"So think about this. The state of California is in the hole by $8 billion for the coming year. That's chump change next to the $8 TRILLION in deficits and surplus losses planned and incurred by George Bush. Nevertheless, the $8 billion deficit is the hanging rope California's right wing is using to lynch Governor Davis. Yet only Davis and Bustamante are taking direct action to get back the $9 billion that was vacuumed out of the state by Enron, Reliant, Dynegy, Williams Company and the other Texas bandits who squeezed the state by the bulbs.

But if Arnold is selected, it's 'hasta la vista' to the $9 billion. When the electricity emperors whistle, Arnold comes -- to the Peninsula Hotel or the Governor's mansion. The he-man turns pussycat and curls up in their lap." - Arnold Unplugged - It's Hasta la Vista to $9 Billion if the Governator is Selected By Greg Palast

The terminator...and the POWER mongers by Jason Leopold

Based on the book by Fortune reporters Peter Elkind and Bethany McLean, the film chronicles in meticulous detail the meteoric rise and staggering fall of the Texas-based natural gas distributor, whose book-cooking fraud resulted in the largest bankruptcy in American history, and incalculable losses to stockholders and employee life-savings. Enron's stupefying self-interest and irresponsible avarice, from the highest executive to the lowest trader, may constitute the most egregious instance of "it's just business" thievery ever effected -- or maybe it's just the biggest one we know about.

The specifics of this mess are sometimes difficult to follow, especially for anyone without a knack for numbers, and by now we're accustomed to the cast of characters. But no matter. The cumulative effect is such that we're shocked all over again when we didn't think it was possible, and the surfeit of all those smug, unrepentant faces will sicken even the most cynical. The point is unmistakable: Corporate power corrupts, and unregulated corporate power corrupts absolutely.

We thought we knew that, of course, but we know it better upon leaving this film, whose most unique contribution is perhaps the observation that the intangible nature of Enron's activities exponentially enhanced its susceptibility to greed, and the abandonment of anything resembling an ethical moral construct. Just as it's easier to shoot someone using a long-range missile than to personally stab him in the gut, it's less troublesome to pick someone's pocket if you don't have to look at him -- nay, to even deny that that's what you're doing, or that he's even there.

In this regard, the film cannily includes archival footage from an experiment done in the early '60s, in which a researcher at Yale sought to determine whether some people are inherently evil. His subjects were instructed to mechanically shock, to the point of serious harm, people they could not see but could hear (i.e. screaming in pain). He was chagrined to find that an alarming number were all too willing to comply, as long as they were physically separated from the subject, and could pass the responsibility off to someone else. (Nuremberg, anyone?) Interviewed for the film, McLean analogizes that this is exactly what happened at Enron: in promoting and sanctioning a system of behavior, key executives assumed tacit responsibility for what devolved into corporate plunder and civic pillaging, leaving their entire workforce, top to bottom, totally free to succumb to their worst impulses. (Abu Ghraib, anyone?)

Nowhere was this perfidy more evident than in the California power crisis, where Enron gained control of the state's newly deregulated electrical industry, and randomly shut down plants in order to drive up the price. Consequently, thousands got rich at the expense of millions who were deprived of essential services, to say nothing of the political fallout. (Gubernatorial recall, anyone?) It is, in fact, the California energy debacle that arguably provides the most devastating details. In addition to images of hapless citizens trapped in elevators that stopped running between floors, there are audiotapes of obscenely giddy traders -- even at this level seemingly as drunk with their power as with the money they stand to gain -- saying things like, "Let them use candles," and chortling that "Aunt Millie" was going to be in the dark tonight, because they had "charged her up her ass." - Movie Review: Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

In April 1997, Governor George Bush met with the Uzbek ambassador to the USA. The agenda? The endorsement of Enron's lucrative deal to exploit natural gas in Uzbekistan. Four years later the Uzbek dictator was miraculously transformed into a crucial partner in George Bush's "war on terror".

Here's a scan of the personal fax on the subject, from Enron CEO Kenneth Lay to his good friend George.

It seems like Bush and the Uzbeks go back a long way. No wonder the US government seems so reluctant to act over Karimov's brutal massacres of his own people.

Amidst the talk about the benefits that Kyoto Protocol is supposed to promote, it is perhaps forgotten, especially amongst the greenies, how the treaty that is supposed to save the world from the evil extravagances of itself was born in the corridors of very big business.

