SF’s Employee Shuttles Reduce Traffic, Carbon

21 Thursday Feb 2013

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From today’s San Francisco Chronicle, this is literally my opinion the subject.

San Franciscans have noticed increasing numbers of employee shuttle buses around the city over the past year. The organic growth of this innovative transit network has occurred alongside California’s efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions, and is a great example of the shift to the kind of activities that policymakers hoped would occur.

Even positive change, however, can bring challenges and this is no exception. There have been concerns expressed about shuttle impacts and calls from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to regulate the shuttles. If regulation is deemed necessary, then it is crucial that it be very carefully crafted in a manner that recognizes both the economic and environmental benefits of the shuttles.

On the economic front, the Bay Area is experiencing some of the strongest growth in the developed world. Driving this growth is San Francisco’s booming tech sector, whose high wages and expanding employment have been shown to create dramatic economic gains across all demographics and throughout entire communities.

The Bay Area Council Economic Institute estimates that every job created in the high-tech sector eventually creates about 4.3 jobs in the local goods and services economy. That’s everything from day-care providers to waiters and day laborers, and helps explain why the city and region have the lowest unemployment rates in California.

It also explains why the employee shuttles aren’t simply about tech. Hospitals, universities and retailers, among others, also operate their own shuttles. In other words, the shuttles service the region’s economic backbone.

Which brings us to climate change.

By law, California must reduce its carbon-dioxide emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, and to 60 percent of those levels by 2050. Because 38 percent of California’s greenhouse-gas emissions are directly attributable to transportation, mostly single-occupant automobiles, the employee shuttles have emerged as a valuable tool to meet environmental, economic and transit challenges.

According to a San Francisco County Transportation Authority report, the shuttles remove 20 million vehicle miles from Bay Area roads and freeways each year, while 28 percent of shuttle riders have forgone car ownership completely. The result has been a net reduction of the Bay Area’s carbon footprint by an impressive 9,000 tons, and the removal of 327,000 single passenger trips from the region’s roadways each year. The shuttle trend is good for business, residents, traffic and the environment, and is in clear alignment with the city’s long-standing, transit-first policy.

Recognizing these benefits, the City of San Francisco has already begun the process to approve dedicated shuttle stops to avoid possible conflicts with its own Muni buses. We hope this positive trend continues and the city resists calls from some quarters for restrictive regulation that could stifle shuttle service and push thousands of San Francisco residents out of the city or into their cars, or both. The city transportation authority report found that 62 percent of shuttle riders say that their decision to live in San Francisco was influenced by the convenience provided by their employee shuttle service.

It is very important that any proposed regulation continues to allow the shuttles the flexibility necessary to serve the thousands of San Franciscan workers who depend on them. Doing so would best serve the residents, the environment, and San Francisco’s standing as a world-class smart city.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openforum/article/Private-shuttles-reduce-carbon-footprint-4295328.php#ixzz2LYtaEqZR

Three Excellent Articles from Obama’s First Term.

22 Tuesday Jan 2013

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Photo Credit: Christopher Anderson/Magnum Photos/New York Magazine

Photo Credit: Christopher Anderson/Magnum Photos/New York Magazine

Once again, Barack Obama has been sworn in as President of the United States. The time is therefore ripe to reflect on some of the excellent commentary and analysis from his first four years in office.

An exhaustive list this is not. Matt Tiabbi’s writings on the financial system, for example, defined the populist fury from Occupy to the Tea Party, and the national debate over the role of debt has hugely benefitted from the pen (or keyboard) of Paul Krugman. The past four years have also given us some analysis notable for being wrong (hint: his name rhymes with David Brooks).

But of all the reading I’ve done on American politics since just prior to the start of the 2008 primary season, three articles really stand out. Two are from the Atlantic–one each by Andrew Sullivan and James Fallows–and the third by New York Magazine‘s Jonathan Chait. As Obama’s second term agenda comes into focus–immigration, guns, and inequality–the emerging picture largely validates the claims made by these three authors, an altogether impressive feat in a punditocracy boiling with mediocrity.

Why Obama Matters

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What: Goodbye to All That: Why Obama Matters
Who: Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic
When: November 2007
The Claim: Obama’s candidacy represents the end of Baby Boomer rule.

Published one year and two days before Obama defeated John McCain, right around the time Obama was buttering up Iowa Democrats with his electrifying Jefferson-Jackson speech, many people didn’t know what make of the hopeful Senator from Illinois. Sullivan did.

The Obama candidacy is about ending a war…a nonviolent civil war that has crippled America at the very time the world needs it most. It is a war about war—and about culture and about religion and about race. And in that war, Obama—and Obama alone—offers the possibility of a truce.

Goodby to All That was about the never-ending psychodrama of the Baby Boomer generation. Their youthful idealism had aged poorly, argued Sullivan, and the two leaders they had produced (Clinton and the younger Bush) embodied, to cartoonish perfection, all that was wrong with those born between 1945 and 1963: a deficit of self-control, a surfeit of self-importance, and a bottomless insecurity.

