Lee Heidhues 2.4.2023

It is nearly one year since Vladimir Putin unleashed his vicious assault on Ukraine.

As the days, weeks, months pass by the Ukrainian people continue to suffer and die under this brutal attack on an independent nation.

Inside Russia a few courageous citizens – in the face of suppression, arrest and prison – are standing up to Putin and his ongoing war of aggression.

Excerpted from The Moscow Times 2.4.2023

Russians continue to memorialize the dozens of Ukrainians killed in last month’s Russian missile strike on the city of Dnipro — one of the deadliest single incidents of Moscow’s invasion — in what has evolved into a new nationwide form of anti-war protest. 

Makeshift displays of flowers, stuffed toys and handwritten notes have sprung up in at least 60 cities across Russia, often by statues of Ukrainian poets Taras Shevchenko and Lesya Ukrainka — or by monuments to victims of Soviet-era political repression.

“It’s a statement against the war, not just mourning for the dead people in Dnipro,” said one woman who laid flowers at a memorial in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk.

“I couldn’t stay silent,” she told The Moscow Times in an anonymous interview conducted with the aid of youth opposition movement Vesna. 

Images of the destroyed apartment block, civilian casualties and desperate rescue attempts in the aftermath of the Jan. 14 strike in Dnipro served as a shocking reminder of the devastation caused by the Ukraine war and evoked anger and shame among some Russians. 

The ongoing tributes to victims of the Dnipro attack are the first nationwide anti-war protests since demonstrations against the country’s “partial” mobilization in September.

They have even earned their own name: “flower protests.”

Almost three weeks after the deaths in Dnipro, new memorials continue to appear. 

“I decided to lay flowers at a local memorial to show that not all Russians lack compassion toward Ukrainians,” said a man from the Khanty-Mansiisk autonomous district in another anonymous interview conducted via Vesna.

“I was thinking about the Dnipro attack victims and what it must have been like to be under the rubble.”

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/02/03/i-couldnt-stay-silent-anti-war-flower-protests-spread-to-60-cities-across-russia-a80129

Top photo – The aftermath of the Russian missile attack on Dnipro on Jan. 14.

Lee Heidhues 2.3.2023

I hope the mountain lion remains free to live its life uninterrupted by humans.

“CDFW and allied agency personnel have been denied access to the primary private property and adjacent private properties.”

I appreciate the fact that State officials respected property rights to stop the hunting down a protected species.

The mountain lion was undoubtedly and understandably afraid when it was approached by a human being.

The mountain lion was protecting itself from what it perceived as a threat.

I hope the injured boy is not forever traumatized.

The mainstream media was quick, with no justification whatsoever, to label the incident in which a five year old was injured a “vicious attack.” Scare tactics which do nothing more than titillate the audience.

Excerpted from The San Francisco Chronicle 2.3.2023

California wildlife officials have called off the search for a mountain lion responsible for attacking and injuring a 5-year-old boy in San Mateo County.

Jack Trexler was attacked around 6:50 p.m. Tuesday while he was walking with his mother and grandparents along Tunitas Creek Road in rural San Mateo County. California wildlife officials searched for the cougar near the scene that night but were unable to locate it.

Jack’s mother, Suzie Trexler, charged the cougar when she saw it attack and it released her son, whom she scooped up and carried to safety. The boy was “taken to the ground” by the cougar and suffered several lacerations to his face as well as a fractured bone near his eye, according to his aunt, Amie Wagner.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife stated in a tweet on Friday that agency staff he been denied access to private property near the site of the attack, which complicated their efforts to track the mountain lion. They said lack of access and inclement weather, combined with the “nomadic” nature of mountain lions, had reduced their chances of successfully catching the animal.

“Since the day of the attack, CDFW and allied agency personnel have been denied access to the primary private property and adjacent private properties for the purpose of attempting to capture the offending mountain lion,” the tweet said.

The agency also reported Friday that it was able to use DNA to confirm that a mountain lion was responsible for the attack.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/state-wildlife-officials-unable-to-catch-mountain-17763190.php

Lee Heidhues 2.1.2023

Times are tough for law & order crime fighter Heather Knight.

