Prop 87

California's ballot propositions drive many folk crazy. If you can get enough signatures to qualify, you can make just about anything a law. It's a crazy way to run a state, though it is the only reason that people in this state can afford to own homes, but I digress.

Every election year there are at least a few propositions on the ballot and this year's General Election is no different. So far, my favorite is Proposition 87.

When you sell your position with rhetoric like "Make Big Oil Pay," you're not fooling anybody. This whole thing is an ugly charade built on essentially nothing more than class envy. It's time to "git" the oil companies and make them pay!

Read this blog post and see just what kind of brain-power is at work here. Then anybody with an econ class under their belt is free to explain to the rest of the class why gas prices in the state would likely rise should this ridiculousness become law.

Meanwhile, at least one California paper weighs in on the matter: To paraphrase Robert Poole, director of transportation studies at the Cato Institute, the tooth fairy must have written this one.

To wit: The campaign for 87 tells us we can slap a $4 billion tax on oil, sue the producers if they try to pass the cost along to us, somehow reduce gasoline and diesel usage 25 percent, increase the use of renewable energy, clean up the air, provide thousands of jobs, invigorate the California economy, create no new bureaucracies, and all without raising oil prices.

This is an oil tax, and the cost will show up somewhere; nobody should believe fuel use is going to decrease even slightly; there are better ways to increase the use of renewable energy and clean up the air, create jobs and spur the economy, and 87 does create a new bureaucracy, in the form of political appointees who would oversee the program.

Surely there's a better way to encourage alt-fuels than driving oil companys out of the state.