I swear to god.
I hope these useless motherfuckers from Enron die a slow and agonizing death.
We all knew this was going on, and we all screamed about it last year, we all knew that this deregulation of the power industry in California(pdf) was a BAD IDEA but those incompetent morons in the California legislature and that mouthbreather in the governor’s mansion didn’t do a damn thing about it.
You know what makes me so goddamn angry? “Kenny Boy” is such a close friend of “President” Bush, and Enron has bought so many members of Congress (You know, those people who are supposed to represent us in government?) not a damn thing will happen to him.
Me, and thousands of my fellow Californians will be paying for his hubris for DECADES, and he is going to walk.
Grrr.
If you’re interested, there’s lots more Enron info here, and here.
*whew*
Sorry. Got off on a bit of a rant there.
Hey, it happens.
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That’s not the worst of it Wil. The whole shitstorm over power in California had farther-reaching consequences than you might think.
All those nifty power companies that went under last year left BC Hydro (British Columbia’s powerco) with $500 million in unpaid power consumption (many of the California power companies bought power from BC).
They couldn’t get the money from the Californians, obviously, so they jacked our power bills up instead, to cover the cost… I know people whose utility bills went from $100 / month to $900-1000… What made it worse was that natural gas costs went up at the same time – a nice little double-whammy.
I hate to break it to you but it wasn’t all Enron’s fault. There were real life issues that caused the prices of electricity to go that high and they are going to happen again real soon all across the United States.
So get ready for it, we’ve lived with electricty that was much too cheap for too long.
I really wish that people wouldn’t refer to bad guys as “mouthbreathers”. I am a mouthbreather and I’m nice and cute. I can’t help it, I have deformed adenoids. *sigh*
You have every right to be pissed off and angry. I would be too, even thought I may only be indirectly affected (living near Washington, DC), but I’m about to fall over from a bad onslaught of my allergies.
Rant and growl as much as you want. The Enron memo must have been released to fire up the angry wolves growling at Enron’s door.
so did i read just recently that good ol’ kenny boy is gonna open up a antique store somewhere, maybe kick back and just take things easy?
kick back?
er…yeah, right, in more ways than one. futhermucker.
wil, your infrequent rants inspire me towards action and movement against those who carelessly wrong others. i only wish i had superpowers and could squash the bums between my mighty fists. alas, i’m just human but i do have something just as strong as steel — the power to vote.
wil’s right, folks. use your power to vote to hold those we elect to office accountable to their constituents, not their political action committees run by corporate boards of directors and wall street insiders.
keep up the rants, wil…piss us off, make us so damned angry, smoke comes out of our ears, provoke us towards action, inspire us with your passion.
keep on keeping on, dude.
portland, or
by the way, blue skies and a perfect morning for a commute on a motor scooter *grin*
Sometimes I wonder if it would be better to leave this planet and start all over again.
What’s sad is there are even scarier atrocities in our country that this entire Enron scandal.
Oh, here is a charming bedtime story:
http://www.soaw.org/
Wow, what do you mean we have our own terrorist training organization in the states?!
Something tells me the “war on people different than us” oh — I mean the “war on terrorism” will not direct it’s weapons on itself.
I’m sorry, but did I actually read a message from someone who said they liked Bush?? Like not in the “he’s funny cuz he looks like a monkey” way, but as a president?? Good lord. A moron with too much power and insidious advisors.
Honestly though, I don’t even think he *wanted* to be president, I think he felt family pressure to run and figured he didn’t have much chance to win anyways so he ran. Then he won and he’s waaaay over his head.
Got a little off topic there 😉 My favourite piece about the Enron affair was the Onion article about how “Americans would be outraged if they understood the Enron scandal”. Awesome.
Sorry if this has been posted already, didn’t have the time to read what’s up already! :o(
From the Denver Rocky Mountain News:
Bar patrons take pity, stuff tip jar for ‘poor’ Kenneth Lay.
A tip jar soliciting donations for former Enron executive Kenneth Lay’s retirement sits on the bar at the Woody Creek Tavern just outside of Aspen.
“It’s been a great worry here about how we are going to help this poor man,” bar patron Jimmy Ibbotson said Monday.
Sadly, Lay won’t be able to retire on the contents of the jar.
