Is the Public Utility Reform Act of 2016 a Corporate Trojan Horse?

by Roger Herried

Californians could soon experience a retake of the disastrous 2001 Energy Crisis if the public doesn’t get involved in making major changes to the Public Utility Reform Act of 2016 that will be taken up by the State Senate later this June.  This time the implications could go far beyond the state’s electricity infrastructure if the plan to breakup the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) goes ahead!  Mike Gatto’s (Assembly 43rd District L.A.) ACA 11 recently passed the assembly on a 69-11 vote that would break up the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC).  If the bill passes the Senate, it would mean that the public could vote this coming November to break up the CPUC as well as removing the protected constitutional status that it gained back in 1878.

Due to recent scandals that have shook the CPUC, such a move to restructure the massive agency that spends $1.4 billion annually to protect consumers appears to be appropriate.  For anyone who has been following what was initially dubbed Peaveygate – when the former President of the CPUC was caught cutting deals for the state’s major IOU (Investor Owned Utility) electric giants – Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (PG&E) and  Southern California Edison (SCE). The Act’s passage would give the state legislature the power to rip apart the CPUC, even redefining what it could do not just for the state’s powerful electric companies but for many other utilities like phone, natural gas and transit services across California.

Summary of the San Bruno Natural Gas Line Scandal

The San Bruno gas line disaster in 2010, where 8 people were killed, including the CPUC’s department head – Jacqueline Greig who had been actively pushing to deny a $3.6 billion rate increase for PG&E.  The response, which was managed by CPUC President Michael Peevy enraged the city of San Bruno. Her death and that of her daughters at the epicenter of the explosion set off a conspiracy subculture resulting in a story by the Examiner.  Victims and residents impacted by the loss of their homes filed over 70 lawsuits against PG&E,  as further investigations exposed the fact that the company had diverted over $100 million of its safety funds into executive compensation bonuses.  Nearly four years after the explosion, internal documents uncovered Peevy’s close relationship with the company to avoid major fines – even suggest an appropriate amount it should be fined. The scandal would eventually force PG&E to be fined $1.6 billion for the explosion.  PG&E has since launched one of the most extensive public relations campaigns ever seen in the Bay Area with its good neighbor ads seen regularly on every TV channel.  In many of these ads the company appears to promote solar energy development, yet the company actively attempted to kill the state’s Net Metering program that pays solar panel owners for their excess electricity.

Then the state was hit with the massive Porter Ranch Natural Gas Leak that resulted in demands for new CPUC investigations.  This was followed by Governor Brown establishing a new Safety Division within the CPUC.

Summary of the San Onofre Steam Generator Scandal

By 2014, the San Bruno story had been relegated to the back pages until another controversy blew the lid off the CPUC – The San Onofre Steam Generator scandal that led to the June 2013 closure of the 2nd to last nuclear facility in California.

Back in 2005, the CPUC gave the Southern California Edison Company (SCE) permission to spend nearly $700 million for new Steam Generators at San Onofre in a bid to extend the operational lifespan of the twin nuclear-powered units located near active earthquake faults and barely 50 miles from downtown Los Angeles.  In a bid to increase the operating capacity of the units, SCE cut a secret deal with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries for the design of the new generators.  The tactic failed. Both steam generators began to leak shortly after their installation (timeline of Steam Generator Failure) in early 2012 soon after they were installed. The half billion dollar disaster and scandals forced SCE to permanently close San Onofre in June 2013.
Rather than follow proper procedures when a major power source fails, the CPUC’s president Michael Peevy, who also happened to be the president of SCE in the 1990’s when the CPUC forced the closure of San Onofre unit 1, refused to start timely hearings into the matter, resulting in major financial benefits to the company.  When he finally did agree to hearings, he cherry picked a former aid as the Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) to oversee the case.  Half way through the hearings, the major parties magically decided – against concerns of many intervenors – to settle the case, leaving ratepayers holding $3.3 billion of the estimated $4.7 billion closure costs.  (See litigation history of scandal)
But during discovery, documents started to pour out of the CPUC documenting wrongdoing that would reach its peak in early 2015 when the secret illegal settlement meetings held in Poland between Peavy and SCE were leaked.  Criminal investigations were begun forcing Peavy to resign from the CPUC.

Summary of State Lawmaker's Response to the CPUC Scandal

With the threat of an ouster over the explosive e-mail scandal at the CPUC, Peevy announced his resignation on October 9th 2014. It wasn’t long before criminal charges against him were announced. Growing anger at the CPUC including major investigative work done in Southern California included a detailed rundown by the L.A. Times on the CPUC’s recent problems. While the InlandPolitics.com opened up an extensive news feed monitoring the CPUC as well as this author.  Brown’s replacement for Peevy has also run into serious criticism for being too friendly with those he is supposed to regulate.  An example of this cozy relationship was experienced by the author and Silvia Seigel, the founder of TURN, who watched in horror as PG&E’s just retired VP walked by us after his deposition in 1988 with the then CPUC’s president talking about plans for a private barbecue party.

