Should essential services be publicly owned

Quote: gamerfreak

In PA the power providers never actually touch the lines. All installation and maintenance is done by the company that owns the lines, so I imagine they would be responsible.

I'm going to disagree on technical grounds. I assume much of the construction is actually done by private contractors.

I don't want to say much about PA as my personal experience is on the west coast. But some attributes of electricity never change. Ohm's law rules, here or on the other side of the globe.

Quote: petroglyph

I'm trying to find out if posters approve of the California taxpayers paying for disasters in Cali, including the loss of life and property, as certainly the costs will far outweigh the assets and credit available to PG&E. You have stated that you have monetary interests in utility's because they are stable, and you have also railed against any public entity that could be feasibly contracted to private enterprise.

If you had stock in PG&E and they go bankrupt [which they are] do you want the taxpayers to pay the difference? Should the taxpayers make you whole if the stock tanks? Or would you refuse the money, because that would be commie or something?

The bigger issue is that the fires have spread because of forest mismanagement on the part of CA. Green-types think that they know how to manage a forest when they have never left the city. You need controlled burns and logging to get rid of deadwood. The greens fight good forest management, thinking every tree is sacred. But the choice is smaller controlled burns or large fires years later. This has been warned about for decades. Meanwhile the governor blames global warming climate change! To put it all on PG&E is absurd.

Quote: kenarman

It is far from proven that public services are cheaper. The 'extra load' of profit is usually more than offset by the inefficiencies of a government bureaucracy.

Do you not believe that there exists bureaucracy at Boeing, GE, or Lockhead?

Quote: beachbumbabs

Petro,

Just a couple of random comments. I was an electric customer in Clark County for 3+ years. It was the cheapest electric I've ever paid at the time by a lot. I don't remember the details, but it had to do with their primary source being the Bonneville Power Dam on the Columbia, and I think it was their property (not available to the Oregon power companies).

Everybody buys power from BPA in the PNW. Once you connect to their system, you can't tell if the watts are coming from Bonneville dam or Hanford.

PGE had their own nuke at Satsop, that iirc paid for itself in 2 years and they shut it down early because it had, and they didn't want to deal with atomic anymore?

They also had/have some diesel plants along the river. PP&L/ Pacific corp has some smaller hydro mostly in Southern Oregon, but fights between tribes and farmers are getting some of those removed. PP&L also has some NG gens.

Useless fact: In 75 when I apprenticed, I worked on the project to add the last generator at Bonneville dam. We moved the entire town of North Bonneville. Good times. Some great sturgeon fishing stories.

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This year marks 30 years since I bought my first house (that one). Wow.

We almost bought the gas station at 4 corners for our construction shop, 80-85.

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Speaking of wow, I am astounded they are allowing the shipment of wet grains out of Arizona, to where the water molecules are forever lost to that area. Over decades, that represents a significant movement of moisture.

I don't know about wet grains, whether that includes Alfalfa or not? Grass is the product that I'm referencing.

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/legislature/2018/04/04/aquifers-being-sucked-dry-but-arizona-lawmakers-want-groundwater-deregulation/360060002/

http://ktar.com/story/866411/arizona-officials-enraged-over-farmland-purchases-by-saudi-arabia-to-grow-hay/

Quote: kenarman

That is true and agree that the societal benefits of stripping gangs of their income is huge. Your point however is the government still needs more money and charges more money for MJ than the gangs were even with their huge profits. Governments are never efficient at anything they do except maybe killing people.

The government isn't even efficient at killing. But some acts of man are so horrid, what they do secretly 'for the public good' should be public knowledge. They shouldn't hide one flag draped casket from one Golden family.

One of the problems I see with privatizing our military to Eric Prince is, private army's are not subject to FOIA requests. If it weren't for Bradley Manning and Assange publishing videos of accidental murders, the public would never have known.

I want to know who is being killed in my name. I'm not even claiming killing millions so we can have cheap oil is immoral, I just want honesty.

"War, what is it good for"

Found this story after posting. Shares of PG&E drop almost 30% after market closes. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pg-e-us-bankruptcy-exclusive/exclusive-california-utility-pge-explores-bankruptcy-filing-sources-idUSKCN1OY225?il=0

Quote: petroglyph

Do you not believe that there exists bureaucracy at Boeing, GE, or Lockhead?

Yes there is a bureaucracy at the large companies. The difference is that on a regular basis when the market changes the private companies will cut overhead. Public companies are way slower cutting overhead if they ever even do it.

Quote: kenarman

Yes there is a bureaucracy at the large companies. The difference is that on a regular basis when the market changes the private companies will cut overhead. Public companies are way slower cutting overhead if they ever even do it.

There was a study done at Homer electric in Homer Ak. It's probably true country wide.

They found that labor was only 8% of the expense of running the local electric utility, and if they laid off every single employee they still couldn't reduce electric rates.

The expense of most utility's is the row and interest on loans, not the guys with shovels. Lay them off, all you gain is service interruptions. If they have to leave town to seek work elsewhere, good luck with the lights.

Quote: petroglyph

There was a study done at Homer electric in Homer Ak. It's probably true country wide.

They found that labor was only 8% of the expense of running the local electric utility, and if they laid off every single employee they still couldn't reduce electric rates.

The expense of most utility's is the row and interest on loans, not the guys with shovels. Lay them off, all you gain is service interruptions. If they have to leave town to seek work elsewhere, good luck with the lights.

I still want it in private, not government hands. No reason for government to run yet more of our lives.

Quote: AZDuffman

I still want it in private, not government hands. No reason for government to run yet more of our lives.

I hear you.