> SF even owns the hydro generator at O'Shaughnessy Dam.
They own the dam, but the Federal government still owns Hetch Hetchy water and land. Permission to use Hetch Hetchy is governed by the Raker Act, which stipulates[1] that SF can only resell the electricity and water through public municipal districts, not to private utilities:
> Sec. 6. That the grantee is prohibited from ever selling or letting to any corporation or individual, except a municipality or a municipal water district or irrigation district, the right to sell or sublet the water or the electric energy sold or given to it or him by the said grantee:
> Provided, That the rights hereby granted shall not be sold, assigned, or transferred to any private person, corporation, or association, and in case of any attempt to so sell, assign, transfer, or convey, this grant shall revert to the Government of the United States.
The original plan was that SF would build both aqueducts and transmission lines to SF, branches of which could serve other municipal districts. But they only ended up building the aqueducts, and contracted with PG&E to transmit the electricity. The question is, is SF violating the Raker Act? Previous administrations have said no or demurred requests to answer the question; typically the people raising the issue want the dam removed. SF claims PG&E is acting as their agent and everything is above board. But, above board or not, I've read some old articles that suggest there's a 50+ year-old understanding or gentlemen's agreement between SF and PG&E, that PG&E would give the City of SF (if not its residents) sweetheart pricing on transmission, etc, and defend the status quo in DC so long as SF didn't attempt to buildout it's own transmission lines or otherwise cut PG&E out of the loop. But if SF did do that, PG&E would lobby DC to terminate the grants under the Raker Act. From the beginning, many cities in California, and even politicians outside California, have resented the Federal grant to San Francisco, so presumably with the right trigger a very large lobby could quickly arise and demand the Raker Act be replaced with a new deal that gave other municipalities in California a direct stake in Hetch Hetchy. It's even possible PG&E comes out on top, because who's going to transmit the electricity?
Of course, that story leaves alot of unanswered questions. But it sounds plausible to me. With CEQA, etc, there's zero chance SF could ever build out its own transmission lines today; it would take untold billions and, more importantly, decades--far longer than the Raker Act would likely survive. Currently the City of SF basically pays nothing to power its public buildings (schools, etc), MUNI buses and trains, and possibly SFO (which SF owns and operates). The budgetary and logistical upheaval that would happen if the Raker Act grant was rescinded (which, again, almost every other municipality in the state would support) is mind boggling. Even if we assume every mayor has earnestly wanted to cut PG&E out of the loop and do right by SF residents' individual power bills, what sane, term-limited administrator would invite that chaos? Plenty of mayors have broached the subject, but invariably such suggestions silently stop, so presumably it's just a negotiating tactic with PG&E that both sides are very careful not to let get out-of-hand.
Even if SF lost the hydro plant outright (which seems unlikely) there's still plenty of margin for SF residents to come out on top. SVP in Santa Clara doesn't own much generation, yet its rates are 60% lower.[0]
Then there's the state-wide need to increase transmission capacity because of the switch to renewables, the future politics of which are kinda unpredictable. It's hard to imagine SF getting singled out and left out in the cold, considering the state already has many large municipal utilities getting better deals for their residents.
It's a common claim on HN that when a regulator caps profit margins, that incentivizes the entity to make-work to increase absolute revenue and thus profits. But capital markets, i.e. investors, only care about marginal returns. Unless your profit margin cap is really high relative to average returns in the global market, there's no market pressure to do this, AFAICT. Capital projects require investment, but what investors have so much money burning holes in their pockets that they're eager to invest at marginal rates lower than what they could invest elsewhere?
The only financial incentive for this would have to come internally from the company, say from executives whose compensation would increase merely by dint of larger absolute revenues. For regulated entities maybe that's plausible? But typically executive compensation is usually tied to margins and given in stock.
