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California Public Utilities Commission fired director who exposed missing $200M

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Re: California Public Utilities Commission fired director who exposed missing $200M

#91

Post by 29athrowaway »

nickpp wrote: post #87
29athrowaway wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deregulate the environment and you will be drinking polluted water, and breathing polluted air. Your food will be likely exposed to pollution too. Deregulate labor and you'll have exploited workers working 100 hours per week, being constantly harassed by their employers, people being discriminated at the workplace, as well as people exposed to poor safety conditions where they can get injured or killed. Deregulate co…

Regulation raises the barrier of entry for startups. Fewer startups means less competition. Less competition means less incentive for the incumbents to do "the right thing" in any field, be that hiring, ecological impact, consumer rights and so on. When it comes to the economy, we should legislate and tax externalities. For everything else regulation is uniformly bad.

OK, fine. Let's remove all forms of regulation, shall we?

Someone joins your company and starts leaking all your intellectual property. It is all good, though, because legislation related to that doesn't exist.

A developer joins your company, and shortly after uploads your entire code base to github. That's OK due to lack of legislation saying otherwise.

A sysadmin changes all the passwords and asks you for a ransom to unlock your production database. That's also OK.

Your ISP randomly makes your internet 99% slower and then asks you for an exorbitant amount of money. That's also OK.

The accountant forged your signature and stole all the money. That's also OK.

Your customers randomly decide to not pay you. That's also OK.

Your employees start dismantling the office and taking furniture and equipment home. That's OK.

The mailman shows up wearing the company swag you ordered. Doesn't matter anymore.

HR people upload a spreadsheet with everyone's personal information and salaries to the Internet. That's OK.

Some larger company sends some gangsters to force you to sell the company for a fraction of its price. That's OK.

As you can see, saying "regulation is bad" is nonsensical. Without certain guarantees, businesses cannot exist.

Re: California Public Utilities Commission fired director who exposed missing $200M

#92

Post by throw0101a »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #84
dgoldstein0 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California does have some less-common voting systems in play - on my San Francisco ballots, the two interesting things I've seen: - IRV is commonly used for local positions - Other positions seem to use a system where all the political parties have the same primary, and then only the top two candidates are on the ballot for the general election. Wikipedia describes it well: > Under California's non-partisan blanket p…

>Every senate election I can recall in California has been Democrat v Democrat by the general election Which is the point of the system. Republicans only have a shot if they don't compete with each other, and no third party candidate ever has a chance.

What are the policies being put forward by the California state-level GOP? They may only be considering things that CA voters do not really find appealing:

> The Overton window is the range of policies politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time.[1] It is also known as the window of discourse. The term is named after Joseph P. Overton, who stated that an idea's political viability depends mainly on whether it falls within this range, rather than on politicians' individual preferences.[2][3] According to Overton, the window frames the range of policies that a politician can recommend without appearing too extreme to gain or keep public office given the climate of public opinion at that time.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

Re: California Public Utilities Commission fired director who exposed missing $200M

#93

Post by yostrovs »

threatofrain wrote: post #70
Justin_K wrote: post #18

The sad part is that CA remains a one party state and this will just get swept under the rug. The power is too unchecked.

The national Republican party has money which they can dynamically allocate to different states. If they want to pitch exciting offers to California, such as solutions for transportation or healthcare, then so be it. Kevin McCarthy is the house minority leader for the GOP and he's using his airtime by talking about how the presidential election is a fraud. That's a taste of the calibre of counter-narrative the GOP ch…

Half the country thinks it's a fraud just like half the country thought the last election was a fraud. And just like last time, the next few years will have to take up this matter for discussion and ripping society apart. The only difference i see is that there won't be a federal investigation into the matter this time, leaving a lot of people convinced that indeed this was a rigged election.

Re: California Public Utilities Commission fired director who exposed missing $200M

#94

Post by boomboomsubban »

throw0101a wrote: post #92
boomboomsubban wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Every senate election I can recall in California has been Democrat v Democrat by the general election Which is the point of the system. Republicans only have a shot if they don't compete with each other, and no third party candidate ever has a chance.

What are the policies being put forward by the California state-level GOP? They may only be considering things that CA voters do not really find appealing: > The Overton window is the range of policies politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time.[1] It is also known as the window of discourse. The term is named after Joseph P. Overton, who stated that an idea's political viability depends main…

I think the Green party position is likely more appealing to California voters than Feinstein's record, but name recognition and party support make it incredibly difficult for another Democrat to beat her.

