

Open letter to the Occupy movement

2011-12-05T11:22:00.000-08:00

Photo by Michelle Gachet

Jack Bogdanski's open letter to the Occupy Portland movement also applies to the Occupy SF folks. If they can't evolve into something more than a public nuisance and a public health hazard, they need to give it up.

Dear "members" of Occupy Portland:

What little credibility you guys may have had before this weekend, you pretty much lost with your pathetic "Thriller for White People" dance party on Saturday night in the Park Blocks. You kept a bunch of elderly and disabled people awake all night, you cost the taxpayers more hundreds of thousands of dollars, and you slowed down and otherwise screwed up downtown holiday activities for all sorts of folks whom you purport to represent.

What does that have to do with economic injustice and corporate crime? Admit it---nothing, really. One of you was on the tube last night talking about "reflecting" on your "successes." Exactly what in heaven's name would those be? You've showed that a lot of people are angry---wonderful, that was six weeks ago. What else have you done? Nothing productive, as far as I can see.

If you want to party on the cheap, find a dive bar somewhere with no cover charge and a decent sound system, and dance the night away. If you want to camp out, there are many campgrounds in the region that are empty this time of year. And if you really want to deliver a political message---which looks more improbable by the week---march around all you want from 7 in the morning until 9 at night. On the sidewalk.

At the beginning, I was glad to see you out there; I had been surprised that you hadn't appeared sooner. I didn't care about the money spent on police overtime, because sometimes democracy is messy. But you've had quite a while to come up with a workable agenda, and it hasn't appeared.

You want a just and fair society---how long do you think that will take? My guess is 30 years at a minimum. Are you going to be out in the park blocks doing the "Thriller" dance for that long?

America has a short attention span, friends, and you're missing your window. In a few more weeks, no one will be watching you on TV, no matter how much you act up. If you're unhappy about how the cops treat you now, you're really not going to like how they act when nobody cares any more.

There'll always be some anarchist in a mask and a blue Mohawk out in the streets wanting to tear everything down. But how much of your life are you going to waste gyrating around getting nowhere?

Get this thing focused, or give it up.

Sincerely,
Jack Bogdanski

Workshop on screwing up Panhandle traffic

2011-12-03T17:40:00.000-08:00

Photo by Volker Neumann

Today's Public Workshop on the city's plans to screw up Panhandle traffic on behalf of the city's bike lobby was of little use to those familiar with the ideas already available on MTA's website. Essentially the "improvements"---every meddlesome anti-car MTA project is of course an "improvement"---involve either taking away street parking or traffic lanes on Fell and Oak Streets to make a protected bike lane. The MTA material talks about improving safety on the streets, though the city's own studies don't show that those streets are particularly unsafe now.

The workshop's Powerpoint presentation tells us of the bike movement's ambitions: "Goal of 20% of trips by bicycle in 2020" (page 4). The only way that can be achieved is by creating something like gridlock on city streets, a prospect that doesn't bother the anti-car movement. Like the Bicycle Coalition's earlier goal of "10% by 2010," it's unlikely to be achieved, but that doesn't mean that the attempt won't make city traffic a lot worse---for everyone but cyclists, that is---than it has to be.

Another "City Goal": "Climate Action Plan: Increase bicycling and walking as alternatives to driving." That is, cyclists aren't just riding bikes; they are also fighting climate change, which is why they are morally superior to the rest of us who rely on cars and buses. The only realistic alternative to driving for most people in San Francisco is the Muni system, which, oddly, is barely mentioned in this presentation. That's probably because the city's definition of "Transit First" in the City Charter has been redefined as per the third Goal: "Bicycling shall be promoted by encouraging safe streets for riding, convenient access to transit, bicycle lanes, and secure bicycle parking." Transit itself is apparently now a secondary consideration for our city's transit agency.

Page 6 provides a graph showing the increase in bicycle use in the city since 2006. But the last two city bicycle counts show a diminishing increase, which I pointed out in my analysis of the 2010 report a year ago. The next city count report, due to be released soon, should tell us whether the city is redesigning our streets on behalf of a PC fad that's already on the decline.

At todays' workshop, I asked the young woman leading the discussion in front of a misleading "traffic volume" chart how many cyclists now use the Fell and Oak Streets every day. She thought that the number was 2,000. The chart she was standing in front of was supposedly showing motor vehicle volume, but it did so on an hourly basis, which made figuring out the daily volume difficult. The Powerpoint presentation at last year's workshop on plans to screw up traffic on nearby Masonic Avenue helpfully provided the actual daily traffic volume for that busy street---more than 32,000 vehicles a day (page 26).

