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Politics : Impeach George W. Bush -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (2144)	4/3/2001 12:14:30 AM
From: portage	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93284

Pete Wilson and the Republican oriented power generators and utilities were the ones who thrust this energy debacle on California, and the Legislature was stupid enough to go along with it. Then the utilities/generators pulled some manuevers to prevent more plants from being built in the mid 90s (by successfully lobbying FERC to prevent more from being built because of the "surplus" of production, and supposedly blocking the building of a new natural gas line, once they realized how they could scam the state under dereg. - then turn around and blame it all on the "environmentalists"). Davis had very little to do with getting into this mess, though his late response was less than sufficient - but nobody else dealing with this problem now has any better ideas that they've brought forward. Idiot Wilson still says it was a good idea (CA should apply for natural disaster aide to cope with the aftermath of that buffoon's disasterous term). Short term price caps - that are higher than other parts of the country but not at these rapacious 500%-1000% markups - make sense, if supported by a punitive tiered structure that rewards conservation and discourages excess usage. Without caps, supply will be the same, but the drain on California's economy will spiral outward. Davis will no doubt take a big hit, but it will probably nail Bush even worse as the ripple effects tank the national economy he's supposed to be overseeing. There's no doubt that there was price gaming - CA has a capacity of about 45,000 mw at peak, and all winter long the demand was only around 29-30k mw. The pattern was that there were always just a few more plants down than needed to keep the supply below this 30k mw threshold. Followed by severe gouging on the spot market with the implied threat of blackouts. This would not have been allowed under a regulated system this winter, but now the PUC has little control over the rogue generators who come in to screw the residents. This summer will be a different animal, as real shortages occur, not just manipulated ones, but which I'm sure the generators will try to compound with additional supply gaming tricks. It may get ugly for all involved. The whole transmission system is not optimized to move electrons around freely according to market forces - it was designed for a more stable regulated system. There are lots of bottlenecks. This problem will repeat itself in other parts of the US that deregulate if they don't redesign both their generating capacity and their transmission facilities. FERC is completely negligent in its handling of the issue. Totally in the back pocket of the energy boys. Impeach clownboy !