Here's his answer, dammit

Dear Bruce Brugmann:

How are people supposed to know your position if you don't tell them what you think? Besides, the Guardian is constantly posturing on the war in Iraq. The Guardian even had an opinion piece recently that blamed Israel for the war in Lebanon. Why not just a small editorial against the attempt by Islamic extremists to intimidate the Western media? Your concerns about the negative effects of media monopolies ring a little hollow when the Guardian doesn't stand up when everyone else in town---except for the Chronicle!---is silent in the face of that intimidation. "Gratuitous logs to the fire" and "insensitive"? Pretty lame, Bruce.

Dear Robert,
Thanks for your question. There are lots of issues we are "silent" on, because we are a small SF paper with limited resources and lots to say about lots of things, mainly local. More: people who know us would know our position. Which was and is that we thought the cartoon assignment was a pretty dumb and insensitive one, but we would support the paper's right to publish the cartoons. However, we would not publish them in the Guardian to make the point, because others were publishing them and they were available on the web. No point in adding gratuitous logs to the fire.

[From Bruce Brugmann]

What happened to the missing 1000?

Rachel Gordon had a small story in her City Hall Beat column in the SF Chronicle way back on Dec. 31, 2004 that cries out for some follow-up. Gordon reported that the city was going to commission a study to find out what happened to the 1,000 people who disappeared from the city's welfare rolls after Care Not Cash became operative in the middle of 2004. Nothing but silence since then. Was a study commissioned? If so what did it find?

From City Hall Beat 
by Rachel Gordon 
Dec. 31, 2004:

And the answer is: More than 1,000 homeless people have dropped off the welfare rolls since the city implemented the Care Not Cash program in May.

And now the city is readying to find out why. Trent Rhorer, the city's welfare chief, said his department plans to fund a third-party analysis to gain a greater understanding of the caseload reduction under Care Not Cash, which cuts the monthly cash stipend for homeless people once they're offered a residential hotel room or a cot in a shelter.

Today, about 855 people are on the rolls---a 66 percent decline since the spring, Rhorer said. Did people slip through the cracks? Leave town? Find housing on their own? "We're going to get a better understanding of what happened to those folks,'' Rhorer said.