Previous reports tell us that Oak and Fell Streets combined carry 67,000 vehicles a day, which means that the city wants to screw up traffic for 67,000 motorists on behalf of 2,000 cyclists because they aren't "comfortable" (page 15) riding on those streets now.

The Examiner changes hands

2011-12-03T09:57:00.000-08:00

Good to see that the Examiner has new ownership. We'll no longer have to wade through the canned right-wing stuff---Obama the socialist!---to get to the only material of interest under the previous regime---the letters to the editor, and the local coverage.

Which makes the news from SF Weekly about impending layoffs worrisome. One hopes that Will Reisman will be retained, not because he shares my views but because his steady work on the local transportation beat has been consistently useful (Rachel Gordon is his counterpart on the Chronicle). And columnist Ken Garcia too is essential reading.

But this pronouncement by the new publisher is also worrisome:

...[Todd Vogt] has asked the editorial team to write local columns that mirror the intensely liberal readership in San Francisco. "I told them that every day the paper has to reflect the readers," Vogt said. "We will not be a political stump for anyone or any cause, but I never understood, from a business standpoint, why it made sense to run five days in a row anti-Obamacare [editorials], whether the readers in San Francisco support the president or don't---it didn't make sense."

The last thing San Francisco needs is another media outlet pandering to the elevated self-esteem of our narcissistic city---the City That Knows How! City residents---especially its political class---need to be regularly told that they are full of shit and not as smart and cute as they seem to think they are.

For openers the Examiner should revise its style book and stop calling our city "The City" in its copy.

Road Trip with Tim and the kids

2011-12-02T12:16:00.000-08:00

The Bay Guardian's Tim Redmond drove to L.A. for Thanksgiving:

I want to take a few Republicans on a road trip. A few days after the GOP-led Congress cut off funding for high-speed rail in California, I drove to Los Angeles for Thanksgiving. I wish the critics of the project were with me in the car, with two kids fighting in the back seat, constant traffic delays, and about as unpleasant an automobile excursion as you can imagine.

It sounds like a set-up for one of those National Lampoon "vacation" movies: a progressive goes on the road with his out-of-control kids, his ponytail quivering with indignation at the shortcomings of our transportation system. Why isn't there a deux ex machina like high-speed rail to make the trip easy for him?

It's typical that Redmond's editorial is completely fact-free. Like Mayor Lee, SPUR, Nancy Pelosi, Dianne Feintein, the Democratic Party, and President Obama, he's apparently unaware of the extensive criticism of the California high-speed rail project. With this poorly-conceived, wasteful project, Democrats and progressives provide Republicans with a perfect example of liberal fecklessness on spending. Of course they're going to cut off funding for this dumb project. That's what they should do, based on the facts. And I say that as a Democrat who likes President Obama. And of course they especially enjoy doing that because it's President Obama's project. Democrats---and progs like Redmond---are saying, Never mind how much it will cost or even that there literally isn't any money---federal, state, local---available to build high-speed rail, we want it anyhow!

I bet 90 percent of the people on that wretched roadway Thanksgiving week would have been thrilled to take a train directly from downtown San Francisco (or Sacramento) to Union Station in L.A.---particularly if the ride took half the time of the drive and cost about the same.

Since he's clearly not familiar with the literature, Redmond doesn't know that projected ticket prices and ridership numbers are among the many issues that are being debated, with the official numbers earning widespread scorn.

And how would Redmond get to Grandma's house once he arrived at Union Station via high-speed rail? He would have to rent a car or Grandma would have to pick him and the kids up at the station, which would have also been the case with plane tickets.

A skeptical presentation by the Legislative Analyst's Office on the CHSR's latest business plan.

John and Ken on California high-speed rail

2011-11-30T16:15:00.000-08:00

SaveMuni on the Central Subway audit

2011-11-30T10:23:00.000-08:00

SaveMuni's analysis of the Central Subway audit:

CENTRAL SUBWAY AUDIT

On November 15, 2011, the Transportation Authority held a hearing on the new MTA Audit and ignored the Audit’s 46-page “Appendix VI: Central Subway Project.” Several press articles reported that the Audit examined 29 construction projects, excluding the Central Subway Project. But in fact, the “Limited Scope Performance Audit” evaluated the Subway’s financial risks---although it did not study transit effectiveness because of the contract’s limited scope.

