Following the clusterf%$# that used to be known as the Iowa caucuses, Troy Price, the head of the state Democratic Party has resigned:

Troy Price, the beleaguered chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party, resigned on Wednesday, a week after overseeing the chaotic Iowa caucuses that embarrassed the state and national party and left Democrats open to accusations of incompetence by President Trump’s re-election campaign.

The Iowa Democratic Party failed to report any results from its first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses on Feb. 3 until the next afternoon. When it did report results, they were filled with errors. Even once the Iowa Democratic Party released what it said were full results, errors remained in the tabulations, and the campaigns of the two victors, former Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., and Senator Bernie Sanders, have both asked for a partial recanvass of the results.

Mr. Price, 39, has been the public face of the Iowa caucus debacle, as he has struggled to offer reassuring explanations about the integrity of the caucus reporting process and final results.

“While it is my desire to stay in this role and see this process through to completion, I do believe it is time for the Iowa Democratic Party to begin looking forward, and my presence in my current role makes that more difficult,” Mr. Price wrote in a letter to party officials. “Therefore, I will resign as chair of the Iowa Democratic Party effective upon the election of my replacement.” The party said its State Central Committee would elect an interim chair on Saturday.

How could one human being screw this up so badly?

The answer is that it takes a village:

In a conference call with his central committee two days after the caucuses, Mr. Price was pressed by two members over the appearance of cronyism because of his friendships, dating to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, with a senior adviser to Mr. Buttigieg who is married to the founder of the company that developed the caucus app. (The New York Times was provided with a call-in number for the call.)

“We have seen the pictures of you, Troy, with app developers and people with the Buttigieg campaign, and that’s concerning,” said Holly Brown, a committee member. She told Mr. Price he should not be involved in a planned post-mortem of what went wrong. “We’d like to have you removed from this,” she said.

………

Sean Bagniewski, the chairman of the Democratic Party in Polk County, which includes Des Moines, said the coziness between state party leaders, vendors and candidates did not originate under Mr. Price. “I think it’s been this way for quite some time,” he said. “It’s kind of like the little families that control petroleum countries. You’ve got access to resources that everybody wants, and you kind of become your own little kingdom of consultants and advisers.”

It ain’t just Iowa.

Given the fraught nature of the whole affair, the (relative) transparency and candor is remarkable, particularly when compared to the US response to its shoot down of Iran Air Flight 655 (Denials for years, and giving the reckless captain of the Vincennes a medal), and the 50+ year French coverup of their shoot down of Air France flight 1611.

It’s a tragedy, but in the aftermath, the Iranian government has behaved relatively well:

After maintaining for days that there was no evidence that one of its missiles had struck a Boeing 737-800 minutes after it took off from Tehran on Wednesday with 176 people on board, Iran admitted early on Saturday that its military had shot down the passenger jet by mistake.

The military blamed human error. In a statement, it said Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 had taken a sharp, unexpected turn that brought it near a sensitive military base. Hours later, though, an Iranian official walked back that claim.

“The plane was flying in its normal direction without any error and everybody was doing their job correctly,” Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ airspace unit, said during a televised news conference later Saturday. “If there was a mistake, it was made by one of our members.”

In a post on Twitter, Iran’s foreign minister, Mohamad Javad Zarif, apologized but appeared to also blame American “adventurism” for the tragedy, writing: “Human error at time of crisis caused by US adventurism led to disaster.”

President Hassan Rouhani said on Twitter that Iran “deeply regrets this disastrous mistake.”

………

A commander of the aerospace division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in Iran, Amirali Hajizadeh, said on Saturday that he accepted responsibility for the plane’s downing minutes after takeoff in Tehran, according to Iranian state TV.

In a televised address, he gave more details about the sequence of events that he said had led to the disaster. He said it had been misidentified as a cruise missile, and was shot down with a short-range missile.

He also said that the Iranian missile operator had acted independently because of “jamming.”

“I wish I was dead,” Mr. Hajizadeh was quoted as saying by local news outlets. “I accept all responsibility for this incident.”

He said that whatever decision the Iranian authorities made, “I will accept with the arms open.”

It turns out that 25% of Americans cannot afford proper healthcare:

Millions of Americans – as many as 25% of the population – are delaying getting medical help because of skyrocketing costs.

