The Incentive To Abuse

Entergy, the behemoth "public utility" which "serves" New Orleans and most of south Louisiana slammed by Hurricane Isaac, is - in economic parlance - a regulated monopoly.  The main, perhaps the only, problem with that is nowadays almost no one, inclusive of the totality of private citizens and public officials, betrays the slightest understanding of the term.  And it is no small problem.

In fact, it is central to solving the bedeviling riddle invented to stifle and straight jacket the righteous outrage and anger - nay, fury - among the hundreds of thousands of citizens still left sweltering, suffering and - in some cases - at imminent risk of expiring during an excruciatingly long, Bataan Death March of a service restoration campaign, a week after the initial attack of Issac.  That riddle goes pretty much like this:

"There is no hard evidence of a conscious decision by Entergy to delay restoration, fail to make plans for rapid restoration, or even not go after it full bore - given the fact of having recruited and brought in thousands of contractors and personnel from around the country at great expense to assist in the effort.  Moreover, they are losing money every minute that a customer is off line and not running up the electric bill, so why wouldn't they do everything humanly possible to get this done quickly?"
 

Sad to say, most people, including most elected officials, seem unaware of the fallacy embedded in that superficially logical line of reasoning.  It is this: they are not losing money, they never do.

A regulated monopoly like Entergy has no economic interest in efficient operation.  Ironically, just the opposite is true.  By law, they are guaranteed a fair rate of return or profit, which in traditional economic terms means all capital expended plus an amount ranging anywhere from 3 to 7 percent above the current and near term projected rate of inflation.  That means they have a built-in incentive to blow spend as much as they can "justify" to the public service regulatory body, in order to increase the overall amount of money they will make.  In other words, it is literally a case of  the more they spend, the more they make. Indeed, unlike businesses which operate in a competitive market, spending more is the only way in which they can increase their revenue stream and profit.  Such is why they always lust after the most expensive options - like nuclear power plants (risk to public be damned) - which they can get the regulators to sign-off on, as they build the cost into their rate base.  So it is, gentle reader, distressingly, depressingly, and inevitably true that despite the fact you are not "running the meter" during this outage time, the rate you will ultimately be assessed over the long term, when finally back to receiving the service, will be adjusted to cover all of the cost of this restoration campaign, along with the revenue that Entergy would have enjoyed had there been no outage at all.  That is the legal framework, and there are many, many very sound reasons why such a model is the very best for the provision of an essential public necessity.  The "economy of scale" feature in conjunction with the critical "public good" nature of this service justifies the monopoly character of the undertaking, but in turn magnifies the intense importance of serious and strong regulation, religiously faithful to the public interest.  That strong regulation, however, is not what we are seeing here.

 

 Today, we have largely clueless public officials, a completely misled populace, and airheadedly vapid, ignorant and corporately corrupted media. The key characteristics of the current stupid zeitgeist are the mind numbing, drug-like effects of the false promises, precepts and pronouncements peddled by the regulation hating so-called supply side economic salesmen left over from the Reagan era debacle, which continues to visit ruin on the middle class, and worse on the poor. All of which makes the rich and the extremely rich extremely happy - just as it was always intended to do. 

It is also why Entergy operations are so opaque.  The company has a core economic interest in remaining inscrutable, so as to not only more easily get by with but actually immensely benefit from an impenetrable and yawning lack of efficiency in their operations. All at the cost of our ever shabbier and shredded pocket books, and utterly disdained human pain and suffering.

 

 

Everything Old Is New Again

Okay, another brief diversion from the explanation of the long absence promised at the end of the last post.  I mean, you know, who cares anyway? 

Meanwhile, yesterday sales sailed up to the heavens in the local Chick-fil-A franchise, as throngs gathered in support of the privilege of denying fellow humans a full acknowledgement of their humanity, in homage to an entity generally known as "The Lord."

Perhaps that entity's real work may have actually been somewhat served had all those who got sandwiches in the drive-thru lane then driven their perfectly distribution-sized packages of sustenance over to mission to the other throngs daily gathering in ever swelling numbers under the raised expressway bridges, for want of a real home.  You know, the ones with the begging signs asking for aid to a "disabled vet" or maybe "laid-off mechanic" or other down and hurt pleading.

But that would require the impulse to revere rather than revile the common humanity of others somewhat differently situated, marked, or inclined than yourself.  Instead, an echo of the 1950's chant "two - four - six - eight, we don't want to integrate" aimed at public education policy was heard in the obnoxious clamor of holier than thou amateur missionaries loosed on one hell of a mission.

UNACCEPTABLE

At work today, I asked several friends if they were aware that Gore Vidal had passed away yesterday.  Three in a row responded, "Who?"  So, I decided to add that by way of some weird, surreal coincidence, Rush Limbaugh also choked to death on a baloney sandwich.  All said, "No, really?!  I said, "Well, really ... no."

If you want to know why we are so royally fucked as a people, that is a good place to start.  So, I guess I'm back.  A tad bit earlier than I thought I'd be, but more on all that in the next post.

