OT First Energy (Ohio) Bribery Scandal

Too forward to ask what you do?   Not many people regularly throw around the phrase N-1 situation in every day conversation.   I ask because I’ve gotten to work on reliability issues related to environmental regulation a fair amount over the years.

There were no enforceable standards in 2003. It was the blackout that gave FERC the power to have NERC (formerly an industry-funded group that developed “best practices”) develop enforceable reliability standards. The first wave of standards became enforceable in 2007.

FE also operates Davis-Besse, where they nearly initiated the worst nuclear accident in the US by falsifying inspections of the reactor vessel head.

Sort of. Cliff Rosenberger stepped down under FBI investigation, but they had an interim speaker and another guy in there in the year between then and when Householder took over the office.

Thank you ! 

FIFO will forever be in my lexicon ...

LOL. Any time I ever see FIFO referring to inventory concepts again I will forever think of this instead.

H/T to you good sir.

Along similar lines, I have a friend who is a pipeline inspector (also in Ohio, but worked all over the Midwest). A lot of the crews he supervises have TAFT (This Aint Fkn Texas) on either their helmets or the tips of their tongue since they often have to deal with guys from there who talk smack about how they lay pipe (hur hur hur) in Texas when that has near zero applicability to doing so in, say,  the mountains of SE Ohio

This was ringing a bell for me and I was wondering if it was related to whatever I read a year ago.

FirstEnergy has also been a key supporter of Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, one of HB 6’s most fervent proponents. As Jeremy Pelzer reports for the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, FirstEnergy’s PAC “donated more than $5,000 to [Householder’s campaign] and a total of about $149,000 to more than a dozen other House candidates,” mostly Householder’s supporters. Those were among the PAC’s only donations that election cycle.

The support is ongoing. The Energy and Policy Institute (EPI) reports that “Householder has received over $12,500 in campaign contributions from FirstEnergy since the start of the 2017-18 legislative session.” He and one of his sons flew on a FirstEnergy corporate jet to Trump’s inauguration.

Smelled fishy a year ago. Not surprising that the FBI found there was more to it

Was wondering what my neighbor was referring to when we was saying he’ll miss tailgating at Company A

let's not forget kwame.   and by all accounts, coleman young was a dandy, too. 

Tee-troit, I mean Toledo, is having its own issues right now with their City council....Just corruption everywhere. 

For some reason I thought the State of Michigan installed oversight of Detroit due to the massive corruption uncovered.

I've always wondered if the City Council in Detroit was more crooked than other cities, or too stupid to figure out how to cover their tracks.

Columbus resident here.  I would be extremely surprised if anything happens to Les Wexner.

I'll preface by saying that, gun to my head, I don't think he was intimately connected with Epstein's crimes.  Whatever counter-arguments you have I probably don't disagree with them, but hear me out:

I'll preface with two things that people should know: 

a)  You know how he has quite a few OSU campus buildings named after him and has donated millions of dollars to various philanthopy type things?  That UNDERSELLS the amount of power and influence he exerts in Columbus by a factor of forty bazillion.  He is basically the vastly more influential and vastly less public version of Montgomery Burns (to Zach Smith's Homer Simpson)

b) One of the worst kept rumors in town in town is that Wexner, shall we say, enjoys the company of handsome shirtless lads.  To be clear, that is completely fine, we're in the 21st century after all, but I understand why a big-time business guy of his age would keep that on the down-low.  It's one of those things in Columbus that almost everyone knows and doesn't mention.

At any rate, although Jeffrey Epstein was a shitstain who deserved to die one thing he was undeniably very good at was ingratiating himself with very powerful people.  Wexner certainly fits that bill and he also happens to be CEO of a brand that's prime recruiting territory for aspiring models.  The other observation I'd make is, as a general rule if you're running a secret sex slavery ring with your own private island, it's best business practice to keep it as secret as possible. 

What I suspect is that Wexner wasn't in on the deepest levels of Epstein's abuse but either chose not to know and/or eventually gathered enough to put two and two together after the evidence was too much to ignore.  And any federal investigation wouldn't unearth damning evidence about his full complicity but WOULD unearth potentially unflattering details about both his personal and professional life that the notoriously private Wexner would rather keep hidden.