At Yes! magazine, Al Weinrub writes—Energy Democracy: Inside Californians' Game-Changing Plan for Community-Owned Power:
[There is a] growing awareness that the people of California can only successfully address climate change by breaking with fossil fuels and the state’s investor-owned utility companies.
These utilities, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), Southern California Edison (SCE), and San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E), control about 75 percent of the electricity market in California, with the other 25 percent being supplied by public (municipal) utilities.
By creating slick, misleading ad campaigns about how green they are, the monopoly utilities have done their best to fight renewable energy programs. This often happens behind the scenes, and with the willing assistance of the scandal-ridden California Public Utilities Commission—the agency that is supposed to regulate these behemoth energy enterprises.
Back in 2002, in the wake of the Enron-induced crash of California's electricity system—which to this day has left rate-payers bailing out the utility companies— California passed AB 117, the Community Choice Aggregation law. This law allows a city, county, or any grouping of cities and counties, to “aggregate” electricity customers in their jurisdictions for the purpose of procuring electricity on their behalf. Under this arrangement, a public agency—the newly formed Community Choice program—decides where electricity will come from, while the incumbent utility delivers the electricity, maintains the electric lines, and bills customers.
The new program is a hybrid between a public agency and a private utility. The utility owns the distribution infrastructure, but the public is in the driver’s seat regarding energy decisions.
“It puts our community in control of the most important part of our electricity system,” explains Woody Hastings of the Center for Climate Protection in Sonoma County, one of the jurisdictions that has opted for a Community Choice energy program. “That means we can purchase more renewable and greenhouse-gas-free energy on the market than PG&E offered us. But more importantly, we can build renewable energy assets right here in the County. We not only get the benefits of low carbon electricity, but we get the economic benefits—the business opportunities and clean energy jobs—that come from investing in our own community.” [...]
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Blast from the Past
At Daily Kos on this date in 2006—How About Some More of that Bush Bipartisanship?
Life goes blithely on in BushWorld, elections or no. Whether it's trying to bring back John Bolton or renominating already rejected judicial nominees, he's intent upon continuing to play to his wing-nut base, apparently unaware that he lost already.
The good news is that Democrats can now stop Bolton and those judges for good. The bad news is that he can make executive branch appointments that don't have to be approved by the Senate. Today he did just that, with a big ol' FU to the Democrats by appointing Dr. Erik Keroack to head up the Office of Family Planning, which adminsters all Title X programs. Title X of the Public Health Service Act provides family planning services primarily to low-income women.
What's so special about this appointment? After all, he's a doctor, right? A doctor at a crisis pregnancy center, one of those deceptive clinics that pose as real clinics and prevent women from having abortions through tactics like this:
According to a recent Planned Parenthood email, a 17-year-old girl mistakenly walked into a crisis pregnancy center thinking it was Planned Parenthood, which was next door. "The group took down the girl's confidential personal information and told her to come back for her appointment, which they said would be in their 'other office' (the real Planned Parenthood office nearby)."
When she showed up for her nonexistent appointment, she was met by the police, who had been erroneously tipped that a minor was being forced to abort. The crisis pregnancy center staff followed up this harassment by staking out the girl's house, phoning her father at work, and even talking to her classmates about her pregnancy, urging them to harass her.
Right, just who we want heading up our governments' efforts to provide quality family planning services
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Fallout from the Paris attacks; our own domestic 2016 horserace continues, uninterrupted; the bizarre political feud behind the shocking police killing of a 6-year-old boy in Louisiana; more Tech Gone Wild, or, “You asked for more two-way communication in politics!” But who else might be listening?
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