Dereg fever Passage of Act 1556, which slows the mad rush to electric deregulation, was a rare bright spot of the current legislative session, and now there's a move to extinguish it.
Resistance is required.
Two years ago, the legislature was gulled into taking the first steps toward deregulation. Since then, the California experience has informed almost everyone that deregulation is risky business, not to be entered lightly, if at all. There is not now, nor never was, a crisis demanding deregulation of electricity, anymore than there is a crisis demanding privatization of Social Security. The crisis came with deregulation, just as the crisis in Social Security will come when private profiteers get their hands in retirees' pockets. The false urgency of deregulation was manufactured and sold by big industrial users of electricity, who decided that they should pay less, which unavoidably means that small residential customers must pay more.