posted on August 14, 2003 02:07:42 PM new
This type of cascading black out is not supposed to happen. Equipment was installed over the last several decades to PREVENT cascading black outs ?
posted on August 14, 2003 03:15:18 PM new
This story can be found on http://www.newsmax.com/ along with a picture of a hwy. where everyone's getting out of their cars and walking around. Oh boy.
posted on August 14, 2003 05:16:28 PM new
Its all Bush's fault, I can't believe he let this happen Must be that blasted patriot act that allowed this ! Darn Nazi stalinist jerks !!!! Its all a republican plot to spike the birthrate to get more soldiers in the furture for their big communist takeover, my god man how far will they go !!!!!!
posted on August 14, 2003 05:39:05 PM new
I can only blame so much on Clinton Helen, After all we are fellow Arkies As a matter of off the subject fact, I went to a Draft Wesley Clark Dinner here in town the other night and it was very enjoyable and interesting. I plan on 2 more such events in the next couple weeks and try and make up my mind if I will support and/or volunteer in his campaign should he run. I'd look for some nationwide Info on his candidacy over the Upcoming holiday weekend if things go as discussed at dinner ! I actualy voluntered on the Clinton Campaign effort and really thought he did a fine job as president. Some mistakes toward the end but over all very effective ( other than NAFTA which I hate )
I liked Clark's answers in this Newsweek interview.
FOR DEMOCRATS LOOKING to take back the Oval Office, Clark’s resume is a godsend—he spent 34 years in the military and served as NATO Supreme Allied Commander and commander in chief of the U.S. European Command from 1997 to May 2000. Clark has not yet decided to take the plunge, but his name has got America buzzing. NEWSWEEK’s Michael Hastings asked for his views on how Washington is handling its global role. Excerpts:
HASTINGS: What could you bring to table that the other candidates haven’t?
CLARK: I’ve never really addressed that issue. I’m considering this candidacy because a lot of people have confidence in me and have asked me to consider it. To me, it’s really about the issues. I saw it starting to go wrong before the [2000] election. I met with Condi Rice. She told me she believed that American troops shouldn’t be keeping the peace—they were the only ones who could kill people and conquer countries, and that’s what they should be focused on doing. What she was telling me [was] that she, as a potential Republican national-security adviser, didn’t support our engagement in Europe. So I saw it going wrong from there. Then, as the administration took office, I saw more and more what I believed were misunderstandings and missed opportunities.
Where does the United States go from here in Iraq?
You have to define what success is, and then you have to work toward it. I would define it politically. Put in place some kind of Iraqi government that [has] some semblance of democracy. The first thing I’d be doing right now [is] calling provisional, national, regional and local councils together from all parties before elections are held. I would ask for their assistance, their ideas and their support in producing security in the region first and guarding the remaining economic infrastructure. I would lay out to them the limitations of the United States’ capabilities. I’d try to get the Iraqis increasingly involved in taking responsibilities. Put an Iraqi face on all the actions that you can and as much of the decision making as possible.
Where does the United Nations fit in?
I’ve always felt the United Nations should have been involved. You need the U.N. for legitimacy, to get nations to cough up forces. They’re putting the troops in harm’s way; they want some credit for it from their electorate. And they’re not going to get any credit by saying, “Hey, we’re really good friends with George W. Bush.” It has to be theUnited Nations.
How is Iraq affecting the war on terror?
If you talk to the people on the inside, they all [say] you can’t do everything at once. I know the administration says it thinks it can, but the honest truth is if you’re looking one place, you’re not looking someplace else. Ultimately, Washington is sort of a one-crisis town.
What do you think of President Bush’s using war imagery as a political tool, like when he recently flew onto an aircraft carrier?
The world expects something more of an American president than to prance around on a flight deck dressed up like [a] pilot. He’s expected to be a leader. That’s my fundamental issue with it. It doesn’t reflect the gravitas of the office. Furthermore, it’s a little phony.
Where does military strength fit in concerning U.S. power?
It’s [a] question of three or four different things. A strong America is not strong only because of its military. Our strength comes from a robust, diverse economy and an engaged citizenry, and values, and a structure that other nations admire and emulate. The military is just one component of U.S. power.
What should Washington do to patch things up with its old allies in Europe?
