by Juliana Birnbaum Fox

Bella Venezia especializes in authenic Italian food in the Mission District.

This is Southern Italian cuisine as it was meant to be: unpretentious, comforting, and full of flavor. Owner Eduardo Reina worked for 23 years at North Beach’s famous Caffe Sport before striking out on his own in 2006 in the Mission, bringing authentic, family-style dining back to a neighborhood once dominated by Italian immigrants. In fact, it is his friendly demeanor, kindness, and genuine love for his work that bring many clients back again and again, along with the excellent value—this is probably one of the most inexpensive, high-quality Italian places around.

The space is lined by comfortable banquettes, walls are covered in photos and artwork of the Old Country, and there is a warm red, green and white décor. It’s not fancy or hip, but simple and homestyle. We were greeted with a sincere welcome, and throughout our meal the service was attentive and personal as you are truly made to feel as an appreciated guest. Italian opera favorites provide the soundtrack to your meal, when the live organ player isn’t in attendance.

Meals begin with complementary warm bread and a delicious, spicy red pepper dipping sauce with a subtle hint of garlic and anchovy. The menu includes well-loved standards: pastas such as ravioli, linguini and penne, with Bolognese meat sauce, pesto, tomato cream and Carbonara preparations, and meat, fish and poultry in Piccata and Marsala styles among others. Portions are large enough to fill your belly and have enough to take home, and both vegetarians and omnivores will have plenty to choose from.

Eduardo Reina

A number of beautiful salads are offered, including a warm spinach salad with melting gorgonzola and walnuts, and the classic Caprese with its layers of tomato, fresh mozzarella and basil. We had the Bruschetta, with ripe tomatoes and quality extra ­virgin olive oil, which came piled high on perfectly grilled bread over a bed of balsamic greens. We also couldn’t pass up the highly-recommended calamari, which did not disappoint—tender with a light, crunchy breading and an aioli for dipping.

Don’t expect an extensive wine list, but the house Chianti we were offered was just perfect with the meal—light, dry and drinkable. House wines are inexpensive and offered by the carafe, and there are several other mid-priced wines to choose from.

Both pastas we chose were delicious, the cream sauce rich and garlicky, the tomato sauce delicately seasoned. We also loved the grilled sole, perfectly cooked and lightly breaded with a lemon and butter sauce, served with potatoes, baby carrots, broccoli and zucchini, tender but not overdone.

Our meal came to a sweet close with the incredible house-made tiramisu, fluffy and not overly sweet with its subtle flavors of espresso and liqueur. And the cappuccino is a treat, served in a huge traditional cup and topped with cocoa. This is a highly recommended dining experience that won’t break your budget.

Don’t miss it! (Located at 3215 Mission Street, SF 94110, 415-642-4896.)

by Marvin J. Ramirez

Marvin Ramirez­

The avalanche of destruction of the budget deficit crisis is doing its job, as many essential programs will be wiped out in San Francisco, soon. Today’s recession and tomorrow’s depression is now being felt.

However, regardless of the prognostics, the activist community is not standing still waiting to happen. Dozens of people from different organizations rallied at the Civic Center Plaza on Thursday, Dec. 11, to expose the damages the cuts proposed by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom will inflict on the most vulnerable sector of the community.

For each of the programs that are being targeted, the organizers erected a symbolic funeral on the lawn of the Plaza.

An open letter to the Mayor, and a list of alternatives to the cuts, were delivered by the Coalition on Homelessness, which held a procession and walked to the Mayor’s office on that day.

The San Francisco Health Department is proposing $17 million in cuts to critical services while new Mayor’s Office staff is being excluded from the ax, according to a coalition communicate.

The coalition claims the mayor is utilizing his power to halt spending in a time of budget shortfall, choosing to exclude budget priorities proposed by the Board of Supervisors during the summer.

“The Mayor must put on the brakes before he runs over fragile community members with this mid-year budget cut,” said James Chionsini of Planning for Elders in the Central City.

Many in the homeless shelters are new homeless families, but many are turned away for lack of space.

“We are asking today that you go further. We have identified over $61 million in alternative cuts to the city… that will not cost lives,” wrote Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness in San Francisco.

The financial crisis we are witnessing is all over, all over. And I mean all over, state, national and worldwide. And the situation is not going to get any better, as President-elect Barack Hussein Obama admitted earlier this month.

