Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/788835
Howtohaveyoursay:Lettersmustbesignedandprovidethewriter'shomestreetaddress and home phone number. Anonymous letters, open letters to others, pen names and petition-style letters will not be allowed. Letters should be typed and no more than two double-spaced pages or 500words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section will be published. Email: editor@ redbluffdailynews.com Fax: 530-527-9251 Mail to: Daily News 728Main St., Red Bluff, CA 96080 Facebook: Leave comments at FACEBOOK.COM/ RBDAILYNEWS Twitter: Follow and send tweets to @REDBLUFFNEWS HaveyoueverwonderedhowyourPG&E payments are used? One would hope effi- ciently to serve us well, but because of re- cent events I am less sure of that than a few months ago. Aclearwasteoftimeand our money was "an important" email from PG&E with ten tips for saving money. Among them were inane items like "clip- ping coupons", shopping around for loans, and other no-brainer suggestions like turning the ther- mostat down when sleeping or when not at home. Why is PG&E using our utility pay- ments to tell us something we already know? It may be that they and their public relations folks are a bit out of touch with mod- ern reality, or simply meeting a requirement to "keep us in- formed". A few months back, at their encouragement, we went pa- perless to pay our monthly utility bill. The system is fairly straightforward, and has worked well with this and other vendors. While we were visiting our family in Arizona, we checked our voice mail; there was an "important" message from our utility company; it seems they were about to shut off our ser- vice. We called the next morn- ing; apparently, our payment had not arrived as of the phone call. As I mentioned above we had been using an automatic payment program that assigns a virtual credit card number to make payments to such ven- dors as PG&E, Verizon, and Charter, and it has been work- ing smoothly. Nevertheless, it seems the automatic payment had not taken place according to the customer service repre- sentative, and they were about to shut off our service, after 43 years of never having missed a payment! Then things got complicated and bizarre. Fortunately, we thought, we had brought our laptop with us, and it had a backup copy of our checking program and credit card statements and payments. We told the rep- resentative what our records showed, but she still con- firmed the money had not ar- rived. She asked us what our account number was, and we repeated that we were in Ari- zona and added that we were not in the habit of carrying our utility bill with us when we traveled. We volunteered to pay the bill with our regular credit card; the representative said for our security they could not accept that without the account number. Obviously, many people would try to pay our bill with their credit card. For some reason the "mod- ern" PG&E system had no way of verifying who we were. They did not have a social se- curity number, a driver's li- cense number, or any security questions for us to answer. I wonder why they didn't ask for that information 43 years ago when we opened our account. Maybe at one time they thought they could trust us, but with all the "fake news" these days, they had changed their minds. Or maybe, since the checks had arrived on time for 43 years, they just didn't care who we were. It didn't make me feel more important knowing that they now care about me. So, over the phone we gave them our social security num- bers, driver's license numbers and two security questions for them to ask, all without prov- ing they or we were real. They could confirm that we had an on-line password to their web site and we could look up our account number. Finally, we were "allowed" to pay our bill with our regular credit card. We told the representative that we were no longer inter- ested using their cost saving and efficient paperless system for paying our monthly bill, that we don't care if it cost them more to process a check in the mail, and that we didn't mind the cost of a postage stamp, an envelope, and a re- turn address sticker; just send us the bill and in the future, and we will mail you a check. Thank you. Then I got to thinking. There was an item on the news the other day about the high cost of electricity in Cali- fornia. A major reason for the high cost is the overcapacity of the system to produce elec- tricity. The cost of overhead, depreciation, etc. is borne by the consumer. The overhead must include an out dated bu- reaucracy and data base which they seen not to be able to af- ford to update. The facts say otherwise. The San Jose Mercury reported: "San Francisco-based PG&E earned $1.41 billion for all of 2016, up 58.4 percent from prof- its in 2015 of $888 million. Rev- enue totaled $17.67 billion, up 4.9 percent from the year be- fore." We might have compounded the issue by putting solar pan- els on our roof. For each of the last three years our we have paid PG&E less than $360 per year for electricity. That has reduced the utility's income and added to their problem of overcapacity; I haven't apolo- gized for that. In the meantime, we are bombarded with public re- lations ads proclaiming how public service oriented the company is, how they want to save us money, and so on. We look at the annual SEC filing of PG$E, I mean PG&E, and find the CEO has a compensa- tion package of $11,123,049; you would think that might be for running a modern, ef- ficient company, not a back- water operation trying to pull the wool over our eyes and utilizing an outdated data base. JoeHarropisaretired educator with more than 30 years of service to the North State. He can be reached at DrJoeHarrop@sbcglobal.net. JoeHarrop Our PG&E dollars at work for us Cartoonist's take I observe that many pedestri- ans talk to themselves. Their lips move and they ap- parently are say- ing something of import. If they verbalize loudly we avoid them like the plague. If they merely mut- ter, then that is their business. In this age of Trump, this conduct is completely under- standable. However, an article in The New Yorker states that a book by British professor of psychology at Durham, England, Charles Fernyhough, makes a case for "inner speech," in memory, reli- gious revelation, psychotherapy and literary fiction. He states, which he has dubbed "dialogic thinking," is