Posted 12:18 PM by Robert

More Self Serving California Energy Claims

As a general matter, it is a good bet that state government officials know they are telling a whopper when they (1) make extravagant claims about wrongdoing by others which, if true, would tend to move blame from the officials onto those they blame and (2) predicate those claims on secret "sealed" information which has no claim to national security or other important confidentiality consideration. The likelihood of prevarication and truth bending is even stronger if those claims are very much like a lot of other such claims that the same state officials have made in the past but which weren't verified by the competent federal agency. California's claims of an increasingly vast conspiracy which allegedly drove up electricity prices have all those earmarks and more.

So one would have to be a very dim bulb indeed to take the most recent claims very seriously. To support its current allegations, California has had to argue that a vast array of energy player were in corrupt cahoots, including for-profit power companies which "teamed up" with utilities run by cities like Los Angeles, Glendale, Pasadena, Burbank and Redding to game the state's markets and split profits.

MORE: Good sense from Lynne Kiesling.