It wasn’t his positions–Obama largely campaigned on a boilerplate moderate-Democrat platform–but his style, confidence, and optimism which set him apart from his chief political opponent at the time, Hillary Clinton. And so Sullivan unleashes the analytic pearl of that historic primary:

As a liberal, [Hillary Clinton] has spent years in a defensive crouch against triumphant post-Reagan conservatism. Her liberalism is warped by what you might call a Political Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Reagan spooked people on the left, especially those, like Clinton, who were interested primarily in winning power. She has internalized what most Democrats of her generation have internalized: They suspect that the majority is not with them, and so some quotient of discretion, fear, or plain deception is required if they are to advance their objectives. And so the less-adept ones seem deceptive, and the more-practiced ones, like Clinton, exhibit the plastic-ness and inauthenticity that still plague her candidacy. She’s hiding her true feelings. We know it, she knows we know it, and there is no way out of it.

Perhaps as Sullivan was typing these words, Hillary Clinton delivered a speech on at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire where she directly acknowledged the political failure of her generation, saying “I don’t want us to be the first generation of Americans to leave our country worse than when we found it”. Following four terms of Clinton-Bush, Americans were more interested in giving a new generation their first shot than giving the Boomers a fifth.

Obama, Explained

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What: Obama, Explained
Who: James Fallows, The Atlantic
When: March 2012
The Question: Is Obama a ninja or a dilettante?

Following 20 years of Bush-Clinton-Bush, America was hungry for an outsider. In 2008, Barack Obama gave voters what they wanted. Within a year of his inauguration, however, the Obama administration was caught flat footed by a movement of conservative populists in revolt at everything the new President represented stood for: youth, diversity, and urbanism. Republicans were shockingly disrespectful of the President at home, while China was disrespecting him abroad. The Tea Party shellacked Democrats in the 2010 primary, taking back the House of Representatives and leaving many wondering if Obama, by jumping ahead of ultimate-fighter Hillary Clinton, had bitten off more than he could chew.

In the February before the Tea Party midterms, Bill O’Reilly asked Jon Stewart to assess Obama’s performance to that point. When Stewart replied that he couldn’t ”tell if [Obama]‘s a Jedi-Master, playing chess on a three level board way ahead of us, or if this is kicking his ass”, the always self-satisfied O’Reilly responded in amazement “you really don’t know?” as if it was clear to all but Stewart that Obama was in over his head.

Or, as James Fallows posed the question in his fantastic analysis of Obama’s first term:

Is [Obama] a skillful political player and policy visionary—a chess master who always sees several moves ahead of his opponents (and of the punditocracy)? Or is he politically clumsy and out of his depth—a pawn overwhelmed by events, at the mercy of a second-rate staff and of the Republicans?

Fallows’ answer was that Obama had shown both good and poor judgment, but that ultimately, he had “shown the main trait we can hope for in a president—an ability to grow and adapt—and that the reason to oppose his reelection would be disagreement with his goals, not that he proved unable to rise to the job. As time has gone on, he has given increasing evidence that the skills he displayed in the campaign were not purely a fluke”.

Fallows’ examples of Obama’s successful leadership were our improving China posture, the prevention of another Great Depression, America’s improved global standing, and the passage of Healthcare reform. Fair enough. But it is the journey, and not so much the destination, where James Fallows’ article really wins.

24-sidebar-gopocalypse-partone

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What: 2012 or Never
Who: Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine
When: February 2012
The Claim: The deepest effect of Obama’s election upon the Republicans’ psyche has been to make them truly fear, for the first time since before Ronald Reagan, that the future is against them”

“When jubilant supporters of Obama gathered in Grant Park on Election Night in 2008″ writes Jonathan Chait, “Republicans saw a glimpse of their own political mortality. And a galvanizing picture of just what their new rulers would look like.”

Following defeat, Republicans were faced with a strategic decision: interpret Obama’s victory as the dawning of new majority and pivot the party as appropriate, or, interpret Obama’s victory as a fluke born of Bush fatigue and soldier on, demography be damned.

As James Fallows mentioned in Obama, Explained, the topic of Obama-as-fluke was a huge one for American conservatives. One of the reasons conservatives were so ecstatic following Mitt Romney’s victory over Obama in the first debate was how the President’s droning, lazy performance perfectly confirmed what they had been telling themselves on talk radio for years: Obama is empty calories, an overreaction to the Bush years, a blip on the radar, soon pushed aside as our truth goes marching on.

The Republican Party settled on a strategy of obstructing Obama’s agenda on all fronts, culminating in a standoff over an increase to the nation’s debt ceiling, a topic never before put to debate. The President was flummoxed as he suddenly found himself trapped in a Quixotean debate with Congress over whether or not the legislative branch was going to pay the bills it had itself racked up. Desperate to make a compromise prior to an unprecedented default on American debt,

Obama offered Republicans hundreds of billions of dollars in spending cuts and a permanent extension of Bush-era tax rates in return for just $800 billion in higher revenue over a decade. Instead the party bet everything on 2012, preferring a Hail Mary strategy. That is the basis of the House Republicans’ otherwise inexplicable choice to vote last spring for [the Paul Ryan] budget plan that would lock in low taxes, slash spending, and transform Medicare into ­private vouchers—none of which was popular with voters. 

