Mercury News: Cancelling my Subscription

After the sign-up teaser rate, payments are markedly higher

Last year we signed up for the San Jose Mercury News electronic-only subscription at the $14 per month discounted rate. When it raised the price in December, we acquiesced to $28/mo., which seemed right-priced because the San Francisco Chronicle ($34/mo.) and Wall Street Journal ($39/mo.) both of which in my opinion had more content, superior reporting, higher quality, and better writing.

In June the Mercury News billed my credit card a fee of $47, which I thought was so out of line from the previous month's $28 that it must have been a mistake or included some non-recurring charges. In July the Mercury News charged $49.

I called customer service to cancel the subscription. I did ask the representative if the Merc had erred by thinking that I had a print subscription. No, she knew I was e- only. I explained that I was upset at their billing practices. She offered to lower the price to $14 per month. How long would that rate be good for? She evaded an answer. She threw out an offer of $4 per month when I didn't budge. At that point there was no price--even zero--at which I would continue to do business.

The CSR said that my subscription will end on July 25th and billing will cease. We'll see; trust is easily lost and difficult to restore.

Don't Try to Catch a Falling City

Chronicle illustration of San Francisco's "doom loop"

San Francisco's deterioration as a premiere American city has attracted national attention.

The Chronicle says the persistent negativism has made San Francisco seem worse than it really is.

San Francisco is a dystopian hellscape overrun by armed criminals and fentanyl addicts, its streets teeming with human waste, its buildings crumbling before our eyes.

That’s the situation according to recent stories in major media outlets from CNN to Good Morning America, from the Financial Times to Newsweek, along with legions of posters on TikTok, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, and perennial S.F. haters like Fox News, the New York Post and, of course, Elon Musk. Presidential candidates Ron DeSantis and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also chimed in last week.

Of course, people who live in San Francisco don't have their houses or cars broken into every day, nor is there a homeless drug addict camped in front of every house. But it happens to enough residents and businesses that they're packing up and leaving, even at great cost.

Just ask Nordstrom how much it is writing off on leasehold improvements and how many lease payments it is still on the hook for in the heart of San Francisco. Just ask Nordstrom's landlord, Westfield Centre, how many millions of dollars of equity it is abandoning by turning the building over to the lenders.

The Chronicle news department itself, to its credit, doesn't try to put a positive spin on San Francisco's problems. It has run dozens of stories on homelessness, rampant shoplifting, home and car burglaries, open-air drug use, and police inaction and defunding. Last year the Chronicle reported that 8% of San Francisco residents plan to move to a different city in the next twelve months, a higher percentage than any other American city.

Frankly, I think the coverage is about right. There's no indication that San Francisco has hit bottom.

Putting Out the Fire on the Bob Lee Murder

Bob Lee (Chron photo)

Bob Lee, Google alumnus and inventor of Square's Cash App, was stabbed to death on the streets of San Francisco on Tuesday night.

San Francisco’s tech community mourned the violent death of one of their own Wednesday, calling Cash App founder Bob Lee a standout among Silicon Valley geniuses, someone idolized as a brilliant thinker, talented hacker and idealist who turned dreams into reality...

Lee, 43, who was visiting from his home in Miami, died at a hospital following the 2:35 a.m. Tuesday attack on the 300 block of Main Street, where police responded to a report of a stabbing and found Lee unconscious on the ground with two stab wounds to his chest. They called medics to the scene and started aid before rushing him to San Francisco General Hospital, where he died.

Bob Lee's death, for now, is a local cause célèbre because it symbolizes all that has gone wrong in San Francisco:

the tech community has been raising alarm about the state of San Francisco, arguing that crime and fear about public safety are factors deterring companies and employees from returning to the city’s hollowed-out downtown.

With the city’s core already facing down a potential “doom loop” scenario in which increasingly empty offices and streets lead to economic decay, some in tech, including Twitter CEO Elon Musk, immediately seized on the killing...

“Violent crime in SF is horrific and even if attackers are caught, they are often released immediately,” Musk wrote on Twitter, tagging District Attorney Brooke Jenkins and demanding to know what her office is doing to jail violent repeat offenders.

