NATI HARNIK / AP
In this May 2, 2011, file photo, Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, gestures during an interview in Omaha, Neb.
On December 16, 2013, the staff of the Las Vegas Sun write:
Nevada utility regulators have given their stamp of approval for the sale of the state’s largest electric utility to a company owned by billionaire Warren Buffett.
The Public Utilities Commission on Monday approved the $5.6 billion deal for Buffett’s MidAmerican Energy to buy NV Energy Inc.Commissioners adopted an order submitted last week by PUC Chairwoman Alaina Burtenshaw supporting the buyout and concluding it was in the public’s interest.
The deal still requires approval by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and is expected to be finalized early next year.
Protests were lodged by some consumers, who said they feared the sale would result in higher bills for customers and urged the commission not to be a “lapdog” of big business.
When the deal is completed, a $20 million credit will be applied to the bills of customers. That will pencil out to $13 for residents in the Las Vegas area and $7 for consumers in Northern Nevada. The credit will show up on monthly bills.
NV Energy has 2.4 million customers and is the parent company of Nevada Power Co. in Las Vegas and Sierra Pacific Power in northern Nevada. Sierra Pacific also provides natural gas to some customers.
This is another example of an OPPORTUNITY TO CREATE NEW CAPITALIST OWNERS, and yet NO ONE is addressing the issue of WHO WILL OWN the future of energy utilities.
Here we have an OPPORTUNITY, with a taxpayer-supported loan guarantee, to create NEW OWNERS among the actual users of the energy to be produced. Instead, Nevada regulators are facilitating the transfer of ownership to billionaire Warren Buffett, and further concentrating ownership of productive capital wealth. Buffett knows that this is a long-term investment that will pay for itself. So why doesn’t Nevada so some leadership and facilitate the transfer of ownership to the actual citizen users of the energy produced, using insured capital credit financial mechanisms to enable EVERY utility customer to purchase equal shares in the utility repayable our of the profitable rates collected?
WAKE UP PEOPLE. If this is a profitable venture for the Buffett, then it is a profitable venture for Nevadans, and should be vested with the rate payers of the energy to be produced.
If there was a consciousness in America today that addresses the issue of CONCENTRATED OWNERSHIP, perhaps Nevada’s Public Utility Commission and the Obama administration’s Federal Energy Regulatory Commission would explore other financial mechanisms to empower capital-less and under-capitalized Nevadans. Their acquisition would be paid from out of the millions of dollars of income generated by the investment, and once paid for, generate a viable capital estate source of income for those Nevada utility users.
Today we accept as normal public ownership of gigantic capital instruments like mass rail, subways, government office buildings, universities, water systems, and power systems. These government-owned enterprises and services could be transformed into competitive private sector companies managed by Private Facilities Corporations with the use of the asset or facility leased to the normal using body. The wages of the Private Facilities Corporation(s) are passed through to the leasing body. This would allow us to build the ownership of what is now public capital into individuals and reduce the cost of government, including public pension systems. Thus, when you build the ownership into the employees of the Private Facilities Corporation(s), who now have a vested interest in its quality of operation and maintenance, the contracted lease rental fee committed by the government entity will give the employee stockholders a reasonable return and lesson or replace the need for supplemental redistribution programs.
Consumer Stock Ownership Plan financing can simultaneously build the ownership into the consumers of monopolies such as telecommunications, water and power companies, mass-transit, and even cable and satellite television, who are the source of all their funding, and dividends paid out to the consumer owners would become an offset to their utility bills.
See The Citizens Land Bank: A Just Third Way For Financing Urban Development at http://foreconomicjustice.org/4535/the-citizens-land-bank-a-just-third-way-for-financing-urban-development/
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2013/dec/16/nevada-regulators-ok-nv-energy-sale-buffett/
Related story: NV Energy sells land to home developer for $14.8 million
