Sorry for the low-tech rerouting, but: 

If you reached this page because of a link to a numbered item that is no longer on my main page, you can get to it by adding "#" and the number -- e.g. "#23," to the end of the URL above.

8/29/03 11:39 a.m. (Link here.)
 

The cause of homeless deaths according to Gavin Newsom:

For what I think may be the first time, the SF Chron has given the annual homeless deaths statistic its top headline today: 169 dead. The figure was collected by the city medical examiner's office administrator, who told the chron he may actually have undercounted.

When you hear that many people are dead after living outdoors or in unsettled living conditions, you begin to wonder if maybe there's a housing shortage, maybe people aren't getting the services they need, maybe sleeping on damp sidewalks is bad for your health...

But now for the weird part: the rich-kid candidate for mayor, Gavin Newsom, is trying to spin this tragedy to say that the problem is (drumroll please)...

...panhandling.

Yep, it seems that many of the deaths had something to do with drugs. And why is this? Well, it seems the problem is not poverty, it is not despair, it is not the unconscionable housing shortage, it is not the downtown business philosophy that treats the poor as vermin and not as suffering fellow beings, it is not the daily uncertainty and fear and worry of living homeless that drives people to escape it through altered states -- no, the problem is allowing homeless people to have cash. And Mr. Newsom has an answer for us, oh yes he does: to the existing anti-panhandling and anti-sidewalk-blocking and anti-everything-else laws, add yet another anti-panhandling law, so poor people won't ask for money. Because, he tells us, if they have money, they'll use it to buy drugs.

This is like the part in Oliver Twist where Oliver becomes unsatisfactorily rebellious toward his new masters and Mr. Bumble from the orphanage says the mistake was feeding the boy meat.

By this logic, of course Mr. Newsom should move on to the other mechanisms that help poor people acquire small amounts of cash. So what will he do next? Forbid the hiring of poor people for odd jobs? Crack down on temporary-labor services? Criminalize recycling? Arrest practitioners of the Untied Way? Bar federal disability checks from the city limits?

Anyway, lemme explain something here: the idea that paternalizing poor people's welfare benefits or hounding beggars will cure persons who use drugs of using drugs is boneheadedness of the first order, a product either of cynicism about the voting public or genuine wrongheaded belief that poor people are robots or fools who receive only what some kind person with (presumably honestly earned) money chooses to give them.

News flash: poor people are resourceful. Necessity is the mother of invention. Poor people who are craving drugs will find a way to get drugs, even if they have to do unpleasant, unhealthy, and possibly illicit things to get them.

Now, perhaps Mr. Newsom and his friends do not know any actual poor people, and perhaps they themselves are used to the airy waive of a credit card to settle their own bills -- so they may not be aware that in poor neighborhoods, purchases of items other than drugs are denominated in cash: for example, sleeping space, food, drinking water, clothing, cigarettes (cigarettes aren't a drug, *right*?), shampoo, alarm clocks, blankets, bus fares.... and yes, maybe even an occasional beer. (Surely the owner of PlumpJack can't object too strenuously to beer, except on grounds of taste?)

Or perhaps Joel's theory is right: Mr. Newsom is actually promoting a health campaign for the poor: it being well known that rats kept on low-calorie diets have longer lifespans. Heaven knows what Plump Jack would have thought of this, but it may be that Mr. Newsom is really showing poor people a kindness by denying them access to the kinds of rich foods and finely vinted intoxicants he sells to the health-heedless rich. In which case his next step should be to close down the city's many private soup kitchens because, heaven forbid, they may be feeding poor people better than their station deserves.

Or perhaps -- and this is my best theory -- he is cleverly waging a war against bad taste.

He must, for example, be aware that persons of means have also been known to indulge in substance abuse -- but that, generally speaking, they do so tastefully: in private, using reputable suppliers, with access to prompt and confidential medical care in case of mishap. And this is why a long list of Rich Victims Of Drugs is not published annually in our papers.

As I've noted already, rich people do ask one another for money -- sometimes quite insistently -- but, again, they do so in private, and tastefully, and it's called fundraising.

