Lee Heidhues 9.20.2021

Dede Wilsey and Thomas Campbell de Young Museum CEO along with assorted San Francisco Swells and benefactors have signed off on the pending transformation to a more environmentally, car free friendly City.

JFK Drive which sits astride the de Young Museum and the The Great Walkway (formerly Highway) at the nearby Pacific Ocean are the recipients of San Francisco aristocracy’s political and environmental largesse.

The de Young Museum and The San Francisco Chronicle are inextricably tied. (see following Wikipedia article).

While the Thieriot family no longer owns the Chronicle its ties run deep with the de Young Museum. The family, business, political and cultural relationship makes the Chronicle endorsement of a permanently car free JFK Drive, and by extension a permanently car free Great Walkway, more noteworthy. Link to editorial follows.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Editorial-SF-jumped-the-gun-in-its-Great-Highway-16469050.php

A clean car free environment is munificence the wealthy socially conscious like to bestow upon The People. It makes them appear magnanimous and costs nothing.

In return they receive something money can never buy. Good will.

Blog contributor Liz is a long time member of the FAMSF. We approve wholeheartedly.

The following is excerpted from a Wikipedia article on M.H. de Young.

In San Francisco, de Young and his brother, Charles de Young (1846–1880), founded the Daily Dramatic Chronicle newspaper, first published on January 17, 1865, with the loan of a twenty dollar gold piece which Michael received from his landlord. A third brother, Gustavus, whose initial originally appeared in the masthead (“G. and C. de Young”), later vanished.^[2] The Daily Dramatic Chronicle was a four-page tabloid that was freely distributed throughout San Francisco. According to the de Youngs, the Daily Dramatic Chronicle would be “the best advertising medium on the Pacific Coast.” On September 1, 1868, the de Youngs expanded their tabloid into a daily newspaper. The first issue stated that the Chronicle would be “independent in all things, neutral in none.” The Daily Dramatic Chronicle was sold under the condition that it be renamed the Dramatic Review. De Young was also the director of the Associated Press for many years.^[8]

Public Leadership[edit]

De Young, inspired by the events of the Chicago World’s fair, led a campaign to bring a world’s fair to San Francisco. De Young then became the Director-General of the California Midwinter International Exposition of 1894. During a visit to New York City, De Young was inspired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s location in Central Park.^[9] As a result, de Young wanted the fair to be held in Golden Gate Park. However, John McLaren, the Superintendent of Golden Gate Park, was concerned about how the removal of many trees would affect the environment of the park. In an intense debate, de Young asked McLaren, “What is a tree? “What are a thousand trees compared to the benefits of the exposition?” Significantly, de Young owned about 31 blocks south of the park and could have been motivated by the fair’s potential positive impacts on his real estate holdings. While the vast majority of the fair’s buildings were soon destroyed, de Young persuaded the city to save the Fine Arts Building. The building was renamed the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum after de Young’s death. De Young supported the museum throughout his life and bequeathed $150,000 to the museum upon his death.^[10]

Personal life[edit]

De Young and his wife Katherine had five children:

• Charles de Young (1881–1913)
• Helen de Young (1883–1969), who married George T. Cameron (1873–1955)^[11]
• Constance Marie de Young (1885–1968), who married Joseph Oliver Tobin (1878–1978)^[12]
• Kathleen Yvonne de Young (1888–1954), who married Ferdinand Thieriot (1883–1920)^[13]
• Phyllis D. de Young (1892–1988), who married Nion Robert Tucker (1885–1950)^[14]

In 1884, De Young was shot by an irate businessman, Adolph B. Spreckels, apparently due to a negative newspaper article, and survived the injury. De Young died on February 15, 1925; a Roman Catholic mass was held in St. Mary’s Cathedral^[15] (he had converted to Catholicism after marrying his wife, Katherine I. Deane).^[16]

Legacy[edit]

