Molly Ivins November 24

AUSTIN, Texas — House Speaker Newt Gingrich continues to astonish. Last week, he lectured House Republicans on duty, honor and country, saying: "We're more than just politicians. We're more than just the cynical, venal, narrow, corrupt profession that all too often is a reflection of the current culture. We are in fact the inheritors and the lifeblood of freedom." Now, this was on the very same day that Gingrich lieutenant Dick Armey attempted to replace most of the members of the House Ethics Committee, which is considering charges against the speaker.

Gingrich consistently projects onto others that which he does himself, so the key words here are "cynical," "venal," "narrow" and "corrupt." The mystery of Gingrich is whether he does this consciously, out of chutzpah, or if he has some internal quirk that prevents him from recognizing his own unethical conduct. This is the man who attacked President Clinton throughout the campaign for "sleaze" and in particular for allegedly failing to respond adequately to the investigations of him. Very curious.

Meanwhile, let's take up the topic of utilities deregulation for fun and profit. Uts de-reg will be a biggie next year at both the state and national levels. On the theory that it is better to consider the consequences before the bills are written than to rue them after the bills are passed, let's take a look at some of the impending consequences.

For one thing, utility companies sponsor a variety of effective programs to promote energy conservation. No corporation will ever voluntarily try to convince people to buy less of its own product, so these programs are, naturally, the consequence of assorted regulatory measures. In general, if a utility manages to reduce the consumption of electricity, regulators allow the company to charge more for what it does sell. It is a fact of life that it is cheaper to conserve energy than it is to generate it.

But uts de-reg will put the kibosh on conservation programs and give utilities every reason to urge us all to use more, more, more. According to a recent article in The New York Times, utilities and pipeline companies are already starting to invest heavily in advertising, which has not heretofore been much of a factor with them.

The huge advertising budgets of telephone companies, now competing for the long-distance market, are an indicator of what is to come. According to Competitive Media Reports, the entire utility industry spent just $83 million on advertising in 1995, compared to AT&T alone, which spent $607 million. This is good news for Madison Avenue but maybe not so great for consumers already surrounded by the endless blat of advertising.

To sell more energy means producing more energy, and that in turn generally means increased burning of coal, which produces more nitrous oxide emissions. Nitrogen oxide is the major contributor to smog. The problem will be particularly acute for cities in the Northeast, some of which are still heavily polluted now. The chance of bringing those cities up to the standards set by the Clean Air Act of 1990 becomes much worse.

At utility companies, the anticipation of uts de-reg has already set off a first round of downsizing, always such a socially desirable phenomenon. But this could be offset by a net increase in lawyer employment, another socially desirable goal.

Telecom deregulation is already providing us with some splendid examples of the adventures in court to come. There's a swell lawsuit between Frontier Corp. and Fibernet, for example.

According to Forbes magazine, "since telephone deregulation, hundreds of middlemen have sprung up in the long-distance market. They buy blocks of unused capacity from companies like AT&T and MCI, then re-sell them, like ticket consolidators who buy and sell airline seats." But what happens when the middleman doesn't pay the supplier or there's a dispute over the price? The supplier in this case whacked off long-distance service to Fibernet's customers, leaving them high and dry even though they'd paid their bills.

A more imaginative legal approach comes from GTE Corp., which is arguing that the Federal Communications Commission is guilty of "taking" under the Fifth Amendment by compelling it to open valuable phone lines to competitors. GTE says it will never recover its initial large investment.

And that leads to the $54 zillion question about uts de-reg: Who gets to pay for the "stranded costs" — expenses and debt previously incurred for capital costs? In many cases, we're talking about white-elephant nuclear plants, like the South Texas Nuclear Project, which were built in the teeth of citizen opposition. Good times ahead, eh?

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Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

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