Dear Senator,

This week the headlines were filled with the revelation that Enron manipulated energy prices in last summer's West Coast electricity price debacle. It did not surprise me, it merely confirmed what I thought at the time. Were it not for the fact that Enron imploded in the months afterward, there would have likely been no discovery of this fact, and political life would have gone on more or less as usual. However, this energy price manipulation was a gross betrayal of the public trust, and not just by Enron. The real villains, as I see it, are the Bush administration's regulatory offices, which insisted throughout that the market must rule, blah blah blah. Millions of people were affected by one company's greed and hubris, and yet Bush and Cheney and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham insisted that the only sensible policy was to sit on their collective hands.

It is too late, really, to recover what was lost. The collective "energy tax" has been imposed in the form of higher rates for years to come, and will be paid by the many for the benefit of the few. And there is no realistic way to get blood out of the Enron turnip that remains, the principals having parachuted out with their bags of gold. I insist, however, that those in elected government remain vigilant, and take action to prevent this abuse from ever happening again. That is the real lesson, the lesson we have paid for dearly. Question Bush's administration harshly on his so-called Energy Policy. Investigate, and prod, and make sure that the FERC does the job it was designed to do. This is the real work that must be done now, and I ask that you undertake it.

Kurt L.