Lights out.

"The three top officers of Pepco Holdings [the utility that couldn't get the lights back on in Washington paid themselves $66 million in 2002 and possess at least $4 million in stock and stock options. Pepco's current budget for overhead power-line maintenance is $13.7 million," reports our alumnus Gregg Easterbrook. "The company's three top officers are pulling down almost as much as the utility's entire budget for overhead line maintenance2' Easterbook, writing on his new Web site, Easterblogg, adds that two nights after Hurricane Isabel hit, with half a million Pepco customers still in the dark, "Pepco Holdings chairman John Derrick sat drinking champagne at the premier black-tie event of the Washington social season, the National Symphony Orchestra ball," followed by an "elegant dinner and dancing on the roof terrace of Kennedy Center," one of the few places in Washington with power.

Another place that never lost its power was The Washington Post. Could this explain, Easterbrook asks, why the P0st was so tender in its comments about Pepco's performance? Just how miserable that performance was is suggested by a comparison with Duke Power, which reinstated full service in North Carolina in three days even though that's where the brunt of the storm hit. It took Pepco eight days.