By Joe O’Neill
(San Francisco politicians, including  John Burton,Willie Brown,  and Nancy Pelosi were instrumental in making California the first state in the country to pass the McBride Principals which made it state policy not to do business with companies in Northern Ireland who discriminate against  Catholics in employment practices. [...]

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(California now has a budget, and faces the consequences: There will be Draconian cuts in state services and irreparable holes in the social safety net – many will fall through, and be unable to get back up – and of course the counties are keen to sue the Capital for taking monies from them. The [...]

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by Warren Hinckle, Matt Gonzalez, Jello Biafra
If we can learn from history, attention should be paid to Black Bart. The legendary gentleman stagecoach bandit robbed only the strong boxes, not the passengers. He was always polite, apologized for any inconvenience, and even left a poem on his departure. Many call eminent domain robbery, which may [...]

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By Warren Hinckle
Editor, argonatut360.com
It is alas a last twist of the knife in Michael Jackson’s tortured life and death that the man who will most profit by from the androgynous diva’s demise is his cultural and political nemesis, the Colorado right-wingnut Phil Anschutz.
The reclusive Anschutz is a deliberately low profile media baron – Forbes called [...]

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(Ed. Note: As I confessed clipping junkie, I constantly rip stuff out of newspapers and magazines and one of the keepers was this pre-presidential piece last fall in the Village Voice by Wayne Barrett on Sarah Palin. It is a classic of shoe-leather investigative reporting, and if the muse takes you to peruse it you [...]

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By Matt Gonzalez
“[N]or shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” US Constitution, 5th Amendment, Takings Clause
When James Madison wrote the “takings clause” he couldn’t have expected courts would misread it in subsequent years.  Madison plainly wrote that only a “public use” would justify taking private property by government, but courts have [...]

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By Clive Crook
Published: June 28 2009 19:09 | Last updated: June 28 2009 19:09
 

As he promised last year, Barack Obama has brought climate change and healthcare reform to the centre of the nation’s attention. As well as evangelising, he is pressing Congress to act. Last week the House of Representatives passed the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill [...]

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(This is an extended version of an article that appeared on the Op-Ed Page of the San Francisco Chronicle about the Transbay Authority’s callous attitude toward small businesses in its path. Attorney Gonzalez, the past president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, analyzes the history and inequities of the eminent domain process in the [...]

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