Following a peculiar introduction by California’s First Lady, Gov. Jerry Brown made his State of the State address even more peculiar when he cited dubious United Nations data on climate change. And then the governor announced he wanted 50 percent, instead of the already legislatively mandated one-third of the state’s electricity, under the 2011 Renewable Portfolio Standard, to be generated by renewable resources over the next 15 years. And he added that he wanted to cut petroleum usage by 50 percent.
Jerry Brown, Anne Gust Brown, from the Sacramento Bee, Jan. 5, 2014
Californians are faced with 930 new laws effective January 1, by this governor and Legislature.
Brown also said he would wanted to “double the energy efficiency of existing buildings, and make heating fuels cleaner.”
“I envision a wide range of initiatives: more distributed power, expanded rooftop solar, micro-grids, an energy imbalance market, battery storage, the full integration of information technology and electrical distribution and millions of electric and low-carbon vehicles,” said Brown after being sworn in for a fourth term as California’s Governor.
The Reality of California
Because Californians likely do not have the stomach for higher or more taxes following Brown’s Proposition 30 income and sales tax increase, state government and legislators have gotten sneaky when it comes to acquiring more of taxpayers’ money. Rather than blatantly increasing taxes, as Brown promised he would not do without another vote of the public, lawmakers and bureaucrats have found success through more regulatory schemes.
Totally ordinary Americans get steered and manipulated, and economically forced into directions they don’t want to go under regulations: The Federal Government Stimulus. Obamacare. Environmental Protection Agency regulations. And in California, there is the climate change agenda, and the cap and trade scheme.
There’s also California’s High Speed Rail scheme, the unpopular Delta Water Tunnels, and the blatant destruction of the state’s agriculture industry. “But this governor has done more than any of his predecessors to get the train project on target, and 2015 may prove to be the most pivotal year yet,” the McClatchy newspapers boast, as the governor holds the groundbreaking for High Speed Rail in Fresno, Tuesday Jan. 6.
Despite Gov. Brown’s claims, California does not have an improved fiscal situation. California is still in debt. The accounting tricks the state government uses are illegal for private citizens.
What Govt. Corruption Looks Like
Corruption and economic turmoil go hand-in-hand. Gov. Jerry Brown is set to break ground Tuesday on the High Speed Rail in Fresno. Funding is elusive. Cap and trade auctions, ostensibly created for limiting carbon emissions, have only raised $1 billion, but are being slated to fund rail project.
“Today Governor Brown tried to paint a rosy picture of our economy by touting a 7.1 percent unemployment rate in California and our many “far-reaching” environmental laws,” said Assemblyman Jim Patterson, R-Fresno, following the governor’s State-of-the-State address. “What he didn’t say is that we have one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation and are about to break ground on a rail project that we expect to break the bank.” Patterson is referring to the more than $100 Billion High Speed rail project price tag, which is only expected to go higher once the project is underway.
“Instead of supporting policies that will help grow our economy he has created a cost of living that many Californians can’t afford. His proposed double-down on cap and trade will squeeze more money out of energy producers and our wallets. All this to fuel risky projects like high speed rail that offer no real promise of cleaning up our environment,” said Patterson. “We cannot continue to ignore the financial impacts of Governor Brown’s pet projects on hard-working people. We know gas prices are on the rise – at least 10 cents a gallon at some stations in the Central Valley and the Los Angeles area so far. Gas distributors are telling us that we’ve yet to feel the full impact of the cost jump, but will in the coming weeks as they pass the costs along to us from cap and trade allowances.”
Assemblyman Patterson has authored AB 23, the “Affordable Gas for California Families Act,” to remove transportation fuels, including natural gas, from the cap and trade program to eliminate the gas tax once and for all.
How Politicians are Killing California
Friday marked the first day people who entered the United States illegally were allowed to apply for a California driver’s license under AB 60, signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown in October 2013. Across the state, 1.4 million people are expected to apply for a license under AB 60 over the next three years of a program which claims will “increase road safety and make immigrants’ lives easier.”
Brown swore in two of his recently confirmed appointments to the California Supreme Court — Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar and Leondra R. Kruger — both of whom are widely seen as ideological change to one of the nation’s most influential state courts.
But many are asking who these new picks are, how they will change the tenor of the court, and what will the result be of their addition to the court. No one in the California media has tackled these questions yet. And with Brown’s history of the recall of former California Supreme Court Justice Rose Bird, remembered as the first and only chief justice of the California Supreme Court to be removed from office by voters, along with associate justices Cruz Reynoso and Joseph Grodin, the governor has a questionable past with California’s highest court.
Gas Tax
Brown has been mum about rising gas prices, and the hefty new gas tax January 1, of roughly 20 to 90 cents per gallon of gas. The California Air Resources Board secretly created the new tax on gas without public knowledge or legislative approval. Yet the money raised from the tax will go to High Speed Rail, heartily supported by Brown. And Brown has been complicit in his support of the CARB’s running roughshod over taxpayers, despite his claims otherwise.
Last year, lawmakers tried to get the tax delayed for one year through AB 69, a bill by Fresno Democratic Assemblyman Henry Perea, and co-authored by nine Democratic Assembly and Senate members. But in one of his last acts as Senate President, Sen. Darrell Steinberg unilaterally killed the bill without ever allowing a hearing.