Deregulation and Niagara Mohawk - Is There a Story?

It's just a few hours after the Northeast U.S. power outage, and facts are trickling in; as of right now, it looks like an accidental overload knocked out a large part of the Niagara Mohawk power grid. A few years ago, California went through rolling blackouts that were largely due to a poorly-executed deregulation of that state's power industry. The question that's probably occurring to many of us is, did late-'90s deregulation play a role in today's power event? I don't know the answer, so I'm turning it over to you -- moderators, please check links and up-mod the most informative, pro or con. Here is some information to get you started: "We support deregulation 100 percent..." (N-M spokesman, 1997; notes N-M wanted to sell generators and "concentrate on the transmission and distribution of energy" -- did it?); N-M made some bad investments and is scheduled to request a rate hike (did it?); and N-M's own website says: "Deregulation [has] changed the laws and regulations governing the electricity industry to promote competition..." (how so?).

Comments

Nothing to do with deregulation

[mjmalone]

I don't see how this has to do with deregulation. It has more to do with poor design of the power infrastructure. From what I have heard, the way the power grid works is there are switching stations which link various networks together much like a router on a lan. When one switching station goes down, for whatever reason, there are fail safe systems which move affected areas over to other switches.

What can happen is, if all stations are working at or near capacity and a part of the network goes down for whatever reason (fire, or too much power being drawn for example) then when power is routed from the other switching stations they become overburdened as well and there is a ripple effect of outages across the grid.

When this occurs, power companies have to be careful when bringing power back online as they may become overburdened again as soon as they become operational. The U.S. power grid has become extremely complicated and vulnerable as it has scaled. Fail safe systems often fail in their fail safe components.

Regarding the rolling blackouts in California, they had more to do with Enron witholding power than with deregulation. I have not researched deregulation sufficiently so I can't really argue for or against it, but blaming everything on it is not helpful.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[Wesley Everest]

I don't know if the overload was due to deregulation, but one of the purposes of regulation is to ensure that the power company can satisfy demand, even relatively unlikely peak demand. It's possible that deregulation led to them running leaner with less margin of error for a big spike in demand.

Add to that an unexpected increase in air-conditioner usage and there you go -- overload and outages. That's one possibility. I suppose we'll find out the facts soon enough, though.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[macdaddy357]

I disagree. It could be related to deregulation. Give greedy businessmen a corner, and they'll cut it. If there were things that could have prevented this, but were costly, they were eliminated with deregulation.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[straybullets]

It has more to do with poor design of the power infrastructure

well, bad design is linked to deregulation, since good design takes time, and deregulation wants money fast. It goes the same for taking good care of the existing installation : it costs money, and deregulation is about profit more than service.

the true fact is that deregulation is a joke, it was well seen with the english rail system. And the joke is on us !

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[mjmalone]

The power grid was designed and put into operation long before deregulation started.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[PFAK]

I'm going to have to disagree with you.

Deregulation usually ends up having the power company as a corporation, and not a Crow Corporation or such. When a power company (or any other company for that matter), has to become profitable they will cut costs, and when they are cutting costs the level of service usually falls.

The most likely reason that this has happened is that the power companies did not want to spend as much money on the grids to maintain them, and make sure that they were in complete working order, and add more grids and upgrade their equipment -- all because of deregulation, and saving money on in the "short term".

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[bperkins]

A deregulated industry will attempt to operate its power system close to capacity at all times as much as possible. This leaves the system open to problems like today's.

Deregulation may work out in the end, but so far what I've seen doesn't impress me very much.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[mjmalone]

Then what do you blame all the past outages on? This is not the first time large scale outages in major metropolitan areas has occured.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[straybullets]

The same for the british rail : it worked perfectly. deregulation came in and it went down in flames, late trains, dirty wagons, and dead peoples in accidents : you need to take care of the infrastructure, you need to plan for the future, and keep the whole engine running smooth.

You can't do that if you have to keep an eye on your competitors and keep lowering the prices some more, and fire those expansive workers.

forget what you've been told : open your eyes and think.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[(54)T-Dub]

Well on thing is for sure, if terrorists weren't considering our power grid to be a viable target they sure are now.

I've heard experts warning about this type of thing since 9/11, but I was always a little skeptical. Living in california I tend to be skeptical of anything the power companies have to say.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[murr]

Interesting thoughts here, but I don't agree that electricity is a "completely inelastic commodity". Californians were able to save a surprisingly large amount of power with relatively simple changes during the electricity crisis.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[macdaddy357]

The only risk publicly traded corporations worry about is not making projections for this quarter. If short term buck grabbing causes a long term problem, it will probably be someone else's problem. Besides, the boys in the boardroom can always blame the lowest level drones, and assure shareholders they will be dealt with.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[rsborg]

That doesn't make too much sense to me. Assuming the blackout is a result of cost cutting, it seems like an unreasonable risk, because now that the power's out, people CAN'T use the power, and thus the utilities can't bill until they lights come back on.

That would make sense, if you don't compare what they saved (in running lean) vs. what they lose (in one blackout). In short, I bet "unreasonable risk" you pose, would be, financially reasonable if it only happened occasionally, and that's probably what they calculated. The same concept as "acceptable level of casualties"... and although not as amoral, still causes hell for everyone not making that extra buck that the power utility is.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[Chris Burke]

Deregulation would only help this sort of crisis, because it would be in the individual stake-holder's best interest to shield themselves from such an event.

Well, that's one possible outcome, but I wouldn't say only. It is also in the stake-holder's best interest to cut as many corners as possible, reducing costs and maximizing profits so they can cash in and get out before the inevitable disaster hits.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[modicum]

The government does not provide water and police services because people 'need' them. If that were the rationale, then wouldn't we want the government controlling all farms (because people need food) and drug production (which many people need to live). The reason we have the government provide police service is because it is a public good, so it cannot be effectively provided privately. The reason we have regulated monopolies provide water service is because that market is a natural monopoly.

The idea behind electricity deregulation is the improved technology allows electricity to be structured as a competitive industry and not a monopoly. It has largely succeeded based on the ability to structure the new electricity market in such a way the competitive providers actually enter. Governments have been largely inept at structuring these markets, which is why the results have been mixed. It sounds like this didn't happen in Alberta, which is too bad. But we shouldn't jump to the conclusion that the government needs to provide everything we think we 'need'.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[letxa2000]

This has nothing to do with deregulation. There have been huge blackouts decades before there was deregulation. Heck, this same grid was the same one that caused the big blackout in about the same area in the late 60's, IIRC.

