Marin Energy Freedom

(watch news report top right of the page) "You gotta beat 16 or what do you get, another day older and deeper in debt, saint peter don't you call me cuz I ain't free. I owe my soul to PG&E."

Why would something with such an in-offensive name as "The Tax Payer's Right to Vote Act" meet such bitter opposition? Prop 16 would impose a new two-thirds voter approval requirement before local governments could spend public money to get into the electricity business. But editorials in newspapers around the state have come out against the ballot measure saying it would actually give customers less say about where their electricity comes from.

The California Public Utilities Commission was created nearly 100 years ago as a constitutional agency to protect consumers from the abuses of monopoly power.

Having observed firsthand the undue influence of Sacramento's hordes of railroad and other lobbyists in the state Capitol, Gov. Hiram Johnson placed the Railroad Commission, as it was originally named, in relatively distant San Francisco.