Tag Archives: Karthik Rajan

In Conclusion

03 Sunday Jul 2011

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From November 18th of last year until June 18th, this past summer, I used social media to seek support and votes for Mayor of San Francisco in the upcoming election, to be held November 8, 2011. I walked around town and talked to people as a candidate, opened my first Twitter and FB accounts, and used Youtube for three campaign videos.

I could not afford to continue campaigning and have withdrawn my name from consideration.

By way of explanation to supporters, I’m filing this last blog, a summary account of the seven months I was a candidate. Full disclosure, I planned to use the project of running to get facile with the Twitter environment and use FB in a different way. I’ve changed the Twitter account to @mtkSF and closed the FB account so now ... this blog represents the bulk of the expression of my effort to run for Mayor in 2011.

This could have been called the Twitter election for Mayor, seeing the birth of several long-time candidates’ social media presence, and yet mainstream press avoided much of it, almost as though the clunky baby steps of starting one’s Twitter identity was somehow a revered space for city officials. And all on the heels of giving Twitter a $47 million dollar tax break and release from stock option pressure before it goes public.

I was glad to be able to express as a candidate what many could not as the Twitter Giveaway, Treasure Island Boondoggle and the Park Merced Housing Scheme That Divides were each railroaded through by the Interim Mayor and the over-eager Board President. Rushed, foolish decisions.

The site yields a fair assessment of why my proposal for reform is better than electing any of the others running today – please click the tabs above for my resumé, campaign promises, FAQs and vids.

My deepest thanks to Lloyd Dangle, The Sons of Emperor Norton, CUBA, Jason Rosencrantz, James Earle, Kris Hansen, Stan Gomez and Josh One for their unequivocal endorsements.

History of the Campaign

Last November, after watching the Mayor’s race in Oakland and Jean Quan’s election, I started the exploratory committee for my candidacy for Mayor of San Francisco.

I was significantly motivated by the fact that there is NO INCUMBENT MAYOR of SF today, and by the openness of process that Instant Runoff, or Ranked Choice, Voting created in Oakland.

A handful of friends were encouraging and this blog began December 5th of 2010. By February, it was clear the current disturbing trends in SF are going to continue. The new Board of Supervisors were given initial tests and failed. What I refer to as The Twitter Giveaway was the first of these and revealed much about David Chiu and other candidates for Mayor.

I began reading all of the blogs you see in the Blogroll daily (still do) and commenting as a candidate. I more actively engaged the blogs, the candidates and the media.

The Twitter Giveaway gave me an opportunity to use video and youtube to make a realtime response. We released this the evening of the first vote.

In late April, Officer Greg Suhr was appointed Police Chief – by coincidence he and I had met a few weeks before, just as I began campaigning. I wrote about that meeting and Chief Suhr’s appointment here.

In May, I made my first campaign appearance – at The Peace and Freedom Party’s County Central Committee Meeting.

A brief and depressing conversation with Chapter President Tom Lacey was only one of many indicators that running was pointless. I was, briefly, on The Usual Suspect’s list of candidates and followed on Twitter by City Attorney staff. I doubted I would be taken seriously and the exercise began to decay in quality fast. The recent pseudo-clamor for Ed Lee to Run for Mayor was the final straw.

Ed Lee should not be allowed to run for Mayor in 2011.

please do read the contents of this blog and watch the videos if you can before going to the ballot box or mailing in your absentee ballot. My concerns are city-wide, and about our attitude, our composition, our culture, our very identity as a city in the world.

Thank you all for your support.

Karthik Rajan

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.

The Six Hundred Dollar Mayor of SF

29 Sunday May 2011

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To date I’ve spent $605 on my campaign for Mayor and received exactly $0 in contributions. Frankly, the non-glare lenses for my spectacles are the single biggest expense.

After 25 years of working on the margins, with small budgets, for counties, non-profits, artists, magazines, Universities and myself, I know how to run our City for less. I know how to save money and to make any institution more efficient and profitable. That’s why my first campaign promise is to refuse $100,000 of  the Mayor’s salary – because I KNOW I can do the job for … what would that be – $163,000 a year? or less [see the campaign promises tab].

