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Today's
Stories
March 22, 2004
Greg Moses
Lenni Brenner
Report from NYC: Old and Young
Parade for Peace
March 20 / 21, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Gay
Marriage: Sidestep on Freedom's Path
Jeffrey St. Clair
Intolerable Opinions in an Age of Shock and Awe: What Would Lilburne
Do?
Ted Honderich
Tony Blair's Moral Responsibility for Atrocities
Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
The Plot Against Syria: an Irresponsibility Act
Gary Leupp
On Viewing "The Passion of the Christ"
William A. Cook
Fence, Barrier, Wall
Phil Gasper
Bush v. Bush-lite: Chomsky's Lesser Evilism
Ron Jacobs
Fox News and the Masters of War
John Stanton
Which Way John Kerry? The Senator's Inner Nixon
Justin Felux
Kerry and Black America: Just Another Stupid White Man
Mike Whitney
Greenspan's Treason: Swindling Posterity
Augustin Velloso
Avoiding Osama's Abyss
Lawrence Magnuson
Eyes Wide Open: Is Spain Caving in to Terrorism?
Kathy Kelly
Getting Together to Defeat Terrorism
Tracy McLellan
Scalia & Cheney: Happiness is a Warm Gun
Kurt Nimmo
Emma Goldman for President!
Luis J. Rodriguez
The Redemptive Power of Art: It's Not a Frill
Mickey Z
The Michael Moore Diet
Jackie Corr
When Harry Truman Stopped in Butte
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Great Trial of 1922: Gandhi's Vision of Responsibility
Poets' Basement
Stew Albert & JD Curtis
Website of the Weekend
Virtual World Election
March 19, 2004
Jeffrey St. Clair
Zapatero
to Kerry: Back Off, Senator, Our Troops are Coming Home
Ann Harrison
So
Protesters, How Well Do You Know Your Rights?
William MacDougall
Fortress Britain's War on "Economic Migrants"
Greg Moses
Sold American: Cowboy Nation Gets Ready to Vote
Cynthia McKinney
Haiti and the Impotence of Black America: Roll Back This Coup,
Mr. Bush
Norman Solomon
Spinning the Past; Threatening the Future
John L. Hess
"Missing" Evidence and the NYTs
Vicente Navarro
The
End of Aznar, Bush's Best Friend
Website of the War
Naming the Dead
March 18, 2004
Gila Svirsky
Rachel
Corrie, One Year Later: She Never Lost Faith in Decency
Christopher Brauchli
Drilling a Hole in the Sanctions: How Halliburton Made $73 Million
from Saddam
William Kulin
Report from Iraq: Just Another Baghdad Car Bombing
Mike Whitney
Resistance: a Moral Imperative
Rep. Ron Paul
Broadcast Indecency Act: an Indecent Attack on the First Amendment
Josh Frank
The Nader Question
Jack Random
They Lied & They Lost: Madrid and the Lessons of Democracy
Greg Bates
What Makes a Nader Voter Tick? A Survey
Sam Hamod / Alfredo Reyes
Contempt of the World: Hastert, Bush and Cheney on Spain
Gary Leupp
The
Madrid Bombings: the Chickens Come Home to Roost
Website of the Day
Privatizing Armageddon: Buy Your Own Doomsday Key
March 17, 2004
Marjorie Cohn
Spain, the EU and the US: War on
Terror or Civil Liberties?
David MacMichael
Untruth
and Consequences
Michael Donnelly
Wear the Green, But Skip the Green Beer
Tom Stephens
"Steady Leadership": Let the Buyer Beware
Wayne Madsen
Sen. Kerry, Let Me Help You Out
Karyn Strickler
Who Owns the Sierra Club? Anonymous Donors and Rigged Elections
Peter Linebaugh
Bush:
Blanc Blanc
March 16, 2004
Lenni Brenner
James
Madison: the Anti-Clerical Father of the Bill of Rights
Scott Boehm
Madrid
Diary: How to Change World Order in Four Days
Alexander Lynch
From Franco to Aznar: the History
Behind the Spanish Elections
Sam Hamod and Alfredo
Reyes
The Truth About the Spanish Elections: Aznar Was Going Down Anyway
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
You Wouldn't Do a Dog This Way:
Executing David Clayton Hill
Mike Whitney
The Case for a Nuclear Iran
Robert Fisk
The Bloody Price of the "War
on Terror"
Bill Christison
The
Aftershocks from Madrid
CounterPunch Photo Wire
The Passion of St. Teresa
Website of the Day
Join the War on Art!
March 15, 2004
Harry Browne
Terror Nothing New to Europe
Mike Whitney
Justice
Not Murder: the Tragic Symmetry of Terrorism
Lidice Valenzuela
Haiti: a Coup without Consultation
Greg Moses
Lessons
from the Texas Primaries: Looking for a Coalition with Legs
Mickey Z.
