District 5 Diary

"Hispanic test scores have risen since Prop. 227"

2009-12-14T12:28:00.000-08:00

The Bilingual Ban That Worked

by Heather Mac Donald

from City Journal (http://www.city-journal.org/)

In 1998, Californians voted to pass Proposition 227, the “English for the Children Act,” and dismantle the state’s bilingual-education industry. The results, according to California’s education establishment, were not supposed to look like this: button-cute Hispanic pupils at a Santa Ana elementary school boasting about their English skills to a visitor. Those same pupils cheerfully calling out to their principal on their way to lunch: “Hi, Miss Champion!” A statewide increase in English proficiency among all Hispanic students.

Instead, warned legions of educrats, eliminating bilingual education in California would demoralize Hispanic students and widen the achievement gap. Unless Hispanic children were taught in Spanish, the bilingual advocates moaned, they would be unable to learn English or to succeed in other academic subjects.

California’s electorate has been proved right: Hispanic test scores on a range of subjects have risen since Prop. 227 became law. But while the curtailment of California’s bilingual-education industry has removed a significant barrier to Hispanic assimilation, the persistence of a Hispanic academic underclass suggests the need for further reform...

The rest of the article at: http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_4_bilingual-education.html

Oil in Iraq: "Contrary to expectations, U.S. firms bowed out of the most recent bidding"

2009-12-14T08:40:00.000-08:00

"Baghdad Hails Oil Auction as Success:
Shell, Lukoil, Other Companies Pledge to Vastly Increase Nation's Output Despite Hurdles"
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704121504574593422979148980.html

Again the question arises: If, as I've been repeatedly told by my progressive friends, the war in Iraq was/is "all about oil," why aren't US oil companies getting any of the contracts?

Willie Brown's Sarah Palin thing

2009-12-13T16:16:00.000-08:00

Willie Brown's fascination with Sarah Palin is hard to figure, since nothing she has ever said or done shows that she's anything but a moron.

Willie on Palin this week: "Can you believe that Sarah Palin actually goaded Al Gore into a debate over global warming? What a masterstroke publicity stunt: The Alaska hockey mom goes one on one with a Nobel Prize winner on Twitter!"

There's never going to be a serious exchange between Gore and Palin---or between Palin and anyone---because Palin is incapable of seriousness. Like a lot of good looking women---and handsome men too, for that matter---she's spent her life coasting on her looks.

Willie on Palin last July after she resigned as Governor of Alaska:

The pundits are wrong. Conventional wisdom is wrong. Sarah Palin's decision to step down as Alaska governor was a brilliant move...If Palin wants to play on the national field, she has to be free to move around. She has to be able to drop into Indiana, Ohio or Tennessee and help Republican candidates raise money. She has to be available for radio and TV...Now she can study up on issues where she is lacking and become a full-time political celebrity...

It's an unlikely image: Sarah Palin, who couldn't tell Katie Couric the name of a single publication she read, studying with furrowed brow long into the Alaska night. She can't do press conferences, and she can't even do interviews with network drones like Couric and Charles Gibson without looking stupid. She can only safely visit the friendly right-wing media.

And she's a compulsive liar, as Andrew Sullivan continues to document. Anyone who's had experience with compulsive liars knows that their sense of reality is very poor, and they end up not knowing the difference between their fabrications and reality. They can't even keep their own bullshit straight. Everything they say and do is only tailored to enhance their egos. That this woman had even an outside chance to become vice president---under John McCain, who has a history of serious health problems---is the most terrifying thing to happen to this country since 9/11.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/12/the-odd-lies-of-sarah-palin-xxxvi-which-we-have-done.html

The Howard Zinning of America: tonight on the History Channel

2009-12-13T13:17:00.000-08:00

The Zinning of America: How to Watch “The People Speak”

by Ron Radosh

(excerpts from a piece on Pajamas Media: http://pajamasmedia.com/ronradosh/)

...The hype for the show has been everywhere. On the TV talk shows you cannot have escaped its stars hyping it. If you read a popular news magazine or a daily paper, you’ve heard about it. Its adherents all make the same argument: for the first time, you get the real American story. The point is not to study and understand the past, but rather, as Matt Damon told The New York Times,to show the past’s resonance for today, when the public is angry about banks and bailouts, and foreign wars. “That’s by design,” Damon said. “What they were up against oftentimes are exactly the same things we’re up against now.” Howard Zinn added that people rebelled in the past, and he hopes the series will spread rebellion now and “lead into a larger movement for economic justice.” Zinn sees history as a tool to be utilized on behalf of radical politics, not as a way to understand our country’s growth and development.

...And so we get to tonight’s TV presentation, portions of which we have online. Let me take a few examples. Let us examine Josh Brolin’s reading of Bartolomo Vanzetti’s letter to the court, proclaiming his innocence and announcing his willingness to suffer martyrdom on behalf of the truth. Brolin, of course, reads it with power. He is an actor. We expect that. He says he was convicted because he was “against the war,” not because he favored victory for the German enemy. Vanzetti says he is proud to die, since he can show there is no liberty or prosperity in America, that all that the rulers say is a lie.

Again, I have not seen the program, and I do not know what the Zinn-Arnove script says before Brolin reads his words. But I am certain of one thing. Viewers will not learn that Sacco and Vanzetti were members of a radical and violent anarchist sect led by Luigi Galleani that believed in robbery, murder and violence in their quest to overthrow the State. There was at the time anti-immigrant and anti-Italian prejudice; there was a blatant disrespect for civil liberties, and the Judge called the two “anarchist bastards” in court, revealing his own heavily biased point of view. But that is the only side of the story that the TV program will reveal.

Nor will viewers learn that there is substantial proof that Sacco was guilty of murdering a guard in order to steal a factory’s payroll for the movement. A few writers have cast doubt about this, but there is real controversy among historians and serious scholars. The entry in Wikipedia accurately summarizes the differences and the controversy among historians. It is not a given that both of the men were innocent.

We also get Morgan Freeman reading the powerful oratory by Frederick Douglass made by the great black abolitionist on July 4, 1852. The actor---in this video Douglass is played by Brian Jones---speaks the words spoken by Douglass at the Corinthian in Rochester, New York. Yes, Douglass at the time made clear that he could not give a tribute, since the promises of the Declaration were not those given to the slaves. He emphasized “the disparity between us,” since the Negro was not part of the “blessings” that other Americans celebrated. The 4th[of July] was that of the whites, he said, “not mine.” It is an attack against slavery, meant to acquaint those outside the South of the reality they were ignoring.

The 4th meant nothing to the slave, Douglass had said. He was correct. But viewers will not learn that after the end of the Civil War, Douglass---the most radical and unforgiving of abolitionists---gave up protest for politics, and acknowledged the leadership and greatness of Abraham Lincoln, whom he called “the black man’s President.” One must read real history, in particular James Oakes’ The Radical and the Republican, to learn that during Lincoln’s presidency Douglass had heaped criticism after criticism at the President. Yet in the major speech Douglass gave after Lincoln’s death, on April 14, 1876, Douglass told his audience that reality was “more complicated” than it appeared to him and the abolitionists years earlier. “Abraham Lincoln,” he told his black audience, “saved for you a country” and “delivered us from a bondage…one hour of which was worse than ages of the oppression your father rose in rebellion to oppose.” He told them that he and others took into account the “circumstances” of Lincoln’s position, and ignored his straying and hesitation and concentrated on what Oakes calls his “longstanding commitments.” Douglass concluded: “We came to the conclusion that the hour and the man of our redemption had met in the person of Abraham Lincoln.”

