Monthly Archives: June 2011

IRV PSA Repost

15 Wednesday Jun 2011

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Give Instant Runoff Voting a chance by educating yourself about how to vote for three distinct candidates on your absentee ballot or in the booth election day. Help others to become clearer on the process. Demand any candidate you support explain their IRV strategy and ask them to produce a simple PSA explaining IRV, such as this:

IRV is an excellent tool because

1. it makes candidates seek alliance and coalition-building tactics

2. it makes voters learn more about more candidates and take greater responsibility for their vote.

3. it aids candidates interested in civic leadership but without finances by giving them a means to recognition

4. it eliminates the need for expensive runoff campaigns

5. the process reveals which candidate works best with others at large.

SF Pissing Contests and Austerity Measures

14 Tuesday Jun 2011

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Dear San Francisco,

I want to be the Mayor for four years to reform the Office and civic sector in the face of deficit economy and then turn the office over to an elected Ed Lee, in 2015.

If elected I refuse to serve a second term and promise to hand the next Mayor, whomever it is, $500,000 and an SF Giveback Fund to supplement the General Fund in times of financial crisis (details in campaign promises).

This was been a depressing week in our once fair town: macho firefighters in mourning push the public defender around, crafty planning commissioners push to illegally draft Interim Mayor Lee onto the ballot via campaigning, and strike-threatening MUNI operators reject a contract for no good reason but a pissing contest about respect.

(sigh)

What happened to you San Francisco? There’s more information than ever. But the more information there is, the less caring and more conniving our politicians and newspaper editors seem.

A stageplay of theatrical poses substitutes for governance and media. A goofy, smiling happy face hangs like a thin curtain over a City with $850 million in debt and ballooning pensions and benefits schemes that are unsustainable.

The new politicians are like models – empty and to be filled by waiting interests. They have no guts.

People are suffering job loss and insecurity and snarky in-crowd attitude has replaced public service.

Parrots, who possess more than most of us, and can thus afford to produce new media, line up in factionalized flocks spitting insults and snide comments at one another as our town loses its grace. New blogs emerge and our San Francisco values are smoothed into the nothingness of pluralized media. The Bay Citizen launches an all out “NY1” or KRON4 style attack on the blogging media consciousness with $5million in startup money from Hellman, and now the new SF residents mistake it for media that has existed forever, a trusted SF news source, overnight. Not that it hasn’t been effective at coverage,but  it imposes itself upon us, by its posture.

There are many new residents who’ve moved into overpriced SF housing built in the last decade at rates few of us can afford. More condos go up weekly to rent to imaginary future residents from elsewhere, with no one questioning why we “have to grow bigger and more dense” as a City before bridging deficits or working on infrastructure.

Some of these new residents are easily manipulated because they do not have history or context and can be herded like sheep through big money being spent to ensure the view of developers are perpetuated.

Twitter Giveaways and Treasure Island Boondoggles face no resistance because of an apathy by the populace, not because they are good ideas. The unenforcable and idiotic Sit/Lie Law is allowed to be tried because some of these new residents don’t make eye contact with anyone in the street, walk fast with headphones and diddling cel phones to avoid it.

When I arrived in this town decades ago, I tried hard to learn how to be a San Franciscan and was taught by this City. Can we not, as a City, ask these new residents to respect our famed tolerance and compassion? No? Why not?

Interim Mayor Lee and Supervisor Chiu would have us believe we cannot say anything to them for fear we might offend them and they would leave?

These newcomers are being used by interests and held ignorant of what has been lost, is being taken daily from us.

(cf. the Twitter Giveaway, these people just gave away $47million to Twitter that should have been in the General Fund. They did it smiling and crowing about jobs and one dared to call himself progressive!?)

Austerity Measures and Real Talk

The global economic reality is that we are in a serious downturn that shows no real signs of rapid recovery. We must change the attitude of state to one of concern, analysis, efficiency and solvency.

Interim Mayor Ed Lee’s proposed 5-year budgets (for the first time ever) are being sold by many interests as popular opinion, but in fact they represent the latest version of SF corruption: vested interests lining their pockets with long-term public funding.

Ed Lee is wrong on this one and we are in an economic situation that demands flexibility. I want to slow down development, compose flexible one-year budgets and make rapid changes to policies that don’t work in favor of those that do.

I propose a public and transparent method of austerity measures that gives respect where it is due and expects contributions from civic and private sectors in accordance with what it takes to right the ship of state, which lists, with no real captain since Mr. Newsom left.

