Okay, so what is the deal with the power outages?

[underpants]

Is it what I think it is or is it just that ____ happens?

I haven't seen any articles on WHY it is happening just that it is (usually with stats about 30,000 people dying in Europe three years ago so shut the hell up you don't have it so bad as the underlying message) and that they are doing their best to fix it.

Okay here is what I thought it was probably caused by- privatization/deregulation. This, we know, was the cause for the lack of upkeep (keeping expenses down) on the trees around the power line that went down in Ohio back in 2003 causing the massive power outage over aobut 1/3 of the country.


So is that it or did no one plan on summer coming around this year?

[whistle]

1. Enron insurgency....Ken Lay has not yet passed over

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

2. KennyBoy, Walt Disney, and Dick Cheney

need the power to keep their cells alive?

[JuniperLea]

3. Too much money went into executive pockets to upgrade anything

No upgrades, no increased capacity, too many people, extreme summer came too soon and lasted too long... global warming is junk science. Water will be the next issue. There will be too much in some areas and too little in others.

[underpants]

6. Vivendi and Suez

http://www.worldhungeryear.org/why_speaks/ws_load.asp?file=63&style=ws_table


Water Privatization:
The World Bank's Latest Market Fantasy

http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/bwi-wto/wbank/2004/01waterpriv.htm

[JuniperLea]

8. Water privatization

Oh, just great.

I guess my knee-jerk shot in the dark guess was spot on... much to my chagrin.

[underpants]

9. Indianopolis and Atlanta are already fully privatized

BTW on a side note if you know anyone who bought into the "Boycott France" BS ask them if they pay their water bill, if they do then they in some way are paying Vivendi and Suez which are both French companies (or they were). US Filter is a monster in the water supply business in the US-it is owned by one of those companies.

Okay now. Think this is new? Think this is only in the works? Think there wasn't a full explanation of the war in Iraq? "huh?" you say "what does that have to do with....

The Tigris and Euphrates are THE clean water supply for the Middle East and most of Persia.

Look it up.

[ixion]

4. See Cheney's (classified) Energy Taskforce Notes

oh, right. You can't. They're classified.

Why are they classified? Because it describes how they will uses Enron's prototype to game the system nationwide, IMO.

What other reason could there be for Cheney fighting so ardently to keep them secret?

Just my two cents.

[liberal N proud]

5. The legacy or Kenny Lay

[thoughtanarchist]

7. "Ken Lay's gone, but the ghost of Ken Lay ... Stays to haunt us."

Published on Thursday, July 20, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
Ken Lay's Alive!
by Greg Palast

...

But then, in 1992, a Texas oil man, George H.W. Bush, ordered to evacuate the White House by two-thirds of the US electorate, gave his Houston crony, Ken Lay, a billion-dollar good-bye kiss: Bush's signature authorizing deregulation of electricity.

But Lay's operation didn't pick up the really big bucks until after December 21, 1994, when the Enron chief wrote to the incoming governor of Texas, George W. Bush, asking the Governor-elect to grant him a special wish for Christmas:

...

And Georgie-Boy granted Kenny-Boy's wish, appointing Wood and thereby giving Texans an electricity regulator who stumped for Ken Lay's right to earn unlimited profits without any obligation to keep the lights on. Thus, by 1995, electricity deregulation had a foothold in the Lone Star state that would spread nationwide like Dutch Elm Disease.

But, unsatisfied with excessive profits, Lay and his team went for unconscionable profits, flickering the lights in California in the winter of 2000. "Let poor Aunt Millie … use candles," said one of Lay's minions as he deliberately schemed to engineer black-outs. When the public reacted with anger, Bill Clinton, by a December 2000 executive order, ended Enron's right to trade power. Lay's response was, that month, through a lobbyist, to tell President-elect Bush to promote Lay's puppet regulator, Wood, to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Kenny-Boy wished it, and again, Georgie-Boy granted it.

more...

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0720-22.htm