Subject: Fiona Ma

• And the Primary Results are In

  June 4, 2008

• SF Dem Values: Friendship Don’t Mean Shit

  July 25, 2008

• Fiona Ma for President?

  Now that Barack Obama has crossed the non-WASP-in-the-White House threshold, which other minority groups might get to produce a president? Mark Oppenheimer explores the question on Slate.com.. Bemusingly, Slate.com readers quickly called Oppenheimer out on his own racial insensitivity because he hadn’t included Hispanics or Asians in his first take of the piece. A revision was in order, and San Francisco Assemblywoman Fiona Ma made a list that includes Mitt Romney [first Mormon,] Al Fran

  November 13, 2008

• Fiona Ma's Right-Hand Man Bill Barnes Quits, Heads Back to S.F.

  Assemblywoman Fiona Ma's chief of staff, Bill Barnes, surprised his fellow San Francisco politicos earlier this month by abruptly handing in his resignation. Barnes didn't give the standard line of wanting to spend more time with his wife and children -- he doesn't have any. Instead, he told SF Weekly "We've got a progressive majority on the Board of Supervisors and I wanted to be back in San Francisco. There's no more to it." We'll give it to Barnes, commuting to Sacramento is a grind. Rumors

  November 18, 2008

• Why The Hell is Supervisor Bevan Dufty the Anonymous Poster Boy For an HIV Drug?

  If Bevan Dufty were the frontman for a Hair Club for Men billboard, we'd assume he's bald. So what are we supposed to think when we see the District 8 supervisor as the poster boy for an HIV pill? Not since Gavin Newsom and Fiona Ma -- the Prom King and Queen of San Francisco politics -- appeared together on a Hepatitis prevention ad right in the wake of Ruby Rippey-Tourk-gate have city politician and a disease been this awkwardly juxtaposed. Dufty's star turn begs a pair of questions: Why isn'

  January 15, 2009

• Riddle: Can LAFCo Be Saved If It Can't Be Killed?

  San Francisco's Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCo) is the appendix of the city's muniEntriescipal body -- an unnecessary entity serving no obvious or useful purpose. Considering the city is looking at a half-billion-dollar deficit, cutting this useless civic appendage and its $1 million budget would seem like an obvious and sensible move. But this is San Francisco, so there's no room for common sense if it gets in the way of ideological purity. Last week those foes of common sense at th

  January 21, 2009

• JROTC under fire in S.F. schools

  April 8, 2009

• How renters work the system to live for free in one of America's most expensive cities

  July 30, 2008

• JROTC Drama Continues with School Board Firing Shot Across Fiona Ma's Bow

  Fiona MaThe San Francisco school board voted 6-1 Tuesday night opposing Assemblywoman Fiona Ma's bill that would force the district to reinstate the JROTC program. This ensures  the district's lobbyist will be deployed to oppose the bill in Sacramento as it makes its way through the Appropriations committee -- yet the school board still must comply if the state legislature were to pass the bill and the governor to sign it into law.  But the state mea

  April 15, 2009

• Your Twitter Oddity of the Day: Fiona Ma Announces Her Car's Been Trashed

  Fiona wants answers -- she wants THE TRUTH!When the 21st Amendment brewed a batch of special Twitter Beer, we thought the Web mega-trend had finally served a discernible, useful purpose. We're pretty sure we still think the beer's the thing after catching the latest San Francisco government-related Tweet: Fiona Ma's car has been violated and she's turning to the Internet for help: Someone broke my blue prius' back window in front of 100 Spear on Mission St. Did anyone c anything? If so email [RE

  April 17, 2009

• Enter the Dragon Head

  August 1, 2007

• Power Failure

  A three-month electrical outage exposed a tenderloin apartment building as a firetrap. How did the nonprofit property manager let things get so bad?

  February 28, 2007

• Slush Daddy

  December 6, 2006

• Fall Gal

  A money-laundering scandal may have helped bring down former Secretary of State Kevin Shelley. But indicted political maven Julie Lee stands to pay the ultimate price.

  November 22, 2006

• Dirty Laundry

  Why Doug Chan may be the best candidate for District 4

  October 18, 2006

• The Darthies

  The SF Weekly Noble Villain Awards. And the winner is ... you!

  August 16, 2006

• No Justice, No Peace ... Whatever

  In the country’s putative activist capital, all the protests and rallies may do more to sow apathy than draw people to the cause.

  July 12, 2006

• Sistah Kamala

  June 14, 2006

• Smoka Free

  June 7, 2006

• Believe It or Not!

  Let's get beyond the balderdash and take a closer look at the motivations behind some political campaigns

  June 7, 2006

• The Politics of Cynicism

  SEIU lobbies for nursing home chains. Clint Reilly vs. Jack Davis, redux. Kerry raises money for Reilly's wife. Fabulous. Absolutely Fabulous.

  April 27, 2005

• This Week's Day-by-Day Picks

  August 18, 2004

• Lee Way

  The public career path of Andrew Lee explains a lot about what's wrong with Willie Brown's style of politics and governance

  November 5, 2003

• Fissilingual Predictions

  Chewing on the past and future is a New Year's cliché that no word-loving breedbate can resist

  January 1, 2003

• The Blue Placard Blues: Bill Would Seriously Fine Disabled Placard Scofflaws, But Doesn't Note It's Still Just Too Easy to Get One

  Assemblywoman Fiona Ma's bill to crack the financial whip when it comes to billing disabled parking placard outlaws is moving through the State Senate -- and local leaders are singing its praises. And why not? Seriously, who could object to a plan to ding those who falsely pass themselves off as disabled and suck up San Francisco's maddeningly sparse parking all damn day long? Who will step forward and fight on behalf of the phony disabled greedy parking community? Whose constituency is that? So

  June 12, 2009

• Follow the Bouncing Bill: Alioto-Pier's New Aide Says Job Was Spur-of-the-Moment Offer

  FacebookNewly minted Alioto-Pier legislative aide Bill Barnes displays decor he no longer needsWhen former Chris Daly legislative aide Bill Barnes quit his post as Assemblywoman Fiona Ma's chief of staff last year, we asked him if the rumors were true -- was he going to work for Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier? Barnes told us no, and that was that. But, for those of you who follow city politics with the rapacity my mother watches shows featuring cops, vampires, or a combination of both already kn

  June 18, 2009

• Pride Rides: How Will Our Elected Officials Be Cruising This Weekend?

