We got bad news this week. Looks like Mike Hennessy’s running for Sheriff again.

Now, most of you are wondering what the hell I am on about. Hennessy’s a uniquely San Francisco figure–someone who’s got a job that brings to mind racist rednecks and  bumbling morons but has managed to carve out a way to make the job a powerful vehicle for progressive change. From drug treatment to gardening projects, the Sheriff’s department runs some seriously innovative projects.  There have even been model protocols developed on how to treat transgender folks in county jails (PDF).

So why is it bad news that Hennessy’s running for a record eighth term for Sheriff? Find out after the flip.

Well, mainly because his name was one of those floated to run against Gavin Newsom for mayor. Since Gavin’s proved unable to stand up to the police–carrying their water against foot patrols, as well as proving unable to respond with any authority to the racist and sexist videos published by the SFPD–it would have been a rare case of the progressive candidate being the law and order candidate. And since the violence plaguing our neighborhoods is such a huge issue for many folks, the idea of a mayor with an understanding of how to change the culture of law enforcement is an appealing one.

Unfortunately, it looks like we’ll have another candidate. I hope that whoever it ends up being looks to the Sheriff for advice on how to handle violence and crime.

crossposted from left in sf

President of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors Aaron Peskin spoke at a packed meeting of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club yesterday, and here are some of the things he said:

He opened by calling the current Board of Supervisors the most progressive 6 years stretch of the Board ever, but emphasized that we need to ensure that when he and three other members of the 2000 Progressive Sweep are termed out in 2008, the people we elect are at least as progressive as the outgoing Supervisors. “Chris Daly thinks we can trade up”, he said, but we need to start now recruiting good candidates to run.

more on the flip…

He mentioned there is a movement afoot to extend term limits in San Francisco as well as at the state level, and he’d welcome that. 

One thing he thinks could be a factor against maintaining a progressive majority at the board is the upcoming fight between Leno and Migden. He compared it to Ammiano’s run for mayor in 1999, where the run actually helped kick off the momentum that led to us making such huge gains in 2000. He worries that this race, however, will end up fracturing the queer and progressive communities, which will make it that much harder to do the work we need to do in November. “It’s a disaster waiting to happen”, he said, adding that he would enter the race himself if that would somehow help.

He denied that he is running for mayor, even when members of the audience offered to dust off their “Run Aaron Run” buttons from last time. When asked about Newsom, he pointed out that the Mayor’s taking credit for a lot of things he didn’t actually do, like the Health Access Plan, but “as long as we have the plan, and it’s fully funded, I don’t care who takes the credit.” It would be an uphill battle to defeat Newsom, he said, unless the situation changes, “Maybe the third shoe will drop.”

He reserved his harshest criticisms of Newsom for Proposition A, the affordable housing bond. The bond lost by one percent, Peskin pointed out, and

if the mayor had shown one iota of leadership, had shown up to one thing, we would have won Prop A. He has all this political capital [from his 70% approval rating] and he does nothing with it. Political capital only means anything if you spend it. It’s not who dies with the most toys wins.

Peskin admitted that when it came to the rising tide of violence in San Francisco, the Board doesn’t have all the answers, “It’s one of the most vexing things we have to deal with,” but he did point to the passage of foot patrols, and the beginning of “a serious conversation” about community policing, which he complained means different things to different people. “One thing we can do is make sure we have the services in place that people need.”

I asked Peskin about his position on the Wi-Fi network, and he sees it pretty clearly as an attempt to create a franchise like with cable, and “I will never vote for another franchise.” He sees fiber as the way forward, first as the backbone for a hybrid-style network, then eventually to everyone’s door. He feels that signing the Earthlink deal will impede moving forward with such a network. I didn’t get a chance to ask about the digital inclusion aspects of the issue, but when someone else asked him about why the mayor was pushing this so hard, Peskin’s answer was that “administrations, especially when you’re a man, are judged by what you build. So everyone says, ‘Joe Alioto, he built the Transamerica Pyramid!’ and ‘Willie Brown build Mission Bay,’ and Gavin wants to build something too.” He went on to say he thought Newsom should be proud to point to the “civil disobedience” of the 2004 gay marriages as an accomplishment, and that as long as Newsom’s going to take credit for the health plan he could take credit for that, too. Perhaps most revealingly, he claimed that “the Mayor knows this [the Earthlink deal] is a lost cause.”

He also touched on the Ethics Commission (ours is understaffed compared to San Jose and LA), condo conversion limits (he’s for maintaining them at the current level, although he’d have been willing to increase the number in exchange for a deal on TICs), the police (he still wishes there was a way to get them to live in San Francisco) and a few other issues I didn’t get a chance to write down and don’t remember.

cross-posted at Left in SF (note that all quotes are as I wrote them down, and have not been verified for accuracy, and the rest is my paraphrase from memory)

cross-posted from Left in SF

I’ve been a little too busy to comment on the health care plan Arnold Schwarzenegger released Monday. I think I’ve gotten enough through it so I understand what’s up with it, at least to point to some of the strengths and weaknesses. The detailed plan is here in PDF form.

