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In Response to Maui Fires, Hawaii Should Buy the State’s Power Provider
Picking Hawaiian Electric up before or out of bankruptcy and converting it to a public good will insure the state with reliable, citizen-centered electricity for years to come while guaranteeing minimal disruption for employees.
Aug 22, 2023
Following the tragic—and perhaps criminal—fires in Lahaina, the state of Hawaii should purchase Hawaiian Electric, the sole provider of electric power to the state, and run it as a publicly owned utility. Here’s why.
When it comes to electric utilities, there are basically only two types of companies: private and public. The main difference between the two is one of incentives.
Private companies, owned by shareholders, have a singular primary goal: to make money. Every action they take must be scrutinized in the light of their impact on profits, because if profits aren’t maintained at a level acceptable to the shareholders, the senior level of management is looking at being replaced by people who will prioritize profits.
People served by publicly owned power companies pay less for electricity, get better service, and have fewer outages.
Public companies, owned by the governments representing the people they serve or run as co-ops and owned by the consumers themselves, also have a singular primary goal: serve the people as well as possible. Every action they take is scrutinized by the people and the government to make sure that people are getting the services they need, in the way they need, at a price they can afford.
Private for-profit electricity utilities not only cost their customers more and generally provide poorer service, but they also have such a long history of ripping people off to increase profits that every state in the union has had to create a regulatory agency to control their worst impulses.
This “public management” to oversee the private company’s management adds another layer of cost, on top of the profits extracted as dividends paid to shareholders, paid by the customers being burdened by privately owned power companies.
Hawaiian Electric is a private, shareholder-owned for-profit corporation, much like California’s PG&E. And, if investigations turn up further evidence of what’s already being reported in the media—that the Lahaina fires were possibly caused by the power company’s failure to turn off the power when the winds hit gale force—they’ll be as responsible for the deaths there as PG&E was for deaths from multiple wildfires in California. Those deaths cost PG&E billions.
This is part of why the company’s shares right now are in the tank, trading around $13 after years of bouncing between $30 and $40.
The market is anticipating lawsuits like the ones that bankrupted PG&E (a half-dozen have already been filed against Hawaiian Power, including a class action), driving down the share price, making now a perfect time for the state to buy out the company. Wells Fargo says they believe the stock will settle around $8 a share making it an amazing bargain.
In fact, the company filed a brief this week with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which regulates private companies, revealing that they are looking into bankruptcy.
People served by publicly owned power companies pay less for electricity, get better service, and have fewer outages. Serving over 49 million (1 in 7) Americans, including large cities like Austin, Nashville, Los Angeles, and Seattle as well as over 2,000 communities across the country, public power companies return an average of 20% more to their communities than do private power companies.
Customers of privately owned power companies suffer an average of 150 minutes of lost power per year; for customers of publicly owned power companies it’s only 62 minutes per year. Being responsive to their communities’ concerns, in 2019 fully 40% of all power generated by publicly owned companies came from renewable resources.
This only makes sense. While the management of a private company is always looking for ways to cut costs to satisfy shareholder demands for higher dividends, the management of publicly owned companies spend their time every day looking for ways to better serve their customers.
Not only that, private corporations can get away with behaviors that are imprisonable crimes when committed by government employees. These “now legal” breaches of the public trust include self-dealing, handing off cash to family members, paying off politicians, and harassing or firing whistleblowers.
As In the Public Interest notes:
[P]rivate providers are generally not subject to conflict‐of‐interest laws, nepotism statutes or ordinances, ethics codes or whistleblower protection for their employees, or restrictions on political involvement.
Back in 2015, when Hawaiian Electric announced it was in negotiations to be purchased by a big Florida power corporation, citizens of Hawaii got together and launched a series of plans and petitions to flip the company to public ownership. These plans ranged from the state taking over the entire company to breaking it up into smaller parts that were owned by the governments of each island or major city.
Forty legislators and county council members met at the state Capitol to request the legislature consider taking over Hawaiian Electric and turning it public. They were led by former Energy Committee Chair Chris Lee.
The group formed on Oahu was called KULOLO (Keep Our Utility Locally Owned and Locally Operated), named after a well-known fudge-like Hawaiian desert made from taro and coconut. City Council Chair Ernie Martin put forth the resolution to the city for a feasibility study.
On the Big Island, citizens and legislators formed the Hawaii Island Energy Cooperative. Its members included some well-known names from the area: Richard Ha of Hamakua Farms, state Sen. Russell Ruderman, and Department of Hawaiian Home Lands Commissioner Wallace Ishibashi. They went so far as to hire a big PR firm (Hastings and Pleadwell) to sell the idea to citizens.
