Lee Heidhues 2.2.2022

Tim Redmond, publisher of 48 Hills, has done a dive into the most recent financial disclosures in the effort to Recall San Francisco’s progressive DA Chesa Boudin.

The Recall campaign hired mercenaries to qualify the measure for the ballot, spending $1,4000,000. Mercenaries, many of them from outside California, were housed, fed and well compensated for each signature.

Absent these mercenaries the DA Recall never would have qualified for the ballot.

This Recall is no mom and pop effort. It is a well orchestrated effort by the most extreme right wing cadres in this country to pull off an electoral coup d’etat.

The most shocking finding. Only $150,000 has been raised by small local contributions. The massive balance are contributions from super wealthy individuals and dark money Political Action Committees  attempting to subvert democracy and bring down San Francisco’s progressive District Attorney.

Mercenary signature gatherer – June 2021

Excerpted from 48 Hills – Tim Redmond – 2.2.2022

The latest financial disclosure forms for this spring’s elections  were filed with the city and the state yesterday, and some of the information is just stunning. Not surprising, I suppose, but stunning.

William Oberndorf, The big GOP donor and support of Mitch McConnell, has now put more than $600,000—including an unusual donation of roughly $300,000 in stock—into the campaign to recall Chesa Boudin.

If you take out all the contributions from the multi-millionaires, the campaign has only raised about $150,000. That wouldn’t be enough to cover the cost of paid signature-gathering, which came in at more than $1 million.

The message: Twenty rich people have paid to put this recall on the ballot. (Let’s be serious—for $1 million you can get almost anything on the ballot in San Francisco.) They are pretty much funding the entire campaign.

That money to the recall campaign is all flowing through a separate organization called Neighbors for a Better San Francisco, created to defeat progressives for supervisor in 2020. It’s now by far the primary source of funding for the recall.

In fact, records on filed with the Secretary of State’s Office show that Neighbors—and an affiliated dark-money nonprofit by the same name that doesn’t disclose its donors—made up almost 80 percent of the $1.4 million going into San Franciscans for Public Safety, the main recall group.

And the vast majority of the Neighbors money comes from 20 donors, most of them very rich. Some of them don’t live in San Francisco.

Virtually all of them made their money in tech, venture capital, or real estate.

Top photo: DA Chesa Boudin being sworn into office by Mayor London Breed as his wife Dr. Valerie Block looks on 1.8.2020

Big, big millionaire money is almost entirely funding the Boudin recall

It’s been 10 years since Trayvon Martin was gunned down by a gun toting white man whose defense was “Stand your ground.”

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

Nothing much has changed. Cops and entitled white people continue to gun down black people with impunity. It’s true there is the occasional exception to the rule when the evidence is clear and public outrage is so strident that the killers face the consequences for their horrific acts.

It was all very trendy for white people to march and flount their Black Lives Matter bling and regalia. That was two years ago. The wanton abuse of Black people in America continues unabated.

June 2020 – Marching on JFK Drive in San Francisco after George Floyd murder by a cop.

It’s the exception in America where cops and racism rule.

Excerpted from New York Magazine The Cut – Brittney Cooper 1.31.2022

In 1892, at the height of the lynching crisis, Ida B. Wells proclaimed that “a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give.

When the white man who is always the aggressor knows he runs as great a risk of biting the dust every time his Afro-American victim does, he will have greater respect for Afro-American life.”

The critical point for me in Wells’s manifesto for Black self-defense is not her overarching respect for the power of guns.

It is her observation about where the aggression begins. Losing that thread of the argument, about who actually starts the fights, is the reason so much white aggression is seamlessly restyled as the right to “stand one’s ground,” to protect and defend one’s kith and kin. Conversely,

Black self-defense is transposed into an act of unjustified aggression and met with fire and fury by both the state and self-deputized white citizens.

There is an earnestness to Black Lives Matter. A kind of barefaced removing of the gloves and the pugilism.

