POWER OUTAGE TRACED TO DIM BULB IN WHITE HOUSE

[PaDUer]

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
WebLog
Friday, August 15, 2003

by Greg Palast

I can tell you all about the ne're-do-wells that put out our lights tonight. I came up against these characters -- the Niagara Mohawk Power Company -- some years back. You see, before I was a journalist, I worked for a living, as an investigator of corporate racketeers. 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.

To pull off this grand theft by kilowatt, the NiMo-led consortium fabricated cost and schedule reports, then performed a Harry Potter job on the account books. In 1988, I showed a jury a memo from an executive from one partner, Long Island Lighting, giving a lesson to a NiMo honcho on how to lie to government regulators. The jury ordered LILCO to pay $4.3 billion and, ultimately, put them out of business.

And that's why, if you're in the Northeast, you're reading this by candlelight tonight. Here's what happened. After LILCO was hammered by the law, after government regulators slammed Niagara Mohawk and dozens of other book-cooking, document-doctoring utility companies all over America with fines and penalties totaling in the tens of billions of dollars, the industry leaders got together to swear never to break the regulations again. Their plan was not to follow the rules, but to ELIMINATE the rules. They called it "deregulation."

It was like a committee of bank robbers figuring out how to make safecracking legal.

-snip-
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."

-snip-

entire article-
http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=257&row=0

[Walt Starr]

1. Greg Palast is VERY Fair & Balanced

In fact fairandbalanced, there is no fairandbalanced more Fair & Balanced fairandbalacned commentator out there fairancbalanced.

[rocktivity]

2. This article should be placed on every doorstep in California

If you can read this and still want to replace Gray Davis with a Republician, you're stark raving dumb.

rocknation

[SpiralHawk]

3. "The Axis of Weasels"

The most telling turn of phrase in this brilliant and timely piece of work. Thank you very much, Mr. Palast.

OK, let's get those e-mails flying off across the Fruited Plain. America needs to know this story, especially the Northeast and California.

"Oftentimes, we live in a processed world -- you know, people focus on the process and not results."
- George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., May 29, 2003

[catzies]

4. BEST. ARTICLE. TITLE. EVER.

With apologies to CatWoman, who still holds the title of Best Thread Title Ever.

[SpiralHawk]

5. Big Badass Kick -- this is raw meat, folks

It takes time and effort to read it all, but then again it says it all.

This is MUST reading for every citizen. I suggest copying it, pasting it in an e-mail, and getting it in HIHH MOTION around the net now -- while the whole stinking mess is unfolding.

[BrotherBuzz]

6. Kick

:kick:
for today's must read

[catzies]

7. get thee back to the front page with a good

:kick:

[Mairead]

8. .

[Octafish]

9. Must read.

Excellent report by a real journalist. Too bad that Greg Palast's work seldom gets printed in, or broadcast on, American media. The reason? he's a real journalist. He tells the truth.

PS: I saw him on C-SPAN roast the crooks once.

[alaine]

10. B is for Bush, B is for Bizarre how many Bad things,

Bogus things, and Beastly things the Bushistas help bring about.

Bump.

[9215]

11. Palast is at the top of

his game. His nuts and bolts analysis shows that this guy has done his homework and has been at it for decades.

Whenever the issue of deregulation is raised this article should be required reading.

:kick:

[AP]

12. Turns out it wasn't NiMo, but was First Energy of Cinci.

Wonder if Pallast will have a piece on them too?