The Most Censored Story in SF History

How the PG&E/ Raker Act scandal has kept cheap clean Hetch Hetchy Public Power out of San Francisco for decades and cost the rate payers billions of dollars.

It's PG&E that has the blank check. Scroll down for a chronology of the PG&E/Raker Act scandal from 1848-1988, with an added update through 2001.

By Bruce B. Brugmann

Ah, yes, you say, as attentive readers of the Guardian since 1969 and the almost famous Bruce blog know, the most censored story in San Francisco history has to be the PG&E/ Raker Act scandal.

It is the biggest ongoing urban scandal in U.S. History. It has cost the city tens of billions of dollars over the decades. It has cost business and residential rate payers hundreds of millions of dollars in extortionate high rates, lousy service, vicious collection practices, and unreliable power. It has corrupted City Hall and local politics for decades and continues to do so to this very day as PG&E presses its multi-million dollar blitz against the Clean Energy act on the November ballot.

And the local media, led by the Hearst - owned San Francisco Chronicle, has censored and marginalized the scandal in every way possible every since the shameful Hearst deal with a PG&E - controlled bank in the late 1920's.

Hearst was once a major supporter of public Hetch Hetchy power and the federal Raker Act that allowed San Francisco to dam a beautiful valley (Hetch Hetchy in beautiful Yosemite National Park) for the city's public water and power supply.

Hearst even placed a copy of his pro-Raker Act editorial on the desk of every Congressperson on the day of the critical 1913 vote on the Raker Act. Hearst won the vote, the dam was built, and Hearst continued his strong support of the Hetch Hetchy project up until the late 1920's PG&E bank deal with it's historic sell out condition.

The deal was that PG&E gave Hearst much needed capital in return for a multi-billion dollar capitulation: Hearst would reverse his historic pro-public power position to support PG&E's private power monopoly in San Francisco.

To it's everlasting shame, Hearst corporate has marched in lock steps everlatter with PG&E and against the city and county of San Francisco and its residents and businesses. It has kept San Francisco in violation of the Raker Act and it's public power mandates and has thus jeopardized the entire Hetch Hetchy system to the Tear-the-dam-movement.

And Hearst kept the story out of the news in San Francisco until Professor Joe Neilands of UC Berkeley revived the scandal in his famous 1969 story in the Guardian.

Here are a few of the stories that demonstrate that the PG&E/Raker Act Scandal is indeed the most censored story in San Francisco history:

*Chronology of Raker Act Scandal

*The 1969 Neilands story

*The Hearst/PG&E deal

*Project Censored 2008

Today's Ammianoliner:

Sarah Palin says she understands gay issues; she can see Clay Aiken from her house.

(From the home telephone answering machine of Sup. Tom Ammiano on Thursday, Oct. 2, 2008.) B3

Today's Ammianoliner:

Yada yada yada, leave a message.

(From the home answering machine of Sup. Tom Ammiano on Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2008.)

Personal note to Tom: you left out the best part of the joke, you didn't mention the Bisque. To the viewers: Check the link above for yada yada yada joke on the Seinfeld episode.

This piece by Peter Scheer, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition, is one of the best I've seen on the financial meltdown. Scroll down to register for the free CFAC assembly this Saturday at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California-Berkeley.

Disclosure--or the lack of it--is a root cause of the current financial crisis

By Peter Scheer

Economists and historians will be debating for years the causes of the financial crisis that, like a global array of dominoes, now threatens to take down the “real” economies of countries big and small, both “developed” and “emerging,” in a massive flight from investment risk unlike anything experienced since 1929.

To the experts’ lists of causes, let me add a lack of information--specifically, the systemic failure of lenders to disclose ample information about the risks of the mortgage loans being made to thousands of borrowers whose homes have since tanked in value, resulting in unprecedented rates of default. These defaults leave the holders of the affected mortgage investments--primarily banks around the world--with sizeable loan portfolios that they can’t value and for which there is no functioning market.