………

Finley is one of millions of Americans who avoid medical treatment due to the costs every year.
‘I live on the street now’: how Americans fall into medical bankruptcy
Read more

A December 2019 poll conducted by Gallup found 25% of Americans say they or a family member have delayed medical treatment for a serious illness due to the costs of care, and an additional 8% report delaying medical treatment for less serious illnesses. A study conducted by the American Cancer Society in May 2019 found 56% of adults in America report having at least one medical financial hardship, and researchers warned the problem is likely to worsen unless action is taken.

Dr Robin Yabroff, lead author of the American Cancer Society study, said last month’s Gallup poll finding that 25% of Americans were delaying care was “consistent with numerous other studies documenting that many in the United States have trouble paying medical bills”.

The free market mousketeers think that all they need to do is unleash the market.

The market is unleashed. That is why everything is crap.

If I think that beef is too expensive, I can have chicken or beans.

I cannot not opt for medical treatment.

Healthcare is coercive by nature, take this or you die.

Benyamin Netanyahu is trying to pass a bill through the Knesset granting him immunity for the corruption charges for which he has been indicted.

His incredible toxicity is why Israel will have to hold its 3^rd election in a year, because he is, to quote Mel Brooks, “Incredibly Guilty.”

So Netanyahu is desperate to get a get out of jail free card:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Wednesday that he would ask the Israeli parliament to grant him immunity in three criminal cases, tying up further the already lengthy legal proceedings against him in a political system that has been gripped by deadlock for the past year.

Netanyahu’s immunity request to the Knesset would shield him from prosecution at least while he remains in office. It also pitches the country’s political establishment against the legal system ahead of an unprecedented third general election in less than a year. That election is set for March 2.

………

In November, Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit concluded that there was enough evidence to prosecute Netanyahu in three cases involving allegations that he and his wife, Sara, accepted more than $260,000 worth of luxury goods in exchange for political favors and that he interceded with regulators and lawmakers on behalf of two media companies in exchange for positive news coverage.

Seriously, this man is a cancer on Israeli body politics.

Cue Freddie Dalton Thompson

We just assassinated Iranian general Qassem Suleimani at the Baghdad airport.

In addition to being a fairly blatant example of wagging the f%$#ing dog, it’s also calculated to escalate the situation.

Additionally, it has already generated greater solidarity in Iran:

This is batsh%$ insane:

The White House said Donald Trump ordered an air strike that killed powerful Iranian general Qassem Suleimani in Baghdad in the early hours of Friday, in a dramatic escalation of an already bloody struggle between Washington and Tehran for influence across the region.

Suleimani, who ran Iranian military operations in Iraq and Syria, was targeted while being driven from Baghdad airport by local allies from the Popular Mobilisation Units (PMU). The deputy head of the PMU, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandes, a close Suleimani associate, was also killed in the attack.

“General Suleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region,” a Pentagon statement said. “This strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans. The United States will continue to take all necessary action to protect our people and our interests wherever they are around the world.”

Minutes before the statement Trump tweeted a US flag without comment. Later, the White House put out a statement saying the strike was a “decisive defensive action” carried out “at the direction of the president”.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, ordered three days of mourning and vowed that the US would face “severe revenge” for the killing.

My wife and I are heading to Memphis for a week.

It’s a combination 25^th anniversary trip,^*, and a visit with her mom, who had a health event, and is in a nursing home facility down there.

We should be on our way to the airport now.

^*Stunned that she has not murdered me yet.  She has had plenty of justification.

To be fair, it appears that Cuomo did so in a fit of pique, and not out of any sense of good governance or the public weal:

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has vetoed a bill that would have made electric scooters and bikes legal in the state, citing the lack of a mandatory helmet requirement and other safety concerns. The veto means e-bikes and e-scooters will continue to remain technically illegal across the state, and will further delay any adoption of popular (if polarizing) shared mobility services like Lime or Bird.

The bill to legalize e-bikes and e-scooters was passed in June with overwhelming support, clearing the state Senate by a 56-6 margin and the state Assembly by a 137-4 margin. But state lawmakers reportedly waited to send the bill to Cuomo until this week out of concern that he would try to stand in the way of the proposal. Cuomo has voiced support for legalizing e-bikes and e-scooters in the past, but reportedly soured on the bill after he was criticized by one of its co-sponsors earlier this year.

Which means that Cuomo has exercised a pocket veto, and it appears that it’s all down to political score settling.

