The People's State of CA

I was exhausted all day today, and there's really no good reason for it.  Maybe the cold, gray, wet weather is having an effect on me.  It was so bad that I skipped the gym after work and came home to take a nap.  That helped, and afterwards I was able to encode 10 sound files in Windows Media format and get them moved to the 8 More Miles site.  Or nearly moved, until the damn servers crashed as I was putting the finishing touches on it.  The Your-Site people have had a LOT of damn problems lately.  I thought I had finally found people good at doing their jobs.  Oh well.

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I've not written about the California power mess because it's so self-evidently comical.  It's almost right out of Atlas Shrugged!  The state decides to "deregulate" in name, but instead of doing so, fixes a price ceiling for consumers on electricity while at the same time ignoring the problem of demand (CA has built no new power plants in years, being environmentally sensitive and all).  So, of course, the price of natural gas spikes, dry conditions reduce hydroelectric production, suddenly the wholesale price of electricity is well above the consumer price ceiling, and CA's "deregulated" utilities are losing all sorts of money (essentially, they are subsidizing the electrical use of Californians), driving their credit rating to hell, which in turn makes their wholesale price of electric even MORE expensive.  Meanwhile, Canadian (and other non-California) firms with PLENTY of power they might sell the utilities are suddenly balking because of a real threat of nonpayment -- further exacerbating the supply crunch.  Governor Gray Davis is threatening to expropriate power generation facilities (how that passes Fifth Amendment constitutional muster I have no idea) to "solve" the problem, and in the interim is using state funds to "buy" electric for the nearly bankrupt CA utilities.  Everyone is talking about massive "regulation" after the failed "deregulation," when in reality, responsible people in CA should be talking about: 1) allowing true electricity price fluctuation at the wholesale and consumer levels, and 2) reducing barriers to construction of electric-generation facilities.  

The leftist government in the People's State of California is getting ready to make a mess a great deal messier.  Rolling blackouts in the world's sixth (I think?) largest economy.  Sad.  

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