Asymmetrical Information

Actually, RR has been up for me for a while. Cable TV is bit random, and I STILL DON'T HAVE ANY FUCKING EMAIL, but RR itself is working great.

Yep. It was the grid. It was the same grid that Bush and the congressional republicans said didn't need an upgrade in June of 2001.

--foo

Some statements, like Jane's just now, ring a single, pure, crystaline note of "I don't know what the hell I'm talking about."

Well Jane, hope your staying cool wherever you are...

As to mocking "deregulation"...

The overall regional grid is kind of a free-for-all, in many ways. While individual utilities have incentives to keep their local grids up and running (actually, its mostly because of shit they'll take from local REGULATORS if they don't), the "inter-utility" system as a whole is, well, less regulated... (though not "unregulated"). Certainly, FERC under Bush is, well, less vigorous than under its predecessors, let's just say.

The power system is, as we see playing out in progress, incrediby fragile. Evidently, we didn't need a terrorist: it collapsed on its own! Perhaps if (illegally) suspending habeas corpus is a matter of "national security", maybe making sure our power grid is a bit less vulnerable than a tinker toy is a matter of national security too?

I forgot... regulation bad... free market good... Mybad.

Hmm, foo bard. Your statement seems to directly contradict the evidence of this speech by Dick Cheney in June 2001. The relevant quote:

"The report we issued last month presented more than 100 recommendations covering virtually the entire range of concerns that face the American people. One of the concerns, obviously, is the aging power grid and the growing problem that we have in getting electricity from the power plant to the light switch. It's clear that we must upgrade and expand the power grid."

Seems like he's saying that the report specifically did say that the grid needed an upgrade. Pesky thing, those facts. Makes it harder for you to just make assertions, no doubt.

foo bard, all: Check out this comment on the power bill vs. Cheney's speech, etc here.

Clearly there is more going on than can be compressed unto a DU anti-Bush slogan.

"Let me put it this way: the sections of the grid that went down are sections that enjoy tight local regulatory control."

Uh, but the problem started in Cleveland and cascaded out from there, right? What does that have to do with NYC regulation?

Blanming deregulation is NOT silly. Deregulation causes a LOT more stress and utilization of the grid.

Before deregulation, power was used nearer to where it was generated. Now, power is sold to be used thousands of miles from where it is generated. Thus the total amount of power flowing across country is much larger now than it was when the grid was built in the '50s.

Deregulation really requires a grid with a larger capacity and tolerance for sudden flow changes than what we currently have. If a single company actually owned the grid it would probably have adapted it to suit it's current puropose by now. But that would be a monopoly, or a government project, and we can't have that can we?

Yep. Deregulations is to blame. That is why Texas, which is now deregulated, is having so many blackouts and brownouts while the northeast isn't having any. And why all those powerplants built in Texas in the late 1990s have hurt the economy so badly by allowing Texas electricity to be sold cheaply, in the quantities that consumers need, while providing those Texas utilities such nice profits. Deregulation bad!

(Piano Riff) Bad! Bad! Texas bad! Baddest state in the whole damn' land. Badder than a junkyard dawg. . . uh, er. . . got carried away there.

Where was I?

Oh yeah. Deregulation bad. Regulation good. Two legs bad. Four legs good. All animals are created equal, only some animals are more equal than others. . .

Did it again, didn't I?

Well, if any companies in the Northeast or California are looking for a state with reliable electricity at reasonable rates, just remember -- in Texas, we bad!

yeah.. because the government failed and didn't do its job properly, we obviously need more government

the solution to this power outage is simple...

shoot everyone who has ever voted for a democratic candidate

this a gives us half the population to worry about and b) removes most of the f**kwads that cause all the stupid lawsuits and opposition to power plants, line, and transformer stations.. even if they were republicans that objected, odds are tat their ass*ole lawyer was a dem...

new standard should be that you must hgave a 50 year period of scientific consensus before you can sue for damages for clusters, gm, asbestos, etc

or just kill all the lawyers (yes i know shakespeare didn't really support that.. but he also had never met any current member of the aba.. plus i'm dating a lawyer!)

"They also associate the endless new capacity brought online in the 1950's and 1960's with the regulatory regime, rather than the sweeping powers that utilities and the governments that controlled them excercised to knock down people's homes and otherwise tell those who didn't want to live near power plants to go get stuffed."

True -- but then, to renovate the grid, we're going to have to restore the ability to do that in any case, whether for a regulated or a deregulated system. And the citizens are a lot more likely to accept it if the decisions as to where to put the new plants are to a considerable degree decided by a democratically controlled government.

Possible causative factors (acording to tonight's NY Times):

"...A surplus of energy could have caused a transmission line to fail, said Robert Blohm, an energy consultant who serves on a committee advising the reliability council. That, in turn, would have worsened the imbalance in the regional grid, possibly leading to a wider system failure and blackout.

