Greg... California uses the PUC to cost shift organic goals over the heads of the proles.
The sugar is buried inside the rate structure.
Ultimately, the PUC, Sacramento pols and Utility Executives have created a fusion of economics and politics.
Using power bills as an alternate tax base permits Sacramento to advance every manner of Green ambits without bringing matters to a vote in Sacramento.
Not surprisingly, power rates -- especially tiers four and five have gone into orbit. ($0.35 and $0.45 per kWHr, respectively -- double adjusted for inflation, to boot!)
This has caused every manner of power intensive manufactureres to flee the state -- starting with the electric steel foundry that used to operate from the City of Industry.
Electric power at such rates makes businesses leave the state. The Greens are only too happy to wave goodbye.
California proudly advertizes that she has de-coupled power use from GDP growth. The wholesale departure of her manufacturing base is not part of the ad copy.
This economic aspect has had a direct impact on electricians and contractors: we spend all of our time retrofitting DOWN -- pulling hot tubs to the county dump. All nearby hot tub retailers have gone broke. They are ten-a-penny on CraigsList at this time -- free -- just take it away!
Everything underway today is a complete inversion of Democrat priorities from FDR through Jimmy Carter. Governor Edmund (Pat) Brown was of that era. (1959-1967) He was a kingpin of hydropower and water projects.
His son Edmund Gerald (Jerry) Brown is openly enthused about the monastic life. (He once tried to enter the Priesthood -- and is an all around minimalist.) Though never a member of the Greens -- he's one with them, in spirit. He's spent his entire political life reversing the priorities of his own father and that generation of Americans.
He served as Governor from 1975 through 1983 ... and is Governor at this time ... 2011 through present.
[ The Browns, father and son, were 'bookends' to Ronald Reagan. (1967 - 1975) ]
Gray Davis was Jerry's Chief of Staff (1975 - 1981) becoming Governor in his own right 1999 through 2003. He made such a hash of the economy that he was the first California Governor ever recalled! (Early in his second term! The Wiki dances around that shame.) He merely did everything his old boss advocated -- but on steroids.
This made everyone in Sacramento bitterly unhappy -- particularly his own party! It did not occur to him that giving his old pals everything they asked for -- and then some would embarrass them, would infuriate them*; but it sure did. (* Humans are complicated, that way.)
The electric power crisis he triggered -- along with Enron -- transformed our industry, our trade. Here, we are still dealing with its echo. It's the source of hyper-extended nega-watts programs -- which in Califonia are drastically beyond anything seen elsewhere.
So, heads-up North America: this may be the future of our craft... pulling loads out of service.
You'd be shocked as to just how dark an office is required to get under Title 24 rules. Yes, it's so severe that employees are bringing in their own portable lamps to improve their moods.
(Shades of "Joe Versus the Volcano" -- the opening scenes. That lighting is so bad that the film crew had to work at it.)
Electric power is the cleanest, smartest, source of servile energy known to man -- and the Greens are flatly against all of it. This is the crowd that has been caught trying to blow down major transmission lines. That's fanaticism.
The ultimate expression of the Greens ambit is the mass exodus of electricians from California. This state has lost at least 60,000 working electricians in the last five-years. Truly new construction now is freakishly rare. One wonders just how long this bleak trend can go on.
Without LEDs and PV there'd be nothing to do. Even the CraigsList electricians have up and blown away. Only a few liars and cheats still post there.
[You know they're lying when their posted rates are insanely low: they can't afford the gas to the job! Free estimates -- coming from 60 miles away? Right! What a bunch of jolly jokers. The old hands have folded up shop. What had been a stew of pleading electricians is now reduced to a trickle of con artists pitching low-ball entry quotes to snag the gullible. This absurdity exists because every ordinary Joe is broke, barely keeping body and soul together.]
I don't know how you can square a future of electric vehicle transportation with the massive curtailment of electric power distribution -- both of which the romantic Greens are enthused about.
I never figured that my industry would become so fulsomely politicized. The biggest decisions possible are being made on faith and emotion.
Is this California trend taking off nationally?
Last edited by Tesla; 12/18/13 12:27 AM.
