Lee Heidhues 4.21.2023

Racism in America runs rampant.

There are so many racist stories involving murder of Black people by Whites, whether it be cops or civilians, it’s hard to keep track of the grim news.

So, a story from Oklahoma where violence is only threatened but not actually perpetrated fails to get immediate major coverage. Now, this story is getting the traction it deserves.

First is a clip from the PBS News Hour followed by a report from the New York Times.

PBS News Hour 4.21.2023

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/oklahoma-county-officials-recorded-making-racist-remarks-discussing-killing-reporter

Excerpted from New York Times 4.18.2023

A small newspaper in rural Oklahoma secretly recorded what it said was an illegal public meeting where a county official talked about hanging Black people and several officials spoke of hiring hit men and digging holes for two of the newspaper’s reporters.

Gov. Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma said on Monday that four officials in McCurtain County — the sheriff, a jail administrator, a sheriff’s department investigator and a county commissioner — should resign. One of those officials, the county commissioner, Mark Jennings, said he was resigning in a letter released by the governor’s office on Wednesday.

Clips of the recording released on Friday night by the newspaper, The McCurtain Gazette-News, have touched off shock and anger in the county of about 31,000 residents in the southeastern corner of the state, bordering Arkansas and Texas.

According to the transcript released by the newspaper, Mr. Jennings, a county commissioner, talked about hanging Black people by a creek. “But you can’t do that anymore,” he said, according to the transcript. “They got more rights than we got.”

“I know where two big deep holes are here if you ever need them,” Mr. Jennings said on the recording, according to the transcript.

The sheriff responded: “I’ve got an excavator.”

Mr. Jennings replied: “Well, these are already pre-dug.”

At another point, according to the transcript, Mr. Jennings said, “I’ve known two or three hit men, they’re very quiet guys.”

“Yeah?” Ms. Manning responded.

“And would cut no mercy,” Mr. Jennings said, adding an expletive.

Bruce Willingham, who has been publisher and editor of The Gazette-News since 1988, said he made the secret recording on March 6 by leaving his voice-activated recorder in the room where county commissioners were meeting. He said he wanted to prove that officials were discussing county business after the meeting had ended in violation of the state’s open-meeting law.

Bruce Willingham said he had turned over the full audio recording to the police and the F.B.I.

Lee Heidhues 4.20.2023

San Francisco is looking at a yawning budget deficit.

San Francisco’s projected budget deficit for next year has risen to $291 million because of higher costs, lower-than-projected revenue and unexpected expenses for police overtime and street cleaning

Despite this harsh fiscal reality the Board of Supervisors voted 10-1 to approve a three year contract with the San Francisco Police Department which will see a massive increase in the SFPD budget.

This caving in to the cops comes just weeks after the Supervisors voted to give the cops a $25 million ‘supplemental’ for overtime pay.

Despite the lack of police accountability, the well documented instances of police abuse, and the fact the SFPD has done a questionable job of clearing cases only one Supervisor, Dean Preston, voted NO.

Most shameful is the fact that three Supervisors, who think of themselves as Progressives, succumbed to the law and order rhetoric of the Mayor and voted for a massive three year contract for SFPD.

Connie Chan

Hillary Ronen

Shamann Walton

The current budget grew the police department budget by more than $50 million, to about $714 million in fiscal year 2023, according to the mayor’s office.

What is San Francisco’s total budget?

On July 29, 2022 Mayor London Breed signed into law a $13.1 billion City budget for Fiscal Year 2022.

The Police Department currently receives over half San Francisco’s budget.

The new contract will see San Francisco will raise pay and add retention bonuses to lure and keep police officers at a cost of $166.5 million over three years under a new contract approved earlier this week.

The new contract between the city and the San Francisco Police Officers Association is trying to boost staffing by giving cops a 10.75% raise over three years and raising starting pay for recruits to the highest among large cities in the Bay Area. 

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/sfpd-police-raise-approved-crime-in-sf-17897716.php

Lee Heidhues 4.19.2023

The San Francisco Standard has a thorough analytical piece dissecting the fervent opposition to legal marijuana in the predominantly Asian neighborhoods.

Marijuana has been legal in California for several years. How this opposition is tolerated is illustrative of the fact that people can blithely choose to ignore the law when it suits their political and/or cultural agenda.