The major weakness in the plan, and what I think makes it fatal as far as being a meaningful way to extend coverage to every Californian, is that it does nothing to take on the insurance industry. Californians will be required to buy private insurance. The health insurance industry has to be slavering in anticipation of this. This is driving customers into their arms by government mandate. Without meaningful government regulation. The only real requirements I can find are “Insurers will be required to guarantee coverage, with limits on how much they can charge based on age or health status, so that all individuals have access to affordable products,” and that insurers must spend 85% of “premium and health spending” on patient care. The latter seems impressive, until you learn that Medicare spends 98% of their revenue on patient care.

It seems to me, at least based on the document, that there will need to be a set-price universal service plan that meets the minimum mandated coverage, which is

The minimum health insurance benefit that must be maintained will be a $5,000 deductible plan with maximum out-of-pocket limits of $7,500 per person and $10,000 per family. For the majority of uninsured individuals, such coverage can be purchased today for $100 or less per month for an individual and $200 or less for two persons. Uninsured persons at any income level can purchase their own health coverage that meets the above requirement or, if income eligible, may obtain coverage with a state subsidy.

We’ll address the income levels for subsidized coverage in a moment, but I’ll point out that $10,000 for a family with an income of $30-40k a year is pretty damn significant. There will be a “purchasing pool” that will allow people to buy in, but I’ll be extremely surprised if there’s anything other than exactly the minimum coverage for exactly the maximum the insurance companies are allowed to charge.

So individuals will be required to purchase inadequate coverage from insurance companies. But what if you can’t afford $100-200 a month? If you make less than 250% of the Federal Poverty Limit (the FPL, which is approximately $10k/year for an individual, and $12,500/year for two), you’ll be able to get discounted participation in the purchasing pool. So if you make $25k/year, you’ll only have to pay 6% of your income for health care (which is the amount specified int he plan), which ends up being $1500/year. Which is, frankly, quite a lot of money. Especially since the coverage will not protect you from bankruptcy if you get really sick.

What about employers? They actually get off pretty easy under this plan. If they don’t cover their employees, they need to pay 4% of their gross pay to a state fund, which presumably goes to subsidize their employees’ coverage. Unfortunately, this is way less than even Wal-Mart spends on  their crappy health plan. It also seems that there’s an enforcement method specified for individuals who don’t buy coverage, but not one for companies that don’t pay. And this only affects employers with 10 or more employees, so I guess people working for smaller businesses get screwed.

There’s also a provision that seems somewhat pernicious to me: “Review health/plan benefit, provider and procedural mandates in order to reduce the cost of health care.” This means, presumably, reducing the amount of care the insurance companies are mandated to provide. So  an insurance company that’s currently required to cover birth control pills, for example, might not be required to cover them.

Finally, I promised some good points: First, it’s great (and crucial) that the plan covers undocumented immigrants. Second, there’s an acknowledgment that there are severe costs of providing care for people who don’t have primary care. Other than that, though, I don’t share the rosy view of this pan that, say, Juls Rosen and Ezra Klein do.

crossposted from Left in SF

It never fails. Bills that seek to make small, but tangible, changes in people’s lives are dismissed as ridiculous by the people they don’t affect. Take Pedro Nava’s Safe Passing bill, AB60, which would mandate that cars give bicyclists 3 feet of space as they pass. Sounds minor, but it could potentialy save dozens of lives every year in California, and make biking in the state more appealing (and remember, everyone who bikes instead of drives means less pollution, less traffic, and a healthier person).

No sooner had I fired off this email to my Assemblymember, Mark Leno, in support of this bill

Dear Assemblymember Leno,

I am writing to encourage your support for AB60, the Pedro Nava Safe passing law. As I am sure you know, the city of San Francisco’s efforts to make bicycling safer have been held up by the intervention of some of our narrow-minded citizens. The State, however, is still allowed to act.

Nava’s bill would help to make cycling safer. I depend on my bicycle as my main mode of transportation and it’s a rare day nobody cuts a pass overly close, occasionally even driving me into the curb.

Every year, more than 100 cyclists are killed in California. It’s time to do something about it.

when I saw this post from the LA Times’s blog Political Muscle:

Another year, another zillion bills. The Times’ Nancy Vogel has sifted through the mounds of legislation already filed by California’s 120 lawmakers. Here are a few offbeat highlights, with our own proposed names attached:

The Lance Armstrong ‘Back Off Buddy’ Protection Act: Assemblyman Pedro Nava wants to require motorists to stay at least three feet to the left of bicyclists when passing them. Under AB 60, violators could be fined up to $250. Perhaps violators will also be required to participate in the Tour de France by riding a Big Wheel.