There is no inherent reason why deregulation will cause problems. In fact, the opposite is true. But electric deregulation combined with new environmental regulation is definitely a bad thing. You have the electric sector needing to do one thing and an environmental sector impeding that. Which is more important is open to debate, but you can't ignore the fact that environmental regulations limit what often needs to be done to keep the electrical sector functioning.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[blamanj]

you need to take care of the infrastructure

Indeed, what often happens with deregulation is that you get a lot of people who see how they can make a quick buck and who cares what happens down the road. One mechanism that could be used is to force companies that participate in these utility industries is to require a very large bond to be put up against future problems and upgrades. They now have a stake in the future. If they cut corners too much, they lose their bond, and so they're economically forced to consider the consequences of their actions.

The other issue is that the "intersection points" need to be addressed in a similar manner. Otherwise you get the situation we have now in the DSL market where the customer gets caught between the CLECs and ILECs.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[Zeinfeld]

The same for the british rail : it worked perfectly. deregulation came in and it went down in flames, late trains, dirty wagons, and dead peoples in accidents :

British Rail did not work 'perfectly' by any standard - with the possible exception of the privatized service.

The problem is not regulation, deregulation, privatization, nationalization or any of the surface reasons thrown about. The real problem is people who substitute ideology for thinking about a problem.

The free market is not the solution to every problem. Get over it.

The state is not the solution to every problem either. Get over it.

There are occasions when you have to use one strategy and occasions when you have to use another. Understanding that there are potential problems with a proposed change is essential if you are going to avoid them.

Instead what we get is politicians who use ideology as a substitute for thought. The solution to every domestic energy issue must be to drill oil wells in Alaska. The problem to every foreign policy problem must be to invade a country in the gulf with large oil reserves. The problem to every economic problem must be to give stupendous tax cuts where at least 80% but hopefully as much as is possible goes to the richest of the rich, and in particular rich Texas oil-men. One thing is certain, W. is not going to say a word about the NYC power cut until he can work out how it can be used to justify some policy to benefit Texas oil men.

The free market is one thing, if you could establish a free market in energy that would be a great solution. The problem is that it is not possible to do that, the market is illiquid, supply and demand are constrained in certain ways. But to the ideologue these problems simply cannot exist, they don't exist in the theory so they cannot exist. Its like a robot in a bad 1960s Sci-Fi serial. So the ideologue plows ahead with a broken scheme and creates an unmitigated mess.

That is exactly what happened with privatization of BR. There is no reason the UK rail network cannot be private, it was built entirely with private capital. But the Tory privatization plan based on the politics of sticking your head in the sand was never going to improve matters.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[qtp]

You are still held subject to the transmission charges of the private monopoly that owns the lines between your home and the plant. Cost of electricity goes down, transmission costs go up. Everybody happy except for the customer.

In California, the supposedly competing power generation companies created a scarcity of power by bringing down one third of thier power plants for "maintenance" during peak season, the largest reseller (Enron) refused to increase supply to meet demand, and instead decreased supply and raised prices. The only municipalities that remained unaffected were the ones that held on to thier municipal (socialized) power companies.

Gray Davis was blamed for the mess, and the companies got off scott-free (thanks to deregulation).

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[stmfreak]

bottom line: electricity is a necessity. like water, or the police service. it is a completely inelastic commodity and privatizing it is only encouraging the new power overlord (since there is, really, only one major power provider... a monopoly) to charge the maximum the market will bear and damn the consequences.

The real problem with so-called deregulated utilities is that they are all a single monopoly from the consumer's point of view.

When your utility fails, you are screwed. Short of getting in your car and driving to where the utility is working, you are at the mercy of the utility . This is not deregulation; this is monopoly.

When your utility hikes the rates, you are screwed. You cannot just flip the switch over to the other utility's lines and start paying less. This is not deregulation; this is monopoly.

For utilities to become truly deregulated, all levels of government need to relinquish their grip on their citizens and allow companies to negotiate contracts directly with you and I. Presently, power, phones, water, sewer, garbage, cable... these utilities are selected by your city or county in a one-size-fits-all contract. The winning company has to follow the government's rules for the courtesy of raking you over the coals. Competition is over once the selection has been made. This is not deregulation...

If you look at what cellphones have done to the telecom industry, you can see how only when consumer choice enters the equation do companies get on the "more for less" bandwagon. Until customers can choose between power company A and power company B from their current home, we're going to have no end of problems brought about by waste, corruption, greed and the lack of customer service or concern you would expect from a monopoly.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[IM6100]

So you're saying a regulated power industry has no qualms about wasteful excess capacity? Because they're guaranteed a sure-thing market?

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[heli0]

"The most likely reason that this has happened is that the power companies did not want to spend as much money"

No, they want to spend billions building new plants so this does not occur. The NIMBY crowd prevents this from happening. Hell, they won't even let them build windmills. Without new production capacity this is going to become a more common occurance.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[S.Lemmon]

Deregulation will be fine the day I have a choice which power company hooks to my house. Problem is they usually have a local monopoly - regulated, at least there's some control over pure profiteering.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[stanwirth]

I agree with you, macdaddy. The power failures in Auckland NZ in 1998 were caused by deregulation. Lasted over a week. The cause was failure to properly maintain underground mains -- lines maintenance had been farmed out to a variety of cut-rate contractors who just didn't do a bloody thing. They had to call back in the old AEPB (Auckland Electrical Power Board) engineers who'd been made redundant in the deregulation craze of the mid-90's. Brought back in as contractors at top dollar, might I add.

The solution was to separate the lines companies from the generators and retailers -- i.e. re-regulation was introduced

This hasn't fixed things, really, because the lines companies now have no incentive to invest in maintenance, and the maintenance the do do (when there's a blackout -- we get 'em all the time where I am) is way piss-poor and the contractors do it in such a way as to maximise their own revenue.