certainly impor- tant in memory and not merely mnemonic recitation of lists. In- ner speech may participate in discerning right from wrong by constructing point-counterpoint situations in our minds. Some- times the voices people hear are not their own , and instead are attributed to a celestial source. God's voice figures prominently early in the Hebrew Bible as he speaks individually to Adam, Eve, Cain, Noah and Abraham. Fernyhough is reluctant to call such voices hallucinations, in fact 70 percent of writers at an Edin- burgh Book Festival responded that they heard their own charac- ters speak and stated that some of their characters do not agree with the writer and demand to change things in the story. In conclusion, psychologists make a case for the validity of one talking to oneself. It may be therapeutic or just the way some of our minds work. The next time you observe this condition in oth- ers, keep in mind they may be merely sorting things out in an orderly fashion. Or they may be composing a newspaper column designed to appear in this very newspaper. Many current colum- nists appear to have been talking to themselves. ••• A woman jumped out of dou- ble parked van recently, dropped a sheet of paper on my desk and then quickly departed. It is a cu- rious entreaty of some sort and hand printed, but I can't make heads or tails of it. She asks, "Respectfully for the love of all that is holy to stop this gangstauking J. Monarchabuse on me and my son Joseph" and adds "Please don't push me." The letter ends, "With all God's love" and her signature. Be- low that she wrote "P.S. Lovely insurance Companies. Sooo many." Thinking I was dealing with a disgruntled person whose in- surance had been cancelled, I checked with Dolling Insurance across the street to see if they have knowledge of this curious affair, but so far no response. In conclusion I do not know a "Joseph," do not know what "gangstauking" is, nor have any traffic with "J. Monarch." I print this letter in hopes that the writer finds satisfaction from the correct recipient. I am in the dark about the whole thing. ••• I note that budding poets can join an internet site called "Hello Poetry" by submitting a poem. The site has received over 2,000 poems about Trump but only 400 or so relating to Hillary. Al- though a positive poem was re- ceived in favor of the new Presi- dent reading "Call me a chump/ But I'm with Trump" some sub- mittals did not even pick a side, i.e. "Voting on how to delude my- self best; I am part of a dollar bill nest, where I get to see, but don't get to touch, where I get to give, but don't get too much." ••• I do not drink coffee. Dave Sale once told me he didn't drink coffee as a youth, but while in the service, he made himself drink it to keep awake when on guard duty. He began with hot milk and then gradu- ally increased the ratio of cof- fee to milk. However, I have con- tinued to avoid stimulants, a de- cision that has served me well over time. And yet Time maga- zine now asserts there is grow- ing evidence that coffee keeps heart vessels clear and lowers the risk of Type 2 diabetes, and it helps to combat aging. A new study found that older people who consumed 5 or more cups of coffee a day showed very low levels of inflammatory factors in their blood. Hmmm. That's going to mean my drinking an awful lot of Classic Coca Cola. ••• A Muslim mufti is living in It- aly as a refugee. The pope de- clares that Italy is a Christian na- tion and the refugees must either convert or leave. The mufti chal- lenges the pope to a religious de- bate. If he wins, the refugees may stay. If the pope wins, they will leave without argument. The mufti doesn't speak Ital- ian and the pope doesn't speak Arabic, so it is decided it will be a silent debate. They sat opposite each other. The pope raised his hand to show three fingers. The mufti looked back and raised one finger. The pope waved his fingers around his head. The mufti pointed to the ground where he sat. The pope brought out a com- munion wafer and a chalice of wine. The mufti pulled out an ap- ple, and with that the pope sur- rendered and agreed the Mus- lims could stay in Italy. The pope later explained what had happened. "I held up three fingers to represent the Trin- ity and he responded with a sin- gle finger to remind me there is only one God. I waved my fin- gers around my head to show him that God is all around us and he responded by point- ing to the ground to show that God is also right here with us. I brought out the wine and wafer to show that God absolves us of our sins and he pulled out an ap- ple to remind me of original sin. He beat me at every move and I just couldn't go on." The Muslim refugees gathered and asked the mufti what had happened. "I have no idea. First he told me we had three days to leave, so I gave him the finger. Then he said the whole country would be cleared of Muslims and I told him we were staying right here. Then he took out his lunch, so I took out mine." Robert Minch is a lifelong resident of Red Bluff and author of the "The Knocking Pen." He can be reached at rminchandmurray@hotmail. com. I say Scientists make the case for talking to yourself We volunteered to pay the bill with our regular credit card; the representative said for our security they could not accept that without the account number. Obviously, many people would try to pay our bill with their credit card. Sounding off A look at what readers are saying in comments on our website and on social media. He had an ankle monitor? He cut it off? That's a GPS, county is supposed to keep track of him? Hmm, not rocket science. Donna Marie: On a high-risk sex offender at large in Tehama County a er removing monitor I'm still confused with your remarks. Yes, the ankle monitor has a GPS, but he cut it off so the last known whereabouts would be where it was cut off or tossed and he has le that vicinity, so police cannot track him, hence the whole reason for the monitor and why he cut it off. Angela Tucker: On a high-risk sex offender at large in Tehama County a er removing monitor Joe Harrop Robert Minch Psychologists make a case for the validity of one talking to oneself. It may be therapeutic or just the way some of our minds work. Chip Thompson, Editor EDITORIAL BOARD OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Saturday, February 18, 2017 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A6