[Overpaid Slacker]

There is no monopoly on graft, payoffs, contributions or corruption on the right side of the aisle:

Texas Democrats received more Enron contributions than Texas Republicans.
Source: CBS Affiliate KTVT in Texas

Hillary Rodham Clinton ordered the destruction of documents, which Enron is now accuse of doing, of four files in 1988 from her work on the failed savings and loan that's now at the heart of the Whitewater affair.
Source: NewsMax.com

During the 1991-92 election cycle, Enron gave $28,525 to the Democratic party while former Clinton Secretary of Commerce Ronald Brown served as the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Enron gave $42,000 to the Democratic party in the 1993-94 cycle.
Source: PublicIntegrity.org

According to internal Enron documents and the recollections of former employees, Chairman Kenneth L. Lay had the ear of top Democrats in the 1980s and '90s. He and his colleagues used that access to promote the company's interests with the Clinton administration and key congressional Democrats.
Source: Washington Post

According to another Enron memo, Lay met with former Clinton Energy Secretary Federico Peņa to urge White House action on electricity legislation favored by Enron. Peņa "suggested that President Clinton might be motivated [to act] by some key contacts from important constituents."
Source: Washington Post

Ken Lay was one of 25 business executives on Clinton's Council on Sustainable Development.
Source: Washington Post

Enron's political action committee gave $10,000 in 2000 to the New Democrat Network, which was co-founded by Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.). Lieberman, the Democratic vice presidential nominee that year, now chairs the Senate Government Affairs Committee, which is leading an inquiry into Enron's collapse.
Source: Washington Post

Several senior Enron officials spent election night at Vice President Gore's headquarters in Nashville.
Source: Washington Post

Enron backed Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) in his successful 1998 campaign to oust Republican Sen. Alfonse D'Amato. Schumer's views on electricity deregulation dovetailed closely with Enron's.
Source: Washington Post

Two years later Schumer, who has advocated deregulation as a way of reducing New York state's high power costs, co-authored a bill to restructure electricity markets along lines favored by Enron.
Source: Washington Post

Former employees say Lay's friendships with other Democrats were based as much on rapport as pragmatism. This group includes former senator Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.), whose brief 1992 presidential bid had Lay's backing, and Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), with whom Lay served on the Eli Lilly Co. board of directors in the 1990s.
Source: Washington Post

In 1996, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, stocked with Clinton appointees, helped Enron with a series of orders that weakened the monopoly of nuclear and coal-burning utilities. In July of that year, Enron gave $100,000 to the Democratic Party.
Source: Washington Post

In 1992, a Democratic-controlled Congress approved a major energy bill that set the stage for a new wholesale electricity marketplace. Trading companies such as Enron could use the transmission lines of regulated utility companies to sell blocs of electricity to private customers.
Source: Washington Post

Some officials in Enron's Houston and Washington offices backed Gore and Lieberman in the 2000 election.
Source: Washington Post

From 1990 to 1994 Enron gave 42% of its donations to Democratic candidates.
Source: The Center for Responsive Politics.

Enron also cultivated relationships with Democrats, however. Lay played golf in Vail, Colo., with President Bill Clinton, and Enron gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democratic campaign committees and Democrats in the House and Senate, including Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) and Rep. Martin Frost (Tex.), the ranking minority member on the House Rules Committee.
Source: Washington Post

Enron, Lay and other senior executives contributed $1.7 million in soft-money donations to politicians in the 2000 election cycle, two-thirds of it to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Source: Washington Post/Center for Responsive Politics

Nothing in this thread, of course, details the fault of Gray Davis et crew in running CA's system into the ground, and their barefaced lies about it afterwards.

If Enron employees (or anyone else) manipulated markets against the law, they should be severely penalized (on the order of securities law violation penalties) and brought up on appropriate criminal charges. If they were engaging in sharp business practice, so be it. It's not like CA (or any other state) doesn't use its considerable muscle in its actions/negotiations.

FWIW I was in the Legal Dept. of Niagara Mohawk for a while as a NUG-buster (non-utility generator). NY's enactment of the Federal PURPA legislation allowed -- Hell, it invited and then turned a blind eye to -- massive fraud on the part of the NUGs and was finally ruled unconstitutional; but not until NiMo went from the 5th (?) cheapest power producer in the country to one of the top three most expensive b/c of these costs. The government is not a solution to market issues. History is rife with examples to that effect, and very few (none leap to mind) to the contrary.

JP