The State Assembly’s Committee on Utilities and Commerce would launch a number of investigative hearings on the CPUC starting in 2015.  The legislature would passed six bills in 2015 calling for modest CPUC reforms, but Governor Jerry Brown vetoed all of them.   The former San Diego city attorney then won a legal decision that Jerry Brown’s emails between him and the CPUC’s Commissioners be released, but Brown used a higher court to quash the lower court’s decision.  In the meantime California Attorney General Harris’ investigation of criminal behavior languished because of her run for higher office. Federal criminal investigations have not gone anywhere either.

The scandals continued to grow as the CPUC hired high priced outside legal services to protect itself, besides failing to answer questions raised by legislative investigators relating to the ten’s of thousands of emails documenting the fact that the CPUC has been captured by the very utilities it has been charged with regulating.  E-mails from CPUC hearings even exposed a serious scandal at Diablo Canyon where the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was caught coaching PG&E on how to overcome major seismic concerns by the agency’s own chief inspector.

Summary of the Public Utility Reform Act of 2016

Mike Gatto (D – L.A.) chairman of the Assembly Utilities and Commerce Committee overseeing the CPUC submitted the legislative bill ACA (Assembly Constitutional Amendment) 11 during the current legislative session what will be known as the Public Utility Reform Act of 2016 if it passes out of the legislature. It passed the Assembly on June 2nd and will have its first hearing in the Senate on June 21st.  The measure will do the following:

“The measure would direct the Legislature to adopt appropriate structures to provide greater accountability for the public utilities of the state and provide the necessary guidance to the commission to focus its regulatory efforts on safety, reliability, and ratesetting and to implement statutorily authorized programs for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.”

And it would do so by:

…”authoriz(ing) the Legislature to reallocate or reassign all or a portion of the functions of the (CPUC) commission to other state agencies, departments, boards, or other entities, consistent with specified purposes.”

The details of a planned amendment to the California State Constitution will require a 2/3rds vote of the public to pass and does not require Governor Brown’s signature to get on the ballot if passed by the senate.

On its face, this bill appears to have honest intentions – to reorganize the CPUC. But if passed this new law would allow the state legislature a blank check to restructure the state’s largest regulatory agency that would open the floodgates to corporate lobbying that could dramatically weaken consumer protections for this agency that has more rules and regulations than the rest of the state government (Index of CPUC’s extensive rules and codes governing California Corporations). There will be immense political and economic pressure brought to bear on the legislature to act against the best interests of consumers that could very well result in deregulation of entire segments of the state’s companies.
It wasn’t long before major conservative institutions like the American Enterprise Institute called for the deregulation of the CPUC.  The focus of the AEI’s oped was the deregulation of the CPUC but also included support for AT&T’s legislative proposal calling for the closure of the state’s copper based phone service that would have dramatic impacts on the 8 million Californians who still rely on the old phone services.  The AT&T legislation, AB 2395 was finally defeated on May 27th as the result of an organized campaign led by numerous consumer groups, the CPUC and every Communication Worker’s of America local union in the state that sent nearly 100 people to Sacramento to oppose the legislation that would have ended all copper-line phone services in the state by 2020. Due to the deregulation of Cell phone services only the city of Los Angeles has started the process of hardening cell tower services against seismic dangers that could exacerbate a major seismic event here like the earthquake that struck the Chinese province of Sichuan that damaged over 2,000 cell towers resulting in poor to missing communication for weeks after that 7.9 quake that eventually killed 88,000 people in
 2008. LA Times

Another op-ed by Forbes Magazine in May started the drumbeat for deregulating the CPUC, also with a focus on deregulating the state’s copper phone services but also bringing up the growing scandal over Uber that has shaken up cab companies in major urban areas.  There can be no doubt the CPUC is having trouble.

But there can also be no doubt that turning over the massive undertaking of restructuring the CPUC to a state legislature that has also been shaken with its own scandals, not to mention what is most likely the largest feeding frenzy of lobbyists the state has ever seen would be ill-advised if there aren’t major public guidelines set in place as to how such a major restructuring should be undertaken.  For anyone familiar with the recent TPP trade agreements, we can be assured that far too many back table deals will be moving forward in terms of how to regulate not just the electric companies but also all the other major areas the CPUC currently manages – all in the name of fairness to the corporate bottom line.

Additional Notes

There isn’t a single soul who has taken on a major corporation using the CPUC intervenor process that doesn’t clearly understand just how unfair the system is to this day.  The CPUC’s own division that is setup to protect consumers from gouging is underfunded, under staffed and in many cases manipulated by the political arm of the agency.  Just as all professional sports franchises are locked down as to how much money can be spent to make competition fair, a similar lid on expenses should be placed on corporate funds that is balanced dollar for dollar with public resources.

Since the CPUC can and does make precedent-setting decisions that can affect the entire nation’s regulatory infrastructure, there are law firms and major industrial associations that routinely monitor the CPUC caseload.  These entities can and do actively help with filings by local IOU’s that already have some of the most powerful law operations in the country when it comes to protecting their own interests.  A good example was the $100 million legal fees PG&E spent  that were used to protect its interests when it went bankrup after 2001. But it is all but clear that the CPUC has become a David vs. Goliath legal battle, with the public clearly getting the raw deal, when any of the regular cases come before the quasi legal Administrative Law Judges who hold hearings within the CPUC process that are then turned over to the political appointees to vote on once the case has been heard.

