Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by masonic 2446 days ago 

  the result of letting Republicans draft hamfisted deregulation legislation
California's ludicrously gameable "deregulated" energy market of that time was set up by the leadership of the Democrat-controlled Assembly and the Democrat-controlled California Senate, then signed into law by Democrat Governor Gray Davis.

CA Republicans were powerless to "draft" anything.
1 comments
inferiorhuman 2446 days ago
California's ludicrously gameable "deregulated" energy market of that time was set up by the leadership of the Democrat-controlled Assembly and the Democrat-controlled California Senate, then signed into law by Democrat Governor Gray Davis.

You need to go back a bit further than that, back to Republican governor Pete Wilson and Republican author of the bill Jim Brulte. Wilson knowingly set up his successor (Gray Davis) to fail.

link
masonic 2446 days ago 

  Republican governor Pete Wilson and Republican author of the bill Jim Brulte.
'Democratic State Senator Steve Peace was the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy at the time and is often credited as "the father of deregulation".'[0]

Again, Democrats controlled both the Assembly and Senate throughout the process, and ever since. Bill contents are amended at will both in and out of committee, and "gut-and-amend" (removing a Bill's language wholesale and replacing it with that of a completely different bill to avoid rules about committee review) is so common, that term was coined for it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis#...

link
inferiorhuman 2446 days ago
You conveniently missed the next two sentences:

The author of the bill was Senator Jim Brulte, a Republican from Rancho Cucamonga. Wilson admitted publicly that defects in the deregulation system would need fixing by "the next governor".

link
masonic 2445 days ago
"The next governor" was a Democrat, and both houses of the Legislature were (and continue to be) Democrat-controlled from that election on, often with supermajorities.

As for the Brulte bill, not one Democrat voted against it in either house (77-0 in the Assembly, 39-0 in the Senate). It was shepherded through by Senator Peace and Assemblymember Martinez. Peace continued to claim parentage until after the resulting disaster.

link