San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Governor leaving office, but he’ll still be political force
Outgoing Gov. Jerry Brown may be leaving Sacramento, but his political life is far from over.
Brown still has more than $15 million in his political war chest that he can spend on whatever causes and initiatives he chooses.
He exits his final term in office as one of the state’s most popular politicians.
And he remains a favorite of the Sunday morning talk shows.
It’s a hell of a potent combination and one that Brown plans to keep using.
Having talked with Brown and his inner circle, I see three areas of interest you can expect to be hearing about.
First up is prison and sentencing reform.
As evidenced by his record number of pardons and sentence commutations, Brown is on a mission to reform the long mandatory sentence guidelines passed in the 1980s by giving judges and parole boards more say in the release of what is becoming an increasingly older prison population.
Second, Brown is already teaming up with former Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn to work on nuclear disarmament.
The third area of Brown’s ongoing interest is climate change, which he continues to view as one of the greatest threats facing the planet.
Three great areas where Brown has both the money and the voice to make a change.
I know Brown is talking about moving back to the family homestead near Williams, but my bet is that Colusa County is just a stop on his way back to San Francisco.
What shutdown? I don’t know about you, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out what this shutdown of the government really means.
I was in the post office, and
they were all working. I contacted the IRS, hoping that they were off the job, but they were all working. I checked on the U.S. attorney’s office, and they were all working. Checked in with Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris’ offices, and they’re all working.
This has got to be the quietest shutdown ever.
Nevertheless, President Trump is singularly responsible for the alleged shutdown. The Senate was ready to pass a bipartisan spending bill that included money for border security. But when Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity called the deal a betrayal of his promise to build the wall, Trump backed away.
It appears that with Trump, you now need the approval from a majority of the House of Representatives, a majority of the Senate and now approval from a new branch of government, talk show hosts.
Raider play: For years, I have been advocating to bring the Oakland Raiders to this side of the bay. Now, thanks to Oakland’s decision to file suit against the NFL, it may happen.
My idea was for the Raiders to play in the big empty space in Brisbane, just across Highway 101 from Candlestick. It never happened.
Instead, Raiders owner Mark Davis appears to be in talks with the San Francisco Giants about playing one or maybe even two years in AT&T Park while the team’s new home in Las Vegas is being built.
If the Raiders do make the hop, then Giants President Larry Baer will have earned his keep and we all will get to be part of a one-of-a-kind show.
Just imagine the Raider Nation, in all its silverand-black monster truck glory, rolling over the Bay Bridge on game day or pouring out of BART.
Imagine the smoke rising from the army of barbecues from tailgaters parked along the waterfront and South of Market.
And with the San Francisco 49ers playing in Santa Clara and the Oakland Raiders playing in San Francisco, the city would get double the national exposure.
They could just park the blimp over Fisherman’s Wharf and call it a day.
Goodbye Gump’s: Shed a tear for Gump’s, the latest longtime San Francisco institution to go by the wayside. Gump’s is just one of many fashionable stores in and around Union Square that has suffered from skyrocketing rents, downtown traffic gridlock and an aging clientele.
It may be time for San Francisco to start thinking about some type of rent control for retail outlets. Otherwise, we are going to have a downtown made up of chain stores, coffee shops, empty storefronts and the homeless.
Movie time: “The Mule.” The newest edition in the collection of Clint Eastwood movies that he both stars and directs is a dud.
Clint plays a 90-yearold horticulturist who, when facing foreclosure, agrees to work as a smuggler for a Mexican cartel.
With a supporting cast that included Bradly Cooper and Laurence Fishburne, “The Mule” might have been a repeat of “Gran Torino.”
Instead, we get a confusing tale filled with a bunch of near-racist stereotypes.
I left the theater thinking my pocket had been picked.
“The Favorite.” This early 18th century period piece revolves around Queen Anne and a host of royal misfits during a war between France and England. The story line appears to be about a love triangle involving the queen, the queen’s longtime confidant and a new arrival at the court.
It’s an intriguing concept but is little more than a collection of bad characters, bad costumes and bad wigs.
In The Chronicle’s Datebook review, the Little Man is sitting up and applauding. He must be applauding because the movie finally ended.
I would have been better off seeing “SpiderMan” or “Bumblebee.”