Austerity measures are inevitable, but here in San Francisco we could do it completely differently from anywhere else in the world because of our culture and history as the most progressive major City in the U.S. We could generate income in totally new ways and respect our Labor by creating new schemes of reinvestment to curtail ballooning pensions and benefits schemes of the past which have incrementally become unsustainable.

All of this creativity and new methodology is only possible with new energy, and fortunately we have an instrument for the first time to allow that new energy to ascend to office: Instant Runoff Voting. IRV is a tool that could be used these next 4 months to create coalition government, but so far no one understands how to use it.

Instead of educating us about how to use Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) to help our candidates create coalitions and alliances, to seek out the best ideas of all candidates, The Chronicle and Guardian and Weekly and the blogs have done almost nothing to reduce confusion about Instant Runoff Voting. They and their “legitimate” candidates see it as a threat.

Hey, we voted for it – used properly it’s a good thing. It could force our politicians to be more collaborative if you in the media would just do your job. Compare its use elsewhere: Minneapolis voters seemed to understand it, while Oakland voters found it confusing.

What do you think the four months before election day were like in terms of explaining IRV in Minneapolis in comparison to Oakland? What kind of coverage and explanation have we been seeing so far? Our media and the City and the other candidates are failing us.

It feels like they want Instant Runoff Voting to fail so they can all clamor together about what a bad thing IRV is. I don’t believe they even understand it, but, visualizing it as threat from the get-go, have just turned full blast against.

C’mon SF, we’re better than this.

10 Points on Johannes Mehserle's Release

11 Saturday Jun 2011

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Former BART police officer Johannes Mehserle, convicted of involuntary manslaughter for shooting unarmed Oakland resident Oscar Grant to death, will be released from prison on Monday having served less than a year in prison.

Organizers have established that protests will take place at 3:00 at the Fruitvale BART where Grant was killed and at 5:30 at 14th and Broadway in downtown Oakland. BART has warned police agencies and passengers that service interruptions are possible tomorrow.

Oscar Grant has a small child and Johannes Mehserle’s first child was born the day after the crime. Many families have been rent by what happened New Year’s morning of 2009. But in the larger picture we must address the issues that create an atmosphere where this kind of thing could easily happen again.

It isn’t about Mehserle or Grant as much as a flawed environment. The race issues are left out of the conversation in public, but they are a huge part of the word on the street. The issues here are systemic.

10 Things to Consider

1. BART, the State and Officer Mehserle immediately agreed that the officer terminated his service literally the morning of the crime, speaking to no one – negating culpability for higher-ups and ultimately resulting in a lack of culpability for BART itself. In this case Mehserle ran to Nevada across state lines before his arrest to kill time in those first days of 2009.

This negotiation between Mehserle’s defense and the state in his absence prevented the state or BART from having to respond for the murder. It took place between the private attorney of Mehserle and the State. Did Mehserle’s representation ask: “What are you going to do to protect my client, your employee, if he does this for you? if he quits voluntarily?”

Is it the case that once his attorney agreed Mehserle would resign, the institutions at large then agreed to protect the officer as much as possible? How exactly? Mehserle’s defense is being paid for by a statewide fund for police officers. The BART police union pays into the fund. From when was the Union involved?

2. Moving the trial out of the neighborhood.

In what must be considered a pattern now [Rodney King the case was moved out of South Central, Amadou Diallo the case went from the Bronx to Albany] the state moved the trial to a supposedly neutral location that is in fact far better for the officer in question. Again what keeps coming up is that the officers in all these cases do not live where they are policing. They come from suburbs to cities to police.

3. The state introduced excuses and the mental state of the Officer to the public far more than that of the victim and did this through the channels of the state’s collusion with the media.

The local cops and the local tv stations and newspapers collude morally, ethically and racially to create the illusion of a balanced coverage, but which subtly turns the public opinion toward an acquittal. It’s all designed to create the atmosphere that we, the people, want the state to be so empowered and that we believe, ‘well, a few eggs have to be cracked to make a safety omelette for the rest of us.’

4. the state’s process creates a jury that favors the cop to the victim. Our jury selection process is suspect and should be revisited.

5. the state allows, and even encourages, immaterial historical evidence from the VICTIM’s past into the case, but resists the same in the case of the cop.

Again, a pattern here – Patrick Dorismond in NYC 2000. The idea is to paint the victim as a criminal and the cop as an unfortunate agent for good caught in an impossibly difficult to understand spot. So ANYthing in the victim’s past no matter how irrelevant is dredged up – sometimes illegally as Giuliani did in the case of Dorismond.

6. during the trials of these cops, the same colluding press created an atmosphere of INSECURITY concerning any outcome that doesn’t condemn the cop. Riots are inevitable. This emphasizes the need for good security and basically demands acquittal in the public mind.

