<story><title>California Scrambles to Find Electricity to Offset Plant Closures</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/california-scrambles-to-find-electricity-to-offset-plant-closures-11634376600</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>systemvoltage</author><text>&amp;#x2F;rant: As a relatively newer resident of California, I find extraordinary levels of incompetence in pretty much every aspect of public-government interactions compared to other states in the US. This place has the most dysfunctional municipal (I am in Alameda county) and state departments. Just yesterday I wanted to file for self-proprietorship DBA record in the state commerce registry, was sent to 3 different offices in Oakland, incomplete list of form requirements and completely fucked up online forms download page CalGold - &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.calgold.ca.gov&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.calgold.ca.gov&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; that lists a billion forms but no central guidance as to what is needed.&lt;p&gt;This is the state that built the Golden Gate bridge in 3 years in 1930&amp;#x27;s but took 8 years to build a little access road recently and more than the cost of the bridge adjusting for inflation. Worse - it is considered a positive thing to have dysfunctional government here. Usually, the response from people in places like Berkeley and SF is that &amp;quot;Why do you need to do all this so quickly? Relax. Life is more than that. Consider gov jobs as a form of UBI. We need to cut down on progress.&amp;quot; and crime? &amp;quot;Oh come on, it&amp;#x27;s not that bad. Car theft is fine, just make sure you have good insurance and get the catalytic convertor shield so it is not easy to use an angle grinder to remove it&amp;quot;. Jeez.&lt;p&gt;Something drastic needs to happen. What a beautiful state occupied by overpaid Government employees.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jjtheblunt</author><text>&amp;gt; This is the state that built the Golden Gate bridge in 3 yeras in 1930s ...&lt;p&gt;I believe it&amp;#x27;s a perceptual (understandable) mistake to think it&amp;#x27;s the same state.&lt;p&gt;Only the state name has remained invariant.&lt;p&gt;The 90 years ago state was more engineering feats oriented, perhaps wasn&amp;#x27;t paying attention to social justices in so doing;  the modern state is inverted perhaps.  I&amp;#x27;m not sure quite how to think of it either.&lt;p&gt;(I lived there too for about 20 years, am from a far nicer part of the USA)</text></comment>
<story><title>California Scrambles to Find Electricity to Offset Plant Closures</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/california-scrambles-to-find-electricity-to-offset-plant-closures-11634376600</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>systemvoltage</author><text>&amp;#x2F;rant: As a relatively newer resident of California, I find extraordinary levels of incompetence in pretty much every aspect of public-government interactions compared to other states in the US. This place has the most dysfunctional municipal (I am in Alameda county) and state departments. Just yesterday I wanted to file for self-proprietorship DBA record in the state commerce registry, was sent to 3 different offices in Oakland, incomplete list of form requirements and completely fucked up online forms download page CalGold - &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.calgold.ca.gov&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.calgold.ca.gov&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; that lists a billion forms but no central guidance as to what is needed.&lt;p&gt;This is the state that built the Golden Gate bridge in 3 years in 1930&amp;#x27;s but took 8 years to build a little access road recently and more than the cost of the bridge adjusting for inflation. Worse - it is considered a positive thing to have dysfunctional government here. Usually, the response from people in places like Berkeley and SF is that &amp;quot;Why do you need to do all this so quickly? Relax. Life is more than that. Consider gov jobs as a form of UBI. We need to cut down on progress.&amp;quot; and crime? &amp;quot;Oh come on, it&amp;#x27;s not that bad. Car theft is fine, just make sure you have good insurance and get the catalytic convertor shield so it is not easy to use an angle grinder to remove it&amp;quot;. Jeez.&lt;p&gt;Something drastic needs to happen. What a beautiful state occupied by overpaid Government employees.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tkojames</author><text>I wonder if there is correlation between what people think of as incompetence and the population of the state. Would be interesting to look at. I have no data to support this just a guess but I would guess when population increases you get things like this. I mean Texas is the second most populous state and is literally politically the opposite of California. There power grid was 5 mins away from literally crashing completely. So it sure is not what&amp;quot;side&amp;quot; the government picks. Both have struggled with power distribution.</text></comment>