Le Folies du "Market Liberte": Officials Want Military to Take Over Power Restoration on Long Island

Pardon my French but this "free market" fandango in the wake of hurricane Sandy continues to expose the failure of past policy.  Now local government officials are finally ready to call the troops in on Long Island.  Story at NBC-NY.

Newsday said a reporter on Thursday visited the Hicksville headquarters of National Grid, which is the company contracted by LIPA to oversee operations, and found engineers tracking outages with highlighters and paper maps.

Here is the wiki page of National Grid, which is headquarted in the UK and listed on the London Stock Exchange and looks like it is another one of these infrastructure "privatization" deals motivated by the desire to "save money that we don't have" that always ends up taking out too much cash and leaving too little funds left to account for the real maintenance and real upgrades required for the real infrastructure.

Then as usual, some periodic crisis happens to expose the real neglect and the regulatory morons who set the deal up in the first place take no responsibility and try to get the federal government sector to bail them out in the end anyway.

We've seen these follies before.