Newsitem List

I wasn’t around when Harvey Milk was Supervisor, but he’s always on my mind when I go to City Hall. Whenever I walk through the metal detectors, I think about how Dan White snuck through a basement window of that building with his revolver to assassinate Milk and Mayor George Moscone. Whenever I climb the opulent staircase in the rotunda and look up at the ceiling, I’m reminded of the spirit that Harvey brought to this building – despite its radiance, City Hall is the “People’s House” where n...

California's most popular representative of the Green Party is interviewed at Electric Politics. Go to the link below to access info for listening....

For the first time since Gavin Newsom became Mayor, the Board of Supervisors successfully voted to override a mayoral veto. By a 9-2 vote, the Board approved Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi’s legislation mandating the Police to have foot patrols in four targeted neighborhoods for a one-year pilot program. Despite Police Chief Heather Fong’s last-minute announcement that she will initiate a series of foot patrols before the end of the month, Supervisors stressed that the Police Department needed to ...

The 2006 Election results have been posted within the past few days and gasoline prices have already begun to show increases throughout the entire State of California and in some areas prices have increased 10 to 15 cents. Alexander says, “The greatest challenge Americans are facing to stop rising gasoline prices is not being organized to demand lower prices at the pumps. It is unfortunate that America’s one party system is keeping the nation divided on this front to protect the oil giants....

I hope you will join me in paying tribute to Dorothy's selfless commitment to the ACLU-NC at our Bill of Rights Day celebration on December 10, 2006....

With Ed Jew and Chris Daly in Room 250 as Supervisors - San Francisco can witness a change for the better and in favor of those that need help most. Mayor Gavin Newsom has played his card using Bevan Dufty, Sean Elsbernd, Fiona Ma, Alioto-Pier, and chosing now and then to add the dumb Sophina Maxwell and diatribe spewing Jake McGoldrick to suit his needs. Things will change for the better and I wish both Chris Daly and Ed Jew the very best....

CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS WEREN'T THE BIG SPENDERS FOR THIS YEARS STATE ELECTIONS. OIL, TOBACCO AND INSURANCE INDUSTRIES WERE AT THE TOP OF THE SPENDING POOL FOR CAMPAIGN FINANCING IN THE STATE WIDE ELECTIONS....

It’s a San Francisco tradition for local political junkies to gather at the SPUR Office on the day after an election to hear pollster David Binder’s analysis of the results. What was not traditional this year was the sheer exuberance that progressives felt about Supervisor Chris Daly’s hard-earned re-election victory. Roughly half the attendees showed up wearing bright green Daly t-shirts, eager to gloat about an election where the local and national outcome was extremely favorable for progre...

The photo below shows Fresno County Clerk employees counting the vote. This room is sealed off. It has no phone lines and computer data can’t be transferred in or out. All of the memory cards from the voting machines are hand carried into this room and read on special Diebold machines. There will be a cross check (1%) of the machine count against the paper ballots before the vote is certified. However, I discovered that there is no cross check for the machine count and absentee ballots. ...

Not only did Supervisor Chris Daly defeat Newsom’s candidate, Rob Black, by a healthy margin -- but now the Mayor will have to meet with Daly once a month to answer his questions. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in hit pieces by the Mayor’s allies (BOMA, the Police Officers Association, the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, and SFSOS) could not convince District 6 voters to reject Daly, who led his seven opponents with 49.66% of the vote with all precincts reporting. While the City will us...