Real-Time Pricing

One of the consevative-libertarian (or was it libertarian-conservative?) myths is that a panacea for the retail electricity market would have been and is real time pricing. Real time pricing in its purest form would be mean that minute by minute retail electricity rates are changed to reflect the current "market price." Now, let's make a couple of BIG (and likely false) assumptions to simplify this issue. First, let's assume that the retail market (and wholesale, too, but we'll get to that) was in reality a competitive one. I'll get into why that is likely a silly assumption at another time, but let's just stipulate for now that it could be. The implication of that is that the real time price of electricity would be roughly equal to the marginal cost of production. The benefit of this is that price would be a correct signal of cost, and therefore increases in cost (and price) would be accompanied by decreases in the quantity of electricity demanded.

Now, the marginal cost of producing an additional bit of juice would be determined by both 'longer run' and 'shorter run' factors - long run including the price of important inputs of energy production - say, the price of natural gas - and shorter run factors would include the transition from more efficient to less efficient means of energy production as demand increased. That is, with low demand the lowest cost generation technologies are used and with high demand less efficient ones are brought oline. So, the second important, and false, assumption that we need to make is that price fluctuations never actually result from reaching the limits of production capacity. If we allowed this to happen, then even in a competitive market the price would no longer bear any relation to the marginal cost of production.

Even given these two rather silly assumptions, real-time pricing is just a pipe dream. First of all, very few or no residential customers would ever want real-time pricing. No consumer would want to have to keep an eye on the price before deciding whether or not to turn on his/her air conditioner at any give moment. There would be a cost to obtaining and monitoring that information which would just be more than anyone would be willing to deal with. That is, the cost of price uncertainty would far outweigh any gains from being able to exploit lower prices by time-shifting. So, competitive retail suppliers, if they existed, would offer long-term contracts to their customers at set rates, which I am sure most customers would opt for. Such contracts would reflect expected future average costs, not marginal ones, and we'd be right back where we started. Retail rates would effectively be fixed - by contract, not regulatory decree - and wholesalers would be able to game the system as they did previously if conditions were right. The only way to prevent this would be to outlaw such long run contracts which is hardly a libertarian solution. In fact, part of the problem with California deregulation was that long run contracts at the wholesale level were outlawed (with good intentions, but disastrous results), . It is true that outlawing these allowed wholesalers to game the system, but it also follows logically from that criticism that if such contracts weren't outlawed, the retail companies would enter into long run contracts with wholesalers, which would then detach the purchase cost from the production cost in the short term making real-time pricing rather meaningless.

It is also true that incorporating a rough time-varying pricing structure such as peak period pricing might not be so unpopular and would therefore be feasible. And, certain commercial and industrial users might be less resistant to time-varying rates, but only users who were extremely sensitive to energy prices and who were able to time-shift their activities would really be likely to perceive that the benefits of real-time pricing would outweigh the costs of potentially extreme price uncertainty.

This Should Help Things

I don't even know what to say about this.

The United States is conducting a secret 'dirty tricks' campaign against UN Security Council delegations in New York as part of its battle to win votes in favour of war against Iraq.

Details of the aggressive surveillance operation, which involves interception of the home and office telephones and the emails of UN delegates in New York, are revealed in a document leaked to The Observer.

The disclosures were made in a memorandum written by a top official at the National Security Agency - the US body which intercepts communications around the world - and circulated to both senior agents in his organisation and to a friendly foreign intelligence agency asking for its input.

The memo describes orders to staff at the agency, whose work is clouded in secrecy, to step up its surveillance operations 'particularly directed at... UN Security Council Members (minus US and GBR, of course)' to provide up-to-the-minute intelligence for Bush officials on the voting intentions of UN members regarding the issue of Iraq.

The leaked memorandum makes clear that the target of the heightened surveillance efforts are the delegations from Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Mexico, Guinea and Pakistan at the UN headquarters in New York - the so-called 'Middle Six' delegations whose votes are being fought over by the pro-war party, led by the US and Britain, and the party arguing for more time for UN inspections, led by France, China and Russia.

The memo is directed at senior NSA officials and advises them that the agency is 'mounting a surge' aimed at gleaning information not only on how delegations on the Security Council will vote on any second resolution on Iraq, but also 'policies', 'negotiating positions', 'alliances' and 'dependencies' - the 'whole gamut of information that could give US policymakers an edge in obtaining results favourable to US goals or to head off surprises'.

Can we just put all of them in jail now? Please?

It's Nice to be Right

As I have been, all along, about the rape of California.

