By Bruce B. Brugmann

(Scroll down to see the David Lazarus LA Times column and the CPUC administrative law judge's draft decision to reject PG&E's latest move to hammer residential ratepayers in San Francisco)

David Lazarus, the talented San Francisco Chronicle consumer reporter who is now writing for the Los Angeles Times, exposes in a Nov. 24 column the proposal by the state's three largest private utilities to shift $90 million in fees for natural gas paid each year by business customers onto residential customers.

Lazarus asks quite rightly, "Is it equitable to raise rates for families while allowing them for the likes of Chevron and Bank of America? Is it equitable to offer a helping hand to employers by increasing the financial burden on employees?"

The Lazarus column ran in the Fresno Bee and other California papers. It did not run in the Chronicle/Hearst nor did the Chronicle do its own story. It is, I might add, the kind of story that Lazarus would find it difficult to write while working on the Chronicle because of the long standing sweetheart relationship that Hearst has had with PG&E. The most recent example of this unholy alliance came when PG&E and Hearst ganged up once again this fall to help PG&E defeat a clean energy/public power initiative that would have brought millions of dollars in savings for San Francisco ratepayers.

Click here to read a recent Bruce blog, PG&E's new move to screw residential customers.

Stop PG&E's corporate welfare

The best way to boost the business climate in this recession era is to promote consumer spending

Guardian Editorial

EDITORIAL Just in time for the holiday season — and the colder weather — Pacific Gas and Electric Co. wants to shift millions of dollars in fees off big industrial customers and force residential consumers to pay more for natural gas.

The move would set a terrible precedent, and San Francisco officials should join the consumer groups that are calling on the California Public Utilities Commission to reject the plan.

By Paula Connelly

Today Mayor Newsom held a press conference to announce the 'Shop SF. Get More', an economic promotion campaign for December / January. This promotion is a collaboration between SF Economic & Workforce Development, SF Office of Small Business, SF Convention and Visitor Bureau, SF Chamber of Commerce, Hotel Council, MTA, MUNI, DPT, BART, Chronicle, Examiner, Business Times and Bay Guardian to encourage people throughout the nine county Bay Area to shop in San Francisco. The Bay Guardian has been promoting small business and sustainable economic programs for years and this holiday season is urging its readers to spend $100 of their holiday money at locally owned, independent businesses - a move that would pump nearly $100 million into the city's recession-plagued economy.

The press conference was held Wednesday, December 3, 11:45am, at the Ark Toy Store, which is located at 3845 24th St (near Sanchez), in Noe Valley San Francisco.

Visit the San Francisco Visitor and Conventions Bureau's website: www.onlyinsanfrancisco.com to lean about Shop Local offers from participating businesses or visit www.sfbg.com/local to find out how to win $500 in the Guardian's Shop Local Reader's Contest.

Ark Toy Storefront in Noe Valley

Gavin Newsom kicks off the Shop Local campaign
http://cbs5.com/video/?id=42754@kpix.dayport.com

Why did Mayor Newsom buy a $51,000 Chevy car in Colma when the only Chevy dealership in San Francisco is going out of business? Scroll down for the KPIX video showing how Hank Plante busts the mayor.

By Bruce B. Brugmann

Photo by Paula Connelly

Newsom's driver and new Chevy Hybrid Tahoe SUV vehicle, parked in front of the Ark toy store on 24th Street, during a press conference launching the Shop Local--Get More campaign. The city bought the car from a dealership in Colma for $51,000.

It was marvelous. Simply marvelous. Hank Plante busts the mayor.

Let me set the scene: The reporters and small business leaders on Wednesday (Dec. 5) were packed in the Ark, a toyshop on 24th Street, for a press conference to launch formally the "Shop Local--Get More" campaign aimed at getting San Franciscans and everyone else to shop local in San Francisco this holiday season.

Steve Falk, president of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, laid out the chamber's extensive program for its members to give substantial discounts to customers. Gerald Johnson, owner of the Ark, explained how his store would give 10 per cent off your next purchase with a purchase of more than $100. Mayor Newsom, who rolled in late in his city car, gave a zippy little talk about the values of shopping local and helping out the merchants and business community during tough times.

