The Dollop with Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds - 573 - PG&E - part two

Episode Date: March 7, 2023

Comedians Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds examine private California utility company Pacific, Gas, and Electric. Sources Tour Dates Redbubble Merch   Squarespace Pretty Litter

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Roger. No, Roger. Shut up. Uncle Roger came to Dodger and now we're all inside of a Dodger. You're listening to the dollop on the All Things Comedy Network. This is a American History Podcast

where each week I, metal coffee cup drinker man, guy with eyebrows, ultimate foot haver, Dave Anthony reads a story from American history to a person. Named Gareth Reynolds, who has no idea what the topic is going to be about. And Dave, I didn't love a lot of that, so.

Do you want to touch me? Ultimate foot haver? Yeah. Do you want to touch me? Do you want to touch me? Yes, I'd like to touch you. Where would you like to touch me? I don't want to say,

cause we don't want to go dirty so early. Let's. Yeah, that's good. Let's go to the theme. We got it. We got it. We gotta hit it with a tot. Hit it with a tot.

And welcome to the dollop. Welcome to the dollop podcast. If you're just listening to this podcast for the first time right off the bat, you're probably like, hey, these guys sound a little fun and quirky. You're goddamn right. We are theme.

Theme. Oh, that's me. If you're listening right now, you're probably. He called it, quote, his jam patch. Jam patch? I'm the fucking hippo guy. Dave, okay. My name's Gary.

My name's Gary. Wait. Is it for fun? And this is not going to come to Tiggly Podcast. Okay. This is like anarchy. And a five-part coefficient. Now hit him with a puppy.

You both present sick arguments. No, sleep down hippo. That's like the hippo. Actually, part of it. Oh, hi, Gary. No. I sleep down, my friend. No.

No. Rhonda, Rhonda, Rhonda, Rhonda, Rhonda, Rhonda. Happy. I'm happy. Maria? Yeah, I love the, I'm the effin' hippo guy. That's funny. Jam pad?

That's good. That's good stuff. Gareth, we are brought to you in part by Pretty Litter. Pretty Litter, you have a cat. Dave, let me tell you. You like when your cat's happy, right? I love a happy cat. And you can't, you can't read your cat.

You know a lot about it, but you can't read the cat's mind. I'm actually, I do have a machine I hook him up to, but the common person is not able to read their cat's mind. But you do know, if your cat's healthy, it's a happy cat. Yeah. And there are certain ways to know your cat is healthy, right? Yeah, you can use Pretty Litter,

or you can hook him up to the machine I've invented. Okay, Pretty Litter's ultra absorbent crystals, trap odors, trap odors. And then there's no cat smell, the bathroom potty smell that cats make. First of all, I would push back on that, but yes, it is, it does eliminate odor. Dave, you can keep going, but let me tell you how good,

I have used Pretty Litter since the first time they became a sponsor. So I've been paying years, years for Pretty Litter for years, because I love many things about it. One, they deliver it to your home. Two, you don't have to change it a lot. And three, there is a color coordinated system in there that'll let you know if there's something going on

with your cat. So you're able to go in there and you're like, hmm, little green piss, I'll keep my eye on my boy. Now I use it, because I like to go outdoors in the backyard. Yeah, you have a bucket full of it. I have a pile, a pile of Kitty Litter. And that's where I do my damage.

Yeah, great. Let's maybe stick to the copy a little more. Why don't you tell me about Kitty Litter's health component? What happens with the health thing when it? Well, you get, it's yellow if it's just, I'm pretty sure it's yellow if it's regular pee. Green is maybe a little like whatever.

And then red is like, okay, you should probably take your cat to the toilet. So you can figure out, like cats have a lot of, like I had cats and one of my cats died from kidney issues. And that's a very common thing with cats. So this is a really helpful thing to have. Yes, and if you clean it, if you just clean it pretty regularly,

this is, there's not a better option. Deliver to your house. And it's not heavy. So like you used to like, when I would go buy cat litter at the store, it's like you're coming out with like a sand briefcase. Like now it's just like a bag. It's right there.

It's easy. Huge fan. It's less scooping, right? See the chips of the garbage can. And then like I said, you can, if your cat has a urinary tract infection or whatever, you'll know. And then it ships for your door, which like you said,

small bag easy to deal with. Yeah, little box shows up, open it up, bag easy, boom, bang, bang, boom, bam, bam, bam, sham. And like I said, for me, it's in the backyard and I never really touched the pile. I just had more kitty litter. It's about five feet tall. She's a lucky woman.

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Yo. Gareth, we're also brought to you in part by a little friend I like to call Squarespace. Oh, our buddy. What is Squarespace? Gareth asks, because he still doesn't know, well, it's an all in one domain, website, online store, marketing tool, analytics.

It's all there. It's everything you need. It's everything you have. Why do I say that? Yeah. Because Gareth, your website is with Squarespace. What? As is my website with Squarespace.

Who's doing this? I don't know. We also have our sources page with Squarespace. What? And also, dollopodcast.com, we can get all your tour information. What the hell's going on? And now we have.

Someone has my passwords. And now at Squarespace, we have, on our dollopodcast.com, we have. Dave. Clean episodes where the swears have been removed. Do we have one for the last episode on there? Because that was one thing I heard people saying. There's a lot of swearing.

No, that teachers were like, I want to play this for my class. But swears? Well, yeah. We cuss. We have customers. That can be removed. Yeah, we can fix that. All right.

Yeah, so like I said, Squarespace has it all. We've been in business with them forever. I've been in a, I would call it a romantic relationship with Squarespace. Super crazy to say that for sure. Might be having my baby. There's been a lot of activity. Let's think about what they probably

want you to not say for a second. OK. Well, like I said, they have e-commerce. They've got online stores. They've got domains. If you need that sort of business, they've got marketing tools, email marketing, and social media integration banners, promotions,

all the deal, analytics, of course. And they got 24-7 award-winning support. It's super easy to use. And that's not just for the website. I've called this line before when I've been going through some rough stuff. Well, they helped me out. They're the ones who said maybe you should stop.

Whatever you're doing in the backyard, don't. I called them wasted on New Year's Eve. And they were so angry. Hey, Squarespace, how you doing, bro? I can't find my billfold. So don't do that, but go to squarespace.com slash dollop for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code

dollop to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Yeah, like they're tag liners. Get yourself a website. Get yourself a website, baby. That's the dollop. OK, there's no need for that. Oh my god.

It's like watching Stephen Hawking. I don't know how to drink out of a straw. All right, anything you have to say? Yeah, Dave, I'm running for Senate. I'm running for Senate against Diane Feinstein. I've moved to her district. And I'm going to actually primary her. And I'm going to beat her.

Also, Dave, I'm going on the road like now. So this time next week, you can come see me in Fort Wayne, Indiana. March 13th, March 14th, Indianapolis. March 15th, Louisville. March 16th, Columbus. March 17th, the funny bone in Dayton, Ohio. March 18th, Perrysburg, Ohio, which is closer to something.

Also, another show then. March 18th, March 19th, Cleveland. March 21st, Lexington, Kentucky. March 22nd, Richmond Heights, Missouri, which I'm told to promote as St. Louis. The 23rd, it'll be at Kansas City, Missouri. Two shows, 24th and 25th in Des Moines, Iowa. 26th, I'll be in Omaha on April 12th.

I'll be at the Tacoma Comedy Club on April 13th. I'll be at the Spokane Comedy Club on April 14th. And April 15th, I'll be in Bozeman, Montana at Last Best Comedy. Go to garethrenalds.com for ticket information. Join me, join us. And we have another podcast. It's called The Past Times. It's on this feed.

We have a guest. We go through an old newspaper. And we have a Patreon where you can see us chop it up about random topics. Last week, we talked about Marjorie Taylor Greene. So the week before, who knows? We probably talked about Joe Biden, Elon Musk, I don't know. But you can go to our Patreon and join that.

There's a lot of fun stuff. And be part of the community. And also, Snapple. And we have, we're gonna be announcing a West Coast. Oh yeah. Western America tour pretty soon. A lot of cities. And then 2024, we're talking about Australia.

Yeah, about buying it. Buying the whole country. And turning it in to... We wanna give it back to the indigenous people it was stolen from. I thought we were gonna make hotels and do like a big casino. I was gonna turn it into,

we're gonna make a big casino called the Koala. Oh. I didn't, we should talk about it. The white in me likes this new plan. Yeah, yeah. Sounds like it's got more dollars. Hell yeah, girl, we're white people. Look, last week, we heard a lot of people.

We heard a lot of people. We heard a lot of people. You did. There were some people who said, I only made it through half. I got too angry. They just made it through the PG part. Oh, and the great thing was,

last week wasn't even the part that should make you angry. You keep saying this. 2005, year of our Lord Jesus Christ. Where's the kids call them? JTown. That's gotta stop. We gotta get Jesus in with the kids. How are the kids gonna enjoy Jesus

if you don't come up with cool nicknames? JTown sounds like a place, it's just very strange. That's what he called himself. Sounds like Jerusalem is what it sounds like. That's what he called, he didn't call him, look. No, he would say, he said JTown's in Jerusalem, let's get busy. I did hear that when he came back

after the three day nap that he came from behind a rock and he went, JTown's back. So PG&E is now exiting bankruptcy after its disastrous attempt to make money from deregulation. Right. PG&E's new CEO is Peter Darby. And just to be clear, this company should no longer exist. Should no longer exist.

It should be a public entity at this point. We've now given them billions of dollars because they suck ass. And then our energy costs have gone up. Go up. He vowed and they've killed a bunch of people. Oh yeah, that's. They killed people with cancer.

Yeah, with cancer water. That's a number of the people they killed at Hinkley through cancer, we're never gonna know. That's just a number we're not gonna know. Which again, I mean, I'll let you get into your story, but that again is the real fucker with cancer and this stuff is because it's just like, people get cancer for random reasons and we, like, yes.

And so this, they're just like, boy, that sucks. I mean, reading about the people in like entire families, tumors and like, yeah. It's clearly PG&E. Oh yeah, yeah, for sure. So he, so Darby comes in and he, he vows, he's gonna turn PG&E into a modern utility. It's gonna make real money, Gareth.

But that's not what anyone's asking for. Gareth PG&E is gonna make real money. But that's not the promise you want. That's actually the opposite of the promise you want to hear. Gareth, he's gonna over. You thought we were doing everything to make money before, you ain't seen nothing yet. He's gonna overhaul the company

to compete for customers and market share. Let's go, utility. But don't they already have a lot of it? What? The market, like, nobody's asking them to expand. We're just asking them to be better. I'm talking about making money. Yeah, I know, I guess that's kind of what my,

I'm throwing the flag on that one. I should add here that private utilities are basically guaranteed profits because they're regulated monopolies. Right. So rates are set for them to make money. That's part of the whole jam. Right.