The way to make sense of that foolhardiness is that the party has decided to bet everything on its one “last chance.” Not the last chance for the Republican Party to win power—there will be many of those, and over time it will surely learn to compete for nonwhite voters—but its last chance to exercise power in its current form, as a party of anti-government fundamentalism powered by sublimated white Christian identity politics. And whatever rhetorical concessions to moderates and independents the eventual Republican nominee may be tempted to make in the fall, he’ll find himself fairly boxed in by everything he’s already done this winter to please that base.

If they lose their bid to unseat Obama, they will have mortgaged their future for nothing at all. And over the last several months, it has appeared increasingly likely that the party’s great all-or-nothing bet may land, ultimately, on nothing. In which case, the Republicans will have turned an unfavorable outlook into a truly bleak one in a fit of panic. The deepest effect of Obama’s election upon the Republicans’ psyche has been to make them truly fear, for the first time since before Ronald Reagan, that the future is against them.

Chait’s ability to synthesize anxiety as the driving force behind the Republican Party made his essay one of the best of the GOP’s 2012 primary season.

THE NEXT FOUR YEARS

Republican opposition to Obama’s first term was characterized by extraordinary slander, or as as Stephen Colbert put it, “a torch and pitchfork-wielding mob empty of all thoughts. An injured, vengeful animal lashing out blindly at shapes and colors.” Republicans questioned Obama’s birth certificate, his college transcripts, and his faith. They called him a socialist, a liar, a tyrant, and an arrogant elitist with death panels. They accused him of launching “apology tours”, “palling around with terrorists”, and harboring “a Kenyan anti-colonial worldview”. Their leader in the Senate said that the number one priority of the Party was preventing Obama’s reelection.

But that didn’t happen. Not only was Obama reelected, but nearly everything else went wrong for the GOP. Marriage equality was enshrined in three states and cannabis became legal in two. In California, Democrats took supermajorities of both houses of the state legislature and every single statewide constitutional office.

Today, with Republicans on the ropes and their King exposed, Obama is on the verge of becoming a transformative President, putting to bed a coalition which has largely governed the United States since 1978, and in the process showing himself to be a master chess player. On the Fiscal Cliff, Obama boxed Republicans into voting to increase taxes on the rich in exchange for virtually nothing. On the debt ceiling, the GOP has boxed itself into debating itself over whether or not it will pay its own bills. On immigration, an issue seen critical by GOP strategists, the party will likely split in two. The same is likely true for gun control and disaster-preparedness, following both the Sandy Hook massacre and Superstorm Sandy. Given the high possibility of GOP disunity on all these fronts, Republicans themselves are beginning to predict a Democratic House-takeover in 2014, and Democrats keeping the Presidency in 2016.

More often than not, pundits get it wrong. Which is why it’s so satisfying to discover intelligent analysts getting it right. In a world of armchair pontificators (guilty), it’s good to know we still got some pros.

Urban America in 2013

31 Monday Dec 2012

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Following a half-century of economic, social, and moral decay, the American city is back. The food is better, the streets are cleaner, and the bars are packed like it’s August 1929. New York City is wrapping up it’s safest year since 1960, while San Francisco’s skyline is cluttered with cranes and i-beams as a wave of building highlights a new era of confidence. Even in poor Detroit, perhaps the most abused urban landscape in America, an artisan class is taking advantage of near-free real estate and forging new communities from the abyss.

Why this is happening and where it’s going, this new era of urban renewal, is something Pacificvs intends to focus on in 2013. What I can say now is that I consider the urban migration a positive trend which should be encouraged through public policy.

From where I stand, the force, or forces, driving the urban renewal appear to be almost entirely generational. Following victory over fascism and depression, the Greatest Generation disrupted what had been a massive multi-century migration into cities by settling in sprawling newly constructed suburbs. Their children, the Baby Boomers, already born into a world where the American City was in decline, embraced car-centric lifestyles that largely kept them in the suburbs they were born. Today, their children, the millennial generation, evinces a gargantuan need for a level of social interaction that the suburbs not only cannot provide, but is completely anathema to suburban principles of space.

To be sure, this urban renewal is occurring unevenly and amidst overall economic hardship. Whereas the effect in places like New York and San Francisco have been dramatic, the old rust belt continues to struggle. Unemployment remains high.  Chicago just had a record year for homicides. Perhaps nothing threatens the urban spring than the continuing poor performance of the nation’s system of public schools; the creative class flooding into cities will ultimately settle down in places that can educate their children, not places where they can get fancy cocktails and use public transit.

Looking forward to a great 2013!

“Abe Lincoln’s Yarns and Stories”

07 Friday Dec 2012

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Abe Lincoln's Yarns and Stories

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On February 13th, 1861, the editor of South Carolina’s Charleston Mercury newspaper penned a defiant polemic against the new Provisional Constitution of the Confederate States of America. The crime? In an appeal to moderate border states, rebel delegates outlawed the importation of new slaves from Africa. “The South is now in the formation of a Slave Republic“. Slave society, he argued, was something to “avow and affirm…as a living principle of social order” which could fail only if its leaders failed to fully embrace it as such. He urged rebel leaders across the South to just come out and admit what everyone knew but for some reason (shame, most likely) couldn’t: that they were fighting for slavery because they believed in it.

