{"id":177352,"date":"2019-10-12T19:30:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-13T00:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/10\/12\/not-enough-bullets-17\/"},"modified":"2019-10-12T19:30:00","modified_gmt":"2019-10-13T00:30:00","slug":"not-enough-bullets-17","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/10\/12\/not-enough-bullets-17\/","title":{"rendered":"Not Enough Bullets"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>The judge in charge of Pacific Gas &amp; Electric&#8217;s bankruptcy case has stated that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kqed.org\/news\/11737336\/judge-pge-paid-out-stock-dividends-instead-of-trimming-trees\">the utility decided to pay dividends instead of properly maintaining its infrastructure<\/a>:<span style=\"color: blue;\"><\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><\/span><\/div>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">A federal judge in San Francisco ruled Tuesday that if PG&amp;E doesn&#8217;t meet aggressive goals aimed at preventing future wildfires, the utility won&#8217;t be able to pay dividends to shareholders after it emerges from bankruptcy proceedings. <\/p>\n<p>At a probation hearing related to the utility\u2019s deadly 2010 gas pipeline explosion in San Bruno, Judge William Alsup said the embattled utility hasn&#8217;t done enough to prevent wildfires through tree trimming and other maintenance work \u2014 even while its shareholders made millions. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cPG&amp;E pumped out $4.5 billion in dividends and let the tree budget wither,\u201d Alsup said. <\/p>\n<p>But the judge declined to impose more sweeping changes that he\u2019d earlier floated, including requiring PG&amp;E to inspect its entire electrical grid. Lawyers for PG&amp;E said that would take years to complete and be prohibitively expensive.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n<p>On Tuesday, the judge also directed a federal monitor to conduct random inspections of the tree-trimming program.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m not cutting you any slack,\u201d Alsup said. \u201cIf PG&amp;E hasn\u2019t cut the right trees, we\u2019re going to have a hearing to get to the bottom of that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>PG&amp;E\u2019s lawyers said that might be unrealistic.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of trees out there, and we don\u2019t have eyes on all of them,\u201d said PG&amp;E attorney Reid Schar.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s a problem of your own making,\u201d Alsup said, cutting him off. \u201cA lot of money went to dividends that should\u2019ve gone to your trees. Get square with the people of California, who depend on you to do the job safely.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>We really need to start throwing people like PG&amp;E&#8217;s management in jail for the crap that they pull.<\/p>\n<p>We need to find an especially deep hole for them. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The judge in charge of Pacific Gas &amp; Electric&#8217;s bankruptcy case has stated that the utility decided to pay dividends instead of properly maintaining its infrastructure: A federal judge in San Francisco ruled Tuesday that if PG&amp;E doesn&#8217;t meet aggressive goals aimed at preventing future wildfires, the utility won&#8217;t be able to pay dividends to &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[817],"class_list":["post-177352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177352"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177352\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}