I'm at the High Speed Rail session at the Bay Area Transportation and Land Use Coalition conference in Oakland today, where my laptop just stepped up to play this great video that the High Speed Rail Authority has put together:
This is a great conference - almost 400 people, and with a strong social justice focus along with the expected environmental one. This is the kind of citizen-led event that flies right in the face of the "California is ungovernable" argument.
Is it any surprise to those of us who follow the machinations of the oil industry that they are recording record profits here in California by gouging us at the pump by way of their refinery prices? Shouldn't be but on the other hand, it has been almost impossible to regulate how these profit hungry, pollution specialist mega-corporations do business. Blame it on the "market-based" system that the Free Marketeers hold so sacrosanct. Nothing should interfere with the market's supply and demand approach to all economic decisions. Although the industry has not yet been found to have violated any laws against colluding to fix prices, the state's Attorney General', Jerry Brown has said the investigation of refiners enormous profit-spike from last year (begun by then AG Bill Lockyer) continues.
So much of their machinations are astonishingly similar to those of the energy companies back in 2000 during our energy crisis in California. Facilities going down for unscheduled and "unexpected" repairs. While always a possibility, it was curious then that when regulators attempted to investigate, they were refused admission to the production facilities or delayed entry for up to nine hours before being allowed in. In the gas refining business, we don't even have the authority by law to conduct such inquiries.
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