“There’s a Lifestyles black condom, several dog biscuts, a loaded .440-caliber rifle cartridge… a blue pacifier for a whiney boy and screws,” said Ibbotson.
Read the rest of the article here….
http://insidedenver.com/drmn/state/article/0,1299,DRMN_21_1076758,00.html
More proof that the crooks are running the country now. Bend over baby, it’s Bush and Dick time.
Sometimes, the only way to stay sane is to believe in karma. As in, those lousy, no good, slimeball, lying, smarmy, glad-handing, grinning, fat mofo asswipes will eventually, someday, get what’s coming to them.
I personally can’t really understand what drives some people to do what they do. I comprehend stuff like this less than I do many other crimes. Purposely screwing with people’s money, with the health and wellbeing of millions, with people’s lives? I do. not. get. it.
Karmaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…..
Enron..and those that caused it SUCK.
In reference to someone’s comment that”wil
you live in LA so don’t worry”..or something
similar. I beleive that Wil is concerned about
the BIG picture here people!
Spudnuts..you rock!
Glad to hear that there are other people as pissed off as I am about this.
Shocked as all hell that anyone would defend it, though.
And for the record, I never once blamed this on Bush. Read it again, and tell me where I blame this on Bush.
Believe me, there are plenty of very good, valid reasons to dislike Bush, and he will screw us many, many times before he finally leaves office at the end of his first term…but this isn’t his fault, entirely. However, if you really think that his hands are completely clean in relation to Enron, we have nothing to talk about.
I really wish people would stop bringing words like “Republican” and “Democrat” into this whole mix.
Political affiliation has nothing to do with it. In this situation, a crook is a crook, whether it’s a donkey crook or an elephant crook.
And currently, both my state (CA) and my nation is practically run by crooks.
Gah.
I sent this to Wil in an email, and he asked me to post it here…
——-
They should all be ejected into space.
But, take a bit of solace in the following: it seems clear that the
whole deregulation fiasco was specifically designed to set California up
for the “power crisis” – to set us up to be raped and gouged by these
assholes when the “crisis” became acute. You’ll recall that the entire
Bush administration supported the notion that in order to tide us over
through the “crisis,” CA should buy power from Enron – Cheney even said
outright that conservation wasn’t a realistic answer, and that it
wouldn’t help much. Basically, the energy cartel was telling us “Oh,
well, you people have a big problem, you’re going to run out of power,
and deregulation will solve that,” and then we “ran out of power,” and
they said, “Well, now you’re going to have to pay for your past
foolishness in not deregulating, and you’re going to pay through the
nose!”
So where’s the solace?
What actually happened is that we, the people of California, cut our
electricity use by FIFTY PERCENT through conservation. FIFTY percent.
And we were able to continue life as usual, pretty much; rolling
blackouts were few and far between, and I don’t think many people were
inconvenienced by it. I think I cut my own usage by around 80%; I took
down 3 of my 5 computers on my home network, and stopped leaving the
other two on 24 hours a day, turned my fridge down a notch, stopped
using the microwave… plus I bought all new 5-year compact fluorescent
bulbs for my lights. Just the bulbs alone went from using about 1150
watts down to only 200!! Usually I’ve only got a couple lights on in my
place now – about 40 watts used (used to be more like 300). I’m not the
only one I know who did this sort of thing.
And what happened after we cut that power use? Enron COLLAPSED.
Hmm, cause & effect, a wonderful thing. Just a hunch on my part, but my
take is that the whole Enron thing was that they tried to set us up to
steal our money, tried to convince us that we should do things their
way… and we DIDN’T. We went ahead and did the SMART thing, and cut
back on our energy consumption, DESPITE our leaders telling us we
shouldn’t bother. And lo and behold, the ripoff artists, the frauds, the
con men, find themselves NOT receiving the huge windfall profits that
they expected to gouge out of us… and their front corporation goes
down the drain.
OK, so the Enron collapse is going to hurt us all. So they screwed us,
and they should be hung off the yardarm… but we didn’t let them have
their way! We actually WON, believe it or not. Believe me, the pain of
this collapse will hurt a lot less than what would have happened in the
long run – being held hostage for our power, being forced to pay them
whatever they demanded for it.
The little people actually won this round. 🙂
Jeff Z.
