Kneel Before Arizona!

Our guest columnist this afternoon is Gary Pierce of the Arizona Corporation Commission.

Dear Mayor Villaraigosa:

I was dismayed to learn that the Los Angeles City Council voted to boycott Arizona and Arizona-based companies — a vote you strongly supported — to show opposition to SB 1070 (Support our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act).

You explained your support for the boycott as follows: “While we recognize that as neighbors, we share resources and ties with the State of Arizona that may be difficult to sever, our goal is not to hurt the local economy of Los Angeles, but to impact the economy of Arizona. Our intent is to use our dollars — or the withholding of our dollars — to send a message.” (emphasis added)

I received your message; please receive mine. As a state-wide elected member of the Arizona Corporation Commission overseeing Arizona’s electric and water utilities, I too am keenly aware of the “resources and ties” we share with the City of Los Angeles. In fact, approximately twenty-five percent of the electricity consumed in Los Angeles is generated by power plants in Arizona.

If an economic boycott is truly what you desire, I will be happy to encourage Arizona utilities to renegotiate your power agreements so Los Angeles no longer receives any power from Arizona-based generation. I am confident that Arizona’s utilities would be happy to take those electrons off your hands. If, however, you find that the City Council lacks the strength of its convictions to turn off the lights in Los Angeles and boycott Arizona power, please reconsider the wisdom of attempting to harm Arizona’s economy.

People of goodwill can disagree over the merits of SB 1070. A state-wide economic boycott of Arizona is not a message sent in goodwill.

Response to the LA Boycott by AZ Corp Commissioner [Scribd, via Ana Marie Cox]

Update: Replying to our afternoon guest columnist is our evening guest columnist Austin Beutner, General Manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

I want to make clear that we support the City position regarding the recent law enacted in Arizona and the resolution adopted by the Los Angeles City Council.

On any given day, we receive 20 – 25% of our power from two power plants located in Arizona: Navajo, a coal-fired plant, and Palo Verde, a nuclear plant.

We are part owner of both power plants, which are generating assets of the Department. As such, nothing in the City’s resolution is inconsistent with our continuing to receive power from those LADWP-owned assets.

I might add that, as the City’s Job Czar, I certainly would welcome any conventions or meetings that were going to be held in Arizona to come to Los Angeles. We have fantastic facilities and incomparable weather and we’d welcome them to the City of Angels.

General Manager’s Statement Regarding LADWP Power Generation Assets in Arizona [LADWP]
39 Comments

Wait, is Orange County going to be Sudetenland or will it be Palm Springs?

anyone going to ComicCon in SandyEggo?

@Capt Howdy: If you mean, is anyone desperately avoiding the convention center neighborhood in July, the answer is yes.

@Capt Howdy: Tickets were sold out two months ago. Son of RML really wants to go sometime.

@nojo:
ha
thats actually not exactly what I meant.
I am not going but if I lived there I would probably have to. our game is going to have a huge promotional presence there. which is why I asked.

@Capt Howdy: Of course, if any Stinque Nerds end up in town, y’all are invited to Shakespeare’s Pub, or some other joint if Pedo’s tired of that one.

@nojo:
we have been talking about trying to get them to send us but I think its unlikely with all the shit we have to get done in the next few months.

on another completely unrelated note, check out this amazing hail storm:

Link

stick with it, it gets better and better. or worse and worse.

Yes, let’s just be giant dicks about this whole thing on both sides. That will solve everything.

@Tommmcat Still Gets Carly Confused With Meg: There was also a counter-boycott of Sandy Eggo in the news the past few days, but this one’s more fun.

RML Summer Bash – 6/26/10 – Santa Fe NM

You can have your electrons back, AZ! They’re not as good as the electrons we get from Nevada anyway. Also, you are a poopy-pants!

Pierce just looks silly making threats. He has to show up on TV planting charges under the towers carrying the power, raving about white nationalism, white power and the destiny of nazi America as he hammers home the detonator and blacks out LA. Asshole forgets the relationship between Camp Pendleton, which probably has a goodly number of non-whites that would love to go and teach him and his nazis some manners. Then, then for chrissake we’d have some entertainment around here.

a great response to a recent Douchbag of the Day star, Peterson:

Link

@Prommie:
Zardoz was great compared to the movie those guys were in

@Capt Howdy:
Hey, I’d kneel before Charlotte Rampling.

OK. That’s it. No more Mr Nice Guy LA. Cut them off from product. No more movies. Let the AZ cineplexes turn to dust and blow away.

