Posts Tagged ‘rose’

Does Chinese New Year Parade “Organizer” Rose Pak Take Ten Percent Off the Top from Corporate Sponsors?

Monday, January 28th, 2013

I don’t know.

I mean, her luxury condo south of Market was only partly subsidized, right? And she doesn’t really have a job job. And I don’t think the Chinese consulate has ever 1099′ed her for the “consulting” work she does / did for it.

So lookie here to see what those gambling houses in Reno and Las Vegas have to pay to participate in the 2013 event:

Click to expand

So Rose Pak is a guaranteed winner and the “Chinese community” she claims to represent is a guaranteed loser, assuming that advertising works and assuming that The House Always Wins, which is does.

Couldn’t somebody else “organize” this parade?

And maybe not do the drunk mafia grandma routine every year?

District Five Meltdown: The Problems with the Three Front Runners – Christina Olague, London Breed and Julian Davis

Tuesday, November 6th, 2012

[UPDATE: Yoops, this ended up not being the order of finish. Hey, perhaps Rose Pak is merely a paper dragon lady, powerless outside of the Realm of Stencil Voters and Oppressed (by Rose Pak et al) Newcomers? It's sure looking that way.]

In order of finish:

1. Back in the day, Christina Olague accepted the deal that Julian Davis and who-knows-who-else rejected. So that meant that she worked on the Run Ed Run campaign in exchange for the promise of later getting appointed as Supervisor of District Five.

Before, she was the Perjurer’s Helper, but is she now? 

I don’t know. We’ll see.

IMO, her rise to power is (still, very possibly) a trap. We’ll see.

Despite recent events involving Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, Christina Olague is still the choice of Rose Pak, Randy Shaw and the rest of San Francisco’s corrupt, government-subsidized, non-profit cabal.

And, apparently, CO is NOT the choice of the Ron Coates / Linda Voight / Ron Conway / Gayle Conway / Republican billionaire / real estate interests side of Willie Brown’s / Ed Lee’s conservative (for San Francisco) Democratic party faction.

You see, there’s a schism, these days, that’s wide out in the open for all to see. So, one side of the faction supports Eric Mar and Christina Olague and the other side supports David Lee and London Breed.

Speaking of which:

2. London Breed is the choice of the Ron Coates / Linda Voight / Ron Conway / Gayle Conway / Republican billionaire / RE interests side of Willie Brown’s / Ed Lee’s conservative (for San Francisco) Democratic party faction.

As she states, she can’t tell the Republican Billionaires of the Bay Area et uxes to stop supporting her, but why would they be spending all that money?

Mmmm…

That leaves us with:

3. Julian Davis, who recently DNQ’ed

Joe, I want to clarify that when you called me yesterday you did not tell me what you were calling about and I did not receive a call back later in the day. I am not going to comment further about anonymous uncorroborated attacks coming from your publication a week before Election Day. Voters I talk to in the streets are intelligent enough to see past the politics of personal destruction. Their concerns are real—a more affordable city, improved public transit and a better climate for small business, to name a few. Your readers would benefit from substantive reporting on these issues and on how the candidates differ on them. Julian Davis

Pwned:

Julian –Shortly after noon yesterday, I phoned your lawyer and asked him about the letter. Immediately afterward, I called you. You said you were on another call and asked if this was urgent. I replied that you should call me back as soon as you could. You said you would, and I was left with the impression you would phone back when you were off your call. That didn’t happen, and I got your voicemail when I called you at 2 p.m. Sadly, you did not call us back before our story went up at 8:30 this morning. This most recent allegation is neither anonymous nor uncorroborated. While the accuser’s name is not printed in our article, it was most certainly affixed on the letters she sent to you and your attorney. I agree with you that our readers would benefit from reporting on “a more affordable city, improved public transit, and a better climate for small business.” I disagree with you that we aren’t reporting on these issues: 

http://www.sfweekly.com/2010-10-20/news/let-it-bleed/

http://www.sfweekly.com/2012-06-13/news/muni-sfmta-buses-public-transportation-maintenance-accidents/http:/

http://www.sfweekly.com/2007-07-25/news/wheelchairs-of-fortune/

Sincerely yours, Joe Eskenazi

So that takes care of that.

