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

To: Gordon A. Langston who wrote (372230)	3/17/2003 12:31:39 AM
From: Kevin Rose	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

Yup, and Nero fiddled while Rome burned: nctimes.net WASHINGTON ---- As the Bush administration resisted calls from Democratic Gov. Gray Davis for electricity price caps during last year's energy crisis, top officials met with past or future Davis foes and key White House political operatives. Administration documents released by a court order showed that administration officials kept a close eye on soaring energy prices and intermittent power blackouts in California. At least two of the meetings included Karl Rove and Mary Matalin, the top political advisers to President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, respectively. Records show that Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham participated in at least 19 meetings during his first five months on the job, including at least seven during the first three weeks of his tenure. While Abraham didn't meet with Davis until late February, he huddled with Republican Secretary of State Bill Jones and former Northwest Airlines executive Al Checchi before then, records show. Jones unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for governor in last month's primary, while Davis had beaten Checchi in the 1998 Democratic primary. Abraham and Checchi knew each other from when Abraham represented Michigan in the Senate and Checchi was at Northwest, which has a hub in Detroit, Abraham spokeswoman Jill Schroeder said. Checchi had criticized Davis in newspaper opinion pieces at the time. In a brief interview, he said he asked to meet with Abraham to "put my 2 cents in" on the energy issue. Abraham, Cheney and other top administration officials repeatedly and publicly criticized Davis for his handling of the situation. Cheney called the state's power purchases ---- begun by Davis when investor-owned utilities tottered on the edge of bankruptcy ---- a "harebrained" scheme. Republicans also began a multimillion-dollar television advertising campaign ---- paid for in part by power-generating companies ---- trying to blame the governor for the crisis. At the time, Davis was viewed as a potential rival to President Bush in the 2004 presidential election and California had for the third consecutive presidential election gone solidly for the Democratic candidate. In late April, shortly before Abraham traveled to California, Joseph Kelliher, a senior policy adviser, asked other staff members to research Davis' assertions that conservation was helping the state through the energy crisis. Referring to a press release on the governor's Web site, Kelliher asked, "Can we assess the accuracy of his claims of conservation?" Kelliher asked. It's not surprising the administration worried about the politics of the California energy crisis, said Davis spokesman Steve Maviglio. "The administration was openly hostile to price caps much of the winter and spring. And they were harshly critical of the governor's decision to get the state in the business of buying power." Leon Panetta, former California congressman and chief of staff in the Clinton White House, said he believes the new administration had already decided "they were going to hang California out there. It would be an example to the rest of the country what not to do. It would show the liberals that they better build new power plants or suffer the consequences." Contrary to showing a lack of concern about California, Schroeder said, the frequent meetings demonstrated that "this was an immediate priority." However, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said she's "convinced that politics played an enormous role in this. "This was the period we were going through our worst troubles and FERC had already found that prices were unjust and unreasonable," said Boxer, who pushed for price caps and a federal investigation of electricity prices. "But the administration did not act." Bush and Abraham made separate visits to the state in May, touting an executive order to reduce electricity use in federal facilities, but remaining firm in their opposition to capping the price of electricity ---- a move fiercely opposed by energy companies. In early June, the administration convened what it called a "California message meeting." The participants included Abraham, Matalin, Rove, Lawrence Lindsey, Bush's chief economic adviser, Nicholas Calio, the administration's chief congressional lobbyist, presidential counselor Karen Hughes and press secretary Ari Fleischer. The following week, Cheney went to the Capitol, where he held a long-requested meeting with California's congressional delegation. The message was the same: Expect no help from the administration on energy costs. California had been "blown off" by Cheney, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Los Angeles said after the meeting. By this time, even some Republicans in California were pleading with the administration for help. Less than two weeks later, two Bush appointees to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission voted to impose limits on what energy generators could charge for spot purchases of electricity in California and other Western states, although they did not call that decision price caps.