While the bill would have broadly legalized both modes of transportation across the state, it was also designed to give cities control over e-bike and e-scooter sharing services. Cities would have been allowed to use permits as a tool to control the influx of these sharing companies, which would help prevent them from being inundated like some other cities around the world. It also would have given these local governments leverage to help negotiate their own regulations around shared e-scooters and e-bikes.

If there is a lesson from Lime and Bird, it is that the promise of strong regulation is a mirage.  They will subvert and ignore any regulations, and lobby aggressively for a get out of jail free card.

Cuomo have have done the right thing for the wrong reason, but in the case of Rat Faced Andy, this is probably the best you could get.

It’s been pretty obvious for a while that Silicon Valley’s tech “Unicorns” have been based on a largely corrupt model, in which venture capitalists buy into a company, and then inflate the value of the initial investment through follow-up funding rounds.
The theory is twofold: That the large amounts of money will push competitors out of nascent markets, and that the mania will generate huge profits for the VCs when they go public, and gullible retail investors flood in.

It has been apparent for a while, Uber, Lyft, Peleton, Endeavor, Slack, and (of course) WeWork have all shown that they have no path to justify their valuations.

But inspector Cluseau, aka the Securities and Exchange Commission, is now on the case, and they are investigating the initial listings of these companies on the New York Stock Exchange.

I hope that it leads to something, if the string is aggressively pulled, it is VERY likely that the whole scarf will unravel, but at best at this point the investigation appears far too narrow.

At worst, this may be little more than an attempt to short circuit the direct listings that these companies used, which deprieved Wall Street investment banks of much of the normal fee revenues that come from a conventional IPO:

The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating the listings of Slack Technologies Inc. WORK 1.32% and other major companies on the New York Stock Exchange, in a probe looking at how trading was handled on the first day, people familiar with the situation said.

SEC enforcement staff have recently sent letters including one seeking information from electronic-trading firm Citadel Securities LLC related to how it opened Slack’s stock for trading on June 20 in the workplace-messaging app’s so-called direct listing, the people said. It also seeks information on other initial public offerings.

………

The SEC is probing IPOs over the past several years of other so-called unicorns, companies known for achieving high valuations while private, the people said.

………

More large companies have gone public in recent years following big capital infusions from venture capitalists that allowed them to stay private far longer than was common in the past. Companies that have gone public on the NYSE in recent years include Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. , Snap Inc. and Uber Technologies Inc.

Slack’s debut represented a new breed of public offering. The workplace-messaging company went public via a direct listing, in which a company lets its shares float on an exchange without hiring banks as underwriters like in a standard IPO. Banks do play a more-limited role as advisers, helping guide buyers and sellers to an opening price. Spotify Technology SA also used the process to debut on NYSE last year.

Direct listings allow companies to save on underwriting fees and bypass some restrictions that come with IPOs, such as limits on promoting the stock to the public and avoiding some lockups that prevent insiders from selling for a certain period.

………

The day Slack went public, some floor brokers felt Citadel Securities’ initial indications were too low and didn’t reflect accurate supply and demand for the stock, according to people familiar with that day’s events.

NYSE floor brokers have complained for years that banks working on big IPOs push DMMs to issue indications that are too low while taking unnecessarily long to open the stocks. That could allow banks to poach clients from rivals over the course of the morning, because the banks may be able to privately give mutual funds and other investors a more accurate indication of the opening price, current and former floor brokers said.

Democrats Who Are Undecided on Impeachment Aren’t ‘Moderates’. They’re Political Hacks.

—Dan Froomkin

He’s right.

I think that the impeachment is mismanaged, they are rushing the process and not exposing the full level of sleaze of the Trump administration, but there level of cowardice, even for Representatives in Republican leaning districts, is beneath contempt.

What’s more, to quote (not) Tallyrand, it’s worse than a crime, it’s a mistake, because anyone who believes that the impeachment is some sort of deep state conspiracy will never ever vote for a Democrat:

What can we conclude about those few Democratic congressional representatives who claim they haven’t decided yet how to vote on impeachment?

We can conclude that they lack consistent principles.

We can conclude that, in the face of overwhelming evidence, they have chosen neither to accept it, like almost all the other members of their party, nor ignore it, like all the members of the other party.

We can therefore conclude that they are instead making up their mind based on something else entirely.

