According to Reuters news service:
Not to worry, Nader assured them, for under bankruptcy California's electric service – which has been hit repeatedly by black-outs lately – need not be disrupted.
Why?
Because, he said, utility operations would be taken over by the bankruptcy courts, then by a state agency.
"It's clear that deregulation has failed," said the failed third-party presidential candidate, who got 4 percent of the California vote last month. "California consumers now face a coerced bailout of the utilities or their bankruptcy."
Nader said the political career of California's Democratic Gov. Gray Davis "hangs by a few kilowatt hours" unless the governor and General Assembly return to a form of price controls for electricity based on costs.
A retail-rate freeze – part of California's ill-starred energy deregulation – has pushed utilities there to the verge of bankruptcy by keeping them from passing along to customers billions of dollars they had to spend purchasing power at uncontrolled skyrocketing wholesale rates.
To get out of that bind, Pacific Gas and Electric is asking to raise customers' rates by 26 percent and Southern California Edison, 30 percent.
Nader made his comments Thursday as the California Public Utilities Commission entered its second day of hearing on those rate-hike requests.
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