California: Fight over who's in charge of energy

Only a little biased /sarcasm!

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Please everyone understand: Davis is not to be trusted. Remember, this is the guy that demanded $1,000,000.00 i campaign contributions from the teachers union while in the State Captial building, and during an official meeting!

Since those contracts were offer and acceptance for value, which constitutes a legal and binding contract, why does duffus think he has a right to renegotiate them.

Just because the smart ass thought he could make it into a power grab and totally control the energy that we have to pay for and got caught with his pants down doesn't give him the right to negate a legal and binding contract.

State Senator Tom McClintock is challenging the legality of the contracts based on alleged violations of state law:

http://republican.sen.ca.gov/web/mcclintock/article_detail.asp?PID=213

We'll see what happens.

That's probably the most biased article that I have seen in a while.

THE TITLE: "Who's in charge of energy... This sound like something out of Hitler's Volkisher Beobacter [People's Observer]. "Translation: We Need a Strong Leader [Fuhrer] to stand firm against the enemy from the East".
In reality, a bunch of individual companies are "in charge" of energy. It's called a free [or semi-free] market, a concept apparently foreign to Mark Sherman.
California has yet to see the first penny in refunds it has been demanding for 14 months. Uh, maybe that's because:
1. The energy companies have never been found guilty in a court of law of any fraud whatsoever. They have never even been accused of fraud, AFAIK. They have admitted to making round trip trades to make their balance sheets look better to investors, but that in no way increased the price of electricity to consumers.
2. In many cases, California has never paid the energy companies in the first place; You can't give back a portion of that which you have not been given. Loretta Lynch admits as much later in the article when she says, "...it is unclear whether California power consumers ultimately would benefit from refunds, which could flow either to the state treasury or to financially strapped utilities".
  And let's not forget that the main reason that many of the producers were charging so much: They knew that they probably would not be paid, a fear which turned into reality. The second reason they charged so much was that California refused to rescind the emission fines which many plants had slapped on them when running more than their alloted hours.
The absence of action at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission...The languid pace of work on the refund issue... As we FReepers who have been following this dog and pony show for two years now know, FERC has been waiting on voluntary talks between producers and the state on these contracts. It's a legal principle called "exhausting all administrative avenues" before going to court. Mark Sherman invokes this principle himself in the next paragraph.
Undeterred, FERC has even sued the ISO in federal court, an aggressive move by an agency that typically first exhausts administrative options. Agressive move? FERC put California on notice in December, 2000, that it's Cal-ISO was not independent under FERC regulations. Was 18 months not enough time for Davis to correct the problem? Oh, I forgot, he was too busy fundraising and demonizing the "energy pirates from Houston" to worry about insuring the energy future of his state.
Enron and other energy companies that sought quick, large profits in California's flawed deregulated electricity market. Let's recall that Davis himself admitted that Enron never supplied more than 4% of California's energy needs at the peak of the shortage. But of course Enron makes a fine scapegoat for petty dictators like Davis.

I now hope that Davis wins re-election, as he probably will. Perhaps in two more years when the chickens he has hatched come home to roost, the people of California will hang him by ankles from a lampost like they did his mentor.

Very biased!

However, some interesting stuff as well

"I look forward to the end of the political season when the old Gov. Davis I first got to know a year ago comes back," Wood said recently.

Davis and other California officials maintain the state is due $8.9 billion because of overcharges at the height of the crisis in 2000 and 2001. A FERC administrative law judge has for the past year been considering how to calculate the refunds.

"I'm outraged they are sitting on our valid claims in front of them," said Loretta Lynch, president of the California Public Utilities Commission.

OK, so Wood is saying that Davis is just politicing and not serious and that there is no chance of a refund before the election. Take that Davis!

Lynch of th PUC is outraged that FERC hasn't acted quicker. Let's see the last time we closely examined things, it showed that California owed the power generating companies more than valid refund claim amounts, so why is Lynch complaining? I know, politics.

While biased, the article does point out that this is all about politics, if one reads closely. I wish the newspaper reporters would stop being tangential and print that Davis is just trying to use the issue for political purposes and is likely not serious.

As to your on-line bribe link, I clicked on it and was stunned. Davis is taking on-line credit card contributions with messages to the Governor. I suppose that he saw how much money Clinton could raise and decided he too wanted to run for president so he could rent out the Lincoln bedroom, sell seats on foreign trade missions, and a host of other things that Clinton brought to the forefront.