Calif.'s Davis Lacked Legal Ability to Solve Energy Crisis

[cthrumatrix]

Calif.'s Davis Lacked Legal Ability to Solve Energy Crisis
Meltdown May Have Generated a Political Power Failure
By Peter Behr
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 24, 2003; Page A04

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37482-2003Aug23.html

snip..
"It took another year before Davis could say "I told you so" about the energy companies. The disclosure of Enron Corp.'s "Death Star" memos in May 2001 exposed strategies that Enron and others used to manipulate power prices and reap profits from the crisis. "The price gouging abounded," FERC Commissioner William L. Massey concluded.

Joskow and some other experts calculate that about one-third of California's increased electricity prices was because of generators' market power that enabled them to charge excessive prices. But three years after the crisis started, FERC is still investigating possible violations of state regulations forbidding manipulation by power suppliers. Courts and regulators have not settled how much of the price escalation broke laws or regulations, and how much was permitted under California's rules.

Davis and his supporters can only wonder how it might have been if FERC had imposed price caps in 2000 and if aggressive investigators had smoked out the Death Star memos earlier.

"People said, he should have acted sooner. I don't get it," said Davis ally Michael Kahn, a San Francisco attorney who heads the state's independent power grid. "He believed in government. He believed in regulators. He believed that responsible people would respond to the problem. The only significant thing maybe we failed at was recognizing in the summer of 2000 we were getting by FERC," he added"

more...

A good read...not sure what more he could have done.

[The Backlash Cometh]

1. How can you trust government to regulate anything,

when they're appointing in high positions in government agencies, people who are anti-regulators?

[Gman]

2. A very good read and everyone should read the entire article

This is what has been completely buried by the right wing in not only the recall effort, but the entire energy fiasco going back to 2001. The energy companies aided by the GOP directly caused the CA energy "crisis" through outright manipulation and fraud while and at the same time, making Davis and environmentalists the scapegoats. Davis has the facts as well as the evidence (Death Star) on his side. This article describes exactly why Davis should NOT be recalled. I've no doubt the entire energy fiasco in CA that started in 2000 was a large part of the strategy to beat Davis in 2002. But, largely because the GOP nominated a right wing nut that had a gift for screwing up every time he opened his mouth, the GOP didn't beat Davis last year. Being the modern GOP (a.k.a. the lunatic right wing), and as such not being able to accept the results of legal elections, the GOP started the recall.

Just a Texan's observations.

[robbedvoter]

3. Blame Clinton, Dems for it + deceiving headline - WP delivers

even when a little truth is let in, it has to be blamed on Clinton! Well, I prefer jason Leopold's piece:

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0817-07.htm 
 
Published on Sunday, August 17, 2003 by CommonDreams.org

Ahnuld, Ken Lay, George Bush, Dick Cheney and Gray Davis

by Jason Leopold

Mebbe WP should be reminded that deregulation was not a Clinton idea, but Poppy's, Pete Wilson's and every GOP-er who had something to do with that (Pataki in NY).

[realFedUp]

4. amen

People in CA know this, they just need reminding of
the facts, not the spin.

[Classical_Liberal]

5. Davis had the ability to solve the energy crisis and didn't.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16641

But Davis was the sitting lieutenant governor when deregulation was adopted in 1996 and there's no record of as much as a contrary hiccup coming from him at the time. Indeed, two years later when consumer-backed Prop. 9 aimed at reversing much of the deregulation fiasco, Gray Davis, allied with the utility monopolies, signed the ballot statement opposing the measure.

Once the power shortage hit in late 2000, Davis as governor was irresponsibly slow to respond, no doubt distracted by his voracious fund-raising. He threatened to seize the power grid, but that bold position soon melted into conciliation with the energy behemoths, at one point Davis employing the same spinmeisters that that were in the pay of Edison. Remember Lehane and Fabiani?

The result? Weighing down the state with over-priced long-term energy contracts, Davis thereby contributed maybe as much as $10 billion to the deficit black hole.

[Undemcided]

7. more here

How can someone tell if the politician is engaging in this blame-shifting strategy? Look for hypocrisy. Is the politician asking someone to do something that politician is not willing to do? For instance, did you know that government-run electricity providers, the so-called municipal utility districts, sold their excess electricity into the state’s grid at prices double that of the so-called gougers from Texas? In fact, the Texas guys only sold California about $100 million worth of power since January. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) sold us $331 million of power. On average, the price LADWP sold its electricity was $100 per megawatt more than the Texas guys were charging. LADWP is in California. Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) charged the state almost double the cost of the Texas guys, a total of $90 million worth of power. The average LADWP rate for wholesale electricity to the state of California was $292 per megawatt. SMUD charged $338 per megawatt. Enron, described by Governor Gray Davis as the “gouger” in chief, charged the state an average of $181 per megawatt. Davis could order LADWP and SMUD to return that excess money right now. He has not.

Government Does It Again
http://www.caltax.org/member/digest/oct2001/10.2001.Haynes-EnergyCrisis.06.htm

[chaumont58]

6. The headline for article has wrong adjective

I read the article and think the headline should have said Davis lacked the 'authority.' Good ole wapo. They use the word 'ability' and it remains Davis's fault. "He just wasn't smart enough!"

[VolcanoJen]

8. Dupe... locking

Please continue discussion by posting in the original, earliest LBN thread on this topic, which can be found here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=80651

Thanks!
VolcanoJen
DU Moderator