GOP REJECTS JERRY BROWN’S NEW CAR FEE, GAS TAX

California Gov. Jerry Brown wants over three billion dollars in new taxes, including a $65 tax on every vehicle, plus increases in gasoline and diesel excise taxes. The money will go to paying for transportation needs that he ignored in his recent budget.

Once again, Brown has decided that the 42 Republican legislators in the State Capitol are chumps.

This week, Brown’s office circulated his latest proposal to fund transportation infrastructure–after both the State Senate and State Assembly Republican Caucuses have been unequivocal that raising taxes on Californians is off of the table.

Gov. Brown Proposes $65 Fee On Drivers As Part Of $3.6 Billion Plan To Fix Highways

CBS San Francisco

Within hours of the release of the Governor’s wish-list for legal plunder, Assembly Republican Leader Kristin Olsen (R-Modesto) released a statement saying that “the Administration’s ideas call for more than doubling the vehicle registration fees and raising the price of fuel on all Californians–we disagree and think Californians have paid enough.”

State Senate Republican Leader Jean Fuller (R-Bakersfield) issued a joint release with Senator Jim Nielsen (R-Gerber), Vice Chairman of the Budget Committee, in which Nielsen spoke to the proposed taxes:

The Governor’s solution to fixing our roads and highways cannot be to raise taxes. We are already paying enough. What are they doing with the taxes Californians have been paying at the pumps? Most Californians drive over 10,000 miles each year; an increase of six cents per gallon for gas, eleven cents per gallon for diesel and paying an additional $65 in car taxes per vehicle is an enormous burden on California’s working families least able to pay them.

Apparently Governor Brown thinks that Republicans are “posturing,” and not serious about drawing a line in the sand against higher taxes.

The Governor wants Republican legislators to forget that it was just two-and-a-half months ago that he signed the largest budget in state history, coming in at nearly $160 billion dollars. This partisan budget was negotiated between Brown and Democrat leaders, without any meaningful input taken from Republicans. Since a budget requires only a simple majority vote, no Republican votes were needed.

Despite billions of dollars in unanticipated tax revenues, and rosy forecasts for the year, the new budget “shorted” needed transportation funding. This was done with premeditation on the Governor’s part, given that as soon as he signed the budget, he then called for a special session of the legislature to raise taxes to fill the politically manufactured transportation funding deficit.

Clearly, again, Brown’s thinking is that Republican legislators are just lacking in intelligence, at even a basic level.

Republicans spent the 2013-2014 legislative term in the super-minority in the Capitol. They had very, very little power. What little leverage they did have was only due to serial corruption by Democrats in the State Senate, with three of them not voting for much of the term (one of the three was convicted on multiple felonies, the other two await trial, but have since termed out).

The 2014 campaign by Republicans to climb out of the super-minority, and regain relevance in the State Capitol, was largely centered around an explicit theme that if the GOP could pick up seats, they could stop tax increases from being passed in the legislature. Perhaps if they were taking a shot at being the majority party in the Capitol, there would have been a more robust and broad campaign theme. But climbing back to over a third in each caucus was about being able to mount an effective defense: no new taxes.

Right now is when Republican legislators are showing their worth, and demonstrating their resolve. This is the moment when they are showing countless volunteers, donors and supporters that elections do matter, and that united together Republicans can protect California taxpayers.

Ironically, the Governor’s ongoing insistence that taxes be hiked by billions of dollars gives Republican legislators a chance to demonstrate that they have the courage of their convictions.

The sad reality is that this kind of high-stakes kabuki with Republicans has a tremendous downside for the State of California, which is that despite the fact that taxpayers are sending record funds to state government, Democrats simply won’t spend any of that money on the basic brick-and-mortar building of roads.

If the Governor was truly interested in making California a better place, instead of abusing Republicans, he should actually listen to them. While some solid Republican ideas were incorporated into the Governor’s latest proposals, largely rejected were a lot of great and creative proposals put forward by the GOP caucuses to fund transportation infrastructure using existing tax revenues.

Maybe, just maybe, if Capitol Democrats will absorb the fact that car taxes, gas taxes, income taxes, property taxes, tobacco taxes, and oil severance taxes (to name a few of those proposed) are not going to happen, the last week of the legislative session could be used productively to prioritize some existing revenue for roads, highways and bridges.

