Ho ho (no), ha ha (yeah)

Ok, Christmas has come and gone, so ho ho ho ain’t apropos. No worries, mate. Just focus your ocular organs on any news emanating from the world’s Whine Cellar: California. And say: Ha ha ha.

Note that the state’s simpering socialistic suburban soccer moms, and their gelded little dweeb hubbies, are finding the energy bills coming due. Meaning: for years they blocked everyone’s attempts to build power plants in the golden state (“not in my backyard”) and, oh, quelle surprise, there’s now an energy shortage.

The government regulates electricity rates, and they’ve been held artificially low…the government regulates power plant construction, too, and it’s been at flat zero…and the inevitable has become, well, inevitable.

Still, most California households, if not all, pay far less than we do per unit of electricity. Too, Saipan is a far more power intensive place than most of populated California, given that our sky high temperatures make year around aircon as necessary as raw oxygen and nubile Tahitian maids.

And, while we’re none too happy about electric costs here, most of us are just plain tickled to death that we have electricity to begin with. Ah, but Californians lack such sense. They’re whining, moaning, protesting, crying, sniveling, and, well, behaving like cry-baby Californians about the whole situation.

While the media are doing their best to use their empty heads as amplified echo chambers for the whining, they might be missing something. And that something is that a lot of the country, and even the world, is laughing like heck at this snafu. California wants sympathy. It’s getting the collective finger instead.

When the power goes down here, we take it in stride. In California, by contrast, a power outage can spark riots. For them electricity is more than a utility, it’s a security blanket. A five-minute power outage will make the front pages over there. No kidding. Shopkeepers in ghettos race to get their security shutters locked in place. The cops race around looking worried. Citizens hide in their homes, afraid of the boogy men, and go bonkers with angst from a lack of television. Never mind industry grinding to a halt; there, society does. It makes you realize how fragile and precarious their social situation really is.

I can’t for the life of me imagine the collective freak-out they’d throw if they had to face a Marianas style typhoon. I don’t think the little darlings would survive. Forget putting fluorine in the drinking water, they’d have to spike the tap with red wine just to keep everybody mellow.

Meanwhile, California’s Silicon Valley is really sweating the load, as high tech firms are up against financially crippling power blackouts. If I was the development poobah for some other region, you can bet I’d already be on the ground in the Valley, pointing out the virtue of reliable power and (generally) lower taxes to be had in most other states.

Oh well, that’s their problem, not ours. But it sure is nice to have a chuckle about it.

Ed Stephens, Jr. is an economist and columnist for the Saipan Tribune.