I only just came to this realization when reading about the effect of tariffs and a description of why they drive up prices much more than you think. If the import price on a widget is $100, a 10% tariff drives it up to $110. If the next purchaser in the supply chain was originally paying $X, you might think they would just pay $X + $10, and on down the chain, so that retail prices only rise by $10. But that's not how it works. If the importer was adding 20% (not atypical), they're going to need to sell the widget at $120 + $10 + ($10 * 20%), so $132.00. The next purchaser will need to do the same, but on their purchase price. Whereas before they were selling at $120 + ($120 * 0.20) = 144.00, now they need to sell at $132 + ($132 * 0.20) = $158.40, an $18 jump, not $10. It compounds on down the chain. Why? Your investors are expecting you to add a Y% margin. The reality is a little more complex, of course. Maybe a supplier can get by with a smaller profit margin, but the floor is going to be their cost of capital for buying supply, which may be least 5-10%.
NPR News veered sharply left over the past ~10 years, even more so local affiliate programming like that put out by KQED. In the past year or two there's been a moderate course correction, but their reporting is still clearly stuck in a liberal cognitive bubble.[1] I think a large part of it was the generational turnover that occurred, and their eagerness to "speak the truth", emboldened by the belief that any random sociology study that happened to support their view firmly established their beliefs as scientific fact, unchecked once Republicans disengaged from earnest empirical debate. But I agree about PBS, they managed to stay the course.
[1] NPR generally has always had a liberal bias, but their professionalism was sufficient to keep them straight shooting. Even Justice Scalia used to listen to NPR News, at least as late as the aughts.
I do agree that NPR is less neutral than PBS but if you want to hear what harder left political commentary sounds like, listen to an episode of Chapo Trap House. NPR isn’t sharply left— they’re very on the very mainstream end of liberal centrist with an occasional smattering of “I was a socialist for a semester in college” liberal in their editorial content— they’re just not shy about it.
PBS on the other hand— while obviously coming from an institution that exists because of things liberals value— clearly puts a lot of effort into representing most mainstream views charitably. It’s almost like if Reuters had a daily news hour.
Lay members of these various churches certainly seem to believe there are huge theological differences, which they infer from the differences in day-to-day practices. But if you read the views of most of the high-level clergy and theologians in all these churches (and not the fringe, e.g. not the monks on Mt. Athos, or bishops trying to score political points), the differences are incredibly thin and not at all significant when comparing Catholic, Orthodox, Oriental, and Syrian churches to other Christian denominations. The patriarchs of all these churches in particular have been remarkably careful across the centuries, and especially today, to avoid formally committing their churches to views that necessarily prevent union. To be sure there have been many exceptions, but invariably succeeding patriarchs walk them back, it just takes centuries. I get the sense that at any particular time most patriarchs have been amenable to union and willing to make the necessary compromises demanded of the day, but fear conservative factions splitting away, which would be particularly painful for Orthodox and Syrian churches already beset by fragmentation nominally justified by much more minor issues (e.g. Julian calendar).
The biggest sticking points theologically today, from what I gather, arise primarily from 19th century Catholic pronouncements regarding papal infallibility and Mary, specifically the Immaculate Conception and how it relates to Original Sin. Most of the historical disputes (e.g. re miaphysitism, theotokos, unleavened bread, purgatory) have largely fallen away as misunderstandings.
In the case of papal infallibility, all ancient churches admit that the Rome pontiff held supremacy, but there was never agreement on precisely what that meant. The Catholic articulation of papal infallibility offends the synodal view of how doctrine is established, and while many Catholic theologians, including several popes throughout the 20th and 21st century, have publicly explained that popes can only legitimately pronounce what the church, synodally, has already accepted, the precise language used in the formal dogmatic pronouncement is too strictly worded. And it doesn't help that many fringe conservative Catholic theologians are more pro-pope than any pope since the the 19th century and promote this more extreme interpretation.
In the case of the Immaculate Conception, it's not so much that the Catholic view is unacceptable to Orthodox or Orientals, but that the Catholic doctrine is too specific (similar to infallibility) and excludes their alternative framing that beforehand had been understood not to be incompatible with union. Some (all?) the Syrians (Churches of the East), though, seem to accept it, despite not having a tradition rooted in the Augustinian articulation of original sin. And views of the Immaculate Conception among Orthodox and Oriental churches nominally in union with each other differ. (But to be clear, the differences are extremely technical; to most people, including Protestants and especially non-Christians, the varying views of all these churches would be indistinguishable, and theologians themselves often seem to articulate them wrongly, at least compared to how their patriarchs do.)
