Articles Posted in the Politics Category

  • Mayor Lee Presents Budget Proposal

    Mayor Lee Presents Budget Proposal

    To help balance the budget, Lee’s proposed budget includes $106 million in reductions to city departments, including $32 million from the Department of Public Health, $26 million in salary increase deferrals and $14 million in cuts to Human Services.

  • Court Jester Surveys Political Field on Memorial Day

    Court Jester Surveys Political Field on Memorial Day

    Same for Leland Yee whose one great ability is to raise money and hide its source in piles of litter. Ed Jew has a better chance of being elected Mayor than Phil Ting does and Dennis Herrera has more arrows in him than General Custer. Face it, unless Chicken John declares again, this is as exciting as this field is gonna get.

  • Are For-Profit Prisons the Answer
    to California Prison Overcrowding?

    Why is the prison system overcrowded? California’s tough-on-crime policies have led to the passage of hundreds of laws that increased prison terms. One of the most significant was the 1977 policy mandating that every prisoner leaving the system get paroled resulting in thousands of ex-convicts being sent back to jail each year for minor parole violations. Last year’s change in parole laws, which allows some non-violent offenders to avoid parole and others to avoid getting sent back to jail for minor violations, was a step in the right direction.

  • Documentary of the Year: Lifting the Veil

    Documentary of the Year: Lifting the Veil

    Lifting the Veil is the long overdue film that powerfully, definitively, and finally exposes the deadly 21st century hypocrisy of U.S. internal and external policies, even as it imbues the viewer with a sense of urgency and an actualized hope to bring about real systemic change while there is yet time for humanity and this planet.

  • Charleston: A Hodgepodge of Impressions,
    Trivia and History

    The Sesquicentennial did go out of its way to point out that Charleston’s economic and political power were attained on the backs of thousands and thousands of slaves. As of 1860 the percentage of Southern families that owned slaves has been estimated to be 43 percent in the lower South, including South Carolina. Half the owners had one to four slaves. A total of 8000 planters owned 50 or more slaves in 1850. According to the 1860 U.S. census, 393,975 individuals, representing 8 percent of all U.S. families, owned 3,950,528 slaves.

  • 2011 Justice Summit: An Ode to Criminal Defense

    In his opening remarks at his annual summit on criminal justice on May 18, San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi assured the audience that this year’s conference was to be “by far, the most exciting” of the seven he has organized and hosted.

  • Overheard in Fog City: Yee Opposes Shark Finning?

    This is currently a hot topic

    Overheard in Fog City: Yee Opposes Shark Finning?

    “I am absolutely opposed to the killing of sharks,” Yee said. “I think that the finning of sharks is not something I support. I’ve always said that and I continue to say that. We ought to not allow that to happen. I am very supportive of banning the finning of any sharks whatsoever.”