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Politics Blog

Lennar’s third quarter earnings are down

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Text by Sarah Phelan

Lennar kicked off the first day of fall by reporting a $171.6 million third quarter fiscal loss for the period ending August 31. That’s more than double Lennar’s $89 million third quarter loss in 2008.

In a peppy press release posted at the corporation’s investor relations website, Lennar President and CEO Stuart Miller attributed his company’s 3Q loss to lower sales volumes and falling house prices.

“While high unemployment and foreclosures will continue to present challenges, consumer sentiment has significantly improved as homebuyers have recognized that the residential housing market is stabilizing,” he said.

“Assuming the economy continues to stabilize, we believe our improved sales environment, increasing pre-impairment gross margins and ability to leverage S,G&A [ selling, general and administrative expenses] should enable us to return to profitability in fiscal 2010,” Miller concluded.

That’s a pretty big assumption that Wall Street apparently wasn’t swallowing: it sent Lennar’s shares down 53 cents, or 3.2 percent, to $16.01 in yesterday’s midday trading.

Further casting doubt over Lennar’s hopes of a 2010 comeback is the fact that it’s still unclear if lawmakers will decide to extend a federal tax credit of up to $8,000 for first-time homebuyers which expires Nov. 30.

PG&E resigns from US Chamber over climate change dispute

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By Steven T. Jones

While we’ve regularly criticized Pacific Gas & Electric for its corrupting political influence and for not doing enough on climate change, but we were happy to hear the company has resigned from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over the business association’s scurrilous campaign to dispute that climate change is real and caused by human activity.

“An intellectually honest argument over the best policy response to the challenges of climate change is one thing; disingenuous attempts to diminish or distort the reality of these challenges is quite another,” PG&E CEO Peter Darbee wrote to the Chambers, according to the company.

The recent efforts by conservatives and corporations to turn back the clock on our understanding of climate change (which even the San Francisco Examiner is promoting) are disgraceful and should have no place in honest political debate. After a weird summer of right-wing Red-baiting, gun-toting, epithet-spewing antics, it’s an indication of how low the political discourse in this country has fallen when PG&E is calling out corporate America.

Golden Gate suicide barrier lacks funding

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By Sarah Morrison
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The 2006 film The Bridge documented suicides from the iconic span.

It was almost a year ago that local officials decided that the Golden Gate Bridge needed a net constructed to prevent potential suicide jumpers, but with its projected price tag of $50 million, a lack of state funds threatens to delay the project indefinitely.

According to Marin County Coroner Ken Holmes, more than 1300 people have died jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge since its construction, an estimate that does not include all bridge suicides or incidences when bodies have not been found.

The Bridge Rail Foundation has been campaigning for years to raise the pedestrian safety rail on the Golden Gate Bridge and stop the suicides. While the board of directors for the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District agreed to implement the net system almost a year ago, but it’s fate now seems to come down to funding.

The new taxi plan: Everyone hates it

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By Tim Redmond

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Municipal Transportation Agency officials have drafted a plan to overhaul the San Francisco taxi industry — and just about everyone hates it.

The proposal, outlined in a Sept. 8 memo from Christiane Hayashi, director of taxis and accessible services, would ultimately shift control of cab permits away from working drivers and give them to cab companies.

The process would be slow — the drivers who currently hold medallions would be allowed to keep them until they retire or die, and the 1,700 people who have been on the medallion waiting list for more than 10 years would retain their rights.

But in the future, as the valuable medallions get returned to the city, they would be auctioned off to cab companies. The companies wouldn’t technically own the permits, but would bid for long-term leases.

The idea runs directly counter to the landmark 1978 legislation known as Proposition K, which for the first time gave drivers the right to control their own permits. Under Prop. K, written by then-Supervisor Quentin Kopp, medallions are issued for a token annual fee to active, working drivers. No corporations are allowed to hold medallions. The only way to get a medallion is to put your name on the waiting list; it often takes as long as 15 years.

Of course, drivers who get the medallions see an immediate and substantial increase in their incomes. The medallions are valid 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, so medallion holders can driver a few shifts a week and lease them out to other drivers for the rest of the time. The lease fees can add up to about $3,000 a month.

And that income continues as long as the medallion holder is alive — and driving a cab. If he or she can’t drive a minimum number of hours, the medallion is returned to the city and goes to the next person on the waiting list.

