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"I usually take a VERY dim view on unions, seeing what they have done to the infamous "Rust Belt" (where I am)."

Funny how that works. I feel the exact same way about management, seeing as what they did to Silicon Valley with their H1-b workers. If you havn't been there, Silicon Valley is pretty much like Hong Kong nowadays, unless you are in the area that is pretty much like India or Mexico. The moral of the story is that we all fight "the last war", or those wounds that sting most recently are the ones we are most prompt to attend to.

Re California deregulation, no argument there save one. When I used to live there, I went out of my way to buy my house in Santa Clara. Why? Because the city of Santa Clara has a municipal utility! My power supplied from there was more reliable than the power that came from PG&E, and cost about %30 less. When everybody else was watching their power bills skyrocket, ours stayed reasonable. The utility had signed some long term contracts that kept them on a even keel. Although I do agree that their recent "deregulation" (note the quotes) was a disaster from the word go, neither public or private, badly conceived and executed.

Now, if you want to talk about government functions that should be privatized, say no more! Education is number one on my list! There is a government institution that very much needs to be defunded and disbanded. Let communities and individual citizens decide how they want to educate their children.

Electricity, however, is one of those private things that I'm wondering if maybe it wouldn't be better off in public hands.

Ones' experiences do tend to color one's judgement. I haven't been anywhere near Silicon Valley (a bit too far from the land of cheese and beer), but I can see that point as well (not that a union would have been able to quash that aspect without quashing the rest of the Valley).

Regarding muni utilities, IIRC, the California ones were exempt from having to go to day-to-day contracts. That gave Santa Clara/LA/et al an unfair advantage vis-a-vis PG&E/SoCalEd/et al. That's not to say that PG&E and SoCalEd didn't royally <expletive deleted> up; just that the munis were set up to survive no matter what.

As for the price differences, I can't speak to the specifics, but a good part had to be because Santa Clara didn't have to go into the speculative market. Other contributing factors probably were the fact that Santa Clara didn't have to make a profit, and they could tap into tax revenues to keep things artificially low (I'll say again, I don't know that either or both happened, just that I strongly suspect the first, with the second having at least a shot of being true).

FWIW, outside of interstate transmission, electricity is still regulated here in Wisconsin (though outside of a couple of small muni utilities, it's private). Because there was a serious disincentive to build until we were looking at brownouts, nobody built. We managed to survive that summer, and the utilities found just enough power to get by for the next few years. Of course, their plans to add capacity are languishing before the government, but at least they are trying to boost capacity.

This action is purely political, there are strikes sprouting up all over the country and I'll tell you why. The union bosses, who I despise, are in an unholy alliance with the democrat party and this is an effort to shift the debate from terrorism to the economy, nothing more nothing less.

Longshoremen making an average 114k per year, with another 40k in benefits and a guranteed 50k in pension is reminiscent of the 60k per year riveter 30 years ago that almost killed the American auto industry.

The longshoremen should be thankful to be amongst the winners in the luck of the draw, not pulling this sh$t during this time.