Wednesday, December 11, 2019

WALL STREET PLUNDERS - SENATOR DIANNE FEINSTEIN'S PAYMASTERS PACIFIC GAS & ELECTRIC BURNED DOWN CALIFORNIA AND THEN SCREWED THEM UP THE OTHER SIDE!

ALL THE PLUNDERING SPECIAL INTERESTS HAVE FOUND IT ADVANTAGEOUS TO OWN A PIECE OF THE OLD WHORE FEINSTEIN!


PG&E reaches minimal $13.5 billion settlement with victims of Californian fires

A tentative $13.5 billion settlement was announced Monday between Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) and lawyers representing the victims of multiple deadly fires caused by the company’s negligence and dilapidated infrastructure. The amount is a slap on the wrist considering that the fires involved—including the 2018 Camp Fire, the 2017 Tubbs Fire, the 2016 Ghost Ship warehouse fire and the 2015 Butte Fire—collectively killed 145 people and destroyed over 25,000 buildings. Lawyers for the victims stated in July that claims against PG&E for the Tubbs and Camp fires alone totaled $54 billion.
Upon filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last January, PG&E cited more than $30 billion in potential liability costs from the numerous victims of wildfires caused by its faulty equipment. Prior to the $13.5 billion settlement, the company agreed to a separate $11 billion settlement with insurers and another $1 billion settlement with cities and counties affected by the fires. In response to the latest announced settlement, PG&E shares rose 18 percent over the weekend, reaching their highest point in months.
At the last minute, victims of the Tubbs Fire, which killed 22 people and destroyed thousands of homes across Sonoma County, were incorporated into the settlement package. PG&E has always denied its responsibility for the Tubbs Fire, but recently a California Superior Court judge allowed the victims’ case to move forward, with a trial set to begin in January. Knowing they faced up to $18 billion in liabilities for this fire alone, PG&E moved swiftly to include these victims in the $13.5 billion settlement.
PG&E utility trucks (AP Photo/Ben Margot, File)
In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Monday, PG&E announced that a $13.5 billion trust would be gradually established to pay for all claims involved, initially with $5.4 billion in cash, to be set up upon the company’s exit from bankruptcy. PG&E would add $650 million in January 2022 and $750 million the following year. The rest of the trust would be comprised of $6.75 billion in common stock of PG&E, whose value has plummeted in recent years and is forecast to continue to slide as the company does little to fix its infrastructure and climate change increases the likelihood of devastating wildfires in the coming years.
At this point, over 30,000 people have filed as claimants in the case. The deadline for victims to file was recently extended to the end of this year, with as many as 70,000 unaware that they could file. Federal and state agencies have already filed claims for $6.5 billion, which will be taken from the $13.5 billion, leaving roughly $7 billion for victims. With the victims’ lawyers expected to take at least 30–40 percent, the amount of cash given to victims that lost family members and their homes could be as little as $10,000, which will do nothing to make them whole.
The deal is now being reviewed by California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, who will announce by Friday whether the settlement would meet the requirements of Assembly Bill 1054. The bill, which was supported by the overwhelming majority of state Democrats last summer and signed into law by Newsom, created a $21 billion wildfire fund to bail out California’s utility monopolies found responsible for future fires. PG&E’s bankruptcy has disqualified them from having access to this fund which effectively sanctions the corporation’s murderous and destructive practices.
If Newsom approves of the settlement, it must then be approved by a federal bankruptcy court judge, which would facilitate PG&E’s rapid emergence from bankruptcy and access to the wildfire fund.
Since coming into office this year, Newsom has demagogically postured as an opponent of PG&E, in particular during the recent mass power shutoffs to which the company repeatedly subjected millions of residents across the northern two-thirds of the state. Newsom’s duplicity, however, is exposed by the fact that he took over $200,000 in campaign funding from PG&E and has sponsored legislation exempting legal liability for electrical utilities that cause wildfires. His fulsome support for AB 1054 prompted its swift passage, allowing the utilities to further offload wildfire liabilities onto taxpayers.
Days before the settlement was announced, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) released a report finding that PG&E has routinely failed to inspect and repair its lines for years, in violation of state rules and regulations. On the day of the report’s release, PG&E finally acknowledged their culpability in the Camp Fire, the deadliest fire in state history, which killed 85 people and destroyed the entire town of Paradise.
For decades, PG&E has allowed its infrastructure to deteriorate, to the point that the average age of their electrical towers is now over 68 years. The CPUC report found that the transmission tower responsible for starting the Camp Fire was 100 years old. In addition, the company has continually de-funded their brush-clearing and other fire mitigation programs, in turn making them responsible for starting well over 2,000 wildfires in the past decade alone.
Each time that PG&E has been made to pay for its criminal practices, the state has stepped in to facilitate their offloading of costs onto consumers, so that today their rates are significantly higher than the US average. Through this process, PG&E has profited immensely, garnering $13.5 billion in net profits from 2006–2017 alone.
Instead of investing in their infrastructure during this critical time period, as their lines caused ever more devastating wildfires, PG&E chose to pay out nearly $10 billion in dividends to shareholders. Provocatively, amid this year’s bankruptcy and facing universal hostility among California residents, PG&E attempted to give $16 million in bonuses to its top executives but was prevented from doing so by the bankruptcy judge.
PG&E’s executives and board members have nothing but contempt for the tens of thousands of victims who have lost their loved ones, their homes and their prized possessions, and who have been scarred by their traumatic experiences. For these victims to be made whole, the company must be expropriated by the working class and run democratically in order to provide for the energy needs of the entire population, not the profit interests of their wealthy shareholders.

