TOTALLY GEEKED!

huskerbb wrote:

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ed11563 wrote:

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huskerbb wrote:

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ed11563 wrote:

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huskerbb wrote:

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ed11563 wrote:

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huskerbb wrote:

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 Why should the utility companies be forced to give away their product for free?  It's not their fault people don't pay their bills. 

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Because they are regulated monopolies, guaranteed profits by law. They set their rates to provide a certain annual return on their capital investment, after ALL expenses.

Including writing off bills they will never collect.

 

 

Our local electric company wasted -- deliberately wasted -- SEVEN BILLION DOLLARS on a nuclear plant that generated electricity for a few seconds before being mothballed.

That was long enough to justify adding the SEVEN BILLION DOLLARS to their base on which they are guaranteed a return.

So we are paying 23 cents per kilowatt hour, more than anywhere else except in Alaska. (Consolidated Edison in Manhattan comes very close, with their own nuclear boondoggles.)

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 That's BS, ed.  Where do you think they get the money to cover what they "write off"????  From the money tree?

 

No.  They get it from other ratepayers--raising rates for all responsible people who do pay their bills. 

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OF COURSE all the money comes from the ratepayers. And then, of course, there are the taxpayers, who pay for everything else. 

I'm just still pissed that the ratepayers wound up paying for the cost-over runs on the $650million Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant.

Let's see, $650 million grew to $4.5 BILLION, plus interest ... current total $7 BILLION and counting. It really should have come out of the pockets of the stock holders, who would then have fired all the members of the Board of Directors, for allowing this outrageous stupidity.

 

 

 

 

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 Whatever--but that has nothing to do with this.  

 

I don't see how this is such a difficult concept.  If you want a good or service in our society--you have to pay for it.

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But when a car company deliberately, knowingly wastes billions of dollars for something they will use for less than 5 seconds, that will never generate revenue, 

wouldn't the Directors be voted out by the stockholders? If Ford had to double the price of every care for 10 years to cover the cost of a deliberate screw up,

wouldn't they be unable to sell cars at double the price of GM or Chrysler or Mercedes? Wouldn't they go out of business, or be taken over by the Feds?

 

 

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 Maybe, but even if the Feds take them over, They still won't give away free cars.

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 Of course the people who use electricity should be paying for it.

And GM didn't have to double the price of their cars because the Feds absorbed GM's debts and GMAC's worthless receivables.

Of course, GM couldn't have doubled the price of their cars. What they were looking at, which would have seriously raised the unemployment rate, and staggered the national economy,

was closing. Shutting down, due to losses from many years of bad mismanagement.