>
>Last night Governor Davis gave what I thought was a damn good speech about the state of California. He stated electricity was a necessity for the state and its residents and we were being robbed.

Tom,

I looked for and found a report of the speech in the LA Times:
http://www.latimes.com/business/reports/power/lat_davis010109.htm

That also provided a very good link to a thorough background article on the quagmire brought on by the deregulation strategy:
http://www.latimes.com/business/reports/power/earlier/lat_dereg001209.htm

Absolutely shocking (no pun intended - darn Tasker...) - its terrible that your State and its citizens are being subjected to this nonsense. Hopefully, as the article says, other States are watching these profiteers at their very worst.