[In the first of what may be a few posts in reference to the upcoming statewide primary election, here are my thoughts on one of the propositions up for vote.]<\/p>\n
Proposition 16<\/a><\/strong> would require two-thirds voter approval before local governments provide electricity service to new customers.<\/p>\n Vote NO.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n This one bugs me more than any other proposition on the ballot. It is so clearly an effort by Pacific Gas & Electric to eliminate competition from citizens want to join together for less expensive electricity from more accountable providers. I live in a city that delivers electric power to all of our residents, and I have to say that the municipal provider is far more accountable to me than was Southern California Edison when I lived in one of their service areas.<\/p>\n What really<\/em> gets me is the supporters’ double-speak of calling it a “Taxpayers Right to Vote.” This proposition would actually take away the right of a majority of taxpayers in a city to break away from corporate power, as it requires a two-thirds supermajority in order for a municipality to offer electric service to themselves. So even if 65% of a city’s residents want to provide their own power, they could still be locked in to the corporate provider by a minority of dumb-asses their city. If the proposition required only a simple majority to effect change in a city, I would not be so strongly opposed to this one. But as it is, Vote NO<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Proposition 16: Vote No.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2Q7kW-1E","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelkeating.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelkeating.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelkeating.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelkeating.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelkeating.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelkeating.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":112,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelkeating.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102\/revisions\/112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelkeating.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelkeating.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelkeating.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}