Oh, and who else? Thea Selby should have taken steps after news of that $10k of RE money had spread. She didn’t. (Perhaps she’s the other candidate that Mayor Ed Lee is “privately” telling his inner circle to vote for? Mmmm.)

And it looks like John Rizzo made some sort of deal with Christina Olague or whomever functions as the Progressive version of Walter Wong these days. We’ll find out what his reward is apres-election.

That’s my best guess.

What’s This? The “Fix Muni First Initiative” Will Let Us Vote to Kill the Central Subway in 2013? Oh, Happy Day

Friday, October 12th, 2012

So it’s only going to take 9,702 signatures to qualify the proposed Fix MUNI First Initiative for the 2013 November ballot?

Those John Hancocks should be pretty easy to get, I think.

Yes, let’s let The People decide if it’s worth $40,000,000 a year to operate a pretty-much-useless subway shortline.

So maybe Chinatown power broker Rose Pak is smoking her celebratory cigar on the veranda of her taxpayer-funded luxury condo in District Six a touch too soon?

Yes.

Let’s see how easy it will be for her to corral stencil voters outside of Chinatown…

All the deets of the Central Subway fiasco, after the jump.

(more…)

Here It Is: Video of Interim Supervisor Christina Olague Collecting $46K from Ed Lee, Willie Brown, and Rose Pak

Tuesday, July 3rd, 2012

OMG, it’s so-called Progressive Supervisor Christina Olague collecting a ton of cash in Chinatown!

Accidental Mayor Ed Lee on Christina: “She knows who her friends are.”

And then she thanks corrupt Chinatown Power Broker Rose Pak, you know, for the $46k.

Here you go, from Table 22, you know, upstairs at that place you’ve spent* far, far, too many hours in, watching the room-temperature plastic bottles of Canada Dry ginger ale spinning on the lazy susans:  

The City Family wanted a compliant, so-called Progressive to represent District 5.

The City Family found Christina Olague.

*Oh, wait, I meant to say “I’ve spent…”

An SFFD Chinatown Mystery: “145 = 529″ on Engine 2

Wednesday, April 25th, 2012

What does it mean?

Click to expand

I think 145 is what corrupt millionaire non-profit profiteer Rose Pak pays for her below-market District 6 condo each month in dollars, but what does the 529 stand for?

It’s a mystery…

 

What’s That PG&E? You’re Sponsoring a “Green App” Contest for $25k? Well, That Makes Up for San Bruno and EVERYTHING!

Thursday, March 22nd, 2012

I don’t know, PG&E. Sometimes I get the idea that you don’t know that you are the suckiest major utility in the United States…

Hey, I know, why not develop an app what tells you how to do your job without blowing people up?

(And then apply to the CPUC to get reimbursed for all your related expenses. Hooray.)

Via David Yu - click to expand

“PG&E Sponsors U.S. Department of Energy Green Button Apps Contest

Utility Offers $25,000 Toward National Prize for Top Energy Apps

SAN FRANCISCO, March 22, 2012 — After seeing the potential for customers to save energy and money by downloading personal energy data through its Green Button service, Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) is supporting further industry innovation by sponsoring a nationwide search for the best Green Button energy apps.

The Apps for Energy contest is a partnership with the White House, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and U.S. technology firms. The developer finalists who create the winning apps for phones and computers will take home part of a $100,000 cash prize from sponsors PG&E, Itron and the DOE, as well as national bragging rights.

“Green Button will arm millions of Americans with information they can use to lower their energy bills,” said Nancy Sutley, Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. “Innovative tools like these are good for our economy, good for the health of our communities, and an essential part of our approach toward a secure and clean energy future that works for Americans.”