Prison report: What the state really wants

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By Just A Guy

Editors note: Just A Guy is an inmate in a California state prison. His dispatches appear twice a week.

I guess this is sort of a continuance from my last blog, which was, What Plan?My sentiment hasn’t changed — what the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has offered the three-judge panel is a “plan” that will surely get rejected.

The political rhetoric indicates that the state will fight — but it really is weak rhetoric, spoken just between the ears of constituents by politicians who want to appear tough on crime.

For those who that don’t deal directly with lawyers and politicians on a daily basis, the “we-will-fight-the-feds” speech really is weak. They have to say that — to appear tough on crime and strong for public safety (in their minds anyway). But I believe a good percentage of them are silently grateful for the escape granted to them by the feds. Ultimately, the court will reject their weak plan and take over long enough to release dozens of thousands of us .

If CDCR and the politicians who say they’re against releases felt as strong as they would have you think, a much more robust, pragmatic, well-thought-out process to deal with overcrowding would have been presented.

The Republicans claim to be against big government. If they really thought that way about the release scenario, they would have pushed for a plan that would have been acceptable to the courts and kept the big federal government out of the California prison system.

The Democrats who speak against releases and federal interference are just hypocrites scampering for a way to ride out the potential political fallout they perceive if they don’t “speak out” against releases.

Meanwhile, the ones who are speaking up for sanity are not getting the shaft that the others so feared.

The long-term results of the current budget cuts for health care, welfare and education are not seen as threats to public safety. But its so right in front of everyone to see and it’s not too complicated to explain nor to understand:

— Cuts to welfare mean more people have to find a way to feed themselves and their families. Consequently, they may steal or deal drugs.

— Cuts to health care mean less money to pay for you and your family’s health — consequently people will steal or deal drugs to pay for health care.

— Cuts to education mean a less-educated workforce that can’t get jobs because the economy sucks so they get on welfare …. oops, there is no welfare. Consequently, they steal or deal drugs to pay for food or healthcare or both.

Of course, there are those that wind up on drugs because it’s easier to worry about the next high than your next meal.

40,000 now — or what, 400,000 in five years?

Another wake-up call

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By Steven T. Jones
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The New York Post — or the Yes Men’s version of it — finally levels with the people about capitalism and climate change.

A few days after I wrote here about my hopes that the upcoming film “Capitalism: A Love Story” would prompt a national discussion about our doomed economic system, The Yes Men have provided another wake-up call, creating a fake New York Post website and newspapers warning of the climate change disaster we’re headed for if we don’t quickly change our wasteful, overly consumptive ways.

That stunt — a hallmark of this creative duo — precedes the Oct. 7 release of their new film, “Yes Men Save the World.” Combined with Michael Moore’s Oct. 2 release of “Capitalism,” we have an excellent opportunity for an important discussion, if only mainstream media obstacles like Post owner Rupert Murdoch would recognize economic and environmental realities. But we at the Guardian plan to facilitate the discussion over the coming weeks so stay tuned.

Amazing Park(ing) Day

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By Steven T. Jones and Molly Freedenberg
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San Francisco — and cities around the world — celebrated Park(ing) Day today in glorious fashion, transforming hundreds of automobile parking spaces (about 50 in SF alone) into mini-parks and works of art.

Among the highlights: the folks at Rebar, which founded the event here in 2005, made the rounds in their pedal-powered Parkcycle; Temple nightclub and Ritual Roasters each created lush lawns for lounging; SPUR worked with the Great Streets Project to extend the sidewalks with platforms and create a street party complete with DJ and belly dancers; Four Barrels Coffee turned car parking spots into bicycle parking spots; and Interstice Architects had a mobile forest that moved to various spots, including 826 Valencia in the afternoon. Downtown’s parks were said to be liveliest during lunch hour, whereas Mission area installations drew the most activity in the afternoon.

Some images of the event by Steven T. Jones:
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Prison report: Where’s the plan?

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By Just A Guy

Editors note: Just A Guy is an inmate in a California state prison. His reports run twice a week.

I wasn’t going to write anything for today, but I realized after a conversation with someone earlier in the day, and one this afternoon with Tim, that I had an apology to make.

You see, I’ve been guilty over the last month or so of the very thing I am constantly denouncing, which is wholesale condemnation of various groups and entities.

