Man, this power blackout story is growing some HMF legs!

[gristy]

We've got Greg Palast slamming the BFEE in Power outage traced to dim bulb in White House (LOL!).

We've learned that Scientists Had Warned of Weak Power Grid (Bush was warned in November)

We've got O'Reilly falling over himself to give Palast a forum for his views

We've got a tinfoil hat theory from Will Pitt about how a federal judge ruled a week ago that an Ohio utility violated the Clean Air Act

More tinfoil from New Zealand: They appear to be trying to blame it on God... which begs lots of ????s

Getting to the bottom of this will be interesting, to say the least: "Mr. Gent and other officials could offer no explanation for the failure of a series of systems that are supposed to isolate such problems, keeping a blackout in one region from dragging its neighbors into darkness, as happened on Thursday." link

Bush has already begun to spin this with a "golly, we've got to modernize (read: privatize or further deregulate?) our utilities". Will he ask for help from Congress to pay for any modernization? And WHAT KIND OF OVERSIGHT WILL HE ASK FOR TO MAKE SURE THAT MONEY IS PROPERLY SPENT?

Will he remain a free-market (and cheap labor) conservative to the end? Or will he at some point realize the need for careful regulation of natural monopolies?

[inthecorneroverhere]

1. 'natural' monopolies???

How can there be such a thing as a 'natural' monopoly????

Man created 'em all!!!

[gristy]

4. by "natural monopoly"

I mean a business which is best suited to be run as a monopoly. Yes, man did create them all...

[On the Road]

10. Electric Utilities ARE a Natural Monopoly

meaning that it's more efficient to let one company serve a market and regulate it than to mandate competition. Two companies each laying its own electic cable in the same residential area is not going to make prices go down.

The secret is to regulate wisely. This has obviously not been done in the area of interconnection and long-haul transmission/

[Warpy]

11. Well, yes and no

The problem with the regulation of transmission over the grid is that it is voluntary. Most companies have respected it because not to do so means the grid will go down. All it takes is one, though, and the whole thing collapses.

[meow2u3]

30. You hit the nail on the proverbial head, ribo

But let me put it a little more succinctly--and with a lighter touch:

If you let two electric companies put down electrical cable for electrical utilities in the same area, you're likely gonna see massive sparks from all the friction generated!

[DoYouEverWonder]

2. Where's Cheney?

I wouldn't be surprised if this whole thing was because his defribulator set off some kind of power surge. Happens everytime he has an organism from counting all his money.

[NJCher]

3. thanks for the links, Gristy

Looks like some good reading. Might want to correct that first one as it has two too many slashes in the URL.


Cher

[gristy]

5. Fixed.

Thanks.

[dpbrown]

6. Thanks for putting these links all together

This sure looks like a direct consequence of deregulation to me.

Dan Brown
Saint Paul, Minnesota

[ParanoidPat]

7. Geee...You forgot the most important story.....

..... Steep Spike in Power Protection Co. Stock – 4 HOURS BEFORE BLACKOUT! :evilgrin:
That reminds me, what ever happened to all those put options on the airline and insurance stocks the day before 9/11? :shrug:

Why has there never been any disclosure about who profited from them? :(

[SoCalDem]

8. This $15 BILLION+ scam goes back the Cheney's "meetings"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=181793

[Eloriel]

27. Don't skip SoCalDem's link! It reveals a lot. n/t

.

[Gloria]

9. And Thursday night, Mr. Gent said on CNN that "Someone broke the rules"

What does that cryptic statement mean???? He said that the 21 plants were supposed to work together in a cooperative manner to avoid problems.

Who is the someone that BROKE THE RULES??

Has this quote appeared in any stories????

(I posted in General Discussion on Thursday night when I heard Gent)

[NYC]

12. I think he was referring to Ohio.

Ohio was supposed to take itself "offline" when it failed. It was supposed to go black, and not burden the remaining participants.

[Gloria]

17. Thanks for explaining that "rules" thing...NYC

Hope you're back to normal in NYC!!

[hedda_foil]

22. I heard on CBS News today that the rules are VOLUNTARY.

And now we all know that it takes for fuckingever for a nuke plant to go back up once it's been taken offline in a cascade like this. That doesn't seem to bode well for their little plan to build tons of the damn things.

[NYC]

28. Well, Ohio certainly thought so.

Re you heard the rules were voluntary.

I haven't turned on the television today, but a friend in Florida said she saw on The Today Show (?) information about the stock price spike and that UK company owned grid. She mentioned Ron Insana & Jeff Greenberg.

Something is up.

Patrick (?) posted above that NYC was threatened with blackouts because ENRON wanted in. That makes sense. I wondered why all of a sudden they were saying (a few years ago) that they couldn't possibly handle the electricity demand in NYC. It didn't even make sense that in a COOLER summer, all of a sudden they were predicting an electricity shortage -- making me wonder: Where did the electricity go? Also, as Patrick (?) mentioned, with the demise of Enron, the threats and predictions stopped.

What can I say? When the lights went out, I was foolish enough to think we were having a blackout. The more I read, the more it looks lie we were getting screwed.