See here.

Here.

Are we invading Turkey now?

I don't quite get this:

The Turkish vote throws into question the ambitious military strategy that had been devised to overwhelm the forces of President Saddam Hussein. American military commanders wanted to begin an attack from Turkey in order to pin down Iraqi forces in the north, thus keeping them away from the main American force driving from the south.

A senior Pentagon official said today that the Turkish Parliament's vote would not alter the military's plans to try to stage tanks and other heavy equipment for the Fourth Infantry Division through Turkey into northern Iraq.

"I don't think it's that big a deal," the Pentagon official said. "As Secretary Rumsfeld likes to say, democracies aren't very tidy."

UPDATE: The NYT, in its infinite wisdom, has removed the quotes from the Pentagon official. AH well.

New Things to Boycott

Turkey
Turkish Delight
Turkish Baths
Turkish Cotton

Eric Alterman's on Now

Goddamn freeper-types called the bookstore and tried to convince them that Alterman had cancelled the appearance. Typical wingnut assholes.



...speaking of Alterman, the book is back up to ranking 58 on Amazon. Wonder what brought that on.

Toying around with the template, particularly for the links..suggestions welcome..

Alterman on CSPAN2 Today

4:30pm.

Kenneth Pollack

I've never read the book (mandatory disclaimer) but his credibility and/or knowledge is pretty suspect when he claims that the Iraqi defector Kamel (his name appears to be spelled alternately with an a and an e) "reported that outside pressure had not only failed to eradicate the nuclear program, it was bigger and more cleverly spread out and concealed than anyone had imagined it to be."

Civil Disobedience

Catholic League president calls for for teachers to break the law.

"Two things need to be done immediately: teachers and students should practice civil disobedience and the judges must be impeached.

“It is up to the teachers in the nine western states affected by this decision to break the law: they should instruct their students on the meaning of civil disobedience and then practice it. All they need to do is call the cops and local TV reporters and then recite the Pledge of Allegiance in their presence. It needs to be shown on television all over the world that as the U.S. prepares to go to war to maintain the liberties symbolized in the Pledge, there are brave men, women and children at home who are prepared to fight tyranny on our own soil.

“Iraq’s problem is tyranny of the minority. Ironically, that’s our problem as well. But the Iraqi people at least stand to be liberated and have their tyrant deposed. We need to do the same with ours, albeit with different means: impeachment proceedings against the two federal judges who made this decision should commence as soon as possible. Make no mistake about it, it is not enough for the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn this ruling. Judicial malpractice has been committed and those responsible must be removed from the bench. They should be removed not because most Americans disagree with them but because of jurisprudential incompetence.”

love it.

Turkey Votes Yes NO on Deployment

Check out Google News, and know that every single one of the stories about this vote is currently wrong.

Apparently they needed an absolute majority, not simply a plurality, and all the news outlets jumped the gun.


Idiots.

The Agonist has more.

Someone with a stronger constitution than me should go read the wailing and screaming of the war bloggers.

UPDATE: hahaha. Watch the Freepers' agony as the story evolves.

UPDATE 2: On a semi-related note, Hesiod tells us some more about the Kamal/Unscom transcript.

Big Big Meanies

Cal Pundit addresses the whining by Weekly Standard Bush Fluffer Leo Bockhorn. Bockhorn wonders why pro-war liberals still don't like the masterful Bush.

Richard Reeves adds a few more reasons:

Declaring that he wanted to talk about "a crucial period in the history of the nation," he began with a war whoop: "Part of that history was written by others; the rest will be written by us." Six sentences later, in full whoop, he offered this: "We have arrested or otherwise dealt with many key commanders of al-Qaida. Across the world, we are hunting down the killers one by one. We are winning, and we're showing them the definition of American justice."

"Otherwise dealing with," as we learned in the State of the Union message, is the president's euphemism for assassination. Now he is defining that as American justice. Actually, American justice is about the presumption of innocence and trial by peers. What the president was bragging about used to be called "lynching."

Ten paragraphs after that, Bush went from whoop to whopper, saying: "After defeating enemies, we did not leave behind occupying armies; we left constitutions and parliaments."

Americans are a decent people with, except for lynching and such, a great history, a wonderful story to tell. We have been pretty good (and sensible) about avoiding colonialism and imperialism. But never occupying? Please. We did occupy Germany and Japan after World War II -- it would have been insane not to -- and we have occupied most every country in Central America, to say nothing of the Philippines, Haiti, Cuba, Indian country and California. Some might add Texas to the list.