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Jon Fleischman is the Politics Editor of Breitbart California. A longtime participant, observer and chronicler of California politics, Jon is also the publisher atwww.flashreport.org. His column appears weekly on this page. You can reach Jon at jon@flashreport.org.

Via: Breitbart

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GOP Presidential Nominees Fire Back at Brown on Climate Change Challenge

After submitting a letter-length question to Republican candidates ahead of their first round of primary-season debates, Gov. Jerry Brown has received some responses.

Heated rhetoric

Pressing ahead with the environmental emphasis characterizing his final term in office, Brown asked the presidential hopefuls to outline their own policies. “Longer fire seasons, extreme weather and severe droughts aren’t on the horizon, they’re […] here to stay,” he wrote, as the Sacramento Bee reported. “Given the challenge and the stakes, my question for you is simple: What are you going to do about it? What is your plan to deal with the threat of climate change?”

Brown’s office told the Bee he submitted his question via the Facebook page of Fox News, which solicited questions from viewers of the debates, which it hosted and televised.

This month, as the San Gabriel Valley Tribute noted, Brown hit out against the field again, using a fresh report on July temperatures to lambaste “Republicans, foot-dragging corporations and other deniers.” Surveying the damage to the fire-stricken Clear Lake area, Brown “repeated his challenge to Republican presidential candidates,” the Los Angeles Times reported, warning that “California is burning” and asking, bluntly, “What the hell are you going to do about it?”

Republican responses

So far, at least three Republican candidates have touched on environmental issues in the wake of Brown’s challenges.

Not all their remarks have been directly responsive, however. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker recently took the opportunity to critique “radical environmental policies that stop things like dams from going in so that water … can be used effectively,”according to the Bee.

But Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and former HP CEO Carly Fiorina, who had challenged Sen. Barbara Boxer’s re-election, both addressed Brown head on, the Bee added. While Cruz dismissed “alarmists” as power-hungry schemers, Fiorina took a more nuanced approach; although she first conceded it “may well be true” that California’s drought was worsened by climate change, she also criticized policymakers for failing to prepare for the kind of droughts the state has had “for millennia.”

Shifting opinions

Republicans on the campaign trail have broadly reflected opinions among constituents nationwide. Even in California, Republicans have demonstrated consistent skepticism toward claims that human activity has fostered dangerous alterations in temperatures and weather. In a new poll conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California, a majority of Golden State Republicans said “they don’t believe that climate change is happening and that they don’t think it will be a serious problem in the future,” as the San Jose Mercury Newsreported. “They also support expanding fossil fuel production — from increasing offshore oil drilling along California’s coast to expanding fracking.”

Yet the poll evinced some wiggle room on environmental policy issues. Fully 43 percent of California Republican respondents supported stricter in-state climate rules than what the federal government has passed into law. “Californians of all parties said they support increasing tax credits for electric vehicles and solar power,” the Mercury News added.

In a recent nonpartisan poll commissioned by a water policy foundation, Californians seemed to confirm that the drought had become a leading issue of worry across the ideological spectrum. According to the Los Angeles Times, “62 percent of poll subjects said they would be very willing or somewhat willing to pay $4 more a month for water if the funds were used to improve water supply reliability. Such an increase, if applied to the entire state, would generate about a billion dollars, according to poll sponsors.”

Environmentalists divided

Brown’s environmentalist policies haven’t satisfied all critics. His administration’s emphasis on reducing emissions, for instance, has led some to wonder why he hasn’t pushed harder for cheaper electricity rates, which would benefit owners of many zero-emissions vehicles. One objection, recently voiced in the San Diego Daily Transcript, warned that Brown’s policies “will systematically shift profits into a few private hands instead of building, managing and maintaining a solid and reliable electric-charging infrastructure comparable to our utility grid.”

Originally published by CalWatchdog.com

Via: California Political Review

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CALIFORNIA TO SEIZE FARMS FOR JERRY BROWN’S WATER TUNNELS

The State of California is planning to use eminent domain law to acquire hundreds of farms in the Delta for a controversial, multi-billion-dollar underground water tunnel project proposed by Gov. Jerry Brown.

According to documents obtained by environmental group Restore the Delta, state water exporters and the Delta Design Construction Enterprise (DCE) division of the Department of Water Resources are planning to acquire 300 pieces of land from Delta farms to ensure right of way for the Bay Delta Conservation Plan tunnel project.