The editor’s name was Leo W. Spratt. 40 years later in 1901, Spratt bought a book, a Christmas present, titled ‘Abe’ Lincoln’s Yarns and Stories (a greatest hits album of sorts to Lincoln’s legendary humor). Spratt gifted the book to a man named “Darius”. On May 31, 1922, Darius cut out a newspaper clipping, a picture of the 79 year old Robert Todd Lincoln, the President’s only surviving son, who had attended the dedication of his slain father’s memorial the previous day. Darius folded the clipping into the book.

90 years, six months, and five days later (aka December 5, 2012), I met a colleague for a work lunch at a Galette 88, a modern creperie located in San Francisco’s financial district. We discussed innovations in the water sector. I had the smoked salmon crepe.

On my way back to the office I passed by a book seller. Nothing much, just a couple stands run by a man named Rick.

Rick had some gems. But one edition in particular took my eye–a dark work, covered in ornate gold leaf, tarnished and earthen by over four score of hands and neglect. Emblazoned on the cover was the portrait of Lincoln, looking every bit the man whose melancholy was once described as having “dripped from him as he walked”.

The inside cover revealed a lonely newspaper clipping, an old man had joined an entire nation in loving remembrance of his long dead father. The book was signed:

Leo W. Spratt
Dec 25: 1901
To Darius [unreadable]

What motivated this old rebel to spend money on a slapstick Lincoln totem? Had he recanted? Was it a gag gift? A joke among old confederate buddies? Did Darius cut out the picture of Robert as a keepsake? Were they, as former enemies of the president, as gripped by Lincoln’s overwhelming legacy as the rest of the us?

Spratt once had a terrible vision of an imperial Slave Republic at the center of global power, respect, and commerce. “Bride of the world, rather than the miserable mistress of the North” he wrote. Forty years later he was giving Lincoln jokes to buddies.

Now he’s dead, and his book is mine.

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Endorsements 2012

31 Wednesday Oct 2012

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Individual candidate and party preferences are based on a complex mix of reason, emotion, assumption, prejudice, ignorance, conviction, self interest, selflessness, philosophy, love, hate, fear, and hope. Given that uncrackable code, I prefer to stick to ballot propositions. So without further adieu, for the great state of California and the great City of San Francisco, Pacificvs thus endorses…

Proposition 30 – Yes
For 35 years California has been engaged in a radical two-step experiment. Step one: divest state resources from public education. Step two: repeat. Proposition 30 would authorize tax increases which would bring in about $6 billion to reverse the devastating cuts to education, and is supported by labor and business. Half the money would be raised by increasing income taxes on the 1% by 1% while the other half would be paid for by everybody else through a modest increase in the sales tax. Everybody pays, the wealthy a bit more, but everybody wins. Yes on 30.

Proposition 31 – Yes
California’s state government is plagued with too many institutional problems to list, and Proposition 31 doesn’t come close to solving all of them. But it does offer some sensible solutions to some of them, including moving to two-year budget cycles, devolving state decision making to local governments, and requiring lawmakers to identify new funding for new spending. Yes on 31.

Proposition 32 – No
It is the worst type of proposition that forces you to ask of its proponents “what do you take me for”? Proposition 32 is one of those. Recall the Citizens United Supreme Court decision that obliterated all political spending limits for corporations and unions? And remember how you’ve heard about corporate profits soaring to unprecedented heights, while the America’s unions spiral into oblivion? Proposition 32 would cement the imbalance of capital over labor by eliminating the ability of unions to raise money, and you can’t spend money you can’t raise. What’s insulting: Proposition 32 “offers” to limit corporate political fundraising by outlawing corporate practices that are already illegal. What a joke. Vote no on 32.

Proposition 33 – No
As a general principle I’m deeply skeptical of proposals put forth by single interests. Prop. 33 was written and put forward by the Mercury Insurance group, and allows auto insurance companies to engage in price discrimination against folks (like myself) who for several years have given up car ownership, regardless of your driving record. Vote No on 33.

Proposition 34 – Yes
Until the day government can guarantee it will never accidentally execute an innocent citizen, everyoneshould be opposed to the death penalty. Proposition 34 would end capital punishment in California, and transmute the sentences of all prisoners so condemned to life-without-parole. Which, by the way, would save California a lot of money because government-murder is expensive. It’s also obscenely racist. Vote yes on 34.

Proposition 35 – No
Sex trafficking is a crime against human dignity and should be severely punished. That’s why it’s disappointing that the backers of Proposition 35 squandered an opportunity to do just that, and opted instead to present voters with an hysterical overreach. In addition to increasing sentences on sex traffickers (a good thing) Prop 35 would turn an 18 year old who is dating a 17 into a registered sex offender, eliminating said 18 year old’s chance to amount to anything in this life. Besides, we don’t need an initiative to increase sentences on sex traffickers: there is a thing called the legislature, and they tend to enjoy passing tough-on-crime laws, and can do so without criminalizing high school kids. Vote No on 35.

