Data Point: How Many DREAM'ers Are There?

Buried in this eye-roll inducing story about the proto-typical "illegal immigrant college kid whose parents brought him to the US and is now threatened with deportation," (by the Big Bad Obama Administration!) is an interesting data point on Obama's much-hyped DREAM Act: there's actually not a lot of DREAM'ers out there eager to change their status:

The California Dream Act, passed in 2011, allows undocumented students who were brought to the United States when they were under 16 to apply for state aid at public universities and community colleges. President Obama enacted the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in June. That program provides temporary, renewable work permits for unauthorized immigrants who are 30 years old or younger and were brought to the United States before age 16.

Through Oct. 10, nearly 180,000 people had applied for coverage under the federal program, and 4,591 had been approved, federal figures show. (emph. added).

 The immigrants advocates say that the small number of applications is due to young immigrants' "fears" of a possible Romney Administration which they thought would not only withdraw the program, but also deport everyone who came forward. Is there any seemingly baffling phenomenon that can't be explained by Evil Republican Racism?

Maybe DREAM'ers are just as wary of Pres. Obama, who could rescind his executive order just as easily as the never-neverland Pres. Romney, and had taken note of his chest-beating on the increase in deportations under his watch.

Less likely, but still plausible, maybe the DREAM'ers are budding constitutional scholars who suspect that Obama overstepped his bounds, and his executive order is vulnerable to a constitutional challenge. They may even be aware of Justice Jackson's levels of presidential power whereby the president's power is at its weakest when he acts without the support of, and in opposition against, Congress. Either way, it wouldn't surprise me if a lot of DREAM'ers suspect that Obama's executive order is not on very firm legal footing.

Maybe the numbers of potential DREAM'ers are not as great as we've lead ourselves to believe. After all, the sort of aspiring middle class types who would send their kids to college, or urge their kids to join the military - both DREAM requirements - are not as likely to be undocumented, but would make sure their immigration status was secure.

Maybe DREAM'ers are typical of the low-information voters in their cohort, and were only vaguely aware of the DREAM Act. Who says immigrants aren't assimilating?

Or, maybe the DREAM'ers recognized that the DREAM Act was less about them, and more about the activitsts and leftists who wanted Obama to have an applause line (Obama: "We have brought millions of DREAM'ers out of the shadows and into college and the workplace!" Assembled multitudes: "Yayyyyyy!") without accomplising all that much.

DREAM'ers are the low-hanging fruit of the immigration debate: photogenic, sympathetic people who just want to go to college and get ahead. They have little in common with the literally millions of uneducated, unassimilated people - most of them from a single country for no better reason than it shares our southern border - and who are the true source of America's immigration angst.

Pretextual: Bay Area Chinese Protest Dispute Over Obscure Japanese Rocks

People in the Bay Area love to say they're above such petty international concerns like war, territorial disputes and (shudder) nationalistic jingoism. There must be some other reason why thousands of Chinese-Americans marched through SF's Chinatown loudly denouncing Japan's purchase of an island chain.

Joining large, angry demonstrations in Asia, Chinese-Americans from throughout the Bay Area massed in this city's Chinatown on Saturday to denounce Japan's purchase of an island chain that has long been the focus of a bitter dispute between that nation and China. 

A few thousand people crammed into Portsmouth Square at the base of Chinatown to clap, chant and cheer as a series of speakers decried Japan's announcement Tuesday that it had bought the three uninhabited East China Sea islands, called Diaoyu in China and Senkaku in Japan. 

Hoisting banners and signs reviling Japan's action as well as its bloody occupation of China during World War II, the protesters paraded down nearby streets.

Interestingly, this protest involving several thousand people marching through SF's Chinatown in support of an oppressive, nominally communist government rated not a mention in the SF Chronicle. The linked article came from the San Jose Mercury News.

The many English-speaking protesters who spoke on the record may be American citizens, but they are having trouble leaving the old country and its resentments behind.

For many people of Chinese descent, Japan's announcement regarding the islands has brought to a boil intense animosities that have simmered for decades. 

"Of course we are angered," said 72-year-old Ying-Ying Chang of San Jose, whose late daughter, Iris Chang, wrote the best-selling book "The Rape of Nanking," which detailed Japan's mistreatment of the Chinese during the war. 

Noting that she was born in China during the Japanese occupation, she added: "My parents went through such difficulties -- all Chinese did -- to resist the Japanese aggression. ... That's the kind of thing that people can never forget." 

Protester Thomas Chu, a 55-year-old health-care provider from Oakland who was born in Hong Kong, agreed. 

"I'm very upset," he said of Japan's decision to buy the islands. "It's just like somebody comes to occupy your house. It's the same feeling. ... This is basically a very wrongful act by the Japanese government."

These guys can be outraged all they want, but no one's going to care. Hasn't anyone told them that the feds only care about foreign affairs when there is a crappy 14-minute movie involved? Also, they might want to consider whether there is any point beyond Chinese sabre-rattling

China and Japan long have been at odds over ownership of the islands between Okinawa and Taiwan, which also claims them. Although the dispute dates back hundreds of years, Japan first took control of them when it defeated China in an 1895 war. After the World War II, the United States retained jurisdiction over them for a while, but eventually put them back under Japanese control in 1972. 

In August, anti-Japanese protests broke out in a number of Chinese cities after a group of Japanese nationalists landed on the disputed islands and waved Japanese flags. 

The most recent protests were set off by Japan's announcement Tuesday that it had purchased the islands from private Japanese owners. China responded by sending several surveillance ships into the disputed waters. And by Saturday, protests spread throughout China and violence broke out in a number of places, according to the Associated Press.

There's no "dispute." Japan won them fair and square in a war, lost them in another war, got them back, and have kept them in Japanese hands all this time. The islands are Japanese. Next, please.

Home Is Where You Hang Your Hat, But What If There's No Room For A Hat?

The NY Times had a feature story about a plan to bring micro-housing to the Big City, so San Francisco has joined in as well: 

Are itty-bitty apartments the next wave for urban dwellers in San Francisco? 

