This is the true saga of the Great Firestorm of San Diego and how natures whimsy has delayed an energy orporations rape of California citizens. It is also the tale of a Bush minion, an expert in crisis management, who is sent to save the day for the corporate bottom line.
What began as a small town utility wanting to build a transmission line has become a battle of epic proportions. SDG&E, the San Diego subsidiary of energy giant Sempra Energy, proposed building what it dubbed the Sunrise Powerlink across the Anza Borrego Desert Wilderness area. Everything was going swimmingly for the swift approval of the billion and a half dollar project that SDG&E said was needed. The company pointed to the brownouts and blackouts of 2001-2002 to illustrate its concern.
Yet those brown outs and blackouts were caused not by a lack of generating capacity, but by the artificial manipulation of the energy distribution grid by Sempra, Enron and others. Lawsuits filed by the State of California on behalf of ratepayers found Sempra guilty of gross misconduct. The problem is that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is the body responsible for determining how much Sempra owed on the estimated nine billion dollar fraud. The FERC is stocked with Bush appointees, and California has been, not only an object of neglect by this administration, but of disdain. The settlement granted was a small fraction of the billions purloined by the mainly Texas oil interests.
But Sempra figured, and rightly so, the Californians would have a short collective memory. They were right. The first public meetings were sparsely attended, and the only opposition to the Powerlink were a few tree-huggers, or in this case, cacti huggers, who wanted the pristine expanses of Bighorn sheep and wildflowers to stay that way. The environmentalists were no match for the high powered lawyers and lobbyists
who were well connected with the Public Utilities Commission and whose approval they sought.
The Public Relations department of the energy giant was doing what they do best,...touting a grab of public lands for transmission and generating capacity as a regrettable, but necessary, public service. Sempras PR department was putting lipstck on a pig of immense proportions. What the Powerlink will transmit and generate best is profit for Bush homeys; out-of-state oil and gas producers.
It was business as usual as SDG&E prepared to conduct another required public hearing in Rancho Bernardo one evening in October. Yet the best laid rip-off plans are subject to a higher authority who demonstrated a Texas size sense of irony. Two days before the meeting, a small feeder line on the Pala Indian Reservation swayed back and forth in the hot dry Santana wind that sucked the moisture from brush like a smoker from his first butt in a week. The swaying lines touched, sending an arc of sparks into the tinder below. The resulting firestorm swept through the county in what became the second most destructive natural disaster in US history.
SDG&E decided that it was an inopportune time to hold a public meeting on Powerlink construction in Rancho Bernardo, given the fact that the upscale suberb was reduced to ashes. It was a bad week for Sempras PR department, let alone the hundreds of homeowners who were now sifting through ashes for remnants of their lives. But the spinmeisters were nothing, if not intrepid. Sempra established a fire relief fund and donated five million dollars. They managed to get San Diegos Mayor Jerry Sanders, to make a speech thanking SDG&E for their quick response in restoring power lines that were downed by the fire, despite early indications and eyewitness accounts that it was downed power lines that caused the fire.
In the following months, as homeowner lawsuits against Sempra were filed, it became clear that the Powerlink might be in trouble.
Enter Ruben Barrales.
Ruben Barrales is a young conservative Republican who has risen rapidly in the inner circle of George Bush. The son of Mexican immigrants, Barrales was voted one of the top 25 most influential Latinos in the country. He worked his way up to be CEO of a Silicon Valley non-profit called Joint Venture Inc., a company that ostensibly specialized in standardizing and overcoming local regulations to government and corporate projects. He held a couple of county supervisory posts in Northern California and made a failed run at at State office. Then his biographt gets interesting.
He is tapped by Bush to become Georges Deputy Assistant, and Director of Inter-governmental Affairs. At age 42, it was a meteoric rise for this accomplished and quixotic figure. No sooner was he hired in 2001 than he appears in a pivotal position... as Bushs liason to Dick Cheneys National Energy Policy Development Group. The NEPDG has been in litigation in the Supreme Court as congressional oversight commitees want to know the extent of corporate influence on energy policy. In a suit brought by the Sierra Club, Barrales was named as present at the meetings.
In researching Ruben Barrales, a theme emerges. He pops up as the White House liason to Kevin Ring, a lobbyist who works for Jack Abramoff. As Bushs 'Inter-governmental Affairs Director', Barrales is involved with Indian Tribal issues and records indicate that he has meetings with the Choctaws and others who were the focus of Abramoffs lobbying efforts.
