Yessiree Bob, the Wall Street investors are going to save us poor folks that are captive PG&E ratepayers like vultures circling their prey.

After Gov. Gavin Newsom came up with an insurance plan to insulate for-profit power providers such as PG&E from the byproduct of their greed that squeezed more profits at the expense of the lives and homes of its ratepayers by essentially having ratepayers forced to pay protection money on a monthly basis, Wall Street investors that hold PG&E bonds giddily announced they were chomping at the bit to write a check for $30 billion to “save” PG&E. 

In the real world it’s ratepayers that need saving from the Godzilla of California power companies both in size and the extent of death and destruction they have unleashed on the landscape.

They even have a way to change how PG&E customers perceive the robber barons of Beale Street in San Francisco. They say a name change should do the trick — Gouge, Sham, Plunder Light ’em Up and Gas ‘em Company. Oops, right acronym, wrong whitewash name. They’re suggesting that PG&E should become the Golden State Power Light & Gas Company.

 That’s akin to convincing people that by Charlie Manson changing his name to Macaulay Culkin of “Home Alone” fame that he’ll become a delightful little scamp.  You can spray paint a skunk white to make it look like a docile kitten named Mittens but at the end of the day the stink won’t go away because it is still a skunk.

But then again maybe they think PG&E’s customers are all surfer dudes that don’t haven’t a clue, marijuana users on a perpetual mellow high, or are all Silicon Valley startup millionaires that view sky high PG&E bills as merely a rounding error on their balance sheets reflecting a value so inconsequential to them if they saw it on a sidewalk they’d keep on walking.

 If you haven’t figured out why Wall Street investors are so eager to plop down $30 billion on top of the money they already have sunk into stocks of the bankrupt PG&E, it isn’t to protect their investments. It’s because they can make money — big money — off of the collective pain of 16 million Californians.

Where else can you invest $1 billion and be assured of a guaranteed a minimum 10.5 percent return through good times, bankruptcies, wildfires, recessions, and while you are blowing up and burning up customers and their property?

And if they play their cards right, Wall Street will convince the folks in Sacramento to up the ante to a 16 percent guaranteed return on your PG&E bill that means a 12.1 percent rate hike for next year is just the beginning. 

Newsom on Wednesday was doing his best to sell his $10.5 billion plan to stick it to ratepayers to establish a revolving wildfire liability fund going forward to help for-profit utilities cover property damage and deaths that their faulty equipment causes.

It’s akin to taxing the neighbors of murder victims to cover the cost of lawsuits filed against the convicted murderer and paying for their high priced lawyers as well. The analogy works well for PG&E because if their legal department was spun off into a free standing entity if would be one of the largest — if not the largest — law firm in the state.

Newsom’s spiel  is that all is good with his plan as it is supposedly “revenue” neutral as our costs as ratepayers wouldn’t go up to bail PG&E out of bankruptcy once again. The governor says it’ll be a $2.50 charge that has been a “feature” of PG&E bills since the 2001 energy crisis that will be extended for a “few more years” to raise $10.5 billion for the wildfire insurance fund to protect PG&E’s behind and their much more safety minded brethren.

The governor really has to cut back on the Kool-Aid PG&E — or is that Golden State Power Light & Gas Company — is serving him.

If the governor bothered to think for a moment instead of parroting what the Wall Street investors are saying, he might see how he’s joining the long-standing tradition of Sacramento politicians throwing 16 million Californians to the PG&E wolves that profit off the financial and physical misery they create.

The Energy Cost Recovery Amount on your bill was imposed by PG&E’s buddies in Sacramento to help reduce the cost of financing PG&E’s emergence from their first bankruptcy almost 18 years ago. It was done so PG&E wouldn’t have to sacrifice any of their state guaranteed profits to pay for their reckless power purchases made in a bid to play in the big leagues with the likes of Enron as they sought 20 to 30 percent returns off the backs of ratepayers.

PG&E collects the charge on behalf of the PG&E Recovery Funding. While the funding doesn’t belong to PG&E it allowed them to protect their 10.5 percent guaranteed profit.

There is also a Department of Water Resources bond repayment charge. This is for bonds issued by the state agency to purchase power that PG&E couldn’t afford to because of their playing energy futures roulette like a sailor on a 48-hour shore leave between two 7-year stints on the high sea. 

In other words that $2.50 or so a month we are paying that was supposed to go away in the next few years was to bail out PG&E from their first bankruptcy keeping the for-profit utility whole while they ate into our wallets while doling out seven figure bonuses and diverting money we paid for power pole replacements into the pockets of Wall Street investors.

And unlike a bond payment that may have a 20-year life, PG&E has already said that it will take 10 years to play catch up to remove fire hazards, replace faulty equipment and harden power lines. That gives them 10 wildfire seasons to take out more towns. Given their admitted handiwork in Paradise that killed 85 people, destroyed 14,000 homes, and burned 5,000 other buildings is expected to cost PG&E some $30 billion, the $10.5 billion wildfire fund if it were in place today probably would be depleted by Christmas.

There is no way we will only be paying $2.50 a month.

There was a time when San Francisco actually sent politicians to Sacramento to serve as governor that was devoted to protecting the little guy. Hiram Johnson was such a reformer. He went after the then corrupt Southern Pacific Railroad that had a chokehold on local economics, had almost the entire legislature in its back pocket, and wantonly laid waste to California’s landscape to pad their profits.

The time has come to break up PG&E and give the power back to the people via municipalization.

Sacramento needs to protect California lives, property and economic well-being and stop doing a duet with Wall Street investors whose idea of reforming PG&E is rebranding it.

Try as they will, there isn’t enough lipstick in the world to change the fact PG&E is the poster company for energy hogs that suck the lifeblood — and literally lives — from the communities the state essentially enslaves on their behalf.

This column is the opinion of executive editor, Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinion of The Bulletin or Morris Newspaper Corp. of CA.  He can be contacted at dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com or 209.249.3519.