Tag Archives: san francisco

Ed Lee is No More the Mayor than Emperor Norton Was

12 Monday Dec 2011

Posted by in politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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.

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

02 Friday Dec 2011

Posted by in politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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 in politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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.

Lee Wins, Avalos Gets SFBG Clip-n-Voters and We Lose (Again)

09 Wednesday Nov 2011

Posted by in politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Hardly anyone has voted.

That remains the story. Can a city official even be considered elected if a minority of the voting age population participates in the election? How is this democracy? We should pass a mandatory voting law for the City.

We must also protect Instant Runoff Voting, which did in fact force greater coalition building and less rancor amongst candidates. It did.

The need to be chosen as someone’s Number Two or Three kept these candidates honest and the results reflect it. Ed Lee’s silent treatment worked beautifully, and everybody who didn’t have a second or third choice in mind selected the Interim Mayor by default.

What a way to back into the job. Sound familiar? It’s what they accused Jean Quan of in Oakland. But guess what? it isn’t RCV, it’s voter turnout that’s the problem.

I am most disappointed in Melissa Griffin and her unfounded assault on Instant Runoff Voting or Ranked Choice Voting. This new system is good for democracy and proves useful at the aforementioned coalition-building and in encouraging more candidates (like myself, Joanna Rees, Green Terry Baum and many others) to participate. Ed Lee supporters should vociferously defend Instant Runoff, or Ranked Choice Voting.

Here’s a repost of my IRV PSA from several months back.

That said, everything has happened exactly as I expected since the Ethics Commission agreed Ed Lee could run – the main reason I dropped out.

This was a statistical inevitability. It’s a confirmation election – made from negotiations between Gavin Newsom’s crowd, Willie Brown’s and Rose Pak’s – to ensure that Ed Lee, the beloved Chief Administrator and Interim Mayor has no blemish on his record on the road to being the first Asian-American Mayor of San Francisco.

I am very happy for both the Chinese-American community and the Asian-American community at large, for the “breakthrough” that will be attributed here. But, the decision-making was done far away from most regular people, again, by power brokers who know we won’t bother to turnout, to look things up, to seek better representation.

I hope that instead of being threatened by what I am saying, Ed Lee supporters and the Mayor himself understand that my issue is with the Ethics Commission’s decision to allow Mr. Lee to run, not with him as a Mayor. He was a competent Chief Administrator and will be capable.

My issues on policy with Ed Lee are opposition to his Twitter Giveaway, the Treasure Island Boondoggle, the Park Merced “housing scheme that divides,” and his absurd idea for five-year budgets – given the huge number of interests to which he seems beholden. He lacks a progressiveness that I associate with our city. You can read specifics throughout this blog. I would have had him be allowed to run in 2015, against a real coalition-built Mayor.

I wish I could have been more active in this year’s election, but expected everything we are seeing today, months ago.

The promising numbers for John Avalos are a pleasant surprise from the standpoint of measuring the election against the power of the media to motivate. He was a non-entity before it began, Chris Daly stayed out of the way, and his absence helped Tim Redmond make Avalos run.

So Redmond pushed with his staid, old method and the numbers today are bigger. Pointless, but bigger. Redmond created the candidate and got him votes. Then had the SFBG report on the pretense of a Progressive Movement. Wow.

John Avalos’ numbers are largely due to the clip-and-vote effect observed for decades now, a method by which the Bay Guardian has become a shepherd for apathetic progressives-in-name, many very recent transplants here, who can’t be bothered to look into it, haven’t better resources or a competitive view of scale. These voters consider matters only in the last week of the cycle and do as Tim Redmond and the Bay Guardian tell them to do on election day by ripping out the page and following through.

This has been sustained because of a lack of competition for the Bay Guardian. But I restate my problem with Tim Redmond in this election: he wakes up everyday with all that power, and in recent years has seriously decayed in terms of courage or creativity. More often than not, he whines, laments and defines progressive space with his opinion of what is progressive. There is little or no collectivity and Redmond takes the centrist road nowadays leaving him as cliquish as the mainstream candidates.