The historic fact that going back to 1878, the original constitutional action setting up the agency included a mechanism banning all lobbying by the corporations impacted set the ground work for what would become decades of legal warfare that led to the initial expansion of the agency’s powers in 1911.  Sadly,  that progressive reform period was also a Trojan Horse where politically naive state representatives weren’t aware of the agenda that was launched by the National Civic Foundation back in 1907 when it created the cookie cutter legislative package that swept every state but Nebraska, establishing what we know today as the CPUC.  That legislative model took what used to be the legal prerogative of local governments and placed it in the hands of a single statewide commission for all perceived natural monopolies, such as water, phone lines, gas, public transit and electricity and did so at a time when there was a growing nationwide campaign that called the public takeover of the mostly corrupt private companies that charged more and were known to be the root cause of local government corruption nationwide.  This legislation would give the private companies a veneer legitimacy, but would also setup the national expansion of wall street super corporations that would then only have to deal with one regional agency, allowing them to create their giant legal apparatus only focusing on a state regulatory process rather than having to bribe local government boards.

The 1911 NCF legislation set in motion the massive expansion of corporate monopolies that were only checked as a result of President Roosevelt’s national reforms in the 1930’s that have  been attacked or replaced since the 1980’s, bills like Glass Steagal or the 1935 Public Utilities Holding Company Act that was repealed in 2005. Both these bills were originally passed as the result of public outrage caused by major collapses of electric companies during the depression. The late 60s was the era when consumer protection was at its peak. Today, we have watched as legal battles in the U.S. Supreme Court have all but stripped consumers of most protections they once held.  One of the most important of such decisions was the 1986  CPUC ruling that the intervenor/consumer protection group called TURN would be allowed to place short commentary pieces in PG&E’s electric bill that always had its own pro-utility newsletter sent to customers. The Court’s ruling destroyed the nationwide consumer activist movement on the basis of its judgment that the TURN comments would impact PG&E’s right to free speech.  The ruling has since been used by large corporations to mean one dollar one vote in all public forums.  

We have watched for nearly 30 years as energy companies – the dinosaurs that led to the lost of over $17 billion in a single year due to the deregulation of electricity – could very well face broad new challenges that could further cause even bigger issues as state, federal and international programs unfold – any of which could be tossed at the whim of  corporate forces that actively deny such things as Climate Issues, or worse, see the growing development of micro-grids as dangerous. Changes such as new solar technologies could dramatically displace the current way in which we produce energy.
Will the vision to protect the public be up to it, or will huge lobby forces far away for most of us in Sacramento result in major deregulatory forces wining out to the detriment of the public?  

Public Utility Reform Act of 2016 Action Plan

The Public Utility Reform Act of 2016 that passed the Assembly by a wide margin on June 2nd will go to the Senate on June 21st. where it will be submitted to a similar hearing process and possible passage by the end of the summer. As it stands, the bill appears to have good intentions but could unleash a wave of lobbying by corporations like nothing we’ve ever seen before if the public votes to pass this amendment to the state constitution.  It is therefore urgent the bill be refined on what it should or shouldn’t be able to do.

As pointed out in the above notes, the creation of the CPUC has led to a sea change over the last century on how the public receives utility services. In 1911, both Los Angeles and San Francisco had passed city charters calling for public ownership of these services – thus the national legislative package that was rushed through to counter the public ownership movement that was growing dramatically across the United States.  For example the U.S. government broke up the Standard Oil Trust at this time, which today would be smaller in size than PG&E is today.

In essence the Public Utility Reform Act of 2016 will have a larger impact on California than the Wilson administration’s disastrous push to deregulate the state’s electricity that went from 1996-2001 that resulted in at least $17 billion in lost rate payer revenues, besides the one time $28 billion give away to PG&E, SCE and the other smaller private electric companies that all disappeared during the crisis.

Suggestions to the senate on changes to the CPUC should focus on the most controversial parts of the agency:

• The political Appointment process of Commissioners and their role in influencing the agency’s actions
• The CPUC’s consumer protection model.  (Division of Ratepayer Advocates) & Intervenors
• The quasi-legal court model overseen by Administrative Law Judges and the lack of outside oversight
• The governor of California’s behind the scenes power over Commissioners and funding of the agency

Whether or not the legislature and its politicized position is ideal to investigate the kinds of changes that would actually enhance consumer protections should also be debated.  If California is to really be a leader in the future as a role model for its actions on issues Climate Change – other energy policies or other issues the CPUC currently oversees, its critical that our Senators hear that they are on the hot seat and need to address this issue in far more detail before letting it go before the public.

Stay Tuned for more Things you can do!

FIGHT ELECTION FRAUD

CALL TO IMMEDIATE ACTION!

Secretary of State has said the CA Primary hasn't been fully counted and is NOT certified until 7/15/16!!!!!!! To date, they have approx. 3.5 million votes counted out of 18 million registrants!

http://www.sos.ca.gov/administration/contact-information

We recommend that provisional voters and ALL Voters do NOT switch party affiliation until they've proven their vote was counted or else ... lawsuits & civil action will prove that election fraud did occur in CA and across the nation in other states as well.