Newsom is at his best at these informal occasions, a little pep talk here, a genial smile and gesture there, lots of jutting jaw, no tough questions please. Then came time for questions and Newsom visibly relaxed for what he hoped would be some Noe Valley soft balls.

Hank Plante, the savvy political editor of KPIX Television (Channel 5), was positioned in the front of the crowd with his television cameraman and his camera was whirring away. He led off with a timely question.

"Mr. Mayor, you want people to shop in San Francisco. You know the car dealerships are in trouble. Can you tell us why you didn't buy your new official city car here in the city?"

Newsom replied testily, "Uh, I have no idea. Thanks for the Gotcha question and I don't have a clue. I didn't have anything to do with the purchase of that car." He said he would find out what happened and get back with the answer.

Plante reported the exchange in the KPIX newscast that night. He said, "We're losing our last Chevy dealership" in San Francisco. He said that the new car was a Chevy Tahoe Hybrid SUV that cost $51,000 at a dealership in Colma. He pointed out that the Chevy was one of the "most visible purchases the mayor made this year." Marie Brooks, from Ellis Brooks Chevy dealership on Van Ness Avenue, told Plante, "I think it's wrong for one of our city officials to buy anything outside the city." Ellis Brooks is a family-owned car dealership and one of the oldest and most famous local names in selling cars in Northern California.

Plante reported that Newsom kept ducking the question and later refused to allow the press corps to take a picture of him leaving the press conference in his gleaming black hybrid car parked in front of the toy store (see pic above.) KPIX showed video footage of Newsom not getting into the car and walking down 24th street.

Plante had nailed a point that has been agitating the small (and big) business community for years. Scott Hauge, a prominent small business leader and founder and president of Small Business California, was at the press conference and picked up on the point immediately. In his followup email to small business people in the city, Hauge noted he had attended the press conference "where the mayor was promoting a shop SF campaign.

"I applaud the mayor and others like the SF Chamber, Bay Guardian, Small Business Commission and Hotel Council for their efforts. What I didn't hear was anything the city will do to require SF City agencies to buy from SF companies located in SF."

Then Hauge zeroed in. "SF government does not have a very good track record in this area. In fact the mayor was asked why he did not purchase his hybrid vehicle in SF and he said he didn't know why. Now is the time to push this issue. SF businesses have a higher cost of doing business because of mandates imposed on us. It seems to me that the least the city can do is buy from SF businesses." I think he's spot on.

And so Plante, Hauge, the Guardian, and small (and big) business in San Francisco are waiting anxiously for Newsom's explanation why he bought a $51,000 city Chevy vehicle in Colma and not in San Francisco where our last Chevy dealership is on hard times and going out of business. And we are all waiting even more anxiously to hear what the mayor plans to do to correct this Shop- outside -San Francisco-syndrome and get the city working to spend its tens of millions of dollars of city tax dollars on businesses and services in San Francisco.

P.S. Full disclosure: the Guardian is a sponsor of the Shop Local campaign. And we sent a delegation to the press conference: Sales and Marketing Director Jennifer Lachman, Vice President of Operations Daniel B. Brugmann, Online and Print Advertising Coordinator Rebecca Frank, Assistant to the Publisher Paula Connelly who took the press conference photos, and myself. We are happy to pitch in on this critical and timely endeavor to put as much instant cash as possible into our local businesses and our community.

Our contribution, as a locally owned, independent newsweekly, is our own Shop Local campaign featuring a key marketing line derived from an analysis provided by the Business Alliance of Local Living Economies (BALLE), using a formula created by the consulting firm Civic Economics. This data is dramatic. It shows that if our 600,000 or so Guardian readers would spend $l00 with locally owned, independent businesses in San Francisco during the holiday season, that would inject $99 million into the San Francisco economy. Immediately.

That's nearly $15 million more dollars than the city would see if that money were spent on chain stores that send their revenues back to headquarters. That's because money spent at local businesses tends to stay and circulate in the community and create more local jobs and economic activity and of course more tax dollars for the city. The Guardian is also leading a national Shop Local campaign among alternative papers that would put several billion dollars in total into local economies all over the country. As Guardian Executive editor Tim Redmond puts it, "A sustainable community needs a sustainable economy, and that starts with locally owned, independent businesses."

