Remember When This Happened?

by: CA Berkeley WV

Wed Aug 12, 2009 at 05:21:33 AM EDT

I was rummaging through the photographs in old email and I found one from a coworker who is no longer with us. It is a fake satellite picture of the blackout in the northeast at 23:15 EST 14 AUG 2003 . It was actually visible and noted by NOAA.

Blackouts Happen

In his blissfully brief speech, Bush, who mistakenly referred to the Northeast event as a "rolling blackout" (ie., a planned shut off), also pointed to the anachronistic grid as a problem. "We'll have time to look at it and determine whether or not our grid needs to be modernized," mumbled Bush. "I happen to think it does, and have said so all along."

Energy markets played a hand in the recall of Gov. Davis in California in 2003. There were traders on tape treating the elderly in California as a joke. What, death panel you say? Then the East Coast blackout. Coincidence?

Governmental Affairs Update

PUHCA/WUHCA:  The Public Utility Holding Company Act was passed during the 1930's "New Deal" era of Franklin Roosevelt when government action to protect the public's interest from huge corporate interest was viewed as good citizenship. The legislation put some parameters and restrictions on the urges to merge electric utilities into large multi-state conglomerates with little accountability. The Congress passed a Bush supported Energy Bill in which PUCHA was repealed.

I am starting to see pattern here. Undo Glass-Stegal from the 1930s with the "financial innovation" that got used the mess that started to unwind in September 2007. The "public" part of public utility goes, and energy is traded as a financial instrument, and we get "sheet-happens" blackouts. And this justifies these FERC'S energy corridors?