"If I said I was going to kill 99 of your friends as opposed to 100, does that mean you'd be any less opposed to the slaughter?"--ex-San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly, commenting on the proposed Twitter payroll tax deal
The new kids on the block on San Francisco's Board of Supervisors got there, partly, by appealing to the generic weariness of voters with endless fighting over, well, everything. Ex-Supe Chris Daly became the poster boy for this change.
"Progressive" is the buzz phrase of the day too. Everyone who wants to be thought of as a nice guy or gal is a "Progressive", has "Progressive" or "San Francisco" Values. What are those anyway, when San Francisco has a Sit/Lie Law and a Top Gun ex-Po'Lice Chief District Attorney who also turned his coat from Republican to Democrat? Gives me warm fuzzy feelings it does.
Nobody could or would define "Progressive", etc., nor can they now, nor can they demonstrate them because they fear corporations like Twitter (Zynga and others now rattling the Supes' cages) will leave the city if they don't continue manifesting some version of Gavin Newsom's old, tired hostile-to-taxes (or any other way of actually raising new revenues) attitude to counteract the All Budget Brawl In City Hall All The Time atmosphere.
Perhaps I should be more optimistic? After all, things were better when Tom Ammiano, Chris Daly, et al, were Supervisors. We have been through a long, strange trip this 20-Odd years from 1990 to 2011, many moons, many Mayors.
Now we come to Twitterville Station, where we must temporarily or forever give up a 1.5% payroll tax on the corporate vampires that feed on us or...they will take their fangs out of our necks and...go suck on someone else (in Brisbane...)! Oh, God, No! Say it ain't so, Mr. Grinch.
The tax deal would cut $22 million out of a city budget bleeding red in the hundreds of millions. $22 million--for a corporation valued at $10 BILLION!!! We seem to be a magnet for corporate bullies like Twitter and Amerikkka's Cup-obsessed Larry Ellison of Oracle.
Twitter wants its own MUNI bus line. Twitter wants the SFPD to provide more (foot patrol) security than they do for...well who do they provide it for anyway? They were asked to participate in a Community Benefit District, a set-up that never benefits houseless or poor people. No surprise--they apparently won't sign any dotted line on that idea--they want to MAKE MONEY, not spend it.
I live in District 6, near where this Twitterpated deal is supposed to go down. POOR Magazine recently held a protest death ceremony for small businesses at Van Ness Avenue and Geary Street that will be destroyed to make way for the new Sutter Health hospital that will be built for everyone but houseless and poor folks. Both ends of District 6 (including POOR Magazine's Redstone Building offices on 16th Street in the Mission neighborhood), plus everywhere in-between, are under intensifying pressure from developers, Twitter, etc.
My SRO (Single Room Occupancy) hotel, the Elk, has a good neighbor, another SRO purpose-built by a well-known non-profit agency. They a bad tenant, a cafe that many of us watched being put in--hoping it would be some form of coffeehouse. It isn't a coffeehouse. It's a karaoke bar. My window looks out on the street behind it (where I get to listen to early morning massive noise from a meal providing non-profit I don't hate, though the noise has gotten worse in recent months), but a friend who does live on the Eddy Street side of the building gets to hear the music and the singing all night.
I may look warm and fuzzy (beards seem to do that to people...) but i'm not feeling warm and fuzzy about this.
The Budget Brawl In City Hall will probably make the Progressive Happy Talk go away. I must ask...what then? Nobody wants to stick their finger in the dike because the corporate fishies might chew it off.
To the Supervisors and Mayor Ed Lee: Stick a finger in! You've got nine more. Each. Show some spine. Show you care. Show you care about poor people.
To anyone wanting to help them do that, contact District 6 Supervisor Jane Kim at
jane.kim@sfgov.org
or at her phone number:
415.413.7525
or contact Mayor Ed Lee at
his phone number: (415) 554-6141
or at his e-mail address:
mayoredwinlee@sfgov.org