Unsolicited advice for the mayor and anybody else at City Hall who keeps sending our money outside of town: check the policy of the San Francisco International Airport that mandates locally owned small businesses get most of the juicy airport franchises. That policy works and works well. When I go through the airport, I always stop to get something to eat at Klein's Deli. Klein's was named after Deborah Klein, a Guardian circulation manager in the mid- 1970s who became a restaurant entrepreneur in San Francisco. For many years, she ran Klein's Deli on 20th Street atop Potrero Hill. B3

Click here to watch yesterday's KPIX newscast.

Click here to see Guardian photo coverage of the press conference.

Here is our monthly installment of Joseph E. Stiglitz's Unconventional Economic Wisdom column from the Project Syndicate news series. Stiglitz is a professor of economics at Columbia University, and recipient of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, is co-author, with Linda Bilmes, of The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Costs of the Iraq Conflict.

The Triumphant Return of John Maynard Keynes

By Joseph E. Stiglitz

NEW YORK – We are all Keynesians now. Even the right in the United States has joined the Keynesian camp with unbridled enthusiasm and on a scale that at one time would have been truly unimaginable.

For those of us who claimed some connection to the Keynesian tradition, this is a moment of triumph, after having been left in the wilderness, almost shunned, for more than three decades. At one level, what is happening now is a triumph of reason and evidence over ideology and interests.

By Bruce B. Brugmann

Let us not forget serious media reform as President-Elect Obama accelerates his work on his governing team and agenda. The Guardian, as attentive readers know, has long supported media reform on many fronts ranging from the overhaul of the federal antitrust laws and the Federal Communications Commission to the return of the Fairness Doctrine. We also support the important work and program of the Free Press media reform organization as a major force in driving these reforms. Here is its latest timely call to action and a media reform agenda the Guardian supports. .

FREE PRESS: ACTION ALERT!

Any moment now, President-elect Barack Obama will announce his choice to lead the Federal Communications Commission. We need to be sure the person he chooses lives up to Obama's campaign pledges to reform the media in America.

To help, Free Press just placed a help wanted ad in four influential Washington publications. http://free.convio.net/site/R?i=vxNA8oF-OWQjvN-z9FX2dA..

Technically, we're not doing the hiring, but the administration needs to be reminded by all of us that the new chair must put Main Street before Wall Street.

Weigh In on the Next FCC Chair http://free.convio.net/site/R?i=RJw5LxJD7psRSV9wtW3vLg..

The FCC has been held hostage by corporate interests for too long. Now is our best chance to change course and make real the possibility of universal broadband access, an open Internet, and more locally controlled radio and TV.

The new FCC chair will be charged with bringing American media into the 21st century, which is why Obama must hear from you before deciding.

Take Our Poll: Rank Your FCC Priorities http://free.convio.net/site/R?i=CFf_cKINwcx0oNQH6NmM6Q..

Tell us what you want the new FCC chair to do, and we'll deliver the results of the poll to Obama's transition team. It's time the FCC met the challenges of reform and renewed the media's role in our democracy.

This is one of the most important job openings to be filled by the next administration. Let's speak out to make sure we find the right person for the job.

Onward,

Josh Stearns
Program Manager
Free Press
www.freepress.net

Click here to read 2009 Media & Tech Priorities: A Public Interest Agenda, from freepress.net

Here's one of my favorite rationales for bailing out the Big Three auto manufacturers. B3

Click here to view Michael Moore on COUNTDOWN with Keith Olbermann Dec 3, 2008.

Kim Gale

1941-2008

By Bruce B. Brugmann

A celebration of the life of Jeremy Kimball (Kim) Gale, a colorful Guardian graphic artist who died on Friday, Nov. 28th, in Marin General Hospital of diabetes and renal disease, will be held at 5 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 11th, at the Paper Mill Creek Saloon in Forest Knolls in Marin County. He was 67.

It is most fitting that Kim's memorial service will be held in a saloon. He loved the Paper Mill and he loved saloons and he loved to attend and put on parties.

Kim was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and graduated from the New England School of Arts in Boston, then headed west and ended up in San Francisco in the mid-1960s. He soon made his way to the Bay Guardian newspaper and our cramped little office at 1070 Bryant Street. There he found a home, fast friends, a cast of characters, his kind of muckraking left politics, a rollicking good time, and a perfect place for his free-spirited lifestyle.