Your humble observer finds the media response interesting. In the Chronicle articles on this tragedy there are repeated mentions that violent crime is down in San Francisco and that homicides are rare.

Its reporting is in sharp contrast to the 2020 George Floyd murder, in which one death became emblematic of widespread police brutality and systematic racism. In the Floyd case sweeping derogatory generalizations were made about wide swaths of society, while in the Lee murder the media is trying to prevent those generalizations from being applied to San Francisco and possibly other urban centers.

In 2020 it was easy to light the flame. In 2023 we will see how easy it is to put it out.

Note: if Bob Lee was shot, gun violence would have likely been the story...and a diversion from confronting crime and fear in San Francisco.

Inflation Freak-Out

(Lyceum photo)

A century ago the Wall Street Journal was mostly read in wood-panelled drawing rooms by pipe-smoking men in grey flannel suits.

It was a serious newspaper that covered serious matters in a pedantic style that was far removed from the subject matter and colloquial language of popular newspapers and magazines.

How times have changed. Here's the headline in today's WSJ on the subject of inflation:

(Psychology Today image)

The U.S. Consumer Is Starting to Freak Out

The person-on-the-street examples that the article cites show that working-class people are living on the edge. [bold added]

Recent layoff trends worry Benjamin DeLong, a 32-year-old customer-account manager at an industrial manufacturer in southern Minnesota. His savings rose to $3,700 during the pandemic, thanks in part to government stimulus. He is now down to about 3 cents.

Don't you just love the "about" in front of "3 cents"?

The large stock-market declines over the past year also alarmed consumers, including Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Sara Laor, who is 57 years old. Ms. Laor said the declines depleted the holdings in her 401(k) and IRA accounts by nearly 40%.

Over the past year, her family has had to dip into their savings to pay for essential car and plumbing repairs. They are putting off other expenses, like buying a new car, and have given up ordering in meals.

She’s trying to spend more cautiously, shunning recipes involving pricey eggs and buying more canned food.

Well, at least the writer doesn't report that thousands of Americans are eating dog food, as this 1975 NY Times article said occurred during the Ford and Eisenhower Administrations (but not from the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations where the phenomenon was supposedly absent).

Jazzlyn Millberry, 33, has been looking for big ways to make cuts. One day last fall, her banking app informed her that the cost of one month’s groceries and household goods for her family of four had risen to $900, from about $600 or $700.

“I find myself now going to three or four different grocery stores just to get the best deals on things to save on costs,” said Ms. Millberry, a health-insurance claims analyst in Pickerington, Ohio.

The rosiest economic scenarios show inflation tapering (but not going to zero), and workers being lucky to maintain their pay instead of being laid off. The lower gap between income and expenses will last years, leaving little margin for error.

Now that I think of it, when the inflation squeezed us during the late 1970's and early 1980's I was a little freaked out, too.

Hot Take on the Hot Chip

(Mercury News photo)

Yet another example of social media being harmful to young people: [bold added]

Sudden nausea, profuse sweating and blue tongues — these are just some of the symptoms associated with the ‘One Chip Challenge,’ the latest social media trend to trigger warnings in Bay Area schools.

Since 2016, Paqui chip makers have promised to “shock” consumers with their annual “One Chip Challenge.” The directions are simple: Eat one of their pepper-laced chips, sold in individual coffin-shaped packages, and see how long you can last before “short circuiting” and seeking relief...

The 2022 chip is laced with Reaper and Scorpion peppers, which both contain more than 1 million Scoville units of heat (the average jalapeno pepper contains less than 8,000 Scoville units). The company says the seasonings will turn your tongue bright blue.

Multiple teenagers have reportedly been taken to the hospital after ingesting the chips, with one TikTok user posting a video of herself in an emergency room that has been watched more than 15.7 million times.

It's not unusual for people to chase fame by risking life and limb; now they're experiencing gastrointestinal damage and courting near-universal derision from thousands of their peers.

