Blame Game
HERE’S ANOTHER LULU FROM THE CAMP OF GOV. GRAY DAVIS.
The Capitol Morning Report, a newsletter for Sacramento insiders, recently quoted Davis campaign advisor Bob Mulholland in this taunt at Richard Riordan:
“When the Texas energy thugs were gouging California, Gov. Gray Davis fought back and thus no blackouts during the summer. Where were you in this fight? It turns out, as head of the LA Water & Power, you joined the Texas energy Junta and also took Californians to the cleaners. Maybe your campaign slogan should be ‘Riordan,Fighting for Texas.'”
Incredible. Pete Wilson, the Legislature, business lobbyists, Texas rowdies, the PUC, the FERC, George W. Bush and now Los Angeles’ former mayor. The list of Davis’ energy villains grows.
It’s true that Riordan, as nominal head of his city’s utility when it was thriving amid the statewide energy gloom, doesn’t have quite as much leeway as his GOP gubernatorial opponents to rip Democrat Davis’ bungling of the power crisis,Davis partisans like Mulholland will counter, loudly if not very persuasively, that supposed sharpies like Riordan share the blame for the state’s power predicament.
But for goodness sake, man, the person who was actually running the LA Department of Water & Power last winter when it was playing an energy-desperate California like a ukulele, was none other than S. David Freeman, the man Davis then tapped in April to become his energy czar. If you want to make pejorative remarks about taking Californians to the cleaners, try this: Davis’ boy Freeman scrubbed the state twice. First, as head of LADWP, he oversaw a public agency whose arbitrage of energy sales to the state made the private power producers look like pikers. Then, having switched to the state’s side, he negotiated the long-term energy contracts that, with the ink on them not yet dry, already look so awful that even Davis is willing to undo them.
Sheesh. I guess when you’re playing as weak a hand as Davis is on energy, this is the best you can do.