Click here to continue reading.

By Bruce B. Brugmann

John Nichols lays out the case for the "No Stolen Elections campaign on the Nation.com blog.
He says: "The bottom line from both 2000 and 2004 is this: Smart, engaged activists from across the country were caught unprepared for monumental struggles over not just clean elections and electoral votes but, in a very real sense, the future of the republic.

"Good people tried to intervene. But it was too little, too late. Mistakes made in the hours and days after the presidential elections in each of those two years would haunt the process to its conclusion--or, to be more precise, to an inconclusive moment when power would be allocated without legitimacy."

To learn more about the campaign, visit the www.nomorestolenelections.org website and sign on "for a democratic election, an honest vote and a legitimate president."

Click here to read the Nation.com's blog post by John Nichols titled, No More Stolen Elections!

Today's Ammianoliner:

Sarah Palin rejects notion of veiled racism but does admit to wearing a special makeup: Mary KayKK. Love your thread count.

(From the home answering machine of Sup. Tom Ammiano on Monday, Oct. 13, 2008, saved for readers to combat pre-debate jitters.) B3

By Dick Meister

The chances of independent candidate Ralph Nader winning the presidency are as remote as ever in this, his fourth try. But he has important things to say about vital matters that mainstream contenders virtually ignore.

Democrat Barack Obama professes to be ­ and undoubtedly is ­ a strong supporter of organized labor. Like most other Democratic office seekers, he's endorsed the proposed Employee Free Choice Act, which is designed to reverse the steady decline in labor's fortunes.

But neither Obama nor any of labor's other Democratic allies has called for the step beyond enactment of the Free Choice Act that is essential if labor is to grow and prosper. Ralph Nader demands it: "Repeal Taft-Hartley!"

OPEN-GOVERNMENT GROUP GIVES "DARKNESS" AWARDS ZAPPING ORANGE COUNTY
JUDGE, CAPISTRANO SCHOOL BOARD, SAN BERNARDINO ASSESSOR

The California First Amendment Coalition has named the 2008 recipients of its "Darkness Award," given in recognition of conduct that thwarts freedom of speech and the public's right to know. The awards, to be presented Saturday, October 18 at UC Berkeley, are given to:

-- Riverside Superior Court Judge David C. Velasquez, who attempted to bar the Orange County Register from covering public testimony in a lawsuit against the paper. His attempt to impose government censorship in the form of a prior restraint was quickly knocked down by the Court of Appeal.

-- San Bernardino County Assessor Bill Postmus, a former chairman of the Board of Supervisors who: 1) refused to disclose his activities and e-mails during a two-week period when wildfires raged in the county, 2) as assessor hired an “executive support staff” that, according to the Grand Jury, did “public image work for him, and 3) employed an aide who is being prosecuted by the District Attorney for alleged destruction of public records.

-- The Capistrano Unified School Board, which was so indifferent to anti-secrecy laws that the Orange County District Attorney issued a public report outlining the board's many violations of the Ralph M. Brown public meetings law. In a follow-up inquiry, the District Attorney found further violations and concluded that the board had proven itself “incapable or unwilling” of complying with the law.

In contrast to the Darkness Awards, CFAC also today named the 2008 winners of awards that affirmatively honor service in the cause of free speech, open government and the public's right to know. Attorney Hal Fuson, the Chauncey Bailey Project, the San Francisco Chronicle, Associated Press reporter Linda Deutsch, and legislative advocate Jim Ewert are being recognized for their dedication to First Amendment principles.

--Hal Fuson, vice president and chief legal counsel of Copley Press, will receive the annual Bill Farr Award, presented jointly by CFAC and the California Society of Newspaper Editors. The award recognizes Fuson's career-long contributions to the principles of free speech,
free press and public access to government.