The point is again that history is complicated, and Douglass himself changed positions and saw how America had grown and what Lincoln had accomplished, and joined the Republican Party and no longer stood outside the political system as a stranger. Oakes compares this speech with that of the July 4th oration. What would Zinn’s viewers think if this was presented right after the earlier Douglass speech? It might teach the viewer something about history, although not the history Zinn seeks to convey. As Oakes writes: “So Douglass shifted perspective again, this time to see events from Lincoln’s point of view, that of a democratically elected official with legitimate obligations to all the people.” He realized that in this light, “Lincoln’s record soared to greatness.” Douglass could acknowledge that; Zinn evidently cannot.

Change, in other words, came from both reformers and politicians, both of whom played a role, and both who at times conflicted with one another and at other times coincided. History is complex, not that of a simple struggle between the forces of light and those of darkness.

Of course, much of the video will speak only to those already convinced. Marisa Tomei reads Cindy Sheehan’s speech “It’s Time the Antiwar Choir Started Singing.” Since the producers obviously chose to include this in the speech, Sheehan more than any other figure has become nothing but a laughing stock. Her words are so crude, so repellent that those who watch it could perhaps be turned off forever. That Zinn and Arnove could include such a figure with the likes of Douglass is not only a case of bad judgment, but an example of the left-wing dogma that only an audience of fellow-travelers like those who applaud Tomei are part of...(emphasis added)

The full Radosh text at: http://pajamasmedia.com/ronradosh/2009/12/12/the-zinning-of-america-how-to-watch-the-people-speak-on-the-history-channel-on-sunday-night/

District 5 Diary's fifth anniversary

2009-12-12T09:42:00.000-08:00

Five years ago today I made the first post to District 5 Diary, more evidence that time flies when you're having fun.

http://district5diary.blogspot.com/2004_12_12_archive.html

The post was essentially a report on a Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council (HANC) meeting on the subject of the "widening" of Martin Luther King Boulevard to accomodate traffic to the Southern entrance to the new garage under the Concourse in Golden Gate Park. What that meeting showed me, first of all, was how out of touch and uninformed the city's progressives were on the issue of the garage and the proposed widening.

The second lesson of the meeting: newly-elected District 5 Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi was eager to pander to city progressives on the issue, even though he didn't really know what he was talking about. Both of these themes---the ignorance of both city progs and Mirkarimi---have been consistent themes on District 5 Diary for the last five years.

Bay Bridge bike/pedestrian path study

2009-12-11T16:57:00.000-08:00

Dear Mr. Anderson,

Thank you for contacting us. In April, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) approved an 18-month, $1.1m study that will address the retrofitting of the West Span with a bicycle/pedestrian path. Adding a facility of that magnitude to an existing suspension bridge is a challenge, we are all looking forward to the outcome of the study. Please continue to visit http://www.baybridgeinfo.org/ for the most recent information about the Bay Bridge Seismic Retrofit Projects.

Best Regards,

Heather Rowe

Public Information Office

San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge

Seismic Safety Retrofit Projects

From: rmajora@gmail.net

Sent: Thursday, December 10, 2009

To: info@baybridgeinfo.org

Subject: Contact form results

What's the status of the study commissioned early this year to look at the feasibility of putting a bike lane on the west span? Is the study finished? If so can I get a copy?

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/08/BAK316UG43.DTL

SF Weekly supports graffiti/tagging vandalism

2009-12-11T11:36:00.000-08:00

The differences between the Bay Guardian and the SF Weekly aren't political; they're purely commercial. Both weeklies, for example, support the bicycle fantasy, and both support graffiti/tagging vandalism. The vandals themselves should thank the Guardian for supporting them as early as 2005, when Tim Redmond opined that defacing of public and private property is merely "unauthorized public art."

http://district5diary.blogspot.com/2005/02/jive-turkey-progressivism.html

Or maybe former District 5 Supervisor Matt Gonzalez should get that honor, since he had a so-called artist deface his office walls in City Hall way back in December, 2004.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/12/10/BAGGJA9B3S1.DTL&hw=Matt+Gonzalez&sn=001&sc=1000

But in the current edition the SF Weekly is catching up with its support disguised as concern about the cost of fighting this form of vandalism.

http://www.sfweekly.com/2009-12-09/news/coverup-worse-than-crime-s-f-outspends-other-cities-fighting-graffiti

I still think we should consider the Singapore Solution---a six-month trial, say---which I bet would put a quick end to this "progressive" art genre.

http://district5diary.blogspot.com/2006/01/graffititagging-singapore-solution.html

Patricia Decker: bike person

2009-12-10T08:47:00.000-08:00

Patricia Decker and Robert Porterfield provide a lot of big numbers on the construction of the new Eastern span of the Bay Bridge in their long article for the SF Public Press:
http://sfpublicpress.org/news/2009-12/unparalleled-bridge-unprecedented-cost

They might have also mentioned another big Bay Bridge number, since early this year the Toll Authority commissioned a $1.3 million study on the feasibility of putting a bike lane on the Western span of the Bay Bridge at a potential cost of $390 million!

http://district5diary.blogspot.com/2009/04/160-to-390-million-for-bike-lane-on-bay.html

Since Decker is a bike person and an active member of the SF Bicycle Coalition, maybe she thought it wouldn't be helpful to the cause to bring up that particular big number. She's so attached to her bike she's given it a name:

mireille (that's the bike. yeah, i named her. and use gender-specific terms when discussing her) changed all of that. before i'd even settled into the lower haight, i'd load up the bike onto AC transit, "dart" across the bay, and cruise up and down howard and folsom streets for dance classes, capoeira and other mission delights. it was practice for the inevitable move. i had to get a taste for the landscape and get some cycling wits to boot.

http://gardenstatetogoldenstate.blogspot.com/2009/10/pedal-revelation.html

Mayor Newsom: "There will be a lot of parking spaces removed..."

2009-12-09T10:07:00.000-08:00

The Bay Guardian's Steve Jones and other journalists cornered Mayor Newsom last week as the city implemented one of the Bicycle Plan projects allowed by Judge Busch. The mayor talked (below in italics) about implementing the rest of the projects in the Plan: "Newsom said he was supportive of the projects in the Bike Plan, even though many of them will cause the loss of traffic lanes and parking spaces, something he had decried in the past."

That Mayor Newsom has ever been an opponent of the bike people is pure mythology. The leftist Guardian has criticized Newsom on many other issues, but, except for his veto of Healthy Saturdays in Golden Gate Park several years ago, Mayor Newsom has given the city's bike people everything they've asked for, even appointing the SFBC's Leah Shahum to the MTA board of directors. I've been following this issue for years, and I've never heard Mayor Newsom "decry" the loss of parking spaces or traffic lanes in any context.

http://district5diary.blogspot.com/2006/11/newsom-homelessness-gay-marriage-and.html

But it's interesting to note that the mayor admits he's a little uneasy about implementing the rest of the Bicycle Plan: "There will be changes[to the Plan]. There will be good ideas that we all agreed to and then we’ll go, wow, this has had unintended consequences, we’ve got to pull back. That doesn’t mean you’re going to reduce necessarily the amount of bike lanes, but it just might be that bike lanes that we do, based upon circumstances that we weren’t aware of that unveil.”

