Wall Street’s implosion staggered not only financial institutions but also the presidential campaign. The McCain-Obama battle was suspended and then resumed as questions about the market meltdown rammed into what was a foreign policy debate at the University of Mississippi last week.
Despite this crisis of Godzilla proportions, San Francisco’s supervisor candidates happily debated issues of interest to the local Neighborhood Parks Council and Friends of the Urban Forest in the heavily APA neighborhoods of District 1 (Richmond) and 3 (North Beach and Chinatown). More was said about tree planting than about the $700 billion bailout. Candidates, including Asian Pacific American supervisor candidates Eric Mar, Alicia Wang, Wilma Pang, Claudine Cheng, Sue Lee, David Chiu, and Sherman D’Silva, ignored or hardly touched on Main Street-a paralyzed consumer credit market that could deny San Franciscans access to mortgages, small business and college loans.
Despite the meltdown, some members of the Board of Supervisors are hell bent on borrowing up to $4 billion through revenue bonds to takeover PG&E (Proposition H) without asking voters. The non-partisan controller’s office has said that acquiring PG&E’s assets could cost “in the billions.” The question is of priorities….
*****Related Articles:*****
The Affirmative Action Economic Meltdown
Asian Americans Consider Bailout Plan
Asian Pacific Americans and the Crisis
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CITY HALL’S OPEN TAB ON APAs: There is not only Prop H but also Proposition A, the $887 million S.F. General Hospital general obligation bond that homeowners will absorb through property taxes while landlords and tenants split the tax increase. APAs were already hit up last March for a $4,000 parcel tax over 20 years for a teacher pay raise measure. The measure was qualified by the school board, including the APA majority of Hydra Mendoza, Eric Mar, Norman Yee and Jane Kim, on behalf of more than 29,000 APA students, who make up half of public school students. Even if the raises are in order, only one in six of the district’s instruction staff is APA…CHINESE AND FILIPINOS PAY: Meanwhile, the parcel tax and property taxes to redeem bonds like Proposition A unfairly hit Chinese and Filipino Americans. According to the 2000 census, they own homes in higher proportions than the rest of the city. More than 53 percent of Chinese and more than 43 percent of Filipinos lived in their own homes. Overall, 46 percent of APAs lived in their own homes, compared to 35 percent of all city residents…BLINDED BY A MYTH: On the face of it, with median home values still hovering around $750,000 citywide as of July, APAs should easily absorb the $200 per year school parcel tax, right? Wrong-that adds to the “model minority” myth of APAs. While these APAs own homes, they are not among the city’s highest incomes. In reality they earned $56,679 or $6,700 less than the median family income, according to 1999 data. Even worse, these APAs earned $22,357, or $12,200 less than the typical city resident-which is a poverty wage by San Francisco’s high living standards. That means APA households likely have more folks working more than two jobs or have extended family members working…
THOSE ASIAN DRIVERS: Spotted on Market and Duboce Streets in San Fran, a red Civic Honda with bumper stickers identifying the vehicle was driven by an Asian. Band-aided on the rice rocket-a defensive “I am not a stalker” and some chop socky Chinese “Make f-k, not love”…. PLANTING A SEED FOR LITTLE SAIGON: No monks were seen in that Civic, but a nearby property in the longtime lavender mecca has gone missionary, as in the Vietnamese Buddhist Association of San Francisco. Where there’s a church, there’s a community….NO BUCKS, NO BUCK ROGERS: District 3 candidate Wilma Pang is arguing with the S.F. Ethics Commission that rejected her mostly Chinese American donors as legitimate. She’s trying to match donations with public funds to run for office…
SITUATION NORMAL-ALL FINANCED UP: Last Friday after J.P. Morgan’s takeover, WaMu was still operating its exhibition booth at the U.S. National Hispanic Chamber of Commerce inside the Sacramento Convention Center. Not far from them, rest assured was the FDIC-the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation-insuring our cash and giving away free FDIC-labeled calculators-all made in China…
DODGERS STILL SUCK: Associated Press reports that Kim Ng of the LA Dodgers, in the playoffs this week, is in the running for the top Seattle Mariners job. Mariners President Chuck Armstrong said, “We’re color blind, gender blind.” Ng became the first woman ever to be interviewed when she was the runner-up to be GM of the Dodgers in 2005. She could have been a candidate for the Giants this year if incumbent GM Brian Sabean had not restocked his farm system with one of the top drafts in major league baseball this summer and drafted Filipino American top pitching Cy Young award candidate Tim Lincecum two years ago…..
