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Work for Public Power in your area. The State of California had the legal right to take over the whole electricity system, from the power plants to the distribution grid to the lines that run into our homes. This would have given us back control over 80% to 85% of the electricity we need and allowed us to dramatically reduce our reliance on out-of-state power. Gov. Davis refused to do this, even though he had said that the deregulated, free-market electricity system is a "colossal ...

Are they lying?   YES! PG&E still produces half its own electricity ... which it sells to itself at the same outrageous prices the out-of-state price gougers do! Hard to believe but true. PG&E owes half its debt to ITSELF!!! Now, power producers are inappropriately citing increased demand to justify building new plants, while the fact is that demand in California is on par with previous years....

Deregulation allowed private, for-profit, out-of-state corporations (Duke, Enron, etc.) to corner the market on electricity and drive up prices by 10 times in the past year.   More factors: bad planning, mismanagement, and greed. Listen to interview with energy activist Harvey Wasserman. | For the $2 billion spent in the first quarter of 2001, we could have bought all the plants that the utilities sold to private companies that are now gouging us. | Deregulation price...

10/11/01 Approximately 2,500 people attended the People Have the Power rally 1 | 2 in San Francisco. Speakers from a variety of organizations spoke in favor of the creation of a Municipal Utility District....

Governor Davis' bailout is now disguised as the $7 billion purchase of the transmission system which has a book value of only $3.8 billion. We should pay less than book value; these utilities say they're near bankruptcy (though their parent corporations are fat with assets they bought with our last bailout)." --Medea Benjamin, February 24, 2001. Meanwhile, California legislators have been dismantling the state's pollution-control regulations in order to build cheap energy plants....

Former Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Curtis Hebert, Jr. revealed that Enron CEO Kenneth Lay threatened Hebert that he should obey or Lay would have his close friend Bush fire Hebert. Hebert refused to obey and was fired. Recently Hebert made a new, even more explosive charge: he says Bush also let Lay interview him and other candidates for FERC chairman in the first place. In other words, Bush gave Enron "hire and fire" authority over the FERC, betraying his oath to the Am...

Power scam: What You Can Do...

By January, Canadian border patrol had already begun to turn away suspected demonstrators, including renowned activist Lorenzo Kamboa Ervin. Canadian authorities, preparing the largest police deployment in the country\'s history, will establish a four square mile security perimeter in downtown Quebec, surrounded by an enormous metal fence. There are plans to clear six hundred plus inmates from a local prison for the duration of the Summit to house arrested protestors. Local legislators also u...

Alliance for Responsible Trade (ART), which includes representatives of environmental, human-rights, U.S. labor, women's, family-farm, development, religious, and public-policy organizations, has presented the Committee of Government Representatives on Civil Society Participation with "Alternatives for the Americas: Building a Hemispheric Peoples' Agreement." The document contends that "trade and investment should not be ends in themselves, but rather the instruments for achieving just and s...

The existing proposals will also force countries to accept any agricultural imports, effectively breaking down barriers for large agribusinesses. As cheaper agricultural products flood their local markets, small family farms (in many countries, a primary form of subsistence for indigenous populations) are suddenly unable to compete. Forced off their land by economic necessity, and often actual displacement as governments award land rights to multinational corporations, many people face factor...