Quick Roundup 162

Electricity "Deregulation" and Your Bill

Galileo, in answering a reader's question, has written a very interesting post about utility choice and electricity rates in states that have supposedly deregulated their electricity utilities.

The details of the deregulation plans vary by state, but all of them, to varying degrees, offer or did offer customers a choice of electricity supplier. Most of these states also mandated that utilities in their state had to divest all or a portion of their power plants. My answer is applicable to all of these states and, in important respects, to the entire country.

This strikes me as a good one to keep in mind the next time some business columnist blames "deregulation" for the market distortion du jour and then uses the misfortune of his readers as a springboard for demagoguing for more regulation of a still over regulated market.

"New East/West Berlin", New York

Galileo also blogs about the recovery (or lack thereof) of different portions of the World Trade Center site in New York, where unprovoked and unjust mass murders -- performed in the name of Islam and celebrated by its followers worldwide -- took place on September 11, 2001.

It's too bad that too many New Yorkers will not recognize it for what it is: A sort of miniature East Berlin/West Berlin comparison of the efficacy of free enterprise versus government planning on its own doorstep.

Mike's Eyes Watch "The Great Global Warming Swindle"

For those of you curious about the Channel 4 documentary on global warming hysteria, Mike N files a report. I also liked his answer to a commenter who slammed the documentary, which indirectly brings up another aspect of the global warming debate, as I realized myself during a somewhat hurried session of comment moderation this morning.

Whatever the merits of the scientific case for global warming, the fact remains that a political agenda that violates individual rights is being promoted based on the idea that man is causing climate change. It is because these political proposals injure freedom that they should be opposed, and this is regardless of what the science says one way or the other.

If the left cannot use a sound scientific case (It hasn't.) to distract from the essential political issue, it will attempt to tie up advocates of individual rights in discussions of the minutiae of climatology. Do not permit them to cause you to forget what is really at stake: your freedom.

Verging on Respectability

Wow! On the heels of a link from Junk Science, I was pleasantly surprised to learn yesterday afternoon that that day's post on Al Gore had gotten picked up by both Cox and Forkum and Slate.

That post was not just a pleasant surprise. It was a huge turnaround. I had an uncharacteristic (and very severe) bout of writer's block that morning. I basically sat there and forced myself to write it.

-- CAV

Updates

3-15-07: Corrected description of producer of global warming documentary from "BBC Channel 4" to "Channel 4". (HT: HBL)