The city is considering shrinking the minimum size of rental units, prompted by a demographic shift toward one-person households along with rising rents and an acute housing shortage. 

"This seems like a logical, necessary response to housing in an extremely high-cost market like San Francisco," said Tim Colen, executive director of the San Francisco Housing Action Coalition, a largely developer-backed nonprofit that is "solidly behind" cutting the size of the smallest allowable apartment by about a third. 

The new minimum would be 150 square feet plus kitchen, bathroom and closet - 220 square feet in total, about the size of a one-car garage. The current minimum with all rooms included is 290 square feet. 

"The goal is to provide flexibility to affordable and market-rate developers to produce all sorts of housing," said Supervisor Scott Wiener, whose proposal to reduce apartment sizes will be considered by the Board of Supervisors on July 24. "The fact is 41 percent of San Franciscans live alone. There are a lot of people who don't need or can't afford a lot of space."

The developer knows his market:

Patrick Kennedy of Berkeley developer Panoramic Interests hopes to build the micro-units in SoMa on the site of a former guitar store at Ninth and Mission streets - "right in the thick of the new Twittersphere there." He anticipates housing young tech workers, fresh out of college, newly relocated to the city, unencumbered by possessions. 

"That demographic cohort wants to continue their collegiate experience for an indefinite amount of time," Kennedy said. "I envision this as a launching space as they get established." 

His planned 160-unit building, now in the entitlement process, will have lots of common areas: a huge lobby, a lounge on every floor and a rooftop deck. It will also have some larger apartments. It's designed for car-free living; the only parking will be for bikes, with a City CarShare spot outside.

Tech! Twitter! Guitar Store! Cohort! "Unencmbered by possessions!" If buzzwords were the fruits and nuts, we'd have Christmas every day.


The pictures of the unit are hilarious, especially the (tiny) table that converts to a bed by way of a tissue thin mattress that is rolled on to a hard wood tabletop. Not sure how many of these proposed hot single tenants will want to have hot single action on a bed that would be declared cruel and unusual punishment if it were put into a California prison. 


(Also, the window in the demonstration unit shows a million-dollar view of the Bay Bridge, but the article admits that the proposed housing is going to go into a "former guitar store" - actually a shuttered Guitar Center - located at Ninth & Mission. I guess you could eke a bridge view out of that but not much of one).


I think if there's one thing we can assume, it's that the people proposing this thing would never actually live there. 


That's not to say San Francisco doesn't need new housing stock. It seems you can always build new million-dollar condos. There was also a successful effort to tear down and rebuild the City's "projects." And, there seems to be new senior housing going up every month. Now, the City wants to build units that are little more than glorified dorm rooms. But housing for regular people, or even (God forbid) families? Forget it. 

Machine Head: Does Willie Brown Still "Run" San Francisco?

San Francisco is buzzing over a long magazine article about former mayor (and before that Assembly Speaker-for-Life) Willie Brown and his continuing influence over City Hall. 

Brown remains sparklingly charismatic and jaunty despite his seventy-eight years. He is possibly more powerful and certainly less controversial now than when he held public office. The ethics and criminal investigations that dogged his entire political career (no charges were ever filed) have been largely forgotten. The well-dressed bon vivant lives downtown in his St. Regis apartment and seems to never tire of the party circuit. 

Brown is now a private attorney under no obligation to disclose the identity of his clients or his interactions with the legion of public officials and others who owe their careers to him. (The most promising of these may be California Attorney General Kamala Harris, Brown’s onetime girlfriend.) Brown operates in a post-partisan, post-paper trail world in which he reaps the benefits of power while bearing none of the unpleasant culpability or scrutiny that typically comes with that. 

There is no scandal here. Brown helped create the system that allows him to flourish now. And he plays that system like a born musician who rarely if ever hits a wrong note. “He is smarter than everyone else. That is what it comes down to. He’s a chess player playing at a level far more advanced than everyone else,” says Corey Cook, a politics professor at the University of San Francisco. “He has always been able to figure out how to find the gray area, and never cross the line.”

There's lots of dark rumblings about billion dollar subway extensions, garbage monopolies, and other local matters; so it's beyond peculiar that this close examination of San Francisco politics has been published by ... The Washington Monthly??? That should give you an idea how closely the local media follows events in their own back yard. 

MS-13 3000: Edwin Ramos Judged Guilty of Murder

It's the end of the line for MS-13 member, and illegal alien, Edwin Ramos, as a SF jury found him guilty of murdering a man and two of his three teen-aged sons:

A man with a long gang history was convicted Wednesday of the mistaken-identity murders of a San Francisco father and his two sons, the culmination of one of the most notorious crimes in the city in recent years. 

Edwin Ramos, 25, at first was still as the San Francisco Superior Court jury returned guilty verdicts on three first-degree murder counts in the killings of Tony Bologna, 48, and his sons Michael, 20, and Matthew, 16. Soon, however, he began to cry.

Ramos was the beneficiary of one of the dumbest "only in San Francisco" initiatives ever: the practice of intentionally refusing to notify the Feds whenever a juvenile illegal alien was arrested. Here's how Ramos used his multiple second chances:

Ramos was not in the United States legally at the time he was identified as one of three alleged MS-13 members who beat up a man on a Muni bus in the Mission District in 2003. Prosecutors told the jury that Ramos and his colleagues had been "checking" passengers to determine what gang they were affiliated with. 

Instead of referring him to federal authorities for possible deportation, San Francisco juvenile authorities placed Ramos in a shelter and later released him to his mother in April 2004. 

Four days after his release, he assaulted a pregnant woman and her brother, and was sentenced to the city's Log Cabin Ranch for felony attempted robbery. He was released in February 2005, again without city juvenile authorities reporting him to federal immigration officials. 

The Juvenile Probation Department had ordered employees not to report minors to immigration officials under the agency's interpretation of San Francisco's sanctuary policy, which barred city officials from cooperating with deportations.

The widow Bologna tried and failed to sue the City, so this guilty verdict will have to do. Reading her reaction only hints at the shattered lives in the wake, not only of Ramos's violence, but also of the destruction that results from the dangerous policy preferences of liberals

Tony Bologna's widow, Danielle, who was in court for most of the trial, wept throughout the session and sobbed hardest when the court clerk read the names of her husband and sons. 

