Frisco Vista

I’m back from vacation, just in time to find that governor Arnold has sent a not very subtle message to the city by the bay, and the California legislature. As reported in the Guardian’s online site, the governor sent the following letter accompanying his veto of a bill sponsored by SF Assemblyman Tom Ammiano that [...]

Rebecca Cathcart, writing in today’s NYT about Gov. Schwarzenegger calling for a study of legalizing marijuana in California, says:
Sales could raise $1.2 billion to $1.34 billion in annual tax revenue, some estimates say.
But that would be little salve for the state’s deficit, which could reach $20 billion in 15 months if ballot initiatives proposed by [...]

Some pranksters civic-minded individuals replaced street signs for Bush Street in the city with Obama signs.

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Image from Dawn Endico’s photostream
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Recently Willie Brown offered his take on the Blagojevich scandal. He writes:
Take Caroline Kennedy, who looks like she’s in line to get Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Senate seat in New York. If she goes to the governor, David Paterson, and tells him, “I’m Caroline Kennedy, and I have distinguished myself. And I am able to raise [...]

This newsreel footage documents 1967 antiwar in San Francisco and elsewhere.

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I went over to City Hall over my lunch hour today and caught the press conference and celebration over the Supreme Court’s ruling that marriage does not depend on sexual orientation. I recorded some parts with my cell phone’s video — the quality is not the best but some of the spirit of the event [...]

Yesterday I attended the Goldman Environmental Prize Awards, as I have done most years since sometime in the early 1990s. The event is held in the city’s beautiful War Memorial Opera House, with a reception afterward at City Hall. The award honors grassroots environmental activists from around the world with a cash prize of [...]

The following is an AP news story. The role of politics has dogged the Olympics almost since its founding. The 1936 games in Berlin, the 1968 games in Mexico City, and the 1972 games in Munich are a few notable instances.
SAN FRANCISCO — Tibetan immigrants protesting Chinese control of the Himalayan region vowed on March [...]

Here is what the Chronicle says about their choice:
The American political system needs a period of reprieve and renewal.
It needs a reprieve from a White House that draws power from fear, sneers at any science that gets in the way of corporate or theocratic missions and stubbornly adheres to policies that leave the nation sinking [...]

“Secret” and “nonprofit” are words that should not appear together. But the donors who have been financing Arnold Schwartzenegger’s jets and luxury suites have until recently somehow managed to keep their names private (despite nonprofit disclosure laws).
The donors receive tax breaks because their donations are made to an organization with nonprofit status. According to [...]

How can we prevent another catastrophic spill in the San Francisco Bay? Oil is bad enough but there are also vessels carrying chemical cargo that could potentially require the evacuation of most of the Bay Area if released in a spill.
One suggestion has been to require double hulls on cargo ships. This is a fine [...]

In one of the more Byzantine maneuvers in local politics recently, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom has requested that all city department heads and commission appointees submit their resignations so he can decide whom to reappoint after the January election (in which he appears to face no serious challenger). According to the Bay Guardian — [...]

Most people think of the Bay Area as a hotbed of liberalism. Which it is. But the region was also host to a passel of robber barons. Several of these immensely wealthy industrialists settled on a hill overlooking downtown San Francisco — “the symbolic nexus of all old California money and power,” as Joan [...]

I took this photo of the Bay Bridge from the Ferry Building. But a while ago when my daughter was at the Ferry Building she was accosted by a security guy as she was shooting pictures. I suppose much of my photography is travel photography, whereas Ellen is more of an art photographer. So she [...]

So SF bloggers are dumping wine and beer on each other now, over, um, Gavin Newsom’s hair … or something … I dunno. It all smacks of desperation for attention.
You could get the full story here. But why bother?