Republicans Hold Energy Reform Hostage

[Bronco_Beerslug]

Unable to get their corporate friendly energy bill passed they attach the power reform legislation to it knowing that this country needs to prevent future blackouts by enforcing electric reliability rules.

This issue should be completely bi-partisan but republicans prefer to gamble our countries needs on their personal desires for corporate appeasement.

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By BRAD FOSS, AP Business Writer

WASHINGTON - There is growing frustration among many power-industry officials and watchdogs that, one year after the country's biggest blackout, electric reliability rules are still voluntary. They worry that as the memory of that day fades, the momentum to improve the grid will, too.

Reliability rules govern everything from tree-trimming around power lines to the protocols by which grid operators dispatch power, and experts said their importance cannot be underestimated.

In fact, a team of investigators from the United States and Canada concluded that the widespread outage on Aug. 14, 2003, which left tens of millions of people in the dark, could have been prevented had the existing rules been followed. Moreover, the North American Electric Reliability Council, or NERC, the industry-sponsored group that created the rules, said in a report published last month that "voluntary compliance with reliability rules is no longer adequate."

Yet proposed legislation that would give enforcement authority to federal regulators or the reliability council, or both, has been locked to the hip of a broader energy bill.

"It's a hostage," said Elizabeth Moler, a former chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (news - web sites) and now an executive vice president at Exelon Corp., one of the nation's largest electric power companies.

The energy bill has been stalled for years due to partisan battles over issues such as drilling for oil in an Alaskan wildlife refuge and regulation of carbon-dioxide emissions. And while Democrats in the House and Senate have attempted to separate the reliability issue from the massive energy bill, Republicans have refused to go along.

"Reliability is not and should not be a partisan issue. It's unfortunate that it's taking on that character," said Linda Stuntz, an assistant energy secretary during the first Bush administration and a current member of the National Commission on Energy Policy. She said it would be "irresponsible" for the year to end without compulsory reliability standards.

FERC chairman Pat Wood said the lack of mandatory standards one year after the blackout is "puzzling" and acknowledged that commonsense appears to have taken a back seat to politics in an election year.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...liability_rules

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Welcome to "Bush World".

Four years of color-coded hysteria, untrammeled corporate abuse, and a power-worshipping media.

A president of his times who exemplifies the larger culture we live in. "Go shopping because otherwise the terrorists would win."

The poor deserve to be poor. They are losers. Winners become winners, because they are worthy.

How do you become worthy?

Whether on Survivor, The Apprentice or at Enron, in order to get ahead, you have to plan and scheme to "get someone else off the island".

"That's why you can have someone thinking it is perfectly okay to gut the pension system and pay himself a bonus because that's how the game is played."

"Sore winners" are mean, angry and stingy to those less fortunate than themselves.

"One of the great creeps in journalism is Robert Novak, who always screams "class war" whenever anyone mentions the gap between the rich and the poor - and is nasty and sneering about it. That's a sore winner...."

http://www.alternet.org/story/19471

[alkemical]

It makes it easier when things like this are kept secret ya know