In my vision of American national policy, we would seek the strongest possible linkage with Europe. I see a strong transatlantic alliance as the key fulcrum for all else America does in the world. I’m not sure the administration sees it that way.
If you decide to run, will you be looking forward to the political realm?
I love being in the business community. I’m thrilled at the prospect that someday I might be able to create jobs for other people. On the other hand, I’ve always liked the battle of ideas. And to me, competing in the political arena should be first and foremost about the ideas and perspectives that candidates would bring to the tasks, then following through on what’s been promised.
posted on August 14, 2003 06:30:17 PM new
I lived in the suburbs of Newark for a few years, in a little town called Nutley. That area was in the dark for awhile.
posted on August 14, 2003 09:28:34 PM new
Gee...Clark must have some inside information...lol
[i]Where does the United States go from here in Iraq?
You have to define what success is, and then you have to work toward it. I would define it politically. Put in place some kind of Iraqi government that [has] some semblance of democracy. The first thing I'd be doing right now [is] calling provisional, national, regional and local councils together from all parties before elections are held. I would ask for their assistance, their ideas and their support in producing security in the region first and guarding the remaining economic infrastructure. I would lay out to them the limitations of the United States' capabilities. I'd try to get the Iraqis increasingly involved in taking responsibilities. Put an Iraqi face on all the actions that you can and as much of the decision making as possible[/i].
....as that's exactly what is already happening over there. The different Iraqi leaders have already been meeting to hash out their differences on which direction THEY want to take their country. The items Clark brings up are already being implemented.
posted on August 15, 2003 04:33:59 AM new
Just checking in. It's 7:30 a.m. in Cleveland and we now have power. It came on around 5:00 a.m. in our neighborhood. I have never seen this neighborhood so dark. Except for the glittering of candles on some front porches, it was pitch. For the first time in years you could look outside and see the stars! What a wonderful sight!
Cheryl
Power to the people. Power to the people, right on. - John Lennon
posted on August 15, 2003 10:45:18 AM new
POWER OUTAGE TRACED TO DIM BULB IN WHITE HOUSE --- The Tale of The Brits Who Swiped 800 Jobs From New York, Carted Off $90 Million, Then Tonight, Turned Off Our Lights
WebLog
Friday, August 15, 2003
by Greg Palast
I can tell you all about the ne're-do-wells that put out our lights tonight. I came up against these characters -- the Niagara Mohawk Power Company -- some years back. You see, before I was a journalist, I worked for a living, as an investigator of corporate racketeers. In the 1980s, "NiMo" built a nuclear plant, Nine Mile Point, a brutally costly piece of hot junk for which NiMo and its partner companies charged billions to New York State's electricity ratepayers.
To pull off this grand theft by kilowatt, the NiMo-led consortium fabricated cost and schedule reports, then performed a Harry Potter job on the account books. In 1988, I showed a jury a memo from an executive from one partner, Long Island Lighting, giving a lesson to a NiMo honcho on how to lie to government regulators. The jury ordered LILCO to pay $4.3 billion and, ultimately, put them out of business.
And that's why, if you're in the Northeast, you're reading this by candlelight tonight. Here's what happened. After LILCO was hammered by the law, after government regulators slammed Niagara Mohawk and dozens of other book-cooking, document-doctoring utility companies all over America with fines and penalties totaling in the tens of billions of dollars, the industry leaders got together to swear never to break the regulations again. Their plan was not to follow the rules, but to ELIMINATE the rules. They called it "deregulation."
It was like a committee of bank robbers figuring out how to make safecracking legal.
But they dare not launch the scheme in the USA. Rather, in 1990, one devious little bunch of operators out of Texas, Houston Natural Gas, operating under the alias "Enron," talked an over-the-edge free-market fanatic, Britain's Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, into licensing the first completely deregulated power plant in the hemisphere.
And so began an economic disease called "regulatory reform" that spread faster than SARS. Notably, Enron rewarded Thatcher's Energy Minister, one Lord Wakeham, with a bushel of dollar bills for 'consulting' services and a seat on Enron's board of directors. The English experiment proved the viability of Enron's new industrial formula: that the enthusiasm of politicians for deregulation was in direct proportion to the payola provided by power companies.