[gristy]

13. Depending on what investigative reporting gets into the mainstream press

in the next couple days (starting with what Palast reported today), the electricity utility story (not just the blackout story) just may be the one that pulls bush* below 50% approval. Finally.

Maybe it will increase pressure on finding out what was discussed in Cheney's energy meetings, too.

[NYC]

14. Another link re U.K. ownership of grid:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=68643

Direct link:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=434095

[PATRICK]

15. From Niagara Falls!

Ha! Our first scheduled getaway in years to an overnight air-conditioned hotel in power rich Niagara Falls Canada. I win the preminiscent luck award. Left my kids home sweltering to gobble down the ice cream, burn candles and feed pets. NiagaraFalls barely skipped a beat.

Anyway, asking real people, not the empty suits on national news, I quickly got the main drift that the Americans tried very hard and very very stupidly to blame Canada. A fire in a station across the river was THE story for several hours before NYS grudgingly admitted there was not any clear sky lightning strike across the way- as the Canadian meteorologists had to prove. It was a riot listening to all the US News poking thier excited heads outside the studios and interviewing puzzled and excited foreign toursits while New Yorkers sweltered.

Ok. Some history. When California was being raped over New York was set up to hurriedly deregulate over to Enron. Somehow ALL the panic about ominous blackouts that COULD happen in NYS vanished when Enron sank. 911
also surpassed all other rational concerns, no matter how pressing. Then the state went broke and Pataki had to HIDE all problems and promise useless pork while dynamos burned.

The Bush/Cheney machine to build coal plants and dirty reactors has been slow for various reasons. You can see how this major plan to play the energy mess for Enron WOULD have developed along with the public getting used to fear, glitches and power losses eerily similar to the
unsteady functioning of ELECTRONIC voting machines themselves. Oh yeah, and ironically I just got my energy bill where they boasted of saving money by buying hydroelectric power from Canada(our nuke reactor sucks). THAT meant the linkage into an expanded grid was recent, recreating the sixties scenario while crossing fingers and trusting to luck. Except with Bush all luck is bad- for the people anyway.

This cosmic revelation of incompetence and nefarious neglect was not in the big plan schedule. That is why all the usual suspects look nervous. Davis recalled? Pataki should be impeached then. Bush and Cheney arrested as traitors. That is the magnitude of judgement if there was any fairness. Davis should be howling this LOUD.

So with all this HOMELAND SECURITY the entire eastern seaboard is nothing but a set of cheap dominoes that one stick of dynamite can topple over???? Don't you think that is the heart of a real story, how this system is set to fantastically implode after several such linkage failures in the past? It was neglected waiting for the middleman to game the inefficiencies while controlling every nickel and dime of a tottering system. That is how they do water, votes, energy, war, security....EVERYTHING.

Nothing matters in heaven or on earth than the warped little interest of their business and their agenda. Nada. Nothing. Rien.

[gristy]

16. great post, patrick

So with all this HOMELAND SECURITY the entire eastern seaboard is noting but a set of cheap dominoes that one stick of dynamite can topple over???? Don't you think that is the heart of a real story

Yup, I do think that is the real story. And the press just may get all over it (being "tired" of Iraq, WMDs, etc.). I hope so, anyways.

We'll keep the fire burning on Iraq in the meantime. That won't go out.

[Beetwasher]

19. Well said!

A set of cheap dominoes indeed!

[bocadem]

18. Greg Palast's article is excellent...

I am very impressed.

[LEFTofLEFT]

20. Socialize the cost of rebuilding - privitize the profits

and let bush's buddies do the work after making the highest bids (with a few tax cuts thrown in)

We must fight the rightwing monsters like the future is at stake.

IT IS !!!

They will destroy us all if we do not stop them.

[gristy]

21. Socialize the costs - privatize the profits

That sums it up perfectly. That's the mantra the BFEE must recite every damn morning. That's what they do. From electricity to Iraq's oil to voting machines. Everything.

[PurityOfEssence]

23. Saaaay, don't spose there're any energy papers around here, are there?

This IS the "energy" administration, isn't it?

[starroute]

24. Have a look at this thread on FirstEnergy

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=184250

FirstEnergy owns the plant that may have triggered the blackout -- and
there are apparently some very questionable things in their record.

[PATRICK]

25. The "rolling blame" game

might be something even our non-technical journalists can get? It was such a cheap evasive shell game.

[DUreader]

26. kick

[Starpass]

29. And all the legs lead to the energy bill they are going to push through

this fall. Now they can squeak ANWAR and the rest into it while sceaming "we can SAVE you Amureka, but the goddamn Dems are stopping the whole thing"!! The Dems better get slamming every minute just what Hillary, Gov. Richardson and Gray Davis said on Larry King on the night of the blackout----the people have to know who the real bastards are in this and who has been dragging feet for their power buddies. Alas, I'm sure our media will make certain Amureka only hears the Bush version. Whole thing stinks----these people operate on outright attacks against this nation believing that the people will never believe anyone dare do so.

[whatelseisnew]

31. kick