TPMtv: A Chat with Gavin Newsom

No. No. NO. Newsom is the very definition of an empty suit. He is not a true progressive. He is not someone you should be giving airtime to. He has FAILED to do anything to address the homeless problem in S.F. He has FAILED to do anything to repair the disastrous Muni system. He has FAILED to do anything to stop crime in the city's lowest-income neighborhoods. He has FAILED to address the major pollution that still plagues the Bayview and Hunters Point neighborhoods. So what has he accomplished? Well, he's generally succeeded in making an ass of himself with his partying and philandering. He's used gay marriage to raise his public profile. And now he's signaling that he's going to run for governor based on ... his "record", I guess? Veracifier would be a lot better off throwing Gavin out and interviewing Van Jones, who has done more for the Bay Area and the world through the Ella Baker Center and Green For All than rich kid Gavin is likely to do in his entire life.

Yeah Gavin, no kidding? You were at Davos? Really? Newsom has spent more time in Davos and speaking at events in New York (and Austin, apparently) than he has spent governing the city of San Francisco. He's an empty suit and a remorseless greenwasher who has achieved nothing as Mayor. Given dozens of opportunities to improve our environment by reducing traffic or switching to green power, Newsom has squandered them all. In 2007 he in fact backed a radical proposal to gut the planning code to allow unlimited parking. When he talks about the bus shelters, he means that the contractor in charge of the bus shelters is permitted to install solar panels and wind generation, but they certainly are not required to do so and they certainly have not proposed to do so. I don't know if TPM should even conduct interviews of local figures like mayors, because you can see that the interviewer here is unprepared to follow up Newsom's lies with meaningful, probing questions.