Power Mad

Jeff Taylor | November 22, 2002

California's quest to find someone -- anyone -- to blame for the state's flaky foray into the energy biz now lands on journalists. Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante (D) has filed a class action suit on behalf of the state's consumers against newsletter publisher McGraw-Hill, among others.

The charge? That the newsletters "knowingly report(ed) false information, and employed absolutely no means to verify information given them by the market participant defendants." The result, the suit claims, is that natural gas prices were too high resulting in electricity prices that were too high.

So the state is saying as it was too stupid to understand what was going on, it fell to reporters to figure it out. California residents, pay your taxes to McGraw-Hill and cut out the middleman.