The best money spent in the Affordable Care Act was the $11 billion dollars put toward expanding and maintaining community health centers across the country. That money will get poured directly into universal care programs for the poor, and possibly lead to some innovations in how we treat people, not just one illness or injury at a time but a comprehensive approach to wellness. The best model for this in the country is San Francisco’s universal care program, Healthy SF, which provides for care for everyone in the city limits, regardless of health, employment or immigration status. It’s not single-payer health care, it’s socialized medicine, and it’s led to significant reductions in the uninsured and a healthier city.

How are you planning your summertime? Are there nearby venues you’ll explore for the first time, or again? Have you any major expeditions planned? Is there big travel in your future, or little travel? Planning a big vacation or an exploratory stay-cation?

This Saturday’s long urban ramble ended at the Ferry Building on the Embarcadero at 4pm, just in time to join the rally of immigration rights activists planning to march to AT&T Park to protest the Arizona Diamondbacks because of their state’s new “papers please” law.

A dispatch from the Department of Unintended Benefits, via TPM: California Tea Party groups are calling San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom’s boycott and raising him a … boycott. The mayor raised the ire of California Tea Partiers this week when, in response to Arizona’s passage of a controversial immigration law, he announced a boycott of [...]

Most neighborhoods have them, little mini marts that sell daily necessities. My local corner store is part of a chain, but in other cities less car-driven, these convenience stores tend to be mom-and-pop businesses. In the San Francisco neighborhood of Mistro, between the Mission and Castro, Yousef (Joseph) Elhaj owns the Church Street corner store.

More than ten years ago, this Christian Palestinian left his family behind Bethlehem, Palestine and came to America working first for his brother-in-law and then buying the Church Street store from his older brother. In Palestine he worked as a salesman for a plastics manufacturing company, but after the Second Intifada, realized that his wages were not enough to support his family. Corner Store documents a pivotal point in his life.

Richard Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO, was arrested along with dozens of workers boycotting the Hilton San Francisco.

Our fair city of San Francisco plans to suspend the Constitution for the Olympic Torch relay April 9th. I know SF is leftist, but even here – do our leaders really want to surrender the nation’s Constitution to the Communist Chinese leaders without firing a shot?