Proposition 36 – Yes
Voters should be wary of any public policy that appears too tailor-made for a catchy slogan. Voters passed just such a law in 1994 called “Three strikes, you’re out” (get it?). It forces mandatory life-sentences on third-time felons, no matter how banal the crime (the famous example is of the guy sentenced to life-in-prison for shoplifting $150 bucks from K-Mart). While carting-off assholes sounds nice, it’s actually really, really expensive (about $60,000 per inmate, per year) and is money best saved for criminals who are actually dangerous. That’s exactly what Proposition 36 does, by reserving the life-sentence for third-offenders who’ve committed a violent or serious offense. Vote Yes on 36.

Proposition 37 – Yes
No issue has been more fear-based and unscientific than the campaigns for-and-against Proposition 37, which would force most food products sold in California to prominently label whether or not the product contains genetically modified organisms (GMOs). What irks me about this campaign is that Yes-on-37 is driven almost entirely by ignorance and paranoia of precisely the same caliber as vaccine denialism. Let’s be clear, when a paleolithic farmer decided to plant his largest crops next to each other in the hopes that they’d produce even larger crops, that’s GMO. Far from being the harbinger of a Brave New World, artificial selection is among our species’ most primitive useful talents. The difference is that today science allows us to pinpoint very specific genes–like ones for drought resistance–and artificially select for them with great accuracy. As such, GMOs could provide extraordinary benefits to drought prone and poverty stricken locales across the globe. I am further annoyed by Yes-on-37’s stupid campaign point that we should label GMOs because Europe does, as if European civilization (of all places!) has never enacted bad public policy. Alas, I am resigned to vote yes. Why? First, because the labels would apply to all food sold in California, it wouldn’t discriminate against food grown in California, and therefore renders the No-on-37 fears of economic hardship to farmers moot. Apart from that key point, there’s this: more than anything else, I believe Proposition 37 is the public’s reaction to the general understanding that US food policy is no longer serving the public interest, and that we’re through ignoring it. My hope is that if Proposition 37 passes, I will wake up the next day in a world where subsidies, pesticides, and hormone abuse (in short, actual problems) are treated as serious matters of public health rather than as the boutique concerns of the rich. If that world requires some labels that will cost little, hurt no one, and humor some harmless paranoiacs, I think we should go for it. Vote Yes on 37.

Proposition 38 – Yes
Most people don’t mind taxes per se, what they do mind is unfairness. It’s not fair that one group should pay for the second, when the second provides nothing to the first (or so it goes). Proposition 38 is no such proposal. In an era of 1 percent vs 99 percent vs 47 percent, Proposition 38 would raise income taxes on just about everybody to pay for an elemental public services that benefits everyone: public education. Yes, Proposition 32 would also increase taxes to pay for public education. Is it too much? No. Taxes today are at their lowest levels in three generations, that’s because we’ve spent the last generation cutting them. If we want a civilization, we have to pay for it. Yes on 38. (NOTE: If both 38 and 30 pass, then the one with the fewer votes will actually fail, even if it passes. I support the Governor’s Proposition 30 over 38, so if you can remember Yes on 30, No on 38, then go for it. Otherwise, I’d rather blast yes on both into the interwebs to avoid confusion. We definitely need one to pass).

Proposition 39 – Yes
Proposition 39 closes a loophole that allows out-of-state businesses from paying in-state taxes on their in-state profits. It would raise about $1 billion per year to close our budget hole. Opponents claim it will kill jobs, as if Arkansas-based Wal-Mart won’t want to sell goods to Californians because it’s profits won’t be a fraction of a percent as high. No brainer: Yes on 39.

Proposition 40 – Yes
Here we go, one of those yes-means-no propositions. As a “referendum”, Proposition 40 is asking voters to validate a law they already passed. The law in question created a non-partisan Citizen Redistricting Commission that takes the job of redistricting legislative districts away from politicians. A ‘yes’ vote means you think the law should stand and that the citizens commission should stay. Vote Yes on 40.

San Francisco Measures

 

 

 

 

 

 

Proposition A – Yes
Proposition A would enact a modest parcel tax of $79 a year on every lot in San Francisco. The tax would raise $16 million for SF City College, which is facing $25 million in cuts from the state government. A modest tax, a big gain. Yes on A.

Proposition B – Yes
A yes vote would authorize $195 million in bonds for the much needed upgrades of San Francisco’s public parks. As a member of the Pacific Coast Hardball League’s Sunset Nobles (of the Mission), I have hard-won proof of the uneven and unkept fields of San Francisco in the form of bruises and lumps all over my body. There are legitimate concerns with the management of San Francisco’s Department of Rec. and Park that have left some unhappy with this deal, but the parks have been neglected too long to ignore this opportunity. Vote Yes on B.

Proposition C – Yes
San Francisco is crazy expensive. One of the reasons why it’s so expensive is that the supply of homes hasn’t come close to keeping up with the demand to live here. Proposition C would authorize the construction of 30,000 new rental units throughout the city and establish a Housing Trust Fund to help offset the rising costs of living here. That’s important, because unless you’re planning on having millionaire’s mop your floors, the City’s working class will be forced to relocate, i.e. commute, outside the city, clogging roadways and contributing to our already horrendous productivity losses due to traffic. Vote Yes on C.

