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Lawrence Gasda's avatar

In war "collateral damage" and "friendly fire" are two regrettable but often unavoidable things that happen. Innocent people die but it's war. If there is any doubt that the GOP's war on democracy has resulted death tolls that rival and surpass actual wars against foreign enemies? Donald Trump loves to ask, "Who killed Ashli Babbit?" The answer is he did. He brought her to Washington and inspired her to participate in the assault on the capitol. A woman died but she's become a good line to use at rallies. The vaccine debate might be expected at the Flat Earth Society but not in the halls of Congress. The former president and his party have no "policy" except to yell "socialist" and "freedom". It's as if saying those two words loudly actually explain anything about why they're willing to let people die. The Constitution they swore to support is the very one they're trying to destroy. Will future history books be praising the great leader Donald Trump or telling the truth about him? At least Benedict Arnold fought and bled for this country before he betrayed it. Trump never did the former and it's been a good deal for him to do the latter.

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Dan Knapp's avatar

You've written another fine essay, Heather. I would only add from here in northern California that the largest fire in California so far is twice the size of the Dixie Fire, at more than one million acres. The difference is that the Dixie fire is the largest single fire, while the largest combined one, the August Complex fire, was a blaze started by multiple lightning strikes in different places that merged into one. The Dixie Fire's single source was a tree that fell across PG & E power lines. The third largest single fire -- The Camp Fire -- that wiped out the town of Paradise, killed more than 80 people and sent PG & E into bankruptcy, also started from a PG & E power line failure. The location was about ten miles away from where the Camp fire started.

And here's a tip from my wife Mary Lou that's worth looking into. She and I both remember that about ten years ago, a bunch of Texas investors bought a controlling interest in PG & E. We all know that statewide, the Texas electrical system is substandard after that big ice storm and deep freeze killed scores of people last year. The question here as anger mounts against PG & E is whether the Texas brand of incompetence is now what is on display here in California. The headline in today's San Francisco Chronicle says "Dixie Fire rekindles mistrust of PG & E." The subhead reads "Critic says, 'They just don't learn from their mistakes.'"

PG & E came out a week or so ago with a plan to bury 10,000 miles of power lines, but that will take a lot of time to do and time is what we don't have anymore. There is quite a strong push here to cut to the chase and let the State of California mount a takeover and turn PG & E into a publicly owned utility.

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