Go Cubs Go

Walking the dog this morning, we encountered a younger couple pushing a kid in a stroller. The guy had a Cubs T-shirt on. “They’re gonna clinch today, right?” I said. “Oh–you never know. They could still lose it.” Technically, it was true, but I thought it was an overly cautious, self-consciously Cubsy thing to say. As it happened, the Cubs did win this afternoon. They won the National League Central Division title. We’ll see what the next step is. While we let the suspense simmer, we can consider some of the team’s musical history

Growing up in the Chicago area–the far south suburbs, in my case–baseball was a summer fixture on WGN. The station had a heavy schedule of both Cubs and White Sox game. Back then, WGN didn’t have an ownership connection with either team (that would come in 1981, when WGN’s owner, the Tribune Company, bought the Cubs from the Wrigley chewing gum dynasty). The fact you could count on seeing 150 or 160 games a year, including all those weekday afternoon games from lightless Wrigley Field, had something to do with creating a pretty avid fan population that followed both teams. At least I know I and most of my friends did. Eventually, the Sox went to WFLD, on Channel 32. Their games were fun to watch because Harry Caray, who had alienated his bosses in St. Louis and Oakland, took up residence on the Sox airwaves. Many commercial breaks featured Harry and Falstaff beer, and Harry delighted the fans at Comiskey Park by doing his play by play from the barren bleachers in center field, his booth perched about 500 feet from home plate. On hot days, the Sox set up an open-air shower out there for fans to cool off.

When the Sox left WGN (Channel 9 in Chicago), the station responded by adding Cubs games to its broadcast schedule–more than 150 a season. Maybe that was part of developing more of a Cubs-centric fan base. More important was that the long-comatose franchise woke up and started a run of about seven seasons or so in which the team went from a horrifying 10th place finish in 1966 to challenging for firstt in ’67; the following seasons ranged from very good but heart rending (1969) to decent and unembarrassing (1973, when the Cubs and several division foes wallowed around the .500 mark until the final week of the season). Needless to say, the notion that the Cubs could make what was never back then called “the post-season” was a theory we never saw proved.

I did mention music up there. WGN’s telecasts in the late ’60s featured Mitch Miller-like choral numbers that a music salesman in a plaid blazer might have pushed as “peppy.” One had a line that went “Hey, hey, holy mackerel, no doubt about it/The Cubs are on their way.” “Hey, hey” was WGN announcer Jack Brickhouse’s signature home-run call; it’s now enshrined on the Wrigley Field foul poles. In due course, that sappy number was supplanted by a mindlessly cheerful ditty that started out, “It’s a beautiful day for a ballgame, for a ballgame today.”

Eventually, I moved away from Chicago, well beyond the reach of WGN’s signal and then, when it became a national “superstation,” into austere Berkeley households with no cable TV. In 1984, the Cubs did what they had never done in my lifetime and played well enough long enough to get into the playoffs. No need to go into how that turned out. By that time, though, Steve Goodman had written the best Cubs song ever: “The Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request.” That’s wrong, actually. It’s the best baseball fan song, ever–unique for its combination of humor, poetry, and rueful but affectionate disdain for the home team.

Goodman died a few days before the Cubs clinched their playoff spot in ’84. But by then, he had already composed and recorded the song that the team now uses as an anthem after a home win: “Go Cubs Go.” A year ago, Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn wrote a great piece about how the song came to be written. The best part is that some of the team’s execs disliked Goodman because of “The Dying Cub Fan.” I don’t know where any of those guys are now. But today, when the Cubs won, Goodman’s voice was ringing out over Wrigley Field, and it sounded like every fan in the place was singing “Go Cubs Go.”

(Lyrics after the jump.)

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Continue reading “Go Cubs Go”

‘Well Done, Good and Faithful Servants’

Seeing this headline–“Administration is Seeking $700 Billion for Wall Street Bailout“–and this one–“At Least 40 Are Killed in Blast at Pakistan Hotel“–I reflected briefly on how we got here. My quest took me to Bush II’s first State of the Union address, in 2001. The new president talked about a nation at peace, a government that enjoyed a sizable budget surplus, and how he would go about fixing all that. His stirring conclusion:

“We all came here for a reason. We all have things we want to accomplish and promises to keep. Juntos podemos — together we can.

