By Pat Monk
June 30, 2008
Dear Jake,
Good morning.
I have to confess that sometimes the positions you take leave me totally bewitched, bothered and bewildered. You are frequently a strong voice for humane, progressive principles and policies, but then you unaccountably fall prey to the darker forces that lurk within us all, much though we try to suppress them.
Mayor Gavin Newsom has been steadily privatizing city government and functions by cutting funding for effective community-based and lead operations; creating cumbersome bureaucracies to replace them; appointing his lackeys to oversee them, further depleting the city coffers; manufacturing highly remunerative, and often dupilicative sinecures for his political supporters etc. All under the guise of serving the public interest, but in reality to service the corporate interests that are increasingly seizing control of our city, and to advance his political career at our expense, like so many of his predecessors.
His hubris and calculated disenfranchisement of the ‘less fortunate’ residents of San Francisco is deplorable, possibly even malfeasance. Now he is proposing cutting funding for Public Financing of Campaigns!!! And you are considering enabling him??
He ‘promises’ to restore these dollars, if possible, at some future unspecified time and if circumstances allow. And you believe him ?? How many of the campaign ‘promises’ he has previously made have been kept. For example, didn’t he ‘promise’ to be held accountable and resign if he didn’t bring down the homicide rate ? The list of deceit and disinformation is long and tedious.
Public financing, along with IRV, is one of the few mechanisms whereby progressives who are not yet beholden to special interests, have a slim opportunity to gain elected office and combat the money of the corporate speculators and their enablers. Please do not condone this latest attack on the right of the people to be involved and participate in our declining democracy.
The recent ‘popular vote’ that passed Prop G and defeated Prop F, is just the latest example of how easily corporate privateers, allied with big unions, can pervert the process and purchase power with massive infusions of money that the people can not hope to match.
I well remember a conversation I had with you at City Hall a couple of years ago, when you had just returned from a well earned vacation in England. It was on the eve of the vote in which the Board approved the RDA/Lennar/Newsom/Maxwell scam to gentrify and whitewash Bayview Hunters Point. I asked if you had decided which way you were going to vote, your response was, “It’s so complicated, I haven’t had time to study it yet”. You must be a very quick study as the following day you voted in favor of this proposal. Now the chickens are coming home to roost and dumping on the golden dome.
All the warnings and predictions we attempted to communicate to you and your colleagues about Lennar and their co-conspirators are coming to pass. I urge you to take a little more time this time to consider the ramifications, before you vote to further disempower the citizenry.
In closing I will quote you from an interview you gave to Tim Redmond of the SF Bay Guardian on October 17th. 2007. ” I suspect that Newsom succumbs to the path of least resistance because of the tremendous amount of pressure that the private sector puts on trying to gain control over public assets”. In light of some of your recent positions that now sounds a little like the pot calling the kettle black.
The people’s right and opportunity to gain access to positions of elected public office and influence is one of our most important ‘assets’ and protections against tyranny in all it’s myriad forms. Please, dont get fooled again by Newsom and his empty promises. The spectre of this duplicitous Mouthpiece for Mammon as Governor is unthinkable and Orwellian, confront him now and join us on the light side Jake.
Sincerely,
Patrick Monk.RN. Noe Valley.
The Hunger Site
No Comments
Comments for Open Letter to Supervisor Jake McGoldrick are now closed.