Not Just Paradise Lost

A Facebook friend in the hills northeast of Sacramento said she has been through two bouts of PG&E power outages. She and her husband had moved to this state from the East for her health and his job opportunity. She woke up one morning this week with no heat and temperatures in the 30s. Another of her friends suggested she pack it in and move to Florida. She responded that it sounded like a good idea.

Florida, of course, has its own set of issues. But we Californians may have some decisions to make. Do we want to live in a state where every fall there are multiple fires, blackouts and precautionary evacuations? Are the home prices, rents,  and taxes worth it?

I have a couple of other friends who have recently pulled the plug. One who had a mortgage on a modest home here sold it for a profit and now lives in a four-bedroom house he owns free-and-clear on an acre of Tennessee land. He is surrounded by great natural beauty, has courteous neighbors, and the traffic is light. There is snow, but usually not too much. It gets cold enough for reminders that there are seasons. No earthquakes and no direct hits from hurricanes, and it is not really tornado country like the Midwest. Yes, bugs and humidity are issues, but the trade-off seems worth it, at least for him.

Look, I’m not going anywhere and am not suggesting anyone else do so. That said, while these power outages may save lives, if they continue at this pace, I’m sure more than one resident will be doing the calculations to see if it really pencils out to stay here. And those considering moving here from elsewhere might think twice about it.

If  that happens, the good news is, the crowds will thin out and housing prices and rents may become semi-reasonable again. That’s bad news for property owners, who will likely see values fall. The best news, of course,  is for those selling solar systems and generators.

It’s cathartic to rail against the big utilities whose lack of foresight has helped put us in this position, but woulda, coulda, and shoulda accomplish nothing. I am confident, though, that better safety tools than these clumsy mass outages may be found, or at least the power companies will come up with more efficient ways to carry them out, simply because they have to.

How long will some Californians wait around for those changes? The grass may seem a lot greener elsewhere right now. And this time of year, it’s probably wetter.

Halloween Hazards

I always thought Halloween was fun, but these days, I can see where it might be a little dangerous. I’m not talking about tainted candy, but PC. You might have to think about that before choosing a costume.

The prime minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, felt compelled recently to apologize for putting on blackface, or in this case,  brownface, to portray Aladdin at an Arabian Nights party at a school where he taught years ago. I would like to be able to say that I’m horrified, but I’m just not that woke yet. Give me a minute to rub my eyes.

The governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam,  got in trouble for allegedly dressing and going blackface as Michael Jackson for a party when he was in medical school. Blackface has a sorry history in this country, as we all know. But in Northam’s case, he was doing Michael Jackson, so you would think blackface would be part of the costume, for a person of another color, at least.

This all reminds me of one of my favorite old movies, Khartoum. Why it’s a favorite, I don’t understand, but it came out in the mid-1960s, and was about the  British general Charles George “Chinese” Gordon, enlisted in the 1880s to lead an army against the Mahdi, who, along with his Islamic followers, laid siege to the Sudanese city. It made me laugh, because they cast the American actor Charlton Heston as the British general, so he had to adopt an accent, with mixed results. But then, Laurence Olivier, who really was British, was cast as the Mahdi. They made his face sort of burnt sienna so he could look more Arab, and he had to use a strange accent too. How did that happen? Maybe Omar Sharif was busy at the time. Hollywood has pretty much mended its ways these days , favoring authenticity in the use of actors of appropriate races, ethnicities, and even genders.

To get back to the point, though, I’ve tried to tell myself that old portrayals by sitting politicians might be OK, because they didn’t seem to involve mockery with malicious intent and they were about specific characters -- but I guess that doesn’t work. It’s a shame, though, that pictures from private parties years ago are producing a whole new set of folks taking offense. In my case, I tend to judge politicians more on their response after the revelation than on the original deed.

OK. So what will I wear for Halloween?  I was thinking of an orange wig. But hey, I never won any prizes for original ideas. Just make sure I get some candy if I knock on your door.

What Iffing

I’m struggling with an addiction. It’s a habit of thought, and I have a feeling I’m not alone -- running election scenarios. A distraction, when I could be directing my mind toward more useful pursuits. I’m a binge-speculator.

Not very long ago, impeaching this President was considered a waste of time, no matter the moral compulsions of some liberals, because the Senate would never vote to remove him, and the 2020 election was too close. But how things can turn on a dime these days! Maybe the new questionis, will Donald Trump finish his first term?

OK, here I go. Let’s just say that the President is impeached and removed. Then what happens? He might say, civil war. But more likely, we would have President Pence, at least until Inauguration Day 2021.

What night that be like? My own feeling is that if Mr. Pence just kept a chair warm in the Oval Office until then, he might do less damage than the current occupant. And what might happen to Mr. Trump after removal? Pence could pardon him of likely federal criminal charges, but he’d still have to face the music in the state of New York.

How might the stock market respond to all this? Would it tank, or shoot up a thousand points? Place your bets!