She NO longer has her favorite Scapegoat Chesa Boudin to kick around anymore. What’s a Nightcrawler scribe gonna do? She needs a new target. How about Mayor Breed and her handpicked Personal shopper DA Brooke Jenkins?

This should have been the Lede in the Story. Not buried near the end. “Mayor London Breed hasn’t agreed to an interview on the subject. I approached her at a public event last week to ask about the Black Magic burglary and if she’s satisfied with the level of service her police officers are providing the public. She said to direct questions to her spokesperson and walked off.”

Excerpted from The San Francisco Chronicle 2.1.2023

It sounds like the opening minutes of a noir-ish “Law and Order.” But the episode — let’s call it “Burglary at the Black Magic” — would have ended before the first commercial break. After the theft, pretty much nothing happened until I started asking questions. It’s just the latest instance of San Francisco police seeming to shrug off crime, contributing to a city short on law or order.

It was early in the morning on Friday the 13th, and Mick Martinez sensed trouble at the Black Magic Voodoo Lounge.

The Lombard Street bar was closed that January morning, but its front window was open — and its curtain blew in the breeze. Martinez, a neighbor out walking his dog, figured somebody broke in. He used the flashlight on his cell phone to peer inside and shouted, “OK, fellas! The game’s over!”

Remarkably, it took nearly 15 hours for police to respond after the bar’s owner, Joe Vernieri, called in the burglary. Even though other burglaries of small businesses in the area — including one two days before at Chico’s Pizza on the same block — had just taken place. And strangely, when cops finally did get to the Black Magic, it was at 3:44 a.m. the next morning even though California bars must close at 2 a.m. Obviously, nobody would be there to give them information and the visit was pointless.

Mayor London Breed hasn’t agreed to an interview on the subject. I approached her at a public event last week to ask about the Black Magic burglary and if she’s satisfied with the level of service her police officers are providing the public.

She said to direct questions to her spokesperson and walked off.

Her spokesperson, Jeff Cretan, later wrote in an email that understaffing “is a very real challenge” but the city is paying officers overtime, as well as adding street ambassadors and crisis response teams to supplement regular police work.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/bayarea/heatherknight/article/san-francisco-police-crime-17755470.php

Artwork cartoons by Liz Heidhues

Top cartoon – Mayor Breed with her minions. Handpicked Supervisor Matt Dorsey, Puppet DA Brooke Jenkins and Assistant DA Nancy Tung

Lee Heidhues 1.28.2023

Tonight I pulled out one my first CDs. Passengers: Original Soundtracks 1 (1995)

The most haunting piece is “Miss Sarajevo.” The song is composed by U2 leader Bono. Luciano Pavorotti is the tenor voice in this memorable composition from the movie of the same name.

The liner notes in the CD read:

“Bill Carter’s award winning documentary “Miss Sarajevo” chronicles one of the more bizarre events of the war in former Yugoslavia – when several artists mounted an elaborate beauty contest under mortar fire. The camera follows the organizers through the tunnels and cellars of the the city, giving a unique insight into life during a modern war, where civilians are the targets. The film captures the dark humor of the besieged Sarajevans, their stubborn refusal to be demoralized, and suggests that surrealism and dadaism are the appropriate responses to fanaticism.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Sarajevo#:~:text=The%20film%20Miss%20Sarajevo%20is,old%20blonde%20named%20Inela%20Nogi%C4%87.

Lee Heidhues 1.27.2023

The legal effort to destroy JFK Promenade in Golden Gate Park and the The Great Walkway along the San Francisco shoreline may be over soon.

The California Court of Appeal in San Francisco appears to be bringing down the curtain on the last ditch legal effort which began in December 2021 in San Francisco Superior Court.

Failing to obtain an injunction in early 2022 ordering JFK Promenade and The Great Walkway be open to cars the plaintiffs, Open the Great Highway Alliance, took their case to a higher Court.

Turns out funding for this legal effort came from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

This fact came to light during last year’s FAMSF campaign for Proposition I and its opposition to Proposition J. Both efforts were funded by the FAMSF and its politically connected former Chair of the Board of Trustees.