In my Richmond District neighborhood which is very expansive geographically there is only one cannabis store.

Two other neighborhoods, Chinatown and The Sunset have been able to harass City officials to the point where cannabis shops are totally banned.

People who oppose these cannabis dispensaries are effectively ignoring and breaking the law. A law which was passed by a heavy majority of California voters in 2016.

Excerpted from The Standard 4.19.2023

“Pasta, not pot!” a cluster of protesters shouted outside of Gold Mirror, a decades-old Italian restaurant in San Francisco’s Sunset District during one of many demonstrations in April. The Gold Mirror owners and a local dispensary had announced plans to open a cannabis shop on the restaurant’s upper level, prompting outcry from concerned community members. 

With a bullhorn and signs in tow, the protesters demanded the neighborhood institution stick to serving pasta and cannoli. 

Even by this city’s standards, the idea of a restaurant famous for its cannelloni installing a dispensary on its mezzanine level may be new—but the outpouring of community opposition is not.

After more than two hours of heated debate, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted 9 to 2 on Tuesday to approve the Gold Mirror expansion plan, a major defeat to San Francisco’s anti-cannabis contingent.

Californians have been legally allowed to consume medicinal cannabis since 1996 and, after voters passed 2016’s Proposition 64, adult recreational use has been legal statewide since 2018. Nearly three-fourths of San Francisco residents voted in support of that measure. 

San Francisco may be America’s most proudly stoned city, known all over the world for its counterculture and for its psychedelic- and weed-friendly residents. But its embrace of commercial marijuana faces staunch opposition from a relatively small but increasingly outspoken group of locals—especially in the Sunset, with its large Asian American population.

Fervent Chinese American opposition primarily explains why Chinatown and much of the Sunset became weed deserts. Over the years, proposed dispensaries in these neighborhoods consistently faced protests from members of the Chinese community, who voiced concerns about crime, gentrification and the proximity of the stores to young children.

Asian community is very active in black market cannabis in the Bay Area

“It’s an open secret that the Asian community is very active in black market cannabis in the Bay Area,” said David Ho, a Chinese American immigrant and progressive champion of cannabis. “Socially and recreationally, the Chinese government banned the use of it—but they’re one of the most active cultivators in the world.” 

Indeed, states across the West Coast report a growing Chinese involvement in illegal weed operations, where the number of Chinese-linked marijuana farms has skyrocketed. State officials said in March that investors and organized crime groups from China are fixtures in Northern California. 

https://sfstandard.com/community/the-big-numb-cannabis-divides-sfs-chinese-american-community-along-generational-lines/

Lee Heidhues 4.17.2023

The Red Scare has taken on a new dimension with The New York Times reporting in the best New York Post tabloid fashion.

The Times breathlessly reported on the arrest of two Chinese nationals for running a Cop shop in lower Manhattan to keep tabs on their fellow countrymen in the United States.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-arrested-operating-illegal-overseas-police-station-chinese-government

It all sounds like something out of a Grade B Spy vs. Spy television show better suited for the era of anti-Communist hysteria. Only this time the presumed bad guys aren’t the Russians.

Excerpted from The New York Times 4.17.2023

For years, thousands of New Yorkers and tourists have walked past an unassuming office building in Lower Manhattan.

On Monday, federal prosecutors unsealed criminal charges accusing two men of helping run an unauthorized Chinese police outpost there, one of more than 100 around the globe used to intimidate and control China’s citizens abroad, and to stamp out criticism of the ruling Communist Party.

The case represents the first time criminal charges have been brought in connection with such a police outpost, according to the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn.

The charges against the men, Lu Jianwang, 61, also known as Harry Lu, and Chen Jinping, 59, grew out of an investigation by the F.B.I. and the U.S. attorney’s office into the outpost, which conducted its operations without jurisdiction or diplomatic approval.

The two men were arrested on Monday and charged with conspiring to act as agents of the Chinese government, and with obstructing justice. They are said to have used the police outpost to intimidate Chinese dissidents living in the United States, on China’s behalf.

Charges were also unveiled in two related cases: one against 34 Chinese police officers accused of harassing Chinese nationals who lived in the New York area, and another against eight Chinese officials accused of directing a Zoom employee based in China to remove dissidents from the platform.