Rich people do even sometimes occupy public spaces to the detriment of the general public. I will never forget a time several years ago in the Jimmy Walkereque days of the Brown Era when a group of us went to address the Board of Supervisors about one of their many anti-homeless laws. On our way in to speak, we had to actually step between tables and decorations being set up for the San Francisco Ballet Patrons' Dinner in the main rotunda of City Hall. Each plate had a boxed gift with a fancy store's label on it. The sense we all got was that society events ruled the city, and the mere legislative business of the Board of Supervisors would have to just struggle along as best it could on the sidelines. On the way out I remember walking on top of a long rolled carpet to keep alongside a friend who was following the narrow passage cleared for the public. That evening's guests and decor (gushingly compared to Versailles!) were described in loving detail here, and here. 

I'm looking forward to the day Gavin Newsom decides that rich people with bad taste shouldn't be trusted with money either.

8/28/03 11:24 p.m. (Link here.)

More fiddling with school statistics in Texas, via Lasso. Speaking of which great state of Texas (one and indivisible, when not trying to arrest its own legislators), I've been chuckling for two days over Molly Ivins' Tuesday column, which, as posted on the Creators Syndicate site and published in the SF Chron print edition, compares Arnold Schwarzenegger to a condom full of walnuts before moving on to better-reasoned criticisms. Pity how her home paper, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, censored that bit even though it meant taking out the lead.

8/28/03 10:48 p.m. (Link here.)

Shannon Williams, moonlighting school employee, is becoming a cause célèbre. 

8/28/03 5:38 p.m. (Link here.)

This just in from Romenesko: Ashcroft refuses to talk to print reporters: holds press conference for TV only. "Pens may no longer be as mighty as the camera, but apparently they make Ashcroft and his guardians squeamish."

8/28/03 1:10 p.m. (Link here.)

News reports this morning say Congress is debating amendments to the Fair Credit Reporting Act that, despite some  laudable purposes,  could override California's hard-won consumer privacy rights measure -- which is a recent victory achieved in part by the San Francisco Chonicle editorial board and State Sen. Jackie Speier. One group opposing the federal override has just demonstrated that even personal data on top federal officials -- even on John Ashcroft himself -- is not safe from online data companies.

(Actually, I'm having trouble parsing where the override appears in the text of HR 2622, but that's apparently the bill at issue. From this Consumers Union analysis it looks like the preemption isn't stated in so many words: if I have this right it's simply that when Congress acts to "occupy the field" in certain areas of law it automatically bars states from acting differently. Here's what EPIC had to say about HR 2622, including the preemption issue, in hearings last month.)

...and meanwhile the Chron business pages tell us that a man named French Clements recently couldn't open a brokerage account because the address he gave wasn't in Equifax's database. "Changing his first name to Freedom would not help," says the Chron's Kathleen Pender. She quotes John Ford, chief privacy officer with Equifax, as noting the need to be scrupulous about such things:
 

"I regret that this gentleman wasn't able to get what he wanted, but we have an obligation under the law to make sure people are who they say they are. There are a lot of fraudsters out there."

8/28/03 11:31 a.m. (Link here.)

They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care...

Here's a clutch of thoughts about Heidi Julavits' revival of the word "snark". And here's an SF Chron feature on the same Believer / McSweeney's community of writers. And here is the Chron's unattributed use of "snark", in the new special Julavits sense of the word, in a new review on affiliated writer Vendela Vida. And here is Neal Pollack's take on Julavits and Vida and the Believer's "Snarkwatch" page and the whole "snark" thing, Not that any of these folks need my help to be famous. I'm just interested in the way cultural concepts percolate. Yeah, and I'm trying to decide if these anti-snarkists are making a serious point or just running a very gutsy PR campaign against reviewers who don't like them.

It's hard to know what to think of the Believer. These guys have a kind of ironic pretense to earnestness that is probably in fact something subtler and way hipper but it gets on my nerves because I myself tend to be earnest in the old plodding unfashionable way that involves actually driving down to the southeastern waterfront with a camera and a tape recorder when the phone rings at an odd hour of the morning about more homeless campers getting arrested and threatened with dispossession-by-tow-truck again in connection with the one and only efficiently punished crime in San Francisco, which is that of taking up space without paying rent. This morning was one of these phone call days and I am not generally speaking a morning person, so you will forgive some slight crankiness. But I digress. What I meant to say is, the Believer itself is full of good ideas and talk and I enjoy reading it and it's nice to have around, and I'm sure the people behind it make wonderful writing counselors for underprivileged youth, and Michael Chabon's Kavalier and Clay is a great book -- but I can't avoid the thought that the Believer is just a little too cute.