The mayor may have been thinking of the push-back the city has already gotten on the proposed Second Street project. Or he may be rightly worried about planned projects on, for example, Fifth Street, Masonic Avenue, and Cesar Chavez, projects that, according to the EIR, will have "significant unavoidable consequences" on traffic and Muni lines on those streets. Judge Busch is allowing the city to implement only ten small, low-impact projects before a hearing on the adequacy of the Bicycle Plan EIR next June, which shows that he too is concerned about the impact implementing the rest of the Bicycle Plan will have on city streets. He probably doesn't want to be known as the judge who allowed the bike nuts to screw up city streets.

If the mayor is worried, and Judge Busch is worried, the people of San Francisco should be worried, too.

But once the topic of the budget was exhausted and the questions turned back to bike and greening issues, the mayor seemed to brighten up. Newsom said he was supportive of the projects in the Bike Plan, even though many of them will cause the loss of traffic lanes and parking spaces, something he had decried in the past.

“There will be a lot of parking spaces that will be removed and there’s a lot of controversy. But I think they’ve been very judicious, the MTA, in having public hearings and engaging the community. I like the idea of broad strokes implementation as opposed to project by project. I think, to our credit, the city has done a very good job at doing more outreach than we have in the past,” he said. “But until you actually do it, then in abstract terms people may be accepting of it, until their parking space is gone and they say what they heck is this. But I feel much more confident than I have in the past that we’ve done the appropriate amount of outreach.”

But he also left the door open to modifying the plan. “There will be changes. There will be good ideas that we all agreed to and then we’ll go, wow, this has had unintended consequences, we’ve got to pull back. That doesn’t mean you’re going to reduce necessarily the amount of bike lanes, but it just might be that bike lane that we do, based upon circumstances that we weren’t aware of that unveil.”
http://www.sfbg.com/blogs/politics/2009/12/newsom_talks_about_taxes_bikes.html#more

For once Morford gets it right

2009-12-08T08:59:00.000-08:00

I hate to admit it, but I actually agree with Chronicle columnist Mark Morford's piece on the left's preposterous "disappointment" with President Obama. Morford's columns on SFGate are usually full of New Age twaddle, and about how clueless Republicans and the religious right are, not exactly challenging insights here in Progressive Land. But his "Obama, the great disappointment?" gets it right in spite of his always-annoying prose.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2009/12/02/notes120209.DTL

Morford links a useful list posted on Daily Kos of 90 of the president's initiatives and accomplishments thus far, compiled by Robert P. Watson, Ph.D., Coordinator of American Studies at Lynn University. Many of the items listed aren't really accomplishments per se, but merely stated intentions. Still there's enough substance on the list to make me pleased that I voted for Obama and glad that he's our president.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/11/19/805925/-90-Accomplishments-of-Pres.-Obama-Which-The-Media-Fails-to-Report

Today's BeyondChron piece by Randy Shaw is a good local example: http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=7623

And the ultra-left folks at Fog City, who seem to think that blowhard Michael Moore's windy, wrong-headed open letter to the president is worth posting: http://www.fogcityjournal.com/wordpress/2009/12/01/open-letter-to-president-obama-from-michael-moore/

How the anti-car jihad hurts the city

2009-12-07T09:26:00.000-08:00

So Tom Radulovich doesn't like the proposal for a major retail project on a blighted section of Market Street because the plan includes a 201-space underground parking garage (http://www.discovercityplace.com/). What a surprise! Radulovich prefers the blighted status quo rather than allow parking for Death Machines, aka automobiles:

Retailers and investors have insisted it's a no-go...unless the plan's underground parking provision is given the go-ahead. Opposition to that is certain. One of the people at the meeting, Tom Radulovich, executive director of Livable City, has expressed opposition to additional parking in San Francisco. One of Livable City's goals is "a reduction in our dependence on the automobile."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/12/04/BU3M1AU4B5.DTL

Radulovich is a BART director, but he's really just another San Francisco anti-car advocate, which is evident when you look at his website: http://livablecity.org/ This is the progressive plan for the city: make it as difficult and expensive as possible to drive here---for residents and tourists, even though tourism is our most important industry. The Bicycle Plan is of course the key to this plan, since it will go a long way toward creating gridlock on city streets.

I notice that Radulovich lists "Transit Villages in the 21st Century," by Michael Bernick and Robert Cervero, on his site's bibliography. But Bernick himself is alarmed by how his transit corridors idea is being misunderstood and misapplied to the streets and neighborhoods of San Francisco, as he told us years ago in an op-ed in the Chronicle:

http://district5diary.blogspot.com/2007/03/san-franciscos-transit-corridors.html

Like other city progs, Radulovich has never met a garage he liked: http://district5diary.blogspot.com/2006_12_09_archive.html

62% support Obama's Afghanistan policy

2009-12-06T09:55:00.000-08:00

A question in the latest CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll of 1,041 adults nationwide on Dec. 2-3, 2009 (MoE ± 3):
"Regardless of how you feel about the war in general, do you favor or oppose President Obama's plan to send about 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan in an attempt to stabilize the situation there?"

Favor: 62%
Oppose: 36%
Unsure: 2%
http://www.pollingreport.com/afghan.htm

Thanks to Daily Kos for the link: http://www.dailykos.com/

Supervisor Mirkarimi: phony budget hawk

2009-12-04T12:54:00.000-08:00

Melissa Griffin quotes Supervisor Mirkarimi's on his new political identity---budget hawk: "There have got to be some larger strategies[to deal with the City's constant deficit]...but it doesn't mean we should ignore the smaller ones." The Murk is particularly concerned with the cost of the mayor's security.

http://www.thesweetmelissa.com/sweet_melissa/2009/12/how-a-fight-becomes-a-law-security-reimbursement-ordinance-.html

But he chooses to ignore the cost of having city cops babysit the monthly Critical Mass demonstration---$10,000 a month!---probably because he endorses Critical Mass, and the SF Bicycle Coalition, which endorsed him for re-election, is his favorite special interest group. Now that the Bicycle Coalition has evidently stopped listing/endorsing Critical Mass on its online calendar, maybe he and Leah Shahum will take the next responsible step and renounce the demonstration and discourage the city's bike people from taking part.

http://cbs5.com/local/critical.mass.cyclists.2.1002044.html

Cyclists kill pedestrians in Philly!

2009-12-04T10:28:00.000-08:00

Pedestrian deaths see cyclists targeted on the streets of Philadelphia
By Simon MacMichael
Posted on 20 November 2009
http://road.cc/content/news/11356-pedestrian-deaths-see-cyclists-targeted-streets-philadelphia

It may take its name from two Greek words that combine to mean ‘brotherly love,’ but emotions are running high in Philadelphia following a series of collisions in the last month between cyclists and pedestrians.The Philadelphia Inquirer said that those incidents resulted in the deaths of two pedestrians and left another with a fractured skull. And in two cases, the cyclists involved didn’t stop.

The newspaper added that concern over the rise of cyclists flouting laws in the Pennsylvania city led two councilmen, Jim Kenney and Frank DiCicco, to table bills yesterday at a scheduled session of the city council that, if enacted, would result in cyclists there having to sport license plates on their bikes and facing higher fines for traffic violations.

