For years, critics of California’s cap-and-trade program have lambasted it as a government slush fund. They say that politicians are able to dip into it to fund their pet projects or raid it to fill the shortfall of the moment — as long as they can assert a mildly credible connection between the spending and the state’s ambitious goals to fight climate change.
Well, California lawmakers are about to prove those critics right.
They needed money but were too frightened politically to be honest about it.
As part of the budget negotiations, lawmakers shelved Gov. Gavin Newsom’s controversial “water tax” that would have raised $140 million a year to help low-income communities finally clean up their contaminated water systems.
Who needs to get money when there’s this big pile over there.
Instead, lawmakers plan to fund the much-needed water cleanups with $100 million a year in cap-and-trade dollars — money that is paid to the state by polluters and which is legally required to be spent on projects to reduce the greenhouse gases responsible for global warming.
Of course the money is supposed to be used for greenhouse gas or other climate disaster mitigation. But the politicians find a way.
So how do leaders justify using cap-and-trade dollars for water cleanups? Newsom’s office said that communities with tainted water need bottled water delivered in trucks that pollute the air. If the water supply is cleaned, that will reduce vehicle emissions.
By that ludicrous logic, California could pay for expanded Medi-Cal benefits with cap-and-trade dollars too, because if people have preventive healthcare, they’ll get sick less and drive to the hospital less and produce fewer greenhouse gases.
Read the full piece by the LA Times Editorial Board here.
Starting in 2014 Southern California Edison would randomly give users what they called a “rebate” that for me would reduce a monthly bill by as much as 85%. An explanation letter would come with the bill saying they hoped I would use the windfall for ‘energy saving’ investments but no one was checking so it could be used for anything. In the meantime our rates steadily increased due to taxes associated with “infrastructure, maintenance, and renewable costs”. So they taxed us more under the auspices of spending it on renewables and by state law they had to spend it on renewable improvements or return it. Tax, then return. Looks like that will stop with our new Progressive “woke” governor who is putting the finishing touches on turning California into a openly Socialist state…… except for high tech. After all, they help to put him in power and keep him there.
Another source for the bloated CALPERS and CALSTRS Pensions!
Corruption = Government = Socialists = Democrats = MSM = Academia = Silent Science = CAGW = Entertainment Industry = Crony Renewables Capitalists = Big Data = Economic Destruction = liberty lost = revolution
“I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here!” (The croupier hands him his money.) “…Your winnings, sir.” “Oh, thank you very much!”
This is just normal for progressives. They believe the State owns everything, including all the money. The State is benevolent, the State knows best and has the answer to everything. If you are against the State you are to be eliminated.
Ever notice how that falls in line with fascism : authoritarian ultranationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition and strong regimentation of society and of the economy
Forget it, Jake. It’s Clowntown.
Anyone who moves to California should be given an orientation kit, which would include knee pads, a tube of KY jelly and a diagram showing the proper orientation.
Imho there’s a single cause for the unbridled criminal insanity – the web of deceit we call The Media. And a coordinated effort to expose its true nature and free the unbridled TRUTH will set us all free.
If they can steal more money from their people, then they will find more ways to spend it. It never ends – well, until the state goes bankrupt of course. This is how socialist states are created – at the willingness of their people while things are going well.
By raising all this new spending now they are setting themselves up for a spending disaster when the economy hiccups. The solution of course will be to raise more taxes.
If you are an industry in California, you need to prepare to flee now.
There are a lot of socialists who want to punish any person or company that tries to escape their grasp by seizing most of their assets, and or making it impossible for them to return/do business with the US.
If you are going to spend other people’s money, “ what difference does it make?”
Did I plagiarize there?
Would you believe that in the province of Quebec, which shares its cap and trade program with California, we had the same problem with monies that were supposed to go to emission reducing initiatives? From an article in the Montreal Gazette: It was being managed in any old way people wanted,” Premier François Legault told reporters Wednesday reacting to the report. “There were several ministries dipping in (to the fund) and no optimization in terms of reduction of greenhouse gases.
They could start an obesity campaign where everyone is encouraged to gain weight and sequester carbon. Those seen working out and therefore exhaling too much CO2 could be charged a carbon tax to pay for food for the homeless so they can gain weight and sequester carbon for the fit people. This would probably pass in CA.
Climate change has always been about a new tax. Man does not control CO2 or the climate.
Climate has always been about a new tax…
+50
Who among us actually knows or mixes with one of these destructive bureaucrats who write and enforce these regulations that are so often criticised?
One might imagine two separate groups, the f****s and the f****d, about whom the latter know little about the former and vice versa.
I spent some years in industry in Oz managing Government business and I cannot recall meeting more than about 3 of the bureaucrat class. Not a large enough base to make generalisations. Seemed like nice people, mostly introspective, did not give the impression of covert wickedness.
Seems to me that there needs to be a stronger. more travelled path over this bridge. Are we suffering in silence, when a few private words between groups could head off emerging conflict?
Do these Californian fund diverters know that their move is a sham, a dodge? Do they know it is unpopular? Do they sleep deep at night? Or do adequate messages get through to them to ruffle their complacency?
Tell us some 1 on 1 interactions you have had. Geoff
They don’t listen to you unless you have money or can deliver votes. I have sent enough letters and made enough calls to know that they don’t listen. I sent a letter once to my representative and the reply had nothing to do with my letter. I sent another letter with his reply attached pointing out that he didn’t answer my letter. I got the SAME letter back. It was only when I threatened to write to the editor of the local paper pointing out that he pays no attention to what his constituents write, that he actually paid attention to what I had said and replied to my concerns.
Cap and trade is a terrible tax because, in the end, it hurts the poor the most and the politicians are not honest about who is at the bottom of the chain of harm.
However, I am much more in favor of actually doing something useful like cleaning water instead of funding harmful things like “green energy.”
To Geoff Sherrington
The collective apathy towards the homeless epidemic in Los Angeles is staggering- officially there are 58,986 people here receiving some sort of services from the city but the actual number is probably much higher. The mayor took a lot of abuse for opening a homeless shelter that houses less than fifty people at a time while campaigning to be governor last year; that’s the type of token gesture pervading the grossly overwhelmed bureaucracy here. The state of California gave the city over $85 million to address this emergency but the “covert wickedness” of those in power have prevented this money being used for homelessness except for a $2.7 million payout to the Skid Row area downtown that looks like a sidewalk tent district littered with trash and crap; this funding was given only because the city representative in that district pushed hard for it; perhaps he was the haunted in his sleep exception to the apathetic standard of his peers gobbling down $16 muffins at the snack bar during their ‘important’ board meetings while staying at luxury hotels on taxpayer money.