——-
Now, looking at this, and how our President
and
his buddies are intricately tied up in it, can ANYONE think that we don’t
have a bunch of criminals running this country now – who got into office
through criminal manipulation of the system? What do they have to do to
make
it more obvious? Start wearing Jolly Rogers and calling the Defense
Department the “Ministry of Peace”?
AMEN JEFF Z! Awesome. Pure genius.
You rawk man.
*bowing down before Jeff Z*
Ok, I’m in Toronto, Ont (yeah, the hated North Hollywood), so I cannot contribute much to the California issue, but we’re about to face the same thing here. Our great new Premier, Ernie Eves, is planning to privatise what’s left of the Ontario’s hydro operations… (The gas distribution is already in the hands of private companies and the rates are beginning to soar).
And so the public property is being transferred to the big corporations. Don’t get me wrong, I am not a socialist, but it’s like George Carlin said, bend over and let the corporations do their thing…
Ernie should take notes from what is happening in California. But he is a Bay Street (equivalent to Wall Street) lawyer and a corporate goon, and so why bother with the welfare of the little people…
/end rant
Just another quick note: I, too, live in LA, so I live on the public power grid – so you might think that conservation efforts by LA residents wouldn’t help. However, the exact opposite is true! When we cut our use here in LA, the LA public power grid can sell the power that we don’t use to other utilities here in California – at reasonable rates that are capped by CA law (which is mentioned in the article, see the “ricochet” tactic). So, by cutting our use, we are increasing the amount of IN-STATE generated power that can be distributed throughout the net at economical prices – thus also taking money out of the gougers’ potential windfall.
WE can make a difference – by NOT being stupid, as the ripoff artists and con men depend on us to be.
So….. when are tickets for this ST convention going to be available? 😉
Borg389 said:
>> Wil, before you go blaming Bush for this mess, simply because he knows someone at Enron.
Yeah.
He “knows someone” at Enron.
Hey.
I “know someone” at Nike.
Occasionally, I can get 50% off sneakers.
And if Kenny Boy set up Bush Jr. with some cheap skippies then I’d say it was all kosher. But a couple million in exchange for unlimited freedom to draft national energy policy, in my mind, is more significant than cheap sneaks (though… they ARE really nice shoes).
Or a jizz-covered dress.
>> keep in mind that this was all happening well before Bush came to power.
Bush didn’t just instantaneously spawn from a damp slice of Wonder Bread. He and his family have never left power. You DO know he was the Governor of Texas, right? You DO know Enron was headquartered in Houston, right?
Houston is in Texas.
Odd coincidence that.
>> Don’t believe that Clinton didn’t know what was going on.
And Hillary.
And the gays.
Also the makers of Grand Theft Auto III.
And rap “gangsta” Ice Tea.
>> It also happened on Davis’s watch, a democrat governor.
And the Northridge earthquake happened during the tenure of Pete Wilson.
A Republican governor!
Addition to “The Coolest” list: Jeff Z.
Spudnuts – you kick ass! Seriously dude, your comments are often hilarious, almost always insightful and generally brilliant.
Whose with me for starting a Cult of Spudnuts, eh? 🙂
Oh my. I can really see why your upset. And I thought my government sucked. This is what I’m afraid is going to happen to us. I’m so sick of politicians getting away with this. Of course no one will do anything because all the other politicans are just as bad. This is tickin me off,
and I’m not from California.
I’m curious Wil.. if Reardon had managed to get the Gop nod, would you have considered voting for him?
Re the Enron memos. If the written smoking gun equivalent had been found concerning Al-Qaida and 9-11, you just know Bush would have been on national TV in prime time trumpeting the news.
For all y’all out there blindly supporting the prez and jimmy-rigging flags to your pickup trucks, please keep in mind that Bush bankrolled the 9-11 tragedy. And since then has succeeding in bombing UN workers, Red Cross workers, and Canadians. We not only have an incompetant president, but possibly an evil one. I’m very sad for our country right about now.
P. S. Please don’t bombard me with “Clinton sucks” messages. Weigh one blow job vs. thousands dead.
Hey Wil. One would guess from reading this entry that you were a tad bit irritated when you wrote it. Right?
You’re late if you’re trying to start the “cult of Spudnuts.”
Ain’t nobody touching our ‘nuts! NOBODY!
