Gifts, Pickpockets, and No Spin

The men behind the curtain, backers of Prop 54, were revealed today. Prop 54 was the effort to ban the gathering of gender and race data. The late Joseph Coors, funder of right wing think tanks and right wing causes, was known to have given money to the Prop 54 campaign, but others, including Rupert Murdock and San Francisco's Jerry Hume gave to a non-profit run by the infamous Wade Connerly, the architect of the initiative that repealed affirmative action. Their "gifts" to the non-profit were not disclosed, even though the non-profit used their money for the Prop 54 campaign. In fact, most of the campaign was funded through the non-profit. Opponents of the initiative sued and they finally prevailed and the funders were revealed.

In another article, Deputy Police Chief Greg Suhr

suggested the increase in pickpocketing is related to desperation on the streets because of the economic downturn and Care Not Cash, the city policy that reduced the cash grants to homeless people and other very poor single adults.

I'm guessing Greg Suhr was not very popular with Peter Ragone from the Mayor's press office today.