We have a second world power infrastructure.

[Warren Stupidity]

When I was a child we used to laugh about the European phone systems, how unreliable, expensive, outdated and difficult to use they were, how their infrastructure was a mess of old and broken technology with hopelessly incompetent organizations running them.

I am now in the fourth day of the fourth major power outage in my region in the last two years. Our power and data distribution technology is based on a 19th century innovation, the telegraph pole. It was quite the thing in the 1800's, but it has many problems, especially in forested regions prone to wind and ice storms. Every tree within range of a telegraph pole has the potential to take down every downstream user.

All of our power and data utilities should be put underground in the densely populated outage prone regions. This is a major infrastructure project on the order of the investment we made in our interstate highway system from the 50's through the 80's. Along with underground distribution, there should be a 'fiber in every home' project on the order of what the Rural Electrification Project did in the 30's under the last populist progressive government of the United States. Had our current president any real vision, this would have been on that table that was set primarily for wall street back in 2009. But that is water under the bridge, or ice on the limbs of broken trees and downed power lines.

Pile onto the refusal to invest in our power and data infrastructure the fact that 'deregulated' regional power and data quasi-monopolies have consistently understaffed their maintenance operations and face no regulatory disincentives for failure to provide reliable systems. Back when AT&T was a regulated monopoly they were required to do just that: provide guaranteed reliability for the data network they held a monopoly on. We once had the world's best phone system, but that was a long time ago.

What a sorry bunch of stupid people we are. We've consistently voted ourselves into this neoliberal hell hole. We take solace in mindless jingoism, cheering on the latest high-tech assassination, accepting without question an endless war on a chimeric enemy that requires the looting of our national treasury, the abolition of our remaining constitutional rights, and the decades long disinvestment of our public sector. Our schools rot, our bridges and highways rot, our health care system is a mediocre cesspool of corruption, but we got us predator drones and military hegemony.

Good job USA!

Freezing in New Hampshire Again,
Warren Stupidity.

[WCGreen]

1. The History Channel has a great two houir show called...

The Crumbling of America...

[magic59]

50. Better infrastructure? Only if the 99% can take back their country.

Europe is decades ahead of us when it comes to infrastructure and its cheaper also. They also have life saving programs like free health care. The reason they can do this and we can't is quite simple. They haven't been paying trillions of dollars a year supporting a military industrial complex that is out of control and has control of our government. Add to that our disastrous banking system and we are so FUBAR.

[hobbit709]

2. In some places it's Third World status.

Back in the 90's when I drove a rural paper route in Hays County, some of the county roads had deteriorated to the point of being more potholes than pavement. the county's response-being good Republicans and not wanting to raise taxes- consisted of scraping the remaining pavement off the roads and turning them into dirt roads.
In 1996 the voters of Hays county passed their first road bond issue since 1947. I've driven on back roads in Third World countries that were in better shape than Hays county roads.

[Warren Stupidity]

3. it is enraging

I am not a nationalist at all, in fact quite the opposite, but it just is enraging what we have done to ourselves.

[luckyleftyme2]

7. your right about that

I worked for a maine engineering company who had an office in portsmouth. they hired us to do most of their preliminary engineering because they were to cheap to increase their engineering department(1950's to 1990's). reason they didn't want to pay benefits or keep them on in the winter .
they never increased their department until they realized that it was necessary to be able to compete for federal funding.(check out the amount of miles of highway they have and the amount of federal dollars they have received in the past 20 years.)

[bvar22]

15. Currently happening in Rural Arkansas

The State and County has notified us that due to a lack of funds,
some roads will no longer be maintained.
On some, they have scraped off the asphalt and returned them to Dirt Roads.
On others they have simply stopped repairs.

4WD with Heavy Duty Suspension and large diameter rims with 6 or 8 ply tires are a MUST out here.
An alert driver with quick reactions and a good memory for the location of Bad Ones is also helpful.

Meanwhile, spending on The Military and Elective Foreign Wars/Occupations is INCREASING,
while the Top 1% enjoys Extreme Excessive Consumption.
....Classic signs of an Empire in decline.

We are well beyond the Tipping Point.
Our Social Security/Medicare funds will only prop up this monster for a short time.
There is nothing left after that.

Do what you can to protect yourselves and your families.


Solidarity99!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Laluchacontinua]

25. I agree. One of my friends told me that where he grew up in Ohio, toilets still drained directly in

to the waterways. It seemed unbelievable to me, but he says it's still like that in his hometown. (Which wasn't somewhere back in the hills, though I can't remember the name).