The power elite first moved on England because they knew Americans wouldn't swallow the deregulation snake oil easily. The USA had gotten used to cheap power available at the flick of switch. This was the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt who, in 1933, caged the man he thought to be the last of the power pirates, Samuel Insull. Wall Street wheeler-dealer Insull creator of the Power Trust, and six decades before Ken Lay, faked account books and ripped off consumers. To frustrate Insull and his ilk, FDR gave us the Federal Power Commission and the Public Utilities Holding Company Act which told electricity companies where to stand and salute. Detailed regulations limited charges to real expenditures plus a government-set profit. The laws banned "power markets" and required companies to keep the lights on under threat of arrest -- no blackout blackmail to hike rates.
Of particular significance as I write here in the dark, regulators told utilities exactly how much they had to spend to insure the system stayed in repair and the lights stayed on. Bureaucrats crawled along the wire and, like me, crawled through the account books, to make sure the power execs spent customers' money on parts and labor. If they didn't, we'd whack'm over the head with our thick rule books. Did we get in the way of these businessmen's entrepreneurial spirit? Damn right we did.
Most important, FDR banned political contributions from utility companies -- no 'soft' money, no 'hard' money, no money PERIOD.
But then came George the First. In 1992, just prior to his departure from the White House, President Bush Senior gave the power industry one long deep-through-the-teeth kiss good-bye: federal deregulation of electricity. It was a legacy he wanted to leave for his son, the gratitude of power companies which ponied up $16 million for the Republican campaign of 2000, seven times the sum they gave Democrats.
But Poppy Bush's gift of deregulating of wholesale prices set by the feds only got the power pirates halfway to the plunder of Joe Ratepayer. For the big payday they needed deregulation at the state level. There were only two states, California and Texas, big enough and Republican enough to put the electricity market con into operation.
California fell first. The power companies spent $39 million to defeat a 1998 referendum pushed by Ralph Nadar which would have blocked the de-reg scam. Another $37 million was spent on lobbying and lubricating the campaign coffers of legislators to write a lie into law: in the deregulation act's preamble, the Legislature promised that deregulation would reduce electricity bills by 20%. In fact, when San Diegans in the first California city to go "lawless" looked at their bills, the 20% savings became a 300% jump in surcharges.
Enron circled California and licked its lips. As the number one life-time contributor to the George W. Bush campaign, it was confident about the future. With just a half dozen other companies it controlled at times 100% of the available power capacity needed to keep the Golden State lit. Their motto, "your money or your lights." Enron and its comrades played the system like a broken ATM machine, yanking out the bills. For example, in the shamelessly fixed "auctions" for electricity held by the state, Enron bid, in one instance, to supply 500 megawatts of electricity over a 15 megawatt line. That's like pouring a gallon of gasoline into a thimble -- the lines would burn up if they attempted it. Faced with blackout because of Enron's destructive bid, the state was willing to pay anything to keep the lights on.
And the state did. According to Dr. Anjali Sheffrin, economist with the California state Independent System Operator which directed power movements, between May and November 2000, three power giants physically or "economically" withheld power from the state and concocted enough false bids to cost the California customers over $6.2 billion in excess charges.
It took until December 20, 2000, with the lights going out on the Golden Gate, for President Bill Clinton, once a deregulation booster, to find his lost Democratic soul and impose price caps in California and ban Enron from the market.
But the light-bulb buccaneers didn't have to wait long to put their hooks back into the treasure chest. Within seventy-two hours of moving into the White House, while he was still sweeping out the inaugural champagne bottles, George Bush the Second reversed Clinton's executive order and put the power pirates back in business in California. Enron, Reliant (aka Houston Industries), TXU (aka Texas Utilities) and the others who had economically snipped California's wires knew they could count on Dubya, who as governor of the Lone Star state cut them the richest deregulation deal in America.
Meanwhile, the deregulation bug made it to New York where Republican Governor George Pataki and his industry-picked utility commissioners ripped the lid off electric bills and relieved my old friends at Niagara Mohawk of the expensive obligation to properly fund the maintenance of the grid system.
And the Pataki-Bush Axis of Weasels permitted something that must have former New York governor Roosevelt spinning in his wheelchair in Heaven: They allowed a foreign company, the notoriously incompetent National Grid of England, to buy up NiMo, get rid of 800 workers and pocket most of their wages - producing a bonus for NiMo stockholders approaching $90 million.
