But today, amid daily power emergencies and utilities clamoring that they have been pushed to the brink of bankruptcy, finger-pointing has replaced hand-holding. The lawmakers involved in crafting the bill are blaming federal regulators for not doing their job; the utilities are charging that California's Public Utilities Commission (PUC) is responsible for the mess; the PUC says both the feds and the utilities are at fault. The federal government is blaming the state, while the governor blames the feds and the companies controlling the generation of energy. Consumer groups blame the utilities and the Legislature. And as California crawls toward yet another imperfect and expensive fix-it plan, no clear solution is in sight.

Who is really the culprit? The easy answer is everyone: The state deserves some of the blame for setting up an imperfect marketplace. The consumer groups can be blamed in part for their myopic focus on breaking the utility monopolies, which prevented them from foreseeing the coming power generator cartel. The utilities are on the hook for signing off on a deal that allowed them to be outsmarted by other energy companies, and then forced them to come crawling back to taxpayers for another bailout -- this time from a system that they largely created. The federal government is guilty, at the very least, of inaction, for failing to step in to order rebates from energy producers who have been making out like bandits. And finally, the producers themselves deserve criticism for willfully abusing the deregulated market to push California into daily power emergencies.

Not surprisingly, few players are ready to stand up and accept responsibility. But even if it's impossible to single out any primary villain in the electricity mess, or to figure out a way forward that makes any sense, it is relatively simple to pick some winners and losers out of this sorry bunch.

First up in the winners column are the energy suppliers, the coterie of companies that bought power plants from California utility companies and then sold the power back to those same utilities at exorbitant rates. But don't shed too many tears for the utilities -- because even though their stock prices are declining, the shareholders of those utilities are still also winners: the beneficiaries of substantial payouts as a result of a massive $26 billion utility bailout included in the original deregulation plan. Meanwhile, the parent corporations of the utilities that currently claim to be on the verge of bankruptcy appear to be doing quite nicely, spending billions more on expansion plans.

Who is the big loser? That's easy too: the Californian taxpayer now faced with footing the bill for a second massive bailout of the utility companies, while at the same time enduring rolling blackouts and the high likelihood of spiking retail electricity prices.

So how exactly did this mess happen?

Politics 2000: Unflinching daily political news, analysis and commentary.