It's really difficult not to politicize this trainwreck. The whole phony energy dereg that the CA Legislature set up (originally under Gov. Wilson, then screwed up even more under Davis) caused the problem. When power supply got short and prices went up, CA made laws preventing energy producers from passing on increased costs to consumers.
CA further botched the situation by charging inexperienced, incompetent state workers to go out and buy power in a dog eat dog type market situation. They got fleeced, no surprise.
Davis and his foray into the power trading business were a disaster of monumental proportions. Now he seeks to blame others for his own ineptitude and get back any way possible (propoganda, lawsuits, etc.) some of the taxpayer's $$$ that he squandered in his panic-driven foray into the power trading business (which, by the way, he initially congratulated himself for--"I kept the lights on", he proudly claimed about the same deals he's now demonizing Enron and others for partaking in.
If that's not political, I don't know what is. Davis and the CA Legislature, by their socialistic meddling in the free market, have created a huge financial debacle that will plague the state for decades to come. If he's re-elected, the meddling and the financial disaster will go on. I fully expect CA to require a federal bailout in the future to avoid bankruptcy.
Thank goodness Simon is pointing this out.
The Cali Media is not doing much to get his message out though!
But that is not a big surprise!
"CA made laws preventing energy producers from passing on increased costs to consumers."
It was the CPUC who did that, not the legislature. The utilities petitioned for an emergency rate increase [December, 2000, I think] when all this began to unfold, and Loretta Lynch shunned them.
(For the record, Loretta Lynch quit her job in 1992 and moved to Arkansas to work on clinton's election campaign. This should tell us all exactly where she stands.)
I would like to remind everyone that as I see it, this whole Enron media circus is just an attempt to divert attention from the impending bankruptcy of California. The state will be officially bankrupt later this month, or early next. Employee paychecks will start to bounce. Davis will need someone to blame that on, now won't they? Guess who?
Clinton went so far as to bomb an innocent aspirin factory and some goat pens to divert attention from "The Blue Dress".
Should we be surprised that Davis is trying the same technique in his own clumsy and impotent way?