Monday May 14, 4:08 AM

US Governor accuses White House of bailing out on California energy crisis

WASHINGTON, May 13 (AFP) -

California Governor Gray Davis on Sunday faulted President George W. Bush's administration for bailing out on the energy crisis, squeezing his western state and accusing power suppliers of price-gouging desperate consumers.

"The people that have dropped the ball are the federal government," Davis said on Fox News Sunday. "They need to reimpose a price cap, because we're being obscenely gouged by price gougers out of Texas and the Southwest," he said.

Faced with rolling blackouts this year from what most analysts agree was the botched 1996 deregulation of California's energy markets, former President Bill Clinton imposed a price cap to keep companies from withholding power as retailers failed to cover rising costs. The cap was lifted in December 2000.

Last month, Pacific Gas and Electric, the state's largest investor-owned utility, filed for bankruptcy.

Davis said California consumers were paying 450 percent more for electricity in 2000 than in 1999 without any justification, and suggested what was at play was not a lack of energy but "obscene" profit making.

"While everyone believes in the profit motive, and while I've been strongly pro-business, you don't charge 1,900 dollars a megawatt-hour for something that last year you charged 30 dollars for.

"That is obscene. No one can defend it. The company is named Reliant, it's in Texas, it's a big, big buddy of President (George W.) Bush and Vice President (Dick) Cheney. And they can't just sit back there and say, 'Hey, it ain't our problem'."

Arguing California was doing its part to conserve energy and build more power plants, Davis continued: "The one issue we have no legal control over that the federal government does is to hold down these outrageous prices the Texas energy companies are charging Californians, and the federal government is totally AWOL on that issue."

"President Bush could solve this problem in five minutes by asking them to impose a price cap," he said.

Asked if he was considering stepping into the fray and taking on the power utilities, Davis said: "I'm not ruling anything in, I'm not ruling anything out. I'm going to do whatever I can to protect the citizens and businesses of this great state."

With more than 33 million residents, California represents over 11 percent of the country's overall population, and according to Davis, has contributed 25 percent of all the jobs created in America in the past two years.

-- Reliant (feds@awol.com), May 14, 2001

Answers

What took him so long to figure it out? I knew the asshole Dumbya was gonna do this as soon as he stole the office of the president.

-- (dumbya is a filthy rotten @ corrupt. stinking bastard), May 14, 2001.

An accurate translation of what Gray (Red) Davis said: "It's not our fault that we didn't build any new power generating capacity, it must be someone else's fault. We want the Federal government to impose price caps on the price of electricity so that we can have all the cheap power that we want without having to build any new power generating capacity in our lovely ecological paradise. If the Federal government doesn't help us with our communist plan, we are going to hold our breath and throw a fit, because roughly one out of every nine Americans live in our state. Waaaaaaaaaaah"!

-- J (Y2J@home.comm), May 14, 2001.

Hi J!

Any chance you can come for another visit? I seem to have some extra time on my hands and I'd love the chance to give you some more pointers on maximizing collateral damage. Also, I need to find a good home for my autographed copy of "The Turner Diaries". Maybe somebody in your group would like to have it? Or perhaps you could just auction it off on e-Bay and give the proceeds to the Montana Freemen.

-- Timmy McVeigh (timmy@terrehaute.com), May 15, 2001.

Davis spoke with such persuasiveness, he had me convinced to provide all the power CA wanted at discount rates. Whinny bastards! Why has the rate gone up 450%? Because the gov't set the prices and totally bankrupted their utilities in the process. Now they see what the rest of the country has been paying.

-- Free (market@enterprise.works.for.us.all), May 15, 2001.

Question for Gray Davis: Who gets to set the rate???

What a whining baby. He should be more concerned with how he can make his state less dependent on out-of-state suppliers than with how much price-fixing the federal government should do. The last time that was tried it failed miserably.

-- libs are idiots (moreinterpretation@ugly.com), May 15, 2001.

Foolish, foolish California decided a few years ago that long-term power contracts should be forbidden, and that utilities should buy the power they need in the "competitive" interstate wholesale market. Now that some California utilities no longer longer have the credit to buy ther power they need, it's the state who's buying the power and whose budget surplus is almost gone.

-- (A@costly.decision), May 15, 2001.