  Bevan Dufty's sweet ride...In case you missed the proliferation of rainbow flags and the huge influx of prideful people heading into our fair city, things are ramping up for the big Pride Parade on Sunday, June 28.As the knives begin to come out behind the scenes in the city's simmering budget battle, the parade offers a chance for our city's elected officials to traipse down sunny streets and toss trinkets to adoring onlookers. You'd think a politician skipping the gay pride parade in San Franc

  June 24, 2009

• Has Willie Brown Outfoxed the Board of Supervisors -- Again?

  Why was Willie Brown -- that's him on the left -- involved in sponsoring an Assembly bill the city's Board of Supervisors is madly hoping to derail?It probably wasn't really Mark Twain who said "Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over." But until the day 80-proof distilled spirits begin rolling in via the tunnels from Hetch Hetchy, it seems the city of San Francisco will have a hard time winning any water wars when one Willie L. Brown, Jr. is on the other side. This story is a

  June 24, 2009

• Willie's Water World Withheld: State Senate Committee Tables Brown-Sponsored Bill That Would Overturn S.F. Ruling, Enrich Massive Engineering Firm

  What can Brown do for you? If you're Parsons Engineering, he can get your bill passed in the Assembly -- but not, thus far, in the Senate.Last week, we reported how former Mayor Willie Brown sponsored a legislative bill that would have changed the state's conflict of interest laws to retroactively overturn a San Francisco city attorney's decision -- and land a $26 million water system job for the gargantuan engineering firm Parsons. Yesterday, the Chronicle lashed out at AB 746 and urged the Sta

  July 2, 2009

• Aaron Peskin Happily Becomes City's 'Arnoldbuck' Sugar Daddy

  Next time you see former Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, be sure to hit him up for money. He told us he never leaves the house these days without stuffing his pockets with bills to hand off to local bartenders, restaurateurs, or even random elected officials. If you're expecting to get legal tender American coin or currency from Democratic County Central Committee head Peskin, you may be sorely disappointed. Of course, if you're hoping to get legal tender American coin or currency

  July 7, 2009

• The Daly Show

  August 29, 2007

• Critics Accuse City of Paying Lobbyists to Weaken Public Access Laws

  ​Yesterday we reported on how, despite detailed complaints from the public, San Francisco's lobbyists were skipping out on requirements to file with the Ethics Commission and report how they're using public money. Now, open government activists, spurred into sifting through some of the city's Sacramento lobbying activity, are not pleased with what they've found. They accuse San Francisco of a dubious trifecta: 1. Using city money to; 2. lobby for state laws restricting public access to governm

  July 31, 2009

• S.F. pays lobbyist to advocate for government secrecy, critics say

  August 5, 2009

• What Crazy Shit -- Literally -- Is Fiona Ma Tweeting About Now?

  Assemblywoman Fiona Ma's Tweets make us happy -- but perhaps not in the manner she intended ​Fiona Ma, you never disappoint us -- on Twitter. We make a point of checking the San Francisco Assemblywoman's Twitter feed at least twice a month. So far, we have never failed to find some manner of bizarre hilarity. What can we say -- the woman is a Twitter savant. For example: Mtg w/ Chris Parker, a tax atty for the Franchise Tax Bd running 4 Bd of Equalization District 2. His 1st job was shoveling

  September 3, 2009

• The Wrong Stuff

  September 9, 2009

• Fiona Ma, Our Favorite Twittering Politician, Casually Tweets About Beasts' Explosive Diarrhea

  Fiona Ma's Tweets are getting a bit, shall we say, Freudian​Following Assemblywoman Fiona Ma's Twitter feed is sort of like panning for gold. Most of the time you're not finding anything that'd inspire a prospector's jig, but every once in a while -- score! And that makes it all worth the while. That being said, Ma has  demonstrated a tendency to not Tweet about gold, per se, but another material that's worth less economically, but more comically. When we last caught up with the San Franc

  October 21, 2009

• Politician With Propensity to Tweet About Fecal Matter Chides SF Weekly: We Forgot a Shitty Tweet!

  Fiona Ma, she of the "bat guana" Tweet​Last week, we once again ventured into the surreal world of Assemblywoman Fiona Ma's Twitter feed -- where you should watch where you step. The former San Francisco supervisor has demonstrated a remarkable tendency to Tweet the shit, so to speak -- the subject of excrement is discharged with delightful regularity (you bet the pun is intended). So, last week, we noted that Ma casually mentioned explosive bovine diarrhea as a factor in where one should sit

  October 26, 2009

• Got Swine Flu? Call a Doctor. Then Call a Politician.

  ​Those of a certain age may remember the wonderful Chris Guest-Billy Crystal sketches from Saturday Night Live in which Willie and Frankie, a pair of none-too-bright New York City characters who enjoyed nothing more than comparing notes of the twisted, masochistic self-mutilation they needlessly endured: Frankie: Boy. You wanna talk about some pain? I bought one o' them linoleum knives the other day, you know? Willie: With the double edge?Frankie: Right.Willie: Yeah?Frankie: So, I go home, y

  October 28, 2009