As I have also promised, I will NEVER accept a cent from Parties, Corporations, Unions or PACs. Seems stupid right? I mean if I were to get popular as a candidate by September, like Obama did at the National level, certainly companies and Unions and others would want to support me with contributions to buy television, radio and Internet ads.

But then I would be subject to them.

President Obama has proven it is an inevitability of accepting such support. [check out the video below for evidence of that]

No. I believe that with almost no money, but with intelligence, honesty and sense, we can use Instant Runoff Voting to elect me so that we can create a true coalition government in the SF Mayor’s office and take back our City from special interests and wealthy manipulators.

If elected, I can choose whomever we like to run the town, but only with me as Mayor, through my strength as an Independent outsider and my study and work as an evaluator and analyst, and via the transparency of the principles of art and writing, can we reveal the corruption and redistribute the burden of the cost of living in our beautiful city. We have to do this to be able to give our children the society they deserve.

I encourage all of you to watch the following video:

and realize what I am proposing: a re-imagining of City government from scratch that builds the greatest small City on earth and teaches other cities not to emulate New York or Hong Kong, but rather encourages the regionalism that we now see emerging around the world in response to the Globalism that has been shoved down our throats for two decades.

Hey, SF, elect me Mayor, then let me select who we want to run the town (Terry Baum and John Avalos’ followers would be first in line), with Ed Lee as our Chief Administrator, and then let’s show the Democrats of this City and the country how to have compassion, tolerance and goodness toward people of different cultures and beliefs, while running a solvent economy that isn’t just for super-wealthy yachtsmen and their Cup.

Lets bring back the things that made San Francisco great since long ago: small town attitude, cool friendliness, openness and the rich, vibrant, cosmopolitan aesthetic of our great City.

Vote Karthik Rajan, first, for Mayor of San Francisco, then, on your IRV or Instant Runoff Voting Ballot this year, choose Terry Baum of the Greens second, and demote, but don’t vote against the Democrats – by choosing John Avalos third.

It will be awesome.

The Best Ticket for Mayor Emerges!

22 Sunday May 2011

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Terry Baum will be the Green Party candidate for Mayor of SF, and with John Avalos in as a progressive Democrat, I am excited to say that I will, from today, be endorsing the following ticket as the best, really the only three choices for Mayor of SF, and in this order, guaranteed to turn this town around:

1. Karthik Rajan, first – the Independent outsider with super strong analytical and communications skills (read the site for details)

2. Terry Baum, second –  a Green playwright who  in 2004 ran for the United States House of Representatives as a member of the Green Party.

3. John Avalos, third – the Democrat, a progressive and insider

Keep Ed Lee as Chief Administrator – since he knows best where all the money has been going these last eight years – and we have the best administration for SF in 2012.

Neither John nor Terry can win outright. In Terry’s case, the Greens have been marginalized since Gavin Newsom outspent Matt Gonzales 23 to 1 and in John’s case, as a Democrat, within his party he won’t get the support – unless of course he compromises his vision to please the Party higher ups, which he won’t – and so he cannot win without a coalition.

But with your help – Democrats, Progressives, Greens, Libertarians and others  – I can win. As an outsider with a clear message we can bring more groups of interests together. Read the site to see why – check out the FAQs and Campaign Promises. Mine is a different philosophy, exciting.

I am flexible, lucid, self-financed and unknown – unassailable. As an intelligent outsider, I can put all of the people our coalition wants into positions of power and only I can protect us from attacks, be strong in the face of the wealthy special interests and the cliquish cabals who have run our town into the mouth of the corporate sector.

I can analyze and document the system, do it transparently and scale back our economy. I have the ability and the agility and I have no interest in being a politician for life.

One year budgets for four years that are flexible, slashing the Mayor’s salary, taxing the right people at the right time, putting the resources toward sustainable growth and a healthy, solvent SF for years to come led by the knowledge of the Greens, the infrastructure of the Progressive Democrats and the personal and creative strength of an artist who cares not for money nor power, but for the betterment of our society.

Wow, sounds almost too good to be true – but it isn’t!

Just vote Karthik Rajan, Terry Baum and John Avalos first, second and third on your ballot for Mayor of SF on November 8, 2011.

This is going to be fun!

