When Ahnold Got Lay'd�and California got Screwed

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" DitziSis " <mk2967

Wed, 24 May 2006 20:24:43 -0700 (PDT)

When Ahnold Got Lay'd�and California got Screwed

 

 

 

 

When Ahnold Got Lay'd�and California got Screwed

 

 

 

Excerpt from Armed Madhouse - Greg Palast's new

book to be released June 6.

 

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

 

 

 

Peninsula Hotel, Beverly Hills. May 17, 2001. The

Financial Criminal of the

twentieth century, not long out of prison, meets

with the Financial Criminal

of the twenty-first century who feared he may

also have to do hard time.

These two, bond-market manipulator Mike Millikin

and Ken Lay,

not-yet-indicted Chairman of Enron Corporation,

were joined by a selected

group of movers and shakers -- and one movie

star.

 

 

 

Arnold Schwarzenegger had been to such private

parties before. As a young

immigrant without a nickel to his name, he put on

private displays of his

musculature for guests of his promoter. As with

those early closed

gatherings, I don't know all that went on at the

Peninsula Hotel

meet,

though I understand Ahnold, this time, did not

have to strip down to his

Speedos. Nevertheless, the moral undressing was

just as lascivious, if you

read through the 34 page fax that arrived at our

office.

 

 

 

Lay, who convened the hugger-mugger, was in a bit

of trouble. Enron and the

small oligopoly of other companies that ruled

California's electricity

system had been caught jacking up the price of

power and gas by fraud,

conspiracy and manipulation. A billion here, a

billion there, and pretty

soon it was real money - $6.3 billion in suspect

windfalls in just six

months, May through December 2000, for a

half-dozen electricity buccaneers,

at least $9 billion for the year. Their skim

would have been higher but the

tricksters thought they were limited by the

number of digits the state's

power-buying computers could read.

 

 

 

When Ken met Arnold in the hotel room, the

games

were far from over. For

example , in June 2003, Reliant Corporation of

Houston simply turned off

several power plants, and when California cities

faced going dark, the

company sold them a pittance of kilowatts for

more than gold, making several

million in minutes.

 

 

 

 

 

Power-market shenanigans were nothing new in

2000. What was new was the

response of Governor Gray Davis. A normally

quiet, if not dull, man, this

Governor had the temerity to call the energy

sellers " pirates " -- in public!

-- and, even more radically, he asked them to

give back all the ill-gotten

loot, the entire $9 billion. The state filed a

regulatory complaint with the

federal government.

 

 

 

The Peninsula Hotel get-together was all about

how to " settle " the legal

actions in such a way that Enron and friends

could get the state to accept

dog food instead of dollars. Davis seemed

 

unlikely to see things Ken's way.

Life would be so much better if California had a

governor like the muscle

guy in the Speedos.

 

 

 

And so it came to pass that, in 2003, quiet Gray

Davis, who had the cojones

to stand up to the electricity barons, was thrown

out of office by the

voters and replaced by the tinker-toy tough guy.

The Governator performed as

desired. Soon after Schwarznegger took over from

Davis, he signed off on a

series of deals with Reliant, Williams Company,

Dynegy, Entergy and the

other power pirates for ten to twenty cents on

the dollar, less than you'd

tip the waitress. Enron paid just about nothing.

 

 

 

-------

 

On June 6, Penguin Dutton will publish Greg

Palast's new book, Armed

Madhouse: Dispatches From the Front Lines of the

Class War. from which this

is taken. ARMED MADHOUSE includes the Project

Censored Award-winning story

of George Bush

and the Enron chief, " Power Outage

Traced to Dim Bulb in

White House " HYPERLINK

" http://www.gregpalast.com/armedmadhouse/preorder.html "

Order it today

 

 

 

Palast, an internationally recognized expert on

Enron and electricity market

manipulation, is co-author of " Democracy and

Regulation, " the United

Nation's guide to control of the utility

industry.

 

 

 

View his investigative reports for Harper's

Magazine and BBC Television's

Newsnight at HYPERLINK

" http://www.gregpalast.com/ " www.GregPalast.com.

 

 

 

--

 

 

 

" To be nobody-but-myself in a world which is doing its best, night and

day, to make me everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle

which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting. " -e.e.

cummings-

 

 

 

We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on

the Mount. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We

know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing that

we know about living.

-- General Omar Bradley

 

* * * * W A R N I N G * * * *

As the result of the abuse of power as manifested by George W. Bush

and with the collusion of and others - this email may be subject

to collection and/or other wire tapping/internet illegalities

currently being conducted by the National Security Agency and others.

And, to any agent(s) reading this, I would suggest it is never too

late to change careers and would refer you to:

http://prorev.com/spookletter.htm

 

* * * * *