That‘s the problem: the cliques at the Chron, SFBG and City Hall are the problem. That, and money … oh and the fact that nobody even cares to vote … (sigh)

The system needs a severe overhaul and I’d like to be a candidate again, but only if called upon. It isn’t real democracy – these aren’t real elections. It’s a sad decaying of SF political history.

The rulers are really stooges for the 1%, and the 1% themselves. They are out of touch and callous as so many of us suffer this terrible economy. They lack creative solutions, fear socialist ones and govern to protect themselves, their property and their right to party hard in our beautiful city.

Please stay in touch with comments. Hoping for a Sheriff Mirkarimi, I will be writing up an analysis of this election after the fact and posting it here. Thanks for your support and kind words.

Karthik

A Fake Election to Confirm Ed Lee as First Elected Chinese Mayor

22 Saturday Oct 2011

Posted by in politics

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Recent traffic to this site as the election cycle comes to a close inspires me to write a brief entry for new visitors to this campaign.

I ran for Mayor from November 18, 2010 until July 3rd, 2011, when it became clear that Interim Mayor Ed Lee would be allowed to run for Mayor in this election.

This was my concluding statement and will direct you to a chronology of the campaign.

I believe it is illegal for Ed Lee to run in this election, having promised not to run in order to be appointed to succeed Gavin Newsom, and because it has given Interim Mayor Lee’s campaign tremendous advantages of pseudo-incumbency. He has gained traction illegally throughout. In fact, despotic interests of the past thirty years have joined together – in fear of Instant Runoff Voting – to ensure the “safe” choice for them, a person they can move easily, will become Mayor.

For Rose Pak and the Chinese community it represents that the first Chinese Mayor, our current Interim Mayor, is never seen in the future as having failed at the job. If anything, this election, with Ed Lee allowed to run, represents a confirmation election. It’s a fake election to confirm that we all like Ed Lee. But it isn’t good democracy. It’s factions finding each other.

Leaving Ed Lee out of your three choices for Mayor is the only real way to ensure an ethical result from the succession process, and ensure a democratic outcome. Please do not include Interim Mayor Lee among your three choices for Mayor.

I am not endorsing any candidate for Mayor because I feel strongly that I am a better choice for Mayor than any of them. My policy ideas (Campaign Promises) are unique, and the best for our City right now. I am truly sorry my name is not on the ballot.

I encourage and welcome the use of write-in to include my name in the final tally.

Thanks to all of you who were so supportive.

In solidarity,

Karthik Rajan

RePost of some Campaign Promises

13 Tuesday Sep 2011

Posted by in politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I’ve grown to know and love the unique and special character of our city’s quiet pockets – what’s best defies definition, it’s called our spirit.

I pledge to stand with our neighborhoods and communities to retain their culture; to seek out input from communities into which predominantly private external interests attempt to intervene; to create jobs for people already living here, rather than imaginary future employees or residents.

We have plenty of people here who could use our support to create lives for themselves in neighborhood microeconomies. These would be of obvious service to our many residents and those who are soon to arrive.

3. To resist Manhattanization and HongKongification of San Francisco, in favor of saner development

Why does SF have to grow to a city of a million before we address the transit and infrastructural issues?

Why do we have to urgently build more residences for people who do not live here yet when so many who already do live here are suffering homelessness, job loss and an inability to keep up with the cost of living in San Francisco?

Why do we have to build housing for people who do not yet live here before working on cleaning up the Bay, preserving our heritage, adding better, smarter transportation and sustainable energy resources?

Why do we have to appease the nouveau-riche of our times: twenty- and thirty-something-year-olds from elsewhere who want to live and work in our beautiful city for companies that make money for investors who live elsewhere which – thanks to the board and the Twitter Giveaway – will contribute little to our economy?

In reality, we don’t.

In Conclusion

03 Sunday Jul 2011

Posted by in politics

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

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

Posted by in politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

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

Posted by in politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , ,

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.

Manhattanization Becomes Policy Under Lee and Chiu

30 Monday May 2011

Posted by in politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

This disturbing article in The SF Examiner uses “Manhattanization” as a tag, but shockingly, Examiner Staff Writer Dan Schreiber works hard here to make the term a positive!

