Doug,
Gov. Davis was caught between a rock and a hard place. If I were in his shoes (a role I'll never be elected to) I would have expropriated the entire electrical generating industry and told the power marketers to go shove it up their you know what. But Davis, in a very Solomonic fashion, tried to balance the interests of the public with that of business. It is because Davis was so obliging to business that they raped California and stole the surplus. This was not Davis' fault. He inherited a mortally flawed scheme, AB 1890, that Gov. Wilson and his ilk foisted upon the state. Don't you see where blame ought to be place in the origination of the flawed scheme? With the utility company lawyers who bamboozled Steve Peace, with all the lobbyist logrolling and Wilson's complicity in screwing the little guy on behalf of the fat cat corporate skybox crowd who see the public as a sucker to be conned. They did exactly that with AB 1890. And as you might recall, the public advocacy groups were strictly excluded from any input during the midnight markup of that bill.
How you can blame any of this on Davis blows my mind. He was simply doing the best he could with an outrageous situation created by the very monsters who collected all the money.
In simplest terms, Doug, if you look at these deals, you follow the money. Davis collects $30 Miillion, while California's power bill goes from $7 Billion in 1999 to a combined $54 Billion in 2000 and 2001. You do the math, please. Who's ripping off California? It sure isn't the governor. Anyone but a blind fool partisan can see that.
-Ray |
