The Real Entergy Shows Its Ugly Head

Is this just training for Entergy? 

Entergy thinks we’re stupid

(Honestly, you are stupid.) 

Updated 7:28 AM; Posted 7:28 AM

 Entergy New Orleans CEO Charles Rice, at left in gray suit, listens as protesters oppose the $210 million gas-fired power plant that Entergy proposed for New Orleans East. The council approved the plant with a 6-1 vote after an hours-long hearing in March. (Kevin Litten, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune) 

By Tim Morris, Columnist

timothy_morris@nola.com

Fining Entergy New Orleans just $5 million for seeking to subvert the democratic process, mislead the City Council and wage war on residents hardly seems adequate.

For starters, there is the question of whether a $5 million fine will get the attention, let alone change the behavior, of a company with annual revenues of $11 billion and literal power over 2.9 million utility customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.

And then there is the sheer hubris the company displayed in trying to rig a political process that was already so embarrassingly weighted in its favor that no self-respecting Las Vegas bookie would have taken odds against council approval of the company’s plans for a new gas-fired power plant in New Orleans East.

Taking council members at their word that the 6-1 vote for the plant last March was based on the testimony of “experts,” what advantage did Entergy gain by hiring actors to show up at hearings in matching orange T-shirts, carrying mass-produced signs and reading heartfelt pleas for jobs, power and an end to “cascading outages” from prepared scripts?

Was then-Entergy CEO Charles Rice really that obsessed with overwhelming and humiliating activists and concerned residents with a shock and awe campaign of paid protesters? Text messages and other previously private communications uncovered by an independent City Council investigation certainly suggest that.

"This is a war and we need all the foot shoulders [soldiers] we can muster," he says in a discussion of whether Entergy would be willing to pony up for more ersatz supporters.

It’s never a good look when the head of a major utility is caught equating what is supposed to be a fair and open democratic process with all-out warfare, especially when his side has actual nuclear power and the resistance is mostly worried about how a new plant will affect their property values, quality of life and their children’s health.

This is the worst use of political dirty tricks since Richard Nixon’s Committee to Re-Elect the President, CREEP, tried to bug the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate in the campaign against South Dakota Sen. George McGovern. The “third-rate burglary” eventually spawned an investigation that forced Nixon to resign from his second term in the face of impeachment.

Nixon, by the way, defeated McGovern in a historic landslide with the Democratic challenger winning only in Massachusetts and the District of Columbia while losing everywhere else, including his home state of South Dakota.

There has never been any evidence that any of Nixon’s subversive political knavery had much impact on the electoral outcome. But that’s what happens when the political process, which is supposed to be “war by other means,” is embraced as actual warfare.

Only in this case, the “foot shoulders” were more “Hogan’s Heroes” than “Saving Private Ryan.” Did anybody really think that hiring local actors to appear in public venues was going to escape detection?

At some point isn’t someone going to notice that a beer-drinking buddy who used to be laser-beam focused on playing a cadaver on “NCIS: New Orleans” was suddenly a rabid convert to extolling the virtues of a “safe, reliable gas-fired peaking power plant over the alternative of being 100 percent reliant on transmission during a storm."

They must have thought we were all that stupid.

And even as the City Council’s investigation uncovered damning communications between top Entergy executives, the company continued to claim it has been duped by the outside public relations firm it hired to sell the plant proposal. Investigators also complained that Entergy has been less than forthcoming in forking over information requested. Not exactly encouraging signs moving forward.

What we need is more lifetime voters, folks who make it habit to get to the polls — informed and engaged.

Rice abruptly stepped down as Entergy’s CEO in August to take on a new role in — I’m not making this up — the company’s legal department.

Perhaps he will get to review the resolutions passed last week by the City Council that could include that $5 million fine and other requirements meant to induce a “sea-change in the corporate culture” at Entergy New Orleans.

City Councilwoman Helena Moreno called the episode “just plain sad and disappointing" and lamented that Entergy had "lost sight of the company they’ve always claimed to be.”