At 07:26 AM 5/30/01 -0400 Gary Nunn wrote:
>From what I am reading and hearing on the news - which is only what they
>want us to know - that the west coast electricity crisis is a result of
>federal deregulation and bad management of the electric companies coupled
>with the fact that several major (regional) nuclear reactors are offline at
>the moment for maintenance.
That, and the fact that California built Silicon Valley without ever
building a new power plant might have something to do with it too. When
demand goes way up (think "new economy") and supply remains constant, you
get price increases. When prices are capped, (as in California), you get
shortages.
>An interesting bit of trivia, last month, a major California electric
>company declared bankruptcy, literally HOURS after depositing $50 million
>dollars in bonus checks into mid and upper management bank accounts. The
>public and even the governor screamed and the politicians promised
>investigations. However, as with many stories, the results of those
>investigations (if they happened at all) seem to have lost their
>newsworthiness.
>story here:
>http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/cal_power010409.html
Ladies and Gentlemen, a textbook case in how rumours get started.
First of all, the article says nothing about "upper management", as you did
Gary, rather it refers to "mid-level managers and other employees." I
don't know about you, but to me, "other employees" implies rank-and-file.
(But I could be wrong - that's just my impression.) Of course, the
article actually notes that the company was "emphasizing that the bonuses
did not go to senior managers."
Secondly, Gary conveniently neglected to mention that that $50mil was
spread out over 6,000 employees. In other words, roughly a bit more than
$8,000 per employee. (A bankruptcy lawyer quoted in the article, says
that the checks were actually closer to $5,000/employee, suggesting that
either $50mil is a high figure, 6,000 employees is a low figure, or both.)
Thirdly, PG&E had a $9bil deficit. The $50mil amounts to 0.06% of that
amount. In other words, the payment of the bonus had almost no impact
whatsoever on the solvency of PG&E.
In other words, we have a company that is actually taking care of its
employees by ensuring that they get paid before all their jobs are risked
in a bankruptcy court. The company's reward? More lambasting from
liberals like Gray Davis.
Figures.
JDG
__________________________________________________________
John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - ICQ #3527685
"The point of living in a Republic after all, is that we do not live by
majority rule. We live by laws and a variety of institutions designed
to check each other." -Andrew Sullivan 01/29/01
