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Pacific Gas and Electric Co. is getting incinerated by California politicians for shutting off power to two million residents amid heavy, dry winds. The publicly traded San Francisco-based utility has been found responsible for two dozen or so wildfires since 2016, some caused by power lines sagging from steel towers more than a century old. The purpose of the blackouts was to avoid more damage from an aging grid that has not been adequately maintained. In January PG&E filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy to restructure tens of billions of dollars in liabilities, including for wildfire. Democrats, including Gov. Gavin Newsom,...

SAN FRANCISCO—Californians are facing a potential second round of pre-emptive power outages, with the state’s largest utility working to prevent its equipment from sparking wildfires as hot, gusty winds are forecast later this week. PG&E Corp. said Monday it might cut electricity to parts of 16 counties in the Sierra Foothills and north of San Francisco. About 200,000 households and businesses were notified that they might lose power starting late Wednesday, the bankrupt utility said. At a press conference, PG&E Chief Executive Bill Johnson said shutting off power to hundreds of thousands of customers again might be necessary, given how...

Key Points: Expired food is regularly sold to consumers via third-party vendors on Amazon. Amazon's marketplace has grown to millions of sellers, making it hard for the company to adequately police the platform. Many brands have grown so frustrated by the abundance of expired products that they're taking steps to clean up the marketplace themselves. ------------------------------------------------- Amazon's sprawling marketplace, consisting of millions of third-party sellers, has become a go-to site for many grocery shoppers, especially since the company's acquisition of Whole Foods over two years ago. But an increasing number of consumers are finding that, just as the broader Amazon...

A left-wing group that specializes in launching boycotts of businesses with ties to President Donald Trump is now targeting Louis Vuitton because the fashion company allowed President Donald Trump and others in his administration to visit its new handbag factory in Texas on Thursday. In an alphabetized list of companies it recommends consumers boycott, the Grab Your Wallet website gives the reason for targeting Louis Vuitton as being because “French businessman and chairman of LVMH Bernard Arnault did a photo op with the Trump administration workshop in Texas.”

If I were an American Indian, I'd be about done with the Democrats. First, we had Elizabeth Warren playing Indian to take a couple of Ivy League teaching slots via affirmative action. Now we have Joe Biden's ne'er-do-well junior, Hunter Biden, involved with people who ripped off Indian tribes. That's quite a pattern of corruption in itself, given Hunter's tainted money hauls from Ukraine's Russia-linked oligarchs as well as communist China's princeling overlords. But it's particularly disgusting because it involves robbing the Indians. According to an exclusive from the Daily Caller: Participants in a multi-million dollar scheme to defraud an...

The dozens of former and current Target employees interviewed said that less hours have made it difficult or even impossible for them to pay their bills or get health insurance. “I got that dollar raise but I’m getting $200 less in my paycheck,” said Heather, a employee whose hours were cut from full-time to 20 hours per week. “I have no idea how I’m going to pay rent or buy food.” Target employees become eligible for health insurance if they average over 30 hours a week. However, a number of employees who were working more than that say they have...

China’s growth slows to weakest level in 27 years China’s economy expanded at its slowest rate in nearly three decades in the third quarter, hit by cooling domestic demand and a protracted US trade war, data showed today. Chinese gross domestic product expanded 6% in the three months from July to September, down from 6.2% in the second quarter, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). The reading – in line with an AFP survey of 13 analysts – is the worst quarterly figure since 1992 but within the government’s target range of 6-6.5% for the whole year. China’s...

Of all the market-moving tweets these days, one in particular from Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Elizabeth Warren is sending shivers through the oil industry. “On my first day as president, I will sign an executive order that puts a total moratorium on all new fossil fuel leases for drilling offshore and on public lands,” she tweeted on Sept. 6. “And I will ban fracking—everywhere.” Outlawing a technique that energy producers use to blast oil and gas from shale formations would require legislation and spur a torrent of opposition from companies, investors and probably even state governments. Substantial as those hurdles...

SoftBank is in very advanced talks to take control of embattled work space company WeWork, according to people familiar with the matter. SoftBank, led by Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son, plans to spend somewhere between $4 billion and $5 billion on new funding and existing shares, sources say. The deal will value WeWork between $7.5 billion to $8 billion on a pre-funding basis and could be announced as soon as Tuesday. It is SoftBank itself taking control, not the start-up focused Vision Fund. After the move, Softbank would then have as much as 70% or more control of WeWork.

<p>MADISON, Wis. (AP) -- Democratic Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers is calling the Republican-controlled Legislature into a special session to take up a pair of gun control measures that GOP leaders have been unwilling to debate.</p> <p>The move Evers announced Monday does not force Republicans to debate or vote on the bills. But it does give Democrats another means to spotlight the issues that a poll in August showed more than 80% of the public support.</p>

It is one of the most famous social-science papers of all time. Carried out in the 1990s, the “blind audition” study attempted to document sexist bias in orchestra hiring. Lionized by Malcolm Gladwell, extolled by Harvard thought leaders, and even cited in a dissent by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the study showed that when orchestras auditioned musicians “blindly,” behind a screen, women’s success rates soared. Or did they? Nobody questions the basic facts that led to the study’s publication. During the 1970s and ’80s, America’s orchestras became more open and democratic. To ensure impartiality, several introduced blind auditions. Two economists,...

