[GPSCC-chat] publicly generated electricity

[Jim Doyle]

Good Folks,

I am the treasurer of the Green Party of the Pikes Peak Region (in 
central Colorado).
The largest city in our area is Colorado Springs (330 k people).  That 
city recently
decided to change from a City Manager (directed by the City Council that 
included the
Mayor) to a "Strong Mayor" form of government.  This is a very 
conservative area. 

So they elected a real estate developer to be their first Strong Mayor. 
Within a year Mayor Bach
proposed that our city should get out of the electricity generating 
business.  He said that the city
owned, coal burning, Drake Power-plant was ugly, old and sitting on 
valuable land.
He suggests dismantling Drake and buying electricity from private 
generators.

I moved from California in 2009.  While there I remember an extended, 
sad episode that
probably embarrassed most Californians.  This was the decision of that 
state to get out the
generating business and buy electricity from private suppliers. County 
and state leaders told
us that electricity rates would decline.  The state would also reap a 
windfall from the sale of
all its generating stations.

As you know, Enron and other private electricity suppliers proceeded to 
brutally rape CA 
ratepayers.  Black-outs rolled repeatedly across most of our major 
cities.  Investigations
showed that many key decision makers had been bought off  (many with 
offers of extremely
lucrative jobs after the transfer to private suppliers). 

*This is where (hopefully) you come in.  I expect that you are all handy 
with a pen. 
Also you probably have a keen eye for powerful prose.  Can you please 
send me the
hardest hitting short essays that you know of lambasting those key CA 
decision makers
that sold out their fellow citizens for big $ with the private electric 
generators?*

Out here, we don't know for certain that Mayor Bach is trying to pull 
the same stunt . . . but it sure
 looks and smells like it!

               Thanks for your time and consideration,
                         Joseph Mitchener  
                         11285 Black Forest Rd
                         Colorado Springs, CO. 80908