We have all no doubt heard that gunman, Jared Lee Loughner, 22, shot Congresswoman Giffords as she met with constituents outside a grocery store, killing Arizona’s chief federal judge John M. Roll, and five others including a five-year old, and leaving Ms. Giffords fighting for her life with a bullet through her brain.
Lt. Governor-elect Gavin Newsom? He did his job well. He was handed the mayoralty torch from Brown in 2003 on a silver platter. Though he screwed up with the 49ers leaving town (generating the ire of Brown), he repaid his benefactors in full by agreeing to delay his swearing in (today at 1:00 pm) so that Brown and Pak could remain in control of the mayor’s office, the Board, the District Attorney’s office and, next, perhaps, the police department.
Though Newsom has not indicated who has accepted the appointment to replace former DA Kamala Harris, insiders believe Deputy District Attorney Paul Henderson is the likely appointee.
Proposition 13 unfairly treats commercial property like residential property. In San Francisco, for example, according to Assessor Phil Ting, prior to Proposition 13, commercial property owners paid 59 percent of property tax revenues and residential property owners paid 41 percent. In 2008, commercial property owners paid just 43 percent of property taxes, while residential property owners paid 57 percent. I believe voters would approve reversing these 2008 ratios.
Newsom is the reason there’s an interim mayor. He got himself elected lieutenant governor in November. Then he decided he’d postpone his swearing-in so he could appoint his own replacement. Brown is the former mayor who used to call the Board of Supervisors his “mistresses.” And Pak is Chinatown’s longtime wheeler and dealer.
All of us Americans strive for the American Dream, and this film shows you why your dream is getting farther and farther away. Do you know how your money is created? Or how banking works? Why did housing prices skyrocket and then plunge? Do you really know what the Federal Reserve System is and how it affects you every single day?
While Dufty can pretend that his brain is no more powerful than that of Forest Gump, it is this kind of political wheeling and dealing that makes most common people sick to their stomach and uninterested in actively participating in the political process. Earlier in the evening while the four outgoing Supervisors said their goodbyes and received a combination of sincere and half-hearted honors from their colleagues, Bevan Dufty admitted what everybody already knows, that he has been a constant swing vote. But with the way the voting process had been laid out and in the fast moving political eddies of the successor mayor tidal pool there simply wasn’t enough time to “hold out” effectively so Dufty was forced to unceremoniously flip-flop instead.
Recent Comments