XPost: talk.politics.misc, alt.politics.usa, alt.conspiracy   
   XPost: alt.politics.democrats   
      
      When energy generation was deregulated in the 1990s, the utilities   
   divested the generators because they felt their old generators could not   
   compete with new generators.  However, because of the highly regulated   
   structure of the remaining energy distribution system, they returned the   
   proceeds to their stockholders, usually conservative fixed income investors   
   on pensions. Therefore they did not invest in upgrading (burying, hardening)   
   the grid and transformers. The regulation system is partly responsible for   
   the fact that they cannot maintain an aging and degrading grid. The cost of   
   upgrading the grid should not be dumped on ratepayers. Perhaps the regulators   
   should therefore provide bond authorities to pay for this; This would be   
   better than forcing the governement to takeover the utilities to only raise   
   rates themselves. Or if Trump can buy a share of defense contractors, why not   
   rails & utilities? Such firms are hampered by their dependence on regulation,   
   so regulators should bear some of the cost? Rails and utilities resemble   
   banks in terms of how their interconnectedness could destabilise everything.   
   Banks were likewise weakened by regulators which forced them into unwise   
   activities: Citi was forced to first sell securities to pay for WW1 and later   
   had to lend to Latin America to support our foreign policy; Boss Hoggs   
   spawned conspiracy theories to keep local banks small and under their corrupt   
   control.  Crypto and AI should not be on the grid but should generate and   
   maintain their own power.  University endowments should pay RICO damages to   
   ratepayers and workers because of their environemental grant extortion scams.   
      
   --   
   	 Vasos Panagiotopoulos  panix.com/~vjp2/vasos.htm   
     ---{Nothing herein constitutes advice.  Everything fully disclaimed.}---   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)