The nationwide power crunch, he said, had been caused by “environmental wackos” who “have insisted that not a single power plant be built.”Īnd then he added a link to my story and my email address. We’ve got to string them up or send them to sensitivity seminars.” We’re told to blame the eeeevil rich owners of big houses for this fix. “These people pay for every kilowatt they use…. Limbaugh had been furious about what he called “one of the most outrageous articles I’ve seen on any subject.” Wealthy homeowners in “the Soviet of Seattle” are portrayed “as though they’re guilty of something for buying power,” he had said. “Gosh, little brother, I am sooooo impressed,” she wrote. I watched amazed as the emails scrolled down until I spotted one from my sister in Texas. I clicked on one: “Your paper is a liberal rag.” Another: “Disgusting.” Another identified himself as “Rightwinger” and wanted me to know I was a “Commie Bastard.” And those were among the few that could be printed in a family newspaper. It dinged again, and again, until it sounded like a coffee percolator. Two days later, I sat down at my desk and logged into my computer, which dinged to tell me I had an email. They included homeowners who used as much as 50 times the average household consumption. I did the story, naming the individuals, businesses and public agencies that consumed power.

City Light didn’t want to tell us, but complied with our freedom of information request. My editors asked me to do a piece on the biggest users of electricity in the Seattle area. Seattle City Light was having to buy power on the national market at crippling prices. I was a reporter at the Seattle Times, and electricity prices had spiked, driven by winter demand, an extended drought, and by changing national energy markets that eventually led to the collapse of Enron. The death of Rush Limbaugh, overlapped on the energy crunch, takes me back exactly 20 years, to the nationwide electrical crisis in the winter of 2001, when the “Doctor of Democracy” awarded me my allotted 15 minutes.

Rush limbaugh medal of dom