CALIFORNIA FIRES: PG&E TAKES TAKES THE FALL
It's been almost eighteen months since the last of the big - and highly anomalous - California fires. True to form, the state's principal utility, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) has taken the fall according to this story shared by G.B.:
PG&E Pleads Guilty To 84 Counts Of Manslaughter Tied To Deadliest Wildfire In California History
As the article indicates, the New York Times reported that PG&E has pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter in the deaths of 84 people during the Paradise fire.
But there's more:
In addition to the guilty plea, the California Public Utilities Commission separately fined PG&E almost $2 billion for its negligence in causing the wildfire. What's more, the company could face additional penalties because its guilty plea represents a violation of a federal probation order placed on the company from a 2010 transformer explosion which started a fire that killed 8 people. The federal judge, William H. Alsup, has the power to impose new penalties on the company for violating its probation, according to the NYT.
As it exits bankruptcy, the company has agreed to pay $13.5 billion to settle claims related to the wildfires (it initially declared bankruptcy last January to try and avoid getting whacked with a massive judgment in the ballpark of $30 billion (or at least that's what the company feared at the time).
About half of that number will be paid in the form of company stock, leaving roughly 70,000 wildfire victims owning a little more than 22% of the utility once it leaves bankruptcy.
Ok... let me see if I have this right: the victims of the fires, who have lost property, houses, cars, and perhaps suffered from medical bills or the actual loss of family members or pets, are being paid for their "inconvenience" by shares of stock in the very utility company found guilty of negligence, which company in turn has been heavily and repeatedly fined for said negligence, and whose shares will likely suffer further hits in value.
One has to admit, that's some breathtaking chutzpah, to pay victims in shares of the company doing it to you, and shares whose value is falling even while you're signing over ownership of the stock certificates.
But there's more to this story than meets the eye, and it's largely in what's not being said.
And the hint of that "other side" of the story comes at the very end of the Zero Hedge article:
And so ends another saga of corporate malfeasance and abuse.
Guilty as charged; everyone go home and don't forget to pick up your stock certificates on the way out.
And that's my real problem here. There's not a mention of how the State of California's own policies might have contributed to these disasters, it's all PG&E's fault. More importantly, there's no mention whatsoever of the highly anomalous nature of some of those fires, anomalies which many Californians themselves documented with their cell phones, posting videos on YouTube. With respect to the Paradise fire, for example, the "high-winds-and-broken-power-line" explanation is still being proffered as the be-all and end-all of explanations:
An investigation eventually found that PG&E inadvertently started the fire when a transmission line broke from a nearly-100-year-old Pacific Gas & Electric Tower after years of neglect.
While that might be one cause, anyone who has seem some of the damage caused by the fire - houses burned, shrubs and trees intact, or fires near power connections on homes - cannot come to the conclusion that it's the only cause. And none of this really addressed the previous fires and their anomalies. How do houses burn and metal rims on wheels on cars burn, and nearby trees and shrubbs - exposed to more or less the same ambient heat - do not?
While those might or might not be legitimate questions, they've all been swept aside. The narrative has been adjudicated, the courts have decided, and the "sole perpetrator" has agreed with the narrative and signed off on it. "Here, have some common stock and don't ask any more questions."
Australians, take note...
...See you on the flip side...
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Another case of pin the tail on the patsy.
Come to think of it, I prefer the version pin the tale on the patsy version better.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_the_single_cause
Difficult to predict legal strategy to prevent anyone ever getting discovery on any of this right? But then we might be too cynical right? HAHAHAHAHAHA.
Speaking of which:
Bill Gates cartoon
BGPuppetShot
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQcvuftqXFY
Nice catch. Red Sheilds have been hollowing out the company for years. Probably will buy them back for fractions of a penny on the dollar. Then probably get the state to legislate rate payers to finance all the improvements and expansions needed in the system long before the current disaster capitalist crises.
You hit the nail on the head!!!