The M. H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, is named in his honor. According to his daughter, Helen de Young Cameron, de Young “loved objects. He was an incurable collector. He collected everything. He stored his collections at the Memorial Museum, where he would visit them at all hours. He took genuine delight in sharing them with the citizens of San Francisco, insisting that his museum never charge admission.”^[2] De Young purchased many things of “curious and artistic and instructive value” for the museum.^[17]

Descendants[edit]

In 1956, one of De Young’s grandsons, Ferdinand Melly Thieriot (1921–1956), the circulation director of The Chronicle, and his wife Frances (1921–1956), were among the 46 killed aboard the SS Andrea Doria when it was struck by the MS Stockholm off the coast of Nantucket.^[18]

De Young was the grandfather of Nan Tucker McEvoy (1919–2015), chair of Chronicle Publishing Company’s board of directors until the 1990s.^[19] He is also the great-great-grandfather of actor Max Thieriot (born 1988).^[20]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._H._de_Young

Letter to the Editor San Francisco Chronicle 9.19.2021

I applaud the Chronicle (editorial 9.19.2021) for taking up the cause of the environment and advocating for a car free JFK Drive and Great Walkway.  For months a strident and noisy legion of motorists have driven out The People of all ages who seek  safe and secure venues to cycle, walk and run. Equally important is the Chronicle’s calling out those in City Hall who let themselves be intimidated by the unrelenting motorist din. Several Supervisors ignored a deliberative process which was in place. When the Board was on vacation these legislators knowingly colluded with Mayor Breed to thwart a goal which would place San Francisco on the map as a leader in the time of environmental degradation and climate change.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Editorial-SF-jumped-the-gun-in-its-Great-Highway-16469050.php

Lee Heidhues 9.18.2021

George Orwell experienced war.

He believed that “his erstwhile friends on the left also could seek to destroy individual rights with malignant vigor.” This is what I find happening in San Francisco as it decides whether or not to make this town a more car free, people first, environmentally friendly venue.

Specifically, too many people leading the push for a car free JFK Drive and Great Walkway along the Pacific Ocean are allowing themselves to be compromised to death by elected officials and City Hall bureaucrats.

Compromise is not an option. A strict unwavering position is the only strategy to guarantee success.

People who speak out boldly regarding a more car fee city are ridiculed, marginalized and cast aside by those who feel compromise is the only path to success.

Why are vocal advocates being criticized by those who should welcome their support? Absent compromise they fear losing their seat at the table. 

People who fancy themselves City Hall insiders will learn their value to the decision makers is illusory as their goals are stripped away piece by piece.

Wannabe insiders who readily compromise core beliefs in return for crumbs will be jettisoned by the power structure, condemned by their core followers and left with nothing at the end of the day.

Wall Street Journal 9.18.2021

“Homage to Catalonia,” a brilliant blend of reporting and analysis, marked the great turning point in his career, the moment when he recognized what others did not: the sobering fact that lies and threats to freedom could come from illiberalism on both ends of the political spectrum. This was when Orwell became Orwell.

Shortly after George Orwell received a medical discharge from his militia in the Spanish Civil War, he traveled to see his wife in Barcelona. She greeted him in a hotel lounge with a “sweet smile,” but then “hissed” a warning into his ear: “Get out!”

At first, Orwell was confused, stammering: “What? Why? What do you mean?”

Lee Heidhues – Artwork by Liz Heidhues – 9.17.2021

San Francisco chameleon Faux Progressive Supervisor Connie Chan’s Self-serving September 7, 2021 Press Release is nothing more than gushing self praise for her deplorable plan to open Car Free JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park to vehicular traffic.

The Supervisor has become a handmaiden of the most entrenched interests in San Francisco who want nothing to impede their goal to make money under the rubric of providing culture to the masses.

JFK Drive is their piggy bank. Supervisor Chan is the cashier.

