“In the final analysis, it doesn’t matter what you crazy people in California do, because I got smart guys who can always figure out how to make money.” - Kenneth Lay, CEO of Enron, 2000
I want to talk to you about a chapter of California history that tends to get overlooked. And it’s important for people to remember this because it’s an example of the worst excesses of capitalism, specifically the California Electricity Crisis that happened in 2000 and 2001.
Basically what happened was that in 2000 and 2001, California was facing severe electricity shortages and blackouts. And it wasn’t because they didn’t build enough power plants either.
It traces back to the Republican Governor Pete Wilson, who ran the state from 1990 to 1998. In 1996, Pete Wilson, in collaboration with his Enron (yes, that Enron) buddies in Texas decided that the California electrical grid was too regulated and that it needed to be fisted by the invisible hand of the free market. So they deregulated the electricity supply and made all the power suppliers buy what they think they’re going to need the next day.
This scheme didn’t kick in until 2000, when Pete Wilson had been termed out and Gray Davis (D) had been elected Governor, the people selling electricity discovered that they could make a lot more money by turning off power plants for a little but and then selling it back once the price went up. And since people have no real choice about electricity providers, they just had to sit back and take it.
And that’s literally what they did. Enron was literally shutting down power plants during times of peak demand to raise prices, and the power utilities weren’t able to meet that demand, so they’d have to have rolling blackouts just to prevent the entire grid from going down.
And Enron, they were literally laughing about it.
At no point in 2000 and 2001 did the electrical demand in Calfornia exceed the supply of power available. These deregulated vulture companies that had come in because of Pete fucking Wilson had set up entirely artificial shortages because it made them money.
So next time somebody talks about privatization or deregulation as the end-all be all solution, run. Vital utilities like power, and water should never be in the hands of unaccountable private companies, but need to be accountable to the public and should be focused first on providing service before being focused on making money.
I REMEMBER THIS AND I AM STILL FUCKING PISSED AND BITTER
On this day, 21 May 1968, during the May uprising in France, radical workers and students formed a joint Workers-Students Action Committee to support an ongoing strike and occupation at Paris’s Citroen auto plant (pictured). This is a great account of the worker-student action committees, including the one at Citroen: https://libcom.org/library/worker-student-action-committees-france-1968-perlman-gregoire https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1128829077302241/?type=3
This asshole bigot farage has the nerve to say, “Sadly some remainers have become radicalised, to the extent that normal campaigning is becoming impossible.” Which is actually radical? Committing and/or encouraging xenophobic hate crimes, or throwing a milkshake at a racist politician? No cop anywhere is going to arrest someone who hits one of us with a milkshake, but a cop just might arrest something which screams xenophobic bullshit while punching us.
Thank You for all this world’s bigots’ reaching complete enlightenment, Universe.
On this day, 25 March 1969, Pakistan’s dictator Ayub Khan resigned, following mass protests against his regime which began in October. Initially the government violently repressed student protests, but that triggered increased opposition. In the countryside, peasants killed landowners and police, while in the cities industrial workers held gheraos – mass pickets encircling factories. The following year the first elections in Pakistan’s history took place. This is a short history of the movement: https://ift.tt/2UU1s8j https://ift.tt/2CAWNBe
