Interesting note on Calif prop 10

There's a environmental ballot measure being touted in California right now by the 'man-of-the-hour' T.Boone Pickens. Proposition 10 or the California Renewable Energy and Clean Alternative Fuel Act, which would spend $5 Billion in California bond money or about $10 billion by the time interest is paid to promote natural gas as an alternative for car and truck fuel. Clean Energy Fuels Corp or CLNE is the nation's largest provider of natural gas for transportation and according to the California Secretary of State website, CLNE has contributed $3,247,250 to supporting PROP 10's passage. T.Boone owns 37% of the company and his wife 7%. There's another champion of this environmental package....Nancy Pelosi. She's the proud owner of 22,000 shares and if she persuades the people of California to vote for PROP 10 in the name of renewable energy, she'll stand to make boo-koo bucks. The initiative deceptively reads like it's supporting all alternative-fuel vehicles and renewable energy sources, BUT, a closer read of it finds a laundry list of cash grabs, much of the measure's billions could benefit Picken's company to the exclusion of almost all other clean vehicles fuels and technology. Even worse, private trucking and delivery companies could buy 5,000 natural gas trucks, collect California taxpayer-funded rebates of $200 million or more and then send those fleets out of state. This is just another way of fleecing the American public. Look up CLNE on the stock market, stockholders.

One of my last acts as a Transit Maintenance Superintendent in San Francisco was to draft a paper to kill the CNG buses in favor of Hybrids. Hard to believe I've been gone from that job seven years. CNG does not have the BTU rating and we had to drive 16 miles south of The City to fuel those rolling rocket bombs. California has a state sponsored alternative energy development program to develop fuel cells, let's hope it works.

But if we really want to solve our energy mess let's turn back on the reactors and go nuke. That way natural gas fired power plants could divert that fuel to home heating and those mid-cracked fuels could be further refined to kerosene and diesel.

Nancy Pelosi is through, she has been real quiet here at her home base and Cindy Sheehan has been getting press.

Any proposition with the word "bond" in it is an automatic no vote for me.

Bent said:

Any proposition with the word "bond" in it is an automatic no vote for me.

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Likewise. Has there ever been a bond-funded measure that didn't go overbudget, or end up costing more in interest than originally planned?

Bonds - No.
Tax Hike - No.
"Temporary" Tax - No. (The Federal Income Tax was temporary until, I believe, after WWI. We all know what happened there...)
Incumbent - usually No. He'd better have done a damned good job for me to consider re-electing him.