[Brickbat]

29. When we were moving several years ago, we looked at a house that drained its gray water out a pipe

that ran out the side of the house and away from it about 20 feet. It drained into a creek.

[Laluchacontinua]

31. It's unbelievable how backward we are in some ways. Even draining into an open pit would be better.

[Brickbat]

34. I forgot to say this was way out in the woods. So it wasn't like it was in the city or anything.

Plus, it was a kickass house. I was willing to overlook the drainage issue.

[Laluchacontinua]

36. It's a nice house, so you can overlook graywater in the river? Because it's in the back of beyond?

Nice to know humans are polluting the wilderness too. Where'd the river go?

[Brickbat]

48. What river?

There was a runoff creek. And because I said I was "willing to overlook the drainage issue" that does not mean I wouldn't have fixed it if we had bought that house.

[kristopher]

38. Gray water isn't good to dump in waterways, but it isn't sewerage.

gray wa·ter Noun: The relatively clean waste water from baths, sinks, washing machines, and other kitchen appliances.

It contains soaps that contribute to overgrowth of aquatic plants, which in turn depletes the oxygen in the water killing the fish.

Just thought that needed clarifying in the context of the discussion.

[Brickbat]

46. Yeah, the bad stuff comes mainly from the soap you use.

We're careful about that.

[kristopher]

37. That's illegal no matter where you are in the US. Clean Water Act.

In most places it is policed pretty well, too.

[Brickbat]

49. .

Sorry, replied to the wrong post.

[luckyleftyme2]

4. oh my

while your rich texas oil friends who are getting richer(thanks to those beloved repukes)having the best politic ans money can buy you help elect!
take your head out in the sunshine your state doesn't even want to pay for its half of the bridge thats closed.
let the rest of the world now how cheap your party in your state is! the body of no!
they hired a maine firm to layout their highways in the 50-70's! why cause they were to cheap to pay benefits to their own people!
gimme a break -

[Warren Stupidity]

5. I feel like I should reply but I have no idea what you said.

[luckyleftyme2]

8. there is a simple reason for that

cuz you haven't a clue as to what your saying -but you simply was trying to plug your party who has consistently failed your state!
nothing personnel just stating cheap =shoddy results!

[Warren Stupidity]

9. which party did I plug?

Please provide the exact statement of mine where I plugged a party.

[formercia]

6. I remember talking with a Western Electric Plant Manager in 1970

He told me that they designed their equipment to last 100 Years. Back in those days, when you sent your phone back, the parts that were usable were recycled into new units and put back in service.

[Ship of Fools]

10. I hardly know the ins & outs of the power grid,

but my husband has been a lineman for 30+ years. He says that it is positively STUPEFYING how dated and
inefficient the system is. They're told to basically limp everything along -- *no money* for updating, etc.

How this society has lasted this long is beyond my comprehension!

[dotymed]

23. I can relate. The old power lines around my home "kick" out a

breaker next to a transformer about once a month. Then the power company comes with a long pole and pushes it back in to place. Why not just replace the damned thing? I know my property taxes (city and county) are based on what my home was worth before the bottom dropped out of the housing market. Our city owns our electric company but it is not reflected in our rates.

When I lived in IN, the rural roads were nearly impassable because of buckling and pot-holes. They just used a gravel mixture (crush and run) to cover the entire road(s) with. Also, the roads in downtown Indianapolis were the best place to bend a rim or bust a shock absorber.

But hey, the wealthy have been really raking it in during the last 30+ years, so it's not all bad. They can afford new vehicles that seem to be riding on air...

GO OCCUPY!!!

[kristopher]

41. The problem is the system is too centralized.

We are in the process of distributing the sources of generation so that it doesn't have so far to go from the point of generation to the end user. The coal and nuclear industry would prefer that you believe differently but a distributed renewable grid is the key to grid stability and reliability. We do need to modernize the distribution and transmission system to make it a "smart grid" that can deal with and manage lots of small inputs.

This page gives a good visual to demonstrate the change.
http://www.rmi.org/ReinventingFireInfographic

[LiberalEsto]

11. Stay warm, WS!

You hit the nail on the head: deregulation is at the root of many of our contemporary evils. I used to work indirectly for the natural gas industry and am familiar with the issues.

My electric utility is PEPCO in Maryland, one of the worst utilities in the US. Despite serving nation's capital, PEPCO has a horrendous record of outages. It responds to criticism by sending out demented trimming crews to mangle our trees, rather than spend a penny to actually improve service. We are sick and tired of having to throw out refrigerators full of food because of their long outages.

