If It Ain't Broke, Don't De-regulate It

Molly Ivins says There Goes the Electrical Grid:

The trouble with deregulation is that it always takes some disaster like Enron before we realize there was a reason for the regulation to begin with.

We are about to repeat one of the huge mistakes of the 1920s and '30s because we have forgotten why PUHCA (pronounced Pooka) was instituted in the first place. PUHCA is the Public Utility Holding Company Act, passed in 1935, which prevents concentration of ownership of power plants. Both the House and Senate versions of the energy bill contain a repeal of PUHCA.

As Kelpie Wilson pointed out in an article for Truthout, "For 50 years we have had reliable, cheap electric power that has allowed strong economic growth, and no PUHCA-regulated energy holding company has ever gone broke."

PUHCA was partially repealed in the '90s, and even that much deregulation was part of what led to Enron, Westar and other slight mishaps.

PUHCA puts utilities under strict regulation by both state and federal governments. It restricts ownership of utilities to public or private companies that are in the business of producing power.

The most likely candidates to take over power companies are the big oil companies, now awash in cash. There goes the electrical grid: Why fix it when you can charge more for doing nothing?

Lynn Hargis, an attorney who spent 10 years at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and is now with Public Citizen, says repeal means a repeat of the same dreary mistakes. In the 1920s, three huge companies owned half of the nation's power plants and built them into speculative power-holding companies that used the reliable money from utilities for flights of fancy in the stock market.

When you are paying your electric bill to Exxon/Mobil, Halliburton or some Chinese firm, you will see why this is a monumentally bad idea...

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