|
You might've heard about the recall of California's governor: Gray Davis .. first such recall in the nation's history. Gray is accused of deceiving the people of California about the state's financial condition (during his re-election campaign). He claimed a debt of some $20-billion dollars, while that figure was closer to 40. Of course, he has nothing to lose by fighting the recall. California is home to Silicon Valley, and therefore affected by the health of the Technology industry. When the bottom fell out of the Tech sector, California's tax-base fell with it. This is the primary source of the state's fiscal woes. Another problem (albeit, self-inflicted) comes from the State's feeble attempt to deregulate energy prices. Prior to this, the PUC controlled prices (guaranteeing utilities a modest profit). Since the prices of plane tickets fell drastically after the government deregulated the Airline industry, some (naive and inexperienced) politicians got the bright idea the same would happen to energy prices if that industry was deregulated (which would subject prices to the economic forces of supply and demand). The premise sounded reasonable, but the execution was appalling. The folks who run the state's utilities are obviously much smarter than those who ran the Airline industry. Because, soon as the government changed the playing field so that energy prices became subject to economics forces (supply & demand), the people who ran the utilities manipulated the game so that it appeared demand out-paced supply (thereby raising prices). As these (artificially inflated) prices continued to climb, month after month, people began getting desperate. So the government decided to jump in and "save the day" by fixing prices when they were at their all-time highs. Soon as this happened, prices (magically) fell .. and the poor people of California are left paying inflated energy prices for the next 10 years .. thanks to a bunch of politicians who had no idea of what they were doing .. or worse: maybe they did. This paints the current administration as incompetent, negligent or criminal .. depending who you ask. More likely, you've heard Arnold is running for office .. to "pump up" Sacramento (state capital) as he says. Most feel certain Arnold will become the next governor of California .. for these reasons: * He's not a lawyer Nobody seems to hold his inexperience against him. In fact, they view it as a positive. I heard one guy say he was going to "vote for the person with the largest breasts" .. which, I think, is Arnold. =) |
|