Posted on 10/27/2006 9:43:48 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
Just 13 years ago, Bill Clinton and Al Gore were exhibits 1 and 1A in the rise of the New Democrats – centrists who appreciated the need for a healthy economy and saw throwing taxpayers' money at a problem as both wasteful and a practice that would lead to voter distrust. And so we saw President Clinton defy the Democrats who then controlled Congress in submitting a first budget that was more concerned with fiscal rectitude than social engineering. And we saw Vice President Gore, in his finest moment in the public eye, demolish protectionist Ross Perot in a live CNN debate over the wisdom of the NAFTA treaty.
Boy, those were the days. Now, as Californians debate the merits of Proposition 87, Clinton and Gore have forgotten their old personas to shill on television and at rallies for a clunker of a left-wing initiative that would hurt the economy, waste taxpayers' money and use Perot-style it's-that-simple arguments to claim there are easy answers to tough energy questions.
The measure would tax in-state oil production to raise $4 billion for alternative-energy research.
Its TV ads are beyond dishonest, asserting in baldly contradictory fashion that increasing the cost of domestic oil production would somehow lower gasoline prices and reduce dependence on foreign oil. They also imply that little alternative-energy research is under way, when in fact there is more such research than ever.
The initiative's language is a mess. It allows the $4 billion to be spent with little accountability – and on research done out of state.
Besides all these problems, the motives of a key initial sponsor – Silicon Valley billionaire Vinod Khosla – are deeply suspect. He stands to directly benefit from 87's passage because of his huge investment in a Central Valley ethanol manufacturing plant.
Yet Clinton says voting for Proposition 87 would help “save the planet,” and Gore divines a “shared moral purpose” in supporting it.
Why would two such high-profile national politicians lend their names to such a public policy stinker?
With Clinton, we suspect he is trying to cuddle up to Hollywood tycoon Steve Bing, the prodigious Democratic donor and 87 supporter whose help Sen. Hillary Clinton covets in her expected 2008 presidential bid.
With Gore, we assume it is just one more manifestation of his frenzied attempt to establish himself as secular pope of the global green cult. No one should be surprised if Gore someday becomes the first nanny-state politician to be more upset with fast-food restaurants because of their discarded food wrappers than their unhealthy burgers and fries.
Whatever Clinton and Gore are up to, we hope Californians recognize their malarkey for what it is and remember the basics about Proposition 87. It won't reduce our dependence on foreign oil or reduce the cost of gasoline. It is a badly drafted mess. Its crucial initial support came from a businessman who hopes to take advantage of it. In considering how to describe Proposition 87, a long list of adjectives comes to mind, but “moral” is not one of them.
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Direct democracy?
Try Direct Hypocrisy.
NR -
Have you seen any current poll numbers on this one? I personally think it's going to go down in flames since no one believes the gas companies aren't going to pass the cost on to us, and don't know anyone who's planning to vote for it.
cue twilight zone music: al gore was born 9 months after the roswell new mexico alien spacecraft crash.
al gore was born 9 months after the ROSWELL INCIDENT.
Actually and surprisingly, these are liberals in my office who are planning to vote for !gasp! Schwarzenegger!!!
(To which my reply is always "Oh, please - it's not like you were having to really vote for a Republican!). And, just to really screw with my sense of reality, many of those same liberal attorneys are voting for McClintock.
I hope no one is planning to vote on it. I may be one of the few who have actually waded through the language of the proposition and it has some really interesting provisions which make it immune to Assembly tinkering, for example, and continues the project past the $4 billion mark if it has debts to pay off, (and there is no debt limit to the board which will run the fund as the original debt limit of $1B was deleted in the final version). It's a vast kingdom for green lilliputians funded by their arch-enemy oil companies and, of course, oil users like us.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
President Clinton steps up to the podium and declares - "I did not have sex with that ethanol manufacturing plant".
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