* “The potential for variation in the final cost of the project is large” (Page 172): The Audit expands on the Federal Transit Administration’s (FTA) concerns about construction and financial risks. In the context of the Audit’s study of 29 MTA construction projects and their delays/ cost escalations, past performance is an indicator of future risks.

* “The Central Subway Project is the highest risk project that the SFMTA has undertaken” (Page 184): The Audit expands on the FTA’s concerns.

* “There is a 30% likelihood of the total project cost in year of expenditure dollars being equal to or less than $1,578 million” (Page 185). The audit couches potential cost overruns in terms of financial probability theory. Although construction contingency dollars and schedules have been increased, the history of large infrastructure projects, in the Bay Area and throughout the United States, shows astronomical cost overruns and unpredictability---within the same financial/ management models. Moreover, in latest project budgets, contingency dollars appear to have decreased.

* “A study of the funds required for maintaining the state-of-good-repair expenditures revealed that SFMTA’s total assets on the FTA’s Condition Code were above the 2.5 out of 5 minimum required by the FTA” (Page 197). With the current $1.9 billion in deferred maintenance and $1.6 billion in budget deficits over the next 20 years, MTA should have already devoted higher expenditures to maintain assets in a state of repair. Instead, the Central Subway will only lead to more service cuts, life-safety threats and draconian revenue hikes---unless the project is halted.

* “However, full funding is not guaranteed and the availability of funds when needed may still be an issue” (Page 198). Officials and the citizenry are increasingly scrutinizing the Central Subway’s data falsifications and misrepresentations---while the FTA reviews the final application and the State of California faces increasing budget deficits and bond indebtedness.

* “The Audit Team is not aware of consequences for the [MTA] Board or the Board Members if performance is unsatisfactory, nor are there any criteria that define what constitutes unsatisfactory performance” (Page 210). By the Central Subway’s estimated completion date in 2019, most elected officials will not be in office and many MTA staff will be retired. History indicates that it’s too easy to spend other people’s money. The political benefits and quid pro quo of large infrastructure projects outweigh actual transportation benefits. Unless the MTA Board, staff, consultants, Supervisors and Mayor bear some personal liability, taxpayers will be singularly liable for future cost overruns and crippling deficits.

* “Now, at the half-way point in the project, the cost estimates at completion are approximately double that at initiation” (Page 213). Again, past performance is an indicator of future performance.

* “[SFMTA] will comply with Prop K policies to delay the expenditure of Prop K funds to the extent possible without putting the project at risk” (Page 271). However, the Subway’s budgets show $72 million of Prop K funds will be expended in the next two years. The recent MTA contract for tunnel boring machines usurped $57 million of Prop K sales tax funds---in lieu of restoring service cuts or improving citywide Muni.

More hats in the D5 ring

2011-11-29T11:38:00.000-08:00

John Rizzo speaks at a Screw-Up-Masonic rally. Photo by Kate McCarthy

From the Chronicle's story this morning speculating on who Mayor Lee will appoint District 5 Supervisor: "...Lee, a moderate who won office with the strong backing of the business community and who placed a distant second to Supervisor John Avalos, the standard-bearer for progressives in the Nov. 8 mayoral election, among District Five voters."

Actually, Mayor Lee got 3,886 votes in District 5---I got it wrong in the previous post---coming in second to John Avalos (5,566), and a not-so-"distant" second place at that. When you look at the totals for Dennis Herrera (2,330), David Chiu (1,800), Jeff Adachi (1,177), and Bevan Dufty (921), you have to conclude that there are a lot of potentially "moderate" voters in District 5.

The Chronicle lists some possible appointees: Christina Olague, Malcolm Yeung, London Breed, Phil Ginsburg, Michael O'Connor, Quintin Mecke, Julian Davis, Gabriel Haaland. John Rizzo has also been mentioned.

Yeung has close ties to Mayor Lee and Rose Pak, which means he would have the same problem as Olague. Ditto for London Breed, who has ties to Willie Brown.

Mecke works for Tom Ammiano and is such a methodical SF progressive I call him RoboProg. Seems unlikely that the mayor would appoint him, since he would be an addition to the left-wing faction on the Board of Supervisors.

John Rizzo, a bike guy and another ultra-orthodox progressive, has the same problem as Mecke. Lee is unlikely to want to bolster his left-wing opposition on the board. Rizzo cut his prog teeth while on the Concourse Authority's board, where he brought a completely bogus Sunshine Ordinance violation against the Concourse Authority.