PG&E failed to do inspections and maintenance on power lines for years, report finds
By Kevin Martinez
5 December 2019
Investigators with the California Public Utilities Commission found that the Pacific Gas and Electric Corporation (PG&E) failed to inspect and repair its power lines for years before a faulty transmission line started last year’s series of wildfires including the Camp Fire, the deadliest fire in state history, which killed 85 people.
The 700-page report released last week goes further than previous findings, showing the company violated state rules for maintaining electric lines and systemic problems with how the company looked after its oldest lines. The Caribou-Palermo transmission line, which PG&E admitted was responsible for the Camp Fire, had maintenance work deferred as did many other older power lines.
The report found, “the identified shortcomings in PG&E’s inspection and maintenance of the incident tower were not isolated, but rather indicative of an overall pattern of inadequate inspection and maintenance of PG&E’s transmission facilities.”
PG&E crews had not climbed up the tower which broke down and started the Camp Fire since 2001, in violation of the company’s own rules requiring that towers with recurring problems be inspected.
A helicopter drops water while battling the Kincade Fire near Healdsburg, California, on Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2019. Millions of people went without power for days as fire crews raced to contain two major wind-whipped blazes that destroyed dozens of homes at both ends of the state: in Sonoma County wine country and in the hills of Los Angeles. [AP Photo/Noah Berger]
Investigators found that an inspection of the tower, “could have identified the worn C-hook before it failed, and that its timely replacement could have prevented ignition of the Camp Fire.”
Mike Danko, an attorney representing the victims of wildfires, told The Wall Street Journal, “It’s not one bad day, not one missed hook. They let the equipment run until it fails.”
Indeed, the Wall Street Journal reported previously how the company knew the Caribou-Palermo line, in operation since 1921, had reached the end of its useful life and needed inspection and repair.
In the aftermath of last year’s Camp Fire, PG&E filed for bankruptcy on January 29, 2019, to shield itself from the billions in claims from its victims. The financial obligations totaled $30 billion in liabilities but the company was quick to make the working class pay for its criminal neglect for safety.
In a move that sparked further public outrage, PG&E announced a series of rolling blackouts this year, affecting 3 million Californians and countless businesses, schools, hospitals and those who needed electricity for life-saving equipment. Instead of repairing and modernizing its decrepit infrastructure the company tried to save money by shutting off power to its lines during the fire season. Nonetheless, a series of deadly wildfires broke out in 2019 as well.
Wednesday afternoon reports from Bloomberg that PG&E was close to a deal to pay only $13.5 billion in damages related to the Camp Fire in a mixture of cash and stock, less than half their liability, sent the company’s stock prices soaring 21 percent. Despite going into bankruptcy, the company still attempted to pay its top executives $16 million in bonuses but was only prevented by US Bankruptcy Court Judge Dennis Montali on August 30.
CEO Bill Johnson announced that blackouts could continue for another decade as the company presumably updates its infrastructure. The state investigation should give pause for those thinking the company will make good on its promises.
This Monday, PG&E admitted that its equipment started the Camp Fire but declined to comment on whether there were systemic failures in its maintenance and inspection practices as outlined by the report. The report was released on Monday but had already been completed last month, the first anniversary of the Camp Fire.
A previous report from 2010 commissioned by the company told PG&E to climb a sample of its towers every three to five years to see if they needed repair. Needless to say, the company failed to do these inspections saying its ground and aerial inspections were enough. Another 2017 internal presentation revealed the average age of the towers was 68 years, but the average life expectancy was only 65 years of use.
The company is already on federal probation after it was revealed that it failed to maintain and inspect its gas pipeline system which killed 8 people in the San Bruno explosion of 2010. The federal judge overseeing the case found that the company has violated the terms of its probation and is weighing further sanctions.
In regards to last year’s wildfires, the investigation found that the company knew about problems on the line before the fire but did not identify them as anything serious. When a PG&E crew found a loose anchor on a lattice-steel tower close to where the fire started, they labeled it as a repair that need to be done within a year. Investigators determined this repair should have been given highest priority and immediately dealt with.
According to the report, “the current and prior inspection and maintenance programs were inadequate” and failed to find defective hooks and other potentially faulty equipment.
The Caribou-Palermo line wasn’t the only transmission line that needed to be repaired. Another hook on a nearby tower has also been severely damaged by years of weather and friction. Even worse, the report found that PG&E didn’t note the results of previous inspections, noting, “this raises the question of whether inspectors were evaluating cold-end hardware even when they performed climbing inspections.”
While the report lists dozens of violations of the utility commission’s rules, it does not include any recommendations. The callous indifference to human life expressed by PG&E is the natural result of the subordination of human need to private profit. Between 2006 and the end of 2017, PG&E made $13.5 billion in net profits. Over those years, they paid nearly $10 billion in dividends to shareholders but never found the money to maintain their lines.

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