Thursday edition - July 20, 2006

The-World-Is-A-Safer-Place-Without-Saddam News

• Killed in Iraq Baltimore Sun

• Iraq Body Count

• Iraqi mom, 2 children executed Toronto Sun, Canada

• 20 Sunni mosque workers kidnapped Houston Chronicle

• Iraq says displaced numbers rise sharply Washington Post

• GSDF Iraq troop exit came with media gag order The Japan Times

• Georgia Pair Is Charged in Plot To Strike Capitol, World Bank Washington Post

• GOP Lawmakers Edge Away From Optimism on Iraq Washington Post

• Iranian businessmen called for investment in Iraq TREND Information, Azerbaijan 

• Iran vows response to nuke package Aug. 22 AP

• US Navy ship anchors off coast of Lebanon AP

• Israeli censor wielding great power AP

• Rift between U.S., EU emerges on Israel AP

George Bush = George Custer -- Grant Gerver

Cheney, Condi Consult Catholic

Father Faouzi Elia of Peoria told Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that Israel should turn its attack to Syria and leave Lebanon alone. ..Elia, pastor of the St. Sharbel Maronite Catholic Church, sat in on individual meetings this week with Cheney, Rice and the national security adviser to talk about the U.S. government's role in the Middle East conflict.

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During an interview with Secret Service agents, Williford denied threatening Clinton but said he believed Clinton was "a communist mole for the Red Chinese," the affidavit said.

Williford, of Oklahoma City, also made violent remarks about celebrity Paris Hilton during the interview, the affidavit said.
 

A Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) missile, not Bill Clinton thinking about Paris, is launched at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The United States will start deploying missile interceptors at a key air force base in Japan from this summer, as part of efforts with Tokyo to deal with the threat of North Korea's missile arsenal, the Japanese Foreign Ministry said on Thursday. Photo/White Sands Missile Range

"So hot today down in Washington, D.C., President Bush said, 'Maybe there is something with the global warming s**t.'." --David Letterman

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will travel to New York to discuss the crisis in Lebanon with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the European Union foreign policy chief, Annan's top deputy said Wednesday.

Jon Stewart on Lebanon Coverage - YouTube.com

by Greg Palast
Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Don't check the casket. I know he's back. When I saw those lights flickering out at La Guardia Airport yesterday and heard the eerie shrieks and moans in the dark, broiling subway tunnels, I just knew it: Ken Lay's alive! We can see his spirit in every flickering lightbulb from Kansas to Queens as we head into America's annual Blackout season.

It wasn't always so. For decades, America had nearly the best, most reliable electricity system on the planet and, though we grumbled, electricity bills were among the planet's lowest. It was all thanks to Franklin Roosevelt and the Public Utility Holding Company Act which allowed for tough regulation of the power monopolies. They were told what they could charge, the maximum profit they could take and -- what I think about when the lights dim -- exactly how much they had to invest to keep the juice flowing.

But then, in 1992, a Texas oil man, George H.W. Bush, ordered to evacuate the White House by two-thirds of the US electorate, gave his Houston crony, Ken Lay, a billion-dollar good-bye kiss: Bush's signature authorizing deregulation of electricity.

But Lay's operation didn't pick up the really big bucks until after December 21, 1994, when the Enron chief wrote to the incoming governor of Texas, George W. Bush, asking the Governor-elect to grant him a special wish for Christmas:

"The Public Utility Commission appointment is an extremely critical one. We believe Pat Wood is best qualified…. Linda joins me in wishing you and Laura and the whole family a joyous holiday. - Sincerely, Ken."

And Georgie-Boy granted Kenny-Boy's wish, appointing Wood and thereby giving Texans an electricity regulator who stumped for Ken Lay's right to earn unlimited profits without any obligation to keep the lights on. Thus, by 1995, electricity deregulation had a foothold in the Lone Star state that would spread nationwide like Dutch Elm Disease.

But, unsatisfied with excessive profits, Lay and his team went for unconscionable profits, flickering the lights in California in the winter of 2000. "Let poor Aunt Millie … use candles," said one of Lay's minions as he deliberately schemed to engineer black-outs. When the public reacted with anger, Bill Clinton, by a December 2000 executive order, ended Enron's right to trade power. Lay's response was, that month, through a lobbyist, to tell President-elect Bush to promote Lay's puppet regulator, Wood, to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Kenny-Boy wished it, and again, Georgie-Boy granted it.