PG&E launched the Green Button in December 2011, responding to a challenge from the White House to design a standard format for customers with SmartMeters(TM) to download their energy use data online. The Green Button aims to promote personal energy awareness and development of phone and computer apps to aid customers in making informed decisions about their energy use and help them save money on their monthly energy statement. To date, there have been about 220,000 Green Button downloads.

“There is incredible power and potential in providing our customers with new visibility into their energy use, with information that’s clear accurate, timely, and easy to use,” said Tony Earley, PG&E Corporation’s Chairman, CEO and President. “Today’s announcement shows PG&E’s commitment to stimulating growth and innovation in the developer community. When it comes to energy management, we are driven to help transform the way our customers manage energy in their home.”

The DOE has long supported energy innovation, driving a nationwide push for more renewable energy sources and encouraging every American to become more engaged with how they use energy.

“Providing consumers with easy access to data on their energy consumption can help give them the tools they need to make informed decisions about their energy use,” U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu has said. “Developing applications and services to help consumers understand and control their energy use is a field ripe for American innovation.”

App developers will be able to participate by registering at challenge.gov and submitting a description, video, photos, and a link to their app. The website energy.gov/developer will be the main resource page for developers. Both sites will go live April 5. Until then, the public can submit ideas for energy apps at energy.gov. The winner is planned to be announced in May.

PG&E customers with an electric SmartMeter(TM) and a My Energy account can log on at pge.com/myenergy, click on the Green Button icon, and download up to 13 months of their hourly electric usage data. About half of the utility’s electric customers – or 2.3 million – are registered with My Energy.

Green Button is one of many energy- and cost-saving benefits available to PG&E customers with a SmartMeter(TM). Other benefits include:

– Hourly electric and daily gas usage data charts via a secure PG&E
website
— Energy Alerts to notify customers when they’re approaching a
higher-priced electric tier and to encourage a change in their energy
use
— Outage detection to help PG&E quickly restore service
— Remote service connection as a convenience for customers
— Special time-varying rate programs like SmartRate(TM)
— Enabling in-home energy management devices that display the energy usage
of appliances

Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a subsidiary of PG&E Corporation (NYSE:PCG), is one of the largest combined natural gas and electric utilities in the United States. Based in San Francisco, with 20,000 employees, the company delivers some of the nation’s cleanest energy to 15 million people in Northern and Central California. For more information, visit http://www.pge.com/about/newsroom/ and www.pgecurrents.com.

SOURCE Pacific Gas and Electric Company

Pacific Gas and Electric Company”

OMG, Now You Can Read “The Real Ed Lee – The Untold, Untold Story” Book Online With Searchable Text – Just Click the Link

Thursday, November 3rd, 2011

Apparently, there aren’t enough printing presses available in the Bay Area to keep up with the enormous demand the public has for The Real Ed Lee – The Untold, Untold, Story.” 

(Uh…, moving on.) 

Anyway, the upshot is that now you can see the text online in a searchable format. See below.

(Or kick it old-school with Bluoz, your choice.)

Click to expand

To review:

“The book goes through the details of how Lee rose through the ranks at City Hall, along the way approving a couple of fraudulent vendors and getting caught up in Willie Brown’s sleaze. It discusses how his campaign is taking credit for other people’s work and ideas. It describes how he promised over an over not to run, then went ahead and did it anyway. It’s got a great picture of him steering a 139-foot yacht with the caption “I’m on a boat.”

(Nice link there, Tim Redmond – I hadn’t made the connection.)

All the deets:

“The Untold, Untold Story” Goes Online - Leland Yee campaign can’t print “The Real Ed Lee” book fast enough for demand

SAN FRANCISCO – The reviews are in and the “The Real Ed Lee: The Untold, Untold Story” is a smash hit!