The Juanita Owens Effect

2011-11-28T12:28:00.000-08:00

As a chair of the "Run-Ed-Run" committee, planning commissioner Christina Olague---who used to be a lefty---no doubt endeared herself to Mayor Lee as a possible appointee as District 5 Supervisor now that Mirkarimi has been elected sheriff.

On the other hand, our district is one of the most left-wing in Progressive Land. Recall that John Avalos buried Mayor Lee in District 5, by 5,566 to 1090 {later: Wrong! Leland Yee got 1,090 votes, and Mayor Lee got 3,886. He didn't do badly at all in D5.]. The mayor could appoint Olague, but that would likely be a kiss of death politically, much like Mayor Brown's endorsement in 2000 of Juanita Owens over Matt Gonzalez was not helpful, to put it mildly.

In fact any "moderate" Mayor Lee appoints---which Olague is now by definition---will likely be rejected by district voters next year.

Young Julian Davis has also been mentioned as a possibility. Even if Mayor Lee was inclined to appoint a leftist, Davis has some baggage that the mayor---and the Police Officers Association---might find unacceptable, like his support for anarchist Josh Wolf. And his recent disregard for neighborhood interests might also make his appointment unlikely.

The intellectual failure of San Francisco progressives

2011-11-26T10:08:00.000-08:00

Illustration by Andrew J. Nilsen

The lengthy, critical analysis of San Francisco progressives in the current SF Weekly is itself more evidence of the intellectual failure of the city's political community. The article rewrites the history of the last ten years while arguing that progressives allegedly failed to capitalize on their early successes after they took control of the Board of Supervisors in 2000:

Ten years is a long time to hold a coalition together. Progressives' decade dominating the board was a hell of a run. While it's easy to focus on their foibles, progressives pushed through major changes that altered many aspects of city life. Even their opponents concede they could be effective legislators with big ideas.

Wachs and Eskenazi are sketchy when it comes to discussing those "major changes" or the "big ideas."

Later they repeat the claim: "But when the progressives came into power in 2000, they weren't casting about for ideas. They had ideas. Big ones." This is followed up with a mention of progressive opposition to the rash of live-work lofts built during the Brown administration, the supervisors' ability to make appointments to the Planning Commission and the Police Commission, restricting chain stores, building affordable housing, and Ranked Choice Voting.

Do these qualify as Big Ideas? Maybe, but progressives replaced the boom in live-work lofts south of Market with the idea of residential highrises, Smart Growth, and dense development. And if affordabale housing was so important to the city's left, why did it take progressives until 2008 to put a serious housing bond on the ballot? Only to be rejected by city voters, by the way. Big chain stores haven't been allowed in the neighborhoods, but that was never a serious threat to the neighborhoods, since the space for big parking lots is mostly lacking. But there are a number of Starbucks, Trader Joes, and Walgreens in SF, which I don't think is a bad thing. But I guess some chains are better than others. You can argue that the Police Commission has been improved, but the Planning Commission essentially operates as a rubber stamp for an aggressively pro-development Planning Department.

Which leads to what Wachs/Eskenazi claim is a progressive achievement: "Now, the Market-Octavia and Eastern Neighborhoods plans have helped rationalize development."

In fact the Market/Octavia Plan is a developer's dream, the opposite of prudent planning and development. The plan epitomizes how the Planning Department is implementing a crude version of the trendy "smart growth" ideas that threaten every city neighborhood anywhere near a busy traffic corridor. Fortunately for San Francisco, the Great Recession made it difficult for developers to get building loans, which at least delayed a lot of destructive development.

The Market/Octavia Plan---originally called the Market and Octavia Neighborhood Plan, though no such neighborhood exists. The 376-acre plan was explicitly conceived by the Planning Department to encourage much denser population---including 20-30-and 40-story residential highrises at Market and Van Ness---in the heart of San Francisco. The M/O Plan was cobbled together from parts of other neighborhoods. It extends north to Turk Street, Scott Street on the west, 16th Street on the south, and South Van Ness on the east. To encourage population growth, the Plan relaxes zoning on building height and bulk, eliminates building setbacks and back yards, and waives the requirement of a parking space for every new housing unit and instead limits parking in line with the city's anti-car policies. All of this is done under the guise of creating affordable housing, though, except on the freeway parcels the state gave the city after the Central Freeway was torn down, the huge Plan requires no affordable housing. Both the M/O Plan and UC's massive housing development in the heart of Hayes Valley were justified by Supervisor Mirkarimi and progressives with the false promise that they were about affordable housing.

