HOME / chatterbox: Gossip, speculation, and scuttlebutt about politics.

Whopper of the Week: Gray Davis

Timothy NoahPosted Friday, April 13, 2001, at 6:32 PM ET

"I am going to will my way to a solution that is financially viable and within the existing rate structure....'Leadership' means raise rates.... 'Bold' means raise rates. 'Decisive' means raise rates. Everything means raise rates. That makes everyone on Wall Street happy. It does nothing to solve our problem."

--California Gov. Gray Davis, as quoted by Dan Morain and Mark Z. Barabak in the Jan. 21 Los Angeles Times.

"[S]ome rate increases are needed to keep our lights on and our economy strong. ... Under my proposal, more than half of you won't pay a penny more. For the rest, the average increase will be 26 and a half percent. For many of that group, rates will rise only about 10 percent. The heaviest users will see their rates rise 34 and a half percent on average. That includes business paying their share. This is in addition to the 9 percent surcharge we've all been paying since last winter."

--Davis' televised statewide addresson April 5. Click here to see the video.

(Thanks to Tom Roberts.)

Got a whopper? Send it to . To be considered, an entry must be an unambiguously false statement paired with an unambiguous refutation, and both must be derived from some appropriately reliable public source. Preference will be given to newspapers and other documents that Chatterbox can link to online.

Whopper Archive:

April 6, 2001: Sumner Redstone

March 30, 2001: Spencer Abraham
March 23, 2001: George W. Bush, Rep. Jennifer Dunn, and/or the Treasury Department
March 16, 2001: George W. Bush
March 9, 2001: Russ Freyman, spokesman, National Association of Manufacturers
March 2, 2001: Paul O'Neill
Feb. 23, 2001: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton
Feb. 16, 2001: Oscar spokesman John Pavlik
Feb. 9, 2001: Lynne Cheney
Feb. 2, 2001: Bobby Thomson

E-mail Timothy Noah at .

Print This ArticlePRINTEmail to a FriendE-MAILShare This ArticleRECOMMEND...Get Slate RSS FeedsRSS
Timothy Noah is a senior writer at Slate.
What did you think of this article?
Join The Fray: Our Reader Discussion Forum
POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES
TODAY'S PICTURES
TODAY'S CARTOONS
DOONESBURY FLASHBACK
TODAY'S VIDEO
Christo and Jeanne-Claude's "The Gates."92/091120_TP.jpg
Cartoonists' take on health.15/091120_TC.jpg
The cutting edge.1/122939/2183724/DoonesburyPlaceholder.jpg