The Bush Moneybags Behind the Blackout Probe

Village Voice ^ | August 21st, 2003 5:00 PM | James Ridgeway

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WASHINGTON, D.C.—President Bush, looking hardly conscious, said last Thursday's blackout was a "wake-up call." His free-market energy secretary Spencer Abraham told CBS that upgrading the technology will cost $50 billion. Who will pay that? Not the guys who caused the shut-down. "Rate-payers, obviously, will pay the bill because they're the ones who benefit," said Abraham.

With Abraham in the driver's seat of the so-called investigation into the blackout, the Bush guys can rest easy. Nothing bad is going to happen to them. But consider the following:

FirstEnergy, the big Akron utility, is the focus of the probe so far because its lines crashed in such a way as to trigger the system’s collapse. The company is an amalgam of seven other companies, including Toledo Edison, Cleveland Electric, Ohio Edison, Pennsylvania Power, Pennsylvania Electric, Metropolitan Edison, and Jersey Central Power & Light.

With Abraham at the helm, the entire blackout affair has disappeared into a maze of technical gobbledygook. Nobody wants to talk about the politics involved because once again—as with Enron—one of Bush's pals and big fundraisers is at the center of the mess.

As independent advocacy group Public Citizen reports, "Top executives at FirstEnergy rank among the Bush campaign's top fundraisers. FirstEnergy President Anthony Alexander was a Bush Pioneer in 2000—meaning he raised at least $100,000—and then served on the Energy Department transition team. H. Peter Burg, the company's CEO and chairman of the board, hosted a June event that raised more than half a million dollars for Bush-Cheney '04."

On June 30, Burg hosted a Bush fundraiser where people paid $1,000 to get in. For another $1,000, they got to have their pictures taken with VP Dick Cheney.

FirstEnergy's Alexander wasn't just a Bush "pioneer," he was also elected to the Republican National Committee's star-studded Team 100 for raising another $250,000 for the GOP in 2000. And Alexander ponied up another $100,000 to help pay for the Bush-Cheney inaugural parties.

Public Citizen reports FirstEnergy's Political action committee gave more than $1 million to federal candidates in 2000, with 70 percent of it going to the Republicans.

FirstEnergy cuts a significant swathe in Congress. It spent $3.8 million lobbying Congress and the Bush government in 2001-2002.

[dead]

upgrading the technology will cost $50 billion. Who will pay that? Not the guys who caused the shut-down.

In Ridgeway's world, energy companies should just give away electricity.

[Koblenz]

The politics are local. Local governments won't let new plants or lines be built. The remarks made by some Connecticut politicans -- R and D -- about the cross-sound cable from Norwalk to Long Island are really shameful. This cable has been installed, but not activated due to disputes about its depth. The CT politicians all say that since it only benefits NY, they don't favor it at all.

[RebelBanker]

Ridgeway's tinfoil hat must be too tight again...

[El Laton Caliente]

The solution I like best is the Texas solution. Everybody maintains their own local power generation and grid.

The other solution I lean towards is to break up the generation from the transmition and delivery, then deregulate the system. Put penelties on the distributors for service interruption.

[Lunatic Fringe]

"Top executives at FirstEnergy rank among the Bush campaign's top fundraisers. FirstEnergy President Anthony Alexander was a Bush Pioneer in 2000—meaning he raised at least $100,000—and then served on the Energy Department transition team. H. Peter Burg, the company's CEO and chairman of the board, hosted a June event that raised more than half a million dollars for Bush-Cheney '04."

Eureka! We found the smoking gun! There was so much money thrown at Bush in 2000, that the grid couldn't handle it! It was Professor Plum, in the Observatory, with the candlestick!

[Blood of Tyrants]

I hear the voice of the village idiot again.

[Mears]

The Vilage Voice----the newpaper that tried to keep The Cape Cod Voice from using the word "Voice" in their title.

Who cares what this ridiculous newspaper says.

[Notforprophet]

Just damn, dead old buddy!? Where's the BARF ALERT?

NFP

[Eric in the Ozarks]

The recent history of US investor-owned utilities shows they have renounced or abandoned their original mission of building and operating power plants and selling power.
Executives in these protected monopolies have voted themselves fat bonuses and huge lots of shares because of the "success" they'd achieved in this environment.
They had protected territories, government-subsidized loans and special depreciation schedules for their equipment, all paid for by rate payers. The utilities merged and sold themselves to each other, then adopted the absurd notion they had become something else...asset managers, or some such new-age BS.
Deregulation, in an industry as basic as electricity, has become a cover for looting (at least that's my view).

[lelio]

The other solution I lean towards is to break up the generation from the transmition and delivery, then deregulate the system.

Dittos. The energy community should look at what Internap does. Every teleco provider has their lines meet at a central point in a city and Internap takes care of tying them all together. No turf wars. Providers take care of their own and let Internap handle the connections.

But that analogy breaks down as while you can have fiber running all over the city and you won't see it, you can't do that with large power transmission lines.

I see a future in small backup turbines like that of Capstone and the smaller GE models setup next to major facilities that need power. However the need for power for things like cell phone towers is all over the city. Its not going to do you much good to have 10% of the towers functional.

A commentator said that to raise the necessary funds everyone's electric bill will go up by $100 a year for the next 10 years. I don't think that's too much of a price to pay considering the mess we're going to have in 10 years when another blackout occurs.

[Grampa Dave]

Any thing this Commy/pinko rag prints is a joke.

Then when Ridgeway gets his wet dreams involved it becomes just dumb. The perfect description of Ridgeway is right below"

[RAY]

Who do they expect to pay? Consumers pay for everything - whether through sales taxes, property taxes, income taxes, corporate taxes, or for direct goods and services. There is no one else to pay for “improvements”, except the worker who are customers and pay taxes. Where else can the money come from?

[Nephi]

"Rate-payers, obviously, will pay the bill because they're the ones who benefit," said Abraham.

Also, rate-payers bear some responsibility for voting for the environmentalist policies that have prevented power plants from being constructed locally, thereby increasing the burden on the transmission system.

If rate-payers want low priced energy they must choose between nuclear powerplants, or transmission power lines/towers. In my view, deregulation will encourage both.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

backup turbines? Where's the gas going to come from? Are you familiar with natural gas nominations, scheduling and penalties?