Tracy Johnson wrote:
>Glad I left California before the Commies took over.

I think it was the free marketeers that took over. I am not an economist and
I never played one on TV maybe that's why I have this question. We have
always been told that eliminating the middle man makes good economic sense.
If I the consumer can buy directly from the producer then I can buy cheaper
and the producer can sell higher than if we go through a third party. Why is
this not the case when it comes to electricity? Deregulation plans across
the country have called for producers not to be the ones that sell the
electricity to the consumers. So in the one case where we actually had a
built in "factory direct" method in place we regulated ourselves into a
middle man method.

What was the problem, weren't the utilities making enough before
deregulation? PG&E claims poverty. They have spent 70 years of gauging
millions of customers and they've lost all that money in a few months?
Please excuse my skepticism.

The out of state producers are charging their locals more because they are
selling California power at huge profits. I guess this makes sense if you
are on the receiving end but the logic escapes the consumer. This is the
same logic that said that they should charge us for the  "work in progress"
of building power plants.

Deregulation of any industry has never been in the consumer's interest; if
it were it the industries would not be pushing for deregulation or even
consent to it. There is no mystery here. There is no grand conspiracy. It is
business as usual by the usual  suspects.

Joseph Rosenblatt