Posted on 08/28/2003 1:40:41 PM PDT by TastyManatees
Bustamante Wants to Regulate Big Oil
By TOM CHORNEAU
Associated Press Writer
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- Lt. Gov Cruz Bustamante on Thursday accused the big oil companies of ripping off Californians and vowed to bring them under state regulatory control as he began what shaped up as a frenetic day of campaigning by gubernatorial candidates around the state.
"Californians are being gouged, and under current law we are powerless to do anything about it," said Bustamante, standing in front of a Sacramento gas station. He announced he would press the Legislature to amend the state constitution to bring the oil companies under state regulatory control.
His remarks kicked off what was to be a particularly busy day for the front-running candidates in the race to replace Gov. Gray Davis if he is recalled Oct. 7. Former baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth was in San Diego to hold the first of several town hall meetings he has scheduled with voters, while actor Arnold Schwarzenegger was campaigning in California's Central Valley.
Democrats Davis and Bustamante and Republican state Sen. Tom McClintock were scheduled Thursday to address the California Nations Indian Gaming Association, representing 57 tribal governments. The group's members have become an influential political force capable of boosting campaign coffers.
Bustamante said he wanted to remind voters they will be paying the highest prices in the nation for gasoline this Labor Day weekend. "Six oil companies control 90 percent of the California market. In the last two weeks they caused the largest jump in gasoline prices ever recorded," he said.
Meanwhile, Schwarzenegger's campaign swing to the conservative Central Valley, including Bustamante's former hometown of Fresno, followed his clearest statements to date on abortion and other social issues.
He espoused alternately liberal and conservative views in conversations Wednesday with radio talk-show hosts, saying he favors legalizing marijuana for medical purposes, some gun control and protecting a woman's right to abortion, but is against gay marriage and granting drivers licenses to undocumented immigrants.
The latter issue is volatile in the Central Valley, the nation's most productive farmland and home to many ethnic groups and migrants who work in the fields.
Schwarzenegger, who supported Proposition 187 in 1994, which sought to deny many services to illegal immigrants, said undocumented immigrants already in the country should stay here, but he added it was a federal issue. A spokesman said he wasn't proposing an amnesty program.
Like Schwarzenegger, Ueberroth is a moderate Republican and a millionaire and both have given heavily to their own campaigns and are raising similar sums of money from wealthy friends. Fund-raising and campaign expenditure reports, due Thursday, were expected to offer a better glimpse of the financial health of the campaigns of the 135 candidates on the ballot to replace Davis.
Ueberroth, a businessman and political newcomer, is relying on his reputation as the man who made the 1984 Olympics a success, earning Time magazine's Man of the Year title. While he has laid out an economic plan to help patch the state's projected $8 billion deficit next year, he has yet to connect with voters.
Schwarzenegger, during his third radio appearance Wednesday, was asked about a racy 1977 men's magazine interview in which he discussed life in the gym and his sexual exploits. He responded that it was not the type of interview he would give today.
"I never lived my life to be a politician. I never lived my life to be the governor of California," he told Sacramento station KFBK. "Obviously, I've made statements that were ludicrous and crazy and outrageous and all those things, because that's the way I always was. I was always that way, because otherwise I wouldn't have done the things that I did in my career, including the body building and the show business and all those things." .
Copyright 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Gasoline in real adjusted dollars is ridiculously cheap in the US. It takes expensive drilling gear, a long transportation system to the expensive refinery, another ride to the gas station and eventuallly into your tank. It passes thru five people's hands before you get it, each one taking a profit. And then it's taxed TWICE - state and federal.
And after all that, it's two to three times cheaper than bottled water, the most plentiful and renewable compound on earth. It's twice as cheap as Coca-Cola per gallon, whose principal component is water. It's about the same price as Clorox, which contains tap water and 5% sodium hypochloride, both a great deal less precious than light sweet crude. And it's ten times cheaper per gallon than extra-virgin olive oil.
It's amazing to me just how cheap gasoline is.
Michael
Did BIG electicity get any power from BIG WIND?
Schwarzenegger, who supported Proposition 187 in 1994, which sought to deny many services to illegal immigrants, said undocumented immigrants already in the country should stay here
and then:
A spokesman said he wasn't proposing an amnesty program.
????????????
What do we do with them? Leave them illegal and look the other way?
Wake up California!
Hb
Only until AFTER the election.
-PJ
Bustedmental would be better off trying to get the state legislature and its taxing and spending under control first.
Then again, this may be a blessing in the end. The wackos have already driven the utilities out in the sense that none of them want to build plants in California. Now if the oil companies do likewise, and the Californiacs can't get gasoline because the oil companies don't want to be under government control in pricing and marketing their products, they might actually do the right thing and run Bustedmental out of town on a rail. So then Bustedmental and the Rats will pass a law making it illegal for any oil companies to go out of business in California? Gee, that sounds awfully familiar (and I'm not even a Randian)...
Either they know that such an idea is so crazy that it could cost him the election they do not even want it mentioned, or the number of members they have over there is so small none of them know about it yet.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.