Note the utter absence of a competitive or contrary view here to the high-speed development plans on the table [thankfully BeyondChron does]. The article defends Park Merced and Treasure Island Development plans launching into the ‘inevitable need for development’ like this:

“Politics aside, growth in San Francisco depends, above all, on the sheer demand for housing. [politics aside?! really?!]

“By 2035, the Bay Area is expected to be home to about 2 million more people and 902,000 more homes, with almost all that growth concentrated in existing urban areas. This daunting 29 percent population increase has prompted regional planners to urge local governments to reduce their per-resident carbon emissions by 15 percent.

“That’s the crux of the “Initial Vision Scenario for 2035,” which was released in March by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Association of Bay Area Governments. The report envisions that while the Bay Area’s population grows from 7 million to 9 million people, San Francisco will add roughly 90,000 households, pushing its population to around 1 million.”

The one question that no one seems to ask is “Why?”

Why does SF have to grow to a city of a million before we address the transit and infrastructural issues?

Why do we have to urgently build more residences for people who do not live here yet when so many who already do live here are suffering homelessness, job loss and an inability to keep up with the cost of living in San Francisco?

Why do we have to build housing for people who don’t yet live here before working on cleaning up the Bay, preserving our heritage, adding better, smarter transportation and sustainable energy resources?

Why do we have to appease the nouveau-riche of our times: twenty- and thirty-something-year-olds from elsewhere who want to live and work in our beautiful city for companies that make money for investors who live elsewhere which – thanks to the board and the Twitter Giveaway – will contribute little to our economy?

In reality, we don’t.

Vote Karthik Rajan and we can put a stop to this rampant, unchecked development and add stronger checks and balances against the commercial uglification of our City – in keeping with our own heritage as the most progressive city in the U.S.

It seems like new architects of the City want it to be for a rich, upper-class from elsewhere who will redefine SF into a 21st Century playground for the very wealthy. The America’s Cup is a prime example of an engine for this development.

I beg you to resist. Vote Karthik Rajan for Mayor. It will be a revolutionary moment in our City’s history and we will slow the development to a reasonable pace. I have the scalar vision to see through the rushed development our politicians now shove through the governmental system and I can lead us to more creative, more sensible and slower growth.

These plans are nonsensical because there is no need to grow like Manhattan and Hong Kong and other places have. It’s 20th century thinking that creates immense, unmanageable cities with vast disparity and horrifyingly under-served populations.

We are smarter than that – this is San Francisco! – we can slow this down and grow our own way. I know it. But we have to have leadership that is willing to stand up to crazy development talk.

Right now Interim Mayor Lee and Board President Chiu are failing to do this, rather they step on the gas for more and more growth. They remind me of the insane developers I saw in Hong Kong in the 1990’s crazily growing the city without concern for those who would be ground down or out.

Enough! Vote Karthik Rajan for a more sane future in San Francisco.

Instant Runoff Voting is Better Democracy

26 Thursday May 2011

Posted by in politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

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.

The Best Ticket for Mayor Emerges!

22 Sunday May 2011

Posted by in politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

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

Posted by in politics

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

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

Posted by in politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , ,

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.

Media and the Mayoral Election in SF

11 Wednesday May 2011

Posted by in politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , ,

When you hover over any of the links in the blogroll to the right, you will notice a critique or comment concerning where the link leads. Spend some time lingering. Also, do bookmark this page and use it as a node to these news sources.

Note that the SF blogs were all launched within the past decade, except Indybay, which, though first and most directly for the poor and disenfranchised, remains marginalized by the mainstream press.

In addition to blogs of neighborhood or city-wide interest, there are also dozens of insider blogs written by people with access to the politicos of our town that pols and wonks presumably sit around reading. They are filled with rhetoric about what’s best for our City.

Like The Usual Suspects, which began as a fax sent to the policy types in 1995, or, since May of 2007, Sweet Melissa ,who sides with those who seek to rebrand IRV, Instant Runoff Voting, with the foul-sounding name Ranked Choice Voting, and drive it away.

