By Count Friedrich von Olsen
I offer this in support of General George Patton’s pronouncement that “Politicians are the lowest form of human life, and Democrats are the lowest form of politician…”
I never got on the Jerry Brown bandwagon, not even the first time around when he was the relatively young son of the former governor who had acceded to his father’s position and was being touted as possessed of a Jesuit education and an overabundance of fresh ideas. My impression was that he was at best a caretaker governor, who survived his two terms in office and then faded into political oblivion. I must admit, he made a comeback, first as Oakland mayor, then as California Attorney General and, five years ago, as governor once again, a span of 28 years after he previously left as governor and 36 years after he first served in that role. Thus, he was governor of California in three different decades, two separate centuries and two millennia, which is a remarkable accomplishment and maybe even a unique one among American politicians. As noteworthy as that is, it has no real bearing on the quality of his service. Recent events would seem to indicate that he is even more noteworthy for the level of corruption which has crept into his governance…
No, I am not referring to the manner in which he is virtually owned by his primary cadre of campaign donors, the state’s public employee unions, which has resulted in the state’s decline. An even starker picture of the seediness the Brown Administration has seeped into lies within the ongoing set of debacles relating to what is the most lucrative enterprise in California: the provision of energy in all of its forms…
Multiple issues have plagued the California Public Utilities Commission and the California Energy Commission under his watch. The most benign interpretation possible, it seems to me, is he is either incapable or unwilling to engage himself and his charges to check this activity, in which billions of dollars of both taxpayer and consumer money is at stake. It is also possible he is directly involved in the violating the trust of the millions of Californians he was elected to oversee and lead…
Over the last year, there has been a steady trickle of revelations about misbehavior on the part of former Public Utility Commission members, particularly former commission chairman Michael Peevey. This has entailed secret and illicit contacts, including ones at oversees locations, between commission members and utility executives while decisions – some with hundreds of millions or billions of dollars hanging in the balance – relating to those utility executive’s companies are pending before the commission. There is running through many of these contacts the suggestion that more than just words or information was exchanged between the parties involved…
From 2011 until early 2014, Dr. Tim Brown was a senior scientist in the Advanced Power and Energy Program at the University of California, Irvine and was also serving as a consultant to the Energy Commission in drawing up a map for determining the best locations for hydrogen refueling stations throughout the state to serve the hydrogen fuel cell cars which are soon to become commercially available. After serving as the architect of the “hydrogen highway,” Tim Brown resigned his position and then formed a company, First Element Fuel, which tapped into the hydrogen station grants being handed out by the Energy Commission. It is hard to say how much money Tim Brown’s company picked up in this way. One report was it was no more than $2 million. Another was that it received $10 million…
Governor Jerry Brown has done nothing about these circumstances involving the Public Utility Commission or the Energy Commission, either looking the other way or purposefully promoting or sustaining others involved. Michael Picker, formerly one of Jerry Brown’s top aides, was on the Public Utility Commission with Peevey the last year Peevey was chairman. Picker’s voting record on every issue that came before the commission was identical to Peevey’s. Brown has appointed Picker chairman. Energy Commission Chairman Robert Weisenmiller, who saw no problem with the conflict involving Tim Brown and approved the disbursements to First Element Fuel, was reappointed chairman by Jerry Brown…
Word now comes that we may be on the brink of learning how much Jerry Brown knew about Peevey’s depredations and when he knew them. While in Poland last year, Peevey met with executives of the Southern California Edison Company, a company of which he was once president. While in Warsaw, he worked out a deal with Edison whereby Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric Co. ratepayers were consigned to coughing up $3.3 billion, roughly 75 percent of the cost of shuttering the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, which grew inoperable because of Edison’s technical mismanagement of that facility. Now, in San Francisco Superior Court, attorneys Michael Aguirre and Mia Severson are seeking provision of approaching 80 documents, including reports, memos and emails relating to communications between Brown and/or his staff with Public Utility Commission members, including Peevey, when the San Onofre settlement was in the works. The Public Utilities Commission, now headed by Brown crony Picker and manned by four other Jerry Brown’s appointees, refuses to revisit the San Onofre settlement issue. The release of those documents could come as early as December 9, depending upon a ruling due that day in San Francisco Superior Court…
Already, however, one juicy tidbit has leaked out. On June 6, 2013, Governor Brown was in Rancho Mirage meeting with President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping. In the midst of that meeting, Governor Brown took a phone call from Edison CEO Ted Craver. Craver sent a memo to Edison board members to give them, he wrote, “a quick report on my phone calls with Gov. Brown. He said what we were doing seemed right under the circumstances.” A possible smoking gun in Craver’s memos is that he said Brown “indicated a willingness to” exonerate Edison of any wrongdoing with regard to the technical problems leading to the power plant shutdown…
All this is occurring against a backdrop which suggests the governor may be positioning himself for a bit of energy-related profiteering himself. It turns out he has recently used his executive power as governor to extract from California’s oil regulating agency maps, geologic surveys and records relating to oil and natural gas reserves beneath his family’s 2,700-acre ranch in Colusa County…
Did I already say that the lowest form of human life is the politician?