Saturday, June 16, 2007

What To Do About Ed Jew?



About 50 supporters of Ed Jew, the embattled San Francisco Supervisor from the Sunset District, assembled on City Hall's Polk Street stairs for a public rally on Friday morning.



There was plenty of media present including the ubiquitous Pat Murphy showing off his zinc oxide colored legs.



Calvin Louie, president of the Chinese American Democratic Club, was crying discrimination because San Francisco's District Attorney, Kamala Harris, along with most of the rest of City Hall's power structure, have been very hasty in charging Jew with felony charges for not living in his official Sunset District home on 28th Avenue. Louie had a point in that Ms. Harris doesn't seem to charge anybody else with much of anything.



The speakers, such as Richard Ow above, alternated between English and Chinese in their speeches which was interesting to hear. None of them seemed to address Supervisor Jew's real problem, which is getting caught in an FBI sting after somebody in his organization pulled a $40,000 extortion scam on the Quickly tapioca chain. The best compiler of the entire scandal has been Rita Hao of SFist (click here for the latest) and following that link will take you to a fascinating comment by "leftalone" (#55) who claims to work for Ed Jew. Whether the commenter is authentic, I don't have a clue but it sounds about right.
"Take it for what it's worth. I want to be a good commenter. But I have every reason to stay anonymous. I work for Ed. One post. No followups. This is both most interesting and most unofficial site I could find. Simply, two stories to get off my chest as I watch my hard work falling apart -

1. "They never check."
During the '06 campaign, I was putting up signs while Ed was doing his "meet & greets" on Taraval. We stopped by his house to pick up something. It was vacant. I asked to use the bathroom. Ed said it wasn't working. I said I heard that supes are supposed to live in their respective districts. Ed said "they never check."

2. The "Why Not?"
Long story short. The Wonderful Foods - Quickly saga was mostly the greedy, trifling, hair-brained work of people much smaller than Ed. When I first heard the proposal to approach the first Quickly with a proposal, I asked, "Why get involved over pennies?". Ed replied, "Why not?"



Political bedfellows don't get much stranger than Joe O'Donoghue, the retired Residential Builders Association President, who is shown above holding the "Double Standards" sign. Joe is the major thug responsible for the blight of "live/work lofts" that transformed South of Market and the Mission District during the dot-com era.



Still, it often takes a criminal to spot another one, and Mr. O'Donoghue is nothing if not eloquent. His denunciation of Kamala Harris for her selective prosecution and lack of due process was a corker, ending with a memorable final line: "Kamala Harris is the Duke Prosecutor of San Francisco!"

6 comments:

  1. Thanks Mike, terrific!

    re "pennies": $40k cold ain't pennies.

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  2. Anonymous5:52 PM

    Ed Jew is a uniter. If you look at the pic of RBA Joe, the guy behind him is an Englishman.

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  3. I was hoping you'd been there. This is the most enjoyable supervisorial bellyflop in a long time. Supes used to be more fun.

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  4. SF politics is fascinating. Even the right wing is pretty left wing by American standards, but the battles are just as vicious as anything in D.C. Thanks, Mike, for keeping track of this stuff.

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  5. Anonymous8:28 AM

    I read this wondering who on earth will be supporting Ed Jew? I mean, I'm a BIG fan of the innocent until proven guilty aspect of our legal system, but this is one of those unfolding stories where you jump to "Why in heck would someone lie about something so blatant?" and "Why extort such a small amount of money, so publicly?"

    And then, "Why would someone support Ed Jew?" It reminds me of when Martha Stewart was in legal trouble and folks came to her defense. Even sometimes framing it as a feminist issue. "Some men have done worse things and not been prosecuted!" An odd logic for defending an arrogant and above the law rich person for behaving in an arrogant and above the law fashion.

    So if Kamala Harris is aligned with the forces of evil, we work to keep Ed Jew in office?

    Greetings and musing from me,
    E

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  6. Anonymous4:39 PM

    um, dude, you owe every reader of your blog some medical marijuana or something to rub out the image of pat murphy in shorts.

    he is hideous enough as is. but to rid myself of that horrid image I'm gonna have to go into electroshock.

    ugh.

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