Craig Cantoni on the Phoenix "gas crisis" and Arizona's primo Donk governor - Gaseous rhetoric from crisis:
There has been no shortage of gaseous rhetoric from Gov. Janet Napolitano, a lawyer by trade, about the gas shortage. Like most liberals and other economic illiterates, her immediate reaction was to blame private industry.But Craig, I'm sure the desert is the only known habitat of the fulminating sand flea. Digging a trench in the sand and putting the sand back might upset their delicate mating dance and harm the species. Future generations would lose the genetic diversity that might provide humanity a cure for tennis elbow!
According to Mark Ellery of Napolitano's Commerce Department, the owner of the broken pipeline, Kinder Morgan Partners, has been trying for two years to get the government to approve permits for a new gasoline pipeline from Tucson to Phoenix. Two years.
How times have changed. In 1862, Congress authorized the building of a transcontinental railroad. After being delayed by the Civil War, construction began in 1865 and was completed in 1869. In only four years, the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads laid 1,775 miles of track, much of it over horrendous terrain, thanks to government providing incentives instead of roadblocks.
Now it takes years just to get permission to build a pipeline across 118 miles of open, flat desert. Getting permission to build a refinery takes even longer, due to environmental extremists and NIMBYs.
