Humpty Dumpty Sat on a Wall

So PG and E failed to maintain its power lines in California and caused the “Camp
Fire’ which killed many, displaced more and left an entire map without a town where
once a beautiful, thriving town stood. So many questions immediately beg to be
asked, and part of an investigation needs to be conducted that would make the
Spanish Inquisition look meek and mild by comparison.

What’s the big deal? It’s part of the implied contracts we all have but forget that really
form the foundation for the Ethos that defines us. Your job is to use electricity and pay
your bill on time and the utility’s job is to deliver power 99.9% of the time without
causing mass death and harm to customers. It’s pretty simple and almost impossible
to not do your job unless there are what many call ulterior motives.

Here is where I become medieval, and not in a way in which I could explain my
actions after the fact. It is driven by my childhood sense of the most dangerous
person among us; I always said that if a person killed another person out of rage,
jealously, orders from a military commander or revenge it was awful, but somewhat
understandable. If someone killed a person without any definable characteristic that
would at least make some small sense; that person was truly a cancer that needed to
be ended badly.

Now the motives and what ultimately seems to drive this, money. Some high level
executive or executives are somehow compensated extra for the performance of a
utility, which is a dowdy company formed when a contract is granted to provide utility
service.

A company that historically paid a dividend during my childhood, was an investors
hedge against inflation, didn’t put its name on stadiums, or advertise or perform
better than expected in any way. Electric companies did exactly what the market
expected, make a moderate return on invested capital but one that was bulletproof.
When you grant a CEO compensation based on performance, short term choices are
made to make the current operations yield higher results. In a utility this comes from
lower capital expenditures in replacing the delivery and generation systems in favor
of profits and executive bonuses.

PG and E executives did not maintain the electrical network for many years. They
endangered and killed people and destroyed far more property than terrorists have
since the beginning of terrorism. The destruction and death were intentional, not
exactly like the shooter in Las Vegas in 2018 or other horrible acts of mayhem that
ended innocent lives, but certainly the results and the method of death was every bit
as horrifying. Review of the documents will, I believe look like tobacco industry
investigation data. The higher ups knew that systems were not maintained (and
dangerously so) and they were unable to close the barn door until the horse had
been stolen, burned and killed, along with Paradise California and woods that can
never be replaced and 85 human beings who paid their electric bills.

So Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a big fall. It’s time for citizens,
who are the modern version of all the King’s men (and women) to get to the bottom
of this, put the utilities (all of them) in the hands and regulation of responsible
executives and oversight and ultimately take the money, every single dollar of it from
PG and E shareholders and executives along with criminally investigating those
whose maintenance and replacement policies killed 85 people and destroyed more
property than every effort in the history of terrorism.

Be mindful, be watchful and good luck!