From our City Hall Correspondent:

Former San Francisco Board of Stupidvisors President Matt Gonzalez, who grew weary of the City’s political divisiveness and said sayorona to the Board, then at the witching hour abruptly dedided to run for mayor against Gavin Newsom and came a shave’s close to beating him, started a law practice and in his spare time worked on his collage art. That proved to be time well spent.

I tried to see this through the window, from Matt Gonzalez @ In vitro Gallery

(One may recall that Gonzalez began the City Hall tradition of hosting monthly art shows in his Supervisor’s digs, complete with jug wine for the sipping. Supervisor Ross Mirkarini, who is an aspirant to Gonzalez’ old job as Board president, heard the call to the clambake and is continuing to host art shows in his office.) ===

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By Paul Krassner

The viral photo of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in her stars and stripes bikini, proudly gripping a rifle, flooded Internet wires-only to spread once more when the photo proved to be a fake.

But the image’s influence holds, even though it’s a fraud. And 2006 research by John Bullock of Yale University supports the lasting influence of misinformation.

Bullock showed subjects the transcript of an ad created by a pro-choice group stating that John Roberts, then a Supreme Court nominee, had supported violence against abortion clinics.

Then subjects were shown an unequivocal refutation of the ad.

56 percent of the Democrats had disapproved of Roberts before seeing the ad, but that percentage jumped to 80 after seeing the false information.

Here’s the interesting part: After the ad was discredited, the percentage of Democrats against Roberts dropped-but only to 72 percent, so the number who were unsupportive remained higher than before exposure to the ad.

Interestingly, Republican disapproval also rose after reading the ad transcript, but returned to the baseline after the ad was debunked.

As we may have already intuitively concluded: the lasting impact of misinformation during campaigns seems to be dependent on subjects’ preexisting views as to whether they buy into negative (or positive) information about a candidate.

Remember this, when we read in the papers that nearly a third of voters believe, incorrectly, that Barack Obama is Muslim. Perhaps because of inaccurate rumors that Obama took his oath on the Koran, instead of, as is the true case, on the Bible.

By Warren Hinckle

At the end of the day, the Republican Party would have been better off with a ticket of Joe the Plumber and Sara the hockey mom. Joe just wants his money and wants government to keep his sticky fingers off it. Sara wants the rough justice of the frontier for the Wall Street crooks who stole our cattle. Both are very American attitudes.In Wednesday’s debate both presidential candidates betrayed their better natures. Obama’s chilling caution betrayed the idealism that propelled him to where is; McCain betrayed his chivalric stature by mocking a woman’s concern about her own health during a difficult pregnancy, surely a deal breaker in an election; Obama no longer has to close the deal, because McCain has broken it.

Obama morphed into a suave, cocky, obfuscating eggplant of the Washington he ran against; McCain morphed into a demented walrus.

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By Our Argonaut Legal Correspondent

Certain waging, legal tongues are speculating that Mayor Gavin Newsom’s decision to spend city taxpayer dollars to educate undocumented workers (and/or illegal aliens) about San Francisco’s sanctuary policy and the fact that city services are available to them, was the act that triggered the convening of a Federal Grand Jury that is currently hearing evidence.

Others that it was the spending of taxpayer dollars to send undocumented minors arrested for drug trafficking offenses back to their country of origin to avoid prosecution that triggered the investigation. Others were suggesting that city workers who aided the San Francisco Chronicle’s series were “going to be hunted down and stomped.’ Others suggested that these city workers were entitled to whistle blower protections, but would probably be forced to hire their own criminal defense attorneys. [Read more →]

By Warren Hinckle

The Republicans are the finest ambush artists in political historie. Give credit where credit is due.

The Rep’s sneak thieves  stole Jimmy Carter’s briefing book before his big debate with Ronald Reagan, and brought us the October Surprise -  whereby in 1980 Republican operatives cut a secret deal with Iran to delay the release of Americans held hostage until after the presidential election -  thereby ensuring Carter’s defeat – in return for billions in arms shipped furtively to Iran through Israel and other cutouts (see: Iran-Contra Scandal.) [Read more →]

From Peter Buston:

 

The widely internet-published photo of Sara Palin in a red-white-&blue bikini holding a gun is a phony (see below.) Governor Palin’s head is pasted atop someone else’s body. Pictures of bikini-clad girls posing with rifles and handguns are a popular fetish online. I had to sift through dozens of redundant images on Google before finding the original used in this Photoshop job. It was in the photostream of a Flickir user names Doctor Casino. The snapshot was taken in Georgia in 2006. The model’s name was Elizabeth.

