{"id":10928,"date":"2010-01-14T20:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-14T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2010-01-15T01:49:49","modified_gmt":"2010-01-15T01:49:49","slug":"pges-initiative-to-limit-access-to-public-power-qualifies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/2010\/01\/14\/pges-initiative-to-limit-access-to-public-power-qualifies\/","title":{"rendered":"PG&E’s Initiative to Limit Access to Public Power Qualifies"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>Pacific Gas and Electric has been known to dabble in politics a bit.  Just a smidge. Anyway, their latest dabble is what they are calling the “Taxpayers Right to Vote Act.”  Yesterday, it qualified for the ballot:<\/p>\n

A ballot measure, backed by Pacific Gas and Electric Co., that would limit the ability of California cities to go into the public power business has qualified for the June election, according to the secretary of state.<\/p>\n

The measure would force local governments that want to compete with PG&E to win the approval of two-thirds of their voters first. The utility, California’s largest, is fighting efforts by San Francisco and Marin County to start buying electricity on behalf of their residents, taking over a role long held by PG&E. (SF Chronicle<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, there are many, many interesting things about this, and many, many reasons for progressives to oppose the measure. First, despite the lovely name, an obviously conservative frame, the measure does anything but give the taxpayers the right to vote. It requires a 2\/3 majority of VOTERS to approve of community choice aggregation, a system that would allow municipal authorities to compete with the big power companies.  Let me repeat that. Not only is this another ridiculous supermajority requirement, this is a 2\/3 supermajority requirement of the voters. Frankly, that so rarely happens on any issue. And for some reason, we want to let the voters of California take away basic civil rights (Prop 8) at a lower threshhold than can opt to start a public power alternative? Does that strike anybody else as insane?<\/p>\n

But, there’s a back story that goes deeper than just that.  PG&E had pledged back in the early part of the decade that they wouldn’t fight Community Choice Aggregation as a way to get some help out of Sacramento during their bad times post-power crisis. Yet here they are, fighting community choice aggregation.  Not only in the form of this initiative, but also by fighting San Francisco and Marin county efforts to get CCA tooth and nail. In short, PG&E has been your typical everyday mega-corporation. It is acting as a sociopath who ignores their past statements when inconvenient and the deals that they brokered in pursuit of one goal and one goal only: shareholder profit.<\/p>\n

Let’s allow our elected representatives to govern already, and quit it with adding more super-majority requirements.<\/p>\n

Image courtesy of generic<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<\/a>Pacific Gas and Electric has been known to dabble in politics a bit.  Just a smidge. Anyway, their latest dabble is what they are calling the “Taxpayers Right to Vote Act.”  Yesterday, it qualified for the ballot:<\/p>\n

A ballot measure, backed by Pacific Gas and Electric Co., that would limit the ability of California cities to go into the public power business has qualified for the June election, according to the secretary of state.<\/p>\n

The measure would force local governments that want to compete with PG&E to win the approval of two-thirds of their voters first. The utility, California’s largest, is fighting efforts by San Francisco and Marin County to start buying electricity on behalf of their residents, taking over a role long held by PG&E. (SF Chronicle<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, there are many, many interesting things about this, and many, many reasons for progressives to oppose the measure. First, despite the lovely name, an obviously conservative frame, the measure does anything but give the taxpayers the right to vote. It requires a 2\/3 majority of VOTERS to approve of community choice aggregation, a system that would allow municipal authorities to compete with the big power companies.  Let me repeat that. Not only is this another ridiculous supermajority requirement, this is a 2\/3 supermajority requirement of the voters. Frankly, that so rarely happens on any issue. And for some reason, we want to let the voters of California take away basic civil rights (Prop 8) at a lower threshhold than can opt to start a public power alternative? Does that strike anybody else as insane?<\/p>\n

But, there’s a back story that goes deeper than just that.  PG&E had pledged back in the early part of the decade that they wouldn’t fight Community Choice Aggregation as a way to get some help out of Sacramento during their bad times post-power crisis. Yet here they are, fighting community choice aggregation.  Not only in the form of this initiative, but also by fighting San Francisco and Marin county efforts to get CCA tooth and nail. In short, PG&E has been your typical everyday mega-corporation. It is acting as a sociopath who ignores their past statements when inconvenient and the deals that they brokered in pursuit of one goal and one goal only: shareholder profit.<\/p>\n

Let’s allow our elected representatives to govern already, and quit it with adding more super-majority requirements.<\/p>\n

Image courtesy of generic<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[],"tags":[8308,5745,8307],"class_list":["post-10928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-8308","tag-5745","tag-8307"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-2Qg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10928\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}