Just Another Hidden Tax Increase

Government officials were very quick to rule out terrorism as a cause of yesterday's blackout, which crashed 100 power plants, including 22 nuclear reactors, over an area of 9300 square miles and left 50 million people without power for varying times. Michehl Gent, head of the power industry-sponsored North American Electric Reliability Council (sensibly acronymed as NERC rather than NARC) was equally quick to rule out terrorism: ''We don't have any indication of blown-up equipment, so we're almost certain it's not terrorism of any kind.''

Well, forgive me for being skeptical. The government of course is loathe to admit any failures in protecting the country and terrified of getting people worried and, even worse, starting to doubt George W. Bush's leadership priorities. And power industry spokesman Gent's statement misses the point as well: an attack on the electricity supply doesn't need to come from blowing up equipment. It is just equally if not more likely to come from a hacker attack on the computer networks controlling it all. Gent himself described how 300 megawatts of power that were traveling east on the loop and suddenly and unaccountably reversed direction, resulting in an estimated 500 megawatts suddenly moving west, he said.

But it's all speculation. I'm not going to insist it was really a terrorist hack attack, but I also am not about to blindly accept the pronouncements of this government that has been proven so ready to lie to us in the past.

I am, however, very ready to call this massive power outage just another tax hike foisted on us. As former Energy Department cabinet head and current New Mexico governor Bill Richardson said: ''We're the world's greatest superpower, but we have a Third World electricity grid." Well, guess what? It takes money to upgrade antiquated power transmission systems, just like it takes money to maintain highways, safeguard the food supply, buy textbooks for schools and a thousand other details of our society. Unfortunately, we have a president who would rather give tax cuts to the rich than to pay for such things.

So yes, for anyone who had food spoil, who lost work time, who saw their business lose sales, for anyone who suffered losses and inconveniences...that was a hidden tax hike. You have to lose that money because George Bush would rather hand out goodies than pay for infrastructure maintenance. It was just one more of the hundreds of hidden costs we are forced to pay because the Bush administration abdicates its social responsibility.

I'm sure a lot of rich people saw the food in their refrigerators spoil too. They can afford to replace it. I hope you who are reading this can afford it as well.