"Elected officials complained yesterday of an antiquated transmission system and called for major new investment in the grid. But Mr. Blohm cautioned that the chain of events might have been set off by bad rules governing the electric grid, which led to a transmission line shutting when what was needed was for a generator to shut down. That could have made the problems worse.

"Mr. Gent, the chief executive of the reliability council, said that the problem on Thursday might have been somebody breaking a rule or might indeed have been because the rules did not anticipate the physical circumstances of the system. The rules govern companies that generate, transmit or distribute electricity, and are highly technical in nature...

"Officials were warning a decade ago of weakness in the grid that moves power around the country, and the challenges have grown with deregulation. Under the old system, a local utility monopoly built and owned both the power plants and the wires in a region.

"Under deregulation, the plants have been sold to other companies that often sell their power to utilities hundreds of miles away, increasing traffic on the grid. To meet rising demand for power, new plants have been built, in some cases further straining the transmission system. Meanwhile, obtaining environmental permits to build power lines has gotten harder."

According to the article, there's a general consensus now that what set this off (as with so many catastrophes) was an unfortunate chance combination of factors rather than a single one. Some of those factors may be linked to deregulation, some to NIMBY-style environmentalism, some to simple tightwaddery on the part of electricity consumers, and some to none of the above.

At any rate, Dr. Johnson's description of the perils of 1738 London still seems to describe modern New York pretty well:

Here malice, rapine, accident conspire,
And now a rabble rages, now a fire;
Their ambush here relentless ruffians lay,
And here the fell Attorney prowls for prey;
Here falling houses thunder on your head,
And here a female atheist talks you dead.

Bruce, just who do you think decides where power plants and lines go now? The democratically elected regulatory boards, community boards, and state, local, and federal governments. Nowhere in the country does the power company just start whacking out a power plant wherever it feels the need.

Again, people are arguing that since reliance on the grid has followed deregulation, reliance on the grid is the result of deregulation. Reliance on the grid is the only possible alternative to either decreasing our power consumption (which can be achieved either by raising rates, or rationing through rolling blackouts), or building new plants. There are very, very few sites local to, say, New York City, where enough capacity could be built to actually power the local grid with an adequate safety margin. Since neither raising rates nor rolling blackouts is acceptable, we're going to be on the grid regardless. The main purpose of deregulation, in some places, was to help legislators get around the fact that everyone wanted more power, but no one wanted more power plants.

(Why are you so fixated on New York, you ask. Why, because the majority of the people affected lived in the Greater New York area.)

Now, as to why New York's regulatory regime matters -- whatever caused this is most likely something that would have happened anyway, causing a local blackout. Regulation is not some magic bullet that prevents power failures, as anyone who has lived through the many exciting blackouts caused by fires at our beloved 14th Street ConEd substation (Utility still regulated within an inch of its life, and rates still set at good old cost+!) can inform you. The big problem was that the grid made it spead so far. And as I've pointed out above, it spread nicely through regions that were plenty well regulated.

Richard Rhodes, author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, chronicles in the follow-up book about the H-Bomb that, occasionally, as much as one-eighth of nationwide electricity production was consumed by the Atomic Energy Commission during periods in the 1950's. This consumption spurred powerplant and transmission construction; it necessitated government regulation in order to "cook the books" so as to hide the AEC's tremendous appetite. Citizens presumably paid those surrepticious electric bills through their taxes. I believe the voracious "eaters", the uranium(isotope) enrichment plants, could quickly go offline during periods of high domestic demand(which is one reason the government got its power at a relatively low price -- it was somewhat elective consumption.)

If you drive in several directions near Chillicothe, Ohio and know where to look, you can see several different electric transmission corridors -- these tend to pass near an enrichment plant built in the 1950's. Our famed "1950 transmission grid" was built in part to supply these varacious eaters. Today's AEC appetite is far less, so those corridors are not set up for today's current pattern of consumption.

The world is not as pristine, for analysis, as either the pro-regulators or the anti-regulators would have us believe.

Jane:
as usual, you have a handle on the economic and political issues of power generation - and typically, free of blame-shifting and ranting. However, there seem to a couple of points missing in your post above.
First; you fail to mention the option of reducing electricity demand through conservation: are you a member of the Dick Cheney "personal-virtue" school of thought on this, or was this just an oversight? IIRC, a statewide PR campaign to promote moderation in electric usage was one of the factors that helped to ease the California "energy crunch" of a couple of years ago. Yes, I realize this is not as easy as it sounds, but it would seem, intuitively, that if excess demand stresses the electric grid, reducing (both current and future) demand will help us get more out of the system we already have in place.
Also: are there not any technical (or technological) solutions that can further localize outages, so as to contain problems as on 8/14? I remember three summers back (?) when a cable fire blacked out the Washington Heights area of northern Manhattan - scores of thousands were without power for a day, but Con Ed officials crowed for months about how their new and improved system had localized the damage, and how 1977-style citywide blackouts were a thing of past (well, and the future, too, but who knew?)