Connie Chan leans on her fellow Supervisor Shamann Walton’s scurrilous and absurd quote earlier this year comparing the Car Free JFK Drive to ‘The Segregated South’.

Make no mistake. Connie Chan is demonstrating the most chameleon like behavior.

Connie Chan ran on an environmental platform which got her an endorsement from the staunch climate advocacy group Sunshine Bay Area and enabled her narrow win in 2020.

Now that she is safely parked in City Hall, the Supervisor’s driving objective is catering to the self entitled motorists.

Supervisor Chan is largely responsible for the August backroom deal which opened The Great Walkway to cars after 16 months as a pedestrian and cyclist only thoroughfare.

Now Supervisor Chan has set her environmentally destructive sights on permitting cars once again to pollute JFK Drive and enable parking near the De Young Museum and Steinhart Aquariam.

This is all about money. The environment and right of the people to have an open, safe recreation space be damned.

PRESS RELEASE Supervisor Connie Chan Calls for Safe and Equitable Access to GGP

The French certainly know how to throw a tantrum when they feel maligned.  What better revenge than cancel a gala in Washington celebrating an American Revolutionary War battle.

As Marie Antoinette is to have famously opined during the French Revolution in 1789, “Let them eat cake.”  What she actually said was, “Let them eat brioche.”  Most people know what happened to her. Found guilty of treason and beheaded on October 14, 1793

Excerpted from The New York Times 9.16.2021

PARIS — President Biden’s announcement of a deal to help Australia deploy nuclear-powered submarines has strained the Western alliance, infuriating France and foreshadowing how the conflicting American and European responses to confrontation with China may redraw the global strategic map.

Underscoring its fury, France canceled a gala scheduled for Friday at its embassy in Washington to mark the 240th anniversary of a Revolutionary War battle.

In announcing the deal on Wednesday, Mr. Biden said it was meant to reinforce alliances and update them as strategic priorities shift. But in drawing a Pacific ally closer to meet the China challenge, he appears to have alienated an important European one and aggravated already tense relations with Beijing.

France on Thursday reacted with outrage to the announcements that the United States and Britain would help Australia develop submarines, and that Australia was withdrawing from a $66 billion deal to buy French-built submarines. At its heart, the diplomatic storm is also a business matter — a loss of revenue for France’s military industry, and a gain for American companies.

Jean-Yves Le Drian, France’s foreign minister, told Franceinfo radio that the submarine deal was a “unilateral, brutal, unpredictable decision” by the United States, and he compared the American move to the rash and sudden policy shifts common during the Trump administration.

“A knife in the back,” Mr. Le Drian said of the Australian decision, noting that Australia was rejecting a deal for a strategic partnership that involved “a lot of technological transfers and a contract for a 50-year period.”

“This is not done between allies,” Mr. Le Drian said. His comparison of Mr. Biden to Mr. Trump appeared certain to be taken in the White House as a serious insult.

A statement from Mr. Le Drian and Florence Parly, France’s Armed Forces minister, called “the American choice to exclude a European ally and partner such as France” a regrettable decision that “shows a lack of coherence.”

“This looks like a new geopolitical order without binding alliances,” said Nicole Bacharan, a researcher at Sciences Po in Paris. “To confront China, the United States appears to have chosen a different alliance, with the Anglo-Saxon world separate from France.” She predicted a “very hard” period in the old friendship between Paris and Washington.

Lee Heidhues 9.14.2021

California voters have overwhelmingly torched an attempt by a group of petulant citizens who used the recall mechanism to toss out the incumbent Democrat Governor, Gavin Newsom. 

California’s Republicans had their typical MAGA classless and clueless response to the lambasting. Republican recall campaign manager Anne Hyde Dunsmore spouted off, “What I’m not subscribing to is this grand mandate, that we got it shoved up our ass. Because we didn’t.”

Oh. Really? These losers spent $100,000,000.

They failed.