The first incident, on October 8, in the south of the city, caused the death of 78-year-old Tom Archie who was preparing to cross the road when he was struck by a cyclist riding against the flow of traffic. The cyclist involved, who has not yet been charged by police, said he shouted a warning to Mr Archie, but to no avail. The victim died two weeks later in hospital.

A week later, on October 15, paralegal Andre Steed, suffered head injuries after apparently being hit by a cyclist at the junction of 16th and Locust. Witnesses described how they saw a cyclist pick himself up off the ground after the collision and flee the scene. Mr Steed died in hospital ten days later, and police are treating it as a hit-and-run. The rider involved has not yet been traced and the law firm where the deceased worked has offered a $10,000 reward for information that helps trace the cyclist.

And a third collision, on October 14, resulted in a lucky escape for student nurse Kirsten Gwynn, who ended up in intensive care with a fractured skull when she was hit by a cyclist while out jogging. Again, the rider in question failed to stop, and has not yet been found.

As a result of those incidents and wider concern about lack of adherence to traffic laws by all road users, police in the city, the birthplace of both the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution, are today launching a short-term campaign ticketing law-breaking cyclists and car drivers in the city center. And in doing so, they will be accompanied by Bicycle Ambassadors from local cycling advocacy group, the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, who will be on hand to educate both cyclists and motorists alike about road safety issues where bicycles are concerned.

But officers acknowledge that long term they face an impossible task in tackling problem cyclists. Sgt. Ray Evers told the Philadelphia Inquirer, “Are we as diligent about it as we should be? Probably not. But we have to prioritise. We can't even stop every car violation we see."

According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, rising numbers of cyclists in the city have been accompanied by an increase in those who ignore road traffic laws. It said that the Bicycle Coalition’s bike counts had shown that in 2008, over 11,000 people cycled to work on a normal day, with 36,000 people doing so at least once a month. But it added that during the year just 14 tickets were issued to cyclists by police, while motorists received over 200,000.

The bills introduced before the city council yesterday are designed to discourage cyclists from breaking traffic laws as well as making it easier to identify those who have been involved in hit-and-run incidents.

Under Councilman Kenney’s bill, cyclists riding on the pavement or wearing headphones while riding would each face a fine of $300. Currently the fines are, respectively, $10 and $3.

Kenney, who has campaigned on a number of green issues, certainly isn’t anti-cycling. He told the Philadelphia Inquirer: “"Overall, it's a good thing that so many people are riding bikes. And I think it's possible for all of us to share the roads and sidewalks safely, as long as we all respect each other's space."

He added, “"the vast majority of people ride responsibly, but I think we need to step up the enforcement of rules so that the behavior by those who aren't responsible starts to change."

Meanwhile, the bill introduced by DiCicco, if passed into law, would see cyclists aged more than 12 years have to register their bikes within six months of purchase and furnish them with license plates. A one-time registration fee of $20 would be payable, with a $100 fine for those failing to register.

DiCicco believes that registration would help track cyclists not stopping at accident scenes, saying that as it currently stands, "With a bike, someone can just keep going and there's no way to identify them."

Both Kenney and DiCicco believe that their initiatives would benefit all road users, the former saying that there are reckless pedestrians and cyclists, just as there are reckless drivers. He said: "I don't want to go to war with the bikers. I want to keep people safe."

In a statement on its website, the Bicycle Coalition said that it “recognises that the city's streets are chaotic.” But it saw the root cause of the problem as a lack of enforcement of existing laws, and that introducing new ones and increasing fines would not address the issue.

Campaign Director Sarah Clark Stuart said: "This is the wrong approach. Bicyclists shouldn't be singled out when the problem is all road users---motorists, bicyclists, and pedestrians---bending the law to suit their own needs, with little if any consequences. The absence of adequate enforcement has led some road users to develop bad habits that endanger themselves and others."

Advocacy Director John Boyle added: "These bills won't make Philadelphia's streets safer. The problem is not that penalties are too low, the problem is that tickets are rarely given out. It is pointless to increase penalties as proposed by Councilman Kenney when the current penalty system has existed only on paper."

As for the proposed requirement to buy a license, the Bicycle Coalition said it believed that adopting such a measure could “discourage riders, impose financial disincentives, and expose the City to numerous legal issues.” It said that the Philadelphia city council should study and learn from the experience of other cities and states that had taken similar steps and subsequently repealed the legislation, including Houston, Washington DC, Detroit, Albuquerque, and the states of Minnesota and Massachusetts, and highlighted that the Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department had made a direct recommendation to the city council that a scheme there be shelved.

Boyle maintains, “Bicycle license plates are impractical and unworkable. Let's learn from other cities' experiences and not waste time and resources on an ineffective program."

Breen Goodwin, Education Director, said that the Bicycle Coalition believed that the key issue going forward was to educate all road users about safety and ensure that existing laws are enforced consistently and fairly on all those who use the road. She believes that “Until that happens, enacting higher penalties or registration programs is ineffective and counterproductive."

Philip Mangano: Republican hero

2009-12-03T08:27:00.000-08:00

More than five years ago, there was a turning point in San Francisco's approach to homelessness. Philip Mangano, head of the US Interagency Council on Homelessness, came to town to help Mayor Newsom and Angela Alioto, head of the mayor's Ten Year Planning Council, introduce the city's Plan to Abolish Chronic Homelessness.

http://www.ich.gov/slocal/plans/sanfrancisco.pdf

Mangano was back in SF the other day:

The man who led the nation's homelessness policy for seven years and trumpeted groundbreaking initiatives in San Francisco stood on a street corner the other day confronting the evidence, in the flesh, that the problem is far from solved...Mangano lasted about 100 days into the Obama administration before resigning May 15. He says the president is heading in the right direction on homelessness---particularly with new initiatives to house homeless veterans---but he also believes he can make a bigger contribution now by directing his newly formed American Round Table to Abolish Homelessness (http://www.abolitionistroundtable.com/). The nonprofit, with its half-dozen staff members and headquarters in Massachusetts, advocates for the same things Mangano did when he was in Washington: ending homelessness, particularly involving the most acute cases, by providing housing and counseling rather than merely shelter and food (emphasis added).

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/12/01/MNSQ1APRCV.DTL

This is the central insight that led to Mayor Newsom's success, however limited, in dealing with the city's homeless problem: it's mostly about the most "acute" cases, the chronically homeless who eat up the most resources as they cycle in and out of emergency rooms and the city jail: "An estimated 20% of San Francisco's homeless population meets the definition of 'chronically homeless,' yet these 3,000 individuals, including families, consume 63% of our annual homeless budget, comprising both City, State, and Federal funding." (San Francisco Plan to Abolish Chronic Homelessness, page 7)

Mangano's approach: get the chronically homeless off the streets and save a lot of money as you save lives. The best account of how Mangano changed the city's---and the country's---thinking on homelessness is Malcolm Gladwell's "Million Dollar Murray" in the New Yorker four years ago:

http://www.gladwell.com/2006/2006_02_13_a_murray.html

C.W. Nevius reminds us that the Million-Dollar-Murray problem is still with us in SF, as it no doubt is all across the country:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/03/BA7B19H3BC.DTL

Good to see that the Chronicle's Kevin Fagan is back on the homeless beat. Fagan wrote the fine series years ago in the Chron that described the growing squalor on city streets that led to city voters passing Care Not Cash and to the election of Gavin Newsom as Mayor of San Francisco.
http://www.sfgate.com/homeless/

"You are a sad and angry old man..."