The Manhattan police outpost, court papers say, was overseen by the Fuzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau, a branch of China’s Ministry of Public Security. It is one of scores of such operations around the world that have unnerved diplomats and intelligence officials.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/17/nyregion/fbi-chinese-police-outpost-nyc.html

Top photo – A police officer wearing a pair of “smart glasses” with a facial-recognition system at Zhengzhou East Railway Station in China (AFP / Getty / The Atlantic)

Lee Heidhues 4.16.2023

The captioned colloquy above sums up in a few words the mysterious brilliance of Three Colours Red.

Favorite movie of all-time edition.

I watched this film twice during its cinematic release in 1994 and have viewed it too many times to remember since.

It’s really no contest. It’s fascinating, deep and thought provoking every time.

The third in the classic Three Colors trilogy by Krzysztof Kieslowski.

Three Colours Red

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Colours:_Red

Three Colours: Red (French: Trois couleurs: Rouge, Polish: Trzy kolory: Czerwony) is a 1994 romantic mystery film co-written, produced and directed by Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieślowski.

It is the final installment of the Three Colours trilogy, which examines the French Revolutionary ideals; it is preceded by Blue and White. Kieślowski had announced that this would be his final film, which proved true with the director’s sudden death in 1996. 

Red is about fraternity, which it examines by showing characters whose lives gradually become closely interconnected, with bonds forming between two characters who appear to have little in common.

Red was released to universal critical acclaim and was nominated for three Academy Awards, including Best Director for Kieślowski. It was also selected as the Swiss entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 67th Academy Awards, but was disqualified for not being a majority-Swiss production.

As of 2022, it is one of only two films to receive perfect ratings on both Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, along with Fanny and Alexander.

Lee Heidhues 4.14.2023

Photos – Liz Heidhues and Lee Heidhues

Today Liz and I went to see the incendiary political messaging film “How to Blow Up a Pipeline.” The story of a group of young adults who have been physically and psychologically damaged by the ravages of the oil industry.

They come together and do something about the grievances they’ve suffered.

The director has successfully conveyed the story without being judgmental either about the cause the protagonists espouse or about the individuals themselves. It’s a fascinating, well done piece of political film making.

Liz and I were the only ones at the mid morning screening. So, we had the luxury of being able to literally take screen shots throughout the 100 minute film.

The landscape of the movie is beautiful. It was filmed in New Mexico, directly adjacent to West Texas where the story takes place.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Blow_Up_a_Pipeline_(film)

Lee Heidhues 4.14.2023

I couldn’t say it better myself.

Liz Heidhues (@simbagirrl) put this on Twitter for all the World to See and Hear with a soundtrack provided by San Francisco’s own homegrown Steve Miller Blues Band.

Livin’ in the USA . Brooke Jenkins, London Breed, Emilio Ruiz-Garcia edition

Liz Heidhues 4.14.2023 as seen on Twitter @simbagirrl

Good Grief!!

Notorious San Francisco MAGA Mouthpieces

Emilio Garcia-Ruiz – San Francisco Chronicle editor in chief

San Francisco Chronicle went into overdrive. Selected dramatic atypical crime to sensationalize and publicize the puppet DA

Brooke Jenkins – San Francisco District Attorney and her band of political groupies

Mayor London Breed

San Francisco Police Department – Emotion dominates reason, sells papers

IT’S LIVIN’ IN THE USA

Top photo – Police make arrest in Lee stabbing death – SF Chronicle page one – 4.14.2023

Lee Heidhues 4.13.2023

The blazing hypocrisy coming from the mouths of San Francisco officialdom boggles the mind at its level of audacity.

These very same people beginning with Mayor London Breed and her handpicked District Attorney have raised the false flag of rampant crime in San Francisco for two years.

DA Jenkins Brooke, who rode to office through a campaign of lies, innuendo and fabrications about the state of crime in San Francisco is excoriating Elon Musk for parroting the lament about crime she shamefully and falsely utilized to con the paranoid driven gullible voters of San Francisco.

It was incendiary rhetoric and complete misrepresentation of the facts that led to the 9MM funded recall of Chesa Boudin in June 2022.

A successful political coup d’etat, whose MAGA donors paid Jenkins over 150K for her work and, ultimately, made Jenkins the prime beneficiary when she was handpicked by Breed to be the new DA.