This sham recall, which consumed the body politic for the past year, is receiving the thrashing it richly deserves. The entire recall system in California is a disgrace. Any group of disgruntled citizens can try and over turn the will of the electorate to satisfy their own obnoxious self interests.

Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle 9.14.2021

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday survived the effort to oust him from office as voters decisively defeated the California recall. With nearly eight million votes tallied, Newsom was capturing more than two-thirds of them.

Millions of Californians had already cast their votes ahead of election day, after officials mailed a ballot to every active registered voter in the state last month, allowing county election offices to process their ballots ahead of time and begin releasing results shortly after polls closed at 8 p.m.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Voters-resoundingly-defeat-recall-of-California-16459904.php

UPDATE: 9.24.2021

Gavin Newsom signed law to replace Sacramento Junipero Serra statue with monument for California Native American tribes.

Excerpted from Sacramento Bee 9.24.2021

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law on September 24th that would replace a former statue of a controversial Catholic missionary on the grounds of Sacramento’s Capitol Park with a new monument that honors the region’s Native American tribes. The bill-signing commemorated Native American Day.

Other related bills included in Friday’s signing include a bill that would replace Columbus Day with Native American Day held in September and legislation that would protect Native American students from wearing “items of cultural significance” at high school graduations.

“Today’s action sends a powerful message from the grounds of Capitol Park across California underscoring the state’s commitment to reckoning with our past and working to advance a California for All built on our values of inclusion and equity,” said Newsom in a statement. “I’m proud to sign this long overdue legislation to honor the Native peoples who have called this land home since time immemorial and to further our important work in partnership with Native American communities to tackle the multi-faceted challenges facing California.”

Read more at: https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article254079163.html#storylink=cpy

San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileono is a controversial figure in his hometown. Now he has taken to the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal to implore Governor Gavin Newsom to veto legislation which, if it becomes law, would permanently remove the statue of Father Junipero Serra from the State Capitol.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jun%C3%ADpero_Serra

Father Serra was beatified by Pope John Paul II on 25 September 1988 in Vatican City^{. Amid denunciations from Native American tribes who accused Serra of presiding over a brutal colonial subjugation,} Pope Francis canonized Serra on 23 September 2015 at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., during his first visit to the United States^{. Serra’s missionary efforts earned him the title of “Apostle of California”.}

^{Both before and after his canonization, Serra’s reputation and missionary work during the Spanish occupation have been condemned by critics, who cite alleged mandatory conversions to Catholicism, followed by abuse of the Native American converts.}

Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle 9.13.2021

San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone appealed to Gov. Gavin Newsom to stop a bill that allows a statue of Father Junipero Serra to be permanently removed from the state Capitol grounds in Sacramento.

The statue of the founder of California’s mission system was removed by protesters in July 2020 and has been in storage ever since.

Last month, the state Legislature passed a bill to replace the statue with a monument to Sacramento-area Native American tribes. The bill, approved by the Senate on a 28-2 vote, now awaits Newsom’s signature.

“Father Serra was in fact the founder of California and in his work here educating and evangelizing the native population did what he could to protect them and educate them,” Cordileone told The Chronicle Monday in a phone call. “That statue is at the state Capitol which is the most appropriate place for Father Serra to be honored.”

In an opinion article published in the Wall Street Journal on Monday, Cordileone and Los Angeles Archbishop Jose H. Gomez implored the governor not to sign the bill.

The piece described Serra as “a complex character, but he defended indigenous people’s humanity, decried the abuse of indigenous women, and argued against imposing the death penalty on natives who had burned down a mission and murdered one of his friends.”

It also quoted a passage from the Assembly’s version of the bill written by Assembly Member James Ramos, D-Highland (San Bernadino County), the first Native American elected to the legislature. “Enslavement of both adults and children, mutilation, genocide, and assault on women were all part of the mission period initiated and overseen by Father Serra,” it read.