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.
Sitting in the dark, as my laptop battery runs low, I don't know if the truth about deregulation will ever see the light --until we change the dim bulb in the White House.
-----
See Greg Palast's award-winning reports for BBC Television and the Guardian papers of Britain at www.GregPalast.com. Contact Palast at his New York office: [email protected].
posted on August 15, 2003 10:52:47 AM new
Good one, Skylite!!!
Iraqis Offer Tips Over U.S. Blackout
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Iraqis who have suffered for months with little electricity gloated Friday over a blackout in the northeastern United States and southern Canada and offered some tips to help Americans beat the heat.
From frequent showers to rooftop slumber parties, Iraqis have developed advanced techniques to adapt to life without electricity.
Daily highs have soared above 120 degrees recently as Iraq's U.S. administrators have been unable to get power back to prewar levels. Some said it was poetic justice that some Americans should suffer the same fate, if only briefly.
``Let them taste what we have tasted,'' said Ali Abdul Hussein, selling ``Keep Cold'' brand ice chests on a sidewalk. ``Let them sit outside drinking tea and smoking cigarettes waiting for the power to come back, just like the Iraqis.''
Here is a top 10 list compiled on the streets of Baghdad:
--10: SLEEP ON THE ROOF. Without power -- and hence without air conditioning -- Iraqis have taken to climbing up stairs in the hot nights. Some install metal bed frames on rooftops, while others simply stretch out on thin mattresses. ``We sleep on the roof,'' said Hadia Zeydan Khalaf, 38, wearing a black head-to-toe abaya in the hot sun. ``It's cooler there.''
--9: SIT IN THE SHADE. Many Iraqis go outside when the power's off. ``We sit in the shade,'' said George Ruweid, 27, playing cards with friends on the sidewalk. Of the U.S. blackout, he said: ``I hope it lasts for 20 years. Let them feel our suffering.''
--8: HEAD FOR THE WATER. ``We go to the river, just like in the old days,'' said Saleh Moayet, 53. Several people said they had seen American beaches on television, and suggested they might be a good place to sit out the blackout. ``They have so many beautiful beaches,'' said Hamid Khelil, 44. ``They should go where it isn't so hot.''
--7: SHOWER FREQUENTLY. ``I take showers all day,'' said Raed Ali, 33. ``Before I go up to the roof to sleep, I take a shower and I'm cooler.''
--6: BUY BLOCKS OF ICE. When refrigerators shut down, there's no better way to keep food cool. Mohammed Abdul Zahara, 24, sells about 20 a day from a roadside table. ``When it's hot people buy a lot of ice,'' he said.
--5: CHECK FOR BITTER-ENDERS. ``They should go to the power stations and see what the problem is,'' suggested Ahmed Abdul Hussein, 21. ``Maybe there are followers of Saddam Hussein who are sabotaging their power stations. That's what happens here.''
--4: GET A GENERATOR. Abbas Abdul al-Amir, 53, has one of a long row of shops selling generators in Baghdad's Karadah shopping street. When the power goes out, sales go up. ``I sell about 30 generators a day,'' he said. ``When the shutdown lasts I can sell even more.''
--3: CALL IN THE IRAQIS. Some suggested the Americans ask the Iraqis how to get the power going again. ``Let them take experts from Iraq,'' said Alaa Hussein, 32, waiting in a long line for gas because there was no electricity for the pumps. ``Our experts have a lot of experience in these matters.''
--2: USE FOUL LANGUAGE. ``When the power goes out, I curse everybody,'' said Emad Helawi, a 63-year-old accountant. ``I curse God. I curse Saddam Hussein. And I curse the Americans.''
--And the No. 1 suggestion among Iraqis for Americans suffering without power: TAKE TO THE STREETS. Some said demonstrations can be effective in persuading authorities to turn on the switch. ``We held protests. After that we had fewer blackouts,'' Ahmed Abdul Hussein said without even a hint of sarcasm. ``I'd suggest Americans go out and demonstrate.''
posted on August 15, 2003 11:55:34 AM new
The blacked-out blackout.
