In August, La Plata Electric Association will be distributing $2 million to its electricity users. This is a good deal. In hooking up with the utility each subscriber was given ownership of a share of stock. When La Plata Electric gains a surplus, it distributes the money back to the owners according to the amount of electricity each paid for. La Plata Electric is a cooperative that is socially owned by its patrons who share in the management. Electric cooperatives were enabled by the Rural Electric Administration as part of Franklin Roosevelt’s scheme to speed recovery in the bleak 1930s to give people work and to bring electricity to homes outside of cities. The established corporations couldn’t do that; there was no profit in it. The REA was a New Deal socialist scheme that provided loans and guidance for farmers everywhere to get together and build the utilities they needed.
We will be exercising the word “socialist” a lot in the coming 2016 presidential election because Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, a declared Democratic Socialist, is seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination. On the ballot as an Independent, Sanders’ whole political career from mayor to congressman to senator has been guided by socialist thought. As the election cycle moves forward, when we study the facts of the matter, we will come to appreciate just how socialist we are: roads, streets, parks, public lands, fire departments, schools, police, defense, Social Security, medical care, our local television district, irrigation water, municipal water, sewage and waste disposal, wildlife, farm advice, the land grant university, the other state colleges, Native American treaty responsibilities, libraries, clean air and water.
Sanders, who favors making government social institutions serve the people well, is the candidate for those of us in the 99 percent.
William Hendrickson
Cortez
