PG&E cutting power to residences in CA
and businesses.
This is being reported over at Ian
Welsh's blog: https://www.ianwelsh.net/california-power-company-cuts-power-to-800000-h... Apparently this is a blanket cutoff with no exceptions for disables, so there will be deaths.
What I am wondering about is why, as Welsh also mentions, San Francisco voters turned down public power initiatives 11 times?? Liberal, leftist SF doesn't want publicly owned power? Could someone from CA please explain.
When I lived in the central valley, it did seem to me that every third Californian, including immigrants, thought they were going to make fortunes in real estate. I was living in a CV town during the foreclosures of 2008-10. Bank owned houses were left to sit with NO maintenance. Not even lawn care in a fire prone area. And city govt and city council simply ignored those houses while they were handing out clean up citations to owner and renter occupied houses.
Comments
SF Gate has an article on this
PG&E gave out $100 million to their shareholders that was supposed to go to improving their power lines. Newsom telling people that they should be upset and yet not doing anything to help or stop this is weak IMO. The economy is going to lose billions and PG&E won't have to be responsible for their losses.
They were getting ready to shut down more ares in SF this morning and I looked at the weather page. The wind was 5 mph. So what's the story?
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
Is it true
that SF voters turned down public power iniatives 11 times? Do you know why? But my cousin has a good job with PG&E? Not even PG&E has that many jobs available.
Mary Bennett
I do not know if this is true
But that is what the article states, but I'm wondering why people wouldn't vote against PG&E every chance they got. They have a horrible record of keeping their gas lines and power lines safe. In 2010 a gas line erupted in SAN Bruno that killed 4-8 people and destroyed 32 homes. I think that case just recently settled.
PG&E diverted safety money for profit, bonuses
The rest is informative.
This is interesting... click on the link and see the fire right under power lines.
Did the wind that prompted the PG&E power shut-offs live up to the hype?
ETA link to fire article
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
According to a federal judge it was 4.5 billion paid out.
Here is some text from an article on common dreams.
link to common dreams article
wow
$4.6 billion in dividends while neglecting trimming trees is outrageous and every person that received them should have to help rebuild the towns destroyed by fire. And not just monetarily but with their hands. And they say the reason they won't put the lines underground is mostly because of the cost. $4.6 million per mile. Overhead lines cost about $448,800 per mile in comparison. Both numbers seem very high don't you think?
The extreme weather events are just going to get worse, but still the problem with PG&E was their greed. And sadly fires started in CA even after millions went without power. One was started when a garbage truck dumped burning trash that the wind took. How very sad. And we know that those affected by the fires in previous years are still not fully recovered. And their resources are running out.
While PG&E is in bankrupcy they wanted to pay out bonuses.
No shame!!
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
A noose would incentivize them better
So the dividends would have paid for a thousand miles of underground HV line.
Or, they could have applied for permission to raise rates temporarily for safety improvements. Then it would have been on the CA government if they denied it.
IMHO, both didn't care.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
I don't like nooses, but
it could come to that. I am beginning to wonder if anything less than the prospect of their imminent destruction will convince oligarchs plus retainers and apologists to mend their ways.
Mary Bennett
I would have said guillotine
but noose is more American. Same results.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
Guillotines and nooses were both in use in Revolutionary France
The former as judicial, the latter as vigilante, execution.
"Les aristos a la lanterne" meant "String 'em up to the nearest lamppost".
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
Interesting how little coverage this seems to be getting
A few articles drifted through my various feeds, but most of them have scrolled off now. Here's one that's still posted:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/10/san-francisco-wildfire-b...
Classes were cancelled at UC Berkley for a second day. Somebody was quoted as saying "we aren't a third world country". Well, bucko, I've got bad news. Regardless of the underlying cause, if the electric grid doesn't work when the wind blows you're a third world country.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone
"If the electric grid doesn't work
when the wind blows, you're a third world country".
It seems that way, doesn't it. If insulin and antibiotics are not affordable....ditto. We could go on in the same vein.
If voters prefer their fantasy lives--Freee Maarket, but what
about..Diversity, to a citizen owned utility-oh, but, socialism--we are living in a non real world.
Mary Bennett
What would Jello do
Apparently the person in that clip thinks it's time for Californians to take over the utility. It sounds like the best solution. I wonder if Californians would.
That was an interesting bit of history in that video. I knew a bit about that dam but wow, to flood a valley that looks like Yosemite? And afterwards, nothing but corruption.
I was reading, thinking,
"this is so third world!"
Didn't Enron do something goofy before they went belly up?
What in the hell...
My electricity comes from a co-op.
I get a vote on who sits on the board.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Enron rigged the power system for profit
They would take their power plants offline and that would cause California to have to pay more for electricity. This was done with the full knowledge of the Bush Cheney administration. It also cost Gov Davis his job and we got the third term of Pete Wilson through Awnold. He screwed me out of a lot of money. Ken Lay was found guilty and died the next day. Want a bridge...?