Youthful misjudgments were once considered embarrassing; now they're celebrated. Worse, they're stored on the permanent record that future employers and spouses can view. Well, at least the Hot Chip Challenge hasn't killed anyone....yet.

Switching Back to Cash

Mailed on June 29th. Still no acknowledgment.

Upon receiving donation requests from charities to which I want to make a token contribution, I'll throw a $10 or $20 bill into the pre-addressed mailing envelope.

Gone are the days when this former auditor would write checks for even small amounts; the cost of printed checks and the additional bookkeeping weren't worth the money and time.

But what if the cash gets misdirected? Well, if the charity doesn't return an acknowledgment then I'll never donate to them again, but for the record all of them have returned a letter, and it's comforting to know that their cash receipts systems appear to be working.

I also now pay cash for magazines that offer very low starting rates.

(I made the mistake of registering online with two periodicals, which I couldn't do without giving them a credit card, and, you guessed it, they automatically renewed the subscription at a much higher rate. They did so once, I cancelled after the renewal period, but they got me.)

Recently Wired started mailing its issues after being sent $10, but Forbes hasn't acknowledged the $10 that was sent in June. In fact Forbes just sent another request yesterday, July 18th.

I'll give Forbes a few more days to initiate the subscription before concluding that this venerable icon of capitalism has leaky internal controls.

The Miasma of Emotion

The priest mused about anger during the entire sermon.

Angry people were all over television raging about Supreme Court decisions, House committee hearings, war in Ukraine, social justice, etc. etc. He wouldn't condemn anger itself. In some cases it's justified, he said; it was a motivation to action. But he's found that if he holds on to anger long it makes him less effective.

For the past decade I've stayed away from television political channels, even those which favor my politics. The "debates" always favor one side of the issue, and opposing speakers very rarely present the strongest arguments for the other side.

But the worst thing about TV political channels is that they personalize issues by running and re-running video clips about injustices done to individuals.

(Image, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

If a network wants to strengthen immigration enforcement, it shows innocents who have been killed by illegal immigrants. If a channel wants to promote abortion rights, it features first-hand accounts of women who suffered horrifically before 1973, when the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade. We can't help but be angry at people who directly or even indirectly result in others' suffering.

That's why I obtain news that has a political dimension from printed media and website articles. There's a better chance that some rational thought will poke through the miasma of emotion.

Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.--------Galatians 5:19-21

Chronicle Editorial Board: Spinning for Progressives

The Chronicle is feeling what he's feeling.

We're used to reading editorials where writers cherry-pick facts, misrepresent the positions of opponents, and warn of apocalypse if their advice isn't followed.

But at least major newspapers don't make up facts that are foundational to an argument, or so we thought until we read the Chronicle's take on Chesa Boudin's recall (yesterday's post below). [bold added]

Editorial: No, California didn’t just send a message on crime — only voter apathy

Voter turnout was barely at 26% in San Francisco the morning after the election. It was even worse across most of the state. Sure, ballots will continue trickling in for days. But the story will stay the same.

Voters weren’t “desperate for change,” as one Los Angeles Times website headline put it. They couldn’t be bothered...

But it was apathy and resignation, not overt anger or a definitive vision, that ruled the day in San Francisco and across California in Tuesday’s election.

But is the Chronicle correct about voter apathy being high?

In an election-analysis article, the same newspaper says that the turnout to recall Chesa Boudin was higher than in 2019, when he was elected.

Unlike Tuesday’s election, which ended up being largely about a single candidate, the 2019 election asked voters to cast their ballots for the mayor, D.A., city attorney, public defender, sheriff and several other races in the year before a presidential election...the Department of Elections is now anticipating turnout among registered voters to hit 46% — higher than the 42% rate seen in the 2019 election, and a lot higher than the 36% rate for the February school board recall.

As of this writing 123,926 votes have been counted, and 74,335 (59.98%) of them were to oust Chesa Boudin.

When all the mail-in votes are finally tabulated, the total is expected to be above 200,000.