For example, a few weeks ago, the power went out in a big rain/windstorm like it always does. So, Alstom (the same contracting outfit that maintains the public telephones for NZ telecom, which is the latest spectacular privatised public services failure story here) comes out to solve the immediate problem, which is the fact that some wet bamboo had blown over the three main lines servicing the whole valley, shorting us out. So they remove the one piece of bamboo causing the short. I watched them. This bit of bamboo had come off a whole stand of bamboo right next to the main lines, and there were over a DOZEN other bits of bamboo in the stand that had obviously also been blown over the same three lines -- burnt off at the same spot. I asked the Alstom guys if they could request that the stand of bamboo could be reported as the cause of repeated problems -- Answer? oh, no, that has to come from "head office."

Now, there was another contractor (different company) halfway up the road cutting down some foliage on behalf of the lines company -- foliage which had nothing to do with the problem . Funny, that. So I went and asked the tree cutter guy, there with all his gear and ladders, if he could please either cut down the stand of bamboo that was the real source of the problem, or notify "head office" (the lines company) that there was just a tad more foliage trimming that would need to be done to solve the source of the problem . No, he couldn't do that. He'd been sent out to cut down some tree branches, and by god that's what he was going to do.

Now why should either of these contracting companies do anything to solve the cause of the problem? After all, leaving the source of the problem in place assured them of ongoing work -- at top dollar . While this ate into any budget the lines company might have for other maintenance (like maybe uh, moving the 40-year-old overhead lines to a safer and more modern underground system so we don't get the spectacular exploding-transformer effect every time there's a lighting storm maybe? DUH!)

Privatisation is the cause of our blackouts, that's for sure! And it's caused the rates to go up. Worse service, higher cost, poorer maintenance.

And what's the deal? They privatised and deregulated the airline, the electric companies and the phone company -- but in each case, as a sop to the poor NZ citizen, who may have been losing an asset but was certainly getting poorer and more expensive service, they earmarked blocks of stock that could only be issued to New Zealanders.

So that some New Zealanders could have the privilege of purchasing an asset FROM THEMSELVES. They only fell for it because of this farking myth about competition leading to better service and lower cost. Yeh right.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[Daniel_Staal]

And involving the government would have solved any of this how?

(You've got a red-tape bound beuacuracy. Governments are famous for them.)

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[dspeyer]

Or not get out.

Seriously, I don't think the power companies have been significantly harmed here. They won't lose customers, seeing as the outage was purely geographic. All bad will is directed against the power companies equally.

Let's face it: the only thing power companies compete on under deregulation is price. They have the same product, the same reliability, etc. This means the only viable business model is to cut every corner you can.

But money is the one true god, and questioning deregulation is unamerican, so we don't see a problem here, right?

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[nathanh]

You mean I actually have to interact with people?????

You are interacting with people. The fact that you use a computer to do so is no more disturbing than speaking to someone via a phone.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[stanwirth]

And involving the government would have solved any of this how?

First of all, rather than having two different contractors, both with a profit motive for not solving the problem, you would have had basically lazy government employees that would have had it in their best interest to solve the source of the problem -- so they wouldn't get future callouts on cold rainy days. Who the heck wants to go out on a rainy day for n+1 emergency calls-- when they could schedule preventive maintenance requiring them to go outdoors during the months when it doesn't rain nearly as much.

When the government was directly involved (i.e. owned the power companies, and the telephone companies, and the national airline), there was *one* bureaucracy -- that was still ultimately accountable to the public. And the quality of service was very high.

Now there are half a dozen "state owned enterprises" (SOEs) which means the public still foots the bill, but now (being "privatised") we have absolutely no oversight, and they are accountable to their boards to make a profit, rather than directly to the people to provide a service. In the case of the lines companies and phone companies, the quality of service is directly related to the integrity of the lines themselves -- and without public feedback, there is no incentive to improve service, because the lines companies still have a monopoly. No such thing as competition there. Yet the SOEs were set up on the pretext of "providing competition" where no competition can possibly take place. It's an argument that would only appeal to a neocon ideologue.

Furthermore, because it's ex-government department employees in these SOEs that operate the SOEs but now without public oversight -- well, it's the same fat, lazy, corrupt, theiving do-nothing slobs you get in government departments, but now they can do nothing for more money and nobody but other fat, lazy, corrupt, theiving slobs --other ex-government bureaucrats--are looking over their shoulders. The public has no right to even find out what's going on---because now it is a private company.

They're more organisationally inefficient and cut more corners on service and funnel more plum contracts to their buddies now than they did when it was a government monopoly/bureaucracy-- because at least when it was a government monopoly/bureaucracy, we had some right to oversight. New Zealand has seen how the privatisation of public services gives you the worst of both the private and public sectors.

Unfortunately.

(You've got a red-tape bound beuacuracy. Governments are famous for them.)

And when the NZ government-run electricity, telephone and airlines were privatised into SOEs, the tape only got longer, redder and meaner--and more expensive.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[jmorris42]

> There is arguements for both sides, but usually when a utility company
> is not deregulated, prices are cheaper, and service is better.

Kid, you are obviously not old enough to remember the bad old days of The Phone Company. Since the big breakup Long distance rates are fast approaching flat rate for everyone everywhere and local service is very affordable if you just say no to all of the optional crap they try to peddle to get their margins up. Hint: Answering machines are $20, voice mail is $5/mo, you do the math.

If you want to see what the loving hand of government does do a business, go look at Amtrack or the Post Office.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[jmorris42]

> The excuse for the 1965 power outage was effectively "we didn't know."
> Obviously they know now, so "tbey didn't care" is a plausible theory.

A temporary failure of a complex system like the American power grid every few decades doesn't sound like a "I don't care" attitude to me. Sounds like imperfect systems built by imperfect humans. The engineers will study this incident and improve the system. And we will discover yet another failure mode after another couple of decades of rapid demand growth. NIMBY attitudes towards building power plants are most likely the largest contributing factor though, since had the industry been able to build new plants to keep up with demand the system wouldn't have been running so close to capacity and that isn't a problem for engineers.

Of course as a Dean supporter, brains and rational thought isn't likely to be your strong suit. Raw emotion, mostly a blind hatred of Shrub, are his draws.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[allism]

Given the remarkable aplomb NYC seems to have handled this outage with, I think terrorists may be considering power grids LESS of a viable target. The residents just aren't reacting in a way that would encourage thinking that mass chaos would be triggered by a power outage (I'm talking about outside of the inconvenience of the outage itself).