Has a serious political point, but it’s actually funny, sometimes really funny, and it’s much easier to read than the plodding “Ed-Is-Greater-Than-God” prose of the original…. For once, we have a campaign piece that made me laugh instead of crying. - San Francisco Bay Guardian

OMG, A new best seller to be! – Some guy on the internet

Everyone is talking about it! – SFist

The 55-page parody shows Lee on the cover as downcast, grumpy and triple-chinned. The book recounts dozens of previously published stories detailing everything from the two district attorney investigations into alleged ethics violations by his supporters and alleged cronyism. – San Francisco Chronicle

The 56-page booklet is heavily footnoted with URLs – The Bay Citizen

I totally LOL’ed – The San Francisco Citizen

((*sound of crickets*)) – Interim Mayor Ed Lee

The slim volume oozes sarcasm as it covers the history of Ed Lee’s tenure as mayor, including his promise to not run for a full term and charges of inappropriate campaign donations from contractors. - San Francisco Examiner

This is the first “hit” recipe in political history. - Eric Jaye

Less than three-months hence, Lee’s campaign is beset by multiple criminal investigations into alleged campaign money laundering, ballot tampering and other campaign election violations. – Fog City Journal

[Ed Lee staff] were pretty disgusted by it. – Tony Winnicker

Painstakingly put together to resemble the original propaganda mailer to the smallest detail. The type fonts are identical. The jaunty writing style is mocked all too well. – SF Weekly

The Leland Yee for Mayor campaign has already distributed thousands of “The Real Ed Lee: The Untold, Untold Story” to voters throughout San Francisco, however, the demand for the book has been so great that today Yee’s campaign launched the book online at http://www.lelandyee.com/the-untold-untold-story.

“We can’t print the books fast enough,” said Jim Stearns, Yee’s campaign manager. “Now that it is online every San Franciscan will have the opportunity to read this accurate account of our interim mayor and be able to compare his tarnished and corruption-filled record to Leland Yee’s 23 years of leadership and experience fighting for our community, especially seniors, students, and the most vulnerable.”

“The Real Ed Lee: The Untold, Untold Story” is a response to a book produced by one Ed Lee’s billionaire IE committees, which falsely glorified the interim mayor and ignored the multiple scandals and ethics violations of his campaign. The highlights of “The Real Ed Lee: The Untold, Untold Story” include Lee becoming interim mayor on false pretenses, his approval of fraudulent contracts, giving “golden parachutes, embracing cronyism, failure to follow ethics laws, illegal campaign contributions, money laundering (well, the first time), voter fraud, and the city’s future if Ed Lee were elected. The book also includes “Willie [Brown] & Rose’s [Pak] ‘No Longer Secret’ Make-A-Mayor Recipe.”

By comparison, Leland Yee has released several detailed plans on job creation, environmental protection, transportation, and schools. Maybe the most important of his plans – “An Independent City Hall” – would clean up City Hall, bring real transparency and accountability, kick out the powerbrokers, and return our local government to the people. To read Yee’s plan, visit http://www.lelandyee.com/issues/plan-for-an-independent-city-hall/.

Here It Is: The Entire “The Real Ed Lee – The Untold, Untold Story” Scanned-In for Your Pleasure – Read the Whole Thing

Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011

You remember this?

Well, now it’s time to read the whole thing without you having to leave your iPad or whatever.

It’s courtesy of the ever-resourceful Bluoz.

Here’s just one page:

Via Bluoz – click to expand

(Remember that one from former Mayor Gavin Newsom? “You’re not just changing your mind. You’re breaking a promise to these people.” That was just 2.5 months ago. Oh well.)

All right, enjoy!

Oh Boy: “Chinese & African-American Community Leaders to Denounce Leland Yee and Other Candidates’ Sleazy, Negative Attacks…”

Tuesday, November 1st, 2011

“…& Call for Positive Campaigns in Last 8 Days Before Election Day.”

