What is Howard Dean afraid of?

sorry Ken, I can understand the confusion here. It's not oil, more specifically, it focuses on the electric utility companies. I just clump oil, gas, energy and environment all together. It makes it no less acceptable for this kind of behavior.

[Penn]

Howard Dean fires new shot over rivals' bows

Howie accuses his bad-mouthing, mean-spirited, democratic rivals, as well as those in Congress, of being in league with G.W.Bush.......



I still think the one he told us folks last year was a real doozie:

That if Terry McAuliffe was as good a man as Ron Brown was, he'd STOP the rest of the contenders from making the attacks on him.

Shoot: Ron Brown didn't do a d@mn thing to stop the attacks on Clinton back in the 90s'!

Who is this nerd trying to fool? Himself maybe?

[Larry Gude (Premo)]

...long enough.

dems4, if you do what you say you do for a living then you KNOW what happened in California and you KNOW why it didn't happen any where else.

For everyone else, here's a simple, easy reading snap shot of why Gray Davis is gone:

http://www.brunchma.com/~acsumama/com/com020201.html

[Ken King]

Dems4me,

I'll concede to your use of the term “oil” as meaning energy, I usually prefer more specifics when discussing things so we know exactly what we are talking about. I can deal with this. But all you keep bringing up is that these companies did wrong. What I am saying is, “Hell yes, they are wrong”, but the law allowed it.

First search of “churning”, beyond the table of contents, took me to chapter II. It goes into the scheme that Reliant was using. Sounds like an illegal practice. That is until you read this little tidbit, “Reliant’s churning did not violate the blanket certificate under which it sold gas because Section 284.402 of the regulations contains no explicit guidelines or prohibitions. We recommend that Sections 284.284 and 284.402 of the regulations be amended to provide explicit guidelines or prohibitions for trading natural gas under Commission blanket certificates. We also suggest a generic proceeding to develop appropriate reporting and monitoring requirements for sellers of gas under Commission certificates.”

I had read this before and it backed my thoughts. And right there in black and white you find that the freaking rules allowed it. These guys figured it out and took advantage of market manipulation. It isn't right, but according to the FERC, it wasn't illegal.

Now under other aspects of FERC laws there have been penalties imposed against these companies for doing something that FERC didn't cover in the rules. Of course the energy companies are appealing. You see, in this country, if it isn't against the law you don't fine someone for doing it.

[Penn]

Thanks for the article Larry.
It would appear that the short-sightedness of the California legislature had much to do with the problem they are facing.

Deregulation without the proper ceiling caps, and the dependence on other surrounding states power purchasing.

Take into account the boom of the internet business, and the amount of power it consumed,(which I had not realized), and it gets a little clearer why they are in that predicament.

Not enough powerplants in the state to help offset the demand on the bordering states was also crucial, it seems.

[Larry Gude (Premo)]

...if the state OWNED all the power companies then we'd never have to worry about evil, greedy things like...profit, speculation, regulation impact, environmental impact, supply and demand.

We'd just turn on the lights and they'd work. All the time. And the price would never go up.