Wachs and Eskinazi don't mention the Bicycle Plan, unanimously---and illegally---passed by both the prog Board of Supervisors and their appointees to the Planning Commission. This Plan is the foundation of the city's anti-car policies, whose purpose is to deliberately make it as difficult and expensive as possible to drive in the city on the unsupported assumption that people will start riding bicycles instead of driving those wicked automobiles.

The anti-car and the dense development policies complement each other, since the Transit Corridors theory assumes that the thousands of people jammed into the residential highrises along city traffic corridors won't have cars and will instead take public transit, or, less plausibly, ride bikes. Unfortunately, the Market/Octavia Plan provides no money for more buses or streetcars for the 10,000 new residents that the plan encourages in the heart of San Francisco, which is already the second most densely-populated city in the country, behind only New York City.

And I haven't mentioned another progressive housing "achievement": The Rincon Hill highrise condos for the wealthy championed by Chris Daly, Aaron Peskin, and Ross Mirkarimi. Or the Central Subway and the grotesque terminal project that is based on the unlikely assumption that high-speed rail trains will someday arrive and depart in downtown San Francisco.

Wachs and Eskenazi don't mention those dubious prog triumphs. Or the crucial, early prog failure on the homeless issue, which Gavin Newsom rode into the mayor's office in 2003.

The likely legacy of the progressive class of 2000: a lot of destructive, neighborhood-destroying development and increasing traffic gridlock, as the Bicycle Plan and other anti-car "improvements" are implemented on busy city streets.

Still coming soon: Study of bike path on the Bay Bridge

2011-11-23T14:14:00.000-08:00

Adding a bike/pedestrian path to the West span of the Bay Bridge will cost $200-$400 million, but money is no problem for the Bicycle Coalition, which is "thrilled" that the street bond was passed by city voters earlier this month. Money---taxpayers' money, that is---can never be an obstacle in the relentless pursuit of the coalition's agenda.

We're now told that the $1.3 million study of the issue will be released next year, after a public meeting and public comment. I already like the "no project" alternative.

Rob,

The plan is to have a public meeting in December to discuss where we are with alternatives. I believe it's going to be December 13 in San Francisco in the evening. The study will be completed next year after public comment and completion of any final technical studies of preferred alternatives.

Peter

Peter Lee, P.E.
Senior Transportation Engineer
Metropolitan Transportation Commission/
Bay Area Toll Authority
Tel.: 510.817.5716
Mobile: 510.384.7471
Fax: 510.817.5848
email: plee@mtc.ca.gov

Mr. Lee:

Has the study on the West Span bike/pedestrian path beem completed yet? Last time we communicated, you thought it would be released in October. Did I miss the release?

Regards,
Rob Anderson

JFK R.I.P.

2011-11-22T09:40:00.000-08:00

My review of Gerald Posner's "Case Closed."

Hear President Kennedy say the US was going to withdraw from Vietnam after the 1964 election.

Obama and the whining left

2011-11-21T14:05:00.000-08:00

From Andrew Sullivan on the Dish:

"The one thing I noticed in my continental run-around this past week is just how mad liberals are at Obama. I remain as baffled by this anger as I am by Republican contempt for the guy. New York magazine has two superb essays that sum up my own feelings on both sides pretty perfectly---by Jon Chait and David Frum. Chait notes how systemic and eternal liberal disenchantment is, and how congenitally useless Democrats are in rallying round a leader, even one who has achieved so much in such a short time. Many Dems even now think Clinton was more successful in fighting the GOP in his first term than Obama has been. (Memo to the left: universal healthcare was achieved under Obama). But much of this is the usual Democratic limpness and whininess. If George Bush had taken out Osama bin Laden, wiped out al Qaeda's leadership and gathered a treasure trove of real intelligence by a daring raid, he'd be on Mount Rushmore by now. If he'd done the equivalent on the right of universal healthcare, he'd be the second coming of Reagan. But Obama and liberals?

"If I hear one more gripe about single payer from someone in their fifties with a ponytail, I'll scream."

