Opinion: Here We Go Again, Again

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Paging Laura Chick.

I know, she’s already got her hands full as the inspector general for the $50 billion or so in federal stimulus money coming to California.

But as she quoted someone to me in my Q and A column earlier, ‘’If you’re not indignant, you’re not paying attention.’’

So pay attention, and see what you think:

My Sacramento colleague Evan Halper writes that every time any of us buys a gallon of gas, we pay nearly a penny and a half into an environmental fund intended to help small companies clean up their messy energy footprint. The mess is from service stations’ underground storage tanks leaking fuel into the groundwater,

Rather than let these small businesses go broke cleaning it up, the state set up a fund 20 years ago to help the little gas-station guys and gals clean up after themselves.

So how has that been working? Well, of the nearly $2.5 billion collected over two decades, nearly a half-billion has gone to homey little businesses such as ... Exxon. And Shell. And 7-Eleven, which has more gas pumps than, to use my great-grandfather’s phrase, Carter has liver pills. It seems from Evan Halper’s story that the big guys have shoved into line with their big mitts outstretched, and they’ve gotten the big checks.

That made me think of something I heard last year, when I was writing about DNA and the one-drop rule during Barack Obama’s run for the White House. A DNA specialist told me offhandedly about a multi-millionaire businessman, a successful Caucasian guy who decided for fun to have his DNA tested. He found something he hadn’t known -- that he had a fraction of native American blood. Not much, but it was the minimum amount required to claim native American status and glom onto a chunk of money set aside to encourage struggling young native American-owned businesses, not thriving businesses run by white guys who had gone most of their lives without a clue as to their small piece of aboriginal American heritage. And glom onto it he did.

It sounds like something of the same is happening here. Money that the author of the law creating the fund says he meant especially for small businesses is being vacuumed up by big energy firms with the big lawyers and the big accountants and the big lobbying firms and the big campaign contributions to make the law and lawmakers serve them, and not the other way around. These are the same companies, Evan Halper writes, that fight gas taxes -- which are used primarily for the road projects that sustain demand for the companies’ gasoline. The small companies don’t have that kind of money; they’re supposed to be able instead to look to lawmakers to even the playing field, in this and in other matters affecting small businesses.

So, in the face of behavior like this, is it any wonder people have so little faith in some of the lawmakers who seem to pay only lip service to the ‘’little guy’’ who pays them?