Whitman: Which Way on Prop. 23?

21 September 2010 |permalink | email article

Proposition 23, which would suspend California’s landmark climate change law signed by Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006, and aims to reduce carbon emissions to 1990’s level by 2020 is under savage attack by Republicans and the oil industry who want it suspended until the statewide employment rate hits 5.5 percent for four quarters in a row.

It’s a clear cut voter issue: protect big business interests or public health. Yet billionaire Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman has long vacillated but now says she will decide later this week. The party’s vice chairman, Jon Fleischman, has asked other GOP members to pressure Whitman to share their position. 

Rich as Whitman is she’s a pauper compared to the Wichita, Kansas oil company headed by the billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch, with a combined fortune of thirty-five billion dollars. They have long pushed for much less oversight of industry – notably environmental legislation– and have contributed $1 million to the Proposition 23 campaign.

Texas based Valero Energy Corp., another major force in the oil industry, has emerged as a key player in the November ballot measure. Bill Klesse, the company’s CEO once jokingly suggested oil executives should fight global warning by holding their breath. A big player in Washington the company has now spent $4 million on the campaign for Prop. 23.

San Francisco hedge fund manager Tom Steyer, co-chair of No on 23, estimated Valero’s gross profit margins in California are double what it earns elsewhere in the U.S. Supporters of the law have raised $10 million.

What they said

“The fact is we would have had comprehensive health care now, had it not been for Ted Kennedy’s deliberately blocking the legislation I proposed. It was his fault. Ted Kennedy killed the bill.” – Former President Jimmy Carter, promoting his new book, “White House Diary,” on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” a remark which Larry Horowitz, Kennedy’s former chief of staff and the senator’s negotiator on health care with the Carter administration called “sad” and “classless” for the criticism after Kennedy’s death.

“That’s a good question, It depends how it turns out, is the honest truth. The security challenge, I’m afraid, is very much still with us.” – Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, interviewed by Newsweek, defending the invasion of Iraq on humanitarian grounds in his new memoir,”A Journey.”

“”She can’t simply ignore it. She’s got to deal with it and explain it and put it in its most sympathetic light.” – Karl Rove, suggesting that Christine O’Donnell, the Tea Party-backed Republican candidate in Delaware clarify her witchcraft remark even as the loopy nominee joked about it on the campaign trail Sunday.

 

 

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