I am proud of the reactions of the residents of the affected areas.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[jmorris42]

> Amtrak runs efficiently, with a very small number of accidents compared
> to, say, airlines.

Compare the number of commercial aviation takoffs per year with the number of Amtrack departures. Now compare the failure rate. And lets not even consider the difference in complexity between running a train along nice straight steel rails and putting jetliners up and bringing them safely back down again.

> As far as the USPS goes, figure out a way to handle the exceedingly
> high volume of mail that goes through every facility's doors every
> day, and I'll tip my hat to you.

I haven't a clue how to do that, but FedEx and UPS would love to have a go at it.... if it weren't illegal. And that my young liberal friend is how the Post Office stays in business with their abysmal service; threaten to put any competitor in jail.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[sql*kitten]

The solution to every domestic energy issue must be to drill oil wells in Alaska. The problem to every foreign policy problem must be to invade a country in the gulf with large oil reserves. The problem to every economic problem must be to give stupendous tax cuts where at least 80% but hopefully as much as is possible goes to the richest of the rich, and in particular rich Texas oil-men.

It was all going so well before you went all rabid. Let me just point out:

• The solution to every domestic energy issue is not to put up windmills
  
• The solution to every foreign policy problem is not to blow up their pharmaceutical industry with cruise missiles, as Clinton did in Sudan
  
• The solution to every economic problem is not to give huge raises and generous pensions to government workers thus bankrupting your state, as Davis did in California.
  

Incidentally, of course tax cuts are going to benefit those who pay the most tax. If people who don't pay Federal income tax anyway get the money, it's not a cut but a grant. No wonder lefties can't run economies, they even struggle with simple language!

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[nanojath]

Concur. The myth of privatization is the myth of the "free" market in general - that competition is always and ever leading us to the best possible product at the best possible price. We all know how business actually runs. However, that doesn't necessarily mean deregulation is universally bad. I'm against it, personally, because the experience so far is that it has been implemented very poorly. But in theory, it could work - provided it is properly, pardon the irony, regulated.

It doesn't take a genius to see how an insufficiently robust and redundant power grid and poorly implemented deregulation could be synergistic. Mmm, maybe we could start getting China-style electricity in the good ol' USA.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[ealar dlanvuli]

Refusing in this sense probably means:

Arguing against building a power plant in the face of information that would lead one to think they were required.

If there was no information to say they were required, no one ever refused to build one, they just never saw the need and it never made debate.

I have to agree with the left wing poster.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[arivanov]

It is a result of american dislike of mathematics and long term scientific projects.

You cannot replace mathematics with elementary computer control systems based on simple feedback. That is the reality. And the american power blackouts are one of the common illustrations given in mathematical modeling classes in most of Europe of why simple feedback systems fail.

After the big blackout of the sixties every single European country has put this task to their universities and/or specilized institutes. In all cases it was given to mathematicians, not engineers (or ended up with the mathematicians after the engineers failed).

I happen know some the people who did the modelling in three countries. It took anything between 7 and 11 years to come up with viable models as well as analysis of viable failure scenarios. The scenarious have been rolled out by the 80-90-es so we are talking 20+ development and deployment cycle.

As a result you simply cannot take out the grid like this in any European country unless the country has grown complacent and has stopped updating the models to account for change in power usage patterns.

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[doinky]

Limbaugh _has_ said in the past that California (government) was to blame for the lack of local supply that was partially responsible for the high prices. He has _also_ said that California shouldn't have agreed to subsidize retail electricity for the end-user; but that would have been political suicide given the astronomical spikes which occurred (and which have now been shown not to be natural market forces at work; but rather, an illegal manipulation of the market by Enron et al).

Re:Nothing to do with deregulation

[Peaceful_Patriot]

Perhaps there are industries which are so important to the well being of society that they sould not be left to the private sector to run. Private companies have one all important goal: to make a profit. Perhaps the larger good of society (like building and upgrading old power plants) is more important than profit and these are constantly at odds.
I think Health Care, electricity, water, and a few other essentials should not be administered by private corporations. They must constantly weigh the common good against the bottom line. In private insustry, the bottom line will always win.

Huh?

[Henry V .009]

The rolling blackouts in California were rationing exercises. This, however, is an unplanned disaster.

Re:Huh?

[mjmalone]

Not to mention that the power needs in california were caused by witholding of power by Enron, not by deregulation.

DAMN!

[DAldredge]

The people that RUN THE FSCKING GRID do not know what went wrong and /. is posting articles asking if X caused it???

Are you insane?

Re:DAMN!

[HiThere]

Be aware that there can be multiple layers of "causes". At one level the cause may be "the insulation on some wires failed and a short developed across the coils of a transformer".

OK. But why?

OK. But after the last New York blackout, there were many promisses that new switches were going to be emplaced that would automatically shutdown connections to large areas that were failing. This doesn't seem to have happened. Did the switches fail, or were they never installed.

OK. But I heard that there was this computer model of the entire electrical system that was being built, which would be able to examine it's sensors an from a log of failures would be able to instantly report on what the cause had been, and where it had occured. Did the model fail? Is there some reason it isn't being used?

Ok. But...

Some of these could be answered immediately (by those with knowledge), some require on site investigation. Some are obvious without any statement, e.g., clearly the super power grid model isn't being used, or they could immediately pinpoint the problem. But why? (Probably it takes a super-computer to run it, and they can't afford to have it running most of the time...if it actually works, that is.)

We will have to wait and see a bit

[Zachary Kessin]

But I don't think de-regulation is a major part of this. The california problems were cronic problems that went on over a long period of time.

As far as it is known now (3 hrs into the event) this is a one time deal due to equipment failure. In the summer due to Air Conditioning and other things power grids run very near the max so if something major fails then you are running much above 100%, this starts blowing breakers and shutting things down. The radio just said in 3 minutes 21 plants shut down, so once things start to fail and they can fail fast.

Re:We will have to wait and see a bit

[Dastardly]

The california problems were cronic problems that went on over a long period of time.

What no one seems to talk about is the 1100MW nuclear reactor that could not produce power during the time due to refueling and then a busted turbine. That is what put the production on the hairy edge of demand, and then by gaming the system other producers were able to extend their profits.

Dastardly

Damnit, look - California was NEVER deregulated!

[raehl]

Just because a politician calls it something doesn't make it true.