The same chart for 2019 shows that Chesa Boudin was elected because he received 68,575 votes (35.71%) out of 192,053, the leader out of four candidates through "ranked choice" voting.

With only 57% of the 2022 ballots counted, there are already more "no" votes against Chesa Boudin than voted for him in 2019.

Sounds like the San Francisco electorate is getting less apathetic, but we're not professional interpreters of facts like the Chronicle editorial board.

It Stinks

The late, great Chronicle columnist Herb Caen called yesterday's paper today's fishwrap.

Events have proved everything about last month's headline ("U.S., Russia Agree", "Talks", "Defuse") as odoriferous as Herb Caen's descriptor. Russia, brushing off threats of sanctions and ignoring the blandishments of diplomats, bombed cities and invaded Ukraine today.

Although I did not vote for him, we only have one President and I suppose we have to support him in whatever action he takes. It's going to be three long, long years.

Juicy Tidbits

Are you disappointed with the Nobel-Prize-winning New York Times?

Get The Nobel's Times instead!

It's not just lemon, it's Super Lemon!

When you pierce the crust of Lemon Taste Powder, bite through the mantle of Mild Lemon Candy, and reach the core of Super Lemon Candy, you too will exclaim, Oh! Juicy!

At $2.99 a package The Nobel's Times is a better value than the New York Times.

It's made in Japan and has the highest quality. There have been no recalls or retractions.

It will leave a sour taste in your mouth, but unlike the New York Times you will be smiling afterwards!

Turn Off, (Don't) Tune In, Drop Out, and Live Longer

For the past five years I've achieved a measure of peace by not tuning in to television news, which--only a slight exaggeration--pushes outrage 24/7. (I also include late night comedy, which has substituted putdowns of half the country for lighthearted laughs about the human condition.)

Internet news is toxic in a different way. Researchers have established that popular sites like Tik Tok and Facebook quickly figure out the subjects and opinions that individual users like to read about and feed them more of the same. Anger is often the by-product.

Within our cocoons it's easy to become outraged at the injustices done to "our" side by the ignorant and evil people on the other.

Do yourself a favor. Use the off switch and add years to your life.

Good, Albeit Biased News

L to R: Anthony Robinson, Derje Blanks, Cameron Moody (KRON4)

The hate-crime articles usually start with the history of racism against Asians.

First is the mention of the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882-1943), and next the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. After these two indisputable and shameful examples, writers often add the 1982 murder of Vincent Chin, who was killed by Detroit auto workers who thought he was Japanese, or the difficulty of the Vietnamese "boat people" in being accepted in America.

The history always ends with President Donald Trump and his accusations that the COVID-19 virus originated in China and the alleged scapegoating of Chinese people by President Trump and/or Republicans.

From these articles one would have thought that the violent attacks against Asian-Americans were perpetrated by MAGA-hat wearing, white supremacist trogolydtes, but one would be wrong.

Asians, at least in the Bay Area, have learned to ignore these politicized narratives because they're useless in ascertaining who is originating the current attacks (let's just say that only a minority are white, and the most violent are not).

The police finally caught a group of men who have been targeting Asians (photo at the top of this post): [bold added]

Two men have been charged with robbery in connection to dozens of purse snatchings targeting Asian women throughout the Bay Area, the Santa Clara County district attorney said Saturday.

The men — Derje Blanks, 23, and Anthony Robinson, 24 — were also charged with hate crime enhancements. The office for District Attorney Jeff Rosen said the suspects “used ethnic slurs to refer to their victims,” who were almost all of Asian descent.

“We will hold these defendants and anyone who worked with them fully accountable for their ignorant and destructive behavior,” Rosen said in a press release.

Blanks and Robinson were arrested by San Jose and Hayward police on September 8. Robinson fled in a vehicle and ran a red light, colliding with another car and injuring a two-year-old and her father, according to police.

A third suspect was arrested on Thursday, ending what SJPD called “yearlong, multi-jurisdictional investigation” into the “prolific robbery crew.”