Dede Wilsey wrote the 200K check paying the mercenary signature gatherers to qualify the ill fated Proposition I for the November 8, 2022 ballot.

It was a wasted effort. Proposition I was defeated by 65 percent of the voters. Proposition J, placed on the ballot by the Board of Supervisors, won an overwhelming 63 percent majority. Assuring car free JFK Promenade and The Great Walkway.

The soon to die lawsuit was the last gasp effort of the long entitled motorists.

After spending 800K to oppose car free areas on the ballot it appears Dede Wilsey and the FAMSF have finally seen the writing on the wall. No longer willing to bankroll this quixotic legal fight. A financial drain and more importantly bad for their image as stewards of culture in San Francisco.

San Francisco Ethics Commission filings for the FAMSF listed Open the Great Highway Alliance as a Filer. The same group which sued to bring cars back to these now car free spaces.

The following is from the Court of Appeal website. The Court is saying it is going to grant the City’s latest Request for Judicial Notice and, barring something extraordinary, will “DISMISS THE APPEAL AS MOOT.”

https://appellatecases.courtinfo.ca.gov/search/case/dockets.cfm?dist=1&doc_id=2379055&doc_no=A164797&request_token=OCIwLSEmLkw%2BW1BRSCFNWEtIUFA6UVxfJSNeWzNSTDtNCg%3D%3D

Lee Heidhues 1.26.2023

I have been subscribing to and reading The Nation since my time as a journalism student at San Francisco State University.

It is must reading and the name Victory Navasky and The Nation have always been inseparable.

Victor Navasky’s death at age 90 is a loss for journalism, political discourse, the United States and the world.

NPR – 1.24.2023

A left wing political luminary has died. Journalist Victor S. Navasky died at the age of 90.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Navasky

Navasky ran The Nation, one of the oldest magazines in America, with a sharp progressive bent. He started as editor in 1978, a year when teachers’s strikes and the Camp David Accords ruled the headlines. He also worked as the magazine’s publisher, and then publisher emeritus until his death Monday at a hospital in New York. The cause was pneumonia, his son Bruno Navasky told NPR.

“For many years, we had a bad joke: If it’s bad for the country, it’s good for The Nation,” Navasky told NPR in 2009. He was alluding to the magazine’s pointed criticism of the George W. Bush administration and the soaring number of subscriptions his publication saw after the advent of the second Gulf War. “It’s a rallying point for people who feel that they’re not represented at the highest levels of power.”

Navasky, the second child of a clothing manufacturer, was also a scion of the Upper West Side in Manhattan. He attended progressive educational institutions, including Rudolph Steiner School and Swarthmore College. After a stint in the U.S. Army, he enrolled in Yale Law School and quickly became part of the journalism establishment, working for The New York Times as an editor, writer and columnist.

But it was at The Nation that Navasky’s singular voice became a clarion call for the left. He mentored other writers whose playful prose and sense of satire breathed wit into what had been an occasionally pedantic publication, among them Christopher Hitchens, Calvin Trillin, Katha Politt and Alexander Cockburn.

Navasky appreciated the work of making news stories passionate and beguiling. He told NPR he watched Fox News for years, because Bill O’Reilly and other Fox stars were so entertaining. He even claimed to welcome the channel’s conservative check on Democratic administrations. But Navasky added he missed progressive voices in mainstream media.

“It is a credibility problem if you don’t — if you distort, omit or otherwise demagogue against the opposition,” he said.

Navasky, for whom entertainment and ethics were always intertwined, wrote the National Book Award-winning book Naming Names which told the story of Hollywood blacklisting, as well as other titles, including Kennedy Justice and A Matter of Opinion, which won the George Polk book award in 2005.

A statement provided to NPR from his family said Navasky “usually had nothing but kind words for everyone he encountered — even adversaries — and took a particular joy in his close relationships with family and a few select friends who were with him through to the very end.”

https://www.npr.org/2023/01/24/1151122377/journalist-victor-s-navasky-has-died-for-years-he-led-the-nation

Lee Heidhues 1.25.2023

The following article may be about nearby Santa Cruz, the coastal town just 73 miles south of The Great Walkway in San Francisco.