He was also a talented graphic artist who could do everything from whipping out illustrations on deadline, to designing front pages, to laying out and pasting up pages quickly, to keeping things flowing with professional casualness. Best of all, he could make sense out of and fit nicely into our often chaotic production department.

He was a big guy, with the build of a high school football tackle on a winning team, and he had enormous stamina and energy. I remember him standing at his drawing board, hour after hour, grinding through the piles of ad and editorial copy, and getting the page flats to the printer on time. Then he would head out to the old Ribeltad Vorden bar near Precita Park for his second job of the day as a bartender. Some of us would follow him to the Ribeltad, where Kim would again be standing, this time behind the bar pouring us drinks until closing time.

Through all the pressures of production and bartending, Kim was always the essence of affability and good humor. I never saw him angry or raise his voice. He was, as we often remarked at the Guardian, "the world's nicest guy."

Kim loved our Guardian parties and could outlast anybody at the bar or on the dance floor. "He could organize a party like few others," according to his brother Jon. "He put together a full day of fun for nearly 200 people for his 40th birthday. There were two nationally known bands and other musicians who performed. Children of all ages, their parents and grandparents danced, ate grilled ribs, and barbecued oysters and the wine flowed freely.

"When he was 17, he put together an ice-skating party that included half of Portsmouth High School and college students home on Christmas break. That party was talked about for years. When I attended my 40th high school reunion, it seemed my classmates asked about my brother before they asked me what I'd been doing over the years. Everybody loved Kim. He was a load of fun."

His favorite job, after leaving the Guardian, was working as a public relations man for the Golden Gate Fisherman's Association. Executive Editor Tim Redmond remembers Kim calling him one day and asking if he wanted to go fishing. "Sure," Tim said, quite startled, "but why do you want me to go fishing?" Kim replied, "Because that's my job, to take reporters out fishing."

It was the perfect job for Kim - beer, fishing, and a chance to talk with interesting people. He loved every minute and often seemed to marvel at the fact that he was actually getting paid to do it.
Tim and then Reporter Martin Espinoza spent a day with Kim drinking beer and fishing out on the Farallone Islands. With Kim's guidance, they caught lots of fish and Kim would give the name and nature of each fish.

Kim transformed his fishing expertise into a fishing report and website. Kim had a host of sources out on the lakes and rivers and he would call them and find out where the fish were biting and how to catch them. He put the information up on his website and fisherman would pay to visit the site.

Kim lived for many years in Forest Knolls where, according to daughter Natasha Pemberton, "he enjoyed visiting and dancing with friends at the Pepper Mill. He also loved fishing, telling stories, and being surrounded by family and food. We will remember him for his sense of humor, love of life, and his gentle, good heartedness."

Kim was preceded in death by his parents Arline and Edwin and son Christopher. He is survived by his brother Jon Gale of Waterboro, Maine, daughters Justine Huntsman of Twist, Montana, and Natasha Pemberton, of Lagunitas, and partner Zoila Berardi, of Grass Valley, and the entire "Berardi" clan, as Natasha puts it. Condolences may be sent to Tashapemberton@hotmail.com.

Ammiano is back: Today's Ammianoliner:

O.J. Simpson finally has enough time to watch Mayor Newsom's seven and a half hour speech.

(From the home answering machine of Sup. Tom Ammiano (whoops, Assemblyman Tom Ammiano) on Dec. 8, 2008.)

And so the pressing question of the day remains: Will Sacramento change Tom Ammiano and his San Francisco sense of humor? B3
Let us watch closely. B3

The coveted Clueless Cup is falling out of the clutches of the Bush staff for the first time in eight long years

By Will Durst

n an upset worthy of Marin Day School covering the spread against the Green Bay Packers through the first three quarters of a spirited scrimmage at Lambeau Field, the coveted Clueless Cup appears to be on the verge of falling out of the clutches of President Bush’s staff for the first time in 8 long years. And the usurper is a little known agency that has blissfully slipped the bonds of reason and floated into the chasm of ludicrous self- delusion. Or to put it in layman’s terms: delivered another Congressional report.

