California DREAMING

When I woke up this morning the LAST thing I had planned to do was write anything of a political nature. I was working on a nice blog article about the passing of Farrah Fawcett, which has all but disappeared from the public notice in the media tsunami over the equally untimely and tragic passing of Michael Jackson. So there I was writing my little personal tribute to the woman whose face and figure helped get me through the "awkward" phase of adolecense when I heard President Obama's dulcet tones telling us that we should model our national energy policy after that of the State of California, and that we as a country should be more like California. So much for the Farrah piece because I can't let a man with such a large microphone spew out inaccurate, false, and deliberately misleading statements without challenging them. This is supposed to be the job of the press, but since they are too busy obsequiously fawning over their hand-picked and annointed messianic symbol to do their JOBS, I guess it will be up to people like me, so here goes. I lived in California in the Reagan 80's and even then, California had a serious pollution problem. I remember in Los Angeles, we got daily smog reports with the morning weather and traffic, and as long as I can remember, California cars have had significantly stricter requirements for automotive emissions than the rest of the country. Despite all this, you could still see a brown smog cloud hanging over Los Angeles, especially in the summer months and it made being outside, nearly unbearable at times. Clearly some reforms were needed, and they were being undertaken by the last good Republican governor to run the Golden State, Pete Wilson. When Californians elected liberal democrat George Dukmejian, the enviornmentalists where pretty much given the keys to the kingdom and free reign over the Sunshine State. I'm glad I got out of there before that happened, especially in light of what followed. To be fair to the environmentalists, the Golden State of California was a mess in many ways. We're all familiar with the story of Erin Brockovich, thanks to her book, movie, and portrayal by academy award winning actress Julia Roberts. She took on the largest power company in the state over the issue of toxic waste coming from a power plant. When Dukmejian was elected, he targeted the largest power companies in the state, forcing them to close a number of power plants deemed hazardous to the environment. This is all well and good, but if you take power plants off line, what happens to the power they generate? Do we stop using less just because we're making less? In the case of California, the power companies tried to make up the shortfall by rehabilitating some of the closed plantsto bring them back online. This was rejected by the government. The utility companies then wanted to build a nuclear power plant as nuclear power is cheaper and less polluting than coal or oil run plants, but thanks to the specters of 3 Mile Island, Chernobyl, and The China Syndrome, the state refused to allow nuclear power. The companies attempted to increase output from the remaining plants, but consumption was too high. This forced the power companies to make up the shortfall by buying electricity from out of state companies at a premium. As businesses do, they pass their cost increases down to their customers, and California residents saw their power bills increase exponentially. This is something we might ALL be able to relate to soon, if Cap n' Trade passes in the Senate and gets signed into law by The ONE, himself. When people are unhappy the complain to their representatives and the unhappy Californians were no different. The problem is, that when you ask politicians to solve a business problem you get a political rather than an effective solution. The same held true in California, and instead of allowing the power companies to create more power by opening a plant or easing environmental restrictions, the government of California decided to regulate the rates utility companies could charge their customers, regardless of the costs those utility companies incurred to produce that energy. This created an inbalance which the government then offset by paying subsidies for the power purchased from out of state. All was well for a time. The people were happy because their utility bills were leveled off, the government was happy because the people were happy, and the power companies were not quite as happy, but they weren't hemorrhaging money so they weren't unhappy. This would have gone on smoothly, but as i pointed out earlier, the state was being overrun by the enivronmentalists and their lobbyists. This resulted in more and more regulation and restrictions on the power plants, which in turn resulted in decreased power production and increased purchasing of power from outside the state and premium rates. The subsidies in place were no longer adequate and the State of California refused to either increase the subsidies, or relax the regulations to allow the power companies to generate more of its own power. The power companies then made the decision produce as much of its own power as it could given the regulations, purchase only as much additional power as the subsidies would cover, and if that weren't sufficient, then there would be blackouts. To minimize the discomfort to the residents, the blackouts were allowed to roll from one end of the st ate to the other keeping the outages to a minimum, and the inconvenience to the residents to a minimum. These rolling blackouts earned then Governor Grey Davis the less-than-flattering nickname of "Grey-Out Davis." They also got California's legilslators costituents calling their representatives again. Consequently, Governor Davis and the legislature decided to increase the subsidies to the power company to stop the blackouts, but then decided to announce an increase in the state's property taxes to help pay for it. That tax increase announcement was the straw that broke the camel's back and caused the citizens of California to rise up, recall, and replace Gov. Grey-Out with Arnold Schwarzenegger, a.k.a the Governator. Whether that was a good thing or not is a matter of public debate. I won't get into that issue here. In conclusion Mr. President, if we're going to emulate any policy of California, it should NOT be an economic or ENERGY one. We don't need skyrocketing utility bills or rolling blackouts on a national level. We also don't need to be swimming in a sea of red ink that makes the Red Sea look like a kiddie pool by comparison. If there is ANY policy of California we might WANT to emulate on a national level, I vote for the ability to recall and ineffective or downright dangerous chief executive. THAT policy I could support with a clear conscience.