The Filioque also isn't a theological barrier. The way it's formally understood in Catholicism is not in conflict with accepted Orthodox or Oriental theology, but for various reasons Orthodox see it as an offense to synodality and respect for previous councils' compromises about how far to go in textually articulating the Trinity. I would think most Orthodox theologians see themselves closer theologically to the Oriental churches, but Oriental churches have changed the creed in much more significant ways--IIRC, the Armenian Church added whole new paragraphs. Not that Orthodox theologians are any more willing to overlook these changes, but they certainly don't make much hay about them.
Note that one of the ancient Syrian churches (I always get their names confused) is poised to reunite with the Catholic church. All the doctrinal stuff has long been ironed out, which took about a century, IIRC, from the beginning of earnest dialogue. The sticking point relates to the Catholic church demanding the Syrian church replace their organically evolved clerical disciplines and practices with comprehensive written canonical rules similar to the Catholic church (Latin and Eastern). In truth, the division between the Catholic, Orthodox, Oriental, and Syrian churches have always been primarily cultural (lay) and political (clerical), not theological. The theological differences have tended to be exaggerated on all sides in service of political (clerical, state, and social) machinations. The 19th century Catholic dogmatic pronouncements were largely triggered by political and social revolutions in Europe which caused turmoil among Catholics, with subsequent political and cultural backlashes that resulted in the peculiar theological focus that unfolded and overwhelmed the typical ecumenical circumspection of church leaders.)
Theological differences among churches nominally in union with each other are often arguably no less significant than between churches where union is supposedly not possible. And there has often been de facto union. For example, for several periods throughout the centuries the Orthodox and Oriental churches in Egypt de facto placed their churches under the authority of the rival patriarch while they weathered political winds and suppressions, without the feared theological contamination divisive theologians claimed were inevitable, and despite the claimed differences being deemed much greater and more incompatible than they're believed to be today.
I lived with someone who was a Greek Orthodox monk (has a PhD in philosophy and masters in theology) and this is exactly what he says. The actual theological differences are 2 or 3 very specific technicalities that are basically glossed over at the lay level (overshadowed by the cultural/political as you say). Thanks for the great articulation of this stuff.
The motivation to invade Taiwan is rooted in the PRC's political and historical narrative about it's legitimacy and purpose, a narrative internalized by most Chinese, including especially the military. It's in a sense existential, not economic or realpolitik, and I don't see that motivation diminishing anytime soon. If anything it's growing stronger, as evidenced by the suppression in Hong Kong, which made zero sense without reference to how Chinese political institutions sustain themselves. The risk of an invasion sparking a conflict with the US is primarily what held them back, and at best economic and foreign strategic pain only secondarily, but all those risks diminish by the day, leaving China's raw existential motivation unchecked.
The biggest victory for CCP will be Taiwan willingly joining PRC. Nothing else will be a better testament to the CCP model
Reunification with the mainland isn’t a completely unpopular idea in Taiwan. The economic ties are already extremely deep (largest trading partner by far).
> In the Paleogene and Neogene Periods (~66 million to ~1.8 million years ago), the mountain chains that today constitute the Atlas were uplifted, as the land masses of Europe and Africa collided at the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula.
But it also notes,
> The Anti-Atlas Mountains are believed to have originally been formed as part of the Alleghenian orogeny. These mountains were formed when Africa and America collided
Anti-Atlas? If we jump over to the Anti-Atlas article we see,
> In some contexts, the Anti-Atlas is considered separate from the Atlas Mountains system, as the prefix "anti" (i.e. opposite) implies.
and
> The summits of the Anti-Atlas reach average heights of 2,500–2,700 m (8,200–8,900 ft),
So in addition to subsequent events, the portion of the Atlas originally formed with the Appalachian is geologically distinguishable from the other portions of the Atlas chain, and actually significantly lower than the parts of the chain formed later, though not as low as the Appalachians.