CA got messed up because their power system was RE-regulated with a set of stupid rules that certain less-than-ethical companies took advatage of. It was the REGULATIONS put in place that caused everything to fall apart, not a lack of them.

Re:Power Outage - More of the same

[Xerithane]

I guarantee you that if a power outage happened anywhere OTHER than New York City, the mass media outlets would barely be covering this event at ALL.

Like the Nevada power outage?

I am sick of the NYC bias we see in the media. Self-importance is so passe. Please make this story go away, I give CNN and Fox News a big "OFFTOPIC" (To their credit, Fox is now reporting the story that some terrorist mastermind yadda yadda yadda has been capture).

Sorry, this is national news. The Nevada power outtage was national news. And CNN has been reporting the Al Qaeda capture for several hours.

Can't Believe It

[isa-kuruption]

We're in the middle of a power outage and all /. editors can do is start the blame game.

There is no proof that deregulation or anything else is to blame for this. From what has been on the news thus far, it is due to a surge in the grid which turned off power distribution points by flipping their effective fuses... just like a surge in your home.

So why start to point fingers right now? It could have been a lightning strike, or a wandering bear, or terrorism, or maybe it was another Pinky and the Brain's scheme to take over the world!

Get over it... get the FACTS before you start to point fingers.

Can't survive without electricity? WTF?!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Everyone needs electricity," says Toth. "You can't be without it.

That is just a goddamn stupid comment.

I am not an outdoor person. I did go hiking with my father when I was a kid, but since I've lived most of my life in various cities and spend most of my waking hours basking in the cold glow of CRT tubes. Still I do know how to survive without electricity: how to light a campfire, build an adequate shelter, boil water so that it's safe to drink and cook and dry food on fire. How do I know it, I ran a rehearseal for before Y2K (yeah, go ahead and laugh but better safe than sorry) and went outdoors for a night. Just me and my rucksack.

Goddamn moron. "You can't be without it" my ass.

Re:Power Outage - More of the same

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

I am sick of the NYC bias we see in the media.

Well, as an ex-patriate New Yorker, I am sick of the middle America bias we see in the media's coverage of culture. This is news and, whining aside, it's bigger news because it happened in NYC. Tough. New York is the financial capital of this nation and incidentally of the world, too. What's there? Hmmm, ignoring the 8 million residents and 5 million daily commuters, we also have the New York Stock Exchange, and NASDAQ, and one of the Fed Reserve Banks, and, oh yeah, the United Nations. These make it news.

If a power outage had roiled through London and an equivalent land area, it would also be news. Losing power in the desert -- not so much news.

Re:Damnit, look - California was NEVER deregulated

[commodoresloat]

CA got messed up because their power system was RE-regulated with a set of stupid rules that certain less-than-ethical companies took advatage of. It was the REGULATIONS put in place that caused everything to fall apart, not a lack of them.

So let's see... you think these "less-than-ethical companies" would be better behaved with fewer rules? That makes a lot of sense. You're blaming the regulations because companies found ways to abuse them. How about a little blame for the companies that abuse them?

Speculation is pointless...

[YrWrstNtmr]

At this point in time...the situation is still being evaluated. *we don't know*

More importantly, the people that run the power grid *do not know*.

Some poor schmuck on the front lines probably knows...but he ain't talking yet.

CA rolling blackouts not due to deregulation

[geekee]

"California went through rolling blackouts that were largely due to a poorly-executed deregulation of that state's power industry. "

The CA power crisis was a direct result of the failure to build a single power plant in CA for the last 15 years. The fact that the state was playing around with a half-assed form of deregulation in which the price to the consumer was still regulated is a coincidence. The fact is, CA wasn't able to supply enough power for itself, so was forced to by power on the open market.

So Much For The Reliability Of Private Power

[berwyn]

I posted this in the ealier article about the power crisis. This thread didn't exist then, but it seams more appropriate here.

I live in British Columbia, west coast of Canada, and we have a publicly owned power company called BC Hydro. However our provincial government, which is very pro business, has been making moves to privatize this public utility by selling off portions to private companies.
The most recent branch to be sold off was to Accenture, a Bahamas based (i.e. tax shelter) spin off of Enron. If you don't remember Enron, here are some highlights: one of the biggest bankruptcies in US history, massive corporate crime, a major contributor to the California energy crisis due to power brokering, a major political contributor to one George W. Bush's election campaign and one of the script writers of Bush's current US Energy policy.
One of the major arguments of our provincial government's privatization campaigns is that companies can run these utilities far better and at lower cost to the consumer than can public institutions.
Well, I'm wondering, how many of you the east cost have seen your power bills going down. Don't every one raise there hands at once.
Now the reason I point this out is I see a direct coloration between the movement to have Open Source Software being deployed in public infrastructure Vs. Closed Source, and Public run utilities, such as water and electricity, Vs. Private Market Driven Operation.
I think most people who frequent Slashdot don't need an explanation in why an OSS solution should be the only standard for a democratic government. Just as I think they can see the rationale for publicly accountable organization running the fundamental utilities that support society, consisting of both Business and the People. However I think no one really understands the extent that Business now has in dictating government policy, and shifting that policy from serving the people to creating profit at the expense of the People, You and Me, whether we are American, Canadian or any other nationality. Health care is a prime example. The Struggle between Linux and Microsoft in India is another.

It's about votes....

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Why are so many US cities and states broke? Upping taxes to fix the problem is not a vote winner.

Same thing with power, personal debt and quarterly reporting. Doubling the cost of electricity to expand the grids capability or rationing power (no aircon) will not be well received. A short-term view will always win over a long-term view if there is some pain involved.

Re:Damnit, look - California was NEVER deregulated

[Elwood P Dowd]

You are obviously correct in that California's power system was never deregulated. It was re-regulated in a manner that all the politicians and relevant corporate stooges called "deregulation." And that doesn't necessarily make it so.

Of course, so long as my power company can force me to give them an easement to put power lines on my property, they will not be, technically, deregulated. So long as they can use public resources, they will not be, technically, deregulated.

That suggests to me that it is completely impossible (due to political reality or physical reality is unimportant) for the US to actually deregulate it's power industry. All we will ever get is "re-regulation." Unfortunately, all the politicians (liberal & conservative alike) called this "deregulation." All the media called it "deregulation." All the think-tanks called it "deregulation." If the public doesn't have any way to know about the true consequences of legislation that's this complex... we'll get fucked every time.

