Reply #110: Randi Rhodes' Hillary was used by Penn, recommended to her by "good dem" DLC-er Bill C.

[tiptoe]

KO: John McCain's Connection to Big Oil & The Enron Loophole June 18, 2008

The road connecting McCain with $4 gas begins with Enron

Soon after Enron's birth as a power supplier in the 1980s, CEO Ken Lay decided he could make more money betting on electricity futures, especially if government regulators didn't stop him from cornering the market and gaming the system.

Under the first President Bush, an obscure agency called the Commodities Future Trading Commission obliged Ken Lay.

The CFTC Chairwoman, Wendy Graham, left Enron alone.

When Bill Clinton beat Bush, it took only one week before Enron asked Graham to lock in her "hands off" position as official CFTC policy.

Graham started the process. The CFTC approved it, after she left on Clinton's inauguration day.

Five weeks later she took a part-time post on Enron's Board of Directors and wound up earning more than $900,000 over the next decade.

Clinton never undid Graham's changes.

Fast forward to year 2000 and Bush v Gore

In the chaos of constitutional crisis, Enron got a law passed containing what is now known as the Enron loophhole. Where Graham deregulated individual trades, the Enron loophole deregulated entire markets... ONLINE markets.

Enron had just started it's own ONLINE MARKET...and SET ITS SIGHTS on the STATE of California.

Over the next six months CA suffered 38 rolling blackouts, as Enron used artificial shortages, bogus deals, and total knowledge of the market AS SOLE OWNER OF ITS OWN ONLINE MARKET to TREBLE California's energy bills.

In the dark, regulators had less power than California did, leaving Enron laughing about it.

The Enron loophole applied to ALL energy markets: oil, propane, natural gas. So today oil futures are driven by speculators free from any regulatory oversight. Now you just can't blame OPEC anymore

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Arnold's Enron Secret -- Greg Palast
Posted on October 5, 2003, Printed on June 19, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/16902/

It's not what Arnold Schwarzenegger did to the girls a decade back that should raise an eyebrow. According to a series of memoranda our office obtained today, it's his dalliance with the boys in a hotel room just two years ago that's the real scandal.

The wannabe governor has yet to deny that on May 17, 2001, at the Peninsula Hotel in Los Angeles, he had consensual political intercourse with Enron chieftain Kenneth Lay. Also frolicking with Arnold and Ken was convicted stock swindler Mike Milken.

Now, 34 pages of internal Enron memoranda have just come through this reporter's fax machine that tell all about the tryst between Maria's husband and the corporate con men. It turns out that Schwarzenegger knowingly joined the hush-hush encounter as part of a campaign to sabotage a Davis-Bustamante plan to make Enron and other power pirates then ravaging California pay back the $9 billion in illicit profits they carried off.

Here's the story Arnold doesn't want you to hear. The biggest single threat to Ken Lay and the electricity lords is a private lawsuit filed last year under California's unique Civil Code provision 17200, the "Unfair Business Practices Act." This litigation, heading to trial now in Los Angeles, would make the power companies return the $9 billion they filched from California electricity and gas customers.

It takes real cojones to bring such a suit. Who's the plaintiff taking on the bad guys? Cruz Bustamante, Lieutenant Governor and reluctant leading candidate against Schwarzenegger.

Now follow the action
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