Proposition D – Yes
It’s kinda cool that San Francisco elects its City Attorney and Treasurer in off-year elections. It’s also crazy arcane and expensive. Let’s move their elections to even years, like everybody else’s, and we can vote less often (but don’t worry, being California we’ll still be voting plenty often). Vote Yes on D.

Proposition E – Yes
San Francisco is the only city in California to tax businesses based on the size of their payroll. That means that as businesses grow, they have a powerful incentive to leave. Proposition E would change that, by phasing out the payroll tax and replacing it with a revenue tax, which would generate about $30 million more for the City’s general fund, which is a small–but welcome–move in the right direction following about $1.5 billion in cuts over the past several years. It’s also fairer to small and growing businesses. Vote yes on E.

Proposition F – No
What do you get when you combine unbelievable narcissism with breathtaking ignorance? You get Proposition F: a proposal to force the City to spend millions of dollars on a plan to spend billions of dollars to dismantle its world-class source of pristine drinking water and carbon-free electricity: the Hetch Hetchy reservoir. Why on earth must we consider this proposal? Because for an extreme fringe, avenging John Muir’s legacy is an objective that exists in a plane beyond reason. And yes, this fringe is extreme: the Sierra Club doesn’t even support it. Granted, we probably wouldn’t build Hetch Hetchy today. But it’s already built, and the ingeniously engineered system continues to provide extraordinary economic, environmental, and social justice benefit to millions of Californians inside and outside San Francisco. In a country with scores of useless reservoirs begging to be torn down, Hetch Hetchy is the last one we should dismantle. But proponents of Proposition F say it would only authorize a study to see if it’s feasible to restore the lost Hetch Hetchy valley, what’s wrong with that? Here’s where the breathtaking narcissism comes in. Hetch Hetchy restoration has been studied seven times in the past 25 years, and all the studies say the same thing: it’s not feasible. Why isn’t it feasible? Because it would cost an absurd amount of money. How much money? $10 billion. How much is $10 billion? $10 billion is enough to send every San Francisco child to UC Berkeley for 30 years. $10 billion could provide every California 2012 High School Graduate with a fully funded four-year CSU education. Proposition F would instead have us spend $10 billion on dismantling our largest source of water and carbon-free power, and spew 387,000 metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere trying to replace it, all in the name of building a new campground. Let’s save ourselves billions of dollars for things that matter by saving Hetch Hetchy. Vote No on F.

Into the Southwest

13 Friday Jul 2012

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When I was cordially invited to attend the wedding of a friend (of not more than six months) at his future bride’s New Mexico ranch, I eagerly accepted. Not only was I honored to be invited to witness this new union, but I was also quite excited at the opportunity to explore new parts of the country.

One of the pleasant surprises one encounters flying eastward from California over the American Southwest, is just how many impressive canyons there are that aren’t the “Grand” one. Indeed, so captivating a sight are these numberless trenches, that writing about their existence can become difficult as it requires one to peel their eyes away from the window. The task is made much easier when the captain takes you headlong into thunderclouds many thousands of feet above both New Mexico and the plane, virtually eliminating visibility.

From the air, Albuquerque is seen as a low-sprawling metropolis isolated in the middle of a vast desert valley. The mountains which ring the city are distant, with long tracts of desert between the two so that the city appears lonely. A green oasis serpents through the whole of Albuquerque; the Rio Grande is as responsible for this city’s existence as the Nile is for the Pyramids. The desert is crisscrossed with dirt roads, connecting its martian-like floor in a spider-like web of crooked ochre tracks.

Albuquerque’s natural beauty neatly captures New Mexico’s motto. The city is surrounded by the picturesque Sandia Mountains, which are themselves dashed with luminescence from gaps in the clouds, which are themselves more enormous and, I don’t quite know how to put it, present than any found in California.

I didn’t venture long in Albuquerque, but from what I saw, the human element was not doing so well. Buildings and homes looked disheveled and the city felt disconnected and poorly planned. Some friends brought us to Los Cuates, a New Mex-Mex restaurant (if the term even exists), which delivered a rousing entree of green and red chiles, which one could order separate or, as the locals do, mixed “christmas style”. The baked bread served with honey neatly captures the essence of the New Mex Mex flavor: sweet, savory, smokey, and damn good.

Jesus light.

The wedding was held at the bride’s ranch near Angel Fire, high in New Mexico’s northern mountains about a four hour drive from Albuquerque. On the road we had several noteworthy encounters.

Highway 64 is littered with fireworks vendors. This being July 7, our party took full advantage of the 50 percent-off discount and loaded our vehicle with a rampart worthy of Washington himself. The vendor was an affable guy, round, tanned, and smiling. He was assisted by a toothless Native American who, whether by alcohol, amphetamines, or something else entirely, had a very difficult time forming coherent sentences.

