Mr. Haney Wants To Sell You a Power Plant

Remember Mr. Haney, the swindling neighborhood peddler from the 1960s TV show Green Acres?

Haney, portrayed by veteran character actor and longtime Western film sidekick Pat Buttram with the distinctive, warbling voice, sold his family's ancient, dilapidated farm to Oliver when he and Lisa Douglas left New York City for rural Hooterville and their new life as farmers. In the process of the sale, Haney stripped the farm of everything of value down to the plumbing.
Haney had cheated the Douglases by charging them several times what the property was worth and saddling them with a dysfunctional farm. He continued to cheat them by initially selling the movable property associated with the farm to them one piece at a time. Douglas bought Haney's cow, tractor and plow, all of which were as useless as the farm.
He continued to come back with his farm truck converted into a peddler's truck stocked with worthless versions of items that Oliver had need of. He almost invariably succeeded in unloading the items on Oliver at inflated prices despite his past shady dealings with them. He often took a piece of junk and called it by some outlandish name, suggesting that it has some use that it clearly does not and that it's in some way valuable.
Haney would often turn up in his truck at the Douglas farm, minutes after they've realized they needed something, selling exactly that (even if it were very odd), complete with a pull-down sign on his truck advertising it. If turned down by Douglas, Haney would offer a variety of equally useless alternatives. Oliver once said "How come you always show up with exactly what I need?" And Haney turned it on him by saying "Well let me put it to you another way...how come you always need what I show up with?"

Well, deja vu, dear readers.  A new age Mr. Haney was peddling his wares to reporters at a "media event" in Fairmont yesterday.  The media event was staged to draw attention away from all FirstEnergy's other problems and hopefully convince the public to support the company's flaccid proposal to sell the Harrison power station to itself for ONE BILLION DOLLARS!

However, FirstEnergy's Mr. Haney is, shall we say, less than convincing?  It looks like Mr. Haney doesn't even believe himself when he tells the few reporters in the audience that he can "control the future."  Is that sort of like Todd's Magic Math?

And speaking of our friend Todd... he's so boring and inconsequential that the reporter talks right over him.  Even Mr. Haney smirks and makes faces when Todd talks.  And the camera man found film of a reporter's digital recorder the most interesting thing at FirstEnergy's media event.  Right.

And in other news... a big rat named Tony tried to eat Morgantown this morning.