8/27/03 9:14 p.m. (Link here.)

On Monday, San Francisco Chronicle reader representative Dick Rogers wrote a column apologetically explaining that the headline "Bustamante And Actor Take Lead In State Poll" happened, not because of some conspiracy to disparage Mr. Schwarzenegger, but because his last name takes up fourteen letters of type. 

On Tuesday, the banner headline across the whole six columns of the front page was "Schwarzenegger rakes in money."

On Wednesday (today), across five columns: "Davis jabs at Schwarzenegger."

Just how apologetic does the the Chron feel it has to be?

8/27/03 3:02 p.m. (Link here.)

If San Francisco mayoral candidate Gavin Newsom seems lukewarm on the Proposition H police accountability measure, it might have something to do with his campaign manager also working for the SF Police Officers' Association.  Naturally SFPOA doesn't care for the notion of an awake, politically diverse Police Commission or an Office of Citizen Complaints with teeth. Savannah Blackwell of the SF Bay Guardian explains.

8/27/03 2:48 p.m. (Link here.)

Lloyd Dangle's Troubletown explains retail recall politics; Arnold thumbs his nose at us.

8/27/03 11 a.m. (Link here.)

So last night was the big Mars approach and an observatory in Oakland threw a costume party attended by 500 kids, parents and crackpots. There they were, happily setting up telescopes and waiting for full dark, and -- well, Steve Rubenstein tells a story better than anyone:
 

...shortly after 9 p.m., the heavens pulled a fast one. Just as the scopes were fixing their sights on the southern horizon for Mars' grand entrance, the fog rolled in.

'Damn,' said a man with tin-foil antennae on his head....

...Alexandra Barrett, executive director of the observatory, said she was sorry that Mars was fogged out, but there would be no refunds. Mars fans were invited to return in another 60,000 years and try it again...."

When things like this happen, Joel and I look at each other and say, "Mine's busted," in memory of the wonderful Jooky
Sprite commercial. And we don't even like commercials.

But this Mars disappointment: it's specifically familiar. I think this feeling is familiar to everyone who was a kid in the early 1970s, and its name is Kohoutek.

We drew pictures of that damn comet in school. Those of us with education-conscious parents were driven up to hilltops in station wagons late at night: me in upstate New York, Joel in northern California. There must've been millions of kids on hilltops all over the world. And did we see a grand spectacle? No, we saw a faint blur. Afterwards there was even a congressional inquiry about the overmarketing.

Apparently Kohoutek did make grand viewing from an observatory on an arid hilltop with a really, really good telescope. I think this picture may even have run in the paper at the time.

If you ask me, Kohoutek left us more than a song by R.E.M. It was a contributing factor to the basic Generation X sense of having missed the boat.

All that good and bad craziness in the '60s and early '70s -- wars, riots, civil rights marches, stark moral choices, federal social spending, home prices affordable to 20-year-olds, etc. -- we were too young to be part of that ourselves, except by literally or metaphorically sitting on someone's shoulders at the back of a crowd. And now when someone says, "I was *there*, man," we know that we weren't. In my own case, I've mainly heard "I was *there*, man..." stories while tending to the speakers' disability benefits, public-drinking citations, dog impoundment problems, etc. Which has given them a certain lack of glamour after a while.

Anyway, if Gen-Xers spend a certain amount of time whining about the state of affairs today, now you know what to blame: blame it on Kohoutek.

8/27/03 9:45 a.m. (Link here.)

The SF Chron's Matier & Ross has some discouraging news on Bustamante and more on the Shannon Marie Williams prostitution saga.

8/26/03 11 p.m. (link here.)

Senator Cranston had a file too (via Rough & Tumble).

8/26/03 5:34 p.m. (link here.)

