This is the good news that you won't find in the Big Media or, as I call them, the Galloping Conglomerati.
The U.S. Senate, in an incredible near unanimous vote, stood up to Big Media and voted yesterday to junk the FCC decision to let the largest media companies swallow up even more local media.

As the Stop the Big Media press release noted, "This historic vote sends a clear message that the only people who support more media consolidation are Big Media lobbyists and the White House." Let us remember that it it was the Big Media who were almost unanimous in whooping along the Bush invasion of Iraq and have largely supported it ever since and who are benefiting greatly from government broadcast licenses and the hope of getting more.
Next battleground: the U.S. House of Representatives.

See the press release from Stop Media.com and the Free Press group. Sign up and join this historic battle. And let me know if you see this story in the Big Media press. B3

Continue reading for Stop Beg Media's press release.

This is simply an astounding victory, and it would not have happened without the massive grassroots effort by you and thousands of others who called their senators, sent more than a quarter million letters, posted thousands of pictures and stories on StopBigMedia.com, and testified at public hearings held by the FCC.

It was your dedication that made today's Senate win possible.

Today was a huge step forward, but there is still much to do. The fight against the FCC now moves to the House, where our elected representatives need to hear from us.

President Bush has promised that he will try to veto this bill. But tonight the Senate and the American people have spoken with one voice. This historic vote sends a clear message that the only people who support more media consolidation are Big Media lobbyists and the White House.

We are in this struggle to bring more minority ownership, diverse perspectives and independent voices to the media. We need to make media consolidation an election-year issue. And we need to start talking about how to break up the giant conglomerates.

Corporate news today -- with its propaganda pundits, horse-race election coverage, and celebrity gossip -- undermines our democracy. We must continue to speak out and demand that the public airwaves be used to actually serve the public.

In just three weeks, thousands of people will be gathering together in Minnesota to build the movement for better media. You can join them at the National Conference for Media Reform, just visit www.freepress.net/conference.

For today, know that you played a key role in the fight for better media for all.

Thank you,

Josh Silver
Executive Director
Free Press Action Fund

I can't come to the phone right now. I'm off to the bridal shop. Hmmm. Care to smell my bouquet, Reverend Sheldon?
Sniff. Sniff.

(From the home telephone anwering machine of Sup. Tom Ammiano on Thursday, May l6, the day the California Supreme Court in a 4-3 vote made history by striking down the law that bans marriage of same sex couples.)
Hurray!

Personal note to Tom: Watch those sniffs. I thought at first you said tsk tsk. b3

Mayor Newsom announces new homeless program. Parking meters for the homeless. Tow not cash.

(From the home telephone answering machine of Sup. Tom Ammiano on Wednesday, May 14, 2008.) B3

Today, at the Board of Supervisors meeting, Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and Aaron Peskin introduced
a Charter Amendment mandating that the city's Public Utilities Commission create a plan to establish a retail power agency in San Francisco and start the process of kicking PG&E out of City Hall and the rest of the city.

The amendment, as our editorial in Wednesday's Guardian outlines, would "provide the badly needed kick start to get city officials to act on San Francisco's historic mandate for a municipal electricity system."

The move is prompted by the battle over whether the city should replace the ruinous Mirant private power plant with city-owned power plants called peakers at the foot of Potrero Hill. PG&E has quietly orchestrated a major political and public relations onslaught to kill the peakers because they would be what PG&E fears most: city-owned public power.

In fact, as Tim Redmond's blog discloses, PG&E even marched seven lobbyists (yes, seven) into the office of would-be-green Mayor Gavin Newsom, who once personally backed the plan and whose Public Utilities Commission backs the plan. PG&E jacked Newsom around and muscled him into asking for a delay in today's scheduled power plant vote to give PG&E more time to kill the peakers.

The rationale: some sort of vague and ridiculous idea of retrofitting the Mirant plant and keeping the PG&E uber alles status quo.

IF PG&E ultimately loses the peaker vote (and it will be close), PG&E will most likely run a referendum on the November ballot against this dread move to peaker public power. So the Mirkarimi and Peskin move is aimed at putting a counter initiative on the November ballot and breathing new life into the historic battle to enforce the federal Raker Act (which mandated San Francisco have a public power system) and bringing our own cheap Hetch Hetchy public power to the people of San Francisco. (See Guardian stories and editorials since l969.) The initiative would be timed to take advantage of the expected heavy turnout of Obama forces for the presidential election and for the election of supervisors.

The legislative digest sums up the amendment in a paragraph of City Hall legalese:

The amendment is to "address the need to change electricity production, delivery, and use to ensure environmentally sustainable and affordable electric supplies for residents, businesses, and city departments and to require the Public Utiliies Commmission to comprehensively study and determine the most effective means of providing clean, sustainable, reliable, and reasonably-priced electric service to San Francisco residents, businesses, and city departments."