I commented on Melissa’s site that the loudest opponents of 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.

The most recent of the blogs is of course the LOUDEST right now, The Bay Citizen, which describes itself like this:

“Concerned about the negative impact of [the decline of journalism] on the community, in early 2009 local philanthropist Warren Hellman convened an advisory committee to examine the issue and offer possible solutions. In January 2010, after many months of research and planning, and with a generous $5 million contribution from the Hellman Family Foundation, The Bay Citizen (first known as the Bay Area News Project) was founded. …

“On May 26, 2010, The Bay Citizen launched its online content on http://www.baycitizen.org. On June 4, 2010, The Bay Citizen’s newsroom began producing the articles featured in the two-page Bay Area Report in The New York Times’ print editions, which are delivered to over 65,000 Bay Area New York Times subscribers on Fridays and Sundays. Over time, The Bay Citizen also plans to distribute news through podcasts, radio, and potentially TV.”

In recent days I have perused the content and we have all witnessed increasing ad presence around the Bay for the blog – which requests you join on a splash page when you visit now, saying they need 500 more “Bay Citizens” to sign up. It’s not as easy to pay top-notch reporters and editors in the era of user-generated content as the Hellmans thought.

I noticed they did hire the experienced and competent Aaron Glantz, the radio reporter for KPFA and Free Speech Radio News, an East Bay journalist and author who also filed stories for me when I was a news director – he did the first and best coverage of Muqtada Al-Sadr in Iraq during the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003, btw.

Some of the work is pretty good and the reach into civic space is decent, growing. But many of the positions taken via their headlines and tweets are dangerously “un-journalistic” and there is some question about their editorial choices at a time when we need to address waste and budget deficits. They are creating a voice for themselves, yes – but what exactly does it have to do with us? regular San Franciscans …

Really though, the media environment in SF has achieved pluralized saturation.

We don’t need more communication, we need better communication.

In fact, traditional modes of journalism relied on critique and competitiveness to create a whole picture of our society – the two-paper town – but in the late 1990’s as the Net and electronic media became more ubiquitous, this all began to fall apart.

Career politicians and the big parties have preyed upon the critical void created by the absence of competitive views and the pluralization of media. Now, by purchasing television, internet and radio time in great volume just weeks before the election, mainstream candidates backed by immense special interests cement their victory in elections and define what our society  should be like.

The Guardian and the Chron have fallen right in line, in order to be perceived of as “legitimate” by those in power, and all of it seems to have more to do with selling something and less to do with the everyday struggles of San Franciscans.

I encourage readers to consider the views of all these blogs and papers with a critical eye – particularly when they are blasé, snarky, cliquish, in-jokey or authoritative about what it means to be a San Franciscan, a progressive, or an informed voter. If we show these complacent journalists and candidates that we are much smarter and more critical than they think, we stand a chance of having coverage that looks more like our city, and more importantly they might fear our turnout more and respond to our needs.

This election year, the Bay Citizen, SF Appeal and other bloggers will seek to become an electronic platform that will stand aside the Guardian and Chron to cover the race. I hope it’s the beginning of competitive journalism again. Let us read together and see. A good example of the work I am talking about is by another of the new blogs, SF Appeal, who have pursued alleged lobbying violations by Alex Tourk, rather vigorously. Check it.

[and this one, about Mesherle’s impending release, which is well written and significant because many in the mainstream press are either avoiding the topic or not addressing the emotions it brings up. I have been reading SF Appeal a lot more recently as I campaign for Mayor, it is succeeding at some level – keep up the good work.

It is important to note in this case that a jury of 12 found Mehserle guilty of Involuntary Manslaughter AND 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. 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.]

BTW, the largest number of hits to this site yet was May 10th …

welcome to new followers and thank you for considering Karthik Rajan for Mayor of San Francisco in 2011.

An Artist for Mayor of SF 2011

10 Tuesday May 2011

Posted by in art, politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

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.

