AUSTIN, Texas -- What with George W. Bush moralizing all over us from
Philadelphia and Al Gore back in his Dudley Do-Right mode choosing the
seriously righteous Joe Lieberman, looks like we're in for a season of moral
one-upmanship and sanctimoniousness.
I'm sure that all this will improve our characters, but in the meantime, we
need to solve a few problems -- like the energy mess.
The Republican answer to energy problems is always: "Drill more! Open up
the Arctic wilderness! Let us drill on the beaches! Give the oil companies
more tax breaks! Free Saddam Hussein!" and other useful slogans.
The D's mutter about ratcheting up the mileage requirements on cars (a move
stalled in Congress by auto lobbyists for the past five years) and gigging
the auto companies to produce less pollution.
The environmentalists urge us to invest in renewable energy sources and
ditch our SUVs.
None of this helps either electricity bills or the price of gas right now,
though you'll never hear the pols admit it.
The New York Times reports the less-than-astounding news that high energy bills hit the poor hardest. "In 1998, a middle-class family spent 2.6
percent of its net income on heating bills, according to the federal heating
assistance program, while a typical low-income family spent 10.1 percent."
If you've never cried or cursed over the total on an energy bill, you may
not be able to identify with this, but the reality behind those numbers is a
lot of bent, gnarled hands trembling when they open the electric bill.
Do I think the utility companies are ripping people off? I refer you to
that bible of capitalism, The Wall Street Journal. Under the headline "Do
Hogs Get Slaughtered?" the Journal says:
"It's a market ripe for manipulation: surging demand for an indispensable
commodity, weak oversight and a chaotic new set of rules amid a transition
from heavy regulation to open competition. This is the state of the U.S.
electricity business in the summer of 2000. And sure enough, there's growing
evidence that some power companies are finding lucrative ways to exploit the
system -- at the consumers' expense.
"The tactics include manipulating wholesale electricity auctions, taking
juice from transmission systems when suppliers aren't supposed to and
denying weaker competitors access to transmission lines. None of this is
illegal, and much of it might be considered basic competition. But as an
electricity shortage plunges sweltering California into an energy crisis and
fears of even worse shortages rattle the Northeast, the practices of power
suppliers face more scrutiny than ever."
The Journal cited one instance in July 1999 when wholesale electricity
prices in the Mid-Atlantic states hit $935 per megawatt hour -- seven times
what it cost to generate power at the most expensive plant.
Consumers ended up paying millions of extra dollars for power that day. And
that, my friends, suggests that we bring back an honorable old political
word, "regulation," without the "de-" in front of it. Our friends who
believe that the free market solves all problems seem to have forgotten why
utilities were regulated in the first place -- because they're natural
monopolies.
According to the Journal, Cinergy Corp., a utility holding company,
surreptitiously took enough power from its grid over a three-day period last
summer to light a small city for a month. The company had underestimated
power demands; rather than buy more or cut service, it quietly borrowed
power from the system when demand was peaking and later replaced it in the
cool of the night when demand went down.
The company received a letter of rebuke but no fine for this because the
company runs its own "control area" and is trusted to enforce the voluntary
rules, even when it is violating those rules itself. Isn't that nice?
The feds say that average wholesale prices have more than doubled at 14 of
17 key pricing points across the country. (It's 89 percent in Florida and
294 percent in Texas.) To revive a George W. Bush slogan during the late,
great battle over de-reg here, "Don't derail deregulation."
If we all have to grow up and be responsible under George W., couldn't we
make the energy industry responsible as well?
Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. To find out
more about Molly Ivins and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers
and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at
www.creators.com.
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