Perhaps this is an homage to Trayvon Martin, who in his last moments was meandering through his father’s girlfriend’s neighborhood, chatting on the phone with his friend Rachel, unconcerned, as all young people should have the freedom to be, with the monster lurking in the bushes.

To this earnestness, the aggressors, who still are almost always white, have responded with cynicism, obfuscation, and gun sales. George Zimmerman added to the chorus by successfully auctioning for $250,000 the gun he had used to kill Martin.

Top photo – Activist Ieshia Evans in July 2016, in Louisiana. Photo: Jonathan Bachman/REUTERS

The Nazis burned books in 1930’s Germany.

School district in Tennessee doesn’t burn books. It bans them. Political book bannning in 21st century America catches fire as an increasingly intolerant neo-Nazi sentiment spreads its toxicity over the country.

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/book-burning

Video link of Josef Goebbels exhorting Nazis to burn books

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/asset/f7811d94-5161-4db1-9f1c-9964c49f4553?t=1498195638

Excerpted from The Tennessean 1.24.2022

A Tennessee school board’s decision to remove Pulitzer Prize-winning book “Maus” from its curriculum has drawn international attention, including coverage from CNN, BBC and Times of Israel.

The McMinn County School Board voted 10-0 to ban the book in a Jan. 10 meeting, citing concerns over “rough” language and a nude drawing of a woman, according to meeting minutes posted to the district website. The book was part of its eighth-grade English language arts curriculum.

The book, written by comic artist Art Spiegelman, is a graphic novel that tells the story of his Jewish parents living in 1940s Poland. It follows them through their internment in Auschwitz. Nazis are portrayed as cats, while Jewish people are shown as mice. The novel also includes conversations between Spiegelman and his elderly father as he convinces him to tell his story.

The book was published in 1986, and Spiegelman was awarded a Pulitzer for it in 1992.

“The values of the county are understood,” McMinn County Director of Schools Lee Parkison said during the meeting. “There is some rough, objectionable language in this book.”

School board debates ‘Maus’ removal, defends decision

Eight “curse words” and the nude drawing were at the forefront of the concerns over the book, according to the board minutes.

Board member Tony Allman said he was also concerned about scenes in the book where mice were hung from trees and children were killed. The book also depicts suicide.

“Why does the educational system promote this kind of stuff?” he said. “It is not wise or healthy.”

Instructional supervisor Julie Goodin, a former history teacher, said that she believes the book represents the brutality of the Holocaust.

“There is nothing pretty about the Holocaust and for me this was a great way to depict a horrific time in history,” she said.

The school board released a statement Thursday afternoon defending its decision, citing the “unnecessary use of profanity and nudity and its depiction of violence and suicide” in the book.

“Taken as a whole, the Board felt this work was simply too adult-oriented for use in our schools,” part of the statement read.

As news spread about the school board’s decision, the US Holocaust Museum posted about “Maus” on Twitter Wednesday.

“Maus has played a vital role in educating about the Holocaust through sharing detailed and personal experiences of victims and survivors,” the post read. “On the eve of International #HolocaustRemembranceDay, it is more important than ever for students to learn this history. Teaching about the Holocaust using books like Maus can inspire students to think critically about the past and their own roles and responsibilities today.”

Congressman Steve Cohen (D-Tennessee) released a statement Thursday condemning the board’s decision, calling it reminiscent of the Scopes Monkey Trial. The 1925 trial centered on young high school teacher John Thomas Scopes, who was accused of violating state law by teaching evolution.

Cohen, who is Jewish, helped create the Tennessee Holocaust Commission and has been an advocate for Holocaust education in schools and other institutions.

“Art Spiegelman’s novel opens minds to the history of the Nazi genocide we’re remembering on today’s anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps in 1945,” Cohen said. “I look forward to seeing the school board decision reversed.”

https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/education/2022/01/27/tennessee-school-board-removes-holocaust-mausart-spiegelman/9237260002/

President Biden will be soon be able to nominate a Justice for the US Supreme Court with the imminent retirement of San Francisco native and Lowell High School graduate Stephen Breyer.

