Jim McCoy wrote the following a few days ago:

> I also can not find information on this group.
> My guess would be that it is a group of democrats tied to grey davis.
> I say this beacause of the myth that the CA power crisis was created by
> Texans (led by the Bush family and thier friends).
> The power crisis in CA was created by CA liberals who started to shut
> down power plants and refuse to build new ones because they don't like
> having power plants.
> As CA grew and created a demand for more energy, the state of CA reduced
> the amount of energy they were producing.


In contrast, the Eastern liberal press establishment wrote the following this
afternoon. Some days you just don't know who to trust:

=======================================

Enron Trader Will Plead Guilty in California Power Case
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 9:25 p.m. ET

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- A former Enron trader accused of masterminding a scheme
to drive up energy prices during California's power crisis pleaded guilty
Thursday to conspiracy and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.

Timothy Belden, the former head of trading in Enron's Portland, Ore., office,
admitted to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. He faces up to five
years in prison and must forfeit $2.1 million.

``I did it because I was trying to maximize profit for Enron,'' Belden told
U.S. District Judge Martin Jenkins.

U.S. Attorney Kevin Ryan said the plea demonstrates once and for all that the
rolling blackouts and huge price increases that rocked California in 2000 and
last year were the result of illegal conduct.

``These charges answer the question that has long troubled California
consumers: whether the energy crisis was spurred in part by criminal
activity. The answer is a resounding yes,'' Ryan said.

Belden, 35, who now lives in Houston, was released on $500,000 bail. He will
be sentenced in April.

Belden's plea is the first prosecution of anyone in connection with the
West's energy crisis. It is also the first public acknowledgment by the
government that criminal activity helped drive up power prices -- a point
California Gov. Gray Davis and other lawmakers have been making since the
crisis began two years ago.

The case represents a remarkable evolution in the Bush administration's
attitude about the energy crisis. In May 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney
said California was to blame for power shortages and soaring prices. ``They
caused it themselves,'' Cheney said then.

Prosecutor Matthew Jacobs said Belden will help build a case against
higher-ranking officials at Houston-based Enron, the energy giant whose
collapse last year has roiled the energy industry.

Belden's attorney, Cristina Arguedas, said her client was following Enron's
instructions when he handled his trades and will ``make amends for that by
cooperating with the government.''

Belden is the third Enron figure to be prosecuted. Andrew Fastow, Enron's
former chief financial officer, is charged with of devising the off-the-books
partnerships that were used to hide some $1 billion in debt. Fastow aide
Michael Kopper pleaded guilty in August to money laundering and conspiracy.

``Tim Belden is not a high-level executive who was lining his pockets out of
greed,'' Arguedas said. ``He did his job. Tim was always honest with others
at Enron about his actions, and was never disciplined by Enron.

``He now realizes that what he was taught to do was wrong,'' she said.

Belden was the mastermind behind the strategies described in memos spelling
out how Enron manipulated the California energy market, said Chris Schreiber,
an attorney working with a California Senate committee investigating the
crisis.

``He's been on our radar for a long time,'' Schreiber said.

Federal investigators have worked for months with the state Senate panel, and
a federal grand jury in San Francisco weighed criminal charges.

Internal company memos, first released in May, describe how Enron took power
out of California at a time of rolling blackouts and shortages and sold it
out of state to elude price caps.

Enron bought California power at cheap, capped prices, routed it outside the
state and then sold it back into California at vastly inflated prices,
authorities said. The so-called ``ricochet'' deals were designed to
circumvent California's price caps on wholesale energy.

The scheme ``allowed Enron to exploit and intensify the California energy
crisis and prey on energy consumers at their most vulnerable moment,'' Deputy
Attorney General Larry Thompson, head of the Justice Department's Corporate
Fraud Task Force, said in Washington.

Thompson said revenue from Belden's trading unit rose from $50 million in
1999 to $500 million in 2000 to $800 million in 2001.

State Sen. Joe Dunn, a Democrat who chairs the committee on price
manipulation, called Belden's plea ``the first of many dominoes that will
fall, not only at Enron, but within other energy companies within the
wholesale energy market. Tim Belden not only knows how Enron played, but how
others played as well.''

=========================================

Wirt Atmar

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