I guess my point is... ok, no point. Still. What do you think we should do about the power industry? If you want *real* deregulation, then you're going to have to explain how the hell you'd define *real* deregulation. And before you ever passed your law, you'd get a bunch of politicians and corporations in there fucking things up.

The one source that I want someone to dig up for me is this: a pre-shortage, pre-"deregulation" article suggesting that the California "deregulation" legislation was the wrong kind of deregulation. Then I'll know who to follow for the right kind of local political coverage for the rest of my life.

If you can find that, I'll kiss you on the mouth. (You can kiss my girlfriend if you'd prefer.)

Re:Un-fucking-believable.

[jvonk]

Aha! However, no entity has a 'right' for their revenue model to be successul. If I were to block slashdot ads--and therefore they were denied income--it is not an ethical (or even moral) problem for anyone involved.

Since I am not under contract regarding their revenue model when I read slashdot, I am not bound to ensure they make money. This is the heart of entreprenurial success: the business owner has to ensure that their income model is practical and profitable.

Your perspective leads to the network pigopolists claiming that I am stealing if I watch a show and flip channels during a commercial. What if they made their commercials interesting to watch, instead?

In summary: "the success of their revenue model is their problem, not mine."

Re:So much for private entreprise.

[Anonymous Coward]

Quebec has huge amount of cheap hydro power.
Quebec produces more power than it consumes, it is near a large energy consumer US east coast.

Quebec goverment does not permit anyone to build powerlines to transmit Newfoundland's labador hydor power to the US across Quebec, instead they buy the power at cost and sell it to the US.

Quebec's goverment ripping of Newfoundland and having lots of natural resources is not the shinning example you think it is.

Kamil

Enron and Power Deregulation

[tsikora]

Enron pushed through electric power deregulation in 24 state legislatures, which made it possible for them to create the "markets" they needed to rip off consumers. They also had personal contacts and meetings with George W. Bush and probably most congressional and state legislators. By removing the accountability factor of government oversight it makes you wonder. Congress investigating themselves? Do you think they will find themselves guilty of any wrong doings? What a sweet deal.

Moron Bush: "Rolling Blackout"

[Anonymous Coward]

We have the dumbest world leader EVER.

"We have been hit by rolling blackouts"

No we haven't... he can't even watch CNN correctly. Bush is a total fucking moron.

Re:Moment of silence

[Martin Blank]

Pfft. If they were TRUE geeks, they would have had a backup generator to provide power, 24 hours of fuel, and contracts with at least two companies to provide additional fuel.

Not that I have any of this. :P

Re:Calm down... don't forget Occum's Razor

[shlashdot]

nonsense. If you live adjacent to a power plant that would be working just fine except for a sorry-arsed control system that can't limit the load to that plant, you would justifiably be miffed. Think about it. It's like chaining a bunch of boats together so they get there at the same time. If one of them sinks? oops we didn't think of putting a release on the chain...

Liberals are not to blame

[kurtkilgor]

For all of you who are saying that because liberals or environmentalists are to blame for this because they prevented infrastructure improvements:

Every single (democratic) country in the world has liberals and environmetalists. Yet presumably, their grids are better than ours (otherwise there is no cause to complain).

If a government can't reconcile these differences of opinion into a coherent policy, this is the failure of the government as a whole. If someone made a decision that new plants have to be built, it would happen, and there would be very little that liberals could do to stop it, other than picketing and writing letters.

It is when elected officials have no policy in the first place, and the relevant departments are asleep at the wheel, that important work becomes subject to the wihms of the populace.

Re:Deregulation a contributor to that fraud...

[leviramsey]

That's part and parcel with capitalism: companies go out of business.

Indeed, it is that capacity for creative destruction that gives capitalism it's power and its benefits. For instance, Southwest and JetBlue are both doing fabulously well relative to their fellow airlines. Neither could have gotten to this point without deregulation (Southwest would have still been a small regional airline and JetBlue wasn't even a glimmer in someone's eye). Why are they successful? They identified what the core of the business is (getting people from point A to point B) and, in their own ways, came up with a better way to do it than anybody else (in Southwest's case, not heavily unionizing, picking one aircraft and using it for everything, and cutting non-essential services to their customers while cutting the prices). It's not surprising that their competitors, with byzantine, adversarial labor relations, too much overhead, and extremely complex networks couldn't compete.

But then they start to show glimmers of possible failure (which everyone could see coming), and, because they're job machines and have wealthy shareholders, both parties fall over themselves to bail them out.

The best thing to do is to let them fail. What then happens? You get a shitload of planes, hangars, and airport berths on the market. Some of those are obsolete (indeed, Southwest has the newest fleet in the airline industry; their average plane is about 7 years old, versus 25 years for a few airlines), but a lot are saleable. The demand for air travel hasn't gone away; investors will be lining up to buy the planes to start new airlines and coming up with new ways of doing business.

A similar thing is happening with telecom. Investors are snapping up the fiber from bankrupt telcos at fractions of the original cost and using those networks to offer remote backup services and enable (eventually) new broadband technologies. New businesses, with smarter management, are taking over assets of those who failed and improving things.

Re:So much for private entreprise.

[Anonymous Coward]

Quebec does have one of the best electrical systems around - even discounting the ice storm :). Electricity is not simply a commodity like milk or eggs because it is highly inelastic, it has significant barriers to entry and it has very significany economies of scale.

1) Inelastic - demand does not flucuate tremendously due to price. While higher prices due lead to decreased demands and energy conservation, electricity is almost a need - unlike eggs which competes against food - for heating, cooling, lighting and computers. So having electricity out of government hands can lead to tremendous gouging - look at all the examples of unsuccessful degregulation attempts.

2) Barriers to entry - additional competitors face tremendous barriers to entry. Plants and transmission lines are incredibly expensive and governments are the only ones that can build and invest in the system without an immediate payback demanded by investors. Plus, in a truly free electicity market, switching providers would be incredibly expensive because each provider would have their own lines to your house. That is why in most deregulation systems the supply of electricity is deregulated but tranmission is still a government monopoly.