An item in the Department of Homeland Security's May semiannual regulatory agenda suggests that people fleeing political persecution in third countries may soon have a harder time seeking refuge in the United States by traveling through Canada to U.S. border posts. See Item 1001, page 25 in the pdf file. The rule seems to be in the planning stages now, but it looks like some time this fall Mr. Ridge's folks will start the formal rulemaking process.

...and in tracking down the Federal Register cite for this item,, I've discovered just how busy we are at excluding things that come from Canada. Among the many are gypsy moths and softwood lumber. As for Canada geese, well, let's put it this way: "...In summary, under our proposed action, entitled 'State Empowerment,'' we expect a reduction in resident Canada goose populations, especially in problem areas. ..."

Actually, it does sound like the geese are a problem: a big enough problem to spark a burgeoning goose dog industry. Looks like we've finally found a mission for the many compulsive collie dogs of America who, deprived of sheep, have spent so many years trying to herd tennis balls, small children and squirrels instead.

8/26/03 2:48 p.m. (link here.)

Interesting feature on stateline.org about state politics weblogs as sections of existing mainstream newspapers. Some good links.

8/26/03 2:27 p.m. (Linkhere.)

Cash Not Care

While Gavin Newsom and San Francisco welfare officials were working on the "Care Not Cash" in-kind aid program for poor people (now moderated, at least for the time being, by the Board of Supervisors), it turns out the city legislative analyst was researching a possibility of saving the city up to $5 million by cashing out health benefits for city workers -- an arrangement that by the way could do some additional good for folks (often women) who receive benefits through a spouse or partner who has a fancier job & hence a nicer health plan than themselves. 

Funny how at one economic level the city recognizes that it's harder to provide services properly than to just fork over some cash -- but at another level it doesn't. Maybe this has something to do with the quality of "care" that was planned for the county aid recipieints?

8/26/03 11:32 a.m. (Link here.)

Anyone for the twenty-nine commandments? 

8/25/03 11:34 p.m. P.S.T. (Link here.)

It's past midnight on the East Coast, so I'll go ahead and link to this new Institute for Policy Studies/United for a Fair Economy report, which is embargoed until "12:01 a.m. August 26" according to a header with a Boston area code. It says "CEOs at companies with the largest layoffs, most underfunded pensions and biggest tax breaks were rewarded with bigger paychecks..." 

Why are we not surprised?

8/25/03 8:18 p.m. (Link here.)

I have a crick in my neck. A neighbor says lots of people she knows have cricks in their necks. She thinks it may be the influence of Mars.

I dunno. I'd say it's the blipping California recall. 

Found another secondary source for that Schwarzenegger quote, though I still haven't tracked down its original context. It's mentioned but not fully attributed (see below) as part of a phenomenal profile in the November 26, 1990 issue of U.S. News and World Report. If you ask me, anyone presuming to pundit status should run, not walk, to the nearest public library or Nexis account (if Nexis goes back that far) to have a look at this article. It makes clear exactly why no democratically minded electorate should touch Mr. Arnold Schwarzenegger with a ten-foot pole. 

This article is hardly a secret -- it's right there on the public record in a major national magazine -- but weirdly enough, as of this evening, searches on the shocking phrase "My relationship to power and authority is that I'm all for it" bring in only one result each on the Google web search and Google Groups -- that is, two versions of the same odd Australian article I've already cited, plus a contemporary Usenet reaction to the 1990 article (thank you again, DejaNews!). I can't find the quote on sfgate.com or the NYT/AP/Reuters search at nytimes.com. Not at Washingtonpost.com either, though I did find a good funny profile from last week with a nice Groucho Marx zinger.  I have a feeling I might have read the quote in the SF Chron somewhere in the first week of Schwarzenegger's candidation, but if so the article must've been syndicated from somewhere else than these sources. That or I'm doing something wrong in the search process. You try it.