That’s not fair, and I don’t want it done to me, and I really am trying to treat people how I would like to be treated.

So, I say: Please accept my apology if you are a politician, or a California Correctional Peace Officers Association member, or a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation employee, or a media person or a person in general who is fighting for change within the prison system, fighting for sentencing reform, trying to move toward sane policies around prisons, and doesn’t buy into the constant rhetoric about those of us in prison.

I apologize for lumping you together with those you don’t deserve to be compared with. And I say, thank you for your efforts at rational laws and fair inmate practices.

But, for those of you that are the cowards and liars serving from the trough of fear, that acrid ambrosia you’re serving the general public in the name of public safety, I still say, Screw You.

Well, it’s 3:30 and California still hasn’t, to my knowledge, given the federal courts a plan to reduce the prison population by 43,000 over the next two years. Imagine that. They don’t have a real plan — well, actually, the real plan all along has been to have the feds come in and take over, so the state can still look tough on crime.

A meager fight is the same as a non fight, which is basically giving up and saying, we don’t know what to do.

There’s nothing wrong with admitting when you are wrong and accepting defeat. But for many, I think it’s more cowardice at the public expense — the public that would rather the problem just go away because we have enough problems already.

“Oh well, oh hell,” as my dad would say.

I hope the feds get it right, and the powers that be use their “new slate” to make changes that may work.

Do unto others as you would have then do unto you.

Can we talk about capitalism now?

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By Steven T. Jones
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Are we actually, finally, about to have a long overdue national conversation about capitalism? I really hope so, and perhaps the catalyst for that conversation can be Michael Moore’s new film, “Capitalism: A Love Story,” which I saw yesterday and which debuts in theaters on Oct. 2.

Moore doesn’t pull any punches in assailing an economic system that has created huge and growing disparities in wealth, corrupted both the public and private sectors, destroyed people’s lives and the country’s manufacturing base, and is both wasteful and unsustainable — a system that even the mainstream clergy he interviews labels as “evil.”

He makes excellent use of last year’s financial meltdown and the electoral gun that Wall Street power brokers (working inside and outside the federal government, Democrats and Republicans alike) held to the heads of Congress members in order to get their $700 billion bailout, which Moore calls a theft of the US treasury.

But it’s his use of archival footage that really brings home just how much capitalist propaganda has conditioned the American people into accepting as natural and inevitable an economic system that is so hostile to their interests. Particularly powerful was a speech that FDR made a year before his death calling for a “Second Bill of Rights” that would guarantee the right to work for livable wages, have access to affordable health care and quality education, housing that is adequate and reasonably priced, a pension and vacation time, and the resources to enjoy recreation and pursue our happiness.

These are reasonable expectations that the richest 1 percent of the country – which Moore shows as actively conspiring against basic equity, fair competition, and the common good, citing an incriminating Citibank memo among other evidence – has removed from the realm of the possible. And it’s time that the people rose up against our economic masters and demanded a new economic system that is sustainable, equitable, and just, something he shows as already starting to happen here and there.

“I refuse to live in a country like this and I’m not leaving,” Moore said toward the end of the film, soon adding, “Capitalism is an evil and you can’t regulate evil — you have to eliminate it.”

Gavin tweets, while Jennifer gives birth?

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It’s typical for women to swear and variously carry on while giving birth. So, one can’t help wondering what Jennifer said when she saw Gavin tweeting, while she was busy pushing out daughter Montana.

LAPD says de la Plaza stabbing may be suicide

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Text by Sarah Phelan

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If de la Plaza really killed himself, how come no one can find the weapon?

I’m still waiting for a copy of this latest report and a call back from SFPD, but the Chronicle is reporting that the LAPD’s review of the 2007 stabbing death of Hugues de la Plaza is leaning towards ruling the case a suicide.

And that’s a verdict that has made de la Plaza’s ex-girlfriend, Melissa Nix, extremely angry.

“It’s very disappointing,” an emotional Nix told me today. ‘It’s a cynical decision that’s meant to silenced critics. How can they explain that a man kills himself when there is no weapon? They should be ashamed of themselves.”

Nix went onto slam the SFPD’s new chief George Gascón .
“This shows that Gascón is not necessarily in favor of cfhange, but of politics as usual,” Nix said. “I think San Francisco should be outraged. And scared. San Francisco can’t be the kind of city where you murder someone and get away with it.”