Hi Wil;
Firstly on Enron, the entire Bush administration should be hung from the highest yardarm by the short hairs, it’s an Enron/Big Oil ‘government’ that is corrupt to the core of it’s being like perhaps no other administration in U.S. history. The sooner these people are in jail where they belong, the better for the U.S., the better for *the entire planet*. If there is a way to exploit and kill the disenfranchised they will do it. I also agree with the Aussie posters commentary on the Repub Enron contributions, it *was* 90% Repubs, 10% dems, and even then in relatively small amounts.
Second, on the GPS thang, I bought the Garmin E-Map http://www.garmin.com/products/emap/ because I wanted a GPS that was not only good for Geocaching, it’s also got expandable memory cards, which means I can stuff up to 128 megs of data in there vs. the 20+ that the Vista does. The E-Map is only a little larger, plus it makes a fantastic road trip GPS, I used mine from WA to Roswell, NM and back. I can also load road maps, contour maps and nautical charts into it. The display’s also a bit bigger too. Just something to think about. Either way you’re getting a winner. (^_^)
Hey, Wil!
I’m a government price economist in DC…unfortunately, my work doesn’t relate directly to Enron or the energy sector, but I have benefitted from discussions with some of the nation’s top economists (government and academic). I am NOT an expert on the California energy crisis, but I am happy to see that so many of your visitors are! It is an extremely complicated issue that has even left Nobel-Prize-winning economists horribly confused ( http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/02_11/b3774026.htm ).
Many of the comments from visitors on your site are partially correct; for instance, it is true that wholesale trade was deregulated but retail pricing was not. What is NOT clear, by any means, is that this is the root of the problem. It is unquestionable that retail utilities (PG&E, Edison, etc.) got squeezed by rising wholesale prices and regulated resale prices (and abandonment by their parent companies), but it is not clear that deregulation of retail trade would have helped much. It *might* have prevented the blackouts, but the end consumers would have been paying increased prices (if not, deregulation could not have helped). What you are now paying in bail-out taxes and long-term contract rates you would have been paying in higher service prices. This, when deregulation was ushered in on promises of increased competition and lower prices! It is difficult to judge what long-term effects deregulation would/will have on the energy market before the dust has finished settling, but early evidence suggests that benefits will be slow to accrue. Afterall, you were promised lower prices and increased competition; upon deregulation the (wholesale) market consolidated and prices soared under the most dramatic increases the industry has ever seen. Others seem to point to supply shortfalls as the root of the problem, but the evidence here is very weak and hinges on some misreporting on the development of new plants in recent years. According to the California Energy Commission ( http://www.energy.ca.gov/database/index.html#powerplants ), the claim that Cali didn’t build any power plants in the ninties is blatantly false. It also seems that excess demand was greatly overstated (and may not have existed at all) ( http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/utilities/rp/rp002193.pdf ).
Enron’s involvement in the California energy crunch is rather troubling, but has been misrepresented in journalistic reports and is at any rate negligible when compared to Enron’s fraudulence and manipulation of the American political system. It is understandable that people might be confused about the ethics (and simply the practice) of trading energy futures and other derivatives, which made up the bulk of Enron’s business operations. Derivatives are difficult to understand! The truth is, as far as we can tell, that in an appropriately operating market, options trading allows firms (both wholesale and retail, in the energy markets) to hedge against “volatility risk” and smooth their operating costs and revenues over time. Enron has been represented as a company that reaps billions by simply moving other firms’ money around—but this is a highly valuable service! The real trouble with Enron’s involvement in California’s recent difficulties lies in its subsidiaries’ incestuous dealings and the influence the company has enjoyed with Federal regulatory agencies. Other energy companies seem to have had more direct influence in the California energy markets, i.e., your local wholesalers (Enron is a minor player in production), who jacked up prices to unprecedented levels (unwarranted by increases in input costs, including natural gas) and without warning took plants offline at peak usage periods.
As for Enron’s crimes, these have been discussed by people more intelligent than me. I leave a link or two of interest, but I might first note to a few of the commenters that to chalk up the problems, either in the Federal government or in California, as blatant failures of one political party and to herald the other party as our only hope for salvation is to ignore a tremendous amount of information. Things just aren’t that easy.
http://www.counterpunch.org/enron.html (written in 1998!)
http://truthout.com/12.16E.Enron.Outrage.htm
http://www.michaelmoore.com/2002_0129.html
BTW, all the guys at http://www.natalieportman.com think you’re cool. I’m with ’em on that. Rant on.
