the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Jun 29, 2020
Pacific Gas and Electric, or PG&E, the biggest utility company in California, pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter for the devastating Camp Fire in 2018, which killed 84 people and destroyed the whole town of Paradise in northern California. PG&E admitted that it had repeatedly failed to maintain the power line, which eventually broke from a nearly 100-year-old tower and started the fire.
PG&E was already on probation from a previous conviction for the gas pipe explosion in 2010 that killed eight people and burnt down a whole neighborhood in San Bruno, California.
In other words, PG&E admitted to being not only a mass murderer, but a repeat offender.
For that, the judge “sentenced” PG&E to a fine of $3.5 million—for a company that has reported to be worth $85 BILLION!
Not only that, but the courts and the state government of California are allowing PG&E, an admitted mass murderer, to get out of paying much of its debt by filing for bankruptcy. And, as an added bonus for the capitalist owners of PG&E, the California legislature passed a law last year, providing $21 billion in taxpayer money to PG&E and other utilities, to “help out” these super-rich companies with paying damages to the victims of the fires they keep starting.
Under capitalism, the justice system protects the profits of the capitalist class and its murderous companies, no matter what the cost is to the population in lives and hard-earned money.