Clinton Still Gets Out Of Bed Every Day To Lie To You

Remember when Bill Clinton was president and endlessly used to tell us that he got up every day to work his heart out for us?  Well, that was a lie, too.  The ones I have in mind right now are those he told yesterday to a group of graduating high school seniors.

He was here, in New Orleans, to address the Urban League College Track program graduates, all 152 of them.  Each has been assisted by private efforts to receive intensive after school tutoring and college prep training during the last four years.  As a result, they are all now headed off to four year colleges.  Good for them. 

Bad for us though is the political claptrap that sell-outs like Clinton, as well as our own Mayor and U.S. Senator named Landrieu, spread at such events.  They use such small scale, very expensive and exclusive efforts as arguments to support the dismantlement of public education in this country.  They make bogus claims regarding achievements scored by the Charter School movement, which simply do not exist.  They attack teachers' unions for their own political purposes. And they even ultimately get around to attacking all of us as being responsible for the catastrophic condition of the economy, by telling us we are just too stupid or ignorant or inept or whatever to be employed in this high tech savy, uber competitive world. Guess they were just luckier than the rest of us; you know, by being so smart and successful and all.  Please.

Clinton included this specific insult in his talk:  He said the billionaires of Silicon Valley have assured him, as recently as one week ago, that they could hire as many as three million of us immediately, if only we were qualified for the jobs.  That, my friends is not only an ugly insult, it is demonstrably false.  Moreover, the same thing was being said by the plutocrats in the 1930s during the depths of the depression.  Once the government started spending real money to build up for the war effort, stupid people miraculously proved smart enough to be hired en mass, and produce brilliantly effective high tech (for the times) products.  The problem today is that Clinton, and other sell-outs like him, have exported most of our middle class jobs, and think we are stupid enough to let them blame the overall economic decline on us.

Stoking The Fire ... Or Capitulation?

In a carefully choreographed two week performance, the dance ensemble of Biden, Hillary, and the new Nureyev himself, Obama, staged a masterful,  political scene switching ballet, which has effectively changed the subject from the persistent economic calamity to a spring cleaning of the darkest corners of conservative psychosis.  Yesterday Obama's insight on the issue of whether all humans are entitled to full human rights finally achieved a complete human genetic encoding.  So, let's all offer him a big "welcome aboard"  the good ship Human Dignity, although there was no indication from the new crew member of any forthcoming effort to help man the oars.

Let's also note that the crowd of youngsters, once all ga, ga and google-eyed over this guy, are no longer "fired up and ready to go."  No, most of them have either been fired or, more likely, never hired, and gone away.  And the lame, only thinly liberal economic program of this administration is directly responsible for this continuing national disgrace. 

Changing the subject is what yesterday's big gay marriage thing was all about, nothing more.  It is truly  shameful that a Democratic President has pursued economic policies so hollow, the even crazier proposals of the plutocratic party sound plausible to average people.  Shades of  Jimmy Carter.  All Liberalism is economic, all else is merely a costume for a masquerade.  Take down the fear of want and scarcity, and all other targets of social failings become softer and more attainable. Miss the main target, and pulling the trigger on other issues is just shooting blanks.

The Gospel According To Paul

But there is no Gospel of Paul, you say.  That would be good news, if I didn't already know it.  So let's just thank God.  For if there were a Gospel of that self-proclaimed good Catholic, Republican zealot, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul (Ryan), it would be all bad. 

According to the Ryan Republican led House action yesterday, it would preach cuts to social services for the poor, such as food aid and health care, in favor of maintaining the bloat in the most bloated military industrial machine the world has ever seen.  You see, Ryan and his fellow zealots really claim to believe that:

                                         The quality of mercy is not strained.
                                     It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven ...


But that if we want to go around dropping bombs, of course we have to make them ourselves.

This is the same interpretation of the Catholic faith which holds that public financing for religious schools should come at the force of law, but that, on the grounds of religious freedom, church run secular service entities should be exempt from the public law governing employee rights. 

All of which is as believable as a phony Gospel.

General Pershing, We Are Here

In 1917, President Wilson sent the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) to Europe under the command of General John J. "Black Jack" Pershing, to bail-out the French and end the slaughter of WWI before Europe ran out of Europeans to kill.  Upon arrival, Pershing was reported to have exclaimed, "Layafette, we are here," in honor of the Marquis de Layafette, the French aristocrat and general who saved Washington's ass, along with all of ours, by cutting off Cornwallis at Yorktown, and essentially handing us victory in the American Revolution.

Now comes Mr. Hollande, the newly elected President of France, with a promise to break the strangle-hold of German led economic warfare against the common man.  Be mindful that the blighting of Europe by the austerity Prussians has not only laid waste to the lives of millions on the continent, but also played a central role in our own politics as well.  I give you the modern day Republican/Teacan party.  Let's hope that Mr. Hollande delivers, let's hope he can shore-up his base and withstand the sure-to-come counter-attack from the right, and, finally, hope his success may inspire a more energetic liberal, anti-capitulation response to the forces of darkness here. Let's put an end to the slaughter, and raise a toast, "Vive La France."