"Burn, baby, burn," is what
one Enron electricity trader gleefully said about a California wildfire
during the energy deregulation crisis. The fires, which knocked down
power lines, helped push electricity prices higher. But that was one of
the tamer comments found by CBS news among tapes in which Enron
employees talk about shutting down power plants to steal "money from
California to the tune of about a million [dollars a day]," and selling
electricity to "grandma Millie… for f—–g $250 a megawatt hour."
The tapes also show that Enron’s head honchos, Ken Lay and Jeff
Skilling were in the loop on the schemes to rob California blind. (Even
with these revelations, the feds have not ordered the billions of
dollars in refunds that Californians are due.) The tapes can be heard
at http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/06/01/eveningnews/main620626.shtml.

What’s really troubling in light of these foul-mouthed revelations is
that Arnold is still pushing the electricity deregulation scheme that
allowed these #!$% energy companies to steal billions from California
consumers and businesses. After listening to the tapes, can the
governor still believe that unregulated energy companies should be
trusted with our energy system? Maybe he has only heard the cleaned up
version of the story — as ArnoldWatch readers know, Arnold and Ken Lay
met in 2001, during the height of the energy crisis and only a month
before President Bush announced that he would not cap energy prices in
defiance of California’s request for relief. If that’s the case, we
need to give Arnold the dirty details.

Please send the governor an email at [email protected] with the link to the CBS report (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/06/01/eveningnews/main620626.shtml).
Tell Arnold that he should stop pushing for more energy deregulation
and, instead, he should start pushing President Bush and federal
regulators to order energy refunds for California.