aspasia wrote:
On Thu, 16 Nov 2006 11:47:18 -0600, "HeyBub"
wrote:

aspasia wrote:

*(Utilities have always been high in So.Calif. But special thanks
must go to Bush's Enron and other energy crook friends who were
caught on tape joking about shafting "Grandma Millie"" during the
artificial energy crisis in Calif a few years ago that was
engineered right out of the White House for the benefit of its
great friends and contributors. Suddenly plants were taken off
line for "maintenance" -- hmmm...what a coincidence. Law of supply
and demand kicks in. Also anybody can check out the precipitous
drop in natural gas rates when El Paso's monopoly ended.)

The White House did not pass laws in California regulating power
generation prices nor did the White House lock in elevated rates on
the futures market. Nor did the White House prevent energy companies
from building new power plants in the state.

You can't blame the energy companies when California bent over and
said "Screw me!"

P.T. Barnum said: "Never let a sucker keep his money." It's the
American way.

Wake up and smell the coffee! Nowhere did I say that the Bushies
overtly planned the Calif. debacle,

Yes you did. You said: "... artificial energy crisis... engineered out of
the white house for the benefit of its great friends..."

but their tentacles certainly
reached into Enron (remember the late, unlamented Ken Lay - is he
really dead, BTW, or sipping margharitas somewhere while his
family enjoys the wealth that would have gone to his victims).

Radical Republican tentacles also into El Paso natural gas.
Did you carefully NOT notice that the price dropped like a stone
when their monopoly ended? And on and on.

You misunderstand. George Bush has zip to do with oil companies. Nada. Then
consider Haliburton: Haliburton does not look for oil, drill for oil,
transport oil, refine oil, or have any market at all in oil.

Now George's dad (Bush 41) came to Texas after WW2 and, with only a few
million in his jeans, and did manage to make it big in the 'oil bidness.'
That's what you did in Texas in the late '40s! You sure as **** didn't try
to corner the market on cheese.

El Paso Natural Gas was a federally and state regulated utility. The
regulatory agencies, overseen by elected politicians, are responsible for
setting the prices - or determining the mechanisms by which prices are
established. El Paso didn't make the rules; don't blame them for playing by
them.



Do you think that Cheney will now be forced by the new majority to
release those top-secret notes on his meetings with the energy barons
-- who, everybody knows, wrote the legislation that the pussies in
Congress allowed to become law -- for the SOLE benefit of Big Energy
and screw the environment our children will have to live in.

No, I don't think Cheney will be forced to disclose anything about his
meetings. If the consequences of engery action results in screwing the
environment, well I might be for that, depending on the other outcomes.
Saving the 'environment' is not a suicide pact.


Do you have a glimmer of doubt that the K Street lobbyists WRITE the
damn legislation on this and other money-makers for Corporate America?

Virtually ALL laws are written by lobbyists. Always have been. Do you want
tariffs on hydrogenated yak-fat decided by someone who doesn't even know
what yak-fat is?


California certainly did NOT perform the anatomical act you describe
above.

Well, I know. I was being metaphorical.

We consumers were NOT damaged by Gray Davis, who himself
was the victim of rampant Republican criminality and mud-slinging

Who mentioned Gray Davis?

(What a laugh when they smeared him for fund-raising -- did you happen
to notice that is *Arnold's* main occupation?)

Fund raising is the avocation of all politicians. It's how you do it that
matters.


It was the *energy companies* that artificially boosted the price in
Calif -- and heartlessly laughed about it in their phone conversations
and emails. Did you happen to notice above where they took plants
off-line for (sudden!) maintenance, so the price would shoot up and
we'd have blackouts?

You simply do not understand that state mandated regulations always result
in the consumer getting screwed. Private, free-market enterprises, even if
they are monopolies, almost always result in lower prices. The arch-villain,
John D. Rockefeller, managed to lower the price of Kerosene from
$3.00/gallon to less than five cents. In three years. Of course this put the
whale-oil people out of business and, had there been sufficient regulatory
agencies to protect whalers back then, we'd probably still be reading by
candles and oil lamps.


If you're not familiar with the screwing that we consumers took out
here, better study up before you pontificate!

I am familiar. The screwing was mainly self-inflicted. You STILL have the
highest gasoline and electric rates in the nation. But, with a Republican
governor, you're not still in the dark.

Meanwhile, you have hydroelectric plants that buy power at night to run
pumps to move the water back UP into the reservoirs so they'll have
something to drive the generators during the day.