"Yes, yes, God," she cried as she heard the verdicts. 

Her son, Andrew Bologna, now 21, was the only survivor of the shootings in the Excelsior neighborhood on a bright Sunday afternoon, June 22, 2008. Tony Bologna was driving his sons home from a family gathering in Fairfield when, prosecutors said, Ramos mistook at least one of the young men for a Mission District gang rival and fired from another car. 

"He didn't get me," Andrew Bologna whispered to his mother in consolation Wednesday. 

Several members of the Bologna family, including Danielle and Andrew, wore white T-shirts with "Finally justice is served" on the front and the victims' names on the back. 

Outside court, Tony Bologna's mother, Lena Bologna, cried as she said, "All I kiss at night are the pictures of my son and my two grandsons."

"He didn't get me." There's a lot of pain and absence in those words. Oh, and the surviving members of the Bologna family are now in the witness protection program. The City did a lot more for Ramos than they ever did for innocents like the Bolognas.


I wish I could say the architects of this fiasco are out of office, but instead former DA Kamala Harris is now the State Attorney General, while Mayor Newsome is Lieutenant Governor. They were running against the sort of Republicans who don't like "negative" campaigning, so the Ramos scandal never came up. Great job. 

Something Is Happening Here And You Don't Know What It Is

Do you know who hasn't had enough positive media coverage lately? Van Jones! Luckily, the SF Chronicle is ready to leap into the breach. Their puff piece celebrating the release of his new book even dubs Jones, "Mr. Dreamy." 

Van Jones, a pioneer among the nation's eco-activists, has made his mark from the Bay Area - where he's headed three major community organizations - to the White House, where he served as President Obama's "green jobs czar." 

But Jones, whom Time Magazine named one of the 100 most influential people in the world and who has written a new best-selling book, "Rebuild the Dream," reached another landmark a week ago: The New York Times Magazine crowned him the Mr. Dreamy of the left. 

"You have these fantasies that someday they will notice you and talk about your educational achievements," the 43-year-old, Yale-educated attorney and civil rights activist said in an interview with The Chronicle last week. "Little did I know I was just a pinup." 

With the publication of his latest book, which is a call to arms to American liberals, Jones said he has attempted to showcase what he calls his "unique perspective in American life" almost three years after he resigned his White House post in the midst of a political firestorm.

No one at the Chronicle seems the least curious about the fact that Jones has been quite vocal in his efforts to organize mass protests (aka Occupy Spring) modeled explicitly on the Arab Spring. They also take him at his word that all of that 9/11 Truther stuff was just some sort of crazy Fox News thing:

In "Rebuild the Dream," Jones explains the incident at length, saying, "I never would have added my name to something like that. Even in my most radical days, I was not a conspiracy theorist." 

But what really happened, he writes in the book, is that "someone approached me at a 2004 conference, along with peace activist (and Code Pink co-founder) Jodie Evans and eco-innovator Paul Hawken" and "asked us if we would be willing to help 911 families." 

He says the three agreed - in principle - to that request, but "were never shown any petition alleging a conspiracy. None of us would have signed such a document, had we seen it." Jones said it was later shown that none of them ever did. The irony, he told The Chronicle, is that "I actually have controversial ideas, real ones that are mine - you don't have to make them up. I actually believe in marriage equality. I believe in affirmative action. I believe in real jobs. These are substantive things that people challenge me on."

Spare me. Affirmative action, gay marriage and "real jobs" aren't controversial. Jones can go anywhere in the Bay Area and earn cheap applause endorsing any of those. His 9/11 Trutherism wasn't limited to a pamphlet, as he well knows. Also, God forbid if they ask him about his very recent past as an avowed Communist. There's white washing to be done!


It goes without saying that there isn't a MSM outlet in the land that would present a conservative activist in such a positive light. Indeed, Jones' time at the White House was marked by a near-resolute incuriosity on the part of the media, which never thought to ask what a street activist from Oakland with virulently socialist views was doing with a $30 billion budget and the title of "green czar." There is a willing effort among the media to present this guy as some sort of idealistic demi-god, even as he plots in the shadows (well, on MSNBC) to carry out some sort of pseudo-revolutionary street movement to accomplish God knows what goals. Are we really going to have to rely on WND and Glen Beck to vet this guy again?

Sanctuary City: Another Illegal Immigrant Mass Murderer In San Francisco

The last big San Francisco mass murder was the Bolagna murders, where a local butcher and his teenage sons were murdered by Edwin Ramos, a MS-13 thug who also turned out to have been an illegal immigrant protected by the District Attorney's office. 


Now, there's been another spectacular act of mass murder - five Asian-Americans brutally murdered in their home with some sort of blunt instrument - and you'll never guess the immigration status of the accused murderer: 

The suspect in last week's slayings of five people in San Francisco was ordered deported in 2006 after he served a prison term for robbery and assault, but immigration authorities had to let him go free because his native Vietnam would not take him back, officials said Monday. 

Binh Thai Luc, 35, of San Francisco was released under the terms of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said undocumented immigrants must be released after six months if their country of origin won't allow them to return, according to officials with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. 

Luc is the only suspect to have been arrested in the killings in a home near City College of San Francisco. A source familiar with the investigation said authorities suspect the killer or killers may have been trying to collect on a gambling debt.

"Incredibly" (scoff) Luc had repeated run-ins with the law, but no one could quite figure out how to keep him separated from law-abiding folk.

Immigration officials had been eager to deport Luc after he was sentenced to an 11-year, 4-month term at San Quentin State Prison for a 1998 conviction for robbing a Chinese restaurant in San Jose at gunpoint, according to agency spokeswoman Gillian Christensen. 

Federal agents took him into custody when he was released from prison on Aug. 2, 2006, after serving eight years, and a judge ordered him deported a month later. 

"However, because Vietnamese authorities declined to provide appropriate travel documents, Luc ultimately had to be released because of the Supreme Court's ruling" in a 2001 case, Zadvydas vs. Davis, Christensen said. 

