Vultures
 

The vultures have filed a suit against the power company that may have caused the blackout. Of course it's for the people and not profit for the vultures. :turd:

And here's part of the cost they'll be suing for. Throwing out food from the lack of refrigeration. I don't understand the wrapped cheese though.:confused:

Doesn't cheese spoil extremely fast? Probably even more so without refrigeration.

I wouldn't think so, seeing that most cheeses are recommended to be eaten (and stored) at room temperatures for "optimum flavor"

Dagney

That Jarlsburg would never spoil, although it would dry out, if you could keep the mold off of it.:(

Uh.... you know, if you don't open the refrigerator, it stays pretty cold in there. So you don't need to throw out all the food.

"Power Company To Blame For People Being Stupid"

What's better is that, to pay for the defense of this lawsuit (and possible damages), guess what's going to go up? That's right, electricity rates!

Nobody wins but the vultures

That technique works pretty well if you experience an outage of a few hours, or even overnight, but my parents (in Detroit) were told to expect three days of no electricity. At that point you face a conundrum -- open the fridge to use what food you can, before it spoils (as some of it surely will), or keep the thing shut and eat canned goods for 3 days**.

BTW, just as an answer to a question posed on this thread, my parents and their elderly neighbors also had to deal with a bunch of stuff we don't normally think of:
-grocery stores running out of food as people rush to buy (with no functional sales registers) and stock is not replenished because it will perish without electricity.
-can't get gas at a nearby station in order to drive somewhere with food, as the pumps require electricity;
-no public transportation, due either to no gas or no electricity;
-electric garage door openers;
-no traffic lights if you do manage to venture out by car;
-in some cases, no running water, because it is electrically pumped;
-in cases of gravity or other non-electric water supply, being advised not to drink without boiling, because treatment is compromised without electricity (difficult if your stove is electric);
-for many people, no phone, if they have given up all their basic land-lines (cordless sets and those that feed through an answering machine are unuseable in an outage, as well as, in this case, many cell phones);
-no AC for 3 days, which is usually tolerable at home because you can always go someplace else to cool off, only this time no one else has AC either;
-**special problems of the elderly, such as not being able to open canned goods, as you gave up the manual can opener in favor of electric bacause of your arthritis.

So, yeah, maybe the power company shouldn't have to reimburse 1.2 million people for the ruined ice cream, but for a whole lot of people, this wasn't a typical short-term blackout.

In this case, more sympathy for the vultures than for the FirstEnergy bloodsuckers. The latter is far from innocent. They could not even provide electricity on the only days that electricity was most important to shore business in Seaside Heights, Lavallette, etc. They could not even tell the residents an honest answer when power was lost, again, during their meeting with the town's people. They could not bother to fix the problems of power loss every weekend until the New Jersey Governor *told* them how they would fix the problem. Why is a NJ Governor a better engineeer than Anthony Alexander, President, FirstEngery? The Governor ordered FirstEngergy to install emergency generators - immediately.

When the NRC conducted a meeting of all nuclear plants with a serious safety problem, all other utilities brought their technical staff. FirstEnergy brought numerous lawyers AND followed that with legalized bribery - $450,000 - to the Republican Party. Then when money was needed to fix transmission line monitors, no money was available.

Their solution to problems is more lawyers. They are not getting (yet) enough lawsuits. What goes around comes around. FirstEnergy may have done more to damage America then any cold war communist in the Kremlin. And they would hide behind lawyers rather than fix the system; pay politicians rather than replace broken equipment.

May every FirstEnergy executive be personally sued. Only the illogical would see this as an emotional response. Having read the actions and technical facts of this company, it just keeps getting worse. FirstEnergy is a classic example of an anti-American organizaton. Watch as they cast blame on everyone else - except their top management. May they get the vultures they deserve - because that is how they fix their customer's problems.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's all well and good but what's going to happen.
1- the vultures get fat.
2- The corporate pigs get fatter.
3- Both at the expense of John Q Public.
The lawsuits don't help *US* at all.
:(

With so many fat vultures and corporate pigs, then they can profit more from all those dividend tax cuts. Clearly fat vultures and bloated corporate pigs can only mean that George Jr's economic solutions will make even fatter vultures and corporate pigs. Clearly all that additional fat means an economic recovery.