Deregulation means utilities get rid of their public information staff, and drastically shrink their repair crews. Forget about investing money in infrastructure upkeep or improvement. Instead of having repair crews on hand, deregulated utilities have formed "reciprocal agreements" with other stingy utilities.

A reciprocal agreement means that if your area's power goes out, you many have to wait days for repair crews from other states to drive hundreds of miles to your area, catch some rest, and then get to work. This didn't used to happen before deregulation. Utility companies were required by law to have a certain number of repair crews and vehicles on hand.

Under deregulation, pretty much all a utility company does is suck money out of its customers is to lavish huge salaries on its executives and deliver dividends to its investors.

[suffragette]

12. Yes, and work on the infrastructure to take advantage of advances

in wind and solar generation.

Saw this article awhile back which included (though buried) info about about the wind generators in Oregon/Washington exceeding expectations and the need to fix infrastructure to be able to make use of this efficiently.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x653404


Past time for a federal jobs program to do this. It would help with jobs now and in the future and be a smart long-term investment in our society on many levels. I'd much rather see this type of investment going to help all of us rather than the financial industry pay-outs we've seen benefiting only the few. It's what we need as a nation.

[snot]

13. Just to chime in re- how great the regulated phone system was.

It was incredibly fast, reliable, efficient, and cheap, even though the infrastructure of land lines & no cell service had to be much more expensive. You could reach a human operator at any time at a moment's notice, and that person could not only give you a phone no. and connect you, s/he could check a line for you and confirm whether it was out of order.

[LiberalEsto]

14. or break in on a long call for an emergency nt

[PETRUS]

16. In the "Lakes Region" myself.

We had a major power outage earlier this fall due to a TRAFFIC ACCIDENT. (wtf?) Nearly everyone around here has a generator or solar panels or something for backup because the grid is so unreliable.

[Warren Stupidity]

17. Which is another example of the reverse socialism of the Kleptocracy.

They gain control of the regulatory process for some essential public service such as power and/or data and extract rent from the peasants through their now deregulated regional monopolies. They then proceed to maximize profits by reducing costs and increasing rents. We (the peasants) get to compensate for their hollowing out of the public infrastructure by providing the redundancy and reliability they have eliminated under their cost cutting: we provide the back up power ad hoc house by house beleaguered peasant by beleaguered peasant at an added cost on top of the stunningly high rents they charge for their shitty backwards services. They have externalized the costs of reliability onto us in order to maximize the profitability of their business, which business is actually wealth extraction from the captive population. Repeat for one public service after another.

[PETRUS]

20. I like your analysis. nt

[Laluchacontinua]

28. +1. you said it better than i did.

[Tesha]

18. You sound just like Mr. Tesha!

He's been cussing out PSNH's system design and reliability
efforts for several of these long-term outages now. It's pretty
clear they could do a much better effort both in designing the
system to be more-robust (better-designed sectionalization,
better tree-pruning efforts, etc.) and in executing their restoration
plans (pick a lot more of the "low-hanging fruit", crowd-source
their damage reports, etc.)

But there doesn't seem to be anyone to hold PSNH's feet to
the fire so they get away with this, storm after storm after storm.
Mr. Tesha suggest that maybe try should start being forced to
pro-rate the fixed parts of their bill based in how many days
during the month they actually provided power! *THAT* might
finally get their atttention!

Well, at least the big three-phase feeder at the base of our
neighborhood is now restored and powered-up. That gives us
hope that in the next couple of days they'll finally get around
to trimming the one branch in our neighborhood that's currently
keeping us current-less.

Tesha

[ljm2002]

19. Wow.

Your last full paragraph sums it up very well:

"What a sorry bunch of stupid people we are. We've consistently voted ourselves into this neoliberal hell hole. We take solace in mindless jingoism, cheering on the latest high-tech assassination, accepting without question an endless war on a chimeric enemy that requires the looting of our national treasury, the abolition of our remaining constitutional rights, and the decades long disinvestment of our public sector. Our schools rot, our bridges and highways rot, our health care system is a mediocre cesspool of corruption, but we got us predator drones and military hegemony."

Depressing. But truth is truth.

[Puget Progressive]

21. Very good points, Warren, that can be applied

in general to the whole country. Noam Chomsky has said that when you leave the U.S. and live in some place like Europe and then return to the U.S. it is like entering a Third World country. It seems to me that our infrastructure is crumbling and our political system is a corrupt, money-driven joke. The elites know this and the scheme now is to drain the system of every last bit of wealth before the whole thing goes up. When I look around and compare the country to the way it was in the 50's - 70's I am astonished at how we have accepted the hijacking of our country and how little promise there is in it anymore. I would have to conclude based on the evidence that we are in serious decline and that the increasing right-wing influence politically and through corporatism will accelerate that process. I can cheer on the various Occupy gatherings but I am skeptical that they can make these gangsters give up their power or persuade their shills in Congress, the Executive branch and the courts into reforming this awful system. I hope that I am completely wrong but I fear that the representative democracy that we largely took for granted is finished and is being systematically replaced by a corporate state where profits and "conservative" ideology trump everything else.

