U.S. Chamber of Commerce: “Won’t Somebody Please Come Out and Play With Me?”

Since corporations are people, what kind of person is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce? Technically, they’re not a corporation, of course. They’re more of a front group; a money-launderer.

If the U.S. Chamber of Commerce were a person, it would be the spoiled arrogant rich kid who thinks he can buy friendship, but everybody hates him. His family could buy the whole city, but he can’t buy a date and never gets invited anywhere.

Like the saying goes, if you lie down with Karl Rove, you wake up with lice and shit and slime all over you. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce worked with Rove — among other sleazebags — to raise $75 million for attack ads. The ads worked. Mission Accomplished.

But now a lot of local chambers of commerce have decided they can’t take the stench any more, and they’re cutting ties with the U.S. Chamber. Some large corporations have also dropped out of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for the same reason, including Pacific Gas & Electric.

It makes sense. A chamber of commerce is supposed to be all about promoting business and economic growth — like the name implies — not political shitslinging and character assassination.

Hopefully a lot more corporations and local chambers will cancel their affiliation with this gang of money-laundering sleazebuckets.

Pacific Gas & Electric: Wanted for Murder in San Bruno, CA

Or negligent homicide in any case. If Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) cared about anything besides their balance sheet, they would have prevented last week’s raging inferno in San Bruno, CA which killed at least four people and destroyed dozens of homes.

In 2007, PG&E requested permission from the Public Utilities Commission for a $5 million rate increase. This $5 million was requested specifically so PG&E could repair a section of the exact same natural gas line that exploded last week.

The Public Utilities Commission granted PG&E the $5 million rate hike, with the understanding that PG&E would repair the gas line in 2009. It never got done.

A spokesperson for the Utility Reform Network said:

“And they said they would replace that section in 2009 and the Public Utilities Commission gave them that money.”

When PG&E requested the $5 million rate hike so they could repair that gas line, their written statement said:

“A pipe failure has a potential impact radius of 415 feet” and “the risk of a failure at this location is unacceptably high.”

They got that right.

Give Wall Street a trillion dollars to keep the economy from collapsing, and Wall Street keeps the money and gives everybody else the finger. Give Pacific Gas & Electric $5 million to prevent a deadly pipe explosion, and the pipe explodes anyway.

Pacific Gas & Electric — Nice Try, Cocksuckers

Of all the political races that captured the public’s attention yesterday, an initiative in California could have been the most disastrous. And it almost passed.

Corrupt politicians come and go. Bone-stupid simpleminded ballot measures last forever.

Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) is a huge utility monopoly with millions of California hostages customers. PG&E spent $46 million promoting Proposition 16 — the Taxpayers’ Right To Vote Act.

(Here are some more links.)

What a sweet innocent-sounding name. What could be more American than taxpayers having the right to vote? Oh wait, they already do.

If Proposition 16 had passed — and it only lost by five percentage points — it would have required a two-thirds vote before a municipality could switch from a private utility company (like, for instance, PG&E) to a city-operated utility.

If this corporate power grab had passed, it might have started a nationwide trend, like everything else that starts in California. Hopefully this twisted idea has been nipped in the bud by California’s voters.

PG&E has already defeated almost every California city’s attempt to operate their own utilities. They’ve got it down to a science: Spend millions of dollars on an advertising blitzkrieg extolling the virtues of the private sector — free enterprise! — versus those lazy inept nine-to-five government bureaucrats. Works every time. Or almost every time.

But apparently the playing field just wasn’t quite tilted and unlevel enough.

$46 million down the tubes. But that’s no problem; PG&E has millions of captive “customers” throughout California. Guess whose utility rates are about to go up and up and up.

Pacific Gas & Electric: “Fuck the Voters”

If you’re somewhere to the left of Dick Cheney and Grover Norquist, this article combines the worst of corporate monopolies, corporate welfare, and the hijacking of the statewide initiative process by corporate interests.

There’s probably a city near you that’s fighting the ongoing battle of public/municipal utilities vs. “the private sector” trying to provide the same service.

Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) has a long history of spending quatrabrazilians of dollars throughout California every time a municipal government even thinks about creating a public utility service and thereby no longer needing PG&E’s monopoly “service.” Sometimes they win (money talks) and once in awhile they lose.

And PG&E is about to fix this pesky little problem once and for all.

This June, courtesy of the above-named monopoly, there will be a ballot in California which, if passed, would require a two thirds vote before any local government could change to another utility provider.

What The Fuck is going on here? I thought voting meant, uh, gee, the saying “majority rules” rings a bell.

It was bad enough when these Neanderthal anti-tax fuckwits started getting a two thirds vote requirement in order for communities to get themselves out of a straitjacket. And this two thirds requirement was always about schools, mass transit, libraries, fire departments — in short, anything that actually benefited the public.

There’s never been any two thirds vote required for invading other countries, building more prisons, or sentencing potheads to life in prison.

Enough is enough.

And now PG&E — with the help of the Mafia Supreme Court Ruling legalizing bribery — is trying to use this same undemocratic Fascist tactic to guarantee that no public utility will ever compete with them again.

In addition to being a corporate monopoly — completely unresponsive and unaccountable — PG&E has a disgraceful history of providing Stone Age service at 21st Century prices. Every time California has a winter storm — and this happens in California in the wintertime — PG&E is completely dumbfounded and unprepared. “Rain and wind in January, who knew?!?!?!?! Nobody could have anticipated…”

So when tens of thousands of their captive customers are stranded without power for days, weeks — “But, these storms were unprecedented! There was nothing we could’ve done!”

They’re also famous for massive layoffs at the worst possible time. Several years ago, a judge levied a multi-million dollar fine against PG&E for failure to cut down trees that were near power lines. (This is part of their job requirement.) The company pleaded and groveled and sobbed that they’d have to lay off thousands of their employees if they had to pay that huge painful mean awful fine.

The judge relented and suspended their fine — and a few weeks later PG&E went ahead and laid off thousands of their workers.

That’s the kind of company they are. Any past or present California resident will vouch for that. And now PG&E has millions of dollars to spend — dollars extorted out of their millions of captive customers — to hijack California’s initiative process.

California voters, please don’t let this happen. If this can happen in California, we’re all toast.