Wackier than a Sumo wrestler in tap shoes, these pointy headed nincompoops from Cambridge, Massachusetts, (where else?) have caught dense in a bottle and driven it to a new area code. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, they have reached the irrefutable conclusion… er, the results of one of their studies is indicative of…, and they are quite certain of its validity… that, yes, your suspicions were correct, we are indeed… in a recession. They said that. Monday.

Today's Ammianoliner:

Governor of Illinois gives a whole new meaning to bailout.

(From the home telephone answering machine of Assemblyman Tom Ammiano on the day after the announcement of the arrest of Illinois Governor Rod R.Blagojevich for trying, among other things, to sell the U.S. Senate seat of President=elect Barack Obama.)

Great, Tom. You are back in stride. Keep it up. Sacramento may give you a whole line on political corruption. B3

By Dick Meister

Barry Bonds is excited. "Really excited!" he exclaims. "It's awesome really gets your blood pumpin"

Ah, he must mean how it felt blasting those record-breaking 762 homeruns during his quarter-century as a Major League Baseball superstar. No, his baseball career apparently behind him, Barry is finding his excitement elsewhere these days. He keeps the adrenalin flowing by shooting and killing animals for fun and profit as a spokesman for Christensen Arms, a Utah company specializing in high-powered hunting rifles.

You can see Barry at work in a new seven-minute online video, shot for his employer in the woods of Saskatchewan. He seems to be enjoying himself immensely, laughing, shouting gleefully, seemingly breathless with excitement, as dramatic background music pulses loudly.

As hard times get harder, the small business community is ever more essential to San Francisco

By Bruce B. Brugmann

(Scroll down for this week's editorials, after the jump)

As the mayor's drastic package of cuts fall on the Supervisors at their Tuesday meeting,
the questions abound: Why so fast? Why not more discussion and more hearings? Why make the cuts as several supervisors leave the board? Why not wait until the new board is sworn in in January? Why let Mayor Newsom drive the cuts, the agenda, and the timing almost unilaterally?

And there is a key question our editorial points out for Wednesday's edition:

"Why are we talking about cutting the $800,000 Small Business Assistance Center, which actually helps the most important sector of the economy, when there's $10 million, much of it redundant, in the mayor's Office of Economic Development?"

As hard times get harder, the small business community is ever more essential as the city's economic engine. Small businesses create the most net new jobs in the city, according to major Guardian studies. According to a 2006 study by Economist Kent Sims, Former Mayor Frank Jordan's economic chieftan, small businesses helped moderate the 2000 to 2004 recession's negative employment and earnings impact on San Francisco households.

Sims also found that small businesses released less than l0 per cent of their employees during the recession while large businesses released more than 20 per cent of their employees, despite the fact that the two groups of businesses had similar shares of pre-recession private employment. Further, he found that small business layoffs generated about 2l per cent of the negative employment and earnings impacts on San Francisco households in 2003, compared with 79 per cent for large businesses. And of course we all know that it is the small businesses that keep our neighborhoods friendly, vibrant, and economically productive. For example, on the economic point, the Guardian's Shop Local campaign may put $l00 million into the local economy, immediately. (We are asking our 600,000 or so readers to spend at least $l00 in a locally owned business.)

You get the point. Now more than ever, small business ought to be nourished and protected, not put to the slashers once again at City Hall. The supervisors need to keep the Small Business Assistance Center in the budget and, if necessary, slash the mayor's $10 million Office of Economic Development. And then the supervisors should take a deep breath, postpone the final vote until the new board comes in, and start considering the realistic progressive agenda advanced in the editorial and stories in the Guardian. B3

By Will Durst

(Durst is a comedian who writes a little. He is the author of "The All-American Sport of Bipartisan Bashing, the Common Sense Rantings from a Raging Moderate.")

Hats off to the Illinois Governor for shooting so high above and beyond the normal arc of political malfeasance that he’s probably annoyed NASA by interfering with satellite traffic. After years of highlighting nuances and scrutinizing minute distinctions, it’s downright thrilling to finally find someone acting crookeder than a dump truck full of dissembled wire hangers. Excuse me. I mean, finally finding someone GETTING CAUGHT acting crookeder than a dump truck full of dissembled wire hangers. Not everyday the FBI arrests a sitting Governor at his house at 6 in the morning: We’re talking movie of the week here. I see Casey Affleck in a bad wig. With Aaron Eckhart as Patrick Fitzgerald.

