Rep. Dennis Kucinich reports on how a big private utility and the banks in Cleveland tried to force him as then mayor of Cleveland 30 years ago to sell the city’s electric system, Muny Light, to the utility for what Kucinich calls a $50 million bribe. The Guardian was one of the few papers inside or outside of Ohio that at the time covered the scandal from a public power point of view.
I encourage you to read Kucinich’s account because it shows for San Franciscans, living in a city poisoned for decades by the ever more costly PG&E/Raker Act scandal, the lengths to which another private utility in a big metropolitan city will go to try to snuff out a public power system. Note also Kucinich’s point about how the private utility subverted the Cleveland media to back the utility in its brutal power play. It’s tough to go up against the private utility, their banking allies and the media, but Kucinich did it and ultimately won in Cleveland. B3
Truthdig.com Report: Rep. Dennis Kucinich on His Battle With the Banks
By Rep. Dennis Kucinich
Once they were as gods, but the deities of the American banking system are now in ruins, plunged from their pedestals into the maw of taxpayer largesse. Congress voted to give the banks $700 billion, lifting them temporarily out of their sepulcher of debt, while revealing a deep truth about the condition of America’s financial powers:
They never had the money they said they had as they constructed their debt-based monetary system which now lies in ruins. Their decisions on behalf of depositors, shareholders and investors were lacking in basic integrity and common sense. Green gods bailing out with their golden parachutes.
There was a time when their power was real. Come with me to Cleveland three decades ago.
Click here to read the full article on Truthdig.com, where Kucinich is a contributing writer.