PROTECTION MONEY

"Dear Prof. Beckmann: 26 Aug 84

The enclosed Rebate Check for $20 from Jersey Central Power & Light Co. is signed over to you for your discretionary use. The rebate 'is a part of the penalty and other actions set by Barbara A. Curran, President of the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities as a result of JCP&L's role in the accident at Three Mile Island.' (Quotation from flyer accompanying the check.) Please accept expression of my deepest admiration and support of your splendid work.

Most cordial thanks to reader Hacken. In keeping with my pledge in the first issue [Sep 73], AtE accepts no contributions other than subscription fees, so the check was used to renew the subscription of a student who had run out of cash, with a request to write Mr. Hacken a Thank-You note.

As for the case itself, Public Utility Commissions are of course the very opposite of the decision maker who risks his own investment as in the energy conservation of the preceding item. They are a prime example of institutions spending other people's money without risk (other than failing to be reappointed) or responsibility (other than pleasing the politicians who appointed them), utterly void of any voluntary-exchange principle and exclusively relying on coercion by the government's guns. The explanations on the remittance advice include the statement "The Company entered into an agreement" [pardon my laugh] "with the Public Advocate and the Staff of the Board of Public Utilities to implement additional conservation programs and to delay the recovery in rates..."

Here you have conservation again, but this time not Harpo's: this smells heavily of Karl.

Apart from the substance of this legalized theft, note the publicity-hounding form. If the refund had been justified, it could have been credited to each rate-payer's account, saving him (who else ultimately pays for it?) the expense of printing and mailing individual checks. But then, how could justice, social consciousness and human dignity be served without Barbara A. Curran's name on each check explaining how kind the Public Utility Commission is in protecting the citizenry's pockets?