The crime spree began in late 2020, according to the district attorney’s office. The pattern was nearly always the same: The men would follow women in parking lots to their cars, wait until the victim was inside her car and either smash a window or quickly open the door to steal a purse off the passenger seat.

Sometimes, the incidents became violent. There were “numerous incidents where victims were pulled or wrestled to the ground,” and some were injured, according to the district attorney.

Evidence shows that the defendants targeted the victims because they “believed that Asian women don’t use banks.”

“We are sensitive to the hate aspect targeting Asian females,” San Jose police chief Anthony Mata said in a release. “I commend District Attorney Jeff Rosen for pursuing hate crime enhancements.”

The Chronicle has published numerous articles and opinion pieces of the sort discussed at the top, that is, they strongly imply that Donald Trump and his followers are responsible for the recent spate of attacks on Asians.

This article, reprinted in its entirety, never discloses the race of the men arrested. (The photo of the suspects, not a MAGA hat among them, was pulled from the KRON4 website.) For many of the people in the media, if the facts contradict their politics, don't disclose the facts.

Book Deal

"New" edition of LOTR coming out in 2021!
I'll buy it if there's a new preface by the author.

The Wall Street Journal writes that its parent News Corp is about to acquire the consumer arm of book publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt:

The deal, which the people said could be announced as early as Monday, would add a portfolio of high-profile novels from authors such as George Orwell, Philip Roth and J.R.R. Tolkien to News Corp’s HarperCollins Publishers division. Terms of the deal couldn’t be learned.

Comments:
1) "Terms of the deal couldn't be learned" is probably not entirely true because the WSJ reporters' contacts with the finance industry are second to none, and they also have internal connections with parent News Corp. However, for legal and ethical reasons only the parties directly involved can release merger information. This information restriction is an example of the Chinese Wall.

2) Nice to know that someone still thinks that they can make money off of books.

3) "authors such as George Orwell, Philip Roth and J.R.R. Tolkien" -- I have read and like these well-known writers, though I hope that they're getting some authors who, you know, aren't dead.

San Francisco: Burglaries Are "Rampant"

Tourists to San Francisco are almost non-existent thanks to the pandemic (and homelessness and car smash-and-grabs and closed restaurants etc.), so the burglars have switched to breaking into stores.

Rampant burglaries plague San Francisco businesses, compounding the hurt of the pandemic

Across San Francisco, businesses are hiring armed security guards, pouring thousands into replacing shattered windows and even pulling up stakes amid a rash of commercial theft and vandalism.

Burglaries in San Francisco have spiked by 62% so far this year, rising from 691 reported incidents in 2020 to 1,123 as of mid-February. The break-ins have been particularly glaring in a city where overall crime is down by 31%, and San Francisco’s once most seemingly intractable crime — car break-ins — has plummeted by 52%...

Most of the burglaries in San Francisco are never solved. What police call the “clearance rate” — the percentage of arrests per reported crime — was 8.1% for burglaries this year to date, down from 14.5% by this time last year, according to police data.

As we've opined before, Progressive government proclaims the unimportance of property versus caring for people, and the surge in property crime was easily foreseeable. "Petty" theft ($950 or less) is a misdemeanor and on the police back-burner; "most...are never solved." Well, people may be the priority, but I don't see a lot of happy people in San Francisco.

The election is over, the winners safely installed, and negative information can't be used by Republicans. The Chronicle has now resumed reporting.

Lousy Marketing

It's 7:30 a.m. on October 1st---Happy trick-or-treat-less October by the way--and, shortly after turning on the Mac, I clicked on a link to a San Jose Mercury News article.

The pop-up box said "You've reached your monthly article limit."

I was thinking about subscribing to the Merc instead of the Chronicle, but the blue pop-up tipped the scales. Forget about it.

Trump's Taxes: Not Surprising if You Know the Basics

Many pundits are posting their opinion about the NYT's feature on President Trump's income taxes. I will do so only lightly because I haven't seen the tax returns. (Responsible analysts also make this disclaimer.)