7.The State scheduled the trial so the verdict would arrive exactly at 4th of July weekend. This both rushed the jury – would you hang a jury for Oscar Grant when you are trying to spend time with your family on 4th of July weekend? – and confirmed that coverage of the story reached a limited audience of the property owning class because it’s the Independence Day Holiday.
8.By contrast, the State actually changed the sentencing date for a public display of protest to be widely observed and feared in civic space. In this case from the low-key “silly season” (August 5th) to the high-profile publicly charged week of the Mayoral election (November 7th). The sentencing was hyper-politicized. The “small riots” were then shown to a public as representative of the unruly class from which the victim comes.
9. KTVU actually interviewed Mehserle after his conviction and before sentencing. They had him sitting in soft light with a compassionate, blonde woman, an extremely friendly television host. What convicted criminal in history ever got such treatment in advance of sentencing?

10. perhaps most shockingly, the judge unilaterally threw out the handgun charge of which Mehserle was convicted.

It is important to note in this case that a jury of 12 found Mehserle guilty of Involuntary Manslaughter AND uniquely, the handgun charge. The handgun charge was a serious element here which could have led to policy changes such as the removal of lethal weapons like guns from BART cops. (they have Tasers and nightsticks and so on). Instead it was thrown out unilaterally by the judge – which seems illegal to many. This was a profoundly wrong judgement. It’s too expensive for the family to pursue that on appeal, but it certainly ought to be the civic sector’s responsibility to make such a charge stick and to pursue such weird decision-making.

I, for one, believe we should disarm BART police. Let local PDs be called when a gun is necessary, make it a felony to carry a gun on BART and put excessive cameras in the system. We need to de-escalate the violence and the weaponry on our streets.

UPDATE: Indybay has done some interesting reporting on the actions of the police at protests concerning this issue. check it out here.

10 Points on Johannes Mehserle’s Release

11 Saturday Jun 2011

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Former BART police officer Johannes Mehserle, convicted of involuntary manslaughter for shooting unarmed Oakland resident Oscar Grant to death, will be released from prison on Monday having served less than a year in prison.

Organizers have established that protests will take place at 3:00 at the Fruitvale BART where Grant was killed and at 5:30 at 14th and Broadway in downtown Oakland. BART has warned police agencies and passengers that service interruptions are possible tomorrow.

Oscar Grant has a small child and Johannes Mehserle’s first child was born the day after the crime. Many families have been rent by what happened New Year’s morning of 2009. But in the larger picture we must address the issues that create an atmosphere where this kind of thing could easily happen again.

It isn’t about Mehserle or Grant as much as a flawed environment. The race issues are left out of the conversation in public, but they are a huge part of the word on the street. The issues here are systemic.

10 Things to Consider

1. BART, the State and Officer Mehserle immediately agreed that the officer terminated his service literally the morning of the crime, speaking to no one – negating culpability for higher-ups and ultimately resulting in a lack of culpability for BART itself. In this case Mehserle ran to Nevada across state lines before his arrest to kill time in those first days of 2009.

This negotiation between Mehserle’s defense and the state in his absence prevented the state or BART from having to respond for the murder. It took place between the private attorney of Mehserle and the State. Did Mehserle’s representation ask: “What are you going to do to protect my client, your employee, if he does this for you? if he quits voluntarily?”

Is it the case that once his attorney agreed Mehserle would resign, the institutions at large then agreed to protect the officer as much as possible? How exactly? Mehserle’s defense is being paid for by a statewide fund for police officers. The BART police union pays into the fund. From when was the Union involved?

2. Moving the trial out of the neighborhood.

In what must be considered a pattern now [Rodney King the case was moved out of South Central, Amadou Diallo the case went from the Bronx to Albany] the state moved the trial to a supposedly neutral location that is in fact far better for the officer in question. Again what keeps coming up is that the officers in all these cases do not live where they are policing. They come from suburbs to cities to police.

3. The state introduced excuses and the mental state of the Officer to the public far more than that of the victim and did this through the channels of the state’s collusion with the media.

The local cops and the local tv stations and newspapers collude morally, ethically and racially to create the illusion of a balanced coverage, but which subtly turns the public opinion toward an acquittal. It’s all designed to create the atmosphere that we, the people, want the state to be so empowered and that we believe, ‘well, a few eggs have to be cracked to make a safety omelette for the rest of us.’

4. the state’s process creates a jury that favors the cop to the victim. Our jury selection process is suspect and should be revisited.

5. the state allows, and even encourages, immaterial historical evidence from the VICTIM’s past into the case, but resists the same in the case of the cop.

