PG&E Blackout is Blackmail

GUEST COMMENTARY--The PG&E Blackout Con is all about threatening the judge in the PG&E bankruptcy case. The victims have joined with the bondholders to eliminate the equity of the stockholders who deserve nothing.

So, in desperation, the power company pigs are turning off your lights. Hopefully, the judge will not be intimidated.

Leaving hospitals, schools and 1 million homes without power — and that means without water — in California is the endgame of deregulation mania.

Jerry Brown, Bill Clinton and other deregulation snake-oil salesmen, and the PG&E greedster bosses, should be imprisoned for the people already burned to death.

Where is the California utility commission? 

I’ve written a book published by the United Nations called, Democracy and Regulation, about how to avoid such piggery. When I wrote the book, it was meant only for Third World nations — apparently, Northern California is the third world of electricity.

Public utilities must be publicly owned. Decades back, I investigated power company racketeering for the Justice Department.

As an expert, I can tell you, PG&E is a criminal enterprise parading as a power company. Shut them down — not us!

(Greg Palast, a Puffin Foundation fellow in investigative reporting, is the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, now a feature documentary. www.GregPalast.com )