{"id":408,"date":"2003-10-06T11:34:24","date_gmt":"2003-10-06T18:34:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/2003\/10\/stiffing_culifornia\/"},"modified":"2003-10-06T11:34:24","modified_gmt":"2003-10-06T18:34:24","slug":"stiffing_culifornia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2003\/10\/stiffing_culifornia.html","title":{"rendered":"STIFFING CULIFORNIA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s a story that might as well be satire because, if true, it’s so nefarious even Gore Vidal
\nmight not believe all the dots it connects among Arnold Schwarzenegger, Enron’s former CEO,
\nKenneth Lay, and the California energy rip-off. It’s also based on facts, unlike the tabloid tale in
\nThe Weekly World News headlined: “Alien
\nBacks Arnold for Governor.”<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A><\/P>
\n

According to internal Enron memoranda uncovered by the Foundation for
\nTaxpayer and Consumer Rights<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A>, Schwarzenegger was among a dozen
\nor so “insiders” who conferred with Lay at a hastily arranged meeting in the midst of the energy
\ncrisis in May of 2001. The insider meeting<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A> — Enron’s own term for it — was
\nintended to drum up business support for an Enron “solution” to the crisis a month after California
\nLt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante filed a civil suit to make various power companies return $9 billion in
\nillicit profits from market manipulation to the state’s electric and gas customers.<\/P>
\n

One reporter<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A> who has seen 34 pages of internal
\nEnron memoranda charges that “Schwarzenegger knowingly joined the hush-hush encounter as
\npart of a campaign to sabotage” the litigation. Schwarzenegger has claimed he can’t remember the
\nmeeting, although an Enron e-mail<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A> lists him as an attendee. (Scroll to
\nsecond memo.)<\/I> Forty-eight top execs are listed as invitees — a who’s who of power players,
\namong them Michael Eisner, Eli Broad, David Baltimore, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Terry Semel,
\nDonald Bren, Bill Simon and Sherry Lansing — most of whom were smart enough not to show
\nup. Only 12 attended besides Arnold, including Michael Milken (and none of the above).<\/P>
\n

If Schwarzenegger becomes governor, proponents of the civil suit fear he’ll approve the
\n“sweetheart settlements” cooked up by the toothless Federal Energy Regulatory
\nCommission<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A> (now headed by Patrick Wood, III, a Bush appointee
\nrecommended to him by — guess who? — Ken Lay), which requires Enron, Reliant, Dynegy,
\nWilliams Company and other Texas-based corporations to pay back only two cents on the dollar
\njust as the civil suit is about to go to trial — and that would likely kill the litigation. <\/P>
\n

Last week the commission signed a settlement agreement with Reliant<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A>.<\/FONT><\/EM> The company did not admit any violations of the law, but
\nagreed to pay $15 million, with two more $5 million payments over the next two years and total
\npayments potentially coming to $50 million. That amounts to a slap on the wrist, despite being
\ntouted as the comission’s “largest ever” settlement agreement. Even the San Diego Tribune, a
\nRepublican bastion, contends in an editorial that Californians are being stiffed by the
\ncommission.<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A><\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s a story that might as well be satire because, if true, it’s so nefarious even Gore Vidal might not believe all the dots it connects among Arnold Schwarzenegger, Enron’s former CEO, Kenneth Lay, and the California energy rip-off. It’s also based on facts, unlike the tabloid tale in The Weekly World News headlined: “Alien […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-408","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-6A","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}