PG&E is mentioned in the surviving excerpts of The Bob Zadek Show only in passing, never as the subject of an episode. The references are incidental illustrations inside arguments about taxation, consumer choice and drug policy. No excerpt states the company’s full name, its corporate form, its service territory, its regulatory status, its rates, its safety history or its founding. What follows is limited to what the excerpts say.
The utility bill as a vehicle for hidden taxes
In the April 4, 2010 episode, Bob Zadek used the utility bill to illustrate how taxes imposed on corporations reach individuals without being visible to them. His argument was that the burden of a corporate income tax falls disproportionately on the lowest twenty percent of wage earners, because those earners devote the highest percentage of their income to goods and services, and the cost of the corporate income tax is buried in the cost of everything they buy. By taxing corporations more, he said, the legislature is really taxing individuals more, but the individuals do not see it on their tax return — only when they buy milk, a car or clothing. He called this a free ride for the legislature and a grossly inefficient and profoundly dishonest way to raise revenue.
The utility bill enters as his example of the mechanism. Zadek told listeners that when they get a utility bill there are a zillion taxes in it, so the bill is high and they are angry at PG&E and angry at the phone company, but it is not their fault: they are merely passing through taxes the legislature has imposed. Those taxes, he added, are borne disproportionately by the poorest people. The same episode extends the point to sales taxes, which he said are buried in the cost at the moment of payment and felt only in small increments, and to the health reform bill, which he characterized as a tax bill disguised as a healthcare bill because of the number of taxes buried in it. Best of: Changing the Face of History (2010)
In the same episode Zadek proposed a Truth in Taxation act, modeled on Truth in Lending. He described Truth in Lending as requiring a lender, by federal law, to disclose in bold type the total interest cost of a loan, accumulating the various fees into a single number called the annual percentage rate. He approved of that requirement and asked why the same disclosure is not imposed on taxation. He then posed a thought experiment: a society with no sales tax, no utility tax and no luxury tax, and only an income tax, so that government could raise money only that way. The result, he said, would be one bill on the 1040 telling a person how much their government had cost them that year, rather than a collection of taxes no one can add up. He asserted that no one can say how much their total tax bill is at all levels of government for the year, and that with Truth in Taxation Americans would know the federal government had cost them a given amount and a given percentage of income, and there would be outrage. He framed the right to know how much government costs as a right, and said he would decide whether the legislature gets reelected on the basis of such a bill. Best of: Changing the Face of History (2010)
Incandescent bulbs, CFLs and the PG&E bill
The July 11, 2010 episode, a conversation with Doug Bandow, touched PG&E through a caller identified as Rich. The caller raised the manufacturing energy cost of compact fluorescent lamps, noting that they are more expensive to manufacture, have more parts and a ballast at the bottom, and that this cost is not reported — comparing the point to hybrid cars, which he said cost a massive amount of energy to manufacture. Zadek agreed, saying that when the government computes the cost of using a CFL it looks only at the energy cost and ignores the manufacturing cost, which he said is so high that manufacturing has been outsourced overseas, and that the bulbs have a high failure rate, cannot be used in an enclosed fixture because they get too hot and the mercury gets into the air. Bandow generalized the point, saying it is very common to fix the numbers by looking at one measurement and ignoring every other cost, and cited ethanol and recycling as examples. He said consumers prefer incandescent bulbs because they are easier to use, safer and cheaper to buy. The Age of Unenlightment (2010)
Zadek then put the question in what he called the Cato frame: why not let the market decide? Put CFLs out there, he said, and if someone wants to use one because they are a greenie and take an oath of allegiance to saving the planet, they are free to vote with their light; and if he wants to be reckless and be an anti-planet kind of guy and have an incandescent bulb, why is he not free to do so. The caller agreed that the market can make an intelligent choice, and added that he could choose to spend five dollars more a month on his PG&E bill to use incandescents, which he said is about what it would cost. That is the whole of the PG&E reference in the episode: a caller’s estimate of the monthly bill difference between bulb types. The Age of Unenlightment (2010)
Prop 19 and the electricity demand of indoor growing
The October 17, 2010 episode featured Gary Johnson, described by Zadek as a successful two-term Governor of New Mexico and chairperson of ouramericainitiative.com. The first topic was marijuana legalization and California’s Prop 19. Zadek raised the federalism question — why the feds are involved at all, why not leave it to the states — and Johnson answered that states competing with one another with regard to best practices is the way the country was founded. Zadek also cited an article he had read in preparing for the show quoting Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, who opposed Prop 19 on the ground that the initiative was unconstitutional; Zadek said Baca has it backwards and that the criminalization of marijuana is unconstitutional. A Better America (2010)
PG&E appears in this episode only in an aside by Zadek. He said he was surprised that PG&E was not a major supporter of Prop 19, because he is told by people who actually grow marijuana that they consume an awful lot of electric power in their indoor grow houses, so legalization would be good for electric consumption and PG&E ought to be all for it. He added, in the manner of a joke, that he thought he would throw that out in case there were any PG&E employees listening, and urged them to vote for Prop 19. The aside is not developed and no guest responds to it. A Better America (2010)
The surrounding discussion supplies the numbers the episode does state. Johnson said taxing marijuana is estimated to generate about $11 billion a year nationwide, that legalizing it would arguably dry up about 75% of the border violence with Mexico because an estimated 75% of Mexican drug cartel activity revolves around marijuana, and that 28,000 deaths south of the border over the last four years should give pause to connect the dots between prohibition and violence. He also said it is estimated that in California the cost of legalized marijuana would drop from $390 an ounce to $39 an ounce, including taxation. Zadek said he was made a little queasy by proponents who support Prop 19 on the ground that California will make money on sales and use taxes imposed on marijuana; Johnson said it made him a little queasy too but that taxing marijuana makes it sellable. A Better America (2010)
Across episodes
PG&E is touched on in three episodes — the April 4, 2010 best-of on hidden taxes, the July 11, 2010 episode on CFLs and market choice, and the October 17, 2010 episode with Gary Johnson on Prop 19 — and the excerpts show no development in the treatment: in each case PG&E is a passing example inside someone else’s argument, and no episode revisits or builds on an earlier one.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state PG&E’s full legal name, its corporate form, its founding, its service territory, its regulators, its rates, its safety record or any proceeding involving it. They contain no episode devoted to the company, no guest speaking about it as a subject, and no discussion of its generation mix, infrastructure or finances. The only concrete figure attached to PG&E anywhere in these excerpts is a caller’s estimate that using incandescent bulbs instead of CFLs would cost him about five dollars more a month on his bill. Everything else is either Zadek’s characterization of utility bills as carriers of legislated taxes or his speculation about indoor grow houses and electricity demand.