Maui Mayor Alan Arakawa was serious, too: he awarded $70,000 to the consulting firm Guernsey for a study of the viability of transitioning that city’s power to a municipally owned utility.
But then the deal fell through and the conversation about taking over the company went silent.
Now it’s back.
A sense of crisis around Hawaiian Electric is already in the air. Just a few days ago, State Senator Angus McKelvey (D-Maui) told the Honolulu State Advertiser:
The consequences [of the fire] are beyond measure. I hope that this will be the mother of all wake-up calls. People need to have comfort that this won’t happen ever again.
The senator, who’s been in the legislature for 18 years, added that the privately owned power company has repeatedly resisted calls from him and other legislators to spend money to harden their power systems by burying cables where they can’t cause fires:
“They fight it tooth and nail,” he told the Advertiser. “There’s zero excuse in my mind why power lines in Lahaina shouldn’t be underground now. No amount of money should be a reason not to do it.”
Disaster workers are still searching for bodies in Lahaina, but, with over 100 dead and counting, the fire already represents the worst American wildfire death toll in over a century.
Hawaiian Electric not only provides an essential service (which shouldn’t be exploited for profits), but also employs about 3,800 people across the islands.
Picking it up before or out of bankruptcy and converting it to a public good will insure the state with reliable, citizen-centered electricity for years to come while guaranteeing minimal disruption for those employees (other than the senior executives with their fat paychecks, like the CEO, who makes $3.8 million a year, who will probably need to be replaced).
Back when Enron was collapsing, our local utility here in Portland, Oregon, was one of their affiliates and on the block for sale. The city scraped together the asking price and a small premium to sweeten the pot, but the company refused to sell to a municipality or state, wanting to keep the utility in for-profit hands. It’s now called Portland General Electric (PGE).
Portlanders got screwed (I’ve personally experienced multiple days of power outages almost every year since) and we didn’t even get a T-shirt out of the deal.
During our last power outage, a month or two ago, PGE came out and strung a temporary high-voltage power line, attaching it to trees (!), to keep our neighborhood lit; we’re now bracing for the winter winds.
PGE, after all, has to come up with the $6.2 million in annual compensation its CEO gets, not to mention the other high-paid senior executives and the $158 million in dividends it paid to its stockholders last year. Fixing my neighborhood naturally competes with that priority.
Which is why Hawaii needs to move on this quick, before other for-profit utilities get into the act as happened here in Oregon. The corporate raiders will soon be circling, even as Lahaina buries its dead.
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Perception is Reality - Not
The expression that seized the modern consciousness - "Perception is reality" - is being toppled - it seems. I read a related and almost equally chilling quote recently about Enron during its heyday - "It's not such a good company but it's a great stock."
Jan 22, 2002
The expression that seized the modern consciousness - "Perception is reality" - is being toppled - it seems. I read a related and almost equally chilling quote recently about Enron during its heyday - "It's not such a good company but it's a great stock."
"Perception is reality" is a mantra that has seduced susceptible participants to abandon critical faculties and to disconnect from the three-dimensional universe. Those who are selling and those who are buying make a contract with the vapors. Some callous observers accuse Enron stockholders of being stupid or of simply being losers in the great capitalist game of musical chairs. I think they're victims of a creeping and pervasive hypnosis. Instead of a pocket watch swinging in front of their trusting gaze the overt and subliminal message that perception is reality has snaked its way into every corridor of their reasoning - and ours.
The collapse of Enron has said loud and clear that perception is not reality. A greater force has snapped its fingers and the trance is broken - the sleepwalker looks around and wonders why he is lying horizontally in the air. He crashes to the floor. The only things that have kept him afloat were the need to believe - the denial of facts - the evasion of truth and looking the other way. These were also the favors that the Bush administration gave Enron, which they were more than willing to give since they need the same things to survive. The Bush administration controls the stocks they are selling and we are in a lockdown - short of impeachment we can't get out of this investment. We need to believe so we are asked to evade the truth, deny the facts and look the other way.
To build a company or a government on a weave of fabrications and hollow claims is to challenge universal laws. Those laws can be kept at bay for just so long. It makes perfect sense for people to make money from what they actually contribute to a vital society. No one should begrudge an honest and fertile profit. But a deceptive and inflated profit based on parlaying a perception is theft. Where is the California energy crisis that Bush and Cheney floated as reality while Enron cashed in? As the price of a mega watt hour in California went from thirty-one dollars to nine hundred dollars Bush did nothing. He claims his hands-off disposition was based on his philosophy of free market. But this free market seems to have had a price of its own paid to a government perceived to be by the people and for the people. The present administration, in reality, is neither.
