According to local news station ABC 7, the city of San Francisco is considering installing safe injection sites, where IV drug users can shoot up under the supervision of medical profesionals who will be provide safe injection supplies and nalaxone for overdoses, if necessary. The sites will most likely be modeled after sites in Europe and Vancouver.

When I saw this on the news, Jared said that the only problem he could foresee would be crime. He said that injection sites would attract drug users, which would attract drug dealers, which would attract crime and "turf wars" among different gangs selling drugs. Conventional wisdom might dictate that crime would go up, but a 2006 study of Vancouver's first safe injection site reveals that crime around the safe injection site remained the same one year after the site opened, compared to one year after the site opened. The study tracked three different kinds of crime: drug trafficking, assults and robberies, and vehicle thefts. The first two categories of crime remained the same. Vehicle thefts actually decreased.

The probable location for a safe injection site is the Tenderloin, the home of seedy residential hotels and crack smokers in the city. Mayor Gavin Newsom has said that he is against the idea of a safe injection site, to say nothing of the legality of such a place. Heroin is classified as a Schedule I narcotic under the Controlled Substances Act, and as such, it's illegal -- even for medical uses (which, according to the government, there are none; that's the definition of a Schedule I narcotic). That would be the first -- and maybe the last -- hurdle, but it's a good idea.

Posted by Mark at 11:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

SACRAMENTO -- Following last year's disastrous U.S. Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. New London, states and municipalities began enacting laws to preserve their own interpretations of the Fifth Amendment right of eminent domain. The Supremes ruled, 5-4, that the government could seize private land and hand it over to a private developer if the developer's presence might create a sort-of maybe intangible benefit through higher tax revenues. The Supremes, however, said in their ruling that this was a broad application of the federal Fifth Amendment and states, if they wanted a narrower interpretation, could acheive that through their own state constitutions. A flurry of activity followed.

Now, California is trying for an amendment to the state constitution that would prevent the state from using its power of eminent domain to seize private land and hand it over to private developers. Sounds great, right?

But stick around for page three of Proposition 90, cleverly titled the "Protect Our Homes Act." Who doesn't want to protect homes? But what this proposition does and what its proponents say it does -- or rather, don't say it does -- are very different. Proposition 90 does indeed define "public use" and prevents the taking of private property for any uses that are not "public," but it goes one further:

Whenever government takes or damages private property for a public use, the owner of any affected property shall receive just compensation for the property taken or damaged. Just compensation shall be set at fair market value for property taken and diminution of fair market value for property damaged. Whenever a property owner and the government cannot agree on fair compensation, the California courts shall provide through a jury trial a fair and timely process for the settlement of disputes.

The key word is "damages." Under this proposed amendment, "damage" could be condominium conversion, low-income housing conversion, or even rent control. It could be environmental or zoning regulations. Anytime the state does anything to affect the value of private property, the owner of the property could sue the state and demand compensation. Who is this good for? Lawyers, of course. It's also good for owners who don't like the state muscling in on their property, demanding things like condo conversion and rent control.

Proponents of Prop 90 focus exclusively on its regulation of eminent domain, using lots of scare words to make voters think that their property will be taken tomorrow without Prop 90. The measure is opposed by a wide variety of groups, from the California Fire Chiefs Association to the Chambers of Commerce of every large city in California. Prop 90 is supported by lots of individuals and lots of Republican groups. Their tagline is "Protect our homes," but whose homes are we protecting? The word "home" is key: it frames the debate as one between the nameless, faceless State and your kindly grandmother, whose house will undoubtedly be bulldozed to make way for a Wal-Mart. The reality is that your grandmother is no danger; rather, landlords are in danger of continuing to have the government place restrictions on property rental. These restrictions ultimately benefit renters, but they keep landlords from making as much money as they could.

While it would be a good idea to have a state constitutional amendment clarifying eminent domain in California, this ballot initiative is a poison pill, a piece of legislation written with a hidden agenda in mind. A law prohibiting public seizure for private benefit could have been written without language in it that would permit landlords and their lawyers to spend the next ten years in court with the state, arguing over what "damages" are and how much money the landlords -- or, more likely, the lawyers -- ought to get.

Posted by Mark at 9:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I was at the Emery Bay Public Market (which is like the mall food court if that food court were at the UN; seriously, instead of Arthur Treacher's and A&W, they have Vietnamese, Thai, French, Chinese, Persian -- there's a Food for All Seasons here) reading one of San Francisco's indy weeklies, appropriately titled SF Weekly. Flipping through the paper aimlessly while I ate my cheesesteak sandwich, I noticed in the "events" section that Lewis Black was coming to Cody's Books in The City to read excerpts from his memoir, Nothing's Sacred.

The date was July 15. That was today! And so, at 6 PM, Jared and I got on the BART and headed to Cody's Books.

Cody's is a San Francisco "chain" of bookstores (in quotation marks because there are only three of them, two of which are in Berkeley, and one of the Berkeley ones is closing soon) and it's pretty neat. When we arrived, twenty minutes before 7 PM, there were some chairs set up in the basement level in front of a podium.

Lewis Black then came out and said that he would not be reading from his book, because when he reads aloud, it reminds him of all the stuff he forgot to put into the book. Instead, he took our questions. Many people asked him many questions, like "What pisses you off most?" For someone as angry as Lewis Black, I'm sure it was hard to come to a conclusion about what pisses him off most, but he said that stupidity pissed him off most, especialyl stupidity in authority.

I asked him what his advice would be to a kid thinking of doing stand-up comedy. He replied, "I'd tell him that the gun store is down the street." But seriously, folks. He then said that his real advice was to just do it, and keep doing it, because the only way you're going to be good at it is to keep doing it until you're comfortable. And, he said, when he teaches stand-up, he advises people to focus on telling stories instead of telling jokes. Everyone, he said, has a funny story, and that's a good place to start.

He also talked to us about writing. Lewis Black, believe it or not, was a playwright for twenty years. He actually majored in drama at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and later went on to attend the Yale Drama School. If you're wondering what writing a book is like, he said, "take a pen and put your non-writing hand flat on the table, and then, with your other hand, take the pen, and stick it in your hand. Twist it around a little if you want. Then, take the pen out and don't do anything. Just leave the wound there. Clean it, of course, but just let it sit there." Black said that writing Nothing's Sacred was particularly difficult, because he wrote it while he was on tour. He doesn't recommend that anyone do writing and stand-up at the same time.

He says he's an optimist, though. "You can't be as angry as I am and not think that there's a better way," he said, meaning that people get angry because they know that there's a better way to do things.

After he talked, I got some books signed. It was a good experience, and Lewis Black is a genuinely nice guy. He really shines when he gets into his "mad as hell" persona; either he's really good at it, or he's done it for so long that it's second nature to him.

Oh, and what did he have to say about Stephen Colbert's appearance at the White House Correspondents Dinner? "Jon and I talked about it, and we couldn't have done what Stephen did. Because Stephen's not a stand-up comic. No, it's true; any stand-up comic who did that would have been shitting his pants the whole time."

Posted by Mark at 11:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)