The California Power Mess Page

Lawsuit electrifies California energy crisis
Davis administration faces charges of secrecy, conflicts of interest.
By Joel Miller
Davis Administration Denies Selling Power During California Blackouts
A California Assemblyman isn't sure if it was "corruption or incompetence," but he claims the administration of Democratic Governor Gray Davis sold more than a half-million megawatt hours (MWh) of electricity earlier this year at a huge loss and at a time when Californians were being told to conserve energy amid rolling blackouts.
By Eric Erickson
$9 Billion Shakedown
Gray Davis’s bullying of a power company.
By Ross Douthat
California’s dim bulbs
CALIFORNIA is in the midst of an enormous stupidity crisis. Californians have been sitting in the dark because . . . they didn’t turn the lights on.
by P. J. O'Rourke
California selling off surplus power at fraction of cost it paid
Cool July weather throughout the West has created an abundance of electricity in California, prompting the state to sell power bought at an average of $138 per megawatt for as little as $1 per megawatt, energy traders say.
By Karen Gaudette
Headline News
The obvious continues to make headlines in California. "Federal price limits backfire" read the big front-page headline in the San Francisco Chronicle.
by Thomas Sowell
Study: Politicians Wrong About Calif. Energy Crisis
Contrary to heated, political accusations, California's on-going energy crisis was caused mostly by bad luck weather and high natural gas prices, say two energy policy analysts in a just-released study.
By Christine Hall
Cap and Crunch
Gov. Davis gets his price controls. Now who can he blame for shortages?
Wall Street Journal Op-Ed
Price controls -- Bad idea whether temporary or permanent
Don't say price controls. Call it price mitigation. Call it price-hike avoidance mechanisms. Anything but price controls. In announcing a complex plan to avoid price hikes, the Bush administration, in retreat mode, now backs the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's policy to "mitigate any severe price spikes."
by Larry Elder
Economists for Price Controls?
They hail from Harvard, Yale, and Cornell, but these economists haven't learned the first lesson of economics. William Anderson corrects their errors.
Language and Power
In an amazing rhetorical trick, the press has a new name for central planning and price control: deregulation. Don Mathews shows how and why this is done.
Economic Lessons from the California Power Mess
The current mess in California proves how important it is for everyone to have a good, solid understanding of basic economics. Indeed, one has to wonder if anyone at all in California has even the least bit of a grasp on this particular topic. Certainly, California's politicians don't. The voters don't either, or else they'd vote these rascals out of office.

	Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation by Joseph J. Ellis An illuminating study of the intertwined lives of the founders of the American republic--John Adams, Aaron Burr, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington. During the 1790s, which Ellis calls the most decisive decade in our nation's history, the greatest statesmen of their generation--and perhaps any--came together to define the new republic and direct its course for the coming centuries.
	Scandalmonger : A Novel Scandalmonger is the 25th book from William Safire, the prolific, feisty New York Times columnist and word wrangler. It's a historic novel set in 1790s New England, when the Founding Fathers were enduring various crises and humiliations as they scurried to become part of the history books. Always a stickler for the truth--as long as it's uttered in the finest of phrases--the author lets us know right from the start that we're "entitled to know what is history and what is twistery." Based on documents and diaries, and complete with an exhaustive section of footnotes separating fact from fiction, Scandalmonger turns out to be a bona fide page-turner. Safire knows what he's doing; he knows he has a lesson to teach. It's a lesson about how early America wasn't much different from Clinton's America--the temptations of mistresses, the power struggles, the ridiculous debates about purity between corrupt men being just as present. If he has one message, it is this: within every powerful politician, there is a dirty-minded second grader trying to get out. Witness this scene between two outraged congressmen who seem intent on "turning the House into a 'gladiators' arena'"
	Setting the World Ablaze : Washington, Adams, Jefferson and the American Revolution Setting the World Ablaze is the story of the three men who, perhaps more than any others, helped bring the United States into being: George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson. Weaving their three life stories into one narrative, John E. Ferling delivers a genuine and intimate illustration of them and, in doing so, gives us a new understanding of the passion and uncertainty of the struggle to form a new nation.
	Becoming America : The Revolution Before 1776 Publishers Weekly "Butler's original analysis is important reading on 18th-century America . . ." Kirkus Review "A sweeping, well-researched analysis of the transformative changes wrought by immigration, war, and cultural change in colonial America."
	Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy by Thomas Sowell From one of America's best-known economists, the one book anyone who wants to understand the economy needs to read. At last there is a citizen's guide to the economy, written by an economist who uses plain English. No jargon, no graphs, no equations. Yet this is a comprehensive survey, covering everything from rent control and the rise and fall of businesses to the international balance of payments. The purpose of Basic Economics is to enable people without any economic training to understand the way the economy functions-not only the American economy, but other economies around the world.