As the media blitz continues, the agitprop begins to have the desired effect and gains a life of its own. Soon, the naïve sheeple who read the daily stream of disinformation from the NY Times (and it’s wholly-owned subsidiaries like the SHT) and foolishly consider themselves “informed” start jumping into the fray. Examples of this can be found in two letters printed in the SHT just this morning.
Too bad Ms. Harris isn’t a democrat – then she would have been given a free pass.
Don't make a big deal out of this. The voters won't.
Someone posted this yesterday on FR.
Carmel firm shoulders blackout blame
Task force faults problems with FirstEnergy in Ohio and lack of response by two grid monitors, including Midwest ISO.
By Jon Murray
jon.murray@indystar.com
November 19, 2003
A U.S.-Canadian task force today placed much of the blame for last summer's massive power outage on a Carmel electrical grid monitor that oversees the area where the blackout began.
Midwest Independent System Operator, a private company that acts as a power grid traffic cop, failed to detect power lines that went out Aug. 14 in FirstEnergy's northern Ohio coverage area. Blind spots in Midwest ISO's monitoring system and a lack of communication with the utility and another grid monitor contributed to a cascade of power failures that followed, the task force's report says.
"This blackout was largely preventable," Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said at a press conference this afternoon. "However, once the problem grew to a certain magnitude, nothing could have been done to prevent it from cascading out of control."
Midwest ISO, FirstEnergy and PJM Interconnection -- another monitor that oversees the northeastern United States, including parts of Ohio -- realized there was a problem too late, according to the report.
The resulting blackout spread north into Michigan and Canada and as far east as New York. As many as 50 million customers were affected for as little as a few hours and as long as a week. Though some southern Indiana customers had lost power earlier in the day, the late-afternoon blackout missed the state.
James P. Torgerson, Midwest ISO's president and chief executive officer, was not available for comment today but issued a statement.
The grid monitor "has worked to refine and implement a series of reliability tools and enhancements," the statement said. It also outlined steps Midwest ISO has taken to upgrade monitoring systems and clarify its responsibilities.
The task force identified three main causes for power loss:
FirstEnergy was unaware of problems in its own system, including malfunctioning alarms.
The utility allowed trees to grow too close to its transmission lines, which caused three of them to fail when stagnant winds on Aug. 14 caused them to droop.
Finally, the two grid monitors failed to detect problems and communicate well enough with FirstEnergy and each other.
Midwest ISO is a private company organized by dozens of utilities and electricity transmission companies in more than a dozen states. Because it started monitoring the power grid less than two years ago, it lacks much of the authority of its counterparts in other regions.
Earlier this month, a Michigan utilities commission criticized Midwest ISO in a report that focused on that state's role in the blackout.
The report ends months of interviews and analysis of data by the task force, which was chaired by Abraham and Herb Dhaliwal, the Canadian minister of natural resources. It pinpoints events earlier in the day that caused the blackout.
The task force will produce a final report by early next year that makes recommendations to prevent future large blackouts.
if the paper actually reported what she said accurately, and there was in fact no basis to the story...she's and idiot.
Too bad one ours got caught, and I wish they'ed go after the dems with equal fervor, but she's still an idiot.
She should stuff classified documents in her socks next time. That's the ticket to absolution.
The inability to tell reality from your imagination is not a small matter.
So9