Last year at this time, we were all obsessing about Y2K. Honk if you were hoarding water, fuel and groceries, and backing up computer files. Hide your head if you were armed and ready to protect yourself against anarchy, riots and the complete breakdown of law and order.
So how silly did we all feel when none of those things actually occurred, and the New Year came and went with hardly a ripple in the order of things? Well, in case you haven’t noticed, a lot of the same stuff is going on now, but Y2K isn’t the culprit.
This year it’s the energy crisis, so keep those candles, camp stoves, kerosene lanterns and bottled water handy in case anarchists rise up and take over the power companies. Will the utilities go bankrupt, as they threaten, if they can’t raise our rates to $1,000 a kilowatt hour? Our oh-so-moderate Guv calls in the feds to impose rate caps on what PG&E and Edison can charge customers. Meanwhile, out-of-state power generators don’t want to sell to California utility companies because they’re afraid they won’t get paid. How mortifying. It’s like having your Visa card refused after picking up the check at L’Orangerie.
And Standard & Poors is planning to devalue the utilities’ bonds, which should do wonders for their credit rating. Seems like the horses are all pulling in different directions. Hey, guys, can’t we all get along?
Half of the country just voted for a man they weren’t exactly thrilled with because he promised less government intervention in business, but deregulated business has run amok and seriously needs some intervention. The law of supply and demand isn’t going to cut this one, particularly when consumers aren’t willing to curtail the demand and manufacturers can’t.
Anyway, because of the vagaries of this paper’s holiday production schedule, I am trying to write a New Year’s column four days before Christmas, while I’m still into gifts and ho, ho, ho. So I’m combining my Santa wish list with New Year’s resolutions.
For Guv. Gray: The cajones to move ever so slightly off his moderate, center-of-the-road backside. Resolution: To solve the deregulation debacle by using the state’s obscene budget surplus to buy out the power companies and run them as, guess what, public utilities.
For President-elect George W. Bush: A voucher for the private school of his choice. Resolution: To call Alan Greenspan every time he’s tempted to say, “Tax Cut.”
For Al Gore: Vouchers for his last year of law school and the public speaking school of his choice. Resolution: To talk as fast as he thinks and parlay his wonkness into a job with the EPA or even the NRDC.
For the EPA: Support for its new regulations requiring refineries to produce cleaner-burning diesel fuel. Resolution: To hold farmers responsible for their pesticide pollution of the state’s waterways.
For environmental activists: Consensus on dams. Resolution: To be just a teensy bit more pragmatic about whether it’s better to use clean hydroelectric power, send Trinity River water to farmers in the Central Valley, or demo the dams and let the salmon run free.
For the USDA: A lifetime supply of organic veggies for listening to consumers before issuing its final regulations on Certified Organic Foods. Resolution: To find a politically acceptable way to force Zacky, Foster and other poultry producers to quit lacing chicken feed with antibiotics.
For the FDA: Copies of “The Coming Plague” and The Los Angeles Times’ Dec. 20 seven-page article chronicling agency decisions made in haste, under pressure from drug manufacturers, that cost lives. Resolution: To read every word of both.
For the National Institutes of Health: A thank you card from Dr. Andrew Weil for finally acknowledging and investigating alternative, or complimentary, medicine. Resolution: To place a sign in every office that reads, “We are the guardians of public health, not the AMA.”
For Madonna: The Scottish wedding of her dreams, with Gwyneth Paltrow, Sting, and whoever’s going to hold Rocco, in attendance, and a long and happy life with Guy Ritchie. Resolution: To give her public relations persons a clue next time her plans are leaked, so she or he won’t have to look a complete fool.
Ho, Ho, Ho and Happy New Year.