On behalf of the City’s small businesses, I am pleading with the Board of Supervisors to declare a moratorium on headline-grabbing legislation. We simply can’t afford it. Small businesses are still fighting through the economic downturn. At the same time, the City is struggling to close a $500 million budget deficit, laying off thousands of workers and fighting to keep vital services available. In this climate, there’s just no room for politics-as-usual. But they’re at it again. This time, the Small Business Commission on Monday will decide whether to support Mayor Gavin Newsom’s idea that small business owners who sell mobile phones need to post San Francisco-specific product labels for customers. In the words of one public health official, if the government starts requiring warnings on everything with undefined risks, everything “from apples to xylophones” would have to be labeled. The last thing we need is the City getting into the business of mandating product labels in convenience stores, dry cleaners, and restaurants for all kinds of different products. What’s next? Will I need to get my labels approved by the government with information on what ingredients are in the hair product I sell? As many as 15,000 city workers are facing lay-offs. Nine hundred school workers, including 10 percent of the City’s teachers, are facing lay-offs. Metered parking may be extended to Sundays. The City’s police force faces $30 million in cuts. We just don’t have the luxury of spending money on silly nannny-state ordinances. San Francisco politics is a circus. We all know that. We all know that won’t change. But on behalf of small businesses, we’re asking that our political leaders stop the merry-go-round at least until we’ve weathered the economic storm.
Tag Archives: cell phones
Friday Evening Open Thread
A few nuggets for you:
• A Superior Court judge in Alameda County has ruled that cell phone companies cannot charge early-termination fees, and has ordered that Sprint return $18.2 million dollars to consumers. This will probably get fought on appeal, but right on. The concept of fee for service has worked pretty well for most of consumer capitalism, as has being nice to your customers instead of bullying them into compliance.
• There’s been a lot of outrage at the LA City Council’s ruling banning new fast-food restaurants from breaking ground in South LA for a year. Actually, far from being an issue of infringing on freedom, it’s a little thing called land use, and every city has them – even the one that the outraged Will Saletan lives in.
I’m pretty skeptical that these proposed South LA regulations will do any good. But it’s not unique or unusual for land use regulations to exist. And working class people around the country suffer dramatically larger concrete harms from the sort of commonplace suburbanist regulations that Saletan’s been living with, without apparent complaint, in Chevy Chase. Those kind of regulations are bad for the environment, bad for public health, and serve to use the power of the state to redistribute upwards. So if you’re going to rail against land use regulations, maybe pick the ones that really hurt people.
• In environmental news, Senate leaders like Barbara Boxer are calling for the resignation of EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson for his preferring ideology over science, defying the advice of his own staff, evading oversight and misleading Congress, particularly about refusing the California waiver to regulate tailpipe emissions. They’re also asking the Attorney General to investigate whether Johnson perjured himself at one of the California waiver hearings in Congress. In addition, Jerry Brown is suing the EPA for their refusal to regulate greenhouse gas emissions at the nation’s ports.
• And this is pretty interesting, turns out the Sarah of “Sarah’s Law” (parental notification) doesn’t have the squeaky-clean image her sponsors claim:
Backers of a ballot measure that would require parents to be notified before an abortion is performed on a minor acknowledged Friday that the 15-year-old on which “Sarah’s Law” is based had a child and was in a common-law marriage before she died of complications from an abortion in 1994 […]
A lawsuit co-sponsored by Planned Parenthood Affiliates and filed Friday in Sacramento County Superior Court asks the Secretary of State to remove the girl’s story and other information it deemed misleading, including any reference to “Sarah’s Law,” from the material submitted for the official voter guide.
“If you can’t believe the Sarah story, there’s a lot in the ballot argument you can’t believe,” said Ana Sandoval, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood and the campaign against Proposition 4.
Using someone’s life story for political means, and wrongly at that. Good people.
Ok, your turn.
LA transit ridership at an all-time high
People have a funny way of adapting. They know that the oil companies are as far from committed to lowering gas prices as possible, so they’ll look to lower the cost of commuting rather than search for useless answers to drop gas prices like offshore drilling, which would do absolutely nothing. The Metrolink rail system in LA isn’t perfect and doesn’t work for everyone, but people are making it work more than ever before.
Commuter rail ridership broke an all-time record this week, and Caltrans reported a dip in freeway traffic as commuters across California struggled with record gas prices.
Metrolink recorded its highest number of riders in a single day ever Tuesday – 50,232 – a 15.6% increase over the same amount of business last year on June 17. Metro Rail ridership last month shot up 6 percent over May 2007, said Dave Sotero, a Metro spokesman.
Meanwhile, Caltrans officials said today that traffic on California freeways dropped 1.5% compared with last year – or the equivalent of a billion fewer miles traveled, said spokesman Derrick Alatorre.
Just that miniscule drop is the difference between gridlock and a relatively smooth ride. Not to mention the fact that hundreds of thousands of gallons of gas are being saved. Between all that and not having to be constantly confronted by idiots driving while holding their cell phones, the LA commuting story is a little less bleak.
This is all happening under a BROKEN transit system. Imagine what could happen with a little investment.
Can You Hear Me Now NSA?
While congress fiddles with FISA, the California Assembly has the opportunity to add another layer of consumer protection to our phone records. Will they or won’t they? Will the telecom lobbyists make sure Sacramento does their bidding, or can we pressure our members to do the right thing?
If you?’ve ever had to wait in line at your local wireless store, you know how cell phone use has exploded over the past few years, and wouldn?’t be surprised to hear it’?s quickly outpaced the use of traditional, residential landlines. Privacy laws, however, haven’?t kept pace. Here in California, the law says telecoms can’?t disclose phone records without the subscriber?s written consent, but this law only applies to residential and not cell phone subscribers.
The ACLU of Southern California wants to change that, and predictably, the telecoms don?’t.
The Consumer Federation of California is sponsoring a new bill, AB 3011 (Huffman) which simply amends Public Utilities Code §2891 (put in place in 1986, before the cell phone era) by deleting the word ?residential.? In so doing, AB 3011 would clearly establish that the calling records and privacy of cell phone customers have the same protections as residential landline customers.
According to our friends in Sacramento, the telecoms are already meeting with assembly members and will hit this bill hard. The telecoms claim federal law is enough protection for Californians, or that amending an antiquated law is a waste of time and resources. But we know Verizon and AT&T fear accountability for participating in the NSA illegal wiretapping program, particularly if congress doesn’?t agree to retroactive immunity as part of the FISA reforms.
The ACLU-SC has a special stake in this debate. We, along with our other California affiliates filed a lawsuit last year on behalf of 17 individual plaintiffs and more than 100,000 ACLU members statewide against AT&T and Verizon to stop them from participating in the NSA?’s program. While we believe that cell phone records also were divulged, the lawsuit only includes residential landline customers as plaintiffs because it’?s not clear that existing law covers cell phone customers.
We must do something now to save our rights and protections.
Contact your Assembly member in the Utilities and Commerce committee on your cell phone before their hearing and vote on AB 3011 scheduled for April 28. They are:
Mike Davis (AD 48) – (213)-744-2111
Mervyn Dymally (AD 52) -? (310)-223-1201
Felipe Fuentes (AD 39) ?- (818)-504-3911
Warren Furutani (AD 55) – (562)-989-2919
Paul Krekorian (AD 18) – (818)-240-6330
These members will need to stand up to AT&T and Verizon on your behalf. Please urge them to do the right thing.
Let your voice be heard!