Reached Monday at his district office in San Bernadino County, Ramos described the op-ed as “a paternal approach to telling Indian people, ‘Let me tell you your own history.’ The archbishop is trying to paint a picture that has been romanticized in the state. What we need is a true perspective of what happened to the California Indian people during the missionary era. Even the pope apologized in 2015 for the colonization of Native Americans.”

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/S-F-archbishop-pleads-with-Newsom-to-save-16455974.php

Lee Heidhues 9.12.2021

The Green Party got a lot of media buzz earlier in the  year when some polls predicted a Green could be elected Chancellor.  

These high expectations have faded.

As the election day draws near pollsters predict an aging German electorate will opt for familiarity. That’s not to say the Greens won’t have a voice. In the coalition style system in Germany the Greens will likely be a partner in a Social Democrat administration. This means the Greens and its young leader Annalena Baerbock will have a major voice in the Bundestag and positions in the governing cabinet.

Angela Merkel will soon step down after 16 years as German Chancellor. If the polls are correct it appears the German electorate will choose the next Chancellor from one of the nation’s long standing parties, the Social Democrats.

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 9.12.2021

About 60.4 million people are eligible to vote in Germany on September 26 — that’s a drop of 1.3 million on the last general election four years ago. And more than half of the electorate is over the age of 50.

An aging voter base 

Age is  an important factor when it comes to prioritizing political issues. Climate change has been found to be the most pressing topic for young voters in Germany. For older voters that does not seem to be the case, according to a survey by the Nature And Biodiversity Conservation Union (NABU). Of those over the age of 65, 60% said they would not let the climate and nature conservation interests of younger generations influence their voting decision.

NABU President Jörg-Andreas Krüger called the results of the survey shocking. “We know from other surveys that climate and environmental protection are among the most important issues for the Bundestag elections,” he told broadcaster ntv. The consequences of climate change “will have to be dealt with above all by our children and grandchildren.”

As the population ages, there’s a shift in the generational balance of power in elections. In West Germany’s 1987 national election 23% of voters were under the age of 30 and 26% were over 60. For the 2021 election, the office of the Federal Returning Officer expects the number of voters under 30 to fall to under 15% and those over 60 to rise above 38%.

This change has further shifted influence to baby boomers — the generation born after World War II that is in its 60s today. And this trend will continue, as younger Germans have fewer children.

Turnout is traditionally much higher among older voters. At the previous general election in 2017, 76% of voters over 70 turned out to vote and 81% of voters were in their 60s. Turnout for voters aged 21 to 24, meanwhile stood at only 67%. 

Older and younger Germans also tend to have different voting behaviors: “Older voters are more likely to have a long-term party affiliation than younger voters. This often developed in earlier phases of life,” Nico Siegel, managing director of the Infratest dimap polling institute in Berlin, tells DW.

Older voters in Germany tend to vote for the Christian Democrats or the Social Democrats, Germany’s historic big tent parties, and are less likely to shift their allegiance.

More than 30 years after unification, there are still differences in how Germans in the east and west vote. The center-right Christian Democratic Union and its sister party, the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), the pro-free market Free Democrats (FDP), and the Greens draw most of their support from the west of the country. 

The communist Left Party and the far-right AfD, however, draw most of their support from the east, the territory of the former communist German Democratic Republic, which is less densely populated—with just 12.5 million residents of the country’s total 83.2 million.  

Support for political parties appears to be influenced the most by income levels. Voters for the CDU/CSU, SPD, and especially the Greens and FDP are generally above the total median income. SPD voters are generally around the median, and supporters of the Left and the AfD generally earn below the median income, many of whom are based in east Germany and regions that have been affected by deindustrialization.

The Greens perform best in urban areas with a young, well-educated population. The Greens have traditionally won a large percentage of the youth vote: At the 2019 European parliament election, they won 34% support from Germany’s under 24-year-olds. 