> Circa 2010 when Xi came to power, the CPC also essentially destroyed the CIA's footprint in the country, something that was not widely reported in the West. And PRC has done very well since...
The PRC was doing just as fine before they executed all the CIA's agents. I don't see any relation. There's never been any hint from either the US or China that those agents were doing anything other than passive intelligence collection, as opposed to actively interfering in domestic Chinese politics. And in any event, the scope of historical CIA operations has always been overblown. In every case I'm aware of, the CIA leveraged a tipping point already well underway to nudge things one way or another. Developing countries are often already highly unstable and prone to regular disruptive power shifts; it's a major cause of their poverty and inability to fully develop. And in many of the outright coups the CIA has been implicated, the extent of the CIA's involvement was simply talking to and making promises to various power players already poised to make a power grab, Chile being a prime example--the Chilean Senate was the architect of the coup, and the CIA merely offered safe harbor to nudge Pinochet, who was waffling because he wasn't convinced it would succeed. The exceptions were during the middle of the Cold War, ancient history in modern foreign affairs.
The KGB/FSB has always been lauded for opportunistically taking advantage of preexisting situations with small but smart manipulations, but that's just how intelligence agencies have always worked in general. When your interventions are too direct and obvious, which they always will be if you're creating a crisis from scratch, you risk unifying the country, Iran being a prime example.
> There's never been any hint from either the US or China that those agents were doing anything other than passive intelligence collection, as opposed to actively interfering in domestic Chinese politics. And in any event, the scope of historical CIA operations has always been overblown. In every case I'm aware of, the CIA leveraged a tipping point already well underway to nudge things one way or another.
Beyond being self-contradictory (CIA is passive but also they interfere on key issues) this is just false. The West has spent a lot of (covert) resources undermining China in the past decade in Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Taiwan, trade and tech wars, COVID, and so on. All attempts which have failed dramatically, perhaps partly due to the lack of IC penetration into society and government.
> Beyond being self-contradictory (CIA is passive but also they interfere on key issues) this is just false
I said the CIA's intelligence network in China which was dismembered was passive, the same way China's network in the US is passive, not that the CIA is passive everywhere else. But maybe you wouldn't describe either as passive, which is fair, but I don't think that definition fits with how most people conceive of what active political manipulation looks like. Note also I didn't mean to imply that promoting a coup by offering safe harbor is passive in the same sense; I would definitely categorize that as direct domestic political disruption, just not of the kind Hollywood or conspiracy theories depict, which is what people assume when CIA involvement is implicated.
And I'm not sure what you're talking about regarding Hong Kong, Xinjiang, or Taiwan. Is public criticism interfering in domestic politics? Sanctions arguably are, which the US uses regularly around the world, but in the context of China, it's always about money and trade wars and international disputes. The US is active militarily in Taiwan in terms of training and arms supplies, but this is largely at Taiwan's insistence, and the US does much less than Taiwan wants. And none of this involves direct CIA involvement beyond the intelligence collection and sharing networks, both with and without the local government's approval.
I'm curious if you have specific examples. I know the US has proposed sanctions for China's policies in Xinjiang, but I don't remember anything actually coming of it. If I'm misremembering, that's fair, and I understand why China would consider actual sanctions domestic political interference, but note that this is also a cultural divide between Chinese and Western political philosophies--the latter is much more moralistic, and interventions against perceived human rights abuses aren't necessarily considered to violate the principle of state sovereignty.
Sure, as long as the solution isn't to just bolt on another distinct DNS monolith. The root of the problem IMO is that no libc, AFAIK, exports an API for parsing, let alone composing or manipulating, resolv.conf formatted data. The solutions have either been the same as FreeBSD (openresolv, a portable implementation of Debian's resolvconf tool), or just freezing resolv.conf (notwithstanding occassional new libc features) and bolting atop (i.e. keeping in place) the existing infrastructure a monolithic resolver service with their own bespoke configs, such as macOS and Linux/systemd have done. But resolv.conf can never go away, because it's the only sane and portable way for your average userland program to load DNS configuration, especially async resolver libraries.