Coalition Building for Mayor of SF

20 Friday May 2011

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I arrived at the monthly meeting of the San Francisco County Central Committee of the Peace and Freedom Party and found Tom Lacey, the chapter Chair, alone in the SF Main Library’s Stong Room. That’s not a typo – the room’s named for Mary Louise Stong, who was an avid library supporter and former President of the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library. But it does give the conference room a name that’s desperately one letter shy of being a great place to start anything.

Tom Lacey, a teacher, has been a committed socialist and Peace and Freedom Party member and a candidate for office in SF. He even garnered the coveted endorsement of the SF Bay Guardian. His knowledge of the San Francisco political environment is excellent, and more, he has been through a lot of the changes, sitting in opposition. Smart, savvy and lucid, Lacey is nothing like the stereotype projected against the Peace and Freedom Party: that of crazy wingnut hippies.

Tom Lacey has great ideas, knowledge about the system, remarkable commitment and a will to implement. He puts a generation half his age to shame. In fact, first I want to support his efforts to get the Oil Extraction Tax on the ballot – an effort that makes complete sense. It’s very easy to get behind.

Every State in the country that lets private companies take oil out of its ground or from under its sea charges an Oil Extraction Tax and uses the money for social welfare … um, except one … California!

In Texas they have diverted these funds successfully to the education system and greatly improved Texas schools. This is an overdue effort in California that has been squelched by powerful oil companies in our state and the politicians they pay for. It’s so simple to understand:

Tax the extraction of oil and use it to pay for schools.

Tom Lacey informed us that the college professor behind the movement, Peter Mathews, who has struggled for this in California, finally got approval for the wording to let us get signatures to put it on the ballot. This happened just a week ago. Now we have a very short time to get the required signatures to put the Oil Extraction Tax to Pay For Education on the ballot. A 2/3 majority of Californians will definitely support this one and we can more than make up for the $1.4 billion in cuts to education that Governor Brown was forced to make this year.

Lacey had copies of the petitions that he had meticulously printed on oversized paper from the .pdf – I am adding it to my platform and collecting signatures myself voluntarily and informing everyone I know about it. check out rescueeducationcalifornia.org and facebook.com/rescueeducationcalifornia and twitter.com/rescueeducation

This is exactly the kind of revenue generation my campaign is about.

Shortly after I arrived and introduced myself to Tom Lacey, Ron Holladay, who is, I believe, the Treasurer of the Peace and Freedom SF CCC, appeared. The two men have considerable history in this town and it was great to meet them. We waited for others.

(cricket sounds) and that was it … (sigh) C’mon people, Prop 14 is going to make third parties disappear unless you show up!

I was fourth on the agenda, but since there wasn’t quorum, Ron Holladay asked whether or not I’d rather skip my presentation and perhaps come to another meeting. I promised I would be at the next meeting, but said I would like to present myself as a candidate to those present. One of my supporters arrived – a surprise! – a little late.

Oh, but wait, then someone else did appear.

An Asian-American man arrived and claimed to have just joined the Peace and Freedom Party. The two long-standing officers had never heard of him, but were relieved that there was at least one other present – I mean, there wasn’t even quorum.

But within minutes I began to suspect that the Asian-American Newly Joined Peace and Freedomer was there to observe and report to someone else. He fell asleep late in the meeting from sheer boredom – or feigned it.

One funny, tiny part of me wondered if another candidate or interest had sent the young man to see what this was all about. Silly probably, but it sure felt like this young man was way more interested in questioning my candidacy and ideas than asking about the party he had just joined.

Of course, it doesn’t matter who comes to observe and report upon me anywhere, anytime, because I am clean, clear and direct and my intentions are pure: I want change, reform, an end to corruption and special interest politics and a return to certain values that made our city the best in the world. I want to lead SF forward to smarter more transparent governance – and I know how.

And so I spoke to four people about why I wanted their vote for Mayor in a small room in the Main Library. We had a great talk for about an hour and I want to thank Tom, Ron and the Peace and Freedom Party for their invitation and informative knowledge.

I then went to see the Fiery Furnaces at Café Du Nord. Single piano and voice, a brother and sister duo, their work is poetic, maudlin and narrative. It was a great show, with songs that told stories with vernacular aptitude, capturing phrases of the contemporary era between married couples, street folk and working class families and others. Very nice.

