This is a surprise, a major TV station in Los Angeles pushes back against the California Air Resources Board AB32 bill aka California’s Global Warming Solutions Act. I urge readers to drop him a letter of support at the email address included in the transcript below.
Transcript follows.
LOS ANGELES – KTTV Vice-President and General Manager Kevin Hale takes a look at how one well-intentioned Climate Change Bill might damage our economy beyond repair in this P.O.V.
When Governor Schwarzenegger signed AB 32 six years ago, it was pre-recession. And that legislation, California’s Global Warming Solutions Act, despite its good intentions, will wreak havoc on our state’s economy.
The California Air Resources Board, under AB 32, recently approved the nation’s first “cap and trade” system, which effectively charges the state’s industries fees for emissions when they exceed a cap—in effect a tax—with the aim of curtailing California’s greenhouse gases.
The bill was passed for all the right reasons but the reality is, right now we are in a down economy, and AB 32 is a business killer. It effectively will be looked at as a back door tax that will push even more California businesses to move out of state.
California, although a leader on environmental issues, cannot solve the problem of greenhouses gases alone. When AB 32 was sold to voters, the promise was that other states would follow our lead. So far, none have.
A study by California State University, Sacramento, commissioned by the California Small Business Roundtable, estimates AB 32’s total cost to be more than $182 billion in lost output, raising living costs by $3,857 per household by the year 2020.
In light of these devastating numbers, I am asking Governor Brown and the legislature to put a moratorium on AB 32.
Look, we all agree that saving the environment is of the utmost importance but I believe that we should revisit this legislation when the economy improves and when other states are ready to join us.
Thanks for listening. I’d like to hear your Point of View. Go to myfoxla.com and click on P-O-V or send me an email at POV@fox11.com
Read more: http://www.myfoxla.com/dpp/news/pov/pov-climate-change-bill-2012-03-15#ixzz1pIClmX6Q
wws says:
March 16, 2012 at 2:19 pm
I WANT to see this bill enforced. I WANT to see California’s economy driven into complete ruin.
Die, Kalifornia, Die!!!
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The preceding announcement was brought to you by….
The Greater Texas Chamber of Commerce
…see Texas now
the ironic thing is they keep asking us to vote on bond issues for water projects and the money just gets dumped into the general fund and eaten up by 50yo retirees.
“The bill was passed for all the right reasons but the reality is, right now we are in a down economy, and AB 32 is a business killer. It effectively will be looked at as a back door tax that will push even more California businesses to move out of state.”
If it’s a bad deal when you have $100 in your pocket, it’s still a bad deal when you have $1,000,000 in your pocket.
He’s just trying to have a television audience to preach the weather to. Is that a questionable self-serving vested interest? (He may never get the hang of Texas’ weather.)
“When AB 32 was sold to voters, the promise was that other states would follow our lead. So far, none have.”
California may not lead the nation in job creation, but it looks like they have a lock on leadership in gullibility.
The hidden message (and not so “hidden”, either), is that NO economy can afford AB32. California can’t; the US can’t; and neither can any country in the world. AB32 is just the manifestation of a much deeper economic problem.
And this subliminal cost/benefit analysis is something thinking people will finally use to kill all this idiocy in the name of “save the planet”, or “save the whales”… or whatever they’re busy saving. The bottom line is they’ve got to save the economy unless they want to be campin’ out 365 days per year, year after year.
Seems to be a race between Australia and California to see which region can reach the highest debt/population ratio in the shortest time by continuing to implement “green” policy after “green” policy. Neither Australia nor California can be green enough. The “greenest” is the competition winner. Who cares about the debt when politicians are intent on saving the world? Australia was debt free 4 years ago. Currently has a debt of ~AU$200B and racking upwards fast.
Rod Blagojevitch is leering out of the front pages of the Wall Street Journal this morning. The caption reads, “A Final Taste of Freedom”, over a picture of him palling around with some high school students on a brief stop at a burger joint before he headed into a federal prison for his 14-year prison sentence. I suppose it’s sad. Illinois has the second-highest deficit (15 billion) after California’s projected 28 B for this year.
http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2011/02/politics/table.state.budgets/
@ur momisugly $182 billion (losses) over 8 yrs, the addition to their deficit is about 22 billion / yr., or a nearly-80% increase annually, over the existing deficit. Could that be right?