—Scarlet
P.S. >>I’d sooner run naked through the biggest Star Trek Convention in history, screaming “LOOK AT ME! I’M ON FIRE!”
I think you should do that anyway. It would sure liven things up, no?
Keep the faith, Wil. And when it comes to rants, darlin’, just remember — you pay the server bills. Keep ’em coming.
And ScarletP, thank you for all the links — I’ve been trying to convince some libertarian, “no, no, it’s the free-market economy meeting stupid over-liberal Californians, stupid,” friends of the behind-the-scenes crap going on in re: the manufactured CA energy “crisis” for a long time.
Pax,
HB
Wil, Wil, Wil, the anger. So ribald! Hmm, you need to calm down. I know, how about a short trip to Australia; if you know what I mean!
JSc said:
>> You’re late if you’re trying to start the “cult of Spudnuts.”
Let’s skip the Cult of Spudnuts and go straight to the “Let’s set up a PayPal button for Spudnuts to give him money because he so dang smart.”
Some films to help better understand our current (CIA) Gov’t & it’s righteous ‘War on Terror’;
Swordfish
The Long Kiss Goodnight
Wag The Dog
Bob Roberts
JFK
Happy Viewing –
Wil, sorry to realize you’ve been living in the dreamland of your youth… that world where we vote for representatives to represent us. Corporations essentially run the government now and we apparently like it that way. No one will vote for a third-party candidate (you know, the ones who have not yet sold their souls). Oh well.
We all need to get off the grid anyway.
NAH!!! No PLAYPAL button for you!
OUR CULT LIKE ADULATION IS ALL YOU GET FOR FREE!!!
OFcourse if you EVER get around to having your
OWN site..you WOULD give Wil a run for Site
of the year! GUARANTEED!!
Or better yet WRITE A BOOK!!!!!!!!!!
NO PAYPAL EITHER!
That’s why I voted for Nader. Hey, Will, it’s great to see that you’re a steadfast progressive! — buzz
Nopaypalfohyou!
If someone wants to give me a couple mill or indeed six bucks to buy some sushi, I’ll gladly allow you to write the entire energy policy for the Spudnuts household.
Right now it’s…
“Don’t stick eating utensils into outlets.”
Needs a little work.
So does this mean you just got your power bill?
Am I the only one that realizes that electricity deregulation in California became law when Pete Wilson was Governor?
Last time I checked deregulation passed in 1996, Gray Davis did not become Governor until January 1999.
Something to think about. Perhaps we need to go back and dig into Pete Wilson’s past.
This would have never happened if people hadn’t voted for DEregulation. The only people to blame are the Californians who were stupid enough to vote for it. DEREGULATION doesn’t work. We should have learned that by now.
And as for Bill Simon, he will NEVER get elected governor. He is too conservative for this state.
ack!
I decide to take a nap before algebra and I miss this much?
damn.
anyways…
Politics definately blow.
That’s all I really gotta say about that.
We’re being lead by a bunch of morons and I forgot to vote so I guess I’m partly to blame.
Sorry…[/innocent apology]
So once again I’ll campaign my idea:
Wil for President… when you’re old enough of course.
love and kisses,
This happened in the 70’s, and the solution agreed upon worked great. Why not do it again.
Wil:
I dont blame you for being very upset. I just hate
to ask what you have to pay in Electric Bills each month because of politics. Perhaps you should visit Mississippi…where the cost of living is pretty low. We can share a pitcher of lemonade in my back yard and talk about my low southern electric bills.
Marc from Jackson
HOW THE FUCK CAN YOU FORGET TO VOTE?!
Mmm, the great energy debate. What if energy were free?
http://www.msoft.no/meg/
http://cheniere.org/
http://www.icehouse.net/john1/
I’m sorry for yelling.
…
…
…
…
…
No, I’m not.
>>Let’s skip the Cult of Spudnuts and go straight to the “Let’s set up a PayPal button for Spudnuts to give him money because he so dang smart.”
The only problem with this plan it that you haven’t TRIED it yet, Spud.
No.
The only problem with the plan, Bobby the Mat, is that I’m not that fucking smart to begin with.