Outing PG&E's Astro-Eco Poseurs

Discussion
1

I don't understand this almost hate of PG & E. Over the years I have called them 6 or 8 times and they have always come in a timely manner and helped me with my problem. Once I was at my mother's in Napa taking care of her as she had just gotten out of the hospital suffering with pneumonia. At 2 a.m. their heater stopped working (in the winter). I called PG&E and explained the problem. The PG&E worker said in a tone that told me he was giving me a hint, "We can't come out in the middle of the night unless you tell me you smell gas." Of course, I said that I did smell a little gas and they were there within 15 minutes. He fixed the heater so that my mother wouldn't get chilled. I have always found PG& E workers in Redwood City where we live, in Napa where my parents lived and in Central California where my children live, to be helpful, courteous and free.
I can't believe that PG&E does good work in some parts of the state and does lousy work in S.F. I rather believe from talking to several friends who own service-oriented businesses based on the penninsula, that it is the way that the City government treats businesses that is the problem. Several of these business people have told me that they often turn down jobs in S.F. because the City is so hard to deal with.

  I do understand that there are some people who are dedicated to seeing that the government controls everyone and everything and I just hope that none of these people are trying to change the Libertarian Party's principles of independence and small government.

Marge

2

Marge, I'm not a PG&E hater, as they were the first "private" company to become a major backer of No on Prop 8.

However, you do need to realize that PG&E has been given a government-granted monopoly in San Francisco, in exchange for several contractual obligations on which they have failed to deliver (such as moving the power lines from poles above ground to utility ducts below ground whenever lines are replaced for new construction and such).

I'm personally not a fan of H Brown (aka "h."), and he'd be the first to tell you that he's not a Libertarian. I think the email from H was forwarded not as an endorsement of his ideas for public power, but instead as an FYI of who's-who in the power monopoly cahoots in this town. For all of his many anti-Libertarian faults, H Brown is one of the few writers in this town willing to name names, which makes him useful even to us Libertarians who disagree vehemently with his goals.

Rob