{"id":1961,"date":"2004-06-17T11:47:57","date_gmt":"2004-06-17T16:47:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/1961.html"},"modified":"2004-06-17T11:47:57","modified_gmt":"2004-06-17T16:47:57","slug":"enron-idiots-strike-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/enron-idiots-strike-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Enron idiots strike again"},"content":{"rendered":"

As if the first<\/a> and second<\/a> Enron tapes weren’t bad enough, there’s a third<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While most of the first two tapes emphasized Enron stealing and gouging in California, the new one details the company’s crimes in Nevada.<\/p>\n

“I want to see what pain and heartache this is going to cause Nevada Power Company,” says one Enron trader on the tapes. “I want to f–k with Nevada for a while.” <\/p>\n

“What do you mean?” a second trader asks. <\/p>\n

“I just, I’m still in the mood to screw with people, OK?” the first trader answers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A Nevada attorney summed this up nicely.<\/p>\n

“This was not a smoking gun, this was an audio tape of the bullet coming out of the chamber, hitting the victim and the killer standing over the body and laughing about it,” says Nevada Power Company’s [Russ] Campbell.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n


\nAnd while it’s easy to shake one’s head in disgust at Enron’s criminal profligacy, Kevin Drum noted<\/a> two key questions touched on in the CBS report.<\/p>\n

* [The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission] has had these tapes for more than two years and has resisted releasing them. Who the hell are they protecting?<\/p>\n

* At the height of the crisis several states, including California, signed long term power contracts at high prices. But even though it’s now clear that these contracts were substantially the result of deliberate fraud, the Bush administration has declined to endorse efforts to void the contracts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These are definitely questions that deserve answers. States like Nevada technically still owe millions to the same people which, as CBS put it, “rigged electricity markets” and “pushed up prices, causing rolling blackouts and power shortages.”<\/p>\n

Even if Bush has no sense of fairness or justice, Nevada is a swing state. Coming to its aid and pushing to tear up the state’s Enron contract would likely have political benefits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As if the first and second Enron tapes weren’t bad enough, there’s a third. While most of the first two tapes emphasized Enron stealing and gouging in California, the new one details the company’s crimes in Nevada. “I want to see what pain and heartache this is going to cause Nevada Power Company,” says one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1961\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}