In the meantime, we can all go out and start a new business - like raising rabbits for food. Is that not what free enterprise is all about?

Ha, ha, ha, very funny.:p

More examples of what happens to a utility company when top management and its Directors are MBAs and lawyers; not technical people. They get the vultures they deserve. BTW one of the directors lives close to The Cellar:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/22/na...22ENER.html?hp

TW, I think you're missing my point. These MBA's fuck up and what's the worst that happens? They get embarrassed in the paper? They get canned WITH enough severence pay to support the average family for 40 years. They have to change country clubs? Who pays the price? WE DO! That is not funny.

Your point is not lost. How many executives are going to jail? None from Enron. None from Global Crossing. None from Waste Management. None from Tyco. None from MCI Worldcom. None from Qwest. None from Arthur Andersen who conspired to help all these crimes be committed. None from the other energy tradiing companies that conspired to steal $billions from CA - the reason for CA's current recall. And show me the outrage in The Cellar. What a bunch of either whips or just what happens when their news comes from a local Ch 6 gossip or Daily News.

Where was FirstEnergy spending vast sums of money. On fixing serious safety problems in Davis-Besse? No. They were joining the long list of George Jr contributors. Read that todays NY Times article. It is chock full of legalized political bribes. Based upon those contributions, FirstEnergy installed no required pollution removal equpment in, for example, the Sammis power plant that is now so much part of the blackout investigation. They did not just forget. They intentionally did not install or completely bypassed all such equipment after getting indirect approval from a corrupt, mental midget administration - right after making another legalized bribe. They did as is taught in business school.

But back to those MBAs. There is one trivial group of insider manipulators that did not contribute to the Repulbican Fatherland Party. Sam Walsau of Inclone did not. Therefore he was quickly prosecuted and now in a federal jail in PA. Martha Stewart also did not bribe the correct political party. She too will probably see jail time for selling stock at a trivial $50K profit. In the meantime, why do all those real criminals, having stolen $1,000,000K plus dollars, not go to jail? See the many previous posts about George Jr's Harvey Pitts, and how Congressional Republicans such as Tauzan of LA have protected those big buck bribers. Legalized crime pays well if you are a right wing extremist in the Replublcian Fatherland Party.

With an adminstration that hypes a tax cut, then forgets to note who gets all the tax cuts ( the super rich). And with a public - even here on the Cellar - that has outrightly approved of such silly "enrich only the richest" gimicks such as a dividend tax cut and the rebate checks only to those who make over $26K. My god. We have the government we deserve. How many more disasters such as the invason of Iraq will it take for us to see lying evil - that we elected?

Because the devil is in the White House, those top executives will leave a corporate disaster using their golden parachutes - having stolen the entire surplus of CA. My gosh. They could have even killed Jon Bennet and no one would even consider them as criminals - because they know how to use our money to bribe the right politicians.

Corruption as taught in business school. How many here have been taught corruption. What is the purpose of a business? To make a profit? Then you are corrupt. Then you have been taught the purpose of the mafia. You would be part of the problem; thinking as an MBA.

The purpose of a business is to provde society with a product. If that business does not earn a profit, then it is not contributing to society. But the profit is not the purpose. Profit is simply the reward. Corrupt MBAs (such as in FirstEnergy) need not know anything about the product. They beleive only a profit is important (even if taken illegally) because, for example, almost no one in The Cellar even criticizes them. Therefore what spammers do must be good. What Enron did is good. MCI Worldcom and FirstEnergy are good? They were doing exactly what both business schools and the mafia teach. Society be damned.

xoxoxoBruce's point is not lost on me. It is probably lost on the majority of readers here who foolishly still believe the purpose of a company is to make a profit - also called corruption, legalized bribery, and the fundamental reason for an east coast blackout.