There are hundreds of professionals battling this 2016 election fraud as we speak. Additionally, many Facebook users and groups across the Internet and elsewhere are urging voters to leave the DEM Party and switch affiliation now to show the Establishment we are finished with a broken system! Still, since Bernie has told us we are going to the DEMOCRATIC National Convention, we will support the #seeyouinphilly movement, online or in-person.

Once again...Counties are attempting to switch Dems and NPPs before provisional ballots are counted in CA!!! Switching Affiliations before the election is certified in order to make votes for Bernie void.

We need to be on top of our info! Please tell all of your CA friends to check the status of their provisional and mail-in ballots here:

http://bit.ly/trackballot or here: http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/ballot-status/

And...to pass informative and corroborated links on to their friends. If election officials cannot confirm ballot status by July 15th, report it here:

CAvoterprotection@berniesanders.com and ask questions here
help@berniesanders.com.

TO ALL BERNIE SUPPORTERS:

The only way Bernie can get the Democratic nomination is by way of superdelegates.  Many are already pledged to vote for Hillary, but they are allowed to change their vote at the convention in July.  This is how Obama received the nomination 8 years ago; many superdelegates changed their plan and voted for him.

The superdelegates from your state will listen to you. With the link above, one email will reach every Clinton superdelegate from your state. There is a space to put a message of your choice.   You can even write them every week, with a new message.  Urge your friends and neighbors to do the same. http://www.lobbydelegates.com/delegates.php

Here is a sample letter- people are welcome to use part or all of it, or design their own.

Dear xx,

As you cast your vote at the Democratic Convention, please consider:

• Bernie Sanders does better against Trump that Hillary Clinton in poll after poll, and is more likely to win the White House for the Democratic Party.
• (If your state voted for Bernie)  The majority of voters in our state voted for Sanders; please heed their wishes and cast your vote accordingly.
• (If your state – eg NY, AZ, CA- had evidence of voter suppression or fraud) Many Bernie supporters did not get their vote counted.  He might well have won if they did.  Do you really want to vote for a candidate who has won by unfair means?
• Hillary Clinton represents the status quo.  We are in a time of extraordinary challenges, with multiple ecological catastrophes looming.  We need a whole new approach, which the political revolution of Bernie Sanders could provide.  He would open up possibilities of change, which is essential.
• Bernie’s campaign is built on telling the truth about the hard economic and ecologic realities of our country.  We need a president who can face the truth and work with it.
• Hillary Clinton is being investigated for using a private, nonsecure email server while Secretary of State.  She even gave the names and schedules of several CIA agents and of the ambassador to Libya, who was killed.  http://www.opednews.com/articles/Did-Clinton-s-Emails-Expos-by-Consortium-News-Email_Hillary-Clinton_Redactions_State-160605-26.html

Her disregard for security while holding this key position bodes ill for her ability to make good decisions and safeguard US security if she is elected president.

• She is also being investigated for racketeering, for using her office to extort money from contractors for the Clinton Foundation.  A person capable of such venality and corruption should not be president.
• If either of these investigations results in formal charges being brought against Mrs. Clinton, her candidacy would lose credibility.
• Donald Trump has shown himself to be a vicious campaigner, who goes for the jugular.  Due to the above investigations, Hillary Clinton is extremely vulnerable to his sort of attacks.
• In contrast, Bernie Sanders has a clean record, with no hint of scandal.  He would be an honest president, who would work for the good of the country, not for his own pocketbook.
• People under 45 are overwhelmingly for Bernie Sanders.  They are looking at the future, and want a president who can lead the country toward “a future to believe in".   Their wishes should be heeded.  They are the future of the Democratic Party, and of our country.

Please feel free to use part or all of the above sample letter, or write your own. Please forward this newsletter to all your lists throughout the country.

COME SHARE THE APOCALYPSE

Sometimes I try to imagine Chief Joseph, whose prophetic powers allowed him to see things hidden to ordinary men, tuning in to the state of life on the planet in the Year of Our Lord 2016: temperatures soaring to 128 degrees in Rajastan, lakes and riverbeds caked and cracking; crops failing in India, Africa, and Vietnam, promising certain famine; plumes of nuclear contamination reaching ever closer to aquifers; the inexorable spread of underground fires near St. Louis reaching the West Lake Land fill nuclear waste burial site; huge swaths of discarded plastics swirling in dead oceans. I wonder how he would feel about terrestrial life, whose existence has lasted 3.8 billion years to be wiped out by the White Man, inventor of superior technologies (starting with the steam engine) in less than 300 years. 

Sometimes I think of Simone Weil, who as a child of six refused to eat sugar because she knew the troops of WWI were denied sugar, and who at the age of 34 refused to eat any more food than what was available to people living in France under Nazi occupation.

