Grrrr…

This is just… I literally have no words…

Overwhelmed by billions of dollars in claims from the Camp Fire and the 2017 wildfires of Northern California, PG&E said Monday it plans to file for bankruptcy, but insisted it will not go out of business.

Full article, HERE.

Once again the guilty go free, and those who lost everything will get pennies on the dollar, IF they get anything, while the company keeps on making money and raising rates to make the end users pay for what they are now going to have to do to comply with what SHOULD have been done long ago.

And the State of California is complicit in this duping of the public.

I REALLY need to get the kids out of there. Dammit…

h/t Wirecutter

Comments

Grrrr… — 23 Comments

  1. It’s not like PGE sent men out with torches to start the fires. And I’m sure they were operating within California code. They’ll have a signed inspection report somewhere to prove it.

    It’s California. There are fires every year. That’s what you get in a wooded/brushy desert.

      • Yes. My B of S is in Rangeland Management, Chico State U., class of ’81. Even then, you could see where it was all headed, but there was still time to change it. Sooo glad we got out when we did.

        This guy has done several excellent videos. This one is about the mechanics of the fire and where it started.

  2. JL,
    Getting the kids out will certainly raise their happiness level and probably prolong their lives. And your grandkids will eventually thank you.
    If all the taxpayers moved, that would leave the Dems with a surplus of needy, greedy non taxpaying democrats (both legal and illegal). You might change history!

  3. When your liability, by law, is not tied to your negligence things like this happen.

    I’ve been reading for years about how the power company wasn’t allowed to do what needed done to prevent fires caused by winds sparking the wires.

    Californians are the guilty party, and they are not walking away free from punishment. They lost their houses and property.

    • Yep. Not able to trim and clear transmission lines, even to just remove trouble trees. Not able to get the permits to pull new line that was better. Forced to cow-tow to every ‘citizen’s’ demand.

      Eventually that leads to a culture of “WTF, whatever” that ends up killing people.

      I am beginning to think that the only way to have a successful California company is to move it out of California.

    • We need to eliminate “Deep Pockets” liability awards (if you’re “5%” culpable, you should only be responsible for 5% of the award).

      Personally, I’d say that unless the blame is nearly equal, the party *most* responsible should be required to pay the entire penalty.

      And if one party’s actions (like CA environmental regulations) *prevent* the other party from taking corrective action, that all liability should fall on that party.

      Limiting lawyer’s fees to the lesser of 2x their normal hourly fee if contingent / 10% of the total award would also help.

  4. I agree with the analogy that I read recently that Socialism is modern day feudalism – in this case, the politically connected escape the consequences of their actions.
    In California, if you know the right person, you can get a permit to do or own anything; if you don’t know them, or they don’t like you, you can’t get permission to do anything.

  5. Outrageous. At what point will California run out of other people’s money?

      • Yup. My take is that the State (Moonbeam) didn’t give a rip whether or not the Choo-choo to nowhere ever got finished. They just wanted the matching federal funds.

    • They ran out at *least* 15 years ago. Glad I got out.

  6. Oh, it’s even uglier than that. H/T Wirecutter’s regular Wisco Dave:

    California lawmakers traveled to Hawaii with utility executives as wildfires raged

    A group of California lawmakers took a trip to Hawaii with utility companies last year as wildfires wreaked havoc in their state.

    During the junket, representatives from utility companies discussed with the bipartisan group of lawmakers just how much responsibility they should bear for wildfires – even as Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (PG&E) could be on the hook for several billions of dollars in damages for fires it caused over the past few years.

    The utility companies are pushing for a new state law that would raise electricity prices to offset costs incurred from wildfires, according to The New York Times.

    The annual event, hosted by the nonprofit Independent Voter Project, was held in Maui in November. PG&E executives did not attend the conference because of the wildfires, but representatives from San Diego Gas and Electric and Southern California Edison did, KABC-TV reported.

    Those in attendance at the Wailea conference included California Assembly members Frank Bigelow, Bill Brough, Ian Calderon, Jim Cooper, Tom Daly, Heath Flora, Jim Frazier, Reggie Jones-Sawyer, Freddie Rodriguez and Blanca Rubio. State Sens. Ben Hueso and Cathleen Galgiani also attended, nonprofit Consumer Watchdog reports.

    Bigelow and Brough are Republicans. The rest of the group are Democrats.

    https://www.foxnews.com/politics/california-lawmakers-traveled-to-hawaii-with-utility-executives-as-wildfires-raged

  7. All- Thank you for the comments! I can’t disagree, and you’ve brought up some good points!

    Posted from my iPhone.

  8. Somebody stick a fork in Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (PG&E), because it’s done. California’s been overcooked since the ice age, but at some point State workers aren’t going to get their retirement the way they’ve been getting it for years, and at that point commercial media might take notice. They’ll print lies, but they’ll notice.

    I don’t know if anyone else has done this, but on the back of an envelope I arrived at the following conclusions: I need an electronic calculator. So:

    PG&E is in hock for $30,000,000,000. It’ll be more, but that’s the number being tossed around. Some cursory research revealed that PG&E has something like 5,384,525 customers. I’m going to lie and say that all these fine people are paying their bills, which we all know they aren’t, but that’s what I’m saying.

    Pour me another Martini please. Thanks.

    So dividing dead presidents by customers comes out to $5,571.52 per customer, which we all know the customers are not going to pay. But! If we split that up over 12 months, each customer would owe an additional $464.29 per month, which would pay the whole thing off. Which any retard could tell you is not going to work either. So let’s try five years, or 60 months of payments.

    That would mean each customer would pay an additional $92.86 per month for 60 months, which probably half of them could actually do. The other half either don’t pay, or qualify for free electricity and gas anyway. So they don’t pay.

    Like I observed earlier, this is a done deal. PG&E will turn to California to bail them out, and the State will turn to the Federal Government, but since Trump is in office this isn’t a viable option. Should Trump be reelected, which is a far cry from absolute certainty, I have no idea what the State of California would do. I’m kind of thinking that it might actually split up so as to get out from under some of the debt. PG&E will be granted bankruptcy – what else is there? Upper management will get millions in severance, while everyone else gets the shaft.

    • My son-in-law is a CA Sheriff’s Deputy – he told me that he checked to confirm that his county is *not* part of CalPers for his retirement and can’t raid his 403b account for shortfalls before taking the job.

      Despite market ups and downs, I have considerably more confidence in my 401k investments than I have in Social Security – and I trust Social Security a *lot* more than I would the California State retirement system.

  9. Hey Old NFO;

    Yep you gotta get the kids out of the Peoples republic of “Cali”. Make their Calexit for real 😀 Well I had to play that off. Seriously, the utility had to do what the environmental weenies wanted done, or not done. The pious environmentalist can feel “holy” in the eyes of gaea while their state kills the carbon offset credits by all the fires that get started and spread because of really poor land management. And the people at the utility will skate on the bankruptcy.

  10. NFO, I’m collecting Government Shutdown poetry. Would you like to comtribute?

  11. MJ- Good point.

    Bob- Yep!

    LSP- I’m sorry, ‘my’ poetry would burn your ears… Sigh…