The name Enron has all but faded from our news pages since the company went down in flames in 2001 amidst charges of fraud, bribery, price fixing and graft. But without Enron there would have been no Kyoto Protocol.

About 20 years ago Enron was owner and operator of an interstate network of natural gas pipelines, and had transformed itself into a billion-dollar-a-day commodity trader, buying and selling contracts and their derivatives to deliver natural gas, electricity, internet bandwidth, whatever. The 1990 Clean Air Act amendments authorized the Environmental Protection Agency to put a cap on how much pollutant the operator of a fossil-fueled plant was allowed to emit. In the early 1990s Enron had helped establish the market for, and became the major trader in, EPA's $20 billion-per-year sulphur dioxide cap and trade program, the forerunner of today's proposed carbon credit trade. This commodity exchange of emission allowances caused Enron's stock to rapidly rise.

Then came the inevitable question, what next? How about a carbon dioxide cap and trade program? The problem was that CO2 is not a pollutant, and therefore the EPA had no authority to cap its emission. Al Gore took office in 1993 and almost immediately became infatuated with the idea of an international environmental regulatory regime. He led a U.S. initiative to review new projects around the world and issue 'credits' of so many tons of annual CO2 emission reduction. Under law a tradeable system was required, which was exactly what Enron also wanted because they were already trading pollutant credits. Thence Enron vigorously lobbied Clinton and Congress, seeking EPA regulatory authority over CO2. From 1994 to 1996, the Enron Foundation contributed nearly $1 million dollars - $990,000 - to the Nature Conservancy, whose Climate Change Project promotes global warming theories. Enron philanthropists lavished almost $1.5 million on environmental groups that support international energy controls to "reduce" global warming. Executives at Enron worked closely with the Clinton administration to help create a scaremongering climate science environment because the company believed the treaty could provide it with a monstrous financial windfall. The plan was that once the problem (imminent global catastrophe) was in place, the solution (Enron's services) would be put into operation. It nearly worked.

A lawyer named Christopher Horner was hired who had worked in Senator Liebermann's Environment Committee. Horner, employed by Enron, became director of Relations with the Federal Government. That was in 1997, before the Kyoto Protocol was drafted. According to Homer, on the second day at the job he was told that the Number One Objective was to obtain an international treaty that would impose cuts in CO2 emissions, but at the same time allowed trade with emission rights. Enron had the biggest natural gas production behind Russia's Gazprom. Enron was making a lot of money trading with coal, but they had already calculated that the profits they would lose with coal would be more than compensated by the profits derived from its privileged position in other areas. With clever positioning and anticipation Enron already had bought the world's biggest wind power company, GE Wind, from General Electric. They now also owned the biggest solar power company in the world, in society with Amoco (now belonging to British Petroleum - BP). Enron then started to finance everything related to the global warming hype, including grants to scientists - but asking for results favorable to their interest - "proof" that humans were responsible for the excessive emissions of CO2 through fossil fuel burning. The fire of malaise now lit and kindled, only required feeding.

- Ken Ring

Most consumers hit by the massive blackout that swept across the United States and Canada last year said they would be willing to pay higher utility bills to safeguard their electricity supplies, a study released on Thursday showed. The survey, conducted by consultancy Accenture Ltd., showed 55 percent of consumers in both countries would accept rate hikes of up to 15 percent to prevent future blackouts like the one that cut power to some 50 million people on Aug. 14. About 44 percent of the respondents said they would not be willing to pay for an increase, according to the survey of 416 households in the blackout-affected areas.

The power outage is believed to have started with a power line failure in the Midwest that caused an imbalance on the electricity grid that swept eastward, knocking out power across wide areas of the Northeast and Ontario. Critics have blamed poor coordination between neighboring power grids for failing to limit the blackout, as well as lack of maintenance and electronic control of the system by the Ohio company, FirstEnergy Corp., on whose grid the outage began. Nearly 10 percent of those surveyed said they incurred between $300 and $500 in expenses related to the blackout, Accenture said, while 24 percent said their costs were between $100 and $300 and 38 percent reported costs of less than $100. The blackout also hurt consumers' confidence in power reliability, with 50 percent saying they expected another blackout in the next six months or were unsure if their power would be interrupted.

Most consumers also said their local utility and the government had not done enough to inform them of the causes of the blackout, and 85 percent said utilities should provide more information about the electrical system and supply. archived