Officials at the Vietnam Consulate in San Francisco could not be reached for comment.

I guess this isn't San Francisco's fault, per se, as it was loser federal immigration officials who let Luc go (and the smarter-than-they-look Viet Namese who refused to take him back). Still, you have  to ask yourself what grand principle is being upheld when an obvious member of the criminal element is allowed to remain in the US indefinitely. I note that Luc's status is that of "undocumented" so it's not like he needed to kill someone to be deported. 


Oh, and I'm sure Luc won't be getting the death penalty either...because SF is special that way.

Question Authority: Sheriff Mirkarimi's Guilty Plea

I continue to be surprised that San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi's domestic violence scandal hasn't captured the fancy of right-wingers beyond the Bay Area. While the GOP has supposedly been waging some kind of "war on women," Mirkarimi's pre-trial maneuvering led to the revelation that he not only was a cad, but also got rough with other women in the past. Mirkarimi has copped the inevitable guilty plea, and appears poised to keep his job (the local media has already begun the "let's move on" drumbeat), but the DA claims to be dissatisfied: 

San Francisco District George Gascón said today he is not convinced Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi really believes he is guilty of the misdemeanor false imprisonment crime he pleaded to earlier this week, and will raise his concerns with the judge at sentencing Monday. 

"There is a guilty plea here and I know there's almost an attempt (by Mirkarimi) to deny that this has occurred: 'I didn't really do this. I'm being forced to do this.' That's very concerning to me, to be very honest with you," Gascón said in a meeting with The Chronicle editorial board. 

"We're going to address this on Monday because we're not in the custom, not in the habit, of taking a guilty plea from somebody who is not guilty," he added. "If the defendant in this case believes he is not guilty, then we should go to trial and let a jury decide."

Amazing, especially as Gascon, who used to be chief of police, is undercutting not only Mirkarimi, but also his own deputies who negotiated the plea. 


The biggest joke in all this is that Mirkarimi was elected sheriff to begin with. The guy is a typical San Francisco Green without a minute of law enforcement experience (although he did manage to graduate from the Police Academy). The sheriff's job is to run the jail, enforce evictions, guard the courthouse, etc. It's a serious, workaday job, not the sort of thing you like to see grandstanders and poseurs take on after being termed out of their previous elective office. Having Mirkarimi elected sheriff was unseemly enough, but the current groundswell of support for the idea that everyone should just move on is even less seemly. 


Dems might squawk about GOP "violence" but when one of their own actually manhandles actual women, suddenly the situation is much more "complicated."


  

Scandal Sheets: What's Going On With The Sheriff Mirkarimi Trial?

I've been so distracted by "slut-gate" that I haven't had a chance to comment on the domestic violence trial of SF Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi. Mirkarimi and his wife swear up and down that he did nothing wrong and this all a big misunderstanding, but that hasn't stopped them from trying to keep out two key bits of prosecution evidence: the videotape of Mirkarimi's bruised, tearful wife & testimony from an ex-girlfriend who says Mirkarimi bruised her arm. That's their right, of course, but all of this effort hasn't prevented some unsavory information from coming to light. 

Ross Mirkarimi forcefully grabbed his then-girlfriend's arm hard enough to leave a small bruise during a heated argument four years ago "without really realizing he was doing it," and then let go quickly and apologized after she yelled out in shock, according to newly released court documents. 

Christine "Christina" Flores, who dated Mirkarimi for about 1 1/2 years starting in 2007 when he was a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, has taken the stand twice to offer pretrial testimony in the domestic violence case against Mirkarimi, who was sworn in as sheriff in January. 

The prosecution, over the objection of Mirkarimi's attorneys, wants Flores to testify to show a pattern of abusive behavior leading up to the alleged incident involving his wife, Eliana Lopez, for which he faces three misdemeanor charges.

You'll never guess what Mirkarimi and his ex were fighting over. 

The court recently released a transcript of her testimony that described how Mirkarimi was verbally abusive to her, and how on one of those occasions, in February 2008, they fought after she found another woman's pair of underwear in his home and he got physical and grabbed her, pushing her against a wall, after she threatened to leave him.

That's the difference between the right and the left, I guess. We may label some women as sluts, but leftists treat women as sluts. 

Leverage: Why Is Sheriff Mirkarimi's Wife "This Way/That Way" About Pressing DCV Charges?

A theory is developing as to why it is that San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi's wife was willing to allow "Ivory Madison" to videotape a bruise on her arm, allegedly caused by the sheriff, but then refuse to press charges against him. She may have been trying to create a get-out-of-jail card in the event of a custody battle over their son. 

Ever since domestic abuse allegations were raised against San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, one mystery has been why his wife would let a neighbor videotape her damaging story and proceed to deny in public that anything was wrong. 

The police affidavit in support of Mirkarimi's arrest warrant that came out Tuesday provides an apparent answer - Mirkarimi's wife, Eliana Lopez, wanted the videotape as leverage in case he tried to gain custody of their young son. 

Lopez allowed her neighbor, Ivory Madison, to videotape a bruise Jan. 1 that Mirkarimi allegedly inflicted on her the day before. She told Madison that Mirkarimi had acted violently toward her once before and that "I (have) been telling him we need help," the arrest warrant affidavit says. 

Lopez told Madison she needed the video "just in case" Mirkarimi tried to win custody of their 2-year-old son, the affidavit says. Mirkarimi "is very powerful and he can do it," the affidavit quotes Lopez as saying.

Madison, of course, screwed up this brilliant plan by taking the tape to the police, and the investigation left the station without Ms. Lopez. If it makes her feel better, Lopez does have (temporary) custody of the Mirkarimi child; the DA obtained a restraining order against the sheriff which effectively separates him from his family. Nice, under the circumstances. 


Deborah Sanders also reminds us of another high-profile San Francisco public safety officer who was involved in a DV mess a few years ago:

As a point of interest, a San Francisco department head has survived a similar episode. In 2005, the husband of S.F. Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White called 911 and accused his wife of hitting him on the head twice with a pint glass. He told dispatchers he wanted to file charges. According to the Chronicle story, the husband feared for his children’s safety. 