Whew! That was the title of yesterday’s Ed Lee Campaign presser in Chinatown yesterday.

So basically, Senator Leland Yee sucks because his campaign released this yesterday.* Oh, and there was something about the City College campus, but I’m not sure exactly what the beef against Leland is about that.

And there was this –  a call for mayoral candidates to “put out facts and not opinion,” but I’ll tell you, that book was chock-a-block full of facts, actually. And it had 107 endnotes to boot.

And let’s see here, oh, suggesting that City Family member Mohammed Nuru has issues, well, thems is fighting words, partner. Even though, well, you know.**

It looked like this:

Click to expand

Apparently, if you find anything at all wrong with San Francisco since the current administration began in 1996, if you think that there’s anything that could be improved, you’re a “hater.” Quoth mayoral spokesmodel Tony Winnicker:

“This one goes out to all my #sfmayor #haters! Keep ‘em coming, we got ur number. Lee’s opponents go nonstop negative: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/10/30/BALG1LJNSD.DTL

But argumentum ad hominem coming from Tony hisself doesn’t make Tony a hater, no, not at all. (Somehow this makes sense.)

OK fine.

*There was a big fuss about the distribution of the Untold, Untold Story book on Sunday, but it had pretty much died down by the time this news conference was beginning.

**All right, play us off, Fog City Journal:

“Nuru, who was first hired by Lee during the administration of former Mayor Willie Brown, was the subject of a series of ethical scandals involving the misappropriation of public funds for personal uses, retaliatory threats against whisteblowers as well as directing city contractors to engage in illegal political activities while they were being paid with public funds, Herrera states:

“Herrera’s office conducted an investigation in 2004 into the San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners, or “SLUG,” the city-funded nonprofit Nuru headed from 1994 to 2000, in the midst of a series of San Francisco Chronicle news reports about potentially illegal electioneering activities. Nuru maintained close working ties to SLUG after going to work for Lee in 2001, according to witnesses, and also oversaw SLUG’s $1 million-per-year street-cleaning contract with DPW. The City Attorney investigation found that while at DPW, Nuru directed SLUG employees who were paid with city funds to conduct campaign activities in the 2003 municipal and runoff elections for Mayor and District Attorney—in clear violation of local law prohibiting city-funded nonprofits from using those funds to campaign for candidates or ballot measures. Witnesses also testified that Nuru had instructed city-funded SLUG workers to engage in similar campaign activities while he served as SLUG’s executive director, for a 1997 ballot measure backed by then-Mayor Willie Brown, and for his 1999 re-election campaign.

Following the 2004 City Attorney investigation, an audit by then-San Francisco City Controller Ed Harrington found a raft of financial improprieties involving SLUG and DPW. The Controller’s review revealed that SLUG mismanaged city grants and contracts, and was overpaid by city departments, including DPW, an amount totaling nearly $72,000. The audit additionally found that SLUG failed to pay more than $643,003 in payroll taxes, and that DPW improperly used SLUG’s contract with Public Works to purchase a $62,508 portable building for DPW’s use. Though Lee reportedly instructed Nuru to conduct no further business with SLUG, neither the 2004 City Attorney’s investigation report nor the similarly damning City Controller audit appears to have resulted in disciplinary action against Nuru at DPW. SLUG was formally debarred from city contracts for two years for violating Section 12G.1 of the San Francisco Administrative Code, which prohibits city funded organizations from using any of those funds to participate in, support, or attempt to influence a political campaign. The organization is now defunct.

Conspicuously absent from last week’s announcement that Mohammed Nuru would take over as DPW’s acting director effective Aug. 15 was interim Mayor Ed Lee. Though the appointment was announced in a written statement from the acting City Administrator, such appointments require “the concurrence of the Mayor,” according to San Francisco City Charter, § 3.104. A report noted that while Nuru’s salary was not finalized, his predecessor’s annual salary was $204,750. Nuru’s most recent previous annual salary as DPW’s Deputy Director of Operations was $193,000.”