Depraved Indifference: C-Sections, Patriarchy & Women's Health
Asaf Shtull-Trauring
AWOL
in New York: From Refusenik to Organizer
CounterPunch Wire
Gen. Gramajo Executed by Bees!
March 12 / 14, 2004
Gabriel Kolko
The
Coming Elections and the Future of American Global Power
Saul Landau
Oh, Jesus...It's the Movie!
William Blum
Neo-Con(tradictions)
William S. Lind
Why They Throw Rocks
Rahul Mahajan
The Meaning of Madrid: War on "Terrorism" Makes Us
All Less Safe
Neve Gordon
Demographic Wars
Kurt Nimmo
Kerry and the Progressive Interventionists
Mickey Z.
The "New" UN Blames the Poor
Mike Whitney
War Games: the American Media Leads the Charge
Helen Scott and Ashley
Smith
Aristide's Fall: What Led to the Coup?
Justin E.H. Smith
Loïc Wacquant: Against a Sociodicy
of the American Prison
Brandy Baker
Him Again? Al Gore Needs to Move On
Robin Philpot
Nobody Can Call It a "Plane Crash" Now: the Report
on the Assassination of Rwandan President Habyarimana
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Meat Monopoly Takes a Rare Pounding
Dave Zirin
She Turned Her Back on the War: an Interview with Toni Smith
Daniel Wolff
The Lord's Pier
March 11, 2004
Ron Jacobs
Bedtime
for Democracy
Bill Kauffman
Hey,
Ralph! Why Not Another Party of the People?
James Hollander
Slaughter
in Madrid: Consolidating an Ally?
Norman Solomon
They
Shoot Journalists, Don't They?
Patrick Gavin
The Salvation of Dan Quayle: Family Values Return
Becky Burgwin
You're
Messing with the Wrong Generation
John Sugg
The FBI is on My Trail
March 10, 2004
Hammond Guthrie
Read
This Book!: "Who the Hell is Stew Albert?"
Chris Floyd
Operation Enduring Sweatshop: Another
Bush Brings Hell to Haiti
Elizabeth Corrie
Remembering the Death of Rachel Corrie
Mike Whitney
US Press Torpedoes Aristide
M. Junaid Alam
An Anti-Civilizational War?
Bob Feldman
The Occupation of Haiti: Recalling 1915-1934
John L. Hess
An Overload of Crises
Gary Leupp
On Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi and the Uses of al-Qaeda "Links"
March 9, 2004
Greg Weiher
The
Zarqawi Gambit, Part 2
Ben Tripp
Word Up! Let's Have a Conversation
Tom Barry
Neo-Cons Target Syria
Sharon Smith
The Hypocrites in the Catholic Church
Robert Fisk
The Same Old Iraq
Doug Giebel
The Bush Strategy: Laughing All the Way
Ralph Nader
Pension Rights, the Trail of Broken Promises
Daniel Estulin
In Memory of Ricardo Ortega: a Great Journalist, Killed in Haiti
Dave Lindorff
Martha Stewart's Cloudy Day
Saul Landau
Will the Filthy Rich Dump Bush?
Website of the Day
Imperial Armies in the Garden
March 8, 2004
Amy Goodman
An
Interview with Aristide
Eric Ruder
An Interview
with Robert Fatton on the Coup in Haiti
Robert Jensen
The Presidential Library Terrorist
Connection
Mike Whitney
Expel the US from the Security Council
Jason Leopold
How Cheney Helped Cover Up Pakistan's
Nuclear Proliferation
Mazin Qumsiyeh
Why is Apartheid Touted as a Solution?
Kevin Alexander Gray
The Legacy of Strom Thurmond
Derek Seidman
Radical Continuity: an Interview with Paul Buhle
Steve Perry
Kerry Fiddles While He Could be Burning Bush
Website of the Day
Patriot
Act Game
March 6 / 7, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Understanding the World with
Paul Sweezy
Robert Pollin
Remembering Paul Sweezy
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Politics of Timber Theft
Tom Reeves
Bush's Mass Deportations: 63,000 and Counting
Charles Lewis
Who Mugged Howard Dean in Iowa:
Kerry, Torricelli and a Mysterious Frontgroup
Tom Jackson
My Breakfast with Sen. Judd Gregg
Kurt Nimmo
Is Venezuela Next?
Alan Cisco
A Report from Caracas
Jack Random
Haitian Democracy be Damned
Colin Piquette
Oh, Canada: the Coup Coalition
Lee Sustar
Labor's State of Emergency
William D. Hartung
Iraq and the Costs of War
David Sally
Rebuilding
Amérique
Mark Scaramella
When God Mooned Moses: Test Your Bible Knowledge
Mickey Z.
