Volume 12, Issue 12. July 2, 2001 - July 16, 2001.

The Electric Slide Peter Schrag

Late this spring, while hardly anyone was paying attention, the epicenter of the California energy crisis moved east. For a year, the focus had been on the state's misbegotten deregulation scheme and on Democratic Governor Gray Davis's dithering response to the mess it created. But in the past couple of months, there's been a seismic shift in emphasis and onus: to the out-of-state generators, marketers, and pipeline companies that have made exorbitant profits off the crisis; to the do-next-to-nothing Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) that's failed to cap runaway wholesale prices despite the commission's own finding that rates have not been "just and reasonable," as federal law requires; and to the Bush administration, which has insisted for months that the problem is California's. The state will still have a long, hot summer, but a lot of people outside California will start feeling the heat.

Davis has been talking about energy company "profiteers" and "pirates" ever since January. But although he recently hired (at $30,000 a month) Mark Fabiani and Chris Lehane, a couple of heavy media hitters from Al Gore's presidential election campaign, this shift wasn't just the governor's doing. Vice President Dick Cheney's drill-and-burn energy plan certainly contributed, as did the Bush administration's monumental political clumsiness. When the president agreed to a "summit" with Davis late in May--a summit with a governor?--he inadvertently gave Davis a chance to grab media exposure on the Sunday talk shows, on Larry King Live, and in The Washington Post and The New York Times.

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-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), June 16, 2001

Answers

The names have changed, otherwise this pile of malarkey is no different than the many conspiracy theories I read about in the 1970s energy crisis. All went nowhere, led to nothing.

Why is it, when things go wrong, someone always comes up with conspiracy theories as its cause? The energy industry is so highly competitive, with every competitior hating his counterpart's guts, that conspiracy theories just don't wash.

Oh, well, in our litigious society, we will go round and round for awhile, yes, once again, before we discover we are running up against a brick wall at the end of a blind alley.

-- Wellesley (wellesley@freeport.net), June 17, 2001.

A close friend, an energy industry executive, tells me that all this conspiracy theory talk going around lately is a laughing stock. He says that execs in this field would rather slit each other's throats to get business than cooperate with each other--in any way, shape or form.

The only reason I can see for all this hype is political advantage. Certainly, no serious solution to the problem is being pursued through this means.

-- Uncle Fred (dogboy45@bigfoot.com), June 17, 2001.

Why is so much time and effort spent on this if there is nothing to it?

-- Polly-Anna (polly-anna@webster.net), June 17, 2001.

The political equation is simple. Blame=lost votes. Lost votes=lost elections. Lost elections=lost power. New leadership=common sense. Common sense=time to achieve. Time to achieve, to impatient voters=lost elections. Hence, a return to the tell-'em-what-they-want-to-hear politicians, which=election. Then the cycle is repeated, much to the detriment of all of us.

-- RogerT (rogerT@c-zone.net), June 17, 2001.