David Lazarus, in today's San Francisco Chronicle, has a piece entitled
Who Sets Energy Policy?, which examines Dick Cheney's complicity in the California energy fraud committed by Enron.
California ratepayers' worst suspicions were confirmed when audiotapes were released the other day revealing that Enron plotted in January 2001 to take a power plant offline in a deliberate bid to jack up electricity prices during the worst of the energy crisis.
What few people may realize, though, is that just three months after the company's power-plant conspiracy, which resulted in rolling blackouts throughout Northern California, Enron was making its case to the White House for why the government shouldn't cap energy prices.
And Vice President Dick Cheney, who met with then-Enron Chairman Ken Lay in April 2001 and was handed a secret memo stating the company's policy wishes, subsequently echoed Enron's position on why price caps are unnecessary.
More after the fold...
The article is well worth a look.
The tapes reveal conspiracy between Enron and energy officials to take down power stations "for maintenance" in order to deliberately reduce supply and drive up prices. And Dick Cheney stonewalled as Californians appealed to the federal government with complaints they were being gouged and defrauded in their energy bills.
Not noted in this article is the fact that Ken Lay (successfully) made the recommendation to the White House for Pat Wood to head up FERC, and did the only vetting of candidates. FERC did much of the stonewalling against California's complaints during the period that California was being bled dry. (BTW, there's a nice little document on Bush Administration Contacts with Enron (PDF) that was prepared for Henry Waxman's office. Contains lots of references to letters from Alberto Gonzales to Joe Lieberman. Was Lieberman on the Senate Energy Committee at the time?)
More from Lazarus:
I obtained a copy of the three-page memo in early 2002 and showed that a number of Enron's recommendations either made it into Cheney's energy plan or were reflected in comments by senior Bush administration officials.
So, although we have the resulting energy policy documents, we still don't have the information of who attended Cheney's secret energy policy meetings and what was said. But we now know that Cheney was carrying water for Enron while they were engaged in massive fraud.
On April 17 of that year [2001], Enron's Lay arrived at the White House for a meeting with Cheney, who was overseeing efforts to craft a response to California's energy woes.
Lay brought along his memo, which spelled out Enron's case for why federal authorities should refrain from imposing price caps in California or provide other forms of relief sought by state officials.
An Enron official in Houston confirmed to me afterward that Lay handed the memo to Cheney during one-on-one talks.
And if you needed any more evidence to why James Carville should not be trusted as part of any Democratic reform movement, the fact that his wife is a shill for Cheney and BushCo should be enough.
Mary Matalin, who was then an adviser to the vice president, told me in 2002 that Cheney's energy plan included input from many sources.
"Just because some of the things (in the memo) are included in the plan doesn't mean they were from the talks" between Cheney and Lay, she said.
Lea Anne McBride, a spokeswoman for the vice president, said this week that the White House stands by Matalin's earlier remarks.
But, of course, the fact that Cheney won't release any of the information from the meetings (supposedly public meetings on public policy) as to who attended and what was said, is not particularly helpful.
The scope of corruption of this regime is staggering.
Next up, what was Arnold Schwartzenegger's role in promoting Enron and their energy fraud in California? He had meetings with Enron prior to becoming the Gubernator, and has subsequently been very reluctant to pursue action against Enron to recover the fraud losses, despite California's dire financial straits. With any luck, the Gubernator will also eventually go down with this ship.