We admit, sometimes we get a little slacky when it gets close to a holiday, especially one as heady as Indigenous Peoples' Day. (That's why, later this week, you can look forward to us re-running our 1973 liveblogging of ABC's Nixon Family Thanksgiving Extravaganza.) And apparantly we're not the only ones: when we were reading the letters to the editor of The Examiner yesterday, we sensed an aura of deja vu around a letter from David Heller, the prez of a Geary Street merchants' association. What is it about his letter -- which argues against dedicated bus lines on Geary, despite the SPUR report's suggestion that they would actually be a huge improvement -- that's so strangely familiar, like the haunting melody of pain and love, drifting on a supple summer breeze? Oh, yeah, it's copied word-for-word from a letter he wrote back in September. Does it count as plagiarism if you're stealing material from yourself? more ›

According to Bay Area Transit News, the Board of Supes voted a 7-to-4 thumbs down to Hunter Stern last Tuesday. (Oddly, the vote was observed in the Examiner and SJ Merc, but not on the Supes' website ... WTF?) Gavin Newsom nominated Hunter for a seat on the MTA board, which oversees MUNI, San Francisco's self-declared transit agency. Hunter's qualifications? Well, er, that's the sticky point. He's never worked in the transit field before -- not even an arabian horse show. And as an official at International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, he helped defeat a public power measure. Says Supe Tom Ammiano in the Examiner, "those campaigning against public power used Muni as the butt of many jokes -- 'You want public power? Look at what you got in Muni.'" The Supes also reportedly didn't think much of his "vision" for the MTA, whatever that means, or his failure to weigh in on raising funds via taxes or fare hikes. more ›

News flash: Muni is slow! Inefficient! Inconvenient! Losing money! Losing riders! It's cutting service, cutting employees, and cutting its own wrists. Muni's forming new enemies by the minute. Oh man, what a scoop! more ›