Re: California Public Utilities Commission fired director who exposed missing $200M

#95

Post by logicchains »

dgoldstein0 wrote: post #54
logicchains wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funnily enough, California's system did used to be slightly less one-sided, but an amendment introduced that was claimed would make it less one-sided actually ended up making it more.

care to share details?

In 2010 California adopted https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonpartisan_blanket_primary.

Re: California Public Utilities Commission fired director who exposed missing $200M

#97

Post by chrisgd »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #19
hh3k0 wrote: post #8

> In response to detailed questions, commission spokeswoman Terrie Prosper said that Stebbins’ allegation of $200 million in missing fines and fees was the result of a misunderstanding of the commission’s accounting practices. A misunderstanding of accounting practices?

Like in many accounting controversies, the fundamental problem here is how to account for future expectations. If you’re owed a big sum of money but you know for sure payment is coming soon, your accounting statements should show you as much wealthier than the actual money you have on hand, because receiving a payment you already knew you’d get shouldn’t change how you measure your financial status. The commission sa…

This doesn’t seem to be a recognition issue though. It’s not AR or deferred, it’s not being accounted for at all or tracked

Re: California Public Utilities Commission fired director who exposed missing $200M

#98

Post by nkrisc »

yostrovs wrote: post #93
threatofrain wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The national Republican party has money which they can dynamically allocate to different states. If they want to pitch exciting offers to California, such as solutions for transportation or healthcare, then so be it. Kevin McCarthy is the house minority leader for the GOP and he's using his airtime by talking about how the presidential election is a fraud. That's a taste of the calibre of counter-narrative the GOP ch…

Half the country thinks it's a fraud just like half the country thought the last election was a fraud. And just like last time, the next few years will have to take up this matter for discussion and ripping society apart. The only difference i see is that there won't be a federal investigation into the matter this time, leaving a lot of people convinced that indeed this was a rigged election.

Who's arguing the last election was a fraud? I can't recall any major Democrat who claimed, continually without evidence, that Russia or Republicans engaged in voter fraud. The argument was that Russia interfered and/or colluded with the Trump campaign to spread misinformation and hack the DNC. No one was claiming the votes themselves were fraudulent.

There have been investigations into allegations of voter fraud in this election. In fact one of the cases the Trump campaign alleged in Pennsylvania turned out to be true! The guy voted for Trump twice!

Re: California Public Utilities Commission fired director who exposed missing $200M

#99

Post by nickpp »

29athrowaway wrote: post #91
nickpp wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulation raises the barrier of entry for startups. Fewer startups means less competition. Less competition means less incentive for the incumbents to do "the right thing" in any field, be that hiring, ecological impact, consumer rights and so on. When it comes to the economy, we should legislate and tax externalities. For everything else regulation is uniformly bad.

OK, fine. Let's remove all forms of regulation, shall we? Someone joins your company and starts leaking all your intellectual property. It is all good, though, because legislation related to that doesn't exist. A developer joins your company, and shortly after uploads your entire code base to github. That's OK due to lack of legislation saying otherwise. A sysadmin changes all the passwords and asks you for a ransom…

I believe you are confused. Nobody is disputing the rule of law (and especially contract law) and the role of government in upholding it. What you are describing is pretty much anarchy and nobody is arguing for that.

Re: California Public Utilities Commission fired director who exposed missing $200M

#100

Post by yostrovs »

nkrisc wrote: post #98
yostrovs wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Half the country thinks it's a fraud just like half the country thought the last election was a fraud. And just like last time, the next few years will have to take up this matter for discussion and ripping society apart. The only difference i see is that there won't be a federal investigation into the matter this time, leaving a lot of people convinced that indeed this was a rigged election.

Who's arguing the last election was a fraud? I can't recall any major Democrat who claimed, continually without evidence, that Russia or Republicans engaged in voter fraud. The argument was that Russia interfered and/or colluded with the Trump campaign to spread misinformation and hack the DNC. No one was claiming the votes themselves were fraudulent. There have been investigations into allegations of voter fraud in…

However you want to see it, half the country thinks Trump was an illegitimate president, elected thanks to external manipulation of the Russian government. This is a fact that has consumed all of media and good chunk of the population for 3 years. It's true it's not an exact mirror copy of the current election predicament. Nevertheless, the outcome of questioning the election and democracy in general is the result of both cases.
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