“We can make Americans proud of their government. Together we can share in the credit of making our country more prosperous and generous and just, and earn from our conscience and from our fellow citizens the highest possible praise: Well done, good and faithful servants.”

Well done, indeed, Mr. President.

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Miscellany

A couple small things, perhaps random and unconnected:

My favorite online find this week (and maybe ever): The Boston Globe’s “The Big Picture” blog. It publishes several topical photo essays each week. I happened across it while looking for space pictures of Hurricane Ike. What I found instead was a gallery of hurricane pictures shot from the International Space Station and various shuttle missions. From far above, the storms are ethereal in their beauty. All the other collections I’ve seen on The Big Picture are absorbing, too. Check out the current show, on the worldwide observance of Ramadan.

Words still matter: Attempting to justify my long-term New Yorker subscription by actually reading the thing, I picked up the September 15 issue yesterday. It fell open to a story called “A Cloud of Smoke,” about disputed findings of post-mortem examinations of a former New York police officer who may have died from the after-effects of working on the World Trade Center pile after September 11, 2001. It’s a good piece of journalism, but I was captivated by the opening of this paragraph:

“The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner has the unrenovated pallor of a forgotten city agency. Dimmed by a concrete overbite, the street entrance manages to look at once ominous and shabby—a homely approach to an agency that houses one of the largest and busiest forensic labs in the country. Even by the standards of other big cities, New York has a prolific capacity to produce dead bodies, and, as Chief Medical Examiner, Charles Hirsch is responsible for the processing of some twenty-five thousand fatalities a year—nearly half the city’s annual total. Roughly fifty-five hundred of those cases require autopsy, including all deaths that are violent, sudden, mysterious, or in some way related to public or consumer safety. …”

“Unrenovated pallor.” “Dimmed by a concrete overbite.” “At once ominous and shabby.” I felt like I was standing in the building when I read that.

City Art

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On north side of 16th, near Folsom. I’m new at the genre, but the two names belong to San Francisco graffiti artists.

Not that this is a natural segue–I find the sidewalk stencils and other street art I see around the Mission and Potrero Hill pretty arresting–but if you read a little into some local blogs (here’s an example, and here’s another) shit on neighborhood streets is a recurring topic. By shit, I mean shit–what the polite but not highbrow might call Number Two. I raise the subject mostly because in the last few weeks, I’ve occasionally found myself strolling through what appears to be a well established and frequently used open-air toilet on Harrison Street between 17th and Mariposa. And today, right by the Honda motorcycle garage on 17th near Folsom, a large pile of human excrement. Notable in the latter case was the presence of a wad of toilet paper. It’s comforting to know that even those with no other facilities, or who are perhaps moved to make a social statement of some kind, are still wiping themselves.

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So Long, Ike; Next Up: Hurricane Nutjob

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We continue with more exclusive coverage of the coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Ike. The image above is the storm as it looked last Wednesday from the International Space Station, which was at an altitude of 220 miles. (For comparison’s sake, the GOES satellites that provide most of the views we see of Earth weather are parked in geosynchronous orbits with an altitude of 22,300 miles. The Terra and Aqua earth observatory satellites that regularly provide stunning images of wildfires and other events work at an altitude of about 430 miles.) NASA has posted a gallery of ISS shots of Ike. And if you like these ethereal views of killer storms, see a wonderful collection published last week on the Boston Globe’s The Big Picture blog.

Enough fawning over pictures. Now to the serious business at hand: If you think those photographs merely depict awesome natural forces at work, you’re sadly mistaken. No. Just like Katrina before it, those who see world weather as a giant conspiracy have declared that Hurricane Ike was a storm on behalf of (someone’s) scheme for global domination.

First, there’s this: An alert from Kevin Martin, a self-described meteorologist in Southern California, that “chemtrails” (a type of evil aircraft condensation trail) were detected last week in areas of the United States along Ike’s forecast path. Whoa. If you’re not sold on the forecaster’s credentials after reading that, check out his public plea for letters of recommendation so that he could be admitted Mississippi State’s online course for would-be TV weathercasters. (There’s more to Kevin’s story, too: one of his inspirations, it turns out, is that he was once struck by lightning.)