Onward into the desert, and one finds vast tracks of land sparsely populated. What industry exists in these frontier reaches? I don’t know, and the few locals we spoke with didn’t seem to know either. At a gas station near Taos, two ladies pulled up near our car and complimented me on my glasses. I responded with a lie, complimenting the tacky piece of car furniture dangling from the review mirror of their beat-up mid 90′s Chevy Blazer. I then took the opportunity to gab with the locals, who told me there was some mining done “near red rock”, that Taos produced better Marijuana than California, and that the disheveled guy walking toward me was in-fact a world famous vagabond who is suffering (or enjoying) a 40-year-and-counting trip from a single outing with LSD upon return from Vietnam. They told me he’d ask us for money, which they advised against giving. Both of these things happened shortly afterwards. Our conversation ended after a woman, probably in her late 40′s, came up to their window, dropped a six pack of Coors Lite on their laps, and advised the girls move on before people got suspicious. Just outside Albuquerque we spotted a Dunkin Donuts next to a cemetery.

Release the FireCracken

Angel Fire appears to be mostly a gas station town to serve those headed towards the several skiing resorts nearby. We arrived around 10pm, and found our ranch destination shortly afterwards. Apart from two girlfriends, the evening was segregated: the bridal party was resting in a cabin somewhere nearby, while the groom’s party drank and lit explosives. Having rained several nights prior, we were fully liberated to deploy the vast arsenal: for nearly two hours, handfuls of aerial explosives were arranged and every lighter on the premises called into duty. For the grand finale, a single arrangement of 300 rockets were launched, laying siege–if not to the moon–then certainly to some low-lying bats or moths.

Saturday was the wedding, held at the cattle ranch which has laid with the bride’s family since the 1880s. The day was, from what I was told, typical New Mexico, warm with intermittent rain and thunder. The ceremony was held in an Aspen grove which, I was also told, constitute the largest organisms on the planet. I was quick to ask about the California Redwood, but it was claimed that Aspen groves develop from a single root system which technically makes them a “single” tree. The catered food was New Mex Mex, which was again fantastic. The bride, who looked stunning, also has good taste; by her orders there was a collection of wedding pies instead of cake.

By far the most important feature of my journey into the Southwest was the first and best opportunity I’ve had to don the jewelry I inherited from my grandpa. I’m speaking, of course, about this amazing bolo tie.

Note: The Bolo

Four Days in Kaua’i

02 Saturday Jun 2012

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Flying over Oahu

Following eight months of hesitant journeys to its owner’s head, authoritative use has finally been made of the author’s fine summer fedora.

After years of travel to places cold and dense, I find myself someplace that is neither: Kauai, the Garden Island.

First the journey. Hawaiian Air had disappointed us with four hours of delay at Oakland International for lack of a “part” which, it was promised, was hastily making its way from SFO. One finds that it’s easy to imagine a nameless “missing part” to be the one absolutely necessary for the act of flying and landing a plane (the throttle? the wing? the flux capacitor?). More likely, it was probably the lid to a luggage compartment, or perhaps a missing bottle of bathroom hand-soap.

Even for those accustomed to microclimates, Kauai is extreme. The island itself is about 85 miles in circumference, and it’s four distinct shores offer incredible variation.

The “Sunny” South Shore receives an average 18 inches of rain per year, making it a Mediterranean climate not unlike Southern California save for the humidity. The beaches and bays of Wiamea and Poi’pu ascend gently inland, creating a vast and sloping grassland which eventually rises into modest foothills which then heave skyward and rip apart to create the astonishing Wiamea Canyon. Wiamea Bay, it should be noted, is home to some of the heaviest waves in the world, while the beach at popular tourist destination Poi’pu is the temporary home to some of its heaviest people. Along Highway 50, Jo-Jo’s serves what is considered the best of the Island’s signature treat: a cup of shaved ice showered in colored sugar water served atop a pile of ice cream, “Shave Ice” is only one element away from a sugary island Turducken.

Driving east along the shore you’ll see the ruins of industries old and gone, mostly sugar plantations, that conjure up a tropical Pittsburg. Hardly of an eyesore, these rusting behemoths make up the island’s most interesting architecture. One will also pass the Kaua’i Coffee Co., whose beans, visitors are told, account for 60% of all coffee grown in Hawaii. If the tasting room is to be trusted, this is an unfortunate state of affairs. Of the dozen or so blends on sample, each was somehow too bland and too bitter. I was, however, so enamored with the site’s stately groves of coffee trees, that I’d rather blame inattentive staff for simply burning the coffee rather than attack the dignity of the noble beans. Like the South Shore, this area has few trees and is instead dominated by the bermuda grass that grows tightly across lawns and fields alike, covering the area like a giant putting green.

The Koloa Rum house is located on a former sugar plantation, which offers free tastings of four different types of rum along with a lesson on making and drinking Mai Tais. All are good, but the dark rum is particularly impressive. I recommend taking the $18 train tour of the grounds, which is today growing fruit, vegetables, and nuts since sugar cane, a highly labor-intensive crop, is no longer cost-competitive.