It's a coordination problem. Note that the original notion of resolvconf, IIUC, was it was only stitching together trusted configuration data. That's no excuse, of course, for not rigorously isolating data from execution, which is more difficult in shell scripts--at least, if you're not treating the data as untrusted from the get go. It's not that difficult to write shell code to handle untrusted data, you just can't hack it together without keeping this is mind. And it would be much easier if the resolver infrastructure in libc had a proper API for dealing with resolv.conf (and others), which could be exported by a small utility which in turn could be used to slice and dice configurations from shell scripts.
The problem with the new, alternative monoliths is they very quickly run off into the weeds with their crazy features and configuration in ways that create barriers for userland applications and libraries to rely upon, beyond bootstrapping them to query 127.0.0.1:53. At the end of the day, resolv.conf can never really go away. So the proper solution, IMO, is to begin to carefully build layers around the one part that we know for a fact won't go away, rather than walking away with your ball to build a new playground. But that requires some motivated coordination and cooperation with libc developers.
> Sure, as long as the solution isn't to just bolt on another distinct DNS monolith
Why not? And I don't mean this in tongue-in-cheek, but as a genuine interrogation: why not go the macOS/systemd route?
DNS is a complex topic. Much more complex than people admit it is, and that can definitely not be expressed fully with resolv.conf. I do agree that it is too late to get rid of it (and was not my concern actually), but it is too limited to be of actual use outside of the simple "I have a single DNS server with a single search domain". IMHO, a dedicated local daemon with its own bespoke config definitely has value, even if it solely provides a local cache for applications that don't have one already (like most of them outside of browsers). And for more complex cases, simple integration with the network configuration daemon provides actual value in e.g. knowing that a specific server is reachable through a specific interface that has a specific search domain. That is, native routing to the correct servers to avoid the timeout dance as soon as you have split networks.
Also, for the local ad-hoc configuration part. We already have nsswitch which is its own can of worms that pretty much nobody have ever heard about let even touched its configuration. Heck, I've written DNS servers but only looked once at nsswitch. resolved's configuration is integrated in the systemd ecosystem, has an approachable and well documented configuration, and is pretty useful in general.
Anyways, the main gripe I had was not really at the mess that is DNS on Linux, but the general stance in the UNIX-like world against anything that's not a lego of shell scripts because "that's not the unix philosophy". Yeah you can write an init system fully with sh, have their "units" also all be written in sh, but oh lord has stuff like systemd improved the situation for the init + service part. Having a raw string from a network packet land in a shell script is a recipe for disaster, seeing how much quoting in scripts is famously difficult.
> The problem with the new, alternative monoliths is they very quickly run off into the weeds with their crazy features and configuration
Agreed for the crazy features. systemd is a godsend for the modern linux world, but I'm skeptical when I see the likes of systemd-home. Yet the configuration is not where I'd pick at those systems though, because they tend to be much more configurable. They are opiniated, yes, but the configuration is an actual configuration and not a patchwork of shell scripts somewhere in /etc, when they're not direct patches to the foundational shell scripts!
> in ways that create barriers for userland applications
How so? In the specific example of resolved, I'd argue it's even less work for applications, because they don't need to query multiple DNS servers at once (it'll handle it for them), don't need to try resolution with and without search domain, etc.
In the end, I find that resolved's approach at symlinking its stub resolv.conf is the most elegant approach with our current setups.
PS: I talk a lot about resolved because that's the one I know best, not the one I think is the best! It has loads of shortcomings too, yet it's still a net improvement to whatever was in place before.
> DNS is a complex topic. Much more complex than people admit it is, and that can definitely not be expressed fully with resolv.conf. I do agree that it is too late to get rid of it (and was not my concern actually), but it is too limited to be of actual use outside of the simple "I have a single DNS server with a single search domain".
resolv.conf is limited, but it's also been highly stable for decades, and it's sufficient if not ideal for controlling how getaddrinfo works (at least for on-the-wire requests), including controlling things like EDNS0, parallel requests, etc. Most if not all libc resolvers support things like parallel querying and other simple knobs which are configurable (if at all--see musl libc) through resolv.conf, demonstrating that it's expressive enough for most if not all common requirements shared among various client-side stub resolvers.
