Electric Epiphany
NOTHING LIKE A POWER CRISIS TO GIVE SOME CALIFORNIA LIBERALS A little market-based religion.
So if we must suffer rolling blackouts, at least we can enjoy the delicious irony of President Bush being the guy who is pandering to populist and extreme-environmentalist interests while Gov. Gray Davis and U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman sound like two guys singing from former Gov. Pete Wilson’s hymnal.
The reason for this odd turnabout is the refusal of Bush’s EPA to exempt California from a rule requiring gasoline to contain clean-burning additives, most notably corn-derived ethanol.
Score one for the farmers whose votes Bush needs to be reelected, and score one for EPA chief Christie Todd Whitman, who gets to say, in the tradition of the finest Washington administrators, tsk, tsk, California hasn’t “met the test” of showing that a waiver wouldn’t hurt the air.
The state’s flummoxed liberals have been left to make arguments grounded in conservative ideology and economic principles.
“Their refusal to grant us that waiver will probably cost California consumers 50 cents a gallon in the pump It will do nothing to clean up the air and it is a triumph of politics over good science,” stormed Gray “Newt” Davis.
Waxman, whose picture accompanies the definition of “over-bearing bureaucratic regulation,” was equally indignant: “It’s incomprehensible to me, because if the waiver had been granted, it wouldn’t have any environmental consequences because the Clean Air requirements would still have to be met.”
Guys, I like what I’m hearing. Keep it up. In fact, maybe you can help break this logjam over drilling in Alaska.
