from archives: Electicity blackmailers put Arnold in office

[yurbud]

electric blackmail > deficit >blame Davis >recall >elect Arnold > Arnold protects them from lawsuits (and helps in just about any other way he can).

At the beginning of that chain is Republican patron energy companies including Enron. Ken Lay came out to meet with various players during the blackouts, including Arnold. Gray Davis asked Bush to have regulators intervene, and Bush flew out to personally tell him to fuck off.

I mention this because somehow Arnold is ahead in the polls through a combination of feigning a conversion to more liberal policies and keeping a low profile otherwise (and the press treating his opponent like page 17 news on most days).

If you remember the first year or so Arnold was governor and the devastation he did to our education system, I have no doubt that the long knives will come out again if he gets re-elected, and this time, since he doesn't have to worry about future elections, that knife will keep cutting until we are all pork chops and pot roasts in the GOP butcher shop display case.

WHEN AHNOLD GOT LAY’D

From Armed Madhouse,Greg Palast’s

Peninsula Hotel, Beverly Hills. May 17, 2001. The Financial Criminal of the twentieth century, not long out of prison, meets with the Financial Criminal of the twenty-first century who feared he may also have to do hard time. These two, bond-market manipulator Mike Milken and Ken Lay, not-yet-indicted Chairman of Enron Corporation, were joined by a selected group of movers and shakers — and one movie star.

<snip>

Lay, who convened the hugger-mugger, was in a bit of trouble. Enron and the small oligopoly of other companies that ruled California’s electricity system had been caught jacking up the price of power and gas by fraud, conspiracy and manipulation. A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon it was real money - $6.3 billion in suspect windfalls in just six months, May through December 2000, for a half-dozen electricity buccaneers, at least $9 billion for the year. Their skim would have been higher but the tricksters thought they were limited by the number of digits the state’s power-buying computers could read.

When Ken met Arnold in the hotel room, the games were far from over. For example , in June 2003, Reliant Corporation of Houston simply turned off several power plants, and when California cities faced going dark, the company sold them a pittance of kilowatts for more than gold, making several million in minutes.

Power-market shenanigans were nothing new in 2000. What was new was the response of Governor Gray Davis. A normally quiet, if not dull, man, this Governor had the temerity to call the energy sellers “pirates” — in public! — and, even more radically, he asked them to give back all the ill-gotten loot, the entire $9 billion. The state filed a regulatory complaint with the federal government.

The Peninsula Hotel get-together was all about how to “settle” the legal actions in such a way that Enron and friends could get the state to accept dog food instead of dollars. Davis seemed unlikely to see things Ken’s way. Life would be so much better if California had a governor like the muscle guy in the Speedos.

And so it came to pass that, in 2003, quiet Gray Davis, who had the cojones to stand up to the electricity barons, was thrown out of office by the voters and replaced by the tinker-toy tough guy. The Governator performed as desired. Soon after Schwarzenegger took over from Davis, he signed off on a series of deals with Reliant, Williams Company, Dynegy, Entergy and the other power pirates for ten to twenty cents on the dollar, less than you’d tip the waitress. Enron paid just about nothing.

http://www.gregpalast.com/lay-convicted-bush-walks