cpt-emnn595-5551212

Dr. Shelley Luce, chief scientist and spokesperson, California Clean Energy Initiative

an initiative to levy a "severance" tax on oil pumped in California and use the money to encourage the use of alternative fuels

Supporters of reducing Californians' reliance on gasoline refined from diminishing supplies of polluting and ever-more-expensive oil have put the "Clean Energy Initiative" on the November 7, 2006, election ballot and are now organizing a campaign to persuade Californians to vote for it.

You can learn more about this ballot measure and find reasons to support it by clicking on this link to the Yeson87.com—The Clean Energy Initiative web site.

Naturally, the oil companies who'd be required under the terms of Proposition 87 to pay this "depletion" tax are not eager to see this ballot measure pass.

You can learn more about their point of view on this initiative and find reasons not to support it by clicking on this link to the No on 87—The $4 Billion Oil Tax web site.

As part of its continuing effort to provide California voters with detailed and thorough presentations of the cases for, and against, important ballot initiatives, in ways that are instantly accessible to voters and level the playing field for both sides by not requiring them to raise and spend vast amounts of money from interested parties in order to fund the production and distribution of cleverly-crafted and endlessly-repeated simplifications of their arguments for or against a ballot measure in the form of 30-second television spots that make up the vast majority of most voters' exposure to these hotly-contested issues on television stations federally-licensed under the Communications Act of 1934's requirement that they serve the “public interest, convenience and necessity” but, which, because they make no money by airing in-depth coverage of these issues but a lot of money by selling ad time to proponents and opponents of ballot measures so they can present their messages to a substantive information-starved public/audience of citizen-viewers, California Politics Today spoke this morning with Dr. Shelley Luce, chief scientist and spokesperson for "Yeson87.com—The Clean Energy Initiative," giving her an opportunity to directly make the case for her side of the debate over whether Californians would be better served by passing or defeating Proposition 87.

Now that you've successfully made it through the thicket of that last sentence/paragraph, you are free to listen to that 19-minute interview with Dr. Luce by clicking on the button next to its listing in the Brightcove Player embedded below in this web page.

California Politics Today stands prepared to provide the opponents of Proposition 87 over at "No on 87—The $4 Billion Oil Tax" exactly the same opportunity to present their case against this measure in an interview as identical in format to the one given by Dr. Luce as it will no doubt be diametrically-opposed in substance at their earliest possible convenience.