Well now, here’s a shock. Lets’ see now, I’ve been speculating bitterly about this since, um, MY F***ING ELECTRICITY BILL TRIPLED.

Get ’em! Hang ’em high! Horsewhip ’em! Brand ’em on both cheeks! Ride ’em out of town on a rail! Boil that tar – I’ll bring the feathers!

Sounds like Washington pols are scrambling to clamber aboard the California-launched boat, which certainly pleases ME.

Less facetiously (don’t actually hang ’em, just keep power utilities in public hands for the rest of my life), it seems clear to me, at least, that the destruction of cheap power for the west coast functioned as the catalyst for the recession (or whatever you want to call it – I’m still not working, so I’ll call it a recession).

This InfoWorld Story from the January 2001 bears out my observation, partly.

I don’t know if you recall. Falling stock prices of dot-coms in the wake of the Justice Department indictment of Microsoft on April 15, 2000, in conjunction with the energy crisis, led to public fingerpointing – at the dot-coms, because they were using sooo much electricity that it was bringing California to its’ knees.

My very favorite of these moments was from ever-smugly irritating former Seattle Weekly editor Knute Berger on the public radio humor show Rewind, in which he blamed the dot-coms for Enron’s failure. (Or at least that’s how I remember it.)

My own bitterly nursed hatred of Enron extends beyond the company itself and into the fervent hope that hearings will, in fact, uncover irrefutable evidence that Enron officials colluded with the GOP to create the energy crisis, and predictable, consequent recession in time for the 2000 election season.

They just missed, you know; if the recession had arrived in full force in October instead of December there would have been a much clearer outcome in the November elections.

Nonetheless, I’m not holding my breath for such evidence to come to light, or even get covered, let alone have any meaningful political consequences. Representatives of one political party’s presidential campaign were conclusively demonstrated to have dealt arms with foreign terrorist governments in order to sway an election a ways back. However, that demonstration was without appreciable political consequences for the administration that resulted from said campaign.

There’s no reason to expect anything other than cursory coverage should evidence of a GOP-Enron recession plan emerge. In fact, I’d guess that should such a thing emerge, our good pals charged with making the inquiries will run like hell in the other direction instead of pressing the point.