Man, we thought we'd be able to get through a week without any sort of Gavin bombshell, but we were wrong. As the saying goes, everytime we think we're out, he pulls us back in. So today there's a big story about Ruby Rippey-Tourk taking a paid ten-week leave of absence maybe illegally, maybe not. Basically, the time off given to her was not commiserate with the amount of time she worked. Now, employees down in city hall are allowed to give their sick time to somebody if they really, really need it and supposedly, Ruby's fellow coworkers donated their time to her. The question, of course, is whether or not they did it out of the kindness of their own hearts or whether Gavin asked them to while making all sorts of hints about how they should really, really donate their time. The Bay Guardian is reporting that the time off was requested by her husband, Alex and that her coworkers wanted to help out. Fog City, however, says that her coworkers weren't very down with it all. The other thing is that the money she was given was much more than normally allowed. ...

If you're not outraged yet about Muni -- the fare increases, the service cuts, the refusal to abide by legally mandated schedules, the f**king DEATHS -- just feast your eyes on the early-distribution copy of a new report by the SF Planning and Urban Research Association (PDF). Not only could Muni face a $1,000,000,000 (BILLION! BILLION! BILLLLLLLLION!) shortfall in the coming years, but guess what: those $1.50 fare increases and service cuts they forced......

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! These observations are all common sense, but they've been made official in a report released last week by the San Francisco's Planning and Urban Research Association. The report (which, according to Bay Area Transit News, is a 7 meg PDF that......