2009-11-30T11:59:00.000-08:00

This is pretty stupid stuff, Shawn [his comment below in italics] and long-winded, too. As I've said before, my strictures don't apply to all cyclists, though, at the very least, they certainly do to a large minority of cyclists, given the awful behavior I witness every day on city streets. If the shoe fits, wear it. If it doesn't, what's the problem?

I have more than "vitriol to spew" on this blog---though I do indeed spew some of that. I'm the only one in the city media to pay attention to what the bike movement and its enablers in City Hall are trying to do to our streets. I read the Bicycle Plan, the EIR on the Plan, all the traffic and bike reports put out by MTA and then comment on it all on this blog, which is more than you can say for anyone else in SF, including all the progressive blogs. Can't take it? Then don't read my blog.

Good intentions are not enough. The many exhibitionist demos and activities on city streets are more or less "benign," but when you start redesigning city streets to cater to a small minority of bike "activists," you go too far. (I don't think Critical Mass is benign, however, since it screws up traffic for people trying to get home from work, including Muni passengers, and it costs city taxpayers $10,000 a month for the police escort.) The city would have saved a lot of money and time if it had simply followed the law in the first place and done an EIR on the Bicycle Plan. If our litigation was nothing but a "tantrum," why didn't the court just throw it out? The answer: we had the law and the facts on our side, and the city was in gross violation of the most important environmental law in California.

I know what's not going to solve Muni's on-time problems---implementing the Bicycle Plan on, for example, Second Street, Fifth Street, Cesar Chavez, etc., which as the EIR tells us, is going to delay Muni lines on those and other streets in the city. "Significant unavoidable impacts" is the exact phrase the EIR uses to describe the Plan's impacts on city streets and Muni. You did read---or at least look at---the EIR didn't you, Shawn? Why do I suspect that you, like every other bike "activist" in the city, didn't bother to do that basic homework? There's nothing in your windy comment to indicate that you have any specific knowledge of anything we're discussing.

I don't doubt your sincerity, but, like good intentions, it's not enough. I'm taking your view into consideration, Shawn, and, like your previous comments, I find it lacking in substance. On civility: if someone insults me, I often reply in kind. Why should I take shit from you and your comrades? If you don't like my opinions or the way I express them, tough shit. If you're really interested in this issue, why don't you inform yourself?

"You're just a sad and angry old man sucking on the government teat and using the legal system to antagonize people who piss you off because they're not as sad and angry as you are."

Ad hominem attack, anyone? I'm neither sad nor angry, actually, though I am pretty old. You seem to be the one who's angry. Again, we had the facts and the law on our side in our successful litigation. Your side---the city---was caught flagrantly violating an important law, which they apparently assumed they could get away with. It really was an attempted coup on behalf of a militant minority of bike fanatics.

Yes, I know you want to change the law so that bicycle plans don't have to do traffic studies before they screw up traffic. And I understand that you and your comrades think that whatever you want to do to our streets is an "improvement," but it aint necessarily so, Shawn. The ultimate judge of what you and the bike fanatics are able to do to our streets will be the people of San Francisco, who have never had a chance to vote on the Bicycle Plan. And they never will, will they?

Note that the city had to back off on the planned "improvements" on Second Street, when the people who live on that street objected. Note too that Masonic Ave. has been dropped from the priority list, probably because even MTA realizes that screwing up traffic on that major north/south street---not to mention delaying the #43 Muni line---won't be politically sustainable.

Note too that Judge Busch in his decision last week carefully picked low-impact projects from the list the city provided. He evidently understands how high the stakes are for the majority of people in San Franciso, who won't necessarily see screwing up traffic on their streets as an "improvement."

This is about SF progressivism, since city progs seem to care more about bicycles than they do about the other issues I write about, like homelessness, the Market/Octavia Plan, UC's hijacking the old extension property on Haight Street, etc. Funny how I often get comments when I write about the bicycle fantasy but rarely get any when I write about terrible development projects that are going to degrade the city for generations. The Bay Guardian has a full-time reporter who writes reams about bicycles but they somehow never get around to writing about the awful Market/Octavia Plan---pushed by Supervisor Mirkairmi, the Bicycle Coalition's favorite supervisor, not coincidentally---that rezones more than 4,000 properties in the heart of the city to encourage population density there, including 40-story highrises at Market and Van Ness! The Bicycle Coalition supports the M/O Plan, by the way, apparently because it restricts the number of parking spaces developers will be allowed in new housing projects.

Shawn Allen wrote:
This isn't about "progressivism", Rob. Most people don't give a rat's ass about "saving the planet" or making some sort of political statement. Do all the Latino men riding their bikes to and from work in the Mission identify as "progressive"? Of course not; they're just looking for a cheap and practical way to get around the city. Is everyone in this city—let alone on a bike—"mindless" and "unreflective"? What a ridiculous assertion. I don't automatically assume that everyone behind the wheel of a car is as ignorant or stupid. In fact, most people in this city are perfectly respectful if you give them the chance to be. You, on the other hand, have nothing but vitriol to spew, and it's a shame that any reasonable discussion about the bike plan in which you take part inevitably devolves into another episode of Rob Anderson's Ad Hominem Culture War.

You think it's silly for twenty-somethings to "work on their mommy and daddy issues on the streets"? That seems a lot more benign to me than one antisocial old man acting out his political temper tantrum in the courts to the tune of over $1 million in costs to the city and over 4 years' delay of infrastructure intended to improve personal mobility and public safety. Muni is in the hole and has recently raised fares while simultaneously cutting service. The city's busiest lines, which service a sizable portion of its commuting population, are routinely late, uncomfortably overcrowded, or both. Do you, an aspiring politician, have some ideas about how to solve some of the many transportation-related issues this city faces? Because all I've ever heard from you is violent defense of the status quo. No wonder you so despise "progressives"—you're not really interested in progress at all.

I'm going to quote one of the first entries from this blog in the hopes that you take your own words to heart: "If you can't concede that your political opponents are sincere in their beliefs and actions, you are essentially dehumanizing them: they are simply Evil and no longer part of a civil dialogue. Just as important, you tend to then indulge in a self-righteousness that corrodes your own political sensibilities. Something like this psychological process seems to underly a lot of political and religious fanaticism."

Cyclists (or "progressives") don't have a monopoly on self-righteousness, Rob. Your complete unwillingness to take anyone else's view prevents a civil discourse from taking place. It's clear from the way you talk down to anyone who disagrees with you that you don't give a shit about anyone else.

You're just a sad and angry old man sucking on the government teat and using the legal system to antagonize people who piss you off because they're not as sad and angry as you are. It may take new leadership in City Hall, the Planning Department, and the City Attorney's office to fix the mistakes made by our current administration. It may take changing CEQA to ensure that nuisance challenges like yours don't hold up similar improvements elsewhere in California. But the history of bikes in San Francisco will be written by the victors, and we'll be here a long time after you're dead and gone.

This just in! Child hit by cyclist!

2009-11-28T10:52:00.000-08:00

Seems like whenever a cyclist is hit by a motor vehicle, Streetsblog posts a link to the story (http://sf.streetsblog.org/), as if the incident is part of the routine oppression inflicted on cyclists on the streets of the country. Maybe I should start posting accidents caused by reckless cyclists, like the one below. Click on the link to the story and check out the comments in pro-bike Seattle.