A second dispatcher came on the line, and said: “Sir, you’re saying that your wife is Joanne Hayes-White, the fire chief?” 

“The fire chief,” White replied. “She just hit me in the head with a pint glass, twice.”
He then said he wanted her out of the house. Asked whether anyone else was in the home, White said: “My three children are, yes, that’s why I’m afraid of it.” 

Later, the Chronicle reported, the husband recanted as: 

Hayes-White told police that her husband had hit himself over the head with the glass, investigators said. 

District Attorney Kamala Harris chose not to file charges.

"Hit himself over the head with the glass??" Presumably after walking into a door? I guess the attitude back then was, hey, Irish lady fire chiefs, whaddayagonnado?

Get Back: Occupy SF Protesters Return

Occupy SF returned on Saturday afternoon, "occupying" the roof of a Wells Fargo in the Mission District. Since real San Franciscans were inside watching the game, we can assume these are outside agitators. 

Police arrested at least four people who had climbed up on the roof of a Well Fargo bank in the Mission District today as part of a protest to end to home foreclosures. 

The arrests came after the protesters, part of Occupy SF Housing, demanded that the manager of the bank at Mission and 16th streets fax a letter to Wells Fargo's chief executive officer, John Stumpf, calling for a moratorium on home evictions and foreclosures. 

"This protest today was about Wells Fargo's role in evicting and foreclosing on our neighbors in the Mission and other neighborhoods in San Francisco," said a man who identified himself as "Stardust," an organizer with Occupy San Francisco and Occupy SF Housing, who witnessed but was not arrested during today's demonstration. "We're demanding an immediate moratorium on for-profit evictions and foreclosures." 

Occupy SF Housing, a coalition that includes Occupy SF, San Francisco Tenants Union, Housing Rights Committee of SF and other groups, organized the noontime protest. As many as 200 protesters had gathered in the streets, according to observers.

Very cute, but I'll ask for the one millionth time: what are these guys doing that is so remarkable that they are deserving of the arms-length treatment they are receiving from Wells Fargo and the cops? The linked article doesn't mention this, but radio reports indicated that the cops were pretty much spectating the whole time, watching the protesters prancing around, and "waiting" for Wells Fargo to ask them to make some arrests. Lame. 


This was apparently a dry run for a planned "shut down" of SF's Financial District this Friday. Looks like the good guys are already planning to surrender to the mob. 

Sleeping With The Enemy: SF's New Sheriff Arrested for Domestic Violence

I know that we've all been distracted by the GOP primary but I'm surprised the story of San Francisco's newly elected sheriff being arrested on a domestic violence charge hasn't received wider notice:

As San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi fights three criminal charges stemming from accusations that he physically abused his wife, he also is battling for his political future.

District Attorney George Gascón on Friday charged Mirkarimi with domestic violence battery of his wife, child endangerment and dissuading a witness in connection with an incident that prosecutors believe happened on New Year's Eve.


"No one is above the law," Gascón said. "Whether this was the elected sheriff or any other San Francisco resident, this type of behavior is inexcusable, criminal and will be prosecuted."

The sheriff was booked and released from the jail he oversees on $35,000 bail. He will probably be arraigned on Tuesday.

Mirkarimi, who was sworn in as sheriff less than a week ago, said he is innocent of the charges and refused to step down while the legal case plays out.

"I believe in the system. I've said that all along," Mirkarimi said. "I believe that these charges are very unfounded, and we will fight these charges. I'm confident that in the end that we will succeed in showing the missteps."

"Sheriff" Mirkarimi was elected to office last November, and was sworn into office just last week. He is no law enforcement officer. Rather, he is former member of the Board of Supervisors who was termed out of office, and looking for another elective post. Color me skeptical as to whether an SF Green could ever be an effective sheriff, although it looks increasingly unlikely his term will last 4 weeks, let alone the full 4 years.

The DV charge arose after his wife, Eliana Lopez, who is some kind of Venezuelan soap opera star, went to a neighbor's house to commiserate over a New Year's Eve fight between the couple, and the neighbor - an attorney with the improbable name "Ivory Madison" - saw a bruise on the wife's arm that the wife admitted was caused by Mirkarimi grabbing her during the argument. Ivory took some pictures and went to the police. Supposedly, Lopez is not enthusiastic about making charges against her husband. Then, again, she was seen wandering around the periphery of an anti-Mirkarimi rally last Thursday, so I think it's safe to say she is of two minds on the issue.

(btw, what kind of social justice can there be in the world when a whiny progressive like Mirkarimi can be married to a Venezuelan TV star and be elected sheriff, despite a complete absence of any crime fighting experience?)

Mirkarimi says he's going to fight this thing tooth and nail, which is fine, but who is he fighting? It's not like evil Republicans are making trouble for him. Some of the earliest calls for him to step down have come from his (former) supporters! Is he going to call his wife a liar? Or his neighbor?

Like it or not - and count me in the "not" faction - Mirkarimi is a law enforcement officer, which requires a higher standard of behavior than we typically expect from politicians, even by the lax standards of San Francisco. Among other things, the Sheriff's Department operates the jail, transports prisoners, and provides baliff's for SF's courtrooms. The SF Superior Court's presiding judge already refused to swear Mirkarimi in precisely because of the seriousness of the charges against him. The longer this goes on, the more Mirkarimi and his colleagues are going to run into these sorts of awkward problems. Having Ross Mirkarimi serving as San Francisco's sheriff was already something of a joke. This mess pushes things up to the level of tragic farce.

Fan Base: 49'ers One Step Closer to Leaving SF

Looks like the San Francisco 49'ers really are going to move down south to Santa Clara. Good thing San Francisco has that World Series win to take the sting out of losing the City's longest standing sports franchise. 

The 49ers are a step closer to saying goodbye to San Francisco. 

Tuesday night the Santa Clara City Council voted 7-0 to approve plans to develop and pay for a new 68,500-seat stadium for the football team that has played in San Francisco since 1946. 

"Tonight we got a virtual shovel in the ground," said Mayor Jamie Matthews. 

