Wednesday, June 02, 2004
Enron's Thieving Butt - The Portland Connection
It looks like the “smoking gun” has finally come to light in the case against Enron. Some of the dirty dealing done by Enron happened at their West Coast trading desk, which was here in Portland. The outrageous practices detailed in this memo sent electricity prices skyrocketing and nearly bankrupted California. The memo was on the letterhead of Stoel Rives, a Portland law firm that represents many corporations in Oregon, including the company I used to work for.
We will be paying for this greedy manipulation of the power markets for years, rates are still more than twice what they were before this scam. Enron was the largest contributor to Bush’s campaign, and the largest corporate bankruptcy to date. The CEO, Ken Lay is a close personal friend of Bush and has managed to keep himself out of jail, despite a long list of corporate crimes.
As “Deep Throat” said during the Watergate days - “follow the money”...
Some of Enron’s political contributions:
George W Bush - $623,000
Phil Gramm (R-Texas) - $108,350
Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) - $101,500
Tom DeLay (R-Texas) - $154,650
Gordon Smith (R-Oregon) - $14,500
- Bob Woods
redacted from CBS News -
When a forest fire shut down a major transmission line into California, cutting power supplies and raising prices, Enron energy traders celebrated, CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales reports.
“Burn, baby, burn. That’s a beautiful thing,” a trader sang about the massive fire.
Four years after California’s disastrous experiment with energy deregulation, Enron energy traders can be heard – on audiotapes obtained by CBS News – gloating and praising each other as they helped bring on, and cash-in on, the Western power crisis.
“He just fucks California,” says one Enron employee. “He steals money from California to the tune of about a million.”
“Will you rephrase that?” asks a second employee.
“OK, he, um, he arbitrages the California market to the tune of a million bucks or two a day,” replies the first.
The tapes, from Enron’s West Coast trading desk, also confirm what CBS reported years ago: that in secret deals with power producers, traders deliberately drove up prices by ordering power plants shut down.
“If you took down the steamer, how long would it take to get it back up?” an Enron worker is heard saying.
“Oh, it’s not something you want to just be turning on and off every hour. Let’s put it that way,” another says.
“Well, why don’t you just go ahead and shut her down.”
Officials with the Snohomish Public Utility District near Seattle received the tapes from the Justice Department.
“This is the evidence we’ve all been waiting for. This proves they manipulated the market,” said Eric Christensen, a spokesman for the utility. That utility, like many others, is trying to get its money back from Enron.
“They’re fucking taking all the money back from you guys?” complains an Enron employee on the tapes. “All the money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers in California?”
“Yeah, grandma Millie, man”
“Yeah, now she wants her fucking money back for all the power you’ve charged right up, jammed right up her asshole for fucking $250 a megawatt hour.”
And the tapes appear to link top Enron officials Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling to schemes that fueled the crisis.
“Government Affairs has to prove how valuable it is to Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling,” says one trader.
“Ok.”
“Do you know when you started over-scheduling load and making buckets of money on that?
Before the 2000 election, Enron employees pondered the possibilities of a Bush win.
“It’d be great. I’d love to see Ken Lay Secretary of Energy,” says one Enron worker.
That didn’t happen, but they were sure President Bush would fight any limits on sky-high energy prices.
“When this election comes Bush will fucking whack this shit, man. He won’t play this price-cap bullshit.”
Crude, but true.
“We will not take any action that makes California’s problems worse and that’s why I oppose price caps,” said Mr. Bush on May 29, 2001.
Both the Justice Department and Enron tried to prevent the release of these tapes. Enron’s lawyers argued they merely prove “that people at Enron sometimes talked like Barnacle Bill the Sailor.”