Billy. I hope you are reading this. Too often those outside America are told about what should really be described as corruption - and not the purpose of a business. America does have a serious business problem because of MBAs and lawyers. Dergulation (a good thing) has made it easier for them to steal from the nation (a bad thing). Too many executives (and MBA graduates) think they are gods - not servants of their employees and customers. And we even elected an MBA as president who could not run a successful business but got rich anyway. Is that also not corruption? Go figure. Are we that dumb or just that complacent? Notice the total silence on FirstEnergy that would even shock people in their backyard pools and not fix the problem - because solutions cost money.

Lice may not be a good thing. But if those lice are killing the rats, then are lice all that bad? May the vultures be permitted to sue all those corrupt MBA rats such as Alexander and Burg of FirstEnergy - and the many rich Directors who permit this corruption.

The first businesses in this country were the blacksmith, butcher, baker, candlestick maker, etc. The purpose was to support this man and his family, ie profit. In order to be successful they had to provide a product or service that was needed as there was no disposible income then.
As time went by businesses turned into corporations and Walmart. At what point did profit stop being the purpose of the business? :confused:
Oh, and the fleas are not killing the rats but getting fat along with them at the expence of the farmer.

If purpose was only to support the family, then all those surveys of what people want from work were wrong. Money is about number three on the list of why people work. Number one is consistently a variation of doing a job, or doing what they want to do, or accomplishing something, etc. IOW the primary reason people work is because they want to do a job. People will even take pay cuts for reason number one.

Each blacksmith, butcher, baker, etc expects to be rewarded for his work - so that he too can also support his family. But if you were correct, each would have been doing jobs they hated only because they first needed to support a family. They did jobs they enjoy best because they accomplish something. They first and foremost contributed to society as all productive businesses do and want to do.

Primary purpose in Walmart was to provide products. Primary purpose at Sears was the profit. No wonder Walmart ate Sears for lunch.

The primary purpose of a corporation has always been the product. Without a product, either the corporation is corrupt or it is not even earning a profit. There is no supporting a family unless and until the primary purpose of a corporation is met - to provide society with a product.

When the primary purpose of a compony is only the reward - a profit - then there is no difference between a company and the mafia. Both only want to steal from society - the product and customer be damned.

FirstEnergy meets the criteria of mafia category. Difference between mafia and FirstEnergy? FirstEnergy bribes their politicians using legal channels. Neither cares about the product, customer, or nation. And both will blame anyone or everyone else for all problems.

Watch who gets latest blame from FirstEnergy. Allegeny Power watched FirstEnergy unsetting the grid for hours. When FirstEnergy started to collapse, APS disconnected from FirstEnergy thereby saving most all their 15(?)million customers from blackout. PJM did same. FirstEnergy is now blaming APS for creating the blackout when, in reality, APS did just what a responsible company and a responsible member of the grid is suppose to do. PJM did same to eventually save the rest of the east USA from a blackout.

Of course FirstEnergy will blame everyone else. How many out there think anyone but Firestone deserves blame for the deaths created by bad Firestone Wilderness tires? If you lie long enough, some people will believe sound byte lies rather than learn the truth. That is what FirstEnergy is hoping you will do.

I spend a long time hunting&pecking a looong reply last night, only to have the Celler 404 when I submitted it. So abreviated:

You don't have a clue about the blacksmith et al. They didn't chose what would be fullfilling. They took what they could get or starved. If somebody else was already doing it they were S.O.L.
They were lucky to get any apprenticeship and were more likely indentured. Job satisfaction? No, survival.
Take a 20 minute break while Sam Walton and I compose ourselves. Take 20 more.
CLUE The prime, principle, foremost, overriding, underlying, top, main, singular reason to start a business is profit. The thing from which all blessings flow. Even non-profit corporations, want it
Business = profit or loss. That's loss as in lose, gone, bye-bye. :rolleyes:

Sam Walton always said the primary function was to provide customers with good products and good sevice at the lowest prices. Why do you insult Mr Walton by imposing your personal biases on him? Why do you insist on corrupting the minds of good honest Ameicans with business school propaganda. Sam Walton was very critical of such MBA types who only destroyed corporations with their anti-innovative mentalities.

