CIRCUS COMING TO TOWN

Mayor Newsom’s decision to employ the City Charter to oust criminally accused, but not yet convicted, Supervisor Ed Jew could set the stage for some entertaining political theater.

Here’s the process:

1. Mayor suspends Supervisor Jew and names his own employee, Carmen Chu, as “interim” replacement.

2. San Francisco Ethics Commission holds a hearing and otherwise investigates Newsom’s allegations against Jew.

3. The Ethics Commission concludes either that Jew should be permanently removed or not, and communicates their opinion to the Board of Supervisors.

4. The Board of Supervisors considers the recommendation of the Ethics Commission (and conducts its own hearings and investigations?).

5. The Board of Supervisors votes on permanently removing Ed Jew.

NOTE: There are eleven supervisors, one of whom, Jew’s replacement Carmen Chu, will not be allowed to vote. The City Charter requires nine votes for Jew to be removed. So Ed Jew needs the votes of only two supervisors to keep his seat.

Also NOTE: This City Charter provision has never before been utilized. Procedures are ill defined—nobody knows what they’re doing. Surprise? Newsom?

Ed Jew is fighting the mayor. Ed has a smart lawyer, Steveen Gruel, who’s going to make things tough for the Mayor. (Photo from SF Sentinel.)

This could get interesting.

Steven Gruel has issued two requests that Newsom can’t possible like:

First: Gruel demanded that the members of the Ethics Commission to immediately cease any ex parte communications regarding this case with the Mayor’s Office and its reps and likewise cease any ex parte communication with the Board of Supervisors and its reps. (Fog City Journal story here.)

As Gruel explains:

A basic precept of due process, of course, is that adverse parties and fact finders do not communicate about an active case in the absence of all interested parties. I see no reason why this simple rule ensuring fundamental fairness should not be followed here.

At least some of the Mayor’s critics see an unwholesome relationship between the mayor and the Ethics Commission.

The second Gruel letters really pissed off the City Attorney’s office (FCJ story here).

Gruel requests copies of all documents and communications used by or in possession of the City Attorney that were used as basis for his (actually the Mayor’s) charges against Jew.

Gruel’s letter might have sounded kind of hardass, quote:

Finally, I expect that your response will be complete, truthful and in full accordance with the law. Not only will your response, or the lack thereof, possibly serve as an exhibit in any future federal or state lawsuit, but anything less than strict adherence to your lawful obligations and duties could provide clear grounds for removal proceedings under San Francisco Charter Section 15.105.

City Attorney Dennis Herrera was so pissed he had his press secretary issue a statement that is simply nasty (forwarded by h. brown).

In it Matt Dorsey says:

Apart from running up his client's legal bill, I don't understand the rationale for Mr. Gruel's continued theatrics.

and:

At this point, I think Mr. Gruel would better serve his client to focus on Mr. Jew's numerous legal problems than to engage in this ongoing publicity campaign.

These statements sound political rather than truth-seeking. Our tax dollars pay Mr Dorsey to fire off this crap. The pretense of concern for the accused is cheap rhetoric. I think Ed Jew and Steven Gruel is beyond taking advice from Dennis Herrera or Matt Dorsey.

The Ethics Commission, isn’t quite ready to proceed. They have scheduled a meeting later in October, not to hear the case, but to discuss how to go about hearing the case.

I hope the hearings are on TV (Comcast cable channel 26).

Now Gruel wants certain supervisors to recuse themselves from voting on Jew’s ouster, if and when the case reaches the Board (SFGate story). Gruel says some supervisors have made public statements that show prejudice against Jew. Gruel threatens a federal lawsuit. SFGate story here.

Gruel’s strategy is to treat the Ethics Commission/Board of Supervisors proceedings like any other legal case in which all of the defendant’s civil and procedural rights are protected. This seems an impossibly high standard for the Ethics Commission.

There's no telling what will happen next.

I guess Mayor Newsom thought it was a good idea at the time.

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JEW: "I'M STUPID, NOT EVIL."

I can’t stand the way high paid officials plead stupidity when malfeasance is revealed.

-Ken Lay got paid millions a year but had no idea what was happening at Enron.
-Our former Attorney General can’t remember which hand he wipes with.
-No one in Gavin Newsom’s office knew the timesheet policy (there wasn’t one).

Now we have disgraced Supervisor Ed Jew claiming naiveté in handling cash bribes, forty large.

The feds finally busted him for shaking down a Tapioca joint.