And we can easily conclude what that is: They are basing their votes on what they think they need to do to win reelection. They are not looking into their souls. They are sticking a finger up into the wind.

Republican members of Congress at least have an intellectually consistent reason to vote against impeachment: They have chosen to throw in their lot with Trump, quite literally no matter what.

But these Democrats are in a special category. You could call them political hacks. You could call them unprincipled, opportunistic, cowardly, spineless, vacillating, fainthearted, jittery, or dissolute.

Or, if you are a member of the elite political press, you could call them “moderates” and “centrists.”

There are areas where Democrats can disagree, but this is just careerism without a shred of values.

When push comes to shove, if they don’t vote for impeachment, they should not be in office, and they should be primaried.

Let me be the fist to say, “Go f%$# yourselves, you racist dirt-bags.”

Visions of sugar plums were not dancing in the heads of officials in Wake Forest, N.C. Instead, they saw protesters violently clashing with members of a local Confederate group who were set to march in the town’s 72nd annual Christmas parade later this month.

So to be safe, the town canceled it.

In a Wednesday night video message, Wake Forest Mayor Vivian Jones announced that the town’s downtown board of directors voted to cancel the Dec. 14 Christmas parade out of concern that “outside agitators” would show up to protest or defend the Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy, who planned to march in the event.

The decision in Wake Forest, located less than 20 miles outside Raleigh, comes almost a week after another nearby town, Garner, N.C., announced it was canceling its Christmas parade over possible protests of a float sponsored by a local Confederate group, the Raleigh News & Observer reported.

The problem is that you have allowed racist organizations to march.

If someone is celebrating the a racist attempt to overthrow the United States of America, maybe you should tell them that they are not welcome.

I would assume that Bloomberg’s massive ad buy is being similarly greeted:

Maggie and Libby knew Tom Steyer’s ad by heart: “I’m going to say two words that will make Washington insiders very uncomfortable: Term limits!” they recently chirped in unison at the dinner table.

Unfortunately for Steyer, their votes can’t be bought — they’re 10 and 13.

“It was like a comedy act,” the children’s father, Loren Foxx, said. “His ads are on constantly.”

Some Granite staters said they’re seeing Steyer’s ads dozens of times a day — and it’s become more grating than ingratiating. A POLITICO reporter who watched YouTube music videos this week by Pentatonix, a popular a capella group, endured 17 Steyer ads in just over an hour.

Even some of Steyer’s local staff privately acknowledge the volume of ads has gone overboard.

Steyer has massively outspent other Democratic candidates on social media in an effort to gain traction in polls and ensure he makes the debate stage. But the recoiling of some New Hampshire voters suggests there are limits to the strategy — Michael Bloomberg beware. Indeed, some residents feel like they can’t touch a piece of technology without seeing his face.

“There is a point of no return in terms of visibility,” said Scott Spradling, a New Hampshire media analyst. “At some point, you become the uninvited guest. He uniquely is becoming dangerously close.”

………

Steyer was asked directly in a recent radio interview whether he’s passed the point of saturation to annoyance.

“I hear a lot of complaints about your social media ads blocking their YouTube videos,” the host told the candidate, referring to her teenagers. “You apparently got the high-end ones that you have to watch.”

“If people actually hear my message, they do respond,” Steyer replied. “I’m … someone who people don’t know anything about and trying to make a very specific point and introduce myself.”

Billionaires seem to think that money can buy everything.

Thankfully, in Steyer’s case at least, it appears to be wrong.

Former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick’s resume reads like a dystopian novel about the nihilism and brutality of contemporary capitalism. He should leave public life forever.

—Jacobin

The headline is, “Deval Patrick Is Everything That’s Wrong With the Democratic Party.”

Patrick’s resume is a litany of the most toxic practices of capitalism., and it should exclude him from serious consideration in the Democratic Party Presidential primaries.

An interesting side story is that it appears that Trump is considering firing Nick Mulvaney as his chief of staff, but people are trying to stop this because they are concerned that if fired, he would flip on Trump.

At least that’s the context of that I read into that article:

President Trump has been threatening for weeks to fire acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, but senior advisers have counseled him to hold off on such a drastic step amid a high-stakes impeachment probe, according to three people familiar with the discussions.