From a pro-bike blog called "The Bike Nazi"

(http://bikenazi.blogspot.com/):

"We have met the enemy, and it is us"

November 25, 2009

Cyclists resent motorists because a few of them drive in such hazardous, inattentive fashion. And motorists resent cyclists because a few of them ride in such hazardous, reckless fashion. HERE is a story from Seattle: "A bicyclist is accused of plowing into a 6-year old boy who was crossing the street with his father." The poor kid was in a crosswalk, and doing everything properly. The cyclist was blasting down the road, ironically right in front of the Pike Place Market, on his "fixed gear bike that has no brakes." He ran a red light and collided with the kid. After the accident, the cyclist, Rafael Aranetal, tried to flee the scene, but witnesses detained him. He was charged with vehicular assault and felony hit and run. The little boy's jaw was broken in three places, and is now wired shut. The doctors hope they can save his lower teeth. But they say he was lucky; if the impact had been in his temple instead of his jaw, he'd probably be dead now. If you ride a "fixie" with no brakes on public roads, you are a moron and no friend to the cycling community.

"This is not about Rob Anderson"

2009-11-26T10:02:00.000-08:00

Streetsblog (http://sf.streetsblog.org/) provides a link to yesterday's decision by Judge Busch:

http://sf.streetsblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/BIKECASE-ORDER.pdf

Judge Busch is allowing only 10 of the 22 projects the city proposed implementing between now and the hearing on the adequacy of the city's EIR on the Bicycle Plan, which will happen next June. The projects he's allowing were carefully chosen, since they are among the smallest, have the least impact, and are easily reversible, though I suspect nothing is going to be reversed once it's done. He's also allowing the city to install bike racks and paint sharrows on city streets, low-impact projects that don't take away street parking or traffic lanes to make bike lanes.

The bike zealots are already grumbling about the decision on Streetsblog.

From a brave anonymous commenter: "Rob Anderson and [his lawyer] already have blood on their hands, what's another seven months' worth?"

No blood on my hands. Mr. Anonymous should direct his ire at the city for trying to take a shortcut in the process instead of doing an EIR on the 500-page Bicycle Plan---clearly required by the law---more than four years ago, which is what we urged them to do at the time.

http://district5diary.blogspot.com/2005/04/district-5-diary-to-supes-dont-do-it.html

From Peter Smith: "We knew the judge was going to endanger us for as long as possible. thanks, Judge!"

Typical ignorance about the judicial process from a fanatic whose shortlived bike website (http://bikeblogs.org/sf/ ) was so extreme it even embarrassed the other bike people in the city, which isn't easy to do.

From Greg, who does the NJudah Chronicles: "It really sucks that we have a judge determining bicycle policy. People who use the courts because they can't win at the ballot box or the support of the majority suck ass!"

More ignorance, along with a big dollop of vulgarity. When have city voters had a chance to vote on the Bicycle Plan? Never. I suspect that a majority of city voters would reject it if they had the chance, which of course they never will.

From another anonymous bike guy: "I have said it before...this is not about Rob Anderson. Rob Anderson is irrelevant and people like him are dime a dozen. The city should have done their homework, part of which would have been to fully expect a dimwit like him to materialize and work against their plan."

Actually, this is close to the mark, except for the personal aspersions on yours truly. The city didn't do an EIR on the Bicycle Plan simply because they thought they could get away with rushing it through the process without doing what the law clearly required. After all who's going to challenge the Bicycle Plan here in Progressive Land? At least we now know the answer to that question.

Mark shares his ignorance of the law: "I'm not sure people like Rob Anderson are a dime-a-dozen. How many crackpots have a lawyer willing to work pro bono for years on nuisance injunctions? In civil court, these are called 'nuisance lawsuits' and you'll face sanctions if you file them."

There's no such thing as a "nuisance injunction." In fact it's not easy to get an injunction on any project, since you have to convince the judge that you're likely to prevail on the merits of the case when the hearing is held. We showed Judge Warren and then Judge Busch that the city was busily implementing the Bicycle Plan before the hearing on the merits of the litigation. Since the city had done no environmental review of what was obviously a major project, the judges rightly assumed we would prevail at the hearing.

Diane comes in late and wonders what's going on: "Why does the judge get to select which projects to go forward with immediately, and which to put on hold? (I know, because he has all the power...) But is he any kind of expert? Which leads me to a question: Who assesses the EIR---him? Or people who really know about such stuff?"

The courts get to decide these issues under CEQA because that law has no other enforcement mechanism. People have to sue the government if it insists on ignoring the most important environmental law in the State of California. I've been at all the hearings on this litigation, and actually Judge Busch has expressed some irritation at being forced in effect to become a city traffic engineer. He too seems to wish that the city had simply done an EIR on the Plan in the first place. In any event, the so-called traffic experts in city government have, to put it mildly, been unreliable sources of information on the Bicycle Plan.

The Murk and the garage

2009-11-24T09:05:00.000-08:00

From Bike Nopa:

Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi told representatives of District 5 neighborhoods that the Golden Gate Concourse Authority, the California Academy of Science, and the deYoung Museum should be sharing responsibility for finding a solution to the traffic congestion caused by overflow crowds and limited garage parking. "They have to help us with alleviation of this problem," Mirkarimi said. "They haven't stepped up yet." He added that the three organizations wanted the city to erect the SFgo signs to alert motorists when the concourse garage is full, but "they don't help with the cost."

http://ibikenopa.blogspot.com/2009/11/supervisor-mirkarimi-concourse.html

Those are all city-owned organizations, with the Concourse Authority under the Recreation and Parks Dept. Has Mirkarimi asked these organizations "to step up" with some money? Once upon a time those who opposed the garage insisted that the garage under the Concourse in Golden Gate Park would be under-used, never make any money, and that the city would be stuck with the costs of maintaining and operating the garage. Mirkarimi himself once called the garage a "financial boondoggle," even though no public money was used in its construction or for its operation now.

http://district5diary.blogspot.com/2004/12/last-thursdays-hanc-meeting.html

Now that the de Young Museum and the Academy of Sciences are open and drawing large crowds, with the garage doing a brisk business, we don't hear those wild claims from city progs anymore. Imagine how much worse the parking problem would be without the 800-space garage under the Concourse.

The Attention Deficit Generation

2009-11-23T09:17:00.000-08:00

Technology is providing people with new ways to be neurotic. I see them everywhere, young people checking their email on IPhones, twittering, engaged in banal conversations on their cell phones, IPods glued to their ears, a generation addicted to insulating themselves from the world with technology. They can't seem to go a minute without distraction or entertainment. All the gaps have to be filled with music, conversation, and computer activity. As a Chronicle article told us the other day, it's mostly people under 35 who are addicted.

Of course they are doing this while driving---and while riding bikes, by the way---thus creating a new safety hazard for everyone who uses our streets. But they also do it while on dates, after sex, and even when they are on vacation! I knew something new and goofy was happening last year, when I saw young people talking on cell phones on the four corners of the McAllister/Divisadero intersection:

Harvard's Ratey, author of the new book "Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain," said he fears today's tech-savvy generation is evolving away from the "genetic roots" of humankind, which used to have time for deep contemplation about complex problems without "being bombarded from stimuli from the outside. It's a challenge for many kids just to sit silently for a few minutes without moving around, looking for some kind of stimulation," he said. "We need that ability to center ourselves."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/11/15/BUNI1AB1G2.DTL

The blizzard of furious comments I got on this blog after Judge Busch ruled against the city on the Bicycle Plan was symptomatic of this distracted, post-literate generation. Few of the pro-bike commenters knew anything about the litigation or the Bicycle Plan itself, even though most relevant documents were---and still are---available online. Actually reading a document and thinking about it was evidently too much to ask of the Attention Deficit Generation.

