Sempra Energy Lobbyists: A Good Argument for Municipal Utilities

The Duvall sex scandal isn't the first time an energy company has been caught using lobbyists as whores. A few years back, oil industry lobbyists were busted for similar things: drugs and sex. There's always lobbyists hiring whores, too (if the lobbyist is male).

Energy isn't the only whorehouse, though. Eliot Spitzer was part of a high-class hooker business. One of Bush's favorite "reporters" was a gay male whore who stayed overnight; people say he was hooked up with Rove. (After all these sleazy scandals, Clinton's blow job seems less sleazy - at least it was consensual and mutual, and there wasn't money involved. Villaraigosa's affair was bad, because his wife seemed like a nice person, and he was effing with the media.)

Given that politicians like to have sex, especially outside of marriage, or on the down low (gay in the closet), and I'm just talking locally, is it wise to have the energy business so privatized that lobbyists have so much power?

(BTW - I'm not bagging on gays here. I'm all for gay politicians being out of the closet. The ones hiding, like David Dreier, are way more dangerous.)

The big media have been painting the scandal as one of personal temptation, moral hypocrisy, and it's all about Duvall. There's a whole other side of it though -- Heidi Barsuglia, the lobbyist.

Once a lobbyist has had sex with a politician, or have done drugs with a politician, they're going to have some dirt on the politician. That gives the lobbyist and energy company leverage.

I've heard some stories like this happening with salespeople. If you're in sales, and you want to seal a deal, you have sex - that way, if the account threatens to leave, you can break up their marriage.

It's not like anyone can do this. You have to be relatively good looking, or a woman, to pull it off. Women have more leeway, I think. But the point is, it's a tool in the arsenal to "seal the deal" for the long term.

All this whoring around, hiring lobbyists, buying recreational drugs, and other bull ends up costing ratepayers on the bottom line.

In contrast, municipal utilities are subject to different kinds of corruption, but, I suspect the corruption ends up costing less. Mostly, it's just going to be bribes to incumbents, or you end up with higher wages to some unionized utility workers (not necessarily a bad thing because you're moving money down the food chain and not up).

What would stop a municipal

What would stop a municipal utility operator from also being subjected to sex-tortion from lobbyists?