--The Chauncey Bailey Project and the San Francisco Chronicle will receive CFAC's Beacon Award. The Chauncey Bailey Project, representing 25 journalists from multiple Bay Area news organizations and journalism schools, produced more than 140 stories that
illuminated the circumstances around the 2007 assassination of Chauncey Bailey, an editor for the Oakland Post who was investigating Your Black Muslim Bakery. Working independently but likewise relying heavily on public records, the San Francisco Chronicle generated 103 stories and probed deeply into the case.

--Linda Deutsch, the legendary court reporter for the Association Press, is a Beacon Award winner. Ms. Deutsch has not only brought some of the nation's most celebrated trials to our doorsteps, she has fought valiantly for openness and press freedom, earning among other things the Society of Professional Journalists' First Amendment Award.

--Jim Ewert, legal counsel and legislative advocate for the California Newspaper Publishers Association, is being honored with a Beacon Award. Ewert is in his second decade of protecting reporters, standing up to censorship, and elevating the rights of student
journalists and their advisers.

The awards will be presented at CFAC's annual Free Speech and Open Government Assembly, to be held this Friday and Saturday at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. The award presentation is on Saturday. The program and free online registration are available here:

The full citations for all awards follow.

By Bruce B. Brugmann

I am doing a special set of Pertinent Questions on the Clean Energy Initiative (Prop H) for all the persons and organizations that PG&E enlisted to front for its multi-million dollar campaign of Big Lies to defeat H. My first pertinent questions go to Mayor Gavin Newsom, who is in the unenviable position trying to be Gavin the Green while standing with PG&E and against the residents and businesses and environmentalists and neighborhoods of San Francisco.

Dear Mayor Newsom, (via press secretary Nathan Ballard):

I see that PG&E is using you as its major poster boy for its multi-million dollar campaign against the Clean Energy Initiative on the November ballot (Prop H).

I would like to ask you the following questions for my Bruce Blog on the Guardian website at SFBG.com. I am doing a series of questions for persons and organizations that PG&E is using to front its campaign against H, the most expensve initiative campaign in city history.

+How can you represent yourself as the "green mayor" and be a "green talk show" host on green 960 radio when you are standing with PG&E and against the residents, businesses, the environmental community, the Democratic party, the City and County of San Francisco, and the federal Raker Act of l9l3 (which mandates San Francisco become a real public power city?)

+How can you, as mayor, representing thousands of city employees, allow PG&E as a private power company to in effect say that city workers and managers are too dumb, too incompetent, too reckless, and too lazy to run an electric system?

+How can you, as mayor, allow PG&E to in effect control the city's Hetch Hetchy public power system and the city's energy policy and thus jeopardize our entire Hetch Hetchy water and power system because the city is in violation of the public power mandates of the Raker Act?

+How can you, as mayor, allow the dirty Potrero Hill power plant to keep pumping away because PG&E controls the city's energy policy? (I see the fumes every day from my office window on Mississippi Street.)

I would appreciate answers or comments by 5 p.m. today that you could either put on my my blog yourself or give to me to put up on my blog. Thanks very much.

Sincerely yours,

Bruce B. Brugmann, editor and publisher

P.S. No answer as of blogtime on Friday. I'll keep you posted.

Today's Ammianoliner:

Joe the plumber comes out of the water closet, says vote no on prop. 8.

(From the home answering machine of Sup. Tom Ammiano on Friday, Oct. 17, 2008.)

By Bruce B. Brugmann

Tony Kelly, president of the Potrero Hill Boosters, and Susan Eslick, president of the Dogpatch Association, have put out an SOS for Potrero Hill residents and others to attend a special hearing on the Mirant Retrofit issue, at l:30 p.m., Wednesday, City Hall Room 283, Board of Supervisors Land Use Committee.

The meeting is timely, just as PG&E is going allegro furioso with its multi-million dollar campaign against the Clean Energy Act (Prop H) and to keep PG&E firmly in control of city energy policy. Which would mean, if PG&E wins, PG&E would keep the city's dirty little secret, the ruinous Potrero Hill plant, pumping away indefinitely.
Full disclosure: I see the fumes from the plant from my office window at l35 Mississippi Street.