The amendment was written and signed by Deputy City Attorney Theresa Mueller and approved as to form by City Attorney Dennis Herrera. It was introduced by the president of the board (Peskin) and a powerful supervisor who is obviously running for board president and mayor (Mirkarimi). These references are important: when the public power movement was reinvigorated in the late l990s, it faced a massive lineup of PG&E stalwarts inside City Hall: City Attorney Louise Rennie, Mayor Willie Brown, the PUC executive director and PUC commission, and all the supervisors with the notable exception of Sup. Tom Ammiano.

Mikarimi led the two famous initiative campaigns as campaign manager in 2000 and 2001, which PG&E defeated with muscle, mutli milliions, and staunch daily paper support. Now, Mirkarimi is inside City Hall in a starring role leading the charge for community choice aggregation (CCA) and now a public power initiative. And the whole thing scares the hell out of PG&E.as never before.
.
Hurray! The battle is on!

P.S. PG&E marches in: You can see how PG&E works by seeing who was at the critical May 5 meeting in the mayor's office. No public power people, nobody from the Sierra Club, and no environmental justice activists who are also opposing the peakers (but for understandable environmental reasons.) But standing tall at the secret meeting were seven PG&E lobbyists, led by Travis Kiyota, and such PG&E friendly folks as PUC Commissioner Dick Sklar (remember him?), Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier, and a representative from the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

PG&E and NRDC arranged to have a timely letter on NRDC letterhead, dated May 12 , come to the supervisors from Robert Kennedy Jr., with ccs to Newsom, President Michael Peevey of the California Public Utilities Commission, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The letter was of course released to the press and the public on the eve of the vote. PG&E, NRDC, and Kennedy had at least one line right: "Where San Francisco ultimately decides to invest its precious energy dollars is a choice that will send a message to cities around the country."

The tipoff: nowhere do the PG&E supporters, including the Chronicle editorialists who suddenly took a down-with-the-peakers stand yesterday, nor the Examiner, with a wimpy story today on Newsom's sudden change of plans, mention those dread three letters that divulge the secret agent at work (PG&E) nor that dread phrase that tells what the secret agent is really up to (killing public power.) C'mon, folks, this isn't that hard to figure out. Is there some law somewhere that says the local media can't cover what PG&E is doing to perpetuate the PG&E/Raker Act scandal and once again kill public power? (See "The Shame of Hearst" in previous Guardian and blog items.)

On guard. The pubic power forces are once again moving up to the front lines, muskets at the ready. B3 (who sees the fumes from the Mirant plant every minute of every day from my Potrero Hill office window)

Click here to read Mirkarimi and Peskin's recent Charter Amendment.

Click here to read Redmond's recent blog, PG&E offers Newsom a blank check

Click here for this week's PG&E editorial.

Today's Ammianoliner:

Rush Limbaugh can't come to the phone right now. He's on a baby seal hunt. MMMMMMMMMMm. Good eating.

(From the home telephone answering machine of Sup. Tom Ammiano on May 8, 2008). B3

Barbara Walters reveals affair and a predliection for chain stores. Chains and whips. mmmmmmmmmmmshe says.

(From the home telephone answering machine of Sup. Tom Ammiano on May 8, 2008). B3

Yearning for Zion, PG@E's attempt to greenwash.

(From the home telephone answering machine of Sup. Tom Ammiano on Monday, May 5, 2008.) B3

Joe Nation on Castro Street says he'd bend over backwards for the gay vote.

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

Joe Neilands flashed the news late Friday afternoon. The City of Stockton may be moving to kick PG@E out of town.

Neilands broke the PG@E/Raker Act scandal wide open with an expose in the Guardian in l969 and started the long battle to kick PG@E out of City Hall and out of San Francisco.

Sure enough, Joe was on target again. The Stockton Record carried the story on Wednesday (April 30) with a strong headline: "PG@E Sued by Stockton, City Pursues Ruling to Aid Possible Power Takeover." The story, by David Siders,
reported that the city sued "its century-old power provider Tuesday and requested "that a court rule Stockton has the right to oust Pacific Gas & Electric Company and to take over the local electricity market--even before the city decides if it ought to.

"A ruling in the city's favor would reinforce its position that PG@E is contractually obligated to sell--agreeing to do so in its franchise agreement in l954--and would undermine PG@E's claim that a takeover would be hostile and that its assets are not for sale."

