Progressives/Socialists are hard at worming their brand of governance into our successful republic. They’re doing this by slowly taking control of utilities including electric, gas and oil and technology. The process is well established. First you must take every opportunity to vilify the private company. Service, costs, management are all found to be undesirable and “hurting” the consumer. These egregious actions by the company must be addressed so legislation is layered on to the already crushing number of dictates, resulting in worse service, costs and rendering management hamstrung to do what is necessary to serve their customers.
Then enters the shining knight phase, Nationalization! That is, with things that are critical to everyday life, no one is better at providing them than the Government. Just look at how bad these profit monger companies act in their quest for only one thing, MONEY! It was health care (Obamacare), internet with “net neutrality”, and now San Francisco wants it to be electricity. No doubt, it will be offered at less cost, at least initially, than that dirty profit motivated PG&E.
The Democrat California government legislated out actions that would have prevented or at least lessened the damage wrought by the Paradise, CA fires. Then they blamed PG&E for the damage causing them to have to file for bankruptcy only to have the perpetrators swoon in to pick up the pieces at bargain basement prices. San Francisco thinks they can provide electricity better than PG&E and has offered them $2.5b for the lines serving the city. Good luck with that San Francisco. You may want to start with getting the feces off your street first.
I am still waiting for a government run program that can prove its efficacy. Even the one thing our Constitution says they must do (provide for the common defense), is inefficient. Giving a bureaucracy with no limit on what they can or cannot do strikes me as ludicrous but then, I don’t get Socialism outside of a theoretical abstract either.
Current Day Publius 