One year ago there were massive protests at the inauguration of a president whom many did not accept as real. An election based on racism, purged voting lists, confusing ballots and nepotism is like Enron stock. A war on terrorism that kills thousands of civilians and claims to be eliminating evil in the world as it creates more of the same is also like Enron stock. However the war or the election is being sold, the fact it is being sold waves a red flag. If someone is working overtime to create a perception about anything then there is obviously a reality they are trying to hide which they are either scared or ashamed of or which they feel we, like children, are not equipped to handle.
Rove and Rice are very clear about perception being reality. They have whipped the media into shape much the same way Enron executives flew to New York to chide the Wall Street Journal for printing an editorial from a reporter who said Enron was in trouble. Didn't the Journal know what kind of effect that could have on their stock? If we all just continue to pump up the perception it will be real and we will all benefit. The Wall Street Journal capitulated. They know better than most that perception is reality. Perceive the condition you want and then sell it as something real. Say it often enough and you might believe it yourself. But there is that weird unavoidable finality of universal truth. It's like oxygen or water seeking its level - it is inevitable. The inevitability is less painful when it hits if we insist on perceiving reality instead of perceiving perception.
Although he is not officially a dictator George believes that things would be "a heck of a lot easier" if he were. A dictator is allowed to force his citizens to accept his perceptions as reality. It appears as though George has moved lock stock and barrel into the structure of his perceptions all based on "sound science" and he is legislating accordingly. And while he does we just have to hold on to our stock - and hope.
We can also dream and imagine and we can use elements of the real world to build things wonderful and true. The elements of the real world are more fantastic and remarkable and life-affirming than anything that thieves try to conjure for the sake of their stock - political or economic. To build an empire with the raw material of perception-management is to invite collapse.
The best we can do is to resist. Take this massive symptom of Enron that has unraveled before the eyes of a perplexed nation and expand its lessons to the global machinations that are trying to absorb our individuality and common sense. Before they can convince us of anything they have to convince us that perception is reality. Perception is not reality. We have to decline the invitations and manipulations of a corrupt and deluded board of directors and put our money and our essential energies into a solid foundation and an expanding legitimate reality.
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Chew Before Swallowing...
"That's when I first got to know Ken and worked with Ken and he supported my candidacy for -- and -- but this is what -- what anybody's going to find if -- is that this Administration will fully investigate issues such as the Enron bankruptcy . . ."
Jan 15, 2002
"That's when I first got to know Ken and worked with Ken and he supported my candidacy for -- and -- but this is what -- what anybody's going to find if -- is that this Administration will fully investigate issues such as the Enron bankruptcy . . ."
Does anyone have to guess whose quote this is. Like a short circuit in a minefield of managed deceptions and covert realities George tries to make a statement. If Bill was compartmentalized George is fragmented - fractured even. Keeping track of who should know what and what is technically troubling and what is damaging perception is a challenge for the most agile mind. For George it is close to meltdown. The choreographed events and the kid gloves with which the media and Democrats deal with this appointed military dictator is motivated by fear of meltdown. They all know he can't quite accommodate complexities and direct challenge. The linchpin of the American event is made of a questionable alloy and most are afraid of the consequences of truly testing his metal.
When Al Gore attacked tax cuts for the wealthiest one per cent he was accused of waging a class war. Did he wage it or just see it coming - in waves? To the dominant forces in this nonexistent class war, a president and its administration are enablers. A president, to those who are able to land one in the white house, is a board member more than an expression of the will of the people. This seems to be the theme that Enron trumpets. It may or may not be a legal problem but it is, if you will, a spiritual problem. The spirit of representative government is and should be passionatley scrutinized. George as poster boy for this lack of representation needs also to be scrutinized. Perhaps he won't be indicted but he must be pressed.
The fact that Clinton was pursued as hotly as he was made me feel he must have been doing something socially conscious and he disconnected from the dictates of the one per cent to whom Bush is presently and sentimentally loyal. Bush and his backers want us to believe that if compelling and legal social responsibility is removed from the construct of democratic capitalism the beloved trickle down model will take care of all bleeding heart concerns. George knows how good his backers are - he knows they are guided by Christian principles - he knows that if they make their mother lode they will be more generous than any government could ever be. They are, after all, his people. The twenty-nine Enron insiders who made enormous fortunes are his people - not the thousand or so that lost modest fortunes and the thousands more that lost their jobs. They may be Republicans but they are ultimately not his people.
