Californians love their energy but they don't want to suck it up so they buy their energy and let the pollution it causes imperil the lives of others. Ain't that a pretty picture?

I figure if you are going to use the energy you can also suck up the pollution it causes! Stink up your own fucking backyard!!!

Another thing about California is they build cities where there ain't any fucking water!!! STOOOOPID!!!

...obviously you know jack about how energy distribution works....there was never a shortage of electricity in CA, only phony distribution problems cause by manipulative brokers like Enron....no use blabbering ignorantly about California...you can thank your republican bitches and their deregulation plans for that...

...it must suck being a republican, what with facts and truth all about making your life more difficult....

The DWP, a city-owned power company, raked it in too. The dept typically makes money (while providing cheap power), but during the crisis, they made bucks selling power to municipalities that didn't have their own power.

Government monopolies may be inefficient and suck, but when private companies collaborate, it's far worse -- it's more like rape. At least governments are nominally responsible to the electorate. Private companies are responsible only to the "stockholders", and then, only to a tiny minority of them.

Worse, within these ad-hoc cartels/combinations, they create a culture of callous domination and hatred for the customer.

These recent Enron tapes are a good example. The way OPEC is fooling with gas prices is another. The way Cheney gave the reconstruction contract to Haliburton, and the way Bush went to war for his oil cronies. This is your "free market" -- capitalists colluding to raise prices, destroy competition, and destroy the little guy. Go look it up in your Adam Smith.

The communist threat is nothing but a bogeyman. The USSR is no more, and capitalists are welcome in China. Stalinist Saddam is gone, a Shia ex-Baathist is in power, and Arab socialist terrorist funder Quaddaffi is a quasi-ally. The enemy of freedom is capitalism.