Proposition 87			00.00 10/09
	Opinion
	Submitted as: "The Clean Alternative Energy Act."
	A YES vote on this measure represents the triumph of hope over not only experience but also ethics, fairness, clear management, and the basic laws of economics.
	Experience.  History is littered with the bleached bones of systems that believed that it was possible to achieve grand goals, given enough power, money, a good solid committee, and an X-year plan.  The best known of these, the late Soviet Union, which favored plans five years in duration, foundered even though it had the additional power to imprison or kill or those who failed to match their lives to the plan.  When it went under, its citizens were still standing in lines to buy bread.
	Ethics.  When a lot of money and power is put into the hands of a few people, corruption follows inevitably.  Here, it's actually built in.  Try a simple test.  Search our summary of this initiative, or even its original if you like, for the word "incentive".  While you do that, substitute the word "pork".  This process is made all the more efficient by the fact that several of the multimillionaires who paid to get this on the ballot own companies which stand to receive and benefit from the "incentives".
	Fairness.  Call us old-fashioned, but we think that if a tax is going to benefit everyone, then everyone should pay for it.  Why do we keep on casting some social subset as the enemy, and forcing that subset to pay while the rest of us get a free ride?
	Clear Management.  As a good indication of the clarity and precision that may be expected from the execution of this initiative, consider its method for determining how the amount of the tax is to be derived.  There are at least two ways to interpret what the initiative says, one of them giving a result almost twice the other.  Which are YOU voting for?
	Economics.  Economics 101 tells us that if we want to reduce consumption of a commodity, we need only raise its price.  If the real goal is to reduce the consumption of gasoline, then we need to increase its price.  A price increase is exactly what would ordinarily happen if this initiative passed; the producers would pass the tax on to you and me.  But the Initiative expressly forbids this.   Why?  Because the real goal of the backers is NOT to reduce consumption; it is to acquire and channel money to their pet startups, and they need your vote to make that happen.
	Vote No on 87.
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