Get to make money. Yes. Unless they fuck up. Then they get to make more money. But Darby wanted now to cut unnecessary costs and make profitable investment. Gareth, were you here? Never, I'm good, I know.

I just don't know. Utility, you think, let's make some cuts. No, no, no, no, you don't, no, no. Congress has, thankfully, just repealed a depression era law and we've said this a million times. Every time Congress gets rid of a depression era law, nothing but good, nothing but good things happen. No, for sure.

Well, that whole era was, I mean, when you think about it, all they were really doing in that era was fortifying against another depression. So it's important to start to kind of pull those blocks away from the wobbling Jenga blocks that is this facade of a country. Okay, you're a bummer. It's early.

So this depression era law is gone and now it allows utilities to merge, make acquisitions and grow into huge investor-owned utility. Those, as God wanted, are not great things. PG&E started paying dividends again after coming out of bankruptcy to investors after three years. So those poor investors didn't get any dividends for three years. They were living off of those other ridiculous dividends

from the three years prior to those three years. Maybe, yeah. Three years, yeah. Most execs at PG&E do not like Darby. Interesting. Writer Catherine Blunt, quote, he was a deeply unpopular leader. Many found him bobastic, controlling and quick to anger.

Meetings with him could turn good days sour. But, okay, because in my head I was like, they don't like him because of some of the things he's saying. They probably like his policies. They just don't like, no, they don't. So these PG&E execs are sort of utility lifer guys. Right. They're even, I mean, you think of that as like

the union guys working in the polls, but even the executives here are like long-term utility guys who know how it works. And now some guys coming in going, let's make some money! And they're like, let's not do that. And he's like, shut the fuck up! Yeah, their reaction's like yours.

They're like, wait, what? Yeah, yeah. So he also doesn't like them because they're lifers, right? Yeah, yeah. They're not up to what he sees as this new competitive world. I feel like they're not gonna last too long.

The new competitive world that we have. Sure. So he keeps replacing them. Replacing, replacing, replacing. A lot of them, unfortunately, have years and years of knowledge of how the utility works. Do you need that in a business that... We'll see, I'm not sure.

I'm not sure, we'll see. Because to me, my ears perk up when I hear we're removing the people with the experience. Yes. So Darby also brings in a consulting firm, a business consulting firm. Always, thank you. How are you gonna run your business?

You are just tossing all the magic terms my way early. This one is called Accenture or Accenture, Accenture. Of course. They quickly found there were no records on the conditions of power lines and pipelines. There were no records on how the conditions were. Nobody wrote it down? Well, they did write it down a little bit.

But Accenture said PG&E could save money by figuring out those conditions and then making maintenance cuts. So they get there and they're like, so nobody has any records on any of your towers? No. And then they go, well, here's a good thing we can do. Figure out what's going on with those towers

and then reel back to maintenance. That just, none of it makes sense. Trust? None of it makes sense. Deep cuts to gas and electric transmission lines is what they're saying. Slash spending, outsourced jobs. They fired 8,000 workers.

Jesus Christ. Obviously unions, well that's what they said, fired 8,000 workers. Unions are not happy about that, obviously. Right. Now the company liaison to unions, the exec that's the guy who talks to unions and deals with them,

said union workers have tricks to make things work, which is important when there's missing records and software. So he's kind of like, you need these people to kind of fill in these gaps of the problems that maybe you're not fully aware of. Frank knows. Right.

That thing you have to torque to the right. You mean tweak. You don't want to torque it to the right. That thing. Frank, no! Ah! Frank's like, and then Frank tells his other, they're the crew guys and then they just know.

So it's basically your employees are covering up the deficiencies. Correct. Right. Cutting workers meant needed workarounds would disappear. Sure. Darby realized embracing renewable energy would help PG&E's reputation in California.

Interesting. So he really strongly pushes renewables and by May 2007 he is featured in an article in Vanity Fair on climate activists. It's so easy. It's so easy. It's just so dumb. Everybody is so fucking dumb.

Yeah, it's just, I mean. Because when I think climate activists, I think the CEO of PG&E. Oh man, it's just ridiculous. Ah! It's like the note was nobody do better. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Vanity Fair said, unlike others who control utilities,

he believed in global warming. Wow! Wow! What a guy! All right! Yay! That'll do it. Now, California has what is known as Santa Ana winds.

Mm-hmm. Hot, dry air blowing out of the desert states across California, out to sea in the winter and fall. Yes. In 2007. Strong winds. Yes, very strong. In 2007, they're very strong, up to 80 miles an hour. So fires break out.

Mm-hmm. Malibu, Santa Barbara, and the witch fire, which down in San Diego burned about 200,000 acres. But that was caused because we were just getting rid of a bunch of witches we found. That's correct. Well, we burned witches. At the stake, yeah, of course we do.

But that was our bad. Yeah, well, I still stand by that one. We stopped burning witches in the fall and winter. We only do it in the spring. Yeah, which results in infestation. But go ahead. Well, there's more witches in the winter, for sure. But we clear them out in the spring.

Yeah, no, for sure. It's what the indigenous people used to do. Thank you. So huge fire, 200,000 acres, two dead, 1,000 homes gone. It was started by San Diego Gas and Electric, a tower from the wind. Mm-hmm. And San Diego Gas and Electric had to pay $2.4 billion

in damages. Okay. That year at a shareholder meeting, five, at a PG&E shareholder, five union members stand up and say the gas division has serious problems that have been ignored by executives for years. All right, you guys,

just help yourself to some sandwiches. Let's just, come on. You guys, help yourself to some of this. Boys, boys, sit down. Come on. Hey, this is more of a hang party. We don't need to be downers. Hey, can someone put on some music?

Has everyone had a sandwich? Get those boys' hats. Hey, get everybody, get as many little sandwiches as you want. Tiny sandwiches. There's pretzels, there's mustard. Go to the little Fixins bar. All right.

Let's keep going with the meeting. Now let's continue with the meeting. Yeah, now those guys shut the fuck up. It's absurd. And from now on, anytime you feel like talking, have a sandwich. Put a sandwich in it, is what we say. Have a sandwich.

Don't we always say it to me? And at the end of this, there's a, you can take a bunch of this party stuff. Keep the sandwiches in your mouth from now until you leave. How about this? There's a new rule. Everyone has to have a sandwich in their mouth

and anyone chewing gets killed. Fair. All right. Motion granted. All right, boom. So they stand up and they're like, there's real, real problems. Now, Accenture had assured PG&E,

it had fewer gas leaks than other utilities. But this company's role is to essentially do this, right? They come in and tell you obvious bullshit based on nothing. So right, so it's sort of, and the role of that is to sort of just cover your ass when the shit hits the fan. I believe so.

Okay. Yeah. In reality, PG&E was giving bonuses to supervisors whose crews had the fewest leaks. Okay. So they just reported fewer leaks. We can't, we can't live in this version. We can't, we can't.

Everyone wants money. We can't do it. In reality, workers were actually seeing more and more leaks, because if none of them are being reported, there's more and more and more. They just keep building up. Leaks that PG&E was really getting rid of

were the ones from supervisors alerting them to the leaks. Correct. Cool. Execs didn't push on spending on maintenance because that hurts the earnings that Darby wants to turn this into a business for shareholders. For fun. But the five union guys speaking up at the meeting.

Got sandwiches, boys, how many times do we have to do this? In front of all the shareholders, that forces Darby to order an investigation. Okay. Turns out the problems are fucking enormous. Darby told the board they needed to bring in independent investigators. Hired by them.

On Christmas Eve, 2008, a woman called PG&E from Rancho Cordova, which is near Sacramento. She smelled gas. PG&E rep came out. There's a gas leak. There's a dead spot on a lawn from where the gas is coming up. Okay.

A leak investigator's called. Now he hits traffic and then his brakes went out in his PG&E truck, so it takes him a couple hours to get there. Can't even keep the brakes going. He checks the records. PG&E has repaired pipes right at that spot under the grass two years before.

Okay. But with plastic leak prone pipes. Is he just gonna see like chewed gum on it? They use cheap plastic pipes. Okay. He measures the gas leak. It's very, very high. And then someone in the house lights a cigarette

and the house explodes. Oh, what the, who, what, give my hands up. How do you not? Yeah, that's what happened. Man, this whole thing stressing me to F out. One man died, three are hospitalized with darts. Wow. So Darby's plan is not going.

I can't believe a guy, a guy in the house. It was actually a young woman, the old guy, the old guy that her grandfather died. Okay. I don't, well, you're getting too specific for me to Yeah, it's not as funny. Play around now. Yeah.

I apologize for the specificities of our dearly departed. Oh yeah, but I'll. He's with J-Town now. Darby's plan for making money is not going as expected. Earnings are not great. Workers are pissed. There were problems all over because of the transformation. Yeah.

Accenture had set up a centralized dispatch for all the trucks. Sure. But didn't give them the proper technology. And new software that they brought in doesn't work with PG&E system and payroll is a total mess. Accenture is basically a massive failure. They had been paid $300 million.

PG&E ends the transformation into becoming a make money company and gets 30 million back from Accenture. So Accenture made $270 million to make PG&E worse. Right. Great. Which is what all those. Did Vanity Fair cover that? It's what those business consulting companies do.

Right. In 2010, PG&E funded a ballot initiative. I don't like how close this is getting to us. Yeah. It's like the JAWS theme. They put $46 billion behind this. $46 billion? That's gotta be million.

That has to be million. I had to make a mistake. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, that's gotta be million. I have a billion there, but it has to be million. Yeah. To make it harder for local governments to become utilities.

So just crush competition, keep the monopoly train going. After the deregulation nightmare, there's a lot of play. A lot of cities are like, why don't we have our own power? It was great question cities. Yes, absolutely. Why don't we have our own power in a couple of ways? Yeah. So people get pissed off when they find out

PG&E is doing this. Yes. And voters reject it. Voters reject the. They reject it. They're, even though they spent 40s. And there's really. Oh, the PG&E one.

Yeah. Okay, good. And even though they spent 46 million. Yeah. But again, that's 46 million. You're taking from people to then fuck them over. Yes. So people are very aware of what you're doing.

Right. Now, Darby at this point has been in charge for four years. Okay. Worker morale is terrible. Executives are bombed. He's doing great. People are just getting angry and angry at PG&E.

Right. And then PG&E starts using smart meters. And people's bills go up. Because a lot of the smart meters were incorrectly installed. Because again, they're not using union guys, they're using private contractors hired to do this. Some houses get business meters, which are charged more.

