The Kennel

Prop 87: Follow the Money

PS - President Clinton needs to check in with his own former Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, on the subject of ethanol. If he should do so, he would apparently be surprized to learn that in Brazil they make ethanol out of sugar, which is both cheaper and more energy efficient than making it out of corn, as is done in the USA -- because, ironically, it is not globally warm enough for us to have a significant sugar crop. Corn-based ethanol actually costs more energy to plant, fertilize, harvest, and process than it saves. As it is, President Clinton's specious suggestion that what worked in Brazil will easily work in California does his cause no honor.

Prop 87: Follow the Money

There are actually two separate issues here: [a] should California have an extraction tax? and [b] if they do, how should the money be spent? As you point out, the first issue is DOA for the oil companies considering that even Republican bastion Alaska and W's own Texas have them while Calfornia is the only state without one. Had the Prop 87 writers just been satisfied with the tax and left it to the legislature to set up the alternative energy program, they would have had a slam dunk, IMO.

But by explicitly proposing to set up a bureaucracy to oversee funneling the extraction tax to alternative energy programs, the Prop 87 authors provided an opening to the oil companies, who are strenuously talking around the issue as to whether there should be a tax and focusing instead plans for spending the money...whereof, it seems to me, they do make some valid points...but then, when weighing the anti-alternative energy opinions of oil companies, one must consider the source.

I guess we will soon find out how much Californians appreciate unsolicited advice from Chevron et al as to how to spend/"waste" their money.


Brad Hessel
Manager, The Kennel