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Matt Smith

Eminently Logical

Don't be too concerned with the originators of Proposition 98. instead, look at what they might deliver.

By Matt Smith

Published: May 28, 2008

If you're an environmentalist, an antipoverty activist, or a member of any other well-meaning civic group, your fellow travelers have told you to vote no on Proposition 98, the so-called...

Matt Smith

For Whom the Bridge Tolls

Politicians want pork to pay for Golden Gate increases, but the money should be paid by drivers instead.

By Matt Smith

Published: May 14, 2008

When financial executives have to pay an extra dollar for crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, terrorists win. At least, that's one moral to be gleaned from an absurdist controversy surrounding plans...

Matt Smith

Can't We All Just Roll Along?

There is a way bike riders and car drivers can more safely coexist, and help the environment.

By Matt Smith

Published: May 7, 2008

To envision the future he'd like to see, architect Robin Levitt shows a small downtown crowd of transportation geeks a selection of postwar photographs of Berlin and Copenhagen. During the 1950s,...

Matt Smith

Fall Into the Cash

Let's hope the Fishers use it to clean up the messes they've created.

By Matt Smith

Published: April 23, 2008

Don Fisher, the iconic founder of the Gap stores, is known for the messes he and his sons step into. A few years ago, he invited a boycott of his company by bringing his sons into the side...

Matt Smith

Cruise Control

Public health advocates want gay hookup Web sites to promote safe sex.

By Matt Smith

Published: April 9, 2008

For public health advocates, the Internet, and its ability to spread disease through anonymous sex hookups, is the new tobacco. Just as the "right to smoke" as an important civil liberty has been...

Matt Smith

Nursing Home Lobbyist Quits After He Predicts SEIU Powerplay

By Matt Smith

Published: April 2, 2008

On Wednesday, March 19, at 8:52 p.m., Scott Carlson, executive director of California Alliance to Advance Nursing Home Care, was apparently in an optimistic mood. Carlson is a former executive...

Matt Smith

Let the Sun Shine, You Hypocrites

Journalism is under attack from lefties who promote public access to information.

By Matt Smith

Published: March 26, 2008

During the summer of 1999, trucks containing almost 15,000 tons of contaminated dirt made their way from the Altamont Landfill near Livermore to a faraway facility reinforced against the possible...

Feature

Working-Class Struggle

Three housekeepers and a day laborer take action against deadbeat employers who abuse immigrants

By Matt Smith

Published: March 19, 2008

Gloria Esteva, a diminutive housekeeper from Oaxaca, Mexico, is wearing an orange T-shirt and carrying a large bullhorn. She exhorts a crowd of about 50 protesters who are standing before a gate...

Sucka Free City

ILWU to Shut Down West Coast Ports on Socialist Holiday

By Matt Smith

Published: March 12, 2008

Arriving in the Port of Oakland at 6 a.m. last Thursday, the grey-blue colossus auto carrier Century Highway No. 3 carries enough cars to fill all the parking lots surrounding the Giants stadium...

Matt Smith

Gonzalez/Nader Hysteria

They're actually out to stop spoiler candidates.

By Matt Smith

Published: March 5, 2008

In 1846, hard-drinking, red-eyed wildman Ezekiel "Stuttering Zeke" Merritt helped roust a few neighbors from their settlements in the upper Sacramento River Valley. They marched to the Bay Area...

Matt Smith

Supes Spread Manure

Their anti-Newsom campaigning is preventing more affordable housing

By Matt Smith

Published: February 27, 2008

Imagine the most bitchin' personal ad in the history of self-promotion. It would conjure a man both wealthy and sensitive, possessing ambition and clout, with madly idealistic goals made to seem...

Matt Smith

Local Union Leader Rosselli Blasts SEIU Boss Andy Stern

By Matt Smith

Published: February 20, 2008

Somewhere in California there's a woman alone in a nursing home with bedsores that grow more painful and life-threatening by the day. And down the hall there's an orderly who would like to do...

Matt Smith

New College Out of Money: Teachers Unpaid, Not Teaching

By Matt Smith

Published: February 13, 2008

Katie Paul, a tall, brown-haired psychology student, is driving south along the peninsula, watching her future recede in the rear-view mirror. "I wanted to go into a public agency and work with...

Matt Smith

West Coast Dockworkers Dispute Could Paralyze U.S. Economy

By Matt Smith

Published: February 6, 2008

Imploding U.S. mortgage markets leave behind trillions of dollars in economic damage. The dollar's slide against the euro and the yuan raises fears of a currency collapse. January job losses...

Matt Smith

Four Steps to Success for Gavin Newsom

By Matt Smith

Published: January 30, 2008

Yakking and posing-wise, Gavin Newsom got his second mayoral term off to a busy start. To differentiate between his promises and the truth, let's examine the facts. On Jan. 8, San Francisco's...

Matt Smith

Epidemic of Violence Against SF Day Laborers

By Matt Smith

Published: January 23, 2008

Alonso Aguirre, his face swollen from recent surgery, promises he'll tell me how gangbangers recently broke his jaw in two places with a baseball bat. But first he asks a favor. "Can you talk...

Matt Smith

Newsom-Linked Non-Profit SF Connect Twice As Inefficient As National Average

Sixty-two percent of budget spent on overhead in 2006

By Matt Smith

Published: January 16, 2008

San Francisco spends a small nation's budget on and around the problem of homelessness. Numerous programs sprawl over multiple bureaucracies, each with differing missions, and different levels of...

Matt Smith

Attention SF Giants, DiFi - Matt Smith's New Year's Resolutions Others Ought to Follow

DiFi's husband and the Giants' owner should resolve to do better in the coming year

By Matt Smith

Published: January 9, 2008

Now that I've completed the heavy lifting of my own New Year's resolutions, I'm moving on to lighter fare: drafting 2008 self-improvement pledges for other people. In my first list of New...

Matt Smith

Portrait of a Capitalist

Take a close look at Don Fisher and his motivations for a Presidio museum

By Matt Smith

Published: December 26, 2007

For a version of San Francisco history from the perspective of the masses, visit the Rincon Annex at Mission and Spear streets. The cartoonish yet unsettlingly realistic murals Anton Refregier...

Matt Smith

Demo Sale

The party's leaders are putting their lack of ethics on display once again

By Matt Smith

Published: December 19, 2007

Proverbs 16:19 — "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall"—is more than a biblical verse. It's a political axiom. In 1980, Willie Brown became...