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Old 08-17-2003, 10:44 AM
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Default Power outage traced to a "Dim Bulb" in the whitehouse!

Just what I've been saying all along. Root causes of problems today can be contributed to Daddy Bush & Baby Bush!

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POWER OUTAGE TRACED TO DIM BULB IN WHITE HOUSE --- The Tale of The Brits Who Swiped 800 Jobs From New York, Carted Off $90 Million, Then Tonight, Turned Off Our Lights
ZNet
Friday, August 15, 2003

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by Greg Palast

I can tell you all about the ne're-do-wells that put out our lights tonight. I came up against these characters -- the Niagara Mohawk Power Company -- some years back. You see, before I was a journalist, I worked for a living, as an investigator of corporate racketeers. In the 1980s, "NiMo" built a nuclear plant, Nine Mile Point, a brutally costly piece of hot junk for which NiMo and its partner companies charged billions to New York State's electricity ratepayers.

To pull off this grand theft by kilowatt, the NiMo-led consortium fabricated cost and schedule reports, then performed a Harry Potter job on the account books. In 1988, I showed a jury a memo from an executive from one partner, Long Island Lighting, giving a lesson to a NiMo honcho on how to lie to government regulators. The jury ordered LILCO to pay $4.3 billion and, ultimately, put them out of business.

And that's why, if you're in the Northeast, you're reading this by candlelight tonight. Here's what happened. After LILCO was hammered by the law, after government regulators slammed Niagara Mohawk and dozens of other book-cooking, document-doctoring utility companies all over America with fines and penalties totaling in the tens of billions of dollars, the industry leaders got together to swear never to break the regulations again. Their plan was not to follow the rules, but to ELIMINATE the rules. They called it "deregulation."

It was like a committee of bank robbers figuring out how to make safecracking legal.

But they dare not launch the scheme in the USA. Rather, in 1990, one devious little bunch of operators out of Texas, Houston Natural Gas, operating under the alias "Enron," talked an over-the-edge free-market fanatic, Britain's Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, into licensing the first completely deregulated power plant in the hemisphere.

And so began an economic disease called "regulatory reform" that spread faster than SARS. Notably, Enron rewarded Thatcher's Energy Minister, one Lord Wakeham, with a bushel of dollar bills for 'consulting' services and a seat on Enron's board of directors. The English experiment proved the viability of Enron's new industrial formula: that the enthusiasm of politicians for deregulation was in direct proportion to the payola provided by power companies.

The power elite first moved on England because they knew Americans wouldn't swallow the deregulation snake oil easily. The USA had gotten used to cheap power available at the flick of switch. This was the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt who, in 1933, caged the man he thought to be the last of the power pirates, Samuel Insull. Wall Street wheeler-dealer Insull created the Power Trust, and six decades before Ken Lay, faked account books and ripped off consumers. To frustrate Insull and his ilk, FDR gave us the Federal Power Commission and the Public Utilities Holding Company Act which told electricity companies where to stand and salute. Detailed regulations limited charges to real expenditures plus a government-set profit. The laws banned power "trading" and required companies to keep the lights on under threat of arrest -- no blackout blackmail to hike rates.

Of particular significance as I write here in the dark, regulators told utilities exactly how much they had to spend to insure the system stayed in repair and the lights stayed on. Bureaucrats crawled along the wire and, like me, crawled through the account books, to make sure the power execs spent customers' money on parts and labor. If they didn't, we'd whack'm over the head with our thick rule books. Did we get in the way of these businessmen's entrepreneurial spirit? Damn right we did.

Most important, FDR banned political contributions from utility companies -- no 'soft' money, no 'hard' money, no money PERIOD.

But then came George the First. In 1992, just prior to his departure from the White House, President Bush Senior gave the power industry one long deep-through-the-teeth kiss good-bye: federal deregulation of electricity. It was a legacy he wanted to leave for his son, the gratitude of power companies which ponied up $16 million for the Republican campaign of 2000, seven times the sum they gave Democrats.

But Poppy Bush's gift of deregulating of wholesale prices set by the feds only got the power pirates halfway to the plunder of Joe Ratepayer. For the big payday they needed deregulation at the state level. There were only two states, California and Texas, big enough and Republican enough to put the electricity market con into operation.

California fell first. The power companies spent $39 million to defeat a 1998 referendum pushed by Ralph Nadar which would have blocked the de-reg scam. Another $37 million was spent on lobbying and lubricating the campaign coffers of the state's politicians to write a lie into law: in the deregulation act's preamble, the Legislature promised that deregulation would reduce electricity bills by 20%. In fact, when in the first California city to go "lawless," San Diego, the 20% savings became a 300% jump in surcharges.

Enron circled California and licked its lips. As the number one contributor to the George W. Bush campaigns, it was confident about the future. With just a half dozen other companies it controlled at times 100% of the available power capacity needed to keep the Golden State lit. Their motto, "your money or your lights."

Enron and its comrades played the system like a broken ATM machine, yanking out the bills. For example, in the shamelessly fixed "auctions" for electricity held by the state, Enron bid, in one instance, to supply 500 megawatts of electricity over a 15 megawatt line. That's like pouring a gallon of gasoline into a thimble -- the lines would burn up if they attempted it. Faced with blackout because of Enron's destructive bid, the state was willing to pay anything to keep the lights on.

And the state did. According to Dr. Anjali Sheffrin, economist with the California state Independent System Operator which directs power deliveries, between May and November 2000, three power giants physically or "economically" withheld power from the state and concocted enough false bids to cost the California customers over $6.2 billion in excess charges.

It took until December 20, 2000, with the lights going out on the Golden Gate, for President Bill Clinton, once a deregulation booster, to find his lost Democratic soul and impose price caps in California and ban Enron from the market.

But the light-bulb buccaneers didn't have to wait long to put their hooks back into the treasure chest. Within seventy-two hours of moving into the White House, while he was still sweeping out the inaugural champagne bottles, George Bush the Second reversed Clinton's executive order and put the power pirates back in business in California. Enron, Reliant (aka Houston Industries), TXU (aka Texas Utilities) and the others who had economically snipped California's wires knew they could count on Dubya, who as governor of the Lone Star state cut them the richest deregulation deal in America.

Meanwhile, the deregulation bug made it to New York where Republican Governor George Pataki and his industry-picked utility commissioners ripped the lid off electric bills and relieved my old friends at Niagara Mohawk of the expensive obligation to properly fund the maintenance of the grid system.

And the Pataki-Bush Axis of Weasels permitted something that must have former New York governor Roosevelt spinning in his wheelchair in Heaven: They allowed a foreign company, the notoriously incompetent National Grid of England, to buy up NiMo, get rid of 800 workers and pocket most of their wages - producing a bonus for NiMo stockholders approaching $90 million.

Is tonight's black-out a surprise? Heck, no, not to us in the field who've watched Bush's buddies flick the switches across the globe. In Brazil, Houston Industries seized ownership of Rio de Janeiro's electric company. The Texans (aided by their French partners) fired workers, raised prices, cut maintenance expenditures and, CLICK! the juice went out so often the locals now call it, "Rio Dark."

So too the free-market British buckaroos controlling Niagara Mohawk raised prices, slashed staff, cut maintenance and CLICK! -- New York joins Brazil in the Dark Ages.

Californians have found the solution to the deregulation disaster: re-call the only governor in the nation with the cojones to stand up to the electricity price fixers. And unlike Arnold Schwarzenegger, Gov. Gray Davis stood alone against the bad guys without using a body double. Davis called Reliant Corp of Houston a pack of "pirates" --and now he'll walk the plank for daring to stand up to the Texas marauders.

So where's the President? Just before he landed on the deck of the Abe Lincoln, the White House was so concerned about our brave troops facing the foe that they used the cover of war for a new push in Congress for yet more electricity deregulation. This has a certain logic: there's no sense defeating Iraq if a hostile regime remains in California.

Sitting in the dark, as my laptop battery runs low, I don't know if the truth about deregulation will ever see the light --until we change the dim bulb in the White House.

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See Greg Palast's award-winning reports for BBC Television and the Guardian papers of Britain at www.GregPalast.com. Contact Palast at his New York office: media@gregpalast.com.

Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" (Penguin USA) and the worstseller, "Democracy and Regulation," a guide to electricity deregulation published by the United Nations (written with T. MacGregor and J. Oppenheim).
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Old 08-18-2003, 06:10 AM
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Gimpy -
Gotta hand it to that author, if Bush II (or Clinton, or Bush I, or Reagan etc.) would have stood up to the energy cartel the way Davis tried to do in California, then america would be a whole different and better place.

Now I'm gettin' irked again to hear the energy companies talking about needing taxpayers to finance the necessary additional transmission lines! Poor babies...they just DO NOT have enough money to support themselves.

Gee, I have a business! I need a new computer system, a bigger nicer office, better stationery, my phone bill is too high! Taxpayers oughta pay for it, right?

Speaking of which, I am STILL p----d of at Cheney for refusing to release the names of those people who attended his energy management confab a couple of years ago. Who the hell does he think he works for?
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Old 08-18-2003, 08:36 AM
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Blue he's king bushII mouth peice.
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Old 08-18-2003, 09:22 AM
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Blues,
Don't ya know brother blues... don't ya know.

Bluehawk, flyin' free
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Old 08-18-2003, 10:10 AM
HARDCORE HARDCORE is offline
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Lightbulb GIMPY MY FRIEND

Hey I wasn't going to respond until I read the the whole piece, but your title about the "Dim Bulb" captured my interest immediately! (LOL)

Now if you'll excuse me, I'll get to reading the text of your material!!

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Old 08-18-2003, 11:22 AM
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Lightbulb wait

In the last ten years power needs in the northeast have increased 34% however new power ( power plants etc) have only increased about 15% and are constantly being sued for making the world dirty or whatever.

States not allowing new power plants isn't the presidents turf. If it was and the problem has been getting worst for ten years, well has GW really been president for ten years? Wasn't Hillery's husband around for at least part of that time?

In the north east there are plans for 3 new nuke plants which would produce enough electricity so our part of the country could export power. However, the tree huggers have stopped those plans at every step down the road. Is George also responsible for the heat wave in Europe???

By the way those up state New York power employees did get a really raw deal. However the power outage started in Ohio. I'm not sure what upstate New York people could have done once the domino effect hit them.

Now, just to keep things in prospective, I do feel that organizations like electric producers are of vital national interest and should be regulated. John Kerry, the front runner among the Democrats who want to be president has never cast a vote opposed to deregulation of power companies. Might want to keep that in mind.

Stay healthy,
Andy
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Old 08-18-2003, 11:25 AM
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Nuclear power plants are a clean and easy solution to all of this madness. Look who has consistently opposed them...

Larry
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Old 08-18-2003, 01:45 PM
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Larry, and others here -
I agree 100% about nuclear power plants, and how 'bout sending the waste on an indefinite trajectory away from earth into deep deep deep space instead of planting it under our deserts? Alternatively, how about the Sahara.

- Other current breaking news... good ole american capitalism never fails to rise to an occasion, good, bad or indifferent. Now that we know for sure these "unanticipated" emergency costs for more transmission lines (estimated to be at least $100,000,000,000 just to get to zero status) WILL most definitely be "passed along to the consumer", "unfortunately", the financial prognosticators on Wall Street are suggesting good ways for americans to play their personal finances for good benefit by doing the following: (ink is not yet dry on reporting the dang event!)

> Long-term Utility Company stocks and bonds will, eventually, pay off on this emergency handsomely, assuming deregulation works (and probably even if it doesn't, for that matter)... so Con Ed etc. are good bets for a portfolio, they say. That is IF the Utility companies can figure out a way (DUH!) to ensure a "high rate of return on their investment", "so as to maximize benefit for their stockholders." (my goodness, how surprising and novel!)

> Shorter-term investments should be aimed at companies who manufacture and have anything to do with electrical generators (kinda scary, ain't it) such as General Motors, Caterpillar, Capstone, Honda and others.

- Sounds like a windfall all around, for a few thousand of our citizens anyhow! Great news!?! I guess the rest of us just get the honor of paying for it?

> I remember in New Mexico how long it took for the utility company to build a fairly short section of lines out there... the NIMBYs (or as Tom DeLay calls them now, the BANANAs) were apoplectic over spoiled vistas, micro-radiation affecting their yoga and ruining their golden seal root crops. All the while driving twelve-ton SUVs to the convenience store for 8 ozs. of water, running 214 different household appliances and demanding better reception for their 5-cell phone family. Oh yeah, and the ATM better work every time without fail, too.

Given how much public land there actually is in many parts of America, one would think that this IS one thing the Federal government really MUST be controlling (e.g. get out of the education business and into utilities). It would seem that even emminent domain wouldn't have THAT much effect on private land owners either! I mean, owners get paid for their land or huge easement, the power company guys are not Genghis Kahn types to work with, America prospers by having plenty of lines to go around, wind farmers can sell their power, investment brokers get commissions, fuel sells, employment increases, a cushion against terrorist computer-fiddling with our energy needs is built, etc.

No?
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