With the approval, the 49ers - who have been in San Francisco for 65 years and won five Super Bowls - will likely leave Candlestick Park and play home games in Santa Clara for four decades. Construction could start next year and conclude in time for the 2014 season. 

Members of the City Council were acting as the Santa Clara Stadium Authority as they considered whether to approve an $850 million loan to build the $1 billion stadium on a 15-acre site that is currently a parking lot next to the Great America amusement park.

This is as clear a case of money triumphing over sentiment as you will ever find. Santa Clara is directly north of San Jose, 50 miles away from San Francisco. The 49'ers, the pro sports team most closely linked in the public's mind with San Francisco, will have as much relationship to the City as the Baltimore Ravens have to Washington DC. But, SF was unwilling to foot the bill to build a new stadium, while Santa Clara's city fathers were more than willing to open the spigots, taking on debt equal to about $7,000 per resident in order to fund the stadium construction.


Can't say as I entirely blame SF's anti-jock political class. The SF Giants built their stadium with their own money, with the City helping clear away red tape. The Giants proved that you can fill seats and field a contender even as you are self-financing your stadium, but for whatever reason the 49'ers owners couldn't be bothered to do the same. I guess if the choice is between spending free/subsidized money versus spending your own, then the choice is clear. Hope they enjoy the inevitable years of litigation that follows deals like this. 


It's a shame a storied franchise is leaving the City like this, but it's not like actual San Francisco residents care all that much. Candlestick is located at the utter southernmost point in the City, and draws fans more from the southern suburbs than from the City's neighborhoods. The move to the south simply makes official what has already been true for a long time. 

This One Goes To 11: Philly Schools Superintendent Applies for Unemployment Benefit

Lots of talk radio outrage over former Philadelphia Schools Superintendent, Arlene Ackerman, who applied for - and will apparently receive - unemployment benefits after accepting a $900K buy-out from the district. Cue the outrageous outrage:

Former Philadelphia schools superintendent Arlene Ackerman, who was given a nearly $1-million buyout earlier this year, has applied for unemployment. 

School District spokesman Fernando Gallard today confirmed that Ackerman wants to collect state unemployment benefits. 

“The former superintendent did apply for unemployment,” Gallard told KYW Newsradiotoday.
This comes after taxpayers funded a $905,000 buyout when she was shown the door in August. 

As part of her separation agreement, the School Reform Commission agreed not to contest any unemployment claims she might file.

Actually, what they've got in Philadelphia is not a school board, but a "School Reform Commission." I assume that's because the actual school board had become so corrupt and pointless as to be incapable of fulfilling its mission. Just to add to the fun, the funds for Ackerman's buy-out came from private donors. I'd love to hear the fund raising pitch for that one. 


There's been a lot of hooting about how Ackerman is nothing more than a parasite living off the tax payers, but I don't think that's quite fair. She was school superintendent in San Francisco from 2000 - 2006 and did a respectable job there. She came in to clean up a nest of corruption in the district, resulting in a number of arrests. She made a real effort to confront the teachers union's insistence on putting its interests ahead of the kids. Parents loved her, but you can guess how things ended. Ackerman became the focus of the sort of "ethics complaints" that are normally reserved for Sarah Palins of the world. The school board was dominated by a Green Party faction that made a determined effort to make Ackerman's life miserable. Hey, sometimes progressive politics demands that we protect corruption and union featherbedding! Ackerman left, taking a buy-out and heading off to Philly. 


I have no idea what happened in Philly the last few years. Ackerman appears to have created some magnet programs at low-performing schools, but these programs were expensive and not popular with the Reform Commission. There have been some spectacular incidents of racial violence at the schools, including an attack on some Asian kids. The last straw for the Commission appears to have been an unexpected budget shortfall, but you would think such a shortfall wouldn't come as a surprise to a Commission charged with operating/reforming the schools. 


None of this is anything to brag about, but if you are determined to dig up bad news about any urban school district in order to undermine the superintendent, you don't have to work too hard. For whatever reason, Ackerman rubbed someone(s) the wrong way, and she had to go. 


Is it silly for Ackerman to seek unemployment benefits? Sure. But, look at things from her perspective. She's been brought into three separate urban school districts (DC, SF & Philly) with the explicit understanding that she will reform a broken system. She always comes in talking about how she will put the kids first, and is clear in confronting the teachers unions, and others who live off the school system. Don't know about Philly, but the parents in DC and SF loved her. But, magically, it always turns out that Ackerman is Doing Something Wrong either by spending money on magnet schools, treating teachers high-handedly, or what have you. And so she goes, often with a pre-printed NEA sign taped to her back. 


If it were me, I'd start feeling pretty bitter about the whole set up. Filing for unemployment benefits might be a small thing, but it would make me feel a little better. 

There Will Be Bloods & Crips: The Latest in Soft-On-Crime Initiatives

The news out of Richmond, California today is that a bloody fight broke out at City Hall...in the office of a gang prevention unit. The details are pretty funny... if you think bringing the ghetto into the corridors of power is a bad idea:    

A bloody fistfight broke out among rival gang members at Richmond City Hall on Friday, according to police.

Seven men from different parts of the city brawled in a third-floor suite that houses the city’s Office of Neighborhood Safety around 12:30 p.m. Friday, department director Devone Boggan said.

He said all of the men involved in the melee are enrolled in the office’s “Operation Peacemaker” fellowship and happened to show up at the office at Richmond’s Civic Center at the same time unexpectedly.

The fight stemmed from an “exchange of looks” and heated words after the men spotted each other, Boggan said.

Love how these bright young men - who are all in their twenties, grow the f*** up, please - are Operation Peacemaker "fellows." How intellectual...and ineffectual. 


Of course, there's always a bright side when your precious gang prevention group leads to more gang violence: 

The ONS director said he sees the unarmed brawl as a sign of progress, since the young men involved all have a history of gun violence.

“They decided to pick their fists up instead of a gun,” Boggan said. “Everyone got up and walked away—not one mother has to bury their child this week.”