Trump has expressed particular anger over Mulvaney’s performance in an Oct. 17 news conference in which Mulvaney stunned White House aides by saying military aid to Ukraine was withheld to pressure its government to launch investigations that could politically benefit Trump, two of the people said. Later, Mulvaney issued a statement saying the media had misconstrued his televised comments and that “there was absolutely no quid pro quo.”

Senior advisers have cautioned Trump that removing Mulvaney at such a sensitive time could be perilous, the people said — both because Mulvaney played an integral role in the decision to freeze the aid, and because of the disruption that would be caused by replacing one of Trump’s most senior aides.

………

Mulvaney had direct talks with Trump about the president’s desire to withhold nearly $400 million in security aid to Ukraine, The Washington Post has reported. At the same time, Trump and other allies were pressuring Ukraine to open an investigation of Democratic rival Joe Biden and of theories about the country’s role in the 2016 election, according to congressional testimony in the impeachment inquiry.

Trump’s advisers have cited as a cautionary tale the example of national security adviser John Bolton, who was dismissed in September. Bolton is now a sought-after witness for Democrats, and despite White House instructions to defy a congressional subpoena has expressed a willingness to testify if cleared by a judge.

Translation:

Don’t Fire Him, He Knows Where the Bodies Are Buried!!!!

It’s going to be interesting to see all the rats come after Donald Trump.

So, the Washington Post has an article titled Four big facts that blow up the GOP’s latest defense of Trump, and the 4^th fact should be the bloody headline, on page 1 in 72 point bold:

………

Pence directly delivered the message about suspended aid to Ukraine.

On Sept. 1, the same day Sondland informed a top Zelensky aide that the military aid was conditional, Vice President Pence met with Zelensky.

Zelensky raised the withheld aid with Pence. And as The Post reports, Pence informed Zelensky that the administration was “still looking at” the aid, i.e., it was on hold. Pence also told Zelensky he needed to do more to fight “corruption.”

So, Mike Pence  is a co-conspirator.

One hopes that the House looks into this in a through manner.

I wouldn’t mind a few months of President Pelosi.

NYT poll finds that majorities of Iowa voters want a moderate, common-ground candidate who will use those traits to bring fundamental, systemic change to American society pic.twitter.com/hDY9f87IwK

— dan solomon (@dansolomon) November 1, 2019

So the poll, which appears to be VERY poorly worded, says that people want fundamental systemic change to America, but they want it from a moderate who crosses party lines.

BTW, this response to the Tweet is prize too:

"Look we want someone that will change things but never talk about changing things. Someone who is different but appears to be the same.

Basically we need a Trojan Horse that we can sneak by The Boomers."

— Travis DeCoster (@MyStupidTown) November 1, 2019

Also, speaking as a Boomer (just barely), let me also say F%$# Boomers.

What is nice about this, is that even the right wing hacks on SCOTUS cannot find a reason to overrule this, because their purview does not cover state constitutions:

A North Carolina state court effectively threw out the state’s map of congressional districts on Monday, saying critics were poised to show “beyond a reasonable doubt” that it was an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander favoring Republicans.

The ruling, by a three-judge panel in Superior Court in Raleigh, technically imposes a temporary ban on using the map in primary elections next spring. But the judges signaled that they were unlikely to change their minds by inviting plaintiffs in the case to seek a summary judgment ending the case in their favor. And the judges said they were prepared to postpone primary elections should that prove necessary to further litigate the case or draw new House districts.

The plaintiffs, North Carolina residents, were sponsored by the National Redistricting Foundation, an arm of a Democratic group led by former Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. that is seeking to challenge Republican control of the next round of redistricting in 2021.

The House map drawn by Republican legislators in 2016 all but guaranteed the party’s control of 10 of the state’s 13 House districts, even though voters’ political preferences are split almost evenly between the two major parties. A separate challenge to the same map went to the United States Supreme Court, which ruled in June that it did not have the ability to regulate partisan gerrymandering, however egregious.

But the state panel said the map violated broader provisions in North Carolina’s Constitution guaranteeing freedom of speech and assembly and equal protection under the law, as well as a guarantee of free elections that does not appear in the federal Constitution.

The Supreme Court has been loathe to deal with partisan gerrymanders because 5 of the 9 are politically partisan and corrupt.

The state courts have not (yet) been perverted as much by the Federalist Society and its ilk.

Case in point, Google’s takeover of Nest.

