More Thoughts on Wednesday’s CPUC “Opt Out” Workshop

A lot has been said about the ‘opt out’ workshop on Wednesday at the California Public Utilities Commission .  Here are statements from two of those present, shedding additional light on the ways in which the PUC and the utilities are together breaking the law, forcing ‘smart’ meter mesh networks into communities who say no:

Cindy Sage, Sage Associates:

“What I can say about the CPUC hearing Sept 14th on smart meter opt-out plans is this.  The initial statement by Carol Brown, (CPUC President) Peevey’s Chief of Staff, is faulty, and should be refuted in the comments back to the Judge –  as a starting point.

The CPUC says that ratepayers should pick up the tab for a failed corporate policy, in opt-out fees.  Is that true any time a utility business plan is fatally flawed?  Badly executed? Do we reward corporate stupidity?  With ratepayer money?

With all due respect to Carol Brown, the CPUC may have authorized smart meters,
but they did not authorize PG&E or any other utility to develop a failed-from-the-start
corporate business plan and defective device.

If the CPUC authorized ‘a concept’, and PG&E implemented it in a dumb way (it is carcinogenic, consumers reject it, it is a security risk, it threatens medical implants, etc) then THE SHAREHOLDERS SHOULD PAY.

The CPUC didn’t authorize a stupid, failed corporate plan.  They authorized PG&E, and the other utilities to figure out and implement a plan that would work.  THIS ONE DOES NOT WORK.

Why reward corporate failure?  THE SHAREHOLDERS SHOULD CARRY THE BURDEN OF THE FAILURE.  They invested with a stupid corporation and didn’t watch for trouble.”

Steve Martinot:

“There are two separate processes at work here:  the enabling legislation that establishes the PUC with its powers, and the decisions that authorize the utilities to use wireless rather than wired technology. The enabling legislation is what set up the PUC in the first place, and gives the PUC the power to “do all things” necessary to regulate the utilities. I can get the citations and law numbers for you if you want them. I don’t have them handy. But the state had already given the PUC the power to make that shift in authorization.

The problem has arisen because, this enabling law refers to the relation between the PUC and the utilities, it does not refer to the relation between the utilities and the people, except insofar as the PUC can regulate utility rates charged the people. But that is all. The relation between the utilities and the people can only be regulated by the legislature, through legislation, and under the protections granted the people in the constitution. There are property protections that PG&E has consistently violated.

Now, when the PUC interprets its authorization of the utilities as giving the utilities the power to impose the technology on the people, and to claim that installation is mandatory, the PUC is entering the realm of legislation, from which it is barred. Period. That is the force of the Circuit Court decision in Koponen vs. PG&E. When the PUC comflates these two relations, and thinks that it can authorize the utilities to ignore the refusal of this technology by persons in California, it is grossly overstepping its legitimacy and authority,
because it is entering a realm that can only be regulated by legislation.

Franchise agreements  belong to the domain of the relation between the utilities and the people. They are contracts signed between the utilities and the people’s representatives. The legislature can override them by enactment, but the PUC can’t because the PUC is empowered only to regulate within its relation to the utilities. The legislature has not overridden them, and the PUC has committed gross violations of its empowerment in claiming that those contracts do not prevent installation of the technology.

It is the PUC’s overstepping its authority that is the real legal issue here.

That is why the opt-out option issue is such a farce. Opting out contains implicitly an assumption that installation is mandatory, and the option will simply create exceptions to that. But neither PG&E nor the PUC have the power to make installation mandatory, because that belongs to the relation between the utilities and the people, over which the PUC has not authority.”

Ed.  and the governor and legislature is doing what besides sitting on their hands looking the other way?

This entry was posted in Citizen rebellion, Class Issues and Social Equality, CPUC, Democracy, Electro-Hyper-Sensitivity, PG&E, San Francisco. Bookmark the permalink.

7 Responses to More Thoughts on Wednesday’s CPUC “Opt Out” Workshop

  1. Jim says:

    That’s some good stuff! Thank you!

    The power company really doesn’t have the delegated authority from the People to install a security risk, privacy invading, health threatening device ANYWHERE!

    I will try to include it in a further update to the example letter text on the page:
    https://stopsmartmeters.org/sample-letter-to-utility/

    Scroll down for the updated text.

    If you haven’t put them on notice yet, you should do so ASAP.

    The text in the new example includes wording so it’s possible to update the notice and complaint with new issues as they become known.

    Copy / Paste and create your own customized version!

