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

propublica.org

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

#101

Post by brighton36 »

js2 wrote: post #6
boomboomsubban wrote: post #2

Call me cynical, but Stebbins likely faces a decade long legal battle which shell very likely end up settling to be done with it, the board members will get even better jobs in or out of government, and the $200 million will remain missing. Yknow, justice.

She uncovers incompetence and gets fired. The article makes no allegations that she stepped on Newsom's toes, but it sure seems like it. She deserves a medal, not to be fired. The article doesn't say who hired her in the first place, just: > Stebbins was hired as the agency’s executive director in February 2018 to bring fresh scrutiny to its finances and operations. Who hired her? Also: > “I find this outrageous!” Ba…

Professionalism is nihlism. It's mostly the same thing. Hence why it's improper to exclaim.

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

#102

Post by greeneggs »

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.

The point of the system is to encourage moderation, and it does well at this. Sometimes you get two Democrats, as in recent Senate elections, and sometimes one Democrat and one Republican, as in the 2018 governor's race.

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

#103

Post by lkbm »

phnofive wrote: post #47
TwoBit wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That of course is why one of the two US political parties is staunchly against abolishing the electoral college.

Sadly, if not surprisingly, partisan support flipped in 2016, making this less ideological than tactical. https://news.gallup.com/poll/320744/americans-support-abolis...

That link shows higher support (for popular vote) from Democrats than Republicans in every data point on the graph: 2000, 2011, 2016, 2019, and 2020. Partisan support has not flipped in at least 20 years.

What "flipped" is that it went from overall 50%.

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

#104

Post by paulryanrogers »

nickpp wrote: post #99
29athrowaway wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think the distinction between rule of law and regulation is fuzzy. Different people will draw the line in different places, with a heavy bias towards the current system for any given jurisdiction. (Devil you know.)

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

#105

Post by [deleted] »

forgingahead wrote: post #32
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How to account for this isn't controversial -- you put the expected money to be received on your balance sheet, either under "Accounts Receivable", which is listed as an asset, or another similarly related account that shows the money is due. Of course, you can't have "Accounts Receivable" for eons with no update, at some point an auditor will say the money should be collected, or you have to write it off as a bad de…

[deleted]

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

#106

Post by paulryanrogers »

refurb wrote: post #77
hnruss wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the states that I have lived, the voter information pamphlet lists who supports and opposes every initiative. Every time that a new regulation on the ballot would benefit the public at the expense of business, it’s always the same: on one side are Republicans and some multi-national corporations, the other side are Democrats and public-interest groups (environmentalists, etc). I don’t think that public-interest gr…

Yet democrats are taking back room bribes to approve new construction. Huh! The regulation enables the corruption. https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/san-francisco/sf-publi...

Would regulation with transparency be the best of both? Because it seems tax law changes so often and violating it so trivial I doubt it'd be better.

IMO those in charge should be forced to drink/breath from whichever area tested most polluted on a regular basis, and as a public event. Once they can no longer hide or pass on the consequences they should take the problems more seriously.

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

#107

Post by sokoloff »

js2 wrote: post #6
boomboomsubban wrote: post #2

Call me cynical, but Stebbins likely faces a decade long legal battle which shell very likely end up settling to be done with it, the board members will get even better jobs in or out of government, and the $200 million will remain missing. Yknow, justice.

She uncovers incompetence and gets fired. The article makes no allegations that she stepped on Newsom's toes, but it sure seems like it. She deserves a medal, not to be fired. The article doesn't say who hired her in the first place, just: > Stebbins was hired as the agency’s executive director in February 2018 to bring fresh scrutiny to its finances and operations. Who hired her? Also: > “I find this outrageous!” Ba…

> I can count on zero fingers the number of times I've used an exclamation mark professionally.

What does your preferred language use for the logical negation operator?

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

#108

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

the sad truth in this story is that the former top boss hired Stebbins and did the right thing....

then former top boss gets fired due to the the CA wildfires fiasco.... which very likely accrued for a long time, well before the former top boss' got the job.

So now the hero, has no protection from the top, and new bureaucrat goes in for the kill.

Now the person that hired the hero, and the hero herself.... are out, for trying to make things better. The good guys get grinded out of the system , by the system itself

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

#109

Post by smhost »

dragonwriter wrote: post #34
legulere wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a European I ask myself why there’s no proportional voting system at all in the US. The states should be independent enough to introduce one for themselves, and there are also referendums.

> As a European I ask myself why there’s no proportional voting system at all in the US. Because change in voting systems has well-studied partisan and ideological impacts, and many of the people who know enough to understand the way that our current voting system contributes to widely-recognized problems in governance also have studied the issue well enough to understand those impacts, and many of them, even while a…

> the reason we can't have democracy is because then things would change.

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

#110

Post by GavinMcG »

yostrovs wrote: post #100
nkrisc wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's factually incorrect. The vast majority of voters on both sides viewed Trump's election as legitimate. [0]

There is a substantial difference between claiming that you lost for reasons that are problematic (i.e. propaganda and the structure of the electoral college) and claiming that you didn't lose at all, despite being behind by 7 million votes, because of a massive conspiracy so powerful as to make our democracy meaningless.

[0] https://news.gallup.com/poll/197441/accept-trump-legitimate-...

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