Here's Tony's note:

It's short notice, but we NEED to have as many citizens attend this hearing
as we can!
(Please forward this where you like.)

1:30 PM this Wednesday (10/22/08) at City Hall Room 263, the Board of
Supervisors Land Use Committee.

Mirant wants to continue to operate the big Unit 3 power plant (the tall
red stack) and modify the 35 year old diesel generators so they can
continue to operate them for many years to come. Supervisor Maxwell has
called in some real experts to testify about the real problems we will
face.

We must have a turn out PG&E and Mirant certainly will!

Contact me with questions, info, etc.

Tony Kelly
President, Potrero Boosters (Tonykelly@thickdescription.org

Here is an installment from Robert Skidelsky's monthly column: Can Afghanistan Be Won? from the Project Syndicate news series. Skidelsky, a member of the British House of Lords, is Professor emeritus of political economy at Warwick University, author of a prize-winning biography of the economist John Maynard Keynes, and a board member of the Moscow School of Political Studies.

Kipling’s Wisdom

by Robert Skidelsky

- Robert Skidelsky, a member of the British House of Lords, is Professor emeritus of political economy at Warwick University, author of a prize- winning biography of the economist John Maynard Keynes, and a board member of the Moscow School of Political Studies.

LONDON – The beginning of October marked the seventh anniversary of the beginning of the American-led bombardment of Afghanistan. Seven years later, the Taliban are still fighting. Some 50 insurgents died recently in an assault on Lashkar gar, the capital of Helmand province. Osama bin Laden is nowhere to be found. Has the time come for NATO to declare victory and leave?

Recently, a French diplomatic cable relating a conversation on September 2 between the French ambassador to Afghanistan, Francois Fitou, and his British colleague, Sherard Cowper-Coles, was leaked in Le Canard Enchainé , a French satirical magazine. Cowper-Coles was reported to have said that the security situation in Afghanistan was deteriorating, that NATO’s presence was making it worse, and that the two American presidential hopefuls should be dissuaded from getting bogged down further. The only realistic policy would be to cultivate an “acceptable dictator.” Of course, the British Foreign Office denied that these thoughts reflected the British government’s views.

And the PG&E canvassers reveal a key disconnect in PG&E's
Don't Sign the Blank Check campaign

By Bruce B. Brugmann

Yes, after covering PG&E since 1969 in the Guardian, I finally got a knock on my door in the West Portal area from PG&E. It was a telling moment.

Of course, it was not anybody from PG&E who knocked on my door about 6:30 Tuesday night. PG&E sent two young ladies, nicely dressed, both blondes, one standing at the top of my stairs holding a batch of forms presumably with my name and address on it, the other standing at the bottom of the stairs as backup.

Today's Ammianoliner:

Queer eye on Sarah Palin's $150,000 wardrobe. Hate your politics, love your shoes.

(From the home answering machine of Sup. Tom Ammiano on Friday, Oct. 24, 2008.)

WHAT: Hundreds of California students who are participating in the 6th Annual Fall Convergence of the California Student Sustainability Coalition (CSSC) will be rallying to show support for Proposition H – The San Francisco Clean Energy Act – at the MUNI stop on 19th Ave/Holloway St. next to San Francisco State University. Prop H will bring 100% clean energy to San Francisco. Students will first hear a speech by "Yes On H" Campaign Chair Julian Davis about why he supports Prop H and what it means for the future of San Francisco and the movement for clean energy. Everyone will move out to the MUNI stop to perform call-and-response with about 75 students standing on the MUNI platform and the rest on campus across the street, chanting, "What do we want? Clean Energy! When do we want it? Now!"

WHEN: Saturday, Oct. 25 from 9:45 am to 10:45 am.

WHERE: Jack Adams Hall at 9:45am, then photo opportunity and speakers at 19th Ave/Holloway St. MUNI platform at 10:15am – 10:45am.

