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To: flatsville who wrote (97114)	4/21/2001 7:38:44 PM
From: portage	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

Hi, flats - you know all the cheap shots we take here, just had to get in one of my own. I did spend plenty of time in the midsection, and let's just say I like it where I am now - and was lucky enough to get here before affordability became an oxymoron. As for our old pals the energy barons, believe me, there's more widespread awareness of it here now than a few months ago. I've tried to hold back on the rants, but in a nutshell, I think the FERC is criminally negligent in hewing to their strict ideology. W. and his pals may soon find out that running a country is not the same thing as running a corporation. Even the repubs here are starting to line up to call for reasonable short term regulatory action. People here would be more than willing to pay higher than normal rates if short term caps were in place - which ensured the producers a price as good as they could get anywhere else outside of this spot market system. Hebert and crew want nothing to do with that so far. The maximum supply is fixed anyway until new plants come online, so their argument about caps not providing any additional supply is bogus, and it's unlikely high prices will enable great additional savings in conserving - we've already hit about 10% more on that, and there are limits. The worst impact will be on small businesses that have a high percentage of their cost in energy. You really have a system here that was essentially changed by big business for big business, then one clever part of that cartel decides to screw the rest. Somehow Pete Wilson and the mid-90s legislature conducted this experiment without the citizens really even aware of what was going down. Rates that go up over 1000% in a couple of years for a basic necessity, and have no reasonable relationship to the cost of production will cause an explosion if they are able to pass them through. Especially given the manipulation that enables this crap to happen. The next million man march may be Californians descending on D.C. After months of following this, I still have no clue how it will end up. We're conserving, and building plants as fast as we can though, but seem to get no quarter anyway. Rates are going up 50% next month, and a tiered system goes into place on the heavy users to encourage more conservation - but blackouts are still inevitable, they're saying. More fun, as if we didn't know already : latimes.com