What a Long Strange Power Trip…

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While John Howard and Patrick Dorinson well up over the sounds of “Morning in America” in the Capitol Weekly puffery surrounding Dorinson’s appointment as the head GOP flack and his clichéd “I didn’t leave the party, the party left me” storyline, there’s another side of Pat’s “personal odyssey” that goes unmentioned – his work for energy profiteer Mirant.

After working for the California Independent Systems Operator through 2001, Dorinson went to work as chief defender in the western states for energy giant Mirant, the same company that was sued by California’s Attorney General for fattening “their wallets at the expense of the California ratepayer.” http://www.ag.ca.gov/newsalerts/2004/04-086.htm

Dorinson’s company and the others sued by the AG didn’t “attempt to refute the allegation that they sometimes sold power they had bid into the state's reserve market. But they said they were merely playing by market rules designed by the Legislature and other state regulators who designed electricity deregulation… ‘Mirant has always operated under the rules California set up,’ said Patrick Dorinson, a spokesman for the Atlanta company.” (San Francisco Chronicle, March 12, 2002)

Not so fast. Just last year the Attorney General announced a $749.7 million proposed settlement with Mirant Corporation to resolve allegations of price gouging and other unlawful conduct during the California Energy Crisis of 2000-01. http://ag.ca.gov/newsalerts/2005/05-005.htm

So while he may try to spin this to the GOP base as a “coming home” story, the story we see is just another corporate shill working for the Governor.

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