> And for more complex cases, simple integration with the network configuration daemon
But which one? Are you suggesting integration by way of loading it's configuration(s) (which puts us back at square 0), or by a modified query protocol, or by interfacing with the broader but even more diverse native configuration systems? None of the options seem remotely practical from the perspective of most open source projects, unless they're specifically targeting a single environment like Linux/systemd/resolvd. I don't see a viable pathway to make that happen. By contrast, embracing and hopefully improving resolv.conf as an integration point could be done piecemeal, environment by environment. The syntax is already effectively universal across systems, with the options directive providing most of the knobs. We could even make an initial push through POSIX by officially standardizing the syntax, which may even convince musl libc to make its resolver actually configurable.
> In the specific example of resolved, I'd argue it's even less work for applications, because they don't need to query multiple DNS servers at once (it'll handle it for them), don't need to try resolution with and without search domain, etc.
Yes, in most cases it's sufficient for userland applications to just make simple requests to the locally managed resolver service defined in resolv.conf. But the cases and projects needing more control over how they do their requests, using their own resolvers, only grows, especially with the proliferation of DNS schemes-see, e.g., the various recent HTTP-related DNS records which often require multiple queries and can benefit from parallel queries managed internally. A prime example is getaddrinfo itself, some implementations of which do parallel queries for A/AAAA lookups. Which brings us back to my main point: resolv.conf is the only common centralized point across almost all environment (Windows being the major exceptoin) for configuring basic DNS services.
I'm not arguing for improving resolv.conf integration as a way to replace local DNS services or their configuration. Just that for decades the staleness of resolv.conf has been a conspicuous and growing pain point from both a system configuration and userland integration perspective, and a little coordinated love & attention across the ecosystem, if only firmly committing to what's already there (especially for glibc and FreeBSD) as a reliable and more easily leveraged source of truth for code that needs it, would go a long way.
> But the simpler route is that there is no such thing as an “independent” agency. That’s a 20th century creation.
Actually, there are at least three early examples of independent agencies, though note that until the modern administrative state emerged in the late 19th century the Federal government was never so hierarchically organized as to admit to an "agency" as we understand that term today.
First was the 1790 sinking fund, a nominally executive committee created by Congress to pay down the national debt, which could override the President's preference regarding payments. Second was the office of the comptroller, which was strongly shielded from executive control for fear of a corrupt president, and which (IIRC) was the subject of vigorous Congressional debates. These two examples are possibly at least partly why in a recent emergency docket decision there's dicta exclaiming that Federal Reserve independence was not and in decisions to come would not be implicated by what SCOTUS (impliedly) has coming down the pipeline. Both of these examples would later be construed as examples of "quasi-legislative" executive agencies, rooted in Congress' power of the purse. (Though, it's likely SCOTUS will lean more heavily on powers and precedent regarding banking.)
Third was the de facto independence of federal district attorneys. Until 1820 they were answerable to nobody, except in theory to Congress by impeachment, until Congress nominally placed them under the Treasury Secretary in 1820. This would be an original example of "quasi-judicial" executive officers, which one might naturally apply to modern administrative and immigration law courts.
There are more, albeit less clear-cut practices, including the situation in Marbury v Madison. Also note that the removal power is distinct from the broader contemporary unitary executive theory, which aims to place even more plenary power in the presidency than merely removal (which is just the hook to prove the larger theory by logical inference which otherwise has little, if any, historical precedent or positive textual evidence), and therein lies much more complexity, which is why the whole debate has been muddled from the very beginning of the US--the Founders and early Congresses discussed it explicitly, but largely showing there was in fact no consensus, except what they de facto established in practice (e.g. many of those who argued for a unitary executive-like theory in fact joined in the establishment of and acquiesced to the practices of a partially independent comptroller). I think the black letter law annunciated by Humphrey's Executor, that Congress can in principle shield quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial agencies from the president, is spot on when trying to square constitutional text, constitutional theory, historical debates, and historical practice. Though, there's a good argument that over time the courts have not been vigilant enough in cabining Humphrey's Executor, e.g. by more clearly and strictly articulating what qualifies as quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial functions, which is presumably why Robert's recently suggested, as an olive branch offering, that Humphrey's Executive as applied today does not hew closely to the legal principle it expounded (and presumably, were Roberts to continue, that it applied it's own principle wrongly). Personally, I wouldn't mind a forthcoming SCOTUS opinion that effectively expands removal powers by way of affirming and applying Humphrey's Executor legal rule, even if it nominally reversed it's application with the same set of facts.