The problem, Jay C, is that conservation can be achieved several different ways. One way is through higher prices causing less usage, or through technological advancement bringing more efficiency. Natural economic laws very effectively drive these effects. These improvements can be retarded by false price-signaling (say, by artificially keeping rates low in a crisis) or improved by additional research.

The other way really is accurately summed up as "personal virtue." This is where people change their preferences and consume less in the absence of changes in price signaling. The California experience somewhat applies, even though the recurring blackouts did provide pressure to conserve. After all, each person had a strong incentive to cheat and not conserve, in a Prisoner's Dilemma setup.

Relying on changed preferences and virtue can be useful. However, it's generally more useful to have actual price signalling. People may not stick by conservation, especially when artificially low prices are telling them that no shortage exists. It also rarely solves long term structural problems. If power plants aren't getting built, then an increase in conservation will, all things being equal, just put off the day when more power plants are built.

I believe all of you are missing the point.

The last blackout occurred in 1979. That is 24 years ago. Do you seriously think that companies will sacrifice their own financial performance (and many short term individual financial rewards) to benefit someone a generation later.

If a massive outage happened every year then something might be done.

Of course, relatively massive outages do happen every year, if you consider over a million people being affected relatively massive. Those are mostly natural disaster caused, though, and different from this. Still, people don't have power for up to weeks at a time. All this reporting is bound to annoy slightly, say, the people in Tennessee, Arkansas, and north Mississippi who lost power a few weeks ago due to massive high winds.

However, Jim, I do expect that companies would be willing to build additional power plants if power were sold at true higher rates during shortages and crisis situations. (When load increases, more inefficient power sources must be used. Of course, despite this, rates are the same even when massively inefficient power is used. If rates increased at times of high usage to reflect this, there would be an incentive to build more power plants, and to conserve in times of high usage.)

John Thacker, Eric Coe, yep, facts are pesky things.

2002 Energy & Water Bill 06/25/2001
Farr amendment - Power Grid Improvement Loans
Cost: $350 million
Authorize the Secretary of Energy to make loans and loan-guarantees for the purpose of improving existing electric power transmission systems, reliability or capacity. These loans must be repaid in full within 25 years, such that the long-term cost to the government is zero.

Lobbied against by the Bush administration and then voted down repeatedly in DeLay-organized party-line votes in the House Appropriations Committee, House Rules Committee, and the finally the full House.

http://www.house.gov/farr/press/prenergy6-20.htm

--foo

Jane's analysis seems to be excellent. Socialists and Luddites will blame the power companies and deregulation, when the truth is, even with the best systems, sometimes undesired sh*t happens. Those who would blame deregulation will ignore her insightful observation that de-regulated Pennsylvania was largely unaffected, while highly-regulated NY went dark. And IIRC, PA is on the same grid as NY, eh?
U.S. sheeple are so conditioned by the media and greedy lawyers to blame some deep-pocket outfit--or the Bush administration--for anything that goes wrong, when the truth is that upper-crust faux-environmentalists oppose every effort to make more power available--even totally non-polluting power, as with the proposed offshore wind-farm in Massachusetts.
But eventually, peoples' mental inconsistencies (let alone hypocrisy) will catch up with them.
Tick tick tick...

"Now, as to why New York's regulatory regime matters -- whatever caused this is most likely something that would have happened anyway, causing a local blackout."

Have you been reading the articles pointing out that it started in Ohio? I'm not sure how that'd cause a local blackout in NY.....

Look, foo. It's also perfectly true that there was a Republican and Administration backed bill also designed to address problems in the grid. Due to disagreements between the parties, neither bill got adopted. You can blame both parties if you wish, of course, but it's a legislative process thing which happens all the time. One can just as easily say that the problem would have been addressed if the Democrats had yielded to the Administration bill. It would be equally unfair.

I don't think that such name-calling at just one party is reasonable or justified. To a degree, both are to blame. OTOH, both groups believe that they are fighting for important principles.

So, foo, to move from "Bush and Congressional Republicans opposed one particular bill that used one particular method to address the grid" to "Bush and the Congressional Republicans said that the grid didn't need an upgrade" is blatantly false and dishonest.

It's as dishonest as saying that, for example, Democrats who oppose the educational voucher spending plans for DC (which in that case, are purely extra funds allocated) believe that the DC public schools are perfectly fine and need no improvement.

And IIRC, PA is on the same grid as NY, eh?

No, Steve, PA is on an adjoining grid ("pool", I think is the term). I haven't seen much reporting on this, but apparently the PJAM pool (Pennsylvania, Jersey And Maryland, which also covers DC and northern Virginia) properly disconnected, and so the blackout did not reach further down the Eastern Seaboard. Ditto the New England pool, so only downstate Connecticut (and Hartford, apparently) were affected there.