I was lucky enough to meet the band afterward and to meet and chat with long time San Franciscans Michelle and Matt and others. It was a lovely night.

More soon. Support the Oil Extraction Tax.

My IRV Strategy

16 Monday May 2011

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Last year, I observed the Instant Runoff Voting [IRV] election for Mayor of Oakland closely. I studied the tactics of the candidates and the results. Oakland Mayor Jean Quan achieved something slow, steady and simple.

In addition to seeking supporters for her campaign outright, Mayor Quan created a coalition of interests for whom another primary candidate was their first choice. Through sound campaigning she convinced this coalition of disparate interests to select her second on their ballots.

Because of a lack of effort by the media and the City to properly explain IRV in advance of the election, many people ignorant of the math or the method never understood it and felt cheated. For these, and others, the idea that “everybody’s number two” won the election persisted. It is imperative we explain what IRV is and why it’s better democracy.

In fact, if traditional voting had occurred and a runoff had been held between Jean Quan and her nearest opponent Don Perata, it would have been a six-week long, expensive affair. Likely, Perata would have outspent Quan even as the supporters of Rebecca Kaplan, Joe Tuman and other candidates tilted to Mayor Quan. That is what IRV showed us: it used basic, smart, weighted statistics to allow the right decision to happen on election day, preventing the expense to the City of a second election and preventing the purchasing of such a runoff by monied interests.

Mayor Quan won because she covered more ground and was more present to more people than any of the other candidates and it paid off in a statistical advantage. That’s good democracy.

The opponents of IRV struggle to rename it Ranked Choice Voting because it implies something that smells bad.

The loudest in opposition to IRV are:

1. people who think the voters are too stupid to know how to use it and

2. those whose interest it threatens, namely big parties, monied candidates and

3. those who use the traditional way of doing things: buying the election.

In fact, 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 the finances to use media by giving them a means to recognition

4. it eliminates the need for expensive runoff campaigns

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

Instant Runoff Voting is complicated and somewhat hard to explain. What our politicians ought to be doing is explaining it in clear terms and helping voters use it to elect our leadership. Instead we see them resisting what threatens them.

My strategy is somewhat different. I believe I’m the best candidate to run the City. I hope you will gather this to be true by election day and vote for me first, but if you don’t, I hope you will see that it only makes sense to include me as a reformist, by voting for me second or third on your ballot. You can trust my promises, which are unique among legitimate candidates.

I will slash the Mayor’s salary first and then ask City employees to help me to do the same before making cuts. I will create a Giveback Fund to encourage the San Francisco value of sharing and community. I will audit and evaluate every department before raising any new revenue from taxation and eliminate waste that has run rampant. I will make the hard calls on pensions and benefits and help come up with creative means to generate revenue to avoid harsh austerity measures.

It’s in our best interest to elect me because I am not a politician. Rather, I’m a regular citizen concerned about waste, solvency and rampant and unchecked growth. I will function transparently and without attachment to special interests.

I can creatively cut costs, reduce waste and lead us to a more efficient San Francisco in which we pay less for a better quality of life. You can trust me to analyze and reform our City’s broken and corrupt system transparently, to save the City money doing it, and to create solvency and a surplus economy from the myriad wonderfulness of our City’s inherently talented and multilingual community.

As a one-time, reform candidate, Karthik Rajan is a smart second or third choice for voters and a great first choice to be the next Mayor of San Francisco.

An Artist for Mayor of SF 2011

10 Tuesday May 2011

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Today I added some of my more recent work as an artist (the last ten years or so) to the resumé on this site, here.