Haven't we learned anything from the quick takes on stories like the Covington Catholic School kids, Ferguson's "hand's up, don't shoot" falsehood that was debunked by the WaPO and NYT, Jussie Smollett's faking his racist, anti-gay attack, and many other news reports that were later proved wrong?

Wait for other, non-NYT analysts to weigh in on the President's taxes, a subject more complicated than the above topics.

Understanding the income taxes of a man who controls $billions of real estate requires many hours of study of source documents by accountants and lawyers to present a "fair" picture of his finances (fairness about the tax code is something very different).

Just because you do your own tax return doesn't mean you can have a decent understanding of how the tax returns of "hundreds of companies" (NYT's words) are prepared. It's like me reading a few sci-fi books and discussing time travel and black holes with a theoretical physicist.

Regarding my own background, I worked 24/7 during the busy season in the Tax Department of a Big Eight accounting firm over 40 years ago. It was the first time I was exposed to how very wealthy families build a network of interlocking entities to organize their businesses.

Those who work on Donald Trump's taxes likely refer to a chart depicting the ownership, cash flows, and goods-and-services flows among the entities. Trump accountants, because of the heavy emphasis on real estate, should be familiar with at-risk rules, the difference between recourse vs nonrecourse debt, the tax attributes of C corporations, S corporations, partnerships (limited and general), and single-owner LLCs.

They also should be acquainted with issues such as controlled groups, consolidated returns (where going from 79% to 80% corporate ownership has important ramifications), fiscal year vs calendar year elections, inside basis vs. outside basis of pass-through entities, foreign tax credits, NOL carryforwards and carrybacks (different for individuals vs corporations), and entity formation and liquidations, to name a few.

These complicated arrangements are often created for reasons other than income taxes. 1) Certain structures minimize estate taxes; 2) In businesses with high-value assets, each asset and its related debt are housed in separate entities for their legal protection; 3) These entities are billed for management fees and administrative expenses by other entities. Who owns the management companies? That's worthy of a separate discussion.

After spending hundreds, maybe thousands of hours, looking over the documents, the NY Times doesn't headline a meaningful finding, such as an in-depth assessment of the financial health of Trump Consolidated. Instead it leads off with

Donald J. Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency. In his first year in the White House, he paid another $750.

He had paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years — largely because he reported losing much more money than he made.

To the Times it doesn't matter if the "hundreds of companies" Donald Trump controls have paid millions in taxes. It doesn't matter if he paid millions in tax years other than 2016 and 2017.

His accountants, as they were supposed to, used their knowledge of the tax code to minimize the taxes on Form 1040. Undisclosed are how much taxes were paid on Forms 1065, 1120, 1041, and others.

If the President is re-elected, I hope that he appoints a public-relations tax accountant to make sure he pays some individual income taxes each year. For example, one of his companies could declare a special distribution or sell a minor asset for a gain. There are countless ways to be tax-positive if your name is Donald Trump. He just has to remember to do it.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Headlines

Peaceful protest, no photos of violence in Time.

Those who are familiar with the art of spin can easily spy the conclusion that Time wants readers to draw:

Headline: 93% of Black Lives Matter Protests Have Been Peaceful, New Report Finds

The use of percentages is a dead giveaway that the writer is trying to downplay the violence, rioting, and destruction in some BLM demonstrations. Here's the text: [bold added]

The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) analyzed more than 7,750 Black Lives Matter demonstrations in all 50 states and Washington D.C. that took place in the wake of George Floyd’s death between May 26 and August 22.

Their report states that more than 2,400 locations reported peaceful protests, while fewer than 220 reported “violent demonstrations.” The authors define violent demonstrations as including “acts targeting other individuals, property, businesses, other rioting groups or armed actors.” Their definition includes anything from “fighting back against police” to vandalism, property destruction looting, road-blocking using barricades, burning tires or other materials. In cities where protests did turn violent—these demonstrations are “largely confined to specific blocks,” the report says.

The meaning would be quite different if, using the same facts, the headline were
"220 U.S. Locations Report Violent Demonstrations in 3 Months".