3) Economies of scale - Hydro-Quebec, being the only supplier, can exploit huge economies of scale to provide electricity at a cheaper price. Multiple electricity generators would split the market and increase the average unit cost simply due to a smaller economy of scale. Sometimes - like public transit - monopolies are better (even government ones)

Re:Do I hear a chorus of 'Blame Canada'???

[Anonymous Coward]

I was waiting for it too - as soon as it came on that a Canadian part of the grid was down, I was thinking, "They'll be blaming Canada any minute now." Sure enough, right on cue, it starts flying back and forth from CNN to MSNBC to FOX - Canada Canada Canada Foreigners it's all the damn furriners.

Turned out not to be true, but honest to god the USA needs to get a grip. Not everything bad that happens is the fault of other nations. It's getting impossible to even talk to Americans these days - the concept of the USA being less than heavenly perfection personified, coming down from above to light the way for backwards and brown peoples who should shut up and do as they are told is rampant - you can see the rage rising behind their eyes when you even suggest that the USA is not to be envied in all things.

The USA is becoming strange and unpleasant. If it were a high school student it would be a wealthy jock, well-dressed, undeniably smart and handsome but with an ugly, arrogant soul. "They only hate me because they're jealous."

I know America - I like America. All the same America as a whole needs to rediscover a bit of humility.

Regulation / DeRegulation no difference

[TheSync]

This same kind of blackout happened twice during full regulation of electrical energy, and now once during the (still early days of) deregulation.

This event has all the hallmarks of a transmission failure, not a generation problem. There appears to have been plenty of power capacity. Transmission is still handled by highly regulated ISOs, despite generation deregulation.

This isn't like the California situation where the state set up a "deregulation" law that made the ISO incapable of getting an efficient market rate for power from generators.

What does need to happen is that NIMBY anti-transmission line political forces need to be eradicated. We need more transmission lines in the East, and more generation in the West.

Re:New Zealand

[stanwirth]

SIMON: They cut back on maintanance and instead of three main feeds, they had one. It blew up.

GAV: Sorry but you're wrong. Go read the final report.

Give it up, Gav. You're playing the same game of misdirection-at-the-details the government played.

The bottom line is, even taking your technical details into account, corners were cut on maintenance, and as a result, most of the 1.5 million people in Auckland either had no power at work, or no power at home -- or both . Rather than fixing the problem within a week, after a week it got much worse . Many companies went out of business -- so even if you weren't working in head office downtown, and didn't live in the blackout area -- if you worked for one of these businesses, you were still affected.

Furthermore, you can't compare Auckland to a city of 1.5 mil in the US, and you certainly can't compare the Auckland CBD to a city of 300K -- Pittsburgh?. Auckland is the New York of New Zealand, and the Auckland CBD is the MANHATTAN of New Zealand--not the Rochester or Pittsburgh. In terms of economic impact on the whole country , the Auckland CBD is where the national offices of most corporations and banks are located.

After the blackout, both Coca Cola corporation and IBM decided to move the bulk of their Australasian operations to Sydney. Now how does that affect everybody purchasing IBM gear who now have to get on the horn to OZ every time a new APAR is annouced? All the New Zealand IBM employees? All of the New Zealand employees of Coca-Cola? These weren't the only two major corps to flee. And then there were all the small shops in the CBD that went out of business. It was like a ghost town.

Another thing that makes it just cynical and callous in the extreme to dismiss this as "only" between 300,000 and 1.5 million people were affected is that -- this is between a tenth and nearly a half of all the people in the country!!! So it's comparable, in terms of the percentage of citizens affected -- to most of the US eastern seaboard going out. for months .

Cause: Overloaded grid and bad logic

[Jimithing DMB]

The original post was very informative. EmagGeek was right on track when he mentioned that one generator got knocked offline for some reason and because of that the power grid compensated by rerouting electricity from other generators.

My dad was vice president of electric supply for NIPSCO for a number of years after having worked his way up the chain of command starting off working at a power plant as an electrical engineer. As VP of electric supply his job included ensuring NIPSCO was generating enough power to cover the needs of all the power customers (including several steel mills), working with regulators to ensure the rates were reasonable so that money could be spent to increase capacity when needed, and working with environmentalists to ensure that emissions were well below accepted government levels.

NIPSCO was a company very interested in serving its customers. As a heavily regulated utility the only reasonable business decision is to service your customers the best that you possibly can. My dad took that to heart. He was strongly opposed to deregulation. Why? Because the simple fact of the matter is that my dad was somewhat of an exception. Most executives tend to look strictly at the bottom line and lose sight of the forest for all the trees. He knew that deregulation would inevitibly lead to cost cutting in areas where costs should not be cut simply because without regulation the power company is at the mercy of its shareholders and shareholders are very often in it strictly for the money.

So, tonight I had a discussion with him about this mess. First of all, the background. Apparently a generator went off grid this afternoon forcing other generators to take up the slack. That can happen for a number of reasons. Equipment does fail, humans do make mistakes, etc. What's supposed to happen is that the rest of the generators and the grid should have enough capacity to take up the slack. Should there not be enough capacity then someone needs to lose power. This should happen at the customer side. That is, a portion of the customers should be blacked out to reduce the load on the grid and allow normal operations to continue. I believe that is what you meant by "putting a release on the chain." You are correct, that's what should have happened. The fact that it didn't indicates that there was some major problem with the logic of the grid. It would have been far better to cut the power to thousands of customers than millions.

Bad logic was part of the cause. The other problem was a seriously overloaded power grid. The power grid was designed to handle the situation where a power company normally had sufficient capacity but due to generator failures was unable to meet demand. Notice that I said failures (plural). If a few generators are knocked off the grid the company ought to have enough energy to supply all of its customers. Furthermore, it ought to have backup generators that can be started and on the grid within an hour. Those backup generators are just that: backups. They cost a hell of a lot of money to operate but they aren't as expensive to build as a main generator. If a few more generators get knocked off grid it's reasonable to expect that a power company will be unable to handle this situation without buying power from another company. That is what the grid is for.

Unfortunately, because of government stupidity (deregulation) and corporate greed the grid is now being used in a way it was never intended to be. It is often loaded to near full capacity drawing power over very long distances. The idea of deregulation was that loosely regulated for-profit companies would compete to generate electricity which the local power companies could purchase instead of generating their own. Because the power companies no longer had to be responsible for providing capacity in excess of what is needed the rates could be

Re:Calm down... don't forget Occum's Razor

[The Famous Druid]

I agree with pretty-much everything you said, except for
There isn't anything or anyone to blame for this.