[reggie the dog]

26. the fact that the usa does not have health care for all

shows that it is either a second or third world nation, hell even south africa is putting health care for all in place, but not the usa, in the usa we get a law that says if we dont buy expensive private care we get fined......

chomsky is right, i have lived in france for the past eight years, i have a three year old daughter and i cannot imagine ever moving back to the usa to live with my kid, i would do her a dis service. the usa is too violent, to dog eat dog, and the stress that the system in place (you get sick you go into debt) causes so many problems in society that it is just not worth it for me to ever move back.

[proverbialwisdom]

22. K&R

[KG]

24. in this country now, making war is more important. than anything...

[Laluchacontinua]

27. I was astonished to see how many people lost power in a single storm, & over how wide an area.

I wonder if any of this is fallout from the Bush era Enron/electricity jiggerty-pokerty + the subsequent downsizing of crews in both the public & private sectors?

I really feel like the corprocrats are just draining the US right now to send the money overseas. Disinvestment & draining the coffers, that is, the people's pockets.

[Flatulo]

30. Care to bet that the utilities have cut their workforces to the bone, and then some?

A buddy of mine was a lineman for Verizon for most of his career. He got canned, along with 30,000 other employees, about 6 years ago.

You know, doing more with less etc. They run a barebones crew and have to send out to Texas and Nebraska for crews when there's a major problem.

I also have a theory that a lot of the power transmission equipment manufacturing has been outsourced to China. Guess how reliable that crap is? One town over blows power transformers on a monthly basis.

Try to stay warm dude, and good luck.

[Laluchacontinua]

32. I believe it. I see the meter readers driving their own vehicles now & wearing civvies.

I'd bet they're part-timers at low pay, no bennies.

[chrisa]

42. A crew from Alabama restored our power.

Our power system is a joke. We badly need regulation, but I'm not holding my breath.

[swilton]

33. Hi Warren

Fabulous Post! Unfortunately, I didn't make the rec soon enough that it got recorded.....But K&R anyway.

From your neighbor in Keene.

[Romulox]

35. This is the logic of "free trade" and globalism: a race to the bottom.

And the horrible truth of the matter is that there will be no national infrastructure project; in fact, we have much further to fall before our wages our "equalized" with China and India. :hi:

[chrisa]

39. Back from 6th day w/o power - almost froze to death

A couple of nights were pretty close.

NE Utilities had massive layoffs so that CEO's could line their pockets (they had record bonuses in 2010 and will have them as well this year). Something tells me they weren't worrying about falling asleep and not waking up in the morning like us common folk.

[Nye Bevan]

40. I was shocked at the frequent outages when I moved here.

The problem is, it would cost an absolute fortune to bury all the wires that are already above ground. And nobody is willing to pay the price.

[Warren Stupidity]

45. "It would cost a fortune" ... not over the long term, it would save money.

That is why the federal government should step in and finance the construction. Pay for it like the interstate system was and is paid for: a usage tax on a now publicly owned utility infrastructure. "Power" and "data" companies would be out of the infrastructure business, as they should be as they have abused their regional monopoly status, and would only be in the power generation and data content provider business. I shed a tear for the cable companies and utility companies that have abused our trust for the last 30 years, but they blew it.

[izquierdista]

43. My own experience

I spent most of 2008 in Poland, moving back to the US in 2009. They are moving up and the U.S. is moving down, just like the raft of statistics I have seen shows. Back then, three years ago, it was pretty much a toss-up which place had a better quality of life. Poland had a lower cost of living, you didn't have to own a car to get around, and dental work was about 1/3 of the cost in the U.S. Everywhere there were construction projects, rehabs and retrofits of existing buildings, and nice new public transportation being introduced. On the downside, the majority of the public transportation was old and there was still a lot of work to be done. But the Poles were getting to it, not letting stuff decay and fall apart, so they have the U.S. beat on that category.

Yes, they were part of the "coalition of the willing" for far too long, participated in some American military adventures, and there is a large contingent of reactionary slugs {insert picture of Lech Walesa here} acting as a boat-anchor on progress. I think the future is brighter for them, because that anchor gets hoisted far more often than it does here.

P.S. They seem far more committed to wind power than say, Iowa or Illinois.

