10-20-08 by dugan
Here’s something for Californians to consider when judging the
promises made by T. Boone Pickens abouit his personal ballot
initiative, Proposition 10. The $5 billion bond initiative would take
taxpayer money and pay it out as 5-digit cash credits to purchasers of
natural gas vehicles. Pickens says he’s sponsoring Prop 10 to clean
the air, not to profit himself (Even though his company, Clean Energy
Fuels, is the largest seller of natural gas vehicle fuel). Yet on
another issue supposedly dear to Pickens’ heart, eliminating consumers’
right to file lawsuits, his conviction evaporated when his own pocketbook was touched.
Lobby
Watch reports that Pickens, an implacable foe of things like class
action lawsuits, just filed a $60 million lawsuit against the defunct
Lehman Bros. financial firm about some of his lost investements. That’s
the same Pickens whose million-dollar donation to an anti-lawsuit group
helped assure that Texans would have limited access to courts. At least
he was able to file against Lehman Bros. in the lawyer-friendlier
confines of New York State.
So when T. Boone tells how strongly
he believes that Prop. 10 would help California, remember what the told
the world about the evils of lawsuits–before he threw that conviction
overboard to file a lawsuit.