Have you been reading the articles pointing out that it started in Ohio? I'm not sure how that'd cause a local blackout in NY.....

Well, I suppose we need to wait for more information. But the obvious point is that a local backout in Ohio shouldn't cause a blackout in New York, therefore something is wrong with NY's highly regulated power suppliers. Unless you want to blame it on Bush and National Grid Group PLC of the UK, like Palast.

The transmission grid is, indeed, heavily regulated. When the transmission grid goes down, areas with lots of local energy production are going to have a much easier time dealing with the problem. Metro areas then naturally do much worse, since power plants are generally not built close by and local NIMBY opposition is much worse. Hence, if a transmission link goes down far away from NYC, the discouraging of local energy production still causes problems. (Energy transmission does always cause energy loss anyway, which is another reason why having more local production could be more efficient.)

It's interesting, but inevitable, that advocates of regulation can have dramatically different ideas of what the regulation should and would do. Even more interesting, advocates of using regulation to force the building of additional capacity and transmission lines seem to coexist faithfully in the same party along advocates of additional regulation to prevent the construction for environmental or other concerns.

Of course, advocates of regulation usually assume that the regulation would work in the way that they want, expecting regulation to be logical and rational and their own ends to be the most logical and rational.

ABC News reported that it was the fast thinking of a PA utility 'command center' that prevented the casquade from hitting their grid. In other words it was luck and fast thinking that kept everything East of the Rockies (regulated and not) from going black.

Isn't the problem with the grid that it is a natual monopoly? Like your phone line, you can choose any carrier you want but that 'last mile' of wire is regulated to prevent the owner from using that monopoly power to price all competition out of the market? If this is the case how would grid deregulation address this problem?

Back in the old old days, the phone company was a regulated monopoly. Its profit was based as a return on its capital equipment. You may remember that a long time ago phones felt like they were made out of lead & they were technically property of the phone company that you were required to return if you moved or they broke. Whatever the merits it does seem like the incentive was there to invest heavily in plan and equipment.

Boonton -

Yup, if anything the "bad old days" of regulation led to overinvestment. It used to be said that utility CEOs were the only ones who could increase profits by redecorating their office...

Bones's comment is just silly, and blatantly false. Power has long been traded from state to state. Before deregulation it was governments and municipal authorities which traded power over long distances. Often, for example, different power generation systems generated more power at different times of the year, so states would trade to balance things out, this is especially true for hydropower, which has almost always been traded over long distances. Remember the last time we had a blackout like this in the northeast of a similar scale was way back in the 60s, kinda hard to blame deregulation for that one too.

The real problem is as Jane described it, the grid is old and fragile, mostly because regulation forces it to comply with out of date codes and to eschew innovation and major upgrades. Compare with the phone industry, for example. When was the last time you heard of a (non power related) massive phone service outage? Even though phone usage is much higher now. The modern phone networks are much, much more sophisticated than the old AT&T network, and they offer tons more services.

Again I thought the actual phone 'last mile' lines remained a regulated monopoly? If the grid is to be deregulated then what do advocates of deregulation propose exactly?

Power usage per person has been going down since 1990. Conservation has already worked it’s way through the system. In the last 20 years our population has increased dramatically. That is what caused our increased need for power. So the politicians are going to have to get a backbone and vote for Bush’s bill that gives the American people the power we need. That bill has been stuck in the Senate for two years.

Or we will have to take the normal left-wing approach to these problems. Line 75 million people against the wall and execute them. This will bring our demand for power in balance with the supply.

I would rather build the nasty power plants and transmission lines.

"Or we will have to take the normal left-wing approach to these problems. Line 75 million people against the wall and execute them. This will bring our demand for power in balance with the supply."

Right, Jake. We all know all liberals are really Stalinists. (After all, we've known it since that guy told us in 1950...)

I vote we build more power plants and transmission lines. Otherwise, I might be one of the 75 million. (Though, at a guess, people in the DC area are less likely to be picked.)

Is foo bard advocating corporate welfare?

I don't know about Foo bard, but the not very Republican Bush/Cheney energy group is ready to hand out some corporate welfare.

We just got our pants pulled down by an accident. Imagine what a saboteur could do. Liberals may have all the bad ideas in the world, but decentralizing energy production (solar, wind, microhydro) is not one of them. The suburbs are sucking the cities dry.

You rattle off plenty of reasons to dissuade development of new plants (NIMBY, employee hazard pay, law suits, etc.) but I would argue that these have all become common enough threats to industry that they have already been taken into account in the costs of conducting business.

"So the politicians are going to have to get a backbone and vote for Bush’s bill that gives the American people the power we need."