Then there’s this: Scott Stevens, formerly of Pocatello, Idaho, TV weatherman fame, announced before Ike’s landfall that “this entire storm is manufactured.” Scott, like Kevin, also saw dark doings overhead in the Midwest before the remnants of Ike got there. Faceless Global Dominators were manipulating weather to fill all the region’s rivers and streams before the moisture-laden ex-hurricane arrived. The motive behind the storm and associated “tweaking,” apparently, is economic chaos. As if we need any more help.

My one and only question to the World Weather Conspiracy folks would be: In olden times, before the advent of high technology–or maybe I should say human high technology, because the Faceless Dominators could be extraterrestrials or Greek or Norse gods unhappy in their retirement–who was responsible for all the floods, droughts, hail storms, heat waves, cold snaps and other weather catastrophes that beset us?

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Urban-Wildland Interface

In California, when you hear the term “urban-wildland interface,” it’s generally used to describe suburbs that have sprawled so far into the hinterlands that whole subdivisions are in the middle of areas that are prone to burning. In fact, a little Google research suggests that the term occurs together with “fire” about seven out of eight times it’s used. But I don’t want to talk about fire. I want to talk about deer running wild in the flatlands neighborhood where we live.

In the Bay Area, as in most of the rest of California and as in most of the country, deer have become very numerous in the past 20 or 30 years. This has led to colorful side effects such as the appearance of mountain lions and coyotes on the fringe or urban areas (I’ve never seen a mountain lion; but a couple years ago I spotted a coyote loping across the road ahead of me when I was on a bike ride about 10 miles from home; and hiking in the hills I’ve come across part of a deer, in carcass form, that had been taken apart by something with good strong jaws).

Deer, on the other hand, I’ve seen plenty of. There are so many in the hills, both inside and outside town, that when you’re riding a bike back down to the flats near dusk you keep an eye out for any that might be crossing the road. I’d say the first time I saw them near our house, well below the hills, about a decade ago. A panicked looking young male went clattering by one night when I was out for a walk. The sightings have become more frequent. Our neighbor Piero set up a motion-sensitive camera in his mother’s backyard to try to find out what was destroying her flower garden. The culprits, captured in pictures just about every night, are a small but healthy deer family that apparently has taken up permanent residence in a neighbor’s untended lot. Some people here think that deer travel down from the hills after dark, moving along the creeks that run toward the bay and through our unfenced parks. In a sense, they’re moving the urban-wildland interface right into the heart of the city.

Tonight’s example: I was just out taking the dog for his final neighborhood patrol of the day. A couple blocks away, alongside a big elementary school, a deer came bounding onto the sidewalk about 50 yards ahead of us, then went springing down the sidewalk in the opposite direction. The dog followed at a trot. The deer stood at the next corner; as we approached, it trotted north down the intersecting street, followed by another deer in that vaulting gait they use to jump hedges and fences and, now, to navigate the byways of North Berkeley.

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Lipstick & Dipsticks

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Exclusive coverage of media coverage of Hurricane Ike’s rampage in Texas. While so-called serious journalists continue to document our looming presidential disaster, here’s a little video editor humor for you: At midday today, CNN showed a montage of storm damage in the Galveston area. They flashed some shots of downed power lines in the parking lot of a business called Lipstick; upon further perusal, the sign on the building reads Lipstick Gentlemen’s Club. There is a “topless entertainment” establishment on Texas Highway 146, listed variously as in Kemah or Bacliff, just outside Galveston (Google street view here).

OK — no worries. Even lap-dance palaces can be terrorized by rampaging storms like Ike.

But the very next shot in the montage showed a big sign saying Dipsticks. I can’t place it exactly, but it looks like it could belong to an automotive shop about 100 miles north of where the first shot was taken. Just a hunch, but I’d guess some CNN editor got hold of the tape, saw the Lipstick and Dipsticks, and couldn’t resist splicing them together. It’s one of my storm coverage highlights.

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Shakespearean

After we got done with our two little afternoon newscasts at KQED yesterday, and after I had cleared a couple stories for this morning that had been awaiting edit, I walked up to the Safeway a couple blocks away, at 16th and Bryant streets. There’s a big shopping center there that runs a full city block over to the east, to Potrero Avenue. Before the center was there, the site was occupied by a giant car dealership. Before the dealership, it was home to Seals Stadium, where the city’s Triple A baseball team played until they were kicked out when the Giants arrived in 1958.