Note too that the Divisadero Farmers' Market is now booking bands at the event, since shoppers supposedly need to be entertained while they shop: "more than just fruit & veggies!" as the North Panhandle News tells us.

http://wiki.nopna.org/images/e/e6/NOPNA_Nov_Dec_2009_Newsletter.pdf

Gascon endorses Harris?

2009-11-19T08:18:00.000-08:00

SF's new police chief, George Gascon, has some good reasons for supporting District Attorney Kamala Harris for Attorney General, including, as he told Matier & Ross the other day (below in italics), ensuring that she continues to be a good "partner" in fighting crime in SF. His endorsement means they'll continue to have a good relationship even if Harris loses the election. "Gascón said he's not anti-death-penalty but supports Harris' stance because the costly appeals process involved in capital punishment cases makes 'life without the possibility of parole a much more efficient way of handling it.'"

But Harris, unlike Gascon, is philosophically opposed to capital punishment, as she explained more than five years ago, when she refused to ask for the death penalty for a guy who murdered a city cop.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/04/25/BAGF66AQ3117.DTL

That plays well here in Progressive Land, but it may not in a statewide election.

Harris also indirectly injected herself into the Josh Wolf case by writing a sympathetic editorial in the Bay Guardian in support of Wolf's imaginary right to withhold evidence of a crime from the Federal Grand Jury. The crime committed in that case included a fractured skull for city cop Peter Shields. Odd that Harris never injected herself into the case itself. Rather than leaving it to the Feds, why didn't she try to find out who fractured Shields's skull, instead of writing a fuzzball guest editorial in our left-wing weekly worrying about Wolf's First Amendment rights?

http://district5diary.blogspot.com/2007/05/what-josh-wolf-case-was-really-about.html

From Matier & Ross, 11-18-09

On board: Add San Francisco's George Gascón to a list of police chiefs endorsing District Attorney Kamala Harris in her bid for state attorney general.
"I really think she has the characteristics that the state needs today," Gascon told us, in making his first-ever endorsement of a statewide office seeker. "She has proven to be a very good partner for me in fighting crime in San Francisco since I got here 90 days ago."
Harris is hoping that Gascón's backing---along with endorsements from Los Angles Police Chief William Bratton and San Diego Chief Bill Lansdowne---will help inoculate her from the expected rank-and-file cop onslaught over her decision not to seek the death penalty in the 2004 slaying of SFPD Officer Isaac Espinoza, or for Edwin Ramos, accused of murdering a San Francisco man and his two sons in broad daylight last year.
Gascón said he's not anti-death-penalty but supports Harris' stance because the costly appeals process involved in capital punishment cases makes "life without the possibility of parole a much more efficient way of handling it."
Not that Gascón's endorsement is likely to win him a lot of fans in his department.
"He didn't talk to me about it," said Police Officers Association President Gary Delagnes. "If he had, I would have advised against it.
"It doesn't show much sensitivity for what has gone on here," Delagnes said.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/11/18/BA9F1AM27I.DTL

"Smart growth" is not so smart

2009-11-18T10:21:00.000-08:00

From Randal O'Toole at The Anti-Planner (http://ti.org/antiplanner/):

Throughout most of this history, compact development was a solution in search of a problem. Early advocates claimed that denser development was needed to preserve farmlands. Yet the United States has a billion acres of agricultural lands, less than 40 percent of which are actually used for growing crops, while the nation’s urban areas occupy only about 100 million acres. So compact development for the purpose of farm preservation made little sense.

In the 1970s, advocates of compact development argued that it would reduce air pollution and save energy because people living in compact cities would drive less. Yet it proved to be far easier to simply build cleaner, more fuel-efficient cars than to completely rebuild American cities. Between 1970 and 2007, for example, urban driving increased by 250 percent, but autorelated air pollution declined by more than two-thirds. Meanwhile, Americans responded to higher gas prices in the 1970s and early 1980s by buying cars in the 1990s that were an average of 40 percent more fuel efficient than those available in the early 1970s. In 1991, for example, Americans drove 41 percent more miles than in 1978, while using only 3 percent more fuel. After gas prices fell, Americans bought larger cars, but technological improvements produced a continuing increase of tonmiles-per-gallon. This shows that considerable progress can be made in improving fuel economy without reducing mobility.

Another early argument for regulating sprawl was that the cost of providing infrastructure to low-density communities was significantly greater than in higher-density areas. The most detailed study of this question concluded that low-density suburban development imposes about $11,000 per residence more in urban-service costs on communities than more compact development. Some have questioned this number. But even if valid, most homebuyers would gladly add $11,000 to the cost of a $150,000 home in order to have a good-sized yard and not share a wall with next-door neighbors.

In the 1980s and 1990s, some New Urban advocates argued that denser neighborhoods had a stronger sense of community. Studies have found, however, that suburbs actually have more social interactions than denser cities. Even the data in Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone, which promoted the notion that Americans were losing their sense of community, showed that suburbanites had higher social participation rates than residents of dense cities.

In the early 2000s, compact-city supporters jumped on the obesity issue by claiming that suburbs make people fat. In fact, even studies prepared by smart-growth supporters found that the differences in obesity rates between low-and high-density areas were trivial. One study found, for example, that about 2 percent more people in low-density Atlanta are obese than in high-density San Francisco. More careful studies have found “no evidence that urban sprawl causes obesity.” In fact, these studies say, compact-city advocates confused cause and effect: “individuals who are more likely to be obese choose to live in more sprawling neighborhoods.”

If all these reasons for supporting compact cities are wrong, then why is the idea so persistent? The answer, at least in part, says Peter Hall, is that it is a class conflict. Ironically, Hall observes, before 1920 the main goal of urban planners was to move working-class people from high-density inner-city tenements to low-density suburbs. No one complained about urban sprawl when low-density suburbs were occupied solely by the upper and middle classes. But when working-class families started moving to the suburbs—more due to Henry Ford’s mass-produced automobiles than to anything urban planners did—conflicts between upper- and lower-class tastes led to a backlash. While often giving lip service to the idea of mixed-income communities, the elites decided to promote policies that made singlefamily housing unaffordable to all but the wealthy...

Growing Cooler insists that reductions in the growth of driving are needed so that transportation will contribute its “fair share” of greenhouse gas reductions. But what is fair? The report implies that, since transportation accounts for a third of emissions, it should provide a third of total emission reductions. This ignores the fact that emissions reductions can be achieved in other sectors much more cheaply and easily, which would be far more efficient for society. For example, the McKinsey study found that more than half of the cost-effective opportunities for emission reductions are in the electricity sector, while transportation offers only 15 percent of such opportunities. Unless advocates of compact development can prove that their policies would cost less than $50 per ton, proposals to reduce driving to meet emission-reduction targets are almost certain to be cost-ineffective...