Rod Blagojevich has lined himself up to be the fourth Chief Executive of the Land of Lincoln since 1974 to be offered a long- term residency at the Gray Bar Hotel. That Springfield Capitol building must be quite a feat of social engineering. It seems to work like a halfway house in reverse. He has single handedly smashed all doubts that Chicago is to corruption what Santaland is to elves. What Los Angeles is to plastic surgery stitching. Upper Michigan and deer ticks. The list goes on. Seattle and mildew. See.

Today's Ammianoliner:

Girly man throws high heel at governor. Budget this.

(Tom, Tom, watch your enunciation. It is hard to tell if you are saying 'Budget this" or "Budget dish" and I had three people listen in. Don't let them knock you off stride in Sacramento.) B3

Editorial for Wednesday's Guardian (12/17/08):

Beyond the budget cuts

The crisis is an opportunity--a chance to examine how the city's current revenue sources are unfair, unstable, and unwieldy

Click here to read EDITORIAL.

EDITOR'S NOTES

By Tim Redmond

San Francisco's not ready to make $118 million in budget cuts.

Click here for full editor's notes.

By Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon

Now in their 17th year, the P.U.-litzer Prizes recognize some of the nation’s stinkiest media performances. As the judges for these annual awards, we do our best to identify the most deserving recipients of this unwelcome plaudit.

Announcing the P.U.-litzers Prizes for 2008:

HOT FOR OBAMA PRIZE -- MSNBC’s Chris Matthews
This award sparked fierce competition, but the cinch came on the day Obama swept the Potomac Primary in February -- when Chris Matthews spoke of “the feeling most people get when they hear Barack Obama’s speech. My, I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don’t have that too often.”

BEYOND PARODY PRIZE -- Fox News
In August, a FoxNews.com teaser for the “O’Reilly Factor” program
said: “Obama bombarded by personal attacks. Are they legit? Ann Coulter comments.”

Today's Ammianoliner:

In a conciliatory gesture Rick Warren will wear lipstick. "Obama, what was that remark about a pig?"

(From the home telephone answering machine of Assemblyman Tom Ammiano Friday, December 19, 2008.)

By Will Durst

The President of the United States looked into the sole of another foreigner- twice- as a pair of shoes was flung at him during a Baghdad press conference on a surprise visit to Iraq. And though a lame duck, he proved to be one hell of a ducker. Some might say “the mother of all duckers.” The biggest shock may be how well he went to his left. And thank god it WAS a surprise visit or the assailant might have had time to assemble an arsenal more potent than his size 10s. Any half way decent computerized re-enactment would surely show size 13 Timberlands clipping their intended target.

An international outcry has arisen over the actions of Muntadhar al Zaidi the irate Iraqi TV reporter slash shoe- flinger. Not because of his “if the shoe flies, hurl it” philosophy, but because his aim was so ducking bad. And he stopped after two shoes. That’s right. For the first time in what may be recorded history, a person is the recipient of worldwide scorn for not being a centipede. A female centipede. Because then chances increase tenfold he would have had a matching handbag or fifteen to lob as well.

Today's Ammianoliner:

Happy Hanukkah! Throw a latke at any antisemite making a speech.

(From the home telephone answering machine of Assemblyman Tom Ammiano Monday, December 22, 2008.)

A flawed energy bill (Scroll down to read Amanda Witherell's Green City column with more on the clean energy/public power/Mirant plant battles)

EDITORIAL

Two months after Pacific Gas and Electric Co. spent $10 million to defeat a clean energy measure on the San Francisco ballot, Sup. Sophie Maxwell has stepped into the battle, introducing a mild ordinance that lifts some of the language from the Clean Energy Act but would accomplish very little. We're glad to see Maxwell stepping up her efforts to close the dirty Mirant Power Plant in Potrero Hill, but her legislation needs some significant amendments.