The shopping center has a huge double-deck parking garage. The upper lot is above street level along 16th, so there’s a wall that runs, at varying heights because the street slopes, the entire block between Potrero and Bryant. Last night when I got to 16th and Bryant, there was a man lying at the base of the wall, a few feet from a bus stop at the corner.

You encounter people lying on the street in San Francisco every day. So many people have plunged through whatever gave their lives structure and support that they’ve become part of the landscape. Every once in a while, one will attract particular attention: because they’re particularly abject, because they’re acting out in some outrageous way, or because there’s something in their physical attitude that makes you wonder whether they’re still breathing.

The guy I spotted at the base of the wall last night was in the third category. He was lying on his side with his back to the wall and a blue-jean jacket pulled over his head. He wasn’t moving. He was wearing dirty jeans and some beat-looking hiking boots. I stood over him for a few seconds to see if I could see him breathing. I thought he was, but wasn’t sure. Then I walked up into the upper level of the parking lot and stood above him and decided to call 911. Since I was on a cellphone, I got routed to the California Highway Patrol; the delay was long enough that I changed my mind about the emergency call. I hung up, then called information for the number of the Mobile Assistance Patrol. MAP started back in the ’80s, I think, when the city’s homeless population first spiked and emergency services found themselves swamped with calls for destitute people unconscious on the streets.

I called MAP and got an operator and described the situation. “OK. Is he breathing?” she asked. “Yes.” “Do you think he’s intoxicated?” “Well, yeah, that’s the usual situation, right?” I said. “OK …”

At that moment, the figure on the sidewalk below me came to life. The man–he was white, middle aged, unshaven, close-cropped brown hair–said, “I’m fine. I don’t need anyone to come help me.” I was relieved, told the operator the guy was still among the living, and hung up. The man put his head back under his jacket, and I walked over to the grocery store.

My errand was to buy a couple cheap Safeway sandwiches for me and one of the reporters back at the station. I bought one for the guy lying on the sidewalk and got him one of those protein smoothies, too. When I got back to the street, he was still lying there. “I know you heard me when I made that phone call before,” I said. “I don’t want to bother you, but I’m going to leave a sandwich and something to drink right here.” He pulled the coat off his head and tried to sit up. “Thank you, thank you, I need that,” he said. I gave him a hand so he could sit upright against the wall. He thanked me again and told me his name, Charles McCue. He was disheveled and dirty but not drunk or drug-addled at the moment. I told him my name, and I asked him how long he’d been out there. “Three years on the street,” he said. He looked up and down 16th. “I used to … I don’t know how I got here.”

I asked him about his family name, thinking it might have come from Ireland. “Where are you from?”

“I’ve lived here for twenty-six years!” he said. “I’ve … I was the director of the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival.” The festival is a well-known company that has put on free plays in parks since the early ’80s. If this guy had been the director–well, he had had things together at some point and really–desperately–lost his way.

“Shakespeare? ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’? ‘Richard the Second’?”

“Oh, I can give you all thirty-eight of them if you have time,” he said. ” ‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances. …’ ”

He trailed off. I asked him where he stayed at night. “On the street,” he said. But where–any particular place, or wherever he found himself? “Wherever I find myself,” he said. “I was so tired that I just sort of collapsed here.” He had nothing with him but what he was wearing.

I had to leave, and I told him to eat. “Have a good night,” I said. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean that ironically. I’ll look out for you when I’m in the neighborhood.”

I walked back to the office, and when the work of the shift was done, I looked up Charles online. There he was. He’d been involved with the company from its inception through 2003. I found an item from July 2003 that described his departure:

A farewell to the Bard: Just as the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival prepares to open its 21st Free Shakespeare in the Parks season with “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” it’s lost one of its primary laborers. Producing Artistic Director Charles McCue , the company’s leader since ’97 — and a member since its first season — has quietly tendered his resignation.

The reasons were not artistic but personal, festival members said (McCue was not reachable at press time). After setting the schedule and hiring Ken Kelleher to direct the summer show, McCue took a brief leave, then decided to make it permanent. With the summer opening on hand, the board of directors named managing director Toby Leavitt the executive director for now.

I wrote Rob an email about my encounter with the man on the street. He said he really didn’t know what had become of Charles McCue and suggested that his successor at the festival might.

After work, I walked back up to the corner where I’d found Charles. He was gone, and he wasn’t one of the dozen or so homeless men that I saw in the walk down to the 16th Street BART station.