What would Western urban life look like if say, for one day, we were to apply the same degree of empathy to our own daily round. We would (for example) have to walk to the nearest public tap; draw water, carry it back home; stretch the quantity of water we drew to include all cooking, and cleaning activities; we would hav e to walk to wherever we needed to go. If our place of work was five miles distant, we would have to leave home at 8 AM to arrive at a punctual 9 AM. If our place of work was ten miles distant, we would have to leave closer to 7; and if our place of work was 20 miles distant, we would have to leave home at 5 AM. We would return after a full day’s work at 10 PM.

To eat, we would have to buy lunch from a pushcart offering hotdogs costing $20.00 a piece. If we packed a lunch, we would have to grow our own food, and bake our own bread, and we would have to do those things only during those hours not part of a regular employment day. 

We would have to meet our obligations the following day regardless of how hungry, and exhausted the business of living the previous day might have left us. 

Now multiply such a life style to last a week. Can you fathom it? You’re still strong, still reasonably game about the experiment, still toughing it out, convinced that you can hack it. Now how about two weeks? How about a month? Still with me? How about a year? Still there?

How about a life time? 

Because that’s how at least half of the people on earth live. And nowadays, with global warming they’re still comparatively well off if their area still happens to be free of flooding, or free of severe drought.

Meanwhile, you have a car. There is adequate public transportation, but you use a car. Is it because you have always had a car? Is it because you earned enough money to afford a car? Is it because you are in a hurry to get where you need to go and want to save one-half hour by not having to take a bus?

Meantime, you retire two to three hours after you can no longer see with natural light. You also operate household appliances, cook using either natural gas or electricity. You use powered devices to entertain yourself, computers, television sets. Most of your energy still comes from burning fossil fuels, which causes freak weather events, such as floods, drought, sea level rise, and fires. And some of that energy comes from nuclear power plants, which generate toxic waste with no known technology to sequester it safely from the biosphere for the next 100,000 years.

Meanwhile you shop.  At the supermarket you get to choose between 18 detergents; 14 brands of ice cream; 24 kinds of breakfast cereal.  At Toys R Us you have to navigate a warehouse full of non-biodegradable plastic toys to provide your children’s birthday gifts. At IKEA you clock the mileage you need to walk between aisles filled with shelves; aisles filled with chairs; with sofas; and whole aisles filled with lamps. At Home Deport, there are so many plumbing appliances, you need to spend at least an hour and a half deciding which one to select.

In Palestine, no cement is allowed in to rebuild whole streets of buildings that have been reduced to rubble.

What would we have to do without to share our present-day apocalypse equitably with the great majority of all the other people living on earth?

How would we have to live to stop the deep insanity of our lives?

Making or Breaking:

Media Steps in to Declare The Winner (Before the Polls Close)

How to write about this 2016 election season? Situation changing rapidly while staying the same?

The Great Whore of Iraq

On May 26, members of the media announced that on June 6, prior to the closing of California’s polls, in fact two hours before, it planned on announcing that Hilary Clinton is the Democratic nominee for residency in the White House. This particular tactic by the media for creating election winners was tried and perfected in the selection of George W. Bush to the residency in 2,000.

California’s voters can take heart: not only has Democracy been dangled like a carrot before their noses, to be repeatedly withdrawn just as their jaws open to take a nice big bite, but up to half a million California voters may have been purged, particularly those who have changed their registration—as many Bernie voters saw fit to do.

The election train has been accelerating toward the proverbial brick wall for a long time. It reached cruising speed some time ago. It is now on that final stretch just before….

Imperator Romano Maximus Trajan

•a loud mouth demagogue stepped up to the plate, with a penchant for substituting racist video clips for actual Coliseum combats, commenting about Christians being munched to shreds by lions and the bones spit out, with cheering from the gallery (warning: may be offensive to some viewers).

•a piece of yesterday’s fish being offered as “the first female candidate” which women will find irresistible bait despite her shrill war mongering. Wars can be overlooked as an issue: America has been at war since the founding except for 21 (yes, that’s twenty-one) years of peace. Now U.S./NATO missiles are ringing Russia, potentially triggering a nuclear war, war mongering is barely a problem until the warmonger-in-chiefess takes office.

•which she is guaranteed to do by Debbie Wasserman Schultz and a clutch of super duper delegates deciding  where that Democratic carrot gets dangled next (and keeps you, sucker, in the happy illusion that your vote remotely counts).

•which she is guaranteed to do by manipulation of voter purging and caging and discouragement in states like New York (more than 100,000 votes were purged just in Brooklyn alone) and Arizona. 

•Shortly after she launched her presidential campaign, and following the assassination of Goldman Prize winning activist, Berta Cáceres, Clinton deleted any and all references to the 2009 Honduran coup which she removed from the paperback edition of her memoir Hard Choices.

•and for comic relief, Clinton went on record promoting transparency in government by making sure reporters couldn’t hear her speech at a fund-raising event by turning up a white noise machine.

It reminded me of Cardinal Mazzarin.  For that we have to go back to the 17^th Century. In France (where he was hated) a popular song excoriated him. Seeing opportunity, he had broadsides printed with the words and lyrics and sold them for good money. “If they gonna sing, they gotta pay,” he is reported to have said. He was Italian through and through.