My work as an artist has been social and political and aesthetic and news-related and cultural and about communicating ideas. These experiences have helped create in some small  part the candidacy you see before you today. To whit,

since 1985, Audiovisual and Performance Artist
Member, Booklyn Artists Alliance, a non-profit, consensus-driven book arts organization dedicated to the book as art, on the web at www.booklyn.org

SELECTED COLLECTIONS

Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles

Museum of Modern Art, NYC

Occidental College, Los Angeles

Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles

Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA

University of Southern California, Los Angeles

University of California at Irvine

Pacifica Radio Archives

EXHIBITIONS, INSTALLATIONS, PERFORMANCES, TALKS

2010  Moving Forward, zine in an edition of 3,000 (1500 en español), distributed free in Fruitvale, Temescal and downtown Oakland, concerning the verdict in the Johannes Mehserle trial

2009    Making Money … Into Something Else, installation and artist’s talk, Deco Art, Oakland, CA
2008    establishment of ffptp.org website (a two year exercise ended in 2010);
new work, local artists group show, Eton Avenue Studio, Berkeley, CA
2007    The Rupee Ganesha, Tamil Nadu, India;
After Po-Mo. [And Before We Agree], artists talk, Certitude, Auroville, India;
Vous êtes ă Puduchcheri, mural, Qualithés Hotel, Puduchcheri, India;
Found in Translation, touring group show, Center for Book Arts, Minneapolis
2006    Artists Talk, Found in Translation, Center for Book Arts, NY;
Found in Translation, Center for Book Arts NYC & Center for the Book SF;
Alternating Currency, Pavel Zoubok Gallery, NYC;
Tricycle Museum, Centro de Cultura Casa Das Mudas, Madeira Island, Portugal
2005    kotataki art, permanent installation, Sun’s Preschool, Kamakura, Japan;
Pluralism of Media in the Age of Surveillance, talk, c-level, Chinatown, LA;
The First Contact Project, streaming Internet audio of interviews
2004     untitled talk on the Presidential Election of 2004, New College, SF;
Troubled Sleep: Art in the Age of Bush, panel discussion, Cal Arts, LA;
Visible Palestine, performance and video, Echo Park Film Center, LA
2003     Art and Political Communication, talk, University of California, Davis;
The SF J18 Manifestation, performance and video, Track 16 Gallery,LA
2002     US=THEM, installation and performance and The Angola Three, a mural, 33 1/3 Books and Gallery, LA; Rare Books of the Future, Center for Book Arts, NYC

I hope you will see why I am best suited to run the City today. I can bring the costs down, get control of the upward spiral of waste and raise the right taxes on the right people at the right time so that:

We will pay less, for a better quality of life.

May Day Toward A Saner Future

01 Sunday May 2011

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The best of wishes to all on May Day, which in 2011 reveals whole systems of laborers being redefined by changing technology and the rising cost of fossil fuel, a corporate controlled media system owned by very few who present information in a narrow manner at great volume to try to make their viewpoint a national narrative, system-wide corruption that serves wealthy overlords who govern through pseudo-democracy – which in any case we don’t seem to value enough to employ as voter turnout is shameful in the United States.

And since the State is broke, instead of coming up with creative solutions or taxing the rich, it launches straight-out attacks on worker’s rights. The State of Wisconsin unilaterally cheated Unions of representation and tea-partiers sell the line because of a perception of corruption and manipulation by Unions that has been manufactured and pushed by among others, an Aussie incorporated in Britain, Rupert Murdoch, through his network [FOX] and newspaper [WSJ].

In the USA, of course, we do Labor Day in September at the end of summer, but for Labour Day, I propose we really consider how our austerity measures are going to look. We have no choice. We cannot paper over the numbers or pretend the City isn’t broke, or worse running at a deficit. But we must protect our workers. In fact, we need to make taxation more equitable and spread more widely rather than author exceptions to law as the Board has done for Twitter.

David Cay Johnston’s book Free Lunch, Porfolio (Penguin), 2007, which is subtitled How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and stick you with the bill), is an excellent read that exposes the facts. Here’s a nice post about taxation over at The World’s Got Problems blog.

There are a lot of creative ways we can generate revenue without cutting into pensions and ending city jobs. and there are lots of ways to redistribute current spending. Take a look at my campaign promises, I will lead us to savings and a surplus economy.

Vote Karthik Rajan for Mayor of San Francisco.

My Name is Karthik

30 Saturday Apr 2011

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I was born in India and moved to the United States when I was two. I’ve been a U.S. citizen for 30 years and have lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for most of those years.

I’ve traveled around the world seven times, living in New York, LA, Japan, India, Europe, South America and elsewhere, but I have always returned to the SF Bay, which I consider my beloved home. I love SF.