The president, as we know, is no scholar -- and that is not necessarily an insult. But he does seem to be intent on dumbing-down America. The ignorance at the top has infected real scholars, beginning with Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, a brainy fellow who has lost his bearings promoting and defending war in Iraq. Last Thursday, Wolfowitz rebuked the Army chief of staff, Gen. Eric Shinseki, who told Congress that occupation of Iraq might require hundreds of thousands of soldiers.

Wolfowitz then asserted that few troops would be needed because Iraq has never had the kind of ethnic strife that has characterized places like the Balkans.

What? Iraq is divided into three parts: Kurds in the north, Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s Sunni Muslims in the center, and the poor (and brutalized) Shi'ites in the south. That's what the "no-fly zones" were about. And, unless God is as kind as he is great, those people are going to try to chop each other into little pieces if they get half the chance. Sad but true, so send some maps to the Pentagon too.

Electronic Voting

I've been behind on posting about this for awhile, but there have been a lot of interesting developments lately. Seeing the Forest is taking this story and running with it so go check there.

Wow

"I don't listen to this noise that goes on around here, and I don't pay much attention to those people who want to stay here, he said. I came from Texas, and I'll go back to Texas. And in Midland, Texas, when I grew up, there were more signs saying Get us out of the UN' than there were saying God Bless America.' And there were plenty of God Bless America' signs.

...
"I feel the comfort and the power of knowing that literally millions of Americans I'm never going to meet ... say my name to the Almighty every day and ask him to help me, he said. My friend, Jiang Zemin in China, has about a billion and a half folks, and I don't think he can say that. And my friend, Vladimir Putin, I like him, but he can't say that.

You've got to be kidding me

I was wondering where Bush was going to come up with his magic instant billions for Turkey. Here it is:

WASHINGTON, Feb 27 (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush may dip into a Depression-era emergency fund for a short-term loan to Turkey as he presses for access to Turkish bases for a possible attack on Iraq administration and congressional sources say.

The $38 billion Exchange Stabilization Fund was used in 1995 by former President Bill Clinton to bail out Mexico over objections from many Republicans.

Bush used the fund to help Uruguay last year and, with an Iraq war potentially just weeks away, is considering tapping into it again -- to provide what s ources say would be about an $8.5 billion bridge loan to NATO ally Turkey.

The administration wants Turkey's permission to use its bases to attack Iraq from the north. In return, Turkey is demanding an aid package worth up to $30 billion in U.S. grants and loan guarantees to help cushion its frail economy
from the impact of a war.

As a down payment on the aid package, which is subject to congressional approval, Turkey wants a bridge loan, which would be repaid once Congress acts.

"They want it right away," a U.S. official said of Turkey's request for a bridge loan.

If Washington is to meet Turkey's demand, administration and congressional sources say the White House has little choice but to tap into the fund. Unlike other forms of bilateral aid, which must be approved by Congress, the
multibillion-dollar fund falls wholly within the jurisdiction of the Treasury secretary, subject only to presidential approval.
....

Set up in 1934, the fund was intended primarily for emergency use to defend the dollar.

The fund returned to the public eye in 1995 when the Clinton administration, faced with congressional opposition to a taxpayer-financed bailout for Mexico, said it would use the fund's resources. That fueled criticism from
Republicans about whether that was an appropriate use for the money.

The United States made up to $20 billion available to Mexico, most of it from the fund, although not all the cash was used. The money was paid back with interest and the United States even made a profit on the deal.

Clinton tapped the fund again in the financial crisis that hit Asia in the late 1990s, again drawing Republican fire.

Despite a pledge not to follow the Clinton administration's lead, Bush in August 2002 provided a $1.5 billion bridge loan to struggling Uruguay.

Blair Calls Protesters Appeasers

Now that Mr. Blair has smacked into Godwin's Law, can we declare victory and go home?

Shorter George Will

From Busybusybusy.

Fox Poll

Kos directs us to this Fox poll.

Support to re-elect President Bush has dipped slightly in the last year, but the much of the shift has been from "undecided" to an unnamed Democratic challenger. When asked how they would vote if the 2004 presidential election were held today, a plurality says they would vote to re-elect Bush (42 percent) and almost as many (38 percent) say they would vote for the Democrat, up from 21 percent who said they would support the Democratic candidate in January 2002.

Michael Savage

Check out this delightful transcript. Apparently he feels he can use the Justice Department to smite his enemies.

Iraq Tracker!

Take Back the Media has their own!