By Bruce B. Brugmann (Scroll down to vote against PG&E and for the Clean Energy Act)
Already, even before the supervisors approve the new San Francisco Clean Energy Act, PG&E operatives are down the poles like firemen and women.
Their first strike is a poll in the July ll edition of the San Francisco Business Times, a link in the American City Business Journals chain, the nation’s largest publisher of metropolitan business journals, headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Business Times did a poll for PG&E, a major advertiser, that poses these questions right out of the PG&E playbook with the same tired old PG&E arguments.
“Should voters be asked–for the fourth time in a decade–whether San Francisco should take over the city’s electric utility?
“”Yes. As Supervisor Mirkarimi says, San Francisco voters should finally back ‘removing the profit motive from the private sector delivery of electric service.
“”No, no, no…No. San Francisco can’t make the buses run on time. But it can find power to keep the lights on? Yeah, and maybe it could finance buying out PG&E by selling the Golden Gate Bridge.”
As attentive Guardian readers know, this is nonsense and the Business Times, as a paper that purports to write seriously about business and consumer issues, to act as the voice of PG&E so quickly and so cravenly even before the initiative is approved. Public power is the only new large potential revenue source for the city, would be much cheaper and cleaner than PG&E power, and would be locally accountable to the local public. More, it would finally bring the city into compliance with the federal Raker Act, which mandates public power for San Francisco because the Raker Act allowed the city a major concession to dam Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park for our water and power supply.
Cast your vote below. For early evidence of PG&E’s emerging campaign of lies, misdirection and astroturfing, read last week’s Guardian by Amanda Witherell. For the case to “Support SF’s Clean Energy plan,” read the editorial below in the Wednesday Guardian.
Alert: The Supervisors’ rules committee will hold a critical hearing on the initiative at 2 p.m. Wednesday at City Hall, Room 273, item eight on the agenda. Attend if you can and stay alert for more PG&E shenanigans. On guard, for the big battle ahead, B3, who is counting on the clean energy movement to knock out the Potrero HIll power plant tthat I see every day from my office window
Click here to vote in the San Francisco Business Times’ survey.
Click here for this week’s editorial, Support SF’s Clean Energy Act.
Click here to read last week’s article by Amanda Witherell titled, The dirty fight over clean power