TVA not too big to fail, future uncertain
October 27, 2009
Without revealing how much TVA has contracted with wind farm distributors for 20 years’ worth of “green” electricity, the motives and pattern for future TVA action is becoming clearer.
In the past, TVA has contracted for coal or electricity ultimately resulting in TVA’s purchase of many of those suppliers and in the process has extended its so-called fence by about 300 miles in the last two years.
Who has authorized these purchases? State legislatures? Congress? Local governments? The answer, of course, is none of the above. A non-elected, presidentially appointed triumvirate has done it most of the time; and the supposedly nine-member part-time board (the full nine member complement was reached only once and then briefly) has been in control for the last four years. TVA follows its own lights and either does not see nor does not much care where it is going. TVA has travelled up too many box canyons for anyone to believe it has well thought out and reasonable plans. But there is an exception of some clarity.
No need to regurgitate here a litany of gross mistakes TVA has made even from the very start of this wrongheaded agency of the federal government. 1933 was the magical year (I was four years old then) and have lived to see and to go back in history to understand what Franklin Delano Roosevelt wrought on me and the rest of U.S. citizens.
Thankfully, most of FDR’s wild experimentations were trashed by the Supreme Court but somehow the equally ill advised and profoundly anti-American, anti-free enterprise TVA survived. The piece of paper called the TVA Act of 1933 basically is worthless as legal guidance to that federal agency.
Comparing those words written then with what TVA actually does today is like Alice looking through the looking glass, strangely unfamiliar.
However, somewhere in the arcane halls of the TVA is, I believe, a plan to do much greater harm than it already has done to the millions affected by TVA’s paternalism, its underhandedness, dissembling, excuse making and wild spending. For example, TVA does not believe that it was the cause of the Kingston disaster but was caused by some “slimes” or perhaps it was Alice.
Of course TVA knows it has the final say in almost any and everything it does notwithstanding federal court orders and marching orders from a companion federal agency, the Environmental Protection Agency, a real ego blower.
The dangerous movements of the TVA are most exemplified by TVA’s 20-year contracts for 450 megawatts of wind powered electricity from the Dakota’s, with more to come, they say, by the end of the year. TVA’s board has authorized the purchase of up 2000 megawatts of so-called renewable energy.
TVA has acquired many electricity producing plants in the past, mostly within its congressionally mandated “fence”. The way the fence was supposed to work was that TVA would not go outside the fence seeking competitors’ customers and, of course, “outside” companies could not cross the “electrified” fence to “cherry pick” TVA customers. Things do change.
In the last couple of years TVA has acquired some power plants which come with customers. So, according to TVA logic, they did not steal those customers, they just included them in the purchase deal. TVA has operated in this manner for many years.
Now, however, and using the same TVA logic, if part or all of the supplied electricity from North or South Dakota was in jeopardy, well, they could just buy out the producers of it. That would extend TVA’s territory quite a bit; it could, as advocated in the 1930s, become a “little TVA”. It is easy to see that while filling in the gaps from Minot to Knoxville, voila! A national grid.
Perhaps it is the aim of the Obama administration to nationalize electricity as it has the automobile, insurance, and banking industries and it would be an underhanded way to achieve that result.
Meanwhile, ratepayers, better named TVA taxpayers, are held in suspense wondering when their rates must ultimately skyrocket from all of TVA’s reckless spending and over obligating.
What is very clear to me is that America is again at those famous crossroads; to the left is more government and control over our lives or to the right where the free market can operate unfettered in our capitalist society.
The Obama administration seemed in great haste to take over a huge portion of the automobile industry by spending billions for stock of General Motors and Chrysler. An administration official actually fired the head of GM unceremoniously. The Department of Transportation tried but miserably failed in carrying out the “clunker” program which artificially boosted auto sales but watched them drop precipitously when the program ended.
Similar hasty administration initiatives have not stemmed the unemployment rate because of the wrong focus in the use of the $800 billion stimulus money. Things probably would have gotten better if the government had done nothing to “stimulate” the economy. Nothing has changed except the taxpayers’ obligation for the highest debt in America’s history. Shall we say trillions?
It is difficult to predict when the administration plans to move on the TVA. Four of nine TVA board member seats are open yet only two persons have been nominated. It looks like a long and arduous process before all of the four board members are approved. A quorum consists of five members.
Because it is evident that Obama wants to federalize everything, the TVA, an already federalized program, might become the pattern for all electricity providers, to take investor-owned utilities completely off the table.
Maybe the TVA is acting on its own authority in moving in the direction of “little TVA’s” but it appears that some nudging from Democrats to federalize the electricity grid is pushing things along sub-rosa.
Ernest Norsworthy
emnorsworthy@earthlink.net
http://norsworthyopinion.com