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Shakespearean

After we got done with our two little afternoon newscasts at KQED yesterday, and after I had cleared a couple stories for this morning that had been awaiting edit, I walked up to the Safeway a couple blocks away, at 16th and Bryant streets. There’s a big shopping center there that runs a full city block over to the east, to Potrero Avenue. Before the center was there, the site was occupied by a giant car dealership. Before the dealership, it was home to Seals Stadium, where the city’s Triple A baseball team played until they were kicked out when the Giants arrived in 1958.

The shopping center has a huge double-deck parking garage. The upper lot is above street level along 16th, so there’s a wall that runs, at varying heights because the street slopes, the entire block between Potrero and Bryant. Last night when I got to 16th and Bryant, there was a man lying at the base of the wall, a few feet from a bus stop at the corner.

You encounter people lying on the street in San Francisco every day. So many people have plunged through whatever gave their lives structure and support that they’ve become part of the landscape. Every once in a while, one will attract particular attention: because they’re particularly abject, because they’re acting out in some outrageous way, or because there’s something in their physical attitude that makes you wonder whether they’re still breathing.

The guy I spotted at the base of the wall last night was in the third category. He was lying on his side with his back to the wall and a blue-jean jacket pulled over his head. He wasn’t moving. He was wearing dirty jeans and some beat-looking hiking boots. I stood over him for a few seconds to see if I could see him breathing. I thought he was, but wasn’t sure. Then I walked up into the upper level of the parking lot and stood above him and decided to call 911. Since I was on a cellphone, I got routed to the California Highway Patrol; the delay was long enough that I changed my mind about the emergency call. I hung up, then called information for the number of the Mobile Assistance Patrol. MAP started back in the ’80s, I think, when the city’s homeless population first spiked and emergency services found themselves swamped with calls for destitute people unconscious on the streets.

I called MAP and got an operator and described the situation. “OK. Is he breathing?” she asked. “Yes.” “Do you think he’s intoxicated?” “Well, yeah, that’s the usual situation, right?” I said. “OK …”

At that moment, the figure on the sidewalk below me came to life. The man–he was white, middle aged, unshaven, close-cropped brown hair–said, “I’m fine. I don’t need anyone to come help me.” I was relieved, told the operator the guy was still among the living, and hung up. The man put his head back under his jacket, and I walked over to the grocery store.

My errand was to buy a couple cheap Safeway sandwiches for me and one of the reporters back at the station. I bought one for the guy lying on the sidewalk and got him one of those protein smoothies, too. When I got back to the street, he was still lying there. “I know you heard me when I made that phone call before,” I said. “I don’t want to bother you, but I’m going to leave a sandwich and something to drink right here.” He pulled the coat off his head and tried to sit up. “Thank you, thank you, I need that,” he said. I gave him a hand so he could sit upright against the wall. He thanked me again and told me his name, Charles McCue. He was disheveled and dirty but not drunk or drug-addled at the moment. I told him my name, and I asked him how long he’d been out there. “Three years on the street,” he said. He looked up and down 16th. “I used to … I don’t know how I got here.”

I asked him about his family name, thinking it might have come from Ireland. “Where are you from?”

“I’ve lived here for twenty-six years!” he said. “I’ve … I was the director of the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival.” The festival is a well-known company that has put on free plays in parks since the early ’80s. If this guy had been the director–well, he had had things together at some point and really–desperately–lost his way.

“Shakespeare? ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’? ‘Richard the Second’?”

“Oh, I can give you all thirty-eight of them if you have time,” he said. ” ‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances. …’ ”

He trailed off. I asked him where he stayed at night. “On the street,” he said. But where–any particular place, or wherever he found himself? “Wherever I find myself,” he said. “I was so tired that I just sort of collapsed here.” He had nothing with him but what he was wearing.

I had to leave, and I told him to eat. “Have a good night,” I said. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean that ironically. I’ll look out for you when I’m in the neighborhood.”

I walked back to the office, and when the work of the shift was done, I looked up Charles online. There he was. He’d been involved with the company from its inception through 2003. I found an item from July 2003 that described his departure:

A farewell to the Bard: Just as the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival prepares to open its 21st Free Shakespeare in the Parks season with “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” it’s lost one of its primary laborers. Producing Artistic Director Charles McCue , the company’s leader since ’97 — and a member since its first season — has quietly tendered his resignation.

