BANG! OW! (limps away).
The sound you just heard was California Lt. Governor and gubernatorial candidate Cruz Bustamante shooting himself in the foot.
On the day that his biggest rival for the governorship -- yes, I mean Arnie, not Gray Davis -- was embarrassed by the publication of a 1977 interview where he admits to drug use and describes his sex life in detail; on this day, I say, Cruz Bustamante advocates price controls on gasoline.
Read it yourself: Bustamante Seeks to Regulate Oil Industry in California. Bustamante proposed giving the Public Utilities Commission control over gasoline prices, and yes, those are the same people who came up with and implemented California's failed deregulation plan. The same deregulation plan Bustamante now regrets having voted for.
So. Suppose the PUC legislates the price of gasoline at $2.40 a gallon, but ARCO can't produce it at their Long Beach refinery for less than $2.70. What will happen:
a) ARCO will shut down the refinery and there will be a gas shortage
b) the State will have to bail out the refineries to the tune of 30 cents a gallon times twenty million people's gas consumption
c) both?
Gas lines and taxpayer bailouts are coming to California. All those people who wish they could relive the 70's will have the opportunity soon.
Cosh plucks this thought from a fictitious liberal's mind: "Why would anyone want a McDonald's parked smackdab in the middle of Prague?"
Exactly! It's not hard to find cheap food in Prague, even cheap authentic Czech food. What's missing in domestic cuisine that a foreigner might value is fast and predictable, and McDonald's does a fine job of providing that.
We actually went to a McDonald's in Prague (my first time) when we were there last March visiting family. It turns out that food cures morning sickness, and when we got out of the Museum of the City of Prague, my wife was hungry and there was a McDonald's right across the street.
Most of the clientele were young Czechs, which just goes to show that you can't keep cheap crappy fast food out of kid's mouths -- not without making it illegal. "You can have my Big Mac when you pry it from my cold, greasy fingers"? Which I suppose goes back to Cosh's point from the other day.