California Gov. Gavin Newsom bailed out his state’s largest utility, which prompted a number of the Golden State’s worst wildfires, after being showered in tons of of hundreds in donations from executives, in keeping with a scorching evaluation of his management in a brand new ebook.
As an alternative, he opted to go after oil and fuel firms over local weather change claims.
“Newsom holds oil and gas companies responsible for wildfires but not the utilities that caused most of them after he and his wife raked in hundreds of thousands in donations,” Susan Crrabtree and Jedd McFatter write of their muckraking ebook, “Fool’s Gold: The Radicals, Con Artists, and Traitors Who Killed the California Dream and Now Threaten Us All.”
The authors notice Newsom, a possible 2028 Democratic presidential contender, filed a lawsuit towards oil and fuel firms, alleging they misled the general public about local weather change, which contributes to situations for wildfires.
However Newsom went simple on a monopolistic utility — Pacific Fuel and Electrical Firm or PG&E, the authors say.
“While blaming the oil companies for contributing to climate change, he failed to hold PG&E and other utilities accountable for wildfires that spewed record amounts of carbon and other toxic smoke into the area,” the authors stated within the ebook, to be launched this week.
PG&E pleaded responsible in June 2020 to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter within the wildfires that destroyed the northern California city of Paradise in 2018.
That blaze — named the Camp Hearth — ignited due to a downed PG&E energy line on Nov. 8, 2018, burning greater than 153,000 acres, leveling 13,500 properties and killing 85 individuals
“But far from holding the massive utility accountable, Newsom spearheaded a legislative bankruptcy deal that allowed the utility to continue operating, then signed $21 billion in new insurance protections for PG&E into law,” the authors stated.
PG&E is a giant donor to California Dems, with shut ties to the Newsoms, the excerpts of the ebook obtained by The Submit reveal.
“Over the past two decades, Newsom and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, have accepted at least $700,000 in donations from PG&E. The funds went to Newsom’s many campaign coffers and his wife’s gender-justice films, at least one of which was screened in PG&E’s corporate San Francisco skyscraper in 2011,” the authors stated.
The ebook factors out that PG&E is listed within the credit of two of Siebel Newsom’s movies as an “associate producer.”
Siebel Newsom based the Illustration Undertaking movie firm.
The ebook additionally notes that Newsom pal Jason Kinney is a associate at Axiom advisers, a prime lobbying agency that represented firms “to whom the utility [PG&E] owed millions [of dollars]” whereas it filed for chapter.
Newsom confronted a ferocious backlash for hypocritically attending a birthday celebration for Kinney on Nov. 6,2020 on the Napa Valley French Laundry restaurant, violating his personal COVID-19 pandemic keep at residence guidelines and to put on masks at gatherings.
After Newsom engineered the chapter deal and that handed the state legislature, the PG&E collectors represented by Axiom had been “paid in full” and Axiom collected no less than $400,000 in charges for his or her lobbying work for the collectors, the ebook stated.
The California Utility Fee, whose commissioners are all now appointed by Newsom, additionally commonly permitted will increase on PG&E’s already sky excessive payments on clients, the authors stated.
Newsom prompted a stir final week, splitting with Democrats, acknowledging that “it’s deeply unfair” to permit transgender athletes to compete towards organic ladies, whereas chatting with a MAGA conservative Charlie Kirk on his podcast debut episode, “This is Gavin Newsom.”
Co-author Susan Crabtree, in an announcement to The Submit, stated Newsom is a part of the issue, not the answer, to California’s issues.
“Everything about Gavin Newsom is performative, rather than performance-based,” Crabtree stated.
“From his college admission, the launch of his wine business with Getty money, to his political rise – all were handed to him on a silver platter. That’s why he thinks he can run for president via podcast while leaving his state in shambles.”
She added: “It’s also why he has no problem taking money from PG&E, which caused the deadliest fire in California history, to fund his campaigns, ballot initiatives and his wife’s gender-justice films, while acting like he cares about wildfire victims.”
The Submit reached out to Newsom for remark.