Expect another ferocious brawl as the Republicans, who already have cemented their majority on the nation’s highest Court, will trot out every incendiary argument to stop Biden’s eventual nominee from being confirmed.

Excerpted from Wikipedia 1.26.2022

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

Breyer was born on August 15, 1938, in San Francisco, California,^[4] to Anne A. (née Roberts) and Irving Gerald Breyer.^[5] Breyer’s paternal great-grandfather emigrated from Romania to the United States, settling in Cleveland, where Breyer’s grandfather was born.^[6] Breyer was raised in a middle-class Jewish family. His father was a lawyer who served as legal counsel to the San Francisco Board of Education.^[7] Breyer and his younger brother Charles R. Breyer, who later became a federal district judge, were active in the Boy Scouts of America and achieved the Eagle Scout rank.^[8][9] Breyer attended Lowell High School, graduating in 1955. At Lowell, he was a member of the Lowell Forensic Society and debated regularly in high school tournaments, including against future California governor Jerry Brown and future Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe.^[10]

After high school, Breyer studied philosophy at Stanford University. He graduated in 1959 with a Bachelor of Arts degree with highest honors and membership in Phi Beta Kappa.^[11] He was then awarded a Marshall Scholarship which he used to study philosophy, politics, and economics at Magdalen College, Oxford, receiving a second B.A. in 1961.^[12] He then returned to the United States to attend Harvard Law School, where he was a member of the Harvard Law Review and graduated in 1964 with a Bachelor of Laws degree magna cum laude.^[13]

In 1967, Breyer married Joanna Freda Hare, a psychologist and member of the British aristocracy, the youngest daughter of John Hare, 1st Viscount Blakenham. They have three adult children: Chloe, an Episcopal priest and author of The Close; Nell; and Michael.^[15]

Excerpted from The New York Times 1.26.2022

WASHINGTON — Justice Stephen G. Breyer, the senior member of the Supreme Court’s three-member liberal wing, will retire, two people familiar with the decision said, providing President Biden a chance to make good on his campaign pledge to name a Black woman to the court.

“This is a huge step in preserving his legacy in a way that Justice Ginsburg failed to do,” said Leah Litman, a law professor at the University of Michigan. “He saw what happened to his friend, to her jurisprudence and all the things that mattered to her when she didn’t step down while she was able to. It is a credit to him that he made this decision even though he’s doing a job that he obviously very much loves.”

Mr. Biden is expected to formally announce the retirement at the White House on Thursday, according to one person familiar with the planning for the event.

Justice Breyer, 83, the oldest member of the court, was appointed in 1994 by President Bill Clinton. After the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2020 and the appointment of Justice Amy Coney Barrett by President Donald J. Trump, he became the subject of an energetic campaign by liberals who wanted him to step down to ensure that Mr. Biden could name his successor while Democrats control the Senate.

With conservatives now in full control of the court, replacing Justice Breyer with another liberal would not change its ideological balance or affect its rightward trajectory in cases on abortion, gun rights, religion and affirmative action.

But Democrats, who control the Senate now by the narrowest of margins, may have to act quickly if they want to ensure that the court does not become even more conservative. If they lose even a single seat in the midterm elections, the balance of power in the chamber would flip, making it much more difficult for Mr. Biden to win confirmation for his nominee.

Justice Breyer’s opinions have been those of a moderate liberal, marked by deference to experts, the ad hoc balancing of competing interests and alertness to fundamental fairness. His goal, he said, was to reinforce democracy and to supply workable legal principles for a sprawling and diverse nation.

He has been more likely to vote against criminal defendants than other liberal justices. On the other hand, as the years progressed, he has grown increasingly hostile to the death penalty.

He played a starring role in the court’s last term, writing majority opinions rejecting a challenge to the Affordable Care Act and protecting the free speech rights of a high school student.

It’s the Wild West 21st century version in Los Angeles.

