Arnold's Enron Secret
By Greg Palast, AlterNet. Posted October 5, 2003.
If Arnold wins, it's hasta la vista baby, to the $9 billion owed to the state of California by Enron and the other electricity barons.
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The wannabe governor has yet to deny that on May 17, 2001, at the Peninsula Hotel in Los Angeles, he had consensual political intercourse with Enron chieftain Kenneth Lay. Also frolicking with Arnold and Ken was convicted stock swindler Mike Milken.
Now, 34 pages of internal Enron memoranda have just come through this reporter's fax machine that tell all about the tryst between Maria's husband and the corporate con men. It turns out that Schwarzenegger knowingly joined the hush-hush encounter as part of a campaign to sabotage a Davis-Bustamante plan to make Enron and other power pirates then ravaging California pay back the $9 billion in illicit profits they carried off.
Here's the story Arnold doesn't want you to hear. The biggest single threat to Ken Lay and the electricity lords is a private lawsuit filed last year under California's unique Civil Code provision 17200, the "Unfair Business Practices Act." This litigation, heading to trial now in Los Angeles, would make the power companies return the $9 billion they filched from California electricity and gas customers.
(more)
http://www.alternet.org/story/16902/And Greg Palast, as usual, was "right on the money" in the article posted above:
Enron, California Reach $1.52 Bln Energy Settlement (Update5)
July 15 (Bloomberg) -- Enron Corp., the energy trader that filed the second-largest U.S. bankruptcy, agreed to a $1.52 billion settlement to resolve California claims the company drove up prices during the state's energy crisis of 2000 and 2001.
The agreement includes a $47.5 million cash payment and $1.475 billion in claims in Enron's bankruptcy case. The actual cash value of the settlement will be about $260 million, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said. The funds will go to three Western states and utilities owned by PG&E Corp. and other companies.
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The agreement includes a $47.5 million cash payment and $1.475 billion in claims in Enron's bankruptcy case.
The actual cash value of the settlement will be about $260 million, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said. The funds will go to three Western states and utilities owned by PG&E Corp. and other companies.
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``We must also work to make sure that California never finds itself in a position to be taken advantage of again,''
Schwarzenegger, a Republican, said in a statement.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=aaJMU1LZpxjM&refer=us