Some excerpts from the U.S. News article, leaving out a fascinating disquisition on the man's personal history:
 

...It is hard to imagine a more relentless and charming physical-fitness ambassador. Schwarzenegger thinks America's kids are seriously out of shape, and after campaigning for George Bush in 1988, he asked Bush to name him head of the Fitness Council, a panel little heard from since the Kennedy administration. Since then, between movie roles, he has methodically toured the states (he's hit 12 so far), urging officials to raise physical-education requirements, holding press conferences and working out with kids. His numbing, campaign-style schedule has led some critics to contend that the fitness crusade is a prelude to Arnold's political career. After all, he is well-read in the works of Milton Friedman and other free-market economists and hews to a conservative philosophy not unlike that of another actor -- Ronald Reagan. But Arnold, who pays for the trips himself, dismisses talk of political ambitions. 'I owe America,' he says of his fitness crusade. 'Here's my chance to give something back.'

Indeed, generosity -- with both money and time -- is one of Schwarzenegger's most appealing qualities. Which makes his shadow side all the more puzzling, for this is also a man who stifles emotions, remains preoccupied with image and can be bluntly insensitive. 'My relationship to power and authority is that I'm all for it,' he once explained. 'People need somebody to watch over them.... Ninety-five percent of the people in the world need to be told what to do and how to behave.'

This Arnold is a scorekeeper and drillmaster who tries to control everything from his wife's clothes (she is not allowed to wear pants with him) to questions that reporters may ask at a press conference. 'The only thing that makes me nervous,' he has said, 'is when I don't get my own way.' He has little tolerance for critics, particularly parents concerned about the impact of his violent films on children. ('It's a free country. We do the films we want to do.') He can also be hugely impatient, fixing his entourage with a Terminator scowl and snapping, 'We're supposed to leave now. No more discussion! Now!'
 

...Arnold once gave an extended interview in which he observed, 'We all have great inner power. The power is self-faith.' But he has also dismissed those whose self-faith founders, saying: 'I look down on people who are waiting, who are helpless.' In 1990, he still sometimes looks down on the weak, though his impatience is less obvious. When a plump photographer started snapping pictures at a recent photo session in the Missouri governor's mansion, Arnold startled onlookers by making fun of the man, announcing that he 'has at least 20 percent body fat' and chiding the governor for hiring a 'couch potato.'

Fasten your seatbelts. It's gonna be a bumpy September.

8/25/03 1:10 p.m. (Link here.)

"What does it feel like to be the Anti-Christ in North Carolina?"

8/25/03 12:39 p.m. (Link  here)

Does anyone know why more than $1.7 million of our tax dollars are being loaned out to help some guy build a car wash in El Dorado County?

8/24/03 4:09 p.m. (Link here.)

If I ran the circus...

...I'd want Cruz Bustamante to do a spoof posing calendar showing hizzoner's serious roly-poly self working away at genuine lieutenant-gubernatorial tasks -- along with a few comic personality shots. Someone's gotta point out that looks aren't everything. It's not so bad in politics to be known as a smart serious guy who likes good food and doesn't mind telling a joke on himself. Look at Barney Frank. But so far, the closest thing I can find to a cheesecake photo of Cruz Bustamante shows someone from his staff presenting a proclamation to a bakery. If this thing has to be won on image, he'd better get busy.

Meanwhile the Amazon review of Schwarzenegger's "Bible of Bodybuilding" (written "with Bill Dobbins") says Mr. Arnold "allows a column to be ghost-written under his name in a muscle magazine." Has anyone looked into this? Also, Amazon offers sample pages from the book , including an interestingly simple historical review in the opening chapter. It begins by saying that bodybuilding for looks -- "a return to the Greek ideal" -- developed first primarily in the U.S. "physical culture" movement while European strongmen were still showing off feats of strength without much attention to physique. The chapter begins at the turn of the last century with tales about American and European muscle champions -- but then a funny thing happens: somewhere around the 1920s and '30s, it becomes solely an American story. Cheerful stuff about posing contests and Charles Atlas ads in the backs of comic books.

If admiration for the "perfected" human physique and specifically the display of male muscle power acquired a political edge anywhere else in the world around that time, it isn't mentioned in the part of the book I could get at, though of course for all I know it may show up on other pages.

Here's an interesting counterpoint from a professor in Australia. I don't endorse or like everything this guy says -- he's got more than a touch of racism himself in that Tarzan discussion -- but on page six is a humdinger of a quote from The Candidator:
 

My relationship to power and authority is that I'm all for it. People need somebody to watch over them and tell them what to do. Ninety-five percent of the people in the world need to be told what to do and how to behave.

