Hear ye, hear ye! Time for TVA dissolution
July 8, 2009
Ernest Norsworthy
emnorsworthy@earthlink.net
http://norsworthyopinion.com
Declaration of Independence from the TVA
When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for the people of the Tennessee Valley Authority Territory to dissolve the political bands required by the amended U.S. Constitution who are entitled to a decent respect to the opinions of the residents therein, that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self evident that the ratepayers of TVA should not bear the burdens of inefficient management and wasteful spending heretofore exhibited by a $26 billion debt owed by all ratepayers.
· That gross negligence of TVA management has resulted in additional billions of dollars required to be paid by ratepayers that should not have been incurred.
· That while previous managers of TVA held down expenses to provide lower than usual electricity rates, present management under the new Board of Directors structure recently approved by the Congress has shown a complete disregard of ratepayers’ concerns.
· That when any form of government becomes destructive of the just powers of the people governed by the TVA, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.
· That government programs long established such as the TVA should not be changed for light and transient causes. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government.
Such has been the patient sufferance of approximately 9 million citizens in parts of seven sovereign states in the Southeastern United States; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their relationship with the Tennessee Valley Authority.
The history of the present TVA is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the continued establishment of an absolute government monopoly. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid remaining 43 United States.
Through the TVA Act of 1933, it prohibits the governors in seven states to enact legislation that would require approval of those states before electricity rates could be increased; large districts of people relinquish their right of representation in their several legislatures, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
The TVA Board of Directors has held meetings at places unusual and distant from the depository of their public records in Atlanta, Georgia, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with their measures.
TVA has erected a multitude of offices and sent hither swarms of officers to harass the people in the TVA Territory.
TVA has kept among the people a police force over an 80,000 square-mile jurisdiction without the consent of the seven state legislatures.
TVA has combined with other federal agencies to subject the people to a jurisdiction foreign to state constitutions, and unacknowledged by state laws.
· For imposing taxes upon the people through federally established electricity rates without the consent of the people in seven states;
· For abolishing the free system of laws in neighboring states, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging the boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these states.
· TVA in the last few years has expanded its 2,500 mile “fence” another 300 miles through the acquisition of electricity facilities at distressed sales because of TVA’s predatory practices. While TVA has a fence to keep the competition out of TVA Territory, there is no such requirement to stop further expansion of their territory in any direction. TVA can continue gobbling up other utility service areas theoretically even as far as the Pacific Ocean.
· TVA has proved its ineffectiveness in handling financial matters by making unwise investments costly to ratepayers. TVA even has betrayed its own employees and retirees by short-funding the TVA retirement plan.
· TVA’s backdoor financing ever increases ratepayers’ obligation to repay debt including loans from the Bank of America.
· TVA’s own Office of the Inspector General is paid from TVA funds and therefore cannot objectively criticize failed and failing TVA policies.
TVA at this time is transporting large quantities of toxic coal ash to surrounding states in concert with other federal entities; coal ash released by a faultily built retaining dam that collapsed December 22, 2008 at the TVA Kingston plant in Tennessee.
Citizens have petitioned for redress of TVA’s egregious management mistakes through their representatives in Congress to no avail.
TVA, after being found guilty of sickening citizens in the state of North Carolina and affecting its environment of forests and tourism, petitioned the federal judge to delay the early reduction of pollutants from four of TVA’s coal-fired plants. Meanwhile, TVA is appealing the judgment against it.
Acting as an independent federal agency unlike any other federal agency, TVA sets its own rules which often are in conflict with the federal government, hence, a separate and parallel federal agency.
TVA attempts to bribe state and local officials with its so-called payments in lieu of taxes which woefully do not compensate for actual taxes that would be paid to those states and localities.
Better use of that money would be to compensate ratepayers for their frugal use of electricity instead of providing slush funds for politicians.
TVA has an outrageous federal bonus structure that not only is grossly excessive it flies in the face of prudent use of federal funds extracted from ratepayers as a tax. That tax is unapproved by federal or state legislatures. Bonuses come before the safety of citizens and the safety of their own employees.
The TVA Act of 1933 specifically calls for the principal offices of the TVA to be in the Muscle Shoals area of Alabama. In violation of that Act, TVA’s principal offices are in Knoxville, Tennessee.
In a disingenuous act of seeming acquiesce to citizens in TVA’s territory by asking for input of federal Public Utilities Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA) requirements, TVA has called for comments on it. This would be a waste of time as have been other comments and suggestions made to TVA management over the years.
TVA has shown contempt of their own rules of accountability in the use of funds by credit cards and their negligence in maintaining accurate records of federal property such as computers.
A one-time co-chairman of the Congressional TVA Caucus has been accused of being favored by the TVA in a land swap deal. The TVA OIG said it was not their business to suggest further prosecution of the congressman (it is) and referred it to an ethics committee in the House of Representatives. TVA has been deaf to the voice of justice.
Therefore, in the name and by authority of the good people in the TVA territory this is solemnly published and declared that the people in TVA Territory are, and of right ought to be free and independent of TVA’s electricity production requirements; and that all political connections between them and the seven states in TVA Territory, is and ought to be totally dissolved and to be free to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do.
Signed _________________________ Date _____
Credit: Thomas Jefferson (Patterned from the original Declaration of Independence.)