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Crude Politics explores California as a petroleum landscape, one whose
contours were determined by the great struggles over access to oil
resources in the Los Angeles Basin and statewide battles over taxes and
highway construction. Paul Sabin argues that political fights in
Sacramento and Washington, DC, as much as the inherent cheapness of oil
or convenience of cars, controlled California's oil economy — and in
proving that point, Sabin provides a powerful corrective to the perennial
claim that market economics determine California's transportation and
energy mix.
Crude Politics also shows the extent to which policy debates that took place
before World War II set the rules for today's oil market — and so are
crucial to understanding the knotty contemporary problems, like
electricity blackouts and car taxes, that have dominated California
politics in the past few years and helped bring about the recall of
Governor Gray Davis and election of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
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