By EMMA BROWN
Like most politicians, Ms. Dianne Feinstein, our venerable California senator and former San Francisco mayor, has a website. And on the website are all kinds of resources, including three-times-daily press releases about the good things Dianne is doing in Our Nation’s Capitol. There’s even a place—Dianne’s Journal, it’s called—for the senator to communicate directly with peons like you and me, giving us a little insight from 3,000 miles away into what exactly she does there in Washington, D.C., among the marble monuments.
Only problem is, there are only two entries in Dianne’s Journal, both dating to spring 2007. One is a welcome letter warning that Dianne’s office is busy—really busy. “I’d like to tell you a little bit of what my staff and I do. We run a big of [sic] office,” she wrote. “In communications, we receive anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 letters and emails a week. That’s a lot.”
The other is a “First Hand View of the Citrus Freeze Damage.”
So Dianne is busy. We’ll give her that. Since she isn’t doing it herself—since none of our representatives are—we at Mission Loc@l are going to try our darndest to keep you in touch with what exactly our local, state and national politicians are and aren’t doing in the halls of democracy.
We’re going to translate legislative-ese into plain English (or, if you’re reading our Spanish site, into plain Spanish) and give you a direct link to how our representatives are voting on issues large and small. Look for weekly updates on votes by Supervisor David Campos, state Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, state Senator Mark Leno, US Representative Nancy Pelosi and US Senators Barbara Boxer and—of course!— Dianne Feinstein.
Good idea. Why not include the mayor and guv? Even Obama — in terms of how is policies and programs get into the Mission or not.
DiFi is busy? What is she so busy doing? How are her fundraising dinners and glamshots with big donors and friends helping anyone in the Mission?