Energy secretary: Power rates to go up by $50 BILLION

[Newsjock]

In GD and not LBN so I can put a better headline on this Washington Post story. Honest to goodness, I was having a tough time believing the tinfoil-hat crowd over this blackout, but I'm starting to change my mind. This is the latest chapter of the BFEE robbing America blind -- and doing so quickly enough so that they'll have it all by November 2004 anyway, win or lose.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7164-2003Aug17.html

By Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 18, 2003; Page A03

As the Bush administration dispatched crews to investigate the largest blackout in North American history, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham warned yesterday that consumers will eventually pay up to $50 billion in higher electric bills to modernize the nation's ailing power transmission system.

"Rate-payers, obviously, will pay the bill because they're the ones who benefit," he said on CBS's "Face the Nation." "And that's where most of the responsibility, ultimately, will be assigned."

... The Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator, which monitors electrical reliability in the region, said in a statement that although it is clear four power lines "tripped off" the day the blackout began, "what is unknown is the relationship among events in the Midwest and what was occurring elsewhere in the Eastern Interconnection at that time."

"What we're trying to say is that focus solely on the events in Ohio may be misleading," said MISO spokeswoman Mary Lynn Webster.

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