What the headline could be

The Sacramento Bee headline reads: "Fracking moratorium dies in state Senate."  It could alternatively read, "Legislature concurs with governor: Divesting the UC portfolio from coal is fine but don't touch oil."  Of course, there is no coal in California - and the article doesn't mention it.  So there is no local coal industry or group of workers to protest coal divestment by the Regents at UC.  On the other hand, California is a major oil producer so there would be protests and push-back for a state fracking ban.  Even with the much-diminished estimates of economically-feasible fracking production in the state, the oil industry remains significant here.  Oil could be a source of extraction tax revenue - not in the current election year - but in the future when the temporary Prop 30 taxes expire and when the next economic downturn occurs.  Anyway, being against coal is a costless way for California politicos to defend themselves from complaints by environmentalists concerning fracking.  Et tu, governor?

[The article in the Bee is at http://m.sacbee.com/sacramento/db_98822/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=QltJjPUy.]

Hypocrisy is not new to Sacramento.  The Regents can't entirely keep politics away from UC.  After all, some Regents, the ex-officio politicos on the Board, are politicians.  But it will be interesting to see what the Regents do with the coal vs. all-fossil-fuel issue.

In the meantime, we can all get another day older and deeper in debt: