Criminal trial related to California energy crisis may start soon

December 4, 2005

Criminal trial related to California energy crisis may start soon

by Jason Leopold

Despite the last minute delay in the criminal trial, the case still appears to be a slam dunk for the prosecution, based on evidence already submitted by the government against Reliant, a spokesman for the Justice Department said.

Snip

FERC released the transcripts in late November 2002 after the Wall Street Journal sued the commission to obtain a full copy of its report. Had the evidence been released before the collapse of Enron, it may have helped California's case, but it would have hurt the Bush's National Energy Policy, which was made public instead in May 2001, the same month Williams and FERC hatched a settlement. During this time, Bush visited California and met with Gov. Davis to discuss the energy crisis. Bush told Davis he could not do anything to help the state.

A few weeks before the meeting between Bush and Davis, Vice President Dick Cheney, who chairs Bush's energy task force, was interviewed by PBS's "Frontline" for a special series on California's energy crisis. During the interview, Cheney flat-out denied that energy companies ripped off California.

Snip

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 August 26, 2001, report in the Los Angeles Times.

http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/20/2005/1601

And let's keep our fingers crossed.

Hekate

:kick:

circumvent with his role as governor. POS

to minimalize the damage AND investigation into the energy sector of CA, especially enron, kenney-boy, etc. If find it absolutely astounding that BEFORE the "energy crisis" that there is verifiable evidence of ah-nuld meeting with some of the enron bunch.

I have never been able to understand how anyone could believe that the crisis was real and not a manipulated event for the profit of the energy companies.

:kick: and recommended

:popcorn:

was one of the biggest meetings of criminals in American history. It rivaled Mafia meetings, except that the government was enabling the energy companies to rip us off to the tune of billions. The Bush administration has been the most brazenly criminal one in United States history.

Yet some deluded souls still see Bush as a good man, because he proclaims himself to be a Christian. If I remember correctly, Jesus drove the money lenders out of the temple, he didn't send one of his disciples to conspire with them on how to rip off his followers.

:argh:

making copies and dropping one on the door steps of everyone on my block. Maybe it'll stir up some critical thinking.

:mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:All I can say is there has to be some powerful threats goin' on to have kept this out of sight for so long. I CANNOT understand how we have allowed it! The Arnold connection has also been completely buried, as well as the questions into the recall election that enabled him to scuttle Cruz Bustamonte's prosecution of the energy companies.

:grr::grr::grr::grr::grr::grr::grr::grr::grr::grr::grr::grr::grr::grr:
:grr:
:grr:
:grr: SHOW NO MERCY!
:grr:
:grr:
:grr:
:grr:
:grr:

$591.00 for one month for an 1800 sq.ft. home...cALIFORNIA "DEFICEIT" WAS 7 BILLION WHEN BUSH TOOK OFFICE AND GREW BY 20 BILLION EACH YEAR FOR 2000 AND 2001.....
Bustamante was getting too close to Enron through the "fair business laws " in California.
Enter: Daryl Issa....Congressman, weapons charge violations and conviction and according to Daryl himself best Friends with George Bush. He exclaimed on the very first night of new Bill Mahers show that he would personally give papers that Bill had in his hand to the president was his"very good friend"....(on tape)
Exit Daryl
Enron built most of the windmills in California and was going full tilt boogie .Andrew Fastow(x enron "treasurer") and his lovely wife Lea took 16 million dollars of their "own money" and invested in "Palm Springs windmills".....duhhhh.
Scalia should be impeached for his collusion with Cheney.What a God awful sham of a chief justice. (President Ford tried to get some Supreme Court Judge impeached once when he was speaker, I think)
Yup....I thinj it's all about the energy frm California to Iraq.What scum sits in the White House!....Whew......

see post #20 here:

The truth: Wilkes was a mechanism by which public funds earmarked for national defense were funneled to G.O.P. candidates and causes.

Apparently, Wilkes felt queasy about housing his PAC at the same address as ADCS proper, so he set up a small office in a San Diego business park. Someone must have put down the wrong address on one of the applications.

So which candidates got chunks of that taxpayer money earmarked for "defense"?

Henry Bonilla, Roy Brown, Rick Clayburgh, Duke Cunningham (of course!), John T. Doolittle, Maria Guadalupe Garcia, George W. Gekas, Lindsay Graham, Duncan Hunter, Darrell Issa, Samuel Johnson, Thaddeus G. McCotter, Constance Morella, Devin Nune, Steve Pearce, Bill Van de Weghe Jr., Jerry Weller.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=5513934

Arnold has got to go!

It was all a set up from day one.

I am not a proponent of the death penalty, but in cases of corporate fraud and massive fiscal abuse which harms millions...
Hang those bastards out to dry.

And yes, I am a Californian.:mad:

with the public by going after these idiots. It could be a gold mine for ambitious people in either profession.

From the article:

California's electricity crisis wreaked havoc on consumers 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 nearly 10 years ago in an effort to provide consumers with cheaper electricity and the opportunity to choose their own power provider. The results have since proved disastrous. The experiment has cost the state more than $70 billion, according to some estimates.

For three years, California officials pleaded with federal regulators, President Bush, and Vice President Dick Cheney to provide the state with some relief from soaring wholesale power prices and investigate energy companies, including Enron, Williams Companies, and Reliant, for allegedly manipulating the market.

Bush and Cheney responded personally to former California governor Gray Davis's pleas for help in May 2001 by saying the crisis was the result of California's poorly designed power market, which left some regulatory restrictions in place.
(snip)

Thanks to Wilms for this possible ray of sunlight! God, I hope prosecutors won't be influenced by right-wing intimidation.

While it was going on, I asked some friends wth was happening. I had recently moved from SF, having lived there for 20+ years and was completely astounded that nothing was being done about it.

This happened over five years ago and the investigation should have started at least four years ago.

Thanks, Larry, for nothing.

...more truth for the American people. 'Bout time! And I'm from California, too.

During the early afternoon - I as at work and boom! out go the lights. So fucking criminal.

I'd love to see someone in the Research Forum compile a list of every lie Dick Cheney has published from the time he worked for Ronnie Rayguns-Zap. It could be the longest list ever compiled in history about anything.

:kick:

been thinking of the energy crisis/deposing of Gray Davis a lot these days - why, with Blanco and Katrina and shades of 911 too...

Associates of Bush Aide Say He Helped Win Contract

WASHINGTON, Jan. 24 - Karl Rove, President Bush's top political adviser, recommended the Republican strategist Ralph Reed to the Enron
Corporation (news/quote) for a lucrative consulting contract as Mr. Bush was weighing whether to run for president, close associates of Mr. Rove say.

The Rove associates say the recommendation, which Enron accepted, was intended to keep Mr. Reed's allegiance to the Bush campaign without putting him on the Bush payroll. Mr. Bush, they say, was then developing his "compassionate conservativism" message and did not want to be linked too closely to Mr. Reed, who had just stepped down as executive director of the Christian Coalition, an organization of committed religious conservatives.

At the same time, they say, the contract discouraged Mr. Reed, a prominent operative who was being courted by several other campaigns, from backing anyone other than Mr. Bush.

Enron paid Mr. Reed $10,000 to $20,000 a month, the amount varying by year and the particular work, people familiar with the arrangement say. He was hired in September 1997 and worked intermittently for Enron until the company collapsed.

In interviews today, both Mr. Rove and Mr. Reed said the contract with Enron had had nothing to do with the Bush campaign. But Mr.
Rove said he had praised Mr. Reed's qualifications in a conversation about
the job with an Enron lobbyist in Texas.

"I think I talked to someone before Ralph got hired," Mr. Rove said. "But I may have talked to him afterward."

"I'm a big fan of Ralph's," Mr. Rove said, "so I'm constantly saying positive things."

http://home.earthlink.net/~mjohnsen/Post_911/Ralph_Reed_and_Enron.html

Also at this link:

Mr. Rove, who sold roughly $100,000 in Enron stock last year, months before the company's collapse, said Mr. Reed was clearly on Mr. Bush's team prior to taking the Enron job.

DeLay's Corporate Fundraising Investigated

In May 2001, Enron's top lobbyists in Washington advised the company chairman that then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) was pressing for a $100,000 contribution to his political action committee, in addition to the $250,000 the company had already pledged to the Republican Party that year.

DeLay requested that the new donation come from "a combination of corporate and personal money from Enron's executives," with the understanding that it would be partly spent on "the redistricting effort in Texas," said the e-mail to Kenneth L. Lay from lobbyists Rick Shapiro and Linda Robertson.

The e-mail, which surfaced in a subsequent federal probe of Houston-based Enron, is one of at least a dozen documents obtained by The Washington Post that show DeLay and his associates directed money from corporations and Washington lobbyists to Republican campaign coffers in Texas in 2001 and 2002 as part of a plan to redraw the state's congressional districts.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43219-2004Jul11.html

The Mysterious Death Of An Enron Exec

It may be the biggest outstanding mystery in the Enron story: the death of Cliff Baxter, a former top Enron executive. He'd just agreed to testify to Congress in the Enron case. A congressional source tells CBS News that Baxter wasn't a target in the probe, he was to provide evidence against others.

But on the morning of January 25th he was found in his car - shot dead.

Police were criticized for calling it a suicide before investigating, so they kept the case open. The fact that it's still open more than two months later has made the Cliff Baxter case prime fodder for murder conspiracy theories, reports CBS News Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson.

Adding to the mystery is a letter - perhaps a suicide note - that Baxter's wife is fighting to keep private. Groups like the Texas Freedom of Information Foundation want at least part of it made public.

"I believe very strongly that Enron is mentioned in it," said Joel White, the group's attorney.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/04/10/eveningnews/main505845.shtml


Charles Dana Rice: He was the senior vice president and treasurer of El Paso Corp., an energy corporation swept up in the recent energy scandal. Two months after the “suicide” of Enron executive Clifford Baxter, in the midst of questions about the accounting practices of El Paso Corp., Charles Rice was found dead of a gunshot wound to the head. His death was ruled a suicide

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:IOU8MKgDAuUJ:dogskinreport.com/index.php/weblog/C6/+Darrell+Issa++Enron&hl=en

El Paso executive dead

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - El Paso Corp. confirmed Monday that its senior vice president and treasurer, Charles Dana Rice, died Sunday in what authorities have called a suicide.

http://money.cnn.com/2002/06/03/news/companies/elpaso_rice/


James Daniel Watkins
His body was found on December 1, 2001 in the Pike National Forest in Colorado, a gunshot wound to the head. Mr. Watkins was a consultant for Arthur Andersen, the accounting firm for Enron. He disappeared on November 13 after he left work. He was described as a devoted family man who always called home if he were going to be late. Officials initially said that the death was suspicious, but have changed their tune and have ruled his death a suicide.

Commerce Secretary Ron Brown
He died in a plane crash on April 3, 1996. Was Ron Brown the first Enron body? In 1995 Enron officials accompanied Brown on a trade mission to India, and to Russia in 1994. Speculation among right-wing whackos suggests that our last duly-elected President, Bill Clinton, was somehow responsible for his death, but we wonder: was Secretary Brown privy to information that would conclusively link George W. Bush to Enron greed and corruption? Charles Meissner, Assistant Commerce Secretary, also died in this crash.

Jake Horton
He was the senior ice-president of Gulf Power, a subsidiary of Southern Company, a cohort of Enron in the energy industry, and a major contributer to the Bush agenda. According to reporter Gregory Palast http://GregPalast.com and http://www.guardian.co.uk/enron/story/0,11337,643422,00.html , Horton knew of the company's appalling accounting practices, and "... had no doubt about its illegal campaign contributions to Florida politicans - he'd made the payments himself. In April of 1989 Horton decided to come clean with state officials, and reserved the company jet to go confront company officials. Ten minutes after takeoff the jet exploded.

http://www.georgewalkerbush.net/index.htm


Things that make you go hmmmmmm....