In the Chron story Ed explains:

The consultant, Jew said, had agreed to take only half the $40,000 fee and leave the other $20,000 with the supervisor as a charitable donation to a Sunset district park development project.

"That was an unorthodox way of paying," Jew told The Chronicle in May. "I don't know if it violates the law. I know now not to venture into these waters."

So, Ed, this constituent agrees—you ARE a dumbfuck. You’re way too stupid to be a Supervisor.

[Photo from ebar.]

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BUT WHERE DOES HE SHOWER?

According to the latest Fog City Journal article on his preliminary hearing, Ed Jew, appears to be in trouble. Nine felony counts, stemming from lies about his official residence, is a lot of felony counts.

Maintaining one lie (or residence) is a significant burden.

The dispute had been whether District 4 Supervisor Jew lived in his San Francisco district as required by law, or in Burlingame, a few freeway miles away.

Now prosecutors have presented an under-penalty-of-perjury loan application on which Ed swore he lives in Chandler, Arizona, and that he lived in Burlingame the previous six years, a time period in which he registered to vote in San Francisco.

As the Teletubbies would say, “Uh-oh!”

In the FCJ story the prosecutor breaks it down for us:

Ackiron said that if Jew was truthful in the loan application, he could not have been truthful when he registered to vote in San Francisco in 2003.

"If the reverse is true, this document is false and Mr. Jew has committed a federal crime," the prosecutor said.

Jew’s best defense is that truthfulness is a higher standard to which no other San Francisco public officials are held.

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ED JEW HUMOR

We in San Francisco’s District 4 are learning more and more about the real estate empire of our supervisor, Ed Jew. Soon we'll have a final tally of residences-owned and a designation of the “official” residence.

Presumably, behind the scenes, investigators are tallying the number of sets of books (financial records) supervisor Jew keeps, and, assuming the answer is an integer greater than one, which set of books is the “official” record.

Pathetically, it all boils down to tapioca. Such is the nature of local politics. It’s the bush leagues (baseball metaphor) of graft. Politicans are not allowed to participate in multi-million dollar military contracting bribes until they’ve proven they can handle little $40k tapioca deals.

It looks like Ed won’t be called up to the majors any time soon.

I found a great report on the $10k donation Ed is trying to make to a local playground-improvement group. The site is new to me, Crooked Street Press. The article, Ed Jew Finds $10,000 in Couch Cushion, is way amusing.

Sub-head and lead:

“I should really clean my couch more often.” -Ed Jew
by Fritz

Sunset, San Francisco- Ed Jew was busy doing spring cleaning in his house in the Sunset Wednesday after the FBI trashed the place when he reportedly found $10,000 under one of his couch cushions. No word yet from authorities on if the money found was part of the $40,000 that Jew took from the Quickly chain store.

Full story here.

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PESKIN ATTACKS JEW

After watching yesterday as a Supervisors' Committee furthered the giveaway of public land to Lennar Corporation, I awakened this morning to this bullshit Examiner story.

The gist: There are a number of street paving projects scheduled to be done in District 4. Our District 4 Supervisor, Ed Jew, looked at the District 4 projects in the queue and suggested a change, based on perceived need, in the order in which the District 4 projects by done. This doesn't affect the schedule for projects in other districts in any way.

But in the Examiner story, Board president Aaron Peskin attacks Ed Jew for using "politics" to influence how a city department does its job. Maybe I'm dense, but isn't that what an elected official is supposed to do?

So I sent this email to Aaron Peskin. I'll post his response if any.

Dear Supervisor Peskin:

According to this morning’s Examiner story you are attacking my supervisor, Ed Jew, for practicing “politics.”

As a native resident of District 4, I must take exception to your attack.

The readers of my blog would like to know:

1) Is the Examiner story accurate? Anything you would like to add?

2) Who exactly was harmed by the scheduling change?

3) Since all the work is within District 4, what business is it of yours?

4) If our district supervisor can’t help City departments fine-tune their services to meet his district’s needs, who will?

5) Don’t you do the same thing in your district?

6) Aren’t you just punishing Ed Jew for his insistence (so far) on furthering his constituents’ interests instead of going along with the Board’s majority?

Thank you for your attention.

Sincerely,

Willie Morrissey

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MY GUY ED: A LITTLE HONESTY

What’s dishonest about a City official accepting a “gift” from a corporation with business before the City?

The dishonesty is calling it a “gift.” Or some might call it a “perq” of the job. The correct word is “bribe.”

