by Gar Alperovitz, Ted Howard & Thad Williamson

Something important is happening in Cleveland: a new model of
large-scale worker- and community-benefiting enterprises is beginning to build serious momentum in one of the cities most dramatically impacted by the nation's decaying economy. The Evergreen Cooperative Laundry (ECL)--a worker-owned, industrial-size, thoroughly "green"
operation--opened its doors late last fall in Glenville, a neighborhood with a median income hovering around $18,000. It's the first of ten major enterprises in the works in Cleveland, where the poverty rate is more than 30 percent and the population has declined from 900,000 to
less than 450,000 since 1950.

Prop 16 informational hearing at CPUC on March 17 1-5 pm. California Public Utilities Commission 505 Van Ness Avenue, Commission Auditorium (Corner of Van Ness Avenue and McAllister Street) San Francisco If you want to testify contact Marzia Zafar at the CPUC at marzia.zafar@cpuc.ca.gov

Posted at 10:20 PM on Thursday, Feb. 25, 2010
By Dan Walters / The Sacramento Bee

Sacramento-area voters, responding to a Sacramento Bee-led crusade, voted in 1923 to divorce themselves from Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and create a publicly owned electric utility, but it took 23 more years before Sacramento Municipal Utility District began serving customers.

Why so long? PG&E fought a rear-guard action to delay the SMUD takeover, before finally losing in a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case.

Nearly a century later, PG&E still is resisting efforts to create publicly owned utilities, beating back several public power campaigns in San Francisco and, most recently, an effort to expand SMUD's territory into adjacent Yolo County.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2010

On February 25, I had the privilege of testifying on Proposition 16 before the joint hearing of the California Senate Energy, Utilities and Telecommunications Committee and the California Assembly Utilities and Commerce Committee. This is what I said:

Thank you for the opportunity to be heard in opposition to Proposition 16. I delivered my first legislative testimony to your predecessor committees in 1975. In the ensuing 35 years, beside spending two decades in the bond markets, I served as Executive Director of the California Energy Commission when Jerry Brown was Governor; as the Chairman of the California Power Exchange during our disastrous experience with incompetent market regulation; as a Board member of the CalISO when Governor Davis asserted the State's authority over that body; and as the attorney member of the California Energy Commission from 2002 to 2008. I'm proud to say we licensed 26 power plants and one transmission line during my most recent tenure at the CEC.

Joint Legislative Hearing Feb. 25, 2010. Pt. Office of Legislative Analysis Staff Report
This hearing includes passionate testimony by brave California legislators, city and agency officials and citizens standing up to PG&E, one of the most powerful corporations in the U. S., about Prop. 16.
Deceptively marketed by PG&E with a $35 million P.R. budget as safeguarding 'tax-payer rights.

Legislative Analysis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxIsM775x-E

Proponents Testimony
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0nHfXeAdDw

By: Melanie Mason
February 24, 2010 – 4:05 pm
Garrett Fitzgerald, towering over the podium in a blazer, button-down shirt and no tie, is at the Al Gore part of his talk—briskly outlining what scientists are saying about climate change. His presentation has nothing like the standard climate activist’s well-worn stock of photos of adorable polar bear cubs, futilely clinging to disappearing ice. Instead, his pitch hits much closer to home: Oakland.

He clicks through maps illustrating how a projected rise in sea level by the end of the century could take out Oakland’s airport. Next comes a chart documenting how a decline in the Sierra snowpack is endangering the city’s water supply. He veers away from sensationalism as he clicks through his PowerPoint: “Some of you may have seen the movie The Day After Tomorrow,” he says, referencing the 2004 epic in which global warming gets the Hollywood disaster treatment. “It probably won’t be that bad. But there’s plenty of reason to say we need to be cautious.” His message is simple: don’t worry about climate change’s effects on the poor cute polar bear—worry about climate change for yourself.

Richard Halstead
Posted: 02/23/2010 04:52:18 PM PST

The Marin Board of Supervisors on Tuesday rejected most of the findings contained in a civil grand jury report that recommended pulling the plug on the Marin Clean Energy initiative.
The initiative, a program of the Marin Energy Authority, aims at reducing greenhouse gases by offering Marin residents the opportunity to purchase electricity generated from a higher percentage of renewable sources than offered by Pacific Gas and Electric Co.

02.23.10 - 2:31 pm | Bruce Brugmann

Every single elected official, candidate for office, and political group in the state that isn't entirely bought off by PG&E needs to loudly oppose Prop. 16 - now

EDITORIAL Pacific Gas and Electric Co. has found few allies in its effort to halt the spread of public power in California. The Sacramento Bee has come out strongly against PG&E's initiative, Proposition 16 on the June ballot. Los Angeles Times columnists have denounced it. Six Democratic leaders in the California Senate have called for the company to withdraw the measure. Even the California Association of Realtors, hardly a radical environmental group, has come out strongly against the measure, in part because it's so badly worded that it could halt residential and commercial development in large parts of the state.