It seems Pence would stand little chance of being elected to a full term. In fact, he might not even be nominated, and let’s just say what I’ll call a more credible Republican gets the nod.

Then the Democrats pick Elizabeth Warren. You might have thought the Republican Party as a brand was doomed – but if voters had to choose between a credible Republican and an edgy liberal, what would happen? Not as easy a call, but perhaps more interesting.

Now, let’s just go wild and say that somehow BOTH Trump and Pence were removed from office (cut me a little slack here, just throwing some spaghetti against the wall, OK?). Then there would be President Nancy Pelosi. You may say, well, “they” hated Hillary, but the prospect of a President Pelosi might also be too far a bridge for some.

You see what an addicting game all this is! Beats fantasy football. In the end, though, he only sensible thing we can do is make sure our seat belts are tight, as we will be flying through turbulence for quite a while.

I don’t know about you, but I’m almost looking forward to the day when the news starts to get a little boring again, the way it used to be.

The Right Target

The once-golden state of California has a giant black eye right now. The seasonal winds and low humidity have elevated the fire danger to the point where drastic preventive measures seem necessary to protect lives and property, like PG&E’s massive Northern California power shut-off. It was a mess.

At its San Francisco headquarters, the utility put up barricades around the building to shield its corporate personnel from angry customers. But that didn’t protect company field workers. In one case, a PG&E truck driver was shot at – fortunately, not hurt.

Not only was that expression of anger inappropriate; the PG&E line personnel shouldn’t be the ones targeted. But the utility’s spotty track record has exposed the company to crippling legal liability.

We did not lose power at our house, but we were expecting an extreme wind event, which didn’t live up to its billing in all areas. PG&E’s customer communication system generally failed, and even the shut-off itself was haphazard, as was the restoration of power. PG&E tried to comfort us all by talking about the disaster that didn’t happen - a hard sell to those with refrigerators full of spoiled food.

It’s fashionable to hate PG&E and to rail against the investor-owned-utility model for its apparent focus on profits over forward-thinking. But does that mean a government-run operation would necessarily be better? You can blame PG&E for not maintaining every single inch of power line through every rural acre of an enormous part of this state. You might also blame the local governments that allowed people to build  in certain areas, and those who chose to live there.

The blame game, though, has done nothing but divide us into victims and perpetrators, or plaintiffs and defendants. But where do we go from here? If there’s a bright side, the shutoff was good disaster training, and could spur the drive toward a sustainable electric power system to face climate change.

Microgrids are one potential solution, but progress can start at the individual homeowner level right now. If you can afford it, don’t just put solar panels on the roof. Pay the extra money and have your solar installer connect them to a battery storage system that can power the house whenever commercial electricity is cut. Batteries will only get better with time, and someday, homes may be self-sufficient, power-wise.

We can either submit to a depressing “new normal,” or we can start to shape it. We may have to be dragged into the latter kicking and screaming, but we will get there.

Clearing the Air

In at least one respect, the Ukraine flap has put former Vice President Joe Biden in a pretty good position politically: he gets to play the “victim” in an effort by the President to sully his name in connection with the business Biden and his son Hunter had in that country, including Hunter Biden’s taking a board position in a gas company that was reportedly paying him $50,000 a month. On the campaign trail, his dad hasn’t had too much to say about it, but when he is questioned, he gets a little testy and throws the “corruption” label back on Mr. Trump. But that has its limits, even though it’s generally accepted that the Bidens have done nothing wrong.

Personally, I think it would be tactically useful, and refreshing, for Joe Biden – maybe even both Bidens - to call a nationally televised news conference, telling reporters, “OK, I’m here for an hour. Ask me anything you want about my involvement in Ukraine, and China too. There may be some limits on what I can say legally, but I’ll do my best.”

After this, of course, the fact-checkers would go to work, but at least the Bidens could say they welcomed questions about their activities. Then, they can move on. Joe Biden might have to respond to specific attacks from the Trump camp going forward, but at least he’d be able to say he didn’t deflect.

Some of what’s happening is just judgmental stuff, people saying, “Why does the younger Biden (who’s an attorney, by the way) get paid so much for a business in which he has no experience? He just has a famous last name!”  It’s partly the bias I call “wealthism.” People who aren’t making much money don’t usually like to see others making a lot, for what to the former looks like little effort. If some of Hunter Biden’s critics could find such a job, they would take it in a heartbeat. I would.

Shifting gears for a moment to the impeachment inquiry, I agree with some who say that the Democrats should consider more than one article of impeachment against Mr. Trump. Putting all their eggs in the Ukraine basket may fail. Certainly one might think there is plenty of other material available for additional articles.

As for those who say that impeachment is wasteful and that it will suck time and attention away from getting anything useful done in Washington for the next year, I’d say, get over it, it’s life in the big city with an election so close, and we might as well see the current melodrama play out. There will no doubt be big surprises along the way.