Business meters. Businesses pay more. The meters check every 15 minutes as opposed to a longer cycle. Others are put in and not correctly calibrated, so bills are doubling. So people are really pissed. Right.

And then on September 9th, 2010 in San Bruno, a gas pipeline leaks for an hour and a half. Anyone wanna smoke? Crews come down to try to stop it. They can't figure it out and then it explodes. There is a crater, half as wide as a football field, and a 40 foot high giant flame shooting out of the ground. Oh my God.

38 homes are destroyed. Oh my God. 70 damage, eight people dead, 60 injured, foreign burn centers. This is just insane. Huh? I mean, come on. Why?

Cause there's like, like cause Satan's about to pop out. Ha ha ha. Bad news, PGD opened up a hell mouth. Yeah, I mean, yeah, like how long until he's just like, hello, enough already. You keep knocking, of course I'm gonna come out. After consulting with PGD,

I'm actually gonna join the team. I'm the new CEO. And we're gonna make some money. Help yourself to those sandwiches, boys. So obviously other people, other people in the area are now like, well, if that one blew up, can other ones blow up? Yeah.

So PGD sends an executive down to talk to residents. Sleeves rolled up. I'm gonna eat the grass. I'll show you guys this grass is still edible. And people are like, where are the other transmission pipelines? And she says, she can't tell them because it's a security risk.

In what way? Because if they know they'll freak out and they'll kill them. Well, this is after 9-Eleven. So you can say, you can get away with just saying terrorism. Yeah, right. And you're like, yeah, but who should be more worried about? Terrorists that have never done this

or you. Well, a lot of people think that Al-Qaeda are living in the ground like moles. And she's like, we don't know why it blew up, but PGD will take care of it. And quote, be responsible as we possibly can. Yeah, I mean, eight people died from a fire hole. And you're like, look, we are really,

we're as pissed off as you are. We wanna get to the bottom of this. Well, and we can't tell you if you're in the danger lines. So. I remember Pablo Sandoval's mom, I think was one of the homes that was burned. Crazy. PG&E now is in a very cozy relationship

with the California Public Utility Commission, which is the government regulator. The regulator. Overseas PG&E. It just is. CPUC rules state there can be no back channel communications with utilities, no texting, no phone calls, no emails, it all has to be on the record.

Right. Three days after the, I'm just gonna use PG&E guy and CPU guy because there's a bunch of different people. Oh, so we have. Three days after the explosion, a PG&E guy emailed a CPUC guy to say, let's set up a meeting with the CEO and president

with the CPUC, now that you can't do that. Right. It's very illegal, especially when there's an investigation on. When you just did that. Because the commissioners in an investigation. Sure. Act as judges.

Yes. So they're literally like, hey, can we sit down and talk with the judge? Yeah. No. After like, after one day of trial, you're like, let's go get some wings. Come on.

What are you thinking? After setting up the meeting, the emails then went on to discuss PG&E guy's recent trip to Yellowstone. PG&E guy said, CPUC guy should go to Yellowstone. CPUC guy, quote, things keep coming up at work.

Yeah, it's been a real nightmare since you've been blowing bomb size holds into California. It's been really tough. PG&E guy, quote, ah, yes, you have a challenging job. Guess that's why they pay you the big bucks. They don't pay them the big bucks,

mostly CPUC guys end up leaving CPUC to join PG&E, of course. Which is awesome too. CPE. Because then you can help write the laws that you'll be bending when you're right there. CPUC also started holding annual conferences where PG&E guys enjoyed a, quote,

reception and strolling dinner at the Monterey Aquarium. Strolling dinner? Let's eat and walk, boys. Sandwiches. Come on, we're gonna do a linguiney skip. Come on, everyone. How we doing? How's everyone liking their lasagna while we run?

Are there bulls? All right, no, use your hands, boys. Just grab some from this bucket. Here you go. What a beautiful night. My hands are hot. What a beautiful night. No, they're very hot.

It's dry, it'll cool down here. Have a handful of clams. Look at that beautiful view. God, that is weird. You can see the whole city from up here, huh? It's just slimy on top of the- Have some fried cheese. Oh, God, that's hot too.

There we go. That's hot too. So listen. Holy shit. Here we are. What an amazing adventure we're on. This is not nice. I'm bribing you. It's terrible.

It's bribing. I wanna kill you. Eat some lasagna from my hands. Oh, that's nice. There we go. Don't ever make noises like that into a microphone again. I guess it's like, what's so insane, obviously,

is just that it's so, I always think that it's so out in the open. Well, yeah, there should, like there should be, this should be done through carrier pigeon. Yeah. Like, you know, you shouldn't be, it should just be like.

Brrr, brrr. You know, that should be the move and that's the pigeon. And instead, it's like you're emailing, you're hanging out, you're going on pasta walks. The emails, which they didn't know about until about three years later.

Right. After those came out, what they should have done was say, from now on, you can never communicate with PG&E except hire a communications guy, everything has to go through him. He has to document everything. If you are caught talking to PG&E outside the cells,

you go to fucking jail. You go to jail. What we need and what we'll never have within all of this is a true outsider. Ever. You're right. So, and also, CPUC should never be having, it's a regulatory commission.

They should not be having a fucking event. What do you think would, wouldn't it garner a bigger freak out if a soccer team had dinner with a ref the night before the game? 100%. Yeah, that would, we would lose our mind over that. This, we're like, hey, whatever.

Hey. We got blow holes. That was a little lasagna. Relax. We got fire holes. I ate, I ate meatballs off a halibut, a live halibut. Mark Tony of the consumer.

I got two first names. What's that? Mark Tony. Mark Tony. Yeah. Consumer Advocacy Organization. This is Paul John. The Utility Reform Network hates PG&E.

Okay. A week after the explosion, the head of the CPUC wrote a happy birthday email. No. To PG&E guy. What's going on? Like get, you can't, like this is, now it's like, what are you doing?

Well, it's his birthday. Who do you expect me to do on a guy's birthday? Is a fire hole about to open up in you? Oh my God. PG&E guy writes back, quote, I love a muzzle for Mark Tony. Oh, wow. What do you want for your birthday?

Happy birthday. I want a muzzle for Mark Tony. I want a muzzle for the one guy who's like. Consumer Advocate guy. Yeah. Tony had just demanded that day PG&E put customer safety first. Six days after the explosion,

PG&E guy emailed CPUC guy to say, their CEO thought Tony's behavior, quote, bordered on the irresponsible. Unreal. Unreal. Unreal. Unreal. Hey, the guy I shot, I'm worried he has a gun.

Go Dave. You killed eight people, motherfucker! Go Dave, go, go baby, go baby. I just, you fucking killed eight people. The bubble is so insane. It's the bot bubble. It's just like how, it is to what you were saying last episode

about they have, they want pain. They want suffering. I still feel like. I don't think these guys want suffering. I think these are the guys. Who carry out the orders. It's just everyone has a price. Yeah, no, they're fine with it.

Like look, they're like, these guys have lost empathy though. Well, that's a price of new business. People die, I mean. That is exactly what I think. I think they, because there's enough of them and they sort of just talk to each other, they start, you normalize no empathy.

I think the guys who want to cause pain are guys like Schultz who runs Starbucks. I think he enjoys causing suffering. Yes. Remember when you ran for president? Great, good stuff. Is the dude from before still in charge? Darby?

Yeah. That's a good question. I think he's still in charge. Yeah, he's still in charge. So. Can we get Damon IV, Aaron, whenever you get a second? The PG&E guy now asked the CPUC if they could put out a statement

shitting on the utility reform network. And CPUC guy responded by saying, quote, call me. So yeah, that means let's do this off channel, but I can get that done for you. Also just from pure strategy, that's so stupid. It's like you should just let, let, ignore. Yeah. Which is what they do very well normally,

but they're like, they're so like, man, we hate this guy. Let's put out a statement that he's evil. Meanwhile, we'll just blow bomb-sized holes in California. A month later, the National Transportation Safety Board concluded the pipe was poorly welded when it was installed in 1956. That meant a change in gas pressure caused the explosion.

Now everyone's concerned about other pipelines, right? Obviously. PG&E does not have records of the pipe manufacturer or the pipe material. I mean. Why would you have records of that? It's just like, look, your pipes were built when the honeymooners were on.

You know what I mean? Like let's, come on, you have a lot of money. Let's fucking go. You could still make money hand over fist and do this. Yeah. The NTSB tells PG&E to go through all gas records to learn which pipes are the same and have problems. If you put one pipeline in the ground that's fucked,

Yeah. Find out which other ones were manufactured by the same company. But all records are on paper and they're in file boxes in offices all over the state of California. They have never digitized. This is truly, I run my little business better. Oh yeah.

No, by the way. How you don't, like, this is also the thing. It's like, there is no impulse because it's, that's just the way it's set up with greed to advance nothing isn't, you're just, it costs money to advance. And so they're just like, yeah, fucking, keep it all in like cabinets. That's right, it costs money.

Yeah, it costs money to do. That's the only way, because it's everything about having the records digitized is better for you at the job, everything, there's nothing about it. Knowing less gives you less complicity, less work you have to do, less maintenance. When I had, I had, I had like a thousand CDs or so, I had a crazy amount of CDs.

I was a big music guy. Going to digital music is worse sound-wise than like, than like a vinyl situation, but I went from vinyl to CDs. But I eventually got rid of my CD collection because of convenience. Yes, yes. Because it's easier.

And you went through a painful growing pain period in order to have a better product at the end of it. An easier, more convenient product. Yes. And your CDs didn't kill many people. Well, I don't really want to get into that. Oh. But there were lives lost.

Oh, oh. I miss you grandma. Oh my God, you didn't, didn't take your dad out, did it? Because nobody will ever know it took your dad out. What? Is your dad, dad of natural causes? No, he did not. Let's go, keep reading, little one.

Darby gets fired. What, I'm one crowd! This guy's crushing it, Vanity Fair, baby! He gets a $34.8 million package. Hey, I'm gonna go barf! Man, if you hadn't blown up that town, we would have given you 50 mil. We are furious at you.

Now you take your $34.8 million and get out of here. He fucked up the company royally. Yeah. He made all the workers mad, the executives mad. Kill people. He fucked up payroll, he fucked up. He fucked up everything. He fucked up everything.

He blew it. He believed. He did not think about records. Oh, he believed in climate, and then he got $34.8 million for being terrible at the fucking job. Terrible. I just, ah, the bandit.

Man, I, Dave, it's good. Let me tell you this. Go ahead. I'm gonna end in a headline, okay? That's how I'm going out. You're gonna be like, I grabbed Darby and we jumped off the cliff together. I like bit Hank Paulson's throat out.

