Some of my current thoughts on the deteriorating state of the US energy sector - in today's Guardian. Comments most welcome. Nomi
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Great article, except... the FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) might have been couched by DoE Secretary Spencer Abraham (probably with the help of VP Cheney and Enron CEO Kenneth Lay) to enforce the contracts in spring 2001, knowing full well they would bankrupt the California State budget. The purpose was no doubt two fold. First, it was a last ditch effort to save Enron, Dynergy, et al. which de-constructed barely three months later during the summer 2001, and second, it served the political purpose of giving California Republicans political leverage against Gray Davis in an election year. It didn't work in that particular election since Davis won in 2002. But it is working now under the rightwing Darrel Issa funded recall initiative barely a year later---since the state's budget is still crashing bigger than ever. Not that Davis didn't also help by shooting himself in the foot with his own neoliberal equivocation over state authority to buy the de-regulated power plants.
You probably couldn't prove the above without access to the `secret' meetings between Cheney, Abraham, and Texas energy tycoons during spring 2001, which were withheld from the Congressional investigating committees under the pretext of `executive privilege'---which means `collusion and conspiracy to defraud' in Washington-speak. But it would have been nice to mention.
You could have also smeared the FERC members with their own biographies. They might not have actually needed Cheney, Abraham and Lay for couches, except on the details and political ramifications.
For example, there is FERC chairman aka Corporate Slimebag Pat (Patsey) Wood who comes from guess where? Well, Texas, of course. According to his bio, he was in charge of the state's telecommunications and electric power industries----Duh (most of the toxic plants moved just across the border? Maybe not since Houston is the most air polluted city in the US). He has a civil engineering degree and a law degree (better to manipulate energy regulatory boards for corporate fun and profit). He worked in private industry, guess what industry(?). Arco of Indonesia, a not doubt sterling firm. And there is Vampira Nora Mead Browell, yet another privitizing for fun and profit scum, `a leader in the administration of Pennsylvania's Electric Choice Consumer Education Program.' This is most likely another wing of Tom DeLay's front organization with a very similar name, that lobbied the California legislature to de-regulate under then governor `Pete' (face looks like an asshole) Wilson. Ms. Brown-out has also been active in de-regulating telecomm and water. And, lest I sound too `partisan' there is that Clintonite, Bill butt-face Massey who presided over the founding de-regulatory schemes under Clinton---held over by popular acclaim from industry, no doubt. He was also a legal-beagle for the energy industry before taking the revolving door into government de-regulation via his Arkansas connection as counsel to Dale Bumpers, Ark(D).
Well, we knew all that, right?
Biographies like these, which openly proclaim their achievements in industry collusion and conspiracies, makes it hard to find better words to fault them. It is as if wholesale corporate crime was a job requirement for industry regulators. I guess de-regulation means, de-criminalizing corporate conspiracies to de-fraud the public interest. These so-called regulators make the 19thC Robber Barons look like a bunch of conscientious Cub Scouts holding their tee-tees.
It was a good article. It's just that the realpolitik background is so utterly broad and sweeping in its rot and corruption that it's hard to find anything more outrageous to say. The sheer scale of the swindles and frauds is simply awe inspiring. Fucking trillions wasted for nothing.
What is really needed is a big long detailed book that lays out what amounts to a multi-national US corporate-government effort to turn the entire construction of `public utilities' ,`public interest', `public commons' inside out. I have nothing but intitution to back this up, but I suspect the entire 90s economic boom was composed of nothing but these vast swindles and frauds in telecom, bio-tech-healthcare, utilities, and energy. Nothing was produced or created, except endless variations on archane legalistically fabricated fees and rents for `access' to already existing infrastructures, or development of completely unneeded duplications.
Tell me your forthcoming book `Money for Nothing' covers at least some of this.
Chuck Grimes