George can deny accusations very well. He is comfortable with denial because he was raised with the notion that no one has the right to expect the truth from you if you are crucial to national security. With an adolescent smile George jokes that he had to choose, or Laura made him choose between Jim Beam and her. So he just stopped drinking - cold turkey. AA was not necessary because George, by virtue of family connections, had Billy Graham. This denial of anything serious, deep or complex at the root of his drinking or at the root of anything that happens to him or us, has been embraced by the public. It is a form of mass hypnosis as well as a form of internalized class distinction. George comes from an entitled universe and that universe gets a begrudging respect from the people it oppresses. There is no other explanation for the serious consideration that gets lavished on George except this residual fear/awe/deference that regular folk feel compelled to give those who have obtained and secured power. Those rich powerful people must know something that we don't because - well - just look where they are and look where we are.
The media is falling over itself not to make any irresponsible assertions or implications. Nothing illegal has happened. Enron made phone calls and the white house didn't lift a finger to help them. This proves how honorable this president is. Yes - people watch closely what comes out of the white house so why would they think of trying anything improper. George has even abandoned sending any e-mails because he is so conscious of being observed. There are things about which we know he's being secretive but the things about which we don't know he's being secretive are the ones that may very well be pushing the crises we find ourselves digging out of:. From election 2000, to ergonomics, to the secret energy policy meetings, to the California energy "crisis", to Kyoto, to avoiding the Israeli peace process, to the Durbin council on racism, to thwarted FBI investigations pre 9/11, to Enron and on and on, we see fins cutting through the surface of the water. Those fins make one truly horrified of the unseen. Smart citizens are like panicked swimmers treading water keeping their eyes on the circling fins which makes them even more sickeningly scared of what lurks unseen.
Whatever George isn't keeping secret he may not know or he has jumbled so effectively in his inner discourse that he is safe from culpability. Above all else he must be above culpability. Coming off of years of manufactured culpability for an elected president, George and company have an obsessive need to circumvent all possibilities of humiliation. Humiliation is not part of his birthright and it seems as if the hypnotized masses and the participating media need to give him that. Like subjects fearful of rattled royalty we'll join the necessary denials that make his personal survival possible thinking it will also figure into our survival. But will it?
It seems that the aggression manifested to Bill Clinton during his tenure was almost primitive. Looking back and contrasting it with the undeserved deference being lavished on George, Bill somehow was deemed not entitled to natural deference by virtue of his class and ironically by virtue of his intellectual acuity. He was treated as if he were uppity white trash and needed to be put in his place no matter how smart he and his wife were and even though, or maybe because, he was the "misguided" choice of a morally compromised people. He and they needed to be set straight about who is allowed to run the show. Baker and Scalia helped to make that clear to a "confused" public in 2000.
The fact Bill was so smart meant he could take whatever they had to dish out - or they seemed to be cruelly interested in how far he could be pushed. He did not enjoy that "subject" deference that is developed in citizens spawned from the British empire. George II fits that profile. Appear as though you are speaking for the good hard working men and women of America but you are not one of them and you will be deemed worthy of genuine respect. The video tape of Clinton's deposition which was aired around the world was a tape intended "innocently" for someone who couldn't attend the deposition. Would a Bush ever allow something like that to happen? Bill did not have the built-in protection and insulation and that made us worry. How could he let it get to this? Shouldn't he have more powerful connections? He did not have the sense of entitlement that protects lesser intellects. The reflex sense of entitlement that George arrives with is all that is required of him by the forces that protect him. He has property rights on the truth - or more to the point, he is given permission by the public to sell a version of the truth that we have the stomach to swallow.
And now it's just been reported that George has fainted. He choked on a pretzel or he was coming down with a cold or his heart rate is low or.... As a human being I hope he's fine - no one should be hurt or disoriented - as a citizen one wonders if George's physical condition is another truth we need to be protected from and one also wonders if this fainting spell is caused by, as the Washington Post reports, intestinal cramps or - fear. Could it be he's seeing his own set of fins in the water? The official story seems to stand as a pretzel not going down right. Straight from the president's mouth is that his mother told him when eating pretzels to chew before he swallows. It's simple - it's not fear or any other more complex underlying cause - it's a pretzel that he didn't chew the way his mother told him to. The moral of the story for America is - Listen to your mother. So we will. A pretzel, like the truth, especially when twisted, is something that we all really need to chew before swallowing.
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