Joyce Morrison argues that deregulation and environmentalists are to blame for the power outage. Besides the fact that we don’t have an exact cause yet, it is hard to imagine how environmentalists caused a breakdown. Environmental regulations are designed to force the costs of pollution to be passed on to the users of electricity. Stunning concept to actually charge users for the costs of their behavior, stunning I tell you. But I’m sure I’m a dupe of the black helicopter patrols. Or given Joyce’s version of the conspiracy, the people who dupe people into believing that there are people who believe in black helicopters.
As always, a giant no-prize to the individual who can locate a proper thesis statement in the column. I believe she outdoes herself in her first sentence, "When the electricity goes off, we are so dependent on electricity, we are helpless."
Beyond that, she keeps arguing dereg caused the blackout in her usual incoherent fashion. She seems to want to maintain the traditional power monopolies without grasping that the prime reason transmission is such a problem is because you have multiple agencies responsible for shaping the regulatory structure reducing incentives to invest. A coherent national plan would eliminate the problem.
The only decent column I’ve seen so far on the issue is from Robert Samuelson of the Washington Post.
After the blackout, the search for a scapegoat could easily go awry. Electricity won’t ever be deregulated. The real issue isn’t between "the market" and "regulation," because the danger of bad regulation is at least as great as that of bad market behavior. What we ought to seek is an intelligent balance of government regulation and market flexibility.
There’s the rub, because Americans generally won’t acknowledge conflicts and make choices. The cry is for low prices, ample supplies, absolute reliability, clean air, no disfiguring construction projects, local autonomy and national accountability. Great. Unfortunately, there are tensions among all these goals. If we want reliability (and we should), we’ll have to pay for redundancy. All too often, regulatory politics are a veil for avoiding choices — a formula that, while pleasant in the present, is disastrous for the future.
Typical. No one wants to admit scarcity or market failures.
In other news of the ridiculous at the Leader, some of the social conservaitves in Illinois have gotten their panties in a wad over the University of Illinois giving benefits to employees’ same sex partners. The horrors of equal treatment. Next you know we’ll be treating homosexuals like equals or something. In an interesting bin of silliness it seems conservatives are upset because there is a budget crunch. Yeah. But of all of the spending at U of I, this is what you question? Don’t worry, everyone gets it. Strangely, more and more conservative towns are passing equal treatment ordinances. When you lost Normal, you lost the war, but keep it up. It keeps you from getting into any real mischief.
And finally, Lee Newcom comes out from underneath his rock in McLean County. I have no opinion on Kinzinger, but Newcom I do. He gave a talk to some high school students several years ago and suggested they could do anything they wanted in campaigns because they weren’t accountable and should take advantage of that factor. Nothing like teaching students to be responsible citizens there Leester.
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