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By David Blake

Back in 2002, when his reputation as” The Man Who Saved the World” was at its peak, Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, came to Britain to pick up his knighthood. His biggest fan, Gordon Brown, now the UK prime minister, had ensured that the citation said it was being awarded for promoting economic stability.

During his trip, Mr. Greenspan visited the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee. He told them the US financial system had been resilient amid the bursting of the internet bubble. Share prices had halved and there had been massive bond defaults, but no big bank collapses. Mr. Greenspan lauded the fact that risk had been spread, using complex derivative instruments. One of the MPC members asked: how could this be? Someone must have lost all that money; who was it? A look of quiet satisfaction came across Mr. Greenspan’s face as he answered: “European insurance companies.”

Six years later, AIG, the largest US insurance company, has in effect been nationalized to stop it blowing up the financial world. The US has nationalized the core of its mortgage industry and the government has become the arbiter of which financial companies should survive or die.

Financial markets have an enormous capacity for flexibility, but market participants need to be sure that there are rules, and a referee willing to impose them. Permanent damage has been done to the financial system, despite the extraordinary measures of Messrs Henry Paulson, the US Treasury secretary, and Ben Bernanke, the Fed chairman, to address the problems that stem from the actions of their predecessors. As Mr. Paulson has suggested, he is playing a hand dealt by others.

Many blame the Greenspan Fed for this mess. They are right, but not for the reason often cited. It is unfair to say low interest rates are to blame. In the past decade, there is no evidence the US suffered from excessive growth leading to inflation. The economy needed low interest rates and a fiscal stimulus to avoid a severe recession. The Fed was right to do its bit.

Where Mr. Greenspan bears responsibility is his role in ensuring that the era of cheap interest rates created a speculative bubble. He cannot claim he was not warned of the risks. Take two incidents from the 1990s. The first came before he made his 1996 speech referring to “irrational exuberance”. In a Federal Open Market Committee meeting, he conceded there was an equity bubble but declined to do anything about it. He admitted that proposals for tightening the margin requirement, which people need to hold against equity positions, would be effective: “I guarantee that if you want to get rid of the bubble, whatever it is, that will do it. It seems odd that since then, in defending the Fed’s inaction, he has claimed in three speeches that tightening margins would not have worked.

The second incident stems from spring 1998 when the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission expressed concern about the massive increase in over-the-counter derivatives. These have been at the heart of the counter-party risk in the crisis. Mr. Greenspan suggested new regulation risked disrupting the capital markets.

At the turn of the millennium, with no move to tighten margin requirements, a feedback loop sent share prices into orbit. As prices rose, more brokers were willing to lend to buy more shares. As share prices went up the buying continued, until the bubble burst. To create one bubble may be seen as a misfortune; to create two looks like carelessness. Yet that is exactly what the Greenspan Fed did.

Bruised by stock market losses, Americans bought houses. The mortgage industry used securitized bonds to ensure that the people who initiated the mortgage did not worry about getting paid back; risk was packaged and sold to others. This time Mr. Greenspan did not just stand aside. He said repeatedly that housing was a safe investment because prices do not fall. Home owners could wait out any downturn. Is it any surprise that so many people thought if the world’s financial genius held this view it must be all right?

Even as things went completely wild, Mr. Greenspan dismissed those who warned that a new bubble was emerging. It was just a case of a little froth in a few areas. Later, after waiting until 2007, two years after he left office, he conceded that froth had been his euphemism for bubble. All the froth bubbles add up to an aggregate bubble, he told the Financial Times.

This time, as with the equity bubble, the mistake was not to set interest rates too low; it was to stand back as wildly imprudent policies were pursued by mortgage lenders. Indeed, any lender would have been encouraged by his words in April 2005: Where once more-marginal applicants would simply have been denied credit, lenders are now able to quite efficiently judge the risk posed by individual applicants and to price that risk appropriately. These improvements have led to rapid growth in subprime mortgage lending. Well, he was right about the rapid growth in subprime lending.