8/24/03 12 p.m. (Link here.)

Depressing: the Craigslist "wishlist" for teachers in public schools and other wretched objects of charity. For example, teacher Jaime Kidd at Bryant Elementary School in San Francisco would like 25 ten-packs of pencils, one pack each of dry-erase markers and ballpoints, a playground ball, a soccer ball, and a few garden tools. Why does he have to beg for these things? (And does Gavin Newsom want to ban this form of panhandling too?) Did the taxpayers ever consciously decide teachers should have to buy pencils for kids out of their own salaries? Or that low wages from a school could drive an employee to illicit moonlighting? Does this have a weensy bit to do with the 1980s "tax revolt" and Proposition 13? It's so ordinary here for teachers to buy their own materials that office supply chains make a big charitable deal out of offering teacher discounts and school donation programs. But where are these same companies when it comes to talk about raising school taxes - huh? Huh?

Jerry Doolittle, who has kindly mentioned this site on BadAttitudes, has an item about Texas school districts fixing their figures to "meet" "Leave No Child Behind" requirements. But when do we get an honest effort to "Leave No Teacher Behind"? 

8/24/03 12:32 a.m. (Link here.)

Several years ago a UK graduate student caught on to what I've just realized: Web surfing is a new version of the Situationists' dérive -- the idea of walking at random through one's city and riffing off of everything that goes by. The dérive in turn comes from Baudelaire's and Walter Benjamin's idea of the flâneur -- the dandy strolling at ease through his city, making an art out of lively-minded idleness. I could never understand all that rebarbative academic po-mo hairsplitting that made Walter Benjamin a hero of academia, but anyway old Walter himself was a good readable writer with lovely political reflexes. If only he could have drafted his mammoth Arcades Project as a website: clearly he was struggling with organizing the thing because what he had in his head wasn't a book of consecutively organized observations but a web of interrelated links. 

WB had a related thing about the hunter-gatherer's kind of work being shared by the collector, the historian, and the storybook detective -- all of them showing skill not through diligent plodding but by surfing serendipity, finding importance in artifacts or clues that others might disregard. He went on at length about the way a collector embroiders new context around items that have found their way into the collection separately. That's just what a blogger does. 

Yes, Walter Benjamin's stuff offers a lovely bunch of excuses for lazy, erratic work habits. Well, dammit, there's something to be said for irregularity. You can't travel everywhere in straight lines.

My other favorite defense of irregular behavior is Justice Douglas' opinion overturning a Florida vagrancy ordinance in Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville. WB might have liked it:
 

...Persons "wandering or strolling" from place to place have been extolled by Walt Whitman and Vachel Lindsay. The qualification "without any lawful purpose or object" may be a trap for innocent acts. Persons "neglecting all lawful business and habitually spending their time by frequenting . . . places where alcoholic beverages are sold or served" would literally embrace many members of golf clubs and city clubs. 

Walkers and strollers and wanderers may be going to or coming from a burglary. Loafers or loiterers may be "casing" a place for a holdup. Letting one's wife support him is an intra-family matter, and normally of no concern to the police. Yet it may, of course, be the setting for numerous crimes. 

The difficulty is that these activities are historically part of the amenities of life as we have known them. They are not mentioned in the Constitution or in the Bill of Rights. These unwritten amenities have been in part responsible for giving our people the feeling of independence and self-confidence, the feeling of creativity. These amenities have dignified the right of dissent and have honored the right to be nonconformists and the right to defy submissiveness. They have encouraged lives of high spirits rather than hushed, suffocating silence....

8/23/03 1:30 p.m. (Link here.)

Now that Al Franken has won his case against Fox and his book has climbed to #1 on Amazon (c/o Cursor, Atrios, and just about everyone else), he's got to decide what to do with all those whopping royalties (poor dear). Just a thought: team up with Yoko to complain about Monsanto using the slogan "Imagine..." or -- instead of further undermining the First Amendment -- maybe lend a hand to the small Maine dairy farm Monsanto is suing for having the gall, the shocking temerity, to advertise: ""Our Farmers' Pledge: No Artificial Growth Hormones." Yoko has kindly licensed the "Imagine..." song to Amnesty International USA. But I doubt she gave Monsanto any kind of permission.

