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Does anyone remember when I and other Californians complained bitterly about some prices Texas energy concerns were charging our state for energy last year? There was a lot of California bashing going on, something to the effect that we couldn'g get our house in order. We maintained that part of the reason we couldn't get our house in order was because of companies like... well, folks can figure that out.

Yes Governor Davis took big money from Enron. Yes some of us were pretty angry that he was facilitating some huge energy purchases from Texas concerns at ten times the normal costs. When we made our feelings known, we told that we shouldn't raise the issue.

Well, I guess we should have raised the issue after all. And Governor Davis was as big a jerk as we were trying to say he was. That's the rest of the story.

Don't be too quick to adopt knee-jerk reactions folks. This was a Texas corporation manipulating the market. It wasn't the state of Texas' fault. And we weren't trying to say that at all.

There have been numerous Federal investigations into manipulation and price gouging, all to no avail...no smoking gun. The situation was an improperly deregulateed market caught in a supply/demand squeeze. Little supply, big demand = high prices in a sellers market.

Collapsed prices of natural gas have temporarily eased that problem. If the economy turns around, power plant building remains stalled or slowed, no north to south power distribution network get completed, you're looking at another winter 2000 situation.

IMHO complete deregulation would go a long way to alleviate that situation; wholesale users as well as individual. NE markets around PA did not see the same price spike precisely because they were totally deregulated.

I seem to recall that when the records of the energy costs were released (which Gov. Gray Davis fought an unsuccessful battle in courts to prevent the release) .. . it turned out that local "PUBLIC" power companies like Los Angeles Power & Light were charging MORE for the sale of their excess power than any private company was. Seems that there was extreme "profiteering" within California that has been ignored, because the companies doing the gouging are local government owned power companies.

Seems that blaming ENRON for excessive power costs in CA must be judged AFTER looking at what OTHER power companies were charging (including the local Muni's!!!)

Mike