[midnight]

44. Great post....

[midnight armadillo]

47. Bring on municipal power!

http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2011/09/10/response_to_irenes_outages_revives_interest_in_municipal_utilities/

Customer complaints about the response of utility companies to Tropical Storm Irene has revived interest in
legislation that would make it easier for Massachusetts cities and towns to create their own municipal electric utilities. Proponents say Irene, which left thousands of households without power for nearly a week, could be the catalyst that finally moves the legislation, which has languished on Beacon Hill for about a decade. The storm knocked out power to roughly 800,000 customers served by the state’s four investor­owned utilities, National Grid, NStar, Western Massachusetts Electric Co., and Unitil Corp.
...
Patrick Mehr, a Lexington resident and spokesman for the Massachusetts Alliance for Municipal Electric Choice, which supports the creation of municipal utilities, said big utilities often don’t respond well, particularly when power is being restored after a big storm. Having a community­run utility, he said, could fix that problem because local officials would be responsible to their constituents.

And while the municipal electrics are burying power lines they can run that fiber to the home and offer municipal internet, cable, and phone service, simultaneously fucking NStar and Verizon. Hell yeah!!

[PATRICK]

51. Another issue on the same line

Good old fashioned snail mail is also a regulated, partial monopoly(first class mail, mail box usage) with several differences. Foremost there are NO billionaire owners to regulate. The USPS does not overthrow regimes to expand business. Granted the arrogance of monopolies has applied to its record of installing news facilities(not into THAT anymore) or closing them, for which it is not only prone to reaction by its own Commission and Board of Governors but every effected Congressman as well.
But no one gets rich, legally anyway. The only fly in the ointment is in fact the abuse of political regulation that hampers service, ruins the goals of the USPS, strangles sustainability or seeks news(old) ways to loot the profit potential. We can't strike, but because we once did anyway at a time when we could bring the nation to its knees we were crafted into a delicate balance that worked to everyone's advantage, especially the country and the commons.
It can't make a profit, can't threaten competitors in non-monopoly classifications, won't ever it seems do much more in wages than tread water with inflation- which in these shameful times makes us look overly paid by comparison to those directly punished by Congress and corporations. Politicians appoint the Board of Governors who appoint the Postmaster and his assistant. The business model of these people is, to put it kindly, inherently at odds with public service models and indeed, reality. The top has always been anti-union, has always held back wage increases until postage is raised to make it appear as if that is the main cause. Unions alone have made things work in spite of inefficient and counter productive modernization and similar quality privatization.
If broken up a la AT&T, according to the experience of handing over parts of the business to the "private sector" I predict that the glamor of that evil will produce a briefly corrupted service, small bubbles for stockholders, rapid disasters(not just declines) in service and collapse- all financed and subsidized by taxpayers as it never has been since "separating" from total government control. If morphed into a more "privatized" single entity,
the bad results will take more time and slow agony, collapsing into itself like a black hole in denial with of course more Congressional hypocrisy than ever.
Since the opportunities for both profit and service are gone thanks to ruinous government takeover by diseased corporate thinking, the last opportunities are for fools or quick profit- at the very top. The WH attack on public education gives me no real confidence in the least that harm to the nation. The nation and its economy requires universal mailing if for no other reason than supporting businesses and national and local organizational outreach like NO other media can or will. Greed blazes over all. Our union stands in a strange place in the eye of the corporate government disaster. So does the most successful, the necessary public service to the nation.
It is the same for all. The only exceptions, like the embarrassing success and necessity of the USPS, are under assault for sheer spite, fear of service looking so good, and for the opportunity to make a quick buck over our dead bodies.
The current Senate 'good bill" in my cynical view will foster "compromise" to delete the sane and install the harm
using the blackmail of stolen funds and the lies of decades, doing NOTHING for the federal budget except to ruin the business of the nation, crippling the tax base and economic recovery(something the GOP lusts for like their own kickbacks).
The union is doing a mailing to communicate a brief counter message to decades of MSM fraud and Congressional high crime, in a comparatively modest and unselfish fashion. No other media can serve that purpose and why is that so?
Private sector USA ruins service, obliterates service competition, siphons all potential into useless vaults of market inflated fantasy and fear. People with any power will be arrogant. That is the job of actual government representation to correct- if we ever get it.

[Tipring]

52. Warrens issue

There is a reason the call it the granite state. Those poles are there because of the cost involved in trenching through solid rock, granite, is VERY hard to deal with. In fact, just to set the poles sometimes blasting is needed. Let's hope for fuel cells soon so we can eliminate the grid as we know it.