Now, this very same conniving politician has completed a 180 degree turn. Acknowledging that San Francisco does not have a crime problem.

It’s Jenkins 2023 world. The rampant crime story is all fake news drummed up by the mainstream media.

This same mainstream media Mayor Breed, her City Hall hacks and Brooke Jenkins relied on to oust Chesa Boudin.

Excerpted from The San Francisco Standard 4.13.2023

San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins has slammed Twitter CEO Elon Musk over his tweet attributing the killing of tech executive Bob Lee to perceived rampant violent crime in the city.

At a Thursday press conference following the arrest of a suspect in Lee’s killing, Jenkins said that Musk’s remarks were “reckless and irresponsible.” 

Police say Lee and his alleged assailant were acquainted and the crime was not random.

Musk’s statements, which implied otherwise, “served to mislead the world in their perceptions of San Francisco and also negatively impact the pursuit of justice for victims of crime,” Jenkins said, because they spread “misinformation at a time when the police are trying to solve a very difficult case.”

“Since waking up to Elon Musk’s tweet, my office has worked hard to tell people not to make assumptions about this case,” told told journalists. 

Lee was stabbed to death in the early morning hours on April 4 in San Francisco’s Rincon Hill neighborhood. His killing made headlines around the world.

Numerous tech entrepreneurs took to Twitter to blame the stabbing on supposedly runaway violent crime in the city. 

Musk was among them, directly calling out Jenkins on Twitter: “Violent crime in SF is horrific and even if attackers are caught, they are often released immediately,” he wrote. “Is the city taking stronger action to incarcerate repeat violent offenders @BrookeJenkinsSF?”

https://sfstandard.com/criminal-justice/bob-lee-killing-elon-musk-slammed-for-reckless-tweets-by-san-francisco-da/

Top photo – DA Brooke Jenkins a master at parroting the false law and order talking points.

Lee Heidhues 4.12.2023

The vicious media attacks on the first black woman District Attorney in Alameda County have begun.

Kudos to SF Gate for calling out the mainstream media which is trying to light the match to yet another political lynching of a progressive district attorney.

It worked in San Francisco. Backed by much of the spineless MSM and with billionaire MAGA funders waiting in the wings they’ve set their sites on another progressive.

Excerpted from SF Gate 4.12.2023

Barely three months into Price’s term, a handful of media members have fixated on new Alameda DA Pamela Price, posturing as if they’re doing objective, community-oriented journalism — and even worse, adopting the holier-than-thou stance that their beliefs and biases aren’t shaping whom they choose to interview and how they choose to report stories.

Price might turn out to be an abject disaster for any number of reasons, but there’s nothing tangible to base that on yet. You don’t have to be a supporter of criminal justice reform to acknowledge the scary implications of already knowing, after barely three months, that a politician who won their race fair and square, who hasn’t even fully instituted their suggested policies yet, seems to be on a collision course for a media-backed recall.

They’re using loaded, pro-punishment rhetoric about “public safety,” boldly assuming the very constituency that just elected Price would of course immediately find her policies to be out of step; they’re acting like it’s newsworthy that a selection of Alameda County prosecutors — some of whom donated to both Nancy O’Malley and Terry Wiley — would choose to resign from office when a DA with radically different politics became their new boss; and they’re also highlighting gruesome anecdotes, thrusting vulnerable families of brutal crimes into the limelight to cynically dissuade the public from thinking critically about the larger impacts of criminal justice reform.

ABC7 reporter Dan Noyes, who, as far as I can tell, would bristle at the idea of publicly admitting to his political ideologies, including on issues like criminal justice. But his editorial choices, and his sources list, speak for themselves.

Reporter Emilie Raguso, who’s guilty of many of the same one-sided reporting techniques as Noyes, took a similar stance at her publication, the Berkeley Scanner, which is dedicated to writing up the grisly details of neighborhood crimes. 

Both Noyes’ and Raguso’s reporting on the triple-homicide case has relied on the disgust of Alameda County Judge Mark McCannon, who denied Price’s 15-year plea deal. Since McCannon’s move, Price has announced that she’s moving to disqualify him from overseeing her cases. Noyes called Price’s decision an “extraordinary action,” but Price’s predecessor, O’Malley, took the same action with a judge less than a year ago.

