Growing up in India, power cuts were as common as sneezes.
While holidaying in the summer at my grandmother’s house, I made an amusing sight for others as I discovered new ways to cool myself when the power was off. Imagine a 5-year-old running at breakneck speed from one end of the room to the other yelling “breeze, breeze,” as the air around stirred and hit her face! My grandma would laughingly say that someone like me should be in America, a land where power cuts are as unthinkable as, say, aliens landing. Or so she had heard.
Even today, one of the common comments I hear when I visit family and friends in India is about America’s efficiency in creating and sustaining an advanced infrastructure, something that India is struggling to emulate. But last week’s CL&P fiasco, which left a good majority of the people in the state without power, made the U.S.A. look more like an Indian village.
More than the downed trees and power lines that blocked access for emergency workers to reach people’s homes, what’s stunning is CL&P’s lackadaisical responses to the media and elected officials. In India, people call it a “chalta hai” attitude, which works like this: No power? Oh well, what can you do? It is what it is.
But since when was accountability not a part of the American story? We’re talking about an economy that was built on the foundations of cutting-edge innovation and business processes. America is not known for tolerating incompetence and entertaining excuses.
In a world where the U.S. is struggling to retain its position as an economic powerhouse, the image of people — especially the elderly — freezing under piles of blankets to stay warm in their houses is incongruous and ridiculous. That people have to do their laundry and take a hot shower at neighbors' homes is simply not the America we should settle for. And all this for nearly 10 full days!
We are known for our ability to anticipate, not just respond. Our technology processes are sophisticated enough to plan for and execute smart solutions during crisis.
Electricity rates in Connecticut are among the highest in the nation. Have the power company’s profits climbed at the expense of its ability to service customers at such times? I don’t think we should rest until we get to the bottom of this.
Case in point, Cain, where do you think he got the idea for 9-9-9 or all the money?? Answer: Corporate America the real simple answer is both parties need to go and we need to take our country back
I do not see the basic common sense approach that got this country regenerated after the s&*%$#! '30s. If half of what was spent to line the pockets of wall street in the last 12 years was used to keep people working, the trees would all be trimmed away from the power lines, and mother nature wouldn't laughing at us right now.
This started more or less with Reagan which was really a Bush thing, they got a clown named Milton Friedman to basically write about a theory called Trickle Down, where the rich get all and we get what trickles down after they have a scotch or 2, because Friedman was a college professor it was thought to have merit, so many people are so brainwashed, we lived through a full throttle Trickle Down from 2000-2008, it is a proven failure as it has been for thousands of years, when you give the rich all or they take it, the system fails. This is why we broke away from the King, he got too greedy. If he had been fair this would still be part of England. We had a great thing going by the 90's in spite of the Bush meddling in the ME and giving alot to the rich with the help of Phile Gramm de-regulating everything he could, people forgot those regulations were in place for a reason, to stop greed and depressions and recessions and robber barons and people losing everything. We never seem to learn.
We lost our Democracy years ago. We have a plutocracy. That's why people are occupying Wall Street, Oakland, Hartford, and elsewhere: they are starting to look beyond that trickle down nonsense that if you do not tax corporations and the rich, that they will benevolently create jobs here in America and not in Cambodia, China, India, Philippines, where wages are as low as 22 cents per hour. In China, the average wage is 90 cents. Children believe in the Easter Bunny; adults should no longer. Barefoot Accountant http://www.cpa-connecticut.com/blog/
Even with SCOTUS declaring that any rich repub can donate as much as they want to the GOP anonimously Obama still out fund raises them. BUT, Obama is more tied to the financial sector, it seems to me that to a degree the GOP is funded mainly by big oil, war mongers, defense contractors and some investment firms, as they always want to shut down S/S and turn it to a individual retirement fund, which would only make some people richer and if W had done this in 2000( if you remember he did want it badly), we all would have lost everything. The dems seem to be funded more by the Rx, Ins, and Wall St which can be seen in the laws they generate and Obama's allowing criminals on Wall St to walk. Although with a 2 party system it is very easy for any corporation to simply donate 100k to a million to each party because it is seen as an investment, whichever party wins they do not care, either way they stand to make billions off their investment. We need a 5 party system, only problem is this nation has become something of a religious extremist one, many would vote for idiots like Palin,Bachman, Perry like they did with W and these people would simply hand the keys over to big business just as W did, and we are living in the results of that. The GOP is currently completely torn apart and dysfunctional with the current character line up.
Perry, a liar who uses religion to gain power. Bachman, a religious extremist who uses religion to gain power and has some very strange beliefs like "you can pray away the gay" Cain, who is a corporate crony, owned by the Koch Bros, riddled with sexual misconduct ( but its ok because he's a repub and his last name is not Clinton), and his 9-9-9 plan is not his, its corporate America's, it will add to our taxes and cut theirs. Gingrich, lower on the scale than an ameba, this scum cheated on his wife while he chased Clinton, he served her divorce papers while she lay in the hospital fighting cancer, he had to leave his political office and position as Speaker or face criminal charges, if he was innocent he would have stayed and fought. Romney, born with a golden spoon corporate know nothing, the repub answer to Al Gore. He would just continue W's failed policies, which were really corporate America's failed policies, Trickle Down. waiting in the wings...Palin, will she, won't she, who cares?? she is the worst thing tio ever happen to politics in along time, she's an idiot but manipulative, she is really a piece of work, she knows how to use power for vanity and thats about it, most people in Alaska hate her, having her or Bachman in charge will be like living in 1432. I'd say its a slam dunk for Obama unless they come up with someone normal.
Paul is a ghost corporate crony, he woos people with his claims of shutting down the govt to save money etc etc, only problem is what he is really advocating is OUT SOURCING EVERYTHING to corporate cronies. Out Sourcing is a scam, taxpayers are always told it will save money, BS, it always costs more, it is designed for some one connected to start a business to do what military or civil employees did and that costs more because a profit will be involved.