San Jose Mercury - "Texas oil interests line up for Proposition 23" - CA Votes Are On Sale Now!

[TomCADem]

I guess 2010 will be the year that California's democracy proves to be on sale to the highest bidder with billionaire Meg Whitnan saturating the air waves with millions of dollars worth of political ads, and joined by oil companies like Valero that are seeking to maintain demand for fossil fuels by trying to repeal laws designed to encourage alternative energy sources.

http://www.mercurynews.com/peninsula/ci_15739108

But never before last spring's campaigns for Propositions 16 and 17 had single companies piled tens of millions into campaigns that didn't even try to disguise their self-serving nature. The blatant quality of the effort to buy themselves new laws set apart the campaigns run by Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and Mercury Insurance Co. and may even have backfired on the two firms.

Feeling threatened by city and special district efforts to set up their own electric sales systems, PG&E spent more than $40 million putting its pet measure on the ballot and then trying to pass it. The company aimed to require a two-thirds vote of local residents before any public power system could start. PG&E outspent consumerist opponents by a factor of 1,000 to 1 while trying to overcome the common tendency to vote against any proposition that seems confusing. The aim was to prevent future dilution of PG&E's regional power monopoly, since two-thirds votes are so difficult to attain. And PG&E almost won.

At the same time, Mercury Insurance was seeking to increase its market share via Proposition 17, spending more than $1 million to qualify its pet measure for the ballot and another $20 million trying unsuccessfully to pass it. That meant two companies spent more than $60 million on narrow measures that figured to help almost no one else.

* * *

All these figures may be surpassed this fall by two more Texas oil interests, the Valero and Tesoro refining companies, which joined to pay for qualifying Proposition 23, a measure to cancel or greatly delay the state's pioneering anti-greenhouse gas law, passed in 2006 as AB 32. What's in this for them? Neither company wants to invest in the upgrades to refining operations that would be needed to comply with AB 32's requirement for reducing emissions of carbon dioxide to 1990 levels by the end of this decade.

[jobycom]

1. Face it, Texas drinks California's milkshake. Remember Enron?

When Bush was running in 2000 and he started talking about an energy crisis no one had heard of, and all of a sudden California started having rolling blackouts that W blamed on Clinton. Turned out the blackouts were caused mostly by Enron (maybe others) controlling the oil supply to create a shortage to give Bush a campaign issue.

Damn I hate that man. The more I think about the crap he got away with... Greatest traitor ever.

[lapfog_1]

2. electricity not oil... from many different sources, but mostly coal

and natural gas fired generators. Enron controlled it all by calling for unscheduled maintenance and playing games in the spot market.

[TomCADem]

3. Actually, Gov. Pete Wilson (R) Pushed Deregulation, And Davis (D) Got Blamed For Results...

Worse, when California tried to invalide the electricity contracts that it entered into at high prices due to Enron's manipulation, the Bush administration did not support California.