And, over in San Francisco, the Board of Supervisors will be considering whether to grant a tax break to City businesses that hire convicted felons. Great idea! Non-felonious people are placed at a disadvantage during a job search, and any employer foolish enough to hire a convicted criminal will be strapping a grenade to their business.   

San Francisco businesses that hire people with felony convictions would get a tax break, under legislation expected to be introduced today.

"Ex-felons are among the most challenged populations in getting work," said Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, who is crafting the plan.
...The goal is to shave about $10,000 off a business' companywide payroll tax burden for every new convict it hires full time. The tax relief for companies hiring part-time employees would be less.

The exact formula was still being developed Monday. The city's payroll tax is equivalent to 1.5 percent of the value of an employee's compensation package.

Supervisor Mirkarimi is running for sheriff by the way. We're going to have some tough as nails law enforcement in San Francisco, let me tell you. 


For whatever reason, liberals are forever pandering to the criminal element seeking to de-criminalize whole swaths of the criminal codes and trying to develop "alternatives" to the simple, easy-to-understand solution to crime: lock 'em up. 

No Class War: Occupy SF Fails to Occupy SF

Looks like Occupy San Francisco is still trying and trying and trying to gin up an actual occupation of San Francisco. At first they tried to set up camp outside the SF Federal Reserve, but got rousted. Next they tried setting up an "encampment" in Justin Herman Plaza, which is at the cross-roads of The City's tourist and business districts (and which you may remember from the concert next to the highway in Rattle & Hum), but The Man said no, leading to another near melee:   

Five people were arrested Sunday night when San Francisco police raided the Occupy SF encampment on Justin Herman Plaza, police said.

Police in riot gear marched onto the plaza around 10:30 p.m. and began taking down activists' tents and other camping gear and loading them into city trucks. City law says people cannot camp on the plaza, police said.

"They were told throughout the day to remove the tents pertaining to the violation," police said in a statement.
Protesters surrounded the city trucks and refused to move, police said. One protester slashed a truck tire. Four were arrested on suspicion of being pedestrians in a roadway and resisting arrest. Another was arrested on suspicion of battery on a police officer.

This is really pathetic, and not an occupation at all. You can move freely throughout the City and engage in all sorts of fascist exploitation of the working class without having to trip over the few dozen professional protesters who say they are occupying us. The ones in Wall Street are even more useless. Have the markets missed a second of trading as a result of their occupation of Zucotti Park? Of course not. 


I keep hearing that polling majorities "support" the Occupiers. That's hard to believe as hardly anyone in the United States has had to encounter our occupiers. 

Locked Down: SFPD Removes Leftist Encampment

Not to be outdone, local lefties in San Francisco have commenced their own "Occupy SF" movement. After a dramatic 800-man march, the .0000099%-ers set up camp outside the local Federal Reserve bank. After a couple of hours, the SFPD ordered them to take off. Vigorous "protest" commenced:   

San Francisco police and Public Works crews dismantled a Financial District encampment early today that had been occupied by activists protesting economic inequality.

About 80 officers wearing riot helmets confronted some 200 campers and their supporters at about 12:45 a.m. at the Occupy SF camp in front of the Federal Reserve Bank's building at 101 Market St. near Main Street. The officers guarded city workers who removed tents, sleeping bags and other belongings.

One protester was arrested for allegedly assaulting an officer.

The camp was taken down hours after several hundred people marched through the Financial District in an Occupy SF-organized protest. The group formed in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement, which has been staging protests in New York over the past month over what it calls corporate greed and the excessive concentration of wealth and power among 1 percent of the nation's population.

Here's a dramatic recounting of the events on Market Street:  

At around 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, police handed a notice to Occupy SF protesters that although the city and Police Department "celebrate and protect" free speech and the right to assemble, their encampment violated several city laws. They included a ban on having an open flame on a street or sidewalk, creating a public nuisance, disorderly conduct in lodging and serving food without a permit.

Protesters began taking down tents and removing belongings, activists said today, but also posted the police notice online. More than 100 supporters subsequently arrived at the encampment, some of whom sat in a meditation circle.

At 12:45 a.m., Department of Public Works employees arrived in trucks and began removing campers' possessions as police stood guard.

"They took everything," said one protester, who asked to be identified only as Leslie M. "They said if we showed an effort that we were removing our stuff and taking down our tents, it would be OK."

About 50 protesters stood in front of one truck to try to prevent it from leaving, activists said. The trucks took an alternate route and drove away via Main Street.

Leslie said she had seen officers scuffle with some protesters and that two men had been led away in handcuffs. Police spokesman Lt. Troy Dangerfield, however, said that only one protester had been arrested, for allegedly assaulting an officer. He did not have the man's name.

Give these clowns credit for agit-prop and media savvy. They are "occupying" San Francisco, even though their numbers are so small you wouldn't know an occupation was underway unless they were standing right in front of you. The Tea Parties had greater numbers, and were a truly spontaneous uprising, but they were also polite, well behaved, and respectful (not to mention focused in their message). These guys are literally professional protesters. A couple weeks ago they were disrupting service on BART. They represent nobody, yet they know their confrontational behavior will draw cameras and headlines in a way that Tea Parties can only envy. Not fair, but that's the way of the world. 


That doesn't mean the "Occupy" people will prevail. But, they are going to get louder, shriller, and smellier, and the media lens will become wider. The goal is chaos and destruction; it's to create an aura of instability that will frighten low-information types who just want to see bad news banished from their TV. Conservatives have to be prepared to fight these guys; not in the streets, but at the ballot box, at the dinner table, and in the media. Otherwise, they'll become the only "movement" in town. 

Art For Art's Sake

Nothing like a cheesy art scandal to liven up the end of the week. The San Francisco Art Commission awarded NYC artist Tom Otterness a $750,000 contract to install some art in the new Central Subway. Turns out that Otterness has a scandalous past. Back in his young and foolish days in the Seventies, Otterness adopted a dog from an animal shelter and, uh, shot it. Dead. With a movie camera rolling. This upset some people back in the day, even as it gave Otterness his initial burst of noteriety. He feels bad about it now, though:

Tom Otterness, a Brooklyn-based artist, has created public art all over Europe, Asia, Canada and the United States, with an emphasis on New York City.