"Or we will have to take the normal left-wing approach to these problems. Line 75 million people against the wall and execute them. This will bring our demand for power in balance with the supply. "

Is the right wing going to achieve levels of intelllectual bankruptcy any deeper than this? Gee, either we have to give Bush a blank check or we have to kill 75 million people. What a choice.

"So the politicians are going to have to get a backbone and vote for Bush’s bill that gives the American people the power we need."

"Or we will have to take the normal left-wing approach to these problems. Line 75 million people against the wall and execute them. This will bring our demand for power in balance with the supply. "

Is the right wing going to achieve levels of intelllectual bankruptcy any deeper than this? Gee, either we have to give Bush a blank check or we have to kill 75 million people. What a choice.

"..but I would argue that these have all become common enough threats to industry that they have already been taken into account in the costs of conducting business."

Yup, you are unwittingly right on target. That's exactly the reason why the industry does not spend the required money to update the system! I think that in this particular instance---you have perhaps blundered onto the truth.

Lonewacko, you're even MORE charming when you're among your friends. And to think that I sometimes feel guilty about insulting you at Matt Y's!

I don't think that we should be hasty about rejecting the idea of killing 75 million people, just because a conservative suggested it. Let's think outside the box, guys!

BTW, something I haven't seen mentioned: aren't trans-state power distribution lines a free rider problem? You shell out to upgrade them, but a bunch of other people benefit.

I'm not sure how you could deregulate to get around this.

I enjoyed this article regarding Bush/Cheney and NY energy deregulation, and found it appropriate to the discussion.

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=15459

Ladies and Gentlemen:
A couple of facts regarding "deregulation" of electricity in NY Stante:
1- The governor re-regulated the electric utility industry administratively through his hand picked political supportors at the PSC.

2-The same players that now "own" the transmission lines were permitted to sell off the power plants, buy out independent power producers at pennies on the dollar without having to agree to any concessions regarding upgrading the transmisson and distribution systems.

3-Every player in the "degregulatory" process, save "one" benifited exremely well. The only player that was not compensated by the re-regulation of the utility market in NYS was, and still is the consumer.

4- State regulators and industry insiders have known for years that significant bottlenecks in the grid system needed to be addressed, and have done absolutely nothing to remedy the situation.

If you are a fan of the first round of the way "deregulation" occured, wait till you get the bill to fix the current problem with the system.

Yep. It was the grid. It was the same grid that Bush and the congressional republicans said didn't need an upgrade in June of 2001.--foo

Hmm, foo bard. Your statement seems to directly contradict the evidence of this speech by Dick Cheney in June 2001. The relevant quote:

"The report we issued last month presented more than 100 recommendations covering virtually the entire range of concerns that face the American people. One of the concerns, obviously, is the aging power grid and the growing problem that we have in getting electricity from the power plant to the light switch. It's clear that we must upgrade and expand the power grid."

Seems like he's saying that the report specifically did say that the grid needed an upgrade. Pesky thing, those facts. Makes it harder for you to just make assertions, no doubt.--John Thacker

Here is a pesky fact for you, John:

In June of 2001, Bush opposed and the congressional GOP voted down legislation to provide $350 million worth of loans to modernize the nation's power grid because of known weaknesses in reliability and capacity. Supporters of the amendment pointed to studies by the Energy Department showing that the grid was in desperate need of upgrades as proof that their legislation sponsored by U.S. Rep. Sam Farr (D-CA) should pass.

Unfortunately, the Bush Administration lobbied against it and the Republicans voted it down three separate times: First, on a straight party line in the U.S. House Appropriations Committee, then on a straight party line the U.S. House Rules Committee, and finally on a party line on the floor of the full House [Roll Call Vote #169, 6/20/01].

Those of us still in retention of the gene that allows us to process information with a critical eye, rather than swallow it whole with a blind eye, have learned not to put a goddamn bit of stock in what Bu$hCo says, but to look at what Bu$hCo actually does. In this particular textbook case, Bu$hCo CEO Dick Cheney feigns concern over the "aging power grid" and declares, "It's clear that we must upgrade and expand the power grid." But only 7 days later Bu$hCo minions in the House went to bat three times against an amendment to

Authorize the Secretary of Energy to make loans and loan-guarantees for the purpose of improving existing electric power transmission systems, reliability or capacity. These loans must be repaid in full within 25 years, such that the long-term cost to the government is zero.

and, yes, it was the amendment that struck out swinging. Initial cost of the amendment would have been $350 million, less than 10% of what we are now spending in Iraq every week. Even if the government had to end up eating the 350 million in the end, if spending it would have prevented last week's blackout, how might that compare dollar for dollar with the economic impact of the blackout when all's said and done?

Bu$hCo says red--Bu$hCo does green.
Bu$hCo says cold--Bu$hCo does hot.
Bu$hCo says up--Bu$hCo does down.
Bu$hCo says power grid needs help--Bu$hCo does kill House amendment to help it.