Again, a pattern here – Patrick Dorismond in NYC 2000. The idea is to paint the victim as a criminal and the cop as an unfortunate agent for good caught in an impossibly difficult to understand spot. So ANYthing in the victim’s past no matter how irrelevant is dredged up – sometimes illegally as Giuliani did in the case of Dorismond.

6. during the trials of these cops, the same colluding press created an atmosphere of INSECURITY concerning any outcome that doesn’t condemn the cop. Riots are inevitable. This emphasizes the need for good security and basically demands acquittal in the public mind.

7.The State scheduled the trial so the verdict would arrive exactly at 4th of July weekend. This both rushed the jury – would you hang a jury for Oscar Grant when you are trying to spend time with your family on 4th of July weekend? – and confirmed that coverage of the story reached a limited audience of the property owning class because it’s the Independence Day Holiday.
8.By contrast, the State actually changed the sentencing date for a public display of protest to be widely observed and feared in civic space. In this case from the low-key “silly season” (August 5th) to the high-profile publicly charged week of the Mayoral election (November 7th). The sentencing was hyper-politicized. The “small riots” were then shown to a public as representative of the unruly class from which the victim comes.
9. KTVU actually interviewed Mehserle after his conviction and before sentencing. They had him sitting in soft light with a compassionate, blonde woman, an extremely friendly television host. What convicted criminal in history ever got such treatment in advance of sentencing?

10. perhaps most shockingly, the judge unilaterally threw out the handgun charge of which Mehserle was convicted.

It is important to note in this case that a jury of 12 found Mehserle guilty of Involuntary Manslaughter AND uniquely, the handgun charge. The handgun charge was a serious element here which could have led to policy changes such as the removal of lethal weapons like guns from BART cops. (they have Tasers and nightsticks and so on). Instead it was thrown out unilaterally by the judge – which seems illegal to many. This was a profoundly wrong judgement. It’s too expensive for the family to pursue that on appeal, but it certainly ought to be the civic sector’s responsibility to make such a charge stick and to pursue such weird decision-making.

I, for one, believe we should disarm BART police. Let local PDs be called when a gun is necessary, make it a felony to carry a gun on BART and put excessive cameras in the system. We need to de-escalate the violence and the weaponry on our streets.

UPDATE: Indybay has done some interesting reporting on the actions of the police at protests concerning this issue. check it out here.

MUNIs Deal and the Illegal Draft of Interim Mayor Lee

06 Monday Jun 2011

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UPDATE: MUNI rank and file voted 994-488 against the contract! (Who’s their counsel? I’m dismayed) and have sent contract to the Prop G – demanded arbitrator, whom they are meeting today. From the Chron:

“… the union blamed the contract rejection in part on what it called inaccurate descriptions of the contract by a management spokesman shortly after the tentative pact was reached. “The actions by management’s spokesman created a sense of mistrust and confusion that was hard to overcome,” said Rafael Cabrera, president of Local 250-A.”

[This points to a single individual here]

BLOG FOLLOWS – POSTED BEFORE VOTE

First, my gratitude to Local 205-A, MUNI Operator’s Union reps and the City for negotiating the contract successfully without interruption of service.

Thanks to the Union for understanding the current economic situation for the City and so many of its residents and for:

– relenting on PT hires and

– allowing for the 3-year wage freeze and

– accepting greater oversight by management.

The Union has been reasonable. It means a lot. The question as to whether Prop G was necessary to force such reasonableness should be laid aside in favor of a new dawn in the relationship and a new way of looking at sharing the burden in the City. When I talk about “San Francisco Austerity Measures,” these are the kinds of sensible negotiations we need. Let us consider it a start.

Second, to the increasing numbers of people who seem to think it would not be unfair, wrong and perhaps illegal to let Interim Mayor Lee run for Mayor this year in November: I profoundly disagree. Please consider the previous post, in which I detail why.

Ed Lee Should Not Be Allowed To Run For Mayor

03 Friday Jun 2011

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I am disgusted by the artificial clamor being generated by  interests who attempt to ensure that Ed Lee’s name is on the ballot, which should not be allowed, and which, if by some manipulation does occur, should be contested in court as an unfair election practice.

They scramble for Mr. Lee because they fear Instant Runoff Voting – which they decry at every opportunity.

During the embarrassing negotiations to appoint Mr. Lee Interim Mayor – because there are no rules for succession that make sense in the event of the departure of a Mayor to become Lieutenant Governor –  I was guardedly suspect, but as satisfied as everyone else that our eminently capable Chief Administrator was willing to take the job, was so self-effacing, said in fact he didn’t want it.