After a March press conference in which the de la Plaza family announced that French investigators had ruled the stabbing a homicide, and a report from the Office of Citizen Complaints that found that de la Plaza was a low SFPD priority, the SFPD agreed to review the case. And when Gascón took over as SFPD Chief this summer, he called investigators in the LAPD, where he used to work, and asked them to take another look at the case.

But according to the Chronicle, Dr. Venus Azar, the SFPD Medical Examiner in charge of the case, intends to stick by her original finding, namely that the cause of de la Plaza’s death is “undetermined.”

Either way, this case is doubtless going to get people wondering just how many deaths that the SFPD has ruled as suicides or undetermined were actually homicides. And how many murderers wander our streets unchecked.

SF Weekly dredges up the Sixties. Sigh.

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By Tim Redmond

I wasn’t going to say anything about the SF Weekly’s big story on the Weather Underground. I mean, Peter Jamison clearly did a lot of work, it was reported in some detail, and frankly, I’ve over talking about what happened back in 1970.

But it keeps gnawing at me, mostly because I don’t really like this whole idea of dredging up radicals from the past and trying to find ways to put them in jail today. I know, I know, a cop got killed and there’s no statute of limitations for murder, and nobody should ever get away with killing anyone else.

But that was a time when all sorts of people on all sides were doing really fucked-up stuff, from the Vietnam War to COINTELPRO; Geronimo Pratt spent most of his adult life in prison after being framed for a crime he didn’t commit. Fred Hampton was murdered. The list goes on — and none of the perpetrators of the state-backed or state-sanctioned violence have ever paid for their crimes.

You can read a remarkable essay by former Guardian arts editor J.H. Thompkins about it here. His basic take:

The ’60s were full of challenge, and although I’m not a revolutionary now, in my heart, I’m still a revolutionary then. You believed you could change the world and yourself in the process, and that was liberating. The politics were confusing, we made mistakes, and at the end of the day, the fact is that we were right and the other side – racists, politicians, corporate vultures, and the rest – were wrong.

Sometimes I think we should just have a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, put it behind us and move on.

Anyway, I asked an old friend of mine who was around in those days what he thought about the Weekly story. He didn’t want his name used, because even now this shit scares people, and the FBI seems happy to be looking for every Sixties radical it can find. But he had some interesting comments:

I’d heard this story was coming out;. it doesn’t seem credible to me. I wasn’t too far away from that scene during those months they refer to — December ’69-March 1970 — and I don’t think BLA and Weather were much connected. Weather types had showed up in disarray after the fucked up “days of rage” thing. And I just don’t think they had the ties — in fact, I’m almost certain they didn’t. even the early weather people weren’t so stupid as to meet a group (BLA) and then pull some horrific job with them. I’d be more inclined to think it was the splinter Panther, BLA-types, even though that trend wasn’t very big in the bay area.

Cops and FBI statements all sound like typical conspiracy things, general and ignorant of any real nuance. And the writer – what was the point of this? – doesn’t dig much up but aging police sources, but does a good job with the incriminating innuendo.

The most credible voice for the cops is Gitlin; because his statement is very true. The group was nearly defunct after days of rage, and the true believers were prone to crazed hyperbole like Bernadine Dohrn’s Manson riff at Flint. It was like that Sociology 101 book “when prophecy fails,” so they were over the top between the fall and when the townhouse exploded. then it changed dramatically.

But I still don’t think that it makes any sense. The Weather people were so naive and so new to it at the end of ’69; I just don’t think they could have – or would have – pulled it off. Plus, and I was closer to the people if not the group as ’70 wore on, I never heard one whiff of gossip about it, and those people loved to tell their stories. What’s more disturbing is the way all this stuff sets precedents, softening up people so that the country is used to finding demon radicals in America again.

I don’t know if Weather Underground was involved in this bombing. I do know that it’s almost impossible at this point to prove it, one way or another. There were too many nutcases doing too much crazy stuff, and all this can possibly lead to is another show trial that seeks to put the Sixties on defense again.

I’m kind of over that, too.

How Newsom chooses commissioners

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By Tim Redmond

The Small Business Commission isn’t one of the highest-profile public bodies in San Francisco, but to the tens of thousands of small entrepreneurs in the city, it’s important. So the recent appointment of Luke O’Brien to a vacancy on the panel left a lot of small business activists scratching their heads.

