You seem to have this bizarre fixation with Ollie North...
Personally I was always more fixated with Fawn Hall...
You talk about unscheduled maintenance... Well, exactly when are they supposed to maintain these plants? Afterall, they were facing power shortages all summer long and the winter was supposed to be a slower period for them.
You have to maintain them or they stop working completely (or blow up). In the link below, you'll discover this interesting fact:
"About 60 percent of the state's energy is produced by power plants built at least 40 years ago....Increasingly, those plants need to be repaired, said Gary Heath, executive director of the state's Electricty Oversight Board,"
And btw, they were discussing these maintenance periods as early as last September. Thus, this is not exactly a surprise:
ocregister.com
And even if all of those plants were up and running, the cost would still surpass the price they are permitted to charge customers because the price of natural gas would increase even more as these plants came online.
What is transparently "so" is that you believe the government should be able to force private power generators to subsidize the energy markets and operate at a loss.
These california utilities have racked up $12 Billion in debt which they used to pay for power last summer and before which they weren't permitted to sell at either cost or at a profit.
I told you NO, THEY ARE NOT USING COERCION.
And they sure as hell ARE NOT GOING TO GO BANKRUPT just to bail out California power customers.
This situation has been long-brewing and this convergence of events will not suddenly go away when these plants come back up online.
And don't you even believe that the California Public Utilities commission couldn't immediately order these plants back into operation were it not the actual case that they require maintenance that has been deferred through the summer and as a result of preparing for Y2K (there's that acronym again, eh?)
And btw, since when do "the people" suddenly have the right, through the power of the vote, to force a company into operating at a loss?
There's your coercion...
Regards,
Ron |