Yes. This is particularly dangerous. It is an emotional play in order to appease the far left in California but it will be a disaster. The main reason is because over 50% of the population of California pays little to now income tax. In fact, nationally, the bottom 75% of wage earners pay only 12% of the tax. So they tout job gains but they are very low end jobs. McDonalds. The sort of jobs that pay no or very little in income taxes. Now they want to raise taxes on people making a lot of money. Well, all it takes is for ONE of those wealthy people to move up to South Lake Tahoe, Nevada and it is equal to losing hundreds of lesser paying jobs. In the meantime, two retired cops who went out on disability retirement have just opened up a restaurant near me. Those guys are pulling in over $100,000 a year in retirement pay. Because it is *disability* retirement, a huge portion of that is tax free. But they aren’t so disabled that they can’t start a second career running a restaurant. In fact, nearly *all* of California’s fire and police go out on disability and most start a second career.
But the key point is that if only a dozen or two of these rich leave the state, it has a real measurable impact on revenue. If another dozen or two decide not to migrate to the state, that hurts even more. These are the people who actually pay the income tax revenue that the state collects and the state is doing their utmost to chase them out! Again, the state should be doing exactly the opposite. They should slash taxes for the rich in half and they would see a migration in from other states and their tax revenue would go up. But that is counter to the emotional, bone-headed thinking of the political left. California is going to raise the tax, the people are going to move away and the state will find itself collecting 100% of nothing.
Carson City is looking better with every passing month. No state income tax and I could probably keep my current job.
Well if Hurcules can’t hold back CAGW in La La Land they have obviously given up.
(sorry to anyone who hasn’t seen “Hurcules in New York”)
…actually sorry for anyone who has seen “Hurcules In New York”
What I would like to see is the budget for C.A.R.B. slashed by about 85%.
I remember in 1975 reading a Los Angeles Times editorial about their ideas of the cause of the New York City debt crisis. The editorial said that Los Angeles has a sales tax of 5%, while New York has a sales tax of 10%, and that was business-killing which was jobs killing.
Now of course, Los Angeles and surrounding areas has a tax of 10%.
“One thing California does is to discriminate against business in a very sneaky way. They create generally hostile business conditions and then they offer certain fair-haired child businesses special major tax breaks. Solyndra, for example, was given huge sales tax breaks. They had to pay no sales tax on the equipment for their facility in Fremont. Twitter gets special payroll tax breaks that other companies don’t get. They were going to leave San Francisco but got special breaks that other businesses don’t get because they were such a high profile example that the politicians were fearful that Twitter’s leaving would cost he supervisors their jobs.”
I read once that this was the technique in Nazi Germany before WW2 started. Regulate everything and hand out favors based on special pleadings. The trains to Berlin were crammed with lawyers who went there on behalf of businesses seeking a special tax break.
I can’t send an e-mail of support to the GM of KTTV on this. Obviously he thinks that AB32 is a good idea but just not now while the economy is bad. I’ll save my words of support for someone who has the guts to get on the air and say AB32 is a scam and needs to be scrapped entirely.
I’ll lend my support to this guy when he gets off the carbon and greenhouse gas band wagon all together. Postponing the bill till later is not a brave move,Anthony, he doesn’t deserve a bouquet. It’s perhaps notable as you have done, but that’s it.
More Soylent Green,
Re-running models does not work.
The Australian Treasury ran models and refused to release their data. The bits that the Government did release say the same thing as California. We will be Glorious Leaders in the New Green World and other Nations Will Flock To Our Cause and so all our failed models will come true.
Yes, all the Flocking has been the other way. The models failed, GIGO, but the businesses suffer anyway.
Just this week, the Manufacturing Industry, mainly food products in Australia, completed an analysis of business under the carbon tax. Their modelling showed the carbon tax will virtually shut down their businesses as power becomes too expensive.
Economically speaking, the world cannot afford Australia to drop out of food production. So their answer is to sell everything to China while we twiddle our thumbs and contemplate Gaia.
The fact is that every week an average of 5.4 companies stop doing business here every week, 974,400 jobs were lost between January 2008 and November 2011, Companies are moving out of state, eBay shipped 1,000 jobs out of California, Intel shipped 8,000 jobs out of California.
State spending has gone insane 2000 it was $84.9 billion, 2009 $122.4 billion, 2011 was $136.9 billion.
California is the 50th worst sales tax percentage, 50th worst utility tax, 50th worst in new business start-ups, and 50th worst in growth in manufacturing. In the last 4 years, 870,550 of the middle class left California and the Wealthy are leaving too.
So, here’s a “great idea”, let’s make sure AB-32 becomes law and shuts down the entire state!!!
The degree of stupidity found in Sacramento is unbelievable. 🙁
Idaho is looking better and better every year.
