To: Daniel G. DeBusschere who wrote (138 ) 3/20/2001 4:48:20 PM From: Raymond Duray Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1715 I am a capitalist pig I admit it. Ahem, I hope you are a well connected one. Generally, the way these things work is that the the CEO, Chairman and BoD of corporations that enjoy windfalls are so pleased with each other that they laud not only praise, but stock options, perks, and innumerable other off-balance sheet rewards on each other, leaving the silly equity investor in a kind of second-class status after all is said and done. Do you see CPN (for example) as rewarding you, as a passive speculator any where near as well as those who run the firm taking care of each other? Re: Noone knows what these "amounts" are - they are a "secret" according to the "Gov" This reminds me of my meeting with the BPA representative two Fridays ago at our local electric co-op annual meeting. I asked him about several rate issues and sought out better information on the BPA website. He told me point blank that a lot of the information I sought was not publicly disclosed since BPA is a power marketer and needs to keep certain information from the market. This is precisely what I hope my public officials to tell me. <w> That for my own sake, I need to treated like a mushroom. I.e. kept in the dark and fed a lot of horse____. His specific recommedation was that I go to the BPA website and access the "Transmission" page. He then said the most up to date information is on the OASIS page:transmission.bpa.gov When I tried to access the latest, I got a page that was dated 9/13/00 and when I tried to further utilize the site, it crashed. Very useful. Re: CPN and the LA Dept of Water and Power who are "surprise surprise" getting the top "amount" from the DNR a real example of a capitalist Public Power Authority - I love this sometime - isn't it great!! Aside from all the folks who are likely to be bankrupted by this, cf.: pbs.org and the thousands who will lose their jobs throughout the California economy because of this price gouging, yeah, I guess it is pretty funny. In the venal sense of laughing at how vulgar human grasping and greed is, when you get right down to brass tacks. And in this case, brass knuckles. Humor of a rather sardonic nature, wouldn't you say? CPN could end up with the entire CA market - whatever's left of it. As conserving Californios are proud to say, they are 49th out of 50 states in the per capita use of electrical energy. Soon, 50th will be in your grasp! Best, Ray :)