Boy, it certainly does take some logical contortions to blame W for a
crisis that took place entirely on the watch of Democratic leadership.
Let me get this straight -- Enron's ascendancy took place entirely
under the Clinton administration; it reached the apex of its
political and financial power under Clinton; it failed under a
Republican government which ignored entreaties to intervene made by
Clinton's Treasury Secretary. And somehow Bush is to blame?

For the record, "deregulation" as such was not the cause of
California's problems. True deregulation was never given a chance to
work in that state -- why else should it have gone off without a hitch
in other regions of the country? This is merely an excuse by
Democrats - Davis in particular - looking to deflect attention from
their own ineptitude.

California's problems were a consequence of a flawed market structure
designed by their state legislature and enacted by Gray Davis. This
mechanism prevented utilities from signing long-term supply contracts,
forcing them to rely on the volatile spot market to cover shortfalls.
Further complicating matters was the actual lack of new generation;
in ten years not a single new plant had been built in California.

Scheer drops the Energy Policy Act in there, "signed into law by the
elder President Bush," but neglects to mention the principal author
of this far-reaching (and utterly benign) law
(http://www.raponline.org/Pubs/IssueLtr/EPAct92.pdf) was a Democrat;
namely, Senator J. Bennett Johnston, then chairman of the Energy and
Natural Resources Committee in the Senate. What's so unseemly about a
law chiefly concerned with controlling emissions and promoting energy
efficiency? Scheer is not concerned with such trivialities -- Lay
lobbied for it, some Bush signed it -- thats good enough.

The deregulation endorsed by the CFTC under Wendy Gramm chiefly
concerned CFTC oversight of over-the-counter energy derivatives;
principally swaps and options. How this all-but-inevitable ruling
helped ruin the California power market is left for the reader to
decipher, assuming he cares one bit for detail. These unregulated
instruments continue to be used in pretty much all commodity and
financial markets to constructive effect.