Thieves are finding it an easy Mark to break into railcars loaded with consumer goods. Predictably the Union Pacific Corporation which has a slim police force, 200 officers in 23 States, is blaming the “progressive” LA District Attorney for its failure to keep its property safe.

LA District Attorney George Gascon, a former Chief of Police in San Francisco, is spot on when he responded to the Union Pacific, “My Office is not tasked with keeping your sites secure.”

Excerpted from The Wall Street Journal 1.24.2022

Michelle Wilde bought a piece of sand art during a visit to Jerome, Ariz., earlier this month. Rather than carry it home, she had the shopkeeper ship the $145 frame to her.

Instead of arriving at her home in Everett, Wash., the package ended up next to a railroad track in East Los Angeles. The frame was gone. The box remained.

Train robberies date to the dawn of railroads, and Union Pacific has had its share of famous heists. In 1899, Butch Cassidy’s gang robbed the Union Pacific Overland Flyer No. 1 as it passed through Wyoming. The group stopped the train and blew up its safe. A posse was sent out in pursuit of the bandits.

Railroads combat the problem with their own police forces. Union Pacific has more than 200 police officers, but they must patrol thousands of miles of track across 23 states.

Lance Fritz, Union Pacific’s chief executive officer, said rail theft has been a mostly small-scale problem. What is happening in Los Angeles is different. A couple of years ago, opportunistic individuals might see a mile-plus-long train inching through the city and pry open a car to see what was inside, maybe grab a few items, he said, but “today, that’s more organized.”

Adrian Guerrero, a general director of public affairs at Union Pacific, said lenient prosecution means many of those arrested for rifling through railcars have their charges reduced to a misdemeanor or petty offense—and are often quickly released. “We just don’t see the criminal justice system holding these people accountable,” Mr. Guerrero said.

In a letter responding to Mr. Guerrero sent on Friday, Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón said the number of cases submitted to his office in which Union Pacific was listed as the victim had fallen each of the past two years, from 78 cases in 2019 to 47 in 2021. The DA brought charges in 55% of those cases, Mr. Gascón said, with the others dismissed for lack of evidence or because they didn’t involve allegations of burglary, theft or tampering.

“It is very telling that other major railroad operations in the area are not facing the same level of theft at their facilities as UP,” Mr. Gascón wrote. “My Office is not tasked with keeping your sites secure.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/train-robberies-are-a-problem-in-los-angeles-and-no-one-agrees-on-how-to-stop-them-11642946401?mod=Searchresults_pos6&page=1

Today there was a school shooting in Germany.  Prime Minister Olaf Scholz said he “was shocked by the shooting.”

The reason for the prime minister’s  response is the fact that Germany, unlike the United States, has very strict gun possession laws. In gun loving America obtaining a firearm is easy as going into the neighborhood grocery store and buying a candy bar.

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 1.24.2022

One woman was killed and three people injured in a shooting at Heidelberg University on Monday.

Police said at a press conference Monday evening that a man entered a university lecture hall with a double-barreled shotgun and another firearm as a class was running and opened fire.

Four people were wounded. A 23-year-old woman died several hours later in the hospital; the other victims suffered injures in the face, back and legs, police said.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he was shocked by the shooting.

“That one student has died of her injuries … It tears my heart apart to learn of such news,” Scholz said.

The  shooting at Heidelberg University has reawoken some interest in German gun control, which is regulated by the 2002 Weapons Act. In 2019 Germany’s Bundestag agreed to new gun control regulations, including a controversial measure that would have everyone who owns a firearm regularly checked by the country’s domestic intelligence agency (BfV).

According to the Weapons Act, you need a weapons possession card (Waffenbesitzkarte) to own or buy a firearm and a weapons license (Waffenschein) to use or carry a loaded firearm. This means collectors, for instance, only need the first, whereas hunters must have both.

A weapons possession card allows gun owners only to “transport” a firearm, rather than carry it. That means it must be unloaded and inside a locked case when taken out in public. But for those with a gun license, German law has no provision stipulating whether a gun must be concealed or loaded in public or not.