8/23/03 12:20 p.m. (Link here.)

Gallup says accountants are a little less unpopular than during the Arthur Andersen scandal, but the oil and gas industry is still the public's least favorite -- below even the "legal field" and the "healthcare industry." Odd part is, people seem more cheerful about business in general. 

8/23/03 11:50 a.m. (Link here.)

The report saying the EPA lied to New York City about air safety on White House orders is available here.

8/23/03 11:36 a.m. (Linkhere.)

Getty-funded millionaire Gavin Newsom, candidate for mayor of San Francisco, is having a big fundraiser next week to promote his Proposition M, which would give us yet another law against "aggressive panhandling" -- although we already have one on the books, plus California has the usual laws against assault, stalking, extortion, etc. Really, of course, this measure won't change much of anything: it's a way to solicit extra independent expenditures that can be used to benefit his candidacy.

So the question becomes, at this here fundraiser, will Mr. Newsom touch anyone? Will he follow anyone? Might he even threaten anyone (ever so tactfully)?

Nother thing: Mr. Newsom makes his money off a string of nice tastful wine shops and restaurants, but in the last municipal election he primed voters for his mayoral run by prominently backing Proposition N, the basically clueless "Care Not Cash" measure, which insinuated that homeless people cannot be trusted with cash benefits because they spend their money on drugs and booze. 

So here we have a rich man soliciting donations and purveying fine beverages while staking his political future on a campaign against panhandling and drunkenness among the poor. Can't anyone see through this nonsense?

8/23/03 1 a.m. (Link here.)

Yum, yum.

Per the August 5 Federal Register, "The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is amending the food additive regulations to remove the requirement for the label statement prescribed specifically for savory snack products that contain olestra. This action is in response to a petition filed by the Procter and Gamble Co." Check out the official description of "G.I. issues" the FDA considered and see if it boosts your appetite.

8/22/03 6 p.m. (Link here.)

OK, I've been trying to keep all the Orwell stuff over at  my other online home, alt.books.george-orwell, but this is just too much:

Mr. John Ashcroft is now preparing a promotional tour for a new round of civil liberties deprivations that would be called the "Vital Interdiction of Criminal Terrorist Organizations" or "VICTORY Act" -- provided, of course, that Ashcroft secures the small detail of Congressional approval. On a.b.g-o we've had some charming discussions of a real British wartime austerity dish, "Victory Pie," but I think news like this calls for Victory Cigarettes and/or Victory Gin.

8/22/03 2:25 p.m. (Link here.)

Pity the author of HUD Handbook No. 2221.1, an educated wordsmith by all appearances. This poor soul has the good taste to cite Rene Cappon and Strunk & White, and commits no obvious absurdities despite having a phenomenal burden of protocol to explain. Our unsung hero does liven the thing up when possible with references to mythical persons such as "... Mr. John Doe, Mr. Chris Kringle, Ms. Rose Bush, Mr. Early Byrd, Ms. Mae B. Soe, Mr. Ben Hurr, Mr. Jon Shaft, Mr. Byrd Song, Mr. Jessie Jessup, Ms. Susie Cue, Mr. Mark E. Mark..." "Amarillo T. Rose" (related to the Yellow Rose of Texas?) Jon E. Begood, Mack N. Tosch, Senators Joe Friday and Perry Mason, Rock N. Robin, Sampson DeLila, Harpo Winfrey, James Bond, Martha Vineyard, Joseph Pheen, Inne Vane, and Ide Clair. 

Maybe Garrison Keillor could use a new writer?

8/22/03 1:34 p.m. (Linkhere.)

This blogging thing. I'm trying it, & I've been a Netizen for six-seven years now, but there's something basically bothering about sitting on one's duff exchanging ideas about artifacts created by others. Yes, there's creativity in selecting and reframing, but life shouldn't be entirely sedentary or derivative. E.M. Forster already said this in 1909 with "The Machine Stops."  Champ blogger Atrios wrote recently: "When you realize you only drive your car a couple times per month, it's time to get rid of it..." Maybe the guy is out and about on foot all day long, but I do wonder if the words "journalism" and "legwork" are diverging too much.

