BENEFIT RE-DO, FLOOD BLDG SPRUCE-UP

It looks like Tim Gaskin’s gone. Looks like Ruby, too, is now part of the bad old days at Benefit Magazine.

According to the mag’s Executive Director, Paul Corso:

"Benefit Magazine is on the verge of releasing a vastly improved editorial product in terms of depth and quality of coverage and of aesthetic design. We have come a long way in the past year. We are now responding to the stream of constructive feedback we have received from our board of advisors and our audience."

A “stream of constructive feedback”?

“Vastly improved…aesthetic design”?

If that ain’t disrespect, what is? Tim and Ruby poured their life’s passion into Benefit Magazine. Mayor Gavin Newsom himself graced the first cover.

How could anyone "vastly improve" this "aesthetic design"?

To celebrate the re-launch, Benefit Magazine has found some support from a San Francisco leading Interior Design firm, SophiSticate Interiors, which has underwritten the cost of a complete remodel at the Benefit Magazine headquarters in the historical James Flood Building in downtown San Francisco.

This, from a press release issued by SophiSticate, posted on Extra Realty blog.

Poor Ruby! Out in the cold. Maybe she really should write that book.

No word yet on the re-launch date.

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"DEAR MR. MAYOR AND STEVE"

In the midst of the final unraveling of Tourkgate, ABC7’s excellent crew fronted by Dan Noyes has released a copy of Ms Ruby-Tourk’s resignation letter. Here's the Chronicle story.

There are many ways to examine this letter: for truthfulness, for evidence of conspiracy, for genuineness, for back dating.

Full size pdf of letter here.

Pud views the letter as a sample of Ms Rippey-Tourk's English composition skills.

Pud asks, “Is this the quality of writing we expect from an office worker making $81,000 per year?”

Pud’s short answer is “No.”

“There are classes full of kids at Lowell who can write better than this!” Pud exclaimed.

“What the heck are we getting for our money!”

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NEWSOM/TOURK MATH

“Most news isn’t,” Pud always says, “and that’s a good thing.”

A politician paying anything out of their own pocket qualifies as real news.

Newsom’s offer (Chron story) to pay Alex Tourk $15,000 per month until Tourk finds a new job was the minimally decent thing to do. And continuing to pay him out of campaign funds made sense as a kind of severance package.

Then questions arose about the propriety of using campaign donations to paper over the candidate’s sexual indiscretions.

Newsom’s decision to pay Tourk out of Newsom’s own pocket looked like an easy solution at first glance, but it has two negatives.

First the math. By my calc Newsom will be turning over his entire mayoral paycheck to Mr Tourk, every month. The below math assumes that Newsom pays Tourk with after-tax dollars (payoffs to betrayed husbands are not deductible), and that Newsom has at least 25% of his net pay withheld for taxes and social security etc.

It turns out Newsom will lose a couple hundred a month until Tourk gets a job. What if Mr Tourk gets all depressed and spends the next five years in his bathrobe and slippers?

Second the precedent. Newsom’s action sets a highly undesirable precedent for other politicians. For a politician to pay the damages of their own misbehavior is a betrayal of the profession. It’s like omerta. Wise guys don’t talk. Politicians don’t pay.

This gal, Mimi, can’t she talk to him?

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