What We Can Learn from Ashcroft's Gallbladder
Ron Jacobs
Politics and Baseball
Dave Zirin
The Longest Jump: the Blackballing of Phil Shinnick
Poets' Basement
John Holt and Larry Kearney
Website of the Weekend
National Day of Action for Rachel Corrie
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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March
22, 2004
Gaming the California Electricity Market
Firm
with Ties to Cheney's Task Force Faces Criminal Indictment
By JASON LEOPOLD
Three years ago, while California's energy crisis
was spiraling out of control, Vice President Dick Cheney secretly
met with half-dozen corporate executives of the country's largest
energy companies to hammer out a national energy policy for President
George W. Bush.
Cheney appeared on a number of news programs
in May 2001 to promote his new energy policy, which turned out
to be a boon for the energy industries, but abandoned consumers
and environmental groups. Naturally, during some of those interviews,
Cheney was asked whether a handful of the energy companies that
sold electricity in California and stood to benefit financially
from the new policy were behaving like a "cartel" and
manipulating prices in the state's deregulated electricity market.
"No," Cheney said in a May
17, 2001 interview with PBS' "Frontline;" a day after
the final energy policy report was released. "The problem
you had in California was caused by a combination of things--an
unwise regulatory scheme, because they didn't really deregulate.
Now they're trapped from unwise regulatory schemes, plus not
having addressed the supply side of the issue. They've obviously
created major problems for themselves..."
California's electricity crisis wreaked
havoc on millions of people in the state between 2000 and 2001,
resulted in four days of rolling blackouts and forced the state's
largest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric, into bankruptcy.
California was the first state in the nation to deregulate its
power market in an effort to provide consumers with cheaper electricity
and the opportunity to choose their own power company. The results
have since proved disastrous. The experiment has cost the state
more than $30 billion.
For three years, California officials
pleaded with federal energy regulators, President Bush and Vice
President Cheney, to provide the state with some relief from
soaring wholesale electricity prices and to investigate many
of the energy companies that sold power to California for allegedly
manipulating the market.
Former Governor Gray Davis met with Bush
a couple of weeks before Cheney's "Frontline" interview
and asked for federal assistance, such as price caps, but Bush
refused saying the free-market would sort out the mess.
But Cheney 's denials that his friends
in the energy sector weren't to blame for the power crisis are
sure to come back and haunt him and could hamper President Bush's
reelection campaign. Later this month, the United States Attorney's
office in the Northern District of California is expected to
issue its first criminal indictment against an energy company
for manipulating wholesale energy prices in California that could
boost the state's claims that it's owed billions in refunds for
overcharges. The company at the center of the probe is Houston-based
Reliant Resources, Inc.
Reliant said in a news release March
8 that it was notified by the US Attorney's office about the
pending indictment, which stems from allegations that the company
deliberately shut down its power plants in California for a few
days in June 2000, creating an artificial shortage and causing
wholesale prices to skyrocket.
A spokesman for the US Attorney's office
said he could not comment on pending cases, but he confirmed
that his office is also seeking criminal indictments against
several current and former Reliant employees whom he would not
name. A Reliant spokesman said "the actions that are the
subject of the United States Attorney's investigation were not
in violation of laws, tariffs or regulations in effect at the
time and intends vigorously to contest any charges."
The evidence the US Attorney's office
will use against Reliant is a recorded transcript of a conversation
between a Reliant electricity trader and a power plant operator
that first emerged publicly a year ago. The conversation between
the two employees seemed to settle the three-year long debate
about the nature of California's energy crisis.
"[We] started out Monday losing
$3 million... So, then we decided as a group that we were going
to make it back up, so we turned like about almost every power
plant off. It worked. Prices went back up. Made back about $4
million, actually more than that, $5 million," the Reliant
trader says in a tape-recorded conversation on June 23, 2000.
The scheme worked. It caused power prices
to reach "unjust" and "unreasonable" levels
in California, which, under the Federal Power Act, is illegal.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission,
the agency responsible for keeping the country's wholesale electricity
and natural gas markets in check, released the transcript in
February 2003 after announcing that Reliant agreed to refund
California $13.8 million, without admitting guilt.
What's interesting about the allegations
against Reliant is that the company has been connected to Cheney's
energy task force, which met between January and March 2001 to
work on Bush's National Energy Policy.
Reliant, along with Entergy and TXU,
two other major electricity corporations based in Texas, hired
Diane Allbaugh as a lobbyist. Allbaugh is the wife of Joe Allbaugh,
"the only member of Bush's so-called iron triangle of trusted
Texas cohorts to have served on the energy task force" and
a director of the Federal Energy Management Agency, according
to an Aug. 26, 2001 report in the Los Angeles Times.