I have come up with a fancy, sarcastic name for this concept. I call it the "Bu$hCo 180 Degrees of Truth." However, most people simply call it stone hypocrisy or outright lying.

No, John, let's not let those little facts get in way.

Spade, it sounds to me like, far from "process[ing] information with a critical eye," you've swallowed the Buzzflash line whole.

Your own cite quotes Congressman Farr's own press release as saying, "Under the amendment, the loans and loan guarantees can only be made after the Secretary of Energy approves them; determines that other commercial financing is unavailable and that an emergency exists, and finds that the projects they fund would maintain or improve electricity transmission."

"...that an emergency exists..." That means, if this amendment had passed, none of the money would have been spent in the Northeast. (In fact, given the pace of Federal bureaucracy, I wonder if any money would have been spent yet.) The only power "emergency" in 2001 was California, so it's no surprise to find that Farr is a California Democrat.

I'm sure there were other reasons to vote against this amendment, but it's no surprise if Republicans voted against a helping handout to California after being trounced the previous year in elections there.

We can agree on the pace of federal beauracracy.

However, here's what was also included in Rep. Farr's release:

"This loan program would benefit people of all political stripes," Rep. Farr said. "And the loans could be used by public or private-sector groups to improve an electrical grid that is clearly outdated and overburdened in California and elsewhere. That's why I'm disheartened that some Republicans continue to play politics while the energy crisis wreaks havoc on our lives."

And here is the sentence that appeared immediately preceding the one you quoted:

The amendment authorizes $350 million to fund direct loans and loan guarantees to improve electric power transmission systems in the United States.

In light of this, I find Buzzflash's statement regarding Bu$hCo's thin skin, fragile psyche, penchant for playing childish political revenge games, and refusal to engage fair solutions to real problems in favor of attempting to solve them by trying to privatize and deregulate everydamnthing in sight to put more money in their cronies' pockets all the more relevant:

And how does this illuminate Cheney's refusal to help California when it suffered rolling blackouts from the predatory behavior of the power companies and Gray Davis asked for help? Well, the Bush administration's and Tom DeLay's refusal to upgrade the electrical grid had a similar -- but even more dramatic -- impact on August 14, 2003

Here are two more interesting pieces in regard to the power biz:

POWER OUTAGE TRACED TO DIM BULB IN WHITE HOUSE --- The Tale of The Brits Who Swiped 800 Jobs From New York, Carted Off $90 Million, Then Tonight, Turned Off Our Lights

Lights Out on Deregulation

The trouble with this is it assumes that the folks who already have abundant power (new england, the south) are so eager to follow montana's lead in "deregulation." Montana Power & Light sold its assets to the same PPL you laud, which then cranked up montana's power prices by 4-fold. This hardly benefited MPL's shareholders, who got burned twice on the deal: once when their stock prices fell, and again by having to pay more for electricity, as it really was a locally-owned company.

Power deregulation is like globalization: the folks that have been perfectly comfortable with the status quo will get burned by the new model.

The montana case was particularly egregious, since essentially all the power is hydroelectric. If ever there was a case for local ownership of resources, this is it. Suddenly montana has become effectively a colony of Pennsylvania, and is suffering all the ills of an extractive economy.

This is an issue where liberals and conservatives agree, and the big-business libertarians can just take a hike.

Spade, this is getting old. Of course Farr is going to say the $350 million is going to benefit the whole nation; I'm sure if you asked, he would be glad to explain how each individual American would be better off as a result. But the fact is he talks about the Path 15 "bottleneck" in California, and earlier in the same Buzzflash article we're told that "The one-time cost to fix the Path 15 problem is $250 million, which would increase transfer capacity over Path 15 by approximately 1500 megawatts."

It's not clear how much of the $350 million is in loans and how much is to be used for loan guarantees; but if one particular fix in California is going to cost $250 million, that doesn't leave much for the rest of the country, does it?

And again, the bill says the Secretary has to determine that an emergency exists. In 2001, it's pretty obvious how the $350 million would have been distributed, and little or none would have gone to Ohio, or New York (or Canada!).

Yes, PJ, it is getting old. I'm having to repeat myself, so please pay attention this time:

Farr's statement says the purpose of the amendment is to "to improve electric power transmission systems in the United States." It does not say "to expand California's power grid, which would be to the benefit of 'each individual American.'" Is it really that difficult to comprehend that he's pointing to the "Path 15 problem" as an example of something that has occurred because improvements were not kept up as should have been? Fer chrissakes, man, it's right there in black & white:

• "CALIFORNIA’S PATH 15 ALREADY PROVES THAT BOTTLENECKS ARE A PROBLEM"
• "AMENDMENT WOULD DEAL WITH ENTIRE GRID--This amendment is designed to deal with all of the major power grid vulnerabilities."