“Nobody knew this individual,” Scott Hauge, one of the city’s best-connected and active small business leaders, told me. “As far as we know, he’s never been active in small business issues.”

When the seat opened up, the commission’s director, Regina Dick-Endrizzi, let the small business community know there was on opening, and advised interested people to send in recommendations, and Hauge and others had plenty to offer. But in the end, the way the new commissioner was chosen says a lot about how Newsom makes decisions — and how little he cares about real community input.

O’Brien, according to a resume the mayor’s office sent over, has a background in sales, engineering and technical support and has worked for several technology companies, including Lucent, where he was a corporate sales engineering manager, and two start-ups, one in Mountain View and one in Reno. In 2003, he joined Pattani Construction, a San Francisco outfit run by Mel Murphy, a developer and Residential Builders Association guy who holds the RBA seat on the Department of Building Inspection Commission. When Murphy set up a real-estate investment company the next year, O’Brien joined him as vice president and partner.

According to the mayor’s press secretary, Nathan Ballard,

Commissioner O’Brien will work to ensure that small local construction companies get their fair share of construction dollars. He will work with Small Business Commission Director Regina Dick-Endrizzi and Supervisor David Chiu on their ongoing efforts to reduce redundant and unnecessary businesses fees, and will bring needed expertise into those business fees flowing out of the DBI and Planning Department that are most onerous for small businesses.

In other words, he’s an RBA guy who wants to make life easier for developers. He’s given money to Newsom allies, including Doug Chan for Supervisor and Joe Alioto for supervisor. (I haven’t been able to reach O’Brien, but I left him a message and I’ll let you know if I hear back.)

Since he has no visible background in the small business community, none of the activists had ever heard of him, and none of the names that Hauge and his allies submitted had made the cut, I asked Ballard who the mayor had met with, reached out to or discussed this appointment with. His response:

“O’Brien was recommended to us by his business partner, Mel Murphy.”

Burning Man’s contribution to urbanism

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By Steven T. Jones

Time.com’s “5 Things Cities Can Learn from Burning Man”

Gabriel Metcalf was just giddy when he heard about Burning Man’s 2010 art theme: “Metropolis: The Life of Cities.” It beautifully brought together two of his two passions. In addition to being a four-time attendee of the event, he’s the executive director of the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association.

“I can’t believe the Burning Man theme. It’s just so awesome,” he said, palpably giddy. “Black Rock City is one of the great cities of the world.”

That’s high praise from someone whose days are devoted to studying urban life and its myriad challenges, and a testament to the fact that Black Rock City has successfully made the transition from frontier to city. Metcalf was equally excited about the other Burning Man news that I reported in today’s Guardian: how Black Rock LLC wants to create a year-round retreat and think tank on the playa and how they want a high-profile headquarters in the vicinity of SPUR’s new Urban Center, which opened earlier this year.

“One thing I love about Burning Man taking on the question of urbanism is it’s going to not just be about physical placement, how you lay out the blocks and streets, but about community in a larger sense,” Metcalf said. “The exploration of different forms of community is what I think is so interesting and transformative for the people who go there.”

Business as usual at City Hall this fall?

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Tuesday marked a return to business, as the Board of Supervisors reconvened after a month-long recess.
It also seemed to mark a return to business as usual on the part of those elected officials who occupy City Hall, including Mayor Gavin Newsom, and, of course, the folks who love to hate them.
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Outside, former D8 supervisorial candidate, Libertarian Party member and sex worker Starchild, tanned and stripped down to the waist, was demanding an audit of the federal reserve as outlined in H.R. 1207, and as part of the “Campaign for Liberty.”

Prison report: Mass releases?

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By Just A Guy

Editors note: Just A Guy is an inmate in the California state prison system. His dispatches run twice a week.

I am constantly amazed at the cowardice of the politicians who are running this state. The Legislature passed the prison bill, reducing the population by 16,000 inmates — but this is a watered-down bill that still leaves $200 million more for California to wrest from other areas, like education and health care.

No one wants to be seen as soft on crime — but a lot of the crimes people are in prison for are moral crimes. Any crime in which there is not an actual victim — that is, a person or entity — should not be a crime, period.