Guardian declares victory after progs lose another election

2011-11-19T16:11:00.000-08:00

Reading the Bay Guardian's post-election story, one would think that city progressives had won. For one thing, the writers---Steve Jones, Tim Redmond, and Rebecca Bowe---redefine what losing means:

The Avalos campaign did, to a significant extent, what the mayoral campaigns for Tom Ammiano in 1999 and Matt Gonzalez in 2003 did---it got the progressives excited and brought a new generation of activists into the world of local electoral politics. As Avalos called up his key supporters to the stage at Roccapulco on election night, it was clear that a broader progressive coalition was forming, with new faces, young organizers, and people of color. The left in this town has a long history of winning by losing: The Ammiano campaign created the movement that took back the Board of Supervisors a year later, and the Gonzalez campaign drew more activists into the movement (emphasis added).

Exactly what are the issues around which this "progressive coalition" is allegedly forming? Except for fleeting references to Propositions E and G, there are no issues discussed in the 2,500-word article. Prop. G is described as "the sales tax measure that Lee was hoping would fill part of the revenue gap, went down in flames." Even though the Guardian also endorsed Prop. G, its loss was a defeat for Mayor Lee!

This progressive celebration of yet another defeat is reminiscent of how Jones and Redmond celebrated something they called the "transit-justice" coaltion after the 2007 election that Mayor Newsom won in a landslide.

The celebratory Guardian article features losing candidate John Avalos, who is also weak and/or fuzzy on the issues. His campaign website is a lot like that of Jane Kim in her carpetbagging victory a few years ago, though, unlike Kim, Avalos at least has an "issues" link, where we learn that Avalos is for Muni, creating jobs, and of course bicycles. Avalos's comments on homelessness show that he doesn't really understand what city policies are now, let alone how to make them more effective.

Avalos aggressively supports Ranked Choice Voting, though his only chance of beating Mayor Lee would have been in a runoff. Recall that the last time city progs even came close to winning the mayor's race was the 2003 runoff between Gavin Newsom and Matt Gonzalez. But it was just as well that Avalos didn't have to face Lee in a runoff, since it would have only shown how much he and the mayor agree on important issues. Revenue for Muni? Both Lee and Avalos support the Central Subway, which is draining $200 million of scarce city transit money.

His website is oddly spineless politically, since Avalos doesn't take a stand on any of the propositions on the ballot, not even the popular street bond that the Bicycle Coalition---which endorsed Avalos, of course---likes so much, even though city taxpayers will end up paying $437 million for the $248 million bond when all the interest is paid on that borrowed money.

The Avalos website links the recent San Francisco magazine article on bikes in the city, probably because the writer went on a bike ride with Avalos, who's a serious bike guy. Wonder what Avalos thought about how the author accuses David Chiu and Leah Shahum of hypocrisy when they soft-pedal, so to speak, their anti-car views when talking to the media?

Homelessness in SF: Groundhog Day

2011-11-18T12:57:00.000-08:00

Every few years, someone in the city's media discovers the homeless issue and raises the alarm: Hey, there are still homeless people on our streets! Panhandlers downtown are bad for tourism!

The Examiner's Melissa Griffin is the latest to rediscover homelessness in SF: "Residents and tourists alike fed up with homelessness and panhandling"! Griffin cites the two polls I wrote about in the previous post and then knocks the candidates for mayor for not coming up with an "innovative plan" to deal with homelessness:

It certainly seems like the candidates for mayor are treating homelessness like the weather---something that is part of The City that we must simply endure. The “plans” put forth by each of them may differ slightly, but at the core they are the same: more shelter, more housing, more treatment, more of the same. After this election, when 15 candidates sit and think about what they did wrong, I hope they consider the total failure of imagination and public communication on the issue of homelessness in this election.

Griffin ends with a cry of despair: "No one seems to care"!

Griffin seems unaware of the history of the homeless issue in SF since Gavin Newsom's Care Not Cash passed by city voters in 2002. In 2004 Newsom appointed Angela Alioto to lead the commission that reviewed the city's homeless programs and issued the Ten Year Plan, which laid out a new approach to the issue emphasizing getting people off the streets as quickly as possible and then dealing with issues that may have led to their being homeless in the first place.

The previous approach tried to address issues the homeless had with drugs, alcohol, or crippling psychological problems before providing housing, which, as Alioto's Ten Year Plan pointed out, resulted in the homeless being shuffled in and out of jail and hospital emergency rooms, an approach that not only didn't get them off the street but was very expensive. Getting the hardcore homeless off the streets as quickly as possible is not only more humane, but it's much cheaper in the long run (the best account of this policy issue is still Malcolm Gladwell's 2006 account in the New Yorker: Million Dollar Murray).