It turns out that they are destroying the products because they just want to spy more intrusively on their users:

Google’s “Nest” smart home division has seen major upheaval this year, and according to a report from Bloomberg, the changes aren’t sitting well with residential builders that formerly integrated Nest projects into their construction projects.

………
 
In addition to the death of Nest the company, we’re also seeing the death of the Nest ecosystem. The “Works with Nest” smart home program is being shut down in favor of Google Assistant compatibility, and that means devices that used to communicate with Nest now work differently or not at all. Nest’s account system is also being shut down, and in the future, users will need a Google account.

Bloomberg’s report says that residential builders, who “collectively purchase tens of thousands of Nest devices each year” have started avoiding Nest products due to Google’s changes. The report quotes Mark Zikra, vice president of technology at CA Ventures, as saying, “We’ve stopped. In an apartment complex we’re talking about 200, 300 devices that would be installed in one swoop and then all of a sudden everyone moves in.”

………

Any time a tech giant takes a walled-garden approach to a device, it makes it harder for customers outside that ecosystem to adopt that product. This is particularly a tough approach for smart home gadgets due to the breath of smart home devices out there. No company can build every smart home gadget that you might want to connect together, and Google’s decision to wall off Nest (which was never that open to begin with) into the Google ecosystem was apparently the last straw for these residential developers. A more consumer-friendly approach would be to make your device as open and compatible as possible, by plugging into the open protocols like Zigbee and Z-wave and building app support for the big tech ecosystems like Apple HomeKit, Samsung’s SmartThings, Google Assistant, and Amazon Alexa.

I knew that Google has eschewed its, “Don’t be evil” motto, but I did not know that their new motto was, “We’re evil and stupid.”

I am not being metaphorical here.  It’s clear that the Turks intend to expel as many of the Kurds as possible in the area, and replace them with millions of refugees currently in Turkey.

That checks all the boxes for the legal requirements:

Last month, at the United Nations, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan waved a map of northeastern Syria before the world’s dignitaries. His point was to demand U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters, whom Washington had relied upon to fight the so-called Islamic State, get out. His subtext was that he was ready to violently extend the Turkish border southward, seizing Syrian territory.

In Ankara on Thursday, Vice President Mike Pence gave Erdoğan everything the Turks wanted in the long-telegraphed war Erdoğan launched following a green light from President Donald Trump during a now-infamous Oct. 6 phone call. The U.S. did not even get the status quo ante.

The Turks did not agree to withdraw from Syrian territory. They agreed to a ceasefire, Pence announced. Over the next five days, the Kurdish forces that the U.S. abandoned are to withdraw approximately 20 miles south. In exchange, the Trump administration agreed not to implement new sanctions—Sens. Lindsey Graham and Chris Van Hollen introduced a new sanctions package as Pence briefed reporters—and, should the Turkish ceasefire hold, will lift those the administration placed on Turkey after Trump’s greenlight drew widespread backlash.

This is just plain evil.

A federal judge in San Francisco ruled Tuesday that if PG&E doesn’t meet aggressive goals aimed at preventing future wildfires, the utility won’t be able to pay dividends to shareholders after it emerges from bankruptcy proceedings.

At a probation hearing related to the utility’s deadly 2010 gas pipeline explosion in San Bruno, Judge William Alsup said the embattled utility hasn’t done enough to prevent wildfires through tree trimming and other maintenance work — even while its shareholders made millions.

“PG&E pumped out $4.5 billion in dividends and let the tree budget wither,” Alsup said.

But the judge declined to impose more sweeping changes that he’d earlier floated, including requiring PG&E to inspect its entire electrical grid. Lawyers for PG&E said that would take years to complete and be prohibitively expensive.

………

On Tuesday, the judge also directed a federal monitor to conduct random inspections of the tree-trimming program.

“I’m not cutting you any slack,” Alsup said. “If PG&E hasn’t cut the right trees, we’re going to have a hearing to get to the bottom of that.”

PG&E’s lawyers said that might be unrealistic.

“There’s a lot of trees out there, and we don’t have eyes on all of them,” said PG&E attorney Reid Schar.

“That’s a problem of your own making,” Alsup said, cutting him off. “A lot of money went to dividends that should’ve gone to your trees. Get square with the people of California, who depend on you to do the job safely.”

We really need to start throwing people like PG&E’s management in jail for the crap that they pull.

We need to find an especially deep hole for them.