They may have power and water. But you got Keanu Reeves.

@ManchuCandidate:
have you seen “Immortal”. its a sort of new movie with her.
it odd. its sort of more interesting for what it tried to do than what it accomplished.
in short she is one of, I think, only two live actors in an otherwise CG film.

You got it wrong, nojo. Arpaio is not Zod. He doesn’t have the brains. Arpaio is the muscle over on the right. Zod is either Russell Pearce, the author of the bill, or Andrew Thomas, the Maricopa County attorney, who directs Arpaio’s showcase showdowns and reinterprets laws to fit his anti-immigrant agenda.

Also, Terrence Stamp = yum.

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ: You’re right, of course. Early morning stretch.

I give you Gary Pierce’s campaign website (you didn’t think he wasn’t running, did you?) for your deconstruction and amusement:

http://www.garypierceforarizona.com/about_gary.php

@Capt Howdy: That hail storm hit my former neighborhood in OKC, where many evil rich people live, including Club for Growth-er and Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon. I believe his house had slate tiles for roofing. A friend there said all the windows were broken out on my old house, and a neighbor lost a double-pane plate glass window. With their recent crackdowns on employing illegal immigrants, these Republicans will be lucky to have new roofs by Christmas.
Also: OK Legislature passes two outrageous anti-choice bills -> destructive tornado.
OK Legislature passes bill to collect and publish private information of women seeking an abortion -> hailstorm of biblical proportions.
Hate to tell you guys, but apparently God is female, pro-choice, and pissed off.

Regardless of the fate of Aryanzona’s appalling, racist laws, the nation’s demographics are headed in one irreversible direction, and it ain’t gonna favor lily-white, loudmouth, asshole-nationalists.

I’d love to ask the Retreads what precisely is their long-term strategy after alienating as many racial, ethnic and seshally-oriented groups as possible.

Post updated with LA’s reponse: We own those power plants, mister.

@nojo: Take that Arizona bitchez….you get all that pollution courtesy of El Ay! Hope you’re not planning on having a home health aide when you’re dying of lung cancer!

@SanFranLefty: Time for another Chinatown sequel. Perhaps Polanski can direct from his house-arrest chateau.

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ:

Man. Here’s a hint folks: knocked-out bold fonts on black are a good way to make your website visitor’s eyes bleed.

Holy fucking shit, read LA’s response, its fucking priceless, turns out, California OWNS those fucking power plants in Arizona! Credit brand W for getting this out there.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

General Manager’s Statement Regarding LADWP Power Generation Assets in Arizona

“I want to make clear that we support the City position regarding the recent law enacted in Arizona and the resolution adopted by the Los Angeles City Council.

On any given day, we receive 20 – 25% of our power from two power plants located in Arizona: Navajo, a coal-fired plant, and Palo Verde, a nuclear plant.

We are part owner of both power plants, which are generating assets of the Department. As such, nothing in the City’s resolution is inconsistent with our continuing to receive power from those LADWP-owned assets.

I might add that, as the City’s Job Czar, I certainly would welcome any conventions or meetings that were going to be held in Arizona to come to Los Angeles. We have fantastic facilities and incomparable weather and we’d welcome them to the City of Angels.”

– Austin Beutner, General Manager, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power

@nojo: I didn’t see, you got it, but its fucking priceless, absolutely priceless.

@Promnight: I was quite surprised by it. You’d expect something more mealy-mouthed from a public utility.

@nojo: Can you imagine, though, the anger, seeing that this Arizona moron made this ridiculous threat, and was such a fucktard, he didn’t even know who OWNED the power plants in AZ, imagine this public utility bureaucrat, normally timid and mealy-mouthed, as you say, but, here he is, observing a public statement of such ludicrous idiocy, knowing he has the ability to smack it down so thoroughly and effortlessly, well, sometimes even a bureaucrat can’t resist the impulse to be real.

@Promnight: I just wish I were in LA tonight to buy Mr. Beutner a cocktail or three. I hope that Dodger, Tommy, Cassandra, et al, have already made the offer on behalf of Stinquers around the globe.

And if some mealy-mouthed boss is giving him shit for that or firing him, we’re starting the legal defense fund.

@Promnight:
If LA owns those power plants there’s only one for Airzona to do–use its sovereign power to nationalize them! Ok, that smacks of socialism so tax the hell out of the powerlines. Wait, taxes bad. So you find a somebody who’s willing to drive a pickup full of explosives into a tower carrying the powerlines. Ah jeez, that’s jihadist. Well, there’s always room for empty threats.

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