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Regulation caused CA budget problems? How about lack of regulation. CA was never in the financial mess until corrupted morons in Congress deregulated the energy trading markets and Enron sucked billions out of the CA economy.
First up in the winners column are the energy suppliers, the coterie of companies that bought power plants from California utility companies and then sold the power back to those same utilities at exorbitant rates. But don’t shed too many tears for the utilities — because even though their stock prices are declining, the shareholders of those utilities are still also winners: the beneficiaries of substantial payouts as a result of a massive $26 billion utility bailout included in the original deregulation plan. Meanwhile, the parent corporations of the utilities that currently claim to be on the verge of bankruptcy appear to be doing quite nicely, spending billions more on expansion plans.
Who is the big loser? That’s easy too: the Californian taxpayer now faced with footing the bill for a second massive bailout of the utility companies, while at the same time enduring rolling blackouts and the high likelihood of spiking retail electricity prices.
Amazing how people have already forgotten the MASSIVE bailout CA taxpayers needed to foot in order to prevent the complete collapse of their energy infrastructure due to the corporate greed of Enron and Wall St. scumbags. Yet another example of tax payer bailouts to cover the losses of white collar crimes. CA has STILL yet to recover from the massive costs it took to bailout the state from the tremendous damage caused by deregulation of their energy market.
It really paid off when Texas started offering free bus rides to California to anyone on welfare. We run ads here promoting "The Land of Entitlement" and how you deserve a piece of the action.
Just in the last 10 years we've replaced 7 million welfare illegal immigrants with 2 million educated and employed people.
The standard of living in texas is also quite low, so what does that tell you? And where do you get this myth about 7 million illegals?
Don't blame Enron for CA's problems. It's much bigger than that and Cal_Jewel is correct that you guys need to get rid of your politicians starting with Pelosi.
Standard of living in Texas may be lower, but the COL is correspondingly lower. Standard of living in TX really isn't that much different than it is in CA, either, at least in the parts that I've been to... so CA is more expensive for virtually no GOOD reason.
If you live in California and don't like it, you're free to leave, right?
I'm happy here. If people want to go, that's fine with me. More space for the rest of us.
Ironic is that the liberals love this kind of system, the elitist lives on top, the followers of the ideology enforce the ideology through political/social movements, and then the others are to shut up and serve them...
And yet, I'd still rather be here than any other state (except perhaps Massachusetts).
CA is the most beautiful state in the union. Too bad it's become a political nightmare, and has way too many people. Your politicians have ruined a really good state. The nanny state that prevails in CA makes me not want to even visit, much less live there.
MA ???? That state wouldn't make my top 25 in any category.
Don't blame Enron for CA's problems. It's much bigger than that and Cal_Jewel is correct that you guys need to get rid of your politicians starting with Pelosi.
The a$$holes at Enron were charging CA utility companies $2500 per megawatt hour for electricity when it should have cost only $350 per megawatt hour. CA's private utility companies were on the hook for the money because after deregulation of their markets happened, they were not allowed to pass a large portion of those costs onto consumers, hence the rolling blackouts. Bank of America alone had $1.2 billion in outstanding loans in CA's utilities, so in order to prevent complete financial collapse as well as collapse of their energy infrastructure, the government of CA stepped in with massive tax payer bailouts for their utility companies. All told, the CA energy crisis in the early 2000s cost the state $40 billion dollars, most of which has never been recovered.
Ever since, the state of CA has been persistently been in the red and has had budget problems that still linger today. The energy crisis, coupled with the dotcom bubble absolutely hammered CA's treasury, most of the circumstance which were out of their control.
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