Category Archives: Debunking Politicos Pundits + Spin

oh hai! stole ur pictures off of flickr

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So you may have heard there’s this whole State Senate primary in full swing, and the vote’s not even until June 2008, and yet the candidates, Assemblyman Mark Leno, incumbent Sen. Carole Migden, and candidate Joe Alioto Veronese are all running pretty intense campaigns. Whee.

Anyway, while reading Beth Spotswood’s groovy blog, however, I saw a link to an anti-Leno site, called Leno the Lapdog that attacks the Assemblyman’s record and discusses what they view to be as deficiencies in his voting record, etc. Fine. Whatever.

Imagine my surprise when I saw that they decided to use this photo I took and posted on Flickrfor their homepage.

Now, I’m flattered that some well paid political expenditure committee just loved my cell phone camera skillz so much they felt that said image merited use on a professional piece of political communication, there’s just one little problem – they swiped it off of my Flickr account and didn’t bother to ask, much less pay me for my efforts. That’s taking money out of my pocket in my line of work, and it’s not very nice. Kids – just because it’s on Flickr doesn’t mean you can just swipe it for your own purposes!

Doing a WHOIS lookup on the domain finds that they use a domain proxy service to hide who paid for the domain. They don’t have an email address to contact them, either. Now, come on, kids. You clearly have the money to spend on a site, and you have the money to pay someone to do this for you. But you don’t have the $$$$ to pay me for the use of my work? Come on.

Now, I don’t really have a dog in this fight since none of the candidates has hired me to work for them, and they probably weren’t planning to anyway. Whatever. But it is more than a little irritating to see my work being considered good enough for their needs, but not getting paid – when clearly they have the means. If they’d asked, I might have said yes for a small fee or something.

Since they didn’t ask in advance, I’m now asking for more money – let’s make it a nice round number of around $15,000 – to pay me as a “consultant” for the website’s images and whatnots. I’m willing to negotiate in good faith, and I’m sure you folks are, too!

You can email me here and let me know if it’s going to be a certified check OR paid via PayPal. Either way is fine. KTHNXBAI!

Someone managed to put something in Hetch Hetchy that turned the “City That Knows How” into the “City That Knows How to Whine“. Its effects are already being seen in our alleged political leaders, and their allied interests.
Seriously. No side is looking particularly statesman-like (statespersonlike?) these days, and it’s mostly because folks are happy with firing off the missives, big or small, but cry like schoolchildren (schoolpersons?) when someone fires back.
How else, then, to explain the “mean people are picking on the Sensitive Mayor” meme anytime anyone dares to suggest Our Mayor is less than perfect? Mild critiques of his sometime galpal, a mere molehill in blogville, got blown up into a mountain – again because someone made a slight comment that perhaps she and Mr. Mayor were not 100% perfect. (What is this, Soviet Russia or something?)
Meanwhile, the Mayor and his allies have no problem dishing it out – remember all the nastiness spewed during the District 6 Supervisor’s race? How many times have the Mayor and his staff resorted to name-calling when they don’t get their way? Folks, you can’t throw rocks and not expect rocks to get thrown back at ya. Deal, or get out of politics and something less acrimonious.
Don’t for a minute think I excuse “progressives” from their share of the blame. Supervisor Daly’s “outrageous” comments aren’t as common as the mainstream media and gossipers would have you believe, but the meme wouldn’t exist if it weren’t at least somewhat true. Worse than that, however, is the cacophony of whining from the left about how “bad” the Mayor and his allies are – and yet after all the whining and gimmicks, folks are content to whine and complain, rather than have the nerve to stand up and do something.

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Reading last week’s cover story at Bay Guardian, I realized that I wasn’t just reading an over-the-top PR piece for a wealthy downtown powerbroker — I was also reading the epitaph for the once-proud Bay Guardian tradition of investigative reporting – and the whitewashing of local history in the process.
Seriously. Now, I am happy to see any semi-public feature get fair treatment, but reading this puff piece I was being asked to ignore years of Guardian investigative reporting that indicated Mr. Hellman (he of the Wells Fargo Fortune) was anything but a “friend to progressives”. And yet, there it was, in all its multi-paged glory.
Apparently all it takes to change writer Steve Jones’ mind about a wealthy conservative power player in San Francisco is a few friendly chats, a trip to freakin’ Burning Man, a big payoff to the Bicycle Coalition (which paved the way, literally, for a big new garage in Golden Gate Park) and a general chumminess of his subject with his friends (Leah Shahum of the Bicycle Coalition and the SFMTA and her beau, Ted Strawser of the SF PartyParty and GavinWatch). Hmm.
Read any article about Hellman’s actions in Golden Gate Park, any one of an assortment of articles the Guardian has published about Warren Hellman on campaign finance, local politics, Mayor Newsom, or even Jones’ own pieces about the guy, and you’ll see a different picture being painted.

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People wondering if their concerns about public safety were just an eerie paranoid feeling had their worst fears confirmed with a string of revelations in the local press recently. First, we hear that auto break-ins are on the rise, while the D.A.’s office does nothing. So the next time your car is broken into, remember to the D.A. and the City, it’s the criminal who has the rights, not you!
Then we read about a particularly dangerous day in San Francisco where repeat offenders are allowed to go free, and the only response from City leaders are shrug, spin and talk – while all along the fact remains murders and crime are on the rise, unpunished.
If any of this sounds familiar, that’s because this has been par for the course for quite some time, and while San Franciscans are much less safe from violent crime, theft, and the like, the spin seems to work because neither the Mayor nor the District Attorney face serious threats to their re-election. The politickers engage in their chatter, the media refuses to take the long view, and all the while we’re subjected to more chatter.
Meanwhile, you, I, and your friends and neighbors are far less safe. It seems spin and disinfo aren’t a great foil for criminals with guns who shoot people, or thieves eyeing your hard-earned money as an entitlement they’re owed by you. (Don’t tell the spinners – it’ll make them feel bad!)

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