Mr. Greenspan was in charge of supervising and regulating much of the banking industry for two decades. The Fed says it is responsible for ensuring safe and sound banking practices. It is right that other regulators should have stepped in, too – the US regulatory structure has not kept pace with market changes . But given the Fed’s institutional importance and Mr. Greenspan’s personal stature, does anyone doubt that the Fed could have used its limited powers to ensure a closer examination of what was going on?

Mr. Greenspan realizes that something big has happened and describes it as a ‘once in a hundred year event’. But then, you do not get Alan Greenspans coming along every day.
The writer is an executive in an asset management company. He writes in a personal capacity.

This article was originally published in the Financial Times.

By Paul Krassner

Welcome to Camp Mogul
by Paul Krassner

My irreverent friend, Khan Manka, Chairman & CEO of Manka Brothers Studios, had broken his ankle and was afraid he wouldn’t be able to attend the 26th annual gathering of the nation’s most powerful executives and their trophy wives in Sun Valley, Idaho.  I really wanted to spy on this summer camp for billionaires, so I suggested that Manka get a wheelchair, then I could serve as his official wheelchair pusher, and he immediately went for the idea.

This by-now traditional five-day extravaganza for 300 guests has been hosted by Wall Street investment banker Herbert Allen, President and CEO of Allen & Company.  There were moguls all over the campground, overflowing with the country’s most influential leaders in business, entertainment and media.  I could feel myself developing a severe case of imposter syndrome.

Saturday was Talent Night, and it was absolutely hysterical.  Part-time Sun Valley resident Tom Hanks served as the emcee.  Warren Buffet was the opening act, with a medley of Jimmy Buffet songs, all sung out of tune.  Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos skillfully juggled five Kindels (wireless electronic books).  Edgar Bronfman from Warner Music–dressed like the character Tevya in *Fiddler on the Roof*–sang with zest, “If I Were a Rich Man.”  Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang–who had turned down an offer from Microsoft to buy Yahoo earlier this year–sang a duet with the ex-CEO of Microsoft, Bill Gates, harmonizing on a song from *Annie Get Your Gun,* “Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better.”  Meg Whitman of eBay did a striptease, auctioning off each item of clothing, one at a time, and over 3-million dollars was raised for an  unnamed charity.

There had been a lot of drinking in the evening, and it was obviously too much booze that loosened up Fox mogul Rupert Murdoch’s tongue.  He was shouting at the moon: “Who says there are 27 million slaves around the fucking world?  How would anybody know?  Do they have census takers or what?  Where can I get one?  You tell me!  I’ll decide!”

Also, a screaming match broke out between Google co-founder Sergei Brin and Google CEO Eric Schmidt, over the infamous cover of the *New Yorker,* which depicted Barack and Michelle Obama, the new President and First Lady, as a terrorist couple doing the fist-bump gesture in the Oval Office.  Sergei thought it was a brilliant satirical illustration, but Eric thought it was racist and irresponsible.

Last year, the surprise guest was former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.  This year, it was Steven Beschloss, the editor of a new magazine which will be launched this fall and be delivered to 100,000 U.S. households with an average net worth of $25-million.  There were piles of preview copies scattered about.

While Beschloss was holding court in an outdoor area, annoying mosquitoes kept buzzing around the crowd.  Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, yelled at him, “I gues we’ll never hear *your* readers whining about a mental recession.  And those of your subscribers who are in the sub-prime mortgage industry–these mosquitoes are *their* fault, because, along with all the home foreclosures they’re responsible for, the stagnant water in abandoned pools turns into new breeding grounds for mosquitoes.”

Others drowned him out by singing the mogul version of good old-fashioned camp songs, such as “This Land Is *My* Land, This Land Is *My* Land” and “KumBuyYahoo.”   I couldn’t help but notice that billionaire activist Carl Icahn snapped his fingers as if having an epiphany; a week later he ended up on Yahoo’s board of directors.

Khan Manka explained that the bigwigs at these events have so-called “informal” meetings which always take place where a pair of individuals can have their discussions alone without any interruption–on the golf course, hiking along an isolated trail, fly-fishing at Silver Creek–but Manka had been privy to only one specific example that he could share.
“Back in 1995,” he told me, “Disney honcho Michael Eisner met with Robert Iger, who was then the head of ABC.  And exactly one month later, these two giant companies merged into one media megamonster.  Coincidence?  I don’t think so.  Their deal had been sealed when Eisner and Iger exchanged friendship bracelets that they had worked on at Camp Mogul.”
—————-
Paul Krassner is the author of “One Hand Jerking: Reports From an Investigative Satirist,” available at paulkrassner.com.

