Plum Crazy

This administration has no plan to fix the infastructure as they are corporately owned. Can't piss off the one's paying your bills, right?

If people really want to put blame on someone, blame those who brought in de-regulation. THAT is the real culprit.

My question though is why it is of National import when it hits places anywhere else but California? When we had energy problems, it was all OUR problem.

Well, according to my ex, everything is my fault.

I'm sorry for the inconvenience and all. Really.

I can't quite buy that the ones who brought in deregulation are the real culprits, because this problem was supposed to be taken care of 23 years ago, and deregulation hasn't been around anything like that long. After both 1965 and 1977, promises were made that nothing like this could happen again, yet it has happened again more than once over that time period. Deregulation didn't help, but it isn't the root cause of the problem either.

As to why it is suddenly of national import, well, the hard truth is that the biggest financial market in the country (and world) isn't in California and D.C. isn't close to California, but it's only a few hours drive from places affected by the blackout. Needless to say the government is more concerned with itself and finance than the citizens of the country.

The major problem is that our society has become so dependent upon energy and yet we have not built the infrastructure to keep up nor have we encouraged people to slow down in their consumption.

If Texas or the Feds want's to d**k us around again with energy, the rest of the states had better start growing their own food. With the Republicans trying to overthrow our elected governor here, I am sure that the next refrendum for us voters to take up is whether to leave the Union (typed slightly tongue in cheek!!!!) I will vote yeah. (tongue not quite in cheek....)

Jillian -- given the incredible amount of coverage the CA energy crisis got here in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal I really did -- and do -- think it's of major national importance. Maybe it's because I don't watch news on tv, and tv news organizations may have ignored it.

I would never have known that Californians were feeling that way if you hadn't posted here, and I'm glad you posted, but sorry you're feeling that way. Person to person -- the great thing about the internet and blogs.

Jillian,

When the lights go off at the house i call the power company after a reasonable amount of time.

I do not call my congressman nor my senator nor do i send an email to the president.

The power company has the personel and the equipment to determine the problem and fix it.
I don't need a middle man.

My understanding is that the feds have had a commision to oversee the power grid since at least 1965. If they haven't fixed it in all that time what makes you think they will fix it now.

I also understand that they had safeguards in place to guard against what happened but either human error took place or some other anomoly happened.

I think we would be wise to see the final report on what happened, then decide action. Blaming those who had nothing to do with the problem may be cathartic, but it solves little.

Mom, I think what Jillian meant was why, when a similar grid failure happened on the West Coast in 1996, weren't there outraged Senators and Congresspeople demanding "something be done." Nine states (and part of Mexico; about 4 million people all told) were blacked out for up to 10 hours.

BT - the way that it is organized right now, thanks to de-regulation, companies are not obligated to provide energy to ANY city. You can call the electric company all you want, but if they decide they don't want to supply energy, it's not going to get you anywhere. They are not required for the upkeep of the transmission systems. They don't need to work with other power companies. They don't need to do a gosh darn thing.

To illustrate their power to do what they darn well please, investigators have found, here in CA, that power companies purposely took plants off the grid to inflate prices, even when people's lives where in danger, businesses were losing their livlihoods, our entire state's economic system was crashing, our state bonds going down, the energy companies decided that profits were more inmportant.

That is a scary thought if you consider our whole national economic system is based upon the use of electricity. The health of our national economy is reliant upon the availability of electricity. Who do you want controlling something that can send this country in a downward spiral...someone that is only in it for profit at all costs?

My understanding is California never was deregulated . They were re-regulated according to Justin over at MSN PIC. He is usually on top of things like that and i'll take his word for that description, and as Lesley has pointed out, grid problems were in existence prior to deregulation.

The whole gist of Lesley's original entry was that the blame game does nothing and politicans hopping on this bandwagon or that bandwagon doesn't help either.

The way a problem is solved is by determining where we are , how we got there and where we need to be.

There will have to be cooperation between all sectors on this.

Since I have been mentioned as a "expert" let me chip in with my two bits. California had a regulation re-organization, not deregulation. And the regulations worked as designed, not as they were intended to work. There was a mix of rate caps and rate freedom with restricted markets and regulations requiring all who bought power in teh required spot market buy at the highest bid price, then they were required to sell in price capped markets ... and many other assinine regulations.

From what I have read of the NE power failure there is once again a mixture or regulation shuffling, miss-labeled as de-regulation. Power generation has seen a lessoning of regulations in certain aspects - typically in the marketplace, whlle facing higher levels of regulations in others - typically in the environmental arena. Power generation is not the same as power delivery, and it was in the delivery that the failures occured. The power grid is heavily regulated at several levels. Power companies face a myriad of regulations from the federal level down to the local level where community leaders must be appeased to stick a power pole in the ground. Various citizen groups have the right to appeal the decision for the placement for (practically) each and every power pole or transmission tower. So there is this enourmous demand for the power by citizens yet this increadible opposition for the means to transmit the power.

Furthermore, power companies do not, typically, refuse to sell their product. They may refuse to sell their product at a loss - but that is their right AND duty.