Vultures

[xoxoxoBruce]

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.

[xoxoxoBruce]

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.

[juju]

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

[Dagney]

Originally posted by juju
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

[xoxoxoBruce]

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!

[xoxoxoBruce]

Nobody wins but the vultures

[99 44/100% pure]

Originally posted by dave
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"

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.

[tw]

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.

[xoxoxoBruce]

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.

[tw]

Originally posted by xoxoxoBruce
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?

[xoxoxoBruce]

Ha, ha, ha, very funny.:p

[tw]

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

[xoxoxoBruce]

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.

[tw]

Originally posted by xoxoxoBruce
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. ... 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.