The $15 billion project, under development for the last eight years, has long been favored by Brown, who wants to use the twin underground tunnels to move water from the northern part of the state to the south by diverting it around the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

But the project has faced stiff opposition from environmental groups like Restore the Delta and others who say the tunnels are not environmentally sustainable.

In a statement, Restore the Delta executive director Barbara Barrigan-Parilla blasted the “arrogance” of state officials for using eminent domain to acquire farmers’ land.

“While Delta and good-government activists are busy mobilizing comments in a democratic process, we discover state agencies view public oversight as simply a distraction,” Barrigan-Parilla said. “These documents arrogantly envision groundbreaking ceremonies as early as July 2016. Bulldozers and cement trucks are ready to roll! Red ribbons are budgeted! All for a $60 billion boondoggle without even one permit. Clearly, water officials under the Brown Administration view the Delta as a colony.”

Brown has tussled with environmental groups over the tunnels before. In May, the governor told critics of the proposal to “shut up, because you don’t know what they hell you’re talking about.” Brown said that “millions of hours” had gone into poring over every aspect of the tunnels, and has called the project an “imperative” that “must move forward.”

Yet despite the governor’s enthusiasm, the tunnel project has not yet been approved.

Water exporters and some agricultural interest groups support the tunnels. Californians for Water Security, a group made up of the California Chamber of Commerce and various farm and labor groups, has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on television and radio advertisements in support of the project.

But California’s plan to use eminent domain to acquire the land has created an increasingly rare moment of unity between environmental groups and Delta farmers.

“It is wrong and premature that the Department of Water Resources has a unit creating a secret land acquisition plan to take 150-year-old farms, like ours, through condemnation,” Courtland farmer Richard Elliott said in a statement, noting that his family has never sold any of its land. “The entire plan doesn’t make for sustainable food policies, smart land use practices, or even common sense.”

According to the documents, the state would make Delta farmers one offer to purchase their land, after which the farmers would have 30 days to accept or reject a deal. But after those 30 days, the state could still plan to force the owners to sell using eminent domain law.

The plan also calls outright for minimal “external” oversight.

“All transactions are conducted, reviewed and approved internally by DCE staff and managers to maintain control and avoid unnecessary delays to schedule,” the documents state. “DCE shall seek to minimize external review and approval requirements.”

Tony Francois, an attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation who specializes in water and property rights, tells Breitbart News that the use of eminent domain does not allow for a proper system of “checks and balances,” even for controversial state infrastructure projects.

“The fact that they don’t have the project approved has generally not been a bar to acquiring the property,” Francois said. “If the project is controversial, they don’t need any special approvals to acquire the property, and that starts making the project look more inevitable. [State contractors could say] ‘Hey, we’ve already spent the money acquiring the property, we better get started building it.”

Francois added that the use of eminent domain exempts the state from being subject to California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) environmental impact reviews, which havecaused stalling on some infrastructure projects for years, or even decades.

“If these reports are correct, then we have further confirmation that the tunnels project has been a foregone conclusion,” state Sen. Lois Wolk (D-Davis) told the Associated Presson Monday. Wolk said the environmental impact review, “which should be used to choose a project, is simply being used to justify a favored project.”

Francois says the state is on solid ground for claims of eminent domain to acquire the property, as long as it can prove the water tunnel project constitutes a “public good.” Less clear, he says, is the issue of “just compensation” for the land the farmers will be giving up.

“Are they only taking the property they need for the underground tunnels, or are they taking the surface estate as well?” Francois said. “It’s the cutting [the land] up that creates a significant problem that farmers think they are not getting properly compensated for.”

According to the AP, the tunnel project is officially in a public comment phase until October.

Via: Breitbart

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CALIFORNIA: Legislation Hiking Initiative Filing Fee Faces Resistance

Unexpected bipartisan opposition has formed against a piece of legislation designed to cut down on California’s sometimes outrageous ballot initiatives.

In addition to the left-leaning Consumer Watchdog organization, citizens’-rights groups like the California Taxpayers Association and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association have mustered their members against the bill. Carmen Balber, executive director of Consumer Watchdog, told the San Francisco Chronicle “that only six of the 26 states that allow citizen initiatives have filing fees and that the highest is $500, in Mississippi and Wyoming.”