Growing Cooler provides no evidence that compact development is a cost-effective solution to greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, it relies on a weak metaphor of a three-legged stool, the legs being more fuel-efficient cars, alternative fuels, and reduced driving. The first two “legs” alone will not meet emission-reduction targets, says the report, so we must reduce driving.

The only evidence the report offers that the first two legs are insufficient is based on the corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standard in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, which called for increasing the average fuel economy of cars to 35 miles per gallon by 2020. The report also accounts for a federal requirement that alternative fuel use be increased so as to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 10 percent. The report shows that the emission reductions from these two standards will be offset by increases in driving. This leads to the conclusion that driving must be reduced.

In effect, the report assumes that no further increases in fuel efficiencies or alternative fuels are possible beyond those in the 2007 law. That assumption has already been proven obsolete, because in 2009 auto manufacturers accepted an even tighter CAFE standard of 35.5 mph by 2016. The report further assumes that auto manufacturers will make no additional improvements in fuel efficiency or alternative-fueled autos after 2020...

(I've left out the footnotes, which can be viewed along with the rest of the document at http://ti.org/pa653.pdf. See also O'Toole's take on the automobile: "The Greatest Invention: How Automobiles Made America Great": http://americandreamcoalition.org/greatest.html)

Factionalism on the left

2009-11-16T14:34:00.000-08:00

Stalinism survives in Zimbabwe or North Korea---wherever a ruler follows its basic premisses---but Stalin splintered Trotskyism even more effectively than he did Trotsky’s skull. Despite Trotsky’s appeal as a proto-Che Guevara, and the influence of Trotskyists in trade-union branches from the London Ambulance Service to the British Library, faction has generated faction over questions of the socialist nature of the USSR, Cuba and so on. The nadir was probably signalled in 1985 by the great schism in the British Workers’ Revolutionary Party, when the scandal over the late Gerry Healy’s antics with new female members caused a split into two factions known to party members themselves as the “fuckers” and the “wankers."

(Donald Rayfield, Times Literary Supplement, Oct. 23, 2009)

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article6883576.ece

Chris Daly acted like a jerk as acting mayor

2009-11-14T09:03:00.000-08:00

Six years ago, this was a front-page story in the Chronicle:

Daly surprises his colleagues, appoints 2 to PUC
Rachel Gordon, SF Chronicle
Thursday, October 23, 2003
In a move some called gutsy and others childish, San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly used his powers as acting mayor Wednesday to appoint two people to the powerful Public Utilities Commission while Mayor Willie Brown was traveling in Tibet. It was a premeditated stroke of opportunism that observers said was without parallel in modern political times at City Hall and caught the Brown administration and Daly's Board of Supervisor colleagues by surprise...Daly, who was tapped by Brown to serve as acting mayor for one day Wednesday, said he had been plotting the insurgent appointments for the past few days. And so far, he has no regrets. "When you ask if this is what should have been done, you have to look at what's good for San Francisco," said Daly...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/10/23/MNG2C2HG8T1.DTL#ixzz0Wr6OfXYJ

Last week Daly again made the acting mayor an issue, as Matier&Ross tell us:

At issue now: questions over the authenticity of the letter that Newsom's office says the mayor wrote designating Supervisor Carmen Chu as acting mayor when he unexpectedly took off for Hawaii after dropping out of the governor's race. Daly has questioned both the timing and the legitimacy of the letter, and was not content with viewing a copy. On Tuesday, he showed up at the mayor's office to inspect the original. He not only read the letter carefully, but he also fingered its edges---and then the backside---to check the indentations of the signature. Finally, he whipped out a high-quality magnifying glass---complete with light---for a closer inspection...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/11/11/BAC41AI2FQ.DTL

Maybe Daly was hoping the mayor would appoint him as acting mayor, but Newsom was a supervisor in 2003 and remembers Daly's stunt under Mayor Brown.

Like a lot of ultra-liberals---and ultra-conservatives, for that matter---Daly has always had a means-and-ends problem. Utterly convinced of his own righteousness, Daly is compelled to question the motives of his political opponents and to push his agenda using questionable means. In spite of all the political setbacks over the past six years, Daly is unbowed. His latest achievement: insulting Supervisor Maxwell on her vote on an important budget issue.

http://www.fogcityjournal.com/wordpress/2009/11/13/budget-appropriation-sparks-daly-maxwell-feud/

Daly, the Punk Progressive, grapples with means and ends:

http://district5diary.blogspot.com/2005/05/chris-daly-punk-progressive.html

If Gonzalez had been elected in 2003...

2009-11-10T08:50:00.000-08:00

Randy Shaw has an airy hypothetical in BeyondChron speculating about the 2003 mayoral election: what if Matt Gonzalez had been elected instead of Newsom?

http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=7529

We know that Gonzalez wouldn't have been interested in stopping graffiti vandalism. Before he left office as District 5 Supervisor, he even hired a so-called artist to deface his office walls with juvenile scrawls typical of the genre.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/12/10/BAGGJA9B3S1.DTL&hw=Matt+Gonzalez&sn=001&sc=1000

And he didn't seem particularly interested in doing anything about homelessness in San Francisco, which is the main reason he lost to Newsom, who used Care Not Cash and the promise of a more aggressive approach to homelessness to win the election. Under a Gonzalez administration, homelessness would have continued to fester until the public demanded action to deal with the growing squalor on our streets and in our parks. Instead of considering policy changes, Gonzalez preferred indulging in pseudo-Marxist twaddle about the "root causes" of homelessness.

Shaw suggests that Gonzalez would have been better for developers than Newsom, but the latter has been aggressively pro-development. Newsom supports the luxury highrise condos on Rincon Hill, as did uber-progs Chris Daly and Ross Mirkarimi. Newsom supports the awful Market/Octavia project, as does Mirkarimi and other city progs. Newsom supports UC's ripoff of the old extension property on lower Haight Street, as does Mirkarimi and other city progs. Is there a single progressive leader in SF that opposes these massively grotesque projects? I don't know of a single one. Like other city progs, Gonzalez would have probably bought into the half-baked Planning Dept. "transit corridors" theory that holds that we can overdevelop our neighborhoods---including residential highrises!---along our primary traffic arteries.

http://district5diary.blogspot.com/2007/03/san-franciscos-transit-corridors.html

And of course the bicycle fantasy would have been a top priority for a Gonzalez administration just as it has been for the Newsom administration. Gonzalez, like Newsom, would have pushed the Bicycle Plan illegally through the process only to be rebuked by Judge Busch. Before Supervisor Mirkarimi became the errand boy for the Bicycle Coalition, Gonzalez performed that function.

http://district5diary.blogspot.com/2005/11/anti-car-conspiracy-hinckle-joins.html

Gonzalez probably would have made the gay marriage initiative, but he might have timed it better than Newsom, whose early 2004 move helped re-elect George W. Bush in November of that year.

The only important policy differences between Newsom and Gonzalez: homelessness and graffiti/tagging vandalism. The quality of life in SF would have continued to degenerate under Gonzalez, whereas Newsom has had some success in dealing with homelessness and is waging a serious fight against graffiti vandalism.

Shaw's current piece is fact-free, much like his empty riff on the marijuana clubs several years ago wherein he relied on suspiciously anonymous "progressive" sources to oppose regulating the pot clubs in support of Chris Daly.

http://district5diary.blogspot.com/2005/10/regulating-pot-clubs-whats_113080083884437889.html