PG&E's Audacious Attempt to Enshrine Its Energy Monopoly In the California Constitution

[asdjrocky]

SUCKS!

The rich and corporate are abusing CA's initiative process to enforce their profits through the state's constitution.

May 18, 2010
Welcome to Gilded Age 2.0, a time when government has become an appendage to the super-rich, used by industrialists, financiers and corporate robber barons to monopolize the economy and strip regular citizens of power and money. One example of just how much corporate cash and oligarchical interests have corrupted America’ democratic institutions comes out of California, where a giant corporation is spending tens of millions of dollars to push through a law that would snuff out competition and enshrine its corporate monopoly in California's State Constitution.

It sounds outrageous, but it is perfectly legal here in the Golden State, where a form of “direct democracy”introduced 100 years ago allows voters to write laws straight into the state constitution. All that is required is a ballot initiative and a two-thirds majority vote by people. Ironically, direct democracy was introduced to the state by the Progressive Party as a direct response to the runaway corruption of the Gilded Age, a way to shift power away from corporate and moneyed interests that dominated the legislature and to give it back to the people. Hiram Johnson, California's progressive governor 1911 to 1917, said that it would "restore absolute sovereignty to the people" by allowing voters to trump elected politicians.

It's true, direct democracy gave California's citizens a way to bypass their representative government, but it also gave a way for the rich and corporate to write their wishes directly into the highest law of the land -- all they'd have to do is convince, cajole or dupe the people into voting their way.

From AlterNet
By Yasha Levine
http://www.alternet.org/news/146894/pg&e%27s_audacious_attempt_to_enshrine_its_energy_monopoly_in_the_california_constitution_

[itsrobert]

1. If Prop 16 passes, we Californians are a bunch of morons

n/t

[asdjrocky]

3. Too true.

It's like Prop 13 all over again. The state continues to pay for that one and now it's become like the third rail in Ca politics.

[City Lights]

4. Yup. nt

[napi21]

5. You & all your friends better write LTTE's & tell everyone

you know or meet o the street what Prop 16 really is! I heard yeswterday that PG&E has dumped a couple of million $$ in Ca. to get that on the ballot and I suspect they're also running ads promoting it too. How many Californians have no idea what it really is?

[Echo In Light]

2. K/R

[CaliforniaPeggy]

6. We MUST defeat this travesty!

Shame on PG&E.

What arrogance.

K&R

[FBI_Un_Sub]

7. Pure arrogance

Nothing else.

[KamaAina]

8. The barrage of vapid TV ads featuring a pretty young lady picking flowers (!)

makes me urgently want to :puke: :puke: :puke:

PeeG&E is scared witless that other places will start following the lead of Marin County, which just created a public power authority. Indeed, they've been using underhanded scare tactics to keep Marinites from signing up with it:

http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local-beat/PGE-Slammed-for-Illegal-Efforts-to-Stifle-Competition-jw-92812009.html

Pacific Gas and Electrics efforts to derail public power in Marin County have been deemed illegal by state regulators, who issued a warning to the powerful utility company.

The California Public Utilities Commission called the brochures the company has been mailing Marin residents "misleading" and order the company to stop sending them, and said that it can not use its own phone banks to call customers (at ratepayer expense) and then transfer them to customer service to opt-out of the Marin Clean Energy public power effort.

The San Francisco-based PG&E said it would respond to the letter of warning from the CPUC in a few days.

PG&E is also spending nearly $35 million dollars (again, from revenue paid by customers) to back Proposition 16, the ballot initiative it hopes will keep similar public power efforts from ever getting off the ground by requiring a two-thirds vote for approval in local elections.

:grr: :banghead:

[asdjrocky]

9. Thanks for the addition.

It adds a lot. Like I said up thread, it's like prop 13 all over again. Back then it was commercial real estate interests that were leading the voters around by the nose.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

10. K & R