One passes the grocery stores, hotels, and restaurants of the East Shore and heads North to Hanalei, which (to non-surfers) is probably the most well-known part of the island. The North Shore looks and feels much more like the tropical destination you expected: it receives much more rain than the South, and is covered in mist and jungle flora. Here you’ll find the island’s established cluster of gift shops, shave ice stands, and art galleries. Petrified lava cliffs bank the road to Ke’e beach, each striped with the dangling, rope-like roots of trees harnessed to bluffs hundreds of feet overhead. The houses are on stilts, some of them appearing 15 feet high. Locals say that the area is inhabited mostly by wealthy transplants from the mainland, with several long-established Hawaiian families tucked here and there.

Ke’e beach is perfect for snorkeling beginners. Its sands plunge 20 feet deep into a calm pool surrounded by a reef which ascends to about 4 feet below the surface. This allows one to plunge and explore the miniature canyons of the reef, and spot all manners of fish, coral, and, if you’re lucky (I was), giant sea turtles. Snorkel Bob’s rents prescription goggles (!).

As we spent the entire day at Ke’e, I’ll spend a word here on the tropical Sun. A Californian will note that the sun is hotter in Hawaii than at home, even when the temperature is cooler. You might not have before considered it, but even in a triple digit Fresno August, the Sun’s heat is dispersed and your surroundings are like that of a convection oven. Hawaii is more like a microwave: cool except for (you)r meal, the atmosphere is mild but in direct sunlight you can actually feel yourself cook.

The road ends shortly past Ke’e beach, marking the beginning of Kauai’s world famous Napali Coast. Napali is a 5 mile stretch of cliffs and canyon accessible only by foot, boat, or helicopter. High above Napali sits Mount Waiʻaleʻale, to the East of which sits one of the wettest spots on Earth, averaging over 400 inches of rain every year. Remember, this is only about 15 miles from Wiamea, which gets as much rain as California’s parched San Fernando Valley. The island is controlled by wild roosters.

I’m sure they’d taste great freshly brewed.

If one is renting a car, the first impression of Hawaiian culture will likely be over the radio. There, one will find that not only is Hawaiian music a slow and moaning mixture of standards-era ballads and ukelele, but that it dominates the dial. Though its lack of passion sounds rather eunuch, Hawaiian music is apparently very pleasant for senior citizens, who seem blissfully unaware that this is the hotel-guitarist’s third go at “Somewhere over the rainbow”. Come to think of it, all-encompassing sameness seems to exist with all components of island culture: all paintings are of sunsets and surfboards, while all architecture that is not 1950′s art decco is in the style of bamboo, palm leaves, and coconuts. It would be as if San Francisco radio only played the ‘Dead, it’s art galleries featured only psychedelic abstractions, and it’s buildings were all cheap imitations of the painted ladies. The food was better than expected, with actually decent hotel food and solid BBQ at Scotty’s on the East Shore. The service can be slow and unusual, like the cocktail waitress who actually grabbed the eaten shrimp off our dirty dishes to explain there was more meat yet hiding beneath the tail. Mostly, we cooked at gas grills along the Kauai Beach Resort with fish from the Fish Express and produce from the farmers market at Tunnels.

A surprising number of individuals we spoke with were transplants from the mainland. One bartender was from Seattle, the woman at the Koloa Rum tasting room was from Ohio, and the guy at the rental car agency was from Pennsylvania. Each marveled about life on the island, but complained about both high costs and low wages. While natives exhibit all the variation you know and love and hate about the human experience, transplants are a self-selected batch of seekers and shut-ins. Nobody wears helmets, and the native Hawaiian accent sounds oddly Minnesotan.

Though economically dependent on tourism, people on Kauai are very committed to its relative isolation from the other islands, which they consider urbanized and spoiled. The only way off Kauai is by plane, cruise ship, or private vessel. No ferry service exists, and the locals are committed to keeping it that way, even if it means they can hardly ever afford to leave. Case in point, a ferry service that launched in 2007 failed as its first boats discovered Nawiliwili Harbor embargoed with a ring of hundreds of surfers. The surfers maintained the embargo for 32 hours, paddling out in shifts until the ferries returned to Oahu. Churches from every denomination are everywhere, a legacy from the vast numbers of missionaries sent here by the West during the 19th century. Mark Twain once wrote that there were “More missionaries and more row about saving these 60,000 people than would take to convert hell itself”.

Speaking of, shortly after I arrived in Hawaii I began looking for a copy Twain’s “Letters from the Sandwich Islands”. Twain’s writings for the Sacramento Union during his four month journey in 1866 is considered by many to be the best travel writing on the Hawaiian islands ever published, making it perhaps the best beach reading of all time. As I first combed the internet on my iPad for copies, I came across a May 2006 New York Times article on travel writing which began with the keen observation that upon arrival to a tropical paradise, a subtle feeling of “This is really nice…but that’s it?” can creep in on city slickers used to options. The antidote, the author recommended, was good travel writing to stoke interest in sights unseen and under appreciated. As I tried to purchase a physical copy of Twain’s Letters, I was politely informed by a local grocer that the Island and County of Kauai, population 65,000, didn’t have a single bookstore. Such is the reason why theologians have always had such difficulty convincingly describing heaven: one person’s eternal paradise is, if not another’s hell, certainly their four day vacation. And such is how I discovered Hawaii’s great irony: to get the most out of it, you have to leave.

Overlooking Wiamea Canyon.

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