It's like one of these things is gonna be like my, you know what I mean? Like, that's how it's gonna end for me. My obituary will be like, whoa. It won't be like co-host of the dollop. It'll be like, man who ate George W. Bush in a goulash. His salary had been 7.34 million. So this guy, Wally, walked with like 70, 80 million.

He made 20 million for the four years already. Okay, so he walks away with like 50, 60 million. I didn't look it up. I'm sure you got a signing bonus. They all do. Like he made, yeah. It's like a wide receiver. Also, PG&E spent more money lobbying Congress

than paying taxes from 2008 to 2010. $79 million for lobbying and a tax refund of $1 billion. My God. No. What? How? How? Everything, oh God, it's all, everything's the worst.

I paid way more money in taxes. Percentage-wise. Than PG&E. Yeah, same. Not even percentage-wise, just more. Wait, how much did they pay in taxes? They didn't pay anything. They had a $1 billion tax refund.

Oh yeah, well, I thought, yeah, right. Okay, yeah, you got it. Yeah, the refund's pretty good. Yeah, they got money back. The new CEO was Anthony Early Jr., ex-navy, ex-utility CEO, and he wanted to go back to basics. He wanted to spend $400 million over two years on repairs.

Maintenance. Profits are gonna be lower. Who is this guy and how did they kill him? He said PG&E- Who hurt him? Needed to be humble. Where, what happened to him? They drowned him?

What happened was he brought in risk management consultant, Lloyds Register. Lloyds Register is a name or a company? That's the name of the consultant company. Lloyds said PG&E was way behind other utilities in modernizing. Okay. One example is other companies

have these things called smart pigs. Already, I'm very excited. They go into gas pipelines. Are we talking actual pigs? No, but they should be. They should be. Damn, I was so... What if, what if, what if,

the best thing would be like, if they were like, hey, all these other companies have smart pigs and then PG&E's like, we got a smart pig? Yeah. And there's just a pig over in the corner. It's the CEO. Yeah. When these pigs, they find the leaks.

That's what they do. You put them down that hole, they'll go around there, they'll sniff around, they'll find your leak for you. All right, let's get a bunch of, let's order like 500 smart pigs. Yeah, get your pig down there, they'll go down there, sniff around, they'll figure it out.

They're like, they're like, the gas for them is like a truffle. Oh. So... So, you send in these little smart pigs into gas pipelines and they basically go through and they, it's a little fucking electronic device and it finds problems in the pipeline.

Sure, great. And then the workers are nearby in a truck and they have a screen, it shows them what's going on. Fantastic, it's like Twister. So, upgrades on the networks begin. And... Shocking, I can't wait to see how this all falls apart. They make a ton of advances with the gas network

and pretty soon they get high marks from Lloyd's register. Wow. So, totally, like this guy came in it. Oh yeah, they're completely ignoring the electrical system. Everything is focused on gas. Remember when... Because of the explosion. Remember when there was a CEO who was all about

making money and was focused on renewables and letting everything else be ignored? Yeah, the man... Now they're all focused on gas and ignoring everything else. Right, all right, cool. A drought begins in California in 2007. 2008 is the driest year on historical record.

Fires start breaking out dead trees and thunderstorms in June. And in July, there's 1700 fires. The National Guard has to be called out to help fight them. Prison labor. Prison labor, slaves. Our slaves come out to fight them. Yeah, we go out.

And then the rains come back in 2008. The CPUC now tells utilities it's prepare for wildfires to be a regular thing from now on. Nice. Fires happen in Australia. They're horrifying fires. Horrifying fires. And the CPUC staff are worried.

The staff, not the commissioners. The staff is worried. The five commissioners are not because the governor has told them to get renewable energy up to the next level. Up to 20%. So that's what they're focused on. That's the mandate.

Who's our governor then? The Schwarzenegger. The great. Yeah, we're looking to get more fires. I'll ride motorcycles through them. Don't worry. So that becomes the commissioners focus. And then a new drought comes

and it comes insanely fast. It's shocking scientists how fast the drought comes. Have you heard of a flash drought? No, but it's great to hear. It's the same thing as a flash flood, but it's the opposite. It's an extraordinarily drying process. So we're getting more flash drought.

So I don't think this was a flash drought, but pretty close to it. Right, fast drought. Millions of trees die. Now San Diego Gas and Electricity, who had the witchfire, are on top of it. After the witchfire, they began removing trees. They started tracking wind speed

and power line safety was improved. Like they have little devices. Logical things, right? They have little devices in their power lines that like individually set up so they can turn off like power lines when they need to at certain moments and turn them back on. Like it's a highly technologically advanced.

Right, they got smart pigs. And PG&E is like, do you lack dirt and towers? Southern California Edison did the same. CPUC does not require that from PG&E because PG&E is in the north, which is not fire prone. Okay, smart. Quote, to our knowledge, there's never been an instance in Northern California

where strong winds have caused power lines to ignite large scale wire fires. Yes, so let's roll the dice. CPUC told PG&E figure out if serious fire events were a possibility and if so, then come up with a plan. And PG&E being the good guys we've talked about the whole time did the honest thing. Well, it took a year to study it.

Sure. And guess what? And that year, nothing changed. Well, Gareth, their study concluded no big deal. Well, that's good. Wind gusts are too low to really be a problem. Well, that's good. That's great.

Yeah. Even though Northern California had what is known as the Diablo winds, which are like the Santa Ana winds, but just in the north. I'm trying to remember the definition of Diablo. What is it? I'm trying to remember. It's me, I'm in San Bruno.

Oh no, him again. The study did not look at branches possibly flying into power lines. Sure, why would they? So tons of dead trees, you do a study. I can't believe they still are like, we don't really understand how trees work. Or wind.

Like the whole time we've been doing this story, they're like trees, is that a problem? What's a tree? You're worried about what with the tree now? My Christmas tree is made of plastic and metal. These trees are there. So that feels like it's okay. Yeah, they're growing over here and that's where they are.

This is fine. Trees stay still forever. It only stuttered, it only stuttered, it only studied power lines. And it studied them as if they were well maintained. Which they probably weren't. So they basically don't play any war game version of it. They're just like, let's just in a vacuum study one thing.

Well, it's like they said, what's the perfect case scenario? It's like being like estimating how drunk someone's going to get from a bottle of whiskey without thinking about how much they've eaten. Yes, that's right. The CPUC did report that PG&E was not spending enough on maintenance.

Okay, it's crazy that I'm impressed with the CPUC. But the CPUC safety staff, the division is completely understaffed. They only have 30 employees. Wow. They, because of that, they never go out in the field.

They can't. Right. So they have to trust what PG&E tells them. I'm finding the leak. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Finding a hole right there. Do you think there's a problem? I'm finding a hole right there. Do you see a problem?

I see a CPUC a problem. It's almost as if when you starve government, it can create safety issues. Yes, yes, it's interesting. It's either your options are either to starve government or corrupt government and there's not a third. PG&E actually had no idea

how old 30% of their towers were. It's just... It's like some guy just left them it in a will. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Like how are you, like it's your company. That 30% were built between 1900 and 1920. Oh my God. Is that old?

Oh my God, David's so old. Talking in a movie? How? Like that era. That old. That old. Before there was talking in movies. Yeah, before movies had talking.

Before cars. Yes, yes, yes. Like Chaplin would see it and be like, pretty good. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. 60% of the towers were built between the 20s and 50s. Still horrendous. PG&E determined crews should climb and inspect a sample of towers every three to five years.

So climb like maybe one of five or one of 10 towers every three to five years. They did not do that. They didn't even do that. They didn't do their own recommendation. Which is not, which is not enough. A former head of strategic. This guy's great.

Quote, we felt we were doing enough. Yep, there we go. Boom. Nothing. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. We felt nothing was good. We thought nothing went above and beyond. I drove by it and honked my horn.

It didn't fall down. I threw my hair in the air and it didn't go too far. Ha ha ha ha ha. There's no rule for state or feds to oversee maintenance. So what, but again, one more time. What is the point of a government? State regulations for maintenance of power lines. Promise.

Are three sentences. Oh my God. Wall Street Journal quote, they simply say that, oh my God, this is, this is, oh, they simply say that each utility must come up with its own procedures and follow them. That's the state regulation for maintenance. And they're probably like, that's a little much.

Yeah. On a super dangerous thing. What do you think you should do? Ha ha ha ha ha. It's literally like having a five-year-old and being like, I don't know, man, it's up to you. Yeah, it's, I mean, it essentially is like, well, what should your punishment be?

Yeah. I remember like getting that once as a kid, like what should your, I'd be like, you should probably just let me go think about it. I think ice cream. Yeah, I think I should probably just, probably get a cigarette. I don't know, I should probably go think about it

for a while. I was able to give myself a grade once in college in this class. Oh my God. Yeah, this teacher was like, I don't know how I ended up in his class, but let me tell you, I've never gone to a class more stoned. And he was just like, yes, I'm the guy

who lets you give your own grade. And I did whatever very little. And then I gave myself an A plus. And then at the end he was like, A plus, huh? And I was like, yeah. I don't really think it's an A plus. I do. And I was like, yeah, yeah.

And he's like, maybe a B plus? I was like, no, A plus sounds good. And he was like, okay. I was like, all right, man. See, like, yeah, human nature is to be like, yeah, I'll take the- Shit plan on your idea. A shit plan.

Yeah, terrible. What's up everybody? This is Gareth, not Gary from The Dollar Podcast. The show you're about to listen to. Listen, I would love to invite you to see some standup comedy I'm doing on the road. I'm all over this great nation of ours. Be part of the Gareth Army or the Garmy,

as everyone's calling it. Everyone's calling it that. Don't look it up, but everyone's calling it that. Monday, March 13th, I'll be in Fort Wayne, Indiana. March 14th, I'll be in Indianapolis. March 15th, Louisville, Kentucky. March 16th, Columbus, Ohio. March 17th, Dayton, Ohio.

March 18th, I have two shows in Perrysburg, Ohio. March 19th, I'll be in Cleveland, Ohio. March 21st, Lexington, Kentucky. March 22nd, I will be in St. Louis. March 23rd, I'll be in Kansas City. March 24th and 25th, I'll be in Des Moines, Iowa. March 26th, I'll be in Omaha. Then April 12th, I'm very excited to say I'll be in Tacoma,

but I will be doing a crowd work show. I'll be filming it, so I really want people to come out to that. That's April 12th, which is a Wednesday. Tacoma Comedy Club, Washington, come on out. Then April 13th, back to regular standup at the Spokane Comedy Club. And then April 14th and April 15th,

I'll be in Bozeman, Montana at Last Best Comedy. Also, Los Angeles, my home city, kind of, whatever. May 5th, Friday, I'll be at the Dynasty Typewriter in Los Angeles. Then May 18th, I'll be at Standup Live in Phoenix, Arizona. More shows coming, like July 12th and July 13th, I'll be at the New York Comedy Club. One's in New York, one's in Connecticut, it's wild.

