Wednesday, March 06, 2002
Sometimes I wonder if the religious conservatives who seem to control the Republican party these days are suicidally stupid. I base that conclusion on Richard Riordan's failure to claim the Republican nomination for the governor's race. Richard Riordan's only crime appears to be that he supports gun control, abortion rights and gay rights. Those are big no-nos for the conservative fringe of the Republic party, and in response to 8 million spent by the DEMOCRATIC nominee (the current governor of California, Gray Davis), duly voted him down.
Bill Simon now stands to lose, and lose badly, to the incumbent Mr. Davis (which is why he spent 8 million making sure Riordan didn't get the nomination). He will lose, because religious conservatives don't typify your average California voter. That's a shame, because governor Gray Davis is just about the worst governor California has had in a long time.
Consider his handling of the California energy crisis. He completely ignored the cause of the energy crisis, which was a half-baked privatization scheme that freed wholesale energy prices but fixed the price paid by consumers at a low rate. This destroyed profits for the newly "privatized" utilities and removed any incentive for them to invest in new production capacity. Instead, Davis chose to blame "greedy energy wholesalers", the US government (for not fixing wholesale prices to save governor Davis, er, California), and ANYONE but the California legislature which caused the problem in the first place. This was a textbook case of government management of the economy leading to inefficiences and failure.
Governor Davis' chose to browbeat outside energy wholesalers for "not being good citizens" for charging the market-clearing price (he also negotiated long-term contracts at the start of the energy crisis which locked in high energy wholesale prices, which just goes to show why bureaucrats make poor replacement for professionals with an understanding of the market). That is the kind of thinking that got California into its energy mess in the first place. Price controls DO NOT WORK and have NEVER worked. Better to let the high profits generated by wholesalers create an incentive for newcomers to spend the money to compete with them. Profits attract competition. That is, and has ALWAYS been, the way the free market works.
Richard Riordan would have understood that. He ran on a platform of things that matter. Bill Simon ran on a special-interest platform. It's frightening to think that enough people care about little else besides their narrow pet interests that he would win the nomination.
Bill Simon now stands to lose, and lose badly, to the incumbent Mr. Davis (which is why he spent 8 million making sure Riordan didn't get the nomination). He will lose, because religious conservatives don't typify your average California voter. That's a shame, because governor Gray Davis is just about the worst governor California has had in a long time.
Consider his handling of the California energy crisis. He completely ignored the cause of the energy crisis, which was a half-baked privatization scheme that freed wholesale energy prices but fixed the price paid by consumers at a low rate. This destroyed profits for the newly "privatized" utilities and removed any incentive for them to invest in new production capacity. Instead, Davis chose to blame "greedy energy wholesalers", the US government (for not fixing wholesale prices to save governor Davis, er, California), and ANYONE but the California legislature which caused the problem in the first place. This was a textbook case of government management of the economy leading to inefficiences and failure.
Governor Davis' chose to browbeat outside energy wholesalers for "not being good citizens" for charging the market-clearing price (he also negotiated long-term contracts at the start of the energy crisis which locked in high energy wholesale prices, which just goes to show why bureaucrats make poor replacement for professionals with an understanding of the market). That is the kind of thinking that got California into its energy mess in the first place. Price controls DO NOT WORK and have NEVER worked. Better to let the high profits generated by wholesalers create an incentive for newcomers to spend the money to compete with them. Profits attract competition. That is, and has ALWAYS been, the way the free market works.
Richard Riordan would have understood that. He ran on a platform of things that matter. Bill Simon ran on a special-interest platform. It's frightening to think that enough people care about little else besides their narrow pet interests that he would win the nomination.