A New Philosophy for San Francisco

06 Friday May 2011

Posted by in politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

There is a transparent reality in SF politics that neither our politicians nor newspapers discuss: the town has changed, is changing fast, and without authority, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse in Gavin Newsom’s absence (a period that by election day will have been really three years, since he spent at least the last two years campaigning for his new job).

Some of these changes are in policy that created new demographics, such as the Twitter Giveaway, while some are demographic changes that have driven policy. No politician wants to talk about the changes in policy wrought by Gavin Newsom’s period that fall into the former category, and few new residents want to talk about the latter.

Few are changes like last month’s Urban Gardening rezoning: local efforts to maintain the integrity of San Francisco. I was touched to see Antonio Roman-Alcala in the photo-op on the City’s website, standing behind Interim Mayor Lee, and applauding as he signed the document.

Some newly proposed changes sound exciting: Treasure Island Development, basketball and football stadia, but unchecked and without transparency or authority, any problems that arise from such changes don’t receive the attention they are due equally.

Meanwhile, hundreds and thousands are being ground down by the changes and have felt unheard. That is why for a decade the progressive left has been represented by the screaming obscenities of Chris Daly and the hand-wringing winging of Tim Redmond at the Guardian. A reformist attitude about our government is long overdue.

We must force our politicians and our new neighbors to address the changes in real terms, and we must restate that there are San Francisco values that are unique to our City – compassion, tolerance and a welcoming embrace. I fear repercussions are not being discussed and the need for important adaptations thus goes unheeded.

More, in these areas of tension – salaries, pensions and benefits that are too high, taxation that’s inequitable, an increasing cost of living and a deficit economy – we are speeding up to create patchwork solutions that cut broad swaths, rather than slowing down to identify and deal with root causes.

Defining SF is something few people want to do because of the socio-political risk and the fundamentally authoritative posture it requires. I wouldn’t dare try to be the aesthetic or cultural interpreter of our incredible City. But I do know it and feel it everyday, and I think that since Gavin left, we are like a ship adrift.

We must begin to poll San Franciscans more actively with current tools to comprehend our makeup now, and the exact nature of our socio-political consciousness and we must protect the many hundreds and thousands who are being eliminated from discourse by our increased “refinement and enlargement” (as Madison would put it).

I am running for office as a strong leader who wants to comprehend our constitution and work for all San Franciscans. I believe we all know what we want our city to be like, but our politicians no longer seem to represent that, whatever that is, to anyone.

This week a few examples brought this to bear for me: Prop G, passed last year, has given the SFMTA unprecedented leverage in what are now being called historic negotiations between MUNI and its employees; Captain Greg Suhr, a 30-year man of the force, who has been involved in one or two serious incidents decried by progressives over the years, was named Police Chief and the current Interim Mayor Ed Lee proposed the first-ever 5-year budget for our City.

In each case, I promptly responded – in most cases in realtime – in advance of any of the other candidates – you can read my thoughts below. I did this because I want followers to see that real leadership knows what’s right and puts it forward quickly to allow colleagues to accept, deny or seek opportunity to adapt it. Leadership starts discourse quickly and accurately then adapts with flexibility to refinement.

I found myself supporting the SFMTA and Police Chief Suhr and decrying Interim Mayor Lee’s Plan and thus realized that mine is a new philosophy for SF. It isn’t Democratic or Republican or Libertarian or etc. It is responsive to what is actually happening and untethered to any special interest. Coalition building will be the result thus of deliberating upon competing views between these vested interests, while being outside of them, being critical, smart and for the people. I am proud to suggest this because I truly believe it is what we need to move forward as a City and retain our values, which are unique in the country and maybe the world.

My campaign is one of inclusion, but I am attempting to project a strong, decisive image because I feel this is what our City sorely needs. I do not see that charismatic strength of leadership in the other candidates. We must be muscular, physical and responsive to the problems, not fixed on setting up 5-year plans for corporate cronies. I am stern and focused, an analyst ready to work restructuring our economy and City for sustainable, solvent growth at an easy pace that doesn’t grind out precious resources or residents.

Thank you to all the new followers this week. We are increasing in number and I very much appreciate your interest and support.