Kucinich: Power To The People

[eablair3]

real interesting piece from the pen of Dennis K.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16625

Power to the People

By Rep. Dennis Kucinich, AlterNet
August 19, 2003

Editor's Note: The following was written by Dennis Kucinich from the campaign trail in Iowa.

With an estimated 50 million Americans and Canadians left without power and in some cases water, common sense requires us to reflect on the absurdity of deregulation of public utilities. The right of utility franchise is vested in the people. We give utilities permission to operate, and enable them to set up a profit making business in exchange for the promise of affordable and reliable service.

In 1992, investor-owned utilities pushed the Democratic House to pass HR776, which granted electric utilities broad powers. The bill was supposed to restructure the electric utility industry to spur competition.

Instead, utilities used deregulation to effect a series of mergers limiting competition. In order to accelerate profits, cost cutting ensued, involving the layoff of thousands of utility company employees, including some who where responsible for maintenance of generation, transmission and distribution systems. A number of investor-owned utilities stopped investing in the maintenance and repair of their own equipment, choosing to cut costs to enhance the value of their stock rather than spending money to enhance the value of their service.

snip

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16625

(it's good article and well worth clicking over to read the whole thing)

[bobthedrummer]

1. eablair3, thanx for posting!

Very informative. I've bookmarked it.
:hi:

[cosmicdot]

2. light up America

aka wake-up America

support the people-infrastructure-future focused candidate

I love smelling the antithesis to * in the morning (afternoon and night)

[Ardee]

3. Deregulation and privatisation

two mantras of right wing ideology. Can anyone name an industry that has been deregulated or an institution that has been privatised that is running better ,more efficiently or at lower cost to the consumer ?

[eablair3]

4. it's really state sanctioned monopolies, is it not?

if you pay off the politicians enough you get deregulation and/or privatization, which is just another word for state sanctioned or state authorized monopolies. They are just a license to steal from the people.

as far as deregulation and your question, I heard many cite the airline industry that was deregulated 20 years ago. Not sure if I agree with that one, but that may be the closest thing to a "success."

can't think of any privatization examples.

[Ardee]

5. the airline industry?

Our airline industry? The one that has cut back on maintenance, overbooks, cancels flights, flies dirty aircraft ,dispenses stale peanuts and inedible food, flies aging fleets? That industry?