Nor is it the least bit difficult to realize that "emergency" he's referring to is the current state of the entire grid, not blackouts in California. It's right in front of you, too:

• "GROWING DEMAND NOT MATCHED BY GROWING TRANSMISSION CAPACITY: Over the next 10 years, the Department of Energy predicts that demand for electric power will increase by 25%, requiring more than 200,000 megawatts of new capacity. However, under current plans electric transmission capacity will not be nearly enough to keep pace."

Sounds like blackouts waiting to happen. Sounds pretty alarming to me.

No, the amendment doesn't break down the percentage of loans against guarantees. So what? What possible difference could it make? There's something else that's not there, either. The amendment does not earmark $250 million dollars of that money specifically for repairs in California. Rep. Farr would not have been in charge of deciding who gets the money. And do you really think the Bu$hCo DOE would even have nightmares of letting that much of it go to California?! Once again, the entire point was to attempt to prevent a recurrence anywhere of what happened in California, not to bail out California or keep the money in reserve to bail out the next place it happened.

This stuff's not hard.

Repug Cheney says "we must upgrade and expand the power grid." A week later Rep. Farr tries to take at least a small step towards making it happen. Repug DeLay calls this "pure demagoguery" and along with his Repug Housemates shoots it down, 3 times. Two years and no modernization later, after reportedly the largest blackout in American history occurs somewhere besides California, Repug Boy Blunder calls the NE US blackout a wake-up call for the need to modernize our electricity delivery systems, only hours after telling the American people, with a straight face, that he has said so all along.

This stuff is easy. They're hypocrites and liars.

Spade, your argument is ludicrous. It's like saying that because the act to prevent gay marriage is called the Freedom to Marry act, then of course, its only aim is to increase freedom to marry, and what are those gays getting all worked up about? Who's against freedom? Just because a congressman inserts decorative language into an amendment does not mean that it is true, or god knows America would be cleaner, safer, more beautiful, educated, family-friendly, and free, than heaven itself.

PJ has pointed to actual constraining language and evidence on the cost of the Path 15 upgrade. Unless you can do something other than repeat "But it says it's for the good of the whole United States, and our congressman's not the kind of meany who would try to grab excessive pork for Cali!" you're just making yourself sound silly.

You've got to be kidding. What's ludicrous is continuing to insist that simply because Farr is from California and used the Path 15 problem in California to illustrate his point, well, then that must be where all the money's going to go. Would you please point to the language in the amendment that specifically gives Rep. Farr control over who gets the loans? Or where the amendment specifically appropriates funds for expenditure in California? Please tell me where it is. I'd be surprised if Rep. Farr hadn't brought home the bacon before, but where is the CA 17th district pork specifically in this amendment?

Except for fundraising, of course, Bu$hCo has had a virtual hands off policy for California, in essence telling Californians to go screw themselves. So, I guess a Bu$hCo-appointed Energy Secretary would then just gladly go along and stamp his approval on sending 70% of those loans California's way. That sounds silly.

So, if I were to contend that when Bush says in August 2003 a wake-up call for the need to modernize our electricity delivery systems, he's only referring to Ohio, Michigan, New York, to the complete exclusion of the other 47 states and DC, you'd back me up on that, huh?

It's like saying that because the act to prevent gay marriage is called the Freedom to Marry act, then of course, its only aim is to increase freedom to marry, and what are those gays getting all worked up about? Who's against freedom?

Oh, you mean like "Clear Skies," "Healthy Forests," and "No Child Left Behind?" Or maybe like saying the grid needs help and then calling it "demagoguery" when someone tries to give it help a week later? I guess we'd sound silly if we called that ludicrous.

It's a tried and true diversionary tactic at work here, one that Bu$hCo excels at: when accused of something, blame somebody else, or change the subject completely and blame somebody else for something else. Prattle on forever trying to make Farr's amendment look like pork, but whether it is or not has nothing to do with, or will ever change the fact that Bush, Cheney, and DeLay are exposed once again here as the ultimate in hypocrites.

[NOTE: I screwed up the link on this in a previous post--a wake-up call for the need to modernize our electricity delivery systems.
My apologies for any confusion.]

What's ludicrous is continuing to insist that simply because Farr is from California and used the Path 15 problem in California to illustrate his point, well, then that must be where all the money's going to go.

So you're telling us that Farr used Path 15 as an example of why we needed to pass his bill even though his bill wouldn't provide nearly enough money to fix Path 15? Just whose dishonesty are we supposed to be mad about again?

When did 250 become more than 350?

Okay, Spade, one more time before we move on™.

Farr's amendment specifically asked for $350 million, and specifically restricted it for emergency situations. I'm sure he would have liked to allocate it all to California, but then there would have been no doubt about it being rejected. (BTW, I'm not putting Farr down; he's mostly doing his job, which is to attempt to wrest some of his constituents' money away from Washington. I'd rather he did it by voting to lower taxes, but I don't expect that of Democrats.)