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
as long as
it is not in California.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
After Davis was recalled, a Democratic candidate for gov.,
I have forgotten his name, he was a Hispanic man from Fresno, maybe, in the legislature, ran for Gov. in the special election. Rumor, I read about it in an alternative paper, was he had a plan to establish a public power authority. To prevent that from happening, Arnold was brought in by the Repubs., and La Huff, who was then pretending to be a leftist, was also brought in to split the Democratic vote. There was even a debate, even more laughable than the current crop. La Huff attended, one of five, because she had enough poll numbers, if you believe that. I remember someone saying on the Slate forum it might have been, it was Eurotrash evening. I remember going to work after the election and all the regular dopes were saying everything is going to be OK now that Arnold is in. That's sophisticated CA for you.
Mary Bennett
La Huff
I remember her running and you're right she did come across as a lefty., if Davis wasn't running I probably would have voted for her. I don't remember the Hispanic guy though. Davis was also blamed for the huge wildfires in S CA but he had asked Bush for federal funds to thin out the deadwood but was turned down.
sophisticated indeed. I went with a group to vote and told everyone that Arnold would be horrible for us but they were just so excited to vote for the terminator. Giggle! He ran on workers compensation reform and pretended that he cared about the injured workers. But then he did an Obama and everything went for the insurance companies and things got much worse in a system already full of corruption. My insurance company screwed with me for over 5 years and should have had to pay big bucks in penalties. Whoosh..the evaporated over night.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
IMHO,
La Huff was a shallow and superficial conservative who became an even more shallow and superficial leftist. Lefty activists accepted her because she gave some (unearned) money away--the cash came from a divorce settlement--and invited them to fancy parties. She founded HuffPuff, where she profited from content provided by unpaid writers, when the divorce settlement began to run out.
Mary Bennett
I remember prior to any mention of Arnold running for
Governor one of the cable channels ran the same cliche Arnold vs. terrorist movie 8 times a day for a week or so. It was really unusual, and I knew something was up but I didn't know what until he announced a run for CA Governor.
Irony?
The felonious Yam was saying fossil fuel was the way to go since you wouldn't get a blackout when the wind was calm.
Those 70 mph gusts were across the mountin tops, quuite
localized, but since the grid up here is inadequately compartmentalized and otherwise not hardened or protected, they used the winds as an excuse for political theater.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Wonder why we rarely lose power here in IL
due to blizzards. It happens but rarely, usually due to tension because of cold combined with weight of ice. It gets fixed, at least with temporary power, in hours. I pity those poor union linemen going out in a below zero blizzard/snow storm/ice storm to repair HV lines and transformers. Those big lines are 13kV and up! But I guess high enough to kill you is high enough, adding zeros doesn't matter.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
Manitoba leads the world
WRT icing on power lines, per this 2012 article.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Interesting Physics there
I'd love to see a model.
My first job after my M.S. was modeling hydraulic systems, transmissions and tractor tires on dirt for International Harvester. When they canned the Research Department, I was transferred to Ag Division and worked on a variety of computer control projects like a hydro-static transmission that we tried to sell to Construction Division.
BTW, a professor from Ames came and gave a presentation on an experimental corn farm that used no fossil fuel. The farm and equipment were all powered by destructive distillation of the corn husks and silage. So much for the claims that organic fuels use more fossil fuel than they save.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
Is this a possibility?
They say that there's a broken light for every heart on Broadway
They say that life's a game and then they take the board away
They give you masks and costumes and an outline of the story
And leave you all to improvise their vicious cabaret-- A. Moore
Here is a little about the CA Public Utilities Commission:
(from the wiki article)
Five commissioners each serve staggered six-year terms as the governing body of the agency. Commissioners are appointed by the governor and must be confirmed by the California State Senate. The CPUC meets publicly[15] to carry out the business of the agency, which may include the adoption of utility rate changes, rules on safety and service standards, implementation of conservation programs, investigation into unlawful or anticompetitive practices by regulated utilities and intervention into federal proceedings which affect California ratepayers.
As of July 2019, the commissioners are:[16]
President Marybel Batjer, (appointed July 12, 2019, by Gov. Gavin Newsom; to take office end of July/early August 2019)[17]
Genevieve Shiroma (term expires in 2024[18])
Liane M. Randolph (term expires in 2020)
Clifford Rechtschaffen (term expires in 2022)
Martha Guzman Aceves (term expires in 2022)
Some regulatory laws are implemented by the California State Legislature through the passage of laws. These laws often reside in the California Public Utilities Code.[19] The CPUC Headquarters are in San Francisco with offices in Los Angeles and Sacramento and the CPUC employs 1000 including judges, engineers, analysts, lawyers, auditors, and support.[20]
Does anyone here know anything about these commissioners?
Mary Bennett
It's the arrogance of it all.
Nobody, let alone a bankrupt private corporation, should have the right to disrupt 2.5 million people's lives and the economy of the entire region on its own whim with no notice, hearings, or planning.
Just as appalling is the absolute capitulation of a regulatory captured state government allowing PG&E free reign to play disaster capitalist. Gavin Newsome is as craven as he is moronic.
When the Israelis intentionally cut power to Gaza as a form of collective punishment, people call it a war crime. When PG&E intentionally cuts power to NoCal to gain leverage in its bankruptcy proceeding, talking greedheads call it 'playing hardball'.
