Sam Seder
@TheMajorityReport·2M subscribers·30.1K videos
Democracy In Power: A History Of US Electrification | Sandeep Vaheesan | TMR
Posted
January 12, 2025
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4,237
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January 12, 2025
4,237
214
8
5.24%
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21:24Now PlayingLive-steamed on January 9, 2025
Sandeep Vaheesan, legal director at the Open Markets Institute, discusses his recent book Democracy In Power: A History of Electrification in the United States.
Sandeep Vaheesan then joins, briefly unpacking his initial reactions to the environmental catastrophes unfolding in California right now and the incremental technocratic improvements to the US’ climate agenda under Biden, before diving into the surprising buoying of US energy infrastructure on – get this – publicly owned or cooperative utilities. Expanding on that latter point, Vaheesan parses through the history of the public sector’s role in US energy infrastructure, starting with the New Deal’s attempt to address the dearth of electrification in rural and farming communities, with FDR moving to recognize electricity as a necessity, rather than a luxury, and establishing the Rural Electrification Agency, which helped to expand access farmer access to electricity from 1 in 10 to 9 in 10, before diving deep into the extensive and overwhelming response from private industry, from the expansive propaganda effort – reviewing, rewriting, and replacing textbooks, purchasing newspaper space, and more – through their powerful push against regulatory institutions. Moving forward through the beginning of the neoliberal turn, Sandeep brings Emma through the process of the privatization of energy grids under this deregulation process, making room for the atrocious grid management we see from Texas nowadays, before wrapping up with the recent reemergence of initiatives for expanding publicly-owned utilities.
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