Then I'll be in Pittsburgh, July 15th, and that's all for now. Go to garethrenalds.com to get tickets and information and join me, be part of the Garmy. Everyone's calling it that, quit pushing back. So, maintenance keeps being pushed. Sure, great. Because there's no one telling him to do it.

Yeah, that's not a problem. And it costs money. Sure. Wall Street Journal quote, the part of PG&E's grid that includes the Caribou Palermo line is so old that segments were considered candidates for the National Register of Historic Places at one point by federal agencies.

Stop it. Hey, the Smithsonian wants to take some of your pieces. Is that a red flag for you? So that means that federal agencies were like looking at things that are- We can't take it down, it's a historical landmark. No, they wouldn't take it down, they would just label it. They put like a fucking plaque up

and go, this is a historic place. Like they do with the fucking- Building. Like they do with the building. Like, oh, here's the oldest sedobing. That's where John F. Kennedy was raised. Like, that's what they're talking about. They're gonna put plaques up and go,

this place is, look at this- We can't make any changes, it's a landmark. Oh my God. PG&E told the federal forest manager it needed to replace 49 towers on that line in 2013, quote, due to age and integrity. Sure. Matt, work was delayed.

Smart. And then delayed again. Great. And delayed again. Okay. In 2014, PG&E blew up a house in Carmel with a gas leak. PG&E paid the city of Carmel 1.6 million and the CPUC fined them 37.5 million.

I mean, at this point, they're just like a mob boss who just like, once someone's killed, gives the widow like a handful of bucks for the funeral. I mean, they're guaranteed money, right? They're guaranteed fucking money. The, again, when you live in a society that only values money, they're going to go the route where what, I mean, you run the war game and you go,

it is cheaper to have these explosions and pay them off after the fact than to make these changes. Right. You don't, you don't want to do- There's no cost of human life factored in or anything like that. You don't want to do maintenance because that will hurt your quarterly things

because you're not looking down the line. And down the line is, oh my God, we just had to pay $37 million because we didn't do the maintenance. They never go that far. They can't think that far. And also they're paying a guy who left the company $34 million instead of using that for maintenance.

He did a great job though. Okay, that's fair. That's fair. Forest officials created a task force to deal with all the dead trees in California. But CPUC kept debating the fire risk in Northern California. They did tell PG&E to report every fire that was being started by their equipment.

What a low bar. Now you guys got to tell us every time you start a fire. Really? Yeah, come on. Yeah, I told you we were going to be a tough agency. Come on now, we want to know. Ah, we're cracking down. Dad.

In 2014, that number was 254. Oh my gosh. Mostly small fires. Still, there's a lot of fires when you're talking about a tinder state. Oh, and in July of that year, California became the first state to have a maximum containment level

for Chromium-6 in drinking water, 10 parts per billion. Okay, so first state. But yeah, but okay. We're the first state. Hey buddy, you're going to be negative. I'm happy to hear it. Okay, finally.

So we are now going, you can just have a little bit of Chromium. But that means there are 49 other states without rules. And the reason why is because PG&E went and fucking changed that report. Okay, all right, look, can we just be happy? Can we just be happy that one state has finally recognized you need to stop with this?

Take the small wins. A state has finally said you can't over Chromium the water. Okay? This is whiskey. It's a good thing. I'm drinking whiskey. I'm having Chromium.

Pure. Chromium-6 has been- By the way, we're brought to you by Chromium coffee. Chromium coffee is the only coffee that will give you pockets of boil in your body. Go ahead. Snapple, now with Chromium. Yeah.

Sex. Chromium. Chromium-6 has been found in higher than recommended levels in two thirds of the water Americans drink. I just, what are we gonna do? It's okay, it just caused a cancer. What are we gonna do? What?

The San Bruno- We're gonna be drinking our own piss. I hope so. Go ahead. Well, you went into my wheelhouse. The San Bruno trial began. The company pleaded not guilty to lying to NTSB investigators

and 27 counts of violating pipeline laws. The max fine, if they were found guilty of those, would be $13.5 million. It's just, ah! Ah! Why can't we just do it right? You just threatened death. You know, China kills CEOs,

but it's still, if they do something like China will execute them. Yeah. But it still doesn't stop it. Right. But it would at least- I bet it lessens it. At least I would be like,

that's good. Yeah. Again, these people are just evil. Yes. But prosecutors like $13.5 million isn't enough and they're like, we want $1.13 billion for extraordinary circumstances. Great.

During the trial, a tree in Butte County hit a power line. It was 107 degrees, 71,000 acres burned, two dead, 365 homes. That year, PG&E equipment started over 400 fires. Oh my God. CPUC is still debating if there is a fire risk for the third year in a row. Oh my God.

In 2014, the San Bruno lawsuit reveals the 65,000 emails between PG&E and CPUC. 65,000 and you're not allowed to communicate. So those are the ones that I read before, some of those. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, how crazy are these fires?

They're not that bad. Four months before the explosion, a CPUC guy invited a PG&E guy to his house, quote, no matter the menu, we have some great bottles of Pino to drink. Here's the other thing. If it's PG&E people inviting CPUC people, okay, I expect that you, that, okay.

The fact that the CPUC people like, get out of here, let's get, like, they, there's no line in between the two. They are appointed by the governor. Yes. So they are Ergo, completely cropped to begin with. Yes. I mean, that's it.

Yes. Even if they were voted in, they're gonna be cropped. It's beyond the point now of like, hey, don't worry, I'm gonna grease his palms. He's like, they're like, come over, grease my palms. Yeah. We gotta drink some Pino.

A keyword search for the words Pino and Cabernet found 16 different exchanges between PG&E and CPUC. There had been a gas explosion that took out a Cupertino condo. After PG&E guy and CPUC guy exchanged emails about how it was due to a plastic pipe failure. Again, plastic pipes. CPUC guy, quote.

Do you like screw tops or the old corks better? After they talk about that, see you for dinner, Sunday night, where and when? Are you bringing Charlie's Angels too? PG&E guy, quote, 730 at Marinus in the Bernatis Lodge in Carmel Valley. Some angels may attend. Nobody knows what the angels were.

I know what the angels are. It's prostitutes, right? Well, I'd see they're like, it's something. Some version. It's sex workers. Some version. It's gotta be. Sure.

Or it's three women on a mission. It was, yeah. Or it's baskets on a desk. It was a real PG&E and the CPUC were judge shopping to find a bankruptcy judge that would favor PG&E. So through those emails. They were trying to, yeah. They learned that when they were on.

Right. When they were going through bankruptcy that they had been shopping for a judge that would help them out the most. CPUC. Jesus. Like PG&E's like, relax, relax, relax. Come on, settle down.

We gotta like, come on. Jesus Christ, I don't know who's PG&E who isn't. Come on, they gotta score a goal every now and then, you know what I mean? Relax. Jesus. CPUPGEC. The leaked emails led to the firings of three PG&E

vice presidents. The CPUC president stepped down. The CPUC executive director said he was leaving. It's not good enough. To study music and another commissioner left for health problems. Why would you say you're gonna go study music? Like you are leaving in pure shame and disgrace.

I just always wanted to learn how to play the ukulele. What? Yeah, I don't know. I think I'm actually gonna do a lot of stuff on GarageBand. I've always seen myself as a kind of governmental beck. You were doing illegal things. I know, and I'm gonna write songs about it in the style of sort of, I don't know,

merengue-ish, you know who I love? Is that Louis Prima. I wanna do sort of like, first of all- You committed a crime. And I understand. Can I finish what I'm saying? My album is gonna be called Crime Rhymes. And, oh, don't try like your head drop.

Listen to me. It's horrifying. You know that right now, if you have enough instruments, you on a simple program on your computer can now seem like you're your own band. That's pretty cool. And my plan is to put together some really great, some great song.

I just wanna do what I wanna do are concept albums. I'm envisioning your neck being cut to the bone and falling backwards. I was like that Van Halen. Is that a good sound, didn't they? You know what I mean? Ah. Now you guys get the fuck out of here.

I'm gonna do music. The jury found PG&E guilty of obstruction and five pipeline safety violations, and PG&E was put on probation. So they have to commit to massive oversight and other stuff. Which should have already been happening because they're a public utility.

That's not a punishment. Not a public utility. A private utility. That's not a punishment. It's not a punishment. It's not, absolutely not a punishment. So now we want people to watch your back. It's like, yeah, that's what they're, what?

You ready? You ready? No. Executives had to do community service. Oh. Bam! I can only imagine how they got out of that. Right, no, they just give speeches and stuff.

Yeah, right, yeah, right, yeah, exactly, right. And the company had to air TV spots explaining their crimes and what they were gonna do to fix it. So we're gonna run one hour commercials. This is a little complicated. The CEO steps down. So early's out. Not good enough.

The new CEO was the executive who had gone to meet with San Bruno residents and told them she couldn't say where pipelines were because it was a security risk. Well, of course they advanced her. She's great. Gisha Williams. First woman CEO of PG&E and a Cuban.

Isn't that unbelievable? And a Cuban American. Oh, come on, everybody. It's not just a white guy right now. Isn't that unbelievable? How can we be evil now? It's totally what they're doing. We're done being evil now.

Look, a Cuban woman. What? Okay, we're done. You know why we know this is what they're doing? It's because they've always gone out of the company to find a new CEO. Right. And now all of a sudden they're promoting from within.

Right. And they're thinking this will help them. It's like when the CIA puts a woman in charge. It doesn't fucking matter. It's still evil. It also is like, I forget what it was. I can't remember what it was, but it's like criticism of Biden

and then whatever name is a jump here. The press secretary is just like, this is the most diverse. It's like, I mean, and I understand like you, I don't want to be a fucking white dude being like, that doesn't matter. Like they're definitely, you don't want to see things wrong,

but it's just this money makes people evil. It's just the money, the system, you're not going to get into the system unless you're willing to play the game. Yeah. So now there are 100 million dead trees in California. PG&E hires contractors to clear fire hazards, but there aren't enough workers for the contractors.

So PG&E lets its biggest contractor lower hiring requirements. Oh, God. Now, for some reason, the contractor has performance issues. Really? I wonder what that was about. Yeah, I'm already at the tree.

Which one's a tree? Yeah. No, Jimmy, that's a power. That's a telephone pole. We got it down. Tinder. So for years, they're missing trees. They're behind schedule.

I'm surprised that they weren't like, well, we were, we imagined the trees would police themselves. Yeah, the trees should come down. We stay up on the room. Yeah. Well, and if they're a part of the brush, they should just get themselves out of there. Thank you.