8/22/03 12:04 p.m. (Link here.)

On the BBC: "Guantanamo May Free Children." What a headline. If the teenaged prisoners -- reportedly aged 13 to 15 -- are released, probably Ted Conover deserves some credit. According to Conover's June NYT feature, the guards down there seem nearly as depressed as the prisoners. Joel came up with a great word: "Guantanamericans." Yep, we're Guantanamericans now -- soldiers, prisoners, civilians, you name it. I was trying to write an old-time protest song about that under the influence of too much Phil Ochs, but it didn't work out very well. Best line I came up with was "...trapped in a teetotal Margaritaville..." but that doesn't fit the situation because probably the guards get to drink all the beer they want when off duty. They just have to struggle back to work next morning. Drunk or sober, everyone on that island has reason to want to be elsewhere. All those fences facing all those directions. Meanwhile, just as you can't get to Heaven in an old Ford car, you can't get to Miami in a '51 Chevy. What a world.

8/22/03, 11:40 a.m. (Linkhere.)

I don't think the Supreme Court case of Demore v. Kim got much coverage in June: a saddening decision saying that immigrants who are facing deportation because they have committed crimes can be held in immigration detention without the possibility of bail -- as a matter quite apart from any sentence they may have served because of criminal conviction. Analysis by the National Immigration Law Center here.

8/21/03, modified 7:17 p.m. (Linkhere.)

Next time someone claims there are women who bear children just to get on welfare, ask 'em to tell you how much the benefits are. Most people above poverty level don't know -- but you can, thanks to this handy chart from the Western Center on Law and Poverty. For more on the actual levels of welfare benefits, see "(Not) Thinking Like A Lawyer" in my left column. It may be instructive to compare the National Low Income Housing Coalition's annual "Out of Reach" report on housing (un)affordability in the U.S.

Egggh, childbirth. Terrifies me. A friend's mother said it was like sticking an orange up your nose.

8/21/03, 1:11 p.m. (Link here.)

Who was the guy on the California Franchise Tax Board who said "tax law is class warfare with footnotes"? Some folks at the Urban Institute -- not pinkos by any stretch of the imagination; they 're regular contractors for HUD -- say govt. income from taxation has tripled since 1929, but "the magnitude of the decline in total receipts since 2000 is unmatched since World War II.... "Since 2000, total receipts have fallen 10.3 percent relative to GDP, from 29.2 percent to 26.2 percent, as the country entered a mild recession, the stock market bubble burst, and taxes were cut...." And the OMB Watch crew have a tragicomic list of people, programs and zoo animals that have suffered.

8/21/03, 11 a.m. (Link  here.)

OMB Watch thinks the feds are getting in the habit of cherrypicking budget data.

8/20/03, 11:50 p.m. (Link here.)

Coming of Wage in Samoa

Odd item in the Federal Register: didja know special low minimum wages are set in American Samoa by an "industry committee"? No increases granted this year, despite the objections of the two employee representatives. Scroll to the end for the wage range, which runs from $2.57 for "Miscellaneous Activities" to $4.09 for "Shipping and Transportation: Classification A." Who knew?
 

8/20/03, 5:27 p.m. (Link here.)

The IRS Statistics of Income Bulletin article on tax treatment of the 400 highest incomes reported in 2000: read it and weep. See especially the very last row of figures, showing the increase since 1992 in the 400 highest taxable incomes as a percentage of all taxable incomes, and the decline in their average tax rates from 26.38 to 22.29 percent.

8/20/03, 11:30 a.m.-ish (Link here.)

All right, I'm gonna try this blog thing. No fancy software yet, just HTML I can kludge together myself plus the optimistically attached hit counter at lower left. Hence the "demisemiblog" moniker. 

First item: The SF Chron is reporting this morning on public school employee Shannon Marie Williams, who allegedly turned to prostitution to supplement her wages. According to a police spokeswoman, Officer Mark Turpin made the arrest after handing over $250 for just one hour of sex.

When Turpin expressed surprise that a school employee would need a second job, Williams "made it clear our perception of what (school workers) make wasn't accurate," she said.

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