Source: NY Times 9/7/2020

In the opposite vein writers accentuate the horror of COVID-19 by tracking the absolute number of deaths, which have reached 189,000 in the United States.

Reporters who wanted to downplay the virus' magnitude could say only 1.9% of the U.S. population (328.2 million) have contracted the disease, and if someone is unlucky enough to have been infected, he has a 97% chance of survival. To really minimize the virus' importance one could say that an American has a less than 0.1% chance of dying from it this year.

None of the above is an opinion about BLM violence or COVID-19's severity. It just illuminates what the media would like you to think--BLM violence occurs rarely, while COVID-19 is spreading out of control. Read and believe what you want, dear reader, but do read critically.

To Run With Joe

(Chronicle 2003 photo)

Kamala Harris, the junior Senator from California, dropped out of the Presidential race last year. However, she is on the short list to become Joe Biden's running mate.

Her friend and mentor, Willie Brown, advised her against being on the ticket in yesterday's Chronicle:

If Joe Biden offers the vice presidential slot to Sen. Kamala Harris, my advice to her would be to politely decline.

Harris is a tested and proven campaigner who will work her backside off to get Biden elected. That said, the vice presidency is not the job she should go for — asking to be considered as attorney general in a Biden administration would be more like it.

Being picked for the vice presidency is obviously a huge honor, and if Biden wins, Harris would make history by being the first woman to hold the job.

But the glory would be short-lived, and historically, the vice presidency has often ended up being a dead end. For every George H.W. Bush, who ascended from the job to the presidency, there’s an Al Gore, who never got there.

True, the vice president does have an advantage the next time the party needs a new nominee, which in Biden’s case could be four years from now. But in the meantime, the vice president has no real power and little chance to accomplish anything independent of the president.

Basically, no one takes the vice president seriously after election day. Just ask Mike Pence.

Plus, if Biden wins, the Democrats will be moving into the White House in the middle of a pandemic and economic recession. The next few years promise to be a very bumpy ride. Barack Obama and the Democrats saved the nation from economic collapse when he took office, and their reward was a blowout loss in the 2010 midterm elections.

On the other hand, the attorney general has legitimate power. From atop the Justice Department, the boss can make a real mark on everything from police reform to racial justice to prosecuting corporate misdeeds.

And the attorney general gets to name every U.S. attorney in the country. That’s power.

Plus, given the department’s current disarray under William Barr, just showing up and being halfway sane will make the new AG a hero.

Best of all, being attorney general would give Harris enough distance from the White House to still be a viable candidate for the top slot in 2024 or 2028, no matter what the state of the nation.

John Nance Garner, Vice President to FDR, apocryphally said that the office was "not worth a bucket of warm spit.” Willie Brown seems to agree with that assessment, but the veteran California politician is (deliberately?) ignoring the possibility that Joe Biden, if he wins, will not serve the full four years.

If she has the same ambition as almost every elected politician in Washington, Kamala Harris would be crazy not to accept the invitation to run with Joe.

[Update - 8/11/20: Yes, it's Kamala Harris.]

You Never Know Which Tweets Have Legs

Snapshot of the tweets with red arrows added

On Tuesday President Trump fired his usual barrage of tweets on a variety of subjects, but two of them--on the vulnerability of mail-in ballots to fraud--still are being hotly discussed. (The Twitter link is here.)

The reason for the tweets' legs is not the importance of voter fraud. (Is it more important than the coronavirus, the stock market, or FBI wiretaps?)

No, it's that Twitter for the first time included a fact-check button on anyone's tweets, it happened to be the President, and everyone noticed.

The ensuing discussion over the difference between a platform, a publisher, whether social media is one or the other, the legal liability implications, the well-documented (Democratic vs Republican political donations, conservatives getting fired, stories that are page 1 vs. page 50, etc.) liberal bias of Silicon Valley tech companies, "shadow-banning", and government regulation will likely last a few more days.