In the meantime, other successful businessmen got that way because profit was not the purpose. Dave of Wendy's literally returned from retirement because Wendy's management was becoming too concerned with profits - the product be damned. Dave returned Wendy's back to strong growth because Dave knew the product - not the profits - were so important. Dave had to remove corrupt bean counter types who foolishly thought the profits were the purpose. Those bean counter did not have the willpower to see through their silly education. Dave had to return and fix their mindset - to save Wendy's.

When John Young was driving HP into the ground, eventually Dave Packard returned from retirement to save his company. He just heard too many bad things at the company beer bashes - all directly traceable to a John Young and his 'profits' agenda. It is well known that Dave Packeard did not want to come back. His wife had died. He was not that healthy. But the MBA John Young was destroying Bill and Dave's life work by maximizing profits.

It was obvious that Ford Motor company had inferior products. Paul Weaver describes a corrupt organization in his book "Suicidal Corporation":
So how did Ford start becoming profitable? They stopped worrying about market share, profits, and cost controls. First with the Taurus, Ford Motor worried about the product, the customer and things important. To do so they have to remove corrupt bean counter mentalities. The returned the business to its primary purpose using the expression "Quality is Job 1". Those who advocat profits as the purpose of a company end up destroying the company.

You're give examples of methodology. The MBA's ruined many good companies because they didn't know the business, only how to measure it's success. You have to run the business properly to be sucessful, but that doesn't change the fact that profit is the goal. Without it there is no business and even a badly run business will survive, if it's market niche allows a profit.
GE said "Progress is are most important product"and Westinghouse said "You can be sure if it's Westinghouse". They all lie.

If your entire knowledge of a slogan is just the slogan, then you have no idea what the slogan represents.
But when Ford decided to make better products and stop worrying about profits, then they got a slogan that first had to be approved by a major reason for their change. The expression "Quality is Job 1" is based upon a real program that replaced "bean counters" with "car guys" (descriptions directly from inside the industry).

Who is a great critic of industries run by such corruption? Who says the purpose of business is the product? The man that Ford Motor went to for approval of that slogan - "Quality is Job 1": W Edwards Deming.

Those silly slogans from GE and Westinghouse only mock you. Slogans invented in a Madison Ave advertising agency have no basis in how a company operates. But when bean counters were replaced by product people; when product replaced profit as the purpose of the business; when the slogan actually meant something fundamental in the company - then the company went from near backruptcy to record profits.

The profits are the purpose in a corrupt business. The product is everything - including the only source of honest profits. That alone means the product is more important than profits.

You keep talking about the MBA's straying from the business plan, fucking things up then someone returning to the business plan and saving the company. I have no problem with that, but it is the business plan and not the primary purpose or objective which is for any business, profit.
Even the non-profits have the same goal. They just do more noble things with it.
TW, hmmmm...teaching at west chester.

A business has to be about its soul, because the middle managers will screw it up if they think it's all about money.

It doesn't matter what it's about. Middle managers will screw it up if left to their own devices. That's why they must be made to stick to the business plan. If not, then there's no profit and if there's no profit then there's no business. ;)

And that soul is called the strategic objective - as made so obviously clear in the movie Apollo 13.

Name the hero in that movie? Tom Hanks? Any of the other astronauts? Name one thing they do that is heroic. None of the stars represent a hero in a real event called Apollo 13. And that should have been obvious if one thinks "product oriented". MBAs will have trouble understanding that every hero had no memorable name. That is how America works when America is productive. The movie Apollo 13 demonstrates quite explicitly how a good organizaton works. Demonstrated was a concept called "stragetic objective" - the soul.

Gene Krantz draws a picture of earth and moon. He puts an X where Apollo 13 exploded. He says we can get them this far; drawing a line around the moon and only half way to earth. "That is not acceptable", he says. He then draws on X on the far side of earth and says that is the objective.

Gene Krantz did everything that a good manager understands. He defined the strategic objection. Then every hero does his part to make the strategic objective work. Gene Krantz empowered the little people. Little people made all big decisions. Therefore astronauts did not die.