Burning transformer on 14th street, lightning strike in Niagara, failed power plant in Pennsylvania, failed power plant in Ohio, problems west of Ontario; we are into day two of the great northeastern blackout of 2003 and nobody knows exactly what went wrong. But two things are clear.
First: Despite the lessons learned in 1965 and 1977, the power infrastructure of the United States is a delicate and fragile system that can be taken down by a single point failure. It is hard to claim to be a world leader when one cannot keep the lights on. We are a first world nation with a third world power supply.
Second: Our much vaunted Homeland Security Department is as much in the dark about what happened as anyone else, if you'll pardon the pun. Had the blackout actually been a terrorist attack, the HS boys would still be scratching their heads, unable to locate the problem, let alone decide how to fix it. And this means that with all their spy cameras on we the people, the "peek-a-boo" scanners that see through our clothes at the airports, the covert searches of our computers and homes, the Homeland Security people are looking in the wrong places, because today we know the homeland ISN'T secure, and that fact caught the Homeland Security people completely by surprise. Just think about it. For all their peeking into our mail, banking transactions, and posing with guns and uniforms at airports, the Homeland Security people were caught off guard by the blackout. Which means that if it HAD been a terrorist event, Homeland Security would have failed their primary mission, indeed HAVE failed their primary mission, which is to identity ALL points of vulnerability in the nation and secure them against attack, not just spy on the citizens to make sure they are not unhappy with the current leadership.
The blackout has taught us all a lesson. We are not secure. We may have shiny new locks on the front doors but the foundations of the nation are cracked and rotted. The roads are falling into disrepair, the power grid has become unreliable, mail service has slowed down, schools do not teach, emergency rooms close, the internet is clogged with viruses and worms; each and every one of these problematic infrastructures is a threat to Homeland Security, and all are being ignored by the people who take our tax money and use it to watch us, while claiming to be concerned for the security of the nation.
Well, the nation is NOT secure. This blackout may not have been an act of terrorism, but it proves that such an act was not only possible but capable of producing a wide area result. and yet the department of Homeland Security has never once taken steps to make the power system more able to survive single-point failures. Nor for that matter have we seen the Homeland security people give more than a passing glance at the MSBlast worm ripping through the internet as I type this. Homeland Security hasn't made the homeland more secure. It just spies on the citizens. Which proves the Department of Homeland Security is really not about protecting the people, but merely keeping an eye on them.
Enron circled California and licked its lips. As the number one life-time contributor to the George W. Bush campaign, it was confident about the future. With just a half dozen other companies it controlled at times 100 percent of the available power capacity needed to keep the Golden State lit. Their motto, "your money or your lights." Enron and its comrades played the system like a broken ATM machine, yanking out the bills. For example, in the shamelessly fixed "auctions" for electricity held by the state, Enron bid, in one instance, to supply 500 megawatts of electricity over a 15 megawatt line. That's like pouring a gallon of gasoline into a thimble -- the lines would burn up if they attempted it. Faced with blackout because of Enron's destructive bid, the state was willing to pay anything to keep the lights on.
posted on August 15, 2003 02:42:44 PM new
I'm getting a bad feeling.......
I was listening to lots of commentary on this blackout today. Seems like it was all the radio news was talking about. But one thing was clear, the grid never reached maximum capacity, only about 75-80%. The whole thing was a freakish glitch.
HOWEVER....
The news is now reporting that throughout the rest of the summer the "demand" will suddenly start exceeding "supply" and rolling blackouts and power outages will be more common.
Can you say CALIFORNIA and ENERGY MANIPULATION?
My absolute firm belief of how this all happened?
Started with:
"Honey, the air conditioner I won on eBay just arrived"
posted on August 15, 2003 02:56:51 PM new
There are lots of people in North America that use a lot of energy. It's too bad the blackout happened at bad time, but I don't see why it's such a big deal. Since 911,
anything unusual will seem like a terrorist threat and that just feeds the fire of needing all this added security, which doesn't work that well anyway.
P.S. Being pitch black out, it was a great night for star gazing. Mars is so bright and the Milky Way was awesome!!
Must be that blasted patriot act that allowed this ! Darn Nazi stalinist jerks !!!! Its all a republican plot to spike the birthrate to get more soldiers in the furture for their big communist takeover, my god man how far will they go 
LETS BLAME BUSH]