They also spend the most per student of any state on education and last I looked ranked 48th in the nation in school scores. In other words, spending per student seems to be inversely proportional to student achievement.
It seems to me if I believed in cagw I would cheer ab32 and consider the loss of industry not as a side effect but rather hitting the objective. If I truly believed I would demand ab32 be implemented.
Seems to me this guy’s a weasel but, I accept his explanation and I am happy for small gains.
Maybe he doesn’t believe and sees this as a way forward.
This is just a rumor but the grapevine has Apple moving out of CA.
A little late!!!
Where was this commentary when there was a recent referendum to kill the ARB, a referendum that failed miserably? Why wait until the thing is about to go into its full effect, instead of coming out loud and strong BEFORE the referendum went down in flames.
pk says:
March 16, 2012 at 1:19 pm
It’s bad out here in California. How bad?
ita so bad that the politicians charge sales taxes on the gas taxes paid at the pump. yeah thats a TAX on the TAXES paid for road maintainence and construction that somehow finds its way into other things.
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You’re way behind. Here in the UK administrative region of the EUSSR, we’ve had that for decades. A petrol (gas)/diesel tax is applied. Then VAT (Value Added Tax (sic) ) at 17% is applied to the total. Currently ~160% is added to the price which the retailer would otherwise charge.
Perhaps folks have started to notice that businesses have fled the state and tax revenues are down, very hard, across the board?
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2012/03/california-tax-revenues-plunge.html
“That is a 22.55% plunge in spite of the fact that this February was a leap year adding a day to the calendar.”
Our Governor Moonbeam’s answer? MORE TAXES!!!!
Someone needs to explain to them the Laffer Curve… Raise rates, get LESS revenue.
Maybe they’ll figure it out before we reach absolute zero… or not…
Bill Parsons says:
March 16, 2012 at 2:51 pm
[…]
http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2011/02/politics/table.state.budgets/
@ur momisugly $182 billion (losses) over 8 yrs, the addition to their deficit is about 22 billion / yr., or a nearly-80% increase annually, over the existing deficit. Could that be right?
Yes, it is. Though some estimates put the yearly deficit at 40ish $Billion (there are a variety of “magic methods” in the budget… like not counting things you must spend but have not exactly spent yet. A few times employees of the State have been given “Warrants” for money ‘someday’. Most of the time, banks have cashed these like a paycheck, then held them until the State could cough up some real cash; but there is no requirement to do so. In theory it’s not really appropriate to do that as they are just an IOU, not a check.)
With present tax revenues down another 1/5 beyond the numbers in what you quote, the “issue” is accelerating too. I’m out of work and not bothering to look in California. My last ‘gig’ was in Florida, and I’m still working the Florida market (but Texas is on my ‘desirable’ list too). Why? Because IFF I did take a job in California, I’m up for about 35% Fed Tax, 11% State Income Tax, and another 10% State Sales Tax on anything I buy (other than gasoline where it was pointed out that the tax is applied to the gas tax too… I’d not be surprised if they put a payment tax on income taxes…) Add that up, it’s about 56% “job to payment”. NOW add the roughly 6% SSI tax, it’s up to 64%. (or maybe more, I’ve not kept up with some of the rises…). Now, out of that 36% (or maybe less) that is “left”, you get to pay your property taxes and your excise taxes and your telecommunications taxes and your utility taxes and ….
Essentially, it doesn’t pay to get a job in California. If you are a multimillionaire movie star or executive, you can hire enough tax lawyers to hide money from The Grab. If you are poor, you can get a partial pass. Really poor? Subsidy. Middle class? Sorry, no room at the inn…
He seems to be forgetting about the other Cap n’ Trade scheme in the Northeast, RGGI. While not nearly as onerous (yet) as AB 32, it is a noose around the neck of the region’s economy just waiting to be tightened. So far, out of the ten states that joined, NJ is the only one that has managed to bail, though NH has come close.
Look, we all agree that saving the environment is of the utmost importance…
While wandering around the global village, you come across someone lying in the gutter, thirsty, starving, in need of urgent medical attention. Do you:
A. Get them help, even if it will inconvenience you somewhat to do so,
B. Contemplate which has the greater environmental impact, saving them or letting them die.
Wait a moment, someone from the California Street neighborhood eco-watch is demanding a third option:
C. Check their pockets first then force passerby to cough up any more money needed for the planting of trees to offset their environmental impact, which must be done by the California Street Environmental Impact Abatement Corp, Tree Planting Division.
(You’re sure that’s a good idea? Oh, it’s your unbiased independent belief that it is, you being a TP employee doesn’t influence that at all? Interesting…)