Maxwell's ordinance, cosponsored by Sup. Aaron Peskin (who is one meeting away from being termed out), would make it city policy to "take all feasible steps" to close the Potrero plant. That's a laudable goal. It also borrows the aggressive environmental goals from the Clean Energy Act, stating that the city needs to meet all its energy needs by 2040 with renewable power. But unlike the Clean Energy Act, Maxwell's mandate ignores PG&E, which supplies the vast majority of the electricity in San Francisco and which can't even meet the state's weak alternative energy standards. Her requirement would apply only to the city's own power supplies, which come mostly from the Hetch Hetchy hydroelectric project and thus already meet the 2040 standards. So the part of the bill that deals with climate change and greenhouse gas emissions is utterly useless.

The measure calls on the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission to study the ways the city can meet its energy goals without the Potrero plant - again, a fine idea. But it ducks the central question: who's going to control the local electric grid, and thus the city's energy future? Will PG&E continue to call the shots (in which case San Francisco will never meet credible green-power goals)? Or will the city take control of the distribution system, which would allow lower electric rates and far higher environmental standards?

As Amanda Witherell reports on page 17, Maxwell's aide, Jon Lau, said the ordinance is "sort of agnostic toward public power." That's a mistake - leaving public power out of the equation amounts to a capitulation to PG&E and a guarantee that nothing substantial will change in the city's energy portfolio.

Maxwell wants to close the Potrero plant as quickly as possible, and so do we. The best way to do that is to block the plant's water permit when it comes up next year [tk: still need a date for this: (see "Water Board can close Mirant," 11/25/08), and Maxwell and City Attorney Dennis Herrera are moving on that front. But the California Independent System Operator (Cal-ISO), which controls the state's grid, has in the past argued that the city needs a certain amount of generating capacity within its borders, and could force the Potrero plant to keep running.
Maxwell originally supported a plan to replace the in-city generation capacity by installing city-owned combustion turbines that would run only during periods of peak demand. But that plan failed after both environmentalists and PG&E opposed it. Now she's pressing an alternative that would use new transmission cables, one owned by PG&E, to eliminate the need for power plants in the city.

That might work - but it would still leave the city in PG&E's clutches, and while it would eliminate a source of pollution in southeast San Francisco, the city would still be using dirty power from PG&E's nuclear and fossil-fuel plants elsewhere.

The best long-term solution is to build city-owned renewable generation to replace Mirant. The city's community choice aggregation plan is moving in that direction. But ultimately, San Francisco will only reach aggressive clean energy goals if it controls its own fate.

Maxwell's ordinance should be amended to clearly mandate a study that examines the feasibility of a public power system in San Francisco. It that's not in the final version, the bill should be voted down.

By Dick Meister

It's way past time for Congress to come to the aid of the medical residents who are among our most important providers of hospital care. The young doctors-in-training are being forced to work 80 hours a week, often as long as 30 hours in a single shift.

Congress has ample proof of the urgent need for legislative action to lessen the incredible workload of the highly exploited trainees, in part to protect patients from the possible errors of sleep-deprived residents. The proof came in a recent report Congress had requested from the widely respected Institute of Medicine because of concern over the treatment of residents and its possibly dangerous effects on patient care.

When everybody in America knows the name of the Secretary of the Treasury, that's not good news.

By Will Durst

Okay. Just so you know: the Top Ten Comedic News Stories of the Year are as different from the Top Ten Legitimate News Stories of the Year as a tarantula infested banana tree is from a small paper bag of locking quarter- inch steel washers painted blue. Other stuff might have had a bigger impact on America and the World, such as an African American guy whose middle name is Hussein winning the Presidency of the United States. But so far, Mister Agent of Change is about as funny as over the counter ear drops. You can’t mock hope right now. Too much like kicking small whimpering furry things with big eyes. Oh, he’s bound to loosen up after a few weeks getting kicked around on Pennsylvania Avenue, but until then, here are the stories from 08 that were most filled with humorosityness.

10. Proposition 8. Organized religion goes out of its way to guarantee that gays will not be burdened with the right to be as miserable as the rest of us.

9. New York Governor and Emperor’s Club member, Elliott Spitzer. Flies a hooker from New York to DC, because as we all know, there aren’t enough hookers in DC. (535 that I can think of offhand) Gives her 4 grand and puts her up at the Mayflower Hotel. Now, that’s a liberal. A conservative will try to get it for free in an airport men’s room stall. Demonstrating fiscal responsibility.