Lay's hand-picked federal regulator Wood then kept the game going until, on August 14, 2003, the entire northeast, from Ohio to New York, went dark. Wood had to take the blame and resigned. Bush replaced him with Joe Kelliher, a regulator nominated by -- no points for guessing -- Ken Lay.

In the old, pre-Ken days of regulation, my fellow economists used to complain about something called the Averch-Johnson Effect. The A-J Effect was the result of regulations which gave companies incentives to gold plate the electricity system, making it way TOO reliable. Too much cash was spent on keeping the lights on.

Well, gone are the days of the A-J effect. The gold-plating is gone -- but not the gold. Under regulation, power sellers were limited by law to a profit of about 9%, what the law called a just and reasonable return. Now, the profits can be -- and are -- unreasonable, unjust and just out of sight.

For example, one company, Entergy, owns a nuclear plant in New York called, Indian Point. They get to charge for nuclear power as if it were produced by oil -- that is, they charge New York City residents at a price effectively set by OPEC, prices boosted by the war in Iraq. Not surprisingly, Entergy today reported a record rake-in of profits from their nuclear business. No 9% limit for these good old boys. On top of that, the power company is relieved of all obligations to keep the lights on in New York City.

… And in New Orleans. The same company supplies all of the electricity in the City that Care Forgot. Under deregulation, they hadn't gold-plated the system; they hadn't even water-proofed it. Last year, when the levees burst and the city flooded, Entergy simply turned off the lights and declared their New Orleans subsidiary bankrupt. Leaving New Orleans in the dark was a profitable decision. The company reported a 23% leap in earnings for the third quarter of 2005, the period including Hurricane Katrina, a profit boost they attributed to "the weather." Hey, are these guys droll, or what?

This year, Entergy's profits have stayed up in the clouds, no doubt helped by the cash the company saved by not bothering to restore electricity to a large number of their customers in New Orleans --who remain in the dark even today.

By now, you've got to ask: after the profiteering from Katrina, after the California power scandal of 2000, after the Great Black-out of 2003, even after the hand-cuffing of Ken Lay, why are we still under a deregulation regime that Ken Lay seems to rule from the grave? Why is it that we're still at the mercy of power vampires?

The answer, in part, is that the bloodsucking is a bi-partisan feast. Entergy, the New Orleans nuclear company, is well defended in the US Senate by their former lawyer, Hillary Rodham, who now protects them under her new alias, Senator Clinton.

Ken Lay's gone, but the ghost of Ken Lay -- the marauding ghoul called deregulation -- stays to haunt us.


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For more on Ken Lay, Entergy, New Orleans and the politics of power, read Greg Palast's just-released New York Times bestseller, "ARMED MADHOUSE: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf?, China Floats Bush Sinks, the Scheme to Steal '08, No Child's Behind Left and other Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War." (Penguin Dutton 2006.)

Palast is also co-author of a treatise on the power industry, "Regulation and Democracy" with Jerrold Oppenheim and Theo MacGregor (United Nations ILO 2000/Pluto UK 2002).

Go to www.GregPalast.com .
 

Saddam Hussein is receiving psychiatric counseling to convince him to start eating again after 12 days on hunger strike in a U.S. military prison.

Saying that the 69-year-old ousted Iraqi president was still refusing food but taking liquid nourishment

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Odd News

• Taiwanese airliner diverted after window broken by drunken ... Hindu, India

• Chinese give Rumsfeld shootdown info AP

• Python gulps queen-size electric blanket AP

• Dentists to give hurt panda false teeth Reuters

• Jellyfish bung up output at Japan nuclear plant Reuters

• Mich. teen flips Jeep during driver test AP

• Customer subdues robber with applesauce AP

 

 

A month-old male giraffe, yet to be named, is closely watched by his mother, Gezi, at the San Francisco Zoo in San Francisco, Thursday, July 13, 2006. (Photo/Paul Sakuma)

Peace.