It looks like California Jobs Initiative will be on the ballot November 2, 2010. Apparently, enough signatures were garnered to put the issue to the people of the state. The issue is AB32, and a noose around the necks of California residents and businesses it is. California Jobs Initiative, if passed, would prevent Assembly Bill 32 from going into effect unless and until California’s unemployment rate returns to 5.5% (it is currently near 13%).
California’s AB32 requires greenhouse gas emissions to return to their 1990 levels by 2020, forcing power plants and heavy industry to purchase expensive mitigation equipment, massive switches to expensive and unreliable alternatives, imposition of a cap-and-trade market with businesses paying to play….all driving up steeply the cost of energy and all products made with energy in the state. That’s all of them.
Studies by Sanjay B. Varshney (Dean, Business Administration, California State University) and Thomas Tanton (Senior Fellow, Pacific Research Institute) found that hundreds of thousands of jobs would be lost, and economic costs would run into the hundreds of billions. That’s dollars with a “b” and a whole lot of zeros. Businesses would accelerate their exit from the state. That means hasta la vista, baby, to both jobs and tax revenues for California. And it would not affect the climate one iota.
For those who are struggling with the effects of a serious economic downturn already in California–largely brought about by the same groups promoting AB32–the imposition of AB32 suggests even further decline. That’s more bad economic news in anybody’s book.
California voters will now have a say in the economic future of their state. Governor Schwarzenegger has shown, by his opposition to AB32’s repeal, that his hopes reside in a dreamy but misguided future for California. The promise of “green jobs?” Well, that’s a fantasy for most Californians, but not to the players who are set to profit from government subsidies. They are lining up to feed at the trough. California was once the envy of the rest of the country, indeed the world. Now, it’s a basket case of an economy with a government on the brink of bankruptcy. AB32 would take California nowhere but farther down the tubes.
In November, let’s watch and see whether Californians vote their pocketbooks or vote to continue their own economic decline.
Sources:
http://www.ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/California_Jobs_Initiative,_the_Suspension_of_AB_32_(2010)
http://www.sbaction.org/get_resource.php?table=resource_kmqap4_18z4ys&id=kmqaq1_1ed1wo
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/jobs-242018-green-energy.html
