Asymmetrical Information

The LA Times is also guilty of similar thinking, Jane.

This article seems written by someone living in a bizarre alternate world. Much as I'd like to believe what the Observer publishes, I'm not sure I'm ready to give up reality to do so.

In the 1980s, "NiMo" built a nuclear plant, Nine Mile Point, a brutally costly piece of hot junk for which NiMo and its partner companies charged billions to New York State's electricity ratepayers.

What does "brutally costly piece of hot junk" mean? It sounds kind of cool (a little long for a rock group name, to be sure), but all I get is that NMP (#2, actually, since #1 was built in the 1960s) was expensive. Does "hot" mean radioactive? Is "junk" meant to suggest they used substandard parts? All we know is that NYS "ratepayers" had to pay billions. Presumably for the electricity generated by the plant? Does "ratepayer" refer to someone paying the regulated rates for electricity? If so, maybe we could call them "customers".

So the sentence becomes: In the 1980s, "NiMo" built a very expensive nuclear plant called Nine Mile Point #2. It sold billions of dollars worth of electricity to New York customers.

But apparently the actual problem that led to the blackout had nothing to do with the nuclear plant. Palast just throws that in to show how eeevil the people running Niagara Mohawk are. Or rather, were, since they're not running it anymore. But the company is still eeevil, really!

And the Pataki-Bush Axis of Weasels permitted something that must have former New York governor Roosevelt spinning in his wheelchair in Heaven: They allowed a foreign company, the notoriously incompetent National Grid of England, to buy up NiMo, get rid of 800 workers and pocket most of their wages - producing a bonus for NiMo stockholders approaching $90 million.

Is tonight's black-out a surprise? Heck, no, not to us in the field who've watched Bush's buddies flick the switches across the globe. In Brazil, Houston Industries seized ownership of Rio de Janeiro's electric company. The Texans (aided by their French partners) fired workers, raised prices, cut maintenance expenditures and, CLICK! the juice went out so often the locals now call it, "Rio Dark."

So too the free-market British buckaroos controlling Niagara Mohawk raised prices, slashed staff, cut maintenance and CLICK! -- New York joins Brazil in the Dark Ages.

Okay, this press release says the takeover was announced in September 2000. The idea of a Pataki-Bush Axis before Bush was elected President seems especially far-fetched to me, but let's not be diverted from the (supposed) main point of the article. Palast thinks (well, "says", at least) that the cause of the blackout was insufficient maintenance at Niagara Mohawk.

And this came about because National Grid bought them and slashed staff and cut maintenance. Let's leave aside the logic of buying a company and gutting it to make a quick profit (anyone here ever heard of lawsuits?). And ignore how a utility is going to make money when there's a blackout, and it has nothing to sell.

So Natl Grid must have acted fast, to get their power distribution system in such bad shape that it causes a huge blackout less than 3 years later.

Except, Natl Grid also bought some other regional power companies: Massachusetts Electric, Narragansett Electric, Granite State Electric, and Nantucket Electric. Oddly enough, none of these were involved in the blackout. Just luck, I guess.

But wait, what about this mention of New York State Assembly members asking questions before the takeover:

Several Assembly members questioned whether service and reliability would suffer in light of National Grid's intention to cut up to 750 jobs over four years from the combined New York-New England work force of 10,000.

So, apparently, the layoffs were spread over Niagara Mohawk and the four New England power companies Natl Grid bought.

I dunno, this makes me doubt Palast's version of events. It looks like Natl Grid has fallen down on the job and not laid enough people off in New England! Let's have equal blackouts for all!

P.S. "...must have former New York governor Roosevelt spinning in his wheelchair in Heaven..." Wouldn't you think that FDR, if he is in Heaven, would be out of his wheelchair?

Greg Palast is hardly the first commentator to build an argument on an ad hominem attack.

If the National Grid is so incompetent, and deregulation such a disaster, I'd like this buffoon Palast to explain why a) my parents in England haven't suffered a power failure since the miners' strike of 1974/5 and b) their electricity bills have fallen in real terms by some 30% since privatisation/deregulation. My parents buy electricity from the gas company (and, funnily enough, gas from the electricity company, which also collaborates with their long-distance provider so that every time they make a phone call they get money off their gas bill). Of course Palast couldn't explain that, since that would undermine the whole premise of this economically illiterate bit of Bush-hating gibberish.

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