The Chronicle's political writer Joe Garofoli says Twitter's "fact-check" button was--whether deliberate or not--a trap that enabled the President to run against "California liberals in Silicon Valley":

To Trump, railing on Silicon Valley generates the same reaction as pounding other “elites” like the media and Democratic governors who don’t want to open the their states for business quickly enough. It’s a well-worn tactic that has kept his conservative base with him through three-plus years in office.

“California is an easy target for conservatives because of the image that we’re ‘freaky San Francisco’ and Hollywood people,” said Donnie Fowler, a former Democratic operative who has worked to bridge the gap between Silicon Valley and Washington for two decades and is now the CEO at Tech4America. “It reinforces their messages.”

The Wall Street Journal, to be clear, doesn't support Twitter management, employees, and owners' liberal views (let's not get into that now, dear reader) but does support Twitter's right to run its own site however it wants to.

Facebook, YouTube and Twitter aren’t utilities or soapboxes in the park. They’re businesses that earn piles of money by selling ads against your missives. They’re within their rights to set community standards and spike posts they deem a violation. If this feels suffocating, log off. That includes you, @realDonaldTrump.

Your humble blogger does wish Silicon Valley did not engage in viewpoint discrimination--sometimes blatant, sometimes subtle--but regulation is not the answer. If you don't like it, change the channel or better yet, start your own.

Stories of One: Politics and Real Estate

Stories of one that mean something or nothing:

Republicans flip seat in California House delegation: [bold added]

Nancy Pelosi and Rebecca, Mike, and Preston Garcia (Chron)

Mike Garcia was sworn in Tuesday as the first Republican to flip a Democratic-held congressional seat in California in more than 20 years. But for both parties, his election means far more than the single GOP vote he’ll bring to the House for the next six months.

For Democrats, Garcia’s surprisingly easy special election win last week over Assemblywoman Christy Smith, D-Santa Clarita (Los Angeles County), is an instant warning that November’s effort to hang onto the seven California congressional seats they grabbed from Republicans in 2018 will be anything but a cakewalk.

IMHO, the range of election outcomes is large. There are important known unknowns like infections and deaths from COVID-19, economic recovery, the mental and physical health of Joe Biden, and tensions with China. As for unknown unknowns, by definition we don't know what they are, but one or two will manifest, it's been that kind of year.

Devastated SoMa restaurant told to pay full rent starting in July. Its landlord? The city of SF [bold added]

Banana Blossom Salad

[Owner Thai] Van temporarily shuttered Green Papaya this month with the hopes of reopening whenever conventions come back to San Francisco — but he’s in a bind, as his landlord wants him to resume paying his normal $11,000 monthly rent payments July 1, even though he doesn’t expect it to be open and making money by then.

Van wouldn’t be so surprised if it weren’t for the identity of his landlord: the city of San Francisco, which also owns Moscone Center. Convention centers are in the state’s fourth and final phase of reopening, coinciding with the end of the stay-at-home order.

“How are they going to ask me to pay rent when they’re not allowing customers to come in? It’s like they want me to pay for a hotel room and tell me to stay outside,” he said.

I have first- and second-hand experience with the plight of landlords. Popular sympathies go to residential tenants who are out of work and commercial tenants whose businesses are closed.

But what about the landlords, most of whom don't have mortgages guaranteed by the Federal government? The banks do not have to give such landlords loan relief--which applies just to owner-occupied properties--while their non-paying tenants cannot be evicted. (Note: in residential real estate about half of the nation's 50 million residential units are owned by individual, i.e., "mom-and-pop" investors, not fat-cat corporations.)

The government has decreed that lease agreements can be violated without penalty by tenants. The good news for landlords is that the moratorium stops after May 31st or June 30th, depending on local law.

The City of San Francisco's hard-line approach against Green Papaya gives cover to landlords who want to restore the integrity of their executed leases.

However, we admit that we do feel a great deal of sympathy for Mr. Van, whose landlord did shut down his wherewithal to pay the rent.

[Update - 5/21] - the Power of One: After The Chronicle reported on Green Papaya’s predicament Wednesday, Mayor London Breed said in a tweet that the city was working on “relief efforts, including rent forgiveness” for small businesses like Van’s.