Editor’s note: Michael Ackley’s columns may include satire and parody based on current events, and thus mix fact with fiction. He assumes informed readers will be able to tell which is which.
California almost emerged from its decades-long oleophobia last week, but ultimately the governor and legislature decided not to pour oil on troubled budgetary waters by even a minor expansion of off-shore drilling.
Too bad. Even a little new oil drilling off the coast at Santa Barbara would have produced a modest but steady stream of royalties over the next 15 years.
The currently cash-strapped California used to apply oil revenues to the building of roads and schools. That was until environmentalists used the image of oil-soaked sea birds after the 1969 Union Oil blowout to scare politicians into banning all new drilling off the coast of the Golden State.
Woops! That curtailed the oil royalties that had helped keep the state flush. The state Assembly, still in the thrall of environmental extremists, blocked the turn toward sanity. There has been no word on which, if any, of the lawmakers will give up their gas-gulping, state-provided sport utility vehicles.
It’s so hard to figure out punditry. On the one hand, we have those who hold up California as a progressive delight, a model for the nation, a leader in the effort to save the environment by curbing greenhouse gases, a multi-cultural Mecca where immigrants (including illegals) mesh in a tossed salad of ethnic harmony, a haven of humanitarianism where there are social programs to meet every need from homelessness to unwed pregnancy.
On the other hand, we have an increasing number of pundits who cite California as an ungovernable mess. Oddly, the pundit that praises the Golden State one week may be the pundit that excoriates it the next, but none seems ready to see the causal link between the social engineering and the governmental quagmire.
Bleeding-heart story of the month: The Dallas Morning News reported on a 45-year-old schizoid immigrant who was arrested for breaking and entering.
“But,” wrote the breathless reporter, “instead of taking (him) to get medical attention, authorities started deportation proceedings against him …”
Perhaps somebody – anybody! – educate the writer on the history of immigration in the United States. While subject of the story was a legal immigrant, we should remember that back in the good old days of Ellis Island, he wouldn’t have been an immigrant at all. Once his mental illness had been spotted, he would have been shipped back to the old country, pronto along with criminals, communists and the chronically ill.
Emma Lazarus’ verse on the Statue of Liberty does not read, “Bring me your tired, your poor, your mental defectives …”
Money tokes, or, back to California: As the Legislature struggles to pretend to balance the state budget the push to legalize marijuana is gaining new life. Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco (where else?), has a bill in to tax the evil weed, and state officials say the levy would generate $1.4 billion.
“Yeah! Yeah!” says the pot-growers’ lobby (no, it doesn’t actually call itself that) which agrees with the Democrats (who else?) who don’t think spending cuts are the answer. Don’t be surprised if this passes a legislature filled with addictive personalities.
California Rep. Dan Lungren’s move to have “In God We Trust” and the Pledge of Allegiance engraved on the Capitol Visitor Center in Washington drew only eight “no” votes in the House of Representatives, but – predictably – it has brought a lawsuit from the Freedom from Religion Foundation. Apparently, the foundation views any mention of the deity as an unconstitutional “establishment” of religion. Atheists, it says, are offended by such words as “one nation, under God.”
Sorry, folks. No. 1: The motto and the pledge don’t constitute “an establishment of religion.” No. 2: Nowhere does the Constitution say there is a right not to be offended. If it did, you’d be defending a new lawsuit every day.
More oil: South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford takes oleaginous honors for his commentary on how – out of his disastrous extramarital affair – God is going to make him a better person. We know the Bible Belt is big on redemption, so this kind of grease might sell in South Carolina, but permit us to doubt.
Screamin’ at Fox News: Fox commentators blithely reported last week that California had balanced its budget with no new taxes. They should have said “no new taxes this month.” In February, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a budget that laid $12.8 billion in new taxes on the people of the Golden State. These included another cent on the sales tax, a quarter percent increase in the state income tax and a huge increase in the vehicle license fee. (The cost of registering our old Chevy popped up 31 percent.) “No new taxes” indeed!
