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California is the only state in the U.S. that donates its oil and natural gas reserves to the private oil and gas industry. Were it a nation, it would be the only nation in the world.
Last year, on March 14th, 2008, the California State Legislature, faced with school closures, teacher layoffs, and, radical cuts in all things pubic, finally considered a 9.9% oil extraction tax that would have raised $1.2 billion.
Julia Brownley, Assemblywoman from California's 41st District, stood to speak for the legislation in behalf of California's K-12 schoolchildren:
In the evening, after three hours of debate, the Assembly defeated the oil extraction tax, voting on almost perfectly rigid party lines. Forty-five Democrats voted yeah, 30 Republicans nay. Democrat, Nicole Parra, of the State's 30th Assembly District, including oil heavy Kern County, voted nay, with the Republicans. Parra consistently opposed an oil extraction tax, and, last year, she infuriated fellow Democrats by endorsing her pro-oil Republican successor Danny Gilmore.
The Republican minority held sway, in 2008, because Proposition 13, a ballot measure passed in California in 1978, stipulates that any budget or tax measure requires a 2/3 majority to pass.
This week, as California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Controller John Chiang warn that California may have to close its doors if the legislature doesn't pass a balanced budget by June 15th, the legislature may again consider an oil extraction tax.
They will also consider extension of oil and gas drilling leases off the coast of Santa Barbara, which suffered the 1969 oil spill which gave rise to the adamant coalition of surfers, beachcombers, coastal residents, and environmentalists determined to defend the California Coast. The new oil and gas drilling lease extensions would raise only $100 million in oil lease revenues this year, and unless an oil extraction tax is passed, would mean donating more of California's oil and gas reserves to the cash-rich and globally destructive oil industry.
Comments
The articles says that oil reserves are "untaxed." Nothing could be further from the truth. Oil companies pay ad valorum property taxes on their reserves, the highest corporate income tax of any oil producing state, local severance taxes, a state barrel tax to fund various agencies and programs, and sales taxes on all equipment, taxes that most other states don't have. The state also receives around 17% of all revenue from oil extracted from state properties, including offshore and public lands. Also, the SB spill was in 1969, not '79.
Tax them until we have real energy choices. No tears over a global industry that is the richest market in the world--around 500 billion a year. Watch the film Who Killed the Electric Car to see how dirty Big Oil plays and how secure is their energy fascism and pollution regime over us all as we are alienated from a clean environment and real market choices simultaneously. Texaco (the oil company) bought the super-efficient electric car batteries, and of course they didn't do this to get into the energy business. They did it to kill it. Of course it was sold to them by GM (that refused to allow national advertising to let consumers know it had bought the 300km battery of their dreams). Big oil and GM deserve to be destroyed because they are destroying us all with their politicized raw material regime. Read Edwin Black's book Internal Combustion for how the USA was converted over 100 years to their energy regime of no choice while consumer interests & environmental interest were killed
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