But he garnered notoriety in 1977 when he adopted a black-and-white dog from an animal shelter and shot it to death with the camera rolling. The footage ended up in his avant-garde movie "Shot Dog Film."

Otterness has since apologized, telling the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in 2008, "Thirty years ago when I was 25 years old, I made a film in which I shot a dog. It was an indefensible act that I am deeply sorry for. Many of us have experienced profound emotional turmoil and despair. Few have made the mistake I made. I hope people can find it in their hearts to forgive me.

Otterness has produced a lot of public art, most of it of a whimsical nature. Knowing that the guy shot a dog does tend to color your reaction, regardless of the charm his work might carry.

Now, talk to a lot of social conservatives who have been at the front lines of the "Piss Christ"-style controversies of the last few decades, and I'll bet most of them will agree that the majority of modern artists are driven by "profound emotional turmoil and despair." For his part, SF mayor Ed Lee seems to agree. The project has been put on hold.

Protest Re-Test: Anonymous Prepares For More BART Protests

The Anonymous protesters say they will be returning to the breach and will disrupt BART service in downtown San Francisco this Thursday during the evening rush hour. The plan is simple, but the rationale is incomprehensible.

BART protesters vowed to block the fare gate exits at the Powell Street Station Thursday in a direct confrontation with transit district officials.

A handful of demonstrators gathered in front of the Civic Center fare gates Monday to detail their plans for Thursday's planned protest.

By shutting down the fare gates at 5 p.m. Thursday, the protesters hope to force BART officials to open the emergency gates and let passengers at the station leave without paying their fares, said Krystof Lopaur, an organizer for No Justice, No BART.

If BART officials refuse to open the fare gates for the protests, as they would after a baseball game, then it will prove that their main concern isn't public safety, but blocking the protest, Lopaur said.

That's right! If you don't release trapped commuters, then you must hate free speech and civil rights! Wow, how will BART officials cut through this Gordian Knot? Uh, can I suggest arresting these idiots and actually charging them with a crime that will keep them in jail for more than two hours?

(btw, I don't get this idea that BART should open the fare gates "as they would after a baseball game." BART doesn't go anywhere near the SF ballpark. As for Oakland's baseball stadium, I've taken BART to A's games several times and never gone through an open fare gate).

As I've explained before, these repetitive protests arise from the shooting of a drunken bum who committed suicide by BART cop back in July. But, the protests really took on a life of their own when BART officials turned off the wi-fi in some stations after it became clear that protesters were coordinating their actions - which included climbing on trains and blocking doors - via Blackberry and Facebook. Turns out that there is a constitutional right to wi-fi access in public transportation systems, even when the "speech" at issue is criminal. Thanks for the update, guys.

These are some of the least attractive, least sympathetic protesters I've even seen. Their cause is not just. Indeed, it's ridiculous. Yet, no one seems able to stop them. They announced their latest action at a BART station, for Heaven's sake! I know San Franciscans are supposed to be liberal, but I can guarantee that nobody will mind if, just this once, these protesters get a whiff of grapeshot, or the 21st century equivalent.

Gold To Lead: Violence Mars SF-Raiders Game

There's a tradition for the Bay Area's two NFL teams to play one another during the pre-season (they meet up occasionally during the regular season). Usually this involves a lot of trash talking and good-natured ribbing, especially if you wear a Raiders jersey to Candlestick. But, this year's rivalry game was a little more...intense.

San Francisco police were seeking witnesses Sunday to the shooting of two men and the severe beating of a third in a restroom at Candlestick Park, as city and league officials condemned a rash of attacks and brawls that marred the annual preseason football game between the Raiders and 49ers.

The most severely injured victims from Saturday night - a 24-year-old wearing an anti-49ers T-shirt who was shot, and a 26-year-old who was beaten - were listed in serious condition at San Francisco General Hospital, suggesting they would survive.

Meanwhile, video footage of fights between fans at the stadium popped up on YouTube, showing a chaotic and dangerous scene at an event that drew tens of thousands of fans.

Memo to excitable football hooligans: it's a pre-season game!!! At this point, you're not even seeing the starters any more. Are you really going to go to jail over that?

More seriously this looks like a real watershed event for the 49'ers. Maybe the Raiders have the rep as a bad boy team, but all of this happened at Candlestick, with Raiders fans apparently bearing the brunt of the attacks. I heard on the radio this morning (so it *must* be true) that the the NFL stadium with the most arrests last year was (drumroll) Candlestick. Clearly we are a long way from the days when 49'ers fans were derided as brie-eating wine sippers. After the Giants won the World Series last year, I wrote that this had marked the moment when San Francisco officially went from being a football town to being a baseball town. Now, it's even worse. Now, it's gotten to the point where a lot of regular people - folks who have been 49'ers fans for decades - won't even go to games any more.

Like a lot of people I haven't been to Candlestick in years (maybe not since the late-1990's), but word on the street has been that it has become more and more unpleasant with each passing year. We're talking a drunken scene in the parking lot, boorish fans in the stands, and lots of fighting. Not surprisingly the 49'ers descent has tracked its ownership troubles. Before Eddie DeBartelo was pushed out when he got mixed up in a gambling/corruption case in Louisiana, he at least was able to field a winning team, and ran a classy operation. No more. The Yorks have demonstrated once and for all that their frank disinterest in the team (they still live in Ohio, for pete's sake!) has caused it to fester and fall apart. And that's not to mention the team's persistent losing ways.

Also, everyone's dancing around this, but there was apparently a heavy gang presence at Candlestick on Saturday night. ESPN is reporting that many of the fights arose from tension between ... get this...Nortenos and Surenos gang members. Random acts of dumb violence in public - it's another job that Americans won't do!

The obvious solution is to increase security at the games, both with the police and private security guards. But, that's only the beginning. Football games, especially those involving mediocre teams, are often little more than elaborate beer delivery systems. That has to be cut off at some point. But the 49'ers have to deal with the fact that at least some of their fans are become more trouble than they are worth.