PRESIDENTIAL BUG: That cicada-like critter comes out every four years nips Julie D. Soo who corrected me. She was bedridden by a bite to her right ankle at the 2004 Boston Democratic Convention four years ago-predicting George W. Bush’s re-election. At the Denver DNC convention in August, she ended up hospitalized for two days on an IV drip for a bug-bitten left ankle, meaning that Soo’s going out on the limb and predicting a Democratic president-Barack Obama… NOT A GRAND OLD FLAG: A couple APA Obama activists are going nuclear over a button-”Chinese Americans for Obama ’08″ that’s patriotically striped with an American and a Chinese flag. Huh? Unaffiliated with the Obama campaign, DemocraticStuff.com describes itself as “proud members of the United Steelworkers Local 3210″ serving Democratic campaigns, unions and progressive organizations with trinkets from the battleground state of Ohio…. They could pre-empt any U.S. Supreme Court decision by issuing “Dimpled Chads for Obama” or “Pregnant Chads for McCain”…
Reach Samson Wong at (415) 321-5886 or swong@asianweek.com.
Veteran columnist has appeared in up to 450,000 households weekly in the SF Independent, Examiner (2000-04) and AsianWeek since 1996. As Editor-in-Chief (2003-07), AsianWeek and Samson received wide recognition from the California Legislature, New American Media, League of Women Voters, GLAAD, Organization of Chinese Americans, SPUR and APA civic groups. Thru the SF Citizens Advisory Committee on Elections, SF Elections Task Force and Chinese American Voters Education Committee, Wong helped boost APA influence from 25,000 in the 1980s to over 50,000 voters by the early 1990s.
Hey, good stuff here guy, keep it up, I like it.
Samson WRONG you are no journalist.
The D3 Parks debate was on September 24th (Congress was still in hearings) was held in North Beach, and there were no D1 candidates there.
Come to think of it, your Republican friend and D3 candidate Joe Alioto Jr. wasn’t at the debate either.
Guess he’s too busy taking money from other Republicans, landlords, and developers.
AsianWeek, can’t you afford real journalists?
Samson Wong wrote: “Despite the meltdown, some members of the Board of Supervisors are hell bent on borrowing up to $4 billion through revenue bonds to takeover PG&E (Proposition H) without asking voters. The non-partisan controller’s office has said that acquiring PG&E’s assets could cost “in the billions.” The question is of priorities”
Yes, Samson, Prop. H is a question of priorities.
The most important priority: Do San Francisco voters want to move towards 100% clean energy in 30 years?
Prop. H mandates the City/PUC to study the best approach to achieving 100% clean energy in 30 years.
PG&E is scared of Prop H because the company has no incentive or plan to reach this goal. PG&E can’t even meet state mandates for clean energy.
Former SF PUC head Susan Leal summarizes the arugments in favor of Prop H succinctly here:
http://www.sfbg.com/entry.php?entry_id=7075&catid=4
Leal writes: “Opponents of the Clean Energy Act are raising the specter of freewheeling issuance of billions of dollars of revenue bonds without any public accountability. Their claim couldn’t be further from the truth: the reality is that revenue bonds cannot be issued unless they are approved by the mayor, the supervisors, and the city controller. Also, the financial rating agencies must review any potential bond issuance and rate its viability. If the proposal isn’t viable, the bonds won’t get sold.”
Samson Wong and AsianWeek publisher James Fang are simply rehashing the same hysteria that PG&E wants to spread.