  2. Redi Kilowatt says:

    I have been strongly opposed to the wireless meter project for over 2 years, probably before this website was created, for many reasons.
    Originally, the Automated Meter Reading project was do be done with a power line carrier (wired), but in this country, we don’t have a so called “smart grid” like they have already built in Europe.
    Sending revenue data to the billing office cannot be done here in the U.S. on power line carriers because the 40+ year old ferrite core transformers won’t pass the signals.
    So the utility corporations cooked up a great scam to use a separate radio network using a mesh network and then repeated to an (originally) proprietary radio network. Now the big mobile phone carriers wanted a piece of the action, and told the utility companies that they could offer up their already in place mobile phone networks and save the utilities big dollars by not having to create their own radio networks.
    These multi-national communications corporations want to rule the planet. They would love to see the day when there are no more twisted pair communications. Some say that so far, 26 percent of our population here do not have traditional land lines, only mobile phones
    We all know that these corporations want the traditional wired systems to go away for the general public, but the corporations still need wired communications to do business.
    It’s all about controlling the masses and making a whopping profit in doing so. They want to saturate the world with their foreign made, cheaply built, expensive to buy and use on their networks low powered wireless devices . These devices are so low powered that they don’t work half of the time. So what do they do ? Raise the rates and build more mobile phone towers to compensate for the narrow bandwidth and low power from trying to cram in too many new customers.
    The mobile phones nowadays put out about 1/4 watt of RF (250 Mw), but the older mobile phones used to put out 3 watts, and now only one carrier (Nextel) has phones that put out 600 Mw (6/10ths of a watt), the rest are 1/4 watt weak garbage, which AT&T says is powerful. It is all these new mobile phone towers that are powerful, they have to handle thousands of channels of full duplex mobile phones, and now the new meters too.
    Radio has been around for 100 years, and we have all been exposed, but this proliferation of all this new wireless technology in the last 10 years is bad news.
    Some people feel the effects immediately, but in others it could take decades.
    Just like the effects of many other things, like air pollution, urban living, living in shared wall communes, pharmaceutical drugs, processed foods, use of pesticides, herbicides, fungusides, GMO engineering, social network monitoring programs and on and on.
    It’s no wonder that the private medical insurance corporations lobbied the government to make everybody pay into their profiteering medical insurance pool.
    Those greedy medical insurance corporations know that people are going to be needing medical care soon from all these things that the corporations do to make a huge profit and control the planet. They know that they are going to have to start paying out big dollars, but they still need to make a profit, that is why they want private medical insurance to be mandatory

  3. Keep in mind. these are criminals we are dealing with. Corporate criminals that think they are above the law.

    When the Millions of people that have been intentionally harmed, press criminal charges, and sue the daylights out of PG&E executives /investors, and the CPUC, perhaps we will then regain our health, safety, privacy: our constitutional and civil rights that PG&E, and the CPUC have stolen, bullied, and when they intentionally forced dangerous microwave radiation emitting smartmeters (AMI) against our will, without our consent on our homes, our property. Criminals belong in jail.

    —–
    More News related to Insider Trades

    http://www.streetinsider.com/Insider+Trades/PG+&+E+(PCG)+CEO+Buys+36,600+Shares/6791480.html

    September 16, 2011 7:24 AM EDT
    After the close, PG & E Corp. (NYSE: PCG) CEO Anthony Earley disclosed the purchase of 36,600 shares on 9/14 at $40.80, bringing his stake to 117,915 shares.

    These criminals will lie, and continue to harm innocent children and their families, until they are put behind bars.

  4. SOSFL says:

    THANK YOU, Cindy Sage for all of your hard work. I have given out several of the Sage Reports to the “powers that be” in Florida. It is still “slow going” here but without your help it would be even slower! Wake up, Florida!

  5. Jim says:

    Why was AB 37 “canceled” ? Still need to hold their feet to the fire, why back off?

    Assembly member Jared Huffman (D–Marin)
    District: Tel: (415) 479-4920 – Fax: (415) 479-2123 (or google it)

    “05/09/11: In committee: Set, second hearing. Hearing canceled at the request of author.”
    http://www.aroundthecapitol.com/Bills/AB_37/20112012/

    This bill would require the CPUC, by January 1, 2012, to identify alternative options for customers of electrical corporations that decline the installation of wireless advanced metering infrastructure devices, commonly referred to as smart meters, as part of an approved smart grid deployment plan. The bill would also require the CPUC, when it has identified those alternative options, to require each electrical corporation to permit a customer to decline the installation of an advanced metering infrastructure device and make the alternative options available to that customer. The bill would also require the CPUC to disclose certain information to customers about the technology of smart meters. The bill would require the CPUC to direct each electrical corporation to suspend the deployment of advanced metering infrastructure until the CPUC has complied with the above requirements.

  6. Pingback: Read and watch these reports and video on the Sept. 14th CA PUC Smart Meter Options workshop « Burbank ACTION

  7. Pingback: Glendale Resident Speaks Out on Smart Meters | Sunroom Desk

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