Our Man Palast strikes gold yet again. After reports covering everything from the August 2003 blackout in the Northeastern U.S. power grid, to the November 2000 "black"out of the Southeastern U.S. voter rolls, Greg Palast now documents the insidious effort by several power utility companies to work around a $9 billion recompensation plan due the State of California after all the 2000-era state energy crises, paying particular attention to gubernatorial candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger's involvement in this malarkey.

You say you owe us one dollar? Let's help you out, here -- why not pay back one cent instead, after ensuring that your Republican candidate gets elected to manage the world's fifth-largest economy? Wait a second, that makes this scale much larger: you owe nine billion dollars? Pay back nine billion cents! All's fair in politics!

"But we're running a deficit!", you say. Well, we can cut state social programs, because there's no way we're taking money from the utility companies! Let's deregulate!

Bah, humbug.