There is also a minor firearms certificate,(Kleiner Waffenschein) which is easier to obtain, and which is needed to carry lower-powered weapons, such as air guns, starting pistols, flare guns, or anything that can only shoot blanks or irritants.

Altogether, the costs for an application, including the required insurance, can run to around €500 ($540).

What kinds of guns are legal in Germany?

German law makes a distinction between weapons and war weapons, with the latter listed in the War Weapons Control Act.

In Germany, it is illegal to possess or use any war weapons. These include all fully automatic or semi-automatic rifles, machine guns (unless antiques from World War II or earlier), or barrels or breeches for such weapons. Pump-action shotguns are also banned under the Weapons Act.

Who is allowed to own guns in Germany?

Applicants for a German gun license must

1) be at least 18 years old,

2) have the necessary “reliability” and “personal aptitude,”

3) demonstrate the necessary “specialized knowledge,”

4) demonstrate a “need,” and

5) have liability insurance for personal injury and property damage of at least €1 million ($1.1 million).

https://www.dw.com/en/gun-control-and-firearms-possession-in-germany/a-52450664

When the 49ers beat Los Angeles at SoFi Stadium on January 9, 2022 the Rams House was packed with 49er fans in Red and Gold attire.

49er fans were such a presence at the Niners victory which propelled them into the playoffs that LA Rams management is now retaliating.

If the Rams can’t beat the Niners on the field (San Francisco has won six straight) LA ownership wants to ensure their team doesn’t lose in the stands, too.

San Francisco Chronicle 1.23.2022

You’ve heard about not counting your chickens before they hatch?

The Los Angeles Rams were banning ticket sales to 49ers fans before the Rams even knew if there’d be an NFC Championship Game next Sunday between the two teams.

An influx of 49er Faithful swarmed SoFi Stadium when the two teams faced off on Jan. 9, a game in which San Francisco scored a 27-24 upset and squeezed into the playoffs. Rams coach Sean McVay later told reporters that the team was surprised by just how many Niners fans had filled the stands.

Sunday morning, as the Rams prepared to play the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in what turned out to be a 30-27 victory for Los Angeles, fans looking to snag tickets to a possible 49ers-Rams title game at SoFi Stadium on Jan. 30 were hit with a notification that warned ticket sales “will be restricted to residents of the Greater Los Angeles region.”

The notification stated that ticket buyers’ residency will be based on the billing address for the credit card used to make the purchase, and “orders by residents outside of the Greater Los Angeles region will be canceled without notice and refunds given.

The unusual prohibition seemed to indicate that the club was trying to avoid a repeat of its regular-season finale against San Francisco when a large contingent of 49ers fans made the Rams feel like the visiting team — on their home turf.

Now, the two teams will meet for a third time this season. This time, the victor will get to represent the NFC in the Super Bowl.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Rams-already-on-defense-against-49ers-by-16798424.php#photo-21924992

Every Picture Tells a Story – 49ers win in the Snow in frigid Green Bay Wisconsin.

San Francisco 49ers’ Robbie Gould celebrates after making the 45 yard game-winning field goal as time runs out.

Like an 11th-hour stay-of-execution phone call from the governor, Jimmy Garoppolo marched the 49ers to a game-winning 45-yard field goal as time expired for a shocking 13-10 victory over the mighty Packers. – Scott Ostler, San Francisco Chronicle.

New York Times 1.22.2022

GREEN BAY, Wis. — Robbie Gould’s kick sailed through the uprights  and as his San Francisco teammates, bundled in red parkas, scampered onto the grass Saturday night, the Green Bay Packers just stood on their sideline. They had not lost all season at Lambeau Field, not in warm weather or temperate conditions or the winter chill, but a certain finality had now descended amid the snowfall.

The 49ers ousted the top-seeded Packers from the playoffs, 13-10, on Gould’s 45-yard field goal as time expired. San Francisco, the sixth seed, advances to play at either the Los Angeles Rams or the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in next Sunday’s N.F.C. championship game.