Some Updates on PG&E and the Public Utilities Commission

A trio of articles from today's San Francisco Chronicle:

PG&E should pay for gas upgrade, agency says

PG&E wants customers to pay almost 90 percent of the cost, adding nearly $2 to a typical customer's monthly bill by 2014. The Division of Ratepayer Advocates [an independent division of the California Public Utilities Commission] said changes to the plan could lower the price tag to $621 million, and contended that shareholders should foot the entire bill.

Heads should roll if PG&E ends up succeeding at passing off any of the cost to its customers. Their management chose profits over minimal safety standards and now expect us to foot the bill? I can't imagine any California resident not being outraged. Meanwhile, PG&E is playing Russian roulette with our lives, as we sit on miles of pipeline that could erupt at any moment.

Speaking of pipelines...

PG&E finds more gas lines that weren't checked

PG&E said in December that it had undertaken a systemwide review after workers found gaps in its maps of distribution lines in Pittsburg, Brentwood, Concord, Danville, Byron and Discovery Bay, which meant that entire neighborhoods were never checked for leaks. Federal law requires distribution lines to be inspected once every five years.

(When was the last time that those lines were checked, if ever?)

Let's end on a positive note:

Lawmaker blasts PUC president over PG&E inquiry

"I ask that you step aside to ensure the credibility of the proceedings in the PG&E case," Assemblyman Jerry Hill told President Michael Peevey during the public comment portion of a commission hearing in San Francisco.

"By refusing to do so," Hill said, "you would be sustaining a culture of complacency that you have pledged to end."

After the meeting, Peevey said he would not recuse himself from the matter, and said he had no more conflicts of interest than people on the commission's staff.

Did I say "positive"? I meant "infuriating."

Latest on Occupy Oakland

I suppose I've been negligent posting links about Occupy Oakland, though the national media has covered it to a degree where I didn't really need to mention it. The protest over the weekend might not get the same level of coverage, so I'll do my part to promote news about the protests. I haven't participated in any of it; the closest I've come has been when I walked by Ogawa Plaza on an afternoon a few days before the infamous police reaction occured, and further when I walked by the Occupy Cal encampments at the steps of Sproul Hall, a few hours after the confrontation with police (which made the Colbert Report).

Reading today's local news, it appears that 400 (!!!) people were arrested Saturday night. Some protesters responded violently to the police, and some even vandalized city hall. These actions, perhaps wrongly, make it easier for people to write off the entirety of the protesters as extremists and hippies and knuckleheads. The advantage of a centralized movement, as opposed to a viral one such as this, is that participants can be held accountable for not following the tenets of non-violent protest.

That said, it's also quite easy to vilify the police after reading five more journalist arrests. Gavin Aronsen of Mother Jones has a report on his experience as a member of a group that was corralled and then arrested en masse, or "kettled." Also on MoJo is this collection of photos by a journalist who apparently narrowly avoided arrest.

Caturday Kitteh Comic... Kind'a

How Nice of Them!

"Pepper-sprayed UC Davis activists won't be charged," SF Chronicle.

District Attorney Jeff Reisig said there was insufficient information in UC Davis police reports to charge 10 protesters who were arrested in the demonstration. Of the eight men and two women who could have faced misdemeanor charges of unlawful assembly and failure to disperse, seven were students, authorities said.

Caturday Kitteh... OMG!!!

"Cupid the Cat" survives arrow impalement.

PG&E Lost Track of 300 Miles of Pipeline

First paragraph from the SF Chronicle article:

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. admitted Tuesday that it had lost track of development around more than 300 miles of its gas-transmission lines - nearly twice as much as the company earlier estimated - a violation of federal law that could result in still more fines being imposed on the company.

Caturday Kitteh Comic

Since I accidentally deleted this entry...