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has a habit of bullying others to cover for and fix his policy blunders. In another display of political grace, Mr. Cuomo has ordered the utility National Grid to resume natural-gas hookups that were suspended after his senseless pipeline veto this spring. Mr. Cuomo wants to make New York ground zero in the left’s plan to purge fossil fuels. First he banned shale fracking in southern New York despite its huge potential to boost local economies. Then he blocked a natural-gas pipeline from Pennsylvania that would have reduced energy bills and reliance on heating oil....

It didn’t take long for Batwoman to show up on our radars again. The CW show already started off bland and annoying, and now it’s back for more. Given our social justice warrior lead, it only makes sense to make a Trump stand-in the bad guy. The October 20 episode “Down Down Down” introduces us to a new character named Tommy Elliot (Gabriel Mann). An old friend of Bruce Wayne/Batman’s, Tommy is a wealthy real estate tycoon known for putting up large walls to protect the elite neighborhoods in the city to “make Gotham safe again.” As the obvious Trump...

Damon Lindelof created a re-imagining of Alan Moore’s The Watchmen on HBO...to portray redneck racists versus black vigilantes. The premiere episode on Sunday, “It’s Summer and We’re Running Out of Ice,” introduces disjointed elements of this parallel present day universe. Racism is the center of this retelling. The story starts with a flashback to the 1921 Tulsa race riots. Gunshots echo everywhere while people on fire run away screaming in terror. Members of the KKK, all in white, stampede through the streets. This is very different from The Watchmen of comic lore, which focused more on nuclear and international threats....

With three polls showing her in the lead, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) may soon eclipse former Vice President Joe Biden as the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination. That’s great news for Republicans, because Warren has a problem: The central message of her campaign is that the economy is working for the very wealthy but it is not working for ordinary Americans. Unfortunately for her, ordinary Americans disagree. A Marist poll asked voters whether “the economy is working well for you personally.” Nearly two-thirds of Americans said yes. This includes large majorities in almost every demographic group. Sixty-seven percent of...

It’s hard to keep up with all the studies touting South Carolina as a great place to do business. The latest, from Area Development magazine, ranked South Carolina third-best overall in its 2019 Top States for Doing Business, behind only Georgia and Tennessee. The magazine based its rankings on states’ objective and subjective scores on a dozen attributes. It found that South Carolina had the nation’s best business incentives and its second-best workforce development programs. We finished third in shovel-ready sites, cooperative and responsive state government, favorable utility rates, speed of permitting and overall cost of doing business. We had...

Nobel-prize winning economist Robert Shiller believes a recession may be years away due to a bullish Trump effect in the market. According to the Yale University professor, President Donald Trump is creating an environment that’s conducive to strong consumer spending, and it’s a major force that should hold off a recession. Before the markets can take-off, Shiller stresses President Trump needs to get past the impeachment inquiry. He sees this as the biggest threat to his optimistic forecast. Yet, he’s sticking with the idea that the economy and markets should have a lot of runway left for gains if President...

The conventional wisdom in American politics is that the coasts represent the economic future of the United States. Higher incomes and potential growth seem to be with cities like San Francisco, New York, and Seattle. Even in the aftermath of her 2016 loss, Hillary Clinton famously dismissed flyover country, saying, “I won the places that represent two-thirds of American gross domestic product. So I won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward.” In many ways, however, the coastal regions that Clinton lauds represent the equivalent of a personal finance ponzi scheme. While many topline statistics like average income...

For every soldier on the battlefield, electric car battery or guts of a smartphone or solar panel, there is lithium to help power them. Now, a Williamsport-based company has been able to extract the mineral right beneath the region’s feet. Through a patented process, Eureka Resources, headquartered at 454 Pine St., has developed a technique at its Bradford County plant to extract the rare earth mineral — in high demand and short supply in the United States — from wastewater flowback used in the hydraulic fracturing process in the Marcellus Shale. “We’re excited our company that purifies water, salt and...

CPI Aerostructures Inc.’s stock climbed Thursday after the company announced that it had won a contract worth as much as $48 million to re-wing Cold War-era A-10 “Warthog” jets, which the Pentagon previously had marked for retirement. Vincent Palazzolo, chief financial officer of Edgewood-based CPI Aero, said in an email that the aerospace manufacturer has been seeking to add 10 to 15 employees to its workforce of 305 and that an additional 10 to 15 would be needed when A-10 work ramps up in 2020. Shares of CPI Aero climbed 2.4 percent Thursday to close at $8.19. The stock was...