OMG, It’s Another Book About the Mayor! “THE REAL ED LEE – THE UNTOLD, UNTOLD STORY” – 55 Pages of Hilarity

Sunday, October 30th, 2011

Well, here it is, something that just popped up on my porch/lobby this AM (and on Jerold Chinn’s too), complete with smiley-faced Post-It Note.

(If you’re not up to speed on the battling books of the 2011 race for Mayor of San Francisco, check out this bit from Heather Knight.)

I totally LOL’ed when I first saw this:

Click to expand

Which do you prefer?

Table of Contents for The Real Ed Lee Story, complete with Willie & Roses’s “No Longer Secret” Make-a-Mayor Recipe* (which riffs on this):

“I can’t say no to Willie and Rose”

That comes from this zinger by Board of Supervisors President David Chiu:

So Ed, about a week or two before you told the world that you wanted to — that you were considering — running for mayor, you told me that you had looked at yourself in the mirror, you didn’t have the fire in the belly, you didn’t want to run, but that you were having trouble saying ‘no’ to Willie Brown and Rose Pak,”

“I’m on a boat!”

The back cover of the original and the parody:

Complete with the necessary disclosures:

Of course this new campaign book was composed as a reply to The Ed Lee Story – An Unexpected Mayor, which was written by:

“…a mid-level hack funded by a shadowy pop-up group backed by experienced political sharks.”

On It Goes…

Excerpts from “The Real Ed Lee: The Untold, Untold Story.”

  • From “Willie & Rose’s ‘No Longer Secret’ Make-a-Mayor Recipe”: “VERY IMPORTANT: Mix all contents together in back room; if any part of the mixture is exposed to sunshine, it will be ruined. … Pour mixture into an empty vessel — any loyal bureaucrat will do.”
  • From “Section 1: The Making of a Mayor,” about the deal to make Ed Lee interim mayor: “[Then-Supervisor] Chris Daly said: ‘This is the biggest fumble in the history of San Francisco politics.’ You know your city is in trouble when Chris Daly is the only politician who got it right.”
  • “Fun facts” about Lee: “Ed Lee didn’t just bring America’s Cup to San Francisco, he also brought Jim Harbaugh to the 49ers. The real reason Twitter isn’t leaving is because Ed Lee won an arm-wrestling match against Twitter co-founder, Biz Stone. … These may not actually be true, but Ed Lee is quite skilled at taking credit for the work of others. …”

 

*Willie & Rose’s “No Longer Secret” Make-A-Mayor Recipe

How do you make a Mayor? Here’s the “no longer secret” recipe created by Chinatown powerbroker Rose Pak and former Mayor Willie L. Brown.

Serves: 4-8 years

Ingredients

1 “dormant” political machine

980 lbs. of powerbrokers (preferably a mix of former mayors, unregistered lobbyists, corporate hacks and Chinatown mavens)

1 Board of Supervisors President with mayoral ambitions

1 exiting mayor looking to payback his friends for years of service

1 “Promise”

2 parts flip-flopped Bevan Dufty

49 yards of wool (to cover people’s eyes)

Optional

The will of the people (“once in a while, if budget allows”)

Directions

1. VERY IMPORTANT: Mix all contents together in a back room; if any part of the mixture is exposed to sunshine it will be ruined.

2. Pour mixture into an empty vessel – any loyal bureaucrat will do. He doesn’t even need to be in the country.

3. Make a promise…and then break it. Very gently!

4. Voilá! A Mayor is made.

5. Be sure to keep your mayor on a tight leash. Do not allow them to have any open conversations with press or voters without being heavily scripted.

6. We recommend immediately hiring a posse of high-paid consultants and bodyguards to accompany your mayor at all times.

For true make-a-mayor aficionados, Rose & Willie swear that the second term is packed full of even bigger sweetheart deals!