San Francisco City Hall needs to get its proverbial head out of the sand and pay attention.

What is going on in Santa Cruz is equally true for the Great Walkway. It took an overwhelming majority of the electorate last November to maintain a partially free space along the Pacific Ocean.

San Francisco officials must continue to push for a permanently car free oasis along the ocean front. If the bureaucrats don’t do it, Mother Nature will take care of it for them.

In short. It is long past the time when politicians listen to the spoiled entitled motorists.

Excerpted from The San Francisco Standard 1.25.2023

“The storm has reminded us that we can’t just keep putting Band-Aids on things,” said Gary Griggs, a UC Santa Cruz researcher who specializes in climate and coastal science.

“We need to think longer term, and realistically, there’s nothing we can do over the long term to hold back the Pacific Ocean. It’s coming, and it’s coming for us.”

While the January storms may have hastened the damage, climate experts say to expect more of these once-rare weather events. And figuring out how to plan for them, and the rising seas in general, is not a problem unique to Santa Cruz or even California. Coastal cities up and down the state have been grappling with similar challenges, debating the idea of “managed retreat,” which focuses on relocating property and infrastructure and planning for sea level rise instead of fighting it.

“Pretty much all the places we identified [as hazards], there are problems now,” said David Revell, a coastal geomorphologist who consulted on the city’s plan. 

While consulting on the plan, Revell said his group found that prioritizing recreation—particularly access to the city’s world-class surfing—would have the most economic benefit to the city and community, especially compared to the expensive status quo of constant emergency repairs. 

“If we keep armoring, we’re going to lose those surf spots much faster than if we allow erosion to continue or look at ways to add more sand to the beaches,” Revell said. “I think dodging cars is probably not the long-term answer.”

But ultimately, Griggs said, there’s no stopping the inevitable. 

“All protection ends somewhere,” Griggs said. “You can’t build a wall to hold back 10 feet of sea level rise.”

https://sfstandard.com/weather/future-of-iconic-coastal-road-in-doubt-following-january-storms/

Top photo – Coastal erosion in Santa Cruz – just 73 miles south of The Great Walkway in San Francisco

Lee Heidhues 1.24.2023

I am not speaking of San Francisco today where 37 pedestrians were cut down on City streets in 2022.

https://sfstandard.com/transportation/pedestrian-killed-in-san-francisco-is-second-traffic-death-this-year/

I am today writing about New York City where 255 pedestrians, motorists and cyclists were killed last year.

The carnage on America’s roadways is a nationwide disgraceful epidemic with government officials, for the most part, making vacuous pronouncements and doing nothing to stop the carnage.

As long as the car rules supreme in America nothing will change. People will continue to be killed.

Excerpted from New York Magazine 1.24.2023

Maybe in the scheme of things, the death toll from driving through New York City isn’t worth fussing over.

When drivers who kill rarely suffer any punishment more severe than a ticket and then get right back on the road.

More than three times as many New Yorkers were murdered last year as died under the wheels. Several thousand overdosed. Many froze to death on the streets. If we’re going to accept those ratios, let’s at least be honest about it and admit that, yes, some people are going to get hit by cars and die, and we don’t care, or don’t care enough.

The advocacy group Transportation Alternatives has just issued its annual report listing the names of all 255 pedestrians, motorists, and cyclists killed on the city’s streets in 2022. Nearly half were on foot.

The Department of Transportation boasts of having “driven” — its word — “traffic deaths to historic lows,” which is true if by “history” you mean since last year. If you compare it to the actual historic low of 2018, when the carnage was limited to “only” 202 people, the stats look less rosy. Nine years into the Vision Zero era, we should really be calling it Vision 125: the average number of pedestrians killed each year in New York since 2014. One every three days.

Apparently, all this is fine, the unfortunate, acceptable by-product of a city where people in cars and people without them mix.

That, at any rate, is the signal we all send when we shake our heads, shrug, and move on.