I want to be the Mayor because I am sure I can run the city better than any of the other candidates. I have the creativity and energy to do what is required to cut deficits and generate revenue. I’m an Independent, progressive and eager to clean house.

Please vote for Karthik Rajan as your first, second or third choice for Mayor of San Francisco. Together, we can make sure our city stays an amazing place, filled with art and compassion, different from every great city that ever existed and yet great in our own way. Join us. Let’s maintain our city and bring back our most important values.

Karthik Rajan

(first posted, February 11, 2011)

The Birds in SF Share Better Than the Board of Supervisors

24 Sunday Apr 2011

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Last year, I documented birds near the Mid-Market Exception Zone that know how to share.

and now I see it as a metaphor for what the Board of Supervisors and Interim Mayor Ed Lee failed to understand about the laws they are changing, beginning with The Twitter Giveaway of 2011.

We have been talking about being afraid of the Manhattanization of San Francisco for some time now – at least since back in the 90’s – and yet we have been unable to resist this rampant development of condominiums and new structures that no one here can afford.

I see now that all these empty dwellings have been built for new employees of all the new Twitter-like businesses that will be arriving because the Board and Mayor Lee have struck down one of the pillars of our very strict tax code – brand new san franciscans most, since they rarely hire local folk.

New, young stylish grads from Yale and Harvard, MIT and Stanford, at least some of whom will be of the type we have seen already – the ones who avoid-eye-contact and civic responsibility, enrich themselves, vote for development and sit/lie laws and aid the driving out of what they deem unsightly: the unwanted poor, the homeless, the ten- and fifteen- and twenty-year San Franciscans who have just managed to survive as the cost of living has skyrocketed. At least some of them will be the Manhattanizers.

But with the upcoming vote over Treasure Island Development I’ve realized a new fear:

The HongKongification of San Francisco.

Do these pro-business, high energy politicians think we should be growing like the last decade that has created these dense cities of Asia? Do they see unlimited space for growth? Do they not know about our long history of containing that growth for aesthetic reasons and civic responsibility?

San Francisco should stay a sweet, small City with its own identity: one of tolerance, compassion, care for our smallest citizens and local businesses. We can develop our new 21st Century SF, but we don’t have to do it like the Asians have or New York did. We should do it our way: slow and steady.

Vote Karthik Rajan for Mayor, an Independent outsider who will stand up to corrupt lifelong politicians and the dozens of interests that support them.

I will demand for all of us that we scale down the SF economy for four years. I will then use half of that time to audit and evaluate our Departments and the current unchecked growth; will identify and reduce waste and re-organize, restructure and reboot the City for a better future for our children.

I will not seek re-election and I will return $400,000 back to the City’s Board and next Mayor upon departure from office, as stated in my first Campaign promise, so, if you vote for me for Mayor, when my term is done, I will give $400,000 plus interest back to the City.

Vote Karthik Rajan and we will pay less for a better quality of life.

What Kind of Mayor Would You Rather Have?

09 Saturday Apr 2011

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Well, the campaign is entering a new and more public phase with the addition of the tech tools that are defining our generation and, in keeping with the transparency of both the campaign and the blog, I thought I’d outline my plans for the next few months.

We are consolidating all websites under karthikrajanformayor.org and the blog will be at karthikrajanformayor/blog as soon as tomorrow night. I will be adding mailchimp and formspring to the blog as well – so feedback is going to be much more possible quite soon. I’m learning many of these new tools as we go, by the way, so if you have any encouraging suggestions, I am wide open.

I am looking for a good UNION printer in the City that I can use throughout the campaign.

As a progressive I’ve committed to using union printing for every campaign I’ve ever been involved in. It’s important to support small businesses and unions – which are under assault even in Wisconsin, a place I don’t imagine to be conservative.

Once we have established a relationship, I will be bringing in designs for all the campaign business cards, posters, yard signs, buttons and flyers – so hopefully before this month is over all of that will happen.

The Campaign Office will open June 1st.

This summer I am proud to announce:

The Karthik Rajan Listening Tour

San Francisco Summer 2011

My candidacy is the result of decades of training and study, but the platform of my campaign is up to YOU. This summer, come meet me at cafe’s, bars and events all over San Francisco and tell me what you want from the Mayor’s office. My campaign is meant to be accessible, transparent and pedestrian because – as our great Governor Jerry Brown said the other day on Southwest Airlines when a reporter asked him why he was flying commercial coach: “I like the people.”