I can’t read this without hearing Beavis and Butthead saying “heh-heh, heh-heh, he said big wheel”.

I’m pretty clear that this bill is not going to be on the top of many people’s legislative agendas, but it’s a pretty small change that could save plenty of lives.

Click through for what prompted this.

Here’s the email I got today that prompted me to write Leno in the first place:

Hi team mates,

Some of you may have heard that my father was hit and killed while riding his bike lawfully last summer on Highway 35 near Skylonda, which is why I’ve been off the bike more than usual this fall and summer.

A civil case and a criminal case against the elderly driver are pending, but even if we win both (likely, I think) it will really have only a small effect.  If one thing could come of this, I’d like to at least think that I was able to make it less likely to happen to another cyclist, including me and you.

Fortunately, I just learned today that State Assemblymember Pedro Nava, who has just assumed chairmanship of the Assembly Transportation Committee, has re-introduced AB 60, a state bill that would require motorists to give cyclists a minimum 3-foot berth when passing.

Here’s a Sacramento Bee article on AB 60:

Here’s the full text of the bill:

I encourage everyone to write letters of support for this bill.  I think a letter to Nava, and to your own state assemblyperson would be good.

The writer of this letter, and the hundreds of thousands of Californians who ride a bike, deserve better than a snide comment by our state’s version of the Kewl Kids–the political insiders who think they can define what’s important to Californians. The triathlete whose death prompted Nava to introduce the bill, Kendra Chiota Payne, deserves better.

It’s why I’ll never be a kewl political reporter for the LA Times. I care more about the content of the law than whether it’s “offbeat”.

Photo by Richard Masoner.

The Chronicle missed it, cause it wasn’t a guy lost in the woods (although, in a major advance for the media, they cranked up their tizzy for a person of color, not just for a white woman), but the LA Times yesterday covered a Union of Concerned Scientists report on the dangers posed by construction equipment in California.

The effects of air pollution from construction equipment in California are “staggering,” according to a report by the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The environmental group concluded that at least 1,100 premature deaths and half a million work and school absences in 2005 were caused by people breathing emissions from older tractors, bulldozers and other diesel equipment – at an estimated public health cost of $9.1 billion.

“This is the first time the health and economic impacts of construction-related air pollution in California have ever been analyzed,” said Don Anair, author of the report by the Union of Concerned Scientists. The report urged state regulators to quickly require owners to retrofit or replace older equipment.

“Construction equipment being used to build our hospitals shouldn’t fill them up…. This is a bill being footed by everyone in California, and particulate pollution is a silent killer,” Anair said, citing asthma attacks, cancer and heart disease.

That’s 1100 deaths in California every year.

crossposted from Left in SF

The problem seems to be that until 1996, there were no standards for emissions by construction equipment, and when they went into effect that year, the standards only covered new equipment. So there’re 250,000 old, dirty machines at work in the state, some of which create as much pollution in an hour as a semi truck would in 1100 miles of driving. So before lunch, these machines have cranked out more pollution than a truck driving all the way across the US.

The machines crank out nitrogen oxides, which are the main component of smog, which is bad enough. Even worse, though, is that they emit a huge amount of particulate matter (PM), better known as soot. The PM, which consists of tiny particles,  gets stuck in your lungs, and in the words of one reviewer of the study, is “like tiny razorblades”. It caused 30,000 asthma attacks in 2005, and caused over 300,000 school absences. In many parts of the state, kids are more likely to carry asthma inhalers than pencils to school.

What about San Francisco? Well, as you might be able to tell from the image, we are in a highest-risk area. Of course, the distribution of the PM and the smog isn’t even, so most likely the places where construction is going on most heavily get hit. So the Mission, South of Market, and other construction hot spots are probably the highest risk.

The major question at hand is what to do about this. Are we doomed to suck tiny razor blades into our lungs until there is no pre-1996 construction equipment left? Politically, it’s a pretty tough battle, but we’d need to push the construction industry (who has quite a bit of clout) to retrofit their equiment, use alternative fuels (like biodiesel), replace the engine on the vehicle, or even the whole thing, and at very least, reduce idling.

It’s not clear to me how we solve this, but it seems horrific that we’re killing over 1100 people a year for construction in California alone. At the very least we ought to be able to push the state to use cleaner equipment. I do think that the scale of construction equipment fuel use should make it possible for someone to start a biodiesel business that sells to construction companies. This came out of left field for me, so I haven’t come up with a solution that seems workable. It’s pretty clear that a thousand people and $9 billion a year constitutes a problem we need to solve fast.

The Air Quality Districts (or at least the Bay Area Air Quality Management District) have funds set up to help construction companies clean up their acts. The funds are pretty insufficient, though. The BAAQMD fund will only fund the cleanup of 1000 machines a year, which is only 4% of the (estimated) 25,000 machines operating in the bay Area.