Articles Posted August 2011
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Adachi Makes Case for Mayoralty
Determined at an early age to work toward improving the justice system, Adachi earned his degrees through the University of California system. He worked up the ladder in San Francisco’s Public Defender’s Office, becoming chief attorney. Adachi was elected San Francisco’s Public Defender in 2002, inheriting an underfunded, short-staffed department overseeing over 20,000 cases a year. He reorganized the department and developed programs within the juvenile justice system to help wayward youth turn their lives around. Four years later, Adachi was recognized by the American Bar Association winning its award for the best public law office in the country.
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Is the GOP the Anti-Science Party?
What is Darwinian evolution? Charles Darwin, whose theory of evolution set forth in his “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life,” and subsequent writings, is considered the foundation of biology. But even after 152 years, his theory supported by information which has been tested again and again over time is obviously still anathema to Perry, Bachmann, Paul, and The Tea Party.
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Avalos, Hall, Dufty, Alioto-Pier Lead Field in SF Contributor Support
Avalos leads with 90 percent of his contributions sourced to contributors residing in San Francisco, closely followed by Hall (82 percent), Dufty (73 percent) and Alioto-Pier (72 percent).
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Avalos Wins Harvey Milk Club Sole Endorsement
The HMDC’s political action committee in July voted to sole endorse Avalos, but a subsequent complaint lodged by Debra Walker forced last eve’s membership vote.
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Community Groups File Lawsuit
Over AT&T Utility Box InstallationsThe coalition is filing the lawsuit to compel The City to conduct and environmental review as required by CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act. CEQA requires that an environmental impact report (EIR) be prepared before the City considers any project that may have significant environmental impacts, including cumulative effects on aesthetics. The lawsuit seeks to immediately halt the installation of any utility boxes while the case is pending.
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Candidates Slam Gascón
Over Refusal to Investigate Run, Ed, Run CampaignInfuriated by the blatant abuse of election campaign laws by Pak and Progress for All, Kopp wrote to Gascón and the US Attorney’s office, August 1, requesting them to investigate potential violations of election laws and other improprieties related to the Run, Ed, Run campaign. Gascón said Friday his office would not proceed with an investigation, one day after Victor Hwang, an assistant district attorney and co-chair for the Run, Ed, Run campaign, claimed, “I am confident that any neutral fact-finder will conclude that there is no basis to these false allegations.”
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America’s Economic Woes
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in July 2011, the unemployment rate in the U.S. — seasonally adjusted — was 9.1 percent or 13.9 million unemployed persons. (It is 12 percent in California.) This figure does not include 2.8 million persons who wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.
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Peskin Links People’s Republic of China to SF Mayor’s Race
However ludicrous such a conspiratorial notion may sound, former Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin believes San Francisco voters should be concerned of the possible influence of international politics in this year’s race for San Francisco mayor.
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Lee and Herrera Hide
from Fillmore African-American ForumSo anyway, now we understand why Dennis Herrera skipped the event. He knew that wannabe-rapper Dufty and some actual really tough black activists would be in the audience screaming for his head for daring to tell the truth about another of Willie’s bracelet charms. So, he went to a Democratic Club meeting in John Avalos’ district to avoid the heat.
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Mayor Lee Snubs African-American Community
for Pub CrawlLee, whose campaign for mayor has been beset with scrutiny from Federal prosecutors over complaints of alleged campaign ethics violations, was formerly invited to participate in the debate but did not respond, said AADC President Erris Egerly.
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Rabbi Lerner Calls for Increased International Pressure
to Overthrow Syrian RegimeBoycotts are more effective when there is a functioning democracy in a given state; but when people have no recourse but demonstrations in the streets, the best we can do is to provide assistance to the demonstrators in any way we can, while simultaneously urging them to provide assurances to the Alawite minority that the regime they seek to set up in place of the current dictator will be one which respects minority rights (a message that the Kurds of northeastern Syria must already believe, else why would they risk their lives, as they have, to join the anti-Assad demonstrations). If Alawites could be assured that the democratic regime aspired to by the protestors would in fact be safe for minorities, they’d be more willing to abandon the dictatorial rule they support in part out of fear of the alternatives.
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Avalos, Onek, Mirkarimi Win Democratic Party
First Place EndorsementsCity Attorney Dennis Herrera and Alameda Prosecutor Sharmin Bock each garnered the DCCC’s second-place endorsement in their respective races for mayor and district attorney. No other candidates were endorsed.
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“Civility Lee” Turns Uncivil During Mayoral Debate
At this point and much to my surprise there was a lot of booing and hissing from the audience. I thought at first that it was because Lee had just been talking about how he’d brought a “new civility” to City Hall, but then I looked around and saw Steve Falk and Jim Lazarus and Kenny Cleveland, and a host of others who work for billionaires, and it cracked me up. The message to Lee was clear: Don’t bad mouth any billionaires in front of us!
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Once Upon a Time in Syria
In February 1982, Hafez ordered the Syrian army to bombard the town of Hama in order to quell a revolt by the Muslim Brotherhood. In what became known as the Hama massacre, an estimated 17,000 to 40,000 people were killed, including about 1,000 soldiers. The attack has been described as among the single deadliest acts by any Arab government against its own people in the modern Middle East. The vast majority of the victims were civilians. In the fifth-month of the present-day uprising, Bashar Assad is now bombarding Hama. Like father, like son.
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Good Government Measure Qualifies for June 2012 Ballot
Proponents and volunteers gathered 12,869 signatures in less than five weeks to qualify the initiative, despite operatives from Recology – the holder of the City’s highly lucrative garbage collection monopoly – deploying an expensive media campaign on both network and cable TV and funding a series of allegedly illegal actions to intimidate petition workers, harass petition signers, and buy or steal petition booklets.
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Waves of Protest Pound at BART, Shutting Down Stations
What started as a fizzled anti-police brutality protest at BART’s Civic Center station has spiraled into a San Francisco moment with echoes of the Arab Spring and V For Vendetta. Following an unprecedented decision by BART officials to preemptively cut off cell phone service on August 11, in a bid to disrupt a protest that never developed, public outrage led to further protest today and a hacking attack on MyBart.org by the notorious international hacker group Anonymous over the weekend.
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Dateline Iowa: Republican Party Hoisted on its Own Petard
Ron Paul (barely) – Paul landed less than a single percentage point behind Bachmann (although your wouldn’t know it from the conservative media’s instant anointment of Bachmann, Romney and Perry as the party’s “Top Tier Candidates”). A perhaps surprising showing in this conservative state since many of his libertarian positions are, well, provocative: legalize marijuana; abolish income tax; allow Iran to have nukes (“everybody else does…”); pull the US out of the United Nations and NATO – and the Middle East; allow states to secede from the union; eliminate the Federal Reserve; eliminate legal tender laws and sales tax on gold and silver – heck, let the free market determine monetary standards. Dr No has voted against virtually every initiative for government spending and new taxes in his 14 years as a Texas Congressman – more no’s than any other office holder. All of which impressed Iowans enough to rank him the second most-desirable Republican candidate. The American People – in Iowa – have spoken! But who’s listening?
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