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Politics : Idea Of The Day -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (44374)	8/16/2003 4:24:41 AM
From: IQBAL LATIF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50167

The money quote from George Akerlof, 2001 Nobel Prize laureate in economics: I think this is the worst government the US has ever had in its more than 200 years of history. It has engaged in extraordinarily irresponsible policies not only in foreign and economic but also in social and environmental policy. This is not normal government policy. Now is the time for people to engage in civil disobedience. (By the way, I got an A+ in George's class.) *********** Suddenly, it all gets very interesting. America's best journalist is Greg Palast. he knows a lot about electricity deregulation; before he became a journalist, he was an investigator specializing in corporate racketeers. On the blackout, he writes, 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." So too the free-market cowboys of Niagara Mohawk raised prices, slashed staff, cut maintenance and CLICK! -- New York joins Brazil in the Dark Ages. Californians have found the solution to the deregulation disaster: re-call the only governor in the nation with the cojones to stand up to the electricity price fixers. And unlike Arnold Schwarzenegger, Gov. Gray Davis stood alone against the bad guys without using a body double. Davis called Reliant Corp of Houston a pack of "pirates" --and now he'll walk the plank for daring to stand up to the Texas marauders. So where's the President? Just before he landed on the deck of the Abe Lincoln, the White House was so concerned about our brave troops facing the foe that they used the cover of war for a new push in Congress for yet more electricity deregulation. This has a certain logic: there's no sense defeating Iraq if a hostile regime remains in California. The Washington Post also has some preliminary notes on how many people saw the blackouts coming as a consequence of deregulation. Expect this to get lots of attention in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, Arianna Huffington raises questions about a May 2001 "secret meeting" between Ken Lay and "prominent Republicans, among them Mike Milken and Arnold Schwarzenegger." I think Karl Rove realizes that the blackouts will be political poison for Bush if voters mentally connect them to energy deregulation and Enron. From Reuters, "President Bush on Friday called the worst blackout in North American history a 'wake-up call' and said the electric grid must be modernized." Which is to say that all along the President has been asleep. Just like Sept. 11 was his "wake-up call" about al-Qaeda. As George said, "the worst government the US has ever had in its more than 200 years of history." demog.berkeley.edu