What neither Noyes nor Raguso bothered mentioning in their coverage is that O’Malley’s office left this triple-homicide case floundering for years, dating back to 2015, because there are questions about whether the evidence would sustain a conviction. And McCannon is not some apolitical figure. In fact, he was an Alameda County deputy district attorney for 16 years under Tom Orloff and then, yes, O’Malley. He even donated to O’Malley’s campaign in 2009. He’s an elected official and someone who was once deeply involved in the office Price is attempting to reform.

Noyes has the ideal mentor for these self-absorbed shenanigans in his colleague, Dion Lim, who perfected the routine of chasing around a progressive DA (in her case, Chesa Boudin).

Lim has waded into Price’s tenure as well, recently interviewing the family of Jasper Wu, a 23-month-old who was killed by gunfire on Interstate 880 in Oakland. Lim explained in her report that Wu’s alleged killers might — keyword might — receive a lesser sentence because Price is against sentencing enhancements; one of Wu’s parents responded by telling Lim that they do not “believe in second chances” and they disagreed with the idea of eliminating those enhancements.

https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/media-coverage-of-alameda-county-da-pamela-price-17891024.php

Top photo: Then-Alameda County DA candidate Pamela Price speaks during a rally hosted by the Peoples Park Council in Berkeley, Calif., on July 27, 2022. MediaNews Group/East Bay Times v/MediaNews Group via Getty Images

Lee Heidhues 4.10.2023

The MAGA war against progressive district attorneys continues.

It has moved across the Bay to Alameda County where it is setting its sights on that County’s first black female district attorney, Pamela Price.

At least one of the usual suspects whose bullhorn disruptive tactics was instrumental in the political lynching of San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin last year has made her way to Oakland.

Leanna Louie, who famously disrupted a Chesa Boudin rally in March 2022 with her bullhorn, is at it, again. Standing on the stairs of the Alameda County courthouse hoping to politically lynch another progressive District Attorney. Showing a little respect for the Court, Leanna wasn’t wielding her bullhorn today.

This is the same Leanna Louie whose candidacy for a Supervisor seat in San Francisco was tossed out by a Superior Court judge due to her illegal residency.

This is the same Leanna Louie who called Mission Local investigative reporter Joe Eskenazi a “Nazi” after he exposed her illegal residency in a feature article last summer. Joe Eskenazi is Jewish.

Excerpted from The Standard 4.10.2023

A crowd of protesters turned out in Oakland on Monday to voice their anger at Alameda County district attorney Pamela Price over her handling of the homicide case of Jasper Wu, a 2-year-old Chinese American boy who was shot in 2021.

Elaine Peng, an activist in Oakland’s Chinatown and a mental health advocate, defended Price, pointing out that the DA has not said she would seek a lower sentence or zero jail time in the Wu case. Peng has worked with the Wu family since the beginning.

“She was just hoping to work with AAPI organizations to find alternative punishment solutions to make the community safer,” Peng said.

Pamela Price, the progressive DA who was elected in 2022, is drawing strong criticism from members of the Chinese American community who fear she may not prosecute the alleged killers to the fullest extent. Protesters cited a recent emailed statement addressed to the “Chinese communities” in which Price sought possible “non-carceral form” of solutions to criminal offenses, triggering the backlash.

Price’s letter, which was sent to multiple Chinatown community members and Chinese-language media reporters, also received condemnation from National Asian Pacific Islander Prosecutors Association for its perceived condescending tone.

“Some people don’t know about the basic principles of constitutional law that govern our office and the justice system,” Price said in the letter.

Price’s office sent out a statement emphasizing it has not yet made any decisions regarding the charges in Wu’s killing and will make decisions directly in accordance to the evidence.

“Our hearts continue to go out to the family and to this entire community regarding this horrific crime,” the statement said. “We will be transparent about this case as it proceeds through the justice system.”

Bob Yee, one of the rally organizers, said the goal for the rally was to empower the community to hold Price accountable.

“Price had an opportunity to unify us and provide leadership,” Yee said. “Instead, she chose to divide us.”

Top photo – Alameda District Attorney Pamela Price

https://sfstandard.com/criminal-justice/progressive-alameda-da-faces-backlash-over-toddler-killing-case/