Until recently, I worked in the electricity biz, programming the control systems you mentioned, and I suspect the system failed in precisely the way you describe, but you haven't asked why it happened.

It happened because the system was running so close to capacity that when one component fails, the neighboring components are not able to take up the slack. This is very poor design, and in the good old days engineers built enough redundancy into the system to prevent it.

These days, of course, the bean-counters have far more control of the industry than the engineers, so they don't "waste" money on back-up systems, it's far cheaper (for the suppliers, not for their customers) to just let the system fail every now and then.

That's no way to run an essential service, and the politicians who allow it to happen need to be taken out behind the wood-shed and given an attitude re-alignment they'll never forget.

Re:Moment of silence

[eam]

Just buy yourself a diesel/electric locomotive. It should be able to turn that home heating oil into electricity for you.

Seriously, it is possible that your home heating oil is the same thing as diesel fuel. It all depends on what additives have been mixed in. I did a quick search and found this:

Diesel generators

If you can ignore the fact that they're trying to sell you something, you might notice that there are quite a few portable diesel generators which could possibly be powered using your home heating oil.

Re:Moment of silence

[rsax]

I know that your comment was meant to be humourous but on a more serious note, perhaps this event could serve as a wake up call to all the people who needlessly consume more than they have to (Yeah right, I can hope can't I?). I know so many geeks who run non-critical computers 24/7 which are chugging along just for the fact that they want to see those high uptime numbers. We all know *BSD/Linux is stable. You don't need to suck up power (pollute more by making fossil fuel power plants work extra hard) to prove something that's already obvious.

Re:Deregulation is a MYTH

[tetra103]

FACT. The only industry that has ever been truly deregulated is the airline industry. I don't see anyone complaining about the price of airline tickets.

No, but after 9/11, we sure have alot to complain about with security. Deregulation is a good thing in that it promotes competition and hence lower cost. Unfortunately, competition also promotes "lowest bidder" mentallity. Who knows, maybe somday we'll "off-shore" our power generators because we just don't want that sorta stuff in our backyards anymore. Detracts the view of the golf course ya know.

OT: Face it, we're all snotty Americans. Hypocritical to the last. We all feel we "deserve" that 2500sq ft home, two car garage and our own automobile when we hit 16yr. We all want the comfort of living in the USA, but if we ever go to war, many would do anything to duck the draft. Hell, we even elect draft dogers for presidents and for some reason, we're ok with that. I love America as much as the next guy, but the general mentallity of it's citizens (myself included) just sickens me. I think the first major overhaul the USA needs is a mentallity adjustment. Get away from the "me first" mentallity and "it's not my fault" court cases. Get back to love and respect thy fellow man/woman and then....just then....maybe the right decisions will start to flow.

De-regulation and Competition

[sterno]

De-regulation works well when there is a competitive marketplace and it fails utterly when there isn't. Witness the airlines for examples of both how it succeeds and fails. If you are travelling between major hubs in the US, you have multiple airlines to choose from and the price you pay is pretty low. If you are travelling between off-hub points, then you pay a premium because it's likely only one or two airlines serve that route.

The electrical industry, much like the phone and cable industry is too dependent on the connection to the house to be truly competitive. Ultimately whoever controls the wires into the home runs the show and has a competitive (and frequently regulatory) advantage over anybody who would need to run new wires.

There seems to be this belief that privatizing and de-regulating are magical cure alls for many problems. They aren't. If a market is naturally prone to creating uncompetitive monpolies, then neither government nor private industry will make it more efficient over the long run. Thus you are better off with government where at least the motivations are to please the citizenry rather than please the shareholders.

Singeltons should be government owned

[ClarkEvans]

and places where there can be competition should be privately owned.

Thus, the grid (a singleton) should be operated by the government so that we have internal competition, that is competition amoung contractors who do the actual work.

And power plants should be operated by private interests (regulated/charged appropriately and equally for pollution of public goods, such as the air or water, etc).

Companies should not run the grid beacuse there is no external competition, the only way to get competition is to have contractors competing on very small jobs /w oversight. In a complementary manner, since there can be competition between power plants, this should be let up to the market, if we need more power, corporate interests will build more plants, etc.

Re:What liberals??

[charon_on_acheron]

What do you define a liberal as? Someone who needs government assistance to wipe their own ass, with government issued toilet paper, in a government owned toilet, and with a government finger shoving up their ass afterward checking for any hidden money that they didn't tax yet? And that person likes this? That sounds like your version of liberalism.

There is a reason that millions of people left Europe and migrated to the US. They were tired of Big Brother, long before the book was written. They wanted a place they could raise a family, work for their own future, and not have the government round their sons up and send them to die in every piss-ant skirmish that the king/queen/prince/mayor/etc decided was needed to save their honor.

The biggest problem with the US today is that too many people have forgotten that aspect of living in the land of the free. They think we should emulate Europe. Why? Where did both World Wars start? Why should we be dragged into acting like that? Unfortunately we have. Now we think we have to do all the stupid things Europeans have been doing for a thousand years. And of course tax everyone to death to pay for it (oh wait, that is another of the stupid things Europeans think is normal).

And for the record, the second biggest problem with the US today is that the religious right can't dissociate their version of GOD from their civic life or their political and legal activities. I don't care if someone wants to marry another person of the same sex, and it's none of my business what two or more consenting adults do in the privacy of their own house. I also don't care if people want to avoid reality for a few hours, or bet on the score of a football game, or watch movies of people having sex. Laws are not meant to be interpretations of the Bible. Laws are supposed to prevent people from causing harm to other people, not save their souls.

And finally, for those who want to throw the race card into the argument, there was a reason I specifically said people left Europe to live in the land of the free. While many Africans did the same, and were free men, the majority were brought over as slaves. I don't think that entails their entire decendant group to live off the government. Liberals in the US like to make this group think they deserve every drop of public assistance that the Democrats are willing to give them. But sucking from the public teat is just keeping them dependant on that teat, rather than helping them become successful in their own life. I would rather see the government helping these people find a solid job and live in good neighborhoods. Instead the liberals herd them into ghettos and housing projects that are unclean and dangerous.