There are scores of law review articles discussing the subject going back well over a century, but a really good one written not long after the Reagan-era debates is "The President and the Administration" by none other than Cass Sunstein and (apropos HN) Lawrence Lessig, https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/journal_articles/7779/
That article is the most honest review of the debate I've read; perhaps too honest and earnest because they really pull their punches. (Perhaps that's partly because of Lessig's background in legal history and his reluctance to make absolute declarations about historical matters? EDIT: I confused Lessig with Eben Moglen at the FSF) It gives significant attention to Myers, FWIW, including agreeing (IIRC) that it was correctly decided.
And if you haven't read this already, here's the contemporaneous strong-man argument for independent agencies, Christine Kexel Chabot, Is the Federal Reserve Constitutional? An Originalist Argument for Independent Agencies, 96 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1 (2020), https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/ndlr/vol96/iss1/1
They own the dam, but the Federal government still owns Hetch Hetchy water and land. Permission to use Hetch Hetchy is governed by the Raker Act, which stipulates[1] that SF can only resell the electricity and water through public municipal districts, not to private utilities:
> Sec. 6. That the grantee is prohibited from ever selling or letting to any corporation or individual, except a municipality or a municipal water district or irrigation district, the right to sell or sublet the water or the electric energy sold or given to it or him by the said grantee:
> Provided, That the rights hereby granted shall not be sold, assigned, or transferred to any private person, corporation, or association, and in case of any attempt to so sell, assign, transfer, or convey, this grant shall revert to the Government of the United States.
The original plan was that SF would build both aqueducts and transmission lines to SF, branches of which could serve other municipal districts. But they only ended up building the aqueducts, and contracted with PG&E to transmit the electricity. The question is, is SF violating the Raker Act? Previous administrations have said no or demurred requests to answer the question; typically the people raising the issue want the dam removed. SF claims PG&E is acting as their agent and everything is above board. But, above board or not, I've read some old articles that suggest there's a 50+ year-old understanding or gentlemen's agreement between SF and PG&E, that PG&E would give the City of SF (if not its residents) sweetheart pricing on transmission, etc, and defend the status quo in DC so long as SF didn't attempt to buildout it's own transmission lines or otherwise cut PG&E out of the loop. But if SF did do that, PG&E would lobby DC to terminate the grants under the Raker Act. From the beginning, many cities in California, and even politicians outside California, have resented the Federal grant to San Francisco, so presumably with the right trigger a very large lobby could quickly arise and demand the Raker Act be replaced with a new deal that gave other municipalities in California a direct stake in Hetch Hetchy. It's even possible PG&E comes out on top, because who's going to transmit the electricity?
Of course, that story leaves alot of unanswered questions. But it sounds plausible to me. With CEQA, etc, there's zero chance SF could ever build out its own transmission lines today; it would take untold billions and, more importantly, decades--far longer than the Raker Act would likely survive. Currently the City of SF basically pays nothing to power its public buildings (schools, etc), MUNI buses and trains, and possibly SFO (which SF owns and operates). The budgetary and logistical upheaval that would happen if the Raker Act grant was rescinded (which, again, almost every other municipality in the state would support) is mind boggling. Even if we assume every mayor has earnestly wanted to cut PG&E out of the loop and do right by SF residents' individual power bills, what sane, term-limited administrator would invite that chaos? Plenty of mayors have broached the subject, but invariably such suggestions silently stop, so presumably it's just a negotiating tactic with PG&E that both sides are very careful not to let get out-of-hand.
[1] https://sfmuseum.org/hetch/hetchy10.html
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