Hoping to stave off a shift in fortunes, Assemblyman Evan Low, D-Campbell, has already tweaked Assembly Bill 1100 in an effort to calm the drama. Co-authored by Assemblyman Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica, the bill originally proposed a massive increase in the fee charged by the state to file an initiative. Currently just $200, Low and Bloom set out to hike the fee to $8,000 — a daunting number for some, but calculated to just about cover what it costs the state to pay the attorney general’s office for drafting each initiative’s title and summary.

Low was inspired to push for the reform by a contentious recent effort that would have created a so-called Sodomite Suppression Act. “Huntington Beach attorney Matt McLaughlin submitted a ballot measure in February that would have ‘any person who willingly touches another person of the same gender for purposes of sexual gratification be put to death by bullets to the head or by any other convenient method,’” as the Sacramento Bee recalled. “Determined to prevent the measure from moving forward, Attorney General Kamala Harris took the measure to court and was relieved of the official duty to write the title and 100-word summary necessary before signature-gathering.”

A checkered past

Proponents of Low’s reform insisted that the bill was about more than shutting down such lurid proposals. California’s ballot initiative system has seen its fair share of half-baked ideas over the years, drawing criticism from more conservative analysts concerned that the state’s view of direct democracy was too romantic and naive.

As the Chronicle noted, initiatives have now been filed that would ban alimony, create a secession commission, eliminate private power companies, fly the state flag above the national flag, “and call the state’s top elected official ‘president of California.’”

Another ongoing challenge, some critics noted, was guiding voters away from voting in favor of unaffordable but otherwise appealing measures.

In fact, Low’s efforts to curb crazy initiatives have not been the first — nor the first to do so by jacking up the price of admission. “Given the sheer number of proposals that have been submitted recently, the Legislature has actually already tried to make filing fees more expensive,” Civinomics noted. “Laws were submitted in 2009, 2010, and 2011 to raise the fee, but two of them were vetoed by then-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the other was dropped by the bill’s author.”

GOP opposition

For now, Republicans have recently tended more toward supporting a permissive initiative process, concerned that California lacks many other effective hedges against the state’s near-one-party rule and its more liberal judges, who largely dominate the courts. So when AB1100 came to a vote in the Assembly, votes for and against split almost exactly along party lines. Assemblywoman Shannon Grove, R-Bakersfield, put forth a popular argument on the right, warning “the higher fee would make it difficult for individuals and nonprofit groups to file for an initiative,” as the Los Angeles Times reported. “She said that if the increase in the cost of living since the fee was implemented was figured in, it would now be $2,700.”

Then, as the bill made its way to the Senate, reality set in. In committee, “the filing fee was trimmed from $8,000 to $2,500 and then to $2,000,” the Chronicle recounted. “The plan to hike the charge in lockstep with increases in the Consumer Price Index also disappeared.” Nevertheless, the changes weren’t enough to satisfy critics, who will likely have to count on Gov. Jerry Brown to stop the bill from becoming law.

Via: California Political Review

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CALIFORNIA SUPREME COURT COULD STOP BULLET TRAIN

The California Supreme Court threw a giant obstacle on the California bullet train’s track, ruling that the state agencies cannot escape the state’s environmental laws by claiming federal laws supersede them.

The case from which the argument against the California High Speed Rail Authority derives, City of San Diego vs. Board of Trustees of the California State University, revolved around the board wanting to expand the campus of San Diego State University (SDSU) to accommodate more than 10,000 additional students in the next few years. The board argued that CSU “may not lawfully pay to mitigate the off-campus environmental effects of its projects unless the Legislature makes an appropriation for that specific purpose.”

As explained by The National Law Review:

The California Environmental Quality Act (“CEQA”) mandates that, before approving a project, a public agency must first identify the project’s significant adverse environmental impacts, and then mitigate those impacts by adopting feasible, enforceable mitigation measures or selecting feasible alternatives that avoid the impacts. If mitigation is infeasible, the agency may approve the project despite adverse impacts only by finding that unmitigated effects are outweighed by the project’s benefits.

The board attempted to use City of Marina v. Board of Trustees (2009) to buttress its argument, as the court had ruled, “[A] state agency’s power to mitigate its project’s effects through voluntary mitigation payments is ultimately subject to legislative control; if the Legislature does not appropriate the money, the power does not exist.” The board argued that the court’s statement prohibited it from funding off-site mitigation without express appropriation by the Legislature.

