While at work yesterday, most of the area received a good soaking rain. Not near enough to erase our deficit, it at least will prolong the time before we completely burn up. When I arrived home there was still water standing in some of the depressions about the yard…Rain puddles…Who would have thought that rain puddles could bring such pleasure to anyone under the age of five…Of course, the forecast hasn’t changed. Little or no chance of precipitation, the same as yesterday. With summertime heating and warm humid breezes off the Gulf, that can be the recipe for afternoon’s of unremitting heat and humidity or sudden thunderstorms that cause street flooding and long after work commutes.
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Too Little, Too Late
Having failed in efforts to impeach Vice President Cheney, Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio) escalated his battle against the administration this week by introducing 35 articles of impeachment against President Bush, using a parliamentary maneuver that will probably force a vote today.
Kucinich Forces Vote On Bush’s Impeachment – washingtonpost.com
It is something that should have happened four years ago…Yes, I know, I can be categorized as one of the angry left wing Bush bashers…To quote a rather infamous American Politician…”So.”
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For All Of You Market Worshipers
Electric companies wilting away in summer heat | Chron.com – Houston Chronicle
How well hedged is your electric company?If you don’t know the answer, you may be sorry. Just ask customers of Riverway Power, which filed for bankruptcy last week and now says it can’t continue operating. Riverway is one of four retail providers that failed in the past month.
With the summer heat, electric companies are wilting like unwatered daisies.
Welcome to dereg roulette, Texas-style. As if higher rates weren’t bad enough, now we have to worry about the solvency of the electric companies themselves.
One of the great things Republicans and Enron, et.al. did for Texas was deregulate our public utilities. As everyone will remember from the California crisis, that works real well…The last few weeks have brought a rash of failures in the electrical supply market here. That wouldn’t be too bad. But when your electrical supplier fails here in Texas a few strange things happen…
First, your chances of getting back any deposits you may have paid are slim. Second, the state rolls you into the POLR pool if you don’t find another provider. POLR is the acronym for the “Provider Of Last Resort”…Which is a lot like a rolling snake eyes in craps. You may have had an electrical contract set at
12 cents per kWh…All of a sudden you find…
A customer who was paying 11.9 cents a kilowatt-hour to National Power before it failed last month found himself facing a POLR rate of 21.7 cents. In some parts of the state, it can be as high as 30 cents.
For all of you folks out there in regulated utility land…Don’t let your legislatures do this to you. The cost of choice in the energy market is a disaster…To quote the author…
Keeping the lights on now requires more than replacing a bulb and throwing the switch. We must make a bet on commodity prices like a trader, scour contract terms like a lawyer and investigate a company’s financial wherewithal like an accountant. And we get to pay more for the privilege.
In dereg roulette, we know we can’t win.
The object of the game is to not lose.
Deregulated utilities will provide services cheaper than government regulated utilities. Nobel Prize winning economist Gary Becker admitted that sometimes markets fail. When he looked into why they failed, it was because of some form of regulation. In the end, the government should be kept out of all but the most severe areas for potential risk such airlines and mining.
Kucinich is a dyed in the mold socialist and an opponent of a strong America. Kucinich’s efforts were forced into committee indefinitely. Why? Because the Democrats don’t want to look like the loons that they during this election period. Pelosi said she’d never consider it. In contrast, the Republicans want the Dems to bring the issue up so they can ridicule them and exonerate the President stood strong in the face of terrorism. Please bring this review up so the conservatives can reveal what anti-American morons the Dems really are.
On the deregulated utilities you could not be more wrong. Where once I paid one regulated utility for my electrical power I now pay two…How is that efficient?
My old utility spun of it’s transmission division and gets paid to do everything but produce the power. Now I have to find a power generating (or middleman) to buy my power from. My rates are now some of the highest in the country.
To add insult to injury, my old utility I grew up with “invested” millions into the naming rights for the Houston Sports and Convention complex.
And as for the impeachment…I may disagree with you Jim but call me an Anti American moron again and you’ll have to post your views on your own blog not here…