AB 32, California’s Global Warming Solutions Act, passed in 2006. The legislation sought to save the clean California air while saving the failing state economy. Seven years later, California finds it did neither.
If the L.A. Times is anything, it is the bully pulpit of political powers pandering to the California public. The paper supported AB 32, purporting its benefits in thwarting global warming by reducing greenhouse emissions despite the disastrous effects upon implementing the state legislation.
L.A. Times even propounded the job-creating potential of AB 32, promoting the legacy that then Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wanted to leave in Sacramento. In both cases, nothing could be further from the bitter truth and real consequence of AB 32.
In truth, AB 32 accelerated the migration of nearly 4 million people from the state, with rates of departure increasing daily. Businesses leave at the rate of 5-10 per week, taking millions of jobs with them, all tolled. Among the cognoscenti living in reality, AB 32 is poised to bankrupt the state and is known as The Bill that Killed California.
Energy is unaffordable for individuals, households, businesses, and industries. And so, California population leaves for the likes of Utah, Texas, Virginia, the Dakotas—states that like business and don’t tax the wealth-makers to death-by-state-government.
Such business friendly ways, however, are not the ways of California. The word is that things are not working as intended, as manifest by California’s lead in unemployment, high cost of living, and usurious tax rates. The state is bankrupt and deep in debt with only more tax increases to shoulder the load.
The L.A. Times chose to spread the notion of economic hope from AB 32. And Californians bought the story by voting down Proposition 23, which, if passed, would have delayed the implementation of AB 32 for better economic times.
Voters even voted themselves a tax increase with Proposition 30, under the illogical logic of Gov. Jerry Brown and prompt promotion by the L.A. Times. The state, at the lead of its government, mesmerized the public with media that promises some kind of unachievable Nirvana.
Rather, California approaches a disaster to which it has become accustomed. And the L.A. Times has decided to print the story slanted toward an untoward accuracy more than ever before. It reported Jerry Brown admitting that “programs [such as AB 32] are costly to businesses, raising the price of their energy.”
The government’s acknowledgment, however, begs the wisdom of its solution. Jerry Brown wants other states to follow in pursuing green technologies to lower costs by economies of scale. Such a solution smacks of another unachievable Utopian fix.
Kudos go to the L.A. Times for reporting that AB 32 imperils the economy, a new and different perspective for that medium. CalWatchdog, however, holds L.A. Times as the irresponsible party for an ‘epic fail' in journalism for promoting the earlier fake fairy tale story for California under AB 32.
Californians have always shown a preference for fairy tale over the prospect of failure. AB 32 remains as the bill that kills.
Comments