WHO: 400 students from 30 California colleges, Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi, Assemblywoman Fiona Ma, San Francisco Supervisors Ross Mirkarimi and Aaron Peskin

VISUALS: Hundreds of students with a 12 ft. windmill dressed in green shirts, green hard hats, coveralls, and bearing signs supporting Prop H standing on campus across the street from the MUNI platform. When the 10:41am MUNI pulls up, the students on the platform will distribute information to riders.

WHY: Proposition H will convert San Francisco's energy sources into 100% clean and renewable energy, and will make San Francisco a leader in the clean energy revolution. Prop H is a local link to Power Vote, a project of the Energy Action Coalition, of which the CSSC and Global Exchange are founding partners. Power Vote is a national, non-partisan campaign to harness the political power of young people by collecting 1 million pledges to vote for clean and just energy. "Millennial Voters" comprise about 25% of the electorate and the Power Vote platform reflects the priorities of young voters.

For more information, visit
www.sustainabilitycoalition.org
http://www.globalexchange.org/
http://www.powervote.org

By Bruce B. Brugmann

Joe Neilands, the University of California-Berkeley biochemistry professor who broke the PG&E/Raker Act scandal story in the Bay Guardian in 1969, died Thursday night of a rare form of tuberculosis at Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley. He was 87.

His son Torsten reported his death in an email to me and asked that a memorial box be placed in the Guardian with this copy:

“J. B. Neilands

September 11, 1921 -October 23, 2008

Final Words: Vote yes on Prop H!”

We will proudly publish the memorial box in the Wednesday (10/25/2008) of the Guardian, our last edition before the Nov. 4 election and the vote on the Clean Energy Act (Prop H). There will be no services. His family suggested that donations should be made to SFCleanEnergy.com.

He was Professor J. B. Neilands, a distinguished professor of biochemistry at UC Berkeley, but to his many friends, colleagues, and fellow activists he was just plain Joe. To the Guardian and to the clean energy/public power constituency, he was the consummate independent political activist. His independent political activities span the trajectory of progressive politics in the Bay Area for more than 50 years, from his successful underdog battle in the early 1960s to keep the Pacific Gas & Electric Company from building a nuclear power plant upwind of San Francisco on Bodega Bay, through the free speech movement at Cal, to the fight against the Vietnam War, to the passionate and unending battle to enforce the federal Raker Act, bring public Hetch Hetchy power to San Francisco, and buy out PG&E.

His specialty was taking on the pioneering great cause himself, personally, when the appropriate institution would not do it. And that’s how he got his scandal story about PG&E into the Guardian and helped make it our signature story through the decades. It all started in Joe’s living room in the Berkeley Hills.

The Clean Energy campaign (Prop H) is heating up and PG&E is now running more scared than the company has ever been about any initiative campaign. Here's the latest media advisory from the campaign's Julian Davis and Aliza Wasserman:

For Immediate Release Contact: Aliza Wasserman
510-717-6599

MEDIA ADVISORY Tuesday October 28, 2008

PROP H WIND TURBINES INSTALLED ON PG&E HQ

PG&E's record-breaking $9.9 million opposition to Prop H said to be obstructing San Francisco's chance for renewable and cheaper energy

SAN FRANCISCO -- In front of PG&E's downtown headquarters at 77 Beale St. at Market, three twelve-foot wind turbines will be constructed by citizens eager to see Prop H pass and begin a green jobs and affordable green energy future. On Wednesday, October 29 from 12:00 to 12:30pm over three-dozen citizens wearing green hard hats and worker overalls will promptly descend on PG&E's headquarters and construct the wind turbine art installations. PG&E provides the City with only 2% wind energy, and 1% solar, for a total of 14% renewable energy, while Prop H would develop thousands of green jobs and move San Francisco's energy provider to 51% renewable and clean energy in a decade, 75% by 2030 and will maximize all available and affordable renewable energy possible by 2040.

