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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DavesM who wrote (18641)	5/24/2005 9:12:47 PM
From: SiouxPal	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 361371

Knowing what you know now if you could go back to the 2004 election who would you chose, Bush or Kerry?

To: DavesM who wrote (18641)	5/24/2005 9:25:57 PM
From: geode00	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 361371

There's deregulation and then there's crimminal activity. Deregulation, which is always shorthand for - we don't have a clue about American capitalism - doesn't open the entire industry to wholesale fraud. ======Severin Borenstein Director of the University of California Energy Institute and a professor of business at the Haas School of Business at California-Berkeley read more The FERC was supposed to be the referee on prices, right? The FERC is supposed to make sure that prices are just and reasonable in the wholesale electricity market. The FERC has not done its job. They, by and large, were uninterested in reviewing and carefully thinking about whether this market would work. And then when it became clear that it didn't work, even to FERC, who in November said the prices were not just and reasonable, their response was to say, "Yes, but we're not going to do anything about it." What's that all about? The [current] chairman of the FERC is a person who believes very deeply in markets, regardless of the facts. But the past chairman? The past chairman was also of that type. He seemed to not believe that the FERC really needed to worry about prices in these markets. Democrat or Republican? I don't think that that philosophy is strictly only associated with one party. There's no question that the Clinton administration would have liked to see more intervention and pressured FERC, but FERC is an independent regulatory agency. There's a limited amount that the president can do to pressure such an agency into specific actions. The president of the United States couldn't have influenced FERC by appointment, or by just in bully pulpit, concerning what was going on? There was a lot of pressure towards the end of the administration to do exactly that, and it wasn't very successful. So FERC took it upon themselves to stay out of the fray? They went further than staying out of the fray. They stayed out of the fray and they blocked attempts by the California Independent System Operator to control prices and to take actions that would have helped. What's the rationale behind that? I'm not a political scientist, and I'm not sure why these people act the way they do. The chairman of the FERC now is somebody who doesn't really understand economics and doesn't really understand how businesses operate. In many speeches very recently, he's said, "You have to just let the market work," which is of more religion than understanding of economics. In any market in the United States, we don't just "let the market work." Every market is regulated to some extent by antitrust laws, by health and safety laws, etc. The question is, how much intervention should there be? And that, when done right, is a careful policy question, and not one that can be addressed by campaign slogans. ... The FERC has a history of being a legal-oriented regulatory agency, where the legal process matters much more than good policymaking. They do have some economists on staff at the FERC, but they actually don't pay any attention to them. The decisions have been made by the commissioners who, by and large, have very little training and history in the energy business or in economics, and by high-ranking lawyers, who also don't seem to understand how markets work, which isn't very surprising. Up until very recently, most of what they regulated wasn't very market-oriented, so they didn't really understand markets and they, for the most part, didn't need to. In the electricity business, that was particularly true. ... The problem is we're now moving toward the market-oriented industry, and they still don't understand how markets work. So they make claims, for instance, like, "Price caps will discourage investments." Well, that's absolutely right. If price caps are set too low, they will discourage investments. But as any economist knows, there's a level at which they would discourage investment and price caps that are higher than that won't discourage investment, and actually can improve the operation of industry. So the FERC could have intervened and stopped this crisis from happening? The FERC could have intervened and certainly lessened the crisis. I think that, to completely avoid the problems ... we really needed to have a retail price increase in California as well, and we haven't seen that. And that's not the first jurisdiction. The first jurisdiction is at the wholesale level. We needed both of them acting rationally? That's right. The FERC has dropped the ball on the wholesale market, and the California Public Utilities Commission has dropped the ball on the retail market. ---------frontline

To: DavesM who wrote (18641)	5/24/2005 9:32:23 PM
From: geode00	Respond to of 361371

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush said Monday that California's electricity shortages should be solved "in California by Californians" as he convened a Cabinet task force to examine long-term energy policy. Bush said his administration will examine California's problems, but he offered little hope of federal help for the state. "The task force that is being assembled will not only deal with the very short-run issue dealing with the West, but, obviously, the longer-term issues that will be confronting our country for a while unless we're willing to act boldly and swiftly," Bush said. "Which we will do." California faced a 14th day with its electrical system at the highest level of alert, with rolling blackouts possible on short notice due to electrical scarcity. But fears that large numbers of Californians tuning into Sunday's NFL championship game would worsen the crisis never materialized. The panel Bush announced Monday will be led by Vice President Dick Cheney and include Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, Commerce Secretary Don Evans and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham. "We're very aware in this administration that the situation in California is beginning to affect neighboring states," he added. "Western governors came to see the vice president and they came to see me, as well. And they're deeply concerned about the situation spreading beyond the California borders, and so are we." California's problems have sparked some grumbling among other states in the Northwest, which are beginning to face problems of their own. A severe drought and heavy power consumption have drawn down rivers feeding hydroelectric dams that during a normal year would generate 75 percent of the region's power. Bush said "it's becoming very clear" that the country needs to develop new sources of energy, and the group that met Monday would explore ways of doing that. Seeking new sources of energy was a prominent part of Bush's campaign, which included a controversial plan to allow oil exploration in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Other proposals included developing alternative sources and coaxing U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf region and Latin America to provide reliable supplies. Since both Bush and Cheney have backgrounds in the oil industry, the proposals became the focus of criticism from the Democratic opposition. California's Independent System Operator, which manages most of the state power grid, said the state would remain under a Stage 3 emergency until midnight Monday. But ISO spokeswoman Lorie O'Donley said no blackouts would likely be necessary, and the system could get an additional 1,100 megawatts of power on Monday, when two units in Northern California come back on line. Meanwhile, state officials worked over the weekend to secure support for a two-pronged plan to relieve the shortages -- one that consumer advocates decried as a taxpayer bailout of the utility industry. Gov. Gray Davis and legislative leaders agreed Friday to take a share of ownership in the state's two largest utilities, which have teetered on the brink of financial collapse as deregulated wholesale electricity prices have soared. Under the state's 1996 deregulation law, the power companies' ability to pass those increases along to customers is limited. The utilities -- Pacific Gas and Electric and Southern California Edison -- have been left without sufficient credit to buy the electricity their customers need. The state would issue bonds to cover utility debts and make customers pay the money back over 10 years. In exchange, California would be granted long-term options to buy low-priced stock in the utilities. Critics target utility 'bailout' The state would hypothetically make its money back when the price of utility stocks goes up, then selling the stock and using the profits to help pay off the bonds. The second part of the proposal involves the state's move into the power-buying business. In an earlier measure, the state Legislature agreed to use $400 million of the state's surplus to purchase electricity for about one-fifth of what utilities must now pay; the state would then sell that power, at cost, to the utilities for statewide distribution. "The state will be in the power business for a long time to come," Davis said Friday. Davis spokesman Steve Meviglio called the plan a "win-win" solution, but many of those critical of California's deregulation process take a different view. "We're being asked to bail out the utility companies for billions of dollars, but they're not worth billions of dollars," said Doug Heller, spokesman for the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights. Groups like Heller's want the state to play hardball, demanding that the utilities transfer assets, including power lines and generators, to the state in return for the money. Last week, Bush extended an emergency order that required out-of-state companies to supply electricity and other energy to the state's power industry for two weeks, but aides said the president would not grant another extension. ================= This sounds just like the situation with gas prices today. It's doublespeak. Bush claims that he'll talk to producers about production one day yet it's the lack of refining capacity another day. Which is it? The California energy crisis was a problem of supply and demand - righto - with the supply being held back in order to falsely drive up prices.