Eighteen percent of the inmates in California are in for drug-related crimes — possession or sales. That’s roughly 30,000 people. Why not let all of them out, now?

Politicians seem only able to describe the decisions they make when they are accused of something — rarely do we see a thoughtful conversation held about a topic that necessitates a dialogue. Like the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, these legislators do what they want, when they want, to whom ever they want, but hide behind the veil of public safety when questioned about their actions — which will, in the long term, harm public safety.

I don’t understand how the general public keeps allowing this ridiculous spending on prisons to go on unquestioned. Are the voters so caught up in their own little worlds to not realize the long-term impact of the terrible laws and terrible system? It must be — because it keeps going on, unchecked.

The president’s health-care reform plan has the public screaming and yelling and talking about long-term costs etc. But they can’t seem the forest for the trees when it comes to prison spending. It goes to show how shortsighted people can be when it comes to their own wallets. It’s akin to never getting your home checked for termites, then being surprised when the house comes crashing down around you, but the chimney still stands.

It’s pretty obvious that the plan in Sacramento is really to just allow the feds to come in and take over the problem. California has until Friday to show the court its plan to replace the prison pop by 43,000 over the next two years. Right: They can’t even figure out how to reduce it by 27,000 over one year. You think they’ll come up with a workable plan by Friday?

The Supreme Court already denied CA’s appeal to extend the deadline.

Mass releases — coming soon, to a theater near you.

MisterMayor? Is anybody home?

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By Rebecca Bowe


Video by Sarah Phelan

SEIU Local 1021 paid a visit to Mayor Gavin Newsom at his City Hall office yesterday, but his doors remained closed and locked. It won’t be the last time Newsom will hear from them, however. The union is launching an aggressive campaign to “dog the mayor,” organizer Robert Halaand told the Guardian, to pressure him to uphold the city’s commitment to comparable worth.

In 1986, San Franciscans approved Proposition H to enshrine the principal of comparable worth — ensuring pay equity for jobs that are held predominantly by women and people of color in an effort to combat institutional sexism and racial discrimination. Since certified nursing assistants (CNAs) and unit clerks employed in San Francisco’s public hospitals fit that description, their pay was gradually increased in the years following the passage of Prop. H.

However, budget cuts made in recent months resulted in those hospital employees getting cut and simultaneously reclassified into lower-paying positions. From SEIU’s perspective, the downgrades signify a form of discrimination and the reversal of a hard-won gain for women and people of color in San Francisco.

Michael Moore coming to SF

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By Steven T. Jones

We’re now getting word that the Commonwealth Club’s Inforum speakers series has just landed a big fish for this week: filmmaker Michael Moore, whose new “Capitalism: A Love Story” promises to make a big splash when it hits theaters on Oct. 2 (check out the glowing review of the film by Beyond Chron’s Randy Shaw, who saw an advanced showing yesterday at the AFL-CIO national convention).

Inforum officials tell us Moore will speak here in San Francisco on Thursday evening, Sept. 17, although details and ticket information haven’t yet been posted on the club’s website, although that’s expected soon. More to come.

Newsom can’t rewrite history, but he can sell his soul

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By Steven T. Jones
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On the day that former President Bill Clinton endorsed Gavin Newsom’s campaign for governor, it’s hard to believe the local blog post that Newsom is about to call it quits, and sources I consulted dispute key tenets of the anonymously sourced article. Yet there’s still plenty of reason to believe that Newsom’s quest is doomed.

While Newsom’s sleazy affair with Ruby Rippey-Tourk was already bound to hurt his candidacy, it is how he handled it afterward that really makes Newsom look untrustworthy and immoral. I attended the 2007 press conference where Newsom blithely admitted “everything you may have heard or read is true” regarding the affair, only to recently tell the New York Times Magazine and Fast Company just the opposite, that there was “a story that has yet to come out” in which Newsom looks good.

This is seriously delusional stuff, the product of a deeply megalomaniacal mind, as if he actually sees himself as a victim for banging his top aide’s wife. It’s reminiscent of his wife Jennifer Siebel’s disturbing quote in the Chronicle that was followed by her crazy extended comment to SFist blaming Ruby for the affair and excusing Newsom’s behavior on the grounds that she supposedly showed up drunk at his door, an odd “date rape as defense” strategy.