Last month, before Griffin's cry of despair, the Examiner had a front-page story: "Hopeless with Homeless," bemoaning the fact that "San Francisco's homeless population remains high" in spite of all the supportive housing units the city has created in the past seven years:

However, city officials insist programs are effective and blamed a variety of factors for the persistence of the homeless problem, such as the bad economy...Human Services Agency Director Trent Rhorer said supportive housing has resulted in providing accomodations for 8,500 people since 2004. "Think what the homeless population would look like if we didn't do anything," Rohrer said.

(Angela Alioto wrote a letter to the Examiner objecting to the tone of that story and in defense of city policies.)

The Chronicle's Kevin Fagan---who wrote the excellent "Shame of the City" series on homelessness---in an article earlier this year on the homeless count---explored the nature of homelessness now compared with the problem several years ago. The big difference, not surprisingly, is the Great Recession, which has prevented the city from reducing the numbers overall, while still having some success in reducing the number of hardcore homeless.

One wonders about the institutional memory of the SF Examiner, since in the past it's published articles examining these issues.

Beyond the most serious recession since the Great Depression, there's the fact that San Francisco always attracts not only high-end tourists but the marginal, the alcoholic, and the psychologically fragile from all over the country. These people keep on coming to SF for a variety of reasons, and they often end up living on our streets and in our parks.

Since our city will never be able to house everyone who turns up homeless on our streets, my favorite city homeless program is Homeward Bound, which gives many homeless a bus ticket back to where they came from. This is the most cost-effective program, and to date it's taken more than 4,000 homeless people off the streets of San Francisco.

Two SF Opinion polls: tourism, cars, congestion pricing, and RCV

2011-11-15T12:42:00.000-08:00

Two polls reveal what city residents think about important issues and how tourists travel to and around San Francisco.

The SF Travel Association's Visitor Profile Research has some good news for the city's economy:

In 2010 San Francisco welcomed 15.92 million visitors, an increase of 3.1 percent from 2009. These visitors spent $8.34 billion in 2010, up 6.2 percent from the previous year. The tourism industry generated $485 million in taxes for the City of San Francisco, up 4 percent from the previous year. Tourism supported 67,122 jobs in 2010 with an annual payroll of $1.88 billion. In 2010, there was an average of 126,931 visitors in San Francisco each day. Visitor spending equated to $22.84 million daily (including spending related to meetings and conventions).

How did all these people get to the city?

While San Francisco visitors can—and do—arrive in the city by a variety of methods, airlines are quite clearly a popular means of traveling to San Francisco. During 2010 twice as many visitors arrived in San Francisco by air (58.0%) than automobile (28.1%), which was the second most common transportation mode. Relatively few visitors arrived via other forms of transportation.

How do tourists get around the city after they arrive?

Survey respondents were asked to indicate the modes of transportation they used (or planned to use) while in San Francisco. Four in ten report taking taxis while in the city (38.1%). Other automobile options are popular amongst San Francisco visitors, with 35.1 percent using a personal car and 14.6 percent using a rental car. Additionally, the city’s public transportation options are being utilized by important shares of visitors. Over one quarter (27.6%) rode the cable cars, while 22.9 percent took MUNI trains and/or buses and 18.3 percent rode the F-Line street cars. One in four used BART (26.7%).

Funny, but there's no mention of bicycles. Add up the percentages, and 87.8% of tourists use Death Monsters---aka, automobiles---to get around in SF.

The Chamber of Commerce poll of 500 city voters shows increasing public optimism about things in general, as many apparently buy into Mayor Lee's "consensus" approach on public policy.

But 61% of city voters still think parking in the city is getting worse, and 78% oppose congestion pricing, that is, paying $3.00 to drive downtown in their own city.

Those polled also prefer traditional runoff elections over Ranked Choice Voting 52% to 42%. Many voters don't trust the RCV system: 70% thought either that their votes weren't counted or were unsure if they were counted, which bodes well for the Elsbernd/Farrell effort to repeal RCV.

A farewell lie from Mirkarimi

2011-11-12T11:31:00.000-08:00

Actually, it's not strictly accurate to call Mirkarimi a liar, since he seemed sincere as he produced one whopper after another since taking office in 2004. But he's always been swaddled in a delusional "progressive" ideology that insulates him from political reality, as he demonstrated during the last campaign. His latest flagrant untruth is one more---here's another---that he's made in the last year about the Divisadero neighborhood:

"Improving Divisadero was at the top of my list when I first ran for supervisor in 2004," said Mirkarimi, who will be termed out in 2012. "The chief concern (then) was public safety---in particular, violent crime. Now it's hipsters complaining about the overabundance of strollers," Mirkarimi said. "That's a welcome problem."

