A section of FirstEnergy's Chamberlin-Harding substation is shown Saturday, Aug. 16, 2003 in Twinsburg, Ohio. Federal and industry regulators investigating what triggered Thursday's Northeast blackout have narrowed their search to three as yet unspecified transmission lines near Cleveland. The first indication was at 2 p.m. Thursday, when the FirstEnergy's Eastlake Unit 5 plant tripped off. At 3:06 p.m., FirstEnergy's Chamberlin-Harding power transmission line, a 345-kilovolt power line, in Twinsburg, Ohio, tripped.
So the blackout culprit was a broken alarm system on transmission lines owned by FirstEnergy south of Cleveland. For want of a repair or redundancy and some human error we got catastrophy. Was it because poor little 12 billion a year in revenues and over 1 billion in cash FirstEnergy was financially hamstrung by some government or environmental policy. NOPE - Just failure to repair an alarm. Just bad private management and unwarranted frugality. Just looking after the bottom line again without regard to the safety of millions of Americans.
Financial profile of FirstEnergy the 4th largest investor owned energy company in America.
(Dollars in thousands, except per share amounts)
Total revenues $12,151,997
Net income $629,280
Basic earnings per common share: $2.34
Diluted earnings per common share:$2.14
Dividends per common share $1.50
Book value per common share $24.25
Net cash from operations $1,915,287
FirstEnergy's PAC (to which Burg has contributed) has given 2002 cycle campaign contributions to several senators on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, including Senators George Voinovich (R-OH), Bob Smith (R-NH), James Inhofe (R-OK), and Arlen Specter (R-PA) Privately, Burg has also contributed this campaign cycle to Senator Bob Smith, to the Edison Electric Institute's PAC, to Senator Gordon Smith (R-OR) and to various members of the House of Representatives.
surprise, surprise, surprise FirstEnergy donates to Republicans and is being sued by investors.
FirstEnergy Corp. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer H. Peter Burg had a very healthy paycheck for the year, a public document filed by the Akron utility shows Burg received a salary of $989,511 and a bonus of $406,186 in 2002 for a total of $1,395,697, plus stock options and other compensation, according to the company's proxy statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. I guess we can blame it on Rich Republicans after all. If you doubt this at all you deserve a visit to Tom at The Funny Farm where you can despense with these confusing details and get into the Heart of Darkness caused by the Bushout of O3. If Blackouts don't scare you maybe Tom's piece on the National I. Q. will.
BLOGGER EXTRORDINAIRE: skippy the bush kangaroo delivers devastating knockout punches with both feet!! Check out Ah’nuld is he down for the count after just one week? If he adds any more to that list of advisors he will have enough votes on his staff: Warren Buffet, Rob Lowe, George Schultz, the Quackenbush quartet, and Pete Wilson’s minions….Ken Lay, Thomas White, Tom Arnold, Peter Frampton, PETER FRAMPTON ???…….and on and on ad infinitum ad nauseum
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