I'm sure Farr would prefer to have some Democrat (ideally, a California Democrat... from his district) decide how to allocate the money, but since the Executive branch at the time was Republican, he couldn't to that.

Looking deeper into the actual facts, it appears his amendment was not actually voted down in committee. Here's the Thomas link to the amendment; from there you can actually see the transcript of the Appropriations Committee meeting. (If that link doesn't work, you can find it by going to Farr's main webpage at www.house.gov/farr/, click on "Bills: 108th", which takes you to the Thomas database listing for the 108th Congress. Click on 107th (because 2001 was in the 107th Congress), then scroll down to Farr's name. Note there's only a 1 in the Amendments Proposed column, which is the one we're talking about. Click on that, and you'll see the page I mean.)

Farr proposed the Amendment at 5 pm on 6/20/01; at 5:22 pm Congressman Young (of FL) raised the point of order that this amendment (to an appropriations bill) would change existing law, and so was prohibited under "clause 2 of rule XXI". The chairman of the committee ruled the amendment was indeed out of order (Farr chose not to speak on the point of order, fwiw), and the committee moved on™.

Spade, I'm sure you'd like to be able to point to a well-thought-out bill that Bush opposed so we could blame the blackout on him. Sadly, there was no such bill. In lieu of that, Buzzflash found this minor amendment and is trying to blow it up into something significant.

You yourself said "We can agree on the pace of federal beauracracy." So even if the amendment had been tacked on the appropriations bill, and passed, it would have made no difference. We'd be arguing about why Bush appointed such a slow Secy of Energy.

Maybe some of the money would eventually have helped the Northeast, but I doubt it. The stories I've seen talk about $50 to 100 billion being needed to improve the electricity distribution system; this amendment talked about an amount less than 1% of that total. You seem to think the money would have been evenly distributed around the country, despite the "emergency" requirement. If it turns out that the main problem was, say, a $100 million transmission bottleneck in Ohio, how could getting a $750k loan from Washington possibly make a difference?

I suppose, with enough contortions, you can turn the story of Farr's amendment into another brick to build your anti-Bush wall. But it's absurd to call it more than that.

Jane et al

Can you actually explain how a deregulated energy industry would have prevented the black-out, or how it would ensure that the grid gets upgraded?

I believe that if you look at my post, I specifically say that I am not claiming that deregulation would have made the grid more reliable.

PJ, never did I blame the power outage on GW. Do I believe his administration could have been (and still be) more proactive in working to prevent such an ocurrence? Surely, but there's no way I can honestly expect Bush to be singularly at fault here.

Nor do I harbor any illusions that Farr's amendment, had it passed, would have been a magical panacea for all the grid's problems. More squabbling over where the loans should go would've stretched it even more thin. I, too, have seen those rather remarkable dollar figures reported, and the amount of money in the amendment would've been merely a drop in the bucket.

But, it would've been at least something. A starting point, something to build on, whatever, and after saying it's needed, the Bu$hCo crew squelched it a week later. That's where my point is, PJ. They say one thing, and they do the exact opposite. All this hoo-hah over Farr's amendment is a bunch of smoke obscuring it. I couldn't care less if it was introduced by Dem, Repub, Green, or Raelian. Bu$hCo says help is needed, someone steps up with it (arguments over its feebleness aside), and Bu$hCo calls it BS. These guys are the All-Stars of Hypocrisy. That's the brick. Hell, I don't have to bake'em. The only contortions I'm doing are trying to dodge the damn things because they keep throwing them at us.

BTW, if you'd like to enjoy a brief moment of levity:
This is Rael

Nor do I harbor any illusions that Farr's amendment, had it passed, would have been a magical panacea for all the grid's problems.

Doesn't look like you have much choice in the matter, does it? All that remains now is for you to admit that when Farr claimed, in language that you yourself quoted, that his "AMENDMENT WOULD DEAL WITH ENTIRE GRID--This amendment is designed to deal with all of the major power grid vulnerabilities", he was talking through his hat.

Huh? Oh yeah, you're the guy who was saying earlier that 250 is more than 350. You should be talking to Rael.

And you're the guy who was trying to convince PJ that only a fraction of that 350 would be spent in California. Well?

Well, you're still missing the whole point.

PJ, thanks for the "spirited exchange." Moving on sounds like a good idea...

Despite your declarations to the contrary, you have been impying there is a connection between the blackout and the continuing regulation of the NY portion of the grid.

But that is only the first part of my question. The discussion, on your side, has evolved into the merits of deregulation in the power industry.

In general, the capacity of the grid needs to be increased.

How would deregulation ensure that the grid's capacity will be updated as needed? It's a very simple question and answering it will go a long way toward proving your point that deregulation is desirable.

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