This is, you shouldn't be angry at us. We need to fight a war on trees. Which is why here at PG&E, we're rooting for more fires. Fires, they get rid of trees, our enemy. Take, we're gonna take two. Okay. We're gonna start and not stay.

PG&E, we want the fires. We're gonna start them because the trees, we're against. Okay, we're gonna, nope. Cut on that. What's the note? Just nothing about, we're against fires. We're PG&E. Well, but the only way we can get rid of the trees

is to have fires. Well, we're gonna need to cut them down before they don't burn. Okay. At PG&E, we're sick and tired of all these fires, just like you. However, it's the only way to eliminate our complete enemy, the tree.

The trees behind all of this. Trees started this and trees better finish this. Hey trees, we're sick of your bullshit. Get out of here. We're PG&E and we're fighting a war on trees. Let's go fires, I've got a boat that flies. All right. I'm exhausted.

This is the hardest I've worked in four years and I'm the president. That is not surprising. Can I have sex with your wife and anyone that you value? Absolutely not. Okay, yeah, all right. Great. In October, 2017, winds gusted to 90 miles an hour

and fires began. One in Sonoma County on the eight. Our wine, our wine, oh no. Moved 80 miles per hour. Jesus Christ, I mean that's, come on. A football field, a second. Fire tornadoes, flipped cars, tore off rooms and ripped up trees.

Just listen to the term. The term fire tornado. We have a family friend who lived outside of Santa Rosa and was warned to get out of her house at 328 a.m., six minutes later the house was gone. Oh my God. Tens of thousands of acres were burned across the state that year, 44 people died.

Oh my God. Days later, the CEO had a quarterly earnings call. No. Quote. How could you even get on that call? This is like nothing I've ever seen. She said PG&E was on the hook for damages. Comma?

It's about money. Soon after the CPUC ruled San Diego, gas and electric could not raise rates to recoup the 307 million that they lost to lawsuits for the witch fire. Good. The constitution of California says if a fire is because of something a utility did,

they have to pay for the property. Is their plan just to let the fires burn that constitution eventually? Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. Two months later, CEO gave a keynote at the United Nations Investor Summit on Climate Risk, and she said fire liabilities could hinder progress, meaning companies wouldn't spend on renewables

if they were paying for the damages, their shit maintenance costs. You won't ever, and you never did, and you won't, and you just keep saying there's other reasons, and it's all lies, and you want us to die. Well, PG&E was responsible for 16 of the 2017 fires and was looking at 2.5 billion in payouts. It just would make so much more sense to just fix it.

Yeah. Just do it, just be a real place. Yeah. Just actually do this stuff. But that means they couldn't give dividend checks to shareholders, that means their stock price would go down. Yeah, right. People are not talking bankruptcy for PG&E.

What? So what? That doesn't matter, they're zombies. They're bankruptcy zombies. PG&E had paid between 2013 and 2017 4.4 billion in dividends. Oh my God. Again, I cannot say this enough.

Since it is not a public utility, that money is not going into maintenance upkeep, it doesn't go back into the company. It is essentially taking money and throwing it into the ether. It is exactly the opposite of how something like this should be right. It's even worse than throwing it into the ether.

It's rewarding the behavior. Yes, you're right. PG&E now goes tree trimming crazy in 2018 because they're like, oh, our bottom line can be fired. Right, yeah. 129 million trees are now dead in the state. That fall, it's hot, it's windy, and it's very dry. One thing about climate change is

it's getting drier than it's ever been before. Like the humidity is so low, it's unbelievable. More fires break out. One was 450,000 acres around Mendocino. So PG&E with the wind starts cutting off power to tens of thousands during wind events. They're like, let's just shut down the power so they can't be fires.

This brings me to tower 27 slash 222. Oh boy. Almost a hundred feet tall in the Sierra Nevada foothills, part of the old Carabue Palermo line. It had existed through 18 presidents. Built in 1921, PG&E said it planned to do work on the line in 2013 and finish in February 2016

because the lines are too close to the ground and trees. And then the work was pushed and pushed and pushed. Oh, did I mention, I'm just talking about the line there. Tower 27 slash 222 was actually never ready for maintenance. It was not due for maintenance. It was not on the maintenance schedule. It's just a power line, sorry, a power tower that's been sitting there since 1921

in which nobody is going to do any work on. Over the decades as people moving into the area, nothing changed with this line. So more power is running through the old lines. In 2010, a grid operator said the line would face, quote, thermal overload. Which we're excited about. Which here PG&E, we're very excited about.

Some work is done, but it's very sporadic. In 2012, wind blew down five towers. They were replaced with temporary wood towers. It just doesn't seem smart. What do you mean? It just seems. Why would you say that? It just seems very flammable.

If there's something that you built in the early 1900s to be super sturdy and you were like, this should be made of metal, in the early 1900s you think that, why would it be a problem replacing it with wood now? Just because of the hazard. What? I don't follow your thinking.

On account of the hazard. Do you not like wood? I find it to be a very flammable. So when we cut down the dead trees, we should what, throw them on the ground? Or should we reuse it? You should probably, well honestly, neither. I would say remove it.

So you want us to just waste dead trees? Look, I don't want to talk to you any longer about this, but I think that- That's fair, cause you're wrong. I think the move would be, and just when we put them in, we're going to cover them in lighter fluid just because, give them that nice smell.

By 2017, one fourth of the wires on the line were too close to vegetation. That's crazy. In 2017, a nearby resident said she saw a crew mark the same tree three times for clearing, but it was never cleared. Quote, it seemed like they did a lot of preparation, but not a lot of follow through.

All four play, no fuck. A consultant recommended PG&E climb and inspect towers. That was not done. Yeah. They were just doing visual. I mean, you can see, I mean- I will eyeball it. You needed subscription to Wall Street Journal,

although there's extensions, but if you just type it in like, there's drone footage of these, they're fucking rusted to shit. The drones just flew over them and looked at them, and they're like brown. Yeah, and then some of the drones have microphones, and you could hear the things say,

they'd go to them in their mountains. They'd go. Federal and state regulators- If they were humans, they'd all be dead. Yeah, they'd be dead. They'd be dead if they were humans, absolutely. Or they'd be on the Today Show. Yeah.

Federal and state regulators, we're leaving it all up to the company, even though it was so old that segments are considered for the national registrations. Here's what you can no longer do. It's just so obvious in every way, but here just, no more life-guarding yourself. Yeah.

You just can't. I know. Work is being done by PG&E. Remember, I said they're spending money. Sure, yeah, yeah, right, yeah. But it's close to high population areas, where towers are not nearly as old. Which doesn't matter with fire.

16 of the 20 worst lines are in high-risk fire areas. Right, that'll come find the highly populated areas. A tower's mean life expectancy is 65 years. Okay, so we're- So that's not the shit they're working on. Right. Also worth noting, PG&E at this point has not paid federal taxes since 2008.

Over the decade, PG&E made 14.5 billion and got a tax refund of 1.7 billion. Oh my God, they're a really good business. Early on the day, on November 8th, 2018, winds picked up. Now, PG&E has got a lot of criticism from the previous power shutdowns they did during a wind thing.

Sure. So they say the wind isn't bad enough to shut off electricity. Soon after, like very soon after they say it, like an hour or so, a hook holding an insulator string on tower 27 slash 222 broke in half. So it's like this, it's like a triangle thing. Part of it snaps, it's holding the wire.

The wire falls, it's now sparking and hanging. It's good. It would later be estimated the wear on the hook that broke had been visible, visible by the naked eye for 50 years. Oh my God. At 6.33 a.m., a PG&E worker saw a fire under the tower. Soon after, 10 acres were burning in 11 minutes.

People in the town of Paradise start calling 911, but they're told the fire is, it's no danger, it's pretty far away. But the fire, tell me if you've heard this before, it's moving a football field a second. Have you heard that before? Yeah, you said that earlier. It covered 10 miles and hit Paradise at around 8 a.m.

Andrew Donner had one leg. When the fire was a mile away, he called his girlfriend and said, quote, today might be a good day to die. His body was found where his front porch had been with his service dock. Most of the people who died were older and had mobility issues. 87-year-old Julian Binstock died in his bathtub

in his retirement home. So they're trying to live, getting in a bathtub, filling it up with water, but the fire's too hot. Oh, shit. That's so dark. It's all old people, it's all people, people flinging in their cars also. A lot of people in their 80s, 85 died.

85 people, 95% of the town of Paradise and the town of Konkau are gone. Magalia lost about 50% of its town, 16.5 billion in damage. Two days later, Donald Trump said California was doing forest management. It was not doing forest management well, quote, you got to take care of the floors,

you know, the floors of the forest. Yeah, the earth floors. Schools had to close across the San Francisco Bay Area and Central Valley due to smoke. 1,000 people were now homeless. The homeless people went to the nearby city of Chico. Chico. That's where Aaron Rogers is from.

So these are climate refugees. Yeah. In the next elections, because there's so many homeless people, the city of Chico swung to the right because people just want the homeless gone. PG&E is looking. This encapsulation is so dark. Yeah, there's something people don't realize.

The more refugees are, the more everything swings right. All, and nature, well, businesses are the match, nature is the tender and the outcome. It's hatred for your fellow. The right-wing creating their own perpetual cycle of hate and that's what this is. We're living in a right-wing world of profits, make money at all costs, causing destruction, causing people.

And we're all parties practice. Causing people, mostly, mostly, not necessarily here, but mostly poor people. Yeah. And then those people are the most suffering and then the right get mad. And on top of that, you're talking about people who just straight up die, old people.

Yeah. Like, the fact, like, I can't believe, like, we, like, I always used to find it's kind of nice in the sense that you would just be like, there was a time when you'd just be like, look, you're no longer healthy, we Viking funeral, you are some version of that. This is that on a non-calculated mass level.

Yeah. We're just like, hey, guess what? Sorry, you're just in the wrong place. Wrong place. So, yeah, so the right-wing takes over, business interests take over the city council in Chico. And, you know, I like to donate up there. That's where I try to take care of homeless peeps.

Anywho. So, PG&E is now looking at liabilities of $30 billion. That's how much they think they're gonna lose. It's still amazing that the idea is like, they're like, how does it affect the bottom line? Well, yeah, yeah, that's all I care about. The CPUC head says the agency is gonna create new laws allowing utilities to pass fire costs on the customers.

What? That? What? What's the problem? Oh my God. In December, the CPUC- We've taken a strong look at the problem and we've decided you guys don't have to pay for that anymore.

This is a customer issue. In December, the CPUC announced it was looking into splitting PG&E into a gas company and electric company, which is to simply shield it from liabilities. So the one that's making all the profit now won't pay for the one- That doesn't. So the electric company will just be screwed.