By John Calder

Before we start swapping spit with the Chinese over the Olympics.

Answer me one question China:

Where is the Tank Man?

Whats his name?

Where is he today?

Is he making the cheap shit you sell at Wal-Mart’s?

Lets remember who we are dealing with and lets not forget our history.
Calder

By Patrick Monette-Shaw

July 13, 2008

Budget and Finance Committee
The Honorable Jake McGoldrick, Chair
The Honorable Ross Mirkarimi
The Honorable Chris Daly
The Honorable Sean Elsbernd
The Honorable Carmen Chu
San Francisco Board of Supervisors
City Hall
1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place
San Francisco, CA  94102

In a report just released by San Francisco’s Civil Grand Jury, “Accountability in San Francisco Government,” a footnote reveals that Supervisor Tom Ammiano noted in October 2007 that “There doesn’t really seem to have been anyone in charge of the store.”

As a candidate to replace termed-out Assemblyman Mark Leno, Ammiano’s admission is startling, given that voters have been paying Ammiano’s City Supervisor salary for over 12 years, expecting he is partly responsible for being in charge of the store and paying attention to the City’s finances.

Since Gavin Newsom took office as Mayor in 2004, fully one-third of the increase in the City’s budget from $5.1 billion to $6.5 billion can be traced directly to the $543.9 million increase paid to City employees earning more than $100,000 annually, while City Supervisors have turned a blind eye toward minding the store and keeping an eye on the cash register.

Last March, the San Francisco Daily (now known as the Daily Post) broke a story that 8,180 City employees who are paid more than $100,000 annually are costing San Francisco over $1 billion, or more than half of the total $2.3 billion the City budgets for wages and salaries.

In 2003, I placed a public records request for salaries greater than $90,000, which salaries Supervisor Ammiano claimed at the time were a huge problem.  Now four years later, salaries over $100,000 are an even greater problem, given the three-quarters of a billion dollar increase, and the increase of 5,262 employees now earning six-figure incomes.

Back in 2003, Supervisor Ammiano (bless the bleeding heart on his sleeve) made great noise about the number of City employees earning more than $90,000 annually, although he made no substantive effort to do anything about reducing their drain on the City’s budget at the time.  All eleven members of the Board of Supervisors are now reported on the City’s salary database available on the Internet to be earning $98,660, at a combined cost to taxpayers of $1.08 million annually, without including their fringe benefits valued at 30 percent of base salary.

Now four years after Ammiano’s initial concern but gross inaction, we have nearly three times more City employees earning more than $100,000.  His bleeding heart concern was not translated into meaningful action.  Ammiano and the Board of Supervisors have done next to nothing to reduce this wasteful spending, or to take serious aim at reducing the amount of City fat, each time you have passed annual salary ordinance’s and the City’s budgets, as if you weren’t in a position to have been minding the store.

For his part, sitting Supervisor Sean Elsbernd authored Board of Supervisors Resolution 474-07 in August 2007 that is documented in a second Civil Grand Jury report released in June 2008, “Fits and Starts: The Response of San Francisco Government to Past Civil Grand Jury Recommendations.”  Elsbernd’s Resolution 474-07 “resolved” that the Board of Supervisors should review the status of Civil Grand Jury recommendations as part of annual budget processes, and stipulated that the Budget and Finance Committee on which he sits should hold hearings on the Mayor’s and Controller’s implementation of Grand Jury recommendations.  None of this has happened, as Supervisor must surely know, and the full Board of Supervisors is about to adopt the Fiscal Year 2008–2009 budget in the absence of such oversight.

The attached testimony provides you with an analysis of where “low-hanging fruit” management fat might be trimmed.  To that end, you should delay considering passing the City budget for Fiscal Year 2008– 2009 until such time as the Budget and Finance Committee gets serious about cutting the low-hanging fruit management fat from next year’s City budget, since Supervisors Peskin and Ammiano, and Mayor Newsom, have done precious little to reduce the low-hanging fruit themselves, as documented in the attached testimony.

Patrick Monette-Shaw