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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Roger A. Babb who wrote (132743)	3/22/2001 2:14:54 PM
From: Kevin Rose	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 769667

"again the bureacrats could screw it up like California and we could be paying much more and suffering outages." Excellent point. Don't let your bureacrats screw things up like they did here in CA. Couple of myths I'd like to address that many outside of CA seem to subscribe to: 1) California is a blatant waster of power, and deserves what its getting. CA ranks 47th in per capita power consumption (that means that 46 states 'waste' more power than we do). CA has also reduced its year-over-year usage of power (5-10%), even though our economy has been booming and pop/business activity have grown. Most Califorians are doing whatever we can to further conserve; something driven home by the rolling blackouts. When my 10 year old daughter comes in to ask if she can turn on a light to read her school books (she was reading by a pen flashlight), I know that things are serious. 2) 'Liberal' CA politics are to blame. BS. It was Gov Wilson, a staunch Rep, who pushed this mess on us. Shame on our politicians, both Rep and Dem, for contorting it into the mess it is; as you said previously, a compromised 'partial deregulation' that has huge loopholes. 3) CA got into this mess by not allowing powerplants to be built. BS again. Who is the real 'villan' here? The power companies (to our politician 'village idiots'). The power companies have manipulated the system to get what they want; higher prices and profits and less regulation. How did they do it? Mysterious plant 'shutdowns' that sparked the first shortages, followed by reselling their own 'out of state' power back to CA at 10 to 20 times the regulated price. The shortages forced Gov Davis to rescind the restrictions on PG&E and Edison to buy power on the spot market, causing them to build up huge debt (and corresponding huge profits at Duke, Calpine, etc). PG&E and Edison ruined their credit, ran out of money, and stopped paying their suppliers. The smaller suppliers (the ones that this 'free deregulated' market was supposed to foster) shut down their plants from lack of payment; the larger ones further raised their prices. With Bush in office, the power companies have become very bold; they know that 'business-friendly Bush' will do nothing to stop the gouging. So, we are officially screwed. Right now, there is 6,000-10,000 mw of power plants sitting idle in CA because their smaller parent co. were not paid by PG&E and Edison. Building more power plants may have prevented the big power producers from screwing us, but maybe not. I won't even go into the whole mess of gas prices; we pay 2-3x what you do for natural gas; shortages that were in part to the previous low price of gas (and lack of exploration) but which were artifically inflated by out-of-state gas suppliers who 'hid' their supplies. Again, deregulation at its ugliest. Sorry for the long rant. Like I said, we're cooked; don't let it happen to you. And if you have a few spare kilowatts, take pity on your west coast neighbors and send it our way.