You can say that again. Here in eastern Japan, where the incompetent buffoons running Tokyo Electric Power let their shoddy safety procedures bite them in the neck with the nuclear plant disaster last year, power rationing is going to be a permanent thing. Indoor office temperatures at 82°F every summer from now on. No air conditioning on the trains anymore. Hot, sweaty, miserable summers... forever. And power surcharges despite the 30¢/kWh that we're already paying. The government is trying to get people to take patriotic pride in not using power. If ConEd ever has scheduled blackouts or takes their sweet time getting things running again, and then starts trying to appeal to New Yorkers' sense of local spirit or some such hogwash, that's your clue that the city is in for a downturn.

Goldman preserved their power: http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/11/goldman-has-the-power.html

Power to the people. Everyone wants impenetrable services on demand, but no one wants to pay for it. Perhaps they shouldn't. We are all self-insured for some or all of what may befall us. Many things we don't insure, some things we insure with a big deductible, some things we protect very dearly. We all make the risk/reward decisions on protecting against the weather, and protecting against 14 foot seas in the Hudson River is not anything that any one of you would have paid for with your own money two weeks ago. Maybe you would now, that remains to be seen. How many of you have upped your own insurance since last week?

There has been a raging debate for decades, even amoung the "rich" towns on eastern Long Island, about burying power lines to reduce blackouts in wind-prone areas. Some (but not all) towns around Southampton recently agreed to a 20-year utility bill surcharge to cover a portion of the cost of sinking a single 9-mile power line, which is more for looks than risk avoidance. All of this is like the old Ford Pinto/Chevy Corvair debate -- if given the choice, the American consumer will take cheap over safe.

The 1% in NYC , the liberal elite , have power

HarlemFF - What have you done with huntersburg? I believe he was last heard speaking to you, welcoming you to SE on every thread where you had made a recent entry.