What kind of a Mayor would you rather have?

I offer a candidate who has traveled around the world seven times, thrice in the last six years; who speaks several languages, who loves SF and knows its neighborhoods and the whole Bay Area very well; who cares to represent the culture and flavor of SF rather than to reform it in the image of big corporations; whose favorite Mayors were Willie Brown and Art Agnos, who loves the Giants and the amazing diversity of our city and supports small business, immigrants, the homeless, the poor and the underrepresented over big business.

Check out my first three campaign promises and I look forward to meeting you and discussing our plan for how to govern San Francisco in 2012.

Sincerely,

Karthik Rajan

The Twitter Deal – Mayor Lee and Supervisor Chiu Cave In

05 Tuesday Apr 2011

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Moving right along, I now have a twitter account:

@karthikrajansf

and am following San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee and Board of Supervisors Chair David Chiu, who are tweeting away with great vigor about how we all need to sign their petition and support their plan to Keep Twitter in San Francisco!

The irony isn’t lost on me. I rented an apartment in the Mission District for $400 a month just 15 years ago and now a great big black bus from Google delivers employees to and from my old neighborhood so they can pay $1200 a month to live there.

The SFBG is right on this one and kudos to Steven T. Jones and Tim Redmond for their great work these past few weeks exposing what is basically a terrible break from precedent, guaranteed to gentrify neighborhoods and raise rents for everyone living in them.

The Twitter deal exemplifies the changes in San Francisco government, policy and culture that I am protesting in my appeal for your vote for Mayor.

We want good companies to come to San Francisco and stay here, but we want them to invest in our city – not take from it.

At stake is a small percentage of the stock options of Twitter employees – which are bound to be worth tens of millions to our city when the company goes IPO – and my chief opponent and the Mayor are just giving away those funds. More importantly they are trashing a hard fought right to demand that corporations that come to our city commit to investing in the welfare of all our citizens and not just their employees.

It’s a sad day in San Francisco. The Twitter deal is a nightmare that sets a precedent we don’t want and makes us vulnerable to dozens of other companies making similar demands.

Mayor Lee and Chairman Chiu are dead wrong and if it upsets you as much as it does  me, Chris Daly and the SFBG, then please cast your vote in November for me, Karthik Rajan, for Mayor of San Francisco.

It is time to set right the course of our city back to the values we all cherish: compassion for the homeless, the poor, renters and immigrant communities – and away from corporate protectionism.

Commercial Space SOMA 65 cents/sq. foot?

31 Thursday Mar 2011

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The weather has finally turned sunny and warm and that crisp feeling of spring has arrived. March felt like one long extended February. 2011 wine is probably going to be interesting. The agricultural sector received beautiful pulses of regular rain for six straight weeks! Marvelous. Perhaps our fire season will be mellower as a result.

This past week, I had a few real estate agents show me 10,000 square foot warehouse space in the South of Market area. The rates have been far too high for more than a dozen years now – empty spaces abound and there’s desperation to rent them. What a change from the madness that since 1995 has sent us spiraling up to unaffordability.

I now think it’s reasonable to demand no more than 65 cents per square foot of those owners for the first year, at least through this election year. Nobody’s going to make a move until 11/08/11 anyway.  So let’s ease the pressure on all of us and bring it back to 90’s levels. The rents only went up because people were willing to pay them. Those folks are the ones who drove out so many long time residents of SF. That’s how I got priced out of San Francisco long ago.

David Boyce, the saxophonist, composer and philosopher recently walked up to my good friend James on a street, shook his hand and said, “There’s only 46,000 of us in this town now.”  Meaning black men. sigh.

That’s what happened between 1997 and 2011 – the Manhattanization of San Fran – and that’s why I am running for Mayor.

These past few weeks, I walked through the city alone, and with my son and with my old friend James and had a few lovely meals: at Oaxacena, my contemporary favorite for chicken mole, at Limon, the new Peruvian place on Valencia near 16th and at Maverick, the now five-year old fine dining spot on 17th near Mission.

