Energy Deregulation: What's Really Going On? Part 2

Tomorrow, if milk were to be increased to $4 a gallon, you could stop eating
cereal. If meat were to go up, you could decide to start eating vegetables.
But if all the food industries decided to get together and raise food prices
400%, the results would be disastrous.

This is what appears to be taking place in the energy industry. Have all
the suppliers banded to take unfair advantage of the system? To find out,
we've decided to do some research and a subsequent series of articles on the
energy deregulation in the Western region of the United States. It's time to
get to the bottom of what's going on, so lets start at the beginning.
Energy deregulation is not new. There have been several attempts over
the past 25 years, but usually deregulation occurs in industries where there
has been a need for new providers to enter a very restricted market. No one
has ever deregulated an industry where a limited capacity was produced. That
would spell immediate disaster, exactly where we are today.

In the phone industry, for example, deregulation was an effective
decision because there was an overcapacity of long-distance capabilities and
cell phones were gaining popularity - their impact easy to foretell. There
also exists the option of making a long distance call or not. This is not
the case when it comes to keeping your house warm in the dead of winter or
trying to cool it down in the heat of summer. It brings to light the
foolishness of putting something as crucial as electrical energy in the
hands of private concerns.

Our political forefathers understood the importance of regulating
something that was of vital importance to us such as electrical energy. They
designed our government to protect the people from organizations or small
groups that band together to take advantage of the taxpayers that support
it. In this case, the sponsors in the political organization that brought
deregulation into place forced the giants - Southern California Edison,
Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric - to sell generating
capabilities to the private sector and allowed them to purchase this
important commodity with no stipulations whatsoever relative to regulations
or price control. A corrupt decision or just a dumb one? Whichever, as
active citizens it¹s time to put the pieces together.

Where does Affluent Living Publications come in? About five years ago we
got involved in energy deregulation and filed for independent operator
status. We did so because our product reached affluent homeowners - high
users of electricity.

We investigated the energy industry and became involved with Eastern
Pacific Energy. We met in rooms for months, studied the energy situation and
read the history. As a final quest, we even met with a prominent California
Senator and asked him point blank the aims and goals of energy deregulation.
He explained the decision to reduce energy costs was made in an earnest
attempt to bring more business to California and make sure that industries
didn't flee. Whether misinformed or misrepresenting, his stance was that it
would make the price of doing business more affordable.

The process seemed simple: sign up a customer, buy energy from any
producer, then pass the savings on to the consumer. Needless to say, we
became actively involved and devoted a full office staff to selling energy
24/7 during deregulation. We billed over 5 million dollars per month, and
are thus a little more knowledgeable on the subject than your average
consumer or writer.

We feel strongly that if every American citizen knew what we understand
current policy to be, there would be outcries so high that this would be
reversed. This is why we're writing these articles. We will continue the
series with a history of the deregulation and subsequent energy crisis. We
will present you with questions the media has been unable to answer. We will
list informative websites, provide the facts so you can draw your own
conclusions and form a plan of action. You decide for yourself what¹s going on. Become informed and take steps to regain control of the situation.

Our first recommendation is that you go to www.consumerwatchdog.org\utilities.
There you'll see we've had blackouts in California with much less usage than we've had in the past. Could they be saying, If you don¹t like the pricing, this is what can happen.?

Ask your political representatives: What is the justification for
increasing the kilowatt price from $4 to $40? We¹d like to find out, too.
Lets call our elected officials. Lets ask if our local congressional
and senatorial representatives have the consumers best interest in mind. n

Next issue: Who is really controlling our energy?

If you would like to read part one of this article, click here