I've lived and shopped in the Divisadero neighborhood since 1995---I started this blog in 2004---and it's simply untrue that this neighborhood had a big crime problem before Mirkarimi took office. I was one of his opponents in 2004, and I don't remember any mention of Divisadero during the campaign. And how likely is it that anyone has actually complained about too many strollers on Divisadero?

Andrew Ross (below in italics) buys into the disinformation campaign about Diviz:

...the area between Haight and McAllister streets, also known as the Divisadero Corridor, has been transformed from a neighborhood known for crime, empty storefronts and "an unwelcoming atmosphere for families and pedestrians" into a thriving neighborhood with the city's first parklet, a Farmers' Market, and numerous new shops and restaurants.

More bullshit, except that this part of Divisadero has always had empty storefronts; there are more than a dozen now, even after the phony "comeback."

Mirkarimi's lasting contribution to Divisadero is the Harding Theater, which still blights the middle of the street's commercial district. One of Mirkarimi's first acts as supervisor was to "save" the Harding from being turned into housing and commercial space.

It will be good to get Mirkarimi off the board of supervisors, where he and his "progressive" colleagues have done more damage to San Francisco in the last ten years than anything since the 1906 earthquake and fire. He beat out two well-qualified candidates for sheriff, but surely he won't be able to do as much damage in that office as he did as a supervisor.

From Andrew Ross's column in the Chronicle:

Job well done: Whether or not Ross Mirkarimi is successful in his bid to be the next sheriff of San Francisco, he'll be getting high-fives next week for his work in making the city's lower Divisadero Street area the Comeback Neighborhood of the Year.

Making the award, the Neighborhood Empowerment Network, a 5-year-old citywide community organization, said the area between Haight and McAllister streets, also known as the Divisadero Corridor, has been transformed from a neighborhood known for crime, empty storefronts and "an unwelcoming atmosphere for families and pedestrians" into a thriving neighborhood with the city's first parklet, a Farmers' Market, and numerous new shops and restaurants.

The organization said the changes are the result largely of a community planning process initiated and led by Mirkarimi, "with an emphasis on public safety and business development."

Having lived in the neighborhood, and visiting it periodically, I can attest to those welcome changes.

The awards ceremony takes place at 6 p.m. next Wednesday in the City Hall Rotunda, with reception to follow. More information, including other awards, at www.empower.org.

City progs lose again

2011-11-10T11:04:00.000-08:00

City progressives lost again in Tuesday's election. That's apparently the way they like it, since they insist on supporting the Ranked Choice Voting system that ensured their defeat. The front page story in this morning's Chronicle got it just right:

Under San Francisco's traditional voting system, interim Mayor Ed Lee and Supervisor John Avalos would be headed for a December runoff in which stark contrasts could be drawn between the moderate longtime bureaucrat and the progressive former social worker. It would have been interesting, but it's not going to happen. Under San Francisco's ranked-choice voting system---in use for the first time in a competitive mayor's race---Lee won with less than a third of first-place votes. Ironically, it's Lee's supporters who are calling for the end of ranked-choice voting. And Avalos and his backers believe it's a beneficial system that should continue.

Exactly. The RCV system is one of those bogus "good government" measures pushed by city progressives that does nothing but sow confusion. RCV does save money on runoffs, but since when have San Francisco progressives worried about saving money? They just hate to admit they're wrong about an issue, much like their chronic state of denial on homelessness and the Central Subway.

The last serious chance for city progs to elect a mayor was in 2003, when Matt Gonzalez gave Gavin Newom a close race. Interestingly, the big issue in that race was homelessness. Newsom had a well-defined position on the issue with Care Not Cash, and Gonzalez vaporized about the "root causes" of homelessness, suggesting that Newsom was a meanie who was waging war on the poor.

There wasn't a single important issue dominating this campaign---thanks in part to RCV---but a runoff campaign might have sparked some debate on important policies, though Avalos doesn't differ with Lee on significant city policies, like the Central Subway, "smart[sic] growth," and anti-carism.

The best thing about this election: David Chiu, Bevan Dufty, and Dennis Herrera all lost decisively.

We're still stuck with Chiu and Herrera, but we can hope that Bevan Dufty's political career in San Francisco is over.

Good too to see Scott Wiener's gratuitous Prop. E---a solution in search of a problem---soundly rejected by city voters.