Something's Got To Be Done

"After the ship has sunk, everyone knows how she could have been saved."

            - Italian proverb

I was somewhat amused as I listened to the "experts" talking about the major power outages in the Northeast and Midwest a couple of weeks ago.  Most of them were appalled that such a thing had occurred, spent a lot of time speculating about what might have gone wrong and were calling for strong measures to be taken to ensure it wouldn't happen again. 

Why is it that when something like this happens we always have to find someone or something to blame?  Then we want to establish a new government watchdog that will impose additional rules and regulations so we can sit back and say that everything is now hunky-dory.

Spending more taxpayer dollars to fix something, that in my lifetime at least, has not been a problem seems ridiculous to me.  How often do we have blackouts anyway?  If we're honest they are rare and I, for one, am not interested in funding another bureaucracy to help my power company manage its operations.

I read the other day that 4,167 new rules were issued by various Federal agencies in 2002 alone and that Congress passed and the President signed into law 269 new bills in that same period.  Do we really need this much help?