COURT JESTERINGS
With h brown
Photo(s) by
Luke Thomas
Court Jester reviews Salon, tidal power,
phone call to imprisoned journalist Josh Wolf
March 6, 2007
"It's amazing how much people love you.'"
(Eileen Left)
Do you get angst when you plan an event? Wonder if anyone will
actually show up and if they do, will they start a fight or if
you might? It's a normal host/ess thing I bet.
"Do more people come when it rains?"
(Chris Daly at Friday's Salon)
Yeah, actually, they do (he was referring to his last visit
when it poured and 25 people made it anyway). It was the weekly
Bulldog Salon and there were only a half dozen or so settling
in for the 2 hour dine and whine I've hosted for 2 years now.
I allowed that he was early (on time) and the others would straggle
in as they finished filming and observing and questioning the
lunch rallies and the like.
We got around 15 or more finally and it was worth his while
and worth ours too. Hey, we ain't the friggin' Commonwealth Club,
but we do OK. Chris brought young Jack, which is guaranteed good
vibes all around.
Friday's Salon was intense and we talked about every candidate
from every corner of the spectrum in every race and everyone was
honest, so I can't repeat anything that was said.
Suffice to say that Salon Progressives do not yet have a candidate
for Mayor or anything else.
I like to fight. Very much, actually. You gotta be on the right
side in your own mind, but there ain't nothing like fighting.
The method and stakes for the conflict are what defines the satisfaction
you derive from the outcome. Or, the consequences.
"Talk about Josh Wolf and Tidal Power."
(Eileen)
Yeah, all that aside, it's a day later and the Board is meeting
in 5 hours and I have to alert you to one item that concerns me
and should concern the planet. Hell, let's get to that now.
PG&E moves to privatize Tidal Power
Item
#33 on today's
San Francisco Board of Supervisors' meeting is sponsored by the
Mayor's Office. The Mayor is a lackey of PG&E (which advertises
heavily amongst my brothers and sisters in the alternative media).
Gavin's one of PG&E's bitches and this item is a request
to accept money from a private corporation to fund meetings to:
"Engaging key stakeholders and interest groups to solicit
input and build support for a tidal energy project"
Kids, this sounds like something Dick Cheney might have put
together for Halliburton. Remember the big meeting he had in the
White House after Bush was elected and he invited all the oil
companies and still refuses to release even the list of the attendees?
This one is hide-in-plain-site. Same people. I dug into the
minutes of the last SFPUC and Department of the Environment meetings
and found that they gave $146k to URS (used to be controlled by
Dianne Feinstein's hubby, Dick Blum … gave em that to do
a tidal feasibility study. And, added another hundred grand or
more for a lobbyist!
Kids, you're not only watching a potential new City owned and
operated industry that could eliminate all taxes (yeah, we could
build 5 plants in the Bay producing 10,000 megawatts of clean
power 10 hours daily - the potential here is astounding).
It is astounding, which makes it amazing that PG&E is so
cheap that they want the City to pay for their meetings and their
lobbying. Item #33's calls upon the Board to accept a grant of
$200k from the 'Sidney E. Frank Foundation'. It took one google
search to hook Sidney Frank Imports to PG&E.
Here's a curveball
You can't stop PG&E. Virtually every major power in the
City, elected and otherwise has at least one PG&E debt. I
favor public power and tidal energy as the lowest of low-hanging
fruit in the alternative energy spectrum. Only major oil and utility
megaliths have prevented its development. Now it's gonna happen.
A shout-out to Josh Wolf
Julian Davis was at the Salon Pot Luck and he got Josh Wolf
on the phone for us. It was awkward. I can't help but thinking
that we've failed him and he's the only one behind bars. I fired
off something about no matter what happened that he'd be rich
in a year from the book and movie right, but it went over like
a led balloon. You don't cheer an anarchist up by talking about
material things. Josh's letter from prison is an American epistle.
3 weeks of mediation on his case. I researched the guy doing
the mediation. Appointed in '98. That's Clinton, right? Presiding
judge is a guy named Joseph Spero. I like the cut of his jib.
He doesn't red flag in any of my paranoid/data bases. He writes
well and has a broad range of abilities. These cases for arbitration
do what they call: 'coming over the wheel' which, I think, means
they are assigned randomly. From what I see, Josh did OK here.
I wonder if Judge Spero realizes he has the most important 1st
amendment case of the new millennium sitting in his in-box?
Those of you without a life, google:
Open
Hydro, Scotland
Burt
Hamner, Puget Sound
Hydro
Venturi, San Francisco
Judge
William Alsup, Guam
Just a start.
h. brown is a 62 year-old keeper of sfbulldog.com,
an eclectic site featuring a half dozen City Hall denizens. h
is a former sailor, firefighter, teacher, nightclub owner, and
a hard-living satirical muckraker. Email
h at h@ludd.net.
####
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