But the court called the Marina language overstated, and ruled against CSU, stating, “In mitigating the effects of its projects, a public agency has access to all of its discretionary powers and not just the power to spend appropriations.” The court added:

CEQA does not authorize an agency to proceed with a project that will have significant unmitigated effects on the environment, based simply on a weighing of those effects against the project’s benefits, unless the measures to mitigate those effects are truly infeasible. Such a rule, even were it not wholly inconsistent with the relevant statute would tend to displace the fundamental obligation of ̳[e]ach public agency [to] mitigate or avoid the significant effects on the environment of projects that it carries out or approves whenever it is feasible to do so.

Via: Breitbart

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[OPINION] California’s Pillage People Lead The Nation In Tax Collector Harassment

California is making a strong case that its pillage people – tax collectors, that is – are the worst in the nation. Should that be doubted, consider the Golden State’s enduring campaign against inventor Gilbert Hyatt, who in 1990 was awarded the patent for the first single-chip microprocessor.

The computer industry welcomed this invention, earning Hyatt a lot of money. He soon moved to Nevada, which has no state income tax. California’s Franchise Tax Board (FTB) claimed Hyatt lied about his residency, and that he owed $7.4 million in taxes for a six-month period from 1991 to 1992. Over more than 20 years, that sum has ballooned to between $55 million and $60 million.

In Nevada, California’s FTB goons ransacked Hyatt’s trash without warrant, told his business partners and doctors he was under investigation, and shared Hyatt’s personal information with the media. Hyatt sued the agency for harassment and violation of privacy. California tried to get the suit dismissed, but in 2003 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Hyatt had a right to go to trial. So he did.

In 2008, a Las Vegas jury awarded him $388 million, including $250 million in punitive damages. California’s tax hacks duly appealed to the Nevada Supreme Court, calling the award “flagrantly excessive” and claiming they did nothing wrong.

In 2014, Nevada’s Supreme Court tossed much of the award, but Hyatt retained the $1.2 million for fraud. He had been awarded $85 million for emotional distress, but the court has ordered a new trial on the amount Hyatt deserves.

Despite the reduction in damages, the verdict was a clear beat-down of California’s Franchise Tax Board. The agency’s response was to continue its legal pursuit of Hyatt, with encouragement from U.S. District Judge Garland Burrell Jr., a George H. W. Bush nominee who questions Hyatt’s motives and would place the burden of proof on the inventor.

Hyatt claims the FTB is contending that he was both a resident of California who owed them taxes, and a nonresident who owed them taxes. Now 76, Hyatt believes California officials are waiting for him to die, believing it would be easier to deal with his heirs.

Former California state senator and assemblyman Bill Leonard has said the FTB action against Hyatt “does amount to a persecution at this point.” Constitutional expert Erwin Chemerinsky of the UC Irvine law school, who is representing Hyatt free of charge, told reporters that “It’s a real injustice” what has happened to the inventor, who has been “denied due process.”

As far as can be discerned, California’s loss in Nevada courts did not prompt the Franchise Tax Board to fire or discipline any managers or employees. Nor has a state senator held public hearings on the Hyatt matter, as happened for the new span of the Bay Bridge after news reports raised concerns about safety problems. Nor has Governor Jerry Brown, an evangelist for the state’s high taxes, made an issue of the tax agency’s zealous persecution of Hyatt.

Taxpayers might conclude that FTB bosses believe they are above the law and unaccountable. The tax collectors have not exactly been transparent about how much money they are spending to pursue Hyatt.

“At some point, you have to wonder whether the costs are justified based on the amounts that taxpayers have laid out,” David Kline of the California Taxpayers Association told reporters. “The FTB has hired outside lawyers in addition to using their own staff resources. It’s a significant cost and it continues to grow.”

Meanwhile, as the Sacramento Bee reported, the attorneys general of 19 other states filed a brief siding with California, claiming the Nevada verdict had a “chilling effect” on tax investigators. Clearly, all states have their pillage people, but those states will be hard pressed to match California for sheer government greed.

Bill Leonard explains that in California, tax collectors “just pick on anyone successful.” Inventors of useful products such as the single-chip microprocessor will find better conditions in other states.

Lloyd Billingsley is a policy fellow with the Independent Institute in Oakland, California, and author of Hollywood Party: Stalinist Adventures in the American Movie Industry.

Via: Daily Caller

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CA Dems push ambitious energy bill

A bold and controversial new bill, introduced by Senate President Pro Tempore and leading Democrat Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, advanced through the Assembly on the strength of Gov. Jerry Brown’s vociferous rhetoric on climate change.

As CBS Los Angeles reported, Brown tied his support for the legislation to his broader climate agenda, which has seen him praise Pope Francis’ recent encyclical on environmental matters and earn a trip to Vatican City to push for global change.

“‘We’ve got a serious problem here,’ he told KCAL9 Political Reporter Dave Bryan via satellite. ‘Burning oil and gas and coal and diesel is a big part of the problem. We’ve got to find new bio-fuels. We have to be more efficient. We’ve got a lot to do. And by the way, if we do nothing, the cost is unimaginable.’”

Brown has done his best to use his final term in office to amplify that message whenever possible. His trip to the Vatican, Sci-Tech Today noted, will be just “the latest of several international trips the governor has taken to urge others to do more to curb global warming. He’s also been rallying states and provinces to sign an agreement to match California’s target for reducing emissions by 2050.”

Stricter standards

While Brown has pushed the message, Democrat allies in Sacramento have crafted the content of regulations to match. De Leon’s bill, SB350, “imposes three significant clean-energy goals by 2030,” U-T San Diego’s Steven Greenhut observed: “Reducing the use of petroleum products in automobiles by 50 percent; increasing to 50 percent (from a current 33-percent goal) the amount of energy that uses renewable sources such as solar and wind power; and doubling energy-efficiency in current buildings.”

In fact, the legislation was crafted around achieving the outsized goals Brown set for ratcheting down California’s statewide emissions levels. As an interim step, the governor has proposed that the state “cut emissions to 40% below 1990 levels by 2030. It’s an ambitious target that members of his administration insist is achievable,” according to Sci-Tech Today.

De Leon himself has not shied away from using aggressive language to characterize the bill’s sweep and ostensible urgency, as Greenhut noted. “We need to break the stranglehold the profit-driven oil companies have on our economy and give consumers better options to power their homes and cars in cleaner, healthier and more sustainable ways,” de Leon said in remarks posted to his website.

Brown, for his part, has openly acknowledged the level of industry outrage the bill guarantees. “Well, of course, the people who are gonna sell 50 percent less petroleum are not only gonna have questions, they’re gonna have a fierce, unrelenting opposition,” he told KCAL-9.

But the coming regulatory shakeup has made for some strange industry bedfellows. “One of the issues both utilities and solar installers have raised,” according to GreenTech Solar, “is that distributed solar should not be treated any differently than utility-scale solar as the state crafts the rules around meeting the new 50 percent target.

Via: California Politcal Review

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Jerry Brown Takes On Climate Change-Denying 'Troglodytes'

California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) on Tuesday urged a group of 60 mayors to take action in their cities on climate change, warning that global warming is "the biggest threat of our time" and denouncing skeptics as "troglodytes."

At a climate change conference hosted by Pope Francis at the Vatican and attended by U.S. mayors and global leaders, Brown offered a dire assessment of climate change's potential effects in the near future.  

"We don’t even know how far we've gone, or if we've gone over the edge,” Brown said. "This is not some linear set of problems that we can predict. We have to take measures against an uncertain future which may well be something no one ever wants. We are talking about extinction. We are talking about climate regimes that have not been seen for tens of millions of years. We're not there yet, but we're on our way."

Brown criticized politicians and business leaders who are skeptical of global warming and its effects as "troglodytes" who have a vested interest in "bamboozling" the public about man-made climate change.

"We have fierce opposition and blind inertia. And that opposition is well-financed, hundreds of millions of dollars going into propaganda, into falsifying the scientific record, bamboozling people of every country," Brown said. "We have to fight that propaganda and overcome the inertia and the tremendous opposition." 

Noting that he's "not counting" on the GOP-controlled Congress to address climate change, the governor pressed the mayors to cut carbon emissions in their communities. 

"We have to respond and if we don't, the world will suffer," he said. "We will all suffer. In fact, many people, millions, are suffering already."

Brown, now in his fourth term as California governor, has made climate change one of his signature issues in office. Earlier this year, he issued an executive order accelerating California's targets for slashing greenhouse gas emissions. In May, he signed a pact with 11 other states pledging to sharply reduce emissions by 2050. And later this year, the governor will travel to Paris to attend the United Nations climate conference, where 196 countries will meet to sign a new climate change agreement.

The Vatican conference, attended by municipal leaders like New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, comes one month after the release of the pope's encyclicalon climate change that called for a "bold cultural revolution" to fight global warming.

"Climate change is a global problem with grave implications: environmental, social, economic, political and for the distribution of goods," Pope Francis wrote. "It represents one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day."

Via: Huffington Post

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Even Gov. Brown Opposes CA Minimum Wage Hike

Opening another fissure with members of his own party, Gov. Jerry Brown has come down on the opposite side of a proposed statewide increase in the minimum wage.

Changing course

In an indication of the mood in the governor’s office, Brown’s number-crunchers came down hard on the proposed hike. Kristin Shelton, the state’s budget program manager, said the Department of Finance opposed the bill “because it results in significant, unbudgeted costs to the General Fund,” according to Bloomberg Politics.

“She said the proposed minimum wage would have a negative impact on California’s economy, though losses from higher production costs to businesses would be partially offset from additional spending by minimum wage workers.”

As Bloomberg noted, the finance department has calculated that an additional increase of $1 in wages above what Brown signed into law two years ago “would cost the state almost $400 million this fiscal year in higher wages paid to in-home health care workers, seasonal park employees and other state staff making minimum wage.”

SB3, introduced by state Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, “would raise California’s minimum wage to $11 in 2016 and $13 in 2017, then tie the minimum wage to inflation starting in 2019,” according to the Washington Times. “He says his bill is needed to keep up with the cost of living and help low-wage workers make ends meet. It already passed the Senate.”

Yet Brown has refused to praise the idea. “At a recent luncheon attended by representatives of private industry, Brown touted the 2013 state law that will automatically raises minimum wage to $10 in 2016 as a sign of economic progress;” but, as the Sacramento Business Journal reported, Brown “did not mention the pending legislation to raise it further.”

Via: California Political Review

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CA Holds Services Hostage to Push Tax Increases

All agree that the roads desperately need revenue yet new funds from the increased budget were not directed to the roads. It’s been that way for some time – transportation infrastructure pretty much ignored by general funds instead relying on shrinking targeted funds. Shorting revenue for a vital service can set up a play for more taxes for that service. It’s happened before in California.

Two years ago, Bloomberg Business ran a lengthy, celebratory piece on Jerry Brown and his governorship. In essence, the writer argued that Brown found a solution to California’s funding problem by cutting programs until it hurt so that voters felt they had to raise taxes.

One gets the sense a similar approach is building support for transportation funds through fees and/or taxes.

Here’s what the article argued:

To get tax-hating Californians to vote to raise their own taxes, Brown became Governor Gloom. If the tax-cutters’ theory was to cut taxes so much we’d have to shrink government, he was going to shrink government so much that people would raise taxes. In addition to schools and community colleges, he would cut medical programs, aid to the disabled, and child health care. “Our breakthrough came because of the breakdown,” he says. “There were more layoffs, more pink slips, more agitation. Cutting was very conducive to the success of Prop 30.” In short: Jerry Brown scared the crap out of people.

Concluding the piece, the author wrote:

So that’s his theory: cut, cut, cut until the people can’t take it anymore. Then inspire them with stories of what government can do.

Let’s be clear that ignoring transportation funding needs goes back much farther than Brown’s current governorship. The deficit for transportation infrastructure is so great that it is not a case of cutting that caused the crisis. Over the course of many years, transportation funding was not adequately met even in good budget years. In essence, this situation amounts to a similar situation as described in the Bloomberg piece, although it certainly extends prior to Brown regaining the governor’s office. This crisis falls on past governors and legislators, too. The government did not fund the transportation system while often putting monies into new programs.

Not adequately funding the roads has led many to call for new taxes despite record budgets. Deprive, deprive, deprive transportation infrastructure instead of cut, cut, cut until the people can’t take it anymore.

The idea of moving current revenues to roads has been argued for a long time. In fact, 27 years ago Paul Gann and I were co-proponents of Proposition 72, which, among other things, directed state sales taxes on fuels to roads and highways. It was defeated.

The need for more transportation money is even greater now than it was when we tried to direct money for that purpose in 1988. Current proposals in the special session also would require certain funds to be dedicated exclusively for transportation purposes. But, a fair question to ask: Will an echo of Prop. 30 strategy as described in the Bloomberg article end in a like result of a tax increase?

(Originally posted on Fox and Hounds Daily.)

Via: California Political Review

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