Democrats against deregulation

Since nobody cared about my topic on the politics of energy, lets see if deregulation can quench your thirst.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/08/23/...adio/index.html

Democrats: Deregulation damages power grid

NEW YORK (CNN) --Congress must not allow the Bush administration's "doctrinal commitment to unfettered deregulation" to keep the country's power grid functioning "like something from the Stone Age," the senior senator from New York said Saturday.

Delivering the Democrats' weekly radio address, Sen. Chuck Schumer said an archaic power grid and no enforceable oversight were at the root of last week's massive blackout.

"The Bush administration, with its doctrinal commitment to unfettered deregulation, has insisted that this situation can be resolved by allowing the states and utility industry to deal with it by themselves," Schumer said.

The resulting "free-market" approach, he said -- while enjoying limited success in boosting production and lowering rates -- is akin to "saying we should let private industry run our roads and our sidewalks."

"Even though the whole nation depends upon an interconnected, high-quality grid, a utility that produces power in one area has no incentive to make it work in another," he said.

The investigation into the cause of last week's blackout is ongoing, but the North American Electric Reliability Council, the agency that sets guidelines for power companies but has no power to enforce them, said initial evidence indicates that abnormal activity on lines owned by Ohio-based FirstEnergy Corp. may have precipitated the widespread shutdown.

The blackout affected parts of eight Northeastern and Midwestern states and Ontario, Canada.

FirstEnergy -- whose president, Anthony J. Alexander, is a member of President Bush's "Pioneer Club" of supporters who raised $100,000 for his 2000 election campaign -- has acknowledged some problems but said that problems in other systems occurred at the same time.

"Truth be told, though our economy operates in the Information Age, our power grid functions more like something from the Stone Age," Schumer said. "We must act to change this now in the energy bill that is before the Congress."

"The new energy bill before Congress must compel the utility industry to meet a minimum set of standards for reliability, power transmission and grid performance across the country," he said. "But it should also ensure that the American power grid is national and governed by one set of firm and enforceable rules, set not by utilities but by non-partisan federal regulators."

Schumer added that the bill should contain no "poison-pill provisions" -- such as the Bush drive to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling -- that might slow or stop progress on the bill.

"We Democrats are not going to let Republicans play Russian roulette with our nation's power supply," he said. "Modernizing the electricity grid is a 21st-century problem that requires immediate, innovative thinking and coordination, not failed economic theory from the Depression-era."