But even during the Greens’ brief surge over the summer, they failed to make major inroads in the east. In June, 26% of those surveyed in western Germany said they’d vote for the Greens compared with just 12 % in eastern Germany, according to pollster Forsa.

https://www.dw.com/en/german-election-demographics-facts-and-figures/a-59143207

Lee Heidhues 9.10.2021

Everyone. And I mean everyone remembers where they were on September 11, 2001. A date which will live in infamy in American and global history.

What few people remember is September 11, 1973.  The day the Chilean military led by Augusto Pinochet with the support of the Nixon Administration overthrew a democratically elected Socialist government in Chile.  President Salvador Allende was either murdered or committed suicide. 

I have a personal memory. In the early 1970’s I was the news editor at a weekly newspaper in San Francisco, The Sun Reporter. Several months before the September 1973 coup the pubisher, Carlton B. Goodlett, traveled to Chile and met with President Allende.  When he returned we published an article and photos of the trip. 

When I learned of the coup against President Allende I was shocked.

The Chilean coup ushered in nearly 20 years of fascist style government terror resulting in the disappearance and death of thousands of dissidents.

The American government involvement in the toppling of Salvador Allende was one of the most shameful acts in a long line of American misdeeds.

The coup and its aftermath have been well documented in literature and film. One contribution to the litany of chronicling the coup in Chile and its aftermath is the novel, The Twilight Zone by Nona Hernandez, a Chilean writer and actor. I am just finishing the novel. It is fascinating, depressing, intriguing and disconcerting. 

Following is a review by Chilean author Ariel Dorfman.

Excerpted from The New York Times 3.16.2021

It was back in 1984, in Chile, a country then suffering under the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, that I first read the sordid story of the torturer Andrés Valenzuela.

A barely tolerated opposition magazine had published an excruciating interview with him, and I forced myself — having recently returned to my native land after 12 years of exile — to devour it with a mix of perverse curiosity and obvious dread. It was a tale of multiple horrors, detailing how Valenzuela and his fellow state agents had abducted dissidents, applied electricity to their genitals, dumped the corpses in rivers and ravines. I knew some of those victims personally and was aware that the viciousness inflicted on them and so many others could very well erupt into my own life.

Overcome with revulsion, I resolved to forget that name, Andrés Valenzuela. As if banishing him from memory could deny his ferocious persistence. Because here he is again, the protagonist of Nona Fernández’s novel “The Twilight Zone,” translated fluidly into English by Natasha Wimmer. Given my initial distressing experience with the magazine interview, I approached this book with trepidation, also wary that a plethora of investigations, memoirs, films, fiction, essays, plays and poems had extensively covered the themes of terror, memory and the obstacles to national reconciliation since Pinochet’s loss of power in 1990. Could anything original still be expressed on the subject?

In fact, “The Twilight Zone” is wildly innovative, a major contribution to literature, in Chile and beyond, that deals with trauma and its aftermath. Fernández, whose previous works of fiction have been admirably iconoclastic, belongs to a generation of prominent Chilean writers (like Alejandro Zambra, Lina Meruane, Andrés Anwandter) who grew up under the dictatorship and have developed fresh perspectives on those turbulent years. She understands that, rather than fleeing from Valenzuela, we must pursue him and his secrets if there is ever to be a reckoning with the demonic legacy of men like him.

In order to hold together the novel’s interlocking fragments, all those lives endlessly trapped in “dense, circular time,” Fernández deploys a brilliant literary strategy. She conjures up samples of popular culture, primarily from the TV series “The Twilight Zone,” and turns them into portals to another dimension. An astronaut stranded on a planet reminds her not only of Valenzuela adrift in a French village, unable to contact his homeland, but also of a prisoner who sends messages to a son he will never again see, as well as the author herself as she receives signals from the child she once was. It is a superb way of making familiar the unimaginable experience of torture and pain, helping her haunted readers descend with her into “the blaze of history.”