But I was under the impression that the negotiations concerning the appointment of Mr. Lee as Interim Mayor included the fail-safe: that whomever was chosen Interim Mayor would be disallowed to run because of unfair advantage as a pseudo-incumbent. Let them run in 2015. The whole deal with Ed Lee was he would be a good Interim Mayor because he doesn’t want the job – we were all happy not to appoint Leland Yee or Art Agnos and everyone trusts Ed Lee.

This artificially “populist” call for Ed Lee’s entry into the race comes from people who are doing it because they are afraid of IRV, afraid that a lot of people will turn out to vote, and for whomever they want, and that the math would put someone they cannot control in charge. Those who call for Interim Mayor Lee’s inclusion on the ballot fear direct and better democracy. They think it would be crazy if someone they didn’t know won the race for Mayor.

Why? Could it be corporate, union and other interests have become entrenched in City work? Isn’t that why we don’t want Mr. Lee to run? for fear of conflict of interest?

Lee is clearly the point-man for some vested corporate interests (Twitter, Treasure Island developers). He’s the first to produce a 5-year budget (something we don’t need, but which seals relationships to his partners in all of this). And we are meant to believe that this self-effacing man, who wants to be Chief Administrator, and is good at it, is being begged to run for office by a clamoring public at-large? This is absurdist theater.

It’s anti-democratic because of the sheer purchase of it all by big money. I, for one, expect John Avalos, Terry Baum and others who claim to be progressive to stand in the way of such a brazenly corporate move.

It isn’t uncivil to call things what they are and for Interim Mayor Lee and Board President Supervisor David Chiu this Mayor’s race has been a farce of glad-handing – smiling and joking about making jobs, while passing crazy development plans unimpeded. They were tweeting about jobs even as they gave away millions to Twitter and now other companies, striking down long-standing SF protections to benefit a few, new companies.

I, for one, respect Interim Mayor Lee and Board President Chiu, but don’t want either of them in charge. Respectfully, I’d rather they stay in their respective jobs as we unpack all of this mess, and make short-term budgets which reconsider and restructure our town (read site for details).

Ed Lee is an extremely competent Chief Administrator. He has asked for that job again. I would give it to him and would expect any other candidate for Mayor to reward competence and do so. But he should absolutely not be allowed to run for Mayor in 2011. It’s unfair and wrong.

And more, I am actually a candidate campaigning to do what Ed Lee should do: I don’t want the Mayor’s Office for more than a single reformative term. I’d be happy to pass it off to Interim Mayor Ed Lee in 2015 – after we have addressed the serious issues the last seven years have brought.

Redmond Continues Editorializing Election

01 Wednesday Jun 2011

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For the last several years, I have been extremely disappointed in the so-called coverage of elections as advanced by Tim Redmond of the Bay Guardian. Today, I commented on the SFBG’s site over his current appproach:

Tim Redmond:

We have $800million+ deficit and no meaningful opposition to corporate-controlled policy makers shoving development and tax breaks for corporations through at an insane rate.

The pensions and salaries are so out of control that three very dangerous things are happening: voters are folding right into “austerity measures” as the only way out, rapacious investors are dropping in like angels from outside to finally take a piece of our town – which we have resisted for so long, and the cronies of these developers and companies are stampeding over our Government agencies and offices, effectively buying our politicians.

We need real leadership from an outsider to put the brakes on.

Leland Yee? John Avalos? Tim, you have been so bad these last few years. You cling to some old mode of covering politics – worse, without significant competition, you’ve grown into an editorialist who tells people who to vote for, for months all the way up to election day, rather than allowing the process to reveal the best candidate. Your critical skills – which you had for years – have become profoundly dimmed.

And it’s terrible that you would take this approach in an Instant Runoff Election – actually it’s anti-democratic.

IRV – instant runoff voting – only works if everybody gets educated to each of the candidates and cares about them. It is about coalition building. It’s about NOT choosing someone till the end. It’s about exploring ALL the options and trying to put together a ticket in your mind. You should be teaching this and doing lots and lots of educating about IRV and all the candidates.

I am so offended by your behavior since 2007, Tim. I am sorry to say it, but I am.

Voting Karthik Rajan, first, Terry Baum or John Avalos second and third ensures we can get ahold of what has spun out of our control. I have the skills to put together whatever form of government John or Terry Baum or other progressives want, without influence from high-ranking Democrats or others (i.e. former Mayor Newsom’s people all planted in positions since his departure).

We share so many values, you and I, and all your readers. You do me a disservice by “covering” this election the way you do. Have the courage not to dismiss me and rather to consider:

http://karthikrajanformayor.org

Thank you,
Karthik Rajan