What it's like when a criminal, bankrupt, for-profit monopoly cuts your power

The Trump Administration may be the decade's defining example of an inept yet destructively shady organization, a gang that can't shoot straight. But one of the nation's largest utilities, a literal corporate felon called Pacific Gas & Electric, is giving Team Trump a run for its money this week — when it cut power to me and around 2 million of my neighbors in the most confusing manner possible. 

Here in tech-rich, wine-and-weed-filled Northern California, we've spent years trying to focus on innovation and ignore PG&E's incompetence. Sure, we grumbled for a few days when a court found it guilty on six felony charges for a deadly gas explosion in 2010. We fumed at the judge's finding that it had taken $100 million earmarked for repairs and turned it into executive bonuses and shareholder payouts. Then we went right back to paying our rate-hiked utility bills. Because what choice did we have? Read more...