Yeah, it's out of the will. In early January, Moody's downgraded PG&E credit rating four notches. On January 14th, PG&E fired CEO, Gisha Williams, and began filing for bankruptcy. I mean, how many times can this company be like, well, we're bankrupt? All right, well, look,

you don't get to be a company anymore. Whoops. If only there was some money that you had sent out to people that you could have around as like a stash for situations like this. Before the 2017 fires, PG&E stock was $70. It was now $6.36. Bankruptcy meant wildfire victims making claims

would become unsecured creditors and not be paid in full. Man, it is so fucked up. The judge overseeing PG&E's probation said it had clearly been violated. When they came in, he asked if he should turn a blind eye and let them, quote, keep killing people. Yes, Your Honor, that would be, is that a genuine question? That's actually, is that something we can do?

Is that a genuine question? Can we do that? That would be unbelievable, Your Honor. We are all smiling over here, Your Honor. We are shocked at the offer, Your Honor, and we are very excited to say absolutely, Your Honor. We would like to keep killing people, Your Honor. We would love to be able to still,

to be honest, we thought we were gonna have to lie a bunch more to kind of get through this, but that would be totally awesome. Can we use it as a slogan? Oh, yeah, that's, I mean, we don't wanna push it, but can we actually, yeah, what should we lean in? Yeah, let's lean into it, Your Honor. Yeah, be great.

Thank you, we would like to keep killing. PG&E, pushing general extinction. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. The judge ordered PG&E to trim all trees near power lines and give monthly updates to him. And PG&E said, quote, given the dynamic conditions of vegetation, it is impossible for utility to achieve perfect compliance.

No, it's impossible to achieve perfect compliance because you haven't been fucking doing it. Yeah, yeah. So now it's a disaster. Yeah, they're like, you can't expect us to do a book report in one night. Your Honor, trees grow. We also feel a little misled by your earlier question.

Your Honor, you've been all over the map. Your Honor, mixed signals? Your Honor, we're, objection, are there two of you? Are you a set of twins who keep swapping out? Your Honor's like civil. There's a bunch of personalities in there. Your Honor, who is this? The judge said there was no evidence that that was true

and it had taken years for these trees to become hazards. And also it's like, look, then you don't get to do it. You're not like, this is, you're not, you're not, you can't do the job. Yeah. He also said it's safety laws were too strict. If safety laws were too strict, PG&E should try using as well oiled lobby efforts,

not as courtroom. So he's like, we know what you're doing because they're fucking lobbying like crazy. Now that's the judge we're looking forward to hearing from again. We will do that, Your Honor. Thank you. PG&E spends like, it's like one of the top lobbying companies.

I mean, again, another term that's just like, what a sweet little term for what it actually is. Public bribery. Yeah, and you're spending $74 million on lobbying instead of on the fucking maintenance. The judge. But Ann, that's the better business decision. Yeah.

He orders PG&E shut down during windstorms to save lives. Which is also, I mean, it's the better dissit, but it's also just like, this is what it's come to. Right. Yeah. Good news comes through. The state rules, PG&E had not caused the tub fire, which killed 22 people and the stock jumped 70% to $14.

Who cares? Come on, buddy, we're making money. Making money. For some reason, PG&E is having a hard time finding a CEO. Three months later, they land on Bill Johnson, head of the Tennessee Valley Authority. He gets a $3 million signing bonus. The signing bonus?

Just what? We're so comfortable with this concept of like, hey, this guy, you know, I know we owe a lot of people a lot of money, but we just hired a guy. We're giving him $3 million. What? Yeah. Pretty cool, huh?

Also, people act like what CEOs do is amazing. I'm sorry, I don't think it's that fucking hard. I don't, I don't. Also, if you're the head of a utility. Yeah. Like, you shouldn't be like, and none of them do good jobs. At all.

Now, of course, because the stock tanked, hedge funds came in and bought tons of stock when it crashed. Right. People are demanding a new board. They want the whole board wiped out and they got one, but the hedge funds made sure half were Wall Street guys. Great. That's just enough.

The head of the CPUC stepped down. He said he'd only had a worse job once in his life when he picked up dead cows working in a meatpacking plant. This guy's a problem. This guy's just overall. Now, this guy's also a shill, right? Yeah, they're put in there by the governor. Yeah, so he's just like, man, this was really stressful.

People get really pissed when you burn their stuff. Only worst job I had was when I had to pick up dead cows. Hey, can we actually get the mic out of his face for a little while? That'd be great. Can we just remove that mic for a little while? You know the cows poop when they die. Okay, hey.

And then when you try to pick them up, a little more poop comes out of them. Danny, we're good with the quotes. One time on a dare, I still sucked milk out of a dead cow. Oh, God, Danny, come on. If you think about it, udders are just like jerking off a bunch of little dicks.

No, they're not. Yeah, they are. Udders are just cow udders. No, not at all. Yeah, it's like six little dicks. You can whack off. How are you in charge of the regulatory commission? Now, I'm talking about my first job.

I had a paper out, and then for $30 once on the floor, I sucked a bunch of dead cow dicks. Then the milk came. And one of them, I shot on my nips. And I said, I got, what? I like a come shot. What? Why is everyone, come on, guys.

Let's all, I'm saying, I gotta go is what I'm saying. I'm done, I'm retiring. Why is everyone looking to be crazy? I shot some of the milk into the pool. I called the chocolate milk. I'm out. By the way, Bill Johnson did not actually get any money when he went.

Oh. So 163 million trees are now dead. That summer, PG&E only removed half of those with potential to fall on wires. Okay. In August, 2019, PG&E said it had a way to ensure leadership stability. They told the judge they wanted to give 16 million

in bonuses to 12 executives for 2019. And the judge used his gavel like Thor's hammer and bashed their heads in. Imagine the fucking balls. It's nuts. The judge rejected it, of course, but imagine like they're like, we're so important. And in actuality, you could take any of the fucking union

guys who've been working for PG&E for years and throw them up there. It also shows the bubble because they all turned their keys on pitching that. So they were just like, but it sounds pretty good. Pay us more, we'll do better. No, what are you talking about?

Also like, we can retain these people without me, we don't want you. We don't want you. We don't want you. We don't want you, we don't need you. Your honor, look, I know we're the worst as far as this utility goes, but I think if we have more money,

that you can keep us. What? Sorry. In October, the winds begin again. Power is shut off to two million people for three days. And you got to also keep in mind that these, I mean, these are like hot, hot days, right? Hot days.

Like in order to cause these disasters. So you're basically that, you're also the collateral damage of people who are just dying from heat in their homes. Right, old people. Yeah, old people. Yeah, you're talking about old people. Businesses shut down, schools shut down,

long lines of gas stations. Billions are lost, billions. Three days later, they turn it back on and then a few days later, the winds come back again. This time, PG&E does not shut off the power in time. Cause they're getting so much shit. And the Kincaid fire began from a company tower, 78,000 acres.

Now PG&E has, from the campfire, which is the Paradise one, you know, they're looking at $30 billion, so now they're negotiating. Negotiating down that fee. Oh, of course. Right. Because of the bankruptcy.

Yeah. They offer $13.5 billion to fire victims. Newsome rejects it. They wanted to newsome. There's a discussion of taking PG&E public. So he's committees and all that shit. Sure, right. I love the idea that we've got to look into it.

Newsome wants to set up a fund for future fire victims, paid for by customers and utilities. Stop it, stop it. So utilities put in money and then customers pay like two point, two point, whatever, a couple bucks a month or something. Okay. And it all goes into this fire fire.

Sure. PG&E wants this and they get it. Consumer watchdog groups say this bill that did, does this, moved way too fast through the legislature. Quote. Which is always a red flag. Always a red flag. Anything that gets passed quick, it's a bad, not good.

There's something in there. Quote. The problem is the legislature is weakening the standard by which rate players can hold utilities accountable for not being prudent managers and starting fires. So rate payers will pay in more instances than the past. Right. So it's a terrible.

Which is what they wanted, which is how our government works. So Newsome comes out and says, we're looking into public, cities in San Francisco, we're looking into taking it public, but in actuality behind the scenes, they're doing a thing to help the business. That's kind of become the trend of,

I don't even know how long, but it's more recent than not, where it's now it is the like bold proclamation. I guess it's not that new, but it's just really picked up steam. The bold proclamation gets everyone excited and then behind closed doors, you pass the bullshit one. But people are like, we were so close.

Yeah, I think that's new in how common it's become. Yeah. The law firm Newsome picked to write the law had been representing PG&E for decades and it stopped in 2017. It's just. Legal people said that was fine. Of course.

People who had their houses burned said it was not fine. Well, how about like a, like we have an ethicist. Yeah. Is that like at all positive? Like it's just, it just doesn't matter. There's one color, one party green. And it's just, that's it. And that's all that matters.

And all of them, it just doesn't matter. It was announced. It's just insane. It was announced there were 1000 line problems and 10,000 needed to be fixed immediately. We're going to send up citizens on the lines to go have a look for themselves in a new program we've come up with.

PG&E, at the very first time they did inspections of all the towers was after the campfire. And then they just did it with drones. They still weren't sending up guys. They had actually sent out a warning to workers who did climb towers to be careful because they were so brittle.

Company memo, watch out on those towers. Some of them are breaking. My God. So negotiations are going on with fire victims. The man who was brought in to represent 16,000 victims. I'm nervous. He's randomly offered a $100 million line of credit by a hedge fund.

Remember the hedge funds came in and bought the debt. The hedge fund had bought his debt and then given him a line of credit. The negotiator. Everyone just gets bought. Everyone just always gets bought. There's nobody who's like, nah. The negotiator told people this

but he said he wouldn't do business with the company who first contacted him because the founder of that company, he called it as quote, destroyer. But he was still keeping the line. But I'm interested. He was keeping the line of credit. But I love the premise.

I like the, I mean, look, I'm not gonna do it with them because you guys will get furious. But I like the idea a lot of having all that money. Okay. Three of the 11 member fire victim committee. There's 11 fire victims on this committee. Three of them now leave

as the settlement gets close. Quote, PG&E's plan is deeply defective. The plan has victims taking substantial risk. Now other law firms say they can't support it and start backing out. This negotiator, however, goes hard at every one of the 16,000 victims holding online meetings, holding, you know,

in-person meetings. He says the line of credit, the $100 million is not. This is for him personally. Yes. This is 100, he's offered a $100 million line of credit and he's like, let me tell you why it's okay. He's saying it's not a conflict of interest. How?

It's very, very random, isn't it, sir? It's really come out of nowhere. He tells the $16,000 fire victims. That 16,000 people who are the fire victims, yeah, right. That they got to take this deal, they've settled. The deal for whatever, where they're paying. PG&E, they got to take the deal because there is no plan B.

