Charity begins at home

The regulatory morass of San Francisco is clearly an extension of political ambitions. Some private-sector entrepreneurs are not even allowed to recover their original rates as a function of the CPI, let alone recover all reasonable and allowable costs to maintain viable service sectors for San Francisco.

Meanwhile, opportunistic entrepreneurs seem to have the political clout to change large apartment complexes into virtual hotels, avoid hotel taxes, and act as an unregulated investor owned utility provider, selling into a monopoly service area. The California Public Utilities Commission should step in and end this activity. Clearly The City will not.

This repricing of power, water and wastewater has a lot of negative impacts. The Rent Board is actually overseeing a power-passthrough that is a highly regressive tax (double dipping) on long-term tenants, who are usually the elderly and infirm. The outsourcing of the sale of water and wastewater to a billing agency with a utility type name appears in conflict with Propositions A and E of 2002.

Much of this is happening in progressive District 3, where the main efforts appear to be renaming major geographical areas and writing job descriptions for some mayoral appointments. Crikey mate, haven’t you heard that charity begins at home?

Brian Browne

The City

Begging the question

Rich Lowry and David Rivkin link the Iraq and Afghanistan war using a simple one paragraph checklist that brushes aside questions of competence in planning and executing the war [“Afghanistan and Iraq: it’s all the same fight,” Oct. 2].

OK. Then they say Iraq is in the midst of a civil war, “but this needn’t be a cause for utter despair.” They state that there is “no reason that the U.S. cannot succesfully navigate the shoals of communal violence.” But they give no strategy for success beyond “exploitable splits within the Shiite leadership.”

This is incomplete, flawed and simplistic and is indicative of the kind thinking that got us to this point in Iraq. The political process is breaking down in Iraq as the sectarian fighting escalates. I guess that would cloud up their looking glass. And, most telling, they do not address the all important question: On whose side does the U.S. fight in an Iraqi civil war?

Scot Bishop

The City

Unsavory threesome

If I were a reasonable Republican, I would treat President Bush’s stumping for Richard Pombo and John Doolittle as a public example of political Mutually Assured Destruction.

Bush, Pombo, and Doolittle are naturally “incredibly busy men.” For each man to take time to appear at a public event together suggests a level of political comfort with what the other man stands for.

Pombo and Doolittle have been involved in Abramoff-style political corruption. Pombo also favors selling out our natural heritage for the forces of greed and short-sightedness. Bush, among other things, favors having and maintaining the type of power accorded to a king. Cumulatively, the three men support dirty politicians, trashing the environment and torture of political opponents. Aren’t there any Republicans left who believe that American politicians should stand for something more positive?

Peter Wong

The City

Spreading Islam peacefully

The Prophet Mohammad had won hearts and minds with supreme courtesy and high morals. The verse, “There is no compulsion in religion,” was not revealed during the early period of Islam’s powerlessness, as the pope suggested, but in the first two or three years after the Prophet’s arrival in Medina, a place where Muslims were not only free from Meccan persecution but also held power.

Islam gained its greatest, and most lasting missionary triumphs in times and places where its political power had been weakest. The areas of largest Muslim population, i.e., Malaysia, Indonesia, and Bangladesh, never had a Muslim conqueror. The increase in their Muslim population was owing to peaceful conversion by traveling mystics, the roving missionaries and the Imams of the village mosques.

Shazia Sohail

Hillsborough

Westfield’s future

Congratulations to Westfield and all their brave tenants for the addition to San Francisco Centre. We got a preview of traffic congestion as it will be with this beautiful new retail heaven on earth, and the message seems to be, shop early and walk! This first Sunday found things operating almost at a standstill, and there were lots of other major events and attractions that kept the hordes away. What will it be like the day after Thanksgiving if it’s already gridlocked in October?

Stu Smith

The City