Middle managers bring in everything that exists inside Apollo 13. Little people must make a square CO2 absorber fit into a round hole. They do so because management worked for the employees. Those three astronauts would be dead if employees worked for the bosses. That is the *soul*. That is how middle managers do not screw up the system - because top management does not do as taught in business schools. Since the product is THE most important function, then a management system must be product oriented - bosses working for employees.

Ironically, the reverse is called communism - people work for the bosses. That is what is taught in the business schools.

We have but two very specific examples of business school concepts. The first is the blackout - and those lying bosses saying the problem requires more money. Lying about a grid being to undersized or too old. There is not a big money problem nor an insufficient power grid. Where the grid is in trouble, management is the enemy of America - does more to damage America than terrorists. FirstEnergy is a classic example; company run just as business schools teach. Employees were not even empowered to fix defective earth grounds in Ocean County NJ! People were getting electric shocks in their jacuzzis and swimming pools - because MBAs and lawyers are top management in FirstEnergy.

The *soul* in FirstEnergy is to make a profit - the product be damned. Such management is why this blackout happened - a control problem directly traceable to bean counter mentailities who now cast blame on everyone else - becasue they are MBAs and lawyers.

Second: the Columiba report in http://caib.us says the exact same thing. They define reasons seven dead astronauts in Challenger and in Columiba as directly traceable to same top management. Look what changed between Apollo 13 and Columbia. In all cases, the little people knew exactly what was wrong and had ability to fix same. In Apollo 13, the system was a classic example of American Patriotism. It could accomplish something - repeatedly - because little people were empowered. So many times were problems solved that if it was not a real story, most people would not believe it possible.

The system that saved Apollo 13 could advance mankind. But under a business school management of Columiba and Challenger, engineers knew the problem up first and immediately - and were not empowered to fix it. Both times the problem was correctly identified immediately. Top management was so technically ignorant (what business schools call acceptable) that managment could not even provide a strategic objective - except do only what the top bosses wanted - cut costs.

The *soul* of an organization. The "strategic objective". When business school philosphy is an all powerful management and the 'purpose is to make money', then we have corruption and murder. When the purpose is a stragetic objective defined by top management so that top management then works for employees - then we call it the American Miracle.

That American Miracle is the *soul* of America. The prouduct is everything. Many years ago (about 1991) I asked here "What happened to the spirite of the American Pioneer?" Why instead do we graduate far more MBAs that engineers? People now want fast profits - the product be damned (ie Bethlehem Steel and USX).

Product oriented Americans know that seven Columbia astronauts were murdered by top NASA management who used business school management concepts (also called communism) rather than the product oriented management that always made America great.

There is no long term profit if the purpose is "the profit". When profit is the *soul* - the stragetic objective - the purpose of a business; then corruption is inevitable. Arthur Andersen, Enron, Tyco, MCI Worldcom, Waste Management, Qwest, Global Crossing ... and exactly what the great MBA, Pres George Jr, believes in. Go for the profits - the campiagn contributions - rather than work for patriotic Americans. No wonder the US trashed a potenial surplus into the largest debt in American history - with an MBA as president.

You make some good points. It's a shame most of them are so shrouded in rhetoric and political agenda that most people will be turned off, half way through.
There are a million things wrong with the business climate today. I don't see that changing when "globalization" has provided slave labor and end run environmentalism to partially cover ineptitude and greed. And the long arm of Wall Street Brokers and Mutual Fund managers control the stock prices that determine how top management is paid.
BUT, the fuel is profit and without it no business can survive.

There must be a better organization to use to make your point about money's impact on business than one that's government-funded with no market competitors and with a sudden influx of money from nowhere.

For those of you convinced that the product is still the main goal of the most successful companies, I suggest you read No Logo, by Naomi Klein. Interesting insights. Website available here.

There are countless examples of companies that succeeded or failed because because they focused on or ignored the importance of providing a quality product and value. Those that pursue profit at the expense quality are doomed. But profit is the ultimate goal because without it a company cannot survive, no matter how good their intentions.