Does the words scapegoats patsies come to mind PG&E was left holding the bag. I wondering what threats or payoffs they were offered to plead guilty or both.
Like button.
You do know the rottenchildren own that company and have since forever, right?
I saw the headlines yesterday. Forced to fall?
How’d that go down? What kind of communication?
Still can’t see/hear about a large fire[s] w/o thinking there’s another signature of Paradise.
Also thinking of public utilities going through the deregulation/privatization of the 1990’s. After that, were they publik utilities[private/public]?
[now to read today’s post]
“The federal judge”. Puppet?
How laughable. Devastated families paid off in the murderous instruments of “burned” stock. Typical of “they’re” math; adding insult to injury.
Then there’s that back radiation signature of anomalies; pervading numerously throughout “our” masked society, now in plain sight. As if the corralled dumb animals couldn’t see nor understand the evil in control.
Those from the land “Down Under’ certainly know well this evil personified by the fires from hell. An evil that burns throughout “our” civilized technocratic spinning worlds of covid1984 woe.
You better run, you better take cover.
I remember reading and hearing from the few Paradise residents who made it out before they sealed the roads and locked them down and in to those fires. Lots of folks found in cars. Lots o folks not found. 84 counts. Ha.
Meanwhile Keith Ellison and others are going to over-reach on all police prosecutions. when Ellison fails to get 2nd degree murder guilty by the jury, somewhat normal people will join up Antifa and BLM in droves. It will be stylish to proriot (protest/riot?).
With PG&E being a utility and a monopoly, eventually these costs will filter down to the ratepayers and we will have another transfer of wealth from the ratepayers to somewhere else.
Enron, with a rinse wash repeat infinite cycle.
Wouldn’t surprise me if they file for bankruptcy, leaving those shares worthless while corporate officers take their golden parachutes to the bank.
Adds up to quite a nice landing
in their alchemical books.
They filed in January, right? They won’t file again until Red Shields can buy them cheap, inflate the share prices while making consumers pay for infrastructure improvements and then syphon off all assets while causing more disasters to capitalize on. Right?
Be funny if those new shareholders’ 22% of the stock gave them controlling interest, right?
When I read the original article a day or two ago my thought was “so whose going to jail?” answer “sounds of crickets..”
Yes,
the sounds of silence.
I suspect there must be many more lawsuits, including insurance litigation, that are off the radar, with reports perhaps relegated to local papers or websites. Maybe some Cal. residents have found something on this. Or maybe the litigants have preferred to keep a low profile, for a variety of reasons.
The other scam: insurance.
A real crapshoot w/loaded dice.
In the Harry Potter saga, there is a denial against the fact, that the dark lord has returned to power. Virginia Slave Codes of 1705, and Washington Slave Codes of 1776, and Reykjavik Slave Codes of 1940, are a budding papal empire of burning witches in California.
DOCTOR WHO 2
Who knows horcrux of Harry Potter,
in his timepiece tide trotter,
as eight-feet course
of Odin’s horse,
in Tardis Jolly Jumper.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/pnz9jpb73u1gfla/druidry-for-dummies.pdf
Corporate Personhood (as a shield) is the big thing here. Not a single executive suite is doing time, after shuffling money off to shareholders instead of repairing and upgrading lines and equipment. Nothing will change until individual people are serving time (a looong time) or getting capital punishment. What PG&E’s executive suite did was essentially slow-motion murder…
As far as the ‘anomalous’ nature of some forest fire burnings, we will probably never know. The tie-in between melted aluminum wheels/parts in those (outside) cars and the melted aluminum engines in parked 9/11 cars is most intriguing to me…
“I’ll believe corporations are people
when Texas executes one”.
– Max Keiser
Why don’t we see the faces of the PG&E corporatocracy? Let’s line them up in their Board room so we can truly see the faces of evil. This anonymous stuff really doesn’t cut it. “Off with their heads!”