In article <bik57l$6ka$1@pencil.math.missouri.edu>, STRIDER says...

From: NonukesHW@aol.com
Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2003 02:51:11 EDT
Subject: FORGET ARNOLD, GRILL WILSON

FORGET ARNOLD, "BLACKOUT PETE" WILSON IS THE ELECTRIC TERMINATOR

By Harvey Wasserman

www.freepress.org

The California media has been whining that Pete Wilson, Arnold's 
chief press flak, won't let them ask Schwarzenegger any direct 
questions.

But in the wake of the big northeast blackout, they're missing the 
boat---it's "Blackout Pete" they should be grilling.  If the policies 
he enacted as governor of California are any indicator, the 
Terminator will be destroying a lot more than just the Golden State 
grid.

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.

Wilson's big idea then was to cut the utilities loose from the 90 
years of public supervision that had kept prices and supply 
reasonably stable in California and most of the rest of the US. 
Regulation was not a perfect system.  But the regulatory checks and 
balances that had evolved from the early 1900s through the New Deal 
and the Carter 1970s formed a complex, sophisticated counterbalance 
to utility greed.

Wilson's AB1890 unanimously passed the California Assembly with 
virtually no public hearings or media debate.  The bill let Southern 
California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and other utilities force 
ratepayers to foot the bill for nearly $30 billion in bad capital 
investments, most of that from commercial reactors built near 
earthquake faults at the infamous San Onofre and Diablo Canyon sites. 

AB1890 was actually written in the offices of Southern California 
Edison by its president John Bryson.  Former chair of the state's 
Public Utilities Commission, Bryson had been strongly identified with 
California's powerful grassroots movement for solar power. 

But as the million-dollar-per-year chief of SoCalEd, Bryson killed a 
massive green plan for some 600 megawatts of solar, wind, biomass and 
other renewables. 

In 1978 Herb Gunther of San Francisco's Public Media Center, Harvey 
Rosenfeld and other consumer campaigners challenged the deregulation 
bill with a statewide referendum.  They predicted the utilities would 
take the bailout money and then play games with the California grid. 
Bryson and the other utility barons spent more than $40 million to 
protect their $30 billion subsidy.  They beat the repeal, 70-30, 

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. 

Rather than prosecuting John Bryson, the new Governor Gray Davis 
essentially groveled at his feet.  Faced with catastrophic shortages, 
Davis held endless private meetings with Bryson, practically begging 
for new power sources to keep the state's lights on, and then 
overpaying billions for whatever power he could get.  It's those 
meetings and those overpayments that most thoroughly anger those now 
demanding Davis's ouster.

But if Wilson and Bryson had not killed that 600 megawatt green power 
plan, the 2000-1 crisis could never have happened.  Wilson's AB1890 
has crippled California's budget.

Arnold's sound bites continue to focus on the "miracle of the 
marketplace" that has already cost California at least $100 billion. 
The media should directly demand answers from Blackout Pete about his 
utility deregulation fiasco, instead of begging to get it all 
rehashed by Arnold. 

Harvey Wasserman is author of THE LAST ENERGY WAR and senior editor 
of <>www.freepress.org .  He is co-author with Bob Fitrakis of THE 
SUPERPOWER OF PEACE, available from freepress.org in September. 

--
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