Right out of Atlas Shrugged
This is right out of Atlas Shrugged. I'll flesh out why later. I'm so ticked about this... When you own a chunk of an entity's stock you pay attention to the manipulators. As a guy who spent several years as a registered investment advisor I know crap when I see it. Note the error in the wise mayor's statement in this story...
..gusts could blow embers more than a mile
This is correct. Efforts to stop these fires with firebreaks are as worthless as the other methods that the green/left publicize. Water sprayed from very large aircraft evaporates before reaching tree top level, replacing gasoline in motor vehicles with electricity that cannot be supplied- pure grandstanding, and as the article says even fire breaks need to be a mile or more wide. The fact is these fires can not be stopped, the only approach is to reduce the fuel load by controlled burns in the wet/cool season.
If PGE were a normal profit seeking company they would know about proper forest management and controlled burning, and lobbied accordingly, but they were too busy on political correctness exercises.
To think that any kind of customer or government ownership will improve all that is to ignore experience in human behavior.
While it is true that CA environmental laws prevented some of the safety measures to be implemented, it is also true that PG&E has been negligent in maintaining the proper working order of its equipment for decades.
As it happens in life, the disastrous fires erupting all over CA have multiple origin and will not be solved by a one off magic wand of changing ownership.
If so, this reminds me of the situation with NY City taking over the railroad/subway system that was initially privately owned and run - but when the private company wanted to raise rates - they were told they couldn't. It eventually ran them out, then the local government took the business over - and then figured out the rates needed to be higher to maintain the system.
I don't sympathize with PG&E for a second, having been exposed to its "services" for a long time.
The attitude itself how they handled emergencies merits a bankruptcy.
They gave explanations when you called them up such as "who would have expected flooding in that area" when it has been well known the area was prone to flooding because of the terrain, every time the rainy season hit.
Or: "we have been spending millions of dollars cutting trees that present danger to the lines" this when power was cut due to a storm that downed trees in open areas, bringing down power lines with them.
LOL
PG&E was supposed to extend credit to ratepayers whose power was cut recently as a "public safety" concern aka incompetence. Or so said Newsom, our erstwhile newly elected governor.
I have not seen one cent of credit on my bill.
My favorite Tshirt
Is PG&E a private, free-enterprise company or a coercive monopoly?