And plus, I'm going to get a Lear Jet, which is awesome. No one. Do you know that I get a pet dolphin? Do you understand what we're talking about? These guys are gonna send me a birthday cake every day. Do you understand? Think about this. Yes, you are sacrificing a lot.

You have been through a lot, okay? But they're gonna give me one of those suits that lets me shoot over water like I'm the Rocketeer. Can I ask you a question? Yeah, but hold on, let me finish. Plus, they're going to give me a motorcycle that shoots flames out of the back. Can I ask you a question?

I get a woman. When you came in here, Yeah. You were wearing a gold cloak and then you handed it to a boy who hung it up. Yeah, yeah, lad, yeah. He's a lad, not a boy. Believe me, you can't wear a gold coat

and hand it to a boy. A lad must take it. It just feels like you don't represent us, common people. What? What? None of us have lads. Someone, lad, come wipe the exasperation off my mouth. This is absurd.

What are you talking about? I'm just like you. You're not. Every day I wake up and make a bowel movement in a golden toilet that a snake eats. I don't have a house. Would you come live on a shed in my property, you pauper? Beat this man.

No, we all don't have houses. Well, I can't afford to do that. I don't have a hundred million dollars. What am I gonna do? Get rid of my jacuzzi plane? Who people said insane? So he tells them there's no plan B, no one is gonna get paid.

This negotiator is good, he's good. Hey, we don't have a backup bangle. 85% vote for the 13.5 billion said because they are told they have no, the guy on their side is saying don't do it and he has a fucking gold cloak. What's his name? Watts, I think.

Watts' problem. Some victims are very angry because half of the settlement would be in PG&E stock. Oh my God, what? What? What? What are you talking about? The company that fucks you,

that bankrupts itself all the time, half of your payout is in their fun bucks? Yeah. Well, this is a, this is a bad deal. And this guy gets $100 million, basically. And remember, the actual amount of money they should be paying is 30 billion. So everyone's getting half of what they should get

or less than half of what they should get and now they're getting a quarter of the money and then the rest in stock. Stock. You can't rebuild. PG&E stock. And then all, and I wouldn't go into the insurance yet, but all these people can't rebuild anyway.

It's like a fucking shit show. Giving you stock of the company that fucks you. On June 17th, 2020. The position that puts you in when you have to now be rooting for PG&E. Yeah, that's right. As someone who's like, you've taken my everything. That's right.

You've screwed me over. You compromised the negotiator and now, because you've screwed me so hard, you're forcing me to market watch this stock that I loathe. Yeah. Yeah. USC.

On June 17th, 2020, CEO Bill Johnson pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter from the campfire. Now, so this is a Butte County prosecution. PG&E was convicted of the deadliest corporate crime in American history. The fires of 2017 and 2018 killed 107 people. Those poor investors lost $20 billion.

Two weeks after pleading guilty, Bill Johnson left. By the way, PG&E pleading guilty is a pretty good start. Bill Johnson left PG&E. Amazingly, he gets no severance package. Crazy. On July 13th, 2021, a tree fell on a wire. The fire that broke out would be called the Dixie Fire.

It would burn. What I hate is all these, I'm going, oh yeah. Like they're just, you know them, but we have just turned the page repeatedly. It burned for three months. It burned a million acres. Oh my God. Several small towns were burned.

PG&E paid 55 million in civil penalties. Million? To avoid criminal prosecution in Dixie and Kincaid for those fires. So they're basically paying and not. It's a payoff to the towns. Right. And then.

But 55 million to destroying towns. Well, then the five counties got 24 million on top of that. Still, towns. The Dixie Fire, well, there is a tragedy. The Dixie Fire caused PG&E's stock to drop. Which is great. But then you think about what just happened where those people were just granted stock

as part of their negotiated deal. And now they're like, great, okay, awesome. Thank you PG&E for doing what you keep doing. They lost $3.5 billion of their settlement. Oh my God. Oh my God. One of the prosecutors who got the manslaughter conviction against PG&E said, quote, we made history,

but we didn't change a fucking thing. For some reason, PG&E is having a hard time finding a new CEO. Oh my God, it pricks me. Yes. I'm interested. They finally pick Patty Pop or Pope Pop, I assume, who's a career utility executive.

Her salary would be 1.35 million. Oh. And the bonus of 6.6 million with 3 million restricted stock bringing the total to $51.2 million to sign with PG&E. She, in 2021, is the highest paid utility CEO in the United States of America.

Why are you giving these fucking people signing bonuses? Why are you treating it like you are signing running backs? These are just, oh my God. It's not hard. I've studied PG&E now for a couple of weeks. I've read tons of articles. I've read a book about PG&E. I can tell you what PG&E needs to fucking do.

You don't need a CEO. You just don't need a fucking idiot. Yes. Or a corrupted human. Yes. Public utilities are the only way to do this. Yeah. The only way to get through this

is to bury every single power line. Yeah. Yeah, right. In the fucking, there is no other way to do this. Oh my God, and just do it. It'll save you fucking money. And you're gonna spend a shitload of money no matter what you do.

Yes, now. Now. When you focus on renewables and not on maintenance, what happens is you end up creating fires that put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than was ever gonna fuck. It's like the amount of carbon dioxide that goes into the atmosphere is extraordinary

from these fires. Then you're heating. Yeah. If you're not actually making any progress, you're making negative progress. For your business, still. That, like, for everything. But when you have to get into the mind of these people,

these psychopaths, it's for, you could, you can, it's what I can never understand. You can pitch to them if you just go, look, you're going to lose money. It both wants a line. The wants of people who don't want their houses burned and the wants of companies who want to make profit. You are going to make more profit

if you make these bold moves in the long term. They just, like, again, like, crack heads. They can't think about next week's crack. They just think about the next hit. It can't, they can't be private because they're not responsible. You know, we have this whole idea. And that's a governmental failure.

We have this whole idea in America that private businesses are better than government. And there's just the number of cases, do we want to talk about Ohio, Ohio? Ohio is going to go through this exact same thing. All the people are going to get fucked. Other cities too, yeah, yeah. They are right now having the train company fucking clean it.

It's the same goddamn thing. And it's the same, and it's, I mean, it's again, it's why, like, Flint was like, you've got, like, and Flint wasn't even a natural disaster. That was, that was the government. Flint was just like an out in the open government move. And the model is never going to change. And unless there's punishment,

it's coming to a city near you or your city. It's going to affect someone you love. It's going to affect all of us. It's going to, it's like, you cannot continue to just turn this country into a toilet for drugs. Well, also, like, you know, the way PG&E isn't, wasn't maintaining their lines. And, you know, I don't know where they're,

I don't even know where they're at. I couldn't figure it out. But the way they're, you know, not maintaining their lines, that's the same thing that America is doing. It's everything. Bridges are unfucking believable. Dams, holy shit. Dams are so far.

Well, our plan is to not need those anymore. So that's the biggest. Like, it's everything. Yeah, yeah, it is. It's everything. The model, again, and the model is to like, the quarter profit is the model. Right, because the rich people have all the money.

They're taking all of the money. You hear libertarians say like, taxes theft. No, the rich people taking all our money is the only theft. Go back to the time when there was more equality in this country and look at the tax rate. 90%. 90%. 90%.

90%. And if you say that to people, they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what? It's like, yeah, no, that's what it is. You still get to be insanely rich. You just don't get to have like this crazy castle money. Well, it's like when we were in Sweden and we were talking to our production guy

and he was talking about the Scandinavian countries and he's like, I mean, you can make money, but you're never filthy rich here. But everybody has a good life. Yes, and you want to have that. You as, I don't know when it's going to happen, but at some point, you're going to not want to be a CEO of a company.

You're not going to want, at some point, it has to. Well, also like, these people, these PG&E people, these, the Newsims and everybody, you're ending capitalism. Oh yeah, yeah, yes. Which is basically what FDR was preserving. Yeah, FDR tried to take out us. FDR was like, I'm going to save it,

and the only way to save it is to get the masses to chill the fuck out. Now you see what happens when you don't do FDR. And then since then, we've just been pulling every thread from the FDR era, just going like, hey, we don't need this, hey, glass tea, everything. You just are slowly pulling away everything, and this is what you're seeing.

But now it's like 1929 on fucking Coke. It's just, it is out of control. Yeah. And it just is, it's, we're all going to die or be poisoned. Wow, you're a bummer. I can't help it. I'm, I'm. And instead, and you just,

I'm thinking about putting in a pool. And also, how about this? How about this? How about, you just are a human with empathy and you no longer look at the way things are run, or ruined, or categorized by who the politician is who's doing it. You no longer look at Gavin Newsom as your friend,

or Donald Trump as your buddy, or Pete Buttigieg as the future. Just go, are these disasters, and are they doing the right thing to help the people? Because if we don't at some point, change the story on how disasters are dealt with and cleaned up, it is over for everybody. We're already like the, we're running out of water,

and the water we have, we're just like dumping chemicals into. You can't, you can't, you can't, it just can't sustain. You can't keep just treating everything like, like it's like a football rival. You can't keep doing that. It'll never fucking end. You can't keep going.

You can't keep going. The news network I watch is good. The news network you watch is bad. You can't keep looking at it like that. All these fucks are laughing all the way to the bank. You don't get to be president unless you kiss the fucking ring. I really think I'm going to put in a pool.

I'm going to go drown myself in it. Oh, I got to do sources. Oh my God. So, Catherine Blunt, California Burning is the book. And then, you know, it's, it's, you know, SF Gate, New York Times, Utility, Dive, SPG Global.

It's, it's, I'll put up the list, but it's, it's just the Wall Street Journal did some really, which is amazing, the Wall Street Journal did great work. I know, that's what I was thinking when you were like saying it. Amazing, amazing work on this. So yeah, one of the, one of the attorneys who won that lawsuit just has on his wall now,

PG&E, pray to God and evacuate. Right, the plan. All right. Oh my God. Noodle strudel, we're all foodle. What's going on with that? You've said a lot of crazy stuff this episode. That was the worst. The new outro, we agreed on it at the meeting.

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That's 20 free meals with purchase plus free shipping on your first box at HelloFresh.ca slash dollop 20 with code dollop 20. What's up, everybody? This is Gareth, not Gary from The Dollop Podcast. The show you're about to listen to. Listen, I would love to invite you to see some stand-up comedy I'm doing on the road.

I'm all over this great nation of ours. Be part of the Gareth Army or the Garmy, as everyone's calling it. Everyone's calling it that. Don't look it up, but everyone's calling it that. Monday, March 13th, I'll be in Fort Wayne, Indiana. March 14th, I'll be in Indianapolis. March 15th, Louisville, Kentucky.

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