Wimps

The lynch mob rides again, but it serves one useful purpose: it shows up the squirming weaklings.

Wimp Weinberger, for example, was "horrified," not at the negotiations with possible terrorists, not at the ransom paid for hostages, not at the duplicity of announcing one policy to the world while carrying out another; he was "horrified" to learn about the one redeeming feature of the entire affair, which was to send the profits to the freedom fighters combatting the Nicaraguan Stalinistas.

That is a policy endlessly tried by utility executives. Not all of them are wimps: Illinois Power produced the video-tape that branded Harry Reasoner a liar; Consumers Power of Michigan fought a valiant battle against overwhelming odds; Wisconsin Power and others are still fighting.

Alas, they are not typical. A typical utility is Southern California Edison. In late October, the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) disallowed no less than $344.6 million in construction costs for the San Onofre nuclear plant as an expense for the rate base calculation. "We are at a total loss to understand," said SoCal Ed's chairman and C.E.O. Howard P. Allen, "how [the CPUC] could vote for the disallowance in fight of the fact that the Administrative Law Judge recommended no disallowance..."

Well, let me explain it to you, Mr Allen (and mainly to your Predecessor Gould). That the decision was unfair, blatantly political and based on utterly false reasons, we both know.

You point to some crummy legalistic recommendation; when have you last pointed to the immorality of a political body ordering an investor-owned company how to spend its money? When have you last compared the safety and environmental impact of San Onofre to your other power sources?

In 1976, a host of scientists and engineers went out to the people and defeated the California antinuclear initiative for you. But when Jerry Brown's bureaucrats obstructed you anyway, you went with the media-promoted fashion and started budding every soft-headed energy source from windmills to manure digesters, and all but treadmill-driven generators. In your servility to fads and fashion, you did not recoil from engaging Amory Lovins as a consultant. (You may be out of $345 million, but you earned his praise.)

Well, did you?

You deserve everything you are now getting from them. Not for San Onofre, of course, but for disregarding what every self-respecting man should know: that anyone letting himself be kicked long enough eventually becomes kickable.