I and other journalists have long hounded Newsom to address issues raised by the affair, and he’s always refused to discuss it. Yet now, as he worries about the impact of this affair on his ambitions, suddenly there’s an “untold story.” Newsom is already held in very low esteem even by his former supporters, but if he and his top political henchman, Garry South, continue to try to rewrite this sordid history by dragging the Tourks through the mud again, our mayor might find himself a top candidate for San Francisco’s All-Time Hall of Shame.

Gavin, if you still have a soul, now’s probably a good time to search it and decide if you really want to trade it in for your longshot pursuit of power.

Update on effort to close Potrero power plant

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By Rebecca Bowe

The California Independent System Operator (ISO), a quasi-governmental body that oversees the state’s electric grid, held a hearing about San Francisco’s Mirant Potrero Power Plant on Friday to decide whether the polluting facility should be required to stay in operation through next year.

The hearing came about a month after City Attorney Dennis Herrera struck a deal with Mirant to shutter the entire plant by the end of 2010. That agreement will only stick if the ISO is willing to release the plant from a Reliability Must Run (RMR) contract, which has kept it in operation for decades despite opposition from San Francisco elected officials.

In short, the ISO indicated that it would be willing to release Unit 3 — which represents the lion’s share of the power plant’s emissions — from the RMR contract by spring of 2010, but it still hasn’t budged on the smaller, diesel-fired units known as 4, 5, and 6.

We received this detailed update from Joshua Arce, executive director of the Brightline Defense Project, who attended the hearing.

I would summarize by saying that environmental and community groups saw movement from ISO, but we think they can do better.

I’ll miss the defenestration building

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By Tim Redmond

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I’m not about to start a campaign here; I know the place is falling apart and a hazard to everyone and ought to be turned into affordable housing, so there’s no rational reason to protest the Redevelopment Agency’s plan to bulldoze the old Hugo Hotel.

But I have to say: I’m going to miss the place.

It just sat there for so long, a weird piece of street art, an abandoned building with furniture flowing out of the windows and hanging on the walls defying gravity and progress. Every time I’d pass by, I’d say: God, I love this fucking city.

It was just art for art’s sake, no money in it, no sign describing the vision of the artist, no discussion of what it means or meant … just old stuff miraculously bolted to the old crumbling walls of an an old crumbling building. I always wondered what would fall down first and what the green couch would look like after it hit the sidewalk.

It was never meant to be permanent. And now it will be gone. That’s appropriate, in a sad kind of way.

But every time something truly strange goes away, San Francisco loses a bit of itself. I hope we don’t forget this one; maybe Redevelopment can find the cash to hire a photographer to document the place, and put great big color pictures of it up in the lobby of the new, clean, sterile project that takes its place, just to remind us that things were different here, once.

The Legislature’s all-nighter fails

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The state Legislature wrapped up its session around 7 a.m. Saturday, after officially stopping the clock on the midnight deadline and pretending it wasn’t the next day yet until 120 elected officials endured a sleepless night and a lot of critical work didn’t get done. The really bad all-nighters in college were the ones when you felt like hell the next day and didn’t finish the term paper anyway.

There’s a pretty good roundup here and hereon a couple of the bills.

It’s remarkable: Governor Schwarzenegger is going to veto the very bill he initially proposed. He’s going to sign a prison reform bill that doesn’t even come close to doing what he agrees has to be done to cut prison costs. And unless he calls a special session of the Legislature to deal with water issues, there will be nothing to stave off the near-collapse of the Bay/Delta estuary.

Meanwhile, of course, the Republicans refused to back down and approve a tiny $16 million allocation to save domestic violence sheters (which literally save lives).

At least the Senate refused to exempt a bizarre sports stadium plan in Southern California from CEQA; it looked for a while there as if the legislators were going to cut a huge hole in the state’s landmark environmental law just to please a billionaire.

Hell of a session. Can’t wait for the fall.

UPDATE: Prison reform squeaks through

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By Tim Redmond

Well, the state Senate just approved the Assembly’s version of a prison reform bill, which is too weak but at least it’s something. It will go back to the Assembly tonight.

By the way, if you want to watch all the end-of-session madness — the bills flying through, the impassioned speeches and the outright nuttery (I was just enjoying the debate in the Assembly over limits on mail-order ammunition — good God, these Republicans are strange), you can get streaming video here.

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