Forget Arnold

Forget Arnold, "Blackout Pete" Wilson is the electric
terminator

Harvey
Wasserman

The California media has been whining that Pete Wilson, Arnold's chief
press flak, won't let them ask Schwarzenegger any direct questions.

But in the wake of the big northeast blackout, they're missing the
boat---it's "Blackout Pete" they should be grilling. If
the policies he enacted as governor of California are any indicator, the
Terminator will be destroying a lot more than just the Golden State grid.

Wilson was the Republican governor of California in 1996 when he made
utility deregulation the centerpiece of his doomed campaign for president.
Competition in the electric power business, said Wilson, would usher in a
new age of lower prices. The "miracle of the marketplace"
would mean better, cheaper, more reliable electricity from a host of
competing suppliers.

Deregulation is also the centerpiece of Schwarzenegger's campaign for
Wilson's old job. The Terminator isn't allowed to say much.
But the few short sentences he does utter seem to have something to do
with policies that would mirror what Wilson did when he set the utilities
free.

Unfortunately, what Wilson did led directly to the staged rolling
blackouts of 2000-1. As we now know, those blackouts were actually a
form of blackmail used by Texas gas companies to rob California of more
than $60 billion. Among the chief perpetrators were Kenny-Boy Lay of
the now-bankrupt Enron (George W. Bush's number one campaign contributor)
and James Baker, George H.W. Bush's Secretary of State, the man the GOP
sent to Florida to finally fix the election of 2000.

Wilson's big idea then was to cut the utilities loose from the 90 years of
public supervision that had kept prices and supply reasonably stable in
California and most of the rest of the US. Regulation was not a
perfect system. But the regulatory checks and balances that had
evolved from the early 1900s through the New Deal and the Carter 1970s
formed a complex, sophisticated counterbalance to utility greed.

Wilson's AB1890 unanimously passed the California Assembly with virtually
no public hearings or media debate. The bill let Southern California
Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and other utilities force ratepayers to
foot the bill for nearly $30 billion in bad capital investments, most of
that from commercial reactors built near earthquake faults at the infamous
San Onofre and Diablo Canyon sites.

AB1890 was actually written in the offices of Southern California Edison
by its president John Bryson. Former chair of the state's Public
Utilities Commission, Bryson had been strongly identified with
California's powerful grassroots movement for solar power.

But as the million-dollar-per-year chief of SoCalEd, Bryson killed a
massive green plan for some 600 megawatts of solar, wind, biomass and
other renewables.

In 1978 Herb Gunther of San Francisco's Public Media Center, Harvey
Rosenfeld and other consumer campaigners challenged the deregulation bill
with a statewide referendum. They predicted the utilities would take
the bailout money and then play games with the California grid.
Bryson and the other utility barons spent more than $40 million to protect
their $30 billion subsidy. They beat the repeal, 70-30,

But in 2000, the Wilson-Bryson dereg plan blew up, as predicted.
Enron and the other gas companies began "gaming" the market.
By manipulating supply and shutting down key generators at crucial
moments, they jacked up spot prices and walked away with some $60 billion.

Rather than prosecuting John Bryson, the new Governor Gray Davis
essentially groveled at his feet. Faced with catastrophic shortages,
Davis held endless private meetings with Bryson, practically begging for
new power sources to keep the state's lights on, and then overpaying
billions for whatever power he could get. It's those meetings and
those overpayments that most thoroughly anger those now demanding Davis's
ouster.

But if Wilson and Bryson had not killed that 600 megawatt green power
plan, the 2000-1 crisis could never have happened. Wilson's AB1890
has crippled California's budget.

Arnold's sound bites continue to focus on the "miracle of the
marketplace" that has already cost California at least $100 billion.
The media should directly demand answers from Blackout Pete about his
utility deregulation fiasco, instead of begging to get it all rehashed by
Arnold.

Harvey Wasserman is author of THE LAST ENERGY WAR and senior editor of
freepress.org. He is co-author with Bob Fitrakis of THE SUPERPOWER
OF PEACE, available from freepress.org in September.