The reasons were not artistic but personal, festival members said (McCue was not reachable at press time). After setting the schedule and hiring Ken Kelleher to direct the summer show, McCue took a brief leave, then decided to make it permanent. With the summer opening on hand, the board of directors named managing director Toby Leavitt the executive director for now.

I wrote Rob an email about my encounter with the man on the street. He said he really didn’t know what had become of Charles McCue and suggested that his successor at the festival might.

After work, I walked back up to the corner where I’d found Charles. He was gone, and he wasn’t one of the dozen or so homeless men that I saw in the walk down to the 16th Street BART station.

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‘Urgent Fundraising Appeal’

Here’s an email I found in my spam-infested inbox this morning. The subject line reads “CA High Speed Trains – URGENT FUNDRAISING APPEAL” (the all-caps are in the original):

“Dear Dan Brekke,

You are being sent this email because you have been identified as a business leader in your community of BERKELEY by Californians for High Speed Trains. If you would not like to receive future emails please click the link at the bottom of this email.

Please go to our website to view the latest newsletter.

http://www.californiahighspeedtrains.com/newsletter/?mail=302004&email_id=2

Thank you!

The message came from a Gmail account, yesonprop1a@gmail.com.

To start at the beginning, we have a $10 billion bond measure on the November ballot to help fund a high-speed rail service between Northern and Southern California. This email purports to be a fundraising appeal for the yes side.

But right off the top–the email address, the subject line, the lack of detailed information in the note, and the absurd reference to me as a business leader in Berkeley–this looks and sounds like a scam. After checking the whois record for californiahighspeedtrains.com, which shows the domain was registered in May through a third party in Arizona, I checked out the newsletter the mail pointed me to.

The newsletter also raises alarms: the name of the mayor of San Francisco is misspelled. And the site contains this use of experimental English: “Californians Have A History of Supporting Project Like High Speed Rail. From their initial support of the Transcontinental Railroad to Their support of the troops during WWII.” At the very least, the newsletter was slapped together in a hurry.

I looked at the “donate” link in the newsletter. It does indeed send you to a donation page on a site called Californians for High-Speed Trains.” The page contains blanks for all your personal data, including credit card number. But get this: It’s not encrypted. So visitors are being invited to send their information unsecured and in the clear.

I checked the California Secretary of State websites, and there is in fact a group called Californians for High-Speed Trains. Their official site appears to be the same one mentioned in the email. The head of the group is listed as a Robert Pence of Sacramento, and looking him up shows that he has served as a staffer to the state Legislature and has been in the “communications” business for the last four years. He’s been listed as a principal supporter or opponent of other state initiative campaigns before this one.

The Secretary of State’s Cal-Access site has a listing for the group. The organization claims to have had $67,000 in donations from since January 1 to June 30 and to have racked up $111,000 in expenses between April and June. Of the early donations, $53,000 came from a predecessor group, Californians for a Safe and Reliable High-Speed Rail, which appears to have shut down and turned over its bank account to the new outfit. The other 15 grand in early contributions came from a handful of small donations, including $3,000 each from Hewlett-Packard and Oracle. (Just yesterday, the group filed a report saying it had gotten $30,000 from New York engineering and construction firm Parsons Brinckerhoff. What in the world could their interest in the initiative be?)

The expenditures are interesting: $88,000 of the $111,000 spent has gone to half a dozen separate campaign consultants in Sacramento; the biggest amount, $35,000, went to the firm of Townsend, Raimundo, Besler & Usher. The expenditure report also lists $15,000 owed to a political web services firm called Campaign Advantage, part of a company based in Bethesda, Maryland.

I’ve got some calls out about where that mail came from and am trying to find out why the campaign would have created an unencrypted donations page. I’ll post whatever answers I get. The bottom line, for now, is that Californians for High-Speed Trains sure looks like Full Employment for Consultants Inc. For an issue that has a lot of high-profile official support, including that of our governor, this campaign committee seems to be nothing more than a cottage industry for a bunch of Sacramento hangers-on.

[Update 11:26 a.m.: I just got hold of Robert Pence, the head of Californians for High-Speed Trains. He confirmed the campaign sent out the email and said he believes that the email was the work of Campaign Advantage. He said he doesn’t know about the unencrypted donations page. He promised the campaign’s media person, Greg Larson, would be in touch. More soon.]

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