I discussed my campaign with Chris Daly and his gang at the Buck, with the sheriffs at City Hall and with friends at Zeitgeist, including two young men, Andrew and Danny, who are new to our town from Orange County. Imagine it, young men from that right-wing enclave out in the back yard of Zeitgeist taking in the sights and smells of tolerance! Andrew’s never going back and I guess Danny will be up here by election day.

I love this city.

Vote for me for Mayor first, second or third and we will have a great time keeping SF small and sweet and bringing the rents down.

Let Twitter go back to Silicon Valley where it belongs, I say. Tax the corporates who want to live here. The commodification of urban space should serve the citizens, not the corporations.

I am the only candidate that has from day one said I will tax the wealthy and the corporate interests to allow those of  us who live in and love this town more security, and today it’s in the Chronicle that most people in California agree that taxing the wealthy is the right move.

Watch how fast the other candidates take it up now. Jean Quan took my idea of giving back a portion of the Mayor’s salary in Oakland – just stole that one. Watch how often that happens this year and celebrate our success in driving the race back to compassion for small business, the poor, renters, homeless and immigrant communities.

stay tuned,

Karthik

Changes Afoot – Karthik Rajan for Mayor

11 Friday Feb 2011

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After long discussion with supporters,

I have decided to run as Karthik Rajan

rather than as M.T. Karthik, which has been a nom de plume for me for more than a dozen years, and how I have been known “on the air” and in the art world.

I want all of my supporters to know and trust me.

My name is Karthik. I was born in India and moved to the United States first when I was two.

I have been a U.S. citizen for 30 years and have lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for most of those years.

I’ve traveled around the world seven times, living in New York, LA, Japan, India, Europe, South America and elsewhere, but I have always returned to the SF Bay, which I consider my beloved home. I love SF. I want to be the Mayor because I am sure I can run the city better than any of the other candidates. I’m an Independent, progressive and eager to clean house.

Please vote for Karthik Rajan as your first, second or third choice for Mayor of San Francisco. Together, we can make sure our city stays an amazing place, filled with art and compassion, different from every great city that ever existed and yet great in our own way. Join us. Let’s maintain our city and bring back our most important values.

Karthik Rajan

Gaining Steam and Overcoming Doubts

07 Tuesday Dec 2010

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After a long discussion with supporters, we decided to drop Not to Win, But to Nudge, which was our old campaign motto, in favor of:

Karthik for Mayor

Not Impossible

which leaves the matter a little more open-ended.

I’ve been feeling out responses from old friends. In all honesty, the legitimacy of my campaign is up to YOU.

I wonder, too, whether many of the artists and DJ’s I know from when I arrived for good to SF in 1993 – DJ Consuelo, the gang from Dalva, Rigo 23 and his crowd, any of the many hundreds of people I have enjoyed a drink with in neighborhoods around town over the years – will be supportive of this effort. I wonder whether my uncle, who has lived in Twin Peaks for more than thirty years will find it idiotic.

It certainly isn’t a joke. I have walked the length and breadth of the city over the last 25 years and know people in every neighborhood because I love it. I want to care for SF and feel prepared to lead us into less expensive, smarter, more efficient and caring government and away from corporate capital and smarm;

To bring back the SF values of compassion for the poor, homeless and renters in our town, and away from those who would “clean it up” by making it a mall that looks like every other city in the U.S.A.

To give the Office of Mayor of San Francisco an independent face, free of influence from Villaraigosa, the Clintons and others who are using our culture and our whole town to support ends we don’t support.

San Francisco was always an independent city with good values, different from the whole rest of the country.  What I represent in my campaign for Mayor is why we all moved here – a choice who’s not a Democrat, nor a Republican, nor a Libertarian, nor a Green, nor a Peace and Freedom candidate, but who shares the best values of all of these in SF and more that we share together uniquely as a free, progressive city.

Our values make SF the best place to live in the world – and they are being bought out by rich Democrats.

I hope all of you will see that what I’m doing is not only necessary, but that I’m really the best suited to do it. This is not, as JFR reminded me, quixotic.

So on your ballot in November please do make Karthik Rajan your first, second or third choice for Mayor

and you won’t be sorry.

In fact, I guarantee you it will feel good.

Karthik