Mayor Ed Chavez had called for a takeover bid in his State of the City address in February. The story quoted him as saying that a takeover would cut rates and generate millions of dollars in revenue. A preliminary estimate found that it could cost Stockton $368 million to buy PG@E's assets but that the market is so profitable the city could recover that cost and save $8 million more annually, according to the Record.

Hey, Mayor Newsom and all the PUC and other City Hall officials are scared to death of PG@E. Listen up. If Stockton can take on PG@E, why can't San Francisco take on PG@E? After all, San Francisco is the only city in the U.S. that is required by federal law to have a public power system (because the Raker Act of l913 allowed the city to build the Hetch Hetchy dam in Yosemite National Park for its water supply, on condition the city residents get cheap Hetch Hetchy public power.) The city got the water but it never got the electricity because of PG@E muscle and City Hall cowardice and so PG@E stands to this day as an illegal private utility in San Francisco. (See Guardian stories and editorials since l969 and the Neilands story.)

Well, it's good to see Joe still on the story after all these years. But, as I always tell him jokingly, "Joe, with a little more seasoning, you may be ready to cover City Hall in San Francisco."

Click here to read the Recordnet.com story PG&E sued by Stockton: City pursues ruling to aid possible power takeover and check out the story links for the background.

May Day! May Day! Arnold Schwarzenegger stops the light brown sprayijng of his hair.

(From the home telephone answering machine of Sup. Tom Ammiano on May l, 2008) B3

Today's Ammianoliner:

Mr. Zito, can I (errrrrr) have a rebate, please?

(From the home telephone answering service of Sup. Tom Ammiano on Wednesday, April 30, 2008.) B3

Bob Herbert, the Afro-American op ed columnist for the New York Times, had the most sensible answer I've seen in his Monday (April 29) column.

He waded right in with his lead:

"The Rev. Jeremiah Wright went to Washington on Monday not to praise Barack Obama, but to bury him.

"Smiling, cracking corny jokes, mugging it up for the big time news media,--this reverend is never going away. He's found himself a national platform, and he's loving it."

Then: "So there he was lecturing an audience at the National Press Club about everything from the black slave experience to the differences in sentencing for possession of crack and powdered cocaine.

"All but swooning over the wonderfulness of himself, the reverend acts like he is the first person to come with the idea that blacks too often get the short end of the stick in America, that the malignant influences of slavery and the long dark night of racial discrimination are still being felt today, that in many ways this is a profoundly inequitable society."

Herbert then gets to the question. "This is hardly new ground. The question that cries out for an answer from Mr. Wright is why--if he is passionately committed to liberating and empowering blacks--does he seem so insistent
on wrecking the campaign of the only Afican-American ever to have had a legitimate shot at the presidency."

Herbert says that "my guess is that Mr. Wright felt he'd been thrown under a bus by an ungrateful congregant
who had benefited mightily from his association with the church and who should have rallied to the former pastor's defense. What we're witnessing now is Rev. Wright's "I'll show you!" tour."

Obama rightly and firmly rejected Wright and his attacks. Now he should change the subject, get back to the real campaign and the real issues, and let his Afro-American and white surrogates carry on the dialog if necessary. Wright will be a killer swift boat issue only if Obama and his campaign allow it to become one.

I think he should take Clinton on in a Lincoln and Douglas style debate. I think he would win, given his oratorical skills, and it would help change the subject. But most important, Obama needs to reenergize his campaign
by injecting a strong populist appeal to his campaign theme of unifying and transformation. He needs to present the case that he has the grit and the intellect to beat the Republicans on foreclosures, the economy, the war, Iran, universal health care, the rising inequality in American life, and everything else that our despised president and his sucking up successor represents. He must offer leadership and offer real solutions and programs with passion and stick to the issues that really matter to the growing tide of Americans who are desperately angry and frustrated with Bush. That is the best way for Obama to deal with Wright and the Wright attacks to come. B3

Click here to read today's Bob Herbert column, The Pastor Casts a Shadow.

Every year, the Guardian runs a major front page story from Project Censored at Sonoma State University, listing the 20 major stories that have been "censored" or underreported during the previous year by the mainstream media.

Since 2003, when the U.S. invaded Iraq with "Shock and Awe," the project's stories have criticized the runup to the war, the lies of the Bush administration, the mendacity of the neocons promoting the war, the lousy media coverage, on and on. Neither the project nor most of the stories were published by the mainstream media. And the New York Times, and its sister paper the Santa Rosa Press Democrat near Sonoma State, refused to run the Censored story nor to explain why. (Last year, to its credit, the Press Democrat did a story on Censored.)

Now, the media reform organization Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) has raised anew an important point involving a major New York Times story on April 20 that exposed the Pentagon's program of feeding talking points to military pundits featured on TV newscasts. (Fair pointed out rightly that the military analysts' ties with military contractors and advocacy groups had been documented as far back as 2003 with a report in the Nation (4/21).

