{"id":43,"date":"2002-01-23T10:40:04","date_gmt":"2002-01-23T15:40:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/wordpress\/lucky_lucky_davis"},"modified":"2002-01-23T10:40:04","modified_gmt":"2002-01-23T15:40:04","slug":"lucky_lucky_davis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/2002\/01\/lucky_lucky_davis.html","title":{"rendered":"Lucky, Lucky Davis"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nSo it looks like Iran
\nis working actively to undermine Karzai<\/a>, while his new government is still
\nweak and uncertain. Just when there was hope that maybe, just maybe, Musharraf
\nwas reining in the ISI and the extremist madrasas… a new threat
\nappears in the west<\/em>. Terrific.\n<\/p>\n

\nCloser to home, the
\nRepublicans
\nhad themselves a gubernatorial debate<\/a>. I read this article in the physical SF Chronicle…
\nunfortunately the web version lacks the cute little table comparing Bill, Bill, and Richard on
\nthe issues. That’s too bad, because in the cute little table’s “Energy Policy” column there
\nwas a short, simple sentence for all three, “Favors full deregulation and a free market solution”
\nor something along those lines. Well, no shockers there. Although it makes me wonder…\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nJones and Riordan clashed most strongly over energy, with the Jones accusing Riordan of
\novercharging the state when Los Angeles sold electricity at the height of last winter’s
\nenergy crisis.\n<\/p>\n

\n“You were busy trying to make sure that Los Angeles made as much money as it could off
\nCalifornia,” Jones argued, adding that Riordan’s expert on energy, S. David Freeman, later
\njoined the governor’s staff and contributed to the administration’s problems wrestling
\nthe energy issue.”\n<\/p>\n

\nRiordan vigorously defended his actions, saying it was his job to protect the interests
\nof residents in Los Angeles, whose electricity rates stayed constant during his tenure.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nStrange that Jones, the stalwart free marketeer, would castigate Riordan for
\nsimply charging California what the market would bear. (Or possibly less —
\naccording to the SJ
\nMercury’s article, Riordan claimed that the Los Angeles
\nDWP sold the state electricity at cost.) Guess those free market principles are harder
\nto stick to when it’s the other<\/em> guy that holds all the cards.\n<\/p>\n

\nWell, since I am not one to let Jones, Riordan, and Simon be pigeonholed by
\nour mean nasty rotten inaccurate liberal Bay Area media, I went to each candidate’s
\nwebsite to see what their solutions were for the energy crisis. No filtering,
\nno soundbites, no cute little SF Chronicle tables. The straight stuff. Here’s what
\nI found as of Jan. 23, 2002:\n<\/p>\n

\nBill Jones<\/a> simply
\nprovides a list of op-ed articles by the Mercury, the LA Times, and the Sacramento Bee
\nthat criticize Davis. (Pssst, Bill: every link you provided is broken<\/B>.
\n Neither the Mercury, the Sac Bee, or the LA Times perma-links their articles. Just FYI.)
\n All righty then, moving on to…\n<\/p>\n

\nBill Simon<\/a>. Who, under
\nhis “Issues” section, provides… nothing on energy policy whatsoever! Looks like
\nour last hope is…\n<\/p>\n

\nRichard Riordan<\/a>.
\nIt turns out that Riordan’s energy policy consists of a short press release calling for
\n the dissolution of the newly-formed Power Authority. Well, I suppose that’s
\n something<\/em>, anyway. Better than recycling other people’s editorials.
\n And definitely<\/em> better than providing nothing at all.\n<\/p>\n

\n Now, certainly it’s fair to criticize Davis. He was
\n slow to react to the mess he inherited from Wilson. And he might have gotten snookered
\n in those long term power contracts. On the other hand, he was under tremendous pressure
\n to simply keep the lights on<\/em>… and despite all that the Bush administration and
\n Enron threw at him, he managed to do it.\n<\/p>\n

\n Davis’s challengers have had a year to plan since the height of the crisis.
\n They have the full benefit of 20-20 hindsight — and then some. So do they have
\n any<\/em> new ideas? Anything besides attacking the governor
\n and spouting clichés? No. Nothing at all.\n<\/p>\n

\n Pathetic<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So do they have any<\/em> new ideas? Anything besides attacking the governor and spouting clichés? No. Nothing at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}