And if anyone knows, the government does not have any money, it has not had any since the Great Depression in 1933, when money – the unit of measurement of gold and silver – was removed from circulation by Congress, and replaced with a medium of exchange called Federal Reserve Notes (the dollar), which is not real money and has no real value, as it cannot be exchanged for gold or silver.

The fake currency we have been using for about 85 years for exchange and which our government has been borrowing since the Depression in the 1930s, is about to see its fi nal days. How do I know? Because I read alternative news on the internet.

The fiscal budget proposal our government submits every year is for the purpose of borrowing from the private bank called Federal Reserve Bank. And guess how our beloved government promises to pay?

By counting on our brothers’ and sisters’ forced coopera- tion through the increase of parking fi nes, moving violations, confi scation of the cars from the undocumented for being unlicensed, by using the police department as collectors.

So all the trillion plus in bailouts the feds are now instituting to save private banks, guess who will be charged to pay it? We the people.

Can you see the picture? There is no way we the people are going to be able to pay for all that. Not the City of San Francisco, neither the State of California are going to be able to pass the bill on to us, because we don’t have money either. Even if they increased the parking meters to $100 for every time your meter expires, or to $500 when you fail to make a full stop at a stop sign, and so on. Maybe the government should just confiscate your paycheck altogether and give you a stipend for your private expenses and keep the rest of your salary to pay for their borrowing.

­As the situation continues, the government will have to file for bankruptcy, just like other states in the U.S. have done, as well as other countries.

So no matter how many protests or mock funerals are held around the country, it won’t help to bring those services back to life.

Let’s just pray that the bankers, who are responsible for this financial fiasco, and who are in the process of foreclosing on the country and the rest of the world, do not kill us with their army, in an effort to ‘reduce population,’ because the worst is yet to come.

But please, do not panic. Keep buying and selling in your local neighborhood, so we can keep the money locally, and so help each other within the community. Oh, and keep piling up food reserve, because you’re going to need it.

by Marvin Ramirez

Marvin Ramirez

This week, California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr., sent a letter to Congressional leaders urging them to include language in any automaker bailout that would authorize California and other states to implement and enforce the state’s greenhouse gas emission standards.

The California requirement is a 30 percent reduction by 2016 for motor vehicles, which the auto industry has opposed, according to a communicate from the Attorney General’s office.

Writing to House Majority Leader Harry Reid and other congressional leaders, Brown pleaded for California to be allowed to implement and enforce emission standards, which “for over 40 years it has had the authority to set stricter standards than the federal government.”

However, what Brown is not saying is that the more regulations, the more money will be taken away from the people who drive when they go and register their vehicle to the DMV, causing them to be more financially squeezed out of their dollars, badly needed for medical, clothing and mortgage expenses.

Every regulation and the thousands of laws passed every year, and the ones about to start taking effect in January, don’t serve to liberate the people from the state’s yoke. They just oppress them more.

This legislation or authorization Brown seeks, will basically play into the money-making green fad, while the state continue benefiting from the gas tax revenues, as cars are not requested to be built hybrid. Why?

How many millions of gas-only cars will be built between now and 2016 if we don’t put a halt their production? So, what Brown is trying to do, is baloney.

The state is not working for the people, rather the people are working for the state, and that is how they have maintained us for so long. So we all should start waking up from the illusion that the state really works on our behalf.

They help us get dependent on cars because they want to tax us everywhere they can, with the brainwashing slogan that it is for our own good. They help build new cities which are non-pedestrian or bicycle friendly, send us shopping to faraway malls which are out of our reach without cars, and put all the roads trap they can, so we have to drive through thin rope to fall through, while they have their deputies, who are hiding in the bushes, take our money with their own phony statute violations. Why we do not hear instead, a plead to the Legislature to require that all the cars built by 2011, be built hybrid, and that they engineer a device to be adapted into current vehicles to use air or water, which many drivers are already using. Have you seen those ads ­online, that say: “discover how to convert your car or truck to use water and gasoline, to double, even triple your mileage?

People have been using water-to-gas converters in vehicles for over four years. This is proven technology, according to information posted on the internet, and to someone I know who uses it.

Using a simple device, you can use the electricity from your battery to separate water (H2O) into a gas known as HHO.

I think it would be more beneficial to all of us if Brown instead demanded that cars carry these devices, instead of enforcing legislation that requires costly demands to the auto industry, and which will make us – the consuumers – pay for. This not only  will  improve the driver’s economy, but the environment as well.