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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (26428)	8/26/2003 9:50:44 AM
From: jlallen	Respond to of 89467

LOL! So the experts shaped our energy policy.....what a revelation!!!!!!!

To: stockman_scott who wrote (26428)	8/26/2003 10:09:09 AM
From: Karen Lawrence	Respond to of 89467

Not much U.N. support for U.S. appeal for more troops, officials say GEORGE GEDDA, Associated Press Writer Monday, August 25, 2003 (08-25) 22:32 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration, encountering U.N. Security Council resistance, may not seek a resolution giving the U.N.'s blessing for the deployment of additional foreign forces in Iraq, U.S. officials say. Four days after Secretary of State Colin Powell made a pitch for council backing of his call for more forces, U.N. Ambassador John Negroponte acknowledged on Monday, "We're nowhere near a resolution on Iraq." Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said the administration had not yet determined whether to seek a resolution. A State Department official, asking not to be identified, said it was a difficult sell for the administration, given that many council members believe Washington is to blame for continuing security problems in Iraq. The official noted that the United States ignored council wishes last March by deciding to go into Iraq without council support. Powell interrupted his vacation last Thursday to travel to New York to make the case for a new council resolution that would endorse a larger U.S.-led coalition force in Iraq. The coalition includes about 140,000 U.S. troops backed by some 24,000 troops from other countries. Powell had hoped that outrage over the devastating bombing of the U.N. compound in Iraq last Tuesday would make the council amenable to a resolution explicitly welcoming such a step. The administration's case may have been weakened by contradictory signals it has been sending about whether a larger force is needed in Iraq. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told a Veteran of Foreign Wars convention in San Antonio on Monday that the United States "can afford whatever military force level is necessary and appropriate for our national security." He said that if Gen. John Abizaid, who heads the U.S. Central Command, believes additional troops are needed, "he will have additional troops, let there be no doubt about it." Negroponte said that, in addition to seeking a broadening of coalition forces in Iraq, the administration wants more countries to provide financial assistance and to help with police training. But officials said that initial soundings among council members on Powell's proposal were not encouraging. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Friday the United Nations could not send a peacekeeping force to Iraq but added that he could not exclude a council decision "to transform the operation into a U.N.-mandated multinational force operating on the ground with other governments coming in." He stressed that U.N. approval for such a force "would also imply not just burden-sharing but also sharing decision and responsibility with the others." "If that doesn't happen, I think it's going to be very difficult to get a second resolution that will satisfy everybody," the secretary-general said. Powell has made clear that Washington won't cede any of its decision-making powers in Iraq.

To: stockman_scott who wrote (26428)	8/26/2003 10:14:21 AM
From: Karen Lawrence	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Public Needs in Private Hands (Deregulation = price gouging and phoney energy crises) How We Lost Control of Our Energy August 20 - 26, 2003 The obvious crisis of our creaky electric-power system is merely the endgame in a century-old pitched battle between public and private interests to determine who will control energy. Big business seems to have won hands down. In the United States, we have what amounts to public resources exploited for excessive private profit. Most of our oil and gas comes from publicly held lands beneath the ocean on the outer Continental Shelf and on public lands in the West. Coal comes increasingly from public lands in the West, as well. Nuclear power is an offshoot of the technologies developed at public expense by the military, and the uranium needed to run nuclear plants also comes from public land. But while in theory the American people own a vast stock of energy resources, we don't control them. In practice, the government sells off or leases the public assets on the cheap and on terms set by private industry. The one effort to wrest a fuel from industrial control was the 30-year fight to regulate the price of natural gas at the wellhead. Industry fought back, created an artificial shortage, and during Carter's presidency, got its way. Overnight, as regulation went away, so did the phony gas shortage. The link between the gas and oil industries and electricity should not be understated. We already get most of our electricity by burning fossil fuels, and the natural gas industry, for one, would like to see this percentage increase. Just as the regulatory system gave up on oil and gas, it gave up on electric power. When farmers and ranchers and small businessmen of the American myth went West over 100 years ago, they clamored for cheap electricity. Backed by the New Deal, the government built a public power system in the West and tried to carry it over in the East with the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority. The TVA created the electric power to make the atomic bomb and its civilian industry, and in doing so, it reorganized the coal industry from a group of quarreling backward companies into a modern industry driven by a handful of large corporations. One way private industry kept the public in thrall was to refuse to send inexpensive power generated on the big public systems in the West across the continent to the Midwest and East. Instead, it clung to its medieval fiefdoms, often protected by local regulatory agencies that were only too happy to do industry's bidding. So-called "investor-owned" utilities fought to protect their little monopolies of captive audiences who were only too accustomed to paying higher rates. Huge amounts of money poured into the holding companies that owned the local utilities and from them to the New York financial institutions that controlled the lot. In the electric business, an important means of control has always been in the transmission lines. That's true of other segments of the energy business—for example, Rockefeller started building Standard Oil in the late 19th century by monopolizing oil pipelines and keeping them private. In the late 20th century, electric utilities finally got their wish for deregulation. Federal laws were passed that brought back the concept of the old trust or holding company as the best mechanism for running a business. Behind the holding company is the financial industry—the securities dealers, insurance companies, banks, and mutual funds—the very same people who have been all over the papers in the Enron scandal. They run the show, setting terms of business and the prices we pay. The name of the game here is not some thumb-sucking debate among free-market economists and their political yes men in Washington but a basic battle between private and public interests.