Tag Archives: tax-break

My Thousandth Tweet

31 Friday Aug 2012

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Recently I posted my 1000th Tweet:

“1000th Tweet: Twitter’s useful but cluttered. You have to tweet a lot to get good at it unless you’ve a weird knack. Reading others is best.”

As a critique thus far, I think those 140 characters do it. I won’t recommend Twitter, but I do find some value in it. I will continue to read and post there, which is a huge surprise to me given how I began:

A little less than a year and a half ago, amidst the San Francisco Mayor’s Race, but before Interim Mayor Ed Lee was allowed to run, SF Board of Supervisors Chair David Chiu (himself a Candidate for Mayor) led the Board and the Interim Mayor to The Great Twitter Giveaway of 2011, which ended the strictest controls on corporate investment in public space in the country: SF’s city tax on companies wanting to do business here.

They shattered our City’s progressive history functionally to create a tax-break to entice Twitter to make its base in San Francisco. That was when I started my first and only Twitter account @mtksf and posted my first tweet:

“Twitter doesn’t deserve the tax break on stock options. They stand to make tens of millions at IPO!”

I stand by that first tweet, there was no reason to give Twitter the taxbreak, which is being extended now to other social media and tech companies. They all want to be in SF.

The Board and Interim Mayor Lee failed to represent our city’s values and changed our city fundamentally.

Those Mayoral candidates used the tax-break to gain money and support for their campaigns from corporate interests, railroaded the Board and City into giving up millions of dollars that could have gone in the General Fund and, far worse, shat on long time businesses that have stayed in SF choosing to contribute to our bottom line when it would’ve been cheaper to leave.

I started using Twitter as a part of my Campaign for Mayor in an attempt to bring  light to these and other issues I have with contemporary SF politicians – a wholly bought-out crew of pawns for special interests.

But I continue even now to use, read and post to Twitter, which has grown on me. I use it primarily to read others and to find important links sent by intellectuals, writers, news and sports reporters,actors, producers, comedians and athletes.

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.

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.