Everyday Socialism, American-Style, Is Happening Now

[ashling]

my dad died in 1998, but he would have loved reading this - he was always big on municipal utilities,
and was proud to point to Austin.
...miss you dad.

I assume you are aware that socialism—real socialism, not the fuzzy kind conservatives try to pin on Barack Obama—is as common as grass (well, maybe not that common, but still very common indeed) in the United States.

****

For a start: It's often forgotten—or simply not known—that there are more than two thousand publicly owned electric utilities now operating, day by day, week by week, throughout the United States (many in the conservative South). Indeed, 25 percent of US electricity is supplied by locally owned public utilities and co-ops.

Moreover, most of these now conventional "socialist" operations have a demonstrated capacity to provide electricity at lower cost to the consumer, not to mention cheaper and more accessible broadband. (Nationally, on average, customers of private utilities pay 14 percent more than customers of public utilities.)

****

Another leader, Austin Energy in Texas, runs the most successful utility-sponsored green energy marketing program in the country. Approximately 15 to 17 percent of its power currently comes from renewable sources—primarily wind, with landfill methane gas a distant second. The utility expects to reach 30 to 35 percent renewable energy by 2020. It also has a twenty-year agreement to purchase power from a large wood-fired power plant in East Texas, and it expects to achieve a CO2 reduction goal of 20 percent below 2005 levels by 2020.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/16353-everyday-socialism-american-style-is-happening-now

[byeya]

1. Private power companies would not build plants to send power to the rural south. Under FDR, TVA

was built and has served this (often benighted) region well.

The same with telephones. Where I lived for decades in the southern Appalachians, telephone service was not available to all until the early 1950s. That was due to federal laws and subsidies. There was also a role for co-ops. Federal law was written to insure that the people farthest from town paid the same rate as those in or near town. - Socialism.