People should read these articles to get a fuller picture of Prop H and why SF voters should vote YES for Prop H:
http://www.sfcleanenergy.com/2008/take-action/
RE: C. Columbus comment
Mr./Ms. Columbus should do some fact checking before judging journalists. The Neighborhood Parks Council and Friends of Urban Forest debates for District 1 (Richmond police station on Sept. 22) and District 3 (at the North Beach Tel-Hi Neighborhood Center on Sept. 24) occurred AFTER the Wall Street implosions of Freddie and Fannie Mac, AIG, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, etc. Following these financial disasters, Congress and the White House moved on the bailout that resulted in last Monday’s vote.
Samson, you do readers a disservice by doing nothing beyond parroting PG&E when it comes to discussing Prop. H. The measure contains only one mandate: that the SFPUC study how best to bring San Francisco’s electricity sourcing to a 100% clean profile, on a phased-in basis, by 2040. And the cost of acquiring PG&E’s assets, should the SFPUC decide that that should be part of the plan, would be far less than the $4 billion that PG&E throws out as a scare tactic; a number of studies have produced estimates at between $800 million and $1.2 billion, which would be offset by the revenues from operating the system.
More important, and what nobody seems to want to mention, is the cost of not moving San Francisco to clean sourcing — and remember that PG&E admits it cannot meet the state-prescribed minimum of 20% by 2010. The current sourcing profile includes nearly 90% from fossil fuels, natural gas and the atom; factor in the public-health , pollution-amelioration and -cleanup, and other costs that this kind of sourcing generates.
There is no more critical issue facing humankind than global warming. It’s here, and it must be slowed and reversed. San Francisco cannot do that alone, but it can, with the voters’ help, take the lead in the effort.
Guys:
As a relic who remembers when BOTH monthly natural gas and electricity bills came in UNDER ten bucks, and that’s for BOTH, i just want to ask”
Should “public” utilities be in “private” hands?
Who “owns” natural gas? El Paso company PG&E?
As for electricity, say it’s a toss-up. But the fact remains that NO ONE and no “company” should be vouchsafed the right to hold such “utilities” hostage to profit and greed.
Every human being has the “human right” to income-access to heating and cooling and “power.”
Frank Eng
P.S.: And something has to be done to bring the “upscale” prices back somewheres near the downscale, at least when it comes to literal “necessities.”
P.P.S.: Big Oil discovered this sujmmer that the four-bucks-a-gallon line cannot be crossed without losing customers who can’t afford it. It’s killing the golden goose, guys. You gotta feed the gander enough so’s he can afford the price of admission.
RE: Gino Rembetes and other comments
Gino certainly adds to the debate. As the column said the cost could be clearly “UP TO” $4 billion to finance the scheme. That figure includes what Gino has claimed as potential costs – $800 million to $1.2 billion.
So, what’s the right figure? That’s up to the readers and voters to determine. The point of the column was to present who pays in the Asian Pacific American community.
The APA community will foot the bill for a $4,000 salary increase for teachers over the next 20 years. And it will foot a bill for a faculty that does not reflect the number of APA students.
Do APAs want to pay for a public power scheme, the S.F. General Hospital rebuild? Does it want to pay for what Gino is suggesting, especially in this economy when credit has tightened for mortgages, college loans, small business loans? These are reasonable questions to bring up for the APA community which has a high proportion of homeowners (who pay property taxes for general obligation bonds), college students and small businesses.
Gino and others should argue the facts and opinions. However, their name-calling only reflects badly on the proponents of public power.
I attended another supervisor forum in District 11 on Wednesday night. Again, not one candidate publicly brought up the effects of the Wall Street financial crisis on San Franciscans. What will be the affect of the $700 billion bailout bill on San Francisco?
Eight years ago, a majority of the supervisors came to power under district elections to address the overheated dot-com economy that was increasing tenant evictions, displacing non-profits.
This time, the Wall Street implosion will minimize what happened eight years ago. What about tenant evictions? What about evictions of homeowners because of resetting mortgages? What about the lack of credit for start-up businesses and ongoing businesses?
None of the supervisor candidates have come to grips with it. It’s time to get real. It’s the economy, stupid.