Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

propublica.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 275 posts

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

#141

Post by dukeofdoom »

hallman76 wrote: post #133
dukeofdoom wrote: post #126

Reminds me of this story I read yesterday. You can't question the system. Or the system questions you. So illiberal. "Michigan’s Democratic attorney general vowed Tuesday to pursue legal punishments against attorneys who have challenged the state’s election results" https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/dec/22/dana-nessel...

FTA > “We’ll go to the Attorney Grievance Commission on some cases, where we know for a fact that there were intentional misrepresentations that were made, the kind where there is no question of the facts,” she said, according to The New York Times. > “If you have your name attached to it and you’ve made intentional misrepresentations, I absolutely think you ought to be held accountable,” she said. This seems pretty…

Election was the "most secure in American history", its a fact. Here is the official document proving it.

https://www.cisa.gov/news/2020/11/12/joint-statement-electio...

So according to you, any lawyer that questions this irrefutable, official documented fact, should be sanctioned for misrepresenting facts. Lawyers should be punished, fined or disbarred or even imprisoned for making arguments. Perfectly reasonable position.

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

#142

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

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 sad part is that CA remains a one party state

A duopoly is a fraternal monopoly, marked by common self-serving behavior.

Both parties trade law and power for campaign funds on a massive scale - every day of the year. It's unclear why one flavor of that might be preferable.

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

#143

Post by [deleted] »

GreenWatermelon wrote: post #121
sokoloff wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Python uses `not`, `and`, and `or`

[deleted]

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

#144

Post by stickyricky »

QuadmasterXLII wrote: post #88
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.

Democratic voters are opposed to the electoral college, but the leadership knows that without it, some backwater state would report 4x its population voted for trump and we’d have a constitutional crisis

Already happened under our current system. Can't imagine how extreme the problem would be if it could affect the global outcome.

> the most extreme case was in South Carolina, where an impossible 101 percent of all eligible voters in the state had their votes counted

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1876_United_States_presidentia...

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

#145

Post by jiveturkey »

hliyan wrote: post #7
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.

What you say will probably come to pass, but this sort of cynical, fatalistic attitude is part of the problem.

heal thyself, physician

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

#146

Post by zo1 »

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…

As a thought experiment: How would you solve those problems with your hands tied behind your back (i.e. you don't have a government to rely on)? Just try one - assume you're in a fictional universe and writing a novel or something.

Anywho, the problem with this trail of discussion is that you can come up with an infinite amount of "problems" and libertarians can likewise come up with a "solution" to each one. However your rebuttal would always be yet-another problem because the original "solution" didn't cater for some arbitrary corner case or something basic that you assume can only come from a society with a government.

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

Answer: Have an escrow organization that both parties trust. Rebuttal: "Your escrow organization decides it doesn't like a certain legitimate business and won't accept your trade." Or "Your escrow organization's owner is buddy-buddy with your customer and he decides to not keep their part of the bargain". Okay - "contracts", followed with "but who will enforce the contracts", etc etc.

As a side note: A lot of the time libertarians and anarcho-capitalists don't "pick" lack of regulation out of practicality, but rather out of plain moral principle. A lot of what is considered "regulation" and "rule of law", when stripped of it's noble/protective aura, is just authoritarianism and bully-like behavior.

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

#147

Post by AlwaysRock »

Kapura wrote: post #123

It feels like I live in a country where every level of government is unbelievably corrupt, but also completely unfixable. How are you supposed to address the sorts of issues that lose $200,000,000 of state money if the people who try to do so get fired? I don't see a way out of this mess, and it makes me want to move somewhere... better.

I very much feel the same way. Unfortunately it is not easy to move to another country long term and work there. Also obviously every other country also has its own issues, many that one likely wouldnt discover until after making a move.

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

#148

Post by spanktheuser »

I'm struck that the commission directors proceeded despite the ample evidence they knew would surface should the corrupt firing be contested. It seems that don't fear personal consequences for their actions. Disposing of limited liability or significantly weakening it seems necessary.

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

#149

Post by anonuser123456 »

hnruss wrote: post #62
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…

Yes, and my guess is that there is more money to be made off of deregulation than on regulation. Thus, more corruption related to the party that wants to deregulate.

Not quite.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

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

#150

Post by TomSwirly »

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.

You probably come off as a bit stiff then.

Of course, in formal documents, you never use it, but in person-to-person communication in 2020, you use it about once in any email or text as a softener.

"Good to see you the other day! [...] Let's do this."

Or the exclamation mark comes at the end, which might be a bit too much for me.

This has been the habit for a couple of decades now...

Post reply on HN