Posted on 05/12/2002 7:59:55 PM PDT by d14truth
Edited on 04/12/2004 5:36:05 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
"The Independent Energy Producers, a trade group, sponsored the evening and kicked in $25,000 for the governor's campaign fund. Representatives from Calpine Corp., Reliant Energy, Williams Cos., Dynegy Inc., Duke Energy Corp., Enron Corp. and Thermo Ecotek Corp. gave $10,000 apiece to be there."
The governor's point person on the job, PUC President Loretta Lynch, had voted against the idea and was outraged.
Lynch, a Yale-educated attorney and veteran Democratic operative, was hardly a utilities expert. In a recent interview, she said she hadn't studied the crisis in depth until July 2000, after the governor ordered her to investigate the Bay Area blackout.
Like many officials at the time, Lynch didn't trust the big utilities, which before deregulation had been the major players. And legislative leaders who had championed the Power Exchange as the central feature of their deregulation plan were loath to weaken it.
Within days of the PUC vote, sources said, Lynch contacted allies in the Legislature. Language to overturn the vote was inserted in a budget bill that Davis signed into law a week later."
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Central Planning DOOFI. It appears the 'market solution' was short-circuited by legislative action. This IS a 'real crime', and we taxpayers had better not let this blatant 'abuse of power' go unpunished.
It was obvious the state's market was in trouble, but the commission had little use for how California had responded -- especially the Legislature's propping up of the Power Exchange even after it had created so many problems.
And commissioners resented being told to clean up the mess.
"The blanket indictment, that 'it's a federal problem' and 'it's your problem to fix, so fix it' -- that was being unrealistic," said then-FERC Chairman James Hoecker. "They were spending most of their time demonizing the FERC."
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The Davis 'MO', 'it's not our fault'
Davis' old dinner partners had the same trouble.
Duke Energy Corp. wrote him on July 31, offering to sell the state's utilities up to 2,000 megawatts of power under a five-year contract at $50 a megawatt-hour -- far below spot-market prices.
PG&E and Edison drooled over deals like this. But red tape at the Davis-controlled PUC, the utilities say, prevented them from signing contracts until much later. By then, they were well on their way to insolvency."
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What say you, guvner?
By November, some began to question what was going on.
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And, we are supposed to believe DOOFUS was 'governing'?
Utilities go shopping for power deals
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"Energy sellers "have just figured out they can make a whole lot of money by bidding high and restricting their output," said Severin Borenstein, director of the University of California Energy Institute, who has studied electricity markets for years.
It doesn't take collusion -- or any illegal action -- for sellers of a scarce product to realize they can demand top dollar, said Borenstein, who is also a PX board member.
Two things make that especially easy in California's electricity market.
One is that there are relatively few sellers.
Only a handful of companies own the power plants sold by PG&E, Southern California Edison and other utilities as part of the deregulation process that began in 1996.
There are also only a handful of very large traders. At any time, any one of them can control enough electricity to have what economists call "market power" -- the ability to move the entire market by raising prices far beyond costs.
Sellers get a second assist from the nature of the product.
Buyers can't walk by today's electricity market as if it were an ice cream stand, check out the prices, roll their eyes and say, "No thanks, I'll skip dessert." The public wants electricity to be instantly available. So the state Independent System Operator, which runs most of California's long-distance transmission grid, was given the job of keeping the lights on by being the buyer of last resort.
If utilities don't buy enough power at the PX to supply all their customers, the ISO will step in and buy the rest, then bill the utilities for however much it costs.
Both buyers and sellers have maneuvered to get the most from this pingpong between ISO and PX."
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Econ 101 and the Davis Administration bureaucrats didn't pass it. They were busy in multi-cultural studies.
Ouch, the truth hurts!
From the 'Peace and Freedom'(Socialist) Party viewpoint. Turnout--A great big problem for the DOOFUS
"In other words, Gray Davis has completely turned his back on the workingclass as he and his party represent the capitalist class, just like the Republicans. The Democratic Party has played the game of catering to labor to get elected and then catering to capital to stay in office. That usually does not work in an economic crisis, when all incumbents are vulnerable to defeat, and Gray Davis is certainly no exception. No party can represent both capital and labor, and when they play the two-faced game, they pay the political price of defeat. On election day, November 5, 2002, please do not vote for the Democrat-Republicans."
DemocRATS tired of Gray might consider 'Green' with the 'Peace and Freedom' Socialists no longer on the ballot.
"So, where is this little digression going? Oh yeah, what Davis proposes in California is nothing but Fascism: if we (the government) don't like what you're doing, we're taking you over.
"Now class, here is an extra credit question: since the federal government has essentially taken the position that private property is OK as long as it doesn't interfere with what the government wants, and that the government can and will confiscate your property for any number of perceived "violations," is this country headed down the road to socialism/communism or fascism?
Easy, huh? I'd bet even liberals could figure that one out. Provided they first removed the thinking portion of their anatomy from the alimentary portion."
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For those in Rio Linda or Palm Beach Country, this means if the liberals removed their 'head' from their 'a**'.
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