Exclusive Tapes Portray Lust for Profit, Lack of Concern for Consumers
By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 1, 2005; Page E01
EVERETT, Wash. -- Utility companies usually don't get fan mail, especially when they have hiked electricity rates 50 percent in the past four years and disconnected record numbers of customers for failure to pay bills.
But the small, publicly owned utility that serves this town north of Seattle has become a West Coast hero by goring the bankrupt carcass of the disgraced Enron Corp. and spilling buckets of deliciously embarrassing blood.
It has flowed in the form of vulgar and cynical chitchat by Enron energy traders -- thousands of hours of it, all recorded on tape. The taped conservations have added a graphic new dimension to public understanding of the company's record of greed, callousness and complicity in the western power crisis of 2000 and 2001. Traders gloat on one tape about jacking up the electricity bill of "Grandma Millie." On another, they scheme to shut down a Nevada power plant in the midst of rolling blackouts in California.
In the litigious aftermath of Enron's bankruptcy, Snohomish County Public Utility District pushed to obtain the tapes over federal objections, exclusively transcribed them and starting last summer has gleefully fed transcripts of Enron's skulduggery to courts and the news media.
…
Snohomish made an "educated guess" that the tapes would contain evidence of Enron market manipulation that amounted to fraud, according to Christiansen, a former FERC trial lawyer who came up with the plan. He said that revelations of fraud would justify the utility's decision to cancel its Enron contract and would absolve it of responsibility to pay any of the $122 million.
Snohomish has spent about $200,000 in the past year, hiring a team of 10 transcribers to sit in a windowless office in Santa Cruz, Calif., and listen to more than 2,800 hours of recordings. The first batch of transcripts was released last June. It included profanity-laced conversations among Enron traders chortling about ripping off "poor grandmothers." The second batch, released at the end of January, showed traders conspiring to close a functioning power plant during a period of severe electricity shortages in early 2001.
The revelations, however, have yet to end a dispute about whether the utility should have to pay Enron $122 million. The question is still before a federal administrative judge, who is expected to submit his decision to FERC commissioners in the fall. FERC, so far, has not let the utility off the hook.
"It remains to be seen whether a court is going to be persuaded because of a tape of some energy trader with a locker room mentality going over the chaos he created," said FERC spokesman Lee. "It is understandable that sentiment against Enron should be to take them and hang them from the nearest tree. But the commission has an obligation to render a judgment based on due process."
Deregulate. Privatize. Only the market can protect the consumer. That’s what we hear from the corporatistas. Or, to be blunt, the investor class. You know, the same ones who need, desperately, those tax breaks the president bush has given them, and continues to shower on them. Poor old “Grandma Millie”, screwed by the deregulated energy market, and also screwed by the president bush, because she’s going to have to shoulder the parasites’ share of supporting the USA.
And now the president bush wants to replace Social Security with the same parasites that sucked a fortune out of the western states during the so-called “energy crisis”. Congress is debating changes to the bankruptcy laws to make it almost impossible for people like poor old “Grandma Millie”, even if medical costs have finished off what’s left of her savings, to be able to discharge her debts. That’s what they call “compassionate conservatism”.
What’s interesting about this article is that a small county public utility is the one that is driving this effort in an effort to save their customers some money. What I don’t see is the large energy holding companies making the same kind of noise.
We see what happens when necessities become commodities. And we need to remember that those companies that take over our government’s functions are only in it to make a profit. So the bottom line in this, is the dollar. And greed.
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