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 Chamber of Commerce'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

Continue reading "Shop Local, get more" »

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Posted by Bruce B. Brugmann at 04:55 PM | Comments (0)

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.

Continue reading "Stop PG&E's corporate welfare!" »

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Posted by Bruce B. Brugmann at 11:47 AM | Comments (0)

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.

Continue reading "PG&E's new move to screw residential customers" »

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Posted by Bruce B. Brugmann at 03:16 PM | Comments (0)

Today's Ammianoliner:

Ammiano to leave oval office. Refuses to pardon Ed Jew.

(From the telephone answering machine in the home of Sup. Tom Ammiano on Friday, Nov. 28, 2008. Wednesday Nov 26 was Amminano's last day as San Francisco Supervisor. He is moving on to the State Assembly.)

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Posted by Bruce B. Brugmann at 02:14 PM | Comments (0)

By Bruce B. Brugmann

For sometime now, I have been asking the question, how much more damage can Bush do before he heads back to clear brush at his ranch in Crawford.

The damage notices are coming almost daily. For example, today (11/28/08)a story in the Los Angeles Times (on how a $200 billion lending plan hurts students and consumers on predatory, usurious loans) and an editorial in the New York Times (on the stripping of a key provision in the Clean Air Act will harm clean air) makes the point yet again in 96 point tempo bold. Get Bush and his cadre out and start the campaign of damage reversal and control. And get the congressional investigations going allegro furioso.

Click here to read Amit R. Paley's Friday November 28 article in the L.A. Times, Private student loan rescues opposed: A $200-billion federal consumer-lending plan shouldn’t benefit private providers of student loans, several groups tell Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

Click here to read the Friday November 28 editorial in the New York Times, A Clean Air Rule to Keep.

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Posted by Bruce B. Brugmann at 02:02 PM | Comments (0)

Here is a column by M. J. Akbar from Project Syndicate's The World in Words series. Akbar, a former member of India's parliament and advisor to the late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, was the founding editor of The Asian Age and is an Asia Society Associate Fellow.

India’s Agony

By M.J. Akbar

MUMBAI – In most cities of South Asia, hidden beneath the grime and neglect of extreme poverty, there exists a little Somalia waiting to burst out and infect the body politic. This netherworld, patrolled and nourished by criminals who operate a vast black-market economy, has bred, in Mumbai, a community that has utter contempt for the state, because it knows that its survival depends on corrupting the police. Like underground magma, that underworld has now burst into the streets of Mumbai.

Continue reading "Akbar: India’s Agony" »

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Posted by Bruce B. Brugmann at 01:22 PM | Comments (0)

Iraq Veterans Against War to Occupy Union Square (SF) on FRIDAY

* THIS PRESS RELEASE IS BEING SENT BY THE WORLD CAN'T WAIT AS A COURTESY TO THE IRAQ VETERANS AGAINST THE WAR; Please contact IVAW with inquiries

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, From Iraq Veterans Against the War, www.ivaw.org Tuesday, November 25, 2008 Press Contact: Eddie Falcon, Iraq Vets Against the War: (714) 381-9825 eddiefalcon400@hotmail.com

*Iraq Veterans Against the War to Occupy Union Square*
*Street Theater Showing the Brutal and Unjust Consequences of Occupying a Foreign Country*

What: Operation First Casualty (OFC), San Francisco

When: FRIDAY, November 28
11am-2pm

Where: Union Square (Start; "Round-Ups") – 11am sharp
Moscone Center (Mock Interrogations)
Powell St. Turnaround (Die-In)
U.N. Plaza Fountain *(PRESS CONFERENCE)- 1pm *
*PHOTO OPS

Continue reading "Veterans against war protest Friday" »

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Posted by Bruce B. Brugmann at 01:04 PM | Comments (0)

Guardian editorial for Wednesday paper (11/26/2008):

The water board can shut down the Mirant power plant at the bottom of Potrero Hill. The city could then come back with a peaker plan that environmentalists can accept or find a way to accept CAL-ISO's mandates without new fossil fuel generation. That sounds like an excellent outcome to us.

Continue reading "Water board can close the Mirant power plant" »

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Posted by Bruce B. Brugmann at 04:30 PM | Comments (1)

This article by Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel prizing winning economist and professor of economics at Columbia University in New York City, is one of the best I've seen on what went wrong with the economy and what can be done about it by the Obama team. It appeared in the November Vanity Fair magazine, shortly before the election.
His monthly column will appear in the Bruce blog. B3

The past as prologue? Lining up for food and water, Louisville, Kentucky, 1937. By Margaret Bourke-White/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images.

Reversal of Fortune

Describing how ideology, special-interest pressure, populist politics, and sheer incompetence have left the U.S. economy on life support, the author puts forth a clear, commonsense plan to reverse the Bush-era follies and regain America’s economic sanity.

by Joseph E. Stiglitz November 2008

When the American economy enters a downturn, you often hear the experts debating whether it is likely to be V-shaped (short and sharp) or U-shaped (longer but milder). Today, the American economy may be entering a downturn that is best described as L-shaped. It is in a very low place indeed, and likely to remain there for some time to come.

Virtually all the indicators look grim. Inflation is running at an annual rate of nearly 6 percent, its highest level in 17 years. Unemployment stands at 6 percent; there has been no net job growth in the private sector for almost a year. Housing prices have fallen faster than at any time in memory—in Florida and California, by 30 percent or more. Banks are reporting record losses, only months after their executives walked off with record bonuses as their reward. President Bush inherited a $128 billion budget surplus from Bill Clinton; this year the federal government announced the second-largest budget deficit ever reported. During the eight years of the Bush administration, the national debt has increased by more than 65 percent, to nearly $10 trillion (to which the debts of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae should now be added, according to the Congressional Budget Office). Meanwhile, we are saddled with the cost of two wars. The price tag for the one in Iraq alone will, by my estimate, ultimately exceed $3 trillion.

Click here to continue reading Joseph E. Stiglitz's article published in the November 2008 issue of Vanity Fair.

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Posted by Bruce B. Brugmann at 06:40 PM | Comments (0)

Today's Ammianoliner:

Prop 8 backlash causes Mormon Tabernacle Temple to become Mormon Tabernacle Trio.

(From the telephone answering machine in the home of Sup. Tom Ammiano on Monday, Nov. 24, 2008)

Welcome back,Tom. You need to be on the cutting edge and in fighting trim from now on if you are going to tackle those hard-charging lobbyists up in Sacramento. B3

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Posted by Bruce B. Brugmann at 05:05 PM | Comments (0)