Cardinal Mazzarin

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

• IGNORE THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA - YOUR VOTE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE    

• INFORM YOURSELF AND YOUR FRIENDS (AND PEOPLE YOU BARELY TALK TO):
  

Is Hillary Stealing the Nomination?  Will Bernie Birth a Long-Term Movement?
By Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman, Reader Supported News - April 27, 2016

Why Can't The Nation & the Left Deal With Election Theft? 
By Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman, Reader Supported News - April 16, 2016

Is the 2016 Election Already Being Stripped & Flipped?
By Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman, Reader Supported News - April 3, 2016 

• RESORT TO THE LAW:

Hundreds of New York state voters to file suit calling the closed primary 'a threat to our democratic system' after claiming their party affiliation mysteriously changed

 

Sanders supporters sue to extend California's voter registration deadline

• RAISE HELL

Six Hundred Thousand Trees to Bite the Dust

For some time, although most residents of the East Bay Region have been unaware of it (and kept in the dark), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has initiated plans to cut 600,000 trees from the East Bay ridge;. The plan includes areas stretching from Richmond through Hayward and some portions of Contra Costa County. The stumps, 600,000 of them, are to be treated twice a year for a ten-year period with Garlon and Glyphosate, cancer-causing products manufactured by Dow Chemical and Monsanto., which will leach into run off, ground water, and eventually major bodies of water. What constitutes tree-shaded wilderness with thousands of miles of trails are to be converted into grasslands. Actualized, the plan will result in severe erosion (it has already caused significant damage along certain stretches of Highway 13 which coincidentally runs on top of the Hayward Fault); it will raise the regional temperature and reduce moisture in the soils; it will adversely affect animal, bird, bat, butterfly and insect habitat; and it will not reduce fire hazard, although that of course is the rationale advanced to justify such a radical plan.

And, like the national movement to disappear library books (covered in my last newsletter) this plan to strip away wilderness extends to other areas of California as well.
 

Regional Park Meeting

 
Last  Tuesday, May 17, the Board of Directors of the East Bay Regional Parks held a meeting at their headquarters.  Public Comments were restricted to 3 minutes per speaker. I share my 3-minutes worth of comments below:

I am here today because it’s the 10^th anniversary of  Al Gore’s film, “An Inconvenient Truth.” According to NASA’s report last week, the planet’s air has gone beyond the tipping point of 350 PPM and now stands at 400 PPM.  No humans have ever existed before in this kind of atmosphere.
 
Atmosphere is a fancy word for the air you breathe, the Board members of the EBRPD breathes, and all the people in this Board Room room breathe. It is the air all living organisms on Earth breathe: marine animals, plants, and, including the soil bacteria and the bees which allow us and all other living things to eat.

There is no separate air conditioning for members of regional governments, city governments, and national governments. There is no separate air for the CEOs of Monsanto and Dow Chemical. The one thing left on Earth that remains democratic is air—the air everyone breathes.

We need full disclosure. What dollar amounts does the budget show for the Dow and Monsanto contracts negotiated by the EBRPD for this project? What does the budget show of the profits from the sale of wood chips and lumber to markets in China and Japan from this project?

The trees are the common property of all the citizens of the East Bay. They are our wilderness. As its owners, we have the right to determine the disposition of our property. We need to know who benefits from the destruction mandated by the FEMA clearcutting program affecting Richmond all the way to and including
Hayward and Contra Costa. We will use every means at our disposal to find out.

This planet is not the home of unlimited growth; it must not become the home of unlimited destruction.  This is not the moment to pollute our already polluted soils, watershed, and larger bodies of water with Dow and Monsanto cancer-causing chemicals.  We’ve been there, done that.

Which is why—if all living things are to avoid death by choking—we need to plant MORE trees. Trees are the lungs by which this home we live in breathes. This is not the place to cut 400,000 trees, not including the 200,000 more trees the UC has under its jurisdiction. Maybe on another planet. But not this one.

 More Information: 

\   

Overviews and Resources 

http://www.saveeastbayhills.org/

http://berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2016-04-08/article/44353?headline=UC-Plan-to-Cut-Trees-in-Strawberry-Canyon-and-Hills-for-Development-Threatens-Ecology---Merrilie-Mitchell

The Science:
http://milliontrees.me/

History and Toxicology:
http://www.eastbaypesticidealert.org/wpad.html

The Lawsuit and More History:
http://hillsconservationnetwork.org/

Art Action and More Science:
http://treespiritproject.com/sfbayclearcut/

Forest Photos and More Resources:
http://bapd.org/trees.html

Fire Hazards: conservation biologist David Theodoropoulos, retired firefighter Dave Maloney,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1i3RP7eDFc

High Burning Fuel (includes pictorial evidence):
https://milliontrees.me/2016/05/06/fire-scientist-says-eucalyptus-did-not-burn-with-high-intensities-leading-to-home-destruction/

August 2015 Hills Conservation Network protest against Sierra Club's FEMA-supporting lawsuit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8huWXwpJNOg 

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

SIGN ALL THREE PETITIONS:

Oakland-specific petition (almost 65,000 signatures already): http://www.thepetitionsite.com/174/979/908/the-east-bay-forests-around-your-home-are-slated-for-destruction/