Vote early, vote often, and vote all the way to the bottom of the ballot.

Voting to save the local economy

For many San Franciscans, the recession is already here -- and is deep and painful

Guardian Editorial

Clean Energy forces stormed the plaza of PG&E headquarters in downtown San Francisco

Photos and text by Paula Connelly
On site assistance by Alex Jacobs

Wednesday, October 29, Yes on H supporters stormed PG&E headquarters at 77 Beale St. in green hardhats to install sculptural wind turbines to protest PG&E's deficient use of renewable energy, the issue at the heart of the Proposition H debate. The clean energy campaign piled "money bags" in the middle of the sidewalk to dramatize the point that PG&E has spent over $10 million so far on the No on H campaign and is expected to put millions more into it in the last week.

The tale of what really happened on Halloween Eve in 1951 in Rock Rapids, Iowa

By Bruce B. Brugmann

As I was preparing to update my annual Halloween blog, I noted the news accounts of all the civic effort going this year into making Halloween "safe" in San Francisco. City Search website even said that, "Despite what you've read in the news, Halloween isn't over just because you won't be experiencing the fun, debauchery, and occasional gunfire in the Castro."

Well, there wasn't any known or admitted debauchery and no gunfire in the Halloweens of my youth back in my hometown of Rock Rapids, a small farming community in northwest Iowa. But we did have some fast times and created some almost famous urban legends on Halloween. I can speak for a generation or two back in the early 1950s when Halloween was the one night of the year when we could raise a little hell and and hope to stay one step ahead of the cops.

Or, in the case of Rock Rapids, the one and only cop, who happened to be Elmer "Shinny" Sheneberger. Shinny had the unenviable job of trying to keep some semblance of law and order during an evening when the Hermie Casjens gang was on the loose. Somehow through the years, nobody remembered exactly when, the tradition was born that the little kids would go house to house trick and treating but the older boys could roam the town looking to make trouble and pull off some pranks.

It was all quite civilized. The Casjens gang would gather (no girls allowed) and set out about our evening's business, being careful to stay away from the houses of watchful parents and Shinny on patrol. Dave Dietz and I specialized in finding cars with keys in the ignition and driving them to the other end of town and just leaving them. We tipped over an outhouse or two, the small town cliche, but one time we thought there was someone inside. We never hung around to find out. There was some mischief with fences and shrubs.

John Brian “Joe” Neilands: September 11, 1921 – October 23, 2008

by Juanita, Torsten and Dianne Neilands

J.B. Neilands was born in Glen Valley, British Columbia to Thomas Abraham Neilands and Mary Rebecca Neilands (nee Harpur), immigrants from the Belfast area of Northern Ireland. He grew up on a modest family dairy farm and saw many depression-era hobos riding the trains that ran across the farm, something that left an indelible impression upon him of the follies of rampant capitalism and concentration of wealth in the hands of the few at the expense of the many. He obtained an undergraduate degree at the University of Guelph in Ontario in 1944 where he had planned to become an agricultural representative to farmers, but an elective course in microbiology opened a new and fascinating world of micro-organisms to him. He served in World War II as a stoker, second class, aboard a submarine chaser based in Halifax and completed his master’s degree in 1946 at Dalhousie University in Halifax. He then obtained his Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1949, completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Stockholm, Sweden and then took a position as an assistant professor at UC Berkeley in 1951. In 1958 he married Juanita L’Esperance and they hand-built a house together in Berkeley.

During his scientific career J.B. Neilands published numerous scientific papers in his area of research, microbial iron transport, and mentored many graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, including Nobel Prize winner Kary Mullis (though Neilands would be the first to say that he had little to do with Mullis’s discovery). In his career Neilands published a seminal textbook, “Outlines of Enzyme Chemistry” and co-authored a text on the dangers of defoliants and herbicides (“Harvest of Death”).

J. B. Neilands in his laboratory at UC Berkeley