Heee's Baack!! Pete Wilson: CA's Electric Price Gouger-in-Chief

[farmbo]

Ah-nuld's campaign chief, former Governor Pete Wilson, gets the audacity award for suggesting that Governor Gray Davis is to blame for California's staggering budget deficits; largely derived from California's "Energy Crisis" of 2001, and the state's too-little-too-late attempt to dig itself out of an Enron-sized hole.

Wilson championed the "Enronization" of CA's electric utilities, resulting in a $60 billion shift of wealth from California consumers into the pockets of Cheney's energy buddies, who engineered "rolling blackouts" and sent the price of electricity spiraling through the stratosphere. California has yet to recover from the double whammy of Bush economic policies and Cheney energy policies.


Kudos to Harvey Wasserman of the Columbus Free Press

http://www.freepress.org/columns.php?strFunc=display&strID=736&strYear=2003&strAuthor=7

<snip>

Wilson was the Republican governor of California in 1996 when he made utility deregulation the centerpiece of his doomed campaign for president. Competition in the electric power business, said Wilson, would usher in a new age of lower prices. The "miracle of the marketplace" would mean better, cheaper, more reliable electricity from a host of competing suppliers.

Deregulation is also the centerpiece of Schwarzenegger's campaign for Wilson's old job. The Terminator isn't allowed to say much. But the few short sentences he does utter seem to have something to do with policies that would mirror what Wilson did when he set the utilities free.

Unfortunately, what Wilson did led directly to the staged rolling blackouts of 2000-1. As we now know, those blackouts were actually a form of blackmail used by Texas gas companies to rob California of more than $60 billion. Among the chief perpetrators were Kenny-Boy Lay of the now-bankrupt Enron (George W. Bush's number one campaign contributor) and James Baker, George H.W. Bush's Secretary of State, the man the GOP sent to Florida to finally fix the election of 2000.

<snip>

But in 2000, the Wilson-Bryson dereg plan blew up, as predicted. Enron and the other gas companies began "gaming" the market. By manipulating supply and shutting down key generators at crucial moments, they jacked up spot prices and walked away with some $60 billion
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[politicaholic]

1. Why can't they just stop and think for a second?

It defies logic to think that a method of replicating something that has been fundamentally flawed from it's conception is a good idea.

Schwarzenegger is not even qualified to be a good actor.

Plus he's was on camera smoking pot...ugh!...republican double standards!