Hills Conservation Network-specific petition: http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/stop-ucs-plan-to-deforest-1

Million Trees, SF Forest Alliance - Sierra Club-specific petititon: http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/sierra-club-must-stop

SUPPORT LEGAL ACTION: hillsconservationnetwork.org

JOIN:  https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/eastbayforests-info

or: 
defendeastbayforests@riseup.net

CULTURAL IRREVOLUTION

What the heck was I doing attending yet another cluster-fuck Berkeley Library Trustees Meeting last week? Taking notes, that’s what. Happily, back out in the street (free at last, free at last!) someone in the loop let me in on what’s really going on. Without my informant’s input, my article (see below) wouldn’t have had a spine. What the article doesn’t let you know, however, is that the City of Berkeley has launched an expensive investigation of any and all library whistle blowers, without whom, Berkeley would never have discovered the destruction by the former library director, Greg Scott, of 39,000 books, books paid for by the citizens of Berkeley, and therefore a theft of our commons.

What the article omits adding is that this theft of our history is happening in libraries nationwide.

Public and Library Employees Ignored by Berkeley Board of Library Trustees

In the home stretch of researching my latest book, I found myself consulting a 1969 issue of an anthropology publication archived in the Main Branch of the Berkeley Public Library, discovering what the people I had been writing about, the Juwasi (or San) of the Kalahari Desert really looked like. Before leaving the library, I browsed the reference room. I came upon an atlas of women travelers of the 19^th Century. Whoopee, I thought. Research done, proofs corrected, I’ll come back to have a serious look. A mere five months later, I found the reference room was stripped. The shelves were nearly as bereft as a mediaeval monk’s tonsure. What was going on?

I discovered 39,000 books had walked out the back door of the Berkeley Main Branch of the Public Library to be pulped. Rumor had it the pulp found its way into the manufacture of mattresses. I was given access to the database of the 19,000 last copies that had met their fate in the teeth of the shredders. I found a disproportion of titles about women and the women’s movement; about Blackness and the history of Black folk, and volumes on economy and politics. Did the library trustees have an agenda?

Since then I have regularly attended monthly meetings where the public is “invited” to interface with the Board of Library Trustees. My participation in these events was prompted by a lifetime of activism and a sense that with so much public indignation at the theft of our Berkeley commons, the Board of Library Trustees might be persuaded to shift their policies. Through the exertion of public pressure, Jeff Scott, the Library Director, whose trashing tenure lasted a bare 11 months (so much mayhem in so little time), was summarily dismissed. Surely things were bound to improve. And yet, nine months later, the same policies remain in force, notably both weeding and collections acquisitions remain in the hands of only two librarians answerable to the Manager of Collections; whereas formerly, librarian specialists had this responsibility each in their particular areas of expertise.

Last Wednesday’s meeting marks a water shed in the breakdown of relations between the trustees , the public and the library employees. Public commentary was restricted to one minute. Following the comment period, two representatives from Local 1021 shared a union notification of no confidence in the current Collections Manager; followed by two representatives from Local 1 who spoke in opposition.

It turns out at issue is a serious labor dispute which finds employee morale at an all time low. Yet throughout the proceedings I marveled at the trustees’ expressions of satisfaction and complacency. Could it be this state of affairs is exactly what they intend? The absence of many librarians for fear of retaliation was duly noted by many speakers. Could it be the trustees agenda is to make working conditions so unpleasant as to encourage older, better paid employees to quit? Recent union negotiations revolving around pay cuts across the board would seem to suggest that is exactly what is going on.

The same trustees who appear indifferent to employee intimidation, display similar indifference to the public. The most recent meeting suffered from lack of any sound amplification. Often speakers comments and directions by the Board secretary could not be heard. Most tellingly, the Board continues to stage these meetings at the Pittman branch, recently visited by the fire department which determined only 34 seats could be accommodated. All were occupied Wednesday, with another 34 people left standing for the nearly two hour long meeting duration—some of them senior citizens. 

Repeatedly, when the public has posed a question to this Board in good faith, it has been met with the assertion that the Board cannot answer questions. If in fact the Board is gagged, it follows that public is gagged as well, yet many questions continue to be asked of this board in what appears to be an ongoing and futile exercise by a public making comments that run off  the trustees like water off a duck’s back. If the trustees of the Berkeley Public Library are responsible neither to the employees nor the public, to whom are they responsible?

(Note: the Board answers to the Berkeley City Council. The concluding question is merely rhetorical.)

 What you can do to help stop Berkeley LibraryGate:

Here are resources you can use to get more involved in saving our books!

Rally highlights discrepancy in number of books weeded from Berkeley Public Library

Berkeley Public Library Trustees Website

Phone for Beth Pollard, Interim Director of Library Services, BOLT Secretary 510-981-6195

Contacting the Berkeley Public Library Trustees link

Save the Berkeley Public Library Books Website

Save the Berkeley Public Library Books Faqs page

Alameda County Library Lovers Facebook Page

TRUMPTON in 2016

CECILE PINEDA’S NEWSLETTER

“Pineda’s singular books perform dazzling literary feats of technique, history, and political responsibility. They display a range of technical sophistication that is hard to compare. To read Pineda is to touch on the miracle of humanity.”

