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Issue 9.34: Cunning Lingle
What Governor Linda Lingle said in her Jan. 23, 2006 State of the State Address about oil:
February 16, 2006
"Weaning ourselves from oil won't be cost-free, but we must do so if we want our economy to survive the next time the price of a barrel of oil increases by 50 percent."
What she didn't say:
The best way to prove to state voters that she's serious—as dead serious as a Republican like her can be—is for her to wean herself from oil. On Dec. 27, 2005, barely a month before her State of the State Address, her reelection campaign accepted a check for $1,000 from oil refiner Tesoro Hawai'i's Noncandidate Committee. As we now know—thanks to the Feb. 8, 2006 Honolulu Advertiser—Tesoro Hawai'i's staggering profits from the fourth quarter of 2005 made a mockery of the state's gas cap, which didn't seem to cap anything. -Anthony Pignataro