Liatos '6 Deborah, reporting for The Militant "Socialist candidates in N.Y.: Nationalize energy industry!" 8/7/06 Vol.70/No. 29 http://www.themilitant.com/2006/7029/702902.html
WOODSIDE, Queens, July 23—“The cause of this blackout is not mainly a technical problem. The problem is Con Edison is in the business to make profits for its owners, not to provide electrical service,” said Martín Koppel, the Socialist Workers Party candidate for New York State attorney general. He was speaking with residents of this working-class area, which had been hit by a weeklong power outage. “Our campaign calls for nationalizing the energy industry,” he said. “The energy companies must be taken out of private hands and run as a public utility for the benefit of the majority. “This means opening their books to expose all their so-called business secrets and profit-motivated decisions, like the refusal to invest adequately in maintenance and new power plants. Those decisions by the capitalists guarantee there will be more disastrous breakdowns.” Koppel said the nationalized energy companies “must be operated under workers’ control on the job—control over the pace of production, over how the job is organized, over the safety of workers and the public at large.” The Socialist Workers Party campaign, he said, is calling for a massive public works program to rebuild the deteriorating infrastructure and create thousands of needed jobs.
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