Barrales is dispatched to the Marianas which at the time was also being handled by Abramoff in an effort to defeat the minimum wage requirements.
Barrales appears in the records of the congressional oversight committee investigating Abramoffs influence. He is mentioned a conduit in the secret e-mail system the White House has used to make an end run around legal requirement for open government. It is Barrales who is a liason between Abramoff staffers Susan Ralston, Jennifer Farley and Karl Rove. From the Congressional Record:
Chairman Waxman on Preservation of Campaign Emails
March 26th, 2007 by Jesse Lee
Citing evidence that senior White House officials are using RNC and other political email accounts to avoid leaving a record of official communications, Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman sent letters today to the Republican National Committee and the Bush-Cheney ’04 Campaign directing them to preserve the emails of White House officials and to meet with Committee staff to explain how the accounts are managed and what steps are being taken to protect the emails from destruction and tampering. As noted this morning, such emails were sent in connection to the resignations of US Attorneys, but as Chairman Waxman’s letters note, they were used in other circumstances as well. In his letter to Marc Racicot, Former Chairman of Bush Cheney ‘04, Chairman Waxman describes one revealing exchange involving convicted former lobbyist Jack Abramoff:
The e-mail exchanges reviewed by the Committee provide evidence that in some instances, White House officials were using the nongovemmental accounts specifically to avoid creating a record of the communications. ln one case, Mr. Abramoff sent Ms. Ralston an e-mail on her RNC account asking her to "pass on to Karl that Interior is about to approve a gaming compact ... for a tribe which is an anathema to all our supporters" and requesting "some quiet message from WH that this is absurd." This e-mail was forwarded to Jennifer Farley in the White House Office of Intergovemmental Affairs, who apparently then warned one of Abramoff s associates about the dangers of leaving a record of their communications. According to an e-mail Mr. Abramoff received from his associate Kevin Ring:
Your e-mail to Susan was forwarded to Ruben Barrales and on to Jen Farley, who read it to me last night. I don’t know what to think about this, but she said it is better not to put this stuff in writing in their e-mail system because it might actually limit what they can do to help us, especially since there could be lawsuits, etc. ... Just letting you know what she said.’
Mr. Abramoff responded: "Dammit. It was sent to Susan on her rnc pager and was not supposed to go into the WH system."
So Ruben Barrales is a Forrest Gump of the conservatives, and seems to pop up in a number of nefarious contexts, in many widespread venues of corruption. He is, in many ways, an anti-sheriff, a fixer for the energy lobby, a trouble-shooter for those at the highest level of political power. Bush, in 2005, is set to nominate Barrales to a seat on the FCC.
Then, in January 2006, Ruben Barrales evidently decides that he has had enough of the corridors of power. When the San Diego CEO of the Chamber of Commerce resigns to take a high-paying position with Sempra Energy, Barrales becomes the new head of the Chamber of Commerce. Of and by itself, a pretty good job even if its in a backwater corner of the country...but certainly nowhere on the previous trajectory of Barrales meteoric career.
A few days ago, Ruben Barrales appears on the front page of the local paper as co-chair of Community Alliance for Sunrise Powerlink.
http://www.nctimes.com/...
So what is going on here? I suppose that Barrales, as a private citizen, has every right to lobby as he sees fit, but San Diego county should know Barrales history. He certainly doesn't advertse his work in formulating the energy policy behind closed doors with Cheney.
His involvement also with the secret e-mail shenanigans should also be of intense interest to Henry Waxmans Oversight Committee, as Barrales is the nexus of Big Oils role in the formulation of energy policy and the Abramoff scandal.
Why is this person so rabidly involved in trying to get this extension cord built? Ostensibly, the Powerlink is to transmit electricity from the Imperial Valley; from biomass, wind and solar plants that haven't been built. But a PUC study said that there are four more desirable options to accomplish the stated goals for the Powerlink. An online map of the projected Powerlink corridor takes it directly through four of the largest burn areas of the recent fires. Does Sempra have another agenda? Does it have something to do with the coal and gas fired plants in Mexico, and the huge gas docking facilities south of the border? Is Sempra planning to circumvent emissions, environmental and labor standards? And finally, do the citizens of San Diego county know that the leading cheerleader of this fifth-rate Powerlink option... helped formulate energy policy at the national level?