Fuck these late stage capitalists and their class war mentality. It's time for them to go.
The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?
An appropriate name.
Some members of the Public Utilities Commission staff used to call PG&E "Pacific Graft and Extortion" in the 1960's and later and maybe still do. It certainly fits.
-Greed is not a virtue.
-Socialism: the radical idea of sharing.
-Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
John F. Kennedy, In a speech at the White House, 1962
To the gallows
if someone dies as a result. Negligent homicide.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
I think this might be
the end of Newsom's political career. I'm guessing he doesn't get to run for president. Was he not mayor of SF when voters turned down the most recent public power initiative?
Mary Bennett
Watch this.
https://www.abc10.com/article/news/investigations/governor-newsom-most-s...
What a phony. The entitlement just oozes out of him.
The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?
Excellent
5 felonies 10 years ago for 8 deaths.
How many felonies for 85 deaths? How many for thousands of homes that were burned down or blown up?
Newsom...let's hope this is the end of his career!
The journalists that saw the exchange should have helped him get an answer not switch to another topic. No wonder our politicians think they can get away with never answering serious questions.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
It’s about money
California’s Power Outages Are About Wildfires—But Also Money
https://www.wired.com/story/californias-power-outages-are-about-wildfire...
Stop Climate Change Silence - Start the Conversation
Hot Air Website, Twitter, Facebook
20B$ insurance fund for PG&E?
The CA legislature voted for that? Whom, exactly will be paying the premiums for that? Do we all have to become homeless zombies before some folks decide that maybe their reverence for Big Business was not so good an idea?
Mary Bennett
Yes.
And maybe not even then.
Speaking of homeless zombies -- and I don't mean to hijack -- I wanted to mention the name of an upcoming book that I'm hoping to read, and that might appeal to many here. It's called Homewreckers, and it's about the 2008 crisis and the aftermath. I normally don't listen to NPR but was on a long car drive yesterday morning and caught the author (Aaron Glantz) on 1A, and was utterly riveted.
If interested, you can listen to the story again here.
(I also seem to be late to many parties these days, so apologies if everyone else already knows about this book!)
One more thing:
That book review indulges in gratuitous/opportunistic anti-Trumpism, but listening to Gantz, I got the distinct impression his disgust extends to both parties.
Please do, hijack all you want.
These events need to be being discussed, and hopefully, acted upon. Whatever the MSM is burying, that is likely where the oligarchs are vulnerable.
I will look for the book. I have connected with a librarian who will buy books I order for interlibrary loan. I don't want to use the connection too often, but that one sounds like it needs to be in our public library.
Mary Bennett
Fires in SoCal
This seems relevant, I'll stick it here.
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/10/more-than-100000-ordered-to-evacuate-am...
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone
more PG&E links - follow the money
Follow the money
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/10/unsustainable-california-no-easy...
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/PG-E-diverted-safety-money-for-pr...
https://www.kqed.org/news/11737336/judge-pge-paid-out-stock-dividends-in...
https://www.macon.com/news/business/article235787937.html
https://www.mtdemocrat.com/news/man-dies-shortly-after-power-cut/
Stop Climate Change Silence - Start the Conversation
Hot Air Website, Twitter, Facebook
San Francisco has not yet given up on
public power.
https://prospect.org/environment/san-francisco-makes-charge-toward-publi...
Mary Bennett
At least one person has died from this
A man who relied on oxygen died before he could get his battery backup tank going. PG&E said they aren't responsible for the billions lost, but maybe they will for the lives lost.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
"Culling the herd" takes an exponential leap
TPTB haven't even the decency - if you can call it that - to admit what they are doing to us.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
It is outrageous that PG&E was allowed to do that
SF Gate has an article with pictures of what it looked like all over the area with the power off. One was of an store employee throwing away ice cream because it melted. Thrown out when I could think of lots of ways it could have been used. But then how about all the meat and frozen food? Is that going to be just thrown away too? Not given to food banks or shelters or hell half a dozen other agencies? This was known to be coming. I don't know if there could have been a plan made up in time, but just throwing away food. Ugh!!
Culling the herd indeed. Oh a warning shot across the bow. Do things our way or we cut the power to millions. Good lord. We already saw what happened in Detroit and other areas when they dissolved the laws and fired the people who were elected to do their jobs. How was that even legal? And then they raised water rates on poor people and shut off their water if they couldn't pay their bills while companies that were thousands of dollars in arrears had nothing happen to them. I could go on....... but my BP is rising. Best to stop.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
I was wondering
about the same thing. These folks need to be taken down before they kill all of us and their minions as well.
Mary Bennett
And it's not just this event
Allowing drug companies to raise insulin prices up to where people can't afford to buy it as well as other drugs. I'm sure others can come up with more examples of how we useless eaters are being culled. This is class warfare and it's time people woke up and saw it for exactly that and start thinking of ways to fight back. We have already not done anything while the PTB have passed legislation making protesting illegal and have militarized the police. And let private mercenaries run the cops that come to protests. Nice pot of boiling water we're sitting in.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt