When the lights, go out, in the city...
By Libby
Our humble correspondent Allahpundit at the incredibly aptly named Hot Air -- did they realize when they named it the phrase means "full of sh*t -- posts
a long whine about ConEd's power grid problems and blames the Democrats for the power failure in Manhattan. Did he forget it was the GOP who deregulated the industry in 96 with the express promise that the "free market" was going to bring us superior service at reduced prices?
All that money to be made via dereg was supposed to go to improving the grid and lowering consumer costs. Instead the profits have been kept in the corporate pockets and the grids have gone to hell because they only provide bare maintainence and the consumer costs have sharply risen because they want to charge the consumer for what should properly be their operating costs before profits.
I'm not saying the Dems are blameless, but they're certainly not the root cause of the problem. Not that the Hot Air aficionados will ever make the connection. They'll just believe their Allah. I find that so very sad.
Our humble correspondent Allahpundit at the incredibly aptly named Hot Air -- did they realize when they named it the phrase means "full of sh*t -- posts
a long whine about ConEd's power grid problems and blames the Democrats for the power failure in Manhattan. Did he forget it was the GOP who deregulated the industry in 96 with the express promise that the "free market" was going to bring us superior service at reduced prices?
All that money to be made via dereg was supposed to go to improving the grid and lowering consumer costs. Instead the profits have been kept in the corporate pockets and the grids have gone to hell because they only provide bare maintainence and the consumer costs have sharply risen because they want to charge the consumer for what should properly be their operating costs before profits.
I'm not saying the Dems are blameless, but they're certainly not the root cause of the problem. Not that the Hot Air aficionados will ever make the connection. They'll just believe their Allah. I find that so very sad.
posted by Libby Spencer at 7:06 PM
5 Comments:
For God's sake! Remember when the lights went out in New York in the 60s? (9 months later there was a baby boom). I can't believe the foolishness. The problem is there are too many pampered people drawing too much energy to run their air conditioners at deep freeze levels. No conspiracy, no deregulation fallout,just the overindulgence of many people.
The demand problem is certainly driven by people carelessly using the power Rocky but the grid problems are directly attributable to corporate greed.
My experience with hurricanes over the last few years bears out the well established fact that Florida Power and Light made an open decision to halt maintenance in order to keep profits up and to pass any resultant losses on to the public.
The devastating and prolonged loss of power in South Florida was directly attributable to the cessation of tree trimming and line maintenance. Money that could have been used to bury power lines, replace rotten poles, replace transformers and trim trees that had been ignored for over a decade went to dividends - even as rates went up. In the aftermath, the first reaction was to raise rates further.
The solution to crumbling infrastructure is not a Luddite life style, but transparency and oversight and enough regulation to assure that public utilities serve the public.
Seems like we were a lot better off when the "monopolies",like ConEd and Ma Bell were in charge of utilities.
Funny, I remember being glad when they broke up Ma Bell, but it didn't make phone service any better.
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