It hasn't been a good year, or three, for the U.S. Postal Service.
Some of us thought they were done for, considering they experience a whopping $16 billion dollar loss in revenue last year and the looming announcement of possibly ending Saturday delivery.
So, what has U.S. Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe done to fix this? Well, let's just say he found salvation in good 'ole alcohol.
If you're a BART commuter, you have a governor -- and a judge -- to thank if you get to work on time Monday.
With the Bay Area mere days away from the second BART strike in as many months, it was Gov. Jerry Brown who came to the rescue on Friday.
Brown -- who last week bought Bay Area commuters a weeklong reprieve, after a 30-day extension on labor negotiations between BART and its unions expired Aug. 4 -- announced Friday that he will ask a San Francisco Superior Court judge to impose a 60-day cooling off period that would push the next strike to October.
BART workers went on strike for four and a half days in early July, and are $44 million apart from management on terms for a new labor agreement.
A hearing on the 60-day cooling off period is scheduled for Sunday morning.
Labor's power in the United States is on the decline -- less than 12 percent of all workers are organized these days -- but unions still wield power in California. Labor is particularly strong in the Bay Area, where few politicians last long who can't count on money and clout from the unions.
That could be why local elected officials aren't taking sides in the labor strife over at BART. From U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer on down, politicians haven't had much to say (aside from hoping that everything gets resolved one way or another).
Business leaders aren't happy about this. The Chamber of Commerce on Friday issued a release demanding that the politicians do something -- but again refrained from taking a side. Only a few members of the state Legislature have sounded off with an opinion -- and it seemed to sympathize with the unions.
Once considered "America's most eligible bachelor," Gurbaksh Chahal, an Internet advertising magnate worth millions, has pled not guilty to 47 charges including assault with a deadly weapon, false imprisonment and battery, in connection with an allegedly violent argument with his girlfriend, according to the District Attorney's office.
Attorneys for the 31-year-old CEO of Internet advertising company RadiumOne, and resident of Rincon Hill, have called the charges, which accuse him of wielding a pillow with deadly force, "overblown and misleading," according to a report by the SF Examiner.
Families of the Asiana crash victims filed a whole flurry of lawsuits against airplane manufacturer Boeing this week, including a class action in Chicago, where Boeing's corporate headquarters are located, and three in San Francisco district court. Burlingame attorney Frank Pitre, who represents the Bay Area plaintiffs, says he's teeing up a fourth suit today to spurn the company for negligence, passenger liability, and breach of warranty.
He says that Boeing should have known how to properly outfit its planes in light of a similar wreck in 2009, when a Turkish 737 broke into three pieces after crash-landing in Amsterdam, killing 9 passengers. Evidently the company failed to profit from that teachable moment, Pitre says. Not only did Boeing bypass a Dutch Safety Board order to install aural command low-speed warnings in each of its 737 jets -- including the ill-fated Flight 214 -- it also dawdled on a host of other amenities.
So remember all those posts we wrote earlier this week about the BART strike being narrowly averted? Uh, just kidding. Maybe. BART's unions renewed their strike threat Thursday, announcing that if they don't see progress at the bargaining table by this evening, they may issue yet another 48 hour notice.
The marmot who hitched a ride to Bernal Heights to fuel her antifreeze addiction is off the streets. She'll soon be on her way back to the mountains -- where she belongs.
The captured marmot -- who goes by "Bernal Marmot" on her Twitter handle -- was spotted Wednesday night by a neighbor who called animal control, according to the Bernalwood blog.
Pet Food Express is a great company that showers an inordinate amount of money and resources upon rescue animals and animal welfare organizations -- and Lombard Street is a disaster that could use the foot traffic.
Pet Food Express is a chain that could put small pet shops under, and was in 2009 denied permission by the Planning Commission to move into the very same Lombard Street digs it now hopes to occupy -- and has allowed to go to seed in the years since.
And there you have it -- more than 100 public speakers at Thursday night's Planning Commission meeting spent a great deal of time making those points in various manners and at various decibel levels during a lengthy hearing. (After more than two hours of public speaking on this issue Planning Commission President Rodney Fong asked "are there any more speakers?" In the silence that followed, one of his colleagues could be heard to whisper, "Quick! Close it!").
In the end, the commission opted to spurn Pet Food Express for the second time in four years, by 6-1 vote. This is a a major step -- but not yet the concluding one -- in an exceedingly nasty neighborhood development battle covered in this week's SF Weekly.
See Also: Pet Food Express Tries to Be the Most Adorable Franchise in Town
