Saturday, August 16, 2003

The "power elite" and the SCLM

Here are David M. Halbfinger and Katharine Q. Seelye of The Newspaper of Record (not!) on the power outage two years ago in California:

Two years ago California suffered a series of temporary blackouts as demand for electricity outpaced older power plants, while a botched experiment with partial price deregulation and environmental opposition created disincentives to build new plants. Wholesale electricity prices spiraled out of control, pushing the state's two private utilities to the brink of bankruptcy as they were left buying power at market rates at costs they could not pass on to the consumer.

"Spiraled out of control"—That's rich. Not one word about major Republican contributor Enron, whose price-gouging and market manipulations sparked the crisis (and, not so incidentally, put Gray Davis in deep trouble politically).

Leading me to ask:

Could wired Republican cronies gaming the system be the cause of this week's outage too? Well, stranger things have happened. Of course, the records of Cheney's task force might be useful at this point; but the administration succeeding in suppressing them.

NOTE: Atrios's orginal perspective (back) on this issue is of course fair more nuanced than my own; I suggest you read it.