FAIR's point: "While the Times article focused on the role of the Pentagon, the parties that arguable have most to answer for are the media organizations that relied on these Pentagon analysts and failed to disclose blatant conflicts of interest posed by their ties with defense contractors...Of course, the Pentagon's propaganda plan would have little effect if not for the enthusiastic participation of the corporate media."

My question: when will the mainstream media start interviewing such prominent war critics as Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and others of this caliber? Meanwhile, keep an eye out for our Project Censored package later this year.

Here's the FAIR article and its call to action to hassle the five major networks:

By George Powell

At the time of greatest box office power, Heston ranked right up there with John Wayne as a legendary American actor. But Heston was not content to portray the Ben Hurs, Michelangelos and El Cids of the world.

Instead he took off in new and different directions. When you have already portrayed Moses at the age of 32 and President Andrew Jackson at a mere 29, the thrill of being a historical figure has a tendency to fade.

His other, different films went unmentioned in the AP obit, which left me puzzled. Famous people’s obits are given form and substance months and years before they die, to be topped off when their lives end. Such a shallow effort by AP, and in a major newspaper like the Chronicle. Mick LaSalle, have you taken a buyout? That thought passed through my mind as I recalled all the special moments that Heston’s exceptional career has brought to this movie buff.

Shameful omissions in the AP obituary of some of Heston’s most different and wide-ranging roles included the films, The Omega Man, Touch of Evil, Soylent Green, Number One, The Big Country and Major Dundee. It might also might have been worth mentioning that he played an ape in an uncredited cameo in the 2001 Tim Burton reimagining of the 1968 Planet of the Apes. And that brief cameo was better than nearly everything else in one of Burton’s directorial misfires.

For those who have not seen any of the aforementioned Heston vehicles, in Omega Man (1971), he is the original Will Smith in I Am Legend. Touch of Evil (1958), finds Heston being directed by Orson Welles and cast as a forthright Mexican (!) detective. Another 1958 effort and one of my personal favorites, The Big Country had Heston playing ranch foreman Steve Leach. His outdoor fight with Gregory Peck and his passionate kiss of Carol Baker are both great moments in this William Wyler-directed big-screen Western melodrama. The very next film Heston did with Wyler was Ben Hur, by the way.

Soylent Green (1973) was another dystopian sci-fi epic about a vastly overpopulated and ecologically damaged Earth with the famous concluding line, Soylent Green is people! Number One (1969) had Heston cast as an aging quarterback for the New Orleans Saints, a role loosely based on the final years of Hall of Fame quarterback Y.A. Tittle with the N.Y. Giants. It’s in no way a big film, but just shows the range of roles Heston was willing to assay at that period in his career.

In 1965, after El Cid but before mega-hit Planet of the Apes, Heston worked for the only time with maverick director Sam Peckinpah on Major Dundee. Heston had the lead role as Major Amos Dundee, the commander of a mixed force of Union and Confederate cavalry that pursued a raiding band of Apaches into Mexico. When Peckinpah was nearly fired in a dispute with the studio, Heston put his considerable prestige on the line and stood up for Peckinpah. Without Heston’s support, the film may never have been finished, and Peckinpah may not have gone on to make The Wild Bunch, where many of the themes in Dundee were fully realized.

As a moviegoer for more than 50 years, I am indebted to Heston for his grand portrayals of so many historical figures, but equally so for his work in other movies that rounded out a very special career. I do not care about his gun advocacy and NRA presidency toward the end of his life. What he did in his movies towers above the political passions of the moment.

Now more than ever his words in 1959 as Ben Hur to evil Roman centurion Messala resound through the decades. Boyhood friend Messala was trying to get Judah Ben Hur to rat out his Jewish insurgent friends who were opposing the military occupation of Judea. In words eerily reminiscent of a United States president, Messala’s final argument was, Either you are for me or against me. In that case, Ben Hur concludes, I am against you. That was a powerful lesson for a mere teenager, and events of recent years have made me think that some political leaders of my generation either never saw nor understood the subtext of Ben Hur.

Heston’s upstanding moral subtext remained strong throughout his life, and he was never content to rest on his considerable laurels. For me that was the true measure of the man, and he ranks with Jimmy Stewart and Gregory Peck as a true master of his craft, and deserving of every movie lover’s gratitude and appreciation for an imposing and noble career.

Anne Marie Conroy becomes rock star. "I'm neither grateful nor dead, she says."

(From the home telephone answering machine of Sup.Tom Ammiano on Thursday April 24, 2008.) B3