                                                                                                —Marcus Embry

• READINGS AND BOOK SIGNINGS
• SOME THOUGHTS ON VOTING

READINGS AND BOOK SIGNINGS

I’ll be talking about two books, Love Queen of the Amazon, and Apology to a Whale: Words to Mend a World on Saturday, May 7 at 3:00 PM at Oakland’s Main Library, 125 14^th Street at Lakeshore Drive in Oakland.

What kinds of books get written in happy times and why can't we have those happy books when we move into less happy times? Your opinions are as good as mine!

SOME THOUGHTS ON VOTING

Either way, whether you’re allowed to vote for Trumpton or Tonoftrump, you will get the same old same old, only this time even worse: endless war; charity for the .0001%, and destitution for the other 99%, not just in the US but world over. UNLESS YOU WRITE IN BERNIE SANDERS. It may not do your country any good, but you will have asserted your own dignity, your own manumission, and your community’s manumission.

US voting looks more and more like a rat laboratory: stand in line for hours, lucky if you get to push the food pellet lever when you get to those pearly (and hacked) gates, and a piece of paper which says I VOTED TODAY (that’s the pellet).

Trumptonism (Trump + Clinton= Trumpton) is not a option. It is a symptom, the symptom of a collapsing civilization, the hollowing out of a society by centuries of imperialism, centuries of war, centuries of beggaring a population, many without food, clothing or housing—and above all without means of coping with a post-industrial, soon to be post-technical world because of ignorance brought on by mis-education where “classrooms” are propaganda tanks for the dissemination of national myths.

As a primarily right brain person, I resort to images for much of my thinking. I try to pay attention to where I see us today (and by us I mean homo saps). Before my eyes I hold the ruins of Chernobyl. For me it represents the image of decay, the faltering of planetary systems, the faltering of the imperial state, the faltering of my own cohort to the indifferent scything of old age itself.

RUINED CHERNOBYL REACTOR CORE

I see the State as hollowed out.  Its high court: corrupt; it education system: corrupt;

its legislative branch: corrupt; the executive: corrupt. Sandra Day O’Connor went on the record musing that maybe in retrospect she should not have cast her vote selecting George Bush in the selection theater of 2000. At the age of 86 she is rectifying that oversight by inventing video games—to teach kids civic responsibility, according to the March 28, 2016 crusty New York Times. As they say in the scrivening biz, you can’t make this stuff up.

Recently I heard Micah White speak. Micah White of Adbusters fame, of Zuccotti Park-Occupy fame. His view is that NO ACTION CAN BE EFFECTIVE UNLESS IT DECLARES SOVEREIGNTY. His formula asks the question: are marches effective? Are petitions effective? Are demonstrations effective? Vigils? And if not, why not? Because empire is tone deaf to petitioning.

I  happen to agree with Micah White. EMPIRES ARE NOT CHARITABLE INSTITUTIONS. But marches, demonstrations, vigils, protests IF THEY ARE WIDELY PUBLICIZED EDUCATE a segment of the population that does not walk by with blinders over their eyes, that may notice (out of their peripheral vision to be sure) that some folks are discontent. And of those few, even fewer may begin to wonder why. Moving a population as numb and dumbed down as this one takes a very very long time and lots and lots of sticktoitiveness. But it is NOT ENOUGH.

What would be effective? In my view, to counter the neocon agenda, the LANGUAGE OF RESISTANCE MUST BE REVERSED. If we cannot entertain DEMANDS, what then? We can have expectations OF OURSELVES. Intensions, Goals. Ambitions. But if we talk of self-determination, we remain mired in the cult of the self. Of individualism.

What then? Here are some nouns: people; popular. mass; massive; common; communal; group; collective.

Here are some indirect objects: determination; manumission; articulation; integration.

We can combine these nouns and indirect objects, but to do so we need verbs, and no verbs are possible without ACTION. What are these verbs? We can DECLARE; we can OCCUPY. We can BUILD alternatives.

Now we need direct objects: streets, cities, banks, corporations, farms; factories; workers collectives; cooperative groceries, cooperative transportation sharing; cooperative energy sharing. We can shift our energies to creating new realities in microquantities. We can begin coloring in the coloring book of our time and place. Much of it is colored in already. We need to expand the areas, intensify the colors.

So far the ground work has been laid:

The occupy movement articulated the concept of economic disparity, and gave it a name: the 1 percent; the 99 percent.

The blacklivesmatter movement extending to the brownlivesmatter movement has articulated a position exposing the extension of the antebellum plantation in the form of police street lynchings; mass incarceration, and mass deportation.

The Bernie Sanders campaign has become a spokespeople, articulating popular aspirations. It must continue, regardless of Act Three of the 2016 Election Theater.

We must make demands of OURSELVES: Fearlessness: willingness to face police terror, sound canons, microwave canons, live rounds. Willingness to speak truth, remind OURSELVES who we are, what we stand for. Willingness to educate sufficient numbers so that no number of arrests (over 1,000 in DC recently) and no amount of carnage can possibly deter us.

When Trumpton is elected, we don’t have to move to Canada. We can BE Canada.