When city officials mumble pieties and let lifesaving street designs get bogged down in endless studies. When the Department of Transportation has only a sparse staff and limited budget to cope with 6,000 miles of streets and an endless supply of fractious New Yorkers eager to tweak, delay, and even block the lifesaving street redesigns.

https://www.curbed.com/2023/01/upper-west-side-zone-pedestrian-death.html

Top photo – The scene at 97th Street and West End Avenue in New York City after Cooper Stock was killed by a taxi driver in 2014. Photo: Pearl Gabel/NY Daily News via Getty Images

Lee Heidhues 1.19.2023

We are over. We lost. We are devastated. We are demoralized.

The victors can gloat and rejoice in their triumph. Aided by 30BN insurance carriers. Ruthless attorneys. Terrible Judges in the judicial system. All allowed this to happen.

It is so horrific.

A Court ordered Mediator finally beat us into submission. “Why do you keep fighting?” we were asked over and over.

All this because eight years ago I said “You can build a fence where the previous one stood.” Those few words were the conduit for our destruction.

Now we must live with this legally sanctioned theft of our land for the rest of our lives. The State has successfully stolen a portion of our property we have owned and lived on for 39 years.

My wife sits downstairs and has the scariest look on her face. I, too, am completely upended. I really don’t know how we will continue living peacefully and feel any kind of tranquility.

We only have each other.

The entire apparatus of the State is destroying us for our free, independent, outspoken, honest behavior.

I have no idea what will happen next. But for sure neither of us are in a good place this evening.

This is such a devastating blow.

January 20, 2023

This afternoon a morbidly obese Notary came to our home. We would not bring him into the house.

It is a painful moment when we must sign the Agreement and effectively surrender a portion of our land.

We are drained financially and mentally. It pains me to think how much worse, after spending over 400K, if we had to continue funneling money into the legal system.

I feel like early 1972 when we returned to San Francisco after years abroad with only $125.00. Broke and wondering, “What comes next?”

Lee Heidhues 1.18.2023

“Character assassination.”

That’s how some observers in New York are describing the rejection of Latino jurist Hector LaSalle to be the Empire State’s top Judge.

New York Progressives view it from a different perspective. They feel Governor Kathy Hochul (shown in photo above) should have named a known Progressive to the Bench.

Progressives are still smarting from a lack of support from moderate Democrats resulting in the loss of several Congressional seats in the New York City area last November. These defeats at the ballot box may well have cost Democrats control of the House of Representatives in Washington.

Now the Progressives are exacting a measure of revenge and sending a message to the moderate Governor Hochul. We demand more respect.

Excerpted from The New York Times 1.18.2023

ALBANY, N.Y. — Gov. Kathy Hochul’s embattled nominee to become New York State’s top judge was rejected on Wednesday, an unprecedented repudiation that underscored a deep division among Democrats on the direction of the state’s judicial system.

Senator Luis Sepúlveda, a Democrat from the Bronx who is Puerto Rican and voted in favor of Justice LaSalle, said the judge had been the target of a “character assassination” because he was Latino.

After a combative hourslong hearing, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 10-9 against the nomination of Justice Hector D. LaSalle, whose nomination was strongly opposed by progressives who saw him as too conservative.

The committee’s rejection — the first time that New York lawmakers have voted against a governor’s choice for chief judge — laid bare how vulnerable Ms. Hochul, a Buffalo-area Democrat, may be to a challenge from her own party.

All 10 senators who voted against the judge were Democrats; two Democrats voted in favor of Justice LaSalle, while one Democrat and all six Republicans on the committee voted in favor “without recommendation.”

The rejection does not necessarily mean that the LaSalle saga is over. The governor has not ruled out taking legal action to force a vote on Justice LaSalle’s nomination on the full Senate floor, raising the specter of a constitutional showdown.

Despite pressure on her to withdraw her nomination, the governor has forcefully defended Justice LaSalle. Over the weekend she rallied support alongside other top Democrats, including Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the U.S. House minority leader, stressing the symbolic importance of elevating a jurist of Puerto Rican descent to the upper echelons of state government.

Indeed, Justice LaSalle’s nomination has split Latino elected officials, with some suggesting that he was subjected to a double standard because of his ethnicity.