Reliant, TXU and Entergy each paid Diane
Allbaugh $20,000 for consulting work during the last three months
of 2000, according to her January 2001 financial disclosure report.
It's unclear whether she lobbied the energy task force on behalf
of Reliant, TXU and Entergy, which would have certainly been
a conflict-on-interest, but her husband, Joe Allbaugh, "has
participated in task force talks with a direct bearing on the
energy companies' interests generally, such as environmental
rules for power plants and electricity deregulation--a specialty
of his wife's," the Times reported.
"At least twice, Joe Allbaugh was
privy to updates from (Bush) economic advisor Lawrence Lindsey
(a former member of Enron's advisory board) on California's malfunctioning
market, where Reliant stands accused by the state of overcharging,"
the Times reported.
According to evidence obtained by Congressman
Henry Waxman, D-California, last year, the energy task force
"considered and abandoned plans to address California's
energy problems in its report."
Whether Joe Allbaugh or his wife Diane
urged Cheney to abandon the issues related to California's energy
crisis is unknown. Neither of them would return calls for comment
and so far Cheney has refused to give up the names of the energy
executives and lobbyists he met with. The U.S. Supreme Court
is expected to take up that issue later this year.
However, it's not the first time, Diane
Allbaugh has been questioned about corporate cronyism.
In 1996, the Dallas Morning News reported
that Diane Allbaugh represented clients with interests in pending
Texas state deregulation of telecommunications and utilities
markets, while her husband served as then-Gov. Bush's chief of
staff. At the time, Bush said he was troubled "if it creates
a public perception that something unfair is taking place."
She eventually withdrew from the contracts
she represented at the time.
While U.S. lawmakers continue to ask
what the Bush administration knew about the 9-11 attacks and
when they knew it, the same can be said about the administration's
knowledge about the California energy crisis.
Did Cheney publicly deny that energy
companies were manipulating the market because it would have
derailed the National Energy Policy? Only a Magic Eight Ball
can answer that question correctly, but there appeared to have
been a coordinated effort by federal energy regulators to conceal
smoking-gun evidence of market manipulation in California in
May 2001 around the same time that Cheney released the final
version of the National Energy Policy.
Another recorded conversation between
two employees of Tulsa, Okla.-based Williams Cos. showed that
the two men conspired to shut down a power plant in Southern
California for two weeks to boost electricity prices and create
an artificial shortage in the state. The scheme is identical
to the one Reliant engaged in and took place during the same
time, in June 2000.
But FERC, the nation's top energy watchdogs,
kept the evidence under wraps and cut a deal with Williams in
May 2001--the same month Cheney released the energy policy--agreeing
to refund California $8 million it obtained through the scam,
without admitting any guilt.
FERC released copies of the Williams
transcripts in November 2002 after the Wall Street Journal sued
the commission to obtain the full copy of its report.
It's possible that Bush, Cheney and members
of the energy task force were kept in the dark about the Williams
and Reliant scams, but given the administration's track record
on other matters such as 9-11, the Iraq war, the Medicare legislation,
etc., it doesn't seem likely.
Jason Leopold
may be reached at: jasonleopold@hotmail.com
Weekend
Edition Features for March 20 / 21, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Gay
Marriage: Sidestep on Freedom's Path
Jeffrey St. Clair
Intolerable Opinions in an Age of Shock and Awe: What Would Lilburne
Do?
Ted Honderich
Tony Blair's Moral Responsibility for Atrocities
Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
The Plot Against Syria: an Irresponsibility Act
Gary Leupp
On Viewing "The Passion of the Christ"
William A. Cook
Fence, Barrier, Wall
Phil Gasper
Bush v. Bush-lite: Chomsky's Lesser Evilism
Ron Jacobs
Fox News and the Masters of War
John Stanton
Which Way John Kerry? The Senator's Inner Nixon
Justin Felux
Kerry and Black America: Just Another Stupid White Man
Mike Whitney
Greenspan's Treason: Swindling Posterity
Augustin Velloso
Avoiding Osama's Abyss
Lawrence Magnuson
Eyes Wide Open: Is Spain Caving in to Terrorism?
Kathy Kelly
Getting Together to Defeat Terrorism
Tracy McLellan
Scalia & Cheney: Happiness is a Warm Gun
Kurt Nimmo
Emma Goldman for President!
Luis J. Rodriguez
The Redemptive Power of Art: It's Not a Frill
Mickey Z
The Michael Moore Diet
Jackie Corr
When Harry Truman Stopped in Butte
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Great Trial of 1922: Gandhi's Vision of Responsibility
Poets' Basement
Stew Albert & JD Curtis
Website of the Weekend
Virtual World Election
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