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M.T. Karthik

~ midcareer archive, 1977 – 2017 plus 2022

M.T. Karthik

Monthly Archives: December 2011

Ed Lee is No More the Mayor than Emperor Norton Was

12 Monday Dec 2011

Posted by mtk in politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

2011, Board, chronicle, Ed, election, Emperor, Lee, Mayor, Norton, san francisco, san francisco bay guardian, sf, sfbg, sfist, supervisors

Evidence of the claims I have been making that the Bay-Guardian, The Chron and The Bay Citizen are not only out of touch, but the worst sort of insider-journalists can be found in their ratification of the results of this year’s election over the reality: only a handful of people decided the political fate of the City.

By contrast, in the blogosphere, SF Appeal, The League of Pissed off Voters (via tweet), and SFist all noted the pathetic voter turnout in the election within minutes of polls closing, which is the story of the election of 2011 – a handful of very wealthy people decided this.

Chris Roberts at SFAppeal notes: “In other words, 112,275 voters — or less than 25 percent of the electorate — decided who became mayor of San Francisco. And of them, 68,721 — or about 14 percent of the electorate, and about eight percent of the citizenry — actually voted for Mayor Ed Lee.”

The absence of coverage of this single most important issue of the election by The Chronicle, The SF Bay Guardian and the newly minted Bay Citizen until now, suddenly this week – when they use it to attack Ranked Choice or Instant Runoff Voting – are exactly what I have been talking about this year.

The reporters and editors of these papers are participating in a cliquish civic theater instead of reporting on the needs, thoughts and desires of residents of our City.

They are engaged in stroking a few candidates and ridiculing anyone who thinks outside the box. They lack courage, conviction and objectivity and cover elections so they can be near the winners and get invited to the party.

The Chron and Bay Citizen and SFBG not only avoided discussing the absurdly low numbers of voters who decided matters until this week, they chose to make their election coverage about defining these very few voters as an aggregate image of the “voters of San Francisco” and to attribute this ridiculously small number of citizens in our town with the general opinion of San Franciscans.

In the Bay Guardian, the political novice Steven T. Jones spent a long column discussing the makeup of “SF voters” – with no mention of the fact that they were not even a third of those eligible to vote! He dares to title the piece San Francisco’s Political Spectrum: a primer – What balls!

The Bay Citizen, however, is the worst and with the furthest reach. The Bay Citizen made an arrangement whereby select pieces appear in print in the New York Times’ Bay Area editions.

So readers of the NYT here in the Bay are informed by a blog started less than a year ago with $5million from the Hellmans (hover over the link to the bay citizen at right).

And the Hellman family’s editors chose to publish a piece by two of their writers that claim that this election “Signals Shift to the Right” in San Francisco! With no mention of the lowest turnout ever!

Again, what balls! Is this so New Yorkers living here can feel that Manhattanization is happening on schedule?! Is that what this is about? Argh. You are killing our City!

These aren’t journalists, they’re mediators.

This was a horrible election because wealthy vested interests manipulated millions of dollars to ensure a handful of viable choices would appear to wrestle for power, while Ed Lee was basically ratified in a confirmation election.

The Chron and The Bay Citizen and The SF Bay Guardian show their true colors even as the Occupy Movement tells the real story of the disenfranchised.

Blame the media – do it. We’d never have such pathetic candidates if instead of gravy-training reporters at the Chron, SFBG and Bay Citizen, we had real reporters and caring journalists.

Image

Iggy, Stooges and le butcherettes at the Warfield

04 Sunday Dec 2011

Tags

2011, bender, braswell, butcherettes, dangle, gender, iggy, le, lia, lloyd, mtk, pop, san francisco, sf, stooges, teri, warfield

at the Warfield in SF last December. Also, check out Holly’s comment which includes a good interview with Teri Gender Bender, founder and lead singer of le butcherettes

Posted by mtk | Filed under music video, reviews, S.F., short film

≈ 2 Comments

Twitter Giveaway's First Big Blow: POOF! Goes the Zynga IPO

02 Friday Dec 2011

Posted by mtk in politics

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Tags

Board, break, Chiu, City, David, Ed, giveaway, ipo, Lee, Mayor, pincus, san francisco, sf, supervisors, tax, Twitter, zynga

Zynga, Incorporated, one of the two large tech companies (with Twitter) who railroaded Mayor Ed Lee and the SF Board of Supervisors to pass the Twitter Giveaway, will be making its Initial Public Offering in the next two weeks.

Zynga’s IPO price is settling in at about $9 billion and the company hopes to raise as much as $925 million.

If the tax-break given to Twitter extends to Zynga, it nullifies the long-standing SF law that would have given 1.5% of the sale to the City.

We will be losing nearly $14 million. That’s nothing to Zynga. They could negotiate it into the offer.

14 million dollars. <poof> just like that …. because of the political aspirations of Lee and Chiu…

Thanks Mayor Lee, and Supervisors Chiu, Farrell, Kim, Weine, Elsbernd, Cohen and Mar. You’re morons on this one.

That’s our new Mayor and Board President at work in the new SF.

Twitter Giveaway’s First Big Blow: POOF! Goes the Zynga IPO

02 Friday Dec 2011

Posted by mtk in politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Board, break, Chiu, City, David, Ed, giveaway, ipo, Lee, Mayor, pincus, san francisco, sf, supervisors, tax, Twitter, zynga

Zynga, Incorporated, one of the two large tech companies (with Twitter) who railroaded Mayor Ed Lee and the SF Board of Supervisors to pass the Twitter Giveaway, will be making its Initial Public Offering in the next two weeks.

Zynga’s IPO price is settling in at about $9 billion and the company hopes to raise as much as $925 million.

If the tax-break given to Twitter extends to Zynga, it nullifies the long-standing SF law that would have given 1.5% of the sale to the City.

We will be losing nearly $14 million. That’s nothing to Zynga. They could negotiate it into the offer.

14 million dollars. <poof> just like that …. because of the political aspirations of Lee and Chiu…

Thanks Mayor Lee, and Supervisors Chiu, Farrell, Kim, Weine, Elsbernd, Cohen and Mar. You’re morons on this one.

That’s our new Mayor and Board President at work in the new SF.

M.T. Karthik

This blog archives early work of M.T. Karthik, who took every photograph and shot all the video here unless otherwise credited.

Performances and installations are posted by date of execution.

Writing appears in whatever form it was originally or, as in the case of poems or journal entries, retyped faithfully from print.

all of it is © M.T. Karthik

a minute of rain

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYLHNRS8ik4

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