So, my guy, District 4 Supervisor Ed Jew, does himself and his district proud by turning down a free ticket to the San Francisco Giants Opening Day baseball game. [Examiner story here.]

I love Ed’s explanation for refusing the bribe, after stating that he IS a Giants fan:

“I have some work to do, there’s some constituents that want to meet with me,” Jew said.

As I said in my laudatory email, Small bribes are practice for big bribes.

The Giants lost, 7-0, in an effort that inspired this purple SF Chronicle lead:

Start with a quart of awful and add two teaspoons of hideous. Throw in a dash of miserable and you had the recipe for the Giants' 2007 opener Tuesday.

The only criticism I have of Ed Jew is that he’s a Giants fan. I guess he wants to root root root for the home team, but the Giants have never been much of a franchise. They’re not even lovable losers.

The Cubbies and the Tribe deserve their runt-of- the-litter affection. The Giants are just, well, losers, as lovable as, say, the White Sox.

But hey, on a nice day their ballpark is beautiful.

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JEW COMES THROUGH AGAIN

I’ve been so busy investigating the long earthworm called the Catholic Church I almost forgot to praise and brag about my District 4 supervisor Ed Jew.

He made another good vote against an ordinance requiring large grocery stores to stop using non-degradable plastic bags, like they all use now.

Ed explained his vote in this Mercury-News story:

"Many of the people in my district can't believe we are spending so much time talking about plastic bags and grocery bags, that issues like crime and homelessness need to be addressed," Jew said.

Another thing District 4 should be proud of is our low level of financial support for Gavin Newsom’s mayoral campaigns.

Gavin Watch has posted a breakdown by San Francisco Zip Code of the per capita donations to two of Newsom’s campaigns. District 4 falls in the lowest category, somewhere between zero and fifty cents per person.

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MY GUY ED

On Tuesday our Board of Supervisors passed a resolution calling for a safe, immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

This was handled as an item of business, and was reported as one of the significant events of that meeting.

The vote was unanimous except for the Supe from my district, Ed Jew. My guy Ed was quoted in the Examiner article:

“I believe that we have a war here in San Francisco — here in the Western Addition and the Bayview. And we need to address issues like homelessness, and Muni and making sure that we do our job at repairing potholes,” Jew said. “We need to concentrate on the issues on hand within the county of San Francisco.”

I congratulate Ed Jew for his position but also for his political astuteness. Sfwillie’s rule is always spoil a unanimous vote. If the majority was correct, your vote will be forgotten, or can be rationalized. If it turns out that you, the only dissenter, were correct, then you’re a genius, a visionary. There is only upside in being a lone vote.

But it’s good that the Supervisors get a little scolding for futzing around when real work needs to get done.

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PUD DEFENDS JEW FROM RACIST ATTACK

My best friend, Pudinhand Wilson, is outraged that our District 4 Supervisor, Ed Jew, is under attack for not being Chinese enough.

“This at a time when the press is asking if Barrack Obama is black enough. Is that asshole Ward Connerly black enough?”

There was an innocuous resolution passed by the Board last week that Ed Jew voted against. A local company that employs Chinese immigrants has laid them off and sent the jobs to Mexico. Here's the SF Bay Guardian story.

The laid off workers don’t like being laid off and are trying to take some action including asking the SF Board of Supervisors to pass a resolution (non-binding, no legal effect) asking the company, Monster Cable, to treat the workers better, at least give them some severance and stuff.

This was a typical bullshit resolution that makes some constituents feel better and gives the Board an agenda item that requires no effort.

My guy Ed Jew voted against it. The fact that he joined rightwing Newsom appointees Alioto-Pier and Elsbernd in voting No raises a little red flag, but the non-pc-ness of Ed’s vote doesn’t bother me or Pud.

Leon Chow, chair of the CPA [Chinese Progressive Association], was very disappointed that Jew, being the only Chinese American on the board, opposed the measure. He and others said Monster appears to be financially healthy and the outsourcing was based simply on greed.

“So Ed Jew gets criticized for not supporting the Chinese workers,” Pud says. So the assumption is that because Ed is Chinese he should vote differently than he might if he weren’t Chinese.

“As a white guy living in Ed’s district I want him making decisions based on what’s good for everybody, not on what’s good for his fellow Chinese.”

SFWILLIE’S BLOG salutes Supervisor Ed Jew for standing up to this overt racism.

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